Archive for May, 2009

Bronze

Friday, May 29th, 2009
        In the last article we saw how God’s timing and description of the events of the first six days of creation are in exact agreement with modern science. But what about the events and dating during the historically fuzzy period from Adam to the flood? Is there any way to see if what little historical data there is for those years might coincide with Biblical accounts? Let’s look at one obscure scripture from that period and “search out the matter.”
        The fourth chapter of Genesis tells us about the descendants of Cain, of Cain and Abel fame. Verse 22 says, “Zillah also had a son, Tubal-Cain, who forged all kinds of tools out of bronze and iron.” That may be interesting reading but is there a reason God would have included it in His Word? As with virtually every sentence in the Bible we might be surprised at what we might find if we dig deeper.
        The Holy Scriptures are chocked full of things like numbers of years a person lived, and ages of people when they had their first son, etc. From these Biblical statements the Israelites came up with their calendar, using the creation of Adam as its beginning. According to the Hebrew calendar we are now in year 5769.
        Getting back to “searching out the matter” in the selected verse that tells us that Tubal-Cain forged tools out of bronze, the Bible does not give us years and ages for his lineage from Cain up to him, but it does list his ancestors by name. His mother was Zillah and his father was Lamech, his grandfather was Methushael, and before them came Mehujael, Irad, Enoch, Cain and Adam. The subject of our search, Tubal-Cain, was the last in the line prior to the flood, which wiped out all of Cain’s descendants.
        If we look at Seth, Cain’s brother, we can trace his descendants up to Noah, and since the age of the father at each son’s birth is given, we can even come up with a date for the flood, when our hero, Tubal-Cain, obviously died. To be exact, Adam and Eve had Seth when Adam was 130, Seth had Enosh at age 105, Enosh had Kenan at age 90, Kenan had Mahalalel at age 70, who had Jared at 65, who had Enoch at 162, who had Methusaleh at 65, who had Lamech at 187, who had Noah at 182. Noah was 600 when the flood came.
        Using a mid point of Noah’s 600 years before the flood we can add up those numbers and come up with about 1,350 years after the arrival of Adam for Tubal-Cain to be working in his home made bronze tool factory. By subtracting 1,350 years from today’s Jewish year of 5769 we find ourselves back at about 2400 BC when the Bible asserts that Tubal-Cain was forging all kinds of tools with bronze. What is so fascinating about that is that of all of the millions and millions of bronze age artifacts that have been uncovered by archeologists and carbon dated, the oldest dates back to the same date of 2400 BC.
        The Bible is always 100% accurate. Always. Since we know that science does occasionally make mistakes, rather than science being used to prove the Bible, scientists should look to the Bible to prove their findings. The Bible is always 100% accurate. Always.

