God's Sovereignty

There are over one hundred and twenty references to the sovereignty of God and the Naves Topical, under God>Sovereignty, lists them. The study is not a short/quick study. I have often seen the question published on the net, “Why Does God Permit Evil?” This is not an unreasonable question for any person, lost or saved, to ask. In my opinion it is a required subject for the Christian to learn to answer.

Now, as demonstrated in the study of God's Sovereignty, He is sovereign over the entire Earth and all of it's happenings. At the same time, if we have studied the scriptures much at all we know that there is no evil in God for He is good and good and evil are opposites. A yearly read through the book of Job will give us a good reason and material to meditate upon in the matter of what God does and does not do as well as what God will permit outside of His perfect will (2Pet. 3:9.) God uses everything that happens on the Earth to call lost men to repentance and salvation.

Job was a righteous man in everything he did and still, God permitted Satan to kill his children, destroy the fruits of his labor and to afflict him with horrible pain and suffering. What was God doing? God never allows Satan to afflict His saints unless there is Spiritual growth to be had. Job 19:1-12 shows us that Job thought God had done this to him but to Job's credit he refused to curse God (Job 2:9-10.)

In the end of it all, Job knew that God had and would always rescue him and Job's faith was multiplied when it was all said and done. And God did not leave Job in that condition but made him better off than he ever was before.

So, how does that relate to us today? I offer you a true life example. I went to Vietnam in June of 1966 and in September of that year I found my best friend after an eighty-one mm. mortar had exploded on his chest. Up to this point I was an alcoholic atheist but as I stood, cursing the God I refused to worship, He spoke to me. God said, “Why curse me, you don't even believe!” My lack of knowledge of the Spiritual life immediately changed. I wasn't a Christian, but for the next 23 years I was a seeker. I had become a Deist and was seeking the one true God.

Does God permit Satan to do evil? It's difficult to argue against the Bible since it is he very Word of God for His believers. God permitted an action that has influenced my life for the past 44 years and as a result of that I have learned that it is a terrible thing to be found, judged by God. I also learned that man is not as supreme as he wants to be but that instead that we are, all of us, in need of God and His mercy. In war I have seen, what is perhaps, a very small example of God's wrath. Am I saying my friend suffered God's wrath? Directly or indirectly, yes. So did I!

I know that the folks that teach, come to Christ and all your troubles end right there, are not teaching the truth o God's word. Have I been attacked by Satan since I converted and bowed my knee in submission? You can certainly believe I have. I am often guilty of upsetting the 'God is love crowd' by teaching the hard doctrines of God, because while it is so very true that God is love, there is so much more to understand about God. I have been serious about my study now for better than 19 years and what I have learned about God has opened the way to so very much more that I do not know and understand yet. I will study the rest of my life and yet I know that if I live another 65 years I will still be studying God, trying to know Him better and still not know everything about Him.

There is true evil in this world, I have seen it. I've held a 6 month old in my arms as it died of the gun shot wounds, that's evil! But out of it all, I have learned to never curse God but to move forward, just like the soldier the US Army trained, and to work toward God's perfect will as He opens and closes doors. God is good and as His soldiers, the Good War is our fight.

Marria

1Co 7:1 Now concerning the things about which you wrote, it is good for a man not to touch a woman.
1Co 7:2 But because of immoralities, each man is to have his own wife, and each woman is to have her own husband.
1Co 7:3 The husband must fulfill his duty to his wife, and likewise also the wife to her husband.
1Co 7:4 The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; and likewise also the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.
1Co 7:5 Stop depriving one another, except by agreement for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer, and come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

Marriage is an institution that is in the toilet today, even in the church. We hear institution jokes told of marriage and there is the very popular lie that one need not be concerned if their marriage fails, get a divorce and marry another!

In First Corinthians seven Paul address' this issue of the importance of marriage. Right off the bat we see that it is good if a man an restrain himself from ever touching a woman and then he goes on to point out that in order to avoid sin it is good for a man to have a wife and a woman to have her husband.

