They Understood Nothing

It was not just Jesus’ prophecies of the rising from the dead or his statements about having come down from heaven that the disciples could not understand.

John 10:1–6

“Truly, truly, I tell you, he who doesn’t enter through the gate into the sheepfold, but climbs up at some other place, is a thief and a robber.  He who enters through the gate is the shepherd of the sheep.  The gatekeeper opens for him, and the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.  And once he has driven out his sheep, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice.  They will never follow a stranger, but they will flee from him because they don’t know the voice of strangers.”  Jesus spoke this allegory to them, but they did not understand the things that he said to them.

Truths that we all now take for granted, people of Jesus’ time on earth had never dreamed of and could not imagine.

Be thankful.  You live in an amazing time.

Redemption in Two Parts

The redemption of the soul happens now, in this life.  The redemption of the body is still to come; that will be our salvation.

The Redemption of the Soul Happens Now

Ephesians 1:7 PJV

7. [Jesus Christ] in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the richness of His grace.

Colossians 1:14 PJV

14. [God’s beloved Son] in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

1Peter 1:18–19 PJV

18. You were not redeemed from your worthless way of life, received by tradition from your fathers, with corruptible things such as silver or gold,

19. but with the precious blood of Christ, as of an unblemished and spotless lamb.

The Redemption of the Body Will Be Our Salvation

Romans 8:23–25 PJV

23. We who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, also groan within ourselves, eagerly awaiting the adoption, the redemption of our body.

24. For we are saved by hope, but hope that is seen is not hope, for what someone sees, why does he still hope for it?

25. But if we hope for that which we do not see, then with patience we eagerly wait for it.

Ephesians 4:30 PJV

30. Do not grieve the holy Spirit of God, by which you were sealed until the day of redemption.

“Would Jesus save me if he came today?”

     Many of us have had that question come up in our hearts.  And we have certainly hoped that Jesus would indeed save us if he came today.

Recently, the Lord gave me another question which will help us determine the answer to that first one.  It is this: “Would Jesus give me the holy Ghost today if I did not have it?”

If Jesus would give you the Spirit today if you were seeking it, then he would save you today if he came.  Would you be given the holy Ghost today?

“I Don’t Care”?

Many years ago now, I heard a lively congregation in Kentucky sing a peppy old gospel song which included the line, “I don’t care what this world says about me. . . .”

Those words can encourage sincere saints to be strong and faithful, but most of the people who have sung that song over the years were only puffing themselves up in singing it, for the world wasn’t really saying anything about them.  They were singing about an imaginary persecution, and boasting of an imaginary courage in the face of it.

We cannot really know whether or not we care what the world says about us until the world says something about us.  Until then, our task is to do the will of God so that we earn the test of genuine persecution, and if we do the will of God, that test will surely come.  And when that persecution comes, we will then, for the first time, know whether or not we care what the world says about us.

If the world has not yet said anything about you, please sing that old hymn prayerfully, asking God for grace to let those words prove true when your time comes to be tested.

Preserving the Treasures of the Gospel

January 2, 2018

I have spent the last ten days or so traipsing through antique ruins of Rome, “the eternal city”, straining my neck to view the tops of majestic monuments, trudging for hours over rocky paths and roads, climbing several of Rome’s famed seven hills, and squinting into dim underground caverns to glimpse graves deserted of the corpses they used to cover.  I have meandered through galleries viewing broken bits and pieces of a culture which many think is extinct but is actually well-preserved in a different form by those who are its heirs.  Much of what I saw would normally be cast aside as worthless junk, but through the efforts of lovers of that past, it is revered, fenced off, and presented as a precious testimony to a special life and time.  Dirty pieces of that past, all but insignificant even when new, are now encased, guarded, and allowed to be viewed only by those who pay the price of admission.  The enormous expense – gladly paid – and the enormous effort – gladly made – to preserve these ruins is part of the glorification of the culture whence those objects came.  Nothing of it that remains is deemed unimportant; indeed, it is all esteemed as nearly sacrosanct.