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Six Days

Tuesday, May 26th, 2009
        There was a portion of the original manuscript of Unlocking God’s Secrets that did not make it into the published book because the publisher was concerned that it would be so controversial in some Christian circles that they would not allow their flocks to read the rest of the book. He was probably correct in his assessment; however, there is another point that may have been even more important that I want to correct today.
        By omitting the truth of that unpublished portion we may have inadvertently continued to push the unbeliever in God away from the total truth of His existence, because our silence in the matter once again made the atheist feel that since we Christians as a whole teach one thing that flies in the face of known and proven reality, anything else we say about the Bible must be taken with the utmost skepticism. Rather than beating around the bush, let me get right into the heart of the matter.
        Up until 1950 most of the non believing scientists subscribed to what is known as the “steady state theory”, which basically taught that the universe as we know it had existed eternally. Everything changed with the idea of the “big bang theory.” This theory is widely held today as truth and is based on the thought that everything started at a particular point in time.
        God told us in His very first sentence, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Genesis 1:1. But what about believing and being adamant that God created everything in six 24 hour days? I will state here, much to the raised eyebrows of some of my believing friends, that God’s Word is always accurate, but our insistence on the days being made up of normal earthly 24 hours is less than rational and often extremely harmful, because it drives away people who otherwise might be brought into the light of Christ. Please bear with me as I explain. 
        First of all, common sense will tell us that the days could not have been our solar days, since the sun and earth were not even listed in the creation story until “days” two and three, and yet God talks about what happened on day one. There simply was no earth making a 24 hour revolution which is what our day is defined as. The earth did not exist. Period. Neither did the sun.
        We need to also understand  that the days could not represent our earthly thousand years, which some believers have tried to make fit, because once again, at the very beginning there were no earthly measures to even multiply by a thousand. As we have seen in our earlier blog articles, those six thousand years do come into play, but in relation to end time prophecy, not in relation to time prior to our calendar dating, or the time that is referred to by scientists as cosmic proper time or CPR. 
        Science, however, is now aligning itself with everything that God said all along. Science took a giant leap forward in 1915 when Albert Einstein stunned the world with what is now known as fact, that there are changes in time flow dependant on gravity and velocity. This difference in the passing of time is known in scientific circles as “time dilation.”
        Most of us can understand how gravity affects our weight, but we haven’t come to grips with how it can slow down time. Science, though, has proven that it does. The other thing that affects time is speed. The easiest way to understand it is to visualize waves of sound or light going out from a central gravitational point in space. They don’t go in a straight line. They are “waves” because they go back and forth as they travel outward. The farther out they go, the farther back and forth they go in an increasingly widening arc. As they travel out, it takes longer to go a specific straight distance away from the original gravitational point because they are traveling ever and ever farther on their back and forth arcs. The end result is that in the second year they can only go half as far away from the starting point as they did in the first year. In the third year they go only half as far as they did in the second year. The reason again is that the farther out they go, the more back and forth on the wave arc they also have to go.
        Our day is in reality a measure of distance. If the circumference of our earth were three times greater, and if the earth revolved at the same speed, it would obviously take three times longer to see the sun each revolution at any given spot on the earth as it does now. In that situation our day would be 72 hours long instead of 24 hours as it really is. The first CPR day, before there was an earth or sun, was also a matter of distance. It was a distance from the origin of the “big bang”, or to state it simpler, the origin of the first explosion of energy. This is the point at the beginning when “God spoke” everything into being.
        Scientists know that the “big bang” was an explosion of radiation, the basis of all forms of light. It has actually been named cosmic background radiation (CBR) and it was discovered by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson in 1965. It is the only source of radiation that has existed since creation.
        At the moment creation occurred, we know that the first “expulsion” of universe was a million million times hotter than black space is today, and it was a million million times smaller than it is today. It was a burst of energy beyond compare, and since, according to science, energy can neither be created nor destroyed, it had to come from somewhere. That “somewhere” was the voice of God. God spoke and everything was created.
        But getting back to the six days, the energy traveled out, and according to Einstein’s formula, E=MC2 (energy equals mass times the speed of light squared), mass or matter was created out of that energy. Actually it took a massive amount of energy to create a tiny amount of matter. So, matter was being created from “God spoke”, which scientists look at as the initial burst of energy.
        The main thing to understand is that the first cosmic day the energy, or light, traveled twice as far as it did the second cosmic day, so, since a CPR day was measured in distance, as ours is, the first cosmic day was twice as long as the second cosmic day, which in turn was twice as long as the third cosmic day, etc. Stated another way, since the energy traveled a shorter distance away from the source the second day, due to the widening back and forth arc, the second day was shorter by one half. 
        Genesis 1:3 says, “And God said, ‘Let there be light’, and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light ‘day’ and the darkness He called ‘night.’ And there was evening, and there was morning - the first day.” 
        Scientists tell us that after what they call the big bang (when God spoke), light did in fact separate from darkness, as electrons bonded to atomic nuclei, just as Genesis states. Galaxies started to form during this period, which took eight billion years. So eight billion years was the length of the first day of cosmic proper time (CPR).
        The second day, therefore, would have lasted four billion years, since it would have had to have been about half the length of time of the first CPR day. During this second day, God’s Word tells us He formed the firmament which He called “sky.” The scientists tell us that during this four billion year period the Milky Way was formed, which obviously is our sky. God’s Word was correct, as it always is.
        During the third day, which lasted about two billion years (half the second day), the Bible says that the earth was formed with dry land and water, and vegetation began. Surprise, surprise, the scientists as one voice tells us that this is exactly what happened during this two billion year length of time.
        During day four, in verses 14 through 19, God says, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate day from night.” He goes on to talk about the sun, moon and stars. The scientists tell us that during this one billion year period, the fourth CPR day, the earth’s atmosphere became transparent, so the sun, moon, and stars were now visible from earth. The scientists and God are in total agreement again.
        The Bible now tells us in verses 20 through 23 that God created fish and birds on the fifth day. Interestingly, that is exactly what scientists say happened during the next five hundred million years, the fifth CPR day.
        The two hundred and fifty million years leading up to the beginning of Jewish dating, which would have been the sixth CPR day and the sixth day in the Bible, according to scientists were the years in which the large land mammals and humans first came on the scene. As we would expect, those are the exact things God said He created on the sixth day.
        God’s Word is exact. Every time. And science is unwittingly proving that fact. Scientists say that creation started at one point in space with a burst of energy that, according to their own laws, had to have come from an outside entity. They further state that the creation, or big bang, occurred about sixteen billion years ago, which they themselves break up into six cosmic proper time days. The big bang was God speaking, and those six CPR days are God’s original six days. We just didn’t know it until now.
        Understanding the truth of the six days of creation does not lesson the miracle at all. In fact, for me, seeing the complexity of God’s plan to create us, His ultimate object of love, makes the miracle of creation even more astonishing and awe inspiring. And by having a better understanding of this phenomenal miracle of creation we just might be able to eliminate a stumbling block of many unbelievers and bring those we love who are in the dark into the glorious light of the love of Jesus Christ, who “by Him and for Him all things were created.” Colossians 1:16.

