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Understanding Healing, Sickness and Disease in the Bible! Where does it Come From? Part 1
(Ver 1.5) Today is the beginning of another in-depth spiritual study about “Understanding where sickness and disease came from”. I have been teaching a lot on the subject of Bible Faith and I got a comment that caused me to back up and think that I was teaching potentially in reverse order. You see there has been a long theological debate in many churches about the origin of sickness and disease. I have even heard preachers teach that sickness is a punishment or a correction sent from God. Of course this is based upon the erroneous assumption that just because God is sovereign that He always gets His will done no matter what. Also, there has long been a teaching in the some churches that since Paul had a thorn in his flesh that we must endure sickness the same way with great humility. These people have concluded again in error that Paul’s thorn was a sickness and thus they are wrong without reading what the Bible actually said. There are really too many false teachings for me to tell you about them all. What is important for us all to know and learn, is did sickness come from God? If it is something sent by God, then we should not be trying to get healed and this causes many people to stay sick. When I taught on faith I said one of the enemies to faith was doubt. Doubt represents a mental question in an area that you have insufficient knowledge or incorrect knowledge. For example, Jesus actually taught us in the Bible that healing does not occur as long as there are questions in our mind to whether healing is the will of God. Here is the lesson Jesus taught us:
Mat 8:2 And, behold, there came a leper and worshipped him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.
Here is a man that was fully diseased with leprosy. He believes that Jesus is fully able and powerful enough to heal him, but he does not know if it is the will of God to accomplish this request. This is a common point of failure to correct Bible faith even today. We have countless Christians in churches today that are taught the same things. It is not God’s will to heal today! God healed through the apostles, but that passed away when they died. I have heard many ignorant men making excuses for why they have no faith, blaming it either on others or God. They act like it was the apostles that were healing the people, when it was only God using the apostles to heal the people. Has God changed since the apostles died or is He still the same today? No God is the same today as He was yesterday! Then there are ministers who are like this leprous man, they believe that God is powerful enough to heal people so they pray “Lord if it be your will, heal this man”. What kind of prayer is that? It is a questioning or questionable faith full of doubts. These men who pray that way do not have the question in their mind answered to whether or not we can know the will of God about anything. But, if that was true then God would not have given us His Word in written form. We have the basis of proof of the will of God by examining the Word of God. As soon as God wrote down His spoken words in a book form, He has committed Himself to do what He has said or He will become a liar. Notice how Jesus answered this question given to Him by the leprous man and see if God is telling you right now what His will is for your healing.
Mat 8:3 And Jesus put forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I will; be thou clean. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed.
You can clearly see the will of God for healing being revealed by the Words of the Most High God. Jesus when He was physically walking the planet, taught us when you have seen me you have seen the Father (John 14:7). Jesus further went on to say “I do nothing of my own, but the will of the Father, I do” (John 5:30). If Jesus Christ is the revealed will of God from heaven, did Jesus ever make anyone sick? Take the time and go back and reread the Gospels and notice everything that Jesus does. Write them in a list on a piece of paper if you like, and then know this is the will of God for you. If you cannot ever find Jesus making anyone sick, then you cannot ever say God made anyone sick even if you have mistranslations in the Old Testament that say otherwise. I searched the Bible and I found Jesus only healing people after he would preach and teach. Healing must be the will of God then. Don’t take my word for it, you go and reread and search for yourself. It doesn’t take that long to learn the truth if you look for it. And if you cannot find it in the Gospels where Jesus ever made anyone sick, then this was God’s will for everyone in personal manifestation. So Jesus by His words and His actions has revealed the will of God is to heal ONLY! Please be smart enough to see this truth.
One religious man who graduated from a theological cemetery told me his wife had cancer that came from God. This man had a zeal for God but, no knowledge of God. If this was true, I will tell you right now that I would not want to follow that kind of God or that kind of religion. How do you tell people in the world come and get saved so God might give you cancer? Does that motivate you to want to get close to this God? Or is this a fear based religion like Islam, where you obey the law or we will cut off your hands. If God gives people cancer because they sinned, then here in the United States God would be easily convicted in any court of law as being a child abuser. Yet religious people think that God answers to a different law than man does. That is a very foolish presumptive thinking. If cancer is what a loving God does to His children, then what would an evil God do to his children? You see when the Bible says God is Love, how do you justify that He gave you cancer? You would have to redefine what Love is and that is a scary way to interpret the Bible. If I loved my wife so much and then I beat her because she did something wrong, I would be thrown in jail. Yet this reasoning is OK for a God you cannot see and throw in jail. It was also very hilarious to me that this man’s wife with cancer from God went to the doctor and received treatment to get out of the will of God for her life on the earth. Why go to a doctor to cure cancer if God gave you the caner? In this situation according to this man who was smarter God or the doctor? Why couldn’t this man go to God for healing instead of the doctor? It is simply because he thought that it was God that gave his wife the cancer so why pray for healing, just go to the doctor. It would appear that the doctor was smarter than God according to this man, if the doctor wants to cure people and God does not that is a major problem. People can truly be blinded by religion and not even know they are wrong. Let’s go back to the beginning of our world and see what God says to us about the things that He created:
Gen 1:31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
Here is God’s opinion of all of the things that He created. God looks at everything from the six days of creation and says it is all very good. What does “very good” mean to you? Did God create Adam or Eve as a weak or sick man or woman? Did God create them with cancer and call it good? I think you can easily conclude that after creation, there was no sickness or disease present in the world. If nothing else you can see that Adam lived over 900 years on the earth and that does not sound like a sick man at any time. In fact you cannot even find the words sickness or disease in this book of the bible until near the end of the book and into the next books of the Bible. The book of Genesis encompasses the first 2000 years of human history and there is barely any mention of sickness or disease in this time period. It is very clear to me that sickness and disease did not come from God and was not a designed plan of God by what He created in the beginning. But, you can believe whatever you want. If you look up the Hebrew word translated as “good” it comes from another word that can also mean “well”. If you are well, then you are not sick. If you are well then it is good! So obviously God thinks being well is good and being sick is bad or evil. This is not rocket science; surely you can see the truth of God’s word today.
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.
You see if you believe your sickness is God teaching you, correcting you or testing you; then you must conclude that it is something good based upon James 1:17! Is sickness ever good? Is wife beating ever good? Is child abuse ever good? If you think these are all good things then you are clearly confused and vastly deceived. I do not know of anything good about sickness. But, my opinion is the same as your opinion, worthless! Show me a Bible verse that says sickness is a blessing from God and I will believe it. It would have to be a blessing in order to qualify for it being good! Sickness steals your time, it takes your strength, it removes your ability to be a blessing to others, it causes your life to be shortened, it sucks away slowly your ability to do anything positive and your money is wasted in great quantities to get rid of it. Sickness and disease is a thief and a robber of your well-being, strength, your life and substance; I do not know what else to call it but an impressive evil. I have only shown you a few Bible verses and I can tell from this information that God did not send you sickness. If Jesus came to the earth to heal and cure people from sicknesses that God had sent on them, then that would be a house divided (Mat 12:25). God would have had to have been divided against Himself. Jesus would have been working against God and not for God. That would mean that God is schizophrenic, double minded and confused? God makes them sick and Jesus heals them. Too many Christians want to believe in a Dr. Jekyll and Mister Hyde type of God. Sure God will make you sick so that He can prove His power by healing you. That is a crazy mixed up Theology! Why heal them if you were the one that made them sick by your will. Do you understand the problem with many people’s confusing beliefs? God cannot be the same one that heals people that causes them to be sick or God would not be consistent and never changing (Mal 3:6), He would instead be the ever changing God. This is not what the Bible says to us, is it?
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.
You can clearly read from the Bible where sickness comes from, if you want to know the truth. Here is a verse that I use all of the time because it contains a lot of great spiritual information about good and evil. This verse is a self-evident claim that doing good is healing and this always comes from God. Think about it! How was the human body designed by God? It was designed with a built in immune system that fights against sickness and disease. If you get cut or scrapped, you do not have an eternal sore, your body has a built in self-healing machine mechanism. This was God’s designed plan in action. So when you read the Gospels did you ever see Jesus making anyone sick, lame, blind, crippled or diseased? Do you ever see anyone that Jesus said it is not my will to heal you? If you cannot find Jesus who was God in the flesh doing these things while He was personally here on the earth, then why would think that the same God in heaven does them to people now? Jesus clearly taught us, “When you have seen me, you have seen the Father”, so whatever we saw Jesus doing is what God does all of the time and Jesus only went about doing GOOD and healing. Do not make your God an Evil God who goes about doing EVIL and making people sick unless you can find where Jesus did it.
Here is where more people are confused. They allow Satan to blind their minds to the truth so that he can continue to cause sickness and disease to abide in them. A man recently told me that Satan is only allowed by God to do what God wants. So if Satan makes people sick, then it was God’s will for them to be sick. Again this is just more C.R.A.P. (Christian Rhetoric Applied Poorly)! I’m sorry I can be very blunt sometimes and I do not mean it to be hurtful, I only mean it to shock people into seeing the truth.
Where did God say sickness came from in Acts 10:38? God clearly called sickness satanic oppression in Acts 10:38. The devil is clearly Satan and sickness is from him and Satan is not God’s policeman sent by God to make people sick. Therefore sickness and disease is satanic oppression and the direct opposite of God’s definition of good. Go back and read the Gospels again and see who got healed. You have blind people seeing (Mat 15:31, Mat 21:14, Mar 10:51, John 9); you have leprous people’ made whole again (Luke 17:17), a woman with the issue of blood (Mat 9:20), a man with the withered hand (Mat 12:13), the dumb to speak (Mat 15:31), the lame to walk (Mat 15:31, Mat 21:14, John 5:9). These are just a few verses to show you who Jesus healed. There are many others that I did not mention. There are even several verses that teach us that Jesus healed every type of disease and infirmity (Mat 9:35) and everyone present (Mat 12:15) so if you did not see your problem being healed it is included in the other all-inclusive category of the type of people and sickneeses that Jesus healed. What I want you to notice is that God calls all of this satanic oppression. If it was sent by God then it would be Godly oppression and that is not what the Bible said. Neither would God have been there to heal them if He had been the one to make them sick.
Luk 13:16 And ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the sabbath day?
Here is another verifiable witness to the fact of the origin of sickness is from Satan. Jesus is asking a direct question that is still relevant and applicable to you today. He says that this woman is a daughter of Abraham; therefore she should be freed from this bondage of Satan. Think with me again and ask yourself this question; are you a son or a daughter of Abraham? If you are then you should also be freed from the bondage of Satan. Bondage is being held against your will as a prisoner. Did you know that was what sickness was? You could call sickness a spiritual jail cell that has kept you physically locked up from your freedom. It is clear to me that Jesus is saying you ought to be free today and this is why I say that.
Rom 4:16 Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace; to the end the promise might be sure to all the seed; not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham; who is the father of us all,
According to God we in the church are called Abraham’s spiritual children today by our faith in Jesus Christ. Therefore what did Jesus say? Didn’t Jesus just say “ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham be freed from this bondage of Satan?” When you begin to see who you are in Christ, it should begin to change your perspective on if you should be healed. According to Jesus, you should be healed even on the Sabbath. Let’s back up and look at an Old Testament verse to change our perspective. Many times people look at scriptures in error found in the Old Testament to justify their erroneous beliefs that God makes people sick, so I’ll talk about one of these to potentially help someone:
Exo 15:26 And said, If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the LORD thy God, and wilt do that which is right in his sight, and wilt give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians: for I am the LORD that healeth thee.
You can see a clear conflict in the English translation of this verse. This is why so many people are confused today. They do not research the words or study the definitions and they conclude things based upon Old Testament verses that you cannot find repeated in the New Covenant teachings. Yet, these are tough words to read. It would appear that God is inconsistent and that God shows favoritism and that God treats one nation differently than the other nation. If God heals Israelites and makes Egyptians sick then God is not the same to everyone. That is a major problem to me. It means that you cannot count on what God said and you cannot trust in God doing anything good for you or to you. It tells me that the definitions of God and Good are inconsistent and unreliable. It means the sun might come up in the west tomorrow because we just never know about how God does anything. Why would God give us a huge book of information about Himself if God did not want us to know who He really was? It does not make any sense to me. Let’s get back to the Hebrew words in this verse found in Exodus and become extremely picky to see exactly what God is saying to us. I want to make one extremely important point up front. First it does not say that God put the disease on Egypt. It was the translators that said that. Look at the Hebrew words translated as “I” will and see that in that statement within the context of Egypt there is no Hebrew word in the verse that can be translated directly as “I”. Do you understand this? It is an assumed reference and inserted because the translators thought that God was the one that made people sick. Now look at the end of verse and see the difference in the last part of that statement. “I am the Lord that heals you”. Now God uses a direct Hebrew word that can only be a personal pronoun of who God is and what God does. If God wanted you to believe that He is the one that puts sickness on people He would have used the same personal pronoun in the other parts of the verse so that you can associate it with Him. No, sickness does not come from God it only originates there by the minds of men who credit God with everything good or evil. Here is the same verse with the removal of the words “I” that do not occur in the Hebrew:
Exo 15:26 And said, If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the LORD thy God, and wilt do that which is right in his sight, and wilt give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statutes, will put none of these diseases upon thee, which have brought upon the Egyptians: for I am the LORD that healeth thee.
No you can see that someone still put sicknesses on the Egyptians, but we learned from the New Testament that this was not God, but Satan. It does not say God put the sicknesses on them. I am attempting to use the Bible to understand the Bible and to get you to see the subtle differences a few mistranslated words in the Old Testament can make. This verse still says “I am the LORD that HEALS” very plainly. So God is attributing healing to His work and not sickness. You of course can remain in darkness and still believe otherwise.
The major difficulty that people are facing today is the fact that the Bible contains two separate covenants. The Old Covenant was with a natural nation of people and the New Covenant is with a spiritual nation of people. In the Old Covenant, God hid the existence of Satan largely in symbolic references, unnamed references and in ways that allowed you to know something was there but not always understand what it was. In the New Covenant, Satan is revealed for who he is directly. Yet the majority of people today, who are confused, are those that are focused in only on the law of God and the prophecies of God without interpreting them using the revelations of God in the New Covenant given to the church. That is a huge mistake, it is no wonder we have so many different opinions in the world.
Let’s ask ourselves some really basic theology questions:
- Which Covenant are we in today?
- Which Bible pages and verses should hold more importance to us as Christians? Genesis or Revelation? Deuteronomy or Galatians?
- Are we under the Law or are we now under Grace?
Too many times Christians want to emphasize the Old Covenant and ignore the New Covenant reality. They only read things in the Old Testament that are important to them thinking that they apply to them. I can go through your Bible and look at what verses you underline to see what you choose to believe is important. If you spend more time in the Old Testament than you do reading the letters written to the church directly, then you are living under the Law of Moses and you ignore God’s Grace. I would strongly recommend that you take the time to go and read Deuteronomy chapter 28 and see what God says about blessing and cursing under the law. But before you do this go and read what God says about it in chapter 30 first:
Deu 30:15 See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil;
God clearly says Life is GOOD and death is EVIL! These are two different perspectives of contrasting opposite events. Births are good and deaths are evil. You could also say healing is good and sickness is evil. You can go down the list of opposites and clearly see God is teaching you something you should understand clearly. Then God says this to you:
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:
It appears the choice to live or die has been placed upon humans. This goes against a Sovereign Predestination theology that is clearly wrong. Now go back and read chapter 28 about the blessing and the cursing of the Law of Moses. If you go and read down the whole chapter you will see many diseases being named by name. Then in verse 61 you will find this statement:
Deu 28:61 Also every sickness, and every plague, which is not written in the book of this law, them will the LORD bring upon thee, until thou be destroyed.
So the curse of the Law includes “every sickness and every disease” that is not named in this book as well as those that are named. Do you understand this so far? What we conclude from this chapter is sickness is a curse and healing and health is a blessing. What did God tell us to choose? Was it not life to live? These are very simple truths found in the Bible yet many people just ignore them. Here is a New Testament reality that will help you if you can see it:
Gal 3:13 Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree:
According to God, what were you redeemed from? You soon learn the difficulty in the teachings of confused people who do not know the truth. We can very clearly see that if Christ has redeemed us (PAST TENSE) we have been freed from all sicknesses and all diseases that were listed in that chapter 28 of Deuteronomy and even those that were not named directly. According to God He did not leave out any sicknesses or diseases in that chapter so that means all of them! If Jesus Christ came to redeem you from sickness and disease then there is NO WAY that God is sending you sickness or disease to kill you. This would again be God working against Himself and a clear Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde type of theology.
I am attempting to alleviate the questions in your mind that God sent you sickness. It is a difficult subject for some people to accept because of the things that they have been deceived into believing about God. I hope if nothing else you will start to go through your Bible and see the Jesus who revealed the true nature of God in the Gospels. Then go and read the Letters written to the church about how God is Love, the Grace of God, the Goodness of God and the mercy of God. Learn to see the real God and who He is today in the New Covenant. If you want to, you can also go through the names of God given to you in the Bible. The names of God in the Bible always reveal the character of God! You will see God called “Jehovah Raffa” which means “I am God Your Healer”! You will never see the name of God called Jehovah Makes You Sick! Yes there is coming a judgment of God and this will occur during the tribulation and the time shortly thereafter. But, do not confuse the Judge God with your Father God. Perhaps I will have time to discuss a balanced approach to understanding the character of God. Ok, I have a lot more to teach on, but I have gone too long today. If you want to learn more about where sickness came from in the Bible, please come back and read with me again. God Bless!
If you want to continue reading in this series about the origin of sickness and disease, please continue with “Part 2“.
What Does God Think of Homosexuality? Pt 2 Searching for the Modern God for the Modern Family in the Modern World?
(Ver 1.2) This is Part 2 of a series of lessons about “What does God think about the subject of Homosexuality”. This will be a little bit different today than my usual Bible lessons, but certainly not less controversial in any degree. I am committed to tell the truth regardless of what it costs me, so if I lose readers today, I’m sorry, but I believe that someone has to tell you the truth. You might ask, why do I write so much about this subject of homosexuality and not any other sin? The primary reason that I write so much about it is because it is the only sin that I know of that is being preached and taught to be a normal reality of the truth and an acceptable alternative Christian lifestyle. Homosexuality is the only sinful habit that is portrayed on TV, in movies, on the internet and in magazines to be normal. You never see a murderer on TV as being someone who is normal. It is only the Homosexual Community that has organized themselves into groups that promotes their agendas and their lifestyles as a minority group equivalent to the African American, Asian or Hispanic population of our country. It is only the Homosexual community that is exalting their sin to be equivalent to the color of someone’s skin. It is only the homosexual community that has support groups to help people to be and stay gay. Alcoholics have AA which is a group to help them get free from alcohol. But, now the Gay community wants everyone to believe this is just who we are and we can’t change. If only the convicted rapists and child molesters in our country could learn how successful this is working for the Gay Community, I’m sure in the future we will see another organized sinful group come forward promoting themselves to everyone that this is just how I am and how God created me so you will just need to accept me like I am. After all I have rights. So this is why I will preach against homosexuality by proclaiming the truth of the Word of God and why I do not talk about other sins to this level. As soon as murderers and rapists start to organize I’ll preach against them next. It might shock you that I compare homosexuality to murder and rape, but according to the word of God sin is sin no matter what sin you are guilty of. You will also note that God gave gay sinners in Sodom and Gomorrah the death penalty for their lifestyles so that is another good reason to lump them together. You should read the law of God in Deuteronomy and Leviticus and find out what were death penalty acts in the eyes of God. You might be surprised at what you find there. Maybe I will show you some of these scriptures later in this lesson. Therefore, according to God and the Bible I can lump your every sin in the same general wrong behavior category. If you feel slighted and want to organize a movement for your sin to be accepted, I’ll give you the same level of attention as I do to homosexuality. The louder the Gay Agenda gets, the louder I’ll get with the truth so that someone will hopefully hear it. So this is Part 2 and if you did not read “Part 1” you should go and start there.
Modern Family Cast Picture
I can look around in movies, on TV and on the internet and see that there is something that has been building that is still very disturbing to me. It is nothing new, but it is a growing threat of deception to our world that we live in. So I will talk about it and see what the Bible says, to hopefully change someone’s perspective on reality. Here in America there is a popular award winning TV show that is called “Modern Family”. It is humorous to me that they call it “modern” when it is actually not a new or modern situation at all. The Bible tells us that there is nothing new under the sun (Ecc 1:9), so obviously anything they are claiming to be modern has already happened within our human history but they want to ignore this fact. There is a famous quotation that states “Those that ignore the past are condemned to repeat it”. This TV show is a basic redefinition of the classic Bible and God family which consists of a husband and a wife using humor to preach their Gay message of acceptance and tolerance. Too many times modern people think that if you make sin funny then it is possible to say and do anything and we will buy into it. If you watch this show and laugh at their jokes then you have already bought into their message of the existence of a normal sin. Notice the picture that I included from the cast of this TV show. Notice how they mix subtly the sin with the normal and dress them all alike in white portraying the message of normal and purity. They have preached a deceived gospel that is designed to confuse people into acceptance.
I do not watch this show and the only reason that I know about it is from watching the morning news type programs that report about them and interview their actors or just talk about them. In this morning’s show they interviewed some “modern families” that they discovered in America. One modern family was a household that consisted of two women who now had two young sons. This family had a sperm donor who was also a gay man in his own modern relationship in order to even have these children. I do not know or understand that the fact that they had to go to an outside party to produce a child was a problem to them? In interviewing one of the children, he told us that this family was just like every other family and that the house was built around love. Of course he had two moms and when he called for mom, one would answer and he would have to say no, my other mom. His dad (sperm donor) was not living in his house but would spend time with them on the weekends and none of this mattered to this child. Obviously to him and his narrow perspective this was a normal family like everyone else. So it is very clear to me that this family is deceived and highly confused to what the definition of normal is and what God thinks about this type of arrangement. You see if you are raised in an abnormal house and you do not know the difference to what normal is then to your perception of reality and your circumstances become normal to you. What if you were Tarzan, raised in the jungle by a family of apes, would you not think that your ape family was totally normal? All that I can see is that if they have concluded that their family is no different than any other family in America, then Christians have done a very poor job of revealing God to the rest of the world to show what normal really is. This TV show called Modern Family has won acclaim and awards and has a major following in America. Forty years ago this show would not have even made it on TV, but today we have become so much more progressive (degenerate, perverted, debased, deviant, depraved, immoral) in our views of what is allowable and permissible that it is no wonder that this show is on TV. This is because we live in a modern world and everything is different now, right? This is certainly what people want you to think anyway, but technically speaking there is nothing that is different today than what it was four or five thousand years ago. Of course we have technology, cell phones, cars and airplanes, sperm donors, en-vitro and all of these types of things that are new, but the people that are using them are the exact same kind of people who lived thousands of years ago. Let me show you what God wrote a long time ago:
Ecc 1:9 The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.
Are you under the sun? Is this talking about you? According to the Bible and what it teaches us there is absolutely nothing that exists today that has not already happened yesterday. People want to look at only external things and ignore people, their thoughts, emotions, intentions, desires, lusts and the other hidden things of the heart and say today we have different more modern challenges facing us. No you see we still struggle with the exact same challenges as Solomon who wrote this verse in the Bible thousands of years ago. We envy each other, we become jealous of each other and we still desire so many things that are only for our own individual purpose. Do people still rob each other, kill each other and lie to each other? Exactly what is different today than back then? Can you really come up with any new or modern emotions, motivations or thoughts that anyone can think today? Oh, sure you couldn’t text your message back then and you couldn’t blog about your thoughts back then, but what is different other than that? Are not the messages still the same? How you do something is not as important as what you are doing and why. People today look at homosexuality as being a major change to the modern family. People think that this is some new physical attraction that has never existed before. It is funny how God wrote about homosexual men in Genesis the first book of the Bible and tells us how He destroyed this city called Sodom because of their immoral lifestyle. If God writes about homosexuality in the first book of the Bible, this is proof that this is not something new just for today. Go read the Genesis 19 account of the city of Sodom and see the story of how Lot and his wife and were a normal family who lived in a modern city of progressive homosexuals and then see that this is exactly what we are seeing on the news today. The only thing that we are not seeing today that did happen then is God rained down fire and brimstone to kill them all and I’m sure that this is coming in the near future after God takes me out of here like he took Lot’s family. There is truly nothing new under the sun.
People like to confuse and combine God’s love and forgiveness with God’s acceptance. After all, the Bible says “God so loved the world that He gave…” (John 3:16). So people have concluded in error that since God loves them how they are right now (which is true) that God also accepts them as they are right now (which is not true) and there is no growth process or changes to ever make in their lives. However, you cannot find that in any verse in the Bible. God loves you yes, but God loved you so much that He gave, so that you could change to love Him back. You cannot ignore parts of the Bible you do not like to accept only the parts that you do like. The Bible informs us that God is a Holy God and that must be balanced corretnly with a Loving God theology equally. There is a central theological theme not found in many modern churches very often and this is the concept of repentance that goes with the concepts of God’s love and forgiveness. I doubt very seriously if any modern gay church preaches about repentance. They must tear these pages out of their Bibles in order not to offend anyone. Everyone in the modern church wants to be forgiven, saved and not go to hell, but it seems that not very many actually want to repent and change to do it. To be repentative is a divine concept that originates from you “being sorry” for your past. Sorrow begins by recognizing what you were doing was wrong and then turning your boat around to make a new course of change and correction for your life. As long as you are happy with your sin, you are not able to be repentant. If I did not love you I would not try to tell you the truth. I would not care and I would be like everyone else in the world. It is only because I love that I write you a letter of truth to try to help you.
You see I got a long comment from a man that called himself a gay Christian and today is my response to his ignorant comment. He is obviously confused and deceived into thinking he is a Christian and that God has saved him. However, he told me very plainly that he had no intention of ever changing. He was happy as a gay man and that this is just how God made him. You see, he told me that he had these thoughts and feelings since he was just six years old and therefore he concluded this was just who he was. This is a clear demonstration of how easy it is for the devil to deceive people in the world. Because he did not understand that he was a spirit living in a body and how spiritual things work and how Satan can easily bring abnormal thoughts and feelings to natural humans from the supernatural realm, he had just learned to accept them as normal reflections of who he thought he was. He allowed his abnormal thoughts and feelings dictate and define who he was, rather than attempting to learn the TRUTH from the Words of the Creator God who made him to be a man. What people do not realize is that Satan can give you evil thoughts even from a young age and tell you whatever you want to hear. Satan can tell you that you are just a monkey. A man named Darwin believed this for a while and wrote a book about it; maybe you read his ignorant book also. Why is this gay man not a Christian? There is no repentance present; no sorrow and no desire to change. Jesus said “If you love me you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). Obviously my gay commenter does not love Jesus or he would not ignore God’s commandments. Do you know what the commandments of God are? The commandments of God say some very direct things about this subject that leaves no room for interpretation. No the words homosexual and homosexuality are not in the Bible. Maybe you think you have searched your Bible and God is silent about this issue, or it could be that you just did not know what to look for. Here is one of the commandments of God that you need to know:
Lev 20:13 If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.
According to God’s Law, this verse says that homosexuality was a capital offense in Israel. God gave these words to Moses for the people to learn what is acceptable and what an abomination in the eyes of God is. This verse says that when a man has sex with another man in a manner designed for a woman that it is disgusting in His eyes. So why do you not know how to read or see the truth presented right in front of you? It is simply because you are not interested in seeing the truth. If find the truth is not a priority in your life there will be no truth found. Today too many people would rather live their lives of lies rather than to change to know the truth. Let me give you another witness of what the Bible actually says:
Lev 18:22 Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.
This says the same thing, but the Bible says let every word of truth be established in the mouths of two or three witnesses so I wanted to give you another Bible verse that speaks of males having sex with other males like they were females. God still says it is a disgusting human act. Let me give you another verse that applies to this subject today:
Deu 22:5 The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the LORD thy God.
The Bible says some pretty shocking things. God pulls no punches nor does he ignore any sin. God is smarter than you obviously think. God says that if a man dresses like a woman or a woman dresses like a man, it is an abomination to God. I see this everyday on TV and in movies. Cross dressing fantasies are a normal type of behavior in the world today. We have movies like “Tootsie” and others that have popularized this behavior as being normal. You can walk down the street and see someone and think, is that a woman until you get up close to them and see that they are just a man dressed like a woman. This is basic homosexual behavior and they view it as normal. If you have ever seen a gay pride parade you will know what I am talking about. If you have ever seen a gay convention or assembly it is easy to spot this behavior. Are not these the commandments from God that Jesus said if you love me you will do my commandments? If you do not think so you are more than confused you are deceived, and I cannot help you. Do you suddenly think that God has changed to delete these words from the Bible or that they do not suddenly apply to the modern world? Maybe you think that God has changed His Book of Commandments to the a modern Book of Suggestions. Has God updated His theology to include a modern interpretation of this very old information? This is what my gay commenter is hoping for. There are many who try to teach the O..T. law is not valid anymore but I disagree with that wrong assessment. Sodom and Gomorrah were both destroyed before the law of Moses was even given. You can clearly see that if God destroyed these cities for their immoral acts of homosexuality and that this must still cause problems in the modern world. Read this next verse in the N.T. very carefully:
Jud 1:7 Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.
What does God still say about Sodom and Gomorrah here in the book of Jude in the New Testament? God says that these were examples of men going after strange flesh who are now in the flames of eternal fire. Do you think that they are happy in hell right now? Do you think they are still having a party in hell right now, having sex with each other? If you do you do not understand that the spirits of men and women in hell do not have physical sex anymore. Plus the torment of hell is so great that there would be no way that you could have any pleasure even if you wanted it.
According to Malachi 3:6, God says “I am the Lord and change not”. Then in James 1:17 it says “There is no variableness or shadow of turning” with God. So if you are looking for a modern God to accept your modern sin lifestyle choices you are about to be greatly disappointed with your decisions that you have made. You have placed all of your faith in a made up temporary fantasy world rather than accepting the truth. Even if you were really gay and lived to be 99 years old, it would not matter billions of years from now if you are in hell. Eternity in hell is a never ending place of torment. You see if I did not love you I would not bother to tell you the truth. It is only because I love you that I care where you spend your eternity. So as long as there is a gay person standing up for equal rights, I will teach the truth. As long you say this is just who I am, I will tell you that you have no idea who you really are.
I challenge you to search your Bible for your definition of the modern family and see if you can find it. Then search your Bible for your definition of the modern God and see if you can find Him also. Sure God loves you and died for your sins just like he died for my sins. So I am definitely no better than you are. But, there is a difference between us, I repented and changed and you are happy with the way you are. Just because God loves you, does not mean that God will force salvation upon you. Sure God is powerful enough to do this if He wanted to, however it is just the love of God that restrains Him from doing this to give you a freewill choice. God will never use His force or power to make you change unless you ask Him to change you and that is totally different. You see I had another commenter on my website who spoke of coming out of homosexuality. So there is proof that this is possible in the world today if you look for it. If you are happy with your life today then you have allowed Satan to deceive you into a temporary state that will not last very long.
Heb 11:25 Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season;
Here is God’s reaction to the sin and lifestyle choices that you are making today. Here in this verse God informs us what causes people to get noticed by Him. Because Moses chose to be with the people of God He is included in the Bible as a hero of the faith. If Moses would have chosen to live sinful in Egypt for what God calls a season, God says that he would have lost out on his good eternal outcome. Sure sin has pleasure attached to it for a while. But, pleasure for a short while and torment for an eternity is a crazy choice to make. I am one of the ones that God says are His people and I have come to you with an old message of choice. You can still choose today to have your pleasures in Egypt over entering into Kingdom of God with the people of God, but your eventual outcome will be a very sad one. I’ll pray that you will make a higher choice to come out of Egypt.
Understanding Bible Faith! The Spiritual Enemies to Your Faith? Part 8
(Ver 1.3) This is now Part 8 in a series of very advanced studies about the subject of Bible Faith. Today’s lesson will be a continuation of the lesson that I taught on last time about Using Your Faith to Possess the Promised Land. In this lesson the Promised Land was described to us to be entering God’s Rest found in Hebrews 3 and 4. What we discovered was that the children of Israel coming out of Egypt represented a natural type of the spiriutal church and God’s salvation from Satan and the world of darkness. We definitely learn from this type that salvation was not the end of the Christian journey, but rather the beginning of our spiritual walk through the wilderness where we hear and learn the Word of God personally. You might recall that after the children of Israel left Egypt they had to go through the Red Sea that was parted for them by the hand of God. We are taught in the N.T. that this was a type of natural baptism into Moses that corresponds to Christians that are now spiritually baptized into Christ during salvation (1 Cor 10:2). The symbolism in this O.T. story is quite extensive and has many applications and lessons for the church. The Red Sea is really a type of the Blood of Christ that we have been baptized into. The cloud by day and the fire by night is a type of the leading of the Holy Spirit today in the church. The Bible tells us that those who are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God (Rom 8:14). Just as the cloud led the children of Israel through the wilderness, so the Holy Spirit leads us today. The Promised Land in the story of the children of Israel represents the promises of God that God has given to the church to possess today. You see, the truth of Christianity is not about the promises that we make to God, it is really much more about the promises that God has already made to us. Just as God told Israel “I have given you the land”, God is saying to the church “I have given you the victory over poverty, sickness, emotional despair, distress and the other things that He has given to us as promises in His Word” and we are to go into the this spiritual land and take them by our faith. Here is another interesting parallel. The children of Israel wandered for 40 years into the wilderness until finally a generation came along to possess the promise land. If you consider the church age has been going on for approximately 40 Jubilees then you will realize that we are the spiritual generation prophesied to take the Promised Land. A Jubilee is a 50 year period where God’s plan has recorded many secret parallels. If you multiply 40 x 50 you get 2000 years. All of these are amazing parallels that speak that we are God’s people that will take the land already given to us. Here are just a few of the promises of God found in the Old Testament. I will give you these as examples so that you know what to look for.
Pro 1:23 “I will make known my words unto you”.
Joel 2:25 “I will restore to you the years..”
Joel 2:28 “I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh…”
Jer 30:17 “I will restore health to you and I will heal thee of your wounds…”
Jer 33:6 “I will bring it health and cure, and I will cure them, and will reveal unto them the abundance of peace and truth”.
Nah 1:13 “For now will I break his yoke from off thee, and will burst thy bonds in sunder”.
Zec 3:4 “I will clothe thee with a change of raiment”.
Whenever God tells you that He will do something, these represent God’s promises that have been given to you and He is committed to fulfill them. These are just a few of the promises of God found in His Word that can be possessed by men and women in the earth, if they mix their faith with them. Just as we learned that Israel was given the Promised Land, they did not possess it because God says they did not mix any faith with the Gospel that was spoken to them (Heb 4:2); this still applies to you today also. The only way to possess the promises of God that have already been given to you is by you mixing your faith to possess them. I’m sorry I sometimes repeat myself, but I want you to get it. Hopefully you have read all of these faith lessons in the series and you have been taking notes so that you can learn this important subject. In my opinion, Faith is one of the top three subjects that every Christian should know completely. We have found that faith is more complex than just simply believing in something or someone. We have seen that faith involves several independent subjects working together in harmony to produce a positive result. If you have not read this series from the beginning I would suggest that you go back and start reading with “Part 1”.
Just as the children of Israel sent spies into the Promised Land to investigate their possession, we can do the same still today using God’s word. You see the spies of Israel went in and found giants and these are a type of something in our Promised Land. There are still many spiritual enemies trying to intimidate you and to try to keep you from walking in the victory that God has already given to you. Today I will be the spy that gives you the report of these enemies and what you do with this information is up to you, just like it was up to the children of Israel what they did. I plan on being a type of Joshua and not a type of the ten spies with the evil report, but hopefully you will learn what to do. The first spiritual enemy that I want to discuss is the giant of ignorance. Here is one of my favorite Bible verses because of what God teaches us:
Hos 4:6 My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children.
To be destroyed is the opposite of being victorious so this sound like it applies to our story of the children of Israel and why they died in the wilderness. Ignorance is the opposite of possessing knowledge. What we have here is one of the primary reasons that God’s people are defeated easily. God reveals to us (His New Covenant People) that we will also be destroyed if we remain ignorant and unlearned. Therefore, the knowledge of God should be the number one goal for the people of God. Let’s put this into context with the subject of having faith. We learned that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God (Rom 10:17). So if we have not heard the Word of God it is impossible to have any faith. If you have not heard the Word of God, then you are ignorant of the Word of God and therefore you are easily defeated. In order to not be ignorant you are going to have to hear from God and this involves Him teaching you His knowledge.
Pro 11:9 An hypocrite with his mouth destroyeth his neighbour: but through knowledge shall the just be delivered.
God gives us clues in the Bible and here is one of them that I am attempting to teach you about today. God is saying that “knowledge” will cause His people to be delivered from their adversary. It is very obvious to me that the lack of knowledge is being stated as one of the key factors to why you are defeated. Because you never knew or understood what faith was, you were constantly defeated. But, now that you are learning about faith you are a potential threat to the enemy of ignorance and Satan. You see Satan wants you ignorant. He is doing all that he can to keep you from knowing the truth. As long as you are ignorant of the truth you are no threat of taking the Promised Land. Knowing this fact alone should cause you to become a more diligent Bible student. You should try to do what I do and spend hours a day in the Word of God. I know in today’s busy world this is almost impossible, but learn what God said in Proverbs “The knowledge of God is greater than obtaining gold” (Prov 8:10). You see God is saying knowing His word should be your number one priority above you working to get rich. Please understand that God does not care if you are rich, but know this that He does cares if you are ignorant. One of the wealthiest men in the entire Bible was Solomon. His wealth is still spoken of today. However please note how Solomon got this way. Solomon wrote some of the greatest wisdom books found in the Bible. Therefore, Solomon had the wisdom of God and this caused him to be rich mentally and physically. This ought to tell you something about you knowing the ways of God that it will cause you to become wealthy. Israel was primarily defeated in the wilderness because of their ignorance. So ignorance is the first giant of faith land that is attempting to defeat you. Let’s move on to the next giant in the land.
The next spiritual giant that will come against you is the giant of “fear”. The ten spies of Israel brought back an evil report and their words caused fear to spread throughout the people. It was this fear that caused the majority of the people of God to die in the wilderness never to see the good land that God had already given to them. Over the course of 40 years the children of Israel died one by one and were defeated, except for Joshua and Caleb. You see Joshua and Caleb said they were well able to take the land and they were never afraid. Joshua and Caleb did not allow fear to rule their lives or their outcome. Let’s look at a verse of scripture that Jesus is teaching us about the giant of fear:
Luk 8:50 But when Jesus heard it, he answered him, saying, fear not: believe only, and she shall be made whole.