I have at least one thing in common with the spiritual descendants of Rome.  They glorify Rome and are devoted to perpetuating that Empire in its revised form, Christendom.  Their predecessors long ago blended Roman culture with the faith of Christ to produce the world’s greatest religion, Christianity, to which well over a billion people on earth now belong.  I am devoted, just as Christians are, to preserving something that existed two thousand years ago.  I know how it feels to be devoted to an ancient thing, to treasure the least bits of it.  I know the passion; I feel the same compulsion to go to any expense and to make every effort to preserve what my heart esteems as precious.  But the object of my devotion is not Roman culture or the religion that came from it; rather, the object of my devotion is the pure and simple gospel of Christ.  I do not glory in grand basilicas of the past or present, or in ancient or modern epitaphs, mosaics, or statues.  I glory in the love of God revealed to us through Christ and the apostles.  Every truth of Christ that I have learned is encased within my heart; I contemplate its beauty for hours.  I marvel at the gospel’s majesty, which, unlike Christian monuments and art, has not faded, though men have often plastered over its beauty with their doctrines, and covered its gold with the silt of vain traditions, and even though Christianity itself has many times attempted to eradicate it from the earth by persecuting those who treasured it.

It is my chief joy to discover any bit of the truth, any remnant of the true gospel, and I am constantly and diligently searching for it.  You are also invited to do so.  And you are promised that “if you cry after knowledge, and lift up your voice for understanding, if you seek her as silver, and search for her as for hidden treasures”, then you will find Christ, the hidden wisdom of God.  Please let me know what you find so that we may rejoice together.

Morning Proverbs

I awoke early one morning, and one proverb after another started coming to me.  Here are a few of them.  You do it!  Come up with proverbs of your own and let us hear them!

Keep your heart as pure as snow;

Out of it life’s issues flow.

Close the door to sin and shame;

Walk with God in Jesus’ name.

Hide yourself in light and love,

Thinking on the things above.

There is nought but One to fear;

Best to keep Him ever near.

In the light there is no death;

Hold it dearer than your breath.

Here is something always true;

God will judge the deeds you do.

Who has peace with God is blessed;

He will know eternal rest.

In the way of lasting life

There is neither sin nor strife.

Blessed the place to be subdued,

All He says to us we do.

The Burden of the Lord

The phrase “burden of the LORD” means “message from the LORD , and in the kingdom of God, it is a capital crime for a man to call his own ideas “the burden of the LORD”.  Israel had its share of false teachers who called their own ideas “the burden of the LORD”.

“And as for the prophet, and the priest, and the people, that say, ‘The burden of the LORD!’  I will punish that man and his house, and ‘the burden of the LORD’ shall you mention no more.  But because you say, ‘The burden of the LORD!’, and I have sent to you saying, ‘Do not say, “The burden of the LORD”!’ therefore, I will utterly forget you, and I will forsake you, . . . and cast you out of my presence” (Jer. 23:34, 38–39 KJV).

False teachers still claim to be bearing the burden of the LORD to the people who hear them, but it is really their own burden.  And they will make you carry that heavy burden for them if you believe what they say:

“Woe to you experts in the law!  You burden men down with burdens hard to bear, but you yourselves don’t touch the same burdens with one of your fingers!” (Lk. 11:46).

The true word of God is the easiest burden to carry.  Jesus told us so when he said that the doctrine he taught was not his, but God’s (Jn. 7:16), and that the burden with which God sent him to us was easy to bear:

Matthew 11

28. Come to me, all who labor and are heavily laden, and I will give you rest!

29. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and you shall find rest for your souls,

30. for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

One Creator

“There is no new thing under the sun.”

Solomon, in Ecclesiastes 1:9

There is only one Creator.  He created a Son first, and then chose to create everything else through that Son (Jn. 1:3), but even at that, the Son was limited to the power the Father gave him.  He could not go beyond it, and he did only what his Father wanted done.  While on earth, the Son openly and repeatedly confessed his utter dependence on God.  He understood well that no one but God is Creator.