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Joshua’s Big Goof

Friday, May 22nd, 2009
        First, I want to apologize that the “comments” section at this site has been inadvertently disabled. From now on you should be able to click on “comments” below each article and leave any comments or have discussions with other readers. I hope you will. At any rate, I think you will find the following little known fact to be fascinating. I sure did.
        Benjamin Netenyahu of Israel met with President Obama this week and although he wanted help with the Iranian nuclear proliferation problem, all Obama had on his mind, like Bush before him, was Israel giving up more land for a Palestinian state. Obama wanted Israel to build no more settlements in the Golan Heights so that the Palestinians could have that area like they currently have the Gaza Strip, a great place from which they can launch their rockets into Israel. Since that is so much in the news all the time, I thought you might find a short Biblical history lesson intriguing.
        We read, “Joshua waged war against all these kings for a long time. Except for the Hivites living in Gibeon, not one city made a treaty of peace with the Israelites, who took them all in battle. For it was the Lord Himself who hardened their hearts to wage war against Israel, so that He might destroy them totally, exterminating them, without mercy, as the Lord had commanded Moses.” Joshua 11:18-20.
        Notice that it was God who wanted all of these groups destroyed totally. I won’t go into all the reasons for this, but take my word for it, these were bad dudes who should have been destroyed. And General Joshua was God’s man to do it. One of the groups God wanted completely wiped out was the Anakites, so we read further, “Joshua totally destroyed them and their towns. No Anakites were left in Israelite territory; only in Gaza, Gath and Ashdod did any survive.” Joshua 11:21-22.
        The other group God wanted destroyed were the Rephaites, and we read in Joshua 13:12-13, “Moses had defeated them and taken over the land. But the Israelites did not drive out the people of Geshur and Maacah, so they continue to live among the Israelites to this day.”
        If you haven’t guessed by now, Gaza, Gath and Ashdod is the land we now call the Gaza Strip. Geshur and Maacah is today the Golan heights. How different things might be today if only Joshua had done 3,400 years ago what God wanted. The only two places in the entire land that Joshua did not do what he was told to do are the very two places that are the thorns in Israel’s side today. Coincidence?

