James Session 8 (Conclusion) - With Chuck Missler

[Music] well this is our concluding session in our study of the book of yakov the book of jacob and his letter to the twelve tribes i love to frame it that way because our first timers are wondering where in the old testament is the book of jacob no it's in the new testament the book of jacob it's yakov in the hebrew and it's of course james in english book of james indeed written to the 12 tribes and i'm very grateful for this session we've had an opportunity over the last seven sessions to go through the book of james it is a book that is widely misunderstood it is a book that through a superficial passing through of it seems to be quite different than the presentations that we're so used to from the apostle paul and i want to deal with that i think the epistle by james is clearly part of the scripture and one of the things that i hope we've gained over the last seven sessions is a perspective of the integrity of the whole and by the whole i don't mean just the book of james i mean the new testament how it fits in it's not contradictory it's complementary and i think we hopefully have emphasized that and i want to review just a few things tonight but i also want to prepare you for some potholes one of the things about puddles in the road ahead one of the things we try to do is not only illuminate by a little background or whatever cross-referencing what have you the word as we go through it i also at least aspire to trying to arm you against the kinds of traps and potholes that satan would put before you regarding the word of god now the epistle to james we we believe that this was written by that james which was the brother of the lord jesus christ and uh we'll talk more about that before we're through but let's recognize let's set aside some of the traditions and notice from the scriptures we went through this that the names of his brothers and sisters and so forth are alluded to uh in the scripture and obviously their younger christ was the firstborn but there were brothers and sisters and you could say half brothers and sisters because obviously they didn't share the same natural father but uh anyway uh there there are four james as we'll talk about but the the james is the brother of our lord is widely understood by most competent scholars is the author of this epistle now there's two major views as to when the epistle was written and this is by way of review but it'll it'll pertain to some of the observations i want to get into shortly we know the epistle was not written later than 62 a.d now following the reign of festus which was from 60 to 62 a.d there was a brief lull in the roman authority before the new roman governor claudius albinus he took before he took full control in this short period a conspiracy led by anus the younger the son of the high priest annis that we all know about illegally arranged for the execution of james in a.d 62. so if we're correct in james authorship i think we are then clearly could not have written been after the 1862. there are implications of this the execution of the popular james remember he was he was the leader in effect of the the council in acts 15 you may recall he was very prominent in the early church and his execution may have been a key element in the rebellion that followed that ultimately led to the romans destruction of jerusalem in 70 a.d and it was murdered 6280 in the coming years there was an uprising that uprising uh the rebellion and it's a subsequent quelling by the roman army led to the famed collapse of jerusalem from 66 to 70 a.d now that's one view in a very a very defendable view there is an alternative view that is also defendable and that is that he wrote the epistle right after pentecost very early uh perhaps after the scattering that's mentioned in acts uh in acts chapter eight first few verses now if it was written later the epistle may have been to correct a misunderstanding bordering on antinomianism on the part of some who are pushing paul's teaching to an extreme that paul never intended that was going on and some people feel that james's letter was a response to that issue antinomianism is the view that by faith and god's gift of grace through the gospel a christian is freed not only from the old testament law of moses but all forms of legalism but also from all law including generally accepted standards of morality prevailing in a given culture there's an extreme view and some people have taken paul's emphasis on grace and so forth too far and and james is an offset or a balance to that and that was written later in his career that's a defendable view now if james's letter was written during paul's imprisonment in caesarea you may recall that could explain why james does not mention the name of his dynamic friend for that would endanger paul even more so all this makes sense if you really lean on now of course to whom was it written it was written to the 12 tribes and we talked about that in earlier studies 10 tribes are not missing that's a myth but i won't start on that one tonight it's written to the same people at first peter peter wrote his first letter to the 12 tribes now james does include about 60 imperatives within 108 verses more than any other new testament book and some people as they go through the book of james see it as just a collection of all these imperatives don't do this and don't do that and that's missing the thrust and his organization which i hope if we've done nothing else in our last seven sessions that we've tried to uh give you the flow of that don't just carry away the do's and don'ts but develop the perspective that james had the key doctrine throughout the epistle of james is faith but the faith as he presents it has a different emphasis or coloration if i may we know the sinner is saved by faith from ephesians 2 8 9 believer must walk by faith second corinthians 5 7 without faith it's impossible to please god from the hebrews 11 6 whatever we do apart from faith is sin romans 14 23 tells us so these are all familiar precepts to anyone that studied the word of god but in spite of that there's a lot of misunderstanding about the nature of faith it is um amplified by the world they aspire to faith is an abstraction having faith in a falsehood is not is a is a path to destruction just having faith faith in what is the critical thing but there's also an attitude even within the church that faith is somehow and it's it and it's also supported by the culture that faith is sort of accepting something in spite of the evidence and that's wrong to accept something in spite of the evidence is irrational and our faith is rational and scripture emphasizes that faith is not believing in spite of the evidence faith james points out is obeying in spite of the consequences big difference faith is not believing in spite of the evidence faith is obeying in spite of the consequences and um where everybody misunderstands james is that he points out that if you have real practical saving faith it will manifest itself in works he doesn't say get saved by works but he knows your faith by your works and so one of the questions that james deals with what kind of faith saves a person he mentions three different kinds of faith is it necessary to perform good works in order to be saved james says yes in effect not because