If you read the context of this verse you will discover that this is another faith lesson within a faith lesson from the Lord God. A man comes up to Jesus and he asks Jesus to come to his house to heal his only daughter because she is dying. While Jesus is on the way to his house, the woman with the issue of blood comes and touches His clothes and gets healed as we have already talked a lot about her faith. Before Jesus could finish with the woman with the issue of blood, some messengers come to the man with the sick daughter and informs him it is too late, your daughter is dead. However, death is not the end of the story, is it? Jesus only looks at the man and says “Fear not, only believe and she will be made whole”. Do you see what is happening here? Here is a faith choice between two reports being given to a man in a highly pressure filled moment of time. One report is very evil and the other is a good report from God and the man has a critical internal decision to make in a split second. This man could get into fear and believe the evil report or stay in faith and believe the report of the Lord. Jesus heard the same report as the man did, but it did not affect Jesus in the least. If you go and continue reading this story Jesus does make it to the man’s house and Jesus makes everyone leave except for the parents. Jesus speaks to the daughter and she arises from the bed healed. Which report did the father believe? Do you think it mattered? I know that it mattered and he believed the words of God. This is again the story of the children of Israel who had a choice to make and they chose fear and death in the wilderness. This man chose faith and saw his daughter raised from the dead. That is pretty awesome if you ask me. Let us look at another faith story about the giant of fear in faith land:
Mar 4:40 And he said unto them, Why are ye so fearful? how is it that ye have no faith?
If you read the context of this verse you will see that Jesus is asleep in the boat and the disciples are trying to sail across a large body of water and suddenly a storm arises. Now, Jesus had already said they were going to the other side so these were the faith filled words of God already spoken informing the disciples of the outcome before it happens. Just as God had told the children of Israel “I have given you the land” they let their fear of the inhabitants of the land conquer them without a battle or a fight. So when the disciples looked at their enemy of the wind and the waves, like the children of Israel in the wilderness they caved to the fear and were easily defeated also without a battle or a fight. They ignored Jesus’ words for the sight of the physical surroundings and circumstances and Jesus is awaken and was not happy at all with them. Jesus stills the winds and the waves with His words and then turns to the disciples and declares there is a major problem here. “Why are you so fearful?” Fear is always the opposite of having any faith. So when you see your situation to be unwinnable or insurmountable and you get into fear, you are about to sink your boat. Jesus was the only one on the boat that had any faith and fortunately for them He was there. What were the disciples expected to do differently? That is a really good question to consider. I personally believe that if they would have believed the words of Jesus, they might have gone to lay down with Jesus and gone to sleep also. I do not recall Jesus telling them they had to sail the boat to get across the body of water. Maybe you and they assumed this, but that is not always good to assume what Jesus wants you to do. Regardless of what they did or didn’t do, I do not believe that they would have drowned or that their boat would have been lost if they would have stayed in faith. Of course what the disciples really should have done was what Jesus did; get up and speak to the problem to cause it to stop. I never think it is wrong to do what Jesus did. Oh, yea they are not God, how can they do this? You see the problem with people is that they think that they cannot do what Jesus did because they think He is God in His omnipotent power. But, that is just not true. Jesus was God, but God had become a man just like you and me and if He could do something, then we can do the same thing. What Jesus did was to set us an example that we can do the exact same things that He did. Do you recall what Jesus said? Jesus said in John 14:12 “The works that I do, shall you do and greater works shall you do because I go to my Father”. Was Jesus telling us that we could do what He did? I believe that is exactly what He was saying to me, you can decide to do with it what you want to and even ignore it if you like. I believe that Jesus expected them to do what He did and they chose to believe the circumstances instead. The spiritual giants of fear, panic, dread, fright, and being afraid are all still very real and they exist today. Satan will cause the circumstances to look just as formidable as the children of Israel were facing and he will even cause people to come to you and tell you how bad it is, to get you into fear. This could be a doctor’s report that says you only have a short time to live. It could be many different things, but yet Jesus taught us that it will come and you will have to choose not to believe it. Let us move on to another faith land giant that is trying to defeat you:
Mat 14:31 And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him, and said unto him, O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?
Here is another faith lesson from the God of creation. Jesus is walking on the water and the disciples are in a boat and Jesus is about to pass them by when they see Him and they think it is a spirit or a ghost. After all men can’t walk on water so they thought. Anyway Peter suddenly gets faith and thinks if Jesus can walk on water then I can do this also. Peter is beginning to catch on to what Jesus was teaching. Peter saw that Jesus was setting them an example showing them what they could do. So Peter says to Jesus “If it is you, bid me to come”. Of course Jesus had no choice but to say “Come” because it was Him. Peter steps out of the boat onto the water and he begins to walk to Jesus and this is a really amazing feat and I’ll tell you why. Peter was walking on the water by his own faith and not the faith of Jesus. He based his faith on the Words of God, but it was his faith that kept him from sinking, until he started thinking about what he was doing. You see the Bible says that Peter began to observe the wind and the waves and this caused something to change in his previous water walking faith level. This is an important faith lesson for you to learn today. It concerns the circumstances that you will also be faced with. If you begin to believe today that you are healed and tomorrow things look worse than they did today, what will your reaction be? You can clearly see by Jesus’s words that He told Peter you should not doubt. He asked Peter “Why did you doubt”. By Jesus asking this question it is obvious that it was Peter’s doubt that caused him to begin to sink, so it had to be Peter’s faith that caused him to walk on the water. What is doubt? Here is a definition from the Strong’s concordance of this word:
From G1364 properly to duplicate, that is, (mentally) to waver (in opinion): – doubt.
This word comes from a root word meaning twice. It is basically saying to us that those who are double minded are those who are in doubt. We can quickly learn that being single minded and focused is the state of faith and being double minded is the state of doubt. This word can mean to waver and this means to hesitate or change your confidence. It is sometimes difficult to understand when we are double minded and when we have thoughts from Satan that are contrary to having faith but we will have to learn the difference. Remember an earlier faith lessons I taught about the factor of having “confidence”? Having confidence today and not tomorrow is being double minded and allowing doubt to rule your life and your spirit. If you believe today that God has done what he has promised and tomorrow when it looks worse you no longer have the same confidence then you are in doubt. The Bible teaches us this that “We walk by faith and not by sight” (2 Cor 5:7). This means that we do not observe our surroundings with your physical senses and allow them to control us. What if Peter would have ignored the environmental circumstances while he was walking on the water and not looked at the wind and the waves, what would have happened? This is actually a very good faith lesson to learn and it teaches us to ignore the circumstances of life and to only focus on the rpomise of the Word of God. Keep your eyes on Jesus and the Word of God and ignore your external circumstances. Of course I’m not saying for you to stop taking your medicine or to do something stupid. I’m just saying keep your eyes on Jesus no matter what is happening around you. I believe that if Peter would have only looked at Jesus, they could have walked to the other side together. So this is the giant of doubt that will come to try to keep you out of possessing the Promised Land. I can almost guarantee you that all of these enemies will show up to fight against you. Even Jesus had opportunities to get into fear, to doubt, or to become worried, to waver or to allow the circumstance to overwhelm Him. But, He set the example for us to follow and we need to learn to follow Him and all of His ways. These are probably not all of the enemies in your faith battle, but they are some of the most important ones for you to learn about that I know of. Overcome the giant of ignorance by gaining the knowledge of God. Overcome the spirit of fear by resisting it. When the giant of doubt comes, keep your eyes focused on Jesus and He will see you through to victory. I hope that you enjoyed my Bible faith lesson about Possessing the Promised Land and that you can take away something that will cause you to become victorious. I still have a lot to talk about on understanding this subject of Bible faith, so please continue studying the Bible with me. God Bless.
If you would like to continue reading this series of lessons about Bible faith you can continue to “Part 9“.
Understanding Who Jesus Is! Identifying the Hidden Diety of Jesus Christ?
(Ver 1.2) This is Part 3 in a Bible Study series of unlocking the Myths of Jesus taught in the modern Church. If you have not read all of the series you might like to start with “Part 1“. My subject today is an introduction to a basic Bible truth of the deity of Christ. Was Christ a man or was Christ God in the flesh? I have recently had a few people ask me a question in implied terms that they did not understand who Jesus was. Some look at Jesus as being only the Son of God and certainly He was this. Some look at Jesus as being a Prophet of God and certainly He was this. Still others look at Jesus as being the Son of Man and again He was this also. However, the basis of salvation is hinged upon a much larger truth that states Jesus Christ was God coming to the earth personally in the flesh and dying for your sins. That is what is important to know from studying the Bible. The foundational basis of the entire New Testament is the Old Testament prophecies that state God will come to the earth in the flesh. Jesus Himself when confronted by the religious leaders of His day spoke some very interesting and important words that affirm man’s ignorance:
Joh 5:39 Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.
As you can clearly see Jesus Christ was telling the religious leaders that their books of the Law written by Moses contained words that identified Him. Clearly this revelation took the religious leaders by surprise and they did not believe Jesus. However, here was God in the flesh speaking to His people and telling them I have come and they wanted to kill Him because He claimed to be the Son of God making Himself equal to God according to John 5:18. What does it mean to be equal with God? Who was Jesus claiming to be? Exactly what verses is Jesus referring to that testifies of God coming in the flesh? This is the problem that the Jews did not understand that this information was in the Bible. This information was not clearly presented in natural terms because it was hidden spiritual information and they could not comprehend it with their human minds. I am going to show you a few of the hidden references to the fact that Jesus is prophesied to come in concealed terms starting with Genesis 1. I have written on this fact before so I will not cover it in-depth, but I will just give you an overview of the concepts. 2 Peter 3:8 says that a day is as a 1000 years and 1000 years is even as a day to the Lord. This is a basic clue to the fact that every day mentioned in Genesis 1 is a prophetic day of human history. Since Adam was created, it has been approximately 6000 years and that would correspond to the 6 days of creation. On Day 4 God establishes two great lights to rule the day and the night. These great lights are the sun and the moon and the sun rules the day and the moon rules the night. Using 2 Peter 3:8 we can multiply 1000 by 4 days and get a period of 4000 years when this was to occur. What happened 4000 years after Adam? Guess what, Jesus came into the earth and was born in a manger in Bethlehem. Jesus is revealed to be the “Sun of Righteousness” in Malachi 4:2. Jesus Himself claimed to be the “Light of the World” (John 9:5) and this was a clear reference to God who is Light (1 John 1:5) coming into the world on Day 4 of human history. Therefore, Jesus was encoded within creation in the first chapter of Genesis to have an exact prophesied entrance into the world at the precise time that was written about by Moses many hundreds of years before it happened. I have written about this in other Bible lessons in more detail so if you did not understand it, you should go and search my blogs and find these lessons and study them. What I want you to see is a designed plan of God being revealed in hidden terms, but yet when discovered it is very profound and almost impossible to deny the deity of Christ.
Next, I want to give you another hidden prophesied statement found in the Bible that speaks of God coming to the earth in the flesh. Again it is hidden, but yet you can find it if you dig deep enough for it. This hidden prophecy comes in Genesis 5 and this chapter is widely ignored in the Bible, but yet it contains some very powerful evidence that you should see. Genesis 5 contains a genealogy of the first 10 descendants from Adam, stating the generations from Adam to Noah. Of course this is not all of the children of Adam and it does not include the vast majority of the descendants of Adam and Eve, but these are the selected people that God put in the Book for a reason. It is important to note that all of these people are real individuals that actually lived on the earth. God did not make up this information nor did He orchestrate it to force it to happen this way. Yet when you see what I am about to show you, you will wonder how this is possible. Let’s look at the list of these people who God gives in this chapter of Genesis and see what they say to us. Did you know they were speaking to you? If you understand how God writes the Bible, you already know that you will not find the information on the surface that you are looking for. If you could do that you would have no further choice, but to believe in the God who wrote the book. No, you have to dig deep and examine every word if you want to discover the hidden truths. Jesus gave us a law from God that states “He who seeks finds”. The opposite of that truth would be “He, who does not seek, does without”. What I am going to do is give you a chart of each name found in the Genesis 5 genealogy and then list the definition of that Hebrew name from the Strong’s concordance. Did you know that Hebrew names almost always have a meaning attached to them? This is one way that God uses to hide information in the Bible for us to find. Here are the 10 names:
|
Name |
Hebrew Definition and Meaning |
| Adam | Man |
| Seth | Substituted |
| Enos | Mortal |
| Cainan | Dwelling |
| Mahalaeel | Praise of God |
| Jared | To Descend |
| Enoch | To Initiate |
| Methuselah | Man Sword |
| Lamech | (Unknown) |
| Noah | Rest |
These are the first 10 names in the Bible from Adam to Noah along with their Strong’s definitions. All but one name has a known Hebrew meaning. We know from reading in Luke 3 that these names are repeated as fathers of Jesus, who was the son of Mary. I want to focus in on just the first 8 names in the genealogy of Adam and what they say to us using the Hebrew definitions of their names. If you combine them and read the Hebrew definitions all together as a sentence you get a basic decree that says something like this:
Man substituted mortal dwelling, but the Praise of God will come down to initiate a man sword.
This statement is the fall of man and the basic plan of redemption of God in a nutshell. Man failed, he sinned becoming a mortal resulting in him substituting the eternal for the temporary. But, God comes down personally as a human man to initiate a dividing force to be the sword of the Almighty that brings to us salvation. You may not understand what that means, but nonetheless it is very important. There are some words of Jesus in the book of Matthew where Jesus tells us why He has come down here on the earth and He says this:
Mat 10:34 Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.
Why would Jesus claim to bring a sword into the world and not peace? This is a paradox when analyzed with other statements in the Bible. Jesus is called the “Prince of Peace” (Isa 9:6) and yet Jesus says this is not why I have come. What does a sword do? I will do a teaching on this subject soon, so I will not explain it right now. However, you can clearly see the reference to the sword that was prophesied in Genesis 5. In Revelation 19:15, Jesus is described as having a sword that comes out of His mouth and this is not an accident or a coincidence. This is the location of the sword that Jesus brought into the earth with Him. You can clearly see by looking at the Genesis 5 name definitions a specific statement that shows us that God comes down and becomes a man with a sword. This is just another example of a hidden reference to God becoming a man.
Next, I want to show you another example of God coming to the earth using a story found in Genesis 22 and again we will see a story with hidden meanings. Here in this chapter of Genesis, Abraham is taking his only begotten son Isaac on a journey to a hill near the future city of Jerusalem. Abraham is taking everything that he needs to make a sacrifice to be obedient to what God has instructed him to do. On the way up the hill Abraham’s son Isaac asks his father a very specific and direct question:
Gen 22:7 And Isaac spake unto Abraham his father, and said, My father: and he said, Here am I, my son. And he said, Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?
Isaac brilliantly notices there is no animal to sacrifice and says “Father, where is the lamb?” Obviously Isaac understood what they were doing and they must have done this before and he knew that you needed a lamb for a sacrifice. UH OH? That is a problem if you were the child. It would appear that you were the sacrifice. Isaac was not stupid. I can personally hear it in his voice as he asks the question. I’m sure that the words pierce his father’s heart since this is the promised son that he waited for to come and after many years he was born on the earth. Does any of this sound familiar to you? Do you see how Abraham is a type of God? Do you see how Isaac is a type of Jesus the Son of God? Here was Abraham’s response to his son’s difficult question:
Gen 22:8 And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering: so they went both of them together.
Wow, this is a faith statement if I have ever heard one. Abraham tells his son Isaac that God will provide the sacrifice. In fact what it says is that God is the sacrifice. So they continue up the hill getting ready to make the sacrifice for God. Abraham builds God an altar and is about to slay his son when an angel stops him and this is what happens next:
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.
It just so happens that there is a ram that is caught by his horns near where Abraham is, so Abraham goes and gets this animal and sacrifices it to God. The implications to this story are far reaching. Jesus is called the Lamb of God in the New Testament in John 1:29 and 36. Jesus is also referred to as the Lamb in Revelation several times. So Jesus is clearly the Son of God (1 John 5:20). Who is always the father of a lamb? In the natural world a ram is always the father of a lamb. So symbolically speaking this story in Genesis is about God coming to the earth in the flesh to die for the sins of mankind. There are many difficult and complex things to try to wrap your minds around in the Bible and this is certainly one of them.
You see the problem comes in when you think only naturally and you ignore spiritual truths. The Bible tells us that God is one (Deu 6:4)! Meaning there is only One True God. But, now we have to make the transition that this one God who is a Spirit, can be the Father and the Son simultaneously. That is the part of the Bible that starts getting people a little confused. In the natural this is not possible, but in the spiritual realm, it is entirely possible. When God becomes a man born in the world, he is equally human and divine at the same time. This is just another example of how God does things that are purposefully confusing to us to accomplish a greater spiritual goal. The trinity of God is a difficult subject to fully grasp. I have tried to do a lesson on this subject so I will not repeat that information here. If you do not understand the Triune nature of God you should go read “Understanding the Trinity of God”. What I want to do now is to demonstrate some definite scripture verses that clearly show us that Jesus was God come to the earth in the flesh.
Isa 7:14 Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.
Here is a famous Christmas verse that is often read concerning a prophetic statement of the birth of Jesus Christ. This verse clearly says that a virgin human female will conceive a son. This right there informs us in implied terms that God is coming personally into the world. It is impossible in the days of Jesus for a virgin girl to become pregnant. That is just not how God created it to work, but yet God says this is what will happen. Finally, this verse ends in the statement you will call his name “Immanuel”. As I described to you earlier, Hebrew names almost always have a meaning behind them. In other words people named their children based upon something important that was happening in their lives and this is the name that they were given. We will see that this name Immanuel is no different, it represents something important that is happening in the life of God and it conveys a hidden message. The Hebrew word transliterated as “Immanuel” consists of two root words that you can look up the definitions to. The first word is H5973 and it means “is with us”. The second Hebrew word is H410 and this is a name for God. So the meaning of this name “Immanuel” is “God is with us”. That is pretty self-evident to me that God is saying I will come down and be with you. So Jesus Christ was the Son of God, but it is very apparent that He was also God in the flesh.
Let’s explore briefly some statements that Jesus made and see if He confirms what I am trying to teach you today. I want to go to the fourteenth chapter of the book of John and listen to some words that Jesus is speaking to His disciples. Pay very close attention to the words for they are important:
Joh 14:1 Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.
Here is Jesus again making Himself equal to God. Jesus is using words that are indirect, but yet very revealing when He is telling His disciples if they believe in God they better believe in Him. This is an indirect way of saying I am God. Let’s continue reading down in the chapter and see what else Jesus says:
Joh 14:7 If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him.
Again we have some very difficult words to comprehend because of the indirect references being made. Jesus is telling his disciples “I am the Father God”. These are difficult words and the disciples could not gather their meanings with their natural minds. Jesus was a man, like they were but Jesus is inferring He was God. Look at the question that one of the disciples asks:
Joh 14:8 Philip saith unto him, Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us.
Phillip is basically saying “we will be very happy if you take us and show us the Father”. Clearly this disciple did not know who He was talking to. This is a pattern still found in the world today. There are clearly many Christians in the world who do not really know who Jesus was and here is Jesus answer to this request:
Joh 14:9 Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father?
If it is possible for Phillip to walk and talk with Jesus for three years and not recognize who He was, then it is still possible to read about Him and not understand this either. Jesus told Phillip I have been with you a long time and still you do not see? Why are you asking me, “Show us the Father”?
Joh 14:10 Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.
If you do not understand the concepts behind “seeds” then you will probably miss what Jesus is saying in these words. Jesus tells the disciples that I am in the Father and the Father is in me. This is one of the basic laws of seeds given to us in Genesis 1. You should probably go and read my Bible study series on “Understanding Seeds” so that you will better relate to what God is saying here. The net results of these words spoken by Jesus, is saying to us, that He and the Father are One God and you cannot separate the Father from the Son. Jesus was clearly saying that when you have seen the Son you have also seen the Father. Let me end this lesson with one more example of what I have been trying to teach you today. If you go to the first chapter of the book of John you will see a parallel N.T. scripture verse about the Genesis 1:1 creation. In John 1:1 it is says this:
Joh 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
In the beginning was the Word and the “Word” is capitalized as a Name for God. It continues to say that the Word was with God and then it ends with the confirmation that the Word was God. So we have a perplexing puzzle of trying to figure out how the Word can be with God and still “be” God simultaneously. It is just another mystery of God, but one that has been repeated already several times in this lesson. How can the God of creation become a part of His creation? How can the Father of Spirits become the Son? How can a Spirit become human? These are just a few of the many difficult questions found in the Bible. But, we understand that the Bible says that which is impossible for man, is still possible for God (Mat 19:26). This chapter actually gives us a clue to the reality of how this is all possible by another verse found later in the chapter:
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.
Here we have God saying to you personally that He came in the flesh. Remember what the Word was? According to John 1:1 the Word was God. So if God = Word and Word = God, by the law of mathematics you can substitute these two words interchangeably and still have the same results and meaning:
Joh 1:14 And God 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.
God the Word became flesh and bone and walked among us physically. This is how a Spirit becomes flesh. God speaks words and the words come to pass and manifest physically. You can see this principle demonstrated in Genesis 1 where God creates our world using His words. Did you know that you cannot separate anyone from their words? The words that anyone speaks reveals to us their character, their nature, their internal deepest thoughts and these Words of God are what comes down to become flesh that humans can see and feel. This is why Jesus could stop and look at His disciples and ask them “Have I been this long with you and you do not know who I am?” Jesus revealed God physically in the earth for the first time. Before, this appearing the men of Israel only had some words written on scrolls from God that were not understood. But, when the Word walked and talked among them, they killed Him by hanging God’s Word on a tree. This was Satan’s greatest mistake that he has ever made and it sealed his fate. If you have never read my Bible lesson on the “Top Ten Reasons Jesus Came to the Earth” you should do that. I do not give a lot of details, but I do introduce you to some of the reasons of why God became a man.
I hope that you have learned the importance of seeing who Jesus is. I did not say who Jesus was, because He is still the same God today alive in heaven forever more that He was before. There is only One True Living God who created everything that we see and this God became flesh and bone so that we could behold His glory personally. God became a man and even though God is not a man as the Bible states, it does not keep God from becoming what He was not. Only natural human reasoning limits what God can do and this never stops Him from doing it anyway. So I pray that you learned who Jesus was and is still today and what the Bible says on this subject. I know I did not cover every scripture that I could have in this lesson, but I think I gave you enough witnesses to the truth to get you to see them. May God continue to Bless you as you study His Word!
If you would like to continue readin in the series about unlocking the myths of Christ please continue with “Part 4“.
Understanding Satan’s Abilities! Can Satan Read Your Mind?
(Ver 1.4) This will be an extremely complex Bible study today of a highly spiritual nature about the spiritual abilities of your enemy Satan. We will explore many difficult and different scriptures found in the Bible that help us to see the truth. In studying your enemy you should learn both his strengths and his weaknesses so that you can be better prepared when he comes to tempt, test or attack you. Satan is definitely this enemy that I am talking about if you are a Christian. God tells us that we do not wrestle against flesh and blood (people) but the principalities, powers and the rulers of the darkness of this world and the spiritual wicked in high places (Eph 6:12). The Bible clearly tells us that we are in a spiritual warfare with a spiritual enemy that we cannot see. Since we do not perceive Satan with our physical senses we must read the Bible and see what God tells us about this unseen spirit and how he operates. Today I am going to focus in on one aspect that many Christians have wondered about. I was asked this question recently by one of my readers so I thought it would be a good topic to share with all of my readers. Here was their question:
Can Satan Read Your Mind?
Let’s start by addressing the question “What is your mind”? Most people associate your mind with your physical brain, an internal organ in your head. But this is not technically true. While the physical brain has some vital functions within the natural realm, we must ask “what happens to our mind when our body dies?” Does it cease to exist? Absolutely not, the mind is just a part of your internal soul realm. Your soul is comprised of three elements; your intellect, your will and your emotions. Your intellect is comprised of your ability to think and reason along with your ability to recall the memories that you have learned or experienced. Let’s look at a story that Jesus taught us to learn about the mind after death:
Luk 16:20 And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of sores,
Luk 16:21 And desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table: moreover the dogs came and licked his sores.
Luk 16:22 And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom: the rich man also died, and was buried;
Luk 16:23 And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.
Luk 16:24 And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.
Luk 16:25 But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented.
Luk 16:26 And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence.
Luk 16:27 Then he said, I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father’s house:
Luk 16:28 For I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment.
Luk 16:29 Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.
Luk 16:30 And he said, Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent.
Luk 16:31 And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.
Reading the story that Jesus teaches us of Lazarus and the rich man in Luke 16:20-31, we can see the actual account of two men who lived on the earth and then died with their bodies being buried. After they have died physically they are still alive spiritually and are able to speak verbally, think and reason mentally in this story without their bodies. Therefore, we know they had conscious awareness and the same mental capabilities that they possessed when they were here on the earth in their bodies. We are told that the rich man was now in hell and he asks Abraham to send someone back to the earth so that his 5 brothers would not come to this place of torment where he currently was. In this conversation Abraham tells the rich man to use is mind to “remember”. This clearly tells us that you will take your past memories of this world into the next eternal realm. The rich man was able to recall that he had a father’s house and even five natural brothers. The rich man was further able to mentally reason and come to the conclusion that he did not want his brothers to die and come to this place. This demonstrated a measured capacity for compassion. This is a very powerful real life specific lesson about the afterlife experience of three specific men. It further teaches us that the human spirit and the human mind will be complete together during this afterlife. The rich man’s ability to think, reason, feel and remember was not tied to whether or not he had any brain cells. Get it?
The human mind is a very complex and powerful feature of God’s creation. We use it to think and create many things in our world. How do we do this? We take mental concepts and process them and then make determinations and decisions based upon these ideas or thoughts. It is this advanced reasoning mental ability that humans have that makes us completely different than the animals on our planet.
There are really only three basic states of thought origination, we can make up our own mind thoughts to one point of view, we can change our mind to the opposite perspective or we can attempt to be double minded and accept both realities simultaneously. Jesus actually warns us about doing this when He said “I would that you were either hot or cold, since you are lukewarm I will spew you out of my mouth (Rev 3:16). God is speaking of a man who is not committed to either way of direction. God is declaring that the choice is clearly a binary one to make. Either choose good or choose evil but do not try to fall back and forth into both. God actually teaches us in the book of James that this is called a “double minded” man:
Jas 1:8 A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.
God is warning us about being a man who is indecisive, uncommitted, trying to appease everyone and God says this man is unstable in all of his ways. The term translated as “double minded” in James 1:8, is the Greek word that can mean a man who has two spirits controlling him. Therefore, we see a definite connection from our mind to our spirit and that is very important to understand. We know that when Lazarus and the rich man died their souls which included their minds, memory, reasoning facilities and even emotions did not die with their physical bodies. These were still fully intact with their spirits. Therefore our ability to think is tied directly to our spirit and not our body. A thought is a process that occurs and is associated with the human mind, but what is the source of a thought? Where does a thought take place and how does it work?
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.
Here is the first occurrence of the thought process of man being stated or described in the Bible directly by name. We of course realize that the thought process of Adam and Eve were involved in their decision making back in Genesis 3, but God never mentions it directly. Here in Genesis 6, God looks down on the men on the earth and sees that they only think evil things in their hearts (spirits). We can again see the connection of thoughts to the spirit of a man and not his physical brain. So a thought must come to rest in your spirit. I’m not sure if it originates there, but it is definitely connected as a resting place.
Here in this verse in Genesis 6, God implies that the thoughts of man’s heart could be one of three states, good, evil or both as I previously stated. We can understand this based upon the words “only” and “continually” used with evil. The antithesis of these two states would be a man that thinks “only good” and “never evil”. We could further stipulate someone who is in the middle as being “occasionally evil or intermittently good”. I personally believe based upon this information that there are three sources of thoughts in the human mind and that these are as follows:
- A Thought can originate from a man’s spirit (Self)
- A Thought can originate from a good God’s Spirit (Good)
- A Thought can originate from another spiritual being, either a holy angel (Good) or Satan, devil, unholy angel, demon, or unclean spirit (Evil)
A thought represents the potential seed from an unseen realm of influence that can be birthed and expressed in the external actions or words of a human. Having an evil thought does not make you an evil man, unless you act upon it and live it out. I believe that a person can be influenced to do good or evil according to what they entertain and allow to remain in their minds. This is what we just read in Genesis 6 when men only thought evil and acted evil. God’s
There is a verse of scripture that occurs in the N.T. that says “Those who are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God” (Rom 8:14). This verse is a scripture that demonstrates the potential for spiritual influence on humans. It teaches us how a spirit can encourage people to do the right things. To be led is the human action of choice to following a guide who shows us the way to go. However, to be led means we have the opportunity to go the other way and not follow their directions. It further implies that there are other spirits that can also lead us to do the wrong things in life. This means that all spirits good or bad can give you direction and that each spirit speaking to us know exactly what they said to you. This does not mean they read your mind, it only means they provided the guiding thought. They spoke something to your mind and your spirit and what you do with it is totally up to you. You can be led by it or you can be a person who ignores it or even one that rebels to do the opposite. It really boils down to your ability to discern the origin of the voice (thought) being spoken internally. The good news is that you can know the difference between God and a demon and this is because God says this to you:
Joh 10:4 And when he putteth forth his own sheep, he goeth before them, and the sheep follow him: for they know his voice.
Joh 10:5 And a stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him: for they know not the voice of strangers.
Joh 10:14 I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine.
We can clearly see Jesus speaking to us and we are called His sheep. He says we will be able to recognize His voice because we belong to Him. We should know that this is a faith proposition being presented to us, but there is also an internal spiritual knowing that will be present. It is very difficult to explain this to people, if you have never experienced it. Some have called it an intuition, but we could call it a hunch or awareness or an instinct. You do not know how you know, you just know. This has happened to me repeatedly, I have a thought and just based upon the content of the thought I know it came from God. It is very hard to explain in natural terms because it is a spiritual experience.
2Co 10:5 Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;
This is a fairly popular verse of scripture that you should already be aware of. But, since we are speaking about the realm of the mind and the origination of thoughts let’s examine what God is saying. We can see that God is speaking to us to do something. God tells us to “Cast Down” imaginations. Then God says to “Take Captive” every thought that does not align with the Knowledge of God. These are two aggressive actions that we are required to take based upon what? If you read the context of this verse you can see that God is again describing a spiritual warfare that is taking place. This means you must interpret this verse within the context of spiritual warfare and this is how you fight against your spiritual enemy Satan. Where do these thoughts and imaginations come from that you are to “make captive” and “cast down”? They must come from Satan, otherwise if they were from God we would not need to do anything but follow His leading. We can assume by indirect reference that the source of these things in our mind that are NOT supposed to be there are from Satan and it is our responsibility to police them out. It is also obvious to me that if Satan puts these thoughts in our mind then he certainly knows what we are thinking at that instance. But, he is waiting to see what we do with the thought to see if it worked or not.
Mat 6:31 Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?
Here is a vital spiritual principle to understand. Jesus said that you can take a thought or reject the thought by reverse implied reference. This is also a demonstrated choice or act of our freewill. God never says that He will control our thought in the Bible. A thought is like if someone offered you some money, you could take it or you could walk away from it by your own choice. More than likely you will take it because it is desirable. However, if I handed you a poisonous snake and you took it from me, then you may be called a fool.
This is the nature of the spiritual battle found within our mind. Jesus is teaching us not to take every thought that we have and to speak them verbally, or act on them, or accept them, etc. To take a thought means you accept it into your heart and then you begin to speak out what you were thinking. This is how Satan knows his mind seed trick has succeeded. As soon as you think something that is contrary to the Word of God you should immediately think what does the Bible say about that? When Satan tempted Jesus, Jesus would automatically say “It is written” and inform Satan what was written to counter what Satan had just said to Him in his mind. This is what we need to do also. However, this assumes that we have studied and read the Bible in order to know what to say in response. Satan is not going to wait for us to go and get our Bible and look up a scripture. Satan is going to find you alone in the wilderness without anyone there to help and then bring thoughts into your mind. It is at these times of isolation that we better have something to say from our heart. Here in the context of this verse in Matthew 6, Jesus is speaking of how people can let worry consume them into saying and doing things that they should not. Worry is another negative mental process that is thinking on the wrong things and allowing them to control us. Jesus is giving us some important information to know about the mental and spiritual realm of reality. I hope you can see it.
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GIVING US A THOUGHT AND MINDREADING
I personally do not believe that Satan can hear your thoughts or read your mind. However, Satan can certainly give you these thoughts as we have seen to try to influence you through your mind. I do not believe that Satan is omnipotent, omnipresent or omniscient based upon my study of the Bible. Satan as the being Lucifer was a created spiritual being who was created to be the high ranking ruler of the angelic order or class of beings. I believe that Lucifer was a being second in rank only to God who was and is still Supreme. God created Lucifer to be the “anointed cherub” and you can read about this in Ezekiel 28. For him to have the title “anointed cherub” implies some supernatural abilities were given to him by God.
For example, in Acts 10:38 says “How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and power who went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed of the devil”. Jesus was also anointed by God according to this verse in Acts and by His title of “Christ” which means “anointed one”. You can clearly see that an anointing represents a supernatural power over the natural. Jesus it says did good with His anointing and healed people because He possessed this anointing. It further implies that Satan using his anointed power caused all these sick people to be in this condition by his implied anointed power. Therefore, we can logically conclude that God’s anointing to heal in Jesus was and is greater than Satan’s anointing to make ill.
So far in my Bible study searches I have not seen any direct verse that says a spirit like Satan can know what you are thinking. However, God is the exception; according to many Bible verses He does know our thoughts (1 Cor 3:20, Ps 94:11, Ps 139:23). There are many verses that inform us God knows what we are thinking all of the time and that God revealed these to Jesus sometimes when He walked the face of the earth (Mat 9:4, Mat 12:25, Luke 5:22, Luke 6:8, Luke 11:17). I do not believe that Jesus knew everyone’s thoughts all of the time based upon scripture. If you recall the woman with the issue of blood snuck up on Jesus and touched Him and got healed and Jesus knew it happened because He felt power leave Him, but He still did not know who it was that touched Him (Mark 5:30). Get it? Let’s now change our focus on other spiritual beings.
Let’s look at some examples of Jesus running into people who were possessed by evil spirits and see what these stories say to us. The first one I want to read about is found in Mark the first chapter. Jesus is in the synagogue on the Sabbath teaching when He encounters a man with an unclean spirit who says:
Mar 1:24 Saying, Let us alone; what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? art thou come to destroy us? I know thee who thou art, the Holy One of God.
As you can read this unclean spirit recognizes Jesus for who He really was and speaks directly to Him. It is very interesting to me that evil spirits knew who Jesus was, but the natural Jews did not. Did you notice what this spirit being asks Jesus? This spirit asks Jesus “Did you come to destroy us”. Any spirit who could read minds would already know this fact and would not have to ask this stupid basic question. Do you understand what I just said? It is very obvious to me that evil spirits cannot read the minds of God, men or even other angels if they have to ask them questions to why they are here what they are doing. You can clearly see this example repeated in Luke 4:
Luk 4:34 Saying, Let us alone; what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? art thou come to destroy us? I know thee who thou art; the Holy One of God.
What we observe is a second witness to the fact that evil spirits are not all knowing or mind readers. Jesus was God in the form of a man who walked the face of the planet as any other human man would. God the omnipotent supreme power of the universe lowered Himself and becomes an intimate part of His own creation. Evil Spirits would consistently say we know who you are; you are the Holy One of God. Then they would ask Him are you come to destroy us? They did not know why Jesus had come in the flesh and for what purpose He had manifested as a human being. This act of God obviously took them by great surprise and they were afraid and very confused to know what to do with Him.
1Co 2:8 Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
Here in 1 Corinthians, God further confirms what I just said. This verse clearly says that if Satan would have known why Jesus was here, he would not have had Him crucified. Satan does not understand acts of love; God who is Love, so loved the World that He gave Himself for us (John 3:16). There are many God concepts that Satan does not understand. We know that God’s ways are not our ways according to Isaiah 55:8, but we can also clearly see and understand that God’s ways are not Satan’s ways either or Satan would have understood the plan of God and countered it with more effectiveness.
Jud 1:9 Yet Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil he disputed about the body of Moses, durst not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke thee.
There are other instances in the Bible that are related to this topic of Satanic mind reading. For example here in Jude we see Michael another high ranking angelic being having a confrontation with Satan (Lucifer) about the body of Moses. If Satan could read the mind of this angelic being that was sent to him, there would be no need for a fight. The existence of an implied verbal confrontation confirms that there was no mind reading abilities in either created spiritual being either good or bad.
So while the Bible does not have a direct verse that says Satan cannot read your mind, you have to find out what the Bible does say on the subject and put the pieces of the puzzle together to understand what he can and can’t do. We can clearly see that Jesus walked the face of the earth for over 33 years and that at no time could Satan read His mind and find out why He was here. If you believe that Jesus was a man like yourself, then you have to conclude that Satan cannot read your mind either. 
So the subject is a very complex one that is probably difficult for many to grasp. I believe sincerely that Satan cannot read your mind directly, but in this same lesson I teach you that he can give you thoughts to think on and that he knows what he said to you. These thoughts are his seeds that can take root in your spirit and grow into weeds3if you let them. You spirit was created and designed by God to be His garden and God has put you in charge of weeding it out by casting down vain imaginations and evil thoughts. These are the ways that Satan can take control of your external life behavior and he does this by planting internal seeds into your spiritual component. If you want to learn about how things work in the spiritual realm this is one of the most important subjects for us to know. It also tells us that Satan can cause people’s minds to be blinded so that we do not hear or accept the truth of God (2 Cor 4:4). The spiritual battle is primarily a war of the thoughts in your mind. Satan wants to control your thoughts and by controlling your thoughts he is able to control your actions through his negative influence. However when we meditate on God’s Word we are able to replace Satan’s thoughts with God’s. I hope that you learned something new today that will help you in your walk with God, until next time may God continue to enlighten the eyes of your spirit that you may know Him.
Understanding the Brotherly Love of the Lord in the Family of God!
(Ver 1.1) Today is a lesson to me because I am challenged at times with turning the other cheek when people write me hateful self-righteous comments on my website, my flesh wants to strike back, but my spirit feels compassion and love for them. This is a very constant internal struggle that we are all faced with over the course of our lives. This is a battle of our wills, between what our flesh wants and what our spirit wants to do and as long as we live on the earth this is a never ending cycle. Satan is bent upon getting real Christians to come out of the spiritual dimension and to get them back into the physical fight with our brothers and sisters but, we must learn that there is a higher path and ground to stand on. So when a commenter left me a message yesterday telling me I’m not a Christian, my flesh wanted to write them back and tell them they were a self-righteous idiot to stand in the seat of judgment against a fellow Christian. They didn’t know me, so they had no idea what I was or was not. They obviously just read some words on a web-site and I guess I didn’t believe like they did so they have concluded I don’t know God. Wow, I find that attitude very humorous. People can act so foolishly and not even know it. The Bible says in Isaiah 5:20 “Woe to you who call evil good and good evil”. In the very next verse in Isaiah God says “Woe to you that are wise in your own eyes”. In other words God calls someone who judges incorrectly and raises their own self higher than others, a person who is in jeopardy of being judged by God.
