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The Predestination Fable vs. Freewill Theology!
(Ver 1.3) This is now Part 3 in a series of advanced Bible studies concerning the erroneous doctrine of extreme “Predestination”. If you have not read from the beginning I would suggest that you go and start with “Part 1“. It seems that there is not a shortage of ignorant people in the world or on the internet. Today I will address a very deep topic that I have addressed previously but I will do it today in a more detailed way for these people who refuse to believe the truth. There are so many levels of deception in the world. There are so many variations of the same lies that it is almost impossible to address them all. I had a reader write me a new variation of an old deception about “Predestination”. His claim was that everyone will be saved who wants to be saved, but God still predestined some people for hell because the Bible says Jesus chose Judas to betray Him. I guess according to this man’s reasoning Judas didn’t want to be saved and this was why Jesus chose him. I really do not know what people are thinking when they say some of the things that they do. Hopefully by writing this I can help someone in the world not to fall into this level of deception, for you see I do not believe that you can help people who do not want to be helped. It is very difficult and even impossible to help everyone. If you noticed while reading your Bible even Jesus could not help everyone. That statement might shock you, but you do realize that some of the Jews hung Him on the cross? Did Jesus not preach and teach the same words to these people as He did everyone else? How is it that some accepted and others rejected and the same words were spoken to each? I guess according to this guy it was because of God’s predestined purpose that everyone did what they did. After all God controls what every human on the planet does every minute of the day. We are all just God’s puppets and we only do His will. That is why there is so much good in the world and love towards each other. Heck, I haven’t seen enough love in the church, much less in the world. Why does the church bicker and fight within their own ranks so much? I guess it was all just God’s will and Jesus doesn’t get His prayers answered. Remember in John when Jesus prayed and asked His Father to “Make them one as we are one”? Has this ever happened in the last 2000 years? I think one of the few times that I saw it was in the Bible in Acts 2:1 when there were only 120 in the upper room and they were all in one accord. It seems to me that once the church grew beyond the 120 it became increasingly more difficult to remain in harmony. Why is that?
Today I’m going to speak about “Predestination” vs. “Freewill”. What is predestination? According to definitions that I have found it is the theology that states God has foreordained every event in the course of human history including the end result of salvation for every man, woman and child. This was a popular teaching that originated from “Calvin” I believe and it has continued in many ignorant and deceived churches to this day. This teaching has many problems and ignores many other Bible verses. It promotes a theology of “Limited Justification”, where only those selected by God have been atoned for by the Blood of Jesus. Therefore the Blood of Jesus is not all encompassing or powerful enough to save everyone. It further promotes the theology of “Once Saved Always Saved” where a God selected Christian can do nothing to lose their salvation. This philosophy is based upon the fact that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent and can do whatever He desires, so therefore they make the erroneous leap that God controls everything that happens to us in the world. Just because God can they think that God does. If it happens in the world then that is or was the plan of God in manifestation. This teaching comes from the minds of heavily deceived individuals who do not see or understand the Bible. Why do they not understand the Bible; primarily because they do not know the author of the Bible who is God! To understand the Bible you must first and above all else come to know Him (the Author) and allow His Holy Spirit to guide you into all of the truth (John 16:13). By knowing God you learn His character, His Integrity, His Nature, His Ways and His Personality. God’s integrity and character is the highest moral standard that exists above everyone else. For example, the Bible says it is impossible for God to lie. You can clearly see that makes His character way beyond mine. It is entirely possible for me to lie to you. It is entirely possible for any human on the earth to lie to you. In fact I do not know of another being natural or spiritual that exists that cannot lie. The existence of Satan proves that even angels can lie. That is why we MUST see what God says in His Word in order to find the truth.
Whether you realize it or not we have a significant problem within the Body of Christ, a major conflict, a battle of theologies between the “Predestination” Theology and the “Freewill” Theology. Many may have never heard of either of these teachings. Therefore they do not understand what they mean or know that there is a conflict being debated. If you do not understand these subjects then you need to learn quickly which one is the truth and which one is a fabrication. But, hopefully you will better understand them as I go through the rest of this lesson. What we have on the surface is the theology that God is in control of everything that happens vs. the theology that man has a freewill to choose his own destiny. This is the root of the battle.
So this reader of mine who ignored everything that I said in the last lesson on the subject of predestination (“Many Called and Few Chosen”), wrote me a long comment why I was so wrong giving me lots of his misunderstood Bible verses about how God prophesied every major event in the Bible before it ever happened in the world. Therefore according to his brilliant reasoning “Prophesy” proves “predestination” or a “predestined plan” that cannot be changed. I have written in other Bible lessons that God lives outside of the boundaries or constraints of time. Do you believe God is limited to time? If you think God is limited to the dimension of time where was God before the “beginning”? Scientists clearly understand that our known universe had a beginning, a clear starting point in time called the “big bang”. We must logically conclude that if God created time God existed before time. Can we agree upon this factual conclusion?
Jesus said “I am the beginning and the end” and this clearly tells us that God pre-existed in a self-existent perpetual state before and after either of these two points of reference in time. Let’s consider the nature of prophecy. The Bible clearly says that “I make known the end from the beginning” (Isa 46:10). Therefore God definitely knows the end before it happens. We are therefore at a crossroad point of decision to choose to believe one of two paths of opposing theology. The first path is the belief that just because God knows the end and everything in between that also means God orchestrated and caused it all to happen this way. This belief alleviates all other source or influences of freewill choices. Or the second path that we could take is that God did not cause it all to happen this way but rather only reports to us in the Bible what will happen based upon foreknowledge. This approach keeps the positive or negative influences of human freewill and other spiritual beings. Just because God knows what will happen does not mean God causes it to happen that way. Let me ask you this, do you believe that God is in control of everything that happens? Can you show me a Bible verse that says this? I simply do not know one and if you do then I would be happy to learn about it. However, you cannot take a prophecy and say God caused it to happen unless you see the words “God caused Judas to betray Jesus”. Otherwise your theology is based upon assumptions of human reasoning and that is a very dangerous place to put your confidence. The Bible says many things that will counter this theological theory that God controls everything and we must see these clearly to understand the real truth. I mean can you read? Here are some Bible verses that you should pay very close attention to:
Mat 13:25 But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way.
Jesus is teaching a parable that relates a spiritual truth about the Kingdom of God. The first thing that you need to note is the fact that God says He has an enemy. Not an evil puppet, an enemy. You can find this reality multiple times in the N.T. God says in Hebrews “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies thou footstool” (Heb 1:13). Do you know the definition of an enemy? According to God your enemy never does what you want them to do; if an enemy did what you desired then they would not be your enemy. We are fighting terrorism in the U.S., because why? Terrorists call the U.S. their enemy. Therefore, we are forced to defend our nation and to try to defeat them because they called us the enemy of their god Allah. Do you have a different definition for an enemy? You should go through the Bible and see the references to what God calls an enemy. An enemy is never one that under the control of those they are opposed to, unless they have been totally defeated. In this parable of God’s garden or farm, God is said to have sown wheat seeds and an enemy has come along in secret and sown “tares” in God’s garden. It doesn’t sound like God is in complete control of His own garden, does it? You cannot read a story like this and believe in “predestination” unless you twist it to believe that God’s enemy is just a part of God’s planned design. If you believe that, then you have to change the definition of what an enemy is. If Satan is doing exactly what God wants him to do, then he is a friend of God and not an enemy. You can clearly see this is true or it makes Jesus Christ out to be a liar. You see in John 15:14 Jesus said this to His disciples “You are my friends, if you do what I command you”. So if Satan is doing what God wants he would not be called an enemy he would have to be called a friend of God. I mean are you blind or can you read? Go through your Bible searching and tell me where it says that Satan is a friend of God? Knowing this fact alone blows extreme “Predestination” out of the water. There is no way to believe in predestination unless you change God’s definition of a friend and an enemy. By clear definition it is impossible for God to have enemies and be in total control of everything. You really need to study your Bible more before you make wild theological statements like God has predestined some to hell. Let’s see another new perspective that counters the theology of extreme “Predestination”.
Gen 6:5 And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
In the book of Genesis God is telling us of a time when man was morally corrupt. It is easy for me to understand that this is why America is in the dilemma that we are in today. Liberals want to remove God from our government and our schools and then expect things to get better. However, the Bible proves this is not what happens in our world without God’s involvement. Without churches, a Bible and God being intimately involved you can see what God says happened in the world. The rise of “wickedness” and “evil” in the thoughts and minds of humanity in our country has caused a generation of people who are not better than we use to be, but much worse. If you take God out of your schools you teach ignorance, children grow up without any moral character, standards and integrity. Therefore, they do what they want to do to who they want to do it and whenever they think they can get away with it. Take a look at this next verse in Genesis:
Gen 6:6 And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.
Ok, I’m going to ask you again, Can You READ? What does this verse say? It says “God was sorry that He made man because He saw the wickedness that was running rampant in the earth. I thought God caused all of this wickedness to occur by His designed plan? After all how would God use Noah to save humans if God had not caused the evil in the world to be present in the first place? So this is the reasoning of predestination theology that you have to say that God purposely caused the “Evil” so that He could implement a plan of “Salvation” for us all. That is what extreme “Predestination” is preaching. But, how can you cause something to happen and then regret that it happened? Does that make any logical sense to you? You see you cannot do this if you have any morality and integrity at all. You do not ever go to your car in the drive way and purposely break it just so you can fix it, that would be called insanity. You see this is a major problem for extreme “Predestination” theology. If God wanted something different than what was happening on the earth, God would have controlled it to make it occur differently. God would not have allowed “wickedness” if it was all up to God. You can see that, can’t you? These verses just don’t make any sense in the extreme “Predestination” world that God caused it to be this way so that God could regret that He created man to be evil. Wow, this is some very powerful stuff if you can accept it as the truth!
Let me give you another verse of scripture that is directly opposed to the exreme philosophy of “Predestination”. You see according to “Predestination” theology God has foreordained that some people would go to hell and some people would be saved. If this is true, man would have no choice to ever make to obtain either one of these end results. So how do you deal with a verse that says something like this?
2Pe 3:9 The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
I have heard many opinions to what this verse means and most of them are wrong. There are those who claim this verse teaches that everyone will be saved because God always gets His will done both in heaven and on the earth. This is the theory of “Universal Salvation” and it is another lie from Satan. Then there are others who must ignore this verse to teach “Predestination” theories. This verse very clearly says God desires everyone to be saved. This verse countermands the philosophy of “Selective Atonement” that other deceived Christians want to buy into. In the “Selective Atonement” philosophy God only paid the price for the sins of those that were chosen. The others have their sins carried with them to hell forever. But, you can read and see that God is speaking in this verse about being patient towards us on the earth because His will is for “everyone” to be saved. If it is therefore possible for everyone to be saved by the shed Blood of Jesus then Jesus paid the price for ALL sin with His onetime blood sacrifice. Where many Christians get confused is in the fact that salvation is not totally up to God. The reality is found in the Bible that God saved everyone but this does not mean that everyone is saved. For those who want to leave salvation totally up to God is how they created the belief of extreme “Predestination”. For those who can see the truth, they know that man has a part to receive through faith everything that God has given to them by His grace. Can you help explain to me what God needs to have patience if He is controlling what is happening in the world? It just doesn’t make any sense to me.
1Co 15:22 For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.
Here is another popular verse that “Universal Salvation” teachers try to exalt to the total truth. Since everyone was condemned to die by Adam, we can now clearly see that by Christ everyone will live again. But, the problem with that is this is not what it says. This verse says only those “IN CHRIST” will be made alive and that is totally different. If you do not understand what it means to be “IN CHRIST” you should go and read my lessons on “Understanding Seeds”. What we have seen in these two last verses that I gave you is that the Bible says it is possible for everyone to be saved, but that it is not an automatic occurrence just because this is the will of God. So we are uniquely challenged by God to take every verse we can find in the Bible on a given subject and then to balance the information given to us in order to come up with the correct interpretations. One of the keys to doing this is by allowing God and His Word to interpret itself. This means getting God’s definitions for every word. This means reading God’s commentaries on the given subjects that we are learning. There are many factors to understanding the Bible and one of the greatest errors that men make is to take a single verse or two and try to make a single truth found in the Bible the complete truth and this is a major mistake.
Let’s go into another Bible verse that is often overlooked by “Predestination” teachers. In the Gospels the disciples of Jesus come to Him and ask “Lord teach us to pray as John taught his disciples” (Luke 11:1). If extreme predestination was really true, then Jesus’ response should have been “You don’t need to pray and ask God for anything because God’s will is always done”. However, this was not Jesus’ response was it? This was Jesus’ response to His disciples:
Luk 11:2 And he said unto them, When ye pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth.
Obviously Jesus thought praying to God was important enough to teach His disciples how to do it. This fact alone discredits “predestination” completely. Why do you pray to God? Do you pray to find out the will of God for your life and that is all? If you pray and have to ask for the will of God to be made known to you so you can do it then you are obviously not doing the will of God already. Do you understand that logic? In this verse Jesus is teaching His disciples to “pray” that the kingdom of God should come. Wow, that was a very heavy duty statement for God to make. If God’s will is always done on the earth then there is absolutely no need to pray for the Kingdom of God to come. Jesus then continues to pray that the “will” of God be done on the earth like it is performed already in heaven. Right there we have another MAJOR conflict to the extreme “Predestination” theology. Jesus who is God in the flesh is speaking to us and teaches us to pray and ask Him for God’s will to be done on the earth. This clearly means the will of God is NOT currently done on the earth if we have to pray for it to be done. Jesus says very clearly that in heaven the will of God is done, but on the earth we have a different situation occurring. Do you understand this? Is God stupid? Did God lie? Many must think that God is either confused or that He just wants people to believe that they are praying for something that is already going to be done on the earth to make them feel important. I tell you the deception occurring in the people who do not know how to read, seeing what it says and to those that try to explain verses like this away to hold on to their fantasy reality is just so incredible to me.
Let’s talk about foreknowledge next. Since God obviously did have a laid out plan for man, does that mean God must control everything to make it happen? Extreme predestination means that God is in control of everything that happens in the world and nothing happened unless it was part of God’s plan. This means Adolf Hitler was God’s plan. This means the terrorist who flew into the World Trade Center was part of God’s plan. This means the death of little children in the world was a part of God’s plan. The level of deception and ignorance to believe in something like that borders on insanity, if it does not cross well over that boundary line. If you believe that God is killing people in the world as a part of His divine plan for man you are a fool. You first off do not know the definition of what “LOVE” is. God who is LOVE (1 Jn 4:8) must demonstrate this highest level of LOVE as an example to us or we are following the wrong God. If God does not abide in LOVE then we are all in major trouble! If people want to redefine LOVE as it if it is permissible to kill people in mass, then we should all be taking up guns and doing exactly like God does. However the Bible says “Thou Shalt NOT Kill” (Exo 20:13). This Hebrew word translated as “kill” means to commit murder. So according to many ignorant theologians God is in clear violation of His own governing laws that He gave to man to follow. When Jesus Christ was born a man through a virgin named Mary (Gal 4:4), God placed Himself under the very laws that Theologians claim is Ok for God to violate. Completely foolish people think that God is some how separate from His Word. In other words God can say one thing and do something that is completely opposite to what He said and it is OK because God did it. Can you tell how much I dislike ignorance and stupidity?
I do not think I ever got to talk about the “foreknowledge” subject in the last paragraph. “Foreknowledge” is the specific knowledge of an event, planned outcome, or schedule before it happens. However, this is very different than man’s definition of “foreknowledge” and let me tell you why. Humans even have a variation of foreknowledge in limited degrees based upon planning. You see you might know that there is supposed to be a party tomorrow at 2:00 PM in the meeting room where you work. You know this because someone planned it and invited you to it. We can clearly see that just because this event is scheduled and planned that it does not necessarily have to occur, because in this world unexpected STUFF still Happens! The day the terrorists flew into the World Trade Center probably caused many parties to be canceled un-expectantly. We need to take this example and apply it to God, if we can. Extreme “Predestination Theology” wants us to believe that everything that occurs in the world is because it was “God’s Planned Event”. Then they have to further say that God does not allow anything else to interrupt His plans since He is in ultimate control of everything. Wow, these are really deep thoughts! What confuses many Christians is trying to determine the difference between foreknowledge and predestination. Just because God knows what will happen, when it will happen, to who it will happen and where it will happen does not mean that God caused it to happen or that someone cannot do something to change it from happening? What does the Bible teach about this?
You might recall that in the O.T. the prophet comes to the King and says get your house in order for God says that you shall surely die (2 Kings 20). Who said this and is it set in concrete? If understand the Bible you know the prophet was just a messenger for God and that God said it therefore God knew what was going to happen before it happened.. Is the king being told the set firm willed plan of God? Or is the King being told one possible outcome? Isaiah leaves the King and the King gets in prayer with God. God then sends Isaiah back and tells the King God has heard your prayer and you shall live another 15 years. So here is where people come up with more stupid interpretations. I have heard ignorant people claim that God has a secret will and God has a revealed will. So God’s secret will was for the King to live another 15 years because this is what happened. But, this is more crazy human reasoning trying to makeup explanations for spiritual things that they do not understand. I tell you stories like this just baffle me to how people can believe in the concepts of extreme “predestination”. Either God changed the predestination of the King or the King did something to change his outcome in life or God just lied. God said you are going to die and the King lived another 15 years after he prayed. So what is it?
Let’s continue to look at what else God says in His word and see if we can determine the truth. By the way “Freewill” theology is one that teaches that man has a freewill choice in their destiny of going to heaven or to hell. “Predestination” means God has already determined who goes to heaven and who goes to hell and therefore man has no clear choices to make. If “Predestination” was true why get up in the morning and do anything that day? Why preach the gospel to anyone? Why even eat food and live? What are we doing here? Let’s go back to the beginning in Genesis 2 and 3. In these two chapters God reveals the fall of man. The Bible says God has created a Garden called Eden and has placed His created man in this location. God tells the man that it is OK to eat from every tree. But, then God says “Don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for in the day that you do, you shall surely die”. Right there is a major problem for predestination theorists. Why would God tell the man anything if man was already going to eat from the tree and fulfill the real plan of God? You see according to “Predestination” the man Adam has no choice in what he does, so obviously when Adam fell it was God’s plan all along. So the warning of God to Adam makes no logical sense and is incompatible with the doctrine of “predestination”. Why warn someone they are going to die if they eat this fruit, if this is what God wanted them to do anyway. So that is the basis of the major downfall in the theology of “Predestination”. Why does God write us this book called the Bible to every human that is full of warnings? If man has no choice in fulfilling their destiny, this makes no logical or theological sense? The existence for the entire book of the Bible makes no sense in the theology of “Predestination”. God does not have to speak to people who are already programmed to do what they were created to do? You see in order to believe in true absolute “Predestination” you have to believe in a “preprogrammed” humanity. If man has no choices to make then whatever they do in life is what they were designed by God to do, good, or bad or in different. This is just a real philosophy that is not found in the Bible:
Deu 30:19 I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live:
Bible verses like this one have to be totally ignored by “Predestination” deceivers. God who writes this verse for us, says “I have set before two choices, one is Life and the other is Death, therefore choose life so that you can live”. Why would God give a choice to a man who had no choices to make in their eternal destiny or earthly existence? That is clearly very STUPID to think that man does not have a choice to make!
Pro 1:29 For that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the LORD:
Here we have another example of how ignorant people fail in our world and teach errors like “Predestination”. Because they “hated” knowledge and ignored the truth they have not chosen the fear of the Lord. Does God say we have a choice to make? Does God say we can choose to be ignorant? Does God put the ball in our court as being our decision to make? It sure looks like that to me.
Isa 56:4 For thus saith the LORD unto the eunuchs that keep my sabbaths, and choose the things that please me, and take hold of my covenant;
Does God again say that these men had a choice in what they could do? Doesn’t it say that they could have done like others and not pleased God? “Predestination” says man has no choice to make. They are pre-designed to please God or to be thrown in hell. If this is the case why does God not believe this? Didn’t God know He just lied to us in the Bible? What is God stupid or are people stupid?
Php 1:22 But if I live in the flesh, this is the fruit of my labour: yet what I shall choose I wot not.
I have blogged on this verse before. In this chapter Paul is in a quandary trying to decide to stay on the earth and continue his ministry to the people or to leave the earth and go and be with Christ which he called “FAR BETTER” for him. Paul says very clearly that this is his choice to make and that he does not know yet which way he will decide to go. Wow, there are hundreds of verses found in the Bible like this one that throws “Predestination” into a downward spiraling airplane that will soon crash and burn. If man has no choices then why does God say that we do in the Bible? No, you see the problem is that people want to take part of the truth of the Bible and exalt it to be the complete truth and this is just a huge mistake. Yes, God has a plan for man! Yes, God know the destiny of every man! No, God did not intend you to go to hell if that is where you end up. In my first blog on this subject I clearly showed you that God had written everyone’s name in the Lambs Book of Life and that the Bible says that God was forced to blot out those who would not receive His free gift of salvation. So if God had predestined you to hell already from the beginning, why would your name be recorded in the “Lamb’s Book of Life” and then be blotted out? Do you understand the problem in that question? Doesn’t God already know who makes it and who doesn’t? After all if God “Predestined” you for salvation then He would just have a book of names that He predestined to be saved and would not have to blot out anyone else’s name who was not predestined. Predestination and foreknowledge are very similar but yet totally different concepts. If I know that you are coming to my house tomorrow, that is different than me making you come to my house tomorrow without inviting you to come. So God can very easily get accused of doing things that He is not guilty of doing. Just because idiots want to teach “Predestination” does not mean it is the truth.
Then there is the difficulty of the fact of “prophecy” found in the Bible. Clearly, God has prophesied many things in the Bible that will happen even in future events to come. I can understand if God prophecies something that He is responsible for fulfilling. This only makes sense to me. God says I will do this and that in this time frame and then it happens. But, when God prophesied things concerning other people, places and things it makes you think that God is controlling these people, places and things to cause them to also occur. However, we have the factor of “foreknowledge” that is not being taken into account correctly. Because God knows how you will react to something, can mean that He can use this knowledge for something that He needs accomplished in the earth. You see a reader pointed out to me that Judas was “predestined” to betray Jesus and to die. In the “predestination” mentality they believe that God created Judas so that he could betray Jesus. Did you know you can’t find that statement in the Bible? If God does this then He is the master designer of a Heavenly Matrix system that puts every man into the specific role they are destined for. The necessary level of control is beyond our imagination for this to occur; God would have to use the power of suggestion, mind control and even mental and physical manipulation would not be off the table for predestination to occur. Is God capable of this, yes I believe that He is? However, is this the God that you know? It is not the God that I know and it is certainly not the God found in the Bible.
So we have covered a lot of different angles found in the Bible that to me clearly dispute the philosophy of predestination. I have given many verses that states man was given choices to make in life. You must therefore decide which way you want to believe. You cannot believe both ways like some would think. You must either choose to believe in the fantasy of predestination and ignore all of the verses that I gave you today or open your eyes to what I have tried to clearly teach from the Bible.
If you want to continue to read the follow-up to this lesson series on Predestination you can go to “Understanding Sheep“.
You can also go and read “Part 4” of the lesson series to study this subject further.
Understanding Angels! More About Put Your Angels to Work! Part 6
(Ver 1.1) This is now Part 6 of a series of studies about the spiritual reality of angels found in the Bible. We have covered a lot of information that is not all going to be repeated, so if you have not read these lessons from the beginning, I would recommend that you go back and start with “Part 1”. I was planning on talking about the negative side of angels today, but God seemed to say that I wasn’t done teaching on the last subject about angels being servants of God. You see I seemed to imply some things that could be taken wrong in my last lesson. I seemed to say that you could tell an angel something to do and they would have to do it. But, that is not the entire truth; usually you find that the truth is always more complicated than your first impressions. In the last lesson I showed you where God said in Hebrews that angels are ministering spirits sent “for” those who are heirs of salvation. The meaning of the word “ministering” meant a servant. We have seen several times where angels were sent from God because of the words of men and women on the earth. So obviously angels are not our personal servants, they are actually the servants of God who do things for us when we speak right words. How do you know you are speaking right words? That is why we need to learn more today. I always like to think that you learn what God says in the Bible and speak what God says in order to be on the safe side. You are much more likely to think and say the right things when you do this. Do you recall what God said to Joshua? God gave Joshua a formula for success. I have heard many people try to preach against taking formulas from the Bible, but yet you must be spiritually blind to think that God would tell one person the way to be successful and this rule not to apply to everyone else also. Read the words of Jehovah God and see what they say:
Jos 1:7 Only be thou strong and very courageous, that thou mayest observe to do according to all the law, which Moses my servant commanded thee: turn not from it to the right hand or to the left, that thou mayest prosper whithersoever thou goest.
To be strong and courageous is the opposite of being fearful and weak. God is revealing a faith principle to Joshua without calling it faith. God tells Joshua that by doing the Law of Moses and not deviating from it, he would be prosperous in whatever he did. To turn to the right or to the left means to depart from going straight down the path that God has instructed you to go in. This gets more Christians into trouble more than many other things. To depart from God’s Words is sin. However, God does not put any restrictions on how you can prosper unless you try to prosper by violating God’s law. In other words you cannot lie, cheat or steal and think that God and the angels will cause you to be a success in life. You see God always gets back to the basics. The basics are always found in God’s Word. If you can follow God’s spiritual laws you will succeed in the natural realm. Apparently this is what Abraham did in our last lesson without having the Law of Moses to follow. Because Abraham did the right thing before the eyes of God by finding a wife for his son among his own people God was able to send an angel to help make it happen. So how do we insure that we do God’s Word? God gives us some more clues in the very next verse in Joshua:
Jos 1:8 This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.
Did you see what this verse says? It says the Book of the Law will not depart from your mouth. Where is the key to your success? It is in your mouth according to God. By reading, learning, memorizing and speaking God’s words constantly, God said you will make your way prosperous and always have good success here on the earth. The term “meditate” means to murmur or mutter under your breath; to keep it in your mind by speaking it with your mouth. It is very difficult to teach any subject in the Bible and not get back to the reality of the importance of your words that you speak. So was the servant of Abraham successful and prosperous in his attempt to find a wife for Isaac? He obviously was, so Abraham followed God’s law of success given to Joshua in order to make this happen. Do you see and understand the connection that I just made and why this applies to a lesson on angels? Do you also remember the verse that I gave you in Psalms?
Psa 103:20 Bless the LORD, ye his angels, that excel in strength, that do his commandments, hearkening unto the voice of his word.
Does this verse make any more sense to you now? You see this verse does not say that angels only obey words. It says angels hearken unto His Words. But it does not say that God has to speak them? It says “the voice” of His Word and that is totally different than the “voice of God”. What if you begin to say what God says about you, are you now the voice of His word? I believe that you become the “voice” of His word when you say what He says. If you say what God says, I believe that allows angels to do what God said to do for you. So what is the key to success in life? It starts with first learning what God said and then saying and doing that whole heartedly in faith. Remember God said to be strong and courageous and not weak and fearful. There are just many factors in life that we need to learn about in studying this subject. If Abraham was fearful that his servant would not find the wife for his son, guess what there would have been no wife found. So you have a major part to play in being successful in life and you just cannot speak a command to the angels to do something that God has not already told them to do.
Here is another aspect about angels that I have already alluded to that you should learn. While angels have been sent to the earth to minister for those who are heirs of salvation, they are not our direct servants. As we have seen they work for God and only do what He says for them to do. However, if we say what God has said then we have the ability to give voice to God’s commands and they will normally hearken to our words. Here is another key factor to consider in this discussion on angels being servants. Jesus in speaking to his disciples said the following:
Mat 10:24 The disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord.
Jesus was calling his followers both disciples and servants. Meaning Jesus was the Master and Lord that this verse is referring to. Paul in Romans 1:1 says “Paul a servant of Jesus Christ”. If Christians are servants of God also, what does that make our relationship to the angels of God? We are about to learn another key factor to angels:
Rev 22:8 And I John saw these things, and heard them. And when I had heard and seen, I fell down to worship before the feet of the angel which shewed me these things.
John in writing the book of Revelation says that an angel came to him and he fell down to worship him. However, the angel stops John from doing this and says the following statement to him:
Rev 22:9 Then saith he unto me, See thou do it not: for I am thy fellowservant, and of thy brethren the prophets, and of them which keep the sayings of this book: worship God.
The angel of God says very clearly not to worship him, for he is a “fellowservant”. In other words the angel says we both have the same Master and Lord. The word translated as “fellowservant” means co-slave. It can also mean “ministrant of the same master”. You can clearly see that the correct order of things is that God is always the highest one over all others. What we discover from this information is that we are all working for the same cause and good. Angels can certainly do things that we cannot do and in many ways they have an advantage over us. However, once you see that it is God’s purpose that we are working for, then we realize that both angels and Christians have a common enemy with God. God’s enemies are now our enemies and we are working and fighting against these spiritual beings. We who are Christians are also working to get more people into the kingdom of God, but that is not an angelic assignment to preach the gospel. Preaching the Gospel is a human assignment from God. So our roles are different because we are dominated by different realms of reality. Humans are resident in a natural realm and angels primarily stay in the spiritual realm. I have seen where men can cross into the spiritual realm in the form of a vision and see things that they normally do not see. We of course in our studies have seen where angels can cross into the natural realm and do things for those who are heirs of salvation. So the lines between these two realms can be blurred to some degree, but yet we still have specific primary responsibilities that have been placed upon us by God. These roles will further blur in the future. After the church is taken up to heaven, then who preaches in the earth? Apparently according to Revelation, the angels will be allowed to preach to men on the earth:
Rev 14:6 And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people,
So today there are no angels preaching in the world that I know of. But, later I believe you can see that this verse says that will change.
Today I’m going to end this lesson from a story that I learned from a preacher that I consider one the greatest men of God in the past century. This man said that God told him to stop praying for money and to command his angel to bring in his finances. God gave him the verse in Hebrews that we looked at about angels being a minister and other verses that said the laborer was worthy of his pay (1 Tim 5:18). He was struggling financially before this revelation from God and he read a verse in the Bible that said I “If you be willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land”. He realized that he was not eating the good of the land so there must be a problem. So this man was a full time minister of God and traveled to church to church speaking and teaching the Word of God. He used to totally depend upon the pastor of the church to treat him fairly and pay him according to the offerings that were supposed to be given to him. Sometime this worked and sometimes men were not as good of Christians as they appeared on the surface and withheld from him. So this minister when he would go to a church would determine how much money he needed to meets his bills for the week and then place a demand on the angels of God to go and cause the money to come. He would not pray to God and ask for any amounts of money, he would not tell the pastors of the church that he expected any amounts of money specifically; he would just say to his angel to go and work for him and they did it every time. God was teaching this man a principle that is found in the Bible and it works regardless of your profession. If you can find the same Bible verses and believe them, the angels will hearken to your voice also. Just as Rebecca was influenced by an angel to come and minister to the servant of Abraham and all of his camels, the angels of the Lord can cause people to give to you also. Angels will of course never make anyone do anything that they do not want to do already. God will always use people to be a blessing to others who want to be a blessing. In return God can bless them further. You may recall in Genesis that God told Abraham that I will bless you so that you can be a blessing to others (Gen 12:2). This is also not a license to steal or even a get rich overnight scheme. You can take any truth found in the Bible to the extreme and make it a lie. There are also many other truths in the Bible that apply; your heart condition, your attitude, your willingness, your obedience to God and His Word and I could go on and on. This is the problem with many Christians, that they hear one good thing and jump on it like that is all there is. God is not a lottery and we are not pulling a Heavenly Vegas slot machine trying to hit it big. Keep balanced at all times and stay in the Word of God and allow God to teach you what else you need to know.
So here is the next part that you need to know. This will not work if you only try it! This preacher knew God’s word and believed God’s words and then he did them and spoke to the angel. You better get the scriptures in your spirit so that they are resident and firmly set within you before you begin to say them and expect them to happen. That was a very basic lesson in faith and believing God’s Word. There are many who do not understand it in the world but yet there are also many others who do this every day. I am not here to convince you of anything that you do not want to believe in. If you read the Bible and see things differently than I do, that is fine with me. Just do not criticize me like you are God and know everything. How you believe in angels will not affect your salvation, but it might affect your finances. If you have a story about how an angel has helped you, I would very happy to hear about it. Later in these lessons I will try to give you some examples from my personal life of how I believe that angels have helped me in life. I thank you for taking the time to study the Bible with me and pray that it was a blessing to your walk with God.
If you would like to continue to the next lesson you may select “Part 7“.
Understanding Spiritual Warfare! The Battle within and the Battle without!
(Ver 1.3) This is “Part 1” in a series of lessons on the subject of “Spiritual Warfare”. This is a new subject for me and a lesson designed for the benefit of those who have been attacked by Satan and do not understand why it has occurred or what to do about it to keep it from happeing again. Many new Christians are immediately attacked and persecuted because Satan wants to stop God’s Word from developing in their spirits and becoming mature and fruitful. New Christians are the most vulnerable and usually do not know what to do about this and do not generally understand why God even allows this to even happen to them. There are many complex factors involved in understanding this problem and I will attempt to at least give you an overview of what is happening in the spiritual realm and why it can occur and what you can do to overcome it.
Within any battle that we face it is always best to first recognize that we are in a battle. Not knowing that we are in spiritual battle is the number one reason why Christians do not fight the enemy. This is the basic fact that allows us to prepare and face this enemy that we cannot see with our physical eyes. Since we are born physical beings on this planet and we grow up dominated by our flesh realm senses we are forced to learn about the reality of spiritual things in order to become effective in this hidden unseen realm. Too often we find that our senses rule our world and guide our lives. If something hurts you physically you learn not to do that anymore. If something feels good or tastes good you learn to do that again. However there is an unseen part of you that is the real you and this being is your spirit inside your physical body. If you are a Christian this is where God resides also. The spirit world is more real than the natural world the Bible says. God tells us that the natural world is “temporary” and the things that are unseen in spiritual world are those that will be eternal (2 Cor 4:18). One of the first things that you need to understand is that we are in a spiritual battle and not a physical battle. People many times want to protest abortion clinics or homosexual events and act like this is doing some good. These people who are doing these ungodly things are just deceived individuals who are being guided by spiritual forces that are behind them. Therefore, your picket signs and protests are not doing anything to solve the real spiritual problem. It is like a doctor who is treating the symptoms and ignoring the cause of the disease. Your focus is on the wrong things.
2Co 10:3 For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh:
You can clearly see that God tells us that we are in a war. However God does not tell us that it is a physical war with guns and swords. We as Christians should be fighting this war differently than people in the world fight wars. This is the greatest deception that Satan has over many Christians, they are focused on external things and ignoring internal things. God tells us in this verse that “terrorism” is not our war as Christians. The United States has been in a war against terrorism for almost 10 years now. We will never win that war with guns. If you go and kill a few terrorist, there are soon 10 more to take their place. This is because of the spiritual forces that are backing them.
2Co 10:4 For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;
God tells us that we have spiritual weapons of war at our disposal. However, God tells us that these weapons are clearly NOT physical weapons like guns. Your gun will not do you any good against a spiritual enemy that you cannot see. Satan has too many ways of fighting you supernaturally and no physical weapon will do you any good against these spiritual war techniques used by Satan. I recently heard about a man in the U.S. that was obtaining natural guns and weapons to help Jesus fight the devil when Jesus returns. This man’s ignorance of spiritual things will only make Christians appear as extremist fools to the world. Let me give you a scripture that informs us when this spiritual battle that I have been talking about begins.
Heb 10:32 But call to remembrance the former days, in which, after ye were illuminated, ye endured a great fight of afflictions;
God tells us a key battle technique of Satan. Satan attacks you when you are the weakest and most vulnerable. Sometimes it appears to you to be seemingly overwhelming opposition and this is by design. Since new Christians do not understand why they are being attacked many times they give up and turn back to their old life styles and ways of thinking and then Satan has won. This verse in Hebrews tells us that a new Christian when first given “illumination” is attacked the hardest. This is when they are the weakest, simply because they do not know how to fight this enemy. Jesus tells us in Mark 4 that Satan comes immediately to steal the word of God from the hearts of people who have just heard the good news (gospel) of Jesus. By attacking them early and often with overwhelming force they are many times easily overcome. Mature Christians should be smart enough to know this and help new Christians overcome these attacks, but many Christians are too self-centered to see what is going on beyond their four walls. Ignorance is a Christian’s greatest weakness. Keep Christians ignorant and they will be no threat to Satan. Let’s research the spiritual weapons at our disposal in this battle that I mentioned earlier. I’ll begin with a verse Romans 13:
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.
One of the other most important things to know is that there are two kingdoms of operation in our world today. This is the root of all spiritual battles that we face. There is the kingdom of darkness and the kingdom of light. These are the kingdoms of Satan and God respectively. As you can see God tells us in Romans 13:12 to put on the armor of light. Light is of the Day and darkness is of the night. I wrote a series of lessons on the subject of “Understanding Night and Day” and if you do not understand these spiritual kingdom concepts you should go and read them quickly. The weapons of Light are the spiritual weapons of our warfare being spoken of in this passage. It is important to realize that Christians are no longer within Satan’s kingdom of darkness, but yet we still war against this spiritual kingdom daily. When this transfer of spiritual kingdoms occurred was when you believed in Jesus Christ and confessed Him as your Lord as it stated in Romans 10:9-10. Because of the transfer of kingdoms we have a new ruler and Satan no longer rules our life unless we permit him or allow him to do so either intentionally or unintentionally. Being in the Kingdom of Light gives you new power over the kingdom of darkness. Light always conquers darkness in the natural realm but you need to learn how this works in the spiritual realm. We fight this kingdom of darkness in the spiritual realm by taking up God’s spiritual weapons of light which we will now get into in more depth:
Eph 6:11 Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.
God again commands us (Christians) to put on His armor so that we can fight and win this spiritual battle that we are clearly in ALL together. I want you to go and read 1 John 1:5. This verse declares that God is Light and in Him is no darkness. Therefore when we put on God’s armor we are putting on the armor of Light. Do you understand this? Satan is the devil and the lord of the darkness that we are arrayed against and it is clearly not the people of this world that we fight against. However Satan does use people to get to us and we may talk about that in more depth in the future. This verse in Ephesians teaches s me why killing terrorist is not the complete answer to our evil problem in this world. You see God wiped out everyone in the world 4500 years ago in the flood of Noah except for 8 righteous people and because we still have Satan in the world, evil and wickedness is almost as great as it was in the days of Noah. However, do not make me out as a pacifist either. I believe that we must defend our country with guns and weapons at the same time that we use these spiritual weapons of God to attack the root causes of the problem. If you want to be a pacifist you will soon discover that evil doers will not be afraid of coming to your city to do you harm.
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.
Again God tells us very clearly that people are not the root cause of the evil problems that we face on the earth. God again tells us that the rulers of the darkness of this world are those that we are at spiritual war with. These are clearly spiritual enemies and not physical ones that we can perceive with our 5 senses. If you notice this verse says that we fight against the rulers of the darkness of this world. Those are simply Satan, his demons and the fallen angels that rule kingdom of darkness. I would also like you to notice the Greek word “powers”. This Greek word is G1849 and it literally means superhuman force or power. This is obviously not any natural or physical strength or power and must be considered to be a spiritual power of great ability. Not knowing that your spiritual enemy has any spiritual power is probably a good reason why Christian people are not fighting against him. If we keep reading in this chapter we find out what these spiritual weapons of light consist of that we are to put on to use against our spiritual enemy Satan:
Eph 6:14 Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness
The first weapon is the weapon of truth. This means you are at least required to learn the truth. Only by you knowing the truth, will you not be easily deceived. To know the truth is more involved than you just reading your Bible. It requires you studying the Bible and you digging into the deep things of God’s Word. You can very easily know some basic truths and not understand the more advanced things that will get you out of the jams that you are in right now. Learning always starts with reading, but study is necessary to gain understanding. Only by you gaining understanding can Satan never steal the truth that is in you. The next weapon on the list is called the “breastplate of Righteousness”. This first involves you knowing who you are in Christ. You need to go through your Bible and read the New Testament letters written to the church and see what you have and what you are in Christ. Christ is your Righteousness! It is only by His Righteousness that we have any righteousness. Go through the letters written to the church and learn and memorize the words that say “In Christ”, “In Whom” and similar words of association. This will help to identify your position and the free gifts of association being given to you as an heir of salvation.
Eph 6:15 And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace;
Every weapon of our warfare if you haven’t noticed goes back to the Word of God in some form or fashion. God’s Words are always at the root of everything that we do, say and live. I think I said this already, but the spiritual battle is over the Word of God being resident in you. Look at this verse speaking of your feet. God says put the “Gospel of Peace” on your feet. The Bible tells me that God waits for His enemies to be made His footstool (Heb 1:13, Heb 10:13). Where are God’s feet in the earth today? These feet are in the Body of Christ who is the church and the spirit of God is within us. So if God is going to “bruise the head of the serpent Satan” with someone’s feet today, how is God going to do that?
Rom 16:20 And the God of Peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen.
This verse written to the Church informs us that it is our feet that God will use to bruise Satan’s head before Jesus returns for us. This implies we are to go out from this world as victorious. How is the God of Peace going to do this? Only by us putting the Gospel of Peace upon our feet will He do this. You can see that we are back to the Word of God again. The Gospel of Peace is certainly the Word of God being preached to the world. The message of salvation, the message of deliverance, the message of emotional and physical healing and the message of safety. These are key definitions of the Greek word “Sozo” (G2982) that is translated as “make whole”, “save”, “deliver” and “heal”.
Eph 6:16 Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.
The next weapon in the Armor of Light is the shield of Faith. This is supposedly the most important weapon to defend off the satanic attacks. Faith is probably one of the top three subjects to study in the Bible in my opinion. But, what is Faith? Faith is based upon believing the Word of God. So we are again back to reading and studying the Bible. The Bible tells us that “Faith” comes by hearing and hearing comes by the Word of God” (Rom 10:17). When the devil attacks you God says you should be firmly grounded in the Word of God for all of your defensive armor of God. We can now look at the final two items found in the Armor of Light and one of these is the only offensive weapons we possess if you exclude the Gospel of Peace on our feet.
Eph 6:17 And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God:
To take the helmet of Salvation means to “receive” salvation which was freely given to us. I’ve aready told you the definition of “salvation” from the Greek. Again we are back to the basics of the Word of God. You heard the Gospel which was the Word of God preached for Salvation and you accepted it and believed the truth and now you are saved. 
Finally, the last weapon is called the Sword of the Spirit and this is plainly called the “Word of God”. You have to study the Bible to figure out what this means. Jesus said the “Words that I speak they are Spirit and they are Life” (John 6:63). So the words that Jesus spoke were the Sword of the Spirit from his mouth. In Revelation 1:16, 2:16, 19:15 and 19:21 Jesus is described as having a sword coming from His mouth that He uses to eliminate those that oppose Him in the end of the world. We can clearly understand that this symbolic sword represents the Words of God being spoken. To take the Sword of the Spirit in our armor means to speak what God has written in His book called the Bible. When you speak the Word of God your words carry the same power as if God spoke them. For example, if someone is coming against you in an attack, you could say “No weapon formed against me will prosper” (Isa 54:17). This is putting the Word of God in your mouth to counter what Satan is trying to do against you. You do not go up and say this to a human being, remember they are not your problem. You say this in the privacy of your home to Satan who is the root cause of the attack. Do you understand this?
Eph 6:18 Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints;
The very next verse in this context is also a key part to the successful spiritual fight that you are in. When immersing yourself in the Word of God you also pray the Word to get God’s wisdom and assistance on the matter you are facing. This next verse in Ephesians says “Praying Always”. That means never ceasing to pray. Pray when you study the Bible, and pray when you are not studying the Bible. There should not be a time during the day when you are not open to pray to God or open to hear from God. I have been doing a series of lesson on Angels and today I stopped that to answer a reader who was being attacked by Satan. But, there are multiple times in the Bible, where God sent angels only after people prayed. This means that if they had not prayed, there would have been no angels sent. I believe prayer is an essential part of your continuing relationship with God. This verse also places special emphasis on a particular type of prayer that is called “Praying in the Spirit”. This of course is not a popular subject in some churches in America and they have no clue what this even means. Some think it is just an extra praying with added emphasis, ability or time. However, this is not what it means. Praying in the Spirit is praying in tongues and if you have never done this you are missing out on one of the most powerful ways that God has to communicate through you the perfect will of God. You see God is smarter than you are and since you do not know everything and do not know how to pray perfectly in every situation that you face, God gives us a method that will never fail. You of course have the choice to not believe me and do it your way and remain at the level that you are at right now. However, if you want more of God and to know Him better, then ask Him to fill you with His Spirit and see if it does not radically change your life, like it did mine.
I guess that is enough for one day on how to counter the attacks of Satan. I know I did not cover everything in complete detail and I did not include everything that you should learn. However, I try to do the best that I can in the limited time and length format that I have. Please allow me to quickly recap the spiritual weapons of your warfare:
- The Belt of Truth (The Word of God is truth John 17:17)
- The Breastplate of Righteousness (Jesus the Word of God is our Righteousness)
- Gospel of Peace upon our feet (the Word of God given for our salvation)
- The Shield of Faith (Rom 10:17 Faith comes by hearing the Word of God, there get faith in God’s to build your shield).
- Helmet of Salvation (By grace ye are saved through faith Eph 2:8 again pointing us back to hearing God’s Word).
- Sword of the Spirit (plainly defined to be the Word of God).
- Praying in the Spirit.
Understanding that you are in a spiritual war is the first place that you need to arrive at. Understanding who your enemy is, is the next place to step up to. The next thing is for you to take up the armor of God that you has been given to you and make good use of it. The next thing that you should clearly understand is that the Battle is all about the Word of God. Satan is attacking you to take the Word of God from you. If he allows the Word of God to get in you, then you are an extremely dangerous person that can use this Word to come against him. Therefore, spiritual warfare is fought with spiritual weapons against a spiritual enemy. Finally praying is another key element to the spiritual fight that will allow you to be successful in life. I hope and pray that I have given someone out there some level of help in what they are facing in life today. It would be the greatest testimony of all if I can do that alone. God Bless!
Understanding Angels! Put Your Angel to Work! Part 5
(Ver 1.0) This is now Part 5 of a series of studies about the spiritual reality of angels found in the Bible. We have covered a lot of information that is not all going to be repeated, so if you have not read these lessons from the beginning, I would recommend that you go back and start with “Part 1”. What are angels good for? What do they do for us? Do they have specific jobs and assignments? Who gives them these assignments, God or Us? Does everybody have a personal guardian angel? If so why do bad things happen to so many people? There are just so many hard questions to try to answer. I definitely will not answer all of these today. We can certainly find some of the answers to some of our questions and still not understand that there are many other factors involved in what we get in life. The Bible is a book full of highly complex issues and even if we learn one of these factors completely, that does not mean we can explain everything that controls what happens to us in life. Many of these spiritual laws of God have been revealed to us in the Bible, but yet we still do not fully understand them all and how each one works, interacts and reacts with the other given spiritual laws. What do we do? I believe that we just do the best that we can and continue to learn as much as we can as we trust God to show us and teach us what else we need to learn. God certainly has hidden a vast amount of spiritual wisdom and knowledge in this book that contains His Truth, so let’s study it today and see what He says us. Today we will explore some more accounts of what angels have done for people in the Bible and thus see what they can possibly do for us. You see the Bible says that God shows no favoritism and that He is no respecter of persons. Meaning what He has done for one He must do for all. Of course it is more complicated than trying to make everything totally up to God. Sometimes God does things for people only because they have done the right things to allow God to bless them. In order to obtain the same blessing that they got, you must do what they did and that is not as easy as you might think. You might not know everything that did and thus it is impossible for you to do what they did. So do not put everything that happens to you in the world entirely in the hands of God’s responsibility, you also have a part to play in what happens to you and you are required to make right choices as we will learn more about in these lessons.