In Ecclesiastes 3:11, Solomon made a strange statement.  He said that God has set eternity in men’s hearts, “so that man can’t find out the work that God has done from the beginning even to the end.”  It is a difficult phrase to understand, but I believe that Solomon was pointing out the inescapable fact that we cannot by any means go beyond the universe within which God has created us.  We have no power or wisdom that will take us beyond this creation; we cannot even think of anything beyond it.  In that regard, it can be said that no one has ever had a creative thought.  Only God can think creatively.  All we can do is use our imagination to re-arrange or combine elements of this creation into new shapes.  Solomon suggested this when he said that “God made man upright, but they have sought out many inventions” (Eccl. 7:29).  Men have invented ways to re-arrange or combine elements of God’s creation, but they have never created an element of it, or even thought of one.

This is true of every creature, in heaven or on earth.  Neither angels nor cherubim nor seraphim have ever thought anything except what belongs in this creation.  One may ask, “If Satan never had an original thought, then how could he be ‘the father of lies’, as Jesus said he was?”  The answer is found in the definition of a lie.  A lie is a re-arrangement of elements of the truth (which already exists) for an evil purpose.  For example, when the serpent told Eve that she would not die if she ate the forbidden fruit, he was combining the reality of eternal life with the reality of eating the forbidden fruit, and then telling Eve that those two things went together.  But they did not.  God had already told her so.

The serpent had not created anything; he had only combined two realities in a new way for an evil purpose.  And it worked.  Eve ate the fruit, persuaded her husband to do the same, and they both began to die.  All liars, that is, all who are like Satan, the father of lies, use the truth to their own ends.  In fact, the truth is the only thing they have with which to begin their evil work.

We have only one Creator.  He alone has thoughts that are not of this creation.  He alone has the wisdom to think of something not in this creation, and the power to bring it into existence, out of nothing.  And thankfully, He has revealed Himself through His Son Jesus, who came to bear witness of the truth, not to re-arrange it.

Ministers of Satan

“For such men are pseudo-apostles, deceitful workers,

masquerading as apostles of Christ.

And no wonder, for Satan disguises himself as a messenger of light.

Therefore, it is no great thing if his ministers also disguise themselves

as ministers of righteousness, whose end shall be according to their works.”

2Corinthians 11:13–15

Paul was not just hurling insults at people he did not like when he called them ministers of Satan.  Rather, he was warning his children in the Lord of men who had rejected the truth and were misleading them.  Nor was Paul condemning those men merely because they did not understand the true doctrine.  Paul was very patient and loving with the ignorant, as were those who worked with him.  For example, when Paul’s fellow-workers, Aquila and Priscilla, heard Apollos teaching the wrong thing, they took him aside and “explained to him the way of God more perfectly” (Acts 18:26).  Ministers of Satan are those who have heard the truth and rejected it, teaching their own doctrines instead.

Ministers of Satan minister to people things that are from the realm over which Satan has control – this world.  Satan is god of this world (2Cor. 4:4), and his ministers minister using worldly things such as worldly water for baptism, worldly food for communion ceremonies, worldly uniforms for worship, etc.  All such fleshly things are from this world, and Satan is this world’s god.

Ministers of Christ minister things from heaven, where Christ sits at the right hand of God.  No man can be a minister of Christ without the holy Ghost, because the holy Ghost brings from heaven the power and revelation necessary to preach the gospel.  True men of God “preach the gospel by the holy Spirit sent from heaven” (1Pet. 1:12), and there are precious few of them.  They may be like Apollos, and not yet see things perfectly, but they will continue to grow in knowledge until they do.  They are living up to all the truth they have been given, and because their conscience is clear, Jesus will continue to feed them the knowledge of God.

As a young man, Paul did great evil to the body of Christ, but he was able to do it with a clear conscience (2Tim. 1:3) because that was all the knowledge he had, and he thought he was pleasing God.  But when Jesus touched his heart, he ceased to do evil and began to learn to do good.  He told Timothy, “I received mercy because I acted ignorantly in unbelief ” (1Tim. 1:13).  Ministers of Satan, on the other hand, teach false doctrine in spite of having been shown the truth.  Their conscience is not clear.  Apollos was never a minister of Satan, even though he was teaching things that were not exactly right.  His conscience, like young Paul’s, was clear, and he, too, obtained mercy because of it.  If Apollos had rejected the more perfect way when he heard it, however, he would have become a minister of Satan, teaching false doctrine out of self-will.

