Jude Session 3 (Verse 6) - Chuck Missler

[Music] as you know we are exploring the book of jude interesting epistle but verses five six and seven happen to take three examples from history of corporate punishment and what i mean by that is not corporal punishment but corporate that were a group were punished in a peculiar way a group of people who have fallen away from the truth who would deny the truth who are up in opposition to the truth three groups are singled out by a jude to teach us some things and uh verse five we took last time in which we uh explored why israel wandering the wilderness was chosen we covered that last time verse six deals with a strange set of events which we'll come to in a moment verse 7 deals with sodom and gomorrah which is perhaps more familiar to us and less controversial but again as an example where god judged broad civilizations for his reasons but verse six which is sandwiched between five and seven has caused all kinds of strange controversies so what we'd like to do is examine verse six tonight and figure out when did this take place and perhaps more important what lessons are there for us and the angels who kept not their first estate but left their own habitation he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day period and if you're the average bible student reading through this you come to that and you say what on earth is that all about because jude gives it the back of his hand as if you remember this of course the angels who kept not their first estate but left their own habitation he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day there is another passage it might be good to put it in our minds right now hold your finger here and turn to second peter this wasn't some kick of jude alone peter himself uh speaks of this in in the second epistle of peter chapter 2 verse 4 we find a comparable where peter tells us for if god spared not the angels that sinned but cast them down to hell and actually that word in the greek is tartarus it's not hades or gehenna we talk a lot about that and it happens to be translated hell in your english bibles the actual word in the greek is tartarus it's the only time it appears in the scripture i'll come back to that but it's it's not a neat place okay incidentally the term appears in homer's iliad and tartarus is as far below hades as the earth is below heaven according to homer so all it tells that doesn't mean homer knew anything about this means the word in the greek carried that kind of an idea it's a bad place to get tied up god spared not the angels of sin but cast them down to tartarus and delivered them into chains of darkness to be reserved unto judgment and then peter goes on to make his heart but peter also just like jude does makes allusion to an event that the writers in each case presume you know now there are this this passage is very controversial so the particular views i'm going to try and share with you i'll try to there are actually there's three views there's three basic views of this passage the first view is the cop-out view which is typically could be expressed that we're not intended to know any more than uh then that is here in this brief verse that's one view i have a problem with that because uh it stands between verses five and seven and uh uh all three of them appear to drop on familiar old testament truths so i personally believe that that first view is really just an excuse not to dig further and it's because the two alternative views that i'm about to share with you are both very uncomfortable they're very peculiar you know it's glib to talk about it in intellectual or literary sense it's quite another to come to grips with what's implied if i'm correct in my view now these angels that sinned the second view is that these angels that sinned are angels that had to do with the fall of lucifer and so the way we go from here is to explore briefly something about the fall of a some kind of super angel called lucifer now i'm going to use the term for a while angel in a broad generic sense actually we have if you're going to be very precise a cherub is not an angel it's a very very high special category but i think we generally use and i wouldn't be surprised you couldn't if you couldn't prove the scripture also uses the term angel in sort of a generic description of this of a created being with some very very substantial powers we will talk a little bit more about angels in general shortly but there's a particular angel that causes us a lot of attention in the scripture and there are two passages that will for most of you be review but it would be an appropriate attack tonight's subject without at least a refresher on isaiah 14 and ezekiel 28. let's take isaiah um 14. these remember because they're multiples of seven by coincidence isaiah and they really are you know that the chapters and verses were added in the 15th century i love to see these ancient documents that people find um the akko volume and others that quote scripture by chapter and verse that purport to be in the first century well that's kind of hard to explain because the chapters and verses didn't come till later but anyway isaiah 14 there is a both passages have a strange attribute in both cases the writer the prophet is addressing a local real live tangible king in isaiah's case he's talking to and about uh the king of babylon but as he gets wrapped up on that subject a place in the discourse occurs where it's obvious that his actual target or subject goes far beyond a human personage and what he's obviously doing is addressing the spiritual power behind the political king and i won't take the time tonight to read all of 14 but if you did you'd see isaiah uh going at the king of babylon but by the time he gets in fact verse 11 he mentions how he's followed the worm is bred under thee and the worms cover the another this king is a fallen but isaiah is dealing with it but when you get to verse 12 in this passage it's very very clear that without any real warning isaiah has shifted gears he is suddenly talking about something quite different and from verse 12 through 17 there is a v it's almost like a little insert where it's almost a parenthesis in which the holy spirit speaking through isaiah is addressing the power behind the king of babylon and verse 12 is the famous verse how art thou fallen from heaven o lucifer son of the morning how art thou cut down to the ground you who did weaken or prostrate if you will the nations lucifer this is where we get his original title but he fell he's fallen from heaven something occurred to put him in disgrace but then we get into verse 13 and 14 and we find the source of his error there are five i will statements this lucifer was the number one angel we'll discover that from another passage we look at he was in charge if you will anyway verse 13 for thou hast said in thine heart where the whole problem starts is through pride in the heart of lucifer where he says the following i will ascend into heaven i will exalt my throne above the stars of god i will sit also upon the mount of the congregation in the sides of the north i will ascend above the heights of the clouds i will be like the most high that's satan's ambition to be worshipped i won't take the time to dissect the ramifications of each of these and what the real hebrew says but you get the you clearly get the message very powerful but still not number one and he aspired apparently in some strange time in some strange way a rebellion which we'll look at shortly verse 15 yet thou shalt be brought down to sheol to the sides of the pit now this is a forecast see isaiah is saying here that you lucifer who fell through pride are going to be brought down verse 16 is an interesting one this is yet future they that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee and consider thee saying is this the man who made the earth to tremble who did shake kingdoms who made the world like a wilderness and destroyed its cities who opened not the house of his prisoners now as you can probably guess behind each phrase there are acres of theological commentaries as to what that might mean there are those that believe that this whole event occurred sometime between genesis 1 1 and genesis 1 2. there is linguistic reason to recognize that an enormous interval of time may have occurred may have occurred between the first two verses of genesis in the beginning god created the heavenly earth period paragraph new subject and the earth became without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep and the verb there in the hebrew argue some experts is a transitive verb implying action and that the earth wasn't originally but became without form and void and this gets intensified because in isaiah 45 18 isaiah god speaks to isaiah and says i did not create the earth that is without form and void and so on this apparent discrepancy occurs the possibility