those works save you but if you've got a faith that saves it'll be evident by your works if you have faith you claim if you profess jesus christ and your life isn't improving isn't changing something's wrong that's what james is trying to get across now he talks about three kinds of faith the first one he talks about dead faith well in chapter two that's just a little review from chapter two but it'll i wanna bring it out because we're gonna explore a few things here in chapter chapter verse 14 says what does that prophet my brother until a man say he has faith and have not works can that kind of faith save him these are people that he's talking about that who claimed he had saving faith but did not possess salvation john calvin said it is faith it is faith alone that justifies but faith that justifies is never alone it's always accompanied by works it's not the works that save you but the works accompany the faith faith without authenticating actions is vain i love the bumper sticker that was suggested you know as a if you were indicted to be a christian is there enough evidence to convict you james talking and uh jesus yeah amen say thou has faith that i have worked show me thy faith without thy works and i will show thee my faith by my works that's his rebuttal mere intellectual assent is not enough one may know the doctrines of salvation and yet has not may not have submitted himself to the lordship of god that's what james means three times his faith without works is dead now the second kind of faith i love this because it really gets the point across is uh he really wanted to shock you he said you believe that there's one god you do well the devils also believe in tremble he's saying the devils go further than you do they at least tremble there's not a demon in the entire universe who is an atheist think about it some of them have better theology than we do they believe the existence of god they're neither atheists or agnostics they believe in the deity of jesus christ they even witnessed of him whenever they met christ he was when he's on the earth they bore a witness to his sonship a whole bunch of verses they're on the notes they knew and they acknowledged the place of albert turman they recognized jesus christ as the judge they submit to the power of his word they know more about their theology is probably better than ours are they saved of course not so you just touch their intellect and they believe and tremble by the way it's not a confirming experience to tremble demons do that a lot a lot of ministries are emphasizing experience that doesn't save you your heart can be stirred and so forth and all that but true saving involves something more is what james is hammering away and of course that leads to the third form of faith which is the dynamic faith that involves the whole person the emotions the will the mind understands the truth the heart desires the truth the will acts on the truth then you go you some examples of abraham and others now we'll go through all that here now what i want to do i want us now to stand back we've had a chance through seven sessions to explore the epistle of james it may surprise you but i don't want you caught by surprise to discover that there are some pseudo-scholastic materials on the landscape some have been there a long time some are new ones but they're somewhat the same kind of heresy that involves james and i want to talk a little bit about a couple of topics that seem to have nothing to do with james but you'll see where i'm headed ultimately trust me i'd like to talk a little bit tonight about the shroud of turin how many have heard of the shroud of turin okay good all right might turn with me to mark 15. let's just start there mark 15. mark 15 is mark's record it's actually probably peter's record mark was probably peter's emmanuences or secretary he's really recording peter's chronicle here and uh in mark 15 we have a crucifixion let's pick it up about verse 42. and now when the evening was come because it was the preparation that is the day before the sabbath joseph of arimathea an honorable counselor who also waited for the kingdom of god came and went in boldly unto pilate and ask for the body of jesus and pilate marveled if he were already dead and calling unto him the centurion he asked him whether he had been any while dead and when he knew it from the centurion he gave the body to joseph now what this doesn't record now i can't go through this without sharing with you some extra biblical insight that chuck smith gave me now joseph amathia of course he went boldly into pilate you didn't just do that you and i couldn't do that this is a demonstration that joseph arimathea is a very very powerful figure he had direct access to the personal representative of the rule of the world in that area he's probably one of the wealthiest men in the area the second thing we know from roman and hebrew law is that he was the next of kin because that was the one that was responsible for disposing of the body even if it was a criminal execution but what the scripture doesn't record here is pilots complete amazement he said uh joseph i don't understand you've got this brand new tomb never before been used for your family and you're going to give it to this criminal and joseph says oy vey it's just for the weekend i have that on good authority from chuck smith that that's i can't go through this passage without sharing that with you but we pay up verse 45 he said when he knew it from the center and he gave the body to joseph and he bought fine linen and took him down and wrapped him in the linen and laid him in the sepulchre which had been hewn out of a rock and rolled a stone unto the door of the sepulchre and mary magdalene and mary the mother of joseph be held where he was laid so ends the chapter now one of the questions of course because is this whole issue is the shroud of turin as it's now called legitimate and there are many many opinions very diverse opinions by very very competent people that studied carefully there is a tradition an ancient ancient tradition that that linen shroud was carried by thaddeus now thaddeus happens to also be one of the four james's but fatty says his other name that's the way it's commonly listed in the year of crucifixion thaddeus is said to bring this shroud to a town called edessa which is modern urfa in eastern turkey and the cloth of odessa shows up in the ancient records as early as 525 a.d there was a major flood at the town of odessa one third of the population dies about 30 000 people died in that flood the emperor justinian orders the reconstruction of the town and in the reconstruction process they discover the cloth of odessa that had been hidden by the christians years before about 787 leo the lector of constantinople refers to the odessa cloth at the council of nicaea so this cloth of odessa shows up in very very early records in 944 the cloth of odessa arrives at constantinople gregory the archdeacon of haggai sofia delivers a sermon from details in that sermon it matches it seems to correspond to the what we know as the shroud of turin in other words of the whole body it's not just the head cloth there's a lot of issues that it that 944 sermon seems to resolve in the year 11 30 audeuricus vitalis recorded what's called the ecclesiastical history and he makes