Blog Archives

Jesus in the Ancient Hebrew Alphabet Part 7 – Vav – Jesus the Nail for Heaven to Earth Connection

(Ver 1.1) This is “Part 7” in the surprising and amazing Bible study series focused upon searching, finding, and learning how God became a man and how He was hidden in every letter of the Ancient Hebrew Alphabet. This series has been going through each letter of the alphabet (but not in alphabetical order) and today we are focused on the 6th letter called “Vav”. This ancient Hebrew pictogram is the image of a nail or a peg. Therefore, this letter represents the act of “connecting” two separated entities.

There are debates about the pronunciation of this letter, and some call it the “Waw”. But we have chosen the “Vav” sound as our preference. If you like another sound, that is fine, please just don’t fight us and cause divisions in the body. Simply change the Vav to the Waw as your chosen way of viewing the letter and learn what this letter means from the ancient Hebrew pictographic point of view.

If your interest today is just learning about the Hebrew letter “Vav”, this lesson is standalone. But if you are new to this subject of the ancient Hebrew Alphabet, it is good to learn the basic concepts of why the Ancient Hebrew alphabet is so important to know and how each letter was revealed by Jesus personally to represent Himself as a prophetical window into who He was, and what He came to do on the earth. Therefore, if you have not read the “Introduction”, it is recommended that you go back and begin there first.

Every time I go into studying a new letter of the ancient Hebrew alphabet, I become more amazed at God’s ability to teach us using a single picture. With each letter, I conclude that this must be the most amazing letter ever of all 22. Today is no exception, because I was totally amazed with what God has revealed to us in the many hours that I have spent in studying the letter “Vav”. I pray that every one of you will feel the same after you read this lesson. Here is a list of the sections that will be covered in today’s lesson on the Ancient Hebrew Letter Vav:

  1. Introduction to the Vav
  2. Genesis 1:1 – Beginning “Vav” Prophecy of the Coming End
  3. Jesus is God’s Sure Nail
  4. How God Placed Us in Christ to Vav Re-Connect Us with God
  5. Conclusion

If you are ready, let us get started learning God’s Word and alphabet.

1. INTRODUCTION

As you can see from the picture of the ancient Hebrew letter “Vav” the orignal ancient image looks like a nail, or a tent peg, and thus the rudimentary meaning of the letter is something or someone that connects two things together of either like or differing composition or nature. We will discover more meanings and applications of this letter as we continue to learn.

The letter “Vav” is the sixth letter in alphabetic order. The number six concerns the linear sequence as well as the gematria value. The number six is significant in Biblical numbers, because it represents “man” and especially the first man “Adam” when created in a sinless mature state of innocence before the fall. As you should know Adam was created as God’s last works of creation at the end of day 6. Therefore, the number 6 will become a very significant part of this lesson, especially because of the essential fact that God became a man to die on a cross to save us from hell (Rev 20:13-14).

The letter Vav is also used as a prefix which is added to another Hebrew word. This addition to the beginning of a Hebrew word, inserts the word “And” to the sentence. This is grammatically added to connect the previous thought, words, ideas, phrases, etc. to what is about to be said. This confirms the basic meaning of the letter “Vav” is that of “connecting” or “adding” two concepts or even entities together. This is the same idea of joining two objects of wood together by connecting them with a “nail”.

The Hebrew matching word for the letter “Vav” is H2053. This word is the two-letter sound of the single “Vav” letter, just spelled out in word form as “Vav” + “Vav”. This is the doubling of the single letter “Vav”, and this will become even more meaningful soon. However, this word only occurs 13 times in the entire Hebrew text, and it can only be found in the book of Exodus.

The Hebrew word “Vav” (H2053) has a root definition of a “peg” as in a “tent peg”. This is exactly what the picture of the letter represents. A tent peg is designed to bring stability to the tent dwelling (house and family inside). This tent peg connects the dwelling to the ground with a rope and this will keep the tent secure during a storm of strong winds. It is interesting that this is exactly what is needed for the “House and Family of God” to be firmly grounded. We are going to discover that Jesus is this ultimate grounding tent peg.

Therefore, this word “Vav” contains the idea of joining or attaching two or more things together like the tent to the ground. But how does this work? If you have ever been camping in a tent you know you better bring tent pegs and rope because you do not want your tent to blow away. The tent is made secure by hammering a peg into the ground (earth) and then attaching a loop or rope to the tent peg that is “also” tied to the tent. This causes the structure to become secure from being easily moved.

We can find in the New Testament where it says God created a new family in Jesus (Heb 3:6). Isaiah 28:16 prophesies this house that is being built by naming Jesus Christ as the coming “corner stone” of the foundation. 1 Peter 2:4-5 describes Jesus to be a “Living Stone” that was rejected of men but chosen of God. Peter further describes the church body as being connected stones to Jesus in His “household of faith” (Gal 6:10). These are all “Vav” concepts of connection being described using synonymous terms with no direct reference to a “peg”.

This Hebrew word H2053 can also mean a “nail”, or a “hook” as in an object that is used as a “connector” to “hang” or “attach” two separated objects together. This is an amazing concept if we will begin to see and learn how this applies to Jesus. The works of Jesus are described with great precision as in the concept of Him being a living “nail” that is used to rejoin sinful humans to the Holy God, and vice versa. We can read about this work of God in Jesus in Colossians 1:20 and other verses.

Let us examine the O.T. word H2053 usage briefly. In the Hebrew text of Exodus in the KJV Bible this word “Vav” is consistently translated as “hook” 13 times. When first used in the book of Exodus in chapter 26 verses 31 and 32, this word is utilized in the construction of the tabernacle by God’s instructions for the hanging of the separating veil covering to enter the most holy temple location. God’s usages of the “hooks” (Vav) was specifically for the hanging of the separating “veil” (H6532) placed upon wooden posts. This usage is certainly a hidden image and description of Jesus hanging on a cross (Tav).

For example, the O.T. veils are a typology pattern of Jesus’ human flesh. We learn this concept in Hebrews 10:20 where God writes the veil represents the “flesh” of Jesus Christ. It should be obvious that the wooden posts of the temple are a typological pattern of the “Tav” cross, and the nails (Vav) placed in the wooden posts (Tav) are what hung Jesus body (veil) up on the cross (Tav). There are other things that we could go into here, but this is just an introduction.

Today we are going to discover some of the amazing facts surrounding the letter “Vav”. Here is one of the first amazing facts that we will see about the letter “Vav”. The letter “Vav” is the 2nd most used letter written by God in the Torah. The 1st most popular occurring letter is the “Yod”. The 3rd most popular letter found in the Torah is the “Hey”. And if you have read the other lessons, you already know these are letters used to spell the name of the LORD. LORD in Hebrew is spelled “Yod” + “Hey” + “Vav” + “Hey”. Therefore, our God has chosen the three most significantly used alphabet letters for His personal covenant name. Each of these letters are important, including this letter pictured as a “nail”, which is the “third” position of His name.

The first letter of the name of God was the “Yod”, the picture of an outstretched hand. This is very symbolic of God’s love reaching out for His lost creation. The 2nd and the 4th letters are the same letter “Hey” meaning “Behold” and “Look”. This double reference to the picture of a man looking at something amazing, places a strong emphasis upon this person that is unnamed, implying created humans should search to find Him. The third letter is our “Vav” nail and all these together give us a prophetical message of God appearing before man to be seen in the flesh of Jesus.

Therefore, we have found a prophecy of Jesus being hung (nailed) on a cross encoded within the primary name of God. These letters are speaking to us “Behold the hand, Behold the nail”.  This covenant name of God is clearly teaching us that God will become a man with human hands and His hands will be pierced with “Vav” nails when He will die for us on a “Tav” cross.

This brings us again to the fact that the Vav letter sequence and gematria value are both “6”. Remember this number 6 represents an upright “man”. This fact is well known because man was created at the end of day “6” of creation in Genesis 1. Since God chooses to select a “Vav” as the third letter of His name, He has foretold to us how His power will allow Him to become a flesh and blood man that will be “Vav” nailed through His “Yod” hands and humans will be able to behold “Hey” when it happens in amazement. This fact is proved correct in John 19:37 where we can see this was fulfilled the first time while hanging on a cross in Jerusalem. This will become of greater significance as we continue to study this letter and its position in the alphabet.

Now to conclude this introduction to the 6th letter of the alphabet the “Vav”, we will also need to know a little bit about the 7th letter of the alphabet called the “Zayin”. These two letters are intimately connected. You see the 6th letter “Vav” is a metal object as in the image of a nail that designed for connecting, but the 7th letter “Zayin” is also made of metal in the shape of a farming tool used for harvesting crops like wheat.

When harvesting crops, the wheat must be cut with a sharp metal tool (Zayin). Therefore, the letter “Vav” is a joining together of two things and the letter “Zayin” is the separating or cutting division of a single thing into two parts. These are antithesis letter concepts of opposition, but God chose to place them directly next to each other in the Alphabet as letters 6 and 7. Therefore, they are connected by God’s design. We will soon discover more about this connection later in the lesson. Now let us move into some Bible details that will begin to unfold all these topics.

2. Genesis 1:1 Vav Beginning Prophecy of the Coming End

There are several amazing hidden prophetical facts found in the words of Genesis 1:1; “In the Beginning”. These prophecies when they are known, reveal God’s personal coming to the earth as a man sent to die by being nailed on a cross. These “End” prophecies occur at the very “Beginning” of the Bible, and they involve our Hebrew letter “Vav”. Here is our key verse for this section to help you understand why we are searching Genesis, and it also reveals what we are looking for:

Isa 46:10  Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure:

As we can see, Isaiah reveals that God has declared the “End” from the “Beginning”. If you recall the beginning letter of the Hebrew alphabet is the “Alef” and the ending letter is the ‘Tav”. The “Alef” is a strong ox picture representing God as a Strong Servant (Jesus). The “Tav” is the picture of a cross the instrument of crucifixion for Jesus to die. Therefore, we are searching for the declaration of an “End” by returning to the very “First” (Beginning) verse of the Bible. According to the Word of God, in Isaiah we are supposed to be able to find something significant that will bring forth an “End”.

But let us place this search for the “End” within the context of our study subject of the Hebrew alphabet. We are going to approach this search with this strategy because it is not yet fully known what “End” will occur, and who it will affect. But also, it is true that we can read the translated plain text verse and find nothing about any kind of “End”. Therefore, this message of an “End” must be found in the alphabet letters that created the words that were written and translated into English. This seems very logical and obvious, doesn’t it?

The very first letter in the Hebrew alphabet is the “Alef” and the very last letter we should know is the “Tav”. The first letter Alef represents the number 1, and the last letter Tav represents numerically the number 22 the total numbers of letters in the alphabet. Also do not forget our current study is the letter “Vav” and this is the number 6. All these facts are given to help set the foundation of our Genesis Hebrew Alphabet search.

Therefore, let us look at the seven words found in the first verse, in the first chapter, in the first book that is in question. It is first interesting to determine if these verses are related to confirm we are at the correct location. We do this by looking for the Hebrew word H7225 translated as “beginning”. It is very simple to see with a search that this word beginning is found in both Isaiah 46:10 and Genesis 1:1 confirming the same word subject is being discussed by God in both verses.

— Hidden Vav Message Foundation —

For this study we will need to examine the Words of Genesis 1:1 in both the English KJV as well as the modern Hebrew:

Gen 1:1  In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

Gen 1:1  בראשׁית ברא אלהים את השׁמים ואת הארץ׃ 

If you are new to the Hebrew language, this verse is written from right to left in a modern font type style and not the ancient Hebrew pictographic font. This may mean that if you desire, you may want to learn the connections from the ancient Hebrew to the modern transition Hebrew font. If you do not care to learn this, that is OK, because the information being covered here is not about the modern font type letter styles or shapes.

Let us notice a few key facts about Genesis 1. This verse in Hebrew consists of 28 alphabet letters in total. It has 7 different words with the Hebrew word H853 (Alef+Tav) occurring twice in two different spellings. If we read the verse as it is literally written it would say and it has both the English words that were translated from the Hebrew words given with Strong numbers. You will also notice that there are three prefix letters given, the first is the Beyt, the second is the Hey that occurs twice, and the final prefix is the Vav. Prefixes may be a totally new subject for you, but it is important for this study.

“In beginning (Beyt+H7225) created (H1254) (AT=H853) God (H430) the heaven (Hey+H8064) and (Vav+H853) the earth (Hey+H776)”.

We are about to get very deep into the Hebrew language today, but don’t be discouraged if it is a challenge at first. There are only 22 letters to learn, but there are a lot of rules to how they can be placed together and what each letter means and what they sound like depending upon location within a word and other details that will not be covered today. However, please make the effort to learn the basic concepts, because they will help you more than you know, since they have for me.

I have learned a lot by just digging much deeper in the Bible. I have found the greatest hidden truths are found in the smallest unknown details. For example, adding the 2nd letter “Beyt” to the beginning of the Hebrew word translated “beginning” (H7225) adds the word “In” to the translation. The word “the” that was placed by the translators in between these two words (In the beginning) in the KJV should not be there and it should literally only say, “In beginning”.

There are four Hebrew words found in Genesis 1:1 that use three unique prefix letters. We already saw the “Beyt” meaning the word “In” (used once). Then there is the letter “Hey” meaning the word “the” (used twice). Finally, we have our study letter “Vav” meaning the word “And” (used only once). This gives us our very literal verse in English as the translation “In beginning created (A-Z) God the heaven and (A-Z) the earth. I hope you are paying attention because this information reveals, or you could conservatively say it implies a lot of new material that we are about to uncover with our study. But first let us look at the placement of the verb in the sentence.

In the English KJV translation the verb “created”, and the noun “God” have been reversed from the way it was written in the Hebrew. Notice the English translation says, “In beginning God created” and the Hebrew says, “In beginning created God”. This was a normal translation change that was done to produce a more readable English-speaking sentence.

It is very interesting that by reversing the verb and the noun order, it sounds more like how the fictional movie character “Yoda” spoke to Luke in Star Wars. For example, English would normally say “It will consume you”, but Yoda would have said, “Consume you it will”. Or Yoda would have said, “Found someone you have” and this would be plainer in normal English as “You have found someone”. This is the writing style found in many Hebrew sentences. It is interesting that this gives the Bible the appearance of sounding like a riddle, or a puzzle book and literally it is one (Prov 25:2, Eze 17:2).

We are about to discover that there are several amazing, coded messages hidden within Genesis 1:1. Several of these will be revealed today in this section of our study subject “Vav”. But not all the coded messages are even known by any of us, except God the creator. We will only focus upon 7 amazing facts today, in the honor of the 7 days of creation in Genesis 1 and the 7 words listed in Genesis 1:1.

Our subject “Vav” letter occurs for the very first time in this verse of the Bible. By the Law of first mention, this occurrence establishes the foundational meaning for the entire rest of the Bible on the letter “Vav”.

— Amazing Fact 1 —
The First “Vav” in the Hebrew Text

If you can read the Hebrew text, you will find the first occurrence of “Vav” is located at exactly the 22nd letter position (address) in the text of Genesis 1:1, removing spaces. We are about to discover a major hidden prophecy found at this 22nd letter address. Also please notice that we cannot find any coded message in the English translation, and this causes us to understand that only the God inspired original Hebrew language is able to support hidden prophecies. Let us get started at analyzing these letters and words of Genesis 1:1.

This “First” “Vav” (6th letter) is found in the Bible at the 22nd letter position and this is the “Beginning” of the 6th Word in the verse, chapter, and book. How can the “First” occurrence of the 6th letter, a “Vav” begin the 6th Word?  Was this by design?

What we have just discovered is the occurrence of two connected (Vav) numbers of 6 (Vav). Usually when God doubles any reference in the Bible, this gives the reference added emphasis and causes the reference to the letter or word to become significantly “greater”, or it simply places the God emphasis of truth upon what is being stated at this location.

There are many times in the Hebrew text that a Hebrew word is doubled. This means God states the Word and then immediately repeats the Word. If you search the English translation for when this occurs it is difficult to find. This is because many times the translators made the text to say “Surely” you will _____. Or it could be translated as something else like this. By adding the word “Surely” the translators have communicated this is what will happen “without a doubt”.

Gen 2:17  But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

For example, notice in Genesis 2:17 the Hebrew word for death “H4191” occurs twice when God speaks the consequences of eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This was translated as “Surely Die”, but it could have been stated as “in dying you will die” or even “you will die once and then again”. This doubling of “die” implies that there are two different deaths that will be the consequence for this sin. This is God’s recorded way of saying this is “very important” to listen to me, because I know what I’m talking about. This is a warning, and it will certainly happen to you without a doubt if you disobey. Therefore, pay attention.

This double six reference connected with the first “Vav” strongly suggests that we are about to learn something worth paying attention to and that it will occur, guaranteed. For example, we should remember that 6 represents the number of a man, but because God doubled it, this man is no ordinary man. In other words, He is guaranteed to come and there is nothing you can do to stop this from happening. We are about to find that this “Sure” man is Jesus Christ (Yehoshua the Messiah).

This double six emphasis is only the first amazing fact whether you understand it fully now or not. But this single fact alone is not that amazing and almost any human author could do that, right? But we are about to find too many other combined facts of amazing circumstances that removes the human influence to cause us to only see all these facts added together can only come from God’s extreme intelligence and intelligent design and these will mathematically become impossible to occur without His participation and therefore, they cannot be a coincidence.

Let us consider a new additional fact of truth about a double reference. Take the 6th letter in English as “F”. If I wanted to create a sentence and make the 6th word begin with “F” that would be very simple, especially if we didn’t care what the sentence said.

We could write, “Let us go to south France”. Look, we just did it! We created a simple sentence with the 6th English word that begins with the 6th alphabet letter “F”, and the sentence sounds very readable. Notice that was not very difficult for anyone to do because there are nearly 30,000 words in the English language that begin with “F”. But will they each be readable? Or will the sentence be applicable and understandable? Does the double 6 have any special hidden meaning in our English example? And the truthful answer to all these questions is, No?

How many words beginning with “Vav” exist in the Strong concordance? There are only around 3 words. This significantly reduces the scope of sentences that can be constructed using the Hebrew alphabet without prefixes added. However, like Genesis 1:1 God just added the letter “Vav” to the front of another word and this added the word “and”, and this causes the addition of the 6th letter “Vav” at the beginning of the 6th Word to be simple. This is how a lot of people will explain away the first (1) fun fact of our discoveries. But we are not finished yet.

For example, in Genesis 1:1, notice how many “Alef” letters occur? There are exactly 6 and six is still the letter “Vav” sequence value meaning a man and a nail. What does the “Alef” represent in the ancient Hebrew alphabet pictographic form? It represents the strong “ox”, and this letter begins a key name of God “El” as the strong God of authority and power. Therefore, we have another key reference that our God will become a “man” by writing exactly 6 Alef’s in the first sentence.

That is interesting again, and this too could be easily accomplished by a clever author of English sentences. But notice would the created English sentence of six required occurrences of a chosen letter like “A”, being combined with the sixth letter beginning the 6th word, still answer the questions above? The answer is still no, and it is becoming even more difficult to occur even by intentional desired design with each additional fact that we find in this verse.

So far, we have found two clues concerning the number 6 with the first being a double reference of sixes joined with the sixth word that was written intentionally to begin with the 6th Hebrew alphabet letter. And the second being the inclusion of 6 Alef’s representing God becoming a man (#6). Both references certainly are pointing us to Jesus Christ who is a very Great Sure Man. Let us continue to search for additional fun and amazing facts in the first verse of the Bible.

— Amazing Fact 2 —
A Vav Man Who is Also the Alef and Tav

If you do not realize the extreme intelligence of God and His ability to weave several combined encoded messages and layers into the first 7 words, you are not very familiar with who God is, and what He is capable of doing. But add this to the fact that the first book of the Bible is a book that is called the book of “Beginnings” (Genesis) that adds new constraints and confirms the prophecy of Isaiah is being searched for in the correct location.

But also realize we are searching for this information in the first sentence, using God’s sovereignly chosen words that He also used to write a very profound and truthful top layer plain text statement (“in beginning God created the heaven and the earth”). Therefore, we are discovering several new facts within facts that add more conformations.

We will continue to learn by noticing again that this first occurrence of the 6th letter “Vav” that begins the 6th word, has been translated as “and” in the English translation. Remember “Vav” represents a connecting force between two objects, positions, places, people, etc. Therefore, we must ask and answer the question, what is God connecting with this first letter occurrence of the “Vav” meaning “and”, that also involves an emphasized Strong and Sure Alef God “man”?

We will continue our discovery by noticing that the 6th word of Genesis consists of three letters, beginning with the 6th letter of the alphabet a Vav, and these 3 individual unique letters create “one” Word. This sounds a lot like 1 John 5:7 that says, “There are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit and these three are one”. While this does not match the three letters, it establishes a principle and a pattern. We can clearly see that God has described Himself to be three unique named individuals and these three combined can be identified singularly as One.

It is also very interesting that this “Vav” in Genesis 1:1 is the “Only” Vav in the verse. This is another sentence construction requirement/restriction, and it also represents a new clue for us to potentially use to discover the identity of this man associated with the number 6 and the letter Vav.

Who is called an “only” in the Bible? One easy answer is Jesus who is called God’s “only begotten” Son. We can find this in John 3:16 a verse that can be quoted by many Christians. We know in this verse we have the reference of “God” (Alef) in both verses of Genesis 1:1 and John 3:16. We also have a reference to a “man” (6) who is an only occurrence.

This certainly appears to be a good first start to show us that Jesus written in John 3:16 as the “only naturally born son” of God qualifies to be our answer. But this single word connection of the “only” “Vav” gives us “only” the potential for a new connection for identifying Jesus to be the true man in Genesis 1:1. This is true despite Jesus being called someone who is “great” in multiple verses (Mat 4:16, Mat 24:30).

However, the English word “only” occurs over 250 times in the KJV translation of the Bible, and therefore this alone cannot confirm the identity of what we are searching for. Consequently, we must keep searching.

We all know that the number 6 represents “man”. And God connected this number to a picture of a “nail”. What are the other two letters? We will quickly notice that the Vav is only a prefix that is “added” (connected) to another very common word spelled “Alef” + “Tav” (AT) and this word is rarely translated into English anywhere in the Bible even when it occurs over 7000 times in over 5000 verses.

We have learned that this word H853 (Alef+Tav) represent two of the names that Jesus claimed to be in Revelation 1:8 when stating “I am the Alpha and the Omega” the first and last letters of the alphabet. Here is another connection to Isaiah 46:10 “I make known the end (Tav) from the beginning (Alef). But in the book of Revelation, we are seeing how God is showing us Jesus at the end of creation revealing His personal involvement and appearance in the beginning of creation and throughout the rest of the Bible.

This is our very interesting fact number two which claims the 6th word beginning with the 6th letter is connecting these three Hebrew alphabet letters (Vav+Alef+Tav) to describe One God called the “Word” (Jn 1:1, Rev 19:13).  By God combining each individual letter identity (nail, beginning, & end) into one Word, He has chosen to hide a message for us to find.

Remember Alef = God that begins the alphabet who also created the world (Eph 3:9), and this is being connected or joined to the “Tav” God/Man that will “End” the alphabet and His old/First creation (2 Cor 5:17, Rev 21:1). This has now brought forth a new beginning which was initiated by Him using the “Vav” nail as an upright man (6th letter Vav). This simply provides us insight that shows us the method of God (Alef) becoming a man (#6) that will be pierced by nails (Vav) and this will have to be done on a cross, since the third letter in this 6th word is the 22nd letter Tav, a picture of a cross.

Therefore, we have found an additional doubling of a word called the “Last”. The “Last” letter of our 6th Hebrew word is the “Last” Hebrew alphabet letter. This is just too amazing to consider how these three letters were selected by God to become the 6th Word at this single addressed location of the sentence.

Have you seen and accepted these as factual clues or are they just easily explained away as coincidence? Regardless, we have discovered how a nail represents an upright standing man that God places great emphasis upon, who has a unique name consisting of the beginning and ending of the alphabet, and this all is clearly pointing us to only one man named “Jesus”. But we are far from being finished from seeing the clues in this verse revealing Him. This is only the second (2) amazing, encoded fact that has been revealed so far.

— Amazing Fact 3 —
And the Two will Become One!

Next remember again that the letter Vav is a picture of a connecting “nail”, and it is used by God to represent the word, “and”. “And” is a designed connection (conjunction) between two words, sentences, phrases, etc. bringing the two thoughts into combined united focus together. This is the duplicate concept of a “nail” that joins two boards making them a stronger united single unit.

Therefore, our “Vav” in Genesis 1:1 is joining or reuniting two independent realities. As we know this letter “Vav” is only found once in Genesis 1:1. So we have a potentially new concept coming into the “light” that is addressed in Genesis 2:24 called “marriage” or “covenant”. In this verse God writes, “and they (two) shall be one flesh”. Wow!

Let us briefly establish what God has implemented in Genesis 2:24 using a “Vav” nail concept of connection of 2 into one, because this will become a critical part of the prophecy of the hidden great man in Genesis 1:1. In Genesis 2, God details the creation of a man named Adam, and how he places him in a sleep to open his side and remove a wife. This so far describes what happened to Jesus precisely while hanging “nailed” (Vav) to a cross (Tav).

Jesus literally died physically first and then He was pierced in His side with a Roman spear. It was this piercing that caused an outflow of blood and water (Jn 19:34). His natural body being dead, took on the appearance of sleep where He was then laid in a tomb for 3 days (Mat 12:30). Interesting how the 6th word in Genesis 1 begins with a Vav nail, Piercing the God/Man (Alef), ends with an ending letter Tav cross, and it is exactly 3 letters in length the time spent in a tomb. These parallels are very amazing to what we see happening to Jesus.

Back to Genesis 2, God then implements the heavenly concept of covenant upon the earth where the first man is joined with his wife, and they are both made from the one flesh of the first Adam. This also sounds like a parallel to what will be happening to Jesus and His spiritual bride the church. Look at this verse:

1Co 6:17  But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit.

Here is the exact same “Vav” nail concept joining two objects together being applied to two separate spirits, 1) Holy Spirit, being joined to the 2) human spirit. And these two separated spirits become one new spirit and new creation (2 Cor 5:17). This is amazing and is helping us to understand the prophecy of Genesis 1:1 and the fulfillment of it in the New Covenant marriage of the Lord Jesus Christ to the church.

Now remember a female is the weaker vessel according to God’s Word (1 Pet 3:7). This only means she is normally physically not as strong as the husband. Remember this pattern because this is also true for the church and Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ calls himself the bridegroom in Mathew 9:15, and the church is called His chaste virgin to be joined with Him in 2 Corinthians 11:2 and this results in the creation of one “Spirit + spirit” in 1 Corinthians 6:17 that we saw earlier. We should also know that Jesus as the male in the covenant relationship is far stronger than all Christians.

This is a quick introduction to what Genesis 1:1 can represent by showing us how a “great man” could come to the earth to bring about a new covenant which will joins Himself to a new bride which is identified in the New Testament as the church. This is the third amazing clue to consider, but we are not finished with the information that God has included in this verse.

— Amazing Fact #4 —
Who is the Vav Joining Together?

We were introduced to the Vav general meaning of joining 2 separate individuals together as in a marriage/covenant union in the amazing fact #3. And these were pointing us to Jesus and the church. Now it is time to further confirm what we were confirm the letter “Vav” using the concept of the “Vav” as being the word “and”. What is directly said to be connecting in Genesis 1:1? This should help answer a lot of questions that are remaining in the minds of many. This new information should help us to confirm the identity of the 6th word Vav man. We are going to do this, by asking the question “what two words does the “Vav” located in Genesis 1:1 connect as one thought? It is found directly between two very significant Words.

These words are 1) “heaven” (H8064) and 2) “earth” (H776). These are two disjointed locations that are being connected. One is called heaven and is a spiritual location of God’s throne, and the other is primarily the surface of the created natural realm of human inhabitants called earth. These people are called “earth dwellers” nine times in Revelation. But there are also spirits that are abiding inside this dimension that rule the kingdom of darkness.

Therefore, God appears to be revealing another very clear hidden prophecy. Because of the placement of the “Vav” between these two separated realities. There appears that there is a need for reconciliation between God in heaven and humans on the earth. It appears that our God is using a “Vav” (nailed man) named Alef+Tav to be His connector to humans on the earth. Let us observe a New Testament parallel verse concerning what we are finding in Genesis:

2Co 5:18  And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation;

It is very interesting to see what is happening to humans that choose to be joined in Jesus. Notice the subjects being named in this verse. First there is God in heaven that created all things. The next pronoun subject named is “us” representing all human earth dwellers. Finally, there is Jesus Christ. Uh oh? Could He be the connecting nail? Wasn’t He God that came down to earth and took on flesh to dwell among us (Jn 1:14), and be with us (Mat 1:23)? This appears to strongly match our 3 Word hidden prophecy found in Genesis 1:1. Do you see it?

We should begin to learn in this verse how God has “reconciled” humans back into favor with Himself by His work in Jesus Christ. This Greek word “reconciled” (G2644) indicates there is an exchange taking place. This is the “Vav” concept of God joining Himself to man so that we might be joined with His Spirit eternally. We find this concept being further described in 1 Peter:

1Pe 2:24  Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.

This verse says more than we can teach today but notice again the similar subjects. The verse is about Jesus, who was God in the flesh, that came down from heaven to the earth to bare our human sins providing us an exchange to give us His righteousness. This truth says the righteous God came down to take (G399=bare) our sin penalty on His body while hanging on a cross made of wood from a tree. This strongly implies the heaven to earth connection with Jesus being the literal “Vav” connector that was said to be coming in Genesis 1:1.

Since “heaven” is mentioned first in Genesis 1:1, this strongly indicates heaven is the “source” of the man (Vav=6) that follows. But the next word beyond the “Vav” is “earth”, and this implies the destination location for this “connection” work of God.

Joh 6:38  For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me.

Here is a verse confirmation for what we are observing in Genesis 1:1. We can very clearly read that Jesus is claiming to have come down from heaven to the earth. He also very plainly states that this was done to accomplish the works of God that sent Him. There are many other verses like this but that is enough to help us see what is being prophesied in Genesis 1:1 and fulfilled in John 6:38.

Only Jesus appears to qualify to be our coming prophecy man “Vav” who remember is also being revealed as the “end” of this present creation. We know Jesus comes from a pattern of the first man Adam (Rom 5:14) and that He is specifically called the “Last Adam”. “and” also the second “man” making Him to be identified as a type of “Vav” single man.

1Co 15:45  And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.

1Co 15:47  The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven.

Do you see how Jesus is being revealed to have come from heaven again? Doesn’t this order match the Genesis 1:1 order of first mention? We can see very clearly how Jesus was God (Jn 1:1-14) that was made flesh and dwelt among us as a man for 33 ½ years.

Therefore, all these patterns and hidden messages appear to only point us to one man. These facts so far, appear to suggest very strongly that Jesus Christ is our mystery “Vav” man connection that we have been searching for, that is described to be a “nail”. All this information represents “keys” that are helping us unlock God’s beginning prophecy of the “end”. And God is giving us all this key knowledge to cause us to understand the answer to this mystery.

— Review of Facts Revealed So Far —

Up until now we have seen several clues of facts being uncovered in letters, words, and phrases Genesis 1:1. These messages indicate there is someone that can be called the “only”. This is because there is “only” one Vav in the verse. This Vav represents a man because the number 6 value of the Vav is the number representation of man.

We have also found that this only Vav is joined with two other letters that represent the beginning and the ending alphabet letters. This indicates this man was present at the beginning of creation as well as he will be present at the coming ending of this creation. Since this “Alef-Tav” represents the beginning and ending we know that there is a corresponding connection to Jesus being this identity in Revelation 1:8

This information is strongly indicating that the God that created in the “beginning” is the one that will become a man (Vav=Nail) and He will be made the “connection” between “heaven” (the spiritual) and earth (the material). Wow, if you only knew what this meant. This location implies there is a problem that needs to be resolved by an implied separation between God and man.

The informed Bible student will already know that there are two problems that God is solving by becoming a man. The first solution that needed a resolution is the elimination of Lucifer and all evil spiritual beings from heaven. And the 2nd solution that was on God’s heart was the salvation of His very loved sinful humans that resulted with the fall of the first man Adam. This occurred only 2 chapters from Genesis 1:1 in Genesis 3. It was this act of the first man Adam that required another man called the Last Adam and His name is Jesus. He had to come down from heaven to the earth and die to shed His blood to redeem us. We will talk more about this as we continue, but this is a summary of our initial four (4) amazing fact so far that were coded in the first 7 words of Genesis 1:1.

— Amazing Fact #5 —
The Nail and the Cross Intersection Point

Ok, here is our next very amazing fact that we mentioned quickly earlier at the beginning of the section. Remember that there is only one letter “Vav” directly found in Genesis 1:1, and it occurs precisely on the 22nd letter position in the verse removing any spaces. It just so happens that this 6th letter “Vav” also begins the 6th word in the verse. Therefore, we have two sixes that are intersecting and being joined together at the single letter address location “22”. Here is list of what we have found once again:

  1. There is “only one directly written Vav” in Genesis 1:1, and it is the 6th letter of the alphabet.
  2. This 6th alphabet letter Vav also begins the 6th Hebrew Word found in Genesis 1:1.
  3. And both intersect at the exact 22nd letter address position of the sentence.

Do you see anything important in this information? If you do, is this a coincidence? Or do you believe like many that these are signs of God’s infinite intelligent design?

We know that one six represents man (either the first Adam before the fall, or man in general) and we found a double 6 appears to represent an emphasized “Sure and True Man”, who we have learned can point us to the “Last Adam” also known as the “second man”. Now we are talking about the “Last Adam”. Don’t forget that Isaiah said, “declaring” the “end” from the “beginning”, and anything that is called “last” is certainly the “end” of God creating any more “humans” named “Adam”.

These facts appear to cause us to make Jesus the great man that has been encoded as the “Vav” at the 22nd letter position in the verse. Why did God place this Vav nail exactly on position 22? Many people might think it just occurred by chance, but God does everything by intentional purposed intelligent design. There is NOT one letter in the Word of God that has not been pre-planned and well thought out on where exactly to place it.

In fact, God goes to such extreme detail of design, that it would probably be impossible to find every meaning of every single letter’s placement. Therefore, let us consider why He places the Vav nail on top of the 22nd position of the verse.

Perhaps you already can see where God is taking us? How many letters are there in the original Hebrew Alphabet? Yes, there are exactly 22. This too is not a coincidence. God purposefully connects the 6th letter and the beginning of the 6th word to the exact position of where the “Last” alphabet letter in Hebrew should occur. Wow! This appears to be another clue to the identity of the single “Vav” man confirming this man is the “Last” of something. Hopefully, you already know what the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet is. The 22nd letter of the Hebrew Alphabet is “Tav”.

What is the picture and meaning of the “Tav”, the last 22nd letter of the Hebrew Alphabet? Hopefully, you have learned this answer from other lessons like the introduction. But let us ask again, what is the picture of the “Tav”? Once you have seen it, it becomes unforgettable. The “Tav” is the formation of two crossed wooden sticks that produce the picture of the wooden “cross” that Messiah was slain upon. Wow!

Let’s place these new puzzle pieces together.

  1. 6+6 = “a Sure True Man” who is also called the “Nail” represented by the letter “Vav” and He is the connector joining heaven “and” earth
  2. He will be hung (nailed) on top of a wooden tree forming a cross and this is symbolized by placing a “Vav” (6) on top of the 22nd letter position in the verse the address of an implied cross.

These are truly amazing facts that could not have occurred by accident. All these clues together are organized in such a fashion that would have taken an ancient human writer a lifetime to create without supernatural help. But because the Bible is written by 40 authors over hundreds of years, how could all the facts that can be found exist without separate supernatural coordination?  This is just too amazing for all the rest of the Bible to also fit together to reveal this man Jesus Christ. But we are not finished yet with this verse, let us go to the next new revelation that we can find to help confirm what we are observing so far.

— Amazing Fact #6 —
Jesus
The First and the Last
The End from the Beginning

We have already found a lot of very amazing information that was hidden in just 12 of the 28 letters found in the last 3 words of Genesis 1:1. Remember in the previous amazing fact we found an implied “Tav” because this was the position of the 22nd letter. Remember a “Tav” is the “Last” letter in the Hebrew alphabet, and it occurs as the 22nd letter. Therefore, the 22nd letter position of Genesis 1:1 would be the implied location if we just placed every alphabet letter in order from the beginning. Right?

Therefore, God has created at this implied 22nd letter “Tav” position a mystery, by sovereignly choosing to overlay this position with the Hebrew letter “Vav” (the #6 letter). This choice of the divine author has placed a man and a nail (Vav) on a cross (Tav). That was an amazing prophetical choice for God to hide this using only 2 letters. But the Bible says in the mouth of two or three witnesses let every word of Truth be established.

Therefore, go back to the “Beginning” of the Hebrew text and search for the “First” occurrence of a “literal” 22nd letter “Tav”. Guess what? The “First” time that the letter “Tav” occurs in the text it is found in the very “First” word of the Bible. It is also very significant that the “Last” letter (Tav) of the alphabet is also the “Last” letter of the “First” word.

Have we seen a pattern like this before? Uh oh? We have just found the “Last” letter in the “First” word is a “Tav”. This causes the “First” connection between the words “First” and “Last”. Hopefully you can begin to see where we are going in this amazing fact. Guess what else? This Hebrew word is translated as “In Beginning” also meaning “First”. The number of the occurrences of the words “First”, “Last”, “Beginning” and “End” may become overwhelming to some.

It is amazing how God places a picture of the “Last” letter “Tav” a “cross”, in the “first” Hebrew word that is translated “Beginning” (the chapter recording God’s “First” works). Doesn’t all this sound like the Isaiah 46:10 prophecy about God making known the “End” from the “Beginning”? Also isn’t this amazing that Jesus said He was all these in Revelation 1:8 and Revelation 1:11? Do you remember what He said,

  1. I am the Alpha (Alef) the “First” alphabet letter,
  2. and the Omega (Tav) the “Last” alphabet letter,
  3. the “Beginning”,
  4. and the “End”,
  5. the “First”,
  6. and the “Last”.

Did you just notice the number of claimed names Jesus identified Himself as? Yes, there are exactly 6 names, the same number representing the “Vav”. Is this an accident? We shouldn’t think it is.

These six claims represent the number of the letter “Vav”, and they parallel what God said to us in Isaiah 46:10 saying, “I make known the end from the beginning”. Since Jesus claims to be the end and the beginning and the first and the last, including the “Tav” ending alphabet letter, we will be finding Jesus over and over.

We have found the following facts and pay close attention to how many times there is a mention of “First”, “Beginning”, “Last”, or “End” occurs, which are the names that Jesus claimed to be:

  1. The Bible “Begins” with the “First” word phrase “In Beginning”, which we are now learning can be understood to say, “In Christ” because Jesus has claimed to be the “Beginning”.
  2. The “First” Word of the Bible is H7225 and it is translated as “Beginning” confirming Isaiah 46:10 has directed us to come and search here for the “End”.
  3. We have also confirmed that the Hebrew word H7225 which is translated as “Beginning” in Isaiah 46:10 is the same word “Beginning” found in Genesis 1:1.
  4. We searched for the “Last” letter Tav by “Beginning” our search from the “Beginning” of the Bible and we found its “First” occurrence in the “First” word, of the “First” verse, in the “First” chapter, in the “first” book called “Beginnings” (Genesis in Greek).
  5.  We have further discovered that the “Last” letter “Tav” (#22) was placed by God as the “Last” letter of the “First” Hebrew word which is translated as “BeginningH7225.

Do you believe God is trying to get a message across using all these repetitive occurrences of “First”, “Last”, “Beginning” and “End” that are occurring with the Last Letter of the Alphabet in the First beginning word of the Bible? Perhaps it will help us to see a verse in Revelation:

Rev 13:8  And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.

This reference to the “Lamb” is a direct symbol for our Savior the slain Jesus (Jn 1:36) and is referring to His death on a “Tav” cross. The Greek word G2602 is the word translated as “foundation”. But it can also literally mean “conception” as in a thought, idea, or concept (plan) from God or even in reference to a “pregnancy” conceived by the Word of God that will bring forth a birth. Conception is clearly indicating an event that causes a new “Beginning”. This undoubtedly describes Genesis 1:1 accurately.

We can certainly confirm there is an important “cross” found in the “First” and “Beginning” word of the Bible. This cross “Tav” is the “Last” and “Ending” letter of the “First” word. Therefore, this placement is strongly suggesting that this original “Beginning” will bring about and “End” utilizing a “Tav” cross which also must involve Jesus, since He claims to be this Alphabet Letter directly. Wow!

Now for some new additional hidden facts which can be found in this “Beginning” and “First” Word’s hidden message. Where in the 1st word of the 1st verse does the “Tav” occur? In other words, what is the “Tav” letter’s number location (address)?

If you look at the “First” Hebrew sentence and count the letters, the “First” “Tav” is found exactly at the 6th letter position. Therefore, the letter “Tav” (#22) overlays the 6th position for a letter to occur. Isn’t this the home address location of a “Vav” nail? Does this sound familiar? Do you think this is another coincidence?

Didn’t we find that the “First” occurrence of a letter “Vav” (#6), occurred laying on top of the 22nd open letter position? So, we have learned the “First” Vav has an “address” number of 22 the home of Tav. We have just found two super amazing combinations of either a 22 or a 6, overlaying the other, and it just so happens that one is a “nail” and the other is a “cross”. It is highly improbable based upon all the other amazing facts that this is a chance occurrence.

In fact, it is certainly mathematically impossible for all these to happen by chance because they all are communicating a common prophetical message about something that is not going to occur for almost four thousand years from when the first man Adam will be created on “Day 6” of the Genesis 1 beginning of creation account.

As we know we found the 6th letter of the alphabet laid on top of the 22nd position of all the beginning letters of the verse. This was our “First” direct nail to a cross relationship. And we have now just found the “Tav” 22nd letter on top of the 6th letter position an implied reference to the letter “Vav”. Why would God place a cross on top of the 6th position in the sentence? Therefore, both references of the “First” “Tav” and the “First” “Vav” indicate there is a “man” that will come from heaven to the earth to be nailed to a cross. Is God amazing or what? Now to help us confirm this with other verses let us check this verse out:

Joh 19:30  When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.

Ok, this verse sounds a lot like what we have been reading about hidden in Genesis 1:1. Here in this verse of John, God has written about when Jesus was hanging nailed (Vav=#6) on a “cross” (Tav=#22). While hanging on this cross (Tav) using nails (Vav) they had pierced His body both 2 hands and His 2 feet with these nails (Vav). Therefore, Jesus a man (Vav=6) is being literally “connected” (“Vav”) to the cross (“Tav”) using nails (“Vav”) and this appears to be the exact prophecy fulfillment of Genesis 1:1, God’s description from the letters and positions found in the “Beginning”.

Then notice what Jesus says, “It is finished”. This Greek word G5055 translated as “finished” can be defined as “to end” and “to complete” as in the fulfillment of a maximum limit that has been reached. Doesn’t this sound like an “End” as in Jesus fulfilling and reaching the “Last” letter prophecy of the alphabet “Tav” cross?

Is it just another coincidence that Jesus is making a reference to the “End” of something while hanging on the “Last” letter of the Hebrew alphabet? I really do not think this could have been an accident. Therefore, we must ask our self, what has just concluded or has reached the “Last” position of fulfilled limit when Jesus died? Here is the short list answer:

  1. Jesus’ natural mortal life and ministry “on” the earth has just “concluded” by His physical “death” hanging by nails (Vav) on a cross (Tav).
  2. Since the “Tav” cross was the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet as it was written in the beginning and has been fulfilled, and this implies that a new beginning is required.

Now recall that the Bible calls Jesus the “Firstborn from the dead” (Col 1:18). This same verse further gives us the reason for becoming the “Firstborn” of the dead is so that He could have preeminence over all the old creation. This strongly indicates that God’s significant problem with Lucifer and evil in heaven has been solved with the death of Jesus on the cross. Could this be the reason God writes in 1 Corinthians 2:8, that Satan would not have crucified Jesus, if he had known the consequences? This appears to be at least one major thing that God is revealing to us.  But let us move to another amazing fact of Genesis 1:1.

— Amazing Fact #7 —
Genesis 1:1 7 Words and
the 7 Days of Creation Parallels

While there certainly could be many other hidden treasures yet to be found in this single verse, in the honor of the 7 words in Genesis 1:1 and the number 7 as being the completion of God’s work in creation, we will end this section with a “final” amazing fact #7 that is potentially revealing another hidden prophecy. This hidden prophecy also deals with the letter “Vav”, but this time it will be connected directly with the letters “Alef” + “Tav” that we also saw briefly before as two names for Jesus Christ.

The first occurrence of the “Alef” + “Tav” is found in the verse as the 4th word. Then the second occurrence of the “Alef” + “Tav” occurs as the 6th word of the verse. But remember the 6th word occurrence has the added “Vav” nail connector. This is very amazing since this 3-letter word occurs around 3000 times in scriptures. What does all this mean? There is probably more than one explanation for the existence of these two “Alef + Tav” joined letters.

Many modern Hebrew seminary scholars try to say these two letter untranslated words (H853 7000+ times, H854 1200+ times), were added for the purpose of representing “a direct object pointer”. This means its purpose was to show the part of the Hebrew sentence that receives an action.

But how do we explain the selectivity of why only certain verses contain this Alef+Tav pointer? Out of over 31,000 verses why are there are only 9000 occurrences of these two letters and in some verse sentences like Genesis 1:1 there is more than one occurrence? Do the verses that have no “Alef Tav” word need no object pointer, or do these have no direct noun object that is receiving any verb action? And do the verses that have two or more “Alef”+“Tav” words have multiple primary objects that need to be emphasized. These types of inconsistencies appear to add a great level of new complexities.

While this direct object pointer using an “Alef”+“Tav” is possible, it appears to mostly deny what Jesus said to us about the first and last letters being His identity. Plus, Jesus personally told the Hebrew people to search their scriptures because these words were about Him (Jn 5:39). Finally, as of today we should be learning God’s superior intelligence reveals His ability to teach us multiple things using a single letter, word, sentence, etc. Therefore, all these facts could be true simultaneously.

The simplest explanation for these word occurrences is my approach to understanding what they represent and why they are there. This explanation is based upon allowing the Bible to interpret itself and ignoring human reasoning (2 Pet 1:20). With this Biblical approach we have greater assurance and alignment to truth that the fact that Jesus claims to be the first and last letters of the Alphabet 4 times in the book of Revelation means He must be these letters in the Hebrew. This is clearly written in a book that begins “The Revelation of Jesus Christ”.

Therefore, if this book of Revelation is primarily about Jesus and it says this is the “Uncovering” and “revealing” (G602=Revelation) of Him, this indicates that we are being given new information in this book that reveals things that were hidden from us since the beginning. Therefore, if Jesus personally claims to be these two letters 4 times, that is good enough for me. You are allowed to do with it as you please.

Do you know why people never see Jesus in the Old Testament? This is mainly because they are not looking for Him. I guarantee that He can be found in some form in every letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and it is these Letters that make up every word that is written down. Let us get back to our Genesis 1:1 2 Alef+Tav words.

Remember there are 7 Hebrew words in total in Genesis 1:1. I believe these 7 words are a parallel to the “7 days” of God’s work in creation. I also believe these “7 days” represent 7000 years of total human history on the earth. According to God writing through Peter again, we read in 2 Peter 3:8 that 1 day to the Lord represents 1000 years.

Applying this revelation of 1 day = 1000 years and the proposal that each of the 7 words in the first verse is a parallel to potentially represent something happening on that day of creation, this would help us to see the following about these two Alef+Tav untranslated words:

  1. The first Alef+Tav appearance occurs as the 4th word of Genesis 1:1. This appears to be prophetical to imply the “First” physical appearance of the man Jesus occurs on the earth at the “Beginning” of the 4000th year (4th Day). (First Alef+Tav)
  2. Because the “Last” occurrence of the “Alef”+“Tav” in Genesis 1:1 occurs as the 6th Word, this appears to teach us that the next time Jesus will appear on earth is at the “End” of the 6th day, year 6000 from the beginning of creation (Last Alef+Tav).

But remember the 2nd appearance of Jesus is attached with the letter “Vav” nail. This can simply mean this appearance will be the fulfilment of the Zecheriah 12:10 prophecy:

Zec 12:10  And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn.

We can clearly read in this verse that Jesus will be returning to the earth as a man with “Vav nail impressions in His flesh”. These nails pierced His body completely through his flesh to attach Him to a wooden cross (Tav). Therefore, the second time Jesus comes to the earth He is prophesied to return on the “Last” of day 6 as a man that has been pierced.

It is also very interesting that the word “me” that was translated in Zecheriah 12:10 is our H853 “Alef+Tav” word. This literally means Jesus is being defined again as the Alef+Tav.  But not like the beginning of His 4000-year “first” public appearance, here in Zechariah 12:10, He is now returning as the man that has been marked by “Vav” nails in which He has become this prophecy of a pierced man. This is too amazing to not be true.

Also do not forget who this man is!  He is Jehovah (YHWH) the God whose name means “Behold the hand, Behold the nail”. Let us move to a new revelation about Jesus being called “the nail”.

3. Jesus is God’s Sure Nail

We are about to go over a prophecy written down by the prophet Isaiah about Jesus Christ. In this prophecy God is directly prophesying about the coming Messiah. But these verses point us to Jesus directly claiming He is to be a type of a “Vav” nail. Let us read two key verses from the book of Isaiah:

Isa 22:22  And the key of the house of David will I lay upon his shoulder; so he shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open

Isa 22:23  And I will fasten him as a nail in a sure place; and he shall be for a glorious throne to his father’s house. 

Here is another amazing coincidence, or not? Did you notice what chapter we are in? It is just too amazing that these verses are found in chapter 22 the same number as the letter “Tav” cross. It is also further amazing that these verses begin with verse 22 of chapter 22, a double reference to the “Tav” cross. Just out of curiosity how many chapters are in Isiah? There are 66 chapters which is 22 x 3. Now all of this cannot be a coincidence. God must be guiding this information and helping us to find the exact verses that we need to learn and study about a Vav nail.

As we can clearly read in verse 23 God is saying “I will fasten him as a nail in a sure place”. This is seriously too amazing to ignore. Can we apply what we learned in the previous section to this prophecy? Did we not just find a sure man “Vav” nailed to a “Tav” cross using the first reference of the Hebrew letter Vav a nail in Genesis 1:1? Isaiah was written a long time after Genesis 1:1, how could he have known and understood what he was writing without the Holy Spirit to help?

Now pay attention that this verse in Isaiah is written about a man that is referred to as “Him”. Who is HIM? We could debate who this is for a long time. But God answers this question for us, and this man identifies Himself in Revelation 3:7 in a letter written to the churches. In this verse Jesus is personally speaking and claims to have the “Key of David that no man can open or close”.

Therefore, if Verse 22 is clearly identified to be Jesus, there is no question that the next verse 23 is also.  This literally teaches us that God is directly calling His sent Son named Jesus to be His designed and purposed “Nail” connection to humanity. Let us now examine and confirm this fact using the Works of Jesus described in the New Covenant.

However, there is another amazing clue to help us identify the identity of these verses in Isaiah. In verse 23, there is a translated phrase “and He shall be” that needs to be clearly understood. This word is “H1961”, and it is spelled “Hey” + “Yod” + “Hey”, which are three of the letters of the name of God (Jehovah/YHWH). But wait, this word is prefixed with the letter “Vav”, meaning “And”. Interesting how this is our key study subject today.  Adding the letter “Vav” to the word as a prefix has now completed all the letters that are needed to complete the name of God. This word is now spelled “Vav” + “Hey” + “Yod” + “Hey”. These are the exact same letters as Jehovah, but the letters “Vav” and “Yod” have been switched. Using the ancient Hebrew pictographic letter meanings this word now says, “Behold the Nail, Behold the Hand”. There appears to be a shift of emphasis by leading with the Vav “Nail” first.

But wait, there is more, the word “H1961” is translated as “I AM” in Exodus 3:14. This powerful name is the identity that God chose to give to Moses to tell His people who had sent him to them. Therefore, Hey + Yod + Hey is “I AM” and now add the “Vav” to the front we get the name the “Nailed I AM”. Who is this? This can only be Jesus. We know in John 8:58 Jesus said, “Before Abraham was, I AM”. This is spoken shortly before Jesus is about to be nailed (VAV) to the “TAV” cross. Don’t you think God knew this when He wrote Isaiah?

These are all too amazing facts to ignore. Jesus claimed to be every alphabet letter from the beginning to the end, from the first to the last, and He fulfilled them all and we are learning today about how the “Vav” was displayed and revealed in Yehoshua (Jesus). Now let us shift our focus to the application of the “Vav” Jesus works for the church.

4. How God Placed Us in Christ
To Vav Re-Connect Us with God

The scriptural prophesied work of God that was fulfilled in Jesus is so limitless that it is a great challenge to know, understand, and write about everything that was accomplished. It is truly amazing what God did for us by becoming a human man named “Jesus” (Yehoshua) (Mat 1:23-25). God sovereignly chose to manifest as flesh (Rom 8:3) and become a part of His “First” creation (Gen 1:1).

God accomplishes this work for more than one reason. The first reason that must be known was for the purpose to righteously separate Himself from Lucifer also known as Satan (adversary) and the devil (slanderer, false accuser) (Rev 20:10). Many preachers believe God sovereignly eliminated Satan from heaven the moment he sinned in heaven. But that belief does not align with scripture as we will soon see.

We are about to discover that this defeat of Satan took place by the death of Jesus while hanging on a “Tav” cross nailed by “Vav” nails (Heb 2:14, 1 Cor 2:8). It was His death that began the ending phase of God’s final plan to be initiated for the complete elimination of Satan. This “wicked one” is not cast down from heaven until Revelation 12:9. And Satan’s final elimination from influencing people that inhabit the face of the earth is not completed until Revelation 20:10. These final judgments will be happening very soon.

But the next primary dual purpose of sending Jesus into our world was to save His valuable humans from an everlasting separation from experiencing His sovereign Love for us (Mat 1:27, John 3:16). It was the “sin” of Adam that initiated this departure from the righteous and Holy God, and we required a connector to be re-joined in full righteous fellowship. Jesus became this “Vav” nail re-connection as we will read about in this section.

God accomplished this sovereign work as well as many other things that were performed in Christ as a display of His fulfillment of the letter “Vav” reconnecting with humans. This plan was carried out as a clear exhibit of the omnipotent force of His great power (Eph 1:19-20). God’s work to become a manifested part of His “First” and “Beginning” creation (Genesis 1:1) to die on a “Tav” cross hanging with “Vav” nails was a very humbling, merciful, kind, loving wise choice and it was clearly a major part of His plan of a “Zayin” separation from Satan by implementing a brand-New Creation (Isa 43:9, 2 Cor 5:17, Gal 6:15) which never existed before. God is doing all these prophesied Hebrew Alphabet letter works in Christ for the following reasons:

  1. To initiate and bring to fruition His New Creation and a New Beginning (2 Cor 5:17, Gal 6:15, Rev 21:1).
  2. To phase out and eliminate the cursed old creation (Gen 3:17, Rev 21:1)
  3. To save all humans that choose to believe in Jesus from an eternal separation by providing the ability to know God’s Love (Jn 17:3, Jn 3:16).
  4. To divide Himself from all unrighteousness and evil in both heaven and earth of the present creation (Eph 3:15, 2 Pet 3:13, Rev 21:8).

These works of God in Jesus are all actions of either joining (as a Vav) or cutting and dividing (as a Zayin). Both divine sovereign works are occurring simultaneously every day, even as you are reading. For example, as your mind is being renewed with these new Bible concepts that you may have never seen before, you are being invited to become joined to think a new way about Jesus and God’s work in you. These new concepts are either filling new space in your mind’s belief system like a “Vav” adjoining addition or they are cutting away with a “Zayin” type of hoe or sword the old contradictory beliefs that need to be uprooted and replaced with God’s new written Words of Truth Seed (Nun).

God’s plan in Christ was to produce a way of transitioning out of His First Creation and the present world’s “Old Creation” corrupted systems of governments (Rev 21:1) in heaven and on the earth. God accomplished this transition by Jesus’ death on the “Tav” cross. It was this death that began the separation from the old creation, and it was Jesus’ resurrection that initiated the New Creation making Him the head of every principality, power, might and dominion (Eph 1:20-22).

Both the original heavenly and earthly realms became “Vav” joined with knowing (in covenant) both good (God) and evil (Satan) simultaneously (Gen 3:5, Gen 3:22). However, Satan was the common part of the old creation that brought sin and wickedness into covenant relationship with both realms of the natural and the spiritual after Adam had sinned.

Satan now has a kingdom of rule (Lk 11:18), that is him currently governing the unsaved people of the world (Eph 2:2) as well as 1/3 of the angelic beings that were joined with him (Rev 12;4). This satanic kingdom is called “darkness” (Col 1:15). God is accomplishing this exit from darkness by providing a “Dalet” door named “Jesus” to make available and entrance into His Newly Created Son’s Kingdom of Light (Col 1:13).

This “Dalet” door transition was first made available after the death of Jesus on the “Tav” cross at the transition point of the end of Day 4 and the beginning of Day 5 of God’s Genesis 1 creation days prophecy (~4033 years after Adam). It is interesting to know the “Dalet” is the 4th letter of the Hebrew alphabet and this also appears to prophesy and show us what will be made available to us at the ending years of the 4th millennium.

The “Dalet” Door of salvation is entered by a human choosing to believe and act on the preached Gospel (Good News) message of salvation in Jesus by Faith.  Our faith belief in Jesus being raised from the dead and declaring Him to be our LORD (Rom 10:9-10) causes a spiritual “New Birth” (Jn 3:3) which is a personal human “New Beginning” and a “Vav” connection with God through Faith (Eph 2:8, 1 Pet 1:23). This never seen before “new spiritual birth” results in a completely “New Creation” system of existence (2 Cor 5:17). By joining this New Kingdom, we are living in Jesus Christ the Son of God’s realm of power and authority, that had never existed before in time past, and the result is His Holy Spirit living in us and removal from Satan’s darkness.

Jesus is the cutting Sword instrument of the “Zayin” that divides and cuts Himself and us away from the authority of evil (Satan), while concurrently driving a “Vav” nail to re-connect Himself back to all of those that choose the gift of His “Righteousness”. This work of God will be completed during a phase of work identified by the Hebrew letter “Chet” which is a picture of a wall without doors that separates God and His New Covenant Family from Satan’s evil darkness permanently.

The “Chet” is the 8th letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and the number 8 signifies a “New Beginning” as in the first day of a brand-new Week. This simply teaches us it is at the beginning of the 8th day that a “brand-new” creation will be completely transitioned into, and the old creation ended after the final completion of Day 7 of the present old creation (7000 years of human history). This will be taking place after Day 7 of creation representing a 1000-year millennium rule of Christ with a 1000-year period of temporary interruption of Satan’s evil influence upon humans on the earth. This is described to occur in Revelation 20:2-3.

And we may know the “Zayin” is the 7th letter of the Hebrew alphabet that signifies it is on this day that the final “cutting” of God’s Zayin sword will be taking place. It is at the beginning of this day 7 of creation when Satan is bound and cast into hell for 1000 years. This will temporarily eliminate Satan’s rule from the face of the planet. But at the end of the 1000 years, he must be released to attempt to deceive any of the people that were born during this time that had never had the choice to choose between good and evil.

Therefore, Satan will be released to deceive natural people again at the end of the 1000-year reign of Christ and the church (those Vav connected with God). Then God’s last phased plan of the “Zayin” division and removal of Satan (the root source of evil, sin, and temptation) will be initiated (Rev 20:10). Subsequently the plan of separation will be finalized with the permanent removal of all evil, including anyone that chose to sin by submitting to Satan’s deceptions and temptations. These all will be cast into the lake of fire with him (Rev 21:8). These are all the ending completions of the “Zayin” cutting away types of prophecies found in the Old and New Testaments.

Finally, God’s New Heaven and New Earth will come into being, with a total “Chet” wall of separation from all Evil (Rev 21:1-2). No, you may not have studied these letters “Zayin” or “Chet” yet, but this was a quick introduction of the concepts. This was added because these letters “Vav”, “Zayin” and “Chet”, can’t be totally understood without including them together in a single lesson to explain how God prophesied the order of events in the arrangement of the letters.

These decisions to enter the Door of salvation or stand on the outside in opposition to the Kingdom of Light, can be made at any moment of time by the sovereign choice of every human by selecting to believe or not to believe. But this choice is only available if you have breath on this planet to speak. People are either “Vav” uniting in harmony with Christ through right beliefs and confessions, or they have chosen to remain in disharmony with Christ by default or through wrong beliefs.

And by not making a choice or choosing incorrectly, they are becoming permanently “Zayin” separated by death from God by their own willful decisions. This is because when Adam sinned, he became “Vav” joined with Satan (Isa 28:15), and now every human that is born from the first Adam must die (1 Cor 15:22). However, all this is occurring for God’s single common good and purpose to separate God and His infinite good, from Satan and his never-ending evil.

For example, when a man marries a woman, the two become united and joined (Vav) as a completely new family and this is good. But simultaneously they have now been separated (Zayin) from all other families on the earth that now exist as independent units.  Also, on an individual level the man and the woman have now become separated from all other individual males and females, to only be in intimate relationship which each other. These two joined intimate people have simply excluded (divided) themselves from intimacy with all other humans. This was exactly a description of the plan of God for a New Covenant in Jesus Christ.

Hopefully, you can begin to see how these two concepts of 1) a joining together like a “Vav” nail can occur simultaneously with 2) a separating and dividing of a “Zayin” sword. It is essential to understand how these two opposites must be present to work together for God’s single design purpose and His greater plan. If you do not see it yet, please be patient and continue to learn, it will become clearer soon.

Perhaps this might help you embrace this topic more quickly. We know a marriage is supposed to be monogamous meaning they are not intimate with their old boyfriends, girlfriends, or anyone else they should meet after the union occurs. This is God’s primary created example of the foundation of a successful covenant marriage (Gen 2:24). Notice in Genesis 2:24 both the joining together and the dividing separation is stated. This is a God created and designed Law. But these concepts were also a necessary requirement for God in His Old Covenant marriage with natural Israel (Jer 31:32) and these will further be expanded to include Jesus and His covenant spiritual bride in the New Covenant (Eph 5:31-32).

God informed natural Israel that He was a jealous God in Exodus 20:5. God says very clearly that they were not supposed to be unfaithful to Him, to go and worship other gods (Exo 20:3). If they do this, they will make Him jealous, and this would bring about consequences for their evils (Exo 12:12, Exo 23:33). Therefore, Israel was supposed to be “Vav” joined with the LORD God only, and forsake, sever, and divide (Zayin) themselves from all other false gods and idols and nations that worship them. Remember the false gods and idols were parts of Satanic worship of the devil’s demons, sorceries, and witchcrafts.  These were all traps of Satan used to defeat the people of God.

This seems very easy to comprehend for anyone of a divine moral character that knows God personally and intimately. For God is more than capable of being faithful to us, but for many people it has not been that easy for them to be faithful to Him as was displayed in natural Israel (Isa 1:21, Jer 3:8). This is a key reason why God sent Jesus into the world to become His human “Vav” connector.

Remember Jesus Christ is the eternal fulfilment of the Old Covenant pattern of a man standing in the office of the high priest (Heb 2:17). Remember in the Old covenant the high priest acted as a “Vav” connection between God and natural Israel, by entering God’s presence with animal blood for the sins of natural Israel. He did this with sacrificed blood when entering behind the veil into the Holy of Holies. This also was what Jesus Christ performed once with His blood entering into the real temple in heaven. Praise the LORD! Jesus will continue this role between God and man forever. All these High Priest actions fulfilled in Jesus as our “Vav” reconnection to God can be studied in Hebrews chapters 2 through 13. Please go and read them and see what He did for us.

However, God still expects this quality of faithfulness in our decision to be “Vav” joined with Jesus Christ. This faithfulness must include the commitment to be “Zayin” divided from evil. As God said to natural Israel in Leviticus 11:44 “be holy for I am holy”, He says the same to the church in 1 Peter 1:16. Repeatedly in the New Covenant God commands us after we are united with Him, to not be “Vav” joined with evil and unrighteousness (2 Cor 6:14-17). Therefore, God is expecting us to learn from natural Israel and not make the same mistakes to become unfaithful (1 Cor 10:11).

Today we have been studying the concepts hidden in the ancient Hebrew letter “Vav” and how they apply to what Jesus fulfilled for us in the prophecy of this unique letter. This letter “Vav’s” primary picture represents a “peg” and/or a “nail”. We can understand from this picture that this letter symbolically represents a connector plan, process, object, or person that performs a work like a nail that can be driven into two individual objects to “connect” or “reconnect” them as if they were one. It is very much like the modern day “super glue” concept of joining together broken pieces of a vase so that they can be made bonded together again.

It is absolutely essential to understand this “Vav” joining together concept, in the manifestation of the Son of God, Jesus. God’s Holy Spirit intentionally chose to be joined with His favored woman named Mary (Miriam) (Lk 1:30). God’s spoken Word produced a natural seed that was “joined” with Mary’s human “egg” and these two God created elements 1) human egg (Mat 1:20), and 2) divine Word “seed” (Lk 8:11) produced a natural human body (Heb 10:5) that could contain and carry both the blood of God plus the Spirit of God (Heb 9:14). Then this new human body type was the “beginning” of God’s intentional design, creating a prototype for His new creation. This would make Jesus the “First” human temple pattern of the Living Spirit of God (Jn 2:21) and give God the ability to take up residence in future believers’ human bodies (Act 17:24). Now with this foundation built, let us move to other scriptures in the New Testament that teach what was accomplished in Jesus using the “Vav” nail concepts.

Please take note that just because scriptures do not say they are about a nail or a peg, does not mean they are not directly connected to our subject of joining. Rather than look for the obvious “nail” mention, search for the applications for what a “Vav” represents. Think of all the synonymous ways to say “join” and this will help your search. It will amaze us how often we can find these concepts when we are looking for them. This is what we will be doing in the remaining part of this section.

We have already been introduced to the prophecy of this nail connecting God in heaven back to created humans on earth and we will easily find how this was fulfilled in God’s work “In Christ” by reading several great examples of verses in the New Covenant. Let us begin with Ephesians.

Eph 5:31  For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.

Eph 5:32  This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.

This is a direct quotation of Genesis 2:24 that we briefly saw earlier in the lesson. Do not forget that this is God’s law of covenant union and connection with the simultaneous separation and division affecting two individuals. These are a husband and wife that are being joined to form a new family with them also being removed from their parent’s families and any other external temptations.

Remember we were connecting Adam and Eve to be a type and pattern of Christ (Last Adam) and the church (Bride). In that section we confirmed the function of a “nail” was to join two separated things to be like a marriage covenant union of a man and a woman. Concurrently both of these two “newly joined” individuals have also further committed and agreed to separate themselves from all others and this is called commitment and faithfulness. This is exactly what is happening in Jesus Christ and His bride, the church.

These natural marriage concepts suddenly become so much greater when viewed in the spiritual realm in Jesus Christ. Ephesians 5:31-32 reveals God’s hidden intention for creating the union of two becoming one in natural marriage was designed for His future purpose of the marriage covenant between Christ and His wife, the church. This is clearly a “Vav” type of spiritual connection taking place between the church and Jesus, with the simultaneous separation of them both by a spiritual “Zayin” cutting away from all sin, evil and Satan.

Consider that the first woman in Genesis 2 was taken out of the First man Adam. Therefore, God made one man first and called both of their name “Adam” (Gen 5:2). Then He took out (a Zayin division) called a woman to create two separate and unique individuals from a single “flesh” (Gen 2:21-23). Then God rejoined the two (male and female) back together by the reunion of two becoming one again in covenant marriage (Gen 2:24). This amazingly describes God’s natural pattern of what is happening in the greater spiritual dimension between Himself and His New Creation (2 Cor 5:17), the church.

Next, we need to understand the spiritual problem of sin that entered the earth in Genesis 3 through the participation of the author of sin Satan coming down to earth from heaven. When this rebellion occurred, God needed a solution for sin in both heaven and earth. But before this sin had occurred on earth, God already had a plan to send another Adam, named Jesus to earth to save humans (Rev 13:8). We must begin to understand God’s purposes for His Works to reconnect (Vav) humans back to Himself. We will find one of the key reasons for Jesus as a uniting “Vav” connector for heaven and earth in 2 Peter:

2Pe 3:13  Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.

If you have not yet seen the great significance of what God has accomplished in Jesus’ death on a “Tav” Cross pierced with “Vav” nails, this verse reveals His entire purpose was to make a new creation wherein only “righteousness” dwelled. What does this mean?

Doesn’t this sound like the “Zayin” sword concept of cutting and dividing by stating God is eliminating “evil” from the “righteous”? This “separation” must then also require that there be a simultaneous opposite of a “Vav” joining. To fulfill the verse this implied joining must represent the New Covenant (Heb 12:24). This New Covenant union that is implied to be taking place, must be between two previously separated individuals (God and the church using Jesus as their mediating connection).

Plainly this spiritual reunion must be a willing unification based upon agreement with each other to be simultaneously “Vav” joined together. Therefore, the church is choosing to be joined with God, His righteousness, His Holiness, and His goodness, while at the same time choosing to be “Zayin” divided apart from Satan, unrighteousness, and all evil.

As we can read in 2 Peter 3:13, there is certainly a God plan for a “New Creation”, which includes a “New heaven” and a “New earth”. This also means that God is 1) dividing and separating all His Old Creation, specifically the sinful evil portion from the righteous forever. We can confirm this reason of division (Zayin) for Jesus’ personal appearance on earth in Matthew 10:34-36 and Luke 12:51-53 which is based upon a prophecy from Micah 7:6.

Most of the natural descriptions in the Old Covenant have parallel and dual occurring spiritual applications that are based upon God’s chosen written natural symbolism. We are not going to be able to teach all these concepts of division today. There are other lessons on this website that speak in more detail about “Understanding Division” and “Understanding the Spiritual Family of God” to name two major sources for understanding what God is doing in Jesus to divide Himself from Lucifer and to join Himself to humans that were separated. Here is this significant prophecy declaring this division will be occurring in the future:

Mic 7:6  For the son dishonoureth the father, the daughter riseth up against her mother, the daughter in law against her mother in law; a man’s enemies are the men of his own house.

We can only give a rapid overview of one part of the prophecy about God’s division to introduce the subject to new readers. We know this prophecy is about Jesus, by Him personally quoting this verse. With this claim, He is clearly describing the dividing of God’s spiritual family was one of the key reasons why He was sent to the earth as a human. He claims in Matthew 10:34 that He did not come to bring peace but rather a “sword” (implying a Zayin cutting division is taking place). Then in Luke 12:51, Jesus is more plain speaking that His coming to the earth was directly to “divide”, and not to bring peace. This is obviously a hidden reference to God dividing Himself from Satan and the “unrighteousness” that is inferred in 2 Peter 3:13.

It is important to see that this prophecy is about dividing a family. First know that God has a family that is named both in heaven and on the earth (Eph 3:15). Second understand that before Adam, this God family only consisted of angelic beings in heaven (Heb 12:22). Please begin to understand that the first Adam was created to be a separated new part of God’s spiritual family that was not connected to the heavenly angels and especially Satan’s evil. This was God’ first “division” of His spiritual family. And this division symbolically occurs on Day 1 of creation where God creates “light” and divides the light from the darkness calling light “day” and darkness “night”. However, this Day 1 of creation was a prophecy for what was about to occur within this first 1000 years of human history.

It is most revealing when studying the Word of God to view what is written and spoken by God from His perspective of dividing Himself from Satan and evil in heaven. God is implementing a Genesis 1 re-creation of the planet earth to accomplish this. We can clearly see the first earth was destroyed in Genesis 1:2. God confirms this in 2 Peter 3:6. This creation has included many new things that never existed before as we are beginning to see. Of course, this work of God peaked with the creation of humans, a law, and a death consequence for disobedience. Hopefully you are seeing how all of this is working together to eliminate Satan with a “Zayin” type of division.

Then we know that we do not get very far past Genesis 1, until we find God’s kingdom purpose continuing to develop to separate Himself from Satan. As we should know Satan existed before Adam’s creation (Job 38:4-7). Since there is never a mention of Satan or anyone else on planet earth when Adam was created, we can logically deduce that Satan’s residence was in heaven. We must recall that Satan’s home in heaven will remain until after the War take place between Michael and his angels who will overcome Satan and his angels in Revelation 12:7-8. It is at this point during the tribulation that Satan and his angels are permanently cast out of heaven, and this takes place over 6000 years after Adam was created.

However, in Genesis 3, it appears that Satan’s interests have suddenly shifted from ruling in heaven and has move down to rule the earth. It further appears that Satan’s desires and purposes have been re-focused upon the corruption (Rom 8:21) of God’s sinless re-created good earth and its inhabitants (Gen 1:31). This intention clearly included his desires to “Vav” join himself to humans so that he could fill the earth with his evil and sin (Gen 6:5) that was then only found present in heaven (Eze 28:15).

Therefore, in Genesis 3:1, Satan suddenly appears in the garden on earth, to craftily tempt God’s newly created separated Adam’s family. However, please do not get confused, by the mention of Adam being called “separated” from God. This separation is plainly stated in Genesis 2:24 where God says the man shall leave his father’s house. Who is the created man’s father? We know from reading Luke 3:38 that Adam’s life came from God making God his father. 

But this implied separation of God from Adam, does not mean that God could not visit and talk with His creation as we can clearly read occurs in Genesis 2 and 3. This only meant that Adam was not a part of God’s heavenly spiritual family or kingdom and that he had been given by God a separated from heaven, earth domain. This domain included a new wife and family of his own, with his own God given authority to rule and manage the re-created earth (Gen 1:26).

This concept of a father to son separation has been passed from generation to generation. It is entirely true in the present earthly realm today, exactly as it was in God’s to His created first man Adam. For example, my son is the husband and father of his own house. He has been joined with his wife and they two are one flesh in the eyes of God. When they were married, they both left their parent’s house. This meant they both gained the independent sovereign abilities to make their own choices and rules apart from their parents’ homes. They are free to ask for their fathers or mothers’ advice, but the decisions are ultimately all in their power to make.

Therefore, this temptation to revolt against God that was brought down from heaven by Satan, was Adam’s sovereign choice to make. Satan directed this temptation intentionally at God’s separated newly created human family to join with them together in rebellion against God. It appears that in Satan’s mind this was an opportunity for him to gain greater power and control of all of God’s creation to exalt himself to be like God (Isa 14:13). But we will notice that this decision to come to the earth has moved him to also be in covenant with humans that must now “die” because of their sins. Uh oh. It is highly likely that Satan did not fully understand what this “Vav” joining with humans could include.

There appears to be a plan of God for moving Satan’s eternal domain found in the heavenly, down to the temporary earth’s surface domain (2 Cor 4:18). We could call this a part of the beginning steps of God’s transition for the separation from all evil from the righteous. This is where we are now and this temporary earthly rule (2 Cor 4:4) appears to be a part of the transitioning steps of God’s plan to eventually move Satan out of the spiritual eternal realm of God’s heavenly Kingdom into the eventual transition of being thrown down into hell finally and permanently separated forever from God and all the righteous.

Remember, it is the heavenly spiritual realm where there is no time, no death, no law, no sin consequences, and God plans for Satan to be brought down into the newly created world of Adam which will begin with a newly implemented concept of time, followed by a law with death consequences for committing sin.

Adam had been created and lived by God’s plan within a temporary separated natural realm of existence, involving the law of stewardship (Mar 12:1-11, Luke 12:42, Luke 16:1-13). This temporary creation involved a timed leased rulership of the earth. Therefore, it was never intended to last forever. The timed lease of the earth that was given to the first man, was to last for 6000 years of human work (Gen 2:5, Mat 17:1), and a 1000-year day of rest (Heb 4:3-11, Rev 20:6).

But after sin enters the world, Adam becomes “Vav” joined with Satan, and falls under the rulership of death (Rom 5:17) which was now within Satan’s power (Heb 2:14). Wow, do you see what has just happened after Adan sinned? Satan has become the temporary “god of this world” (2 Corinthians 4:4), which is the temporary government systems that were given to Adam (Gen 1:26) but have now been transitioned to Satan’s rule according to Matthew 4:8-9.

This is a major shift from Satan only living within the freedoms of heaven where there are no laws (Gal 4:26). Please read the context of Galatians 4:26 to help confirm the heavenly Jerusalem above is called “free”, meaning there are no “laws” of bondage. This is very important to help us understand why Satan was never dealt consequences for his rebellion against God and why God is implementing a plan to transition Satan from out of heaven.

This rebellion of Adam then places him into covenant with Satan and this meant whatever was Satan’s is now Adam’s, and whatever was Adam’s, was now also Satan’s. This meant both Adam and Lucifer are bound by a limitation within a supernatural bondage to God’s newly created realm of time and laws. Remember Adam’s domain of earth’s stewardship was on a time limit that was set to expire in 7000 years. All this information is found based upon the Genesis 1 prophecies where God declared “I make known the end from the beginning”. But this will not be covered in this lesson due to an excessive increase in lesson length.

Remember that Adam and Eve, only knew God (light) and everything “good” that God had created, including themselves. There was no wicked or evil presence upon the earth after the 6 days of Genesis 1. It was not until Satan (God’s adversary) shows up in the Garden of Eden in Genesis 3:1, that evil had entered God’s newly re-created world. Remember from Genesis 1:26 we know that Adam had the authority to cast Satan out but chose rather to disobey God’s single commandment (Gen 2:17).

We can read about this temptation and rebellion occurring in chapter 3 of Genesis. As we know from scripture Satan implements his plans of death and destruction by primarily deception (Gen 3:1, Rev 12:9). In Genesis 3:1 we find how subtle Satan was above all of God’s newly made animal creation. Then Satan begins to speak to the woman and was able to deceive her in her mind to get her to disobey God’s only rule with the consequences of death (2 Cor 11:3). It is clear by Satan’s temptation that he nor Eve believed that a spirit being could die (Gen 3:4).

God then informs us in 1 Timothy 2:14 that Adam was not deceived during chapter 3 of the fall of man. Therefore, Adam’s sin appears to have been a willful and intentional rebellion (Zayin division) against God and an intentional joining (Vav) with Lucifer. Did you notice this was the “Vav” and “Zayin” concepts occurring in reverse from Jesus the Last Adam’s choices and works?

Nevertheless, Adam turned over his God given dominion of the earth (Gen 1:26) completely to Satan (Lk 4:5-6). And Satan became the “god of this world” until God’s appointed time has been fulfilled (Mat 8:29). Also, during this time of Satan’s dominion, “death” was passed upon all humans because we were all “in Adam” when he sinned (Rom 5:12). Now notice what else happened to Adam’s family on the earth:

Pro 25:5  Take away the wicked from before the king, and his throne shall be established in righteousness.

If the first Adam would have cast Satan out from the earth, wickedness would not have entered God’s created good world, and we would be living in the original creation state of only knowing “good” (Gen 1:31). But since Adam chose to “Vav” join Satan’s rebellion, darkness and wickedness has taken hold of the planet and according to Proverbs 25:5, righteousness departed from humans by the law of antithesis truth. If you are not familiar with this Biblical law, it simply states, that whatever is truthfully stated in any verse, the opposite unstated truth is equally true.

Therefore, Proverbs 25:5 also confirms that the state of God’s Kingdom of Heaven before Satan came to the earth to tempt man was not fully righteous either. This simply meant the state of heaven was a mixture of both good and evil, and unrighteous and righteous.

Too many people believe Satan was just cast out of heaven the moment he sinned. But because God is a righteous judge, He was not able to legally do this. Therefore, one reason for our current world’s creation was for us to learn that there is a “righteous”, “fair”, and “good” process that is being worked by God to eliminate finally and completely all evil.

God had purposefully created a “new” concept called “death” within His current world’s creation containing sinful humans. This concept brought about a separation for all that reject righteousness and God’s gifts of salvation. This part of God’s family by their own choices will be called “dead” to God as was the prodigal son in the parable found in Luke 15. God planned to use this newly created concept of “death” to separate Himself from Lucifer and all his wicked angels.

Therefore, we will say this is the beginning of the many steps of God’s “Zayin” plan of separation from evil began using the creation of our present world so that God in Jesus Christ could manifest to die on a “Tav” cross hanging with “Vav” nails. We know “death” was a major part of God’s plan by reading Revelation 13

Rev 13:8  And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.

This is an essential verse of truth that exemplifies the overview of the plan of God for eliminating evil. The end of the verse describes the beginning of the plan. Notice God had planned for the death of Jesus (called the Lamb) before our world was founded. Therefore, death is the key part of eliminating Satan and all evil.

This verse in context is about Satan’s manifestation as a man on the earth that will be worshiped by a lot of humans. In this chapter they will take his mark, and this will eliminate their names from the Lamb’s “book of life”. As we can see the Lamb’s purpose for death is two-fold. These are the two unified concepts of joining and dividing that will occur from God’s participation in Christ to die.

To all those that will join the faith in Christ their names are recorded in His book to remain, and this will give them life to know God personally forever. But all those that reject God’s free-gift of life through belief, will be “Vav” joined with Satan taking his mark, and “Zayin” cut away from God’s never-ending life.

For time’s sake we are going to jump forward past the cross to find and learn the ending phased strategies of God to permanently eliminate Satan and all evil from their union with the righteous. For example, notice these verses:

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

Rev 12:8  And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven

Rev 12:9  And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.
Rev 12:10  And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night.

These verses of scripture in the book of Revelation describe a war that will take place during the soon coming but future 7-year tribulation. This war will be fought between God’s faithful angels led by Michael, and they will be fighting against Satan and his rebellious angels. It is during this final heavenly spiritual war that Satan is finally cast down to the earth as we can read in verse 9. This verse confirms the future and final “casting down out of heaven” event of Satan and all his angels. This also amazingly teaches us that Satan still has access to heaven even today as we can clearly confirm in the following verses of the Bible:

  1. Genesis 28:12
  2. Job 1:6
  3. Job 2:1-2
  4. Luke 22:11
  5. John 1:51

Twice in these five references, angels are directly stated to be “ascending” and then “descending” between earth to heaven and vice versa. God does not say that these were just the “good” angels. It implies these are “all” angels whether good or evil. In Luke we find an implied reference of Satan going before God demanding to sift Peter like wheat. But in Job we find the direct mention of both good and evil angels presenting themselves before God in heaven twice in a very short time span.

This would imply they were going often and in Job 2:2 God directly asks Satan where he has come from. This question was not for God to gain knowledge that He did not already know, but rather it was for our benefit to teach us Satan goes back and forth from the earth to heaven. Satan’s answer was “I am coming from walking to and fro throughout the earth and walking up and down in it”. This sounds like a paraphrase from 1 Peter 5:8. “Your adversary the devil as a roaring lion walks about seeking whom he may devour”.

What we are discovering is the clear fact that all angels have access to heaven today even as you are reading this lesson. And we can visibly confirm this statement by observing what we have just read in Revelation chapter 12.

Notice what Revelation 12:8 said. God says very plainly that before Satan and his angels were cast down, they had a place in heaven. The Greek word G5117 translated as “place” is an essential word to understand. This word literally states Satan, and his rebellious angels had dwelling places with implied addresses of ownership, as well as positions within the government including roles and titles. This is also confirmed in the book of Jude 1:6 where it also describes angels’ dwellings in heaven.

But after this final war in heaven, in Revelation 12, their access and living rights have been finally revoked and their places and positions of authority have been ended in heaven. Wow, this is a view of God’s final prophetic heavenly “Zayin” sword “cutting” plan of division, removing all heavenly evil from those that are called righteous in His heavenly Kingdom.

Next notice in Revelation 12:9 we find the heavenly war results and who it affected. In this verse God identifies the defeated beings as Satan called the dragon as well as the symbolic ancient serpent in the Garden of Eden. But don’t let it pass you by, that Satan is stated to have deceived the entire world and this also includes Christians at some time of human existence. Hopefully, only when they were not saved.

Now notice Revelation 12:10. This verse is amazing because it also confirms Satan’s future removal from heaven will occur during this soon coming heavenly war. Pay close attention to the words “Now has come salvation in heaven, because the accuser of our brethren has been cast down”. This is clearly stating a permanent Satan exit will be taking place and he will finally not be able to “accuse” Christian/righteous people anymore before God. This literally means this is what he has been doing for thousands of years.

We do not have the time to go into all the steps that have taken place to get us here. We can learn God’s major accomplishment to eliminate Satan was to come to the earth in the flesh to die on a cross being hung by “Vav” nails. We could call this the central part of God’s phased multistep plan for the elimination of “evil”. It was at this point that Satan literally believed he had prevailed over God. But Satan was not aware of the next step of God’s plan called the “Resurrection from the dead”. Here is a quick list of the major steps of God’s plan for the final elimination of evil:

  1. God foresaw the need to eliminate evil and decides to create a world with laws (Gen 2:16) and consequences of death for disobedience (Gen 2:17).
  2. God speaks to create this new world in Genesis 1:3-31.
  3. God then created one new man to rule this world (Gen 1:26, Gen 2).
  4. God knowing Satan’s ambitions, understood his desires to rule God’s new separated world and this would drive Satan down to the earth. God allowed Satan to temporarily “Zayin” separate himself from heaven to descend to the earth and become “Vav” joined to God’s new world containing laws, time limits and death consequences.
  5. After the sin and rebellion of Adam, Satan, sin, and death ruled over all humans (2 Cor 4:4, Eph 2:2, Rom 5:17-21).
  6. Now during the 6000-year time of man’s work on the earth, God and humans both were now joined simultaneously with good and evil (Satan). This meant Satan had rights to both the spiritual domain of God and the natural dominion of humans (Gen 3:5, 3:22). This is clearly a transitional plan of God to catch Satan with one foot in the spiritual and the other in the natural.
  7. The sin of Adam left God on the outside looking into His earth creation and Satan can practically destroy this creation by the time of Genesis 6.
  8. This brough God’s judgments upon the earth where only 8 righteous could be saved by an “ark” living through a global “flood” (1 Pet 3:8).
  9. This judgment places a fear of God upon the earth, and they begin to build a tower in Babel to save themselves from anymore judgements (Gen 11:5-8).
  10. This is when further judgments occur, and many new languages are implemented by God to divide the people on the earth. From these divided people come all the nations of the earth.
  11. In the course of time, God chooses one man from all the people of the earth, to create one new physical nation and one forthcoming planned coming new spiritual nation (1 Pet 2:9). This man named Abraham will bring forth “one” promised combined natural and spiritual seed named Jesus Christ (Gal 3:16). This man Abraham is now the spiritual father of everyone that has been and will be saved in Christ (Rom 4:16).
  12. During the next 2000 years of human time, God implements a significant marriage covenant (Vav joining) with the natural children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Jer 31:32).
  13. Further in the Old Covenant process these children of natural Israel are brought under the bondage of captivity in Egypt and God selects a man named Moses to deliver them.
  14. They are delivered by God implementing a final 10th plague on Egypt called the death of the “firstborn” and bypassed by the substitutionary “death” of an innocent sacrificial lamb (Exo 12). Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
  15. Next God implements more “laws” in natural Israel for humans to follow. This is done to establish a High Priest system of mediation between God and man using blood sacrifices. This is done because God desired to personally live on the earth in a temporary tabernacle with them. This is now a pattern of God’s coming New Covenant with Christ living inside of temporary human bodies (1 Cor 6:19).
  16. At the end of 4000 years of human history, God comes personally into the earth being birthed in Bethlehem (Mat 1:23). This birth places God under His given LAW (Gal 4:4). God does this to fulfill all the “Law”, but also to “die” a spotless lamb’s death to pay the penalty for all human sins redeeming humans from Satan using a Zayin cutaway. Finally, this death on the cross also performed another “Zayin” divide, separating God, Himself from all evil at another set future time.
  17. It was after 3 days in hell that God was righteously satisfied for the death of Jesus as payment for “All” human sins, that Jesus is resurrected from the dead.
  18. It was this resurrection that began God’s “New Creation” with Jesus becoming the “Firstborn from the dead”. This new birth brought about a creation type that had never existed at any time in the past. And this gave Jesus preeminence over all other creations in the past, the present and the future.

It was Jesus being raised from the dead that sealed Satan’s future destiny in hell. This is why 1 Corinthians 2:8 claims that if Satan would have known what was planned, he would not have crucified the LORD God on a cross. What happened that Satan did not expect?

God’s surprise is called the first “New Birth” of a spiritual being (Rev 1:5). Jesus reveals this mystery in John 3:3 when He said, “Except a man is born again, he cannot enter the kingdom of God”. Wow, that is a major statement. It is also the exact same “Vav” joining heaven to some deemed righteous, while simultaneously performing a “Zayin” cutting away of others named unrighteous and evil that is taking place.

Was Jesus a man? Yes, He was! Therefore, this statement first applied to Him. If we can read in Colossians 1:18 Jesus is called “the beginning”. What is He the beginning of? It comes in the next connecting statement, “the firstborn from the dead”. Wow, again! A growing number of Bible teachers are beginning to teach what was accomplished in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. However, there are still too many that are leaving out that He became the “firstborn from the dead” while being resurrected. It was this powerful act of God that made Him preeminent (the FIRST, the HEAD, the alphabet letter “Resh”) in God’s never existing before, new creation.

This spiritually imminent New Birth is what Satan was oblivious to. It implemented a “New Creation” (2 Cor 5:17) that also brought about a “Vav” reconnecting “New Covenant” (Heb 12:24) with humans, which is resulting in a New Jerusalem (Rev 21:2), a “New Heaven”, and a “New Earth” (Rev 21:1), and all these new things will exclude (Zayin divide) Satan and all other evil completely. This New Creation is our current phase of existence in God’s plan of removal of evil and Satan. It will last for 2 days, or 2000 years called the church days of Divine Grace.

However, the church age will climax with implementing God’s next steps of His plan. This begins with the church being victorious over God’s enemy Satan. This will be the conclusion to Christ’s works on the cross that laid the foundation of Satan’s defeat and our Victory. This victory will result in the church standing upon Satan’s head with our feet (Rom 16:20). The church is the prophesied woman that will bruise Satan’s head under our feet in Genesis 3:15. Can you hear the screams of blasphemy that just happened? Please patiently put down your stones.

Yes, most teach Genesis 3:15 is about the “Seed” and not the “woman” crushing the serpent’s head. But both are true. Remember where the church came from and who the church is today. The church is called the bride of Christ and Christ is called the bridegroom. But the church is also called the “Body of Christ” like we can read in Colossians 1:18. We also know that Christ is called the “Head” of the corporate church “body” that is “Vav” united with Him to being in Him and Him being in our spirit. Therefore, we know that God says, “As He is, so are we!” (1 Jn 4:17). This appears to say whatever He does through us, is what He does. This would mean if we crush the head of the serpent under our feet, it is the same as if Christ Jesus in us has done it.

Therefore, where are the feet in the body of Christ? They must be in the church that is on the earth today. This is exactly why God writes to the church in Romans 16:20, “the God of Peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly”. This clearly is a statement of prophecy about a soon coming victory over God’s enemy. It is God’s sovereign choice to show Satan that it will be a newly created spiritual woman that will be the one that will crush his head, and not the Almighty God that created him. This appears to lower Satan’s pride significantly to not think that he is so high and mighty above all else. This is powerful if you will accept it.

Quickly, let us wrap this section of the lesson about the simultaneous “Vav” joining with God, and “Zayin” cutting away of Satan and all evil with observing the last steps of the plan of God for Satan’s permanent removal.

Rev 20:3  And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season.

This verse in Revelation 20 is when Satan and all his evil spirit servants are cast into the pit for 1000 years. This is the last 7th day of the creation account found in the Genesis 1 prophecy of man’s complete history on the earth during this present creation. This is called God’s Sabath day of rest, and this is very interesting. What we learn from this coming 1000-year day of “rest”, is that it is a time where all humans on the earth that there will be no “evil influences” for humans to be tempted with.

This information clearly implies by the law of antithesis truth, the preceding 6 days or 6000 years of man will be a time when they will be working for God and against evil influences or working with the evil to be against God. These 1000 years of rest from fighting Satan, will bring down the Kingdom of God from heaven which will be ruled with a rod of iron by the resurrected from the dead LORD Jesus, and the resurrected and raptured church overcomers (Rev 2:26-27, Rev 5:10, Rev 20:4).

There will be physical tribulation survivors that did not take the mark of the beast and were not killed by the antichrist, that will be left on the earth. These people would have survived miraculously throughout the entire 7 years of God’s judgments upon the earth, and Satan’s wrath. Now these people will be able to repopulate the earth for the period lasting 1000 years. But after these 1000 years have ended, we can clearly read in Revelation 20:3 that Satan must be loosed for a short time from his pit captivity (Rev 20:7) to deceive, tempt and test people again (Rev 20:8). None of these natural newly born people on the earth have ever experienced any direct temptations. Therefore, it appears God is allowing them to be tested by evil to choose between “Vav” joining with Satan or remaining in “Vav” union with God through Jesus. Let us look now at the final “Zayin” division of Satan and all evil from the righteous:

Rev 20:10  And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.

We can clearly read in this verse that there is coming after the 1000-year reign of Christ, the never-ending separation of God from all evil. This is the last time that a “Zayin” cutting away will become final and the “Chet” wall of permanent division fully encloses all evil away from the righteous.

The “Great White Throne” Judgment will take place next after Satan’s elimination, and the unrighteous will be judged and whoever is not found written in the “book of life” will be cast into hell with Satan (Rev 10:15). This is the second death called the spiritual separation from knowing God and all His grace, goodness, mercy, love and forgiveness. This will truly be sad for these people since they could have accepted Jesus their entire life on the earth. Finally, God is completing the “Zayin” separation from evil and His “Vav” union with the “righteous” by ending His first creation after fully transitioning all righteous into His New Creation:

Rev 21:1  And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.

Rev 21:2  And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

Rev 21:3  And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.

Rev 21:4  And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.

Rev 21:5  And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful.

Rev 21:6  And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.

Rev 21:7  He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son.

Rev 21:8  But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.

These are amazing prophetical promises that will be occurring much sooner than you may imagine. Hopefully, these verses make a lot more sense to you now. We can clearly see the culmination of God’s plan being fully realized that was planned from the very foundation of the world. God has spoken this entire plan in outline form in Genesis 1.

Go back and see how the 7-day creation of our current world was an overview for His plan of eliminating evil and “Vav” joining with only righteousness. Five or six times “Zayin” divisions take place. The first three chapters of Genesis have significant amounts of dual meanings attached to them. They contain natural descriptions of what is happening in our world during creation, and these are also symbolic revealing spiritual things that are prophesied to happen in the spiritual world of God’s plan of man’s salvation and Satan’s elimination. However, this will not be covered in this lesson.

5. Conclusion

There are numerous verses in the New Covenant as well as prophetical verses in the Old Covenant that could have been included in this lesson today. Hopefully, you have learned enough to spend your personal time studying this subject on your own. For example, to conclude this lesson, we will only review a few examples of what we have learned that Jesus fulfilled as the “Vav” ancient Hebrew alphabet letter:

1Co 15:24  Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power

Here is another confirming verse that helps unlock the mystery of Jesus as the “Vav”. Notice it begins with then comes the “end” and this connects us to the end being made known from the beginning we learned in the Genesis 1:1 prophecy.  Next notice Paul writes “when ‘he’ shall deliver up the kingdom to God the Father. The “he” here in this verse is Jesus the Son of God that was raised up from the dead to “begin” a brand-new creation (2 Cor 5:17) and He in this process has “been highly exalted far above all principality, power, might and dominion” (Eph 1:21). This is a direct reference to Satan and all his kingdom evil angels. Let us include this verse of Ephesians in our conclusion.

Eph 1:21  Far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come:

It is essential to notice that the Greek word G746 translated as “principality” in Ephesians 1:21, is also translated as “beginning(s)” approximately 40 times. It is also the same exact Greek word that was translated as “rule” in 1 Corinthians 15:24.

Therefore, we have discovered that there was a “powerful” ruler that existed at the time of God’s beginning of His first creation (Gen 1:1) that needed to be put down and placed permanently underfoot. This spiritual ruler was “Lucifer” and God has been working His plan to remove Lucifer’s evil influence both in heaven and in earth through “Jesus’ death” being nailed (Vav) on a cross (Tav) (1 Cor 2:8) for the last 6000 years.

1Co 15:25  For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet.

As we can confirm from this verse, God is implementing a progressive transfer of power and authority that began in God’s heavenly kingdom that was then transitioned to rule in the current temporary earth realm. Remember God personally came down in the form of a human baby in the middle of this process to “Vav” join Himself with His creation and to place Himself under His law (Gal 4:4).

It should be becoming obvious that this shift of power was a process and not just a one-time single event. We can see a major part of this transition was accomplished after Jesus was resurrected from the dead by reading Matthew 28:18. In this verse, Jesus the risen Son of God proclaims, “All authority in heaven and earth, has been given to me”. Clearly this is a profound statement of a shift in power and delegated authority.

It strongly confirms God’s need to eliminate Lucifer’s authority in heaven and then on the earth and it was accomplished when Jesus became the “First born from the dead”. It was through this “New First Spiritual Re-Birth of Jesus” that initiated God’s “New Creation”, including a “New Kingdom”, a “New Covenant”, etc. as we have learned.

God is amazing and we could have written many more volumes of information about this subject of a “Zayin” certain “Division” of Satan and evil from God and man, a “Vav” destined “re-connection” of all righteousness back to God, and a “Chet” final and permanent “wall of separation” being “built” between all good and all evil.

Thank you for reading and studying the Bible with us. We love you more than you may know. Hopefully this potentially new information did not overwhelm you. Please, be an Acts 17:11 more noble type of Christian and learn to study everything learned here for yourself, looking up every verse reference given and confirm what is taught is what God is saying to the church today. There is too much deception taking place in the world today, and God’s Word is the only source of TRUTH for the sound knowledge of what He has done for us and given to us. Praise the LORD!

Intro Alef Beyt-1 2 Gimel Dalet Hey Vav Zayin Chet Tet Yod Kaf Lamed Mem 1 2 Nun Samekh Ayin Pey Tsade Qof Resh Shin TavAlef-Beyt Chart (Series updated as LORD directs and permits)

Are You Saved? Do you Know Jesus? Life is Short! Jesus wants to Know You! Please come and get to Know Him!

Jesus in the Ancient Hebrew Language – Ayin – The Eyes of God Are Upon Us

(Ver 1.0) This is “Part 17” in the amazing Bible study series focused upon learning how God became a man named “Yehoshua” (Jesus=Jehovah Saves) and how He was hidden in every letter of the Ancient Hebrew Alphabet. We have been going through each letter of the alphabet (but not in alphabetical order) and today we are focused on the 16th letter called “Ayin”. This ancient Hebrew pictogram is the image of an open human eye as in looking, seeing and sight. Therefore, we will be studying about primarily the Eyes of God, and Jesus, and the application of the letter “Ayin” to human sight (natural and spiritual) in this Bible lesson.

The Ayin is another one of the most essential letters representing the very significant participation and involvement of God’s Eyes looking upon the lives of humans on the earth (2 Chr 16:9). Therefore, we will be learning the subject of “eyes” from two views, one is the eternal spiritual application, and the other is God’s created natural application. God sees us from a much higher spiritual vision and viewpoint, than most people see Him or observes other humans. The ways of God are so much greater than human ways of seeing and making decisions and judgments (Isa 55:9).

Therefore, be forewarned that this lesson is an advanced spiritual subject that can potentially be offensive to naturally thinking humans and Christians. Also, it may not take the direction that many readers expect. We are about to discover how the Lord has shifted our focus from just verses about “eyes”, to some of the key applications of spiritual eyesight. This may not seem obvious at first, but these potential new perspectives on eyes will become more alive after being understood.

If you have not read this series from the introduction, it is highly recommended that you go and build upon the foundational subject introduction, before selecting individual letters to study. To do this select “Jesus in the Ancient Hebrew – Introduction”.

Since this lesson is about the “Eyes” of God and man, both in the eternal spiritual and naturally created realms, it is suggested that we begin by asking God to open our spiritual eyes to see whatever He wants us to see about this subject from His higher heavenly perspective. This is a great prayer to pray for every lesson in this series on this website and every lesson subject that you desire to learn taught by anyone. Pray and ask God in faith for Him to do the following as you continue to study:

Eph 1:17  That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you (me) the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him:

Eph 1:18  The eyes of your (my) understanding being enlightened; that ye (I) may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints,

If you prayed this prayer and meant it, God will be faithful to open your “eyes” to “see” exactly what you need to learn today. Let us begin to study this subject of Ayin eyes with our basic introduction to the letter Ayin. Here is a quick list of the subject topics that will be covered today:

  1. Introduction to the Ayin = Eyes
  2. Introduction to Spiritual Eyes
  3. What Did Jesus Teach About Eyes?
  4. Eyes in Creation – Separating the Light (Seeing Eyes), from the Darkness (Blind Eyes)
  5. Ayin Application to the Believer
  6. Conclusion

1. Introduction to the Ayin = Eyes

This is another very interesting an amazingly essential letter picture pointing us to the plan of God to bring Jesus into the world. It is also a picture representation of hidden things that God will accomplish in Jesus. As you can see in the image that was drawn above, it is the simple picture of an “eye”. But it is not just any kind of “eyes”, it is the picture of the eyes that have been “opened” so that they can “see”, and this is very significant to what God will teach us today. Notice this letter is very prophetical, with God desiring His created man to seek and search for Him (Deu 4:29, 1 Chr 16:11). But it is also a picture of our God like a Good shepherd that is watching over His flock with loving care:

2Ch 16:9  For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to shew himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him. Herein thou hast done foolishly: therefore from henceforth thou shalt have wars. 

Here is a key verse written about God’s eyes looking down upon humans. This verse claims that God’s eyes are constantly scanning the face of the earth’s surface, and He is looking for a human to show Himself strong to. This verse then states that there are people that have done foolishly that were seen by God, and this will be the cause of their coming wars. Let us look at another verse about the Eyes of the Lord:

Pro 15:3  The eyes of the LORD are in every place, beholding the evil and the good.

There are numerous verses found in the Bible that reveal God has eyes and that He is seeing everything that is going on in the world. There are a lot of humans that do not believe this, including people that call themselves Christians. This information should awaken some today, to consider what they are doing and saying about God and others in the world.

The Ayin picture represents the image of a natural open eye which also has direct application of figurative meanings to the unseen spiritual realm. This is one of the primary reasons why we prayed the prayer in Ephesians 1, asking God to “open our eyes” (Ayin) to see and know Him. We can also find in 2 Kings 2:16-17 where Elisha prayed and ask God to open the eyes of his servant to see that there were more in the unseen spiritual realm that were with them, than were against them in the natural realm. It is very clear that everyone has the potential to see the greater spiritual realities around us with the opening of our spiritual eyes by God, and this will cause the lesser physical realities to become insignificant.

Therefore, the primary meaning of the ancient letter design, is the open or seeing “eye” or more precisely “eyes”, because humans were created with two natural eyes. But the letter picture has several other functional applications in the natural visual realm. For example, the Ayin letter has the following applications:

  1. An eye, or eyes as in “open”
  2. to see,
  3. to perceive,
  4. to look,
  5. to behold,
  6. to observe,
  7. to recognize,
  8. to search and/or find,
  9. to watch,
  10. to witness
  11. a color related to the eyes.
  12. the face connected with the eyes.
  13. to stand before and in the presence of the one looking on

Now let us go through a few of the spiritual applications of the “ayin” eye image:

  1. to learn,
  2. to know,
  3. to understand,
  4. to comprehend,
  5. to have a thought,
  6. to think,
  7. to perceive,
  8. to experience,
  9. to be enlightened
  10. to be alive
  11. to visualize or have a vision,
  12. to be open minded,
  13. to not be closed minded,
  14. to not be unaware, or asleep
  15. to not be dead

As we can see the “Ayin” pictogram of an open eye, also has multiple figurative applications to the hidden human heart representing the combined human soul and spirit.  But wait, there are also a couple other natural application of the eye symbol within God’s designed creation. Here is a short list of them:

  1. A well in the ground containing water looks like an eye and God refers to the earth as a face (Exo 10:5) which is a container for these waters (Gen 24:12, Exo 15:27).
  2. A fountain and a pool of water on the earth can look like a shimmering eye (Neh 2:14).
  3. A fountain of water can resemble a weeping eye (Gen 16:7, Num 33:9).
  4. The human eye can also resemble “furrows” (slits) in the face of the earth representing ground that has been plowed (Hosea 10:10).

These are some of the basic concepts found in the ancient Hebrew letter Ayin and its corresponding Hebrew word H5869. Please note that this was not a complete list and none of these concepts can be covered fully in this lesson today.

But when the Ayin letter is combined with other letters to form new words the application of the open eye becomes immensely greater. For example, “Ayin” + “Nun” can mean the “Eyes Continue” as in a shepherd “Keeps Watch” over his flock, clearly an image of God and Jesus as found in Psalm 23.

The “Ayin” + “Mem” combined letters form the Hebrew word H5971 that is translated as “people”. Remember the Ayin represents the “Eye” or “See”, and the “Mem” represents moving “water” and “blood”. Therefore, combining these meanings we can easily see that these two letters mean “See the Blood” and “See the Water”. The number one ingredient in any living human body is water and if you recall Adam’s name means “God’s Blood”. Therefore, God is calling His people those that have been bought with the blood of God (Jesus).

The alphabet letters Ayin + Dalet + Nun spells the Hebrew word H5731 transliterated as “Eden” which is the name of the garden of God. The Ayin is the Eye. The Dalet is the “door” of entrance or exit to God’s house and this is Jesus. The Nun is the picture of the “seed” representing continuing life, another image of Jesus giving us eternal life. These letter meanings when combined can say “Search (Find and See) the Door to Eternal Life” (Jesus).

Another amazing Ayin word is “AD” (H5703) that can be translated as “everlasting” or “evermore” as in eternity. Recall these were the first two Hebrew letters of “Eden”. God is clearly teaching us that His plan was for man to live forever. But because of Adam’s sin, Jesus was sent to the earth to make a new way to eternal life, and He is definitely the completing Nun seed of God sent to accomplish this (Jn 12:24) to give us eternal life.

The next Hebrew word in the introduction will be “AhTH” (H6258) and this word is translated predominately as “Now” as in the present time. This word is spelled “Ayin” + “Tav” + “Hey”. These three letters have the meaning, Ayin=“look”, Tav=“the cross”, and Hey=“behold” and placing these together we get two directions of view on a single most critical point event of human history called the crucifixion of the Messiah. God called this single event the “fulness or the fulfillment of time” in Galatians 4:4.

We can get the hidden message for AhTH, no matter where “now” is to any human. If now occurred before the cross, God was saying for those to look (Ayin) forward to the cross to come. But if it was after the cross occurred, then God is saying for us to look back in time, to become an amazed believer beholding (Hey) what God has done.

But this Hebrew word H6258 “now” also comes from the root “AhT”, that literally means “time”. This word is spelled “Ayin” (Eyes) + “Tav” (Cross). This appears to teach us that God’s entire reason for creating this thing called “time” was for the coming event of a cross that needed to be eagerly looked for.

Most of the Jewish people were looking for Messiah to come, but completely missed Him and did not realize what happened to save them on a cross in plain sight. These were just some of the amazing hidden coded messages using the “Ayin” letter and there are many others. We may get into a few more of these special words later if the Holy Spirit permits.

Let us move quickly into the letter Ayin numbers. The letter Ayin is the 16th letter of the alphabet. It has a gematria value of seventy. Seventy is the number achieved by multiplying 10 a perfecting factor with the number 7 that represents the perfection of God. Here is a short list of significant 70 occurrences in the Word of God:

  1. Lamech will be avenged 70 x 7 times in Genesis 4:24
  2. All the souls of Jacob that came into Egypt was 70 in Genesis 46:27.
  3. Moses brought the children of Israel to Elim where there was 12 wells and 70 palm trees to camp in Exodus 16:24.
  4. Children of Israel died in the wilderness at the maximum age of 70 or if some were stronger at 80 according to Psalm 90:10.
  5. God tells Moses to bring Aaron, his 2 sons, and Seventy elders of the 12 tribes of Israel to Mt Sinai to receive and accept God’s Law (Torah) (Exo 24:1). The Jewish Sanhedrin was formed and consisted of 70 elder men.
  6. 70 weeks are determined for natural Israel in Daniel 9:24. Seventy times seven is a total of 490 years.
  7. Israel exiled into Babylon 70 years (Jer 25:12).
  8. Jesus tells Peter to forgive people 70 x 7 times in 1 day (Mat 18:22).
  9. Jesus chose 12 disciples and appointed 70 others to go out to heal the sick and preach the Kingdom of God is come near to them (Luke 10:1-9).

These are just a very few of the examples found in the Bible of significant occurrences of the number 70. Each of these would take multiple lessons alone to cover. Therefore, they are only mentioned today for your personal Bible studies.

Every Hebrew letter has a corresponding Hebrew word. This word is the spelled-out form of the sound of the letter. The Hebrew word H5869 is the Hebrew word equivalent for the letter Ayin. This word is spelled “Ayin” + “Yod” + “Nun”. This Hebrew word occurs over 800 times in the Old Testament with it being translated over 400 times as “eyes”, over 200 times as “sight”, over 70 times as “eye” and several other interesting words applying to the eyes, and some were mentioned earlier.

Remember the Ayin Hebrew word H5869 was spelled “Ayin” + “Yod” + “Nun” and this is also very significant. Also remember the letter “Ayin” means “eyes” that “see” or “look”. The “Yod” means the “right hand” of “power”. The “Nun” represents a “seed”. This is profound because this says, “what we see with our eyes has the power to plant a seed (in our heart). This is radical and many humans don’t realize what they are watching could kill them or save them.

This introduces us to the ancient Hebrew cultural concept of the “evil” eye versus the “good” eye. The terms “evil” and “eye” occurs multiple times in the Bible, and they are easy to find by searching the words in your Bible software program or app. An evil eye in many Hebrew minds was a person that was stingy or not kind to give to others, a man focusing upon the consumption of wealth (Prov 28:22). This is very much like the rich man that died in Luke 16 with a beggar that lived outside his gate hoping to eat his crumbs from his tables. This rich man went to hell, implying in the eyes of God this man had an evil eye towards his fellow humans.

Let us go through a few of the other basic concepts and components of seeing “eyes”. We all know that “eyes” are essential for “sight”. This means they are like windows of the body that allow “light” to enter an image into our minds. We just saw this concept about a “seed” that can be planted in our mind by visual images.

But this is only possible because of the presence of the “light” that is shining upon the object being observed. This entrance of light reflected off the object causes the image to enter the body’s interior and the unseen human mind (soul), and this is an essential part for human learning. But all this learning is only possible for eyes that are open, and willing minds that desire to learn.

1Jn 1:5  This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.

Here is a major God connection to the human spirit and our spiritual eyesight. God is called light as we can read in 1 John 1:5 and we know that light is the essential element for natural sight. This verse also informs us that in Him is no darkness and we know darkness is one description for blindness and the inability to see natural light. But remember that John 4:24 says God is a Spirit and not our natural light, so this verse is primarily applicable to spiritual concepts like God’s Words (Jn 6:63, PS 119:130).

God’s Words are just ink on a page and without natural light nobody could see and read them. But the same is true in the spirit realm. Without God’s light to illuminate His Words to our mind and spirit so that we will be able to comprehend what He has written for us to know about Him, we can receive nothing from them. Therefore, let us move to Part 2 of the introduction revealing the reality of spiritual eyes.

2. Introduction to Spiritual Eyes

We are now coming into the light, about the concept of two types of human eye doors (Dalet) that can be opened and shut. In the natural realm this occurs from blindness (Jn 9:1), the shutting of the eyes (Ps 132:4), or the placing of a blindfold upon the natural eyes (Luke 22:64) that shut out the light. But these same principles can also apply to the greater parallel reality of 1) spiritual seeing eyes as being eyes that perceive and are opened, or 2) spiritual eyes being shut, closed, or blinded, which is a human that is not understanding what is being taught from the Word of God.

Perhaps you did not realize spiritual eyes do exist. We know the spirit realm of eyes is true because God is a Spirit (Jn 4:24) and He has eyes (Gen 6:8), but also know that His eyes never close to sleep (Psa 121:4). But there is another concept of the eyes of God that teach us that He may turn His eyes away from people when they are living in sin (Eze 7:22). Sin is a problem for God to look upon, this is why Jesus hanging on the cross cried, “My God, My God, why has thou forsaken me?” (Ps 22:1, Mat 27:46). Remember that the cross of Christ for the last 3 hours was in a manifestation of “darkness” (Mat 27:45). It was during this time that Jesus was made sin for us, so that we could be made the righteousness of God (1 Pet 2:24).

Spirit beings called angels must also have eyes, since the Church is reminded to entertain strangers, because some have encountered angels in the natural realm unaware (Hebrews 13:2). Therefore, at least some of the created angels can appear to be identical, as in feature to feature to humans and must have eyes.

We can further confirm this truth by reading about Lot entertaining 2 angels sent to Sodom to destroy these wicked places. The men of that city wanted Lot to bring the visiting men (not knowing they were angels), out of the house so that they could have sex with them. But these angelic beings had supernatural power and they “blinded” the eyes (Ayin) of the humans so that they were not able to see and that ended the wicked men’s desires immediately, since they could not find the door anymore (Gen 19:11). Therefore, some angels look almost exactly like humans. But we can also find where other angels have wings and can use their wings to cover their face in Isaiah 6:2.

We all know that humans have natural eyes to see in the created physical world. But today some are learning that humans also have spiritual eyes as we can read in Luke 16:23. In this verse Jesus informs us of a rich man’s spirit that was in hell, with his body buried on the earth, that could still see Abraham and Lazarus afar off. Therefore, we know spirits of humans apart from their bodies can see in the spirit realm, with their spiritual eyes.

Remember again that we prayed an essential prayer from Ephesians 1 at the beginning of the lesson asking God to “open” the spiritual eyes of our understanding while we are still alive in our human flesh. Therefore, we learn that the spiritual human eyes can also be fully opened (alert and aware), or be in varying degrees of participation, progressing all the way to being fully closed, while we are alive in the flesh. This inner alertness is not dependent upon whether our natural eyes are open or closed. This means the closing of human spiritual eyes in a living human body, has a deeper attachment to perceiving and knowing truth (open), or not seeing it (closed).

2Co 4:4  In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.

Remember the story of Lot and two of God’s angels that blinded the natural eyes of evil humans. This ability appears to also be true for evil angels that can blind the spiritual eyes of certain humans. As we can see in 2 Corinthians 4:4, there is a “god of this world” (Satan) that is able to “blind” the spiritual eyes/mind of unspecified humans. God calls this inability to see spiritual light a spiritual “blindness”. This spiritual eye problem was described as the inability to perceive light. But this light that was unable to be seen, is being illuminated from the “glorious gospel” (Word of God). It then informs that this blindness is causing that spiritually blind person the inability to be saved. This is a new radical concept to many.

What we are learning is that there are spirit beings that can keep the Word of God from the hearts and the “mind” of qualifying people. While we are not informed of the basis of this truth and why it is permitted in this verse, we know that God is just and if He must allow this type of blindness to occur it is because of something that the human has done that granted this to happen (Eph 4:27).

Nevertheless, whatever the reason for this access, these evil angels are clearly able to do this to keep some people from being saved. As we observe the world around us, it is obvious that there are a lot of people in this condition. There is no doubt that there are potentially many reasons why this has become so prevalent in these times that we are living.  We will not be able to cover all of them today.

There is one key reason why this blindness occurs. This reason was given to us by Jesus in the parable of the Sower in Matthew 13 and Mark 4. In this explanation of the parable Jesus teaches us that the “Seed” of the Word of God can be easily stolen by Satan because the one, that was listening to the Gospel did not “understand” the words being spoken. This is clearly a direct relationship to the human mind’s inability to “see” and “comprehend” a message. This lack of understanding a message that should be easily understood is what Jesus is speaking of.

One of the key reasons this blindness is occurring in the modern world, has been the removal of the Word of God from all public schools. This was designed intentionally by Satan to keep the truth far away from young impressionable minds. This continues into many colleges and universities through indoctrination of Satanic agenda items of persuadable smooth words to explain that there is no God.

These types of indoctrinations and brain washing schemes and techniques are being introduced even into elementary schools. The darkness of this world is attempting to sweep everyone away from the truth. But the Word of God is Light and Truth and it will always triumph over the lies of the darkness if Christians will get involved to fight for its return and the removal of the binding of the evil dark agenda.

This brings us to the concepts concerning our study subject of eyes (Ayin) called day and night, and light and darkness. People normally sleep in “darkness” and are “awake” and at “work” during the daylight. Therefore, light is the essential requirement for sight by God’s design. Paul writes to Christians in Romans 13:11 and Ephesians 5:14 informing them to “awake” out of their spiritual sleep. This informs us that even Christians being initially saved, can still be living in a state of partial or full darkness.

This sleeping in the darkness, is also like a partial blindness or the shutting of the spiritual eyes causing the inability to understand the Light of the Word of God. But this can be viewed as passiveness or tolerance for evil, like someone that is asleep during the robbery of their neighbor’s house. In the natural realm, this is more like a human that sees evil taking place and does not go to help someone being mugged.

This is a major problem in these days before Jesus returns, for too much of the church. Therefore, there needs to be a renewed Christian desire to move back into His Light to know Him more and understand His Word. This is a lot like the church written about in Revelation 2:4 when they are rebuked for leaving their first love (passion).

This sleep in the darkness, is analogous to Christians spiritual realities of not knowing God who calls Himself “Light” in 1 John 1:5 and it also includes us not fully knowing the Words of God that are called “Spiritual Light” (Ps 119:130). Therefore, without allowing God’s involvement in revealing Himself and His Word, no one living in the absence of God, which is the condition of darkness, would be able to “see” or “understand” anything in His Word of truth. These are all essential concepts to grasp, concerning spiritual awareness (sight), and blindness realities.

If you have ever descended into a large cave, and traveled very deep, and they have turned the lights off to demonstrate the effect of the absence of light, you know the nonexistence of all light is an amazing effect not normally experienced especially in the modern world of electronic devices that light up on demand. Again, this is analogous to God’s light participation and presence that enlightens our eyes to be able to perceive the truth.

We have only been introduced to some of the basic concepts and applications of eyes (Ayin). We have just learned the fact that there are at least two kinds of eyes that are in existence. These were the 1) natural physical created eyes and the 2) supernatural eyes of spirits.

This introduction has also brought us to understand that there are multiple kinds of spiritual beings with eyes, including 1) God (Father, Son and Holy Spirit), 2) angels, and 3) humans. So far, we know God is a Spirit (Jn 4:24) and that God has spiritual eyes that can observe both the spiritual and the physical realities simultaneously (Genesis 6:5). But we know from 1 Samuel 16:7 that His foremost focus is upon the internal spiritual heart of man.

The real focus of God in this lesson is the Son of God named Jesus. This was a unique one-of-a-kind Son of Man and Son of God combination. Therefore, Jesus had to possess God’s spiritual eyesight as well as human natural eyesight. We are going to be primarily focused upon God the Son and His human interactions and purposes for appearing on earth, in the rest of this lesson.

But we must not forget that there remains the participation of evil spiritual influences of Satan, fallen angels, and demons in our world that are attempting to take away our abilities to see God’s “Light”. We will get to more of this soon. Let us move to the subject of the teachings of Jesus on “eyes” next to better understand the perspective of the Son of God purpose for being born in Bethlehem.

3. What Did Jesus Teach About Eyes?

This teaching on the “eyes” (Ayin) of God and man is a huge subject. It is impossible to cover everything in this single lesson about “eyes” that were taught by Jesus. Jesus was God, and still is God in the form of created flesh, and it was Him that created the “eyes” (Ayin) (Prov 20:12). Therefore, He knows and understands this subject better than anyone (Eph 3:9). Because we are learning how every alphabet letter is pointing us to Jesus, let us analyze a few key statements that He taught us about “eyes”.

Luk 4:18  The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, 

Early in the ministry of Jesus, He begins to teach the Jewish people from the Word of God. Therefore, in this verse He had just walked into a synagogue and the scroll of Isaiah is brought to Him to read. He searches (with His Ayin Eyes) the scroll and finds this verse specifically. He reads it boldly with the natural eyes (Ayin) of everyone in the temple being fixed upon Him. He then goes and sits down in a chair reserved for the coming Messiah. He tells everyone that “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your ears”. This got their attention like nothing else could have. They had been awaiting their Messiah for centuries.

As part of this verse, we will only focus our attention on a single statement. This occurred when He said, “I am sent to bring the recovering of sight to the blind”. Certainly, this ministry to human eyes was a key part of His divinely appointed earth mission. According to prophecy and his own mouth, God had appeared on the earth in the flesh, “to open blind eyes”.

As we have learned in the introduction, blind “eyes” are those that do not have vision either fully or partially, and either naturally or spiritually, or both. They typify eyes shrouded in “darkness” denying the ability to perceive the “light” clearly. We can see Jesus opening physical blind eyes in Matthew 9:27-30, Matthew 12:22-23, Matthew 15:30-31, Matthew 20:30, Matthew 12:14, to only name a few in one book of the Gospels. Therefore, physical blindness being healed was certainly a key part of the ministry of the Messiah.

But there was also Jesus’ working in the realm of the spirit to remove spiritual blindness that was a significant part of His revealed purpose for coming into the world. This was revealed when He read from the scroll of Isaiah. This spiritual blindness is the inability to find, perceive, know, or understand God’s truth. We still encounter vast numbers of readers on this website like this. This is revealed when they do not leave a comment that they saw anything that blessed them spiritually, or they write about things that are so carnally distracting that it is clear they have no spiritual sight. Jesus spoke of people in this condition:

Mat 15:14  Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.

Reading the context that went before in verses 1 to 13, we will find Jesus speaking about religious leaders that understood very little of what they were teaching the people from the written Words of God’s Law. These were people that were supposed to be shepherds in a role that were there to care for God’s sheep (people). These men were adding their own carnal traditions and customs to be above the written words of God and in doing so they made the Word of God ineffectual (Mat 15:6). Jesus called this the “blind” (of spirit) that were leading their “spiritually blind” followers into a pit of destruction.

This was a very strong statement against those that were being spoken of, but it had vast implications of antithesis positives attached to it. The first and foremost unstated reference was that Jesus was implied not to be spiritually blind because He was the speaker. This made Him a spiritually sighted man able to see and understand the Word of God and this was observed by many people that heard Him speak on the Kingdom of God (Luke 2:47, Luke 4:22, Mark 6:2, John 7:46).

There are other examples of spiritually blind leaders of God’s people. Another one that is found in the Gospels is the statements made by Jesus to scribes and pharisees in Matthew 23:15-36. These words appear to be a rebuke to these leaders combined with a warning to repent and change. Repent means to change their ways of thinking and this is a spiritually mind/soul reversal of thought. This clearly indicates they were in a condition of being spiritually blind not able to understand God or His Word clearly. God prophesied about these leaders in Ezekiel 34:1-10 and other places.

Therefore, we have learned and confirmed the following from the mouth of Jesus about eyes:

  1. God came to the earth to open blind eyes.
  2. One kind of blind eyes that are in darkness is natural.
  3. A second kind of blind eyes are spiritual because they understand not what is written in God’s Word.
  4. Being spiritually blind is the condition of not understanding what is learned or taught from the Word of God.
  5. Spiritually blind people can be people that fully see clearly with their natural eyes.
  6. Therefore, spiritual blindness represents the lack of human ability to perceive the Word.

Let us look at a new set of verses that Jesus spoke of about “eyes” (Ayin) revealing His Ayin mission on earth.  We will read four verses in John 12.

Joh 12:44  Jesus cried and said, He that believeth on me, believeth not on me, but on him that sent me. 

Joh 12:45  And he that seeth me seeth him that sent me. 

Joh 12:46  I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth on me should not abide in darkness

Joh 12:47  And if any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not: for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world.

Here in these verses, Jesus is physically present on the earth teaching the natural people some key spiritual concepts about one of His significant purposes for coming into the world. There is a direct mention of “eyes” that “see” in verse 45 connecting us to the study subject of “Ayin”. But notice Jesus said that He came into the world to be a “light”. This was not a physical light that glowed in the night’s natural darkness. No Jesus is speaking spiritually as He did in His normal types of conversations with humans.

This literally means Jesus is calling Himself the Spirit Light source of knowledge and this simply means He knew and understood the Word of God. Therefore, this indicates His purpose was to open the blinded (darkened) spiritual eyes (minds) that we were just reading about in the beginning of this section. This also further connects us to Jesus being called symbols of the sun, such as the Day Star (2 Peter 1:19), Morning Star (Rev 22:16) and the Sun of Righteousness (Mal 4:2).

We already know that Jesus is speaking about two types of eyes here by additionally stating that one of His highest goals for His personal appearance was to “save the world”. Therefore, we can easily connect that our “salvation” is from this present lost world, and this was related to the opening of our blind spiritual eyes. This is amazing when you see it, no pun intended.

Notice in verse 44, Jesus is speaking of “believing”. We know from Romans 10:9-10, that believing in our hearts that God raised Jesus from the dead, and confessing with our mouths He is our Lord Jesus, we are on the path to be saved. Therefore, we are experiencing and confirming the reality of two sets of eyes (Ayin), these are:

  1. Spiritual Heart Eyes, and
  2. Physical Natural Eyes.

We find this revelation in verse 45, when Jesus said, “when you have seen me (with your natural eyes), you have been given the opportunity of seeing my Father with your spiritual eyes. In other words, it takes believing faith for a human to experience and internally see God in the spirit realm of the “heart”. Here is an overview of some of the essential concepts that Jesus just taught us.

  1. Jesus came to be and bring the “Light” of salvation to everyone in the world (John 9:5). Jesus is speaking of Him being a physical example to show us the true nature of God as a spiritual Light (1 Jn 1:5).
  2. Jesus fulfilled being the Light of the world by teaching the Word of God (Psalm 119:130).
  3. Therefore, Jesus is not of the darkness, nor does He blind the eyes/mind of anyone, since He is the Light source that causes sight (Jn 9:5).
  4. Those people that did not understand what was being taught remained in their darkness of spiritual blindness (Mat 13:19).
  5. Those people that heard and understood His Words were enlightened with their spirit eyes and could believe in their hearts (Eph 1:17-18).
  6. Believing in things not seen is called walking by “faith” (spiritual enlightenment) and not by “sight” (natural) (2 Cor 5:7).

Our foundational Ayin verse of this lesson is Ephesians 1:18. We have seen this verse more than once and in it we will find Paul prayed for the church at Ephesus. Paul specifically mentions to ask God to open their spiritual eyes of their understanding to be enlightened (light to shine). These were all people that could see physically, and they were saved initially in their spirit, yet they still required a prayer to further open their spiritual eyes.

This further confirms that the removal of spiritual blindness is key to continued salvation and spiritual maturity. All these people that are being prayed for, have already received Christ as Lord and Savior. Yet Paul understands they are still very blinded in many areas of receiving, learning, and knowing God’s fullest truth.

If you look up the Greek word G5461 that was translated as “enlightened”, it is amazing how it fits with our discussion of “eyes”, “sight”, and “light”. This Greek word literally means to bring light to someone to cause them to see. But since God writing through Paul connected this to the word “understanding”, we find the meaning is changing from an external natural type of sight to an internal heart and soul illumination. Let us move to a new Ayin lesson from Jesus next:

Mat 6:20  But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:

Mat 6:21  For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

Mat 6:22  The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light

Mat 6:23  But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!

Mat 6:24  No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

This is one of the deepest spiritual thoughts that we could possibly try to understand in a short description. Yet, we will touch on it because Jesus is speaking about our subject of “eyes” in this chapter context in verses 22 and 23. We should quickly realize that Jesus is speaking of the subject that we were introduced to earlier concerning a good eye (Ayin) and an evil eye (Ayin).

Also, what we will quickly discover is that these verses are crossing into two human realities simultaneously, in practically every verse. These two realities are spiritual sight and physical sight as well as natural light and spiritual light. For example, in verse 20 we see Jesus speaking of storing up “treasure” in heaven.

Heaven is clearly the unseen spiritual location of the throne of the Father (Ps 11:4) and is the place now where the Son is also seated (Heb 8:1). But these words are being spoken from the natural realm of our human choices and works. Jesus specifically declares that when we store our treasures in heaven (the spirit reality), the natural corrupted evils found in the physical world cannot devour or steal them from us. This is amazing because it teaches us that Heaven is a “securely” ruled location, and earth has a different “cursed” system of combined “good” and “evil” that can destroy them on the earth. Therefore, we have new facts of major truth:

  1. There are two realms of existence and access for humans, and these are a). the spiritual and b). the natural, and these occur simultaneously.
  2. The spiritual in heaven is where God’s throne is located.
  3. The earth natural realm is where humans live.

Now combining verses 20 and 21 we confirm these two realms of existence can be manifested or accessed here upon the earth by humans. Jesus makes the clear statement “wherever” we focus our heart that is where our treasure is located. Wow, this is good for us to know. Humans can “see into”, “participate in”, and “focus upon” either of these two realms of existence while on the physical earth. What does this teach us?

  1. Jesus says there are human spiritual eyes and natural eyes, and we can choose to point our human focused desires and priorities towards either.
  2. Jesus is also very clearly confirming the fact that an evil eye is a greedy stingy person only focused upon gaining more physical wealth to bring themselves more money, influence, power, praise, prestige, glory, honor.
  3. But those with the good eye, is focused upon bringing people into the kingdom of God for the Glory of God only (Prov 22:9).

How does a Christian change their eye focus? Jesus enlightened us to the answer in verses 22 and 23. Jesus is teaching us that it is a daily human choice what we focus upon as our priority. In these verses Jesus says, “If our eye is…” and the choices are for us to make our eye “wholly” focused upon the implied good Light like us choosing to be kind, loving, generous, etc. The other choice is for us to change our mental eye focus from doing evil like choosing to see others instead of ourselves only.

An evil eye is also one like Lucifer, that was described to us in Isaiah 14:12-14. In these verses Lucifer says at least 5 times what “He will do and become”. He was clearly focused upon himself, by saying, “I will be like the most high”, “I will exalt my throne above the stars”, etc. This shows self-promotion and greed, and the clear quality of pride. These are character traits of a lot of rich people in the world today, but God will judge everyone, and it will be like Jesus said in Matthew 19:33, “hardly will a rich man enter into the kingdom of heaven”.

In other words, we can choose to focus upon what we are observing all around us in the natural world to our own selfish greed, and we can let those thoughts dominate us, or we can replace that darkness with the “light” of the Word of God to allow it to come into our hearts and minds. God’s words, thoughts and ways filling our minds, will consume our carnal thoughts, and Satan’s evil thoughts of temptation.

Let us end this section with verse 23. In this verse Jesus is describing the “evil eye”. But this verse also has a new revelation to teach us a new concept about light. Reread this verse again:

Mat 6:23  But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!

Did you see the contradiction? How can an evil eyed human that Jesus says is full of darkness, also have light? Uh oh? Jesus just opened our eyes to two kinds of light. We know the Word of God brings us “Good” light and this represents Truth. Therefore, evil light must represent lies.

As we should know from 2 Corinthians 11:14, Paul wrote to us, “Satan himself transforms into an angel of light”. We also know that Jesus said in John 8:44, “the devil… for he is a liar, and a father of it.”. Therefore, gaining spiritual “light” appears to be defined more clearly and precisely as the concept of a human obtaining “knowledge”. Doesn’t this make sense?

Weren’t our human minds born as vessels empty of “knowledge”? Are they not being filled and enlightened with new things never seen before every day? But this is where Jesus warns us that there is potentially a lot of “light” / knowledge that is not “good” to know of fill your mind with.

In fact, this is the concept found in Genesis 2. This is where God commands the man not to “eat” from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Eating from a tree of evil appears to represent symbolically “looking” at, and “receiving” the enlightenment of the types of knowledge that are of the darkness. Therefore, this is evil, this information is always based upon the devil’s “lies”. Did you learn anything new? Here is an overview of the basic concepts:

  1. Gaining knowledge is receiving spiritual enlightenment.
  2. There are two kinds of spiritual “light”. 1) Good, and 2) Evil.
  3. Evil enlightenment fills the spirit/mind/body with darkness and lies.
  4. Good enlightenment fills the spirit/mind/body with Light and Truth and this is always Words from the mouth of God.

Now let us take all this new information back to creation written in Genesis 1 to be enlightened further with confirming truths.

4. Eyes in Creation
Separating the Light (Sight),
From the Darkness (Blind)

We are learning that there are multiple types of eyes and created entities that possess them. We know God created birds, fish, mammals, insects, etc., that all had natural eyesight. Finally, there was created man as the ending climax, that we also are learning was given created natural eyes and spiritual eyes that can either see or be blinded. All these eye types were created by the Eyes of the Creator God.

But in this section, we will discuss what took place in God’s Genesis 1 account of His creation about eyes. In this chapter we can find several direct and implied participations of eyes. We will also discover and confirm that there are other concepts concerning eyes like light and darkness that allow or hinder us from sight.

In the previous section it was revealed that viewing objects illuminated with “light” is gaining new “knowledge”. We could also say gaining new “knowledge” comes from “seeing” new “light”. This is why I love the Bible. There is a never-ending supply of “new light” and “new truth” in this book. The more you learn, the more you see, to learn.

All these new eye concepts are essential to understanding why God created the 16th letter of the Hebrew alphabet to be a picture of a “eye” (Ayin). We will start with the very first verse of the Bible in the book of “Beginnings”.

Gen 1:1  In the beginning God created (Alef-Tav) the heaven and the earth.

The very first indirect mention of God’s eyes is found in the first verse of the Bible. The eyes of God are strongly implied to be present in Genesis 1:1. But we can easily discover through study, that God’s unstated eyes and unstated mouth in the creation of verse 1, are very strong participants in the beginning creation of the entire heaven and the earth. In fact, notice that seven times in Genesis 1 God wrote “God saw” a clear reference to the eyes of God participating in creating our present world. These verses are:

  1. Genesis 1:4 “And God saw the light, that it was good”…
  2. Genesis 1:10 “And God saw it was good”.
  3. Genesis 1:12 “And God saw it was good”.
  4. Genesis 1:18 “And God saw it was good”.
  5. Genesis 1:21 “And God saw it was good”.
  6. Genesis 1:25 “And God saw it was good”.
  7. Genesis 1:31 “And God saw everything that He had made, and it was very good”.

We have 7 direct references to the eyes of God at work in creation. Now let us discover the mouth of God at work which represents His spoken Word, which we know is Jesus (John 1:1-14).

  1. Genesis 1:3 “And God said Let there be Light”.
  2. Genesis 1:6 “And God said Let there be a Firmament”.
  3. Genesis 1:9 “And God said Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together”.
  4. Genesis 1:11 “And God said Let the earth bring forth grass”.
  5. Genesis 1:14 “And God said Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven”.
  6. Genesis 1:20 “And God said Let the waters bring forth moving creatures with life”.
  7. Genesis 1:24 “And God said Let the earth bring forth living creatures after his kind”.
  8. Genesis 1:26 “And God said Let us make man in our image after our likeness”.
  9. Genesis 1:28 “Ang God blessed them and said…”
  10. Genesis 1:29 “And God said I have given you…”

In each of these verses it is written, “God said”. This is clearly the working of the Words of God coming from His mouth, but we will further verify this for those that like more details.