So rather than doing what my flesh wants to do today, I will teach on love towards your brother. In doing this I will feed my spirit on the right things to do and build up myself to become stronger in this area. You see I technically do not know if my commenter was my brother or not, but I will give them the benefit of a doubt since they were reading a Christian’s blog about Advanced Spiritual Bible study.
Rom 12:10 Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honour preferring one another;
To be kind means that you have the opportunity to not be kind at times. It would seem that this occurs more often than you might think. People can be easily misunderstood; their words can be taken incorrectly very easily. Reading someone’s writing is not like hearing a person’s voice where you can pick up on voice changes, inflections, sarcasm, humor and emphasized or deemphasized expressions or whatever. I have found that writing online is probably harder than just talking to someone in person because of these challenges. So while I do not intend to offend anyone, I know sometimes I do. The term translated as “kind affection” is a Greek word that is interesting to note in this verse. The word means an “emotional cherishing or fondness of a family member”. Did you know I was in your family that is if you are a Christian? Obviously if you are not a Christian you are not in my family which is the family of the Most High God. I am in the family of Jesus Christ and I know this for a fact whether you do or not. Did you know that God has a spiritual family? Christians need to learn this first and then learn how to treat their fellow family members with kindness.
Here in this verse we have another word that is translated as love, but is a different type of love. The Greek word “philadelphia” is the word that is translated as “brotherly love”. Brotherly love is a “fraternal love” of your family again. If you did not know that there are different types of love in the Bible you should do a study on that subject. Most intelligent people understand that you love your wife differently than you love your sister. Unless your sister happens to be your wife, like Abraham’s wife was. In John 3:16 it says “God so loved the world that He gave…”. In John 3:16 the Greek word for love is “agape”. This word in John 3:16 is the God kind of love where God loved us while we were even sinners and died for us when we did not deserve it, earn it, or ever could. The Bible tells us that God is “Agape” in 1 John 4:8. It does not say that God has Agape, it says He is Agape. Then if you are a Christian this Agape is now a part of your spirit. Agape is an unconditional God kind of love that every Christian possesses in their spirits. However, getting “Agape” out to the external is a different subject entirely. Philadelphia is similar but yet different. It is kind of like the saying you can choose your friends but you cannot choose your relatives. Well sometimes your natural relatives can be the most challenging to love, so it is in the spiritual family of God also. In the real world you can walk away from someone being hateful, but if this is your brother doing this at the family dinner, then you have an opportunity to overcome the same internal challenge that I have been going through today. Do you retaliate or do you try to smile and say something kind. Wow, that is a bigger challenge than you can imagine.
Next, in this verse it says “in honor”. This is an interesting concept. This word in the Greek means “something valuable” or “a great price paid”. This word in 1 Peter 2:7 is used to describe Jesus Christ as being the “precious” stone that the builders rejected. This is the exact same Greek word used in Romans 12:10 as “honor”. Anything that is “precious” in the eyes of God should be precious to you also. I believe that God is saying to treat others as being precious as you are. Wouldn’t it be a nicer church if people would just do what God said? I hope and pray that someday they will become a doer of the word of God and not just a hearer only. The last phrase in this verse Romans 12:10 says to “prefer one another”. This is another amazing truth that is very profound. This Greek word translated as “preferring” means to “lead the way for others”. Wow, is that a strong statement. So obviously when someone hits you verbally and you want to hit them back, God instructs us to become an example to them so that they can be directed into the right path. I use to have a sign in my office that said “He who leads when no one follows, only takes a walk”. So today I am attempting to take a few people on the internet down a path of brotherly love and I am hoping someone will learn to follow.
1Co 11:1 Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ.
I’m not Paul and I’m certainly not Jesus, but I’m trying to follow their examples. The Christian way is a complex life style that can be simplified if you approach your existence using God’s words to guide you into the right things to do. Because people do not know the Bible they do not follow the Bible. God says in Hosea 4:6, “My people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge”. Instead of getting the right knowledge from God, a lot of the time people are deceived into a distracted priority for a lesser way of learning and doing. I am attempting to come up to a higher spiritual dimension today and to set an example of what to do when someone calls you names unjustly. This will probably not be the last time that someone does this to me, so this will probably not be the last time that I write about love on this website. I trust that those of you, who can see the difference, you have some understanding in what kind of spiritual battle I have been going through today. Now that I read the Bible about love and looked up the definitions, reminding myself of the truth, I have a better and stronger resolve to do the words of God towards others. So if you have been a faithful reader of this website, I apologize for writing a Bible lesson directly and mostly at myself. I hope that you will display some grace towards the things that we probably all face at one time or the other and to my brother who left me this hateful comment, I will tell you that I love you anyway and I will pray that you will do the same in the future. God Bless!
Hiding the Truth in Plain Sight – Part 11 – Understanding God’s Old Testament Hidden Secrets!
(Ver 1.3) This is “Part 11” in a series of Bible lesson about “How God Hides Spiritual Truth in the Words of Natural Truths”. If you would like to begin reading from the start please select “Part 1“. Today is a lesson on Understanding that there are many Hidden Spiritual Secrets of God in the Old Testament. I have written on this subject before, but God won’t let me get away from it. He keeps bringing it back up again and again for a reason. I guess there are still so many people in the world who need to learn this, that He wants to keep bringing it back up until they get it completely. What we find in every in-depth Bible study is that there are many subjects in the Old Testament that are clearly hidden and only revealed by God to those in the New Covenant. This is the number one reason why the natural Jewish people did not see or understand their God given Holy Book of the Law or the books written by their prophets. The cause for this inability to understand the truth comes from the the basic design of God’s Word. God has written to the Jews a highly complex book of hidden spiritual information using some natural words, rules, instructions and the historical stories of some natural people and places. I can see these realities looking at them from a New Testament perspective, but they cannot observe them from their Old Testament point of view. I call this technique of God’s writing “Hiding the Truth in Plain Sight” and today I am going to discuss a number of these hidden subjects concealed within the words of the Old Testament.
Mat 13:35 That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things which have been kept secret from the foundation of the world.
It is very clear from my Bible study that God has an immense number of hidden subjects in the Old Testament. Of course if you did not know this, your attempt at understanding the O.T. would be severely hampered. Not knowing how the Old Testament was designed, written and constructed with these hidden and concealed pieces of spiritual information means that you are attempting to interpret and understand the Bible using only your mental capacity and that is clearly not talented enough to achieve the necessary level of intelligence, maturity and wisdom to overcome God’s ability to conceal these things from you. It would be like you attempting to crack a 128 bit encryption with your calculator and if you understand code systems you know this is virtually impossible to do anyway using a large scale computer. In other words God is so much smarter than you, that without His help to understand what has been written is why we see so many confused people in the world today searching for the truth. So here is a list of some of the hidden subjects in the Old Testament books:
- Jesus, the Personal Appearance of God on the Earth in the flesh.
- Why Jesus Came to the Earth.
- The Death of Jesus.
- Salvation
- Satan
- Resurrection
- Faith
- Seeds
- Spiritual things like Fruit, Gifts
- God’s Spiritual Family
- The Kingdom of God
- The Creation of the Church and the New Covenant
- The fact that there were Hidden Secrets was clearly a Secret
These are just a few of the hidden subjects of the Old Testament that God has revealed to us in the New Testament. I have written several blogs on many of these subjects and if you have read them and understood them, then you know that God is pretty smart. I plan on doing more of these topics that I have not touched on before in the future so hang in there and keep reading my blogs. You will be glad that you did as we continue.
THE HIDDEN JESUS
Let’s go through the list of subjects and briefly touch on them for an introduction. Jesus of course is described on almost every page of the Old Testament, but using very complex hidden methods of concealment. These can range from multiple names, titles and descriptions, symbolism, analogies which are hidden allegorical natural stories and even indirect prophetic statements where He is not directly named. For example, Jesus can be called an “angel”, (Gen 48:16), “Shiloh” (Gen 49:10) or “Rose of Sharon” (Song 2:1) or “Branch of Righteousness” (Jer 23:5) or “Sun of Righteousness” (Mal 4:2) to name a few hidden names of Jesus in the O.T. If you want to see more names of Jesus you can go to my list “Names, Titles, Symbols of Jesus”. There are probably more hidden references to Jesus in the Old Testament than any other hidden subject. This is mainly because He is the most important subject for you to know. I have another Bible lesson on “The Hidden Jesus in Genesis” and this may help you to see more of the techniques that God has used to conceal Himself in His Word. If you have not read my series on “God’s Methods of Hiding the Truth in Plain Sight” then you should definitely do that very soon.
THE HIDDEN REASON FOR JESUS
Why did Jesus come to the earth? There are so many hidden reasons for why Jesus came to the earth that there is no way I can get into them all in this brief synopsis. To provide salvation for us is one of the key reasons for God’s personal appearance on the earth, but definitely not the only reason that Jesus came. I think I wrote a lesson called “The Top 10 Reasons Jesus Came to the Earth” and you should probably check that out if you have not read it already. When you begin to realize that God is multi-dimensional and able to accomplish multiple things in one planned work then you start to realize the extreme intelligence of God. Too many people think one-dimensionally and only accomplish one task at one time using a single threaded approach to life. This is like computers of old, which were sequentially threaded devices that could only do one instruction at a time. However, in today’s modern computer world with multi-processor capabilities it is much easier to visualize the mind of God who clearly is speaking to millions of people on the earth simultaneously. That is pretty awesome stuff if you asked me. I will challenge you to go through the Old Testament and find the concealed reasons why Jesus was prophesied to come to the earth. It is a fascinating Bible study to do.
We know from reading 1 Corinthians 2:8 that Satan did not know that the death of Jesus on the cross was his greatest mistake. Had Jesus not been slain and shed His blood, the world’s situation would be exactly the same as before Jesus came into the world and that was not a good situation to be in. We can clearly see that Jesus coming into the world to die was a hidden secret from God. We can further explore this information in many other verses of the Bible. I like the words of Ruth where she revealed to us that it was only “death that was a separating force” that could divide her from her mother-in-law Naomi. God uses His death on the cross to separate Himself from the evil one named Satan. This is not a widely taught subject, because I believe it is a new subject revealed in the last days by God.
THE HIDDEN SATAN
In reading the Old Testament there is seldom any direct reference of the spiritual being named Satan. When he is mentioned it is widely using some symbolic title like the “serpent” in Genesis 3:1. Other times God speaks of an individual like the “Prince of Persia” (Dan 10:13) and this is Satan. Still other times there is the “King of Tyrus” in Ezekiel 28:12 and this is widely believed to be a hidden reference to Satan. If you would like to read more “Names, Titles, Symbols of Satan” then you should go and do that. Why does God hide our enemy in the text of the Old Testament writings? It is a fascinating concept to consider. Why does God hide any information in the Bible? From my view point, there is no reason to describe Satan in great detail since in the Old Testament the human race could not do anything about him. Satan is called the “god of this world” in the N.T. (2 Cor 4:4). Therefore we realize that as the god of this world Satan had ultimate control or influence over many of the things that transpired here. I know that goes against the theology of a lot of confused individuals who believe that God is in control of everything that happens, but that is just too bad because the Bible teaches us some quite different realities. I believe that Satan was hidden from plain view for the safety and protection of the people in the O.T. If people would had known about him in greater detail, probably many more people would have made him their god. In addition to this other than being in the protection of obedience to God’s word there was nothing that any human on earth could do about Satan. It was not until Jesus died that Christians were again given authority over Satan as you can read in Luke 10:19.
THE HIDDEN SUBJECT OF FAITH
Faith is a subject that was definitely hidden in the Old Testament very well. In the Old Testament God honored the people’s faith and allowed many people to perish because they had no faith. You can clearly see this in the children of Israel wandering in the wilderness. They sent 12 spies into the Promise Land to check it out and they come back and only 2 had a good faith filled report. The majority came back with the evil report of doubt and unbelief. Everyone that did not believe the good report died in the wilderness over the course of time, but these two men named Joshua and Caleb led the younger generation into the Promise Land by faith. You can read about what happened in this Old Testament story in the book of Hebrews chapters 3 and 4, where God said the children of Israel failed to mix their faith with God’s promise so they did not enter into His rest. Faith is therefore a dominate New Testament revealed truth that was not made known to those in the Old Testament. Galatians 3:23 clearly teaches us that faith was a revealed New Covenant reality. This literally means that faith was previously hidden to those under the law. If you would like to read my latest series on “Understanding Bible Faith” then please do that. In this series I talk about the Genesis or beginning of faith and I teach you that faith existed eternally. Therefore the subject of faith was a factor in the Old Testament the same as it is a predominate factor for the New Testament. Being concealed in the Old Testament does not mean it cannot be found for those that are truly seeking to know and find it. I challenge you to do this and you will be enlightened beyond word’s descriptions.
FINDING THE HIDDEN SECRETS OF GOD
There are just so many hidden subjects in the Bible that I cannot fully speak to all of them in this introduction. What I wanted to do was to get you interested in searching your Bible for hidden information. Learn to open your eyes to spiritual things and then read your Old Testament using new ways to look at this old natural information. It will amaze you if you believe it and allow God to teach you these things. Remember when the early church was first started, the only Words of God that they had were the writings of Moses and the Old Testament prophets? So Peter and the other apostles were limited to teaching the church only from these O.T. books. Keep this in mind when you read from them and see if you can see what they used to teach Jesus, salvation and all the other hidden subjects.
Act 17:2 And Paul, as his manner was, went in unto them, and three sabbath days reasoned with them out of the scriptures,
Paul preaches using only the Old Testament and He starts churches in many cities where he later writes them letters from prison. We know that churches in Ephesus, Galatia, Rome and Corinth were started this way. Until Paul was thrown into prison the only Bible the church had were the Old Testament writings. They then had to be able to see that Jesus was there along with many of the New Testament concepts that have been since written about and expanded in the New Testament.
Act 18:28 For he mightily convinced the Jews, and that publickly, shewing by the scriptures that Jesus was Christ.
You should be able to do the same thing that Apollos did here in Acts 18. You should be smart enough to learn every verse that you can in the Old Testament so that you can show Jews their Messiah is Jesus. If you have a legal mind and can speak like a lawyer you will be able to convince many of the Jews that Messiah has come. But, do not go and speak like an ignorant fool to someone who knows more than you do. You are going to have to study and become more informed than they are.
Act 8:30 And Philip ran thither to him, and heard him read the prophet Esaias, and said, Understandest thou what thou readest?
I’ll wrap this Bible lesson up with a short story of how God will cause some amazing supernatural things to occur when a man is hungry to know the truth. In Acts 8 is a story where we hear a question from Phillip that is still relevant today. A man from Africa was reading the book of Isaiah and Phillip ran to him and asked him a very basic question. If it was easy to understand what you were reading then it would be unnecessary and even stupid to ask someone this question. However, it is very obvious to me that understanding what you read in the O.T. is the ultimate goal, but that this does not automatically happen just because you read it. In doing this advanced Bible Study blog, I have met many men and women who know how to read these verses, but I have met few who can see what they mean. Having the eyes of your understanding enlightened to see the truth, this is what God desires to do today.
Act 8:31 And he said, How can I, except some man should guide me? And he desired Philip that he would come up and sit with him.
This Ethiopian man was an extremely intelligent individual and possessed great wisdom based upon his answer to Phillip’s question. I have had far less intelligent men and women write me ignorant comments. This foreigner Gentile man came all the way from his country to Jerusalem to read God’s words written by the prophet Isaiah. I believe God notices people who are hungry and thirsty for the truth and this is why Phillip was sent to him. I believe that God will help any man or woman who truly desires to know Him in this way. The man displayed a key quality for learning and it was called being open minded to hear about what you do not understand. If only more of my reader’s had this quality they would benefit the same as this man did.
Act 8:32 The place of the scripture which he read was this, He was led as a sheep to the slaughter; and like a lamb dumb before his shearer, so opened he not his mouth:
Act 8:33 In his humiliation his judgment was taken away: and who shall declare his generation? for his life is taken from the earth.
Act 8:34 And the eunuch answered Philip, and said, I pray thee, of whom speaketh the prophet this? of himself, or of some other man?
Do you see the heart of this man? He had so many admirable qualities that caused God to do supernatural things to get him the answers to his questions. First off the man was humble and this opened the door for God to do mighty things. Next, the man was hungry for the truth no matter what it was. Then this man was open to hear the truth and this allowed him to hear with his spirit. Finally, after hearing the truth spoken to him from a complete stranger, this man believed it and was saved. Wow, what a powerful story that God has given to us of how salvation works. Here we have a story of how a foreign man saw a hidden Jesus in Isaiah and that allowed God to send another man to him to help him understand the truth. This is an extremely valuable lesson for what to do and what God will do in response. Begin to understand that the Bible has many complex hidden mysteries and then seek to know them. Allow God to answer your questions however He wants. It may be Him sending you someone with the answer to knock on your door. It may be a complete stranger that you do not know. It could be a blog on the internet. God can use anyone, anywhere but you are going to have to be ready to respond.
So we have looked at a lot of different scriptures today. We talked about God’s hidden subjects and the fact that they still exist in the Bible today. If you do not believe that, then you should go read Revelation and tell me what it all means. I’ve studied Revelation for many years and I’m a long way from knowing everything that is written there. In fact if you search the internet you cannot find two people who completely believe everything the same 100 per cent. I believe that God is revealing this information before He returns for us. But, we are going to have to be like the Ethiopian and be open to hear and learn the truth. Ask questions and allow the answers to come from God. Learn the hidden information in the Bible and see them for the spiritual truth that they are. God Bless you until next time.
If you would like to continue reading in this series, please go to “Part 12” next.
Understanding the Davidic Covenant and the Rapture Connection!
(Ver 1.2) This is a basic rebuttal to a man who left me a very ignorant comment on one of my posts. He was adamantly opposed to the concept that Jesus could possibly come back and catch His church up before the tribulation occurred. He basically took some verses out of context and gave them some natural interpretations to justify his ignorant position and beliefs. I have learned not to reply to my critics and their hateful words because they are not interested in getting help or learning the truth. I may read their comments to see if I can learn something, but I then delete them and move on. So if you want to leave me a hateful bunch of reasons of why I’m wrong, please do not waste either of our times. So today’s lesson is not for my commenter but, only for those who are willing to hear the truth and to change. That is what makes me different than my commenter, I am perfectly willing to change if anyone can give me spiritual Bible verses that say I am wrong, and then I will change very fast. What this man was guilty of is an attempt to put his limitations and definitions on what God can do. It is very clear to me that God will never violate His word. You can always count on the fact that God will do whatever He says. However, it is also very clear to me that there are many people in the world who do not understand God’s word so they have come up with erroneous conclusions that put limitations on what God can do in their mind. It is interesting to note that God is not limited in His ability to what you have in your mind and what you think that He can do. Your interpretation of God’s word does not limit His ability to do what He said He would do. Your wrong interpretations of His word will only affect you personally and what He will do for you and it will have no effect when He comes to rapture me out of here in a very short time from now. I am going to start by giving you his main scripture that this man said was proof for why Jesus could not come back before the tribulation ended and then hopefully show you how narrow minded and blind his argument was.
Act 3:21 Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began.
According to my very ignorant commenter, he claimed that this verse says that Jesus has returned to heaven and must remain there until the time when all things that have been written about have been completed, fulfilled, accomplished or performed. In other words according to him Jesus cannot ever come back to the earth to rapture the church before the tribulation because every prophecy has not been fulfilled in his mind. I wonder who died and made this reader God. Clearly he acts like he knows more than God when he can tell God what he can do and what he can’t do. Clearly he does not know how to read the Bible and see that Jesus has already been back to the earth several times since ascending into the heavens and being seated at the right hand of Majesty. He is attempting to put God into his little box and God is not interested in his mindless interpretations. According to my reader he saw where Scofield said that Israel must be restored to the seed of David before Jesus returns. Therefore he has concluded that a pre-tribulation rapture of the church is impossible without understanding that the Seed of David has already been restored His Kingdom. I went and reviewed Scofield’s notes on the subject and I do not have any idea how this man came to his conclusions based upon this information. It is very clear to me that he is thinking of spiritual things in the terms of natural interpretations, definitions and realities and not seeing that they have already been fulfilled in Christ. Let’s go back and see what God said to David:
2Sa 7:16 And thine house and thy kingdom shall be established for ever before thee: thy throne shall be established for ever.
The basis of the Davidic Covenant is established when the prophet Nathan comes to speak to David in 2 Samuel 7. You can go and read the entire chapter if you like. I just want to focus in on one verse for now and this occurs in verse 16. God says to King David that He will make David’s house and kingdom an eternal everlasting one. Since David died physically and has not been resurrected, God was obviously not speaking to David who was incapable of fulfilling this prophecy. In fact there were no sons of David who were ever capable of fulfilling this prophecy until God became his son in Jesus. If you understand the genealogies of Jesus given to us in Matthew and Luke you know that these are two different ancestries of two different people. If you do not know this you better go and study it again in detail. Both lineages go through David, but after David the one in Matthew is through David’s son Solomon and the other one in Luke is through David’s son Nathan. So it is very clear that they are not the same person who comes to the end of this list. Both do not end up at Jesus, only one does. So how do you resolve this problem? You have to realize that the genealogy in Matthew is that of Joseph and the genealogy in Luke is that of Mary the mother of Jesus and I do not have time to prove this to you in this lesson. Use your brain and read it and hopefully you will see it. What we understand from the Bible is that Joseph was not the father of Jesus, so in order for Jesus to be born a physical son of David his physical mother must have been a daughter of David. This is the only way the Davidic covenant would ever be fulfilled eternally. Jesus Christ is the only son of David that is alive today to take his father’s throne and since Jesus is eternally alive His kingdom is also eternal.
What I am going to do now is to change subjects for a bit to show you that Jesus is not limited to the words of an ignorant commenter to what He can do. According to my commenter, it is not possible for Jesus to return to the earth because we read in Acts 3:21 that heaven has received him until all things have been restored in the earth. It is very obvious to me that my commenter is expecting an earthly Kingdom to be reestablished like David’s kingdom and that only this would fulfill the prophecy in his mind. However, Jesus is not limited to your interpretation of the scripture, so He can return to the earth as often as he likes and you can’t do anything about it. Let’s look at a couple of examples in the Bible where it clearly tells us that Jesus came back to the earth after being seated in heaven:
Act 9:17 And Ananias went his way, and entered into the house; and putting his hands on him said, Brother Saul, the Lord, even Jesus, that appeared unto thee in the way as thou camest, hath sent me, that thou mightest receive thy sight, and be filled with the Holy Ghost.
Uh oh? What did this verse say? Did Jesus appear to Saul on the road to Damascus? Didn’t Jesus know this was not permitted according to my deceived commenter? I guess Jesus didn’t read Scofield commentary and decided to show up and talk with Saul anyway. This verse also says that Jesus was the one that sent Ananias personally to Saul. How did Jesus accomplish this while being in heaven? Apparently Jesus appeared to Ananias and told him to go to see Saul. You can read this in the surrounding verses of chapter 9 how that Jesus appears to Ananias in a vision. What is a vision? A vision is the appearing of Jesus in a spiritual form on the earth where a man is permitted to see him spiritually. Maybe you do not understand spiritual visions because you have never had one. So that is probably the most difficult obstacle for you to overcome. You need to learn about what visions are and how visions occur using the Bible. I wrote a Bible lesson about this subject so you should go and read that if you want to know if they are “Real or Fantasy”. Here we have a verse that says very clearly that Jesus appeared to two different people on the earth after going back to heaven and you will have to ignore them completely to hold on to your deceived ideas of what Jesus can and can’t do in the earth before the tribulation occurs. Here is a much more detailed account of the appearing of Jesus to Saul on the road to Damascus and you should pay close attention to this story to see if God is saying this is the way it happened or not:
Act 26:12 Whereupon as I went to Damascus with authority and commission from the chief priests,
We can definitely see that Paul is describing his journey and the reasons behind the journey. Saul was given authority of the chief priests to persecute the church of Jesus Christ. That is what he intended to do when something happened to interrupt his plans:
Act 26:13 At midday, O king, I saw in the way a light from heaven, above the brightness of the sun, shining round about me and them which journeyed with me.
A very bright light shines from heaven into the natural realm on the road to Damascus and Saul and his traveling companions see it. This light is compared to the light of the sun. Of course Jesus is called the Sun of Righteousness in Malachi so this is not uncommon to describe the appearing of Jesus as being a very bright light from heaven. In fact if you look through your Bible you will see that Jesus is described to be either light or various synonymous terms for the sun around ten times just in the New Testament. If you do not know where these verses are you can check out my post on the “The Names, Titles, Symbols of Jesus”.
Act 26:14 And when we were all fallen to the earth, I heard a voice speaking unto me, and saying in the Hebrew tongue, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.
You see in my Bible, the words of Jesus are in Red Ink so that they are easily recognizable. If Saul is on the earth on the road to Damascus, how is it possible that Jesus can appear and speak to him, since Jesus is obviously not permitted to come back to the earth until the restoration of all things be accomplished? Wow, I wonder how stupid you have to be to come up with some of these false teachings. People really need to open their spiritual eyes and see what the Bible actually says before they open their mouths and prove how ignorant that they are. It is very clear to me that my commenter has a scriptural dilemma to resolve; a conflict of monumental proportions. Either the prophecies that he says have not been fulfilled and God is a liar or the prophecies have been fulfilled in the spiritual realm.
Act 26:15 And I said, Who art thou, Lord? And he said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest.
This verse must baffle the minds of many of the mindless deceived people in the world. Saul was persecuting the church and Jesus says he was persecuting Him personally. How is that even possible? If you think only naturally it is not possible, but if you begin to think spiritually it is very possible. You see the problem is when people do not see things spiritually they are limited to their natural view points and these are clearly not what God intended for us to use. The Bible clearly says that the people in the church are the “body of Christ” and members in particular (Rom 12:5, 1 Cor 12:27, Eph 4:12, Eph 5:23). Just as the human body is made up of millions and billions of individual cells, God is saying my spiritual body is made up of millions and billions of individual people. I’m about to blow some of your minds with my next statement of revelation so get ready for a new bomb shell. You can clearly see according to the Bible that Christ has NEVER technically left the earth fully yet! As long as the church is here Christ is here since we are His body and He is our head. So obviously my ignorant commenter is just a bit confused and does not know what he is talking about in this instance. If Jesus never left the earth then it is perfectly legal for Him to return anytime He likes for any reason He likes and this would include the rapture of the church, His body. When the church is raptured and only when the church departs the earth has Christ fully left the earth. However, it is more complicated than that since even after the rapture occurs more people on the earth can become Christians also and choose to believe.
Act 26:16 But rise, and stand upon thy feet: for I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness both of these things which thou hast seen, and of those things in the which I will appear unto thee;
So according to the words of Jesus himself, He has appeared to Saul to make him a witness to the truth. Wouldn’t it be nice if Jesus would do this with everybody on the earth? However, there is no Bible verse that says He will do this so do not pray for Jesus to come and appear to you, for more than likely your prayer will be answered by Satan and not God. You can clearly see in this verse that Jesus is saying that He has appeared to Saul for a specific purpose and then in the final statement of this verse Jesus claims that He will come back to teach him more things in the future. The statement that Jesus made goes from present tense to future tense and it is very important for you to see this. Jesus is able to appear to anyone that He wishes at any time. It is His choice to do this and not yours. I have heard more than one modern minister say that Jesus appeared to them in a vision and that He taught them something very important to tell us. So if Jesus wants to come back to the earth, He is not going to check with you and see if it is OK for Him to come. Get it? He is the head of the church and not you!
Act 23:11 And the night following the Lord stood by him, and said, Be of good cheer, Paul: for as thou hast testified of me in Jerusalem, so must thou bear witness also at Rome.
Here is just another Bible example of how Jesus came to Paul and appeared to him on the earth without asking for anyone’s permission. Please understand the precedence that is being established and is presented to you. If the Bible records these specific instances where Jesus appeared on the earth after His physical ascension into heaven, then there is absolutely nothing stopping Him from coming to rapture His church body out before the tribulation has started. This is really not rocket science but you do have to have the eyes that see spiritual things. You do understand that Jesus does not have to set foot on the earth to catch His church up to where He is, don’t you? So technically speaking the rapture of the church is not Jesus setting foot on the earth at all. We are going up to meet him and he doesn’t have to come down to get us. Therefore, your argument for no rapture is purely fictional rhetoric.
So back to the Davidic covenant; let’s return to this and see what else the Bible says. We know that Jesus Christ is called the son of David in Matthew 1:1, 9:27, 12:23, 15:22, 20:30-31, 21:9, 21:15, 22:42-45, Luke 1:32, Rom 1:3, 2 Tim 2:8, and Rev 22:16 to name a few of the verses that reveal this information to us. Then you can read in Revelation 1:8 that Jesus says “I am alive forevermore”. So clearly Jesus has been resurrected never to die again. Based upon these scriptures Jesus certainly qualifies to be the eternal ruler of his father David’s throne which was prophesied in the Old Testament.
Luk 1:31 And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS.
Luk 1:32 He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David:
Luk 1:33 And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.
What we must do after reading this angelic prophecy given to Mary about her coming son Jesus is determine if God is declaring a natural kingdom or a spiritual kingdom. There are obviously many Christians who do not understand that there is a difference and this is their first mistake. What these Christians do is to think naturally first, without considering or finding out if there is any other way that this prophecy could be fulfilled in the spiritual realm. For example, in many of my Bible lessons I have taught you that the Bible declares that there are three different cities named Jerusalem. So when you read a prophecy of Jerusalem you must determine which city is being spoken of. I guess this concept blows the mind of many people and they are just not making the connection. I believe that they are having trouble making the leap from natural into spiritual things. There is only one city in the natural named Jerusalem in the Bible and this is all they can wrap their minds around, but the Bible teaches us that there are two other cities in the spiritual realm called by the exact same name. This makes correct Bible interpretation infinitely more complex. By assuming that a scripture is speaking of the natural city you are more than likely missing the truth. You see we can find many verses in the Bible that reveal there is a major difference between these two realms. For example, read Matthew 5:34 and 23:22 to see God’s throne being described as a place in heaven. This is clearly a spiritual location, a spiritual throne and a spiritual kingdom based upon the fact that God is a spirit (John 4:24). If you can see the existence of parallel realities in the Bible you will be far above the capabilities of many people who read the Bible using their natural one dimensional mind. I guess I need to do a Bible teaching on the reality of the spiritual nation of Israel. I have avoided this subject because of the potential controversy that it can stir up. You see I have read other people’s blogs after they have written about spiritual Israel and they are attacked vehemently by narrow minded spiritually blind people who cannot see the truth and what the Bible says. Let me ask those who fight this Bible subject so enthusiastically if there is like the Bible says a spiritual city called Jerusalem, what is it the capital of? We can clearly understand that natural Jerusalem was and is the capital city of the natural nation of Israel here on the earth. Can you not think logically enough to conclude that a spiritual nation of Israel must exist if God names his new heavenly city Jerusalem in Revelation 21? I mean come on and use your brain.
I guess I have gone long enough in today’s lesson. I have not fully covered the subject about the Davidic Covenant and there are many other scriptures that we could add to this discussion. I want you to think with me if God tells David in 2 Samuel that his kingdom will be an eternal one, what do you think that implies? To me it is obvious that it is not a natural kingdom here on this earth. There are many Bible verses that say that Jesus will come back and establishes a 1000 year reign of peace on the earth. This is God’s day of rest prophesied from Genesis 1. I think that there are some confused people who are expecting Jesus to set up His eternal kingdom in this 1000 year time frame and that is why they say that the rapture cannot take place until this happens. However, this is just more misguided interpretations of the Bible while they clearly are not looking for the real answers. Did you know that the 1000 year natural reign of Christ is not forever? I mean think! It clearly only lasts a 1000 years and then what? The Bible tells us that Satan will be released from the pit to deceive again. So everyone who is born during the 1000 years of the righteous reign of Christ will be given the opportunity to make a choice and to be deceived like we have all had these same choices to make. There is an eternal Kingdom of God and the Bible says it is in me right now. Jesus clearly taught us where His kingdom was located when He said “the Kingdom of God is in you” (Luke 17:21). So men are looking for external things while God has established His kingdom on the inside of us in a spiritual realm you cannot see. Either change your perspective to see the truth or choose to remain in your deception. Thanks for reading my Bible lesson on the Davidic Covenant and why the rapture can take place at any time. God Bless!
Understanding the Coming Anti-Christ! And the Homosexual Agenda! Part 4
(Ver 1.2) This is Part 4 in a series of lessons on understanding the coming antichrist. If you have not read this series from the beginning, I would recommend that you go and start with “Part 1”.
Gal 4:16 Am I therefore become your enemy, because I tell you the truth?
Today I may lose some readers, but I am going to speak the truth and I do not care what your response is to what I have to say today. According to what Paul wrote in Galatians 4:16 he experienced what I may experience today also. Paul wrote some tough words for the church at Galatia and many of the hearers were clearly offended and could not handle the truth. I will warn you that today I will be very blunt at times and at times very direct in what I teach. The country of America has been in a rapidly progressive moral decline for the past 50 years and recent events have only come to confirm this. There is an evil spiritual agenda to erode and eventually erase the moral fiber of the established Biblical history and foundation of our country. While the United States is by far not a perfect country, the establishment of a Christian nation caused God to bless us tremendously for over the past 250 years and to cause us to grow to be the leading power of the world. Around 390 years ago, the people of Europe were tired of the religious oppression and control that was being forced upon them and so they came to America to worship God freely without persecution. The United States and its founders were highly motivated by God and the Bible and they built and designed our government using established Bible principles. While the founding fathers of the U.S. incorporated and defined the freedom of religion to be the moral background to worship the One True Living God of the Bible, they left in obvious loop holes that allow other choices to be made. Obviously this is another Bible principle being written into our constitution that is backed up by God’s Word. You see, God does not promote a Forced Salvation theology, despite what a lot of my ignorant commenters like to tell me. Man was created with freewill to choose and this was a choice to either believe in Jesus or not to believe in Jesus as their Savior and Lord. So while our country goes through these changes from the Godless leadership of our President and Congress, it saddens me tremendously while not surprising me in the least little bit. I of course am speaking of the recent government decision to allow homosexuals in our military openly. There has been an openly aggressive agenda from the spiritual realm to redefine morality and what is acceptable to God. I call this the homosexual agenda and I will discuss this agenda in conjunction to its relationship of the subject of the coming antichrist. Here are the progressive steps of the homosexual agenda that have transpired up until this point in time of the homosexual agenda:
- Pervert the human sexual orientation, identity and behavior and cause personal confusion.
- Redefine morality and sin to be an open minded concept free from the Bible’s input.
- Encourage sexual identity development using the coming our process.
- Highlight established social acceptance emphasizing diversity using the stars found in the media and television.
- Show the gay lifestyle in the movies and TV as being a viable reality.
- Nominate gay TV shows, movies and actors for awards to promote them as being great role models for our children.
- Introduce children to the gay life style early so that they can better determine their true identity.
- Shame any church or preacher that teaches against homosexuality as being a sin by calling them intolerant, biased, bigoted and hateful.
- Never show the consequences, hurt and true pain caused by the homosexual life style nor the suicides it causes.
- Overly emphasize any negative acts committed against a gay man or woman as being a hate crime of great evil against a good person and a clear violation of their civil rights to gain sympathy for the cause.
- Promote human sexuality as being a pre-ordained design pattern and not a human life choice.
- Elevate the homosexual life styles to be a legal civil right of a minority group of consensual adults.
- Hide or downplay the abusive perverted homosexual behavior of child molesters unless they are committed by a religious figure or leader.
- Never mention any serial killers as being homosexual even though they killed many young boys.
- Shift human choices off of the individual and alleviate any personal responsibility for sin.
- Redefine marriage to be between any two adults regardless of sex and ignore the Bible.
These are just a few of the observable patterns that I have personally witnessed in my life time on the earth from the homosexual agenda. They are clearly represented in the news media, on TV talk shows, in movies, magazines and now on the internet and the determined purpose is to change the thinking minds of those who are being raised in the ignorance of the truth. It is a clear technique in brain washing the people to accept the coming antichrist. They are all cleverly designed ploys of deception to cause people to buy into a lie.
I had a commenter ask me why I used a blanked out picture of the face of the President in my recent article on the “Antichrist”? Was I saying that Obama was the antichrist? No, I was not saying that at all. Obama does not fit the information given to us in the Bible about the antichrist. I do not know who the antichrist is right now. However, I have learned by studying the Bible how the antichrist will operate and what he will do to gain his power and control, to change the world and redefine the freedoms of our founding fathers. No you see when a man rises rapidly to power that has no basis to be in power, and has done so in a fashion causing so many people to buy into his smooth way of talking, it says to me BEWARE A DECEIVER! No I do not believe that Obama is the antichrist, but I do believe that he is a forerunner to the coming agenda of the antichrist and also a pattern of this man. I believe the similarities are unmistakably recognizable. I believe that this is the exact way the antichrist will come to power and that is why I used the picture and for no other reason. What I see is a man who says one thing and then does something that is the opposite. Here is a man that promotes himself as a Christian in speeches, but acts more like a godless non-believer in his decision processes. You see Jesus said you will know them by their fruit and not by their words. Anybody can say I am a Christian, but only a few will actually back up those words with appropriate corresponding actions to prove it. According to Jesus you can tell who is a Christian and who is not a Christian simply by observing the external actions of a man. Here is a man that promotes and drives abortions and the rights of women to choose, human genetic and stem cell research, homosexuality and I could go on and on. All I know is that he does not act like a Christian so you decide what he is. So, while I believe that Christians are not supposed to preach against sinners, I do believe that we should teach how not to be deceived by the words of someone who does not bear the fruit of righteousness. There is absolutely no way that our President got voted into office without the clear support of a great number of deceived Christians who voted for him. I can tell you plainly that I was not one of these. So today’s lesson is about the coming deception of the antichrist and how the slow creeping infestation of the homosexual agenda being forced upon the world fits directly into his perverted plan.
We will begin our study of the antichrist using a couple of verses found in the Book of Daniel. The book of Daniel has a lot of prophecies concerning this coming individual and these will be important to see and understand. We will read beginning in Chapter 11 and verse 36:
Dan 11:36 And the king shall do according to his will; and he shall exalt himself, and magnify himself above every god, and shall speak marvellous things against the God of gods, and shall prosper till the indignation be accomplished: for that that is determined shall be done.