that's an enormous interval between genesis 1 1 and 1 2. now they sometimes call and there's a lot of ideas about that generally going under the label the gap theory there are aspects of the gap theory that i happen to think are correct but if you subscribe to the gap theory that also probably implies all kinds of things you don't really mean either so be cautious about that many people in that small little crack drive trucks through them and come up with all kinds of ideas and i'd want to get into that tonight we cover that on the genesis series you can listen to genesis tapes and i probably told you more than i know on those tapes for those of you who want to chase that that's isaiah 14 that's a a pivotal passage that you should be aware of and a comparable passage is ezekiel 28 and ezekiel in his case is also a prophet dealing with a particular king an earthly king i i should say i'll use the term prince here because it keeps it a little straight the prince of tyre was an actual guy josephus tells us his name was etiolabus or i-t-t-i-o-b-a-l-u-s and here spoken as the prince of tyre but as ezekiel wraps up his his um you know gets excited about his message to the prince of tire again about verse 11 or 12 he shifts gears and the scope of what he's saying clearly does not fit this human king the prince of tyre and he speaks he changes and he talks about the king of tyre use this different phrase also if you study the whole chapter you'll discover that the prince of tyre that is the human ruler gets killed by being pierced through he predicts how he's going to die but the king of tire is going to be burned so you recognize that they're two different p whatever it is what just linguistically you know that somehow he's talking about two different people he uses a slightly different title in each case and the destiny is slightly different but the the differences are far deeper than that let's pick it up about verse 11 of ezekiel 28. moreover the word of the lord came unto me saying son of man now by the way don't be thrown by that phrase that's just a that's a uh familiarity that ezekiel uses of himself when god speaks to his son of man it's not a title in some theological way it's just it's just a label a nickname if you will of ezekiel so you if you're from the book of ezekiel's follow that you've got to get you said that's just like a nickname if you will of his ego son of man take up lamentation upon the king of tyre and this strikes you strange by now because if you've been reading the chapter it's all been about the prince of tyre this literal ruler but now the holy spirit in fact says the king of tyre and say unto him thus saith the lord god thou sealest up the sum full of wisdom and perfect in beauty that's king james language we're saying see let's episode the person he's talking to here is the epitome of wisdom and beauty that's strong language in fact the expression in the hebrew is that there can be no more extreme expression it's a superlative wisdom and beauty that goes on and say thou hast been in eden the garden of god whoops i don't know of any king of babylon that goes back to genesis 1. you follow me so suddenly we realize clearly there's been a shift of subject here the person that is being addressed was in eden the garden of god every precious stone was thy covering the sardius the topaz the diamond the barrel the onyx the jasper the sapphire the emerald the carbuncle and the gold and the workmanship of thy timbrels and of thy flutes was prepared in thee in the day that thou west created one thing that should strike you is the eden that's described here doesn't seem to be the eden that's described in genesis verse two chapter two on because there we think of it as a i mean at least we visualize it with trees and foliage and and a terrestrial kind of place don't we this eden is described in the same vocabulary that we use post-millennially of the new jerusalem and so forth part of what overlays this whole study will take the time and night i'll just throw it out so you'll can think about it and dig it on your own acts chapter 3 speaks of the second coming of jesus christ as the time of the restitution of all things restitution mean put back like it used to be put back like eden could be but maybe it's a different eden than you and i think of a pre-fall eden and so when we read revelation 22 and we talk about new jerusalem and foundations and stuff it's a whole hyperspace you and i probably have no capacity to deal with and these precious stones may be just their way vocabulary wise of talking about light or talking about a dimensionality that goes beyond our three-dimensional physics as we think of it but also this person was in eden and he was big news perfect but he was created another side of this is don't forget he is not some kind of super god he may be superhuman but he's created as fantastic as he may be or was one time he is still a created being easy to forget there's a popular book in the demonology called between christ and satan by tragic title tragic title because it implies equality christ was not a created being john 1 first three verses the gospel of john should straighten that out for you satan was now verse 14 thou art the anointed cherub that covereth now it's clumsy language to say that he was well he was anointed that was he was appointed to office what office that covereth in other words he was in charge of everything we would say it differently but the king james translators and trying to render the hebrew said thou art the anointed cherub that covereth another way of saying that he was in charge and he's a cherub which is a most powerful kind of angel we know of four cherubim that are around the throne of god we find it in isaiah 6 and in revelation 4. whenever we see the throne of god we see these four cherubim and they're strange creatures apparently satan was one of those thou art the anointed cherub is covereth and i have set thee so thou wasted upon the holy mountain of god thou walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire thou was perfect in thy ways from the day that thou was created and then i have a word that i always whenever i see it in the scripture almost always i mark it put a circle on it red underline the word till the word till what a what a momentous word that can be israel's eyes are blinded until the times of the gentiles be fulfilled such and such and such until the word until or till generally is a very pivotal word well here that was perfect in thy ways from the day that was created until iniquity was found in me what's the iniquity well you go back to isaiah 14 it tells you the iniquity of the reason god hates pride is that's how the whole thing started by the multitude of thy merchandise they have filled the midst of thee with violence and thou hast sinned therefore i will cast thee as profane out of the mountain of god and i will destroy thee o covering cherub from the midst of the stones of fire that heart was lifted up because of thy beauty thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness i will castly to the ground i will lay thee before kings that they may be holy that thou has defiled thy sanctuaries by the multitude of thy iniquities by the iniquity of thy merchandise therefore i will bring forth a fire from the midst of thee it will devour thee and i will bring thee to ashes upon the earth in the sight of all them that behold thee all that know thee among the people shall be appalled at thee thou shalt be a terror and never shalt thou be any more by the way the word merchandise is from the hebrew word meaning to go about and it can be translated either in two words merchandising like trafficking or slander and the word slander is the word for satan i mean that the word is what the word satan means a slanderer so it's another other aside so the word merchandise me it actually comes from the from the hebrew root that can be translated either way okay that's a little bit on his origin we've got a little glimpse now where satan comes from there's a chapter in the bible that describes in one sort of summary overview his whole strategy and goals that's revelation chapter 12. and it might be useful to take the time to review revelation chapter 12 briefly revelation chapter 12 and there appeared a great wonder in heaven a woman clothed with the sun and with the moon on her feet upon her head twelve a crown of twelve stars and she being with child travailed uh cried traveling in birth and pain to be delivered and there appeared another wonder in heaven behold a great red dragon having seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns upon his heads and his tail drew a third part of the stars of heaven and it cast them to the earth and the rag and stood before the woman who was ready to be delivered to devour her child as soon as it was born verse five and she brought forth a male child who was to rule all the nations