Heb 1:14 Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?
If you read the context of this verse found in Hebrews you will clearly see that God is talking about angels. God calls angels “spirit” beings that minister. These angels as we have seen have the capability of manifesting into the natural realm and becoming physically seen by humans. But, also note the qualification for the angel’s service being given to us. These angels are only sent for those “who are heirs of salvation”. Wow, that really narrows the scope doesn’t it? Do you qualify as one of these people? If you do then you have angels that are sent to minster for you. Did you notice that it did not say minister “TO” you but that it says “FOR” you? There is a big difference between those two words. It is like saying I have someone working “ON” me vs. someone working “FOR” me. If you look up the word translated as “ministering” it has a great definition. It means “attendance” as a servant. Angels are you spiritual “attendant”. It can also mean “aid” or “official service”. So what is it that angels are supposed to be doing for those that are heirs of salvation? That is of course a trick question. Did you know if you do not tell your “servants” what you want them to do, that it is Ok for them to do nothing and think that is what you want? Only by giving your servants some specific assignments, tasks and jobs do you ever get servants that will know they are doing something that pleases you. God is telling us to put our angels to work for us and you need to learn how to do that. It is very much like owning a large company and hiring people but you not telling anyone what you hired them for. They come to work every day and sit and just wait for something to do. They take home a pay check for doing nothing. I’ve seen many people who I have worked with before who do this. Let’s look at an example in the Bible of how to put your angel to work for you.
What did angels do for people in the Old Testament and why did they do it? By studying the Bible and asking these two questions we are about to find some of these answers. We will find some examples and see how they ministered for these Old Testament saints. We will start by looking at a verse in Genesis 24. By reading the context you will see that this is the story of Abraham when he is very old and he sends out a servant to find a wife for his son Isaac. Abraham makes the servant take an oath and swore that he will fulfill his last request. Let’s start with a verse near the end of the chapter where Abraham makes a statement that is very relevant to my subject today:
Gen 24:40 And he said unto me, The LORD, before whom I walk, will send his angel with thee, and prosper thy way; and thou shalt take a wife for my son of my kindred, and of my father’s house:
Abraham declares that the angel of the Lord will be sent with this servant to help him find a wife for his son Isaac. How does Abraham know this? Reading this chapter I did not see Abraham pray to God and ask for an angel. Did God tell Him that an angel would go with his servant? I couldn’t find that in the Bible either. You should really ask more questions when you study the Bible. You see I do not think Abraham did anything but declare what his angel was going to do and thus he put his angel to work for him by faith. The servant takes camels and gifts and goes on his journey to look for a wife for Isaac. But, there is no mention of an angel going with him like Abraham said. It appears that the servant went alone. What happened? What we can see in this verse is a great statement of how angels minister “FOR” those of the heirs of salvation. Abraham certainly qualifies for a “heir of salvation”. We can read in verse 11, that the servant goes to a city of Abraham’s relatives where he sits by a well and prays. As you continue to read in this chapter you find that a woman appears at the well. How is it that just the right woman comes to the exact well that the servant is sitting by at just the right time and no others come first? Have you ever thought about that?
The first verse that we read in Genesis said that the angel will “prosper” your way. In other words you do something and the angel will do something to make it successful. Did you see that this is a partnership arrangement? If God and the angel were only responsible for getting a wife for Isaac, it would have been best for Abraham and his servant to do nothing and let the angel do his job. However, this was not how it worked was it? The servant went forth to a land and sat by the well waiting and knew what to pray and say and suddenly the right woman appears first before any others could come. Do you understand that angels can influence people to do things and even say things? Angels do this most of the time by simply putting thoughts and suggestions into your head (mind). It does not say the angel appeared to Rebecca and told her anything. You can assume that the angel came to Rebecca and suggested that she needed to go to the well and Rebecca agreed in her mind and went. You can also see that the angel must have told her what to do and say when she got there to the well in order for everything to work out the way that it did. You can also assume that since every other woman who was usually sent to the well to get water also did not show up first because these other women were given suggestions to wait and they did. It is a fascinating concept being given to us. Angels can affect what people do and when they do it. Did you know that many of the people on September 11, 2001who should have normally been in the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City were not there for some strange reason? These two buildings normally contained over 35,000 people on an average day by 9 AM. This does not account for the number of tourists and others who could visit on any given day to reach way beyond that number. All of these people who would have normally been there were not there the day that the planes flew into them and less than 3000 died that day. When the terrorist struck the Towers, the buildings were amazingly not full to capacity like they normally were. Was this a chance accident or were there angels trying to suggest that these people needed to be somewhere else this morning? I heard many people say that for some reason they had to run an errand and do something else and fortunately for them it saved them. I find that just too amazing to be a coincidence or a chance accidental occurrence. I completely believe that angels of God were at work trying to save as many people as they could from what Satan was trying to do. You of course can believe whatever you want to about it.
What we discover in reading chapter 24 of Genesis is that Abraham said some very specific words and instructions for his angel to follow in faith and things worked out for his servant in an incredibly orchestrated non-accidental fashion. The odds for going to anywhere and being in the right place at the exact right time to meet a someone that you do know who says and does exactly what you expect is mathematically impossible to say the least. So I believe that Abraham’s words put the angel of God to work for him to cause these things to occur.
Num 20:16 And when we cried unto the LORD, he heard our voice, and sent an angel, and hath brought us forth out of Egypt: and, behold, we are in Kadesh, a city in the uttermost of thy border:
When this verse says that people cried unto the Lord, they are said to be praying to God. If you are praying then you are saying words, yes? Apparently angels are sent and respond to words that are spoken by people on the earth. We have actually already seen this fact in the story of Zacharias in Luke and Daniel from an earlier lesson on angels. Here is a key verse that I gave you before:
Dan 10:12 Then said he unto me, Fear not, Daniel: for from the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand, and to chasten thyself before thy God, thy words were heard, and I am come for thy words.
The angel was sent by God in response to the words/prayers of someone on the earth. Daniel spoke words and the angels responded to those words. If Daniel doesn’t speak words, guess what no angels are going to show up and do anything. This is a revealed Bible principle of how you put your angels to work for you. What we are seeing is a definitive pattern that informs us that angels respond to our words. So let’s go back to what I said earlier, that Hebrews said angels are servants sent for the heirs of salvation? How would you put someone to work for you in a company on the earth? You hire them with your words and then tell them what you want them to do for you with more words. I believe that this is very simple concept of how angels work for us. You can choose not to believe it and it will not affect me one bit, however it might affect what your angels do for you.
Psa 103:20 Bless the LORD, ye his angels, that excel in strength, that do his commandments, hearkening unto the voice of his word.
The angels of God do things based upon spoken words. Clearly when God speaks they are attentive and listen to what is being said. You can again see in this verse that angels are extremely “strong” beings and definitely not to be taken for granted. So what other factors cause angels to work on our behalf? I’m not sure if we can fully say the answer to that question. I can see that the words that we speak and pray to God have definite effects on what they do. If you have read my other lessons on spoken words, you should already understand and know what we say matters. God clearly tells us that our words affect our outcomes in life. There are certainly more instances in the Bible that I believe I could discuss today. For example, David when he slew Goliath was he that good of a shot by David’s ability or was there an angel from God helping him? You see it does not say there was any angel present, but there was certainly something supernatural taking place that we are not clearly informed of. David certainly said all of the right words before his angel and God so I believe that this allowed them to help defeat the giant Goliath. If God told us everything about every story in the Bible there would be no secrets and no hidden information to learn from the Bible; everything would be obviously right in front of us. God obviously did not do this and conceals information in almost every story found in the Bible. So we are forced to put the puzzle pieces together correctly to see what is revealed to us and what is hidden from us. I believe that God purposely hides information about angels from us so that we do not worship them as gods. So God balances the information in the Bible so that there is just enough to inform us and not too much too exalt angels higher than where they should be.
So I believe very strongly that our words affect our angels and what they do “FOR” us. Only by choosing right words like David, Abraham and Daniel do they respond in ways that are positive to us. I’ll try to show you in my next lesson how what we can say and do can cause a negative outcome on what angles do for us. If you know of other stories in the Bible about angels I would be happy to hear about them. If you have personal experiences with angels I would also be happy to hear about them. God Bless!
If you would like to continue reading this series of lessons you can go to “Part 6“.
Understanding Angels! Satan the Anointed Cherub! Part 4
(Ver 1.2) This is now Part 4 of a series of studies about the reality of angels found in the Bible. We have covered a lot of information that is not going to be repeated, so if you have not read these lessons from the beginning, I would suggest that you go back and start with “Part 1”. I personally believe that you cannot discuss the subject of angels and ignore the one angel that has caused God and man the majority of their problems. Today I want to study and discuss the angel Lucifer as being one of the created chief beings within the angelic class of creation of God. I believe that when we study the subject of angels without studying about Satan, we miss out on understanding an opposing force to God and that which is good. Many of the angels mentioned in the Bible are good and do many positive things for God and us. However, there is a counter force to this good in the world and this is very important to understand. I have actually already mentioned Satan in my last blog. You might recall that God sent Gabriel to give Daniel a message and the Bible tells us that the Prince of Persia withstood him for 3 weeks until finally Michael came and helped. The Prince of Persia was a symbolic reference to Satan. The Bible reveals much about this spiritual being and it would take a long series of lessons to include everything but, we should still learn as much as we can about him, so today will be your introduction to him. We will begin our study looking at some potentially controversial scriptures found in Ezekiel. These are potentially controversial in the fact that they again do not name Satan directly. This is one of the techniques that God uses to conceal information in the Bible and that is to call one person by many different names, titles, descriptions and symbols so that you do not know directly who he is talking about. However these words written in Ezekiel are clearly about someone who is not a human, so most knowledgeable Bible scholars agree these verses are references to the unnamed spiritual being Satan. We will start reading with verse 12 of Ezekiel 28:
Eze 28:12 Son of man, take up a lamentation upon the king of Tyrus, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty.
I’ll start with the word “lamentation” first. This is a very interesting word in that it has an implied meaning of a musical dirge that is usually sung at someone’s funeral. It usually involves much “wailing” and “sorrow” for the loss of this individual being sung about. It would appear to me that God is prophesying the impending demise of someone who as I said I believe is Satan. The prophet is told that this lamentation is concerning the “king of Tyrus”, but clearly reading ahead it cannot be anyone that is natural or human. Tyrus occurs 22 times in Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Amos and Zechariah and that is too many verses to look at them all, so we will not go through all of these verses in this lesson. The next statement is the beginning of the prophesy against this individual and it informs us of some of his past qualities and achievements. It starts very interestingly with the words “thou sealest up the sum”. This is a mathematical accomplishment that has negative connotations surrounding it. It clearly implies that this individual has brought to an end something of increasing value, count or a numerical total; whatever this is of something not directly named. In our past studies we had discovered that the number of the angels in heaven were said to be innumerable, but yet they are numbered with an end in Revelation 12 when God tells us that 1/3 of them have fallen to the earth with Satan. This is what I believe that this is saying to us, I believe that Satan has done something that has caused an end to anymore angels being created. Remember angels were called the sons of God in Job and Genesis and this implies that they are all a part of God’s spiritual family in heaven. We should know that any family on the earth continues to grow and increases in total number as along as the family continues to marry and have children. Is this a reference to what God has done with His spiritual family? All of this is mostly just my opinion on the interpretations of this information and other scriptures that I have found in the Bible that we have not looked at yet, so you do not have to buy into what I just said at all.
The next statement in this verse is not very good information for us if this is describing Satan. God says that whoever this is, was “full of the wisdom” of God. To be full of wisdom is a goal that I am attempting to achieve as a disciple of Christ. In fact it should be one of the utmost goals of any Christian to obtain first knowledge, then understanding and finally the wisdom of God. Wisdom is always the ability to make right decisions based upon your knowledge and understanding. So if this is Satan, I wonder what happened to change the good qualities that God put in him to the evil qualities that we see today. What this also tells me is that Satan is not stupid. He might have made some foolish choices, but God already had taught him a significant amount of spiritual knowledge before he sinned. Do not underestimate the cunning craftiness of this angel. He has been around much longer than you have and has much more experience at deceiving people than you have at resisting deception. Let’s go to the next verse in Ezekiel to continue:
Eze 28:13 Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold: the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created.
Now we get to some more revealing controversial statements and why people do not believe that this is a human being that is being prophesied about. This individual is said to have been in Eden the garden of God. Since we are literally hundreds or even thousands of years after the time of Adam when this is written, that is why most Bible scholars agree that this is not about a man that is alive at the time of Ezekiel. But, I also want to point out a very subtle difference in this verse. In Genesis 2 and 3 the place where God placed Adam was called the “Garden of Eden” and never “Eden the Garden of God”. Am I being too picky or is God trying to tell us something else new. You see I do not believe that God forgot the name that He gave it in Genesis, so this must be a different place. Obviously both are reported to be gardens and both are named “Eden” but what we must understand is whose responsibility and control is over each garden mentioned. Eden the Garden of God clearly means God had control over this garden, but now if we go back to Genesis 1 and read what do we find? We must realize that Adam according to Genesis 1 was given control of the earth, the authority to rule the earth (Gen 1:28) and the responsibility to guard and protect it from invaders (Gen 2:15) and thus the earth was no longer a Garden of God’s responsibility. Adam now held responsibility over the earth and Eden; do you understand why I bring this up? I believe that God had a garden that Satan walked in and ruled long before the one that God gave to Adam. If you know anything about the Bible you know that earth was made as a pattern for things that already existed in heaven. You can see this in Hebrews and Galatians and other places. So I believe that “Eden the Garden of God” is not the “Garden of Eden” where Adam was said to be. Now again the “serpent” or Satan did show up in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve but this verse in Ezekiel does not say that there was any man present when Satan was there originally. It must be different gardens.
I could go through and say many other things about this verse, for instance this individual has a covering of 9 precious stones. There is a fascinating parallel given to us by God of the earthly Israel’s High Priest’s breastplate that also was covered with precious stones. In fact these 9 stones that covered Satan are an exact match for 9 of the 12 stones found on the High Priest’s covering (Exo 28:17). Did you notice what I just said? You see I believe that this verse in Ezekiel reveals to us that Satan was a High Priest for God in heaven before he came to the earth. Are these stones and coverings an amazing coincidence or is there some hidden information that God is revealing to us about Satan. You see if you do an analysis of the High Priest’s breast plate you can see that they had 4 rows of three stones each. Each row consisted of a different set of stones and each stone was different from all of the others. We are told that these 12 stones on the High Priest’s covering were engraved with the names of 12 tribes of Israel. But, if you cross off the stones found on Satan’s covering from the stones found on the High Priest’s breastplate you find that Row 3 is missing completely. That is definitely not an accident, it is impossible mathematically for this to be a coincidence. What does it all mean? That is another really good question to try to figure out. You see you can conclude that Satan lost three things that Israel had or Israel was given three things that Satan didn’t have. Either way you come up with the same results. However, I just don’t have the time to even try to talk about that in this blog nor do I know all of the answers to that question so I’ll definitely be moving on today.
Finally this verse ends with some important new information about Satan and all angels. Satan was a created being. This word created is the exact same word found in Genesis 1:1 where God says “In the beginning God created, the heaven and the earth”. In general terms this is also the exact same Hebrew word used to describe God’s man Adam. This same Hebrew Word is used to describe the origination of both individuals so we can clearly assume a connection between them. In Genesis 5:1-2 Adam is said to be “created” just as Satan was said to be “created” in Ezekiel 28:13. However, I do not know if they were created in the same way and I definitely do not believe that they were created at the same time. You see God tells us very specifically that Adam’s body was formed from the dust of the ground. This was definitely from the existing earth and I believe that God created this dust a long time before He created Adam. If you do not understand this, you should read some of my other blogs on the subject of “The World that Was” mentioned in 2 Peter 3:6. After Adam’s body is formed then comes his wife, Eve. However, she was also not created from something new since her body came from that which already existed, the body of Adam. So Adam and Eve were not a new creation. So it could be different than Satan? We do not know this for sure, but I’m just trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together and that is what I have concluded so far. You also have to understand that the body of Lucifer is a spiritual immortal body and not a natural body that dies like Adam’s. So they are clearly very different at the same time as being very similar to each other. What I see in this information is that God says there could be a difference between Satan and Adam. Satan was definitely a created being but it does not tell us when he was created, or how he was created and where his body originated from. All we know for sure right now is that Adam was a being made from that which already existed and his body was clearly modeled after the preexisting angels in heaven as we have discovered in our previous studies on this subject. However, both Satan and Adam are called sons of God and both are therefore made in the image and the likeness of God. That may not go over very big with some people, I know. It must be important to note the way God created Adam or He would not have included this information in the Bible. Couldn’t God have said “Man Be” and then God see a man appear? So why does God take existing dust and form the man’s body from it and then breath into his nostrils to give him life? Then I want to ask you this about Adam, why did God create a new son Adam and give him a wife named Eve, if he already had a family of angels in heaven? Believe it or not this was a pattern for what God was going to do in the spiritual realm with Jesus. You see God tells us the law of marriage in Genesis 2, that a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife and they two shall become one flesh. If Adam is the son that cleaves to his wife, then God was his Father that he left to be joined to his wife! This means that Adam would leave his Father’s house and be married to a wife (a woman) who would be the mother of the entire new natural human family on the earth not a part of God’s family in heven. What is God doing? God is establishing a new family outside of His current existing family in heaven. This is very important to know and understand from a Bible perspective of what Jesus has also accomplished. I guess I will stop there and let you do more research or read some of my other blogs on this subject.
Eze 28:14 Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so: thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire.
Now we are beginning to see some more information about Satan that is very important to understand. Anointed comes from a Hebrew root word that means to smear with oil. David was anointed king this way by Samuel. But this word here means to “spread like wings” and it is the only time this word occurs in the whole Bible. However, it is still important to see that Satan is said to be “anointed” of God. This is a direct comparison to Jesus who was also said to be “anointed” of God with the Holy Ghost and power in Acts 10:38. So now we have Satan being compared to Jesus the Messiah. This is a clear Satan and Jesus connection. You probably do not fully understand the concept of being anointed by God. God anoints people in the earth to perform specific tasks like to pastor a church. What this represents is a special divine ability to perform the duties being assigned to them. So we learn from this verse that angels can also be anointed by God to do specific jobs and assignments. An anointing can involve supernatural ability and even the power or divine knowledge or wisdom to do what you do not fully understand how to do. This says a lot about Satan and his abilities.
Then Satan is called a “cherub” and this is a very unique name for a class of special angelic beings. Not every angel falls into this class so we are beginning to see some new truths about angels. The angels that appeared in Sodom to get Lot out I do not believe were cherubs. Also, in the previous lesson we learned that Gabriel and Michael were described as “Chief” angels. This just means they were a much higher rank than the others that were under them. This word for cherub only occurs in around 66 verses in the O.T. The first time it occurs is in Genesis 3 and God places a “cherub” and a flaming sword outside the Garden of Eden to guard the way to the tree of life. Apparently someone wanted to take forcibly from this tree and live forever so God placed an angelic guard of the class of Satan’s ability to protect it. It was obviously not Adam that God was guarding this way from and you can read my other blogs and find out why I can say that. I believe that Satan was after this tree and God was guarding the “way” to the tree to keep him from partaking of it.
So what is a “cherub”? That is another million dollar question for the day. From what I can tell from reading these 66 verses in the Bible, a cherub is a type of angel which has “wings”, but this could also be symbolism for an anointing of God for a specific job or purpose. God told Moses to make the golden Ark of the Covenant with two winged cherubs on the top with the mercy seat of God in between them. This is clearly a natural pattern of something that we should know concerning spiritual things. These are all symbolic representations of spiritual realities.
Exo 25:18 And thou shalt make two cherubims of gold, of beaten work shalt thou make them, in the two ends of the mercy seat.
In Psalm 99:1 it says God sits between the Cherubim. The Mercy Seat of the Ark of the Covenant was made by God’s instructions and described to us in Exodus which was recorded by Moses. These patterns reveal to us information about angels and God’s relationship with Satan before he sinned. I believe that God’s throne in heaven was between two anointed cherubs and one of these use to be Lucifer. Now Jesus is at the right hand of the Father and to me that means Jesus has taken Lucifer’s old place of authority and power. Again that is my opinion on stuff that I’ve read from the Bible.
I want to skip forward in Ezekiel 28:14 to the part that God speaks about Satan being in the Holy Mountain of God. We should be smart enough to know that this is not an earthly mountain. God did come down to Moses on Mt Sinai and God called this mountain holy at the time but, Satan was never there. No this holy mountain is Mt Zion in heaven and this is the spiritual covenant mountain of God. When God speaks about Mt Zion, He says many things. For example, “I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a precious corner stone” (Isa 28:16). So we know that Zion has had a new building project started on it from scratch by the Lord Jesus Christ. This represents a “New Covenant” and it eliminates the old covenants with everyone else.
Let’s continue looking at Ezekiel 28:14 and how God describes Satan to us. God told us he was an anointed cherub and then said that his job or assignment was to “cover”. This Hebrew word means to cover as a protector or as a guard. It can also mean a fenced in hedge of protection. It can also mean to entwine as in join together. These are all amazing definitions. They imply a covenant relationship and that is very important to know. I definitely believe from the information that I have seen in the Bible that God was in covenant with the angels of Heaven, including Satan. In fact if you read Galatians 4 very carefully you will see that God reveals information about heaven that calls this city God’s wife as a type or pattern of Sarah as being Abraham’s wife. She is called the freewoman in this analogy. The Heavenly Jerusalem is what this city is called in Hebrews. In Galatians 4 it is called the Jerusalem that is above. This is the real spiritual city of angels and it is inferred to be a wife of God the Father. If you understand covenants you know that God was in covenant with the natural nation of Israel and the earthly city of Jerusalem. This earthly city Jerusalem is called the “bond woman” and is the type of Hagar and Abraham who had a slave child. Angels were of the city of the “Free Woman” called Heavenly Jerusalem. Galatians 4 tells us that God had two wives and that these were two covenants.
Eze 28:15 Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee.
This is the last verse in Ezekiel that I am going to touch on today. Since I am running a little long I will make these last parts brief. You can clearly see that Satan was not created as Satan. The original angel Lucifer was perfect in all of his ways. That means he did things the right way, he made the right choices, said the right things and walked upright before God. But, God says “sin” was found in him and that is the root of God’s problem with Lucifer. How do you end a spiritual family covenant relationship with a spiritual being in a Godly and legal way that does not cause God to become as equally as sinful? Do you understand the wisdom of God? God is so much smarter than us that He came up with a plan that would solve our sin problem and His covenant problem simultaneously with the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, His Son. I’ll end this blog with this last thought about Satan:
Isa 6:2 Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly.
Here in this verse found in Isaiah we see a new word describing what appears to be an angelic being. This is also a winged creature that clearly flies using their wings. It is not clear that this is describing Satan unless you look up the definition of the Hebrew Word “seraphim” in Strong’s. This word is many times translated as “fiery serpent” and that to me describes Satan very well. We clearly know from Genesis and Revelation that Satan is the “serpent” so we have an association to a new titled reference for this spiritual being. A fiery serpent is a great symbolic representation for Satan.
So we have learned enough for one lesson about angels, and probably more than some can accept. I will briefly review some of the high points:
Satan:
- Was a created being (Eze 28:13)
- Not created with evil in him (Eze 28:15)
- Was found with iniquity in him (Eze 28:15)
- Was in covenant with God the Father (Gen 2-3, Gal 4)
- Was anointed by God for specific purposes (Eze 28:14)
- Was in a class of angels called “Cherubs” (Eze 28:14)
- Was also described as a “Seraphim”; winged fiery serpent (Isa 6:2)
- Was a Priest unto God (Eze 28:13).
- Was called Lucifer a son of the early light (Isa 14:12)
- Named Lucifer means “Bright Morning Star” (Isa 14:12)
These are just a very few things that we picked up from today and the previous lesson about Satan. If you want to you can go and take a look at my list of Names, Titles, Descriptions and Types for Satan found in the Bible. I know I said a lot of things and some of them are hard to accept because I cannot fully cover every related subject in a single blog. You do not know everything that I know and I cannot teach you everything that I know in one blog so just keep reading and I’ll try to do a better job at filling in the gaps that I’m sure you feel that I have not covered fully. If you have specific questions I would also appreciate hearing about them. Maybe this way if I hear where I am the weakest I can address those areas first. God Bless!
If you would like to continue reading this series you can go to “Part 5“.
Understanding Angels! The Named Angels in the Bible! Part 3
(Ver 1.2) This is Part 3 of a series of lessons on understanding Angels in the Bible. If you have not read this series from the beginning I would recommend that you go back and start with “Part 1”. Today I want to discuss not something new, but a basic concept surrounding angels. This concept states that angels all have names and that these names mean something. Just as people on earth have names which are given to them when they are born, angels also have very specific names that I assume was given to them by God. Of course the Bible does not reveal the names of every angel and since there are an innumerable number of them, I’m glad that it does not. Throughout the Bible you discover that people did not normally just make up their children’s names. These names were given to their children for a reason and it often involved the circumstances surrounding their birth. So we discover that we can learn things about people from looking up the definitions of their names. I believe that this applies to angels also. I do not think that the angels got their names by accident or chance. We are not told but a few names of the angels, but we are told enough to help us to understand these concepts. The Bible says there is nothing new under the sun. I take this to mean that what God has designed in this world were patterns for things that already existed elsewhere or in past times. So what we see and observe in our world are not new things, new ideas or new concepts, but are things that have existed before. That is very hard thing for many people to accept and even Christians today because they have widely been taught that creation happened 6000 years ago and God created the angels and people, heaven and earth and everything else at this time. That would really be good, if that was what the Bible actually said, unfortunately for many Bible teachers it is not; so their teaching produces nothing but points of confusion. What I am going to do today is start in the book of Psalms and show you a verse that informs us that angels have names:
Psa 147:4 He telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their names.
You may recall that angels were symbolically called “stars” in Revelation 1:20, 12:4 and several other places in the Bible. The stars seen in our heaven symbolically represent these created spiritual beings called angels. They are also according to this verse all “named”. God knows the names of every one of them and this is an amazing feat since there are so many of them. Scientist can only roughly estimate the number of the stars in our universe; there is absolutely no way that they could count them all, since none of our telescopes reach to the ends of the entire universe. So you cannot count what you cannot see. Plus the fact that they estimate the number of stars to be between 10 raised to the 22nd power and 10 raised to the 24th power. Both of those are huge numbers.
Let’s turn to Luke and start to study about a named angel that you have already heard of. This angel reveals some things that we have potentially already discussed as well as some new things to consider. For example, this angel has a name and this is the first time we have discovered that reality. In the first chapter of Luke is the story of Zacharias and his wife. They are older mature people in Israel and Zacharias is a priest for God in the temple. One day while he is in the temple suddenly something happens that he never experienced before:
Luk 1:11 And there appeared unto him an angel of the Lord standing on the right side of the altar of incense.
The angel of the Lord suddenly appears within the physical dimension of space and time and Zacharias sees him standing there. We have seen the angel’s ability in the Bible to appear or manifest physically in our world and this is another example of this. Since the context of this verse says that there are many people on the outside of the temple and none of them are said to have seen the angel enter the temple, we can only assume that this angel from God steps out of the spiritual dimension and into the temple at the appropriate exact place and time. So what would be the normal human reaction to something like this?
Luk 1:12 And when Zacharias saw him, he was troubled, and fear fell upon him.
What would be your reaction if you were in a room alone and suddenly a man appears before you out of nowhere? You can certainly understand that this would be troubling to say the least. The natural human reaction would be the emotion of fear. As you study angels many times when they appear to humans, they would have to say to them “fear not”. In other words they were saying “we are not here to do you harm”. This is probably why angels are not sent more often by God. I just don’t think that people could handle the supernatural appearance of a spiritual being, even if they are sent from God.
Luk 1:13 But the angel said unto him, Fear not, Zacharias: for thy prayer is heard; and thy wife Elisabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John.
This angel starts speaking to Zacharias and tells him God has heard his prayers. We can obviously see an example of another angel being sent to the earth in response to words/prayers of a man in this example. I do want to point out that I do not believe that Zacharias prayed for God to send him an angel. I have not found any verses in the Bible that anyone ever prayed for God to send angels to help them. When Jesus was about to be crucified He did say this:
Mat 26:53 Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?
So Jesus said He could have prayed to His Father and God could have sent 12 legions of angels to help Him from being crucified. A legion can vary in numbers but generally it would be anywhere from 3600 to 6000 men in a roman legion. So you multiply that by 12 and you get a lot of angels. As you have seen two angels were sent to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah so that many angels would be a very strong force. It is interesting that Jesus said He could have done this but yet He never did. I would still say from the Bible that God says “Those who are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God”. Meaning we do not pray for guidance by angels. If God chooses to send you an angel, then it is probably for a bigger reason than you want to know right now.
We have not talked about Daniel yet, but God sends him an angel for his prayer also. We can very easily assume God has heard this man Zacharias’ prayers and has sent His messenger with the Words of God for him to hear. The angel continues to tell Zacharias what will happen in the next 3 or 4 verses. He is told that he will have a son and that he will be filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother’s womb. He will not eat or drink unclean things and he will lead many people to God. After hearing all of this Zacharias should have been very happy, however he starts to question the angel and basically asks “How do I know this is true?” That was the wrong question to ask the representative of God. Here is the angel’s response:
Luk 1:19 And the angel answering said unto him, I am Gabriel, that stand in the presence of God; and am sent to speak unto thee, and to shew thee these glad tidings.
The angel in effect says “Who do you think you are talking to?” He then tells us and him his name and his normal daily duties. This is the angel “Gabriel” and he normally stands in heaven in the presence of the Most High God. In other words God the Most High sent one of the highest angels to bring him a personal message concerning his prayers and he wants to question and doubt us? The angel implies “How do you think I knew about your prayers, what are stupid?” Ok, I added some of my thoughts and interpretations to that response, but you can certainly understand why. Zacharias was a priest of God was intimately familiar with the story of Abraham and Sarah and how old they were when they had their promised son Isaac. So why would this old man doubt God’s ability to do what he has already proved that he could do? Sarah was 90 years old when she had Isaac. Age is not a determining factor for God’s ability to answer your prayer. I believe this is what upset the angel more than anything; it was clearly Zacharias unbelief and total lack of faith in God that displeased God.
Luk 1:20 And, behold, thou shalt be dumb, and not able to speak, until the day that these things shall be performed, because thou believest not my words, which shall be fulfilled in their season.
So the angel gives Zacharias a sign that he was not expecting to happen. Here we have another example of the supernatural power of angels. In Genesis we saw how the angels blinded all of the men that wanted to have sex with them and here the angel tells Zacharias that he would not be able to speak until what was told him came to pass. What was the difference in this story and the story of Abraham? In Genesis God changed Abram’s name to Abraham which meant “Father of Nations”. So God got Abraham to believe what was said to him, but Zacharias did not believe so his mouth was shut. Abraham went around saying to everyone “My name is Abraham”, “I am the father of nations” which was what God said and then he had a son and it happened. Zacharias could have done the same thing if he would have just believed the angel. It is difficult not to talk about words even when you are studying angels because every subject in the Bible overlaps every other subject. Your words and your beliefs have a determining factor to what occurs in your life. Also note that the angel said that the words that he spoke would be fulfilled in the earth. God spoke what was going to happen through an angel in the earth and then it happened. Do you know this is how God works in our world? God sends His words first into the world and only then do they come to pass. We live within a Word Based World system. This is why Gabriel shuts the mouth of Zacharias so that he could not counter the words that were spoken to him with his unbelief. I could say a lot more on this subject, but I’m already off of the main subject of angels so I’ll leave it at that.
So the angel of God was named Gabriel and he had a problem and solved it by making Zacharias dumb. So again we see supernatural powers being exhibited by an angelic being. It is very interesting to note that the name “Gabriel” means “Man of God”. It also has root words meaning a “warrior” and “strength”. We can see from this information that again angels are not trivial beings to be ignored. It is also interesting that they are called “men”. If an angel appears to you and tells you that God has said something, I would suggest that you do not treat it with the same level of unbelief that Zacharias did. If you question the words make sure you ask the right questions. You might recall that when the angel appeared to Mary, she also questioned the words, but said it differently. She asked “how will this be since I know not a man”. That was a valid question and not one of unbelief. She just wanted to know how God was going to do what he said to her. Then after the angel told her how God was going to overshadow her with the Holy Ghost and she would conceive, then Mary said “Be it unto me as you have spoken”. In other words she said “I believe it”! Believing God is one of the most important things that you can ever do in life and this might have been the most important thing that I said in this whole lesson. Let’s talk about Daniel’s experience now:
Dan 10:11 And he said unto me, O Daniel, a man greatly beloved, understand the words that I speak unto thee, and stand upright: for unto thee am I now sent. And when he had spoken this word unto me, I stood trembling.
The angel Gabriel is sent to another man on the earth named Daniel. While it does not name Gabriel directly in this chapter you can see this is who it is by reading Daniel 8:16 and 9:21. Again Gabriel is being sent in answer to a man’s words/prayer. God directs the angel Gabriel to bring Daniel an answer and this story reveals to us that sometimes answers from God take “time”. We like to think that God lives outside of time and that God is omnipotent so He can do anything instantly, but this story proves God can’t do just anything in our world instantly like we would like to think.
Dan 10:12 Then said he unto me, Fear not, Daniel: for from the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand, and to chasten thyself before thy God, thy words were heard, and I am come for thy words.
As you can read and see when Daniel prayed the angel was sent by God on the very first day. However, we can learn in this chapter that Daniel has been fasting for 21 days before the angel actually shows up. That is the problem with many religious minded people’s theology. There is a 3 week delay from the time that Daniel prayed, God answered and the answer arrives. Why is that? That is the million dollar question of the day. You see this chapter tells us that the “prince of Persia” withstood the angel Gabriel from coming to Daniel. Persia of course is where modern day Iran is located. But, this is not a human being and it has to be a powerful spiritual being with a spiritual army of resistance to keep another powerful spiritual being from coming from heaven.
Here is the second most important thing that you should learn from today’s lesson. Did you notice what the angel said? The angel said I was sent for your “words”. Uh oh? We’re back to words again. Did you know that angels get assignments based upon your words? If you didn’t know this you just learned something new that is very important. We’ll definitely talk more about this later so let’s keep looking at the name of the new angel in this story.
Dan 10:13 But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me one and twenty days: but, lo, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me; and I remained there with the kings of Persia.
So God dispatches Michael another chief angel from heaven to help Gabriel to get to Daniel. So Michael and Gabriel are two chief named angels from God found in the Bible. The name “Michael” has the following meaning in the Hebrew “Who is Like God”. To me that tells me something new about angels. Angels are made in the image and likeness of God like men were. You can of course take this definition two ways I know, you could say it like a question or you can say it like a statement of fact. However we have one angel Gabriel that means “Man of God” and another angel named Michael that means “Who is Like God” and both of these have implications of our descendant Adam described to us in Genesis 1 and 2. So you do not have to believe it like I believe it but, based upon what we have learned I have to conclude that angels were created being before men and that they were made in God’s image first. They are also called a “prince” of God. You will see this is a term of authority and power. They are rulers of some dominion or domain that I have already alluded to in the first lesson. Since they came from heaven we can assume at least that this rule use to be the kingdom of heaven. But, God told us in Gen 1:16 that the Moon and the Stars will rule the night on the fourth day of creation. The Stars definitely symbolize angels. So the fourth day was a symbolic time of when Jesus came to the earth. However at this time of Daniel was before Jesus came to the earth and this prophecy of Genesis had not been fulfilled. I do not know if you understand that statement and I don’t have time to explain it. You are welcome to read my other blogs to see if you can grasp these concepts.
What we have seen is the names of two of God’s angels from heaven mentioned to us in the Bible directly. These are actually the only two angels of God that are directly named that I know of. The other angels mentioned in the Bible were angels of God, but have fallen so they are not God’s anymore and we will look at them briefly:
Isa 14:12 How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!
I believe that Lucifer is the name for Satan before he fell from heaven. I will do a more in-depth study of this spiritual being in a separate lesson. What I do want to point out in this verse is something I find very interesting. Lucifer is again called a son of God in this verse, but it is not a direct named instance. It is more a symbolic name based upon information from other verses in the Bible and it reveals something to us in it that we would not have fully known otherwise. What you surely realize is that God hides information in words using techniques that I describe in other blogs. In 1 John 1:5 we see a verse that says “God is Light”. Then what we learn from this verse in Isaiah is very important if you can accept it. The word “morning” means “early light”. This is a symbolic revelation of God and Satan. We know that God has neither beginning nor any ending and the Bible calls Him the “Ancient of Days”. All of this tells us that God has been around a very, very long time. But, if you think symbolically about a day cycle, when the sun comes up and then sun goes down; God is describing the timeframe of Satan’s creation using these terms of a symbolic day. God is saying Lucifer was a “son of the very early light”. This informs us that Lucifer has been around not as long as God has but so much longer than Adam or the rest of us could ever have imagined. Scientists tell us that the age of our universe is estimated to be in the billions of years. I imagine that Lucifer has been around at the very least that long and probably longer just based upon this simple information. It is important to note that Lucifer is called a son of God like we saw the other angels called in Genesis and Job. It is also important to note the meaning of the name “Lucifer”. The word “Lucifer” means to brightly shine as the morning star. Wow, that is an amazing statement that almost boggles my mind. You see in Revelation 22:16 Jesus says “I am the Bright and Morning Star”. How can both Lucifer and Jesus have the same names? That is of course a very difficult question to answer especially in a blog like this about angels so I will not even attempt to give you an answer to that. What I do want you to do is see the hidden complexity within the Bible and to show you that we have only scratched the surface to what is written there in and what it all means. So far we have seen angels named Gabriel, Michael and Lucifer so let’s continue quickly and look at the other name found in the Bible of angels:
Rev 9:11 And they had a king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon.
Here in Revelation 9 it speaks of too many things to go through them all. The book of Revelation is a heavily symbolic book of references. Most of this information found here is widely controversial since hardly anyone has been able to agree on what anything means. However, this error is mostly attributable to man’s private interpretations of God’s Word. What I see in this verse is the fact that God is speaking of an angel. This angel has a name and is called “Abaddon” in the Hebrew and “Apollyon” in the Greek. This name means “destroyer” or “destruction”. I am fairly convinced that this is just another name for Satan personally. I believe that Satan is the one that has destroyed kingdoms and laid waste to the earth making it null and void in Genesis 1:2. When I talk about Satan in the next lesson I will try to show you scriptures that seem to indicate Satan is responsible for these things.
So we have seen potentially 4 angels directly named in the Bible. Two Gabriel and Michael are on God’s side and the other two Lucifer and Abaddon are definitely not good angels.
We have learned a few new things in this lesson so let’s review them.
Angel (s):
- Have Names (Luke 1:19, Rev 9:11)
- Names mean something
- Gabriel means “Man of God”
- Michael means “Who is Like God”
- Are called Princes (those who rule under the King) (Daniel 10:13)
- Stand in the Presence of God (Luke 1:19)
- Can make people dumb (Luke 1:20)
- Lucifer was called a son of the early light (Isa 14:12)
- Lucifer means “Bright Morning Star”
- Abaddon means “Destroyer” (Rev 9:11)
- Are sent by God because of the Words of Men on the earth (Daniel 10:12, Luke 1:13)
- Bring messages from God and it matters if you believe them (Luke 1:18-19)
If you would like to continue reading this series you can go to “Part 4“.
Understanding Angels! The Angels in Sodom! Part 2
(Ver 1.1) This is Part 2 of a series of advanced studies about the reality of angels found in the Bible. If you have not read this series from the beginning I would strongly suggest that you go back and start with “Part 1”. In the first lesson I introduced you to some potentially new and very interesting concepts concerning angels. The Bible certainly has a lot of information on this subject so it is only a matter of researching and seeing what it says in order for us to better understand this subject. Today I want to start by expanding on the concepts that I gave you last time which stipulates that an angel can manifest in a physical form in our world. Today will be another witness to this fact. I believe that I clearly showed you scriptures in Genesis 6 that says the angels took human wives and had sex with them to create a race of giants. So we learned that angels in the Bible directly resemble human males on the earth. As you may recall the Hebrew word translated as “angel” is a word that means “messenger”. In today’s lesson we will further explore a basic reality that has some important concepts in it. In Genesis 19 we find the story of Lot in Sodom. Lot and his family had parted company from Abraham and moved near a city of the plain called Sodom. The next time we hear about Lot we find that Lot has moved into Sodom. It turns out that this was not a good choice for Lot to make. If it was not for Abram’s relationship with God, Lot would have been killed with all of the other people of this city. But, we might also not have Jesus coming into the earth either, since Lot was the primary ancestor of Ruth who marries Boaz and from them comes David the King and later Jesus of Nazareth. So that is where this next verse starts the story of the angels that visit Lot in Sodom:
Gen 19:1 And there came two angels to Sodom at even; and Lot sat in the gate of Sodom: and Lot seeing them rose up to meet them; and he bowed himself with his face toward the ground;
As you can see two angels have manifested or transformed into their physical form and can be seen in the physical dimension by Lot. I have to assume that angels have physical glorified bodies that have the ability to be visible to natural people or to somehow change and not to be seen by natural people. We know that Jesus today has a physical body, but it is a glorified natural eternal body. Jesus in this glorified body was able to suddenly appear inside a locked room of the disciples after His resurrection. Did Jesus walk thru the wall or just step into the 3 dimensional space at the just the right spot? You see I do not believe that we fully understand the 3 dimensional space concept fully. I believe you can find verses in the Bible that say this dimension can be folded up and that is a radical concept. Jesus then told Thomas to touch and feel Him for He said “a spirit does not have flesh and bone”. Jesus was saying I’m not a spirit alone, I have a physical body. So we know the glorified body of Jesus at the least had skin, flesh and bones like we do and we can only assume all of the features that we have. This could be like the bodies of angels also. I sometimes like to think that the natural realm is a dimension of space that spiritual beings like Jesus and angels are capable of stepping into or stepping out of upon their will. But, it is more complicated than that, because the unseen spiritual realm is also all around us in this natural realm that we live in. The Bible seems to indicate that there are disembodied spirits in our world today who do not possess a physical body as these angels appear to have. We will look at these beings in other lessons and we will further discuss these types of spirits, often called demons. These two angels in Genesis 19 just happen to come to the city in the evening and Lot is right there to see them coming. I never think that things like this are just coincidences. Lot is very gracious to them and I do not know if Lot knows if they are angels or not at the beginning of his conversation. I believe at the first, Lot did not know they were angels, but certainly at the end of the story Lot had no choice but to believe who they were. Lot at first was probably just being cordial and hospitable to some strangers that are new to the city of Sodom.
Gen 19:2 And he said, Behold now, my lords, turn in, I pray you, into your servant’s house, and tarry all night, and wash your feet, and ye shall rise up early, and go on your ways. And they said, Nay; but we will abide in the street all night.
Lot offers his house for them to stay the night since it is already very late in the evening. It almost appears that Lot understands the immoral condition of the city and the dangers that these strangers have come into it.
Gen 19:3 And he pressed upon them greatly; and they turned in unto him, and entered into his house; and he made them a feast, and did bake unleavened bread, and they did eat.
It fascinates me to no end that angels can eat physical natural human food. This just goes a little further to show us that our bodies are not an original design or the first of their kind. Angels existed before any humans existed. So God already had a pattern and a design to form the body of Adam. We know that Jesus after He was resurrected from the dead that He also ate physical food with His disciples (John 21:9-11). Apparently eating and drinking is something we will be able to do in heaven and throughout eternity even with glorified eternal bodies. Whatever we eat there I hope there are cakes a pies.
Psa 78:25 Man did eat angels’ food: he sent them meat to the full.
What is it that angels eat in heaven? God gives us at least a partial clue in this verse in Psalms. If you read the context of this verse it is speaking of God raining down manna from heaven to feed the children of Israel. This is clearly called angel food. So God’s mighty angels eat food even in heaven.
So we have seen and learned more information that angels have bodies that resemble our bodies. They are physical and their look and feel must be very similar to our bodies and they must be able to walk among us and us not even know that they were angels. Nowhere in this chapter does it say that these men glowed in the dark or radiated the glory of God or had any feature that made them different than us. Nowhere does it say that they had wings or any appearance that did not resemble our appearance totally and completely. These two angels here in Genesis 19, walked into the city like any other man would. They sat and ate dinner like any other man would. We have clearly seen that angels can eat human food and people can eat angel food. So these are some amazing facts found in the Bible to consider. So I think about stupid practical things sometimes. If angels eat natural food do you go to the bathroom like we have to? I do not technically know the answer to that question either. It would appear to me that if you eat something and put it into your stomach, something must happen to it. The natural stuff can’t just disappear and vanish? So to me there must be some digestive process and some waste process to function correctly. We have obviously seen that angels have the organs and bodily parts to produce semen so that means to me that they have other organs that are either similar or identical to ours also. These are just funny things that I ask myself and maybe these are things you have asked yourself also?
Gen 19:4 But before they lay down, the men of the city, even the men of Sodom, compassed the house round, both old and young, all the people from every quarter:
So I’m not planning on going through every verse in this chapter, just a few of the key verses, but continuing with the next verse you can see that it says the angels were going to lay down. Now that is not something I have ever thought of extensively, do angels sleep? Maybe they do and maybe they don’t and I cannot technically answer that either. I know the Bible says that in the New Jerusalem to come that there will be no night because the light of God will be our light for eternity. Was this the way it was in heaven before God created the earth? I guess we will continue with our story of Lot and Sodom. Now is where the story changes and is often used to teach about the perils of the homosexual life style. The men of the city witness the fact that there are two new men in town. So obviously they are visible to everyone and not just Lot and his family. This proves that they are physical and that they looked like everyone else in the city.
Gen 19:3 And he pressed upon them greatly; and they turned in unto him, and entered into his house; and he made them a feast, and did bake unleavened bread, and they did eat.
So the men of the city press Lot to know where the new men are that came into the city. This verse says that they want to “know” them. This does not mean to meet them and be friendly; it means to have homosexual sex with them. This is exactly why the angels were there in Lot’s house to begin with. These angels were sent to Lot to get him and his family out of the city before they destroyed it. We will soon see that more clearly as we proceed forward.
Gen 19:6 And Lot went out at the door unto them, and shut the door after him,
So Lot has a major problem, he goes to the men of the city and starts to talk to them to try to convince them to change their minds.