Daniel was God’s prophet and he speaks the words of God given to him. Daniel is speaking of the coming antichrist king and tells us more about his personality and character. We again see clear references to his ability to speak things against the “God of gods”. That is a very interesting title and an important revelation to be understood, but I won’t get it into it in this blog. The antichrist continues to magnify himself to be God and clearly is attempting to deceive the simple minded people of the earth. It is interesting to note that this verse says that Satan is doing his will and not the will of God. Too many ignorant Christian believe that God is in ultimate control of everything that happens in the world, but that is just not what the Bible says. Here is a prime example of how another’s will is done and not God’s will. The Hebrew word in this verse translated as “indignation” is a very strong word. It means to “froth” or “foam” at the mouth. In my last blog on this subject I taught you that this man will have power coming from his mouth and this verse is just further connection to his mouth and his words being a determining factor. God says that this “indignation” of his mouth will continue until someone puts an end to it and shuts him up and I believe that someone is God and His Word. The final word in this verse that I want to point out is the Hebrew word translated as “determined” and this word means “to wound”. If you do not know it God prophesied in Genesis 3:15 that the woman and her seed would bruise his head and I believe that God is giving us a direct prophetic reference to this event in this verse. The man of sin will continue to speak great boastful words against God until God bruises the head of the serpent under the feet of the church (Romans 16:20) and causes him to be wounded. However, this will not be the end of the antichrist because he will later appear to miraculously recover from this head wound as we will see in Revelation.
Dan 11:37 Neither shall he regard the God of his fathers, nor the desire of women, nor regard any god: for he shall magnify himself above all.
Here is the verse that I wanted to focus in on today in regard to the homosexual agenda being forced upon the world. It is very clear to me that God is telling us in this verse that the antichrist is a male who is not interested in women. What do you call a man like this, besides crazy? You call him a homosexual. This tells me that the antichrist will fully embrace the homosexual agenda and that he is actually the one that is behind it all in the first place. If you think about this you will see why he is doing it. The anti-Christ is opposed to everything that God does. If God created them male and female then the anti-Christ is for the opposite which would be male and male or female and female. Whatever Christ did or is doing, the anti-Christ will do the complete opposite. The Bible clearly informs us that Christ the Lamb of God will clearly marry a bride in Revelation 21:9. So it is very easy to assume that if Christ has a wife, the anti-Christ will have a same sex partner that will pervert what God has created. Of course the anti-Christ is technically a spiritual being in a physical body and he will use this knowledge to try to get out of the sentence of being tormented in hell for an eternity. But, this will not be successful. We can see however, that when the antichrist comes on the scene he will definitely promote and embrace the homosexual lifestyle as a normal way of life and this is what is happening in the U.S. right now.
Let’s shift gears and talk about the easiest way to deceive people. How do you get a dog to eat strychnine poison? You always wrap the poison in a tasty steak before you give it to them. This is what the homosexual community has been doing in America for the last 50 years. The homosexual community saw how the civil rights movement worked to become so effective and they jumped on the same band wagon. They chose to compare their sinful lifestyle to the color of someone’s skin and call them the same things. Obviously no man chose the color of their skin in this world. We were all born here without given a choice to being a male or a female. We were all born in the world without selecting our nation of origin. We did not even get to choose our parents or our relatives; so obviously all of these factors transfer to morality, sin and other elements in life, or not! They have introduced a fabrication of the truth to say “we were born homosexual” and they deny any choices ever being made on their own part. The problem with this logic is how do you differentiate between a homosexual and a child molester type of pedophile? Why can’t the pedophile use the same argument and just say this is the way I was born? What about the murderer who just loves to kill people for fun? Can’t they be smart enough to jump on the civil rights band wagon and say this is just how I was born? I’ll bet you that homosexuals love the “Predestination Theology” so that they can attribute that this was the way that God created them to be and they cannot change so we should just all accept them exactly like they are.
In all fairness to homosexuals and other sinners in the world, most of them do what they do out of ignorance. When Saul persecuted the church and threw them into jail and caused the death of some of them, Paul later wrote that what he had done was done out of ignorance (1 Tim 1:13). In other words Paul didn’t know any better but he still sinned against God anyway. While he thought he was doing the right thing before God, he was actually a direct enemy to God. So sinners also do not understand that there are spiritual forces controlling and influencing what they do. They do not understand demon possession and how that a spirit can cause you to do something like sin. They do not understand that everything we do has consequences in this world good or bad. Since they are oblivious to spiritual things, they do not even know who or what they really are. Many say they are females trapped in a male body. Others say they are a male trapped in a female body. Heaven forbid that they are a spirit trapped in a human body? Since they do not know they are a spiritual being and not just a body they simply are controlled to follow what feels good to them and what satisfies their thoughts of perverted fantasies that are being placed in their simple minds by evil spirits. No, they choose to embrace a message that evil spirits do not exist and only what matters is what they want to do in this present world, so therefore you should be more open and tolerant to how God has created them to be. I’m sorry but I just cannot do that. While I love you, I do not love your sin and I will not receive it to be an acceptable lifestyle. If I did that today, what would I do on judgment day? There is coming a time of judgment from God when you could look at me and say, why didn’t you tell me the truth and I will be at the least able to say I tried to, why didn’t you listen and look for the truth while you could? In this way your blood will not be on my hands. If I remained silent your blood could be on my hands in the future. What do you think I should do? Am I being intolerant for speaking the truth? Or am I just shooting a warning shot across your bow to get your attention before it’s too late?
The homosexual agenda wants the world to say “I understand and it’s OK!” They think that by getting the majority of the world to agree that their lifestyle is acceptable that this will somehow affect the way God feels about them. Unfortunately for all sinners in the world God does not run a democratic system of spiritual government where the majority rules. God is the only one that makes the majority decisions and He is the only one whose opinion matters. My opinion is worthless, your opinion is worthless and your lover’s opinion is also worthless. In fact the Supreme Court’s opinion is worthless and so is the opinion of the lawmakers of our country. Just because they passed a law this weekend that further promotes a sinful lifestyle to be a normal and an acceptable civil right freedom, does not and will not ever make it right or change what God thinks about it. You can do whatever you like and ignore the Bible if that is what makes you feel justified in your life style choices. You can rip the pages out of the Bible where it says that when a man lies with another man like a woman it is an abomination to God and they both should be put to death (Lev 18:22, Lev 20:13). You can rip out the page that says when a woman dresses like a man or a man dresses like a woman that it is also an abomination to God (Deu 22:5). You can rip out the pages of Genesis 13 where God sends two angels to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah for living their ungodly homosexual lifestyles. You can pretend that these two cities never existed, even when the Bible says that these cities were destroyed as an example for those who would come after who do the same (2 Peter 2:6). This verse is a clear warning to those that desire to call their lifestyles normal. These are verses that declare clearly the homosexual lifestyle to be a perversion and not the way that God created people to be. If they only knew the truth, Jesus said the truth would set them free from their bondage.
The next key step in the homosexual agenda is the universal redefinition of marriage. It is already started in many states and when the Vice President was asked about Gay marriage, he spoke on TV this morning about the country becoming an evolving community of openness. This is exactly the homosexual agenda in action, however I call it the evolving level of deception, but I’m sure they do not see it this way. Take away God’s Word and introduce a new world order for the definition of marriage and morality. By allowing men to marry men and women to marry women it further enforces their normalcy in the minds of those that practice it. The antichrist will love this work that is being accomplished for him and I’m sure he is watching anxiously for the completion of the deception. I hope that you join with me in praying for those that are deceived so that they will come to know the truth before it is too late. God Bless!
Understanding the Coming Anti-Christ! The Man with Power in His Mouth! Part 3
(Ver 1.0) This is now Part 3 of a series of lessons on the Coming Antichrist. If you have not read this series from the beginning I would highly recommend that you start your reading with “Part 1”. Everyone who studies the Bible wants to know about the coming antichrist. Very few Christians have never heard of this soon rising world leader, but few actually know much about him. While the Bible does not directly tell us who the antichrist is or where he comes from, I believe the Bible gives us enough clues to help identify him, what he will represent and what he will attempt to accomplish in the world. I’ll start today by saying the term “antichrist” is technically only found in the books of first and second John. However, this does not mean that other books speak about the same coming individual using different names and titles. This is a widely popular method utilized by God to conceal the truth in the Bible; call the same thing by many different names, titles, descriptions and symbols. The term “antichrist” is certainly a valid name found in the Bible so that it cannot be easily explained away by those who do not believe in this man. The word antichrist can be easily defined as a man with an opposite anointing to Jesus. Whatever Jesus did, the antichrist will do the opposite. Since Jesus was the truth, then the antichrist will be the liar. Since Jesus went around doing good healing people (Acts 10:38), the antichrist will be here to do evil, hurt and kill people. Take a look at what Jesus did on the earth and then inverse those qualities and actions and this is what the antichrist will be. So while the name or title antichrist does not appear but in two books directly found in the Bible, there are other names to look for. For example, Jesus gave us a clue of one called a “false Christ”.
Mat 24:24 For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.
A false Christ is easily defined as anyone that is a deceiver who claims to be a Christ. We have seen many men in the modern era who have exalted themselves to this level and the end result has widely been the death of many of their followers by self-inflicted or forced suicides. You can see this in the lives of those who followed David Koresh in Waco and those who followed Jim Jones in Guyana. It is clear that people will be easily deceived by the right charismatic personality if they do not know or understand the Bible. To hear the words of one of these men in the early stages of their deception you would have thought they were good men; however the later end was not so good. This is a standard methodology of deception, to wrap your poison in tasty morsels of steak that are highly desirable. Any way Jesus gives us a name called a “false Christ” who will come to deceive you in the later times. Jesus who was the master of signs and wonders informs us that these false Messiahs will also be able to imitate what Jesus did on the earth. Jesus raised the dead and I would not be shocked to find that Satan can do the same thing when comes into the world. Perhaps later we will look at scriptures in Revelation that indicates that the antichrist will miraculously recover from a major head wound. It would almost sound to me that he is raised from the dead back to life from this wound that was inflicted upon him. It sounds like it could be that miraculous. What you should realize is that just because someone does something supernatural, does not make them a follower of Christ. Jesus pretty clearly says that we should not be followers of signs and wonders, only followers of Christ and the Word of God.
So today we will continue our walk through the Bible looking for more of the clues to the coming antichrist. You may recall in the first two lessons we talked about him being the “man of sin” and the “son of destruction” found in 2 Thessalonians 2:3 and I taught you that I believe this helps to confirm that this will be Satan’s attempt to repeat what God did in the earth through Jesus Christ. Satan rarely has an original thought, so whatever he does is normally a perversion of something that has already been done in the past by God who has initiated creativity into the world. I call the antichrist, Satan incarnate. This is exactly what God did in the man Jesus when He became flesh and walked among us healing people and doing things that were good to all of humanity. However, the antichrist will not be here to do you any good and we will see this in several scriptures that I will give you today. I personally believe that Satan is very desperate knowing that his time is growing very short and that he is running out of options to try to save himself from the coming appointed time when he will be cast into hell. In the second lesson we begin to look at the book of Daniel and how this man is again mentioned in a very negative regard being called a different type of king that will come. I want to continue today’s lesson by giving you some more scriptures in Daniel that talks about this different king that will arise. We will begin by looking at Daniel 8:23 first:
Dan 8:23 And in the latter time of their kingdom, when the transgressors are come to the full, a king of fierce countenance, and understanding dark sentences, shall stand up.
A king of fierce countenance and understanding dark sentences shall come forth. Let’s start by looking at the words “fierce countenance”. The Hebrew word translated as “fierce” means to be strong, mighty, fierce, greedy and powerful. These are traits and characteristics of an evil being like Satan. The Hebrew word translated as “countenance” means the “face” and that is an interesting statement of where his power is located. You can find over 300 times in the Old Testament that this Hebrew word is directly translated as the word “face”. In this verse in Daniel the translators seemed to want to translate it as how the face looked and not the direct mention of the meaning of the word. However, on the face of every human, is an opening called the mouth and this is the external expression device for the internal spirit inside of the body. In fact if you study your Bible you will see that this is the only way that the internal human spirit can be expressed externally is by your words that come out of your mouth. So Satan when he is here as a physical man, he will demonstrate fierce power coming from his face or mouth. You should understand why this is being stated by studying the Bible about the power of spoken words. I wrote a lesson on “Understanding God’s Spiritual Power and the Power of Spirits” and it might help you to go and read that if you do not understand what I just said about your mouth having spiritual power.
Understanding “dark sentences” is a complex part of the verse to technically explain. Let’s start by understanding what “dark sentences” are. According to the Hebrew word’s definition from Strong’s, this word means a riddle, a puzzle, a hard question, a trick, a conundrum, sententious maxim, a dark sentence, a proverb. If you do not realize it or not, this is exactly how the Bible was written and describes God’s writing methodology found in the Bible. God hid a wealth of complex spiritual knowledge in some words that are very difficult to understand for even Christians and for unsaved people entirely impossible to comprehend. Satan has learned the hard way that he should not have crucified the Lord Jesus Christ on a cross, even though this event was prophesied for hundreds of years before it happened. Because he did not understand the consequences of killing God on a cross, God tricked Satan into doing it anyway. Satan has now learned that he better not do something so stupid again, but of course now it’s too late and his fate is sealed. However, I guarantee you that Satan is studying the Bible and looking for ways out more than most Christians are studying the Bible to find out the truth. To understand something means that you comprehend the meaning of what is being stated. There are many Christians who read the Bible occasionally, but few who understand what they just read. Satan, I believe is bent on understanding the Bible and it says this in this verse in Daniel that he will come forth with great understanding. This understanding would explain how it is possible for Satan to manifest in a flesh form. This understanding would also demonstrate how it will be easy to deceive the simple minded people of the world who do not understand the Bible. We have only gone through one new verse and I wrote two paragraphs of some very important information about the antichrist. I hope you are grasping these things that I just said. Let’s look at the next verse found directly after:
Dan 8:24 And his power shall be mighty, but not by his own power: and he shall destroy wonderfully, and shall prosper, and practise, and shall destroy the mighty and the holy people.
Here we again see a reference to him as being a powerful type of individual. Let’s stop there and reemphasize where the power of a spiritual being resides in a physical world. You can obviously look at this verse in two different perspectives if you choose to. First there is physical power and strength we know from the Bible that spirits can give physical being greater natural strength to do amazing feats that are not normally achievable. You can see this demonstrated in the life of Sampson in the Old Testament and you can also see it in the opposite evil way when Jesus cast out evil spirits from a man in the country of Gadarenes in Mark 5:1. In this story it says that people could not even bind this demon possessed man with chains, because he was able to break them. Both of these examples are obviously supernatural examples of spiritual power being displayed on the earth. Is this the power that the antichrist will exhibit? While I do not discount that it is possible, I believe the spiritual power coming from the antichrist’s mouth will cause much greater devastation and harm. Did you notice what this verse said? It said that his power shall be mighty but not by his own power. That is a perplexing statement, isn’t it? It sounds like a riddle to me? How can a man be strong but not use his own strength? To me it only makes sense if you change from a physical perspective and see it from a spiritual perspective. The physical man’s ability will not come from his physical body is what I believe this is trying to tell us. I believe that this antichrist’s power will come from his spirit and his mouth. Again I’ll make references to Satan doing what Jesus does and Jesus is described as the man with the sword coming out of His mouth in Revelation 1:16, 2:12, 2:16 and 19:15-21. You can clearly see that Jesus’ power is said to be in His mouth as a symbolic double edged sword in these verses. So again if Satan has learned and understands the Bible and where his power is, then he will also imitate whatever Jesus will come and do also. Let’s look at another verse in Revelation about this coming antichrist:
Rev 13:5 And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months.
Hopefully you know that the tribulation period is scheduled to be a period of 7 years on the earth. This period is described as being a week of years. If you multiply 7 years by 12 (months) you get 84 months of total time. We can clearly see that for 42 of these months or half of the entire duration of the tribulation, a man will come forth with great demonstrations of power in his mouth. Here in this verse you can see that there is an indirect mention of the antichrist. If you read the context of the chapter you know that this chapter corresponds to some verses that we can find in Daniel about the beast with ten horns. What we see in this chapter is the same basic information being restated from a different perspective. So chapter 13 of Revelation is definitely related to the vision found in the book of Daniel of the beasts and the antichrist. The main reason I wanted to give you this verse is to demonstrate a couple of important things that I said about the earlier verses in Daniel. Here we have several key words being reiterated. We have “power” and we have the direct mention of a “mouth” that speaks. Wow, that is too amazing to be a coincidence. This again shows us or at the least implies that this man is an incarnate Satan who has power to speak words to cause harm and deception. The occurrence of mouth and power in the same verse is not there by chance. I also believe that because 42 months is mentioned here that the antichrist will use the first three and half years of the tribulation to rise to power with his promises of peace. Then when he comes into his full power I believe that he will use his new position of authority to try to destroy that peace.
The subject of the antichrist and the tribulation is a vastly complex subject and I do not profess to know it all right now. I’m learning stuff new every day that I study this subject. This is the way it works. You learn what you can and you continue to build upon it until you get it all done, if that is even possible. I have found that God’s knowledge of His Word is pretty inexhaustible. Just when you think you understand everything about a single verse, God can show you something new and sometimes this new information changes everything that you thought before, but most of the time it only adds to what you know. I think for today I’ll end this lesson and continue again on it in the future. Here are some of the names of the antichrist that we have seen so far:
- Man of Sin (2 Thes 2:3)
- Son of Perdition (2 Thes 2:3)
- A King (Daniel 8:23)
- Antichrist (1 Jo 2:18)
- False Christ (Mat 24:24)
- Destroyer (Daniel 8:24)
- Deceiver (Mat 24:24, 2 Jo 1:7)
- Supernatural Miracle Worker (Mat 24:24, 2 Th 2:9)
- Blasphemer (Rev 13:5)
- Murderer (Dan 8:24)
I know some of my titles are not directly found in these verses, but are derived from a logical association of what is stated in those verses. I tried to take the verbs and adjectives given to us in these verses and change them into nouns to describe this individual, so do not criticize; just learn what they say and then use your brain like I try to do. Hopefully we will continue in this study in my next lesson, but sometimes the Lord leads me to write about other things also to try to remain in a balanced state of teaching the Bible. If you have information about the antichrist that I do not have or have not covered I would welcome your comments and Bible information. So until next time God Bless you.
If you would like to continue reading in this series of lessons on the antichrist you may now go to “Part 4“.
Examples of Deception to Avoid Part 7 – Let’s all Go Protest Some Sinners!
(Ver 2.1) This is “Part 7” in a Bible study series about examples of modern cases of deception found in the church for Christians to avoid at all costs. If you would like to read the series from the beginning you may go to “Part 1” first. However, this lesson is intended to be a beneficial blessing for learning and applying in our lives by itself. I identify with Paul the Apostle of Jesus Christ frequently. I hear myself saying what Paul taught very often. Thankfully I have never been thrown into prison or beaten for what I teach, although I’m sure there are people who read some of these things and would like to do that to me based upon their comments that they leave me. I hadn’t written in this series for awhile. But last night on the news more people who call themselves Christians were given headline making notoriety for their clear acts of planned non-Christian attitudes and behavior. As a result Christians were made to look like haters of humans and I’m sure this is exactly what Satan was hoping for. By the foolish acts of a few people who label themselves followers of Christ every true Christian gets a discredited reputation simply by association of the name. I have learned that not everyone who calls themselves Christians, are Christians. Anybody can call themselves a car, but that does not make us a car. Jesus said you will know them (Christians) by their fruit (Mat 7:20) and clearly these people in today’s lesson are fruitless.
So let’s discuss what these fruitless deceived people are planning to do tomorrow. They are planning to go to the funeral of a famous and renowned individual to picket and protest. In doing this they feel like they are making a statement that will further their message, whatever that is I do not know. They claim that this individual who died blasphemed God and that is why they are making this public statement. So tell me this, if this person did or did not blaspheme God what good will your picket signs make to the body of the person lying in the casket? I can’t see where it will make any difference to them now no matter what you do or say.
Of course there are those who are attending the funeral, I guess that is why you are picketing since they are the only ones that will be close enough to read your signs. What message are you sending to these people? Believe it or not, you are sending an Old Message that has been around for a long time that was done away with by Jesus Christ on the cross.
What I have observed is the fact that there are many people in the world who are living in an Old Testament Law reality and ignoring the New Testament Grace reality. This is nothing new and this spirit has been around since before Jesus came into the world. In the Old Testament, if someone was found guilty of breaking the law, many times they were taken out and stoned to death.
Lev 20:2 Again, thou shalt say to the children of Israel, Whosoever he be of the children of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn in Israel, that giveth any of his seed unto Molech; he shall surely be put to death: the people of the land shall stone him with stones.
This is the attitude of all these people who are picketing in the name of God tomorrow, they would love to stone all of the guilty parties. Yet when Jesus was confronted by the lawyers of His day with a woman who was caught in the act of adultery, what was His attitude and reaction? Did Jesus rush to judgment to pick up the first stone? Did Jesus pick up a sign to protest the sin? Did Jesus even ever speak a negative word against this sinner woman? You should go and read this story before you ever try to pick up a picket sign against someone else’s sins. Jesus told the accusers that “He who is without sin cast the first stone”. Jesus basically ignored the words of the religious lawyers and began to stoop down to write in the sand. I personally believe that Jesus wrote the names, dates and the sins on the ground of those who were standing around ready to cast stones. I believe that some of these men who were standing there were also guilty of having sex with this woman. So when Jesus wrote their names on the ground with the dates and times of their sinful acts, the Bible says they walked away one by one.
John 8 was a New Testament Jesus and God being clearly demonstrated to us. This was God’s reaction to a sinner while He was here on the earth in the flesh. This is a Godly example of how to treat those who are caught in sin. Whenever all of the accusers had left the scene without Jesus speaking any words to them, Jesus looked at the woman and said “Woman where are your accusers?” Then Jesus said “neither do I accuse you, go and sin no more”. This was an act of forgiveness, mercy, love and compassion on the behalf of God. These New Testament acts of God are ignored by those who desire to still stone the guilty. So by anyone holding up condemning words on a sign, are they not casting the first stone? Who died and made us greater than Jesus? In this story of the woman caught in adultery, the only sinless man in the crowd was Jesus and He was the only one that could have legitimately thrown the first stone, but He did not. Wow, that is a very important lesson to learn today.
When one protester woman was interviewed by the news, she was asked “Did God tell you to picket this funeral?” Her answer was not surprising; she said “Every fiber of her being said she was doing the right thing”. Wow, what an ignorant reply to a direct question. She obviously did not feel comfortable with telling a lie and saying God had told her to do it, so she gave an indirect unrelated answer to the question. If this woman was a spiritual lady, the fiber of her being would be different than if she was a carnal natural woman. People can do things based upon many different factors and feelings and emotions are just two reasons why people do things that they do in the world. What we need to realize is that our feelings and our emotions can both be enemies against God and doing the right things to and for people.
There are people who like to drink alcohol and get drunk and they are clearly led by their desires and feelings to do this. Then there are people who take drugs and are controlled by these substances based upon a feeling in their bodies. I will bet that every fiber of their being tells them they need more drugs, but is this the right thing for them to do? Many times doing the right things goes against how we feel. In John 3:16 it says “God so loved the WORLD that he picketed and protested until they changed into doing the right things”. Uh oh, it doesn’t say that does it? The Bible actually says that “God so loved the world that He gave”. Did God feel like giving Himself on a cross? I will guess from all of the pain that was experienced while hanging for hours on the cross this was not a feeling that would be good. The Bible says Jesus sweated drops of blood because of the impending pressure that he was under about going to die on a cross for our sins (Luk 22:44). Jesus prayed and asked His Father three times, “Father if it be possible, may this cup pass from me, nevertheless not my will but your will be done” (Mat 26:39). Doing the right thing should never be based upon a human feeling.
I want to wrap this lesson up with another revelation from God’s word that will cause us to think today. Did you know that most of the New Testament was written by a blasphemer of God by his own admission? How could God possibly make a minister out of a blasphemer? I’ll bet you can’t answer that question today. Do you know who I am talking about? I am talking about Paul, the Apostle of Jesus Christ sent unto the Gentiles. Here are the words of Paul:
1Ti 1:12 And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who hath enabled me, for that he counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry;
1Ti 1:13 Who was before a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious: but I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief.
Paul previously Saul, says that what he did in his past by killing and imprisoning Christians was done in ignorance. He even claims that he was a blasphemer. Saul was a self-righteous religious zealot that felt like he was doing God’s work by committing evil acts against people that had done nothing to him. Wasn’t Saul judging these people? Didn’t Saul take it way beyond protesting to the next level of injurious persecution? Wasn’t all of these wrongs done because of what these Christians were doing and saying? Wow, isn’t this what religious protestors do today? Doesn’t this apply to how people are judging others like they never had committed any sin themselves?
Do you think that you would have picketed Paul to write 2/3 of the New Testament? Would you ask recently converted Saul to come to your town to preach? I would bet that you would not. This was the kind of opposition that Saul got trying to change to become a Christian. I mean he was a blasphemer! He killed Christians. He put them into jails. Yet some Christians want to celebrate and thank God that He killed this lady at the funeral that they are picketing. People are truly deceived that act with such outward hatred towards people that God loved so much to die for them. Here is what Paul the blasphemer told Timothy to do and it was not to go and protest against sinners:
1Ti 4:12 Let no one look down on your youthfulness, but rather in speech, conduct, love, faith and purity, show yourself an example of those who believe.
As you can see God said that we should be doing something with our speech and conduct must be associated with what God’s definitions of Love, Faith and Purity. This is the example we as Christians should be portraying to others that are unsaved in the world. If you do not understand this, you should look up the definitions of these New Testament words and learn about them fast.
Because some people desire to make a difference in the world they are often motivated to do overzealous acts out of ignorance like Saul did. Rarely does it do any good, but nevertheless they must feel better because they think they did something religious for God. What we all need to do is to learn the differences presented in the New Testament from those given to us in the Old Testament. Because people only focus on the Old Testament verses they embrace a God of judgment with abundant laws and punishments like Saul did. However, the Old Testament is the New Testament hidden and the New Testament is the Old Testament revealed. So whenever a person focuses only on the Old Testament they are only seeing hidden truths about the real God that are revealed clearly in the New Testament. This is one of the greatest mistakes that modern churches can make. Learn the lesson of Jesus with the woman caught in the act of adultery and see what was His reaction and actions towards her. Then ask yourself would Jesus pick up a picket sign with mean judgmental words written upon it and take it to a funeral to protest against sinners? I cannot find that in the Bible, at least not in the New Testament.
So we have to make a choice to do the right thing based upon the New Covenant today and ignore every fiber of our being that screams to us to do something that Jesus would not do. Since Paul was able to change I will pray that we all will also change to know the real will of God to reach the lost. May God enlighten us to see the difference! To those real Christians out there who can see the truth, I would suggest that you also pray for those attending the funeral of this woman that died of breast cancer and then pray for the eyes of the protesters to be opened so that they will come to know the real God who is LOVE!
A PERSONAL APPLICATION
LORD, I pray that you will help me not be deceived. Lead me far away from anyone that is not proclaiming or acting according to what you said in your Word. Help me to turn from being influenced or pressured by anyone that is not being led by your Spirit and acting in real Love. Open my spiritual eyes to be able to understand your Word and discern between right and wrong, truth and lies, and good and evil. Live large in my heart and help me to be a loving light of kindness to the world so that they will desire to be like you in me. Thank LORD for your faithfulness to me in Jesus Name to help me produce your desired fruit, I pray. Amen.
Understanding the Coming Anti-Christ! The Different King! Part 2
(Ver 1.1) This is Part 2 of a series of lessons on Understanding the coming Anti-Christ revealed to us in the Bible. If you read the first lesson, you no doubt heard a few new things that were difficult to accept because they were mostly new concepts for many. I have read some other teacher’s material and I am not alone in what I taught you in lesson 1. In this first lesson I showed you several verses found in 2 Thessalonians that heavily indicates that the coming antichrist will be Satan incarnate. If you have never thought about that before, then you probably drew back from those statements. Does Satan have the power and ability to do what God does? Does Satan have the knowledge to do what God does? Can Satan learn from watching God and repeat or at the minimum mimic and mock God’s works and words with his own similar signs and wonders? These of course are difficult questions to answer. If Satan is capable of doing what God does, this would mean Satan when he was created was made to be like God in every aspect and feature. We can only assume that Satan was made on a lower level or scale than God, but nonetheless still made to resemble the Most High God. If you have not read from the beginning I would strongly suggest that you go and start you reading in this series with “Part 1”.
We learned in the first lesson that the coming antichrist is called the “man of sin” or the “man of lawlessness”. We also saw that he is directly called the “son of perdition” or the “son of destruction”. All of these names are terms that can be directly associated with Satan. So today I will explore this subject of the antichrist from a different angle, giving you some new Bible verses about this coming man of sin. I want to look at some verses found in the book of Daniel. The book of Daniel is a heavily symbolic book of information that contains both historical and future prophetic information. The book of Daniel also ends with God telling the prophet to seal up the words that were written until the time of the end so that they can be revealed. Since we are now living in the time of the end, I believe God has started revealing the meanings of this book to His people on the earth. I mean what do we need to know this information in heaven for? There will be no Satan, no enemy, no spiritual battles in heaven. So this information will be virtually worthless when we all get there. So we must be smart enough to allow God to show us what these verses mean now.
Dan 7:19 Then I would know the truth of the fourth beast, which was diverse from all the others, exceeding dreadful, whose teeth were of iron, and his nails of brass; which devoured, brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with his feet;
The book of Daniel paints a very bleak picture concerning a coming world kingdom. Many in the world have been calling for this kingdom for decades not realizing what they are doing. The term “A New World Order” has been a popular phrase that will help introduce this new satanic kingdom to the masses. I’m not going to teach the entire book of Daniel today, there is just too much information to even try to do that. I am only focused in on the coming one beast of the antichrist found in this book. I will tell you briefly that Daniel in chapter 7 gives us a vision of four world kingdoms. Three have already been raised up and have fallen in the past, but one is still left to come. Here in this verse of Daniel 7:19, it says that this fourth coming kingdom will be different than the others that came before it. So if you want to know how this kingdom is different you are going to have to do an in-depth study of the other three to see how they were. I will not elaborate on all of the differences in that level of detail in this lesson. I will however, address two factors that makes the coming kingdom different than any other previous kingdoms and these are my main points today. You see while Daniel describes this beast and these kingdoms he gives us some valuable clues to what to look for. In every previous world kingdom there has always been a limited scope of the definition of the inhabited world. In other words, the main part of the world back in Daniel’s day was only parts of Europe, Asia and northern Africa. No previous world ruler actually ruled the entire world, it was just geographically impossible for an army with so few soldiers to accomplish a true world kingdom. So every world kingdom of that day never ruled North or South Americas or Australia and a few other places in the world. So one of the key features of the coming new World Empire of the antichrist that will come is that it will have to rule as much of the inhabited world as possible and this is a very large area. I believe that this will be one key difference of the coming empire from the past kingdoms, but not the only difference.
Dan 7:20 And of the ten horns that were in his head, and of the other which came up, and before whom three fell; even of that horn that had eyes, and a mouth that spake very great things, whose look was more stout than his fellows.
It is of course difficult for people to see what the Bible says if they have never studied it. Verses like these and those found in the book of Revelation are extremely challenging to understand. You can simply tell this by the number of idiot interpretations we can find on the internet for the exact same Bible information. I can remember 40 years ago hearing preachers teach of the coming 10 nation alliance and they saw this as being 10 European nations that were going to form the European Union to create a new world super power. Now that the EU has way more than 10 members, I do not know how they explain what they taught 40 years ago. These were just crazy private interpretations of the Word of God that caused confusion and they are still being taught today in many church circles. I learned from these preachers and teachers that you do not name names that are not found in the Bible. Whenever you do this you get it wrong ten times out of ten attempts consistently. What we can see is that the 10 horns represent 10 new Kings and you can read this in Revelation 17:12. These kingdoms did not exist in the time of the writings of the book of Revelation and it implies that they will be new Kings and Kingdoms of only a very short duration in time. Therefore to speculate who they are is pure conjecture and mindless rumors, so I will not participate in spreading these lies. There is also always a reference to an eleventh coming King that will arise and I believe this man to be the actual antichrist. Here in Daniel 7:20 it says this horn will have eyes and a mouth that speaks great things and will be stronger than the other ten kings.
Dan 7:21 I beheld, and the same horn made war with the saints, and prevailed against them;
As you can see the antichrist king will be opposed to God, Christ, the Bible and Christians everywhere. He will be strong enough to pursue and persecute them heavily this verse says. The antichrist knows that his time is very short left on the earth so he is doing whatever he thinks he can to either extend his time on the earth or to delay the coming end as long as he can. Let’s skip down to verse 23:
Dan 7:23 Thus he said, The fourth beast shall be the fourth kingdom upon earth, which shall be diverse from all kingdoms, and shall devour the whole earth, and shall tread it down, and break it in pieces.
We can again see that this coming fourth world Kingdom will attempt to control and destroy the whole earth. We can clearly see that the term “whole earth” is used to emphasize one of the ways how this kingdom will be different than those that came before it. It also clearly states that this beast will be bent upon the spread of destruction and mayhem. We can definitely see the hand of Satan personally at work in this kingdom. These are just more scriptures that tell me that the coming antichrist will be Satan incarnate and this is what also makes this kingdom so different than all previous world kingdoms. While Satan might have influenced and backed the previous world rulers of the past, he was never here to rule physically himself until this coming kingdom. So I strongly believe that you can see how this coming kingdom will be so radically different than all of those that came before.
Dan 7:24 And the ten horns out of this kingdom are ten kings that shall arise: and another shall rise after them; and he shall be diverse from the first, and he shall subdue three kings.
Here we have another verse that informs us that the 10 horns are symbolically representative of 10 kings on the earth. I believe that these ten are all naturally deceived men, the descendants of Adam who are here already but maybe not yet in power. However, this verse then clearly tells us of another king who will arise that will be much different than the ten others. This king will take three world rulers out or down in rapid succession. I still believe that this new eleventh king is Satan incarnate who will remove 3 kings from power on the earth. This will leave a total of 7 kings left with the eighth being the antichrist. If the eleventh king is Satan incarnate it would help to explain why he is so different than all of the others mentioned and why he does what he is said to do.
Dan 7:25 And he shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time.
Here is more difficult information, but yet it is also confirming information for what we read in 2 Thessalonians in lesson 1 on the coming antichrist. You can pretty clearly see that this man will be the one who speaks vehemently against everything that is Holy or that is God. This verse also gives us Satan’s reasons and motivations for everything that he is attempting to do. This verse says that Satan is motivated by two primary factors, first he is seeking to change the times set by God and second he wants to eliminate the law of God. These are two very critical pieces of information to what is inspiring Satan’s great and fierce anger toward both God and mankind on the earth. Satan hates everything and everyone, but Satan especially hates the Jews. Why does Satan hate the Jews so much? What do the Jews possess today that makes him hate them so much? Why does Satan want to kill all of the Jews on the planet earth? If you do not understand it is because of the Law of Moses, then you do not clearly understand what God has done and has accomplished with Jesus Christ coming to the planet in the flesh. God had to do something to put Satan under the law in order to convict him of his sins. You cannot convict anyone that is not under the law of the physical or spiritual nation where they are. You do understand this, don’t you? One country in our world can make it illegal for you to wear blue clothes, but unless you go to that country wearing blue clothes, you cannot be convicted of that crime even if you are wearing blue clothes right now. This is called legal jurisdiction or authority. Satan came to the earth which had been given to Adam and he became the god of this world, the Bible says. Adam had legal jurisdiction for what happened in the world. But, there were no laws so Satan was a free spiritual being able to do whatever he wanted practically until God showed up. So God gave Israel the law for several reasons, but one of them was to get Satan under this law.
The only way to eliminate the law of God is to eliminate those who are bound to it. The natural nation of Israel is still bound by God’s O.T. laws. So Satan is still highly motivated to kill them all so that he can hope to take himself out from under this law of God. This is why Satan tried to kill every Jew with Adolf Hitler and this is why every Muslim nation in the world hates the natural nation of Israel and wants to drive them all into the sea today. As soon as a nation like Iran gets nuclear weapons, Israel is in deep trouble, because I believe that they will not hesitate to use them against Israel. Let’s back up in the book of Daniel and look at another vision being related to us about the coming antichrist’s kingdom.
Dan 2:32 This image’s head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass,
Dan 2:33 His legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay.
Dan 2:34 Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces.
It is extremely interesting to study this picture puzzle being presented to us in the Bible. God gives a dream vision to the king of Babylon and Daniel writes it down for us to read. This is a vision of the same beasts that we looked at in Daniel 7 briefly but from a new and different perspective. This image is of one human body type of a male, but made up of five different parts and materials. You can read that the first part is said to be made of gold and this represents the makeup of the head. I believe that this is a representative type of Satan’s original greatness. If you recall in the Bible, Christ is also called the Head of the Body in Ephesian 5, but this body is the church and the body in Daniel 2 is a composite of the beasts. I believe that this is not a coincidence comparison between Jesus and the King of Babylon or Satan. This to me confirms that the coming antichrist will be another attempt of Satan to exalt himself to the same level of Christ. The Bible tells us that the head is representative of the Babylonian King Nebucadnezzar. I personally believe that this king is a symbolic type of a coming Satan figure. There are actually 5 kingdoms described to us in this dream and they are listed below in this table:
| Kingdom | Description |
| Gold (Head) | Babylonian Empire(Daniel 2:37-38) |
| Silver (Arms & Shoulders) | Medo-Persian Empire |
| Bronze (Torso) | Greek Empire |
| Iron (Legs) | Roman Empire |
| Iron and clay (Feet) | Antichrist’s Empire |
We can observe two things very quickly from this list of world kingdoms. First, is the fact that they go from oldest head kingdom to most modern the futuristic feet kingdom. I believe that metal is a symbolic representation of a spiritual power or force in this vision. Metal has value and strength associated with it. It is also interesting to note that the list of metals given goes from most valuable to least valuable in terms of monetary value and significance. Meaning the last kingdom will be the least valuable from all of the others that came before it. It actually reveals to us that Satan’s spiritual power has diminished from God’s perspective. Metals of course are a highly used symbolic agent in the Bible and can represent many things. Metals are tried by fire and are what remains from a smelting process which causes purification the Bible tells us. These of course could apply to Satan’s world also. Gold is of course outrageously priced in our current world economy and it is the most valuable metal given to us in the list. The value of silver is of course the next most valuable metal in the list of five items given to us. Bronze would be the next most valuable and then followed by iron which builds a lot of our cars and buildings that we use today. The final kingdom which is described by the feet is said to be a new mixture that has never existed before and again this points us to the fact that this one will be Satan incarnate. While these other kingdoms were backed by Satan, Satan was not here physically to rule in them. What is clay? Where does clay come from? Was Adam’s body formed from the dust of the earth? Clay, dirt, dust are all synonymous terms for what our bodies are made of. So we can clearly see that the coming feet Kingdom will be a combination of the previous spiritual metal works that backed the Roman Empire, but this time it will be mixed with human flesh. I believe that this is a clear prophetic picture of the incarnate Satan from a picture diagram and the hidden puzzle given to us in a vision and dream from God.
