080 Who God Is NOT

There’s a lot of people out there doing a lot of things in the name of God, which I firmly believe the God-Who-is-Love and God, Who He really is, does not have anything to do with, nor would He want to be associated with them, much less held responsible for them.

Sometimes, in order to discover Who God really is, we first have to clear away the rubble of the images we have made ourselves of Him, and define what God is not:

God is not a harsh dictator or cruel, merciless tyrant Who judges the innocent.

He is not the cruel Father as which some would depict Him, Who gives us the greatest gift ever given to man, namely Salvation through the blood of His Son, only to take it away from us again if we don’t behave.

God is not partial. He does not side with the rich and powerful, even if they claim to be His children, as long as those “children” of His use their power and wealth to exploit their poor and weaker brethren.
“Love thy neighbor as thyself” still goes hand in hand with “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God.” We cannot love God, Whom we have not seen, if we cannot love our brethren, whom we have seen, and from the way some treat their neighbors and brethren, it becomes obvious that their supposed love for God is a farce (Mt.22:37-40, 1Jn.4:20).

God is not exclusively the God of the rich and powerful. “The meek shall inherit the earth. He filleth the hungry with goods, but the rich He hath sent empty away” (Mt.5:5, Lk.1:53, Jam.5:1-3).

God is not mute. It’s not true that He has stopped speaking 2000 years ago. He still says, “Call unto Me, and I will show you great and mighty things which thou knowest not” (Jer.33:3).

God is not responsible for the countless people who starve each year when it’s within our financial power to save them from starvation (Jam.4:17).

God is not blind to the circumstances which have brought an unbeliever into His current state. If someone refuses to believe in Him or His goodness because of the sheer lack of any of His qualities in His earthly representatives, then He will not hold the unbeliever responsible, but those who claimed to represent Him.

God is, quite simply, not like us. He lacks each and every one of our negative human qualities which influence our way of seeing things: He is not stingy. He is not self-righteous. He is not a liar. He doesn’t side with the strong and powerful to get an advantage out of that acquaintance. He quite simply doesn’t need their help. He prefers to side with those who need His (Is.55:8-9; Num.23:19).
He is also not the prudish God as which some portray Him, since He Himself is the One Who equipped us with our means of procreation, a task apparently so important to Him that it was the first commandment He ever uttered to man (Gen.1:28).
God is not a fool. You may be able to fool most of the people most of the time, but you can’t fool Him (Gal.6:7).

God is not a conservative, stale, brittle preserver of the old, much less of any man-made status quo, but says, “Behold (look!), I make all things new!” (Rev.21:5).

God is not a respecter of persons, including their rank, status or achievement, which may only make us more accountable in His eyes, whereas He calls the children His own, and that “of such is the Kingdom of Heaven” (Acts 10:34, Jam. 3:1, Mk.10:14, Mt.18:1-6).

God does not run a One-Man-Show, nor a 3-Man-Show, merely assisted and applauded by the angels, but His theme has always been Family and teamwork, and He gratefully takes all the help He can get (even yours, if you will). If you don’t believe it, just have a look at creation, which describes the way He is (Rom.1:20). God seems to be constantly recruiting workers for His harvest, obviously due to the lack of them, and sometimes it’s those one would least expect to, who wind up doing the work (Mt.9:37, 20:1, 21:28-31).

Finally, God is not nearly as fond of pompous buildings as we may think He is. In fact, He quite simply does not live there (Acts 7:48-49). You can’t put Him in a box, no matter how pretty you try to make it.

079 Huge Surprises

There is a series of online videos out from Lionandlamb ministries, stating that the Pharisees in Jesus’ Day were all members of a secret society which today is called Cabala. While at first glance this seems to be a convincing argument (and the author of the videos states it with an effort to make it come across as fact, rather than a theory), and it does seem to make sense in the light of such dreaded Scriptures as John 8:44, where Jesus tells them openly, “Ye are of your father, the devil…,” or many others where He blasts the Pharisees, about which many theologians argue that Jesus couldn’t have possibly said or meant that…

After all, He was talking to Jews, and the Jews are God’s people, right?

While I don’t doubt that members of occult secret societies may had infiltrated the governing body of Jewish religious establishment of those days, just as they have allegedly (and obviously) infiltrated today’s established religion, I see a few problems with that theory.

First of all, we have members of the Sanhedrin, Pharisees, who believed in Jesus, even if they had to do so secretly¸ like Nicodemus, who came to Jesus by night in John 3, or Gamaliel, who defended the disciples before the Sanhedrin in Acts. Certainly they weren’t Satanists.