of the rod of iron and her child was caught up to god into his throne and the woman fled into the wilderness where she had the place prepared by god that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and three score days now i'm not going to make this a study of the book of revelation that would really derail us but there's a few key points here the first question is to understand the various people are going to be introduced here the first question is who is the red dragon you don't have to guess because in verse 9 he's defined for you as you read later in the chapter it says in verse 9 and the great dragon was cast out that old serpent called the devil and satan to deceive it the whole world he was cast out into the earth and his angels were cast out with him this is where we understand that satan rebelled and was thrown out when you put ezekiel 28 and isaiah 14 and revelation 12 together and there's lots more but those are the probably the three key passages to sort of try to synthesize to get an understanding here satan clearly was very powerful at one time was perfect at one time was in charge rebelled a third of the angels apparently were allied with him and they blew it and were thrown out so we know who the red dragon is in this scenario the next question is and this is where most people get screwed up is who's the woman and it's very tempting there are many commentators that are very competent commentators that identify the woman with the church and love the way chuck smith puts it if the if this woman is the church she's in trouble because she's pregnant the church uniformly is used in the new testament as a virgin bride not a one to give birth the woman is identified up here with the sun and the moon and the 12 stars that's not the zodiac there's only one place that the sun and moon 12 stars show up in the scripture and your principle in the book of revelation is every the entire thing's in code everything in there is in code but every code is deciphered somewhere in the scripture the holy spirit's engineered the book so it would take you into every other passage in the bible if you take it exhaustively and the only place you'll find 12 stars sun and moon is remember joseph's dreams jacob understood the dream joseph remember he pursued the sheaves about there were 11 sheaves that bowed down to his sheep and so forth then the next stream he told that to his brothers he was already a little unpopular and you can understand the brother's point of view then he had this dream where this there were the stars and eleven the stars and the sun and the moon bow down to him and at that point he told that dream around not only does his brothers get upset but jacob his father got a little miffed by it are your mother and i going to bow down before you also see he recognized jacob and he rebuffed the youth that way but in so doing gives an identity what are who is the woman that is is crowned with the son of the moon the 12 stars idiomatically in the scripture israel in a way it's israel in the sense that she starts with eve because the man-child is the seed of the woman what woman israel is not israel in the sense of starting with abraham israel in the sense that she starts with god's declaration of war on satan the declaration of war on satan is genesis 3 15 i'll put enmity between the and the woman what woman the woman of chapter 12 of revelation i put enmity between thee and the woman and between thy seed and her seed two seeds the seed of the woman is a biological contradiction hebrew the seed isn't the man all of us have had enough biology understand that phraseology the seed of the woman is a in the grammar of the hebrew predicts the virgin birth and in isaiah 7 14 and in matthew it is the virgin not a virgin proper name very important so the man child thus is whom jesus christ who gives birth to jesus christ conceptually speaking here not the church israel israel was ordained from eve on god's plan was to present the deliverer that was his commitment to adam now we see here though that the woman is being with child traveling and birth pain to be delivered and this is idiomatically speaking of all history in an overview and there appeared another wonder in heaven behold a great dragon having seven heads and ten horns and upon and so forth and his tail drew a third part of the stars of heaven the stars of him being an idiom for angels we find that a third of them rebelled with them what do they do they stood before the woman who's ready to be delivered to devour her child as soon as it was born now one thing you can understand one thing it's interesting if we had the time i think we do when we go through revelation 12 we start with genesis and go through the scripture and review the whole history in the bible as satan's plan to thwart the will of god the for it starts at 3 15 there's going to be deliverer so what does satan first do go after the seed of eve we got cain and abel satanically that was an attempt to get rid of the seed it was seth neither king nor abel fine but as we go through the scripture as god reveals more and more of his plan it allows satan to focus his attack when it becomes when the call of abraham occurs he doesn't have to mess around with anybody else he can misforget abraham isaac jacob as god confirms his covenant when it becomes a tribe of judah it's judah and all through the scripture you find again and again plot and counter plot you have several occasions where all the babies are killed moses and the infants that was pharaoh no it was satan because he had he's got to thwart the the messianic threat go all the way through to uh well bethlehem wasn't herod slaughtering the babes it was satanic he was just the instrument all through the kings you find the children that are heirs hidden by someone and attempts to slaughter all the kids but missing the one well we could go on about that but the point is the concept of anti-semitism isn't just noxious because it's racial prejudice racial prejudice of any kind i'm sure is an offense to god but anti-semitic tithes and trends and so forth go even deeper as you understand the scripture you understand that satan's objective is to thwart the messianic plan and his attempt at that is to attack israel it's interesting here verse 5 says that the woman brought forth a male child who was to rule all the nations with a rod of iron again or the psalm 110 several other places that identify that as whom christ in fact psalm 2 i guess is where it occurs yeah and her child was caught up to god unto his throne kind of interesting verse 5 seems to appear historical the ascension right verse 6 looks ahead at the tribulation okay those of you that have stud daniel 9 are not uncomfortable about the idea of a gap in the timeline god deals with israel those props that deal with israel ignore a period of time between jesus christ and his second coming we call it the church age that gap occurs between verses 26 and 27 and daniel 9. if you remember that study it also occurs here there are 1900 years that have occurred between verses 5 and 6 so far that gap appears how many times in the scripture make a guess no more than that what is the number of the church 24 remember 24 elders there are 24 occasions like this in the scripture which i think is interesting for those of you that are mystics and by the way another thought to just confuse you further and her child was caught up to god in his throne and then the woman fled into the wilderness i always used to view that as the ascension of our lord but there's a guy by the name of pember who wrote a book about genesis and the ancient earth's earliest ages and it blew me away because he sees this differently and i don't know if he's wrong he sees this in the language the the that her child was caught up to god in his throne he sees that child as the body of christ he sees in that the rapture that wild it doesn't alter the text because what happens in verse six on is tribulational as we would label it i'm saying that erroneously because all of us fall into the fiction of visualizing a seven year tribulation period that's not the great tribulation the creature relations last half of that seven year period but i don't want to get in that time now the attack of satan on israel is part of prophecy and it climaxes in a period of time which the old testament calls the time of jacob's trouble daniel refers to that as a period of tribulation such as the world had not seen to that day or ever would see again and jesus christ in his private briefing to four disciples peter james and john andrew in all of the discourse quotes from daniel and it's in christ's quote from daniel that that period of time gets its classical label among bible scholars the great tribulation but in that we over we easily forget the focus of the tribulations in the world at large it's israel but think about that phrase means most of us the more you