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How Shall We Tell The Children?
By Edward Chamberlain

Table of Contents

APOSTASY: THE DIVORCE

The passage we just cited from 2nd Thessalonians explicitly and emphatically tells us that we should not allow ourselves to be easily panicked or disturbed by the doctrine that the day of the Lord is imminent. The doctrine of imminence is one of the most popular doctrines in the church today, but it has no actual scriptural support. It is true that in every generation, Christians have expected the return of Jesus, but it is also true that Jesus told us that certain things must happen first, and he said that we were to be watching for those things. The doctrine of imminence is popularly assumed to be true in order to support a pretribulation rapture of the church which would deliver us from any affliction from the world or from testing by God. Having previously considered what God has allowed to happen to Israel because of apostasy, we can believe that God has shown us that the apostate church and the gentile world will deserve no special treatment. While many Godly saints have suffered affliction unjustly from both the world and an apostating church through the ages, the truth is that God allowed them to be "sifted as wheat" to his Glory. Neither the New Testament nor the church would have any credibility at all apart from the martyrdoms and suffering of the Apostles and the saints of God. The events that bring on the great tribulation of the true church are clearly triggered by apostasy within the church and the amount of affliction to come upon the real church at any period of history is directly proportional to the holiness and fidelity and spirituality of the Body of Christ. That means that the holier, truer, and more spiritual the church is, the more she will be afflicted by the world and the apostate.

2 Tim. 4:8 says that all who love the appearing of the Lord Jesus Christ will receive a crown of righteousness. It is then true, that we should love his appearing. But it is also true that we should also make every effort to present his return to the world in its entire scriptural context. And it is true that we should understand that millions of souls, many of whom are members of our families and who are our friends, will be eternally condemned into Hell when he does return because of their rebellion to God.

In that passage from 2 Thessalonians 2:2-4 quoted above, it says that Jesus will not return before there has been a "falling away", the Greek word that is translated, "falling away", is "apostasia". It comes from the word "apostasion," which is nearly everywhere else translated as "divorcement" when it appears in the New Testament, such as in Matt. 5:31, Matt. 19:7, and Mark 10:4. The literal interpretation of apostasia is "away stand" or, in our idiom,"stand away." Apostasia is the feminine form of Apostasion, and it, therefore, would seem that in this case it reflects a feminine cause; i.e. the wife forsaking or standing away from the husband. It therefore is explicit that the day of the Lord will not come until the majority of his betrothed bride moves away from him and chooses another groom.

Revelation 18:7, which says of her, "I sit a queen, and am no widow..." is germane, for the queen could not sit as queen if the King had divorced her. It is therefore apparent that the apostate church deserts her betrothed husband while he is absent for some reason. She then usurps his authority, and plays the whore with another lover, which we shall see later on to be the whole of the Babylonish system of civilization.

The bulk of the evidence in the scripture points to the fact of an apostasy, a divorcement, within the church in the last days before Jesus returns, and that, it is the general crush of the crowd and this renegade church that deliver the real believers up to the Antichristian powers of Babylon in the last days.

In the 17th Chapter of The Revelation, which we will cover in more detail later, one of the angels of wrath shows John "the judgment of the great whore" that has been sitting "upon many waters." We need to understand the picture of this Whore if we are to understand the Apostasy and the historical significance of what has been revealed. We will explain the many waters later, but just now we to examine the sin of this great whore.

Verse 2 of that chapter says that she committed fornication with the kings of the earth and caused the inhabitants of the earth to become drunk on the fruit of that fornication. So this great whore commits fornication with the political powers of the earth. Fornication is any sexual conduct outside of the context of Holy Matrimony and is symbolically used here to describe the effects of her actions. This great whore has given her "body" (the people who believe her doctrines) over to be used by the political powers of Babylon in exchange for material favors, favors for which she is lusting. What can be the meaning of this picture?

If The Revelation is what it claims to be, and not what the rationalizers believe it to be, then this revealed picture should easily be understood by matching it to the history that has unfolded since it was written. If The Revelation is not the word of God then the picture and the history will not match. It is not a lack of faith that will hold God to his word, but an iron clad belief that he is able to accomplish what he has promised. That is the faith of Abraham. So lets compare this picture of the Babylonian Whore who has committed fornication with the kings of the earth to the subsequent events of history since the picture was written, and see if we can understand how the fermented fruits of that fornication have made the merchants of the earth rich, and have intoxicated all the people of the earth.

Understand first that fermentation takes some time. From the moment that Christianity first began to replace the earlier religious beliefs of the Roman Empire, the Roman aristocracy became concerned that if Christianity caught hold in the Empire, the Christian belief that their kingdom was not of this world would result in the downfall of the state. Even though the Aristocracy recognized the complete necessity of religion to instill the qualities of citizenship and service in the manners of the Roman citizen, they feared that Christianity would not accomplish this in such a fashion as to serve the state. This fear was the result of the pagan understanding of the Christian insistence that the Christian Kingdom was a heavenly realm and not of this world. The pagan rulers believed this doctrine would preclude its believers from providing such service to Rome as paying tribute, civil obedience, loyalty to the state, and fighting to hold back the "Barbarians" who were continually threatening the frontiers of the Empire.

By all accounts, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Emperor of Rome from 121 to 180 A.D., was a man of noble mind and character who believed the philosophy of the Grecian Stoics. He was moderate and regular in his habits, and he was a gentleman of the highest order. Yet he authorized the execution of Christians in the provinces because he feared the Christian attitude toward the worldly state would make them useless to that state.

When The Roman Emperor Decius returned to Rome from fighting almost endless battles with the Barbarians on the frontier, he became alarmed by the general apathy of the population toward the fighting. Erroneously believing this apathy to be the result of Christians attempting to put into practice the teaching of Christ that they were not of this world, he attempted to systematically destroy all Roman Citizens who did not possess a sworn certificate stating that they had sacrificed to the image of the Emperor.

The public execution of Christians continued in varying degrees of intensity until 313 A.D. when Constantine granted freedom of worship in Rome, and he, himself, embraced the Christian Faith, but without baptism. Constantine claimed to have seen a vision of the Christ and the Cross in which he was told that his hopes for conquest would be fulfilled within the context of Christianity. I do not doubt for a single moment that Constantine actually saw this vision. I do question its source. Constantine made Christianity the de facto state religion and assumed authority for its polity, i.e. he took control of its body. Those Emperors who followed him did likewise, until, in 383 A.D., Christianity was declared to be the Imperial Religion of Rome.

Do you begin to see something here? The de facto practice of Greco-Roman philosophy in both the Greek and the Roman mind, regardless of what was being said, used the citizen to serve the state and not vice versa. The function of religion in the state, both before and after Christianity became the official religion of that state, was to make the citizen a proper servant to the state. It will invariably be the same with any state religion operating within the philosophy of any Greco-Roman styled civilization such as a western democracy. In America today that religion is humanized Christianity that is soon to become secular humanism unless there is a restoration of true Christian doctrine within the body.

The Roman Aristocracy may not have themselves believed the ancient religions which Christianity was replacing in the Empire, but they understood that it was the moral habits, the civility, and the civic duty taught by those religions that made citizens that were useful to the state, and therefore they encouraged the teaching of those religions in their schools, in their forums, in their homes, and in fact, in all public and private arenas. This Ancient Roman Religion had become humanized by the infusion of Hellenist philosophy, and it was in this form that it was nurtured by both the State and the Aristocracy, in order to maintain control over the population.

After Christianity became the state religion of Rome, it was inevitable that the union of the spiritual truths of freedom and equality in Christ, and the political imperatives of Greco-Roman Humanism would eventually produce in the minds of men the idea that freedom and equality were Divine expressions of government in, not only the eternal state, but for all temporal ones as well. And thus, those Aristocrats who had believed that Christianity would destroy their state were right, but it did not happen as they thought it would. In The Roman Aristocratic attempt to destroy Christianity, the martyrdom of multitudes of saints bore witness to the general population of the strength with which they held their faith. This martyrdom won many to Christ through suffering and patient endurance. Our Christianity today was passed on to us by their sufferings.

By winning much of the Empire to the faith, the church made it politically expedient for the state to not only recognize, but to embrace this faith that allowed its adherents to face death rather than compromise. But in embracing this faith, the aristocracies sealed their eventual demise, because Democracy was the inevitable conclusion.

It is important to understand that the early church called those who compromised with political authority "apostates." That is the picture of the Babylonian Whore who commits adultery with the kings of the earth and makes all the population drunk by the wine of that adultery. Spiritual compromise for personal, or political, or commercial expediency is always apostasy, and the church has been on that road since 313 A.D. In The Revelation, "The Babylonian Whore" rides the beast roughshod over the people, living delicately to mutual benefit of herself, the political powers, and the merchants of the earth. At least two hundred years before it began to occur in the church, The Revelation revealed that the church would get itself involved with the kings and the merchants of the earth, and that when she did, her compromises would make men drunken concerning her spiritual truths. History and the picture in The Revelation match perfectly.

The apostate church is only one part of this great whore, for she includes all false religions that have, throughout all history, "divorced" themselves from the light of worshiping the God of Creation in the manner in which He has declared he will accept.

If the Bible is true, then by any Biblical evaluation, it must follow that all of the thirty thousand religions on earth, except the true forms of Judaism and Christianity, have developed by way of apostasy from the true worship of the God of Creation, because all civilizations, both before the flood and after, would have proceeded from Noah who knew God intimately. We have previously noted how all of the major world religions were founded right at the beginning of, or during the age of the gentiles. Since that time thirty thousand different religions have continued to proceed to form from out of the liberalization, modification, and rationalization, of the doctrines of these founders and from the ancient religious roots upon which those founders drew. For example, Muhammad founded Islam from out of Zoroastrianism, Apostate Judaism, heretical Nestorian Christianity, the remnants of a very ancient shamanism involving magic and ritual, and Grecian humanism. Muhammad gleaned from all of these a Warrior's religion of tribal parochialism that has become a nationalized, rationalized system of worship that promises the protection of the Creator to the believer and his tribe, and both political and spiritual destruction to other tribes and to the infidel. Many branches of Islam have likewise now been formed from Muhammad's original doctrines. Likewise, hundreds of sects of Christianity have formed from the original doctrines. But, if the Bible is true, then all 30,000 religions must either go back to Noah and to what he preached, or represent a break from, or an apostasy to, Noah's preaching.

Let's go back to Noah for a moment. What would Noah have preached? What knowledge of God, and from God, do you suppose Noah carried into the ark with him? Did he have a book, or a tablet inscribed by the hand of God? What was Noah supposed to tell his descendants about The Creator that had sent the flood? How were Noah and his children supposed to live while they obeyed the commandment to multiply and refill the earth?

The only thing we know for sure is from the story in Genesis chapter 1 through 11. By some cosmic coincidence, these are the very same chapters that "learned men" say are nothing more than ancient folklore, and they point to such things as the Gilgamesh Epic, and the ancient Sumerian accounts found in the library at Nippur as proving a common mythology. How blind does a person have to be before he cannot see the truth substantiated by a common thread in all of the most ancient accounts? The argument against the Biblical account is that these other ancient accounts are believed to be the more ancient. Those who argue against the Biblical account put forth argument that Moses, who was born around 1500 B.C., was preceded by the Sumerian civilization that they believe existed from 4500 B.C. until 2000 B.C. and had some similar events in their religious documents. They say that Moses "borrowed" from previous accounts. That is the rationalistic view.

But there is an alternative. Look at Genesis chapter 6: God told Noah the reason he was going to destroy all flesh was because they had filled the earth with violence. The inspired account in verse 5 says that God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that his every thought was of evil. But the inspired account also says that the only reason that God gave to Noah directly for bringing the destruction upon the earth was that the earth was filled with violence. The Hebrew word translated as violence comes from a primary root that definitely means to be violent. So Noah knew for sure that this God with whom he was dealing was anti violence.

Did Noah know anything else about God? Well, its for sure that Noah knew his own name, and what it meant, and why he had been given that name. Noah's name means "rest." Genesis 5:28-29 says that Noah's father, Lamech, named him Noah saying, "This same shall comfort us concerning our work and the toil of our hands, because of the ground which the Lord hath cursed." Well, what do you know! It's for sure then that Noah knew that God had put a curse on the earth and that God had promised to provide eventual rest from that curse. So we see then that Noah saw a world full of violence, and he knew that the God who had created the cosmos and man was against violence, and he knew that this God had promised a deliverance from the curse he had put on the earth. Noah knew about the dualistic nature of man and the cause of that dualism.

What else did Noah know? Well, he also knew that this God was reliable in his word. God had told Noah to build an ark for the salvation of his family and himself and all the living things, because he was going to bring a flood upon the earth that would destroy every living thing that was not in the ark. Noah worked on that ark for a hundred years, preaching while he worked. Noah told every human being who would listen to him that God was going to send a flood of water upon the earth. But everyone knew that it was scientifically impossible for water to cover the earth. Every scientist in Noah's day knew that the water was under the ground and only rose to the surface in a mist. Covering the earth with water would have been as ridiculous to those scientists as water falling from the sky.

There is a story told about Thomas Jefferson that says when he was President, two college professors came to him trying to get a government grant to study meteorites. "What are Meteorites?" Jefferson asked. "You know, rocks that fall from the sky," the two college professors said. Jefferson jumped up and shouted, "ROCKS THAT FALL FROM THE SKY!!! I'd rather believe that two Yankee professors would lie to me than that rocks will fall from the sky!!" That is the same problem Noah had, but one hundred years after Noah began to preach, the waters came and covered the earth.

What else did Noah know about God? I believe he knew every thing that Adam knew about God. He knew about the Creation of all things, he knew about the original sinless state of man, he knew about the fall of man through disobedience, he knew about man being cast out of the Garden of Eden. Noah knew about God's promise that he would provide a seed of women who would crush the serpent's head, but that the serpent would first bruise that seed's heel. That promise of a "seed of women" was the single most important thing that God had spoken after the fall of man in the Garden, and it was the reason for the accounting of the lineage from Adam to Noah to Abraham to David, to Jesus Christ.

Noah also knew about the sacrifices of Cain and Abel, and he knew that when God had chosen Abel, he was simply choosing which of the two sons of Adam would produce the lineage from which that seed would come. He also knew that God's election would certainly entail hardship, persecution, and possibly even death because he knew that Cain had killed Abel. Noah also knew that when Cain murdered Abel, God had provided Eve a "substitute" whose name implied "Substituted" (Seth is a Hebrew name which had the implications of being a substitute). Noah knew that Seth was his ancestor.

How did he know? His father, Lamech, told him. Just as Lamech told Noah of the "hope of rest" that God had promised to mankind, and which would come through Noah's lineage. How did Lamech know these things? He could have learned them directly from Adam who lived for 56 years after Lamech was born, and he could have learned them from Enoch, whose name meant "Initiated" or "teacher." The Bible says that Enoch walked with God, and that he lived for 113 years after Lamech was born. These things did not have to be handed down by word of mouth over many, many generations.

Also note that there are two people mentioned in the Bible before the flood that were named Enoch. Cain named his first son Enoch. Cain also built the first city on earth, and he named it after his son Enoch. Cain taught his Enoch about cities, but God taught his Enoch about Himself, and the Enoch that walked with God could have taught Lamech, who taught Noah. Also God personally told Noah about the everlasting covenant between himself and man. We will look at the Everlasting Covenant in just a moment because it is so important to understand why the judgment of God falls when it is broken.