reference to it and there's other references in the 12th 13th century it's on display in constantinople in the year 1203 but it then disappears in the sack of constantinople by the crusaders and it disappears then for about 150 years but in 1355 it reappears in leery near troyas and in 1389 it's mentioned in a memorandum i will go through i will go through the whole list but it's about 1578 that the shroud moves permanently to the town of turin now what is this thing it's about 14 feet long it consists of a very special kind of herringbone twill of linen cloth and it bears an incredible image of a naked and bearded man about six feet tall hair in a loose ponytail back apparently scourged with a multi-thonged whip hands crossed before him now in 1978 coming out of modern times that there's a whole history of the shroud but i'll i'll spare you all that in 1978 two dozen scientists from the united states from switzerland and from italy they performed a battery of tests they use tape to lift pieces of material from its surface and they they their tests included uh photo and electron microscopy x-rays spectroscopy ultra violet fluorescence thermography or infrared chemical analysis the findings the first of all they came to the conclusion that no way could this be an artist having done it somehow they got into the whole physics of the of the strange imaging that's on there i'm i'll give you the short form of all this but basically they concluded that the shroud had come in direct contact with the body and that the blood that's implied was real blood the idea that it was a work of some kind of cunning artist was dismissed for a number of reasons now one of your interests in this background one of the guys that has written the most competent extensive books he's got a name ian wilson he's written at least three books on the shroud when you read his books you'll discover he's very thorough not biased he presents very very he does a remarkable job at getting into all the issues and in fact the technologies that you go through are the diverse issues are incredible roman graffiti is involved the the bp-8 image analyzer the crystal or monochrome gray kind of painting techniques the feeding habits of the ibis the musculature of the brow the existence of the twill and the herringbone weave as an ancient israeli form of linen all these things are dealt with but the main points are the blood flows the nails are through the wrist not the hand as naive people have always talked about we know for a lot of reasons it was through the wrists the eerie three-dimensional aspects of the image all seem to support the issue that it is an authentic burial shroud that part seems to be beyond competent debate the image is only one fiber deep with no discoloration below the application of acids or pigments would not achieve that kind of delicacy fiber by fiber microscopic graduations even within a single thread which makes up the image has very strange exquisite shading it defies having been done by a human hand now the experts have concluded that the blood is real blood that it came from a man who died under trauma the chemical analysis and telltale yellow green fluorescence under under ultraviolet light indicates the presence of a remains of a slightly different substance the fluid exuded from blood clots this substance is invisible to the naked eye and was unknown until the 20th century so the point is the idea that it's some kind of a hoax is dismissed so that's part a of the story but before i go on i'd like you to turn with me to numbers 21. in numbers 21 we have an episode while israel was wandering in the wilderness in which um people were rebellious in verse six the lord sent fiery serpents among the people and they bit the people and many people of israel died verse seven therefore the people came to moses and said we have sinned for we have spoken against the lord and against thee pray unto the lord that he may take away the serpents from us and moses prayed for the people verse eight and the lord said unto moses make thee a fiery serpent and here the term implies brass brass was the metal in that culture that could sustain heat so brass things represented a resistance to fire and that's why levitically those things in the tabernacle that dealt with real fire like the brazen altar were brass gold was only inside it was used differently brass is synonymous with judgment or fire in fact levitically speaking but anyway make me a fiery serpent and set it up on a pole and it will come to pass that everyone that is bitten when he looketh upon it shall live moses made a serpent of bronze and put it upon a pole and it came to pass that if a serpent had bitten any man when he beheld the serpent of bronze he lived strange strange story when you think about it because if god's going to save the people great why did god resort to this rather weird code it's a code what's a code it's a set of symbols this was assembly he made a brass server put it on a pole if you looked at the pole you were you know you were healed if you didn't look at the pole sorry sayonara god you know in other words he asked you to do something it was simple so that's the story and you say what's going on here fortunately the most competent commentator in the universe has given you the explanation turn to john chapter 3. the bible is always best interpreted by itself in john chapter 3 the number one teacher in israel god by name of nicodemus comes to jesus by night and in the conversation that ensues we learn that he is the teacher not a teacher the teacher in israel and this way this is the famous passage where jesus says you must be born again in fact uh this is important enough let's just start at verse three jesus answered said to him verily verily i say unto you except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of god nicodemus said to them how can a man be born when he was old can he enter the womb and second in his mother's room a second time obviously he knows better that's his way of getting across the question what do you mean jesus answered verily verizon except the man be born of water and of the spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of god that which is born of the flesh is flesh that which is born of the spirit is spirit marvel not that i said he must be born again where the wind bloweth where it willeth now here's the sound of it but you not can tell from where it cometh when it goes so is everyone that's born of a spirit nicodemus answered and said unto him how can these things be jesus said unto him art thou the teacher of israel and know us not these things verily verily i said of thee we speak that which we do know and testify to that which we have seen and ye receive not our witness if i have told you earthly things and you believe not how shall ye believe if i tell you heavenly things and no man hath ascended up to heaven but he that came down from heaven even the son of man who is in heaven in other words the guy is standing in front of him then you get this enigmatic verse 14 jesus continues and as moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness even so must the son of man be lifted up that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have eternal life for god so loved the world now verse 16 i think you're probably familiar with right god