know about the holocaust in germany the more you understand their plea never again you got tragic news what's coming yet future is going to make that look like a warm-up our lord said a time of trouble such as the world had not seen to that time and that time's your future so whatever's happened in the past has been a prelude now what made the holocaust possible the philosophy of nietzsche and others the notion that the the rationale philosophically or religiously that israel was somehow appropriately trumped on fallacies of the church for 1900 years made that possible and if you watch over the next few years you're going to see in the christian body charismatic as well as fundamental teachers who will argue a theology that has as one of its besides being full of all kinds of other error has as its attribute the prelude to anti-semitism and i'm saying this not out of a sociological concern for israel i'm saying this out of a prophetical interest in the scripture that when you see that on the one hand you may as you see it surface you may experience shock on the other hand you can praise god because it means the time is getting close because when ezekiel 38 happens when the soviets invade israel and five six of them get wiped out the lord makes it very clear that it happens by his hand not the comfort and support of the united states sometime between here and the tribulation period the united states along with all the other countries will turn on israel and god is going to use that occasion just as he did in egypt to show his hand on his people again the bible makes that clear we talked about that last time we read from ezekiel 36 that his purpose in doing so is not because they deserve it there'll be an unbelief when this all happens or at least rent starts he does it because he made promises before the heathen that he would do it and it's for his namesake before the heathen that he's going to keep those promises for israel's behalf okay we got off the subject but i want to tie that prophetically to what we're talking about there so we have some insight perhaps on on satan's goals and objectives let's turn to matthew 25 but in chapter matthew 25 verse 41 is the sheep and goat judgments as we sometimes call it in verse 41 then shall he say also unto them on the left and depart from me ye cursed into everlasting fire prepared for whom for the devil and his angels again it's just a new testament or a gospel a confirmation of what we've mentioned before okay uh we know that there another way of looking at this is that there are two governing bodies to be punished isaiah 24 return with me to isaiah 24. we've been at this a lot when we as we go through the scripture but where the earth shall reel to verse 20 where the earth shall reel to and fro like a drunkard and shall be removed like a booth and so on and verse 21 and it shall come to pass in that day that the lord shall punish two groups of people shall punish the host of the high ones that are on high and the kings of the earth upon the earth see this business of revelation and the climax and all of that isn't just on people it's on the high ones that are on high whoever they are satan and his angels are not bound yet they're free they may have some restrictions obviously but i mean the point is they're not bound they will be they're not yet um some are and that's what jude's talking about now we're believe it or not we're making our way that way there's much more being redeemed than you and i because the climax in isaiah and isaiah says i behold i see a new heavens and a new earth it's not only the earth that's redeemed heaven itself is cleansed so it's a complicated issue and that's a whole other study you can chase on your own but one of the questions that we're going to face is are demons angels now let me point out to you that there are those that make a big distinction between demons and angels angels apparently have the capability of being embodied by themselves we find angels um in human form genesis 19 verses 5 10 and 16. they spoke as men they took people's hand they ate food with them the angels appeared to have no necessity to be embodied there's no occasion that i know of with one exception maybe of them being embodied there's a place where satan entered judas but that may be a special situation in contrast to that the demons are a whole other story uh the perhaps the most bizarre one and you know me i love bizarre passages so we might turn to well one thing let's turn to acts 23 9 first because there this supports a view that some hold that demons and angels are not the same thing uh acts 23 verse nine it says the pharisees scribes whoever the pharisees party roses they contended sharply saying we find no evil in this man but if a spirit or an angel hath spoken to him let us not fight against god and those are pointing that out the conception at least at that time was that demons or spirits and angels are two different things and so that's one of the things you come into and the more you study demonology and there are some good books on that marylander has a book on biblical demonology it's very very comfortable for layman yet quite uh quite uh thorough and useful if you're interested that sort of thing but uh you might turn with me to luke 8. pick up about verse 26 and arrive the country of the gerasenes which is opposite galilee and when he went forth to the land there met him out of a city a certain man who had demons for a long time and he wore no clothes neither bowed any house but in the tombs and he saw jesus he cried out and fell down before them and cried out with a loud voice says what have i to do with thee jesus thou son of god most high i beseech thee torment me not that's a shock if you're reading the gospels because this up to this point he has not acknowledged his role in and that comes later so the the the personage inside this tormented person recognized something beyond the knowledge of the people at that time in terms of our understanding of demons they're knowledgeable this is not something that just some crackpot demented person would say he had not announced his real role the fact that they recognized his deity the son of god at most high because the torment may not now they know that out of this we learn that they know who he is they know that they're destined for torment and they know it's at a very specific time verse 29 for he had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man for often it caught him and he was kept bound to chains and fetters and he broke the bonds and was driven out of the demon into the wilderness and jesus asked him saying what is thy name and he said legion because many demons are entered into him legion is not a thousand by the way a roman legion is six thousand troops so when you say that's the first legion the second third and fourth legions are smaller it's the way the romans organize but i'm just the point is a legion is a lot the demons in this man ultimately go into a herd of swine you know how many are in the herd of wine mark tells us two thousand that's a large herd i used to be bothered what are they doing raising swine and kosher country the answer is it's not kosher country it's on the east of the jordan there's a they're the greek cities the decapolis there were five cities that were gentile and so it was understandable in that sense you know economically can understand why there were swine at all being raised you wouldn't expect that in judea there may have been there too to support the gentile contingency but the point is this is near the decapolis the five cities that were supported this way so many and they besought him that he that he would not command them to go out into the abuso now this is one of those passions the bible i don't understand they do beseech him don't send us back to the pit which is apparently one of the places he would normally do if he cast them out they go back to the abuso apparently permanently or not permanently but anyway for a long time and they ask him please don't do that cast us into that herd of the swine question is that gives us some insight i mean i'm not sure what you do with that piece of information but what puzzles me even more the lord agrees he lets him do that why does he do that i don't know maybe just to teach us that these things are not euphemisms for psychiatric problems and so forth you know and there are people who who uh you know read the bible figure well those are just idioms of for things that we now give psychiatry psychiatric terms for them the people who say that have never attended an exorcism or they would know better there was there was there a herd of many swine feeding on the mountain and they besought him that he would allow them to enter into them and he permitted them then when the demons out of the man entered into the swine of the went violently down a steep place into the lake and they were choked and they that fed