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Friend, are you unable to read the Bible, that is, make sense of it? Or do some parts make sense, but others, such as Leviticus or Revelation or Romans seem totally bewildering? Are you desiring to go deeper, or reach a higher ground, spiritually, but your difficulty in comprehending scripture is holding you back? It may well be you need to consider that the Bible is quintessentially Messianic--that is, it exists to tell you about the Messiah and Savior, and virtually everything in the Bible points to Him. Imagine a skyscraper without its structural steel beams--it would immediately collapse, right? It won't matter what the building looks like or how much money was spent on it or what its history is or who designed it or anything else that defines the building--it is going down! The same with the Bible and the Messianic theme that supports the whole edifice of the scriptures. The scriptures mean nothing, ultimately, aside from the Messianic theme--for the Bible is really about religion or Jewish history or various famous Hebrews and Jews or festivals and religious laws or the temple or the tabernacle--all that together can't hold the edifice of the Bible up or make it stand. The Bible is also like a lantern. Jesus the Messiah is the light in the lantern--and the lantern goes completely dead and dark without Jesus lighting it from within. And then there is the tree--try making a tree with just branches and deleting the trunk--all you will get is a pile of branches on the ground! With this understanding, you are on your way to unlocking the scriptures and opening the door to Yeshua--for the Bible is, at the living core, a living Person, Jesus (Yeshua), who delights in His Name, the Word (John 1:1: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."
I am the Bible.
I am God's wonderful library.
I make known to all, Him who is Truth.
To the weary pilgrim, I am a good, strong staff.
To the one who sits in black gloom, [like the Dalit or Untouchable in India, or the drug or porn addict or the victim of abuse or neglect, or the tortured Christian in Laos or China or Burma or Nepal, or the Sudanese Christian slave abducted from Darfur, or the well-off American enslaved by materialism and self-indulgment and self-centeredness and ease] I am glorious light.
To those who stoop beneath many burdens, I am sweet rest.
To him who has lost his way, I am a safe guide.
To those who have been hurt by sin, I am healing balm.
To the discouraged, I whisper a glad message of hope.
To those who are distressed by the storms of life,
I am an anchor, sure and steadfast.
To those who suffer in lonely solitude,
I am as a cool, soft hand resting on a fevered brow.
Oh, child of man, to best defend me, JUST USE ME.
The Bible is God's road map as you travel through life.--from Faith Magazine, Author Unknown
This Blessing Dial is a Scriptural Dial, divided into categories like a clock face is divided into minutes, so for every minute you can easily select a verse in any particular category you choose, such as "Healing," "Holy Spirit," "Character," "Assurance, "Comfort," "Deliverance," "Faith," "Courage," "Guidance," "Friends," "God's Will," "Salvation," "Peace," "Victory," "Joy," "Purpose," "Power"--whatever is your need or interest. You may request one from Oral Roberts Ministries, Tulsa, Oklahoma, which may induce them to reprint the Blessings Dial, as this Bible aid is a wonderful resource, and has two sides containing dozens of scriptures arranged in 16 subjects on each side of the dial with 6 scriptures for each section. Just move the little arrow on the Dial and you are given the verses for any one of 32 subjects you choose.
1. The Ten Comandments Day Commission supporters have introduced Resolution HR 686 which will bring back the Ten Commandments into public schools and society at large, after being outlawed by the runaway, liberal Supreme Court in 1960s. It has taken over forty years to bring this resolution forward to Congress to pass (and pass, it will, if it will hearken to the will of the American People, which according to numerous polls and surveys is overwhelmingly in favor of the Ten Commandments).
2. Continued low prices at the pump! [they have gone up some lately, but still remain well below the record highs we had a while back] This continues despite all the cries of doom by the know-it-all pundits and puppets in the media. You heard them! These are empty-headed puppets, all spouting what is scripted by news managers for them, not what they actually know to be the truth and the facts. Have they been eating humble pie after their doom and gloom prognostications have fallen flat? Hardly! They obviously learn nothing, just like the weather men who get their forecasts wrong hundreds of times but continue to claim they know what the weather is going to do to us today, tomorrow, and even a week ahead! What a racket for such ordinarily nice people to get mixed up in!