so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life and then he goes now we all remember john 3 16 but verse 14 leads up to that and the model that jesus presents to nicodemus a well-trained jew is draws upon that experience from numbers 21 just as moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness so shall the son of man be left up he's starting literally here now literally you say well gee it's a symbol yes but is he speaking literally when everywhere in the scripture that a prophet of god interprets the scriptures always literally always literally and jesus is raised up literally on a pole and whoever looked at him trusted him would be would not perish now turn around the other way god back in numbers 21 in contriving this response to moses prayer develops that imagery okay moses make a brass serpent put on a pole and whoever looks trusts it will be healed god is setting what i call a macro code is it's an anticipatory code the end now so you all know the story now you may not realize this the serpent on the pole became an ancient symbol of healing in the days of the torah days of moses later that legend or that story that legend that story takes a greek form where it's called escalapias the god of healing the greeks picked up this from the earlier tradition of the hebrews and the idea of a pole with the serpent became a symbol of what healing in alexandria in the greek legend that's why i used term legend four in the greek legend of escalation that's what that's that's the symbol now what's kind of interesting most of you probably have seen on license plates the little medical symbol which is a poll with two serpents see somebody who is designing the symbol for the army medical corps the one cir now you'll see nurses and sometimes they'll see a poll with a single serpent that's correct but you often see the double serpent that's unfortunate because whoever designed that way way way back didn't do their homework because the single serpent on the pole is escalapius a symbol of the god of healing in the greek the two serpents on the pole is a symbol of the god of hermes which is the god of commerce and every time i see a doctor's license plate within two serpents so anyway the reason i get into this is because i want you to turn with me ii kings 18. now we're moving here from the torah the days of moses to second kings 18. we're in the reign of hezekiah king of israel or i should say anyway king of judah excuse me and i want to get down to second kings 18. and under hezekiah we're going to see he reigns over judah and he's going to have a major major revival and verse 4 says something kind of interesting it says he removed the high places and broke the images now by the way you should understand that god instructed them they never were to put their sacred places at the top of hills never the top of hills even the temple was not the top of right it was a saddle point because the tops of mountains were associated with idol worship that's where all the pagan nations built their idols is on the top of mountain he wanted their practices to be different two of the old testament speak of the groves the groves were not groves of trees they were trees that were trimmed like phallic symbols this had to do with the sex orgies and and the form of worship of the pagan idols so when it says he removed the high places what that means is he destroyed all the pagan artifacts that were on the tops of these hills and he broke the images that is the idols and he cut down the idols and broke in pieces the bronze serpent that moses had made for unto those days the children of israel did burn incense to it and he called it on a thing of brass this imagery one other thing i forgot to point out maybe i should just insert here jesus said unto nicodemus as moses raised the serpent the wilderness so shall the son of man be raised up there's a subtlety there that is very deliberate on the part of god because the serpent on the cross the brass serpent was a symbol of what sin and paul tells us in this corinthian letters that jesus was made sin you think gee isn't that a strange symbol of jesus christ a brass serpent on a pole no it isn't a strange symbol if you really understand who he was and what he was doing that he we have no ability to grasp what it means when it says he was made sin for us but that again see now here's a symbol i want you to imagine the state of israel you know a thousand years after moses we're under hezekiah this brass serpent was still around it wasn't a counterfeit it was the brass serpent apparently that somehow had been kept from those days of the wilderness wandering and what had people done with it they worshipped it now this was not a counterfeit it was the brass serpent it had tremendous representational value it was an authentic relic but they were burning incense to it venerating it so what did hezekiah do he destroyed it he destroyed it and there's a lesson here by the way verse 5 follows this says he trusted in the lord god of israel so after him was none like him all among the all the kings of judah nor any that were before him hezekiah was at a a peak he did well but the point the lesson we learned is imagine imagine that we came back from ararat with a piece of wood from noah's ark wow isn't that neat yeah maybe what's likely to happen well put it on display and thousands of people come to want to see there there's an actual timber from the you get you see what's going to happen you see how foolish we are how we focus on the creation not the creator and that's what hezekiah was faced with here and i bring this up because let's assume for the moment that the shroud is real let's assume that it is real what does paul tell you in colossians 3 2 set your affection on things above not on things on the earth how irresistible it would be if we can prove scientifically that it really and by the way i'm sparing you the long version there is a lot of evidence that does support the idea that that really might be the shroud that wrapped our lord two thousand years ago let's for the moment stipulate that let's assume it is why does that make it dangerous is your faith enhanced because of that shroud if it is you've got some praying to do really is your faith on a relic however venerated however scientifically valid hey big mistake well let's let me turn now to april 21st of 1988 10 years later after the previous scientists under the gaze of anastasio cardinal valestreal of turin italian microanalyst giovanni riggy cut a half inch by three inch strip from the shroud in a place that was considered not objectionable and he divided this three-inch strip into postage stamp size samples and distributed them to representatives of the laboratories in zurich oxford and the university of arizona and tucson for radiocarbon dating now carbon dating so you understand what happens is it measures the level of carb carbon 14 which is an isotope it's not the normal kind of carbon because of cosmic ray induced neutrons it interacts with the nitrogen atoms and gives you a carbon-14 an odd isotope in the atmosphere plants and animals ingest that and while they're alive a balance takes place the mouth is destroyed gets replaced by the mouth that's there there's there's an equilibrium that takes place but as long as they're alive and the plants or animals die that