them saw what was done they fled and went and told it in the city and in the country and he obviously becomes very unpopular because he affected the economy of that range so anyway uh and i don't want to make this a whole study in demonology but i do want you to be at least sense of the fact that demons seem to be something quite different than what you and i think of as angels so there are those that make the make a big thing of that difference which raises a bizarre question where the where do the demons come from if they're not angels what are they where do they come from and they're all kinds of bizarre ideas that have no scriptural basis that are really built within the the gaps if you will from what we do understand there are those that believe that there was a pre-adamite creation that was destroyed and judged and the demons are the disembodied spirits of that particular creation there's no spiritual there's no scriptural evidence for that they place all this hypothesis between genesis 1 1 and 1 2. that's part of the gap theory that gets way out in the left field that i it has only one problem and there's no basis for it that doesn't mean it's right or wrong you can't tell it's just somebody's idea but there is apparently some difference between demons and angels and so in that whole thing you can expect you know if you've got nothing to talk about over a cup of coffee a piece of pie at 2am you can argue about whether demons and angels are the same thing now actually i personally believe that there's a large hierarchy of all kinds of these creatures in the old testament we have the sherim the syrian the lithu the tissum and some others and they're all translated in the septuagint as demons but they're different hebrew words the sherim are the mighty ones and they show up in deuteronomy 32 17. the syrian are he goats or satires they're hairy creatures that are they were not but they're demonic but they were uh embodied in legends as the satires and so forth and the others have other names they have slightly different attributes but when we speak in the new testament principalities and powers and so forth those are ranks if you will and so angels apparently come in different kinds and it could very well be that the demons are no more than a if you will a junior disembodied spirit that is part of that rebellion that we read about in revelation 12. so with all this digression you see we now are equipped now incidentally i don't this we've talked about the second view item one was you can't tell about what verse six means in jude item two was it has to do with the fall of satan and the angels not directly because i think the fall of satan and those and those angels and all of that number one are not bound the ones that jude are talking about are bound they're in chains of darkness right reserved unto judgment satan is not at least not yet that happens at the end of the tribulation before the the millennium what about his angels they're pretty free to do mischief because that's all yet future so what on earth are we talking about in jude 7. that leads us to a passage in the bible that's very very strange that's genesis 6 this is the third view genesis chapter 6 we all know about noah's flood but i don't think one person in 100 knows the reason for noah's flood except it may be a very broad sense yes there was wickedness and the wickedness was very widespread and god chose to wipe out the known earth at that time or all the whole earth at that time i don't think there's anything local about the flood by the way but genesis chapter 6 verse 1 and 2 has a phrase that scholars sort of wince and squirrel around trying to explain you know it's amazing how much trouble you can get into how much work you can put on yourself if you decide not to accept what the bible tells you you know um there are people that spend years of study trying to talk about first isaiah and second isaiah because they've never read john 12 where john says that you know that there was one isaiah that wrote both parts etcetera um and likewise here their libraries are filled with speculation what verse two means and yet if you just take it face value it uh it's interesting verse chapter six verse one it came to pass when the men began to multiply on the face of uh the earth and daughters were born unto them that the sons of god saw the daughters of men that they were fair and they took them wives of all whom they chose now the sons of god saw the daughters of men that they were fair there are those that and very competent scholars i'm not trying to sell you a view there are two basic views on this passage but the commonly held church acceptable view is that the the sons of god is a reference to believers generally associated with the line of seth the concept of the line of seth became separate and believers and the rest were wicked and ungodly that the daughters of men were they were what this suggests is intermarriage that was not appropriate a couple of problems with that first of all it's not what it says the name is a term it shows up four times in the old testament and it's always used of angels a term to a bible to a hebrew is angel my proof of that is when the septuagint was translated three centuries before christ they translated it as angels but it even goes deeper than that also the daughters of men are not limited to the non-sethites thirdly when a believer and unbeliever get married they don't have monstrous offspring what these people give birth to well i mean not generally what they give birth to are some strange creatures verse three says the lord might says my spirit will always drive with man for he is all for he also is flesh and yet his day shall be 120 years bear in mind that longevity is decreasing so it goes to 120 later becomes three score and ten but going to verse four and there were nephilim in the earth in those days and also after that when the sons of god came in unto the daughters of men that they bore children to them the same became the mighty men who were of old men of renown so whatever happened here the sons of god and the daughters of men gave birth to something unnatural not normal now the greek word gigantis was irresistibly transliterated to giants but that's not what the word comes from the word giganese i guess it is is a word that means um earthborn the word nephilim here described well in the hebrew nephilim are the fallen ones come from the hebrew word in the fall to fall so the offspring of the sons of god and the daughters of men are fallen ones that only make sense if you visualize these as angels somehow leaving their appropriate domain and becoming in a mode that can have intercourse with women and they give birth to something bizarre the nephilim now the nephilim and we find them before the flood and also after that we find them numbers 13. they happen to be very large 13 feet long and so forth we'll come to that in a minute so the nephilim are are strange and so that suggests that something bizarre is going on here now the first point i guess i want to make is the very very early church the septuagint translators obviously in alexandria and also um the early church justin athinogorus cyprian eusebus also josephus pilo judaism and also the authors of the apocrypha the old testament apocryphal books which aren't inspired but the authors betray a presumption of this truth so whatever else you say that was the common belief up until about the fourth century and the god by julius africanus who's a contemporary organ introduced this idea of the sethites that this isn't really angels it's really the offspring of seth and they intermarried with the with the other people and and that's what gave that comment there was a an attack on the church by celsus and julian the prostate that attacked this older classical idea and cyril of alexander in his reply to them repudiated the orthodox position of the angels and and so forth so from about the fourth century through the middle ages this idea of seth emerge and you'll find it in a lot of study bibles and so forth um but it's got some major problems first of all there's no indication in the scripture that the sethites were distinguished for their piety there's no exemption of them from the flood that came you've got a real problem with that if they're somehow believers you follow me so if they were believers they perished which is also i got a problem with that and of course the progeny being monstrous is a problem okay now those of you that want to study the nephilim you might well we might find that interesting because it says back you know it says there were giants in the earth in those days and also after that who might that be the anakim the sons of anak you know one of them very well a guy by the name of goliath he was a son of anak and you may recall the story it's one of my fun for fun things in the bible equation you know you got david and he's the little