3. Rex Humbard's decades-long radio and TV ministry has touched us all for good, whether we are aware of it or not, and we need to be grateful for his pioneering work that has benefitted millions, with millions saved and also discipled across this country and the world. He and his wife were the favorite Gospel preachers for Elvis, as Elvis himself testified. Mrs. Humbard in turn called Elvis the Lord's "bell sheep," the sheep that lead the others--and truly he was a leader for his generation and millions after too, for he was not just a rock star, but a true witness of Jesus in his many albums of Gospel music and his stand for this kind of music in the worldly market, long before it had become popular with mass audiences. He opposed the record company marketing his music and even his own manager to do the Gospel albums and songs. Appearing on America's premier talent show, the Ed Sullivan Show, he insisted against Ed Sullivan's judgement that he do "Peace in the Valley" as his tribute to his own mother, and it proved to be one of his most best received songs. Who but Elvis could sing this beautiful hymn as well as Elvis and so feelingly?
Elvis was greatly comforted by Rex Humbard when Rex found Elvis weeping uncontrollably after his mother's sudden death.
Rex is now lying very ill in the hospital, and needs your prayers, which his son has requested of Christians everywhere. After decades of faithful, true service to the Body of Christ, Brother Humbard will receive a rich, rich reward in heaven from the Lord, no doubt. But now he needs our prayers in perhaps his last illness. Will you pray for this beloved saint and minister of the Lord, that the Lord surround him with angels and comfort him in every way? Remember, some day we all pass through that same valley of the shadow of death, and so prayers we say for others in that time will no doubt come back to us when we too will need them.
1. Christian Education
2. Prayer
3. Holy Spirit
4. Biblical Science
5. Foundational Principles
6. Witnessing and Discipleship
7. Types of Christ (OT)
8. Bible Covenants/Israel/Bible Atlas
9. Christian Hope and Character
10. The Prophetic Calling
Just as Christians were confused and duped in Nazi Germany, Christians in America are understandably confused and divided on who the enemy is, and whether to fight back, as well as how to fight back. This is tragic, because in this state we Christians are a helpless prey to all who want to attack and destroy and enslave us--and we are attacked, destroyed, and enslaved!
But fortunately the Bible gives us clear direction, if only we will heed it. St. Paul took on the seemingly unconquerable Empire of Rome, the mightiest power on earth, and went right for the jugular, Caesar's own palace and household, with the soul-saving Gospel of Christ, and won! Mighty pagan Rome, which no other power on earth could challenge and then survive Roman retaliation, came tumbling down from that day, even though the Roman despot, Nero, had Paul beheaded and thousands of Christians slain by making them human torches to light his rose gardens in Rome. Does this speak of a Christian pacifist? St. Paul was a revolutionary, a terrorist for Christ, only he sought to win souls for Christ and rob Satan's kingdom. Paul fully understood that Christians must take the kingdom of heaven by violence--pacifism and compromise with the world and its powers will not get us anywhere.
The only problem is--the enemy is not always clearly perceived, and sometimes the enemy is not perceived to be an enemy at all because he comes like a wolf in lamb's fleece! In terribly mixed up, confusing times like these--when we have along with a dozen other threats to our existence, two dire, very aggressive enemies of Christianity--secular humanism and Islam--arrayed and even in league together against us, we can look like intolerant, bigoted, backward people who are irrelevant and even retrogressive socially, without any redeeming value, or we can step out into the arena of public opinion with hostile crowds watching and eager to see us torn apart by wild beasts and take what comes to a steadfast, unwavering saint and witness of God and His truth. What is our choice going to be, fellow Christians?
We may find ourselves in the dilemma faced by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in the early 1930s, just at the onset of the rise of Hitler to power. He had the choice set before him of going against the Church he served and opposing a seeming savior of Germany or opposing him as a false Christ and incurring all the wrath of state and the appearance of being a traitor to the Fatherland and most of the churches. Imagine his situation. He had to confront a church-going Hitler--whom he knew to be a wolf in sheep's clothing! Churchmen and Christians everywhere in Germany were acclaiming this wolf in terms that only Christ deserved!