Secondly, labeling the Pharisees as members of a secret satanic society creates a comfortable gap between them and us. After all, we don’t belong to a satanic society, so we’ve got nothing to do with those satanic people who were responsible for Jesus’ death. No, we’re the good ones, and they were the bad ones.

I’m afraid that won’t do.

In my own personal experience, today’s established religionists are a lot more like the Pharisees than they would like to believe.

Let’s have a look from the Pharisees’ point of view in the days of the apostles: here was this strange, new, dangerous sect emerging, with scary new doctrines that threatened to overthrow all their good old traditions, and the way they had believed and practiced religion for so long.

How many people attending church do you know who would react differently to that kind of threat, nowadays, than the Pharisees did to Jesus and the Early Christians?

It’s easy to say, “Well, they were of the Devil and belonged to a satanic sect,” now, 2000 years after it happened and there’s no proof whatsoever to back up that theory.

It’s a lot harder to say, “Hmmm, looks like the Pharisees had a definite problem with self-righteousness, and they were quite stuck in their old religious rut, they thought they knew better than God as to who and what kind of people He would use.” Because that sounds a lot more familiar and closer to home, doesn’t it?

The theory also takes any guilt from the general Jewish population of that day, by creating a separation between them and their “satanic” rulers. But you can’t tell me that it was just a few members of a secret society yelling “Crucify Him!” and “Free Barabbas!” before Pilate (see also Mt.27:25).

Many people seem to forget that God has made a new Covenant with man, a covenant of the spirit, not of flesh, and that “He is not a Jew, which is one outwardly” (carnally, physically), “but he who is one inwardly…in the spirit” (Romans 2:28, 29).

“By their fruits ye shall know them.”

Maybe a whole lot more people than we think are going to turn out to have believed the wrong things, no matter how convinced they may be that they are in the right, just like the Pharisees were, and maybe a whole lot more of us will turn out to have sided with the wrong guys, opposing and oppressing those who look a lot more like little David with his slingshot confronting Goliath than the guys we’re siding with.

Not all Palestinians are terrorists, nor are all Muslims terrorists. In fact, there used to be more Christians among the Palestinian population than among the rest of the population of Israel, and there probably still are, except that we never hear much of their side of the story these days. Not much of anything gets through that wall the Israelis have built in order to keep out the undesired elements.

I really wonder how God would look on all these things.

And from the way I know Him, I think many of us are in for some huge surprises.

The truth, ladies & gentlemen, is and has always been terribly unpopular in a world run by the father of lies, even – or should I say, especially – in the circles of established religion.

Sin is a lot closer to home than many of us have the guts to admit to ourselves.

It doesn’t take a secret satanic society to oppose the true Messiah and His strange new sect.

All it takes is some damn clever lies of the Devil, and from what I can tell, those are more abundant than they ever were.

078 Mercy, Not Sacrifice

Last week I came across the astounding video of Southern Baptist missionary Paul Washer’s sermon before a congregation of young people, and I immediately became a fan. Early that week I had written that I wish I knew one minister of God with the guts, conviction and initiative of someone like conspiracy hunter Alex Jones, and it seemed as though here I had found one.
I was deeply moved by Washer’s conviction during the speech, and wholeheartedly agreed with everything he said about the pitiful condition of Western Christianity, and also loved his television interview one can find on Youtube.

However, there was one thing that kept haunting me in a negative way about his sermons, and that was that he seriously seemed to question people’s Salvation, and his way of mocking the way most of us have learned to win souls, namely by asking them to pray with us to receive Jesus as their Savior.

While it is true that we should make sure we are saved, and that we make our Salvation work out for us in this life with “fear and trembling,” and it may also be true that Jesus never asked anyone, “Would you like to receive Me in your heart?” and that repentance is way more than that, at the same time it also remains true that “Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved,” (Acts 2:21), no matter what Paul Washer, Roy Comfort or anyone else may tell us!

It also remains a fact that “Whosoever believeth on the Son hath eternal life” (John 3:36), and that “as many as received Him to them gave He power to become sons (children) of God” (John 1:12) and that He even stands at the doors of the hearts of the lukewarm church and knocks, and “if any man hear My voice, I will come in to him and sup with him and he with Me” (Rev.3:20).

And there is no amount of “godly zeal” that could ever destroy the universal truth of John 3:16, that “God so loved the World (yes, the whole world, including not only lukewarm Western Christians and Jews, but even Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists and the whole shebang) that whosoever believeth in Him should have eternal life.”