dave was going to go up against goliath you all know the story except notice carefully when read the scripture he picked up five stones that some lack of faith only took one right what he needed the other four if we had four brothers goliath had four brothers we found that out later in the scripture and david's men later on slew the four brothers but david was ready for all five [Music] that great if you take the trouble in deuteronomy 3 verse 11 you discover that their bedstead of one of them was 13 feet long gives you some idea of his size okay that's what you really call king size and you'll find that in numbers 13 when the giant when the spy spy out the land the ten that brought reports said we were like grasshoppers in their sight they were terrified because they ran into some of these anakim they saw some of the spy spotted them and they couldn't handle that joshua kill it that's no problem lords on our side he's bigger than air let's go but people didn't buy that and so it cost him about 38 years why does israel refer to their second appearance in numbers 13 the phrase is the nephilim fallen ones see there's something about them that harks back to the days when the angels communed if you will with the daughters of men as you can tell from my presentation of this i hold to the view personally that uh there there was something supernatural going on and i have some reasons for emphasizing this but let me go on to something that i haven't found in in most of the commentaries that deal with this controversy mention all the sides of both sides of questions but they miss one thing and that's verse 9 of genesis 6. noah verse 8 says noah found grace in the eyes of the lord right these are the generations of noah noah was a just man and perfect in his generations and noah walked with god now the first there's three things mentioned there being a just man in fact that he walked with god we can relate to that he was a just man that really means justified but i won't get into that right now and he walked with god that's pretty exciting but what does this mean perfect in his generations what that phrase says in the hebrew is that his genealogy was untarnished now gee i don't know how to take credit for something like that if i could come to you and say gee my genealogy is untarnished that sort of implies everybody else is so i personally believe that one of the things that distinguished noah is that yes his father islamic his father was methuselah and we'll get into all of that when we talk we're going to talk later about enoch because he comes up later in june we'll get into that whole exciting scene there's some really thrilling prophecy already happened before we get to genesis 6 and i have another excuse to get into that so we won't do it tonight but the point is one of the things about noah is that he had a clean unadulterated untarnished genealogy now that makes no sense to me unless you take countenance of verse two when the sons of god saw that the daughters of men that they were fair and took them wise of all whom they chose now this this presents an antediluvian picture a picture of life before the flood that's a bit bizarre but let me mention a couple of things that's that we try to emphasize we study the book of genesis life in eden is quite different than you and i have any capacity to imagine because adam walked with god he was clothed with light he was in a dimensionality that none of us have any concept of prior to sin and prior to the curse the whole situation was so different that there's no reasonable way to communicate it to us also even after the fall from adam through noah we have a whole different lifestyle people lived for hundreds of years noah built this barge in his driveway for 120 years you can imagine what the neighbors thought now what's interesting about the sons of god and the daughters of men thing is that that idea is embodied in the greek mythology now we all know what we all run into from time depending on how interested you are in the classics you have had varying degrees of exposure to the so-called demigods right and um one of the most interesting guys are the so-called titans you've heard we use the term titan usually meaning large right like a missile or something titans are partly heavenly partly earthly in their origin they are reputed in greek mythology to have rebelled against their father uranus king of heaven and after a prolonged contest they were finally defeated by zeus and they were thrown into a prison called tartarus now something kind of interesting titan is the greek term that the chaldean term is shaitan which is the chaldean for the hebrew satan so even in the mythology and legends of our classical you know cultural roots we have veiled remembrances of a time when some strange things are going on on the earth before the flood and we're at least in part cause for the blood why satan's strategy again how is man going to be delivered by the seed of the woman what's his shot at this to contaminate the human race so there are no pure humans left to be heir to the title deep so in revelation chapter 5 when there's one in the right hand of him who sat on the throne a scroll written within and without and on the backside sealed with seven seals and no man when heaven was found worthy to open the book had to be a man had to be an heir to adam suppose there were no pure heirs to adam john says i sobbed convulsively because no man was found able and elder said to me weep not behold the lion of the tribe of judah hath prevailed open the book he turned and he saw the lamb of god jesus christ had to be man now it's really interesting when you study the genealogies of jesus christ in matthew and in luke you have two genealogies luke goes from adam because he's a physician he goes from adam all the way through to david and down from david through mary matthew being a levi is interested as the son of abraham he starts with abraham goes down through david through solomon the royal line all the way down to joseph who has the legal title to the throne of david but back in jaconiah's day and we won't cover this all in detail but some of you know that in jaconiah's day was in the royal line god cursed the royal line put a blood curse on jack and i and all his descendants and i have the view from what i know about scripture that in that day in the councils of satan there was rejoicing he thought aha now he got him because there's a bloodline there's a blood curse on the royal line when we get down to jesus christ we find that he is this legal son of but not the flesh son of joseph who carries that blood curse but when you study the genealogies carefully discover when they get to david they take a detour matthews goes down the legal line that has heir to the throne the luke goes down the through nathan another son of david to mary so jesus christ was of the house and lineage of david but in a way that makes him legally entitled but not subject to the blood curse so when again and again as you study the scripture you find satan plotting and god outsmarting every step of the way but the more you study the scripture the more you become fascinated with god's methodology and how how clever he is but you also recognize that every detail fits into a plan every name every number every detail of these 66 books is woven tightly by a super engineer and it's it's just incredible and that that i find that exciting okay i uh we might i did let's take a look at second peter i think we did look at that already but i want to make sure your second peter chapter two second peter chapter two verse four uh for if god spared not the angels that sinned but cast them down to hell now that's kind of strange because satan has all kinds of fallen angels doing all kinds of things but they're not bound these angels did something very they broke some deeper rules and so got they got cast down to tartarus and it's interesting that the same greek word is used there as occurs in the literature that deals with the titans and all of mythology same word and delivered them into the chains of darkness to be served on judgment notice what peter goes on and spared not the old world but save noah the eighth person a preacher of righteousness hang bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly and and then he goes on with sodom and gomorrah et cetera et cetera so clearly what peter is talking about is something that is familiar to his readers as familiar as the flood of noah and the destruction of sodom and gomorrah etc peter is presuming that his readers are familiar with this when we get to jude jude does the same thing and in fact and i want to get into next time's subject but if we look at verse seven we're going to see even a sodom and gomorrah and the cities about them in like manner giving themselves to fornication going after strange flesh we're going to talk about the sin the the sin and the subject of sodom and