If Jesus condemned everyone who thinks wrong things about God, nobody would ever come to the knowledge of God.  All of us have had wrong ideas.  That is not even the issue.  The issue is this: How many of us will give up those wrong ideas when Jesus shows us the truth?  There are many ministers who are teaching wrong things with a clear conscience.  I have been among them.  Maybe I still am; God knows.  But the critical question is this: Will those ministers continue in a clear conscience when they hear more truth?  Will they continue to grow in grace and knowledge, or will they reject the truth and cling to what they have always been told?  God is incredibly patient and kind to us who are ignorant.  Pray that He will grant us the grace to humble ourselves to His truth when we hear it.

Good for Nothing

“You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt has lost its flavor,

with what will it be salted?

It is good for nothing, but to be cast out and trampled on by men.”

Matthew 5:13

Those who come to Christ should be warned that if they fall from righteousness and become entangled with the world again, they will be good for nothing.  Children of God cannot go back and be the same sinners they once were; without Christ, they can only become worthless to everybody.

================

Pastor John,

This blog gave me a thought, that is: The life we live as sinners, before coming to the knowledge of Christ, is a life that God has designed for us, to get us to Him.  And though it be a life of sin, if we are children of God, God is still there guiding us to Him and to repentance, all along the way.  The LORD knows His sheep, and He is guiding them to Him, even while they are in darkness of sin, and cannot yet see.

That life of sin, is a protected life of sorts.  It is a life that ultimately has purpose, and serves as a means to an acceptable end.

But a life of sin after we have known the goodness of God, and received the washing away of our sins, is a life with no purpose, that leads nowhere, and has no end, except for the Lake of Fire.

That life of sin is the most fearful life of all.

Jerry

God Does Not Get Over Some Sins

And Jehovah said to Samuel . . . “I have sworn to the house of Eli that

I will damn myself if the iniquity of Eli’s house

will ever be covered over by sacrifice or offering.”

1Samuel 3:11, 14

There are some evils which God will not forgive.  For example, the high priest Eli sinned greatly by not stopping his sons when he saw them grossly and repeatedly abuse God’s people who came to worship Him.  Long before that, the prophet Balaam greatly sinned by teaching the Moabites to seduce God’s people into joining them in idolatrous worship (Num. 25; 31:16).  Over a thousand years later, Jesus still had not gotten over that; he was still angry about what Balaam did to God’s people (Rev. 2:14).

There are some things God does not get over.  And there are some things we’re not supposed to get over, either.

God Condescended to Us

Paul exhorted us to “condescend to men of low estate” (Rom. 12:16).  But we cannot condescend to anybody as far as God condescended when He came down to help us.  Nobody is as far beneath us as we are beneath God.

Let’s always remember where we came from.

The Difference between Repentance, Godly Sorrow, and Reconciliation

Repentance has been redefined by many to mean feeling sorrow for having sinned.  But as good as godly sorrow is, the actual repentance is the actions that godly sorrow leads one to take.  Paul stated plainly that godly sorrow produces repentance (2Cor. 7:10); he never said that sorrow for one’s sin is repentance itself.

This is why John the Baptist told people who were convicted by his preaching to go do deeds that reflected godly sorrow for sin (Lk. 3:10–14).  He knew they did not understand how to repent, and so, he defined repentance for them:

Luke 3

10. And the crowds asked him, saying, “What, then, shall we do?”

11. He answered and said to them, “He who has two coats, let him share with him who has none, and let him who has food do the same.”

12. The tax collectors also came to be baptized, and they said to him, “Teacher, what shall we do?”

13. And he said to them, “Exact nothing beyond what has been mandated to you.”

14. And even the soldiers asked him, saying, “What about us?  What shall we do?”  And he said to them, “Don’t extort money or harass anybody, but be content with your wages.”

When men came to be baptized by John who felt no godly sorrow and had no heart to repent, John rebuked them, refused to baptize them, and commanded them to go and “bear fruit worthy of repentance” (Mt. 3:8).  Paul, likewise, warned men to “do works meet for repentance” (Acts 26:20).  Indeed, no true man of God has ever taught that merely feeling sorry for sin is repentance.  They all told people that if they regretted sinning and wanted forgiveness, they had to do something with those feelings, and in both the Old and New Testaments that “something” is called repentance.