People, men and women are prone to locking on to a portion of a point and never reading the text in context. When Paul explains that a married woman's body is not her own he does not stop there. The man, likewise does not own his body, it belongs to his wife and it is her duty and her privilege to satisfy his needs. Be careful here! It is likewise the duty and the privilege of the man to his wife.

As early as Gen. 2:24 we find that a man becomes one flesh with his wife the very moment they couple. I am often heard to say that the worst invention in the world, for all time, is the back seat. Young people never consider the life long impact that their coupling will have on their eternal lives. I'm not saying it can't be forgiven but I am saying it is a sin that can not, in this life-time, be forgotten and often leaves a baby without a father and a child with a baby.

Sex is for marriage!

Proof!

There is a reoccurring argument that is falsely used by the lost man of the world today against the Christian Community of believers. That is that we use circular logic to arrive at our conclusions and hidden in this statement is the lie that they do not! These false teachers would have everyone to believe that outside of the Bible, there is no reason to believe that Yahweh, God, exists and nothing could be farther from the truth.

There is a book that intimidates Christian and lost man alike, the Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics. The price is not even a problem if we look for it on line we find a copy at a1books.com for $26.08 at the writing of this article. This work, by Norman Giesler, is the result of forty years of research, on his part. Included is possibly, every extra-biblical reference, available, at this time, to events occurring in the scriptures. There is even documentation for the three hours of night, in the middle of the day, when Jesus was crucified.

The known world, at that time was Europe, Africa and Asia Minor. Both Greek and Roman historians, not present in Israel, recorded the three hour without the Sun making it a "known” world event and not a local event. But I digress!

On the other hand, the believers in Evolution and the Big Bang do exactly what they accuse us of doing. They use their text books to prove that these theories, now remember, please, these are just theories, are the method of creation for the universe and mankind. (Please reread that last sentence slowwwlllyyy! There is no, and I say it with emphasis, no conclusive proof for evolution having ever occurred. What is spoon fed to our young people, as evidence, are examples of fish, butterflies and others adapting to their environment. The Blind Fish is still a fish, he or she just lives in utter dark and does not meed eyes any longer. In the same manor butterflies have demonstrated their ability to adapt to their environment by changing colors, lizards do that every day, here in SE Texas.

And so goes the myth that if man evolved, the universe had it's own origin, independent of God, pure unadulterated Hog Wash! That "belief?” defies everything known in the scientific realm. If you begin with nothing, no matter what you do to it, it remains, nothing. Matter, condensed or expanded, has an origin, God did it!

Christian, get up off your rear end and stand for God!

Atheist, Buddhist, Hindu, Islamic and all the rest of you, study, we will miss you in Heaven if you follow the lies you have chosen.

Knowledge And The Lack Thereof!

Recently, Ive had the term experiential spit at me like it was a booger caught in the gentleman's throat. I had freely admitted to him that I had proven God to myself and that in the end he would also need to do the same in order to ever know God.

So, let's look at that for a minute or two. The objection to this as evidence, as per the world is that experiences are not scientific evidence. Of course I'm going to illustrate that nothing could possibly be further from the truth. In the field of science there are a group of people that endeavor to explain the mysteries of the world. When a, thought to be reasonable, idea is formulated, such as Evolution, and presented it is termed a theory.

Theories are then taken and evidence is sought for the idea and if none is found the idea remains a theory, i.e. Evolution. In the case of Gravity, when it was a theory, in the early ages, experiments were performed until it became a defined fact of science. The same experiential evidence established the scientific laws of mechanical flight by man. These and many other points of our existence are scientific fact because experimentation has given certain results/experiences as proof.

So it is that we live in a world that is proven through experiences, making the experience of individuals worthy of examination. In the scientific community, when several people repeat an experiment that ends with the same result the idea that was a theory becomes scientific fact! So, if I tell you that I read the Bible and followed the method prescribed and I found God it might be worthy of examination. On the other hand if ten people do the same thing and they find God then we are rapidly approaching fact. When a million people follow the method and find God, it is a fact, period!