We as conservatives, evangelicals, Bible-believers, traditionalists--both Christians and Jews, Protestants and Catholics, face a most bewildering political scene. How can we vote our consciences when the candidates are so mixed in with the world and its anti-Christian secular humanist values. I hear Christians call in to conservative Talk Radio shows and express this bewilderment. How about you? As yet no candidate that stands a chance to win has expressed clear views that I can willingly endorse--they are sending mixed messages, are they not? We may face some hard choices this coming '08 election, or stay away from the polls altogether, avoiding the whole issue. I am afraid this will happen: that Christians will not vote, since everything is such a muddle. It will be interesting to see what God does, as we call to him in prayer--for prayer is our only genuine option that promises to bring good.
It isn't a rosy future we face. We may not see good in the coming election results, as Hillary Clinton is almost guaranteed to win and become our next President. No matter that she has no real record and no real achievements, she has been picked, and she is the chief runner in the race because she expresses the secular humanist values that are championed by the most powerful voting blocs and monied special interest groups in this country. By all means vote for her, if what she stands for agrees with your conscience and Christian beliefs--but try to square her beliefs with the Bible's teachings--you might have trouble doing that! I note that many candidates presently feign faith in God, while previously they did not bother. But we know them by their records and what they have voted for in the past--and that defines them, not their statements about their "faith". We as Christians should not be misled by leaders who do not "walk the talk." Unfortunately, evangelical Christians can make major mistakes if we are not careful and exercise discernment. Evangelicals voted for Hitler--though Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a courageous leader of evangelicals in Germany, was not one! Evangelicals sat in churches, singing hymns, while cattle cars rattled by on train tracks, blending the sounds of the screams of Jews with their singing! May this not happen to us--either to sit in the pews as the people of God are transported to death camps or to be the people in the cattle cars being taken to our deaths!
Are we any smarter or better educated or more cultured than the Germans were? I doubt that very much. The Germans were a highly cultivated, scientifically advanced society in the 1930s--Germany being the homeland of Bach, Goethe, Kant, and Einstein. Since that highpoint, there have been significant declines ever since in Western Civilization that clearly show that the West, despite 21st century hitech, is not really going forward and is even retrogressing. How then can we escape what happened to a sophisticated Germany, once the fountainhead of the Reformation and a bubbling, creative center for science and technology and the arts, but which somehow took a wrong turn and became a secularized, war-mongering, racist, anti-Semite totalitarian state? In America Relativism is creating a dictatorship, evolution is creating a totalitarism, and socialism and secular humanism are creating an all pervasive, controlling Big Brother government. If that weren't enough to destroy us, Islam, following hard on the heels of these absolutisms, has an absolutist theocracy and sharia law-system it seeks to enforce upon the whole West once it is too weak to fight for its values. Is there any hope for the West and America?
Perhaps not. Yet for individuals, there is--given the examples in the Bible of people who stood against the tide of their day--and triumphed. Dr. Michael Youssef offers a weekly devotional called, "My Journal." In Week 5, he explains how Daniel the prophet escaped becoming pagan Babylonian in his thinking and lifestyle while being a captive in Babylon nearly all his life. Here is an excerpt that will explain how we can filter out what is not of God and escape the contamination of the evil, Satan-permeated society around us just as Daniel did:
AMERICA, AMERICA
America, America
I hold you up in prayer.
While your red, white, and blue is waving,
I stand with you in prayer.
America, America
you're weighed in the balance.
Repent and forsake evil ways,
building upon God's grace.
America, America,
God wants to change your ways.
America--Pray!
God wants revival today.
Ask your pastor or theology professor to speak on it without notes--he won't be able to say more than a few lines, which will show the attention and study he has given the subject. Maybe then he will go to the Bible and learn what it is all about.