Reconciliation is another issue.  Reconciliation may take place when we go to a person that we have wronged and repent, but it is also possible that reconciliation will not take place, for that wronged person may not be willing to forgive me for my wrongdoing.  In that case, I have repented, but he and I are not reconciled.  My repentance was not our reconciliation.  Those who repent have no control over how another person will respond to their repentance, and so, reconciliation cannot be defined as repentance; it is only a possible fruit of it.

“Where Is the God of Judgment?”

“I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil.

I the LORD do all these things.”

God, in Isaiah 45:7

If God were a Christian, He would not have said such things about Himself.  As it is, however, He is free to tell the truth.

God was also free to tell the truth when He said through Moses, “I kill, and I make alive” (Dt. 32:39), and He was free to tell the truth when He warned Israel through Micah, “I will make you sick” (Mic. 6:13).  And the author of 2Samuel was enough like God not to talk like a good Christian, either.  He said that God struck David’s infant son so that it died (2Sam. 12:14–15), and in 1Samuel, he said that God took His holy Spirit from King Saul and sent an evil spirit upon him instead (1Sam. 16:14–15).  David’s tearful prayers did not save his child, and Saul’s tears did not obtain forgiveness.  Moses said that God cursed man to labor, and cursed man to die, and cursed mankind with languages to prevent them from working together.  And Moses also said that God overwhelmed this planet with a flood, drowning the men, women, and children in it.  And their helpless screams for mercy did nothing to stop the flood waters from rising.

It is rare to find any righteous soul in the Bible talking the way most modern Christians talk about God.  What Christian minister will go on television and declare that God is a man of war (Ex. 15:3), or that God hates the wicked and the violent (Ps. 11:5), and that every day, God is angry with those who do evil (Ps. 7:11), and that if sinners do not repent, God will cast them into a lake of fire where they will be tormented forever (Rev. 20:10; 14:10–11).  God knows nothing of what Christians call “unconditional love”; He has never forgiven anyone who did not first repent and confess their sin (cp. Prov. 28:13).  God promises eternal life only to those who obey Him, but “The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all nations that forget God” (Ps. 9:17).

God is a God of love, and He always has been.  He was a God of love when He condemned the man in the wilderness to die because he picked up sticks on the Sabbath, contrary to the commandment.  He was a God of love when He cursed Miriam and then Gehazi with leprosy.  He was a God of love when He starved the Israelites in Samaria to the point that they began killing and eating their own children.  Yes, God is, and always has been a God of love, but that is not all He is!  He is also, and always has been “a consuming fire”, and it is also, and always has been a fearful thing to fall into His holy hands.

“Where Is the God of Judgment?”

Malachi 2:17

A particularly detestable spirit of our time is the demon that promotes a God who is not a man of war, who never hates, is never angry, who never makes people sick, or kills a baby, or would even consider creating evil.  I recently read a book by a woman who once belonged to the Lord but now has succumbed to this filthy spirit.  She calls herself a teacher and seduces others by teaching them to “get rid of” the Jesus of the Bible.  She proclaims instead a god who never judges, a god whom no one need fear, and she teaches that there is no such thing as sin.  Those who secretly desire an excuse to commit sin follow her.  She is a fool, and she makes fools out of those who believe her.  Go ahead, you fools!  Try to get rid of Jesus.

Her heresy is an old one.  False prophets in Israel also taught, contrary to all the holy scriptures, that “everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the LORD, and He delights in them!” (Mal. 2:17a).  They scoffed at the warnings of the true prophets, saying, “Where is the God of judgment?” (Mal. 2:17b).  But their foolishness attracted no one in Israel who was upright in heart, and it attracts no one today whose heart is pure before God.

“Do not be deceived,” my friends.  “God is not mocked.  Whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also reap, so that he who sows to his flesh shall from the flesh reap destruction, but he who sows to the Spirit shall from the Spirit reap eternal life” (Gal. 6:7–8), “for the LORD is a God of judgment; blessed are all they that wait for Him” and do not follow teachers who are blinded by the mad spirits of this age.