So Noah had very good oral and first hand, personal information about God. But what about the rest of the promised lineage from Noah to Moses. Well, Abraham was contemporary with Noah for sixty years. And God also "walked and talked" with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in establishing his covenant with the Hebrews. From Joseph to Moses the Children of Israel were isolated from any outside influence, except Egyptian, by the bondage of slavery in Egypt. During this time the principle doctrine that the Hebrew had to hold onto came from the tradition as told by Noah to all his descendants for 350 years after the Flood, and from the story of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Both were simple and easy to remember and to pass on to each successive generation.

Then beginning with Moses the account was written down and maintained by revelation when God began to bring forth and preserve the lineage that would produce the messiah, the hope and the blessing of all mankind.

But what about the rest of humanity, the unnamed millions, who were spreading out over the world carrying that same story told by Noah of the Creation, the fall, the curse, the promise of redemption, and the Flood. Those multitudes of accounts fell into embellishment, sophistication, and rationalization by apostate men who did not walk with God but went about on their own. These accounts spread all over the ancient world, and while they all shared common threads, they were none the less altered by the reasoning of man.

All ancient religions, and thus all modern ones including the human secularism of western democracy, sprang from continual apostasy of the things that Noah preached to his descendants concerning the Everlasting Covenant that God had made between Himself and all that was in that creation, including the fallen race of mankind. Noah's preaching would have included the fall of man, the punishment of the curse, the promise of redemption, the world covering waters of judgment against violence and iniquity, and the promise in the rainbow of the promised everlasting peace. Noah also knew about and taught the ordinance of sacrifice as a reminder of the covering with which God had temporarily covered man's naked "self" until the hope of His eternal covering was realized. These things are simple to remember and easy to pass on to each generation. They are almost too simple for man's sophisticated tastes and so the "unprotected" accounts of the rebellious were soon embellished and rationalized until only some common threads remained among them all.

But why would God allow some men to drift into apostasy, and even seem to have ordained that such will be the case?

I speculate on the answer: We have to understand this about God. God is the Supreme Being and so he is the Supreme Prophet. When God speaks he can not lie, and so what ever He says, actually comes into being when he speaks, that is to say, whatever God says is. However, God does not speak in the temporal sense. He speaks in the eternal sense so that whatever God has said to man within the temporal time frame, is simultaneously spoken in eternity before time as we know it began. It seems from a general picture given in the Bible that the temporal history of man is actually an object lesson in the inevitable effects of disobedience for the spiritual realm to observe. As such it has not been the will of God that these things should be, but he has spoken of them to serve his own purposes in the instruction of the spiritual realm. Therefore, since these things came not by the will of God, but for reasons of his own, he has freely offered redemption through Jesus Christ to any who do not want to live in this hellish condition forever.

Only one of the ancient accounts can be the truth, and it is my unyielding conviction that the one that is both ancient and at the same time the one that is the most entirely consistent and reasonable, in both story and in concept, is the one that represents the Truth. The only account that meets that criteria in my mind is the one given in the Bible.

If the Egyptians were the only people that could have reasonably affected the Hebrews from Abraham to Moses, we need to look at what the Ancient Egyptians believed and see how they would have affected the traditions of Hebrews. The Hebrews were in Egypt from about 1780 B.C. until 1440 B.C. This time period coincided with the very last of the Egyptian dynasties and was called the New Egyptian Kingdom. There had been two previous Egyptians Kingdoms prior to this time. The first, or the Old Kingdom is recorded to date from about 2700 B.C. to about 2200 B.C. The Intermediate kingdom lasted from about 2200 B.C. to about 2000 B.C. and the New Kingdom is reckoned from about 2000 B.C. until the time of Christ when the Roman Empire spread into North Africa.

All of the above dates are recorded and reckoned by secularists of whom I will say without equivocation: Both they, and the texts upon which they rely, are ten of thousands of times more susceptible to the errors which they attribute to the writers of the Scripture, and so I use their dates only to indicate the fact that there were three transitions in Egyptian politics and religion while the politics and religion of the Bible before and after the Egyptian bondage remained fixed. While the religion of the Old Egyptian Kingdom was pantheistic, it did teach that there was one god who created himself and that he also created the heavens and earth. This Egyptian religion taught that the god who was the first cause of all things masturbated in his hand which got pregnant and produced a god and goddess who then copulated and produced the first man. I do not think the Hebrews learned much religion from the religion that would have come down to them from the Old Egyptians. By the end of the Old Kingdom it was taught that man was created from the tears of this god who cried over the rebellion of the two gods he had earlier "begotten." This first god was now taught to be a Spirit who was the eternal mind of the universe. These Middle kingdom Egyptians believed that the world had originally stood forth from primeval water. They believed that the earth was a flat plate divided by the river Nile, and that the sky was separated and supported from the earth by four columns. They believed that the sun, moon and planets, were living things because they moved around in the sky. They believed in what is called today, uniformitarianism, because they had a sense of existence that explained the state of being as that which was, is, and will always be. Time to these Ancient Egyptians was a circular something that repeated itself in endless cycles. Indeed, of the all religions of the Ancient world, only the religion of the Hebrews taught that time was an eternal linear progression.

By the time of the Hebrew captivity in the New Kingdom, the Egyptians had "humanized" their religion to teach that the reason this god had created the earth and the universe was for the benefit of mankind. But by the time of the Hebrew captivity they began to hold only one idea generally in common with the Hebrews. The Egyptians of the New Kingdom believed that the God who created man also drove back the monstrous waters to make a place for man. The point being, of course, is that its was the Egyptian Religion that was in a constant state of flux, and not the religion of the Bible. And it seems to me that the Egyptians were learning and adopting religion from the Hebrews instead of vice versa.

Therefore this great whore spoken of in The Revelation represents not only the apostate church but all other manifestations of false, Babylonish, apostate, state sponsored religions to which the apostate church joins herself in the last days. And the reason that judgment comes upon the world is because the inhabitants have apostated from and broken the Everlasting Covenant that Noah taught.

Isaiah 24:1-5 says that God is bringing judgment upon the earth and the people that live on it because, "The earth also is defiled under the inhabitants thereof; because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant."

This passage says that men first become iniquitous, i.e. they "transgress the law." Then they "change the ordinance." This is the most logical solution to sin in the world to me, and it is the one that is in practice today in every nation of earth, and in every false religion including many sects of Christendom: If I cannot satisfy my self righteousness because I am in rebellion to the law, I'll simply change the law to agree with me. God said that He will bring judgment upon the earth because men have changed his ordinances. Then God says the last thing that happens before judgment falls is that man breaks his ever lasting covenant.

God first mentions an Everlasting Covenant to Noah in Genesis 9:16 when he tells Noah that the rainbow will be the sign of his Everlasting Covenant between Himself and "every living creature of all flesh." Children often ask if animals go to heaven, and the answer is, "Yes." The ark and Noah were types of the salvation that God has promised in His Everlasting Covenant, and God made provision for the animals in His Ark. And God promised Everlasting provision to "every living creature of all flesh" in His Everlasting Covenant

When Noah and the animals came out of the Ark, God told them that He would put the fear of man and the dread of man upon every animal. He told them that he had given the animals to man for food, and God himself gave them to man for clothing his nakedness. Every animal that man kills for such uses should be killed from the sanctity of that Everlasting Covenant with thanksgiving. Any animal that is killed for any other purpose, unless it has become a man killer or attacker, does not have the blessing of God. God told the animals that if any of them shed man's blood, He would personally hold that animal responsible. Also, since the Wolf is going to lay down with the Lamb and the Lion is going to eat grass, it is manifest that God has promised to change and to redeem the animals, also. Harming a man then is the sin which breaks the Everlasting Covenant between God and an animal, but what breaks the Everlasting Covenant between God and man?

In Gen. 6:18 God said that He was going to establish (raise up) His covenant with Noah, and then Noah and his wife and his descendants and their wives would "come into the ark." The very first requirement that man has in the Everlasting covenant is to "come into the ark" that God has provided to escape the flood of his judgment. There will never be any other provision for salvation except coming out of the world and into the ark. Look at the following text:

Isaiah 55:1-3
"Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labour for that which satisfieth not? hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness. Incline your ear, and come unto me: hear, and your soul shall live; and I will make an "everlasting covenant" (quotations added for emphasis) with you, even the sure mercies of David.

God has said our first obligation is to accept his provision and come to him. We can choose to reject this provision but there is no other alternative but to remain in our condition of lostness for eternity if we do so. There is no price for admission to this covenant, just come and ask to be let in while the door to the ark is still open. Notice that God says we should incline our ear and come to him and hear and our souls will live. Listen to what God says and forget about what man says. God says that Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. Hearing involves a good bit more activity than passively letting noise fall on your ear drums. Hearing means to listen, and ponder, and meditate, and to assimilate. God says that when you come, He will make an everlasting covenant with you, and you will hear. In Proverbs 1:23 Gods says that if we will turn at his reproof of our ways, He will pour out his spirit upon us, and He will make His words known to us.

So the very first thing that man has to do in the everlasting covenant is to come to it. But then there are some ordinances in this covenant which we are to strive to keep.

In Leviticus 24:1-8 God gave the Hebrews some symbolic ordinances of their responsibilities under the Everlasting Covenant. The ordinances were to: Provide light continually outside of the "vail" of the testimony; provide bread in the same place, provide a sweet odor (frankincense, symbolic of spiritual prayer, See Rev. 8:1-6) along with the light and the bread. The veil of the testimony was the curtain in both the tabernacle and the temple that separated the place of God's presence, called the "most holy place," from the holy place where the priest's ministered before God. It was this veil that was torn at the moment that Jesus Christ was obedient unto death on the cross.

When Christ died on the cross, the holy place of man became one with the most holy place of God. And the ordinance to provide light became one to "be light," and the ordinance to provide bread became one to "be bread," and the ordinance to provide a sweet odor became one to "be a sweet odor." These were priestly ordinances and the primary function of the priesthood is one of intercession.

Under the Mosaic Covenant these ordinances were for the priests to observe as they ministered before God, making intercession for the people of the covenant. But under the New Covenant, God is "one" with the people of the covenant and he has therefore mightily broken out of the walls of man made sanctuaries. Both the world and the church have been trying to put God back into the box of His sanctuary ever since, but God now commands the priesthood of all believers to "be the light for the world," and to be the "bread for the world," and to "be the sweet odor for the world." But the church has forgotten her ordinances under the Everlasting Covenant, and today she builds gymnasiums, and bowling alleys, and secularized universities and colleges, and seminaries in which heretics and agnostics, and atheists have infiltrated to rationalize and destroy the faith of young ministers, while 40,000 children die every day from hunger and poverty, and 4/5 of the world's population goes with out access to clean drinking water.

How can we then talk to them about "Living Waters," when we have filled swimming pools with something they do not even have to drink? I do not believe we are going to reach them with the "light of the world," and the "bread of life." and the "sweet odor of spiritual prayer," as long as we continue to serve ourselves in the material manner in which we have become accustomed. We have become so materialistic that we think a church builder is a minister who can get the people to pay for more and grander buildings. I believe we must repent of this apostasy and get back to serving within the ordinances of the everlasting Covenant or see the "wrath of the lamb" come upon us.

The last living words of David are recorded In 2nd Samuel 23:1-5. Just as we noted earlier concerning Jesus and the disciples on the day the ascension, we should understand that anyone's last words are probably what they think is extremely important for us to understand. In his last breathing words, David reminded us of God's promise of an Everlasting Covenant in which He would provide a just ruler over men who would be the light of morning to them, and who would be as gentle as the tender sprouts of grass following refreshing rains. David reminded us that even though he and his sons had not been rulers of that sort, that God had made an Everlasting Covenant with him that one of his line would fulfill that promise. This then has always been God's responsibility in the agreement. God is responsible for producing an everlasting Kingdom that is ruled by a just, and a gentle King. Man's responsibility in this Everlasting Covenant is first to come into the ark that God has provided and then be light, food, and a sweet odor in the earth. Now it is manifest that when we forsake our responsibilities and take upon ourselves God's responsibilities that we have done as Satan, and we have replaced God with ourselves. It is not faith that does such things, but lack of faith.

Apostasy invariable begins when men forsake the responsibilities of the Everlasting Covenant, and serve themselves, and take unto themselves the office of God. They cease to worship God as their creator, and begin to worship and serve the creation.

The first chapter of the Book of Romans, which we will cover in a moment, also teaches that this apostasy into false religions invariably manifests itself in forsaking God as Creator, and then worshiping and serving the creation or some created thing, i.e. serving self and worshiping the material realm and the things therein. That is what apostasy looks like, serving self while worshiping the natural realm in the natural realm, and its effects are described below:

2 Timothy 3:1-5
"This know also, that "in the last days" perilous times shall come. "For men shall be lovers of their own selves" (quotations added for emphasis), covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away."

Verse 1 tells us that the last days will be synonymous with peril, and verse 2 tells why. Men will be lovers of their own selves, and it is this self love which leads to the personality traits listed in the remainder of verse 2 through verse 4. The Holy Spirit prophesied of the doctrine of self interest rightly understood nearly 1500 years before it infiltrated the church, and accurately predicted the effects that this doctrine would have on humanity nearly 2000 years before those effects became manifest in epic proportions. Today the manifestations of self interest rightly understood are almost universal.

Look at each problem that is mentioned in those verses concerning the condition of the "man of the last days," and see if you do not agree that they all have for a basis the fundamental doctrine and condition of the love of self. The love of self is the foundation of all psychological "healing" in the world today. It is instilled in mankind from the cradle to the grave and not having good self image and esteem and respect is considered to be the cause of emotional disturbances and criminality. Those who speak against self interest are considered to be ignorant, unenlightened outcasts from the human race. Well, praise God, I am an outcast from the human race. The Holy Spirit anticipated the circumstances and extrapolated the outcome of the doctrine of "self interest rightly understood" nearly two thousand years ago and taught the church to "turn away" from all who taught and believed such an ungodly doctrine.

But the Church has embraced this doctrine along with other rationalistic teachings of men "having the form of godliness but denying the power thereof," and the Invisible Kingdom of the Body of Christ has been on a journey through many centuries, until the present, whereby every spiritual, supernatural element of the Christian Faith has been brought under subjugation to the reason of man, and more recently, the soul of man has been replaced by his enlightened self. This journey will end with nearly total apostasia within all denominations and sects of Christianity. These apostate "Christians" will open the doors for the Antichrist who will be the total embodiment of all that they naturally believe.

2 Timothy 3:6
"For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts,"

The remarkable thing about this verse is that 1900 years before it happened, God told us that there would come a time when the kind of men who were lovers of self would creep into homes (houses translates oikia which literally means a residence, and by implication, a home) and would take silly women captive (silly women translates "gunaikarion," which literally means "the little woman"). It says that these women were ready to be led away anyway because of the various lusts raging within their personalities because of the love of self. The chief characteristic of these women is not that they are unwilling captives, but that they are willingly led away from the Godliness of God fearing homemaking to selfish unrighteousness. One need look no further that the hate and vehemence with which modern, liberated womankind despises the term, "the little woman" to see the truth of the prophecy.

It does not matter if every woman in the world gets her hackles up over this verse. If God said it, and I confess that he did, we can either heed it, or rebel from it; we are all free for the time being to exercise our choices. But we also have to understand that while God may sometimes negotiate his timing, he never alters his meaning or his intentions. God said that these self loving persons enter "HOMES" and lead the wives away who are lusting to leave anyway. The secular world is beginning to wake up to the reality of what they are calling the "startlingly new and devastating effects" that are being "discovered" to have been produced in American children who have been sent from the home to child care centers, or who have been left at home to take care of themselves because mother needed a career, or the family needed money, more than the children needed a mother. The Bible says that the child who is left to himself will bring shame upon the mother (Proverbs 29:15).