We can learn from Psalm 102:5 that the heavens were the “works” of God’s hands (Yod). And the letter Yod (hand) symbolically means that it was God’s “power” that created the heaven and the earth. But where is God’s power? We answer this by reading Hebrews 1:3.

Heb 1:3  Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high;

This verse is also about Jesus called by the name “The Word of God” in Revelation 19:13. In this verse we discover that the world is held together by the “Word of His Power”. Therefore, All of God’s Power to not only create but to cause everything to remain created, is found in His spoken mouth “Word Power”. Then in Psalm 33:6 we confirm all of this by reading, “By the Word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all of the hosts of them by the breath of His mouth”.

God was said to be at work creating our present world, for 6 days in Genesis 1 and we should also understand that any good work is usually performed with the participation of eyes (Ayin) as we have observed directly in 7 verses. We learned that God’s hand (power) created the heavens (Ps 102:5). We have all heard of the concept for the necessity of “eye-hand or hand-eye” coordination in human works. This would be like a tennis player that finds the ball coming at them using their eyes, and then calculates and coordinates the desired location to swing their racket to meet the tennis ball to return the volley. Man was made in the image and likeness of the creator God. Therefore, God must do the same kind of eye to hand coordination to create. This will become more real as we continue to study Genesis 1.

We have already confirmed that creation was accomplished through God’s mouth (Peh) speaking creative Words (Ps 33:6) of Power (Yod = Hand) (Ps 102:25). God’s written word further confirms to us that God is “His Word” that created everything that was created by reading John 1:1-3 to name only one reference. In verse 1 of John 1 God says, “In the Beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God”. Next in verse 2 of John 1 we find God is claiming to be at work in the beginning through “Words” and these spoken Words came from the same creator God. But then in verse 3, we find a very direct reference to creation that everything that was made was made by Words of God.

Then we find in John 1:14 that the Word (God) chose to become flesh and that He dwelt among us personally by Him being made the man named Jesus (Mat 1:21). Therefore, Jesus was God in the flesh, and He was the Word of God (Rev 19:13). And He was God with us in human form (Mat 1:23). But what are God creative Words built upon? The correct answer is God’s chosen “Alphabet”.

If you have ever done any serious deep Bible study, you have already discovered that the Bible is a giant puzzle containing many scattered word pictures in random placements of the scriptures that must be aligned and joined correctly to all the other scattered related puzzle pieces to find Jesus Christ fittingly. Everything in the Bible (scriptures, words, letters) points us to Jesus in some form. This is the most important way to find Jesus, knowing we must search for Him on purpose everywhere.

What we are discovering is the existence of connected Hebrew alphabet letters to other letters (Ayin, Peh, Yod) that were purposefully designed by the intelligence of God. We have found that there is a major connection between the eyes of God to the mouth of God and the hand of God in creation at the beginning of all matter, space, and time, and Jesus the spoken Word of God was present and involved in all of it.

In our initial analysis of creation, we find where God has implied eyes, and we are going to confirm this using several other scriptures in this lesson. But what we are about to discover that at first creation of the heaven and the earth, there were also other eyes (Ayin) besides the eyes (Ayin) of God that immediately observed how God accomplished it. These observing created beings were the angels who after witnessing such wonders, shouted for joy. We can read about this in the book of Job and chapter 38 where Jehovah (YHVH) is speaking to the man Job:

Job 38:1  Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said, 

Job 38:2  Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge

Job 38:3  Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me

Job 38:4  Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding

Job 38:5  Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it? 

Job 38:6  Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof

Job 38:7  When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy

As we can see, God is asking Job some questions and demanding him to answer. But God’s questions are designed to reveal Job’s ignorance, and this applies to any human that believes they know completely about anything to how He created the universe. This is because no human was present to observe us being created or this single beginning event of Genesis 1:1.

But we are told in Job 38:7, that the creation event was observed by the “morning star” (Lucifer, Isa 14:12) and the sons of God (angels) and they literally all sang for joy in seeing how this creation was performed. Therefore, we have just seen more eyewitness observers of creation called “angels”. Hence, this further establishes that angels have “eyes” that see, and mouths that can speak. Let us look at the next verse in Genesis:

Gen 1:2  And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

The first occurrence of God’s usage of the letter Ayin is found twice in Genesis 1:2. Here God says, “darkness was upon the face of the earth” and “the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters”. The Hebrew word H5921 (‘al) was translated as “upon” twice and it means “to be above”.

God spelled this Hebrew word H5921 beginning it with our letter “Ayin” which is joined with the letter “Lamed” to form the word ‘al and it occurs significantly over five thousand times in the original Hebrew text. This word H5921 is translated as the English words “on”, “upon”, “above”, “over”, “against” (with a downward aspect), and others.

But the word H5921 individual ancient Hebrew letter meanings “Ayin” (eyes) + “Lamed” (shepherd staff authority) combined say “See, Watch, Observe the Authority” (of God’s power released through spoken words). This strongly implies again that God’s Eyes, Hands, and Mouth of Authority were all sovereignly at Work to create our world in Genesis 1.

What we are continuing to see in Genesis 1:2, is another implied involvement of the “Eyes of God” to describe what God was seeing concerning His creation and how He had observed a state of darkness that had covered the earth to make it formless and void. But we know from studying Isaiah that God did not create the world in Genesis 1 as formless and void.

Isa 45:18  For thus saith the LORD that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the LORD; and there is none else

This is God’s amazing commentary on Genesis 1:1-2. God very clearly writes to us that the earth was never created as “vain.” This Hebrew word is the same one that was translated as “formless” in Genesis 1:2. God says here in Isaiah, the earth was created in a form that was inhabitable originally. Therefore, we know the words describing the earth as “formless”, “void”, and “covered in darkness” and “water” were not the original ways that it was created. Therefore, something, or more accurately someone, destroyed the earth to place it in this state of confused chaotic darkness. We will show who this was soon.

Now let us notice the first mention of God’s direct acts of His work during what appears to be Day 1 of earth’s re-creation.

Gen 1:3  And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

Here in Genesis 1:3, we find the first explicitly stated method to “how” God worked in “all” of His creation. Here we find where God uses His mouth (Peh) to speak the words “Light Be” (or more literal the command “Exist Light”). It was these spoken words from the mouth of God that caused “light” to begin to manifest on the earth to counter the darkness that had previously consumed it. But simultaneously this command began a natural and a spiritual “Light” solution to be initiated to achieve “physical and spiritual eyesight”. Therefore, the first work that God deemed necessary was the re-introduction of light again on the earth. Let us continue to the next verse Genesis 1:4:

Gen 1:4  And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

The “eyes” (Ayin) of God, being first directly spoken of in creation are found in Genesis 1:4. In this verse Moses inspired by the Holy Spirit wrote, “And God saw light causing good, God divided light from darkness”. That was one very literal translation of the original Hebrew words that teach us “light is related to be only Good” and “darkness is the implied antithesis to the good Light, being only evil”. Hopefully, you are beginning to see some things that you have never seen before in these verses.

We should have been observing that the “good light” was not only being re-introduced back onto the earth, but it was also being separated and divided from the evil darkness. To help us better understand what is happening, let us read another clue that God gives us in the book of Isaiah about His creative works:

Isa 46:10  Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure:

Learn a potentially new concept given to us from Isaiah 46:10 about how the omniscient God already knows the end before He ever begins to create or recreate anything. Please realize that our God who is living outside of the dimension of time has pre-planned the ending of our created world by foreseeing and declaring it with His spiritual eyes (Ayin) and causing it to become through His spoken words from His mouth (Peh).

This literally teaches us that God’s Eyes (Ayin) see His “good” end results long before He speaks it to come to pass. Do you see how the “eyes” (Ayin) of God are working throughout creation in conjunction with His mouth (Peh)? This is very profound and prophetic for how man is supposed to operate also. Perhaps you will remember that the order of the 16th letter of the Alphabet is Ayin eyes and it is immediately followed by the 17th letter the Peh Mouth. Therefore, God has placed a design connection introducing us to the concept of “seeing” first before “speaking”.

In this God designed process He intelligently thought out a plan to accomplish His purpose of eliminating darkness before He creates the world that we are living within. He does this even by allowing for all the oppositions that Satan, fallen angels, and humans used by the darkness would fight against Him to try to stop it from happening.

Therefore, we must know that Genesis 1 reveals the entire outlined God desired ending of His creation before a human was ever created (Rev 13:8). This designed layout of Genesis 1 has encoded within it some incredibly significant points, which cannot be fully expanded today. There are other lessons found here that teach some of these hidden concepts in more detail. We will only go over some quick few points in relationship with the study subject of “eyes”. But we must know this fact before we move forward.

There are 6 days of work in chapter one, followed by a day of rest at the beginning of chapter 2. This is a total of 7 days, or one week of creation days. What has God hidden in these 7 days? We find the answer by reading Psalm 90:4:

Psa 90:4  For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.

God defines one day to be exactly 1000 years in this verse. We know this is God’s definition because it says, “in thy sight” and this is the Hebrew word H5869 that we have learned is “Ayin” representing “eyes”. Therefore, in God’s eyes He is trying to get us to “see” the days of creation represent 1000 years of human history. This is confirmed in 2 Peter 3:8 saying, “one day is with the Lord as 1000 years”. This is simply teaching us that the 7 total days of creation are a hidden overview of the entire human history within our current world.

This knowledge works out very well when we begin to understand day 1 of creation represents the first 1000 years, and this was the beginning of humans on God’s viewpoint of a time clock. The other significant occurrence that directly happens at the end of days 6 is the creation of man in a sinless mature state of existence. This is a prophecy of how God intends the church to end at the completion of 6000 years. We are currently living within this part of the prophetic calendar now. But let us go back to the beginning of Genesis to discover more about this concept of light being separated from darkness.

We should notice that there was no direct mention of eyes until after God “spoke” in Genesis 1:3. In this verse we saw that He declared spoken words to bring forth His planned light solution into the world to overcome the darkness that had fully consumed earth. And we notice that this “good” work on day one was accomplished with the intention of dividing the good light from the evil darkness. Therefore, we are learning God’s primary “eye” focus was upon His desired “end results” and He was not mentioning His eyes being concerned on the current problem of darkness and evil. This confirms what we read about in Isaiah where God is declaring the planned “ending” from the beginning of creation and we are discovering this plan intimately involves a new creation called “man”.

God is emphasizing a previously introduced subject of “eyes” called “focus” in Genesis 1:1-4. God has hidden an example of how He is “not” focused upon (to see clearly and be concerned about) any current problems caused by darkness. Rather, His focus is to observe and visualize the desired future ending result in His mind first. Then after He has fully analyzed and thought out all the possible solutions in conjunction with all the possible hinderances, He makes the wisest decision and speaks His solution.

After that is accomplished and is manifest, God observes His solution with His eyes and names the light “day” and the “darkness” He called “night”. This represents “categorization”, and “division”, of now two separated identities. Finally, God says this was “Day 1 of creation and it was Good”. Therefore, we are observing the first 1000 years of human history summarized in symbolic language in a short couple of verses.

Remember, we read in verse 2, God said there was only “darkness” (implied evil) that covered the entire face of the deep. This information implied that God has seen the works of the evil darkness, and it caused Him to bring the ending solution of light back into the world. And this light would be used to eliminate the current situation of the earth’s dominance by darkness. Let us go to the end of the Bible to see the future goal of no darkness will be achieved:

Rev 21:23  And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.

Notice this verse is written after the completion of a total of 7000 years of human history (7 days in God’s eyes). Do you see how the problem of darkness and its division are being completely solved in the next to the last chapter of the Bible? God is prophesying through John, that He will be the Light of the World and He accomplishes this through His manifested Son named Jesus Christ.

Please never forget that God calls Himself to be “Light” in 1 John 1:5 and light is the essential element for all “eyes” to see, whether spiritual or natural. Therefore, separating light from darkness in Genesis 1 takes on a completely new realm of spiritual meaning and application when applied to the “True Light” representing Jesus (John 1:9, 1 John 2:8). Also, we know who represents the ruler of darkness from reading and combining several verses.

1Co 2:6  Howbeit we speak wisdom among them that are perfect: yet not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world, that come to nought

1Co 2:7  But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory

1Co 2:8  Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory

1Co 2:9  But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him

We will begin with 1 Corinthians 2:6-9 to find these verses are related to our study subject. We find the mention of “eyes” in verse nine confirming the connection to the “Ayin”. We also find the mention of the creation of the world in verse seven. Notice that we see a “ruling prince” in verse six of an implied kingdom in our world who will come to nothing. This spiritual ruler coming to nothing is again mentioned in verse eight as a ruling “prince” who is not the omniscient God called “Light”. This implies this ruling prince is of the opposite realm called “darkness”.

But we also find in verse eight, that the ruler of this world in his incredible ignorance, crucified the Lord Jesus and appears to wish he had never caused this to happen. Why is this? This is because the “death”, “burial” and “resurrection” of Jesus was the major pivotal point in the course of time to fulfill the plan of God to separate light from darkness.

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

This verse written to the church in Ephesians 6 describes God’s and our spiritual enemies using ranking orders. We immediately can seethat this current world ruler is the “ruler of everyone in the darkness of this world”. However, in this same verse we additionally learn that this spiritual kingdom authority of darkness are supernatural beings not of the class of created human flesh and blood (natural) existence.

It is also very revealing to know that the Greek word translated as “principalities” is G746. This Greek word occurs around 59 times and 40 times it was translated as “beginning(s)”. Wow, this is amazing since we read about the angels were the created beings that were present at the beginning of creation. This is a very strong display of who these supernatural dark rulers are.

But we also learn that this kingdom of darkness is still a point of opposition for all Christians who are wrestling against them in the spirit realm by putting on and wearing the armor of God that is subsequently listed in this chapter. Therefore, we have confirmed there is a “kingdom called darkness” who has a royal spiritual ruler with authority. Let us dive deeper into this by moving to Colossians:

Col 1:12  Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light:

Col 1:13  Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son:

We also find in Colossians 1:13 that, “God has delivered us (the saved church) from the authority of darkness, translating us into the Kingdom of His dear Son” (Jesus). We additionally notice in Colossians 1:12 that Christians are called the “saints in Light”. Therefore, the Kingdom of Light belongs to God and is ruled by His Son Christ Jesus. Remember Genesis 1:3, God says, “Let there be Light” and then He called this division of time “Day”. The opposite “darkness”, God calls “night” and we are observing 2 spiritual kingdoms being separated as we are reading about in the New Testament. But we still have the need to find which “prince” is the ruler of this night kingdom of darkness? We find the major revealed clue to the identity of this ruling prince of darkness in Acts:

Act 26:18  To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me.

Notice the direct mention of our subject of “eyes” to begin the verse. Wow, we are still on target to understand how God wrote words to point us to Jesus as the letter Ayin (eyes) source of sight. It is now much clearer that Satan is the ruler of the kingdom of darkness (no light, no God, and no Jesus), and he has chosen to become the enemy of God and His Son who are Light.

We are discovering in Genesis 1, how these described creative works of God reveal to us how it was His intention to separate Himself (Light) from Satan (the ruler of darkness). In Acts 26:18 we found that Christians who have chosen to turn (repent) and follow God’s salvation in Jesus are no longer in Satan’s darkness (the spiritual realm of no God existence).

But as we saw in Colossians 1:13 His plan was for us to enter the Kingdom of Light and Day by being translated out of our previous darkened state of existence having our “eyes” (Ayin) opened. But guess what, God is referring to spiritual blindness and not natural inability to see light. Therefore, spiritual eyes that have been opened is the God designed process to begin salvation. Let us confirm these realities with these two verses:

1Th 5:4  But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief.

1Th 5:5  Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness.

The Apostle Paul makes it very clear that Jesus came into the world to take us out of our former life in the darkness by being born-again into the Day as “children of Light (God)”. Do you see the amazing parallels to what was stated in Genesis 1:2-4? We can find parallel subjects of “darkness and light”, “night and day” in both Genesis 1 and all these verses that we are reading in the New Covenant. Therefore, the Genesis 1 verses are God’s prophecies using symbolic terms for the rise of two opposing spiritual kingdoms that were divided by His design.

When did this work begin and when will it end? We know this work of God was initially happening on Day 1 of creation in Genesis 1:3 when God commanded “Light to be”, after the darkness had previously destroyed the world in Genesis 1:2. God confirms this connection was His designed intention by reading this verse in Corinthians:

2Co 4:6  For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Wow, again! Paul is quoting from Genesis 1:3 where God commanded “Light to Exist”. Paul is confirming that Genesis 1:3 was a prophecy about a coming of God (Light) as a personal appearance into the darkened controlled world. We also learn that that Light that was commanded to shine also applies to spiritual eyesight simultaneously with the realization of the natural light that took place nearly 6000 years ago.

We can now begin to learn that without this dual purposed commanded natural and spiritual “light” of Genesis 1:3, we would be unable to have the necessary light of “knowing” the glory of God in the face of Jesus (2 Cor 4:6)! Wow, again! Where are the eyes of Jesus located? We all know they are on the face of Jesus. Did you know the “eyes” of Jesus are described as “flames of fire” in Revelation 1:14? Do you understand flames of fire produce “Lights”? Do you believe any of this is a coincidence? Certainly, it is NOT!

But when did the rulership of these two opposing kingdoms (Light vs. darkness) officially begin? Was it happening 6000 years ago when God spoke “Light Be”? We should know that this does not work, since Jesus (God=Light) only came to the earth approximately 2000 years ago. Therefore, we have a difference of 4000 years to resolve.

What we discover from reading further in Genesis 1 is that this key rulership division occurs as another prophecy on Day 4 of creation. If a thousand years is as one day to the Lord (Psalm 90:4, 2 Peter 3:8), we find the secret that Jesus was scheduled to be born as the “Light of the World” exactly 4000 years after Adam sinned. Uh oh, that appears to match and potentially solve our previous difference. What happened on Day 4 of creation?

Gen 1:14  And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years

Gen 1:15  And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so

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

Gen 1:17  And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth

Gen 1:18  And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good

Gen 1:19  And the evening and the morning were the fourth day

In our knowledge that has been acquired about studying light and darkness in Day 1 of creation, what we find on day 4 of creation is very amazing parallels to the same night and day division. We know this represents two kingdoms called light and darkness. But here in these verses we also find two “rulers” of these separated kingdoms. God very clearly states that there are two great lights, one called the “greater light”, and one called the “lesser light”. Hopefully you know by reading the other lessons on this website, these are synonymous and symbolic terms for the sun and the moon. God clarifies this Genesis 1 terminology in Psalms:

Psa 136:8  The sun to rule by day: for his mercy endureth for ever:

Psa 136:9  The moon and stars to rule by night: for his mercy endureth for ever.

As we can now plainly see, the Spirit of God defines the greater light to be the sun that rules the day/light, and He defines the lesser light to be the moon that rules the night/darkness. Does this mean that the symbol of the sun represents Jesus, and the symbol of the moon represents “Satan”. Absolutely it does. There are many verses that confirm this reality, but we will only focus upon a few in this lesson. For example, here is a very key verse:

Mal 4:2  But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall.

Here is a major application of our natural “sun” that becomes a symbol for the “Son of God” named Jesus. It is Jesus who is our righteousness (Rom 3:22). God very specifically chooses the Hebrew word H8121 that is widely translated as “sun” to suddenly be a symbol of the Lord Jesus Christ. This Hebrew word can refer to the “sun’s brilliance” or it’s “rays” also. But wait, there are other verses that speak of Jesus as the Sun. For example, look at Matthew:

Mat 4:16  The people which sat in darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up.

Here in this verse, we find the parallels of Genesis 1 resurfacing to refer to light versus darkness and God’s separation plan prophesied in His creation works. This is amazingly describing a very major part of this “Ayin” spiritual “eyes” Bible lesson. God has designed a “great light”, named Jesus to be born into Israel. These people will be the ones that are seeing a great light rise.

Pay very close attention that Jesus is called the “Great Light” in this verse like He was prophesied from Genesis 1:16. This verse of Matthew is a quotation of Isaiah 9:2. Isaiah 9:2 uses the exact same Hebrew word H1419 being translated as “great”, that was translated in Genesis 1:16 as “greater”. Therefore, we understand there is a direct connection between Matthew 4:16, Isaiah 9:2 and Genesis 1:16 as they are all speaking of the same “great light”. God has moved in Matthew to identify this Great Light” to be Jesus Christ that was first mentioned to us in creation. This is amazing! But wait, there are more direct connections.

Notice in Matthew that this “Great Light” is being described as a light that has “sprung up”. This Greek word G393 that was translated as “sprung up” is most often translated as “rise”, “arise”, “risen” and “rising” all being descriptive terms of the human point of view of our daily perception of the natural “sun” appearance on the earth’s horizon in the east.

We all know that the “sun” rises in the east and sets in the west as designed by God. This single earth rotation is called a “day” in Genesis 1:5 being described as evening and morning the first day. Notice “darkness” was first, like God observed before He spoke “Light Be” and then light was. Are we seeing the parallels that are directly related to Jesus as the rising Light of the World?

This “rising” terminology describes the morning transition from the state of darkness in the night that is turned into the light of the day. These are all well-known natural acts that occur every single 24-hour day of our lives.

But in Matthew, God is teaching us that this natural phenomenon of a rising sun is a parallel to the “Greater” spiritual reality found in Jesus Christ. The “rising” spiritual Light (Jesus) is the key to understanding God’s plan of salvation for humans to have their eyes (Ayin) opened to “see” and understand His ultimate and superior truth.

As we can read in Matthew 4:16, there were only people that sat in darkness until Jesus Christ was born into the world and began to minister at the age of 30 to teach the Kingdom of God is come near (Mat 4;17). All those that “sat” in darkness were those that could read the Word of God but could not understand much of what was prophesied to come or happen to them. But Jesus the Sun of Righteousness was God’s ultimate solution to overcome this state of gross darkness (ignorance). Peter describes this again for us:

2Pe 1:19  We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts:

Pay very close attention to what was just described using naturally created terminologies and synonyms. For example, “day dawn” means a “sun rise” is taking place. The “day star” is another name for our “sun”. Everyone must understand our “sun” is nothing but the closest “star” to our planet. This describes us living in a solar system, where planets revolve around the sun. All these naturally created facts describe the man Jesus Christ the bright morning star in Revelation 22:16, and our “Sun of Righteousness” in Malachi 4:2.

It is also very important to know that the translated word “arise” in 2 Peter 1:19 is the exact word that was translated as “sprung up” in Matthew 4:16 referring to the people that sat in darkness that Jesus came to bring “Light” to. But understand Matthew when speaking of the “Great Light”, He is describing the “physical” presence of Jesus with Him teaching spiritual Words of light (Psa 119:105, John 6:63).

But Peter is describing Jesus after the resurrection and ascension of physical Jesus and now being on the earth in His spiritual presence of the Holy Spirit that abides in us. His Spirit is working presently in each of us simultaneously as an internal unseen rising “Day Star”. This “Day Star” is the representation of the increasing light (Word) and work of the Holy Spirit inside of the human body in the unseen heart (soul and spirit). It is this internal working of God/Jesus that causes the external transformations of the human thoughts and behaviors.

Wow, humans can now overcome their existence in darkness (lack of knowing God who is Light) by believing and placing our total faith in the “Day Star”. If you have never let Jesus, come into your heart, now is a great time to invite Him inside. But, whenever this occurs, this begins the process of the “Day Star” to arise in our hearts (2 Peter 1:19). This allows Him to grow brighter and brighter bringing us ever increasing potential knowledge of God’s Word every day we read the Bible if we choose to cooperate.

Notice the connection to us believing the Word of God to releasing the increasing Light into our hearts. This has just brought us back to the concept of “spiritual eyesight” based upon our faith in the Word of God (Jesus). Remember what we are studying in this series? We are studying the ancient Hebrew Alphabet that was used by God to create words and sentences, to write a book about Jesus. This is why everything in the Bible points us to Jesus. Let us go back to Genesis to learn more about this essential “Light” of God to help our “eyes” to “see”.

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

Remember our New Covenant spiritual Kingdom of Light ruler was named the “Day Star” (Jesus) that arises in our hearts in 2 Peter 1:19. We have already seen in Genesis 1:16 how the greater light is this same “Day Star” of the New Covenant. Now let us go back to the opposite side of Day called Night.

What else does this verse of Genesis 1:16 reveal about the “darkness”? We can all see that the Day will be ruled by the “Greater Light” referring to Jesus, who will be opposed and separated from the “lesser light” (moon) who now rules in the “kingdom of night and darkness”. As we discovered in Acts 26:18 it is the ruler Satan that has dominion over the spiritual kingdom of darkness. Thank God we have been saved out of this deception to now enjoy living in the Kingdom of Light in Christ Jesus.

Praying that everyone’s spiritual eyes have been enlightened to understand how the Ayin “eyes” of God were intimately involved in the Planned Works, and Words releasing the Power of God in creation. Also, how the subject of “Light” that occurs on Day 1 and Day 4 of creation is essentially connected to how people are saved out of the darkness to be brought into the kingdom of Light. God spent nearly 2000 years of human history giving us His written words that came from the breath of His mouth. This was a plan of God to enlighten us within our spirits. It is only by the Light of Jesus Christ that causes our spiritual eyesight to see.

5. Ayin Application to the Believer

There is a personal application to the believer in Christ Jesus found in every letter. The Ayin is no exception. You have probably already learned the primary application is God’s involvement in bringing us “Light” = “Knowledge” & “Truth” to save us. We certainly saw this in the teachings of Jesus clearly being stated. Jesus made it very plain that He was the source of God’s “Light” while He was physically ministering to the physical people on the earth and especially to the Hebrews.

But Jesus is not physically present now. What then are we supposed to be doing since we cannot see physical Jesus right now on the earth? Almost everyone would love to walk and talk with physical Jesus today. Yet Jesus said it was better for Him to go away, because if He did not leave the earth, the Holy Spirit could not come and abide with us and in us. Jesus further explains in John 14, that He would come be with us in Spirit form living on the inside of the physical body of believers. Jesus also claimed that He would personally lead us into all truth because the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth (Light). Therefore, we have the God of infinite Light (Knowledge of all Truth) abiding in us, and He is present 365 days a year, and 24 hours of every day of the week. This is far better than any shorter talk with physical Jesus. That is very awesome when you are awakened out of the darkness to fellowship with Him.

But there is also the human problem of “focus” and “priorities”. Christians in this modern age can be so consumed with the problems of this world, that they are ignoring who they are looking to or at and focusing upon. We see a Bible example of this in Matthew 14.

In Matthew 14, Jesus is walking on the water during a storm and the disciples “see” Him, and believe it is a spirit and they begin to fear greatly. Suddenly Jesus says to them “fear not, it is I”. Then Peter says, “Lord if it be you, bid me to come” and Jesus says “Come”. Peter gets out of the boat and begins to walk to Jesus. This strongly implies that the “eyes” of Peter are fixated upon Jesus.

But then it says in Matthew 14:30 that Peter’s eyes begin to “focus” upon the effects of the “wind”. Had Peter ever walked on water before this day? I seriously doubt it, if Peter had tried he would have hit the water and sunk so fast that there would have been no time to say “help”. What is changing when Peter removes His focus from Jesus and begins to consider the storm?

Our spiritual eye focus is the determining factor for success or failure. What we are focusing upon will determine if we obtain a continuing supernatural miracle or a sinking defeat in the need to be saved from drowning. Peter’s spiritual attitude of beginning to become “fearful” caused his downfall. And this opposite force of faith in Jesus to fear the circumstances caused him to begin to sink. If Peter’s failure had been an instant drop, it would have been so fast that there would not have been any opportunity for his salvation. This appears to teach us that we can evaluate our focus and make minor adjustments to help us to continue into complete victory over the circumstances being presented to us by the devil.

Where is your spiritual focus today? The devil has been trying to introduce fear driven plans to get your eyes departed from thinking on Jesus and the Word of God. This is your application for today, because the evil of the world will be trying more things very soon, some are new, and others are the same plans as before. How you react to them will determine your success. Make a commitment to stay out of “fear” and to get into the Spirit of God to keep Him as your focus by feeding your spirit with His Word. Peter could have simply remembered Jesus told Him to “Come” and this single Word had enough power in it to provide him “faith” to keep him above the water.

6. Conclusion

We have only touched a short time on the study of “Ayin” Eyes. There are so many verses on this subject that it would require volumes of books to try to understand them all. This lesson was only a shortened introduction to the key subjects of “Ayin” eyes and the various types of applications. We have learned of natural eyes and spiritual eyes. But only briefly seen what they teach us. We know one foundational scripture is from Proverbs 15:3. This verse says, “the Eyes of the Lord are in every place beholding the evil and the good”. Therefore, there is nothing that is not seen by God and He will judge.

We were unable to cover the part of the lesson about when Jesus heals a blind man in John 9. But this story demonstrates Jesus’ extreme purpose to bring God’s “light” of knowledge to both the physical and the spiritual realms. This man’s physical blindness that was present from his birth was healed first by placing mud on his eyes and being told to wash in a pool of water. But later Jesus found the man again, to remove his spiritual blindness so that he could believe on the Lord Jesus as the Son of God. This real story demonstrates the fulfillment of Isaiah 61:1 which Jesus read in the temple “I have been anointed, to preach the Gospel, and bring the recovering of sight to the blind” (Luke 4:18).

Joh 9:5  As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.

It is within the context of Jesus fixing the problem of one man’s eyesight of two kinds of eyes (natural and spiritual), that Jesus personally claims to be the “Light of the World”. Now Jesus is seated in heaven at the right hand of majesty. He has placed His loving Holy Spirit inside of us if we have let Him come in to abide. Then Jesus proclaimed that we will be the light of the world (Mat 5:14) to help open the eyes (Ayin) of others that have not yet seen the wonders of His amazing mercies.

This lesson should have taught you an introduction about who Jesus is and why He made the 16th letter of the Hebrew alphabet the essential picture of an “eye”. This is so amazing, that He can’t be praised enough for His Great Words and Works of His Spirit! Praise the LORD!

If you liked this lesson let us know and share it with your friends and relatives. If you have any prayer requests, please share those also. If you need to know Jesus, please click on the link below to help you get started on the path to receiving eternal life to Know the True and Living God named Yehoshua (Hebrew) / Jesus (Greek). May God continue to richly bless you. Thank you for your prayers as we continue to pray for you in this very trying time before Jesus returns. Jesus is coming back to get us sooner than you think, please be ready.

Intro Alef Beyt-1 2 Gimel Dalet Hey Vav Zayin Chet Tet Yod Kaf Lamed Mem 1 2 Nun Samekh Ayin Pey Tsade Qof Resh Shin TavAlef-Beyt Chart (Series updated as LORD directs and permits)

Are You Saved? Do you Know Jesus? Life is Short! Jesus wants to Know You! Please come and get to Know Him!

Why Study the Ancient Hebrew Language and Alphabet?

(ver 1.1) There could be many skeptics in the church body of believers that resist new revealed concepts found hidden in the Bible. These lessons are NOT intended or designed to introduce new doctrines or beliefs. However, they do contain several basic revelations that many may have not yet seen before while reading and studying God’s Holy Text. This lesson series is only intended to take what the scriptures actually say and teach us about our Messiah, Lord and the Savior of humanity named Jesus and show us how God reveals Him in an ancient Hebrew pictographic alphabet.

This concept of the ancient Hebrew Text has become an incredibly expanding study subject on the internet and in churches. There are many Christians that have received partial revelations about this subject and have started teaching it also. There are multiple pastor teachers on “Youtube” that have had many of the fundamentals revealed to them and they are teaching it to their churches and to those that want to watch it on the internet. Praise the LORD! It is true, that not everyone has seen the exact same things, but we trust God to continue to work in us and through us all, to come to the increasing fullest knowledge of Jesus Christ. Amen.

There are numerous reasons to learn these lessons about the ancient Hebrew Language. One of the first reasons is simply to understand the selected graphical designs of each letter, and how each of them tell us a story of Jesus individually. After learning the basics of each letter we should desire to learn how letters are joined together to create a greater revelation found in each Hebrew root word meaning. Finally, for advanced students it is then beneficial to see how each larger Hebrew word is built upon the foundations of the alphabet letters and the root words that are laid together to build a greater message of hidden meanings.

Do you remember the old saying that a picture tells us a story of at least a thousand words? We are going to explore today just some of the reasons God reveals this is an important subject to learn. Let us get started on this first subject of why we should study this ancient alphabet with Reason 1.

Reason 1: Jesus Personally Claimed to be the Alphabet.

Rev 1:8  I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.

You have hopefully seen this claim stated before in previous lessons. Jesus in the Book of Revelation twice declares to be the Alpha and the Omega, written as the first and the last letters of the Greek alphabet. However, the writer of this book was John who was a Jew, Jesus the speaker was also a Jew, and they both most likely were speaking in Hebrew to write the book of Revelation. We know for sure that Jesus spoke Hebrew, because when Jesus appeared to Saul on the road to Damascus, it is written in Acts 26:14 that Jesus was speaking to Saul in Hebrew.

Now we must also understand that in the Hebrew text of the Old Covenant, there is a word that occurs very often and it is mostly completely ignored by translators. This word H853 is created by God using two Hebrew letters. These two letters correspond to the Alpha and the Omega, being the first and the last letters and in Hebrew they are called the “Alef” and the “Tav”. That just cannot be a coincidence or accidental occurrence.
Yes, there are modern day scholars that study the Hebrew language and believe these two letters, while not being translated only are there to place emphasis on primary subject verbs. But please do the studies for yourself. Analyze each word if you have the time and its placement and usages. Notice how it sometimes appears to be random when it occurs, and then notice there are many, many verses that do not contain this untranslated word Alef + Tav. Then notice that there are other verses that can contain this word more than once. Finally, pay attention that almost every verse that this word occurs could apply to Jesus in some direct, or hidden form, whether it be in name, title, typology, symbolism, etc. So, the fact still remains that this word H853 occurs more than 5000 times in the text, and Jesus makes it an emphasized point to say these letters represent me, and this cannot be ignored.

Therefore, if Jesus is claiming to be the first and last letters of the alphabet, it is at the least strongly implied that He is also all of the letters in between these two also. This only makes logical sense, because He is called the literal “Word of God” revealed to us in Revelation 19:13. If Jesus was called the “Word of God” in this verse, this just further confirms that He is the entire alphabet that creates the Words of God also. Doesn’t this make sense? It takes all the letters in the alphabet to write the Word of God. Therefore, Jesus by being called the “Word of God” and claiming to be the first and last letters personally, we can make the easy revelation to see Him as every letter.

Reason 2: Jesus Personally Knew and Referenced the Jewish Alphabet

Mat 5:18  For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.

There is a very interesting confirmation for Jesus’ ability to speak Hebrew in this recorded verse from Matthew. Matthew consistently wrote to help Jewish people to find and see their Messiah. In the Genealogy of chapter 1, it is only given to us originating from the fathers Isaac, Israel, and their father called Abraham all proving Jesus to be the promised Seed of Abraham. Now notice what Matthew wrote by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in chapter 5 verse 18. Here in this verse Jesus is speaking of the Old Covenant writings and says very to the point not one jot or tittle will pass away from these writings.

There is some debate about what exactly a tittle represents. Some believe these are only the vowel markings of the word that are very minor in size. This could be a reference to the text marks found in Hebrew during the time of Jesus. But it is the word “Jot” that must capture our primary focus. In this verse the “Jot” is a transliteration of the Greek letter “iota”. Wow, this is another single alphabet letter.

But the “Iota” letter is a transliteration of the original Hebrew alphabet letter “Yod”. Wow again. Now place a few more puzzle pieces together to see what is being communicated. Jesus just picked the most used letter in the entire Hebrew Old Testament writings and said none of these are going to pass away from God’s written word. But wait, what does a “Yod” picture represent? If you have studied this, we know it is the representation of “a hand extended from an outstretched arm”. This picture connects us to the “hand of God”, the “hand of man”, or the “hand of angels like Lucifer”. The “Yod” further represents the concepts of “power and authority” within kingdom realms. These kingdoms include the Kingdom of God, human kingdoms, and the kingdom of darkness.

The Yod is also the letter that begins the name of Jesus in the Hebrew language. The letter “Yod” is the same letter that begins the name of “Jehovah” (LORD) in the Hebrew language. This letter “Yod” also begins other essential words like Israel and Jerusalem. Are there any light bulbs being illuminated in your mind yet? Why did Jesus pick this letter to place such an emphasis upon it saying none of these will pass away from God’s Word? The simple answer is because God places the emphasis upon this letter in His written Word.

Could it also be Jesus was connecting Himself to this letter and again saying this one is me also? Remember what God wrote in Hebrews 1:8. In this verse God is speaking to His Son Jesus and says, “But unto the son, he says thy throne oh God, is forever.” Can you see the direct connection of the throne of Jesus Christ being forever, and not one Jot (Yod) will pass away? I personally believe that it is just another clue to connect us with the ancient Hebrew language.

Reason 3: God’s Intelligently Designed Alphabet

The next reason that becomes self-revealing from the study of this ancient Hebrew alphabet, is that these letter pictures could not have occurred by accident, or by human creation alone without God the Creator of our universe’s personal involvement. There are just too many signposts found in each letter that point us to only one person in the scriptures, and He is called the only begotten Son of God and is named Jesus Christ in English.

God is an amazing God and has a beyond amazing intelligence and level of understanding. The layers of intentionally designed information found in the Bible is like an onion. There is a never-ending supply of hidden treasures to find in the Bible. Jesus talks about this in a short parable:

Mat 13:44  Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field; the which when a man hath found, he hideth, and for joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field.

As you can read the Kingdom of Heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field. When anyone comes to the realization that Jesus is talking about His Word and knowing Him by His Word, they will change from never reading their Bibles to spending all of their spare time digging in it, seeking to find and learn new hidden treasures. Why would a man sell everything to buy a field that he had just found a very valuable treasure? The only logical common-sense answer is that he expects to find more treasure in the same field. This is a perfect description of the Bible. The Bibles is the ultimate field containing infinite hidden treasures.

If you are a computer geek or engineer, then you might understand that all intelligently designed, organized and presented data and information, does not occur randomly, without intensive intelligence involvement of a creator. This realization brings us to the amazing conclusion that this book could have only occurred without God being personally involved. The known facts prove this by asking and answering the question, how could one book written over 1500 years of time, by over 40 different individual authors, and each one of their unique writings contain the harmonious union of a single story about the One True God? This could not occur without contradictions or errors, unless there was an external God author that inspired every letter and word! If you would like to debate that the Bible does not have errors, that probably proves your ignorance of what the words mean. It could also say you may be ignoring how the organization of the words were designed, and how even each letter was purposefully organized and chosen to create each word.

When assumed conflicts are encountered, they normally come from a human that does not know how intelligent God is and therefore could never relate on the level with His extreme intelligence. In the book of Isaiah 55;8, informs us that His thoughts and ways are so much higher than our natural human ways. This is exactly why when we become a saved Christian through believing in Jesus, then we are given His personal Holy Spirit to live on the inside of us to help teach us what He hid in this Word for us to find. This is an amazing intelligently designed encryption system. Unless we are spiritually born again, we are totally unable to comprehend some of the simple Bible statements. It is very much like a 2-year-old trying to debate a chess master on the subject of how to play the game to win.

Reason 4: God’s Word Conceals Him

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

This is an amazing clue to finding Jesus. Before we look for Him, we must know that He is hidden for us to find. We learn this from this verse and others like it. To understand what is being spoken of here, we must analyze the words “thing” and “matter” which is the same Hebrew word H1697 (dabar).

This Hebrew word H1697 is spelled “Dalet” + “Beyt” + “Resh”. If you have studied these individual letters, you already know the “Dalet” is the door of the house, The “Beyt” is the “House” and the “Resh” is the Head, ruler, or Prince of the House. Placing these pictures together in a sentence we get “The door of the House is the “Prince or Head”. As you should know by now this is a prophecy of Jesus as being the Only way into the Father’s house. Jesus stated this very plainly in John 14:6 “I am the way, the truth and the life, no man comes unto the Father except by me”.

Wow, that is an amazing revelation alone.  Jesus is claiming to all of God’s creation that there will be some that do not or more clearly can never enter the Kingdom of God. This is too complex to go into in great depth. But the bottom line is that Jesus is revealing Satan and his angels will be excluded forever from the Kingdom of God because of their rebellion and sin.
However, there are others that will never enter the Kingdom of God. God reveals these others that will never be able to enter into His kingdom in Revelation 21:8. In this verse the LORD says, “the fearful”, “unbelieving”, the “abominable”, “murders”, “whoremongers”, “sorcerers”, “idolaters”, and ALL LIARS, shall have their part in the lake of burning fire another name for HELL! Remember these are words written down by John from the mouth of Jesus. What we are finding is that not everyone will be saved and if they do not enter into the door when they can on the earth, that door will soon shut when they die a physical death. But let us get back to our subject of “dabar”

Ok, what is God speaking of in the Hebrew “dabar” translated as “thing” and “matter”? I believe this verse should have been translated more literally and said “It is the glory of God to conceal the “Word”, and the honor of kings to search out the “Word”. This Hebrew word H1697 is translated as “Word” more times than any other and this is the literal definition. That information should be causing lights to shine in your heart right now.

Who is the Word of God? Remember, we saw this answer mentioned earlier. God revealed the answer to us in Revelation 19:13, but also, He shows us more of this mystery in John 1:1. “In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God”. We can find out in John 1:1 that the Word of God is God and God is His Word spoken and written simultaneously. Then we learn in John 1:14, “that the Word (God) became flesh and dwelt among us”. This flesh Word manifestation of God was Jesus! Therefore, the Word is God, God sending His Word into the World manifested in human flesh form, and God walked around us in person through Jesus who was born in Bethlehem.

Do you see better what Psalm 25:2 is saying now? God is the “dabar” Word, the “dabar” Word was with God and was God and He the dabar “Word” who became flesh to reveal Himself to humans in a touchable human form. Therefore, it was “The glory of God to conceal Jesus (the Word), and it is the glory of kings (Christians) to search Him out and find Him in the Word everywhere from Genesis to Revelation.

Reason 5: God’s Word Proclaims Him

We are about to discover a few more hidden jewels within the Word of the Living God. God’s Word has a fundamental design to reveal Him, and His nature, His Character, and His Ways to those that desire to know Him personally. But to those that do not desire to know Him, He has built into His Book a spiritual encryption language to block the carnal human mind and thoughts from knowing or understanding it. Therefore, if you are struggling to see what the Bible actually says about the God who is called Love, Light and Truth, it could be you need to pray and ask Him to help open your eyes to see what He has to say today to you personally. These are innumerable valuable hidden truth treasures placed in His Word for us to discover with our faithful and diligent Bible study.  Let us confirm our reasons to study this subject with this next verse:

Psa 40:7  Then said I, Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of me,

This verse is written down about the coming Messiah. God clearly states that there are three very important terms about studying the ancient Hebrew language. These three words are “volume” (H4039), “book” (H5612), and “written” (H3789). We will dig deeper into each word to find God’s treasures.

H4039 translated as “volume” refers to the concept of ancient scrolls made of leather or papyrus sheets that are rolled up after having letters written upon them. But these exist in blank form first awaiting someone’s thoughts to be recorded and preserved. This concept is a parallel to the human heart and mind. When first born onto the earth, each of us is a blank slate awaiting to be imprinted upon. We can see this concept and God’s intention of His Word to fill it, by reading God instruction to us saying, “for us to write His Words and Commandments upon the table of our heart”, in Proverbs 7:3.

The Hebrew word H5612 translated as “book” is very similar to the word translated as “volume” for it also refers to the scroll of a skin or papyrus rolled up, but this word more directly attached the meaning of this document containing a record of handwritten words with letters and also implied or direct numbers. This is a representation of a book that has was previously written upon using an alphabet building words.

Finally, the Hebrew word H3789 translated as “written” moves us to the process and act of writing implying with the usage of a “hand” (Yod) to accomplish this book of records in the volume of the book. This is actually representation of the human level of participation to take words and store them into our heart. But this verse in Psalm 40 while revealing spiritual application for us, is primarily focused upon Jesus as a prophecy.

It is most interesting to know that this verse is further quoted in the book of Hebrews. This is an amazing blessing from the LORD, because it gives us a word for word direct transition from Hebrew to Greek. In other words, it removes any guess work for knowing what Greek word corresponds to which Hebrew word. Let us look at the same words written in the book of Hebrews next:

Heb 10:7  Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God.

The Greek word G2777 was translated as “volume” and it corresponds directly by quotation to the Hebrew word H4039. This word in Greek dictionaries is very similar to the Hebrew meaning “a scroll”. But this word also reveals that it means “a little head” as in the top of a round stick that the scroll is rolled up upon.

The Greek word G975 translated as “book” is the Greek word “biblion”. The Greek word G975 is a diminutive of G976 “biblios”. Hopefully you are seeing these are the words that give us our English word “Bible”. And our Bible is the book of writings penned by man from the inspired breath and finger of God.
As you can see, we are getting to some more of the good stuff now. The next Greek word is G1125. This word in an English transliterated word form is “grapho” and as we should know, it is translated mostly as “written”, and this again is implying with the work of a “hand”. In fact, in Biblical terms, we should understand this is the cooperating hands of man, being guided by the powerful hands of God. Both of these references connect us back to the statement of Jesus about the “Yod” (hand) letter never passing away.

According to the Mounce Greek dictionary this word “grapho” means “to engrave, as in to write, according to the ancient method of writing on plates of metal, waxes, tables or tables can also be known as tablets. There are many of these recovered writing surfaces that have been restored to prove and show us the ancient Hebrew Texts. I believe that is an interesting fact of history.

In the Thayer dictionary this word G1125 is further expanded to refer to the handwritings containing alphabet “letters”. As we should all know it is this concept that is the basis for all ancient and modern written words. Every word can only be created by people with intelligence through the proper education and selection of each of the letters made to form the words. Each individual created word can further be expanded to the concept of being organized by the person to convey in writing their thoughts, knowledge, understanding, wisdom, and ideas and many other types of word thoughts. But God designed words to mean so much more than this basic idea of communication of ideas and imaginations.

Hopefully you see where God is taking us. The Greek word “grapho” defined by Thayer means “to write, but it contains the direct reference to the form of the individual letters”. The clear emphasis given to us by this definition is that the shapes of letter matters. This is where many ignore the forms of the individual letters as being unimportant. But many of them have been transformed from the original and ancient writing style to the modern letters we see today.

Just a few examples of this are, the ancient Hebrew “Alef” ox pictogram looks like the English letter “A”. The ancient Hebrew “Mem” wave picture design looks very similar to the English letter “M”. The ancient Hebrew letter “Tav” cross picture is very similar to the English letter “T”.  However, other letters were not so blessed and have been distorted to remove much of the ancient pictographic message from it.

However, let us learn from the Greek word “grapho”. From this word we can derive English words like “graph”, and “graphics” or it can be used as a “suffix” as in “biography” to tell one’s life story.  All of these deal with ideas that are written by hand on either a piece of paper or in computer terms of digitally remembered designs of the same handwritten or drawn information.

Now let us go deeper into modern tech applications. Every website will hire one or more “graphic designers”. What are these people responsible for? They represent the design of the content of that website. This would include picture and photographic designs that are associated with textual content, including the font style, sizes and colors, etc. All of these come from the Bible. God is the ultimate “Divine Graphic Designer” of the Bible. Every picture image came from the mind of God and not a human. Each word style and order of the letters in the messages came directly from the mind of God the Creator of the heaven and the earth.

There is a significant challenge in modern culture, to try to understand the original designs and writings. The alphabets of most languages have transitioned and in modern terminology the font styles can vary so widely that every letter has been perverted to a nature of its own human reasoning. This is where God’s original manuscripts can reveal the same types of challenges, but the general shapes of the letters are still true to original intent and they still convey the basic envisioned picture meaning. It is only when we ignore these ancient original forms and only look at the modern modified variations that we could easily miss about what God hid for us to find, by Him designing Himself into each letter picture. Let us remember what Jesus said again in John:

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

Jesus is speaking to Hebrew leaders who could read and write in their native language.  Speaking directly to these religious leaders, Jesus makes a claim that blows their minds. With this statement Jesus is making the claim that He is Messiah. But this statement is so much more than our simplistic human thinking of His declaration of truth.

Jesus is implying a much deeper truth than to just read from plainly stated verses written about Messiah. All these Jewish leaders knew the Messiah would be a Son of Abraham (Mat 1:1). All these leaders knew Messiah would be a Son of David (Mat 22:42) to rule David’s throne forever. All these leaders understood that He would be born in Bethlehem (Mat 2:6). These types of verses were so plainly understood by most scholars. Therefore, Jesus could not be talking just about these. No, these leaders knew all these verses and did not recognize the God in the flesh man named Jesus that stood before them that fulfilled them completely.

Therefore, Jesus is definitely speaking of deeper hidden truths. What Jesus was speaking of had to be a type of search that contained things that could be easily hidden from them in plain sight. This “search” would require more than just reading and implies a deeper need of “pursuit” behind words to find Him. I personally believe that what Jesus is referring to as Him being hidden, can apply to many layers of methods of deep study. Some of these could be methods that we have not yet fully found or understood, but all of these are placed there in plain sight using simple alphabet letters. In other words, there are no hidden coded messages that required us to do some unencrypting of the text to find Him. Let us go over some new examples of how Jesus was potentially hidden in Hebrew Words containing ancient Hebrew pictogram letters, next.

JESUS the GIFT of GOD

Knowing this about Jesus possibly being in the Alphabet and the Words built from this Alphabet, we begin by realizing one way for God to hide Himself, was for Him to create an alphabet of 22 letter pictures where every letter tells a part of the story of who He truly was and what He came to do. We find this message in the story of the alphabet letters pictures and in the placement of these letters to create words for greater God thoughts and God ideas. For example, we know God Almighty is the first letter of the Alphabet called the “Alef” representing the picture strong Ox servant, who is self-driven to move towards the final letter picture called the “Tav” representing His death on a wooden cross.

Along this journey and pathway of planned design, God moves through each letter to bring us new knowledge of His plan and the benefits that we will obtain by following after Him with our whole heart. For example, look at the Hebrew word H5414 a root word meaning “to give”. This root word is comprised of three letters with one letter being the same letter that is the beginning as well as ending letters of the word. Uh oh? Do you remember what we read in reason number 1 about Jesus claiming to be the first and the last? Who gave us a gift and what is this gift that is being given?

Remember that Jesus directly claims to be the “gift of God” in John 4:10 to a woman at a well.  In this statement Jesus said, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that said to you Give me a drink…”. We will not teach this story, but pay attention to the fact that Jesus is calling Himself this gift and remember in John 3:16 we find “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him, should not perish, but have eternal life”. Jesus was offering this woman at the well a drink from His Spirit coming from His mouth and these words could have imparted to her eternal life if she believed. We have just learned that Jesus is the Gift that was given by the Father to the world so that we might be saved.

Now what are the two letters that make up the Hebrew word H5414, translated as gift? The first and last letters are the letter “Nun”. Uh oh, again. Do you recall what this letter means? This letter primarily means “a seed” but has implied applications to be the spoken “Words” of God also. We know this because the “Sower” (Jesus) sowed the Word of God in Mark 4. Therefore, the Word of God is being stated plainly to be “seed”, the letter “Nun”.

We also know that the Word of God is likened to bread in Matthew 4:4 where Jesus quotes to the devil “man shall not live by bread alone, but by every Word that proceeds from the mouth of God”. Do you see the progression God has just taken us through? You do understand that wheat is a type of grass that is cultivated to obtain its seed to make bread? You do know that bread is a very basic staple for maintaining natural human life? Therefore, God just said His words of “seed” are the same type of life source for the human spirit of man.

There are other applications to this “Nun” representing Jesus by knowing Jesus is called the “Seed of Abraham” as well as the “Seed of David” in the New Testament. Jesus further makes the direct claim to being a “seed” that came to the earth to die and fall into the ground in John 12:24. Jesus said unless He does this He would abide alone, but if He accomplished this goal, He would bring forth much fruit for God.

Now the middle letter of the word sandwich is the pivotal letter called the “Tav”. Surprise, Surprise! This letter as you should recall is the picture of the “cross”. Remember the cross is a torture instrument for death. Placing these three letters together “The Seed must die on a Cross (be buried) and will arise again (the third day) a new Seed of Life”. We get the attention to detail of the third day by just paying attention to the number of letters in the word being three (NTN).  There are no accidents in the design of scriptures, but there are a lot of misunderstood and yet to be discovered things the Lord will reveal to us if we choose to “search” for Him. He is still hiding in plain sight in this word “to give” (H5414, nathan).

JESUS the STONE the BUILDERS REJECTED

Another awesome hidden Jesus is found in the Word translated as “stone”.  The Hebrew root word H68 that is mainly translated as “stone” is also comprised of just three letters. Again, this is not a coincidence either. Three, is the number of divine completeness. There are three divine manifestations in the Godhead, revealed as God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. But what are these three letters?

First let us look up why the word “stone” represents Jesus. We know from reading Mark 12:10 that Jesus speaking to the Jewish people and leaders is claiming to be the “stone”. In this verse He quotes a Hebrew verse found in Psalm 118:22.  In this verse we find the Hebrew word H68 translated as “Stone”. But this is a verse of prophecy about Jesus the coming Messiah that “the builders” and the “keepers” of the Old Covenant were supposed to accept in joy, but rather rejected because they did not know Him.

This Hebrew word “H68” is spelled “Alef” + “Beyt” + “Nun”. This is an amazing Hebrew word containing great layers of revelation in just three letters. In simplistic letter for letter interpretation, we see the Alef as the Strong Servant, the Beyt as the House of the Father and the Nun as the Seed that comes from the Father’s house. Therefore, placing these meanings into a sentence, we get “God will come forth from His House in heaven to bring forth a Seed to the earth to die”, as we learned before in the word Nathan meaning “to give” a gift. This new word “ABN” contains the basic prophetical message of Jesus being born as a Son sent from the Father’s house in heaven and the reason for His appearance was to be a “Seed”. Is this amazing or what? Can we begin to agree upon the intelligent design of not only individual letters, but also of the creation of root words as prophecies?

But wait, there is more. The first two letters “Alef” + “Beyt” spell the word “Abba” the word for Father. The last two letter “Beyt” + “Nun” spell “Ben” the Hebrew word for “Son”. Is this an accident? The Father becomes the Son? This is exactly what happened in scripture. We learn in John 1:1, In the Beginning (the first Letter Alef” representing God) was the Word (the second two letters the Son Beyt + Nun, aka known as the Word of God, Rev 19:13), the Word was with God, and the Word was GOD!

Heb 3:6  But Christ as a son over his own house; whose house are we, if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end.

We do not have the time to teach the entire revelation in this shortened version but understand the middle letter of these three letters translated as “stone” in the Hebrew word H68, is the “beyt” representing a “house” and a “family” transition from the “Father” to the “Son”. The Son of God has become the Heir of God’s House by His death on a cross. By being raised from the dead Jesus becomes the firstborn Son of God from the dead (Rev 1:5).

Then notice what God revealed to us in Hebrews 3:6. Jesus has implemented (BUILT) a new house of God and He calls us (the Church saved believers in Him) to be the building blocks that will be joined together with Him (1 Pet 2:5). Remember Jesus is the “Chief” (Head) corner stone and all of us that are saved in Him, are living stones to be built with Him as His Body.

Do you see how this is all fitting together containing a hidden puzzle from three letter design of the word stone? Jesus is plainly hidden in the Hebrew Word H68 “ABN’? Psalm 118:22 clearly included this word to relate us to Jesus. But within this word is Jesus’ story and God’s plan found in three letters. That is just too amazing to be an accidental chance occurrence. These organizations of specific letters to tell a story and make a prophecy are too great for us not to be excited about what God has hidden for us to find.

CONCLUSION

Thank you for taking the time to read and study the Bible on this website. If these kinds of hidden pearls of treasure do not excite you enough to sell all you have to obtain more of them, then you may not be one of His disciples. Remember again what Jesus taught us in Matthew:

Mat 13:45  Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man, seeking goodly pearls:

Mat 13:46  Who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it.

God’s Words and gaining the knowledge of them is more valuable that seeking to gain all of the silver and gold in the world. These words of knowledge and truth will save you, heal you, deliver you and transform you. They renew our mind from the dark filth of this present evil world to move us into the light of the knowledge of the true and living God that came and died to save all of us. Praise the LORD for His immense wealth of all knowledge and wisdom.

Be blessed in the LORD as you continue to learn things that you have never seen before. There is a never-ending supply contained within just the words and the alphabet letters that create them, and these were created and written in His Bible by the Hand of God. If you enjoy these lessons, like and share them with your friends and family. God’s Word will go forth to all the ends of the world, and then the End will Come! Jesus is Coming very Soon! Are you Ready?

If you would like to begin to learn more about this incredible ancient Hebrew alphabet, please go to the beginning of the series “Introduction“.

Are You Saved? Do you Know Jesus? Life is Short! Jesus wants to Know You! Please come and get to Know Him!

Jesus in the Ancient Hebrew Alphabet Part 14 – The Mem Part 2 – The Water

(Ver 1.0) This lesson is “Part 2” of “Part 14” of the Bible study series revealing the Lord Jesus Christ, that had been hidden by the Spirit of God in His design of the original Ancient Hebrew Alphabet. In this lesson we are focusing upon the letter “Mem” and how it represents “water”. If you have not read the first introduction to this mini-series within the larger series, please go to “MEM Part 1” first.  Also, you are able to go to the entire series introduction “Part 1 INTRO” to get the basic foundational information for the entire series.

We have learned the two primary meanings of the ancient Hebrew pictogram of the “Mem” are 1) Water and 2) Blood. We focused upon the subject of blood in the first lesson because the “blood” of Jesus is an incredibly essential subject in the entire Bible for our human salvation. We should have learned that Jesus was the Last Adam. We further learned the named Adam means “God’s Blood”. Based upon this information we should be able to understand that the first Adam rebelled against God and destined all of humanity to separation from God in an eternal hell. But Praise the LORD God who became the “Last Adam” and it was His sinless Mem “Blood” that met His own righteous justice to be able to pay for all of our sins as a free gift.

In the introduction we learned the individual letter “Mem” study is a picture of 3 significant waves of a sea. Therefore, God was focusing this letter primarily upon the subject of moving “Water”. This Mem water symbolism will be the focus of this lesson. We are about to discover the incredible significance of this subject of “water” from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22. For example, the world was destroyed twice by water. The first in Genesis 1:2, and the second is found in Genesis 6. Our present world will culminate with its destruction in fire, the antithesis of water. But the new heaven and the new earth will contain a “river” of pure as crystal water that flows from the throne of God in Revelation 22:1, that water provides us life.

The references to “water” in the Bible, is so much greater than these.  The various forms of the word “water” is found over 700 times. The words “sea” or “seas” occurs over 400 times. Also do not forget some seas and bodies of water have specific names that are mentioned. The words “river” or “rivers” occurs over 250 times. The words “well” or “wells” occur over 50 times. The words “brook” or “brooks” occurs over 50 times. The word “lake” occurs at least 10 times. But there are many other words that are associated with the concept of water that also occur in the Bible. For example: a “flood”, to “drink”, to “wash”, to “draw” from a well, to “fill” a cup, the “depth” of the body of water, the movement of the water called “waves”, and on and on we could go. To cover this subject fully would take writing many volumes of books, derived from countless numbers of hours from a study with the leading of the Holy Spirit.

Today we will be learning only a limited number of subjects of the total amount of God’s important information about Jesus Christ found in the letter “Mem”. In fact, in this second “Mem” lesson about the subject of “water, we will only be covering the following seven titled subjects:

  1. Jesus in the letter Mem Number 40
  2. Jesus’ First Miracle Turning Water to Blood
  3. God’s Spoken Words are the MEM Waters for Spiritual Life
  4. Washed with the (Mem) Water of the Word of God
  5. The Spiritual Cleansing Power of Jesus Water and Blood from Sin
  6. Natural Water Waves Created and Connected with God’s Spirit Voice Sound Waves
  7. A God’s Real-Life NOW Application of the MEM – Calming Life’s Storms
  8. The Mem Water Conclusion

Let us get started with learning this incredible picture of God’s “Mem” letter as being His representation of Jesus Christ.

1. Jesus in the letter Mem Number 40

Remember the ancient Hebrew letter “Mem”, is the 13th letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and has the gematria number value of “40”. The number 40 has the basic symbolic meaning for the time of testing, trials and temptations. We find this number as a pattern for these, repeatedly in the Bible. We should know that Noah’s time of testing continued through a time of 40 days of rain that destroyed the rest of the world. We should also know Moses met with God on Mount Sinai for 40 days. Then the children of Israel ate manna for 40 years in the wilderness. There are other examples of forty, but we cannot cover everything today.

It is very essential to observe how the earthly ministry of Jesus begins after a 40-day preparation time of testing. And then we must also notice how the earthly ministry of physical Jesus ends with another 40-day period of speaking a flow of words to the church to help direct them into their arising future. Let us briefly go through both of these confirmation to Jesus being the “Mem” fulfillment of ancient prophecy found in the number 40.

Luk 4:1  And Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness,

Luk 4:2  Being forty days tempted of the devil. And in those days he did eat nothing: and when they were ended, he afterward hungered.

We must first understand the direct water connection to the “Mem” with these verses. Before this 40-day trial and temptation of Jesus occurred, He was physically “baptized” into the waters of the Jordan River by John. This meant the physical body of Jesus was “fully” emersed within God’s created substance of “water” (H2O) a definite picture of the letter “Mem”. This is truly amazing and definitely not a coincidence. Jesus appears to know and understand exactly what He is doing all the time while interacting with water.  He purposely chooses to be fully covered by the “water” before He even begins His ministry. Jesus actually said He was doing this to “fulfill all righteousness” (Mat 3:15).

It is very, very important to note what John said about Jesus before he baptized Him in the Jordan river:

Mat 3:11  I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance: but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire:

Here is your first clue that the “Mem” physical water matter represents a symbolic substance of far greater spiritual application to Jesus.  We can see this by how John compares his physical water baptism of Jesus, to a different kind of future spiritual baptism that is assigned to a coming role of Jesus. We know from studying other verses that John is speaking of a “baptism” that Jesus could only perform after He had ascended back into heaven.

We do not see this coming Jesus baptism taking place until the first time it is mentioned in Acts 2. We are about to find out that this “baptism” of the Holy Spirit would also occur after a 40-day series of events. What do you believe the Holy Spirit is trying to say to us? There appears to be direct connections to the letter “Mem” and the fulfilment of multiple types of “water”. We can see how Jesus began His ministry after being baptized in physical water. But the prophet John claimed Jesus would be baptizing people with the “Holy Ghost” and “Fire” and this clearly began in Acts 2. Notice how all of this information is being communicated by “Words” that were spoken first, and then written down for anyone to read and speak.

It is very interesting to note that the 40-day temptation of Jesus occurs directly after His Baptism into Mem physical water that flowing in the Jordan river. Let us stop and analyze what this means.  The name Jordan is the Hebrew word H3383 and is defined by Strong as a “descender”. This is a major revelation. It describes God’s position of His ultimate highest supremacy has been reduced to become a part of His fallen creation in the first Adam. Think about it! The eternal Creator, and the self-existent God became a created mortal human that could experience death. He did this for several reasons, but one of the primary reasons was to save His creation from permanently being separated from Him.

The picture of Baptism in water is a windowed view into God’s plan and process of salvation. The descent into the water represents His death and burial. The time spent under the water represents His 3 days in the tomb and His time in hell to pay for all of our sins. The rising of the body of Jesus out of the water, represents His coming “resurrection” from the dead, into a newly created realm of fresh eternal life. All of this occurred using the pictogram ancient Hebrew letter “Mem” type of physical water. 

Remember what happened to the children of Israel after they were saved out of Egypt? The Pharoah regretted letting them go, even after all of the problems that God had caused them through 10 plagues and especially the deaths of the first-born of every man and beasts that was not protected by the blood (Mem) of lambs.  So, Pharaoh got his army together and went after them. Here is where it gets interesting. The children of Israel were camped next to the “Red Sea”. Uh oh! This is another “Mem” water supply. This water was at first imagined to be their death not allowing them to escape. But God suddenly divided the “Red Sea” and dried up the ground and the children of Israel went through to the other side.

Then came Pharaoh after them into the “Red Sea”. But God collapsed the walled and divided (Mem) waters and these their greatest hinderance became their amazing permanent deliverance from Egypt. Because the Red Sea flooded the Egyptians suddenly, God caused all of the pursuing Egyptians to drown (Heb 11:29). Wow, this is an amazing picture of what God did for us all in the New Covenant.  Notice the name of the Sea is “Red”, which is the color of “blood”. Could that be a picture of the blood of Jesus that we learned about in “Part 1”? Of course, it is!  Going through the “Red Sea” is a pictured type of “Baptism”. Please notice what Paul wrote by the inspiration of the Spirit:

1Co 12:13  For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit. 

The works of God’s plan of salvation was a complete surprise to Satan.  The devil thought by crucifying Jesus on a cross, he had just gained a great victory over God. But God by raising Jesus from the dead, implemented Satan’s defeat and greatly modified the presence of the Spirit of God in every human that would believe.

Paul writes about this by saying the Spirit of God “baptized us (believers in Jesus) into (His) 1 body”, making us all one with Christ. Clearly this greater Spirit baptism, was a type of what happened to the Lord Jesus in the river Jordan and the children of Israel in the Red Sea. The entire body of Jesus went under the water. But now in the New Covenant we can read every Christian has become a “member” of the Body of Christ, which is still a growing spiritual entity today. 

Do you see what is happening here? Notice the “water” concepts being given to us in just this verse. There is a two-fold work of the Spirit of God. Every saved Christian has been placed “inside” the Spirit of Christ as His growing temple and body. But simultaneously we drank this same water (Spirit) to have Him become alive inside of us. That is one of the most important concepts that is needed to be understood after you are saved. It changes our identity from being a dead human, to a new living house of Christ.  Hopefully we will go deeper into this subject as we continue to learn.

It is also noteworthy that when Jesus was baptized and came up out of the water, the Holy Spirit descended upon Him from heaven in the bodily shape of a dove, and the Heavenly Father said in an audible voice “This is my beloved Son, whom I am well pleased” (Luke 3:22).  But what happened to Jesus next after being immersed in water, is a very stark contrast. All of these actions that occurred to Jesus also occurred to us as His spiritual body.

After being fully emersed into the water of the Jordan, the Spirit leads Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. Guess what a “wilderness” is? A wilderness can be defined as an uninhabitable dry desert area.  Notice that we are studying about “water” the Mem letter and Jesus went from 1) a full immersion in a water river, 2) then receiving the Holy Spirit, 3) the fully audible spoken voice of Father God, 4) to being led into a dry place where no water is easily found. Apparently, this dry area of “no water” made Jesus more accessible for the tests, trials, and physical and spiritual temptations of the enemy. It is also interesting to see how what Jesus went through was a fulfillment of what the children of Israel also experienced. These occurred when Israel was being led through the Red Sea (baptism, water and blood), and then going into a dry waterless wilderness of testing and trials for 40 years, before they began to possess their promised land. Where they failed, Jesus came to succeed for us all. At least three times the people of Israel required God’s miraculous provision of water to survive in the wilderness.

These are all important concepts that were just mentioned. We are being introduced to a new set of “Mem” representations. The Mem water letter is a symbolic picture of 1) Physical Baptism, 2) Spiritual Baptism into the Body of Christ, 3) Receiving (drinking) the Holy Spirit, and 4) hearing God’s spoken words.

We in this section are being introduced to the fact that “Mem” represents the Words of God. The more Words of God that we are surrounded with, the safer we are from the attack of the devil. Let us take notice of something that Jesus taught about humans that are inhabited by demons:

Luk 11:24  When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest; and finding none, he saith, I will return unto my house whence I came out

Luk 11:25  And when he cometh, he findeth it swept and garnished. 

Luk 11:26  Then goeth he, and taketh to him seven other spirits more wicked than himself; and they enter in, and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first. 

Why would demons want to go to a dry place like a wilderness where Jesus was led to go? This is because the devil and his demonic forces know the power of God’s spoken words to cast them out (Mat 8:16). In this example, of Jesus, He says a human can be loosed from a devil temporarily but they will attempt to come back inside the same human mind and body. Uh oh!  Jesus is implying this human was made clean by the “Mem” water but was not filled with the Spirit and the Word to keep their enemy out. This is an introduction to “Mem” realities of water to represent both the Spirit of God as well as the Word of God.

What is interesting is that Jesus when tempted by the devil, each time He would quote the Word of God by saying “It is written…”. This clearly teaches us how Jesus overcame the enemy’s temptations because Jesus had been filled with the Spirit and Word of the Mem water of God. Every time the devil brought a new plan of deception to Jesus, Jesus just spoke the Word of God. Even when Satan quotes a verse to Jesus, which was a new trick, Jesus countered with “It is also written”. So, in the temptation of Jesus, we are observing a battle of opposing Mem “words” of water. This concept will be a theme of the rest of this lesson revealing the spiritual application of physical “water” to be a representation picture of spiritual words.

We have just been going through the baptism “descent” of Jesus into the created realm of death. But let us shift to the time just before Jesus ascended to go back into heaven which is pictured by the coming out of the waters in physical baptism. What we are about to discover is another pattern of “Mem” gematria number 40. What we will read, is the fact that Jesus after being raised from the dead, interacted with His followers for exactly 40 days. During this 40-day time, Jesus would test His disciple to help teach and guide them into learning about faith, but we will not be able to get into this in great depth. Let us read the record of Luke the writer of the book of Acts:

Act 1:1  The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach, 

Act 1:2  Until the day in which he was taken up, after that he through the Holy Ghost had given commandments unto the apostles whom he had chosen: 

Act 1:3  To whom also he shewed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God: 

We can all clearly see these three verses are about Jesus. We can further observe that Jesus appeared to His followers to 1) give commandments to the chosen church, 2) to show Himself, and 3) to provide infallible proofs by being “seen” of them for forty days. Finally, the last part of verse 3 says all of this was accomplished by Him “speaking” of things that pertained to the Kingdom of God. Here we again see the pattern of salvation that occurs from “Words of God” being spoken (sowed), and “Words” believed (consumed) and confessed in agreement.

Think about what the Bible says about what Jesus did after being raised from the dead. He appears at the tomb to get his body. He encounters women and tells them to go and tell his disciples that He was alive. That is the first test of faith to see if they will believe what He had told them. Jesus also appears to the disciples later, with Thomas not being present. This is another example of a test. Thomas failed this test and receives a rebuke. These are just a couple of examples of tests that Jesus gave to His disciples and there were others. Jesus performed this by speaking words to people and then these that saw Him telling others so that they could also believe in Him. Clearly this was a training mission to show them how to spread the Gospel. When Jesus spoke to Thomas, He said; “Blessed are those that have not seen and yet believe”. That is where we are today. Do you believe?

Ok, we have only been quickly introduced to the concept of “Words” being Mem water. But we will see this more and more as we study this subject today. Just please pay attention to the fact that for exactly 40 days the number value of the “Mem” letter, Jesus went to over 500 people in the nation of Israel, to appear and teach them about His works that were accomplished on the cross (1 Cor 15:6). In doing this Jesus fulfilled two very significant examples of the number 40 and the picture of water interactions.  We are now going to shift into a new fulfillment of Jesus and the letter Mem.

2. Jesus’ First Miracle Turning Water to Blood

We have learned the connection that the “Mem” pictogram is a representative of both “water” and “blood” in the Part 1 introduction. It just so happens that the first miracle of Jesus has something to do with both of these natural symbols.

Joh 2:5  His mother saith unto the servants, Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it. 

Joh 2:6  And there were set there six waterpots of stone, after the manner of the purifying of the Jews, containing two or three firkins apiece

Joh 2:7  Jesus saith unto them, Fill the waterpots with water. And they filled them up to the brim. 

Joh 2:8  And he saith unto them, Draw out now, and bear unto the governor of the feast. And they bare it. 

Joh 2:9  When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine, and knew not whence it was: (but the servants which drew the water knew;) the governor of the feast called the bridegroom

Joh 2:10  And saith unto him, Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse: but thou hast kept the good wine until now

We are studying an ancient Hebrew letter called the “Mem” that is a picture representation of water and blood. It is amazing that we see both of these appear in the very first recorded miracle of Jesus. The first thing we need to realize is that this takes place at a “wedding” that Jesus was in attendance. This wedding was no doubt one of Jesus’ siblings either a brother or sister. We can easily deduce this because of the role of Jesus’ mother as a person that was able to order the servants and tell them what they should do to listen to obey her son Jesus. It is practically impossible to ignore how Mary had such authority to do this at anyone else’s house other than her own family.

Now notice there are exactly 6 earthen empty waterpots that are present at this wedding location. The number 6 is a representation for the number of a “man”. Man was created by God at the end of day six on the last work day of creation (Genesis 1). These 6 pots we are told are used for Jewish ceremonial cleansing. Therefore, these water pots normally contained water for people to make themselves clean. Please, remember that we have learned this is a significant quality about water in previous parts on this water letter subject.

Jesus orders the servants to fill the 6 empty pots with “water” (Mem). We can potentially see that the fact that these pots were empty, meant they previously contained wine that was already consumed during the wedding feast. Therefore, the need to be refilled implies this is why Jesus commanded them to be “filled” with Mem water. But everyone knows water was not what they needed to continue the feast, or was it?  We should understand that Jesus who created everything, including grapes knew how wine was made and He knew it must originate from “water” being fed into the roots of vines to flow into the finished fruit of grapes. Jesus appears to be starting with the water, and expecting the rest of the process to occur supernaturally.

After filling the pots, they are ordered to draw and take out from them and go and serve it to the master of the feast. These servants were operating by faith in what they were being told to do. So, they bare the cup to the master, and he took a drink and was shocked. He called for the bridegroom and gave him a high praise saying “Most serve the good wine at the beginning, and then when everyone is drunk, they bring out the cheap wine”. That was a paraphrase, but it conveys the meaning precisely. What the servants and the disciples of Jesus had just witnessed was a supernatural miracle with amazing symbolic representations fulfillment to our letter “Mem” prophetical picture.

We know that the “Mem” is first thought to be a picture of only water. But we have learned that it also represents the internal unseen flowing blood movement in the body of a human, being pumped by the heart repeatedly to every body part for the functioning operation of life.  We also learned that “blood” is predominately made up of “water” and this water is internalized by consumption. This human water to blood transition is what Jesus just demonstrated with His first miracle.  But many will say, this miracle was just a story about turning water into “wine”. That is why we need to learn more about what God says about grapes:

Gen 49:11  Binding his foal unto the vine, and his ass’s colt unto the choice vine; he washed his garments in wine, and his clothes in the blood of grapes: 

There is more than one verse in the Old Testament, that describe the juice of grapes to be its blood. It should be obvious from squeezing a red grape that it produces red juice that looks very similar to “blood”. What we need to realize is that the “blood” of grapes called Juice is produced from fruits produced upon the branches of vines. In order for the branching to produce juicy fruit, the vine’s roots must take in the “water” (Mem) from the soil and send it up to every branch. This is God’s natural process and it was being accelerated by Jesus performing a parallel spiritual process.

Perhaps you do not understand what is being said yet. Remember Jesus claims to be the “Vine” in John 15:1-5. In this example, Jesus claimed humans were the attached branches that must produce fruit in order to remain connected to the vine (Jesus). Do you see how this will match with the “baptism” concept into one body of Christ? The fruit and its production of juices with good taste are implied to be the Words that Jesus was giving to humans. Now take this knowledge and apply it to Jesus’ first miracle illustration of what happened in turning water into wine:

  1. Jesus the Vine is called upon to provide wine for the marriage feast
  2. Jesus instructs humans to fill 6 pots with water
  3. The empty pots represent the unsaved human body
  4. The water represents the Word and Spirit of God
  5. When filled the servants were commanded to take out water by faith
  6. Then by faith they shared it with the Master of the feast by faith
  7. Taking water out of what is deposited on the inside, is a picture of sharing the Gospel with others by faith
  8. The master receiving the water finds out the word of God is very good
  9. He become saved and gives witness and praise to the bridegroom a picture of Jesus our LORD of His good gifts to serve the best last.

So, we have found a direct application of water being changed to the blood of grapes to be an analogy to be like the process of salvation. It is interesting that this prophecy in Genesis 49:11 is about Jesus, but it is being spoken by Jacob to his son Judah in whom Christ would come.  It is amazing how Jesus’ first miracle was turning water into wine a mentioned type of blood in the Bible. It should be becoming clearer to many readers that Jesus did nothing by accident. He taught us repeatedly that He only did what His Father told Him to do, and only said what His Father told Him to say. This makes everything that He did on the earth something designed to teach us about Him, His nature, His purpose, His works, His identity, and His Father.

3. God’s Spoken Words are the MEM Waters for Spiritual Life

Let us begin this section by reviewing real events that occurred in the Old Testament. We briefly mentioned these earlier in the lesson. The children of Israel during their time in the wilderness were thirsty, and searched everywhere for essential drinkable water. This was a reoccurring problem while they wandered in the desert. Moses in Exodus 15:23 came upon a place called “Marah” (bitterness) that only had “bitter” poisonous water.  This caused a great problem for Moses, because the people murmured against him. The people of Israel chose to place all of the blame for the test of having no water on his shoulders alone. There was obviously no trust placed in God who brought them out of the land of Egypt! How soon they forgot their God that was so good to them, killing all of their enemies drowning them in the “Red Sea” that we saw earlier. Was God someone that would save them, and then leave them to die in a dry land? Many believed this lie of Satan, and turned against God.

God was clearly more than capable of solving their little lack of pure “water” (Mem) problem. It was God that created this substance. He totally understood the chemical make-up and its purpose for life. Notice the connections being made here in this story to the people of Israel speaking negative words of complaints and them standing before a pool of “bitter” waters called “Marah”.  Do you see God’s connection?  God told Moses to get “wood” from a certain tree and cast it into the bitter waters. Moses obeyed and the “mayim” bitter waters became sweet drinkable water for life. I believe the “tree” was a pattern for the work of Jesus to be hung on a wooden “cross” that would result in the Spirit of God coming on the inside of every saved human. This is only one of the illustrations found in the Old Covenant deliverance.  Let us look at another.

When we move to Exodus 17:6, we find Moses faced with another crisis of no drinkable water to be found for the people of Israel. The people again speak negative faithless words before Moses and God. They complained and grumbled loudly to Moses, saying “Is God with us or not?”. This was not the right words to speak before God who heard everything they said. God instructs Moses to stand before a rock and strike it with his staff. Ok, stop right there. In the previous example God had Moses throw “wood” into the pool of bitter water to make it sweet, and now here we see God again using “wood” as a symbol of authority to bring “water” (Mayim) out of an apparently dry rock by striking it.  

Not a lot of readers may understand what is happening here with Mem water and wooden sticks yet, but it will become clearer. Let us look at the third example found in Numbers 20:8. In this chapter we again see the people of Israel without water. God again tells Moses to hold his wooden staff in his hand, and then gather the people before the rock. But we saw that God had changed the instructions for Moses to not strike the rock this time, but rather to just “Speak to the Rock” commanding it to bring forth water with “words” that came from out of his mouth. However, Moses disobeyed God and spoke curses upon the people and hit the rock twice. This was clearly an unbelieving act of faithlessness for Moses and he was not permitted to enter the promise land because of this failure to follow God’s instructions completely.

Psa 103:7  He made known his ways unto Moses, his acts unto the children of Israel. 

What was God doing in these three examples of water and wood? Believe it or not, God was teaching us and Moses some very powerful ways of the Almighty. We can clearly see in Psalms 103:7, how God revealed to Moses His ways, while only showing his acts to the children of Israel. There is a vast difference between seeing God’s miraculous acts of deliverance and knowing why God did them the way that He decided to perform them, and how they apply to us. What we are about to see is everything had a meaning, a purpose and a lesson for the called out and saved church of God.

These were three cases where water was made available by God’s grace and mercy to a lot of bickering and faithless people.  Let us analyze what we should learn from these three “Mem” water examples. The first example, of bitter waters was a typological picture of Christ coming into the world that was full of bitter poisonous and deceitful words given by the devil’s intent to destroy all humans. Christ was the man that would be nailed to a tree to shed His blood, and He was the only source of a pure truthful word water supply. God revealed His truth through Christ’s pure spoken words. God did this to satisfy all humans that were spiritually thirsty to know Him and His truth. God did this to counter the poisonous words of the Pharisees and Sadducees who were spreading the untrue words of their father the devil.

Ok, the next instance of striking the rock to bring God’s people access to pure waters directly from God occurred when Jesus was beaten to be hung on a cross. Jesus endured such great humiliation and torture for our sake. He was beaten with a whip 39 times, ripping the flesh from His body. A crown of painful thorns was placed upon His head. He was slapped and hit with human hands across His face. His beard was even pulled out. How does this brutalization of Jesus match our second water out of the rock example? We get our first clue by reading in 1 Corinthians:

1Co 10:1  Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; 

1Co 10:2  And were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea; 

1Co 10:3  And did all eat the same spiritual meat; 

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

Here in these verses God is revealing how Christ fits into what was happening with the natural nation of Israel. Can you see the comparisons being made by the Holy Spirit? We can clearly see in verses 1 and 2, that there is a direct connection with Israel passing through the Red Sea as it being a type of our spiritual baptism that we receive from Christ. Remember baptism is an entrance into, a covering completely, and a resurrection back to life using Mem water. But verse 4 is where we want to focus. God is plainly informing us that the Rock that Moses struck was another symbolic type for Jesus Christ.

Therefore, God is revealing the fact that Christ was only coming to the earth to be crucified one time. He would only suffer the pain and humiliation once. Being beaten the first time was for out salvation and healing. But Jesus being beaten and crucified twice, would put Him to shame unnecessarily and would be vain. Please read over these verses carefully and notice any words that could relate to the letter “Mem” meanings and applications:

Heb 6:1  Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God, 

Heb 6:2  Of the doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment. 

Heb 6:3  And this will we do, if God permit. 

Heb 6:4  For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost

Heb 6:5  And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come

Heb 6:6  If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame

Heb 6:7  For the earth which drinketh in the rain that cometh oft upon it, and bringeth forth herbs meet for them by whom it is dressed, receiveth blessing from God: 

Heb 6:8  But that which beareth thorns and briers is rejected, and is nigh unto cursing; whose end is to be burned. 

Heb 6:9  But, beloved, we are persuaded better things of you, and things that accompany salvation, though we thus speak

These are some very amazing and complex spiritual statements being taught to mature Christians. God begins by saying, let us move up from the basic foundational teachings of Christ and let us grow spiritually mature to be able to receive and understand God’s deeper spiritual truths.  Notice that the number 1 foundational doctrine refers us to the subject of “baptism”. This connects us directly to our letter “Mem” bible study. God is informing us very clearly that there are fundamental things that need to be understood about the purpose of water and being baptized.

Let us begin our passage study to focus on verse 4. God begins a warning for people that are saved in this verse. This verse begins by warning every Christian of an impossibility. What this means, is what is about to be described is something that is not possible to recover from if chosen.  God confirms that this verse is about Christians by saying, “those that were once enlightened”. We know from reading 2 Peter 1:19, Hebrews 10:32, and Ephesians 1:18, that being “enlightened” is what happens when an unsaved person receives Christ into their hearts. Next is where God gets into the subject of the Mem. God describes these people as, “having tasted of the heavenly gift”.  

We will focus upon the word “tasted” first. This Greek word G1089 literally means to put some type of food or liquid into your mouth to experience the good or bad flavor.  We can logically conclude, that if the substance placed in the mouth does not taste good, it is spit out of the mouth. Or if it is found tasty and desirable, it is swallowed and consumed to become an internal part of that person physically. Remember the water into wine example earlier. The master tasted the end time wine and found it to be the best he had yet tasted. This is an amazing prophecy of how the knowledge of God and His word will become greater, better, tastier, and more desirable in these last days.

Job 34:3  For the ear trieth words, as the mouth tasteth meat.

We learn the natural concepts of tasting applies to us spiritually. This parallel concept is explained to us in the book of Job above.  When someone hears the Gospel message of Jesus, and receives the Word of God as good, it enters into their heart (spirit) and Christ comes into them to begin a planting and growing of new life on the inside of them.  Therefore, this phrase is also speaking of people that received Jesus and did not reject His new life offered free gift.

Next, at the end of Hebrews 6:4 God ends with describing this person as being a “partaker” of the Holy Ghost. The Greek word G3353 that was translated as “partaker” can also be defined as “participant”, “partner”, or a “sharer”. All of these words relate to a human that invited Christ into their heart to be LORD and Savior, and have become “one Spirit” with Him (1 Cor 6:17). Therefore, God is describing very clearly this person has intimately experienced the “Holy Spirit”. There is no way this is not describing a “true” Christ follower.

God in verse 5, reaffirms this is a Christian by stating again, that this person has “tasted the good word of God”. This is a new detail to what exactly is being tasted. Wow, now we are getting directly into the subject of the “Mem” sweet and pure waters. God’s word to a dry human that has never experienced Him, is desperately in need of God’s word to live.  When someone tastes the Word of God for the first time, it is very much like a human that is stranded in the desert without water. The intense heat of the desert will kill them soon, if they do not find the physical water to live. As we continue this Bible lesson, we will repeatedly see again and again, how the Word of God is His pure Mem water for spiritual eternal life.

Ok, verse 6 is describing a person that has accepted Jesus but has now turned back into the desert to be tricked into leaving Christ to return to the ways of darkness.  It is inconceivable why anyone would want to do this, but the devil is a master at deception. He will do everything possible to get someone to reject Christ, and God must allow this freewill choice to take place. God is not going to force anyone to be saved the first time, or to remain saved until the end.

Notice the ending of the warning! By accepting Jesus Christ as our personal LORD, if we decide to reject Him and turn away from Him, and then attempt to return again, we are putting Him into open shame. God says this person is trying to crucify Christ again. We should know that Christ died once for all, and it is now impossible for Him to die again, because He has a resurrected body, incapable of experiencing death one more time.

Pay attention to the fact that in verse 7, God again speaks about the subject of Mem water. Is this an accident? Obviously not. In this verse God says, “as the earth drinks in the rain from heaven”. This is clearly figurative terminology speaking about spiritual realities. People were designed by God to drink His Word send down from heaven to produce any saving harvestable “fruit”. God is describing a process of the continual drinking a plant or in the spiritual realm a person, to continue its life.

Next in verse 8, God contrasts the saved Christian that continually drinks the Word of God, with the one that ignores taking the time to value the Word enough to spend time to receive it daily. This person is stated to become a dry type of plant that only produces thorns and briers. God very clearly says, this plant will be rejected at harvest time.

Finally, God ends the warning in verse 9, with an encouragement of faith filled words, that this rejection will not happen to anyone that is reading this warning. Are we all receiving this warning? If you believe you can never be deceived to turn away from Christ, then you are on a path of potential destruction. Being aware of your enemy and his tactics will greatly help you to avoid the tricks and the traps of his plans. It is strongly suggested that you go and read down to verse 12. God continues the encouragement to be diligent to continue in the faith until the end.

Rev 22:1  And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.

It is absolutely essential to begin to understand that a “pure and clean natural water supply” is a symbol of spiritual spoken words from the mouth of God, and these waters are able to save and preserve any human life, that will receive them in this mortal life. This supply of water words will continue throughout eternity also. God has a never-ending supply of knowledge that we can continue to learn from.

In the spiritual realm, God views spiritual “pure” water to be pure words. We can very clearly see where pure water comes from, by reading the above verse in Revelation 22:1. In this verse we see that God’s throne is where the Lamb (Jesus) is also seated right now. But this verse is describing the existence of God’s kingdom in eternity after the end of this present world. We know this because words written in preceding verses in chapter 21, God describes the creation of a new heaven and new earth that never existed before. Therefore, chapter 22 is in the coming new heaven and new earth. In chapter 22 we can still see where pure waters containing God’s spoken words, are still flowing from God’s eternal throne. This teaches us clearly that there is still a lot that God would want to say to us throughout eternity.

Perhaps you have heard stories told of man’s attempts to search for a fountain of youthful life. Whether true or not, they point us to a human’s desire of a life without death. It must be our Creator that has placed this desire in the hearts of mankind. We can clearly see that humans are held in bondage by Satan by our fear of this coming “death” (Hebrews 2:15). The fear of the unknown after death is certainly only eliminated by knowing God’s Words of Truth.

God desires us to know Him so that we can live eternally with Him. He has placed His word everywhere, trying to get everyone to search for Him and His words of life. We can read in Proverbs 4:20-22, to confirm God’s Words being “life” to all that find them. We also can read in Deuteronomy 8:3, where God says “man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God, does man live”. Wow, we are further confirming that the pure waters in Revelation 22 are the words of life being spoken from God’s throne.

But what other characteristics describe these pure Mem water words of life? We can read in Psalm 12:6 and Proverbs 30:5 that God’s words are “pure” words.  We can read in John 17:17 from the mouth of Jesus, that “God’s words are truth”. We also know from reading Numbers 23:19 that God is not a man that He should lie. And in Hebrew 6:18 we further confirm that it is absolutely impossible for God to lie. Therefore, we have established a firm foundation that God’s words are pure waters and this is because He cannot ever lie to us.

These concepts of pure waters introduce us to an antithesis truth. We can conclude that since there are pure waters of words of truth producing life coming from God, there must also be other types of watering words that are not from God, and potentially harmful, hurtful and even deadly. For example, the vast amounts of “ocean” water is “salt” based and will kill a person that drinks it. Moses in the book of Exodus 15:23 came upon a place called “Marah” (bitterness) that only had “bitter” poisonous water.  Therefore, we immediately learn there are two types of water representing two types of spoken words. The pure water gives us natural life and this can only be God’s Words. The tainted poisonous types of waters, must represents the enemy Satan’s spoken words that produce spiritual death.

Rev 21:8  But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.

Notice a list of some of the poisonous water types that God lists in Revelation 21:8 above.  Fearful words are poison intended to kill us. Unbelieving words are designed to lead you away from believing God’s truths.  Fowl tasting words will kill us.  Listening to the words of the murderer Satan will kill us. Words of deception that draw us to witchcraft, or idolatry will kill us. But the one that needs to be emphasized is lying words of deception will lead more people to hell than any others. It is essential to notice the ending of this verse. God is clearly warning every human that there is a second spiritual death, that is by far worse than the first natural death. God describes this death to be eternal existence in a lake of fire. That is just another way to describe “hell”.

We are learning of two realities of possible drinkable waters to give to others or to partake of for ourselves. For example, God’s Words will produce life everlasting and are good and pure drinkable words. We are also seeing how there are enemy of God words spoken by humans and/or demons controlling humans that will poison us to die two deaths. Being a liar will get us into hell. Believing the lies of the devil will also get us into hell. Either way we all have a lot of choices to make every day. We must choose between heaven or hell, life or death, good or evil, in what we are listening to, and what we are sharing with others. Deuteronomy 30:19 declares God has set the choice before us that we have the right to select our ending of life or death, and He strongly recommends that we choose the pure water life words. People everywhere are still ignoring the coming end of their life, when it will be too late to make this choice.

It is amazing how God’s created qualities and characteristics of “water” types, parallel the power of spiritually spoken words. We learn this conceptual fact from reading Romans 1:20, where God declares, “the hidden things of God are clearly seen, being revealed in things that were made, even His eternal power and godhead”. That is an amazing statement to memorize. This teaches us we can learn a vast amount of spiritual information by analyzing naturally created substances and objects, and “water” is one of the most dominant elements on our planet.  Let us continue with knowing “pure water” is a representation of God’s words, by reading some words spoken by Jesus in John:

John 4:7  There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water: Jesus saith unto her, Give me to drink. 

We can clearly see from this single verse and by reading the context, that Jesus was sitting at a natural well of water all alone, when a woman walks up and finds Him.  Jesus immediately asks the woman for a drink of water from the well. This gets her attention instantly, since she was a Samaritan and she thought Jesus was a Jew apparently from how He was dressed. She immediately questions Jesus about why He was speaking to her, because Jews did not normally do this with Samaritans. In fact, at the end of this story, even the disciples when they came to find Jesus were shocked at Him talking with a Samaritan. We will skip down to verse 10 next to discover the words of response from God in the flesh (Jn 1:14):

John 4:10  Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water

John 4:13  Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: 

John 4:14  But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life

Notice these very radical and exciting words spoken by Jesus the Messiah/Christ. The primary subject is about “Mem” water. But there are two kinds of water that are in parallel being spoken of. The first is natural water that was in the well. Jesus asked a Samaritan woman for a drink of natural water. This got her attention. Then Jesus shifts the conversation to a spiritual drinking water reality. Jesus told this woman, if you knew who you were speaking with, you would have asked me for a drink. Wow! This caused the woman to become even more curious, since Jesus had just asked her for a drink of natural water from the well, and He clearly had no physical water to give to her. Can we agree, there are two kinds of water in this conversation?

Did you observe how even the woman notices that there was a problem with their conversation?  She said to Jesus, that He had nothing to draw from the well with. But Jesus changes the subject back to spiritual water to say “whoever drinks this (natural) water will thirst again”.  “But the water that I offer will cause them to never thirst”. Jesus said very clearly that the water He offered was “living water”. Jesus in verse 14 declares something even more shocking by saying to her, “the water (mem) that I shall give to people, shall be in them a well of water springing up into everlasting life”. Jesus speaks like this again in John 7:

John 7:38  He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.

John 7:39  (But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified.)

These verses sound very familiar, don’t they?  Jesus again speaks of internal spiritual waters hidden inside the body of a human. Jesus used the hidden unseen “belly” as an internal symbolic reference to the unseen human spirit.  Jesus again is discussing “Living Water”. But in this context Jesus introduces another new perspective to what “water” is in the spiritual mind of God. God is revealing that to those that will believe on Jesus to be the Son of God, He will give them the Holy Spirit. And His Spirit living inside of us, will cause rivers to flow out of our belly (spirit).  These descriptions are of “Words” that will be spoken out from the unseen spiritual heart of a human.

Joh 6:63  It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life. 

We are learning about a spiritual connection that is astounding. Did you notice what Jesus just revealed? He just claimed, that His spoken words were both “Spirit” and “Life”. Isn’t this what Jesus was telling the woman at the well when He asked her for a drink? Remember that Jesus told her that He would give her a drink of “Living Water” that she could choose to drink, and would cause her to never thirst again? Wow! We are finding amazing parallels to natural water and God’s spiritual living water that He says are His spoken words. Do you see the connection to our verse in Revelation 22:1, where there was a continual flow of pure waters coming from the throne of God in eternity? Do you see how we can partake of this flow now in the natural realm by drinking His waters of life? What have we learned so far?

  1. Pure natural water is a symbol of God’s spoken Word.
  2. God’s spoken Words are from His Spirit and carries the power to join/plant His Word in the heart (spirit) of humans.
  3. We can and must partake of this water now, in order to receive it later in eternity.
  4. Receiving and drinking God’s pure water will produce life eternal in us now.
  5. Not receiving and partaking of this pure water now in this natural life, means we are dead spiritually.

If we analyze the concept of God’s created natural spoken words, we will discover that a human’s voice is a flow of sound waves that are produced by the vocal cords within humans. These sound waves travel and are moving through the atmosphere at over 700 miles per hour. These moving waves can travel from a speaker to a hearer/listener and be received into the ear to communicate a message. This is exactly what Jesus was doing with the woman at the well, and it was these two acts of Jesus speaking and the woman listening that He called giving her a drink.

 These sound waves, are very similar to God’s created water waves found in the letter “Mem” pictogram. We will continually see repeated patterns in the natural and spiritual realms. Both move in waves as long as there is a power or force causing them to occur. For water, this movement can be caused by the “wind”, which is the similar concept for human breath that exhales to produce sound waves. But God gives us some more information in this verse about our words:

Luk 6:45  A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil: for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh. 

Everywhere Jesus speaks of the human “heart”, He is referring to our spirit. All humans have a spirit inside our body. Jesus is revealing our heart is a container for our spoken words, just as our belly is a container for drinking natural “water”. This is why Jesus said in John 7:38, “Out of your belly shall flow rivers of living water”. Jesus was speaking of a human that had been filled with His Spirit and His Words and they were being released from their mouths by speaking them to others, to produce a new life in them. Here in Luke 6, Jesus is contrasting two types of fillers that can be contained in a human heart (spirit). These two spiritual realities are the 1) words of evil from the darkness (no light, no Word of God knowledge), versus 2) the forever good Holy Spirit of God that gives us His pure words of Light.

Can we all agree that the picture of the “Mem” as moving water represents Christ speaking God’s words for Eternal Life? These words were initial planting of seeds, spiritual enlightenment (Light), and His “living water” that were combined together in the spirits of every human that would listen and keep them as a most valuable treasure.

4. Washed with the (Mem) Water of the Word of God

Drinking natural water for physical life is absolutely a requirement. Without it we die physically. But the same concept is paralleled by God’s design within the spiritual realm. Consuming the Word of God for obtaining Eternal Life is just one of the primary benefits of God’s Spiritual Drink of Pure Water (Mem). There is only one spiritual water fountain of eternal life and it flows out of the spoken Word of God.  But we all should know that “pure water” is also essential for cleansing a human body, clothing, dishes, pots, pans, floors, walls, and etc.  If anyone attempts to wash their clothes in a muddy creek the clothing will never become clean. This same concept is true in the spiritual realm. But God’s pure Word has the built-in benefit for cleansing of the human soul and mind.

John 15:3  Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you.

As you can clearly read in this verse, Jesus is speaking to His disciples and informs them of the power of His spoken words to make them “clean”. Remember this was spoken before they could be saved, because Jesus had not yet risen from the dead. And obviously, Jesus is not speaking of a natural external cleaning that is taking place either. This means Jesus was again speaking metaphorically about spiritual truths. Jesus’ spoken words were never filled with lies, deceit or deception. This means His words were from God and were completely pure. This made them the ultimate cleaning and purification agent to change every human that would focus to hear them. It should be very clear from this statement that Jesus is declaring His words to be cleansing waters, to remove the unclean words from their human “minds” that were previously spoken to them while growing-up in the lost world.

By Jesus speaking directly with His disciples for over three years, they gained a lot of knowledge from the mouth of God. This means they were being 1) enlightened, 2) seeds were being planted, and 3) water was causing it all to begin to grow that we learned previously. But simultaneously God’s Words were doing something else also. You see, when we grow up in the world as a child, we are being heavily influenced by the words spoken from people that are being ruled by the “god of this world” (2 Cor 4:4). It is the devil that is able to work in everyone living in his kingdom of darkness. Our minds need to be renewed or refreshed (cleansed), and our ways of thinking need to be transformed. The only way this is possible is by us constantly drinking in the Pure Water of the Word of God.

God’s pure water words (Mem) have the power to cleanse our minds from the dirt and filth of this world.  Let us look at another verse to confirm this work of His Word:

Eph 5:25  Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; 

Eph 5:26  That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, 

In this context of these scriptures, we find God speaking to husbands and wives. But hidden in this discussion is the fact that God reveals a mystery that Jesus is the husband and the church is His bride. Jesus is described to be sanctifying and cleansing His bride with His spoken words. The Greek word G4487 is translated as “word” in verse 26, and it is the word “rhema”. This Greek word primarily means the spoken words of God. But do not forget these words have been written down in the Bible so that we can learn to speak them to give them a voice.

Notice that what was happening to the disciples of Jesus before they were saved, still continues with the entire church after our salvation and infilling of the Holy Spirit. Every human still has a defiled mind, filled with Satan’s lies, deceptions, distractions, useless information, and things that are designed to fight against us knowing God fully.  This is why everyone saved in the church is told to do this:

Rom 12:2  And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. 

It is interesting to know that when we are born again, we receive a brand-new spirit that never existed before. This newly created spirit is completely pure and clean. But the other two parts of the human triune composition are not made newly fresh. In fact, they are the exact same. The human flesh just needs to be imagined to be dead being crucified and this will place it into subjection of the new man inside. But the soul of man consisting of the 1) mind, 2) will, and 3) emotions must be renovated by the Word of God to be made clean and fully saved (James 1:21).

Like physical water consumed into the human stomach and is processed to renew life, and to become a part of the human body, God’s spiritual water of His Word does this in the unseen mind. Now just apply the natural water concepts to the spiritual water parallels of God’s words. God created a system of cleansing and eliminating impure, unclean words deposited in our minds, using the infinitely more powerful spoken Words of God. We could call this Heavenly or Spiritual mind washing. There are probably many people, that have heard the term being “brained washed”. A lot of people think this is automatically and evil and bad thing, and it can be that, in certain examples. But washing our minds with the “Pure Water of God’s Words” we are getting only His truth.

These God truths are doing things in us that no other words can produce in our minds.  When we consume God’s Words we are being “transformed”, this Greek word G3339, represents a “metamorphosis” type of process for changing caterpillars into butterflies.  That is amazing what we are learning about God’s Words of Power and what they are capable of doing if we choose to drink them in. As long as Satan can convince you to only be drinking his words, and ignoring the words of God, you are an easy prey to be consumed by him (1 Peter 5:8).

The Mem concepts of water being used as a cleansing agent, is very powerful and necessary. Only people that drink-in the Word of God daily will become less likely to be deceived. The more Words of God we drink, the more words of “Life” we make a part of us. This knowledge is what greatly helps us to recognize the tricks, traps, lies and deception of the devil.

Every human mind on the earth is in desperate need of cleansing from the impurities of the devil. The corruption of the world has been joined into every part of our culture. No one can watch a movie, a television show, an internet video, or even the news and not have their minds corrupted by some demonic lies to influence and guide them into the darkness and away from the light of God’s Truth. The deception in every public school system and higher education colleges and universities are greatly affecting the minds of almost all children in varying degrees of perverseness.

The only way to eliminate this word and image filth that is being poured out to be consumed by people today, is to immerse yourself under the flow of God’s words. Think of God’s spoken words as being like a faucet that when turned on is pouring out pure cleansing waters. Think of the human mind as being a cup of dirty water. Since we cannot literally pour out our memories and thoughts to start with a new mind, we must approach the cleansing of the unclean mind differently.  These unclean words in our minds, can only be washed out by pouring more clean words into our minds than we are receiving of the unclean. By focusing upon the clean words of God, our old ways of thinking will be replaced by the new ways of God word.

Try this experiment at home. Take a cup filled with muddy waters. This is clearly not anything that a normal human would want to drink. But how do you make it drinkable without pouring it all out, cleaning the cup, and starting over with only clean water. The solution is to set the cup under a full flow of pure water. Notice what happens to the cup of muddy water? The muddy waters are running out of the overflow of the combined clean and muddy water. But eventually the water is practically pure, because of the continual flow of good and no more additional dirty. The water in the cup has gone from undrinkable filth to good and purer water to consume. This should help everyone know how to clean up their mind with the Word of God. How much time do you spend drinking the words of God versus drinking the dirt of your enemy? Let us now move to a new subject.

5. The Spiritual Cleansing Power of Jesus Water and Blood from Sin

We could write books and books of information on the concepts hidden in one letter Mem. This section will be only a quick overview of this topic due to the potential overwhelming length of this Bible lesson. We are about to enter into topics that we have seen before on the surface to find there is so much more that God speaks about it in His Word.  We will briefly review an event that happened to a “leper” man in the book of Mark, chapter 1:

Mar 1:40  And there came a leper to him, beseeching him, and kneeling down to him, and saying unto him, If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.

Mar 1:41  And Jesus, moved with compassion, put forth his hand, and touched him, and saith unto him, I will; be thou clean.

As we can see there was a leper man that came to Jesus believing that He could help him, if it was His will to do so. This is where many humans are today in their faith. They all know God is powerful enough to do anything for them to help them in their situation, but “Will He?”. This leper found out very quickly that God is always very compassionate and He is willing to save anyone. This man was saved from a slow and painful death. It was a physical death sentence, found in the process of leprosy. It was completely a hopeless situation. But not with God!

The natural symbolism of physical “leprosy”, is a representation of spiritual sin. The external death and decay of the human being a leper was even more demeaning, because the law forced the man to walk about screaming “unclean”. This was done to warn others to not come near him, and also die. Leprosy was a highly contagious disease and almost always resulted in “death”. This makes this story even more amazing. By Jesus reaching out and touching this man’s body, this man knew Jesus was either crazy and had a death wish, or He was answering His question that it was His will to heal Him. Most believe it was the answering and removing the man’s doubts to receive his healing.

But notice how this man worded his request. He knew that he was unclean (dirty, sinful) and he said Jesus you can make me clean! Wow, in doing this he is calling Jesus the Pure Water of Life that cleans all sin, and disease.  That is a pretty amazing connection to Jesus being the ultimate fulfillment of the Mem letter prophecy. What we are learning is very profound. There is a direct connection between physical leprosy and spiritual sin. Leprosy would cause natural death and spiritual sin causes spiritual death.

Both are curable with two realities of words which represents water as we have learned earlier. Jesus answered the leper’s question with the words “I will”, and then further spoke more spiritual water saying “Be clean” and the man was made clean. Do you remember the paralyzed man that was let down from the roof into the room where Jesus was preaching? This story occurs in Matthew 9:1-8. In this real event Jesus connects the forgiveness of sins to be no different than the healing of paralysis.

Jesus looked at the paralyzed man and said “Your sins be forgiven”. The religious men in the house, thought in their “minds”, “This man blasphemes. No man can forgive sin, only God”. It is very unfortunate that they knew not this man Jesus was God in the flesh. Jesus perceiving their thoughts said to them “Which is easier? To say your sins be forgiven or to say rise and walk”. With these words God was making a connection that human sin was the source cause for this man’s paralysis. But Jesus then said, “That you might know the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sin, Rise take up your bed and walk”. The man was healed when he believed and obeyed what Jesus had said to him.

We have quickly learned a basic concept of becoming clean from both sin and sickness is found in the process of receiving the Word of God (Mem water). God’s word received by faith in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus will causing anyone that will receive it and confess Him as Lord to be saved. The Greek word translated as “saved” is “sozo”. This word is all encompassing, being spiritual, and physical salvation. We are not able to fully teach this concept today, but we will end this section by reminding everyone that Jesus is named the Word of God in Revelation 19:13.  We also know in John 1:1 “the Word was in the beginning, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”. Then in John 1:14 we receive the revelation that “The Word became flesh and tabernacled with humans”.  Relate this information to the reality we are learning the God’s Words are His Waters of Life and Cleansing and we are beginning to learn new things that are incredibly applicable to our lives being saved, made new, and our minds cleansed and transformed.

Let us move to a new subject about the works of Jesus found in the Gospels next.

6. Water Waves Created with God’s Voice Sound Waves

We have already been introduced to this concept of natural Mem water and its waves, being a representation of spoken words that proceed from the mouth of God. We are further beginning to see that these spoken words are also capable of saving us from spiritual death. We additionally saw in the Gospels that Jesus spoke words to cast out devils and to heal people. We have also seen where these Words have the power to cleanse our minds from worldly influencing spiritual words being contributed by Satan through people. Now we are going to further explore and confirm that God’s naturally created waters, are a pattern of God’s spoken words, in more depth. What we can see from the picture of the Mem waves of water, is a strong resemblance to them being like sound waves. Let us allow God to reveal this concept to you from His Word.

We are going to confirm these parallel concepts more directly with scriptures. It is always essential for every word of truth to be established from the mouth of two or three witnesses in the Word of God.

Rev 1:13  And in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle. 

Rev 1:14  His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire; 

Rev 1:15  And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters.

Here are three verses describing the Lord Jesus in the Book of Revelation. In verse 13 we are told that someone was standing in the middle of the seven churches and He is like the Son of Man/Adam. This can only be Jesus the head of the church body. We are not going to go through every description, but rather we are going to focus upon the last statement in verse 15. In this statement, Jesus is described to have a voice as the sound of many waters. Wow, what is this describing? Let us first just focus upon the obvious fact:

  1. The sounds of the words from the mouth of God, are being compared directly to the sounds of many waters.

As you can tell, we are studying about the concept of the ancient Hebrew letter pictogram as it represents natural waters like a large sea. Now think about the basics of natural water waves and what voice sound waves are. The similarities of these two created realities are amazingly similar patterns of the same exact reality. In fact, the view of the Mem pictogram could very easily represent the picture of “sound waves”. Here is a picture of sound waves that will be included next:

Do you see any similarities between waves of water and sound? It should be obvious! But God further confirms this in His Word also. God never ceases to amaze us with all of the intelligent hidden information found in His Word.  Read again Revelation 1:15. This verse ended with “His voice as the sound of many waters”. Then look at the Greek words for voice and sound.  You will notice this is the same exact word G5456 “phone”.  This is the word we get our “telephone” or “smart phone” from. What do these devices do? They take your voice and your voice sound waves, and transports them into radio frequency waves that move your voice to a receiver phone that can answer. Once connected, the two people are able to have a conversation like they were standing next to each other. All of this is a an amazing parallel to the movement of water waves.

God has established a remarkable direct connection of sound waves and water waves, using one Greek word “phone”. From the mouth of God comes sound waves and this voice sound is directly connected to be like water waves that make sounds. If you look up the Greek word “phone” you will find this word is translated as mostly “voice”, or “voices” 131 times. But it is also translated as “sound” and even “noise” in other verses. By God selecting to use the same word is a fact that water waves make sounds the same as voice waves. We are discovering how these two realities were specially designed to teach us a lot of hidden truths that we have potentially never seen before. Here is another connection where we can see this confirmation:

Mat 3:17  And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. 

This verse occurs after Jesus was baptized in the Jordan river by John. Jesus had just come up out of the “water”, and the Spirit of God had just descended upon Jesus as a dove, and then God speaks.  Here this verse says “a “voice” (Greek phone) was heard from heaven saying “This is my beloved Son”. Wow, talk about a long-distance phone call, this was one of the longest in human history. But the concept came forth and reveals that even the Spirit of God the Father in Heaven can produce natural sound waves that can be heard by natural humans.

Num 14:27  How long shall I bear with this evil congregation, which murmur against me? I have heard the murmurings of the children of Israel, which they murmur against me.

God confirms to us that while He sits in heaven, He is able to hear everything that we speak on the earth. These children of Israel were murmuring against God at least 10 times. God judged righteously and said these people will not enter into my promised land. What we are learning is about a vastly profound heavenly connection. God’s spoken sound waves can come to us from heaven, and we are able to hear Him in our natural ear. And His ears are more than capable of hearing everything we say even when we think nothing of it. Sound waves appear to be a cross-over way of communicating between two realms of existence, being natural and spiritual.

Most will be able to see this connection to our letter Mem water pictogram. The concept of moving waters is duplicated in the movement of sound. Especially in direct relationship to God sending His Word to humans on the earth. But the title of this section was about God speaking words and His voice sound waves becoming creation. This occurs over and over in the Bible. We first see this in Genesis 1. 10 times in these verses it is written “And God said”. Then God lists what He said, and the manifestation of those words suddenly appeared in the natural realm. God begins with speaking “Light Be”, and then “Light Was”. This is the basic concept of how creation took place by God’s design and purpose.

What we learn from this is God spoke sound waves with His voice and these sound waves became what we can physically see, taste, touch, smell and hear around us. We will eventually discover that everything that was created came into physical existence this way. Every object that you can see is moving. Every object that you can see has a frequency and a vibration of movement. This can describe sound waves almost precisely. Sound waves have frequencies and movement and these God created frequencies are still in existence in His creations. We can further confirm creation was made from the Word of God by understanding the fact that God’s Word is powerful:

Heb 1:3  Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high; 

Hopefully we can understand in this verse and by reading Genesis 1, that God created physical realities with His spoken Word, and this Word contained His power. Then we notice this word of His power is still holding everything together. This teaches us that sound waves are at the rudimentary level of all of creation.

Therefore, we have just learned that the elements of every created natural substance have a measure of the power of God’s word in them, and it is this power that is still holding them together (Heb 1:3). Humans have learned in the last 100 years to release this hidden power by splitting these atoms. These nuclear devices have become the world’s most destructive forces. But it confirms what the Bible teaches us is precisely correct.

God’s word is so amazing, and if this does not excite us to want to learn more about Him, then we are probably spiritually dead. Let us move to a new topic of Mem next.

7. A God’s Real-Life NOW Application of the MEM – Calming Life’s Storms

The essential fundamental spiritual concept of the letter Mem water picture, is “spoken words”.  There are a number of applications that are found in this letter, that can be used for real-life situations. We have been primarily focused upon the concept of “Good” God Mem Waters for life and cleansing. These pure waters represent the Words of God!  But there are very negative types of waters and waves that need to be addressed further. This is because all Christians have a spiritual enemy named Satan. He is an adversary that had illegally taken over the “god” role of this planet, until Jesus came into the world to take back this authority. Once taken away from Satan, Jesus delegated His Kingdom authority to everyone in the church (Mat 28:18-19).

We will begin this section of applying the Mem, with another confirmation review that water is a type of spoken word.

Pro 18:4  The words of a man’s mouth are as deep waters, and the wellspring of wisdom as a flowing brook.

Did you notice what God reveals about human spoken words again? This was exactly what we saw in the Revelation 1 description of Jesus’ spoken words.  The word translated as “waters” in this verse is our “mayim” Hebrew word representing the spelling of the “Mem” letter in word form. God directly connects spoken words to represent a likeness of physical “deep waters”. The physical deep waters produce waves, and spoken words produce sound waves. The parallels are incredible. There are several other verses in the Bible like this one, but for the sake of time we will only use limited verses in this section to confirm a human’s words are like water to God. However, we have seen other confirmations when we studied the spoken words of Jesus earlier to be like living waters.

Now notice another type of water that we were also introduced to earlier:

Psa 69:2  I sink in deep mire, where there is no standing: I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow me.

The Hebrew word translated as “mire” is literally describing “muddy” waters. That description of waters is NOT positive for human consumption to produce life. In fact, it appears to show these waters are designed to be used for death. Uh oh! Confirm this by observing the writer follows by saying, “deep” waters are about to cover me. Remember the Hebrew word “waters” is our spelled “Mem” letter Mayim.  We can read in this verse the writer is being overcome by two kinds of waters called muddy, and deep. But these are not natural waters. In order to understand verse 2, we need to first understand what verse 1 said:

Psa 69:1  Save me, O God; for the waters are come in unto my soul.

David the writer of this Psalm is crying out to God for salvation from the deep and dirty waters mentioned in verse 2. But the area of attack is not directed at his body, or his physical lungs trying to drown him dead. No, this attack is spiritual in nature. We know this by God’s word mentioning waters are flowing to “come” unto David’s soul. The soul of man is comprised of their “mind”, “will” and “emotions”. This layer of humans is connected with the spirit. Therefore, we are learning this attack is of a spiritual nature.

Please notice the Hebrew word H935 translated as “come” in verse 1. This word is defined as, “to enter in to fill a void”. Now notice the waters in these verses are coming to fill an empty void. What exactly is the symbolic empty void that is attempting to be filled with symbolic dirty waters? We learned this area is found in the human soul. Then, remember the birth of every human from the first Adam? Every human enters the world with a mind that is an empty vessel at birth. A newborn child, has no knowledge, or ability to ever try to take care of themselves. God created mothers with the loving and caring gift for feeding and caring for their child with milk. The mother has a built-in feeding system containing the ability to nourish their new child. These loving mothers are the reason why any of us exist today. God designed every new human mind with a need to be filled with truth, and not garbage like we see being described in this Psalm. Good fathers and mothers perform this task of filling their children’s’ minds.

Therefore, in Psalm 69:1 we can see where someone is attempting to overwhelm David’s mind with waters (words) that he needs God to save him from. What does the modern massive news media attempt to do with their words today? They are attempting to flood our minds, with agenda motivated false words that produce “fears”. These resulting negative emotions then allow other powers to control your actions and words if you agree with what they have spoken. This is describing exactly what David is experiencing.

This type of warfare taking place in the life of David, is utilizing the spiritual weapon of symbolic water.  This is a spiritual battle using the Mem type of “words”. David is crying out to the LORD because He is able to save him from these deep polluted waters that are desiring to kill him. What do deep polluted waters represent in the spiritual realm? These deep polluted waters represent massive numbers of untrue, unclean and impure spoken words mixed with a little pure truth. These types of waters are representations of any words originating from the devil.

Only God’s Words are completely pure without any possibility of filth. Therefore, unclean words represent words of distraction, deceit, untruths, deception, confusion, misdirection, or any other negative words that did not come from the Creator God! Also, not only do the words matter, but the motivation that caused them to erupt externally is a major contributor. If evil words come forth, it could be because of greed, hatred, revenge, or hurt. The number of contributing factors producing unclean words, are too large to mention them all. Just know for sure that any words spoken by God is because of His good plans and love motivations to help us.

The concept of “deep” waters, is a representation of massive amounts of “words” sent upon you to overwhelm you and to either carry you away from knowing God’s pure watering words, or to overflow you to get you to give up on God. Therefore, we are seeing how even God’s words can be diluted or polluted to kill us by overwhelming us to not hear correctly from Him (Mk 7:13). Let us look at an example of how Jesus dealt with situations like this in the Gospels.

There are multiple accounts of Jesus working with water that are significant. One of the major accounts was when He was sleeping in one of the big fishing boats when a large storm had risen against them to threaten their crossing of the sea. Read these verses very carefully:

Mark 4:35  And the same day, when the even was come, he saith unto them, Let us pass over unto the other side.

Mark 4:36  And when they had sent away the multitude, they took him even as he was in the ship. And there were also with him other little ships. 

Mark 4:37  And there arose a great storm of wind, and the waves beat into the ship, so that it was now full

Mark 4:38  And he was in the hinder part of the ship, asleep on a pillow: and they awake him, and say unto him, Master, carest thou not that we perish? 

Mark 4:39  And he arose, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm

Mar 4:40  And he said unto them, Why are ye so fearful? how is it that ye have no faith? 

Mark 4:41  And they feared exceedingly, and said one to another, What manner of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him? 

This is a very informative real account of one “water” event in the physical life of Jesus living on the earth in mortal flesh. First, notice in this story that Jesus was never in fear! He knew that He was only scheduled to die on a cross (Tav). Therefore, nothing could happen to Him before that timed event. Jesus was in complete “faith” enough to go to sleep and rest. This is very similar to when “Peter” was placed into prison in the book of Acts. He was going to be killed by the Roman soldiers the next morning, and he too was fast asleep, not worried about it in the least. Peter must have learned this action of faith from Jesus in this boat full of water.

Notice that the disciples were in a panic. Several of them were professional fishermen, and had no doubt been through sudden night storms before. They completely believed this one storm was so bad that they were all about to die. Then they woke Jesus up and asked Him a dumb question. “Jesus, don’t you care?”. Of course, Jesus cared. The disciples could have asked a much better faith question, but letting fear dominate them they were about to get rebuked after Jesus dealt with their problem.

Nevertheless, Jesus arose and first “rebuked” the wind. Wow, let us stop right there and analyze this. The Greek word G2006 translated as “rebuke” can also be defined as someone giving a command to “forbid” something from starting, or continuing. This was a confirmation to us all, that Jesus possessed great authority even before He died on a cross. It is also our first indication that there was something that needed to be stopped that was coming against them to kill them. Wow! Jesus countered this plan of destruction with His spoken words that represent waters flowing from His mouth.

We can see how Jesus used His authority implemented with sound waves to cause the calm, by His choosing to speak to an unseen force of moving air, forbidding it to continue as the cause of the chaos. It is obvious that Jesus knew it was the wind that was the root cause of the problem. Ok, we just made another direct connection to the definition of the “Mem”. The “Mem” picture of a raging sea also contains the meaning of a state of “chaos”. This is the negative of the great potential of good usages for “water”. “Chaos” is the opposite of “Peace” which Jesus is calling for. Wow, this is really good. Let us look at a different account of Jesus rebuking something to cause a different kind of peace:

Mark 1:25  And Jesus rebuked him, saying, Hold thy peace, and come out of him.

Notice in this context that Jesus is speaking sound waves again to an unclean spirit, that was inside of a human man. This demon was speaking to Jesus questioning His authority. But Jesus ignores the devil’s words and rebuked him by saying, “Hold your peace”. That was just a nicer way of saying “SHUT UP”. Wow, again! Notice the implied meanings here in this example, to when Jesus was seen rebuking the storm. The first priority is for us to notice that both situations were examples of Jesus rebuking the source cause of a chaos situation, in order to cause “peace” (calm, silence). But one was a silencing of a devil in a man, and one was the calming of a “wind”. Were these different things or are they actually the same termination of speaking spirits that were both causing the identical patterns of “chaos”?

The Greek word translated as “wind” can also mean a “breath of air”. Anyone speaking words from their mouth is exhaling air. It is interesting to understand that the demon possessed man was using the man’s own vocal cords and lungs to produce the words that were spoken to Jesus. Do you see the parallels to the storm? Therefore, the cause of the storm winds could be from the mouth of God, an angel, a human, or the devil. These are the only speaking spirituals beings that were created by God. But we know this storm wind was not being caused by God, the Father of Jesus. If the storm winds were caused by God, then this would have been Jesus the Son of God working against His own Father God, and that is impossible since Jesus said He could do nothing of himself, and only did what He saw His Father do (Jn 5:19).  

Therefore, this breath of storm wind had to come from another spiritual source. Some may try to say this was just a bad natural weather event, but the reaction of the professional fishermen, seem to indicate this was nothing like a storm that they had ever seen. Please go back and read the story of Job in chapter 1 to help us confirm what is being taught here. God told Satan in chapter 1, that Job was in his power. The term “power” is the Hebrew letter “Yod” meaning hand. This simply meant Job was under Satan’s authority to do what he desired. However, God placed limitations upon the level of destructions.

However, in verse 19 of chapter 1 of the book of Job, we find where a very strong wind came from the wilderness to kill Job’s children that were in a house. This Hebrew word H7307 translated as “wind” can also mean a “breath”.  Therefore, this powerful wind also had to be caused by Satan, since it was not God that was causing it in heaven. God is in the process of defending Job and speaking well of him, and it was only Satan that was present to accuse Job. What we are learning are the parallels to what happened to Job, and what was happening to Jesus, who was also spoken well of by God in heaven, are both from the same causing source.

We need to believe that both storms were caused by Satan. We know from John 10:10 that whatever happens that causes “death”, “loss”, or “destruction” is from the thief, a name for Satan. And Jesus said in the same verse that He only came to give us life. Therefore, rebuking the wind to preserve “life” came from God in the flesh, and He accomplished this by rebuking the devil’s attempt to kill them all and end the life of Messiah, and His disciples.

Then notice the second thing that happened. Jesus looked at the waves of the sea (Mem) and told them to “Be Still and to be filled with Peace”. That is interesting application for our study. It sounds like when David was seeking God to still the waters that were trying to overwhelm and fill his soul. Do you see the parallels? Everything that happens to Jesus in the Gospels is designed by God to teach us something that we need to apply to our lives in some way (1 Cor 11:1, Eph 5:1).  

This sea calming, is Jesus sending a message with His command (Mem spoken word sound waves) to cause the wind to stop and the waves to be eliminated. Pay attention that the second demon silencing example, was Jesus doing the exact same things that He had done to the natural water waves. Jesus spoke in this situation to silence the demon spirit’s (breath, wind) voice producing sound waves, and that silencing would bring peace to the soul of the tormented human. But the parallels to Jesus telling the unclean spirit to “Hold its peace” are remarkable.

Let us also remember that it was the Word of God that created this “sea” body of water. This would indicate to us if God’s words could create it, He could still speak to change it, or even calm it instantly.

Now finally notice the problem that Jesus focused upon after calming the storm. Jesus turned to the disciples and said, “Why are you so fearful? How is it that you have no faith”. This was a clear divine disappointment and rebuke for their lack of action to do what He had just done. Jesus was claiming that they could have had faith instead of fear and they could have spoken to rebuke the situation and it would have obeyed them.

Do you recall that Jesus had given to His disciples the authority to cast out devils and to heal the sick, the same that He did? We can read about this authority being given to the 12 in Luke 9, and 70 others were given the same authority in Luke 10. Therefore, by the disciples seeing how Jesus operated in authority and them casting out demons personally, they had to have been introduced to knowing what to do.

It does not matter who’s mouth the rebuke of God’s word comes from, because the Word of God has the same power behind it, if the speaker has faith. Don’t believe me? This is what Jesus said in John 14:12. Also Jesus said this to His disciples after He spoke and cursed a fig tree, and it died:

Mat 21:21  Jesus answered and said unto them, Verily I say unto you, If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done.

Jesus just taught His disciples that what He was doing by speaking with authority to a gale, waves, trees, they could also do the same. Why is this important to our subject of an ancient Hebrew letter picture of waves? This is because “waves” of water can be symbolic of evil words of the enemy of God, that produce “chaos”, “disorder”, “confusion” in the human life. The only answer to these attacks is for humans to counter these attempts to destroy them with words of authority that cause the source of opposition to become silent which allows the “peace” of God to again rule in our lives.

Ok, we need to see what we have learned so far, and make sure we understand it. The overwhelming storm waves were initiated by Satan, to cause the death of Jesus and His disciples. Jesus had already said “Let us go to the other side”. By declaring His faith to make it to the other side safely, He could rest in His spoken words. He then went to sleep expecting to arrive at any moment and He was unconcerned about any storm while resting peacefully, despite the coming overwhelming circumstances.

However, any waves are never present without cause, intentional, or otherwise.  Someone, or something had to cause the waves. In this case of the sea storm, there were intensely strong winds that were causing the massive waves. We can still see the direct parallels to our verses of David in Psalm 69. Jesus’ solution in the Mark 4 sea example is to rebuke the “winds” first. Jesus was wise enough to know that dealing with the root cause is always the primary answer.  Again, we see the solution in this case is for someone to speak words with their voice to produce sound waves that would cancel and still the wind causing the waves of the sea. We saw this happen again when Jesus rebuked the demon and told him to hold his peace.

These are amazingly confirmed in the Bible. The Hebrew word H1826 is the word “damam”.  It is spelled “Dalet” + “Mem” + “Mem”. This is not a coincidence. This word and it’s spelling is a confirmation of what we have just learned in this section on how to bring about silence. We will start our confirmation with the ancient Hebrew “Dalet” letter first:

Psa 141:3  Set a watch, O LORD, before my mouth; keep the door of my lips. 

If we read in this verse, we will be able to confirm that our human mouth is a “door”. Perhaps you recall that the “Dalet” is a picture of a tent door. Our human bodies are the temporary tent tabernacle of the Holy Spirit and our mouth is the door to our internal spirit location. I have heard of more than one testimony of people that when they died physically, their spirit exited their mouth and stood up above their lifeless body to watch the doctor’s operation taking place. When they were brought back into their bodies, they came back inside by sliding inside of their mouth to fill it like a hand, slides into a glove.

That is very important to understand. We have the freewill choice to determine what we allow to enter this mouth door of our body to be consumed internally. But we also have the freewill choice to allow or stop what goes out of our mouth in spoken words with God’s help. We just read about one example of this in Psalm 141:3, when a man asks the Lord to help him guard his mouth. Never forget that when your voice is released, it can never be taken back. Jesus literally said in Matthew 12:26, that we will give an account for every idle word that we speak in the day of judgment. This literally means your naturally spoken words are able to be recalled by God in the spiritual realm later.

But this is where it gets exceedingly more interesting. Remember our Hebrew word for silence is a mouth door (Dalet) with two Mem waves of water. This appears to be saying that one mouth is speaking spoken words against another set of words that were already spoken from a different source. This indicates these words being spoken by this door mouth are being directed at words that were already spoken by an unknown or unnamed speaker. Wow, how many are paying attention? This word that has a mouth that is releasing words in expressed sound waves directed at another set of sound waves is translated as “silence”. This word can also mean to bring calm peace. Do you see how this word is a picture of what we just saw in the silencing of the storm and the demon’s voice?

The parallels are amazing! Do you understand the concept of noise cancelling headphones?  They were designed by a man that discovered, if you reverse the sound waves being produced, that they will cancel out the sound waves that are being heard by the human without the headphones. This is very profound because this is exactly what Jesus was doing in both examples. Jesus in both cases of noise and disturbance being produced, spoke peace to it. In every case example the reality of a flat line realm of silence was the resulting end.

What have we learned? We have learned if the world is bringing you a storm to kill, steal or destroy you, you better open your mouth and speak to it, saying the opposite. For example, if you get a doctor’s report (voice) containing the words “You have cancer and only have a few months to live”, it is time to put the Word of God in your mouth every moment of every day saying “I will live and not die, and declare the works of the Lord” (Ps 118:17). If you are feeling extremely sick, ill or having no strength to get out of bed”, it is a good time to quote God’s word back at your situation.  Say “No, you don’t in my body”, God has said “Let the weak say I’m strong”. I speak and say “I am strong in the LORD and in the power of His might”.

Your spoken words of God, can change your situation from death to life, from defeat to victory, and from chaos to peace. Praise the LORD! We will end this section with this message of how Jesus defeated the devil during His temptation. We learned at the beginning of this lesson that Jesus was tempted by the devil for 40 days in the wilderness. Forty is the gematria value of the “Mem”. This occurred directly after He was baptized in Mem waters of the Jordan. So, we are continuing to travel the path of waters and words. 

The temptation of Jesus was Satan coming to Him with words. Notice the temptation of Jesus was a three-wave attack. We can see with each wave of temptation Jesus’ response was to quote God’s Word saying “It is written”.  So Jesus canceled the wave of Satan with the wave of God’s words. Wow, this occurred three times and the devil gave up, went away, and the devil’s plan of attack bringing temptation to sin ended. Wow! This sounds really important based upon what we have been learning.

Heb 4:12  For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

God changed this analogy in this verse about words. It is still words, and waters, but now it is also a sword. This is the Hebrew letter “Zayin”. The letter “Zayin” is primarily a steel farming instrument, but it is also representative of any “steel” instrument like a sword. For example, a sword is a “Zayin” wartime battle instrument to defeat an enemy. But a “Zayin” plow is a peacetime seed sowing instrument. Both of these represent “words” of God. We must conclude that we should speak God’s words in both times of our lives, war or peace.  But when we put the sword of God’s word in out mouth, this means we are in a spiritual battle or war. This war is not with physical weapons or fleshly enemies, but it is fought against spiritual enemies with spoken “words”. We fight this good fight with God’s armor and one piece of this ensemble, is the Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God!

8. The Mem Water – CONCLUSION

Joh 4:13  Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again:
Joh 4:14  But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.

Jesus speaking to the woman at the well said, “Whosoever drinks of the water that I give, will never thirst again”. Wow, what an amazing promise! Of course, Jesus is speaking spiritually and not naturally. The water that was being offered to everyone, is His spoken and written words! These words are powerful enough to do things most Christians have not yet imagined. The answer to every problem of life, is only found in the Word of God.

We have learned at least two functions for the use of pure water.  One primary use is for internal consumption to produce and maintain life. The second is for external usage, created to cleanse. The first becomes a part of our internal spiritual life, and the second is used by God to cause a display of purity to others. There are also 3 realms where water of the word is evident. The first is the spirit of every human. By accepting the Word of God into our heart and confessing Jesus as Lord, we are born-again spiritually. This makes our spirit a new creation and one with the Spirit of God. Therefore, every real saved Christian, is completely pure in their spirit.

But there is a second internal realm called the soul, that is still filled with very unclean waters of worldly teachings and doctrines of devils. These are impure words that have been corrupted by Satan as a way of keeping humans from knowing God’s Words of life. This realm of the soul must be cleansed daily and continually with the pure water of the Word of God to renew our minds. Everyday living life in the world, we are hearing and seeing things that are trying to drive us away from God. This is the main reason why we need to continue drinking in God’s Word. But there are engrained things that we have experienced in our lives from our past that must also be cleaned away. The Word of God does this for us in our minds, and memories if we will allow Him to work.

The third realm of human existence is the external view of each human. This is the parts of life, where people see what we say, what we do and how we act. This realm of existence can only be changed by the first cleansing of the two internal realms in the order of mention, spirit first and soul second. The Word of God is the living pure water that can and will work to make us like Christ, if we will cooperate with God and receive Him.

Are you thirsty for more pure watering words of the knowledge of God and His Son Jesus Christ?  God gives this amazing offer to anyone and if you have never drunk from this water, then you do not know what you are missing:

Isaiah 55:1  “Listen! Whoever is thirsty, come to the water! Whoever has no money can come, buy, and eat! Come, buy wine and milk. You don’t have to pay; it’s free! (GW)

We are learning in this lesson, that pure water was created by God to teach us of our total dependence upon drinking in His Word, to obtain eternal spiritual life. God provides us in this verse an incredible offer. God begins the invitation with seeking for those that are “thirsty” to know Him. Are you thirsty every day to know Him better than you did yesterday? God continues the invitation by directing us to come to His Mem waters to satisfy our thirsts. He says we can come and eat, and drink with Him and it will cost us nothing. God is offering you eternal life for free.

When we are not physically asleep in the natural realm, we can all be thirsty frequently. So it is, in the spiritual unseen realm also. But the majority of the unsaved world are ignoring this thirst as normal, primarily because they are asleep spiritually (Eph 5:14). When someone realizes this, and awaken from their spiritual sleep, they are driven by their spirit to thirst for a cool refreshing drink of water from the Word of God.  But even saved Christians can become dry or hardened in their heart so that God’s word is unable to water the “seed” (Nun) of salvation that He has attempted to save them with (Mat 13:21). This is because these humans have become dull of knowing their own spiritual unseen part of them, and they are easily torn away from their beliefs in Jesus because of their trials, tests and persecutions that the enemy can bring. Without drinking the fresh pure watering Word of God continually, we are dominated with a past dry desert wilderness sensation, and do not understand what we are fully missing, that God desires to give us.

Notice God is offering us His food, water, milk, and wine, in Isaiah 55. All of these are symbolic types of the Word of God. God said in 1 Peter 2:2 to desire the “pure water” of God’s Word as newborn children desire milk. God’s spiritual food is a type of physical bread, like the daily manna that He sent Israel in the wilderness. Natural bread is made by combining grains that are ground into flour and mixing this with water. Then Jesus said in Matthew 4:4 that man cannot live upon bread alone but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.  In Acts 2:13 on the day of Pentecost, the disciples were acting strangely and speaking in new tongues, and the people outside accused them of being full of new wine. In these verses most can easily see the connections of speaking words from God to the symbolic substances of water, bread, milk and wine. We will only review one other verse to confirm:

Amo 8:11  Behold, the days come, saith the Lord GOD, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD: 

Here is a problem that is coming upon the world. There will be a time when God sends a famine upon the earth. But as you can see this is not a lack of bread and water, but rather a coming time when the Word of God will not be available to be heard. This is because the church will be caught up away from this world directly before the tribulation begins. What we can certainly confirm that bread, and water represent figuratively the Word of God. We will end this lesson with a verse describing the beginning of God’s amazing future new pure world that we saw earlier:

Rev 22:1  And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. 

As we can see in the last chapter of the Bible, God has a plan to continue to supply His saved people with His pure waters (Words) of life. These words of God will continually flow out of His mouth and will produce a river that will satisfy our thirst to know more about Him and His ways. This is an amazing thought to consider. God has so much knowledge, understanding and wisdom that it won’t matter how long we will stand before Him to hear His words, there will not end the amount that He has to give us. Wow!