Fellowship

When Brother Paul Curtsinger dropped by one morning, he made an arresting statement: “I don’t think Jammie and I understand what fellowship is.  It can’t be believing the same teaching because I have seen people who believe the same doctrine not have fellowship at all.”  The subject of fellowship had been on my mind for several days, and I told him so.  Then I told Paul that after much consideration, I had concluded that not only is true fellowship not believing the same doctrine, but it is also not love, for God has loved many a person but had no fellowship with them at all.  So have we all.  There are people whom we all love dearly to this day, with whom we have no fellowship in the light of God.

Genuine fellowship in Christ, I concluded, is in our feelings.  Fellowship with God means to feel what God feels, when He feels it.  Jesus lived that way; he was alive to the feelings of his heavenly Father each moment.  And in that fellowship, there is no sin.  When we feel what our heavenly Father feels, as Jesus did, we will not sin, and we will not make wrong judgments.  Our words and our actions will be directed by the feelings we share with the Father and the Son.

If we feel what God feels, when He feels it, we will rejoice at the proper time, and be grieved at the proper time.  King David, for example, grieved for his little baby as long as there was hope that God would heal it, but when the child died, David “arose from the earth, and washed, and anointed himself, and changed his apparel, and went to the house of the Lord and worshipped.  Then he came to his own house, and when he required, they set bread before him, and he ate” (2Sam. 12:20).  David’s servants thought this was odd behavior, and they asked him, “What is this thing that you have done?  You fasted and wept for the child while it was alive, but when the child died, you rose and ate food” (2Sam. 12:21).  David explained that the time to grieve was when there was hope for healing, and concluded by saying, “But now that he is dead, why should I fast?  Can I bring him back again?  I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me” (2Sam. 12:23).

This is how we want to live with others, especially they of the body of Christ.  If we have fellowship with God’s feelings, we will fast and pray for a brother when he first begins to drift away from righteousness, and not wait until after he is gone to be sad.  After all, when God sees the spiritual condition of one of His children begin to deteriorate, He feels sorrow – and so will we if we have fellowship with His feelings.  When we feel what God feels, our thoughts and our actions toward a weak brother will reflect God’s feelings toward him, at the time God feels them, not later!

Pray to feel what God feels when God feels it.  That is true fellowship with Him, and it is the only way we will ever come to know Him or ever have fellowship with one another in His Son Jesus Christ.

Free, Not Muzzled

“. . . so that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us

who do not walk after the flesh but after the Spirit.”

Romans 8:4

Almost all of this world’s religions, whether small or great, provide some beneficial service for mankind.  Their chief benefit is that they restrain the wild, beastly element of man’s nature.  They muzzle the beast so that it doesn’t harm itself or others.

God, on the other hand, did not send His Son to restrain our fleshly nature; He sent him to change it.  And this He does when He gives us His Spirit.  By the holy Spirit, God makes us partakers of His holy nature (2Pet. 1:4) so that we no longer need to be restrained, for when we walk in the Spirit, we do “not fulfill the lust of the flesh” (Gal. 5:16) and are no longer a danger to ourselves and others.

In Christ Jesus, we are “new creatures” (2Cor. 5:17) and then are set free from all restraints, except for the restraint of love for our fellow man, so that even though all things are allowed, only what is good for others is done.  As Paul said, “Everything is lawful for me, but not everything is beneficial; everything is lawful, but not everything edifies” (1Cor. 10:23).

When Jesus said that if he sets us free, we are “free indeed”, this is what he meant.  In him, we are freed from every shackle on earth, including its laws and customs.  But we are set free, not to rebel against the earthly authorities that God has ordained for man’s good; rather we are set free to do the will of God, who “so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son so that every one who believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.”

Before the Restoration

“How is the faithful city become an harlot!  It was full of judgment; righteousness lodged in it; but now murderers.  Your silver is become dross, your wine mixed with water.  Your princes are rebellious, and companions of thieves; every one loves bribes, and goes after rewards.  They do not give justice to the fatherless, neither does the cause of the widow come to them. . . .