Isa 64:8 But now, O LORD, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand.
A potter is the symbolic name for the creator of symbolic clay vessels. This verse is pretty clear when it calls us the people of the earth these clay vessels that have been created by the potter, God. It is very clear to me what God is saying to us now by seeing verses like this one in the Bible. God is calling the last kingdom of the iron and clay feet a combined unification of the evil spiritual with the evil natural flesh. This is exactly what God did in the reverse when He came to the earth in the form of Jesus Christ. We can very clearly see the symbolic representations being given to us in these Old Testament prophecies found in Daniel concerning the last earthly kingdom. The coming of this kingdom is not that far off from being established in the earth, so if you think it is not near you have already been deceived. I have heard from several deceived commenters on the internet about things that I have written about and they claim many things like, all of the kingdoms in Daniel two and seven have already occurred and they have fallen already. When Jesus was here he toppled the last kingdom so there are no others to come. So many people have been deceived into believing so many crazy things that it is virtually impossible to help everyone. I hope and pray that you have not fallen into any of these deceptions. Satan’s coming world kingdom is very close at hand and he wants to cause you to have doubts that it is even possible for him to manifest in the flesh to present himself as a man that looks like one us. This attitude of deception is exactly what caused the natural nation of Israel to miss the coming of their real Messiah, so do not let it be your downfall in believing that Satan is your coming Messiah when he shows up in person.
Satan when he shows up (is revealed) in the world will look like one of us, talk like one of us and even act like one of us to gain power and the control of the masses of nations. You may wonder how it will be possible that one man can do so much, but you only have to look at our world and you will see how fragile a place we live in today. The world’s economies are on the verge of bankruptcy and collapse. The U.S. borrows money from communist countries to survive. So when a man comes along who offers solutions on the surface to every world crisis, it will be very appealing to those who need answers fast. Perhaps we will discuss the mark of the beast and how Satan will use this tool to gain control of the population of the world in the next lesson on the coming antichrist. Also, in my next lesson on this man of sin I will give you verses that show us that he will possess supernatural powers to deceive and do lying miracles. So God Bless you until next time!
If you would like to continue reading this series of lessons on Understanding the Coming Antichrist, please go to “Part 3“.
Understanding the Coming Anti-Christ! The Man of Sin! Part 1
(Ver 1.1) This is Part 1 of a series of lessons on Understanding the Coming Anti-Christ revealed to us in the Bible. This will probably be a very different lesson than most things that you have heard about this coming individual, but I will give you Bible verses for everything that I say so that you can go and look them up and study them all for yourself. I will warn you that I will say some things that you may have never heard before, but that does not make them wrong, it just makes them something new to learn. Some of the things that I will write about today, I believe that God spoke into my spirit and revealed them to me. I then spent the time looking into the Bible to see if they were actually true. I have always found that whatever the Spirit of God says to me, the Bible will agree with, for these two are one and they always are in agreement. So, if you have an open mind and a heart that wants to learn from the Bible, then I would say continue reading, otherwise you will not offend me if you go read somebody else’s blog today. Today’s Bible lesson about the anti-Christ is not a theological doctrine or even a dominant Christian teaching that your salvation hinges upon. Therefore, if you do not agree with everything that I say today, it’s literally OK, it really is not that important. I do not believe that anything I say today will affect your salvation even in a minor way so it is not that critical to believe in. However, this knowledge found in the Bible must have been important for someone to know otherwise God would not have recorded it for us to find. Here is one of my foundational verses:
1Jn 2:18 Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time.
According to God we are living in age of the “last time”. This is a time period designated by God of predetermined duration with a designed set ending. In other words God keeps a calendar of set events and has appointed the appropriate time for some things to occur. This would be like if I set up a birthday party for a friend and invited some people to show up at a specific place, day and time. This is what God has done on the earth for the coming of Christ. The only difference is that the Bible says only God know the exact day and hour of this event. God has established a set party in heaven and invited everyone to come by sending out a Book of invitations without giving us the set time. God simply says be ready for it, for it is coming. So we must all be ready to go when this time arrives. However, there will be many who reject this magnanimous offer and will be very sorry that they did. In this verse in 1 John God describes a coming individual called the “antichrist”. This word is comprised of two Greek words, one being “Christ” or the “anointed” and the other meaning the “opposite”. In other words God is saying that this coming individual will be the opposite of the Real or True Christ who was Jesus. This antichrist will be a person who is diametrically opposed to everythting the Real Christ represents! So in reading and studying the Bible you need to discover all you can about the Real Christ and then you will be able to better understand the negative qualities of this coming false-Christ. Every postive qualitie of Jesus Christ has a direct antithesis of revealed antichrist truth. Hopefully if you are already a Christian you already know the real Christ intimately so I will not spend much time talking about the real man Christ Jesus in this lesson but I will give you some valuable clues to the coming fake. It is also noteworthy that even in John’s day back when he wrote this letter to the church, he informed us that there were already some antichrists in the world. However, these false Christ’s were certainly different than the coming antichrist being spoken of in this verse. Being like the coming antichrist is by far different than being the named antichrist. I hope you understand that. We will see why I say that as we continue on through the Bible.
Almost every major religion in the world today is looking for a coming “messiah” or “savior”. You can find this in Judaism, Islam and even Buddhism. Therefore, when the antichrist comes there are already countless numbers of people in the world who will buy into the deception being presented with eager hearts! Satan has set this up on purpose to deceive people when this False Christ suddenly appears on the earth. What I will do is start by giving you some basics about what the Bible says about this coming individual:
1Jn 2:22 Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son.
We can clearly see that this antichrist will come to deny that God has sent His son into the world. He will deny that God is a Father. He will deny that God had a Son! He will deny that there is a way of salvation. This clearly means that he will deny the Bible, Jesus and every Christian claim for Him being the way to salvation. Why is it so important for the antichrist not to admit what God has already done through His son Jesus? For one thing it seals your fate in not being saved and then he thinks that it helps him not to be thrown into hell for what he has done. Satan is in denial of the works of Christ in the earth because what He accomplished was so detrimental to his long term kingdom plans establishing himself to be god.
1Jn 4:3 And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world.
Again we see another verse that says the coming antichrist will deny Jesus came in the flesh. Jesus Christ was God incarnate meaning the God who took upon Himself the human nature of created flesh so that He could die and pay the price for our sins with His shed blood. Do you realize why Satan is denying God came in the flesh as a man? He is in effect saying this was a stupid and foolish act of God and it was not even possible for God to do something so crazy. He is placing doubts in the minds of people so that they will not believe in the truth. By discrediting one thing found in the Bible Satan in effect is attempting to discredit every other truth in the Bible. Pretty soon you will see some more reasons why I believe Satan will do this. In this verse it is important to note that spirit beings are behind this teaching and that it does not come from men on the earth. However, these spirit beings deceive men into teaching these things and these were the antichrists that were present back when the Bible was written.
2Jn 1:7 For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist.
We again have a third witness that says the antichrist will deny that Christ has come in the flesh. Therefore, this must be a pretty important revelation to understand. It is also very important to note that any antichrist is also called a deceiver. Deception is a complex lesson that I have written on before. Not all deception is a sin, but most of it is if it is intended for evil to cause harm or hurt to someone else. It is fairly clear that this is Satan’s motivation, he wants to cause as much havoc and destruction as possible. It appears to me that Satan has decided that if he is going down, he is going to take as many as he can with him. Satan does this by using deception and lies that are intentionally designed to trick and cause you to fall.
The coming antichrist:
- Is a Liar with Evil Intent and Motives
- Will Deny Christ Has Come in the Flesh
- Will Deceive many to believe his Lies
- Is always a spirit being behind the message
Wow, so far no great controversial information, which is just amazing for me isn’t it? I guess it is about to change and here are the new things that I warned you about that we need to learn. I can remember a while back I was thinking on the Word of God and the Spirit of God spoke to me and told me that Satan would come to the earth in the same way that God came to the earth. So I thought about this and started to ask some more questions and began to search my Bible for the answers. You see what is Satan’s greatest weakness in the earth today? If you did not realize it, Satan is a spirit being and it is illegal for a spirit being to be here in a natural world to tempt you. The Bible says there has no temptation overtaken you except which is common (natural) to man (1 Cor 10:13). What this verse means is it is illegal for Satan to tempt or test you supernaturally. Therefore, Satan is forced to uses people in the world to overcome this limitation. Have you ever thought of this before, why doesn’t Satan just kill you if he wants you dead so bad? Did you know he can’t kill you, unless he talks you into killing yourself? Satan can enter into the body of a man on the earth and cause them to say and do great evil to others, but Satan’s hands are tied because he cannot do it himself. We can clearly see this in anyone who has committed mass murder of the human race, like an Adolf Hitler. You can clearly see that a man has potential to do great harm to many others. You can also see this in the Gospels when Satan entered into Judas and caused him to betray Christ to the leaders of the Jews (Luke 22:3). So from Adam until now Satan has always entered into people and used these people to hurt and deceive other people. So how does Satan overcome this severe limitation? How did God overcome this limitation? God became flesh and walked among us (John 1:14). Is it possible for Satan to do the same? Before you answer that question you better read the rest of this lesson and see what else I teach you today.
Let’s examine a familiar parable that Jesus taught us. I have talked about this before, but God woke me up last night and related this lesson to the antichrist. I’m talking about the parable of the wheat and the tares, do you remember this parable and it’s interpretations from studying about seeds? God had a garden and planted good seeds of wheat. While God was away from the garden, Jesus said an enemy came and sowed tares in the same field. God said let them grow together until harvest time and I will send the angels to reap my crop of wheat and then to burn the tares of the enemy. In this parable the wheat represents righteous saved people, the tares represents wicked lost people. This is not a highly complex parable to understand; but let’s think about something new today from what we have been discussing. Using this parable as a reference, God Himself became a grain of wheat when He took on the flesh of a man. This is the amazing fact that the coming antichrist will vehemently deny. God becoming a man, why is it so important for Satan to deny this ever happened? You really need to see how important that question is. Here again is the very difficult question that I o presented you with a few sentences ago and that is “If it is possible for God to be born into the world as a natural symbolic grain of wheat, can Satan do the same as a symbolic tare?” Wow, you should really think about that before you answer. I had one reader say that Satan has no creative power or any supernatural ability and they obviously ignored a lot of what the Bible says about Satan in order to make that statement. How did God get Mary pregnant? The Bible says God spoke words to her and said you will conceive after the Spirit comes upon you. Is Satan a spirit? Does Satan also speak words? Wow, your religious minds are probably spinning right about now and that is probably not very good. Nevertheless I am convinced from the Bible and what the Spirit of God said to me that it teaches us that the coming antichrist will be Satan incarnate the opposite or antithesis of God incarnate. Satan the antichrist will be the personification of hate and evil while God in Jesus was the personification of love and good. What I will do is show you some Bible verses now that while they do not spell it out completely there is enough information to derive some logical conclusions to support what God told me. Here is the first verse that I want to examine carefully:
2Th 2:3 Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;
There are many ignorant people in the world that can’t read or can’t see what this verse says, I guess? If you look at the context God is clearly talking about the coming of Jesus and the gathering together of the church in verse 1. Then in verse 2 you can see God’s comforting words to us (the church) not to be troubled or worried about the coming “Day of Christ” that it is soon approaching or eminently at hand. Of course when this was written it was much further away than it is today. Nevertheless, in verse 3 God says that this “Day of Christ” will not come except 2 things happen first. The first thing is said to be a “falling away” and I will not comment on that event in this blog. The next thing that will occur is the revealing of the “man of sin”. To me it is very clear that this is the coming antichrist. However, the Greek word translated as “man” in this verse means “man faced” or a literal “human being”. This is the definition for me and this is also you today in the world. However, this verse says that this is someone who will be revealed. The word “revealed” here means “to take off the covers”. In other words this word means to make seen something that was hidden. What was hidden that will be seen in the coming time of tribulation? This is so critical that you think about this carefully before you answer that question. God is clearly informing us that this time will be uniquely different than the times before. Let me help you by asking you another question, has anyone ever seen Satan in the physical realm? Could this be what is revealed that was previously hidden? I believe that it could very well be that.
To reveal something clearly means to uncover that which was kept secret and hidden so that it can now be literally and plainly seen. That is what we are talking about here, right? Doesn’t this describe what God did when He came into the earth in the form of the man Jesus who was born of the natural woman named Mary? Jesus, who was the eternal hidden God, became the visible incarnate God so that we could witness Him in person and so that He could give His life for us. God took off the hidden spiritual covers from Himself and revealed to us the Savior Messiah in the flesh. This is why I believe that these verses are saying that Satan who was the hidden spiritual enemy of God will also be uncovered so that people on the earth can see him visibly for the first time. However, this man will not be here to save you; this man will be here to kill you. This verse says very clearly that the “man of sin” will be revealed to us. What is sin and where did it come from? Did God create sin? That is of course a deep theological question that I cannot get into today. But, according to the Bible, sin originated from Satan if you do not know that you should go and read it in your Bible (Ezekiel 28:15). So according to the Bible, Satan was the originator of the first sin in the Bible and is the one that I believe will be called the “man of sin” in the near future. This is a human title for clearly a spiritual being, which I will refer to as Satan incarnate. The next set of key words to examine in this verse is the man is called “the son of perdition”. The word “son” is simple enough because it simply means one (a child) born from a father and a mother’s conception. Jesus clearly called Himself both the Son of God and the Son of Man. So Jesus clearly exemplified the demonstrated and established definition of the union of a spirit being and a natural being. Therefore, God establishes this fact as being a viable reality and not a fantasy proposition of your imagination. However, this verse is not speaking of the Son of God, here; the term “perdition” means “destruction”. Who is responsible for destruction in the world? If you associate John 10:10 with this verse and see what Jesus said about Satan you can see who this description fits. In John 10:10 Jesus said “The thief (Satan) comes not but to kill, steal and to destroy”. So Satan is responsible for the destruction on the earth. So we now can see that the revealed man of sin can be related to being the son of the spiritual being Satan, the destroyer. The Bible is complicate like that; you have to dig to find the hidden truths that are in it. Sometimes it is obvious and other times like today it is more difficult to see, especially at first.
From this one verse we can conclude several new things about the antichrist and these are:
- The antichrist is a physical man
- The antichrist is a natural son from a woman
- The antichrist comes from Satan
- The antichrist is Satan incarnate
- Every man always has a spirit within him and he will be Satan
Continuing to read in this chapter of the 2 Thessalonians we learn some more information and some further confirmation of what I have just said:
2Th 2:4 Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.
Here God starts to tell us what this antichrist will begin to do in the earth. He is said to be directly opposed to the real God, the Bible, the church and everything that they represent. He will exalt himself as being greater than all of these. You see if you use your brain and think you will know that this is only possible if Satan is here in the flesh. Otherwise he cannot fulfill this specific prophecy. The next statement says ‘he as God sits in the temple of God”. I have heard many preachers try to teach that Israel will rebuild the temple in Jerusalem and reestablish the sacrifice before Christ’s return. I could not disagree with them more than to say; can’t you see what the Bible says? Where is the temple of God today? Because many men think naturally they focus on the wrong things and they look at what God did in the past is what they expect or want God to do over in the future. However, God is not this way and rarely repeats Himself. What we can see from the O.T. is the fact that what God did in the natural realm was a pattern for what He was going to do in the spirit realm. The Bible says very clearly that God does dwell in the buildings made by the hands of men (Acts 17:24). So even if Israel did build a new temple in the city of Jerusalem, God would not be there to dwell in it. Do you get it? So the question needs to be changed from where is temple of God to who is the temple of God. The Bible says “Now we are the temple of God” (1 Cor 3:16). Uh oh? This definition changes everything, doesn’t it? The human body is now the spiritual temple of God today. That is ME! That is YOU! If you are a Christian then you are now the temple of God. This is the temple made without the hands of men. So this verse in 2 Thessalonians 2:4 fits with the revelation that Satan is an incarnate man of sin. If the antichrist is Satan incarnate, then this man will have a body which was originally designed by God to be the temple of God, but this man will have the spirit of Satan in him and will proclaim himself to be God in this human temple. Wow, I hope that you understand what I just said. What we see is Satan’s attempts to duplicate what God has done so that he can be like the Most High God. This verse makes no sense if this is not speaking of an incarnate Satan. Satan cannot manifest himself spiritually in the earth and proclaim himself to be God unless he becomes a man like God became a man. Only as a physical man can Satan look like one of us and set himself up to deceive so many people in the world. When people see the antichrist on TV walking, speaking and acting like the one with all of the answers to the world’s problems, many will fall for his deception because the world will be in chaos and they will all be looking for the quick and easy answers to their problems.
2Th 2:6 And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time.
God said that this man will be revealed at the right time. I believe the right time is very close at hand, since God told me to write this Bible lesson to tell the world he is coming soon. To be revealed or uncovered requires that he be physically born and grow to be a man just like Jesus did for 30 years before He did anything spectacular. So no doubt the antichrist is already in the earth somewhere right now waiting for the opportunity to seize control. That of course was my opinion, but I believe it is certainly self-evident that the time is very short.
2Th 2:9 Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders,
This whole chapter does not say anything good for the people who are left in the world during this time of deception of this antichrist. God gives a strong warning in these verses for people to learn now before it is too late. As you can see in this verse, it is not a great translation; the translators added two words at the beginning and these really only cause confusion. If you take the words out, it says “who comes after the work of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders”. In other words, this is further confirmation that this man is Satan incarnate. This man will have smooth words that will deceive the minds of the simple. This man will have the ability to do signs and lying wonders. Kind of sounds like Jesus doesn’t it, except these will be the opposite of what Jesus did. When Jesus walked the face of the earth, He did many positive signs and wonders by healing the sick and raising the dead (Acts 10:38). This is not what Satan will be doing. Satan’s signs and wonders are intentionally designed to deceive people and cause them to buy into his ways of deception. He will come doing many miraculous, spectacular and amazing feats that only a powerful spiritual being can accomplish. It is also interesting to note that Jesus only did miracles after He was 30 years old. I believe that this is a pattern of what Satan will mimic also. Satan has to appear as a man with some level of authority and experience. No one will follow after a teenager to be easily deceived. If Jesus would have started ministering at the age of 12, very few would have followed him, if any. But as man of 30, He got the attention of enough to start a church that would grow.
Christ vs. antichrist, this was the lesson for today. God vs. Satan, one good and one is evil. One became a grain of wheat and the other a tare. While Satan has been effective at deceiving people in the world using humans, when Satan shows up in the flesh, he will be no match for the simple minded people left on the earth. They will buy into the lies in droves not knowing what they are doing nor knowing who they are doing it with. You should go back and read the entire chapter of 2 Thessalonians and see if you can see what God is saying about this coming “man of sin” also called the “son of destruction”. Maybe you can help someone with this information and save them from this future deception. I believe it is worth a try. So I hope you enjoyed this Bible study on the antichrist and have learned something. Remember that the antichrist is a man like you and me who will wield great power to deceive many. He will be opposed to everything that Christ stood for. He will deny that Christ ever came in the flesh so that he can deny that he is Satan in the flesh. After all if he is just a miracle working man, it will be much easier to deceive the people. Perhaps in my next lesson on this subject I will give you some more perspectives on this individual from other parts of the Bible. God Bless you in your attempts to learn the truth!
If you would like to continue reading in this series please go to “Part 2” now.
Understanding the Collapsing Timeline of the End of the World!
(Ver. 1.2) This is Part 1 in a series of advanced Bible Lessons about the signs of the end times. Many people in our world do not understand that we are at the end of the end of our age. A time called the end of the “last days” on earth. The door to this Age of Man’s dominance upon the earth in conjunction with the works of Satan is closing rapidly. Most of the world proceeds in the darkness and grows more evil for they do not know the signs of the time. It is true what the prophet Hosea said “My people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge”. No doubt if people only had the right knowledge, they would also be able to see the times of God’s seasons are concluding quickly. However, I heard a TV preacher the other day make a statement that I agreed with 100%. This pastor of a church here in the U.S. prophesied a coming reveal of God’s Word; his statement said every mystery of God will be revealed in the next 2 years. While I do not know if 2 years is the time frame for Christ’s return or not, I believe that there are countless numbers of mysteries in the Bible to be discovered by God’s people and that God will reveal them by His Spirit to His people before Jesus returns. I mean think about it, why would God hide information in His book if it was not going to be revealed? What do we need with mysteries and hidden information from the Bible in heaven? I had a commenter say that it will sure be nice when we get to heaven and God can teach us all the things that we missed out on down here. Why can’t God teach His people the truth, here and now? Do you think that God is incapable of teaching His people what the truth is in the Bible? All it takes is for God to show us some little keys and suddenly the whole book could unfold right before us like a giant puzzle solved. You see when we get to heaven, there will be no enemies up there, no evil, no crime, and no deception and then what will we need with the truth? From my vantage point on the earth, the church needs to know the truth now so that we can become one body in harmony and accord with each other. That means we have a lot to learn in a very fast time frame. If you are interested in learning these secrets of God with me, then get involved with what God is doing in these last remaining days on the earth.
1Th 5:1 But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you.
Why did God not have to write about the times and the seasons to these His people? What the Bible does is reveal something that implies we will be able to see these times and seasons and understand that the coming of the Lord is at hand. You can certainly look at the world around us and see many of these things mentioned in the Bible about the end are happening all around us. There have been earthquakes, wars, rumors of wars and many going here and there saying peace, peace! The signs of the times surround us every day. Technology, computers and the internet have made it possible for the Anti-Christ to take control of the world’s finances like never before. The Arab nations are building nuclear weapons and the nation of Israel is in perilous times. There are terrorists and people killing people and people dying all around us. In our calendar year, the seasons are used to determine the times of planting and reaping. God has been planting seeds for the last 2000 years. The knowledge of God has exploded like never before, but there is also a coming time of harvest, where God says that’s it, it is finished! How do you tell people this and not sound crazy in our world today? You sound like a chicken little saying the sky is falling! You come across as a fool, but at least you can be a fool for Christ.
1Th 5:2 For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night.
So we have a verse that contradicts the previous verse. This verse says the coming of the Lord will be like a thief in the night. You just never know when a thief will show up. But, what we have here is the same event from two perspectives. Those who know Christ will be able to see the coming times and for those who do not know Christ it will happen suddenly without any warning.
1Th 5:3 For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.
We certainly see everyone today in the world calling for this illusive peace. What they do not understand is who is behind these wars, the spiritual forces that manipulate and control people in doing the evil that they do. This verse is again given in contrast to other verses in the Bible that reveal the church is not appointed to wrath. Sudden destruction is not coming to the church, if you think it is then you are very confused in who wins this spiritual war. Sudden destruction will come upon the evil people in the world who do not want to see the coming of Jesus. The church of Jesus will be taken up and out of this destruction before it happens.
1Th 5:4 But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief.
Here we have the previous verse to verse conflict resolution given to us very clearly. We the church, are not those who are in the darkness. The destruction is only for those in and of the darkness. Those who walk in the darkness are those who have been blinded not to see the truth of God. These are those who have been deceived into believing lies. These verses in 1 Thessalonians 5 are contrasting the end events from two perspectives, one is light and the other is darkness. Do you understand this?
1Th 5:5 Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness.
We again see that the church of God is those who walk in the light of God. Anyone who has light can see what is happening in the world because of the light that God is shining upon us. This is in stark contrast to those in the darkness who cannot perceive the times or the seasons.
1Th 5:6 Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober.
God says let us therefore be awake while we are in the light of day. This is a spiritual statement and not a physical statement. People still sleep at night and work during the day physically. But, these natural realities correspond to spiritual realities that we must understand clearly. To watch and to be sober is another contrasting statement to those who like to party during the night and get drunk. These concepts are not that difficult to grasp if you have eyes that see spiritual things.
1Th 5:9 For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ,
For God has not appointed us to wrath. I spoke of this verse earlier because I wanted to show you that God is not angry at the church. Wrath is a coming time of punishment for being evil and rejecting the truth. Wrath will never be given to anyone who has been delivered from it by the blood of Jesus. Jesus became sin that we might become the righteousness of God and this makes us saved from the impending doom of the world. The Bible says that we (the church) have been reconciled back to God. That means to be brought back into right relationship with Him. I do not understand how people ignore verses like these in order to teach a mid-tribulation or post-tribulation rapture of the church. The church will not be here during the time of wrath and that means we will be taken out of here very soon. Jesus almost 2000 years ago said this about the times that we are living in:
Rev 22:20 He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.
In being able to recognize the times and seasons, it requires that you understand the Bible and what it teaches on these subjects. If Jesus could make this statement of coming soon almost 2000 years ago, how close do you think that we are today to the return of Jesus? How could Jesus say this and it be a truthful statement? To human perspectives 2000 years is almost an eternity. But, we of course understand that God lives outside of the dimension of time in an eternal self-sustaining mode of existence. God is called the ancient of days in the Bible, so time to God must be completely different than time to us. To man 2000 years is a very long time since man only lives to be a 100 years old, but to God, it is just a yesterday. If I said to you today, “I’ll see you tomorrow”, is that a long time to you? To most people, tomorrow is not a long time. We are simply talking about at the most 48 hours. So when you see Jesus speaking of 2000 years as a short time you must find God’s definition of what time is in order for you to understand the real truth of the Bible. This is called letting the Bible interpret itself:
2Pe 3:8 But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
So by God’s definition of time on the earth, one day can represent a time period of 1000 years to Him. What God is doing is changing our definition to His definition so that we can see things from His perspective. This is one of the most important concepts for correct Bible interpretation that you can find. This definition gives us a reference to time that was hidden in the Bible. When you start analyzing the Bible using this information you can begin to see why Jesus could say that He would see us at the end of the day tomorrow and it be nearly 2000 years on our timeline. Therefore 2000 years would not be a long time in God’s eyes. Seeing things the way God sees them is one of the most important keys to understanding the Bible. Let’s break down this information we just read for a future point of reference:
1000 / 24 = 41.6667 years = 1 God Hour. So One hour in God’s timeline would be just over 41 years of our calendar.
41.6667 / 60 = 0.6944 years = 1 God Minute. One minute to God would be approximately .7 of a calendar year to us.
0.6944 * 365 = 253.47 days = 1 God Minute. One God minute is just over 8 months of our calendar.
253.47 / 60 = 4.2245 days = 1 God Second. 101.388 hours = 1 God Second. 6083.25 seconds = 1 God Second.
While I have not found a reason why these numbers are significant, the concepts behind them are what I am trying to convey. To hear when God tells you to wait a minute, that it could mean wait up to 253 days for the answer. Even God’s Wait a Second, could be over 4 days long. It is a radical shift in our perspective of time concepts. It causes us to come up to a higher dimension of spiritual understanding. It forces us to renew our minds with some new spiritual facts and knowledge. What I am attempting to show you is that many times in the Bible God is defining words differently than we do. Do you understand that any verse in the Bible can change dramatically depending on the definitions of the words found in the verse? If we use man’s definition of the word found in the verse, there is a high probability that we just got it wrong.
By the law of first mention, we must go back to Genesis 1:5 to see the first time the word “Day” is used in the Bible. God goes through a series of 7 days of creation, doing something new every day that is unique to the world that we live in. This is a God week by definition and according to the definition of what a day is it means a period of 7000 years. However, we must also change our perspectives to see what else is hidden in this information. I do not believe that it took God 7000 years to create our world; I believe that God is trying to teach us something else about these days of creation. If you have read my other blogs, you already know that these 7 days of creations are prophetic statements of the history of man on the planet. Every day of the creation account has symbolic meaning of something that transpired in the earth during that millennium. The 7th day is a representative pattern of the coming millennial reign of Christ. This is God’s day of rest upon the earth where we have no enemy to fight or defend against. The first 6 days of creation are days of work for man, where we definitely have a great challenge presented to us by God. Our enemy Satan has come with great fury knowing that his time is very short. So while we do not know the exact day or hour for Christ’s return we can clearly see that the harvest season is fast approaching. There is no way to know how long of time that we have exactly on the planet. Our year 2010 is a corresponding year of 5771 in the Jewish calendar. The Jewish people have supposedly calculated from the time of Adam’s creation to today and they think it has been just under 6000 years by a few hundred years. I think that they are close but that it is much closer to that magic number of 6000 years than we think. There is no way that God is going to wait over 200 years to come back to the earth, people would not survive that long. If I had to guess a number I would say that the Jewish year is closer to 5985 to 5991. But, that is just me pulling numbers out of the air that mean nothing. It is only logical to see that Biblical prophecy is falling into place very rapidly around us. I do not think that the coming of the Lord can wait more than a very few years. If God does wait, then we are in trouble. The world’s economies are declining and the wickedness in the world is increasing at rates that are off the charts. I’m not going to explain the 6 day time line of creation like I have tried in other blogs. So please if you do not understand these concepts go and search my website for additional information on this subject. Using this information let’s look at some Bible verses that certainly apply:
Mat 17:1 And after six days Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John his brother, and bringeth them up into an high mountain apart,
When you realize that Jesus did nothing by chance or accident, you begin to see important prophetic verses in the Bible with hidden double meanings within them. In this verse it says Jesus went up to a mountain top and took with him Peter, James and John. The symbolic representations in this verse are very clear. If a day is as a thousand years then after 6000 years (6 God Days) of time on the earth Jesus will come to take His church up to be with Him. This is what I see that this verse implies, you of course can believe whatever you like. While on the mountain top Jesus meets with Moses and Elijah. These are also two symbolic representations of those who were dead (Moses) and those who were caught up alive (Elijah) to be with Christ. This whole story in this chapter of Matthew is giving us a prophetic confirmation of God’s timeline on the earth in hidden terminology. I hope and pray that you can see it and how it fits together with other Bible verses.
Mat 24:37 But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.
Here Jesus is telling us some more secrets about His impending return. It says that as it was in the days of Noah it will be again in the coming of the Lord. So how was it in the days of Noah? In Noah’s day, the people mocked Noah for building an ark. They laughed because they knew not the impending coming disaster nor could they discern the times or the seasons because they were in darkness. They lacked “knowledge” of the truth and perished because of this lack of knowledge. Jesus says in this chapter of Matthew that they ate and drank and had parties. They married, built houses and went about their ways ignoring the coming disaster. This is a very important lesson for the coming of the end of the age that we are living within. Noah was considered righteous and is a type of the church family of God. Noah knew exactly when the disaster would start and how it would end. Noah was prepared for the disaster, so Noah was saved from the disaster. Noah escaped the wrath of God, and so it will also be with the church. This is a clear pattern of the true church in the world today. These are those who can read the signs of the times and understand the seasons. The Lord’s coming will not come as a thief in the night just like the rain did not come as a thief in the night to Noah. If you are prepared for Christ’s return then you will know and see His return clearly. In the parable of the 10 virgins, there were 5 who were foolishly not prepared and went away for oil. These are types of the people in the world who do not know God. They will not perceive that the time is too short to try to get more oil. While you are away Jesus will come back and those who are ready will go up. This parable is an attempt by God to tell you to get ready now before you realize the time is too close at hand to get more oil. Noah was 600 years old when the flood came, do you think that this could be a symbolic indication of the coming 6000 years of Christ’s return? I certainly do. Let’s look at one more verse about the end of time in relation to a historic type:
Luk 17:28 Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded;
I take these verses very literally. When Jesus says the coming of the son of man will come like it happened in the days of Lot, what does that tells us? The righteous were taken out and the destruction began to rain down immediately upon those cities. This again gives us a picture of the pre-tribulation departure of the church. God does not appoint the righteous to His wrath. This verse says those in the earth will be eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building and their consumed focus on these activities will cause them to miss the coming of Jesus.
Joh 2:1 And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; and the mother of Jesus was there:
God gives us little clues in the Bible in vastly spread out verses. Here we have a reference to a real event that occurred during the days of Jesus on the earth, but God uses it to inform us of a spiritual event that is coming. These types of verses are allegorical and they are real events that happened on the earth, but they show us a spiritual reality. After two God days (2000 years) there is coming a wedding feast that will occur in heaven on the third day. While the earth is experiencing the vials of Revelation, the church will be in heaven getting ready for a wedding feast. Verses like these are very interesting and potentially controversial because it appears that I am pulling something out of context to teach a spiritual prophecy. However, God uses this technique throughout the Bible in symbols, types and shadows and allegories. I mean think about it, God could have used any number of days in this verse and it could have been accurate, but God chooses to use 2 days and then Jesus went to a weeding. Do you think this is an accident? I certainly do not!
Joh 4:43 Now after two days he departed thence, and went into Galilee.
Again we see that Jesus could have stayed however many days that he wanted, but it is recorded that Jesus stayed here 2 days and then the departure occurred. Is this another coincidence or is this a prophetic picture of the coming departure of the church? Only you can decide what you believe, it is. I will believe that it is a prophecy.
Joh 6:40 And this is the will of him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day.
Approximately four times in this chapter, Jesus uses the term the “Last Day” in conjunction with a time of resurrection and new life. What is the last day of the week? The “Last Day” of the week would be to the Jewish people the Sabbath, also called the day of rest. The God Sabbath is also called the Millennial Reign of Christ. We can very clearly see that Jesus is saying that there is coming a God Last Day where some things will change dramatically for us. There are a bunch of verses like this one in the Bible that make much more sense when viewed in the context of the prophetic creation week. When you apply God’s definition correctly you can understand how they are telling us our time on this earth is closing to an end, when we return to reign with Christ on the 7th day.
Joh 7:37 In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink.
Wow, there are so many verses that we could go into that give us this repetitive clue of the coming “Last Day” when the feast will come. This of course will be the covenant marriage feast of the Lamb of God to His bride, the church. You must search your Bibles for these little hidden clues and then you will begin to understand them. God uses some very tricky methods of hiding information in the Bible in plain sight.
Joh 12:1 Then Jesus six days before the passover came to Bethany, where Lazarus was which had been dead, whom he raised from the dead.
Again we see an amazing coincidence of 6 days and then a feast. The Passover was a representative symbolic meal of covenant between God and Israel. This is a pattern of the coming Marriage Supper when the church eats and drinks with Christ. So God could have put any number of days here in this verse but, chooses 6 as being significantly important for us to see. This verse also speaks of being raised from the dead after these 6 days, so that is again too amazing to be an accident. These are just more prophetic pictures of the coming to the end of our current earth age.
So while the Bible does not give us exact dates and times, it gives us enough information to discern the times and seasons that we are living in. I hope that you are beginning to understand the concepts being taught and can see the references to the soon return of Christ. God Bless!
If you would like to continue reading in this series you may go to “Part 2“.
Understanding the Symbolic Nature of Genesis 1, 2 & 3! Spiritual Symbols Found in Genesis!
(Ver 1.4) In reading and studying the Book of Genesis I have found that it is essential to look at the first 3 chapters of this book using symbolic spiritual eyeglasses which allow us to see the concealed spiritual meanings that were hidden from the surface only reading that many Christians do. By studying the book of Genesis I have discovered that most of the subjects written about in these three chapters contain natural symbols that convey a much greater and complex spiritual truth. The difficulty comes in rightly dividing what is natural and what is spiritual and then interpreting both of these at the same time correctly. Clearly the book of Genesis and especially the first 3 chapters contain both real naturally created realities and people, but at the same time it contains a vast number of spiritual symbolic references that are intermixed throughout the text in almost every verse. This makes correct Bible interpretation of Genesis infinitely more complex, especially for carnal minded Christians.
1Co 2:13 Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.