Hopefully this lesson was a great blessing to you and helped you to see and know God better.  God’s Word is the most amazing book that I have ever encountered. I have noticed that there appears to be a never-ending supply of information, knowledge and application to us, just in this one limited big book, that we call the Holy Bible. This book as only around 750,000 to 800,000 words depending upon the translations. It has only around 31,000 verses.  It has around 1000 chapters. It was divided into only 66 books written by around 40 different authors over the course of around 1500 years of human time. Yet with this large limited book is found an infinite number of truths and words of wisdoms written to help us learn about who Jesus is and who we are in Him.

Then notice what God says in John 21:25. God says in this verse, “that there are many other things that Jesus did, that if written the world could not contain the books”.  That is the confirmation to show us how limited we are in knowing much about Him and what He is able to share with us throughout eternity. This simply means when we enter into His presence we will never be bored or thirsty.

God bless you immensely with the Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation in the knowledge of Him that loves us and gave His life for us. Thank you for your prayers. Thank you for leaving your comments. Thank you for sharing these lessons with your friends and family to help us spread the good news of the LORD Jesus Christ. Amen.

Intro Alef Beyt-1 2 Gimel Dalet Hey Vav Zayin Chet Tet Yod Kaf Lamed Mem 1 2 Nun Samekh Ayin Pey Tsade Qof Resh Shin TavAlef-Beyt Chart (Series updated as LORD directs and permits)

Are You Saved? Do you Know Jesus? Life is Short! Jesus wants to Know You! Please come and get to Know Him!

Jesus in the Ancient Hebrew Alphabet Part 1 – Introduction

I believe we can find Jesus in every letter of the ancient Hebrew alphabet. This belief is founded upon the fact that Jesus in the Book of Revelation, claimed to be the Alpha and the Omega, at least four times. We explored this in the last lesson that was published when discussing the name of Jehovah is comprised of 3 letters used 4 times to say in the letter definitions “Behold the hand, Behold the nail”.

(Ver 1.0) This will be “Part 1” in a new Bible series, the Lord be willing. Today will be the subject introduction. This lesson series will be foundational information designed for every believer. In these lessons we will explore the subject of the Ancient Hebrew Alphabet and how each of these 22 letters can represent, and reveal Jesus in some form, role, characteristic, pattern or work.

It should be becoming clearer to you, that God hid Jesus in letters, words, sentences, paragraphs, and etc., to help us learn to search to find Jesus. We will be learning that the Bible is constructed around layers of intentionally designed natural and spiritual information, with everything ultimately, pointing us to Jesus. We could say the word of God is like an onion. There is the outer skin coating, that is on the visible surface, and we by just touching, smelling and observing this outer shell layer, can gain the strong realization that there must be much more to it, that is yet to be uncovered and seen.

Think of the outer surface layer of the Bible as being the basic information about the book. There are 66 books, written by 40 different authors, divided into two major divisions containing two major human covenants. The first division is called the Old Testament, and consists of 39 books written predominantly in the Hebrew language. And the final division is called the New Testament, and consists of 27 books, written in the Greek language. There is of course a lot of other basic information like book names, author names, etc. that are not going to be covered.

The Old Testament begins with the basic account of the creation of our world, God’s creation of man and his wife, the rise of sin, and the introduction for a great need for our salvation. God initiates a human interaction with His creation to cause His plan to come into manifestation.

He does this by selecting one man named Abraham, that a natural nation named Israel would come from. We can read many real stories about real people and how God built a Covenant relationship with them. Therefore, there are real historical people with actual real names that tell a great surface story of human origin and history. Everything we can read in the Bible really happened as stated, and is the true account of many people, and things interacting with God over 4000 years.

But perhaps you remember Jesus telling the Jewish people, “Search the scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life, but these are they that testify of me” (John 5:39). That is an amazing claim that implies that He was hidden almost everywhere in some form in the underlying layers of hidden verse information. It could be He was found in hidden symbols, patterns, practices, feast holidays, ceremonies, names, titles, or descriptions. Or He could be hidden in natural human typological patterns as in the first man Adam (Romans 5:14). Or it could be that He was hidden in allegorical stories of real people, like Abraham and Sarah (Galatians 4:24).

Knowing how extremely intelligent God is, we can begin to see that Jesus can even be hidden in the letters of the alphabet. This is a great mystery, but God said that this was what He would do in Proverbs:

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

This verse is amazing. God is claiming to be God and to have an intelligence factor of such great capacity that He can hide Himself in plain sight, using words that we can all read, even knowing all of the word definitions, and still completely miss what He wanted us to search and find. This is such great evidence of a complex design technique that is only possible coming from an infinite intelligent designer.

This is even more impossible based upon the fact that all of this is happening, from someone using 40 different authors that many never met each other, and it was written spread out approximately 1500 years. The beginning authors were all dead, when the ending authors began to write. Therefore, they could not have collaborated together, to plan any of this hidden Jesus to happen. This is one of the main reasons why a computer geek loves Him and His Bible so very much.

JESUS – THE ALPHA AND OMEGA

Let us begin our introduction to alphabet letters, by talking about a very prevalent hidden Jesus in the Old Testament writings using just two letters. Remember Jesus claimed that He is the Alpha (the first letter of the Greek alphabet) and the Omega (the last letter in the Greek alphabet).  Jesus made this claim 4 times and it was written using the Greek alphabet in the New Testament book of Revelation. But we do not actually know if Jesus spoke this to John in this Greek language.

It is very possible that Jesus spoke at least 3 languages, and Greek and Hebrew were at least two major known languages for that region and at that time. For example, the sign above the head of Jesus hanging on the cross, was written in Hebrew, Greek and Latin (Luke 23:28). It is possible that Jesus spoke this to John in Hebrew, and John wrote it down in Greek to teach and reach the world. We know from reading Revelation 9:11 John wrote the same name in both Hebrew and Greek. Therefore, John knew both languages. This information should make us wonder, why were these two Greek letters Alpha and Omega, so very important for Jesus to claim, and for us to know. That is a great question to ask God. He must be giving us a clue to something significant to learn about.

Could it be that these two letters that Jesus claimed to be, mean something more than just sayings on the surface that He is the beginning and the ending of an Alphabet? Can we ask, do these Greek alphabet letters, transfer and apply to the Old Testament writings with the Hebrew alphabet? Could it also be possible that these two letters that begin and end one alphabet also indicate the other letters in the middle are also representations of the same Author GOD?

I believe that the Alpha and the Omega are revealed clues and pointers to how we can search, find, and discover Jesus in the Old Testament alphabet. Remember the book of Revelation is supposed to be the uncovering of Jesus and it represents the completion of God’s Words to the church.

I have become a believer that the Alpha and the Omega alphabet letters do transfer into the Hebrew language. What we are about to discover, is that these first and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet occur over 7000 times throughout the Old Covenant books of the Law, Psalms, and the Prophets. This is an amazing coincidence or more likely a great design pattern given by the designer to hide Jesus in the first and last letter combination of the Hebrew alphabet.

The first Hebrew letter “Alef” is combined with the last Hebrew letter “Tav”, and these two letters form a word that was mostly ignored by every translator of the Bible. These translators either thought these letters represented an unknown Hebrew word, or had an untranslatable Hebrew word meaning. If only these translators would have read the book of Revelation, and applied what Jesus said they might have potentially placed Jesus in many other places that have been hidden from us.

When I searched the Hebrew text for the Strong’s number H853, the Alef and the Tav hidden word combination was found 7302 times in 5650 verses, in one Bible software. Other Bible software had slightly different numbers of occurrences and verses but they were all close enough not to be disputed or argued.

Wow this is very amazing new information to many people. This means translators largely ignored or removed nearly 14,604 alphabet letters from what they were attempting to translate into a language that others could learn from. This was omitted information that should have been considered essential for us to understand our creator God with. This sounds like a major problem. What if we did this with a classic literature book? If someone ignored thousands of letters when translating it, wouldn’t that cause you to wonder what you may have missed?

That information should become a potential concern to everyone. There could be a lot of good information that is being ignored by a lot of the natural people of Israel, and Christians to learn about Jesus. Thankfully, there are a growing number of people that have come to this conclusion, and are beginning to learn more every day about what we have missed, and you can find some of them on the internet. Let us go over some things that help us see how there are definitely things that we have missed.

THE FIRST ALEF-TAV HIDDEN WORD

The first time this word Alef-Tav occurs is found in the fourth word of the very first verse of Genesis 1:1. I will list the word in the text as A-Z for an English translation presentation. Consider what Genesis 1:1 could have said, if they had added the omitted word:

Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning God A-Z, created the heaven and the earth.

The English equivalent A-Z (first and last letters of the English alphabet), could have been changed to the “God Alef-Tav” as in a Hebrew representation, or the “God Alpha-Omega” in the Greek application. If you know much about the New Testament you can find how this A-Z addition to the Old Testament harmonizes with the truth identifying Jesus as the creator of everything, we see around us that is good. We can find these confirmations in John 1:1-14, Ephesians 3:9, Colossians 1:16, Hebrews 1:2, Hebrews 11:3, and Revelation 3:14, to name a few.

Can we begin to see how Jesus is being directly named in Genesis 1:1, to be the creator God that made the heavens and the earth? This is really more important than you may know. There are vast numbers of people that do not believe Jesus was God in the flesh. Instead, they label Him to be a mere human man that died 2000 years ago as a prophet. Vast numbers of people believe Jesus was a good man but no greater than any other prophet. But clearly Jesus claimed to be both the Most High God who is the Creator and this was first written in Genesis nearly 3500 years ago.

As you can see, if translators would have added these two alphabet letters in their translations, humans could have been curious to learn to at least ask what these two letters of the alphabet meant. This could have potentially caused more people to search for, who or what this represents. The answer to the curiosity would have become apparent, when people reached reading the book of Revelation, where Jesus gives us the definition of these two individual letters as representations of Himself. WOW!

EXAMPLE 2 OF ALEF AND TAV JESUS

The second time this A-Z word is selected by God in His descriptions comes in just three verses after the first. In Genesis 1:4, we can read the next usage:

Gen 1:4  And God saw the A-Z light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. 

If we had time to write a book about this verse, we could learn a lot of things about seeing Jesus here. But for the quick overview think of what Jesus claimed in John:

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

Compare what God said in Genesis 1:4 to what Jesus just claimed, and then tell me, both of these verses are not about Jesus coming into the world? When the A-Z God spoke into the darkness of Genesis 1 and said “Light Be”, He was making a decree for the darkness of the world to end. This was literally God speaking to the destruction and chaos that had been caused by Lucifer’s rebellion and bringing Himself into the world as the coming Jesus to undo the works of darkness (1 John 3:8). Remember Jesus was called, “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Revelation 13:8).

Are we not witnessing the account of the creation of the current natural world in Genesis 1? Therefore, are these not the words that were spoken by God A-Z to create our world foundation? We again find another book-end conclusion like the A-Z identification of Jesus in Revelation. But in this one God confirms that He was revealing His plan to bring “A-Z the Light of the World” with His first order of creation “Light Be”. God is defining and explaining what was happening in the introduction of Genesis with the climatic conclusion of Revelation. God provides further confirmation of Genesis 1:4 to be about Jesus in 2 Corinthians:

2Co 4:5  For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus’ sake. 

2Co 4:6  For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. 

These are radical words being taught. There has not been enough people in the world that have seen what Jesus the A-Z, has accomplished for ALL Christian believers. God reveals a part of His foundational works of Genesis 1:4 to be about Jesus’ work on the earth, by teaching us it is the internal light of the knowledge of Christ in the human spirit, that eliminates the darkness of Satan from us.

There are at least 12 verses in Genesis chapter 1 that share this H853 Hebrew Alef-Tav word. I have just included the first two, but you are welcome to go find Jesus in the others.

EXAMPLE 3 OF JESUS IN THE ALEF AND TAV

Today’s final great Old Testament verse, that confirms how Jesus, the self-proclaimed “Alpha-Omega”, was being hidden in O.T. scriptures is found in the prophecy of Zechariah. I will again include the word in the verse as “A-Z”. Take a look at chapter 12 and verse 10:

Zec 12:10  And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon (me) A-Z whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn. 

This verse is so profoundly obvious to be written about Jesus. The word “me” in the English translation is actually the “Alef and Tav” (H853) word in the Hebrew. This is one of the times when the translators decided the word Alef-Tav should be made to mean “me”. This decision is one of the few times they chose to potentially help the sentence to point us to Jesus. What we are observing is another major confirmation that Jesus claimed to be this person being written about in this book of the Bible. We know this, because we know this is Jesus’ name in the book of Revelation as He claimed to be the Greek “Alpha and Omega”.

CONLUSION

These were only three verse examples given that we took the time to find and introduce to you. But we know this is enough to establish the truth, because God commands us in the mouth of two or three witnesses, let every truth be established. All of these three verses point us to the True Jesus in the New Covenant. Therefore, we have enough evidence to at least conclude, it is a worthy Bible search to look for Jesus in the ancient Hebrew.

There are only 7300 other hidden words like these three A-Z examples, found in the O.T. Bible. This is your mission, if you should decide to seek Him. But this was an awesome place to begin your Bible study to find the hidden Jesus. Do exactly what Jesus commanded us to do and begin to search the scriptures for Him. Jesus promised that you will definitely find Him, if you diligently seek Him (Jeremiah 29:13).

The LORD be willing, we will do another short lesson, just on the first letter “Alef” next. Then, if the LORD be willing, we will go through each and every Hebrew letter in order. Thank you for taking your valuable time to read and study the Bible with Agapegeek. We value your faithfulness, support of prayers very much. We love you all and will continue to make mention of you in our prayers. May God abundantly bless and keep you.  Always remember Jesus is LORD, and He is coming back very soon.

Intro Alef Beyt-1 2 Gimel Dalet Hey Vav Zayin Chet Tet Yod Kaf Lamed Mem 1 2 Nun Samekh Ayin Pey Tsade Qof Resh Shin TavAlef-Beyt Chart (Series updated as LORD directs and permits)

Are You Saved? Do you Know Jesus? Life is Short! Jesus wants to Know You! Please come and get to Know Him!

THE TRUE IDENTITY OF THE WOMAN IN REVELATION 12 Pt 10 – WHY THE CHURCH Pt 3 – WHO IS MY MOTHER?

(Ver 1.0) This is now “Part 10” in the advanced Bible study series of lessons revealing, “The True Identity of the Woman in Revelation 12”. If you would like to read from the beginning, you may like to go to “PART 1” first. Today’s lesson is also “Part 3” of the miniseries within the full series called “Why the Church”.  If you would like to read from the beginning of the mini-series, you may like to go to “Part 8” now. Regardless of where you begin to study, this series is only intended for spiritually mature Christians. If you feel this does not describe you, please do not attempt to continue to read any of this series. It could cause some to be offended, and that is never our intention. Love demands that you judge yourself.

This mini-revealing series is designed to answer a lot of Christian’s deep questions to; how this woman could possibly be the church in the light of the apparent divine identity of her child as being the Christ? Many good people see the natural words, and description written to us, to indicate this woman could only be the virgin Mary, or the natural nation of Israel.

We thank you very much for taking the time to read and study the Bible with us at Agapegeek. Whether you love the word of God or you just have a curiosity about the book written by human men containing the words of the Living God, you are not here by accident or chance luck. Within the Kingdom of God, there are no coincidences. God loved you so much that He sent an angel or spoke directly into your spirit to give you a thought to search and find this website. God wanted to say some spiritual truths, to you that your natural mind was unable to hear directly from Him on your own current spiritual ability to understand. I praise the LORD only to be used in this way, because without Him, I could do nothing.

Many Christians are challenged by the God given design of the book of Revelation. I believe the Holy Spirit spoke to me, and said the book of Revelation is a compilation of word images. God spoke these written words through His mouth, using His Spiritual tongue, to paint us a visually organized spiritual set of word masterpieces. These pictures were given to us from the ultimate Word Artist. His paintings are the most valuable images, and understanding them are of far greater value than owning a Picasso, or Rembrandt.

In Revelation 12, there are plainly many words, that can only be taken as symbolism, like a dragon, and a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet. These clear symbolic references are then mixed with natural descriptions, like a pregnant woman, who is crying out in pain, travailing in birth, laboring to be delivered, etc., that can easily be taken as a literal specific human event, like the birth of Christ in Bethlehem.

Think about what was just stated about these Revelation words being word pictures. Did you ever see the drawing that someone did of a beautiful woman? But then did you ever notice that if you looked as that picture with a different perspective the beautiful woman became a witch? Or did you ever notice the 3-dimensional photos, where on the surface it just looked like a lot of random colors and dots, but when your focus changed, it became an amazing 3-D picture of another object like the space-shuttle?  

This is exactly what is happening in the book of Revelation, with us changing our normal human natural focus into God’s spiritual higher divine perspective. These word images do two things with amazing clarity of wisdom. These words conceal the truth with natural word thoughts that can be taken one way to hide the truth. But then they can simultaneously reveal the truth, by us only receiving the Holy Spirit to allow Him to help us change our view using the Light of His Word.

Now consider this truth. God writes about every major thing that will happen in the future, but He does it in a way to keep it from being known by His enemies. The author of the book of Revelation, who is the Holy Spirit, appears to hide the meanings of His strategies and plans from the devil. But simultaneously it appears that He desired for His saved children on the earth to be able to read and discover the real actual meanings at the right time. How can God do this using only words?

He could do this by utilizing coded message. He could write the book of Revelation using an obvious message that everyone would think that it is. But using His other writings that were written to His children, He could help then to understand the keys found in the letters, and then He could use these keys to help us find the correct definitions and meanings for what was not available to His spiritual enemies.

This is the strategy of encryption using unlocking key techniques used in software everywhere today. What if God knew that people would possess, the internet, computers, and smart phones? What if God leveraged His foreknowledge of the future to hide information about what would occur during the tribulation, because people on the earth would have this technology at the end-of-days, to solve the mysteries with His help? What if this is true?

Could this new transformative spiritual information, help us to change our perspective about what a pregnant woman wearing our closest star, and standing on the moon giving birth to a child could mean? Can we begin to see the heavenly spiritual word images, instead of the earthly natural viewpoints?  Why can’t this woman mean something greater than us just trying to understand it only using natural literal imagery? Couldn’t Satan simply read about what the book of Revelation said, 2000 years ago, and then just prepare a counter-strategy, far in advance to keep it all from happening? I pray that opening will help a lot of people that are still struggling to see from God’s viewpoint.

INTRODUCTION/REVIEW

In the last lesson we were introduced to some very new radical Bible ways to change our natural perspectives into higher spiritual perspectives, of how to see the woman in Revelation 12. Many have struggled to understand how the church is pregnant and could give birth to the Messiah. But God taught us how this picture of a pregnant woman wearing the sun, and standing on the moon, can represent the spiritual church using common well known natural descriptions. We covered 7 major points in the last lesson. It was a long essential study, but today there will only be one single but very significant subject to help shorten the length of the study. Let us review a short list of items that should have been learned in the last lesson, to help us understand that the woman in Revelation 12 is definitely the church:

SYMBOLNEW COVENANT REALITY
Rev 12:2 A pregnant woman. Can this represent the church?Galatians 4:19 Paul gives birth again to cause the Spirit of Christ to be formed in new believers
Rev 12:2 The woman travailed with birth painGalatians 4;19 Paul also travails using the exact same Greek word to give spiritual birth
Rev 12:2 The woman cries out in pain (Today this is called going into labor)1 Cor 3:8, 1 Cor 15:58, Gal 4:11, Php 1:22, 1 Th 3:5, Rev 2:2, to name only 6 verses that reveal the church is in labor to produce new children of Christ.
Rev 12:2 The woman waits to be deliveredGal 4:27, Tit 2:13, Rom 7:24, 1 Cor 15:24, 2 Cor 1:10, Gal 1:4, 1 Th 1:10, these are just 7 verses of connections to the church waiting to be delivered
Rev 12:4 The woman brings forth the fruit of her wombGod’s desire was for man to be fruitful (Gen 1:28). God is waiting patiently to harvest this fruit (James 5:7, 18)
  

We will not spend any more time reviewing the last lesson. But if you have not read this one, it is highly recommended that you go back to “Part 9” and read the series overview. However, understanding today’s subject is not dependent upon reading it. Today’s Bible lesson will stand alone if you would like to continue reading.

COMMENT QUESTION AND ANSWER

Recently during the last lessons, we have had comments that try to claim the woman in Revelation 12, represented a God designed rare occurrence within His heavenly creation for a sign. This event took place in the 2nd heaven on September 23, 2017. It is undeniable that it occurred. In this created event the claim is made that our sun was in the Zodiac constellation of Virgo. During the night sky on this date some have concluded that the stars making up the constellation Virgo were clothed with our sun. An alignment took place that had another constellation above her head named Leo. This Leo was said to be her crown of 12 stars. However, normally Leo consists of only 9 stars, but during this date, three planets could be seen in the formation of Leo. This they say was the 12-star crown.

Now, is where it becomes more interesting when observing the heavenly natural layout, with Revelation 12 verses 1-3. There was the moon and a serpent constellation aligned under the feet of Virgo. Then there was the planet Jupiter that revolved around inside of the belly of Virgo for approximately 9 months before exiting Virgo between her legs, like a type of birth.

This is truly amazing but, this event should only be viewed as a visible sign or symbol that gives us the desire to point us to know that it is now the time, for us all to go and discover what God wrote about in the book of Revelation. Beyond this meaning, it cannot be interpreted to mean anything else without Bible verses that confirm it. If you know of any you are free to share them.

At the beginning of the lesson, we talked about the era of technology that we are living in. This is clearly what Daniel spoke of in Daniel 12:4 when he prophesied that at the end, there would be a massive increase in knowledge and many people would be traveling around the world rapidly. This confirms God knew the end from the beginning.

It also confirms God knew when this constellation could be seen by human technology to help us to confirm that we were living near the time that this event in Revelation 12, needs to be understood. But what if this was only given by God to help us know the times, we were living in to help us prepare for His soon coming?

There are many issues that come to mind, if we try to make this event that occurred on September, 23, 2017, to be the fulfillment of Revelation 12:1-5. First, we must ignore that the same woman is mentioned in almost every verse to the end of the chapter. If the woman in Revelation 12:1 is a constellation, then the same woman in verse 17 is also the constellation or we are being very inconsistent in our interpretations.

The second major problem occurs by the fact that this is now 2022 when writing this lesson. This would be almost 5 years after the event and Revelation 12 must have commenced and it only lasts for 42 months. We must be inside of the tribulation very deep already, and obviously we are NOT! Therefore, the only way to view this constellation event, is to say it is a pointer signpost to investigate the true meanings of the words and cannot be the actual fulfillment.

Finally, another problem that comes to mind are the words of Jesus Christ. In Luke 17:20, Jesus says very clearly “The Kingdom of God cometh without observation”.  This only means we are not going to see the Kingdom of God or Jesus coming with our natural eyes until it will be too late. Let us now go into the meat part of today’s Bible lesson. This subject will be about what Jesus thought and said concerning His physical mother Mary, when confronted with this subject while living in the flesh here on the physical earth.

WHO IS MY MOTHER, AND BROTHERS?

We are going to explore some far-reaching words of the LORD Jesus, to help us better understand, and confirm the true identity of the Woman in Revelation 12 as being the church. Do you remember the nursery rhyme called “Are you, my mother?” In this story a newly hatched baby bird, goes to look for his mother”. He asks everyone he meets, “are you, my mother?”. This bird goes to many different parts of God’s creation and asks each of them all the same question. He goes to a kitten, a hen, a dog, a car, and sees a plane. On and on until he is returned to his home nest where he finally meets his mother, and the mother asks “do you know who I am?” The little bird answers “yes you are my mother, and you are not a kitten, a hen, a dog, a car, or a plane, etc”.

This is an interesting child’s story, but it does have application to our subject of a child in Revelation 12. Would the child in Revelation 12, ask everyone, are you, my mother? That is what people in the church are doing? Or would he already know before his birth and proclaim, you are my mother, and you are not Israel, Mary, or anyone else that is natural flesh? It just so happens Jesus the Christ (Messiah in the flesh), answers this question of “who is my mother in Revelation 12”, long before the book would be written. But His words are possibly unknown, ignored, explained away, or completely rejected by those that have not seen, or do not want to see the truth. Let us read the real story and see what He reveals to us:

Mat 12:46  While he yet talked to the people, behold, his mother and his brethren stood without, desiring to speak with him

Mat 12:47  Then one said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to speak with thee

Mat 12:48  But he answered and said unto him that told him, Who is my mother? and who are my brethren? 

Mat 12:49  And he stretched forth his hand toward his disciples, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren! 

Mat 12:50  For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother

These are vastly misunderstood words, that were spoken directly from the Creator God’s own mouth (John 1:1-4). If you read verse 46 carefully and thoughtfully, you discover a major problem developing with the belief of Israel and Mary being the woman in Revelation 12. Verse 46 says Jesus’ mother Mary the once virgin and Jesus’ half-brothers who were all the natural children of Israel, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, and finally Joseph and Mary (Mat 1, & Luke 3 genealogy). 

Take note what Jesus does in verse 47, after being told that His natural family members including His mother Mary, were outside the house desiring to speak with Him!  Jesus, practically ignores all of them, by answering the messengers in verse 48, with a question.  Jesus asked them “Who is my mother, and brothers”?  Sounds like a nursery rhyme question, but instead of asking those present, are you my mother, He asks them do you know who my mother is? This was an obvious question revealing Jesus already knew His spiritual mother, since He could only be speaking spiritually, and not naturally.

Please understand, that if Jesus was speaking naturally, He must have amnesia, or some mental deficiency. Then pay attention to what Jesus’ true intention was, for this mentally challenged behavior. Jesus looks at His disciples while extending His hands toward them saying, “Behold, My mother and brothers”. WOW! Please do not ignore what Jesus just said. This is Him revealing the main reason, why He spoke and acted in this manner.

Jesus, is either a ranting lunatic or He knows something we don’t! We should believe the second. Therefore, the only logical conclusion is to settle that Jesus was speaking of a radically different mother, and brothers that were NOT of the natural nation of Israel, and Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and finally Mary. Think about it?

The natural nation of Israel was sitting all around Him. He was teaching them something radically wonderful about Himself. His natural mother and natural half-brothers were standing outside of the physical house. Respectfully, Jesus should have acknowledged Mary to be His physical birth mother and his half-brothers, to be his natural co-family members. But there is no mention of any of them. Should we call Jesus a liar? Let us look at a new verse that reveals who the natural nation of Israel believed Jesus to be:

Mar 6:3  Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? and are not his sisters here with us? And they were offended at him

What we learn from reading the natural perspective of the people of Nazareth, they believed that Jesus was the elder son of the carpenter named Joseph, and Mary. They believed Jesus had 4 younger brothers named James, Joses, Judah, and Simon. They believed he had an undeclared number of sisters. All of this was true from the natural perspective and viewpoint. Wow, could this be the reason why the people today have not seen the wisdom of God in Revelation 12 yet? I believe it is.

What we are observing in scripture are two viewpoints of the same man named Jesus. All of the natural humans were uninformed and ignorant of the truth. They believed He had a human father. They believed He was born in Nazareth. They clearly did not desire to ask any questions to learn the truth, so God in the flesh was asking them a question to help them change their perspectives. Does this apply to our study lesson today? Could their limitations of knowing who and what was possible for God be limiting their ability to receive higher spiritual truth?

It must be true, because we can notice how the Spirit of God in Jesus, was not looking upon their natural earthly perspective when He asked them the question, “Who is my mother”. WOW, I pray that we are all spiritually awake with our spiritual eyes being enlightened. Let us analyze another verse that confirms how Jesus thought spiritually at the young age of 12 years old, about his natural family:

Luke 2:48 – And when they saw him, they were amazed: and his mother said unto him, Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing. 

Luke 2:49 – And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?

Take notice of this story that occurred when Jesus was only 12 years old. The natural family had traveled to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover. When they were returning home, Mary and Joseph finally noticed that the eldest son Jesus was not with them. It took them 3 days to find him and they discover him in the temple listening and teaching. When He is confronted by His mother Mary, saying “Son, why have you done this to us?” and “because your father and I have sought for you in sorrow”.  

What was Mary’s perspective? It seems like in just 12 years’ time, she had let slip that her son’s father really was the Holy Spirit! Could she have become more naturally thinking, while Jesus in the same time had become more spiritually minded? We must ask this question, because Jesus’s words disagreed with His natural mother’s words. Therefore, since Jesus was God in the flesh we know His truth, is not calling Mary a liar, it is only a higher truth that trumps the natural perspective.  Jesus is being well aware of His true Father’s identity when He asked them both two questions, “Why did you seek me?” and “Did you not know I had to be about my Father’s business”?

The only way to resolve this naturally viewed perspective problem found in two Bible examples of natural versus spiritual truth conflicts, is for us to change our perspectives, that these words of Jesus in Luke 2:49 and Matthew 12:49 were from a higher spiritual view of reality. This new way to see can help overcome our natural mind’s way of thinking, to be renewed to change our perspective to say and believe, Jesus is speaking spiritually and we were previously just thinking naturally from the very limited bit of spiritual knowledge that we had. 

The prophet Jesus was in no doubt speaking prophetically in both statements about His spiritual family roles. In Luke 2:49, Jesus was speaking about His role on the physical earth as a physical man, to bring the spiritual Light of the Word to humans living in the flesh, and to die for all of our sins. Then in Matthew 12:49, when Jesus asked them the question, “Who is my brother and mother”, He was envisioning the future work of God after being raised from the dead, for the new coming reality only found in the New Covenant truth of the need to be born-again spiritually. Wow!

We can understand this by who Jesus is pointing to in Matthew 12:49, when He declares them to be His mother and brothers. It was impossible for these 12 men being pointed to, to be His physical mother and brothers. Therefore, we reject this natural belief immediately, to look for a new higher spiritual truth, since Jesus only speaks truth. All of these men, became the foundational members of the church body, with the exception of Judas. These are the men that would be like Paul, to be used by God to give birth to the soon coming new church members.

These were the men that when Jesus was raised from the dead in John 20:21-22, He appeared to them and said “Peace be unto you, as my Father has sent me, so I send you”. Jesus then breathed on all of them, with His mouth, and He told them to “Receive the Holy Spirit”. This was the beginning of the spiritual church body and bride of Christ. Jesus had just transferred the Spirit of God from the inside of His single Last Adam resurrected body (1 Cor 15:45), to His human disciples. They immediately received the same life-giving Spirit of Christ that He had on the inside of Him, and they were born-again. They received this gift, in order to now spread it continually to many others utilizing a spiritual new birthing process.

Now recall that we have learned in this series, that Jesus was called the firstborn from the dead (Colossians 1:8). Then in Romans 8:29, Jesus was called the first born from MANY brethren. The Bible begins to make so much more sense, when we begin to understand what God is saying from His perspective. This is the church rising to come up to a higher and more mature level of Christian spiritual life.

What we are now further confirming, is how Jesus can be called an “Everlasting Father” in Isaiah 9:6, in one prophecy. The only naturally born Son of God in another verse (John 3:16). And the “Firstborn” having many other “brothers” in Romans 8:29. God writes about the same Messiah from more than one perspective. Sometimes, He is God’s ONLY naturally born Son, and sometimes He is referred to as the first spiritually born Son of God with many other born-again believers. Not rightly dividing the Word of Truth is one of the main reasons why many Christians are confused.

This new knowledge should help us to better understand how Jesus could be looking at His disciples in Matthew 12, and call them by at least 2 different family relationships. First, Jesus will become an “Everlasting Father” to his new spiritual sons, through Him personally breathing upon them His internal Holy Spirit in John 20. Then we should be learning that these same apostles, can also be called His spiritual brothers by them being born-again of the same Holy Spirit as Christ was raised from the dead by. Jesus was their personal spiritual Father, by Him sowing the Word of God into their human spirits for 3 ½ years. Jesus claimed that they had been made clean by the washing of the water of His spoken words in John 15:3.

What we have also learned from reading Galatians 4, is that human male church members can travail in birth until Christ is formed in other humans to get them born again. Therefore, these human male disciples that were the founding members of the church body, can also give the new-birth to new spiritual children through laboring for Christ, to spread the Seed of Christ, in order for the Spirit of Christ, to come inside of each of us from generation to generation.

This concept represents one of the laws of God found in Genesis, called “the seed within itself”. God’s design of self-perpetuating natural entities like trees, plants, animals, and humans, would be extended into the spiritual realm to, and for His church to continue to grow and spread. However, God realized that humans needed His help not to mess it up, like the first Adam and He gave us His Holy Spirit on the inside to insure we do not fail.

What we are observing is the fact that Jesus in the flesh, knew His Spirit of Christ would be what is given to future added church members through the labor of those disciples that were seated with Him in the room. This is exactly why Jesus could point at them, and say “Behold my mother and brothers”.  Let us now review verse 50 of Matthew 12, and learn why Jesus made this new inclusion of a new female type called sisters, in His family:

Mat 12:50  For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother

There are many ignorant people that do not believe, that women should sow seeds to get anyone else saved. But according to Jesus the Christ, the Head of the Church, this is NOT what He was teaching the founding members of His body. Notice Jesus begins by saying “WHOSOEVER shall do the will of my FATHER!”. This is an all-inclusive statement including male, and female, bond or free, Jew or Greek”.  Let us continue to learn by reading some important information to what is being taught now:

1Co 12:12  For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ. 

1Co 12:13  For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit. 

Notice what the Holy Spirit said in these verses. In Verse 12, He compares the naturally created human body that is made up of trillions of individual cells all being called by one name, is the same as the body of Christ being made up of millions and billions of individual human believers, with all of them being called Christ. Wow! We are ONE in Him. But these verses did not mention females. This is corrected in the letter to the Galatians:

Gal 3:28  There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. 

Paul must have obtained a new revelation from Jesus, because his statement to Corinth has been dramatically enhanced to include female humans into the same body of Christ. We can see how this new statement potentially resolves a possible issue found in Matthew 12:50, where Jesus had included both HIS brothers, and HIS sisters, to be called HIS same spiritual mother.

We must stop thinking on such a limited natural mindset. ALL Christians, are much more in Christ, than many have realized. Too many Christians are limiting what God can do with anyone that chooses to be “in Christ”, and who also lets “Christ live in them”. Every believer whether male or female, has been given the exact same great commission to go into all of the world and preach the Gospel as His physical body living on the earth (Mark 16:15).

CONCLUSION

Thank you so very much, for spending your valuable time to read this essential end-time spiritual prophetic Bible study. We have just been presented some radical new spiritual information that was taught by Jesus to the church about who this Revelation 12 woman represents, in the spiritual mind and view of God. Today, Christians have been largely ignoring these words of Christ and it is past time for this to cease. We must stop seeing the Revelation 12 male child to be the physical man Jesus, who was actually the one that was speaking in Matthew 12 to reveal to us the truth. Since they have jumped to the conclusion that the child is natural Jesus that would die on the cross, they further the confusion by claiming the woman standing on the moon and clothed with the Sun is Israel.

However, the Holy Spirit inside of Jesus, through the omniscient foreknowledge of God was inspired by Him, to teach us some important clues about the coming future book of Revelation in Matthew. Because God foreknew Christians today would struggle to see the true identity of the woman in Revelation 12 to be the church, He answered all of our questions, with us saying “how can this pregnancy be, seeing we know not a man”, just like Mary was asking the angel, and He did this long before we asked Him the question. Wow! Praise the LORD, what a God we serve!

What we are learning today, is if we are a spiritual woman who is pregnant and laboring to be delivered, then the pregnancy, the child, the labor, the delivery are also all spiritual truths, and not physical truths. The spiritual truths of God, still trumps the natural truths of man every time. Remember what Jesus said, “I only speak what I hear my Father say” (John 12:49).

Jesus, when asked to speak to His earthly mother and brothers, makes one of the most radical statements found in the Bible. To the human mind dominated by natural reasoning Jesus sounded crazy, when He pointed to His human male disciples, and called them His mother and brothers. In the natural these men were neither.

At the very same time, Jesus totally ignored Mary and the natural nation of Israel brothers that were standing outside of the house. Don’t you think that God in the flesh, knew exactly what He was saying, and doing at this dramatic moment of time?  Can you see how He was helping us to understand something before we even knew that we needed to understand it? Isn’t this the nature of our God? Doesn’t He already provide for us everything that we need before we need it?  This would be the nature of a God, who knows that you need before you even ask!

Did the first man Adam, and his natural wife have to starve and wait for a year before they had physical fruit to eat? Why then would the second and last Adam, and His wife the church, need to wait for our spiritual food of life to eat from? Glory to God!

Hopefully, everyone can begin to see how Jesus’ perspective was on a higher spiritual dimension of thought and reason. This is the way that we should begin to think more consistently. God said in Isaiah 55:8, “My thoughts are not your thoughts”. Do you believe He said this to demean us, or do you think that He could be challenging us to come up higher and think like Him? It should be obvious because He is love that He is only challenging us to think His way. Thank you, Jesus!

Thank you for taking the time to read and study the Bible with us. We love you very much, regardless of if you agree with us or not. God loves you the same whether you agree with Him or not also. But yet God wants us all to rise above the natural human level of perspective. Hopefully, the LORD has helped us all to do this.

THE TRUE IDENTITY OF THE WOMAN IN REVELATION 12 Pt 9 – Why the Church Pt 2

(Ver 1.0) This is now “Part 9” in the advanced Bible study series of lessons revealing, “The True Identity of the woman in Revelation 12”. But today’s lesson is also “Part 2” of the miniseries within the full series called “Why the Church”. This mini-revealing series is designed to answer a lot of Christian’s deep questions to how this woman could possibly be the church. Many see the words written to indicate this woman could only be the virgin Mary, or the natural nation of Israel. This is based upon the fact that her child will rule with a rod of iron, and this MUST be Jesus in some form. No doubt this is the popular belief, and it logically stands to reason why it is believed to be this way.

What this lesson series is attempting to do, is to help you change your vision from a natural reasoning viewpoint into a heavenly God spiritual viewpoint. God sees things in ways that the carnal human does not even begin to comprehend. Therefore, it is again highly advised that you go and pray the prayer found in Ephesians 1:17-23. This will ask God to give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in knowing HIM who is Christ Jesus. Opening your spiritual eyes to see what has been accomplished by God in and through Jesus Christ. Make this prayer personal and believe God heard and answered you.

Today’s Bible lesson will deal with the Bible interpreting itself on the subject of what the pregnant woman represents and her child represents, from a Holy God perspective, and viewpoint. This should be of interest to a lot of Christians. Because it will answer a lot of questions about how this woman in Revelation 12 can represent the church. Are you excited and expecting to learn? If you really are, then you are ready to begin.

If you have not read the first part of the miniseries or the entire full series, please at least start with “Part 8 – Why the Church”, or “The True Identity of the Woman in Revelation 12 PART 1”. There are too many details already covered that are not able to be restated in this lesson.

First, we need to repeat the series warning.  This series was written for spiritually mature Christians. For those that are newly born again, or younger Christians, you may want to go study some more basic Bible foundational subjects before trying to digest some deep eschatological study that may be hard to swallow. This decision could possibly help you not to be offended at what will be a very deep spiritual subject filled with complex spiritual information and application, about a highly controversial topic. Thank you for judging yourself before continuing.

We pray that you love God, and His Word as much as we do. We are infinitely blessed to have the author of the Bible living on the inside of us to help us all understand the mysteries of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We want to say before you begin, we love you all very much. This lesson series is founded upon divine love and no other motivation is present or hidden. Please know this before you leave any mean or nasty comments.

One of the first things to answer about the woman in Revelation 12, is to determine, if she is natural or spiritual. Is she literal, or a figurative symbol for a greater hidden spiritual message? Answering this question, can only be established based upon the context descriptions of her.

We can remember, that she is seen in heaven in verse 1. This causes us to begin to lean to understand that she is a spiritual reality. But then we see she is clothed with the sun and standing on the moon. Both of these CANNOT be taken literally, and this almost seals the confirmation that she is a spiritual being. The major confirming sign that this chapter is speaking of spiritual realities, is the mention of the dragon and the ancient serpent, who God defines to be Satan and the devil. This being is certainly a spirit being, therefore, the woman can only be interpreted as spiritual also.

Please remember the basics of eschatological hermeneutical principles. Here is a fundamental rule to begin “If the plain sense, makes perfect sense, seek no other sense”. Because the first verse in Revelation 12, does not make plain and perfect sense, this forces us to seek God for the actual true sense. People have tried to answer this problem by searching the Bible for any references to the “sun, moon, and stars”. They have then found one reference in Genesis 37:9 in the dream of Joseph.

This was used rapidly to confirm in their minds that the woman can only be the natural nation of Israel, since that is what the dream was about. But they ignored the placement of these objects on and around the woman because these facts do not make plain sense. Because the placement of these objects is important, and they were defined by Jacob to be clear symbolic references to specific individuals, we should try to apply this information into the Revelation 12 interpretation of the symbolic elements. But few have tried to do this.

We will be exploring a lot of great new hidden secrets of God concerning the church. What we are discovering is that the woman in Revelation 12, represents a victorious church that has overcome the enemy Satan. It must be understood that the two key chapters to understanding Revelation 12, is to first understand Genesis 3 and then understand Galatians 4. These two chapters have direct connections to what God wants us to learn about Revelation 12. But we will also be going over other verses to help us. Let us look at some new insights about what we learned in the last lesson, before we continue to today’s subjects.

NEW REVELATION 12:1 INSIGHTS

In the last lesson we did an overview of some of the key aspects and descriptions found in Revelation 12:1. We all know there was a woman, that appeared in heaven. She is said to be clothed with the sun. We have learned that this means she is clothed with Jesus, the Sun of Righteousness (Malachi 4:2). But there is much more to this sun symbol than just this single great revelation. For example:

Eph 6:11  Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. 

Notice what this verse says to us. God says put on His armor. Then we find in the book of Romans:

Rom 13:12  The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light

Ok, now we are gaining important insight into what type of clothing we in the church are supposed to be wearing. Our spiritual armor is called “the armor of light”. Wow, what does the sun do for our world? The sun gives us light by day. Now we are confirming we are in God’s kingdom of Light and the Day (1 Thessalonians 5:5). We are supposed to take off the works of darkness, and put on this (sun) light armor.

By casting off our clothes (works) of darkness, what happens to them? They fall to the floor of course. If they fell, are they under us, or above us?  Uh oh? This is just more confirmation that the moon under our feet in Revelation 12:1, are things that we have put off and thrown down and this allows us to be standing above the moon. Do you see how this truth concerning the church matches the description of the woman so far very well?

This new information about clothing being like works for good or evil, implies that we are supposed to be doing works for God’s Kingdom of His dear Son, and not the works of the enemy. What we must conclude is that wearing the Sun in Revelation 12:1 is the same as wearing Light as an Armor in Romans 13:12, and this must be connected with doing good “works” for the Kingdom of God on the earth. Can we agree so far? This will get much clearer soon as you continue to read.

But also notice in Ephesians 6:11 God says by wearing His full armor, the church (we) will be able to stand against the enemy. Notice the mention of standing. Does this involve the feet? Of course, it does, and we see a woman in Revelation 12:1 with her feet, which are implied to be standing on, and above the moon. We have already determined very clearly; the moon is the representative symbol of the ruler of the darkness who God calls Satan (Ephesians 6:12).

Again, we have this connection being made in Romans 13:12, with the mention of “night” and “darkness”. Being connected with the armor of “light” and the mention of “day” being at hand. The woman in Revelation 12, is certainly standing in the Daylight of the Sun. We are experiencing another confirmation for who the woman in Revelation 12:1 really represents, and how the church is planned by God to overcome the devil, by wearing God’s defensive weapons and by wielding God Spiritual Sword, called the Word of God. Amen.

INTRODUCTION –
SEEING REVELATION 12
FROM GOD’S SPIRITUAL VIEWPOINT

Let us review one of the foundational verses for this miniseries of lessons about WHY the church is the woman in Revelation 12. We should be attempting to rise far above the normal natural human perspective of things that anyone can read in the Bible. We can read in Isaiah 55:8, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, and my ways are not your ways”. It is very clear from this statement that God claims to be smarter than us, and to think and see things different than we do as humans. This is one of the reasons, Jesus came to the earth to help reveal God’s higher thoughts and ways to us, and here is one thing that He said about this subject of perspectives:

John 3:12  If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things? 

Remember again that Jesus gave us this “key to help us in understanding God’s thoughts”. Knowing this will be a huge benefit to understanding a great portion of the book of Revelation. We must begin by understanding that God is a Spirit (John 5:24). If God is a Spirit, and it was Him who designed and authored the book of Revelation (2 Tim 3:16).  God selected a writing technique utilizing many major patterns from natural symbolic objects and realities, that reveal unseen existing higher spiritual truths, entities and realities.

But here is a potentially new revelation for you. God expects you to become a mature Christ follower. He expects His church to grow up spiritually (1 Peter 2:2). This simply means we are not supposed to remain as carnal thinking humans. This should help you to see the necessity to change our thoughts to conform to His. This is essential for understanding the book of Revelation.

Today we will focus on the natural subjects of the process of a physical woman’s pregnancy, labor, and delivery of a child. In this analysis, we will confirm and apply what this natural process represents, in the spiritual birth process that is taught to us in the Word of God. Probably most of you have never thought of this or studied this subject, until now. Is a spiritual woman’s process of giving spiritual birth, the same types of experiences as the natural birthing process? That should sound interesting to a lot of Christians who want to know the truth.

We will be going through additional verses in Revelation 12, starting with verse 2 and possibly continuing to verse 6. What will help you to see these verses differently, is by changing your perspective and expectation for who you may have ignorantly “pre-judged” her to represent. To “pre-determine” who she represents before you see all of the evidence, blocks your ability to see any truth that God really desired you to see. There are a lot of Christians that are closed minded to change any viewpoint. Some have called these types of people, “concrete Christians”, meaning they are thoroughly mixed up and firmly set, and almost impossible to change even with the greatest message of truth. We pray no one reading fits this description. Please, decide to be an Acts 17:11, more noble type of Bible student.

This is a common tactic of the devil, to block God’s revelation from being seen. As long as Satan can get us to seek words that makes this woman to be only natural Israel, then that is what we will see and find. This fact of what we seek for, determines what we find, is based upon the law Jesus spoke to us in Matthew 7:7. Therefore, instead of seeking to find natural Israel, just ask God to help you to seek the truth, and you are promised to find it (John 16:13).

Imagine in your spirit, that the Holy Spirit came to you in an audible voice and said “This woman is the Church”. Would you ignore this personal God visitation to help give you this revelation? Some people do this all the time. But not with an audible voice from God. No, God uses pastors and teachers of the Word of God by giving them the revelation, and then helping them to present it to the rest of the Body of Christ. This method of divine operation is so easy to bypass and ignore as false teaching, simply because a message did not conform to what you believed it said. Uh oh?

Therefore, allow the Holy Spirit that lives in you to bear witness with what you are reading today. If the Holy Spirit, makes you feel very unpeaceful, then please reject and ignore everything that this internal feeling occurs upon. It is possible, that God will give you peace with certain parts of the message and not every part. If that occurs, then be as wise as an old cow feeding in a pasture, eat the good green grass and spit out the bad tasting sticks. But if the Holy Spirit gives you perfect peace in your spirit, then that should be a sign to you, that this should be given your attention. Finally, are we ready to go? Let us turn to Revelation 12:2 and begin our study.

Rev 12:2  And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered

Rev 12:3  And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads. 

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

Rev 12:5  And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron: and her child was caught up unto God, and to his throne
Rev 12:6  And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and threescore days

Ok, these are really awesome word selections displaying an intentional intelligent design and designer behind them. God’s intelligence is so far beyond ours, that we easily miss the spiritual truths that He is speaking using a naturally coded message. Remember that it is much easier for us to understand the spiritual truths, by first coming to understand the corresponding natural truths. Let us list some of the major new qualities and descriptions of the woman in Revelation 12 verses 2 through 5:

  1. Verse 1 informed us that there is a woman in heaven who is “with” child in verse 2.
  2. Therefore, she is crying out, while travailing in labor in the spirit realm.
  3. She is experiencing pain while waiting to be delivered.
  4. An evil dragon stood before or against her.
  5. The dragon waits to devour the male child as soon as he is born.
  6. After birth her child was caught up to God and to His throne.
  7. The woman goes into a wilderness prepared by God to be fed for 3 ½ years.

We will not go into tremendous detail, but we will try to take each point, one by one. However, this lesson will not be able to touch on every subject, because of the length of the lesson that this would cause. It is wise to warn you that this will still be a long Bible lesson. It is recommended that you break it into seven separate study sessions, unless you have the time to do it all in one study. Today we will focus our study upon seven sections of information which are:

  1. A Woman with child, which will take us to the next subject.
  2. Can the spiritual church of Jesus Christ, have a spiritual child or children?
  3. Then we will learn about how God reveals the spiritual woman the church has children.
  4. Next, we will review what are the differences between spiritual and physical births.
  5. Next, we will address, the spiritual concept of labor.
  6. Next, we will address the spiritual subject of fruit.
  7. Finally, we will address the spiritual subject of delivery.

If you notice these are all components found, or implied in the natural concepts of birth that were listed within Revelation 12, but instead of looking at them from the physical perspective, we are going to shift into the higher dimension of seeing them from God’s spiritual viewpoint, revealed in the Holy Bible. If you are ready, let us get started.

1. WOMAN WITH CHILD

What do these natural words, descriptions, and symbols teach us? First, we must begin by understanding that everything stated in these verses (1-6) are predominately spiritual truths that are being taught to us with a mixture of both supernatural, and common descriptions of natural realities. Please take notice that the words spoken DO NOT teach a natural how to guide for human pregnancy. No, God is only using concepts that most are already familiar with to help reveal the hidden unknown spiritual message.

Without this foundation, you will be very confused. Let us go over a quick list of what we should be able to see in Revelation 12:1-6:

  1. Remember that a woman (wife) in a relationship with God always represents a covenant partnership. We can learn this in several verses, but research Jeremiah 31:32 (Israel), and Matthew 9:15 (Church) to see two references.
  2. This statement implies that this woman was previously a physical reality upon the earth, before she was taken into heaven. We can confirm her simultaneous existence in both heaven and on the earth, reading verse 6.
  3. Therefore, we can conclude that God/Jesus must have taken this woman up to be with Him at the throne. Does this sound like a type of rapture for those that were ready with oil in their lamps? In this story 5 virgins were not prepared and did not enter into the wedding. These could represent the people that were left on the earth who repented and returned to Christ. We will find more evidence coming to support this view soon.
  4. Also, this verse implies that this woman’s appearance in heaven was because she is considered righteous and not of the kingdom of darkness. We will see this more clearly when we look again at her clothing.

QUESTIONS?

  1. Is the church viewed as a spiritual woman to God?
  2. Can a spiritual woman give birth?
  3. Is a spiritual woman’s child also spiritual?
  4. What does it mean to be spiritually pregnant?

2. DOES THE BIBLE SPEAK OF
SPIRITUAL CHILDREN THAT ARE
BIRTHED BY THE CHURCH?

This is a very major and significant question that must be answered accurately, in order for us to believe, and confirm that this woman in Revelation 12 could represent the church. It is plainly stated in Revelation 12:2, that this woman was pregnant, and she was crying out while travailing with labor pains, waiting to be delivered. Please remember that this Greek word used to describe the pregnant “woman”, is the same word used to describe the Lamb’s “wife” in Revelation 19.

This is a lot of amazing information that we just read. This clearly describes the natural process of birth. But does this information also have spiritual applications for the church? I believe with all of my heart that it ALL DOES. To begin, we will only focus upon answering the question, can the spiritual church body (Romans 12:5), have a spiritual child?

The Greek word G5043 that was translated as “child” twice in Revelation 12, verses 4 and 5, describes the male child that was born to the woman. But this same word is used many times in the New Testament to describe both natural, and spiritual children. A search of this word in the New Testament reveals a lot of valuable information.

Also, it is very interesting to notice that this exact Greek word is never used to describe the baby Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem of the virgin Mary (Israel). It is only used to described the physical child that was born of Elizabeth, whose name was John. But for Jesus, it is NOT used. This appears to be another strike against the child in Revelation 12 being the newborn baby Jesus. Let us go to the first book of the Corinthians next, to see what Paul wrote to the church:

1 Cor 4:14  I write not these things to shame you, but as my beloved sons I warn you. 

This is a very interesting verse of truth. Paul writing to the church in Corinth, calls them “his” beloved “sons”. It just so happens the Greek word translated as “sons” is the exact same word G5043 translated as “child” in Revelation 12. Is that a coincidence? I ask that question a lot, to get you to think. There are no coincidences in the Bible. If this is a spiritual parent child relationship, we should begin to ask, is Paul their spiritual father or mother? Uh oh? That sounds like satanic gender confusion.

We all should know the Apostle Paul was a human male. We also should all know that Paul was an unmarried bachelor (1 Cor 7:8). Therefore, it is impossible for Paul to have had natural children in this verse in 1 Corinthians 4:14, and he must be speaking spiritually. Let us read down a few verses and see another usage of this same Greek word:

1Co 4:17  For this cause have I sent unto you Timotheus, who is my beloved son, and faithful in the Lord, who shall bring you into remembrance of my ways which be in Christ, as I teach every where in every church. 

Here, we can confirm again, that a male name Timotheus, is being called a spiritual child of his spiritual parent also a male named Paul. Wow, if that is not amazing, I do not know how to then get you awake. This described parent and child relationship is purely spiritual, and not physical. We should believe that these types of spiritual revelations, are the reason why Satan is bringing up the confusion of natural sexual identity. Satan will attempt to use this evil, to turn people away from the spiritual truth of God’s word.

It is interesting that this same pattern is repeated again in 1 Timothy 1:2, and 2 Timothy 1:2, where Paul calls Timothy his dear son (child) in the faith. This is again repeated in Titus 1:4 where Paul calls Titus, his own son (child) after the common faith. We are seeing a pattern of spiritual truth that must NOT be ignored. God confirms very clearly that there exist spiritual births that come by spiritual parents.

Now who is PAUL? Paul is a male member of the early corporate church body. He is one of the chief spiritual leaders of the Christian faith. He wrote 2/3 of the New Testament, so he definitely knows what he is talking about. Paul should be considered to be a representative of the spiritually mature part of the body of believers, since he was the one that was teaching them how to grow spiritually (1 Cor 3:2). Since Paul is one major member of the entire church, Paul qualifies to be called a spiritual woman bride. Paul is confirming that the church can have spiritual children with some of the body being a mature parent, and new believers of the body being their child (G5043). Can we all agree so far? It only gets more amazing from here.

3. HOW WOULD THE SPIRITUAL CHURCH
BRING FORTH SPIRITUAL CHILDREN?

Please take note that this is the next most significant question for us to answer, in order for us to determine if someone specific in the church, or the church as a combined whole can conceive, bare, and bring forth a spiritual child. Let us take a look at a verse in Philemon:

Phm 1:10  I beseech thee for my son Onesimus, whom I have begotten in my bonds: 

Here is Paul writing to the church and claiming to have given birth to a son while being bound in chains. The Greek word G1080 that is translated as “begotten” literally means to “procreate”. This word procreate can mean, “to multiply by sowing seed”. This word can certainly apply to both the natural methods of procreation, and the spiritual methods of procreation.

It can also be applied to the father as the seed supplier, or the mother as the seed receiver. Therefore, which one is Paul claiming to be? It is entirely possible that Paul is claiming to be both. That is a difficult new question to answer in detail, in this Bible study series, but it is answered in the Bible very clearly.

What is the answer? The answer comes from Genesis 2. This is where God gives us the details of Adam’s creation and how his wife came out of his side. This was the exact pattern that occurred in the Spirit realm when Christ died on the cross and was raised from the dead to become the second man (1 Corinthians 15:47). Jesus is also called the Last Adam in 1 Corinthians 15:45.

To help us confirm that what happened to the first Adam, is what happened to the second Adam (Jesus), we must also know Romans 5:14, where God teaches clearly that the first Adam was a “figure” of Jesus to come. The Greek word translated as “figure” means” a “sample type”, “pattern”, “model”, and “style”. Wow, that is powerful.

This knowledge teaches us that what was recorded to happen to Adam, will be the prophetical “pattern” for what must happen to Jesus during His manifested presence upon the earth. But Jesus will make the right choices and His wife and bride will NOT be deceived. Again, we have the prophesied victory of a woman over Satan spoken from God’s mouth in Genesis 3. God’s Words WILL come to pass, and the time is now for the victory.

But we did not answer the question, how can a natural male in the church be both the spiritual mother and the spiritual father of new spiritual children in the church?  The answer is still found in Genesis 2. Adam was put to sleep, and Jesus was put to sleep on the cross. Adam’s side was opened to remove Eve, Jesus’ side was opened to pour out blood and water to save His church bride. Because the first natural woman was taken out of Adam, the last spiritual woman was taken out of Jesus. But God said in the Law of Covenant Marriage in Genesis 2:24, the “two shall be one flesh”. We learn in 1 Corinthians 6:17, that whoever is joined (married in a covenant) to the LORD is ONE SPIRIT! This teaches the concept of two being called one, as long as one is a male, and the other is the female joined in matrimony.

Please remember Eve, is a prophesied pattern of the spiritual church and not natural Israel. Then recall in Genesis 3:10, Adam calls His wife by the name Eve, because she is the mother of all living. Wow! This is where Christians are missing a major revelation of the church’s role in the kingdom of God immensely. This pattern of Eve being the mother of all the natural living human race teaches us that the church must also be a mother to all the spiritually living born-again believers in Christ. How does this occur? How is this even possible?

If Eve is one pattern of who the church is, and she was a mother the natural living, then this matches the description of the pregnant woman in Revelation 12 being a spiritual mother of the spiritual living. It is possible a lot of people will not be able to comprehend this immediately. Especially spiritually immature Christians. But we will soon see more evidence for what is being taught by the Holy Spirit. Thank you, Jesus.

We do not have time to cover this part in depth. This should be a Bible study series, all by itself. But there are more than enough facts of spiritual truth being given to you to continue to study and confirm more of this with other scriptures. I would suggest that you go and read the Bible study about “How did the church became the body of Christ”.

You might also like to read and study verses like “Romans 12:5”, and “1 Corinthians 12:12, 27”. In these two verses, the church members are called the body of Christ on the earth. This clearly is God calling His female church bride by the male name Christ, also being His body. Therefore, we can confirm how the woman bride is being given the same name as He does (Christ) through the covenant that we have entered into with Him. Wow, this is awesome when you see it. How can spiritually born-again people on the earth be our risen savior’s body, while He is physically seated in heaven? This is how God reveals hidden spiritual mysteries. God reveals this problem and answered it very clearly in Ephesians 5. We need to move on to a new verse that may help people to see what is being taught.

My special reader asked, “How can the woman be the church, since we did not birth the Messiah”. My response should be, “SAYS WHO?” What we are about to confirm using the Bible, is that the church actually does birth the Messiah, but our spiritual child is not the physical Jesus born in the form of a baby, in a manger in Bethlehem. Remember to stop thinking carnally, and look for the spiritual realities of God in scripture.

Gal 4:19  My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you, 

This is one of the most amazingly obvious proof texts confirming the church to be the woman in Revelation 12:2. Notice that this is Paul writing to a different church in Galatia. He uses the same terminology “children” to describe his relationship with them. The Greek word G5040 translated as children comes from the Greek word G5043 used in Revelation 12. Therefore, God confirms that we have a direct connection that He is speaking of the same subject.

Then notice the Greek word G5605 that is translated “travail in birth”. Wow, this is the exact same Greek word used to describe the woman in Revelation 12:2. Now we have two direct word connections and this one is overwhelming and irrefutable. It just so happens that Galatians 4 and Revelation 12 are the only times this word is used by the Holy Spirit in the ENTIRE BIBLE. That makes this the ultimate qualified match.

Mary is never described using this word, and certainly not Israel either. This evidence of intelligent divine design, narrows the possibilities of choice that could have been easily changed by God, selecting and using different Greek words in either verse. There are many other possible word selections to describe child birth. This specific identical word choice, simply confirm that the woman in Revelation 12, can be NONE OTHER THAN THE CHURCH!

We must conclude that Paul by travailing the same as the woman in Revelation 12, is proclaiming to be that woman. Whether Paul knew this in his mind or not, it was what the Holy Spirit inspired him to write. Therefore, God is ultimately making the match.

Ok, here is what we MUST notice in this verse. My reader said the church never gave birth to Messiah, but here is the clear evidence proving the church does give birth to Messiah. The Greek word G5547 is translated as Christ. This is the Greek word for the Hebrew word translated as Messiah (H4889). Both words mean “the anointed one”.  Clearly God has just confirmed the Church does give birth to Messiah, but this Messiah is definitely not the natural child in Bethlehem. Are we all awake yet?

What else is important to learn from this verse? Notice that Paul said I travail in birth AGAIN, until Christ be formed in you. This is amazing! Paul is claiming to be a female that gives birth to children. Paul is also claiming this is NOT HIS first-time laboring to give birth. The word “again” clearly implies there have been MANY births, and we can see this from all of the children references that Paul claims to be the birth mother of. Wow, this is amazing if you will receive it.

4. THAT WHICH BORN OF FLESH IS FLESH
AND BORN OF SPIRIT IS SPIRIT

This is a majorly deep spiritual topic today, and our prayer is that it does not escape your understanding of God’s Truth. We have talked more than once in this series of lessons about this subject, that was brought to us by Jesus in John 3:3-6. Jesus taught clearly to Nicodemus and us, revealing that there are two types of “births” possible, and they DO NOT MIX. For humans, the natural comes first, and then and only then does the spiritual re-birth become possible. You should remember that we have already established from John 3 that only a spiritual woman can give birth to a spiritual child. Therefore, Paul as a born-again spiritual participant in the New Covenant, is qualified to give birth to new spiritual children who have the Spirit of Christ. Let us look at an important verse:

Rom 9:8  That is, They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted for the seed. 

Here is an essential concept concerning two kinds of children that come from two kinds of seeds, resulting in two kinds of births. The first was the natural human child birth process, and the second is introducing us to the “promised spiritual re-birth” process, that was also mentioned by Jesus in John 3.  God begins by comparing children of the flesh that came from natural Israel, with the children of the promise. Uh oh? What God is doing is informing us, that He promised all humans, that He would have spiritual children. Please go and reread Galatians chapter 4. Because this is a vital chapter needed to understand Revelation 12. Here is just one verse to pay close attention to:

Gal 4:23 – But he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh; but he of the freewoman was by promise. 

In chapter 4 of Galatians, God gave us an allegory using Abraham, Sarah and Hagar to confirm to us an exceedingly important spiritual truth. Sarah and Hagar had two types of children because of who they were naturally. These two symbolic sons that were birthed, by two different symbolic women, represent the concepts of flesh births, versus spirit births. The first son born was Ishmael, and he is called a son of the flesh and the son of the bond (slave) woman because he came by the will of man. But then came Isaac who is referred to as the promised son who came from Sarah, and she is called the “freewoman” who came by the will of God.

We learn in Galatians 4, that this son named Isaac, was a type of the spiritual Christ that the church comes out from. This makes this type of Isaac the promised child, who is the risen from the dead spiritual Jesus Christ (Romans 7:4).  I pray no one is choking on the meat that the Holy Spirit is trying to feed us. I will encourage you that once you see this truth, it is impossible not to see it everywhere in the Bible. Notice what else God said to us in Galatians 4:28:

Gal 4:28  Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise. 

Paul writing to the church (the members of the body of Christ) in Galatia, and he is calling them, both his brothers as well as children, is confirming that they were, as well as we are, the promised spiritual “Christ” child spoken of to Abraham. This is an amazing revelation. But you really need to go back to Galatians 3 and study to see that the promise given to Abraham was the promise of the Spirit that will be birthed in every believer in Christ. Please read this very carefully stated truth in Galatians 3:14. If you are lost with this new information, be patient and do not throw it away. It is the truth. Let us explore this more by explaining how we can be called simultaneous brothers with Christ and other believers, and be called promised children of God, and Christ at the same time.

We are named Christ, because we are the body of “Christ” (1 Corinthian 12:27). Each individual believer represents one spiritual member, in the one spiritual body of CHRIST with every believer being joined to Him and every other believer to form this ingenious new spiritual body (Romans 12:5, 1 Corinthians 5:4). This new growing body of the Spirit of Christ, can also be called the temple of God (1 Corinthians 6:19).

This new spiritual design of joining believers as cells in a human body, or bricks in a temple, is practically identical to the created human body consisting of potentially trillions of individual cells, and all of them being joined together are called by the name that was given to us by our natural parents, when we were born naturally. The human body comes from the union of just two physical cells. But from these two cells, they grow by division, and spread out to every other cell, increasing until full maturity. Even after maturity, cells die and are replaced with new cells in most tissues.

This human natural growth process from two joined cells, is the exact same process that is happening in the spiritual realm for the spiritual body of Christ. Jesus was called the firstborn from the dead in Colossians 1:18. In this same verse Jesus is also called the “head” of the body (of Christ) in order that He might have preeminence.

It is the head that controls the body and not the other way around. This makes HIM LORD and not any other individual spiritual cell joined to Him (in Covenant) in His spiritual body. Are you getting this, because this is an amazing new revelation for many Christians? In His new spiritual body, He is the head, and we are HIS body members (Ephesians 1:22-23), with all of us together being called Christ. There is no sane way to separate a person by naming His head Christ, and His body (the church) something else. They are called by ONE name.

Jas 2:7  Do not they blaspheme that worthy name by the which ye are called? 

In this verse James inspired by the Holy Spirit, writes about Christians being spoken of by other humans wrongfully. God is making the claim that when they do this, they are blaspheming the “worthy name” which they are called. This name has to be “Christ”, because no other human name can be worthy.  There are many spiritual aspects of being one with Christ, and here is another factor for us being called by His name as a born-again believer:

Rom 16:7  Salute Andronicus and Junia, my kinsmen, and my fellowprisoners, who are of note among the apostles, who also were in Christ before me. 

Paul makes a comparison of order and likeness. Paul informs us that Andronicus and Junia were his kinsman. This Greek word G4773 literally means a relative by blood. But you can tell by the names of these people in Rome, they are probably not Jewish. Therefore, Paul is not speaking naturally and this can only be a spiritual relationship by the blood of Jesus. Yes? This was the message of these men were like me.

Then comes the mention of order. Paul is teaching us next how these Christians became members of the same spiritual family, by entering into CHRIST. But we also can notice that Paul said these entered into Christ, before he did. This truth is based upon our natural time line. We are recognizing another parallel, between the natural and the physical birth process of organized order that is noted by God.

Therefore, we are learning of two simultaneous realities that occur at a new spiritual birth into God’s Kingdom. This is a very essential truth to learn. When you are born-again by believing in Jesus being raised from the dead, and confessing Him as your Lord (Romans 10:9-10), you are reborn into a brand-new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17). This means this had never existed before Jesus was raised from the dead. He became the first born from the dead and each of each us after enter into Him in order of believing.

When this happens to you by believing in Him, you enter into Christ, and the Spirit of Christ also enters into you, and you reside in both the natural, and heavenly dimensions simultaneously. WOW! Did you know this already? If you did, do you understand the power that was needed to accomplish this (Ephesians 1:19-20)?

What we are learning today is awesome.  We should now have begun to understand that Jesus seated in heaven right now, is the physical raised from the dead man, named Christ in the spirit realm. He is the mediator of the New Covenant (Hebrews 9:15) that we are in. But simultaneously born-again Christians living on the earth. are also called by His name Christ, because we have His Spirit on the inside of us. We are IN HIM, and HE is in us. This was God’s plan from the beginning and His wisdom is amazing!

If it would help you, please take note of Genesis 5:1 where God describes Himself creating man as a male and a female. God then says He called both of them by the name “Adam”. This matches what God did for Christ Jesus and His Church, by calling us both Christ.

Ok, everyone needs more verses to confirm the truth. God says in the mouth of 2 or 3 witnesses, let every word be established. Notice in 2 Corinthians 6:15, God through Paul writes what fellowship does “Christ” have with “Belial”. The church is very clearly stated to be named “Christ”, and if we join ourself to a devil, we are joining the body of Christ to that same spirit. Paul is writing that this should never be. Do you see this?

Now look at 1 Corinthians 6:15, and see that this is the exact same truth. In this verse, God through Paul says the church as a member of the body of Christ, we must not allow Christ to be joined to a harlot. This is just one of several other places where the church is referred to by the name of Christ.

But how does this work? We learn another important piece of the puzzle in Romans 8:10. In this verse God reveals that it is the Spirit named “Christ” that comes to live on the inside of our human body. Wow, because every born-again Christian has the same Spirit of Christ, we are all of the same name of Christ and represent one living and growing spiritual body of a child on the earth.

This brings up another new point. What happens when a Christian dies? Their spirit departs the earth body of Christ and goes to be with the spiritual body of Christ in heaven (Philippians 1:23). This helps to solve how a spiritual woman in heaven in Revelation 12:1, can still have parts of her same body as a remnant left here on the earth to battle with the dragon in verses 6 and 17. But this is probably a different topic for later.

So, we have learned how the spiritual process of a child growth and development can be understood, by us viewing a natural child’s development process. This will be brought up again in this lesson later, so please do not forget it. But remember this is what we are seeing happen to the woman in Revelation 12 with a growing child in her womb.

God was a genius in transforming one natural seed named Jesus (John 12:24), into a growing corporate spiritual entity consisting of millions and even billions of individual spiritual cell members. He did this in His own one Body and then He calls us by the same name Christ. And this is legal because we all have the same Spirit of Christ abiding on the inside of us. Wow! This truth has a far-reaching application to help us understand, and explain how the church will end up victorious over the devil. It also teaches that God views us (the church) the same as HIM. Let us take a quick side journey to help someone that needs to know how their prayers can be answered:

Joh 15:16  Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you. 

This verse shows us why we can come to The Father in prayer with confidence, and ask Him our request. We can do this boldly because we ask in His name, and the Father in heaven will answer, because of who we are in HIM, and not based upon who we are on the earth, or what we have done. It is also important to notice the mention of bring forth fruit. We will be talking about this concept in a soon coming section in much more detail. Just take note of the connection being made by God’s design.

Now that we are beginning to learn and understand, how the church can be represented to be one body of one spiritual growing child. We need to explain, how new spiritual cell members in this growing body, came to exist. In the natural realm there are a lot of cell divisions that occur and each are just grown into a new body component, but in the spiritual realm it is slightly different. But this helps to explain how we can be both brothers and children of the same cell that birthed us. This is actually very similar to the natural if you think about it.

We are spiritual brothers because we are from the same spiritual Father (Holy Spirit, also known as the Spirit of Christ in Romans 8:9). We are spiritual children of others in the church, because we have God’s Spirit of Christ that was birthed on the inside of us from sowed Word (seeds) into our hearts shared by others in the body of Christ. These spiritual laborers, got each of us born-again spiritually, while they were travailing in birth, to bring us out of the flesh, and into the spiritual Kingdom of God. Praise the LORD!

We can further confirm what was just taught by analyzing Galatians chapter 3 that is directly connected with Galatians 4. In this chapter we learn two very important concepts about Abraham. First, we learn Abraham’s promised seed (son) was CHRIST by reading Galatians 3:16. In this verse the LORD says the seed is singular and not plural that God was speaking. Wow, that truth is ignored by a lot of Bible teachers. The main take away is for you to know God said His promised seed was only CHRIST! Please take note the name JESUS was omitted from this verse, even if we understand this was who came first to be born as the CHRIST.

Galatians 3 continues with a discussion between the promise and the law that was unable to nullify the promise because it occurred over 400 years before the law came. Then notice in Galatians 3:26 where God says we in the church have all become His children through our faith in CHRIST Jesus! Pay attention to the flipping of the order of the names, and take a note that God did not say “Jesus CHRIST”! God is so specific to even the order of words, that reordering them has a meaning about things beyond our imagination.

Now pay close attention to Galatian 3:27. This is another direct connection to Revelation 12 where the woman was clothed with the sun. Here we see how when we now in the church, are baptized into CHRIST, we have put on CHRIST. Again, this is amazing spiritual information that occurred when we were born-again. But it still directs us to Revelation 12 to confirm it is the church that is represented there.

Now for the sake of time we will jump to Galatians 3:29. In this verse God wrote about the church again, and here He says “If you be CHRIST, then are you Abraham’s seed and heirs according to the “promise”. Ok, if you study you will notice that I changed the translated possessive tense word “Christ’s”, to “CHRIST” not being the possessive tense. However, this Greek word 5547, Christos is translated as “Christ” the majority of the times it occurs. In other words, this word occurs 569 times in the New Testament, and it is translated as Christ in 553 of them. It would therefore, be legal to make it fit the majority if it works, and makes plain sense in context. I believe it does.

Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that there are times that it does appear to be correctly translated as “Christ’s”, with something belonging to Him. This is legitimate either way in this verse of Galatians 3:29. Whether we belong to His spiritual body, or are being called by His name Christ, it is the same end result as we have learned.

Notice the mention of a promise again? These are amazing connections being made.  Do you understand what the LORD is saying? I mean really, do you? This is a radical statement of your identity, and who you now are to GOD! God just called you Christ! God just said you are Abraham’s promised seed. Being the promised seed child, you have become a spiritual heir and a joint-heir with CHRIST (Romans 8:17). Let us back up in Galatians 3 and see what you may have missed:

Gal 3:14  That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. 

What may help you in understanding, is go back to Galatians 3:14. Notice again what this verse said. Also notice this time God included the name Jesus before CHRIST. This qualifies the reference of CHRIST, to be only the physical man Jesus who died for our sins. It is by our faith in His finished work for us, that Abraham’s “promised” blessing is able to come upon the entire human race. This we can learn was the promise of the Spirit to live on the inside of us through faith in JESUS CHRIST ALONE! It was only us being born of the Holy Spirit, and being joined with the Holy Spirit, that gives us this opportunity to be named CHRIST. This was the promised GOSPEL that was preached to Abraham (Galatians 3:8), even if he never understood it on the earth (Matthew 13:17).

This potentially new spiritual information may be overwhelming to some. It will take some a lot of prayerful thought and study to come up to a higher dimension of spiritual growth to see it. No one is claiming to be GOD.  No one is claiming to be JESUS. We are just reading what God has done for us and acknowledging this is an amazing gift of sonship being freely given by HIS GRACE and we receive it all by our faith.

Let us move to a new concept that was just introduced to us. This new concept is called “labor” and it is what the woman in Revelation 12 is described to be doing.

5. LABORING TOGETHER WITH AND FOR CHRIST

It is very important to know that when a woman is in travail producing a new child, she is said to be in “labor”. Uh oh? This is just another random coincidence, isn’t it? Absolutely not! There are many verses in the letters written to the church that describe us (the church) working laboriously and painstakingly for our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. Uh oh? Notice what Jesus said about this subject in Matthew:

Mat 9:37  Then saith he unto his disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few; 

Here we have Jesus speaking to the foundational church members of the Body of Christ. Jesus was focused upon the great need of so many people that needed to come to know HIM! He is making a prophetical statement concerning a future spiritual harvest of saved human spirits (James 5:7), and their saved souls (James 1:21).

However, He is expressly declaring the need for many “laborers” to accomplish this. Wow, this is amazing when you see how this is connected to Revelation 12, and the woman that is laboring in travail. In fact, you may already can see it, since we have already found where Paul was travailing in labor in Galatians 4, to give birth to Messiah, in the people coming into the church. This work of God is certainly sharing the Gospel good news with other people and sowing spiritual seeds to produce new spiritual fruit. Notice this verse next:

1Co 3:9  For we are labourers together with God: ye are God’s husbandry, ye are God’s building. 

Wow, again we see the concept of workers in labor together with God. As a Christian, we were created in CHRIST to do works for God (Ephesians 2:10). We do this with Him, because He lives in us to help. Notice the term husbandry to define the church, because this will come again in the next section. This means we are God’s spiritual garden on the earth.

God further calls us His physical building on the earth. The building corresponds with us being His temple that we saw earlier. The LORD is using multiple natural concepts to help us to understand how the spirit realm was created and is operating today. What we are discovering is the spiritual concept of Christians that perform labor for God is the spiritual realization of the natural description of a woman in Revelation 12 in labor.

This is becoming such an accurate picture of the woman in Revelation 12, that it can’t be denied. Can you begin to see the new spiritual perspective, of how this woman was given to us by the Holy Spirit using natural realities can fit with what we are doing in the church today? Can you understand, how excited I was to hear from God at 3 AM to receive this information?

Women could describe the experience of giving birth so much better than I could. But one noticeable feature of the process is the pain. This can result in loud outcries. Another observable quality of giving birth, is that the woman’s labor pains become more and more frequent, and closer together and they usually increase in intensity as the ending finale birth comes. Did any of this sound like what might happen before Jesus comes to take us out of the world and our labors to get people saved?

Can you potentially see that persecution from the world, has been increasing in intensity and come more frequently? If you have not, then you are not laboring for God’s cause. We need to see what else the Bible says about laboring, to take us into the next phase of the revelation.

1Co 3:5  Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave to every man

1Co 3:6  I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase

1Co 3:7  So then neither is he that planteth any thing, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase. 

1Co 3:8  Now he that planteth and he that watereth are one: and every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labour

Notice these verses are using natural farming concepts. But farming is also an analogous concept to having a natural child in birth. Both of these subjects are parallel natural realities projecting information about the spiritual birth process that Paul was describing in his letter to the church.

The spiritual birth process is based upon the principle of “seed”, “time” and “harvest”. Wow that was a lot to process. But notice the ending statement in 1 Corinthians 3:8 is about each worker in the church receiving a reward for doing their labor. Wow, is that not more than amazing, with us seeing the woman in Revelation 12 being in labor? Connect this back to the Galatians 4 example of the labor with Paul working to get Christ the Messiah formed in the church in Galatia. Please tell me that you are seeing this.  If any of this is registering on your spirit, leave a comment to help encourage others.

Remember in Revelation 12, we had a woman wearing a victorious royal crown. Could this be a part of her reward for enduring her spiritual labors for CHRIST?  I personally believe this is a part of the reward as we can see from 2 Timothy 4:8, to name just one example. We need to move on to the next subject. Now we are going to add a new spiritual dimension to connect us to what is happening to the church and parallel to what is described about the woman in Revelation 12.

6. THE PRECIOUS FRUIT OF THE EARTH

We have been learning new spiritual God perspectives that come from the Word of God to understand the natural descriptions about a woman in Revelation 12. So far, we have discovered that the woman is standing on the devil in a position of victory in Revelation 12:1. We have also seen she is wearing a royal victor crown as a symbol of her reward for victory. We have also learned that she is wearing Jesus, the Sun of Righteousness as her clothing revealing to us her position of authority being IN CHRIST (Romans 5:17). This new information confirms that she is a spiritual being and her identity can only be the church.

But we are now beginning to see in Revelation 12:2, that she is pregnant and travailing to give birth to a spiritual Messiah in the hearts of people that are becoming new-born believers. We have also seen how this process begins to correlate together of her enduring signs of crying, travailing, being pained, waiting for the birthing full process to come to completion. We learned this could certainly be the combined natural and spiritual process of how the church “labors” in the world, for Christ to minister by spreading God’s Word (Seed), into the hearts of unbelievers, to get others saved out of the world of our spiritual enemy. Please realize that this time of completion for laboring for Christ, is soon coming to an end.

But now, let us think about the natural birth process to help us understand what else God could be teaching us from the spiritual process of producing a natural child by receiving His Seed in our hearts. Do you know what this natural and spiritual concept of childbirth, is referred to as, in the Bible? You are about to find out that it is called “producing fruit”. If you did not already know this, please get your spiritual eyes opened to what the Holy Spirit is about to say. Let us begin by reading a verse in James:

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

We were introduced to this topic in the previous sections. Notice this verse is about the coming of the LORD. This coming has to be for the catching away of His church bride. If this is the woman in Revelation 12, it is our hoped for “deliverance” from the world. Notice that this verse is speaking of God being a gardener, who has planted a lot of seed, and is waiting very patiently to produce something that is good for harvesting. Wow, did that turn on any lights in your mind and spirit? If not, Satan must have you very blinded with his darkness (2 Cor 4:4).

This verse in James is speaking of people. This is the only thing that is precious enough to cause God to wait and endure all of the evil of the world. God is looking for “precious fruit” to harvest. This fruit came first from Jesus sowing the Word in our hearts as taught to us in the Parable of the Sower. From God’s perspective, the end outcome of planting any of His good Seed is to produce good fruit, in the hearts of humans.

We confirmed in 1 Corinthians 3:5-8, that it is the church that has been assigned this responsibility to continue the sowing, and watering process to produce fruit in humans. Remember what Paul said in Galatians 4? “My little children, of whom I travail in birth again, until Christ be formed in you”. I believe sincerely that Paul was travailing, and waiting for these carnal Christians to become fruitful and to be on the path of spiritual maturity. Why do I say this? Because this “fruit” is what God is waiting for in James to harvest.

Now, here is another truth that helps to confirm this belief that this pregnant woman in Revelation is pregnant spiritually indicating she has produced a lot of fruit, and is waiting to be delivered. Let us remember Jesus’ natural birth to help us better understand this spiritual birthing process being described in Revelation 12.

Luke 1:42  And she spake out with a loud voice, and said, Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. 

Do you see how Elizabeth described the unborn natural baby Messiah child, that was in the belly of the virgin Mary? She called her baby inside her physical womb, to be her “fruit”. Wow, this is God revealing an amazing parallel concept between the natural and the spiritual ability to produce “fruit” from planted seed. It is very obvious that a natural child is called a woman’s fruit of her womb. God is again using natural farming concepts to describe the natural birthing process, and this means both of these are teaching us hidden spiritual concepts about fruit, that we cannot see with our natural eyes.

It is very interesting to remember what Jesus said about fruit in Matthew 7:15-16. God in the flesh who we see waiting and wanting to harvest the precious fruit of the earth in James, informs us that we will be able to determine who is real and who is fake by examining their fruits. What is He speaking of? It is NOT apples, cherries, or apricots. God is saying if what they say is a blessing to produce a new-birth in some other human, this will be a sign of their external fruit. By observing their labors to produce fruit, you will know if they are real Christians.

Let us go back to the Parable of the Sower again. In this parable that Jesus taught us, He said He was the Sower and He came to sow the Word of God! The soil in this natural to spiritual parable was the heart/spirit of a human. The parable compares soil (human spirit) types, differentiating between those that produced fruit and those that do not produce any harvestable fruit.

Matching this information with other parables, and the verse we just read in James about God being the ultimate farmer, waiting for fruit, we know that those that produce fruit belong to God, and those that do not produce fruit, must belong to the evil one, Satan. This is revealed more clearly by the parable of the wheat and tares (Matthew 13:24-35). The wheat is harvested into the barns of God, and tares are burned in the fires of hell.

Now we have determined there are two types of people in the world. Those that belong to God and produce fruit to be harvested and those that belong to Satan that are called weeds that are eternally separated from God. But applying this to what we have just learned we know the woman in Revelation 12 has fruit in her womb. We should now understand that the womb is soil of the spiritual heart of a human. The spiritual fruits that are produced in the spirit, represent a human’s good works for the kingdom of God, and the fruits of the spirit (Gal 5:22).

It is very interesting to see how in Galatians 5, this was God’s selected location to discuss and define “fruit” directly after chapter 4. In this chapter 5 spiritual comparison we find the differences between producing good versus evil fruits. This is definitely applicable to what we have been learning. Do you believe this is just a coincidence? It cannot be! This is just a confirming method of God’s intelligent spiritual design.

Finally, notice that a woman that is unable to bear fruit in her womb is called “barren”. This is also discussed in Galatians 4, but we don’t have the time to go into this part of the deeper lesson. Please just notice the fact that the woman being in travail in Revelation 12, has the visible evidence of having produced fruit in her spirit (the spiritual womb and soil) of God’s Garden (Genesis 2:8). This is the location of where His WORD was planted as a seed to produce “fruit”. Wow, that is an amazing new way of viewing the woman in Revelation 12. Can you see it?

7. DELIVERANCE

We need to wrap this lesson up quickly. We have been receiving the “Seed” of God into our spirits, while studying this subject. What we need to remember, is that in the natural process of childbirth, there is usually always a “deliverer” involved to catch the baby. This has occurred this way in every normal natural childbirth since Adam and Eve. This deliver is usually, a mid-wife, doctor, or nurse, or they could be the spouse’s husband. I believe the husband Joseph was the deliverer of Mary. But in the spirit realm this person who delivers the church, is definitely the LORD Jesus Christ.

What we find in Revelation 12, is two connected verses concerning the pregnant woman on this subject of delivery and an implied deliverer. In verse 2 and verse 4 God mentions the woman is waiting to be delivered. This is the Greek word G5088. This word has a very amazing definition that corresponds to what we have been learning about. Let us review the Strong’s definition:

G5088 to produce (from seed, as a mother, a plant, the earth, etc.), literal or figurative: – bear, be born, bring forth, be delivered, be in travail.

This Greek word contains a double wow factor. This only means it applies to the literal natural and to the spiritual by figurative application.  Notice this word applies to natural things being produced from physical seeds. This included a human mother (woman), a tree, a plant, etc. including the earth’s natural soil. All of these are naturally created realities that parallel the spiritual realm. Notice the spiritual woman in Revelation 12, is travailing in labor awaiting to be delivered. How does this apply to anything for the spiritual church? A lot of light bulbs should be illuminating in your spirit all of the sudden from this new description. Please let us read these verses and analyze them in the NEW light of what we are seeing in Revelation 12.

Luk 21:27  And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.

Luk 21:28  And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.

These verses are obviously speaking of the physical man Jesus, with Him being referred to as one of His physical human titles the “Son of Adam”. As the risen Jesus departed from the earth in Acts 1 for a cloud to receive Him, He will also be returning in like manner from a cloud. But this return is for the catching away of His bride, as spoken about in the Parable of the 10 virgins (Matthew 25:1).

Jesus was teaching in this context about the signs of the times for His return. Please pay attention to the last command. Jesus speaking to His followers, told them when you see these things, “look up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is very near”. Now look up the word “redemption” and see how Strong defines G629 as being a “deliverance”. This is another amazing parallel to the woman in Revelation 12 being pregnant.

Every time a woman experiences pregnancy, she goes from not being outwardly seen as pregnant, to being obviously seen to even be called big or great in her pregnancy. Or another way to look at it, is to say her delivery day is “drawing near”. The Greek word G1448 that was translated as “drawing near” is also defined as “soon approaching”. Consider what this is saying about the potential of a birth in Revelation 12.

If this woman is the spiritual church, and being delivered of this child represents the rapture, by God using naturally coded symbolic terms, this should dramatically change how we are to view what is being revealed. We should be able to see from God’s perspective, that this description of the woman in Revelation 12, could be a detailed view of the end-time church and the rapture event, followed by the mention of the people that have repented and were saved after the rapture.

It is just so essential to see that the Greek word G726, that was translated as “caught up” in Revelation 12:5, speaking of the child after He was delivered, is the word “harpazo”. It is this exact word that is used by God to describe the rapture event in 1 Thessalonians:

1Th 4:16  For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: 

1Th 4:17  Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord

No place in the New Testament, is this Greek word “Harpazo” used to describe the physical risen from the dead man Jesus, being taken up to heaven. The absence of Jesus being taken as man and not as a baby, and the church being “caught up” to heaven to be with the LORD, are two amazing confirmations to the woman in Revelation 12 being the church.

Also, the Greek word G4536 that is translated as “trump” in 1 Thessalonians 4:16 announcing the rapture event, is the exact same word used by God to catch John up to heaven in Revelation 4:1. This is just another major connecting force, that cannot be denied. This would teach us that the woman’s labor of the child coming to completion, is the same event of deliverance that is being described in Revelation 4:1, and 1 Thessalonians 4:17.

It is highly recommended that you go search the New Testament and look for all of the verses that has anything to do with deliverance, or a deliverer. We should all know that the deliverer of the Church is Christ. There are also other key Greek words that mean to be delivered, like the woman in Revelation 12 is waiting for. These include “redemption”, “redeem”, “save”, “salvation”, and “savior”. Of course, there are many forms of these words and others that could not be mentioned today. But all of these confirm the spiritual truth, that the Church body of Christ, is a woman waiting to be fully delivered. For example, please remember this one:

Tit 2:13  Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ; 

As you can read in Titus 2:13, the church is waiting for out savior Jesus Christ. The Greek word G4990 translated as “Savior” literally means a “deliverer”. That is what we could also call a person that is catching up a baby in a hospital. Wow, I don’t know how anyone can deny what the Holy Spirit is teaching today.

But notice again, that this day of deliverance is called a blessed expectation event. Again, we see a woman who is expecting to be delivered. The Greek word G1680 is the word translated as “hope”, and this word means “expectation of something good”. It can also be defined as a feeling of “pleasurable anticipation”. What this is describing occurs when a normal husband sees his wife after a long time of separation, and vice versa, the wife’s feeling for the appearance of her husband after a long separation, like a long trip. WOW!

I believe the woman in Revelation 12 represents the church from what the LORD has shown us. I believe the process of childbirth, represent every person that was, and is being born-again by planting seed in the hearts of unbelievers. I believe the growing child in the spiritual womb of the woman, represents the spiritual body of Christ growing to completion to be taken up to heaven. Therefore, I believe the woman’s final birth of the child is the completion of the church age. This soon coming completion or fulfilment of the 2 day or the 2000-year period of the church (2 Peter 3:8), is where God ends the current ongoing time of GRACE for salvation. After this God will return to the 70th week of Daniel’s prophecy to finalize His dealings, with another woman named natural Israel, for one week of years. If this is correct which I believe the scripture is teaching us, then the rapture is represented by the child’s finale birth in Revelation 12. This is why the child is immediately caught up into heaven and to the throne of God after the final birth has occurred.

In other words, the spiritual growth and birth process of the CHRIST child has been fulfilled and it is time for her to be taken up (Romans 11:25). The laboring has been accomplished. The birthing has been finalized. The woman has been brought to full safety and protection in heaven and the marriage supper of the LAMB can be celebrated. This would help us to understand how the description of the woman in Revelation 12:1, begins with a sight of a woman “appearing” in heaven. These words mean someone in the spiritual realm was looking on with wide open eyes viewing someone in heaven that was called very remarkable. Who else can this be but the body of Christ that the prophets and righteous men desired to see being fulfilled in total completion (Matthew 13:17)?

CONCLUSION

We have covered a lot in this lesson, and it has gone into so much new spiritual information that it is probably good to end now. Hopefully, the Holy Spirit has given you a lot of good spiritual meat to chew on for a long time. What God has taught us, is to look for His ways of understanding natural things so that we can apply them in the spiritual realm and find truth to see what He has prophesied in the book of Revelation. One question comes to mind that will mentioned in this discussion of a woman who is expecting deliverance. When will this occur? We can begin to learn this in this verse:

Rom 11:25  For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. 

As you can see God is speaking of the natural nation of Israel, and comparing them, to be separated from the largely spiritual Gentile church body of Christ. God calls His church a mystery, but He has been revealing us, with increased intensity in these last days. But notice in the last phrase of the verse. God indicates that there is coming a “fulness” to the Gentiles.

Now notice what the Greek word G4138 that was translated as “fulness” means. This word means “something that is filled as a place, a container, a time period, etc.”. Think of this in the terms of a pregnant woman. There is a limited capacity inside the womb. There is also a set time for delivery where her body just says I’m ready. God says in Matthew 24:36, that no man knows the exact day or hour of this event of Jesus coming to deliver us. But we all can see the signs and seasons, and know how close we are to this happening. I guarantee you, that it is closer than you think!

You should have a lot of take aways from this lesson. We were not able to answer every question, or go into every verse. This would definitely require many lessons to cover it all comprehensively. But remember the natural birth process of a woman, and a seed planted in a garden, should cause us to better understand what is happening in the unseen spiritual realm.

A child represents fruit using natural to spiritual symbolism. But it also represents the Spirit of Christ the Messiah being birthed inside humans to grow the church. Therefore, we have learned how the woman qualifies to be taken up into the spiritual realm of heaven to appear before God in Revelation 12:1 and 4:1.

There are multiple ways to react to what you have just learned? You can reject it completely or partially. You can also accept it partially or completely. If you have heard this taught before, I would love to hear about it and where it was shared. If you have never heard about this before, please share it with every Christian you know, if the Holy Spirit inside of you agrees with it. If not, that is OK, please just share why you feel something was not peaceful. No matter what, thank you for reading the lesson.

If you have any feedback, questions, or comments please leave them. They are greatly appreciated and encouraging. If you need prayer for any need, it is also nice to receive these requests. We will certainly pray if we are able to agree with you scripturally, and the request does not violate the written word of God according to His will for your life. We love you all very much no matter who you believe the Revelation 12 woman is. We hope and pray you will love us also. Love NEVER Fails!

If you would like to continue reading in this Bible study series, please click on “Part 10” now.

THE TRUE IDENTITY OF THE WOMAN IN REVELATION 12 Pt 8 – Why the Church Pt 1

(Ver 1.0) This is now “Part 8” in the extremely advanced Bible study series of lessons revealing, “The True Identity of the woman in Revelation 12”. If you have not read this series from the beginning, there is a lot of details already covered that will only be taught in a climatic summary form in this lesson. This lesson may be good information for people who like the bottom line and not all of the details. Also note that this lesson will be divided into two parts. Today we will cover the review of mainly Revelation 12:1, with some added new insights from a slightly different viewed perspective. Then in the next part (the LORD willing), there will be a lot of new spiritual information that many are awaiting to see that were hidden in Revelation 12:2. You certainly may continue reading Part 8 and Part 9 independently if desired, however, if you would like to read the series from the beginning please go to “Part 1”.

First a warning, this series was written for spiritually mature Christians. For those that are newly born or younger Christians, you may want to go study some more basic Bible foundational subjects before trying to digest some deep eschatological study that may be hard to swallow. This decision could possibly help you not to be offended at what will be a very deep spiritual subject filled with complex spiritual information and application, about a highly controversial topic. Thank you for judging yourself before continuing.

This series was first shared with me through the Holy Spirit, over 12 years ago and it was published in 2009. It has been undated numerous times to bring added revelation and clarity. If you have read the entire series and made it to this lesson, you should be commended, because you are like one of the Acts 17:11 Christians, that Paul said were more noble Bible students than those in the Thessalonica church. This verse reveals that there are two types of Christians, those that are mature and those that are very carnal and immature. Which one you choose to be, is normally determined by your amount of love you receive and release from God, your deep knowledge of His Word, and the length of time and amount of spiritual growth experienced as a Christian.

This has been one of the most loved or hated Bible lessons that I have been given by God to share with the body of Christ. Those with spiritually mature pure hearts, begin to love it after understanding what God is saying to us. But the immature baby Christians, who are set in their ways, believing they understand the Bible in totality, they hate this spiritual information. This is what Paul faced in the book of Galatians, when he said, “Have I become your enemy because I tell you the truth?”.  It is very interesting that this was written by God in Galatians chapter 4 and this will be one of the primary-focuses of this Bible lesson today.

Recently, I received a nice and very spiritually mature comment with a question from a faithful reader. This was a confirmation from the Holy Spirit that I was to do this lesson. I had already felt led by the Holy Spirit to teach this subject again, and God confirmed it by this question. The reader’s question was:

May I seek some clarification about your understanding of the woman in Rev. 12? You say she depicts the church, however the church didn’t give birth to the Messiah, Israel did so I would be very interested to hear why you believe as you do. Thank you again.”? 

That was a great question, asked in a respectful way. We should pray that more people ask questions, rather than to call people heretics for a teaching of things that they do not yet understand. It appears that the question is based on popular teachings within the church majority. The belief that the woman is Israel originates from several descriptions that appear on the surface of the text in Revelation 12. First, the child is caught up to heaven and said to rule all nations with a rod of iron. This is taught to be the risen from the dead Jesus Christ. While this does sound like Jesus, notice that Jesus never did get caught up to heaven, as a freshly born baby child, as is described in Revelation 12. That is one of the first obvious problems with us claiming this child is the Messiah Jesus.

The next problem is this child is taken up by force using the Greek Word “harpozo” (G726), that describes a sudden snatching by forced departure, like is described as the rapture event in 1 Thessalonians 4:17, and 1 Corinthians 15:52. If you can, please find us a verse that describes Jesus ever being taken to heaven exactly in this manner?

Therefore, we have just reviewed two significant text problems with us making this woman appear to be Israel or Mary and the child being the physical Jesus. But people still believe this is the physical Jesus anyway. We must however learn to pay attention to every detail that we can find. God did not write things using words and descriptions that were not important. Make a note that whoever this is, this child is taken up to be with God in heaven by forced departure and it happens as they are a fairly young immature child.

Next, the woman is surrounded with three objects, the sun, the moon and the stars, and these three objects appear in the dream of Joseph in Genesis 37 that use these symbols to describe Jacob’s family of Israel. This was where 11 stars bowed, with the sun and the moon to worship the 12th star. Jacob interpreted the dream to mean the sun was himself, the moon was Rachel, and the 11 stars were all the brothers of Joseph who was the star that everyone bowed down to worship.

This mention of 12 stars, a sun and a moon in Revelation 12:1, represents another major cause for most to jump to the conclusion that this has to be the natural nation of Israel. Almost every past and modern Bible teacher has jumped to this conclusion without performing a deep study of the subject. They simply teach that this woman is natural Israel and the child is the baby Jesus born in a manger, who had been sent into the world, to become the Messiah (the Christ). If that is true, please apply the interpretation of Jacob to how these symbols are used in Revelation 12 specifically by the Holy Spirit’s leading.

How could a woman who is pregnant that people call Israel, be clothed with Jacob? I thought Jacob was named Israel? This is just one of the major problems. We might be able to stretch or twist a verse to make this claim of Israel being clothed with Israel, but we really need a Bible verse that interprets it this way.  Remember what the Lord said through 2 Peter 1:20 “No prophecy is of any private interpretation”. This simply teaches the law of self-interpretation of the Bible. This means the Bible interprets the Bible, and my opinion or yours does not matter.

The next major contradiction and disqualification for the woman in Revelation 12 to be Israel, is the position of the moon under the feet of the woman. If the lady in Revelation 12 is Israel, the moon must represent Rachel, and she is been walked upon as an enemy, defeated and conquered by this symbolic woman in Revelation 12. Jacob informed Joseph very clearly that the moon in his dream represented his mother in Genesis 37:10. Therefore, if we use this dream to interpret the woman in Revelation 12, we MUST also use and apply the interpretation of the dream to understand all of the words in Revelation 12. These are major problems, and they are totally ignored by every Bible teacher that wants to believe this woman is Israel.

This is a very common and popular teaching and it is one possible interpretation using selective surface reading of the text in Revelation 12. But it may be based upon a very carnal human reasoning with the joining together of scriptures that do not actually go together. Right there, that statement could make a lot of pastors, theologians, and Bible students very upset.  Some get so angry that they write the nastiest and most hate filled comments that you can imagine. This type of response does nothing but to prove their immature carnality. Love does not name call, and love does not speak evil of others, even if they disagree with your beliefs.

Today we will cover only verse 1 of Revelation 12. We will call this Part 1 of the summary and unveiling. Then in the next lesson, the LORD willing, we will cover verse 2 in significant detail. 

WHY NOT NATURAL ISRAEL?

In this lesson series, we have gone through many logical, comprehensive, and wide-ranging truthful Biblical reasons why this woman and this child cannot be Israel and the physical baby Jesus Christ. If you have read the entire series, you should be able to list some of them. Let us quickly review a few:

  1. The angel of God showing the vision to John, said everything after Revelation 4:1, must occur in the future beyond when John saw the vision and wrote the book of Revelation. This book was written a long time after the birth, life, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of the LORD JESUS. Therefore, this disqualifies the woman to be Mary, and Israel and the child to be Jesus the physical Messiah.
  2. The next most important reason, is that Jesus said in John 3:3, that which is born of spirit is spirit and that which is born of flesh is flesh. This is a law of God’s design. This forces the mother and child to be either flesh birthing only flesh or spirit birthing only spirit. This disqualifies Israel from being the woman because she was a combined spiritual wife made up of many physical humans in the Old Covenant (Jer 31:32). The woman and the child appear to be both spiritual beings in Revelation 12 and neither Mary or the natural nation of Israel ever gave birth to a spiritual child.
  3. What did we find that the Sun represents in the woman’s clothing? This is ignored in the Israel and baby Jesus’ interpretation completely. We have found this Sun is a symbol of Jesus the Sun of Righteousness (Mal 4:2). Who then is clothed with Jesus? Was it the natural nation of Israel or Mary? The church is clearly told to put on Christ in the New Covenant (Rom 13:14, Gal 3:27).
  4. What does the moon represent? And what does it mean to be standing on this object? We have discovered from the Bible the moon represents the ruler of the darkness and this has to be Satan (Eph 6:12). We also have found verses that anyone that is underfoot, has been defeated (Ps 44:5, Ps 91:13, Mal 4:3, Lk 10:19). Has Israel defeated the ruler of the darkness? Has Mary defeated the ruler of the darkness? If not, they are disqualified to be valid interpretations. We will be discussing parts of these subjects as we move forward.
  5. Let us consider one more reason, that may have not been taught before enough. The woman in Revelation 12 appears in heaven. This describes that she is spiritual at her appearance. Has the natural nation of Israel appeared spiritually in heaven? Can the natural nation of Israel appear in heaven without being saved through Jesus Christ? Not according to Jesus. Jesus said in John 3:3, except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God. Then in John 14:23 Jesus said, “No man comes to the Father, but by me”. The only legal way to heaven is through Jesus Christ. This disqualifies the natural nation of Israel from a heavenly appearance, unless they receive Jesus.

These were just 5 major disqualifications for the woman in Revelation 12 to be viewed as the natural nation of Israel, or the physical virgin Mary, and for their child said to be the physical baby Jesus born in Bethlehem. What we are about to discover and confirm is that the church does give birth to Christ, but not in the form of a physical baby in a manger. That will probably shock a lot of people, but this concept was already introduced to you in the updated “Part 5” of the series. I pray you were able to read this first. If you are ready to begin this spiritual insightful view of the woman in Revelation 12, let us please get started.

GOD’S SPIRITUAL VIEW
 OF REVELATION 12 REVEALED

We will now begin to allow the Holy Spirit to reveal His higher spiritual messages that are desired to be taught to us from these verses about a pregnant woman found in Revelation 12. Please stop and pray the prayer in Ephesians 1:17-23, before continuing. In this prayer Paul asked for the church to be given a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of HIM! Who is HIM? It is the LORD JESUS CHRIST. Then Paul prays and asks God to give the church (us) the spiritual eyes of understanding for enlightenment to see what God has accomplished and given to us in Christ. Paul is simply asking the Holy Spirit inside of the church to illuminate our spirits to be able to comprehend what God has provided to us in Jesus Christ.  Please believe that God has heard and answered this prayer and you will be able to receive more of these deep hidden spiritual concepts about Christ. Ok, now let us continue.

Joh 3:12  If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things? 

Jesus gives us a “key to understanding” a great portion of the book of Revelation. This is because God has written the book of Revelation using vast patterns of natural symbolic objects that reveal unseen spiritual entities and realities. God also has used numerous naturally created systems and methods, like childbirth to teach us about complex spiritual truths. In this verses Jesus reveals that there is a significant difference between earthly things and heavenly things. But then Jesus indicates that by us understanding these natural things, it will greatly assist us in understanding invisible heavenly things. We confirm this truth of Jesus in the book of Romans:

Romans 1:20, “For the invisible things of God from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood from the things that were made, even God’s eternal power and Godhead.”

Did you understand what God said? The Creator God declares we are able to understand the hidden and unseen qualities of the divine Godhead, because we can learn them from naturally created objects, systems, patterns, and laws, etc. That is what we are going to do today. We are going to go through the naturally created symbolic objects and descriptions and then use these with the Bible to understand the hidden messages that God is trying to teach us in these last days.

Rev 12:1  And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars: 

Let us begin by listing the qualities and descriptions of the woman in Revelation 12 verse 1. Take note that the Greek word G3700 translated as “appeared”, means to look with eyes wide open at something remarkable as if in shock and awe. Now read the list of important subjects:

  1. There was a great wonder woman that suddenly appeared in heaven.
  2. She was clothed in the Sun.
  3. Standing with the moon under her feet.
  4. Wearing a crown of 12 stars.

We will not go into tremendous detail, but we will take each, one by one.

THE SUDDEN APPEARANCE
OF A GREAT WONDER WOMAN IN HEAVEN

What do these words and symbols teach us?

  1. This appearance of a woman in heaven causes us to logically conclude she is a spiritual being, in order to be found existing in heaven. This causes us to ask how and when she appeared.
  2. Remember that a woman (wife) in a relationship with God always represents a covenant partnership. We can learn this in several verses, but research Jeremiah 31:32, and Matthew 9:15 to see two references.
  3. This statement implies that this woman was previously a physical reality upon the earth, before she was taken into heaven.
  4. Therefore, we can conclude that God/Jesus must have taken this woman up to be with Him at the throne. Does this sound like a type of rapture? We will find more evidence coming to support this view soon.
  5. Also, this statement implies this woman’s appearance in heaven was because she is considered righteous and not of the kingdom of darkness. We will see this more clearly when we look again at her clothing.

A WOMAN CLOTHED WITH THE SUN

We have already covered this subject extensively. Please recall what this SUN represents to God.

  1. In spiritual terms, being clothed with any object, means to be endued with its power. We learn this many places, including Elijah’s mantle being passed to Elisha in 2 Kings 2:14. Jesus speaking to the church told His disciples to tarry in Jerusalem until they were “endued” with power from on high. The Greek word G1736 that is translated as “endued”, means to be clothed with.  The sun in the sky certainly qualifies as a high heavenly object. The sun is also the closest great power source for all life on our planet. We learned this sun represents Jesus “the Sun of Righteousness” that rises with healing in His wings, in Malachi 4:2.
  2. We can confirm from Malachi 4:2 that wearing the Sun of God represents being clothed in His righteousness. We can confirm the church is clothed in His righteousness in verses like Ephesians 4:22.

THE MOON UNDER HER FEET

We have also covered this subject extensively. The first mention of the moon is found in Genesis 1 and is called the lesser light. Genesis 1:16 informs us that “the lesser light”, also called the moon rules the night (darkness). This heavenly object depicts the evil being Satan who rules the darkness of this world (Eph 6:12).

  1. Standing upon the symbolic moon symbol of Satan depicts the picture of victory over Him by a woman. God informs Joshua in Joshua 1:3, “everywhere the soles of your feet tread, I have given to you”. This means this woman was fighting a battle and she won the wars like Joshua.
  2. We know this represents the church because Jesus told us in Luke 10:19, “Behold I give you power to tread upon serpents (devils) and scorpions (demons) and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing by any means shall hurt you.” These words apply to Jesus’ believers.
  3. In Romans 16:20, God promises to bruise the serpent Satan under the feet of the church (New Covenant Bride) very soon. It has been almost 2000 years since this was written and it is time for it to be fulfilled.
  4. God promises the church to be “overcomers” in the New Covenant. Overcoming signifies someone who has been raised up above someone else in power and authority by their enemy’s defeat.

A CROWN ON HER HEAD

This is another great symbol that reveals the truth of victory for the woman. This confirms the fact that she is standing on the moon (Satan), with the moon (Satan) under her feet, and the moon (Satan) has been “overcome” and defeated. Review what God says to the church in this verse:

1Co 9:24  Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain. 

1Co 9:25  And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible. 

God our LORD and savior informs us that we are in a race. But ours is not a physical endurance contest. Rather, our run is in a spiritual endurance contest. Our opponent and enemy is a spiritual being named Lucifer and Satan. God informs us in Revelation 12 we win this race. The exact same Greek word is spoken here that was found in Revelation 12:1. This is a run that we will win over Satan, and our crown of victory will be the incorruptible kind of eternal victory. Are you an overcomer?  Why not? Jesus tells how we overcome Him in this chapter 12 that we are studying about:

Rev 12:11  And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death. 

We can clearly read and see there are two things that cause the church to be standing on the moon (Satan). The most essential piece is the Blood of the Lamb of God, our spiritual husband. The second is our participation by speaking the Word of God out loud to bring our testimony to bare upon Satan’s head and put him under our feet through exercising the authority that Jesus gave to us (Lk 10:19, Mat 28:18-19).

If anyone needs additional convincing that God’s desired plan for your life is to overcome your enemy, please read verses like these:

  1. Romans 5:17
  2. Romans 12:21
  3. 1 Corinthians 15:57
  4. 2 Corinthians 2:14
  5. 1 John 2:13-14
  6. 1 John 4:4
  7. 1 John 5:4-5
  8. Revelation 2:7, 11, 17, 26
  9. Revelation 3:5, 12, 21

For the final part of the review of the crown, we must remember that wearing a crown, is a sign of kingship and royalty. The church is called a “royal (kingly) priesthood” in 1 Peter 2:9. The church is said to “reign (as a king) in life, by one Jesus Christ” in Romans 5:17. Then in Revelation 19:16 Jesus is called the KING of kings. If you are not reigning over Satan now with the LORD’s help, it is past time to get started.

CONCLUSION

We have only started to see just some of the spiritual truths that the Spirit of God desires us to learn and know. In the next lesson we get into some things that the Holy Spirit spoke with me about at 3 am in the morning. These things were very revealing to show His perspectives of Revelation 12:2.

We pray that everyone will come back for the next lesson, with eager anticipation and hunger to see what God says to us all. If you love the Word of God, as much as I do, I know you will. Please share the lesson series with your mature spiritual friends. Also leave a comment or question, if you feel led by the Spirit to do so. Thank you for praying for us. We greatly appreciate your support with your intercessory prayer. You have no idea how the enemy is trying to silence this website completely. Thank you for standing strong in and with us and the LORD. We love you very much, whether you agree or disagree with what has been taught. God bless you all very much. Always in His abundant love and Grace!

If you would like to continue reading in this awesome God given series, please go to “Part 9” now.

SERPENT WITCHCRAFT PART 6 – AN OVERVIEW SUMMARY

(Ver 1.0) This is now “Part 6” in the Bible study series about one of the most important modern-day human experiences of evil revealed in the Bible, and potentially taking place in our world today. This lesson series is either very hated or very loved. But it is written in extreme love and has the potential to enlighten many that the devil would like to kill. Sharing this information from the Holy Spirit may cause the loss of friendships. People who you thought were friends may not want to be your friend anymore. It is truly amazing the level of deception the devil has been able to achieve, with his inspired manmade crisis.

Every serious student of the Bible should know that there is an evil devil, that was originally named Lucifer (Isaiah 14:12). He is first identified in the Bible, to be a symbolic moon, being called the “lesser light” in Genesis 1:16. This moon symbol represents the devil, and he is said to be the ruler of the darkness in Psalm 136:9, and Ephesians 6:12. Then in Genesis 3:1 we find this same spiritual dark creature being identified as a symbolic “serpent” that deceived mankind (1 Timothy 2:14).  We are never officially introduced to who this evil created symbolic serpent was, until he is defined by God in Revelation 12:9. In the first verse of this chapter, there just so happens to be “a woman” seen in heaven, who is standing with her feet in victory over him. Here in this chapter 12, verse 9, he is called the “old serpent”, and the “great red dragon”, and he is officially connected, to be named as 1) the devil, and 2) Satan. This makes all of these symbolic descriptions, and names to be equivalent for the being named Lucifer and it connects the first three chapters of Genesis to the book of Revelation directly.

We can now see, some of the ancient serpent’s related symbols and literal names, that we need to help us understand this revelation from the Holy Spirit. This confirms the identity of the spiritual power that has been planning, initiating and controlling all of the evil that has been taking place in our world. We can see and learn from reading 1 Timothy 2:26, that it is the devil, also known as the serpent, that is tricking and trapping humans to work out his will, and plan of evil on the earth.

If you have not read this study series from the beginning, it would be recommended that you go and start reading at “Part 1” first. But if you would like the quick general overview of what we have learned presented in summary form, you may read this lesson in isolation.

Before we begin, please understand what is being stated today in this lesson. This lesson series revolves around information provided by God from the book of Revelation. There are endless views and opinions that are taught, spoken, and written about on the internet about this information. It is one of the most controversial books of the Bible because of the vast numbers of views available.

This is where you must make the book come alive to you personally, through your own intimate study. For example, there are good Christians that teach a pre-tribulation rapture. Others teach a mid-tribulation rapture, and still others teach a post-tribulation rapture. We can study and see how all of these views could be seen as true. It is possible that whatever someone believes is true to them, is what will happen to them. We can base this upon the words of Jesus when He said; “According to your faith, be it unto you” (Matthew 9:29). Jesus appears to set a precedent in this statement that it is however you believe, that will determine what He will do for, or to you”. But you judge for yourself.

Always, be led by the Holy Spirit, and allow His Spirit to witness to your spirit. It does not matter what is said, here or from any other ministry, if it disagrees with what God is showing you personally. It is entirely possible, that there are multiple dimensions of available views that could be all true simultaneously based upon what God wants to say to us each at that moment.

This message series is agreed with by many Christians that are aware, and awake, and Satan is attempting to silence us all. There are two main objectives of the enemy that must be accomplished in order to succeed in a global conquest. The two necessary steps for evil to succeed are to 1) control all of the information available to the public, and 2) silence all of the opposing truth. If the enemy is able to continue fulfilling this plot of evil, the true church of the LORD Jesus Christ will all be required to die spreading the truth. Are you ready for this to happen? It is prophesied to occur later in the book of Revelation.

There are still limited freedoms in select parts of the world. But these are slowly being taken away step by step with the fear-based driven and coordinated propaganda message of the devil. This message consists of the original planned release of an exaggerated “crown” plague death, and is now continued with the serpent’s never-ending wave of one variation after the other. These have all been designed by the serpent to control the population and force us into compliance to the agenda.

What is the serpent’s agenda? It is not for anyone’s good. The serpent is still the “god of this world” (2 Corinthians 4:4), and he is not here to help you, or make you safe. He is only come into the world to deceive us all (Revelation 12:9) and to steal, kill and destroy us (John 10:10) through his deception. This means you must determine whose side you will desire to be with, God who wins, or Satan who has already lost (1 Kings 18:21).

ARE THERE COINCIDENCES IN THE BIBLE?

As you know, we have been studying the prophecies of the book of Revelation. We have focused upon key God given words in the verses found in largely chapters 1, 6, 9, 12, and 13. No one has claimed that we are living through any of these soon coming tribulation days, here now in 2021. But we should be able to see, that there are several potential prophesied patterns of future events that appear to be happening to the world and the church NOW! Hopefully, we should be able to agree that these events must be a surprise attack from the enemy serpent, trying to gain advantage over every Christian and our God.

Jesus gave us a basic pattern to NOT follow in life in John 16:3. In this verse Jesus said “Oh you hypocrites, you can discern the face of the sky, but you cannot discern the signs of the time”. Jesus had just spoken to people who could foretell the weather of tomorrow, by just looking at their evening sky today, and called them hypocrites. But these weather predicting people, could not discern where in God’s timeline they were, because they were missing the visible signs of the visitation of God in the flesh who was standing right in front of them. Wow, that was a very strong statement.

Do you realize we are living right before the time of the return of Jesus to the earth to catch away His church? I do not believe very many people have fully understood how soon this could be happening. Satan certainly understands the times we are in. This is why there is happening such a massive attempt at a global conquest that is taking place.

Many of the events that were written about almost 2000 years ago in Revelation, have a distinct and amazing pattern of things that we can see happening in front of our eyes. There are only two choices for a person’s response to comparing what is written, to what is happening.

First, many spiritually awake and aware Christians will definitely be able to see how there is an amazing match of Bible details to current world events. These people have the ability to discern between good and evil and recognize the hidden motives behind the word messages and the ruling demands to conform to.

For example, ask; who is trying to deceive you? Who is trying to hurt you? Who wants to kill you? Is it this website? Or could it be the governments of the world? What do we have to gain from our message of warning?  What do the governments and businesses have to gain from their forced demands? If you do not know the answers to these, please pray and ask God to show you the truth. Only people who can hear from God and can see the truth, will be able to pray and stand against the devil to overcome the evil plans.

But second, there are a lot of people, and even Christians that believe that the events that are happening now are for the good of the entire world, to save us all from death. These are the people listening to and agreeing with the false Jezebel government and media platforms. Ask yourself does the Jezebel rulers gain anything from their messages? Does the false prophet news gain anything from giving out the Jezebel ruler message?  Ask God to help keep you out of the deception that is occurring everywhere, and to open your eyes to see what is really happening in the spiritual dimension.

People who put their trust and confidence in their government to help them, to look out for their good, and to supply their needs, do not recognize that it is only God who is the source of anything good. Deceived people will passively accept anything that they are told to do by the rulers and the false-media, and will never resist the serpent’s witchcraft of deception.

Many will try to ignore these Bible and world event similarities completely. Many will try to explain away the patterned information, because of the deception that has overwhelmed them. Others will just claim these are simply a few coincidences, and they “all” do not really match what we are seeing.

But there are no Bible Hebrew words that can be defined as a “coincidence”. A coincidence is a concept that is just not easily found in the Hebrew Bible mindset or language. Believing in “coincidences” would violate Genesis 8:22, called God’s law of “seedtime and harvest”. In this verse God says things will occur in the future, because of the seeds that were planted in the past.

The Hebrew word H3588 is the basis of most human events that occurred in the Old Testament. This word is often translated as “because”. This word defines a causal connection of what is being stated now in a verse to what was found previously in the context. For example, in Genesis 3:14 God speaking to the serpent said “Because you have done this thing, cursed are you….”. As you can see God vocalizes a caused serpent curse, because of the evil deception that was found in his previous actions. This is just confirmation of the cause-and-effect relationships of Biblical events.

Also, there is God’s law of repeated patterns revealed to us in Ecclesiastes 1:10. In this verse God asks, “Is there anything new, no it has already been in old time”. This verse simply teaches us God potentially designs past or future repeated patterns to occur at other times.

Please go read these concepts, and study them for yourself to confirm that they are a very important factor for understanding everything in the Bible. What will occur in the future in the book of Revelation are things that have occurred somewhere already in a different place and time with different participants. These concepts simply teach us, God can use past patterns knowing that they will reoccur in the future. Knowing this we can see how Satan can also use patterns to get them to reoccur for his potential advantage. Finally, humans can also even act the same as before and repeat things that have happened or will happen in the future. Perhaps you have heard the saying those that do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.

What is a coincidence? According to one online dictionary, the word coincidence, can mean a series of accidental events that appear to be planned. This is why some will explain away the book of Revelation events as just an accidental reoccurrence in the world’s current “crown” plan-demic. People who do things like this do not understand God or the study of probability.

The more accurate fulfillments of what was written by God to occur in the future, the less likely there are any coincidences. Today we will review, at least 26 matches of world events to verses found in Revelation that are potentially happening today. If only half of these are occurring, it is mathematically impossible that what is happening now is just a coincidence to what God said would happen in the tribulation. Therefore, we must conclude that what is happening today is a plan of someone to potentially copy what was written in the Bible for 2000 years.

So let us go through a list of some of these potential comparisons that some will try to convince us are just flukes.

WORD OF GOD /
WORLD EVENT COMPARISONS

We are not going to go through every found event comparison. We will only look at the most direct matches that appear to be happening today. Please read them over and study all of these for yourself. Read the verse references. Look up the Greek words and definitions. Study to show yourself approved; a workman that needs not to be ashamed before God (2 Timothy 2:15).

#ReferenceWorld Event
1Revelation 12:9 the Genesis 3:1 ancient serpent, is identified to be the devil, Satan and has grown into a Great Red Dragon.There is only one current world nation identified with the Great Red Dragon symbol, guess who? It was the nation that released the deadly pathogen on the world in 2019.
2Revelation 12:9 The ancient serpent revealed to be Satan and serpents have “two fangs” filled with poisonous deadly substances to paralyze and kill victims.“Two jab” remedies were the normal first solutions for a promised life of normalcy and the relief from the fear of death.
3Revelation 12:9 The serpent is defined to be the source of all global deception. This represents a heart filled with poisonous words that are spread to the world.The world’s governments, media, corporations, & entertainment, working together to deceive the entire world into a fear driven message to accept an unknown solution.
4Revelation 12:9 The dragon is defined as a “fabulous serpent” indicating a beast of vast increased ability to deceiveSatan needed to only deceive two people originally, but is now attempting to deceive nearly 7+ billion people with another message of lies.
5Acts 28:5 Paul was bitten by a beast with two fangs full of poison in his hand to kill him, while placing sticks on a fire. This is the same Greek word as the “beast” empowered by the serpent in Revelation 13:7.Majority of the world’s initial solution fang dosages were a two marked injection system. People today are offered a chip fang mark in their hands to confirm their participation in the two-fang mark.
6Revelation 13:15 All that do not worship the serpent’s beast are separated from the marked people on the earth by intentional death/murder (Revelation 20:4).Threats of separation and quarantined isolation for everyone not participating in the mandated worship of the fang marks.
7Revelation 13:16 Every human (100%), rich or poor, weak or powerful, free or slave, is required to take the “mark” of the beast.Tyrannical world leaders are now requiring every human (100%), the young or old, the sick or healthy, and even those immune, to take jabbed “mark” in their body with an unknown substance.
8Revelation 13:16 Marks received in right hand and foreheads. Right hand symbolizes source of power and authority, and forehead the position of freewill and free thought reasoning. This symbolizes Satan’s ultimate desire for all human control.Jezebel rulers are removing human rights to choose, and controlling the narrative to produce mind control. There are several researchers that say the injected serum to save us will affect the human mind and abilities to function in the future.
9Revelation 13:16 The serpent empowered beast, demands a forced mark, and taking this mark causes eternal spiritual death in hell (Revelation 14:11)Forced and mandated marks demanded by world governments, ruling powers, with a yet to be determined benefit or known negative impacts?
10Revelation 13:17 Refusal to take mark, results in the loss of the ability to buy or sellRefusal to take today’s crown marks, are resulting in loss of employment, travel, freedoms, etc.
11Revelation 13:17 taking the mark results in the ability to buy and sell freely in the global economy.Many nations issue passports after taking the “fang marks” allowing “some” promised freedoms of movement and ability to buy and sell
12Revelation 13 There is no mention of any personal expenses for taking the mark of the beast in the Bible, implying the marks are given out for free to all that will cooperate to take them. This further implies the government rulers are covering all of the costs.It is interesting to see how the governments are the ones that are paying the costs for development and distribution of the experimental pathogen jabs. This makes them free for every one that is cooperative. Another matching coincidence?
13Revelation 6:2 a rider on a white horse conquering the world looking like the return of Christ in Revelation 19:11. This clearly indicates a very prevalent deception is taking place by a false savior.Almost every world power system (government, business, news, etc) is coordinating together to push one massive devious plot to save every human. This is a false & exaggerated message of propaganda for an agenda.
14Revelation 6:2 a crown is given to the world ruler and is used to conquer the world as a part of the combined system.A corona (latin crown) was released from the Great Red Dragon nation (Rev 12:9) and it was used to rapidly conquer the entire world (2020-2021)
15Revelation 6:2 – a bow in the hand of a world conqueror, represents a device from which an arrow/dart is released and “shot” to spread a potential (toxic) poison, which is designed and intended to produce death.Over 5 million people have reportedly been murdered by the intentional release of the crown pathogen. The acceptance of taking the solution “fang mark” in the U.S. has reportedly killed at least 17,000 so far, but the true numbers are vastly under reported and silenced.
16Revelation 6:2 The conquest of the world is performed by the combined partnership of the controlling government rider, and the powerful horse instrument of war that is identified by them wearing a “white coat”.Today, the powerful white coated Big-Pharma industry (that created the crown pathogen), has made billions of dollars from their “fang marks” solutions that are being forced upon all people by the powerful controlling government(s).
17Revelation 6:2 The horse’s white color can present a perception of a peaceful world conquest, utilizing potentially unseen & unconventional weapons.It should be very clear that the pathogen is a modern-day biological weapon, designed to create massive fear for the people’s cooperative willingness to take the forced free marks.
18Revelation 6:2 The horse’s white coat, can also be called the horse’s “hide”. Combine this with the missing arrows would imply there is a vast potential for a hidden or deceptive purpose to what is happening in this world conquest.Today we are experiencing a new version of an older pathogen. The solutions being spread to counter this global bio-attack is very new, unknown, has never been tried on human subjects. Because it is being forced upon every living human, it shows there is a massive hidden reason for its purpose.
19Revelation 6:2 the rider has a bow in his hand, and is given a crown for his forehead. Both symbols confirm a Rev 13:16 conquest involving human mind control and loss of the ability for people to think or reason for themselvesThere are hidden substances that are given in the fang mark injections called nano-technologies and graphene oxides which are very harmful toxins. Nano particles are designed for mind control. The GO is designed to kill everyone slowly. Go do the research for yourself.
20Revelation 9:12 Scorpion like creatures released to torment humans with single stings in their tails.White coat industry creates repeated booster stinger marks for each new version of the crown disease. Many nations are up to 4 marks, without any end in sight.
21Revelation 9:18 1/3 of the world’s population is said to be murdered by the serpent’s plan5+ million have been murdered so far by the crown disease and an unknown hidden number of people have died from the fang marks so far.
22Revelation 9:20 God says there will be many people killed by a global plagueThe crown pathogen was released by the Great Red Dragon nation, and represents a designed plan for a global conquest
23Revelation 9:20 Those that have not been killed by the plague, do not repent for the “works of their hands” done in their occupational industry to cause it to occurThe white coated industry is furiously at work to rush to market an unproven, untested, solution product with unknown ingredients and unknown side effects and hidden consequences.
24Revelation 9:21 those that are involved in the global holocaust do not repent of their “murders”Globally over 5+ million have been murdered by the crown disease and the fang marks so far
25Revelation 9:20 Those guilty of the worldwide murders also do not repent for their committed massive “thefts”Billions of dollars have been funneled into the White Coat Industry profiting a few rich
26Revelation 9:21 The committed global murderers are connected with the witchcraft of humans, which is the Greek word “pharmakeia” that we get pharmacies, pharmaceuticals, and pharmacists from, and these are defined as the acts of distributing poisonous (toxins).This is the obvious climax to the clues. It is God’s deliberate mention of the white coated industry that needs to be watched very closely.

Here we can read through a quick overview of at least 26 eerie “coincidences?”, found spread out in primarily the book of Revelation. These are not every parallel from Revelation to what is potentially happening in our world today.  But it is amazing to see how all of these “coincidences?”, could have appeared in today’s false prophet news, if they chose to be honest.

It is interesting to learn, and know the layout of the book of Revelation. Many believe the book of Revelation is in complete chronological order. This would mean the current chapter’s events follow in sequence, after the events that were described before in the previous chapter’s events. But there is NO WAY this approach to interpretation can be understood to be completely true.

For example, chapter 11 describes events that take place in a time period of 42 months (Revelation 11:3), chapter 12 also describes a time period of events that occur in 42 months (Revelation 12:6). In fact, chapter 13 also describes events that are occurring in a time period of 42 months (Revelation 13:5). Adding these together we would get ten and a half years of the tribulation just in these 3 chapters and this would not include the other 19 chapters. Uh oh? That would be a major problem, because we should know the entire chapters from 4 to 18, takes place in a total of one week of years, called Daniel’s 70th week.

This knowledge simply teaches, there are significant overlaps in certain chapters occurring. This would be exactly like the first two chapters in the book of Genesis. Chapter 1 of Genesis was God’s world creation overview, and chapter two is just the specific end of the 6th day of man’s creation detailed account. This repeated pattern is definitely what is occurring in the book of Revelation.

For example, chapter 4 of Revelation, begins with the rapture, and initiates the events of the 7-year tribulation. Chapters 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10, appear to be sequential or chronological overviews of some of the events happening in both the spiritual realm, and the natural realms simultaneously. We know this by understanding there are 7 seals being opened in heaven in sequence, followed by 7 trumpets that are blown in heaven also in sequential order. Each heavenly event initiates events that occur on the earth.

This would imply to us, that chapters 4 through 10 occur within a potential 42-month time frame. But in chapters, 11, and 12, these appear to be specific details of certain specific places, people, and events, that also occur during the same 42-month events. Many good Bible teachers, call chapters like 11, and 12 parenthetical chapters.

Please just consider the possibilities of God writing a book using this format. And remember that we can find this technique found in the book of Genesis as a valid pattern for possible future books and chapters. If we can conclude this is at least possible, this may help allow our spiritual eyes, to see how many of these Revelation overlaps may correctly fit together. Let us start with Revelation 12, first.

If the church is caught up to heaven in Revelation 4:1 as believed by many thorough, and serious Bible teachers, Revelation 12:1 begins with a wonder “woman”, suddenly “appearing” in heaven. These two verses would certainly match together, to confirm the event of 4:1 as a type of rapture, that is potentially connecting with the event described in 12:1 of a spiritual woman suddenly appearing in heaven. If you can see it, great!

If you do not understand that the church is mentioned in the first 3 chapters and never again by the name “church” after Revelation 3, this should be your first clue. The omission of the name “church” (G1577, eklesia), from chapters 4 through 22, implies the formal organization of the body and bride of Christ upon the earth, has departed to be with Christ in the spirit realm. It is also very important to know that the church in Revelation 3:10 is promised to be kept from the adversities that will take place upon the people dwelling upon the earth. This clearly says at least some of the church will be gone during the tribulation.

Then if you don’t know the church is described to be a woman, a bride and wife, you should read verses like Matthew 9:15, Ephesians 5:31-32, and 2 Corinthians 11:2, just to list a few. It is very important to go and study these subjects. There are other lesson series that will help you learn these truths on this website, for example:

  1. Understanding Bible Covenants
  2. Revealing the Bride of Christ
  3. The True Identity of the Woman in Revelation 12
  4. Is the Rapture taught in the Bible?

Now look down to the end of chapter 12, where we find people that have either become Christ followers, or were not ready for the catching away, and were left on the earth during the tribulation. We can clearly read in Revelation 12:17, where the dragon is extremely wroth with the woman after being thrown down to the earth. He then makes war against her remaining remnant on the earth. Therefore, in this chapter 12, we first have the woman (the church), found in heaven, simultaneously with the remnant of the church on the earth.  We know this woman is the church because these people keep God’s commandments, and have the testimony of Christ Jesus in verse 12:17. Let us please, not get distracted with the rest of the information in this chapter for this study.

Now review chapter 11 quickly, to see what the main subject found is?  This chapter has to occur suddenly after the church disappears from the earth. We conclude this because, God brings down from heaven, 2 witnesses to preach and prophesy to the world from Jerusalem, for 42 months. Wow this just fits so well with the fact that the church has to have been taken out of the world and the preaching of the Gospel to the nations has suddenly ceased. God would logically send two witnesses, since He is still interested in saving all people from hell. This would confirm how the true saints, pastors, evangelists, missionaries, and the apostolic church members, were previously caught up to heaven. Do you see how this is fitting together, so well?

Now, consider some potential overlaps with the first verse in Revelation chapter 13, that describes in detail an event that may also fit to work together in the same overlapping timeframe. After the church is caught up into heaven, God reveals to us in 2 Thessalonians 2:3, how the “man of sin” will come to the earth to be revealed. Then, go and read Revelation 13:1. We have a “beast” which we found was a type of “serpent” who represents the origin of sin on the earth. This beast rises out of the sea. A sea is a symbolic representation for a mass of many people.

So, we have a sudden world ruler system powered by the serpent and/or the dragon, that has come upon the world seen, to rule it all. That is very interesting since this may correspond with the conquering rider, we can find in Revelation 6:2. God appears to be informing us that the mark of the beast may be a part of this world conquest for wielding power to conquer, and control all of the people in the world. This could possibly match the things that are occurring in Revelation 6:2, very well. Remember we saw a government who arose to sit upon a white coated horse of war. This government was given a “corona” / “crown” and had a “toxin” in his hand that will be used for his peaceful but deceptive, hidden weapon, global conquest.

Searching Revelation 13, there is no mention of any visible weapons being used to force people into taking the mark of the beast. Therefore, how are the people being threatened with death to cause them to want to take this mark of the beast? The answer is found in Revelation 13:5, the beast is given a mouth that is able to speak great things. This indicates there is great deception taking place, and the silencing of any opposing voices. That sounds a lot like the image we can read about in Revelation 6:2 of the white horse deceiving rider.

Another interesting point is found in Revelation 13:9. This verse says “Let him that has ears, hear”.  This phrase occurs 7 times in Revelation chapters 2 and 3. But in these verses God says “let those that have ears, hear what the Spirit says to the churches”. This appears to be another clue to indicate the church should be gone when all of this is occurring, since the words “says to the churches” are omitted.

It is very interesting how in the world today, that people who are unmarked are being said to be the source of all death and we are told they will all die very soon. How can the healthy be the problem for what is being spread, simply because they have not been marked? This very clearly teaches us there is a deceptive hidden agenda for forcing people to take the mark.

CONCLUSION

This Bible lesson was just a quick list of a few possibilities, for looking at the book of Revelation. No one is claiming we are living through this Revelation time in 2021. But it should show us how all of these prophesied real events could be a parallel pattern to what the serpent is prematurely causing to happen to us now. These parallels could be called a pre-cursor type of dress rehearsal for the real coming big events. Or the serpent could be trying to redirect us away from God, like he did to the church in 2 Thessalonians 2:1-2. In this example, there was a false message that was being spread by the serpent to the church that the day of the LORD, had already passed. Paul quickly refutes this false message in his letter. But this same pattern has been reinitiated in many churches today, where they are claiming we are living in the tribulation right now.

This admittedly was a very controversial subject to address from the Bible and the book of Revelation. Many asleep Christians will reject it as being completely not true. Others may see parts of it has happening but still trust their rulers to help save them. Hopefully, most Christians are awakening to discern the hidden spiritual motivations for what is happening to them.

For the people that are becoming awake, they can begin to see how there must be very evil spirits behind all of what is happening in the world. Who is causing the massive fears? More Christians should begin to ask these questions of God to give them more discernment. If all of this coordinated effort is God conducting His heavenly work of salvation, no one should resist it. But if God is not committing these evils, it must be orchestrated for the serpent’s dark agenda.  Let us ask some questions:

  1. Is God a God of forced salvations?
  2. Is God a God of fear-based salvations?

The answers to both of these essential questions are NO. Therefore, nothing that is happening to produce death or fear in the world, can be of, or from God. God is not producing any massive fear.  God is not forcing people to get saved from natural or spiritual death.

Thank you for reading this lesson. If you have any questions or comments, you are free to leave it in a comment. Always remember God loves you so very much. It is His immense goodness that will lead people to repentance. It will never be a message of force or fear that will save you. Jesus Christ, is the King of kings, and the Lord of lords and He is coming very soon.

***Please do not allow anything written here to produce fear in you. If you have taken the marks that were given out freely, or forced upon you, they will NOT send you to hell. But please understand that many believe they are designed to send you to heaven sooner than God wanted you to show up.

Thank you for your prayers and if you would like us to join you in agreeing with your prayers, please let us know. God Bless you all very much.