gomorrah next time but what if you read jude the tone of it in verse five he talks about israel verse six he talks about the angels that kept not their first estate but left their own habitation so forth and then even as sodom and gomorrah they went after strange flesh the implication from the language and the thrust of jude's argument is that the angels did the same thing that they did in sodom gomorrah namely unnatural sexual perversion it isn't just that they're fornicating just having you know sex outside of marriage that isn't the only issue sodom and gomorrah gives rise to all kinds of other things we'll talk about that next time but the point is the way the language is constructed the implication is that is the nature of the sin of the angels in verse six follow i'm saying now this doesn't mean i'm right i'm just telling you why i view it so aggressively i want to on one hand let you recognize that there are good scholars that take would take great exception what i'm presenting here and they argue the seth kind of idea but i frankly this is one of those places where i just really uh feel personally that this if you take the scriptures in a straightforward manner it's quite clear uh what it says now you may wonder okay chuck that's interesting it's a little bizarre it's kind of fun but it's what's that got to do with us well several things at this point let's summarize lessons practical lessons for you and i well the first thing is that the scripture warns against meddling with the spirit world in any way and i i did not take the time to really list all of that uh in detail in deuteronomy all through the torah all through the old testament and certainly the new we are admonished to flee occultic things of all shapes and sizes and by the way i don't know how many of you saw the movie the exorcist anybody see that movie i'm not trying to recommend the movie but there's something interesting if you recall that entire oh well first of all you should probably know william blatty based that up on a collection of several case studies the amalgamated into a novel so there's much in the movie that is documentaries documentarily sound it all starts though with what a ouija board a little party game that's known in the trade as an entry you know what other entries are astrology i want to ask you how many of you read the astrology com columns in the paper just for fun because it's kind of cute watch out these subtle innocent little things can lead to an entanglement with the spirit world an involvement that grows and gets addictive and deepens whose end point is your destruction now there are many superstitions and such that people had throughout the ages that the bible doesn't even bother to comment on these things are not dangerous because they're stupid or because they're just ignorant or what have you they are malevolent behind these innocent little pieces of foolishness is the demonic spirit whose goal is to undo you and who has at his resources what has that has called enormous resources so you're playing with tough stuff so that's point one jude's point is that punishment which overtook the angels that sinned is he makes that point simply to emphasize the serious nature of apostasy opposing the truth beings of a higher order than you and i you and i are human angels were are a higher order have been hurled down to a dark place of confinement where they they have been there now for thousands of years we have no idea what tartarus is like but they're there and they've been there for a long time god has not changed his attitude toward them and time passing has not mitigated the seriousness of their sin what jude is drawing on here is that example which presumably in his mind is in the mind of his readers to emphasize the point he's making is that apostasy is serious stuff it's not some little thing that you sort of stumble and say gee god i'm sorry you know it's heavy stuff now in first timothy 4 1 we say we might take a look at first timothy we're going to get a couple passages uh first timothy 4 1 we looked at it last time but i want to remind you this because it it gives a label to false teaching that i think is worth absorbing in paul's first letter timothy chapter four verse one he says paul says now the spirit speaketh expressly that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith giving heed to seducing spirits and the doctrines of demons one of the sobering realizations is any doctrine any idea that impacts your life that's not biblically sound has a very malevolent source now some of those doctrines or ideas are so conspicuously anti-biblical that to you and i they're obvious and that the prey they pray primarily on the secular world the new age by the way some of their old ideas but repackaged in modern technology the new age the whole shirley mclean thing sinister stuff don't think it's i can't imagine being appealing to anyone that has any biblical roots at all i worry more about a different kind of heresy i worry more about christian near pseudo-christian doctrines that are just one degree off if i'm aboard the ship as a spy and i'm trying to get this ship off course my shrewdest way is to get the autopilot one degree off because they won't notice it for a while until they're so of course there's no hope that's exactly what satan has done also through the ages there are also demonic doctrines one degree off what's your protection against that the whole council of god the whole council not one chapter not some little hobby horse not some little catechism the whole council of god genesis 1 1 through the 22nd chapter of revelation to try to absorb as the holy spirit gives you opportunity the whole council of god that's your only uh source of balance the other dimension to this that i would like to turn to is ephesians six you know when you come to if you come to our house we happen to have a very english tutor type of home and it happens in the entry hall it fits the decor we happen to have a suit of armor a friend of mine arranged for it for me it's a suit of armor and everybody says what's that you know i think and i said well that's don't you know who he is that's ephesian six that's his name and uh they what you know if they're christians they laugh and chuckling or i'm talking about if they don't gives me excuse to open the bible and come to ephesians 6. that's why we call it suit of armor ephesians 6 because it reminds us of ephesians 6 starting oh say maybe well we started verse 10 finally my brethren paul says be strong in the lord and in the power of his might be strong in the lord and the power of his might jude and later in his letter is going to give an example where michael the archangel is fighting with satan and he doesn't bring up brailing accusation against satan he's smarter than that because he knows he's a dignity he's an adversary but he's senior how are you strong not in your own power but in the lord strong in the lord and the power of his might then he says verse 11 put on the whole armor of god that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil you don't stand a chance by yourself he's smarter than you he's had centuries of study got enormous resources and focus and he's bright he was the brightest thing around he was perfect in wisdom now he has a disease called sin and that corrupts that's going on for a while however you make a gigantic a gigantic mistake in in underestimating that's why you don't fool around in spiritual matters without proper armament verse 12 for we wrestle not against flesh and blood that's not our problem gang we wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities against powers against the rulers of darkness of this world against spiritual wickedness in high places one of the passages i had my notes to take you into tonight but i saw i would over spend my time is daniel chapter 10 and just a couple of sentence summary you can dig it out on yourself there's where daniel prays and for three weeks he fasts and after three weeks the messenger comes but the messenger points out gee i was held up for three weeks and you sort of get the impression it doesn't say this you get the impression of daniel to stop fasting a day earlier you might not have made it but the point is he describes that he was battling you know the uh the prince of persia right how he withheld him but michael came and helped him and he got through to give him his message and then when he's through giving him the vision he says by the way i gotta go now because the prince of uh greece is next i gotta fight him getting back you you get the strange shadowy glimpse that behind these governments are spiritual powers and who is the head of the spiritual powers in the world who is the prince of this world and you begin to realize that there's a warfare you and i don't see we got a glimpse of that warfare in um there's one interesting place again i didn't take the time to take