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Our Obligation

Tuesday, May 19th, 2009
        I had another article ready to post today, but felt led to write what is to follow. Quite frankly, I bring up this unpopular concept that I feel to be truth with quite a bit of trepidation. Knowing that it cuts against what is often preached in our churches, it would be much easier and safer for me to leave this discussion under the table and only talk about things that the church as a whole would agree with, but the more time I spend in God’s Word the more I am convinced that the full truth is not always being told.
        How we all love to hear or read the first verse of Romans 8 which makes us feel all cozy because it says, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Most of us can recite that verse with a smile on our face. Our actions now no longer condemn us. You and I now have no responsibility. We accepted Christ and we are safe. Boy, what a great thought that is. But is that really what chapter 8 is telling us?      
        Yes, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Verse one is clear. What most tend to leave out is just “who” is “in Christ Jesus.” Verse 4 tells us exactly who the “who” are. The first paragraph ends by saying the “who” are those “who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.”
        Also unfortunately, very few of our leaders want to talk about the “if’s” that follow later in the chapter. We need to understand that all too often our people friendly churches don’t want to scare us away by telling us that we still have responsibility. Today, however, please read slowly and contemplate carefully verses 12-13.
        “Therefore, brothers, we have an obligation - but it is not to the sinful nature, to live according to it. For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.”
        In that quote I put three words in bold print, two “if’s” and a “you.” The “if’s” are pretty self explanatory. The “you” is the big stumbling point. The “you” is us. God does not tell us in that verse that the Spirit is going to stop us from sinning, as many teach. It tells us that we, the “you,” have an obligation to put to death the misdeeds (sins). It is ultimately our responsibility. No one else does it for us. The Holy Spirit will help us if we ask Him, but in the end it is up to us to stop doing the things God does not want us to do. We still have free will, and we must take control of that free will and put an end to gossiping, telling lies, greed, cheating on things, having a temper, adultery, envy, drunkenness, lust, pride, selfishness, hate, immorality, unforgiveness, stealing, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc.
        It is time to have an honest talk with ourselves.
        “Therefore, brothers, we have an obligation …”
        PS - I honestly thought I had finished this article with the above quote. I thought that was a pretty good ending. I shut down my computer and walked away. But God was not through. I truly feel that God just told me to write two more short final paragraphs.
        Romans 6:19 says, “Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity …, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness.”
        We smile when we hear the old saying that it is impossible to be “a little bit” pregnant. We know that either a woman is really pregnant, or she’s not. There is no middle ground. I wonder, could it also be impossible to be just “a little bit” Christian?

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Why Bethlehem

Saturday, May 16th, 2009
        Have you ever wondered why God chose Bethlehem for the birthplace of His son? All three patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, were buried at Hebron. So were Sarah, Leah and Rebecca. Rachel, the wife of Jacob, however, was not buried there. She was buried on the Bethlehem Road below the caves in which Jesus was born that we discussed in the last article. Rachel died giving birth to a son. As she was dying she named her son Ben-Oni, which means “Son of Sorrow.” Jacob, the father, though, changed his name to Benjamin, which means “Son of my Right Hand.” This is interesting because Jesus first came as “A man of sorrows” as described in Isaiah 53:3, but now we know that he is seated at the right hand of God.
        In Jeremiah 31 we are told that Rachel was mourning and weeping for her children because her children were no more. That was the case because they were in bondage. In verse 16, though, the Lord  tells her to stop her weeping for they will return from the land of the enemy. That is something to ponder when we consider that she is the matriarch whose tomb is at the birthplace of Jesus.
        A second possible reason for Bethlehem being the selected town was that the story of Ruth occurred there. You probably know that the story of Ruth is one of the classic “type and shadow” stories of the New Covenant of Jesus. Ruth was a gentile. Her mother in law, Naomi, was, a Jew. And both went to Bethlehem and were saved by Naomi’s relative, Boaz, who became the kinsman redeemer when he married Ruth. Of course, we will be redeemed by our “Kinsman Redeemer” at the marriage feast of the Lamb described in Revelation 19:9.
        Going on, Ruth became the great, great grandmother of King David, whose father, Jesse, still lived in Bethlehem. From David, of course, was prophesied to be the lineage of the Messiah, which obviously came to pass.
        Speaking of prophesy, no discussion of Bethlehem is complete without mentioning the famous prophesy from Micah 5:2 written some 500 years before Christ’s birth that says, “But you, Bethlehem, Efrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.” 
        Finally, the name Bethlehem comes from two Hebrew root words meaning “House of Bread”. We only have to look at the words of Jesus himself who told us explicitly, ” I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.”  John 6:35
        Jesus added in verse 40, “For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in Him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at that last day.”
        Nothing God does is without reason or plan. Bethlehem was prepared in advance to be the birthplace of our Lord, just as the New Jerusalem has been prepared in advance in heaven to be our eternal home.