equilibrium is stopped the carbon-14 has a half-life it decays it's radioactive and it has a half-life of about fifty seven hundred years but the point is it's a measurable decay and so what in the case in the case the the the linen which is made from flax they can tell presumably that when that flax plant was picked now carbon 14 dating within the range we're talking about here isn't a bad technique you're talking a few thousand years it's pretty good you start extending that to many many many thousands or tens of thousands the errors in your measurement start to accumulate as no reliable laboratory will date anything beyond certain thresholds more than 5000 years so these attempts to deal with fossils in millions of years is baloney and i won't get into that here carbon 14 is a technique that's been much talked about among scientific discussions but usually in the context of much longer ages within more recent thing it's considered a pretty understood technology now uh by anyway so by measuring the residual carbon 14 in the linen and comparing it with the amount of modern plants that they can yield an estimate of how long the flax plants making up the little have been dead that's what they do each of the three labs did three tests nine tests total and they came to the conclusion that that shroud was dated somewhere between 1260 and 1390 a.d it's about 700 years old not 2000 years okay it is that dating of the shroud that caused me to include this background in our study of james say what okay before i go on because i want to get off the shroud and you'll see where i'm headed in a minute i want to give you i haven't told you the final part of the story dr leon leoncio garza valdez of san antonio texas he's a pediatrician but he has substantial interest in microbiology and archaeology he has pointed out a potential source of error the possibility of a bioplastic lacto-lacquer-like coating produced by bacteria it turns out in the past i won't tell you that whole story he was responsible for correcting an earlier error involving a mayan jade artifact that was misdated because of such a coating so he has background in this and when he heard about this with a shroud of turn he wondered is it possible that same thing could have happened apparently bacteria can create a certain lacquer like very microscopic but it does screw up the carbon 14 dating studies and that's what happened with the mayan artifact and they corrected that and he was famous for that he wondered is it possible that's true here so in may of 1993 obtaining a couple of threads and a blood stain sample from the turin shroud and working with microbiologist stephen mattingly of the university of texas health science center in san antonio they determined that the coating was indeed a cockle-shaped bacteria in a filamentous mold-like organisms are around the thread they have this coating is transparent to the naked eye it cannot be removed by normal cleaning techniques that the labs typically do for this kind of test so they believe that this coating could be enough to skew the radiocarbon dating by some amount it could be even as much as 1300 years they don't know how much older the shroud is they just believe it is much older and they haven't got enough evidence to pin that down so the point is for those that really are hung up on the shroud there is the possibility still that that shroud might be 2 000 years old don't know but i want to get off that let's assume what we know so far and that is the shroud appears to be a valid shroud of a crucifixion that's 700 years ago what does that mean well there are books floating around there's a half a dozen of these and i'm not going to record any any of them for a number of reasons but i'll mention just one because it gets right to the point for our interest here a guy named christopher knight and robert lomas have published several books and they are third degree masons now if you know anything about the masonic order that's three out of 33. but that's as that's what they call the blue lodge that they're they're beginners within a few years but they have published extensive research on the background of the freemasons but one of the things that they have come out with is the suggestion that the shroud is actually the shroud of a crusader by the name of jacques de molay he was the last grand master of the knights templar he was crucified by the inquisition in a mock a mockery of jesus crucifixion before being burned at the stake and that that shroud was part of that ceremony now if they're right or wrong is not the point who i mean from our point of view who cares it goes it's part of a larger story that if you did not have a good grounding in the word of god and you encountered the pseudo scholarship that surrounds this is just one version of a similar a family of stories that turn out to be about james strange enough the lord's brother the story that you you will find some of the skeptics and secular i'll put scholars in quotation marks they portray that the true story of the early jerusalem church is of jesus and his brother james as they struggle to establish the kingdom of heaven on the earth using masonic style rituals now the establishment of the what we know is the christian church they attribute to a as a political invention by an intruder that came later by the name of paul and that paul and james were adversaries and that's the position they tried to take and they tried to defend the story continues that these early christians the real christians not the pauline people but these are they are said to have buried their most precious scrolls and their treasures beneath herod's temple before now this is yeah before they in the city was destroyed by the romans in 70 a.d and the hidden teachings of the real gospel by james and jesus were driven underground and following the destruction of the jerusalem church and the slaughter of the jewish nation 70d a few of the surviving priests from the smoldering city of jerusalem headed to europe to await the moment of the lord's return prophesied in the gospel of john now precisely one thousand years later their bloodline of those original priests their descendants re-entered the holy city in jerusalem to claim their ancient heritage and to form a new order of priests known as the priest of the temple known as the mysterious knights templar now one of the things you'll quickly discover you start doing research here there is a lot of mysteries that surround the knights templar they're presented in britannica and those kind of sources as a group of knights that were organized to protect pilgrims during the crusades and so forth that's the press releases there when you really get behind this there are there are a lot of strange mysteries about the knights templar i won't go through all that here but the idea was lost to the world for a thousand years the records that they uh it is claimed that they were clandestinely unearthed and interpreted by the infamous order of a nice templar who adopted the ancient teachings and rituals as their own these warrior monks ostensibly conducted a nine year long excavation under the temple following the first crusade there is reason to believe that they did discover a great deal in fact there are many scholars that believe they found the temple treasures and uh that uh hidden below