Gen 19:7 And said, I pray you, brethren, do not so wickedly.
Lot recognizes and knows of the evil of the city. Lot having lived in this city has known what they do to each other. This is one of the strongest witnesses in the Bible that homosexuality is a very perverted lifestyle and is wrong in the eyes of God. Homosexuality is an abuse of the design of God’s intended usage of the human body. Just as you can abuse drugs, alcohol, food, or anything else, you can abuse your own body. An abuse is always the use of something for a purpose that it is not designed for. People obviously just ignore verses like these in the Bible to promote and justify their own alternative modern life styles. It appears to me that these modern lifestyles are the same old lifestyles that were destroyed in the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. So Lot offers his virgin daughters to the men, but the men want only want more men. The lusts of the flesh are very strong in the world. Obviously these men had no self-control over their ways.
Gen 19:10 But the men put forth their hand, and pulled Lot into the house to them, and shut to the door.
Here is another verse that confirms that these angels are not just spiritual beings. They have physical presence to open the door and pull Lot back into the house and then to shut the door. But, physical or natural power is not all of the power that they have as we are about to discover:
Gen 19:11 And they smote the men that were at the door of the house with blindness, both small and great: so that they wearied themselves to find the door.
You see angels also have supernatural powers and that is very important to note. These angels came to Lot’s house on assignment from God to get him and his family out of that city. When confronted with a large crowd of men who wanted to have sex with them, the angels solved Lot’s problem by causing all of the men to be blind. Since they were unable to see Lot’s front door anymore, I guess sex was not as important to them as they thought before. It is funny how stupid people can be, isn’t it? As long is everything is normal they can only think about their desires, the only thing that these angels did was give these perverted men something new to think about and it was not a good thing for any of them. When I read accounts like this in the Bible, I try to relate the information to other spiritual beings. If God’s angels can cause physical changes to a body, can Satan and his angels also do this? We will see later in this series that Satan can.
Let me summarize the remainder of this chapter. The angels of God come and take Lot and his wife and two daughters out of the city by physical persuasion. It also says that two of Lot’s daughters were married and Lot could not convince them to leave the city. Their husbands thought Lot was crazy and it did not turn out very good for them. The angels actually tell Lot the following:
Gen 19:13 For we will destroy this place, because the cry of them is waxen great before the face of the LORD; and the LORD hath sent us to destroy it.
As we study angels in the Bible you will see that angels have significant supernatural power and ability. They are not something to ignore. They clearly have the power to destroy entire cities of the earth as this verse says. So we learn something new about angels, not only can they bring messages from God to people on the earth, but they can also fulfill assignments or tasks directed by God. In other words they can do the will of God to people on the earth. In this particular story God is the supreme Judge and has passed judgment upon the wicked people for their alternative lifestyles. God sends just two angels to destroy both cities completely. Certainly angels have great power especially when backed by God.
2Pe 2:11 Whereas angels, which are greater in power and might, bring not railing accusation against them before the Lord.
The Bible clearly teaches us that angels are not trivial little creatures. Just for grins I searched the internet for pictures of angels. Guess what I found? The majority of the pictures on the internet were cute little harmless looking winged creatures or female angels with beautiful features. I went through hundreds of pictures from people’s imagined conception of how they viewed angels and none of them match the Bible description of an angel which has great power and might. In 2 Peter 2:11 God tells us that angels are much stronger than we are. There really is no comparison to our might and their might and you should get a hold of this concept. You are no physical or spiritual match for Satan and his angels without God in you. Only with God the “Greater One” in you can you stand up to these spiritual beings. So let’s review a list of features and characteristics that we have clearly learned about angels in the Bible so far.
Angels:
- Are Called sons of God (Gen 6, Job 1, 2)
- Of God are different than other Angels not of God. (Gen 16:7)
- Are the Symbolic Stars of Heaven (Gen 1:16, Rev 1:20, Rev 12:4)
- Rule the Night with the Symbolic Moon (Satan). (Gen 1:16)
- Come From and live in Heaven (Heb 12:22)
- Number are innumerable for a man to count (Heb 12:22)
- Are used as Messengers For God’s Word to Man (Gen 16, 19)
- Have the ability to Travel from Heaven to the Earth and back (Job 1, 2)
- Can Manifest and be Seen by the Natural Eye (Gen 16, 19)
- Look Like Human Males (Gen 19:5)
- Walk Like Men (Gen 19:1, Job 1:7)
- Are Able to be physically touched. (Gen 19:16)
- Are Very Strong and Mighty (2 Peter 2:11)
- Were Sent to Destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. (Gen 19:13)
- Have Supernatural Powers (Gen 19:11)
- Can Eat natural Food (Gen 19:3)
- Have the Ability to Have Sex with Human Females (Gen 6:4)
- Produced a race of Giants in the Earth. (Gen 6:4)
- That Had Sex with Natural Women are Locked In Hell (2 Peter 2:4)
- Of Satan will be swept to the earth and their number is 1/3 of the total population. (Rev 12:4)
In the next lesson we will continue to discover more information about these spiritual beings, so I hope that you will continue reading. God Bless!
If you would like to continue reading the next lesson in this series you can go to “Part 3“.
Understanding Angels! A Bible Perspective to the Reality of Angels! Part 1
(Ver 1.1) This is “Part 1” in a study series on the subject of “angels” found in the bible from cover to cover. People generally do not believe in things that they have never seen or that they do not have any proof of existence. It is very much like the subject of God who is a Spirit (Jn 4:24) and many people do not believe in Him either. However, the Word of God known as the Bible says a lot about these spiritual beings, we call angels, and it informs us that they definitely are real and that they do certainly exist. The rest of this lesson will cover things found in the Bible about angels that you should know. Who are they, what are they, where did they come from, when did they come into existence, what is their purpose and whatever else God leads us to discuss about them. I personally know people who claim to have seen angels and their descriptions of these creatures are not like the fat little baby angels you see in many picture books or art diagrams. These creatures are generally very strong, large and tall. Their strength is so much greater than the strongest man on the earth that there is no comparison that can be made. In this lesson we will discuss a lot of scriptures and many of them you might or might not already know. However, I will probably say some things that you probably have never heard or thought about before, so you should read the entire lesson series before you pass final judgment. So let’s look at the first occurrence of the Hebrew word “H4397” that is translated as word “angel” in the English KJV Bible. The Strong’s definition for this word is “messenger”. In the ancient Hebrew lexicon this word is defined as “one who walks for another”. That appears to define one of the primary roles of angels in simple terms. If we search the Bible, we will find that the first direct mention of this word is found in verse 7 of Genesis 16:
Gen 16:7 And the angel of the LORD found her by a fountain of water in the wilderness, by the fountain in the way to Shur.
The Hebrew word translated as “angel” is used 213 times in the O.T. so that is a lot of scriptures to read and learn from. But that is not all of the references that can be found in the Old Testament. This is because these beings go by many other names, titles, descriptions, symbols, etc. For example, the first time I noticed a reference for angels was in Genesis 1:16 as the mention of “stars”. This symbol for angels occurs especially in Revelation 12:4 where the tail of the dragon sweeps 1/3 of the stars from the heaven. Most wise Bible scholars agree these stars are references to angels.
There are at least two references to angels in Genesis 3. In verse 1, Satan is referred to as a symbolic “serpent”. Most should know this is the fallen angel Lucifer, but we will hpefully go into this more later. Then in verse 24 of Genesis 3, we find God placing “Cherubim” with a flaming sword to guard the way to the tree of life. This is a speciality ranking order of that angels that appear to have a different assignment other than being a “messenger” class of God’s angelic creation. We will discover that God is a very organized creator. There will be angels of differing ranks and responsilbities.
All of this introduction information tells us that angels were widely active in the O.T. times and that these creatures are still implied to be active today based upon what we will find the book of Revelation described future. While not every occurrence is translated as “angel” of the Hebrew word, there are enough that are this way that I cannot mention them all.
As we learned, the word “angel” means “messenger” in the Hebrew; they are spiritual beings that are normally sent from God to deliver a message to man. So, an angel could be viewed as a “Word carrier”. You could also say a “Word courier” or someone who delivers God’s Words to the people on the earth. You could compare angels to an earthly company like “Fedex” who delivers messages around the world, but of course angels are much more than that as we will find out. It is interesting to note two things found in this verse. First is that God qualifies the word “angel” with “of the Lord”. Meaning there are other types of angels that are not “of the Lord”. We will discover more about this shortly, but note that God claims some angels to be His and others that are clearly not His. Later we will also see that within the organization of angels, there exist ranks, classes and orders.
The next thing that is interesting to see in this verse is the Hebrew Word translated as “found” in this verse. This word does not mean the angel had to search for Hagar to finally locater her. According to Strong’s this word means “to come forth”, “to appear” or “exist”. Did you know that you cannot normally see angels in the world, but that this does not mean they do not exist around us at all times? It is critical to note that this “angel of the Lord” came forth and appeared in the natural realm so that Hagar could see him and hear him with her physical eyes and ears.
What we will learn soon are that Angels are normally not visible, probably because they were created by God on a higher frequency of movement/vibration. All physical substance contains vibration frequencies. Some are more easily seen, and some are impossible to see with the unaided eye. But according to this verse and some other verses that we will look at later, God may cause or permit some angels to slow their spiritual frequency so that it allows them to become visible in the natural realm. This means that angels can be visible at times or be invisible at other times. How they do this, and it is accomplished, I have no idea?
There are many details in the Bible that we are not informed of directly and this is one of them. We have to assume that they have some power or ability that allows them to do this. You can read further in this chapter and also see that this angel of the Lord brings Hagar a message from God, and he informs her of what will happen to her and her son Ishmael in the future. God who sees the end from the beginning can tell you this information, but this is not the normal way that God does things most of the time; I believe that this is an exception to the way God does things.
So, we have just looked at the first direct reference in the Bible about angels, however this is not the first time they are mentioned in the Bible so we will back up in Genesis and read some new very important verses about angels. What you must realize when reading and studying the Bible, is that God calls the same things in the Bible by multiple names, titles, descriptions and each of these reveal new qualities or features of that person or object being referenced. So, let’s read a verse that reveals angels to us in a totally brand-new way:
Gen 6:1 And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them,
God starts this chapter by informing us that the children of Adam and Eve began to multiply upon the face of the earth. There were both males and females born to them and then these children married and had more children and thus continued the multiplication of the earth’s population. This is of course what God told Adam and Eve to do; to be fruitful and multiply, and to replenish the earth’s population. So, they were being obedient in this part of God’s commandments, I wonder why? Now we are going to get into the part about angels, for the preceding verse was put there to set up the next very important verse:
Gen 6:2 That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.
In the next verse in the Bible, we learn some very valuable information about angels. I’ll start by giving you the time frame for this information. These verses are occurring within the first 1000 years of human history. Since Adam lived to be over 900 years old, he must have come close to witnessing the beginnings of what was taking place on the earth during these verses. The very next thing that you should recognize is that angels are called “sons of God”. We know that Jesus was the Son of God, but notice angels are also called “sons of God. It is the same designation of title, but in an entirely different context. However, we know Jesus was God, but angels were never God. We know in Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14 that Lucifer was a created being. We also learn Lucifer was “anointed” by the Spirit of God. This would appear to indicate angles to be very similar to humans.
Notice this fact that the Bible calls us (the church) “sons of God” also (1 Jo 3:2). Why is this? This is directly attributable because God is called our “Father”. In Hebrews 12:9 God is called the Father of spirits. Angels are definitely spirit beings and people are spirit beings also, so God qualifies to be Father of both.
The next important thing to recognize about angels is that they can manifest themselves physically in this world as we saw with Hagar. But Genesis 6 provides greater details. It appears that angels can appear in the same form apparently as human males on the earth with the same sexual reproductive equipment. Some try to explain that these “sons of Gods’ are not angels, but you can see that they are by other verses in the Bible. This term “sons of God” is used only a very few times in the O.T. Other than twice in Genesis 6, the term “sons of God” can be found only three times in the book of Job when Satan appears before God and the “sons of God” come with him. Most knowledgeable Bible scholars will agree that this reference to “sons of God” is speaking of angels also.
It is very apparent in this verse that angels have physical bodies as well as spiritual bodies. I still believe this is just one body that is able to transition to slower frequencies that are visible in the created natural realm. However, angels are clearly not mortal like sinful fallen humans. Even angels that have sinned like Lucifer travel from the earth realm to the heavenly realm daily (Rev 12:10) I believe from what I have read in the Bible that angels are spiritual beings that are capable of traveling between the earth and heaven where the throne of God is located at their own will. I also believe that these angels can manifest themselves in a physical form on this earth when given a divine assignment. But Genesis 6 is an example of unlawful angelic manifestation in the physical realm as we will learn soon.
So, this verse in Genesis 6 says the angels of God looked at the women on the earth and thought they were “beautiful” and they took them for their wives and as we continue reading this caused a perverted race of human and angelic beings to come to be in the earth. It is interesting to note that it does not sound like these women had much choice in this matter. To me it sounds like a victory of the spoils of war type of mentality that came upon the angels. They clearly thought they had a right to these women. Knowing the strength and power of angels we can understand why. Read this next verse:
Gen 6:4 There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.
So, this is a very hard saying indeed. One that is truly difficult to comprehend. The “sons of God” are said to “come in unto” the daughters of men. This is a very interesting concept being given to us by God. It is spoken of in the terms of Noah “entering into” the ark (Gen 6:19). This means God views the woman’s sexual organ as a door into her body. In fact, it is designed by God as a two-way door; a man or angel enters in, and babies come out. These exact same words are used in Genesis 16:2 when Sarah tells Abraham “go in unto my maid” so that I may have children of her”. We can clearly see that this is natural sex using God’s perspective. So, we know that the angels (the sons of God) had physical sex with women on the earth and they created a race of giants.
I wonder sometimes, if there are male angels which clearly there are, do female angels exist? That is a question that I do not know the direct answer to yet. I do not ever recall reading any description of an angel in the Bible that resembled a female. But the Bible says that there are an innumerable number of these creatures in heaven, so we do not know everything, do we?
From my Bible studies I have to conclude that there are female angels but the only proof that I have found so far, is that the Bible says Heaven existed first and it is called the “Heavenly Jerusalem” (Heb 12:22) and this city seems to be a pattern of the one that God created on the earth that I call the “earthly Jerusalem”. If the earthly Jerusalem has females, I can only conclude logically that this was a repeated pattern of the original heavenly city Jerusalem also. So, in my opinion there has to be female angels, but I do not yet have a direct Bible verse for that yet, so you do not have to accept it.
Gen 6:4 There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.
So where did all of these giants come from that were in the earth? They had to come from the sexual union of Adam’s daughters (female descendants) and the angels (sons of God). It is very apparent to me that this union between God’s new creation and the angels was an illegal sinful act and a perversion of creation, that God would have to do something about. I can see two potential reasons for this union by angelic beings with humans. It appears to be motivated by their hatred of God and humans, using their willful and intentional act of rebellion to try to destroy God’s new creation. Some can try to say that Satan and the angels were attempting to pervert the bloodline of man, and this is the only reason for what they did. It is very easy to assume or jump to the conclusion that they were in effect attempting to eliminate the pure blood line for Christ to come into the world. However, I’m not convinced that Satan or any of the angels knew Jesus (God in the flesh) was coming into the world at that time. Remember there were no Bibles written when all of this was taking place. Moses wrote about this many years later for the first time.
So ,their motivation for taking human women could have been just a conquest or sexual desire and the fact that they thought and believed that they could get away with it. Angels, Satan and demons are not “all knowing” beings and God has not yet prophesied the Messiah to come in writing at this point of human time. It is true that the plan of God was already in place before the foundation of our world. However, there is no written word, no recorded law of God, no divine prophets speaking the word in the earth other than Enoch, that I know of. We do know that there were a few statements of God being spoken directly t Satan, Adam and Eve about the seed of the woman bruising the head of the serpent. And that is certainly motivational information that Satan knew someone was coming, because what is the seed of the woman? So, unless Satan understood what God was saying about the seed of the woman, how would Satan know to start corrupting this bloodline? We can assume that Satan understood the words of God and that is why the angels did what they did to the women on the earth, but I have no verses to confirm either of these motivations at this time.
In this same chapter of Genesis is the beginning of the story of Noah. I do not believe that this was just a coincidence. I believe that Noah was chosen by God to preserve the bloodline and the seed of Adam. God decided that He must intervene into this perversion by wiping out the human race with a universal flood. God selects Noah and his 3 sons as those who would preserve the seed of Adam. Looking at the genealogy of Jesus given to us in Luke 3, God shows us that Jesus mother Mary lineage goes all the way back to Adam through Noah and Shem who have preserved God’s plan. In other words, there are no angels in the line that Jesus came from. So, what happened to the angels that sinned and took the women of the earth as their wives? We are actually given a clue to this event in the N.T. when Peter writes the following:
2Pe 2:4 For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment;
God tells us that the angels who sinned were forcibly thrown into hell and bound with “chains of darkness”. It is interesting to note that this verse informs us something very important for you to understand. Angels, demons, and Satan have never been to hell, do not want to go to hell and are trying everything in their power to stay out of hell. Hell is not a good place that anyone that is halfway normal wants to be. Too many people think that Hell is Satan’s dominion or kingdom, but you can clearly read in Revelation that even Satan has to be forcibly thrown into this place. So, Satan and demons are not normal people, but they do not want to be in hell any more than I do. Think about it, Satan was used to walking streets of gold in heaven why would he want to go to hell? Did you notice that this verse said that these angels who sinned were cast into hell and chained so that they could not leave? Does that sound like they wanted to be there, it does not! The sin of the angels is not directly named in this verse found in 2nd Peter, but the next verse starts talking about Noah so we can clearly assume that the sin was having sex with the natural women on the earth when they clearly should not have in Genesis 6. It is not rocket science to read Genesis 6 and 2 Peter 2 and figure this out.
So here we have Genesis 6 the first occurrence or mention of angels in the Bible, or is it? You see I believe that the first mention of angels in the Bible is a symbolic occurrence way before this in the first chapter of Genesis. The first two chapters of Genesis is the account of the creation of our world. Within the first chapter of Genesis is a prophetic timeline of the entire history of mankind on the earth. If you do not understand that statement, you should read some of my other blogs on the subject. God uses symbolism in the first chapter from the things that are mentioned, and these things occur in a very specific ordered timeline that reveals a lot of great information to us. I believe the first reference to angels occurs in verse 16 of Genesis 1:
Gen 1:16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
Where are the angels you ask? That is the tricky part of the mysteries within the Bible; God has hidden significant information within verses that we do not understand until He reveals them to us. In this verse God speaks of three heavenly objects found in our sky. Did you notice I said “Heavenly”? Where is God’s throne? God’s throne is in “Heaven”. So, we have three natural symbols that convey spiritual beings and meanings. I will not discuss the sun or the moon in this lesson, if you need to know who these objects represent you should go read some of my other lessons. However, the “stars” are innumerable in our night sky. That is a key word that describes the angels in heaven.
Heb 12:22 But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels,
God tells us in Hebrews that Heaven contains an innumerable number of angels. This means that God only knows the number of them, and we just do not have the time to count them all. In other words, the number of angels is not an infinite number; it is just a very big number. So here is the reason that I bring “stars” into today’s lesson. If you read later in the Bible in Revelation, you will see how important it is note:
Rev 12:4 And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born.
As you can clearly see the tail of the symbolic dragon who is revealed to be Satan causes a 1/3 part of the stars of heaven to fall to the earth. These are not real stars in our night sky; these are only symbolic stars that represent angels. In the Bible “stars” many times represents angels symbolically. This is definitely true in Genesis 1 and Revelation 12 and many other places also. In this verse of Revelation, it clearly tells us that the number of the angels is not an infinite number because a specific fraction 1/3 of them is fallen from heaven to the earth. If you can divide a number by 3 you have to know what that number is that is being reduced. Again, this is just basic logic and the laws of mathematics.
This has been a basic introduction to the subject of angels using the Bible. I have only speculated about one thing and that is I believe that there must be female angels but that I have not found a direct Bible verse to prove that. The other facts in this lesson definitely are scripture-based teachings found in the Bible. We have learned that there are many angels that exist, in fact more than we can count, however not as many as God can count. We have learned that some of these angels do not belong to God anymore. Those that are faithful to God are numbered in terms of 2/3 of the total population of angels. The other 1/3 of the angels we are told are cast down to the earth. We also learned from Peter’s writings that some angels have already been cast into hell for creating a perverted race of beings in an attempt to corrupt the seed of Adam. So we have seen two witnesses so far that say that angels can manifest themselves in physical forms in our world. That is a very important fact to keep in mind. Here is another witness to this fact:
Heb 13:2 Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.
I’ll end today’s lesson with this thought, God says for us to treat strangers like they could be a heavenly representative from God. It is very clear to me that God is saying you never know who you are entertaining and that they could potentially have a message for you from God. I base this on the fact that I believe that an angel’s number one assignment is to be a messenger of God since that is what the name “angel” means. We will discuss more scriptures about angels in my next lesson and hopefully see what else the Bible says that they can do. God Bless!
If you would like to continue reading this series about angels, you can go to “Part 2“.
Understanding Hard Sayings in the Bible! Eat My Flesh and Drink My Blood!
(Ver 1.1) This is “Part 4” in a series of advanced Christian lessons on “Understanding Hard Sayings” found in the Bible. This lesson today is not a new subject for me to teach on, for I have covered parts of this topic of hard sayings in at least one other lesson. But, I want to back up today and introduce you to the general concept of “Hard Sayings” found in the Bible before I teach any more about them. The Bible contains many sayings that are very difficult for people to accept, so in many Christian churches they simply ignore them. You see I did not invent the term “Hard Sayings”, it came from a teaching that Jesus directly gave to His disciples and in doing this, Jesus taught us that the Bible contains many “Hard Sayings” within it. There are other Christian books and authors on the market that are available with this title about “Hard Sayings” in the Bible. I have not read them, but some of them must be good. What I want you to realize is today’s lessons came directly from God and the Bible and not from the teachings of another man. So what is a hard saying? A Hard Saying can be described as any words or verses that are very difficult to understand or to accept because of what is being taught or stated within them. Many times hard sayings in the Bible are natural controversial subjects which have a hidden spiritual message that is being conveyed. Jesus actually gives us the classic difficult or hard saying Himself in the Gospels and in doing so teaches us some very significant things about this subject that we should all learn. Here is what the disciples said about the lesson that Jesus gave to them:
Joh 6:60 Many therefore of his disciples, when they had heard this, said, This is an hard saying; who can hear it?
As you can see the disciples listening to the words of Jesus said that this teaching was very “hard sayings” to accept and they asked “who could hear them”. They are in effect saying the words of Jesus are very difficult to believe, comprehend, accept, grasp or even understand. What were these words that Jesus was teaching on that were called “hard sayings” by His followers? I mean if His followers had trouble accepting them, what about us? What made the words of Jesus so difficult to grasp for these inner circle of disciples? I guess we should start by reading what Jesus was teaching about that the disciples called “Hard Sayings”.
Joh 6:53 Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.
These are truly very “Hard Sayings”. If you try to take these words literally you will attempt to say that Jesus was teaching cannibalism. However, one of the key elements to correct Bible interpretation is knowing when something is symbolic and when something should be taken literally. . This is something that is not always as easy as you would like it to be. Symbolism is a key element used throughout the Bible to conceal and reveal spiritual information to us His disciples. Jesus is speaking symbolically about spiritual things in this verse and we will need to explore several other Bible verses to get the correct interpretation to these symbols. But, this verse is the prime example of how the natural mind of man can get easily confused when reading the Bible. The Bible says this about the natural mind of man:
Rom 8:7 Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.
What is a carnal mind? A carnal mind is one that thinks 100% naturally. To apply natural things to a spiritual book is said to be an enemy of God. I see blogs on the internet about Bible studies and they are clearly the enemies to God. They are applying human logic and reasoning to explain away the true spiritual meanings and that is a major problem. So the important lesson from this verse is for us not to think like men, but to renew our minds and change to think like God. God’s ways are not our ways and God’s thought are not our thoughts, but that does not mean we cannot come up to God’s way of thinking. It only means that we do not know how to do this until we learn it from God. God did not give us a book that we could not understand ever. He only wants us to change in order to see the real truth. This change involves a higher level of spiritual thought and hopefully you are growing in this area.
What we discover from Jesus’ statement are that two major components are being spoken of. These are the “Flesh” of Jesus and the “Blood” of Jesus. Then we are instructed to eat and drink these two elements. I purposely chose the word “elements” because many Christians know these are symbolic representations for our communion services where we take bread and wine and partake of the Lord’s body and blood. Christians do this as a symbolic representation of a greater spiritual truth that I will discuss in more depth today. Jesus actually taught us some very profound things while partaking of the “Passover” meal with His disciples. Jesus breaks the unleavened bread of Passover and says “this is my body” eat. Then Jesus takes the cup of the covenant and says this is my “blood” drink. Jesus in doing this was not saying this is my literal body and blood; he again was just using symbols to convey spiritual meanings.
In the Old Testament Psalms, it says “Taste and see that the Lord is Good” (Ps 34:8). So how do you taste anything naturally? In order to taste something you usually put that something in your mouth and then swallow it, if it is good or spit it out if it is bad. God appears to be using more symbolism in this verse of Psalms. We know that God is a Spirit (John 4:24). How do you then taste a Spirit and see if He is good? For that matter how does the real you, the spirit inside your body taste the Lord and see if He is good? That is exactly why Jesus uses these natural things to help you to understand the spiritual things that you have no experience with before you are saved. You have plenty of natural experience with eating if you are a healthy human being. Jesus chose to teach us using these natural things to give us a view into the spiritual things that we do not see. These things obviously have to be similar in characteristics even if they are totally different from comparing natural to spiritual things. God using His vast intelligence created natural things for us to get glimpses into spiritual things. So Jesus is saying in order for you to be healthy spiritually you must eat my flesh and drink my blood and in doing this you will have spiritual life. Our problem right now is we just don’t know what this means and that is where we are going now. I will explain the symbols given to us by Jesus to help you to understand these spiritual things.
What is the “body” of Jesus Christ made of? Where did the body of Jesus Christ come from? These are two key questions to discovering the true meaning of what Jesus was teaching when He taught us to eat His flesh. I will start this lesson with a description of the flesh of Jesus from the book of John:
Joh 1:14 And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.
You can very clearly see that God tells us that His Word became “Flesh” and walked among us. In fact, if you backup to verse one in this chapter, you find that it says “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”. You cannot separate God from His Word in this verse. God and His Word are “One” in the same. This is one of the reasons why it is impossible for God to lie. God is saying that He became Flesh by sending His Word to join or unite with the egg of the virgin woman Mary. God’s Word became the spiritual and natural Seed that became the flesh that was crucified on the cross. Do you remember when the angel told Mary that the Holy Spirit would “overshadow” her and that she would become pregnant? What was Mary’s response to the Words of God sent through an angel? She said “Be it unto me according to thy Word” (Luke 1:38). The angel tells Mary that God will “overshadow” her. This term means to supernaturally envelop. Mary could have said “I don’t believe that” and God would have been forced to find another woman. But, Mary says “It will be as you have spoken”. So the Words of God were accepted into the spirit of the woman Mary and she believed them and then the Holy Spirit came upon her to conceive the child Jesus. God sent His Word to a woman to become Flesh and this is why Jesus was speaking to the disciples that you must eat my flesh. The flesh of Jesus was the “Word of God” made manifest in this world. The Flesh of Jesus was the Word of God Visible to your natural eyes. This was what Jesus was trying to teach us using these natural symbols that exist in the world. Of course at this time when Jesus taught this, the disciples lacked the keys to the knowledge to understand this truth and therefore this was a “hard saying” for them to accept. We still have this problem in the body of Christ even today. We have many Christians who do not accept things because they do not understand them. For example, speaking in tongues is a prime example of this. Because some do not understand it they criticize it and even teach against it. That is a very foolish thing to do. God excuses your ignorance for a while then it may come time for judgment when you attack your brother. I would dare not teach against anything that I do not fully understand to the best of my ability. What I have hopefully shown you is that the Flesh of Jesus is the Word of God so let’s look at the blood of Jesus and what this represents.
Jesus was not teaching you that you should drink His actual blood; there are laws in the O.T. that say that you should not eat meat with the blood still in it. So Jesus has to be speaking figuratively or symbolically. So what is the “Blood of Jesus”? What does the Blood of Jesus represent symbolically? These are another two questions that are critical to understand if you want to understand what Jesus was teaching when He says to “drink His Blood”. We know from the Bible that it is the Blood of Christ that has paid the price for our sins (Heb 10, Rev 1:5). But, what made the blood of Jesus of sufficient value to accomplish this and not some innocent sinless animal like a real lamb? A real lamb has no sin and it certainly has blood. God told Israel in the Old Testament to sacrifice these animals as a type or a pattern for the real “Lamb of God” who was to come. Jesus Christ is called the “Lamb” several times in the N.T. (Rev 21:9, 21:14, 21:22, 21:23, 21:27 to name a few). Here is another verse that speaks about Jesus being the lamb of God:
1Pe 1:19 But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot:
This verse informs us that the Jesus was our sinless Lamb and that His blood was precious. What made Jesus’ blood precious? To be precious means to be very valuable. Anything that is very valuable costs a lot. The Blood of Jesus is said to be a “Mighty Cost Paid” for our sins. So what made the blood of Jesus more valuable than that of a natural lamb? Isn’t blood just blood? That is the million dollar question for the day and if you can answer that question you will understand many things about the Bible that are also hard to accept. Let’s look at a clue that God gives us to this answer in the O.T.:
Lev 17:11 For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.
So here is a clue to the answer to the million dollar question. God tells us that the “Life” of the flesh is in the “blood”. Without blood your flesh has no life. People know this fact fairly well in our world. If you are injured badly and bleed excessively, you will die. So no blood means no life. This of course is a very interesting paradox being given to us. It would appear that after Jesus was raised from the dead that His “blood” was no longer necessary for His continued bodily functions to operate and to exist; after all most of His blood spilled out onto the ground on the hill of Golgotha while hanging on the cross. Then after His resurrection Jesus told the Mary Magdeline not to touch Him (John 20:17) until He went to heaven to present His remaining blood before God’s real temple in heaven (Heb 9:12). After Jesus returned to earth from heaven it was OK, to touch Him, because He told Thomas to “touch me, a spirit does not have flesh and bone” (Luke 24:39). Notice that Jesus never mentions His blood again, why is that? So I do not know if the resurrected Spiritual Body of Jesus has blood in it today or not. It is an interesting question to consider. After Jesus was resurrected he ate food with His disciples, but yet could walk through walls and appear in a locked room. So what will our resurrected body be like? I can only guess it will be like Jesus’ body. I think that I got off the main subject so I’ll continue with what the Blood represents now.
The Life of the Flesh revelation that we just read about in Leviticus 17:11, we now know that the blood represents Life. We can now ask, whose Life was it in the body of Jesus Christ? We know from the Bible that it was “God’s” life that was in the body of Jesus (Heb 10:5). So when they crucified Jesus the man, they crucified God. God gave us His life in exchange to buy our lives. That was an awesome display of a loving God. No one else qualified to pay the price for our salvation. No one else had the sufficient sinless qualities. No one else could pay the price of such great value that was necessary for our redemption so God came Himself and did what we could not do. I do not know about you, but I am extremely thankful that He did this.
1Jn 5:20 And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life.
The Bible is a highly complex book of spiritual information and putting it together correctly is one of our greatest challenges. If God who had no beginning or ending, could come to the earth and experience pain, suffering and death for our benefit then who are we to question was this necessary. If God did not think it was necessary He would have done something else. God experiences death for a reason and you should be smart enough to know that it was just not for our benefit alone, but also for His benefit. God is smart enough to multi-task like no one else that I have ever known. God can accomplish many things with one designed act of love and mercy. So if you want to think that God came only to die for your sins, you can think that and be wrong. Death is a legal separating force for covenants. Do you understand why God had to break covenant with Satan? First, you probably did not realize that God was in covenant with Satan, but this is a Bible fact if you look for it. I guess I’ll get back to my real subject today about flesh of God and the Blood of God. In 1 John 5:20, the True God is spoken of in conjunction with a direct connection to eternal life. One reason that God died was so that we could partake of His Eternal Life. Before God died on the cross, no man on the earth possessed God’s Eternal Life. I know that God took men in the O.T. on credit like Enoch and Elijah to heaven. But, even these men were looking forward to what God would accomplish in the future through Jesus Christ.
1Jn 5:12 He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.
He that has the Son of God now has this eternal life of God. This is what Jesus was talking about when He said for us to drink his blood. Jesus was speaking of His blood as being the life of God that we should be able to spiritually drink and become a part of us internally in our spirits. What happens when you drink natural water? It becomes a part of your natural body. If you do not have water to drink you die physically. These are all symbolic representations of what happens to you in the spiritual realm when you drink the Blood of Jesus. So what is the Blood of Jesus? It was His Life, but what is that to us now on earth right now?
1Jn 1:1 That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life;
I have already shown you scriptures that told us that the Body of Jesus was the Word of God. Now we see another revelation concerning the Blood of Jesus. If the life of the flesh is in the blood then you can substitute Life and Blood interchangeably and still be correct. It would appear to me that everything reverts back to God’s Word. If you want God’s Life you better study God’s Words and get them into your spirit. This was the key to the lesson that Jesus was teaching on when He said “eat my Flesh” and “drink my blood”. Spiritually speaking we would not be able to do this any other way but by eating and drinking the Word of God and the Word of Life. You may recall the Words of Jesus, when He said “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (Mat 4:4). Jesus is again giving us clues into the “hard sayings” that He was teaching in John. Jesus is comparing natural bread that we eat with our physical mouths to the spiritual bread from God. God’s spiritual bread is His Word and we can only eat this by getting God’s Word into our spirits. Jesus said by partaking of the spiritual food it will bring life to us. God’s words are that spiritual food that we need to eat and to drink in our spirits.
So if nothing else today I hope and pray that you learned two things. The Bible contains “Hard Sayings” that are difficult to grasp and accept on the surface only reading of the text. But, then you should have also learned that God has provided explanations in His Word to what these Hard Sayings mean. You have to study, you have to search the Bible for the key words and then you have to allow the Holy Spirit to direct you to the truth. In doing this you come much closer to knowing the truth as Jesus taught us in His Word.
Joh 8:31 Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed;
Joh 8:32 And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
God Bless,
If you would like to continue reading in this series about “Understanding Hard Sayings” found in the Bible you may go to “Part 5“.
What you should know about the Truth in the Bible? How will you know it when you see it?
(Ver 1.5) This is Part 2 in a series of lessons on understanding truth in the Bible. If you have not read from the beginning I would suggest that you go back and start with “Part 1” first. I have had way too many people try to tell me that the Bible is the truth, but yet none of these people can agree what it is that the Bible says. Isn’t that a problem to you? We have one group of people who profess only we know the truth ad another group who believes the opposite who say only they know the truth. This makes it very difficult for you to convince anyone that is not a Christian that the Bible is true and that they should become a Christian. Of course this is what Satan wants to happen and that is why he works so hard at confusing Christians and potential Christians. Truth is a very complex subject and an extremely advanced subject for any Bible study. Truth is such a complicated concept simply because there is no one but, God who knows it all. That leaves the rest of us in a state of varying degrees of ignorance and nobody likes to admit they are ignorant of anything. So as a result we have churches standing up in pride saying only we have all the truth and the rest of you are just a bunch of heretics.
There are many Christians who profess that the Bible contains God’s “Absolute Truth”. This is technically not a true statement if we base it upon a complete dictionary definition of the word “absolute”. The term absolute dictates both “complete” and “perfect” truth. But we should realize that God knows many other truths that were not yet recorded or made known to us. Instead of calling it absolute truth I would prefer to call it “ultimate” truth and I will try to explain this more clearly as I continue in the lesson. The Bible is clearly the only source for any ultimate spiritual Truth from God. Even if the Spirit of God speaks to someone a truth it will never contradict what He has given to us in the Bible already. I believe this and I preach it. I will also define the term “ultimate truth” as being truth that never changes or a truth that can not be overruled by the knowledge of any new truths. But the stated existence of even “Ultimate Truth” would also imply that there are other types of truths that are not at this level or truths that could be trumped by new knowledge. This would mean there could exist levels of potentially changing truths depending upon human perspective, understanding or even knowledge and you need to understand this. I believe that our perspective of truth changes even when God’s truth stays constant and that both of these occur at the same time. God’s truth will never change but our knowledge will change or at least it should.
Then there are those who look into the Bible and claim that every word in the plain textual natural meaning is the complete truth that needs to be known and they imply that that there is no other hidden spiritual truths within the plain text that can be found. Others say that everything written in the book is 100% the truth. But, I do not believe that is completely accurate according to what the Bible itself teaches us. Some people will automatically think that I am preaching some kind of heresy to say that the entire Bible is not 100% truth. But, they fail to understand the complexity of God’s Word so they make wrong assumptions and say things out of religious ignorance and I forgive them. You see I certainly do believe that the Bible is God’s inspired word and that it does contain the truth, but this truth is not all that easily visible on the surface only readings of the Bible that most Christians do. You see the Bible clearly describes to us numerous times that this book contains spiritual parables, proverbs, mysteries, secrets, puzzles, riddles, hidden wisdom, and many things that are not clearly self-evident without God showing us what they say and what they mean. That is why we have over 22,000 different Christian denominations in the world today and everybody thinks they know what is important.
So the first thing that you should learn about truth is that you do not know it. I guess I should qualify that statement and say you do not know it “all”, because you might know a very small part of it. I personally believe the amount of the truth that we all know combined when compared to God’s knowledge of the truth is like a thimble full of water being compared to all of the water in the oceans of the world. I mean come on, you do not know the number of hairs on top of your head and God knows the number of hairs on top of over 6 billion people in the world today. We all know just little bits and parts of the complete whole truth and too many times we think that we know way more than we do. According to the Bible, God is the infinite holder of all knowledge and all truth. But, the Bible also says that God’s ways are not our ways and that God’s thoughts are not our thoughts (Isa 55:9), and this is one of the human’s greatest problem and weakness. So if we know anything that is actually a part of God’s truth it is usually a result of God’s grace giving us insight and revelation into this information. Without God opening your understanding you will fail to see or know the truth. One of our biggest problems as human beings involves the fact that we are not God, but try to act like Him on many occasions. Do you understand that statement? Since only God knows everything, we are extremely limited to know only what He has revealed by His grace. Fortunately for us, God has revealed a lot of valuable information to us in His Word for us to know in these last days. But that still does not mean we know everything by far. Here are my foundational scriptures for today’s Bible lesson:
Joh 8:31 Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed;
Joh 8:32 And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
In this statement by Jesus concerning us knowing the truth are some valuable clues of us understanding this subject of what truth is. First off it says or at least implies that you do not yet know all of the truth and I will talk more about that soon. The basis of this statement almost implies that we can never know all of the truth, but at the same time it seems to imply that we will at some given point in time come to know what the revealed truth is by God’s grace. It is almost a paradoxical puzzle being presented to us. According to this verse, in order to know the truth, we must continue in the Word of God. To continue in the word implies an ongoing or even a never ending process of learning, or so it would seem. But by continuing in the Word of God we are further implied to come to an end or reach a level that God called “Know the Truth”. Have you arrived at this level of “Know the Truth”? If you think you have you have probably been deceived. The reason that I say that is because this verse says that this “knowledge of the truth” will set you and I free? Are you free? What does it mean to be free? Free from what or who? Those are extremely good questions and more difficult to answer than you might think. According to Jesus and the Bible, you are not 100% free right now! Meaning you are limited or controlled by something that is holding you captive today. What is this speaking of? I personally believe it is our ignorance that is holding us captive and when we learn what God has hidden for us to learn we will then understand what we need to do to become free. I would venture to challenge you to do some Bible study and find out what you need to be freed from. The reason that I say that is that no one ever escapes to freedom from captivity who does not first know that they are captives. What I learn from this verse is that Jesus teaches us that there will come a time when we learn and understand enough that will cause us to be free from someone or something and we will be able to clearly see when this happens. So if you think that you are already free you do not know that you are a captive. If you think that you have arrived at this “know the truth” level what are still doing here in this world?
So I alluded to a statement that there were different types of truth in my introduction. I believe that there are many types of truth in the world and that this truth changes based upon two things that I will attempt to introduce you to today. For example, 150 years ago it was impossible for man to fly and that was the known truth. However, today people fly everyday all over the world and that is the new or changed known truth. What changed to make this new truth of flying available to everyone? Does anyone in the world today still believe we can’t fly? It was our knowledge that changed. The real truth never changed, the real truth was that man could always fly. It was just what we thought was the truth because of our ignorance or lack of information forced us to believe the wrong truth. However, 150 years ago it was true, but today that view is not true. Do you understand these things that I’m telling you? Since our knowledge has increased in this area we have learned that the laws of aerodynamics overrule the laws of gravity and this allows us to fly. 150 years ago we only understood gravity and this was only a small part of the truth and we based all of our beliefs of the truth upon our limited knowledge. We never invented aerodynamics, so the laws of aerodynamics are not new, we just didn’t understand them and how to use them 150 years ago. So it was our ignorance of these existing laws of truth that kept us from flying 150 years ago and nothing else. Do you understand this? This is actually very important information to see and to apply to what you learn and know from the Bible. This is a prime example of how studying the Bible is today and why some people believe this way and others believes the complete opposite. There is always an absolute truth, but based upon your current level of knowledge you may not understand it and therefore still don’t believe that people can fly. There are way too many Christians like this in the world today.
God is so much smarter than we are that He can write things in a book over 2000 years ago that we do not clearly understood and yet the words are right there in front of us this whole time. I have just demonstrated to you that knowledge matters to determine what the truth is. Another example that I could give you is that men and women in the world today are more like 4 year old children when compared to God’s infinite knowledge level. If a college professor came to teach a 4 year old child some advanced calculus would the 4 year old grasp any of it? This is another major problem with modern Christianity found in the world today. Their spiritual maturity level is not sufficiently increased so that God can teach them anything about what is the real truth. So I mentioned the fact that there are different types of truth in the world and I will talk briefly about that. There are changing truths, inter-related truths, dependent truths, independent truths and universal truths to name some that I have discovered while studying the Bible. I’ve already discussed the changing truth concept based upon our level of knowledge so let’s talk about another factor that helps us to determine truth.
Let’s take a look at the concept of gold. Gold has great value in our world and that is a truth based on the way we see it. But, the actual value of gold is not known because it is viewed as an ever changing commodity that is manipulated by the markets of the gold traders on the earth. So the true value of gold is an unknown quantity and probably impossible to determine in our world. Why, because the quantity of available gold is tightly controlled and the prices are artificially manipulated to be high. I would dare to say that God knows the true value of gold but unless God revealed this, it would be only our best guess. However, I have read in the Bible that God paves His streets in heaven with gold, so that would mean that since we paved our streets on the earth with asphalt that God views gold to be His asphalt. So God’s perspective on gold is entirely different than our perspective on gold and this is why the Bible is so entirely difficult to understand. Gold must be so abundant in heaven that it is used for paving roads and here on earth it is viewed as a rare commodity. So your view of the truth is totally dependent upon your knowledge level and then your perspective of the subject being studied. I just showed you an example of how God’s perspective on something is vastly different than ours, so let’s adjust to see things like God sees them. Knowledge and perspective are two things that are critical to understand when studying the Bible. My current level of knowledge of the Bible may be more or less than your current level knowledge of the Bible, but my perspective of the Bible can be more accurate if I choose to see things the way God sees them. I have known many people who knew the Bible much better than I did, but understood practically none of it because they had the wrong perspectives. They viewed things naturally instead of seeing with God’s spiritual perspective. Therefore, correct Bible interpretation is dependent upon your level of knowledge and your perspective of the verses being studied. What happens if you do not agree with my beliefs? Nothing, but this just proves that at least one of us is wrong and possibly both of us are wrong and only God is right based upon what I have just taught you. As we continue to study in the Word of God we should be converging to the top of a spiritual pyramid type organizational or knowledge chart. We should be coming closer together to the agreement of what is the truth and the knowledge of the truth, to reach the upper point that God called “know the truth” pinacle point.
In my last blog about heaven I talked about the city called Jerusalem in the Bible. Let me ask you a new question about this city. Since most people do not know that there are three different cities called Jerusalem in the Bible, how can one man teach about Jerusalem from the Bible when they do not know this information? Does it matter what we teach if we are void of some of the key facts on the subject? Does it change the real Bible truth because someone teaches something that they think is the truth, but is not? You see you might believe something with all of your heart and you might be totally wrong because you do not know a couple of key scriptures that will solve your ignorance problem. You see that is the problem facing every Bible teacher, our ignorance forces us to teach a subject based upon our current level of knowledge and our current perspective. But, the mistake some Bible teachers make is when they teach at the level that they know like it is the complete truth and everyone else is totally wrong. You see the Bible contains more than one truth and all of the truth must fit together correctly. The Bible also has numerous hidden truths and these must be revealed by God in order to understand other truths. You cannot ignore one truth to teach another truth, all though people do this all the time. I’ve used this example before; I have heard more than one preacher read how the church is the body of Christ in the Bible. I believe these verses whole heartedly, but then they jump to wrong conclusions and say that means we are not the bride of Christ. Their ignorance causes them to criticize those who teach things contrary to what they believe. They say that if Christ has a bride we have a bride since we are the body of Christ and that is very wrong. What these men of God lack is knowledge of how the church became the body of Christ and this would solve their problem and their view of the actual truth. To them what they teach is the truth or they would not be a Christian. However, ignorance and knowledge levels play a huge role in us knowing the real truth. This is the basis for the majority of all of the problems faced within the church today; those who do not know much teach like they know everything and they cause nothing but vast confusion.
What have we learned today? The primary thing should be that “absolute truth” doesn’t change. But, our view of the truth changes as we change based upon the two primary factors that I have taught you about today. As your knowledge increases of the Bible, your understanding of the Bible should also be increasing. If your understanding of the Bible is not increasing, then check up on your perspective on the subjects that you are studying in the Bible. Could it be that you are seeing things in the Bible from your perspective and not God’s perspective? You should be smart enough to be able to judge yourself and determine if you are doing the right things that I have just discussed. It is only by the church of God making the right adjustments that God can accomplish what He has planned for us. I am a firm believer that before Jesus returns for us that the church will become one unit in one accord, victorious overcomers over Satan our enemy. This I believe is the clue to Jesus statement of “you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free”. There must come a point in time when we know the truth, in order to experience this freedom that Jesus described. This is what I am working towards; this is my goal for you and me today. Continue learning the Bible and continue growing in the knowledge of Him who is faithful and true and I will be back with more of the knowledge of God in my next Blog.
The Most Important Things You Should Know About Heaven!