Do not make the mistake and think that if it is a fact that everyone will believe it, they will not do so. People have the ability to and they often do, choose to be ignorant of the facts. There is nothing that can be done for that man or that woman but do not ever be discouraged, there are thousands of others that are seeking the truth and will listen, examine and learn.

Will God?

Of late, I have been reading the prophecies of Ezekiel and I am just floored at the attitude of the people of my generation. Throughout the Bible God has promised to never forget nor to forsake His chosen people, Israel. (Duet. 14:2) He has promised to love them as much as a thousand generations.(Duet. 7:9 Exo. 20:6)

Let's talk about that for a moment. God's perfect number, for those that go that direction, is seven. I have no truck with Numerology but neither do I have a problem with God doing things in sevens to illustrate completeness. So my point, there is good reason to believe that the Earth will suffer te presence of man for about another thousand years before God destroys it.

God has promised to never forsake those that He has called that are faithful to follow Him. (At this point it is always good to remember the Messianic Jew and the fact that the first Christians were Jewish.) The promise is for a thousand generations, the earth will be here for seven thousand years and using today's shorter definition of a generation, the promise is for at least 25,000 years. Folks, I make that out to be forever!

My point now. Will God pour out wrath on the USA? Please read Ezekiel 36. Then look at Israel, today. God poured out His wrath on Israel several times but as I understand it the wrath Ezekiel suffered was from the period when God used the Babylonians to punish them. God totally devastated the land of milk and honey and sent the people off into slavery.

What were they guilty of? They killed their babies in the worship o false gods, we kill ours, today, for the god of convenience. They built temples for the false gods, we have the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City and Islamic Temples going up on every corner. The Hollywood crowd is busy exporting Buddhism and the worship of that idol. In just this country it is estimated that we have slaughtered just under fifty million unborn children since 1973.

Can you honestly believe in a perfectly just God and still believe that He will not punish us as He did others in the past?

Wrong Judgments

1Co 4:1 Let a man regard us in this manner, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.
1Co 4:2 In this case, moreover, it is required of stewards that one be found trustworthy.
1Co 4:3 But to me it is a very small thing that I may be examined by you, or by any human court; in fact, I do not even examine myself.
1Co 4:4 For I am conscious of nothing against myself, yet I am not by this acquitted; but the one who examines me is the Lord.
1Co 4:5 Therefore do not go on passing judgment before the time, but wait until the Lord comes who will both bring to light the things hidden in the darkness and disclose the motives of men's hearts; and then each man's praise will come to him from God.

There is a problem within the church that appears to have been always present. When I am teaching in different settings I am often confronted with a spirit that is not of God, it's commonly called a Critical Spirit but I tell you that it is of Devil, himself.

To begin with there is a huge perception error today. We see and we are taught, correctly, that Salvation is free when in fact it never was! My salvation cost me nothing and was free to me but my savior paid with His very life to acquire it for me. Now read verse one again... we are the servants of the Christ. Now, visit with me for a moment, a time when slavery was a way of life, and remember who the servants were. That same Bond Servant is who we are today, slaves of Christ.

There is another facet of that verse, stewardship! That leads us on into verse 2. Stewardship is a vital portion of any successful Fortune 500 company today and is still essential for this world to take care of it's day to day business. Today, just as today, a steward, a manager, needs to be found faithful. Here in Texas we have seen dynasties collapse over night due to the lack of faithfulness.

As Christians we are the stewards of the mysteries of God and the fate of the world depends on just how faithful we will be with it. We can sit back in the recliner with our Remote Control and flick through the two hundred-plus channels knowing we are saved or we can begin to put our best efforts into evangelizing the Lost Man next door or at work. Jesus, our example of a successful life would not have been so concerned with the TV.