SERPENT WITCHCRAFT PART 5 – A NEW MODERN SERPENT MAGIC THREAT

(Ver 1.0) This is Part 5 on the essential right NOW warning message series of Bible lessons from the LORD. We have been going through a series of Bible prophecy lessons learning from the patterns given of enemy “serpent” witchcraft tactics. Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 2:11, we should not be ignorant of Satan’s devices (schemes), yet many people are. In this verse God through Paul, says the ignorance of Christians gives Satan the advantage over them. This teaches us that whatever we don’t know, potentially allows Satan to deceive even the elect (Matthew 24:24). How many Christians have you seen that have become deceived by what is happening in the world today?

These studies have been mostly revealed, from the perspective of the book of Revelation. Today’s lesson will potentially be the climatic conclusion of the series. We will be focused on God’s definition of witchcraft and how God says this evil will affect people in the last of these last days. If you have not read this series from the beginning, it is highly recommended that you go back and start with “Part 1”.

It is important to note, that this lesson series, is not designed or intended to cause division or contention. But we are living in a time of tremendous polarization. It is like a line has been drawn in the sand by God, and people are being given the choice, do you want to stand with God in the Kingdom of Light, or do you want to choose the devil and stand with the kingdom of darkness? The middle ground fence balancers, are now being forced to make a choice. These two kingdom choices are becoming so very clear today. The darkness is becoming increasingly darker, and the Kingdom of God is increasing in brightness, daily.

BRIEF REVIEW

We have been learning about a spiritual enemy who was originally identified as “Lucifer” (Isaiah 14:12), who was one of, if not the highest-ranking created angels in heaven. It is highly recommended that you read Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28, because these two chapters contain key information about the fall of this perfect created spiritual being.

God reveals to us in Genesis, about this fallen angel, as a symbolic “serpent”, that entered the garden of Eden, to tempt, and deceive God’s newly created man and woman on the earth (Genesis 3:1). We are informed this “serpent” was actually the adversary spiritual being we read about in Isaiah and Ezekiel, that was now identified, and named as “Satan”, and “the devil” in Revelation 12:9.

We have already read key verses from Genesis 3:1, and Revelation chapters 1, 6, 12, 13 and 19. In the last lesson we were focused upon a key verse we discovered contained a lot of hidden parallels to what we have been going through in the last 2+ years. A lot of people will try to say that these are just coincidental biased interpretations. But how well do they match? How many matches are enough to convince anyone to see what God wrote, and not us?

You should have seen in Revelation 6:2, an unknown and unnamed rider that is controlling a “white coated” horse having only a bow and a crown (Latin corona). These symbols, logically represent a type of king, prince or government ruler, that desires to deceive people into believing he is the coming Christ found returning to the earth in Revelation 19.

These symbols further imply that he is a ruler of a kingdom utilizing a peaceful conquest strategy, without the normal weapons of war. But we are taught in the verse that he remains committed upon conquering the world without violence through implied deception. This type of conquest appears to indicate a weaponry using a very unconventional type that could possibly make the rider look like a hero. This method of conquest could possibly win the hearts of the people for them to want to raise him to power as a replacement type of Christ. Clearly this would mean the presence of great deception taking place and probably great fear of some unseen motivation that causes a desire for an evil overseer.

Today we will be moving to chapter 9 of Revelation, because this also has a great number of parallels to what we have, and are still experiencing today.  Let us begin to study what the Holy Spirit wants to teach us today.

A NEW PATTERN OF SCORPION POISON

We will now go and focus on some very new critical verses, and words of warning given to humans from God in the Bible. These words will help us to support what has been given to us so far from the Holy Spirit. Today, we will be led to read verses written in Revelation chapter 9. We are about to find a lot of information, that should be appearing in our newspapers and online news feeds. But for the evil reason of deception this information is being silenced by the Jezebel evil ruling system, and the false prophets.

We will only be going to go through selected verses found in the book of Revelation chapter 9, due to reader time constraints. We are NOT attempting to do an in-depth or comprehensive study of all of the information. We are primarily looking for parallel concepts that show what we may be experiencing now. These will all be possible repeatable patterns of current serpent attacks. We will start with verse 3:

Rev 9:3  And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power

Just like the dragon, and the serpent in Revelation 12 is not a literal physical dragon or serpent, the mention of locusts and scorpions are also not to be taken literally. We can determine this by where they came from. In the previous two verses, we find these symbols being released by unlocking them from the bottomless pit. This clearly indicates that they were spiritual beings that were confined to be released here to do an extraordinary, and special type of evil. Even though these symbols are not natural creatures, their natural features and qualities of each creature can reveal hidden unseen qualities of how the spiritual beings they represent are operating on the earth. 

For example, a locust can be a consuming creature, eating up everything that comes across their path.  These creatures are also swarming entities. This means they overwhelm the target of attack with so many of them they are practically unstoppable. But these are very special types of locusts because they are described to have the authority of a scorpion. Most know what a scorpion is in the natural.

But for those that do not know or understand what a scorpion is, we will give a quick overview. A scorpion is a type of insect with 8 legs, two front grabbing pinchers, and a long tail containing a poison injector stinger. Clearly this an ominous type of evil creature, that is being released upon the earth during these last days.

Do you remember in the last lesson the comparison between a serpent fang injection system, being two fangs causing two injections? Now in comparison a scorpion while being a similar poison injector system, is limited to only a single injector at a time. But still the delivery of a toxic mixture of poison that affects the nervous systems is identical. This if very interesting in the light of what we have been experiencing with our two-injection serpent mark system, that is followed up by one or more single booster marks.  This is just an interesting coincidence to read about in the Bible. Whether it is happening now as a forerunner to the tribulation real event, you will need to decide for yourself. But wait to read the entire lesson before you make any rushed judgment.

Please just take a serious look, that this is at least the third time we have encountered the strongly implied usage of “poison” by GOD’s word choice selections. We have seen a “poisonous serpent”, and another greater “dragon fiery serpent” (Revelation 12:4), and both are related to have a poisonous 2 fang system in their mouth. Then we saw a rider in Revelation 6, on a white coated horse carrying a “toxon” that we get our words “toxin” and “toxic” from. This word choice is implying a poison tipped arrow system would be shot into the rider’s victims. Now we are observing a new type of poison injection system here in Revelation 9, that uses the symbol of “scorpions” and their tails.

This subject of poisonous injections, appears to be a very significant reoccurring theme found in the book of Revelation, and we are about to see the ultimate clue to how this poison delivery plan is attempting to be spread throughout the world as we continue.

INTRODUCTION TO POISON IN WITCHCRAFT

Let us please continue our Bible study on Serpent poison and witchcraft, by reading Revelation 9:20, and pay close attention to the God selected words and the main points, that are being emphasized with underlines.

Revelation 9:20 – And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood: which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk: 

This verse, could be taken from today’s lead stories, and headline news, if the false prophets of the world were honest, and sincere enough to report on them. We notice first, God mentioning that there are people in the world that have not been killed by a “plague”. What is a plague? One dictionary defines this word as the spread of a “virulent infectious disease”. That certainly applies to what we have been experiencing.

Recently, there was a crown bio-weapon released from a red dragon worshipping nation, that was spread to the entire globe. This has been labeled by the false prophets to be a natural occurring “pandemic”. A pandemic is defined as a virulent epidemic, that crosses many national boundaries. This just so happens, to be an amazing example of an ingenious modern day evil strategy for a peaceful world conquest. This type of warfare can be easily won without firing one visible weapon. This type of warfare only needs a pathogen that is 120 nm in size. This cannot be observed with the natural human eye. Remember we learned about all of this type of technique with the rider of the white coated horse found in Revelation 6:2.

But, according to Strong’s definition a plague is not the only explanation of this Greek word. This word’s definition could also apply to what people have been taking, to try to cure the spread of a deadly plague like disease. This Greek word G4127 also means “a stroke”. What is a stroke? This word stroke is defined as “an act of striking the human skin with an instrument, or a weapon to potentially cause pain, bruising, and bleeding”. Certainly, this could describe a serpent fang or scorpion tail injection, could it not? This could be applied to be a way of potentially describing a person, that has taken several metal jabs in their arm with a sharp hollow injector, called a hypodermic needle.

Therefore, this Greek word G4127, can be 1) applied to be figuratively describing something as a widespread “calamity” as a possible virulent plague, or 2) equally as well as the application of a manmade instrument to produce a human pain using a stroked lacerations for the punctured release or access to human blood. It is used both of these ways in the New Testament. The disciples were beaten and wounded with stripes (weapon strokes) in the book of Acts (Acts 16:23-33), and plagues are used in the book of Revelation (Revelation 11:6, Revelation 16). This would appear to indicate that this Greek word, could have dual application and meaning to both types of plans that could cause human deaths in this chapter. Just read and study the whole chapter, and if you see it great, if you don’t, no worries. No one here, is forcing anyone to believe anything.

However, if you choose to view this information in Revelation, we must admit there is certainly something that will cause a major “calamity” in order for it to cause 1/3 of the world’s population to perish (Revelation 9:13). Any “disastrous event of this magnitude type would be marked to be clearly intentional for genocide. Did you know there are a lot of globalist people promoting a global warming narrative, that have called for a major population reduction? Isn’t that just another interesting coincidence? By releasing a cleverly designed bio-weapon, this would facilitate both the reduction in population and world conquest, simultaneously. Please, take another look at the beginning of this verse:

Revelation 9:20 – And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands, …

Notice what verse 20 says next. “None” of those that have survived this massive “plague” of death, would repent for the “works of their hands”. God says these spiritual inspired evils are coming from the “works” of human hands. This Greek word G2041 that was translated as ‘works”, can be defined as a “job in a human occupational field”. Certainly, the white coated medical field and drug industry, would qualify to fit what God is speaking of. No one is making the claim everyone in this field is the devil, no that would be stupid if we thought that way. And we all should believe that there are many other people in other occupational fields, that could have jobs that also qualify to be cooperating with the evil agenda. However, please just, analyze the truths given to us by God’s Word and make your own personal determinations. To at least some there should be a seen connection to the white coated horse industry.

What type of occupational works do these people need to repent for? A need to repent implies that these surviving people are the ones that are working these evils. However, instead of repenting they choose to worship devils and idols of gold and silver, etc. Almost no one today, worships literal idols. No, these idols are symbolic modern-day items, like homes, possessions, powers, fortunes, and fame. However, this could be a strong potential reference and Bible description, of some people in the white coat industry. Do you remember what the Bible says in Mark? Let us stop and read a small part to refresh our memory:

Mark 5:25 – And a certain woman, which had an issue of blood twelve years, 

Mark 5:26 – And had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse, 

Here God selects one woman’s medical condition to teach us what happens to a lot of people. Notice this woman has a medical condition with a blood issue. There are a lot of medical conditions and issues, that disturb or attack the human blood, and the “crown” disease, and its fang solution both work through the blood. Verse 26 informs us this woman suffered a lot of different things, like treatments, and even possible medicine potions that were given to her by physicians. Finally, notice this woman had to spend every bit of money she had to receive this painful treatment. Notice even though none of the things the physicians did to help the woman worked, they gladly took her money. Now go back and compare this information to what we just read in Revelation 9:20.

Whoever, God is speaking of in Revelation 9, they refuse to repent for the work they are doing to, or for someone, and obtaining and worshiping objects of wealth and possessions seems to be their god? This could describe a lot of people, but use the other clues that are given to us to figure out what can narrow the possibilities. I think we need to go to verse 21 next to learn what else these people do not repent for doing.

Revelation 9:21 – Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts

In this verse, God is speaking of the same living people on the earth that are being used by the serpent Satan, to carry out his plan of evil depopulation and the control of humanity. We know already that in this chapter, 1/3 of the total world’s population are being killed through this phase of the evil plan. Using current (2021) population numbers, there are nearly 8 billion people living on the earth. This would indicate at least 2.5 billion people will be killed during these coming timed events. That qualifies as massive depopulation.

Now pay close attention to the next statement concerning the fruit of their works that are not being repented for.  The very first word is “murders”.  This Greek word G5408 literally means a “slaughter”. This is why the word “genocide” should rise up in our spirits. What happened in the 1940’s to the Jewish population in Europe and Asia? 

A lot of our national and world history is being removed from children’s textbooks in classrooms. This world conquest event was a planned attempt by one man possessed by the serpent, to become the world’s ruler. He did this at first by coming to power in only one nation peacefully portraying himself to be like a savior. He used the same techniques that we can observe that are happening today. There was the immediate taking control of the national media and the silencing of every opposing voice of opposition to portray only one acceptable version of truth.

This very nefarious and evil man was named Adolf Hitler, and he rose to power in Germany. But soon he tried to exterminate every Jew off of the face of the planet. He implemented a “mark” system of population identification. They were slaughtered, shot, burned, drowned, gassed, and had medical experimental surgeries done to them without consent or anesthesia, and on and on we could go. There appears to be a lot of matching patterns found in this information that are being repeated now, and in the book of Revelation.

He also created a vast and powerful army that went to conquer nation after nation. Millions of people died during this time of history.  But Adolf Hitler did not commit these murders by himself. He had a lot of people cooperating, tolerating, and committing these murders for him.  It appears that God says this will be repeated in the coming tribulation also. But in actuality Satan could be trying to get it to reoccur and happen now.

We will briefly skip to the last word in the verse translated as “thefts”.  This Greek word means to steal or take from someone something that is not rightfully or legally earned. We know from reading John 10:10, that Jesus declared; “the thief (Satan) only came to steal, kill and destroy”, and this describes the key strategic results of evil.  Could this possibly be related to our verses in Mark 5, where the woman with the issue of blood gave all of her money to physicians?

Can you see how this woman in Mark 5, was potentially driven by fear to do what she did for 12 years? Can you potentially see how people could use their “plan-demic” to keep us in bondage to fear for the next 12 years?  Can you potentially see how a lot of physicians, might become motivated to only help her knowing they have no cure, to only take her money? Again, not every Physician is this way. We all know the disciple Luke, who wrote the book of Luke and Acts, was a physician. So, if you are working in this profession and are not like those that do things to get rich for money, Praise the Lord. Let us now focus our attention on the pivotal phrase that needs our full attention.

MODERN SORCERER WITCHCRAFTS

Revelation 9:21 – Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts

We have arrived at the most important clue in this entire Bible discussion and study. Our climatic word involves the revelation of our key subject of witchcraft. God says in verse 21 of Revelation 9, no one repented for any of their “sorceries”.  What are “sorceries”? It is definitely NOT what you think, unless you already have studied this Greek word in your Bible. If Harry Potter is only what you think of when you see this word, you would be very wrong.

The Greek word translated as “sorceries” is G5331. This Greek word is transliterated as “pharmakeia”. This is one of the main Greek words that we get our English words: 1) Pharmacy, 2) Pharmacist, 3) Pharmacology, and 4) Pharmaceutical, from. Wow, this is the most major Bible clue we have come across in this study, and it helps us greatly narrow what is happening in many verses found in the book of Revelation. It is also an amazing parallel to the white coated horse being used by the rider to spread a deadly toxin to conquer the world.

The Strong’s concordance defines this word G5331 as “medication”, and mentions the “pharmacy” as the supplier source. The Thayer Bible dictionary defines this word as “the use or administering of a drug”. Thayer also defines this word to potentially represent, “poisoning” someone with a substance. It appears from this information that medicine can be used for either good or evil, depending upon the motivations of the one that is supplying it, or the one requesting it for a supply of some need or desire. But we must be led by the context of this word’s usage. It is being used and selected by God when describing people who refuse to repent for their thefts and murders during a plague event, containing global massive deaths.  I pray eyes are opening, minds are understanding, and spirits are discerning the differences between good and evil applications and intentions for drugs. No legitimate usage of a good medicine, requires a mandate to force someone to take it. Ask yourself why is this occurring? Think by not taking the mandated “fang” marks, the only person they are hurting, is themselves, unless this mark means and does something else, that we are NOT being informed of?

Rev 21:8  But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death

The Greek G5331 word, comes from G5332 transliterated as “pharmakeus”, and this word means a “drug”, as in a “spell giving potion”. This word also is applied to people that administer these magic potions called “pharmacists”, with extensions of implications to also be stretched to be called “sorcerers”, or “magician”. It is only used by the Holy Spirit in the above Revelation 21:8 verse. This verse very clearly states people who are participating in this group of like evil, will spend eternity in hell.

Both Greek words carry the implication to be the work of “magic” by “magicians”, called “pharmacists”. But these trained white coated individuals are only the distributors. Therefore, by extension we can apply these concepts to the modern people that are actually creating, and manufacturing these potions in mass for the mandated mark distribution. All of these white coated workers are casting potential spells upon people, by giving them human created treatments for some potential cure, or relief purposes, and in doing so, are obtaining a lot of money for their work. This is sounding more and more like the woman with the issue of blood in Mark.

It is also very noteworthy to see that the Greek word G5332, carries the meaning of a “poisoner”. If that does not match what a natural “serpent” does, I do not know how to convince anyone better. We have now increased our number of references to serpent “poisonous toxins” by one more, and there are potentially others that we will not cover in this lesson. But this one is major and real, and it has serious application to what we are living through right now.

Ok, these are some very hard and challenging clues to accept. The white coated industry field has potentially done a lot of great things for people in recent history. But like anything else good, when placed in the wrong hands, with the wrong motives, and wrong desires, it can easily be turned to do something very evil, so quickly. The white coated workers, have been viewed as a positive modern accomplishment, by the majority of humans. This trust is why so many humans are rushing to be given an untested and unproven, serpent fang injection into their arms. After all, all of us are being told that it is totally safe. We are being brainwashed to believe that we are only doing what is best to save everyone else around us?  Right? If we cared about others, we would all participate blindly in full confidence they were all smarter than we are.

However, anything that comes from an end-time government does not appear to be doing anything good for their people, according to the Bible. Can you find Bible verses in Revelation or other places that teaches any government in the last days is working to save you?  Here is the main challenge. Some man-made medicines do help some people if they are used perfectly. But no one knows of any man-made drug that has no potential side-effects. Every prescription or non-prescription drug has a warning label of potential deadly side effects, including death from an overdose. This should be obvious why the Bible says they are all potential poisons.

There are a lot of possible physical problems, caused because of evil attacks of intentional or unintentional drug usage, that cause chemical imbalances in the human blood, organs, and tissues. What we learn from drug usage, and misuses, is that there can be the potential for a drug to be designed to do someone evil. The worst-case scenario, would be to cause intentional death to occur to someone. Or a lesser evil case result, would be to get someone to be easily under the power, control, or authority of another to make them like a willing slave or servant.

We could literally talk for days about the positive and negative uses for drugs. But the motivation for creating every legitimate, and major drug, from a creator and manufacturer, appears to have become, a “greed” for money. We learn this fact, that any drug that is deemed useful to help people, after the patent has expired, it then becomes legal to be manufactured by generic medicine producing companies. Suddenly, all of these companies greatly reduce the cost for the drug because of the competition between the companies. Suddenly these types of drugs are not even considered as a solution for saving lives for a crisis situation. No, the only solutions are new patentable drugs that can make a company a lot of money.

Could it be this is why God said these people in Revelation 9, needed to repent for their idol worship of gold and silver objects? This at least implies the application of “greed” being a major factor for the plagues that occur even today. If big-pharma companies, did not make billions of dollars, would there have ever been a requirement to force people to be inoculated? It is hopefully becoming obvious how this information is coming to life to describe what is happening in our world right now.

I do not know of any of these white coated companies that are labels as a “non-profit” corporation. That makes them automatically in it for the “profit” of money. This is exactly why there are so “few” disease cures. If a disease is completely cured, there is no longer any future income to be made.  Even the illegal drug makers, sell their products to make a lot of money. The more addicting a product is, the more profit they are bringing in.

CONCLUSION

We will conclude this lesson series with a reminder. Satan is a master deceiver. He has been deceiving angels and people, exponentially longer than you have been alive. If you believe you can never be deceived by him or anyone being used by him, you simply prove you are already deceived. There are just too many words of God written to people and Christians to warn us of this possibility of becoming deceived.

In these last days, there is such a massive global level of deception occurring. It has been planned and coordinated in the dark spirit realm. There is no way that people are clever enough to have perpetrated this level of coordinated global evil without dark spirit influence. It has crossed national boundaries, ethnic boundaries, racial boundaries, media and political party boundaries, even financial corporate giant boundaries and technology company boundaries.

Do you believe evil people are smarter than God? That should be an obvious answer of NO!  Do you believe Satan, is smarter than God? That answers should also be an obvious NO! But why have these less intelligent beings, now appear to have defeated God’s people on the earth? That is what a lot of people believe based upon the current circumstances.

Is God a Liar? Is His Word True? These also better be obvious questions to answer correctly for you.  God is not a liar. God’s Word is Absolutely True. Ok, let us ask some tougher questions. Does God’s Church bride lose to Satan? Is the Church of the Living God, defeated and go through the tribulation?  This is where people with faith will stand strong, despite the circumstances and take their authority to end this global conquest plan. You are either with God, or you are fighting against Him. Which one is it? Join the battle to submit to God’s Lordship, and begin to resist the devil with the rest of us. Greater is He that is in US, than he that is in the world!

Be a strong believer, in victory and shun defeat. Resist the serpent agenda. Don’t cooperate with the serpent. Pray continually and praise God even more for His Powerful ability that can be trusted. Faith filled prayers, worship and praise should fill your homes, automobiles, work places, cities and nations.

Where will you place your faith? Will you trust the false prophet narrative? Will you trust the Jezebel ruling government leaders? Will you place your trust in the white coat horse industry to be your savior? Who is really being transparent with you? Who can you really trust? Will you base your faith on God and His WORD? Will you trust in Him, or take a fang mark? Will you trust your job for your supply, or your God? IT IS TIME TO CHOOSE A SIDE AND MAKE A STAND!

It is best to end with good news after hearing about all of the potential negative end time works of the enemy serpent. Christians have been given authority over the serpent and his scorpions, according to Luke 10:19. However, this delegated authority does not guarantee our safety or our victory over him. But it will work for us, if we believe it, and exercise it as a reigning king on the earth (Romans 5:17). According to Ephesians 6:12, we are not fighting against the people being used by the serpent to do his evil. It is always the spirits that influence and possess these people that we are in an unseen battle with. Please join in unity with all of the body of Christ, and come against these unseen spiritual workers of the world. Bind them according to Matthew 18:18 and stop their takeover of the world. In Romans 16:20 God prophesied He would bruise the serpent under our feet before we are raptured. Believe this is happening now!

Finally, if you are a Christian working in the White Coated industry, please accept our thanks and encouragement for your heart to help people live. This is what is needed today. It is an extreme blessing to go to someone that loves to be a blessing to people, and that will pray for us, as well as to help people get well. Thank you again for being led by the Spirit of God to make wise bold right choices to save lives.

If you are a worker in the Jezebel government and you know Jesus, it is time to take a stand for Him. Pray for those in authority over you and ask God to remove everyone that is not willing to repent and be saved. The same is true for the Jezebel false prophet propaganda networks. Pray for these people to have a laborer of God to be sent across their paths to hear the good news of Jesus Christ. If you are a Christians working with them, ask God to use you to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ. God’s end time harvest is taking place before He comes to take the church away. Time is becoming very short. Be led by the Spirit of God in every moment of the time we have left.

Thank you for taking the time to read and study the Bible with us. We love you all very much. Be blessed to be a blessing. Share the Gospel of Jesus Christ, with the world. If you do not know Jesus Christ as your personal LORD and Savior, now is the time to ask Him. There is a link that follows to help you make that choice in believing faith. God bless each and everyone. If you have a question, comment, or prayer request, please feel free to leave it in a comment, and as the LORD, leads us we will do our best to acknowledge it. Thank you again for your prayers and we will pray for you.

If you have not read the summary overview of the series, you may like to continue to “Part 6” now.

Are You Saved? Do you Know Jesus? Life is Short! Jesus wants to Know You! Please come and get to Know Him!

SERPENT WITCHCRAFT PART 4 – SERPENT POISON FROM A CONQUERING RIDER

(Ver 1.1) This is now “Part 4” in one of the most demonically hated Bible study series ever published. If you have never seen any personal demon attacks, you have probably not done much to share the Gospel and Truth of Jesus Christ to the world. Satan has definitely manifested in so many new unexpected ways in the past few years, that it makes some wonder, is this the tribulation already?  But since many believe like us, that the rapture occurs prior to the beginning of the tribulation, we should rather conclude that this is just Satan knowing his time is very short, and bringing a surprise attack against the body of Christ. But we will find that what is happening today was foretold to us in God’s Word.

We have been going through information found in the book of Revelation concerning a spiritual enemy identified by God as the “ancient serpent” in Revelation 12:9. This symbolic trespassing ancient serpent, was originally a spiritual being named Lucifer (Isaiah 14:12). He has apparently now grown into the “great dragon” in these last of the last days. We learn of this significant spiritual growth from Strong’s definition of a “dragon” (G1404), as being a “fabulous serpent”. We then see how God combined this word Greek word “drakon” (G1404) with the Greek word “megas” (G3174), that was translated as “great”. If you understand computer terms, you know a megabyte is 1 million bytes. This is how God is describing the original serpent in the garden of Eden’s growth. This would reveal that Satan has increased in ability to deceive the world significantly. If you have not read this Bible lesson series from the beginning, it is highly recommended that you go and begin with “PART 1”.

One comment that was received about the last lesson, needs to be addressed for everyone. The comment implied that the “mark of the beast” described in Revelation 13, would need to be a more obvious choice before anyone would be willingly participating in receiving it. Unfortunately, we do not find that concept in the Bible. Take for example, the consequences of natural and spiritual death for every human, in Genesis 3? The serpent never mentioned any of this to Eve. Instead, he presented a false diversionary narrative of humans becoming more like God. There are numerous examples exactly like this throughout the Bible.

Please understand, the devil knows the Bible probably better than you do. He has had many more years to read and study it to see his future. This is what scares him so much. If he can read about the mark of the beast in Revelation 13, and see what God foretold, he is going to use that information to try to trick you. If you are only looking for a very obvious “666” tattoo on your right hand or on your forehead, he is not going to use that on purpose. No, Satan is crafting new modern ways of accomplishing the same end results. These technologies are the only way, he will be able to try to control over 7 billion people to cause them not to be able to work, buy, or sell. This is exactly why this Bible study series is showing some new hidden Bible ways of ultimate modern deception.

No, the current plan-demic of evil, is one of the most masterful deceptions, that demonstrates the increased level of the serpent’s ability to deceive everyone on the planet simultaneously. Instead of fooling just two humans to participate in the serpent’s deception in Genesis 3, he must now get over seven billion people to want and desire to participate in his purpose to steal, kill and destroy us (John 10:10). Again, this is much easier when it is done with a false narrative of a created crisis, and the unfillable promises hiding disguised evils in the mandated solutions. The serpent is using the promises of life, safety, security, freedom, health, normalcy, and other words of deception to inspire people to want to participate with a great passion and desire. Too many people want their freedom from fear, when this can only come through believing in the Word of God. Do you know how to say this more clearly?

If you are trusting all of your doctors, physicians, hospitals to do what is right and best for you, you are deceived already. If you are trusting everyone in the government to do what is best for you, you are extremely deceived. If you are trusting even your church ministers, teachers and pastors to tell you everything you should be doing to help make the world a united safe place, you are a very deceived individual. The Word of God is the ONLY SOURCE of TRUTH that can be trusted fully, and completely! If you do not read and study your Bible every day, you are becoming an easy target to receive the serpent’s “mark”.

EVERY WORD OF GOD
 IS AVAILABLE TO HELP US NOW

Hebrews 4:12  For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. 

It is essential for every Christian to understand this basic fundamental of the Bible. If you read this opening verse, you find that the Bible is “quick”, and “powerful”. The word “quick” in modern translation is “alive” or “living”. In one translation it says “living” and “active”. In another it says “living” and “working”. In another translation it says “alive” and “full of power”.

This is an awesome claim of divine participation in every human life that desires to partake in the Word of God. This teaches us that these Words that were written thousands of years before, have valid life meanings, and applications to what is happening to each of us now. Many times, people are not looking for how these things can apply to contemporary circumstances, and they miss out on what God wanted to say to help them get through life. This is why God says in Hosea 4:6, my people are destroyed for not knowing my Word. Now notice what this next verse teaches us:

Ecclesiastes 1:9 – The thing that has been–it is what will be again, and that which has been done is that which will be done again; and there is nothing new under the sun. (AMP)

This is another essential reason why this Bible lesson about Revelation is important, even if you don’t see what is written here to be happening now. God establishes a concept of law in this verse. God reveals everything occurring in the dimension of human time, repeats. What happened before, will be what happens again, today or in the future and vice versa. This means what will happen in the prophecy of the future, could be what is happening right now. God is just saying very clearly, events reoccur, like today’s fashions of clothing probably has already happened at some time in some form. Maybe not exactly, but the pattern is so similar that it is identifiable to the trained eye. Wow! We pray this truth is coming alive in your spirit.

What is amazing about the Word of God, is that if we have a situation that we need God’s help with, we can stop and pray, and ask God to show us a verse that will help us. He can then direct you to a place in the Bible that was written “for” someone else, “to” someone else, “about” someone else, and it can be just the message that causes us understanding and hope for NOW! This is what God is doing through these lessons. He is providing us verses, that apply to our current situations, using verses that were intended for a soon coming timed event.

We are about to learn a pattern of a “serpent” rider on a white horse. What we are doing in this Bible series, is examining clues given to us in the book of Revelation. Not one clue is sufficient to understand what is said is a “right now” truth. This is the law of 2 or 3 witnesses that must be used to understand ALL truth (Deuteronomy 17:6, Hebrews 10:28).  What we will find after going through all of the clues, should be a pattern of connected signs that at the very least, should help to guide us in the direction, that God wants us to go to learn the fullest form of truth.

Remember what Jesus said in John 8:32, “You shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free”. This is why Satan silences the truth. As long as you are ignorant of what God has done for you, and given to you, you are an easy serpent captive prisoner. But don’t forget the verse before this one in John 8:31. Here Jesus said “If you continue in my Word, then are you my disciples indeed”.  Please notice, there is “NO” assurance of being a disciple of Jesus, if you are not IN THE WORD.

REVELATION 6
AN INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW

In this Bible lesson, we will be focused upon a key verse in the sixth chapter of Revelation. God provides us a significant description of many of the events that will occur during the tribulation in the book of Revelation. This chapter 6, begins with a description of the Lamb of God in heaven, opening the first seal of a book, in verse 1. This heavenly action of the Lamb of God, causes a specific satanic serpent response on the earth. It is this exact scheduled response that appears to be prematurely thrown against us today. The serpent appears to be playing his cards before he is foretold to do so. This is actually a smart military move. It is like a surprise attack. Many military victories have occurred when the enemy was not expecting it. It would be like the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor and almost wiping out the entire naval force of the U.S. in WWII. But the serpent, like Japan has underestimated the knowledge, and power of God.

The book of Revelation is dominated with patterns, of sequences of sevens. First the tribulation lasts for 7 years, which is described to be the 70th week of Daniel’s prophecy concerning God’s dealings with the natural nation of Israel (Daniel 9:27). This time begins with the opening of a book sealed with 7 seals. Then comes the 7 trumpets. Then comes the terrible 7 bowl judgments. There is so much more that is mentioned that just cannot be studied here. All of this is not a part of this specific study on the subject of “Serpent Witchcraft”. No one should believe that any of this is happening as it is revealed for a future soon coming time.

But we are about to encounter a list of some of the most amazing “coincidences” possible with what is really happening in our world today. These are what some like to call, “Just so Happens” events. Seeing only one of these happening should not be sufficient evidence, to convince anyone that what is written in the Bible, could be the exact same as what we are experiencing. But combining all of these together, should begin to raise some significant concern, and awe with how God’s Word is so amazingly accurate and applicable for a right “NOW” warning to us all.

In Chapter 6 of Revelation, there are 4 horses listed with riders. These horses are primarily differentiated by the assigned color, and the rider’s qualities and descriptions. The order of mention of horse colors are 1) white, 2) red, 3) black, and 4) Pale (Green). It just so happens, that these 4 colors appear upon almost every Islamic nation flag. It is very interesting to learn how the events of the four horses, precisely correspond to the mention of events, described by Jesus in Matthew 24. Here is a list of references:

Matthew 24Revelation 6
A false Christ (v: 4-5)White Horse (v: 1-2)
Wars (v: 6)Red Horse – War (v: 3-4)
Famine (v: 7a)Black Horse – Famine (v: 5-6)
Death (v: 7b, 8)Pale Green Horse – (v: 7-8)

This is an amazing set of parallels from two writers. But it confirms how the white horse rider must represent an antichrist figure.

It is important to understand that a horse was an animal mostly for war. We can learn this from a lot of verses, but we will only mention Revelation 19:11-19. In this passage, Jesus is described coming back to the earth riding a white horse, to make war against the beast we were learning about in the last Bible lesson. This return, is a very sharply contrasted entrance to Jerusalem, to when Jesus rode a donkey in John 12:15.

It is VERY IMPORTANT to know here in Revelation 6:2, this rider of the white horse, is NOT JESUS CHRIST. Most Bible scholars agree the rider we will be focused upon is antichrist. He is the serpent pretending to be Christ to trick people into believing a lie, to worship him. Let us begin by reading our key Bible verse:

Revelation 6:2 – And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer. 

There are 32 English translation words found in this verse. But there are only 22 Greek words that make up these 32 English words. That does not sound like a lot, but it is amazing how much God can say in just a few words. God’s prophetical word selections are infinitely well thought out to bring His designed plan to pass, and demonstrate His great ability of foreknowledge. We will focus upon the rider first. We also view his intentions and motivations. Then we will look at his descriptive items. Finally, we will focus upon the horse symbol and the color white.

THE RIDER OF THE WHITE HORSE

Revelation 6:2 – And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.

We are being introduced to a rider, described as sitting upon a white horse. As mentioned before this rider’s description appears to be imitating the return of Jesus Christ, as coming to the earth. In fact, the exact same Greek words (G3022 = white, & G2462 = horse), are written only in these two verses in the N.T. (Revelation 6:2, & Revelation 19:11). This appears to say, that this rider has a role of Christ in mind, as conquering LORD and Savior of humanity, and the warring judge of evil.

From this information we can only conclude one of two possible interpretations. Either both verses refer to the same rider, or they reflect the reality that they are two different riders, with one trying to take the appearance of the other. Since we know the rider in Revelation 19:11, can describe only Jesus Christ, this other rider in Revelation 6:2, must be a false-Christ actor or imitator. That would agree with 2 Thessalonians 2:4, where Paul wrote about the antichrist setting himself up to be God.

It is interesting to see from the descriptions of Revelation 6:2 and 19:4, that both horse rider’s intentions are to conquer the entire world. Which one do you believe succeeds? If you are having trouble figuring this out, the serpent is going to be thrown out of our world in Revelation 20:2. This would teach us that any of the serpent’s victories during the tribulation, will only be temporary.

Therefore, we should understand our described conquering rider in Revelation 6:2, “WILL” achieve significant world conquests, but only for less than 7 years. He will be doing this using his subtle tricks of deception. But this will be terminated when the LORD returns. OK, if this rider is the antichrist, we know this is the “serpent” that we were introduced to in the previous lessons.

We can learn the most in the Bible from what is directly written. But we can also learn from what is NOT mentioned in a verse. There is no mention of a name, or even a symbolic description of who this rider might be. This would appear to teach us, that this person or system of power, could be anyone we could meet in the world today. In other words, the rider will not be wearing a red suit, with horns, and a long-pointed tail, like people envision the devil to look.

This missing information can confirm to us, that this rider is not obviously evil to the casual uneducated observer. Therefore, this person could look exactly like a normal human. It could also be a group of eloquently speaking political figures. In Daniel chapter 7, God gives us another prophecy about this system consisting of 10 kings (called horns) and stating another little horn (the antichrist) would rise above them. We can see this repeated in Revelation 13, but we did not discuss it previously.

God could be warning us that no one will be able to tell who this person or system of individual rulers are, by their physical descriptions or photographs. They may all look, and sound very good to many, while being very evil minded inside to all. Notice that our rider, is not called a dragon, a serpent, a beast, or by any other distinguishing physical characteristic. Therefore, this is a God clue to teach us, that humans must NOT blindly trust anyone.

RIDER INTENTION TO CONQUER THE WORLD

Revelation 6:2 – And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on himhad a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.

Now notice what we have learned so far. There is someone taking the appearance to be like Jesus, who is riding a white horse of war. This person has their eyes upon conquering the entire world. But there is absolutely no mention of any weapons in hand to achieve this goal. Or is there? Let us confirm the rider system’s design is to conquer next.

We can confirm this with the Greek word G3528, that was translated as “conquering” and “conquer” in Revelation 6:2. This word literally means to “subdue” someone. It can also be translated as to “prevail” over someone, or “to get the victory” over someone. It occurs in the N.T. in 24 verses and the majority of the time it is translated in the form of the word to “overcome”, past or present tense.

Strategy is a key part of conquering. Therefore, let us look at this briefly in this section. Past world conquests have been attempted by many “want-to-be” rulers. Their conquering strategy has typically been to take the world piece by piece, over a drawn-out duration of significant time. There has been none that have conquered the entire planet, until possibly now. Uh oh!

Think of this modern fact about war. Things have certainly changed since Biblical warfare days, and God knew this. For example, if any obvious attack to conquer the world occurred, there could be some possible nations that would not willingly allow this to occur. With global nuclear proliferation of weapons, someone could possibly push the buttons, to destroy the attacking enemy, and in retaliation with them certainly being destroyed the same. This type of warfare leaves nothing to possess or control. This does not match this verse of Revelation 6:2. Clearly this would make a global nuclear conquest very unlikely. 

Even if there was a conventional warfare that took place for global conquest, this could be a very long and drawn-out affair, and this certainly does not correspond with what Revelation 6:2 describes. If you read later in Revelation 6:4 you will find a “red horse” rider that does take peace from the earth. These wars cause significant deaths. What we learn from these facts, is the conquests taking place in verse 2, are not based upon nuclear or conventional warfare violence. We will speak more about this unconventional work of conquest, when we analyze the “bow”.

Let us analyze the Greek word translated as “went forth” that comes before the word “conquering”. It is important to note that this same Greek word G1831, is used in Matthew 2:6, to describe Jesus “coming into” the world, to be born in Bethlehem, to eventually become the Governor of Israel in Revelation 19-20. This was a quotation from Micah 5:2. It seems to indicate another paralleled comparison of plans, between God and the serpent.  God brought forth the Christ to come to save and conquer and the serpent is counterfeiting this plan with his own. We need to actually look at all of the Strong’s definition of G1831, because this is very important to understand:

G1831- From G1537 and G2064; to issue (literally or figuratively): – come-(forth, out), depart (out of), escape, get out, go (abroad, away, forth, out, thence), proceed (forth), spread abroad.

This word definition teaches us that this world conquering system, was “sent-forth”, “departed-out”, “escaped”, and “spread-abroad”. This would at the least, imply this was an intentional planned world conquest, of whoever, or whatever it was that was being spread around the world. Uh oh?

Now see this information in the light of what we have learned about the current world pathogen, that suddenly, and unexpectantly “came forth” and was “spread-abroad” on our planet.  A popular false prophet narrative, claimed it had just accidently “escaped” to spread from a wet market in the Great Red Dragon nation, to “go abroad”. But other more reliable sources of potential truth, have claimed there was a deliberate release where it was intentionally designed to be spread abroad to every nation of the world, for a potential purpose of globalization conquest.

Whatever happened (and God knows), this pathogen has crisscrossed the entire globe, over and over, going forth rapidly conquering the entire planet, exploiting human “fear”. This appears to be just one more “just so happen” accurate implied descriptions found in Revelation 6:2.

Ok, we are not done with our verse word analysis. Let us look at the word “to”, that precedes the word “conquer”.  This is describing the horse, the rider and their intent. The Greek word G2443 that was translated as “to”, is defined as “intent”, “purpose”, or “planned result” for the rider and the horse. This simply confirms to us that this was, is, and will be, an intentional release for an intentional planned purpose and result. Right now, it appears that the serpent is winning, but fear not, because God is not done yet. What we have confirmed so far, is that when the rider of a white horse has gone forth into all of the world, their plan was only to conquer. Let us now move to the subject of the bow.

THE BOW

Revelation 6:2 – And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.

Here, is the problem with the rider of the white horse in Revelation 6:2. We can read clearly; his motivation is to conquer the world. Then we can only find a “bow”, that represents a part of an ancient projectile delivery system. This type of weapon is not likely to be used in modern times. Therefore, it must be symbolic or have a hidden meaning.

Let us briefly discuss how a “bow” works. This device is used for hunting, target practice, or ancient war. This would make it useful for at least three, or four purposes. One purpose would be for obtaining food. The next would be for just pleasure for increasing skill. The final would be for potential defense against an enemy, or for the evil intent of murder.

A bow works by creating, and releasing kinetic energy through the application of human strength, being combined with the designed device’s power and tension. Usually, a bow consists of a strong piece of line that is connected to the ends of a flexible object, like a piece of wood, or modern type of strong plastic material. By bending the bow portion and connecting the line to each end, it creates tension, that can be increased by pulling back upon the line. A projectile device called an arrow has a groove at the end that is inserted into the line, and then the line is pulled back to create the greater tension, until it is released by the holder of the bow. This “release” causes the kinetic flow of the arrow at a high speed away from the “bowman”, going through the “air” to cause the sharp tip of the arrow to enter into the desired target, either, animal, target, human being aimed at.

This is an amazing description of what we have been experiencing with the pathogen. We have had a ruling system, that released a pathogen that is transmitted by predominantly air, thus the demand for masks to stop the transmissions, etc. Now the plan has progressed (flowed forward), to include a dart injection solution of who knows what. This weapon choice of Revelation 6:2, has some vast symbolic implications being associated with it. But notice our white horse rider is not described to have any arrows directly. Therefore, these arrows could be implied.

This would seem to teach us, the rider is not the main one, that is delivering the arrow, dart, spear, or the needle to the people to cause fear from deaths. It looks like he is possibly just the one, that may be giving the peaceful orders for a hidden and mandated greater delivery system. We talked briefly about the factors of modern methods used to control people, in the last lesson. However, notice how similar the patterns of conquest are in Revelation 6:2, with what we have been going through in the world today with the pathogen.

The rider has NO “full” visible weapons for conquest. This teaches us at least two very important things we must know. First, this means this rider, is not conquering the globe with airplanes, submarines, armies, intercontinental ballistic missiles, etc. Second this teaches us, that his conquests methods are not normal and visible. Uh oh!

We can only find a “bow” in his hand, which is totally useless without arrows. What does the omission of sharp pointed projectiles tell us? This description makes this rider either the most stupid world conqueror on the planet, or one of the shrewdest, and most crafty unconventional and unexpected, evil beings we have ever encountered. We should probably vote for the second choice.

The “bow” is one of the most fascinating words found in this verse. What we should understand is that a bow represents only a “delivery” system for whatever will be “shot” from this device. Stop and think about what the Holy Spirit just said. Is it just another coincidence, that people get “shot” (pierced) with a sharp dart or arrow from a bow?  If the “bow” is a figurative symbol, and not a literal item, then this could possibly change a lot of our views upon what could be figuratively “shot” into a human to control them. Let us take a look at this Greek word next translated as “bow”.

This Greek word G5115 translated as “bow”, only occurs here in this verse of the New Testament. There are no other verses to compare its application of usage, or its defined meanings. According to Thayer and Strong, this word means a bow. There is no other help that is given to us to understand it to be anything else. I read through nearly 30 different English translations of the Bible, and they were ALL translated as a “bow”. That consistency should almost scare us. It is very rare to see anything with 100% agreement, translated from the Word of God.

Perhaps the disagreement will come in only what the “bow” symbolically represents. Searching the internet for opinions, you can find a lot of people who do not have a clue what it is, and they guess. Therefore, let us only focus upon the transliterated Greek word to see what can be learned from this. The Greek letter sounds that can be transliterated into English represents the word “toxon”. This was God’s word choice for writing this verse and He knows everything about every word. This word choice will next become very amazing.

It just so happens, that from this Greek word, we get our English words “toxin” and “toxic”. Both of these describe and represent “poisonous” materials.  According to the Online Etymology this word toxon, can also be associated to be the equivalent with the Latin words toxicus, meaning poisonous, and toxicum, meaning poison. It is also noteworthy, that this online resource speaks of a “toxon” (bow) being associated with the ancient practice of dipping the tips of arrows into poison, before shooting them into an enemy from a bow. Wow!

Here again is the problem with the rider of the white horse in Revelation 6:2. We can read clearly; his driving motivation is to conquer the world. And now we can see the possible implied usage of peaceful hidden “poisonous” substances, to accomplish this. And this is coming from a symbolic device that will produce a “shot” pierce mark to potentially kill people (maybe some slowly or others instantly). Notice, no one is making this up, this is what we can potentially see from this verse. Then remember this verse is alive and potentially trying to help us all see what we might need to know now.

Hopefully, you are seeing something potentially very useful to know about how this seated, “want to be world conqueror”, could be intending to spread his power, to conquer the world. The serpent could very well be using a modern bio-weapon of poison to cause death. This would again appear agreeable with how it was spread and swept the globe as an invisible peaceful conqueror. Has anyone ever seen the devil? So similar is this, with the pathogen named as a crown.

No one here is claiming this is what is happening, but each of us will have to judge the facts given to us by God, and let the peace of God rule our choices, or the lack of peace overrule what we do, and believe.

But, if this rider is a disguised conquering warrior, we must at least admit he is capable of doing anything very evil to achieve his peaceful goal. This logic would include an unseen type of bio-weapon that could bring him, or them power and control of the planet’s large population without causing massive destruction of physical assets. This would also imply a very large motivation of “greed” to own everything. We will see this possibility more confirmed, later in the Bible series, when we move to a different chapter of Revelation, the Lord be willing. Let us now move to the “crown” gift next.

THE CROWN GIFT

Revelation 6:2 – And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.

We can read in Revelation 6:2, where a crown gift is given to a potential one world, false Christ want to be ruler, for a possible coming system of global government. It is essential to notice, this crown was a “gift” given to the rider. It is at least, implied that this gift is given after he was seated and riding to conquer. Therefore, the crown source came from somewhere else. We can learn from reading in Revelation 13:2 that it was the “dragon” that gave the beast its power and authority. This appears to connect these two chapters together.

If you have been alive, and awake upon our planet for the last couple years, you have been introduced to a new word of fear by Satan’s design. Perhaps you have heard the word “corona” almost every day, being spoken constantly by the global false prophets. What does the word “corona” mean? This word has one definition of “being the area located at the top of the human head”. The coronal area extends from the front of the forehead moving around in a level circle to the back of the head. This would normally be where a hat, or a “crown” would sit upon the human head. For example, a “coronation” occurs when a prince is exalted to be king.

It is also very interesting to know that the word “corona”, is Latin and Spanish for a “crown”. Is this just another “amazing coincidence”? Are you keeping track of the number of coincidences we are observing? Did you know the Hebrew language does not have a word for “coincidences”? This would tend to teach us that God does not view things to be a coincidence. But you will have to judge for yourself, if you want to agree with the LORD, or not?

We should be able to see another pattern being repeated with this information, combining it with the previous section, about the bow. It should be becoming obvious we have both placements of the mark of the beast mentioned in this verse. The forehead would be where the crown could be placed, and the hand could be where a bow is held. This precisely matches the locations of the mark of the beast we read about in Revelation 13:16.

Now pay attention to where the governments of the world have focused upon to control their people. We have been forced fed a narrative for the need to wear a mask or face shield on our head, and constantly to wash her hands with sanitizer. Both of these requirements are in no way normal, or healthy. Nor do they stop the spread of what they claim is a severe priority. Now they are currently demanding a forced arrow “shot” participation from a type of bow.

Do you remember and understand the size of the crown pathogen? It is only 120 nm in size. The holes in a mask are over 100 times the size of that size. This would make it like stopping a mosquito with a chain link fence. Please say you do understand that comparison?

As we know a crown is one typical symbol for royalty, power, and authority. It is possible that this is the only thing that this word “crown” is referring to. But we should consider some other additional possible meanings, based upon what we read in Hebrews 4:12. Remember that it was this verse that describes the Word of God, to be a living active document, that is applicable to come alive to help us at every place, and time in our life. Why did the Lord direct us to this verse? This would also help to teach us to ask, how is what is written in Revelation 6:2 applicable, and useful for what is happening to us NOW!

Perhaps we can see the potential for a “toxin” being spread globally for world conquest? This “toxin” could be a combination of a man-made crown micro-weapon, that causes the alleged need for a new man-made serpent fang solution. Since no creator of this substance, clearly has fully tested it upon humans sufficiently, or will name all of the items that they contain, it should be more than a little concerning. We should all pay close attention to the fact that God chose these two words and put them together to describe a world conquest. Do you believe all of this is just a coincidence? How many coincidences does it take to make it real? Let us look at another potential coincidence with the color of the chosen horse.

THE WHITE HORSE

Revelation 6:2 – And I saw, and behold a white horse: and hethat sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.

God could have chosen any colors to describe the 4 horses revealed in Revelation 6. But these were chosen to inform, teach and provide information for anyone that needed to know about what was happening, or was coming soon. Also think about this, perhaps the color of the horse is being selected by the evil rider, and not by God. This would be like God giving us the news warning, thousands of years before this selection would take place.

This should make the color “white” more than very important. We can believe God reported to us, this color to mean something that should be very recognizable and beneficial for us that are living at the time of the end. It could even have a meaning today, that has not ever been seen until recently.

The color white, can definitely be a symbolic message for peace or surrender. Anyone not wishing to fight, waves the white surrender flag to give up. This would appear to say, the rider takes the appearance of being very peaceful, while he is conquering. The color white is also a message of righteousness, purity, and cleanliness. For example, this would describe the clothing of the bride of Christ in Revelation 19:8. This would signify the evil intention of this ruler, is outwardly pure looking, while potentially being inwardly very evil.

But there is another current major world power system, that needs to be introduced, and addressed in this Bible study. Remember a horse represents a powerful system under the control of the government ruler rider. The rider must have the ability to steer the horse in the direction he wishes them to go. They typically do this by making laws and this steers the horse the way they wish it to turn. This describes the relationship with our next global horse industry.

This system has been around for a long time, but it has risen to become one of the most dominant modern influences in the last 100 years, for every human regardless of age. This industry was hopefully established as a good influence to our world to help hurting people, and many Christians worked in it. This industry worked together with governments to help get this beneficial help out. This industry was founded with a basic moral standard, and set of ethics and oaths, that profess they “will do their patient no harm”. They call this the Hippocratic oath. They normally swear this covenant before beginning to work in this field. However, greed has changed some powerful people in the upper management area, and even in the lower professional area of this good intended group, into another willing participating tool for deception. The Bible actually speaks about how this will be used to control people and we will hopefully, see this in the next lesson, the LORD be willing.

Governments have cooperated, and partnered with this industry extensively. This is done because this industry, is one of the largest political campaign contributors, and lobbyists that exists. It is also interesting that it is this industry that buys most of the advertisements to fund the false prophet voice platforms. Money is a clear factor for their intertwined, workings, power, and influence. The communicated narrative for these cooperative workings, has always been, for the perceived, “betterment of public safety, health, and for the prolonging of life expectancy”. Helping people to live longer and healthier lives, sounds really great, until it is turned into something else that is not for the narrative purpose still being claimed. This would appear to be what is happening in our world.

This is how deception works best. Create a history of good works, with respectable intentions of good, to ensure public safety, success, and to raise general public confidence to be high. Then create an intentional fear-based crisis, and then prepare a very similar sounding solution, that is totally new and different, but give it the exact same name of previous successes.  Then mandate that the new untested solution must be taken, for all of the good of yourself, and your family, and your friends, and your co-workers, and the world.

Let’s analyze this industry a little deeper. Many of the current highest levels of professional workers in our subject industry, predominately wear professional white lab coats, like God’s first Revelation 6:2 white coated horse. Please understand the similarities. The horse being chosen by the rider, and described by the LORD, is clothed with a coat of white. The human professionals in this industry have been clothed in a coat of white as their own personal choice. Could this be foreknowledge?

This trend of wearing white lab coats only began in the late 1800’s. That is interesting since that is clearly in the category of the last of the last days. The main reasons given for wearing this white coat, 1) is their clean appearance, and 2) how this white coat causes their patients to feel positive about seeing them. In other words, it is for external perception, and not for the fact that they are actually pure and clean. It would seem to give people a greater confidence, and level of security, that these were the good guys that were taking care of them. Uh oh! This is still true for some of this industry, thank God!

Now for an emphasis upon some well-known disturbing information. Take note that the primary symbol for this industry, just so happens to be one or two venomous serpents on a pole. Wow, did God know all of this when He wrote the Bible?  Of course, He did! He knew exactly who would wear white lab coats, and use the “serpent” idol as their symbol, after all they copied it from the Bible, and Moses in the book of Numbers.

Notice what God appears to teach us in Revelation 6:2. Here we can find an implied meaning, that it is the horse being ridden, that is increasing the power, and ability of the rider to conquer the world. In other words, if there were no white horse to ride, there would be a much different type of conquest. So there appears to be a direct cooperative partnership between whatever this horse represents (maybe this potential health industry), and the world government leader(s). Pay close attention to every horse being a different color, and every rider producing different results of evil. Also take note, no other rider is ever given a “crown”. Finally, notice that it is only this rider that conquers without the mention of evil things occurring. In other words, this makes it sound like a “peaceful” takeover. Doesn’t this sound like what we have been through recently?

Could it be the white coat animal that hands the “crown” (Latin corona) to the ruler to help with his conquests? Could it be the ruler using the toxin orders that help with this conquest? That is something very significant to begin to think about, and to see if that is really possible. There has been evidence revealed that it was the government (white horse rider) that funded the creation of the crown weapon, and white coated workers in the Great Red Dragon nation that developed, and released it. This implies that it was this cooperation between parts of the government (the rider) and the medical white horse under the influence of the “serpent”, that released it, that caused a global toxic evil to be spreading. It appears to have happened to eliminate an opposing President that was in office, who was not a part of their plan. There appears to be more of the Bible that is potentially happening now, then many currently fully comprehend.

We currently have a leadership of many, working and cooperating with a potential white-coat industry to produce acceptance of a “fang-mark”. The result of taking this, is an unproven, unknown and untested end. It has NOT been fully tested or fully authorized as safe by anyone other than the false prophets. No one but God and the manufacturers, knows all of the ingredients that are literally in these demanded arrow venoms. But if you are wise, you might go and search the patents and you may just find one ingredient just so happens to be a substance called “Luciferase”. Uh oh. What is that? This type of information is available if you search.  You just can’t make this stuff up.

It is also more than just a coincidence that the majority of the fang mark solutions are two shots. How many fangs are in a serpent’s mouth? It just so happens that there are two injections in every natural serpent poison bite.  Next there are coming booster shots that are being required for injection. We will see this happening in the next lesson, the Lord be willing.

How do so many people that are reporting to work every day to help save lives, want to participate in a fear driven propaganda serpent agenda? It is definitely called deception, but due to threats from employers, many are also being forced to participate or lose their jobs. We all do so very much appreciate the hard work of so many honest and good workers in this industry. There are a growing number of smart white coat industry workers, that have found ways to get out real working solutions for the weapon, without taking the “fang-mark”.  These are people that still have a heart of compassion, and they are needed everywhere, if you are one of those people, we all pray for you to stay strong in the LORD.

SUMMARY

We should have learned a lot of potential new information found in our Bibles, about things that could be currently happening in some form of a repetitious, or reoccurring pattern. Notice the photo at the beginning of this summary. A reader showed us this in a comment, and it was added to the lesson for confirmation. This was a photo created for a Genome Sequencing Lecture that is believed to have been held in the UK. This photo was a part of the company’s presentation discussing the pathogen crown sequencing discussion. Do you believe they knew what they had created, or was this just another coincidence? It appears to match a lot of the information that is contained within the Revelation 6:2 verse. Wow!

Many will call God and His Word, nothing but conspiracy theories, fiction and a book of misinformation. But, for those that want to see the truth, these can be eye opening words. We have been seeing a study of what just some of the book of Revelation, says will definitely happen in the end of this age. From what is happening now, it appears we are living very close to the time this could be happening next for real.

We have been introduced to a symbolic “serpent”, a spiritual being that has been around on the earth for at least 6000 years. We have seen a description of 4 types of “serpent” poisons that this evil being can use to deceive or kill people. We have seen the prophesied “mark of the serpent beast” in Revelation 13. We learned this was given with a hidden agenda and message. We learned that without this mark, people would not be able to work, buy, or sell. We have gone through only selected verses of Revelation, chapters 6, 12, & 13, so far.

In Revelation chapter 6, we were introduced to four horses of different colors, with our emphasis being on the first “white” horse. We should have learned this rider had intentions of globalization by world conquest. He appears to be a potential peaceful hero and world savior to be worshipped on the outside, but there is found the potential for a hidden toxin. This could possibly represent two poisons, the first being cleverly crafted words, and the other being a hidden poison control system created by a white coated powerful horse industry.

This should be a lot of information to cause many to begin to be awakened from the darkness that had covered their minds by the works of the serpent. We thank you all for taking the time to read and study the Bible with us. Please, ask the Holy Spirit to speak to you and guide you. Allow His guidance to rule your hearts and minds. At least understand, that it could have been the Holy Spirit to guide you to read this information. We have had so many testimonies from people that claimed this is what happened to them and we give God all of the glory for how He works.

Please, do not allow any of the words of this website, or the world false prophets, to place you into any fear. God is GOD, and there is no better source to trust in.  Please discern our heart’s motivation and desire is to just help people to see something that they may not have seen or known before about God’s Word. We are not telling you that this is the only way to view these Bible verses. But we are saying these are all more than enough coincidences that should cause us all to pray for people in our world.

We love you all very much and will continue to pray for each of you. If you have a personal prayer request, you are welcome to leave it in the comments. If you have any questions, or comments, please feel free to share them. Remember God loves us all, and Jesus is Coming Soon. Be Ready!

If you would like to continue reading in the Bible lesson series, please click here on “Part 5

Are You Saved? Do you Know Jesus? Life is Short! Jesus wants to Know You! Please come and get to Know Him!

SERPENT WITCHCRAFT PART 3 – THE SERPENT’S MARK

(Ver 1.0) This is “Part 3” in the Bible study series about the subject of serpent witchcraft, deception, and a planned global conquest occurring in these times of the end of days. If you have not read this series from the beginning, it is highly recommended that you go to “Part 1” first. This series, builds upon the previous lessons as its foundation. There is so much dependent revelation, and each of this must be understood to better recognize any new revealed Bible verses. God usually layers truths upon truths to build a sound Biblical groundwork (Isaiah 28:10).

So far, we have been introduced to the concept of a Bible fear-based Jezebel ruling government system, that demands the silencing of the real prophets of God and truth. She establishes, and works with her unified false prophets who provide a deceptive cover of coordinated narratives. These false messages are designed to spread fake propaganda to us, for a dominated harmonized diversion. These diversions are causing many to be distracted away from the truth of knowing God, and His Word, and what is really happening in our nation, and to them, and the world. This is a very subtle way that an evil serpent operates (Genesis 3:1) to achieve deception. Then in the last lesson, we examined Bible truths surrounding 4 types of serpent poisoning. It now appears at least 3 out of the 4 types of these poisonings, are happening in the world today in massive coordination, working through the rulers, and the false prophets’ tricks.

Have you ever observed such a well-planned and orchestrated level of global corruption and evil, in your lifetime? Recently there occurred a purposeful designed leak of a manmade enhanced deadly micro-biological pathogen weapon. This warfare originated from the evilest of all of the Great Red Dragon nations. This beast is our primary named subject found in Revelation 12:3, and he must not be forgotten to be the original serpent of witchcraft and deception introduced in Genesis 3:1.

What has been happening is a masterful spell of serpent witchcraft for human mind control. Anyone with any spiritual discernment can observe that there is a global “plan-demic” for the control of every human on the earth. This plan originated as a strategy of spreading an exaggerated fear of certain demise. An evil man-created pathogen was released and the exaggerations of terminal conditions caused great cooperation to destroy a lot of the world’s economy, convincing people to believe they were safest being confined in isolation. This caused great emotional stress upon adults and children, causing mental instability and demonic desires for suicides.

Legitimate treatments for the pathogen have been intentionally prevented to be used by the Jezebel advisors. Proven prophylactic pathogen inhibitors were deliberately silenced. Even one nameless solution that was given authorization for internal usage, was given to people and it was known to intentionally kill them. What we are witnessing is a massive genocide, on the level of Nazi Germany in the 1940s. Vast numbers of people were purposely murdered, just to increase the fatality numbers, to cause more fears for human submissiveness.

But now we are seeing a major shift into the next phase of a nefarious global plan. The rest of this Bible series will be focusing upon this new potential strategy of evil. It has to do with taking a mark from a beast, in order to participate in the global economy. It is clearly the next level of human control.

As stated before, this Bible series is intended for spiritually awake, and aware mature Christians. Jesus consistently cried for people to hear, that plainly had ears to hear, and in making this statement openly, He claimed not everyone that was present to listen, was able to comprehend His words.  So it is, with any spiritual message from the Holy Spirit. There will be some that are just offended at the message of warnings. If you do not feel like you can receive a deep spiritual Bible prophecy warning from the LORD, please do not continue reading. Also know that everything that is presented here today, is not intended to produce fear, but rather faith and encouragement. And it is given only in, and for His great LOVE towards you! Let us start learning about the mark of the beast system.

SERPENT’S IDENTITY

Revelation 12:9 – And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. 

This verse defines the “serpent” being in the Bible!  He is the reoccurring theme subject of this Bible study. This ancient spiritual being was clearly defined here to be Satan. In the next section, we will be looking at verses in Revelation chapter 13. This verse definition of the serpent, only precedes our main chapter subject, by less than 10 verses. Remember God did not write the Bible in a chapter and verse format originally. These divisions were added by humans to permit simplified referencing. Therefore, these words, and descriptions are all directly connected together.

Pay attention to the names of the spirit entity being defined. This is an essential verse definition for interpreting, and understanding the Bible correctly from Genesis to Revelation. In this verse God connects the names of “the devil” and “Satan” to be the exact same spiritual being. Then God connects these two synonymous names with the identifying symbols of a “great dragon” and an “ancient serpent”. Therefore, the serpent, and the dragon are also the exact same Satan spirit.

The Greek word G3789 is translated as “serpent”, and this word is simply defined as a “snake”. But it has additional implications attached with it. For example, it comes from the Greek word G3700, that means “eyes wide open”, implying sharpness of vision. This could be true for the observer of the serpent, and/or for the serpent as well. But Strong defines this word to figuratively be describing, someone that is sly, and a cunning artful malicious person. So, God is defining a spirit being who is exceedingly evil.

Now for the Greek word G1404 (drakon) that is translated as “dragon”. This word’s definition by Strong, is “a fabulous type of serpent”. This word teaches us that the original ancient serpent, from Genesis 3:1, has now grown into a larger ‘great dragon” in Revelation 12. This shows us this serpent’s increase in size, power, and ability to do greater evil, and deceive people more effectively. This is a very important point to understand. Since the beginning of Genesis, until Revelation 12, the serpent has assumedly increased from his experiences in dealing with God and humans to grow in influence, and ability to trick, and hurt humans who do not know, or understand their authority over him.

We can learn in this “dragon” word definition, from him being a “fabulous serpent”, that Satan possesses some amazing abilities to captivate, charm, attract, hypnotize, mesmerize, or enchant people through either mind control or thought manipulation. This concept, would be like a wizard that is trying to use witchcraft spells against humans. We can confirm this by reading 1 Corinthians 4:4, where we see God warning that people who do not believe His gospel have had their minds blinded from seeing His truth by the serpent. Another key verse is written to Christians in 2 Corinthians 2:5. In this verse God warns His saved people to cast down vain imaginations, and every high thought that tries to overrule the Word of God. This sounds very important. God is teaching how people, and Christians can all be deceived by the “serpent” in their minds.

LESSON TO LEARN: A SERPENT SPIRIT GIVES THE BEAST SYSTEM OF RULERSHIP, THEIR POWER, AND THEIR SEAT OF GREAT AUTHORITY. IT REQUIRES A COOPERATIVE COMBINED EFFORT OF THE UNIFIED GLOBAL LEADERS TO WORK THE SERPENT SYSTEM IN UNITED COORDINATION TO NOT FAIL (GENESIS 11:6).

Satan has tried this plan previously in Genesis 11. In this case God declared that there would be nothing that they would not be able to do, because they were all in one language, and with one purpose to defy God. However, God demonstrated to Satan how much wiser, and powerful He was than the serpent by confusing all of the languages and dividing the humans into separate nations. Satan watched this happen, and is trying today to reverse all of this for his plan against God.

LESSON TO LEARN: THERE IS GOOD NEWS! A SERPENT SPIRIT PLAN TO RULE THE WORLD WILL ULTIMATELY FAIL, BECAUSE GOD IS STILL GREATER, WISER AND MORE POWERFUL.

Finally, please note that it is here in this verse of Revelation 12:9, that we were warned again that it was this spirit being, that will be deceiving the entire world. Therefore, everything we are learning is directly connected together by God’s design to be about a hidden spirit being who:

  1. is someone that is very sly, tricky, cunning like a serpent,
  2. able to poison people’s hearts, and minds, with lies, or fear-based words,
  3. is even capable of injecting created physical poisonous substances into people.

Therefore, it is Satan that is working this plan, to destroy all humans. Next, we will find that it is also this serpent being, that will be giving out a “mark” for every human to take by either free choice, or by force.

INTRODUCTION TO THE SERPENT MARK

Revelation 13:15 – And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed. 

Revelation 13:16 – And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: 

Revelation 13:17 – And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. 

What the majority of the world has been experiencing in 2021, appears to be a very parallel reality to what was prophesied by God in Revelation 13. We can read clearly, that there was a demanded mandate in Revelation 13, where everyone will be forced to take a “mark” from “the serpent” ruler. You may think it just speaks of a “beast”, but we need to learn and remember where the symbolic beast gets its power. For example, in Revelation 13:2 we find this beast receives its power, seat, and great authority from the “dragon”. We have already learned the Revelation 12 dragon is a specific type of the original ancient serpent of Genesis 3:1. Therefore, this beast is operating with our “serpent’s” abilities and literally could be the serpent himself manifested in the flesh. Let us use this introductory information to compare with what is happening in the world now.

If you go and study how a natural serpent operates, it may shock you to how the design of his serpent fang and gland system, is almost identical to a modern-day medical device being used now by the millions. You see unless the natural serpent can get its poison under your skin, they are completely harmless. Remember a serpent’s fang must penetrate the human’s skin to be effective and deadly, and this will always leave an external mark. Uh oh? This is an interesting concept when compared to the two types of Bible poisons, we learned about in the previous lesson. These types of poisons were:

  1. words, (Proverbs 18:21)
  2. natural poisonous substances, (Numbers 21:6)

and both of these can cause death according to the Bible.

If the spiritual serpent can get his words in your heart and mind, then he has achieved his deception plan to change, control, and influence you. If the serpent can get you to say what he desires, he can even kill you (Proverbs 18:21). The same is true if a serpent inspired human, wanted to physically kill you. They must get their naturally created poison, into your physical body in order for it to be effective. This would cause them to resemble a naturally created serpent. What we are finding out is, the spiritual or physical poison is ineffective, unless it gets under our skin.

One modern term used for a device like this serpent fang, is “hypodermic”.  The general designs of these two realities, are almost identical. The word comes from two joined terms “hypo” meaning under, and “derma” meaning skin. Therefore, we are now contending with a modern device with an identical design of a serpent “fang”, that places substances of potential things that are good for life, or poison for death, under the skin of the human test subject. This will be just one of our combined subjects about the “mark” today.

We have just been introduced to a new “beast” system of government in Revelation 13, that demands “a mark” be given out and forced upon everyone. We are learning that this “beast” system of rule, is based upon the symbolic serpent with fangs concept. Notice that this system of rule, demands to be worshipped, or all those that resist it, will die. Without taking this “fang-mark” that is being mandated, the Bible says “no human will be able to buy or sell”. These are amazing modern parallels. These could be news headlines if the false prophets would tell the truth.

Ok, we are not going through everything in this chapter, or in these verses for the sake of time. This subject of a “mark”, is a significant theme found in the entire Bible, and should be a Bible study series, all by itself. But notice what is said by the Holy God. God declares, and warns us that many people will be killed in verse 15, if they do not worship a “beast”, and take his “mark” in verse 16.  Let us start with understanding, what “killed” means.

A SERPENT’S PURPOSE IS TO KILL

The Greek word translated as “killed” is G615. This word is defined by Strong as “slay”, “kill outright”, and “put to death”. It comes from the Greek word G575 which means “off”, or “away”, denoting someone to be permanently “separated” from someone else. Therefore, the term “killed”, is a description of people that are intentionally being murdered for permanent separation from earth’s human society. This means these deaths are NOT ACCIDENTS. It is implied in this setting that this is a mass killing of potentially millions of people. Remember we are not speculating anything, simply by reading what is said to happen in the Bible!

God says, and not us, that these people are intentionally murdered, simply because of their “refusal” to willingly comply, and cooperate, with the ruling world serpent authority’s demands for unquestioned obedience, conformity and uniformity. This threat alone makes the acceptance of the “mark” more than a mandatory request, and it dictates the need for a loss of most, if not all freedoms of personal choice.

LESSON TO LEARN: Murders will be occurring to produce fear for an ultimate forced control of all humans. These rulers will display their evil power to silence any opposing human influence.

Notice that these people are killed, because they are not willingly taking the beast’s mark. We are not told directly here how these people are killed. But later in Revelation 20:4, God informs us of the souls of people that had their heads cut off during these 7 years. These people were stated to be followers of Jesus Christ. Therefore, we can logically conclude, that they do not take the mark of the beast, and die a very bloody death. There are people being killed like this by extreme radical Islamists right now. That is just an important fact of truth to be aware of. This seems to imply that it is people like this that will be ruling the world during this time.

These verses in Revelation 13, show how these prophesied unmarked people are very hated by the antichrist ruler(s) that are demanding the mark. This could further imply that all of the people that have willingly taken the mark, could potentially be convinced to hate these “unmarked” people. We have seen this planned strategic narrative already occurring. Can you imagine how the mark mandators in Revelation 13, could accuse all of these people that are unmarked, to be the new source of an entire global crisis? It is a very masterful evil strategy to label good people as evil people, and evil people as good people. God warns us of this coming strategy in Isaiah 5:20.

LESSON TO LEARN: THROUGH THE TACTICS OF AN EVIL SERPENT GLOBAL GOVERNMENT SYSTEM, RULERS WILL BE LABELING GOD’S PEOPLE AS THE SOURCE OF THEIR EVERY EVIL PROBLEM. ALL OF THE SERPENT MARKED DECEIVED PEOPLE WILL EASILY TURN ON ALL OF THE PEOPLE THAT ARE “UNMARKED”.

Does any of this sound familiar yet? It should. Now let us move to the word “worship” mentioned in Revelation 13.

THE HIDDEN REQUIRED SERPENT WORSHIP

In Revelation 13, we find that “worship” is being demanded from all of the people on the earth, by a beast system of government. Uh oh! Just when we think that the mandate priority is to just take a mark to buy and sell, we find out about the real new “hidden” agenda. This secret new desire is for someone to be worshipped. Could this be true today in our world? It sure does give us that projected idea, if we are paying attention. There is definitely the appearance of a hidden reason for taking today’s mark, and it is not to make anyone safe or healthy.

This Greek word G4352 translated as “worship”, literally means “to kiss, or to be like a dog who licks their master’s hand”. That definition could change the viewed perspective of worship, considerably. Think about a dog’s determined exuberance, when their good and loving master, enters the house! That is how saved humans should react to a loving and saving God, that delivered them from an eternal existence in a lake of fire.  But what kind of a person do you need to be, to worship someone, that is deemed as “extreme evil”, and even a mass murderer, in the sight of God?

If we study this word “worship” in the New Testament, we discover that there are two opposing spiritual beings that are in a battle for the human worshipper. Did you know that every human is a worshipper of something or someone?  God created us this way, on purpose, to seek for Him.

We can read in John 4:23, where Jesus said “that God is seeking for true worshippers, and they must worship Him in spirit and in truth”. This is the exact same Greek word (G4352) that describes the beast’s desire in Revelation 13. There appears to be an evil serpent spirit rivalry against a good God to obtain human worshippers. Therefore, the serpent’s desire, must involve the attraction of every worshipper to be taken from God. Please remember this concept of redirected worship, because a serpent redirecting someone will soon reappear.

But now contrast the two spirit beings’ personalities. The serpent’s attempts are to force people to worship him, and if they do not, they die.  But God’s approach is to die in the human’s place, to show them extreme love. Then this saving love gift provides all humans, the choice to freely love, and worship Him, in response. It is a forced mandated worship versus, the freewill choice of returning love to a loving God. God offers His mark as a gift of salvation, and the serpent only forces his mark. It is a contrasting decision between love and hate, and life and death. It sounds like a really easy choice to make, but it is not because of the pressure that the serpent is placing upon people.

LESSON TO LEARN: ANYTHING BEING FORCED WITH THREATS IS NOT FROM GOD AND MUST BE WATCHED CLOSELY.

The story of the 3 Hebrew boys in Daniel 3, is a perfect parallel to what is happening today, and in Revelation 13. The entire nation, and these 3 Hebrews were commanded by the king to bow down like dogs, to worship a large idol. It will be interesting to see how the size of this statue is said to be 60 cubits tall, and 6 cubits in width. That would be 60x6x6. We will find that this has an interesting similarity to the coming number of the mark in Revelation 13. It is also very noteworthy that in both Daniel 3 and Revelation 13, the refusal to worship, results in death. These are repeated patterns of evil. In Daniel, a fiery furnace was heated up seven times hotter than normal, and everyone not falling on their face to worship the idol statue, will be killed in the fire. But there is good news, God saved them even after they were thrown into the fire. That should encourage people today to not bow down and take the mark.

LESSON TO LEARN: GOD IS ABLE AND WILL SAVE PEOPLE THAT WORSHIP HIM ALONE. EVEN IF GOD ALLOWED THE HEBREW CHILDREN TO DIE IN THE FIRE, THEY WOULD HAVE BEEN SAVED FROM HELL BY NOT WORSHIPPING THE FALSE GOD. EITHER WAY THEY WOULD WIN!

Do you remember when Jesus was tempted in Matthew 4:10 by the devil? Satan wanted to trade Jesus all of his authority over all of the kingdoms of our world, if only Jesus would worship (G4352) him.  This is the exact same word found in Revelation 13, so we can easily find a direct connection, to confirm this is Satan’s motivation, who longs to be worshipped. But Jesus quotes the Bible to the devil saying “It is written, thou shall worship the LORD your God only”.  Wow! We are discovering, that there is a possible direct connection to who we worship, to whose mark we will receive.

LESSON TO LEARN: WE ARE BEING INTRODUCED TO THE BIBLE REALITY THAT THERE ARE ONLY TWO MARKS TO TRAVEL TOWARDS! WHICH ONE WE CHOOSE WILL DETERMINE WHICH MARK WE OBTAIN.

Every human WILL BE marked by either Jesus, or the serpent depending upon the human choice to whom they will serve (Romans 6:16). There is only a binary choice, and no third option exists. By overcoming the devil, believers have the name of God and His city written upon them by Jesus (Revelation 3:12). But those that receive the serpent’s mark of the number of his name (Revelation 13:17) will be cast alive into the lake of fire (Revelation 19:20). Unfortunately, the making no choice option, is the default selection for worshipping the serpent, since he is still the god of this world (2 Corinthians 4:4).

What we have just learned is that there is a subtle serpent being, that is trying his best, to redirect us away by his crafty distractions. His desire is to keep us in his darkness, and from reaching the light in the door of Jesus, who was hung on the cross.  Let us move on to the beast next in this lesson.

THE SERPENT BEAST

Now we have already found that the figurative beast in Revelation 13, is described to be Satan, and also known as the ancient serpent, as defined in Revelation 12. But let us analyze this spirit being and confirm his identity and nature further.

The Greek word G2342, that was translated as a “beast”, is defined by Strong as a dangerous, wild and a venomous beast. This is the exact same Greek word, that was used by God to describe the physical creature that attached itself to the hand of Paul, while he was placing sticks on a fire in Acts 28:4. Do you remember we learned about this physical creature in the last lesson? This beast was described to be a “serpent”.

Do you remember, that everyone that witnessed this viper poison attack on Paul, watched him in amazement when Paul did not drop dead before their eyes? Therefore, we are gaining a pretty good understanding, of what type of creature, that this “beast” symbol represents, and the connection to it being deadly, and poisonous. We are also observing God’s power and ability to protect His people from the deadly effects of these types of poisons.

LESSON TO LEARN: LIKE THE HEBREW CHILDREN SAVED FROM THE FIRE, PAUL WAS SAVED FROM THE DEATH OF THE SERPENT’S FANG MARK AND POISON. GOD NEVER CHANGES, AND CAN, AND WILL DO THE SAME TODAY.

We must notice how this Revelation 13 “beast”, is defined, and why it was selected by God, to be described to be like the poisonous “serpent” that bites Paul. This connection, potentially teaches us a lot. We have already been introduced to the original trickster of death, to be the ancient serpent which now matches the future description of the “beast” in Revelation. The goal of causing intentional death to humanity, is one central connection in both of these stories of Genesis 3, and Revelation 13. It appears from what we are learning, that these two words, beast and serpent could be synonyms.

It is also very important to recall where God said Paul was bitten by the venomous beast in Acts 28. Paul was bitten by the fang of a serpent injecting its poison into his “hand”. Where did God say the mark of the beast would occur? You may recall God said the mark of the beast would be placed upon the person’s right hand or their forehead (Revelation 13:16). Now we can see how Paul’s serpent mark is further directly connected with the Revelation 13 serpent mark, with both cases, to be marked in their hand.  Later we will speak of the head location in more depth soon.

God appears to be using a pattern of reoccurring serpents, that are compared to be called venomous beasts. The Revelation 13 serpent is being describe as a coming system of deception, implemented through a natural hypnotic leader that is ultimately being controlled by a real internal spiritual serpent (Satan). This person’s purpose will be to deceive everyone in the world using clever words. His hidden goal is to cause people to voluntarily worship Satan. But for those that do not participate, his goal is to motivate them by extreme threats of starvation, or even death to get them to obey. Those that still do not worship him, are murdered.

A SERPENT MANDATED MARK FOR POPULATION CONTROL?

There appears to be other reasons besides the serpent’s ultimate desire to be worshipped. One major motivation for a forced mark in Revelation 13, seems to be for the ultimate control and ownership of humanity. Our chapter 13, teaches Satan’s plan of people division into two types of people on the earth. Everyone taking the mark is promised to live naturally, and everyone not taking the mark is promised to die naturally. Clearly this implies a type of population control for only a desired specific type of people taking the mark.

Think about this in light of the serpent’s desired global goal to abort every baby in the womb? Is this a serpent desire to lower the population on earth by any means? Is this desire, now being expanded by the serpent today for everyone? What is this serpent so afraid of? Could it be he is trying to stop God from using any and every human in the church, from potentially crushing his head, as it was prophesied to happen in Romans 16:20? This is an interesting concept to consider.

If control of only certain types of people on the earth are desired, there are multiple methods for a ruler to control these people. God’s method is love dominated. But Satan’s methods include threats, force, power, and fear, among others. We need to list a few of the ways someone can potentially control another human who has a right to choose who they will submit to.

HUMAN CONTROL THROUGH IGNORANCE

We can learn that one method of control, is to keep people ignorant of the truth. This is what God warns in Hosea 4:6. Here God says “My people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge”.  This is the ultimate reason why a Jezebel type of ruler system, desires to silence the true prophets with the words and message of truth. Today they do this by labeling the truth as being racist, misinformation, and conspiracy theory.

LESSON TO LEARN: SATAN WILL USE ULTIMATE CENSORSHIP TO TRY TO ELIMINATE THE MESSAGE OF GOD COMPLETELY.

This massive censorship is happening now globally. Entire nations have completely tried to silence every opposing voice. Ignorance is achieved only by eliminating the truth from being taught to children and adults. This is occurring on the societal media websites daily.  We have already spoken of the false prophet narrative that communicates the party propaganda faithfully parroting each other’s talking points. We also should understand that now we have people in the Jezebel ruling system that have armed the legal system, to silence every oppositional voice to the agenda, by labeling them as “homeland terrorists”. This is a small part of the antichrist agenda.

HUMAN CONTROL THROUGH ADDICTION

But, how else can an evil ruling power gain control over their people? One of the most modern prevalent methods is through “addiction”. It can be almost any type of human desire or substance abuse, that can lead to a person’s ultimate control. This is another method of deception.

Consider the concept of “addiction”. Think about the gambling game of poker. Have you ever been to a casino? This is a Satanic house of deception. It combines, external bright lights to attract, internal darkness, alcohol, liquor, sexual content, and the promise to potentially get rich without a lot of work. A person would really hate these games like poker, if they lost every time. If time after time, they just left their money with the others that were happily taking it, most intelligent people would just give up and find something else much better to do. But the devil ensures the new player wins enough to get them addicted, then he takes them for everything they have.

What gets a person addicted to this lifestyle? It could be the money, possible fame or fortune, it could be just the dark atmosphere, the booze, or a combination of all of the above. It can be very hard for people to get out, once they have entered the door.

LESSON TO LEARN: SATAN WILL POTENTIALLY USE UNFULFILLABLE PROMISES TO GET SOMEONE TO BECOME ADDICTED TO PLAY HIS GAME AND THEN HE HAS THEM.

SERPENT CONTROL THROUGH POISONOUS SUBSTANCES

Another very popular modern addiction source is coming from two different poison sources. It is difficult to imagine that a person could become addicted to a serpent’s deadly poison, but this is happening every day. This substance is called “drugs”. One type of drug is labeled as “medication” for possible good health, and the other is promoted as a recreational entertainment for a physical pleasure or euphoria. But either substance has potential negative, and adverse qualities, and many deaths have occurred from abuses. First, we will focus on the potential positive poison.

It should be very obvious that there is a major coordinated plan to get the world’s population to be injected with a type of universal substance “mark” through a manmade fang. This is appearing to have addictive qualities to it. It first began to be handed out as the savior from a real but exaggerated problem, and it was given out as the only ultimate solution. Then this one-time solution has become a potentially never-ending program of one dose after the next to keep people saved. What kind of deceptive addiction is this? It is called a combined physical, mental and emotional type of mind control.

The serpent’s incentivized strategy in today’s game, is to sucker people into a plan of false safety, security, and a temporary return to normalcy. This false narrative is a fake promise of a freedom from fear, and death. Surely you know what this means? Why are there so many diversions, distractions, and claims, that this “mark” is the only solution for returning to a lost “normal”?

How is it that the same people that created the problem, are the same ones that are proposing, creating, and distributing the claimed only solution? That sounds like a conflict of interests at best, and at worst the evilest plan possible. We can only wonder who is getting the richest, with this plot of evil? Perhaps you are unaware that it has been reported by the real prophets, that it was the governing Jezebel ruling system that created the crisis? Perhaps you are unaware of this because the Jezebel supporting “false prophet” system has been only reporting other untruths or meaningless information as a distraction. It is highly recommended that you go read about this concept in 1 Kings 18. This is the story where the prophet of God named Elijah calls out the false prophets, to see whose God will answer.

LESSON TO LEARN: GOD IS NOT DONE WITH AMERICA. GOD STILL HAS PROPHETS THAT ARE CALLING OUT JEZEBEL AND HER FALSE PROPHETS. LET US WAIT AND SEE WHOSE GOD WILL ANSWER AGAIN? OUR FAITH IS IN THE TRUE GOD OF THE BIBLE.

The final addictive drug poison that is used by the serpent, was previously illegal in most world locations, but yet still easily accessible. People are getting very rich off these deadly substances. Also, many people are being murdered by them. But the user of these poisons, are very easily controlled by the serpent rulers. People taking these, do so for pleasure, for relaxation, for relief from physical, emotional, or mental pain. Again, this is the same concept as the potential legal poison drugs. The serpent creates the problems for these people to seek the relief by drinking, swallowing, or injecting substances to get under their skins. These addictions offer no solutions, but rather only ease of control and eventually death the serpent’s ultimate control. Let’s analyze a different type of human control through ownership. This is another way of saying human slavery.

A HUMAN MARKED FOR OWNERSHIP

This Greek word translated as “mark” is G5480 (charagma), and it can be defined as an external stamp that implies a person’s ownership or property. We have only mentioned this topic briefly in the previous sections. But this sounds a lot like something Hitler did to the Jews in Nazi Germany. He began with identifiers like stars of David, but then moved to literal tattoos with numbers. This concept could be like a horse or a cow being branded with the ranch’s symbolic mark. Every animal that displays this mark are known to belong to only that specific owner. This would seem to describe this mark in Revelation 13, precisely. If you study the verses that speak of the mark, you will find that everyone that has taken the mark of the beast, is completely rejected by God, without hope.

This Greek word only appears in 9 N.T. verses, and 8 are found in the book of Revelation. Revelation 13:16-17, Revelation 14:9, Revelation 14:11, Revelation 16:2, Revelation 19:20, and Revelation 20:4. It is recommended that you go, and read all of these verses. But there is one other word usage found in the book of Acts:

Act 17:29  Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device. 

Here in Acts 17, we find the word G5480 again, but it is translated as “graven” instead of “mark”. It should be very clear in this verse, that this is describing Christians and our attitudes towards idols made by the hands of man. Here in Acts 17:29, God is saying Christians “are His children”. This will become very important soon. This means we are born into His family. As part of being in the family of God, we can obtain His name. As mentioned before, in Revelation 3:12 we find overcoming Christians to be given God’s name written upon them. This is clearly the one named “Mark” that is of utmost importance to desire.

But in this verse, Christians are told that we should NOT think the Godhead is like engraved images made of gold, silver or stone that are just “cut out pieces of art”. Wow, that is saying a whole lot, in a few words. Notice the emphasis upon the human desired substances of “gold”, “silver” or even possible valuable stones. This information will come up in the main points of the lesson series in the future, to show how “money”, “greed”, “worth”, and “value” drive a lot of the evil that is occurring in the world today (1 Timothy 6:10).

Ok, let us notice how this Greek word G5480 is translated as “graven” in this verse. This word implies a tool is being used by the skilled and trained professional human hands, to place an engraved mark upon the desired object to be worshipped. Uh oh! This is very similar to what is happening in Revelation 13, where the beast is having his mark placed upon all people. But notice in both of these two verses, there are people who are worshipping someone besides God, by their own freewill, or they are being forced! Yet the concept of being engraved with some tool by a skilled, and trained professional human, can still be the same identical work in both examples. What we need to see in the Bible, are the repeated patterns of concepts and applications. This is one of the greatest ways that God hides information in His Word for us to find truth.

It should become clear that this Greek word G5480, implies the external presence of trained, and educated human skill, and their work performed through some crafting instrument, to produce an observable “mark” on the human skin. This would further imply that this “mark” would produce some type of bleeding to potentially occur. It is very difficult to get any type of puncture in the human skin, and for there not be at least minor blood leakage. Therefore, this mark in Revelation 13, might have something to do with the human blood. If it reaches the blood, it could also have, or cause a corresponding internal bodily reaction.

This could be describing someone getting a tattoo. Have you ever seen this artistic type of work done? In the Hitler example above, it was not for a pretty design, but was rather to number and identify the person. But in either case, there is normal blood leakage. But this process of marking a human is done with human created tools, to insert substances under the human skin. If by chance the artist’s tools contained a contamination, there could result a severe infection. Clearly this is just one type of artistry that leaves a permanent external “mark”.

We should have just learned a lot about a potential “mark” in Revelation 13, by studying the concept given by God in Acts 17. Could this be like receiving a puncture from the design of a serpent “fang”? This Greek word G5480, has its origin from the root word “charasso”, which means “to sharpen to a point”. Does that help anyone understand what God could potentially be speaking of in Revelation 13?

This is beginning to sound more and more like a modern man-made narrowed, sharpened metallic serpent fang like tool instrument, for inserting some type of potentially useful or poisonous liquid into the human body. This work could be performed by a trained and skilled professional, and that would match what we have learned so far.  If you do not yet know what is being said, we will try to make it clearer. Game wardens use this type of powerful dart device to tranquilize a dangerous animal. This means a more powerful wild animal, is being sedated or drugged, to be under the control of the weaker being. Uh oh? Are you awake yet?

All of this introductory Bible information, matches the description of a serpent’s fang type of mark precisely. Then remember the design of a “fang”, is like a natural injection system, for the purpose of inserting a poison into the snake’s enemy. Ok, please never forget who the original “serpent” was in Genesis 3:1 that deceived Eve. Let us now shift our study to some Old Testament root sources of types of a “mark” defined by God in His Word.

ANCIENT HEBREW – MARK DEFINITIONS

It is a great idea when studying the Bible on a word or a subject, to go back to God’s beginning Hebrew texts, and see what He says about the foundational mention of the subject. In most cases, the first time a subject is mentioned, God establishes a foundational truth needed to understand the entire subject. This is called the “Law of First Mention”. It is used here frequently. But also using this same concept, we can learn so much new about a subject, by analyzing the ancient Hebrew alphabet letters and meanings that make up the word.

Here are just two of the Hebrew words that were translated as “mark”.

  1. “H226”
  2. “H4307”

While there are other words translated as “mark”, we will only go over a these two briefly for the sake of time. We are primarily interested in the Biblical concepts that were introduced and used by God, for these words. In this part of the lesson, we will be analyzing the ancient Hebrew words, their spellings, and what each letter means. We will begin with the word H226.

H226 – Mark

If we go back and search the Old Testament, we will learn that the Hebrew word H226 is mentioned for the first time in Genesis 1:14 and Genesis 4:15.  In Genesis 1:14 the Hebrew word is translated into the English word “sign”. But in Genesis 4:15, it was translated as a “mark”. This word is very interesting, because this root word is comprised in the ancient Hebrew pictographic alphabet from the joined combination of an “ox” and a “cross”. Contained in this word, is an amazing revelation.

In the ancient Hebrew, the “ox” is the “alef”, the first letter of the alphabet, and it represents a lowly, but strong type of servant. This ox would be attached to a yoke (Matthew 11:29), and a plow (1 Corinthians 9:10), and then the servant ox, would be driven by their master (LORD) to a mark in the distance (physical place of growth in time), to make a straight line for planting the seeds (Isaiah 28:24).

The second Hebrew letter of this word, is the “tav”, and this is a picture of a cross, and this is the last letter in the Hebrew alphabet. This letter amazingly can mean “a mark”, as in “x” marks the spot.  So, we have a word with the letters, “alef” and the “tav”, and this translated into Greek, would be the “Alpha” and the “Omega”. Does that sound familiar? It “just so happens” that this is one of the names that identifies Jesus in the first chapter of the book of Revelation. Wow, none of this is an accident.

What we discover from these two clues, is that God has designed a predetermined end “mark” of the “cross”, for every human servant of His, to plow to. Paul uses this analogy of a plowing ox, to describe his work for Christ in 1 Corinthians 9:10. In doing this, Paul quotes from a verse written in Deuteronomy 25:4, about not muzzling a working ox. Using this verse Paul writes the ox in the O.T., symbolically represents God’s people. Paul in Romans 1:1 calls himself a “servant” of Jesus Christ. We can conclude from this information, that Paul was submitting himself to the LORD, to be his personal end of life targeted mark.

Our ultimate example of a “servant” to follow, was Jesus Christ (Zechariah 3:8). His destination was to die on a cross. He was born to die, and then to be raised from the dead. But it was His death on a “cross” that showed us the “mark” to follow after to be raised from the dead with Him. Remember the cross pictogram, is the last letter in the Hebrew alphabet, and God designed it this way to teach us about His end targeted mark plan for all of humanity.  Jesus, was given so that we could have a new beginning in eternity with Him forever.  

We can begin to see how God’s divine mark of the “Cross”, must become our sought-after desired target to move towards, during some part of our available life line. This desired target must also “remain” our priority goal for the end of our life line. By achieving God’s end-mark for a straight divinely designed life movement, this will always lead us towards the final mark of Jesus, and we will become His for eternity. But during this entire process, there is an unseen enemy that is doing his best to distract us from the path of life, to take us away from God’s mark.

This Hebrew word H226, appears to represent, a life filled with the successful work as His servant, that continued to move us toward the straight, and narrow future end target for a human destination of everlasting life. We can confirm this truth by reading what Jesus said in Matthew 7:14. In this verse Jesus said “Straight is the gate, and narrow is the path that leads us to life, and few are they that find it. Do you see how this corresponds to the goal of a plowman working an ox to a distant post mark target?

Since we are now observing the reality for the existence of two marks (Satan’s mark, & God’s Cross Mark), let us find the very first time this word was used by God to establish the foundation:

Genesis 1:14 – And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: 

As you can notice the English word “mark” is not included in this verse, but the Hebrew word H226 is found. This time the translators made the word to be “signs”. But this is still very profound if you understand who the lights in Genesis 1:14-16 are symbolic of.  In verse 16 God describes creating light on the earth that originates from two “great” divided lights. The greater light refers to the “sun”, and this represents “Jesus Christ, the Sun of Righteousness” (Malachi 4:2). The lesser light in these verses is describing the “moon”, and it (he) represents the ruler of the darkness of this world (Satan aka the serpent), (Ephesians 6:12).  We can confirm this with many verses, but please read 1 Thessalonians 5:5 where the LORD said “You (the church) are all children of the light and the day, we are not of the night or of the darkness”.  Wow, this is amazing information designating two separated kingdom paths, and two marks of ownership.

Therefore, we can logically conclude that any serpent “mark” forced upon a human is Satan’s attempt to get them off of the straight path from entering into the eternal life cross point found only in Jesus Christ. This can normally only occur, if a human is deceived to follow in a different path direction either veering away from Christ, to the right or to the left of a balanced, and straight center path. Let us now review another Hebrew word that was translated as “mark” in the O.T.

H4307 – ‘Mark”

1 Samuel 20:20 – And I will shoot three arrows on the side thereof, as though I shot at a mark. 

H4307 is the next Hebrew word, translated as “mark”, that needs to be understood. This word is first used in 1 Samuel 20:20, as you can read above, it was translated as “mark”.  But notice the context, because this will become very important as we continue to learn. Take a note, that in this verse a man named Jonathan told David, he would shoot arrows, from his bow, as if he was shooting at a target. Jonathan and David agree that if the arrow went in one direction from the mark, it meant David was welcome to come back to the king’s palace, but if it went in the other direction, David better run and hide. Why does God speak in such great details about stories that seem of such unimportance? Of course, everything is important in the Bible, because everything found can teach us concepts and patterns that can be repeated.

Again, we have the concept of a “mark” being a “target”. In this example, the man aiming at the target, must keep his eye on it in a careful, and watchful way being very steady handed, to release at the exact time to hit, or in this case to miss the intended mark for a specific purpose. But in these verses, that marked target that is being aimed at, contains a “hidden coded message”. This message would only have been discernable to David that understood the code. Anyone else watching the arrow fly towards the mark, would not have understood the meaning, unless they knew the code.  In our first example, there was an ox servant being aimed at a mark, and now an arrow using a “mark” to communicate a hidden code attached to it. Therefore, both examples represent a desired ending mark for an intentional purpose.

AN AIMED MARK CAN CONTAIN A HIDDEN CODE, OR PURPOSE, EITHER FOR GOOD OR FOR EVIL.  SATAN’S SERPENT MARK IS NOTHING BUT EVIL. PEOPLE IN REVELATION 13 TAKE THE MARK FOR THE GOOD PURPOSE TO BE ABLE TO BUY AND SELL FOR LIFE, BUT IT HAS A HIDDEN CODED MEANING TO BRING THEM ETERNAL DEATH.

Now let us analyze this new Hebrew word using the ancient Hebrew pictogram definitions. This Hebrew root word is also two letters. The first letter is the “tet”, which is the 9th Hebrew letter, and this letter represents a basket, or a type of container. If you look this up, you will find that the picture of this letter is a circle with an “x” or another “cross” on the inside of it. That must just be a coincidence also? This letter is how we get this to be another “target” and “mark” concept. The second letter of this Hebrew word H4307, is the “resh”, which is the 20th letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and this is a picture of a man’s head.  

Placing these two letters together, we get the meaning of the word is to literally “target a man” or figuratively “contain the man”. Wow, that is very eye opening. Think again that the “resh” Hebrew letter, is a picture of a man’s head. This is also one of the location target placements, for the beast’s mark in Revelation 13. This must be just another “just so happens”. But also remember that the human’s head is the location of the brain and mind.

Therefore, we are being led to understand how that someone can become a target for a mark to be contained, through a method of controlling their mind. Before a human will take a mark, they must decide to yield to it in their mind. From the thoughts of the human heart working with their mind, come the motivations of all human beliefs, decisions, choices, etc. This seems very profound, based upon the subject of deception. Deception also occurs in the mind, and this becomes much easier to occur, when the words that are intended to deceive are the only words that are constantly presented to the human.

What do these concepts teach us? It says, that by a serpent placing a mark, upon a human, this is one of the possible ways of “limiting”, “restricting”, “restraining”, or “containing” that human. God is trying to warn us, of the devil’s plan of “mind and body containment” to confine their spirit. Perhaps you have experienced this recently? For example, the demand to stay at home. The demand to not attend public gatherings like church.  Clearly these are signs of being marked as a target by someone, and they are doing this through fear.

H1285 – The Covenant ‘Mark”

We need to understand another word that contains the “cross” mark. The English word “covenant” comes from the Hebrew word H1285. This Hebrew word consists of 4 Hebrew letters and the combination of these letter definitions is very profound in the ancient Hebrew.  These four Hebrew letters are the “beyt”, “resh”, “yod” and “tav”. These letters create the word “covenant” as in a permanent marriage. But let us list what each of these letters mean:

  1. Beyt = a tent, as in the family in the house
  2. Resh = a man’s head
  3. Yod = a man’s hand
  4. Tav = a mark

Wow, perhaps you already can see the meaning. God begins the word with a combined family unit under a single dwelling. This family unit would imply the existence of a father, a mother, and their children. Now notice the human head is the next letter. Where was one location of the mark of the beast in Revelation 13? Your right, it was the forehead. Now, notice the next Hebrew letter in H1285, is the “hand”. Where else does Revelation 13 say the mark of the beast will be placed? It just so happens to be the right hand. Now for the last letter in the H1285 word is the tav, which is the symbol of the cross and is defined to be a “mark”.

What we can conclude from this information, is the serpent mark in Revelation 13, appears to be an eternal covenant. Taking this mark on the hand or the forehead indicates you have become a permanent covenant family member with the serpent. This would completely explain why there is no repentance, or salvation available for these people after taking this “mark”.

CONLUSIONS

Phillipians 3:14 – I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. 

We have just gone through a limited overview lesson on the subject of a “mark”. In it we should have learned two words translated as “mark” in Hebrew. We should have learned a few important concepts from these two examples. We should have learned that a mark can be a potential good life goal, if it is directing us to Jesus. This is exactly what Paul was talking about in Philippians 3:14. Paul had set his life goal on obtaining that mark found only in Christ.

Recall that the Hebrew word translated as covenant, was a four-letter word consisting of a family, a head, a hand, and a mark. This was an amazing parallel to what we found in Revelation 13, describing the placement of the mark of the serpent. This appears to be a revelation that Satan’s mark is a permanent covenant that every human should avoid. Satan’s mark would be in direct opposition to the New Covenant in Jesus which should be our marked destination for salvation. Therefore, we should have learned that an evil mark can be used as a plan for limiting, controlling, or containing someone for a separation from God.

We also should have learned that a “mark” can be designed, and used for a secret coded message. The range of possibilities for this usage are staggering to think of. A code is a system of hiding information, that is not intended for just anyone to know. So, it is with the number “666”. This is a number that contains a hidden coded meaning, and many have been trying to figure this out since the book was written.  

Next, we should have learned that a human can be “marked” as a target for the purpose of their death. We can plainly see that the beast in Revelation 13 will physically kill anyone that does not take his mark, but this is a trick because everyone that takes it will die a spiritual eternal death. Therefore, we need to know there are two types of death mentioned in the Bible. We need to learn today, that Jesus taught us in Matthew 10:27, for us to not worry about those that can kill the natural physical body, but rather for us to just fear God who is able to throw your spirit, soul and body into hell after this death. Jesus was warning us of a greater spiritual death.

Do you remember the serpent beast’s primary threat for NOT taking his “fang-mark”? In Revelation 13:17, God says this coming satanic system will cause anyone that rejects the “mark”, to lose the ability (freedoms) to buy or sell. Wow, if anyone does not see that this is already beginning to happen now, they are blind, and deceived. Are these not the threats of losing freedoms? Is this not an example of containment and separation?  Currently there are several large private organizations, and governments, calling for everyone in their country, group, or company to take their current present-day fang “mark”, or lose their job and income. Uh oh? That means these people, will not have money to buy anything.

There are other calls for people to have to show a “I have taken the fang mark” ID card, in order to enter their store to participate in buying food, clothes, services, entertainment, etc. Uh oh?  There are others that are not allowing any global travel without confirmations of a “fang mark”. Isn’t it interesting these people do not want us to show an ID to vote, but if we do not get a “mark” we can’t go anywhere? It appears to say, it is all of the healthy people that are being targeted, and restricted the most today.

There are examples after examples, of how companies are being used by Satan, to bring great stress and pressure, to cause a fear of losing jobs, and to raise the possibility that people will not be able to pay their bills, without their full compliance of taking a “fang-mark”. This pressure is causing people to have no option, other than to take a type of sharp pointed mark, in order to keep them from a death that we are told is only occurring to less than 1% of the world’s population. Did you know more people use to die of the flu, and no one thought that was something to deal with, so that everyone would be forced to get a flu-mark?

This strategy appears to be an attempt at the spreading of multiple strategic messages of poison, to cause a convergence of two or more fear types. However, all human fears are rooted in death, but there are many ways of the serpent to present the information to cause fear and death to occur. And these methods of evil information seed sowing, are being played together to force everyone into unwavering compliance.

Please note, there is no claim that we are living in the tribulation right now (2021). There is no claim in this series that the permanent death mark of the beast, is being given out at this publication date. There is no claim that the final antichrist devil has come out into the open to make himself known.  But this lesson reveals diverse signs occurring everywhere that all of this could all begin to happen very soon. It is becoming evident that what is happening today through the serpent, is a forerunner, or just a dressed-up rehearsal for what will be repeated during the soon coming tribulation.

Is the serpent out of step with the Bible, or is this just a surprise attack when no one was expecting it to happen? If this is a surprise attack, could the serpent be trying to get an advantage over Christians or God? We believe that this coordinated plan-demic, is a premature surprise attack from the serpent. But there is absolutely no way that this will succeed or even gain any advantage over the church, or our God, because “Greater is He that is in us, than he that is in the world” (1 John 4:4). Also remember the promise of God given through Jesus to the church:

Luke 10:19 – Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you. 

Thank you for reading and studying the Bible with us. We love you all very much and pray God’s blessing upon each of you and your families. Please do not allow anything said in this lesson, to cause you any fear. Please allow the Holy Spirit to give you His insight on what is happening in the world right now, and only be led by His peace in making your decisions. This information is only presenting God clues given to us in the Word of God, that teach us about what is possible to be happening in our world today.  It is far better for us to be informed by God’s Word, than to be ignorant of it.

If you would like to continue reading in this series, please go to “Part 4” now.

Are You Saved? Do you Know Jesus? Life is Short! Jesus wants to Know You! Please come and get to Know Him!

Names, Titles, Descriptions and Symbols of the Antichrist in the Bible

(ver 1.0) This is Part 5 in a series of lessons revealing the multiple Names, Titles, Descriptions and Symbols of significant Individuals in the Bible.  This lesson will focus only on the subject verses of the Antichrist found in the Bible.  This is a living document of references to the Antichrist.  It will change and be updated as I find additional scriptures or you can submit verses that you have found to be added.  A Name is a direct reference to the individual.  A Title is a given direct identifying appellation signifying status or function.  A Description is something that represents the individual in expressive words.  A Type is a real named person, place or thing in history that can be viewed to apply as a pattern of the spiritual individual not directly named.  A Symbol is a natural object that describes the characteristics or features of a spiritual being that you cannot see or understand without first understanding the symbol.

We should all know that we are living during the last of the last days of the church age of Grace on the earth.  The end of our age and the soon coming of tribulation judgments has been well documented with Biblical prophecy written thousands of years before. The signs of this end and the rise of the Antichrist is clearly observable.  At no time prior to now has the rise of Globalism increased to set up a false world ruler.  This ruler will be able to deceive much of the world easily.  Using modern technology, he will be able to control and limit human behavior by forcing them to receive his mark of allegiance or else they will not be able to buy, sell, or eat. The preparations for his appearance are happening right now.  No doubt he is alive somewhere on the earth awaiting the departure of the church, to rise to power after the resulting chaos.  He will be an eloquent speaker and will present his false expectations, solutions, and explanations using clever words and phrases.  He will be a masterful deceiver, a speaker of non-truth appearing as truth.  His entire experience of physical power and rulership will be short lived of only 7 years when he will be defeated and thrown into hell by Jesus Christ.  People who are not ready for the rapture better learn quickly what will be taking place during these 7 years or they will not have any further opportunity to be saved and there only option will be to go to hell with him.  Let us look at some of the Bible verses used by God to describe this man and learn how we can share this information with our friends and family.

Name, Title, Symbol, Type for the Antichrist DescriptionScripture Reference
Abomination (G946) of Desolation (G2050)Detestation of Idolatry that Lays WasteMat 24:15;
Abomination (H8251) that makes desolate (H8074)Idolatry that DevastatesDan 11:31;
Adversary (H6862)Opponent, Antithesis of God and GoodPsalm 74:8-10; Isa 59:58-59; Lam 4:12; Amos 3:11
Angel (G32) of the Bottomless Pit (G12)Angel destined for the center of the earth;Rev 9:11;
AntiChrist (G473 + G5547)An Opposite Messiah1 Jn 2:22;
Assyrian (H804)A potential source for the origin of the AntichristIsa 10:5; Isa 14:25:
Beast (G2342)Wild AnimalRev 11:7, 13; Rev 19:19-20;
Belial (H1100)Wickedness, evil, worthlessNah 1:11, 1;15
Bloody (H1818) man and Deceitful (H4820) ManBloody as loss to cause deathPsalm 5:6
Branch (H2159) of the Terrible (H6184)A pruned twig of power, oppression and violenceIsa 25:5;
Chief (H7218) Prince (5387)Head RulerEze 38:2;
Crooked (H1281) Serpent (H5175)The fugitive serpentJob 26:13; Isa 27:1;
Cruel One (H394)Terrible, Violent, DeadlyJer 30:14;
Deceitful (H4820) ManDeceiver, FalsehoodsPsalm 5:6
Destroyer (H4873) of the Gentiles (H1471(Destroyer of foreign nationsJer 4:7;
Enemy (H341)Hater of GodPs 55:3; Jer 30:14;
Evil (H7451) Man (H120)Bad and evil manPs 140:1;
Father of liesOriginator of DeceptionJn 8:44; 2;
Great (G3172) Star (G792)Mighty & Strong StarRev 8:10;
Head Over Many CountriesLeader of the earthPsalms 110:6
Idol (H457) Shepherd (H7473)Worthless good for nothing shepherdZech 11:17;
King (H4428)World Ruler;Dan 11:36;
King (H4428) of Princes (H8269)Ruler of the underworld captains/rulersHos 8:10;
King (H4428) of Babylon (H894)Ruler of Confusion and Chaos (Babel)Isa 14:4-20;
King (H4428) of fierce (H5794) countenance (H6440)Strong Face KingDan 8:23;
Lion (H738)Violent BeastJer 4:7;
Little (H2192) Horn (H7162)Small Rising RulerDan 7:8:11; Dan 7:21-26; Dan 8:9-12; Dan 8:23-25;
Man (G444) of Sin (G266)Human of Offence/Sin2 Ths 2:3
Man (H582) of the Earth (H776)Mortal of EarthPs 10:18;
Merchant (H3667) with Balances of Deceit (H4820)A Canaanite with unfair deceitful scalesHos 12:7;
Mighty Man (H1368)Powerful warriorPs 52:1;
Nail (H3489)He who thought he was secureIsa 22:25;
Prince (H5057) that shall come (H935)Future RulerDan 9:26;
Prince (H5057) of Tyrus (H6865)Ruler of the RockEze 28:2-10;
Profane (H2491) Wicked (H7563) Prince (H5387) of Israel (H3478)Pierced King IsraelEze 21:25-27;
Proud (H3093) Man (H1397)Arrogant WarriorHab 2:5;
Rod (H7626) of (my) AngerA Ruler with or of angerIsa 10:5;
Son (G5207) of Perdition (G684)Son of Ruin, Loss, Waste2 Ths 2:3;
Son (H1121) of the Morning (H7837)Lucifer son of early light (morning)Isa 14:12;
Spoiler (H7703)Large strong personIsaiah 16:4;
Vile Person (H959)Someone disesteemedDan 11:21:
Vine (G288) of the Earth (G1093)False Vine of the Soil (a weed)Rev 14:18);
Violent (H2555) Man (H376)Incarnate man of violencePs 140:1, 11;
Wicked (G459)Lawless Man2 Ths 2:8;
Wicked One (H7563)Morally wrong manPs 9:17; Ps 10:2; Isa 11:4; Jer 30:23;

Understanding Bible Division — Introduction to Division a Divine Hidden Plan — Part 1

House Divided(Ver 1.3)  This is Part 1 of a brand new advanced Bible study series concerning the seldom mentioned or taught Bible subject entitled “Biblical Division”.  I have personally never heard anyone teach on this subject in the church but this is what God is directing me to share today on the internet to all those that are willing to receive the message.  However, I will warn everyone upfront like in many of my other Bible studies that this is a very advanced Bible Study series and it is intended primarily for only spiritually mature Christians to attempt to learn from.  This lesson series represents a very unconventional spiritual meat topic presentation and it may not easily be chewed (be received) well by many of my milk drinking younger or spiritually new born Christian brothers and sisters in Christ.  I do so hope and pray that you understand what I mean.

Biblical division is definitely a brand new topic to most Christians which has rarely been studied, known or understood.  Therefore this subject could be potentially judged controversial or even easily offensive and rejected by a non-serious Christian disciple.  People in general are usually closed minded to an unknown or a first heard Bible topic never encountered before.  For example, men like Martin Luther brought forth radical new teachings that departed from the normal traditional dominate Church doctrines of the 1500’s.  His thoughts and views were fundamentally fresh to most and very dissimilar to anything at that time period that was popularly taught and accepted.  Martin Luther was a Bible professor in Germany and he condemned the Catholic Church for their corrupt practices of selling indulgences (forgiveness of sins).  His writings were viewed as the catalyst for the Protestant church.  However, these seemingly new views have been determined to be very sound theological scriptural teachings and they have now been widely adopted to conform more to what Jesus and the early church actually taught.  Martin Luther was still branded a heretic by the religious church leadership and excommunicated from their church.  We can clearly learn from this example that religious deception in the church can occur even as it did in the popular church of Martin Luther’s day.

Even today, we must know that not everything that is taught by a modern church is always completely accurate.  The only way to prove any subject’s truthfulness is to let the Bible and the Holy Spirit on the inside of us; become our final authority.  That is exactly what I want you to do today as you read these lessons.  Please get your Bible out and then pray and ask God to open the eyes of your understanding to see what He wants you to see.  Prove everything that is stated with your own Bible research and personal relationship with Almighty God.  Never and I do mean never believe me or anything that I teach or anyone else teaches unless you can see it in the Bible with sufficient evidence and the Holy Spirit on the inside of you confirming that it is true.  The Word of God and the Spirit of God will always agree.  Please learn to verify everything and assume or accept nothing just because someone teaches it.  Don’t be a David Koresh or Jim Jones type of blind faith follower.  Let God be your guide and not any man.  It could be a matter of life or death.

While this subject of Biblical Division is a new revelation to most of you today it is actually a very old concept that existed with God from the beginning.  It is only becoming new to us today because God is revealing something that has seldom been studied much less noticed or mentioned in any modern church.  Of course the reason why it has not been mentioned is probably one of two reasons.  First, some Bible teachers have not made the subject of division a real priority to search for or search out to discover it in the Bible.  Second, some Bible teachers may have seen the subject while reading in the Bible before but did not consider it important enough to spend time on and therefore made no effort to understand what it could mean.  Either way the root cause for “Biblical Division” not being taught is human ignorance.   No one can teach what they do not yet know and have learned.  I hope that this Bible lesson on the internet will spur interest to learn what God has done.

Therefore I ask that each of you judge yourself before continuing to read in these advanced Bible study lessons.  I certainly do not want to offend anyone with any spiritual meaty lesson that I publish.  But, I do wish to help everyone grow and mature spiritually in the faith of Jesus Christ.  Thank you in advance for using your own sound judgment to being led by His Spirit to know how to proceed.  Let’s get started with the subject of Biblical Division.

INTRODUCTION TO DIVISION

bread_slicing1What is division?   Division is defined in one dictionary as the “action of separating something into two or more parts”.  In other words division is a deliberate and intentional act of taking one item that represents a whole and complete named entity and changing it by the thoughtful application of power, force and effort into 2 or more separate and distinct disjointed pieces. This would be very much like a baker slicing their whole and complete freshly baked loaf of bread and cutting it into separate and smaller edible slices.   Or division could be viewed like the cook taking their whole baked fresh apple pie and cutting and serving it in 8 individual slices for their guests to eat.  Therefore we learn from these examples that division always represents the creation of new individual pieces consisting of a reduced size or nature where each is less than the original greater whole portion before it was split.  It is also very important to note that each new divided part is of the same substance as before but just in a reduced portion.  Do you see and understand this?  This is exactly what division represents in the Bible.   There is absolutely no difference.  Here are four main points that you should have just learned from this basic definition:

  1. Division of One Substance
  2. Separation into New Individual Parts
  3. Reduction of Size from the Original Whole
  4. All New Parts are of Like Substance

Does this subject of division, separation and reduction have anything to do with anything found in the Bible, you might be asking?  That is a very excellent question to consider.  But God’s answer to that question will always include “division plays a very main role in the Bible even if we do not yet understand how it fits into God’s overall designed plan”.  That answer is very incomplete and just begs us to ask more questions.  We will soon discover that the subject of division has a very significant and strategic role while also being potentially hidden within the Bible.  However we must learn that the subject of division is covered by God from the beginning book cover to the ending book cover and we just have not always seen it very clearly.  I will tell you at the beginning of this lesson that God’s plan from the start of creation was not only to save man but also to divide man.  Also know that God will divide other spiritual and natural entities in the Bible that we will discuss later.

Perhaps you may not believe me when I claim that the subject of division plays a very major role throughout the Bible.  That is very wise of you to follow what I asked you before to do.  Remember I said don’t follow blindly.  So I’ll introduce you to this Bible subject using the Bible interpretation law of first mention.  Where, is the subject of division first mentioned in the Bible?  If you initiate your reading from the very beginning of the Bible you will only need to go forward three verses in order to find the subject. The very first verse containing a directly revealed, intentional and deliberate act of division by God occurs within the recorded creation event of the Day 1 creation of our world and you will find it in Genesis 1:4.  This first named division in verse 4 represents a divine sovereign display of His power and His will and it further embodies an act of God’s supreme intelligence, wisdom and ability.  Let’s take a quick look at this in case you have never seen this concept being mentioned so early before in the Bible:

Gen 1:3  And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

Gen 1:4  And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

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.

These three verses describe Day 1 of the 7 day creation event of our present world.  Six days God worked and the seventh day He rested (Gen 2:1-2).  How do we define work? Work represents an activity of mental or physical energy or power designed to achieve a specific purpose for a positive end result.  This is entirely what God was doing during the Genesis Day 1 description.  Did you notice what type of “work” God performed on this given Day 1?  God speaks “Light Be” and then “Light was”.  At this time of declaration darkness had already covered the earth in verse 2 so we know that God did not create any darkness on this day.  We know from Genesis 1:2 that darkness pre-existed Day 1 of the creation work thus stating the need for light’s existence in the earth’s current situation.  I need you to pay attention to what I am trying to say because this will become more important later in the series.  Darkness existed prior to Day 1 and God uses His power to make the light to shine on the earth in Day 1 to counter the pre-existing presence of darkness.

God then declares in verse 5 the reason for the introduction of light to our planet.  God had spoken the light to shine on the earth in order to “divide” the light from the existing darkness.  Next in verse 5, God gives each of these division results a new and separate distinct name calling them “day” and “night”.  Wow, this could really get very spiritually deep if I was going to attempt to teach all of the given implications found in these verses but I will save it for another lesson later.  Remember what we just learned, that the act of “dividing” light from darkness by God and naming the day and night was all called His own work by His own definition.  This divine work was the exact same concept as the baker cutting his loaf of bread or pie into new separate pieces.  There is no conceptual difference in the type of work being described by God here in Genesis.

What did God accomplish on Day 1?   Without the introduction of light on the earth there could have been no concept of time here.   In fact until God named Day and Night the earth had no way to measure time.  A day (the period of light) consists of 12 hours and a night (the period of darkness) consists of 12 hours which when combined represent one 24 hour period of time also called a day.  One day as you should know is a 24 hour period of time corresponding to one rotation of the earth.  This represents a single cycle of what God created to occur repeatedly.   It is very interesting to note we would have no concept or understanding of God’s work if He had not named the Day and Night and then called it Day 1.

While all of this is what I believe a literal reality, I believe God did this to teach us a greater symbolic spiritual truth.  But I do not have the time to go into this.  All I need you to do is to grasp that God’s Day 1 work was something that represents a constructive progress step to accomplish God’s plan for a good outcome for us.

Have we not just learned that even God’s “dividing” work can achieve a positive purpose and end-result?  Keep this in your mind that this divine work of dividing introduced to us by God here in Genesis 1 is good.  Then think of it as being like a parallel when a baker slices their loaf of bread to eat.  Isn’t the slice of bread much better than the entire loaf when you just want a sandwich?  Can we begin to now learn a little bit about the impact, value and positive purpose of God’s designed work to divide light from darkness from just this one single Day 1 creation reference?  Division appears to me to be very important just based upon this limited understanding so far.  Ask yourself “Why was it so important for God to divide at the very beginning of His 6 days of creative work?”    We will learn more about this as we progress to understand this subject better.

I just want us to begin to realize how much we potentially do not yet know or understand about the subject of division in the Bible.  Before I proceed deeper let’s at least examine the Hebrew word that was translated as “divided” in verse 4 of Genesis 1.  This word is H914 and it represents a base Hebrew root word that has the following Strong’s definition:

H914

A primitive root; to divide (in various senses literally or figuratively, separatedistinguishdifferselect, etc.): – (make, put) difference, divide (asunder), (make) separate (self, -ation), sever (out), X utterly.

This Hebrew word’s definition is in tremendous harmonious alignment with the English dictionary definition of “division’ that we examined earlier.  As you can read, this Hebrew word means “to divide asunder”, “make separate” and I also want you to see the phrase “sever out”.  All of these phrases are valid parts of our Bible subject study today even if we don’t yet fully understand them all right now.  However, even if we do not yet understand them completely, please do not let them slip from your minds.  Let me give you the list of important points from this Hebrew word definition:

  1. Divide Asunder
  2. Make Separate
  3. Sever Out

To conclude this short subject introduction I will tell you that there are actually at the very minimum 5 major named “divisions” that take place within the very first two chapters of the book of Beginnings also called Genesis and we will look at these in greater detail later in the lesson series.   What we just need to understand right now is that these divisions took place during God’s work within creation and therefore each of these divisions must have had a positive divine purpose for us to learn from.  Let’s review some of the major things that you should have learned about division:

  1. Division concerns one Substance Being Cut Apart
  2. After Division Occurs there are New Individual Pieces
  3. That which was Divided is a Smaller Portion of the Original Whole
  4. All New Parts are of Like Original Substance
  5. Division is Work
  6. God’s Work on Day 1 was to Divide by Speaking
  7. New Divided Parts can be Named

Since we have covered the basic introductions to division and its definition let’s start building a foundation for the subject now.

BUILDING THE DIVISION FOUNDATION

?????????????????????????A foundation represents the part of a building process that all of the other following parts are raised or built upon.  A foundation is the underpinning of the structure and the groundwork of the entire rest of the building process.  Nothing can be created structurally sound without a very firm foundation and so it is with Bible study subjects.  In the first section of the lesson I already gave you basic foundation definitions and those were very important.    But, let me stop right here and provide the main foundation Bible verse that these definitions apply to for the entire series of Bible lessons on this subject of Bible division.  Let’s turn to the book of Luke and chapter 12 to begin our construction process to read the foundational verse for the subject of Bible division spoken directly from the mouth of the Lord Jesus Christ:

Luk 12:51  Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division:

This is my LORD Jesus speaking to me and He literally makes a very shocking and a very controversial statement here in this verse.  We must first understand who is speaking.  Jesus was literally God incarnate.   He is called by the Hebrew name “Emanuel” which meant “God with us”.  Whatever Jesus said were words that God spoke personally and directly to all of mankind.  Therefore God was teaching us about one of the key reasons for His personal appearance upon the earth and it is a very outrageous declaration to say the least.  He tells us in this verse “to bring peace on earth” was never His appearance objective but rather He had come into this world to divide it.  This announcement from the Lord is a potential major conflict to several other Bible verses and this should raise new questions in our minds.  For example let’s review some of the potential conflicts:

Luk 2:14  Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

We should be able to begin to see from this angelic announcement the rising conflict.  At the birth of the Lord Jesus in the city of David called Bethlehem the angels appear to shepherds tending their flocks and they bring them the great news of God’s appearance on the earth.  As part of this announcement they declare that there should be peace on earth because of His appearance.  However, that is definitely not what Jesus said He came to bring.  Both verses contain the same Greek word G1515 that is translated as “peace”.  So they both are related by God’s word selection.  But there is still the problem of an apparent conflict.  Let’s read another verse:

Isa 9:6  For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.

There are several Bible verses that appear to conflict with the Lord’s statement in Luke, but especially this one verse found in Isaiah 9:6 where Jesus is clearly called the coming “Prince of Peace”.  Isaiah informs us of a prophesied future “Prince of Peace” that will come to the earth and this was certainly an important title describing Jesus.  However, Jesus who was this Prince of Peace claimed that to bring peace on earth was not His objective at His initial appearance on earth in Luke 12:51.   Whoops I just gave you an important clue in that last statement.  I hope you did not miss it.

At least 5 times in the New Testament (Rom 15:33, Rom 16:20, Php 4:9, 1 Th 5:23, Heb 13:20) our God is called the “God of Peace”.  Wow, how should we even begin to understand how to resolve these statements of God being peace and Him saying I did not come to the earth to bring any peace?  How can the Prince of Peace and the God of Peace not appear here physically on the earth to bring us peace?  How do we resolve this conflict?

I think I have already given you the clue if you were paying attention for the resolution of the conflict of peace.  The answer that will become more prevalent is based upon timing.  Everything that occurs in the plan of God has a set time of appearance.  At the first coming of Jesus on the earth there can be no hope for any peace based upon the statement made by Him in Luke 12:51.  However, that does not mean that He cannot bring peace later to the earth at a future time and I don’t have the space in this lesson to go into any great detail to when this coming peace will occur.  But I want us to understand that when Jesus came to the earth the people of the city of Jerusalem were expecting a natural King but they only saw a spiritual King that did not come to rule them at that time on the earth.  It was not God’s timing to rule on the earth during His first appearance.  This truth of reality teaches us how to learn more about God’s timing for peace and I hope this will help us all to understand how to resolve what Jesus was saying in Luke 12:51 more clearly.  Here are the main three points that you should have learned in this foundation:

  1. Jesus Came to the Earth to Divide
  2. And Not to Bring Peace
  3. But No Peace Now Does Not Mean There Can Be No Peace Ever

Luke 12:51 is my foundational Bible division verse concerning the complete subject of Bible division.  Jesus very clearly teaches us that to divide was one of the main purposes for His arrival on the earth.   We will now continue this lesson by attempting to understand what Jesus said He did not come to do.  Jesus said He did not come to bring peace.  So what is peace?  I think we need to know more about what Jesus said He did not come to bring us.  So let’s find out.

WHAT IS PEACE?

peaceful-still-watersAs we continue learning we need to understand as much as we can about what Jesus said that He did not come to do during His initial earthly appearance.  Jesus informs us very clearly in Luke 12:51 that He did not come to bring peace during this specified time.  Therefore, we need to ask the question “What is peace?”  Peace in one English dictionary means “cessation from war”.  A cessation of war means there is no longer any aggression, no fighting, no conflict, and no longer any hostilities one towards another.  Peace can also mean “a place or state without any disturbance”.  Some synonyms of peacefulness could be calmness, tranquility, serenity or quietness and Jesus told us that these were not the purpose for His arrival.  We can learn what peace represents in order to better comprehend why Jesus came to the earth.   It should become apparent that if Jesus did not come to bring us peace then the opposite of peace was His goal.  Can we agree?  Let’s review the quick list of what peace represented:

  1. PEACE = No Wars, No Conflicts, No Fighting, No Hostility
  2. PEACE = Calmness
  3. PEACE = Tranquility
  4. PEACE = Quietness

If Jesus did not come to bring peace then I believe very firmly that He must have come to do the opposite.  What is the opposite of peace based upon just these 4 definitions?   Jesus must have come to bring a war, a storm of agitation or even a raging wave and force of noise to the earth.  I believe all of those that I just stated are true.  However, we also need to understand that according to Jesus the opposite of peace appears to be the stated purpose of “division”.  Division by the definition of the Lord Jesus is the opposite of peace.  Once we consider what division represents it becomes very clear that it is truly the antithesis of any state of undisturbed peace.  Please keep thinking on these concepts of what peace “is” and “is not” as we continue to learn why Jesus said He appeared on the earth.  Based upon the definitions of peace we can begin to see Jesus came to bring us the opposite and these would be:

  1. War
  2. Agitation
  3. Turbulence
  4. Noise

I’ll say this again; Jesus speaking in Luke clearly claims that one of His chief purposes for being here on the earth was not to bring anyone or anything peace, calm, quiet or tranquility during His first appearance.  Then Jesus claims that one of His actual purposes for being here was to “divide” or bring “division” to something or even someone unnamed here on the earth.  What exactly was this on the earth that Jesus came to disturb, to bring unrest to, to disquiet it and to interrupt it with a wave of force of noise and power to cause or effect a division to occur?

war-3We have just briefly covered the subject of peace exploring some synonyms and some antonyms in this section of the lesson.  But I believe that I introduced you to some new things to consider.  We should have learned that God came to disrupt whatever was considered normal here on the earth.  We should have learned that God came to divide the status quo and cause what God desired to occur.  We know this because we learned division is a positive work of God and God’s work will always bring about positive results with a purpose.  So we should have learned God’s appearance was to bring war on the earth and not any peace.  Any war is an act of force between enemies against each other.  War is a very clear separation by force and power and a strong division between factions and it will always result in a reduction of the former whole.  We should be able to see that war fits very well into the definition of “division”.

  1. Who is Jesus at war with?
  2. What does Jesus intend to divide with His appearance on the earth?
  3. What will be the positive result for this division after it has occurred?

Learning how to answer these questions will be what this lesson series will now be focused upon.  However we still need to increase our foundational understanding for the subject of division and we will do that by looking at the subject of “disunion”.

WHAT IS DISUNION?

Let’ review the Greek word translated as “division” that was used by God in Luke 12:51.  This Greek word was translated as “division” in this verse.  This is a very unique Geek word.  In fact this Greek word is only found one time in the entire Bible here in Luke 12:51.  This Greek word is G1267 and here is the Strong’s definition:

G1267 – From G1266; disunion (of opinion and conduct): – division.

The Greek word G1267 translated as “division” in this verse in Luke 12:51 literally means something has been divided.  It also literally means “disunion” (of opinion and conduct).  Wow, that is a new amazing and very essential declaration that Jesus is trying to teach us concerning His positive purpose to divide here on the earth.  A state of “disunion” is clearly the opposite of a state of “union”.  A union is a representation of two or more entities becoming one single entity with unified authority.  Therefore disunion is like the one loaf of bread becoming many individual slices of bread that was mentioned earlier.   Disunion conforms to what we have learned about division up until this point of the lesson.

Disunion is a word that literally means the breaking up of a federation or union.  Disunion comes from a lack of unity and agreement.  Whenever even one person in a group is not in full agreement there can result a state of disharmony, discord and conflict.  Disagreement is the root cause for much disunion.  I wish to introduce you to two new potential reasons for Jesus appearance on the earth to divide using Strong’s definition.  First, Jesus was saying I came to divide the opinions or “beliefs” of men on the earth.  Second He was further saying that He came to divide the conduct of men here on the earth.  Either of these acts of God would bring about a war like state of disunity.  That is so very important what I just said.  We will definitely be talking about that a lot more in this lesson later.  But we need to look more into the subject of “disunions” first.

Let’s talk about the concept of “disunions”.  The word “disunion” means to break up something that was a whole or complete named entity into smaller distinct separate pieces.  For example the disunion of an earthly sovereign federation will result in the division of that nation into smaller nations.   Take for instance the disunion of the U.S.S.R. that took place back in 1991. Do you remember what U.S.S.R. stood for?  The U.S.S.R. stood for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The U.S.S.R was one sovereign named union containing states that were broken apart to form the new D.S.S.R = “Disunion of Soviet Socialist Republic”.   Of course that was just a joke but what resulted from the disunion were several new separate smaller sovereign states.   The united nation of the U.S.S.R. clearly qualified to be a candidate for division and disunion.  Down throughout human history there have been many nations, empires and kingdoms that have risen to only become divided, conquered and fall.  Nation and kingdom partitioning is a very constant and prevalent example of divisions and disunions. Could this concept be related to something that Jesus was referring to that He came to do?  We will soon find out that it is exactly what He came to do but let us look at another prevalent type of natural disunion first.

The natural case of divorce from the divinely created institution of marriage also represents a form of very prevalent natural disharmony, disruption and disunion occurring in our world too frequently.  A divorce is the dividing into individual pieces and the separation from God’s defined condition of being in the state that God called a “One Flesh” union (Gen 2:24).  Marriage represents the “union” of two individuals (1 male and 1 female) into one new family unit but divorce is the clear antithesis state called disunion.  Divorce occurs when the one named married family entity becomes two separated, partitioned and disjointed individuals that can no longer be considered a sovereign family covenant union.  If Bob and Sally Jones get a divorce the Jones Household and family has become disjointed in disunity and can no longer even exist.  This will always result in two lesser named entities lacking completeness and wholeness.

I have only briefly introduced you to two types of “disunions” and “divisions” so far in this section.  One is that of a natural sovereign nation being divided and the other is the concept of a natural sovereign family being divided up by acts of force or power.   Both are differing levels of sovereign authority.  Both can be divided by force and power.  Viewing them to be a positive work is another dilemma since neither sound like positive end results and I would definitely agree with that for now looking only at things from a purely natural perspective.  But there are other ways that we need to consider and I will talk about them soon enough.

Let’s continue our Greek word study and move down a level to the root word.  The Greek word G1267 that means “disunion” comes from another Greek root word G1266 which means “to partition thoroughly”.  This just keeps getting better and better, deeper and deeper and more and more complex doesn’t it?  To partition means “to divide something”, “to split apart something” or “to break up something” using a stated or implied wall of separation.  Partitioning is an understood act of constructive building through a display of intelligence combined with a force of power to create the divide.  This concept of partitioning is further based upon a rule of authority hierarchy.  Those which are building the partition are of much greater authority than that which is being affected by the division.  What I just said was so important I want you to see it again:

PARTITIONING = an Understood Act of Constructive Building through a Display of Intelligence Combined with the Application of Force or Power to Create A Divide.

For example, a criminal after conviction is divided or partitioned from the mainstream population by a greater force of authority and placed behind a separating barrier which can be named or labeled as partitions or the prison walls of separation.  Within our society the greater government authority created these partitioning walls of separation.  The separating walls of the prison will keep the prisoners in but also will keep all others in the general population out.  We can certainly see some potential positive aspects of division in this example.  Therefore, we should learn that division is defined as an act of separating one whole and greater item (the general population) into smaller or lesser items (prisoners and free people).  Using my quick example, our population is being separated by an act of law and authority into those that are free and those that are incarcerated. This is just a natural concept that helps us in understanding the spiritual Bible concept more clearly and God’s stated plan of division.

What was Jesus partitioning through His physical appearance here on the earth?  What walls were being constructed by His appearance on the earth?   I’ll begin to answer these questions in the next section.  The information covered in this section  should begin to give you some major clues to why Jesus came to earth.  Jesus has built a dividing wall partition with His appearance on the earth.  Let’s review the list of points we learned in this section:

  1. Disunion is a Force of Disagreement Dividing Two or More Groups
  2. Disunion is the Division of a Single Kingdom
  3. Disunion is like the Division of a Whole Family
  4. Division is the Separation of Two Entities using a Partition or Wall of Separation

There were other good points made in this section but these are the ones that need to be carried forward into the next section.  We will now take a look at God’s plan of division and how it was prophesied to be implemented by the coming Lord of Glory.

GOD’S PLAN OF DISUNION/DIVISION

In the last section I talked about the disunion of a natural nation, empire or a kingdom as well as well as the disunion of a natural family.  Both of these types of disunion that were going to be implemented by God’s design and plan in order to protect the righteous from the unrighteous.  God came to the earth in the form of a man in order to divide His kingdom and to divide His family.  God does this primarily to separate and partition that which was good from that which was judged as evil.   I believe this is an excellent time to introduce you to a prophecy that applies directly to what God was doing in Jesus.  Please turn to the book of Malachi and read what the LORD says:

Mal 3:16  Then they that feared the LORD spake often one to another: and the LORD hearkened, and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared the LORD, and that thought upon his name.

Mal 3:17  And they shall be mine, saith the LORD of hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels; and I will spare them, as a man spareth his own son that serveth him.

Mal 3:18  Then shall ye return, and discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him that serveth God and him that serveth him not.

These are verses prophesying a coming division.  Did you see it?  These are the works of the LORD that were coming through Christ Jesus.  God is going to separate the righteous from the wicked.  He is going to make it known (able to discern between) those that serve Him and those that do not.   The Hebrew word H996 that was translated “between” in verse 18 reveals to us this story.   This word means to make a “distinction” between two or more things.  It is a comparative stipulation that is used as a preposition to describe those that are named after the statement.  This Hebrew word H996 comes from the root word H995 which means “to separate” mentally.  To separate mentally is just another synonymous phrase of division that means God will divide them with a partition of thought so we can understand that there is a difference between them in our minds.  The ability to distinguish between good and evil and right and wrong is a mental partitioning process.   God actually warns us about this in the Bible:

Isa 5:20  Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!

We can clearly see these happening even in the world today if we observe the actions of people closely.  It has become increasingly difficult for people to “discern” between good and evil.  The lines have shifted to allow what we use to believe was evil to become good and vice-versa. God is warning all those on the earth that cannot discern between two opposites in this verse.   God says you are in trouble if you call good evil or evil good.  That is exactly what is transpiring in our world today.  It is everywhere on TV, in movies and on the internet.  Good is being called evil and evil is clearly being promoted to be good and normal.  God is teaching us about one of the walls of separation that will and is dividing us all.