(Ver 2.0) Today is a new subject for me, even though I have taught on parts of this subject in other lessons. I believe that it is so important for people to clearly know about heaven; that I have decided to talk about it again using new terms and perspectives to give people another chance to grasp these concepts found in the Bible. Does God exist and if so where does He exist? This of course is an extremely complex subject for humans to comprehend since we are a naturally born people limited to the constraints found within a physical world and the Bible clearly says that God is a Spirit (John 4:24). So how do natural people come to understand spiritual things? Spiritual things are not the same as natural things. God lives outside of time constraints and space constraints. There are many people in the world who do not believe there is a God. They base these beliefs on the fact that they have never seen God, cannot see God, do not ever hear from God or have any other proof or evidence that He exists. They further expound that since God does not do anything to stop the evil in the world, He must not exist. Of course, the flip side of this extreme is another extreme of people believing that God is causing all of the evil in the world and therefore they do not want anything to do with Him either. But, all of this is purely by God’s design in order to give man a free and fair choice. God purposely hides Himself from our view, if He did not do this you would have no choice but to believe that He existed. All of that said, God has spoken to us directly in a written book form called the Holy Bible. I have studied this book for close to 25 years and have determined that there is no way that this book did not come from God directly. There is just too much complex information for it not to have a very intelligent designer and an author who could be no one but God. However, there are certainly many others in the world that view this book as a collection of fantasy and made up stories because they do not understand anything that is in it. This is again by God’s design; and it gives people who want to see the truth the opportunity to know Him and those who refuse the truth the right to go to hell. It is a very perplexing method of operation, yet I cannot question God’s ways since He is entirely smarter than I am. So today I want to discuss some very important things found in the Bible about Heaven, what it is, where it is and what do we need to know about it? We might talk about some of the characteristics of heaven like the existence of many mansions being there and how the streets are paved with gold and God’s throne is surrounded by angels, but I do not think these are the most important things to know about heaven so if we do talk about them, they will be later or in another follow-up lesson. I want to start with a verse found in the N.T.:
1Pe 3:22 Who is gone into heaven, and is on the right hand of God; angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto him.
Why is it necessary for all the angels and spiritual powers to be made subject to Jesus, the Son of God? That is a very interesting question to consider. The Bible certainly has some very difficult statements to try to explain and this is certainly one of them. I will state what I believe and say that if every spiritual force and angel was already subject to God, I do not believe it would have been necessary for God to put them under His Son Jesus. Wow, I just got off the subject for a quick side trip to get you to think about something you may have never thought of before. So let’s go back to the beginning of this verse and notice that the Bible says that Jesus has gone back into heaven and is now located at the right hand of God. This verse very clearly informs us that there is a real place called heaven and that Jesus is there right now. We know from reading the Gospels in verses like John 3:13 and 6:51 that Jesus said before He was came to the earth that He came from Heaven. So heaven is where Jesus came from and heaven is where He went back to after He died and rose from the dead. Since the Bible says in the mouth of 2 or 3 witnesses let every word be established, I will give you another witness to this fact that we just read:
Heb 12:2 Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.
Jesus, again is very clearly described to be at the right of God at this moment in time. Where Jesus is now is also the location of the throne of God. A throne is always a place where a King rules His Kingdom. So heaven was the Kingdom of God, before Jesus came and died on the cross. However, God tells us that now the kingdom of God is within us (Luke 17:21). So it appears to me that God is said to be moving His Kingdom location and I will talk more about this later.
Heb 9:24 For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us:
The word “heaven” appears in the KJV Bible more than 550 times. However, it is not always in reference to the spiritual location of God’s throne. The word “heaven” can refer to at the minimum 3 different realms or dimensions and you must be smart enough to figure out which one God is talking about by the context of the verse being read. Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 12:2 that he was caught up to the “3rd heaven” where he saw things that he could not verbally describe to us with human words. That makes heaven sound pretty awesome if you can’t even describe it. We can see in this verse in Hebrew 8:24 that Jesus is said to enter into a “Holy Place” not made by the hands of men. So God is now telling us about heaven as a spiritual place. This verse informs us that heaven has a temple that is the original pattern of the objects made on the earth by the hands of men in Jerusalem. This heavenly temple is called the “true temple” which would imply to me that the earthly temple in Jerusalem must be the “false temple”. But, I guess I won’t go there either today!
2Th 1:7 And to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels,
As we have seen Jesus ascended into heaven after His resurrection and is now at the right hand of God. However, the Bible informs us very strongly that Jesus is coming back very soon. Not long from now this Jesus who went up to heaven will come back down the same way that He ascended, the angels told the disciples this in Acts 1:11. This verse in 2 Thessalonians tells us that when Jesus returns He will bring with Him many mighty angels. So we have just discovered a revelation that heaven is the home or a house that is full of the angels of God and that these spiritual entities are not insignificant beings. They clearly are said to be very mighty, meaning they are very strong. Here is another witness to this fact:
Heb 12:22 But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels,
So heaven is not described to be a small place. This place also has a very specific name and is called the “Heavenly Jerusalem”. This spiritual place is described to have a mountain named “Zion”. This place is clearly described to be the “City of the Living God”. This does not sound small or insignificant either, especially since you cannot number the population of this city. This city “Heavenly Jerusalem” is said to be the home of an innumerable number of angels. This is the mighty spiritual force army that will return with Jesus when He comes back. It is also critical that you note the name of this spiritual city. This city is called the “Heavenly Jerusalem”. Did you know that heaven had a name? This is another reference to the “true” heaven that we just read about previously. Why does God have another city called Jerusalem? I guess I should ask, why did God name the earthly city Jerusalem the same as His heavenly city Jerusalem? You do understand that the heavenly city Jerusalem certainly existed before the earthly city came to be. Isn’t that an interesting question to consider? This spiritual city seems to be called the real or true city of God. This is what I believe, God created a covenant with Abraham to bring forth a natural nation called Israel who would build God an earthly city that would be a pattern of His spiritual city Jerusalem in heaven. I believe that God did this for several reasons and I will probably not be able to get into all of these today. But, one of the reasons I believe was to show us a city that was like another city that we can’t see. Why is there just one city in our entire world that has the focus of every eye on it? Why does this city “earthly Jerusalem” gain so much attention? It is because it is a pattern of the “heavenly Jerusalem”. Just as the earthly city Jerusalem has had numerous attack and people come against it, I believe the heavenly city of Jerusalem is being attacked. Just as the earthly city of Jerusalem is being forced to stop building and expanding, so the heavenly city of God was attacked in the same way by Satan and his army. The majority of the world governments are proposing that the earthly Jerusalem be divided. If you study the Bible, God is also being forced to divide His heavenly city. So let’s look at another witness to this heavenly city of God called Jerusalem:
Gal 4:26 But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all.
Here is another verse of scripture in the Bible that describes Heaven as a place that is somewhere above. Again it specifically names this city and calls it “Jerusalem”, but this time it qualifies it by calling it the Jerusalem Above! So we automatically know that it is not the Jerusalem that is on the earth or the Jerusalem below. Heaven is again said to be a city called Jerusalem, where the throne of God resides with an innumerable number of angels. But, this verse in Galatians tells us another major clue to a puzzle we didn’t even know was a puzzle. This city is called the Mother of the church. You do not understand yet how important that statement is, unless you understand God’s spiritual family structure. What we have just learned, is that the Heavenly Jerusalem is called the “Mother” of all of those in the Church of Jesus Christ, so this means the heavenly Jerusalem is not the Church! Did you understand what I just said? I’ll show why this is important to note very soon. What is a mother? A mother is a woman who has had a child or children. Wow that is one of the most important things you can learn today, if you can grasp this concept. A city is a woman, a woman is a city. A spiritual city is a spiritual woman and she can have spiritual children. But, remember that this heavenly city Jerusalem was comprised of a spiritual nation of angels which included Satan. Uh oh? I just let you in on some more information that I’m not ready to discuss yet. Let’ me shift gears and talk about another woman briefly that is said to also come from heaven:
Rev 21:2 And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
First take note of what this verse says. A city came down from heaven and this city is called a woman, a bride and the wife for a husband who we will see later in this chapter to be the Lamb. This woman has the same name as the other two cities that we have already been looking at. This name is of course the “New Jerusalem”. Why is all of this that I am trying to teach you important to know? Because it helps you to know who you are in Christ and where you fit in God’s New Kingdom which I am attempting to reveal to you. In Revelation 21:2 we either have the same city Jerusalem or a new and different city called Jerusalem being described to us. From my current understanding of the Bible this is clearly a different city than the one that I just showed you in Hebrews and Galatians called the Heavenly Jerusalem and here is why I believe that. First off did you notice that this woman in Rev 21:2 comes down from heaven? Did heaven come down or did the city called New Jerusalem come down from heaven? Wow, you see heaven did not come down it is still there. What happens when a woman gives birth to a baby? Does the baby come down the birth canal and out to the waiting doctor? So we just read in Galatians 4 that this heavenly Jerusalem is our mother, meaning she gave spiritual birth to us. Let me ask you a basic question, do you have babies first or do you get married first? I guess I should ask which one should come first and not how it works in our world many times. If the heavenly Jerusalem is a woman who gave birth in Galatians 4, then she should not logically be the woman who is getting married in Revelation 21. Get it? You see the woman called Heavenly Jerusalem must already be married in order to have had children. This is not rocket science so you should be at least following my logic a little bit. If you continue to read Galatians 4 and see what it is describing to us, you will hopefully see that it is using the life story of Abraham as an allegory for a type of God. So let’s review the story of Abraham. As you may or may not recall, Abraham had two wives and two sons. One was from the much younger Egyptian slave girl Hagar and Galatians says this is a type of Jerusalem on the earth (Gal 4:25). The woman Hagar is called a “bondwoman” and she gives birth to a slave son who is not the heir with the promised son. Sarah who is not named directly in Galatians 4 is the type of the “Freewoman” and is called the Jerusalem that is above. This means that Sarah (the Heavenly Jerusalem) existed prior to Hagar (the Earthly Jerusalem) and they both now have children, but Hagar’s son came first and then Sarah’s son came after. We should know that Abraham represents God in this allegory since the Bible tells us that He was married to natural Israel (Jer 31:32). What you must see is that both of these cities called Jerusalem existed simultaneously and are called women who are in covenant with and married to God. Why is God telling us this information? It must be very important for us to see and to understand clearly. What you should notice in Galatians 4 is that God is quoting an Old Testament prophecy found in the book of Isaiah.
Gal 4:27 For it is written, Rejoice, thou barren that bearest not; break forth and cry, thou that travailest not: for the desolate hath many more children than she which hath an husband.
As you can see God is quoting Isaiah 54:1 in this verse. This verse tells us that there are two women, one a barren woman (Sarah) and one a married woman (Hagar). As we have seen God is using the allegory found in Genesis 16 of Sarah and Hagar to reveal this information to us in Galatians 4. Sarah the older barren woman as we have seen is the one that is said to now have more children than the bondwoman Hagar. So the Bible tells us that these are two covenants and you automatically jump to the wrong conclusion that this is the Old Covenant between God and Israel and the New Covenant between Jesus and the Church. However, that just doesn’t make any sense based upon the information we have just read about these women. The Heavenly Jerusalem (Sarah) existed prior to Israel’s covenant with God on Mt Sinai (Hagar). This city had to exist prior to Jesus coming to the earth, dying and establishing a New Covenant. Then in Galatians 4:26 it says very clearly that this “Heavenly Jerusalem” is the mother of the church and not the church. So whatever covenant this is referring to, it is definitely not the New Covenant between Jesus Christ and the church and it is also not the old covenant between God and Abraham in the Old Testament. So that complicates things tremendously since no one has ever taught on the fact that the Bible mentions three different covenants and not just two. You see, this third hidden covenant has to be God’s covenant with the angels in heaven that existed before Adam ever came along.
Rev 21:2 And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
So let’s go back to Revelation 21:2 and notice that God is describing a city coming down from above that is called the “New Jerusalem”. What does the term “New” mean? It means it is not the Old Jerusalem. Which one was the barren old Jerusalem (Sarah), it was the Heavenly Jerusalem that was above. Are you beginning to see and understand the concepts being given to us? God has problems with the “Heavenly Jerusalem” and the “Earthly Jerusalem” so He creates a “New Jerusalem” to replace them both. Let’s look at the verse that comes right before this one in Revelation 21:
Rev 21:1 And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.
Again why replace the old heaven and the old earth with new ones if there are not problems with the old? What you do not realize is that God is a just God. He does everything in a decent legal ordered way. If God does not follow strict rules He would be no different than Satan the thief who comes to kill steal and destroy what you have. I have often asked myself and God this question, “If you found sin in Satan why didn’t you cast him into hell and get rid of him?” The only answer that I got back from God was that He could not legally do this and I do not have time to try to explain that statement in this lesson. You can go read some of my other blogs where I give you some clues to the answers to that question. But, it has something to do with this hidden third covenant that God had with the angels and I’ll leave it at that for today.
So getting back to Revelation 21:2; we can review that this verse is also describing a city called “New Jerusalem” who is also described as a woman who is to be married to the Lamb of God (Jesus Christ). A marriage is also a covenant defined to us in the Bible, so we know this is God’s New Covenant with US! So what have I taught you so far? We have three women, three covenants, three cities all named Jerusalem. One is called “Earthly Jerusalem”, another is called “Heavenly Jerusalem” and the last one is called “New Jerusalem” or “Holy Jerusalem”. This implies that the other two women were not the Holy Jerusalem of God and were definitely older than the “New” woman Jerusalem. Why is this important? Because God tells us that this city will come down from Heaven to be reestablished back here on the new earth. In this new city, God tells us that there will be no unrighteous people, no uncircumcised people and no ungodly people, only those that have been purchased by the blood of the Lamb. Finally there will be no Satan, no hurt, no harm, no thieves, no robbers, no murderers and no rapists, no one to do evil. There is where the Bible describes that we will spend eternity with God.
2Pe 3:13 Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.
So even as Peter wrote about looking forward to this “New” heaven and “New” earth so we should also look for the coming new city of God that dwells only righteousness.
Many people want to know, where is this heaven that now is located? We have clearly seen in the Bible that it exists and that Jesus is there right now at the right hand of the throne of God. This place is large and holds an innumerable number of angels. It also holds the spirits of all of those righteous people that have died on the earth. They are there as witnesses (Heb 12:1) that are rooting us on in our spiritual journey. The people in heaven do not see what we see on the earth. Spiritual people are oblivious to natural things. Natural things are not important to spiritual people anymore. So people in heaven do not know what kind of car you drive, what kind of house you live in or how much money that you have in the bank. They do not know if you are married or single, and they do not care. The angels and people in heaven are only concerned with your eternal destiny. Have you made Christ your Lord and will you spend eternity with us. Whenever a sinner comes to know Christ, the Bible says that heaven rejoices. So heaven knows about spiritual things.
So where is this Heavenly Jerusalem located? The Bible actually does not specifically tell us, primarily because we would not really understand its spiritual location. As you recall this Jerusalem was said to be “Above”. But, since we live on the earth which is a round ball, every direction you are standing on has an up direction. So is heaven all around us? We are actually given some clues in the Bible and I will end this lesson with the information about the location of heaven:
Psa 75:6 For promotion cometh neither from the east, nor from the west, nor from the south.
Psa 75:7 But God is the judge: he putteth down one, and setteth up another.
Many times God gives us direct information in Bible verses of specific things like God is a Spirit. However, other times God gives us indirect information and we learn from what is not given in the verse. This is the case here in Psalm 75:6. God tells us three directions that promotion does not come from. That only leaves one direction called “North” and that gives us an implied location for the direction of heaven. As you can see clearly God leaves this direction out of the statement and then in the following verse we have a contextual statement that God is the one that promotes one person and puts another person down. So I take these verses to indicate to us where we can find the location of heaven to be from God’s perspective. I assume this to mean you go to the North Pole of our planet and look straight up and this would represent the nearest proximity of the location of heaven.
Isa 66:1 Thus saith the LORD, The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool: where is the house that ye build unto me? and where is the place of my rest?
So we have another verse in Isaiah that seems to indicate the direction of the throne of God to be an implied North. If you can see that the North Pole could be considered the top of our planet, the earth is said to be the location of God’s footstool. So God is sitting on the throne up above us.
I have covered a lot of new information from the Bible about this place called Heaven and shown you many things for you to think about. These are some of the most important things that I have found about this place in the Bible. However, I believe that if you read Revelation 21 you can see that heaven is not our final eternal destination. It would appear that God is preparing a new heaven and a new earth that we will live within eternity on. The Bible says that our eyes have not foreseen the things that God has prepared for them that love Him (1 Co 2:9). So it sounds like a really awesome time in store for us. I don’t know why anyone would not want to go to this place?
Are there Any Rules in Life to Follow? A Rules Based System To Life!
(Ver 1.3) This Part 1 in a series of lessons on modern computer concepts that are found in the Bible. If I learned anything from being a computer programmer for over 20 years, I learned that everything in this life has very strict rules or it is useless. In this life you do not get to do everything that you can do just because you can do them. You do not get to drive on any side of the street that you want to. You do not get to drive through any intersection as fast as you want to when you want to. You do not get to do many things because rules exist to keep you from hurting yourself and others. This is the basis of the majority of the problems in this world today. The problems of the world are caused by people who do stuff to other people just because they have the ability or power to do them. It comes from a self-centered ME mentality! The world is all about ME! What I need, what I want, what feels good to ME! People then use their attitudes of Me to take what they need or want from others without thinking about what they are doing to the ones that they are hurting. If everyone takes this attitude, then only the strongest survive to live. This attitude of ME is a self-centered absence of the feelings of the God kind of “LOVE” for anyone else. As long as people care more about themselves than they do about others, they will remain apart from the life of God. Today I want to talk about a computer programming concept called “Rules Based Systems” in relationship to what God and the Bible say about the concepts of them or the absence from them. Why are rules important to live by? Why do rules exist? The Bible is a highly complex book of spiritual information and it cannot be interpreted correctly without knowing God’s rules for interpretation. I’ll start by giving you a definition of this term from the internet:
rule-based systems are used as a way to store and manipulate knowledge to interpret information in a useful way.
I believe that God taught me about rules based systems as I learned computer programming. A rules based system is one that adheres to a strict set of laws in order to work correctly. When I first started learning computer programming in High School, I started with the Basic programming language. I also played with another early computer language called FORTRAN. Then I started working for a company and going to night school to learn mainframe programming. I learned Mainframe Assembler and COBOL and became an expert in both of these languages. This was of course way before there were any PC’s in the world. What I learned from programming languages, is that they have very strict rules that must be followed, or guess what they do not work. You create your program and then compile your program and get nothing but a long list of errors back. This is not fun, when this happens, but it happened a lot until I learned to follow the rules more closely. As I became more detailed oriented, I learned to pay attention to the little things that use to be where I made most of my mistakes. I would just automatically learn to look for them and try not to repeat them. I do not think that I ever got so good that I wrote a new program that complied cleanly the first time, but I did get much better. So why am I describing my work experience to you? Because it helps me more with Bible interpretation and understanding the Bible that you can imagine.
Did you notice two key words in the definition of what a rules based system was? The two key words are “knowledge” and the “interpretation” of the knowledge. A rules based system helps us to process vast amounts of information and then come up with the correct interpretations of that information. So what is the Bible? The Bible is the Spiritual knowledge of God written down in a book for us to read. However, the Bible is widely interpreted in many different ways resulting in contrasting and conflicting points of view. That is probably the major problem in the church today. Everybody has their own opinion to what the Bible means. Why is that? It is because of a complete disregard to the rules of Bible interpretation. Some people know one rule and they sometimes follow it and then sometimes they do not. They are very inconsistent. Other people know of no rules and they are all over the board with their interpretations. Only a few know more than one rule to Bible Interpretation and try to adhere to them consistently.
While I read and studied the Bible, I started to recognize patterns of a rules based system. Since God does not give us a list of the rules in any one place in the Bible, the correct understanding of the Bible must start with figuring out what are the rules that God has established for us to follow. You see I know that every computer language has their own individual set of rules to follow. However, I also learned that many of these rules cross languages and apply to other languages. Even though each language was uniquely defined, the application of the rules applied across the board. So in order to even begin to understand the Bible, you must first establish God’s rules for interpretation and not your rules. This is the first step of understanding God and the Bible.
Do you realize that God follows the rules that He has established? That is the beauties of God; He is a highly intelligent being. His ability is so far beyond our most powerful computer. I see the world around us and I recognize an intelligently designed world full of natural laws, systems and sub-systems. This is the basis of any large complex computer programming system also. Anything with an intelligent design has organization and rules. So why do people not recognize that the Bible is also an intelligently designed rules based system? Obviously they do not understand the importance of rules and following them. If you are a Christian you should be following rules in everything that you do. Following rules does not save you; it just helps you live the life that God intended for you on this earth. Christians who do not follow rules are no different than unsaved people who rob banks because they want money or rape women because it feels good to them. I know that is an extreme examples of bad Bible interpretations, but yet I feel that strongly about the subject. I do not mean to reduce rape and robbery to minor offenses, I hope you understand the point and forgive the analogy.
So what ire my main points today?
- Start by Recognizing that the Bible is a Rules Based System.
- Then find out what the rules are!
- Next follow the rules with all diligence!
When I was computer operator, on the top of our mainframe CPU, there was a big sign that said “THINK”. Wow, if more people would do that one word! To think before you act or speak is a widely ignored talent of many people in the world today. I have many blogs on the subject of Bible Interpretation, I hope you that you will go and read them and then learn to follow them. Life is a rules based system of existence. This is the intelligent design of God. If you learn the rules and follow them there will be great benefits to being a doer of the word of God and not just a hearer only. By learning the rules and following rules I believe that the Body of Christ will finally come into agreement to what the Bible says. So I challenge you today to apply what you’ve read today. By learning rules and living within their guidelines you make the Bible useful as God had intended it to be. You take the words of an intelligent God and you can finally begin to understand them. There is no greater benefit than knowing the real God.
If you would like to continue reading in this series you may go to “Part 2” now.
Psalm 1: Learning the Secrets to Success In Life!
(Ver 1.4) There are more subjects in the Bible to study than there is time to study them. Today I want to discuss the first chapter of Psalms. The book of Psalms is a series of thoughts from God written down by the prophets of God for his people. Moses is known to have written some of the Psalms, and David is known to have written some of the Psalms. The book is a vast wealth of information and has many very profound revelations and prophecies within it. The Book of Psalms is written like the other parts of the Bible, in a seemingly random pattern of unrelated thoughts, but yet Jesus said these are those that testify of me (John 5:39). So we should be able to see Jesus in every book of the Bible and practically every chapter. Today I’m going to go through a few thoughts on the first chapter of the Book of Psalms. This is not a long chapter so it will not take a long time for us to review it and see what God says to us:
Psa 1:1 Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.
What does it mean to walk in the counsel of the ungodly? What is counsel? The word translated as counsel is a word that means “advice”. Advice are words of guidance or the suggestions on what you should do in life. There is no shortage of “free advice” on TV and the internet. However, for God’s people we are not supposed to get our advice on what we should do or where we should go or even what we should invest in from ungodly people. If you are looking to your unsaved friends, co-workers, newspapers, magazines or TV shows like Oprah for your counsel or guidance for your life you are being deceived. Then this verse says Christians should not stand in the way of sinners. That does not mean we are obstacles to them, it means don’t do what they do. Just as we do not follow the advice of people who are ignorant of God, we do not observe them and do what they do. Jesus put it this way, if the blind lead the blind, they will both fall into the ditch (Luke 6:39). This is just having basic good logic, common sense and is sound judgment to follow. God’s Word is the only truth that you will ever need to help you make every decision. Of course this gets more complex than that, but the Word of God is the foundation for building your life and there is nothing else that can replace it. If you base your decisions upon anything else you have already been deceived and you cannot blame God for what happens to you, even though many people still try to.
Psa 1:2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.
You see this verse says exactly what I just tried to say to you, but in a more direct way. The basis of your life is the Word of God. The Bible says “I will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on me” (Isa 26:3). Isn’t that saying the same thing that this verse in Psalms just said? How do you delight in the Law of the Lord? It tells you that you keep it in your mind both day and night. That is a mental exercise and a thought process that is easier said than done for most people. There are just too many distractions in life to fulfill this verse completely, or at least this is what many people think. Their mind has been cluttered with many worthless things that do not mean anything, nor do they have any redeeming value to them. These are the designed distractions of the enemy used to get your mind off God and His word. Why do you think there are so many mindless TV shows on today? They are intentionally designed distraction of the blind leading the blind. Reality TV has gotten so immoral that I refuse to waste my time with it. However, there are so many people watching these TV reality shows, it drives more of them to be created every year. This generation appears to be consumed with the trivial mindless words spoken from people who do not know God or even want to know Him. I was watching Jay Leno the other night and he had a Jay Walking on that had people from off of the street being asked basic questions on American History. Nobody could answer any of the basic American History questions, but everyone of them could answer and tell you who was on the TV show Jersey Shores. What a mindless generation we have allowed to be raised in this country.
Psa 1:3 And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.
Here is why I like the Bible so much! It has verses like this in it and ignorant spiritually blind people do not have a clue what it means. If you have ever really read the Bible seriously you know that people are often times symbolically called trees in the Bible. For example, people are the symbolic trees of the field who clap their hands in Isaiah 55:12. As you can see in this verse, people are only prosperous in life if they have done the verses prior to this verse. Are you interested in being prosperous? Some of the secrets to prosperity are found right here in this chapter and that is why I am talking about them today. This verse is a parallel verse to one I always associate with it found in Revelation 22. We can read in Revelation 22 about the “tree of life” standing on either sides of the river flowing from the throne of God and we can see that these trees produce their 12 kinds of fruit every month forever. God is making a connection here and hopefully you can see it. The people in the church are the trees being described in this verse. We are to produce our spiritual fruit for God here and now in this life and forever throughout eternity. It is a never ending process of spiritual replication.
The last three verses in chapter one are in stark contrast to the “Trees Planted by the Waters”. The last three verses speak of the ungodly who do their own things, their own way and do not care for others. They are described to be “chaff”. This is found to be a descriptive term for that which you consume with fire. I do not like to think about people going to hell, but yet it clearly says in the Bible that people go there who do not want to follow God’s ways. So it comes down to a decision on every human on the planet and many of them do not understand the severe consequences of the choices they have made. I use to be one of those who rejected Christ and thought the church was stupid. Now I have learned that I was the one that was stupid and have been able to see finally that I have made the correct choice. More than likely I have told you nothing new today from this chapter study, but have only helped to remind you that if you are a Christian you also have made the right choice. God bless you today!
Myths about Jesus in the Gospels! PT 2 An Omnipotent Jesus vs. an Anointed Jesus?
(Ver 1.2) This is Part 2 in the series of advanced Bible Study lessons discovering the real Jesus of the Bible. These studies also spend time countering the myths of the false Jesus taught in many churches today. If you have not read the first lesson in the series I might suggest that you go and start with reading “Part 1“. There are a number of things taught about Jesus from the Bible that are clearly fabricated by Satan to discredit the real Jesus found in the Bible. In my last lesson on the real Jesus, I discussed a poor Jesus vs. a Jesus with money. I know I did not fully cover the subject, but I gave you some key scriptures that are very important to note when discussing the subject. I believe that Satan wants to portray the Jesus of the Bible as a homeless man who owned nothing and then he tries to use this image to imply that the followers of Jesus are never supposed to rise higher than their master the teacher. So if Jesus owned nothing Christians are supposed to own nothing and I do not follow that religious philosophy simply because that is not the Jesus of the Bible. I believe there are many scriptures in the Gospels that dispel the fact that Jesus owned nothing and I gave you many of these for your consideration. Please do not accept anything that I teach without you seeing it in the Bible. Verify everything that I say using your own Bible to confirm it. This is the only way that you are insured that someone is not deceiving you.
Today I want to attack another myth taught in many churches using the truth in the Bible. These churches teach that Jesus came to the earth as God in His full omnipotent Godhead power and they claim that He proved it by demonstrating to us countless miracles and supernatural signs like speaking to the wind and waves and walking on water to name a couple of prominent examples. I am going to start this discussion with a scripture that you probably do not associate as being important to this subject of Jesus’ omnipotence found in the book of Acts:
Act 10:38 How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him.
So I will not debate that Jesus was God in the flesh, if you do not know this already you should go read and study your Bible to find this for yourself. I have written about it in other Bible lessons, if you want to go read them. This verse in Acts is very clear, yet totally ignored by those who profess an Omnipotent Jesus theology. Omnipotent means “all powerful” capable of doing anything in His full Godhead strength. Was this the Jesus of the Bible when he was born in a manger and grew to be a man? If it was why did God have to anoint Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and Power? This verse implies that if God had not anointed Jesus, he would not have been able to heal anyone. It clearly says that it is the spiritual anointing power that healed the people and not the man Jesus of Nazareth. If Jesus is God in the full manifestation of omnipotence there is no need for any anointing, is there? If you do not see this, you do not know how to read. It just isn’t that difficult to see.
Do you know what “Christ” means? Jesus is called the “Christ” in the Bible. This is the Greek word for a Hebrew word translated as “Messiah” in the Old Testament. Do you know what “Christ” means? What is the definition of the word “Christ”. This word “Christ” means “anointed”, to rub or smear with oil. When David was anointed to be King by Samuel he poured oil over David’s head (1 Sam 16:13). This was an outward symbolic representation for an internal spiritual process that was taking place. This is also what happened to Jesus. Do you remember when Jesus was baptized in the river Jordan by John the Baptist and the Holy Spirit in the form of Dove descended from heaven? (Mat 3:16) This was God anointing Jesus of Nazareth the man with the Spirit of God and Power that we just read about in Acts 10. So why was it necessary for God to descend from Heaven if the Spirit of God was already in the body of Jesus in full omnipotent power? I hope you are seeing the problem with the erroneous teaching of many ignorant people in the church. Let’s verify this belief based upon the words of Jesus himself:
Luk 4:18 The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,
Here we have Jesus speaking to the people in the temple. Jesus opens the scroll and finds the place it is written about Him in Isaiah 61:1 and He begins to read. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me”. In this verse Jesus is claiming using prophecy what we just observed in the Baptism of John. This claim was given that the Holy Spirit had descended upon him from the heavens in the form of a dove to rest. Jesus is very clearly stating that God has anointed him to do certain things and He begins to list these things that He is anointed by God to do. So if Jesus could do everything using full omnipotent deity power, Jesus must have lied and He did not need to read a verse about being anointed, does He? I thought God could do anything, especially an omnipotent God in full Godhead power. I hope you are beginning to see the falsity of what many try to teach you on the internet and in some churches. It is absolutely critical to see and understand the real Jesus so that you can understand the real you. God used this anointing power throughout the Old and New Testaments to give His power to men. God still anoints people to do things today in the world. But, my lesson is not about God’s anointing on us, it is about why it was necessary for God to anoint Jesus so let’s continue.
There are many things in the Bible that are difficult to explain with a single lesson because there are more than one inter-related subjects to also discuss or we do not understand what is being taught. In the Gospels we find that Jesus went around and healed many people but, what was the “determining factor” for why some got healed and some did not. First let me ask you did you know that Jesus did not heal everyone that was sick? I will prove this to you as I go. Was it God’s choice on who to heal and who to leave sick, lame and crippled or was there other factors involved that we do not yet understand? The Bible says very clearly that God does not show “favoritism”.
Lev 19:15 Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment: thou shalt not respect the person of the poor, nor honour the person of the mighty: but in righteousness shalt thou judge thy neighbour.
Act 10:34 Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons:
Jas 2:9 But if ye have respect to persons, ye commit sin, and are convinced of the law as transgressors.
Does God ask people to do things that God does not do Himself? I don’t think so, if it is a sin to respect one person over and above another, then God commits sin if he heals one person and does not heal another. So we clearly have a problem, when reading the Gospels, since Jesus did not heal everyone. So there must be another factor that can explain this situation and not leave us confused. Do you recall when Jesus was walking in Mark 5 with one of the rulers of the synagogue named Jairus? Jesus was on the way to his house to heal his daughter and there was a very large crowd of people following Jesus and touching Him. In this chapter is an incredible story within a story. Why is everyone touching Jesus on every side? Was Jesus just a man with rock star status to them or were they all after the healing Power that Jesus told everyone that He was anointed with? You are going to have to make up your own mind why people are touching Jesus, because the Bible does not directly tell us. However, while everyone is touching Him and He is walking to the house of the sick girl, a woman with an issue of blood comes up and forces her way through the crowd and touches the hem of His garment. Jesus stops and turns and asks a very funny question for an omnipotent and omniscient God to ask, “Who touched me?”. Was this a blunder by Jesus or did He not know who it was that touched Him after all the disciples said “Master the crowd is touching you on every side”. In other words the disciples see people touching Jesus everywhere, but they did not understand what just happened and only Jesus and this one woman knew what just transpired. However it is clear that Jesus felt the power leave but did not know where the power went based upon the question.
So I am going to make a longer story a shorter story for the sake of time. The woman with the issue of blood feels the power of God go into her and heal her and Jesus feels the power of God go from Him and heal her, and yet Jesus does not know who it is that got healed. Why is this? It only make sense if you understand the Bible correctly, otherwise it is just a point of confusion. Jesus we have seen was anointed by God with the Holy Ghost and Power (Acts 10:38). Jesus told us that the Holy Ghost had anointed Him in Luke 4:18. We also saw the Holy Ghost descend upon Jesus like a dove in Matthew 3:16. So we have 3 witnesses that say that Jesus was anointed with the Spirit of God. So Jesus had the power of God clearly upon Him with the anointing. But what was it that caused one woman in the crowd of hundreds to receive this power while the others did not? That is a very important question to understand the answer to. Fortunately Jesus gives us the answer:
Mar 5:34 And he said unto her, Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague.
Jesus gives us the answer to the million dollar question of why this woman received her healing and the hundreds of others who touched Him did not. Jesus said that the determining factor was her “faith”. So now we have a new problem what is “faith” and why did she have it and the others did not. Since that is not my primary subject, I’m not going to get into that fully in this lesson today. What I want you to see is that yes Jesus had Anointed Power, but that this power was only accessed by one woman with her individual “faith”. So apparently it was not all up to sovereign God in what happens in the world, is it?
My primary subject today is the myths concerning Jesus’ deity power, so I’m going to continue with teaching on this line of thought and leave “faith” to another day. I told you earlier that Jesus did not heal everyone and we clearly saw an example of this with the crowds touching Him in Mark 5 with only one woman getting healed. So now I’m going to show you a much stronger witness to the fact that Jesus was not God in His omnipotent power on the earth. If you continue reading in the book of Mark you will find starting in chapter 6 verse 1 that Jesus is said to come into his own country. This is the home of Jesus, the place where He lives in a house like I showed you in the last lesson in this series. He enters into the synagogue and begins to teach the people and the people automatically begin to question, him saying where did He get this wisdom? You see all of these people saw Jesus grow up and watched Him from a time of a child and knew Him and his family intimately. Why is Jesus teaching the people? I think people who do not understand “faith” don’t understand that before healing comes, teaching comes first. Jesus would always teach the people from the Bible, that God has anointed Him to heal and if they believed it, they could be healed and if they did not believe it they could remain as they were.
Mar 6:4 But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house.
Jesus is the prophet in this verse that is without honor in his home city. The people were too intimately familiar with Jesus and His natural life to allow the new “anointing” to work. These people let the old natural Jesus influence who He was to them today. Little did they know that this was the Messiah spoken of in their Bible. These people let their ignorance rob them of the blessings of God. They did not know He was born in Bethlehem and they did not know His father was God. They just assumed they knew him and they made the wrong conclusions. This is one of the greatest danger that many people face today. I see this attitude in and out of church.
Mar 6:5 And he could there do no mighty work, save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk, and healed them.
The Bible does not say that Jesus would not do any mighty works there; it literally says it was impossible for Jesus to do any mighty supernatural healings in this setting. In other words, no blind people came again seeing, no crippled people walked again, no deaf people could hear, nothing occurred but Jesus laying His hands on a few minor sick people to be healed. So obviously the Omnipotent Jesus was on vacation during this chapter of the Gospels or people just ignore the real Jesus to make up their fictitious version of Him. You can clearly see that Jesus was not omnipotent in this verse or He would have been able to heal everyone regardless of what they believed.
Mar 6:6 And he marvelled because of their unbelief. And he went round about the villages, teaching.
When Jesus saw their unbelief He was amazed. So what is the opposite of “faith” that got the woman healed in the chapter before this one? You can see that the woman with the issue of blood believed what she heard and these people in the Jesus home town did not believe. That is probably the most important thing that I will teach today, but that is not my primary subject, so I will continue.
What I have demonstrated to you is a version of Jesus that the Bible depicts as being the real “Emanuel” God with Us! This was a man who was God, but clearly was not God in His full Godhead power. Do you understand that it would be impossible to kill the man Jesus if He was here in His full Godhead power? If Jesus was the omnipotent God in person on this planet no would have been able to crucify Him and no one would be saved today. It is very clear to me that God stripped Himself of His divine powers when He choose to manifest on the earth as a human being like you and I. I am going to end this lesson on this note about the resurrection of Jesus. Did you know that after Jesus was raised from the dead He never did any more supernatural signs or wonders here on the earth? Jesus walked the planet after being raised from the dead for nearly 40 days and never did one single supernatural act to prove His divine nature. I mean why didn’t Jesus appear to everyone that just crucified Him and say look I told you so? You see after Jesus was raised from the dead He was again the omnipotent God. But then He told His disciples “that all power in both heaven and in the earth had been given to him”(Mat 28:18). So why is it that people teach that Jesus already had all power before He was crucified if Jesus said it was given to Him after being raised from the dead? Can’t you read and see that Jesus said this power wasn’t fully given to Him until after He was raised from the dead? You cannot have it both ways! Jesus had to be a man with human limitations before the crucifixion and then the power was returned back to Him after His resurrection or you just have to ignore more parts of the Bible that do not agree with your ridiculous fantasy. If Jesus had all power before His crucifixion then there is nothing to give to Him after His resurrection and Jesus is a liar. Wow, I don’t know if you really understand the things I teach or not, but it would be great if you did! God Bless!
If you would like to continue reading in this series of lessons about the Myths of Jesus in the church you may proceed to “Part 3“.
Must Women Keep Silent in the Church?
(Ver 1.6) Some may have noticed that this website does not avoid controversy. I believe we need to learn everything possible about every subject and take on even the difficult or controversial Bible subjects that many like to ignore or abuse. The Bible has some very difficult things written in it and on the surface the subject of a woman teaching and preaching in the church, is certainly viewed as one example of those. Vast numbers of people with limited knowledge of the Bible, have long proclaimed their dominant doctrine over allowing women preachers and teachers, in the church. This is a very legalistic Old Covenant approach to understanding the rest of the Bible and the New Covenant age of Grace. Hopefully everyone understands the Bible is divided into two major divisions of covenant relationship. The Old Covenant is dominated by laws, commandments, rules, and words that were to be followed to the letter. But Jesus came to fulfill this law and He has accomplished this, and in implementing the New Covenant relationship with mankind, He has brought about a brand-new creation that never existed before. Please keep this truth in your mind as a foundation when studying this subject of women’s roles in the church, to avoid extreme legalism.
The Old Covenant legalism viewpoint and attitude is placing all women in only subservient roles that appear to be based upon prejudiced or biased legal opinions. What causes alleged Christian people to think this way? The answer to wrong extreme legal thinking and believing, is not knowing who we all are, “In Christ”.
We should all know and understand that in the Kingdom of God there is always order. God is not a God of chaos, disorder or rebellion. What we will find with diligent Bible study, is that many people that believe women must always be silent in the church forever, only read a very few select, and limited number of scriptures that they whole hardly embrace, proclaiming them as the final basis of all their beliefs on this important subject. This of course forces people to ignore vast numbers of other scriptures that do not align with their desired doctrinal outcome or definition of their beliefs. We must understand that the Bible is a book of more than one scripture, and one truth. One of the greatest errors in understanding the correct interpretation of any subject, is to not take a single truth and make it the only truth higher than all others.
In studying the Bible on any subject, it is very wise to pray and ask the Holy Spirit to guide us into the fuller knowledge of His truth on any subject before we begin to read and study it. Then we must also ask the Holy Spirit to help us balance every verse on the subject, that He leads us to study. Finally ask the Holy Spirit to show us things that we have never seen before on this subject to grow our understanding of His truth.
If in our deep study of any Bible subject, if there is ever one scripture that He leads us to that we have never seen before, and this verse disagrees with our current beliefs, or one verse that we do not completely understand enough about the subject of women, then we must pray and ask again for the Holy Spirit to help us better understand what He wants us to know about that verse. It is only the Holy Spirit that can reveal something as truth, and He can resolve any and every conflict or controversy that we can encounter with other church members. God is the author of the book, and only He knows every verse, and every word and how they apply to the subject of women’s roles in the church.
Let us begin today by asking the Lord, have we ever studied the Bible on every scripture reference on the subject of women in the Bible? Then ask yourself and the Lord, “Do I totally understand every scripture in the Bible on the subject of women?” We should all believe and say that there is no way that any of us have studied and know everything about this complete subject enough to call our self an expert on the subject. The Bible is way too complex for anyone to say they know it all, except for God.
So how is it that there are some people in the church that can get up to teach and claim that women are not permitted to preach or teach in the church based upon their very limited knowledge on the subject? Please ask the question, who died and made these people higher than God to judge anyone else? Is not God the only person living that completely knows and understand the entire Bible to judge anyone? Be as wise as the man in Acts 5:39 “If this be of God, we cannot overthrow it, lest haply you be found to even fight against God”.
It would also be wise for these types of judging people to learn a lesson from the book of Job. God asked Job, “Who is this that darkens my counsel with words with no knowledge?” When people teach that a woman is incapable of teaching or preaching the Word of God, I believe that this implies that they believe women do not have the brains or mental capacity to know or understand the truth of the Word of God. It would also imply that they believe women cannot ever hear from God and therefore should not even be praying to God. In other words, it comes across that women are not able to go directly to God to listen for His leading because they should only go directly through their husbands or the other men in the church first to hear God’s voice. Is this how God operates?
What a potential arrogant, and superior attitude of pride that attitude could possibly represent! It should remind us of the church in the dark ages, when only a trained priest was believed to be capable of understanding the Bible. In these days no one else was even allowed to read the Bible. What controlling spirit in that time of the church age, were they dominated by? Do you remember what Jesus said to the Pharisees? In Luke 11:52, Jesus said “Woe unto you lawyers, for you have taken away the key of knowledge. You have not entered in yourself, and you have hindered those that were entering in”. Perhaps we need to also read Jeremiah 31:34 that is quoted in Hebrews 8:11. In this verse, God writes to the church, that “everyone” will know Him, from the least to the greatest”. This would certainly include women. Therefore, we all know that women hear from God as well as any man.
People can be too dogmatic when it comes to a deep Bible study discussion like this. Please do not be so engrained into a deep trench of traditional human beliefs, that you are dug in too deep to get yourself out of it. What we are going to do is go through some key Bible verses that are often ignored or purposefully overlooked to examine what else God says in regard to references of His usages of women in the Bible and His selected roles for them.
Have you ever had a Godly woman influence you? I can only personally speak a testimony about women that have influenced me. I will tell you that if it were not for good Christian women in the church, I would probably not be here today teaching the Word of God. I believe that it was only because of their direct prayers, help, involvement and their leadings from God in ministry that I am even here today to write this lesson. So, I appreciate whoever God uses and I refuse to put limitations on what God can do through anyone. Let’s focus upon the root scriptures of controversy first:
1Ti 2:11 Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection.
So here we go with the first doctrinal classic verse, about shut up and just learn silently in the church, speech. However, perhaps we need to know some basic facts. The Greek word G1135, translated as “women” is predominately speaking to married wives in relationship to their husbands sitting under the teaching of the Lord’s Word together. This verse must be applied to this application first. With futher study we will discover that Paul is addressing a very specific cultural issue in this verse for the time of the early church. In that culture women sat on one side of the church and men on the other side of the church. This would cause a great number of issues during the church service causing disordered distraction to everyone present. Therefore, Paul wanted everyone to be silent while the Word was going forth.
If anyone is distracted, talking to others while the Word of God is being taught, is anyone learning anything? No, of course not! This was the situation in this letter. Paul was addressing a very specific problem of distraction in a very specific Church, and he was not establishing a broader New Covenant law that women can’t ever talk. If the problem was that it was the males were talking in church, then I believe Paul would have said, you talking and distracting men keep quiet and learn. Humans both male and female were designed by God with a mouth, a mind, and the ability to talk and communicate intelligently, so to say a woman can’t ever talk in church, is very ignorant and domineering.
So now this verse ends in the word “subjection” and this is not a bad word. It means you are “not in control” and you are “not the head”. Everyone on this planet is in subjection to someone or something. This word applies to men equally and as strong as to women. If you have ever been in the military, you understand “subjection”. You follow orders from the day you join to the day you leave. You are not there to do anything but to follow orders. The corporate business world is very similar, but some people do get paid to be creative and come up with new ideas. However, this does not mean they can do whatever they want, whenever they want and to whoever they want. They still have to be submissive to those that they are working for. To be submissive is a normal way of life; it promotes order and a chain of command for authority, and this further designates who has responsibility as well as accountability.
Even the CEO of a large public company is accountable to the stockholders. There is really no one on the earth that is in complete control of anything. Submission is not a negative thing, and it should never be used to force anyone to do anything that they do not want to do or keep them from doing what God calls and desires them to do. Learn from God’s example, the utmost highest Spiritual Being who came to the earth in the flesh and while He was here, He washed the feet of His disciples. Please don’t make yourself better than God. If you are not serving someone else, you have become deceived.
1Ti 2:12 But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.
So here we go with another “Thus saith the Lord”! Oh yea, it doesn’t say God said this, it says Paul said this using the personal pronoun “I’ and that knowledge could make these words mean something very different. Did you know that it is possible, that Paul could have a personal opinion or belief, that could be his own and potentially biased or even wrong? Was Paul God? Did Paul know everything? Remember in 1 Corinthians 13:12 that Paul wrote that he and all of the rest of us are currently only seeing things through a glass darkly, and he personally said, that we only know the truth in “part”. Wow, that is an amazing revelation to apply to each of us personally. We need not think too highly of our self, and we believe that we know and understand everything about any Bible subject.
I would like to give you something new to consider. Did Paul when He was writing his letters, know that his personal words written in letters to his believing friends in churches, that God usee him to establish, were going to be taught in the future as God’s Holy Word and even combined and compiled together into a new greater “New Testament” with other 7 other writers? I personally do not believe that Paul had any knowledge that his personal letters, that were written to his friends in a few churches would be compiled and bound into a new book called the New Testament. If Paul considered these letters to be the official Bible, why would he not have written this in these letters? Also, why are there so many personal references to names of his special friends? Why in 2 Timothy 4:13, does Paul write and ask for someone to bring him his Coat that he left in Troas. He also asks for some special books and parchments to be brought to him. I find these types of personal references, to show us that Paul did not understand that what he was writing was God’s inspired Word. That does not mean it is NOT God’s inspired word, it only means, it is possible that Paul did not know that it was.