I have also spent some years on Latin American mission field and have had to cope with the vast difference between the fire and fervor among Christians there and the blatant lack of it in the West. Things quite simply never were the same. It took me years to get over it.

But I don’t find any use whatsoever in raising doubts over anyone being saved or not, or in speculating over the percentage of Christians in the West that are actually saved or not. We should remain focused on getting those saved who pretty much are sure they’re not.

As far as the “sinner’s prayer” is concerned, brother Paul, it definitely did work for Me, when I was 13, although I didn’t immediately turn out to be an overnight wonder, and although I probably couldn’t get you to keep doubting my salvation until the end of our lives.

All I know is that before I was blind, and now I see. Before I was deaf, and now I hear. Before, there was emptiness, and now there is Jesus. And I won’t let anyone’s words, may they be ever so eloquent or “anointed,” take that away from me, and I would seriously issue a warning to anyone attempting to do that to anyone else. Unfortunately it is often those endowed with the greatest amount of truth that will cause the greatest harm to God’s work, as evident in the sad example of the Pharisees in Jesus’ time and the incessant persecution of believers by the established churches for centuries.

In my opinion, “being saved” is not always something plainly evident, since it can take years for that seed of having received Jesus in our hearts to sprout and surface. We will be rewarded according to our works (without which our faith is dead,) but we are never saved by them (Eph.2:8,9, see also 1Cor.3:11-15).

People who go around repeating how they doubt the Salvation of others must either be paranoid that there won’t be enough room in Heaven for everyone, or the prospects of so many less deserving than they winding up in the same place anyhow makes them feel less “special.”

There are hundreds of verses in the Bible about the vastness of God’s mercy, but we don’t seem to grant our lesser brethren that mercy. Perhaps that’s why Jesus told those among us with a tendency toward self-righteousness, “Go and learn what this means: ‘I will have mercy, not sacrifice’” (Mt.9:13)

It also reminds me of the parable of the workers who volunteered to work in the Husband’s vineyard but didn’t go, while those who said they weren’t going to, actually wound up doing the work. You never know who’s going to pick up the plough you left in the field when you got overwhelmed by your frustration and bitterness.

Of course, one factor that probably influences the “No, you’re not saved” attitude of some is the false belief in a Pre-Tribulation Rapture. I whole-heartedly agree that most of today’s Christians would not “deserve” just being whisked out of this world before the great purification of the church the Antichrist and the Tribulation are purposely destined by God to bring about.
But that’s not what the Scriptures say anyway, if you care to read them properly.

As far as there not being enough space in Heaven for all of us, though, I’d leave the worryin’ to God on that one.

077 The Beginning and the End

The first and the last two chapters of the Bible are very much connected, and they both go totally against the grind of the matrix considered fact and reality by the vast majority of today’s intelligentsia. In the first chapter of Genesis we find the outrageous statements that not only was God supposed to have created earth, the universe and all that goes with it in mere 6 days, a statement so preposterous that even most Christians are ashamed of it, but He also is supposed to have created the earth first, before the sun and all the rest of the stars…

That, of course, is the one that’s hardest to swallow & just about breaks the camel’s back, since every child in the 21^st century “knows” (because it’s damn well made sure to know by its public educators) that the earth is just one infinitesimal spec of dust spun off the incredibly fast revolving matter that brought everything else into being during the “Big Bang” (a story which I personally find just as hard to believe, and yet it’s being told as if each and every science teacher on the globe was present when it happened).

But according to the last two chapters of the Bible, earth is anything but insignificant, and in fact here we find the reason why God took such special care in creating this little gem first of all, before all the other stuff. Because in Revelation chapters 21 and 22 we find God’s ultimate plan for earth unfolding: He has actually chosen this place for His future Headquarters from which to rule the rest of the universe, and for eternity, that is.

So, if you were going to create a place you were planning to make your home forever and ever, and especially if you were the Boss of everything, you’d probably also bestow some special care on it, and lay the foundation first, before you’d take care of the lighting and surroundings, right?

Of course, for the sceptics and scoffers, this ending of the story is just as unbelievable as the beginning, but for anyone who deems the Bible to be any kind of authority at all, this should make them think. Revelation chapters 21 and 22 describe in quite some detail how the Heavenly City, New Jerusalem, the actual City of God, will descend down to earth, which will have received a new surface with – remarkably – no more sea (5 times as much space, yippee!).