the tumbled ruins they're even they divide there's a lot of other things that start here too the turret cards were a a cryptic they were assigned cryptic meanings to protect their secret cult the knights templar were a secret order and that's what partly what got them into a lot of trouble now their strange history then endures for about two centuries about 200 years when they were finally they're primarily strong in france they were incredibly wealthy that's what leads to the inference that they probably did bring treasure out of their out of their involvements in jerusalem and philippe iv of france coveted their wealth they were very very powerful but he arranged sealed orders to be opened on a certain day almost like this gestapo thing and on october 13th of the year 1307 in france all the knights templars were arrested and their homes and lands confiscated by the crown they were tried and tortured for years to find out where the real treasure were apparently the treasure of the nice templar was secreted out of europe or out of france uh in advance even despite all the secrecy by philip they they apparently they never did find the treasure it remains a mystery now attempts to wipe out the knights templar outside of france was less successful in fact philippe's own son-in-law was edward ii of england and he was very half-hearted in his pursuit of the templars scotland was at war with england at that time and so the order was never even officially dissolved in scotland maintained itself in scotland for another 400 years in germany and spain they found refuge in other orders they changed their name to the teutonic knights and some other things in portugal they became the knights of christ they functioned until the 16th century devoting themselves primarily to maritime activity most scholars who study this suspect that the treasures were secreted by ships somewhere and they were found vasco de gama columbus's father-in-law were all tangled up in this stuff so there's so many trails here we can spend all night on this issue easily in 1522 the templars prussian progeny the teutonic knights repudiated their allegiance to rome because up to them even though they were a secret order they professed an allegiance to the vatican that's finally what undoes them because they are discovered to be satan worshipers and that's what uh that's a whole background behind that but but anyway the in 1522 the teutonic knights repudiated their allegiance to rome and threw their support behind another upstart rebel by the name of martin luther so it's interesting to see how these things go there are scholars that believe that the wealth of the knights templars that was never recovered was the starting capital of the great banking houses in europe but that's conjectural but there's a lot of books written on that sort of stuff now anyway in march of 1314 this is seven years after the original arrest of the knights templar their last leader jacques de malay he was the grand master of the night templar it said he was crucified in a bizarre parody of the crucifixion of jesus and it's his image that materialized on the cloth that once clothed him now we brought you up to about the 18th century where various secret societies derive from all of this behind all these it seems that the master society even prior to the knights templar is an organization was originally called the the the order of zion or the priory late in 1188 was changing the priority of zion and the knights templar was a front group really run by the order of zion also in 1188 is when a derivative spin-off called the rose crucians also develops now this gets all interwoven with another heresy that i don't think a bible someone has any bible background has any trouble with because it's so absurd but there's a heresy that jesus didn't really die and that he married mary magdalene and had children and that becomes the merovingian dynasty and in the fifth century it shows up that's obviously a heresy but what is interesting that many scholars overlook is you apparently can build a family tree from antiochus epiphanes the one that desecrated the temple in the second century before christ the titus vespasian who destroys the jerusalem in 70 a.d is a descendant of antiochus epiphanes and that bloodline does connect to the bloodlines in europe and so there are scholars that suspect that the uh from daniel 11 some other studies that the antichrist will be of that bloodline it doesn't help us much today because that bloodline is very diverse almost every major family in europe can trace its lineage back down that channel interestingly enough we're not going to get it out here but we are going to deal with that explicitly in a a briefing package called behold a white horse we're doing the the the five horsemen of the apocalypse i've told you about that story there you know everybody calls the ministries it doesn't chuck know there's only four you know the four horsemen revelation six no there's a fifth one that's the one in revelation 19. so we're gonna include all five but anyway we're going you know four three two one we did we're going to climax with the our next the last would be the first horse the white horse in revelation 6 and we will deal with all of this in more substance at that time but it will be interesting to you to know that from the 18th century on there were all kinds of societies that derive from these apparent ancestral societies secret societies all of them mystical occultic among them was a group formed by adam weishaupt known as the illuminati on may 1st of 1776 they were subsequently merged into the masons the freemasonry freemasonry tries to attribute whether it's real or not as scholars argue but they try to attribute their origins to the knights templar and maybe earlier the guardians of these secrets are have tried to hide them from the world and from their own membership if there's a mason here i apologize if i'm offensive but the truth of the matter is there are many good devout wholesome people that happen to be caught up in the masonic order it's viewed as a charity service group does philanthropy but as you progress through the 33 degrees and the scottish rite of misery to use it as a nominal model here there's two different new york and scottish rite but the point is it turns out that you take olds at each level and those olds are terrifying emission will tell you well no one takes them seriously but they're blood oats and they're scary the whole thing the truth of the matter is if you if you get into this and i don't take the time here you the whole mace the freemason i should i better deal with this a little bit the freemasons are a widely held misconception even among its own members and incidentally the two authors that wrote the right about the so-called second messiah the jacqueline they're only at the third level masonry so they themselves are probably as much research as they've done on the history of masonry they're in for some surprises i believe but they presume to be a terrible organization indeed they do many good things but their inner mysteries are unknown until you ascend to the higher levels in fact i have correspondence from some of the experts that if they know you're a christian that bottles you a real christian that bottles you you can't progress beyond certain levels and