I put this verse in this lesson to show you how important rightly dividing the Bible is to correct interpretations. Here God says there are many who teach things in the Bible that are just from man’s own wisdom. You can still find this in churches and on the internet everywhere. But, God says there is a better way, let the Holy Ghost teach you spiritual things and then compare these spiritual things with other spiritual things. Most Bible scholars would certainly agree that this complexity is repeated in other books of the Bible like the prophets and especially the Book of Revelation. Revelation is dominated by symbolic references throughout the entire book and it is widely one of the most controversial books with the most widely dispersed interpretations surrounding it. So symbolism is an added layer of complexity that makes understanding these Bible books with it, much more difficult to comprehend and to understand correctly. For example when God mixes natural fruit with symbolic spiritual fruit in the same chapter this forces us to see what is being discussed by the context and then to use the rest of the Bible to help us interpret the meanings of the spiritual side of the information given. This is called “Comparing Spiritual Things with Spiritual Things” and “Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth” and we are required to see it correctly or we will remain hopelessly confused. We must therefore, choose to rightly divide the Word of God deciphering or decoding every word between the spiritual definition and the physical definition or we will wrongly divide it and make them all spiritual or all physical references. To make them all spiritual or all natural, we would get most of our interpretations wrong when doing this. So God did this all by a grand design. God purposely hid complex information in the Bible to keep it from Satan and to allow Him to reveal it to us His church in His perfect time. It is the designed process that I call “Hiding the Truth in Plain Sight”. So in today’s blog I am going to focus on the symbols recorded in the first three chapters of Genesis and give you a list of the most important ones that I have found. Here is the List of Symbols in Genesis 1, 2 & 3:
|
Symbol |
Description |
Chapter Verse Reference |
| Adam | A real man, but also a symbolic representation of the man Jesus Christ | Genesis 2:18-26; Romans 5:14 |
| Afraid | The symbolic spiritual force of the fear of the consequences of sin and death | Genesis 3:10; Heb 2:15; |
| Ashamed, Not | Symbolic Spiritual Innocence | Genesis 2:25; 1 John 2:28 |
| Cleave | The symbolic covenant of marriage between Christ and the church to be JOINED! | Genesis 2:24; 1 Cor 6:17 |
| Darkness | The spiritual kingdom domain of Satan and those in it | Genesis 1:2; Rom 2:19 |
| Day | Those in the Kingdom of God where the Sun of Righteousness has arisen | Genesis 1:5; Malachi 4:2; 1 Th 5:5; |
| Day | The days of creation were symbolic 1000 years of the history of Man | Genesis 1:5, Genesis 1:8, Genesis 1:13; Genesis 1:19; Genesis 1:23; Genesis 1:31; Genesis 2:2; 2 Peter 3:8 |
| Divided | Symbolic separation of spiritual beings | Genesis 1:4; 1:7; Luke 12:51 |
| Dust | The Symbolic Spiritual ground and the possession of man for 7000 years (7 days) | Genesis 2:7; 3:14; 3:19; |
| East | The Symbolic direction of the rising Spiritual Sun | Genesis 2:14; 3:24; Mat 24:27; |
| Eat | Spiritual enlightenment and understanding either of good or of evil | Genesis 3:6; 3:11-19; 3:22; John 6:51 |
| Firmament | A spiritual division or separation, an expanse or spiritual dimension as a partition. Above the firmament is heaven the throne of God. Below the firmament is the future expanse of Satan’s domain. The air realm represents man’s current position and where Satan currently resides. | Genesis 1:7; |
| Flesh, One | The symbolic covenant of marriage between Christ and the church | Genesis 2:24 |
| Fourth Day, the | The 4000 year appointed time of the coming of Christ into the world | Genesis 1:19 |
| Fruit | That which is produced by a Spiritual Tree either good or evil | Genesis 3:2, 3, 6; James 5:7 |
| Garden | The heart of man, the symbolic soil of the earth where God plants His seeds to grow spiritual fruit | Genesis 2:8; 3:2; 3:10 |
| Greater Light, the (Sun) | The symbolic Jesus, the ruler of the spiritual day Kingdom of Light | Genesis 1:16; Mal 4:2 |
| Hand | Symbolic Spiritual Power | Genesis 3:22 |
| Lesser Light, the (Moon) | Satan the ruler of the darkness of this world; the Prince of the Kingdom of Darkness | Genesis 1:16; Eph 6:12 |
| Light | The God of Creation, God is Light | Genesis 1:3; 1 John 1:5 |
| Meat | The symbolic food of a spiritually mature man | Genesis 1:29-30; Heb 5:12 |
| Naked | The External Shame of Sin also the unclothed spirit of man | Genesis 3:10; 2 Cor 5:3 |
| Night | Those in the spiritual darkness, who stumble and sleep and get drunk in the world; kingdom of Satan | Genesis 1:5; 1:14; 1:16; 1:18; 1 Th 5:7 |
| Rain | The symbolic outpouring of the Spirit of God, the former and the later | Genesis 2:5; James 5:7 |
| Sea(s) | Peoples/Nations of the earth | Genesis 1:10; Rev 17:15; |
| Second Day, the | The Covenant of Abraham to separate God’s people from the other people on the earth | Genesis 1:8; |
| Seed | The symbolic representation of children, words, and several other types of spiritual things | Genesis 1:11-12; 3:15; |
| Serpent, the | Satan the spiritual ruler of the darkness, the deceiver of the nations | Genesis 3:1; Rev 12:9; Rev 20:2 |
| Seventh Day, the | The Millennial Reign of Christ; God’s symbolic Day of Rest | Genesis 2:2; Heb 4:4; Rev 20:6; |
| Sixth Day, the End of the | The prophetic coming into maturity of the church of God before His return. | Genesis 1:26 |
| Skin | The outward clothes of the spirit of man; God later removes this with the circumcision of the heart | Genesis 3:21; Rom 2:29 |
| Third Day, the | God starts planting seeds and expecting fruit to grow in His garden; Moses given the Law | Genesis 1:12 |
| Thorns and Thistles | The Weeds of the Enemy Satan | Genesis 3:18 |
| Tree(s) | Any man who makes a choice to either produce good fruit or evil fruit | Genesis 2:9; 3:8 |
| Tree of Life | Those men who have chosen to receive the Word of God and produce fruit unto righteousness | Genesis 2:9; 3:24 |
| Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil | Those men who have seen good but chosen evil | Genesis 2:9, 3:11; |
| Waters | Symbolic people, the voice of many waters | Genesis 1:6; Rev 17:15; |
| Way, the | Symbolic Spiritual Path to Knowledge, Understanding and Wisdom from God | Genesis 3:24 |
| Woman | The symbolic type of the Church who was taken out of Christ | Genesis 2:22-23; 3:15; Eph 5:32 |
These are certainly not every symbolic reference in these three chapters of Genesis; these are just the ones that I have seen and feel are important to know. You of course are welcome to look for others and if you find them please let me know so that I can add them to the list. I will certainly confirm that I do not know everything and I like to learn new things. God teaches me new things almost every day and it is very exciting when He does this. I pray this list will be a helpful tool in your study of the Bible and specifically the book of Genesis. God Bless!
Understanding the Concepts of Deception in the Bible! Righteous vs. Evil Deception! Part 4
(Ver 1.2) Today is Part 4 of a series of very advanced lessons on Understanding Deception in the Bible. We have covered a lot of important information about this subject, so please do not start reading here in the middle of the series, go back and start reading with “Part 1” so that you can better understand what has already been covered in more detail than what I can do today. The church world has widely been taught that Satan is the initiator, instigator, mastermind, leader or distributer of deception in our world and that this deception is always evil. I of course concur with these facts whole heartedly. However, in the last lesson in this series I introduced you to the concept of “Righteous Deception” and I will carry this lesson further today so that you can better understand these new concepts revealed to us in the Bible. What I have discovered by Studying the Bible is that there are several types of deception mentioned in the Bible and some are positive and some are negative. By the Bible definition we can understand that evil deception is when someone comes to you with hurtful or harmful intentions and lies to you to get you to do something that you should not have done. However, I also showed you in the last lesson that the Bible speaks of “Self-Deception” as being a condition where a man or woman has deceived themselves into doing something that they should not have done. You should have gone and looked up the verses that I gave you so that you can better understand this situation so that it does not happen to you. So I gave you several brand new concepts about deception that you should at least be a little bit familiar with by now. According to God’s definitions, a deception in order for it to be a sin must be directed at a person to cause hurt or harm or an expected evil outcome. We clearly saw in Genesis 38 that Tamar used deception for a positive outcome and for the good of God, Judah and the nation of Israel. Tamar was exalted by God for what she did so that she was included in the genealogy of Jesus Christ in Matthew 1. Without Tamar’s intentional deception of Judah there would have been no King David, no Solomon and no Jesus. I know these statements rock your religious boats to no end. I totally warned you in these lessons that I was going to upset you evil deception apple cart so that you would have to see this subject in a new more complex and different way going forward and I hope that you are doing just that.
I’m going to start today’s lesson by giving you another natural example of the use of deception for a good or more positive outcome. Say you are working late at night at a restaurant and about to close up and go home. You hide the majority of your daily money and receipts in the hidden vault in your office and you put the rest of the money in your petty cash drawer. Say you have $5000 in the vault and $500 in the petty cash drawer. Then suddenly an armed robber comes into your business to steal from you. He demands your money or your life so you hand him your petty cash drawer and tell him to go. He asks for more money and you say I gave you money now go. You are clearly attempting to be deceptive while not telling a lie and you convince him to finally leave. You call the cops and they show up and so on. So was what this man did a sin of deception in the eyes of God and the Bible? You see I do not think so, because it matters who are trying to deceive and why. You are not trying to harm this thief you are just trying to keep him from taking everything that you have. This is the way Satan is in the world also. Satan is an evil thief that has come to “kill”, “steal” and “destroy” your life’s work (John 10:10). So how do you handle an evil spiritual thief like Satan if you are God? I believe that sometimes you have to deceive (trick) these evil people into doing the right things. I know there are religious people who are just having fits right now because I implied that God can legally use deception. To deceive someone without sinning requires great wisdom to do and God is the ultimate authority of all wisdom. Why am I giving you this example? I want to show you what the Bible says that God did and then you can better understand this concept of “Righteous Deception” a little better. Read this next Bible verse very, very carefully using your eyes and your brain:
1Co 2:8 Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
In this verse it declares a concept that right “knowledge” is the key to doing what is best for you. What we learn is that if we would have known that the highway was closed, we would not have gone that way, for example. The Bible says in Hosea 4:6 that my people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge. So again knowledge is the key to not being destroyed in the world. Here in this verse, we have an instance of implied active righteous deception being taught to us. The princes of this world are references to Satan and his demonic angels. They are the rulers of this world that God is speaking of. If you look up the Greek word translated as “Prince” it means “ruler”. This verse then tells you that if they had known what was going to happen to them by killing God on a cross, they would not have done it. Do you understand this very complex concept being given? Satan hung Jesus on the cross because he didn’t know what was going to happen and he thought if he killed Jesus this would just get Him off of his planet. It appears to be a clear case of the lack of information from God and wrong assumptions on the part of Satan. This sounds exactly like what Abraham did in Genesis 12, doesn’t it? Abraham withheld information and the king made wrong assumptions and thus the wrong choice. It is very clear that God withheld important information from Satan and as a result Satan did the right things that God needed done. This is really an amazing example of God’s ability to control information in order to get a powerful spiritual being like Satan to do the right thing for God but the wrong thing for himself. You see it was God’s death on the cross that ended His covenant relationship with Satan and the angels forever. Satan is now only in covenant with the humans on the earth, the sons and daughters of Adam. I cover this in other blogs so I cannot repeat everything here. So just understand that the death of God on the cross caused something to happen to Satan that he greatly regrets today. Do you understand how God used deception because He had an evil enemy and how God is justified in using this deception because he was deceiving a deceiver. You can clearly see that this type of deception is a potentially powerful tool when used properly and not for evil. What I am trying to do is to get you to think outside the box and to see that not every deception in the Bible is an evil or a sin. This of course represents a two-edged sword in what I am trying to teach, because there will obviously be some who try to use what I say to justify their evil intentions and only God knows your heart better than you, so you will never get away with using this wrongfully.
So let’s go back to Genesis and look at another example of “Righteous Deception” used for the good of God’s chosen people. In the story of Isaac in Genesis 25-27, Isaac and Rebekah have two twin sons. They however are not identical twins because they look and act completely different. Esau comes out first and becomes the first born in the family who is slated to inherit everything that his father Isaac owns. However, the implication from the birth is that Esau did something underhanded to come out first and Jacob stuck his hand out and caught his brother by the heel. These are clearly symbolic types being given to us of what was going to transpire in the future. So Jacob the “heel catcher” was born second and he is in the natural line to serve his older brother. I’m sure that you are familiar with this story because it is widely taught, but it has probably never been taught in the context of it being a “Righteous Act of Deception”. Jacob’s mother Rebekah comes to him with a plan and here are some of the concerns that Jacob brings up in this chapter of Genesis:
Gen 27:12 My father peradventure will feel me, and I shall seem to him as a deceiver; and I shall bring a curse upon me, and not a blessing.
The mother’s plan was for Jacob to get his father’s blessing by the use of deception. You can clearly see that Jacob is concerned with being labeled a deceiver by his father, so we are definitely talking about a clear case of the act of deception in this story of Genesis. In this story you see that Jacob’s mother comes up with this plan of deception for her husband and two sons. I don’t know why this is the second story concerning the righteous act of deception by a woman. Rebekah tells her son Jacob to go and kill some animals that she can fix his father favorite meal. Then she tells Jacob to go and get some skins to cover his arms, hands and neck with. Why did Rebekah instigate this deception and for what purpose was it done? You might have to go back to chapter 25 to see part of the answer to this question. When the children were still in the womb of Rebekah, she noticed that they were already fighting inside of her. She went to God to find out why and God spoke to her some inside information (literal pun) that was very relevant to this lesson of deception.
Gen 25:23 And the LORD said unto her, Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger.
God says these are two nations of people and only one will be called by my name. Not good news for one of them, is it? Here we have a story that is very difficult to grasp and accept. Esau is clearly a child of Isaac and the firstborn from him, the rightful heir of all of his father’s wealth. But, God said that the elder firstborn would serve the younger second born. You should understand the concept of “Analogies” from the Bible if you have read my other Bible lessons. This is a concept that a natural real story gives us spiritual information about two spiritual brothers that I just cannot get into today. Just understand that there is more information hidden in this story than is on the surface and then go and dig for it. I will help you and tell you that the younger son is a type of Jesus so now go and figure out who is Jesus’ older brother.
Rom 9:13 As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.
So God knew the sons of Rebekah before they were born and God also knew what they would do in this world before they were born. So God let Rebekah in on a secret and this was why she could do what she did and be justified in the eyes of God. So why was Jacob justified in doing what he did in deceiving his father for the blessing?
Gen 25:31 And Jacob said, Sell me this day thy birthright.
In Genesis 25 Esau comes home very hungry and not thinking and asks his brother for food. His brother says “sell me your birthright”. The birthright is the right of the firstborn to own everything of his father. So Esau reasons in his mind that unless he eats his birthright will not do him any good and says this:
Gen 25:32 And Esau said, Behold, I am at the point to die: and what profit shall this birthright do to me?
So then Jacob tells his brother to swear that the birthright will be his.
Gen 25:33 And Jacob said, Swear to me this day; and he sware unto him: and he sold his birthright unto Jacob.
So you can clearly see that Esau sold his birthright to his brother for a bowl of soup and some bread. Esau also gave his word to his brother and in the eyes of God your word is your legal commitment to do what you have said. If you did not mean it you should not have said it, the Bible says. It could be that Esau was playing Jacob for a fool because he clearly still expects to go and inherit the blessing from his father later in this book of Genesis.
Gen 25:34 Then Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentiles; and he did eat and drink, and rose up, and went his way: thus Esau despised his birthright.
You can see that God says the man Esau “despised” his own birthright. This Hebrew words means to NOT Esteem or to disdain, scorn. It is the act of a vile person the definition says. This is certainly not a positive confirmation for what Esau has done in the eyes of God. It also gives legal justification for what Rebekah and Jacob did to deceive Isaac for the blessing that now rightfully belonged to Jacob. There is a lot of things to learn from this story, and one thing is that even though Jacob was justified in what he did, the Bible says that God is not mocked whatsoever a man sows that will he also reap. So Jacob planted the seeds of deception and these came up when he was working for Laban for his wife Rachel. Laban deceived Jacob 10 times it says in the Bible changing the terms and conditions of his employment. Jacob thought he was working for 7 years for Rachel and ended up working 14 years for her. So while you can be justified in doing deception, it usually always comes back to bite you later in life. God however, did not abandon his man Jacob and continued to bless him even though Laban was attempting to steal from him and to use him.
So it is interesting to note that Esau was legally the heir of his father Isaac, but God caused this blessing to go to his younger brother Jacob who became the father of the nation of Israel. So we learn that not everyone that came from Abraham can be called Israel, only Jacob’s descendants. This is an example of righteous division or separation. The sons of Esau were not the chosen ones. What we have seen is a clear use of deception initiated by God. God told Rebekah about the sons in her womb before they were born. I do not know if you like everything that the Bible says or not. Many of these types of stories are very difficult for many to accept. I sure if you wanted to you could come up with alternative meanings and interpretations to everything that I just have taught on this subject of deception. But, I hope that you can see who God was dealing with and why deception was used to cause a positive designed result. I think that I will end this lesson here today. God Bless!
If you would like to continue reading in this series about deception, please go to “Part 5“.
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If you want to know how to get saved and know that you are with confidence you can go to: How do I get saved?
Understanding Symbolic Sheep in the Bible! Are You Once Saved and Always Saved?
(Ver 1.2) This is Part 3 in the series of lesson on the subject Once Saved Always Saved and what others have called unconditional eternal security. If you have not read all of the lessons from the beginning I would recommend that you go back and start reading with “Part 1“. Today is a response to a reader’s comment, who thinks that I know nothing about sheep in the Bible among other topics that I may get into later. However, this man wanted to chastise me for not following his steps of hermeneutical Bible study. He claimed that I clearly did not know what I was talking about when I taught on Predestination and Once Saved Always Saved, because He had figured out the magic formula for Bible interpretation. However, this man failed in one minor detail, he gave me no Bible verses for his method of interpretation so therefore I categorically reject his methods completely. You can read from my other Bible lessons how I interpret scriptures based on other scriptures found in the Bible. This is called letting the Bible interpret itself. There are many basic laws of interpretation given to us in the Bible and I am totally guilty of following these the best that I know how to do. So you can find many blogs on my methods of Bible interpretations so go and read them and learn. Any man can invent rules for Bible interpretation and that is the problem with most of them that you find on the internet. The Bible says that no scripture is of any private interpretation and this is what most people are guilty of. Today’s lesson will be an obvious example of how two people can read the same scriptures and get two opposite interpretations and why. You see all you have to do is ignore certain key words in these next verses and you can get the exact same interpretation that he gave me. However, if you try to do it correctly and pay attention to every word you come up with a major difference in perspectives. Here are some of the Bible verses that this man said I do not understand:
Joh 10:27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me:
Joh 10:28 And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.
Joh 10:29 My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand.
Joh 10:30 I and my Father are one.
In this chapter of John and John is one of my favorite books of the Bible which I have studied more than any other except maybe Genesis, I find a very interesting set of statements being made. This man said that these verses prove that people are “once saved and always saved” by God and can never lose their salvation because that is just what it says. However, if you look very closely and examine the wording and context that is not what it says at all. Sheep are of course symbolic of people in this chapter. The sheepfold is the symbolic world that we live in. Jesus is of course the Chief Shepherd that is in charge of all of us sheep. These verses start with the statement that “My sheep hear my voice”. So right there we learn the first lesson. Not everyone is “His” sheep. You do not have to qualify the noun “sheep” with the adjective “My” if all sheep can hear His voice. Do you get it? So let me ask you a simple question, are you one of His sheep? How can you tell if you are one of His sheep? Is it just because you say you are? I believe our current President proves that is a lie in his actions every day. Saying you are a Christian does not make you a Christian ever. You might recall in the book of Acts that some men came up to a demon possessed man and said “In the name of Jesus that Paul preaches come out of him”. However, the demons said to them “Paul we know and Jesus we know but who are you” and they made them sorry that they confronted a being more powerful than they were (Act 19:13-15). These were examples of men who were not His sheep, but tried to act like it anyway. So you either are one of His sheep or you are not one of His sheep! What is it that determines this fact? It really is not that complicated, if you can hear His voice then you are, if you do not hear His voice then you are not. So let me ask you this, do you hear His voice? I know for certain that I hear His voice on a daily basis, what can you say about this? So the first thing that you learn is not everyone is His sheep and then only His sheep can hear His voice. So let me ask you this, if someone speaks and you are not paying attention do you ever miss what is said? My wife accuses me of this every now and then. She says something and I am sometimes distracted or not paying attention like I should and I miss what was said. Has this ever happened to you? Just because you can hear does not mean that you heard. This is proved every day in church. People sit in the congregation listening to the preacher and I would guess that only a small handful actually hear what is being said and understand it. So hearing is not the complete answer given here, I believe it takes more than just hearing. You can learn this from the Parable of the Sower when Jesus taught on the 6 types of soil, 3 types of soil produced some fruit and 3 types did not produce any fruit. But, they all heard the same words of the sower who was planting the seeds. So obviously there is much more involved than just hearing. Do you get it?
So the next statement that Jesus makes is “I know them and they follow me”. So if you hear His voice Jesus says “He knows you”. However, then He says “They follow me”. Uh oh? Is that another potential problem? What if they don’t follow Him or His voice? Do sheep ever have a “freewill” choice of whether they follow the Shepherd or ignore the Shepherd’s voice? I mean come on, do people ever lose the right to choose? You see you clearly do still have a choice to make even after becoming one of His sheep. There is a clear implied meaning given to us here in this verse that sheep still have choices to make even after being saved out of this crazy world. I mean come on and think a little bit with your brain! If they choose to follow Jesus they can choose not to follow Jesus also. The only way that this would not be possible is if God tied a rope around the neck of every one of His sheep and then dragged them wherever He went whether they wanted to go or not. That would be forced “predestination” and forced “eternal salvation”. Does God forcibly enforce His will upon all Christians and all people in the world? There are many confused Christians who think that He does. If this is the type of God that you serve then you are highly deceived and very ignorant. God is not forcing any of His sheep to follow Him. If you know anything about being a good shepherd, they always walk ahead of their sheep calling to them and the sheep normally follow them. The sheep are therefore highly trustworthy of their master that He is not going to lead them to the wolves. However, sheep do still have a choice not to follow. Once Jesus told this story found in the Bible that is very relevant to our current subject today about sheep:
Luk 15:4 What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it?
Is Jesus talking about sheep in this parable? I don’t think so! Jesus is again using sheep as an example of people. However, it is very clear and self-evident that sheep can wander off and away from the voice of the shepherd that was guiding them. This tells me that Jesus the Great Shepherd is not in complete control of everyone on this planet and what they do. Any sheep at any time has the choice or chance to walk away. Do you get this concept? This is called “FREEWILL”. These are saved people who have walked away from Jesus’ voice and no longer are able to hear it. Do you GET IT? Of course Jesus says any good shepherd will leave the 99 and go and look for the 1 that is LOST! So here we go again. Does this mean the shepherd when He finds this lost sheep drags him kicking and screaming back to the flock by force? If you think it does then you again do not know the loving compassionate merciful God who allows His sheep to do as they will. Sure a sheep could wander off accidently and be totally glad to get back to the safety of the flock and the shepherd. But, still people are not sheep, they are people and they can do what they want, when they want, to who they want at any time. If a sheep wanders off and commits suicide there is no getting that sheep back even if the shepherd wants it back really bad. If while away from the safety of the shepherd a wolf comes and eats that sheep, it is also gone forever. These are basic sheep principles of shepherds and their flocks. People want to think that God is in control of everything, but if this was true and God is the omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient Almighty, He would have never let one of His sheep get lost in the first place. In this parable, it is clear that a sheep got away and the shepherd did not know about it until He stopped and counted and said I only have 99 and I started with 100 so one got lost. Wow, what do you do with people who ignore what the Bible says for their version of reality? It sure makes it difficult if you can’t see the words that written on the pages, doesn’t it?
Let’s further examine the emphasized subject in verses 28 and 29 of John 10 that we were looking at first. If you can see, then you can understand that both of these verses are about the Power of God vs. the power of Satan. Both of these verses say that God is able to keep those that have chosen to follow Him. Remember that choosing to follow was an important prerequisite to the next two verses. So the next two verses are only applicable if you continue to follow by your freewill choices. As long as you are with the shepherd you are clearly SAFE and no one including Satan can come and force you away. This would be the opposite of forcible salvation; it would be called forcible damnation. If it is illegal for Satan to force you to hell, guess what it would be illegal for God to force you to go to heaven. This MUST be a two way street that goes both ways and the only determining factor which way you go is by your own choice of continuing to follow your faithful Shepherd.
So did we learn anything today? I bet my commenter didn’t hear a thing that I said and that is really a sad state of the world that we live in. My Bible says “Whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them that believe not”. It is almost impossible to get a blind man to see. What you must determine is a basic question; do sheep still have any freewill choices to make in the real world after being saved? Can they do what they want rather than do what God says? Before you answer this question you should go and read your Bible and see if there are any people in there who God said not to do this and they ignored it and went and did it anyway. There is Balaam, there is all of natural Israel, there is even Moses who God said speak to the rock and he hit it instead. There are too many examples in the Bible of people disobeying God’s voice. Why did God pick sheep as a type or symbol of people in the world? You should study more about sheep and learn how they are a picture of people. For example, sheep are pretty dumb animals, I have to admit that and that speaks a lot for God’s opinion on what people think in the world. You should be smart enough to first see that God’s intelligence is so far above your intelligence that it is barely comparable to a man vs. a sheep. So having said that your opinion is worthless! What you think about the Bible is totally irrelevant! There is no significance to your thoughts unless they become God’s thoughts. So what have we learned about sheep today?
- People like Sheep are DUMB!
- Sheep still have a free will!
- Not ALL Sheep belong to God!
- Sheep still have to pay attention and understand the words of the Shepherd.
- A Sheep can Get LOST accidently or on purpose!
- God will try to go and find the lost sheep!
- Not every sheep has to follow the Shepherd!
- No one can force a sheep away from His Shepherd as long as it hears and follows.
These are the basics found in these verses about sheep in the Bible. You of course can disagree with what I just said and ignore the facts if you want to. But, please do not write me any more ignorant comments about my lack of understanding of the Bible and go pull the plank out of your own eye before you try to take the speck out of mine. God Bless!
If you want to continue reading about Once Saved Always Saved and the Eternal Security subjects you may go to “Part 4“.
Understanding Angels! Protecting Angels! Part 7
(Ver 1.1) This is now Part 7 of a series of studies about the spiritual reality of angels found in the Bible. We have covered a lot of information that is not going to be repeated, so if you have not read all of these lessons from the beginning, I would recommend that you go back and start with “Part 1” and read forward to this lesson. In the past we have been discussing the physical makeup of angels, where angels come from, the dimensions of angels, the assignments of angels and we have learned that they are intended to be a beneficial spiritual force that works for us and with us. Christians and the angels of God are on the same spiritual team and we have the same God. But, we have also seen battles, conflicts and the realities of other angels that are not working for God. These evil or unclean angels are God’s enemies and we will discuss them more in the future. Today I want to discuss a different purpose of angels of God found in the Bible. I believe that God has assigned specific tasks and responsibilities for angels to follow. These are generally followed for our benefit, but angels never override your will unless there is eminent danger. If you recall we studied the story of Lot in Sodom and God sent two angels to his house to get him and his family out before the city was destroyed. These angels practically had to drag this family away from the city by the hand, because they did not want to leave. I do not know if it was a case of core unbelief or just the fact that they thought they belonged there in the city. We did see that Lot left two daughters in the city that were married and they would not leave with them, so this might have contributed to the hesitation. However, if they would have stayed in Sodom they would all have been killed that very day by the falling fire and brimstone from heaven. Of course the only reason they were saved was because God talked with Abraham and Abraham asked God to spare them. So really Lot had nothing to do with his salvation other than allowing the angels to guide them out. He was very fortunate that he had an uncle that knew a God who was merciful. Many times angels will do this for your unsaved relatives also if you ask them to. So what we learn from God’s story of Sodom is that angels can protect people from a pending disaster, either natural or supernatural. Therefore, one of the key assignments of angels given to them by God is to protect those who are heirs of salvation.
Of course it is always much more complicated than trying to make that simple of a statement trying to say that an angel’s job is just to protect us. We can clearly see in the world that even Christians die in plane crashes and terrorist attacks. In fact children are killed every day in our world and they have not yet come to the age of accountability to make a decision for Christ. So where are all the protecting angels for these children? These are very difficult questions to try to answer since we do not know all of the facts or circumstances surrounding any one’s death that occurs in our world. So how can we attempt to explain why something happened if we do not know all of the information necessary about what caused this to occur? That is our challenge, since the Bible says that we are looking through a glass darkly and only see partially the spiritual realm, we must do the best that we can from what information God hsd given to us. I do not believe that we can know everything unless God somehow shows them to us and many times these things are personal items between God and that person and God will not tell you their secrets just because you want to know them. God says in Deuteronomy 29:29 “that the secret things belong to the Lord” so don’t go asking God to reveal to you things that do not concern you personally. So today I ask the question do people have guardian angles assigned to them by God? Here is an interesting statement that Jesus said about angels:
Mat 18:10 Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you, That in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven.
Here we have a verse where Jesus is speaking about the little children that have been brought to Him to be blessed. Jesus tells us that these little children all have “their” own angel. These angels go from here to heaven and when in heaven they check with God and see what God says for them to do. Since God does not show any favoritism to anyone we must logically conclude from this information that every child born on the earth has an angel assigned to them. The population of the earth is currently less than 7 billion and in the book of Hebrews God tells us that the total number of the angels in Heaven are innumerable. Men can easily count to a billion and even a trillion if they had enough time or could just use a computer. According to Revelation 12 we know that 1/3 of the angels have been cast down with Satan to the earth. Therefore, we can clearly observe that even taking away 1/3 there are potentially more than enough angels to go around to watch over 7 billion people.
Let me tell you about some personal experiences that I believe that angels have come to my aid in my past. One day as a young man I sat in my car at a red light in the left turn lane waiting for the light to turn green. I was the first one in line and just sat waiting for a green light to go. Suddenly a dump truck ran over the front of my car and crushed it. It seems this truck was coming down the hill to my left and lost his brakes and the driver of the truck could not get it to stop when the light was changing. I never heard anything or saw anything that was about to happen. So the driver came down the hill without brakes, without sounding his horn and he was trying to weave and dodge everyone as he came down the hill without any brakes. He missed most everyone except my car. However, if I was 5 or 6 feet closer into the intersection or the light had turned green I would not be here today. A man I knew saw me right after the wreck of my car and stopped to talk to me. He said I was very lucky to have escaped harm and he was right. You see I did not see any angels present that day, but yet looking back on it I can see the hand of God that spared me so I conclude that an angel was at work that day doing something to help me. It could have been just to cause the light to stay red long enough for me not to go forward. It could have been to tell me to stop and not inch any closer into the intersection. It could have been helping the driver of the truck to know how to turn and when to turn the wheel to keep from killing anyone. I mean we do not know all of the possibilities that could have been affected by an angel’s help. It is very difficult to know when something like that happens all of the factors that went into that day’s activities for everyone involved. I mean I could have been a few minutes later and missed everything or I could have been a few feet forward and been killed.
Then later in life I was attending a church gathering at a large convention center in downtown Dallas Texas. It was very late at night and the service was still going on, but I decided to take my kids home to get them into bed. So we left early and started for where I parked my vehicle about three blocks away. I noticed as I walked down the sidewalk that there was no one else around anywhere and that concerned me. We had to go close to 3 blocks to get to my car and it was very dark except for street lights. Suddenly I noticed two teenaged punks up ahead of me nearly a block away on the other side of the street. Then I noticed them looking at me and taking something out of their ankles like knives or weapons of some sort. I knew this was not a good situation to be in with two small young children. I was carrying my youngest child and my eldest son walked by me. I saw that the punks crossed the street so I crossed the street at the same time in the opposite direction. They suddenly realized that I had changed my course as they were coming towards me. I remember praying to God and “pleading the blood of Jesus” over my situation. I grabbed the hand of my son and we turned to walk back towards the convention center down the middle of the street. Suddenly a group of people appeared out of nowhere. There were probably four of them, two men and two women so I started walking towards them and arrived at them at the same time as the two teenaged punks so I turned and stood by them and we all stopped to look at the punks. The teenagers were outnumbered at this point so they asked some dumb questions acting all innocent and then ran off. I walked with this people for a little while never saying anything to any of them about what just happened. Suddenly again one of the women turned to me and said “Thank you” and they went on into the night and disappeared. So why was someone that I did not know telling me “Thank you” with me not saying anything to them at all? I have asked myself that question many times and can only come to the conclusion that it was because I prayed and ask that God cover us with His shed blood. So were these angels sent from God or were these just people who happened to be at the right place at the right time for me? I don’t know! I just believe that God answers prayer and how He does it is not up to me. I cannot tell this story without tears coming to my eyes thinking about it.
So those were just two examples of how angels could have affected a positive outcome in a potentially negative set of circumstances. One time I saw nobody and the other time there were people involved that I saw. I have heard many times a minister of God say this, “People are looking for the spectacular and all the time missing the supernatural”. In other words they read their Bibles and want God to do something like part the Red Sea for them or appear in a burning bush and God does not have to do something like this to cause a supernatural event to transpire and save your life. I’ll give you one more example of someone I knew. He was working very late one night at the office and he had his little daughter with him there at work. They decided to go home and of course it was dark and everyone else was already gone. As he loaded his daughter in the car and put her in her car seat a man with a gun came up and told him let’s go back inside the office building. This man that was being robbed with his daughter was the type of man that carried a licensed firearm with him for protection, but it was in his brief case in the front seat of the car. So he told the gun man I have my wallet in my brief case and reached in and his hand fell on the gun in the exact perfect way so that he just grabbed it and pointed it and began to shoot it at the robber. The man was hit several times but did not go down. The robber pointed his gun at the window of the car where the daughter was and pulled the trigger and guess what, the bullet bounced off of the window. The car did not have bullet proof glass and this should not have happened. So was this a chance accidental occurrence that everything just worked out like it did for the child? You have to be pretty blind to think that it was. I am confident that the angel of God was present there to help and to save the little girl who is still our friend today as a 13 year old young lady. Can angels stop bullets? I believe that they can, what you believe is your choice.
Psa 34:7 The angel of the LORD encampeth round about them that fear him, and delivereth them.
So God tells us in the Bible that the angels of the Lord are present around those that have respect for God. Therefore, those who do not fear God might have a problem. It would be good to hear God say that we have an angel that is with us, but it also much better to hear Him say that one of their assignments is to help deliver us from something? What we need to figure out is what it is that they deliver us from? I believe that we only need deliverance from something that is intended to do us harm or hurt. Do you understand this? What is this trying to tell us? If angels can deliver you then other angels can also do things to you to cause you harm. That is just a basic reality found within the spiritual realm. Satan wants to kill you and God wants to save you and we have the classic battle of good vs. evil in our world transpiring all around us every night on the evening news. So how does Satan cause things to happen to take you out of the world? Many times Satan influences and uses people to hurt other people. Just as good angels can influence good people to do good things, Satan can influence and suggest that evil people do bad things to hurt other people. We have not discussed demons and evil spirits yet, but the Bible says they exist and we will definitely talk about them later.
Exo 14:19 And the angel of God, which went before the camp of Israel, removed and went behind them; and the pillar of the cloud went from before their face, and stood behind them:
You can read another story of angelic involvement with the children of Israel leaving Egypt. In this story God says that an angel appeared before them to help guide them. The children of Israel make a camp and the angel moves to the rear of them for protection. We can clearly see that angels give God’s people a layer of protection from their enemies of Egypt who were pursuing them to take them back. This is not ministering “to” them; this is another example of angels ministering “for” them. We can clearly see that “protection” is one of the primary responsibilities for angels. You can also assume that Satan was influencing Pharaoh to pursue God’s people to do them harm. This is another example of how angels can affect the outcome of what happens in the world.
Exo 23:20 Behold, I send an Angel before thee, to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared.
So I hesitate to mention this verse, because it says the angel was guiding Israel in the way that they should go. However, it will be a good opportunity to teach you something about the role of angels in the church. Angels can clearly give people direct messages from God. We can seen this happening repeatedly in the Bible. These words from God can be considered guidance. You can even see this in examples found in the New Testament. However, many times these angels brought news from God about pending disasters. For example, Paul’s ship wreck in Acts 27:23 was foretold to him by the angel that he would live through it. But, here is the problem; I have not found a verse of scripture that tells us to pray for angels to lead us. The Bible in the New Testament says that those who are led by the Spirit of God they are the sons of God (Rom 8:14). So it appears to me that today we are to be primarily led by the Spirit of God that lives in us. This does not mean that God cannot still send you an angel if He chooses to do so. However, it is God’s choice and not yours. Do not put God in a box and think that an angel is the only way God can do anything for you, just leave the option open if God so desires. I have heard stories of people who prayed for angels to appear and Satan shows up to give them a message like it was from God and this was nothing but a way to deceive them into doing something not in line with the will of God. The Bible clearly says that Satan can disguise himself to appear as a messenger of light (2 Cor 11:14). So if you pray and ask for angel and are not promised one in the Word of God, then you are asking and praying for something out of the line of God’s purpose and plan and this normally just opens the door for Satan to come in to deliver his message of deception.
There are many verses in the Bible where angels are used by God to protect and deliver His people, so I will not go through all of these. I will briefly talk about Peter being thrown into prison by Herod in Acts 12:5. In this chapter you can see that Peter was being persecuted for preaching the truth. Thus we have Satan influencing Herod to do God’s people harm and Herod later finds out this was a mistake that he should not have made. In verse 5 of Acts 12 you see that the church was praying for God to deliver Peter and they continued to do this until Peter showed up at their door one night. God ends up sending an angel to wake Peter in the jail and this angel walks him to the house where the church is meeting. The angel is able to bypass the guards, release his physical bonds and open doors supernaturally to get Peter out of prison. This is a supernatural event of the divine intervention of God of how an angel can be used to deliver anyone from harm. Peter would have been executed the next day if not for the angel of God and the prayers of the church. This is another example of how angels are sent for the words of people on the earth. If there had been no prayers or words spoken there would have been no deliverance for Peter and we would have a few less books of the Bible to read today. Please notice that spiritual angels can affect an change physical things and outcomes.
I’ll end this lesson with another example of how angels can potentially work in the earth and you not see them or know of their involvement. In an earlier lesson I told you that the towers in NY on 9/11 were amazingly empty compared to normal capacity. My wife knew one man in NY that was supposed to be in the tower giving a presentation for his company. This was a very important meeting and one that he should never have missed. However, something transpired that day that was not expected at home and he was forced to stay home with his family that day. Because he stayed home we can only assume that this saved his life. The company that he worked for and the company that he was presenting to both vanished that day and do not exist anymore. So what appeared to be important that day turns out was not very important in the grand scheme of life. Were angels involved in this one case, again we do not know but yet something happened out of the normal course of life that caused a dramatic different result. I personally believe it was an angel, but you can believe whatever you like.
So I am personally convinced that angels do supernatural things to help people when someone asks God to help them. It doesn’t have to be you praying for yourself either. It can be like Peter when it was the church that prayed for his deliverance or Abraham speaking to God for Lot’s benefit. Ask God to get involved in the lives of your friends and relatives and see what happens. I am a firm believer that we are not done with evil in the world. I believe the terrorist and evil people of the world are hard at work coming up with new ways to hurt people. By releasing the angels of God to help protect us is one of the best defenses that we can possess against this spiritual evil. If you have personal stories of how angels helped you out of a bad situation I would be very happy to hear about them. I’ll end this lesson here for today and pray that you have a very blessed day.
If you would like to continue reading this series of lessons on angels you can continue with “Part 8“.
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 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! Satan the Anointed Cherub! Part 4
(Ver 1.2) This is now Part 4 of a series of studies about the reality of angels found in the Bible. We have covered a lot of information that is not going to be repeated, so if you have not read these lessons from the beginning, I would suggest that you go back and start with “Part 1”. I personally believe that you cannot discuss the subject of angels and ignore the one angel that has caused God and man the majority of their problems. Today I want to study and discuss the angel Lucifer as being one of the created chief beings within the angelic class of creation of God. I believe that when we study the subject of angels without studying about Satan, we miss out on understanding an opposing force to God and that which is good. Many of the angels mentioned in the Bible are good and do many positive things for God and us. However, there is a counter force to this good in the world and this is very important to understand. I have actually already mentioned Satan in my last blog. You might recall that God sent Gabriel to give Daniel a message and the Bible tells us that the Prince of Persia withstood him for 3 weeks until finally Michael came and helped. The Prince of Persia was a symbolic reference to Satan. The Bible reveals much about this spiritual being and it would take a long series of lessons to include everything but, we should still learn as much as we can about him, so today will be your introduction to him. We will begin our study looking at some potentially controversial scriptures found in Ezekiel. These are potentially controversial in the fact that they again do not name Satan directly. This is one of the techniques that God uses to conceal information in the Bible and that is to call one person by many different names, titles, descriptions and symbols so that you do not know directly who he is talking about. However these words written in Ezekiel are clearly about someone who is not a human, so most knowledgeable Bible scholars agree these verses are references to the unnamed spiritual being Satan. We will start reading with verse 12 of Ezekiel 28:
Eze 28:12 Son of man, take up a lamentation upon the king of Tyrus, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty.