In Verse three, Paul was so dependent on God that the least of his worries was judgmental people. I am often called down by others that judge me as being judgmental because I proclaim the truth of the entirety of scripture. Since January 1 of 1990 I have sought to learn more about this Holy Life that God wants me to live and as I have understood what is meant by this desire of our LORD's I have sought to teach others.

Like Paul, I have a judge and He is Jesus, God in the Flesh of man. As a result I am often called arrogant and instructed that I must stop choosing my conversations and to allow more people to argue with me, I refuse! If I allow one that, like myself, is claiming the name of the Christ to divert my attention onto personal preferences and away from the salvation of the Lost Man I am a disobedient servant, it must never be so. I will preach the truth, even when it offends some.

And finally, in verse five we see the call from Paul for us to hold our judgmental attitudes in check and to allow God, the one that knows the heart of man to do the judging. Be careful here! That does not mean to run off in the same direction as the World today and to use their interpretation of Matt. 7:1.

For a man to understand Matt. 7:1 he must read, at least, the entire chapter and better yet, the Bible. The man that judges nothing is a fool and his mind is the Devil's playground. At the same time, as you pick your associates, friends and a place to raise your children do not pretend to be God and think that you know the heart of a man.

A Word From God

I remember back in 1973 that there was a great out pouring of humanity from the Christian Community and while the news media didn't do much to help the cause they did report it. Today there are more than forty-nine and a half babies that have been murdered by various means of dismemberment and solutions injected into the womb to burn the baby to death, all in the name of convenience and pleasure without responsibility. But hardly a whimper is heard from our news sources today.

Te greatest tragedy in Human History is in full swing and nobody seems to even notice! Just consider for a moment... the better than forty-nine million American babies are only the tip of the iceberg. I've never seen any numbers on the infanticide we have exported to the Third World countries and then there is Europe and Asia. Why, in China, the best way to die is to be born a girl. And still we plod along, every day, and never take notice of the thousands of children that are being exterminated. Why a roach in my house has a better chance of survival than millions upon millions of infants have had, they couldn't even run from their exterminator.

I just finished Jeremiah and the book of Lamentations this week and it would do all of us good to read through those two books. One of the things God points out is that He is punishing Israel and Judah worse than he does the other nations because they are His people and they turned their backs on Him and His justice. Sounds remarkably familiar, doesn't it?

In all the past nineteen-plus past years of study the closest I've been able to find scriptures to relate to my beloved country are the prophecies about Edom. The single chapter book of Obidiah is all about Edom. If we search the scriptures we find more in the different prophets but the one thing I've never found is a good report to focus on. J.R. Church is responsible for me making the Edom/US connection in my early Christian years but once it was pointed out I just cannot shake the connection.

With a little study of scripture and of some extra-biblical history we see that both Edom and Rome, for a national symbol had an Eagle making it's nest in the stars... so do we. Studying history we see that the prophetic end of Edom also happened to Rome. Having worked for the Japanese and alongside German exporters I am very conscious of the rape being perpetuated on the US, very much the same as we did to them after World War II. There's that Obadiah connection again.

I often find myself reading the events of the day/week in the Jerusalem Post, on line, and I'm just dumbfounded at the daily fulfillment of prophetic events and the denial of the truth by the people of the world, more astoundingly by God's own people in Israel and the US. The US is at war with the Nation of Islam and yet we are preparing to withdraw and at the same time we are spending millions of American tax dollars to import Palestinian Terrorists. We have elected a president that nobody can prove to be an American citizen but I must give him credit where credit is due. He never defined what change he was promoting but he is bringing about great and devastating change.

Am I upset? About the babies, yes! About the president and the change he is implementing, nope! As devastating as this message might seem to some, I'm rejoicing. One way or another, I'll soon be in Heaven. In the mean time I have a request to make to my fellow Christians. In 2Chron. 7:14 God made a promise to His people. He did not ask the lost man to pray He asked me and you, the people that are called by His name.

Are you going to be counted faithful?

Where Do You Stand?