Remember God said it 1900 years before we began to see it happening. Was God just lucky? Or did he know something we didn't? I'm trusting God, and not these self loving men and women whom he predicted would be predominant in the last days.

2 Timothy 3:7
"Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth."

God said these lovers of self would be ever learning, but would never be able to apprehend the knowledge of the truth. It is not hard to see why this is true since they have rejected the standard for Truth and made themselves the judge of Truth. The Bible says that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. These have confused education with wisdom. Education has become the shrine for the god of this age. More money is expended per child on what is called education today than at any time in our past, and we keep achieving poorer results. The problem with education is not with students but with content.

Wayne C. Booth tried to make the point in an essay entitled, "Is There any Knowledge That a Man Must Have?" that there is a difference between what an individual must know for personal survival, and what mankind in general must know in order for civilization to survive. I believe more is involved than just knowledge, I believe that understanding a little bit is better than knowing a lot. I believe assimilation is much better than accumulation. When Booth asked in that essay what a man should know in order for him to be a man, he believed that knowledge would somehow determine that man's manners. Such cannot be demonstrated. People who have been getting the same education and learning the same things for years have been turning out quite different. The "graduates" of the same education with comparable intelligence will turn out to be everything from missionaries to murderers. I believe the difference is in how they have assimilated everything that has been thrown at them into a big picture. If a person cannot make the things he has been taught fit together into a cohesive whole under a larger truth, he will never allow that knowledge to alter his manners. To that person, that kind of knowledge is nothing but mental overhead that he has to carry around to pay his dues to the general bank of human trivia. It is entirely irrelevant to him that someone else has said it is important that he should know it. Understand that this applies not only to secular education but to Christian Doctrine as well.

The importance of assimilating information into a larger picture cannot be over emphasized. The failure to do so invariably results in fatal error to the individual and to any one else who listens to him and believes his exegesis of life. REMEMBER THE BRANCH DAVIDIANS!! It is most obvious then that the picture of life that evicts and excludes all contradictions to itself is smaller than, and inferior to, the picture which predicts and includes them. That is why I believe that Jesus Christ's big picture is the real one - because the Bible both predicts and includes its detractors. And not only that, but Jesus also included all of creation in the contradiction of sinners that he endured, even me (see Heb. 12:7). As I go through life trying to fit all of the information that comes to me into this big picture I find such peace because of the order and harmony it produces from the chaos around me.

Jesus Christ dips a brush of love into a paint bucket of life that is filled to overflowing with anger, and hate, and discontent, and violence, and selfishness, and confusion, and sorrow, and suffering, and pain, and lies, and deceit, and death, and he paints with that brush, raised from such filth, and degradation, and despair, a big picture of peace and joy and dignity that passes understanding.

I did not say that I have drawn the big picture. God forbid that I should point you to myself!!! I am trying, just as every one alive is trying, to fit the information of life into a larger frame which will contain it and explain it. I point you to Jesus Christ, my Lord and my God.

If you are one of the many millions of people who have rejected Jesus in these last times because of us Christians, I do not much blame you. I ask you to reevaluate the picture in the light of Jesus Christ, and not in that light as it is reflected only dimly and distortedly by his church. His church is just one of many pieces of information that he included for you to evaluate, and I ask you to try and understand that often because we really do want, so desperately, to exemplify our Lord, we go to artificial extremes and forget what "manner of Spirit we are of." In our zeal to be holy, without thinking, we forget that we are innately self righteous. I promise you that if you will come to Jesus, it will also happen to you from time to time in like manner. I ask you now that when it does happen, to forgive both yourself and us, for our self righteousness is the weapon which Satan wields best from within the church. We are ever forgetful that Jesus told the self righteous that the harlots and the publicans (or in today's language, the prostitutes and those hated IRS tax men), would go into the Kingdom of Heaven before they did.

It may seem to you that I have come very far afield from the topic of discussion which is, at the moment, that kind of education that ever teaches but never learns. But I do not believe so, for what I have been attempting to demonstrate is that no amount of knowledge is useful for altering the manners of a person, until it has been meaningfully incorporated into whatever frame of life that person holds to. And I have tried to demonstrate that the life view that is framed by Jesus Christ is greater than, more positive than, more civilizing than, and superior to the life view that is natural.

And so I believe that the problem with American education is that we have abandoned our standard for truth, and have ceased teaching students how to test information. We are teaching children how to pass a test. We are teaching them what will be on the test, how to recognize it on the test, and how to answer it when it appears on the test. And we are teaching them not to ask any serious questions about that information. We are not teaching about such things as independent speculation, and assimilation. Children are not being taught to think because serious thinking is dangerous to the self based foundations of modern society. I am not being critical of the students, how could anyone blame the students for not having been taught properly? It is the whole system of human belief that is at fault.

To memorize a fact requires no authority. But to test that fact for truth, requires the acknowledgement of the existence of a standard of truth beyond the opinions of the self and even beyond the opinions of the majority of "selfs." This is why so many young people today are rejecting education as a waste of time, or, are putting only enough into it to get a diploma. I recently went back to school at age 51, and I discovered that the worst place in the world to look for truth is in the American university. While I was there I talked to many traditional and nontraditional students and asked them why they were enrolled. Every single one of them said in effect that they were there to get a diploma so they could get a good job and make a lot of money. It was almost a chant: "Gonna get a good job, make a lota money! Gonna get a good job, make a lota money." I could almost see them "rapping" across the campus to their classes to that tune, "Gonna get a good job, make a lota money." Hardly any of them believed they were learning any thing truly worthwhile. They have been to the well and the well is dry, but the journey thereto is required. Education is the empty Mecca of humanism.

Education in America today is the "Boot Camp" of American Commerce, Government, and Religion. It is required that all who would enter the doors of those institutions must have previously demonstrated their capacity to record and play back upon demand the sophistries of western civilization, thereby demonstrating their accord with the agenda of that civilization where the ideas and ideals of truth, justice, and liberty have been swallowed up by the baser humanistic necessities of utility, law, and equality. Their diplomas illustrate that they have endured the mind confusing, thought crushing, light dimming, initiative squelching, imagination killing regimen of Babylonian Brain Washing without displaying any serious indications of intellectual integrity, individual inquiry, or independent thought. Such an "inductee" can be relied upon to "fit" well within the structures of Babylon, and not make any serious trouble for the system by asking any really serious questions concerning Truth, justice, Liberty, Righteousness, or Purpose. The Bible says they are ever learning but never able to learn the truth, and it is time for Christians to come out of that Babylonian Slop Jar, and for the church to once again provide and pay for the education of her children whatever their age.

I would like to encourage any "Christian Pioneers" who have even now come out that mess to understand that God knows about the financial sacrifice that is involved in paying taxes to brain wash Babylonians and then giving offerings to educate your own children. God knows that it is unfair that the Babylonian Humanists can use our taxes to teach their religion, and that you must pay twice for the education of your children. I want you know that God has always honored such sacrifices and punished such injustice. Those who wait upon the Lord will not be ashamed.

I want to encourage Christian schools to stop worrying about Babylonian Accreditation and Babylonian standards and obtaining Babylonian money. Babylonian money is the wedge that drives the truth from schools, and Babylonian Accreditation and Standards are the weapons that Satan has placed in the hands of his humanists to promote his agenda. Pray to learn the truth; seek to find the truth; teach to proclaim the truth. Let God lead you in all truth and let Babylon fall to her own darkness because she is ever learning but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Likewise I want to admonish those so called Christian Schools that do nothing more than take people's money and throw some work books at students to keep them occupied a few hours each day. Such schools should not exist within the church and the only reason they do is to make a profit in Babylon.

Next in that passage from 2nd Timothy in verse 5, there is a kind of summary of the conditions of that time when self loving mankind will dominate the thinking of humanity. It says that men will have a form of godliness but will deny the power thereof. The true church is told to turn away from men such as that. The New Testament declares the power of Christianity to be: "Christ, the power of God." 1 Cor. 1:24. Jesus said in Matt. 28:18, "All power is given unto me." John 1:12 says, "But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God..." And Rom. 1:16 says, "For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth." But the revisionists of the last days have even now laid the doctrinal ground work that will eventually lead the apostate to deny Jesus Christ The Way, The Truth and The Life: They will deny his authority as Creator, and they will deny his Eternal Logos, his birth, his life, his death, his resurrection, his ascension - the power of Christianity. The "politically correct" religion of the last days will resemble Christianity in its external doctrines concerning humanitarian ideals, orderly conduct, peaceable habitation, industrious habits, civility of manners, and brotherly love, but it will emphatically deny the unique singularity of Jesus Christ as "The Way." When Jesus is included, it will be as but one of many who have shown the way. And it will emphatically deny sexual immorality or perversion, or lewdness, or such like as sin. It will define sin as being any act that physically hurts another human or his property.

The 1993 World Religion Parliament released a document called the "Global Ethic" declaration. This document summed up the consensus of the leaders from 125 different world religions, including many Christian Denominations. This global ethic concerned the common set of core values of all religions, and it stated those shared values without ever once mentioning God. It is therefore obvious that the majority of Babylonian religions are already coming to believe in, and will finally fully believe in, a unified religion of righteousness by the works of man. And in the last days before Jesus' return, those works will be authenticated to humanity by the beliefs of the majority, and they will be directed toward preserving man and his civilization.

When self righteousness manifests itself in the church, whether it is from a conservative or a liberal theology makes no difference, the church is opened up to the idea that man will himself build a tower that reaches into heaven whereby he can climb into heaven himself, i.e. that man can get to heaven by his own works. When Christians become involved in civic organizations over which Jesus is not Lord, no matter how noble their cause, a mixed message of faith in Christ and faith in man comes across to the world. And the world is sent the message that the church believes that man is supposed to clean up Babylon, and that man by his own works can make the world a righteous place to live. In other words it teaches in effect that man can build heaven on earth, and that belief is invariably a manifestation of self righteousness. Self righteousness is the most subtle of sins because it is a Satanic perversion of the wonderful and beautiful dignity which Jesus Christ gives to the believer. There is no greater recommendation for our dignity and worth as individuals, than that Jesus Christ died for us as individuals, and that it is as individuals that we must come to him, but we must never forget that no person has any merit, nor worth of his own. The only worth we have is that which Jesus Christ gave to man when he created us in his image and when he saved us by his life.

The consensus among the social psychologists today is that the American youth of all races are experiencing an identity crises. Let me tell you who you are. You are someone very special because Jesus Christ died for you, and you are no one in particular because he had to do so.

Self righteousness is such a subtle and pervasive evil that even as I write to you I am held captive by it. I confess I know these things, and I believe them with all my heart, and yet I am too weak to keep them ever before me. Oh gracious Father, grant that your church will learn before it is too late for today's world that it is by our works, and not by yours, that the apostasy comes.

My friend, that is the big picture, we are all captive to this ungodly nature, but Almighty God has promised deliverance through Jesus Christ to everyone of us who will look to him in faith. Oh, I confess that I am a changed man from what I used to be, but I am dirt compared to what I am going to be, after I have endured myself unto the end and lain aside this body of sin.

But self interest, of which self righteousness is but one manifestation, is the core of the Babylonian system. This system started in Babel with Nimrod in defiance of God's Commandment to men that they should "fill up the earth." But Nimrod rebelled at that directive and decided that as long as men were separated from each other and disorganized, they would be too weak and too ineffective to control their environment. Nimrod began to organize a kingdom with "himself" as king. I want you to notice for certain and sure that God's plan set men at LIBERTY to go anywhere on earth they chose, and occupy any spot on earth they chose, and to utilize any resources they found there for their occupation. God intended that man should be free to stand or fall by his faith in God and his personal industry. God never intended that men should lay individual claim to the resources that He had provided for all men. God never intended that men should be subject to another man or to a group of men. But because men are of a fallen, unrighteous race, and could not trust one another to all act righteously, they allowed Satan to introduce an alternative which he gave to Nimrod. Men liked Satan's alternative because they did not have the faith to live in Liberty, trusting in God's provision. It has ever been so that men of no faith will come to embrace tyranny. God neither blessed nor sanctioned Nimrod's kingdom, but that did not stop Nimrod, and it does not stop mankind today.

It is vital that we understand that it was not by the will of God that false religious, and political, and commercial powers were introduced by Satan and developed by man. But for his own reasons God has allowed them to proceed, and he has even ordained their directions. Just as it was not by his own will, but for his own reasons, that he subjected the creation to vanity (Rom. 8:20). We are not to materially resist these political, commercial, and false religious powers. Rather we are called to live peaceably within them while waging spiritual warfare against them, and to keep them from destroying mankind by being the salt of the earth and the light into darkness. Remember these three powers of politics, commerce, and false religion, because, as you have already seen, and will continue to see, they are important to every aspect of our discussions.

It is important to understand the principles upon which civilizations have always been founded. These things began with Nimrod soon after the flood and they may have even been carried over from Cain before the flood.

Genesis 10:8-9 and 11:1-9
"And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth... And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel... in the land of Shinar. And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech... And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded. And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth."

First, there was a departure from the leadership of God for the leadership of man; then some man advanced himself above his fellowmen; then mankind became the source of his own authority ("Let us make a name for ourselves.); then man denied the God who made him and gave him life, and man declared he did not need God, but would get into heaven by his own works, or that he would build heaven on earth ("Let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach into heaven"). If God doesn't let him in, man will take the walls by storm. Then he developed a system of commercial enterprise around the resources that God had provided for all mankind, "Let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter." But just as God confused the Babylonians of Nimrod's day, he will do so once again with finality on the day of Jesus Christ.

Also notice that the Babylonians were building a city. As we noted earlier, Cain was the first man to build a city before the flood, and now we see where Nimrod was the first to build one after the flood. We are going to see throughout our discussions that God is not favorably impressed by the cities of man. The democracies of Ancient Greece were founded around cities. Lot set his eyes upon the cities of the plain, but Abraham searched for that city whose founder is God. Until around the time of the American Revolution, Europeans thought of themselves as citizens of some city. Next men began to think of themselves as citizens of a larger state. Then next, they thought of themselves as national, and lastly, they will think of themselves globally.

Alexander the Great, was the first political leader to assert that all of mankind belonged to a single community of order founded upon commerce, religious belief, and law. It was this belief that motivated and justified his conquests. One of the principal beliefs of the Ancient Greeks, and of those who have subsequently "taken up their mantle" is that they have been ordained to bring civilization to the earth. The Romans continued their conquests in this belief, and the monarchies of Europe inherited that belief from both Rome and a church that had become almost totally prostituted to Roman commercial and political power by the time the Roman Empire fell into decline.

The point of this of course is that all apostate religions have for their purpose the civilizing of man so he can live in the cities and support the agenda of the civilization in which he lives. The only true religion teaches us that mankind is hopelessly lost and will perish unless God saves him. The focus of true religion is Jesus Christ, God of very God, who has saved us from ourselves. The focus of apostate religion is man and his righteousness. In fact, of all the ancient religions that have been documented, only the Bible of The Hebrews focuses on God and not on man. All of the religions that have come out of the age of the gentiles have focused upon how man can earn both eternal and temporal rewards by being civil to each other. To be sure Christianity teaches us that we are to be civil to each other, but not for the purpose of earning salvation, but as evangelists and good stewards.