If God would have told Paul directly that this was happening, Paul would not have been living by faith, or walking by faith. Paul very clearly said, “the just shall live by faith”, quoting an Old Testament verse. In Acts 17:11 when Paul was preaching, he called the church at Berea more noble because they showed the diligence to verify what he was saying by finding it in the Old Covenant Hebrew writings. This tells us, that Paul believed those written Hebrew words were to be considered God’s inspired scripture containing God’s Word. But it should also tell us that even Paul needed the Old Covenant writings to confirm what he was teaching to the churches. DO NOT misunderstand what is being said, Paul’s words are certainly inspired words, but not all of them are to be considered, “Thus saith the LORD”.
Let us look at some other translations of 1 Timothy 2:12. The Modern King James Version says, “I forbid a woman to teach”. Again this represents a personal opinionated choice of Paul. The New American Standard Bible says, “I do not allow a woman to teach”. No mention of God’s command here either. The American Standard Versions says, “I permit not a woman to teach”. These are all common translations that harmonize together. There is no contradiction between any of the translations that it was only Paul’s opinion being given to the church for that specific day and that specific culture.
Were Paul’s personal views and words shaped by his life’s experiences and the culture of the surrounding world influences? I believe they were just as our views have a basis of our own cultural surroundings and influences. Please do not misunderstand me. I have no doubt that these words were inspired by God to be written down, but I believe that does not mean God said them. If we believe that every word in the Bible is a commandment from God, then we need to understand the Bible a lot more. There are quotations given by Satan who we know is a liar. Therefore, these are not instructions to follow or obey. Then there are a lot of quotes from men like Job, that we should know that he was rebuked by God for saying.
There are literally too many examples to teach them all that are found in the Bible. But I will mention a great example to learn from found in 1 Corinthians 7:6-12. In these verses Paul was very clear to teach us how he literally flipped into writing about his own personal opinion on the subject of marriage and divorce. Uh oh, this is speaking of husbands and wives again like we were reading about in Timothy. Please go and read these verses carefully and observe how Paul said, “I say, not the LORD” and other times “not I, but the Lord says“. This is just one great example that we need to learn from, to show how we must rightly divide the Word of Truth, and how easy it could be to wrongly divide the Word of truth.
Before we continue any further, please go and read the surrounding contextual verses to see what they say and how they fit with women being silent. Notice in verse 9 of 1 Timothy 2, Paul writes that women should dress moderately. So far so good for a lot of church women, but for others even this Pauline suggestion is not followed. But then Paul writes that women should not be wearing gold or pearls. Uh, oh? What just happened, how many women are following these as commandments. All of the sudden we have a Burger King religion of have it our way, or only eat selective doctrines we like from a larger buffet containing some choices that we don’t like. We eat from the words we like and the words we don’t like we leave alone. But to give notice, there are no quotations of “Thus Saith the LORD” in these words either. But we can still learn things to apply to us from them all.
Let’s talk about the Bible cultural influences that could have been used to contribute to the meanings of the Words written on the pages. In ancient days, were women ever in charge of anything when Paul wrote this? You can find a few instances of women like Esther, Jezebel, and Cleopatra who were in the world realm of royal power to have some very significant influence, power and authority for God and the devil. But for the most part, it was a total male-controlled world. There are many religions in the world that still hold to this domineering male philosophy, and I like to watch what the devil does to people in the world to learn from how he wants to pervert things to oppose God’s ways. Satan’s ways are usually the opposite of God’s ways. Satan seems to either want to keep women totally ignorant in a slave type of relationship or exalt them to the top of the food chain and make them run everything independently of male partnership. It is either total submission like in countries of Afghanistan or Iran, or total women’s liberation and independence like in Europe and parts of America. I believe both are perverted wrongs of extremism and the truth of God must be somewhere balanced in the middle. What I would like to say is if Satan uses women for his perversion, who says it is not possible for God to use women for His glory, righteousness and Holy purposes? If God is doing anything that resembles what the devil is trying to do in the world to women, that should raise a concern in our spirit, for us to ask when did God and Satan begin to agree on anything?
Only a few Christian churches seem to have the correct perspective of a balanced approach of the truth being somewhere in the middle. So here is another problem, I have heard from many extreme preachers and teachers that these verses written to Timothy should be interpreted that all women must not teach but rather to sit and keep silent in the church. According to correct Bible interpretation rules I need another witness that says this is the law of truth and so far I have not found it. The Bible says in the mouth of 2 or 3 witnesses let every word be established and here we read one passage and people want to make it the rule of their doctrine and force everyone to adhere to it.
I searched through every N.T. verse that had any form of the word “teach” and this is the only verse that I found with the word woman used in this regard. I find that to be a major problem with some people’s interpretation. If anyone is trying to take one verse out of context and make it a rule of law, that does not work for me. So let’s look at some other verses in the Bible and see what God says about women and see if we can come up with a balanced approach to this subject. Let us turn to the book of Acts and see how the early church is described.
Act 2:17 And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams:
In this verse in Acts, Peter is quoting the Word of God from the Prophet Joel. Right there we learn that this means we will possess two direct witnesses to what this verse says. So we are clearly on a much safer and firmer ground for our interpretation. Do you understand that concept? It is so very important. According to this verse, God will in the last days pour out His Spirit upon “ALL FLESH”! This verse would certainly include both women as well as men as you can clearly see. This verse continues to say that both your sons and your daughters would “prophesy”. So, let’s stop right there and ask the question what does it mean to “prophesy”? Can you or I prophesy in silence? No clearly this verse involves women opening their mouth and making audible sounds that can be heard by anyone present.
What is the difference between teaching people with the spoken words from the Bible which were given by the Spirit of God and prophesying with the words potentially inspired by the Spirit of God in a church? Can you think of any differences? Isn’t prophesying the act of speaking words out loud to someone else so that they can hear them? Then what is the definition of teaching? Isn’t teaching speaking out loud words for other people to hear? It would be useless for a woman to prophesy without someone present to hear her. Uh oh? You can automatically and quickly see that this verse directly conflicts with Paul’s declared command to keep silent. You also have to remember that Paul did not really tell women to keep silent, he said to “learn in silence” and that is something completely different than to never say anything. Let us see another example in the book of Acts that brings further confirmation:
Act 21:9 And the same man had four daughters, virgins, which did prophesy.
These 4 daughters were the children of Phillip the evangelist. We are clearly told that they were able to prophesy to others. This clearly means speaking out loud in an audible voice that can be heard and even directed at the men that were there in the house. Did you know that the early church met in houses? They did not have any synagogues, temples or church buildings to meet at, so they met in houses. If the daughters of Phillip prophesied in the house they were probably doing it during a church service. So we have a huge issue with should a woman always keep silent in the church. Please allow me to ask again, what is the technical difference between teaching and prophesying? Is there a difference? Are not both spoken words directed at listeners? I will also say this, if you do not have women prophesying in your church services, you do not have a complete New Testament church. You have deviated from God’s original plan observed in the book of Acts in favor of your ideas of order. Let us now approach this subject from a new direction and see how God teaches us something new to consider.
Gal 3:26 For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.
According to the Bible, God says that we are all His children. So, does God play favorites? Are the male children preferred above the female children? If you think that they are you are clearly in need of learning the truth. Let us keep reading:
Gal 3:27 For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.
We can continue down this chapter and see that every Christian has been baptized into Christ and that makes us ALL one with Him equally. This is an all-inclusive statement that includes both males and females. Then notice what God says about us all:
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.
So here we go with another paradox and puzzle being presented. God says to us, that In Christ males and females are not different. But in the world, we can all clearly see that males and females are quite different, and even treated as such. This teaches us a new foundational difference, between Christians who are natural thinkers versus Christians who are carnal thinkers. We know in the world there are both males and females, but God claims in the spiritual dimension in Christ, we are all just members of one body. There is no difference within the Spirit realm from each other. I personally believe that men who teach male dominance usually are just very carnally minded individuals who look at external things and do not try to see things spiritually as God sees things.
If ignorant Bible teachers would just please read and study their Bible’s to see things within the Spirit and not in the flesh and how God sees them, they would discover that the church is called the “Bride of the Lamb”. Jesus is plainly revealed to be the Bridegroom of the church in the Spirit realm New Covenant (Luk 5:34-35). If you are a male preacher, does that bother you, to be called a spiritual woman bride of Christ? I think it does to many carnal naturally thinking people. But this means we (the church) are all collectively called one woman in the eyes of God. This is not something new. God did the exact same thing with the natural nation of Israel, calling Himself their husband, implying they were all His wife. So we are all in covenant and in subjection to our Head who is the Lord Jesus Christ (Eph 5:24).
So how can Paul write that women should not teach in one place in the Bible and then write there is no difference between men and women in Christ in another place? If you do not understand the major conflict between these two contrasting and opposing statements, then you do not realize that we have a significant problem that God can only resolve.
Here is my opinion and I usually do not give you my opinion so you do not have to take anything to heart that I say next in this paragraph. I think from a natural perspective that men counseling women or women counseling men privately should never be done under any circumstance. There are just too many potential problems that could occur. I have seen the best married pastors get into physical affairs with women because of this natural physical and emotional attraction that God created within us. Women should counsel women, and men should counsel men. This just makes the most logical and common sense approach to me. So, I believe firmly that counseling between opposite sexed individuals in the privacy of an office type setting should never be done under any circumstances. By avoiding the appearance of evil, men and women will not fall into these types of traps that Satan can use against them. However, what people do in a public church service is not limited by these natural types of rules. That was my opinion and there is no extra charge for that. So let us see what else the Bible says about women:
Tit 2:3 The aged women likewise, that they be in behaviour as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things;
This verse is directed at mature women, but I was shocked at how it ended. To be a teacher of “good” things implies strongly that women have the ability and can teach. In fact, it clearly implies these women should be teachers. It further implies that these women have gained some wisdom that is worthy to be taught to others. Obviously, we have another verse that goes against the broad concept of a “keep silent” verse that some like to focus upon. So, we have another potential conflict of whether women should teach or women should never teach.
Tit 2:4 That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children,
Here we have the follow up to the previous verse and it clearly says that it is OK for women to teach other women. Now it is interesting that this verse directly contradicts again that a woman should keep silent that some try to teach as the only gospel truth. If a woman has the ability to teach another woman, then she must also have the ability to teach anyone (PERIOD)! Any teaching ability is a gifting from the Holy Spirit, and it represents a special anointing given to her from and by God.
I would like you to go back and read chapter 1 of Titus, because in this chapter it is talking about Bishops in the church. God and Paul are clearly talking about women teaching in a church setting and not in a private setting. So instead of denying women who are called of God the right to preach and teach, we should be smart enough to recognize when God is doing something and we should not fight against God. If God is not behind it, it will not matter who it is that is teaching or preaching because there will be no anointing from the Spirit of God and it will eventually fail. My Bible says that unless the Lord builds the house, those that build it labor in vain (Ps 127:1). So if God wants to use a woman, we better bow to the wisdom of God and keep our mouth closed while we learn. Please learn the lesson that people try to only apply to women, learn in silence and we might be amazed at what God says through a woman.
We could go through the Bible from the beginning to the end to find that women play an essential part of the design of God’s purpose for humans. God promises the first woman that it will be a woman and her seed that will bruise the head of Satan with her heel. Wow, that sounds significant. Then at the end of the Bible we find a “Wonder Woman” standing on the moon which is a symbolic representation for Satan with her heels on top. Wow, again! We are seeing that God chose to use a woman to do this job!
Then read through the rest of Bible in between Genesis and Revelation and you will find other women used by God for very significant purposes. To name a couple notice Esther. Without her fulfilling her purpose to become a Gentile king’s wife, there would probably be no nation of Israel. A woman was the center character used by God to accomplish this. Then without Ruth a Gentile Moabite who decided to have faith to leave her nation to join in covenant with her mother-in-law to move to Bethlehem, there may have not been a Grandmother to King David. Read the account about Deborah who was one of the Judges (rulers) during the book of Judges. These are just a few of the women that are noteworthy to from. But there are other noteworthy women of faith like Sarah. Sarah was directly mentioned in Hebrews chapter 11, the Hall of Faith of noteworthy examples of Old Covenant people.
CONCLUSION
Let us review our key verse again that causes many to stumble in the light of what we have just read from other parts of the Bible:
1Ti 2:12 But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.
Let me ask you again, how can a woman keep silent and still prophesy? She can’t! How can a woman teach other women in the church and still keep silent? She can’t! Did you know the word translated as “usurp authority over” is only in the entire Bible this one time in this verse and no other places? According to Strong’s it means “a worker” who acts of themselves. Do you know this is wrong for anyone to do regardless of gender? To act of yourself means to be self-appointed and self-sufficient. This means to promote yourself and raise your own ability to a level above where you should be. Men are guilty of this more than women are guilty of it. So I do not know of any verse in the Bible that says that a woman cannot be called by God, appointed by God, promoted by God and made to be a blessing to others in the church? Today, God has already raised up and promoted several women in the church with large ministries that are way beyond many of the ministries of men on the earth. So please, let us become wise and recognize God’s perspective of truth and please LORD, help me not to judge the message given by the gender of the person delivering the message. Help me LORD, to study what is taught and just see if what is said was what You said in your Word! Help me to learn to see people as You see people and I believe You will be able to cause Your servants to stand or fall.
I’ll end this Bible lesson with an important instruction that God gave to one man and you see if it is something that applies to you also today:
1Sa 16:7 But the LORD said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the LORD seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart.
Please do not become legalistic and bound by laws of limitations that put God in a box that claims a woman is unable to be used by the Almighty. Thank you for reading, studying and leaving me a comment if you care to. I love you all and I pray for all my readers that He will give unto you the Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation in the knowledge of Christ Jesus. Amen.
Understanding the Book of Job? An overview of what it is and what it is not! Part 3
(Ver 2.1) This is Part 3 in a series of advanced Bible study lessons on understanding the book of Job. I have been attempting to give you some new perspectives on the meanings behind the book of Job by showing you how it fits into other verses found in the Bible. Only by using the Bible to interpret the Bible can we really see what God says in any other part of the Bible. If we attempt to interpret a verse, chapter or book in isolation, we are forced to rely on our own opinions and natural thoughts to figure out what it all means. But, I have noticed while studying the Bible that God was not stupid, He didn’t leave us in the dark with us trying to figure out what He said. However, I believe that we are required to search and dig deep in order to find out what His definitions and comments are on the subjects that we are studying. God says the natural man receives not the things written by the Spirit of God (1 Cor 2:14). So, if you do not understand the Bible, it is because you are either not saved or it is simply just the fact that you are thinking naturally. So if you have not read this series from the beginning I would strongly suggest that you go back and start with “Part 1” since I cannot repeat everything I teach in each lesson. What I have been trying to emphasize in these lessons is the fact that God is the originator of blessings and that Satan is the author of the curses encountered in this world. What I haven’t taught is why this transpires.
I will briefly make an attempt at a quick explanation of the origination of good and evil in the world before I continue with Job. When Adam was created, God placed Adam in the Garden with his wife and told Adam that he may freely eat from every tree except one. Everything created by God called “very good” by God’s own admission. There God did not create anything evil, bad or harmful and Adam knew only the goodness of God. There was one tree called symbolically the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil that God say do not eat from. God told Adam that the day that he ate from this tree he would surely die. I personally know that this was a symbolic tree that represted a hidden spiritual reality because of what I have studied and found that the Bible says in other parts. In the past I did a couple of lessons on this subject and if you are interested you can read them by going to “Does Eating Fruit Kill You?”. I will not attempt to repeat these lessons here, but I will tell you that Adam made the wrong choice. Isn’t it funny how we keep coming back to people making choices in the world? If you recall I told you that Job made some wrong choices that opened the door for Satan to come in and attack him. These choices of Job involved wrong spoken words, wrong believing, fear, and no peace or rest. This attack of Job was a repeated pattern found from when Adam was given a choice by God and made the wrong selection to let Satan into this world. Adam’s choice resulted in him knowing the evil of Satan’s power. Adam already knew the blessings of God so this was nothing new. It was only Satan and evil that Adam gained or obtained by letting Satan into the world. So if God gave Adam a choice, he must also give every man the same choice after Adam. God does not control the choices of men. God gives each man the freewill to make their own selections. Job therefore had a choice between blessings and cursing. Job allowed Satan to continue working evil in his life. Both Adam and Job experienced the loss of children. I’m sure that both men regretted their decisions, but yet it was too late to take them back.
In the first two lessons on Job, I went through chapter 1, verses 1 through 19 on all of the bad things that happened in rapid succession to Job and his family. I also spent time in trying to reveal the actions that opened the door for Satan to attack Job. It is obvious to me that this was a staged planned attack by Satan to take away everything that God had blessed him with. So what was Job’s reaction? That is where we are going to start today?
Job 1:20 Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshipped,
Job goes into a state of mourning and anguish; after all he just lost all of his children. I do not know of any normal parent that loses their children that is not devastated. To tear your clothing is a sign of sorrow, to shave your head is sign of mourning but, then Job still worships God. This is one of the only good things that Job still does and it describes why he was blessed by God in the first place. What we will find by reading is that even after all that has happened to Job, he does not turn against his God. If you learn any lesson from Job you should learn this lesson, always stay on God’s side no matter what happens to you. If you blame God and start to curse God, you are just digging your hole much deeper. God did not kill Job’s kids, Satan did. You see in the Bible it says this about kids:
Psa 127:3 Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his reward.
What would it mean to be a reward? Children are clearly blessings from God. I told you earlier if God blesses you with children and then kills them to take them away, His house is divided. God would be both the author of the blessings and the author of the curses. How would you ever follow a God who was so crazy and inconsistent? I’m sorry but I could not. I also tried to teach you that the Bible says God is a constant and does not change. These verses prove that God is not the give of life and the destroyer of life simultaneously or God would have to change to do each. God is truly only a giver of life and the devil is the taker of that life, but only by the allowed access of man’s choices do either happen. So let’s see what Job was saying after all of this occurs to him and his family:
Job 1:21 And said, Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.
Here we have the famous classic Bible verse widely used at many funerals. This is clearly a misguided application of the words of a man in sorrow. If you just lost 10 kids, what would you be saying? I am probably going to get some ignorant Christians mad at me, but I am going to tell you that not everything you read in the Bible is true. These words of Job are truly in the Bible. These words of Job were truly spoken by Job. However, both of these facts together do not make his words the truth. Job was a man without a church, a man without a Bible, a man without a spiritual leader or a pastor and a man who tried to blindly follow his God the best that he knew how to do under these circumstances. It is true that Job had heard about God, but yet at this point in time no one knew that much about God. God had not yet given man any written words to read about Him and to learn from. The only words that Job could have had are the past experiences of Adam and the other descendants of Adam. So why would you think that anything that Job says came from directly from God? Did God come to Job and say I took your kids? I took your possessions? Did God say this or did Job say this? What people say out of their limited state of knowledge and ignorance can be what they believe whole heartedly to be the truth; however, does that ever make it the truth because they believe it to be the truth? Nowhere in this chapter does it ever say that God took anything from Job, only Job says this.
Here is where I should briefly discuss the fact that the Bible says that the Word of God was given by inspiration of the Holy Ghost (2 Tim 3:16). The Greek word in this verse literally means the Bible was God breathed. However, that does not mean everything in the Bible is true. It is like watching the evening news on TV, the newsman is speaking and telling you things and events that were reported to happen that day, but does that mean everything that he says is the truth because it is on the news? What if a news man quotes another man that says “I did not have sex with that intern”. Does that make it the truth because it was on the news? Obviously we learned that it does not. This is the way the Bible was also written. There are quotes in the Bible from men that were clearly ignorant or intentionally lying. For example, in Acts 5, there was a man named Anainias and his wife that fall down dead for lying to the Holy Ghost. Is what they said recorded in book of Acts the truth? Again, obviously not. I hope you can begin to see the struggle with reading the words of men in the Bible versus reading the words of God that were given to men. If the Bible says “Thus saith the Lord” you can count it being the truth. If the Bible says “thus saith Job” you are going to have great difficutly in convincing me this is the complete truth and I talk about this more in a minute.
Let’s talk briefly now about a hedge and the reason for a hedge to even exist. Chapter 1 of Job clearly says that God had placed a hedge of protection around Job. Therefore, who was God protecting Job from? There are only two reasons to build a fence. You do realize this yes? First, you only need a fence around your property if there are animals, enemies or things that can come in and steal from you or hurt you. Second, the only other reason to build a fence is to keep something in, like a prison. I personally believe that both of these were true based upon my knowledge of the Bible. I mean this is not rocket science; you just have to use your brain and think a little bit. So let’s talk more about the first reason on keeping someone out. Who is God guarding Job from? It has to be from Satan! Satan is a created spiritual being and he is capable of coming and going from the earth back and forth to the spiritual realm in heaven. Satan is free to come and go and Job is not. Job is definitely hedged into the earth’s natural and has never seen God or been to heaven. For that matter Job has never seen Satan either, so clearly there is a hedge that prevents this view. So what is a hedge by God’s definition? This is where it really starts to get more interesting. You see our definition is usually not’s God’s definition. This word hedge is only found 3 times in the whole O.T. This Hebrew word occurs twice in the book of Job and I personally believe this second usage of the word was the key to the definition:
Job 10:11 Thou hast clothed me with skin and flesh, and hast fenced me with bones and sinews.
Let’s briefly discuss the context of this verse. Job is speaking and he is describing his body and God’s intelligent design of it. Notice what Job says, Job is telling us that he is clothed with a body and that this body of flesh and bones is a “fence” around him. The Hebrew word translated as “fence” is the exact same Hebrew word that was translated as “hedge’ in chapter 1. Wow, I find that fascinating. This is what we discover happening when Adam sinned. God clothed Adam with a coat of skin. Pay close attention to the fact that the body as described is not Job nor Adam, but rather they were actually the spirit that is covered by the body. Isn’t this the definition of a hedge? To keep something in or to keep something out? What is Satan? Satan is a created spirit being. Satan is not allowed by God’s law to come into the natural realm to tempt or test as I taught in the first lesson. I believe that this physical body is our hedge of protection from the evil beings in the spirit realm. It is also our physical bodies that keeps us present in this world. But, I do not have time to fully expand that thought today in this lesson. It was simply an introduction to get you to think about something new. Think about this also, when Satan attacked Job, what did he attack? Did not Satan attack Job in the physical realm and not Job in the spiritual realm? Could Satan have hurt Job spiritually speaking? It is impossible to kill or hurt a spirit being, so Job was incabple of being harmed spiritually. Therefore, I believe that Satan attacked God’s designed hedge or protection that surrounded Job and this was the man’s body and his natural surroundings that he possessed. It certainly changes your perspective dramatically when thinking in these terms and I hope you are seeing them.
So let’s get back to the words of Job and what he said in chaoter 1 about the Lord taking and the Lord giving and determine if that is the truth or just his words. Do you understand that there are many accounts of people speaking in the Bible and some of these people are clearly ignorant and do not know what they are talking about. There are also many clear accounts of people who intentionally lie in the Bible as I just talked about found in Acts 5. Jesus taught us that Satan is the father of lies and the words of Satan are found throughout the Bible. Based upon the shear presence of lies being recorded in the Bible, do you understand how this information makes correct Bible interpretation more difficult? If it does not say “Thus Saith the Lord God” or the Words of Jesus in Red Letters, then you are taking the words that are potentially words of an ignorant man or woman and exalting them to the status of God’s words. Having said all of that there are Prophets of God who do speak God’s words, but even they sometimes quote Pharaoh or Nebuchadnezzar or someone else who does not speak for God. Correctly interpreting the Bible is not as easy as you think and it takes brains, thought, logic and seeing who is speaking, who they are talking to and then finally noticing exactly what they say.
So let me ask you this, is Job a prophet? Is Job speaking for God? I’ve been to too many funerals given by preachers who think that these are the Words of God Himself, just because they are written in the Bible. These are tough questions to answer based upon just the small parts that we have read so far. But let’s go to the end of the book of Job and see what opinion God has of the spoken words of Job. After all it really shouldn’t matter what you or I think about the Words of Job, it should really only matter what God thinks about his spoken words:
Job 38:1 Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said,
As you can clearly see God is about to speak directly to Job and say something very significant to him. You should pay very close attention to the next words that do come out of the mouth of God and then go back and apply these to what Job said in chapter 1 about God taking things away from him:
Job 38:2 Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?
God basically tells Job you do not know what you are talking about, so why do you open your mouth and speak any of these words. According to God Job is speaking empty words from an empty head. Therefore, we can clearly see that Job is confirmed by God to be ignorant! God says Job has no knowledge to speak in the areas that he is attempting to speak in. So should Job be saying anything at all? Or should Job being doing what most Christians in the world should be doing and listen to God in order to learn. Instead of running their mouths on the internet, many people need to hear what God is saying and go get some knowledge before they try to speak anything. There are virtually many chapters of Job and most of these verses are just the empty words of ignorant men who should not be talking. Yet we have a vast number of preachers who want to quote Job’s words at funerals as if God had spoken them. That is just more demonstrations of ignorance in action. I hope that if you learned anything today you learned the lesson of what God thought of Job’s spoken words.
Job 1:22 In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly.
We finally see what the last verse in chapter 1 says, after all of Job’s accusations of God stealing his possessions and killing his kids God says that Job did not sin nor charge God foolishly. You see what people do or say out of ignorance is often overlooked by God. Especially in the case where there is no written laws of God to follow. Since Job had no Bible and was doing the best that he could to figure out what was the right things to do, God overlooked his accusations. Let’s see a verse that is applicable to what is stated in Job:
Rom 4:15 Because the law worketh wrath: for where no law is, there is no transgression.
Clearly God says where there is not law there is no punishment for sins. The law brings wrath and the law permits punishment, and this is true in the natural realm as well as the spiritual realm. You see there was a time when child pornography was legal, but was it right? Absolutely not, but yet because of the lack of laws, no one could be convicted of this crime. It was only after laws were passed that now people are punished. Because, Job lived during the time where there were no Mosaic laws of God written, there was no punishment that God could bring if He wanted to. So Job did not transgress God’s laws even if he did not do or say everything right.
The next time you go to a funeral and they start to tell you how God took somebody, or their children, I hope that you can at least see this was not true. God is not the thief who kills, steals and destroys. The only two times I saw God take anyone in the Bible, God did not have to kill them to do it. Enoch the Bible says was translated and poof he was gone. Elijah was caught up in a chariot of fire and Elisha saw it happen. So these are the only two times in the Bible that God is said to have taken anyone up beside the raised from the dead Jesus Christ. If you can see somebody go up in a chariot of fire, then you can claim that God took them, otherwise do not accuse God of doing something that He did not do. God does not have to kill anybody to take them to heaven; many people will find this out the hard way before too long when Jesus appears for the catching away of the church. Then the dead in Christ will arise first and those that remain will be translated as Enoch and suddenly all disappear from the planet. What a vast confusion this event will cause all over the world.
I guess I should briefly mention the subject of God’s judgment. There are times in the Bible, like Noah’s flood or Sodom and Gomorrah that God is forced to exercise judgment upon the earth. What happens when God exercises judgment? In both cases, Noah and Lot the righteous were spared and the others perished completely. So why do people want to apply God’s judgment to Job? If Job was an unrighteous man and fell into judgment, he would not have been around at the end of the book. Do not confuse judgment with attacks from Satan. Satan does not have to ask permission to attack you, all he has to do is watch for you to open the door and Satan has learned he is now free to do to you what he can get away with. In the book of Job you find that Satan is presenting himself with the other angels to learn what is valid and what is not valid for him to do. Why is Satan being so careful? You see you may recall that there are other references in the Bible to the “sons of God”. In Genesis 6, before the flood, the sons of God are again referenced. This time the “sons of God” see the daughters of men and see that they are physically beautiful. These angels have physical sex with the human females and create races of giants on the earth. This results in a polluted mixture of men and angels and God says this was an illegal perversion of God’s laws and design. This was clearly an example of the angels crossing over the hedge. You can see that by reading this verse in 2 Peter:
2Pe 2:4 For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment;
If God threw some angels into hell (but not all of them), they must have violated some spiritual law or done something that was very perverted. Having sex with natural women would be an example of this type of perversion. The angels are obviously ignorant of what is permissible and what is not permissible for them to do. So believing that Satan is appearing before God in Job chapter 1 to accuse Job and to find out what is permissible makes perfect sense to me. Satan has certainly seen that some of his angels were already cast into darkness, locked up with spiritual chains. Do you understand that Satan must learn what is permissible and what is not? So I have gone long enough in this lesson for today and I have given you many new things to think about. I appreciate greatly your time in studying the Bible and if you have any comments or question about anything I have taught, please do not hesitate to leave me a comment. God Bless.
If you would like to continue to read in this series about Job, please go to “Part 4“.
Understanding the Book of Job? An overview of what it is and what it is not! Part 2
(Ver 1.2) This is Part 2 in a series of lessons on understanding the book of Job. The book of Job is a very tough book of the Bible to understand using just the reasoning found within your human mind. If you have not read this series from the beginning, I would highly recommend that you go back and start with “Part 1”. Too many Christians want to put themselves into the role of a Job because of all of the bad things that have happened to them and they find some peace or reason to help explain their situations in life. They use Job to help explain what is going on in their lives, because they think if God can test Job, then he must be testing me also. They want to see themselves as a Job being tested by God and this somehow makes them feel worthy of the bad things that have occurred. After all they think that God sent all of these evil things that were occurring in Job’s life to test him. That would be great if that was really what the Book of Job actually said, but that is just someone’s misinterpreted view of the book of Job and that does not make it the truth. Nevertheless, this view is widely taught this way and that is exactly the way Satan wants it to be taught. You see as long as you think that it is God sending you the curses of life you will have to accept them and just be patient until God changes His mind to bless you. You do understand the difference between blessings and curses? It is the difference between day and night and good and evil. Blessings are good and curses are evil. As you read the book of Job you need to figure out first who sends good things into your life and who sends the bad things to hurt you. If you think that God sends them all, you are sadly deceived and playing into the hands of Satan. Here is what my Bible says about God:
Jas 1:17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.
So as you can see God is the sender of every Good and Perfect gift into your life. Then who sends the evil bad curses into your life, do they also come from heaven above? You see you cannot conclude that they do, because this verse also says God does not change. If there is not any shadow of turning in God, then God is not blessing you today and cursing you tomorrow. God is not having full confidence in you today and testing you tomorrow. This is so absolutely important for you to see and to understand. God already knows the future, he does not have to test you to know what you are going to do, He already knows. Whenever Christian think that God tests them, they automatically think that God is stupid and does not know the outcome. The Bible says that God makes known the end from the beginning, so he must already know the end. Do you get it?
The story of Job is a story of God’s blessings and Satan’s curses. If you confuse the two roles you are just going to be deceived. If you recall, we have already looked at the first 12 verses of the book of Job. Job was said to be an upright righteous man blessed of God with tremendous wealth. This is what God is guilty of doing for Job. Satan sees the hedge of protection that God has placed around Job and his family and Satan starts to look for ways into Job to force God into lowering the hedge of protection. I showed you that Satan is called the “accuser” of the people of God in Revelation 12. Suddenly Satan appears in heaven and starts the legal accusation process. God is a God who holds all power and all knowledge. God is an omnipotent God and only He sees the future. But just because God is all powerful, too many Christians want to think that God controls everything that happens in the world. This results in a “No Fault” Christian religion. In other words no matter what happens to me in life, it is not my fault. This makes it all God’s fault. People like to think that when good things happen to them it is God’s blessings, but when bad things happen to them that it is just God’s tests and trials. However, I showed you in Deuteronomy where God says I set before you life and death and blessings and curses, now you choose life. So it would appear that God places the choice for both life and blessings in the hands of men on the earth. But, here is Job’s problem, he didn’t have Deuteronomy to read and he certainly didn’t have the book of Revelation to read. Job is flying in the game of life blindly, by the seat of his pants trying to figure out what to do and how to do it. This is Job’s greatest weakness, his ignorance. In Hosea 4:6 the Bible tells us clearly why God’s people are destroyed and it declares that it is for their lack of knowledge. If only Job had possessed the correct knowledge Satan would not have been able to make inroads into his life. This is what I am attempting to teach you about so that you do not fall into the same mistakes as Job. There is a popular quote that says those that fail to learn the past are destined to repeat it. Are you learning anything from God and Job yet? We are about to see that ignorance is what it is that is controlling what is happening to Job. So let’s continue our Bible study of this valuable book:
Job 1:13 And there was a day when his sons and his daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother’s house:
This verse reveals that the children of Job have not changed their ways. They are still party animals and are in the process of having fun and fulfilling their fleshly desires. Here we find out that these are not young kids, for the eldest has a house of his own. At the least the eldest doesn’t live with dad Job anymore and it could be that every kid had their own house.
Job 1:14 And there came a messenger unto Job, and said, The oxen were plowing, and the asses feeding beside them:
What we are beginning to see is the power of Satan being made manifest that God describes to us in verse 12. It is funny how a messenger is spared in each case to come tell Job of the bad news. It is also interesting to note that before one messenger stops speaking another shows up with more bad news. So you can see the rapid progression of simultaneous events. Let’s continue reading and see what happens:
Job 1:15 And the Sabeans fell upon them, and took them away; yea, they have slain the servants with the edge of the sword; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.
Do you see how Satan works? Satan does not come into this world and steal your stuff from you personally. Satan uses people in this world to steal your stuff from you. This is the only legal course that Satan can take. The Bible says there has no temptation overtaken you except that which is common to man (1 Cor 10:13). The words “common to man” means “in the natural course of things”. In other words it is illegal for Satan to tempt you supernaturally. But, the Greek word translated as “temptation” also means “to test”. Job is being tested, but it is certainly not God that is doing it. The Bible says in James 1:13, “Let no man say when he is tested that I am tested of God, for God cannot be tested with evil and neither does God test any man”. I changed the words that were translated as “tempted” to “tested” because that is what the word means in the Strong’s. Look it up for yourself, if you do not believe me. Prove all things and then hold fast to those that are true. The story of Job is definitely the testing of Job and how Job survives it using his patience and the grace of God. But, James says God does not test men, so God clearly had nothing to do with the tests of Job. Do you understand this? If you do we can continue, if you do not you should go back and reread James a couple of hundred times until you get it.
Job 1:16 While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, The fire of God is fallen from heaven, and hath burned up the sheep, and the servants, and consumed them; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.
It seems that the messengers just keep coming and bringing more and more bad news. God gets blamed for something in this verse that He did not do. This still happens today. People call earthquakes and hurricanes acts of God. These clearly destroy things and kill people and take away human life. Is this the God that you serve? It is not the God that I serve. My Bible says that God is Love! Love does not bless you today and take it all away tomorrow. That doesn’t make any sense for our God to do that. One of the most important verses in the Bible is John 10:10 and it clearly describes God’s role and Satan’s role in the world.
Joh 10:10 The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.
This verse sound like a major problem for the God is testing us theory. What is the major difference being described to us in this verse? Who is the speaker and who is he speaking about? Jesus (God in the flesh) is speaking here to us personally and He said I came that you might have life and that life more abundantly. Now using this information if you try to say that God sends hurricanes on the earth when someone dies; then somebody lied when they wrote the Bible. Do you think that Jesus lied or was He just confused about His role with the Father God? God the Son came to Give us Life; but God the Father sends storms that will kill you. Would this mean that God’s house is divided? Is God opposed to Himself? Which one is God doing, giving life or killing you? What did Jesus say about a house divided? If God gives life to people and kills people this is a Dr Jekyll and a Mr Hyde type of God and that is clearly a problem to me. You better go and study your Bible a lot more before you accuse God of sending storms to kill people.
Job 1:17 While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, The Chaldeans made out three bands, and fell upon the camels, and have carried them away, yea, and slain the servants with the edge of the sword; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.
Again we see another example of how Satan can influence people to come and attack you, steal from you and do you harm. So here we get to some of the most devastating news:
Job 1:18 While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, Thy sons and thy daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother’s house:
Job 1:19 And, behold, there came a great wind from the wilderness, and smote the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young men, and they are dead; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.
A strong wind from the wilderness; what is that? That sounds like a tornado if you ask me. I do not know of any stronger wind on this planet than one of these forces of nature. Can Satan cause one of these to occur? It would appear from reading this story that he can. The force of the wind was directed at the house of the eldest brother, was this a coincidence? It cannot be a coincidence given the sequence of events that have just transpired in rapid succession. The odds for all of these events occurring to Job in that short of time are astronomically impossible. You talk about bad luck; it seems that Job has just hit the bad luck lottery. Here we are just 19 verses into Job and most of his possessions are taken, his children killed and this all in the matter of minutes.
I am going to stop with chapter 1 and 2 and skip ahead in the book of Job to show why this is occurring and what Job did to open the door for Satan to do it to him. You see if you begin to understand things in the Bible, you can apply what you learn in other places to help you better understand places like Job. What we will do is see if Job gives us any clues to what choices he made in order to choose the curses instead of the blessings. What we are going to do is look for what Job did and not focus on what you think God did or did not do. So let’s skip forward and read the last 3 verse of chapter 3 and learn what Job says about what just happened:
Job 3:24 For my sighing cometh before I eat, and my roarings are poured out like the waters.
Job 3:25 For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me.
Job 3:26 I was not in safety, neither had I rest, neither was I quiet; yet trouble came.
Amazingly enough there are some critical clues in these three verses. These verses taken in light of other verses in the Bible clearly demonstrate where Job missed it and allowed Satan to have access to his life and his family. Let’s see what he says.
Verse 24 speaks of Job’s” roarings like water”, what is that? What happens when a lion roars? It is making vocal sounds. Well this is a clue that Job was running his mouth too much. What is water a symbol of in the Bible? The N.T. tells us that we are made clean by the washing of the water of the word (Eph 5:26). So water must represent God’s spoken words in this verse. God speaks words that can make us clean, so what kind of words does the enemy Satan speak? I believe these are words that make us dirty. So what kind of words are you speaking?
Pro 18:4 The words of a man’s mouth are as deep waters, and the wellspring of wisdom as a flowing brook.
So Words are Water! I do not have time to teach you everything that the Bible says about words in this lesson but you can go read my other lessons on this subject. In James God tells us that our mouths are like water from fountains and asks can a fountain bring forth fresh water and salt water at the same time? No it cannot, but it can either bring forth only fresh water or it can also bring forth the fresh mixed with the bitter undrinkable salt water. It would appear to me to be a choice to which one that you allow your mouth to bring forth. I will tell you very plainly that I believe your spoken words are Satan’s number one access into your life. If you say the wrong things, you open the door for Satan to waltz right in and use his power to steal, kill and destroy you. You in effect give him orders that allow his work to be accomplished. It is like a spiritual permission slip that is granted to him. Let me help to prove what I just said using the Bible to back it up:
Pro 6:2 Thou art snared with the words of thy mouth, thou art taken with the words of thy mouth.
Proverbs teaches us some very powerful lessons on the words that we speak. This is one of the most powerful lessons to learn found in this verse. God clearly tells us that we are “snared” or “taken” captive by the words of our mouth. To be “snared” or “taken” captive means to be imprisoned, enslaved, or to be trapped into something or somewhere that you do not want to be. Do you understand this? It is like falling into a pit and you did know was there. So is Job facing a situation that he did not want to be in? Of course he is, Job has been trapped or tricked into a series of things that were clearly not what he desired to happen to him. What happens to Job is based upon Job’s spoken words first and foremost, but that is not the entire problem revealed to us. Let’s look at the next verse in chapter 3.
In verse 25 of chapter 3, Job says that the thing that I feared the most has come upon me. That which I was greatly afraid of has over taken me. People, who do not understand faith in the Bible, do not know what Job has just told us. The Bible in the N.T. tells us that without faith it is impossible to please God (Heb 11:6). So why is faith so important to God? And then what is faith so that we can please God? Again I cannot teach you the answers to either of these questions fully in this blog. It would take way too long. I can only begin to tell you what faith is not in this blog. Faith is not fear. Faith is not being afraid. In fact fear is the opposite of faith. If you would like to read about “Understanding Bible Faith” then you can go to this series of lessons that will better explain why Job failed. Fear opens up the door for Satan to cause what you are afraid of to come to pass in your life. Faith opens the door for God to bless you and fear opens the door for Satan to curse you. This is how the whole Bible works and it is a common theme from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22.
Finally in Job verse 26 of chapter 3 we see more of the problem being described to us. To be in faith means to be in peace, but yet Job was in fear so he was definitely not peaceful and resting. The Bible says that to those who have believed they have entered into rest (Heb 4:3). When you have faith in God you can rest that he will do what He has promised. This is also having peace in your spirit. Job did not have this, so Job was open to the attack of Satan. Job was constantly in fear and was worried about his children and offered sacrifices to help his children and Job did this continually provring he was not in faith believing that it was working. This is not peace or rest, it is works based and the Bible says that no man is ever justified by his works.
Did you know that in any court of this land, you cannot go in and plead ignorance? Ignorance is never a valid reason for committing a crime. I’m sorry judge I didn’t know driving 140 was illegal. So it is with God’s spiritual laws. Just because you do not understand faith, spoken words, peace and rest does not mean you can get away with not doing them. You can clearly see that Job’s problem was at least 3 fold. He couldn’t keep his mouth shut; he was in fear for his family and finally he did not have any confidence in God’s ability so he could not rest. These are just Bible basics that God has hidden in the Word of God so that we can find them. We can also clearly see why God said everything that he possesses is in your power. It was Job’s own words and actions that open the door for Satan to come in. I would strongly suggest if you do not know much about faith and spoken words that you go study these two subjects extensively. If you can understand these, then you can clearly see how Job let Satan into his life. Then you can apply the lessons of Job to understand this is also how you let Satan have access to your life. So it is a vitally important subject to learn. I have gone too long in this lesson, so I’ll end it right here. I pray that you will continue reading in the next lesson so that we can learn some more from the book of Job. God Bless!
If you would like to continue reading this series you can continue with “Part 3“.
Understanding the Book of Job! An overview of what it is and what it is not! Part 1
(Ver 1.3) This is Part 1 of a series about understanding the Book of Job. The book of Job is a highly controversial book of mostly confusing information. The book of Job has been widely given the theme of patience and we see this mentioned in the New Testament book of James. This reference in James is the only time Job is mentioned by name in the N.T. The name Job is mentioned only 54 times and mostly just in the book of Job. However, the name does occur in Genesis 46 and Ezekiel 14. The book of Job is primarily about the afflictions of Job. However, the initiator of the problems in Job’s life and the cause of the problems are widely misinterpreted. The book of Job is often quoted at funerals and this is another misapplication of the scriptures and I will probably get into these verses later. The first two chapters reveal the afflictions occurring to this righteous man and then starts the words of Job in chapter 3 in an apparent conversation with some of his friends that have come to tell him what to do and this continues for many chapters. The discourse between Job and his friends go back and forth and finally end when God comes into the conversation with some new information that shuts everyone up. The last chapter of Job ends with God’s blessings on him being restored more than he ever had before. Most Bible scholars agree that Job is probably the oldest book of the Bible. The timeframe of Job is probably somewhere between Noah and Moses since it does not refer to Israel, the Old Testament law or any reference to God’s covenant with Abraham. The author of Job is probably the man Job himself, but we do not know this for sure. There are several verses found in Job that reveal things to us that confirm that it belongs in the Bible and that it is the inspired information from the Spirit of God. So I will not attempt to do a verse by verse study of the entire book, there is just too much unknown information found in this book to do this. I will attempt to teach some key verses that I have seen and I will try to use other verses in the Bible to help us to interpret what we find in Job correctly. Always remember that the Bible interprets itself. Let’s start with verse 1:
Job 1:1 There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil.
The first verse informs us where Job lived and what his nature and character was in the eyes of God. God calls the man Job a complete man, in other words a righteous man. He was humble and feared God and resisted evil. This is the type of man that God can stand behind as we will find out shortly.
Job 1:2 And there were born unto him seven sons and three daughters.
The man Job was married as we will also find out and he had 10 children. In the next verse we will see that the blessing of God were upon him.
Job 1:3 His substance also was seven thousand sheep, and three thousand camels, and five hundred yoke of oxen, and five hundred she asses, and a very great household; so that this man was the greatest of all the men of the east.
According to this verse Job was the greatest of all of the men of the east. This is strictly in terms of wealth and the blessings of God on his life. This is also a hidden hint to the reasons of things to come. If God’s blessing are on someone, he will get the attention of everyeone else physcially and spiritually speaking. When Satan sees the blessings of God upon Job, Job became a target. In verse 4 of Job 1, you can see that Job had problems with his children. They like to party, eat, drink and be merry. They were into having fun more than they were into work and doing right. This caused Job vast concern of what would happen to his children. This is the introduction to what Job worried about the most.
Job 1:5 And it was so, when the days of their feasting were gone about, that Job sent and sanctified them, and rose up early in the morning, and offered burnt offerings according to the number of them all: for Job said, It may be that my sons have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts. Thus did Job continually.
So Job does some things that I find very interesting. His kids have stopped their partying and Job is offering burnt offering for the number of his children to the Lord. Where does Job get the idea for this? I honestly do not know. As far as I know there is no law, no priests and there was no precedence for doing what he is doing. Is Job a priest of God? I do not know? We know from the N.T. that without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins (Heb 9:22). So Job was doing the right things, but where did he get this information? Plus was it doing any good since it was his children that were sinning and not him? This verse ends with the statement that Job did this continually so we assume that his kids were continually in a party mode. There is another scripture in the N.T. that I believe should be applied to this information we are given, and it goes like this “God is not mocked, for whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also reap” (Gal 6:7). What were Job’s children sowing? Will they reap what they sow regardless of what their father does? I believe God says they will.
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.
So here we go with another introduction to some highly confusing information. The book of Job seems to change dramatic focus from the earth to a place in heaven. The “sons of God” are the angels of God and this would include all angels, the good and the bad. This verse says Satan came with them like he is not included in the group of “sons of God”, but I totally disagree with that interpretation and I believe that Satan was their leader and the most high angel. You can see this by reading verses in Ezekiel 28:14 that describe Satan as the anointed cherub and the covering cherub. Then in Isaiah 14:12, Satan is called Lucifer, the son of the morning. Morning is the “Early Light” and since God is Light we can see that Lucifer is called an early son of God.
Job 1:7 And the LORD said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the LORD, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.
We are now told that Satan has come from the earth, so we know that he is not on the earth while he is holding this conversation with God. We also learn that Satan is not omnipresent. He must walk across the earth and go from place to place. We therefore know that Satan is not everywhere on the earth at once. However, we do not know how many angels that Satan has under his control on the earth so there may be many angels tormenting people simultaneously and not just Satan doing everything. However, many angels there are, the Bible says in Revelation 12 that 1/3 of them are fallen with Satan. There is also another reality given to us found in the N.T. that helps to explain what is happing to Job. In 1 Peter 5:8 God informs us that Satan is our adversary and he goes about as a roaring lion seeking who he may devour. Is this not exactly describing what is happening here in Job? Satan had just come from walking the earth and he came across Job. He is obviously the adversary of Job that God has hedged out. But, he is seeking to devour Job as we will see as we continue to read in this chapter. We learn from reading 1 Peter 5:8 that Satan is not able to devour everyone if he is seeking ways to do this. This indicates that Satan is not omnipotent and neither does he have direct access to anyone unless certain conditions are met to allow him to come in. Keep 1 Peter 5:8 in your mind as we continue to read about Job:
Job 1:8 And the LORD said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil?