The blurring of distinct lines of good and evil today is the devil’s plan to undo what God has already accomplished in Christ Jesus.  Satan wants us to not be able to recognize between good and evil and that is what is happening in this world.  Satan would like to get Christians to regress and become passive to accept sin, evil and etc.  I still believe that God’s plan will prevail in those that desire to follow Him as Malachi predicts.  Real Christians will know what is right and good and what is wrong and evil even if the world does not.

light-vs-dark (1)I want to stop here and teach you why things are named by God.  God gives things, people and places names to show that they are different.  Giving objects and people names are a form of the process of division.   When your child is born you name your son or daughter to give them distinction.  This new name separates them from the other children and makes them unique.  Do you remember what God did in Genesis 1:3-5 on day 1 of creation?  God spoke to introduce the light into the world which was then separated from the darkness and after God did this He named the light “day” and the darkness He called “night”.  Did you notice that in the verse in Isaiah 5:20  God also mentioned light and darkness?   Is that a coincidence?   No, it certainly is not.  Light represents good and darkness represents evil symbolically throughout the Bible.  This is God’s way of connecting the dots for us to learn His plan.  God was going to separate good from evil from the very beginning of creation.  Can you begin to see this?

This concept is exactly what God was doing here in these Malachi verses also.  God says there will be one separate group called the “Righteous” and another group called the “Wicked”.  Those are the names of distinction and separation given by divine appointment and purpose.  These represent the dividing lines between two groups of beings.  This certainly includes mankind but it also must include angelic heavenly beings also.

Wow, I just introduced so much potentially new information to you so fast that I pray that you understood it all.   We could go through other prophecies of division but I am trying to keep this lesson as concise as possible to not overwhelm anyone with too much information.  I hope to cover this subject in much more detail as the series continues.  So please be patient and kind and believe with me that God will say everything that needs to be said in His right timing.  Let’s recap what we should have learned from this section quickly.

God is going to build:

  1. A Mental Wall of Partition for Discernment in People
  2. A Wall Between the Righteous and the Unrighteous
  3. A Wall Between the Good and the Evil
  4. A Wall to Perceive Between Right and Wrong
  5. A Wall of Separation Between the Light and the Darkness

We could literally talk for many hours on these subjects but I just want you to begin learning the basics for and of division now.  I think today I am going to only go into one more introductory topic to help point us to future lessons.

CONFIRMING JESUS’ PURPOSE FOR DIVISION

I have already introduced you to the concept that God came to earth to divide His kingdom and to divide His family but we need further scriptural confirmation to assist in these statements and beliefs.  Both a nation and a family dissolution are very clear examples of types of extremely prevalent earthly natural disunions.  However, both of these natural examples of disunion have direct application to what Jesus said that He came to do here on the earth believe it or not.   Let’s look at a new verse that Jesus spoke about this direct subject of division to help us to confirm the reality of one of God’s primary purposes for sending Jesus into our world was to divide His kingdom and family.

Jesus actually talks about this subject of division much more than many realize.  It is very clear to me from learning this subject now that Jesus understood His reason for coming into the world far better than anyone else at that time including Satan and all his angels and demons.  We will now turn back to the book of Luke again and read a verse found in close context with our initial foundation division verse found in Luke 12:51.  Please, turn back to chapter 11 and begin to read in verse 17:

Luk 11:17  But he, knowing their thoughts, said unto them, Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and a house divided against a house falleth.

Jesus begins the statement with the word “Every”.  “Every” is the Greek word G3956 that literally means “every”.  I am just being funny with that last statement but that is exactly what the Greek word means.  The Greek word G3956 means “every”, “any”, “all” and “the whole”.  Therefore, G3956 is an all-inclusive adjective describing the noun “kingdom” that leaves no kingdom out of the statement.  Do you understand that?  There cannot be any “kingdom” in existence either past, present or future that is omitted from this statement of truth given to us by the Lord Jesus.  I cannot say that more plainly and this is such a very important concept to learn.  Jesus is not a liar and He would have phrased the statement differently if there were any kingdoms that could be excluded from being mentioned.  I do hope you understand what God is saying by His selective use of the word “EVERY”.

So we learn immediately from the mouth of Jesus that “any” or “every” kingdom named or unnamed directly or indirectly will fall if it is divided against itself.  Therefore we learn from the Bible what we already know from human history that any kingdom can be divided into two or more smaller pieces and even cease to exist completely.  For example the Roman Empire ceased to exist.  The Persian Empire has ceased to exist.  The Babylonian Empire has ceased to exist, and etc.   Today division of nations is still a very prevalent topic with the nation of Israel.  Peace talks are dominated with the division of Israel into two nations giving their land to a new nation called Palestine.   Satan is using God’s law of division to try to eliminate Israel and you should know that.

Did you know that this statement from Jesus absolutely must include the “Kingdom of God” and the “Kingdom of Heaven”?  You probably never thought of that, did you?  Does that sound offensive to you for me to imply that the omnipotent God’s kingdom can be divided, fall and possibly cease to exist? Please understand that I did not say it.  I just gained that knowledge from what Jesus said because He included these two kingdom references in the statement by selecting and speaking the word “EVERY” in union with the noun “KINGDOM”.  Wow, I think there could be a lot of upset religious people not very happy with this lesson after reading that but this statement is still true.

Do you remember that I talked about a whole pie being cut into pieces?  Let’s change the pie to a Kingdom and ask if it can be divided in the same way?  Jesus is speaking about a whole kingdom pie that will be divided if it is fighting against itself and He tells us that it will become desolate (a dry empty place) if it is experiencing any condition of discord, disharmony or even disagreement.  What happens to a pie after it has been cut and divided against itself?  It is usually dished out and served and the pie dish has been left an empty dry mess of crumbs.  That is what Jesus is describing that will happen to any kingdom that is divided also.  There is an old proverb that says “United we stand but divided we fall” and that is an accurate phrasing of what Jesus just taught us about God’s Kingdom.

These truths are precisely the reason that I mentioned the U.S.S.R. previously.  The U.S.S.R. was a very good example of a modern kingdom that has been divided against itself.  This whole nation was split into several smaller nations even now which are still fighting among themselves.  There was even recently reported heavy fighting in the Ukraine and Russia was blamed to be fueling the discord.  Note the fact what Jesus said again.  Jesus said “Do you think that I came to bring peace?  I say No but rather division”.  That was my paraphrase of the original key verse statement but it does represent an accurate message of the original.  No nation or kingdom that experiences division can or will experience any peace after it has been divided.  Now ask yourself what Kingdom is Jesus from?  Where did Jesus come down from to enter into the earth?  These are basic fundamental questions that you should be able to answer in your sleep.  Jesus came down from the Kingdom of God and from the Kingdom of Heaven in order that He might divide them with war and I believe this very firmly.

Now consider the second part of the statement made by Jesus concerning division in Luke 11:17.  Jesus declares that a house divided will also fall.  This Greek word translated as “house” means a dwelling where a family resides.  This is why I talked about the concept of divorce earlier also.   A divorce represents the destruction of a sovereign family unit.  The result of the family division is a whole entity that no longer exists or we could say a family unit that has been brought to the state of non-existence.  This is exactly why Jesus was making this statement in Luke because it concerns His purpose for coming to the earth.

We should be able to find out by close Bible study that Jesus has come down from the Kingdom of Heaven directly from the spiritual family of God to bring about a division to both realities.   We can begin to learn this truth simply by reading verses like John 6:50-51 where He describes His flesh as the bread that came down from heaven.   In these words are found the concept of the loaf of freshly baked bread that I presented earlier.  His body was broken and we must eat of it in order to live.  All those that do not eat of this bread will die.  That is a very clear division of separation being inferred.  There are many other verses but I will help you with one about the family of God next for you to know that God has a family that can be divided.

If you study the Bible by searching for the word “house” you will find more than enough verses that will confirm what we need to know about the existence of God’s spiritual family.  For example, in John 14:2 you will find Jesus talking about His Father’s house.  He claims there are many mansions in this location.  The Greek word in this verse is G3613 and it comes directly from the Greek word G3624 that Jesus spoke of in Luke 11:17 about a house divided.  Both words were translated as house and both words mean a literal family dwelling place.   I can give many other references but I do not want to take the time in this lesson introduction.  Just begin to realize that God has a spiritual family and this family can and has been divided by the plan, will and the work of God through Jesus Christ.

If this is true what Jesus is teaching us then the implication of both of these divisions will dictate God’s need for a new spiritual family and a new spiritual kingdom since both will be brought to the level of non-existence as Jesus has prophesied.  I hope you realize that Jesus was a prophet also and spoke what would come to pass in many of His recorded statements in the Gospels.  I warned you that this Bible lesson would take us into some really deep waters which may go over the heads of some weaker carnal Christians.  If this describes you please just stop reading and go to a different Bible lesson.  So let’s review the main points from this section of the lesson.  We learned these Bible facts:

  1. Every Divided Kingdom Will Be Made Desolate
  2. Every Divided Family Will Fall
  3. God Has a Kingdom Which Can Be Divided
  4. God Has a Family that Can Also Fall

All of these Bible facts of Truth point us in the direction for God’s personal appearance on the earth to divide.   These help us tremendously to understand a very complex hidden Bible subject.

CONCLUSION

I hope and pray that you have learned at least a little more on this subject of Biblical Division than you ever knew before.  I know there was a lot of new information given but I also know that there is a whole lot more to learn.  I would recommend that you go back and at least reread the main points from each section of the lesson. This will help us put the pieces of the division puzzle together correctly.  I will be continuing in this series with more confirming scriptures to help us believe in God’s Word.  Thank you for taking your time to read and study the Bible with me.  I do value your time greatly and I do not wish to waste any of it.  If you would care to leave me a comment or question I would appreciate it.  Also please share this website with your friends and relatives so everyone can learn more about the Lord and the soon coming King Jesus Christ.  God Bless you.

Click now if you would like to continue reading “Part 2“.

BIBLE ANSWERS: Was Jesus the ONE and ONLY Son of God?

One and Only Son of God(Ver 1.3)  There is a popular false teaching going around in many churches that claims that Jesus was the one and only son of God and that is NOT what the Bible says.  However, I do not want you to throw stones at me yet.  I do want to say up front that I believe in the Triune Godhead.  God is comprised of three unique personalities called 1) God the Father, 2) God the Son and 3) God the Holy Spirit. Therefore, Jesus is the only Son within the trinity of God.  But that does not mean there are not other sons of God in His family.  In fact preaching one son of God only is not even close to what God says in the His Word.  Are you ready to learn the truth and see what God actually wrote us in the Bible? This false belief that Jesus was the one and only son of God has even crept into several modern Bible translations and thus it appears to become more legitimate than it truly is.  Many Christians will read an erroneous modern Bible translation and think this is what God really said but they have to ignore the details of the correct writings of God in the original language word meanings to believe this way.  This false teaching is destroying the truth to project an image that there are no other children of God except for Jesus.  This leaves Christians with the impression that we are “a nothing” and “a nobody” and this is exactly what Satan wants us to believe so that he can condemn and accuse us.

Please understand this very basic truth, only the original scriptures in the original languages were God inspired (breathed) and at no time were any of the TRANSLATIONS that were created by men ever inspired by God.  Every translation produced by a human introduces some new version of the personal opinions of the translators that must be weeded through in order to find God’s intended accurate truth.    I literally mean that we can find many translation errors in the KJV Bible, the NIV Bible, the NASB Bible and every other translation if we go back and study to find the truth from the original Greek and Hebrew.  This of course becomes highly controversial in many Christian circles.  This Bible study will be potentially discarded simply because people do not seek to learn, know or understand what God says.  Being a “concrete” or “firmly set, dry and hard” Christian will cause many to miss the truth and I hope and pray this is not you today.

I am a detailed oriented type of person.  I was a computer programmer for over 25 years.  You cannot write a computer program without paying attention to all of the little details or it will not work.  Using this same detailed oriented approach is how God taught me to study the Bible.  Please learn to pay attention to the details found in the Bible and this will help to see the scriptures more from God’s perspective who spoke them.

I’m going to repeat this again, please do not read this lesson and believe that I am saying there is more than one Son in the Trinity!  I am not claiming this and do not intend for the message to be understood this way.  I know this Bible lesson will be offensive to some and I know that some people will potentially take the message wrong.  People become so narrow minded  when hearing something new.  People like to take hold of one truth and abandon all others.  I have said this more than once; there is more than one truth in the Bible.  Jesus is the primary truth and the greatest reason to study the entire Bible but God teaches us other things like this lesson that should also be made known to be His truth.  This Bible lesson is not taking away from the message of Jesus Christ being the only begotten Son of God within the Trinity.  Do not read this and believe that at all!  I teach the Trinity of God very strongly.  I teach the fact that Jesus is the only begotten Son of God very strongly.   I teach the fact that God came to the earth personally in the flesh and died for our sins to give us His gift of righteousness to save us.  Before you criticize me on one Bible lesson go read everything and then ask questions.

INTRODUCTION TO SONS

The main focused scripture today in this Bible study is one that we have all heard at some time in our Christian life.  This verse is one of the most popular verses learned and memorized by many children at an early age in Sunday school.  This verse is one that Satan would like to remove from the Bible and this is the reason for his attack to pervert it.  Here is the main verse in question that will be answered:

Joh 3:16  For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (KJV)

John 3:16 is the focused controversial verse that I will be talking about in this lesson today.  I started with the basic KJV translation of the verse since I believe it to be one of the most accurate.  However, this verse was translated by men in several different conflicting ways in other translations.  For example the WNT, CEV, ESV, BBE and NIV Bible translations all get parts of the original language meanings very wrong changing the original Greek language into “Only Son of God” or “One and Only Son of God”.  The KJV, NKJV, NASB, Webster, YLT, AMP, ASV, Darby, LITV and the MKJV translations all translated it correctly saying “only begotten Son”.  While “Only Begotten Son” is more accurate, this English word “begotten” is not well understood to what the term means.  This of course was not a complete list of all the available Bible translations but it gives us a clear view of why there is a controversy and asks the question who is correct?    For your review comparison here is the NIV translation of John 3:16.  Please note the differences given:

John 3:16  For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (NIV)

Both the KJV and the NIV translations cannot be correct since they simply mean two completely different things.   “One and Only Son of God” and “Only Begotten Son of God” cannot be considered identical because one set of modern translations completely left out one of the most important words “begotten” when the other set included it.  The NIV further convolutes the truth to add the word “One” before Son and this just brings further confusion since the word “one” does not even appear anywhere in the original Greek language.

Now consider the English grammar found within John 3:16.  What does the term “only begotten” represent and how does it relate to the noun “Son”?  You should begin to understand that the term “only begotten” represents an adjective modifier to the noun “Son”.  An adjective is only required to limit the scope of the discussion of the types of the noun being referenced.  In other words if there is only one sun in the sky then there is no need to modify that noun to qualify which one you are speaking of.  The same is true of the moon in our sky.  When only one exists the need for qualification is eliminated.  Now what would happen if there were two moons in our night sky?  Then we would need to qualify which one we are referring to.  This is exactly what God is doing in John 3:16 with the adjective “only begotten”.

Now what does “begotten” mean and why is it found in so many translations?  Why was “begotten” omitted from many other translations to change the meaning?  What changes when the word “begotten” is eliminated?  We need to learn the facts in order to determine the truth and this is what we will attempt to do in this lesson.

Someone might try to ask if it is even important for us to believe the Bible correctly.   Why am I being so nitpicky to think that it makes a difference how we believe what John 3:16 actually says?   I would answer that question with this reply; does it matter if you believe the Koran is the truth or the Bible is the truth?  Does it matter if I believe they both are the truth?  They certainly contradict each other.  Therefore, they both can’t be the truth so does it matter which path you chose to be on?

Of course it does matter what we believe is the truth more than we can imagine.  Jesus very clearly said that He was the only way to be saved (John 14:6).   So now take that truth to the next level.  Does it matter if you believe that Jesus was just a man like those in Islam because according to the Koran He was just a prophet of Allah when He died or should we believe what God says in the Bible that He personally came down in the flesh to save us?  I hope you are getting the point.  If it does not matter greatly what we believe then God would not have given us His Word to study and learn.

Therefore, if a Koran or a Bible belief matters then it must also matter if Jesus was the “One and Only Son of God” or the “Only begotten Son of God”.  We just can’t omit one word that God included and think that it does not matter.  This is exactly what I was referring to with computer programming.  The omission of just one single letter, number or symbol can cause the entire design of the entire software to fail.  What I am getting at is that we need to learn as much accurate Bible as we can so that we are not deceived by someone that comes along with a message of one small lie mixed with good several truths.  How can we recognize the truth if we ignore the details of God’s Word?

I will warn you that this is an advanced Bible subject intended for spiritually mature Christians only.  It is not a rudimentary lesson that is designed to feed baby or young Christians the milk of the Word of God.  This lesson is definitely a meat subject that can cause immature Christians to choke.  If you do not feel like you are very spiritually mature then please just go read another lesson so that I do not offend you with something that you are unable to receive.  I will also warn you up front that this is another long Bible lessons with a lot of spiritual scriptural content.  Some subjects tend to grow lengthy because there is so much that needs to be taught from the Bible on any given subject.  I usually do this using a series of shorter Bible lessons, but these Bible Answer responses to reader questions are usually stand alone.  I hope you understand and will continue to read to the end.

In this lesson I will be using a minimum of 3 primary rules of sound Bible interpretation to verify the truth.  I will also introduce you to a concept that you have probably never been taught before.  This concept found in the Bible will teach us that there are at least 4 unique types of individuals that are called “sons of God” in the Bible.  I can already hear the gasps being loudly raised by that last statement.   People might be resistant to anything new simply because they have never heard it taught before.  But please do not reject the message without first reading what is taught with an open mind.  Then only after reading what is taught here do I ask that you become an Acts 17:11 type of more noble Christian and verify everything that is being taught using your own Bible study.   This is the only correct method to confirm what the Spirit of God wants us to know.  Work within God’s methods and grow or work apart from them and fail to see the truth.  It is each of our own personal choice.

CORRECT RULES OF INTERPRETATION

driving-in-manilaI am going to begin this Bible lesson by introducing some of the basic rules of valid Bible interpretation.  I will not be covering every rule that exists but these three will be used in this lesson for us to find the truth to what was written by God in the John 3:16 verse.  Can we begin by agreeing that rules are good?  What would be the outcome if driving on the road was a freeform chaotic madness with no rules to govern the actions of all of the drivers?  How many drivers would still be alive after a few days if driving was based upon a chaos random approach of  actions that allowed people to go however they wanted, where ever they wanted, how fast they wanted and whenever they wanted type of driving style?  If governments permitted unstructured driving methods to how fast they could go or where they could drive it would be an extremely dangerous environment.  This same principle of a no rules approach to Bible interpretation represents the same level of dangers except restricted to a mental or spiritual environment.  I hope that you can agree in this introduction with the need for good Bible interpretation rules.

I will use three rules of Bible Interpretation that the Holy Spirit taught me to use.  I did not learn these rules in any seminary so they may not adhere to your version of hermeneutics.  But I would rather attempt to follow God’s spiritual guidance than man’s rules because only God’s will give us the correct truth.  Please read these rules and then I will try to explain each briefly to help us learn how they work and why they are important to follow:

  1. Find and Use Hebrew and Greek Original Word Definitions
  2. Compare an Original Word’s Usage with Other Occurrences in the Bible
  3. Search for Direct Bible Contradictions to Balance each Scripture in Harmony

ORIGINAL WORD DEFINITIONS

One of the keys to correctly understanding any translated Bible verse is to judge each translated word using the comprehensive definitions of the words found in the original transcripts of the Bible.  Without studying the original word definitions we must trust and rely on an imperfect translator that was not inspired by the Spirit of God in what they wrote.  Also many translated English words like other languages transform or mutate into new or different applications and meanings as the world changes around us.   For example in the KJV Bible the Greek word that was often translated as “charity” would be almost always misunderstood by the majority of modern Bible readers.  The modern application of “Charity” is not what the word means in the original Greek.  This word was “agape” which represents the unique God kind of love.

These original word definitions are critical to discover.  Without them the original meanings were often lost in many of the modern translations.  I have heard some claim that the KJV Bible was God inspired and that no other Bible translation should ever be read.  These types of proponents often claim there is no need to study the original Greek or Hebrew words.  This is entirely a wrong belief based upon ignorance.  These types of people have been so deceived that they may never know or see the truth of God unless they learn to dig deep and study to find it.  I have discovered so many errors in the KJV Bible that leaves me no doubt that the original language study is indispensable to knowing the real truth.  You are free to disagree with me, but by you ignoring the original language this will help us to resolve why we differ on what any one verse means.  Let’s move on to another rule of correct understanding of the Bible.

OTHER BIBLE OCCURRENCES OF THE WORD

Another key to understanding specific original words is to go and look for God’s usage of the same Greek or Hebrew word in the rest of the Bible.  To do this we need to use our computer devices, smart phones or tablets to search in our Bible for all of the places where God uses only the exact same Greek or Hebrew word that we are trying to learn.  In doing this we obtain a more complete understanding of  this one word that we wish to study.  I need to emphasize that we do not search the Bible for the English translated word because more than one Greek or Hebrew word can be translated to the same English word.  For example the Greek language has at least 3 different words that mean a type of “love”.  But only God’s selection of the one can be compared correctly to learn how each verse usage is related.  If we attempted to mix the Greek word “philedelphia” (G5360) and the Greek word “agape” (G26) we would be mixing apples with oranges and only causing confusion.

This rule of interpretation allows us to see how one word in one verse relates to the other occurrences of the same word in other found verses.   This type of study method is what I call doing a “word study”.  There is also a type of study that I call a “subject” study that goes into considerably more detail but also take more effort to perform.  There are at least two different ways of doing a word study or a subject study.  First in a word study you can restrict your search to only using the direct Greek or Hebrew word in question.  This will shorten and limit the study considerably.  The Subject study would need to include the matching Hebrew word for the Greek word in question as well as include every other word that is a synonym of the word in question and this can take significantly more time but can also give great benefits to new truths.  Today I will only be performing a very basic word study for “only begotten”.

This word study technique of understanding the Bible introduces us to the concept of consistency and uniformity.  I have found through many years of Bible study that God is normally very consistent in His selection of words, their usage, their application and what they mean.  In other words if God wanted to say something differently in one verse from another verse, He would have used a different word.  I call this God’s “Intelligent Design” of His Words.  God knows every word and what they each mean better than you do, so do not attempt to change a word’s definition based upon some random human speculation or reasoning.   Keeping a Greek word’s definition consistent will help bring stability and balance to our understanding of every word being selected by God.  In review this step of correct Bible interpretation involves at minimum finding every occurrence of the Greek or Hebrew word being studied and reading each verse closely to see how it was used by God.  We then compare each verse to every other verse to understand how they are related attempting to understand why God chose this single word in each.  In doing this we attempt to balance every word’s usage into a single definition and application.  This can be simple or it can be complex based upon the number of times any word is used by God.  Some words are used less than 10 times (simple) and other times they are used many, many hundreds of time (complex).  Let’s move on to the next guideline for correct Bible understanding.

NO VERSE CONTRADICTS ANY OTHER VERSE

The next method of understanding correct Bible interpretation is for us to utilize the basic fact of truth that NO one Bible verse when correctly interpreted will EVER conflict or contradict with any other Bible verse when both are correctly interpreted.  Do you understand this rule?  This is another essential part of understanding absolutely anything in the Bible.  Realize that God is not stupid.  Then understand that God does not change or flip flop on truths, word definitions, thoughts, concepts or ideas.  God is not here today on this word’s definition and then there tomorrow on the same word.  God is not a Dr. Jekyll or a Mr. Hyde type of God.  God is a God of never changing goodness, purpose, character and qualities.  What God says today will never change tomorrow.   What God said in the beginning will remain true at the end and what was said will not reverse, disqualify or eliminate anything else that was spoken by God in between.  I do not know how to explain this rule more clearly.   If one verse says God has only one son and another verse says God has many other sons then one verse is clearly NOT TRANSLATED CORRECTLY.   There can be no conflicts within the Bible when understood correctly.  The only time a conflict exists is when a human does not correctly comprehend the truth of what was spoken by God.

I am going to apply these three basic rules of correct Bible interpretation and understanding to answer the question “Was Jesus the One and Only Son of God”.   After you see what God and the Bible actually says about this subject you must agree that Jesus was not the one and only son of God.   I will begin with the rule of searching for the original word definitions to find what God meant by them and then this will help guide us to what the word means in the verse that we are questioning.

G3439 ORIGINAL WORD DEFINITION

Joh 3:16  For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten (G3439) Son (G5207), that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (KJV)

This verse has become very controversial by Satan’s design. This verse was previously held up in football games like the Super Bowl until it was banned by the NFL again by Satan’s design.   It has been cried loudly on street corners to passing people that walked by indifferently and ignored the message.   It has been preached on TV and in many churches by countless preachers.  It is one of the first verses that a child learns and memorizes in Sunday school.  However this verse has stirred up a modern dilemma and debate asking was Jesus the One and Only Son of God as the NIV and many churches claim?   The translation that I opened with was the KJV Bible and it is stated to say “only begotten”.  However you already observed in the NIV how it was changed to say something almost completely different.

While the NIV change on the surface seems to be insignificant to many, the underlying application of the subtle difference is very profound.  If Jesus was the one and only Son as the NIV Bible states then this verse translation invalidates a great number of scriptures in the rest of the Bible.  This NIV translation purposefully causes a direct conflict within God’ Word and that teaches us that we need to determine the resolution to the conflict in order to correctly understand this part of the Bible.  We will do this by beginning to see what the original Greek word means as defined in the original language using the Strong’s dictionary:

G3439

From G3441 and G1096; only born, that is, sole: – only (begotten, child).

The Greek word translated into English as “only begotten” in the KJV Bible is “G3439” and it is a single Greek word that is created from the combination of two other Greek root words.   The first Greek root word designates the single or solitary occurrence of something, someone or somewhere.  This Greek word is where the translators got the application of the English word “only” which is correct so far.  However, the second Greek word designates something that was made or caused to be.   Let’s stop there and consider what is stated when something was caused to be or made?  Anything made was not in existence previously and that only means that Jesus was a new type of Son and nothing else can be assumed from this definition or it would be adding to it or changing what was given by God.  These two Greek words literally mean that Jesus was uniquely made and did not compare with anyone previously created or anyone that was subsequently created.  However it does not mean that there are no other types of sons that came into existence in some other way.  Do you understand this so far?

Let me use an analogy of an automobile.  There are many types of automobiles, but yet someone can also create or make one unique auto that was created as a special custom model that is unlike all the others.  People do this all the time.  This new custom car could be called this type of “only made” (G3439) model of cars.  That is exactly what Jesus is being called in this definition.  This definition does not mean that there are no other sons of God; it only means that this one named Jesus was made especially unique unlike every other son.   Think about it before you reject it.  Was Jesus uniquely made?  I personally do not know of another human that came from a virgin woman, do you?  I think that makes Jesus especially different than me and you.

The Strong’s dictionary further defines this Greek word as “only born”.  What does this mean?  I think this part of the definition also applies to Jesus very well.  Were there any other naturally born sons of God?  Not according to the Bible as we will soon learn.  The New Testament is very explicit in declaring Jesus to be the only naturally born Son of God.  This is the literal definition for “only begotten’ in John 3:16.  To be called the “only begotten” means that Jesus was God’s only naturally born child.  Again this does not disqualify other sons or children of God from existing using this correct definition.  Did you know that God is all powerful?  God being “omniscient” and “omnipotent” simply means that God is able and knows how to make a new unique child if He so desires to do it.  This was God’s design of Jesus.

In the Thayer dictionary he makes the point that this Greek word G3439 is only used to describe a son or a daughter when viewed within their relationship to the stated parent(s).  That is a very important part of the meaning and we will discover this as we continue through the other rules of interpretation.  When using the Thayer consideration we must now deliberate who the parents of Jesus Christ were.  Any serious Bible student will say that Jesus was both the Son of God and the son of a natural virgin woman named Mary.  But we must eliminate Mary from this “only begotten” participation since in John 3:16 it is only speaking of God the Father who gave His Son to save the world with no mention of Mary.  We should also know from further Bible study that Mary had other natural children born from the union with her husband Joseph.  Therefore, Jesus was not the “only begotten” son of Mary.  Nowhere in the Bible is Jesus called the only begotten of Mary and there are a lot of people that need to learn that fact.  What I am introducing you to is what this Greek G3439 word means.  Jesus was the only naturally born son of God and this is the only way that this can be correctly interpreted based upon the definition and the contextual subject matter.  Uh oh I just introduced another important rule of correct Bible interpretation that was not one of the 3 that I was going to use today. This new rule states that no one can take any verse out of context to make it say what it was not intended to say within the context.

You see in John the 3rd chapter Jesus is speaking to a natural man named Nicodemus that asks Jesus how to be saved.  Jesus tells this man that he must be “born again” in order to enter into the kingdom of God.  Clearly Jesus was teaching Nicodemus about birth types in this chapter.  Jesus is using two contrasting types of birth to explain salvation.  Jesus was saying to Nicodemus that there is a coming spiritual birth that must occur after the natural birth occurs.  We will soon discover in this Bible lesson that there are many spiritual births that have occurred since Jesus was raised from the dead.  However, please note that up until this point in John 3 that no man was ever born again because the sacrifice for their sins had not yet taken place on the cross.  It is within this context of the subject of births that we find this Greek word G3439 that was translated as “only begotten”.   It makes logical sense to conclude “only begotten” son of God is related to the contextual subject of birth types.

Therefore, the “only begotten” son of God could only represent Jesus coming into the world through a natural birth experience and could not be related to this coming spiritual birth that Jesus described.  This again is what this “only begotten” Greek word means.  God only had one Son that was naturally born and His name was Jesus Christ.  God’s usage of this Greek word to describe Jesus teaches us that only He could be called the naturally made, created or born Son of God.   However, that still does not mean that there are no other types of sons of God that were spiritually born or created by some other methods.  I hope you understand this but if not it should become clearer as we continue through the other verses found in the Bible on this subject.

OTHER VERSES WITH THE GREEK WORD G3439

If you search the New Testament you will find this Greek word G3439 that was translated as “only begotten” in John 3:16 is only found in 8 other verses.  Five times it is used to describe Jesus in relation to His Father God but 4 times it is used to describe other naturally born children that were the only begotten son in direct relation to his earthly mother.  For example, in Luke 7:12 God describes a man being carried out at a funeral and he is called by this name G3439 as being this mother’s only born son.   What this means is that this dead man was her only child that she actually conceived inside her and gave birth to.  Notice that only the mother is mentioned in this verse because of her presence.  I would also like to point out that the KJV translators made the same mistake as the NIV translators did in John 3:16.  In the KJV, Luke 7:12 says that this man was her “only (G3439) son (G5207)” but they intentionally leave out “begotten” part of the definition and that makes it an error.  This woman could have had other adopted sons but that would be ignored by the translators from what God intended it to say.

What I want you to begin to see is that an “only born son” is always given using the relationship to only the specific parent being mentioned and does not necessarily apply to the other parent involved.  There is no mention of the father in Luke 7:12 and he could have had many children through other women like Jacob did in the O.T. before he died.  People like to put God into an oversimplified human box of limitations.  However the Bible says very clearly that what is impossible with men is possible with God (Mat 19:26).   So while a natural woman may have had only one naturally born son it is entirely possible for God to have other types of children that were not naturally born even though Jesus is still called His only begotten.  Do you understand this?

I am certainly not teaching you that God had other naturally born children other than Jesus.  Jesus by definition from the dictionary and word use application was the only naturally born Son of God that ever existed.   Just please do not limit God to say this is the only way that He can produce children.  That would be very foolish if someone believes their limits placed upon God effects what God is able to do.  If we continue to look through the book of Luke we will find two other examples of this Greek word G3439.  In Luke 8:42 a ruler of the synagogue came to Jesus asking Him to come and heal his “only born” daughter.  I will just tell you that this is the same type of translation error example as seen before in the NIV.  The daughter being described is not the only daughter in the nation born but she was this man named Jairus’ only born daughter.   Again the KJV translators get it very wrong and leave out the word begotten.  In fact the KJV translators in this verse added the word one to further confuse people.  Instead of being consistent and making the word “only begotten” they changed it to “one only”.  This just proves that there are errors in the KJV Bible the same as other translations.  Now let’s look at the next word occurrence also found in a verse in Luke:

Luk 9:38  And, behold, a man of the company cried out, saying, Master, I beseech thee, look upon my son: for he is mine only child.

Here again is an example of a very wrong translation.  It should not say “only child” it should rather say “only begotten” or “only born”.  The word child is not found in the original Greek word.  If God would have wanted the word child to be included in this verse He would have added the Greek word G5043 that is normally translated as “child” in several other N.T. verses, for example:

Luk 1:7  And they had no child (G5043), because that Elisabeth was barren, and they both were now well stricken in years.

Here in this verse God is saying that this couple does not have a child.  The woman Elisabeth is said to have been barren.  What we can learn from this truth is that God has other words in the Greek language that literally means a child.  So if God wanted to say “only child” in Luke 9:32 it could have been accomplished using other specific Greek words that actually mean that.  The translators thought they were making a good assumption but this simply produces inconsistences that were not stated by God.  God selected by His choice to say “only begotten” or “only born” and this was the correct original meaning.  It is just so obvious to me that if God wanted to say “only child” that He would have said G3441 (only) followed by G5043 (child) and this would have matched what the KJV translators thought.  However since God did not say this why did the translator not understand what they were doing was changing God’s word into something that was not stated causing a potential confusion to occur.

The last occurrence of G3439 not being used to describe Jesus is found in the book of Hebrews.  In this verse God is describing Abraham and his “only begotten” son named Isaac.  Let’s examine this verse and consider the implications given by God on this subject of Jesus:

Heb 11:17  By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac: and he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten son,

Notice that God calls Isaac the “only begotten” of Abraham.  Uh oh, that is a major problem since Abraham had several other children.  The first born of Abraham was a child named Ishmael and this child was born from Hagar.  God does not consider this child to be an heir of promise.  Also if you read in and study in Genesis I believe that you will discover that Abraham had other children later after Isaac.  Yet God still calls Isaac the “only begotten”.  What this teaches us is that God could have had other children before Jesus Christ as well as other children after Jesus Christ and that the existence of these other children still cannot disqualify Jesus to be called the “only begotten”.  I know that this is potentially complex information but Abraham is a type pattern that was given by God in the Old Testament to teach us about spiritual truths.  You see if you read in Galatians 4 carefully you will discover that God teaches us that the life of Abraham represents an allegory of spiritual truth that is much deeper than the natural story.  I am not going to go into this allegory in depth today because that will take too much time.  You should go and read my other Bible lessons to discover what this allegory represents.

I believe we need to be consistent when viewing this Greek G3439.  I believe we can clearly see that every time it is selected by God in the New Testament that it is in reference to an “only born” child in reference to a single parent.  You can go through every reference in Luke and see this very clearly.  You can find this pattern again in Hebrews when God only speaks about Abraham and his only begotten son Isaac.  Consistency is an important factor.

ARE THERE ANY “ONLY SON OF GOD” CONFLICTS IN THE BIBLE?

The next rule of correct Bible interpretation involves researching for potential conflicts to any given statement.  If the NIV Bible translation is correct claiming that Jesus is the ONE AND ONY SON OF GOD then there better not be any other verses found in the Bible that contradict with that statement.  If only one verse is found that can be shown to disagree directly then there is a major problem with one of the verses being read.  So here we go with discovering the conflicts of the statement “One and Only Son of God”.  We will begin with Genesis 6:2:

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.

Here is another potentially ontroversial verse.  Many have tried to explain away this verse as not saying what God describes.  There are two separate types of individuals being described by God in this verse.  There are the “sons of God” and the “daughters of Adam”.  If the father of the sons of God is God then the father of the daughters of men must clearly be Adam.  Perhaps you do not see it so clearly.  If you research the Hebrew word translated as “men” in this verse you will discover that it is the Hebrew word H120 and this is the exact same Hebrew word as H121 that was translated as “Adam”.  Therefore these women originated from Adam and these other beings had to originate from the spiritual creator God and they cannot be the same because of the two different associated fathers being described.  Perhaps I need to tell you that this Hebrew word translated as “God” in this verse is one of the most popular names for God in the O.T. Bible.  This Hebrew word H430 is found in over 2200 verses in the Old Testament.  Nine times out of ten it was translated as “God” starting in Genesis 1:1 where it was first used to describe the creator.  The other Hebrew word used in conjunction with this name of God is H1121 which was used to describe a “son” is defined to be a male builder of the specified family name.  The family name here is God and the sons are clearly his spiritual children within His personal family.  In order to confirm who these “sons of God” represent in Genesis 6, we need to look for other examples of these same word combinations in the Bible just as we did with our search for the “only begotten” Greek word.  If you do the search you will find some important verses that help to reveal who these sons of God are:

Job 1:6  Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan came also among them.

In the book of Job, God again describes the “sons (H1121) of God (H430)” but this time using some new contextual realities.  The previous Genesis 6 setting was definitely set upon the earth with human female interaction but this time in Job this same group of beings are found to be in the very presence of God in heaven.   What type of beings can be found both here on the earth and up in heaven in the presence of God?  If you do not understand that these are angels then you will need to go study the subject of angels in more depth before continuing.  I will give you a verse from a dream that God gave to Jacob and this will help establish that angels can travel between these two separate dimensions:

Gen 28:12  And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it.

These sons of God must be angels based upon the logical facts given.  There are other verses that we could explore but I need to move on.  Please notice that Satan appears with the “sons of God” in Job 1:6.  This is actually a very interesting concept given by God and implies a great deal of hidden information.  The Hebrew word H8432 that was translated as “among” in Job 1:6 literally means that Satan was in the center of them.  This Hebrew word represents a bisection of the group of “sons of God” with one half being on the left side of Satan and the other half being on the right side of Satan standing before God.  This places Satan as the implied leader of the “sons of God”.   We know from reading in Ezekiel and Isaiah that Satan was one of the chief angels if not the chief leader of them all.  Also notice that the position of Satan being in the center of the “sons of God” means that Satan was also one of this group of sons by association.  Did you know that Satan and the angels were called “sons of God”?  Let me give you some additional proof:

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!

Here in this verse the individual named Lucifer is called a literal “son” of the morning.  The morning is actually a poor translation because this Hebrew Word H7837 means “dayspring” or more literally “early light” or even “first light”.   The emphasize detail in this definition is the light and the timing of its appearing. Who is called The Light in the New Testament?  God is clearly called “Light” in 1 John 1:5.  Also Jesus claimed to be the light in John 8:12, John 9:5 and John 12:46.  But since Jesus was God in the flesh both are equally the Light.  I think I need to give you another key verse to this puzzle:

Luk 1:78  Through the tender mercy of our God; whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us,

You can clearly see from this verse that Jesus was called the “dayspring” from on high.  This literally means that Jesus was God but it also confirms who Satan was as a revealed son of God in Isaiah 14:12.  If you look up the definition of “dayspring” you will see plainly that this Greek word in Luke 1:78 has the meaning of the early light of dawn and it is a perfect match for the Hebrew word definition of “morning” or “dayspring”.   What God is revealing to us in these verses is that Lucifer was one of the first created beings that God produced.  Early light in the context that God is Light simply means the preceding order of time which is a difficult concept for us to grasp about a God who lives outside the dimension of time.  God is clearly indicating to us that Lucifer was His son before Jesus became His son.  I know that is hard to grasp for many people because it is new information.  Just keep in mind that Jesus was God who created everything and that He had children called angels before He ever had a Son name Jesus.  All of this will become clearer as we continue to discover who are represented as the other “sons of God” in the Bible.

I want you to notice in Isaiah 14:12 that the Hebrew word H1121 translated as “son” is repeated in this verse the same as in Job 1 and Genesis 6 for the “sons of God”.  God claims that Satan is a builder of His family name.  The name of God is His family and God of course is the head of the family being the Father of all spirits.  Perhaps this is a good time to introduce a New Testament confirmation verse that is related to this subject of sons and fathers:

Heb 12:9  Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?

Here is a very revealing verse for the discussion of spiritual fathers and spiritual sons.   God is being named the spiritual Father of all spiritual beings.  Is Satan a spiritual being?  Is every angel a spiritual being?  You must understand that created Satan and every created angel are both eternal and spiritual beings before you continue to learn more complex Bible truths.  I try not to teach anything without at least giving you a reference for what is being stated so I will give one about angels being spirits to help you see it:

Heb 1:14  Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?

Reading this verse in context you will discover God speaking of angels.  God declares His angels to be ministering spirits sent to minister for those that are heirs of salvation.  I know this is talking about me because I’m an heir of salvation.  Therefore God’s ministering spirits (angels) will be there for me to help in this world.  What I have just done is establish a basic truth of angels being called “sons”.  Since God is clearly called the Father of every spirit in the Bible.  I hope you are beginning to learn how poorly translated the NIV Bible was in John 3:16.  We have just witnessed the reality that every spiritual being is called a child of the spiritual God who is called Father.  This literally means that we should find this father and son theme in the Bible in other places.

I have only introduced you to the second type of a son of God found in the Bible.  Jesus was my first type called the “Only Begotten” but before Jesus we found that angels were previously called God’s sons as the second revealed type of a son.  Technically speaking angels existed first as sons before God became His own Son in the natural form of Jesus.  Did you notice what I just said?  God created everything and everyone and He clearly self-existed eternally.  However, the eternal God chose to become His own son before the foundation of the world to redeem us from our sins as well as accomplish many other things that I can’t get into in this lesson.  God becoming a Son being born 4000 years after the creation of Adam was clearly a mystery that took Satan by complete surprise.  However the wisdom of God prevailed and we find that truly “All things are possible with God”.  I hope you understand this truth of the eternal Spirit of God manifesting as a human Son because this defeated Satan and set you free from Satan’s rule.

What I have just given to you is the realization that before Jesus physically existed that there were other spiritual beings called angels that are referred to by God as His spiritual children.   This is enough of a conflict to cause us to reconsider the NIV translation of the verse in John 3:16.  But there are many other verses that also cause additional conflict.  Let’s look at another important verse:

Rom 8:14  For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.

Here is an additional verse that was written to the church (me and you if you are a Christian) that conflicts with the belief of “one and only son” of God.  This verse indicates that those that are led by God’s Spirit will also be called God’s children.  Are you a spirit?   Do you remember that God is called the Father of spirits?  God has made you a son when you were previously not His son.  How did these people being led become God’s children?  We have to do further research in order to answer that question and this answer is found here in this verse:

Joh 1:12  But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name:

Do you believe in the name of Jesus?  Have you received Jesus Christ?  If you have done both of these then you qualify to be called a son/child of God.  Now consider what else this verse says.  This verse clearly indicates that we were once not His child but have become this son by God’s plan of salvation.  Uh oh!  That raises too many questions that just cannot be answered fully in this Bible lesson.  You see you were a spirit being before being saved but yet you had to become saved in order to become this new son of God status.  If God created our spirit and He was previously our Father then how did we lose this son status in order to need this again?   The Bible is a highly complex book of spiritual information and this is just one mystery of the many that God solves by His extreme wisdom.  I will not answer this question in this lesson so if you want to know this you will have to leave a comment and ask for the answer or go find it for yourself.  However, I will give you this verse since it is found in the context of my main subject of John 3:16 to help confirm what I have just said:

Joh 3:3  Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

In the context of John 3:16 we find Jesus telling a man that he must be “born again”.  Uh oh again!  What does this mean?   Nicodemus thought that it meat that he needed to reenter his mother’s womb and be born naturally and that was not what Jesus was teaching.  Jesus was teaching a spiritual birth and not a natural birth.  Notice what Jesus confirms here.  Unless you are born again spiritually you will not enter into the kingdom of God.  That means before we were born again we were not in God’s family and needed to be saved (born again) to become a member of His family.  Being a son/child of God is essential to being saved.  We were once not His children but now being born of the Spirit of God have become His children and this is the new third type of son being described in the Bible.  This son type differs from every other son type previously mentioned and yet there is still a fourth type of son that has not yet been mentioned.  Let’s discover the fourth type of son of God that was not like the only begotten Jesus, the angels or the born again church.  Here is where I will start next:

Luk 3:38  Which was the son of Enos, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God.

This is another controversial verse that is ignored by most non-serious Bible students.  This is the genealogy of Jesus Christ recorded by the author Luke given to us by the inspiration of God.  This genealogy proceeds in reverse order all the way from Jesus back to Adam and then finally concluding with God the Father of every spiritual being.  Every named pair represents a father and his son relationship however the Greek word for “son” is not included so many believe that this was omitted to allow God not to be called the Father of Adam.  However that is just the deception of Satan trying to keep you from learning the truth to what is stated in this genealogy.  Let me go back to the top of the list and show you the beginning:

Luk 3:23  And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli,

Notice what God says here.  God says Jesus was SUPPOSEDLY the son of Joseph.   Any learned Bible student knows that God is correct to state it this way since God was His Father and not Joseph.  Now consider the end of the list of names using the light of the beginning.  If Adam was not the Son of God then God would have said “SUPPOSELY” again and since He did not do that we know that Adam was a created fourth type of a son of God.   Now to confirm this we need to go back to read Genesis 2 where God created the man named Adam.  Read this chapter in full if you like.  I will not quote it all because I want you to focus on verse 26 primarily:

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.

This verse was written about Adam leaving his Father to be joined to his wife.  Who then was his father that he left if not God?  It has to be God that was the spiritual Father of Adam.  I know this because of what we read previously in Hebrews 12:9 where God is declared to be the Father of every spirit.  If you go back up in the chapter at Genesis 2:7 you will read where God breathes the breath of life into Adam.  This Hebrew word translated as breath is the same word that means “spirit” and this word teaches us when and where Adam received his spirit directly from God his spiritual Father.

We have now discovered 4 types of sons of God and there is at least one other type but that is sufficient overwhelming evidence that John 3:16 cannot be correctly translated as “ONE AND ONLY SON”.  This erroneous translation simply conflicts with too many other verses in the Bible that teaches us about other “sons of God” that existed before Jesus came to the earth and after Jesus returned to heaven.  I received one additional question that I will end with in this lesson.  I received a question about Jesus having brothers and who these brothers were.  I have alluded to this truth in some of my other Bible lessons but never fully explained it.  I may not be able still to fully explain it here but I will at least introduce the subject for your consideration.

If there are multiple types of sons of God as I have demonstrated and God is the Father of them all, then  it makes good logical sense that Jesus has brothers/siblings.  If Jesus is a Son of God which He clearly is then every other son of God must also be His brother.   In many of the parables taught to us by Jesus there is more than one son given.  Even within Old Testament typology there are many examples of multiple sons. For example, Isaac was a half-brother of Ishmael.   Isaac was accepted and the older brother Ishmael was cast out.  This is a common pattern found in the Old Testament types.  For example, there was Cain and Abel the first two sons of Adam mentioned by God.  Abel was killed by his older brother Cain.  Abel’s offering was accepted by God but Cain’s was not.  Then there was Jacob and his older brother Esau.  Again Esau the firstborn was rejected but the younger Jacob was chosen by God.  Abel, Isaac and Jacob are all clearly types of Jesus Christ.  Yet who are these brothers a type of?  I personally believe that they are types of Satan.  I have other Bible lessons where I address these subjects so I will not repeat it here.

What I am doing is teaching you that Jesus had spiritual brothers.  We now know that Adam was a brother of Jesus since God was both of their direct spiritual Fathers.  We should also now know that Satan was a brother of Jesus since he was called a son of the early light in Isaiah.  We also know from reading that we Christians are also called spiritual brothers/sisters of Jesus if we have become “born again” by the Spirit of God and being led by His Spirit.  How do we know this?  Well we know this because Jesus was called the “firstborn” from the dead in Colossians 1:18.   That verse teaches us that this means Jesus was given preeminence by God’s design being the first to be born again from the dead.  Wow God teaches us some pretty hard things for us to grasp.  Who understood that Jesus was talking about Himself being born again in John 3?    If Jesus was the first then there are others that followed Him being called second, third, fourth and etc.   There are many other verses that teach us that we are called brothers and sisters of Christ.  For example we are called “joint heirs” with Christ Jesus in Romans 8:17.  What is an heir?  An heir is normally a child that inherits what is left after the Father/Parent dies.  Who died to make us an heir with Jesus?  It was Jesus who died to allow us to become an heir.  This is just another divine mystery.  God died and became the first heir and this act of God allows us to become the same in subsequent numbered positions.  This is a very complex spiritual subject that is not known or understood by many Christians.

Today in this Bible lesson I want to reemphasize the fact that I am not taking away from the deity of Jesus Christ nor am I reducing His most significant Son of God status with the existence of other created sons of God.  I always capitalize Jesus as the Son of God and any other being like Lucifer was but a mere son of God.   I fully acknowledge Jesus Christ as being Supreme.  Just because I taught you that there are other types of sons of God that exist in the Bible that does not disqualify the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit within the trinity.  These three are the One True God.  If you perceived any other message from this Bible lesson than what I just stated here then you need to go back and reread this lesson again and again.

My website is called “Advanced Bible Study”.  This is one of those types of lessons that have been designed for spiritually mature Christians.  I went over many things that will be rejected by a lot of immature people who call themselves Christians but yet that is the nature of teaching advanced subjects to students who are only capable of understanding simple basic subjects. I used 3 to 4 basic rules of good Bible interpretation to confirm the truth in this lesson.  You should have learned these rules so that you can apply them in your Bible study.  If you disagree with this lesson please do not leave me any nasty comments.  I really am not going to change what I teach if you are incapable of understanding spiritual truths.  I thank those that can see the truth and understand why it is important to learn.  I could not include everything in this lesson so if you have questions I am willing to hear them and see if I can help you to understand anything that was not covered sufficiently.  In conclusion I will give you the list of 4 types of sons of God:

  1. Only Begotten (natural born) Son (Jesus Christ)
  2. The angelic beings are called the sons of God created before the world existed
  3. The born again church are called sons of God if they are led by the Spirit of God
  4. Adam created as a son of God who left his Father to be joined to his wife

I hope that you enjoyed this advanced Bible lesson and will leave me a positive comment or question if you learned anything that you can share with others please do that also.  Also please point others to this website to help the Word of God to be spread to the entire world.  Post links to my Bible lessons on Facebook, Twitter or any other social media site where people can learn about Jesus. I thank you and may God continue to bless you as you are led by His Spirit with me.  God Bless!

Is the Rapture of the Church a Bible Truth? More Rapture Found in O.T. Typology! Part 6

Rapture_Ready_01(Ver 1.1)  This is now Part 6 in the series of Advanced Spiritual Bible Study Lessons concerning the reality of the Rapture of the Church.   God has covered a lot of information in this series so far and most of it will not be repeated.  Therefore I would recommend that you begin reading the series in Part 1 and continue forward in the series until this lesson.   There is just no feasible way to repeat the last 5 lessons on this subject in one lesson so please consider reading them all carefully.   In today’s Bible lesson God will take us on another journey through Old Testament scriptures that have no specific or direct mention of the Rapture event by a named reference.  However that does not mean that this story is not about the rapture event using divinely inspired typology of named O.T. patterns, types, participants and events.  If you are a doubter that believes God has not hidden any concealed information in the Bible for us to search for and discover then you are clearly a deceived person that has had your mind blinded by Satan from seeing the truth that is in plain sight if you desire to find it.   No one can force you to see what will be taught to you today.  Being a closed minded type of person to this potentially new information will probably cause the information to roll off of your mind like water off of a duck’s back.   I pray that you will at least attempt to consider all of the information that is presented to you before you totally reject any of it.

THE RAPTURE IN OLD TESTAMENT TYPOLOGY

Today, we are going to go through some verses buried in the Gospel of Matthew that teach us about the coming rapture concepts.  Right there you are probably going to ask “I thought that you said this was an Old Testament Typology Lesson”?   “Why then are we reading in Matthew clearly a New Testament book and author?”   That is actually a legitimate question but one that is easily answered.   Yes the Gospels were written by New Testament church writers named Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  The time of this writing was obviously well after the death, burial and resurrection of Christ during the beginning of the church age.   However, consider the primary subjects given within these texts.   The majority of the descriptive acts and accounts within these texts occur prior to the implementation of the New Covenant which occurs at the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.   It is essential to learn that there was no New Covenant made available until Jesus was raised from the dead.  If there was no New Covenant then salvation could not be obtained because salvation is based upon believing in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead (Rom 4:24, Rom 10:9).  Not until after Jesus was raised from the dead could anyone, be saved by God’s Grace through faith (Eph 2:8).  So while the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John contain the beginning of the New Covenant at the conclusion of the books, the vast majority of the actions take place outside of the New Covenant.   I hope that you understand that simple truth.

Within Old Testament Typology too many people want to see great detail, but these are never given in that format.   Any Old Testament typology is a dark outlined natural shadow pattern of the brighter spiritual real image that produced the image and is never the real image itself.   God designed the Bible with foreshadowed O.T. events that were projections to the coming spiritual real events found in the New Testament.   So while the story in Matthew that I will present will have some real actual natural facts, there will be no details given otherwise about the actual timing of the coming future spiritual event being described.    In other words this Typology in this Bible lesson will help prove the existence of the rapture but not necessarily if it is a pre-tribulation event or a post-tribulation event.  I will address this issue of rapture timing further after we go through the verses to see how the shadows fit the actual described rapture event.  I’ll begin the study with the first verse of the seventeenth chapter of Matthew, please read slowly and carefully:

  • Mat 17:1  And after six days Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John his brother, and bringeth them up into an high mountain apart,

Here we have the beginning of a new story initiated by Jesus the key figure of the entire New Testament and the rapture event.  I want you to see how this fits the description of the rapture as we have already studied in the series.  You should recall that it is Jesus that initiates the rapture event and it is not initiated by any man here on the earth.   Then notice that it says “Jesus taketh”.   Wow, that is very strong rapture language within typology.  Taking people up, is the central theme of action found in this verse and it is initiated by the Lord Jesus.   Notice that Jesus only selects a specific number and not every disciple to take with Him up to a high mountain apart from all of the others that were left below.  Doesn’t that sound like more hidden rapture shadows?   When you read scriptures like these in the Bible you should always stop and ask the basic who, what, when, where and why?    For example ask why is Jesus taking them up after 6 days?  Why not five, four or three or even two?   What does this mean?  Why is Jesus only taking 3 of the 12?   Why is Jesus going up to a high mountain?    If you are not asking God any specific question you will never see any specific answers.   I’ll start with the concept of 6 days.   Does 6 days match anything given to us in the Bible anywhere?    It just so happens that 6 days matches the days of creation found in Genesis 1.   This is called the Law of First Mention.  Whenever a subject is first revealed in the Bible God places clues within the text to help us understand the references in the other parts of the Bible.  God’s creation of our world was exactly 6 days in length.  If you have read my other Bible studies you should already know that these 6 days represent the entire human history of man on the planet.  I based this conclusion upon scriptures given to us by God in Psalm 90:4 and 2 Peter 3:8.   Let’s review 2 Peter 3:8 for those that have not read it or do not remember it:

  • 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.

If you do not know or understand this verse, then God calls you ignorant.  Being ignorant is not bad since we are all born in this condition.  But ignorance can be easily corrected by learning the truth of God.   What God is doing is giving us a New Testament spiritual definition for the word “day”.  To a human the term “day” means a 24 hour period of time.  But a day to the Lord is now being redefined to be a 1000 year period of human history.  This news causes God’s definition to take priority over man’s definition when interpreting spiritual realities found in natural O.T. typologies.     I am not going to be able to reteach in this lesson why human history is a 6000 year long period on God’s time clock and how that these 6 days of creation prophetically reveal man’s entire history on the earth in major shadowy steps of progression.  I just don’t have that much time.  You can begin to learn about these concepts from other Bible lessons that I have posted if you are interested.

One of the most important concepts to understanding and correctly interpreting any natural O.T. typology is to search and find the New Testament definitions of the words being used by God.   However, please do not take this rule and misapply it in error.  You cannot say that Jesus took Peter, James and John up to a high mountain after 6000 years.   No, that is not what is happening.  We also cannot take the 6 days of creation and try to make them 1000 year long periods of time.  Both of those would be examples of erroneous interpretations.  The 6 days in Matthew 17:1 are literal 24 hour periods of time.   However these are used to point us into a spiritual reality of 6000 years using God’s definition.   Both are true simultaneously.  It is very much like the shadow of me on the ground caused by me standing in the sunshine is not me but yet represents me and is true because I’m truly standing casting the shadow.  I hope you understand how to apply this information given by God in a natural O.T. story and how it can point us to a coming N.T. real spiritual reality.  Let’s return back to the Matthew typology study.

I would like you to consider two key words in the first verse in Matthew again.  These Greek words were translated as “taketh” and “apart” in the KJV Bible.    Let’s look at the Greek G3880 that is translated as “taketh”.  This Greek word literally means to “receive near”.  The implied state before this occurred is that they were apart from Jesus but have now been brought close to Jesus.  I believe that is exactly a rapture synonymous description.   I hope that you are seeing the same things.  Now consider the word translated as “apart”.   This Greek word is G2398 and it means “one’s own”.    It contains the implied meaning of what is being taken close was previously separated from something else or someone else.   In this case in Matthew 17:1 Jesus selected 3 to be His own and the other 9 were to be left behind not to participate in the event experience.  Wow, I’m telling you that this is very important information.   Do you remember what Jesus said to us?

  • Mat 7:21  Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.

If not everyone that calls Jesus Lord will be saved this means not everyone that calls Jesus Lord will be raptured.    Jesus basically teaches us that 75% of the church could be potentially left behind in the rapture.   Let’s just take this and place figures to it.  If there are 1 billion professing Christians in the world, this would potentially teach us that only 250 million of them will be taken in the rapture.   Of course this is not me making any predictions.  Because there are other verses that need to be considered.   For example in the parable of the 10 Virgins the number of virgins that enter in with the bridegroom is 50%.   So using that figure we could say 500 million of the 1 billion could be taken up in the rapture.   The actual number is not important, but what is important is the fact that some are taken and some are left behind separated from the others exactly as what occurs in this type.  That is what will occur when the rapture happens.    Let’s continue to go through the rest of the Matthew 17 typology.

  • Mat 17:2  And was transfigured before them: and his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light.

The key word found in this verse is the English word translated as “transfigured’.   This Greek word G3339 is a word that we get “metamorphosis” from.  It means a state of newness that did not exist in the old state.   It is like when a caterpillar is transformed into a butterfly.  That is exactly what occurred in this verse in the natural but that is also what will occur in the rapture.

  • 1Co 15:52  In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.

You see in this New Testament verse God is describing the rapture event and He declares that there will be a change in the human state from death (corruptible) to eternal life (incorruptible).   The corruptible man will be completely transformed into a brand new incorruptible man.   These are just shadow events in Matthew 17.  I could talk a long time about the rest of verse 2 when Jesus appears as the sun, but that would take too long.  Let’s continue to verse 3 and see what is revealed next:

  • Mat 17:3  And, behold, there appeared unto them Moses and Elias talking with him.

I want you to remember where Jesus is.  Jesus has already been transfigured and suddenly on the top of the high mountain “appears” Moses and Elijah.    Wow again this is strong hidden rapture typology.  Notice that Jesus there alone being viewed by the 3 disciple witnesses and suddenly Moses and Elijah instantly appear with Jesus.  If that is not a rapture type I do not know what it is.  Moses lived 120 years and then died.  If you read the book of Jude you will begin to see a clue to what is being described here in Matthew 17.

  • Jud 1:9  Yet Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil he disputed about the body of Moses, durst not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke thee.

Why would Satan and Michael be in a legal dispute over the possession of the body of a dead man?   I mean come on, what does this mean?   I personally believe that the body of Moses was taken by God as a type being used to teach what will occur when the rapture occurs.  Did you know that a Jubilee year only comes every 50 years of Jewish time?   What is a Jubilee year?   A jubilee year is when all debts were forgiven and the lands were returned to the original owners who sold them because of their debts that they could not pay.  That is a very descriptive type of the human condition.  Man had a debt that he could not pay and Jesus came to pay a debt that He didn’t owe.   This is the Gospel good news of salvation.   Well if you take a Jubilee of 50 and multiply it by the years that Moses lived you get 6000 again.  Is that a coincidence?  It could be, but I do not believe it is.  Also consider the fact that Moses died a natural death (Deu 34:7) and that clearly Elijah did not (2 Kings 2:1).  If you recall Elijah the prophet was taken up to heaven by the Lord alive in his physical body and never saw death.   So we have Moses representing the dead in Christ and Elijah representing the living in Christ on the earth being taken up on the high mountain in the clouds to appear with Christ.   This my friends is very precise typology of the coming rapture event that is a parallel to what we studied in 1 Thessalonians 4:16 being described.  The dead in Christ represented by Moses will go up first.  Just as Moses was also mentioned first in verse 3.  God does everything for a reason even the order of the words in the verse teach us something important.  Then Elijah is mentioned and he never died representing the shadow picture of the saved saints in the church still alive during the time of the rapture.

I believe that you can clearly see the rapture being described in this shadow text found in Matthew.   The parallels are truly amazing and cannot be a chance occurrence.   God has hidden things like this in the Bible, yet many people are not seeing them.   The 6 days in this typology represent the 6000 years of human history and then the church is taken up.   What we need to address next is when this will occur based upon God’s Word.

RAPTURE TIMING IN THE LIGHT OF THE SEVENTY WEEKS OF DANIEL

Daniels_70weeks

Please allow me to address the timing of the rapture using a short explanation for when this must occur according to the Word of God.   Consider the 6 days found within the Matthew 17 typology shadow text.  Let’s break these 6 days down into three separate but consecutive two day periods within the timeline of human history like God does in the Bible.   Did you know that God did this?   From Adam to Abraham was approximately 2000 years of human history and this time represents the initial two days of the six.  God forms a covenant with one human man and his natural descendants and that initiates a new personal transition of God’s involvement with man.  Then from Abraham to Jesus was also approximately another 2000 years of human history and again this was 2 additional days of the six.  This Old Covenant through Abraham was God dealing with man in the natural realm and through the law.

We are now up to 4 in the series of six total days.  The beginning of the 4th day of human history presents the entrance of Jesus the Messiah (God in the flesh) into the world as the Redeemer.   With the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus this begins God’s new plan of salvation for all men through a New Covenant.  The New Covenant begins a completely new period of human history through God’s intimate involvement with the individual man in the spirit realm.  Knowing these facts literally teaches us that the duration of the church age can only endure the last 2 days of human history or approximately again a 2000 year time period.  How long has the church been here on the earth now?  We technically do not know for sure the exact length of time which matches the prophecy that Jesus gave to us saying “no man knows the day or the hour” (Mat 24:36).  The current calendar year is 2013 AD but how long that is precisely on God’s timeline cannot be calculated exactly or precisely.  There is even a debate of the year that Christ was exactly born and when Christ exactly died.   What I will tell you is that even though we do not know the exact time, we are certainly at the very least at the last of the very end of the time of the two days (2000 years) of the church age.   What I am attempting to say is that when the church age comes to an ends the rapture of the church must take place.

I guess one of the main questions that I will receive is when is the Great Tribulation?    Is the Great Tribulation a part of the church age or a part of another age being separated from the church age?   Those are excellent questions to consider.   The correct Bible answer is not so obviously or easily found.  But we will attempt to address these questions next using a very important Old Testament prophecy.

What I want to do in the remainder of this lesson is to introduce you to a new concept hidden in the Bible.  In the book of Daniel God gives a detailed prophecy of an exact period of given time within God’s timeline.  What we must do is determine if this period is within the 2 days of the New Covenant church age, the 2 days of the Old Covenant age, or the pre-Old Covenant 2 day age.  This endeavor sounds like a Sherlock Holmes type of search for the clues to discover the answer and that is exactly what we will do.

This period in Daniel is described to be a time of 70 weeks of years foretelling the coming events concerning the natural nation of Israel and the entrance of Jesus into the world.  Seventy weeks of years represents a period of time of exactly 490 years.   You can calculate this by multiplying 7 (1 week of years) by 70 weeks and that gives you the 490 years total.  Multiplying 490 years times 360 days in the Jewish calendar gives us 176,400 days of their history.  Every week of these years has already been fulfilled except for one final week of years that has yet to occur.  This final week of 7 years is called the great tribulation.  Let’s go back to Daniel and read parts of this important prophecy to help confirm what I have just introduced you to:

  • Dan 9:24  Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy.

Perhaps I need to better explain what a week of years represents to God.  A week of years is exactly 7 years just like one calendar week of days is exactly 7 days.   Therefore 70 weeks of days would be calculated using the same math as 7 times 70 which equals 490 total days.  This is not that complicated but yet it does involve a certain level of basic math and God loves to challenge us with things like this to discover.  God uses the concepts of weeks and groups of 7 repeatedly in the Old Testament in various multiples.  A Jubilee year occurred after 7 weeks of years (Lev 25:8-10).  The Jewish people would count 7 times 7 years = 49 years and then they knew that the next year would be the Jubilee and this was the foreshadowed description of what occurs during the rapture event but I do not have time to explain that today.   A Sabbath rest for the land occurred every 7th year (Lev 25:4).   Jacob worked 1 week of years for his wife Rachael and then had to work another week of 7 years since he was tricked into taking the older daughter first (Gen 29:20-28).   Joseph in Egypt interprets a dream where the end result was two weeks of 7 years each with 1 week of plenty followed by 1 week of famine (Gen 41:29:30).  Both of these weeks represented 7 years.   A Hebrew man or woman that was sold into slavery was to be freed after 6 years or on the 7th year and this represented 1 week of years’ service (Deu 15:12, Jer 34:14).  This picture again fits the pattern of Sabbath rest that is repeated throughout the Bible starting in Genesis 1 and 2.  You see I taught you that the 6 days of creation represented 6000 years of human history but there is coming another day called the 7th day that will be an additional 1000 year of rest and rule without Satan on the earth.  That would make the creation event and human history on the earth the complete and full week.    We could go through other examples of Bible weeks but that is enough for now to make the point of the existence of this pattern in the Bible.

Does a 7 year period of time sound like any futuristic event to come?   Let’s go back and look again at Daniel’s 70 weeks of years in more depth.  If God declares 70 weeks of years that is like I said a total of 490 years that were prophesied for ONLY natural Israel and for the work to fulfill the coming righteousness as described in verse 24.  I want you to know this because that is critical for the correct interpretation of what God is doing here.  What I will emphasize more than once in this discussion is that the church age is NOT a part of this 70 week prophecy nor can it be since righteousness has already been given to the church (Rom 3:21-22, Rom 5:17, 2 Cor 5:21, Eph 4:24).   Let’ reread verse 24 of Daniel 9 to analyze the words more carefully:

  • Dan 9:24  Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy.

I would like you to review what is being stated in this verse more clearly.   Seventy weeks is the initiation of the verse statement.  Seventy is a Hebrew term that means 3 score and 10.   What we begin to understand is this is the initiation of a very significant and complex prophecy puzzle or riddle.  The Hebrew word that is translated as “determined” is H2852 and this word means to “cut off”.  That is obviously not a positive term to apply and I do not have the time to get into that part of the discussion.  Next in the verse is where we begin to understand who this prophecy applies to primarily.   God says this is written to His people and His holy city.   In the Old Testament this is clearly the natural descendants of Abraham and the city of Jerusalem.  I could give you scriptures for that if you need them and do not understand it, just ask me for them.  The next part of the verse represents the work of Christ.  This work of Christ was to finish the transgression of these people and to put an end to sin.  This work further goes on to declare reconciliation for iniquity and to bring in everlasting righteousness.   Wow those are very important statements concerning what Jesus will do.  This verse is about the coming of Jesus into the world to pay the price for ALL the sins of mankind.   This statement predicts the accomplished works of Jesus that occurred nearly 2000 years ago.

Do you understand the information being tied together here?   We have a total period of time described to be 70 weeks of years that declares the coming righteousness and that is followed immediately by several other verses of prophecy that begin to break this complete period of 70 weeks down into subdivided weeks of years.  This is just part of the complex riddle being presented.  These are very easy concepts to overlook and not understand.  Let’s go read the verse 25 of Daniel 8 of the prophecy and consider this new information next:

  • Dan 9:25  Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks: the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times.

The KJV Bible translation causes the next time period to be a bit confusing using a complex wording of 7 weeks followed by the term three-score and two weeks.  This sounds a little complicated at first until we learn that three score is just a period of 60 weeks which needs to be added to 2 weeks to get a sub-total of 62 which then we need to add to 7 weeks where we get 69 total weeks until this time period is accomplished when Messiah the Prince is prophesied to come!   Ok, 69 weeks of years is 7 times 69 years which results in 483 years until Messiah’s entrance into the earth into Jerusalem.  Several people have done the calculation on the internet so I will not repeat that in this lesson.  What they have determined was back when the command to build the walls of Jerusalem was given until the day that Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey was an exact period of 483 years.   You can search this out and find it to help you confirm that math.

This new division of 69 weeks from the original 70 weeks teaches us that the 70th week occurs sometime after this stated initial prophecy of when Messiah has come.  Do you understand this so far?   What we have started to observe is an implied disjointed 70th week.  Now consider this information in the next verse:

  • Dan 9:26  And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined.

What God is telling us is that the Messiah (Jesus Christ) will be killed after 62 weeks.  That is a different break down of the time period called the 69 weeks that was previously mentioned in the last verse.  What God is revealing is that there will be a 7 week timed event followed by a 62 week timed event and then Messiah will come after the full 69 weeks are fulfilled.  Do you understand this?  This verse is just a new further description of what occurs during the time that occurs before the end of the 69 weeks but God breaks it down into a further division of 7 (49 years) and 62 (434) weeks. What I believe God is stating is that there will be first 7 weeks of years followed by another 62 weeks of years and then Jesus will be killed on the cross (cut off).  Here is a synopsis of what I believe is being stated in these verses so far.

This is how the 70 weeks are broken down:

  • The first 7 weeks – This 49 year period of time represents the initiation of the commandment to rebuild the walls of the city of Jerusalem was given until it was fully accomplished in or around 445 BC.
  • The next 62 weeks – This period of time represents the completion of the walls of Jerusalem building until Messiah comes riding into the city walls 483 years later.
  • The Last Week – The yet to be fulfilled week of years is disjointed from the others because God has halted the O.T. time clock of weeks since Israel rejected their Messiah and killed him on a cross.

Many times people do not see or seek to understand these important clues.  This prophecy was hidden by God in such a way that man could not understand it until it was revealed.   If you read the end of the book of Daniel in verse 12:4 God says to “Daniel to shut up the book until the time of the end”.  That teaches us that this book of the Bible was concealed by God to not be easily understood until such a time as this.  Let’s move to the 70th week to help us to see this time as being a separated time from the other 69 weeks more clearly:

  • Dan 9:27  And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.

Here is an interesting description of a single one week period of years.  Obviously this is the 70th week being described since all of the other 69 weeks have been previously covered.  This one week period of time is clearly divided into two equal portions.  Dividing 7 years by two you get 3.5 years.  If you take that into months you will get 7 * 12 = 84 months and dividing that by two you get two periods of 42 months each.  Are you following this simple math?  This description matches what is prophesied to come in great detail in the book of Revelation chapters 6 through 18.  In the book of Revelation God used two different synonymous references for these periods of half 7 years.  One reference is called “42 months” in Revelation 11:2 and Revelation 13:5 and then He calls this time period a “time” (year), “times” (2 years) and “half time” (6 months) in Revelation 12:14.  Both of these represent the half week year time period being described here in this verse in Daniel 9:27 and also in Daniel 7:25 and Daniel 12:7.

I am convinced beyond any shadow of a doubt that this seventieth week of Daniel represents the 7 years of tribulation revealed in the book of Revelation.  The book of Revelation references and further describes many of the events prophesied in the book of Daniel repeatedly.  That would be a very extensive Bible study in itself to confirm this but I do not have that kind of time to do that today.  If you need to learn more about that you can ask questions or you can do an in-depth study for yourself on this subject.  My point in conclusion is that if these seven years in Revelation represent the one final week of years found in the 70 week of years directed at only the natural nation of Israel in Daniel then they cannot be included in the 2000 years of the duration of the church age.  In other words they must not nor will they ever overlap each other in simultaneous concurrence.  What we are discovering in this study is a restart of God’s time clock that had previously been halted when Jesus was killed at the end of the 69 previous weeks.  Knowing this reality literally teaches me that the church must be raptured before the 70th week of Daniel’s prophecy can occur since we in the church are not under that covenant.  Do you understand this logic?  I pray that you understand this because it is essential to learn.   You are free to disagree but that is how I view it as God has taught me.  So please do not write me a comment telling me God is wrong.

CONCLUSION

I believe I have gone long enough in this lesson on the soon to occur rapture event.   The church age is coming to its rapid conclusion as declared by God’s Word to be exactly two days (2000 years) upon the earth.  The internet today allows the Gospel to be preached to the whole world and this was prophesied by Jesus to occur before He returned for us (Mat 24:14).   My Bible study blog has been read by people in more than 150 different nations on every inhabited continent.   That would be impossible for me to visit those personally and tell them about the soon coming Jesus.  However I can give them a message on the internet and that will do the same work if they will believe it.    I pray that you understood why I went into the 70 weeks of prophesied years of natural Israel and how these do not overlap with the church years on the earth.   We are under God’s Grace during the church age and His righteousness has been extended to anyone that will receive it freely by faith.  The age of Grace will be taken away with the church in the rapture.  This does not mean that people cannot be saved during the tribulation but it will be much more difficult to receive this salvation.  Learning this information has caused me to believe that the church must not be found present during the 70th week called the Great Tribulation in Matthew 24:21, Revelation 2:22 and Revelation 7:14.   In the next lesson in this series we may explore more hidden clues concerning this pre-tribulation rapture revelation.  I hope and pray that you learned something that you can take away and share with others.   The time is drawing rapidly near and the rapture could literally occur at any moment.  If you are not ready for this and need to repent and turn to Christ you can find a link at the top of my menu on how to believe and receive salvation.  Thank you for reading and studying the Bible today and God will continue to lead you and guide you in new ways to help others come to Christ.  God Bless!

If you would like to continue reading in this Bible Study Series, please go to “Part 7“.

Is the Rapture of the Church really found in the Bible? Finding the Rapture in Revelation 3:10!

rapture8(Ver 1.3)  This is Part 5 in a series of advanced spiritual Bible lessons on the timely and very important subject of “Is the Rapture of the Church a Bible Truth”.  If you have not read this entire series from the beginning I would highly recommend that you go and start your study with “Part 1” and then continue in succession until today’s lesson.   However if you do not have the time to read every lesson I will inform you that this lesson today will be of great benefit and will be easily understood as a standalone lesson.  Many Christians today are asking “Is the Rapture Really Found in the Bible?”  I believe the clear signs of the times that we live within today are causing more and more people to ask this question.  In this lesson series I have been going through verses that teach us about the rapture subject found both in the New Testament and in Old Testament typology.   Many of these verses represent places in the Bible that Christians have not considered being about the subject of rapture.  Today’s lesson will certainly be no different.    God will present to you some potentially new information today in this lesson that may just open your eyes to a brand new way of searching for His Truth!   I hope that you are ready to learn.

Before I get started today I wish to thank you for your time in studying the Bible.   To all of my faithful subscribers I greatly appreciate your ability to perceive that what I teach is not from me.  The teachings of a man are inconsequential without the anointing and the guidance of the Holy Spirit.  I take no credit for anything that is on this website.  If it was not for the gracious and precious Holy Spirit teaching me I would have had nothing worthwhile to say.  Therefore, I give God all the praise and all the glory for anything that has helped anyone.  So no matter what, I trust God to confirm everything that is taught here by you using your own Bible and the Holy Spirit that is within you giving witness.  Trust no human at any time, no matter how eloquent the words that come from them or their good looking appearance.   There is a great deception occurring in the world today.    Evil is being called good and good being called evil.  I know that no one including myself is perfect and we all make mistakes.   Therefore I trust that you will receive my sincere gratitude as I humbly submit to God’s direction.

SEARCHING FOR TRUTH IN THE BIBLE!

The vast majority of Christians today believe in a rapture concept where Jesus literally returns in the clouds to take up His people to be with Him in heaven.  This belief is based upon verses like John 14:1-3 where Jesus speaks of His father’s house in heaven and says that He will go and prepare a place for us and then come again to take us there.   There are not very many Christians that do not understand this truth and believe it yet the great debate that remains among many churches is concerning the timing of this event.  The rapture timing is exactly the subject being addressed in these Bible lessons.   In the last lesson I went through a lot of new information that I will not repeat today.  I tried to teach the importance of seeing spiritual things even in the O.T. natural stories but I got a few ignorant comments that refused to open their eyes to understand the legitimacy of these methods.   These types of people are so focused on the literal obvious messages that they do not want to understand how God has concealed many spiritual truths for us to find in these same words.  I tried to emphasize in the last lesson that even Jesus said that He was hidden in the O.T. (John 5:39) and that we were required to go and search to look for Him in those verses.  This information must have gone over the heads of a few people who want to see everything easily in the Bible.  I do not recall any verse in the Bible that says Bible study is easy, do you know of any?   If you do please share it with me so I can learn.

I just mentioned John 5:39 and this is so important to memorize that I am going to emphasize it again.   In Matthew 13:11 Jesus declared to His disciples that it was given for them to understand the mysteries of the Kingdom of God but then He clearly states that this was not given to everyone else.  This is just further confirmation that not everything in the Bible is clearly stated to be understood by everyone.  Romans 16:25 says that Paul preached the mystery of the Gospel of Jesus that was hidden from the foundation of the world.  That literally means it was not plainly stated in the O.T. and had to be revealed by the Spirit of God.  Proverbs 25:2 declares that it is “the glory of God to conceal a thing and the honor of kings to search out a matter”.   These are just a few verses of the many that I could include in this message that not everything in the Bible is plainly presented for your automatic understanding.   This is so easy for a supremely intelligent God to do.  He can speak to us on His level of understanding and we would be clueless to understand it until we learned how.   I emphasize this fact in many, many of my Bible lessons because it is so vital for you to come up to a higher spiritual way of thinking.   Learning to see the scriptures as God sees them will help you more than anything else that I could teach you today.

BE IT UNTO YOU ACCORDING TO YOUR FAITH

Why any Christian would desire to go through the coming tribulation is a mystery to me but that is what many are choosing to believe and I believe that is what may just happen to them based upon what the N.T. teaches us about faith.    Jesus very clearly taught us a valuable lesson in the Gospels when He said “According to your faith, be it unto you” (Mat 9:29).    Jesus was telling these blind men in Mathew 9 something directly and He treated them differently than the many other blind men that may have been in the same city.   Jesus only healed the blind men that believed and had faith and the others that were in the city were not healed.   You could reason that these others that were not healed were simply not present but that is a different part of another lesson and I do not want to get off track in this lesson.  Simply understand that the blind men had to believe in order to seek after Jesus and if the others did not do the same they were left out from this benefit.   Now go and read Matthew 8:13 where Jesus says to the centurion “go thou way and as thou has believed, be it done unto you”.  Jesus spoke very highly of this man’s faith.   He then told him clearly that it would be done to him even as he had believed.  I think you need to consider these facts carefully.

I think both of those examples that I just presented you are valuable lessons to learn from about the subject of faith.  We then need to learn to apply that knowledge to the subject of rapture.  If you want to believe and stay in the post tribulation camp, I won’t stop you.  I will still try to show you what I see that the Bible says on the subject and that is why we are going to go through a different part of the Bible today to see a different lesson taught by God.  What I am trying to say here is that what you believe matters and if it does not matter what you believe then God is in sovereign control and I don’t have to believe in Jesus or Satan.   That is a common false teaching to think that man has no determination of his destiny.   I believe from the words of Jesus that what you believe could very well be the determining factor if you are taken out on the first call of the rapture or left here.   If you don’t believe me, that is fine with me.   Please don’t write me any negative comments trying to say something I didn’t say.

Evaluate where your faith is today.    What do you believe and why?   If you have several scriptures to back your beliefs then you are on a firmer foundation than not having any.   That is exactly why I am giving you my scriptures for why I believe the way that I do in a pre-tribulation rapture.  I did not determine my beliefs in pre-tribulation rapture first and then seek to find the scriptures to confirm them.  That is a false erroneous approach to Bible study.   You can find any belief in the Bible that you want to find in some form.  This is exactly why there are mid-tribulation believers and post-tribulation believers and most of them have found some scriptures that they believe support their thinking.   God purposefully designed the Bible this way to allow us to be wrong and remain in our false beliefs.   What God desires is for us to first clear our mind of our prejudices and then to ask the Holy Spirit to show us the truth and only then can we go and seek to find it in His Word allowing Him to direct our paths of search.   We cannot do this with any presumptive expectations for what the truth is or this will slant our viewpoint to that preconceived belief.  That type of search is a closed minded approach and does not allow God to speak to us in our hearts since our hearts are already set in concrete.   We can only determine the actual truth based only upon what God reveals to us in His Word when He speaks to our heart.   Notice that I did not say your mind, the voices in your mind can be from the devil.  The Spirit of God is in your heart and that is where divine direction will be given.  If you do not know how to be led by the Spirit of God I would recommend that you go read that series of lessons to begin to learn.

This section of the lesson I title “Be it unto you according to your Faith”.  Faith comes by hearing the Word of God taught according to Romans 10:17.  That simply means that you can get faith to change your beliefs by what God presents in this Bible lesson series.   If you are open to learning this will allow the Spirit of God to confirm this lesson.   I hope and pray that you will at least give God a chance to see what He might say to you today.

THE RAPTURE IN REVELATION 3:10

 I was asked to explain the Bible verse found in Revelation 3:10 and I immediately understood that they were asking this question from a rapture subject perspective since that is clearly the hidden message of the verse.  I say clearly but what is clear to me may not yet be clear to you!   You may still be amazed after you read this lesson how a verse that never mentions the word rapture directly can be such a key and important lesson on the subject.

The first fact that I would like to mention is that you are right the theological term “rapture” does not exist in the English Bible but that does not mean that the concepts surrounding the subject are not taught repeatedly by God in many unique ways.  As I have said before the English term “rapture” comes from a Latin word “raptus” which means “a carrying off”.   People are normally too narrowly focused on finding the specific word rapture, that they are missing entirely the more important messages about the subject recorded from God.   One detail that needs to be understood is that there are at least two completely different ways of teaching any subject.   A teacher can state the subject directly by describing it plainly or they can teach it indirectly by what is stated so that the subject must be true in order for the statement being made to also be true.   Most modern school textbooks are written in a direct teaching style with ordered increasing levels of associated complexity.  However, God’s word is not written in a textbook style and appears to be more random information that needs to be connected by study.  God teaches most spiritual subjects indirectly especially in the Old Testament where they are never explained fully until the descriptions are given about them in the New Testament.   Direct natural truths as opposed to indirect spiritual truths are found equally in abundance throughout the Bible.   For every direct natural lesson on a subject there are usually equal numbers of indirect spiritual lessons that can be found if you know how to search for them.   I hope you will learn both of these concepts given in this introduction from this lesson today.   Revelation 3:10 is an indirect and unstated spiritual lesson on the pre-tribulation rapture of the church that must be a truth for this statement that was made by Jesus to also be a truth and you will soon learn why I say this.  Let’s start by reviewing the verse in question and seeing what was stated by Jesus:

  • Rev 3:10  Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth.

The KJV Bible translation does a fair job at translating each Greek word into English but yet these English words are often ignored or misapplied to not mean what they are really saying.   It is very easy to take an English word and restrict it to a specific narrow thought or application and that may be what is happening in this verse when you read it.  Some English words are easily assumed to be fully understood as they actually go much deeper in their definition and meaning when studied.   Assuming that you know and understand the truth is probably one of the greatest reasons why God is unable to teach you anything new.   So please take no preconceived assumptions into this Bible lesson as you continue to read.  There are certain key words given to us in this verse which need to be understood in order for us to comprehend the message being given to us by God.  Today we are going to go through at least 5 specific Greek words found in Revelation 3:10 and find their meanings and God’s usage for the words in other parts of the Bible.    These words that I will focus on are “all”, “world”, “temptation”, “keep” and “kept”.

I’m going to start with the Greek word translated as “all”.  This Greek word G3650 translated as “ALL” literally means the “entirety of the whole”.  This Greek word is applied as an adverb in this sentence and is directly used by God as a modifier description for the noun “world”.  In this type of presentation it would represent the entire “world”.   Let’s go back to an old Bible lesson that I did on the serpent in the garden first mentioned in Genesis 3:1.   In that Bible lesson I taught on how that God created laws of mathematical sets and used them in the words that He has written in the Bible.   A set is always a related grouping of like objects.    If I have a set of automobiles they may differ in manufacturer, color, make, year and model but they are all still unified members of my automobile set.  If I wanted to limit the scope of my set of automobiles I could qualify a new description to create a subset of just certain common features or characteristics.  For example I could define one sub-set of my “automobiles” to be only “red” automobiles and that makes ALL cars of the red color to be members in that set.  Now when I say ALL RED CARS you know I am including every one that qualifies to be a member together in that definition.   This is basic mathematical logic based upon established God created principles and yet many Christians may not grasp these important basic concepts and how they apply to the Word of God.   What we need to see is that God has just defined a mathematical set in Revelation 3:10 and said “every” noun object in that set called the “world” was included.   That literally means there are no “world” members excluded from the statement.  However the next problem is how does God define the members in the “world” set and what do these members possess that defines them to be in the common description?  I hope I am not going over your heads with these important thoughts but they must be applied correctly to understand who God is speaking about in this verse.

Let’s speak briefly about God’s usage of the Greek word G3650 that was translated as “ALL” in this verse.  This Greek word occurs in 99 verses of the Bible.   Around 60 times it was translated as “ALL”.   In nearly 40 verses, the Greek word was translated as “whole”.    “Whole” and “all” are clearly synonyms with the same definition.   They both will always include every member that fits the definition.   If you would like to do the study and search for this word for yourself in your Bible software to confirm how God consistently uses it to mean every that would be good to do, but I will not do that in this lesson today to keep this lesson a little bit shorter.

The next step to understanding Revelation 3:10, is to learn the Biblical definition of what the “all the world” set represents to God.   Jesus very clearly states that an “hour of temptation” will come upon the “entire world” at some unstated future time which was not directly given to us.  If the entire world will come into these common temptations we need to learn what the world means and what temptation means so that we can understand how or even if these apply to us in the church.   Let’s continue by examining the Greek word G3625 and determine how it was defined in the Greek language.  This Greek word which was translated as the English word “world” literally means “the earth”, “the soil” or “the physical land parts of the globe” according to the Strong’s definition.  However that does not mean that these physical land parts of the globe will be what is tempted in the prophesied hour.   What we are to apply is that God is speaking indirectly about the “inhabitants” of these “land areas” and not specifically about the dry dirt.   Therefore it is not the physical land directly being referenced but rather the people living on the land who will be tempted.  The implied application for this Greek word (world) is anyone that is alive on the earth or living upon dry land or occupying the livable land mass continents of the planet.   Let’s confirm this by observing this phrase in other parts of the N.T.:

  • Mat 24:14  And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.

Here is an interesting reoccurrence of the phrase “All the world”.   Jesus is speaking and He declares the time of the end will come only after the Gospel is preached to “all the world”.   Obviously Jesus was not telling us to go preach to the literal soil of the planet.   No Jesus was telling us to go into every part of the globe and preach to the people that inhabit that part of the whole.   In other words the entire population of the globe will hear the Gospel before the end will come.  If we go and read Luke 2:1 you will see another example that it is the people that are the intended definition for the term “all the world”.   In this verse the ruler Caesar Augustus declared that “all the world” should be taxed.   That sounds very familiar to what is happening with governments today but that is a different subject.   We have seen enough examples to understand the description being used is about the people living on the earth and definitely not the literal earth.   Let’s stop there and ask ourselves does that term “all the earth” include Christians?   Of course we must realize that presently it does.   Christians on this planet are no different than non-Christians in that we both live in the same global “world” set of earth dwellers.   Remember what I just said because that fact will become very relevant as we continue in this lesson.  Let’s now examine the next Greek word G3986 translated as “temptation” in Revelation 3:10 because this is also an essential word to learn and understand:

  • G3986
  • From G3985; a putting to proof (by experiment [of good], experience [of evil], solicitation, discipline or provocation); by implication adversity: – temptation, X try.

This Greek word literally means to prove something or someone.   This is usually done by someone performing a trial or test like a scientist proving their theory of supposition performing repeated tests.   That is a popular concept within the scientific community but one that is misapplied to God and the truth found in God’s word.   Many Christians today believe that God tests people with trials to prove their faithfulness and that belief is contrary to what the Bible actually teaches.  Once you learn the truth you will figure out quickly that it is unnecessary for God to test anyone.   First consider the well-known fact that the divine God is called omniscient.  This is a common characteristic used to describe God and clearly demonstrates His superior nature.  Omniscient simply means “ALL KNOWING”.   If God literally knows everything as most Theologians and Christians believe it would be totally unnecessary for God to test or prove anyone since He must already know the outcome before the test is presented.  Therefore it is extremely ignorant to believe God needs to test us in order to prove our faith in Him.  Do you believe this?  If you do then you need to apply that information to what Jesus is stating in this verse to determine who is doing the testing to prove these people in the world.

The Bible teaches us who the tester represents but these facts are often ignored by many Christians because Satan would rather you believe in a good God that brings the tests rather than an evil being like himself that you might resist or fight against.   Do you already see the initial motivation behind why Satan wants Christians to believe that God is their tester?   I think it is obvious because Christians will not be foolish enough to fight against God.   The Greek word G3986 translated as “temptation” in Revelation 3:10 comes from the root word G3985 that means “to test”.   We need to learn how this word is used by God to teach us that it is not God that is testing people.  Let’s read this verse found in the book of James:

  • Jas 1:13  Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man:

The word translated as “tempted” here is the Greek word G3985.  Notice what God declares.  God clearly states that He is not the tempter or the tester of humans.  The statement is directed at man by God saying “let no man say”.  This term for “no man” is found in several statements made by Jesus and is even found in Revelation 3:11 the next verse that we are studying when Jesus says “Let no man take your crown”.  It is very clear to me that this term is referring to human earth inhabitants again.   We have already stated why this testing is unnecessary based upon God already knowing the outcome.  If God does not test or tempt any human then who is sending the temptations, tests and trials in Revelation 3:10 to the whole world?   That is a very interesting question and the answer still points us to Satan to be the tempter.   Let’s examine some other verses found in the N.T. to confirm that God is not the tempter or tester of man:

  • Mat 6:13  And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.

Here is a verse found in the Lord’s Prayer used by Jesus to teach His disciples how to pray.   Jesus taught them to pray for God to lead them out from temptation and clearly not into them.   Is the implied will of God for Christians to be tested or not to be tested?   It would seem to say that it is not God’s will for us to be tested based upon the prayer.  The implication given to us is that if we need to pray to ask God not to lead us into “temptations” that God is not the one that is initiating the temptation.  That is just sound basic logical reasoning.  God would not remove something that He was causing.   Let’s shift to another verse to help understand the true source of temptations:

  • Luk 4:13  And when the devil had ended all the temptation, he departed from him for a season.

This verse has the same Greek word found in Revelation 3:10.  God clearly says that Satan was the source for these temptations here in this verse.    Based upon the context given to us these temptations occurred when Jesus was being tempted in the wilderness being on a forty day fast.   Clearly Jesus would be considered to be “in the world” occupying the soil in this example and that is key for us understanding Revelation 3:10.   I could go over many verses found in the N.T. but I will only give you one more witness to learn from for now:

  • 1Co 10:13  There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.

Here we have a message written to the church.  We are plainly informed that “temptations” may come but then we are indirectly informed that God was not the one that sent them.   This is an example of learning from what is stated how to see what is not stated.   In this verse God says “I will not allow the temptation to be above what you are able to endure”.   That appears to me to say I am a God that places limitations upon the one that is testing you.    God would not send the test and then limit the test and finally make a way out of the test as this verse declares.  That would be a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde type of God.  This would be dueling personalities with one side of God sending you the test to potentially harm you while the nice side of God limiting the test and placing a way out from it so that you can escape it.   That type of reasoning makes no sense to me but many Christians believe in that type of situation everyday.  One man that I knew believed that God sent cancer to his wife to test them but they were going to the doctors to try to get out from the test and live.   Wow, I seriously tried to help him see that it was not God doing it to his wife but he rejected it.  I’m really not sure what happened to his wife.

So far we have looked at the Greek words for “temptation”, “world”, and “all” in in Revelation 3:10 to gain understanding how they apply to the verse.   We have learned so far that a “temptation” is a stated trial or test that every human can potentially come into at some time in their life even Christians.  We have learned that Satan is the initiator of these tests and trials and that God is the one that leaves us a door out of the test if we want to find it.  We have learned the term “world” means earth dweller or inhabitant.   So far that definition would include everyone still living here on the planet.  Since God used the qualifier “all” before the world noun He clearly states that the entire population will be tested by Satan.  Let’s reread the verse again and apply what we have learned so far:

  • Rev 3:10  Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth.

Jesus is the speaker in this verse so that is very important to note.   Then we know by reading in context that He is speaking to the church since this statement is found within one of the letters of Revelation written to the churches.   Therefore we know the majority of the noun subject participants found in this verse including the speaker and the intended target audience, Satan the tempter of the earth inhabitants and we now desire to understand the verb actions being given to connect them all together.  We have already seen where Satan is the tempter and Jesus says that his temptations, tests and trials will come upon the entire population of the earth.    Right there is an excellent time to consider that to be a prophecy of future reference.  Meaning what Jesus was speaking of had not occurred up until the time of writing.   That should raise a meaningful question in your mind, “Why is this stated time of temptation different than previous mentions of temptations given throughout the Bible?   I personally believe that the hour of temptation being spoken of is the soon to be described “Great Tribulation” later in the book of Revelation.   One of the main reasons that I believe this is because Satan is one of the key subjects in the rest of the book.  He is described as the “Great Dragon” and his prophet and anti-Christ servants will be revealed during this time to deceive the whole world’s population.

We then know from the statement of Jesus that He will “Keep” the church from that hour of global tests.  How will He do this?  In order to understand this we need to learn the definition of the word “keep” next.  Let’s look up the definition for the Greek word translated as “Keep”:

  • G5083
  • From τηρός teros (a watch; perhaps akin to G2334); to guard (from loss or injury, properly by keeping the eye upon; and thus differing from G5442, which is properly to prevent escaping; and from G2892, which implies a fortress or full military lines of apparatus), that is, to note (a prophecy; figuratively to fulfil a command); by implication to detain (in custody; figuratively to maintain); by extension to withhold (for personal ends; figuratively to keep unmarried): – hold fast, keep (-er), (ob-, pre-, re) serve, watch.

This is obviously a complex word and is compared with several other Greek words that are similar but different.   The meaning of the word means to watch or to observe.   As you can read this word means to keep your eye upon something or someone.   Perhaps it will help us if we analyze how this word was translated in the N.T.    This Greek word is found in 68 N.T. verses.   In 33 verses it is translated as “keep”.    In 12 verses it is translated as “kept”.  In 10 verses it was translated as “keepeth”.   The other verses in the N.T. it is translated as “observe”, “reserve”, “reserved”,  “watched”, “watching”, “preserve” and “hold fast”.

What do all of these translated English words have in common and how do they apply to how they were used by God in the New Testament?   We really need to learn this in order to understand what Jesus is going to do to the church before the coming hour of trials.  I think it is relevant and important to know that this Greek word is used twice in Revelation 3:10.  Once it was translated as “keep” and the other time it was translated as “kept”  Let’s examine how it was used for the church and then apply that definition to how it will be used by Jesus.  Read the beginning of the verse again and see how God uses it for the church.  God says “Because you have kept my words…, I will keep you…”.    How do you keep God’s words?    That is a very loaded question.   To keep God’s word implies they are important to you.   That you value them and that you desire to know them and possess them.   If further implies that you want to protect them and even make them safe.   Let’s examine the steps or process for keeping God’s Words:

  1. We must desire to know God’s Words
  2. We must value the Words of God
  3. We must give the Words of God priority over all other words
  4. We must make the effort to find God’s Words
  5. We must take the time to learn God’s Words
  6. We must extend the effort to understand God’s Words
  7. We must then place the Words of God into our memories and recall them at all times
  8. We must then put the Word of God into daily and hourly practice becoming a doer of the Words of God

That was my quick overview of keeping the Word of God.  It denotes a process of taking the Word of God from a book and placing into our hearts and minds to exalt it, protect it, guard it, preserve it, etc.  Clearly to keep the Word of God represents a transfer from one location to another.  What did I just say?   Taking God’s word from the pages of a written book and internalizing them is the transfer of divine information from one place to another.  Can we agree that this is what this word represents?  Now apply that to what Jesus said He would do before the hour of temptation.  Jesus basically said “I will keep you (move you out of harm, protecting you, keeping you safe, etc.) before that hour occurs because I value you as my treasure.   People will disagree with me that do not wish to see the truth, but there is really not much I can do to help those that do not want any help.

I believe very firmly that this verse is very specific.  It is a prophecy of two events occurring in sequence.  The first event is the “Keeping” safe of the church body that has kept safe the word of God.   The second event that will occur next is the hour of temptation, testing and trial that will occur to everyone on the planet earth.   This very clearly says that the church cannot be present upon the earth or this verse would not be accurate anymore.  The church’s presence on the earth’s surface during the trial would either cause the first part of the verse to become a lie or the last part of the verse to be a lie and that does not make any sense to me how people could explain it to be something else.

If you go through the New Testament carefully, it might help you to see where the Greek word “keep” is used and how it primarily means to take hold of something to never let it go.   I’ll give you an example of this:

  • Joh 14:21  He that hath my commandments, and “keepeth” them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.

You see even in this verse it says that a man that hears the Bible is not the one that will benefit from it.  He must “Keep” it which means grab hold firmly and not let go or let it slip away for God’s Words to be effective.  To take hold and not let go sounds very much like a rapture in this Revelation 3:10 description.  To rapture or to catch up or catch away is clearly God taking hold of His people and not letting them go.   This is what will happen to the church members that have kept God’s Word firmly within their hearts and not let them go.   It is a conditional rapture event.  Not everyone that called Him Lord will be taken.  It is only those that made Him Lord and put His Word on the inside firmly that will be taken up.  Can you now see how Revelation 3:10 is describing a rapture event before the time of trial?  It is literally impossible for the church to on the planet and not be in the group “all the world” that will be tested.   This literally means that since God has “kept” us from this hour that we must be in heaven.  Those are the only two choices for our location.  Based upon the meaning of the word “kept” as being a transition of state or position, there is really no way for a Christian that loves the Word of God to not be carried away from the pending world disasters.  I could literally go on and on about this but that was enough for one Bible lesson.  I hope and pray that you have gathered some wisdom on the timing of the rapture event from what was taught to us from God’s Word today.  The primary goal of this lesson was to help build your faith in a pre-tribulation rapture event.  I at least hope that you were encouraged how to go and search to see more verses like this one today in the Bible.   I’m not sure when my next Bible lesson will occur on this subject or any other right now.  I would appreciate your prayers if you know how to pray in the spirit as Ephesians 6:18 teaches.  I thank you all and I will also remember you in my prayers today.  Be Blessed Always.

If you would like to continue reading in this series, please click “Part 6“.

Is the Rapture of the Church Really Found in the Bible? The Rapture Found in Old Testament Typology! Part 4

typology(ver 1.2)  This is Part 4 in a series of advanced spiritual Bible lessons on the timely and important subject of “Is the Rapture of the Church a Bible Truth”.  I know this teaching series has been a little different than what most other Bible teachers’ attempt, but I do not copy or imitate other Bible teachers.   I would rather be led by the Spirit of God and teach the subjects with the content, direction and in the order for His purpose and plan.  If you have not read this entire series from the beginning I would highly recommend that you go and start your study with “Part 1” and then continue in succession until today’s lesson.  I have been building a firm doctrinal foundation for the Biblical subject of rapture.  In doing this I have been moving through the scriptures in what appears to be a random order.  However, if you are a spiritually mature Christian you should be able to see that I am taking them in the order that helps us understand how the subject has been distributed throughout the Bible by God.  Rarely do we ever find God doing things in His Word in a manner that we expect and I will warn you up front that this lesson will demonstrate that it is no different.

Today God wants me to go in a completely new direction in this lesson series and talk about the subject of rapture hidden within the context of Old Testament typology.  What is “Biblical Typology” you might ask immediately?  Biblical Typology is simply an actual historical event containing real people doing real things that are recorded in the Old Testament which point us to a coming future New Testament spiritual reality truth.  I believe that God through His wise word selection utilized very specific descriptions for many recorded O.T. Bible events and participants which all have direct relevance, application and meaning to what will occur again in a future context.   God cleverly designed the Bible in ways so that people would not be able to see the complete truth unless it was spiritually revealed to them.  It is important to understand this concept of hidden truth because God uses it throughout the written Word to require everyone to search diligently for Him and His truth.  This method of concealing the truth allows everyone the right to not see the truth.  This actually explains why many in the church today have not believed in the rapture because they have not searched for it and found it in the Bible.

I believe that this lesson will be one of the most important lessons that you have read on this subject.   I can see how it will potentially reveal some new unexpected ways for many people to learn.  I will probably teach several original aspects that you have never thought on before, but all that should mean to you is that you need to become a noble Acts 17:11 type of Christian to verify everything that I say using the Spirit of God inside of you and your own personal Bible so that you do not take my word for anything.  Are you ready to learn something potentially brand new on the subject of rapture?  This will be a very long Bible lesson with a lot of good information in it.  I also believe that I need to do a basic introduction to the subjects to help you see where we are going to go in this lesson before we get there.  I’ll start by teaching you about hidden spiritual messages found in the natural words of the Bible.  I call this the Spiritualization of the Word of God.  I will follow this part of the introduction with a brief discussion on “Extremism” and why we need a “Balanced” approach to Bible Study.  Then I will introduce you to the subject of Biblical Typology to help you better understand what that is and why it is important for us to learn.  In the introduction I will also introduce you to the concept of Rules Based Interpretation and how these are useful to Bible study.   Finally in the remainder of the Bible study I will discuss a hidden rapture description given to us by God in the O.T.   Let’s get into the Bible study.

THE SPIRITUALIZATION OF SCRIPTURE

True-Spirituality

Are the stories recorded in the Bible merely the natural thoughts and words of forty different human men?  In this part of the introduction I would like to address a major point that will surely be raised by some people who read this lesson without any spiritual eyes to see what it says.  Many Bible preachers today, claim that we should not try to spiritualize everything written in the Bible.  When they say this, I wonder if they even know who or what their God is and who wrote the Bible.   Is their God a mere human or an omnipotent Spirit?  When they say things like this they are simply stating that we need to take the Bible literally as a natural historical message and they imply God is like any natural man writing words for all other natural men on the earth.  This type of reasoning reduces God to the same type of writer as any ordinary book author.  In proclaiming a literal only interpretation of the Bible they are stating that all of the words written on every page of the Bible all have a simplistic plain meaning that is obvious to every reader.   These teachers have obviously not read the internet nor tried to understand why there are thousands of different Christian denominations in the world today.  The existence of so many meanings and interpretations to the words written in the Bible proves beyond any doubt that the Bible is not plainly understood by anyone.

These types of literal only Bible teachers refuse to explore the Bible message using any allegorical applications, symbolical meanings, typological interpretations or other spiritual importance in order to understand a message from a Spiritual God and His purpose for giving it.  Clearly these Bible teachers are narrowly focused on a different version of the truth than what I see revealed by God in the Bible.  I can clearly see where both Jesus and the New Testament teach us that the Old Testament is a book full of hidden secrets called “mysteries” (G3466).  This Greek word translated as “mystery” occurs in 27 different verses throughout the New Testament.   Jesus spoke directly three times in the Gospels about the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of God  in Matthew 13:11, Mark 4:11, and Luke 8:10.   Close to 20 times in the New Testament God records a comment about certain O.T. mysteries and even tells us that many of these secrets have been hidden since the foundation of the world (Rom 16:25, 1 Cor 2:7, 1 Cor 4:1, Eph 3:3-9, Eph 6:19, Col 1:26).  Go read these scriptures and learn what they say and then learn to apply them to every part of the O.T. Bible.  The Greek word (G3466) translated as “mystery” in these verses means a literal “secret”.   What is a secret?  A secret is anything that was hidden or kept from your plain obvious view.  Since the Bible contains literal readable plain text words in every book, where are these divine secrets hidden in them and how are they hidden?  Do you see the important and relevant question that I am asking?  Either God lied about the secrets in the Old Testament or we should rather more wisely know that God recorded the secrets in ways that keep them from our self-evident understanding.

In the book of John, Jesus makes a statement about the Old Testament that is mostly ignored by many Bible preachers, teachers and students.  Read over this verse very closely and see what the Author of the Bible has to say directly about the words that were written to us in the Old Testament:

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

Jesus told these keepers of the written Holy Words of God that they needed to “search” their scriptures to find Him.  How do you define “search”?   To search meant for them to investigate, seek to find, pursue, examine, study, inspect, explore, dig deep in order to discover this Jesus.   This statement makes finding Jesus conditional in the O.T.  Search for Jesus you will find Him and don’t search for Him you will miss the most important reason for the words.  Jesus was saying that at least some of these O.T. words were those that were recorded about Him.  Have you ever done this search?  Does God consider you a doer of the Word of God or just an ignorant hearer only?  I have spent many hours doing nothing but looking for my Jesus on all of the pages of the Old Testament.  Why because that is what Jesus told me to do.  Within every verse that I read in the Old Testament, I devote a significant amount of time probing to find my Lord Jesus in some hidden form.  Since Jesus is never mentioned anywhere by direct named reference in the Old Testament how do you seriously think that He can be found there in the words written mostly about somebody else doing something else?  If Jesus could be found so easily within the surface text context, He would not have needed to tell these Jews or us that we were required to “search” for Him.  Let’s let every word be established in the mouth of two or three witnesses:

Luk 24:44  And he said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me.

Here again we have Jesus teaching us that Moses wrote prophetic words about Him.  He claims there are specific prophecies that must be fulfilled from these Old Testament verses.   I have to admit I have read the books of Moses in the Old Testament and if I did not know these verses were about Jesus I would have missed so much.  Do you understand that Moses only wrote the first five books of the Old Testament and a few of the Psalms?  Have you ever read these books, chapters and verses?  Please show me in these words written down by Moses where Jesus is so plainly and clearly found!  If you can find a literal Jesus mentioned anywhere there, then tell where it is found.  Some say the “seed of the woman” mentioned in Genesis 3:16 is Jesus, but that is your poor reasoning and an assumption taken to an extreme.  Nowhere is the name of Jesus mentioned to be the seed in this verse and you have to ASSUME by your faith or ignorance that it is talking about Him.  That is just one popular example of people trying to say that Jesus is found in Moses’ words where there is no direct evidence.  What I am asking you is if that type of interpretation is legal, why then is the use of spiritual Biblical Typology also equally legal?   Do not misunderstand what I am saying I believe that Jesus is found in these books of the Bible, but I also believe that  He is just not found in the literal obvious terms as many expect Him to be and we must utilize valid spiritual interpretation methods and rules in order to find Him.

It is important to notice that Jesus does not declare that everything written in the O.T. is only about Him, but He does conclusively say that He can be found there.  So is Jesus a central theme of the O.T. or a needle in the hay stack concept in these books?  Do you see what I am asking?  Is Jesus an isolated O.T. occurrence or a prevalent central subject?  I personally believe that Jesus is the central theme of the entire Bible from cover to cover and therefore He must be found in more than just a single verse in the book of Genesis and the other books of the O.T.  Allow me give you the next verse in Luke to help you better understand the previous verse statement:

Luk 24:45  Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures,

Did you see it?  This verse explains why the disciples did not previously see Jesus in the writings of Moses before this event described in Luke.  The reading of the Torah in the temple was a common occurrence and the disciples had heard the words before but never knew what they meant.  This is why Jesus had to give them understanding of what was previously written by Moses in order for any of it to be comprehended that any of it was about Him.  That literally means Jesus cannot be easily and obviously found by anyone just reading the plain text words without the Spirit of God helping them to understand what it says.   Without the Spirit of God giving understanding it will never work out.  God is so amazing to how He designed the Words in the Bible!  I pray that you are beginning to see the wisdom of God in His Words.

Do you know what the name “Jesus” used in the English N.T. is equivalent to in the Hebrew O.T.?  You do understand that Jesus was a natural born Hebrew and that He was given a Hebrew name?  The name of Jesus is a transliteration of the Hebrew O.T. name Joshua or Yeshua.  The Hebrew word for Jesus in Strong’s is H3091 and it literally means “Jehovah saved”.  I believe that Jesus qualifies to possess this name, don’t you?  There is a book of Joshua found in the O.T. but this book of the Bible is normally considered to be the story of a real historical man leading the children of Israel into the Promise Land.  The name Joshua occurs in 197 verses of the O.T. and few if any of these verses can be considered a direct reference to the coming Jesus of the N.T.  Therefore, the name of the N.T. Jesus is not directly found in the O.T. in relation to the N.T. man that said these words were written about Him.  How then are we expected to find this N.T. Jesus mentioned there in the O.T. if there are no direct references to Him?  That is the million dollar question that these modern Bible teachers do not consider when they try to tell me not to spiritualize the messages found in the O.T.

I have to conclude from this initial information and asking those questions that this means the Jesus of the N.T. can only be found by us using spiritual methods to locate Jesus in O.T.   For example we can use spiritual names, titles or descriptions, Christophanies, allegories, typologies or symbolisms to list a few obvious spiritual interpretation methods that need to gain our focused attention when reading the O.T. Bible.  These Biblical patterns are clearly established to be legitimate methods of Bible interpretation several times in the New Testament by God’s own revelation.  Paul clearly used allegory, typology and even symbolism when describing the revelation that God had given to him about Jesus and of course Paul only had the Old Testament to base all of this new knowledge upon.   Clearly spiritual things were concealed in the Old Testament but they have now been revealed in the New Testament for the benefit of the spiritual people of God.  I strongly believe that God has concealed Jesus in the Old Testament so that God can reveal Jesus in the New Testament.

Always remember who the author of the Bible is when you are reading it.  I personally believe that the entire Bible is the recorded inspired spoken words of a Holy God who is described to be a Spirit (John 4:24).  God very clearly tells us that His ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts (Isa 55:8-9).  But does that mean that He does not desire us to know or understand His ways or to think His thoughts?  I cannot understand anyone who thinks that God’s desire is to keep them ignorant and in the dark.  People who believe that would be projecting a direct slap in the face of the God who clearly said “whoever follows me shall not walk in darkness but have the light of life” (John 8:12).  Why would God write you a huge book of divine wisdom if you were not supposed to understand any of it in the direct here and now?  I am totally convinced that God’s desire is for us to learn what the Bible actually says and means.   I have concluded that we need to learn how to see these natural words written on natural paper pages as really being a spiritual message written to a spiritual people from an all-knowing spiritual God.  Come up higher and learn to see the Bible as God sees it.

AVOIDING EXTREMISM IN INTERPRETATION

extremism_logo

I will end this part of the introduction with the subject of Biblical Extremism.  Biblical extremism is the practice of taking any subject or isolated truth from the Bible to an overstated or exaggerated position of error.  I recently spoke to one commenter on my Bible study that clearly was in the realm of extreme error.  He disapproved of my teaching that the church is the revealed “Bride of Christ” because he isolated the established truths in the Bible that the Church is the “Body of Christ” taking them to an extreme.  In his mind it was impossible for the Church to be both concurrently.  I then tried to explain what God had shown to me in the Bible about how the church became the body of Christ by being His covenant bride and this message was rejected.  What he was doing was taking one truth to an extreme and ignoring all of the other truths of the Bible becoming unbalanced in his theological view.  That is called Biblical Truth Extremism and it is a clear example of error and closed mindedness.  I run into this error more than any other that I am confronted with on my website teachings.  Let me give you another recent example of the extremism error.

Another preacher man that I was discussing the subject of Divine Grace with recently was so spiritually blind that he did not realize that he had moved into the realm of extremism.  He had made an exaggerated statement that Paul constantly was confronted with the “sin question” when teaching on the subject of God’s Divine Grace.  In other words he applied his own experience to overemphasize Paul’s recorded Bible experience and thus he moved into the realm of doctrinal extremism and error.  What am I saying?  I am saying this nameless preacher on the internet instead of admitting that he was wrong claimed that he was right because Paul wrote “one time” in Romans 6 about the confrontation of the sin issue in opposition with the truth of Grace.  This man was clearly a modern Grace Bible teacher who has taken the clear Bible truth of Grace and pushed it beyond the level of scriptural balance into the arena of extremism theology and error.   I simply caught him in a direct lie and tried to nicely make a correction to his statement and he told me I was wrong.  My primary point was that this man had exaggerated the truth to a level so far above the truth that he had changed this great truth of Grace to transform it into a lie.  He took one chapter in Romans and said this was a “constantly” reality for Paul.  One chapter or one verse does not make a sound Bible truth of doctrine!  God clearly says in His Word for us to establish every truth in the mouths of two or three witnesses (Deu 19:15, Mat 18:16, 2 Cor 13:1).  This Grace preacher has reduced the subjects of sin and repentance to be non-factors for either salvation or for the human continuance of eternal security.  He totally missed what the Bible says in the New Testament on other subjects like repentance, forgiveness, judgment, holiness, and I could go on with others.  Actually he has explained away many of these subjects so cleverly that he has deceived others into believing his extreme teaching.

Exalting any single truth or any single reference of the message of truth to be the only truth necessary to understand will always cause a position of error based upon individual unbalanced isolation.    So what am I saying?  Are we to take the extreme position that all scripture should be plainly and naturally interpreted or are we to take the antithesis extreme position that says all scripture should only be spiritually interpreted in order to be understood?  I think neither extreme is valid and we need to become balanced in our theology beliefs somewhere in the middle realizing that God  is smart enough to teach us multiple levels of truth both spiritual and natural in any single verse, chapter or book of the Bible.  What I try to teach in my lessons is that we need to avoid falling into the ditches of extremism on either the right hand or the left hand when walking down the road of Bible study.  Having said all of that let me introduce you to the subject of Biblical Spiritual Typology.

BIBLICAL TYPOLOGY

I just want to give you a quick introductory overview of the subject of Biblical Typology since this is one of the central themes in the rest of this lesson on rapture.  First, understand that no Old Testament Typology is ever a completed design representation of anything revealed to be eternal or spiritual in the New Testament.  Second understand that every hidden spiritual type mentioned in the Old Testament (and there are many of them) is not the actual real spiritual entity that it symbolically represents.  Therefore I have just said that any O.T. type is neither the real spiritual entity nor the complete representation of anything spiritually real in the New Testament.   Think of Biblical Typology to be like Jesus teaching the people using parables in the Gospels.  I believe that these parable teaching concepts that Jesus utilized are completely identical in nature and application to the Biblical Typology concepts also found in the Old Testament.  Jesus would stand up and teach the people using natural examples of real physically identifiable objects, people and events saying the Kingdom of Heaven (a spiritual reality) is like this or that and then tell what it was similar to using symbolic figures of speech that could be understood by the people that were listening.  Nothing in the parable was the actual real spiritual subject being taught on, but everything in the parable had a symbolic meaning containing parallel characteristics and features that applied to the real spiritual subject and this information teaches us significantly about these spiritual things that are normally not seen by humans.

ShadowsThe concepts of Biblical Typology are often revealed in the terms of natural shadow models.  Typology is like a simplified general recognizable shadowed patterned outline for a more complete complex real spiritual detailed image subject.  Subjects found in typology are lacking many of the precise details of the actual eternal spiritual subject just like the natural shadow lacks the detail of the natural object producing it.  If you can understand natural shadows you can understand Biblical Typology.  For example, any physical object standing up on the face of the earth will cast a shadow upon the ground when the light of the sun is in its brightest angled unobstructed view.   Analyze the source of objects needed to produce a shadow.  First we need a bright light source like the sun.  Of course in Biblical symbolism the Sun represents God.  You then need a natural object to produce the shadow and this can represent Jesus who became flesh so that people could see God.  Then when Jesus walked the face of the earth he would project a shadow on the ground and this is another interesting analogy.   We can see that if the shadow represents the Type of Jesus found in the Old Testament that it would be a darkened outline of the more complex three-dimensional image of the Jesus that was standing between the Old Testament Jew and the Light of the fullness of God.  Do you understand the pattern being taught?  God is Light and without God we would not be able to see Jesus or who He is and this helps explain why the Jews did not recognize their Messiah when He was here.

ChrisOne of the most interesting aspects about viewing any shadow projected on the ground is that it is always easily recognizable and identifiable to all those that know the original real object intimately but it is not recognizable to those that do not know the original.  For example a teacher at the school where my young son attended, created a shadow cut out portrait of his silhouette.  This picture contained only the outlined profile of his head, but yet I could look at it and I knew immediately who it was without anyone telling me.  Because you didn’t know my son you would only know that it was a young boy, but you would have no clue to the identity or the name of the child by looking at the shadow picture only.  What this experience taught me was that anyone that knows the original object that cast the shadow can recognize what or who it was that created it by only looking at the vague incomplete shadowy outline.  That is exactly what occurs in the Old Testament Bible Typology arena when people read without knowing the real Jesus of the New Testament first they will just never understand how anyone can say that Jesus is found in these shadow words.  It is only because I have come to know this New Covenant Jesus intimately that I can recognize the types that were hidden in the shadows of the Old Covenant.   I pray that you are grasping these important concepts of types and shadows in the Old Testament because again God uses this method of concealment in so many selected O.T. examples.  Let me define what a “type” represents in the Biblical context to be more precise.

TYPE:  A real literal person, place, event or thing found in Old Testament Biblical history divinely designed by the omniscient God to be a prophetic shadow of the good things that Jesus would fulfill in the New Testament.

Can you understand this paraphrased definition for a Biblical “type”?  This definition was directed and designed specifically for the one subject of Jesus but there are other spiritual N.T. subjects that are hidden in types found in the O.T. also.   Perhaps you are struggling to understand where this is revealed, used or described in the New Testament?  I will attempt to give you a couple of examples that will help to confirm this definition if you have some spiritual vision and some spiritual maturity to embrace and receive them.  I will not attempt to do a complete teaching on the subject of Biblical Typology here in this introduction so pay close attention to what I do give you and then if you need to ask questions you can do that in a comment.   Read this N.T. verse written about Biblical O.T. Typology:

Rom 5:14  Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come.

The reason people do not understand this verse is about Biblical Typology is probably because they do not study the definitions of the Greek words selected and used by God.  What God reveals in this verse is that what He wrote about the literal historical Adam in the Old Testament was a patterned “type” or “figure” of the coming Jesus that was to be revealed to us in the New Testament.  Do you understand this and then do you remember what I have already taught you about typology?   Clearly Adam is not Jesus by far.  However, Adam still characterizes a basic shadowed incomplete form for the coming Jesus.  What God is teaching us is that we should be able to read about Adam and see a pictured incomplete outline of the Lord Jesus.  I really do not know how you can read this revelation given to Paul and not see it.  It is literally right in front of your eyes.  Perhaps we need to look up the definition of the main keyword in the Greek to see it more clearly.  I’ll emphasize this one more time that Jesus was not Adam, but rather Adam was a simpler symbolic representation for Jesus lacking many of the finer spiritual details.   Examine the Greek word that was translated as “figure” in the Strong’s dictionary and you will see the following definition that is critical to understand:

G5179

From G5180; a die (as struck), that is, (by implication) a stamp or scar; by analogy a shape, that is, a statue, (figuratively) style or resemblance; specifically a sampler (“type”), that is, a model (for imitation) or instance (for warning): – en- (ex-) ample, fashion, figure, form, manner, pattern, print.

Printing-PressLearn the key words presented in this definition and apply them to the comparison between Jesus and Adam.   God says that Adam was a pattern, type, example and even a figure of the coming future Jesus.  What does that say to you?  Do you know what a printer’s “type” is in the natural?  Maybe you are too modern to understand the old printing “type” press concept created by Guttenberg in 1440.  This man revolutionized the older hand written word recording and distribution methods.  Guttenberg reinvented what use to be an expensive time consuming laborious method of copying God’s Word into something more useful and cheap to produce.   Because of Guttenberg what was rare for man to own soon became common for man to own.  Guttenberg took what was out of the reach of every normal person and changed it into something within their reach.  Clearly that was a God inspired idea to help man spread His written Word.  If you did not know it already, Guttenberg invented the moveable “type” system of printing.  Did you notice the repetition of the keyword “type”?   Typology is the study of types.  Moveable “type” was when the letters could be arranged in a specific configuration, ink applied to them, and then a piece of paper could be pressed on the type pattern to leave a lasting recurring impression that was a duplication of the original type pattern.  Wow that process describes a God concept found in the Bible in Typology.  This printing process could easily create hundreds and thousands of identical copies all from the originally created pattern.

What we are observing is that Adam is a Biblical Type reference point directing us to the coming Jesus and what He will accomplish and do for us in the spiritual realm.  That means what Adam does is a prophecy for what Jesus will do in the spiritual realm.  Adam is described to us in the first 4 chapters of Genesis primarily.  God very clearly says in Romans 5:14 that you can find Jesus in these words if you are able to see Him.  Adam as a pattern for the coming Jesus is by far not the only Typology hidden in Genesis or the rest of the Old Testament.  I could take you through the O.T. and show you Jesus found in a type of Noah, in Abraham, in Isaac, in Jacob, in Joseph, in Moses, in Joshua and on and on I could go.  In fact I am convinced that you can almost find a type of Jesus in every major story recorded but that will be another advanced subject for a different Bible study series.   Let’s look at another N.T. reference to Biblical Typology found in the O.T.:

Col 2:16  Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days:

Col 2:17  Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.

Read these two verses and observe closely what they are speaking of.    These verses begin with a list of O.T. references and concepts concerning Holy days, Sabbaths and new moons.  These are all subjects found in the written Laws of Moses.  They describe instructions and actions given by the directions of God and performed by the people in obedience.  Then notice what Paul writes about them.  Paul says these were simply shadows (types) of the things to come in Christ.    What we can observe very clearly is new hidden references to Jesus in the O.T.  Nowhere in the O.T can you find that these represent anything about Christ yet that is what is revealed by God in these verses.   That simply means these stated things were not Christ but rather designed by God to point the people to the Christ.  Are you beginning to see the concepts of typology in the Word of God?  If you do not yet understand the significance of hidden N.T. references in O.T. Biblical Typology I really do not know how to make it clearer in such a simple introduction to the subject.  Let’s get into the subject of finding rapture in O.T. typology and see if this helps you to learn how to apply what you have learned so far and I will try to give you another example of O.T. Bible Typology described in the N.T. in the next section.

UNSTRUCTURED INTERPRETATION VERSUS RULES BASED INTERPRETATION

What I am going to do today is to utilize a little known law of Bible interpretation that I call the Law of First Mention to step back into a past reality to help us to see and learn about a coming future truth.  Perhaps you have never heard of the Law of First Mention.  I have found through repeated years of Bible study that using this Scriptural Law of Interpretation that God has placed certain specific hidden clues whenever an important subject is first mentioned in His Word.  Practically every time a Bible subject is mentioned for the first time I have discovered important hints to understanding the whole subject in the rest of the Bible.  Usually this first subject mention is found in the book of Genesis but today my subject that I am searching for occurs first in the book of Exodus.  I am going to apply this law of first mention by searching for just one of the specific keywords referenced by God in 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 and find out where it was initially mentioned by God in the Old Testament to help us see that this is a legitimate Bible study technique.  In doing this I believe that I will locate, read and discover what God has hidden about the subject of rapture within recorded Old Testament typology.  You might ask me “Seriously, you mean you can do that?”   I think people not knowing how to study the Bible is one of the main reasons we have such mass confusion in the church today on subjects like rapture.  I always try to teach you how I study the Bible when I give you my lessons.   In doing this you gain much more insight than if I only teach what I discovered and not how I arrived at the conclusion.

randomstones

Let’s stop and think about rules based interpretation of the Bible as opposed to having no structure or rules for the interpretation of the Bible.   A no rule based approach could also be called a random approach to Bible study.  In the context of Bible study are rules a positive or a negative influence?   Randomness is associated with a realm of lacking intelligent design.  For example in my picture at the beginning of this paragraph I have a bunch of random rocks which do not display any structure.  At the end of this paragraph I have another picture of rocks that clearly are not random but have a designed patterned created by intelligence.  Which picture is more like the Bible?  A 488899Let me ask you about general life situations and see if these can be taken back to Bible study.  Are rules of conduct and manners good or bad?  If they are good then consider why we might want to learn and follow Bible study rules also?   Are rules for driving positive or negative?  Would a random approach to driving a car result in more safety or more accidents?  I think you can quickly see that randomness is a state of confusion and promotes negative consequences.  That is why I believe random Bible study does the same.

Some might ask me “Can’t we just go and read the Bible and see what it says?”  I wish that was true but that is not how God wrote the Bible as we discovered when Jesus said you must “search” for Him in the Bible to find Him.   Bible study without strict rules would be like us playing a sport without knowing the goal or purpose of the sport or having any specific applicable rules, referees or penalties.  If you place no independent reviewable limitations or restrictions upon what is permissible in any sport then suddenly you can do whatever you like to, to whoever you like to, to achieve whatever result you want to see.  This type of mentality would result in a“Hunger Games” Bible study approach to winning the truth game and that is what we are observing in the church today.  That is why I use very strong rules of Bible interpretation with defined and clearly stated restrictive laws guiding us to what is permissible and what is illegal in determining the meaning.  These defined rules can be verified independently of the viewed interpretation to confirm that they are being followed.  Without any laws of interpretation there is nothing but disorder, chaos and randomness and where disorder rules any interpretation represents legal truth.

What are these Bible study laws of interpretation that I use?  I guess I have touched on most of them in my many other Bible lessons, but there are always new readers that have not read every lesson yet so I need to repeat things constantly to teach everyone new.  If you have read these rules already and understand them, please forgive me for being repetitive.  Let me give you just an overview of some of these basic laws of interpretation that are good to learn, remember and follow:

  1. The Law of First Mention.  The first time a subject is mentioned in the Bible God gives specific descriptions, clues and even hints to understanding the entire spiritual subject in the N.T.  It is noteworthy to mention that sometimes the subject first mentioned is not the same exact English word being sought from the N.T.  For example, the sun, moon and stars of Revelation 12:1 is usually thought to be first mentioned in Genesis 37:9, but they are all mentioned before that using other titles and descriptions in Genesis 1:16 and that knowledge changes the definition of their identity dramatically by the discovery and understanding of these concealed clues.  What I am saying is that not every first mention is always easy to find.
  2. The Law of Last Mention.  This law is very similar to the Law of First Mention in reverse.  The last time a subject is mentioned in the Bible God gives specific descriptions, clues and hints to the conclusion of the spiritual subject in the N.T.  For example, the mention of the bride of the Lamb in Revelation 21 and 22 gives us conclusive insight into the spiritual representation of this figure.  So while Eve was the first mentioned bride, the last mentioned bride concludes the subject.  Since we also already learned that Adam was a type of Jesus, then Eve must be a type of the bride of Jesus.  So much to learn but not my subject today.
  3. The Law of Two or Three Witnesses.  Taking any solitary isolated text you can make the Bible say whatever you like, but by God requiring the reader to find at least two different confirming subject texts from two different books of the Bible helps to eliminate the isolation truth error.  This single rule of interpretation is one of the most important and widely ignored laws that cause so much of the error in churches.
  4. The Law of No Private Interpretation.  God requires us to leave our feeble opinions out of every Bible interpretation.  This literally means that God will interpret His own Words in the Bible.  This also means you have to look, search and find these interpretations in order to understand the original verse being studied.  Get into the habit of finding God’s commentary on the subjects and leave your weak opinions out of the discussion.
  5. The Law of Divine Definition.  God’s divine definition of every word will always take precedence over man’s definitions.  Finding this definition is always the challenge, but it is usually accomplished with keyword searches of the text.  For example many times in the Bible God speaks of a coming day of the Lord.  This could be an isolated event of one time occurrence or it could also be a time of duration that points us to a 1000 years of duration as defined by 2 Peter 3:8 and Psalm 90:4.  We will definitely see in this lesson that this law will apply to our rapture study as a 1000 year time period.
  6. The Law of Indirect Antithesis Truth.  For every stated direct truth in any verse an implied indirect antithesis truth not stated can be concluded.   For example, the Bible says in 1 Corinthians 11:31 that if we judge ourselves, we would not be judged.  By the law of Indirect Antithesis truth we could say legally “If we do not judge ourselves we will be judged”.  Both statements are equally true.
  7. The Mathematical Law of Transitive Equality.  This law of Bible interpretation uses a basic law of Algebra to teach truth.  It states if A = B and B = C then A = C.   I recently used this law in stating if God = Word (John 1:1) and God = Spirit (John 4:24) then Spirit = Word and Word = Spirit and both = God.
  8. The Law of Right and Wrong Seeking.  God reveals a Bible interpretation law in Matthew 7:7 that whatever we seek will be what we will find.  Therefore, know that if we seek error (intentionally or unintentionally) we will always find error.  Conversely if we seek truth then we will always find truth.  It matters greatly what you are searching for in the Bible.  If you seek to prove abortion is legal in the Bible you will find information to justify this belief but that is not the truth.  It is the Law of God that by His design you will always find whatever you look for in His word.
  9. The Law of Truth Dependence.  Understand that many truths found in the Word of God are dependent upon the discovery of other greater truths first.   For example the symbolic identity of the woman in Revelation 12 is a truth that is dependently based upon first understanding the identities of all of the other dependent symbols that she is described with.  No true interpretation of the woman is possible without discovering God’s hierarchal truth structure of the sun, moon and stars first.  That is the law of truth dependence.
  10. The Law of Freewill Choice.  God has given to every human the right to be wrong.  Thus the Bible was written in a manner that permits every human the right to believe whatever they desire to believe.  Not knowing this truth will cause many people to choose poorly their beliefs from the Bible.  The Law of Freewill Choice goes hand in hand with the Law of Right and Wrong Seeking.
  11. The Law of Spiritual Guidance.  God says very clearly in His word that His Spirit will guide us into all truth (John 16:13).  Ignoring the guidance of the Spirit of God will always result in your own individual private interpretations.  Not listening to the Holy Spirit will always result in error.
  12. The Law of Revelation Knowledge.  The Bible presents us with a paradox.  God gives us plain text words but then requires us to receive His Spirit in order for Him to reveal them to us so that we can understand them correctly.  The natural mind will always be enmity with the Spirit of God and the Bible.  A spiritual mind will always be capable of receiving revelation truth from God.  Every verse in the Bible can always be taken in two opposing ways; one is a natural view point and the other is a spiritual viewpoint.  Which one do you believe is the ultimate truth?  You see I have noticed that some preachers can teach sickness from the same verses that someone else preaches healing.  How can two people see opposite truths from the same words?

That was just a simple sample introduction to finding and applying structured rules to your Bible study.  Lacking any defined structure will consistently result in what I teach to be called the Random Human Chaos Understanding of the Bible.  That simply means you can totally miss what God intended for you to know by doing it your own way and ignoring God’s ways.   Since I am former computer programmer I understand rules based systems better than most.   Every useful system is an entity with a design and every designed entity has rules.  If you do not understand that the Bible is a book with design, structure and rules you are very ignorant that man can build something that God did not.  That was a long introduction and I could spend a lot of time on the subject of structured versus random Bible study but that is not my primary subject today.  So let’s move to rapture now and see what God teaches us about the subject in the O.T.

RAPTURE IN O.T. TYPOLOGY

rapture-trumpetThe primary keyword that I am searching for today in the Old Testament is “trumpet”.   If you recall we found the Lord Jesus descending in 1 Thessalonians 4:16 in unison with the sound of a trumpet coming out of heaven.  Where, is the word “trumpet” first mentioned in the Bible and what does God reveal with this word’s usage in the context?  Do these verses have anything to do with the rapture subject as I suspected?   Since I have already done the Bible search, I will simply direct you to go to the book of Exodus and chapter 19.   You may recall that the book of Exodus is the recorded story of God’s deliverance of the slave children of Israel from the oppressive nation of Egypt.   We should also know from reading in 1 Corinthians 10:11 that this story was given to us by God to be a specific “type” (another typology) pattern for the church to learn from.  How do I know that?  It is simply because in this verse is found the exact same Greek word (G5179) that was translated as “figure” in the Adam to Jesus type pattern in Romans 5:14.  But, here in 1 Corinthians 10:11 this same Greek word has been translated as the English word “examples”.  “Examples” is just another synonymous term for “type”.   What I am teaching you is that Jesus is not the only spiritual entity concealed within types in the Old Testament.   1 Corinthians 10:11 clearly teaches that natural Israel was a type of the spiritual church that we need to learn from as examples.  What is an example?  An example can simply be any model of the real.  You see an architect might build a scale model of his designed building for the client to approve and this is his usage of an example type for the coming real.   That is what God is saying to us that He is doing.  However God is not looking for our approval, God is using this example type to teach us.

When taking a test in school some example questions may be given for you to see how to answer correctly.  These examples are not the real test but are rather only patterns for the coming real to teach what is expected of you.  Do you understand?  Any example can also be either positive or negative and we can learn from either type.  Some examples teach us what not to do and other examples teach us correct responses.  I clearly believe that natural Israel teaches mostly negative examples for us not to follow but that is another subject entirely.  Remember the introductory rules of Bible Typology?  Natural Israel is not the church but only represents certain patterned characteristics for the church to apply or learn from.  Maybe I need to just give you the complete verse and let you look at it for yourself:

1Co 10:11  Now these things happened to them as an example, and they were written for our instruction, upon whom the ends of the ages have come. (NASB)

Let’s verify that the natural O.T. nation of Israel displays certain positive patterns that correspond with the N.T. church.  What parallels exist within the written history of the nation of Israel that can be used as typologies for the coming New Testament church?  Are there any specific parallels or common patterns with these two separate distinct entities?  Let me give you a quick overview of some of the Biblical typologies that I believe are fairly obvious concerning the natural nation of Israel and the spiritual church of Jesus Christ:

  1. Israel was held in bondage for 430 years in Egypt until the deliverer was sent by God to set them free from their bondage.
  2. The people of the earth were held in bondage for 4030 years under the domination of the spiritual oppressor Satan until Jesus our spiritual deliverer was sent by God into the world to set us free.
  3. Moses the natural deliver was preserved from death by God as the evil ruler of Egypt killed every male child of Israel.
  4. Jesus the Deliverer of the world was preserved from the same type of death being sent by an angel to Egypt as the evil ruler ordered the deaths of every male child in Bethlehem.
  5. The Passover lamb is killed in Egypt and the blood spread upon the wooden doorpost to guard, protect and deliver the children of Israel from natural death.
  6. The Passover Lamb of God (Jesus Christ) is killed and His shed blood on the wooden cross delivers God’s children from our eternal spiritual death and destruction.
  7. The children of Israel after being freed from Egypt and Pharaoh were baptized by God when they went through the red sea and this same red sea eliminated the threat of the pursuing Egyptian army.
  8. The church of Jesus Christ has been baptized into Christ’s sea of red flowing blood and this flowing blood sea saved us while dooming our enemy Satan.
  9. The children of Israel were given water from a rock to drink in the wilderness to sustain them.
  10. The Church of Jesus Christ drinks the living water pouring from the mouth of the Chief Cornerstone Jesus Christ our eternal living spiritual rock.
  11. The children of Israel ate manna sent down from heaven in the wilderness.
  12. The Church of Jesus Christ eats the bread of life sent down from heaven which is the Word of God.
  13. The children of Israel take the Promised Land and possess it overcoming their enemies.
  14. The Church of Jesus Christ takes the promises of God by faith overcoming their spiritual enemy Satan.
  15. Moses the deliverer gives the children of Israel the law of commandments on Mt Sinai.
  16. Jesus Christ the deliverer of the church gives the church the law of the commandment of love.
  17. God establishes priests in Israel to offer sacrifices to their God.
  18. The church is comprised of spiritual priests unto God offering sacrifices of praise unto our God.