Christian churches are sitting on their blessed assurances, counting on the Rapture to be the fix-all for all the present crises, while we should be Wise Virgins preparing for the Bridegroom and the Coming Reign over the Earth for a full thousand years with Him in Jerusalem (not just preparing for the wedding, which will be only brief interlude). Are we going to be brides of Christ who sit and do nothing? No! Christ the Husband of the Church has plenty for us all to do! Well, if you can see this, then start preparing yourself! We may not have much time left.
We have a President, White House, Supreme Court, Congress's Senate and House of Representatives, not to mention the Pentagon, the State Department, and tens of thousands of high-paid advisors and think tank experts, yet we are essentially a nation that has lost its head. The blind are leading the blind! No one has the slightest good idea what to do with Iraq--whether to cut and run or stay the course or take some other tack. They all have ideas, to be sure, but there is not one good one. What is the answer? Let me tell you what the Bible says, that "the fervent prayer of a righteous man is effectual!" That means one humble, unknown, praying saint who is deep in the Word of God and listens and hears from God outweighs all the volumes of testimony and the stacks of thousand-page reviews and studies and analyses that the administrators of this nation can muster. Sadly, this nation's leaders and so-called experts and advisors will not turn to one praying saint for a prayer to God for direction! They are just too proud and self-reliant to turn humbly to the all-knowing God for wisdom to solve our crisis! So, these decorated, high-credentialed fools are going it without God, relying exclusively on their own fine human reason and limited human knowledge!
No wonder that we are staggering toward disaster, without any light whatsoever to show us a nation-saving way.
I do believe witchcraft and satanism have such a hold on this society and now its government, from President to the least functionary in the government apparatus and government community in Washington, that we are mired inextricably in Satan's deceptions. We cannot find our way out, we are so entangled. Only Christ can cut through this morass and pull us out! But who is crying to God for help and deliverance, among our leaders, or seeking Christ's wisdom? Who wants Christ's wisdom? Our President gives lip service to God and prayer, but is he truly seeking what he says he admires? Why then are we stumbling along in the dark, with thousands upon thousands of experts and advisers carrying briefcases stuffed to overflowing with statistics, facts and analyses, while our government leaders continue to commit blunder after blunder based on human reason and human judgment? Such things have always failed us in the past, and they are failing us now. God is the Source of Wisdom, and we must listen to Him, seek Him alone. Let us turn from human agencies, human ability, and human understanding--for the arm of the flesh is vain to help us--and turn to the Almighty, All-Knowing God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. A pox on our leadership and all their foolish "wise men," and foolish counsellors. O God, render their speeches impotent as sawdust in their babbling mouths until we cry out for mercy and turn to You alone for true wisdom, the only kind that can guide and save us out of the pit that is yawning to receive America!
Sorcery, or witchcraft, is one of the major threats to America and the Christian faith. Sorcery pervades radio, advertizing, entertainment, the media, education, government, the military, and even the churches! We need to know this enemy in all its forms and ways, and stand up against it, or we will lose everything we hold dear. Many evangelists (you see a number of them on TBN and Daystar and other Christian networks) are practicing manipulation of people that really has more to do with witchcraft and sorcery than the Holy Spirit and the Christian faith. It is not necessary to warn you about these false shepherds--beyond saying this much. Just test them yourself, whether they are preaching the historic Gospel of the Cross and Christ Crucified (which includes denial of self, by the way, and losing oneself!) or not. Clearly, many are not! Well, then, you know what types are not worth your time and attention and support--and stay clear of them! You cannot stop them from operating, but you can flee from them, as the Scriptures tell us to do. Also pray that they repent and be saved--lest they suffer the judgment reserved for false shepherds and false teachers. Would you want that kind of judgement that Jesus describes to happen to anyone? Of course not! But have nothing to do with them, except for prayer for them. There are plenty of good teachers and pastors who are still sticking to the true Gospel that Paul and other other Apostles preached. Let us not follow the mass that is being led astray by the false shepherds and false teachers, the wolves in our midst. The Holy Spirit and the Word of God will protect us, if we allow them to guide and inform us. As dear Frieda Lindsay (widow of Gordon Lindsay who now heads CFN) advises everyone studying at CFN, let us read three chapters of scripture a day--and five on Sunday! Let us be protected, by the Holy Spirit and Bible firewall! We will make it to heaven, to a great reward, if we stay centered in the Word each day.