The Babylonish religion of civility and righteousness by the works of man will, in the last days, be world wide in its scope and democratic in its polity. It will derive its authority, not from the supernatural God of Creation, but from the will of the majority. It will teach a righteousness of works whereby men will attain to Godship on their own merits, which can only be achieved by the education of man through special knowledge and initiation. Before this religion becomes the de facto state religion, the apostate church will divorce herself from Jesus Christ through a progressional series of humanistic and rationalistic heresies which has the effect of reinterpreting both the Old and New Testaments to conform to their material naturalism.

The church in general, and many traditional mainline denominations in particular, have been incorporating these extremely natural doctrines into their theology for hundreds of years, all of which have their origins in the wisdom of man, and his science, and his philosophy, and his psychology, and his popular opinion.

The individuals of these congregations who are adhering to these doctrines are very near to apostasy. God has said in Proverbs 3:5-8, "Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the LORD, and depart from evil." This is the positive message that God sends man concerning in whom we should have faith, and trust, and hope. There is a negative message also that says if we chose not to trust God, but place our faith and hope and trust in man and the material dimension instead, that God will curse us. "Thus saith the LORD; Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the LORD."(Jer.17:5)

By the time she divorces herself from the Lord, the apostate church will have joined herself to a world wide movement toward pantheistic humanism, a concept that glorifies man and emphasizes individual knowledge about, and communal relationships with, god, the creation, instead of God, the Creator.

The true church will have been hearing the Lord's words from Revelation 18:4 throughout this age as he pleads with us to forsake the Whore of Babylon, when he says, "Come out of her my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues." Please notice: at such a time that the true church does not heed the warning of Jesus and fails to come out of the doctrines of the Babylonian whore, that is the true church that will be the joint partaker of the plagues that come upon the whore of Babylon. This coming out of the apostate church is not a physical separation but a spiritual one. The apostle John said that the test for the true church is not that she physically departs but that she stays put and all of the apostate leave.

If the true church were to separate herself physically, she would only be fooled once more by the ravening wolves that would follow her, because she would think that all who followed her were true blue. Jesus told us that we cannot distinguish the sheep from the wolves until the end, except by the fruit they bear. The true church must stay put and strive for reunification of the body, not further fragmentation. But we must also be wary of the wolves who look like sheep and observe the fruit of all doctrine, and take unto ourselves only that which is Godly.

The Bible teaches that there is but one Church with one mind, and one mouth, and one tongue, and one body, and one Lord, and one faith, and one baptism, and one God and Father of all (Rom.15:6, 1 Cor. 12:1-26, and Eph. 4:4-6). Doctrine that divides, no matter how spiritual or intellectual it may sound, is not of God. Those Spiritual "pillars" in the church who require the same Spiritual manifestations in every believer are teaching divisive doctrine that is not from God. Likewise those intellectuals who deny one, some, or all of the Spiritual manifestations are teaching divisive doctrine. The Bible says that God equips his church through the manifestations of the Holy Spirit, and that we are all equipped as it pleases God and not ourselves. It is self righteousness that turns Spiritual gifts into merit badges. The Bible teaches that we should test doctrine based upon its intent to unify the church and glorify God. But it is by ignoring or discrediting the Bible that division comes to the Body.

Jesus once told the most learned biblical scholars of all time, "For had ye believed Moses ye would have believed me: for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?" (John 5:46-47). If it was a fair criticism then, it remains so today and one need only look as far as the so called "Jesus Seminar" to see how near is the apostasy when men of the church reject the words from the Books of Moses. The first of the Books that Moses wrote by the Spirit is the Book of Genesis. The doctrines of Genesis concern the origin of all things, from the universe, to man, to sin, to death, to redemption, and those doctrines are the Old Testament doctrines which have been subjected to the greatest degree of rationalization.

As mentioned earlier, this progression of heresies has been going on within every segment of the church for centuries. Unless repentance and restoration come within the body, it will continue and grow worse, until the popularly organized church denies Jesus Christ as the Way, the Truth and the Life, and God declares from Heaven that irreversible apostasy has occurred. Such apostasy results in our being so far separated from that the restraint against iniquity that lawlessness abounds and the man of sin is revealed. But the true church always has a veto over this apostasy if we are but willing to pay the price and forsake the doctrines of man and come out of Babylon.

The friendliness with which the world is embracing liberal theology, and the vehemence with which both the world and liberal theology are ridiculing and rejecting fundamental doctrine should be all of the evidence that is needed for a fair minded believer to choose sides, for Jesus said of his disciples in John 15:19- 20,

"If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his Lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep your's also."

But apostasy is not limited to liberal theology, for a conservative theology that embraces political action to mandate Christianity and Christian doctrine into Babylon is an even more subtile and an even greater danger to the true church.

A look at 1 Maccabees and the Jewish religion depicted in the New Testament during the first advent of Christ will reveal the truth of this in the types of the true church and the apostate church that are depicted therein. But a caution is necessary. The apocryphal book of 1 Maccabees is not the same as Holy Scripture. While it may be divinely inspired in the sense that Almighty God orchestrated the events and the history which are therein reported, and God could have certainly have inspired the text if he has chosen to do so, the book of the 1 Maccabees does not occupy that position of authority given by God to those inspired writings which he considered absolutely essential to his purpose of revealing himself and his program to mankind.

The canon as we have received it is without doubt the canon which God would have us to have, otherwise the pens and councils of men have subverted the program of God. The day in which that should happen, while God is yet intending that men should be saved, God will cease to be supreme, for man will have overruled his determined counsel. I do not say that whatever man wishes to receive must forever be perfect. I do avow this: to that degree that God's intentions are that men should still be saved, then that which we have received must be 100 percent His Word, and we must have received 100 per cent of what he considers essential to revealing Himself and His Purpose to man. It does not matter whether the words which we now have are the exact words of Jesus, or Paul, or Peter, etc. What matters is this: Is God still proposing to redeem mankind? If he is still determined to redeem us, then we must have a record of that determination. If God, some time ago had decided that we were no longer worth saving, then we could turn anything we want into "holy scripture," and it will not subvert God's purpose, which is to leave us damned, no matter what we believe. If your god has decided to let us all be universally damned, it is just as well, because a god who would do that and still allow us to further propagate has made of himself an unrighteous and sadistic bully. Such a god is neither gracious nor merciful and I would not want to spend eternity with him.

If the canon is not perfect, we are either doomed, or God does not care what we believe. If God does not care what we believe, we are either universally doomed or universally saved. If we are universally saved, there is then nothing in man which God needs to judge and change. I for one have no wish to spend an eternity with myself and the rest of you under these same conditions which I now observe, and so if that is God's program He can keep it. Neither can God universally change all men regardless of what they want or believe, because he would necessarily change some against their wills, which would make of him a bully and a despot. But, if God is yet purposing to redeem from mankind a peculiar people unto himself, then our canon must be in perfect accord with both his will and his purpose, in both context and content, therefore God would have had to have inspired not only the writers and guided the copyists of the various books in their context, but would have had to have inspired the councils which adopted them into the contents of the canon as well.

I do not say that everything that God has inspired will make good sense to man. God is not a man and his ways are not those of a man. In any approach to God, the unseen path is trod by faith, and not by reason, for it is written, that without faith it is impossible to please him. As we said earlier, purpose can not be discovered. Purpose can only be recorded and delivered by the creator of the product. That is what the inspired scripture is: the record of the purpose of the Creator.¹

1 Maccabees does not fall into this category of that which God considered necessary to redemption. One must be careful not to receive any doctrine from apocryphal books which is contrary to Holy Scripture, just as one must receive no doctrine from any other writing of man (including this book) that is contrary to the Bible.

To see then a type of the apostate church of the last days, one can look at the renegade Jews of 1 Maccabees. To see a type of the true church one can look at the separatist Jews in 1 Maccabees. That there is danger in carrying the analogies too far should be evident from the fact that it was this same party of separatists in the days of the Maccabees, that had become the self-righteous, covetous, politically minded pharisees in Jesus' day, and the Helenized renegades had become the Sadducees. It is also extremely important to notice from the Gospels that the type of the apostate church in Jesus' first advent was made up from both liberal and conservative religious materialists whose primary aim was political and commercial preservation of the state. The last, completely apostate church will likewise be made up from the same factions.

In the first chapter of 1 Maccabees it says that Antiochus Epiphanes (A type of Antichrist) issued a decree throughout his empire (His empire was the Asian portion of the former Grecian Empire). The decree mandated that his subjects were to become "one united people, and abandon their own laws and religion." It is evident that this edict was the result of that Grecian belief that mankind belongs to a single community of man and that it is the destiny of Greeks to bring unity and civilization to the world because of the civil superiority of Grecian philosophy, science, and religion. 1 Maccabees says that all nations in Antiochus' realm complied with the royal command except Israel, and even many in Israel accepted the foreign worship, sacrificing to idols, and profaning the sabbaths.

The "Helenized" Jews severed all ties to the God of their fathers, and worshiped the Greek god Zeus. They adopted the customs, philosophies, laws, and religion of the Grecian Empire. They became bitter opponents to those Jews who refused to abandon their covenant with Almighty God. When the Maccabees led the rebellion which ultimately broke the Syrian yoke, these apostate Jews joined forces with the Syrians and betrayed their former brethren into the hands of the Syrian forces for slaughter and imprisonment. Verse 53 of that passage says that the forces of wickedness had driven Israel into hiding in every possible hiding place. Notice that in the types of the apostate church and the true church, it was the religious Grecian humanists who delivered the true church up to be persecuted by the type of Antichrist.

Jesus said this kind of thing would happen again before he returns, but the last time that it happens, it will be all apostate religions, including the apostate church, and the real Antichrist, and not their types, uniting to bring upon all mankind one body of government, one body of law, and one form of worship. Most of the humanists who pursue this philosophical unity do not realize how they are pawns to the unseen forces that are bringing earth to worship the Antichrist and his system of commerce, government, and religion. Most of them do not understand how the impetus of history has been directed for centuries toward this construction which will embody and authenticate the pantheistic belief that "man is god is one." In their unholy union to this power they are going to bring great tribulation upon the true saints of Jesus Christ.

It must be noted that as the "type" of the true church, the faithful Jews chose to wage material war on the Syrians rather than be obedient unto death and take the chance that God would deliver them as a people. As such they became the legalistic, materialistic, rationalistic pharisees of Jesus' first advent. Those who wish to wage political war in order to preserve the doctrines of Almighty God in civilization are ever in peril of the same fate.

How then does the church fight back? Jesus wasn't just "whistlin' Dixie" when he said that our way was narrow and our gate was strait. We are called out to be a peculiar people, and to suffer tribulation from both the carnal world and the apostate church, and we can not in any way compromise with the world or its church, and we must shun all heresy, and iniquity, and unrighteousness, and still we can "judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come..." (1 Cor. 4:5).

We are aliens while we are in this world, but we are not gullible concerning its ways. Jesus told us, "Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore as wise as serpents, and harmless as doves" (Matt. 10:16). The wisdom of serpents is apparent in the way that they stay out of sight and move silently away from disturbances. The dove is the picture of non-aggression. It is the dove, and not the upside down broken cross of Antichrist, that is the very symbol for real peace. But a wolf can swallow a dove in one mouthful, so we must be wise like the serpent and stay out of the way of the wolves. How then shall we fulfill the great commission of going into the entire world and preaching the gospel to every creature, and baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Name of the Son, and the Name of the Holy Ghost, if we can not confront the world and its unrighteousness?

We need to understand the laws of the spiritual reality. When the saints are holy, there is an overflowing of all spiritual fruits into the world in every place that saint plants his foot. God has give every place his holy saints walk to them in victory. But when the saints are carnal, we just spread strife, and anger, and resentment with every step we take through life.

Jesus was never so gentle as when he faced a person who had fallen completely into sin, and he was never so harsh as when he faced those who believed they were escaping on their own merits.

St. Thomas Aquinas listed the "seven deadly sins" as: pride, lust, anger, gluttony, slothfulness, envy, and covetousness. I challenge anyone to meditate upon that list in prayerful self examination, and then condemn anyone who has had some minor problems with any of the manifestations of sin such as drug abuse, or adultery, or murder, etc. A close look at the "big seven" will surely reveal the source of the problem to, once again, be centered in "self" and, at least as I see myself, the symptoms of the different ways in which the manifestations become apparent in humanity are of secondary importance to the disease. When the untreated illness is terminal, it makes little difference that it makes some people itch and others twitch.

If we were to take a straight edge a mile long and draw a line on a piece of paper large enough to contain it, and let this mile long line represent the deadly sins of our "selfs". And next, if we were to try to draw a line in proportion to that line to represent some action that is symptomatic of one of the sins of self, such as an act of adultery which proceeds from the sinful condition of selfish lust, the line representing the act would not be as long as the width of the pencil lead. It is easy to avoid adultery, but impossible to avoid lust. It is easy to flee from fornication, but lust runs beside, and inside of us, mocking us as we run, reminding us that we would not have to be running at all if it were not for his continual presence.

It is easy to avoid drawing attention to one's self, but pride takes us captive even when we succeed in doing so. It is easy to cut down on what we eat, but gluttony and pride take us even in the celebration of our moderation and we glut ourselves with self righteousness and self glorification. It is easy to avoid the display of anger, but anger lies in wait, brooding and brewing a spontaneous, automatic (self driven) eruption, anger keeps a record of injury to our self that is played back at the opportune moment. Except for righteous indignation, of which only the redeemed are even remotely capable, that which makes us angry is that which floods truth upon our passions for self preservation, self righteousness, or self glorification.

It is easy to live simply, but covetousness is with us even then, and we begin to covet simplicity. Think for a moment about these things and see if you do not agree that the only cure for the "big deadly seven" is the mortification of self.

The mortification of the flesh and the denial of self is a constant battle in which we engage, and although we do not win often, when we occasionally get some little something right, there are cheers that ring through heaven such that the world will never hear, and Jesus smiles and shouts, "Well done!!!" But then, Look out! because Satan is not at all pleased by this, and he will take us captive before we can draw our next breath, and pride, or lust, sloth, or one of the other "big seven" will take us by storm.

God tells us the same kind of things in Romans 7:14-25 where he speaks through the Apostle Paul saying,

"For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, "sold under sin" (quotations added for emphasis). For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I. If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good. Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. "I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me". For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. "So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.""

God tells us that His law is a spiritual reality, but that we are carnal, that is to say, we are of the physical or material reality, and as such we are owned by sin, we exist under the ownership of sin and can never, by our own efforts, apprehend the benefits of His law, and extricate ourselves from the body of this death. Even though we spiritually agree with the law of God wholeheartedly, there is something wrong inside of us that does not allow us to obey it completely or consistently. Yet it can not be that the problem lies with the either the law itself, or the fleshly, material reality, otherwise God would not have been able to become flesh in Jesus Christ, and fulfill the law. As we discussed earlier, the problem therefore has to be that something is amiss within the material reality and not with that reality itself. Genesis 1:31 says that God created this material reality very good, so something has to have happened that changed that, because what we see now is, "Dog eat Dog," which doesn't seem to be very good.

As we've noted, the third chapter of Genesis says that the something that went wrong was, and is, sin. God created man and gave him dominion over a good material reality, but man gave it over to Satan when he chose to listen to the words of Satan rather than the law of God, and God, therefore put a curse upon the earth.

The nature of this curse is both spiritual and physical. The physical manifestation of this curse is scientifically expressed as the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics. The spiritual manifestation of this curse in the spiritual realm has a comparable effect on spiritualities and may be observed through the spiritual equations such as, "because iniquity shall abound the love of many shall wax cold."