This is called God’s Biblical Typology using O.T. patterns found in the information given about a real natural people that teach us about a coming spiritual people.  We could go into many other parallel patterns found in the Bible about the natural nation of Israel, Moses and Pharaoh representing the church, Jesus and Satan in types.  I believe that this was a really good introduction to the subject of how God uses hidden Biblical typology in the Old Testament to teach us what will happen again in the New Testament.  I pray that you can see it and receive it because it is essential that you understand what God says in His Word.

Ecc 1:9  That which has been is that which will be, And that which has been done is that which will be done. So there is nothing new under the sun.

This is what I call the Bible Law of Repeated Design Patterns being revealed.  God clearly says what has been in the past is that which shall be again in the yet to come.  There is definitely nothing new under the sun!   God teaches us that O.T. types are the design patterns for what will occur again in the forthcoming events of the world.  This is such an important part of God and the Bible that I cannot emphasize it enough.  This law is why I am looking for rapture concepts to be hidden in the recorded types of the O.T.  If we cannot find any previous rapture patterns in the O.T. it will not be possible for it to occur again in the N.T.   If we can find rapture types hidden in the O.T. then we can be assured of the truth for what will soon reoccur for the church.  Let’s continue to study Rapture.

Using Bible search software, do the search of the Bible for the keyword “trumpet”.   Please do this to help verify everything that I teach is accurate.  If I make any mistake, if I miss something, if I say it wrong, or even if I type it misspelled, tell me nicely and I will make the necessary correction.  You should hopefully find the word “trumpet” in verse 13 of Exodus 19.  This was the first mention of the keyword “trumpet” that I found in the KJV Bible search and here is what I found that this verse says:

Exo 19:13  There shall not an hand touch it, but he shall surely be stoned, or shot through; whether it be beast or man, it shall not live: when the trumpet soundeth long, they shall come up to the mount.

I think the Bible is so awesome.  Did you notice the way that God writes this verse in the Bible?  God orchestrates a real historical natural event that actually occurred but because of His designed purpose and precise word selection, these words can be taken both literally and spiritually as being both historical and prophetical typology simultaneously.  We can use the order of mention and the phrasing to see the implied spiritual future application pattern.  For example here in this verse, God says where I am now, no one living on the earth can come up or they will die.  That has a lot of hidden meaning in it to me.  We live DOWN here in a natural world on the earth apart from God’s throne UP in heaven.  How can a natural man ascend into heaven without first experiencing death?  It is just not possible for a natural man to visit God’s spiritual location by his own desire, effort, action or will.  In fact for a Christian to depart and be with the Lord before the trumpet rapture event they must normally die.  We of course have also already learned that there are the exceptions of Enoch and Elijah that did not die before they were taken by God.  But those two were just further confirmation rapture patterns that we the living in the church can be taken identically.   Let’s continue to move on to the last part of the verse for the beginning of the really good stuff about this hidden rapture pattern.

Right now I really only want to talk about three main subjects found in the last statement where God says the (1) “trumpet” will sound loud and then (2) “they” shall (3) “come up”.  Remember according to 1 Corinthians 10:11 who the people called “they” are a “type” of.  Then notice what happens first and then what the type of the church is instructed to do.  Did you notice that this verse does not say who blows the trumpet?  This is a very clever way of making a literal physical event a prophetic event description.  Since no one directly is named as the trumpet blower the action can be performed by anyone natural or spiritual.   You will also observe the obvious fact that “they” is another generic unnamed pronoun of non-specific assignment.  In other words someone will blow a trumpet and then some unnamed people will “come up”.   Now I can understand that God is speaking about natural people and natural acts of those people, but the words apply to two realms by explicit use of generalities.  Many times what people read in the O.T. as God only speaking to a natural people is really God speaking more broadly to a greater coming people.  I’m sure I will have some disagreement with that statement, but sorry I stand by it.  Perhaps we need to look up the Hebrew word translated as “trumpet” to see the meaning and the definition from Strong’s.  This information may help to confirm if we have found the correct named N.T. association found in 1 Thessalonians 4:16 for trumpet in the Greek:

H3104

Apparently from H2986; the blast of a horn (from its continuous sound); specifically the signal of the silver trumpets; hence the instrument itself and the festival thus introduced: – jubile, ram’s horn, trumpet.

In this definition we will read a strong matching definition for the Greek word G4536 that was translated into English as “trump” in 1 Thessalonians 4:16.  Observing the Hebrew definition of the word from Strong’s it means “a blast of a horn as with a continuous sound”.  It is also very interesting to see that God uses this trumpet sound to announce certain festivals.   Let me help you with another Bible study fact detail.  If you search the Hebrew word definitions in Strong you will find the word “trumpet” occurs in 10 different Hebrew words.  What does that tell us?  God specifically chose this word in the O.T. to be the first mention and that the other words are potentially not connected to this event description.  However, I will also tell you that God uses another word in Exodus 19 that is also translated as the English word “trumpet”.  For example, in verse 16 of Exodus 19 you will find the Hebrew word H7782 that is also translated as “trumpet”.  Why does God use two different Hebrew words for basically the same type of noun object?  Why are both words translated as the same English word trumpet?  What is the difference between the trumpet in verse 13 and the trumpet in verse 16?  Those are all great questions and if you are not asking these types of questions when you study the Bible you are not studying.  I believe that God has a purpose for every specific word selected.  I believe no word utilized is there by accident or chance.   We still have a lot to learn.

It is extremely important to search the O.T. for every occurrence of this Hebrew word translated as trumpet in Exodus 19 to see how God used it for the subject context of the entire O.T.  If you do this you will find that this Hebrew word is only selected for use by God in 25 verses of the Old Testament.  Almost every other time this Hebrew word is selected by God, it is translated as the English word “Jubilee”.  Pay very close attention that a Trumpet blast always begins the festival Jubilee. Do you know what a Jubilee was to the natural nation of Israel?  God writes significant things about Jubilee in the Law book of Leviticus.  To the natural Jew the time of Jubilee was a highly anticipated event.  Uh oh!  That sounds like the rapture to me!   Jubilee occurred every 50 years by God’s design.  During this time of celebration all debts were forgiven and the lands went back to the previous owner in the family.  There are two key words found in the descriptions of Jubilee that applies to Biblical typology for the rapture of the church.  These two key words are “inheritance” and “redeem”.  Both words are predominate themes of the N.T.   You may still scratch your head and wonder what could Jubilee, inheritance and redemption have to do with Rapture?  That is where I will tell you that it has more to do with rapture than you can possibly imagine right now.   Perhaps I’ll get to that part of the discussion later today, but if not I will make an effort to talk about Jubilee in a future Bible lesson on rapture.  What I have concluded with this information is that this story given by God in Exodus 19 is the first example of Jubilee for the nation of Israel and you should remember that.

Looking back at Exodus 19:13 did you read it closely searching for the rapture parallels found in 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17?   Notice what God says to Moses who is a typed pattern of the N.T. deliverer, the Lord Jesus Christ; God says that a trumpet will blast long and then the people will come up.  Did you notice where Moses was when he was told this statement?  Was not Moses up on the mountain with God?  I thought God just said no one could touch the mountain or they will die.  You should be able to see more typology patterns that fit the rapture event here.  Moses being a type of Jesus goes up into heaven alive in Acts 1.   Let me stop at those words and explain the typology of the mount for you.   The mountain represents the place of God in heaven symbolically.  Moses goes up to talk to God and God gives instructions from the location of the symbolic heaven.  We could easily get off on another side trip discussion about the symbolism of the mount but I will move on to the “come up” part of the verse.

The Hebrew word translated as “come up” is H5927.   If you look up the word’s definition in Strong’s it literally means “to ascend”.  Here we have one of the closely described synonymous terms that God taught us to look for in Lesson 1 for the Greek term “harpazo” where it was translated as “caught up” in 1 Thessalonians 4:17.   To ascend up is the stated direct opposite of descending down.   To “ascend up” can also be interchanged with the description of being “caught up”, “taken up”, etc.  This verse is certainly not a completed match for what we read in 1 Thessalonians but it is a very good initial shadow outline for it.  Remember what a type is?  It is not the completed picture but rather just the outline of the detailed image casting the shadow giving enough information  so that it is recognizable to those that know the original.  Here in this single verse are 6 direct and indirect nouns and one verb that corresponded to the rapture information with pretty amazing accuracy.  What were these nouns and verb, you might ask?  Glad you asked here is a list of these important parallel types:

  1. God (In charge of the entire event)
  2. The Mount, the high location of God (a type of heaven)
  3. The trumpet blast (announcing the beginning of the event)
  4. Moses (a type of the Lord Jesus the deliverer already up in the clouds in heaven)
  5. The people (they) alive on the earth (a type of the living church) waiting to go up to be with the Lord
  6. The wilderness valley (the symbolic location for the church in the world today)
  7. Ascend Up  (The living church rising up to meet God in the clouds)

Here are seven key parallel ingredients to the described rapture event in 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 and this is just the first mention of the trumpet instrument that brought us to this chapter in Exodus.  Do you see how these two separate scriptures were linked together by God?  Do you understand why they are linked together?  Probably not yet but hopefully very soon you will see it more clearly.  Let’s examine the context of this verse more closely to see what else is hidden concerning the coming rapture.  In doing this we will go up in the chapter to verse 1.  But I will not include all of those verses in this lesson to shorten it slightly.  Verse one describes Israel coming out of Egypt and traveling from there for a specific set time of 3 months.   They come to the Mountain of Sinai and God wants to meet with Moses on the top of the mountain.  I wonder why a mountain?  God always does things by plan and purpose and nothing that God does is an accident.  Moses goes up on the mountain to hear God speak and the next few verses are primarily God doing the speaking but notice that some or all of these words can be taken concurrently for the now present tense and a future prophetic tense to apply to someone else.  What I am saying is that these words spoken by God apply to the natural situation right then with the children of Israel but they also apply to the future repeated events that will not occur for thousands of years from then concerning the church.  Let’s begin to examine verse 5 to see what exactly God says:

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

Here we have God speaking of the natural nation of Israel using terms that are very interesting.  God tells them you are in covenant with me!  God tells them to keep His commandments and obey His voice!   Both of these were stated conditions for the covenant.  Then God announces the benefits of the covenant arrangement and for fulfilling the conditions.  God says you shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all other people.  Do you understand fully what was just spoken?  God states that you will be my people but all others will not be my people and that is a classic binary division of two opposing antithesis groups.  That is very much like the concept that we discovered in the first three lessons on the subject of rapture.  Those two groups that we have been learning about were those that are “IN-CHRIST” versus those that were “OUT-CHRIST”; those that were called the sheep versus those that were called the goats; those that were wheat versus those that were tares; those that were wise virgins versus those that were foolish virgins.  Can you see the pattern agreement with what was revealed in the N.T.?

Here in this verse we also have a Hebrew word that is very noteworthy to comprehend.  This word H5459 means “wealth” as in something shut up in a locker or a vault.  This Hebrew word signifies a place or a state of protection for something that is very valuable to keep them from an enemy or a thief.  Who do you recall that Jesus said is the thief in the Bible?  In John 10:10 Jesus said “the thief (Satan) came to kill, steal and to destroy but I have come that you might have life”.   I am not going to spend time explaining every word given by God in this verse.  Just note the existence of three important parallels, the covenant, the conditions and the benefits because these are all types that apply to the church today.  Let’s move to verse 6 and learn some new important details:

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

God continues to speak and says to the people that you will not only be my guarded treasure but “You shall be 1) a kingdom of priests and 2) a holy nation.  God then tells Moses these are the words that you shall speak to the “children of Israel”.  Who are these two mentioned types?  We have Israel and we have his children.   Who are these children and who is this Israel in Biblical typology?  I do not have the time to elaborate on every spiritual application of the information given in the O.T.  I will go over a few key details to help to get you thinking in a new spiritual way about this typological information being given.  Naturally speaking, we know Jacob’s name was changed to Israel in Genesis 32:28.  Here in this verse is the first mention of the name Israel and by the law of first mention God gives us certain clues that we need to learn from to understand the rest of the subject in the Bible.  Go read this chapter again and see it for yourself.  Then answer these two questions.  Where did this name come from and whose name was it before it was given to Jacob?  I’ll tell you directly that the Bible says the name Israel came from the angel sent by God up in heaven to wrestle with Jacob.  Then I think we need to do some research study to see what this name means in the original Hebrew language.   Read the definition from the Strong’s and see how it is defined:

H3478

From H8280 and H410; he will rule as God; Jisrael, a symbolical name of Jacob; also (typically) of his posterity: – Israel.

I want you to pay close attention to what Dr. Strong believed this name represented.   He declared that first this name was a symbolical name given to Jacob.  What does that tell you?  That simply means the name Israel was not Jacob’s real name but rather belonged to someone else.  It also connects us back into the Biblical Typology discussion directly as this name being a spiritual subject that was hidden in the natural O.T. typological references.  Did you notice how Strong was led to include the word “typically” in the definition?  I do not believe that was an accident.  Typically or types is exactly what we are studying.  Did you notice what the name means?  According to the definition the name Israel means “He will rule as God”.   Uh oh?  Who can that be?  Is that the natural man Jacob that will rule as God or someone else that was prophesied to come from Jacob?  Since Jacob obviously died a natural death and has not been raised from the dead from what I have read in the Bible, I do not believe that natural Jacob qualifies to rule as God.  Wow, this is going to get very deep here and I might just offend some immature Christians with the truth.

The Hebrew name “Israel” is comprised of two other Hebrew root words.  One Hebrew root word is H8280 which means “to prevail” as a ruler prince.  To prevail implies this subject has direct opposition and enemies to overcome.  To prevail further implies victories and conquests over these enemies.  The second Hebrew root word is H410 and this is the most important part of the name.  It is a very common O.T. shortened form for the divine name of God.  This Hebrew word “el” is used before other divine titles like “El Shaddai” (Almighty God), “El Elyon”  (Supreme God) and “El Olam” (Everlasting God) which are all O.T. descriptive divine names for our God.  Perhaps you have heard of some of these names?   Ok, let’s take a quick review of the information that we have just learned about the name “Israel”:

  1. The name Israel came down from God in Heaven.
  2. The name Israel was given to a natural man named Jacob after he prevailed with the angel.
  3. The name Israel was called a symbolical name by Strong for the man Jacob.
  4. The name Israel literally means “He will rule as God”.

What we are observing here are some more O.T. Typologies that are pointing us to Jesus using these patterns.  Let me help prove to you that the name “Israel” is God’s name that was given to a natural man named Jacob.  Did you know I could prove that using the Bible?  This is why so many Bible teachers today are so confused about what is written, they do not see what is plainly right in front of their eyes.  Let me give you a few verses to help you see what I am trying to teach you:

2Ch 7:14  If my people, which are called by my name,

Isa 43:7  Even every one that is called by my name: for I have created him for my glory, I have formed him; yea, I have made him.

Jer 7:11  Is this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, even I have seen it, saith the LORD.

Jer 7:14  Therefore will I do unto this house, which is called by my name, wherein ye trust, and unto the place which I gave to you and to your fathers, as I have done to Shiloh.

Jer 32:34  “But they put their detestable things in the house which is called by My name, to defile it.

I could give you a few other verses but that is enough witnesses to the truth to establish it firmly in my mind.  Can you read?  God says 5 times these people are called by My name?  What name do you think this is?  I know for sure that it is the name “Israel” (He will rule as God) and it can be no other.  Do you know how many times “Israel” is found in the O.T.?  The name “Israel” is included in 2,228 verses of the O.T. Bible.  There is no other name used that many times to describe any people.  Jerusalem is found in only 626 verses.  Judah is found in 754 verses.  Can you think of any names in the O.T. of a natural people that will qualify for who God is calling by His name?  Ok, let me help you out by connecting some more of the dots for you.  Did you notice that I included Jeremiah 7:11 in my list of confirming verses?  I did this on purpose because Jesus tells you directly who it is in Matthew 21:13.  Jesus drives out the money changers with a whip from the temple in Jerusalem and He quotes a part of Jeremiah 7:11 to describe the event.  Jesus said “My house shall be a house of prayer but you have made it a robber’s den”.  What Jesus has just described are the people that are called by His name and this can only be the children of “Israel”.   I do not want to spend any more time on this part of the lesson.  You either are going to see it or you are going to close your eyes and reject it.

The natural children of Jacob were 12 sons and these were the founding natural fathers of the 12 tribes of natural Israel.   Each generation had their own children and this continual cycle of generational propagation continued until Moses is speaking with God here in these verses in Exodus 19.  Now is the time where we need to factor into the equation “how does this natural pattern typology information fit with any spiritual application of the greater prophesied truth of God?”  Did any of these words just spoken by God in verse 6 even sound just a little bit familiar to you?   Please let me list the key factors that were just given again in verse 6:

  1. The children of Israel (A natural family pattern of many generations descending from 12 brothers)
  2. A Kingdom of Priests
  3. A Holy Nation of People

I mean if you have ever read the N.T. you have come across all of these type descriptions even if you did not realize where they were mentioned first in the Bible.  I’ll give you a hint, the Holy Spirit inspired Peter to write about all of these types to the church and this is what God reveals to us through His servant Peter:

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

As you should be able to tell, Peter is not directly quoting the entire verse of Exodus 19:6.  However Peter writes enough for us to know they are directly connected.  If you look at the NASB version of the Bible you will discover this verse is mostly capitalized to indicate that it is a direct quote of Exodus 19:6.  However, this verse is really more of a direct commentary explanation by God for what He was talking about and who God was speaking to prophetically in the original statement of Exodus 19:6.  I will no doubt have some naysayers try to tell me this verse does not have anything to do with what God said to natural Israel but that is just spiritual blindness that causes people not to have the ability to make the proper connections.    Look at what Peter says to the church.  He said we are a “chosen generation”.  Chosen simply means the “elect”.   Uh oh, I thought natural Israel was the only ones ever called God’s elect?  Not according to what God just revealed to the church here in the N.T.  The Greek term G1085 translated as “generation” directed at the church in this verse simply means a group of related family members, relatives or kin.  Did you know that you were in a new family now if you are a Christian?   How does that term for the church compare with the typology we just found spoken to the children of natural Israel?  I personally see so many parallels and repeated patterns here that it is amazing.  The natural nation of Israel originates with one man having 12 natural sons.  Does that compare to the church at all?   What about Jacob being a type of Jesus Christ?   Did Jesus ever have twelve spiritual sons?  I’m not talking about natural sons, I am asking about the spiritual offspring.   Did you ever wonder why Jesus chose exactly 12 disciples?  I mean that has to have been for a very specific reason, do you not agree?  Does God do anything casually?  I believe Jesus choose twelve disciples to match with the 12 sons of Jacob in the natural.

Biblical typology is such a fascinating subject with so much hidden information that it is really astonishing.  Why did Jesus knowing Judas was going to betray Him choose him to be a disciple?    Did you know that Judas was also found in hidden O.T. typology?  One tribe of natural Israel has been omitted from all mention of the 12 tribes of Israel in Revelation 7.  In fact this omitted tribe of Israel has been replaced by just one son from another tribe.  I do not have the time to attempt to explain what is happening here in this typology fully.   Notice that in Acts 1 that Judas who killed himself was replaced by another.  Who was that man that stepped into the vacant Judas position to take his place in the church?  I believe that it was one of the spiritual sons of one of the other 11 faithful disciples.  I can see every disciple mentioned to be chosen to fulfill a beginning initial role in the new family of God.  These 12 men would go into the whole world to bring the Gospel of Jesus to increase and grow the spiritual family of God from every nation on the earth.  Why, are Christians called brothers and sisters in the Lord?   At least 30 times in his letters to the churches Paul refers to Gentile church members to be his brothers.  Since Paul was a naturally born Jew Paul had to be speaking of spiritual kinship and not of the natural.  This is simply because we are all spiritual family members in the same spiritual family of God.  This spiritual reality simply parallels the natural reality of the nation of Israel who were also all brothers and sisters of the same 12 fathers.   Let’s move on in this verse in 1 Peter so that I do not get into too much information.

After “Chosen Generation” Peter then mentions “we are a royal priesthood”.   Here is where we get to the direct correlation to Exodus 19:6.  Do you remember what God said for Moses to say?   God says tell them “You are a Kingdom of Priests”.  Royalty has to do with only kingdoms and thus we have more synonymous terms being linked directly together.  Did you know that you were a priest in God’s spiritual family in the New Covenant?  We do not offer animal sacrifices to God like the priests of natural Israel, but rather we do offer the sacrifice of praise of our lips to God (Heb 13:15).  These are just two parallel truth realities that are imperative to learn about as Christians.  Finally we get to the one for one relationship being called a “holy nation” the exact same phrase as was mentioned in Exodus 19:6.   I want you to do a keyword search for the exact phrase “holy nation” in your Bible search program.  This exact phrase only occurs in two verses and these verses are Exodus 19:6 and 1 Peter 2:9.  Do you think that is a coincidence, chance occurrence or an accidental happenstance?  If you do you are vastly deceived.  The Bible linking such a precise phrase together in only two verses is God connecting them together to leave no doubt about what is being communicated about.  God is saying very clearly that Exodus 19 is about my Church.

So far we have two very specific links to the church.  Do you remember what they were?  We have found the church by the law of first mention concerning the “trumpet” reference from 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17.  Then we have the keyword matched “Holy Nation” reference from Exodus 19:6 only found repeated in 1 Peter 2:9.   Let’s go back to Exodus and continue to study what God says to us.  I’m going to skip down to verse 9 in Exodus 19 to move past some less important verses for this lesson discussion:

Exo 19:9  And the LORD said unto Moses, Lo, I come unto thee in a thick cloud, that the people may hear when I speak with thee, and believe thee for ever. And Moses told the words of the people unto the LORD.

Do you remember how many references I said there were concerning “clouds” in the New Testament?  In several of those Jesus very specifically said that He would be coming in the clouds.  I am not going to list those again but you can review the previous lessons and find the references.  What I see in this verse is another connecting reference to a noun from 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17.  The clouds being repeated here in this discourse is not an accident.  We now have 7 repeated nouns and 1 repeated verb.  I have been working up to this next verse for the entire lesson and here is some very key information for the timing of the rapture event.

Exo 19:10  And the LORD said unto Moses, Go unto the people, and sanctify them to day and to morrow, and let them wash their clothes,

God tells Moses the deliver (a type of Christ Jesus) to sanctify the people.  bath2 (2)What exactly is that and what does that statement even mean?  Let’s begin with the definition of the Hebrew word from the Strong’s dictionary.  According to Strong the Hebrew word H6942 means “to be, make, pronounce or observe as clean”.  Therefore, sanctification is like a cleaning process.  Perhaps you occasionally take a bath or a shower to make your body clean and if you do then you are sanctifying your body.  This is really not that complicated but easily missed if we do not learn the application to what this means in the spiritual realm.   Wow this is so interesting to me knowing what I know about the word of God and work of Christ Jesus in the New Testament.  Are you beginning to see the hidden Jesus Christ in these verses?  I could give you many New Testaments verses that apply to what is stated here but I am going to limit myself to only two verses to show how God has sanctified the church through Christ:

1Th 5:23  And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Here we have another very key verse of information that ties directly to our rapture subject study.  This verse occurs in the chapter immediately following the previous chapter’s rapture event report to the church.  Here God brings into the context discussion the subject of sanctification.   Paul continuing to write to the church tells them that the God of peace will sanctify them wholly and wholly is defined to include their spirit, soul and body.  What did sanctify mean?  It meant to cleanse or make clean and this implies they were dirty in these three areas of their lives.   The Bible is so awesome when you finally put the pieces of the puzzle together.  God is saying I will make you clean but technically does not describe how this will occur.   Some try to transfer responsibility of this cleaning as a God only type of work but that leaves out the human freewill right of choice and that would violate so many things found in the Bible so very plainly.  Since sanctification is not the primary subject here I am not going to spend the time here to explain it.  I simply want you to see the clear links that are being placed plainly in front of you for you to join them together.  God is linking rapture to the sanctification part of the discussion and vice versa    Let me show you one other very key scripture concerning sanctification and the church:

Eph 5:26  That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word,

Here we have a verse that does not name the church directly but if you read the context you will find out the church is one of the primary subjects being discussed in this chapter.  In verse 25 God says to husbands “Love your wives even as Christ loves the church and gave himself for her and then in verse 26 is the connecting link to the previous statement “that He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of the water by the word”.  I wasn’t going to get into the method of sanctification but I think I just did.  What God is saying here is that Jesus has sanctified His bride the church by giving them His precious Holy Word to wash with.  Here we have a paradox being presented that many readers will be puzzled with.  I recently had one man tell me I was crazy for teaching people that the church was the wife of Christ because we are clearly described to be the body of Christ in many verses of the New Testament.  To that man I will ask this simple question.  If we the church, are the body of Christ why then is it necessary for Christ to give us a Word bath to cleanse His very own body?  Uh oh?  Is not the body of Christ already clean having been raised from the dead and exalted into heaven?  You see because people do not think when they read the Bible they miss so much of what is being stated.  The answer to why the church needs cleansing is found in Exodus 19 and several other verses.  If you would like to learn more about this secret you can read my Bible lesson “How the Church became the Body of Christ”.

Let’s continue to look at Exodus 19:10.  God says for the people to be cleansed and tells them to wash their clothes today and tomorrow.  That was a stated cleaning duration of two days, was it not?   Why did God pick exactly two days to tell them to prepare for the trumpet?  Wow, we are now getting into the timing of the rapture event without even understanding what God has said to us fully.  Approximately how long has it been since Jesus left the earth to go into heaven to wait for His time to return?  It has been nearly 2000 years.  No one knows for sure the exact time but it is very close to that number.  Why is this number 2000 significant and how is it related to the 2 days mentioned in Exodus 19?  It simply goes back to what I said earlier about God’s law of divine definition.  It is important to interpret spiritual things using spiritual definitions or you will bet lost and confused.  Do you remember how I said that God defined a “day” found in 2 Peter 3:8? God defines one day to Him to be equivalent to 1000 years and even 1000 years to be equal to exactly one day.  What is needed here is for you to see that God says for His people to get ready by making themselves clean because in two days (2000 years) He was going to sound the trumpet and they were going to “come up”.  These are hidden patterns in the Word of God that teach the general timing of the event.  It is very scripturally in balance because Jesus said in Matthew 25:13 “Be sober and vigilant because no man knows the day or hour of the coming of the son of man”.  But notice that Jesus did not say that we would not be able to discern the general season for the event.   In general terms I know that the timing for His return is very soon, but I do not technically know for certain if it is this year or next or the next.  Do you know the certainty of the calendar?  There is really no way that I know of for us to ascertain the exact duration of time since the beginning of the church age.  Therefore, it is foolish for anyone to attempt to set a specific date for this event.

Typology is not a perfect picture of anything spiritual.  The chapter has only given us patterned clues for the outline and not the entire complete detailed picture.  I’ve spent enough time on this chapter going over many of the specific outline qualities that point us primarily to the event described in 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17.  I believe that we have established the start of the proof necessary for the establishment of the pre-tribulation rapture event.  We can conclude by typological references from Exodus that after two days of cleaning preparation represents two thousands years of the church age when the trumpet will be sounded and the people will come up.  I think we have just established that within O.T typology there is a solid pattern match for a future rapture event being connected to the church.   Thank you for taking the time to read this important Bible lesson on rapture.  I pray that you gained some new insight from it on the subject of rapture that you did not know before.  Until the next Bible lesson in this series, I thank you for sharing this information with everyone that you know!  God Bless!

If you like to read the next lesson in the Rapture series please go to “Part 5” now.

Bible Answers: Was the Angel Michael the Pre-Existence of Jesus?

(Ver 1.1)  I occasionally answer Bible questions.  If you have Bible questions you are free to leave them as a comment and I will get to them as I have the time.  In today’s subject I was specifically asked by a reader what my views were on the Arc-Angel Michael being the pre-existent Jesus.  This was a very strange question that I almost ignored.  However, I can see the reason behind the question and the harm that this issue raises, so I will address it in a quick Holy Spirit led Bible Response.   I will state plainly upfront that the main reason for addressing this subject is because it is a false teaching that promotes the lies of Satan.  Any subject that is a lie from Satan can always be countered with the Truth of God’s Word.   Clearly Satan is going to great extents to discredit the true identity of Jesus.   Rather than teach you directly about the lie, I would rather spend my time teaching you the truth found in the Bible.  In order to do this we need to address 9 basic questions:

  1. Do angels have pre-existence or are they created beings?
  2. How is Michael described in the Bible?
  3. Is Michael an angel or a divine component of the Godhead?
  4. Did Michael exist prior to Jesus’ birth?
  5. Does Michael still exist after the birth of Jesus on the earth?
  6. What “was”, “is” and “will be” Michael’s role in the Kingdom of God?
  7. Is Jesus ever directly connected in identity to the angel Michael in the Bible?
  8. Who did Jesus actually claim to be?
  9. Is Jesus a direct component of the divine nature of the Godhead?

I will at least briefly touch on the answers to every one of these essential questions in this lesson.  These questions will be my outline for the lesson so you will know where we are going before we get there.  Let me give you my opening verse for this entire Bible lesson.  This verse has nothing directly to do with the subject of Michael but then it also has everything directly to do with the subject of who Jesus Christ is.  Read and study it closely:

1Jn 2:22  Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son.

We should be able to see from this statement that the anti-Christ will be the one that comes denying that Jesus is the Christ.  He further goes to explain that the anti-Christ will also be the one that denies the existence of either the Father or the Son.  Either denial constitutes an anti-Christ spiritual teaching of perversion.  Why is it important for someone to affirm Jesus the Son’s existence?  Why is it important to affirm God the Father’s existence?  Both positions are placed on the same equal footing.  Both are given equal levels of importance.  Do you understand that if you deny one but not the other that you still remain an anti-Christ?  You cannot proclaim God is Father and deny Jesus is His Son because you have reduced the importance of Jesus while exalting the importance of God.  A partial lie is usually a harder deception to detect than a full complete lie.  In this verse God just clearly made Jesus the Son the equivalent to God the Father in importance and significance.   In this lesson we will discover why it is essential for every true Christian to know who the real Son is.

I believe that you will find that this teaching of Michael being a pre-existent Jesus originated from the Jehovah Witness group.  I believe that many in this organization are teaching that Jesus existed in heaven previously before coming to the earth in the form of the angel Michael.  This teaching would clearly lower Jesus to a distinct inferior level far below the level of the divine.  This teaching reduces Jesus status, character and ability to the inferior position of all angels and all other created beings.  Thus we have the first potential contradiction to my introductory subject verse that clearly places Jesus the Son on the same plain and level as the divine Father God.   This stated teaching position that reduces Christ from being deity, clearly places the Jehovah Witness group in the category that God calls the “anti-Christ” denying the Son’s equivalence.  That is potentially not a good group to be associated with by God’s definition.   Do you see the importance of not denying who Jesus was and is?  This is actually getting to be a very prevalent false teaching today because it keeps people from being saved.  If people deny that Jesus is the Christ, they cannot be saved.  If Jesus was just an angel or a normal man like you or I then we have no basis for our salvation.   Salvation is dependent upon believing correctly the truth and I really do not care what other religious people try to teach.  If anyone can get to heaven by believing anything that they want then Jesus was a liar.  Jesus very clearly said “I am the only way to the Father” (John 14:6).  Therefore, what you believe about Jesus matters very much.

The Jews today believe that God had no son. Therefore, they deny the Christ.  Islam today teaches and believes that God had no son.  So they categorically deny that Jesus was the Christ.  What we can clearly observe is a pattern of deception occurring.  This pattern of opposition represents a thread of lies that crosses boundaries between even opposing religions.  Both Judaism and Islam clearly teach and deny that God had no Son.  Now we can see this same erroneous religious philosophy corrupting modern church teachings and churches in a similar way.  The denial of the existence of the Son has now started to creep into churches.  How does one lie cross so easily between such diverse religions?  It would seem to me that there is an outside force that is prompting these separate lies of deception to be taught.   I believe that this outside force is the father of lies called Satan.  You need to ask yourself, why does Satan want people to not believe in the true identity of the Son of God?  Why is it important for people not to know the actual character, nature and origin of the man Jesus Christ?  This knowledge should peak your interest enough to find the answers because your eternal destiny rests upon you knowing the truth.   Don’t believe me?  Who then saved you?  Did an angel save you?  Did a man like Muhammad save you?  Who is your faith placed in to save you?  If it is not God then you have been deceived.

I believe that there should never be any direct connections of equivalence made between any created beings and any divine being.  We cannot lower the divine down or raise the created up to make them equal.  When anyone makes the statement that Jesus pre-existed in heaven in the form of Michael a potential angel they are lowering Jesus’ true divine position and claiming Him to be the equivalent to any other created being.  When they try to teach that Jesus is God today but before becoming a man he was Michael the potential angel, then they are raising Michael from the lower level of a created being to the level of the divine.  Either position is a corruption of the truth.  Any corruption of truth is a potential poison that may kill you.  I believe that where the confusion originated is when God the eternal divine chose by His will to be made mortal flesh and thus divine God joined Himself to His creation in a brand new manifested form.  This single act of God the divine was not expected by Satan and it seals the fate of Satan and this is why he fights it with all of his might to deny that it even occurred.   However, God by His own sovereign will did this for a very specific cause and purpose that I will not be able to fully address today in this lesson.

THE ORIGIN OF THE ANGELIC CLASS OF BEINGS

Let’s begin by researching and considering the origin of angels.  We should know from Bible study that there are only a few named angelic beings revealed to us in the Bible.  I did a more complete study of the subject of angels called “Understanding Angels” if you want to study this subject in more depth than I can spend today in this single lesson.  The three primary named angels are Lucifer, Michael and Gabriel.  These three angels each held special high roles in the organized structure of heaven.  I personally believe that each of these angels has at least some sub-ordinate angels under their authority and command.  However, I believe if you study the subject out you have to conclude that the angel Gabriel is not as strong of an angel power as either Michael or Lucifer.  We may look at this later.  However, ask the question, where did angels come from?  Are angels an eternal divine being like the divine God or do angels have a creation point where they first originated.

Eze 28:13  Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold: the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created.

Eze 28:14  Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so: thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire.

Eze 28:15  Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee.

Reading these verses we can clearly see that God reveals the creation of the angel Lucifer.  The Hebrew word translated as “created” here is the exact same word used by God in Genesis 1:1 when God says He created the heavens and the earth in the beginning.  Therefore, we have a one for one word match that Lucifer the angel was also a created being with a stated beginning. I have to conclude just by this information that if one angel was created then every angel was also created.  This would certainly include Michael if he is an angel.  Therefore, ALL angels had an origination point with no status of pre-existence before being created.  Anything created must come from a creator outside of the realm of the creation.  This is just very basic self-evident logic observed all around us.  We understand when we see an automobile or building that someone apart from the automobile and building created them.  According to the Bible God is the only eternal being with no stated beginning and no end.  Therefore, God is the only qualified individual to begin or create anything with an origination point.   Do you understand this logic so far?

WHAT DOES THE BIBLE REVEAL ABOUT MICHAEL?

Let’s counter the false conclusion that Michael and Jesus are the same individuals using the information revealed to us in the Word of God.  This belief would either reduce Jesus to a created being class with no pre-existence the same as Lucifer or it would raise Michael to be an eternal being in the divine class and we are beginning to see that this is not true but we need more Bible evidence to prove it.  Clearly if Jesus is reduced to a created being the argument position fails the initial verse test that places Jesus the Son on the equivalent level as God the Father.  Let’s do a further analysis of the limited information given to us about the being Michael in the Bible.  I’ll start by going to the last mention of Michael in the Bible and then working backwards through the Bible:

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

Rev 12:8  And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven.

Rev 12:9  And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.

Here what we have is a stated future war being described to us that takes place in the spiritual realm of heaven between Satan and his angels and Michael and his angels.  It is very important to note three things in this description; the timing of the event, the location of the event and then the participants of the event.  We should be able to clearly see that this event is a future tense subject by backing up and reading the scripture in Revelation chapter 4 and verse 1.   We then should be able to clearly observe that this described event takes place in heaven (a spiritual dimension) and not here on the earth (a physical dimension).  Finally, we can see two opposing forces that are in conflict against each other.  One force is directed by Satan a created being and the other force is directed by Michael.  Therefore I have concluded from this information that Michael still exists in this future event description and this was written well after Jesus was raised from the dead and had ascended back into heaven in Acts 1.  Uh oh?  I think I can see a problem conflict coming.  Do you see it?  Are there two different individuals now?  One is called Jesus and one is called Michael?  What I can observe is that if Michael was the preexistence of Jesus then Michael should have ceased to exist when Jesus was manifested yet we see Michael still mentioned after Jesus was raised back into heaven.  Is Jesus now become Michael again?  Or are there two separate individuals with one named Michael and one named Jesus?

We find by continuing to read in Revelation that Michael and his angels prevail against Satan and his angels and that Satan and his angels are then cast back down to the earth in verse 9.   Here we have the confirmation of strength difference between angelic beings.  If Satan was stronger than Michael, then Satan would prevail but that is not the stated pattern that is revealed to us in the Bible.  Michael is clearly the winner in every confrontation with Satan, but we should note that both leaders have angels that are subordinate to them.  This is a verse that could imply Michael to be Jesus or equivalent to Jesus but that is a weak erroneous assumption that falls apart by further Bible study and analysis.

The being Michael is only directly named in 5 verses of the Bible.  Three times in the book of Daniel, once in the book of Jude and this verse here in Revelation 12 that we have just looked into.  Therefore we can only read a limited set of information given about this being and draw from them whatever facts are given to us.  We also need to be smart enough to not jump to any erroneous conclusions from the provided information that is not being directly revealed.   I personally believe that God provides us sufficient information to find the truth of Michael and Jesus and we will only come to one conclusion as we continue to explore all of the information provided.

I selected this verse in Revelation to study first because this verse helps us to begin to prove that Michael is not Jesus and that Jesus is not Michael.  Nowhere in the Bible is Jesus connected to be Michael.  They are always separate distinct named individuals.  These verses in Revelation 12 are speaking of Michael as a future heavenly warrior after the physical birth, life, death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ being taken back to heaven in Acts 1.  Thus we can easily conclude that the being Michael still exists even after God became a man in his son Jesus Christ.

God very clearly describes and names Jesus as being in heaven in 12 different verses in Revelation.  In 27 other verses in Revelation we find Jesus being titled the “Lamb” and these references are also directed as Him being in heaven.  Nowhere in the Bible is Michael ever called the Lamb, associated to be the Lamb or even close to becoming the lamb.   I believe that it is technically and logically impossible for Michael and Jesus to be both mentioned in a future prophecy book using two different names at the same time if they are the same individual.  That would make Jesus a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; one man with two personalities and that is another contradiction with scripture that teaches us “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today and forever” (Heb 13:8).  God would not name the same individual with the name Jesus and the name Michael in the same book of the Bible.  Let’s read quickly the previous found Bible reference of Michael in Jude:

Jud 1:9  Yet Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil he disputed about the body of Moses, durst not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke thee.

Michael is clearly revealed to be an “archangel” in this verse.  An archangel is a specific class of angelic beings which are of a higher order of responsibility than other angels.  What we have just accomplished is that we have determined proof that God in the Bible calls Michael an angel and not a divine being.  This makes Michael in the same class as Lucifer and helps us confirm that Michael was also a created being.  Here in this verse we can clearly see that Michael was in another dispute with the angel Satan over the body of Moses.  This is just a continuation of a pattern. Then notice what Michael says to Satan!  The archangel Michael says “The Lord rebuke you”.   That statement proves that Michael is not the “Lord”.  Uh oh?  That must be a new problem for anyone that says the Lord Jesus was a pre-existent Michael!   If the Lord Jesus was Michael, he would have simply said “I rebuke you” and that would have been all of that conversation and Michael would have revealed to everyone that he was the Lord.  I believe that we have just proven that Michael cannot be the Lord Jesus with this single verse and the previous one given to us in Revelation.  However, let’s look at another important verse found in the book of Daniel about this individual named Michael:

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.

Ok, here is another very interesting verse of truth containing more important facts about the identity and nature of the archangel Michael.  We find that the angel Gabriel is speaking to the prophet Daniel and he says the angel Michael came to help him to get through to defeat Satan in order to be present in this conversation.  This older spiritual war took place over a time period of 21 days in duration hundreds of years before Jesus was born on the earth.  Did you notice what this verse says about the named angel Michael?  Michael is very clearly described to be ONE of other unnamed “chief princes”.  We are not given the number of “chief princes” that were created but there is definitely more than one of them.  A chief prince denotes a type of ruler authority and means that there are sub-ordinate beings or princes under his command.  It also literally means that Michael is just ONE of these “chief princes” and I believe that this causes great difficulty of conflict if only one of these chief princes became the incarnate man Jesus.  What happened to all of the others and why were they not selected?  What God has just revealed about the angel Michael is that he is not a unique being.  What have we just learned from these three verses about Michael?  Here is a quick review of the basic facts:

  1. Michael existed prior to the birth of Jesus found in the book of Daniel.
  2. Michael was warring with Satan in the book of Daniel to help the angel Gabriel reach his destiny here on the earth.
  3. Michael still exists after Jesus was born, died and was resurrected back to heaven according to Revelation 12.
  4. Michael is still a warrior angel in Revelation 12 continuing to battle Satan.
  5. Michael is nothing but a created archangel according to Jude.
  6. Michael by his own confession says that he is not the “Lord” according to Jude.
  7. Michael is clearly stated to be just one of other “chief princes” making him non-unique and no more special than any other created angel according to Daniel.  I believe that this does not make Michael special enough to die to take away our sins.

How can you from these facts given to us conclude that Michael is the pre-existed Lord Jesus Christ?  I honestly do not have a clue how this teaching can be considered legitimate using these basic Bible facts.   Why, is the Lord Jesus Christ called the “KING of kings and the LORD of lords” (Rev 19:6)?   It is simply to inform you that Jesus is not one “chief prince” of many but is rather the ONE LORD and KING of all.   If Michael was the Lord, he would have said to Satan “I rebuke you” and not “The Lord rebuke you”.  This is just so elementary that I don’t know why people are missing it.

WHO DOES THE BIBLE SAY JESUS WAS?

Who was Jesus?  Who did Jesus claim to be?  Did Jesus ever claim to be an angel?  What does the Bible reveal about Jesus to us?  Did Jesus ever claim to originate from Michael?  If you do not know it yet, Jesus was the eternal God coming personally to the earth in the flesh to die for your sins.   This is why Satan wants to discredit His identity.   Here are some quick verses to help establish this essential truth:

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

Here is a very basic divine truth that needs to be established firmly in your heart.  The angel announces to us that a virgin shall conceive and bring forth a child and His name shall be called “Emmanuel”.  Emmanuel is a Hebrew name for the coming prophesied child that literally means “God with us”.   What is being described to us in this name definition is that the eternal Spirit of God will come and manifest physically in human form to be observed firsthand by His own creation.  The creation of God will for the first time be able to naturally observe their creator.  Jesus will be the full manifestation of the combined Spiritual divine Godhead united with His created natural mortal man.  Jesus Christ will be 100% God and 100% a man.  There is no angel Michael in this work mentioned.  The definition given to us from the name “Emmanuel” is simply that God will appear in the form of a man.  Jesus would have been given a different name if it was “Michael with us”.   Did you know that what a name means in the Bible is always important to God?  God conceals important items of truth in the names of many people found in the Bible.  If you don’t believe me then you need to go study the genealogy found in Genesis 5.  The meanings of each of the names from Adam to Noah teach the complete plan of salvation of God.  Every name has a purpose and teaches us something.  For example the name Michael means “Who is like God”.  That name teaches us that Michael is not God but rather a reflection of someone asking about Him or observing Him.   Take the name “Israel” as a direct contrast to the name “Michael”.  Both names contain the same Hebrew root word “el” which is translated as a “God”.  However it is the other root words combined with this word that makes them so different.   Do you know what the name “Israel” means?   The name “Israel” means “He will rule as God” and that informs us who Israel really is.   Israel is not just the name of a natural nation of people on the earth but according to the Bible it was a name of their God.  It is clear to me that whoever possesses the name “Israel” will be the God divine ruler.   I don’t have time to teach that but know the facts and understand that Bible names have meanings and that these meanings teach important messages.

I am going through the verses that declare Jesus to be God.  We just looked at the verse in Matthew where Jesus was named “Emmanuel” and discovered what it meant.    Let me give you other verses that say the same thing using different word descriptions.  Read these important facts closely:

Joh 1:1  In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Joh 1:2  The same was in the beginning with God.

Joh 1:3  All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.

In the beginning was the Word.  God initiates the book of John with words that parallel Genesis 1:1.   God basically connects Genesis 1:1 and John 1:1 together by His specific word selection.  God is giving his commentary on the Genesis 1:1 creation using new descriptions.  Here God says that the Word existed eternally and equally with God.  This Word being described here in John 1:1 was clearly God.  What we are observing is another parallel verse to my introductory foundation verse from 1 John 2:2.   However, in these verses in John we are seeing that God equates “the Word” to be equal with God and in 1 John 2:2 we saw that the Son was equal with God.  Do you know what that means?  I’ll tell you in minute.

I think we need to establish a basic foundational Christian truth to who this God is being described to us in the Bible.  This God called the Word in John 1:1 is the same as the God described to be a Spirit in John 4:24.   Therefore I believe that this God who is Spirit is the same as this God who is the Word.   Wrap your minds around what is being taught here because it is clearly way beyond normal human imagination.  God is clearly telling us that His Spirit, and His Word and His Son are all equal to one in the same.   How might you ask can I legally arrive at this conclusion?  I am simply using God’s created laws of mathematics and Algebra to facilitate this fact.  What law of mathematics am I speaking of?   There is a very basic law of mathematics that states if A=B and B=C then we know that A=C.  Do you see how I arrived at those statements now and how that they are correct?   We can clearly see if God = Word (John 1:1), God = Son (1 John 2:2) and God = Spirit (John 4:24) that we can apply the laws of mathematics and say that Word = God and Word = Son and Word = Spirit.   I think I probably went over the heads of many readers.  Hang in there if you do not enjoy mathematics like I do.

What we can read in John 1:3 is that God confirms to us that everything created in the beginning was created by the Word of God.  This eternal Word God created all temporary physical space and matter.  Continuing to read down in the first chapter of John you get to the confirmation of the identity of Jesus:

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.

This verse is very clear with the identity of Jesus as the Word God who is also Spirit.  Jesus was the stated Word/Spirit and He was made flesh for our benefit.  This is simply another way to say “Emmanuel” or God with us.   John writes that because God became flesh that we were able to behold (see, observe) His glory.  This was the creator God making Himself known in ways that blows the mind of devils, demons and natural men that do not want to believe in the existence of a loving God in the form of a Son.  This was an expression of divine love beyond normal human comprehension.  Why would an all-powerful God that could choose to do anything, choose to humble Himself to become a part of His own creation and walk around as if He was just one of us?

Eph 3:9  And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ:

God continues to reveal in this verse that all of creation was performed by Jesus Christ the Word.  This clearly claims that Jesus Christ was the Word of God since God created everything by His Word as we have just seen in John 1:3.  If Jesus was the creator of all things then Jesus pre-existed all creation.  The only way this is possible is if Jesus is divine, eternal and the Lord God.   Notice the word ALL things in John 1:3.  If Jesus was Michael then this would make Michael a non-created being and that belief falls apart quickly.   This would mean Michael created everything and was God and that belief comes short of sound Biblical doctrine immediately just from the verses that we read about Michael.  There are so many contradictions to this teaching that I just can’t give them all to you.  But we will continue with a few more important verses of confirmation to the identity of Jesus:

Rev 19:11  And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war.

Rev 19:12  His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself.

Rev 19:13  And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God.

I wanted to include these verses to help confirm who this Jesus is that is coming back to the earth in Revelation and help you see that He is not called Michael but rather in verse 13 He is named the Word of God again.  Who was the Word of God according to John 1:1?  We know the Word of God was God and thus this Word God comes back riding on the white horse to the earth.  There is no connection to Michael being stated here, formerly, presently or in any future tense.

WHO DID JESUS CLAIM TO BE?

Let’s examine who Jesus claimed to be while here on the earth to help prove that Jesus never said that He pre-existed as Michael.  Who did Jesus say was His Father?  Was it ever communicated that Michael was the father of Jesus?  Did Jesus ever claim to pre-exist?  In at least 70 verses in the N.T. Jesus is called the “Son of God”.  Clearly to be called a son means that the man Jesus originated from a source of parental beings.  From reading the Bible we know the physical natural mother of Jesus was named Mary and she is described to be a virgin having never known a man.  The angel appears to her and informs her that she has been favored and she will have a son.  She asks how this is possible and the angel tells her the Holy Spirit will come upon her and she will conceive.  If you do not understand the concepts of the virgin birth you need to read my lesson series on that subject.  I just told you that there are 70 verses that claim Jesus was the Son of God.  We must conclude that the Spirit/Word God became the Father of the man Jesus.  Therefore, the man Jesus was a product of the union between a natural woman’s egg and the Word of God coming from the Spirit that created all of creation with His Word.   Take note that if God can create a natural world by speaking words, it is a very small thing to get a woman pregnant by speaking the same kind of words.  Do you agree?   Let’s take a look at some things that Jesus spoke:

Joh 3:18  He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

Here in this verse Jesus speaking of Himself declares that His father was God.  Jesus claims to be the literal ONLY BEGOTTEN Son of God and that is a very important distinction to understand.  Earlier we saw that Michael was called one of several chief princes.  Clearly Michael was not a unique being.  Here Jesus clearly states that He is completely UNIQUE!  I’m not like Him, you’re not like Him, Satan is not like Him and Michael is not like Him.  Jesus is a one of a kind being God never having done this before.  So please tell me how a non-unique angel name Michael becomes a unique Son of God named Jesus?  Can you even try to make some new lies to explain that?  I pray that you are learning something.

Joh 14:9  Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father?

What did Jesus just say in this verse?  Can you see it?  This verse is only understood if you know who Jesus really is.  If Jesus is not God in the flesh then Jesus just lied.  Jesus looked in the faces of His disciples and told them when you have seen me, you have seen my Father.  How can this possibly be if His father is not God and He is not His Father?  Go back to the law of mathematics again.  Jesus just said “Seeing Me = Seeing Jesus”.   Then Jesus literally says “Seeing Jesus = Seeing My Father”.   Therefore Jesus was claiming to be the same creator God in the flesh.  This is not rocket science people, can you see it?  Let me show you some other important verses that Jesus spoke:

Joh 5:17  But Jesus answered them, My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.

Joh 5:18  Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God.

Jesus just made a statement to the Jewish leaders and said that what He did was equal to what His Father was working.  Jesus had just healed a man on the Sabbath and this upset the religious minded people significantly.  However, that was not the final straw.  They heard these words that Jesus just spoke and realized that He had just said that He was equal to God and now they really wanted to kill Him.  Did you understand that?   Jesus said literally “My Father Works” and “I Work”.  That is a very clear reference to equality.  You cannot find any verse in the Bible that declares any angel to be equal to God.  That would include Michael, Gabriel and Lucifer and every other unnamed angel.  No angel is an equal to their creator.  Only the creator Himself can be called an equal.  Let’s look at one set of example verses to help confirm what I am teaching:  Look at these two verses very carefully:

Mat 4:6  And saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.

Mat 4:7  Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.  

Here in context is Jesus being tempted after being forty days in the wilderness without eating.  The temptations are coming from the angel Lucifer also known as Satan.  The name Satan simply means “adversary”.  So Satan had become the enemy of Jesus.  In verse 6 Satan has just tempted Jesus by asking Him to cast Himself down off of a high place.  It would be like you standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon in Arizona and Satan telling you to jump.  But, did you notice what else was said?   Satan a chief prince said it is written that if you jump “He will give His angels charge over you and in their hands they shall bear you up and save you from the fall”.   Wow that is a strong statement?  Who is the He that will give His angels charge”.  It is not Michael even though Michael has angels under his command.  If Jesus was Michael here His response would have been totally different to this statement.  Did you notice what Jesus said and who Jesus claimed to be here?  Jesus quotes an Old Testament verse that says “Don’t tempt the Lord your God”.  Jesus was looking at the face of Satan saying I am your Lord God, why are you tempting me?  I think that is pretty clear that Jesus is not an angel and never was an angel.   I could just continue with many other verses but I’ll end with this one:

Mat 12:8  For the Son of man is Lord even of the sabbath day.

Here we have Jesus personally making another statement about Himself.  Jesus calls Himself the “Son of Man” but then He also follows that name by calling Himself the title of “Lord” and that makes it very clear who He was claiming to be.  Michael is never called Lord by anyone, in fact if you read in Revelation 19:10 when John sees an angel and falls down at his feet the angel rebukes John and tells him not to worship him, because he is a fellow servant with John.  God’s Angels and Christian humans are called “fellow servants”.  What was Michael?   Was Michael not an angel of God’s also?   If Michael is an angel like the Bible says then Michael is a fellow servant with me and not my Lord.   If any angel was ever guilty of calling himself Lord it will be Satan and he will be cast in the lake of fire for his lies.   Only the God in heaven is ever called the Lord hundreds of time in the Bible.   God has no problem with calling Himself LORD as is His right.   This is what Jesus just did with His statement of being the Lord in Matthew 12:8.

Jesus never claimed to be anyone but God.  Jesus never claimed to be a former angel.   Michael never called himself Lord but Jesus clearly called Himself Lord.  Jesus clearly claimed to be unique not conceived like any other human but the Bible says Michael is not a unique being.  Only Jesus can claim to be the “Son of Man” and the “Son of God” and both be true.  I believe I have given sufficient evidence in the Bible to establish that Jesus was not Michael in the pre-incarnation spiritual dimension.  I believe that we can see Jesus and Michael both being mentioned in future prophecy of Revelation and each have their own distinct roles and responsibilities.  Michael is clearly just a warrior angel of God.  He had a spiritual warring role in the book of Daniel to get Gabriel through to the earth with a message and we can see another example of him warring in heaven and casting Satan down to the earth in Revelation 12.  The role of Michael has not changed from Daniel to Revelation.  Michael was created to be an archangel and he has not departed from that role and he will remain in that role.

Can we now agree that Michael is not Jesus?  Can we agree that Jesus is God?  I could have given you many more scriptures but that was long enough for time spent on this type of question.  I have spent two whole days writing this Bible lesson and it took away from what I was working on for a month.  I hope I helped someone to understand the truth of the Bible and may it will help to point others to the one True God Jesus Christ.  I pray that God will continue to bless you, until I get the next lesson completed.

Is the Rapture of the Church Really Found in the Bible? Rapture Basics in Intelligent Design – Part 3

(Ver 1.4)  This is Part 3 in a series of advanced spiritual Bible lessons on the important subject of “Is the Rapture of the Church a Bible Truth”.  If you have not read from the first lesson I would highly recommend that you go and start your study review with “Part 1” and then continue in succession until today’s lesson.  I have been going through the steps for building a firm doctrinal foundation for the Biblical subject of rapture.  In the last lesson we explored 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 to begin our discovery process to what God was teaching the early church on the subject of being “caught up”.  The Greek word “harpazo” was correctly and clearly translated as “caught up” in this verse and this Greek word is just a synonymous term for the modern English word “rapture”.  We further explored at least 6 historical rapture events recorded in the Bible to verify that being “caught up” was not a fictional or manmade concept but it was given to us by God as a standard pattern in the Bible starting in Genesis and going all the way to Revelation.

As we have discovered, not every historical rapture event reported in the Bible was both physical and spiritual but still every example fulfilled the pattern for the sovereign display of the power of God to take a man suddenly out of the world.  Each of these recorded rapture events that I mentioned from the Bible were the divine intervention of a sovereign God that interrupted the normal course of human events for the selected few that were affected.   We learned several important lessons from these examples.  For example, we can clearly observe that when these events transpired, that the man selected by God was removed from the earth while all others remained on the earth to be left behind.  We can further learn from the study of these men taken up that each was considered to be righteous and not evil in the sight of God.  Every person recorded in the Bible that has already been raptured was a righteous man in good relationship with the almighty God.  I could not find where God takes up an unrighteous man from off of the face of the earth as a historical pattern.  If you know of one that I missed you are free to tell me about it.  From what I have seen all those that were taken up by God had the normal course of their life suddenly and instantly translated by divine designed interruption.  These are all very important patterns to apply and remember.  God will not take everyone in the next scheduled rapture event either and God will only be focused upon the righteous people as is revealed in these great Bible patterns.

From the six recorded historical rapture events we have found in the Bible, three were very clear examples of living breathing men leaving the earth in complete unified body and spirit form.  These three men were Enoch, Elijah and the risen from the dead Lord Jesus Christ.   We of course know that Jesus going up was different from Enoch and Elijah since Jesus had tasted death first but was then resurrected back to life before He went up to heaven in Acts 1.  It is important to distinguish this difference since Enoch and Elijah never tasted physical natural death and they were both taken up by God as they were walking with God like we who believe in rapture soon will be also.  We further know that neither Enoch nor Elijah had any power or control over what transpired.  However the Lord Jesus Christ went up under His own control and power at His own timing, but He was also God.    Enoch and Elijah establish a pattern that teaches us that every living being does not necessarily have to experience natural death to be taken into the presence of God.  These three divine transportations from the face of the earth prove the concept of rapture is absolutely true and more than possible beyond any doubt in my mind.   We further saw two examples of spiritual transportation to heaven to view things never seen by human men and these two described experiences were Paul and Isaiah.  Finally, we also saw another human man named Phillip in Acts that was transported physically and spiritually from one natural location to another natural location on the earth.  All of these clear examples prove that another event just like those can occur by God’s selected design.  We have not talked about the book of Revelation or any future rapture events yet but we will get there as the Bible study continues.

A FRESH LOOK AT 1 THESSALONIANS 4:16-17

1Th 4:16  For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:

1Th 4:17  Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

Today in this Bible lesson I am going to do a few things very different than in the majority of my other Bible lessons.  I am going to attempt to go into more technical depth with the basic Bible rapture information found in 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17.  I plan to give you a brand new approach for Bible study.  This method will help you to see how I think about the subjects found within a Bible study.  I realize that not everyone is like me and I understand that completely.  We are all unique beings with differing life experiences, training, education and personalities.  So while I describe to you how I study the Bible I am not saying that you must be like me or you are wrong.  I hope that you keep this in mind as you read the rest of the lesson.  I will not attempt to promote my Bible Study method as being superior to anything that you do.  In fact after you read this lesson, please be brave to share how you study the Bible, I would love to hear about it in a comment.  My primary point here is that we all just need to study the Bible and if anyone can use anything from my methods and learn from them that is really great, but if you have another method that works for you then you be led by the Spirit of God and do it that way.

I believe that many people do not generally spend enough time when studying specific verses in the Bible.  I am going to focus today on 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 again to help some to learn that there is always more that we can get from reading the same verses over.  In fact, most of the greatest revelations that I have received from the Spirit of God has come only after I spent significant time reading the verses over and over and over again.  Sometimes after the 30th repetition of reading it slowly again, the Words on the page would suddenly come to life in my spirit and I would see something new that I had never seen before.   Even as I continue to meditate upon the verses and reread them I would again see something new that I had not seen before.  I have learned that God just works like this because humans are generally spiritual dull people requiring their minds to be renewed with the truth before being able to see what God is saying in the Bible.  It is also noteworthy to consider that because of the extreme intelligence of God, He is able to say significantly more in a few words than any human can say writing an entire book.  Usually this mind renewal process is not a onetime read it and we got it type of miracle.  Even if someone has a photographic memory and can immediately quote the verse that they just read does not mean that they understand what it said completely in their spirit.  You can even teach a parrot to quote the Bible but that bird will not understand what he is saying   I hope you understand these principles because they were very important points that I have learned from experience.

Let’s examine these Bible verses in 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 and extract the primary stated nouns, verbs and adjectives.  This is actually a very good first step in any Bible study.  If you have never done this I would suggest that you put this into your study habits.  It will help us to be more detailed oriented when reading and it helps us stop at each word and consider why God has placed this word within the text.  Also, in doing this it will help explain how these words selected by God fit into a new way to study the Bible that I use constantly and I’ll talk more about this later.  A noun is a person, place or thing and is usually tangible in nature, recognizable within the 5 sense realm, but not always.  There certainly exist many intangible nouns beyond the 5 sense realm of the natural senses.  A verb is a part of speech that expresses existence, action, or occurrence and it is usually connected in relationship to the stated noun part of the sentence.  Finally, an adjective is a word or phrase of descriptive quality that modifies any given noun in the sentence.  An adjective almost always limits the qualified scope of the noun definition by providing us with specific descriptions, attributes or qualities of the specified noun.  I am going to give you a list of what I found in these two verses and I would like it if you would see if you can agree with me on these.  I certainly realize that I am not a perfect man and that I do not know everything so I am open to correction if you have very strong sound evidence for your belief and understanding of the these subjects.

 VERSE 

  ADJECTIVE 

  NOUN 

  VERB 

16   Lord Descend
16   Heaven  
16   Shout  
16   Voice  
16   Archangel  
16   Trump  
16   God  
16 Dead In Christ Rise
17   We  
17 Alive   (In Christ) implied    Caught Up 
17   Them  
17   Clouds  
17   Lord Meet
17   Air  
17   We Be With
17   Lord  

This list is certainly not every word identified in the verses, but I believe that they represent the major subjects, actions and descriptions being communicated.  Being a detailed person I like to consider the words like “the”, “and”, “with”, “in” and etc., but including all of these in this study would make the lesson considerably longer.   Correct Bible study involves much deeper digging beyond a simplistic one time surface reading and this is what I am attempting to demonstrate to you today.  I personally believe that one of the next steps to correct Bible study is for us to look up each original language word definition in a good dictionary like “Strong”, “Thayer” or others.  I have found from experience that Strong appears to be a good word definition source however I do not consider it a perfect book without errors or at least certain human bias.  For example, Strong names the natural land of Israel “Palestine” in many of its definitions and I disagree with that.  There has never been a nation of “Palestine” that I know of.  Strong may have had a good reason for doing this, but I have not found it yet and it seems to promote the modern Palestinian view that the land of Israel does not belong to the nation of Israel.  I will point out that when Dr. Strong published this book back in 1890 the nation of Israel did not technically exist until 1948 when they were again given parts of this land area and reestablished as a nation.   Therefore when the concordance was published he could have viewed this land as the land of Palestine even though that nation did not exist either.

I have found 16 major nouns and some of them are used more than once like “Lord” and “we”.  I have found at least 5 distinct verbs of described accomplishment or action.  The adjectives are mainly two words that are describing two different types of Christians, the physically dead and the physically alive.  To study this completely we would need to look up the definitions of every word in the original Greek language to insure our understanding is complete on the word’s usage and translation into English.  I do this to protect the accuracy of the translation and in doing this I have discovered many mistakes that the translators have made.  If you have not ever looked up the definitions of these words in a dictionary like Strong’s, I would strongly suggest that you spend the time and do it before continuing to read. I simply will not go into that level of detail on every word to keep this lesson from growing into a longer book form.

I will point out a few key words that are important in verse 16.  The Greek word G2962 translated as “Lord” means the supreme one in authority and can only be a reference to Jesus Christ.  Therefore Jesus is at the beginning of this described future event.  The Greek word G2597 translated as “descend” means to come down and we are told the originating location for the descent by the Greek word G3772 translated as “heaven” the abode of God as one possible rendition.  So far in this event we have the risen spiritual Jesus from spiritual heaven descending down towards the physical natural earth.  That represents two realms of existence and a transition between them taking place.  I’ll skip the “trump“, the “archangel”, the “voice” and the “shout” for now.  Let’s go down to the Greek word G3498 translated as “dead” and you will find that this Greek word G3498 means a literal corpse.  The next primary verb is the Greek word G450 translated as “rise” literally means to stand upright again.  Thus we have Jesus coming down and the corpses arising up.  These are very descriptive words and I do not understand how or why people explain them away but they do.

Let’s quickly review some of the other key words found in verse 17.  The Greek word G2249 translated as “we” is just a plural form of the personal pronoun “I”.  Therefore God’s usage of this word “we” represents a group of more than one.  We of course are not given a number of people in this group and it could be an open ended quantity anywhere from 2 to more than we could count.  Did you ever think about the term “we”?  What is it that allows many separate individual people to be grouped into a single named pronoun entity?  The answer to that question is they all must have something in common together or they are not a “we”.  Also notice that the writer’s usage of the term “we” includes “me” the author of the letter.  Paul was clearly including himself in the category by using “we” or “us” and not “them” or “they” which would have excluded Paul.  Who are all of these “we” people and what is it that all these individuals in this “we” group have in common in this verse with Paul the writer?  The answers to those questions are found in the adjective that follows the pronoun.

The next key word G2198 is used as an adjective description for the preceding pronoun “we” and it was translated as “alive”.  G2198 literally means “to live”.  Clearly we are observing the stated contrast of verse 16 the dead corpses from the living bodies of those that are described to “live” here on the earth in verse 17.  Always attempt to place what you are reading in any verse within the context of the surrounding verses.  This is just a general rule of sound Bible interpretation.   Then notice that Paul was obviously alive when he wrote this letter, so he was including himself in this group of living and excluding himself from the group of corpses previously mentioned.  However, that is still not sufficient information for us to conclude who Paul was referring to as the “we” in this sentence because of the “and” word that connects the additional point to the description.  This next connected subject was the word “remain”.   Who remains, who left and what does that mean?  The Greek word G4035 translated as “remain” literally means those “left behind”.  However this “remain” can only be clearly understood correctly within the context statement of the preceding verse. Verse 16 clearly speaks of the antithesis of those alive in verse 17.  In verse 16 Paul writes about those that were not only “dead” rising but then speaks why they rise because they were also “Dead-In-Christ”.  The “Dead-In-Christ” must have already departed the earth to be present with Christ Jesus or the inclusion of the word “remain” would not make any sense to have been present in the sentence.  Can you begin to see how God says so much using so few words?  The wisdom of God is way beyond human ability to have written this text.  Notice that both verse 16 and 17 are clearly talking about two types of contrasting Christians.  One Christian group has physically died and spiritually departed earth and the other Christian group is alive and remains behind on the earth.

Finally the next key verb found in verse 17 after the stated adjective and noun is the Greek verb “harpazo” that we have already looked at before and it just means in context “to be taken up by force or external divine power”.  This is just not that complicated until you listen to deceived people that are trying to explain it all away using satanically inspired human reasoning.  Satan attempts to use people to help others see things that are not being communicated in the verses, but the Holy Spirit will always point us to Jesus and the truth.  We have just spent a very short time reviewing some of the key words found in the text, but certainly not everyone.  I hope and pray that you are getting the idea of how to do this for yourself.  I would much rather teach you how to fish than just give you a fish to eat in my lesson.  I know I have said that before, but not everyone has read every lesson that I have published.

What should the next step in the process of correct Bible study?  All of these steps are open to debate, but my next step is usually to explore the Bible for where else each word is used in the Bible? I would recommend that we need to exert effort to discover God’s usage of each of these selected words in the verses we are studying to insure that God does not redefine the word in any other verse of the Bible.  I have discovered that God’s definitions are always true and man’s definitions are always wrong.  Also by examining the word usage we can have a greater confidence and a more complete understanding of the entire subject being discussed.  Only by examining every word usage can we be assured that what we are teaching and believing is correct.  Simply by ignoring just one key verse on any subject from the Bible, that lack of information can leave us void of the complete truth omitting the key elements of the topic.  I pray that you realize that many times a partial or incomplete truth is more deceptive than a complete or total lie.  Not balancing every scripture on a subject will cause someone to think they believe the entire truth when they do not.

I certainly understand that the number of times any given word is used by God can make the research of the subject more complex if there are a great number of references found.  For example, the Greek word G2962 which is translated as “Lord” is found in well over 600 verses of the N.T. alone. That is a bunch of verses to read for any study.  However, if you have any doubts to who this “Lord” represents in 1 Thessalonians 4:16 then you need to do that study to resolve any conflicts in your mind that it can be no one else but the God/Man Jesus Christ.  If after reading all 600+ verses and still not being able to confirm that this word references Jesus, then I would suggest that you get saved and get to know Him personally for yourself before you come back and study the Bible.

Some words in the Bible are used very frequently and that truly makes them challenging for us to go and read every occurrence.  I suggest that if the word usage is less than 100 verses that you take the time and read them all.  If it is used many more than 100 times then that is probably more time than you have to spend.  I guess it depends upon your effort that you wish to devote.  I have found the harder I work the more I am rewarded with finding good things that I did not know before.  Take the Greek word G2597 translated as “descend” in verse 16.  It is found in 80 verses of the N.T.  Many times it is translated as “come down”, “came down”, “descended”, “and descending”, etc.  In reading all of these verses it seems very consistent what it means and it helps us to understand the word in relation to the Lord noun being described coming down from heaven.  Perhaps you do not know where heaven is stated to be in the Bible?  That would be an excellent question for you to answer in your word search.  You are probably not going to find the answer directly in the N.T. but it is stated clearly in the O.T. in Isaiah for example:

Isa 14:13  For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north:

We should be able to see that Satan is being revealed to make a statement about the placement of the throne of God in a realm called heaven.  Satan is obviously on the earth looking up and telling God what he will do to ascend up to raise himself above all the other angels (symbolic stars).  I also take it that the direction given is very relative to the direction of this throne and heaven.  North is the only stated reference to a physical direction, but even this is relative to the position of the earth during the earth’s tilt and cycle around the sun.  I personally believe that this is just a general direction of where heaven is revealed to be, since I have no proof for this location other than what the Bible says.  Therefore, I am not going to fight over it, if you choose to disagree with what I just said.  I will give you one other verse that appears to confirm what I just said about the location of heaven:

Psa 75:6  For promotion cometh neither from the east, nor from the west, nor from the south.

As you can read every direction given is where “promotion” does not originate from.  Which direction is therefore implied to be the source for a human’s promotion?  It is obviously from the north again.  If you read the context of this verse it is clearly speaking about God’s location being the one that raises up one man and lowers another man’s position on the earth.  Therefore God the judge is stated to be seated in the North.  We could go into other verses, but that is not a primary part of the rapture message even though it helps to establish which direction He will be coming from.

Take the Greek word G3498 translated as “dead” in verse 16.  Here is a fascinating word that can teach us a lot that is found in 123 verses of the N.T.   But, interestingly enough this Greek word is consistently translated as the same English word “dead” in every single one of them.  That is a tremendous rarity to find in so many translated verses.  Normally a Greek word can be translated into several different English synonymous words and some of them might be a stretched application for the given verse.  However, in this Greek word translation example, we can be more confident that “dead” literally means “dead”.  By reading all of those other verses, you will discover that this Greek word is almost consistently used to describe the physical death of the natural body.  However, that is not actually true in every word usage found in the entire New Testament.  This becomes a clear example of why it is so important to read every verse to expand what this word can apply to.  Take for example Matthew 8:22 where Jesus is speaking to a young man and tells him “let the dead bury their dead” when asked if it was permissible for him to go and bury his own dead father.  Here we have an important revelation of two kinds of dead being described in a single verse.  Since it is impossible for physically dead people to bury physically dead people Jesus had to be speaking of a new type of death and I call this the spiritually dead people in the city burying the physically dead people that have died naturally.  I know this presents some brand new challenging information for you to deal with in all of your Bible study verses.  However, that is what is necessary to learn when studying the Bible.  What we have just observed is a very basic Bible fact that the same Greek or Hebrew word can be used to describe both a spiritual truth and a physical truth and we need to be able to determine which it is or we will be confused.  That becomes a great challenge for us in rightly dividing the Word of Truth to determine which realm is being referenced in any one verse (2 Tim 2:15).  We can normally do this by examining the source statement closely within the context of the surrounding verses.  I hope you understand this point that I just taught you.  It is a major stumbling block to many carnal Christians when they read the Bible seeing all of the words as being natural references only.

It is a good basic rule of interpretation to take the Bible literally first and then seek to understand it as being non-literal only if there is a major conflict for a literal revealed truth.  Since Jesus was literally speaking about a real funeral service of a literal dead natural man, these are easy to accept as being literal interpretations and not symbolic references.  However, when Jesus tells the young man to let the dead bury his father, this departs from natural logic and can only be a symbolic spiritual reference to people that are clearly implied not to be like Jesus or the disciple.  This is one of those types of verses that one needs to see what is implied but not directly stated.  Jesus did not volunteer to go and help bury the dead father, Jesus is implying that he is not dead physically or spiritually.  Since Jesus did not tell the young disciple to go bury his father, Jesus was implying this man was not dead physically or spiritually.  These are just very basic ways to look at scriptures correctly dividing spiritual things from natural things to understand what was being stated.  I truly hope that you understand this concept because this will be repeated in so many other verses and subjects of the Bible.

I’m not going to go through every word in these two verses, but I will go through one more as an example of what we should be looking for.  The Greek word G3507 translated as clouds in verse 17 is only found in only 22 other N.T. scriptures.  That is a very manageable number of verses to go and read them all slowly and in-depth.  I have discovered that sometimes the fewer the verses a word is used in the more likely they are to all be linked together for a greater divine purpose.  This Greek word literally means cloudiness or a cloud and it is translated this way consistently in every example verse that contains it.  It can be either singular or plural but that is really not that important.  I personally believe that almost every one of these verses has something to do with the rapture but I do not have the time in this lesson to expand upon them.  We will get to as many of them as we can in future lessons as I am led.

If you have not done this research with all of these words, I would suggest that you stop reading now and using your Bible search program go look up and read every verse with every word being used in these verses.  It would take me a great deal of writing to do that, so I will allow you to do it on your own and if you have any questions or comments with what you find, you are more than welcome to add them at the end of this lesson as a comment or question and I will attempt to respond as quickly as possible.  Keep in mind my list of nouns, verbs and adjectives because I will be referring to these as I continue with a new perspective on Bible study.  Let me quickly review a list of my basic Bible study steps.

  1. List every significant word and designate it to be a Noun, Verb, or Adjective.
  2. Using a dictionary look up the words found in the original languages to insure your understanding.
  3. Search for every occurrence of every word in a verse and read and study them to see how they fit into the entire subject being studied.

BASIC BIBLE RAPTURE CONCEPTS FOUND IN INTELLIGENT DESIGN

I am going to attempt to reveal how a former computer programmer logically thinks in simple black and white terms while observing the intelligent design found within the complex system of information found within the written Word of God.  I believe that God is the author of the entire Bible and that it was written down in 66 different books in a period of time over 1500+ years by 4o different prophets of God.  I further believe that God is supreme in all wisdom, knowledge and understanding.  I also believe that God is an omnipotent eternal Spirit.  Therefore I believe that the Bible contains the superior thoughts, actions, words and descriptions spoken by the superior knowledge, wisdom and understanding of the supreme Spirit of God.  Perhaps you have never thought of the Bible as being a very large complex system of divinely designed information.  However the existence today of hundreds and even thousands of church denominations in the world prove that few in the church agree with God on what the truth actually is in the Bible.  Did you notice how I phrased that last statement?  I did not say many do not agree with me or you or any other human opinion.  I said many do not agree with God.  Only God is true and everyone else is just potentially ignorant or confused.

The Bible is a book containing easily read natural plain text word data but still not very many can agree with what these simple words actually mean.  Why is that?  I believe that this failure to agree is largely based upon man’s introduction of their own “Human Opinion” or as it is referred to in the Bible, man’s “Private Interpretations” (2 Peter 1:20).  Private interpretations are defined as “Self” defined meanings completely separate from God’s intended purpose.  Ever since the Bible was created this has been man’s greatest weakness of not knowing the truth.  What Christians do not realize is that within the plain text words of historical accounts, genealogies, laws, commandments and instructions are found hidden threads of complex spiritual truths about a spiritual world that we have never seen or experienced fully yet.  The Bible contains such great detailed hidden spiritual information about this reality, but the carnal mind will never be able to see it or understand it while reading the Bible.  Most of the spiritual meaning is cloaked or covered beneath layers of parables, symbolism, allegorical content, Biblical typologies and many other methods that God uses to hide the information from plain natural view. Becoming spiritually “born-again” is the beginning to the process of obtaining the spiritual eyes to grow in mature spiritual “understanding” of the truth of God.

I want to ask you, do you believe that the Bible is a divinely created “Complex System” of information?  I guess the answer to that question should rest upon the definition of what a complex system represents.  So I’ll change the question to, what exactly is a “Complex System” and how should it be defined?  I believe that if you live in this world you are surrounded by a countless number of manmade and God created “complex systems”.  Whether God created or man created the complex system each has the same patterned characteristics.  Perhaps you have never thought about these concepts before and how they relate to the Bible.   We are surrounded by complex systems still there are a wide number of varying opinions to what a complex system represents and how it should be defined.  Rather than give you all of those varying opinions, I’m going to just stick with my viewpoint and tell you what I think about the subject based upon my experience and observation as a former computer professional.  I normally do not give out my opinion on things but I am going to make an exception for this discussion today.  You see by me giving you my opinion I am violating one of the main rules of Bible interpretation that teaches us we should not “privately interpret” anything.  I do hope that you understand that every opinion is nothing but a personal theory which is just another phrase for a private interpretation based upon ignorance of the subject under discussion.  However, since I have had vast experience with large scale computer system design and construction since the 1970’s, I feel that I am a bit more qualified to give an expert opinion on the subject than many others.  Please extend me some patience as I attempt to expound through a complicated subject.

Let’s start by looking up the antonym for the word complex.  If you do this you will find that the opposite of “complex” is the term “simple”.  By far the Bible is not a simple book.  Yes, the Bible has some simple statements in it, but I would strongly suggest that you go and read the books of Revelation and Daniel and find out how many mysteries you encounter on every page that cause you to scratch your head.  I find nothing simple about either one of these books.  There are so many Bible teachers teaching a completely different message from them that it is truly ridiculous.  I have concluded that the Bible cannot be considered a simple book and if you have read all of my other Bible lessons you should easily agree with me.  Let’s then examine the synonyms of the term “complex” and learn from those.  According to the thesaurus the term “complex” has some of the following synonyms:

  1. Multifaceted
  2. Compound
  3. Composite
  4. Multipart
  5. Intricate
  6. Multilayered
  7. Many-sided

Wow, I really believe these words describe the Bible very accurately.  Think about what they say and then attempt to apply them to what you know about the Bible.  Now permit me to define the term “system”:

sys·tem/ˈsistəm/

Noun:
  1. A set of connected things or parts forming a complex whole,     in particular.
  2. A set of things     working together as parts of a mechanism or an interconnecting network.

We can learn a lot by reviewing word definitions.  The term “system” implies something that is complex by definition.  The term “system” means that which is found to be in multi-parts.  Is that the Bible? The Bible is 66 separate books written by 40 different humans.  Therefore this information alone causes the Bible to be a system of information.  A system is a set of connected things and the Bible is definitely a set of connected books.  A system is a set of lesser components that comprise a more complex whole purpose and this also describes the Bible precisely.  For example how many subjects are mentioned in this book?  There are so many different subjects that it would be very challenging and complex to attempt to list them all. .  That makes this book a clear complex system of different components of information designed designed by an intelligent author to teach us. I really pray that you are beginning to see this already, but I’m going to go into it in more detail to help you..

Based upon my personal experience as a computer system operator, programmer and designer, I believe that a complex system is first any observable set of components that were created by an external intelligent source of thought, design and construction.  I further see that every complex system is created for a very specific given purpose.  No useful complex system exists today in the world apart from external intelligent interaction and purpose.  Did you hear what I said?  I will probably get some disagreement from some potentially deceived individuals, but since they cannot provide any proof for spontaneous intelligent design construction by random chance, I will stick with what the Bible says about God creating everything that we can see.  You see “spontaneous design construction” or as some ignorant people call it “evolution” cannot possibly occur.  Evolution is increased complexity that had to come from a much less-complex set of random components without any intelligent design to assist.  This belief in evolution violates the second known law of Thermodynamics.  This law teaches us that everything around us is in a state of decay which is the reverse or antithesis of the addition of a force and intelligence necessary to form it, cause it to be or make it become complex.  The second law of thermodynamics is a study of entropy.  Entropy is the measure of the degree of randomness or disorder of a given system.  What that teaches is that a complex system is anything that is more ordered than it is random.  We could also say that a complex system is anything with a much greater degree of non-randomness by external intelligent design influence.

Ok, so the laws of thermodynamics just gave us a pretty good introduction to what a complex system represents.  From that I believe I will give you my definition for a system in the relationship to a book like the Bible.  The Bible would represent a complex system because it contains a collection of intelligent non-random words with organized designed purpose for every part to contribute to the greater complex whole.  In other words since the Bible is not random word patterns on a page and can be used easily by any person with a basic education, it is a system of related parts of information and by definition a system.  Let me give you these points one more time:

  1. The Bible exists only because of externally influenced higher intelligence
  2. The Bible is not a random collection of unrelated words
  3. The Bible was written in distinct parts
  4. Every Word of the Bible has a specific designed purpose
  5. Within the books of the Bible is contained many multiple layers, parts, subjects, etc.

The substance, laws and organizational non-random structure found in our own universe did not suddenly appear from nothing as many ignorant college professors and school teaches would like us to believe.  The organization of a system from chaos or randomness would violate the laws of thermodynamics.  Just the existence of a vast expanding universe proves beyond any reasonable doubt that someone of greater ability external to this known system caused it to exist here.  This simply states that a designed system with rules and laws cannot create itself nor could any force within the system have created the system.  Randomness never creates non-randomness.  Dis-order never creates order.  This is really not that complicated, but so many get it easily mixed up with people’s words that are trying to deceive you.  The existence of a complex system simply means someone external to the system was the source of origination.

The universe is very much like a modern computer system.  A computer system is a complex machine with many organized laws, components and structured building blocks that all work together to fulfill a greater plan and purpose.  The existence of a working computer system proves the existence of an external computer designer, a computer builder and a computer programmer that cannot be found to be physically present within the computer system.  No one with any intelligence would look at a computer and believe that it just evolved into being present on the earth.  Therefore, since I believe that the universe was created by God and if the Bible was also originated from this same God as is declared (2 Tim 3:16), then I believe that the Bible qualifies to potentially be another complex system of recorded information created by the same external greater intelligence.  The existence of one complex universe system pattern helps to establish the existence of another complex Bible system pattern.

I believe that the size of a system plays a major role in the complexity of the system.  From what I have observed the larger the system is, usually the greater the complexity of the system.  Let’s go back to the universe system example created by God.  The universe is such a vast complex system that it can only be imagined to its total size, its full content, its type of individual components, its understood composition, its total mass and its actual past point of origination.  Scientists are still today constantly discovering new facts concerning the known parts of the universe surrounding us.  In my humble opinion based upon just the size of our universe alone we all need to open our eyes to embrace the existence of a much greater intelligent creator being.  Many agnostics and atheists will reason against me, but I still stand with that belief since I have personally come to know Him for myself.

I think I will expand the definition of size and help you to see that not all created systems need to be light years in expanse in order to be complex.  The system can still be considered complex depending upon the number of components and sub-systems discovered in the system.  You see I view the human body to be a very complex system within itself.  Within this one system of very measurable size and weight are smaller immeasurable components called cells.  There can be millions, billions and even trillions of cells within the many parts of the human body.  Many have estimated somewhere between 5 and 50 trillion cells in the human body.  Wow, that makes our bodies a very complex system all by our self.  Take the human body system and underneath this main system there are many sub-components containing subordinate systems and objects with each being made from individual cells.  For example we have the neurological sub-system object, the respiration sub-system object, the digestive sub-system object, the circulatory sub-system object and on and on I could go.  Each sub-system can have further divisions of several layers of individual object components, like the heart, lung, kidney, stomach, etc.  The level of complexity can get very great.  We could transverse the entire human body system all the way down to the individual cell level, molecular level and even add in the very complex DNA system object components that are a complex system by themselves.   The existence of the human body system objects with so many interacting sub-object components working together for the single greater purpose and good of the whole object represents external intelligent design.  Truly the human body system is an ordered arrangement of functioning designed components and systems.  Any complex system lacking non-randomness or chaos is a very strong indicator of intelligent design and this proves the existence of a greater intelligent designer.  Of course I am referring to God as the design engineer and creator for the human body object.

I have just introduced you to another factor for the definition of a complex system.  A complex system has other dependent subordinate complex systems within it.  Systems within systems, systems depending upon other systems and all working together for a greater purpose, how can we even get our minds around all of this?  Maybe you do not understand this statement yet.  Let’s examine the created universe system again.   If the universe is a complete complex system as I believe it is, how many other systems also exist within this system and would our universe still exist in the same form without every single one of these being present?  I told you I was going to get really deep in this Bible study to cause you to think today.  One basic rule of intelligent system design is that the designer never adds anything that is unnecessary for the completion of the whole given purpose.  In other words what I am teaching is that in any well designed system every given observable component has a specific purpose even if that purpose is not fully disclosed or known.  The universe system can be divided into a multitude of galaxy systems and the galaxy systems can be further divided into a multitude of solar systems.  The earth resides within the Milky Way Galaxy system.  The sun that the earth revolves around is just one star of around 20 billion others in our galaxy alone.  Therefore, scientists generally do not have a clue to how many galaxies exist in our universe since they do not even know how many total stars there are in our single galaxy.  Wow, is that cool or what?  God created such a great place for us to exist in.

Our planet’s solar system is just one complex sub-system found within the greater universe system.  Let me ask you this question and I want you to really think about it.  If our solar system did not exist would the universe still exist in the same form and for the same purpose?  I do not believe that it would.  Let’s shift back to the computer system example that I was talking about previously.  Any large scale modern computer system is comprised of many designed dependent sub-system components.  Every sub-system component is essential to the entire process or it would not have been included in the design.  Many of these sub-system components are so critical to the whole process that the designers have built in a factor called redundancy.  Redundancy just means if one critical part of the sub-system fails another part of the sub-system takes over until the whole sub-system can be repaired to full working redundant capacity.  The existence of redundancy within many critical computer systems proves that the omission of any single sub-system causes the design of the whole system to fail.  Thus the failure or elimination of even one sub-system without redundancy will be catastrophic for the working of the whole greater process of the system.  If you think a manmade computer system is different than a God designed complex system of the universe you are a very deceived individual.  Man was created in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:26) and what God does a man can only do on a smaller scale.  There is nothing new under the sun.

In any complex system in order to begin to understand it, one must be able to break down the whole information into lesser manageable components and sub-components.  Many times people get the complex Bible truths mixed up because they are missing the basic spiritual fundamental details that are spread out in specialized hidden designed formats in the Bible.  Any complex system with intelligent design should contain the ability to be analyzed and broken down into smaller manageable pieces that first need to be understood.  By understanding the smaller core pieces and parts we can more quickly learn about the more complex interactive purposes and parts of the entire system.  What I am trying to teach is that there are methods to learning the Bible and that these methods conform to known modern intelligent design procedures.  I am talking about a basic of life concept found all around us.

For example in order to correctly fix an automobile you better understand how it was built.  An automobile is a complex system with many dependent lesser complex systems working together to get the user to a desired location.  The automobile system has a cooling system, a power system, an electrical system, a transmission system, a braking system, an air conditioning system and many others.  In the car example the failure of the AC system will not stop the car from functioning.  This is a bit of a departure from what I said earlier.  However without an AC system the driver might die if they are going through a desert in the summer.  If any system of a car fails, someone needs to know what they are doing and how it works in order to fix it.  If you don’t believe me go and take apart your car’s transmission and see if it will ever work again.  God wrote the Bible using defined intelligent design principles and if we are to understand these words we must approach studying the Bible with the same level of intelligent analysis methods.

I am going to conclude this Bible lesson with a very deep application of mathematics and computer concepts and how they relate to the Bible.  If you are not into either one of these subjects this discussion might be less interesting to you because of the new level of complexity that I am introducing into an already complex subject.   I believe that God created these concepts such as math and computers for us to learn, use and to apply.  Every part of creation has a purpose just as every word of God has purpose.  Math and computers are certainly a part of God’s creation so they have a purpose whether you understand them right now or not.  Even if you have never studied these subjects you might just derive some added benefits if you attempt to learn some of the basics concepts for what they mean.

In 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17, I introduced you to a new concept based upon the laws of mathematical sets but I never revealed to you why I was giving it any significant emphasis.  I am going to continue to reveal my behind the scene logical thought process for what I was teaching in the first two lessons.  Let me give you a quick definition for a mathematical set.  A mathematical set is a grouping of related well-defined but distinct individual objects with common characteristics or features.  A set is a very similar concept to the definition of a system in many regards.  An object is either an abstract or tangible “noun” that can be practically anything that is perceivable or observable.  If you noticed, I just connected us back into the discussion the subject of “nouns” that we listed at the beginning of this lesson.  A tangible object noun is like a man, a city, a tree, an animal, a fork, a car, or whatever.  An abstract object noun is like an idea, a thought, a spirit, or an emotion, etc.  An intangible object is anything that is not perceived by the five natural senses and this is why I included the noun spirit.  However, a spirit can also manifest and be seen or felt within the natural realm as is recorded in the Bible.  In those instances the intangible spirit becomes a tangible object.

From my list of nouns in 1 Thessalonians most can be considered tangible objects.  God and Lord of course are generally intangible since no one can prove His existence with their physical senses.  Of this list of given nouns, how many are qualified to be sets or groups of related individuals or things?   That is probably a new complex question to think about?  Hopefully you can see that “we”, “them”, “the dead in Christ”, “the alive in Christ” and the “clouds” are all words that have both plurality and commonality.  Thus these nouns being more than one yet can be referenced with a single noun, qualifies the group to be a mathematical set by definition.  Do worry, not every Bible study that I do will contain this level of detail.  So do not get discouraged if you are having any trouble following it.  Do the best you can and learn what you can and more understanding will eventually come.

Both intangible and tangible objects can be grouped together into a single named defined set based upon any known and well-defined relationship or characteristic.   For example, a group or set of related objects would be like a set of universal cars or automobiles.  This universal set might include every automobile ever created if so defined.  Each automobile in the set can be a unique object (noun) alone but they can also be grouped together into a new greater set because they share many common characteristics and features becoming a new named object (noun) maybe called “Universal Automobiles”.  That brings up a new set consideration called sub-sets.   A sub-set is just a smaller more well defined set of the larger more general set of car objects.  That brings us into the world of “adjectives”, doesn’t it?  An adjective is nothing but a further subset limitation (division) of a larger defined noun set.  For example we can have a “Universal Automobile” subset of just “Toyota Automobiles” because all of the cars in this subgroup were manufactured by Toyota and share that common trait.   What if we created a subset called “Red Automobiles”?  Uh oh that brings a new wrinkle into the discussion that gets more complex.  Red Automobiles now cross over into every car manufacturer including “Toyota Automobiles”.  Therefore a Red Toyota Automobile is a common member of both sets.  This is where multiple subsets can potentially overlap each other and share common objects.  A single named object just might be found in common with multiple subsets and we need to at least be aware of this possibility when we read and study the Bible.    Do you understand sets yet?  Many have learned this in school and probably just consider this a minor review.  But, it gets more complicated than that simplistic introduction.

Let me review a few of these set laws that I have been going over very rapidly.  Each unique member object in a defined set will either be a totally separate noun object or another new subordinate subset object.  Every member object in a set or a subset is joined by the selected well-defined noun description or adjective qualifier commonality.  As long as this is true each member object can be legally included and named as one object in the set or subset.  However it is very important to note that one defined object does not exist multiple times in any one single set.  Also one member object does not exist in two different opposing separate sets.  For example, being in the “In-Christ” set is one of the common bonds that join every Christian that is saved together by God’s set definition.  Perhaps I did not give you enough scriptural information on Christians being in God’s set called “In-Christ”.  There are repeated scriptures written to the church that clearly state this fact.  This phrase “In-Christ” occurs around 27 times in the book of Ephesians alone.  But I will give you a few good examples to help establish the truth in your mind:

Rom 8:2  For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.

Rom 12:5  So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.

1Co 15:22  For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.

2Co 5:17  Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.

Gal 3:28  There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.

I am not going to go through every verse and explain them.  Nor am I going to attempt to give you every verse that says we (the church) are all in this mathematical set called those “In-Christ”.  However, I just listed some key verses that I felt were applicable to the topic discussion.  For example, look at the first verse found in Romans 8:2.  This verse declares a new spiritual law of life that opposes the old law of sin and death.  In effect God is revealing two sets of opposition.  I believe that these are those in Christ verses those out of Christ.  Then notice how in Romans 12:5 and Galatians 3:28 that Paul is clearly stating that we as many separate individuals are now referenced to be one “In-Christ”.  Those were mathematical set laws being stated whether you presently understand them or not.  Many times in the Bible God will say some of the most profound things in passing without any given explanation to what was just said.  I hope that you can see the stated fact that all Christians today are in the God defined set called “IN-CHRIST”.

Let us consider that there are multiple defined sets in existence in the Bible.  I personally believe that any plural noun reference in the Bible is a defined set.  We certainly all know that the O.T. nation of Israel is a predominate set of people described intimately in the Bible.  This set of people excludes every other person not of this natural nation.  Therefore the people not in this natural nation of Israel were another set called “Gentile”.  One set was in covenant with God and the other set was not.   If the saved church is now defined by God to be in the “In-Christ” set, where were we found to be before we were added to this new group?  Uh oh, maybe you have never thought this way before?  Theoretically we could have been in no other set but I rather believe that we were in either the set called “Gentile” or “Israel” which included everyone.  I personally believe that everyone in the world is in a defined set found within the Bible.  Determining the set is another new complex study.   However, I just alluded to this fact in the last paragraph when I reviewed Romans 8:2.  I believe that those now found “In-Christ” came from an unstated set of those that were “Out-Christ”.  Don’t start picking up any stones to throw at me yet, I’m not done.

You must understand that if God can name and define one set that there is no limit to the number of defined sets that God can use for His purpose. Please allow me to introduce you to a new important concept.  There is a very popular law of Bible interpretation that I call the “Law of Antithesis”.  This law states for every directly named truth in the Bible there exists an opposite truth position by unstated implied antithesis.  It is very much like reading about the subject of light and knowing that the opposite of light is the absence of light and that this is called darkness even if it was never directly mentioned or referenced in the verse it still exists somewhere.  In other words what was stated as truth for light in the verse, the opposite is implied to be truth for the unstated antithesis darkness.  Do you understand opposites?   In our current world there will always be opposing forces; evil opposing good, death opposing life, darkness opposing light, drought opposing rain, storms opposing calm and we could go on and on.  This antithesis fact came as a result of the choice that Adam made in Genesis 3 when he allowed the evil to enter the world after God had created everything in a state of being called “very good” and warned Adam not to do it.  Notice what God created as a set of “very good” and from what Adam chose a new set called ‘evil” entered into the world of good.

Antithesis truths are a very common binary computer concept.  Every computer in the world is a binary machine.  What is a binary machine?   A binary machine is one where the basic most simplistic unit of definition can only be one of two states of opposite.  The lowest and simplest form of every computer device is called a “bit” unit.  A bit is the rudimentary binary computer element that is assigned either one of two opposing force settings.  A bit is either defined as a 1 (one) or as a 0 (zero) thus a computer is called a binary machine.  However, modern computers are comprised of millions, billions and even trillions of these single bit binary units. These simple single bits can be combined and grouped together to form larger and more complex number concepts and objects such as bytes, words, double words, etc.  However the basis of every computer is still a simple solitary unit of either one or zero.  Combining multiple bits only facilitates larger binary numbers to be formed.  For example, an 8 bit binary number can be anywhere from 0000000 to 11111111.  These represent the numbers from 0 to 255.  In order to make larger numbers you must add more bits for more 1’s and 0’s.  This binary concept corresponds to a simple toggle switch that can be turned on or shut off.  Therefore, a bit is nothing but a binary electronic switch.   The laws of antithesis and computer binary concepts are very prominently featured within God’s intelligent Bible design.  Keep this information in your mind as we continue to study the subject.

In this discussion a mathematical set consisting of many individual objects can also be considered a complete self-contained object within itself as I alluded to earlier when discussing the set “In-Christ”.  Therefore using mathematical set concepts we have an important idea of many individuals being viewed as a collective named one.  The many being named as a one is another very popular concept found throughout the Bible and I pray that you are beginning to understand it.  The nation of Israel was many people but only one named wife to God in the Old Covenant.  The church of the risen Jesus Christ is also many people but still one named bride in the New Covenant.

I am taking these well-known mathematical facts and transferring them into my Bible study.  For example I taught you about the existence of the mathematical set of saved believers that God called those “IN-CHRIST”.  Every individual believer when they believed and accepted Jesus into their hearts to make Him their personal Lord and Savior enters into this common single object group having left their previous unnamed antithesis object group.  This set transformation is a single individual exiting or departing from a former set of many entering into as a new individual a new many set called “In-Christ”.   What I just described is God’s definition of marriage if you did not put that together yet.   When a man marries a woman, they both leave their former family sets to be joined together to become a new family set that never existed before and God defined them to be a new one (Genesis 2:24).  It is critical that you understand this simple but profound information.  Do you recall that I gave you 2 Corinthians 5:7 in my list of “In-Christ” verses?  What did that verse say?  It said if any man be “In-Christ” he is a new creature and the old things have passed away.  That verse teaches us set transition is possible with God.  We can leave the old set and become a member of a new set that never existed before called “In-Christ”.

By the defined existence of the saved group called those “IN-CHRIST” God has indirectly implied the presence of another unstated antithesis group of unsaved people in the world that we could call those “NOT-IN-CHRIST” or the “OUT-CHRIST” object group or set.  I hope you understand the concept for Biblical antithesis truths by now.  God teaches us by using a named noun set that there is a limitation to the scope of the objects in the named set.  If it was as the Universal Salvationist’s try to teach us that all will be saved, God would not have needed to create a named set called those “In-Christ” that excludes those that do not qualify.  No, I’m going to say this one more time that the existence of those that are “IN-CHRIST” clearly reveal the existence of those that are “NOT-IN-CHRIST”.   Jesus taught us these unstated concepts of set truths repeatedly in the Gospels using the wide path and narrow path example, the sheep and goat example and the wheat and the tare example.  All of these were single named symbolic sets with two opposing sets of many individual member objects.  Every parable mentioned was a binary teaching concept where only two states of existence persist.   Therefore sets and binary concepts are a prevalent themed subject in the Bible even if you never thought of them in these terms before.

I taught you previously that underneath this common set called those “IN-CHRIST” are two separate divinely defined sub-sets that I will call the “DEAD-IN-CHRIST” and the “ALIVE-IN-CHRIST”.   As you recall any set of collected objects can be sub-divided into further defined object groupings based upon selected and further defined commonalities.  In this case being dead or alive physically determines which sub-set you are currently in and if you are reading this lesson I will tell you that you are in the “alive” sub-set.  This is a major component to what God is teaching in 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17.   Try to understand how I arrived at the existence of these sets and then consider the existence of the antithesis set “OUT-CHRIST”.  Logically speaking, if the “ALIVE” and “DEAD” subsets exist within the “IN-CHRIST” set then the same must also exist in the “OUT-CHRIST” set.  These are all new concepts for you to grasp today.  All of these concepts conform to the mathematical laws created by God and are easily recognizable when you apply the laws logically to the scriptures.  If you do not understand basic Algebra, Geometry and math concepts you probably do not understand much about how I arrived at these conclusions.  Let me give you a quick picture diagram of these concepts that I have just given to you.

I probably do not have many readers that really understand computers and especially object oriented programming (OOP) concepts but I do know that I have a few that read my lessons that do.  This diagram shows a hierarchy of related objects.  OOP is not something that is required to understand the Bible but I have found that it is a good subject to know if you can grasp the complex ideas.  You see in modern computer programming there is a similar concept like math sets and sub-sets called objects.  An object in computer programming is a thing that performs a related set of defined tasks for the greater purpose of the system.  We’re back to talking about systems again.  I am still linking together all of the concepts using related titles and named entities to teach how these concepts overlap.  You see we are again speaking about one complex system within another greater complex system.  The computer that a program is running on is just one greater complex system and the application sub-system designed to do the corporate accounting runs beneath the computer system.

If you were programming a banking system in OOP, an object might be a single customer of the bank, or even one account of the customer of the bank or any other related defined banking noun.  Generally speaking programming objects are always nouns that have verb activities associated with them called methods or actions.  For example any customer object can change their address, create a new account, make a deposit, make a withdrawal, make a payment or perform any other normal banking activity. These are all verb actions performed by a banking object noun.  An object can also possess defined attributes.  A defined attribute is just like a descriptive adjective.  It is interesting to note than almost any adjective can also be a noun.  For example, a banking customer object will probably contain their name and address information as well as their date of birth, sex, tax ID and other pertinent personal identifying information.  Attributes of an object clearly identify the object and make it unique from other types of the same object.   I just tied into the discussion OOP the round trip with the beginning noun, verbs and adjectives from 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17.  Can you see how all of these concepts are coming together yet?  We have gone from systems, to sets and now to objects and each possess the same characteristics and basic features.

So with every associated programming object we have a unique noun named entity that can perform specific things and be described with details that cause them to be unique from all other similar noun objects in the set.  I’m not sure how detailed I should get with this but I will teach you about another OOP concept called a class.  Every computer object is created from a class that is used to define the object its features and its designed actions.  While every object of the same type can be unique they are generally all created from the same class definition.  Therefore a “class” is nothing but a blue-print pattern used to create the unique noun object.  Wow, that is a God kind of realization if I’ve ever heard of one.  Patterns are a basic truth found in every part of the Bible.  Objects being created from class patterns are another basic reality found in every part of the Bible.  What I am doing is teaching you of the existence of God’s intelligent design concepts found in His Word using naturally created patterns found all around us.

One more complex concept found In OOP is that one object can inherit characteristics and features from another object’s class.  For example, a cell is a common human body object that is shared within almost every human component or object.  Therefore in the human body system we could have a basic cell object that every other system objects inherits from.  The complexity of object definition, object commonalities and object interaction can get very complex especially in a very large system like the human body.  Why am I teaching computer programming concepts and methods?  It is primarily because I see these complex concepts repeated by God in the Bible.  I am praying that you can see how your Bible is a very large complex system containing both antithesis and related word objects that I will call God’s Bible subjects.  These subjects have defined attributes, characteristics and limitations that I call “adjectives”.  These God given defined Bible subjects also can perform certain designed actions that I will call “verbs”.  All of these interact together with each other in a highly complex intelligent designed manner to achieve the greater message purpose revealed in the Holy Bible.  This is one of the central features of the Bible that makes it unlike any other created book ever conceived or written by a human.  It clearly demonstrates the characteristics of extreme intelligent design beyond the human capability to produce or even fully understand and when you see it, it proves the existence of a very intelligent author.

Let’s talk about the Bible object (subject) called man (Hebrew word H120 in the Strong’s).  I of course am using this term man to include both natural males and females in a generic object I could call “Mankind”.  Under this object type we could sub divide it into two specialized object types called the male and the female objects using the naturalistic perspective view.  Here is where I want to emphasize a change in your Bible perspective to include the spiritual viewpoint.   When you read the Bible looking at only the words from a natural perspective you will find only natural truths being communicated.  The spiritual truths are generally found within the same verses but deeper within the text than on the surface.   Perhaps you do not understand how one verse can project multiple or simultaneous messages.  If you do not understand this then you have probably not read and studied the Bible for very long.  I can read a verse that I have read for hundreds of times and suddenly in my spirit I see something that I had never observed before and the meaning is suddenly very clear now.  Explaining how you missed it before is a total mystery to most Christians.  What happened to cause this?  How can one person see something in a verse that the other person reading the same words cannot see? The answer to those questions is called God’s revelation or revealing of the words so that someone can finally see what was written there on the page from the beginning.   This fact is the main reason why God had to “reveal” the Old Testament to Paul and the other disciples even though they had read or heard the words all of their lives.   The New Testament has many, many quoted Old Testament verses with God’s explanations of what they finally mean.  One of my greatest frustrations is when people quote me Old Testament verses and they have not researched the New Testament information that explains them.  I run into this more often than I would like to admit.  When I try to tell them what the New Testament says, they close their spiritual eyes and refuse to be open to what God is saying.  The only thing that I can do after that is pray for them like Paul prayed for the church at Ephesus in chapter 1 of Ephesians.  Paul prayed for God to open their spiritual eyes of their understanding.  Go read this prayer and find out that Paul asked God to give them the revelation of Jesus Christ.  “Revelation” is God uncovering the words on the page so that they can be finally clearly understood.  If you have not prayed that for yourself, then do it!

Instead of a natural viewpoint let’s change the human object type “Mankind” into defined spiritual sub-divisions like I did in the previous diagram.  When confronted with Bible subjects I prefer to look at things from a spiritual God perspective first rather than from a natural human perspective.  We should understand that God is a Spirit and that God is the author.  When we try to look at the words from the perspective of how God looks at the words I believe that we come closer to seeing the truth.  There are probably not very many Bible teachers that would agree with me since so many are carnally minded.  One spiritual sub-division or object type of man would be the “IN-CHRIST” saved type of man.  We can clearly see from the Bible that not every human is in this defined object noun set.  This only leaves those that are not saved in the “NOT-IN-CHRIST” object type category.  Both the “IN-CHRIST” and the “NOT-IN-CHRIST” objects can inherit common characteristics and features from the greater “Mankind” object or class pattern.  However each new object type can also implement new individual characteristics or properties that are only common and in effect with the other named object types that are derived from this same object class pattern.  For example the “IN-CHRIST” object will be defined with a “SAVED” property and the “OUT-CHRIST” object will be defined to have a “LOST” property.  You just never know what you might learn when you read my Bible studies.  I try not to get this deep in most of my lessons but sometimes I believe that is just good for me to make you think outside of your box.

If we take this object lesson up the ladder from the “Mankind” object this human object that was created by God will inherit all of their spiritual characteristics from their creator class according to Genesis 1:26.  Mankind made in the image and likeness of God causes the man object class to inherit from the greater spiritual God object class but the spiritual God object class inherits from no one else being supreme.  That is until the Jesus Object class comes along and He inherited from both the God object class and the Adam/Man object class equally to become a new God Man.  I really believe I shock people sometimes because they do not think when they read the Bible.  Only Jesus was 100% God and 100% man.  Only Jesus called himself the Son of God and the Son of Man.  Only Jesus was a unique product of the naturally created and the divinely spiritual.  Only Jesus was qualified to save us by inheriting from two separate opposing natures.  If you disagree with what I have said you are free to be wrong and I will not argue with you.

Ok let’s move down below the “IN-CHRIST” object in the linked diagram.  We learned in 1 Thessalonians 14 that the IN-CHRIST object has been sub-divided by God into 2 binary antithesis subsets. These two were the “DEAD-IN-CHRIST” and the “ALIVE-IN-CHRIST” and both of these are unique qualifications that allow each to be treated differently by God at the rapture event.  Both of these object groups inherit common characteristics from the greater “IN-CHRIST” saved object type which inherits from the greater “Man” object class which inherits from the greatest “God” object class.   Understand the basic quality of the two groups of “DEAD” or “ALIVE” are speaking of the physical natural death or life respectively and not a spiritual feature.  The “In-Christ” object must contain the quality of spiritual eternal life already based upon what Jesus taught in John 3:15 that whosoever believes upon Him would not perish but have eternal life.  Right there Jesus is speaking about all those that are either physically alive or physically dead that believe in Him will have spiritual eternal life.  Therefore placing the verse in the proper context will align the words with those found in the saved “In-Christ” class.  It further goes on in John 3:15 and states that those that do not believe are those that “perish” and again this is a universal quality reserved for the “OUT-CHRIST” class of objects beings.   This is not good news for these people.

Let’s discuss in more detail the differences between the “DEAD-IN-CHRIST” and the “ALIVE-IN-CHRIST” objects.  The “DEAD-IN-CHRIST” objects must have a change of classification with the departure or the separation from their natural physical bodies.  The “ALIVE-IN-CHRIST” objects are still physically here on the earth and they remain present in their physical bodies.  The “DEAD-IN-CHRIST” objects have experienced natural death while the “ALIVE-IN-CHRIST” object types have not.  Once the naturally dead Christian departs they cannot die physically again.  Also both subsets are spiritually alive but one is in the body while the other is not in their body.  Using basic logic I have concluded that these two object types must also exist under the “OUT-CHRIST” object.  This is not rocket science we know saved and unsaved people both physically die by the story that Jesus taught in Luke 16.  However the departure from the body of the unsaved object will result in a much different location change to that of hell and not heaven like the “DEAD-IN-CHRIST”.  It is also interesting to note that the “ALIVE-OUT-CHRSIT” object types still can get saved and be changed to become an “IN-CHRIST” object and this results in a different future destiny completely.  The “DEAD-OUT-CHRIST” objects do not have any further opportunity to be saved once present in hell.  Maybe you can see why I like computer programming and why I can see things like this in the Bible.  If not don’t get upset at me, just keep learning whatever you can accept.  There are many other more complex things built into object oriented programming but I will not get into any of this in any more depth so that I do not totally bore anyone else that does not understand the importance.

Why have I spent so much time describing noun, verbs, adjectives, systems, sets and objects?  I use these complex realities whenever I study the Bible.  I read a verse and I analyze the words and then ask what are the objects given by God in this verse?  I then think why does this object exist?  Where did this object come from?  What does this object represent?  Does this object inherit any characteristics or features from any other Bible object?  Is this object a set or sub-set?  Does this object fit any known patterns in other verses of the Bible?  How does this Bible object differ from other Bible objects?  What features are presently in common and which features are unique?  Also remember that an object is just one member in a set.  How did the set get created?   How do members come to exist in that set and what are the benefits or pitfalls of being a member of that set?  We could finally determine, does this object have an antithesis related object?  So many questions to ask and I just really broke the surface of them all.

According to 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17, rapture is a select activity performed by God which is reserved for a well-defined subset of objects within the greater set of all human beings.  In order to qualify for rapture described in these verses the individual must be found in the given set that will meet the requirements.  This teaches us that those not raptured are excluded from the event being described.   From the 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 information we are given only one very specific set that qualifies for rapture in the description.  This set that qualified for the rapture was the “ALIVE-IN-CHRIST” believers and it excluded everyone else.  Everyone else not raptured were in the sets called the “DEAD-IN-CHRIST” and all members in the “OUT-CHRIST” set.  The “DEAD-IN-CHRIST” did rise bodily but since their spirits were already present in heaven they do not qualify for rapture (harpazo).  Please notice in these verses that there is no mention of those outside of the set of “ALIVE-IN-CHRIST” being taken up and off of the earth at this timed scheduled event.  That is a very important detail to consider.  Learn from what the Bible says and then apply correctly what it does not say also.  Selective and exclusionary rapture is a pre-established pattern found in the Bible found in the lives of Enoch, Elijah and Jesus.  These were all taken up and all of the others on the earth were left behind to remain.  This is a very key point to distinguish.  Not everyone is going up in this prophesied event being described in 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17.

I totally believe that I have blown the minds of many of my readers.  I will conclude this lesson here so that I can allow you to think about the many facets of the information that I have presented.  If you like this style of detail you are free to tell me, but more than likely I will not go into this level of detail in the future on this subject of rapture.  In the next lesson I will attempt to get back to more of the standard types of Bible lessons that I have been doing for several years.  I just wanted you learn how I think and by doing this it might just help you to see why I write things in the style that I do.  Thank you for your time in reading and I greatly appreciate it if you would help point someone else to my website.  God Bless you until the next time I can get a lesson out.

If you would like to continue the study in this series on Rapture please go to “Part 4“.

Is the Rapture of the Church Really Found in the Bible? Introduction to the Basics – Part 1

(Ver 1.4)  This is Part 1 of a series of advanced spiritual Bible lessons on the subject of “Is the Rapture of the Church a Bible Truth”.  I honestly do not understand why this is such a majorly controversial subject but I can only think that Satan does not want anyone to know the truth.  There are generally speaking two categories of belief types on this subject.  These two groups can be divided as those that believe in a rapture event and those that do not believe in a rapture event.  Why anyone would not want to believe in rapture, I do not know.  I think it would be like someone not believing in salvation.  But, we have a very significant number of people in the world who call themselves Christians that do not believe in a rapture event.  Then we have other people that believe in a rapture event but with contradictory predicted timings for the event.  Therefore the believers of the rapture can be further divided into three sub-category group types.  That leaves us with Christian rapture beliefs generally falling into 4 differing realms of categories.  First, there are many Christians that believe in a pre-tribulation rapture event.  Second, there are definitely some that believe in a mid-tribulation rapture event.  Third, there are some that believe in a post-tribulation rapture event.  Finally, the fourth group is those that simply state that there is no rapture event ever revealed in the Bible.  Based upon these wide ranges of opposing beliefs we can easily conclude that many Christians are obviously deceived in the church today.  I mean using only basic logic and probability outcome reasoning we can easily understand that the existence of 4 such diverse positions cannot all be the truth.  Technically speaking all four position groups could potentially be in error and God’s truth could remain in still another category option 5 labeled as unknown, undiscovered or unrevealed.  We must always be open to the reality that God’s truth needs to be discovered or we will potentially miss it while we stagnate in our current belief.  Hopefully you can understand that the greatest enemy to knowing the truth is the belief that you have already discovered it.  Here again are the four major belief categories concerning current known rapture beliefs:

  1. Pre-Tribulation RaptureThe belief that the church will be taken up prior to the initiation of the 7 year period of time called the great tribulation.
  2. Mid-Tribulation RaptureThe belief that the church will be taken up in the middle of the 7 year period of time called the great tribulation.  The Tribulation period will last for 84 total months and somewhere around 42 months the church will be taken up from the earth.
  3. Post-Tribulation RaptureThe belief that the church will be taken up immediately following the end of the 7 year period of time called the great tribulation.
  4. No RaptureThe belief that the church will remain on the earth during the tribulation.  Under this belief there are also several contradictory beliefs to what will occur to the church during the 7 year period known as the great tribulation.  But I left them all in one group category for now.

As you should be able to see from the list of group types, they can be divided into two basic opposing antithesis beliefs of those that believe in a rapture event versus those that do not.  Then as stated earlier those that believe in a rapture event can be further sub-divided based upon the expected occurrence of the event all surrounding the timing of the great tribulation revealed in the book of Revelation.  We may also discuss in this series of lessons that the no rapture believers can be sub-divided into various details of what they believe will occur while they are here on the earth. There are probably at least 3 variations of beliefs in the no-rapture belief camp.  In this series of Bible lessons we will attempt to explore every known belief and give reasons why each can either be confirmed or rejected as the truth.   You see every sound Christian belief should not have any major contradictions in the scriptures when all verses on the subject are rightly divided and interpreted.  God is the central author of the entire Bible and we should be smart enough to understand that God does not ever contradict Himself.  If we believe that we have found a contradiction then we do not understand what is being stated.

Each side in this argumentative debate claims that the other sides are the ones deceived. Each side can also further claim that from their perspective if we could only clearly see the accuracy of what they are teaching from the Bible that we would be transformed to know the truth.  Everyone can use the same argument to defend their points and this is the way that God designed the Bible to allow men the right to be wrong.  Do you see the problem here?  What is truth?  Why can’t everyone see it?

WHY ARE THERE SO MANY DIFFERENT CHURCH BELIEFS ON RAPTURE?

Did you ever ask yourself why there are so many diverse interpretations of the Bible being taught by Christian churches on not just rapture but every subject found in the Bible?  Atheists have a field day with that one bit of controversial information alone claiming this proves that Christianity is a foolish approach in life to take.  Why are the Christians so divided lacking any harmony or unity in their beliefs?  We really need to seek the truth and resolve why it appears that God has instigated a system of confusion in the modern church age.   The early church did not start out in confusion but they also began in a much smaller number of 120 believers in the upper room being all in one accord (Acts 2:1).  Since the Bible tells us that God is not the author of confusion (1 Cor 14:33) there must be another explanation for why there are over 3000 different church denominations existing in the world today.  What caused the early church to drift from one body into a divided body?

The answer to those questions rests in us understanding the existence of Satan to deceive people and man’s carnally dominated mind that is easily deceived to believe in anything.  Wrong beliefs are proportionally tied to the carnal nature of the human mind.  The more carnally minded one is the greater number of wrong beliefs that are found to be present.  The more spiritually minded one is the greater number of right beliefs are found to be present.  Which type of Christian are you?  Are you a very carnal Christian or a very spiritual Christian? Usually people are somewhere in the middle of those two ranges in a state of transition, hopefully growing more spiritual.  Everyone that is a Christian begins as a carnal spiritual baby.  As they grow and increase in the Spirit of God and the knowledge of the Written Holy Word of God they progressively achieve a level of greater spiritual maturity.   I can usually look at your Facebook wall and tell very quickly where you fall in this range on the spiritual Christian growth chart.  The more you post or are focused on the natural things of this world the more carnal minded you are.  The more you focus on God the Father, the Holy Spirit, Jesus and the Bible the more spiritually minded you become.   Where is your focus?  It will determine what you can see and understand in the Bible whether you believe that or not.

In this lesson to begin we need to better understand the source for such diverse beliefs.  Why are there so many contradictions where one person can see something totally opposite in the Bible than the other person can say is so very clear for them to see?   I have observed this over and over in my experiences.  One believer sees the rapture event so clearly and another believer cannot see it from the same verses.  Why is that and how can we explain this phenomenon?   Can you explain that?  I’m not sure if I can explain it more clearly where you will easily understand it, but I will try.  Many people believe that there is a contributing factor of deception that is at the root of the problem.  I tend to agree with that belief.  But what is deception, why does it occur, who causes it and who can be deceived?    For example, the believers in the fourth category teach adamantly against the rapture beliefs found in the other categories calling them the false doctrine of “escapism” given to us from demons and Satan.  However, every other group proclaims that they are the only ones that are completely correct and all of the other groups are the ones that are deceived.  Every group has a basic set of scripture verses found in the Bible to help justify their positions.  However, it is very easy to take several verses out of context and explain others away as something that is irrelevant to their stated belief position.

Deception is a very complex subject.  No one that has ever been deceived knows or understands that they are deceived at any time.  If they knew that they were deceived by their enemy they would more than likely abandon that false teaching very quickly.  Many times hidden deception causes Christians to believe sincerely in their hearts that they are correct even while being sincerely wrong in their heads for what they believe.  Do you understand heart beliefs are based upon your current level of Bible knowledge?  Do you understand that you don’t know everything?  In order to be 100% accurate in your beliefs you have to have 100% correct knowledge of the Bible and no one that I know qualifies for that except my God.  Therefore, do you understand how wrong knowledge causes wrong beliefs?  We could also say that the lack of correct knowledge causes people many wrong beliefs.  The lack of correct knowledge is the main reason for what people ultimately say is the truth but actually is not.   Most people teaching untruths or partial truths are teaching them believing that they are not falsehoods.  This is why Christians need to confirm everything that anyone teaches by using what the Bible says with great precision and attention to every detail (Acts 17:11).  Never believe me or anyone else without you seeing it in the Bible to confirm what is said.  If you don’t see it then throw it away and keep moving forward with what you do see.

What I have just introduced you to in this section is the basic realities of the carnal nature versus spiritual nature of man.  Every human is born as a carnal person naturally into the world and Jesus taught us that it was a necessary requirement for every carnal human being to be “born again” (John 3:3) spiritually in order to enter into the kingdom of God.  The natural process of physical growth and maturity is given to us to teach us about the unseen spiritual process.  These repeated patterns of how the natural works can uncover how things in the spiritual realm work.  Spiritual growth is a very necessary requirement (1 Peter 2:2) according to God.  This spiritual growth process helps us to explain why there are so many different beliefs existing in the church.  Those that have grown in spiritual maturity can see things from a new mature perspective that a baby Christian cannot see or comprehend.  As it is in the natural it is also the same in the spiritual.  A 3 year old natural child cannot be found mature enough to make wise decisions on what to eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  Well the spiritual food of God’s word is the exact same type of menu choices for baby Christians.  Many baby Christians will fail to desire to eat their spiritual broccoli and steak in the Word of God.  Baby Christians will stick with a diet of macaroni and cheese, cake and cookie scriptures and unless they learn to eat other verses that will help them to grow up spiritually strong.  This is just how everything in the Bible works.

HOW TO CORRECTLY STUDY THE BIBLE ON RAPTURE

So which group of rapture/no rapture believer types do I choose to place myself?  I think I have already given several clues to where I stand and I’ll say “I stand with God”.  But, we will get into what the Bible actually says very soon.  I also want to say that I never start studying the Bible by choosing a position first beforehand and then searching the Bible to prove that position is true.  That is a very foolish approach to any correct Bible study.  You can actually prove anything that you desire to find from the Bible because of God’s intentional design of the verses to provide man the right to be wrong in their beliefs.  The Bible teaches us that the “carnal mind is an enemy of God” (Rom 8:7).  Since every human starts out as a naturally dominated person we were all once called the enemies of God before we were saved (Col 1:21).  God reveals to us in these two verses that man can have either of two opposing types of mindsets.  One mind type is called the flesh, carnal or natural mind (Rom 1:28, Rom 8:5, Col 2:18) and the other opposing mind type we can call the spiritual or supernatural mind (Rom 8:27, 1 Cor 2:16, Eph 4:23).  I seriously believe that these two opposing mind types are the root causes for why there are so many differing opinions on what the Bible means.  We can also read about these two mind types in this verse in Romans:

Rom 12:2  And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

Ok, here is a secret from God being revealed.  Why is it necessary for the human mind to be transformed and renewed?  Did you understand my question and do you know what the answer is?  I’ll tell you, mind transformation allows you to see the truth in His Word.   Take the Greek word translated as “transformed” (G3339) and look up the definition in the Strong’s.  It literally means “to change”, “to transfigure” or “to transform”.  Then think of the story in the Gospels of the transfiguration of Jesus on the mount with Moses and Elijah.  That story is an exact representation of what the Bible is teaching here.  You see the Greek word G3339 is only used in those two scriptures in the N.T.  We can find it being used for Jesus being changed into a supernatural being and you will find it here in Romans being referenced to Christian minds becoming the same type of spiritual being.  Go and read the story of the transfiguration, it is actually a great lesson to learn from especially on the subject of the rapture.  We will no doubt get there in this series at some time but probably not today.  Just understand the link between transformation and transfiguration and keep that in your mind that this is what is happening as you learn the Bible.

There is an implied requirement for the supernatural to be present and applied in order to cause this transformation event to occur, but I won’t go there today.  The Greek word G3339 definition also carries an association with a natural known process called “metamorphose”.  Do you know what that means?  Metamorphosis is a divinely created quality that is displayed in certain natural creatures like an ugly caterpillar being “transformed” into a glorious beautiful butterfly.  Wow, that metamorphosis is the process that God is describing to us that needs to occur in our minds.  God is saying “Take your old ugly carnal mind out of your natural gutter and renew it into the new beautiful spiritual way to think and learn to see what I have said to you in my Word”.   This renewal process is not an instantaneous one-time event.  You do not get zapped in your mind when you are saved and suddenly your mind can see everything in the Bible clearly.  The lack of the completed mind renewal process is the primary reason that a Christian does not see the truth in the Bible like another Christian sees.

God chose to write the Bible in a way to give His children the blessed truth, but He also chose to keep these important truths from all of His enemies.  How do you give one group the information that they need to know while keeping the information from another group using the same exact words on the page?  I mean that concept fascinated me for a long time before God showed me what He was doing and how that He accomplished this task.  I discovered that God uses a divine ingenious system of hiding information in the Bible.  How does any government today keep a message secret from all of their enemies while allowing their friends to read it?  They always write the message using a code.  But, that is not exactly what God is doing here.  You see the Bible is written in plain text words that are not encrypted to make them unreadable to God’s enemies.  Any enemy of God can read the Bible and try to figure out what it says.    I have alluded to this fact in many of my Bible lessons.  Even though the Bible is not physically encrypted the information in it is spiritually encrypted using natural plain text words with clever plain text methods of information concealment.  I call this God “Hiding the Truth in Plain Sight” and you can go and read some of these methods in that series.  But, what God has done is extremely intelligent and what He has spiritually hidden from our natural minds in His Word can only be revealed in our spirits after we are saved by His indwelling Spirit living inside of us.  This was a very clever method that God designed to keep the truth from His enemies and it is a very wise way to control access to important spiritual information.   God comes inside of us to help us to understand His own word.  Having the author of the Book on the inside is the clear advantage that we have over the unsaved world that will never know or understand what the Bible says unless they turn and repent.

Therefore, we must understand when we read and study the Bible that God intentionally designed it to prohibit the carnally minded human from observing what was intended to be revealed to only mature Christians.   I know that this statement is not going to go over well with everyone that reads it.   But, hopefully some will understand this explanation to why there are so many observable rapture theories in existence in the church?  I have such a wide range of readers from the carnal, the very novice new Christians all the way to the advanced mature spiritual Christian, so I try to explain things so that everyone can understand what God is doing.  At least I try to say things that can potentially help every group if they are open to receive it.  God gives everyone freewill to find whatever truth that they want to seek in His word, whether it is right or wrong.  For example, if you want to believe in abortion or homosexuality God permits you to find scriptures that justify in your mind the error of your beliefs, but He will eventually judge you for your foolishness.

If you do not understand spiritual maturity and spiritual growth then you will probably not understand why there are so many different variations of the rapture doctrine.   We are all born-again as infant baby Christians when we accept Jesus as the Lord of our life.  However, spiritual growth is not guaranteed.  A born-again baby Christian is usually one that is very sense realm, fleshy or carnally dominated in their thoughts, emotions and actions.  The opposite of a baby Christian is one that has grown to maturity and they are usually spirit and Word of God dominated and controlled ignoring their senses.  How do you grow up spiritually from one to the other?

1Pe 2:2  As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby:

We must drink the milk of God’s Word.  The milk represents the basic subjects in the Bible as revealed in 1 Corinthians 3:2 where Paul told the church I fed you milk and not meat because you were unable to handle it.  Paul was telling the church they needed to grow up spiritually and become meat eaters.  Just as a natural new-born child cannot eat any solid food, a new born spiritual baby Christian is unable to comprehend the deep complex subjects of God.  Meat subjects represent the complex Bible lessons like I try to teach.  God is informing us of the existence of many different levels of knowledge in His Word.  The rapture of the church is one of those meat subjects in the Bible and those that are milk drinkers cannot eat it or they will choke.  Now are you seeing why there are so many different teachings on the subject of the rapture?

PRESUMPTIVE ASSUMPTIONS USUALLY RESULT IN ERROR!

Presumption is one of the greatest errors found in modern Bible study.  Entering into a Bible study with any pre-established beliefs and predefined expectations of the truth will almost always cause all of the other perspectives in the Bible to be blocked from your spiritual view.  I call this type of Bible Study, “Tunnel Vision Bible Study” or “Bible Study Wearing Blinders”.  Do you understand what blinders are?  Blinders are placed on a horse or an animal to keep them narrowly focused.  It restricts the vision while forcing the attention on what is desired.  Well this is what is occurring in many Christians today.  Think of it like this; when a crime detective enters a crime scene they usually try to come into the situation without any prejudices or pre-conceived assumptions of the truth.  They should always let the evidence found on the scene point them to the truth and not the other way around.  Wow, do you understand why this is an important concept to apply to our Bible study?  Take a bloody crime scene with a dead body lying on the floor found with a gun their hand.  If an investigator came into the scene already looking for a specific cause for example assuming a suicide this approach would automatically skew or narrow their viewpoint with suicide blinders to ignore all the other possible murder facts.  If they came into the same crime scene with murder blinders on, they would automatically miss or omit any suicide truths staring them in the face.  These same principles apply to Bible study, if you come into the Bible wearing a set of “no rapture” blinders you will just automatically miss all of the relevant truths that might be presented on a rapture event and vice versa.

These are all very important statements of truth that I have just taught you, so do not ignore them.  A truth seeking student of the Bible must lose all of their prejudice and every pre-conceived thought of human knowledge and reasoning in order to be open to be shown the actual spiritual truth by the Spirit of God.  God says in His word “Your thoughts are not my thoughts and your ways are not my ways” (Isa 55:8).   Therefore entering into correct Bible study is us choosing to leave our old thoughts and our old ways behind us so that we can remove our blinders to see God’s superior ways clearly.  Too many times learning the real spiritual truth involves us unlearning some old carnal things that we only thought was the truth.  The human mind is very analogous to an empty pitcher for water concept at birth.  When we are born physically into the world we enter with zero knowledge of any truth.  Thus the baby human is void of all knowledge needing to be filled with correct information.  As we grow in knowledge the human mind pitcher fills with information both good and bad.  Take this analogy back to the “renewing” or “transformation” mind process described to us by God that we looked at earlier.  A major part of this renewal process is us taking out the old bad information to replace it with the new good spiritual information of God.    This would be like a person emptying a pitcher of the old stale substance in order to refill it with something new and fresh that is tastier.   What you once thought was tasty truth, is potentially blocking the Spirit of God from speaking to you to open the new truth to get it into your mind pitcher. Quit trying to mix the new spiritual word of God with the old concepts of the natural.   Just empty your mind of what you thought of this subject before and then continue to read and study this subject going forward.   When I started the study, I chose to empty my mind to what I thought about the truth and I simply prayed and asked God to show me His truth, no matter what it was.  Having this attitude allows the Holy Spirit to guide us into what we need to know.  As you continue to read this lesson I would recommend that you do the same.  Ask God to help open your mind to see what it is that you need to change or eliminate in order to see His spiritual truth.

IS THERE A RAPTURE FOUND IN THE BIBLE?

So since I have already done this Bible study and now I am simply writing it down for you to read, I can tell you that I am a firm believer in the pre-tribulation rapture event based upon many clear scriptures that I will use to teach how God revealed this to me.  This lesson will be what the Spirit of God showed me that the Bible says on the subject of “Does the Bible say anything about a rapture event”.  If you are open to His Spirit with a cleared mind He should confirm what I will teach you about this subject of the soon coming of Jesus Christ for the removal of the church.

I will begin this Bible lesson by agreeing “strongly” with the fourth group of “no rapture” believers that the word “rapture” is technically not found anywhere in the Bible.  However, the absence of a modern theological term in the Bible does not eliminate the underlying foundations of the ideas, the concepts, the principles, the patterns and the message behind the modern term.  Do you understand what I just said?  Let me try to rephrase it in case you missed it.  The non-inclusion of the word “rapture” in the Bible does not prove that the ideas behind the rapture are not clearly taught to us using other synonymous words, symbolism, types or any of the other methods of God’s authorship to encrypt or hide His spiritual information from obvious view in the Bible.  In fact now that I have studied this subject, I believe that you can find the concepts of the rapture hiding in the book of Genesis and proceeding all the way through the book of Revelation.

Why do modern theological terms and titles exist today like the word “rapture” if it is not found in the Bible?  Modern theological titles are simply given to complex spiritual subjects to assist the Bible teacher in teaching them.  By assigning a single name or a label to a subject it makes the subject more quickly understandable, more concisely communicable and infinitely clearer to what you are speaking when you teach.  Therefore, assigning a simple label is not a foreign concept but a technique that is found today in every wise teacher’s toolbox.   You can go into almost any advanced math classes and see them speaking of many terms that have been invented in modern times to help the student understand the complex subject being taught.  Take for instance the term “Analytic Geometry”, this terms specifies a specific type of the whole knowledge and restricts the course to only this information necessary to understand this subject.  This is not rocket science people.  That is all that the word “rapture” is doing by helping the teacher to restrict the subject discussion to a very specific branch of knowledge found in the Bible.  Don’t get distracted by the absense of the word “rapture” in the Bible to miss the most important concepts behind the word.

Take the concept of math again and find it in the Bible.  The Bible certainly contains math and mathematical concepts throughout the text.  However the word “math” is never found anywhere in the Bible.  Uh oh?  What are we to do here?  Are we to conclude that math is a false teaching originating from demons?  That is basically what people are doing with the rapture.  The absence of a modern theological word from the Bible does not prove that the doctrine behind the label is not an absolute truth.  If that was the case then the existence of the “trinity” would be another false church doctrine.  The existence of “demons” would clearly need to be eliminated from modern church teaching.  Any church teaching against “abortion” or “homosexuality” would also have to be removed from our church doctrines.  Finally, other eschatological concepts like the “millennium” and the “2nd Advent” would also need to be eliminated from all church teaching.  None of these modern theological words that I have just mentioned occur in the Bible anywhere, however God says a lot about every one of them in the scriptures using many illustrative and creative descriptions.

I’ve heard “no rapture” preachers teach several different variations to what they believe will occur.  Some say that Christians will be protected from the coming destruction on the earth during the seven year time of great tribulation like Noah was protected when God destroyed the world using a flood.  Others teach that Christians will be treated the same as all of the other people on the earth and endure the great hardship equally with the unrighteous people on the earth.  Some others teach that it is the evil unrighteous people that will be taken off of the earth and they call this the true rapture.  I find that that teaching very bizarre that God would rapture non-believers and leave the believers to kill them.  That teaching sounds satanic to me and I’ll bet Satan uses that one to help describe where all the righteous people have gone.  These teachers attempt to equate Satan’s persecution of the church to be corresponding to God’s judgment during the tribulation.  They try to say if the early church was put in prison, beaten and killed in the book of Acts then why, would we think that we are better than them now to not have to endure the exact same thing during the end of the church age.  However, I cannot find any verse in the Bible where God judges a righteous man.  I only see God as the deliverer of the righteous, our savior and our redeemer.   Then inversely I only see God as being the judge of the unrighteous in the Bible.  You do understand the difference between the righteous and the unrighteous, don’t you?   The primary problem with this logic is that the persecution of the early church was not the work of God.  Persecution in the early church was the work of Satan trying to keep the work of God from spreading.  There is a major difference in who is attempting to  bring death upon a man.  If it is Satan you can fight that and win, but if it is God, you are done for.  During the great tribulation it will be God judging the unrighteous and not the righteous and we will learn this as we continue to go through the scriptures.

RAPTURE DEFINED FROM THE DICTIONARY

Let’s begin by just searching for a basic definition of the word rapture and use that information to enlighten us for the remainder of this lesson.  Since the word rapture can be found in the modern dictionary the concepts behind the word must have originated from someone somewhere.   We need to understand what the word means in order to know what the possible synonyms might be that we need to search for in our Bible.  I went to the internet and found these definitions of the word rapture:

Rapture: The transporting of a person from one place to another, especially to heaven.

Rapture: The English derivative of the Greek word RAPTURO, which means “to be removed quickly.”