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Born As a Lamb

Thursday, May 14th, 2009

        We are all familiar with the scripture in Luke 2 that says about the birth of Jesus that “the shepherds were keeping watch over their flock by night.” What makes no sense is the part, “by night“.  We know that the flocks did not graze at night. In reality they were brought into caves that existed on the hillside overlooking Bethlehem. A hedge was then put at the cave entrance to keep the sheep in and the wolves out. There was only one exception, that being a few flocks of lambs that did graze at night beside the road that passed by Bethlehem going to Jerusalem. Those lambs were sold to people passing on that road early in the morning to be used as sacrifices later in the day in Jerusalem. The fact is that the angels recorded in Luke came to announce the birth of Jesus to shepherds whose duty it was to watch over the lambs that were to be the passover sacrifices.
        Of course Jesus was born in a stable because there was no room in the inn. Bethlehem was small and there may have only been one inn at that time. At any rate, the stable referred to did not look like a stable we see in pictures. In reality it would have been one of those hillside caves I just mentioned. So Jesus was born in the same place those sacrificial lambs were born.
        Incidentally, the Hebrew word that we read as “swaddling clothes” was actually the word that described some very cheap cloth that was in fact used to wrap the lambs in as soon as they were born.
        The description of Jesus being the Lamb of God sent as a sacrifice to take away the sins of the world can be seen very dramatically in His very birth. His story began in a cave on a Bethlehem hillside where other lambs were born for only one reason, to serve as a passover sacrifice. Jesus was the Lamb of God whose passover sacrifice once and for all gave us eternal life.

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Forgotten

Sunday, May 10th, 2009
        There is a little known dilemma in the Bible that “highly sophisticated skeptics” and “educated atheist debaters” occasionally bring up with their knowing air that says “I’ve got you now, Dummy.” The apparent scriptural contradiction does require us to “search out the matter,” which God says “is the glory of kings,” but once the solution is discovered it not only ends the debate, but it unlocks one of God’s secrets that is beyond awesome.
        The controversy starts in 1 Kings 6:1, where we are told about Solomon, “In the four hundred and eightieth year after the Israelites came out of Egypt … he began to build the temple.” The contradiction arises from the fact that in Acts 13 Paul gives a chronology of this same time period, and he lists 40 years in the wilderness, 450 years under the judges, and 40 years under the reign of Saul, making a total of 530 years. On top those 530 years that Paul describes, we must add the 40 years of David’s reign and the first three years of Solomon’s reign before he actually started the temple. That makes 573 years for the exact same 480 year period described in Kings. Biblical critics, of course, point to this as being an undeniable error in the Bible. As usual, they are dead wrong.
        Once we search out the matter we find that during this time period God gave up the Israelites again and again in punishment for their persistent idolatry. In fact, God allowed them to become slaves to Mesopotamia for 8 years, to Moab for 18 years, to the Canaanites for 20 years, to the Midianites for 7 years, and finally to the Philistines for 40 years. Those periods of slavery add up to 93 years, which if subtracted from the total 573 years brings us back to the exact 480 year figure mentioned in Kings. Amazing. Every year the Jews had been cast off by God had been completely eliminated in God’s account in Kings. The reason those years were not added in was that God “forgot” them.
        Now, having resolved that controversy, but with God’s intentional “forgetting” still in our minds, let’s look at the 70 week prophesy in Daniel, in which we know that each “week” represented seven years. As was covered in Unlocking God’s Secrets, the first 69 weeks were fulfilled exactly to the day when Jesus entered Jerusalem on a donkey. After that, Jesus made reference to the 70th week when He said in Matthew 24 that the abomination of desolation, which would occur in the middle of the 70th week (the seven years of the tribulation), would be the definitive sign of His second coming.
        The idea that the delay between the 69th and 70th week, which so far has lasted two thousand years, was the time period needed to bring the Gentiles into God’s Kingdom is commonly taught. And we know from God’s Word that the eyes of the Israelites were purposefully blinded during this time specifically in order that the church age could occur. Of that, by the way, we need to be extremely grateful.
        The revelation that is so awesome is the truth that “God not only forgives, but he also forgets” is an actual fact. The 93 years and the time of the delay between the 69th and 70th weeks, the time periods God has ostracized His chosen people, have literally been forgotten by God. God does not remember them, just as He promised us. Unlike humans who make a person serve time in jail but still refer to him as an ex con after his time is up, or a parent who punishes a child but still remembers the offense, God can literally wipe these times out of His phenomenal mind. He truly remembers it no more.
        This revelation gives birth to another one, which is more personal, and therefore more meaningful to us. Just as the forgetting of those times by God for the Jews is literal, so the forgetting of our sins, as told to us in my favorite Old Testament chapter, Psalm 103, is just as literally true. There is not an inkling of a possibility that God will remember our past sins. To Him, they are gone.
        Of course, we know that our sins are covered by the blood of our Lord, and therefore unseen by the Father, and we can read over and over in God’s Word that they are forgotten, but now we can know what that means. We now can have an even clearer, and more deeply rooted knowledge of the meaning of our past sins being “forgotten”. To God, they absolutely do not exist, and never will. Imagine that, unlike humans, God really forgets our sins.
        The next time any one of us recalls our own past sins, and the guilt still carried with them, we have a more clear biblical example of what “forgotten” really means. And since God has forgotten, we should as well, and move on.
         Likewise, since we are to strive daily to be more Christlike, the next time we think about the wrong that someone has done to us in the past, we need to stop and remember what “forgive and forget” means to our Lord. And in the same manner we need to forget their past wrongdoings just as completely. If we forgive someone, we must forget. We are instructed by God to “be holy, because I am holy.” 1 Peter 1:16.
        What a phenomenal thing it is to be a child of God. How constantly thankful we all should be. His love for us is truly beyond description. “As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.” Psalm 103:12.
        “I will remember their sins no more.” Jeremiah 31:34.