I’ll start with the word “lamentation” first. This is a very interesting word in that it has an implied meaning of a musical dirge that is usually sung at someone’s funeral. It usually involves much “wailing” and “sorrow” for the loss of this individual being sung about. It would appear to me that God is prophesying the impending demise of someone who as I said I believe is Satan. The prophet is told that this lamentation is concerning the “king of Tyrus”, but clearly reading ahead it cannot be anyone that is natural or human. Tyrus occurs 22 times in Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Amos and Zechariah and that is too many verses to look at them all, so we will not go through all of these verses in this lesson. The next statement is the beginning of the prophesy against this individual and it informs us of some of his past qualities and achievements. It starts very interestingly with the words “thou sealest up the sum”. This is a mathematical accomplishment that has negative connotations surrounding it. It clearly implies that this individual has brought to an end something of increasing value, count or a numerical total; whatever this is of something not directly named. In our past studies we had discovered that the number of the angels in heaven were said to be innumerable, but yet they are numbered with an end in Revelation 12 when God tells us that 1/3 of them have fallen to the earth with Satan. This is what I believe that this is saying to us, I believe that Satan has done something that has caused an end to anymore angels being created. Remember angels were called the sons of God in Job and Genesis and this implies that they are all a part of God’s spiritual family in heaven. We should know that any family on the earth continues to grow and increases in total number as along as the family continues to marry and have children. Is this a reference to what God has done with His spiritual family? All of this is mostly just my opinion on the interpretations of this information and other scriptures that I have found in the Bible that we have not looked at yet, so you do not have to buy into what I just said at all.
The next statement in this verse is not very good information for us if this is describing Satan. God says that whoever this is, was “full of the wisdom” of God. To be full of wisdom is a goal that I am attempting to achieve as a disciple of Christ. In fact it should be one of the utmost goals of any Christian to obtain first knowledge, then understanding and finally the wisdom of God. Wisdom is always the ability to make right decisions based upon your knowledge and understanding. So if this is Satan, I wonder what happened to change the good qualities that God put in him to the evil qualities that we see today. What this also tells me is that Satan is not stupid. He might have made some foolish choices, but God already had taught him a significant amount of spiritual knowledge before he sinned. Do not underestimate the cunning craftiness of this angel. He has been around much longer than you have and has much more experience at deceiving people than you have at resisting deception. Let’s go to the next verse in Ezekiel to continue:
Eze 28:13 Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold: the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created.
Now we get to some more revealing controversial statements and why people do not believe that this is a human being that is being prophesied about. This individual is said to have been in Eden the garden of God. Since we are literally hundreds or even thousands of years after the time of Adam when this is written, that is why most Bible scholars agree that this is not about a man that is alive at the time of Ezekiel. But, I also want to point out a very subtle difference in this verse. In Genesis 2 and 3 the place where God placed Adam was called the “Garden of Eden” and never “Eden the Garden of God”. Am I being too picky or is God trying to tell us something else new. You see I do not believe that God forgot the name that He gave it in Genesis, so this must be a different place. Obviously both are reported to be gardens and both are named “Eden” but what we must understand is whose responsibility and control is over each garden mentioned. Eden the Garden of God clearly means God had control over this garden, but now if we go back to Genesis 1 and read what do we find? We must realize that Adam according to Genesis 1 was given control of the earth, the authority to rule the earth (Gen 1:28) and the responsibility to guard and protect it from invaders (Gen 2:15) and thus the earth was no longer a Garden of God’s responsibility. Adam now held responsibility over the earth and Eden; do you understand why I bring this up? I believe that God had a garden that Satan walked in and ruled long before the one that God gave to Adam. If you know anything about the Bible you know that earth was made as a pattern for things that already existed in heaven. You can see this in Hebrews and Galatians and other places. So I believe that “Eden the Garden of God” is not the “Garden of Eden” where Adam was said to be. Now again the “serpent” or Satan did show up in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve but this verse in Ezekiel does not say that there was any man present when Satan was there originally. It must be different gardens.
I could go through and say many other things about this verse, for instance this individual has a covering of 9 precious stones. There is a fascinating parallel given to us by God of the earthly Israel’s High Priest’s breastplate that also was covered with precious stones. In fact these 9 stones that covered Satan are an exact match for 9 of the 12 stones found on the High Priest’s covering (Exo 28:17). Did you notice what I just said? You see I believe that this verse in Ezekiel reveals to us that Satan was a High Priest for God in heaven before he came to the earth. Are these stones and coverings an amazing coincidence or is there some hidden information that God is revealing to us about Satan. You see if you do an analysis of the High Priest’s breast plate you can see that they had 4 rows of three stones each. Each row consisted of a different set of stones and each stone was different from all of the others. We are told that these 12 stones on the High Priest’s covering were engraved with the names of 12 tribes of Israel. But, if you cross off the stones found on Satan’s covering from the stones found on the High Priest’s breastplate you find that Row 3 is missing completely. That is definitely not an accident, it is impossible mathematically for this to be a coincidence. What does it all mean? That is another really good question to try to figure out. You see you can conclude that Satan lost three things that Israel had or Israel was given three things that Satan didn’t have. Either way you come up with the same results. However, I just don’t have the time to even try to talk about that in this blog nor do I know all of the answers to that question so I’ll definitely be moving on today.
Finally this verse ends with some important new information about Satan and all angels. Satan was a created being. This word created is the exact same word found in Genesis 1:1 where God says “In the beginning God created, the heaven and the earth”. In general terms this is also the exact same Hebrew word used to describe God’s man Adam. This same Hebrew Word is used to describe the origination of both individuals so we can clearly assume a connection between them. In Genesis 5:1-2 Adam is said to be “created” just as Satan was said to be “created” in Ezekiel 28:13. However, I do not know if they were created in the same way and I definitely do not believe that they were created at the same time. You see God tells us very specifically that Adam’s body was formed from the dust of the ground. This was definitely from the existing earth and I believe that God created this dust a long time before He created Adam. If you do not understand this, you should read some of my other blogs on the subject of “The World that Was” mentioned in 2 Peter 3:6. After Adam’s body is formed then comes his wife, Eve. However, she was also not created from something new since her body came from that which already existed, the body of Adam. So Adam and Eve were not a new creation. So it could be different than Satan? We do not know this for sure, but I’m just trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together and that is what I have concluded so far. You also have to understand that the body of Lucifer is a spiritual immortal body and not a natural body that dies like Adam’s. So they are clearly very different at the same time as being very similar to each other. What I see in this information is that God says there could be a difference between Satan and Adam. Satan was definitely a created being but it does not tell us when he was created, or how he was created and where his body originated from. All we know for sure right now is that Adam was a being made from that which already existed and his body was clearly modeled after the preexisting angels in heaven as we have discovered in our previous studies on this subject. However, both Satan and Adam are called sons of God and both are therefore made in the image and the likeness of God. That may not go over very big with some people, I know. It must be important to note the way God created Adam or He would not have included this information in the Bible. Couldn’t God have said “Man Be” and then God see a man appear? So why does God take existing dust and form the man’s body from it and then breath into his nostrils to give him life? Then I want to ask you this about Adam, why did God create a new son Adam and give him a wife named Eve, if he already had a family of angels in heaven? Believe it or not this was a pattern for what God was going to do in the spiritual realm with Jesus. You see God tells us the law of marriage in Genesis 2, that a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife and they two shall become one flesh. If Adam is the son that cleaves to his wife, then God was his Father that he left to be joined to his wife! This means that Adam would leave his Father’s house and be married to a wife (a woman) who would be the mother of the entire new natural human family on the earth not a part of God’s family in heven. What is God doing? God is establishing a new family outside of His current existing family in heaven. This is very important to know and understand from a Bible perspective of what Jesus has also accomplished. I guess I will stop there and let you do more research or read some of my other blogs on this subject.
Eze 28:14 Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so: thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire.
Now we are beginning to see some more information about Satan that is very important to understand. Anointed comes from a Hebrew root word that means to smear with oil. David was anointed king this way by Samuel. But this word here means to “spread like wings” and it is the only time this word occurs in the whole Bible. However, it is still important to see that Satan is said to be “anointed” of God. This is a direct comparison to Jesus who was also said to be “anointed” of God with the Holy Ghost and power in Acts 10:38. So now we have Satan being compared to Jesus the Messiah. This is a clear Satan and Jesus connection. You probably do not fully understand the concept of being anointed by God. God anoints people in the earth to perform specific tasks like to pastor a church. What this represents is a special divine ability to perform the duties being assigned to them. So we learn from this verse that angels can also be anointed by God to do specific jobs and assignments. An anointing can involve supernatural ability and even the power or divine knowledge or wisdom to do what you do not fully understand how to do. This says a lot about Satan and his abilities.
Then Satan is called a “cherub” and this is a very unique name for a class of special angelic beings. Not every angel falls into this class so we are beginning to see some new truths about angels. The angels that appeared in Sodom to get Lot out I do not believe were cherubs. Also, in the previous lesson we learned that Gabriel and Michael were described as “Chief” angels. This just means they were a much higher rank than the others that were under them. This word for cherub only occurs in around 66 verses in the O.T. The first time it occurs is in Genesis 3 and God places a “cherub” and a flaming sword outside the Garden of Eden to guard the way to the tree of life. Apparently someone wanted to take forcibly from this tree and live forever so God placed an angelic guard of the class of Satan’s ability to protect it. It was obviously not Adam that God was guarding this way from and you can read my other blogs and find out why I can say that. I believe that Satan was after this tree and God was guarding the “way” to the tree to keep him from partaking of it.
So what is a “cherub”? That is another million dollar question for the day. From what I can tell from reading these 66 verses in the Bible, a cherub is a type of angel which has “wings”, but this could also be symbolism for an anointing of God for a specific job or purpose. God told Moses to make the golden Ark of the Covenant with two winged cherubs on the top with the mercy seat of God in between them. This is clearly a natural pattern of something that we should know concerning spiritual things. These are all symbolic representations of spiritual realities.
Exo 25:18 And thou shalt make two cherubims of gold, of beaten work shalt thou make them, in the two ends of the mercy seat.
In Psalm 99:1 it says God sits between the Cherubim. The Mercy Seat of the Ark of the Covenant was made by God’s instructions and described to us in Exodus which was recorded by Moses. These patterns reveal to us information about angels and God’s relationship with Satan before he sinned. I believe that God’s throne in heaven was between two anointed cherubs and one of these use to be Lucifer. Now Jesus is at the right hand of the Father and to me that means Jesus has taken Lucifer’s old place of authority and power. Again that is my opinion on stuff that I’ve read from the Bible.
I want to skip forward in Ezekiel 28:14 to the part that God speaks about Satan being in the Holy Mountain of God. We should be smart enough to know that this is not an earthly mountain. God did come down to Moses on Mt Sinai and God called this mountain holy at the time but, Satan was never there. No this holy mountain is Mt Zion in heaven and this is the spiritual covenant mountain of God. When God speaks about Mt Zion, He says many things. For example, “I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a precious corner stone” (Isa 28:16). So we know that Zion has had a new building project started on it from scratch by the Lord Jesus Christ. This represents a “New Covenant” and it eliminates the old covenants with everyone else.
Let’s continue looking at Ezekiel 28:14 and how God describes Satan to us. God told us he was an anointed cherub and then said that his job or assignment was to “cover”. This Hebrew word means to cover as a protector or as a guard. It can also mean a fenced in hedge of protection. It can also mean to entwine as in join together. These are all amazing definitions. They imply a covenant relationship and that is very important to know. I definitely believe from the information that I have seen in the Bible that God was in covenant with the angels of Heaven, including Satan. In fact if you read Galatians 4 very carefully you will see that God reveals information about heaven that calls this city God’s wife as a type or pattern of Sarah as being Abraham’s wife. She is called the freewoman in this analogy. The Heavenly Jerusalem is what this city is called in Hebrews. In Galatians 4 it is called the Jerusalem that is above. This is the real spiritual city of angels and it is inferred to be a wife of God the Father. If you understand covenants you know that God was in covenant with the natural nation of Israel and the earthly city of Jerusalem. This earthly city Jerusalem is called the “bond woman” and is the type of Hagar and Abraham who had a slave child. Angels were of the city of the “Free Woman” called Heavenly Jerusalem. Galatians 4 tells us that God had two wives and that these were two covenants.
Eze 28:15 Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee.
This is the last verse in Ezekiel that I am going to touch on today. Since I am running a little long I will make these last parts brief. You can clearly see that Satan was not created as Satan. The original angel Lucifer was perfect in all of his ways. That means he did things the right way, he made the right choices, said the right things and walked upright before God. But, God says “sin” was found in him and that is the root of God’s problem with Lucifer. How do you end a spiritual family covenant relationship with a spiritual being in a Godly and legal way that does not cause God to become as equally as sinful? Do you understand the wisdom of God? God is so much smarter than us that He came up with a plan that would solve our sin problem and His covenant problem simultaneously with the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, His Son. I’ll end this blog with this last thought about Satan:
Isa 6:2 Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly.
Here in this verse found in Isaiah we see a new word describing what appears to be an angelic being. This is also a winged creature that clearly flies using their wings. It is not clear that this is describing Satan unless you look up the definition of the Hebrew Word “seraphim” in Strong’s. This word is many times translated as “fiery serpent” and that to me describes Satan very well. We clearly know from Genesis and Revelation that Satan is the “serpent” so we have an association to a new titled reference for this spiritual being. A fiery serpent is a great symbolic representation for Satan.
So we have learned enough for one lesson about angels, and probably more than some can accept. I will briefly review some of the high points:
Satan:
- Was a created being (Eze 28:13)
- Not created with evil in him (Eze 28:15)
- Was found with iniquity in him (Eze 28:15)
- Was in covenant with God the Father (Gen 2-3, Gal 4)
- Was anointed by God for specific purposes (Eze 28:14)
- Was in a class of angels called “Cherubs” (Eze 28:14)
- Was also described as a “Seraphim”; winged fiery serpent (Isa 6:2)
- Was a Priest unto God (Eze 28:13).
- Was called Lucifer a son of the early light (Isa 14:12)
- Named Lucifer means “Bright Morning Star” (Isa 14:12)
These are just a very few things that we picked up from today and the previous lesson about Satan. If you want to you can go and take a look at my list of Names, Titles, Descriptions and Types for Satan found in the Bible. I know I said a lot of things and some of them are hard to accept because I cannot fully cover every related subject in a single blog. You do not know everything that I know and I cannot teach you everything that I know in one blog so just keep reading and I’ll try to do a better job at filling in the gaps that I’m sure you feel that I have not covered fully. If you have specific questions I would also appreciate hearing about them. Maybe this way if I hear where I am the weakest I can address those areas first. God Bless!
If you would like to continue reading this series you can go to “Part 5“.
Understanding Angels! The Named Angels in the Bible! Part 3
(Ver 1.2) This is Part 3 of a series of lessons on understanding Angels in the Bible. If you have not read this series from the beginning I would recommend that you go back and start with “Part 1”. Today I want to discuss not something new, but a basic concept surrounding angels. This concept states that angels all have names and that these names mean something. Just as people on earth have names which are given to them when they are born, angels also have very specific names that I assume was given to them by God. Of course the Bible does not reveal the names of every angel and since there are an innumerable number of them, I’m glad that it does not. Throughout the Bible you discover that people did not normally just make up their children’s names. These names were given to their children for a reason and it often involved the circumstances surrounding their birth. So we discover that we can learn things about people from looking up the definitions of their names. I believe that this applies to angels also. I do not think that the angels got their names by accident or chance. We are not told but a few names of the angels, but we are told enough to help us to understand these concepts. The Bible says there is nothing new under the sun. I take this to mean that what God has designed in this world were patterns for things that already existed elsewhere or in past times. So what we see and observe in our world are not new things, new ideas or new concepts, but are things that have existed before. That is very hard thing for many people to accept and even Christians today because they have widely been taught that creation happened 6000 years ago and God created the angels and people, heaven and earth and everything else at this time. That would really be good, if that was what the Bible actually said, unfortunately for many Bible teachers it is not; so their teaching produces nothing but points of confusion. What I am going to do today is start in the book of Psalms and show you a verse that informs us that angels have names:
Psa 147:4 He telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their names.
You may recall that angels were symbolically called “stars” in Revelation 1:20, 12:4 and several other places in the Bible. The stars seen in our heaven symbolically represent these created spiritual beings called angels. They are also according to this verse all “named”. God knows the names of every one of them and this is an amazing feat since there are so many of them. Scientist can only roughly estimate the number of the stars in our universe; there is absolutely no way that they could count them all, since none of our telescopes reach to the ends of the entire universe. So you cannot count what you cannot see. Plus the fact that they estimate the number of stars to be between 10 raised to the 22nd power and 10 raised to the 24th power. Both of those are huge numbers.
Let’s turn to Luke and start to study about a named angel that you have already heard of. This angel reveals some things that we have potentially already discussed as well as some new things to consider. For example, this angel has a name and this is the first time we have discovered that reality. In the first chapter of Luke is the story of Zacharias and his wife. They are older mature people in Israel and Zacharias is a priest for God in the temple. One day while he is in the temple suddenly something happens that he never experienced before:
Luk 1:11 And there appeared unto him an angel of the Lord standing on the right side of the altar of incense.
The angel of the Lord suddenly appears within the physical dimension of space and time and Zacharias sees him standing there. We have seen the angel’s ability in the Bible to appear or manifest physically in our world and this is another example of this. Since the context of this verse says that there are many people on the outside of the temple and none of them are said to have seen the angel enter the temple, we can only assume that this angel from God steps out of the spiritual dimension and into the temple at the appropriate exact place and time. So what would be the normal human reaction to something like this?
Luk 1:12 And when Zacharias saw him, he was troubled, and fear fell upon him.
What would be your reaction if you were in a room alone and suddenly a man appears before you out of nowhere? You can certainly understand that this would be troubling to say the least. The natural human reaction would be the emotion of fear. As you study angels many times when they appear to humans, they would have to say to them “fear not”. In other words they were saying “we are not here to do you harm”. This is probably why angels are not sent more often by God. I just don’t think that people could handle the supernatural appearance of a spiritual being, even if they are sent from God.
Luk 1:13 But the angel said unto him, Fear not, Zacharias: for thy prayer is heard; and thy wife Elisabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John.
This angel starts speaking to Zacharias and tells him God has heard his prayers. We can obviously see an example of another angel being sent to the earth in response to words/prayers of a man in this example. I do want to point out that I do not believe that Zacharias prayed for God to send him an angel. I have not found any verses in the Bible that anyone ever prayed for God to send angels to help them. When Jesus was about to be crucified He did say this:
Mat 26:53 Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?
So Jesus said He could have prayed to His Father and God could have sent 12 legions of angels to help Him from being crucified. A legion can vary in numbers but generally it would be anywhere from 3600 to 6000 men in a roman legion. So you multiply that by 12 and you get a lot of angels. As you have seen two angels were sent to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah so that many angels would be a very strong force. It is interesting that Jesus said He could have done this but yet He never did. I would still say from the Bible that God says “Those who are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God”. Meaning we do not pray for guidance by angels. If God chooses to send you an angel, then it is probably for a bigger reason than you want to know right now.
We have not talked about Daniel yet, but God sends him an angel for his prayer also. We can very easily assume God has heard this man Zacharias’ prayers and has sent His messenger with the Words of God for him to hear. The angel continues to tell Zacharias what will happen in the next 3 or 4 verses. He is told that he will have a son and that he will be filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother’s womb. He will not eat or drink unclean things and he will lead many people to God. After hearing all of this Zacharias should have been very happy, however he starts to question the angel and basically asks “How do I know this is true?” That was the wrong question to ask the representative of God. Here is the angel’s response:
Luk 1:19 And the angel answering said unto him, I am Gabriel, that stand in the presence of God; and am sent to speak unto thee, and to shew thee these glad tidings.
The angel in effect says “Who do you think you are talking to?” He then tells us and him his name and his normal daily duties. This is the angel “Gabriel” and he normally stands in heaven in the presence of the Most High God. In other words God the Most High sent one of the highest angels to bring him a personal message concerning his prayers and he wants to question and doubt us? The angel implies “How do you think I knew about your prayers, what are stupid?” Ok, I added some of my thoughts and interpretations to that response, but you can certainly understand why. Zacharias was a priest of God was intimately familiar with the story of Abraham and Sarah and how old they were when they had their promised son Isaac. So why would this old man doubt God’s ability to do what he has already proved that he could do? Sarah was 90 years old when she had Isaac. Age is not a determining factor for God’s ability to answer your prayer. I believe this is what upset the angel more than anything; it was clearly Zacharias unbelief and total lack of faith in God that displeased God.
Luk 1:20 And, behold, thou shalt be dumb, and not able to speak, until the day that these things shall be performed, because thou believest not my words, which shall be fulfilled in their season.
So the angel gives Zacharias a sign that he was not expecting to happen. Here we have another example of the supernatural power of angels. In Genesis we saw how the angels blinded all of the men that wanted to have sex with them and here the angel tells Zacharias that he would not be able to speak until what was told him came to pass. What was the difference in this story and the story of Abraham? In Genesis God changed Abram’s name to Abraham which meant “Father of Nations”. So God got Abraham to believe what was said to him, but Zacharias did not believe so his mouth was shut. Abraham went around saying to everyone “My name is Abraham”, “I am the father of nations” which was what God said and then he had a son and it happened. Zacharias could have done the same thing if he would have just believed the angel. It is difficult not to talk about words even when you are studying angels because every subject in the Bible overlaps every other subject. Your words and your beliefs have a determining factor to what occurs in your life. Also note that the angel said that the words that he spoke would be fulfilled in the earth. God spoke what was going to happen through an angel in the earth and then it happened. Do you know this is how God works in our world? God sends His words first into the world and only then do they come to pass. We live within a Word Based World system. This is why Gabriel shuts the mouth of Zacharias so that he could not counter the words that were spoken to him with his unbelief. I could say a lot more on this subject, but I’m already off of the main subject of angels so I’ll leave it at that.
So the angel of God was named Gabriel and he had a problem and solved it by making Zacharias dumb. So again we see supernatural powers being exhibited by an angelic being. It is very interesting to note that the name “Gabriel” means “Man of God”. It also has root words meaning a “warrior” and “strength”. We can see from this information that again angels are not trivial beings to be ignored. It is also interesting that they are called “men”. If an angel appears to you and tells you that God has said something, I would suggest that you do not treat it with the same level of unbelief that Zacharias did. If you question the words make sure you ask the right questions. You might recall that when the angel appeared to Mary, she also questioned the words, but said it differently. She asked “how will this be since I know not a man”. That was a valid question and not one of unbelief. She just wanted to know how God was going to do what he said to her. Then after the angel told her how God was going to overshadow her with the Holy Ghost and she would conceive, then Mary said “Be it unto me as you have spoken”. In other words she said “I believe it”! Believing God is one of the most important things that you can ever do in life and this might have been the most important thing that I said in this whole lesson. Let’s talk about Daniel’s experience now:
Dan 10:11 And he said unto me, O Daniel, a man greatly beloved, understand the words that I speak unto thee, and stand upright: for unto thee am I now sent. And when he had spoken this word unto me, I stood trembling.
The angel Gabriel is sent to another man on the earth named Daniel. While it does not name Gabriel directly in this chapter you can see this is who it is by reading Daniel 8:16 and 9:21. Again Gabriel is being sent in answer to a man’s words/prayer. God directs the angel Gabriel to bring Daniel an answer and this story reveals to us that sometimes answers from God take “time”. We like to think that God lives outside of time and that God is omnipotent so He can do anything instantly, but this story proves God can’t do just anything in our world instantly like we would like to think.
Dan 10:12 Then said he unto me, Fear not, Daniel: for from the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand, and to chasten thyself before thy God, thy words were heard, and I am come for thy words.
As you can read and see when Daniel prayed the angel was sent by God on the very first day. However, we can learn in this chapter that Daniel has been fasting for 21 days before the angel actually shows up. That is the problem with many religious minded people’s theology. There is a 3 week delay from the time that Daniel prayed, God answered and the answer arrives. Why is that? That is the million dollar question of the day. You see this chapter tells us that the “prince of Persia” withstood the angel Gabriel from coming to Daniel. Persia of course is where modern day Iran is located. But, this is not a human being and it has to be a powerful spiritual being with a spiritual army of resistance to keep another powerful spiritual being from coming from heaven.
Here is the second most important thing that you should learn from today’s lesson. Did you notice what the angel said? The angel said I was sent for your “words”. Uh oh? We’re back to words again. Did you know that angels get assignments based upon your words? If you didn’t know this you just learned something new that is very important. We’ll definitely talk more about this later so let’s keep looking at the name of the new angel in this story.
Dan 10:13 But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me one and twenty days: but, lo, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me; and I remained there with the kings of Persia.
So God dispatches Michael another chief angel from heaven to help Gabriel to get to Daniel. So Michael and Gabriel are two chief named angels from God found in the Bible. The name “Michael” has the following meaning in the Hebrew “Who is Like God”. To me that tells me something new about angels. Angels are made in the image and likeness of God like men were. You can of course take this definition two ways I know, you could say it like a question or you can say it like a statement of fact. However we have one angel Gabriel that means “Man of God” and another angel named Michael that means “Who is Like God” and both of these have implications of our descendant Adam described to us in Genesis 1 and 2. So you do not have to believe it like I believe it but, based upon what we have learned I have to conclude that angels were created being before men and that they were made in God’s image first. They are also called a “prince” of God. You will see this is a term of authority and power. They are rulers of some dominion or domain that I have already alluded to in the first lesson. Since they came from heaven we can assume at least that this rule use to be the kingdom of heaven. But, God told us in Gen 1:16 that the Moon and the Stars will rule the night on the fourth day of creation. The Stars definitely symbolize angels. So the fourth day was a symbolic time of when Jesus came to the earth. However at this time of Daniel was before Jesus came to the earth and this prophecy of Genesis had not been fulfilled. I do not know if you understand that statement and I don’t have time to explain it. You are welcome to read my other blogs to see if you can grasp these concepts.
What we have seen is the names of two of God’s angels from heaven mentioned to us in the Bible directly. These are actually the only two angels of God that are directly named that I know of. The other angels mentioned in the Bible were angels of God, but have fallen so they are not God’s anymore and we will look at them briefly:
Isa 14:12 How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!
I believe that Lucifer is the name for Satan before he fell from heaven. I will do a more in-depth study of this spiritual being in a separate lesson. What I do want to point out in this verse is something I find very interesting. Lucifer is again called a son of God in this verse, but it is not a direct named instance. It is more a symbolic name based upon information from other verses in the Bible and it reveals something to us in it that we would not have fully known otherwise. What you surely realize is that God hides information in words using techniques that I describe in other blogs. In 1 John 1:5 we see a verse that says “God is Light”. Then what we learn from this verse in Isaiah is very important if you can accept it. The word “morning” means “early light”. This is a symbolic revelation of God and Satan. We know that God has neither beginning nor any ending and the Bible calls Him the “Ancient of Days”. All of this tells us that God has been around a very, very long time. But, if you think symbolically about a day cycle, when the sun comes up and then sun goes down; God is describing the timeframe of Satan’s creation using these terms of a symbolic day. God is saying Lucifer was a “son of the very early light”. This informs us that Lucifer has been around not as long as God has but so much longer than Adam or the rest of us could ever have imagined. Scientists tell us that the age of our universe is estimated to be in the billions of years. I imagine that Lucifer has been around at the very least that long and probably longer just based upon this simple information. It is important to note that Lucifer is called a son of God like we saw the other angels called in Genesis and Job. It is also important to note the meaning of the name “Lucifer”. The word “Lucifer” means to brightly shine as the morning star. Wow, that is an amazing statement that almost boggles my mind. You see in Revelation 22:16 Jesus says “I am the Bright and Morning Star”. How can both Lucifer and Jesus have the same names? That is of course a very difficult question to answer especially in a blog like this about angels so I will not even attempt to give you an answer to that. What I do want you to do is see the hidden complexity within the Bible and to show you that we have only scratched the surface to what is written there in and what it all means. So far we have seen angels named Gabriel, Michael and Lucifer so let’s continue quickly and look at the other name found in the Bible of angels:
Rev 9:11 And they had a king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon.
Here in Revelation 9 it speaks of too many things to go through them all. The book of Revelation is a heavily symbolic book of references. Most of this information found here is widely controversial since hardly anyone has been able to agree on what anything means. However, this error is mostly attributable to man’s private interpretations of God’s Word. What I see in this verse is the fact that God is speaking of an angel. This angel has a name and is called “Abaddon” in the Hebrew and “Apollyon” in the Greek. This name means “destroyer” or “destruction”. I am fairly convinced that this is just another name for Satan personally. I believe that Satan is the one that has destroyed kingdoms and laid waste to the earth making it null and void in Genesis 1:2. When I talk about Satan in the next lesson I will try to show you scriptures that seem to indicate Satan is responsible for these things.
So we have seen potentially 4 angels directly named in the Bible. Two Gabriel and Michael are on God’s side and the other two Lucifer and Abaddon are definitely not good angels.
We have learned a few new things in this lesson so let’s review them.
Angel (s):
- Have Names (Luke 1:19, Rev 9:11)
- Names mean something
- Gabriel means “Man of God”
- Michael means “Who is Like God”
- Are called Princes (those who rule under the King) (Daniel 10:13)
- Stand in the Presence of God (Luke 1:19)
- Can make people dumb (Luke 1:20)
- Lucifer was called a son of the early light (Isa 14:12)
- Lucifer means “Bright Morning Star”
- Abaddon means “Destroyer” (Rev 9:11)
- Are sent by God because of the Words of Men on the earth (Daniel 10:12, Luke 1:13)
- Bring messages from God and it matters if you believe them (Luke 1:18-19)
If you would like to continue reading this series you can go to “Part 4“.
Understanding Angels! The Angels in Sodom! Part 2
(Ver 1.1) This is Part 2 of a series of advanced studies about the reality of angels found in the Bible. If you have not read this series from the beginning I would strongly suggest that you go back and start with “Part 1”. In the first lesson I introduced you to some potentially new and very interesting concepts concerning angels. The Bible certainly has a lot of information on this subject so it is only a matter of researching and seeing what it says in order for us to better understand this subject. Today I want to start by expanding on the concepts that I gave you last time which stipulates that an angel can manifest in a physical form in our world. Today will be another witness to this fact. I believe that I clearly showed you scriptures in Genesis 6 that says the angels took human wives and had sex with them to create a race of giants. So we learned that angels in the Bible directly resemble human males on the earth. As you may recall the Hebrew word translated as “angel” is a word that means “messenger”. In today’s lesson we will further explore a basic reality that has some important concepts in it. In Genesis 19 we find the story of Lot in Sodom. Lot and his family had parted company from Abraham and moved near a city of the plain called Sodom. The next time we hear about Lot we find that Lot has moved into Sodom. It turns out that this was not a good choice for Lot to make. If it was not for Abram’s relationship with God, Lot would have been killed with all of the other people of this city. But, we might also not have Jesus coming into the earth either, since Lot was the primary ancestor of Ruth who marries Boaz and from them comes David the King and later Jesus of Nazareth. So that is where this next verse starts the story of the angels that visit Lot in Sodom:
Gen 19:1 And there came two angels to Sodom at even; and Lot sat in the gate of Sodom: and Lot seeing them rose up to meet them; and he bowed himself with his face toward the ground;
As you can see two angels have manifested or transformed into their physical form and can be seen in the physical dimension by Lot. I have to assume that angels have physical glorified bodies that have the ability to be visible to natural people or to somehow change and not to be seen by natural people. We know that Jesus today has a physical body, but it is a glorified natural eternal body. Jesus in this glorified body was able to suddenly appear inside a locked room of the disciples after His resurrection. Did Jesus walk thru the wall or just step into the 3 dimensional space at the just the right spot? You see I do not believe that we fully understand the 3 dimensional space concept fully. I believe you can find verses in the Bible that say this dimension can be folded up and that is a radical concept. Jesus then told Thomas to touch and feel Him for He said “a spirit does not have flesh and bone”. Jesus was saying I’m not a spirit alone, I have a physical body. So we know the glorified body of Jesus at the least had skin, flesh and bones like we do and we can only assume all of the features that we have. This could be like the bodies of angels also. I sometimes like to think that the natural realm is a dimension of space that spiritual beings like Jesus and angels are capable of stepping into or stepping out of upon their will. But, it is more complicated than that, because the unseen spiritual realm is also all around us in this natural realm that we live in. The Bible seems to indicate that there are disembodied spirits in our world today who do not possess a physical body as these angels appear to have. We will look at these beings in other lessons and we will further discuss these types of spirits, often called demons. These two angels in Genesis 19 just happen to come to the city in the evening and Lot is right there to see them coming. I never think that things like this are just coincidences. Lot is very gracious to them and I do not know if Lot knows if they are angels or not at the beginning of his conversation. I believe at the first, Lot did not know they were angels, but certainly at the end of the story Lot had no choice but to believe who they were. Lot at first was probably just being cordial and hospitable to some strangers that are new to the city of Sodom.
Gen 19:2 And he said, Behold now, my lords, turn in, I pray you, into your servant’s house, and tarry all night, and wash your feet, and ye shall rise up early, and go on your ways. And they said, Nay; but we will abide in the street all night.
Lot offers his house for them to stay the night since it is already very late in the evening. It almost appears that Lot understands the immoral condition of the city and the dangers that these strangers have come into it.
Gen 19:3 And he pressed upon them greatly; and they turned in unto him, and entered into his house; and he made them a feast, and did bake unleavened bread, and they did eat.
It fascinates me to no end that angels can eat physical natural human food. This just goes a little further to show us that our bodies are not an original design or the first of their kind. Angels existed before any humans existed. So God already had a pattern and a design to form the body of Adam. We know that Jesus after He was resurrected from the dead that He also ate physical food with His disciples (John 21:9-11). Apparently eating and drinking is something we will be able to do in heaven and throughout eternity even with glorified eternal bodies. Whatever we eat there I hope there are cakes a pies.
Psa 78:25 Man did eat angels’ food: he sent them meat to the full.
What is it that angels eat in heaven? God gives us at least a partial clue in this verse in Psalms. If you read the context of this verse it is speaking of God raining down manna from heaven to feed the children of Israel. This is clearly called angel food. So God’s mighty angels eat food even in heaven.
So we have seen and learned more information that angels have bodies that resemble our bodies. They are physical and their look and feel must be very similar to our bodies and they must be able to walk among us and us not even know that they were angels. Nowhere in this chapter does it say that these men glowed in the dark or radiated the glory of God or had any feature that made them different than us. Nowhere does it say that they had wings or any appearance that did not resemble our appearance totally and completely. These two angels here in Genesis 19, walked into the city like any other man would. They sat and ate dinner like any other man would. We have clearly seen that angels can eat human food and people can eat angel food. So these are some amazing facts found in the Bible to consider. So I think about stupid practical things sometimes. If angels eat natural food do you go to the bathroom like we have to? I do not technically know the answer to that question either. It would appear to me that if you eat something and put it into your stomach, something must happen to it. The natural stuff can’t just disappear and vanish? So to me there must be some digestive process and some waste process to function correctly. We have obviously seen that angels have the organs and bodily parts to produce semen so that means to me that they have other organs that are either similar or identical to ours also. These are just funny things that I ask myself and maybe these are things you have asked yourself also?
Gen 19:4 But before they lay down, the men of the city, even the men of Sodom, compassed the house round, both old and young, all the people from every quarter:
So I’m not planning on going through every verse in this chapter, just a few of the key verses, but continuing with the next verse you can see that it says the angels were going to lay down. Now that is not something I have ever thought of extensively, do angels sleep? Maybe they do and maybe they don’t and I cannot technically answer that either. I know the Bible says that in the New Jerusalem to come that there will be no night because the light of God will be our light for eternity. Was this the way it was in heaven before God created the earth? I guess we will continue with our story of Lot and Sodom. Now is where the story changes and is often used to teach about the perils of the homosexual life style. The men of the city witness the fact that there are two new men in town. So obviously they are visible to everyone and not just Lot and his family. This proves that they are physical and that they looked like everyone else in the city.
Gen 19:3 And he pressed upon them greatly; and they turned in unto him, and entered into his house; and he made them a feast, and did bake unleavened bread, and they did eat.
So the men of the city press Lot to know where the new men are that came into the city. This verse says that they want to “know” them. This does not mean to meet them and be friendly; it means to have homosexual sex with them. This is exactly why the angels were there in Lot’s house to begin with. These angels were sent to Lot to get him and his family out of the city before they destroyed it. We will soon see that more clearly as we proceed forward.
Gen 19:6 And Lot went out at the door unto them, and shut the door after him,
So Lot has a major problem, he goes to the men of the city and starts to talk to them to try to convince them to change their minds.
Gen 19:7 And said, I pray you, brethren, do not so wickedly.
Lot recognizes and knows of the evil of the city. Lot having lived in this city has known what they do to each other. This is one of the strongest witnesses in the Bible that homosexuality is a very perverted lifestyle and is wrong in the eyes of God. Homosexuality is an abuse of the design of God’s intended usage of the human body. Just as you can abuse drugs, alcohol, food, or anything else, you can abuse your own body. An abuse is always the use of something for a purpose that it is not designed for. People obviously just ignore verses like these in the Bible to promote and justify their own alternative modern life styles. It appears to me that these modern lifestyles are the same old lifestyles that were destroyed in the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. So Lot offers his virgin daughters to the men, but the men want only want more men. The lusts of the flesh are very strong in the world. Obviously these men had no self-control over their ways.
Gen 19:10 But the men put forth their hand, and pulled Lot into the house to them, and shut to the door.
Here is another verse that confirms that these angels are not just spiritual beings. They have physical presence to open the door and pull Lot back into the house and then to shut the door. But, physical or natural power is not all of the power that they have as we are about to discover:
Gen 19:11 And they smote the men that were at the door of the house with blindness, both small and great: so that they wearied themselves to find the door.
You see angels also have supernatural powers and that is very important to note. These angels came to Lot’s house on assignment from God to get him and his family out of that city. When confronted with a large crowd of men who wanted to have sex with them, the angels solved Lot’s problem by causing all of the men to be blind. Since they were unable to see Lot’s front door anymore, I guess sex was not as important to them as they thought before. It is funny how stupid people can be, isn’t it? As long is everything is normal they can only think about their desires, the only thing that these angels did was give these perverted men something new to think about and it was not a good thing for any of them. When I read accounts like this in the Bible, I try to relate the information to other spiritual beings. If God’s angels can cause physical changes to a body, can Satan and his angels also do this? We will see later in this series that Satan can.