Before I was saved I tried to read the scriptures and they made no sense at all to me. As a result I have lived the bulk of my life in the shadow of pleasure. Since I was given a great voice by the LORD my God I thought that I would find fulfillment in in the music industry. I put my time in, twenty-five years, in and out of the juke joints of SE Texas. All in the name of pleasure I have seen men killed because they asked a lady to dance. I've seen men sent to the hospital because they wore the wrong shirt and the ladies like the look of it. I've also see men beaten to within inches of their lives because they admitted knowing somebody. All in the pursuit of pleasure.

When I first gave my life over to Christ I was just tired of the struggle and I was tired of running from God. He had called me twenty-three years, one month and about a week before. Every time I shunned Him and went off in the other direction He was there. It's a laborious task to attempt to escape God, no, it's a fool's task because you an;t escape God.

I have read and read through the scriptures for the past nineteen-plus years and every time I have God has shown me new meanings for the same texts. Don't get me wrong here, the older revelations were not wrong. It's just that there are many facets to the scriptures to understand. The scriptures are much like a diamond I once saw in a jeweler's shop. The stone had been cut to a round shape by the use of many small flat cuts and it was dome shaped by the same manor of many small cuts. It was the most beautiful stone I had ever seen. The stone and the lights were fixed in their positions and as I moved the gem constantly changed and refracted different colors.

The Word of God is like that to the saved man. As soon as I began to read the same scriptures that had made no sense to me at all as a Lost Man, the words just lept off the pages and into my mind and the meaning was crystal clear. I did not understand it then but I had bee indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God. It is by the leading of the Holy Spirit that these new facets, meanings, are revealed to me each time I reread the scriptures now. I was once told by a man that a certain pastor didn't have everything right yet but that he was a good pastor. My reply was a question, "Do you suppose that any of us have all of it right yet?” He smile an impish smile ad we went on with our conversation in a new direction. That is why we study to show ourselves approved. (2tim. 2:15)

On my read through this year I am almost finished wit the book of Jeremiah. I have, in the past, endured the book ad took no pleasure at all in the reading. This year, with the judgment of God falling all around the world I have been both astonished at the refusal of Judah and Israel to follow God and encouraged by God's never ending love and care for His, most cherished, creation, man. God has always sent a prophet before He judged His people and He always begs them to repent and not to force Him to pass judgment. In the last nineteen years I have heard so many men of God warning of the certain doom that is befalling us now and just like Jeremiah, nobody wants to give up a moments pleasure for an eternity of joy with God in Heaven.

I have watched people for the past sixty-five and a half years and in spite of all the technology, they are just as spiritually dumb as they ever were. Perhaps more so because of all the fast paced diversions. Folks don't have time for God except on Sunday and then most want to sit there on the couch or in their easy chair drinking a brew while the preacher tickles their ears.

Of the few that manage to et dressed, shaved and drive to a meeting house, most of them are Pew Whales. They come in after Sunday School and plop down on "their” pew and want to be fed. It never seems to occur to people that God actually wants to walk with them through every aspect of this life. It is these same folks that are amazed at the idea that God would judge America for the millions of babies that we have murdered. God told Jeremiah that He knew him before he was in his mother's womb and yet a very large segment of the people that meet together on Sunday morning believe that a child is not a person until they are given birth.

This condition of Spiritual Ignorance prevails in the meeting places of the Body of Christ because of the lack of study, laziness and willful disobedience to the will of God. These same conditions existed in the days of the prophets. Many offer the excuse, "But they didn't have the Bible!” They had the first five books, the Pentateuch and they had the scrolls of the prophets that had preceded them. And, as in the case of Jeremiah, they had the living Word of God being delivered to them as they required it. Just like us, they were, as we are, without excuse. 2 Chronicles 7:14 is the kicker though. God doesn't ask the lost man to pray. God said, "If My people, who are called by My name, will humble themselves and pray.” We are a stiff necked, disobedient bunch of scoundrels.