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What’s Next

Friday, May 8th, 2009
        I am hearing questions constantly about what is the next biblical prophecy that should come to pass. The answer is easy. As you know from my book, there are about six thousand prophetic scriptures that do not pertain to the end times events of the rapture, the tribulation, and the second coming of Christ. Each and every one of those six thousand have already been fulfilled exactly as God had said they would, with the glaring exception of one. It doesn’t take the brains of a rocket scientist to figure out that the final non end time prophecy will come to pass, too. He didn’t predict correctly the first six thousand just to mess up on the final one.
        What I am referring to is the War of Gog and Magog that is prophesied in such minute detail in Ezekiel 38 and 39. Briefly stated, Israel will be attacked by a coalition of nations including Iran, Russia, Turkey, Sudan, Uzbekistan, Kazakstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Lybia, and others from north central Asia Minor. Not a single country will come to the aid of Israel, but Israel will surprisingly win that war due to the intervention of God. And looking at that list, we must be aware that for the very first time in history Iran and Russia are allies. That was unthinkable in the past.
        So, if we want to check off prophetic events from God’s Word, we can stop looking at the events happening in America. Sure, the quick march toward US socialism, the push of abortions, the wave of new states legislating same sex marriage, the marginalization of Christianity, the current administration’s overtures toward a global government, and a list of a hundred other things can all be seen as precursors to what is described in the Bible as the state of the world during the tribulation, but if we want to take first things first, we must keep our eyes on Israel.
        Yesterday the UN admonished Israel once again because of the recent Gaza War, totally forgetting as usual that the reason for the war was that Hamas had sent over 9,000 rockets against Israeli citizens. Two weeks ago Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for the total and complete destruction of Israel at the Durban Conference on Racism, and all but a relatively few of the nations of the world in attendance roundly applauded his vicious remarks. Can you imagine that? The world actually applauded. In short, anti Semitism is not only on the rise, the majority of the world wants Israel annihilated. The current US administration is showing its non love for Israel in several ways already, including their talk of dividing Jerusalem and giving up more land.
        Of course God told us very often in His Word that all of this would happen, including Zachariah 12:3, “In that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people: … all the people of the earth be gathered together against it.” He even told us why this would happen, “You will advance against my people Israel like a cloud that covers the land, so that the nations may know me when I show myself holy through you before their eyes.” Ezekiel 39:16. God wants Israel to have to stand alone so that the ultimate victory will prove His existence and His power. He wants that to happen so that His people will turn back to Him and be saved. It will all happen because of His merciful love. 
        Last night I watched an interview with the nephew of the great Israeli general, Moshe Dayan. Like his famous uncle, he also has been a military man all his life and rose to the rank of general. In the interview he said that he felt Iran would have nuclear capabilities within six months, but surprisingly he said that those capabilities could be dismantled with an air strike on just one target, unlike the normal view that Israel would have to hit hundreds of nuclear centrifuges. He also felt, quite naturally, that Obama’s desire for further negotiation would just give Iran additional time to complete its first bomb.
        When we add this to the report that Iran tested even longer range rockets last month, it is not hard to understand why the Israelites are so nervous. However, God has put a man at the helm in Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, who is not adverse at all to preemptively striking Iran.
        My personal guess is that the way the next prophetic event will play out is that Israel will of necessity attack Iran’s nuclear facility, as it did Iraq’s in the 80’s. Iran and the Islamic world will be irate and counterattack, with Russia being pulled into the fray due to its recent signing of a defense pact with Iran. The rest of the world will also show outrage, like we saw in the UN against Israel yesterday. No one, including the US, will stand with Israel. She will be alone. But hold on to your hats for the last act of that war to play out. God’s might will be revealed. It will be something to see.