Why do you think that God brings up Job? I believe it is because God knows what you are thinking. God knows why Satan is there. Job is a spiritually righteous blessed man of God; there is none like him on the earth. In the eyes of God this is why Satan was there to contend for this man.
Job 1:9 Then Satan answered the LORD, and said, Doth Job fear God for nought?
Satan starts to ask God questions about Job. Why does Satan ask this question? Does Job fear God for no reason or for nothing as he said to God? This sounds like a complaint or accusation to me.
Job 1:10 Hast not thou made an hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on every side? thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his substance is increased in the land.
Now we begin to see the problem that Satan has and why he is there to see God. Satan is questioning God’s authority to place a hedge of protection around Job and his family. You can clearly see what God is being accused of, the fact that God has blessed Job and given him great wealth and placed a spiritual wall of protection around him so that Satan could not touch him. What gives Satan the right to do this? That is an excellent question to consider, we know that Job’s children are living in sin in a constant state of partying. Job is continually offering sacrifices for his children who do not want sacrifices to be made or at least it appears that they do not care if they are made. The children of Job are not repentant or sorry for what they are doing, they are just being wild crazy rich kids who can get away with whatever they want, or so they think. We know that Satan is called the accuser of the brethren in the Revelation 12:10. This verse in Revelation says that Satan accuses the people of God on the earth both day and night. To accuse is a legal term that means “to charge with an offense”. You do understand that God is the ultimate supreme Judge of the Universe? Satan is the “Plaintiff” that brings accusations against righteous people before the Judge. So why does Satan do this? So these righteous people can be found guilty of violating the spiritual laws that God has established in the spiritual realm. Do you understand this? Satan is looking for a way into your life, he watches your every move, your every action, your every reaction and your every word to see what he can accuse you of doing that violates God’s laws. This is how it works until Revelation 12 comes around and Satan is cast down and he is no longer welcome to come into the heavenly realm to accuse us anymore.
Job 1:11 But put forth thine hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face.
So here is where it starts to get even more difficult to understand and to interpret correctly. Satan tells God to stretch His hand and touch all that he has and Job will curse God to His face. So is God the curser or was God the one that blessed Job? If you recall from reading earlier we know that God was the one that blessed Job and made him exceedingly wealthy. It was God who had placed the hedge of protection around him and his family so what would happen if God changes and does the opposite like Satan just said for God to do? If God does what Satan just said, then God becomes a liar. That is pretty strong words, but that is what the Bibles says:
Mal 3:6 For I am the LORD, I change not;
According to the Bible, God is a constant never changing force of good. If God would have blessed Job and suddenly bent to the pressure from Satan to change and curse Job then God is guilty of changing. Do you understand that this is impossible? The Bible describes God as being Light. Do you know that the speed of light is a constant? The speed of light does not diminish or change it always stays the same. The distances of stars in our universe are measured in the terms of light years. A light year is the distance that light travels in the course of a year’s time. This is a constant value or we have a major problem on our hands. If you do not understand laws of physics and science about light and the speed of light, just fix your mind on God. If God blessed someone today and tomorrow takes it all away, then God changed and now God is a liar. That is a major problem with most people’s Bible interpretations, they interpret a book of the Bible like Job in a vacuum and ignore the rest of the Bible and this is not a valid interpretation. Here is another challenge for you to consider from something that God said in the book of Deuteronomy:
Deu 30:19 I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live:
If God sets before us life or death, blessing or cursing and says to us to choose between the two, whose fault is it which one we get? Uh oh? That is a problem isn’t it? It would appear that if Job got curses instead of blessings, then he made the wrong choices to cause them to occur. Do you understand this?
Job 1:12 And the LORD said unto Satan, Behold, all that he hath is in thy power; only upon himself put not forth thine hand. So Satan went forth from the presence of the LORD.
So we now have God giving permission, or so many people think it says. This however, is not what this verse says. Nowhere in this verse does it say you have won your case, I give you permission. People just read this into the statement because that is what they want to see that it says. All God said was “Behold” and that means look, open your eyes and see. Do you understand that? That is not a statement of permission; it is a directive for Satan to see what has already happened. You cannot behold something that is not already there. I mean God can see into the future, but Satan cannot. If Satan is told to see something it has to be something that he can already see. This is clearly not rocket science, so surely you can comprehend the simple words of the Bible. Then God tells Satan that all that Job has is in his power. Again this is not I give you the power; this is a simple statement that says you already have the power. There is such a huge difference between those two perspectives. The only thing God does is limit what Satan can do and this was not to touch Job. So God was guilty of still trying to protect his righteous man Job. God never gives Satan permission to do anything. God simply said you already have the right to do what Job has chosen.
So who is the author of destruction? Who causes death and tornadoes? We will find out in our next lesson about the story of Job. I hope that you will join me as I continue with this series of very different Bible lessons. Thanks for your time and your comments. God Bless.
If you would like to continue reading in this series you can go to “Part 2“.
Names, Titles, Descriptions and Symbols of the Church in the Bible
(Ver 2.2) This is my list of the Names, Titles, Descriptions, Types and Symbols for the Church of Jesus Christ. If you are a Christian, this document helps to describe who you are and your place in the Kingdom of God. This is a living document of references to God. It will change and be updated as I find additional scriptures. A Name is a direct reference to the Church. A Title is a given direct identifying appellation signifying status or function. A Description is something that represents something in words. A Type is a real named person, place or thing that can be viewed to apply to a spiritual individual not named. A Symbol is a natural object that describes characteristics or features of a spiritual being you cannot see.
If you have found others that I may have not included yet, please share them in a comment. Thank you and God bless you in advance.
words. A Type is a real named person, place or thing that can be viewed to apply to 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. If you know of other references not named, please share them with me in a comment. Thank you.
|
Name, Title, Symbol, Type for the Church |
Description |
Scripture Reference |
|
12 Tribes |
New Covenant People in Jesus originating in His 12 Apostles, the fulfilment of Jacob’s 12 sons. |
James 1:1; |
|
Abraham’s Seed |
Those with Abraham’s type of Faith |
Gal 3:29; |
|
Babes |
Newborn (born again) Children of God |
Mat 11:25; Luke 10:21; |
|
Beloved |
The Bride of Christ |
Rom 9:25; 2 Ths 2:13; |
|
Blessed of My Father |
The Sheep of God’s Pasture |
Mat 25:34; |
|
Body, His |
Those married in Covenant to Christ |
Eph 1:23; Col 1:24; |
|
Body, the |
Those who are in Christ |
Eph 5:23; |
|
Body of Christ |
She Who is Joined and one with Christ |
Rom 7:4; 1 Cor 10:16, 12:27; Eph 4:12; Col 2:17 |
|
Born Again |
Those who are new Children of the Spirit |
John 3:3-6; 1 Pet 1:23; |
|
Born of God |
Children of the Spirit |
1 John 3:9, 4:7, 5:1, 4, 18; |
|
Born of Him |
Born Again of the Spirit |
1 John 2:29; |
|
Bride |
Married to Jesus |
John 3:29; Rev 21:2, 9; |
|
Bridechamber, Children of the |
Those married in covenant to the bridegroom (Jesus) |
Mat 9:15; |
|
Brother |
Sibling of eldest brother Jesus Christ |
Mat 10:50; Rom 8:29; Heb 2:11, 17; |
|
Called, the |
Those chosen by God |
Rom 1:6, 8:30, 9:24; 1 Cor 1:24; |
|
Candlestick |
Lights in the dark World |
Rev 1:20; |
|
Chosen |
Those people that have embraced the Calling of God to follow Jesus |
Jam 2:5; |
|
Chosen Generation |
Highly Favored People |
1 Pet 2:9; |
|
Children |
Sons and daughters of God |
Rom 8:17; |
|
Children, Dear |
Those dearly Loved by God |
Eph 5:1; |
|
Children of Abraham |
A Spiritual family type of Israel |
Gal 3:7; |
|
Children of God |
Born of the Spirit |
Mat 5:9; Rom 8:16, 21; Gal 3:26; 1 Jn 3:10; |
|
Children of Israel |
Spiritual Nation of God’s people |
Exo 19:6; Hos 2:23; |
|
Children of Light |
God is Light, those who are His children |
Luk 16:8; John 12:36; Eph 5:8; 1 Th 5:5; |
|
Children of the Day |
Those walking in the Light of God |
1 Th 5:5; |
|
Children of the Free Woman |
A type of the promised child born to Sarah, those who are reborn from the spiritual woman Jerusalem Above |
Gal 4:31; |
|
Children of the Living God |
Those Born of the Spirit |
Rom 9:26; |
|
Children of the Kingdom |
Those Who Belong to God’s Kingdom |
Mat 13:38; |
|
Children of the Promise |
Children of God’s Spoken Word |
Rom 9:8, Gal 4:28; |
|
Chosen |
Those Favored by God |
Eph 1:4; 2 Ths 2:13; |
|
Christ |
Those with God’s Anointing and Jesus in their Hearts |
2 Cor 6:15; |
|
Christian |
A Believer in Christ |
Acts 26:28; 1 Pet 4:16; |
|
Christians |
Followers of Christ |
Act 11:26; |
|
Church, Glorious |
Noble and Honorable |
Eph 5:27; |
|
Church, My |
Those Who Belong to God |
Mat 16:18; |
|
Church of Christ |
Those who Belong to Jesus |
Rom 16:16; |
|
Church of God |
Called Out by God |
Act 20:28; 1 Cor 1:2, 10:32; 2 Cor 1:1; |
|
Church of the Firstborn |
Those gathered in and with Christ Jesus the Firstborn from the dead |
Heb 12:23; |
|
Circumcised Heart |
God’s children that have been circumcised by the hand of the Spirit |
Rom 2:29; Php 3:3; Col 2:11; |
|
City |
The home of God within His people |
Mat 5:14; Rev 21:23; |
|
City, Faithful |
She who will be a faithful wife to God’s Covenant |
Isa 1:26; |
|
City of My God |
Where God Resides; |
Rev 3:12; |
|
City of Righteousness |
Those abiding with God who is their righteousness |
Isa 1:26; |
|
City of the Lord |
Those of the New Jerusalem |
Isa 60:14 |
|
City Not Forsaken, A |
Those pursued by God |
Isa 62:12; |
|
Daughter of Jerusalem |
The Church who is reborn by the Spirit of God, His Word and the woman Heavenly Jerusalem |
Mic 4:8; Zep 3:14; Zec 9:9; Gal 4:26; Heb 12:22; |
|
Daughter of Zion |
She who is Born of God |
Isa 52:2, 62:11; Mat 21:5; Heb 12:22; |
|
Disciple |
The Student of God |
Mat 10:24-25; |
|
Ekklesia (Church) |
A Calling Out |
Mat 18:17; Act 2:47; Rev 22:16; |
|
Elect, The |
Those Chosen of God |
Mat 24:31; |
|
Faithful Brethren in Christ |
Those married to Christ |
Col 1:2; |
|
Fellow Citizens |
Residents of the City of God |
Eph 2:10; |
|
Fellow Heirs |
Joint heirs together of God’s Kingdom |
Eph 3:6; |
|
Fellow Servant |
Working Together in Unison |
Rev 22:9; |
|
Field, His |
God’s Garden |
Mat 13:24; |
|
Flock of God |
Those in God’s Pasture |
1 Pet 5:2; |
|
Followers |
Those that that imitate the Godly examples of others |
1 Cor 11:1; |
|
Followers of God |
Led By the Spirit |
Eph 5:1; |
|
Friends |
Jesus Laid Down His Life for Us |
Jn 15:13-14; |
|
General Assembly |
Universal Congregation |
Heb12:23; |
|
Glory and Honor of the Nations |
Where God Resides |
Rev 21:26 |
|
Good Soldier of Jesus Christ |
Those in God’s Army |
2 Tim 2 :3; |
|
Great City |
She Who is Mighty and Strong |
Rev 21:10; |
|
Ground, Good |
The Good Soil of the Kingdom of God |
Mat 13:23; |
|
Habitation of God |
The New Jerusalem God’s City of Living Stones |
Eph 2:22; |
|
Heir(s) |
He Who Inherits |
Rom 8:17; Gal 3:29; Gal 4:1; Tit 3:7; 1 Pet 3:7; |
|
Heirs according to the Promise |
Those who inherit |
Gal 3:29 |
|
Heirs of God |
Those Who Inherit |
Rom 8:17; Gal 4:7; |
|
Heirs of Promise |
Those who inherit by an oath |
Heb 6:17; |
|
Heirs of Salvation |
Those that inherit the Kingdom of God |
Heb 1:14; |
|
Heirs of the Kingdom |
Those that inherit the Kingdom of God |
Jam 2:5; |
|
Holy City |
He has made her clean and ready |
Isa 52:1; Rev 21”2; |
|
Holy Jerusalem |
Blameless City of Jehovah |
Revn 21:10; |
|
Holy Nation |
Blameless People |
Exo 19:6; 1 Pet 2:9; |
|
House, Christ’s |
The Dwelling of Christ Jesus |
Heb 3:6; |
|
Household of Faith |
Those in the Family of God by Faith |
Gal 6:10; |
|
Household of God |
Those in the Family of God |
Eph 2:19; |
|
Household, His |
Those in the Family of God |
Mat 10:25; |
|
House of God |
Where the Spirit of God Lives |
1 Tim 3:15; |
|
House of Israel |
The Spiritual Israel in Covenant with Jesus |
Eze 34:30; Heb 8:8 |
|
House of Judah |
The Spiritual Jews in Covenant with Jesus |
Heb 8:8 |
|
In Christ |
Those abiding in Jesus Christ |
Rom 12:5; 1 Cor 1:2, 3:1 15:22; 2 Cor 1:21, 2:14, 3:14, 5:17; Gal 3:28; Eph 2:6, 2:10, 2:13, 3:6; 2 Tim 3:15; |
|
Isaac |
The church called a type of the son of promise being in Christ |
Gal 4:28; |
|
Israel |
God’s people saved by Grace |
Rom 11:26; |
|
Jerusalem |
City Redeemed of the Lord |
Isa 52:2, 9; Dan 9:25; |
|
Jew |
Spiritual type of natural Israel; Circumcised of the Heart |
Rom 2:29; |
|
Joined Unto the Lord |
The Bride of Christ |
1 Cor 6:17; |
|
Joint-Heirs with Christ |
Those who Inherit |
Rom 8:17; |
|
Just, the |
Those Who are Blameless |
Mat 13:49; |
|
Kingdom of Priests |
Spiritual People |
Exo 19:6; |
|
Kings |
God’s Royalty |
Rev 1:6; |
|
Kings of the Earth |
Rulers of the Earth |
Rev 1:5, 21:24 |
|
Lamb’s Wife, the |
Married to Jesus |
Rev 21:2, 9; |
|
Light |
Those of the Day |
2 Cor 6:14; Eph 5:8; Php 2:15; |
|
Light of the World |
Those that Teach the Truth and demonstrate the Love of God |
Mat 5:14; |
|
Living Stone |
The New Jerusalem of God |
1 Peter 2:5 |
|
Members of Christ |
The Body of Christ |
1 Cor 6:1; |
|
More than Conquerors |
The church in Christ Jesus |
Rom 8:37; |
|
Mother |
Spiritual Mother of God |
Mat 12:50; Gal 4:19; Rev 12:1; |
|
Nation, A |
Those of Spiritual Israel |
Isa 55:5; |
|
Nations of Them Which are Saved |
The Redeemed of the Lord from every nation |
Rev 21:24; |
|
New Creature |
Those Born of the Spirit |
2 Cor 5:17; |
|
New Jerusalem |
The Lamb’s Wife |
Rev 3:12, 21:2; |
|
One |
One consisting of many in Christ |
Gal 3:28; Eph 1:10; |
|
One Body |
One With Christ by Marriage Covenant; |
1 Cor 10:17, 12:12; |
|
One Bread |
One With Christ by Covenant |
1 Cor 10:17; |
|
Partakers of His Promise |
Participants of the union with the Holy Spirit. |
Eph 3:6; |
|
Peculiar People |
Purchased Possession |
Tit 2:15; 1 Pet 2:9; |
|
People, A |
God’s Spiritual People |
Heb 8:10 |
|
People, Holy |
Those made blameless |
Isa 62:12; |
|
People, My |
Spiritual Nation of Israel |
Hos 2:23; Rom 9:25; |
|
People Israel, My |
Children Born of the Sprit |
Mat 2:6; |
|
Pillar in the Temple of My God |
Living Stone |
Rev 3:12; |
|
Precious Fruit of the Earth |
That Which is to Be Harvested |
Jam 5:7; |
|
Priests |
Those who bring the sacrifice of Praise to God |
Rev 1:6; |
|
Priesthood, Holy |
Those who bring the sacrifice of Praise to God |
1 Pet 2:5; |
|
Purchased (Possession) |
Those Bought with the Blood |
Act 20:28; |
|
Rachael |
The type of the Bride of God’s Week of Work |
Gen 29:18 |
|
Ransomed of the Lord |
Those Bought with the Blood of Jesus |
Isaiah 35:10; |
|
Redeemed of the Lord |
Those Purchased from the World of Darkness |
Psa 107:2; Isa 51:11; 62:12; |
|
Righteous, the |
Those Justified by God |
Mat 13:43; 1 Pet 3:12; |
|
Righteousness |
Those Justified by God |
2 Cor 6:14; |
|
Righteousness, Servants of |
Those who Serve God’s Purpose |
Rom 6:18; |
|
Royal Priesthood |
New Covenant Kings and Priests that praise and worship God |
1 Pet 2:9; |
|
Ruth |
A Type of the Bride of Christ |
Ruth |
|
Saints |
Sacred, Pure, Blameless |
Rom 1:7, 15:25, 16:15; 1 Cor 1:2, 16:1, 15; 2 Cor 1:1, 13:13; Eph 1:1, 2:19, 3:18, 4:12, 6:18; Php 4:22; Col 1:2; 1 Th 3:13; |
|
Saints In Christ Jesus |
Those blameless in Christ |
Php 1:1; |
|
Saints in Light |
Those blameless in God |
Col 1:12; |
|
Salt of the Earth |
Those who flavor and preserve |
Mat 5:12; |
|
Same Body, the |
Joined members of the same body |
Eph 3:6; |
|
Saved |
Those redeemed from Satan’s kingdom |
Rom 8:24; 1 Cor 15:2; 2 Cor 2:15; |
|
Seed, Abraham’s |
Those of spiritual Father Abraham |
Gal 3:29; |
|
Seed, Good |
Those planted by God |
Mat 13:38; |
|
Seed, the |
Those of the Promise of Abraham |
Rom 9:8; |
|
Servant |
Those in service to God |
Mat 10:24; |
|
Sheep |
Those in God’s Flock sorted at the right Hand of God |
Mat 25:33; Heb 13:20; 1 Pet 2:25; |
|
Sheep, My |
Those people dedicated to follow the Good Shepherd |
Jn 10:14; Jn 21:16 |
|
Sister |
The Sibling of Christ |
Mat 12:50; |
|
Sister Spouse |
Sister Married to Christ |
Song 4:9-10, 12; 5:1 |
|
Sons of God |
Those Born of the Spirit |
Jn 1:12, Rom 8:14, 8:19; Gal 4:6; Php 2:15; 1 John 3:1-2; |
|
Sons of the Living God |
Born of the Spirit |
Hos 1:10; |
|
Sought Out |
Those pursued by God |
Isa 62:12 |
|
Spiritual House |
The New Jerusalem God’s dwelling place |
1 Pet 2:5; |
|
Spouse |
The Bride of the Son of God Jesus |
Song 4:8, 11; |
|
Sweet Savor |
Pleasant aroma of Praise to God |
2 Cor 2:15; |
|
Tabernacle, the |
God’s Eternal Temple |
Rev 21:3; |
|
Temple of God, the |
God’s Dwelling Place |
1 Cor 3:16; |
|
Temple of the Holy Ghost, the |
God’s Holy Living City |
1 Cor 3:19; |
|
They which are written in the Lambs Book of Life |
The Church |
Rev 21:27; |
|
Tree, Good |
Those who produce Fruit of the Spirit |
Mat 7:17-18; |
|
Tree of the Field |
Those that bear fruit for God |
Eze 34:27; |
|
True Worshipper |
Those people in the Spirit |
Jn 4:23; |
|
Twelve Tribes, the |
The Spiritual Israel of God |
Jam 1:1; |
|
Vessels |
Those of the House in Honor |
2 Tim 2:20; |
|
Vessels of Mercy |
A saved human |
Rom 9:23; |
|
Way, the |
Believers walking and following the Good Shepherd in the narrow path of eternal life |
Gen 3:24; Mat 3:3; Mat 7:14; Act 9:2, Act 16:17; |
|
Wheat, the |
That which is planted by God for Harvest |
Mat 13:30; |
|
Wife |
The Church aka the Bride of Jesus |
Eph 5:25, 5:31-32; |
|
Woman, A |
The Bride of Christ |
Rev 12:1 |
|
Workman, A |
God’s faithful servants |
2 Tim 2:15; |
|
Zion, the |
Those of the New Jerusalem |
Isa 60:14; |
If you would like to read other reference documents about Names, Titles, Descriptions and Symbols here are some others that are available:
Names, Titles, Descriptions and Symbols of Jerusalem in the Bible
(ver 2.0) This is Part 4 in a series of reference documents revealing the multiple Names, Titles, Descriptions and Symbols of Spiritual Individuals in the Bible. This lesson will focus only on the subject verses describing Jerusalem found in the Bible. This is a living document of references to Jerusalem and it will change and be updated as I am led to additional scriptures. 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 that can be viewed to apply to 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.
Jerusalem is a central subject of the Bible and the capital of Israel located in the Middle East today. Jerusalem is also a major city revealed in end time prophecy. This city has captured the attention of the entire world. Jerusalem is mentioned in the Bible directly around 767 times and indirectly many other times. However, it is very important for you to know that there is more than one city named Jerusalem in the Bible. In fact there are 3 separate and distinct cities all with this exact name. Knowing this information complicates correct Bible interpretation significantly. You must be wise enough to know which Jerusalem God is talking about when you see the name “Jerusalem” by itself. You may be asking yourself what are these three cities named Jerusalem and I will give you a quick lesson on them:
- The Jerusalem that now is as revealed in Galatians 4:25 and in multiple other verses and the primary subject of this document.
- The Jerusalem Above revealed in Galatians 4:26 and is called the Heavenly Jerusalem in Hebrews 12:22.
- The New Jerusalem revealed as the Lamb’s wife in Revelation 3:12 and 21:2.
From these references you should be able to recognize the existence of three cities named Jerusalem. This document will primarily focus on the one reference of the Jerusalem on the earth that now is. If you have seen other verses that I have not found yet for Jerusalem, please share them with me in a comment. Thank you.
|
Name, Title, Symbol, Type for Jerusalem |
Description |
Scripture Reference |
| Abomination | Disgusting Idol Worshipper | Ezekiel 9:4; Ezekiel 16:2, 36, 51, 58; Ezekiel 22:2, 23:36; 33:29; Malachi 2:11; Revelation 17:4-5 |
| Adulteress | Unfaithful Wife | Jeremiah 3:1; Jeremiah 5:7; Ezekiel 16:32; Ezekiel 23:45; Hosea 3:1 |
| Afflicted | Depressed Woman | Isaiah 51:21 |
| Aholibah | My Tent is In Her; Whore | Ezekiel 23:4 |
| Ariel | The Symbolic Name of Jerusalem | Isaiah 29:1-7 |
| Babylon | The Whore | 1 Peter 5:13 |
| Bad City | Wicked City | Ezra 4:12 |
| Birthed in Land of Canaan | Where She was born | Eze 16:3; |
| Bloody City | Those that Kill the Prophets | Ezekiel 22:2, 24:6,9; Nahum 3:1 |
| Bond Woman | Spiritual Hagar Egyptian Slave | Galatian 4:24-25, 30-31 |
| Burdensome Stone | Load Carrier | Zec 12:3; |
| Castle of Zion | The Net or Snare of Zion | 1 Chron 11:5; |
| City | Inhabited by the Children of Israel | Judges 1:8; 2 Kings 23:27; Psalm 122:3; Zec 14:2; Jeremiah 26:9 |
| City, Chosen | Highly Favored of Jehovah | 1 Kings 11:36; 1 Kings 14:21; 2 Kings 23:27; 2 Chron 12:13 |
| City of a Stranger | Home of the Jebusites | Judges 19:12 |
| City of David | David the Great King’s City | 1 Kings 8:1; 2 Kings 9:28; 2 Kings 14:20’ 2 Kings 23:27; 1 Chron 11:5; 2 Chron 5:2; 2 Chron 21:20; Isaiah 22:9; |
| City, Faithful | She who is faithful to God | Isaiah 1:26; |
| City of Righteousness | The inhabitants have God’s righteousness | Isaiah 1:26; |
| City of the Great King | City of David | Matthew 5:35; |
| City of the Jebusites | Inhabited by the trodden | Judges 19:11; 1 Chron 11:4; |
| City Where David Dwelt | The City of David the King | Isaiah 29:1; |
| City Which Is Called By Thy Name | Married to Jehovah | Daniel 9:18; |
| City Which Killed Jesus our Lord | Those Who the shed Blood of God is On their Hands | Mat 16:21; Rev 11:8; |
| Covent Breakers | Those Who Broke Covent with God | Eze 16:59; Romans 1:31; |
| Curse, A | City which is cursed | Jeremiah 26:6; |
| Daughter | Female born of a woman | Ezekiel 23:2; |
| Daughter of an Amortie | Her Father was a Canaanitish Mountain Tribe; | Ezekiel 16:3, 45; |
| Daughter of a Hittite | Her Mother was a terrorist; Fear and Terror | Ezekiel 16:3, 45; |
| Desolate | Waste Land | Jeremiah 26:8 |
| Desolate City | Jerusalem laid waste | Eze 26:19 |
| Desolation | Waste Land | Zep 2:15; |
| Divorced Woman | She that was Put Away | Isaiah 50:1; Jeremiah 3:8; Hosea 2:2 |
| Dross | Backsliders; Those who draw back; Refuse of the furnace | Ezekiel 22:18-19; |
| Drunken | She Who is Drunk | Isaiah 51:21: Jeremiah 13:13; Ezekiel 23:33; |
| Egypt | Spiritual Name for Jerusalem; Where she played the Whore in Her youth | Hosea 11:1; Revelation 11:8 |
| Evil | Moral Wickedness | Jeremiah 25:5 |
| Evil Figs | The Spoiled Fruit | Jeremiah 24:8; |
| Family Know of God | She who was married to Jehovah | Amos 3:2; |
| Faithful City | She who was faithful in Marriage | Isaiah 1:21; |
| Filthiness | Not Gold; uncleanness | Ezekiel 16:36; Ezekiel 22:15; Zephan 3:1; Revelation 17:4 |
| Filthy | Disobedient and Rebellious | Zep 3:1; |
| Fornicator | Lover of Idols | 2 Chronicles 21:11; Ezekiel 16:15; |
| Fuel to the Fire | She which is consumed by the Lord | Ezekiel 21:32; |
| Gomorrah | Spiritual name of Jerusalem; | Isaiah 1:9-10; Jeremiah 23:14; |
| Great City | She which was Great | Jeremiah 22:8; Revelation 11:8; Revelation 17:18; |
| Hagar | The Egyptian Bond Woman; slave girl | Galatian 4:24-25 |
| Harlot | The unfaithful woman | Isaiah 1:21; Jeremiah 3:1: Ezekiel 16:15; Ezekiel 16:35, 41; Ezekiel 23:19;Ezekiel 23:44; Hosea 2:5; Hosea 4:15; |
| Harlot, Well-favored | Beautiful Adulteress | Nahum 3:4; |
| Heifer | Female Cow | Hosea 10:11 |
| Her with My Name | The Name of Jehovah shall be on her | 1 Kings 11:36; 1 Kings 14:21; 2 Kings 23:27; 2 Chron 12:13; Jeremiah 25:29 |
| Holy City | Sacred | Neh 11:1 |
| Imperious Whorish Woman | Vixen Adulteress | Ezekiel 16:30 |
| Israel After the Flesh | Natural Nation of Israel | 1 Cor 6:18; |
| Jebus | Aboriginal Name of Jerusalem; Trodden | Judges 19:10; 1 Chr 11:4; |
| Jebusi | Trodden inhabitants of Jerusalem | Joshua 18:28 |
| Jebusite | Trodden Amorites | Joshua 15:8; |
| Jerusalem Which Now Is | Earthly Jerusalem | Galatians 4:25 |
| Jeshurun | Symbolic Name of Israel | Deu 32:15, 33:5, 33:26; Isa 44:2; |
| Jews | Those of Judah | Romans 2:17; |
| Jezebel | A type of the False Religion of Adultery and Idols | Revelation 2:20; |
| Killer of the Prophets | Murderer of Those Who Are Sent To You | Matthew 23:37; Luke 13:34 |
| Lewd Woman | The Adulteress Wife | Ezekiel 23:44; |
| Married Wife | She who has a husband | Isaiah 54:1 |
| Mistress of Witchcrafts | She who is deceived by Magic | Nahum 3:4 |
| Mocking to All Nations | She who is ridiculed; | Ezekiel 22:4; |
| Mother | She who has born Children | Isaiah 50:1; Hosea 2:5; Matthew 23:37; Luke 13:34; Galatian 4:25 |
| Mother of Harlots | Her Children are like her | Revelation 17:5 |
| Mother’s Daughter | The female child; like mother like daughter | Ezekiel 16:45; |
| Mt Sinai | Where the Law Given to Moses | Galatians 4:24-25; |
| Mystery Babylon the Great | The Whore | Revelation 17:5 |
| Oppressing City | The City who is proud and violent | Zep 3:1; |
| Oppression, Wholly | She who has unjust gain; deceitfully obtained | Jeremiah 6:6; |
| Polluted | Trodden Down | Ezekiel 16:6; Zep 3:1 |
| Rahab | The Harlot, spiritual type of Jerusalem | Psalm 89:10; Isaiah 51:9 |
| Rebellious House | She who is disobedient and has become an enemy | Ezekiel 17:1, 24:3; |
| Rejoicing City | Joyous City | Zep 2:15; |
| Reproach to the Heathen | Disgrace to the Gentiles; | Ezekiel 22:4; |
| Salem | Peaceful the pattern and roots of Jerusalem | Genesis 14:18; |
| Seed of Evildoers | Fruit of Ungodliness | Isaiah 1:4; |
| Shalem | Early Name of Jerusalem | Gen 33:18; |
| Sinful Kingdom | A people to be destroyed | Amos 9:8; |
| Sinful Nation | A people led astray | Isaiah 1:4; |
| Sister | Woman with Siblings | Ezekiel 16:46; |
| Sister of Judah | The sister | Jeremiah 3:1; |
| Sister of thy Sisters | Sin runs in the family | Ezekiel 16:45; |
| Slayer of Innocent Blood | The City that Killed Jesus | Jeremiah 26:15; |
| Smitten | To Strike Down | Ezekiel 33:21; |
| Sodom | Spiritual Name for Jerusalem; | Isaiah 1:9-10; Jeremiah 23:14; Ezekiel 16:46-49; Revelation 11:8 |
| Thy Mother’s Daughter | Daughter of a Hittite (terror) | Eze 16:45 |
| Uncleanness | Religious filth | Ezekiel 36:17; |
| Where Our Lord Was Crucified | Jesus was hung on the cross there | Rev 11:8 |
| Whore | Adulteress Idol Worshipper | Ezekiel 16:33-34 |
| Whore, Great | Adulteress Idol Worshipper | Revelation 17:1; |
| Wife | She who is married to Jehovah | Jeremiah 3:20, 31:32; Ezekiel 16:8; Ezekiel 16:32; |
| Woman | The Great City | Ezekiel 23:44; Revelation 17:18 |
| Woman, Removed | Unclean Woman | Ezekiel 36:17; |
| Woman Who Breaks Wedlock | The Unfaithful wife of Jehovah | Ezekiel 16:38; |
If you would like to read other reference documents about Names, Titles, Descriptions and Symbols here are some others that are available:
Spiritual Visions! Real or Fantasy?
(Ver 1.5) This is now Part 2 of a series of important Bible lessons on the subjects of spiritual truths and realities. I had a reader try to tell me that the story in the Bible about Moses and Elijah appearing with Jesus on the mountain top was a vision that Peter, James and John experienced and therefore in a vision anything is possible. The entire context of his message comment was an attempt to explain away the reality of the existence of spiritual beings after their physical/natural death. These types of people are simply very ignorant and deceived by the devil into believing lies. They do not want to believe that people are spiritual beings that exist after death because they would rather believe that they go into a state of unconscious sleep until judgment day comes and God awakens them. They are attempting to justify their deception of the false “soul sleep” theology by explaining away what the Bible actually says on the subject either directly or indirectly. This is a common ploy of deception used by Satan, either ignore those things in the Bible that do not conform or fit with your version of the truth, or attempt to explain them away using your limited intellectual knowledge and human reasoning. There arises a great problem with this type of wrong thinking. We can easily find verses that contradict a soul sleep belief. People, without understanding what they are saying believe that my God was and is a willing participant to visions with lies of deception being embedded within them. They said that God can give people a vision of anything, like fairies, monsters, fantasies, imaginary figures or whatever simply because He likes to teach us something and it would be OK and acceptable for God to behave this way since He is clearly the sovereign God. All of his comment was a response to my explanation of “Is there Life after Death for Seeing Spirits” lesson that was recently written on that important subject. If you have not read this lesson you should go back and start with that lesson first, because I will not repeat any of it here. Because these people want to believe you go to sleep when you die, they try to explain away Moses and Elijah appearance with Jesus as a vision fantasy. Today’s lesson is on the subject of visions and it is directed at those who want to know the truth.
INTRODUCTION TO SPIRITUAL VISIONS
So today’s lesson is about the subject of spiritual visions and what they are! God will further discuss today in this lesson the purpose that His vision are given to people. We will learn today that there is more than one kind of spiritual vision. We will also discover that there are other types of a vision possible for other purposes. We will research and discover the truth using the Bible and ignoring the words of deceivers. According to the “deceived individual” a vision is simply an apparition or a fantasy of Biblical and Godly proportions where anything goes. So according to this person, God can communicate with people saying anything He wants to and even lie to them using a vision not found within reality. However, my Bible says that “It is impossible for God to lie” (Heb 6:18). In Titus 1:2 it says God cannot lie. Therefore according to written scripture there is absolutely no way that a vision from God can be a party to a lie or untruth in any way or form. Because people do not want to know the truth, they make up excuses to explain away the truth and they present them to fools who buy into them like they were eating candy. What a crazy mixed up world that we live in. It is just way too easy for Satan to deceive some people (Rev 12:9).
So what is a spiritual vision? In order to understand something we need to define it first. A vision occurs when a natural man is given a view into the spiritual realm either past, present or future. A vision is not a normal human experience. A vision is most definitely a gift from God by His sovereign choice that allows natural people to see unseen spiritual things, places, events, angels and people. However, these spiritual things are never fabrications or fantasies because they are more real than the natural things that we can see all around us. God who is a Spirit (John 4:24), created the natural world as a pattern after the spiritual world that He already lived in. It was the Supreme God of the spirit world that created this natural world.
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.
The things that we perceive with our five natural senses are called the “Temporary” things of this world. This verse then contrasts the temporary things with the greater eternal things. What are eternal things? They are not natural things so they have to be supernatural things. These are spirits and the world that they live within. These are the eternal things and beings that God is comparing to natural seen things. Because people cannot see, feel taste, hear or smell the spiritual realm normally they do not believe that it exists. But, this is by God’s design and purpose not to allow man to know that he is a spirit being living in a temporary natural body, until after they are either saved or dead. Even after a person becomes a Christian they can still be a very “Carnal” Christian and still be flesh dominated.
Heaven is a very real spiritual location and place and existed way before the earth and the natural universe existed. What I am going to do today is to use the Bible to show you God’s usage of visions and see what we can learn from them. By standing firmly only on the Word of God and understanding what it says, is our only hope for not being deceived like some of these people that try to write me crazy responses, like they were trying to help me not to be deceived. I have learned better than to ignore God’s truth in order to follow a lie, I know who my God is and I know what His Word says, so I’m going to stand with Him and ignore the opinions of people.
THE FIRST VISION
The very first mention of a “vision” in the Bible comes in the Book of Genesis. This account is God speaking to Abram. If God is the one giving this vision then we know that God is communicating truth to Abram and these are not the words of any fantasy or fairy tale. Abram is able to perceive and understand the spoken words of God and here is this first mention of a vision in the Bible:
Gen 15:1 After these things the word of the LORD came unto Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward.
So obviously God is lying to Abram and just telling him something He wants to trick him with. If you are spiritually blind this is what you might believe. If that is what you choose to believe then you might need to go read somebody else’s blog. What we can clearly see is that God holds a conversation with Abram in this chapter and informs him of what will happen in his life on earth and in the future to come. If you read the whole chapter you can clearly see that God gives Abram a covenant and reveals what will happen to his seed. These are spoken prophetic Words from God and not lies. There are no lies written here in this chapter because these are all of the true facts that will soon happen to Abram. God is not participating in a fantasy with Abram. It is very critical to note and learn the reason for the vision being given was for God to speak to a natural man named Abram. God did this by opening his spiritual eyes to see and hear something coming from the greater spiritual realm. God speaking to natural men with visions will become an established pattern of truth as we continue in this lesson. Please note that there is no other reasons given for the vision, do you understand this? Let’s look at another mention of “visions” in the KJV O.T. Bible.
ANOTHER CONFIRMATION FOR VISIONS
I am going to move to the book of Old Testament book of Numbers next. Here we should see God’s usage of visions and the further confirmation reason for their application usage. Remember in the Bible that God says let every word of truth be established in the mouths of two or three witnesses and that is exactly what I will do. Let’s read Numbers chapter 12 and verse 6:
Num 12:6 And he said, Hear now my words: If there be a prophet among you, I the LORD will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream.
God clearly informs us of how He uses visions to communicate to His servants the prophets. The prophets of God would receive spiritual information directly from God Almighty in the form of both visions and dreams. Again we see the only reason for God giving a vision to a human man is for God to speak to them. This means it has to be the truth, if it is coming from God. So I brought up dreams because this verse mentioned that God also uses them to communicate with people on the earth. I do not believe that every human vision or dream can only originate only from God, after all there are other spiritual beings that are alive and well on this planet. I have heard people say in church that they saw someone who they thought was Jesus and he appeared to them, but what he said to them tried to make them do something that the Bible did not say or confirm. So that type of vision could be the possible deception of the enemy Satan. The Bible says that even Satan can transform himself into an “angel of light” in order to try to deceive us (2 Cor 11:14). The only reason why Satan would transform himself is to be seen in a visual form. This clearly implies a vision into the spiritual realm. Therefore, if you do not know what the Bible says, you are an easy prey for this type of deception. I will tell you this plainly that God will never tell you anything in a vision that is contrary or opposed to the written Holy Word of God.
As you can clearly see in the above verse in Numbers 12:6, God uses visions to make Himself and His words known to people. So is God going to trick you with a false vision? Is God going to deceive you with a lying vision? Or is God going to speak ONLY the truth in a vision? What would make God known to us? I believe that only the truth is what comes from a vision from God for Him to make Himself known to us. So if Peter, James and John had a vision of Moses and Elijah speaking to Jesus was it fictional or real? I believe it has to be more real than anything we experience on the earth. The spiritual realm is not fictional, if it is, then God is a fictional character and I know much better than that. One of the key points to deception is to discredit the truth. Satan uses this ploy very often by inferring that God is the one that lies to people and that he is the one speaking the truth! This was his deception to Eve and he hasn’t come up with anything new for you either.
TYPES OF VISIONS
There are more than one type of vision in the Bible and in fact there are at least two types of visions that I have found in the Bible. One type of vision I will call an “Open” vision and the other type of vision I will call a “Closed” vision. Let me briefly show you the difference between these types of visions using the Bible. For example in the book of Job God says the following.
Job 33:14 For God speaketh once, yea twice, yet man perceiveth it not.
Spiritually unaware men have a great difficulty in hearing the voice of the Spirit of God. Either their minds are cluttered with busy natural stuff or their mouths are opened too wide and speaking with empty words instead of listening for God. In either case, God does not interrupt your life and your agenda because He wants to say something to you. God is a Gentleman who does not rudely butt in on what you are doing and interrupt you. If you think He does, you are wrong. In Job this verse tells us that men and women have a great difficulty in perceiving the spoken Words of God. God can be speaking to you and you never even understand that it was God. One solution to this problem is God’s usage of dreams also called night visions while you are sleeping. This is an example of a closed spiritual night vision:
Job 33:15 In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, in slumberings upon the bed;
As you can clearly see in this verse, God is saying that I will come to you in the night while your body rests and sleeps, because you did not hear me during the day when you were awake and busy. When you are in a deep sleep, your mind is usually very quite, you are not busy moving or talking and you can more easily hear what the Spirit of God wants to speak to you. Why is this possible? It is only possible because your spirit inside our sleeping natural body never sleeps. Just because your body sleeps does not mean the real unseen you ever sleeps. Only deceived people believe that spirits can sleep. While your body is asleep and your mind is not preoccupied, your spirit can hear directly from God in a night vision or a dream.
Job 33:16 Then he openeth the ears of men, and sealeth their instruction,
God says that He is able to open the ears of the man in the night sleep so that he is able to hear the instructions from God. This is an example in the Bible of a closed spiritual vision. There is a key word given to us in this verse, and it is “opened”. This does not mean that the man was deaf and was unable to hear physically. It is only talking about the spiritual ears of the man being opened so that he can hear with his spirit. This type of vision is usually very personal and it is God speaking directly to your spirit for normally your benefit only. I guess it is important to note that even in a closed vision of the night, God must open something in order for you to hear it or see it.
So let’s contrast the difference between closed visions and an open vision. An open vision would be one that was in the likeness of the one experienced by Peter, James and John when they all saw Jesus speaking to Moses and Elijah on the mountain top. They were not sleeping, they were fully awake and they could clearly all see into the spiritual realm of reality concurrently something that they would have missed otherwise. If there was a third party watching this experience they would have seen Peter, James and John in a trance like state with their eyes fully wide open. But, these external observers would not have been able to perceive the presence of either Elijah or Moses unless God opens their eyes to see them. Let’s look at an example of this in the O.T.:
Num 24:4 He hath said, which heard the words of God, which saw the vision of the Almighty, falling into a trance, but having his eyes open:
An open vision is usually one that occurs with your natural eyes wide open. When this type of vision occurs to you the people around you usually do not see what God is showing you in the spiritual realm, they only see you in a trance like state of existence. You are usually the only one that perceives the message from God sent from the Spiritual Realm. This is a method of God that allows you to see into the real spiritual world and it definitely is not a fantasy event of any type.
There are just many examples in the Bible of this type of vision and I will only give you one more example in today’s lesson. I just cannot go through every mention of the word in the Bible, it would take too long. The next story that I want to touch on is the story of Elisha in the O.T. book of 2 Kings. In this story the servant of Elisha comes to him and tells him some really bad disturbing news, he thinks. He tells Elisha that they are surrounded by the enemy and on the verge of their death. However, Elisha did not fret with this news or get worried in the least little bit. Why was this? What made Elisha able to see the situation differently than his servant? Remember that Elisha was God’s prophet and what did we read in Numbers about God speaking to His prophets? All Elisha did was this:
2Ki 6:17 And Elisha prayed, and said, LORD, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the LORD opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.
Open the eyes of my servant so that he can see that there are more for us than there are against us. To open your eyes, does not mean your physical eyes were closed or blinded, his physical eyes were seeing fine the natural things that they were faced with. What Elisha was requesting for God to do was to open his spiritual eyes to let him see into the spiritual realm in order to see that there were flaming chariots of fire all around them. This was an example of an open spiritual vision of view into a real set of angels of God riding in chariots of fire. These angels were not “make believe” and these angels were not fantasy; they were simply seen only in the real spiritual realm and this the truth from God. So people, who want to believe lies, can go and explain away these real spiritual things in the Bible with their human reasoning for other spiritually ignorant people to devour.
CONCLUSION – FALSE VISIONS
I’ll wrap this lesson up for today with one final verse to consider. We have learned there are at least two types of visions, one open and one closed. We have observed that God’s visions are only given because God wants to speak truth to a natural man about things that he may not have been able to perceive otherwise. Now I want to briefly address a part of the subject that I alluded to earlier about false visions from other spiritual beings.
Jer 14:14 Then the LORD said unto me, The prophets prophesy lies in my name: I sent them not, neither have I commanded them, neither spake unto them: they prophesy unto you a false visionand divination, and a thing of nought, and the deceit of their heart.
God clearly tells us that He does not give anyone “False” visions so that they can preach lies to the people of God. Did you understand what God just said? Do you understand why and how this applies directly to the vision that Peter, James and John had? If the vision of Moses and Elijah was not real and the truth then it was a fabricated lie and must be called a false vision. This would be a deception that God says that He is not participating in. This verse clearly teaches us that God gives people only visions of truth and spiritual reality. God will not give anyone a fantasy vision, a fairy tale vision or an imaginary vision of fiction. That would make God a liar and this is not my God and never will be.
People who want to believe lies will ignore vital scriptures in the Bible that conflict with their erroneous beliefs. These scriptures were placed there by God to teach us the truth and every scripture on the subject of visions must be balanced with the other scriptures on the subject. This is basic correct Bible interpretation. Only when we allow the Bible to interpret itself can we come close to actually understanding the truth. The next time anyone gives you a verse and tries to tell you that it is not a real vision from God of truth you should respond with the Bible.
It is very interesting to note, do you know that it does not matter what you believe? It does not matter if you are right or if you are wrong? Wow, I probably just blew someone’s mind saying that. I guess I should rephrase those statements, because it does matter if what you believe is the truth for your salvation. But, what I meant to say was your version of the truth does not change the reality of the actual God given and intended truth. God is not going to change to fit and conform with your personal beliefs. God is not going to change His truth to align with your version of the truth. God is a constant, never changing, eternal God that only projects the truth in His word to those who want to see it. To those who are not interested in God’s truth, they are permitted to be deceived and follow their own misconceptions. This is the only way that God can give everyone a free will and a right to make a fair choice in this life.
I had another confused reader try to ask me, why can’t there be multiple choices available to the afterlife? In other words he seemed to think that people are all so different in this current world, so therefore God will allow them all to be different in the world to come. While people will not be identically cloned robots in the afterlife and they will be completely unique we must understand that an anything goes moral mentality and the freedom to commit sin, will not be a direct part of God’s future plan. This type of thinking was the erroneous philosophy of an all-inclusive religion of tolerance and acceptance called “Universal Salvation” where everyone will be in heaven even if they never made Jesus their Lord here on this planet. I have other Bible lessons that address this so I will not repeat them here. But these are false lies of Satan also that will send people to hell because they think they do not have to repent and get saved. There will be no evil in the afterlife for those that are saved because there will be no tempter to test us. Satan will be cast into the lake of fire and will not be able to tempt anyone. God help us all to see the truth.