Some people interpret “a new heaven and a new earth” to mean that God will have created a whole new universe. But that’s not what it says, or means, nor what it takes in order to create new atmospheric heavens and a new surface for the earth. Besides, it would contradict Scriptures in the Old Testament which predict that (also contrary to scientists’ speculations) the earth and sun will remain forever (see Ecc.1:4, Ps.72:5, 17).

So, if you ever wondered how God could ever be so dumb to defy the combined opinions of 99% of today’s scientists and create the earth 3 full days before the rest of the universe, (or how some people could be so dumb to believe that), just think about what you would do if you were to build yourself a place where you were planning to stay for a while: would you first build the house, or plant the garden?

076 The Trouble With the Truth

As much as we all long for the ability to enjoy life, there are certain things that make it tough and a bit of a pain sometimes.

One of the things that make it hardest for me to enjoy life is the pitiful state an alarmingly growing number of my fellowmen is falling into, and a certain quality that seems to be ever increasing, which is an appalling lack of interest in the truth.

No matter whether it’s about Evolution or 9/11 or any other subject on which it would require a little bit of courage to embrace the truth instead of the broadband input of lies coming at us from the powers that be and their cronies, the media, people not only seem to prefer the more comfortable lie over the shocking truth, but they even vehemently defend it.

Never before was the proverb as true as today, “No matter how rare the truth, the supply has always been in excess of the demand.” It’s almost as if people worship the lie, and man’s philosophy in the 21^st century – with few exceptions – has become a philosophy of lies, a fake reality, very much as described in “The Matrix.”

People are increasingly, as the Bible says “willingly ignorant,” or, as Kent Hovind put it, “dumb on purpose.”

The attitude is, “Don’t bother us with the truth! Entertain us!”

Okay, granted, it would probably make it a bit easier if those who are a “furious voice for the truth” would have all the details straight, and if there wouldn’t be all those variations. Some things we simply don’t know yet. But instead of looking at the overwhelming evidence in favour of the truth, defenders of the lie nitpick at the little details we don’t have straight.

But basically, the truth is still the truth, and the lie is still a lie. The truth that just as behind every shred of information ever given there had to be an author, so must there also be an Author behind the immense amount of information in every living cell is still overwhelming in the face of the probability of it all having happened by chance, no matter how many more people choose to believe the latter, just as most people seem to still choose to believe and defend the official version of 9/11, no matter how ridiculous it is, or the reasons for the Iraq war.

No wonder some people consider their fellowmen dumb sheep.

Jesus never said it was wrong to get smart. He said “Be wise as serpents and harmless as doves.”

Nonetheless, when you’re “dealing in truth,” it’s a bit frustrating when so few are interested in your merchandize or what you have to offer, even if it’s for free. On the other hand, it does make you appreciate the few friends you do have, and you know they don’t love you for any false reasons. You know they don’t love you because you’re so popular or successful.

What scares me a little about folks like Alex Jones is that they apparently sincerely believe that they can stop the New World Order from happening, and that’s where they seem to lose the Big Picture that the New World Order must come to pass in order for the truth and the forces of good to ultimately prevail.

What they also seem to fail to realize is that there’s some bigger evil at work here than just the Bush administration, and they seem to figure, “Just change the president and everything will be fine.” Or, “If we can just get enough people together, we will win.”

They fail to see the spiritual forces behind what’s happening, and you can’t lick the devil with axes and daggers.

The only Revolution that’s ever going to prevail against the tide of evil that’s rising is the Revolution that started 2000 years ago, which wasn’t a physical one, but a spiritual one. True that most of today’s “followers” of that Revolutionary seem anything but revolutionary, and I wish to God I knew one minister of God with the guts, conviction and initiative of a fellow like Alex Jones.

But I guess it’s always easier to believe that the answer lies in our flesh, in the physical, in our numbers and our own strength.

Perhaps that’s precisely one reason why the NWO must happen, and there’ll be no other way out than God’s way, no other power to save us than His, and we’ll finally recognize that if anything is going to save us, it’s certainly not going to be our own arm.

And as far as the defenders of the unpopular truth not having all the details of their story straight yet, it’s still better to have a skeleton & rough foundation of truth, than a big fat carefully designed and constructed fair-tale, as much as we may all tend to prefer the latter.

The challenge is, how can you get people interested in what’s real instead of the shiny fake? How can you get a kid to choose a carrot over a candy bar? There’s probably no advertising campaign in the world that’s every going to successfully persuade the world to buy the healthier, wholesome option.

I guess the only thing that’s going to do the trick on a large scale is going to be the hard & painful road of experience & finding out where it’s not at.

In the meantime, could I perhaps get you interested in a carrot?