Rapture: The act of carrying, or fact of being carried, onwards; force of movement

These were three definitions that caught my attention.  I have found these concepts and definitions very interesting and informative.  It sounds like the old Star Trek show principle of being “transported” from one location like the surface of a planet up to the ship Enterprise orbiting above.  In this old TV show this process was being referred to as a type of “Beam Up” procedure or process.  I believe that this is the message being revealed and the concepts being observed in the definition of the word “rapture”.  If you have never seen the Star Trek shows that is really not a problem; however, just learn how the devil took a God concept to use it to make the Bible concept seem less spectacular, divine and more natural.  Let’s review quickly the Star Trek concepts of being transported up.  Here was a fictitious human machine that would take a person’s existence, life and body and instantly change their current location to a new 3-dimensional location.  However if you ever watched the TV show you will understand that the people being transported were never involved in making it happen.  The power of the machine that would transport a person was external and outside of the realm of influence of the human being moved.  In other words no human power was involved in making it happen.  In the Star Trek show the person that controlled the power of the machine in the star ship was the only one that could transport anyone from the surface of the planet.  This also means that this person in control of the machine could take out anyone, even if they were not expecting to go yet.  Why am I comparing a fictional TV show to the Bible event called the rapture?  I believe that whatever God has created or will do that Satan will try to pervert it, disguise it, and duplicate it to make it seem absurd.  Let’s look at another online reference found in Wikipedia to the rapture:

The Rapture is a term in Christian eschatology which refers to the “being caught up” discussed in 1 Thessalonians 4:17, when the “dead in Christ” and “we who are alive and remain” will be “caught up in the clouds” to meet “the Lord”.

Here we have found a reference to at least one scripture verse and we have another synonymous term to consider and place in our vocabulary.  So far we have “transport” and “caught up” and both of those are similar to the Star Trek concept of being beamed up to the ship.  There is a definitive implication found in the information in the definitions of the word “rapture” that it means a “taking of people by force or power” to relocate them physically.   Let me give you a list of possible synonymous terms that could apply to this basic foundational concept found in the word rapture.

  1. Transport Up/Out/Away
  2. Caught Up/Out/Away
  3. Taken Up/Out/Away
  4. Catch Away
  5. Gathered Up/Out/Away
  6. Seize Up/Out/Away
  7. Pluck Up/Out/Away
  8. Pull Up/Out/Away
  9. Extract Up/Out
  10. Convey Away
  11. Remove Up/Out
  12. Snatch Up/Out/Away
  13. Depart Up/Out/Away
  14. Ascend Up/Away

I believe these are all valid phrasings for synonymous terms of the word “rapture”.  I could use any of these phrases in place of the word “rapture” and the message would be interchangeable.  Why is it important to understand that there are so many ways to say the exact same thing?  It is primarily because God does this frequently in the Bible.  Using several different synonymous words is a great way to hide information for you to find.  You see many of the “rapture” critics believe it is a false teaching simply because they have not read any obvious scriptures to support it.  They claim that it requires at least 2 or 3 confirming scriptures to establish a church doctrine of truth and I totally agree with that statement.  However, two different witnesses in a court case can say the same thing using many different words and descriptions and both can be describing the exact same event from their perspective of view.

Let me give you a quick example of what I am saying.   When I was a young man walking home from high school as I usually did, I noticed two very young boys up ahead of me on the same side of the road as I was walking.  They appeared anxious and wanted to cross the street to get to the other side, but there were cars coming in both directions.  Suddenly one boy thought the street was clear as the last car on his side of the road passed by and started running to cross to the other side.  This child could not see what I could see.  I could see the oncoming car that he could not observe because of the car that had just passed on his side was blocking his view.  Well the oncoming car hit the boy and traffic immediately stopped.  The boy lay in the road badly hurt.  The driver that hit him never saw him run in front because he also was blocked from the children’s view by the cars in the oncoming lane.  Well everyone had a different perspective of the same event and everyone could be a witness to it in court.  But we would all be describing it from much different view points than the other witnesses.  Do you understand what I am saying?  God’s witnesses many times use different perspectives to the same events.  Because they are worded slightly different does not prove that they are not all accurate and that they are not all true.

We are going to have to use a level of intelligence to see that each witness is describing the same event even though what was said was not exactly using the same words.  I probably did not do justice to all of the possible synonyms for the word rapture.  If you can think of others that are also valid please share them with me and I will add them to the list.

BIBLE RAPTURE BASIC CONCEPTS

Since we have two basic opposition positions for the existence of a rapture event we need to learn what the Bible actually says on the subject.  Learning the very basic concepts of any subject always logically precedes learning any of the advanced information on the same subject.  So that is where we are going next with the rapture Bible study to find the simple truth basics.  Jesus taught us many of these basic truths in the Gospels, but we need to find them first, understand those second and then we need to learn how to apply them correctly to the subject of the rapture last.  I taught you in other lessons that correct Bible study is like a complex puzzle solving process.  Therefore, in order to view the correct big picture on the rapture subject we need to make sure that we have gathered, organized and put together all of the smaller detail type of puzzle pieces together correctly.  We will transition into fact gathering mode and not jumping into any conclusions at this initial phase of the study.   We are going to back up to view one of the very basic Bible themes taught by Jesus consistently first and then use that evidence to help our Bible interpretation of the existence of any coming detailed rapture information.  We are going to let the Bible interpret itself, before we decide if the rapture is not found in the Bible or attempt to place the timing of the rapture correctly.  What we will be looking for are hidden patterns in the statements of the Lord Jesus Christ.  If you do not understand the concepts of patterns then that is probably one reason why you don’t believe in the rapture.  A pattern is simply a description using words other than the direct mention of a subject but still conveying the general message of the subject. Let’s review some Bible basics taught by Jesus:

Mat 7:13  Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:

Mat 7:14  Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.

Here for example, Jesus makes a strong recommendation to everyone.  Jesus, speaking prophetically said that most of the world will choose to follow in a wide path to their own destruction and that only a few will find the narrow path that leads them to life.  Therefore we can clearly see the existence of two possible outcomes based upon the determining factor of the personal human freewill choice being selected.  These two eventual outcomes were either life or destruction and those that find life are not destroyed and those that are destroyed miss out on life.   But, let’s take that statement into context with what Jesus was talking about.  Jesus was making a clear separation between two antithesis groups of people/humanity.  Does this concept sound familiar?  Are you looking for rapture patterns? What exactly is rapture?  From what I have learned studying the subject, rapture is the taking of a select group of people from a larger group of other people that are left.  The raptured group’s results are much different than the group that are left.   What Jesus was describing to us here in Matthew 7:13-14 is the separation of the righteous from the unrighteous people in the world using a pathway symbolic analogy.  The righteous are therefore, following a path to obtain life and the other unrighteous are following a path to an end of destruction and death.  Uh oh?  What about that pattern?  Take that very basic scriptural information and apply it to the two main stated positions on the rapture.  The “Pre-Tribulation Rapture” group claims that the righteous will be taken out prior to all of the death and destruction about to occur in the 7 years of great tribulation.  The other group of “No-Rapture” believers primarily teaches that the righteous will be found to be present during the death and destruction being poured out on the world during the 7 years of great tribulation.   Which position or belief conforms more precisely to what Jesus was teaching us in the pathway illustration?   Are the righteous Christians, going to go through the great tribulation to experience death and destruction or are the righteous removed from the coming death and destruction to obtain their life everlasting?   Wow, I pray that you are awake!

Maybe we need to do a quick overview study on the book of Revelation first.  You see the horror, terror and death described to us in this book during this 7 year time period from chapter 4 until chapter 19 is so strong that it can clearly be associated with only mass destruction.  From how I read the book, I can see very few individuals during this time that will obtain this salvation or life.  Don’t misunderstand what I am saying; there is the mention of 144,000 witnesses and others that will be martyred in Revelation.  But I believe that these people that are mentioned are those that thought they were Christians but have been left behind and suddenly realized too late that that they were wrong.  Jesus actually teaches us another very important parable to consider, reflect upon and to relate into our study:

Mat 25:1  Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom.

Mat 25:2  And five of them were wise, and five were foolish.

Mat 25:3  They that were foolish took their lamps, and took no oil with them:

Mat 25:4  But the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps.

Mat 25:5  While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept.

Mat 25:6  And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him.

Mat 25:7  Then all those virgins arose, and trimmed their lamps.

Mat 25:8  And the foolish said unto the wise, Give us of your oil; for our lamps are gone out.

Mat 25:9  But the wise answered, saying, Not so; lest there be not enough for us and you: but go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves.

Mat 25:10  And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came; and they that were ready went in with him to the marriage: and the door was shut.

Mat 25:11  Afterward came also the other virgins, saying, Lord, Lord, open to us.

Mat 25:12  But he answered and said, Verily I say unto you, I know you not.

Mat 25:13  Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh.

This is such a great passage to study.  It has so many deep things from God hidden in it that it will amaze you when you can see them.  Reading the Bible is never studying the Bible, but studying the Bible does involve some reading.  One of the keys to understanding any verse is to look up the original language definitions of the words given.  This is a tremendous mistake to assume that you understand what a word means and then walk away with the incorrect meaning believing you are correct.  That is one of the easiest ways that deception can occur.  I actually want to talk about the last verse first.  This verse gives us a very basic truth.  Jesus said I’m coming but you will not know when I come.   Using this information we know that Jesus will return at a time that we do not fully comprehend.  Ok, using that information how can anyone say that Jesus will return for us at the end of the tribulation or at the middle of the tribulation?  Both of these belief positions are at pre-determined set times.  We understand that the total length of the tribulation is a 7 year set period of time.  This was called the 70th week of Daniel’s prophecy.  If the rapture occurs 3.5 years or 42 months after the beginning everyone would know when the rapture would occur and be ready for it.  That does not fit the parable does it?  The same is true for the post tribulation belief.  After 7 years or 84 months of tribulation everyone still alive would instantly know when the rapture would occur.  Both of these belief positions are very weak when compared with scriptures like the foolish/wise virgins.

My next point that I would like to make is God’s usage of one very specific Greek word that I found absolutely essential for us to see.  The Greek word G1831 is used twice in this parable in verse 1 and verse 5.  This word from the Strong’s definition has the following meaning:

From G1537 and G2064; to issue (literally or figuratively): – come-(forth, out), depart (out of), escape, get out, go (abroad, away, forth, out, thence), proceed (forth), spread abroad.

This is a very interesting Greek word originating from two other Greek words.  The first Greek root word means origin as in the point where motion or actions proceeds (from or out).   The second Greek root word means to “come” or “go”.   Combining these two words together gives us the possible meanings in the Strong’s definition as “escape”, “get out”, “go forth”, “go out”, etc.  Does any of this sound like the synonymous terms for rapture to you?  Isn’t that what the “no rapture” group is criticizing the other rapture believers for buying into the doctrine of “escapism”?  Any time you can escape from danger, peril, jeopardy, hazards, traps, evil, death or destruction you have been delivered from it.  I am not going to teach you the entire parable of the 10 virgins today, because I do not have that much time.  We are just going to look for keys and patterns to understanding the existence of the rapture in the Bible.

For the next point I would like to say that this teaching of the 10 Virgins by Jesus does not match with the previous teaching where Jesus said wide is the path and many there are that will go that way.  Therefore we are either viewing two different events or two different perspectives of the same event.   Here in this parable Jesus is again comparing two groups of contrasting people but here He divides them into two equal halves.  Therefore we do not have a direct match to what Jesus was talking about in the path analogy.   In the 10 Virgin Parable, both groups are called virgins and start out with the same identical oil and lamps, but 5 of them run out of oil and miss the coming of the Lord.  There is still a division that takes place between two groups, but these cannot be the righteous and the unrighteous.  I see this parable as speaking only about Christians and the saved church.  Christians are called the light of the world by Jesus (Mat 5:14).  If you read the book of Revelation chapter 2 when Jesus talks to the 7 churches He mentions candlesticks twice.  One mention in verse 1 is a symbolic reference to the 7 churches with each being a candlestick light to the world.  Then in Verse 5 Jesus warns one church at Ephesus to beware or their candlestick will be removed.  Did you get the symbolism?  The removal of a candlestick is symbolic of the removal of a light.  What did Jesus say in Matthew?  Jesus said you are the light of the world.  Do you also see the symbolism being repeated in the 10 Virgin Parable?  The running out of oil causes the lamp to go out.  The parallels are very significant here and I pray that you see them.

According to what we read from Jesus, he said the righteous will find life, we should be able to conlclude logically that in the 10 Virgin parable these were all saved Christians at one time but that half of them made foolish choices to run out of oil and missed the coming of the Bridegroom to enter into the wedding feast!  Consider the fact that all 10 virgins are waiting and looking for Christ to come.  What does that teach us?  Are we looking for Christ to come or for the anti-Christ to come?  If the church was going through the tribulation then they would be looking for the coming anti-Christ and not the coming of the actual  bridegroom Christ.  This pattern found in the 10 virgin parable only fits with a pre-tribulation expection rapture event and no other belief works.  Using this parable the pre-tribulation coming of the bridegroom is the only possible harmoneous belief that can be possible.  Every other belief of a post-trib, mid-trib or even a no rapture belief will not fit with the parable pattern information given.  Wow, these are such important patterns to decode.  Spend time in researching them.  Figure out what the oil represents symbolically.  Let’s keep moving and continue to learn some more kingdom of heaven simple basics taught by Jesus:

Mat 13:24  Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field:

Mat 13:25  But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way.

Mat 13:26  But when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also.

Mat 13:27  So the servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? from whence then hath it tares?

Mat 13:28  He said unto them, An enemy hath done this. The servants said unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up?

Mat 13:29  But he said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them.

Mat 13:30  Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn.

Jesus repeatedly taught the concept of separation and division between two opposing groups.  Here again in this parable is a lot of truth that contains many of the puzzle pieces but not the complete picture diagram of the whole subject.  Jesus just said that the wheat will be “gathered” into His barn but that the tares will be burned (destroyed) with fire (Mat 13:25-30).  I want you to notice the basic concept taught to us here in these verses.  I also want you to ignore figuring out the timing for this for now.  There is a definite subject of “gathering” that takes place by the reapers.  “Gathered Up” is a synonymous term from our list for a type of rapture.   The reapers gathering in their crops to harvest is the basic premise being communicated symbolically and it is mentioned twice here.  Can we at least agree that the concept given sounds like a type of rapture?  It does to me whether you choose to see it or not.

If you read the verses closely you will notice a very distinct problem emerging.  These verses say that the tares will be gathered “first” before the wheat is gathered into the barn.  Of course we will talk about this in more depth later because these verses are often used by the “no rapture” teachers to prove that the wicked tare people rapture (gathering) must occur first before the good righteous wheat people are gathered from the earth.   However, that is simply one common misunderstood position or one erroneous interpretation of misapplied information but that is not the entire truth on the subject.  We are required to balance all of the facts and not just try to take some limited information and make them more important than any other information on the subject.  Just try to learn the concept basics right now and then we will try to figure out the details later.

Mat 13:37  He answered and said unto them, He that soweth the good seed is the Son of man;

Mat 13:38  The field is the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked one;

Mat 13:39  The enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels.

Mat 13:40  As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire; so shall it be in the end of this world.

Mat 13:41  The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity;

Mat 13:42  And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Mat 13:43  Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.

If you read closely the explanation of the parable in Matthew 13:37-43 you will surely see more of the basic symbolism being defined.  We can learn from the description that Jesus was the sower of the good wheat seed.  We further learn that the enemy Satan was the sower of the tare seed.  Jesus teaches us that the wheat represents one good group of people and that the tares represent a distinct separate evil group of people all growing together in the same field (the world).  The group of wheat represents the saved righteous people in the church and the other tares that are destroyed in the fire are the wicked unrighteous people of the earth.   Which group are you in?   I’m wheat myself.  Therefore, I’m not ever burned.  Ok, the harvesters we are informed are the angels of God.  Then in this discourse Jesus also says that this event being described occurs at the end of the world.  Uh oh?  When is that?  I believe that this is referring to the end of the millennium also called the prophesied 1000 year long day of rest when the righteous rule the earth. Therefore, this description given by Jesus cannot be talking about a pre-tribulation rapture event.  Did you know that is so very true and that I totally agree with that statement?  This is exactly why many of the “no rapture” teachers teach that there can be no rapture until the end of the world comes and the wicked are removed from the earth first.  However, that is where I depart from their erroneous theory.

You see they are neglecting to understand that there can be more than one rapture event in the Bible being described.  Anything that God can do once, God can do as many times as He desires.  If you study the Bible correctly you will find that there have been at least 4 or 5 rapture events that have already occurred and we will list them in detail later as we study.  Then we must understand that there will be coming 2, 3 or more rapture events that must still come to pass and that these are all separate and distinct events occurring at different set times.  Therefore, Jesus here in this lesson is speaking and describing one rapture event that cannot be mixed with any another rapture event but it does help us prove that they can occur for God’s purpose.  You see if one “rapture” is possible at any time then more than one is also highly possible.  Are you God?  Some Bible teachers think they are God.  They try to tell God what He can and cannot do and they sound like fools doing that.   So understand this concept, there has been several rapture events that have already occurred and there are more yet to come.  Do not get into a single threaded interpretation of all events being the same event. What we must do is to see all of the facts and not just take one truth attempting to make it the whole truth.  What Jesus just described cannot be a description of the pre-tribulation rapture event, but that still does not mean that there is not one of those that can still occur.  Did you hear what I just said?  Is your brain engaged in this study and have you learned anything so far?  We are still studying the basics of the subject and I just gave you some very important clues to learn from.  Let’s continue with another set of basic information from Jesus:

Mat 25:31  When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:

Mat 25:32  And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:

Mat 25:33  And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.

Mat 25:34  Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:

Here is a set of popular scripture verses describing another rapture type of event.  The term being described here is again called a “gathering” of the nations.  Remember that term and then understand that it is the exact same key word phrase (G4863) of “gathering” given to us in the parable of the wheat and tares.  Here God is using a different type of symbolism to describe some very similar concepts.  “Gathering” wheat or sheep is the same general act of power and force.  Neither the sheep nor the goats make a request to be gathered or to be separated from each other and these acts occur outside of the realm of their influence or control.  Do you understand how these very basic principles being described are similar to a rapture event?  These are clear divinely originated plans from God not originating from any man.   The act of separating the sheep from the goats is practically identical to the separation of the wheat from the tares.  The concept parallels between these two descriptions are outstandingly similar and are linked together by God’s choice of the same Greek word translated as “gathered”.  What we are observing is God’s usage of a synonymous word for rapture.  It is described to be a gathering together as well as a separating from.  Both of these acts occur simultaneously by God’s design.  We have just reviewed some of the very basic information on rapture revealed and taught by Jesus in the Bible.  I do not know why you would read these verses and not believe that rapture is possible even if you do not yet understand all of the timings of any of the rapture events.

Thank you for your time in reading this first lesson in the series about the rapture.  We have really only touched on some very introductory basics but in doing this I believe that I have also introduced you to several new things to consider.  I believe that we need to begin to understand that there is more than one possible rapture event that could occur.  You see many read the Bible and only see one event and think that is the only event.  Take for instance the flood of Noah.  This is widely taught as a universal flood that wipes out all life except for those in the ark.  However, reading in Genesis 1 we should be able to see that there was another universal flood that was also mentioned.  What we learn is that God uses repeated patterns in the Bible.  Patterns are a widely used concepts displayed throughout the Bible.  What God has done before is typically what God will cause to happen again.  We learn this concept from verses like Ecclesiastes 1:9.   We need to fully learn how God operated in the past in order to understand how God could possibly operate in the future.  Please come back and read the next lessons in this series.  We will cover a lot more imformation that is critical to understand.  God Bless you until then!

If  you would like to continue the study of this subject you may go to “Part 2” now.

Understanding Healing, Sickness and Disease! Erroneous Teaching in the Modern Church? Part 5

(Ver 1.3)  Today’s lesson is Part 5 in the Bible study series about “Understanding the Subjects of Healing, Sickness and Disease”.   In this series we have been exploring the Bible foundations to recognize God’s truth and perspective on the subject of where does physical healing, sickness and disease actually come from?  I have already introduced you to a lot of information in this Bible lesson series that will not all be repeated exactly as stated before, therefore if you have not read every lesson from the beginning, I would strongly suggest that you go and start your reading with “Part 1”.  I usually do not focus on the erroneous teachings of other men, but I think this is a valid approach to take since there are so many erroneous things about healing being taught by many churches.  What I will attempt to do today is not to teach you the foundational basis for the error, but rather to teach you to see the counter truth to the inaccuracy using God’s Word.  One of my chief goals in all of my Bible lessons is not to give you a fish but rather to teach you how to fish from God’s word for yourself.  This concept of learning to see the truth for yourself will help you not to be deceived by anyone that will try to come to you and present something new that contradicts with what God wanted you to know.    Therefore, we must counter the error with only the truth of God to help other people from falling into Satan’s traps of deception.  So today will be a Bible lesson about many of the wrong teachings found in churches about healing, sickness and disease to help you.  Obviously this will not cover every false teaching in the world on the subjects and it will not be a comprehensive level of detail on any one subject that could have been accomplished.  It will however give you an overview of the vast problems associated with a few teachings that I know are in error.

BRIEF REVIEW OF WHAT WE HAVE LEARNED SO FAR

Since it has been a long time since I posted on this subject, I think it would be good to briefly mention a few of the things that we have learned in the series.  We know from reading the Bible that when our world and the first man Adam were created by God, He looked at it all and said it was “Very Good” (Gen 1:31).  Therefore according to God, no evil, like sickness existed prior to sin.  If Adam was not created sick, where then did sickness come from?  The first mention of the healing of human sickness actually occurs many years after creation in Genesis 20:17.  From God’s timeline this has to be nearly two thousand years after Adam. I will also say that the book of Job is reported to be the oldest book in the Bible and it has mention of sickness and healing.  However the exact timeframe of the book of Job is not known.  The book of Job probably occurs sometimes after Noah and before Abraham.  We may talk about Job in future lessons since this book is widely misapplied to accuse God with causing sickness by Satan to occur on Job.  For now let’s concentrate on Genesis 20.  In this verse Abraham prays to God for Abimelech and his wife and it is stated that God healed them because of the prayer.  This is actually very important to note that the first recorded healing in Genesis is stated to have come from God through the vehicle of human prayer.  I believe that is important to know.

We also know from Bible study that Adam’s sin was the main factor for man knowing evil according to Genesis 3:22.  In this verse God states that evil entered into the world and man has now come to know something besides knowing only God’s goodness.  Therefore I have concluded that sin was the root cause for all evil including sickness to enter into the world.  However do not misunderstand what I said.  Just because sin was the root cause for all sickness, this does not mean that it was necessarily your sin that caused your sickness.  You see there was a transfer of death upon all men from the original sin of the one man Adam.  Since sickness is nothing but a minor precursor to death we should know that Adam’s sin has now passed this curse to everyone else that has descended from him according to 1 Corinthians 15:22.  There are such things as generational curses that are handed down from parent to child and from generation to generation.  This is why doctors ask about family history of certain diseases.  If your parent had it then you are more likely to also have it.  Perhaps in a future lesson we will talk more about this generational curse factor revealed in the Bible.

I further showed you in lesson one that sickness was the curse for disobeying God’s law revealed to us in Deuteronomy 28.  Any disobedience is called a sin of commission or omission and we are all guilty of this according to Romans 5:12.  You may recall that I gave you one example of Jesus healing a paralytic man that couldn’t walk.  In this story Jesus said to him first “Your sins are forgiven” and all of the Jews drew up in arms that Jesus could forgive sin.  In this story found in Matthew 9 you will see that Jesus attributes a direct link between sickness and sin.  Jesus was basically teaching us that the cause of sin resulted in the effect of sickness.  When Jesus told the man his sins were forgiven Jesus was saying son you are healed.  Are your sins forgiven by the shed blood of Jesus today?  Well according to Jesus you should be healed also.  The Greek word translated as “saved” is the word “sozo” and it means to be made whole.  This was an all-inclusive work of God.  God gave to men salvation which included spiritual health, mental health, physical health and financial health.  In other words God relieved us from the curse and you can read that by finding it in Galatians 3:13.

I hope you also understood the concept that I presented about a house being divided will not stand.  If God makes you sick and also heals you then His house is divided and by His own admission of law will not stand.  Jesus revealed a basic truth that states any house or kingdom can be easily defeated if it is not strongly unified in a singleness of purpose.  Therefore, evil and sickness must only come from the house of Satan that is evil and healing which is good can only come from the house of God that is consistently good!  Finally I taught you one lesson on the Father’s heart revealed to us in the parable of the Prodigal Son.  The father was not out to inflict the child for being stupid, the father’s heart was directed at only re-establishing the son to his place in the family because of his great love for his son.  This is clearly a picture of God and His desire to bless you today.   These were all just some of the basic important concepts already discussed.  I pray that you took hold of them and accepted them as the truth.  Now let’s explore some error.

THE ERROR OF AN OLD TESTAMENT DOMINATED THEOLOGY

There are literally too many unfounded erroneous teachings about healing, sickness and disease found in the modern church today.  I will start this lesson with one that is very popular.  I find this error in more of my comments on this website than almost any other mistake that people make.   Reading the Old Testament in isolation is one of the most prevalent problems with modern theological teachings.  There are literally many mistranslated verses found in the Old Testament that people use to establish their wrong beliefs.  Because people do not know or understand how God wrote the Bible, they can easily be misguided by what they read in the Old Testament.  We must begin by first asking “Is the truth plainly presented in the Old Testament”?   If you feel like it is, then you are already deceived and lack understanding that is required by God.  There is nothing of any spiritual value in the Old Testament that is clearly presented.  I probably just lost a bunch of readers with that statement.  However consider what Jesus said about the Old Testament before you turn me completely off:

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

This is one of the most important statements that Jesus taught us about all of the words written in the Old Testament.  Jesus said that nothing you could read was self-evident concerning the truth about Him.  In fact Jesus just literally said you must “search” to even find Him.  That means He is not easily found.  To search the Old Testament implies the hidden meaning that the words about Jesus were not placed upon the surface text for us to easily locate.   Have you ever lost your car keys?  Have you ever had to do a house room to room search to find them?  That is exactly what Jesus is teaching you about you finding Him anywhere in the Old Testament.   Jesus claimed it was going to take great effort of you looking for you to find Him on the pages.  That is a very important concept for you to learn.

One of the most important things that you can learn from me today is for you to never read the Old Testament without first reading the New Testament very closely and understanding it as completely as possible.  Begin your every Bible Study by understanding this very basic Bible interpretation law.  The Old Testament is the New Testament in a concealed format.  The New Testament is the Old Testament hidden concepts being revealed to the church.  Therefore we must use all of the New Testament revelations to understand anything that was written in the Old Testament.  If you fail to do this you are in error.  If your pastor is teaching you mostly from the Old Testament without using any of the New Testament to explain it, you need to find a new church very fast.  We in the church are not under the law of the Old Covenant (Rom 6:15).  Therefore we are not under that covenant.  There is a major division within the Bible that occurs between Malachi and Matthew.  The words written prior to Matthew are primarily directed to a natural people and the words written after Matthew are primarily written to a spiritual people.  Of course this is much more complicated than I just stated.

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

This is another very important scripture to understand.  Do you know what “revelation” is?  God defines the word “revelation” as “a disclosure”.   This Greek word translated as “revelation” literally comes from a root word that means to “take the cover off”.  Revelation is the act of revealing what was once hidden from plain view.  Therefore we must understand that the words written on the pages did not change but only the meaning they convey were adjusted so that we could see them like God could see them.  As you can read in this verse, God revealed to us mysteries that were kept secret from the foundation of the world.  How did God do this?  God does this by writing in plain text code.  I do not mean that He encrypted the text and made it unreadable; I just mean that He hid the spiritual meanings of the words being encapsulated within the natural word text making them easily overlooked by the carnal dominated mind of the reader.  This is still what occurs today for most people reading the Old Testament and thinking they understand it without checking out what God explains and reveals about the subjects in the New Testament.  Because people do not understand these concepts they are vastly confused about many subjects in the Bible.  You cannot understand anything in the Old Testament without first finding God’s definitions, explanations and revelations in the New Testament.  That could have been the most important thing that I teach you all day.

Here is an interesting fact about the New Testament.  God quotes the Old Testament nearly 300 times in the New Testament.  This fact means that every 1 in 22 N.T. verses is an Old Testament quoted verse.   If you have a NASB translation of the Bible you will easily find the quotes since they are presented in ALL CAPS.  This will greatly help you in your search for them.  If one in every 22 verses is quoting the Old Testament then the other 22 verses are potential explanations of the revelation about what the O.T. verse meant.  This means that you must read and study these N.T. verses to even come close to begin to know what the Old Testament verses were saying originally.  Paul taught us plainly  that what he taught the early church came as a direct revelation from Jesus (Gal 1:12).    If Paul required extensive revelation to understand the Old Testament scriptures, then you also need the same kind of revelation to understand God’s O.T. words.  However it is noteworthy that what they taught in the New Covenant was completely verifiable from what was written in the Old Testament:

Act 17:11  These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.

We can clearly see from this verse that the early noble church at Berea used the O.T. to verify everything that Paul was teaching to them.  Notice however, that this was the exact same book that the Jews had read for 1500 years and they could not see what they were now seeing being revealed by Jesus.  There were no new words added to the O.T. text.  The only event that had occurred was that God had finally revealed what the words on the old scrolls meant and that changed everything.  So what am I saying to you today?  Are you learning anything?  Do not read the Old Testament in isolation thinking that you understand what it means about any subject.  Your carnal mind and human reasoning is too small to comprehend God’s vast hidden meanings and there is literally no way that you will understand them correctly without first learning to view them through the New Testament.

OLD TESTAMENT CONFLICTS WITH NEW TESTAMENT REVELATION

Because this is such an important topic to understanding the differences between New Testament revelations and Old Testament mysteries, I’m going to reemphasize it with some direct Bible examples about what I just taught in the last section.  Let’s begin by defining the word “sick” from the Bible.  This Hebrew word that is often translated as sick literally means to be rubbed or worn.  It is the opposite term of being new or being without imperfections, faults or failures.  Healthy is of course the opposite of being sick from our modern vocabulary.  Therefore, God is basically saying to be sick is to be like a pair of jeans with worn holes in them.  Sickness is a condition that demonstrates your human weakness and it shous us a condition that we were not in when originally designed and created by God.   Therefore according to God to be sick is like having worn holes in you pants.   I know many ignorant people today like their jeans with holes in them, but I’m not that stupid to pay extra money for a garment that is distressed and imperfect.  Therefore, human sickness is a weakness to the fabric of life and health and a precursor to death which is the complete failure of the life and health fabric.

What is the definition of the Hebrew word that was translated as “heal”?  To heal according to God is to repair or mend that which was broken or in need of fixing.  Healing is defined to be a cure or a reversal for whatever made you sick.   Therefore we must use these new definitions to figure out if our God broke us just so that He could come to the earth personally to fix us?  That obviously does not make any logical sense to me but that is what many are teaching us today.  I do not intentionally break my car just so I can fix it.  I never break a china plate to try to glue it back together.  That would be insanity and not creativity and the revealed nature of our God.  Let’s go back to the Old Testament and see a verse:

Deu 7:15  And the LORD will take away from thee all sickness, and will put none of the evil diseases of Egypt, which thou knowest, upon thee; but will lay them upon all them that hate thee.

Here is a classic Old Testament verse about sickness being attributed to God’s purpose.  We have a direct stated conflict in this verse that violates many of the New Testament scriptures that are impossible to believe while believing what this verse says as translated.  If we take this verse literally as stated it means God is either good or evil depending upon some unknown or unstated factor.   If God takes away sickness from Israel but also puts the same sicknesses on Egypt then that is an inconsistent God of indeterminate uncertainty.  Clearly His house is divided if we take this verse literally and we do not know if we should pray and ask God for healing or stop and be humble and thank God for sending us the sickness to enjoy.  That is an idiotic type of Christian thinking to interpret the Bible this way.  You see you cannot find God making anyone sick in the Gospels.  Jesus never walked up to anyone and said “I will bless you to be ill today”.  Jesus consistently healed everyone and that was the revealed nature of my God.  Therefore we cannot interpret anything differently from the Old Testament if it violates the revelation given to us from the New Testament.

Many people just do not understand that every English Bible translations contain flaws of human error and wrong human interpretation embedded in them; they will read these Old Testament verses and think that God has caused sickness to occur while ignoring the revealed God in the flesh in the New Testament.  I can literally find many verses translated like this in the O.T. Bible.  But that does not mean I must believe them over what God says to me in the Gospels and the letters written directly to the church.  Whatever was written by God in the New Testament, now take precedence over everything that was written in the O.T.    What is precedence?  Precedence is technically a legal term that means those words have priority over the other stated words.  This could be present for many reasons, but just remember that these New Testament words do not replace the Old Testament words, but that they certainly do explain them.   The church should realize what covenant they are joined to and then make that one their priority as I was trying to teach you in the last section.  Make this determination right now; if you are under the law of the O.T. then you should never attempt to read the N.T.   However, if you are under the grace of the New Covenant then you should never read the O.T. without using the revealed light of God found in N.T. to understand what was written in the Old.  This is just very basic spiritual reasoning that God taught me.

This is one of the most significant reasons why people believe things in error today about healing.  They will read an Old Testament verse about God making someone sick believing they understand it but when they finally explore the entire subject using the New Testament God has changed the definition of what they thought He said in the O.T. to reveal a new understanding of the subject for the saints.  This is why in an earlier lesson that I mentioned that Acts 10:38 was a critical verse on the subject of healing, sickness and disease.  You should recall that this verse attributed all healing to Jesus and all sickness to satanic oppression.  This new information changes our old interpretations of every other verse in the Old Testament about sickness.  Many times human translators would accuse God of doing something when it really should have been translated using the permissive verbiage.  There is a major difference between a causative God of sickness and a permissive God of sickness.  If God causes sickness in the O.T. this would directly conflict with Acts 10:38 and all of the Gospels where Jesus is only revealed to have healed and never made anyone sick.  If you learn nothing else from me today you need to learn how to interpret the Bible using the New Testament explanations, definitions and revealed information and I know that is probably the third time that I said that.  But you really need to get that into your study habits because there are things explained in the New Testament that you will never see directly mentioned anywhere in the Old Testament.

GOD USES SICKNESS TO CORRECT OR TEACH HIS PEOPLE

Heb 12:6  For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.

Here is a very popular modern belief taught by many seminary graduates.  Some in the modern church teach that our God the creator of heaven and earth sent us sickness as punishment, or correction, or as a teaching tool.  Many have come to me and asked me how God corrects His children like Hebrews 12:6 says if not with sickness like my pastor says this means.  What you need to do is to read and study your Bible and then just ignore everything that your pastor says that does not match with what you see that the Bible actually says.  People can try to make the Bible say whatever they like, but that does not change what it actually says.  You have eyes and a brain and the Spirit of God in you if you are saved.  Ask God to show you what the Word says and then believe what He says.  Here in this verse in Hebrews, it does not mention sickness not once and still people have tried to claim this is how God affects His children with correction.  Just read the Bible and believe what it says and do not add to it what it does not say.  That is one of the main rules of correct Bible interpretation.  God tells us that no scripture of prophecy is of any private interpretation (2 Peter 1:20).  God is basically saying I will tell you what it means, therefore, don’t invent your own meaning because it will be wrong.

So why is the belief that God afflicts Christians with sickness for correction a bad belief to believe in?  First it will keep you from seeking divine healing that clearly comes from God (Exo 15:26, Psa 103:3).  Second, it violates the laws of singleness of purpose given to us by Jesus in an undivided kingdom (Mat 12:25).  Third, it would violate God’s word that says God does not ever change (Mal 3:6).  Fourth, it would violate the character of God revealed in the Son of God Jesus in the Gospels.  You cannot ever find Jesus making someone sick for any reason.  Jesus was unified in the sole purpose of healing only and thus His kingdom will stand forever and not be divided.  I just gave you four great reasons why God will not correct you using sickness.  I hope and pray that you got them!

GOD’S SOVEREIGN CONTROL OF THE UNIVERSE

There is another very popular belief being taught that because God is sovereign that He controls whatever happens to us good, bad or neutral.  This is just another example of extremism; people taking one truth and trying to apply it as the only truth that is necessary for what we believe.  This is a huge mistake in wrong Bible interpretation.  I think I have shown you in this series that this was not what the Bible says and that sickness came as a result of man’s disobedience, his sinful choices and his independent actions that were implemented by his own freewill.  Extremism on any subject is an unbalanced approach at understanding God and the Bible.  It promotes an isolationism theology that ignores every other revealed truth on opposing subjects.  Certainly I believe that God is sovereign and I do not disqualify His ability as the Omnipotent Being to control everything if He so desired.  However for me to believe that He does this violates the definition of a God described to be Love (Agape) in 1 John 4:16.  Then there is this verse; God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him would not perish but have everlasting life (John 3:16).  This verse in John describes a major conflict with God sovereignly placing sickness on people.  Why would the sovereign God come to save me and then tell me that I could be saved, if I only I believe?  Did you see what I just asked you?  Does that make any sense to you?  Whose choice is it to believe mine or God’s?  Obviously it is my sovereign choice to believe that causes me to begin to be saved.  You didn’t know you were a sovereign being did you?  A sovereign being is anyone that has the ability to make an independent decision without external control or influence.  Did you decide to get out of bed this morning?  If you did then you made a sovereign choice.  Of course if you decided to stay in bed this morning you would have still made a sovereign choice in what you did.  Nothing you do today can be placed upon anyone but you.  You have been given responsibility and control of your destiny.  Actually technically speaking you are not a completely independent agent as a human.  After Satan entered the world and Adam lost his sovereignty over the earth, Satan became the god of this world (2 Cor 4:4).  Before Satan entered into the world Adam was a completely independent sovereign being. We learned from Jesus’ law of singleness in purpose again that Satan has a kingdom (Mat 12:26).  Therefore, we are either in the kingdom of light (Jesus) or the kingdom of darkness (Satan) (1 Th 5:5) and we will all choose which eternal kingdom to reside in by whether we believe and are saved or do not believe and are damned (Mk 16:16).  Having the ability to choose what we believe in is a direct design feature of every man and woman.  The pure ability of man to believe and choose makes God’s sovereign control inconceivable.

Let’s expand and continue to explore the notion that our loving Heavenly Father is still the author of all of the sickness today because of His sovereign control of the planet.  This extreme sovereign control theology has great potential for harm because it relieves man of any human responsibility and future accountability.  If God is in complete sovereign control then I have nothing to do today to be saved or lost.  Is that what the Bible says?  What about future accountability?  Accountability is simply the responsibility to do something that you should have done.  Is there coming a judgment upon every man?  If God is in sovereign control of what happens to every man, what then is there to judge?   Do you see any problem with that?  You cannot ever judge what you caused to happen or you will be forced to judge yourself.  Judgment is simply the responsibility of only the Judge to pass sentence for an independent violation for someone that is held accountable for doing something or not doing something.  If I stole something from you then I could be found guilty of violating the laws against theft.  If you caused me to steal something from you then you are now guilty for what I did and I am not responsibile for my actions.  Therefore, I can only be judged fairly by a judge that was not involved in what I did and I must be held accountable and made responsible for not doing it right.  Who is this Supreme independent fair Judge and who will He judge?

Act 10:42  And he commanded us to preach unto the people, and to testify that it is he which was ordained of God to be the Judge of quick and dead.

According to the Bible God is the judge of the living and the dead.  The living and the dead are two separate opposite categories of people.  You cannot be the living dead nor can you be the dead living.  You are either dead today or you are alive inside.  Of course these are figurative language definitions for the status of salvation.  Those that are alive are those spirits that are in the Kingdom of Light and have believed.   Those that are dead spirits are those that have not believed and are in the kingdom of darkness.  Both are eternal spirits, but classified in two individual sub-sets.  This is really not rocket science but it proves God is not in sovereign control of what you or I do or what we decide to believe in.  God is the supreme judge and the only ability for any fair judgment to occur in the future is for the Judge to be independent of the crime being judged.  If God caused you to believe what you believe or not to believe then He should be judged by all of us for making us this way.  Clearly that is a major problem with that line of thought.

Extreme sovereign God philosophy teachers clearly do not understand the concept or the definition of what love is and that God is defined to be only love in 1 John 4:16 as I stated earlier.  Does God love His spiritual children differently than I love my natural children? If you think so, then you do not know God.  If I loved my natural child here on the earth, I would not want them to be sick no matter what they did and if I chose to make them sick on purpose after they have disobeyed me then I would now be guilty of being a child abuser in need of prison.  Sovereign control is a modern philosophy taught in some churches that tries to convince people that no matter what we do as humans that we cannot change what God has given to us to endure or suffer through.  People who believe this clearly have not read the Bible.  This type of belief disqualifies prayer and the power of God to heal.  I could probably say a lot more about this subject, but I’m just hitting some high points on every subject and not trying to do an in-depth teaching on every issue.

DID DIVINE HEALING CEASE WITH THE DEATH OF THE APOSTLES?

Still many others in the church teach that God did heal people in the Gospels and through the early church, but all of that ceased when the last apostles died.  This teaching is very popular because it relieves them of accountability and responsibility.  It is another twisted example of the extreme God Control Theology.   This erroneous teaching denies that the apostles were in the same church as we are today.  This teaching contradicts the verse that says Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today and forever (Heb 13:8).  You see everyone in the church is clearly defined to be the complete one body of Christ (Rom 12:5).  In other words there are not two bodies, three bodies or more bodies of Christ; there is just one unified body that exists.   Since Peter, James and John were in the same body of Christ as us, then what they could do we can also potentially do because we are still the same body.  Christ does not ever change according to Hebrews 13:8 and therefore if Christ healed anyone in Acts, Christ still heals today.  Don’t make yourself independent from Christ or you are none of His.

What else is wrong with this teaching of treating apostles differently than disciples?  Are you a disciple?  Jesus said in John 13:35 that they will know that you are my disciples if you have love one for another.  Who was Jesus talking to?  I believe that He was talking to me and you.  Therefore everyone is a disciple even if you are not an apostle a prophet, an evangelist, pastor or a teacher.  To attribute that only the apostles healed anyone is a clear misunderstanding of God and the scripture.  For example, in Luke 10:1-18 Jesus sends out 70 disciples and not 12 apostles.  How many more is 70 than 12?  Even if the 70 included the 12 that leaves 58 that were not apostles of the Lamb.  Why is this important? This is only important to see because Jesus told them all to heal the sick in verse 9.  Clearly we can see in verse 18 that all of the 70 returned to tell Jesus that even the demons were subject to them.  Uh oh, that means they healed the sick that were oppressed with devils (Acts 10:38).  It is very obvious to me that healing was a disciple gift and instruction and not just an apostle gift and instruction.  Don’t put God into your box to define what He can do or not do with His disciples in His Church.  He is the Head of the Church and you are not.

Let’s talk about another scriptural conflict with why healing did not stop with the apostles.  Is God a respecter of persons and does He show any favoritism to anyone?  Can you find anyone getting healed in the Old Testament?  I can find several.  Can you find anyone getting healed in the Gospels?  Again I can find many.  Why then do you think that healing has ceased for today?  This alone violates Hebrews 13:8 that says God never changes. Believing that only certain apostles can heal denies God to be the healer.  This belief conflicts with verses like Acts 10:34 and 1 Peter 1:17 that proclaims God is no respecter of persons.  If God only gave the healing power to the early disciples then that would be a denial of the power to me as a disciple of Christ.  This would first mean that God has changed.  Then it would mean that what He did for Peter, James, and John, He will not do for me and I believe that is a major problem to your theology based upon God being no respecter of person.  That type of belief would mean that they were special, but I am not simply because I was born in another generation to come.  That is clearly a false belief and the violation of the Word of God.   We cannot allow scriptural conflicts to stand.  We must use the Bible to understand the Bible.  If healing ceased then the Word of God has ceased.  My Bible says in the Old Testament that “He sent His word and healed them” (Ps 107:20).  We know from New Testament revelation that Jesus is the Word of God incarnate (John 1:1-14) that came and healed us (1 Peter 2:24).  So Jesus is the healer and not any apostle.  Therefore, if Jesus is alive today and He is, healing has not ceased.  Nowhere in the Bible can you find an apostle claiming to be the healer.  Therefore do not allow men to teach you otherwise.

SHOULD WE SEEK GOD OR SHOULD WE SEEK DOCTORS TO GET HEALED?

There are also a few ignorant teachers who claim the healing power of God ceased with the death of the apostles that have justified in their minds that this is the reason why we have modern medicine, doctors and hospitals in existence today.  This teaching is just another example or a variation of the extremism philosophy of the Divine Sovereign Control Theology.  In other words, they believe that what God had done previously though His Spirit and His word has now shifted to a physical pill or the hand of a surgeon type of man called a doctor.  They have in effect exalted a man into the previous position of God and that sounds like an anti-Christ type of teaching to me.  This is one of the most ignorant backwards types of reasoning that I have ever heard conceived up.  I would find it humorous if it were not so dangerous.  These teachers claim in error that God has changed His healing methods and approach and that only a natural doctor is now God’s healing agents for all of humanity.

Therefore this teaching immediately violates Hebrews 13:8 and Malachi 3:6 that teach us that God never changes.   Why is this false teaching so dangerous?  This teaching shifts the focus off of God onto a man that we can see and that makes it a treacherous error.  If your eyes are on a man then you are missing the God who is the healer. This teaching denies the need for a Christian to even pray to God and ask for healing or guidance.  In fact it denies the human responsibility of being led by the Spirit of God to know what to do in the case of sickness.  Being led by the Spirit of God is a requirement according to Romans 8:14 therefore to be led by a doctor to get healed you are not being led by the perfect God but by imperfect human doctors.  According to them we should all just go to the doctor and they will handle it all now for God and what will occur will occur as the will of God.  Clearly this is a very bad teaching that causes many people to die today since no doctor is God and knows everything.  Let’s take a look at what the Bible actually says about doctors:

2Ch 16:12  And Asa in the thirty and ninth year of his reign was diseased in his feet, until his disease was exceeding great: yet in his disease he sought not to the LORD, but to the physicians.

I do not think that it is entirely bad to seek a doctor’s advice, but what I do find troubling is not first seeking God’s advice.  Clearly God speaks about the king in negative terms for his ignorance of only seeking for doctors to help him.  Doctors being fellow ignorant humans are technically incapable of healing anyone.  Most of the time doctors treat the symptoms but rarely do they fully implement cures of complete wholeness.  If you read the very next verse you will see what occurred by only seeking doctors.  The Bible says that Asa died and was buried with his fathers.  Clearly this is a major conflict with the seek doctor only modern teaching and it ignores God.   There is another greater example of seeking physicians found in Mark 5:26.  In this story of the woman with the issue of blood she had sought a cure for her problem for 12 years with doctors and finally turned and sought to touch Jesus after hearing about Him.  Clearly the doctors could not help her and only seeking God brought the answer.  I learn several things from this example.  First, seeking the doctor’s help did not keep her from being cured and made whole by God.  But, I also learned that her answer came by her only seeking Jesus.  Therefore I have concluded if you need a doctor’s help seek one.  But in your seeking do not neglect the real healer and seek Him more diligently.

IS IT THE WILL OF GOD TO HEAL TODAY?

Here is another major problem taught in many churches today by words and actions.  Certain preachers do not know if it is the will of God for healing to occur so they do not understand how to pray and ask God for healing or they fail to do it completely.  Many times these preachers will constantly pray and ask for healing “If it by thy will”.  There is a major lesson taught to all lawyers and attorneys.  You never ask a question to anyone on the witness stand that you already do not know the answer they will give to you.  This same principle works for healing and all Christian prayer.  If you do not already know that God’s answer is yes for what you are asking then you are asking in error and praying in the dark.  That is a major revelation to understanding why many are not healed today.  Do you remember the story of the leprous man that comes to Jesus for healing?

Mat 8:2  And, behold, there came a leper and worshipped him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.

Here is a man that desperately needs help and divine healing but he does not know if it is Jesus’ will to help him.  Any time there is a question mark present there is a hindrance to receiving healing from God.  The man clearly knows that Jesus has the ability and the power to heal him but does not know if it is the will of God to heal him personally.  He must have learned about the power by the observation of what happened to others touched by Jesus.  But what happens to others is no guarantee for what might happen to you.  You can never base your faith upon what others possess or fail to possess.  You must answer all of the questions in your own mind and then you will have the ability to receive for your situation.

Mat 8:3  And Jesus put forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I will; be thou clean. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed.

Here was Jesus’ response to the leprous man.  Jesus told him “I will” and that is a universal statement of truth for you also.  This statement reveals God will for all healing.  It is God’s will for you to be saved, healed and delivered from everything that the enemy had you trapped under.  We know since we have read repeatedly in the Bible that Jesus is never changing as revealed in Hebrews 13:8, that Jesus will still say “I will” today.  Therefore God’s will was to heal in Matthew 8:3 and God’s will is still to heal in today’s modern time.  Knowing this information now you do not have to pray to ask God if it be your will and you can just ask and receive knowing it was His will to begin with.

THE CONCLUSION

I think I have covered enough for one lesson.  I know there are many other false teachings that promote coonfusion and division in the church.  If you know of other false teachings surrounding the subject of healing I would be glad to learn about them from you.  If you are not sure what your preacher is teaching is right or worong, then you may also ask me that if you desire.  Hopefully you will have learned that you can find the answers also if you search your Bible for them.  Finally always remember my main point about reading the Old Testament.  If you are not looking at the Old Testament through eyes corrected with the New Testament glasses, then you are blindly reading a hidden message from God.   Thanks for reading and we will do another lesson in this series later.  God Bless.

Understanding Bible Faith! The Hidden Aspect of Authority for Having Great Faith! Part 15

(ver 1.0) This is now Part 15 in a series of very important advanced Christian Bible lessons on the subject of Understanding Bible Faith.  I have covered a tremendous amount of information in this series that will not be repeated so if you have not read it from the beginning I would suggest that you go and start with “Part 1” first.  I dealt with the subject of Great Faith in one other lesson directly and several other lessons indirectly.  In the direct lesson on Great Faith about the woman from Canaan we discovered the importance of how we view the problem versus how we view the power of God to solve the problem matters.  I attempted to teach you that no matter how big the problem may appear, the power of God to solve it is so much significantly greater that it only takes a crumb of His power to change it.  This principle was an awesome revelation that combines two stated truths found in the Bible concerning faith.  First there is “All things are possible with God” and second that “all things are possible to those that believe” (Mat 19:26, Mark 9:23).   You see many Christians have no problem believing that God can do anything because He is omnipotent, but then they fail to realize that they have any part to play in getting this reality from God to occur in the natural realm.  It is a combined effort of agreement between God and you and you cannot ignore the fact Jesus taught that people must believe in order for the humanly impossible to transpire.  This is why Jesus told us that all things are possible to us “IF WE CAN BELIEVE”.  So our faith is again mentioned as the final determining factor for what is possible for us or what happens to us.  I hope that you understand what faith is by now.  Faith is a belief based spiritual system that comes from hearing His written Word about what God has already accomplished in the Spiritual realm.  It is this Bible faith that becomes the literal substance of those things that we cannot or have not seen in the natural realm (Heb 11:1).

Today I am going to focus in on the only other illustrated example given to us in the Bible of explicitly stated great faith.  Jesus only looked at two different Gentiles and said that they had great faith beyond what he could find in all of Israel.  Jesus revealed to us that he was looking for people with faith in this statement and He marveled at only two things; those in Israel that had no faith and those outside of Israel that had great over the top faith.  So I have already addressed the woman of Canaan that was rewarded for her great faith by Jesus casting the devils out of her daughter.  Today I am going to look at the story of the Roman Centurion that introduces us to a brand new perspective on the subject of faith.  How did this non-Jewish man obtain such great faith when Jesus was not even sent to anyone except to those in Israel?  I believe that this is an excellent question to answer and that will be my goal.   We will start reading in our Bibles in Matthew chapter 8 and verse 5:

Mat 8:5  And when Jesus was entered into Capernaum, there came unto him a centurion, beseeching him,

Here is the beginning of the great faith story.  Notice how the story begins.  The Roman Centurion is coming to Jesus and it was not Jesus coming to the Roman Centurion.  Recognize today where the source of your answer will originate and then start out to get it from Him the same way.  I know today that Jesus is not physically on the earth, but He is here spiritually and His written word is ever present here for you to still seek out.  God, His Spirit and His Word are all inseparable realities called three in one (1 Jn 5:7).  So come to the Bible and start to learn what you are missing and then pray and He will answer.  Also recognize that if you are waiting on God to show up you are out of the designed process of God’s flow and you are doing it all wrong.  If you want an answer to a problem in the world today you are going to have to go and figure out how to receive it.  This is exactly what the Roman Centurion is doing in this example.  The Roman Centurion was not sitting back passively but was taking steps and being aggressively active to seek God for the answer.  I hope you have gotten that concept from the previous lessons, but I restated it again for those that need to hear it.

Mat 8:6  And saying, Lord, my servant lieth at home sick of the palsy, grievously tormented.

Here is the stated great problem that the Centurion is seeking Jesus to solve.  The servant of the Centurion appears to be too “grievously” sick to come to Jesus himself.  We can understand that the servant is suffering greatly and in tremendous pain.  The Centurion obviously has great compassion in his heart to do something for someone else to try to help them.  Having compassion is a Godly quality that is highly desirable.  Here we must stop and understand why is the Centurion coming to Jesus?  At this point he must have either seen Jesus heal personally before or at the very least heard of Jesus healing someone by word of mouth from a witness.  Hearing is a requirement to having Bible faith.  As we continue in this lesson you will definitely learn that it was the Centurion’s faith that causes the positive results to occur.

This also introduces us to an interesting concept and a fascinating question that comes up when discussing this subject of faith.  Can my faith or your faith be used to help someone else get their answer?  Clearly in this example given to us from God in Matthew 8 we are going to see that the Centurion’s individual faith definitely helped a servant without the servant’s faith being involved.  Part of the reasoning that needs to be taken into account is that a servant is a delegated household subordinate or individual.  In other words the servant was part of the household of the Centurion and under his roof.   However, it is more complicated than that statement.  You see in the example of the Centurion the fact that the servant is so sick that it would be impossible for him to seek out Jesus personally for himself must also be taken into account.  Plus the fact that the servant was the property of the Centurion means whatever happens to the servant is up to the owner in charge.  Both of these factors play a role in determining whether your faith can be used to help for others.   It is a great mistake to automatically assume that you can force your faith upon anyone or that you can override the will of another individual to get them saved, healed or delivered from anything that they do not want to be free from. 

Let me go into some examples of when your faith can and cannot work for others.  For example, if you have young children living at your home and they get sick, it is going to be your faith that gets them well until they get to the age of accountability to have faith for themselves.  This is the repeated reality found in the terms of the Roman Centurion who is the head of the house and the servant being a subordinate figure.  Children are always subordinate to the parent.  This same natural example crosses over into the spiritual realm also.  You see if a Christian is new to the faith, they are a spiritual child in the Lord too young and immature spiritually to have faith for most difficult things.  That is kind of an oxymoronic statement, since nothing is too hard for God and if they believed for their salvation that was probably the greatest obstacle that they will ever face.  Technically a saved person has already achieved great faith in one area for their salvation.  But, that is the problem it takes more faith in other areas like being filled with the Spirit, or healing, or finances to solve those different inadequacies.  I guess what I am trying to say is that your faith can be accessed to work for many new Christians at least once.  However, as they grow, spiritually mature and see how it works they will learn that they will be required by God to have faith for themselves.  Just like kids today in the natural are required to grow up and take responsibility for their own lives, so it is in the spiritual realm.

Next if a person is unconscious or unable to come or ask for their own healing then many times your faith can be used to help them also.  It is not always the case however.  For example, when my father was unconscious in a comma in the hospital after a stroke the entire local church body prayed and sought God for the answer in faith, but the answer did not come.  Was it our lack of faith that caused us to fail or were there other factors?  You see there were several other factors that hindered the healing.  The spiritual maturity of my father played a very significant role.  The previous actions of my father were also pivotal in determining whether our faith could work for him to be healed.  Also our will could not override his will and we do not actually know what he desired or thought about staying and being healed or going to see Jesus.  First off consider this; my father was not a baby Christian.  He had been a Christian for over 25 years.  Next consider that my father had been to two Bible schools and was a pastor of a church.  Then consider the fact that he ignored certain warnings from God about what was about to happen months earlier and the instructions given to him by God that showed him what he needed to do to fix the situation and it was all of these things that allowed death to dominate him and win.  Do you remember the story of the prophet coming to the king and telling him that he would surely die and to get his house in order (2 Kings 20:1)?   What did the king do and what result did it cause to change?  Surely you remember, the king repents before God and God sent the prophet back to tell him that God had lengthened the king’s days on the earth considerably.  So what people do on the earth, how they react to bad news, their ability to repent and change or not to change must matter if they want to live on the earth a long time.   Do you understand this?  What if the king did nothing?  God said that he would die and he would have died just as it was spoken.  This same thing happened to my father, God sent him a Prophet warning him of his death and he ignored it and guess what happened?  These are very powerful lessons to understand about when your faith will work for someone else and when it will not.  God says in the Bible “I am not mocked, whatever a man sows that will he also reap” (Gal 6:7).  This is a basic statement of truth that sometimes what we pray for some men may not matter if they have sown the wrong crop and refused to repent for it. 

Let me give you another example of when faith worked for an unconscious man.  A pastor of a small church in Texas once had a member of his church fall off of an oil well platform from a great distance and he was very near death.  He was unconscious in the hospital and the doctors said it was just a matter of time and he would be gone.  His pastor was a believer in faith and he did not accept that report.  This pastor went before God in faith and prayed and the man eventually fully recovered and came back to church well.  So what is the difference here?  The man was a member of the church of the pastor.  This means the member was under the jurisdiction of the pastor being a spiritual subordinate and I’m going to talk about this more in a little while.  What I am saying is that the pastor had a right to pray for his own member because he was not a fully grown mature Christian and the fact that the member could not pray for himself and ask God for healing since he was totally unconscious.  The church member had not been warned by God of impending disaster and he just fell into it.  Thus the factors were dramatically different between this man and my father’s example.  So the subject of faith and healing is a very complex one that has many factors involved in it and sometimes it is extremely difficult to determine when your faith will work for someone and when it will not.  Let’s continue with the Centurion:

Mat 8:7  And Jesus saith unto him, I will come and heal him.

Jesus replies to the Centurion that He will come with him so that his servant will be healed.  However, I want you to think and understand why Jesus said that He would do this.  It has to be the man’s faith being visibly seen that causes Jesus to go where he was needed.  I can find no other reason that caused Jesus ever to do anything for anyone just because they asked.  I guess I should qualify that statement, because there were times when Jesus did things through a manifested gift of the Holy Spirit’s working.   A gift of healing or a gift of miracles is a different type of the work of God that takes place by God’s divine choice and does not involve the faith of the individual to receive it.  God will sometimes heal someone as a sign or as a confirmation of the Word preached that will not involve a man’s faith as a great gift.  Just do not count on the gifts of God to heal you, this is a great mistake.  You do not control the gift giver; gifts are only given according to God the administrator by His divine sovereign choice.  This would be like if you heard of me giving away a present to someone that you really liked or needed.  Even if you came to me personally and asked me for one, does not mean I will give it to you?  That is presumptive thinking to assume someone will give you anything when you do not know the circumstances to why the other one got what they received.  Conversely your faith can be used to take hold of God’s power at any time as we discovered studying about the woman with the issue of blood that just came and took her healing without praying or asking God for it.  Next, I want to explore the scriptures that record the Centurion’s response to Jesus’ confirmation that He will come and heal.  Here is the beginning of the statement:

Mat 8:8  The centurion answered and said, Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof: but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed.

One of the first factors that I notice about the Centurion is that this man of great human power in the Roman army has great humility.  It takes great humility to even ask anyone for help.  Do you understand that?  The soldier could have demanded Jesus to come, but instead tells Jesus he is not even worthy for Him to come under his roof.  If you feel like you are worthy of Jesus coming to do anything for you then you are not in the right attitude of respect and humility for the all-powerful God.  You do not deserve the answer and there is nothing that you can do or to offer to make yourself deserving.  Anything that you obtain from God is solely based upon God’s Grace to give it.  Your position of wealth, fame, power and influence on the earth will not cause you to receive anything from God.  Then the next thing that I want to point out is the Centurion’s ability to perceive spiritual things.  This Centurion could see when Jesus spoke that things happened.  He simply asks Jesus to speak the Word and his servant would be healed/saved.  Wow, that is an awesome display of ultimate faith.  I can see why Jesus was so focused on this Gentile man entirely.  You see if the Centurion had no faith he would have not come to Jesus at all.  If the Centurion had only average faith he would have been very glad for Jesus to come to his house.  But because he understood spiritual things greater than any other, he asked Jesus to just give the command and it will be done.   You may not yet understand what is happening in this story and why this man has this kind of faith, but you are about to learn the key found in the Centurion’s next statement:

Mat 8:9  For I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me: and I say to this man, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it.

The Centurion says “I am a man under authority”.  Wow again and double wow!   The Centurion just revealed one secret to having great faith and this is where we are going to spend the rest of the lesson.  The Centurion tells Jesus, “I speak commands and they are obeyed”.  The centurion says “I tell this one to go and he goes, I tell this other one to do this and it is done”.  In other words this is a military man who understands authority.  Everyone in an army has an assigned rank of authority.  Anyone new to the army is at the bottom of the authority food chain.  Anyone with extended experience and maturity is at the upper echelons of the authority ladder by their years of experience and wisdom.  There is literally no one in the army that is not under the authority of someone else.  Even the chief leader is under the lordship of the ruler of the country.  There are vast numbers of lessons to learn from the military but I will not attempt to give you very many.  Just understand that orders are given and orders are obeyed.  If orders are not given, nothing is done.  If orders are not obeyed then severe consequences are delivered.  All of the army is a word based command structure system of authorities.  No one shoots their gun without someone in charge telling them to shot, where to shoot and how often to shoot.  If you don’t understand this I’m sorry, but that is generally how life works in the army.

Mat 8:10  When Jesus heard it, he marvelled, and said to them that followed, Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel.

Jesus’ responses to the Centurion’s words are very revealing.  As you can see Jesus is clearly looking for faith in Israel and has found it to be a scarcity.   If you do not understand that Jesus is still looking for faith today then you are not in touch with reality.  God has not changed, is not changing and will not change.  So this is the key factor for what is happening in this story.  Jesus stood in astonishment with the words spoken to Him by a man outside of the Old Covenant.  This wisdom that came from the Centurion’s mouth demonstrated his ability to recognize things that others ignored around him.  Do not think that Jesus did things in isolation or in private always.  When Jesus cast out a demon with His Word, the demon was gone and people could see the result immediately.  Many people in Israel recognized this to be authority in demonstration, but only the centurion used this knowledge of spiritual authority to set his servant free from his pain, torment and impending death.  Let me show you some other scriptures found in the Gospel about Jesus’ authority quickly:

Mat 7:29  For he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.

Mar 1:27  And they were all amazed, insomuch that they questioned among themselves, saying, What thing is this? what new doctrine is this? for with authority commandeth he even the unclean spirits, and they do obey him.

You see the authority that Jesus carried with Him on the earth was clearly evident so that everyone could see it to be different than all the other teachers in Israel.  This is what the Centurion also observed and only he understood how it worked.  You can clearly see that men of Israel questioned Jesus in Mark 1:27 saying He speaks and the demons obey Him.  These are military realities.  They were very self-evident but yet some saw them and questioned them, others saw them and accepted them.  Where are you today on this authority revelation?  That is exactly why I am teaching on this subject to help your faith.  Let me show you another verse on this subject of Jesus’ authority:

Mat 21:23  And when he was come into the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came unto him as he was teaching, and said, By what authority doest thou these things? and who gave thee this authority?

Here we have the Jewish leaders in the synagogue questioning the obvious display of authority from Jesus to teach, to heal or to do anything.  You can tell these leaders recognized what authority was, but yet they did not accept it to be a legitimate authority since it was not given to Him by them or by any other established human organization, government, etc.  The things in their minds were not right.  They saw Jesus as a mere man from an insignificant city called Nazareth and not the God man sent from heaven born in Bethlehem.  Uh Oh?  That was a major stumbling block of offense to them and they allowed their ignorance of the truth to stop them from seeking the truth.  That was not very good news for any of them at all.  You see these men were very closed minded locked into a false knowledge of the truth.  When confronted with truth they closed their eyes because of His overwhelming brightness, even though truth was standing right in front of them.   To be closed minded is a state of mental and spiritual blindness that is used by Satan to keep people from knowing the truth (2 Cor 4:4).  I pray that you will always be open to learning more from God, because He certainly has more that He can teach you.

In Matthew 8 we have discovered a new factor for having great faith.  This factor for having great faith is called “authority”.  Both the Centurion and Jesus walked in authority, understood authority, recognized authority and used authority to produce positive results.  The Centurion’s authority was natural and Jesus’ authority was clearly spiritual.  Both men knew what authority was and both men understood how authority worked completely.  Both men recognized the power of spoken words and this is the basis of ALL authority.  That is where we are in this lesson.  Perhaps we need to research what authority is and how it affects our faith next?  We still have a lot to learn on the subject of authority so let’s explore deeper.

People today in the modern world still question authority and do not understand the importance of its existence.  They typically disrespect those that are in authority and they do not understand the chaos that would exist without any organized structural authority.  We like to live in a free country and enjoy all of these freedoms offered, but these are only made possible because there are established laws under authority.  In this country that I live in we have an organized system of hierarchical layers of authorities.  Let’s quickly look at a definition that I found on the internet for the word authority:

  1. The power or right to give orders, make decisions, and enforce obedience:
  2. The right to act in a specified way, delegated from one person or organization to another.

Authority involves power, but authority does not mean you are all powerful.  Being the strongest man in the world does not make you the one in charge.  This is true in every realm of government, sports, corporations, organizations, families, etc.  Many times the shortest weakest men or women are the ones with the most authority.  Understand the difference between power and authority.  For example, a policeman carries a gun that gives him power, but he also has been given delegated rights of authority by the badge that he wears.  Both of these are separate distinct factors that combine for either positive or negative results.  Look at the definition of authority; this word means a delegated right to give orders and to enforce their obedience.  These orders given are expected to be carried out or there are major consequences.  Having rights is a key part of the definition to having legitimate authority.  This is why Jesus was questioned by Satan asking what right do you have to do these things on the earth?  Satan did not realize how smart God was and that God does not do anything that is illegal.  God certainly had a right by all of His past previous divine acts.  But, I do not have time to fully elaborate on all of these today.

Using these definitions of authority we can easily understand that our God holds all authority by preeminence and power.  But, can we also find the transference of rights and authority from the most High God to us or anyone else here on the earth?  You must realize that God is sovereign and being sovereign God has the explicit right to delegate authority to whoever He wishes.  Does God do that and why would God do that?  Certainly God has the right to do that, but many do not understand why God would do anything to relinquish any control.  To surrender control would violate their idea of an omnipotent God in sovereign control of everything that occurs.  Delegation of authority would allow others to make independent choices, laws, rules and commands and thus things on the earth would no longer be in God’s full control.  That concept boggles the mind of many religious people endlessly.  That is really very unfortunate that people do not just read their Bibles and actually see what God has said in His word and then believe that.  Read this verse carefully and observe the transfer of authority from God to man:

Gen 1:26  And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

Man being made in the image and likeness of God dictates “that what God is capable of man is also capable of” on a lesser scale.  You see I once had an educated seminary man try to tell me this verse does not mean what it literally says.  If that was true then no verse in the Bible could be taken as truth either.  Anyone could easily dismiss the virgin birth, the existence of the man Jesus Christ or His death on the cross and his subsequent resurrection from the dead as all being invalid occurrences.  This verse in Genesis clearly from God says man/Adam has been given “dominion” over all of the earth.  Did God have the right to do this, certainly He did.  Perhaps it is the word dominion that you are having problem with.  This word has a very different meaning than what may come to your mind at first.  Let me give you the Strong’s definition of the word to investigate what God intended to happen with His created man Adam:

A primitive root; to tread down, that is, subjugate; specifically to crumble off: – (come to, make to) have dominion, prevail against, reign, (bear, make to) rule, (-r, over), take.

Interesting Hebrew word definition, isn’t it?  To “tread down” is a very familiar term if you have read many of my other Bible studies.  You see this word “dominion” corresponds to an impending prophecy after the fall of man found in Genesis 3:15 where Gods says that the “seed of the woman” would bruise the head of the serpent.  The confusion arises because people do not understand who the woman is or what the seed is either.  Genesis 3:15 has not been fulfilled yet even though many teach that it has.  To those that teach that it has been fulfilled show me the Bible verses that declares this.  You are going to have to show me where Jesus is called the seed of the woman and then show me where he bruised the head of the serpent.  Since you cannot find these verses, you have to make other verses try to fit your beliefs and that is a dangerous approach to Bible interpretation. What we must first understand is that “dominion” to God means to “tread under foot”.  Then we can try to figure out why Adam did not do this and what the consequences were for not following God’s orders.

What God is teaching us is that how the world began with man in authority will be how the world will end.  This word definition for “dominion” conveys delegated authority and at the very least the right of man to have limited human sovereignty over the earth.  This would give Adam the right to make independent decisions apart from God.  For Adam to rule and to reign on the earth represents the delegated right of power and authority given from the highest authority in the universe and that was God.  Was Adam the strongest and most powerful being on the earth at this point of assignment?  As of Genesis 1, he probably was, but as of Genesis 3 we see the entry of another spiritual being called the serpent coming onto the scene that at the very least God says in the Bible also has great power but yet no authority on the earth.  Let me ask you at the point of the entry of the serpent on the earth, who had authority?  Was it God, Adam or Satan?  Adam of course had been given full authority by God to kick Satan out.  Therefore, God did not have the responsibility to do it.  Satan comes into the world and causes sin and death to reign.  Now authority has been transferred to Satan.  God gave it to man and the man gave it to Satan.  Probably not the best choice Adam could have made.  But nevertheless all of this was legally transferred authority based upon God’s Word.   

You see when Jesus came into the world Satan took Him up to a high place and showed Him all of the kingdoms of the world and said I will give these to you if you worship me (Mat 4:8-9).  Satan declared with this statement that the rights and authority of the world had been given to him.   Where did Satan get this if not from Adam since it was first given to Adam by God in Genesis 1:26?    I find things like this written in the Bible to be fascinating.  Why would God put such detailed information of events if they were not significant things that we needed to know about and to understand?  Also these related subjects would not be understood if they were not properly connected in some way.  God is teaching us that authority matters and that was one reason that Jesus came into the world to reverse the works of Satan (1 Jn 3:8).   You see after the resurrection of Jesus from the dead He makes another radical statement about a transfer of authority that is often ignored:

Mat 28:18  And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.

Do you see what Jesus the risen Savior has just declared?  Is Jesus a liar?  Is this not omnipotent God in the flesh?  What a new radical statement.  Here God is telling us of another transfer of all authority that has just taken place.  Jesus Christ informs us clearly that not all power was His before, but now is in two different dimensional realms.  Power in both the spiritual dimension and the natural dimension has again been transferred back into the hands of God.  Wow, is that a tough concept to comprehend?   Do not forget these words, because they are very important.  This Greek Word translated as “power” does not mean God lost His omnipotent ability of force at any time.  This Greek word translated as power actually means “Authority” has been transferred again back from Satan and returned to God on the earth.   Uh oh?  That means Satan no longer has any authority again on the earth as before Adam sinned.  Do not confuse power and authority.  Satan still has power, but he has no authority to use his power unless a Christian gives him the ability to use it.  Let me show you the very next statement that Jesus makes to the church after saying all authority has been returned to Him:

Mat 28:19  Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:

Can you see that Jesus after saying that all authority has just been transferred to Him, immediately He transfers that authority back to the church, His body on the earth?  That is why this verse 19 starts with the conjunctive “therefore” which connects the previous statement to the current statement.  You see Jesus immediately delegates responsibility again to His people on the earth to do something in the power of His name.  Do you understand this?  These concepts are very important to embrace as a Christian.  You again have delegated rights and authority from the Most High God to do things.  What Satan took from Adam and lost, you have gained back from God through Jesus Christ.  The only difference is we are not working independently from God because God is joined with us working together in us to bring about the final victory over Satan.  Now we need to go back and determine what do all of these transfers of authority have to do with faith and more correctly us having great faith? 

This is where the rubber meets the road so to speak.  We are going to make a practical application of how to possess the greatest kind of faith using our newly found knowledge of how authority was transferred from God to Adam, Adam to Satan, back to Jesus and finally to the church and how this type of authority works from a military perspective.  Recall what the Centurion said to Jesus.  He told Jesus to “Speak the Word” only and my servant will be healed.  Did Jesus do this and what happened to the Centurion’s servant after Jesus spoke?

Mat 8:13  And Jesus said unto the centurion, Go thy way; and as thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee. And his servant was healed in the selfsame hour.

Jesus speaks several things but I skipped down to verse 13 to shorten the lesson for now.  Jesus says to the Centurion to go your way and that as you have believed (past tense) it has been done to you exactly that way.  Ok, that was my paraphrase of the words of Jesus, but surely you can see what Jesus has declared.  Why did Jesus emphasize that the Centurion had already believed and did not currently believe (present tense)?  Do you think this make any difference?  I believe that it does make a huge difference.  If you believe that God will heal you someday in the future then that is not real great faith.  Maybe it will help if we review what just happened to the Centurion and the servant.  Here is a synopsis of what the Centurion did and what happened:

  1. The Centurion heard of Jesus and had faith in His Word.
  2. The Centurion initiates the exchange and does not wait passively for Jesus.
  3. The Centurion was very humble in his approach to God.
  4. The Centurion had great compassion for another to seek God to help.
  5. The Centurion recognized the Authority that Jesus possessed.
  6. The Centurion understood Authority involved only Giving Orders.
  7. The Centurion believed that he only needed Jesus to Give the Order.
  8. And finally the Centurion believed it was done when the Order was given.
  9. The Bible then said after the word was spoken, the servant was healed.
  10. Therefore, by the time everyone was back at home everything was back to normal.
  11. Understand that at no time on the way home did the Centurion doubt that it was not done.
  12. Therefore, the Centurion had great confidence in the Word of God that was spoken to him.

These are all factors of having great faith today.  In other words all of this happened exactly like it was previously believed and spoken by the Centurion first.  Did you notice I did not say spoken by Jesus first?  Yes I did mean it that way.   Yes Jesus did say it was done according to the way the Centurion believed, but Jesus didn’t tell the Centurion to believe this way or what to say.  The Centurion made the choice what to believe and knew based upon his knowledge of authority that it would be done if Jesus would agree.  This was the greatest faith example in the entire Bible of an unsaved Gentile man that was never in covenant with the almighty God because he understood authority.  Clearly we can see that it was only because the Centurion believed in authority and spoke humbly with authority that caused him to have such noted declared great faith that caused even God to stand in awe and marvel.  Do you want to amaze God?  Here is how you do it.  You believe He has given you the same authority that He possessed “to tread on serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy” (Luke 10:19) and you speak with this delegated authority of God’s Word in your mouth declaring what has been already established in the spiritual realm and God will then say to you “be it unto even as you have believed today”.  You see I just quoted you a part of Luke 10:19 and you need to go and read this verse closely and study it:

Luk 10:19  Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you.

This verse confirms your authority over Satan.  God says that you will “tread on” the power of serpents.  Isn’t that a full circle back to what God said to you in Genesis 1:26 and Genesis 3:15?  To “tread on” again means that you have been given transferred rights of authority to demonstrate Satan’s defeat on the earth personally.   You will need to look up the definitions of the words “power” in this verse in Luke 10:19 in order to fully confirm what I am telling you.  The first word translated as power in this verse means “Authority” and the second word translated as “power” means force.  So they are two different Greek words concerning two different spiritual beings.  We have God’s “Authority” over Satan’s force of power.  Both of us are in the world but light overcomes darkness every time.   However, if we do not exercise our authority, Satan will dominate us with his illegal power.

I guess I have been going a long time in this lesson.  I have many more things that we could talk about concerning using your authority.  Perhaps I need to do a series of lessons just on the subject of authority.   This is truly a great revelation that every Christian needs to understand.  Jesus has come into the world to restore the right order to man and has given to us His newly transferred authority for a purpose.  We are going out of this world a victorious church and not a defeated church.  We can only be victorious if we learn that we have authority and then learn how to use it with our faith.  This information will change your life and your attitude.  When Satan attacks with his power, you can fight back with your authority and he will flee in terror.  Satan will not like me teaching you this authority, but that is just too bad.  If you will grasp these concepts and take hold of them firmly and believe what God has told me to tell you, you too will become an over comer for God.  God bless you until next time and please leave me a comment about how this is helping you to learn and grow in the knowledge Jesus Christ.

If you would like to continue to read in this series on the subject of Bible Faith you may now go to “Part 16“.

Understanding How to Be Led By the Spirit of God! How the Holy Spirit Led the Early Church in Acts 10! Part 11

(ver 1.2) This is now Part 11 in a series of very important basic Christian Bible lessons on the subject of Being Led by the Spirit of God.  These lessons contain critical spiritual information necessary for the spiritual growth of every Christian and they directly apply to us in the modern world because we are the same church body serving the same God as those in the book of Acts.  My foundational scripture verse for the series is “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God” (Rom 8:14). That verse makes it sound essential to be led by God or you cannot be called His child.  Therefore, I believe that it is essential to know this subject.  We have covered a tremendous amount of information that will not be repeated so if you have not read this from the beginning I would suggest that you go and start with “Part 1” first.   In recent lessons, I have been moving through the book of Acts and observing the recorded (direct and indirect stated) methods used by God to lead the early church.  We are beginning to see a set of repeated pattern of the same methods being used by God to build up and grow the Body of Christ.  We are also beginning to understand an emphasis of certain methods of God over others that I have mentioned of how God leads His people.  In the last lesson I introduced you to some new concepts when I described the contributing factors of peace and joy to be necessary for hearing from the Spirit of God.  If you are depressed then you are not hearing from God.  If you are not in peace you are not hearing from God.  We have also seen repeatedly that those in the church that are being led by God are always those that are in unity with the other believers surrounding them.  This means they were not arguing, fighting or debating over what anyone wanted to do individually, but that they were more concerned with what God was doing corporately for the greater plan and purpose of the church.  Those being led today in the Church should be no different.  God is not going to lead one part of a group of believers differently apart from another group of believers so that they fight over who is right and who is wrong.  This is another important key to being led by the Spirit of God.   Hearing from God should always cause love to flow which generates a spirit of oneness, agreement, harmony and unity. 

Today I am only going to teach in chapter 10 of Acts.  It has just been making my lessons too long by me trying to teach on multiple chapters in one lesson.  Acts chapter 10 is only 48 verses long but it is so rich with new information on my subject of being led by the Spirit of God, that this again will probably be a long lesson and I will probably only get approximately half way through the chapter today.  I apologize in advance for the length of the lesson, but I believe this information is really important on the subject of being led by the Spirit of God.   Acts 10 is probably one of my favorite chapters in the book of Acts and hopefully as we go through it today, you will see why I say that and maybe it will become one of your new favorite chapters also.   Let’s start at the beginning with verse 1 and read down to verse 3.

ACTS CHAPTER 10

Act 10:1  There was a certain man in Caesarea called Cornelius, a centurion of the band called the Italian band,

Act 10:2  A devout man, and one that feared God with all his house, which gave much alms to the people, and prayed to God alway.

Act 10:3  He saw in a vision evidently about the ninth hour of the day an angel of God coming in to him, and saying unto him, Cornelius.

It is very interesting for me to see the connecting and developing factors being tied together in these verses.  It is also clear to me that God gives us many new clues and details like the hour of the day that these events occurred in this chapter.  These details certainly have direct meaning and are not there by chance.  There is nothing found in the Bible that occurs there by accident.  Every word has a designed purpose of God.  In the first verse, God is speaking about an Italian man, a Gentile by the flesh.  Up until this point in time, the church was widely a Jewish set of believers that have accepted Jesus.  But, Cornelius is clearly described as a Christian man; he is being labeled as someone who feared God.  To fear God is not an indication of being afraid or terrified of God, but it is more the concept of being in an attitude of awe for God with a great reverential respect for His position, His power, His knowledge and His ability.  This same Greek word is used in Ephesians 5 when God talks about a wife’s attitude towards her husband.  This is clearly not the type of fear that she is to be afraid that her husband will hurt her.  You see the risen Savior Jesus is the husband in this relationship with the church and the church is supposed to treat God with awe and respect.  However, God’s attitude of love was first demonstrated towards us and He treats us with great tender kindness like the very valuable wife that He has given His all to find. 

You can learn this concept of God giving His all by listening to what Jesus said about the kingdom of God when He teaches the parable of a merchant man seeking valuable pearls.  This merchant man goes and sells all that he has in order to buy the pearl of great value that he has searched for and found (Mat 13:45-46).  The merchant man in this parable is a type of Jesus and the pearl of great value is a type of us, the church.  The great purchase price paid for us was the payment of His blood and His life.  This was God giving everything that He possessed to buy us out of our major predicament of sin.    What we learn as the symbolic pearl from this information is that how we view God will determine if God will be able to guide us with His Spirit.  If we view Him as a God that will hurt us if we do not obey or make a mistake, then that is going to affect what we can hear and how we can hear Him.   If someone obeys God out of terror then that someone becomes a slave to that fear.  If someone obeys willingly out of their love for their God then that person actions are founded upon His love knowing if they do make a mistake that He is there to help them.  You see you do not understand how much God values you if you believe that God will hurt you if you do wrong.   One of the most important verses in the entire Bible is the one that states “God is love” (1 Jn 4:8)!   Not God has love for us, but He is that Love for us.  God has not given to us the spirit of fear.  Fear is being afraid or terrified which is really an opposing force to love.  This is why I wanted to briefly try to explain the type of fear being mentioned in Acts that Cornelius possessed that allowed him to hear from God.

In the first three verses in Acts 10, Cornelius is also described to be a giver and this is a characteristic of most real Christians.  Most Christians love to give to others.  The United States gets accused of many things, but the majority of the charity poured out on the world comes from this Christian nation.  Giving may or may not be a factor for what you think about God, the Bible and being a Christian, but giving is a huge factor for if you desire to receive anything from God.  I’m not preaching works based giving; I’m teaching Spirit led giving.  Obeying the law will not justify you, but obeying God will cause great benefits and blessings to occur.  You see giving is tied to receiving everywhere in the Bible.  You can see this as a stated spiritual law of God.  It is called the law of sowing and reaping and it occurs everywhere in the Bible as a predominant theme from Genesis to Revelation. Sowing and reaping is not usually a popular subject and frequently ignored because people teach it only in regards to money, but this subject is found ever present in many areas other than money.  There are over 10 things in the Bible referred to as seeds and if you don’t know them, then your ignorance causes you to potentially miss them.  I have a series of Bible lessons on this subject so I will not repeat them in this lesson.  If you want to read them you can go and see “Understanding Seeds in the Bible”. 

As you can see in verse 2 of Acts 10, Cornelius is praying.  What happens when we pray?  I think I tried to teach you that God hears and will respond.  Here is another very clear example of that in Acts 10.  Cornelius has a vision, but this time it is of a spiritual angel.  So we have the spiritual realm becoming visible to a man in the natural realm through God’s use of a vision.  This is an example of a combined method approach of spiritual communication.  God used both a spiritual vision and a spiritual being or an angel simultaneously.  This is certainly different, but it does happen.  Other times in the Bible, God sends an angel into the natural realm and people see them physically and God can do either.  This is also another example of an open type of vision.  The man Cornelius is wide awake and his eyes are wide open.   These are amazing confirmations that God will still use visions and angels directly in the modern church to give to us a specific message. 

I want you to see the stated order of occurrence in this manifestation of God.  It is stated that Cornelius did three things first before God sent the angel and gave the vision.  Cornelius feared God, gave to others and prayed before God gave him a vision and sent the angel with the message.  Is that not God responding or giving back based upon what Cornelius gave and did first?  Most of the time, I believe that this is the way that things have happened in Acts.  Saul was the only example that I have observed in Acts to be different so far.  Jesus appeared to Saul an unsaved man the first time without Saul asking or doing anything, but notice after that, it was only when Saul prayed to God that God said that He had given to him another vision.  The Spirit of God can do things progressively different as you continue to learn to grow up spiritually.  For, example when I was first filled with the Spirit of God, God spoke to me in an audible voice one time.  He has never done that again since then.  However, that does not mean that I do not hear from the voice of God daily.  It only means that I have grown enough spiritually to discern how else He speaks.  God treats unsaved and baby Christians a little bit differently than the mature Christians because He expects the mature Christians to know more.  This is true for babies in the natural realm and this is true for babies in the spiritual realm.   Let’s now see what God’s response was to what we have seen so far from Cornelius:

Act 10:4  And when he looked on him, he was afraid, and said, What is it, Lord? And he said unto him, Thy prayers and thine alms are come up for a memorial before God.

God declares that He has heard the prayers of Cornelius and has seen his giving and it sounds like God sees both of these as being positive things.  Why else are they mentioned?  One key word in this verse is the term “memorial”.  A memorial in the natural is a way to remember someone or something”.  This is what this word means, but it is easily taken the wrong way since God does know everything. What you do or say cannot cause God to suddenly remember you.  God does not step back and say “Oh yea, I forgot about Jim, I guess I better do something.  However, it is clear to me from these verses that God says the angel was sent and the message delivered because of his actions.  What I want you to discover is that Cornelius’ actions and his words were observed by God and thus your words and actions are also viewed by God since God is no respecter of persons.  I also want you to understand that if anything is pleasing in the eyes of God we need to remember clearly what it is that pleases God.  It is not your giving and it is not your praying, but it is only your faith when doing both of these.  You see the Bible says without faith it is impossible to please God (Heb 11:6).  So if you are giving without faith, you are still not pleasing to God and you do it in vain.  If you are praying without faith then you are again not going to be pleasing to God and your words will fall empty.  God places certain priorities on certain things and His Word is first and foremost above everything else and then your faith in His Word allows the connection to take place to access His Power.   If you do things without learning about God’s priorities then you are more than likely doing them out of order.  I do not have time to teach you about faith, but I have a series of lessons that will help you understand this critical subject called “Understanding Bible Faith”.  I bring up faith because it is clearly Cornelius’ faith that played a role in hearing from God even though it was never directly mentioned.  This is just another example of using the Bible to explain the Bible.  If God is pleased with anyone, then God says that they have faith while doing what they have done.  Let’s continue with the angel’s instructions from God:

Act 10:5  And now send men to Joppa, and call for one Simon, whose surname is Peter:

Act 10:6  He lodgeth with one Simon a tanner, whose house is by the sea side: he shall tell thee what thou oughtest to do.

The angel tells Cornelius to send men to Joppa for a man named Peter.  Notice that Cornelius does not know Peter.  Why didn’t the angel just show up where Peter was and tell Peter to go and see Cornelius?  I find it very interesting how God does things in this chapter and that is why I’m spending so much time in talking about it.  Here we have an angel sent by God with a message to tell Cornelius where to go and get another message from God.  Wow, that is just mind blowing, to many Christians.   God tells Cornelius to go find a man named Peter because Peter has a message for him but as we read down in the chapter we are going to find out that Peter doesn’t know this yet.  Why is that?  Do you see what is happening here?  The man Cornelius has a vision and sees an angel but does not get the message from the angel but is told where to go to get the message from a very certain man named Peter.  In other words if Cornelius tried to get the message from the apostle John, he would have missed it  Was it only because the angel did not know the message or was it that God was teaching these people involved some new spiritual lessons on guidance, helping them all to grow?  Both men of God are required to walk by faith and not by their sight.  Cornelius had specific steps of instructions to get Peter and Peter will be given specific words of instruction for Cornelius.  Using this information you should begin to understand how God is going to potentially lead you?  He is not going to tell you everything personally all at once.  Sometimes He will just tell others what to tell you.  Sometimes I am used by God to speak to people and sometimes God uses other people to speak to me.  Sometimes I hear directly from God and other times He does things differently with me reading His word or hearing a preacher or a teacher.  There are so many ways that God can speak that you just need to be observant and attentive enough to hear Him when He does.  That is just the way He does it.  I just try to learn the best that I can to flow with Him and that is all that I can do by faith.

Act 10:9  On the morrow, as they went on their journey, and drew nigh unto the city, Peter went up upon the housetop to pray about the sixth hour:

Act 10:10  And he became very hungry, and would have eaten: but while they made ready, he fell into a trance,

Ok, we are about to learn several new things in these verses.  First, Cornelius sends men to get Peter and while they are traveling Peter is described to go up on top of the roof to pray.  So again we see prayer as a major contributing factor for hearing from God.  But, we should soon notice that it is not just the fact that Peter prays, but it becomes more significant that Peter prayed at just the right time that makes all of this really work together.  This is why God is revealing the time factor in this chapter and teaching you that timing is everything with God.  You can be told by God to do something and then do it too early or too late and miss what God wanted you to learn.  During this prayer, Peter falls into a trance.  That is the beginning of a very different manifestation of the Spirit of God.  This is what I call a closed vision.  A closed vision is one where the individual is not necessarily asleep, but not necessarily awake either.  A vision during sleep is called a dream and this is not a dream.  In other words, if you were observing Peter praying you might seem to think that he looked like a statue because he appeared motionless and fixed in one place.  The condition of his eyes could be either shut or open, but they will definitely not be blinking.  It might look like that he was sleeping if was not for the fact that he might be standing up or even kneeling down.  Nowhere in the chapter does it say that Peter was directly lying down.  It does say later in verse 20 that Peter is told to arise and this implies that he was not standing.  But there are a lot of positions other than standing that it could be.  What you need to observe is if God does not tell us the position then the position is not important.  Too many Christians get focused on external things and totally miss the really important spiritual things.  There is an unnamed church denomination that is highly ritualistic.  They think that they will be heard by God by their faithful acts and works.  However, that is just not the truth.  During prayer what is important is the inward position of your heart and not your outward external posture or stance.  Saul saw a vision while he was traveling.  Stephen saw a vision while standing and being stoned.  Here in Acts 10 we now have seen the third and fourth mentioned direct occurrence of someone having a vision and both of these times it was while they were praying.

Act 10:13  And there came a voice to him, Rise, Peter; kill, and eat. 

I’m not going to go through every verse, but this one is very good because it tells you directly that Peter heard a voice and we will find out in the next verse that Peter recognized that it was the voice of God speaking to him immediately.  Remember what Jesus said to the Apostles?  Jesus taught them about Him being the Shepherd and them being the sheep in John 10.  Jesus also said that He knew His sheep and that His sheep knew Him (John 10:14).  All of this information in that chapter teaches us that God’s children will recognize His voice.  So God does not have to say “Thus saith the Great I Am”, He just speaks and Peters knows who is speaking.  This is the same way with you and I.  I hear His voice and I recognized Him to be my God and the voice of a stranger I do not follow because the stranger I do not recognize.  That is called spiritual discernment.  The more you understand about the Bible the more recognizable His voice becomes to you.  God will never speak in opposition to His Word, but Satan will. You see in the Bible voices are always spirits and spirits are always voices.   You will either know it or you will be deceived to follow another voice and that is usually fatal.

Act 10:14  But Peter said, Not so, Lord; for I have never eaten any thing that is common or unclean.

As you can tell Peter understands who is speaking to Him because He calls Him his Lord.  You may recall earlier that Cornelius had this same response calling the voice Lord.  This was the Spirit of Jesus, the Great Shepherd the familiar known voice that was speaking to Peter.  Here is where Peter’s problem begins, because he knows who is speaking and he thinks that his God is telling him to do something that was unlawful.  Peter is greatly struggling with these instructions from God.  What we learn from this is that God knows what He is doing and you don’t so you should not question, but should be obedient.  As long you know the voice is from Him, you just need to do what He says.  If you read down in the chapter God repeats these instructions 3 times, so Peter is on the verge of rebellion because of his lack of understanding of the purpose of the law.  God says my people are destroyed for a lack of knowing (Hosea 4:6).  So Peter must learn quickly or get left out.  Why didn’t Peter just ask God to explain what was happening?  Did you know that you cannot ask God any questions that are too hard to be answered?  You can ask God a dumb question, but as long as it is not a question of doubt or unbelief then it is a valid question.

Let’s discuss briefly the vision of Peter.  Did you notice that the vision was about food and in verse 10 it said that Peter was already hungry?  Do you think that God can give you any physical feelings?  I know the Bible says that God is a Spirit, but I’ll ask you again, do you think that the Spirit of God can give you a physical feeling like that of natural hunger?  I know for a fact that God can manifest in these ways if He so desires.  After all God invented natural feelings so it is not difficult to manifest them.  Again I will tell you that this is God’s choice and not our choice.  But, God can come into the natural realm to make Himself known for any purpose and in any way that helps to teach us. 

When I was first filled with the Holy Spirit, I felt a strong heat like a fire from the Spirit of God inside of my chest and sometimes it was so strong that it was very distracting.  I feel this heat of the Spirit of God in my chest right now as I type this lesson.  This is clearly a physical feeling in my flesh caused by the Spirit of God residing in my spirit.  If you do not believe me I’m sorry, I can’t prove it to you; this is for my benefit and not for yours.  However, I do know that what I feel physically is scripturally based.  Have you read the recorded words of John the Baptist?  He said of Jesus that “I baptize you with water, but there will come one after me that is greater than I and He will baptize you with the Holy Ghost and fire” (Mat 3:11, Luke 3:16).   I can tell you about this fire from God, but I can’t make it happen for you and neither can you.  However, there is a difference, you can pray in faith and ask God for this experience since it is a recorded promise found in His Word for you.  If you want the fire of God ask for it now. 

Let’s go back to Peter’s vision.  What I found significant about Peter’s vision was the fact that he was feeling very hungry and suddenly God gives him a closed vision about food that needed an interpretation in order to be understood.  Visions and dreams that required interpretations were given by God many times in the Old Testament.  But, this is the first time we can see that God is doing this again in Acts.  Realize that God is still the same God today as He was back then, and He can do whatever He likes.  Just learn to flow and then learn that God still uses dreams and visions that need interpretation.  Verses 11-16 in Acts 10 describe the vision of Peter and since this is not my direct subject I’m going to skip it.  They basically give several symbols, a sheet carrying many wild animals of the earth that are lowered down from heaven.  God tells Peter to kill and eat and Peter tells God I have never eaten what is common or unclean.  God then tells Peter “Don’t call common what I have made clean”.  Uh, oh?  God is definitely teaching Peter something new.  This was God teaching Peter to get out of his box because He was doing a new thing on the earth.

Act 10:17  Now while Peter doubted in himself what this vision which he had seen should mean, behold, the men which were sent from Cornelius had made enquiry for Simon’s house, and stood before the gate,

Here is what I have been trying to say about Peter’s view of what was happening; that he did not understand what the vision meant yet even though God had just given it to him.  This is what happens to Christians in the church still.  Just because God gives you something does not mean you will understand it immediately.  Peter had a conflict in his mind because he was attempting to interpret and judge the vision by his old knowledge of the law of God.  God declares many things in the law to be unclean for human consumption but, now God has said to Peter to kill one of these and to eat it.   This was a common problem for many converted Jews when they first become Christians.  They tried to hold on to their old traditional understanding of the laws of God too tightly when God was clearly saying “those were only shadows of new coming spiritual things”.  Paul taught this problem in Romans and Galatians and other places.  There was a constant struggle for man to try to keep the law and God is teaching them to be led by the Spirit instead.   However, what God was doing was using Peter’s knowledge of the scriptures in the Old Covenant to bring him a new revelation of what God was doing in the New Covenant.  Go back and reread this chapter again very closely.  It is actually a great lesson to learn many things.  First see what timing plays in everything that occurs.  Then realize that God must be guiding multiple people simultaneously to get all of these things to happen at just the right times.  God gives multiple limited step directions using two types of visions, an angel and a voice directly from the Spirit of God and everything occurs at just exactly the right time.  It is pretty amazing to me.

Act 10:19  While Peter thought on the vision, the Spirit said unto him, Behold, three men seek thee.

I want you to realize that the Spirit of God is directly attributed with speaking to Peter and that this is the second recorded direct example of God doing this in the book of Acts so far.  I’m not sure if I pointed out the first occurrence, but there was one recorded in Acts 8:29 that said the Lord spoke to Phillip directly.  I really do not believe that these are all of the times that God speaks directly, but I do believe that these are mentioned to teach us that God still does this.  I want you to understand also that it does not say what kind of voice these men heard.  It could have been an external audible voice or more than likely it was the internal still small voice of God within them.  Again, how God speaks is not as important as what God says.  I hope you understand that.  You should not really focus or care about the method, but you should care greatly what God said.  Also notice that God speaks while Peter is using his God given mental reasoning faculty to try to determine what the vision means.  In other words Peter was focused in on the very important content of the vision and not the fact that he had just had a great vision from Almighty God.   Wow, what a lesson to learn today.  Don’t stand in awe if God gives you a vision and miss the message!

Act 10:20  Arise therefore, and get thee down, and go with them, doubting nothing: for I have sent them. 

While all of this is happening to Peter, the men from Cornelius’ house just so happen to show up and the Spirit of God says they are here and to go down to see them because I have sent them.  Notice God claims responsibility for what is transpiring.  So is God doing it or are the men doing it, or is everyone doing it together?  Take a look at what God is doing.  God is teaching them all spiritual lessons by giving them many different limited steps to follow.  These are examples of God teaching them using tiny baby steps of divine guidance.   Things are beginning to fit together as each part of God’s designed plan is revealed and fulfilled.   The men of God are definitely participating and this demonstrates clearly that they are all being led by the Spirit of God.  What we are observing is men working with the Holy Spirit’s guidance to achieve a greater purpose.  Without the participation of each man and the direction of the Spirit of God, we may not have any Gentiles in the church today. 

Pay attention to the fact in verse 20 that God is directing Peter to not doubt and also to be obedient.  Why is God doing this?  What is doubt?  Doubt is the opposite of having faith.  If you have doubts then you are not fully in faith.  I keep going back to faith, because this is the key factor for following God, being led by God and for being pleasing to God.  Jesus taught Peter about doubt when Peter left the boat to walk on the water with Jesus.  Because of Peter’s doubts God says Peter began to sink (Mat 14:31).  So how does this knowledge that Peter possessed apply to his current situation?  To me it is obvious that doubt causes people to go down or fail.  That would mean the opposite truth would be that not to doubt would cause people to have a successful outcome.  You have to understand that God has not told Peter who was at the door to see him.  God only said, “Men are here and I sent them”.  Here is the opportunity for Peter to doubt.  These men sent by God were all Gentiles and that causes a problem of potential doubt in the mind of a man who feels special for being a natural born Jew.  Peter could have looked at the circumstances and thought that these men can’t be from God.  There was a great revelation coming that everyone is welcome in the New Covenant and not just the natural Jews and that was the plan of God to bless all nations in order to grow the church beyond the borders of natural Israel.  But, Peter didn’t know this yet.  Peter was about to learn a revelation that was hidden in God’s covenant with Abraham and this was how God chose to reveal it to him.  I hope you understand the concept of revelation, I will do a separate Bible study on this subject soon.

Act 10:21  Then Peter went down to the men which were sent unto him from Cornelius; and said, Behold, I am he whom ye seek: what is the cause wherefore ye are come?

Peter still does not know why they are here even though God had just given him a vision to why they are there.  God even told Peter that He had sent them but, Peter has just not put all of the pieces of the puzzle together yet.  Have you ever realized that God gives us many things using a puzzle format in the Bible?  If you do not understand this then you do not understand the joys found when solving a divine puzzle.   There is great satisfaction gained from solving the complex puzzles given to us by God.  Maybe only computer programmers, like me understand this.  It causes a sense of accomplishment and God uses it to promote your morale, confidence and self-esteem.  God is interested in teaching you how to do things.  It is an error to think that God wants to do everything for you.  God wants you to grow in spiritual things so that you can come up to a higher level.  Did you know that?  I think that is a little bit controversial to many and it sounds like I’m contradicting what I said in an earlier lesson that without God we labor in vain if we do things independent from God.  There is a huge difference from doing your own things in independence and doing specific God kind of things by faith expecting Him to work with you and guide you.  A guide will never come to you and carry you; that would be them doing everything and you watching.  A guide should give directions and show you the way to go and you should make the effort to obey and to follow them.  Wow, that is unity and harmony of God working with you and you following God.

You see when I write Bible studies for you to read, I do it, but I am expecting God to show me what to do using my faith in Him.  This is what is happening in this chapter of Acts also.  If that was not true then God would not be doing what He is doing, the way He is doing it in this chapter.  If God simply wanted to get new information into the hands of the church the fastest way possible, He could have done things in a much more simplistic direct manner with both Cornelius and Peter.  They could have all immediately known everything instead of having to walk by their faith.  However, walking by sight is just not what is happening here in this chapter.  Everyone is working through the process and learning and this is God’s hidden plan.  I pray that I am describing these things in a way that teaches you how God will deal with you.

Act 10:22  And they said, Cornelius the centurion, a just man, and one that feareth God, and of good report among all the nation of the Jews, was warned from God by an holy angel to send for thee into his house, and to hear words of thee.

I want to reemphasize that Peter still has no clue what is going on or what he is supposed to say to Cornelius.  God has never told Peter that he was to go directly to see Cornelius either.  God has only told Peter I sent these men to you.  So what these men tell Peter is totally new to him and they bring words sent from God through a Gentile man.  Peter is required to believe a message came from God from a Gentilie man.  Cornelius is also required to beleive a message came from God from Peter.  Do you really understand what is happening?  God had just gotten through speaking to Peter directly but never gives any details to what is happening or why.  Peter still does not have a clue what words he is supposed to share when he goes to Cornelius’ house to speak.  Are you learning now what is happening?  Do you see how everyone is required to walk by faith and not by their sight?  I know I keep repeating myself, but that is so very important that I want you to really understand it.  God purposely provides limited instructions in phases and stages of development that all will fit together eventually.

Act 10:22  And they said, Cornelius the centurion, a just man, and one that feareth God, and of good report among all the nation of the Jews, was warned from God by an holy angel to send for thee into his house, and to hear words of thee.

So this is all news to Peter.  Peter hears about an angel appearing to Cornelius the Italian.  Peter has just had a vision from God that explains the whole situation, but the vision needs interpretation to be understood.  I think I‘ll end this lesson with this discussion.   Let’s review the key points given today:

  1. Cornelius’ giving was mentioned as a key factor for getting God’s attention.
  2. Prayer mentioned as a connecting reason twice for having a vision from God.
  3. Faith is always a key to being Led by the Spirit of God.
  4. An open vision was given to Cornelius and he sees an angel with a limited message from God to go get Peter to hear the real message from God.
  5. Peter experiences physical hunger and is given a closed vision about food and eating that needs an interpretation in order to be understood.
  6. A clear vision was given to Cornelius that needed no interpretation.
  7. God gives Peter a symbolic cloaked vision that needs interpretation.
  8. The interpretation of the vision required Peter’s knowledge of the Word of God.
  9. God spoke directly to the spirit of Peter with a very clear voice but with limited details being given and Peter was required to believe the words of the men sent to him.
  10. Timing in every event mentioned is a key to the success of the whole purpose of God.
  11. Every man involved heard from God, obeyed and cooperated with the Spirit of God to accomplish God’s plan.
  12. The purposed outcome of the plan will be a new revelation from God and the continued growth of the church.

This is what is happening today in the church whether you realize it or not.  God is revealing the Bible, the knowledge of His people is greatly increasing and the church will grow until Jesus returns very soon.  Get into the plan or you will be left behind.  Be in unity, hear His voice and be led and we will exit as the victorious church body of Christ.  Thanks for taking the time to study the Bible today.  I will continue this series soon, but please leave me a comment about how you have heard from God.  I guarantee that He is speaking, just be attentive, pray and listen.  God Bless you and thank you for your time.

To continue reading in the series you may go to “Part 12” now.

Understanding How to Be Led By the Spirit of God! How the Holy Spirit Led the Early Church in Acts 5 – 7! Part 9

(ver 1.1) This is now Part 9 in a series of very important basic Christian Bible lessons on the subject of Being Led by the Spirit of God.  These lessons contain spiritual information and not natural formulas so they are easily misunderstood by Christians.  We have covered a tremendous amount of information that will not be repeated so if you have not read this from the beginning I would suggest that you go and start with “Part 1” first.  I am currently going through the book of Acts searching for the works of the Spirit of God to lead His people.  Just in the first 4 chapters of Acts, I showed you 7 of my 12 guidance methods either displayed in actions or referenced by words.  We are seeing God working through His church to guide them and direct them and by learning how God has done this in the past, it will help point us to how God will direct us in these last days.  Christians today are in the same church, the same body of Christ, in the same covenant, we read the same Bible, have the same Holy Spirit in us and are the same kind of believers in Jesus Christ as all of those mentioned in the early church that we are reading about in Acts.   The mistake many modern Christians make is thinking that God now does something different today than what He did with the early church or perhaps that those in the early church were superior and God did something special and different for them.  Somehow these types of Christians have missed the point that the Bible says that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever (Heb 13:8).   Not believing this Bible truth causes many today to believe God changed how He operates and what He does with His people.  That is clearly a misguided teaching that attempts to explain away what God did in Acts as not applying to the church today.  I refute that kind of teaching categorically and declare with boldness that I’m in the same Church as Peter, James and John.  What they did, I can do, what God did through them God can do through me.  But, you can choose to believe whatever you like.  Let’s move in the study to read in chapter 5.

ACTS CHAPTER 5

The fifth chapter of Acts is a difficult chapter to comprehend because of the many types of things that transpire.  In this chapter a man and his wife sold a piece of property and they brought some of the money to the church to give to others and they claimed that they gave it all, when in reality they withheld a portion for themselves.  Here is where it starts to get complicated.  This does not mean that they were supposed to give it all; it only means they were not supposed to lie to say that they did when they didn’t give it all.  Here is what Peter said to what was happening in verse 3:

Act 5:3  But Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost, and to keep back part of the price of the land?

Peter reveals things that are impossible for him to know personally.  Peter would have had to follow them around and to be invisible to know what they had done in private.  How did Peter know what was going on?  I think that is an excellent question and people ignore it because they do not understand God and spiritual guidance.  Peter knew that Ananias was lying because of the work of the Spirit of God within him and a spiritual gift of discernment called the “Word of Knowledge”.  This is a spiritual gift from God that causes people to know things in their spirits that they did not witness personally in the physical realm.  In other words this type of knowledge did not come from the sense realm.  Here is where we need to ask how then did Peter know this private intimate information if he did not observe what they did with his senses?   Let me give you another direct verse that speaks of this very special gift from God to help us understand what is being spoken of in this chapter:

1Co 12:8  For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit;

Clearly not everyone possesses these gifts.  It is God’s work that causes these gifts to come and never man’s desire just to have them.  Man cannot cause them to happen nor can he ask for them to happen.  I want you to notice what Peter was doing when this occurred.   He was in the middle of a church service and he was not praying but he was speaking to the people that were gathered.  Therefore, Peter was clearly not asking God for the gift when it was given.  You see that would be like me coming to you and asking you to give me a thousand dollars when I just saw you get 1000 dollars from the bank.  What right would I have to do that?  Why would you even consider giving me anything just because I asked for it?  You would be very foolish and become very poor rapidly if you gave to everyone that came along and wanted a free hand out.  The word would get around quickly that he is giving away free money and then you could never stop the onslaught of people that would knock on your door.  Think of children.  Children ask for many things constantly that they want.  As a parent are we supposed to give them everything they ask for?  I hope you can see that would not work.  They would want every toy and every sweet thing to eat and would sit around doing nothing but play games.  We are no different than children in the world to God.  God is not going to give you something just because you asked for it.  I guess that is getting too deep for this lesson, because there are promises in God’s word that He has already given to us many things and we still do not possess them because we have failed to learn how to receive things from a spiritual God.

Just as parents should not be foolish to give their children everything they ask for, God is not foolish either.  God is all knowing and all wise and He will decide when to give a spiritual gift.  Here in 1 Corinthians 12:8 God gives some the “word of wisdom” and others the “word of knowledge”.  Both are different gifts and manifestations of the Spirit of God to lead you and to guide you and to guide those that are being spoken about or to.  A “word of wisdom” occurs when you spiritually know what to do in a certain situation in your life when you would not have known otherwise.  A “word of wisdom” is a future knowledge of something to do, unlike the “word of knowledge” which is a past knowledge of something that was done.  The “word of knowledge” occurs when you know of something that has occurred in the past to someone other than you and you would have not known of it without God showing you what had occurred to them.  This is normally sin related, but not always.  One pastor said this happened to him many times while he was in charge of the church that God had sent him to.  God would bring a word of knowledge about someone doing wrong in the church like someone that was committing adultery or some other sin.  This was done to help bring correction to the situation.  But, the word of knowledge does not always have to be a sin.  Now the word of wisdom is slightly different.  Another pastor once said that he was in preparation at home doing something and God told him that this certain member of his flock was going to die today.  So this pastor went immediately to where the individual was to help him and to bring comfort.  Both examples were God’s Spirit giving gifts of guidance to help the church.  These gifts were examples of God leading His people by His Spirit.  I hope you understand them, because they happen every day to those that cooperate with them.  Let’s briefly go back and read the context of 1 Corinthians 12 and verify that God is speaking about spiritual guidance.

1Co 12:1  Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I would not have you ignorant.

God is writing concerning the spiritual.  The word “gifts” was added by the translators and it is not necessarily accurate but it is not necessarily bad either.  Anything you get from God is a gift of His grace.  But always remember that God is a Spirit (Jo 4:24).  Therefore, whatever God has given to anyone first came from the Spiritual realm.  Here in this verse God is declaring ignorance to be an evil.  If God does not want you to be ignorant then why are there so many ignorant people in the world?  Primarily they do not make the effort to learn about spiritual things so they remain in their natural thinking ignorant processes.  Let’s look at the next verse and eliminate some of our spiritual ignorance:

1Co 12:2  Ye know that ye were Gentiles, carried away unto these dumb idols, even as ye were led.

God is telling the church you use to be Gentiles that were previously led astray, but implies that the Holy Spirit is now leading them to know Grace.  What we learn from this verse is that every human on the planet is being led by some spirit.  Those that are in the world are being led by Satan and his demons, and those that are saved should be led by the Spirit of God.  This verse is a very direct statement concerning being led, but we have to add our reasoning to determine who was doing the leading of the unsaved because it is not directly mentioned in this verse.  If you read the next verse you will hopefully see that God is speaking and declaring that no one says Jesus is Lord except by the Spirit of God and the no one curses the Lord Jesus by the Holy Ghost either.  Here are two contrasting works that proceed from humans.  The Spirit of God says I do one but not the other.  This is simply another implied reference to Satan vs. God’s work on the earth.  Satan causes men to curse God and the Lord Jesus and God helps men to say Jesus is their Lord.  I’m not going to go through every verse but here are the next 4 vreses in 1 Corinthians 12:

1Co 12:4  Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit.

1Co 12:5  And there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord.

1Co 12:6  And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all.

1Co 12:7  But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal.

What I wanted you to see in context is that God is speaking of leading the church and that He helps us to understand why He does this in these verses.  There are three unique descriptions that are interesting to take note of.  These are “diversities of gifts”, “differences of administrations” and “diversities of operations”.  What are these speaking of?  I personally believe they are simply informing us that God gives us different things at different times in different ways.  In other words you can never put God in a box or try to say that He will always do things one way.  The key words are diversities and differences.  You are not God and you are not in charge of anything.  Finally in verse 7, God tells us what it is that motivates Him to do things this way.  God directly says it is for the profit or benefit of the entire church.  That means God intends His leading to be a positive outcome for the church.  Keep this in mind as we continue to study in the fifth chapter of Acts about Ananias.

Act 5:5  And Ananias hearing these words fell down, and gave up the ghost: and great fear came on all them that heard these things.

Continuing in the fifth chapter of Acts Ananias falls down dead and is carried out by the church.  I guess the lesson and the word of knowledge on this day was not for the benefit of Ananias the dead man, but rather for those that were watching and listening to what was said and done and they all learned that lying to the Spirit of God was not a very smart thing to do.  They also learned that God knew when they were lying so it was impossible to get away it.  They also saw the demonstration of the Word of Knowledge.  This one act put the fear of God in the whole church and they got the message very quickly.  What I want you to notice was that this was God leading the church through a spiritual gift called the word of knowledge for what we read was the greater good of the church.  Even though we are never told this directly in the chapter, but that was what was happening.  The Spirit of God spoke to Peter and Peter spoke what God had shown him to the church.  I also want you to notice that Peter described Ananias as having Satan filling his heart and not God.  That is an example of another manifestation gift of the Spirit of God called the “discerning of spirits”.  It is also clear evidence that Satan was leading Ananias what to do and this was the wrong spirit to listen to.  There are so many lessons to learn in this chapter that I really cannot spend the time to speak to them all.   I do want you to understand that Ananias’ listening to Satan is why God did not correct Ananias, but allowed Satan to kill him and he fell dead immediately.  You’ll probably ask me why I said Satan killed him and this is because Paul writes about another incident in the N.T. that is related.

1Co 5:5  To deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.

I do not have time to talk about this verse in full or the context of this verse.  But, I wanted you to see that a Christian was going to be turned over to Satan for the destruction of his flesh so that his spirit would be saved.  Wow, that is pretty revealing.  First you can see that Satan can cause physical death but not spiritual death.  Spiritual death is separation from God.  The sin of the Christian allowed Satan’s access to his physical body.  I have concluded that this is potentially what happened to Ananias and his wife also.  But, I’m not going to be able to go any further with this line of teaching today.  Let’s continue going through Acts 5:

Act 5:11  And great fear came upon all the church, and upon as many as heard these things.

Do you see the effect that this event had on the church?  What would happen today if things like this happened again when the church met?  I believe the effect would be the exact same.  It would promote an attitude of holiness where the church would see that doing right was a good thing and sin was a very bad thing.  I’m not predicting that this will happen again, but I would not be surprised if it did.

Act 5:12  And by the hands of the apostles were many signs and wonders wrought among the people; (and they were all with one accord in Solomon’s porch.

As you read in Acts chapter 5, the apostles continue to do many signs and wonders and preach the name of Jesus until they are thrown in prison in verse 18.  If you read Acts 5:12 in isolation, it will give you the impression that the disciples were in control of what was happening, but this is clearly a misunderstood application of God’s works being made manifest through natural men using spiritual guidance, direction and His anointing.  If the disciples do any great works they were done by the Gifts and the Grace of God’s power being made available to them and displayed through them.  It is only by God’s direct power and man’s faith in His power that anything positive occurred in the book of Acts.   I also want to point out that the church in this verse is again stated to be in one accord.  This means there was a spirit of church unity and harmony which abounded in everyone and I am convinced that this is how the church will leave this planet very soon.   Let me briefly describe the anointing of God and its role in what is happening in chapter 5.

2Co 1:21  Now he which stablisheth us with you in Christ, and hath anointed us, is God;

1Jn 2:27  But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him.

Here are just two verses that speak of God giving the church an anointing.  Why the anointing was necessary and what the anointing is are two very valid questions?  If you do not understand the concepts behind the anointing of God then you will not understand the book of Acts.  In Acts 10:38 it tells us “How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and power who went about doing good and healing all those oppressed of the devil”.  The anointing of God was the power of God according to this verse and it makes available this miracle working substance to others that Jesus encountered.  If God had to anoint Jesus (God in the flesh) to heal people in the Gospels, then God must use the same anointing power in the lives of the disciples to heal also.   These are repeated patterns given from God to Jesus that was handed down to the members of the church.  We in the church are called the “Body of Christ”.  That title alone promotes the fact that the anointing is present upon us.  The Greek word translated as Christ means “anointed one”.  It corresponds to the Hebrew word for “Messiah”.  God is clearly saying that it is My Anointing on you that caused anything good to occur.   Let’s continue through chapter 5.  Verse 18 tells us that the disciples are thrown in prison, but then in verse 19:

Act 5:19  But the angel of the Lord by night opened the prison doors, and brought them forth, and said,

Act 5:20  Go, stand and speak in the temple to the people all the words of this life.

We can again see the involvement of angels at work for the church.  We are once more not told every detail.  We do not know if the disciples prayed or if the church prayed, but nonetheless the angels show up and release all of them from prison.  The angels come and shake the prison and release them to go back into the temple to continue to preach the name of Jesus.  You can clearly see that the angels give them a message from God and tell them what to do.  This is again very strong evidence that God is directing them and that they are being led by the Spirit of God.  You have to understand that the disciples were new born spiritual babies in Christ less than a few weeks old at this time.  They have much to learn about spiritual things and how God will lead them.  Many times Christians want to be led like someone who has been a Christian for 50 years and they do not realize that these people grew to that level of spiritual maturity and awareness and that this was not how they were led by God from the start of their Christian conversion.  Spiritual growth is a very basic principle to learning how to be led by the Spirit of God.  Just as a new born natural baby is not independent from their parents for many years, so a new born spiritual baby is not able to do what a Christian of mature age and experience can do.  That is just the way it works and you cannot sidestep the issue and jump beyond where you are right now just because you want to.  You are going to have to grow and continue to learn.  Let’s review briefly what we have observed and learned from chapter 5:

  1. God used Peter again to be a human messenger for other people to hear.
  2. The Holy Spirit gave Peter a word of knowledge concerning someone who was being influenced by Satan to sin.
  3. God also gave Peter the gift of discerning spirits to identify Satan’s involvement.
  4. All of this was done for the benefit of the church to teach them and guide them into holiness.
  5. Angels again are sent by God for deliverance of the church and for a message from God.
  6. Based upon other stories found in the Bible it is implied someone was praying but it is not mentioned directly in this chapter.
  7. Therefore, there are at the least three different direct methods of leading being taught in this chapter and a forth that was implied.
  8. We can observe the Holy Spirits involvement in this chapter, even though He is never directly mentioned.

ACTS CHAPTER 6 & 7

Act 6:1  And in those days, when the number of the disciples was multiplied, there arose a murmuring of the Grecians against the Hebrews, because their widows were neglected in the daily ministration.

Act 6:2  Then the twelve called the multitude of the disciples unto them, and said, It is not reason that we should leave the word of God, and serve tables.

Here in this chapter, we are going to see another manifestation of the inward work of the Spirit of God.  I want you to notice that the number of the church has multiplied considerably and this is the first time that I know of in the book of Acts where the church is said NOT to be in complete harmony and unity.  Uh oh?  That is certainly not good.  I think this is an example of what happens in any church as they grow.  But what I want to do is to teach what God’s response to this disharmony was?  If you continue reading in the chapter you will see that the disciples are led by the Spirit of God to elect a church organization with structure assigning certain men jobs within the ministry of helps.  These men are selected, prayed over and hands were laid on them to also anoint them for their new roles of responsibility.  I want to teach you what is happening by showing you a verse in the New Testament that proves this was God working through the disciples and not the disciples acting independently from God.

1Co 12:28  And God hath set some in the church, first apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, governments, diversities of tongues.

Can we read?  Can we see what it says?  Who set up the ministry of helps and governments in the church?  The Bible said that God did this yet we see the disciples only mentioned in Acts 6 like they were acting independent from God.  Do you understand the dangers now of reading the Bible without using the Bible to interpret itself?  Clearly this is one of the most prevalent errors in the teachings that many people listen to today.  When the disciples set up an organized church structured government we were directly informed that God did this in Corinthians.  We must therefore conclude that they were being led by the Spirit of God to do what they are doing in this chapter even though the Holy Spirit is not mentioned directly.  Now notice the recorded reaction of the church to what is happening:

Act 6:5  And the saying pleased the whole multitude: and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolas a proselyte of Antioch:

Whenever you can get the whole church in attendance pleased over anything this has to be the Spirit of God’s direct involvement that is helping to influence the church.  Can you see the problem of disunity within in the church and the solution that God has implemented to fix it? What does the Greek word translated as “pleased” mean?   This Greek word means “to be agreeable”.  It also means to be emotionally excited.  Wow, here we go with more difficult spiritual concepts to relate with natural words and phrasings.  Believe it or not this had to be an example of God leading the early church and helping to guide them.  There is no mention of any angels, any voices, any external signs or any physical manifestations of God.  No, you see the Spirit of God was present, but He was present in every believer having filled each of them with the Spirit of God a short time earlier.   I want to show you something that Jesus said that is applicable to what is occurring in this chapter.

Mat 18:20  For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.

If the church was gathered in the name of Jesus, then Jesus declares “I will be there with you”.  Here we have another contradiction of information given verses information not directly mentioned in the book of Acts.  You can clearly read in Acts 6 that there is no direct mention of Jesus being present, yet clearly Jesus was a liar in Matthew if He is not present Acts 6.  Uh oh?  It is very obvious to me that they were conducting church business and since Jesus is the Head of the Church therefore, Jesus has to be present in a spiritual form to oversee this operation, administration and to give them guidance, direction and instruction.  Something is occurring internally within every believer that caused them to become excited and very agreeable together and I believe that both of these are signs of being led by the Spirit of that you can rely on today also.  If what the Spirit of God does is not exciting to you then you are probably not saved.  If you do not agree with what the Spirit of God is speaking to the church, then again you are probably not saved.  Two signs of being led by God are that you will agree and that you will be excited about what He says.  I am going to skip down to Stephen in verse 8 to continue:

Act 6:8  And Stephen, full of faith and power, did great wonders and miracles among the people.

We can again see a bad translation or at least an easily misunderstood translation of the Bible demonstrated in this verse.   It was not Stephen that was doing anything, but yet it was.  Because Stephen was full of faith, God’s power was able to flow through Stephen to cause many miracles to occur.  There is a clear connection that it was the partnership of a man’s faith and God’s power working together that causes the positive things to occur.  We can clearly understand this was the anointed power of God that permitted the miracles and wonders to be performed.  Stephen had no power in of himself to help anyone.  It was only because Stephen was being led by the Spirit of God that Stephen could be at the right place at the right time to do anything.  I do not know how to say that any more clearly and I hope you understand that God can and will use you the exact same way as He did Stephen if you cooperate, believe and expect Him to do it.  In chapter 7 of Acts Stephen preaches with boldness the truth of the Word of God and as a result he is stoned and killed.  It is very interesting to note that the Bible says that Jesus is seated at the right hand of majesty and in this chapter; Stephen sees a vision of Jesus standing up and watching the murder of a Spirit Filled church member by the ignorant overzealous misguided Jews.  If it was God in heaven watching this event on the earth, who was on the earth causing the death of Stephen?  It was definitely not God.  Who was leading the Jews spiritually to kill this man of God?  Based upon scripture it is Satan (Jo 10:10).   It is very clear to me that Jesus took this action of the Jews very personally.   I’ll think I’ll end here today since I have already gone too long.  Let’s review what has happened in chapter 6 and 7:

  1. The church was meeting and Jesus said whenever you meet in my name, there I am also.
  2. God sees disharmony in the church and moves to solve the problem through spiritual guidance.
  3. God leads the church to organize and to create delegated levels of administrations and responsibilities.
  4. All of the church is well pleased and church unity is restored.
  5. God was working through many different people and in chapter 5 we read about God using Stephen a man not of the original twelve.  Proving God can lead us and use us all mightily.
  6. In this information God has grown the church to some very large and significant numbers proving God’s involvement in what we are reading about.
  7. When disharmony breaks out God is involved in bringing correction proving God has our best interest at heart.

There are probably many other things to learn in these chapters but I believe we have covered many of the important ones that I wanted to emphasize on how and why God was leading His people.  I also introduced you to the concept of God’s guidance being a gift from God given to us by His Grace.  That is actually a very import concept to consider.  Anything we get from God is not something we earned or even deserved.  If God gave us direction, then it was His love that motivated Him to give it to us.  I hope you are enjoying these lessons and I’m sorry I did not cover as many chapters as I would have liked to have covered today.  We certainly learned several new concepts about spiritual guidance and I believe that was worth your time in reading and studying with me.  If you would like to share a comment on this subject, I would really love to hear it.  So feel free to be a blessing and share what is on your heart.  God Bless!

If you would like to continue reading in the series to learn how to be led by the Holy Spirit you may continue with “Part 10“.

Understanding How to Be Led By the Spirit of God! How the Holy Spirit Led the Early Church in Acts 1 – 4! Part 8

(ver 1.2) This is now Part 8 in a series of very important basic Christian Bible lessons on the subject of Being Led by the Spirit of God.  We have covered a lot of information that will not be repeated so if you have not read this from the beginning I would suggest that you go and start with “Part 1”   first.  In this series I have been attempting to teach that God still speaks in the modern world to His children the same as He did in recorded Bible days.  Since the Bible teaches us that God does not change nor does He show any favoritism, what He did for others in the past is what He will do for those that wish to participate with Him today.  Today’s lesson will emphasize this reality by beginning to focus directly on how God led the early church in the book of Acts.  In today’s lesson we will explore the first 4 chapters and the major scriptures found in those chapters that deal with the documented methods that the Spirit of God provides for evidence for His involvement in guiding everything positive that occurred in this book.  By studying the book of Acts we should quickly come to understand that God was heavily involved in everything that takes place that causes men and women to be added to the church, for safety of the church, for deliverance from evil, the preservation of the Body of Christ and the spread of the Gospel.  God accomplished all of this by leading His people by His Spirit.  Many people today in error call the book of Acts the “Acts of the Apostles”, but this is a classic misnomer and the direct misapplication of the key importance of God working through man to accomplish His will and purpose on the earth.  The Apostles did not do anything in this book independent from God.  Nor could they have done anything without His guidance.  So we will begin to go through the book of Acts to discover how God accomplished these great feats through such ordinary men and women and we will learn in doing this how God will do the same with us today before Jesus returns.  I will probably warn you that this is going to be a long Bible lesson since I’m covering selective information from 4 chapters.

Let me tell you what I will be attempting to cover today in this lesson.  I hope by telling you what to expect you will learn how to study the book of Acts and the Bible for that matter with greater accuracy.  We will be reading the book of Acts looking for the leading of the Holy Spirit.  This sounds very simple, but if you read the whole book of Acts you will never see God say “Peter was led by the Spirit” or anyone else.  Therefore we are going to have to dig a little deeper to learn the truth other than looking for the obvious.  Many truths in the Bible are not obviously presented and this is certainly one of them.  Nevertheless we will be searching for explicit leadings of the Holy Spirit and implied leadings of the Holy Spirit.  What else can we learn about this subject?  Why does the Holy Spirit lead anyone?  What are the benefits of being led by the Spirit of God?  In order to answer these questions we are going to have to find examples that teach us the answers.  Therefore we are going to look for why the Spirit of God led the early church and what resulted from these leadings.   Here is my list of things to look for as you read the book of Acts with me:

  1. Explicit or Implied Leadings of the Holy Spirit.
  2. The Methods of God Leading Used.
  3. Reasons for the Leadings.
  4. Results of the Leadings.

Hopefully by studying these subjects and answering these questions we will learn how God will lead us and for what purpose.

ACTS CHAPTER 1

The Book of Acts begins with the brief description of the time period after the resurrection of Jesus prior to His ascension back into heaven where He now remains awaiting the time of His return to catch away the church.   In chapter 1 we are told that Jesus has met personally and physically with the disciples for 40 days teaching them.  This was the resurrected God in the flesh, the Lord Jesus Christ in bodily form and He could speak to each of them directly.  Jesus during this time must have taught them many things and no doubt He must have given them instructions like those recorded in this chapter when He told them to wait in Jerusalem until they received power from on high (Acts 1:8).   However, Jesus was taken up into heaven in verse 9 to await the soon coming end of the church age which will run for a time of approximately 2000 years.  In chapter 1 of Acts after Jesus is taken up into the clouds, two men appear to the disciples with a message, asking them “Why stand ye here gazing into heaven, this same Jesus that went up will return in like manner” (Acts 1:11).   These two men were dressed in all white and they were no doubt angels sent from God with a message to the early church.  This is the first recorded occurrence of divine direction being given to the church without the personal involvement of a physical Jesus being present.  Also, what these angels said to the apostles applies to us directly especially in these last days.  Understanding that any words spoken to the early church are still words that were spoken to us today is essential to learning that we are all the same growing Body of Christ.  Angels throughout the Bible have always been used by God as messengers for the people on the earth.   As we continue through the book of Acts we will see that angels will be used by God repeatedly when dealing with the church, so you can conclude that angels will also be used by God before Jesus returns.  It is further identified in Chapter 1 that Peter quotes David’s writings in Psalms concerning Judas (Acts 1:16, Psalms 109:8).  Peter uses the words of the Holy Ghost written in the Old Testament to justify the election of a new disciple to replace the traitor Judas.  Therefore we can further conclude that the early church was directly led by the written Word of God in what they did the same as we are to be led by our knowledge of the Bible today.   From reading chapter 1 of Acts we can see that it contains two directly named methods of my 12 methods previously listed that I taught from in this series.

Therefore just in chapter 1 of Acts, God has used three different directly mentioned methods to communicate with the early church to provide spiritual guidance.  There was God in the flesh, the angels and the written Word of God all specified as valid communication methods, but I would not expect Jesus to appear in the flesh to you today until you are raptured away from this earth.   You see there are other Bible verses that God is awaiting to be fulfilled before Jesus comes back to the earth in a physical form.  I know many people would disagree with that last statement, because of what they call the doctrine of eminence.  This church doctrine reports that there is nothing left to be fulfilled for the Lord Jesus Christ to return.  I wonder how many of these people have actually read the Bible and have seen what it says?  I have a lesson about this subject, so I will not repeat that here.  If you want to read about it, you can go and study the lesson called “What in the World is God Waiting For”.     I also want to point out that these three manifestations of guidance were all physical sense realm leadings as I have already tried to teach as being the primary methods used by God in the Old Testament.  The more carnal the Christian the more God has to come down to the human level to communicate with us.  What we will begin to see after chapter 2 is a transition into greater spiritual realm guidance methods as they become the primary methods of guidance from God.  However we will still see angels potentially at work at any time.

What have we learned from Chapter 1?

  1. Jesus taught the disciples for 40 days in the flesh to give them understanding.
  2. The angels appeared to the disciples to give them a message from God proving God is involved in the Book of Act leading His people.
  3. Peter used the Word of God to direct their actions to replace Judas, therefore God’s Word offers guidance in our everyday life as well as specific actions to take in specific situations.

ACTS CHAPTER  2

Chapter 2 of Acts begins with the promised outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the church and this was technically the beginning of God’s use of purer new spiritual communication methods to guide the church.   In this chapter the church started and consisted of the 120 believers in the upper room that were anxiously waiting the fulfillment of the promise made by Jesus of the outpouring of the Spirit of God.  This event occurred on the Jewish feast of Pentecost.  You can read this chapter carefully and see that when the Spirit of God was given, He was described as coming like a rushing mighty wind (Acts 2:2) from heaven.  As He fell on all that were present in the room in Jerusalem they began to speak with other tongues as they were each filled with the Spirit of God.  It is very interesting to note that the Greek word translated as “wind” can mean “breath”.  I personally believe that this wind was God breathing on them from Heaven.  When you speak words, do you breathe?  You bet people breathe when they speak.  This breath of God implies the beginning of a new spiritual ability and a way for God to lead His people.  To breathe on the church in this chapter is an amazing fact to consider, since Jesus had already personally breathed on every disciple that was present in the room and had already told each of them to receive the Holy Spirit (John 20:22).  You can read this very clearly in the book of John if you like, but realize that this occurs over 40 days prior to Acts 2.  Is God confused or are people confused to what this means?  We must conclude from this information that the Holy Spirit that they had previously received from Jesus directly could not have been the same manifestation or work of the Acts 2 Holy Spirit that they were now being filled with.  Uh oh?  Yes they were both from the same Holy Spirit from God, but in two different manifestations and demonstrations of the Spirit of God.  This fact obviously boggles the mind of many people in the church today who do not understand that the same God can do different things to the same people.  These Christians usually mistakenly believe that they were filled with the Spirit of God when they were born again and that this was the only spiritual experience that is required.  It is funny that God did not think that was all for the early church, so why have men changed today to believe differently?  What some Christians do today is to settle for less of what they could have had in this life and miss out on God’s fullness.  I’ll tell you very plainly, if you have never spoken in tongues, you have never been filled with the Spirit of God and you are missing out on the best of what Jesus commanded the church to receive.   You can ignore this command and still go to heaven potentially, but I would not want to be you in trying to explain why you thought it was important not to be obedient to God.  I am a firm believer that in John 20:22 the disciples were born of the Spirit of God when Jesus breathed on them and told them to receive the Holy Spirit, but in Acts 2 they were filled with the Spirit of God and that these were two separate spiritual experiences.  I believe this primarily because that is what the Bible says and it is also what I have experienced personally, so that is two witnesses that you can choose to believe or ignore.

Act 2:14  But Peter, standing up with the eleven, lifted up his voice, and said unto them, Ye men of Judaea, and all ye that dwell at Jerusalem, be this known unto you, and hearken to my words:

After the church was filled with the Holy Ghost, Peter stands up to preach to those that have gathered in amazement at what was happening.  Read this chapter closely and remember that this is the same Peter that we can see in the Gospels who denied Jesus 3 times approximately 50 days earlier.  It is funny that this same man now has something boldly to say publically about His Lord Jesus.  Therefore, something obviously occurred to change him from a man who was a mess to a man with a message.  This transformation occurred when he was baptized and filled with the Spirit of God in this chapter, because Jesus said that you will receive power to be a witnesses (Acts 1:8) and that was what Peter demonstrated to us in this chapter.  Peter suddenly had the power to become this great witness for Jesus and when Peter denied Jesus, he lacked this power.  If you have trouble witnessing to people, then you probably need this same power today.  Here in chapter 2 Peter again quotes the Old Testament speaking of the words recorded by the prophet Joel.  Peter says “This is that which was spoken of by the prophet Joel that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh” (Acts 2:17, Joel 2:28).  This verse also informs us that God will use visions and dreams so these are two more relevant New Testament methods of God to guide His people.  What is happening in this chapter?  How did Peter suddenly having not prepared a sermon have a sermon to preach?  I think that is an excellent question which Jesus answered in the Gospels:

Luk 12:11  And when they bring you unto the synagogues, and unto magistrates, and powers, take ye no thought how or what thing ye shall answer, or what ye shall say:

Luk 12:12  For the Holy Ghost shall teach you in the same hour what ye ought to say.

Do you see what Jesus said?  Do you see how this applies to what Peter did?  Peter suddenly quotes scriptures out of nowhere without having a Bible in front of him, no notes or anything prepared ahead of time and he knows exactly what to say to get those standing around saved.  I would call this a miracle if I did not understand what Jesus was teaching us in Luke.  You see the Holy Spirit was inside of these men speaking through them.  Technically Peter was doing the speaking, but the Holy Spirit was giving the words to speak.  What is the lesson that we need to learn?  We need to learn to trust the Holy Spirit in us to give us the right words to speak when we run into people we have never seen before.  What God does in this chapter with Peter, He will do for you if you get filled with the Holy Spirit.  As we continue through the book of Acts, notice this is a repeated pattern that occurs many times for many different men of God.

Peter after being filled with the Spirit of God still hangs all of his beliefs and what was happening to them upon the written Word of God, further establishing and confirming the importance of the Bible to the modern believer.  Peter was justifying what they were doing and what God had done based upon what God had written about many hundreds of years before.  Make sure what you believe is only based upon God’s Word.  So far we have looked at two chapters and discovered God using 5 different methods of communication to lead His people being stated.  These are all very important so do not let them go or ignore them.  What were the methods of leading revealed in this chapter and what resulted from this chapter?