If I were you I would become hungry and thirsty to know the real truth. Only by being open minded and examining the Bible closely to verify everything that you believe is true, can you ever be assured that you have not been deceived. If you are not willing to change when the truth is presented to you then you are in trouble. Pray and ask God to show you the truth, He is the teacher and will confirm to you the truth. Base your faith only on the Bible and not on anything that a man teaches. Thank you for taking the time to read and study the Bible and I hope this lesson will help someone to understand spiritual visions. God Bless!
Who’s Sending the Storms in Your Life?
(Ver 2.1) This is “Part 3” in a series of advanced lessons about “Understanding Hard Sayings” found in the Bible. We live in a pretty crazy world at times. Some Christians like to believe that God is in complete control of everything that happens to us, but what do you do with the times when it seems like you are facing some very challenging overwhelming circumstances? Did God send these negative circumstances to test you, prove you or maybe just to keep you humble? It is funny what many churches teach on this subject and most of them ignore what the Bible says in order to teach something that they have created in their minds. Human reasoning and religious thinking usually results in things that are directly opposed to the truth of God. Learn to be careful who you follow and make sure what they are teaching you is based ONLY upon the scriptures being correctly divided and interpreted. Also allow the Spirit of God inside of you to be your quide into the truth. He will also keep you from what is not the truth if you let Him. Always remember that whatever God says to you by His Spirit will always be in perfect alingnment with what He has said to you in His written Word.
Joh 16:33 These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.
The Greek word translated as tribulation literally means “trouble” and “pressure”. So we have all been faced with the storms of trouble and pressure in our lives. These are things like losing your job and wondering what you are going to do now for money to pay the bills. How about getting attacked physically with sickness and disease? Having a child die suddenly? What about being pregnant and having a miscarriage?
Facing natural disasters like hurricanes, tornados, wild fires, earthquakes and floods. Look at the world’s economies on the brink of collapse. The plunging real estate markets and the rollercoaster stock markets. What about the price of food and inflation, droughts, famines, wars and I could go on and on We are all faced with an enormous amount of different kinds of pressures being put on us from every side it seems. The verse above in John 16:23 speak of these “pressures” in life. Jesus told us that tribulation is a part of the world that we live in. However, Jesus did not say God was sending them your way. Jesus said be of good cheer for I have overcome the world. Jesus directly links this “pressure” to the “world” that we currently live in. Jesus did not say be of good cheer because these are just God’s way of testing you, changing you, proving you or whatever else people like to think. I personally believe that if there was nothing to overcome in life that nobody would seek God for help. But, yet I also believe that God never sent any of these storms of life that we are faced with. I personally believe that God warned Adam not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and that Adam is the one that allowed evil to enter into the world that we reside within. I’ll try to talk more about this as we go to show you who the originator of these adversities and evils really is. Here are some Bible verses that I have found that helped me tremendously when I was studying this subject and I hope they are a blessing to you also:
Luk 8:22 Now it came to pass on a certain day, that he went into a ship with his disciples: and he said unto them, Let us go over unto the side side of the lake. And they launched forth.
In this story found in Luke, Jesus has been ministering to a group of people and it was now getting very late in the day. Jesus sends the people away and goes with his disciples to cross the sea in their boat . So far nothing new is happening that is very news worthy.
Luk 8:23 But as they sailed he fell asleep: and there came down a storm of wind on the lake; and they were filled with water, and were in jeopardy.
This is where the story starts to get really good. There are many people in churches that teach that Jesus was God in His full deity power. However, this verse should cause them a major problem, because the Bible says that God neither sleeps nor slumbers (Psalm 121:4). You can obviously see the potential conflict to that kind of teaching by simply reading the verses in the Bible that reveal to us the truth. I believe that Jesus Christ was fully God and fully man. However, I also believe when God became a man, He stripped Himself of His deity powers in order to lay down His life for us. You see it is impossible to kill an omnipotent God. Understand that how you are now is how God had to become. If you sleep Jesus had to sleep. If you eat then Jesus had to eat. If you ever get thirsty then Jesus got thirsty. If you could sin, then it was possible for Jesus to sin. These are just basic realities found in the Bible. So I got off of the subject for a quick side trip to help someone today. This verse informs us that as they were sailing, Jesus went to sleep. The winds picked up and a storm came upon them and it looked very bleak to the disciples. Some of the disciples were men who made their living on the water; they were intimately familiar with this sea, the weather there, boats and sailing. They obviously thought the situation was life threatening. So they had a problem; one of those storms of life had arisen around them that I talked about earlier and they believed it could be the end of them. The boat was taking on water, the wind was very strong against them and the outcome looked very bleak. Fortunately for them they had Jesus in the boat asleep. Let me ask you a quick question; do you have Jesus in you right now? If you do He is not sleeping!
So let’s stop right here and determine something. Who sent these winds and this storm to Jesus and the disciples? Was this the work of God? I thought God was in the boat? Of course God in the flesh was in the boat but God who is a Spirit was also everywhere else at the same time. But, did God send the storm? People like to think that the storms are the acts of God because He is the highest power in control? Certainly men on the earth believe they did not cause the storm, therefore they understand cause and effect so someone had to cause the storm! Insurance agencies like to have “Acts of God” clauses to define what they will cover and what they will not cover. I’ve even heard ignorant ministers claim a hurricane that almost destroyed New Orleans was an act of God’s judgment upon a sinful city. People sure can be ignorant and accuse God of doing some crazy things that I doubt if He is pleased with. Please let me introduce you to a new concept that is related to our subject today of who caused the storm:
Mat 12:26 And if Satan cast out Satan, he is divided against himself; how shall then his kingdom stand?
Did you know that Satan had a kingdom? That is not why I picked this verse, but it is an interesting point to keep in mind. Jesus says that any kingdom divided against itself will be brought to nothing. This is a spiritual law from the mouth of God! What do we learn from this law? Can you apply this knowledge to our discussion today? Jesus claims that one party or one kingdom cannot fight against itself and survive. That is a very important concept to keep in your mind when thinking about did God cause the storm. So what is my point? If God sends the storm and then God is awakened in the boat to stop the storm, would that not be God working against Himself? That would make God divided against Himself, not in harmony and certainly not in unity. It is more like a Jekyll and Hyde type of God. You cannot send a storm just to give you something to do or to provide an opportunity to prove that you can stop it. It would not make any logical sense. The Kingdom of God would clearly be divided against itself if God sends the storm and then stops the same storm. Do you understand what Jesus is teaching?
Luk 8:24 And they came to him, and awoke him, saying, Master, master, we perish. Then he arose, and rebuked the wind and the raging of the water: and they ceased, and there was a calm.
As you can see the disciples woke Jesus up and said Master look we are perishing. Jesus got up and looked at the problem and spoke words to it! The wind stopped and there was a great calm. So let’s stop right there again and think. If Words stopped the storm, could words have started the storm? I think that is a very valid question. If it were Words that caused the storm, they cannot be the words from God or He would be divided against Himself. The Bible clearly says God does not change! To speak words to cause a storm and then to speak words to stop the same storm would cause God to be a shifting inconsistent unstable God! I find that a very interesting concepts to understand. As a result of spoken words there was a great calm that surrounded them. If the storm was intentionally sent to Jesus and the disciples what would have been the end result of the storm, if Jesus had not stopped it? For what purpose would the storm have served? Would the storm have been a blessing or a curse? I recently saw a post on the internet that said “adversity can be a blessing in disguise” and I thought immediately how confused this writer was. If you can read in Luke from the fear that the disciples possessed the storm seems to be designed to kill them, to destroy their boat and to steal their life, their time and their money away from them. There is absolutely no logical way to think that the storm in Luke could be viewed to be a blessing in disguise. What else is a storm good for? Right here is an amazing time to use your brain and think again. Is any major storm of life ever a blessing in disguise? I do not think anyone recently in Joplin Missiouri would think it was. So who does Jesus say causes these types of adverse destructive events in our lives? Did you know that the Bible tells us who is responsible?
Joh 10:10 The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.
The thief is a synonymous reference or title for Satan. There are those in churches that think that God sends the storms of life upon them and if that is the case then God is the thief. I cannot speak for your God, but my God is not a thief. Anything that steals from you, tries to kill you or destroy what you possess, Jesus called it an act of the “thief” Satan. 
We also know that God is not the one who kills, steals or destroys because Jesus said in this verse that He came to give us life abundantly and that would be the opposite of someone who was coming to give us death. Hopefully you can see the difference and know who is behind each event that happens to you. Jesus said that the pressures of life would come, but that we should be of good cheer because He had overcome all of the pressures. Why is that important? Because according to 2 Cor 2:14 God declares us triumphant “In Christ”. Did you know you were in Christ? I guess I do not have time to teach that today, but this is why God can tell you to be of good cheer when storms come!
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.
There are just too many people in churches who do not realize that we have a spiritual enemy and an adversary of spiritual opposition. This enemy is only interested in taking you out of this world. He wants to deceive you any way that he can. The term to wrestle is a physical conflict between opponents. If you are wrestling a friend you are not wrestling. The opponent is described to us as not being a physical being, but is clearly described to be a spiritual force. The term principalities refer to the chief rulers in the spiritual realm. These spiritual forces are described as being “wicked” that means evil and hurtful. They do not play the game or fight the battle by any rules. They are in a no holds barred match of spiritual wits against you. They will send whatever they can against you to take you out.
Luk 8:25 And he said unto them, Where is your faith? And they being afraid wondered, saying one to another, What manner of man is this! for he commandeth even the winds and water, and they obey him.
Getting back to our main lesson story found in Luke, Jesus calms the storm with words and turns to the disciples and asks them a very funny question that most people do not understand. Jesus did not say “Sorry fellows, I did not know, why didn’t you just wake me sooner”. I think that is what most religious people would like to do or think that Jesus said. Jesus was asking “Where is your faith?” Why was Jesus asking them like they should have had faith to do something about the storm? When you read the Bible you need to pay close attention to every word. What is said and what is not said. You do not ask a question like this if you did not expect something different. Everyone likes to pray to God and ask him to calm the storms of life and God’s response will always be “Where is your faith?” That is something that people do not grasp easily, because they do not know what faith is. The implied meaning of the question that Jesus asked was the disciples could have done the same thing that Jesus just did. I know that is going to go over big with some people and others it will be like I’m speaking heresy. We can’t do what God does, can we? We certainly are not God! I know that for sure. However, I’m just studying the Bible and trying to understand what it says. You can choose to believe something else if you like; I’m not your judge.
What I take away from this lesson of Jesus and the disciples is that Jesus is more than capable of solving all of our problems. But, His question will always be “Where is your faith?” I also learn from this story in Luke that God is not causing the storms in your life so He or you can calm them. God’s house is not divided and God must be consitently good or we woould not know if we should try to calm the storms, ask God to calm the storms or to simply let the storms kill us. After all if God sent the storm and you prayed to have the storm stop you have made yourself a new enemy to the will of God and that is why I peronsally believe that God never sends the adversities in your life. You of course can choose to believe what you like. God Bless!
If you would like to continue reading in this series about “Understanding Hard Sayings” you may go to “Part 4“.
God’s Definition of Eternity! Are there any Limits to What We Can Learn?
(Ver 1.1) Today I want to do something different to stimulate and exercise your mind. I want to get you to thinking of some things that you may have never thought of before. God woke me up last night and taught me some new concepts about eternity that I have never even thought of before. I hesitate to tell people on the Web that God does this to me, because people sometimes think you’re crazy to believe things like God can actually talk to you and you can actually hear and understand Him. However, if this is not possible, then we have found something else that God can’t do, He can’t communicate with humans. Actually if you have ever read the Bible you have seen too many examples of God speaking to Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Elijah and I could go on and on. Today, the problem with most people is that they are not spiritually aware enough to realize when God is saying anything to them. Knowing how God talks to you is the key to hearing from God and I will not comment on that any further. So this is what the Spirit of God said to me, “Are there any limits to what you can know?” I took this to mean will there ever come a time when we are in eternity with God that we will reach a point that there is nothing else for us to learn? I mean forever is a very long time. Humans cannot even fathom the definition of what eternity is. After we go beyond billions or trillions, most people stop trying to process what those kinds of numbers mean in our brain. We have no reference point to the experience of eternity that even comes close to what forever means. You see my computer has a 1 terabyte hard drive in it. That is a far cry from my first computer hard drive of 10 megabytes. However, even 1 terabyte is nowhere close to having an infinite hard drive space available to you. I mean even Google doesn’t have infinite hard drive storage space. We are born on this planet with a limited perspective and we may live even 100 years and this is nothing compared to eternity. It would be like one cell out of every cell in our universe combined. Even Adam or Methuselah in the O.T. never lived to be older than 1000 years old. Methuselah the oldest recorded living man in the Bible, only lived 969 years. This is a nothing numbers compared to living in eternity. So there is no human on the earth that has any clue of how long eternity is. So here is the key question today to challenge you to think; how much could you learn if you had forever to do it in? Are there any limits to knowledge? Are there any limits to what God knows?
Isa 57:15 For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones.
As you can clearly see, the Bible says that God lives in eternity. I looked up the word “eternity” to see the definition and it means “forever” or “without end”. Eternity is clearly just a concept to us that we have great difficulty in comprehending fully. God exists outside of the realm of time and yet sent Jesus Christ into the realm of time at the perfect time to accomplish what God needed to accomplish. So I believe that the dimension of time does not limit God. Einstein theorized that as we approach the speed of light that time would slow and then finally stop. I find that very interesting since the Bible says that God is Light! That is pretty awesome stuff to think on.
So here is where I’m going to start to get a bit controversial, surprise, surprise. Does God know everything? Is there anything that God does not know? These are almost trick questions. Because I do not know, if we have the answers to these questions. Most people believe that God knows everything. After all only He is omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient to name three known qualities used to describe God. The term omniscient is a theological term that is used to describe God and it can actually mean “All knowing”. God can be described as having an infinite amount of capacity for knowledge and this is probably a very good thought. But, I also think that this is dependent upon your perspective. God certainly is All Knowing concerning us and the rest of His creation. The Bible certainly says that God knows some amazing details about us. God knows our every thought and with over 6 billion people on the planet, I do not understand how this is even possible. The Bible says God knows how many hairs are on our heads at any given time. Do you have a clue of how many hairs are on your head? Unless you are totally bald, you do not have a clue. This proves that God is the most detailed oriented being that I can conceive of. So what is the controversial part of my thought process today? If God holds the capacity to know everything that is possible to know but still does not know everything, then there is a possibility of an infinite amount of knowledge being available to learn. If God knows an infinite amount of information already, then there is nothing that He does not know. Which one is it? Either way, we have to conclude that there is no limit to what we can know and learn in eternity. Maybe this will come out clearer as I go forward; probably right now I have a bunch of people just scratching their heads and saying what did he just say?
Let me see if I can rephrase what I tried to say, either God already has infinite knowledge or the realm of knowledge is infinite and God has the capacity to know it all. I really cannot say which one is true using the Bible. If you say that God knows everything already, then you have to conclude there is no creativity in anyone else. Every book that can be written has already been written by God. Every song that can be written has already been written by God. Only God has creation power and the rest of us are just puppets imitating God’s preconceived ideas. That would mean that the Bible says we are made in his image but we do not have His power to create so the Bible lied. I haven’t found a Bible verse to describe any of this per say. If you know of one or two, please let me know. I would love to learn. I did see some verses in Job that describes God as having “perfect knowledge”. The term “perfect” would tend to mean or at the least imply “whole” or “complete” knowledge.
All I know is somewhere something or someone has to be infinite. Either the amount of knowledge available is infinite or the knowledge of God is infinite. Otherwise it would mean somewhere in the course of eternity we could potentially reach a point of the end of all learning and come to a state of knowing everything. If this could occur, what would we do then? Can you even wrap your mind around this deep subject today? Here is what I took away from what God said to me last night. There is no limit to how much you can know, because there is no limit to the availability of God’s knowledge. You see I totally believe that God has the capacity of knowing everything. I totally believe that God’s knowledge compared to my knowledge right now is a like a comparison of all of the water in all of the oceans in the world compared to my single drop of water, if that much. But, I also believe that eternity is a long, long time. So the bottom line is no matter how much we learn even in a trillion years of time, we would have just begun to learn what God can teach us.
Also God when he spoke to Abraham told him that his seed would be as the stars of the heaven or as the sands on the seashore (Gen 22:7). In other words more than you could count right now. However, if you had eternity to count them all, is it possible to do it. This has to be a finite number, just a very big number. Do you understand big number concepts? Is there any limit to how high you can count? I don’t think so, if you have the time to do it.
So I probably just turned off a bunch of religious or non-intellectual type people. I seemed to imply that there could be stuff that God still has left that He can learn and I certainly do not have any Bible verses to demonstrate or confirm this logic. But I will tell you this also; this is what else God said to me in the middle of the night. He told me to think about the number “Pi”. If you are not a math type person you probably do not know what I’m talking about. The number “Pi” is a number used in math and geometry in relation to measuring circles. A circle is a symbol of completeness. A circle could also be a symbol of infinity, since as long as you want to go around in the circle it will let you keep going. A circle is a line without ends. So a circle could possibly be representative of a picture of God. Here is the Web definition for “Pi”:
Pi: the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle
Pi is an irrational number, in decimal places it never ends and never repeats with any know pattern. To me I can see Pi as a picture of God. He has no end and never does He do the exact same thing exactly twice. However, God does utilize patterns to repeat things in the natural realm from the spiritual realm so we have some additional complexity to ponder. If anyone ever told you that studying the Bible was easy, they lied to you. What do you think of the concepts behind pi and how this number relates to God? So I believe that God invented math for us to learn about natural concepts and laws that we can apply to spiritual things. If you can learn from them and apply them correctly you will begin to see how they relate to other spiritual things. I use math laws in my Bible interpretations all the time. God taught me this method so I stick with it. So here is the problem that I am faced with, Pi is an infinite never ending number. No matter how many digits that you calculate the number Pi to, the number never ends. This is the definition of eternity again, demonstrated to us in the concept of a never ending number. When I was in the 10th grade I memorized Pi to like 8 or 9 digits; to me “Pi” was 3.141592653…” and I thought I was doing pretty well. Later in life when computers came along, I learned that “Pi” had been calculated out in the astronomical realms of numbers. However, even with all of this work they were not any closer to the end of the number than I was. Why did God create infinite things like this? Never ending number concepts? I believe it was to show us that there is no limit to what we can still learn in eternity. I mean think about it, if God can create a number that He cannot find the end of; that tells me that we have something truly amazing in store for us. So I probably offended someone again saying God could not solve Pi, but yet God would have to change the definition of Pi or round it off somewhere in order to stop computing the number. Do you understand this? God, who has far greater computing power than any computer we have on our planet, could spend the rest of eternity at calculating Pi and still never reach the end. That is the definition of something that is infinite, yes? So can an infinite God solve an infinite math problem? I think that is a very tough question for me to even try to think of how to answer. You see I think that an infinite God who lives in eternity could calculate Pi forever and still never reach the end of the number. There would always be another digit to add to the list of numbers. Wow, that is very deep, I know. So we can still look at this subject in different ways. We can say that the possible realm of knowledge is infinite or we can say that God already holds infinite knowledge. To me if God held infinite knowledge then God had Pi solved before we were given it. However, this means by definition that Pi is solvable and is not an infinite number. Then there is the concept of writing books or songs that I mentioned earlier. Is there a limit to the number of books that God could write? Is there a limit to the number of songs that can be written by us? I personally do not believe that there are a finite number of songs available for us to create. Do you understand the complexity behind these concepts that God has given to us? They are truly amazing, but yet they are nothing compared to what God has in store for us in the future:
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.
When you start to think differently you begin to see old Bible verses in new enlightening ways. Is it beginning to get into your heart like it is mine? I think if it is, then we have only scratched the tip of the iceberg of knowing who God is and how much He loves us. Be a thinker, but begin to see God as He sees us. The Bible says that we have the mind of Christ, so begin to think like God. I know that I can hardly wait for the eternity of good things to come from God. I hope that I at least stimulated your mind to think today, like God did my mind last night. You may not agree with the things that I said, but that is OK also. Today was not a lesson on how to be saved so it really doesn’t matter that much. Today’s lesson was designed to get you to think eternally, infinitely, as a course for your future existence with God. If you disagree with anything that I said I’ll read it, but I probably won’t respond to the negative words of critics’ unless you can show me some Bible verses. You see I don’t know everything and I am perfectly willing to change to be right as long as I can see it in the Bible. In the meantime I’ll do my own search of the Bible using my computer to see if I can learn anything about what God has challenged me to think on. Mathematics is full of never ending number sequences and there must be a reason why God created them to be this way, so it is a challenge for you and I to find out why. Be continually blessed and encouraged in growing in the knowledge of Him.
Is there Life after Death? The Bible Evidence for Understanding Spirits!
(Ver 2.0) This is a serious Bible lesson on the important Bible subject of understanding death. Today I will discuss a very basic foundational subject but also an extremely important Bible truth in an attempt to make a potentially complex subject as simple as possible. I always like to emphasize that the Bible is a highly complex book of natural and spiritual information and one that the natural human mind is incapable of understanding without God’s help. This is the greatest and number one problem with why people read the Bible and do not understand what it says. God is the most intelligent being in both the Spiritual and Natural realms. God designed the Bible in an intelligent spiritual manner to permit humans the freedom and right to be wrong in everything that we believe. There is really no clear evidence for anything in the Bible, because people can put their own interpretations and definitions upon every verse, ignoring all other verses that do not fit with what they want to believe and thus they come to the conclusions that they desire to hold on to. That is a pretty foolish way of understanding the Bible, but people do it every day. By not being consistent and by not taking every related verse into account some people have concluded some vastly erroneous teachings.
Today’s lesson searches for what the Bible says about “Is there Life after Death?” This is obviously a highly controversial subject with a wide variety of opinions to the possible belief outcomes. There are a lot of people who would like to never think about death because they believe they are having so much fun. But there is still a difficulty that most of us face death is coming someday whether we like it or not.
Most of us have never died and then come back to talk about what happened to us after we died. The majority of dead people that were on the earth are still dead and have not been able to return form the dead to tell anyone about the after-life experiences, if it exists. And if anyone did die and come back would anybody believe them, since they would have no evidence like pictures to convince anyone of what they were trying to tell the rest of the world. Any personal natural death experience would probably only help to motivate the one that died to personally be more motivated to prepare for death.
So, what then do we do? I believe that we are given a Bible by God for the basis for all of our knowledge and for what we believe in our faith. If what you believe is not based upon what the Bible says, then you really have no ability to be confident of anything that you believe in. Faith is believing in something that we have no physical proof or evidence of possessing.
The Bible also firmly informs us that our faith must be based upon the Truth found in the Word of God. So, a Christian should be most concerned with what does the Bible say and reveal to me on the subject of death and the afterlife experience. Here is why I am addressing this subject today. I had a very deceived individual come to me who believes that when people die, they go into a state of sleep, until wakened for judgment day.
These types of believers do not believe in the existence of hell or eternal damnation or punishment. They want to believe that after this life there are no consequences for what we do here on the earth, how we believe, or whether we make Jesus our Lord and Savior or not. According to them those that are not saved by God are eliminated from future existence, they will have no consciousness of ever having been here on the earth or for ever existing at any time on this planet.
This type of teaching is one that I have heard proclaimed for many years. It is called a doctrine of “Soul Sleep” or a “Spirit Sleep” theology. They claim that everyone who dies goes to sleep until God chooses for the time of judgment. These people have many Bible verses that they believe that they can stand on and I do not deny that these verses exist. However, I do deny their weak erroneous interpretations of them and how they have twisted them to determine how they use and apply them with their natural minds to drive others into believing the lie of an eternal solution for an end of natural life with no eternal consequences.
This is a classic example of ignorance being combined with deception which is going to seed, and which is being spread and multiplied. God says in Hosea 4:6 “My people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge”. Therefore, what we don’t know will end up killing us and sending many to hell. You better make sure you know God’s truth before you believe something someone tells you is their truth. The only way we can be insured is for us to read the whole Bible and make sure there are no other verses that conflict with what someone is telling us is the truth.
So rather than telling you about all of the verses that they have misinterpreted, I want to focus mostly in on verses in the Bible that will put a few gaping holes of doubt in their theological erroneous teachings. These are the verses that they purposely ignore or are forced to explain away so that they can hold on to their beliefs. Let’s look at some of these verses about death and life after death today and you can be the judge and see what the Bible is saying for yourself.
Deu 34:5 So Moses the servant of the LORD died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the LORD.
This verse in the Bible is very plain. Moses we are told died a physical death exactly like every other human on this planet in our history has done also. I guess I should clarify that last statement, because there are two men in the O.T. that did not experience death, and the Bible says God took them and these were Enoch and Elijah. The Bible says it is appointed unto man, once to die and then comes the judgment (Heb. 9:27).
This is where people like to believe that the in between time from natural death and the time of judgment is a state of nothingness, because the Bible says there is nothing or does it? People need to realize that God does not tell you everything in any one place anywhere in the Bible. You MUST put the puzzle pieces together correctly in order to have a valid interpretation of the Word of God. Let’s confirm that Moses died before we go any further:
Deu 34:7 And Moses was an hundred and twenty years old when he died: his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated.
We can again clearly see that God says Moses lived 120 years on the earth when he died a natural death. I find that it is very interesting what this verse says. It does not say Moses died of any illness, weakness, infirmity or even any natural cause, does it? It even says that Moses was physically strong and had good eyesight. Oh well, I guess I won’t go there and create any more controversy.
Can we at least agree that Moses died? So then according to many people who believe in Soul Sleep, Moses is now in spiritual “la, la land” of non-existence. I assume that this is a state of blissful nirvana or an unconscious state of rest according to what they want to believe occurs after death. I hope that you can see this is pretty crazy to believe this way, you have to ignore so much of the Bible to believe wrong. Here is the main reason that I call this an erroneous teaching. Please read this carefully:
Luk 9:28 And it came to pass about an eight days after these sayings, he took Peter and John and James, and went up into a mountain to pray.
Here we have an account written by God in the New Testament that declares that Jesus went up on a mountain to pray. He took with Him, Peter James and John. So, we have 3 key witnesses to what is about to happen next. Is this a real story? You bet it is a real story if you chose to believe the Bible is the inspired word of God as is written in 2 Timothy 3:16. The Bible also says God is not a liar in Numbers 23:19. So, we know Jesus is praying and what happens?
Luk 9:30 And, behold, there talked with him two men, which were Moses and Elias:
Uh oh? Moses is suddenly there with Jesus on top of the mountain, and he is supposed to be asleep somewhere in la, la land. I really thought he was supposed to be sleeping until judgment day according to what these people care to try to teach us. Do you understand how wrong some people’s teaching can grow to become? Here Moses died at least 1500 years before Jesus came to be on the earth, and he appears with Elijah to talk to Jesus. I guess God must have awakened them both from their sleep. Maybe God sent a fairy princess to kiss Moses so that she could awaken him from deep spiritual sleep?
Do you understand what happens when anyone deviate from what all of the Bible say? These types of people have to start making stuff up and their lie is then as good as anyone else’s lie. Let’s stop here and think about this logically and just use some common sense. If Moses and Elijah were spiritually asleep for the last 1500 years or so, and do not remember their life on the earth and were just awakened for some quick purpose of God, what would they have to talk about with Jesus? Do you think that Jesus was the only one talking here and they were just getting filled in on the updates of the last 1500 years?
You see there are certainly many ways to explain away what the Bible says if someone does not wish to embrace it. However, it is so obvious to me that since Moses and Elijah were present with Jesus on the mountain top, they were clearly not asleep and could remember many things wrote to talk about. It would be a very far stretch to say that they were ever spiritually asleep either. So, you can believe whatever you choose to believe, but it may still be best to agree with the Bible’s truth.
So let me approach this subject of Soul Sleep from a different angle now. When you are asleep naturally speaking, are you ever aware of anything that happens? What about your dreams? Do dreams ever happen, do you ever remember them? Are there accounts in the Bible of anybody dreaming? You should probably understand if you have ever read the Bible that there are many people who have heard from God in a dream. Do you understand this? You have the story of Joseph in Genesis 37:5. Then in Matthew 1:20 we have another man named Joseph who heard from God in a dream about marrying the virgin, Mary.
So, we know that people do have dreams while naturally asleep and people can remember them and even hear from God when they are physically asleep. Therefore, is there a potential problem with spiritual sleep if there is any such thing? Have you ever seen a verse that explicitly says a spirit sleeps?
How do humans ever remember a dream if their natural body is asleep, and their mind is at rest? After all you were sleeping. That is a million-dollar question to ponder. You see your spirit inside your body never sleeps. Even when your body is asleep your spirit is awake and capable of hearing from God. Interesting, isn’t it? The Bible says in Psalms 121:4 that God neither slumbers nor sleeps. This tells us very clearly God who is a spirit, does not get tired. A spiritual being never needs a nap, to rest up or regain spiritual strength.
The problem with most people, they think that the spirit of a man is somehow different from God and this is their downfall. Because they think naturally, they come to the wrong conclusions concerning spiritual truths. This is the most significant way that God keeps people from seeing what the Bible really says. In their minds they have the wrong foundation of reference or the wrong perspective on things that were written.
If you are driving in a car, when you start out going in the wrong direction, it is sometimes very difficult to get the car to turn into the right destination. So, it is with Bible interpretation. So, people too often forget what the Bible says about Adam being made in the image and likeness of God. God said, “Let US make man in our image after our likeness…” (Gen 1:26). When you don’t believe what the Bible says in one spot it makes it increasingly easier to disbelieve another spot.
So, the point is if God (who is a Spirit) does not sleep or nap, the spirit of man does not sleep or nap either, because we were made in the image and likeness of God. If you want to see what the Bible really says, sometimes you have to change your perspective. Sometimes this requires you seeing things like God sees them. Sometimes it requires you to see things the way others see them around you. This is just part of the complexity of understanding the Bible.
So why did I go through the explanation of dreams while you are in a natural sleep? It was only to show you that your spirit never sleeps and that is the only way that you would remember what you dreamed. So, you decide what you want to believe, it might be wise to stay with what the Bible actually says.
So those who teach fictitious “Soul Sleep” have a predicament, we can clearly see that Moses died literally hundreds and hundreds of years before Jesus came along yet he appears with Jesus to talk about spiritual subjects with the transfigured Lord. We also should know that Judgment Day is not coming for many more hundreds of years in the future when this event occurs.
Where has Moses been previously and where will Moses wait until the Day of Judgment finally comes. Think about it, where is Moses during all of this past and future time? You first have to understand that Moses is a triune being. That just means that Moses is a spirit being that has a soul that lives in a body. When his body died his spirit and soul left his body. We know this from other Bible verses like this one:
Jas 2:26 For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.
As you can see the Bible says that man is a spirit. The absence of the spirit from the body deems the body to be dead. The death of the body means that the spirit is no longer present in the body. Either way there is a clear separation of the two. When you go to a funeral and look in the casket you are not looking at the person, just the body that this person used to lived in. So as you look into the casket do they appear to be awake or asleep? If you are bright at all you have to say they look asleep. So, all of the Bible verses in the Bible that “Soul Sleep” teachers like to grab hold of, and use are from our perspective on what death is and looks like. The body is asleep and the spirit has departed and gone somewhere else. The spirit must still exist and must be awake because it is made in the image of God. So let’s look at another lesson of what God used Paul to tell us:
Php 1:23 For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better:
People who choose to believe in a “Soul Sleep” ignore verses like this one in the Bible. Here is Paul writing to the Philippian Church and he is speaking of a decision that he is trying to make. He is trying to determine if he should stay here in his body and help them or to leave his body and go be with Christ. Uh oh? That is a pretty strong indication that there is no sleep time in between death and what occurs afterwards. Paul calls death for a Christian something that is a “FAR BETTER” thing than staying here physically and living on the earth. So what would make death far better for anyone that would only go to sleep until judgment day? Sleep is not better than being awake, alert, aware and conscious, is it? If you think it is, you are a vastly deceived individual. Christians, who die according to what Paul just said, leave their bodies and go into the spiritual realm of heaven to be with Christ. That is what would be far better than being here. You are walking on the streets of gold, you beholding the face of the one that died for you, you are standing before the throne of the living God and you surrounded by all of the angels, and your Christian relatives and friends that have gone before you. That is the definition of a “FAR BETTER” time if you ask me. That is the only explanation of this verse that makes any sense to me. Seeing my earthly father again, seeing my son again, seeing my Heavenly Father for the first time, seeing Jesus Christ and the nail prints in his hands and feet, that is what gives me hope. Spiritual sleep is not hope, it is nothing to look forward to, it is nothing that you can call better even a little bit. What is FAR BETTER to you? How do you define “FAR BETTER”? It could make all the difference in the world.
So I could go on and give you many other Bible verses, that talk about death, heaven, hell and other related subjects, but I have gone long enough for today. I pray that you will take the truth of God’s word and hold fast to it so that no man will deceive you with lies from the enemy. I have found that some people are not capable of being helped. No matter how much you try to show them. These are what I call “Concrete Christians”; they are thoroughly mixed up and firmly set in their ways. They do not read the Bible with an open mind to allow the Spirit of God to teach them anything. They do not wish to see the truth, because they are happy with their perception of reality. They have extreme tunnel vision and only see what they want to see. Whatever you do, do not become as one of these types of people. Always stay open to change, but always base your change upon the Bible only. It saddens my heart tremendously when I encounter people like this if they are that easily deceived then they are open to other deception as well. The Bible says that there will be many in that day that come before Christ and say Lord, didn’t we do this and that in your name and Jesus will look at them and say depart from me for I never knew you. Do not be one of these! May God Bless you and help you to see the truth of His glorious Word!
Understanding Seeds in the Bible! How are Spiritual Babies Conceived? Part 9
(Ver 1.5) This is a series of Bible lessons on the significance of understanding how Seeds work. I believe only by understanding how natural seeds work, can we really ever focus on how spiritual things operate. God gave us the natural things in our world to teach us about the unseen spiritual things through the wisdom of His intelligent design. Using many Bible verses and the Seed laws from Genesis 1 I have explored several subjects applying the knowledge of seeds to other scriptures in the New Testament. We have discovered that the Bible says there are multiple things that are all referred to by the title of a “seed”. This is just one of God’s techniques of concealing the truth in plain sight. God calls many things by the same name, title or description. This makes it more difficult for the reader to determine what type of seed He is talking about. From our study we have seen that there are natural seeds, like fruit seeds or grass seeds mentioned in the Bible. We have seen children called seeds all over the Bible. We have seen the male sperm called his seed. We have seen spiritual spiritual things like God’s Word being labeled as the seeds that are spread by teachers in the spiritual soil of a human’s heart. We have discovered that there exists two types of seeds in the Bible; one is the Good Seed and other is called the Bad or Evil Seed. By pattern association we can conlude these can be representative of the good words from God versus evil words from Satan. The Good seed was always sown by God exclusively and the evil seed was always sown by his enemy Satan. These are such important concepts to fully grasp. If you have not been reading this series from the beginning you should stop and go back to start reading with “Part 1” first. If you haven’t read from the beginning you have just missed more than I can possibly teach you in my simple introduction.
Today I want to discuss the previous seed concepts and seed laws in more detail to apply them to how a person becomes a Christian. I have alluded to this subject before in other lessons, but I will address it more completely today filling in some gaps. We have already seen that Jesus told us that the most important parable to fully understand is the Parable of the Sower. From this parable we should now know that God’s Word was the seed that the sower was spreading. We also learned that the soil in this parable was always the hearts or spirits of the men and women in the world. There were 6 revealed types of soil presented to us in this parable; 3 types of soil did not produce spiritual fruit and 3 types of soil did produce spiritual fruit in varying degrees of multiplication. This parable demonstrates Salvation to us very clearly and fully describes how you became a saved Christian. Those that hear the Word of God and allow other factors (spirits, natural attartions, etc) over rule their decision to be a Christian are those that were not saved. Those that hear the Word of God, understand it and choose to believe it, they are the ones that are saved and born again. All of this is really not that complex to me but I guess many people have not understood it and therefore do not apply it to the subject of how people become Christians.
So based upon the intimate knowledge of this parable of the sower, it would appear to say that the more Word of God we know the more fruitful we can become. Conversely the less we know about God’s Word defaults our fate to hell. Hopefully, we do understand this. Jesus teaching the parable of the sower was Him spreading the Word of God to the entire world. Every man, woman and child born from Adam represents the symbolic soil that is responsible to allow or permit God’s seed to be planted. It is much more the human rejection of the Word of God (the Seed) from the soil (the spirit) that causes people to go to hell than anything else that they will ever do. People like to think that sin is the key factor for going to hell, but this is simly not the case based upon the Word of God. The Bible says that everyone has sinned and come short of the glory of God (Rom 3:22). If everyone is a sinner there must be another factor for who is saved and who is not and it basically boils down to what type of soil we each choose to be. Do you realize that only you make the choices in your own life and for your life? I can’t do it for you, your wife can’t do it for you, your mother can’t do it for you and even God can’t and will not do it for you either. Do you also know that you have a spiritual enemy that is helping you to make the wrong choices? Only by studying the Bible can we better recognize the devices, plans and traps of this spiritual enemy. Only by continuing to study in the Bible are you able to grow and mature to being the overcomer that God has designed you to be. God is expecting to come back for a victorious church and not a defeated church.
So the Parable of the Sower gives us the basic overview for the whole plan of God for our Salvation. Jesus told us to “Go into all of the world and Preach the Gospel AKA the Word of God” (Mk 16:15). By preaching the Word of God you are sowing the Seed of the Word of God into the hearts of more people who can choose to let it grow. This is salvation or damnation in action. The human heart soil decides its own outcome by what seeds are permitted to enter and this is what determines what kind of fruit that it produces. Let’s look at this in action in the Bible:
1Co 3:6 I have planted , Apollos watered; but God gave the increase.
The Apostle Paul is writing to the church at Corinth and to you and I. Paul says that he has planted. So what does it mean to plant something? And What was planted? As you can clearly see these are seed concepts that are repeated for us. Maybe you do not understand these concepts fully because you have never planted a natural garden in your back yard. You always start the process by putting seeds in the soil and you then conintue the process by watering the soil and they grow over time into something that you desired to have. If you look back at the previous verse you will see that Paul and Apollos were “ministers”. A minister is anyone that sows God’s Word by God’s design. If you hear someone speak in church that is not teaching from the Bible they are not a minister of God. If you go to a church and the speaker is teaching from a Reader’s Digest you need to find another church that works like God said it should. Paul sowed only from the Word of God to the people in Corinth and they believed it. Then there came along another preacher named Apollos and he watered the seed that was in the hearts/spirits of the people with more of the Word of God and this helped the seed take root and to continue to grow. But, it also says that it was God that gave the increase. In other words God Spirit caused His Word Seed to Grow! Therefore only God gets any of the glory in the process of salvation of any human. Do you understand that no farmer can take credit for what is grown in his field? Does any farmer fully understand how multiplied natural corn is produced from a single seed? Did the farmer create the seed that produces the corn crop? I think you can see that he did not. Neither the farmer or the minister created the seed they are sowing nor did they invent the growth process that takes place, only God did this. They just plant the seeds, water them and watch them grow like it was a miracle, and it is. However, this is just the supernaturally designeddesigned seed process from God using His created Seed. This is a really amazing concept of how the spiritual New Birth process works. It is a partnership effort with God working through men and women who preach to spread the Seed of the Word of God. So the human that is planting the seed is not as important as God because God created the process. But it is also plainly the word of God being planted that is the critically important part of His whole process. It is really a paradox and a puzzle, without men and women sowing the word of God no one would ever be saved. However, without sowing the Word of God no one is saved either. If you are sowing seeds of Buddhism no one will be saved no matter how much you teach on it. If you are sowing the seeds of Islam you are sowing words that never produce salvation. If you are sowing the words of Judaism you are also not going to be saved. It is not very good news for any world religion out there; God made only One Way into the Kingdom of Heaven and that was through His Son Jesus Christ. So do not throw stones at me, I’m just a farm messenger. I did not write the Bible!
1Pe 1:23 Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever.
So I think I have given this verse before in another lesson on seeds, but it bears repeating for our current discussion on how people are spiritually born again. The fact that we have been “Born Again” is attributable to us receiving the incorruptible Seed of the Word of God into our spirits. There are two terms given to us by God in this verse that are critical to understand. These are “Corruptible” vs. “Incorruptible”. The term corruptible means able to “decay” and you can state this to be equivalent to a man’s mortal body. The natural realm is a temporary realm of decaying particles. The laws of thermodynamics dictate that everything around us is decaying and not reorganizing like evolutionists like to believe. If you build a new car today and never drive it; it will become a pile of rusted metal in the course of time. The opposite of mortal is immortal. We have been born again from an immortal seed. You may recall that Jesus said “heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away” (Mat 24:35). So the Word of God is immortal, and not capable of being eliminated. The Word of God is the incorruptible SEED that causes us to be born again spiritually.
Corruptible seed can be viewed as either a physical or a spiritual type of seed. The sperm of a man is a corruptible natural seed. But so also are the spiritual words (seeds) of Satan. Satan’s seeds can be used to produce corruption in the human spirit. Jesus does not appear to say that the words of your enemy Satan will be ineffective in the parable. No it appears to suggest the opposite is true by the soil with the weeds. Weeds come from seeds just like fruit comes from seeds. It all depends upon the seeds we allow in our hearts. So every false teaching and false religion can be eliminate fruit.
So we now have a dilemma of sorts of how to discuss natural things so that we do not offend anyone by comparing them to spiritual things. You see if being spiritually Born Again is a comparable pattern to being born in the natural realm the first time, then how are natural babies conceived? You can begin to see my difficulty, can’t you? God created sex for a reason and it wasn’t just to make you feel good. Sex is a part of the reproductive pattern of new life on our planet. So sex must be related to new spiritual life also. So how does natural sex relate to the spiritual New Birth? That is where we are today in this discussion. Get ready for a new concept that you may have never thought of before.
Gen 4:1 And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the LORD.
We are informed that Adam “knew” his wife Eve and she conceived his physical seed. This is God’s definition of natural sex in the Bible. By the law of first mention, God again gives us the definition of what it means to conceive revealed in terms of spiritual information and descriptions. God could have described this act differently, but He specifically chose this Hebew word YADA which was translated as “knew”. The definition of this word is therefore very critical for us to understand in order to see how it applies to spiritual things like being born again. The Hebrew Word translated as “knew” means “to ascertain by seeing”. This is truly complex because men are usually visual types of people, they like to see. Women are not normally visual people and they do not want to see anything generally speaking. There is a widely used term for natural sex that is called “carnal knowledge” and this phrase is more suitable with the spiritual realm concept of obtaining word information that we can apply more correctly instead of thinking in human natural terms of having “intercourse”. We should be able to easily transfer God’s definition of natural sex as “knowling” into the spiritual New Birth process. We should be able to do this using our knowledge of the Parable of the Sower that we learned defines the process of order for any human to be spiritually born again. In this parable every soil (human heart) must receive “spiritual Word of God knowledge” from a teacher sowing the Lord God’s Word (Seed). This is not natural sex as many are thinking right now, is it? Of course not. However receiving spiritual seed (hearing words) is still a spiritual sex like act according God’s definition of the natural act. The human ability to “see spiritually” God’s Words causes us to conceive it.
However don’t forget there still exists an enemy to God’s created salvation process, who is trying to steal away the seed before or after being sown. The success or failure of the salvation seed sowing process is completely dependent upon the fact that some people value and choose to understand the Word of God and some people do not. This enemy’s method of causing some people not to understand is revealed more clearly in the New Testament scripture that says “the god of this world has blinded the minds of them that believe not” (2 Cor 4:4). You see spiritual blindness is the inability to see or literally understand spiritual things. If you recall in the parable of the sower, Satan came immediately to steal the Word of God that was sown in their heart and he was able to do this only because they did not understand it (Mat 13:19). Therefore, clear focused spiritual eyesight is one key to gaining spiritual knowledge and understanding. I could talk a lot more about that part of the subject, but I’m running long in this lesson. I do pray that you are following me on these points and beginning to understand how people are born again. Let me end this lesson with one more verse from Paul:
Gal 4:19 My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you,
So here we have another very difficult complex deep scripture to try to swim through. The apostle Paul is not a natural female yet he speaks in the terms of being a spiritual female. Can you see this? Only natural XX Chromosome females give birth, yes? According to what I have seen in the Bible God created only natural females to give birth. So what exactly is Paul talking about? Paul is saying, I have spread God’s seed into your hearts by teaching God’s Word to you, and now I am interceding for your continued thirst for more understanding to take root so that Christ can be formed in you, resulting in spiritual fruit that is viewable from the actions you live externally.
According to God through Paul what is the key to this spiritual birth happening? It was the spiritual ability of a human to see or to gain “spiritual knowledge” who heard the word of God that will determine whether they will conceive Christ and be born again. Paul can sow all of the seed he wants to, but none of it will grow unless the soil of the hearer allows it to stay by understanding what was said. You can easily see how that you can read verses in the Bible and totally miss what is said, can’t you? You can also see that there is an implied reality that Paul is a part of a spiritual woman, called the Bride of Christ. So the complexity of the Bible is so great that it causes many people to stumble. People will never see the spiritual truth of God’s Word trying to figure it out using only their natural minds.
What we can begin to see is that Paul’s (Saul) new birth conversion on the road to Damascus by Christ was not Christ’s.ending final work to bring Paul into full spiritual maturity, but was only the beginning of Saul’s Christian salvation growth experience. Like new born natural babies continue to grow through feeding, Paul was still responsibility to feed upon the Word of God through study to cause his own spirit to mature. Then using this gained knowledge he would become able to share it with others for getting more people born again by sowing the incorruptible seed of the Word of God. Getting more people Born Again by spreading the Incorruptible Seed, should become the goal of every Christian. This goal will result in the expansion of the new spiritual family of God in Christ. And the multiplication of Sowers spreading the Spiritual Seed of God by sowing His Incorruptible Seed into new soil.
Today’s lesson has been some of the basic Bible ideas of how natural people are born again using the laws and concepts surrounding Seeds in the Bible. I know I did not cover everything that I could have, I know I left out many verses that could have been included, but I did the best that I could in a limited time and space forum. God Bless you to see and to understand His Word! Thank you for your time in studying the Bible.
If you would like to continue reading this series of lessons on seeds you can go to “Part 10“.
Understanding Seeds in the Bible! If You Abide IN ME and My Words Abide IN YOU! Part 8
(Ver 1.2) This is now Part 8 of a series of lessons on the concepts and laws surrounding seeds found in the Bible. The Seed is a natural divinely inspired design principle revealed in creation that demonstrates vast complex spiritual revelation. In the previous lessons I taught on the laws surrounding seeds and demonstrated some of their applications given to us in the New Testament. Today I will be doing another one of those lessons about seed applications using the New Testament. If you have not been reading this series from the beginning I would highly recommend that you go back and start reading with “Part 1”. Only by following the series from the beginning will you have much of a chance at understanding what is being taught. Let me review briefly the Major Seed Laws from Genesis 1 that we have already covered:
- Fruit with Seed within Itself!
- Every Seed produces after its Kind!
- Seeds Produce Trees that Produce More Fruit!