075 FLDS – What Did You Expect?

While I deeply feel for the members of the Fundamental Latter Day Saints community who have recently had the State of Texas take nearly 500 of their children into custody in typical self-righteous red-neck furor instigated by some mysterious phone call by a young woman obviously posing as someone else, and I whole-heartedly agree with every public outcry in the media for justice and sanity & pray that the FLDS’ lawyers will have the skill to drive sufficient sense into the presiding judge(s) to have those children returned to their parents, I also have to ask this question:

What did you expect? What did you expect from a State in which less than half a decade ago people were semi-publicly being tortured to death for the mere crime of having a darker skin color than their tormentors and by-standing authorities?

What did you expect from a state in which little more than 1 decade ago the FBI burned to death a whole compound full of men, women and children in a town called Waco?

What did you expect from the government of a country that spends more on killing innocent people in far-away lands than it does on anything else?

What did you expect from a government that has declared war on its own people under the guise of “Homeland Security” in response to a “terrorist act” the official version of which is being doubted and disputed not only by conspiracy theorists, and that you may never find out the truth about until so much more misery will have happened you won’t care anymore, just like with all the other crimes it covered up that are coming to light decades later?

Maybe you really swallowed all that baloney about “land of the free,” or thought the book of Revelation was just a weird allegory put in the Bible to confuse people, and the term “Endtime” was a product of fear-mongers trying to pressure folks to join their cults. Maybe you haven’t discerned the signs of the times, as Jesus advised people to do…

Maybe you’ve ignored the talk of “New World Order” by the Bush dynasty for too long, and the possible effects that oh-so-wonderful New World Order might have on your freedom.

I don’t blame you. If there’s trouble on the horizon, I’m the first one hoping it’ll just up and go away. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always happen that way. Prayer also helps. But sometimes I’m afraid we just reap the results of our own blindness, our own refusal to see what’s going on, and our own unwillingness to cope with the truth.

We all want to feel at home in this world and believe it’s not so bad, after all. But that’s not what Jesus said. He made it clear that He and His followers were not of this world, and if they persecuted and hated Him, they would do it to His followers also (John 15:18-20).

Today it may be the weird little sects that the mainstream Christians wrinkle their noses at. Tomorrow it may be the little bit less mainstream ones whose freedom will be taken away. But sooner or later, under that glorious New World Order, I can pretty much guarantee that if you’re any kind of a true Christian at all, you will suffer persecution, too, and you had better prepare for it while you can.

Prepare for it by realizing that that’s normal for true believers in this world. If you believe the Bible, why don’t you also believe the part where it promises that? (2Tim.3:12)

Prepare for it by realizing that no, this world is not your Home, if you can really say of yourself that you’re a follower of Jesus, and by believing what His Word says about our world we’re living in and who’s running it, and stop kidding yourself into believing that everything is going to be alright just because you live in “free,” “democratic” and oh-so-Christian America.

Let’s face it, if you were the Devil, and you were running this joint, what people would you try to get rid of and eliminate as “undesirable elements” of your oh-so-clever society? First, just like he did it 2000 years ago, you’d probably stir up the fat, lukewarm, deaf & blind religious establishment to wipe out the small radical cults who really do something for their faith, only to sweep up the big birds on your triumphant march back home. (The Jewish establishment in Jesus’ day may have been triumphant over Him and some of His early followers, but only to be stamped out by Rome 40 years later.)

Sooner or later we need to realize who this “War on Terror” is really designed against. Today it may be the Muslims & radical little sects, but sooner or later the Devil will have everyone persuaded that the single greatest threat to world peace (as if he ever cared for it) is those religious nut cakes like me and you, be they Muslim, Jew or Christian, and with another “Christian” in the White House killing and declaring war on everything in sight, it’ll be a piece of cake.

We’d all better prepare for it, because what we are seeing in Texas is only the beginning of sorrows. It’s just a little test run for the greatest religious persecution the world has ever seen that will make the Holocaust look tame in comparison.

If you don’t believe me, you’re not really aware of what’s happening, nor of what the Bible says is yet going to happen. You’ve probably been mislead by false prophets and Bible teachers who interpret the Endtime events in such a way that you will be anything but prepared for them.

The bitter truth is, no one will come to whisk you out of trouble before it happens. Nor will being American protect you. The evil that we’re indifferently watching our governments perpetrate on its victims will come back on us. It’s the law of cause and effect which the Bible also teaches. If we sow the wind, we’ll reap the whirlwind, and if you live in Texas, you may not yet feel it, but from where I stand, Baby, I can feel a cold wind blowing.