that's not disclosed to the general membership but the truth matter is there are a lot of books around a lot of authorities that will point out to you that ultimately the masonic order is a luciferian cult a dark occult and this is topic that's too charged emotionally charged to get into detail here but our notes will have a reading list for those that want to do any anybody that's involved in this to do some homework john ankerberg and john weldon have done an excellent little book on that and there's a number of other charles finney the famous evangelist has done an extensive book on the character claims and practical works as a freemasonry and ralph epperson and others have done it i won't there's a whole list that will be associated with the tape of where you can start if you want to do some homework in this area but the real reason i get into all of this isn't because of that accompanied with this is a lot of scholastic materials that suggest that jesus really led just an entirely jewish sect and he was succeeded not by peter but by his brother james the first bishop of jerusalem the role of james was appeared to be a threat to the roman catholic church it's claimed by them and they of course controlled history and removed information from the records about james in 1996 pope john paul ii issued a statement declaring that jesus was mary's only child and therefore not his br that james was not his brother at all you know that and that's scholastically and defendable but i mean you have to understand why the church starts putting up those barriers the advocates here adversaries would put paul in opposition to james as a late coming intruder after james is martyred in 62 a.d the first cousin of jesus simeon the son of cleophas became the new leader of the church in jerusalem he was later executed by the romans as a pretender to throne of david the flavor they tried to paint is that they're trying to recreate the davidic dynasty jesus's brother and that's the story they try to paint now these heresies ascribe christianity as we know it to paul in contrast to james and they pray upon the ignorant who fail to understand the integrity of the word of god there are some contemporary so-called christian scholars robert eisman and others that portray james as a central figure among the revolutionary parties in jerusalem from 40 a.d to the 80 early 60s when james was killed by the same pro-roman priestly establishment that killed jesus and throughout his lifetime james like jesus is presented as a preaching a law-oriented apocalyptic nationalism that contrasted sharply with the teachings of paul it was the death of james that triggered the uprising against rome that led to destruction 70d that's the party line they try to sell and if someone hasn't done their homework this is just rip through of misstatements of fact but unless you've done your homework you wouldn't recognize that people that will stumble into this can get inoculated against the true gospel of the new testament by imagining these kinds of things so this pseudoscholastic revisionism can deal severe death blows to a someone who doesn't have the depth of background or grounding here and what fascinates me about this is your protection of this is to discover for yourself the integrity of the total bible not just the book of james it has integrity too i mean in terms of total when you discover that these 66 books penned by 40 different guys over thousands of years are designed as an integral whole and i don't mean just the themes i mean the place names the structure of the text in fact one more example and then we'll tie it off here there are four james's that are mentioned new testament james the son of zebedee the brother of john the beloved disciple right james and john the sons of zebedee you know all about that and they they were in both james and john were insiders that james was slain by parrot right after pentecost james the son of alfie is the brother of judas not a scary at the other judas he's only enlists and he and he's he's sometimes called james the younger or james the lesser the third james is james the father of judas again not a scary a different judas he's identified as one of the 12 in luke 6 16. he's probably the thaddeus of matthew 10 3 and mark 3 18. and then of course the fourth james the brother of our lord now i understand the brother of the lord jesus christ did not believe in jesus's deity until after the resurrection okay john 7 5 he then the lord first appears after his resurrection apparently to james first corinthians 5 15 7 galatians 1 19. now he of course rises to prominence in the jerusalem church those going to jerusalem from other churches founded by paul are said to have come from james in other words to have come from the jerusalem church was to have come from james he was the leader of the church but it's interesting that max 15 24 he had already disavowed allowing them to use his name as endorsement to the legal teachings he didn't want to take he didn't he deliberately avoided being authoritative in that sense in acts 15 24. now one of the things that really fascinates me i can't take this topic without sharing this with you and that's the equidistant letter sequences now you probably know about all the controversies having to do with these bible codes and there are many kinds of bible codes where in fact we're as you know we're publishing a book called cosmic codes hidden messages from the edge of eternity but the point of it is these codes there are many different kinds in the bible and the equidistant letter sequences are not the most important and i could spend a lot of time talking about the others but let's just focus on the equidistant letter sequences there's a lot of that about the torah codes but i want to shift to the book of isaiah rabbi yaakov ramsel in san antonio is the guy that has made some fascinating discoveries not in the torah codes that we saw about in isaiah if these equidistant letter sequences all it means all that means is that take words at every tenth letter every fifth letter what do they they spell meaningful things there are codes we discover all through the scripture some of these some people figure are just accidental or coincidental others people argue are too unique to be there by accident isaiah 53 is considered the peak of the old testament some people call it the holy of holies of the old testament isaiah 53 is incredible passage but the occurrence of equidistant letter codes in the in isaiah 53 is very striking the label nazarene which is jesus of course shows up in there the word galilee appears twice and that in itself isn't big thing except in combinations every time something else appears nearby it makes the the likelihood that it was accidental less likely the time of the passover the location of mount moriah the names of herod and caesar make their appearance both the names of anas and caiaphas the high priests are there thanos was the former high priest the uncle of caiaphas both of course figured prominently in three of the six trials that jesus went through that night after his arrest in gethsemane now what's startling is in isaiah 53 within 15 verses there are 40 names encoded 40 names pilate caesar uh caiaphas annas and all the disciples that were at the foot of the cross the specific names each and of themselves