- You Always Harvest more than You Sow! Seed Multiplication.
Seed concepts are not widely known in modern America. Very few people plant gardens and grow their own fruit, vegetables and crops. The farm concept was a widely known principle in early Bible days. This is one of the key reasons Jesus taught using these principles so often in the parable lessons that he gave us. In Jesus’ days on earth, if you wanted to eat you better grow it. Today modern children just think everything is magic that appears at the grocery store or at the market and they probably do not even have a clue how it is produced. As a result of this they have lost the essential concepts and laws of planting seeds and getting harvests. To lose sight of these concepts is to lose sight of God’s designed ways. The Seed concept is still a vital part of the End Time Plan of God. God has never lost sight of what seeds are and how seeds work. That is one of the key reasons I have spent this amount of time on this subject. I believe it to be absolutely critical to understand how God works in the spiritual realm and since we do not have any personal experiences in this realm we must rely on the natural realm that God created as a pattern of information for the unseen spiritual realm. Of course you do not interpret nature, you interpret the Word of God, using the Word of God to define the things that you find in nature and this is the key to seeing these Bible truths and hidden spiritual things.
Today I am going to expand on the topic of the “Seed within Itself” Law of Genesis 1 using some fresh New Testament verses. In earlier blogs on this subject we discussed how that Levi had paid tithes in Abraham, because he was a seed of Abraham (Heb. 7:9). Levi was a future descendant of Abraham, yet God counted what Abraham did as applying to what Levi had done. This is one of the most profound truths in the Bible that I have ever seen, yet I have not heard hardly anyone teach on it. The concepts behind this teaching are far reaching and apply to many things in the spiritual realm. Today I am going to give you an example of these concepts. Let’s start the lesson with a verse found in Galatians:
Gal 2:20 I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.
There are verses like this one in the Bible that will totally confuse you unless you understand the Seed Laws and apply them correctly. How can Paul have been crucified with Christ, when he was not even there physically with him? I hope that you are beginning to see how this is possible. Paul was not there physically, but he was there spiritually as a future spiritual seed of God. If natural children are natural seeds in the Bible, then spiritual children are also seeds, but of a spiritual kind. Remember everything produces after its own kind. Jesus was called the Seed of Abraham and the Seed of David in the Bible. Paul was calling himself a seed of Christ Jesus. Whatever happened to Jesus is what happened to US who are born again. Since the spiritual birth is a spiritual process that is patterned after the natural birth process we can very easily begin to see that Paul considered himself to be a spiritual descendant of Jesus. Paul looked at Jesus as being his spiritual father. Paul looked to Jesus as being the head of a new spiritual family of God as you and I are also in this family. Here is another verse that use to boggle people’s mind:
Eph 2:6 And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus:
As you can see this verse says that we have been raised from the dead with Christ and that we now sit with Him in heaven. Have you ever been to heaven? If you have then you probably died or saw a spiritual vision of heaven. No, again we see the application of the “Seed within Itself” Law being applied to us in the spiritual realm. Whatever our father Jesus accomplished we accomplished because we were “IN HIM” when He did them. Wow, that is so awesome! That is just a totally RADICAL concept to try to wrap your mind around, isn’t it? Everything that Jesus did, we did if you are born again! This is why in the New Testament you can search and find so many verses in the Bible that describe how we are IN CHRIST, IN HIM, IN WHOM. By finding out what Christ did, you find out what you DID!
1Co 15:22 For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.
There are just too many scriptures in the Bible that repeat the “Seed within itself principle for me to give you them all. I think I gave you this one before, but it is so good that I will briefly go over it again. Because the human race was “IN” Adam all must die. Adam’s death passed death to every one of His Seeds. This is the natural picture of the seed within itself concept being described to us very clearly. Then there is a spiritual contrasting truth that is now revealed to us that Jesus who is the Last Adam and that He is the spiritual procreator of a new people that will live. Because Jesus was raised from the DEAD, we have been raised from the dead because we were IN HIM! As in Adam all died, so those IN Christ will all live. You better make sure that you are IN Christ if you want to live spiritually in God’s family!
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.
Being IN Christ is essential to understanding your position today in the spiritual realm. Those who are spiritually born again have become a NEW CREATION of Almighty God. This means that we are something that never existed before. Adam had a spirit within his body, but did not have the Spirit of God in union with his spirit. You can see in this verse that translators have added 3 words that are not in the Greek. If you take these out, they basically say the same thing, but review it without these words:
2Co 5:17 Therefore if any man in Christ a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.
You can see a subtle difference now. The fact that we are IN Christ has not changed but only because we are IN Christ makes us a new Creature with Christ! God the Almighty Creator became a part of His creation by His designed purpose. I could try to elaborate why this was necessary but I might just cloud the current subject with too much extraneous information, so I’ll pass by that for now. What I want you to focus on is the fact that a man is now IN Christ and that is what also makes him able to participate as being a New Creature!
2Co 5:19 To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation.
Now we can see why Jesus Christ was so different and why Satan did not know what to do with this man. Jesus was born a human male that had the Spirit of God within His Body. This is the SEED within Itself Concept being repeated. God provided Himself the Seed for our reconciliation. These seed concepts are so important for you to understand. It truly helps you to see what was accomplished by God and how He did them. God was IN Christ; the church was IN Christ so we are now IN God. Christ IN Us, the hope of Glory! Now the reverse concept is also applicable in the New Testament Bible. You can see that not only are we IN Christ, but Christ must also be IN us! It is a two way seed street reality. How do you get Christ in YOU?
Joh 15:4 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it Abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye Abide in me.
More seed concepts are given in this verse statement of Jesus Christ. You can see the concept of fruit being given. Fruit is the end result that God is looking for in the lifes of every Christian. This fruit will always contain seed to produce more fruit. This is again the seed within itself concept. But we can also see the two way street that I just referred to and how that this works. While the SEED of God is in us, we are in the VINE of God. The VINE represents Christ and we are in Him. We the church, are the branches that produce the fruit as long as we abide in Him, Christ the Vine! But, we the church are also the ones that have the Word of God in Us! If you recall from earlier lessons on this subject, the Word of God was the Seed of God. We have been born again not of corruptible seed, but of the incorruptible seed, which is the Word of God (1 Peter 1:23). So we are beginning to see how it is a full circle concept of Seed Salvation. Everything starts with the Word of God and everything continues to exist with the Word of God.
Joh 15:7 If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done untoyou.
Do you see what Jesus is telling you? Do you see how the seed concepts and seed laws are affecting what you get in life? Do you see how that if you abide in Christ the Vine (the Spiritual Seed of God) and if you allow the Word of God (also the spiritual seed of God) to live in you a natural seed (the Seed within Itself) that you can not only produce fruit but that you can also get your prayers answered by God? Everything hinges upon the Word of God which is the Seed of God that produces the results that God is expecting to harvest very soon. Seeds are everywhere in the Bible. The concepts of seeds are everywhere in the Bible. Different Seed types and seed patterns are repetitious, overlapping and intersecting with each other and this can make them vastly complex to understand. The intelligence of God is so much greater than our minds and therefore we are challenged to come up to a higher dimension of how to think about these spiritual things and God’s Word. May the God of Peace enlighten your minds so that you can comprehend these Seed Principles! God Bless, until next time!
If you would like to continue reading this series of lessons you can now continue with “Part 9“.
Where DO BABIES Come From? A Bible Review of the Salvation Process!
(Ver 1.6) This is Part 2 in an essential basic Bible study series on the subject of Savlation and the Spiritual New Birth of God. What is it and how it occurs will be what I teach on today. If you have not read the first lesson I would suggest that you go and start reading with “Part 1” first. I had a Reader(?) try to tell me that being saved is not tied to any certain or specific observable process or stated steps found in the Bible. He told me that “Salvation” was not a formula! He implied that you just can’t ever be assured of your eternal destiny here in this life. He clearly said that there was just no single point event that you could observe of when you were saved. By stating that he implied that there are no given steps, instructions or ways in the Bible to be saved. He implied you can just never know if you are really saved. Call me different, call me unique, call me stupid I don’t care, that is just not what I see that the Bible says. My question to this guy is, “Where do Babies Come From?” Do you know how natural babies are made? Can you ever know if you will have a baby or your wife will have a baby? Does the mother ever know when she is pregnant? Does the mother of a baby know when it is time to deliver a baby? Is there a single point of time reference that goes on the birth certificate of when a natural baby was born? Is not the birth of the natural baby the entry of the child into our natural present world? This may not be a good set of questions to ask a male, but I bet you any mature female could answer these questions correctly. This is what Jesus taught us in John 3:3.
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.
So have you ever thought about what Jesus said here? Jesus says that a man must be “born again” in order to see the Kingdom of God. To be “born again”, implies they were born once naturally already. Doesn’t it, isn’t this what this verse says? However, being born ONCE in the natural is not enough to get you into the Kingdom of God according to the words of Jesus. If I said, I’m going to drive to Detroit again tonight. Doesn’t that tell you that I have already driven to Detroit before? If we are required to be born again, how was the first birth accomplished? What you must realize is that Jesus is speaking of a first birth that is a completely NATURAL process. Was there a formula for making natural babies in the world? This is not a trick question! Is it a difficult or unknown process to create natural babies in the world? Come on and think with me for a moment! God is comparing a natural process to a spiritual process. Or are you spiritually blind enough to believe that THE spiritual things of God are somehow completely different than the natural things that God has created. I believe that many people think that God created natural things to be totally separate and independent from spiritual things and this is just NOT the truth (Rom 1:20). The natural process of things clearly point us to the unseen spiritual process and FORMULA! Naturally created things are clearly patterns of spiritual things that existed prior to God creating our world. God created natural sex as a pattern to spiritual things that you cannot see. Maybe you just don’t know or understand what it means and that is the root of your problem right now. But you should search your Bible and find the truth and then you will see that what I am trying to say is right. Let’s look at some more verses in John 3. When Jesus was speaking about being “born again” He was talking to a man named Nicodemus. This was his response to Jesus’ statement of being born again:
Joh 3:4 Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?
Because Nicodemus was a carnally minded man, he was thinking only in natural physical terms. He asks Jesus how can a grown man enter back into his mother’s womb to be born again? Nicodemus obviously was smarter than a lot of men today, at least he knew where babies come from. However, Jesus was speaking of spiritual things and Nicodemus was focused on the natural process of birth only. This is the repeated problem with most Christian in the world today. They think like Nicodemus and not like Jesus when they read the Bible. Do you understand the difference and why it is important to see things from God’s point of view?
Joh 3:5 Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
So Jesus starts giving us the spiritual answer to Nicodemus’ carnal question. Jesus in this verse speaks of both kinds of births, the first and the second in a contrasting comparison. To be born of water is the natural process of you coming into the world when your mother’s water breaks and she gave birth to you physically. This is the “First Birth” of all humans and it is only natural. However, this natural birth is contrasted with the spiritual birth process of being born of the Spirit. Being born of the Spirit is the “Second Birth” process that a man can experience. Jesus clearly tells us that if you are not born naturally first and then spiritually second you will never see the kingdom of God. Also note that Jesus did not say that you will be born again and again. In other words spiritual brith is a onetime event, just like being born into the natural world is a one time event. Your natural mother does not birth you over and over and like this process when you are born again spiritually it happens only once. Always keep that in mind, that a man is never born again, again. Let’s look at the next verse in John 3:
Joh 3:6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
Jesus confirms what I have been saying in this next verse. You can clearly see that only natural mothers give birth to natural babies. You can see that only spiritual mothers give birth to spiritual babies. A natural mother does not birth a spiritual baby and a spiritual mother does not give birth to a natural baby. This is by God’s design and God’s laws of reproduction and procreation. Is this too complicated for you so far? Did you know that there were spiritual women who could give birth to spiritual babies? So I’m going to stop and ask you again, where do natural babies come from? Is there a formula for making natural babies? If there is a known formula for making natural babies then there is also a known formula for making spiritual babies. I am not spiritually blind to this truth like so many in the church! Are you understanding this new spiritual principle that I am attempting to teach you today? All you have to do is to open up your spiritual eyes, stop to look and study your Bible to find out the truth.
Let’ me now teach you that if you were “born again” to become a Christian right now that you had a spiritual birth mother. Did you know that you had a spiritual mother? Do you know that you had a physical natural mother? If you are here in this world reading this article posted on the internet you must have had a natural mother. It is just a biological fact of God’s designed creation. Again I will say if you had a natural mother to be born here in the flesh the first time into the world, then you must have a spiritual mother to be born into the spiritual Kingdom of God. So is there a corresponding spiritual mother for being “born again” into the salvation of the Lord? Of course there has to be a spiritual birth mother. You either never searched your Bible to find her or you must have just ignored her in the Bible and read right over the information. Here is your spiritual birth mother if you are born again:
Gal 4:26 But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the MOTHER of us all.
Who was this letter and this verse written to? You should be smart enough to see that it was written to us in the church of Jesus Christ. If you are “born again”, here is your “spiritual mother” who gave birth to you to be in the new spiritual family of God. God tells us very clearly in a statement written to the church that the “Jerusalem Above” is our spiritual birth mother. Do you understand this? Is this complicated? So where do Spiritual babies come from? Do spiritual babies come into existence the same way that natural babies are conceived? Obviously NOT! Spirits do not have sex with each other, but that does not mean that the spiritual process is not very similar to the natural process symbolically. Natural things are most often used to symbolize spiritual truth that you cannot see. It also does not mean there is not a process to be saved or to be born again. If a natural woman gives birth to a baby and she knows when it occurs then a spiritual mother who gives birth to a spiritual baby would also know when she gave birth to a new child. Before we go there, let’s establish who this woman “Jerusalem Above” is and where this spiritual mother lives using the Bible.
Heb 12:22 But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels,
So we now have an established point of reference for the identity of the woman who gives spiritual birth to the church. In this verse in Hebrews God says that this is the “Heavenly Jerusalem”, the city of the Most High God. The location of which contains the throne of God and where the angels of the Lord reside and surround and praise God’s throne. Did you know that a city can be a spiritual woman? Did you even know that this spiritual woman Heavenly Jerusalem existed? You should go back and study the Old Testament and see how many times the Earthly Jerusalem is called a woman, the wife of God, the whore, the harlot. Read, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Hosea to name a few great places to start. See how many times God describes Israel as His wife in covenant. See how many times she is described as being unfaithful and sleeping with other gods. See how many times you can find where God says “I divorce” you for your unfaithfulness to me. What we begin to see is a pattern that a woman to God is a nation of people in covenant with Him. You can clearly see that if Jerusalem Above or Heavenly Jerusalem exists from the verses that I just gave you that this is a pattern of another woman called Jerusalem Below or Earthly Jerusalem. What we have established is that we have a city on the earth called a woman and a city in heaven called a woman, both with the name Jerusalem. You can clearly read about both of these women in more depth by exploring Galatians 4. The Jerusalem Below is said to be a type of Hagar in the O.T. The Jerusalem Above is said to be a type of Sarah. Sarah births the child of promise and Hagar and her son are cast out. Sarah was the older of the two women in the Bible and existed before Hagar. Hagar had a child before Sarah had her child. These are all physical patterns of the spirit realm and the woman that gave birth to the church. So I probably just taught you a bunch of new things that you did not know. Yet they are there in the Bible and you can choose to see them or go ahead and reject them like a spiritually blind man. So let’s get back to the fact does a woman know when she has a baby? A natural woman certainly does, but how about a spiritual woman? Here is what Jesus taught us about this birth process:
Luk 15:10 Likewise, I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.
As you can see the angels of God rejoice when just one sinner repents. What happens when one sinner repents? They are born again! Isn’t that what we are talking about? Are we talking about a single point in time when a sinner is saved and born again? If the angels rejoice when this occurs, they obviously have observed the second spiritual birth of the man. Where are these angels? You may recall that we read in Hebrew 12:22 that there were an innumerable company of angels in the Heavenly Jerusalem. Are these the angels of God that rejoice over the new birth of one spirit on the earth? You can try to explain it away if you want to, but I am convinced that these are the angels who rejoice. After all it is that city which is said to be our mother and every mother knows exactly when she gives birth to any new baby. People need to be smart enough to learn to put the pieces of the puzzle together correctly. I can see it very clearly, I guess you can too if you choose to believe what you read.
Did you know that only people who want to be saved, will be saved? No one repents if they do not want to repent. God does not force salvation upon anyone. Jesus says in Revelation 3:20 “Behold I stand at the door and knock, if any many will hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to him and I will sup with him and him with me”. 
That was the basic formula for salvation and being born again in a nutshell. Jesus first Knocks! The man either ignores the knock or listens for who it is that is knocking. Let’ me stop there and tell you that Jesus is speaking figuratively or symbolically in this verse in Revelation. Jesus is not going to come to knock on your physical house or apartment personally. No, your house where your spirit lives is your physical body. God’s Spirit is the Spirit of Christ that comes to knock on your heart’s door. The door that Jesus knocks on is your ears when a man like me comes and preaches the salvation Gospel. Yes, the Spirit of God is the Key partner to any salvation. No man comes to God unless the Spirit of God draws him. But, God doesn’t come in person, physically anymore to save anyone. Jesus Christ was God in the flesh and He came for a short time to fulfill the plan of God for our Salvation and Redemption. But, He went back to heaven and has now turned over the responsibility of teaching and preaching to people like me and you. So when a man comes to you and tells you the good news of salvation, that is Jesus working through that man to help you see the truth. Then the individual who hears the words of God, now stands at a crossroad and at a time of decision; to either accept it or reject it. If they accept it, they believe what was said and can ask Jesus to come and be their Lord with a repentant heart. This invites Jesus to come in to sup. Jesus them comes in at that exact point in time. That is when you are saved, that is when you are born again. If that person refuse to hear the Gospel, then Jesus has no choice but to walk away from the door. Jesus is not going to kick the door down, just because He wants to save someone.
Any new born physical baby when first entering our world is sometimes smacked on the bottom and they take their first breaths of air and begin to cry. This is a joyous sound for the mother who has gone through 9 months of pregnancy and then labor. She now knows that all of the discomfort and pain was worth it. So also then the baby knows when he or she is born into the world because they can cry and the mother knows when she has given birth to the baby because she can hear their cry, something that they never did before. Is it any different in the spiritual realm? No I do not believe it is. Once a person believes in their heart that God raised Jesus from the dead and they accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior like Romans 10:9-10 says they are “born again”. The Spirit of Christ comes into their spirit and they are saved. The angels see the birth and rejoice. The mighty cloud of witnesses in heaven also see the birth and they now rejoice (Heb 12:1). This is just how it works by God’s design, if you do not believe it, that is your problem and not mine and it does not change the facts. I know that I am saved and I know how I got saved. Salvation was not a long process, it was not a complicated proces, it was just following the formula that God gave us in His Word that worked for me. So I’ll ask you one more time “Where do Spiritual Babies Come From”? I believe that you can see that we still have a lot to learn about how God does things in the unseen spiritual realm. If you are not a “born again” Christian and have had the pleasure of this new spiritual birth it is not difficult to make happen in your heart. If you want to read about how to be saved, you can go to “Salavation and How to Know if You are Going to Heaven” and follow the instructions. God Bless!
If you would like to continue reading in this series you may proceed to “Part 3“.
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If you want to know how to get saved and know that you are with confidence you can go to: How to know that I am saved?
Names, Titles, Descriptions and Symbols of Satan in the Bible
(Ver 2.2) This is Part 2 in a series of reference documents about the multiple Names, Titles, Descriptions and Symbols of named Spiritual Individuals in the Bible. This document will focus only on the subject verses of the enemy Satan found in the Bible. It is not designed to teach anything other than give you a place to search from to find references to Satan in the Bible. This is a living document of references and it will change and be updated as I am led to additional scriptures. 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 that can be viewed to apply to 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. I will now give you the list of my references to Satan in the Bible and if you have others that I have not found yet, please share them with me in a comment.
|
Name, Title, Symbol, Type for Satan |
Description |
Scripture Reference |
| 666 | The Number of the Beast | Rev 13:18 |
| Abaddon | Destroying Angel – Jesus said the thief only came to steal, kill and destroy in John 10:10 | Rev 9:11 |
| Accuser of the Brethren | Legal Opponent in Court of Law – the devil is referred to as our adversary (court opponent) in 1 Peter 5:8 | Rev 12:10 |
| Adversary | The Opponent to the Church in a Lawsuit | 1 Peter 5:8 |
| Angel of Light | Impersonator, Actor, Stage Performer; Masquerader | 2 Cor 11:14 |
| Angel of the Bottomless Pit | Ruler of the Darkness | Rev 9:11 |
| Anointed cherub that coverth | The Winged Angelic Defender | Ezekiel 28:14 |
| Antichrist | Opponent of the Messiah | 1 John 4:3 |
| Appolyon | Greek Name of Hebrew Abaddon; Destroyer | Rev 9:11 |
| Baal | False God of the O.T. Type of Satan | Rom 11:4; |
| Balaam | False Teacher | Jude 1:11 |
| Bear | Kingdom of Satan Symbol | Rev 13:2 |
| Beast | Dangerous Animal; Venomous | Rev 14:9-10; Rev 16:10 |
| Beelzebub | Lord of the Flies; A god of Babylon | Mat 12:24, 27; Mark 3:22; Luke 11:15, 18-19 |
| Belial | Worthless One | 2 Cor 6:15 |
| Bird, Hateful | Loveless | Rev 18:2 |
| Bird, Unclean | Foul, | Rev 18:2 |
| Blasphemer | Name of the One Who Vilifies God | Rev 13:1 |
| Cain | Murderer from the Beginning | Jude 1:11 |
| Chief of Demons | Prince of demonic gods | Luke 11:15 |
| Cherub | Winged Anointed of God | Ezekiel 28:14 |
| Cockatrice | The Viper | Isa 14:29, 59:5; |
| Deceiver | The One Who Deceives the entire world including Christians | Rev 12:9 |
| Devil | False Accuser; Slanderer a title and name of Satan identified to be the same individual in Revelation 12:9 | Mat 4:1-11, 9:33, 11:18, 12:22, 13:29, 15:22, 17:18, 25:41; Mk 5:15-18, 7:26-30; Luke 4:2-13, 4:33-35, 7:33, 8:12, 8:29, 9:42, 11:14; John 6:70, 7:20, 8:44-52, 10:20-21, 13:2; Acts 10:38 13:10; Eph 4:27, 6:11; 1 Ti 3:6-7; 2 Ti 2:26; Heb 2:14; James 4:7; 1Pet 5:8; 1 John 3:8-10; Jud 1:9; Rev 2:10, 12:9, 12:12, 20:2, 20:10; |
| Dragon | The Genesis 3:1 Serpent that has increased in power and strength | Rev 12:7-9 |
| Dragon, Great | Symbolic description of the Powerful Fabulous Serpent of Genesis 3:1 now having increased spiritual power and strength | Rev 12:9 |
| Edom | A Type of Satan, twin brother of Jacob, having characteristics hated by God | Eze 32:29; Joel 3:19; Mal 1:4; |
| Enemy | Adversary | Mat 13:39 |
| Esau | A Type Pattern of characteristics that the Lord Hates | Mal 1:2-3; Rom 9:13 |
| Evil One | Malicious; Wicked One | John 17:15 |
| False Light | The Opposite of the TRUTH of True Light Jesus. A description of the moon that makes not light of itself and can only reflect light from the sun who is Jesus Christ the Sun of Righteousness (Mal 4:2) | 1 John 2:8 |
| Father | A Male Parent that has sown “Seed” to produce children. In Satan’s case they are lies of deception that are being sown. | John 8:44; Acts 13:10 |
| Father of Lies | Fabricator & Distorter of the Truth, | John 8:44 |
| Fiery Flying Serpent | Satan | Isa 14:20, 30:6; |
| Fiery Serpent | Satan | Num 21:8; Deu 8:15 |
| Frog | Unclean Spirit | Rev 16:13 |
| Fox | Cunning Spirit | Luke 13:32 |
| Goat, He (devils) | Devils (Hebrew Word for He Goat) | Lev 17:7; 2 Chron 11:15 |
| God of this World | Ruler of the Darkness and Night of all that are asleep to hear the truth | 2 Cor 4:4 |
| Gog | Symbolic Name for the Anti-Christ | Rev 20:8; |
| Great Red Dragon | Original Genesis 3:1 Serpent but now of Increased Power and Strength | Rev 12:3 |
| Herod | A Type of Satan the Murdering King Ruler | Luke 13:31 |
| Judas | Judah The Betrayer of Messiah | John 6:70-71; John 13:2 |
| King of Babylon | A symbolic name for the Ruler of Jerusalem | Isaiah 14:4 |
| King of the Bottomless Pit | Ruler of the Darkness | Rev 9:11 |
| King of Tyrus | Ruler of the Rock | Eze 28:12 |
| Laban | A type of Satan as a Deceitful Man | Gen 31:7 |
| Leopard | Kingdom ruler by Satan Symbol | Rev 13:2 |
| Lesser Light | Moon who Rules the Night and Darkness | Gen 1:16 |
| Leviathan | Serpent Monster of Babylon | Isaiah 27:1 |
| Liar | Falsifier; Deceiver | John 8:44 |
| Lion | Kingdom of Satan Symbol | Rev 13:2 |
| Little Horn | Rising King | Daniel 8:9-11 |
| Lucifer | Bright and Morning Star | Isaiah 14:12-14 |
| Man of Sin | Man faced Trespasser | 2 Thes 2:3-4 |
| Moon | Ruler of the Night and Darkness | Psalm 136:9; Rev 12:1 |
| Murderer | Man Killer | John 8:44 |
| Oppressor | He Who Makes Sick | Acts 10:38 |
| Perdition | The Destroyer | 2 Thes 2:3; |
| Pharaoh | A Type of Satan as someone that rules Egypt a Type of the World | Eze 31:2-18; |
| Power of Darkness | Superhuman Ruler of the Night Kingdom | Col 1:13-14 |
| Prince of the Devils | Ruler of All Evil Spirits | Mat 9:34, 12:24; Mark 3:22 |
| Prince of the Kingdom of Persia | Type of Satan as the Ruler of the nation of Babylon | Daniel 10:13 |
| Prince of the Power of the Air | Ruler of the Authority of the atmosphere needed for the production of Spoken Words | Eph 2:1-2 |
| Prince of this World | Ruler of the Evil Darkness | John 12:31-32; John 14:30; John 16:11; 1 Cor 2:6-8; |
| Roaring Lion | Powerful Sounding King of the Beasts attempting to devour All Christians | 1 Peter 5:8 |
| Ruler of the Darkness | Moon who Rules the Night | Ephesians 6:12 |
| Satan | The Accuser, the Opponent; Adversary | 1 Chron 21:1; Job 1:6-12; Job 2:1-7; Ps 109:6; Zec 1:3:1-2; Mat 4:10, 12:26, 16:23; Mark 1:13, 3:23-26, 4:15, 8:33; Luke 4:8, 10:18, 11:18, 13:16, 22:3, 22:31; Jo 13:27; Act 5:3, 26:18; Rom 16:20; 1 Cor 5:5, 7:5; 2 Cor 2:11, 11:14; 1 Thes 2:18; 2 Thes 2:9; 1Tim 1:20, 5:15; Rev 2:9, 2:13, 2:24, 3:9; 12:9, 20:2, 20:7; |
| Seducing Spirit | Imposter; Deceiver | 1 Tim 4:1 |
| Seraphim | The Fiery Serpent an Evil High Ranking Heavenly Angelic Ruler | Isa 6:2 |
| Serpent | Symbolic Name for Satan | Gen 3:1; Rev 12:15 |
| Serpent, Old | Symbolic Name for Satan; First Ruler of the earth | Rev 12:9; Rev 20:2 |
| Son of Perdition | Destruction’s Child | 2 Thes 2:3 |
| Son of the Morning | Satan a son of God’s First or Early Light | Isaiah 14:12-14 |
| Spirit, Foul | Perverted Spiritual Being | Rev 18:2 |
| Spirit, the | Satan a spiritual being | Ephesians 2:2 |
| Spirit, Unclean | Leprous Spiritual Being | Luke 9:42; Rev 16:13 |
| Star | Angel Cast Down to Earth | Rev 8:11; 9:1 |
| Star, Great | Angel Cast Down to Earth | Rev 8:10 |
| Star, Wandering | He Who Departs the Path | Jude 1:13 |
| Tempter | He Who Proves and Tests | Mat 4:3 |
| Thief | Robber; Burglar | Mat 24:43; Luke 12:39; John 10:10 |
| Viper | The serpent Satan | Isa 59:5; |
| Waster, the | He Who Destroys | Isaiah 54:16 |
| Wicked | Law Breaker; Evil Degenerate | 2 Thes 2:8; Eph 6:16 |
| Wormwood | Type of Bitterness | Rev 8:11 |
If you would like to references other documents in this series you may go to one of these:
Understanding the Concepts of Deception Used by Satan!
(ver 2.0) This is Part 2 of a series of Bible lessons on the subject of deception. If you have not read from the beginning, it is suggested that you begin with “Part 1” to begin your study. Let’s read one of the series foundational Bible verses to get us started. This verse reveals a great deal of information about our spiritual enemy, including his identities, and his tactics.
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.
Today will be a different type of Bible lesson from many others. As you can see from our Key Bible verse above, Satan is called the deceiver that is deceiving the entire whole world. That means, this statement includes Christians and non-Christians alike. Satan is an equal opportunity deceiver, and he shows no favoritism. He is interested in causing us to be deceived from believing and knowing the Truth of God by any means that he can. So, I’m going to introduce you to some new things to think about that God has taught me personally. You will hopefully see that these few things that I present you to think about could be a very effective tool of our enemy Satan. I do hope that you understand that God’s enemies are Christian enemies also. If Satan is an enemy of God, then he is our enemy here and now on the earth. Satan’s greatest weapon on the earth has always been the subtly of deception. But Jesus told us that if we continued in His word we would be His disciples and that we would know the truth and that the truth would set us free (John 8:31-32). That sounds like our freedom is dependent upon us continuing in the word, recognizing the truth, knowing the truth and then using this knowledge of God’s truth to set us free. If Satan can keep you from knowing the truth you will be forever bound by his deception. That is why he is trying diligently to do everything in his power to distract you and to keep you from knowing more about the Bible. In fact deception is one of his only weapons that he has to defeat you. If he can get you to think and believe wrong, he has accomplished his plan of deception, and you are now a party working in conjunction with him to deceive others in the world. There are false prophets, false teachers and false apostles in the world everywhere we look. The numbers of these false distributors of lies are so many today that it is becoming increasingly difficult for Christians to recognize all of the ways that Satan uses to deceive people. I will discuss just a couple of the ways that God has taught me over the years that Satan uses and I pray that you can see them also.
I am going to start with one method of deception which I feel is critical for all Christians to understand. This method of deception is to take a small but critical piece of the truth in the Bible and then to possess it or claim it is something that it is not. False teachers take bits of information out of context and then teach it in a false religion with new imbedded lies attached to it. For example, we can find the “Golden Rule” of the Bible found in almost every religion of the world in some alternative form. Because all of these other religions have attached themselves to this verse in the Bible, they have in essence diluted the true meaning as having come from God and they change it to fit what they prefer it to say. Most Christians just automatically discredit the teachings of Satanism and Cultic organizations. But, where did these false religious organizations get their information and why is it so important for them to claim it all as their own original ideas? Think about this a long time, where did all knowledge come from? Was it not our Almighty God who holds all knowledge? I think I should stop here and tell you that what I am saying I am saying to only mature Christians who have been in Christ for many years. I do not want you to think that it is OK to explore Satanism, or to go and study other religions looking for the truth. That would be very foolish to go to a source of predominately lies and try to determine which words are true and which ones are false. That is exactly what Satan wants you to do. What I am saying is study the Bible and ONLY the Bible and find the truth and then do not reject it because Satan has tried to pervert it. Do the sayings of Jesus from John 8:31-32. Continue in the Word was the first step of the command. That means you do not search history books, you do not search textbooks, you do not search other religions and you only stay with the BIBLE for your total and complete source of the truth!
I am not convinced that Satan has ever had a completely original idea in anything that he does or says on the earth. It would appear to me that Satan takes what God does and perverts into something useful for his purpose of deception. You must realize that Satan is a highly intelligent being that can run spiritual circles around what you know right now. Satan has been in the presence of God and seen what He does firsthand, have you ever stood before the throne of God? I doubt seriously if you have. Satan has been deceiving man for the last 6000 years, how old are you? Does your experiences match Satan’s experiences? I say Satan has had a lot more practice at deceiving people than you have had at resisting him. What Satan likes to do is take little key principles from the Word of God and to pervert them so that many Christians will automatically reject them because they are taught as a part of a cult lesson. Do you understand how powerful this is? By taking a truth and by discrediting it, he can now cause many people to more easily reject that truth and be deceived into believing a lie. This is a common political tactic used in our political system. A candidate for office simply discredits his opponent with some perverted mixture of truth with lies. By discrediting them they make themselves to be a more positive answer for the people. I usually do not like to name names but I will give you an example of this type of behavior of Satan. I was told by a reader that a small part of what I teach is a concept that is embraced by the Mormons and used to promote evolution. Since the Mormon religion is a false cultic teaching, does that make everything that they teach a lie? If I do not teach evolution using this same concept does that make what I say a lie? No, what I say is not a lie, but it has been discredited by a cult taking it and perverting into their lies. Does what they teach discredit everything that I say using the Bible? Again, I am not telling you to go read the Book of Mormon and try to figure out what is true and what is false. That is clearly a ploy of the enemy. The book of Mormon is promoted as ANOTHER Testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ given to a false prophet and written down so that you will not read the REAL Testimony of Jesus Christ. Jesus actually warned us not to read things that people ADD to the bible. Jesus clearly told us not to take away any words or to add any words to those that have been written in the Bible (Rev 22:19). The enemy has produced this book of Mormon simply as a tool to get you to not read the TRUE Word of God and His Holy Book of Truth. As long as Satan can distract you with the false you are never going to recognize the Truth. But, if the Mormons try to teach something that is a part of the truth just to discredit the truth; that does not mean the truth is not present in the Bible.
So let me give you another example of something that I may teach that is perverted by a satanic symbol. A common satanic symbol is a five-pointed star with a symbol of a male goat with horns on it. Why did Satan choose this symbol to pervert it? What is the significance of this symbol and the meaning of this symbol? Why did Satan pick a goat to pervert it? Now anything in the Bible that God uses for the symbol of the goat is tainted with this perverted image. Because the goat and the 5 pointed star symbols are used for a direct reference to Satan, anything that the Bible now attempts to use them for are more easily rejected by Christians. If someone suddenly came to you with a new revelation of what God said a “star” represents; you will more than likely retract from it. Now, if anyone comes to you with a revelation of what a goat is a symbol of in the Bible, you will automatically throw it aside. This is typical human nature to throw away even the good because someone used it for evil. It is an automatic death sentence for any symbolic object that Satan has used to describe himself. This death occurs by the simple association of any truth by associating with the lies or symbols for Satan. All Satan has to do is to get someone in the world to take a Bible symbol and to pervert it into a symbol for Satan and every Christian will automatically run very fast away from it.
The Bible informs us that Satan presents himself as an angel of light (2 Cor 11:14). Why would Satan then try to present himself with strong demonic images of himself being a very evil being with a pitch fork, horns and a pointed tail? It is because when he shows up looking like a glorious spectacular supernatural being or even as a normal looking person, he will be able to trick you into believing his lies. After all you are looking for an evil ugly being and not a handsome good looking fellow. It is the classic bait and switch approach to advertising; you present one image and then you switch out another new image that is completely different and try to get people to be a sucker for something they didn’t expect to get. This is a very prominent ploy used in deception. Make people think this is true and then present them with a set of lies that are believable. Satan used people like David Koresh and Jim Jones to deceive people. They looked normal, they sounded normal and presented some very subtle words of deception. As a result, many people died because these men decided it was time to die. Understanding how your enemy Satan operates may save your life someday.
I’ll end this blog with one more example of deception. If you did not know it, the Ram is a Bible symbol for God the Father. However, Satan uses this symbol for himself. Satan is attempting to exalt his throne to the equivalency of that of God’s throne. Satan is trying to deceive people into believing that he is god. When the anti-Christ comes in Revelation he will be setting himself up to be this most high god. So where is God a Ram in the Bible? We can find this several places in the Bible but we will start with Genesis 22:
Gen 22:13 And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son.
When Isaac asked his father Abraham “Where is the animal for the sacrifice?” Abraham replied, “God will provide Himself as the lamb”. Jesus is repeatedly called the Lamb of God in the N.T. This is a symbolic name for Jesus Christ our sacrifice Lamb. Who is the father of a Lamb? A Ram is the father of a Lamb! As you can see in this verse in Genesis 22, instead of Abraham sacrificing Isaac God provided a Ram. This Ram was a symbol of Himself being the sacrifice. Abraham sacrifices the Ram a symbol of God coming to the earth in the flesh to pay the price for the sins of all mankind with His blood. So God’s symbol is that of a Ram and Satan now produces this symbol to represent himself. What is Satan trying to do? He is trying to discredit the truth of the Bible. He is taking a real symbol found in the Bible and trying to present you a false symbol. This is a classic ploy of deception. Take the real and pervert it.
So this blog was different, I know! It was an attempt to challenge you to think. Use your brain for something more than a place holder of useless information. Take the real and reject the fakes, the false, and the lies of the enemy. God Bless you to know the difference!
If you would like to continue reading about deception you can continue to “Part 3“.
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If you want to know how to get saved and know that you are with confidence you can go to: How do I get saved?
Understanding Seeds in the Bible! The Seed of Resurrection! Part 7
(ver 1.2) This is now Part 7 of a series of lessons on the concepts and laws surrounding seeds found in the Bible. The Seed is a naturally divinely inspired designed principle that demonstrates vast spiritual revelation and today will be another example of that. In a previous lesson I taught on a parable that Jesus spoke on concerning the seed concept that if a seed ever produces fruit, it must first die and be planted (buried) in the ground (John 12:24). We looked at Jesus being this seed, but of course He was also a man like you and I in the world. The Spirit of God raised the man, Jesus Christ from the dead and He became the first man ever to be resurrected from the dead. We know that the man Jesus Christ was crucified on a cross in Jerusalem. We know that He hung there and died. We know the Roman soldier pierced His side and His blood and water from His body flowed from His side onto the ground. We then know His body was taken down and placed in a tomb. We can now begin to understand the seed concepts being presented. The body of Jesus was a seed. This seed died and was buried in a earthly tomb. But, after 3 days we know that God raised this man Jesus back to life in His own physical body. So far I’m just stating things that you should already know, especially if you have been reading this series. If you have not read this series from the beginning I would strongly suggest that you go back and start reading with “Part 1”.
Let us today start by discussing some basic seed concepts using a natural seed. Did you know that a seed contains 3 main parts? How many main parts does a man have? A man also has 3 man parts; man is a 1). spirit that has a 2). soul, who lives in a 3). body. So man has 3 main parts. I believe the parallels to natural things and spiritual things are quite amazing. God is also described as a 3 part spiritual being. God the Father, God the Word and God the Holy Ghost are the three parts that comprise the One True God. So what are the 3 main parts of a natural seed? They are the 1). Seed Coat, the 2). Endosperm and the 3). Embryo. These are the 3 major components of a natural seed. Let’s compare the makeup of a man to the makeup of a seed. The outer portion that we can see would be the “human body” and this would correspond to the “seed coat” which is the outer shell membrane. Then man’s next layer going from least important to most important would be his soul. The soul of the man is his “mind” and this component corresponds to the seed “Endosperm”. The final most important part of a man is his spirit. The “spirit of man” corresponds to the most important part of a seed, the “Embryo”. God can be very tricky to understand. As you might have seen God calls the children of humans their “Seed”. So God describes the human makeup of a man to be designed after a seed. As you can see from the natural description of a seed this information corresponds very closely. However, in another parable Jesus spoke of a man being the “Ground” that the seed is planted into. However, this time the seed is the Word of God. Jesus taught in the Parable of the Sower that man could be 6 different types of ground or natural earth. This is the part that makes many people scratch their heads and say “how can we be both”, yet God clearly calls us both of these. I believe it depends upon your perspective and the application that you are attempting to use it in. Clearly there are different types of seeds and this is part of the difficulty of interpretation, being forced to determine the context and the correct type of everything being discussed by God. No body that I know of says Bible interpretation is easy, if you think it is you have been deceived.
So I have gone through a long introduction, introducing some new things along with a review of some basic seed concepts that we should have all previously learned. Today I want to show you something new in the Bible that applies to God’s design of us being a type of seed. The subject of the resurrection is of course a potentially controversial subject, since not to many people know much about it. Some believe in it and some do not. It is no different today than when Jesus walked the face of the earth. You may remember in Matthew 22:23 that a group of people came to Jesus to ask Him a question. These people were members of the Sadducees, who did not believe in the resurrection of the dead. So it is really no different today, we still have people who do not subscribe to what the Bible teaches. So let’s discuss resurrection and what it is briefly. The “Resurrection of the Dead” is a basic foundational truth taught in the Bible (Heb 6:2). The Greek word in the Strong’s dictionary means to “raise up”, to “stand up again” or “to raise to life again”. These are those which were once alive who are stated to have died and behold are alive again. That is the concept of resurrection being described to us and this is a seed concept being clearly demonstrated. A seed lives, a seed dies and is raised again to a new life after being planted. So if a man is a seed and his makeup or design resembles a natural seed we should be able to see how God plans to use this concept in the resurrection of our physical bodies.
1Co 15:35 But some man will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come?
In this verse Paul is writing to the church at Corinth and answering some basic theological questions. There must have been some raging debate on the subject to cause God to respond in this manner. Of course it also helps us to learn what was being taught since we were not present when Paul taught it to them personally. Two questions are presented to God. First, how are the dead “raised up” and second what kind of body will they have? I think these are two very good questions and we will see if God answers these questions.
1Co 15:22 For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.
Backing up in the chapter we see some contextual verses that are also in reference to the seed resurrection principle. Adam caused all men to die because we were all “in” Adam when he sinned. Christ will cause all men to live again because we that are born again were in Christ when He was raised from the dead. This is not a universal salvation, meaning that everyone will go to heaven however. You see there are people trying to deceive others using these types of teachings where they only use the parts of the Bible that they like and then reject the parts that they do not like or that don’t fit what they desire to believe. Here is a verse that Jesus gave us on this subject of resurrection.
Joh 5:29 And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.
To “come forth” is a Seed concept. You dig a hole in the soil, sow a seed in the ground, cover it with dirt and in the process of time it “comes forth” out of the ground. Then Jesus tells us that some who have done good things will be resurrected into life and these are the good seeds that God planted. However, then there is the bad news for the bad seeds, those that have done evil will be resurrected to damnation. Wow, not very good news for some people. Everyone is prophesied to be resurrected from the dead and come forth but there are two types of seeds being described and they are very different, even completely opposite. We learned this concept when Jesus taught us the parable about the man who sowed good seed (Mat 13). The enemy came and sowed tares among the seeds of wheat and they both came to bear fruit simultaneously. What we discover is that the resurrection for the dead is a reality that everyone will face in the future; it is really dependent upon what type of seed you are in to where they end up. Some will be very happy and some will be extremely sad.
1Co 15:32 If after the manner of men I have fought with beasts at Ephesus, what advantageth it me, if the dead rise not? let us eat and drink; for to morrow we die.
Here is a verse that I thought I would include simply because this is a common attitude found in the present evil world that we live in. People are massively consumed with self-indulgence and have a self-centered attitude towards life. If you have something and I want it I’ll just take it. After all there are no consequences to life, we are just the same as every other animal on the planet, they think and have been taught. If we evolved from monkeys and monkeys die that is the end of them so it is with us. There is no God, no Judge, no hell, no way are we going to bear any responsibility for our actions so live it up and be all that you can be for tomorrow you may die. People are so focused on themselves they do not know what they are doing to others. That is really going to be the hardest lesson to learn when it comes to judgment day.
1Co 15:35 But some man will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come?
So let’s get back to finding the answers to the two questions being asked by the skeptics. How is it possible that this resurrection will occur and what will I look like after it does occur?
1Co 15:36 Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die:
God begins to answer the first question using the seed principle. To quicken something means to be made alive. This is a changing or reversal from death to life. What God is describing is the basic seed concept we previously discussed. A seed is useless unless it first dies. Only after the death of a seed, can the new life come forth. I like Paul a lot. He is very straight forward and stands firmly behind what he teaches. He says that those who are ignorant are fools because they purposely reject the truth. You need to decide if you want to be a fool today or change to accept the wisdom of God. God is revealing to us seed principles that are very profound and they apply directly to us in this subject of the resurrection of our physical bodies. We wouldn’t be able to live again if Jesus did not die for us and plant the seed for our salvation. Here is the next verse so pay close attention to what it says:
1Co 15:37 And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain:
God almost gives us a contradiction of terms. One of the seed principles from Genesis is every seed produces after its own kind. An orange seed will produce only an orange tree. But, now we see another extension to the puzzle. You plant a seed and you get a tree and not just another set of seeds. In other words you do not plant a tree and get a tree. Or you do not plant a seed and just get more seeds. No the basic law is that you plant a seed and you will get a new living plant. God is saying in this verse in 1 Corinthians that the physical body that you have right now is nothing but a bare grain of seed. What God is alluding to is that your physical body you have now is not the spiritual body that you will have after the resurrection.
1Co 15:38 But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body.
While wheat seeds only produce wheat, God is saying that every human is still a uniquely designed individual. So while we are all human seeds, we look differently and have unique natural features like individual fingerprints and DNA. These unique features will produce a similar design in the resurrected us. In other words everybody will not be clones in the resurrected spiritual realm. You can clearly see in this verse God is calling us each a seed, but at the same time also calling us all unique seeds. That makes our seed discussion a little bit more complex, but yet same seed principles and laws still apply. So let’s go through some of the other information revealed to us:
1Co 15:42 So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption:
I skipped down to verse 42 because it seemed relevant to our seed discussion. God says He will take the corruptible natural part of us and sow it to produce the new incorruptible part of us during the resurrection. That is pretty cool stuff, if you ask me.
1Co 15:43 It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power:
What was dishonorable and weak will become glorious and powerful. God is giving you a clue comparison of the difference between the old and the new. That which will become a new is highly better than that which was sown. This is a result of being born again of the incorruptible seed of God and not the corruptible natural seed of man.
1Co 15:44 It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.
Our natural bodies will be planted as a seed that will produce the spiritual resurrected bodies. God clearly declares that our future spiritual bodies are not the exact same as our current physical bodies. The new spiritual body will not get sick, or grow old, will not fail, or even grow tired. There are just too many new features to describe this new body. The new body will certainly have many of the same features of the old body and still be able to do many of the things that old body could do. The best of the old will continue to be present in the new. Jesus after being resurrected from the dead would still eat natural food with his disciples. So eating is a future good thing to look forward to and all the church people said amen! So I think I have gone long enough on the subject of the “Seed of Resurrection”. I hope and pray that you enjoyed the lesson and derived some benefit from reading it. God continue to bless you until the next time.
If you like to continue reading this series you can go to “Part 8“.
The Agapegeek Blog 