Nevertheless, I will turn my hand upon you, and purely purge away your dross, and take away all your tin.  And I will restore your judges as at the first, and your counsellors as at the beginning.  Afterward, you shall be called, ‘The city of righteousness, the faithful city.’  Zion shall be redeemed with judgment, and her converts with righteousness.”

Isaiah 1:21–23, 25–27

How compassionate God is, to give such a promise to His terribly backslidden people!  What a precious promise, that He will come and restore righteousness to them, and give them – again! – leaders who are wise and good.

But you may have noticed that a verse is missing in the section of scriptures quoted above.  In that missing verse, we are told what must come to Israel before God restores His blessings to the nation – judgment!

“Therefore, says the Lord, the LORD of hosts, the mighty One of Israel, Ah, I will ease myself of my adversaries, and avenge myself of my enemies” (Isa. 1:24).

In other words, before God comes with His promised mercy, He will come with His wrath, and clean house.  And as always when His judgments are revealed, the guilty will become angry and retaliate against the upright.  Righteous judgment always sparks protests from the wicked.  They become bitter, and grumble, and make all kinds of accusations against the upright.  But God is never moved from His purpose by the wicked.  He is only moved from His purpose when the upright are moved by the wicked to turn from their uprightness.

God is determined to rescue His faithful people, those who love Him and His ways.  The foolish will not prevail forever.  Peace and holiness will fill the house of God again.  God has promised it!

The only question is this: Will you be among those who rejoice when God restores righteousness and peace and joy to His household, or will you be among those who are cast out so that it can happen?

The State of Dead Saints

“And when he opened the fifth seal, I saw beneath the altar the souls

of those who had been slain because of the word of God

and because of the witness of the Lamb which they had.

And they cried out with a loud voice, saying, ‘How long, O Master,

holy and true, will you not judge and avenge our blood

upon those who dwell on earth?’  And a white robe was given to each of them,

and it was said to them that they should wait for a while,

until their fellow slaves and their brothers, who were about to be killed

as they also had been, should finish their course.”

Revelation 6:9–11

We often hear it said that righteous souls who have died are now in eternal, perfect bliss, but the verses above show that such is not the case.  The souls beneath God’s altar in heaven seem to be pretty miserable.  They were filled with the Spirit (“the witness of Jesus”); they had suffered martyrdom because of righteousness; they were now dwelling in the very presence of God; and yet, here they are, obviously weary with longing for something that has not yet happened.  And God’s only response is only to give them some robes (which no doubt were wonderful) and to tell them they must continue to wait.  We should note that God did not answer their prayers!  He did not do what they were begging Him to do.  These verses reveal that while saints who have fallen asleep in Jesus have finished their earthly labors (Rev. 14:13), they are not yet perfectly happy, that they still have longings and prayers that can go unanswered, and that they still need patience to overcome frustration and disappointment.  Does that sound to you like eternal, undisturbed joy and peace? 

These verses suggest that the saints who have fallen asleep in the Lord still are a part of us, that they still pray for us and have feelings that they express to God about us.  If the wicked rich man who died and went into Torment still remembered life on earth and still felt the feelings he felt on earth (Lk. 16:27–28), it seems reasonable to assume that saints who fall asleep in Jesus and enter into Paradise can do the same.  The dead saints under the altar of God certainly remembered what had happened to them while they lived on earth (unjustly martyred), and they also were aware enough of matters on earth to know that God had not yet avenged them.  If the wicked rich man who went to hell still thought about and prayed for those he loved, surely the saints of God still think about and pray for those they loved.

 The tormented rich man’s desperate prayer for mercy in Luke 16 was unanswered because it was not the will of God to do what the rich man asked.  The dead saints underneath God’s altar were praying for something that God fully intended to do, but their prayers were also unanswered because it was not time for God’s answer to come.  Regardless of the reasons, however, neither the prayers of the wicked rich man nor the prayers of the righteous dead saints were answered, and that means that everyone who prayed, saints and sinner alike, felt disappointment.  And that means that nobody in those two stories was enjoying eternal, perfect, undisturbed peace.