        The news is alive if we understand that our economy is not what we need to concentrate on. I highly suggest that you slowly read Ezekiel 38 and 39, as well as Chapter 31 in my book, Unlocking God’s Secrets. That chapter fully explains what may soon be on the horizon. God not only told us what would happen in “His Story,” but all of the reasons why they would happen. Once we are aware of the what’s and the why’s, we can sit back with a calm peace and watch everything unfold. It is like watching a master painter or musician do his thing. In this case the master is the Master of everything.
        Once we know what is going to happen we can sit back calmly, as T.D. Jakes so aptly described it, like the owner of a wrestling match sits cool as a cucumber while the rest of the audience is pulling their hair out. He knows what is going to happen. We can, too. But even more than that, once we understand why it is all happening, we can sit with awe of God’s great and merciful love for His children. God is love, first and foremost.

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The Beyond Awesome Bible

Monday, May 4th, 2009

        After reading this you may never look at your Bible the same way again.
        Although there is still some controversy surrounding ELS codes in the Bible, what I am going to share with you should end the controversy. For anyone still not aware of ELS codes, they refer to the strange fact that words, phrases, complete sentences, and even paragraphs are now being found by high speed computers underneath the surface Hebrew and Greek text of God’s Word in “equidistant letter sequence, or spacing.” For example, a complete paragraph may be written underneath the normal body of the scriptures spelled out with every seventh letter. Obviously, the longer and more complicated the ELS code, the less the chance is that it could happen by random chance.
        Today I want to look at two ways God linked the books of the Bible with ELS coding. First, lets examine an unusual phenomenon in the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. Between Genesis and Exodus the Hebrew word for torah is found in an ELS with the first letters at the end of Genesis and the remaining letters at the beginning of Exodus. Next, Exodus and Leviticus are linked in the same manner with an ELS of the word torah. In the very middle of Leviticus is an ELS spelling out torah. Then interestingly we find that the two books of Leviticus and Numbers are also linked with torah, but this time torah is spelled backwards. The same is true of Numbers and Deuteronomy, the last two of the five books in the Torah. So torah is spelled forward linking the first two books and Leviticus, and backwards linking the last two books and Leviticus, with torah spelled normally in the center of Leviticus. The first two books and the last two books all have torah pointing toward the center of the Torah. The chances of that happening by random chance is said by experts to be “incalculable.”
        Next, let’s look at the Bible as a whole. Skeptics always say that the Bible is just a collection of books put together by man. How wrong they are. I hope you are sitting down for this because it will blow you away. The truth is that all sixty six books of the Bible are linked together with the name “Yeshua” (Jesus). Let that sink in. The word Yeshua starts at the end of Genesis and ends in an ELS code in Exodus. It does the exact same thing sixty five times, linking every one of the sixty six books in the exact order they are found in our Bible. The chances of that happening are probably a gazillion times more than “incalculable.”
        To put that in prospective, recently a trillion dollars has been bandied around in the news quite a bit, and it was figured that a trillion one dollar bills stacked on top of each other would stretch sixty thousand miles. But if we want to take a similar picture of the random chance of the name Yeshua linking all sixty six books of the Bible, we would need to pile sheets of thin tissue paper to the very end of the universe, putting a red dot on only one of those sheets and then picking it out blindfolded by random chance. A person would have to randomly choose the one and only correct sheet to prove that it was remotely possible for anything other than God having linked all of those sixty six books in order by equidistant letters sequencing with the name of Jesus.
        We must treasure and revere our Bible with the awe it deserves. It was written totally, letter by letter, by the all divine God who created everything, including the uninformed skeptic himself. God’s Word may be the most complex creation of all time, and from Genesis to Revelation Jesus is the focal point.