When God put a curse on the physical realm the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics became operative. Before this time God was continually renewing the energy available to the physical realm. We think that because Adam did not die immediately after God confronted him with his sin, that God let him slide, but such is not the case. God immediately stopped pouring his power into the creation and Adam and every material thing began to decay and die. The available energy in the creation has been steadily declining ever since the curse.

The First and Second law of Thermodynamics are the two most venerated laws in the physical realm. The first law says that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, but can only be transformed. Thus, matter is only energy in a different form. The Bible said the same thing centuries earlier than science, when it was written that God in Christ Jesus "upholdeth all things by the word of his power." The second law says that every thing in the universe is in a condition of running out of energy. Let's think about those two laws for a moment. The first law says that the universe, which is made up of matter, which is just another form energy, cannot have been created because energy cannot be created or destroyed. Therefore the universe, which is just energy in the form of matter, must have existed eternally according to the First Law of Thermodynamics. However, the second law says that the universe cannot have existed eternally because every thing in it would have run out of energy and ceased to exist. Therefore, the fact of the universe, plus the laws of thermodynamics, demand a Special, Supernatural Creation from beyond the natural realm.

And so the thing that is wrong with this world is that it is under a curse because of sin. This curse will one day be lifted and a new Creation will be given to mankind to enjoy under the righteous reign of Jesus Christ. Until then we will all suffer the terrible consequences of living under sin in a cursed reality.

We must never forget that we have not been saved because of any degree of merit on our part. In a real sense there is not a farthing's worth of spiritual difference between any of us, from Jack the Ripper to St. Jude, from the catamite to the "sainted missionary mother", we are all sold under sin (Romans 7:14) and the lust of the self for itself is what keeps us there.

Therefore, there are many things which we must allow without judgment for the present time, but which we must personally reject from the standpoint of our personal fellowship, and which we must personally refuse to partake of, in ourselves, for conscience sake.

One of the bigger mistakes the church has historically made has been in trying to remove Christians from temptation by legislating temptations out of the world. The only people who have been totally happy with these efforts are the criminals who have profited from making popular worldly pleasures and pastimes illegal, and thus, scarce and profitable. In so doing the church has been the unwitting accomplice to Babylon and its doctrines of commercial enterprise and political expediency.

A politician was once questioned about his allowing a brothel to remain in operation in his area of authority. His answer was, "Jesus Christ could not stop prostitution, why should I try?" Both parties in this exchange had an entirely wrong picture of what Jesus first came to accomplish. The truth of the matter is that Jesus Christ did, and has continued, to stop prostitution. The number of lives in which he has done so cannot now be counted, but he has stopped it where he targeted it, and that was in the lives of his disciples. Be sure that when he comes again, he will be shooting at a different target, and he will, at that time, stop it in all of the earth.

If the power of the Spirit of God within us is not sufficient to deliver us from temptation, it is not sufficient to deliver us from the Gates of Hell, and we do not need less temptation, we need more power. There is a principle concerning sin given in the Bible that we don't like to think about because it places some responsibility upon us as God's power goes to work. God spoke to Cain concerning his attitude in the 4th chapter of Genesis verses 5 through 7,

"But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell. And the LORD said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen? If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him."

Clearly man has a God given responsibility to try to do well, but because we do not do well, sin crouches at the door waiting to devour us, but we have a vote and can overrule sin. ¹

Peter 5:6-9 says:

"Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God that he may exalt you in due time: Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you. Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: Whom resist stedfast in the faith, knowing that the same afflictions are accomplished in your brethren that are in the world."

And 1 Cor. 10:13 says, "There is no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful who will not allow you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it."

Once again we see that we must humble our "selves" before we can resist Satan, then we can be alert to the roaring lion that seeks to devour us. James 3:7 says, "Submit your 'selves' therefore to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Resist the devil and he will flee from you." We are all of us, sinners and saints alike, in the same leaking boat, and we all face the same difficulties, but remember, when we face temptation; we can only find help from God and from his people who are seeking His face. When we do not humble ourselves before God, we will be humbled by sin, for high mindedness is the soul of self righteousness. When we succumb to temptation it is not because the temptation was too great, but because we are too self centered. When we give in to temptation, it is because we choose to do what we want to do, and because we care more about what we want than about what God demands. But also we must remember that when we have resisted, it is not our will power that has prevailed but the power of God working through humility, else we will be overwhelmed by self righteousness.

And so our fight is not one of fists and swords, neither is it of litigation, nor of legislation, nor of prosecution and penitentiaries. We fight a warfare different from anything in the world. We fight a spiritual warfare. So How are we to live in this world and fight Spiritual warfare until Jesus returns?

Ephesians 6:11-12
"Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles [strategies] of the devil." [The devil is a strategic wizard against whom man is helpless without the armour of God.] "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places."

The Apostle Paul warns us in this passage that before we can hope to fight back properly as Christians, we must put the complete armor of God over our "selves." Then, and only then, can we engage in proper warfare, and that warfare is not with any human being, no matter how vile or offensive he may be to our self righteousness. That warfare is against the spiritual hierarchy of demonic wickedness in both this world, and in high places. The phrase, "high places" above, translates epouranios, a compound Greek word from the prefix "epi" plus "ouranos", the word from which we get our words Uranus and uranium, and which normally means the sky or heaven. Epi denotes the superimposition of some quality of direction, distribution, or relationship upon the object to which it is attached. Here it would literally be a direction super skyward, and therefore it must mean "heavenly places."

That wickedness presently exists in heavenly places is also evident from reading Job 1:6-12, Job 2:1-6, and Rev. 12:7-12. The reason this is so is because Satan yet has access to both Heaven, where he accuses us night and day, and to Earth where he, "as a roaring lion, walks about seeking whom he may devour." We will look at how this can yet be so later.

It is for this reason that we must wear the complete armor of God before we can engage the enemy. Now it appears that since we are not at war against flesh and blood, and since we can judge nothing before the day of the Lord, and since our enemy is spiritual in nature, and we can't even see him, but only where he is operating, that we are not so much warriors as we are battle fields, and that we engage to fight this spiritual war as it rages within ourselves, and to help others so engaged to fight that battle. Those who do not know about the war going on within themselves have not yet engaged to deny self. Jesus said we should first remove the log from our own eye, before we tried to remove the little sliver from our brother's eye. I can not answer for anyone but myself, but I have despaired of ever getting much of that log out. The reason why this is so should be obvious from our discussion of the self and the seven deadly sins. We really need to understand once and for all that we have all been sold under sin.

Now read Romans 1:21-31. Notice that it is a picture of a society without the righteous influence of the Spirit of God. The conditions described there sound more like reading today's newspapers than the Bible. As we have noted, Jesus said that one of the signs of his return would be that because iniquity had greatly multiplied that the Godly supply of committed love would be deliberately cooled.

The minding of one's duty is indicative of his commitment. Agape love and duty come into conflict with selfishness at every point of contact. The Bible says that when we begin to see such things as generations of men being "lovers of their own selves," that the end of time is nigh upon us. Jesus said when we saw the kinds of things he talked about come to pass, we should lift up our heads because our redemption draws near. If the true church will not lift up its head in these times, who will? It is high time that the believers stopped apologizing to the world for politically and scientifically unpopular Biblical Doctrine and got on with proclaiming exactly what the Bible says. The apostate can take it or leave it, but it will at least be what God intended it to be, a clear calling out, a clarion call to separation. Jesus never told us that we were responsible for making the Word palatable to the world, and anyone for whom it must be sweetened with humanism has not yet attempted to swallow the bitter pill of repentance and self denial.

While it is not the first such "sweetening heresy" and it won't be the last, as we have mentioned earlier, the accommodation of Genesis to the theory of evolution is typical of the attempts of faithless humanists to bring the Word of Almighty God into compliance with the science of man. Such error is the place of beginning for all apostasy. If you will give the Book of Genesis to any child who can read at a grammar school level, and ask them to read it, and then tell you if the Bible says that creation took six days or 4.5 billion years, they will, every time, say that the Bible says it took six days. (I suppose that may be why Jesus said that if we do not receive the kingdom of heaven as a little child we will in no way get in to it (Matt. 18:1-4)).

Evolution is not a law of science. Evolution is not science, and it is not even good philosophy. The Bible says such things are conjured in unregenerated intellects of degenerate minds that are inspired by the wooings of demonic spirits who gleefully drive them to and fro with the changing wind of every silly doctrine. These minds seek notoriety, indeed they must have it, or perish. It is not enough that they themselves have no faith; they must publish their lack; they must normalize their failure. They are entirely driven by their own self preservation, self righteousness, and self glorification in these things. God told us in the 1st chapter of the Book of Romans how this apostasy would effect the cultures in which it was allowed to flourish:

Romans 1:18-32
18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold [katecho = hold down] the truth in unrighteousness;

Notice that the wrath of God is revealed, at first, not directly against the men themselves, but against the ungodliness and the unrighteousness that characterizes such men who suppress or hold down the truth in unrighteousness. Any teaching of man that is not of the Truth is going to produce ungodliness and unrighteousness in the lives of those who teach it, and in the lives of those who receive it, and it is in those lives where the wrath of God is revealed from heaven as they bear the fruits of that unrighteousness and ungodliness. The Bible says we should not be deceived; God will not be mocked; what ever a person sows that is what they are going reap from their lives (Gal. 6:7).

19 Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. 20 For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:

Here God says that which any man can know about Him is manifest (made apparent) in those who are bearing the fruits of ungodliness and unrighteousness in their lives. This is a generic statement that does not mean that only "bad" people will suffer, or that "good" people will not suffer. It must be understood in the general context in which it is given: that life choices that are characteristic of ungodliness and unrighteousness will overall bear the fruit of those choices. Ungodly choices tend to bear such fruits as misery, degradation, dissipation, disintegration, and despair, while unrighteous choices tend to bear such fruits as anger, hostility, guilt, confusion, separation, and fear. That both the world and the church are becoming increasingly unable to note any distinctions between the life fruits of the unredeemed and those of the redeemed in no way discredits the truth of the Bible, but rather, verifies the fact of near apostasy.

God also says that those who make ungodly and unrighteous choices are without excuse because he has shown them that his power and divine nature may be clearly understood by the fact of His creation and observing the things of that creation. This passage speaks only to what mankind can empirically know about God; it does not concern the revelation of himself in His Word which is received not as empirical knowledge but as revelational knowledge through faith. That which all men can empirically know about God can be known from the creation, the fact of the creation argues for a Creator. Even George Gamow's ridiculous cosmic egg of "ylem," which he asserted to be the core of his "Big Bang" theory, had to have an origin, everything demands a source. Every effect has a preceding cause sufficient for its existence. But these men choose to reject the evidence of the creation and God darkens their heart.

A literal reading of the next few verses will reveal another of those relationships between the loss of spirituality and the increase of abominable behavior in mankind and will require a few paragraphs to develop.

21 Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.

God says these men are without excuse because he has revealed himself to them through his creation, and because when they knew of him through this knowledge of the creation, they chose to reject that knowledge, and because they were not thankful for the light he has provided for them by the creation, but they rather, turned their minds toward their own empty imaginations, God darkened (obscured the light from) their heart. It is a serious thing to trifle with the knowledge of God and the knowledge from God.

Once, before the flood, God pleaded with mankind through the traditions of Adam and the preaching of Noah, and for one hundred years no one listened, but the day came when He told Noah to take his family and enter the ark. When Noah had done so, GOD CLOSED THE DOOR, AND BILLIONS OF HUMANS PERISHED WITHOUT UNDERSTANDING THAT IT WAS JUDGMENT THAT HAD COME. NOR DID THEY UNDERSTAND WHY THAT JUDGMENT HAD FALLEN UPON THEM until Jesus went into Hell and preached to them by the Spirit concerning sin, righteous, and judgment (1 Pet.3:19-20 and John 16:8). Jesus has said that conditions would be like that again in the time just before he came back.

22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,

These men believe that modern man knows more than Ancient, Eternal God. They teach man's knowledge and wisdom, and if God wants to agree he can. If God does not agree with them it is because he is not as well educated as they, and did not have the advantage of twenty one centuries of human science when he created the universe from out of nothing, or when he inspired the Bible.

23 And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.

Spiritually, God is not at all like man, and to attribute human character to God is the most subtle form of idolatry. This most subtle form of idolatry is the same whether men worship a god that they have constructed in their own imaginations from the designs of their own minds, or they attribute human character to almighty God. Such is the idolatrous god of the REimaginers. Such is the god of the New Age...The worship of a god made in the image of man....or of woman as the case may be. The worship of this manlike god, and the worship of natural animal spirits and things of natural earth is the basis of a new shamanism which is even now being reborn in the young Babylonian hearts of the "ecologically correct".

24 Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves:

God gave them up!!! Those iniquitous souls who say they are out of control speak the truth. But the saddest part is that those who have rejected this knowledge of God, and who have placed their faith in the doctrines of man, are not even aware that they have been given up to the lusts of their own hearts. You see it does not matter how this lust manifests itself, whether through a debauched life or through intellectual or academic rebellion to God, they have been given up to uncleanness in order that their bodies and intellects will be as dishonored as their personalities.

This is definitely not a popular doctrine. How can a loving God do this? God has given man two choices: We can believe Him, and turn from iniquity to righteousness, or we can rebel from Him, and be turned over to iniquity. What more could we ask for? Either way we get what we want. How can God be more fair? The truth is this: if you were allowed to visit Hell a billion years after the rapture of the church, and you took a poll to see who wanted to stay there, and who would like to be changed to leave and be with God; they, every soul of them, would choose to stay there rather than have to be changed. When a human being has rejected the persuasion of the Holy Spirit of Almighty God, there remains no greater power of persuasion which can bring him to repentance, not Death, not Hell, not eternal damnation.

Popular wisdom states that unless a person has been given at least three alternatives, they have no choice. Such wisdom assumes that all people will use their reason to examine the consequences of having only two alternatives and that they will all invariably choose the same alternative as the best. This is not what happens in temporal reality. As we mentioned earlier in talking of the conflict between our selfish motivations and our yearning for meaning, the truth of the matter is that when faced with only two alternatives man will invariably try to manufacture a third choice from whatever aspects of each may appeal to his condition. This is what Humanism is all about: The attempt to manufacture a third alternative from the condition of having to choose between absolute good and absolute evil, and the fundamental problem of all humanity, whether redeemed or not, is that we are all to one degree or another, humanists.

25 Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.

They worship and serve that which God has created more than God. They are materialists. The belief that the creation is some kind of god is not new. Philosophers have called Spinoza the God consumed man, and he seemed to believe that the earth was God. Many think of Mother Nature and Father Time instead of God. What is relatively new about worshiping and serving the material creation instead of the Spiritual Creator, is that, as it is now being done, it is called science instead of religion, and is being taught as science to unsuspecting children of all ages. I am continually amazed at men who say that doctrines about God are unscientific while fairy tales about their mother nature and their father time become science merely because they have declared them to be such.

26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: 27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet.

And here is the relationship between abominable behavior and the loss of spirituality in humanity which of we spoke above: Verses 26 and 27 from the 1st chapter of Romans just above are definitely speaking concerning male and female Homosexuality. And this is the relationship: Homosexuality in mankind in general increases as humanity comes to believe less and less in the God of Creation. I do not for a moment imagine that either the humanists or the "gay community" will agree with this, but it does not matter what man says or believes, it only matters what God has said. Verse 21 above said that it was because men chose to reject and oppose the knowledge of God, as revealed by his creation, and that they did not glorify him as the Creator, that he darkened their hearts; then verse 22-23 said when God darkened their hearts they did not even notice, but declared themselves to be wise, and then decided such things as what and who to worship for themselves (they reinvent a god for and of themselves), next, they decided what was acceptable sexual orientation, and what was acceptable sexual behavior, etc.