"EVOLUTION'S DENIAL OF BIBLE AUTHORITY TO SPEARHEAD THE SPIRIT OF ATHEISM IN THE SEVENTIES.
On June 17, 1963, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that it would be unconstitutional for any school to authorize Bible reading and recitation of the Lord's prayer. But nothing was said against the teaching of evolution in the schools, a teaching which implies the Genesis record of creation to be a myth, while claiming that man sprang gfrom the brute beast. This rank hoax, the religion of atheists and infidels is being taught in the schools. Many young people naturally come to the conclusion that if evolution is indeed true then the Genesis account is a fable. If Genesis is false, then the Bible is not an authority and cannot be depended upon as a true source of faith. Its call to sobriety and holy living therefore, becomes merely the tradition of men. Evolution denies that a reckoning will be coming or that mankind must stand before God some day in judgment and declares that the Bible's promise of an afterlife, of a heaven and a hell, is all fiction.
During the Seventies this insidious God-dishonoring theory is going to become almost universal in the schools. Already it is being taught in many religious institutions that once stood for the inspiration of the Scriptures. Even Full Gospel colleges in order to obtain state funds and accreditation must conform to certain educational requirements. The temptation to obtain these funds will be very strong. Parents who believe the Bible should find out if the Christian college to which they send their children uses these textbooks. Such teaching can rob their children's faith in God." (page 27)
Would you believe that there is a powerful organization in America that has as its reason for existence the destruction of this innocent life? But who in America would want to kill this precious and beautiful baby? Is there really an organization in America that is dedicated to doing just that? Yes, there is! This organization is primarily responsible for the butchery and deaths of over forty million such babies--which they call "abortion," "privacy," "reproductive rights," not the unconscionable murder of helpless human lives, which it actually is. Answer: Planned Parenthood, which is tax supported with our tax money to the tune of over 200 hundred million dollars in one year alone! PLANNED PARENTHOOD was founded by a eugenicist, Margaret Sanger, for the express purpose of eliminating all children she judged unfit to live--the children of poor people of any race, of mentally impaired parents, but primarily poor, uneducated black people being especially targeted. Thanks to her organization, which is the largest abortion provider in the world, 4,000 American children are destroyed in the womb, or nearly born in partial-birth abortion, each and every day in the United States! This is one 9/ll every twenty four hours!
'Heavenly Father, we come before you today to ask your forgiveness and to seek your direction and guidance. we know your Word says, "Woe to those who call evil good," but that is exactly what we have done. We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and reversed our values.
We confess that we have ridiculed the absolute truth of Your Word and called it Pluralism. We have exploited the poor and called it the lottery. We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare. We have killed our unborn and called it choice. We have shot abortionists and called it justifiable. We have neglected to discipline our children and called it building self-esteem. We have abused power and called it politics. We habve coveted our neighbors possessions and called it ambition. We have polluted the air with profanity and pornograpnhy and called it freedom of expression. We have ridiculed the time-honored values of our forefathers and called it enlightenment.
Search us, O God, and know our hearts today; cleanse us from every sin and set us free. Guide and bless these men and women who have been sent: to direct us to the center of Your will and openly ask these things in the name of Your Son, the living Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen! "The response was immediate. A number of legislators walked out during the prayer in protest. In 6 short weeks, Central Christian Church [in Wichita, Kansas] where Rev. Wright is pastor, logged more than 5,000 calls with only 47 of those calls responding negatively. The church is now receiving international requests for copies of this prayer from India, Africa, and Korea. Commentator Paul Harvey aired this prayer on his radio program, "The Rest of the Story," and received a larger response to this program than any other he has ever aired. With the Lord's help, may this prayer sweep over our nation and wholeheartedly become our desire so that we again can be called 'one nation under God.'"--Fran Stenberg, Executive Director, Union Gospel Mission, Sioux Falls, SD 57103.