  1. God says people will be led by visions and dreams in the last days.
  2. The Holy Spirit gave Peter utterance and taught Him what to preach to get others saved.
  3. Peter declares that what was happening was prophesied by God through the prophet Joel thus confirming the importance of the written Word of God.
  4. Therefore God led those that were listening in the crowd by what was spoken by Peter so that they could believe.  This was a God’s use of a preaher a man with a message from God that was believed on and resulted in their salvation.
  5. The church was expanded greatly from 120 to over 3000 this day and so God was at work through the early church to save many others.

ACTS CHAPTER 3

Act 3:1  Now Peter and John went up together into the temple at the hour of prayer, being the ninth hour.

If you read the Bible in isolation you will be very confused to try to understand what is happening.  You see God does not tell you everything that happens in every verse or you would never be able to finish reading the Bible because it would be so huge that no library could contain it.  God writes the Bible using a technique of very incomplete information with random clues spread throughout the text to what is occurring.  All of the information given to you in any single verse is very important, but it is never all-inclusive.  This just means that it is the truth, but not the entire truth.  I try to teach that in every Bible lesson that I do to some degree either by stated rule or by example.  The name of my Bible study is “Using the Bible to Understand the Bible” and that is how I interpret the Word of God.  You are going to have to read and study the entire rest of the Bible to figure out what is going on and how things are working in what you are reading in this chapter because God is just not going to tell you everything in one verse that would be impossible to do.  If you read this verse and ignored the rest of the Bible you would be forced to conclude that Peter and John just randomly decide to go up to the temple by chance or by accident.  However, I do not believe that there are any random chances or accidents written about in the book of Acts.  If you read the Gospels closely you will discover that Jesus was always in the right place at the right time for a very specific given purpose and plan of God.  I believe that Jesus was the ultimate example of being led by the Spirit of God and perhaps I’ll do a lesson just on Jesus later.  But understand what the Bible says:

Rom 8:14  For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.

I have already used this verse in this lesson series, but I want to re-emphasize it again for clarity on its application to what the disciples are doing in this chapter.  Are these disciples the sons of God?  If you do not know it, they are definitely the foundations of the church and the New Jerusalem that all the other stones are built upon.  This is critical information then to apply to what Peter and John are doing.  If you read down in chapter 3 you will see that they come to the gate and see a lame man.  Was this an accident?  There is no way that this was accidental.  Peter grabs the lame man by the hand and says to him in the name of Jesus walk.  Did Peter heal the man or was it the Spirit of God working through Peter that healed the lame man?  That was not a trick question.  Peter could not heal a fly, so the Spirit of God was directly working through Peter to bring a miracle of healing and deliverance to a man in need.  Therefore I have concluded that Peter and John were being led by the Spirit of God even though we are not told directly how they were being led.  There are vast numbers of implied works of guidance in this chapter displayed in the recorded actions of the disciples.  However, nowhere does it say directly that God was involved.  Do you understand the challenge being presented?  We are told the external actions of the disciples, but we are not told the internal spiritual action s of God.  Peter and John could have been led by any of the 12 methods that I listed in this series, but since we are not told which one it was, I will not try to assume I know and I will just say based upon scripture, they were being led by the Spirit of God to be at the temple that very day, hour and minute.

  1. Peter and John were led by the Spirit of God to be at the right place and time where a lame man was sitting.
  2. The Spirit of God heals the lame man and this resulted in great attention being drawn to the church and God as well as the lame man could now walk about and testify for them.

ACTS CHAPTER 4

Act 4:8  Then Peter, filled with the Holy Ghost, said unto them, Ye rulers of the people, and elders of Israel,

In chapter 4 we are again told that Peter was filled with the Spirit of God and this implies that this is the reason for his new found boldness to declare Jesus Christ before those that he previously feared.  Being full of the Holy Ghost appears to be a key factor for being led by the Spirit of God for Peter at least in the first 4 chapters of Acts.  If you read chapter 4, you will see the disciples standing before the Jewish rulers being questioned.  These men of Israel obviously thought they were right and all others were wrong, but they were missing the greatest manifestation of a new work of God and did not realize it.  Peter is again directed by the Holy Ghost what to preach to these men.  Just as Peter and God had done in Acts 2 is being repeated in Acts 4.  If you read verse 4 you will see that the Church grows by another 5000 new believers.  Therefore God is at work causing the church to grow greatly even though some disciples spent the night in prison.   Let’s skip down to verse 24:

Act 4:24  And when they heard that, they lifted up their voice to God with one accord, and said, Lord, thou art God, which hast made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all that in them is:

In the latter part of chapter 4 we can see that the disciples and the early church were gathered together and that they prayed to God all in one accord.  Therefore, prayer as you may recall was one of my observable triggered methods that will get God to respond to give people guidance.  What we will observe as we continue to go through the book of Acts is that prayer always gets God to respond.  Therefore, prayer is still a valid trigger method for the modern church to communicate with God and to get God to give us guidance and direction.   The Bible says in James “You have not because you ask not”.  Informing us that guidance and direction is not a foregone conclusion.  If you want God to guide you today then you get up in the morning and you ask for His guidance.  Do not assume that He will guide you without you asking, or you might also totally miss out on the greatest display of God that you could have never imagined.  I do want you to notice that the church is stated more than once to be in total agreement.  I personally believe this is a sign of those that are being led by the Spirit of God.

Joh 17:22  And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one:

Being one is what Jesus prayed and asked God for in this chapter of John.  If you do not remember this prayer then go and reread it because it applies to our study of being led in the book of Acts extensively.  As we continue through this lesson I will try to point out how many times we encounter the term “one accord”.  This is clearly a sign of being led by the Spirit of God.   Why is the Christian church today not in one accord?  It is primarily because they are not all being led by the Spirit of God.  We have many people who think they are Christians who are going to be very surprised when the bridegroom comes in the middle of the night and they are left outside trying to get in.  Do you remember the parable of the 10 virgins?  Weren’t the 5 virgins that went in with Christ all in one accord?   Weren’t the 5 virgins that were left out also in one accord but just not with those that went in?  Uh oh?   I’ll talk more about this as we continue through the lesson on Acts and being led by the Spirit of God.

Act 4:31  And when they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together; and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the word of God with boldness.

Here in this verse is God’s response to their prayer; proving prayer gets God to respond.  The place where they were gathered was shaken and they were all filled with the Spirit of God again.  Wow, this is really getting good.  You see in this prayer they asked for the ability to speak the Word of God with boldness and this is what they received.  Let’s list the lessons learned from chapter 4:

  1. Being filled with the Spirit of God is a stated reason for what was happening in this chapter.
  2. Peter was again led by God what to say in the midst of the crowd and the leaders of Israel.
  3. Many new believers were added and the church again grew by great numbers.
  4. The church prayed and asked God for a specific request and God responded and granted the request.
  5. Therefore, prayer caused God to respond.

I think I have gone long enough in this lesson for today.  I was originally going to go through many more chapters, but I think the lessons are getting too long for some people.  So I’ll try not to write such long lessons in the future or at least to break them down into smaller chunks.  Hopefully you can see what is happening in just the first four chapters of the book of Acts.  God is causing the church to grow by leaps and bounds and adding many new people through the disciples who were being led by the Spirit of God to be in the right places at the right times.  There are several different methods of leading that God has used or referenced in these first four chapters of Acts and these are a follows:

  1. Angels sent by God with a message.
  2. The Written Word of God used to Direct Men.
  3. Inward Witness (Spirit of God shows Peter what to Preach).
  4. Prayer of the Church.
  5. Visions and Dreams (Not yet demonstrated but referenced by Peter in Acts 2).
  6. God’s use of preachers to bring a message from God to the people.

Believe it or not we have just gone through the first 4 chapters in Acts and found 7 of my 12 methods of communication listed or demonstrated by the words or the actions of the people recorded.   That is pretty significant if you ask me.  You can clearly understand based upon this information that God is intimately involved in guiding His people to cause them to be successful.  Of course success is a relative term that is highly subjective.  Too many people view success as monetary gain or wealth accumulation or even fame.  That is not what I am talking about.  God’s success may not be your success but many times the eternal rewards will far outweigh what you could have earned in this life.  If you get on God’s side He will cause you to be successful and He will reward you and that is all I should have to say about that.  Thanks for reading and studying the Bible with me and if you have any questions or comments please be as BOLD as the disciples were and share them, but also be led by the Spirit of God in you.  God Bless!

If you like to coninue to study in this series you may go to “Part 9“.

A Christian’s Responsibility vs. the Sovereign God’s Responsibility! Part 1

Responsibility: the ability or authority to act or decide on one’s own, without supervision

(Ver 1.4)  This is Part 1 in a series of basic Bible studies about the Personal Responsibility of Every Christian versus the Divine Responsibility of the Sovereign God.  Responsibility is a word that implies authority and ability to make independent decisions.  This certainly applies to God, but what about men and women made in the image of God, how would this apply to humans?  I personally believe that the word responsibility is potentially more complex than this definition.  There are independent abilities of man and there are dependent abilities of man.   So responsibilities can be independently assigned or they can be jointly assigned or they can also be corporately assigned to many.  There is a popular Christian philosophy being taught in many churches that God is in complete and absolute control of everything that happens in the world.  This philosophy relieves all Christians of any personal responsibility, accountability or judgment for doing the wrong things in the world.  I truly believe that God in Heaven is sovereign meaning that He is all powerful and is perfectly capable of doing anything that He desires at any time.  However, is this the character of God that you know and understand and base your faith upon?  Does God force people to do what He desires them to always do?  Is God overriding human freewill to manipulate the outcome or destiny of individuals?  If a terrorist kills thousands of other people was that the perfect plan of God in action and full manifestation?  Does God really control everything that happens to every Christian and non-Christian alike?  Is God the Great Puppet Master in the Sky pulling all the strings?  I personally do not believe that God is in control of every event in human history.  If it was true, then God is the most evil God that I have heard described and that definition would contradict with a God who is named Love!

INTRODUCTION TO THE ERRONEOUS PHILOSOPHY

THAT GOD CONTROLS EVERYTHING THAT OCCURS!

I saw a very ignorant movie last night from Hollywood called The Adjustment Bureau.  This movie portrayed a God who manipulated men and women to do what He wanted them to do.  It dictated a master plan of a sovereign type of God.  If a man or woman strayed from the sovereign plan, they were immediately sent a being to adjust them for change.  These adjustment beings would have to manipulate the circumstances surrounding the individual and they would have to change the persons’ mind or thoughts to get them to conform to the good plan of the chairman upstairs.  They would have to cause them to go down the right path that they were supposed to go into to be what God had planned for them to do on the earth.  This is a very popular religious philosophy taught in many churches.  However, any time Hollywood embraces a Christian philosophy it automatically causes me to suspect it is a fallacy of the grandest proportions.   But, we still have to balance the fact that after all God is sovereign and you cannot do anything to ever lose your free gift of salvation.  It is too bad that this is not what the Bible actually teaches us. 

INTRODUCTION TO CHRISTIAN RESPONSIBILITY

I have already said that if God controls everything that it is completely unnecessary for humans to do anything for the perfect will of God to be accomplished in their life.  If they wake up with cancer one morning then this was the plan of God for them to die an early painful death.  The will of God must prevail so why even go to the doctor to prolong your life?  Wouldn’t you be fighting against God by going to the doctor? 

We should just blame God if you stay in bed all day and do nothing because this must be the will of God for you.  Because it happened it had to be the plan and will of God.  But is this what the Bible teaches?  There is a very popular Christian extreme belief called predestination.  In this belief some were predestined to be saved and others were created by God to go to hell by God’s sovereign choice.  In this belief no one has any right to say  which place they were made to go for an eternity.  But this is a very popular lie from the devil that places no responsibility upon humans for determining the outcome for their lives.  it also relieves all of the involvement of the spiritual enemy called Satan and reduces him to be a non-factor in our lives.  This is exactly what Satan wants you to believe.  This gives Satan free reign over your life and you will blame everything negative that happens to you on God.  What a masterful deception this is.  

We are about to explore verses in the Bible that teach us differently about the divinely delegated human responsibility that was given to us by a sovereign God.  For example look at Hebrews:

Heb 6:4  For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost,

Heb 6:5  And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come,

Heb 6:6  If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame.

There are literally many verses in the Bible that I could teach from today, but I will begin speaking about these for now.  If a Christian can never be lost after being saved, then why did God write these verses of direct warning to all Christians?  To be a partaker of the Holy Ghost is clearly a sign that these people being spoken of were once all Christians.  But, by the time you get to verse 6 it says that they have “fallen away” (departed) from Christ and the Holy Spirit.  Some Christians read the Bible without thinking about what is said by God.  They will see a word like “if” and think that the word “if”  means that it is not possible to fall away.  But the Greek word translated as “If” (G102) in this verse could very easily have been translated as “When” so do not write it off and think that it cannot happen to you or to anyone else.  Therefore, God says there is no further salvation available for them because they would have to crucify the Lord of Glory again and put Him to shame.  If you do not understand these verses you better read, study and learn them very soon.  These are very powerful words of warning written to ONLY the Church.  They were not addressed to the lost unsaved world.  If you believe you cannot fall away after you are saved or that it is impossible for this to occur, you may already be on the verge of being deceived.  Because of ignorance, potential deception is more likely.  This was the first and greatest responsibility given to us by God as a born again Christian believer and that is to remain or to stay a Christian.  This means we don’t stray away and get lost from the goodness of God.

These verses list three specific things that you need to remain committed to.  First, it says for you to partake of the Holy Ghost.  Define the Word “Partake”!  Is that God’s responsibility or your responsibility?  If I sat a piece of chocolate cake in front of you and said “partake”.  What am I asking you to do?  To partake is clearly the freewill choice of every cake eater to choose to eat.  This is the same for every Christian to receive the Spirit of Christ.  Once you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior the Holy Spirit comes inside and abides.  To accept and receive the Holy Ghost implies the responsibility for keeping the Holy Ghost resident.  I know that goes against what many people try to teach from other verses in the Bible.   However, if I gave you $100 today, you could by our own choice throw it in the trash or you could put it in the bank to try to keep it safe.  The choice would always be yours to do with whatever you have been given freely.  Next it says to taste the word of God.  This is not a onetime meal.  This must be a continual everyday action of eating God’s Word to make your spirit strong. 

When you eat your natural meals, who is it that is responsible for you eating and tasting?  Does anyone force feed you or do you freely pick up the fork and do it yourself? How many physical meals do you eat a day?  You better learn to eat the Word of God as much as you eat physical food.  The physical food of this world is important, but the spiritual food of God is more eternally beneficial.   Finally, these verses say to taste the powers of the world to come.  This means that we can walk in the power of God right now and that this power is the same as that which we will possess then in that future world.   Do you know you have this power right now?  Perhaps you will recall what Romans 8:11 teaches us?  In this verse God says the same power that raised Christ from the dead now dwells in us and that is a statement that should be believed.

There is an old saying that goes, “with great power comes great responsibility”.  This saying goes along with the current state of many nations of the earth who are in possession of weapons of mass destruction that can cause many other people hurt or destruction.  God’s power is greater than nuclear power.   However, this is the kind of power and responsibility that God is relating to you that you have in the spiritual realm right now.  Taste and see that the Lord is good (Ps 34:8) and that His mercy endures forever.  These three verses were an introduction to basic Christian responsibilities for us to live by today right now.   I’ll list these again later in the lesson for you to take note of them, but let’s move to another perspective to Christian Responsibility.

IS EVERYTHING GOD’S GOOD PLAN THAT HAPPENS TO YOU?

Rom 8:28  And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.

This is a very popular verse of scripture quoted in many churches today by many preachers.  It is read at funerals, it is read for divorces, it is read in hospitals after car accidents, it is read at every negative event that occurs in the lives of any Christian believers to provide comfort and to try to justify a greater unknown sovereign plan and purpose of God for the evil that occurred.  Because preachers in their ignorance cannot explain these negative and evil events, they attribute them to be for a higher purpose to explain them away.  After all they have been taught in seminary that God is in ultimate control of everything that happens in the life of every believer and this is what they were brainwashed to think and believe.  This belief gives them religious comfort, relief and solace and it relieves them from learning the truth or for any personal responsibility for what may have occurred that was negative.  It is what I will call “A No Fault Religion” philosophy.  In this philosophical view whatever happened in my life was certainly not my fault because God is sovereign and must have willed it to occur.  What Christians are attempting to do is to take a portion of a verse in Romans and change it to say something that God does not say.  This is a major mistake of Bible interpretation that many make.  They take things out of context and they miss or ignore the conditions being given in order to qualify for God to cause everything to work out for their good. 

Christians try to take a conditional promise of God and make it completely unconditional because of God’s sovereignty.  However, this verse says that God will only cause all things to work together for your good if you 1). “love” God and if you are 2). “called” according to His purpose as two major conditions for receiving the promise.  But, again people take this as personally including them automatically, but then if you ask them what they were called to do by God; most of them could not tell you.   I am called to preach and teach the Word of God, and that is my calling and gifting.  So I have a direct and personal answer to that question if you choose to ask me.  Now the subject of “being called by God” is much broader than my simply example but this is still certainly a major part to the subject.  Regardless of how your were called or what you are called to do, it is still a condition for God to cause all things to work together for your good.  Do you understand this?

Also there is the fact that God says to those that “love” Him all things will work out for their good.  Many will say I love God and then not understand what this means either.  Love is much more than just saying some meaningless words.  For example, remember in John 14:15 where Jesus said “If you love me you will keep my commandments”.  so do you keep all of His commandment?  If not then Jesus implied that you don’t love Him and therefore you don’t qualify for everything to be working together for your good.  I hope and pray that you are examining yourself to see if you qualify.

These there is further conditions give to us by God.  This verse is also in the context of the two previous verses that it goes along with.  These verses are often ignored because they are not understood.  The two previous verses are speaking about the personal prayer life of the believer.  But this is just not any type of prayer, it is a very specific type of prayer being mentioned, and even though it does not tell you what that type of prayer is you need to figure it out in order to qualify for verse 28.  If you do not understand what kind of prayer that is, I’m sorry I’m not going to teach it to you today in this lesson.  Just realize if you do not understand it and cannot explain it to me, then you are not doing it and you do not qualify for verse 28 and I’ll leave it at that for now.

If Christians could automatically expect everything that happens to them to become a good thing from God, then why would there be so many other verses in the Bible that instruct us to do something else?  It would seem to me that too many Christians are not using a balanced approach to understanding the Bible and that they are ignoring some very important verses in favor of other verses that they like better.  I call those types of Christians to be “Trail Mix” Christians.  They pick out the pieces of the trail mix they like and throw out the pieces of the trail mix they do not like.   Let me give you a quick example of what God says for Christians to do that makes the Christian life conditional with personal responsibilities:

Jas 4:7  Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

My primary subject today is “Christian Responsibility vs. God’s Divine Responsibility”.  Here is God speaking to every Christian with two important instructions.  Where does it say that God will resist the devil for you?  Where does it say that God will chase the devil away from you regardless of what you choose to do?  Where does it say that God will force you to submit to Him?  Can you read?  Does this mean if you do not do these two things that God will still cause everything to work together for your good?  I assume that this is exactly what many Christians want to believe.  I personally do not believe that this is the case!  I believe that all of God’s promises are always conditional and that you are required to follow His instructions in order to be successful in this life.   Can you answer me this question; “Is obedience a factor in this life?”  If obedience is a major factor, then doesn’t obedience denote human responsibility and even consequences for disobedience?  

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

Here is God giving us another clear conditional statement of promise.  God says “IF” you do this and that you will get to eat the good of the land.  Being obedient is one of the key determining factors to being successful in this life.  The other is being “willing” to be obedient.  In other words you can do what God says and be unwilling and God will tell you that you do not qualify because you failed in one key step.  This is how the things of God work and if you do not believe it you can do without the good of the land.  Here in James 4:7 God said first for you to submit your life totally and completely to Him.  This is not that hard if you actually do it.  I try to get up every morning and pray, “Not my will but yours be done today”.  I tell God “I submit my will unto you this day”.  I believe that praying and committing your ways to the Lord is the beginning of submitting to Him.  Next, God says that you must resist the devil.  Uh oh?  That is a major problem for many Christians, isn’t it?  How do you resist the devil if you do not ever see the devil?  Have you ever seen the devil?  What happens if you do not resist the devil?  Are these words of warning with implied consequences?  I think that will be a better series by itself so I will not get into how you resist the devil today.  Just realize that these are two personal instructions that have attached responsibilities with them and implied consequences for not doing them.  God is not going to do them for you, so you better learn how to do them for yourself.   Also note that if you do not do them, then God cannot cause everything to work together for your good either.  Since I’m in James, I’m going to stay here and give you another verse with personal responsibilities attached to it:

Jas 1:22  But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.

You see the Bible after telling you to submit to God and to resist the devil says for you to also be a doer of the Word of God.  This implies that you must first read the Word of God, then that you study the Word of God, next you must understand the Word of God, and this is based upon the requirement that you remember the Word of God, then you must put the Word of God first place in your life and give it priority and then finally that you will actually do what the Word of God says to do.  If you think you automatically do all of this, you are probably already deceived.  There is nothing that I just mentioned to you that is automatic human behavior.  These are all learned behavioral modifications that you must do to renew your mind to God’s new ways of doing things.  God says you can deceive yourself simply by not being a doer of the Word, but you can see that being a doer of the Word requires a lot of effort on your part.  Effort implies personal responsibility and again consequences for not participating.  If you do not feel this way, then you are in trouble.  There is also no way that you can do what you do not know personally.  God says in Hosea 4:6, “My people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge”.  This means your lack of knowing can cause many of the negative things to occur in your life that you could have avoided if you only knew how to avoid them.  God is saying that all things do not work together to those of His people who do not know the Word of God and do it.  Surely you can see why things have occurred in the lives of many people that were very negative and why.  Do not think that something negative happening to you is the perfect plan of God.  This is what Satan wants you to do.  If you do not fight it or resist it and you simply roll over and accept it, you are easily defeated.  Negative things can be caused by many things in this world.  You might have forgotten to submit yourself unto God.  You might have forgotten to resist the devil.  You might have not been a doer of the Word of God in the area that you needed to know how to avoid that negative situation.  There are really many more factors of Christian Responsibility but I have gone long enough for today.  Here is a short list of a Christian’s responsibilities that I have covered today:

  1. Make an effort and commit to remain a Christian daily
  2. Partake of the Holy Spirit continually (Praying in the Spirit)
  3. Continually feed on the Word of God to strengthen your spirit
  4. Continually taste the Power of God
  5. Submit yourself unto God
  6. Resist the devil
  7. Read the Word of God
  8. Learn the Word of God
  9. Put the Word of God first place in your life
  10. Do the Word of God
  11. Be willing and obedient to God

These are some of the basic Christian Responsibilities for every one of us to do daily from today’s lesson to help us have positive outcomes in our life.  If you do not understand them, then you need to learn them and find out what they mean.  If you do not understand what these are, you are free to ask questions, because I at least believe that I understand enough to be a help to those who do not know them at all.  What I am attempting to do is to teach Christians that they have a personal responsibility for what happens to them.  It is not all up to God and God is not orchestrating everything that happens to you for His perfect plan.  If God was doing that, there would be no need for Him to tell you to do anything.  God gives us His word so that we can get to know Him personally, His ways, His character, His nature, His love, His grace, His Son Jesus Christ and His divine responsibility.  Then God gives us His Word so that we can learn who we are in Christ, what He has given to us and what we are still required to do with His free gifts of grace.  These are balanced Christian Responsibilities working with the Divine God Responsibilities in partnership.  I will try to continue this series in the future.  Thanks for taking the time to study the Bible with me today.  God Bless!

Understanding the Hidden Spiritual Family Structure of God’s Household! The Hidden Family of God in the Abrahamic Covenant! Part 9

(Ver 1.5)  This is now Part 9 in a series of extremely advanced Bible studies about a subject that you have probably never heard anyone teach on before.  If you have not read these lessons from the beginning, I would suggest that you go back to “Part 1” and start there.   The Spirit of God revealed this information to me more than 10 years ago and I have been diligently studying it in the Bible ever since then to prove it was true.   Over these years I became totally convinced that this was accurate simply because I could see it plainly in the Bible and I knew that it was actually what the Bile said.  This is my introduction to one of the last lessons in this series of one of the most important and complex Bible studies that you may ever try to study or try to understand.  All of these lessons have come directly from my heart today to yours.  I can’t make you see anything in the Bible.  So my prayer today is that you may have an open mind, a receptive heart and may the eyes of your spiritual understanding become enlightened with the spiritual knowledge of knowing Him who was and is and will always be eternally faithful; my God of all Grace and all Peace, my Lord and my Savior Jesus Christ.  Amen.

I was a computer programmer for over 25 years.  I have worked on the development of several complex large computer software systems for some very large corporations.  I will occasionally introduce computer terms in my Bible lessons and I may do that again today.  But, I have found the design of God’s Word system to be so much more advanced and complex than anything that I have ever seen created by man that it is at times overwhelming.  God’s extreme intelligence is clearly displayed in the design of His Word.  However if you have never worked on a large scale computer system before or approached the Bible with this way of study, you will not understand what I am talking about.  This is why not very many people on the earth today actually understand how to study the Bible.  Intelligent design is displayed in every word printed right in front of them, but many do not recognize the patterns being presented.  I have been studying the Bible faithfully for over 20 years using my computer and I am not any closer to learning everything that God says because of the vastness of what is covered in the Bible.  Having said all of that, God has taught me a few things since the beginning and I am closer to knowing the complete truth today than I was 20 years ago.  The things that have taken me over 20 years to discover, you can learn in a matter of a few days if you apply yourself and actually believe what you are reading and then search and see them in the Bible for yourself.  When you do this, Satan will not be able to come and steal them from you.

In the last lesson I reviewed three distinct hidden patterns of the family of 5 divided 3 against 2 using the Micah 7:6 prophecy as the foundation and the stories of Abraham as two of the repeated models or patterns.  Abraham was both the father and the son in the family in these patterns.  In each of these examples, the pattern of family division recurred as an arrangement of 3 against 2.  The patterns were always close enough that you should have been able to recognize that they came from the same Designer.  You could call these little hidden patterns just amazing coincidences or you could call them the work of God like I do.   Today I am going to show you another even more potentially controversial hidden pattern of the family of 5 divided 3 against 2 that is also found within the life of Abraham.  This will be the third witness of God’s hidden pattern found in the life of a single man in the Bible.  I do not believe that the existence of three very similar patterns found within the story of one man in the Bible can be called a chance occurrence, a happenstance or even an accident.  If you could determine the mathematical probability of this occurring I believe it would be way beyond random probability.  If you can find this pattern in the life of anyone else in the Bible please let me know about it, I would really be interested in hearing if you can find it anywhere.  I personally believe God is trying to teach us something that is extraordinarily complex and important for us to know about.  Today we are going to explore the Abrahamic covenant and what God has initiated in a cleverly designed hidden textual format that will probably amaze some of my readers and for others they will probably just walk away being perplexed and skeptical.   I cannot predict which one you will choose to be, but I will hope that you will at least give God a chance before you shut the door on what He has to say in His Word.

I am now going to take you back to Genesis again to some prominently featured Words of God in the Old Testament that are very relevant to the family of 5 being divided 3 against 2.  Of course all of this information has been very widely studied for thousands of years and yet no one could have understood what was being said because I believe that it was only intended for us to know before Jesus returns.  I want to specifically show you these hidden secret concepts found within the Abrahamic Covenant so get ready to learn something new.  We are going to be studying the verses found in Genesis chapter 15.  You may recall while reading in this chapter of Genesis that God comes to Abram and makes some very specific promises to him and to his seed and these verses are all very interesting.  Let’s start by reviewing the general themes found in this chapter.  Here is my list of the important themes found in this chapter.

  1. Abram is very concerned because he has no heir.
  2. God comes to Abram in a spiritual vision.
  3. God makes Abram certain promises.
  4. Land is a central theme in this chapter.
  5. God makes a covenant with Abram.
  6. The seed of Abram is a central topic to this entire chapter.
  7. The majority of the statements spoken by God are prophetic.

In reading and studying Genesis 15 these were some of the central themes being related to me.  God appears to be dealing with Abram personally, but also simultaneously speaking prophetically about many subjects.  The central theme concerning an heir and the central theme of the seed are both critical to understanding the purpose and the plan of God being revealed in this chapter.  I believe that we should quickly list the promises of God made to Abram in this chapter also to understand what is being promised as well as the prophecies being revealed.

  1. Your heir will come from your own bowels (Gen 15:4).
  2. Your seed shall be as the stars of the heaven (Gen 15:5).
  3. Abram will inherit the land (Gen 15:7).
  4. Thy seed will be a stranger in a land and they shall serve them and be afflicted in bondage 400 years (Gen 15:13).
  5. God will judge this nation and the seed will come out with great substance (Gen 15:14).
  6. Abram will live a long life and die in peace (Gen 15:15).
  7. In the fourth generation they shall come here again (Gen 15:16).
  8. God makes a covenant with Abram saying the land from the Nile to the Euphrates is given to you and to your seed (Gen 15:18).

These are the basic prophecies and the promises that were made concerning Abram and his seed from direct statements of God in the spiritual vision.  I believe these are very important to note, because we will learn more about them as we go further into the lesson.  I think we need to do some introductory concept analysis to exactly what a “seed of Abraham” is in order to understand who God is talking to and why.  I have done a much more extensive Bible series on the concept of Understanding Bible Seeds so I will not repeat all of that information here, but I may touch on some of it again in this lesson.  If you want to understand this subject more completely you can stop and read that series first and then come back to here and continue or you can wing it and try to catch up with what I am teaching just today about Abraham’s seed.

Before I continue let me make a point about something that God does in the book of Genesis as well as other places in the Bible that is potentially very confusing to many Christians.  God will speak about natural things and spiritual things within the context of the same chapter, even calling them by the exact same name and description and not ever tell you which one He is talking about or if He has even changed the subject or has shifted the realm of domain of the subject from what we were just reading about in the previous verse.  Wow, I’m not sure if you really understood what I just said.  Maybe you will as we continue through the lesson.  Also know that one verse may be from a participant like Abram’s viewpoint and the next verse may be given to us from God’s viewpoint of the situation.  Scripture view point is a complex subject analysis, but one that you need to be aware of in order to understand how to rightly divide the Word of truth.  For example, Abram could ask a purely natural question and God could give a spiritual answer and both should be viewed differently.  There is also another level of complexity built into the story of Abraham based upon what we learned from Galatians 4.  The story of Abraham was and still is an allegorical representation of the family of God.  This means God tells a natural story about a natural man and these are parallel references to the spiritual realm.  All of this makes the correct interpretation of Genesis 15 infinitely more complex.

There are many spiritual things mentioned in Genesis 15 as well as many parallel natural things.  For example the concept of “seed” found in Genesis 15.  “Seed” is mentioned directly 4 times in 4 different verses.  Is every verse speaking about the same type of seed?  Is every verse speaking of the same exact seed?  Is this “seed” natural or is it spiritual or is it both simultaneously?  Is the term “seed” used as a singular reference or is it used as plural reference meaning many or is it both again simultaneously?  When I studied the subject of “seed” in the Bible I found where God called at the very least 10 different things by the exact same Hebrew word translated as “seed”.  Which one of these ten is the type of “seed” being spoken of in this chapter?  Or is every reference a different type of seed?  The Bible is so much more complex than you think it is, so let me try to answer some of these questions.  Let’s go to Genesis 15 and start reading in verse 18 first.

Gen 15:18  In the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates:

I am going to start by talking about the covenant that God makes with Abraham first and then I’m going to talk about the seed of Abraham and then finally end back up at the covenant at the end of the lesson.   According to my Bible studies that I have done, a covenant is a spiritual marriage in the eyes of God.  If God makes a covenant, he is proposing spiritual marriage.  If you do not understand this concept then you should go and read my lessons on “Understanding Bible Covenants first.  God says “Unto your seed I have given this land”.  God is speaking to Abram directly and speaking about his seed.  What or who is this seed that God is speaking of?  God actually does not define that in this verse does He?     People automatically assume it is only the natural children of Israel since they possess a small portion of that land today.   We can read in Romans 11:1 and 2 Corinthians 11:22 that Paul calls himself a seed of Abraham and Paul is very clearly speaking of a natural seed as being a physical descendant of the man Abraham.  You may recall that Abraham begat Isaac, Isaac begat Jacob and Jacob begat the 12 tribes of Israel.  We can also see in Hebrews 11:9 that Isaac and Jacob are described to be heirs of the promise.  So clearly we have some scriptures to lean towards an all-natural interpretation of Genesis 15.  We also know that Paul was born on the earth from the descendants of the tribe of Benjamin.  So there is clear precedence for a purely natural interpretation of the Seed of Abraham as being only a physical people.  This is a popular position that many Christians stand on.   But, is this all that the Bible says on the subject?  I think we are about to find out some new perspectives on this subject.

When reading the Bible it is important not to mix apples and oranges just so that you can call them all fruit.  This would be an example of trying to take the Word of God and make it all natural or to make it all spiritual by lumping both of these into a general basket category that you want to call the Truth and that would work if God wrote the Bible that way.  However God makes us divide the word of truth into categories of either spiritual or natural sections in order to understand it clearly.  What I am getting at is that there are many things that are spoken by God in this one chapter and if you think that God is only talking about one covenant, one people or even one man then you are in a position to be very confused.  You are going to have to read the Bible with a more open mind and then learn to use the Bible to interpret the Bible.  You are also going to have to discern the differences between natural things and spiritual things.  Here in this verse in Genesis it appears that God is speaking only to a natural man named Abram and that He is making a covenant which includes some physical land on the earth.  There is an explicit region described that goes from the Nile in Egypt to the Euphrates river going through Turkey, Syria and Iraq and this land has been directed to the seed of Abram.  I really do not have a problem with that general interpretation of this verse.  It is usually best to always take the Bible literally first and then stick with the literal interpretation when you can.   I said when you can, because there are some other places in the Bible that appear to expand our definition of what God was talking about in Genesis 15.  For example, read this verse in Galatians 3:

Gal 3:29  And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.

Here we have a major new conflict brewing with the pure natural interpretation of Genesis 15.  You see in Galatians 3:29 it appears that God is calling all Christians the “seed of Abraham”.  God also calls us the “heirs” of the promise.  Which promise, is God speaking of and what is it that we are supposed to inherit?  This is obviously a very different new type of seed being spoken of than what we originally thought from reading Genesis 15:18.  Galatians 3:29 must be referring to a “spiritual” type of seed and not a “physical” seed since I am not a naturally born Jew and neither is the majority of the modern church today.  Since I’m not in possession of the natural land of Israel, this also means there is a potential spiritual inheritance that is different than the natural inheritance that was given to natural Israel by God in Genesis 15.  All of this new information makes correct Bible interpretation infinitely more complex for us immediately.  We are going to have to learn to rightly divide the Word of Truth if we are ever to correctly understand it.  We are going to have to balance this new spiritual information with the old natural information that we previously thought to be the entire truth.  It is important to note that this scripture implies a plural type of spiritual seed, meaning many spiritual individuals being called the seed of Abraham.  Everyone that belongs to Christ is now called the spiritual seed of Abraham.  This is the same pattern that existed when we read in Genesis 15:18 and there were many implied natural descendants of Abraham called his natural seed.  What I begin to see developing is a natural pattern found in Genesis 15 that has occurred first to help point us to a spiritual pattern that has occurred after Christ was raised from the dead.  I know I added the words “spiritual” and “natural” before the words “seed” in my interpretations but that is the only logical way to differentiate them in my view point.  Let’s back up in this chapter of Galatians and see what else God says about the Seed of Abraham.

Gal 3:16  Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ.

Here is another verse that complicates our efforts tremendously when interpreting any verse found in Genesis 15 with a reference to the seed subject.  Here in Galatians, God is speaking directly about the promises that were made to Abraham and to his seed and this time God clearly comes out and says that the seed in Genesis 15 is a singular reference to Christ and that it is not a plural reference meaning many.  Do you recognize how this presents more complex problems in interpreting the seed and the promises of God found in Genesis 15 correctly.  At the very least it appears to imply that God has made simultaneous promises to the natural and the spiritual seed of Abraham.  Here in Galatians 3:16, God says this promise was only made to the one seed of Abraham called Christ (Heb 2:16).  So we have a continual increasing conflict developing.  We just read in Hebrews 11:9 that Isaac and Jacob were called heirs of Abraham and God now directs us to Christ as being the only seed that was spoken of.  We have now gone from many to one and this is a totally new perspective.  I believe that we are seeing more parallels being revealed.  Abram had only one natural son that God recognized to be his natural heir.  This heir was Isaac and he represents a natural pattern of the spiritual Christ to come.  Let’s read another verse found in the New Testament from God’s commentary about the seed of Abraham:

Rom 4:13  For the promise, that he should be the heir of the world, was not to Abraham, or to his seed, through the law, but through the righteousness of faith.

These are vastly ignored verses in the Bible.  They clearly say the promise was not made to those natural seeds that were under the law, but that the promise was to the spiritual seed that would inherit the world through the righteousness of faith.  This is obviously a major problem for the exclusive natural seed interpretation of Genesis 15.  Here in this verse it does not name the specific region of the Nile to the Euphrates any more, it rather states it in the general term called the “world”.  The Greek word translated here as world means “an orderly arrangement”.  It denotes a place with structure and organization.   When God spoke to Abram in Genesis 15, the known world was centered between the Nile and the Euphrates.  That was the world back then.  I believe that this is what God is saying to us from these verses using patterns found in design and speech.

What I see developing is two realms of parallel existence.  The natural realm occurred first and Abraham produced a nation of natural seeds.  But, God then reveals that there is another type of seed that has also come from Abraham and this seed must be viewed spiritually from God’s point of view.  These verses in Romans and Galatians clearly inform us of another parallel type of seed that is spoken of by God and too many Christians want to ignore them to focus only on the natural descendants of Abraham.  There is an implied reference that the land between the Nile and the Euphrates was only a symbolic representation for the greater reference of the “world”.   Notice in Romans and Galatians God is speaking of the fulfillment of prophecies and He mentions the promises, the heirs and the seeds in these verses and this proves conclusively that God is speaking directly about what we are studying in Genesis 15.  Practically every major theme of Genesis 15 is explicitly satisfied in these verses.  To ignore God’s definitions, God’s perspective and God’s words of explanation will cause you to wrongly interpret the Bible 100 times out of 100 attempts.  I hope you are learning something today.

2Co 4:18  While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.

I believe that one of the primary goals of the New Testament is to cause Christians to transition away from looking at the temporary things of this world to try to teach us to look at the eternal things of God within the greater spiritual realm of domain.  Both in Galatians and Romans, God is attempting to shift our focus off of the natural things found in this world in an attempt to get us to see the supernatural spiritual things that He has accomplished in the unseen realm.  My mentioning these verses will probably not make me a very popular Bible teacher to a select number of people who believe that natural Israel was given the land eternally.  However, I am not going to ignore these important verses in the Bible that speak of Jesus and the church as the spiritual seed of Abraham in order to satisfy their personal private interpretation of Genesis 15.  Too many people read the fifteenth chapter of Genesis in isolation and think that God is speaking only to the natural people that will forever possess the physical land in the Middle East named Israel.  However, when we read the New Testament more closely we found some additional insight that is too important to ignore.    The New Testament appears to say that the seed of Abraham is not the natural seed, but that it is rather the spiritual seed who will inherit the promise of God.  Do not get me wrong, I’m not abandoning the natural nation of Israel.  I fully support them to get saved and come into the reality of Jesus Christ.   Let’s go through the rest of the verses in Genesis 15 that speak about the seed of Abraham to see how they might fit with what we have just learned from God in the New Testament.

Gen 15:2  And Abram said, Lord GOD, what wilt thou give me, seeing I go childless, and the steward of my house is this Eliezer of Damascus?

Here in verse 2 it is very interesting to note that Abram is speaking to God and telling God what God already knows.  It is not news to God it is only the sound of Abram complaining.  But, one hidden word stands out to me in this verse.  The word translated as “steward” is actually two Hebrew words and the translators omitted one of them.  The Hebrew word left out is “H1121” and it means “a son” and “a builder of the family name”.   Abraham is clearly saying to God I have no son; my only family builder is my servant.  So Abram desires a son.  This hidden son reference is not a coincidence.  This is the exact same Hebrew Word that Jesus used when He said “I am the Son (H1121) of Adam (man)”.

Gen 15:3  And Abram said, Behold, to me thou hast given no seed: and, lo, one born in my house is mine heir.

Here in verse 3 of Genesis 15, the term “seed” appears to be a singular natural and physical reference and it is spoken by Abram from Abram’s perspective of his personal situation.  Try to see how Abram is asking God a natural question and the answer that God gives back to him is precisely not the exact same question that was asked.  As you can see Abram is focused entirely on the singular fact that his wife Sarai has given him no children.  Abram desires to have an heir to inherit all that God has blessed him with.  Abram is seeking God for the very basic human need of a sole physical heir.  It is also interesting to note that Abram is blaming God for not having this heir.  Abram has been married to his wife Sarai for a while now and they have had no children but not for a lack of trying to have children.  Abram has only a servant in his house that is currently his sole heir if anything would happen to him.  There is a possible voiced discouragement in his question to God.   From this information so far we see a singular focus for a solitary son to be the natural physical heir.  To me this relates indirectly to another spiritual heir named Christ we saw in Galatians 3:16.  You see when Isaac was born to Abraham; God called Isaac his only son (Gen 22:2).  Jesus the Son of God is also called God’s “Only begotten” in John 3:16.  Are you seeing the parallel being established here with Abraham being a type of God the father?  Isaac is definitely a type of Jesus the future spiritual Seed of Abraham and the promised heir.  Let’s examine God’s response to Abraham’s natural problem.    Abraham tells God you have given me no seed.   This “seed” that Abraham is talking about is clearly a physical son.   Can we agree so far?

Gen 15:4  And, behold, the word of the LORD came unto him, saying, This shall not be thine heir; but he that shall come forth out of thine own bowels shall be thine heir.

As you can see God is telling Abram that this servant born in his house will not be his heir.  God then tells Abram that his heir will come directly from his own internal bowels.  From this statement we could automatically assume that God is indirectly speaking of a new second type of “seed” called sperm.  You can see this type of seed mentioned in the Bible in verses like Leviticus 12:2, Leviticus 15:16 and Numbers 5:28.   The sperm of a human male is definitely called by the same Hebrew word translated as “seed” in those verses.  Since this type of seed originates internally and then is produced externally we could think that God is speaking of this seed in Genesis 15:4.  If we do that the number of human male sperm cells (seeds) passed to the female can vary.  The number of sperm cells can range from 20 million to 400 million individual cells.  Yet this amount is a very countable number so keep that in mind.  Abraham was asking God about one natural seed called a child and God seems to confirm that this child will come from his own body (bowels) and that he will be produced from one of the millions of seed cells that were in him.  However that is a very human natural viewpoint of another actual spiritual situation and circumstance being spoken of in the New Testament. The word translated as “bowels” is more likely to mean the “womb” as in a female reference to a woman’s natural body part that produces children.  Obviously Abram does not have one of these, or does he?  You can look at this verse two different ways using the Bible.  There are specific verses that say Sarah’s body is Abraham’s body and that they are now one flesh (Gen 2:24).  So what his wife has Abram also technically possesses.  Then there is another aspect that is also highly applicable to our subject of having children.  These are called the spiritual children that will be birthed after the resurrection of Christ.

Gal 4:19  My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you,

Here is a very confusing verse for many people.  A human male named Paul is writing about being in labor with soon to be born children and clearly he is not speaking literally or more specifically physically.  Paul must be writing about a spiritual process that is taking place.  I believe God is speaking spiritually in this verse in Genesis also while people are thinking naturally.  Abraham is called the “father” of the church in Romans 4:16 and James 2:21.  This cannot be speaking naturally and it can only be revealing a spiritual fatherhood that has transpired as a result of Abraham’s faith.  Do you see how complicated these subjects found in Genesis can become?  So far we have two different types of natural seeds being spoken of and one new third spiritual kind being implied in this chapter and it is about to get even more complex in the next verse.  Genesis 15:3 was a natural question and verse 4 was a potential natural answer that I believe can simultaneously apply to the spiritual realm.  These are God’s words of promise to Abram with definite spiritual applications.  We also saw a seed transition occurring; moving from a singular reference to a potential plural reference. Now let’s see what God says next to Abraham.

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

Here in verse 5 of Genesis 15 the subject of “seed” seems to shift dramatically beyond the concepts of anything natural or singular.  Reread this verse very carefully and see if you can see how God has shifted the focus and the perspective has changed from a naturalistic human way of thinking to a purely spiritual divine point of view.  Notice how these words seem to be coming from how God see’s things happening up in the spiritual realm.  To me it appears that God is looking down from heaven at a new and different type of seed.  Remember that the last verse spoken by God could be taken either naturally or spiritually, but here in this verse it is practically impossible to take it naturally at all.  God is still speaking directly to Abram and this is still the same answer to his natural question about a singular natural heir (seed).  However, God is now comparing the concept of Abraham’s “seed” to be like the number of the stars in the heavens.  Do you have any idea how many stars there are in the heavens?   Using modern telescopes we have determined that there are so many that we cannot even begin to count them all.  Modern scientists have only been able to estimate the astronomical number of heavenly bodies.  This number is way over the trillions of stars level.  Therefore here in Genesis 15:5 God has escalated from one seed or even millions of seeds all the way to a range of uncountable seeds.   So obviously what God is saying to Abram is something way beyond what a natural human mind could conceive.  The current earth population is around 7 billion and this is still a very countable number.  Even if every human on the earth got saved today, we would not come close to the number of stars in the heavens.  Are you following me so far?  I know you can look at this verse other ways and reason that God was only speaking of people seeing stars with the naked human eye in order to determine the number of seeds to come.  However, since the knowledge of this is going forth in a day when we can see way beyond the naked eye constraints, I believe that God is answering Abram from a prophetical spiritual way of thinking and seeing?  Let’s estimate the count of the stars visible by the naked eye on a clear night to be somewhere in the range of the low thousands maybe even tens of thousands.  Is that all of the seed that Abraham will produce?  Even if you count to a million, there are 7 billion people on the planet.  There are currently over 4 million natural descendants of Abraham living in Israel today.  Neither of these numbers is in the thousands.  There is no logical way that God is talking about a number that low to be all of the seeds of Abraham.  After all God knows how many stars that He created.  I personally believe based upon what we learned in Romans and Galatians God was thinking eternally all along while simultaneously speaking of both natural and spiritual things.  Let’s skip down quickly to verses 13 and 18 to see the last two times the “seed” of Abraham is directly mentioned in this chapter.  One of these verses we already looked at, but it won’t hurt us to see it again:

Gen 15:13  And he said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years;

Gen 15:18  In the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates:

Here in these two verses we have what appears to be the usage or a reference to the fourth type of the Hebrew word translated as “seed” of Abraham found in Genesis 15.  This time God has seemed to shift back to the plural natural perspective of the nation of Israel being the natural seed that are to be captive slaves in Egypt for a period of 400 years and that was not what Abram was asking about in verse 3 or even what God was talking about in verses 4 or 5.  This “seed” in verses 13 and 18 appear to be plural and it is definitely natural on the surface.  Yet we are still talking about the same subject of a singular seed heir of Abraham.  This makes it very complex to interpret all of these scriptures correctly.  When the children of Israel were freed from Egyptian bondage scholars estimate their numbers to be around 1 to 2 million people.  This would involve all the men, women and children that came out of Egypt.  This reference is somewhere beyond the number one, but way below the number of the stars in the heavens.  So this is why I stated that this appears to be a fourth type of seed referenced in this chapter. We have seen multiple seed references and multiple numbers associated with each reference.  Going back to Galatians 3:29, God said “If you are Christ’s then you are Abraham’s seed”.  Based upon what we just read in Genesis 15 of the 4 different types of possible seeds mentioned, which seed type is Romans 4:13, Galatians 3:16 and 3:29 talking about?

  1. Seed of Abraham = the son Isaac a solitary seed/heir (Genesis 15:3)
  2. Seed of Abraham = the sperm in his bowels in the range of millions of cells (Genesis 15:4)
  3. Seed of Abraham = something as the stars of the heavens an uncountable number (Genesis 15:5)
  4. Seed of Abraham = the natural nation of Israel in bondage 400 years 1 to 2 million people (Genesis 15:13, 15:18)

Since the majority of the church does not qualify to be seed type 1, 2, or 4, we must be found somewhere in the seed type 3 by default or we are another parallel seed type that is not directly mentioned.  We also saw that Jesus was called the singular seed of Abraham.  Which one of these seed types fit that pattern?  I believe Jesus was a pattern of the seed type 1, Isaac.  That was an introductory analysis of the very complex subject of the “seed of Abraham”.   I just showed you 3 or 4 different things that are called the seed of Abraham concurrently.  Yet God said none of these are the heirs in Galatians or Romans.  How difficult is this?  A physical heir was what Abram sought from God and Galatians 3:16, 3:29 and Romans 4:13, tells that Jesus Christ and the church are these revealed heirs of Abraham.  Yet we (the church) were not held captive 400 years in Egypt.  However, you may be able to see that according to Bible typology, the human race was held in symbolic bondage to Satan for 4000 years until Jesus Christ came and died and provided us freedom from the bondage of sin.  There are many distinct parallels given to us in the Bible about the natural nation of Israel being a pattern of the church for us to learn from.  I will not expand that part of the subject any further today, but I thought I would throw you a couple of new clues to think about.

An heir is one of the major themes of the entire story of Abraham found in Genesis 15?   A physical heir was what Abraham desired and it was a spiritual heir that God desired.  When God was telling Abraham what He would do in this chapter, you need to understand what Jesus said about this chapter in the Gospels.  Moses wrote the book of Genesis and in John 5:46 that Moses wrote about Him.  This was a very key statement to understanding anything in the Book of Genesis.  It is ulitmately about Jesus.  The truth of the Bible is rarely found on the surface text, it will only be clearly understood when we dig deep beneath the surface and find out what else God says about the subjects being discussed.  I am now ready to talk about the Abrahamic Covenant and its hidden meanings.  So far in this lesson I skipped over the primary verses that I wanted to talk about in an attempt to explain how things in Genesis 15 were given more from God’s spiritual point of view rather than they are from Abraham’s natural point of view.  What I am going to say now will further confirm that if you can see it.   We can fairly easily understand that God is doing something much greater than just making a covenant with Abraham in this chapter if we perceive the underlying messages being revealed to us.  Let’s go to verse 7 in Genesis 15 and begin to read there next.

Gen 15:7  And he said unto him, I am the LORD that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it.

Gen 15:8  And he said, Lord GOD, whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it?

Here we have another direct promise given to Abraham to inherit the land.  Notice in Genesis 15:7 God says to Abraham I brought you out of your former land to give you this land to inherit it.  I can see spiritual implications on that statement.  We as Christians have been brought out of our previous natural land to become the spiritual heirs within a new heavenly spiritual domain.  I think we need to look up the definition of the word translated as “inherit” in this verse to learn what it means.  I think we need to analyze this statement.   Did Abram ever possess the Promised Land?  Uh oh?  Abraham certainly sojourned in this land but there is no way that you could say that Abraham inherited it!  I think you will be surprised to find that “to inherit” does not mean what you automatically assumed that it meant.

H3423

A primitive root; to occupy (be driving out previous tenants, and possessing in their place); by implication to seize, to rob, to inherit; also to expel, to impoverish, to ruin: – cast out, consume, destroy, disinherit, dispossess, drive (-ing) out, enjoy, expel, X without fail, (give to, leave for) inherit (-ance, -or), + magistrate, be (make) poor, come to poverty, (give to, make to) possess, get (have) in (take) possession, seize upon, succeed, X utterly.

This Hebrew word represents a wide range of possible meanings and uses.  It would appear to me that many of the meanings are an aggressive action of force against an enemy.   It also appears that there is a double edged sword of blessings and cursing attached to the very definition.  The occupying people would be blessed and the occupied people would be cursed.  To occupy is a conquering term where one nation overtakes another nation.  It denotes the seizing control of, the casting out of the previous occupants, or to make the previous owners poor, consume them, destroy them, ruin them, to take possession and to seize control away from someone or something.  This is not what we normally think of when we say I inherited a house from my uncle.  Using this definition that would mean you kicked your uncle out of his house by force and you took it over to live in it for yourself.   Did Abraham ever do this?  I do not see how Abraham ever fulfilled this prophecy until after his natural descendants did it hundreds of years later when Joshua led his children into the Promised Land again to possess it.  Did you know that this story of Joshua and Israel taking the Promised Land was a type of Jesus and the church today?  Do you know what Jesus’ Hebrew name was?  The Greek word transliterated as “Jesus” is the exact same Hebrew name transliterated as “Joshua” who led his people into the land to possess it.  Do you think this is a coincidence?  I can see the parallels being given to us again, can you?

Wow, I could spend a lot of time talking about that but, perhaps I better not today.  Just take note that God is speaking here about a pending battle that will take place in the future.  God is denoting future responsibility and action that is required by Abram and his seed to inherit the Promised Land.   Then look at verse 8, where Abram says “Lord how will I know that I will possess (inherit) it”.  What is God’s answer to this question?  I am about to blow you away with God’s proof text answer.  This is the surprise that I have been building to today in this lesson.  Here is God’s reply to Abram’s question.

Gen 15:9  And he said unto him, Take me an heifer of three years old, and a she goat of three years old, and a ram of three years old, and a turtledove, and a young pigeon.

Gen 15:10  And he took unto him all these, and divided them in the midst, and laid each piece one against another: but the birds divided he not.

I can read these two verses now and see how that Abraham is given the task of dividing the Spiritual Family of God very plainly.  Can you see it?  You are going to have to learn to look beyond your natural thinking and begin to look for the spiritual pattern characteristics from what you have learned before.  In these two verses there is no mention of a family, a father, a mother or a mother-in-law, a son, a daughter-in-law or even a daughter, yet they are all right there in front of you in plain sight.  I call this the display of God’s intelligence and His ability to hide the truth in plain sight.  It is like I taught you earlier, when you are sewing together dresses from a single pattern, one dress can be made to look totally different than another dress by the simplest choice of options or the material fabrics selected.  One dress might be made from black silk with white pin stripes and the other dress could be made from a linen or cotton red polka dot pattern.  They can appear totally different on the surface.  However, the expert will always be able to recognize the reuse of the same pattern in both.  The designer can make specific selections to change the entire look and feel of a dress and still be using the exact same pattern.

In object oriented computer programming this is a cool feature called “inheritance” that exists that is related to our subject today.  One computer object inherits the characteristics and patterns of another object and the new object can make little additions or modifications to individualize the new component.  However the original pattern is still available and is clearly recognizable to the expert.  Did you notice this computer technique was called “inheritance”?  Did you notice that inheritance was one of the primary subjects within the Abrahamic Covenant?  You should really learn more about computers if you want to learn more about God’s word.   Sometimes the parallels are amazing.  I am teaching you God’s object oriented technique of inheritance today found in His word using patterns.  God reuses natural patterns to convey hidden spiritual lessons.  When you learn these things it changes how you study the Bible.

Did you notice how many animals that God has instructed Abram to use in this covenant?   It just so happens that there is exactly 5 animals used in this covenant.  Uh oh?  Since we are not directly told that there are five you are going to have to count them for yourself and this is just a small effort on your part to help you to recognize the same familiar pattern found in Micah 7:6.  How many family members did Jesus tell us were in the family in Luke 12:52?  Was it not exactly five?  Do you think that the use of 5 animals is just another strange coincidence?  I certainly do not believe that.  Now let me show you what else is revealed here in the Abrahamic covenant.  Did you notice that 3 of the animals are divided?  Do you think the number three is another coincidence?  Did you also notice that these 3 animals are given specific ages as well as their specific sexual genders?  One is specifically masculine and the other two are specifically feminine.  A “Ram” is always a mature male sheep.  A “Heifer” is a mature female cow.  The “She Goat” is also a mature female goat.  These are three very specific types of unique animals with great detail given to each of them.  It clearly tells me that a ram is not a cow and a goat is not a ram and a cow is not a goat.   We have three very different creatures even though they are all within the global animal kingdom.  But, that makes three animals with specific genders being divided.  Is that an accident?   There is absolutely no way that this occurs by accident.  What we are seeing is the Father, the Mother and the Mother-in-law in the family of God being divided and we will get to this in more depth very soon; one male and two females.

The specific genders of the two birds are not revealed within the text, but we now know from our understanding of Micah 7:6 that one bird is a male and the other bird has to be a female.  But, since they are not divided we learn some very new information about how the family of God is being divided.  It is essential that you notice that 3 of the animals are divided and 2 of the animals are not divided?  Does any of this sound familiar to you?  Isn’t this very similar to the patterned words of Jesus again from Luke 12:52 when He said the house would be divided 3 against 2 and 2 against 3?  Is this not another reoccurrence of the pattern of the house of 5 divided 3 against 2 with a slight new variation?  In every pattern given, God is revealing new details of the family division.  I’m telling you God is so smart that He can write something in the Bible for thousands of years and no one understands it until He reveals it to us and then it is so obvious that I wonder, why I didn’t see it before?   Let me give you a new picture diagram of the Abrahamic Covenant and show you how it fits the pattern of God’s family of 5:

This is the third time in Genesis that God has used something in direct association with Abraham to display a repetitive pattern of the 5 in one family divided 3 against 2.  The first time I showed you this pattern, Abraham was a type of the son.  The next time I showed you this pattern, Abraham was a type of the father.   Now we have the covenant that God is making with Abraham with another new variation of 5 being divided 3 by 2.  Keep in mind that this is God’s answer to prove that Abraham will inherit the world/land.  God is saying to Abraham this is all of the proof that you need, but it was certainly spiritually encrypted or encoded evidence that was not understood by Abraham or anyone else since Abraham until now.  I can clearly see the spiritual implications being revealed to us and I hope that you can also.

I need to address a subject here for the sake of argument.  You might can look at my diagram of the family of 5 and can see how Satan has taken it to possess it for a symbol of himself.  You see, I believe that Satan figured this truth out a long time ago and this is why there are so many satanic symbols today that are viewed as an upside down five pointed star with the head of a dead ram on it.  Do you think this is also a coincidence?  I believe there is absolutely no way that this is a coincidence.  I believe Satan purposely selected this symbol to discredit the truth and to present himself as God.  I do not believe that Satan is stupid.  Satan is very intelligent and very tricky.  However, I believe that God is smarter and He is definitely going to win this battle.  What battle?  You will have to read Revelation 12 to see the coming battle in heaven.  Satan will take on God in heaven with all of his might and he will be thrown down to the earth.  Let’s get back to the Abrahamic covenant.

The animals selected by God are not specifically revealing on the surface except for the Ram.  The ram is a symbolic representation for God the Father and He is always the father of the Lamb.  A lamb is of course a type of the Son of God, Jesus Christ.  When Abraham took Isaac to be sacrificed, Isaac asked his father “where is the animal to be sacrificed”.  Abraham’s answer was “God will provide himself as the sacrifice” (Gen 22:8).  Now we see that a ram and not a lamb is caught by his horns nearby where Abraham was and Abraham goes and gets this animal and he becomes the sacrifice instead of Isaac.  Therefore God as a Ram in my diagram is a very easy association for me to make.  I personally believe that God chose these five animals to teach us some new truths while also using them to hide the pattern in more depth of surface complexity.  I do not ever recall Jesus being called a bird, but a dove did descend from heaven upon him when He was baptized by John.  So I can see an association of Jesus to a bird using this reference alone.  I personally believe that God did not tell Abraham to use a lamb because this would have given it away and made it way too obvious for everyone to focus on the Lamb of God.

I do not believe at this level of the discussion that the identities of the female animals, the heifer or the she goat are important for today’s lesson.  I could have flipped them and the result would still be the same for what I want to say about them.  The same is technically true of the given two birds; one is described to be a turtledove and the other a young pigeon.  However there is an interesting part of the Hebrew definition of the “young pigeon” that I will mention briefly.  This Hebrew word means “nestling” and it is referring to a very young bird without feathers.  In other words a newly hatched baby bird that just came into the world!   I do not see how this type of bird fits with a type of the Son of God, but the newborn/reborn church I can make that fit very logically.   What I want to teach you about briefly is what God uses in the Old Testament as a type of Jesus and the church.  This may be too much information in this lesson, but I’m going to try to show it to you anyway so that you can see the usage by God of these two birds as a type for Jesus and the church more clearly.  We are going to the book of Leviticus and we will read in the fourteenth chapter:

Lev 14:2  This shall be the law of the leper in the day of his cleansing: He shall be brought unto the priest:

Lev 14:3  And the priest shall go forth out of the camp; and the priest shall look, and, behold, if the plague of leprosy be healed in the leper;

Lev 14:4  Then shall the priest command to take for him that is to be cleansed two birds alive and clean, and cedar wood, and scarlet, and hyssop:

Lev 14:5  And the priest shall command that one of the birds be killed in an earthen vessel over running water:

Lev 14:6  As for the living bird, he shall take it, and the cedar wood, and the scarlet, and the hyssop, and shall dip them and the living bird in the blood of the bird that was killed over the running water:

Lev 14:7  And he shall sprinkle upon him that is to be cleansed from the leprosy seven times, and shall pronounce him clean, and shall let the living bird loose into the open field.

I read these verses and come near to tears when I thought of them.  If you do not see what they are saying then perhaps you should get saved.  God uses the law of the leper cleansing to reflect the redemptive works of Jesus Christ on the cross.  Practically everything mentioned in these verses are symbolic representations of something much greater in power and spiritual authority.   Two birds are used and that is not a coincidence, especially knowing who the two birds are in the Abrahamic Covenant?  One bird sheds his blood in order to free the other bird after the living bird is dipped into the blood and the water of the dead bird.  There is a direct mention of an earthen vessel, cedar wood, scarlet thread and hyssop and each of these are very significant to the story of Jesus.  Jesus came to the earth in an earthen vessel to shed His blood for us.   Jesus was hung on a cross of wood.  The Roman soldiers gave Jesus a drink of vinegar and hyssop on the cross.  When Jesus’ side was pierced by the soldier’s spear, water and blood poured out onto the ground.  The scarlet thread represented the blood line of the savior from Abraham to David to Jesus.

I personally believe that leprosy is a hidden type of sin in the Bible.  Leprosy is a physical state of uncleanness that reveals to us a greater truth about a spiritual state of uncleanness.  Did you notice what the priest was instructed to do with the two birds?  One bird is killed and his blood is collected in a pot with running water.  The living bird is dipped into the pot and then is set free to fly away after being symbolically cleansed.   I of course can see Jesus as being the type of the bird that has shed His blood to cleanse the church that is represented by the living bird.  In other words we in the church, do not have to shed our blood to be made clean from our sins.  It was only Jesus’ blood that causes our spiritual cleansing from our sins (1 Jo 1:9).  Two birds are definitely a hidden pattern for Christ and the church so these 5 animals are beginning to fall into place very nicely.

The ages of the three animals that are divided are specifically given and they are said to each be 3 years old.  That of course makes life more difficult for me to try to explain.  God the Father is an eternal ageless spiritual being and has no age.   The Heavenly Jerusalem was the elder woman first created in covenant with God as the type of Sarah.  So the Heavenly Jerusalem has a birth or a start creation date, even though I do not know when this occurred.  The Earthly Jerusalem was a much younger woman and she was a type of Hagar.   We do technically know when this approximately occurred from reading in the Bible and calculating the dates.  The covenant of Abraham was made approximately 2000 years after Adam and 2000 years before Christ.  So we generally know the age of one woman in human terms she is technically near 4000 years old earth time.  However here in this verse God calls them all three years old.  I personally believe this is symbolic and certainly not literal ages.  It also emphasizes the number 3 to us to help us to see that this is an important number to recognize in this verse.  I do however believe that this number teaches us that all three animals were called mature and not newborns.  A three year old cow, ram or goat is old enough to have children and that is in stark contrast to the young pigeon that is not yet old enough or mature enough to have children.   I believe personally that the number 3 signifies a triune characteristic of each.  God was God the Father, God the Word and God the Holy Spirit at this time in the covenant.  The nation of Israel was mankind made in the image and likeness of God and they were spirit, soul and body.  Ok, here is where I get to speculate a bit.  I believe the angels in heaven were also triune beings made in the image of God.   The number 3 given to each animal could be representative of other things as well, but I do not have time to explore them today.

So why are there three animals split down the middle in this covenant while two were not divided at all?  The birds could have very easily been divided with great ease compared to a much larger cow, ram or goat.   I told you that this lesson today was going to get very controversial so here I go again.  I’m going to start with the easier one first.  If the woman Heavenly Jerusalem consists of every angelic being including Satan and his angels, I can logically see how this female in Heaven can be divided to eliminate all of the evil while preserving all of the good angles.  Therefore I have concluded that to divide the she goat is God removing sin and evil while keeping the good.  Now we get to the younger woman called the Earthly Jerusalem and things get a little more complicated because of the vast numbers of religious beliefs that are not based upon a complete spiritual view of the Bible.  I believe the same division of good vs. evil is occurring in this woman also.  You see the controversy come in when you find scriptures in the Bible that people take to say that God will come to the rescue of the entire natural nation of Israel to save them all.  I know that this is not what the Bible actually teaches us.  The Earthly Jerusalem is only the natural people of the descendants of Jacob that are under the law.  She was a type of Hagar and I showed you in the last lesson that Hagar was cast out of the family of God by allegorical interpretation.  Therefore none of natural Israel will be saved ever.  But, that does not mean they cannot become spiritually born again in order to be saved.  It does make the salvation of natural Israel conditional.  According to what God says in the book of Romans we have to balance every scripture about Israel giving each equal priority.  Here is God quoting from Isaiah:

Rom 9:27  Esaias also crieth concerning Israel, Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, a remnant shall be saved

A remnant is not many based upon the sands of the sea concept that it is being compared to.  We must realize at this time that God is saying the natural house of Israel on the earth will be divided and a remnant will be saved and others will just miss out.  We of course know very clearly how they can be saved.  God says everyone that believes God raised Jesus from the dead and confesses Jesus as Lord they will be saved (Rom 10:9).  Those that do not believe or do not confess Jesus as Lord will be damned.  This is still not good news for a lot of people.  That really saddens me tremendously but this is the way that God has established salvation to work.  I guess I should change the subject off of natural Israel and get back to the rest of the family of God again before I make some new enemies.

We are getting progressively more complex as we continue up to the top of the spiritual food chain.  The Ram being divided is clearly a type of God.  This is going to make life and your understanding of the Bible infinitely more complex to try to comprehend.  How can you divide God?   Are you beginning to see my problem?  I guess I should say God’s problem, and not mine.  In every other family member I believe there was a division of the good from the evil and how do you make that fit with our understanding of a good God?  Technically you cannot divide God.  We know that the triune God is described to be “One” (Eph 4:6)!  Yet even in mathematics you can divide the number one and get fractions.  According to the Abrahamic Covenant God says He is divided here by association to a ram.  I think I mentioned this in other lessons, but it needs to be readdressed for this discussion.  If God the Father does not die on the cross and experience death for all mankind, we (the whole earth) are in serious trouble.  This would mean God the Father is still in covenant with all of the angels.  This means God is still in covenant with natural Israel.  This would also mean God’s son does not have anything to inherit.  You need to understand that God is not evil.  However, the Bible informs us that God was in covenant with evil and this represents a major problem for God.  The only legal way to end the covenant with evil is through experiencing death to separate Himself from His old wives.  The N.T. talks a lot about us being the heirs of an inheritance. An inheritance only occurs after someone dies to leave their possessions to another.  When Jesus was raised from the dead He makes this statement that is almost universally ignored:

Mat 28:18  And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.

Why does God the Father have to transfer ALL power in both heaven and the earth to His risen Son Jesus?  I think that is an excellent question.  I also think since no one could answer it they ignored it.  It is very clear to me from this statement that God has transferred all spiritual authority to the Son Jesus Christ who was raised from the dead.  Why didn’t God do this before He died on the cross?  The term “power” in this verse means “authority”.  We know that God by definition is almighty and all powerful so it is impossible to transfer His power, but to transfer His authority to another member of the Godhead is a different concept entirely.  Authority is the rule or the government of a nation.  This transfer of authority tells us that whoever was running the Kingdom of Heaven is not the same one who now is running the Kingdom of Heaven in the eyes of God.  I told you this was deep and controversial.  But yet it is written in the Bible so do not ignore it.  I could give you many other Bible verses that reveal the death of God but I really do not have the time today.  I think I will end this Bible lesson here and perhaps continue it on another day in the future.  If you have understood anything that I have taught tell me.  If you have doubts and questions tell me.  I do not know what needs more explanation and what does not until someone raises the issue.  I know this was a long Bible lesson and I really could not cover everything that I wanted.  I tried to shift your focus from natural things to spiritual things and this will help you if you can do it.  I thought this was going to my last lesson, but I will probably need to do another to show you the other patterns found in the life of Abraham and his son Isaac.  So until next time, may God continue to bless you and keep you in your study of His Word.

Understanding the Hidden Spiritual Family Structure of God’s Household! The Hidden Bible Patterns of the Household of Five Divided 3 Against 2! Part 8

(Ver 1.0)  This is now Part 8 in a series of extremely advanced Bible studies about a new subject that I call “The Hidden Spiritual Structure of the Family of God”.  These lessons are designed for mature Christians who want to learn the truth about God’s Spiritual Family.  Today’s subject will be focused on the repetitive Bible patterns of the 5 family members who are divided 3 against 2.  If you have not read this series from the beginning I would highly recommend that you go back to “Part 1” and start there.  I will warn you at the start that the next two lessons in this series are potentially the most controversial lessons that I have ever done on my website.  It will cause many Christians to rethink what they have believed about God, the Bible, the nation of Israel and the subject of families.  I can guarantee you that you have never heard this taught anywhere.  But, just because it is something brand new, does not mean it is not from God.  You need to learn how God operates and how God unfolds the Bible to His people in stages.  You should then learn to use your Bible to figure out if what I am teaching to you today is something that is actually true or something that I just made up to try to deceive you.  Don’t make me or anyone else do all of your Bible study for you and never take the words of any man blindly and accept them as the truth.  Decide right now if you want to learn the truth and then get your Bible out in order to prove all things.  You are required by God to study to show yourself approved unto God a workman that has learned to rightly divide the Word of Truth who cannot be put to shame (2 Tim 2:15).  I learned that if I can’t see what someone is teaching from the Bible in the Bible for myself, then I just ignore what they said.  You should do the same with what I say today.

By now you should be intimately very familiar with the prophecy of the family of 5 found in Micah 7:6.  I gave you a new picture at the beginning of this lesson of the family of 5 with several new scripture references in it.  Some of these verses I have discussed before and others are brand new.  I would suggest that you go and read all of the scriptures that I have given to you and then go back and reread the original prophecy in Micah 7:6.  It was this specific prophecy from God that got me started studying this subject.  I quickly learned that the prophecy was repeated in Matthew 10:34-36 and Luke 12:51-53 with only some slight variations and additional new details (clues).  Both times in Matthew and Luke, Jesus is speaking and He says “I am come…” and then tells us about the Micah 7:6 prophecy as the reason for Him coming.  This told me that the prophecy was related to God and His family and not just some anonymous random unnamed household that God was using to make a point.  Jesus was in effect saying I have come to the earth to divide God’s family of 5 by putting 3 of them against the other 2.  That statement will be very perplexing and almost sacrilegious to some.  Many will read this lesson series and probably scratch their heads in either confusion or amazement depending upon their spiritual growth.

Since this prophecy is recorded in the Bible these three times, I quickly understood that God placed special significance upon it.  After all, God will never speak anything three times in the Bible using three different writers for it not to be something that He wants you to fully understand.  If God ever says the same thing three different times in the Bible it is always very important to Him.  He places extraordinary value upon His every spoken individual word so when He repeats Himself, you better learn to pay attention to it.  In addition to all of that, Jesus specifically when quoting this prophecy said this is why I have come to the earth in the flesh.  So Jesus also places such unlimited importance on such an obscure prophecy that it immediately drew my full attention to it. The problem that I instantaneously recognized with the prophecy was that all of these verses were spoken and written in the form of a riddle that actually concealed their meanings.  You could not read the riddle prophecy and be confident about what it meant, who it was speaking of or even to whom it was written.  Like I showed you before you could not even understand how many were in the family until Jesus revealed there were only 5 in Luke.  When Jesus made these statements there was no church; so technically Jesus was not speaking to the church.  I personally believe that Jesus was speaking both to the natural nation of Israel and the angels in heaven where He came from.  These were the only two women that were present in the family of God to divide when He spoke these words.  However Jesus was the Son of God and that makes the fourth member of the family.  All we need now is the bride of Christ to come into the picture to make the fifth family member.  But, since the prophecy is now being revealed to the church, I believe that it is clearly written for the benefit of the Bride.

So I studied this subject for well over ten years.  During this time God revealed more and more to me and I began to see the significance of this knowledge like never before.  There were times that I would be listening to the Bible on CD and the Holy Spirit would stop me when a certain verse came on and ask me “Did you hear that?”  When God speaks to you even in a still small voice, it is always very important to stop what you are doing and for you to give your full attention to what is being said.  So I would back the CD up and listen to the verse again and there it was a hidden pattern of the family of 5 divided 3 against 2.  Then God would show me additional details while listening to Christian ministers on TV.  They would not be teaching on this subject, but they would be reading from a verse of scripture that was another hidden reference to the family of 5 and again the Holy Spirit would prompt me inside of my spirit to pay attention to what was being read.  I soon learned who the mother was in the family, then who the mother-in-law in the family was and finally God taught me about the daughter and the daughter-in-law in some other verses.   God progressively connected all of the dots for me to understand His spiritual family and it changed my perspective dramatically forever.  God would disclose the meanings of the riddle by His Spirit that was in me.   Therefore what I’m teaching you today did not come from any man or any school on the earth.  I can clearly say that if it were not for the guidance of the Holy Spirit, I would not know anything to teach on this subject.  So I soon realized that these were not my words, only those that were freely given to me to freely share with others.  I do hope you can see that also.

Joh 16:13  Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.

One of the greatest benefits of being a real Christian is the ability to participate in a concept and a process that the unsaved world remains clueless of.   We as Christians have an infinite amount of knowledge and wisdom inside of us because the Holy Spirit indwells us.  However, just because God knows everything and He is inside of us, does not mean that we automatically know everything.  Did you notice in my last paragraph that the Holy Spirit would always point me to scriptures?  God never spoke to me anything that was not already written in His word.  That is why the Holy Spirit is called the guide to all truth.  That is why the Bible is called God’s Truth.  When is it necessary to have a guide?  What is a guide?  A guide is always someone who knows more than you do.  You only need a guide if you are going into dangerous territories that you have never been to before.  I just called the Bible dangerous territory and that will make people think! But, all you have to do is read things on the internet and find out why I say that.  You can literally make the Bible say whatever you want it to say and that is very dangerous territory.   A guide is always someone who you will follow.  That means you never tell the Guide what to do or where to go, they will lead you and you will be required to follow them.  You are the follower and the Spirit of God is the Guide Leader.  The Spirit of Truth is of course just one of the names given to the indwelling Holy Spirit in John 16:13 and He is definitely my Guide.  Here is a basic truth that this verse in John teaches us.  We know from this statement and many others that God’s word is written in riddles using hidden word construction techniques that make it impossible for a natural man to comprehend.  The Word of God is the most highly complex spiritual book of hidden information that you will ever attempt to study.  This is why we need the Holy Spirit to teach us what it means.  He will show us where to look for the truth in the Bible, He will teach us what this truth is, He will reveal the meaning of the hidden truth, and then He will show us how these new truths fit with all of the other truths that we already know.  We are constantly moving from truth to increasing truth, always moving higher and higher in the knowledge of God, gaining new insight and revelation into these hidden mysteries of God.  I am personally very excited to be involved in the ministry at this time in history.  We are coming to the culmination of the completed work of God.  The end of the six days of God’s labor will be fulfilled shortly and God’s day of rest is close at hand.  The Savior will come and take us away from here very, very soon and then we will return with Him after 7 years to reign on the earth for another 1000 years.  I hope you are ready and looking for His soon return.   Let’s begin to examine the information found in the hidden patterns of God’s family in Genesis.

One of the first patterns that I taught you about of the 5 in one house divided was when I showed you the hidden pattern within the family of Abraham.  It is interesting to see and learn how God writes the Bible.  You see you can find verses that seem to indicate that Abraham was the firstborn of triplets.  However, the other children of Terah are omitted in Genesis 20:12 in order to make what was written a pattern of what God wanted to conceal in the Bible.  In other words God selectively chose His words with such precision that He included only the exact words in the Bible that He needed to convey the hidden message.  In this verse in Genesis 20:12 we are specifically told that Abraham and Sarah were brother and sister.  To selectively use information is a very interesting concept.  If God says something but omits many of the insignificant details, is that a lie?  I have had people try to tell me that this is a sin of omission.  Not to tell the entire truth according to them changes what you say to a lie.  I do not believe that at all.  The Bible says it is impossible for God to lie.  So if God omits certain facts to make a verse say something, to me that exhibits extreme intelligence and not deception.    God purposely omitted many specific details of human history in order to include only pertinent facts that had hidden message that He needed us to learn about.  Wow, I hope you are grasping what I just said.

In Genesis 20:12, we are told that Terah was the father of both children and they each had different mothers.  Using this single verse we now have an exact matching pattern of the family of 5 given to us reading the selective words written by God.  Each family member referred in Genesis 20:12; has the exact relationship titles given to us in the Micah 7:6 prophecy.  Since there are only 5 family members mentioned in this verse we can quickly make the connection to the family of God as being a viable natural pattern of the hidden spiritual Family of God.  God informs us in Ecclesiastes 1:9 that the thing that has been is the thing that shall be again.  God is basically teaching you about the concept of repetitive patterns.   The things that you have seen are the exact things that you shall see.   God says there is nothing new under the sun.  It is also interesting to note that the first time the term “daughter-in-law” is used in the Bible; is when it is used to describe Sarah.  That is clearly not a coincidence.  That is called the Law of First Mention and God is relating pertinent information of the Micah 7:6 prophecy to the family of Abraham.  As you continue through the next two lessons you will begin to see how important Abraham is to the subject of the family of God.  God is connecting Sarah to be a type of the future church in this specific allegorical information.  God is connecting Abraham to be a type of the future Savior Jesus Christ.  When God speaks to Abram in Genesis 12:1, He tells Abram to leave his father’s house.  This commandment from God causes a family division to occur.  We now can see the split of the two married children from their 3 parents taking place.  These are all just more hidden patterns of God’s family and they speak volumes to me.

Hopefully you now understand the names and the identities of every family member in the Spiritual House of God.  There is God the Father the Spiritual Head of the Family and God the Son, the two males in the family.  They are also the husbands married in covenant to three different women all named Jerusalem.  God the Father was married to the Heavenly Jerusalem first and then later He married the natural nation of Israel on the earth (Jer 31:32).  This city I called the “Earthly Jerusalem” was a much younger natural pattern of the existing heavenly spiritual woman Jerusalem.  Then God sent His son Jesus Christ onto the earth to be the Savior of the world.  Jesus was killed by the natural nation of Israel and the Roman Empire on a cross.  The good news is that this was the plan of God all along and God raised Him from the dead.  You see the death of Jesus on the cross was not the end; it was simply the beginning of something brand new.  Jesus Christ the risen Son of God is now joined to His new bride named the New Jerusalem in a new covenant of marriage.  Jesus Christ the risen Son of God was never before married to anyone else and since He was God and man simultaneously, He was uniquely qualified to solve problems in both the natural and the spiritual domains simultaneously.  Jesus has created one new family for God and this is very important for you to know.

The term new implies a Jerusalem that never existed before.  However, the bride of Christ technically consists of spiritual beings and people from the two previous marriage covenants along with all of the people on the earth that were never entered into a covenant marriage with God, but who have also accepted Jesus Christ to be their Lord and Savior.  Therefore, the New Jerusalem will consist of spiritual individuals from three separate sets or groups that are now joined to form the one new body of the bride.  Therefore, follow what I am saying, the New Jerusalem will consist of all of the gentiles who were saved from every nation on the earth, all of the natural Jews of natural Israel (the Earthly Jerusalem) that have now accepted Jesus as their Messiah and finally the good spiritual angels of God from the Heavenly Jerusalem that have never sinned.  These are the three realms of domain that have been divided to be joined for a new oneness with Jesus Christ.

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.

It is important to notice that the Gentiles of the earth were never previously in a covenant marriage with God Almighty the Father at any time.  You can learn this by the specific context of this verse in Romans 7.  These specific verses are only written to natural Israel (those that know/knew the law).   You see the natural Jews were previously in a marriage covenant with God the Father.   But, we have also learned from reading here in Romans 7:4 that through the death of Jesus on the cross, the natural Jews were now freed from their previous covenant in order to become married to another, Jesus the risen Lord.  This was an important point given to us by God in the seventh chapter of Romans because God clearly tells us to be in covenant marriage with more than one husband simultaneously is an act of adultery.  One of the major points being made in the beginning of this chapter is the fact that if the husband dies the wife is now freed from the law of her previous husband in order to marry another and then God tells natural Israel in verse 4 He has given this freedom to natural Israel because Jesus died on the cross.  This information means God the risen Son is not the same God that was in covenant with natural Israel.  I’m sure that is going to go over really big with people, but that is what is being taught by God in these verses.  This is not that complicated, but yet it is so very different than anything you have probably ever heard taught before that it makes it controversial.

There are many very tough and complex subjects found in the Bible and this one probably qualifies to be the most complex that I have ever attempted to study in the Bible up until this point in time.  Recently I had a commenter say to me that they believed that God intended marriage to be between only one man and one woman and that this was His perfectly designed plan for all of humanity.  I have to say that I totally agreed with that comment and their analysis of the Bible.  The difficulty now comes since I have tried to teach you that the Bible says God the Father had two wives simultaneously and that information seems to conflict with our current idea of the perfect designed plan of God for man.  Just because God designed something to work one way is not an indication that God does not permit alternative lifestyles.  I think you can clearly see that by looking around us every day.  The ignorant state of New York recently passed the Gay marriage law that legalizes same sex marriage and that is clearly not what God designed or intended.  However, I personally believe that God permits many things to occur that were never His original plan.  Also, I will say that just because God was married in covenant with two wives at the same time does not mean that this is how it will be forever.  I can clearly see that God in the beginning had only one spiritual wife named Heavenly Jerusalem and then reading in the last chapters of Revelation I again see that God at the end will only have one spiritual wife named New Jerusalem.  However, it is the interim period of transition where we struggle to wrap our minds around what God has done and why.  Let me see if I can explain what is going on to you so that you can understand it.

Before God created our present world, God was married in covenant with only one spiritual woman in heaven named the Heavenly Jerusalem.  This was God’s perfect plan for all of His creation right up until sin was found in His wife (Eze 28:15).  Who was God’s wife that sinned?  This was Lucifer (the anointed cherub) and the other angels that were with him.  Lucifer latter became known as Satan in the Bible.  But, when did this name change occur?  Was it before Adam or after Adam?   We know that according to Revelation 12:9 when this anointed angel appeared in the Garden of Eden for the first time in Genesis 3 he was already named Satan and not Lucifer.  Lucifer is never called by this name here on the earth; he is always called by the name Satan and other names and symbols.  What does the name Satan mean?  According to Strong’s it means “adversary”, “opponent” and “enemy”.  Who did God say were His enemies in Micah 7:6?  God tells us that those of His own household were found to be His enemies.  Now God has a major problem on His hands.  God cannot legally  divorce His wife nor can God cast Satan and his angels into hell without casting Himself into hell with her.  According to the Bible they are all “one” Spirit joined by covenant marriage (1 Co 6:17, Eph 4:4, 1 Co 12;13).  The angels and God the Father are all from one family in one spiritual household.  The problem becomes infinitely more complex when you realize that God was living within the eternal spiritual realm of existence now in an eternal covenant marriage to other eternal spiritual beings who have now committed sins.

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

There was no time, no concept of death, no legal separation, no concept of legal divorce and no laws that could be created after the fact to solve the problem within the spiritual realm of heaven.  There has always existed the concept of sin even before God created our world, but yet there were no consequences for that sin if it was present.  You can clearly see this from reading Romans 4:15.  So what does God need to do to solve His problem?  He creates all of these needed components within the natural realm.  God created our world with a limited time constraint of only 6000 years.  Now there is no more eternity. God creates the opportunity for sin but with only one law for Adam to follow and to obey.  Now we have the creation of the law with sin consequences.  God creates major consequences for disobedience and for sin and all of these are radical new concepts that never existed before.  God said to Adam, “Don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil for in the die that you do it you will surely die”.  Adam of course disobeys God’s one law and fails and he eats from the wrong tree and now sin and death have both entered into our world to initiate their reign over all that God created in the natural realm (Rom 5:14-21).   Uh oh that sounds like another new problem for God to solve.  Have you ever thought that sometimes to fix a problem you may have to create some new problems to solve first?  I guess I won’t go there, but it is an interesting concept.

The concept of death was a new concept for any previous spiritual beings to be faced with.  Adam had absolutely no comprehension to what death was.   It is clear to me that Satan did not understand the concept of death either.   Satan told Eve “You will not surely die, you will be as God knowing good and evil” (Gen 3:4-5).   Wow, did you hear that statement that Satan just made?  I know this is not what the KJV Bible says, but it is what the Hebrew text says.  Satan now reveals the status of God to His new creation.  We know from reading Genesis 1 that everything that God created in our world was by His own definition “very good”.  Therefore, Adam and Eve knew nothing but good from the beginning.  This is why Adam had no comprehension of death; death is not or never will be a good thing.  However, Satan clearly tells Eve that God already knows about both good and evil.  Where did this evil come from that God already knew?  God is revealing His personal problem here in Genesis 3.   In Genesis 3:22, God says “The man has become as one of Us, knowing both good and evil”.  God confirms by speaking this statement the fact that Adam has now become entwined in a covenant with both good and evil and he now has the same major problem that God has.  To “know” evil is a covenant term.  God says “Adam knew his wife Eve and she conceived”.  This was the exact same Hebrew word that God and Satan used when speaking about God knowing evil.  Hopefully you can begin to understand the problem God was facing.  It was impossible for a Spirit being to die or to cease to exist.  According to what we learned in Romans 4, marriage covenants are binding until the husband dies.  That makes God’s problem impossible to solve unless God creates death and comes to the earth in the flesh to fulfill it and to participate in what He has created personally.  Are you beginning to see how smart God is?  Are you beginning to see God’s motivation for what He has done?  God is motivated to end His covenant relationship with evil and this is the solution to divide His family up.

God takes and creates a new separate family on the earth apart from His spiritual household in heaven using the man Adam and his new wife Eve as the newly repeated natural pattern of God’s existing family.  Like God’s family in heaven, it started with Adam and Eve started by only knowing “good”!  However, we can see from the allegory being presented in this story of Adam as also applying to God’s family situation.  Again we see the duplication of a spiritual pattern of the one husband and one wife concept who only knew “good” to begin with.  Also, notice where Eve came from in Genesis 2?  God took Eve from the physical side of Adam in Genesis 2 and this reveals where God’s spiritual wife the Heavenly Jerusalem also came from.  The Heavenly Jerusalem had to be taken from the Spirit of God’s side.  God then tells Adam “For this cause shall a man leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife” (Gen 2:24).  These are more of the patterns that I believe have reoccurred when Jesus came into the world as the Last Adam (1 Co 15:45).

However in the interim transitional period (4000 years) between Adam and Jesus, God the Father comes into another covenant with another woman named Jerusalem here on the earth.  What is God doing?  Why didn’t God just establish His covenant with Adam and include the population of the whole earth?  I think that is an excellent question to consider.  The current population of Israel is around 8 million people and around 75% of those are natural Jews.  That is not very many people in comparison to the total population of the world that is now very close to 7 billion.  You really need to think about what God has done on the earth to see what God is doing in the spiritual realm.  These are patterns that have great significance.  God took a single nation of people on the earth and made a covenant marriage with them (Jer 31:32).  God became their husband and they became His natural people and His wife.  God is intentionally dividing the entire natural family of Adam and revealing that this is what He will do again with His spiritual family.  You see by definition a marriage is the union and the simultaneous division of two people (a male and a female) to each other and from all other people.  When I married my wife I forsook all others.  Meaning I do not go after other’s because I am joined to my wife.  When God joins Himself to one nation of people on the earth, He has now forsaken the rest of the planet.  Uh oh?  That was not good news for all of us gentiles.  We of course now know that is not what God did or had in mind.  God is only making this temporary covenant with natural Israel to teach us the concepts about what is happening in the spiritual realm.  I know that I just stepped on someone’s religious toes by saying God entered into a temporary covenant with natural Israel.  I’m sorry you are going to have to learn what the Bible actually says or you will be forever confused and misguided.  If you think the covenant with natural Israel was eternally binding to God, you have a tremendous number of things still left to learn.   For example, read this verse and apply it to how many men try to interpret the Bible concerning natural Israel:

2Co 4:18  While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.

Of course this is some more new controversial information for many Bible students.  Are you able to see natural Israel every day in the news and all around us?  Can you go to the country of Israel and visit the physical city of Jerusalem?   If you answered yes to either of these questions, then God clearly informs us it is TEMPORARY!  That means the natural nation of Israel was never intended to be around eternally.  Wow, that is going to upset a lot of people.  Am I reading the Bible?  Am I applying the Bible fairly?  Am I using the Bible to interpret the Bible?  From my viewpoint I have done all of these.  In 2 Corinthians 4:18 God is telling ALL Christians to shift their focus off from the natural things of this world and change to look at only the eternal spiritual things that will endure.   There is nothing within the current natural realm that will survive in eternity and that will certainly include natural Israel.  You see I am not teaching against natural Israel, I am only teaching that they better get saved if they want to be in the new family of God.  They better get married to the risen Jesus because their old covenant with God the Father is OVER!  The spiritual realm will remain and those that have accepted Jesus Christ as the Messiah will remain, but there is a major difference between the temporary natural things of the earth and the eternal spiritual things of God.  God requires you to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven by the one open door named Jesus Christ.  There will come a time when this door will shut and then the foolish virgins on the outside will be crying let us in, but Jesus will say what He has already said.  “Depart from me, for I never knew you”.

I do not curse natural Israel.  I try to bless them by telling them the truth to turn to their God and Savior Jesus Christ.  Satan is out to kill natural Israel for reasons that are very important for you to understand.  Natural Israel is still the holder of the Law of God.  We learned this from reading Galatians 4 and 5 and other places in the N.T.  Earlier I showed you that without Laws there are no consequences for sin.  Therefore, Satan has realized that it is this Law of God that will convict him of his sins and soon he will be thrown into the lake of fire.  Satan’s only recourse or solution is to try to wipe natural Israel from the face of the planet; to drive them into the sea with their law.  Satan will not rest until he has accomplished this goal.  This is why Iran is building nuclear weapons. This is why the Middle East is currently in great turmoil in Egypt, Libya and Syria and other places.  The overthrow of all of these ruling dictators will usher in a new Islamic government that is not friendly to Israel.  When Egypt elects an Islamic government, they will no longer recognize their peace treaty with Israel.  The world united against Israel is coming and it is already well advanced in structure and organization.  Be warned Israel for there is an approaching evil spiritual force against you.  I believe that God has blessed Israel and will keep Israel up until a certain point in time.  All of this is another Bible lesson so I will move on to another pattern of the family of 5 that I taught you about previously.

Seeing the allegorical information given to us in Genesis 11-21 we know that God’s wife the Heavenly Jerusalem gave God the Earthly Jerusalem because she was called barren.  So God entered into a covenant with a second temporary wife in order to have a son or an heir of the Family of God.  There I go again saying God’s covenant with Israel was temporary, but did you notice that is what God says when He uses Hagar for the type of natural Israel?  Was Hagar a temporary wife to Abraham?  Did Hagar get cast out of Abraham’s family with her son?   These are questions you need to begin to consider to see how they fit with the nation of Israel right now.  There are several new verses in this picture diagram.  God and read them for yourself and see what they say. God having a Son was a part of His greater divine design to create a new family for God.  This risen Son of God will finally repeat the original design of God in the spiritual realm and this will again result in only one Husband in covenant with only one wife who knows nothing but good.   So God is not a polygamist nor does God desire polygamy.  God however used this approach to achieve a greater purpose and plan.  I am not promoting more than one wife at all.  The New Testament does not promote the idea of multiple wives.  But, we clearly see in the Old Testament things that are very different than those found in the New Covenant.  I guess we need to ask the question did Abraham sin by having more than one wife?  According to God I believe he did not.  If Abraham sinned, then Jacob sinned twice as much for having 4 wives.  Then Solomon sinned 600 times as much for having even more wives than he could ever hope to satisfy.  I believe there was a time that things were permitted by God, but that they were never intended to be to be the final outcome or even how things should have been.  For example, let’s briefly speak about another very difficult subject found in the Bible concerning the Gentile woman named Ruth.  Who was Ruth?  Where did Ruth come from?  Hopefully you understand that Ruth was a Moabite.  There is a very complex story about the origination of the Moabite people found in Genesis 19.  I read this story and I wondered why in the world did God put this in the Bible?  How is this story relevant to real Christianity?  Why is this information valuable for anyone to know?  Sure men are strange and do many wrong things, but why tell everyone about it?   The Moabites are the descendants of Lot.  Who was Lot?  Lot was a nephew of Abraham?   Wow I think this is really cool allegorical information being given to us?  Who was Abraham a type of?  Abraham was a type of God’s family.  So Lot is not in God’s family yet he is still a near relative of God.  Is that not what Adam was?  Adam was not in God’s family but he was a son of God (Luke 3:38) a near relative who left his father and mother to be joined to his wife.

Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar of salt while fleeing from Sodom.  Now we have a story that twists and turns to even a stranger something to explain when Lot’s daughters get their father drunk to keep their father’s seed from disappearing from off of the face of the earth.  Each daughter has a child from an incestuous relationship with their own father.  Why is this recorded in the Bible?  Is it TMI or just misunderstood information?  When I see how God uses allegory in the Bible with natural patterns reflecting spiritual realities, it makes me wonder.  I do not believe that any of these stories of Lot was God’s perfect design either but God still uses it to produce the future King of Israel, David.   You see Ruth would not have existed if there was no incest and therefore since Ruth was the type of the church and the great grandmother of David, there would have been no David and if there would have been no David, there would have been no Jesus born on the earth either since He is called the son of David.  These are very tough subjects to try to figure out.  Yet you have to say God wrote them with a specific purpose in mind and it was not to teach you that incest was good.

It is entirely too complex to see everything that God allows, permits or even uses to accomplish His greater plan but I believe that God uses these natural patterns to reveal His problems and solutions for His own spiritual family situations.  Just know that there are always positive and negative things that can occur whenever you deviate from God’s perfect plan and wander into the paths of sin.  Because Satan chose to sin originally after God had implemented a plan of perfection, I believe that God was forced to compromise His perfect plan for a new alternative solution that could cause the return of something that was at least closer to the original pattern of perfection called “very good”.  God was certainly perfect in all of His ways.  God’s creation was originally perfect in all their ways.  But, the perfect creation chose to rebel, in order to become imperfect.  According to Psalms 119:96, God says all “perfection” has ended.  If the Hebrew definition of the word “All” is correct it means “All”.  The New Jerusalem that is coming is not the same perfect Heavenly Jerusalem that existed before.  There are changes and there are modifications that have occurred.  I cannot call them improvements; I can only call them perfection modifications, adjustments or even compromises.  I believe personally that the way God created our world originally will again be how the New Jerusalem will be in the future.  God said our world was originally “Very Good” and that means it was not perfect.  It also means The New Jerusalem will not be free from the order of the Law.  However, the New Law of God in the New Jerusalem will be written on our hearts by the Spirit of God and it is the New Law of Love.

I am totally convinced that God’s perfect plan was for the angels to never sin.  I am also totally convinced that it was God’s perfect plan for man (Adam) to never sin.  But, since both have sinned, God comes up with the greatest plan of redemption and salvation for all those who want to bow their knees and become subservient to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.  Since Satan is not interested in anything like that, he will be cast down to the pit with all of his followers.  Every human being that is also willfully ignorant can also count on being cast down with their ruler of their darkness.  These are those who are not interested in freedom or righteousness and they remain in their sin and pride.  There is coming a division of God by God that will cast out a great part of the old Family of God.  For all those who bow their knees to the Lordship of Jesus they will be saved.  That is the way it will be and it will happen if you believe it or not.

God’s plan of repentance, salvation and redemption dictates the requirement for the prior existence of sin and imperfection.  If there was no sin, there would be no need for a Savior.   Just like in the story of Ruth if there were no debts there would have been no need for a redeemer and no redemption.  The bride Ruth is bough out of her debt that she could not pay and Boaz the redeemer paid a debt that he did not owe.  This was God’s pattern for Jesus’ redemption for His bride also.  Ok, I’m going to open a new controversial subject using allegorical information encoded in the Bible.  If Ruth is a type of the church and Boaz is a type of Jesus our Redeemer, who was Boaz’s mother?  Do you know the answer to that question?  Did you know that Rahab the Harlot was the mother of Boaz?   Is God trying to tell you something?  How many times in the Bible, is natural Israel called a harlot?  There are so many times that I will not even try to give you the references, but you can find them very easy.  You can read the book of Hosea and see the theme being developed by God.  These are not subjects that are taught very often in churches are they?  The subject of being a whore is a very relevant spiritual subject to understand or you may be guilty of committing the same thing that Israel did.  You better learn from the mistakes of others or you will find yourself repeating them.  If you study your Bible you will find two or three times that God tells Israel “I divorce you”.  A divorce is a termination of a marriage covenant.  This is more evidence for the covenant with natural Israel being temporary.  You see God could legally divorce Israel and not Heavenly Jerusalem because of the Laws that God gave to Israel to abide by.  Because Israel was unfaithful to their husband, they have been kicked out of the family of God forever and that is not good news for them.  Go and study the O.T. laws about divorce.  It is illegal according to the law for the first husband of a wife to take her back as his wife.  God calls it an abomination.  So that covenant marriage is irreconcilable.  I know I am stepping on a lot of religious toes who think Israel has a future in God’s plan, but you better look deeper to see what is really being revealed in the Bible.

Ok, I have tried to teach you about how the perverted things that occurred before the New Covenant are not how things will end up after the New Covenant is completed.  Polygamy is an Old Covenant concpet and God will permit you to live in the Old Covenant and to die in the Old Covenant still to this day.  Hopefully this cleared up the concerns that my commenter had about a future monogamous plan of God being reinstituted.  This was how God originally created the Heavenly Jerusalem, this is how God created Adam and Eve and this is how it will end again with Jesus and His bride.  Monogamy and heterosexual marriage was always the intended plan of God for man and it will be that way again.  So those out there who claim differently with their alternative life styles you are now warned this is not acceptable in the eyes of God just because you can do it now.  Your personal freedom to sin will not matter when you are with your lovers in hell.  There will be no wild parties in hell with sex, drugs and alcohol.  Sorry I got of the main subject again.

I guess I will need to do a future lesson on the subject of just Biblical Patterns.  I have been talking a lot about how God creates and uses the concepts of design patterns and I have given you many examples of this practice throughout this lesson.  Today’s lesson is primarily about God’s usage of these repeated pattern concepts as it specifically relates to the family of 5.  The story of Abraham is a great lesson to understand how and why God has done what He has done.  Just as Abraham started with one wife named Sarah, so God started with one wife named the Heavenly Jerusalem.  There must have been recognition in heaven of the need for an heir of God after sin had occurred in the spiritual family.  Since the Heavenly Jerusalem is connected by an allegory in Galatians 4 to Sarah we know that she was called barren and unable to provide the heir for God.  Therefore we can better understand why God took upon a second wife on the earth.  The Earthly Jerusalem was this Hagar the slave woman from Egypt.  In the last lesson I showed you how she was bound by the law of God and that she is still in bondage to this reality even until this very day.  You have to admit that Abraham’s relationship with Hagar was not a permanent marriage.  Sarah the older wife cast the slave woman and her child out of the house and that in effect ended the marriage covenant.  This is a very legitimate type and shadow of God’s relationship to natural Israel using the precise allegorical information found in Galatians 4.

I do not deny God’s blessings are still upon the natural nation of Israel.  This was further confirmed because God said to Hagar that He would also bless her son after she left Abraham’s house to become a great nation (Gen 21:17-18).  The blessings of God appear to be unconditional towards natural Israel to some extent, but the covenant of God with natural Israel is very much conditional and very temporary.  You see you cannot look at all of Israel’s history and say that she was forever protected and blessed by God.  There are many times and places even in the Bible that Israel is taken captive by foreign nations.  The Babylonian Empire is a prime example.  The Roman Empire is another prime example.  Adolf Hitler tried to exterminate the Jewish population of the earth and came very close to it.  Stalin killed probably more people than Hitler and he included the Jews in his plan.  Where were the blessings of protection from God during these times in Jewish history?   Sure Hitler, Stalin, Rome and Babylon do not exist and Israel still does exist, but tell that to the millions of Jews that have been killed over the years.

If you do not agree with my point of view of the scriptures, it is OK!  I’m not mad at you!  So don’t be mad at me!  I’m not a Jew hater.  I do not wish any Jew any harm.  I am like a Paul, when he wrote this:

Rom 10:1  Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved.

This is my prayer for Israel also.  But, I pray the same thing for Islamic believers and Buddhist believers and any other religion that is currently going down the wrong path.  There is only one way to God and that is through salvation and faith in Jesus Christ.  God clearly tells us in Romans that only a remnant will be saved.  A remnant means only a very few of them (Rom 9:27, Isa 10:20-22).  That is extremely bad news for the natural Jews.   In their attempt to serve the true living God, they missed His personal appearance, His purpose, His plan of Redemption and their Messiah.  Take time to reread the story of Abraham in Genesis.  Then notice how this story both parallels and reveals God’s relationship with Israel who is called Hagar.  Then see that Sarah is named a type of the Heavenly Jerusalem, the first wife of God.  Now, use all of this new information to re-interpret the rest of the Bible.  It will dramatically change your perspective on how you view the slave woman from Egypt.  God and read Revelation 11:8 where God speaks of the great city called Earthly Jerusalem where Christ was crucified.  God reveals to you that this woman is spiritually named Sodom and Egypt.  God is connecting her to immorality and godless people.  This is just further confirmation that Hagar is a valid type of natural Israel.   These are more patterns that are being transitioned and projected from an individual named Hagar onto a group of natural people named Israel.  If God did not want you to understand these things, He would not have written them in His Holy Word.

The Story of Abraham in Genesis has had a dramatic influence for why I believe what I believe today about many things that I did not really understand before.  When God came to Abraham He knew by design what He was doing and who He was doing it with.  I showed you twice already within the Family of Abraham the repeated pattern of the family of 5 that is divided 3 against 2.  First, I showed you in Genesis 20:12 that the Bible clearly says Sarah was a half-sister of Abraham and she became his wife.  Sarah had a different mother than Abraham, but the same father.  This pattern was an exact match for the family of 5 given to us in Micah 7:6 with every family title being a perfect match.  After Abraham and Sarah were married, God told them to leave their family and to go to a land that He would show them.  This again is the patter of the son leaving his father and his mother to be joined to his wife the commandment of God found in Genesis 2:24.  We see that this makes a house that is divided 3 against 2 and this pattern is repeated in the spiritual family of God.  We saw the pattern repeated again in the family of Abraham with the addition of Hagar and when both wives have sons, the bond woman and her son were cast out of the family of 5 dividing it 3 against 2.  These are not coincidences; they are specific patterned examples that convey spiritual information of what God is doing in the spiritual realm.

I know this series is very complex. I know it is totally new to you.  I know it is hard to accept like anything new.  People are naturally resistant to change.  So if God wants to change your knowledge of the Bible, too many Christians would rather remain ignorant than to accept change.  Wow, if we are not open to change, then we are not open for God’s internal transformation.  That is a very dangerous stance to take with God.  When God commands us to “renew” our minds in Romans 12:2; it really is not an optional request.  In this verse God says “do not be conformed to this world’s ideas, thought processes, or their natural ways of doing things, but be transformed…”.  There is a transformation process that needs to take place.  God is comparing natural thinking to spiritual thinking and when you become accustomed to think this new spiritual way it is a life changing experience. I hope that I have challenged you to learn a few new things today on this subject.  I hope and pray that you will come back for at least one more lesson in this series.  In the next lesson I will again show you the complexity of God’s wisdom in a NEW hidden pattern of the family of 5 within Abraham’s life and then I’ll try to explain it so that you can correctly understand how it applies to God’s spiritual Family.  It will be worth your time to come back and to read it.  If you could see my heart as God sees my heart you would know that I love God and the Bible more than anything.  May God continue to bless you until next time!

If you would like to continue reading in this series about the Spiritual Family of God you may continue with “Part 9“.

Understanding the Hidden Spiritual Family Structure of God’s Household! Beginning to See the Identities of the Women in God’s Family! Part 6

(Ver 1.3)  This is now Part 6 in a series of extremely advanced Bible studies about the Hidden Spiritual Structure of the Family of God.  I have covered a tremendous amount of fresh information and several radically new concepts that I cannot take the time to go back and repeat them all.  So if you have not read this series from the beginning I would strongly suggest that you go back and start reading with “Part 1”.  Then as you go through the lessons, I would also recommend that you take notes on all of the key points.  The ultimate goal of today’s lesson is to introduce you to the first woman in the family of God.  I guess technically speaking she is my first woman, but she is the last woman in the family of God.  But, God says the last shall be first and the first shall be last (Mat 19:30) so I think I am being scriptural to teach them in the reverse order.  That was a joke!   Today’s lesson will be focused primarily on the identity of just the woman who is titled the “daughter-in-law” in the family of God.  You may recall that in the family of 5, we have 2 men and 3 women.  While we are not given the ages of the family members, there are younger and older family members implied by the titles given.  The son must be younger than his mother and his father and the daughter is also logically younger than her mother and her father.  Therefore the most recent female in the family of God is the one that is called   the “daughter” who subsequently becomes the “daughter-in-law” and both of these titles you will eventually discover apply to us, the Church of Jesus Christ.  That is where we are going today in this lesson.

I have taught on this subject before, but not in the specific context to the family of God prophecy found in Micah 7:6 so I will repeat some things while I also explore some new subjects that I probably have never taught on before.  As we continue through this lesson series you should begin to observe the fact that God uses repetitious patterns throughout the Bible.  I will try to point out as many of these as I run across in today’s lesson.  Learning to recognize patterns found in the Bible will assist you greatly in your knowledge and understanding of God’s Word.  We will soon discover that this family of 5 was a hidden pattern found in many other parts of the Bible.  For example, in an earlier lesson, I showed you that it was found in one place in Genesis 20:12 where God describes Abraham and Sarah’s relationship as a typical match for the family of 5 pattern revealed in Micah 7:6:

Gen 20:12  And yet indeed she is my sister; she is the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother; and she became my wife.

God tells us that Sarah was Abraham’s half-sister and that they shared a common father, but that they each had different mothers.   Abram and Sarai were therefore half brother and sister and they later married and became husband and wife.  Because Abram’s father Terah is the head of this house, it technically does not matter how many wives that Terah had, they were all still in one family.  This is precisely the 5 family members in one family with the exact titles given to us in Micah 7:6.  There is a father, a son, a daughter, a mother of a daughter and finally the mother of the son who becomes the mother-in-law when the daughter Sari marries Abram.  Do you think this was a coincidence that this occurs in the Bible like that or can you see that it is just a hidden typology like I believe it is?   I am personally convinced that it was an Old Testament hidden pattern of God’s family.  However, this type even goes further than that to fulfill the Micah 7:6 patterns.  God also told Abraham to leave his parents and go to a land that He would show him.

Gen 12:1  Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee:

This is again a hidden typology of the precise division found within the family of 5 with the 3 parents being divided against the 2 younger children.  Again if you think this is coincidence it would be a mistake to think that way.  In this typology Abram is the son and is a type of Jesus who left His Father’s house in heaven to come to the earth, the land that God would show Him.  Terah (Abram’s father) is of course a type of God the Father who ruled the Kingdom of Heaven.  Sarai would be a type of the Church, the wife of the Lamb of God and we will get into this in much more depth soon.  As in every O.T. type and shadow everything in the story is not a perfect match.  Abraham took his father with him until he finally died.  The fact that Lot was also taken in disobedience was another fact that eventually did occur when Abraham and Lot finally separated.  A shadow will always be a recognizable pattern with some details omitted.  That is just how it works.    Later, I will show you some other 5 things split 3 against 2 as a repeated pattern in some very strange and unusual places in the Bible.  I will try to show you one of these in the next lesson and another one in a future lesson.  Just remember that nothing in the Bible occurs by chance or accident and everything has meaning and significance.  God says the thing that has been is the thing that shall be again and I believe this law is based upon the reality of repeated patterns that have occurred and that will occur again.  We are just now beginning to understand many of them, but that is the nature of how God works.

You may recall that I taught you the male members of the family were based upon the Trinity of God reality and that the Trinity contained the implied existence of females.  But, let me briefly give you a synopsis of some other reasons that I believe that the male members in the Family of God are God the Father and Jesus, God the Son.  One of the key rules that I always use to interpret the Bible, is to always allow the Bible to interpret itself.  Because God is smarter than I am, I look for His meanings and definitions to help me understand what He is attempting to reveal.  In other words I search to see if the Bible backs up what God says in other places.  I always interpret the Bible using only the Bible and I do not search any other books, Bible lessons or commentaries for what some man thinks it says to justify my beliefs.  If God does not confirm my beliefs with only His Word, then I change my beliefs to fit what He says.  Otherwise I would just be teaching you my opinion and that would be worthless.

Mat 10:35  For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.

From reading in Matthew 10:35 we should know that the Father and the Son are divided against each other.  The Greek word translated as “father” in this verse in Matthew is G3962 and it literally means “the male parent”.  Is this same word ever used to describe God in the N.T.?  If it is not, my interpretation fails immediately.  However, if you do a search using your computer, you should easily find that God is called by this exact Greek word title over 200 times in the N.T.  In order to find these I did a case-sensitive search for the word “Father” and the Greek word G3962 to occur in the same verse.  You can do the exact same thing if you do not believe me.  Therefore, I have concluded that Jesus could have been literally talking about His Father God being the “Father” in Matthew 10:35, by direct and overwhelming scriptural word association.  At the very least you cannot deny that it is not entirely possible based upon this overwhelming evidence.  In Matthew 10:35 the son is called specifically a “man”.  Therefore, we need to determine if Jesus is ever called a “man” in the Bible to confirm if this is also a possible interpretation.  If we cannot find where Jesus is ever called a man, this would shoot down my interpretation categorically.  The Greek word translated as “man” in Matthew 10:35 is G444 and it literally means “manfaced” or “male human being”.  Was Jesus a male human being?

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

As you can see in Luke 12:53, Jesus used a different word for this individual male and it says the father (G3962) will be divided against the “son” (G5207).  Was Jesus ever called a “son” G5207?  If you again search your Bible you will find over 80 Bible verses where Jesus is directly called both a “Son” and a “Man” (G5207 and G444) in the same verse.  Again you do this by searching for both Greek words G444 and G5207 as well as the case sensitive “Son” all in the same verse, your results should match my results.   Finally if you search the N.T. to see how many total times Jesus was ever called a “Son”, you can find over 200 times in the New Testament where Jesus is directly called a “Son” (G5207).  Jesus is either called the “Son of God” or the “Son of Man” in more verses than I could try to name in this lesson.  This is just more confirming overwhelming evidence for the identities of both of the male members of the Family of God.   We can find scriptures that say God is a “Father” and we can find scriptures that say Jesus is both a “Son” and a “Man”.  Again using this evidence it does not conclusively confirm that God the Father and God the Son are the two male members in the family of 5 that Jesus was describing to us, but it also does not rule them out to fit the interpretation either.  Try to search the Bible and find another father and son combination mentioned over 400 times that fits with the exact same 5 family relationship titles.  None that I searched for even came close.  Father Abraham is only mentioned together in a total of 30 verses in the entire Bible.  No other father and son dominate the Bible like God and His Son Jesus.  The evidence is overpowering to me, but I’m sure we will come across some skeptics out there who can come up with reasons why they are not God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ.  If is funny that God will always allow you to make the choice to be wrong.  God will never prove anything in the Bible beyond a reasonable doubt.  If God did that He would leave no one any freewill choice to believe or not to believe and God is not going to do that.

I guess I need to review another aspect that is important to know for our Bible study today.  I want to give you a couple of verses that God reveals some very relevant information about His family.  I taught on these verses before, but I will reemphasize them for your further benefit in today’s lesson to make sure you understand what is being stated:

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

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

You should be able to see that these verses clearly inform us that God the Father has or at the very least had a spiritual family.  This verse further implies that God the Father is the Head of this family.  In this verse we are told the specific location of this family and it is explicitly stated to be in two separate realms of reality.  One is a spiritual dimension called heaven and the other is a physical dimension found here on the earth.  Wow, that is very clear to me.   God is also clearly stated to be the named and titled Father (G3962) in this family and Jesus is clearly implied to be the Son in this family.  The implication is given that the family is very large in order to reside in the fullness of these two separate dimensions.  I also want to point out that we are told that this family has God’s name.   This is clearly self-evident that God the Father was the spiritual head of the household and that He is also the husband in a relationship with a wife in order to have a Son and to give them all, His name.  Taking the husband’s name during marriage is a standard practice and tradition originated from God, but it is often times ignored in the modern world.  The modern wife sometimes does not always desire to take the name of her husband when they are married, but this is clearly not how God intended it to be.

If you search the O.T. closely you will get some more confirmation in serveral verses that say people on the earth have been given God’s name like in a marriage.  We can find some of these verses in 2 Chronicles 7:14, Isaiah 43:7, Jeremiah 7:10, 11, 14, 30, 25:29, 32:34, 34:15 and Daniel 9:18-19.  If the family of God has been given His name, what is this name?  That is a very tough question to try to answer in a concise manner, since God is revealed by many names in the Bible.  I think I will not even try to answer that question today, because it will take too long to get you to see it.  For now, just try to see the fact that God’s family is called by His name and this implies that a marriage has taken place.   What I want you to do right now, is to dig a little deeper and see what else these verses in Ephesians are saying?  Often to see the deep things of God, you need to look up the word definitions to see what they say in the original languages or learn what God’s definition of the words are in other parts of the Bible.  I want you to focus in on the Greek word translated as “family” and see what is revealed in it:

G3965

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

Many times in the Greek language one word is derived from another word which is the case in this definition.  Often times the gender of either a male or a female is also assigned within the definition and this is exactly the case for both the word GG3965 and G3962 that it is derived from.  This Greek word has some awesome detailed information within it according to the Strong’s definition.  The general definition is concerning children that have descended from their parents.  But, also notice that the usage of the word is not limited to a single generation and that it can apply to all of the generational descendants.  This Greek word is very much like a family tree diagram containing all of the family’s relatives in the lineage that originated from the specific set of parents.  But, it actually goes way beyond that as you can see.  This word G3965 can refer to the entire nation of people that have descended for example from a specific named man like a Jacob.  This is another common pattern found throughout the Bible.  You will see many men stated in Genesis that originated nations that were spread out over the globe.  Almost any nation of people mentioned in the Bible can be traced back to the originator who was the father of them all.  As you should know Jacob was the originator of the natural nation of Israel here on the earth.  But, God changed his name from Jacob to Israel.  Where did this name come from?  Can this be the answer to my question earlier of what God’s name is that was given to his family on the earth?  I believe that it is but I still can’t explain that fully right now.   I will tell you that I am convinced that Israel is God’s name and we will learn more about why I believe that as we continue.  I will tell you that the definition in Strong’s dictionary for the name “Israel” means “He will rule as God”.   Now knowing the definition of the name “Israel” does that help you to determine who the name actually belongs to?  Who will rule as God except for God?

Please notice that this Greek word translated as “family” is said to be a feminine derivative of the Greek word G3962.  This Greek word G3962 is the counter masculine reference to the male parent, so the “family” word G2965 is referring to a female family member only.  Is this not the pictured pattern of creation and Adam and Eve?  Doesn’t the Bible say that Adam came first and then Eve was formed (1 Tim 2:13) and that she was taken from Adam?  Uh oh?  It seems that God does have women in His spiritual family after all and that these women can be found both in heaven and on the earth.  I also believe that God is giving you a repeated clue to where women come from in both the natural as well as the spiritual realms.  They are always taken from the male.  I firmly believe that the origination of all these things is from God who is concretely called a male throughout the Bible.   But we also understand from reading 1 Corinthians 11 that there is a circular pattern within God’s creation.  From the man came the first woman, and after that every new man came through a woman.  Wow this is really deep.  Nothing self-exists or created itself, except for God the Father.  So if God describes a spiritual woman she must have originated from God the Father.  But, we also understand that a woman can conceive and produce others like her, either natural or spiritual.  I hope you are beginning to see that repeated patterns is a dominate theme found within the Bible.  God uses these types of patterns because they work first, but also because we can learn about one and can easily apply what we learned to the others.  When Eve was taken from the side of Adam, I am convinced that this was a spiritual pattern that existed before in heaven and that it is a further prophetical pattern to what will occur again.  I know all of these assertions are very complex statements and I do not have time to fully explain them all in the level of detail that I need to today.  If you are struggling with any of my statements, please be patient and continue to learn as much as you can and hopefully I will cover everything that I need to share as I continue.

Here is where I will start to deviate a little bit from many natural dominated thinking people.  I do not believe that a spiritual woman is exactly like what we think of when we think of natural women on the earth.  However, I believe that they both certainly do possess very similar characteristics and features.  Consider this Greek word G3965 again.  It seems to at least imply the existence of a female which can be defined as an entire nation of people (including males and females).  This will become increasingly more apparent as I continue today as I attempt to describe to you a spiritual woman in the family of God.  I think now is the time to introduce you to the last woman in the family of God.  I want to identify her by examining her title as she is called in Matthew 10:35 and Luke 12:53 to be the “daughter-in-law” and then I will search the Bible for God’s usage and definition of this word to find out how the subject is developed in the other key parts of the Bible.  Let’s first examine the Greek definition of the word G3565, translated as “daughter-in-law” in Matthew 10:35 and Luke 12:53:

G3565

From a primary but obsolete verb νύπτωnuptō (to veil as a bride; compare the Latin “nupto”, to marry); a young married woman (as veiled), including a betrothed girl; by implication, a son’s wife: – bride, daughter in law.

Here is the Strong’s definition of the Greek word translated as “daughter-in-law” from Matthew 10:35 and Luke 12:53.  This definition is also very revealing in what it contains.  A daughter-in-law is clearly defined to be a “son’s wife”.  Uh Oh, again?  Fortunately for us we have a Son in the family of God that is qualified by title to be her husband.  She is also synonymously called the “bride” in the sense of a marriage ceremony being performed to someone’s son.  Of course Jesus is this Son, but does He also have a wife?  I have heard many preachers say that the church is not the Bride of Christ, yet these men speak out and teach in error and prove their ignorance of God and the rest of the subjects under discussion in this lesson.  If you have read my other Bible lessons you already know that a covenant is a marriage in the eyes of God (Malachi 2:14, Jeremiah 31:32).  If you do not understand this you should go read the lesson series about “Understanding Bible Covenants”.  So if Jesus is the Son of God in this family we should be able to recognize that the church is the woman that is now in covenant marriage to Him.  Are you in the New Covenant with Jesus?  If you answer that question yes, then you are the Bride of Christ.  This direct knowledge would make the church the “daughter-in-law” in the family as well as the “daughter”.  But, we will need to confirm this information using the Bible rather than to speculate or assume its existence.  It is very interesting that this Greek word translated as “daughter-in-law” in Matthew 10:35 and Luke 12:53 is only used a total of 6 other times in the entire N.T.   In the majority of every other reference in the Bible when it is used, it is always being associated to Jesus as the Groom with this word being His bride.  Do you think that is a clue for us?  Let’s go find out.  The first time you can find this word (G3565) after Matthew and Luke, it is used in the book of John:

Joh 3:29  He that hath the bride is the bridegroom: but the friend of the bridegroom, which standeth and heareth him, rejoiceth greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice: this my joy therefore is fulfilled.

Here is some very strong evidence for the identities of these two family members in the family of 5 and they are indirectly called the “son” and the “daughter-in-law”.  In this verse, John the Baptist is speaking about Jesus and he is describing Jesus to be the “Bridegroom” with the “bride”.   The term “bride” here is the exact same Greek word used as “daughter-in-law” from our riddle.  John could have actually said, “He that has the daughter-in-law is the bridegroom”.  I do not know how it can be any clearer than that.  Jesus actually calls Himself the “Bridegroom” in several places like Matthew 9:15, 25:5, Mark 2:19-20 and Luke 5:34-35.  I believe this is God’s way of giving us very specific clues about a hidden family structure.  God uses very specific words in limited capacity to show us related verses spread out in random patterns.  God is definitely revealing the identities of two of the family members directly and others are implied by logical association.  For example, you never have a bride without a mother of the bride also existing previously.  You never have a son without a mother-in-law of the bride also existing.  You will also never have a son without a father and that is everyone in the entire family that Jesus named.  It is now time to show you the direct named identity of the bride (daughter-in-law) in the Bible.  This is the woman that has married the son in the family of God.  Here is another scripture that you need to look at very closely:

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.

Here in this verse we have a bride and her husband directly named.  Knowing the definition of the Greek word G3565 (bride), we can easily substitute the word translated here as “bride” for the synonym “daughter-in-law” and make the verse say this legally:

Rev 21:2  And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a daughter-in-law (bride) adorned for her husband.

Because God has used the exact same word from Matthew 10:35 and Luke 12:53, I believe that God is making a direct confirmation and a connection to who the identity of the bride is, in the family of 5.  We can clearly see the connection based upon this titled commonality.  Please recall that a commonality is a shared characteristic or feature of two separate entities.  But, it also helps us in logical discussions to identify the same entity being spoken of in two different places in the Bible.  If we can find enough shared attributes it makes it very easy to conclude that the one is the same as the other.  When you are interpreting the Bible, these are the types of clues that you are looking for.  You want to find shared connections that help you to establish the truth.  God is a highly intelligent being and He never chooses His words randomly.  Every word of God has a designed purpose and it is an intentional carrier of the knowledge, understanding and wisdom of God.  However, God did not write the Bible in a simple text book style of writing with easily laid out facts and bullet lists of every displayed subject.   God intentionally wrote the Bible more in a designed shotgun shell approach that spreads the information out in seemingly random patterns.  God did this so that He could conceal the information until the time that it could be revealed.

Let me briefly tell you about two laws of Bible interpretation that will hopefully help you in understanding the Bible.  There is the Law of First mention that is used by God to help define a subject under discussion.  You can go back and find the first time the subject is mentioned and you should be able to learn something that will help you to understand the entire subject.  I use this law frequently in my Bible interpretations and it has never failed me.  Conversely by the law of opposition or opposites, if there exists a law of first mention, there must also exist a law of last mention.  It is exactly like if you are told about north you must logically assume there exists a south.  If the law of first mention introduces you to a subject, then by the law of last mention, the subject must be concluded in those verses.   So when I looked up the Greek word translated as “daughter-in-law” I immediately found the last woman with this title in the book of Revelation.  Reading in Revelation 21 and 22 she is called this title of “Bride” 3 times and this is conclusive proof that this is the last woman that will be in covenant with the living God.  Ok, I just taught you a bunch of stuff in one paragraph that is very important.  I pray that you did not let it blow right by you.

What I want you to see is that the bride or the daughter-in-law revealed in this verse in Revelation has a name and this is exactly what we are looking for to solve the riddle.  We are intentionally trying to find the names of all of the women in the Family of God and here is the first name that is very important to learn about.  I have taught on this subject multiple times in other lessons, so I will not repeat everything all over again, but I will try to hit the important points.  The name of the woman is directly called “New Jerusalem”.  That is a very revealing and important name.  First off the word “new” is an adjective qualifier that separates this Jerusalem from every other Jerusalem.  If I say “I have a new car” you immediately know that this car is not the same as my “old car”.  I would have to omit the “new” adjective from the statement and say “I just fixed my car” or “look at my car” for you to understand that it could possibly be the same car that I already had.   This is a fact that you need to understand completely.  To qualify something means you have modified the meaning of the noun and limited the scope of it’s definition or you have restricted the definition by giving everyone a specific case exception.  Do you understand this concept?  If it was not important, I would not be asking you this question.  If you do not understand this concept, please go and look up the word “qualify’ in an online dictionary and find the definition that I have given you and then look for examples of its usage and application.  You can also explore the subject of adjectives and see how they are utilized within the English language.   What I am trying to say is that the “New Jerusalem” is not the same Jerusalem found throughout the Bible.  I do not know why this concept causes many Christians to get confused, but it does do that.

The word “Jerusalem” occurs well over 700 times in the Bible and that is a lot of verses to analyze all of them.  It is widely taught by many Christians and theologians that every verse that names Jerusalem is God speaking about the same natural city found in the middle-east today.  However, I have discovered a greater truth found in the Bible and we must consider this new information in order to interpret these other 700 verses correctly.  The first time “Jerusalem” occurs directly it appears to be in the book of Joshua chapter 10.  It would appear reading down the chapter that Jerusalem existed prior to the nation of Israel possessing it.  Interesting isn’t it?  It would also appear that this city was inhabited by “Jebusites” prior to Israel taking it.  It further says in the Bible that before Jerusalem was called by this name it was originally called “Jebus”.  The word translated as Jebus means “trodden”.  I could very easily get off the main subject and probably write you a book about the subject of Jerusalem, but I will not do that today.  What I want you to embrace is a fact that the New Jerusalem in Revelation 21:2 is NOT the same city as most other places that Jerusalem is mentioned in the Bible.  The natural city of Jerusalem in the Middle East today is not the city that is described to be coming down from heaven in this verse in Revelation 21:2.  There are many reasons that I say that, but I do not have time to explain them all today.

Another aspect that is essential to grasp from Revelation 21:2, is the fact that God says a spiritual woman is a “city”.  This concept is very close to the definition of the Greek word G3965 where we discovered a woman could be viewed as a nation of related people.  God uses a city as a symbolic representation for a far greater spiritual truth.  The book of Revelation is covered with symbolic language and this helps us to understand the unseen spiritual things that are written there.  This is also God’s way of giving you a definition without saying this is a definition.  Since the city is coming down from heaven we must logically conclude that she is a spiritual representation and not an actual physical city.  If you examine the Bible very closely you will observe this is another repeatable pattern found in some very unusual places.  A city in the Bible is often referred to as a female, a mother, a daughter, a sister or a bride.  For example, a city is again called a woman in Revelation 17:18.  However, this woman is named “Mystery Babylon the Great” and she is called the mother of whores.  I could give you many more Bible examples of a city being described to be a woman, but I believe I have made my point.

This city in Revelation 21:2 is also called a “Holy” city and that again disqualifies all the other cities with the same name that do not possess the “holy” attribute.  These are not hard concepts to grasp;  but they are difficult for many religious people to accept because they have been taught wrong.   It is many times very difficult to overcome the false doctrines of men because most of them were never taught to intentionally deceive people.  Most preachers who teach in error do so out of ignorance and not for intentional evil deception.  Many very good Christians have taught erroneous doctrines and totally believed they were true.  I guess I need to get back to my main subject.

Let me briefly try to explain exclusion using qualifier words to separate things.  If I have 5 cars parked in my driveway and I hand you some car keys and say go drive the “blue” car to the store and buy us some food.  With this verbal statement, I have excluded every other car that is not blue.  You immediately know that the keys that I just gave you do not fit or start the red car, or the green car, or the yellow car or even the white car.  This is what God is doing with the adjectives of “New” and “Holy” and He is describing to you a “city” that never existed before and the keys that He has given to you only fits this “new holy” city.  God has linked a “bride” and a “daughter-in-law” directly to a city named Jerusalem and God separates her using two evocative adjectives of holy and new.  By the law of opposition or opposites, we understand that this means this bride is not the unholy Jerusalem and neither is she the old or the previous Jerusalem and that is some very powerful hidden information to who the other two women are in the family of God.  But we will not get to them until later as we continue to learn.  Remember the prophecy of Micah 7:6?  It says the daughter will be opposed to her mother and the daughter-in-law will be opposed to her mother-in-law.   These are exclusionary acts of God being stated.  Since the New Jerusalem is both the daughter and the daughter-in-law we must logically associate that a division is occurring between that which was unholy and that which was old from this newly revealed bride.  A separation is occurring of one woman from two other women.  God is separating one new city from two other cities.  God is separating one new covenant from two previous covenants.  Wow, I’m not sure if I should have told you that yet.  Hang in there and I’ll prove it all later.  Let’s define the word Holy to see what God is saying to us.

H6944

From H6942; a sacred place or thing; rarely abstractly sanctity: – consecrated (thing), dedicated (thing), hallowed (thing), holiness, (X most) holy (X day, portion, thing), saint, sanctuary.

G40

From ἅγοςhagos (an awful thing) compare G53, [H2282]; sacred (physically pure, morally blameless or religious, ceremonially consecrated): – (most) holy (one, thing), saint.

Here are definitions for both the Greek and the Hebrew words translated as “holy”.  There are many words here that are relevant to see.  To sanctify or to consecrate are both concepts that means to set apart.  Again we have the concept of division occurring.  It is funny how God repeats patterns in the Bible over and over.  The word sanctify comes from another word that means “to make clean”.  I cannot personally read any of these definitions and not think of myself and the rest of the church of Jesus Christ.  In the Word of God it is the church that are called to be as saints, we have been sanctified and set apart, bought with a price and we were cleansed by the blood of the Lamb.  The only “holiness” that humans possess is that which has been freely given to us by the grace of God.  However, this free gift of righteousness qualifies us for being holy.  I feel very confident that the Church is scripturally qualified to be this Holy City called the New Jerusalem, but we will get more confirming witnesses to help you see it.

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

Why does God call the church a “Holy Nation of people”?  These are all spiritual names, titles and descriptions of us His new Bride.  This bride is however a spiritual woman in covenant with Jesus now.  We therefore as a holy nation of people qualify to be the city that is named Holy Jerusalem.  I sure hope you are getting what I am teaching today.  If you do it is going to help you more than I can say.  Once you understand what I am teaching you will know who you are in Christ and what your position of responsibility is in His family. You may continue to read down in Revelation 21 and see two more references to the Bride of Christ that I do not have time to go into today.  They basically say the same things that we have already said, but they give us a second witness to the name of the new “daughter’-in-law”.  In Revelation 21:9 we are specifically told the husband is the Lamb of God and this connects Jesus to be both the groom and the son in the family.  As I continue through this series you will soon begin to see a pattern of cities, women, and covenants that are repeated.  The transition will be from spiritual to natural and then back to spiritual and I wish you knew what I knew to understand that statement.  Just keep it in mind as you continue to learn.

I want to make an interesting point here for the sake of argument.  Is Jesus Christ married to a city of buildings and architectural structures or is He married to the people in the city.  Does the city represent people or buildings?  What is a city in your definition?  Wow, these are tough ones!  I have heard several preachers try to claim that the buildings in the city is what makes up the bride for Jesus and since the church is the Body of Christ, they try to tell us that this city is also our bride.  But, does God care for building structures or for people structures?  Did Jesus die for to save a city or for the people in the city?  Perhaps you think that John 3:16 says “God so loved the city of Jerusalem that He gave His only begotten son…”.  You should begin to see that Jesus is not in covenant with architectural building structures, He is in covenant with the people that make up this spiritual structure.  But it is much more complex than that statement.  The Bible tells us that God is building a new city, but it also says that we (the church) are that city:

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.

Hopefully you can see what God is saying in this verse.  God is not building a natural building, the city location in Revelation 21:2 was purely a symbolic reference for a greater spiritual truth.  We are the living building blocks for God’s new dwelling place.  The word translated as “house” is a Greek word G3624 that means “a family”.  There are many implied meanings to these words.  God is building a New Family structure to replace the old family structure.  You could also say based upon what we have learned God is building a Holy family structure to replace the unholy family structure.  God qualifies this family to be a Spiritual House and a new Family and that means it is not a natural one or even one that ever existed before.  The spiritual dimension is an unseen realm of existence to us presently here in the natural realm.  I also want to point out that this New Family being built is associated with Jesus Christ, the Bridegroom, the Lamb of God, the Son of God who is our covenant husband.

Let’s shift our focus on another reference of Christ and His Bride found in the Bible.  If you read the fifth chapter of Ephesians very closely you will discover that God is speaking about a dominant subject of marriage in relationship to husbands and wives.  Now remember that a wife is always a daughter-in-law so this chapter applies to our study.  God talks about this natural subject and says many words of instruction for our benefit.  However in this chapter God has intertwined a spiritual reality that also applies to us the church.  God then ends the entire discussion with a bomb shell unveiling of a great mystery.  Since we are studying about the bride, the daughter-in-law and the marriage to the son we must conclude that this chapter is specifically related to information that we need to understand about our subject.  If you read down the entire chapter you will see many things being intermixed between natural things and spiritual things.  The natural husband is instructed how to treat his natural wife and the natural wife is instructed how to treat he natural husband.  But, during this discussion, God is also speaking about Jesus and the church using the exact same terms.  Finally when you get down to verses 30 through 32 God reveals that this is a great mystery and that He is telling us that Jesus is married to His wife the church.  If you do not understand this I have many other lessons that go into this in more detail.  We have basically seen enough witnesses to confirm the identities of at least 3 of the main family members in the family of 5.  So I’ll give you most of this information in a synopsis picture format so that you can see it more clearly or at least visually.

You may not still know who the mother is or who the mother-in-law is, but we will discover those two women in the next lesson hopefully.  I know I did not give you every scripture that I could have in order to limit the size of the lesson.  So if you would like to understand more of the details about the Bride of Christ being the church you can go read my lesson series called “Understanding the Bride of Christ”.  Also read my series called “Understanding the Book Ruth”.  You see in the book of Ruth, she is specifically called a “daughter-in-law” and since there are not that many women with this title given to us in the Bible, she must apply to the church as an Old Testament typology and her husband must also be a type of Jesus.  Hopefully you know that her husband was Boaz and that he is called the Kinsman redeemer.  All of this information fits with us the Gentile church (Ruth) and Jesus Christ (Boaz) our redeemer with amazing accuracy.  I think I have gone long enough for today and we will continue in the next lesson to identify the other women called the “mother” and the “mother-in-law”.  I hope and pray that you are learning with an open mind.  I know it is totally new to you and I know it is complex beyond our imagination.  I have been attempting to teach it in concise chunks that are manageable while attempting to simplify the subjects as much as I can.  Hopefully after I finish the next two lessons in this series you will have sufficient knowledge and understanding to be able to share it with others.  Thanks for taking the time to study the Bible with me and may the God of creation continue to bless you tremendously in your inner man to give you the spiritual eyes to perceive what He wants you to know.  Until next time continue to fight the good fight of faith.

If you would like to continue reading in this series, you may go to “Part 7” now!