It was then for this reason that God gave them up to vile affections, and homosexuality rises exponentially in that environment. This passage also says that they receive in their own bodies a proper requital for their actions, and verse 28 says that God gave them over to a reprobate or rejected mind. When homosexuals say they can not change, it is absolutely true. When they say that God can not change them, it is manifest that they are in error because He has already done so once at their insistence. Recent and highly, and I emphasize HIGHLY, suspect, biased, and speculative statistical data concerning a genetic link to homosexuality should not disturb the believer in the least, because God already told us that they would receive a proper requital in their bodies. This is not to imply that all rebellious humanity will turn to homosexuality, but that just as iniquity causes a deliberate cooling of agape love, rebellion creates the environment whereby foolish and darkened hearts cultivate the vile affections for which they have lusted, and to which they have been handed over, which then in turn allows homosexuality to be condoned and to flourish.

28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;

Here is the heart of the problem. They did not like to retain God in their knowledge. God was an unwanted intrusion into their choices between absolute good and absolute evil. To the rebellious, everything God has to say is arbitrary and unreasonable, look at Cain. To Cain, God's choice of Abel was arbitrary and unequal. It is not hard to suppose him raging after God, "I am as good as Abel. Your choice is both arbitrary and unfair." God never said that he chose Abel because Abel was a better person, or a better human, or even a better servant. He said that He chose Abel because, by faith, Abel had offered a better sacrifice. Abel would have been just as faithful had God chosen Cain, but then Cain's rebellious heart would not have been made manifest.

It is intended that "men in whom is no faith" should rebel at the word of God just as Cain did, and the church ought to stop trying to appease disobedient hearts by convoluting the word of God. We must tell it like it is, when they won't hear it, they are not rejecting us, but God.

29 Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, 30 Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, 31 Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: 32 Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.

Reading verses 29 through 31 today sounds more like reading the daily schedule of television and movie fare instead of the Bible. Verse 29 is another of those spiritual laws. It says that they are "being filled" with..." This is a continual process and there is no lack of supply of the things with which they are being filled. The things with which they are being filled are once again the fruits of rebellion and the supply of such fruits is exponentially related to the degree with which the rebellion is occurring. When anything is filled it is accomplished by the measure of its volume which is a cubic function. In a spiritual sense, the availability of such things as unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, and maliciousness, etc. in the life of a person, increases by the cube of the distance that person is separated from God.

Not only are they being filled with the above traits, but they are completely full of all of these others also: envy, murder, debate, deceit, and malignity. The word translated as "malignity" is an interesting word; it is a composite Greek word, kakoetheia, which is made up from "kakos," which means intrinsically worthless, and, ethos, which means moral habits. Malignity then stands for intrinsically worthless moral habits. Such persons are being filled, and are completely full, of intrinsically worthless moral habits along with all those other degradations. When someone is full of filth, and is still being filled with filth, they are going to be continually running over with filth. They are going to leave a mess all around them for someone else to clean up everywhere they go. As more and more of humanity become entrapped by this condition, there are fewer and fewer left to clean up and more and more who are leaving a mess. What we are seeing today in civilization is humanity making filthy messes everywhere even as they stir around trying to clean up someone else's filthy leavings.

Verse 32 tells us that one of the natures of that mess is that these self loving, pleasure worshipers will continually seek to normalize their behavior by reproducing and encouraging their attitudes in others. If only we, the Godly, would be full, and be continually being filled with the Spirit of God, and spill spiritual fruits over every where we go in like fashion, we would begin again to understand how spiritual warfare is fought. I believe that the spiritual laws by which our material environment is controlled are determined by our spiritual condition. When we are filled with agape, and being filled with agape, we likewise spill over every where we go, and our world becomes overflowed with agape instead of filth. We are losing these spiritual battles in the material realm because of our double mindedness. Those who are attempting to duplicate themselves in unrighteousness have no such opposition to their efforts. To be sure the Bible says that they oppose themselves, but they do so wholeheartedly.

We have been associating these passages from the 3rd chapter of 2 Timothy and the 1st chapter of Romans together to show how apostasy allows the spiritual degradations which we see all around us today. We have seen how the prophecies concerning the conditions at the end of the age predict these conditions and attribute them to the apostate church's involvement with doctrines that deny him as Creator. We have seen that the Bible teaches that men will come to worship and serve themselves, and that such men will worship and serve the creation and be given over to a reprobate mind. We have seen that it has been prophesied that these conditions will be predominant in the last days before the return of Jesus Christ.

We have also seen that it has been prophesied that a false religion that is involved with the authentication of the Babylonish system will be popularized in those days, and that the apostate church will have incorporated a philosophical position normalizing fornication and adultery and both male and female homosexuality as acceptable behavior. We have seen that the Bible says that violence will begin to fill the land.

In the next few paragraphs we are going to look at how the civilizing influence that the Spirit of God has had upon mankind in general will be diminishing in the last days until it is hardly present at all. And we will look at how apostasy effects this loss of civilizing spirituality.

The prophet Joel said that after a time when the Lord himself had been in the midst of Israel, there would come a time when God would "pour his Spirit out up on all flesh."

Joel 2:27-28
"And ye shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I am the LORD your God, and none else: and my people shall never be ashamed. And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions:"

This passage definitely indicates:

1) There would be a time when the Lord himself was in the midst of Israel, and his people would know it when he was there, and:

2), after that time he would pour his Spirit out upon all flesh. The Bible says that Jesus Christ is and will be the complete fulfillment of that prophecy concerning God's presence in Israel.

On the day of Pentecost following Jesus' ascension, the disciples were all assembled together waiting upon this gift of the Spirit from the Father when suddenly there was a mighty rush of wind, and tongues of fire dancing around in the room and on the disciples, and they began to speak in tongues. When the city of Jerusalem heard this uproar, they came to investigate the commotion and they accused the disciples of being drunk. Peter stood up and said:

"Ye men of Judaea, and all ye that dwell at Jerusalem, be this known unto you, and hearken to my words: For these are not drunken, as ye suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day. But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel; And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams:" (Acts 2:14-17).

Both the prophecy and the report of its fulfillment say that the Spirit of God will be poured out upon all flesh. To the extent that God said "all flesh" he left no flesh out.

Since the day of the Christian Pentecost, God has been pouring his Spirit out upon both regenerated and unregenerated human beings. The Spirit has had a civilizing, moderating effect upon the passions and the habits of mankind in general, and a sanctifying effect upon the regenerated children of God.

During the millennium, when Satan is no longer allowed to influence mankind, sin will become a rare, but not extinct, occurrence. The prophesies concerning the effects of the Spirit of God upon all flesh will be totally fulfilled at that time.

But, in this age, as it is with agape love, where iniquity and rebellion have a diminishing effect upon its benefits, the benefits of the Spirit are exponentially diminished by the increasing rebellion to God. The intensity of the effects of The Spirit upon the world in general diminishes by the square of the distance that the church is separated from Holy God. The volume of His Holy Spirit that is poured out upon the world is constant, but the intensity upon each one of us is exponentially diminished because of our separation from God. At some point of separation, Godly Spiritual effects upon all unredeemed flesh come to an end altogether. At that time unregenerated mankind will begin to grow uncontrollably and rapidly more godless, selfish, ruthless, carnal, and corrupt, spreading those filthy messes everywhere he steps. At that time there will be hardly anyone left who is being filled with agape to clean up after them, and the earth will be rapidly brought to ruin.

The Apostle Paul wrote that the mystery of iniquity was already at work in his day, and that it would continue to work throughout the remainder of the gentile age. He said that something was restraining this mystery of iniquity even then, and that it would also continue to restrain him until it was taken out of the way and then the mystery of iniquity would be given full reign on the earth. This unrestrained rampage of the mystery of iniquity will continue from the time that the restraining force of the Holy Spirit is blocked from the world because of an iniquitous church choosing the doctrines of man, until the mystery of iniquity is completely revealed and subsequently destroyed by the Lord himself.

2 Thessalonians 2:7-8
"For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way. And then shall that Wicked be revealed whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming:"

The sense of the phrase that is translated as "taken out of the way" in the above passage, is that the Restrainer or the restraining force is no longer available at the place we are located because it has been gotten out of the way of the efforts of the mystery of iniquity. The Restrainer will have been gotten out of the way when man removes himself willingly from the supply of the restraining force because of his lust for iniquity. The word translated "letteth" above is the same Greek word "katecho" we discussed earlier concerning Romans 1:18, which literally means to "hold down" or "to resist." The sense of the above passage is that he who was holding the mystery of iniquity down in the Apostle Paul's day will continue to hold him down until rebellion to the Lord causes that restraint to progressively diminish away until its effects are lost. This passage says that this mystery of iniquity, who is also called the Abomination of Desolation and the Antichrist, will be revealed to the church and mankind, when the restraining force from God which has been holding him down is no longer in his way.

Daniel 9:23-24 says:

"And in the latter time of their kingdom, when the transgressors are come to the full, a king of fierce countenance, and understanding dark sentences shall stand up. And his power shall be mighty, but not by his own power: and he shall destroy wonderfully, and shall prosper, and practice, and shall destroy the mighty and the holy people."

This passage clearly says that this "mystery of iniquity" will come forward when the transgressors have completely rebelled against God, and that at some point the saints of God will once again pay for their testimony with their lives. We need to ask ourselves if we are prepared to die for our testimony in Jesus Christ. It is certain that we will not have the faith to die for him tomorrow, if we do not have it to live for him today. During this age when God has been pouring out his Spirit upon all flesh, there have been many "good" humanitarians, who have not been Christians, who have been engaged in many civil activities for the betterment of mankind, but when the Spirit of God ceases to be available upon all iniquitous flesh, then darkness will rapidly overtake all unregenerated mankind.

Hatred for anything of Christ will become common place, indeed it is already beginning to become so even today. When there is no longer a holy influence at work upon the lower levels of man's consciousness during the periods of "eternos," then the unregenerated psyche will continually turn to evil only. God says in Isa. 57:1 that, "the righteous perisheth, and no man lay it to heart: and merciful men are taken away, none considering that the righteous is taken away from the evil to come."

If for no other reason than this, we Christians ought to be on our knees repenting of our whoredoms with the world, and with men of ungodly appetites and heresies. Before the mystery of iniquity can be revealed, the Word says that there will first come a bridal divorcement, when the apostate church abandons her groom.

Jesus said that he would return to earth when the conditions were once again as they were in the days of Noah, and in the days of Lot (Refer to Matt. 24:37-38 and Luke 17:26-29). The Book of Genesis teaches that God moved against mankind with hostile intent in the days of Noah and the days of Lot because of moral and spiritual depravity. In Noah's day eight souls were all that were saved from out of all the earth when God overflowed it with the flood. In Lot's day, God moved against Sodom and Gomorrah for sexual immorality and pagan worship and only four people escaped, and one of them turned back to destruction. Study carefully the message of Genesis 6: 5-13 and see if you do not believe that the world is once more going in that direction.

Because the earth was corrupt before the Lord in the days of Noah, God destroyed all but 8 souls from the face of the earth. Jesus said when conditions were like that once again, he would return to earth. And Jesus also said that when things were once more like they were in Sodom And Gomorrah he would come back. Look at the 18th and 19th chapters of Genesis and see if you can not see a great deal of similarity between Sodom and Gomorrah and the world today.

Abraham pleaded with the Lord on behalf of Sodom for Lot's sake, and the Lord promised that he would spare the city if there could be found even ten righteous men dwelling there. But ten could not be found and so Lot and those of his family who would go with him were physically delivered from the destruction of God's wrath. It would seem that the same situation will exist once again at the end of this age when God will again, because of iniquity, pour out his wrath upon all the earth. We need to understand clearly that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed because of iniquity. But they were not spared because ten righteous persons could not be found in either of them. It is very popular to blame the destruction of the world on the unrighteous, but when Babylon finally is destroyed, the reason she will not be spared is because there will be so few truly faithful believers within her.

No one knows what the population of Sodom was at the time of its destruction, but the ratio of lost to redeemed was small indeed if ten righteous could not be found in the whole city. In Noah's age there were only eight souls out of all the earth who were delivered from the flood. Jesus indicated that he did not expect to find a great deal of faith on earth at the time of his return when he asked the following question which expects a negative answer, "Nevertheless, when the Son of Man cometh, shall he find faith on earth? (Luke 18:8).

Are these times cast in stone? Or is their timing variable? The truth is that they are both, but no one knows how or when. And, because of the fact that they will not occur until the apostasy has come, the church is the controlling factor in their fulfillment. Is there yet time and place for repentance? I believe the answer to that lies in one of the strangest places in scripture for one to find one of the most comforting assurances concerning the character of God's mercy. Look at 1 Kings 21:16- 29.

1 Kings 21:16-29
"16 And it came to pass, when Ahab heard that Naboth was dead, that Ahab rose up to go down to the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite, to take possession of it. 17 And the word of the LORD came to Elijah the Tishbite, saying, 18 Arise, go down to meet Ahab king of Israel, which is in Samaria: behold, he is in the vineyard of Naboth, whither he is gone down to possess it. 19 And thou shalt speak unto him, saying, Thus saith the LORD, Hast thou killed, and also taken possession? And thou shalt speak unto him, saying, Thus saith the LORD, In the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth shall dogs lick thy blood, even thine. 20 And Ahab said to Elijah, Hast thou found me, O mine enemy? And he answered, I have found thee: because thou hast sold thyself to work evil in the sight of the LORD. 21 Behold, I will bring evil upon thee, and will take away thy posterity, and will cut off from Ahab him that pisseth against the wall, and him that is shut up and left in Israel, 22 And will make thine house like the house of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, and like the house of Baasha the son of Ahijah, for the provocation wherewith thou hast provoked me to anger, and made Israel to sin. 23 And of Jezebel also spake the LORD, saying, The dogs shall eat Jezebel by the wall of Jezreel. 24 Him that dieth of Ahab in the city the dogs shall eat; and him that dieth in the field shall the fowls of the air eat. 25 But there was none like unto Ahab, which did sell himself to work wickedness in the sight of the LORD, whom Jezebel his wife stirred up. 26 And he did very abominably in following idols, according to all things as did the Amorites, whom the LORD cast out before the children of Israel. 27 And it came to pass, when Ahab heard those words, that he rent his clothes, and put sackcloth upon his flesh, and fasted, and lay in sackcloth, and went softly. 28 And the word of the LORD came to Elijah the Tishbite, saying, 29 Seest thou how Ahab humbleth himself before me? because he humbleth himself before me, I will not bring the evil in his days: but in his son's days will I bring the evil upon his house."

Naboth owned a garden vineyard that Ahab coveted. Ahab offered to buy it but Naboth refused to sell, and so Jezebel and Ahab plotted to have Naboth killed on a false charge of treason. When the foul deed was done the word of the Lord came to Elijah, the Prophet, to confront Ahab with the word of God's judgment.

This deed seemingly broke the last strand of God's mercy and patience as they touched Ahab, and so God sent Elijah to pronounce judgment. God said that there had never been anyone who practiced evil like Ahab, and he told Elijah to tell Ahab that judgment was about to fall. But when Ahab heard these things he "humbled himself" before the Lord and the Lord delayed the judgment. Judgment was still going to come but it would not come in Ahab's lifetime.