are not that you can statistically say well gee that that could have happened by itself but not all together the name of peter appears in isaiah 53 verse 3 beginning the second letter of the fifth word counting every 19th letter from right to left there are over 300 occurrences of the name in isaiah so this incidence doesn't seem that significant in and of itself but then you find the name of john also appears there every 28th letter and on it goes the name of andrew and name of philip the name of thomas i will go through all the numbers that you get they'll all be in the notes if you want to change and you can chase this down yourself if you want here's the point on the up to it's interesting that the name james appears twice encrypted it's a jacobus it's a yakov in the hebrew it appears twice hidden behind the text it was a common name of that period what makes this provocative there were two james's at the foot of the cross not three not four two follow me and one of them was the son of zebedee the brother of john with whom you know we went through all that and uh the other was the son of alphys one of the twelve apostles james the younger now what's interesting is there isn't a third james why we're not a believer at that time he that was the lord's brother he becomes a believer later he's mentioned with both his brothers joseph and simon and judas those are the names of of christ brothers before his resurrection they're listed in the gospels by the way there are three mary's also a relatively common name in the period i won't go through all the details but grant jeffrey points out that in isaiah 53 11 starting with the fifth letter of the ninth word counting every 20th letter from left to right spells in hebrew exceeding ohio is my strong name the yacht there in that word is the same letter that encodes john and mary together where jesus on the cross commits his mother to the care of john how interesting how intimate how how touching that is and the word meshiach the messiah is in there and on it goes and i won't go through all there's something interesting there is a word that occurs 50 times accidentally presumably in the book of isaiah that does not appear in isaiah 53 the name of judas now what makes that strange is the name judas by this frequency of the letters of it is that it should appear statistically frequently it does it intrinsically happens in hebrew it occurs apparently 50 times in isaiah but it's interesting it's it's an argument by omission it is conspicuous in its absence within that region of the text and matthias by the way the one that replaced judas does appear reaction one if you remember all of that well why did i get into all this first of all if you haven't somewhere along if you're going to be a serious student of the scripture and the historical background you'll run into these bizarre contrivances that try to argue that james and paul were adversaries all you need to do is read the new testament you'll find out hardly they were both pulling together in acts 15 and elsewhere if you watch that closely no these these heresies are people who try to manifest what i call pseudo scholarship and twist and distort the scripture now what bothers me about it when i encountered some of this i do some reading in this background for other reasons to fill in some get some understanding of these viewpoints i was so startled with the degree to which these heresies about james can totally derail a new christian you start hearing some of this and you hear their nice sounding arguments and you start buying into that it starts to shred the scripture one of the things that really bothers me is that there are these guys that start fight they find ways to cause you to cast doubts about the word of god and you'll never match them with degrees or erodition having to do with the language background or exegesis no you don't need to do that all you need to do is discover for yourself not because i tell you discover the integrity of the word itself it is bulletproof these wise guys can't shred the scripture uh it is bulletproof but it gets its strength by its integrity from genesis chapter 1 verse 1 to revelation 22 it's tight it's a network every number every place name every detail is there by supernatural engineering you start pulling one of those pieces out of the place and it starts to fall apart like an address just pulling one thread it all unravels right and so be careful and the same thing happens with uh so-called textual criticism some scholar who's trying to do a thesis for his phd says well gee isaiah didn't really write isaiah there were two isaiahs that's interesting john didn't know that because he makes it very the holy spirit makes it very clear the same isaiah wrote the whole book and that's not a seminary thesis that's in john chapter 12 verses 39 through 40. makes it clear if you look at it closely every heresy that you encounter the holy spirit has anticipated in the word of god and this fiction that somehow james and paul had different gospels and the james died off and paul took advantage and that christianity is built as a pauline gospel is nonsense the gospel that you and i embrace has its roots in genesis and is re-amplified in every chapter on every page throughout the book the miracle of the book of genesis is not the creation is that jesus christ is on every page and his fulfillment of the law of the torah on your behalf and mine is there on every page and paul hammers that these people who write these weird books that sound good and they make the authors some wealth are out of the pit of hell they betray an absolute ignorance on the part of the writer of any knowledge of the author of this book i hope this hasn't been a waste of time tonight i want you not to be caught by surprise when these weird ideas hit you from left come out of left field because we know in whom we have believed and that he is able to keep that which we've committed unto him against that day and i've run a little over let's stand for a closing word of prayer with our hearts father we praise you for your word we thank you father you've gone to such extremes to reveal yourself to us and father we know that you've not given us a spirit of fear but a power and of love and of a sound mind we pray father that you would just send your holy spirit to instruct each of us help each of us to discover directly firsthand the the integrity of your word shield his father help us build this shield of faith that will quench the fiery darts of the wicked one we pray father that you would just shield us protect us enlighten us illuminate that path before us that we might discover what you would have of each of us in these days that remain we pray father that you would just help each of us to continue to grow in grace and in the knowledge of our lord and savior jesus christ that we each might be more responsive to what you would have of us these days we pray father that you'd make us discerning that we might be effective witnesses of the truth that you've entrusted to us help us father to bear fruit for you as we commit ourselves this night into your hands in the name of yeshua our lord and savior jesus christ amen [Music] you

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Length: 66min 32sec (3992 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 22 2021