There would be no English literature today worth mentioning unless Christians (yes, Christians!) started writing early on, as they did thousands of years ago, and also right at the beginning of British history. The greatest writers in English literature have been, by and large, Christians.
The continent of Africa is a basket case, generally, after independence was declared from the colonial powers, France, Britain, and Spain, and even Belgium (arguably, life was better under Belgium's King Leopold than it has been under native Congolese dictators and the various generals and rebel militias). The rest of the world is constantly being called upon to bail out the continually failing African states. These states are ruled by Western educated government elites that are completely out of touch with their peoples and have turned corrupt and incompetent and self-serving. They fill the United Nations with rafts of these Cambridge-accent speaking rascals, who live the lifestyles of the rich and famous, while their countrymen back home are suffering the most scandalous poverty and filthy conditions and hopelessless without food, shelter, and education.
No one in the world community dares to tell the African nations this basic fact: humble yourselves, seek out your former colonial overlords, and get the help you need or continue to go down hill and perish. Turn over your governments and economies to the former colonialists (though not the infamous, Royal Dutch Shell Oil and Gas Company, or any of the other globalist, multinational companies that act just like Shell!), if they will take them back. You Nations of Africa cannot govern yourselves, as the record has proven beyond question since each of you gained independence. All the tribal, colorfully costumed dancing and patriotism and singing of your national anthems and mass cultural observances in the big areans and parade grounds will not save you in the least!
Africa is doomed, and will continue to suffer famine, sectarian and tribal genocide, economic decline, the AIDS epidemic and other pandemic diseases, until Africa humbles itself and turns to Christ and Christian people and the wrongfully despised colonial status that it rejected far too soon (even though Africa benefitted immeasurably from that status, though the European nations administered and built up African states at an economic losss to themselves). Many of these colonial nations were up and coming, with vibrant economies, exporting food to the world--such as Rhodesia (now called Zimbabwe)--but incompetent, corrupt, power-mad, brutal, anti-democracy, tinpot despots like Zimbabwe's Mugabe are the rule in African states today--and the whole continent is being dragged down into the abyss. Colonialsm, despite the BBC and other secular humanists' tarring of the period, was a very good thing for Africa, helping the continent to climb from the 7th to the 12th centuries into the 19th and 20th. Yes, there was exploitation and misgovernment--but nothing to the extent that is going on now under elite/dicator-ruled national governments and "democracy". Africa is fast sinking backwards and behind the rest of the world, despite the glitter and gloss of the Westernized capital cities where the rich, Western educated people with money congregate and live (when they are not vacationing abroad in France). The pit of barbarism yawns to engulf Africa. It is high time for colonialism to be reinstalled, and the Gospel message spread far and wide as the only real counter to Islam's subjection and ruination and enslavement and impoverishment of Africans. Only then can the peoples of Africa be lifted up out of their misery and poverty and disease and filth. This is not state welfarism--it is just a sure way that Africans can be taught the basic lessons of life and economy that they have unlearned since independence--how to work productively and produce goods the world wants and do it econonomically and efficiently to be competitive. African Government, despite impressive Cambridge accents, cannot save a people who are not educated enough to provide for themselves the basics of life. No matter whether they have the vote or not, they cannot expect their corrupt, out-of-touch governments to come up economic opportunities and a free market economy! Certain predatory multinational firms will always exploit them, too, without protection of their governments, because the government officials will be bribed to issue the permits to do business there. This is an unpopular message you will never hear from any other quarter, perhaps, but it is nonetheless true. Colonialism, for all its warts and defects, is still Africa's best hope, as long as Christianity is allowed full liberty along with other faiths. I really do not believe there is any hope for the main part of Africa until Christ returns--as government corruption is endemic and there is so much brutality against the common people, who are kept under by poverty, bad government, lack of infrastructure, disease epidemics, and ignorance. With Christ reigning, there will be justice for the African peoples, not just a privileged few educated in Western schools abroad.
Jesus Christ first, and all the rest will fall into line.
He shall call to the heavens from above, and to the earth, that He may judge His people.
"Gather My saints together to Me, those who have made a covenant with Me by sacrifice."