That kind of peace and joy will be granted to God’s children only after Jesus has reigned on earth for a thousand years, has won the last battle, and has destroyed this present heaven and earth: “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea no longer existed. . . .  And I heard a loud voice out of heaven, saying, “Behold!  The dwelling place of God with men!  And He shall dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them.  And He shall wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more; neither shall there be sorrow, nor crying, nor pain anymore because the former things will have passed away” (Rev. 21:1, 3–4).

What I Learned from This about Believing

In spite of my having read Revelation 6:9–11 many, many times through the years, until Monday, March 13, 2017, when Jesus gave me understanding, it cannot be said that I truly believed it.  In reality, every time in my life that I thought or spoke of dead saints as already enjoying eternal, undisturbed bliss, or every time I said “Amen” when somebody else said so, I was not believing what those verses were telling me.  I was instead still confused by Christianity’s mythological version of the State of Dead Saints.

When we truly believe, that faith moves us and takes us somewhere; it leads us into the knowledge of God, into understanding, because true faith is of God and is alive, and makes us alive to the things of God.  “By faith, we understand that the worlds were created by an utterance from God, so that things that are seen were not made from visible things” (Heb. 11:3).  If you have truly believed the word of God, then you understand the truth.  If you have truly believed, then your true faith has taken you to good places.  It has taken you out of darkness and into the knowledge of God, out of strife and into holy love, out of pride and into humility, out of heresies and into fellowship with every other human being who has also truly believed.  You can’t hide it, and they can’t miss it!

May God grant us genuine faith in His word so that we may know His Son Jesus Christ, and experience the unity and fellowship of the Father and His Son!

The Only Proof

“It is the Spirit that bears witness because the Spirit is truth.”

1John 5:6b

The increase in number of scientists and educators who are not afraid to publicly confess faith in the Bible’s creation and flood stories is refreshing.  The evolution bullies are having their stranglehold on education and scientific outlets loosened a little.  We may be seeing the beginning of a revival of good, common sense in the scientific and education communities.

Before you start jumping for joy, however, let me remind you of this eternal truth: the holy Ghost is the only completely dependable witness that the Bible is true and that Jesus is Lord.  It does feel like a relief to hear scientists and scholars speak up in favor of Genesis being a trustworthy record of historical events, but if those scientists and scholars do not have the holy Ghost, they do not even belong to God, much less have they been sent to speak on His behalf!  And not belonging to God, they must have an agenda other than love for God for their defense of the Bible.

The theory of evolution has always been goofy.  God’s children have never needed help from “creation scientists” to understand that.  Genuine faith needs no scientific evidence to be strong and sure.  No matter what we know of earthly scientific facts, it is only by faith that we understand that the worlds were formed by the word of God (Heb. 11:6).  Do not be seduced into leaning on the knowledge and wisdom of men!

One of the first truths Jesus taught me as a young believer is that the closer something comes to being true, without being true, the more evil it is.  Someone who is close to the truth can deceive many more people than someone who is nowhere near right.  Likewise, men who defend the Bible, but have not yet been baptized with the holy Ghost into the body of Christ, are only close to the truth; they are not in it!  And the truth is not in them, for “the Spirit is truth.”  Guard your hearts against such men!  Do not trust those who believe in the goodness and need of the Bible but who do not believe in the goodness and need of the holy Ghost!  They are not of God!

The holy Ghost is God’s witness that everything in the Bible is true, and it is sufficient.  The geological, biological, and astronomical facts that “creation scientists” proclaim can be interesting and instructive, but they are all things the human spirit can learn and teach; they can never create righteousness and save a soul.  “If we receive the witness of men,” John wrote, “the witness of God is greater.  And this [the Spirit] is the witness of God which He has borne of His Son” (1Jn. 5:9).

John went on to say that “He who believes on the Son of God has the witness in himself,” and that “he who does not believe God has made Him out to be a liar because he does not believe the witness that God gave of His Son.” (1Jn. 5:10).  In other words, those who do not have the witness of God, the holy Ghost, are making God out to be a liar, no matter what they say about the Bible, or even what they say about God Himself!  Some men passionately argue that the Bible is one big myth, while other men passionately argue that it is all factually true, but they are all making God out to be a liar if they all do not have His Spirit.