Let me summarize the remainder of this chapter. The angels of God come and take Lot and his wife and two daughters out of the city by physical persuasion. It also says that two of Lot’s daughters were married and Lot could not convince them to leave the city. Their husbands thought Lot was crazy and it did not turn out very good for them. The angels actually tell Lot the following:
Gen 19:13 For we will destroy this place, because the cry of them is waxen great before the face of the LORD; and the LORD hath sent us to destroy it.
As we study angels in the Bible you will see that angels have significant supernatural power and ability. They are not something to ignore. They clearly have the power to destroy entire cities of the earth as this verse says. So we learn something new about angels, not only can they bring messages from God to people on the earth, but they can also fulfill assignments or tasks directed by God. In other words they can do the will of God to people on the earth. In this particular story God is the supreme Judge and has passed judgment upon the wicked people for their alternative lifestyles. God sends just two angels to destroy both cities completely. Certainly angels have great power especially when backed by God.
2Pe 2:11 Whereas angels, which are greater in power and might, bring not railing accusation against them before the Lord.
The Bible clearly teaches us that angels are not trivial little creatures. Just for grins I searched the internet for pictures of angels. Guess what I found? The majority of the pictures on the internet were cute little harmless looking winged creatures or female angels with beautiful features. I went through hundreds of pictures from people’s imagined conception of how they viewed angels and none of them match the Bible description of an angel which has great power and might. In 2 Peter 2:11 God tells us that angels are much stronger than we are. There really is no comparison to our might and their might and you should get a hold of this concept. You are no physical or spiritual match for Satan and his angels without God in you. Only with God the “Greater One” in you can you stand up to these spiritual beings. So let’s review a list of features and characteristics that we have clearly learned about angels in the Bible so far.
Angels:
- Are Called sons of God (Gen 6, Job 1, 2)
- Of God are different than other Angels not of God. (Gen 16:7)
- Are the Symbolic Stars of Heaven (Gen 1:16, Rev 1:20, Rev 12:4)
- Rule the Night with the Symbolic Moon (Satan). (Gen 1:16)
- Come From and live in Heaven (Heb 12:22)
- Number are innumerable for a man to count (Heb 12:22)
- Are used as Messengers For God’s Word to Man (Gen 16, 19)
- Have the ability to Travel from Heaven to the Earth and back (Job 1, 2)
- Can Manifest and be Seen by the Natural Eye (Gen 16, 19)
- Look Like Human Males (Gen 19:5)
- Walk Like Men (Gen 19:1, Job 1:7)
- Are Able to be physically touched. (Gen 19:16)
- Are Very Strong and Mighty (2 Peter 2:11)
- Were Sent to Destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. (Gen 19:13)
- Have Supernatural Powers (Gen 19:11)
- Can Eat natural Food (Gen 19:3)
- Have the Ability to Have Sex with Human Females (Gen 6:4)
- Produced a race of Giants in the Earth. (Gen 6:4)
- That Had Sex with Natural Women are Locked In Hell (2 Peter 2:4)
- Of Satan will be swept to the earth and their number is 1/3 of the total population. (Rev 12:4)
In the next lesson we will continue to discover more information about these spiritual beings, so I hope that you will continue reading. God Bless!
If you would like to continue reading the next lesson in this series you can go to “Part 3“.
Understanding Angels! A Bible Perspective to the Reality of Angels! Part 1
(Ver 1.2) This is “Part 1” in a study series on the subject of “angels” found in the Holy Bible from cover to cover and Genesis to Revelation. People generally do not believe in things that they have never seen or that they do not have any proof of existence. It is very much like the subject of God who is a Spirit (John 4:24) and many people do not believe in Him either. However, the Word of God known as the Bible says a lot about these spiritual beings, we call angels, and it informs us that they definitely are real and that they do certainly exist. The rest of this lesson will cover things found in the Bible about angels that you should know. Who are they, what are they, where did they come from, when did they come into existence, what is their purpose and whatever else God leads us to discuss about them. I personally know people who claim to have seen angels and their descriptions of these creatures are not like the fat little baby angels you see in many picture books or art diagrams. These creatures are generally very strong, large and tall. Their strength is so much greater than the strongest man on the earth that there is no comparison that can be made. In this lesson we will discuss a lot of scriptures and many of them you might or might not already know. However, I will probably say some things that you probably have never heard or thought about before, so you should read the entire lesson series before you pass final judgment. So let’s look at the first occurrence of the Hebrew word “H4397” that is translated as word “angel” in the English KJV Bible. The Strong’s definition for this word is “messenger”. In the ancient Hebrew lexicon this word is defined as “one who walks for another”. That appears to define one of the primary roles of angels in simple terms. If we search the Bible, we will find that the first direct mention of this word is found in verse 7 of Genesis 16:
Gen 16:7 And the angel of the LORD found her by a fountain of water in the wilderness, by the fountain in the way to Shur.
The Hebrew word translated as “angel” is used 213 times in the Old Testament. So, that is a lot of scriptures to read and learn from. But that is not all of the references that can be found in the Old Testament. This is because these beings go by many other names, titles, descriptions, symbols, etc. For example, the first time I noticed a reference for angels was in Genesis 1:16 as the mention of “stars”. This symbol for angels occurs especially in Revelation 12:4 where the tail of the dragon sweeps 1/3 of the stars from the heaven. Most wise Bible scholars agree these stars are references to angels using figurative language symbols.
There are at least two references to angels in Genesis 3. In verse 1, Satan is referred to as a symbolic “serpent”. Most should know Satan is the fallen angel named Lucifer, but we will hopefully go into this more later. Then in verse 24 of Genesis 3, we find God placing “Cherubim” with a flaming sword to guard the way to the tree of life. This is a specifically a ranking order within in whole of creation called angels. And this class of angels appear to have a different assignment and ranking than other angelic beings like a “messenger” class of God’s angelic creation. We will discover that God is a very organized creator. There will be angels of differing ranks and responsibilities.
All of this introduction information tells us that angels were widely active in the O.T. times and that these creatures are still implied to be active today based upon what we will find the book of Revelation described future. While not every occurrence is translated as “angel” of the Hebrew word, there are enough that are this way that I cannot mention them all.
As we learned, the word “angel” means “messenger” in the Hebrew; they are spiritual beings that are normally sent from God to deliver a message to man. So, an angel could be viewed as a “Word carrier”. You could also say a “Word courier” or someone who delivers God’s Words to the people on the earth. You could compare angels to an earthly company like “Fedex” who delivers messages around the world, but of course angels are much more than that as we will find out. It is interesting to note two things found in this verse. First is that God qualifies the word “angel” with “of the Lord”. Meaning there are other types of angels that are not “of the Lord”. We will discover more about this shortly, but note that God claims some angels to be His and others that are clearly not His. Later we will also see that within the organization of angels, there exist ranks, classes and orders.
The next thing that is interesting to see in this verse is the Hebrew Word translated as “found” in this verse. This word does not mean the angel had to search for Hagar to finally locater her. According to Strong’s this word means “to come forth”, “to appear” or “exist”. Did you know that you cannot normally see angels in the world, but that this does not mean they do not exist around us at all times? It is critical to note that this “angel of the Lord” came forth and appeared in the natural realm so that Hagar could see him and hear him with her physical eyes and ears.
What we will learn soon are that Angels are normally not visible, probably because they were created by God on a higher frequency of movement/vibration. All physical substance contains vibration frequencies. Some are more easily seen, and some are impossible to see with the unaided eye. But according to this verse and some other verses that we will look at later, God may cause or permit some angels to slow their spiritual frequency so that it allows them to become visible in the natural realm. This means that angels can be visible at times or be invisible at other times. How they do this, and it is accomplished, I have no idea?
There are many details in the Bible that we are not informed of directly and this is one of them. We have to assume that they have some power or ability that allows them to do this. You can read further in this chapter and also see that this angel of the Lord brings Hagar a message from God, and he informs her of what will happen to her and her son Ishmael in the future. God who sees the end from the beginning can tell you this information, but this is not the normal way that God does things most of the time; I believe that this is an exception to the way God does things.
So, we have just looked at the first direct reference in the Bible about angels, however this is not the first time they are mentioned in the Bible so we will back up in Genesis and read some new very important verses about angels. What you must realize when reading and studying the Bible, is that God calls the same things in the Bible by multiple names, titles, descriptions and each of these reveal new qualities or features of that person or object being referenced. So, let’s read a verse that reveals angels to us in a totally brand-new way:
Gen 6:1 And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them,
God starts this chapter by informing us that the children of Adam and Eve began to multiply upon the face of the earth. There were both males and females born to them and then these children married and had more children and thus continued the multiplication of the earth’s population. This is of course what God told Adam and Eve to do; to be fruitful and multiply, and to replenish the earth’s population. So, they were being obedient in this part of God’s commandments, I wonder why? Now we are going to get into the part about angels, for the preceding verse was put there to set up the next very important verse:
Gen 6:2 That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.
In the next verse in the Bible, we learn some very valuable information about angels. I’ll start by giving you the time frame for this information. These verses are occurring within the first 1000 years of human history. Since Adam lived to be over 900 years old, he must have come close to witnessing the beginnings of what was taking place on the earth during these verses. The very next thing that you should recognize is that angels are called “sons of God”. We know that Jesus was the Son of God, but notice angels are also called “sons of God. It is the same designation of title, but in an entirely different context. However, we know Jesus was God, but angels were never God. We know in Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14 that Lucifer was a created being. We also learn Lucifer was “anointed” by the Spirit of God. This would appear to indicate angles to be very similar to humans.
Notice this fact that the Bible calls us (the church) “sons of God” also (1 Jo 3:2). Why is this? This is directly attributable because God is called our “Father”. In Hebrews 12:9 God is called the Father of spirits. Angels are definitely spirit beings and people are spirit beings also, so God qualifies to be Father of both.
The next important thing to recognize about angels is that they can manifest themselves physically in this world as we saw with Hagar. But Genesis 6 provides greater details. It appears that angels can appear in the same form apparently as human males on the earth with the same sexual reproductive equipment. Some try to explain that these “sons of Gods’ are not angels, but you can see that they are by other verses in the Bible. This term “sons of God” is used only a very few times in the O.T. Other than twice in Genesis 6, the term “sons of God” can be found only three times in the book of Job when Satan appears before God and the “sons of God” come with him. Most knowledgeable Bible scholars will agree that this reference to “sons of God” is speaking of angels also.
It is very apparent in this verse that angels have physical bodies as well as spiritual bodies. I still believe this is just one body that is able to transition to slower frequencies that are visible in the created natural realm. However, angels are clearly not mortal like sinful fallen humans. Even angels that have sinned like Lucifer travel from the earth realm to the heavenly realm daily (Rev 12:10) I believe from what I have read in the Bible that angels are spiritual beings that are capable of traveling between the earth and heaven where the throne of God is located at their own will. I also believe that these angels can manifest themselves in a physical form on this earth when given a divine assignment. But Genesis 6 is an example of unlawful angelic manifestation in the physical realm as we will learn soon.
So, this verse in Genesis 6 says the angels of God looked at the women on the earth and thought they were “beautiful” and they took them for their wives and as we continue reading this caused a perverted race of human and angelic beings to come to be in the earth. It is interesting to note that it does not sound like these women had much choice in this matter. To me it sounds like a victory of the spoils of war type of mentality that came upon the angels. They clearly thought they had a right to these women. Knowing the strength and power of angels we can understand why. Read this next verse:
Gen 6:4 There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.
So, this is a very hard saying indeed. One that is truly difficult to comprehend. The “sons of God” are said to “come in unto” the daughters of men. This is a very interesting concept being given to us by God. It is spoken of in the terms of Noah “entering into” the ark (Gen 6:19). This means God views the woman’s sexual organ as a door into her body. In fact, it is designed by God as a two-way door; a man or angel enters in, and babies come out. These exact same words are used in Genesis 16:2 when Sarah tells Abraham “go in unto my maid” so that I may have children of her”. We can clearly see that this is natural sex using God’s perspective. So, we know that the angels (the sons of God) had physical sex with women on the earth and they created a race of giants.
I wonder sometimes, if there are male angels which clearly there are, do female angels exist? That is a question that I do not know the direct answer to yet. I do not ever recall reading any description of an angel in the Bible that resembled a female. But the Bible says that there are an innumerable number of these creatures in heaven, so we do not know everything, do we?
From my Bible studies I have to conclude that there are female angels but the only proof that I have found so far, is that the Bible says Heaven existed first and it is called the “Heavenly Jerusalem” (Heb 12:22) and this city seems to be a pattern of the one that God created on the earth that I call the “earthly Jerusalem”. If the earthly Jerusalem has females, I can only conclude logically that this was a repeated pattern of the original heavenly city Jerusalem also. So, in my opinion there has to be female angels, but I do not yet have a direct Bible verse for that yet, so you do not have to accept it.
Gen 6:4 There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.
So where did all of these giants come from that were in the earth? They had to come from the sexual union of Adam’s daughters (female descendants) and the angels (sons of God). It is very apparent to me that this union between God’s new creation and the angels was an illegal sinful act and a perversion of creation, that God would have to do something about. I can see two potential reasons for this union by angelic beings with humans. It appears to be motivated by their hatred of God and humans, using their willful and intentional act of rebellion to try to destroy God’s new creation. Some can try to say that Satan and the angels were attempting to pervert the bloodline of man, and this is the only reason for what they did. It is very easy to assume or jump to the conclusion that they were in effect attempting to eliminate the pure blood line for Christ to come into the world. However, I’m not convinced that Satan or any of the angels knew Jesus (God in the flesh) was coming into the world at that time. Remember there were no Bibles written when all of this was taking place. Moses wrote about this many years later for the first time.
So ,their motivation for taking human women could have been just a conquest or sexual desire and the fact that they thought and believed that they could get away with it. Angels, Satan and demons are not “all knowing” beings and God has not yet prophesied the Messiah to come in writing at this point of human time. It is true that the plan of God was already in place before the foundation of our world. However, there is no written word, no recorded law of God, no divine prophets speaking the word in the earth other than Enoch, that I know of. We do know that there were a few statements of God being spoken directly t Satan, Adam and Eve about the seed of the woman bruising the head of the serpent. And that is certainly motivational information that Satan knew someone was coming, because what is the seed of the woman? So, unless Satan understood what God was saying about the seed of the woman, how would Satan know to start corrupting this bloodline? We can assume that Satan understood the words of God and that is why the angels did what they did to the women on the earth, but I have no verses to confirm either of these motivations at this time.
In this same chapter of Genesis is the beginning of the story of Noah. I do not believe that this was just a coincidence. I believe that Noah was chosen by God to preserve the bloodline and the seed of Adam. God decided that He must intervene into this perversion by wiping out the human race with a universal flood. God selects Noah and his 3 sons as those who would preserve the seed of Adam. Looking at the genealogy of Jesus given to us in Luke 3, God shows us that Jesus mother Mary lineage goes all the way back to Adam through Noah and Shem who have preserved God’s plan. In other words, there are no angels in the line that Jesus came from. So, what happened to the angels that sinned and took the women of the earth as their wives? We are actually given a clue to this event in the N.T. when Peter writes the following:
2Pe 2:4 For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment;
God tells us that the angels who sinned were forcibly thrown into hell and bound with “chains of darkness”. It is interesting to note that this verse informs us something very important for you to understand. Angels, demons, and Satan have never been to hell, do not want to go to hell and are trying everything in their power to stay out of hell. Hell is not a good place that anyone that is halfway normal wants to be. Too many people think that Hell is Satan’s dominion or kingdom, but you can clearly read in Revelation that even Satan has to be forcibly thrown into this place. So, Satan and demons are not normal people, but they do not want to be in hell any more than I do. Think about it, Satan was used to walking streets of gold in heaven why would he want to go to hell? Did you notice that this verse said that these angels who sinned were cast into hell and chained so that they could not leave? Does that sound like they wanted to be there, it does not! The sin of the angels is not directly named in this verse found in 2nd Peter, but the next verse starts talking about Noah so we can clearly assume that the sin was having sex with the natural women on the earth when they clearly should not have in Genesis 6. It is not rocket science to read Genesis 6 and 2 Peter 2 and figure this out.
So here we have Genesis 6 the first occurrence or mention of angels in the Bible, or is it? You see I believe that the first mention of angels in the Bible is a symbolic occurrence way before this in the first chapter of Genesis. The first two chapters of Genesis is the account of the creation of our world. Within the first chapter of Genesis is a prophetic timeline of the entire history of mankind on the earth. If you do not understand that statement, you should read some of my other blogs on the subject. God uses symbolism in the first chapter from the things that are mentioned, and these things occur in a very specific ordered timeline that reveals a lot of great information to us. I believe the first reference to angels occurs in verse 16 of Genesis 1:
Gen 1:16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
Where are the angels you ask? That is the tricky part of the mysteries within the Bible; God has hidden significant information within verses that we do not understand until He reveals them to us. In this verse God speaks of three heavenly objects found in our sky. Did you notice I said “Heavenly”? Where is God’s throne? God’s throne is in “Heaven”. So, we have three natural symbols that convey spiritual beings and meanings. I will not discuss the sun or the moon in this lesson, if you need to know who these objects represent you should go read some of my other lessons. However, the “stars” are innumerable in our night sky. That is a key word that describes the angels in heaven.
Heb 12:22 But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels,
God tells us in Hebrews that Heaven contains an innumerable number of angels. This means that God only knows the number of them, and we just do not have the time to count them all. In other words, the number of angels is not an infinite number; it is just a very big number. So here is the reason that I bring “stars” into today’s lesson. If you read later in the Bible in Revelation, you will see how important it is note:
Rev 12:4 And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born.
As you can clearly see the tail of the symbolic dragon who is revealed to be Satan causes a 1/3 part of the stars of heaven to fall to the earth. These are not real stars in our night sky; these are only symbolic stars that represent angels. In the Bible “stars” many times represents angels symbolically. This is definitely true in Genesis 1 and Revelation 12 and many other places also. In this verse of Revelation, it clearly tells us that the number of the angels is not an infinite number because a specific fraction 1/3 of them is fallen from heaven to the earth. If you can divide a number by 3 you have to know what that number is that is being reduced. Again, this is just basic logic and the laws of mathematics.
This has been a basic introduction to the subject of angels using the Bible. I have only speculated about one thing and that is I believe that there must be female angels but that I have not found a direct Bible verse to prove that. The other facts in this lesson definitely are scripture-based teachings found in the Bible. We have learned that there are many angels that exist, in fact more than we can count, however not as many as God can count. We have learned that some of these angels do not belong to God anymore. Those that are faithful to God are numbered in terms of 2/3 of the total population of angels. The other 1/3 of the angels we are told are cast down to the earth. We also learned from Peter’s writings that some angels have already been cast into hell for creating a perverted race of beings in an attempt to corrupt the seed of Adam. So we have seen two witnesses so far that say that angels can manifest themselves in physical forms in our world. That is a very important fact to keep in mind. Here is another witness to this fact:
Heb 13:2 Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.
I’ll end today’s lesson with this thought, God says for us to treat strangers like they could be a heavenly representative from God. It is very clear to me that God is saying you never know who you are entertaining and that they could potentially have a message for you from God. I base this on the fact that I believe that an angel’s number one assignment is to be a messenger of God since that is what the name “angel” means. We will discuss more scriptures about angels in my next lesson and hopefully see what else the Bible says that they can do. God Bless!
If you would like to continue reading this series about angels, you can go to “Part 2“.
Myths about Jesus in the Gospels? A Rich Jesus vs. a Poor Jesus?
(Ver 1.3) This is Part 1 in a series of advanced Bible lessons on “Myths taught about Jesus” in the modern church. There are a number of things taught from the Bible that are clearly fabricated by the devil to discredit the identity and character of the real Jesus of the Bible. By portraying a fictional Jesus, Satan can keep the church from seeing, seeking and following the examples of the true Jesus. For example, it is widely preached and taught in many churches that Jesus was a very, very poor man and did not own anything of value. However, is this really what the Bible teaches us or is this just what Satan wants you to think so that he can keep you poor in the world today? What advantage does Satan gain by portraying a poor Jesus to the church? I believe that as long as Christians think Jesus was poor they will follow in his example to remain the same. Poor Christians are ineffective and unable to be a blessing to others and therefore very harmless to Satan or even to help the lost unsaved people under his control. Satan desires every Christian to take a vow of poverty to go and live in common dwelling community with others in the same way. In doing this they are unable to feed the poor or help preach the Gospel to the world on the outside. Poor nations are the same type of pattern in this world as poor Christians. This is very evident in the displayed wealth distribution of the nations as studied on the internet. Only the richer strong nations can be a factor to effect any positive change to any other nation that needs help. The poorest nations are the ones that are found the homeless, starving people that are begging for the other nations to come and help them. This is why Satan causes many churches to promote a false Mother Theresa type of sainthood thinking it to be the perfect model type of a real Christian. There are just too many churches that promote a vow of poverty philosophy and somehow believe that this self-imposed vow of suffering makes their people more pious or worthy of being saved. However, I’ve got bad news for you, if Mother Theresa would have had 5 billion dollars to help poor people she would have been much more effective and reached so many that she was never able to reach. Bill Gates helps more poor people than Mother Theresa will ever dream of. There is just no substitute for having money in this world to help and bless other people. Of course money without knowing God is completely worthless. I am not a prosperity preacher or teacher. I hardly mention money on my website and I never ask you to send me anything. Therefore, do not put me into a category of any other stereotyped Bible teacher. I simply like to look for what the Bible says and then teach that regardless of the message. If the Bible said that Jesus was poor then that is exactly what this lesson would be about. How about we just find out what God says in His Word and believe that. Can we just do that?
If you do not have any money or do not work to earn any money then you are living in poverty and usually called a beggar that is seeking and asking churches, charities, relatives, other people or the government for a free helping handout just to eat and to survive. Is that what Jesus did? Can you search the gospels and ever find Jesus begging from anyone? I mean try to find it and then tell me where it is. There are at the minimum two different ways to learn from the Bible. You can learn from what the Bible directly says or you can learn from what it does not directly say. If the Bible does not teach us that Jesus begged then why would you think that you should beg? This type of baseless poverty Jesus teaching would be very much like teaching since the Bible never teaches us that Jesus went to the bathroom, we must all not go to the bathroom and hold it to be like Him. No this is the challenge of resolving our ignorance to allow us to become realistic in our beliefs to see what the Bible actually says about how Jesus never begged for anything and then find out how that applies to us. So I want to take you through some scriptures in the Bible and show you some new perspectives on some things that should hopefully permit you to find and see the real Jesus of the Bible. You will soon find that this real Bible Jesus was not a poor man who owned nothing. Please let me show you in the Bible:
Mat 2:11 And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh.
There are many verses in the Bible that I could start with, but I’ll start with this one in Matthew about the men from the east coming to visit baby Jesus after He was born. If you read you will find that these men traveled a great distance because they had seen His star in the east and they followed it to where Jesus was. Most Christma manger scenes have Jesus being born in a stable in Bethlehem with the animals that were present and they have the wise men coming to the manger with their gifts. However, did you notice in this verse in Matthew 2:11 that these men came to see Jesus in a house? There was no manger in this verse or the context. Apparently from this information we can see that Jesus at the very least was a child who lived in a house with his mother and father. So far this is not a homeless and destitute poor Jesus that we have been taught, is it? Next did you notice what these men brought to Jesus? It says they brought gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. That does not sound like a poor Jesus either? So if men traveled a great distance to see a newborn king, would they have brought small insignificant trivial gifts or large extravagant gifts fit for a living king? What would impress the family? If you do not believe me try taking a wrothless gift to the queen of England and see how it is received. You are foolish not to believe a gift for a king has to be great. Therefore, I do not think that Jesus was either homeless or poor as a child growing up; I hope you can see what the Bible says also.
Let’s shift gears to the older Jesus and see what the Bible says about the men that Jesus chose to hang around with. One of the key men that Jesus personally selected was a man called Peter. Peter was a key figure and we can learn a lot about him in the Bible. Peter was married, a fisherman with his brother and he lived in and owned a house:
Mat 8:14 And when Jesus was come into Peter’s house, he saw his wife’s mother laid, and sick of a fever.
So reading about Peter in the Bible we can clearly see that Peter was a businessman who made a living and had a job and thus was not homeless or a man of poverty. Jesus came into Peter’s house and healed his mother-in-law. So the house was large enough to accomodate more than just his wife. Jesus did not pick men who were homeless and poor to associate with, so why do people think Jesus was homeless and poor? Somehow it makes people feel good on the inside to think that Jesus had nothing, owned nothing to depended upon others for everything that He needed. This is exactly how Satan wants you to envision your Jesus so that you will never rise above the level of His poor example.
So do you think that Jesus ever owned a physical house and dwelling place? Some place where He lived for three years? An actual building called a home built with walls, windows, doors and a roof, in some city? If not then where would our Jesus live, sleep, eat or rest? Does He just sleep outdoors on the ground? Does He beg to sleep in other people’s houses? Maybe He just slept in someone’s barn. I do not know why people like to think that Jesus went from place to place sleeping under the stars for at least three years? Remeber that the ministry duration of Jesus was somewhere near three years of time. I cannot only assume that people read the Bible with dark goggles on so they do not have to see what is actually written there. They have created a Jesus in their minds and are quite content with keeping Jesus in their cramped little box of limitations. You would truly be amazed at what the Bible actually says if you would open your eyes and see it! Let me give you a verse found in Matthew to start with:
Mat 9:1 And he entered into a ship, and passed over, and came into his own city.
What does it mean if Jesus crosses over in a boat in order to get to His “own city”? It sounds like that was Jesus’ hometown, doesn’t it? The term “own” is a possessive pronoun and this town was the town that Jesus lived in and possibly even owned a home in. If I called you on the phone and you were my friend and I said “I’m back in town”, you know from that statement that I was gone from town but that I have now returned back home. So did you know that Jesus had his own city to return to? Well I’m about to show you some additional verses that will help us confirm this reality:
Mar 2:1 And again he entered into Capernaum after some days; and it was noised that he was in the house.
Capernaum was a seaside city on the north end of the Sea of Galilee, thus Jesus entered back into the city by boat as we just read about in Matthew. This verse in the book of Mark says there went out rumors spreading everywhere that Jesus was in the house. Uh oh? Further, notice that these rumors took several days to be spread, so Jesus has been in this house for at least that length of time. Whose house was this? Who did this house belong? That sounds pretty bad for the poor homeless Jesus proponents and teachers. If you knew I was gone out of town and drove by my house, could you tell when I got back home? More than likely you could! However, in Jesus’ day you could not just drive into town incognito unless you walked in, in the middle of the night when everyone else was asleep. So according to this verse Jesus comes to Capernaum in a boat and people see Him arrive and start spreading the word to all of their friends that “Jesus is home”. To be “In the house” you have to logically conclude that this was Jesus’ house that they are talking about, otherwise which house in a city of hundreds or even thousands of houses are they speaking of? You just cannot say that Jesus is in the house if you do not already know which one it is! So far this is just very basic simiple logic reached by observing what is stated in the Bible, it is not that difficult, but admittedly it can be easily explained away for those who refuse to see it.
Mar 2:2 And straightway many were gathered together, insomuch that there was no room to receive them, no, not so much as about the door: and he preached the word unto them.
So technically speaking it does not say this house belongs to Jesus, but then again it does not say that it doesn’t either. If you read the context there is no mention of any owner and I believe that is very important to note. So we have to use our brains in order to figure out the truth. Jesus is in a house and a large number of people hear that Jesus is present to be found there and they just happened to show up automatically at just the right house. How do all of these people know which house if this is not Jesus’ house? Uh oh? Here we have another problem for those who want to believe in a poor homeless Jesus. No this verse says so many people showed up, that they could get anyone else in the house, so they had to stand outside the door to hear His words. Then there comes 4 more men carrying a lame friend to get Jesus to heal him. How did these 5 men know what house to come to and why were they there? When they arrived at the house they could easily look at the house and all of the people knowing, yes Jesus is in the house. I conclude formthis that they knew He was home again because we can soon see that they were going to do whatever it took to get their friend healed.
Mar 2:4 And when they could not come nigh unto him for the press, they uncovered the roof where he was: and when they had broken it up, they let down the bed wherein the sick of the palsy lay.
You see here is the major problem that I have discovered about this story in the Bible. If this was my house that I owned and Jesus was just visiting with me for a few days and four idiots come tearing a huge hole in my roof what would you have done to stop them from tearing up your house? Do you know there is no mention that anyone was upset that 4 guys just tore a big hole in the roof to lower their buddy down in? I find that omission totally fascinating to say the least. To me the lack of anyone complaining just confirms that Jesus the healer was in His own house and He did not mind when He saw these men’s faith to get their friend healed. That is the only logical explanation of how everybody knew where Jesus was and why no one cared when the house was broken into and modified with a huge new sky light large enough to lower a crippled man. Let’s read down now in the same chapter and see what else Jesus does in his home city.
Mar 2:14 And as he passed by, he saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the receipt of custom, and said unto him, Follow me. And he arose and followed him.
Jesus is said to be walking in His city again and finds a man named Levi and tells Levi to “follow me”. Right there let’s analyze that statement; if Jesus wanted to go to Levi’s house would Jesus have said “follow me”? To me Jesus would have said “let’s go to your house and I’ll follow you”. Things in the Bible need to make sense when we read them. The verses present us with limited factual information and we are required to read the facts and use the information to make a determination of what is stated. L’et’s read the following verse and see what is said next:
Mar 2:15 And it came to pass, that, as Jesus sat at meat in his house, many publicans and sinners sat also together with Jesus and his disciples: for there were many, and they followed him.
Hopefully you can see my problem? Whose house is Jesus now eating in? Did Jesus lead Levi to Levi’s house expecting Levi to feed everyone? Or did Jesus take Levi to Jesus’ house and there they all sat and ate together. The phrase “his house” is one that must be directed at Jesus and not at Levi since Levi is never mentioned in this verse. But, you see we could easily take this verses either way and almost be right. However, only one way is right and the other was must be wrong. Two truths can never exist from one statement. Did you notice how many people were present? Did you notice all of the disciples and Jesus were present and we know Levi was also there if he followed Jesus and now we can read that publicans and sinners were also there. That really sounds like a big group and not a small house at all.
Mar 2:16 And when the scribes and Pharisees saw him eat with publicans and sinners, they said unto his disciples, How is it that he eateth and drinketh with publicans and sinners?
So poor Jesus proponents and teachers have more problems to try to explain away. I’ll start by asking you how did the Scribes and the Pharisees know where Jesus was eating? Are they following Jesus around? From my current understanding of Bible history the city of Capernaum was not a tiny 4 or 5 house community. It must have had a significant population with many families and houses in it. We can clearly see from this information that Jesus was eating in a house with a lot of people being present and while others simultaneously watching him and knowing where He was located. From what I have just read, I am convinced that Jesus was a man who owned a house in the city of Capernaum and that many people knew Him and exactly where He lived. This is really the only explanation that makes sense of how people kept finding Jesus in a big city. You of course have the option to remain ignorant and believe whatever you like.
Mar 6:4 But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house.
If you read the Bible like you want to believe that Jesus was homeless you have to ignore a lot of the Bible to establish that belief. In this verse Jesus is speaking and He says some very profound words. Jesus was the Prophet that He is talking about in this verse. Did you know that Jesus was a prophet? The prophet’s office was just one position that He held, but nevertheless that is one title that He called Himself. This Prophet was said to have no honor among the people who knew Him personally. These people were His neighbors and relatives who knew Him and knew where He lived. These were the people who recognized Him when He walks down the street. These were the people who can see when He enters into the house where He lives and they knew exactly which house it was. These were the people who look at Jesus as being a regular human like them. Because the do not know Him as the Son of God, they hold no place of honor for Him in their heart because He appears to be exactly as they were in every way. To be exactly like them meant that He works, He eats, He sleeps, He goes to the bathroom and He lives in a house just like they did. Do you understand these basic things? They do not see Jesus with a halo around His head and they do not see Jesus walking above the ground where He does not leave any footprints. Jesus was not surrounded with angels. His faced did not glow. Jesus looked normal, acted normal and lived normally. Jesus was a man in complete normalcy like everyone else in appearance. Furthermore Jesus himself just spoke some words and said that He owned a house. Did you notice that? The Greek word G3614 translated as “house” literally means a residence. The inclusion of a personal pronoun of “own” before the noun house (residence) conveys ownership responsibility and is directly associated to the speaker of the words and that was clearly Jesus.
Mat 12:46 While he yet talked to the people, behold, his mother and his brethren stood without, desiring to speak with him.
Here is another very interesting verse that I found about Jesus. Jesus is in a house talking with some people and suddenly His mother and His half-brothers suddenly appear asking to talk to Him standing outside of the house. If this is not Jesus’ house where He lived, how do these close relatives know where to find Him? You can clearly see the difficulty that I have with people’s interpretation that says Jesus did not own a house. If His mothers and His brothers could come to exactly where He was and request a meeting, they had to know where to go. Jesus instead of going to speak to his natural family looked around the room and said those that do the will of my Father, you are my mother, my sister and and brother and then a couple of verses later you will read this:
Mat 13:1 The same day went Jesus out of the house, and sat by the sea side.
Again, we have to conclude that Jesus owned this house that He keeps being associated with near the sea. If Jesus is seen exiting a house and sitting by the sea, we know this is Jesus’ house in Capernaum that He is seen leaving from. There are certainly many more verses like these that I could go through to show you that Jesus did own a house, but I will leave it at that. It really doesn’t matter if you show people two verses or forty verses, if they do not want to see the truth, they will always ignore whatever you give them. Let’s change the subjecvt from houses to moeny and see another perspective of Jesus.
I want you to think about this, did Jesus ever have any money? We know there was one case in the Bible that says when Jesus was forced to pay taxes that He told Peter to go to the sea and catch a fish and use that money in the fish’s mouth to pay the tax. So stories like that are used by people to promote a poor Jesus who did not carry money around with Him. But, did you know that the disciple Judas was said to be the treasurer for Jesus and the other disciples (John 13:29)? Do you need a treasurer if you have no money? In fact if you search and can read the Bible, you will find out that Judas was a thief and he was able to steal money from Jesus and the disciples without anyone else knowing it (John 12:6). Did you know if Jesus only had a little bit of money and Judas took a little bit of it out, it wouldn’t be easily missed? But, if Jesus had a whole bunch of money in the bag and Judas slowly took out a little here and a little bit there, it would never be missed by anyone? So to me using this story of Judas alone we discover that Jesus did carry large sums of money so a little bit is never missed. Let me show you another story in the Bible about this large sum of money that Jesus and the disciples carried around with them:
Mar 6:36 Send them away, that they may go into the country round about, and into the villages, and buy themselves bread: for they have nothing to eat.
We have an interesting story of many people following Jesus in the wilderness. In the Bible verse before this one it says that it is very late in the day and the disciples come to Jesus and ask Him to send the people away so that they can still make it home to get something to eat. However, Jesus had a different lesson to teach them and said this:
Mar 6:37 He answered and said unto them, Give ye them to eat. And they say unto him, Shall we go and buy two hundred pennyworth of bread, and give them to eat?
Jesus tells the disciples to get all of the people something to eat and since there were thousands of them, the disciples ask Him a very strange question for poor homelss men. If these disciples did not have in their possession 200 pennies to buy this bread they would have said let’s go take up a collection so that we can go buy them some bread. But, they did not say that did they? They asked Jesus, do you want us to go and spend 200 pennies to buy all of these people bread to eat? The Bible tells us that there were approximately 5000 men in this group and we know these men had wives and children so there could have been 15000 people there around Jesus. Let me ask you this question, what would it cost you if you took 15000 people to McDonald’s and bought them all a burger? It would take a whole bunch of money to feed that many people. So why would the poor disciples ask Jesus if He wanted them to go and buy food for all of them, if they did not already have the money to do it? You see that would really be a stupid question to ask wouldn’t it. The disciples were not stupid and they were not poor either so get over it and see what the Bible says about money. The disciples had enough money on them to feed everyone, but still there were no bread stores in the wilderness to buy this food, so Jesus goes with His original plan of multiplying the loaves and fishes of a boy’s lunch. The discipiles could have solved the problem in a natural way, but Jesus was teaching them a supernatural method of supply.
I’ll end today’s leson with one more example of how Jesus was not a poor man. When Jesus was crucified it tells us that there were some soldiers who divided up what Jesus was wearing. Since Jesus was hanging on the cross naked about to die, He would have no further need of any of the items and the guards saw a great opportunity to profit:
Joh 19:23 Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took his garments, and made four parts, to every soldier a part; and also his coat: now the coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout.
Jesus was wearing a seamless coat that was woven in one piece from top to bottom it says. You probably do not understand the significance to that statement. It means His coat was very valuable. This was the coat of a wealthy man, a king or someone of great status in the city or country. Not everyone possessed a coat such as this, because it took a lot of money to buy one. Evidently if Jesus was poor where did He obtain such a piece of clothing? Someone tried to tell me that this valuable robe was the garment placced upon him by Pilate, but if you go read closely that robe was not a gift but a temporary robe placed to mock Him (Mat 27:31). This royal mocking robe was removed after the mocking and it did not go to the cross. Thefore, the coat that the soldiers were gambling over had to have been owned by Jesus.
Joh 19:24 They said therefore among themselves, Let us not rend it, but cast lots for it, whose it shall be: that the scripture might be fulfilled, which saith, They parted my raiment among them, and for my vesture they did cast lots. These things therefore the soldiers did.
You see the soldiers recognized the value of the coat and said let’s not tear it up! Let us gamble for it so that one of us can use it like it is. For the soldiers to gamble for something that is worthless would be illogical or foolish; so they had to know that the coat was a very valuable item and something that they could not afford even with their salaries from the Roman Empire. This information about Jesus does not go along with the Mother Theresa type of poor Jesus that many people want to follow. There are many other Bible verses that I failed to mention, but I gave you enough references to get you to think and hopefully change your poverty mentality away from the poor Jesus to change it to the real Jesus. You see I do not believe that Jesus was Bill Gates or Warren Buffet while on the earth. However, I also do not believe that Jesus went about as a homeless man in absolute poverty either. You can see too many examples of Jesus beginning with His birth all the way to His death and never is it said that He was poor. Jesus is portrayed in the Bible as being more in the range of an upper middle class man and never a poor homeless man in the Bible. I hope that you can see it with your own eyes and definitely spend more time reading the Gospels for the real Jesus. Thanks for taking the time to read and study the Bible and if you have any questions or comments you are welcome to share them. God Bless!
If you would like to continue reading in this series about Myths of Jesus taught in the Church you may continue to “Part 2“.
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“.
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“.
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!
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