unit but you can do it on your own if i can find my reference here in kings second kings six there's a place where in elisha and uh they're surrounded servants worried and so forth elijah looks up looks at both sides no problem those that are with us are more than they with against him show them lord and he sees them surrounded by these angels what's interesting about that is you get several glimpses one is that there are spiritual forces behind what's going on in the earth both ways i would like you to look and see you know who's the strongest they were okay they're more than there's more of ours than there is okay he went back to sleep and since we're getting close to time i want to keep moving but i'll show you again as a it's part of these hints the bible gives us that there's a lot going on we don't see but the hints are very explicit if you will in ephesians for wrestling against flesh and blood principalities and powers and rulers the darkness of this world against the spiritual wickedness in high places by the way in daniel 10 we have the prince of persia and the prince of greece we get the impression that there's a ruler and his minions over each of these governments and by the way the period between persian greece is like 200 years so their time domain's a little different than ours because their physics are different than our is there a prince of the united states sure there is whom does he report you make a lot of cracks for that one but you get the idea who owns the media in this country all you have to do is read it get a good impression of what that's all about wherefore take you the paul says the whole armor of god that you may be able to withstand in the evil day and having done all to stand stand therefore having your loins gr girded about with truth and having on your breastplate of righteousness and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace and above all taking the shield of faith which ye shall be able to quit with which you'll be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked now i've heard many people preaching it may be very correct that paul at the time he was writing was chained to a roman soldier and so as he was and of course you know he didn't regard himself as chain of the roman soldier he just figured the roman soldier was chained to him so he witnessed him but reminds me of woody allen's crack about you know hell is what being stuck in an elevator with a life insurance salesman so but but but paul's comments there could be very well you know the easy view is that he was looking at the roman soldier and he was building analogies with the helmet of salvation and so forth except if you look at isaiah 52 verse 7 you discover that isaiah apparently was chained to a very similar soldier because isaiah in chapter 52 verse 7 that's not the one i wanted but uh that's close oh mister you just did it again feet shot of the pot how beautiful up on the mountains or the feet of him that bringeth good tidings and published salvation and saith unto zion god reigneth and that's one of them you can actually find if you you can actually go through and find parallels with each of each of those phrases have links back to the old testament that's the one i marked there and there's some others um i think isaiah 59 17 also but moving on the whole idea of spiritual warfare is one of having the spiritual armament and one of the things that we're admonished by paul is to put on the whole armor of god how do you do that what you might do yourself because it's a study that you'll get more out of you do it on your own is to take ephesians 6 and lay out each one of those things and don't treat them as just sort of casual allegories but really dig into them and build yourself a preparation if i told you that within the next six months we're going to have guerrilla warfare in the united states i'm not saying that i'm just using this as an example what would you guys do i'll speak to the guys those of you that have had some black belt experience would probably refresh yourselves those of you that had small arms would probably get them in shape you'd have each of you depending on your responsibilities and skills and whatever would prepare wouldn't you some way some of you head for the hills with canned goods hidden away or you do something right preparation means a lot well you and i have some time to prepare so i'm going to suggest to you that's exactly what you and i should be doing with a sense of urgency that's very very high we should be preparing ourselves being here in this bible study is a major piece of it uh letting the holy spirit lead you into special studies of your own a special piece of it developing a deep devotional life prayer life big piece of it each of yous for each of you the syllabus would be probably a little different the holy spirit will lead you but i do strongly urge you to take ephesians 6 and prepare now why am i saying that well first of all it makes sense in terms of your spiritual walking spiritual growth but i have another reason because there's something else that puts jude 6 into a terrifying dimension as far as i personally am concerned and that's something the lord jesus christ said he said on several occasions as the days of noah were so shall the days of the coming of the son of man be and he gave some examples several in fact he made several illusions to that period a lot and other things and we'll talk some about that in subsequent evenings but the more we study the days of noah the more insight we will probably gain to the times that will precede the next judgment much is made of the fact that he gave noah promise that he never again fled the earth and gave him a rainbow peter tells us that you should read the small print he just said he wouldn't do it with water so god is getting ready to judge the earth again but there's some events that will occur prior to that period for lots of reasons we know that period is not far away but those events that occurred prior to the flood the days of noah are going to happen again widespread wickedness a small minority that are in god's grace in the sense of being taken care of heavy stuff now we all all have either seen or heard of a movie called rosemary's baby piece of entertainment uh what have you um but a little bizarre because if we understand genesis 6 correctly and if that's also included in the scope of christ's statement as the days of noah were we should not be shocked if there's some very very strange goings on in the coming decades i'm not saying next a week from tuesday but we're heading for some strange times oh and let's stand for a closing word of prayer strange stuff kind of interesting increase the imagination causes us to look with a little different eye towards some of the strange myths and legends embodied in the various cultures of the planet earth but apparently based in effect on real things that happened a long time ago things that are stranger than we normally would countenance in in our horizon as we understand our history but relevant to you and i not just because they're quaint ancient beginnings but because they have an impact on where you and i are living because i am convinced for lots of reasons some of which we've talked about in the past and some which we'll be talking about shortly that we are living in in that period that lifetime that generation in which god is going to climax his plan for man and he's told us a lot about what's coming what's our job what's our response to that the first response is that we better know that we're that we belong to jesus christ there's anyone in this room that has any doubt in his mind about that i would strongly urge you to resolve that before you get home tonight you can do so in the privacy of your own will as we close our eyes and bow our heads make a commitment to jesus christ and he will carry it from there he's done 100 of the job he won't meet you halfway he'll meet you 100 of the way if you'll but ask that's step one to be in christ second step is to grow by reading his word by studying by prayer by fellowship with other believers crucial more crucial all of you in this room all of us in this room have problems financial problems and pressures health problems and pressures all kinds we get a long list whatever problems and pressures we have are pale and insignificant compared to some of the issues we've talked about tonight your spiritual position now you're having to run into some people this weekend and you know i'm known within my business world as a risk taker i'm i'm a real hip shooting high leverage maverick kind of guy in business but i'm fond of pointing out that i do not have the guts i don't have not willing to take the risk to gamble like you mr so-and-so i'm not willing to bet my eternity that the bible is wrong that's the real issue [Music] you

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Published: Mon Nov 23 2020