Divine judgment is coming, but it does not have to come in our lifetimes. There is yet space for the church to repent. The world could yet be turned for another millennium. It is entirely up to the people who are called "Christians." God says if those who are called by his name will humble themselves, and pray, and seek God's face, and turn from their wicked ways, God will hear from heaven and heal their lands (see 2nd Chron. 7:14, which we will look at in a moment).

If we are to avoid the divine judgment concerning the apostate church we must understand the nature of her sin. In the 17th chapter of The Revelation, John is shown the judgment of "the great whore that sitteth upon many waters."

As we mentioned earlier, This great whore is accused of committing fornication with the kings of the earth in verse 2 of that chapter, and it says that the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication. All of us, as inhabitants of the earth, are intoxicated (our mental faculties are greatly clouded) by the harlotries of this whore with the kings and merchant's of the earth. In other words, this whore has sold herself to politics and commerce, and in so doing she has confused the people of earth concerning what she was supposed to have been.

Revelation 18:9-15 says that the merchants of the earth mourn when she is destroyed because no one buys their merchandise anymore. Is it not strange to us that the destruction of a false religion can preclude an entire global population from buying and selling with the merchants of the earth? Can we not see that it is the fornications of this Babylonian whore with the system of man inspired civilization that have so intoxicated us with the principles of a "self" based system of politics and commerce, that we have failed to see that the "Earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof," and any use of the earth's resources for self is ungodly and Babylonish? I did not say that such uses were not universal, I said that they were ungodly and Babylonish. We have all truly been sold under sin. This whore has so involved herself with sanctifying the political and commercial enterprises of Babylon, and we humans are so drunk with the wine of her fornications, that we can not even imagine a workable system of politics, worship, and commerce that is based upon agape and not upon self.

The 17th chapter of Revelation explains the vision of the beast of the 13th chapter of Revelation and of a great whore that appears riding upon the beast. Verse 15 ties the vision of the great whore to the image of the beast that rose up out of the sea in Revelation 13:1. There was no mention of any water in the vision of the great whore, but the images described in both passages are of the same beast. Therefore, we are being told that this great whore is being carried by the beast that is at least similar if not identical to the beast that rises up from out of the sea. We will be returning to explain this image of the beast with 7 heads and 10 horns soon, but for now we are only concerning ourselves with the image that the whore upon its back presents concerning the apostasy.

The word translated "whore" is the Greek word "porne" which means a female prostitute. A "porne" is a female person whose business is the sale of her "body" for material, sensual, and sexual purposes. In the case of this Babylonian Whore, the body which she is selling is the people that she holds captive by her religious, political, and commercial whoredoms.

As mentioned earlier, fornication is sexual misconduct outside of holy matrimony. The picture of Revelation chapters 17 and 18 then, is that this great whore, whose body was to be used for some other purpose, has sold herself, both heart and body, to the kings and merchants of the earth and to the priests of man in return for material gain, political power, and sensual pleasure. It is a picture of the materialistic infatuation by which the church has become spiritually demented. Her greatest sin is that she sells herself away from the King of Glory even as he prepares a place for her in the spiritual realm, and thus she corrupts her virginity to obtain material gain and pleasure, and to wield political influence in the material realm. In so doing she gives up her inheritance in the spiritual realm. Instead of waiting for Jesus to prepare a place for her, she has sold herself in order to make her own place here.

Because she has not remained separate from the pollutions of materialism, the whole world has become demented in its ever growing lust for material pleasure. The fact that she is shown sitting upon many waters means that she is, herself, being carried in ease and comfort by the efforts of many people, while they struggle, and suffer, and cry out because of her fornication.

The New Testament says that the things that happened to Israel should be taken as examples and warnings by the New Testament Church (1 Cor. 10:1-11 and Heb. 4:1-11). God does not use "the apple of his eye" lightly as an example to others, and because he has done so, it is an extremely serious matter when his warnings are not heeded.

Israel sold her King to the politicians and materialists for political influence and material gain, and she suffered desolations unto this day for that reason. The apostate church even now forsakes this same King and sells herself to these same powers for the same reasons, and in so doing she is causing the world to fall headlong into an ever tightening spiral of lust and desire for material pleasure. The fruit of her infamy causes the people for which she is supposed to have had spiritual responsibility to forget their spirituality and become consumed in their lust for the material reality.

"Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whosoever, therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God"!!!! (James 4:4).

"Wherefore, come out from among them, and be ye separate [set apart by a boundary], saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing, and I will receive you." (2 Cor. 6:17)

Today within the much of Christendom, every fundamental, spiritual doctrine of both the Old and New Testaments has been compromised and corrupted through fornication with politics, economics, science, art, philosophy, psychology, or some such knowledge from man. If God does not classify compromising his word to conform to the knowledge and desire of man as an extremely serious problem, why does he call it fornication? Fornication is the only sin which Jesus said was valid grounds for divorce.

2 Peter 2:10-22 says that those who live by the principles of the flesh, or the material reality, are natural brute beasts which have been created for the purpose of being taken captive and destroyed. They are captured by their own gainsaying of the things they do not understand. Their lust for the material reality holds them prisoner.

God says that even as "they speak great swelling words of vanity... they are like dogs eating their own vomit." 2 Peter 2:2 says, "And many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of." And 2 Pet. 2:14 says that they have, "eyes full of adultery," and that they cannot stop from sinning; it says that they are "beguiling unstable souls:" and that they exercise their hearts continually with covetous practices; and most terrible of all, that they are "cursed children:"

Unstable souls need an anchor, a fast, secure mooring. Hebrews 2:1-3 speaks of how Christians ought to continually pay earnest attention to the things which they have heard, or they will let them slip, and then they themselves will be drifted away. The image suggested by that passage in Hebrews is that of a boat tied up to a dock that stands out into a swift current that continually pulls against the boat and its moorings. Unless the moorings are regularly being checked and tested, and resecured, the current will eventually loosen the moorings, and the boat will be helplessly caught up into the rushing current and uncontrollably swept away. Later on in the book of Hebrews it cautions that Christians should not forsake the assembling of ourselves together especially as they see the Day of the Lord approaching. Without a doubt we can only regularly check our moorings from within a sanctified assembly of a family in Christ.

I saw it happen many times when I was stationed on a ship moored in the current of the Cooper River above Charleston, S.C. Small boats would slip their moorings and be helplessly swept out into the current, having no power of their own, and no hand at the helm. Such incidents could invariably be traced back to someone's negligence in tending to the moorings.

Hebrews 2:1-3
"Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip. For if the word spoken by angels was stedfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense of reward; How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation;..."

The primary need of unstable (unfixed) souls is that they need to be fastened down or securely moored, and to stop vacillating, before they are taken captive by some brute beast and become such themselves. Elijah asked the Children of Israel, "How long will you continue to limp along between two opinions?", Joshua told Israel, "Choose you this day whom you will serve, but as for me and my house we're going to serve the Lord."

The book of James says that a double minded man is unstable in all his ways. David said, "Today if you will hear his voice, harden not your heart." And Jesus said, "Which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he hath sufficient to finish it?"

Have we counted the cost? Is the only thing that matters to us when this life is over that we should hear Jesus say, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant." Acts 7:22 says that Moses was educated in all the knowledge of the Egyptians. Yet Hebrews 11:24-26 says it was by faith, not the wisdom of men, by which Moses chose to suffer affliction with the people of God, rather than enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season. It says that Moses did so because he evaluated the reproach of Christ to be greater riches than all of the wealth of Egypt. Moses counted the cost, and gave up all the worldly knowledge and wealth of Egypt for the reproach of Christ. Moses had respect for the riches of a life and an eternal life in Jesus Christ. Paul said that all those former things of worldly knowledge and prestige had become dung to him since he had known the riches of Jesus Christ.

Conventional wisdom of those ignorant of the ways of the sea has taught the proverb, "Any port in a storm," but, from the aspect of the ship, it is not true. "In port" is the worst place in the world for a ship to be during a storm. Ships aren't meant to be restrained while the water surges and heaves beneath them and the wind blows them against moorings and docks and even rocks. Ships are meant to cut a wake through the water faster than the motion of the water; ships are meant to ride out the anger of the sea, until like a wild bucking horse, the sea has winded itself and has been tamed by the determined buoyancy of the ship.

"Any port in a storm" is not true for human souls either. The soul must "put out to sea" upon that medium for which it was created, fellowship with Almighty God in Christ Jesus. The Soul must be making headway through angry, spraying, wind tossed waters, if it is to weather the storms of dread, and doubt, and desire which are steadily blown across that communion by the Spirit of Wickedness. If it is to avoid being drifted away because of neglect, the Soul must get underway on the word of God within a holy gathering of Saints, and miracle of miracles, it discovers that it is not riding upon the storm at all, but is safely moored, and securely held fast by the love of God. But we can not escape if we neglect so great a salvation as Jesus Christ, who is our peace, our propitiation, our judge, and our defender, all at once.

But the scripture is clear that such is going to happen in the last days before the return of Jesus Christ. The church in general is going to have neglected away its moorings. At that time materialism, worldliness, and apostasy will be the order in the church, even as we can see it becoming so today.

The time will come when God's people are too proud, too self reliant, and too self centered to humble themselves. Only time will tell if that time has now come when the church will grow progressively more selfish and wicked. We will soon know if people will grow progressively more rebellious, causing the strands of God's patience and mercy to be stretched because of our separation from God. God is gracious and patient and we have been given time to repent, but the time will come when any further delay would be unrighteous and ungodly, and God will say, "Enough!!!" and the end will come.

It is not the easy road to which Jesus commands us, but it is the only road. We have been called to endure the ridicule and rejection of the majority of mankind who, by scientific, philosophic, political, educational, economic, and sociological opposition to Christ as the only way, continually place obstacles in between us and the "strait gate". (The word translated "strait" in that passage in Matt. 7:13 is "stenos" which has the sense of narrowness because of many obstacles standing in the way. It is an obstacled gate.)

But God has promised us two things: 1) The journey will be wonderfully fulfilling - Matt. 6:33, "But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you." and 2) the destination will be indescribably wonderful, 1 Cor. 2:9, "But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God has prepared for them that love him." and 2 Cor. 4:17-18, "For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal."

The above passages clearly indicate that the Christian should keep his mind upon heaven as his city of final dwelling. However, for several hundred years the church has been politically involved in trying to build the kingdom of God on earth through an indiscriminate mixing of the Gospel with the principles of the old Greek culture.

In the 1960's this culture with which she had been playing the whore turned and attacked the church. At that time, rebellious, materialistic, carnal, lustful youth, at the bidding of an unregenerated intelligentsia, rejected the world that was being handed to them, and because the church had been so erroneously involved in its construction, they rejected Christianity also. At the time most of these youth were too stupefied from their sorceries to understand much of anything, much less the distinctions between the materially, politically minded churchmen, and the spiritually minded ones, and so these youth also rejected the doctrine of the kingdom of heaven as "pie in the sky by and by." Churchmen, whose spiritual discernment and judgment had been suffocated by centuries of materialism did not perceive the real danger, for, as the issue of slavery once hid Satan's true purpose of Federalism during the civil war, the issue of civil rights hid his purpose of dissolving the restraints of Christianity within American democracy during the decades of the 60's, and 70's.

Make no mistake, when Christians tolerate and practice injustice, when the church winks at ungodliness because it is good politics or commerce, and when sin and oppression are not dealt with from the pulpits, Satan will use those issues as smoke screens to his real purpose which is to discredit the church, establish the apostasy, and prepare mankind for the tyrannical world empire of his incarnation.

I am going to use one small example here of compromise with Babylon that by any reasonable Christian evaluation should be rejected. The example is not going to be popular with many Christian merchants, but none the less it is typical of all our compromises, and I am using this example not to single out merchants, but because it is simple and plain. Many Christian merchants believe that they must keep their businesses open on Sundays to remain competitive with Babylon, and while they themselves may attend church, those who work for them cannot. Indeed, I have heard many such merchants explain that their Sunday business equaled or exceeded their weekday receipts. I ask one but question. Do we believe Jesus is going to accept that for an excuse? I am as guilty as anyone for I have used such businesses on Sunday. I am not advocating blue laws again, I am saying that we as Christians ought to support businesses that close on Sunday, and we ought to do our business during the week, and we even ought to be willing to pay a little more if it meant that someone would be confronted with the necessity and the opportunity to attend a worship service.

The church had compromised with popular beliefs concerning racism before the 60's because it was expedient and profitable to so. That compromise cost the generation of the 60's its spiritual heritage. That 60's generation is now engaged in building the most godless, selfish civilization the world has ever known. While the population has increased only around 40% during the ensuing 30 years, the violent crime rate has increased 500% Never before have children, mere babies, killed other human beings just for the joy of killing someone. Never before have so many millions of babies been murdered for convenience or brutalized by drugs for selfish pleasure, while still in their mother's womb. Never before have so many children been taken into the bondage of sensual pleasure and become trapped by their own fornications. Never before has the need for prison beds been so great. Women prisoners are now beginning to outnumber men. And still this generation doesn't have a clue as to what is going wrong, and they are just now coming into their age of power.

If the problem was only that the unregenerated world was rejecting Jesus Christ, that would be nothing new. But in addition to that, the organized church is compromising and rejecting every spiritual doctrine in order to attract the itching ears of this ungodly majority. Every liberal interpretation of the Holy Scriptures that rationalizes the miraculous power of Almighty God, or subjects his authority to the reason of man, is a stepping stone away from the "narrow way" that leads to the "strait gate" and a step towards apostasy. Every Christian sect, denomination, and assembly is challenged by the peril. Every believer needs to awaken.

The official doctrines within the "organized church" today run the gamut from denial of the virgin birth, to denial of the vicarious atonement, to denial of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Many "theologians" and denominations are even now embracing Hinduism, Buddhism, and pantheism, while denying the uniqueness of Jesus of Nazareth as "The Christ, The Son of The Living God." Atheists are allowed to teach seminary and divinity students, and many pastors finish their education in unbelief of the Bible.

Most of the so called Christian Universities teach the atheistic theory of evolutionary origins and never mention the actual credibility of the scientific evidence for a supernatural ex nihilo creation; most are completely unaware that any such evidence even exists. Nearly all are actively engaged in the production of citizens for Babylon in stead of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Heresy within the church is not a new phenomenon. Even as the New Testament was being prepared we were warned to avoid the oppositions of science falsely so called, and to avoid the man who is a heretic after the second admonition (1 Tim. 6:20 and Titus 3:10). But never has so large a percentage of the church been involved in such obvious heresies and oppositions.

Often the church is heard enthusiastically embracing the teaching of some man who has been antagonistic to all spiritual doctrine. Where do you suppose the source of inspiration to be for a man who would write, "I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature." This same individual wrote his own New Testament by removing all of the miracles of Jesus, and all the references to the virgin birth, and all mention of the resurrection. This same man believed that the very existence of God should be called before the reason of man to give an account of Himself. According to 2 Cor. 2:14, these are the words of a natural man, a man who cannot receive the things of God. According to the Book of Jude he is a filthy dreamer who is twice dead (Jude 8 & 12).

This particular person was Thomas Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson was an apostate, material rationalist who hated the Anglican Church, because, in Virginia, he had been forced by the state to pay taxes to support it. I can not help but wonder what he would think about me having to pay taxes to support the teaching of his religion today in his churches, which are called public schools. Jefferson disallowed all spiritual doctrine. Thomas Jefferson was a heretic who had been made "drunken" by the wine of the fornications of the Babylonian Whore.