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On His Throne

Saturday, May 2nd, 2009
        Revelation 3:21 is a verse that causes me to say “WOW” out loud. As you know, the letters that Jesus wrote to the seven churches in Revelation were not only written to seven actual churches, but are commonly thought to have been written to Christians in the seven ages of the Church, with Ephesus representing the Apostolic Church, which was the church up to 100 AD, Smyrna representing the Age of Persecution, which was 100 AD to 313 AD, Pergamos being the Imperial Church age from 313 AD to 590 AD, Thyatira being the Age of Papacy from 590 AD to 1517 AD, Sardis being the Age of Reformation from 1517 AD to 1730 AD, Philadelphia the Age of Missions from 1730 AD to 1900 AD, and finally Laodicea being the modern church age, from 1900 AD to the year Christ returns.
        All of the seven letters end with a promise from Jesus as to what the Christians of that time would receive if they “overcame”. All of the promises are exciting, from being given the right to eat from the tree of life, to being given a “white stone”, which represents celebrity status such as Greek Olympic athletes had. They are all wonderful rewards to be given in heaven.
        When it comes to Laodicea, the letter written to us, the emphasis always seems to be on the fact that Jesus said the church of our time was neither hot nor cold, and that since our church as a whole was lukewarm Jesus said he was going to spit it out of His mouth. But let’s really look at the promise for those of us who overcome. I am bowled over by it. Here it is, from Revelation 3:21: “To him who overcomes, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I overcame and sat down with my Father on His throne.”   
        Let that sink in. It is one of the most incredible things you may ever read. If we only overcome Satan and the world for the few relatively short years we live on this earth, we will actually sit down with Jesus on His throne, for eternity. Can you imagine what that would be like. Talk about being born into royalty. WOW !!!
        Of course, if someone doesn’t believe in a literal heaven, that may not mean much. But if we are truly a Christian, we must believe that heaven is a real place, just like Borneo is a real place even though we haven’t seen it with our own eyes. If we don’t believe it, we are saying that Jesus is a liar. For me, Jesus said over and over that it exists, so end of debate.
        Therefore, if heaven exists, the throne Jesus sits on exists, and you and I can earn the right to actually sit on it with Jesus. The thought sends chills up my spine. All we and I have to do is “overcome”. Whatever that takes, no matter what, the reward is a billion times greater than the acts involved in overcoming. If ever we could be persuaded not to give 100% of our love and our lives to Jesus, that should dissolve with the realization of what that verse is saying. There could be no greater promise than that. That is the best there is.
        Whatever this world or Satan throws at you, remember the vision of you sitting right beside Jesus on his throne. For such a reward, there is nothing you and I could not withstand. Burn it in your memory. Don’t ever forget it.
        I will look forward to shaking your hand, with a big grin on my face from ear to ear, when you and I sit down together, of all places, on the throne of Jesus, right along side Him. Talk about a front row seat to the events of eternity. Words don’t come close.
                                      A joint heir with you to the throne,  Bob

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