Just because God sometimes uses natural phenomena does not meant that He cannot act supernaturally when he chooses. Spiritual men should understand the power of God is behind even natural phenomena when they occur. When men demand that God act supernaturally they fall into the same trap as did the Jews in Jesus' first advent. One of the things that the religious powers of that day had against Jesus was that there were untold hundreds of reports concerning his miraculous powers, but he would not perform a single "trick" for them on demand.

The rainbow is the definitive example of some awesomely terrible, but completely natural events whereby God is going to rearrange the topography, the atmosphere, and the demography of the planet in the last days, without arousing over much awareness of the supernatural among the natural humanists who even now make up the majority of the population. Let's look at the rainbow and see what had happened.

After the flood waters had receded, God told Noah in Gen. 9:13, "I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth," [which in accordance with Gen 9:15, included all of the inhabitants thereof].

A rainbow is a naturally occurring phenomenon which now occurs in rain clouds when sunlight passes through water droplets and is refracted into the different hues that make up the visible light spectrum. There is nothing supernatural about a rainbow, and Noah and his family may have even seen one in a waterfall, if there were any, or perhaps they might have seen one in the mists that rose from the earth to water the ground in those days. Of course, the antediluvian atmosphere being different from today, may have precluded the same spectrum of light from penetrating to the surface of the earth. In any case, Noah and his contemporaries would not have seen a rainbow in a cloud before the Flood, because there were no clouds before the flood. In the days before the Flood, the earth did not depend upon rain for irrigation and water distribution. Genesis 2:5-6 says that a mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground.

When God had originally created the heavens and the earth, he caused the sky to be placed in such a fashion as to separate the waters of the earth into two parts, one part above the sky, the other part beneath the sky. The water above the sky accomplished a great many things for the benefit of mankind, not the least of which was to shield him from cosmic and solar radiations which have proved to be so hostile to biological life. It is likely that one of the reasons men lived to great ages even after the curse is because they were shielded from this hostile radiation which causes, among other things in biologic life, the degeneration of the life force through accelerated cellular destruction, genetic mutation within the gene pool, and cellular mutations within the body.

This pre-flood environment was very different from our world today. Many believe the whole earth was like a green house, canopied with the protective water layer above the earth. The entire globe would have had the same moderate climate and there would have been no harsh seasonal differences. Planet earth would have been a verdant splendor of exotic plant life from which man could take his sustenance.

Geology teaches that this type of climate has existed, at one time or another, all around the globe. The only difference is that the Bible indicates those "times" were all one and the same time. In fact many of those who understand such things as geological unconformities and isochronic boundaries say that the whole of the geologic column, as it exists in actuality, and not in the artist's conceptions of the text books, was deposited as the result of a single event over an extremely short period of time.

When God sent the Flood upon the earth, the water came from two sources: The water from beneath the surface of the earth came gushing upward when God broke up the fountains of the deep, and the water from above the firmament of the sky, came rushing downward in a deluge upon the surface (Gen. 7:11). From the time that the deluge ended unto now, the sun has been unevenly heating the earth's atmosphere and surface. This, plus the earth's rotation, now causes great, circulating currents of air to sweep over the surface of the earth. The radiation from the sun causes evaporation of water from the surface, and these air currents absorb the vapor and carry it over the land masses where God causes it to condense into the rain that now falls "upon the just and the unjust." As this happens, white light from the sun, passing through these forming water droplets, is separated into all the hues of the spectrum of visible light. These hues are then projected against the backdrop of the clouds or the sky and men experience one of the truly serene sights of sentience, the rainbow.

It is possible to postulate a completely natural series of events which caused the Flood except for the original creation and placement of the two huge volumes of water. It is also possible that God acted supernaturally to bring the Flood. Which ever the way he choose, falling rain in itself would have been an alarming event to the population of the antediluvian earth since they had never before seen rainfall (Gen. 2:5-6). The point is this: Regardless of how God brought the Flood about, the events which occurred in its production would have been new to the world which then existed, and would have at that time seemed to be supernatural even if they seem commonplace today in their greatly diminished reproductions.

As we discussed earlier, I believe a companion dark star to the sun could have passed through the solar system and swept millions of tons of extraterrestrial dust particles and larger bodies, like planetoids or comets, into collisions that penetrated the water canopy around the earth, starting it to condense and fall earthward as rain. This dark, unseen space voyager would have also broken up the fountains of the deep through the gravitational tides it caused in the pristine crust of the earth as it passed by our sun. The many collisions with the earth and the larger chunks of debris being swept into the path of the earth would have further broken up the surface as they plunged deeply into the crust, causing volcanic activity and seismic tremors to reverberate around the globe. All of this violent activity would have cracked the earth's mantle rock. The tidal surging would have continually lifted and dropped the broken pieces of the earth's crust for days or even months as this thing approached and left our solar system. Much of the surface of the earth today looks like it has been "stirred and plowed" in just such a fashion. Seismic reverberations of the impacts could have also shaken the whole earth: Earth's present day rotational precession or axial wobble could possibly be attributable to these tides and impacts.

The Bible says that one hundred and one years after the Flood, the earth was divided, which some take to mean that the continents were separated at that time (see Gen. 10:25). The possibility that all of the land masses of Earth were at one time a single, connected continent is readily seen from the way that the maps of the continents may still be cut out and very nearly glued back together like a jigsaw puzzle. However, those who have the engineering, mathematics, and geological skills and understanding necessary for such an investigation indicate that there are a great many problems involved with ever being able to prove one way or another if the continents were actually once connected as a single land mass. The proof for me comes from the account of the flood.

In the Book of Genesis, chapter 10, verse 25 says that a man named Eber had a son whom he named Peleg. It says he named him this because "in his days the earth was divided." The name Peleg means divided. But how it was divided is debatable, for it could mean the division by language, and subsequently by race, which God brought upon man in Peleg's day because of man's rebellious acts in Babel. Or, it could mean the land mass was noticed to be separating. Or, it could mean that as the water level rose from melting ice and snow in the higher latitudes after the flood that these rising waters "separated" previously connected land masses.

I have previously taken the position that I am going to believe the Bible above all that men may have to say in objection to it. That does not mean that we cannot speculate upon or contemplate God's methodology, just as long as we do no violence to the scripture.

And so I believe that once there was land upon which many millions of men lived, whether there were oceans at that time I do not know, but there was land that stood out of whatever those waters were that were located beneath those waters that were above the atmosphere. I believe that God flooded this land at every place where it been previously exposed above the lower waters. And I believe that the waters, at their highest extent, were about 22.5 feet above the tallest land mountain. I believe that all of the land remained under the water for the period of about 5 months, and that after that, it was another 6 months before the land surface was sufficiently drained to support repopulation. I believe all of this because that is what the Bible says in the 7th and 8th chapters of Genesis.

When the flood started, the waters fell from the heavens and surged up from subterranean reservoirs for 40 days, and during that 40 days every living land creature except for those in the ark with Noah, and nearly every existing artifact, of the antediluvian civilization were destroyed. It seems to me that the deluge by itself is insufficiently violent to destroy nearly all traces of a global civilization, for the waters would rise and recede much like they do in a flood today (assuming a place of drainage), and even in swift currents, not all existing structures are completely obliterated.

It is just as evident to me that there had to have been structures within that civilization, because when God told Noah to build an ark, he did not have to tell him how to build the tools to use in so doing. God had to tell Noah what the ideal proportions were for constructing a buoyantly stable vessel because, until the flood, there had been no need to float an object in the water, and so no one knew any thing about buoyancy and stability. But God did not have to tell Noah about axes, and saws, and planes, and hammers, and wedges, and squares, or how to use them in construction. It seems to me therefore that something more violent than the flood had to have occurred at some point to have swept nearly all of the evidence of such a technologically developed civilization from the face of the earth.

It is also evident to me that having once covered the existing land with water, the water cannot then be drained from off of the land until the topography of the planet is changed to provide a place to hold the water. I believe that this is what happened to nearly all of the artifacts and evidences of Noah's civilization. Some structures such as the pyramids of Egypt or Central America could have actually been built before the flood and could have survived to be reused by later civilizations. After the water had completely covered the earth, the continents had to begin to separate from each other in order for the water to drain. This separation occurred along the recent fractures in the pristine mantle rock. The forces which accomplished this separation could have been the tidal forces between the earth, the sun, the moon, and the dark star, and the rotational inertia of the rock. As gravity caused the crust to be alternately lifted and set down over a period of months, the inertia from earth's rotation could have caused the fractured pieces to be set down at a location displaced from where it had been lifted. The net result of this process could have caused the continents to "walk" or "step" progressively further and further away from each other: providing of course that there were enough differences in the total mass of each separate "continental" chunk, and in the amount of latitudinal velocity imparted to each, to cause them to react differently to the lifting and dropping and drag of the tides. The magnitude and the rate of displacement would have depended upon the latitude of each chunk, and the location of the dark star. The direction of this displacement would have also depended upon in which axial hemisphere each chunk of "continent" was located. The magnitude of each step would have also been effected by the density of the rock at each location. Once the water gained access between the land masses its rushing back and forth against the continental shelves would also have tended to push the continents further apart.

In whatever manner he accomplished the separation of the land masses, I believe that God caused it to begin to occur while they were yet under water. Because the tidal forces would have been at their greatest at that time, each "step" would have been larger, and as the visitor from space departed, each step would have become progressively less. The inertia of the water as it was swept over the face of the newly formed continents into the deep trenches being formed between the continents would have obliterated all traces of the civilization that had once existed upon the surface, while at the same time it would have stirred up the sediment and suspended it in the broiling waters until the reverberations of that motion died out sufficiently to allow the debris to settle. Nearly all of the artifacts from that civilization would have been swept into the deep beds that were being created for the new oceans and buried there under thousands of feet of water, silt, and lava bed. When God decides to obliterate something, there are no hiding places.

At the same time that God caused the continents to form, he caused new mountain ridges to begin to wrinkle and rise up from under the water, all of which created a great hydrodynamic broom which swept the continents clean of most of the evidences of Noah's civilization. All of this mixing and stirring and convolution in the crust and surfaces of the neo-continents while they were under water would also have caused the disruptions and folding of the newly forming rock strata which men like James Hutton observed and completely misread as being the results of long geologic ages because of the false assumption that all past processes have operated identically to present observations. Such formations as the "Devil's Tower" in Wyoming would have been formed as the magma continued to shoot skyward after the water began to drain. Truly have we been warned that those who do like to retain God in their knowledge will be sent strong delusions so that they will believe lies. Those kinds of "scientific beliefs" like Hutton's are no more scientific than that which I have just written. They are philosophical notions framed within the boundaries of either a spiritual or a material perspective.

The Bible says that God caused "a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters asswaged. The fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained." (Gen.8:1-2) The word translated "asswaged" above literally means that they were trapped through the notion of a secretive or hidden process. The wind is reported in this passage, I believe, not because it evaporated enough of the water to expose the land, but because it was a completely new phenomenon that had not existed before the flood. The water was trapped in the trenches between the continents which God had "secretly" created while water still covered the earth.

What ever it was that caused the breaking up of the fountains of the deep; it probably also fractured the land into the continental masses which God separated from each other to provide basins to drain the earth. God could have done it all with one finger. The explanation I have given is pure speculation and of interest only to the degree that it suggests the possibility that this "visitor" or another like it could return again some time.

Men of "science" have no earthly idea why the continents drift. They are still "speculating" about Hutton's "heat engine" theory being the cause. I "spec" that the drifting of the continents and the terrible consequences of the seismic activity caused by that drifting, are the result of forces released by the judgment of The Living God against sin. Every piece of this description is now natural, but would have been terrifying to the men who lived before the Flood.

The continental drifting just mentioned is the cause of all vulcanization and seismic activity in the earth. Thus, the cause of such destructive events as the 1994 Los Angels Earthquake is a kind of generic judgment against sin. When such events occur, they are not now specific judgments directed at any particular populace or person. Rather, they are reminders to man that God has cursed this earth once and for all because of sin and the consequences of that curse have terminal effects upon the earth and every creature upon it.

The lesson for us today in this is: The Bible states emphatically that God is going to cause some great and terrible events to occur on, around, and to the earth in the days before the Lord Jesus Christ returns. Natural men will see these events and think of them as the worst of possible "Bad Luck" events because they will not be altogether unnatural. But spiritual men will interpret them as signs of the end of the age.

I believe it to be entirely possible that the "trigger" for these events could be the return of that same dark star that may have once before passed by at the time of The Flood, or of another such "star" that is similar. Binary and tertiary star systems are not at all uncommon in the cosmos, and since God has demonstrated to us a inclination to the number three in his designs, it is entirely possible that there exists a third star out there...! somewhere...! If that is the case, I believe that this silent monster has been secretly plunging through the dark wastes of space completing its circuit of destiny all during the ensuing ages, to one day begin a cataclysmic cycle of destruction on earth that men cannot even imagine.

Jesus called the beginning of these things "the beginning of sorrows." Jesus taught that these sorrows would come upon the earth in a time when apostasy was predominant in the church. There is a series of events in The Revelation listed under the 6th seal which occur before the final judgments from God begin to come upon the earth. Applying the principle that the scripture cannot be broken leads us to the obvious conclusion that the earth has never before experienced such events and therefore, man has not yet experienced the events of the 6th seal. David Koresh, the leader of the tragically confused Branch Davidians, should have understood that we don't need to worry about the 7th seal until we get through the 6th.

The next thing that Jesus said in the 24th chapter of Matthew also concerned the apostasy, but instead of talking about the conditions central to the apostasy, he told us of the only way we could survive it.

"13 But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved."

Endure translates "hupomeno," a Greek word which literally means to stay under. In order to "stay under" anything means that we will have to submit our "selves" to what ever we are under. In the case of Christians, we are under the authority of Christ. When the Roman Centurian said to Jesus in the 7th chapter of Luke, "I also am a man set under authority," he was telling Jesus that he recognized immediately that Jesus was not serving himself, but was submitting himself to a higher authority in order to serve the higher purpose of that Authority. As a Roman soldier he had no problem understanding the life of self denial, and self discipline, and self sacrifice required to commit one's life to the demands, and the restraints required to represent and serve the purpose of a higher authority.

Jesus admired the man's understanding of service, and equated that man's life as being characterized by a faith of a kind he had not found in all of Israel. But we must also see and understand from that passage that it was not the centurion's faith, and service, and dedication to the purpose and authority of Rome that saved the centurian and his servant, but that it was the immediate resolve and humility with which he humbled himself before the Lord of Glory and brought those same character traits into the service of Jesus Christ. That is the faith at which Jesus marveled. The word translated "marveled" in Luke 7:9 implies admiration. Jesus admired his faith and indicated it should be a model for the rest of us.

To endure unto the end in the Christian Faith will not be possible with out commitment and self denial, and self discipline, and submission of our "selves" to the authority of Christ. Just as it is impossible to remain under the obligation of a marriage without these things, mankind will apostate from Christ Jesus without them. The Devil knows this and that is why his legions have been preaching self interest, and self fulfillment, and self realization, and self determination, and self esteem, and all of the other such facades of self glorification, self righteousness, and self preservation. When the things "of the end" begin to come to pass in the last days, agape will be the trait that separates the true church from the apostate very quickly, and the true church will be the one that is hanging on with faith and commitment.

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