The California Collection/TheCaliforniaCollection.cdr/his137/theology.lzh/THEOLOGY.TXT

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THE:The Existence of God

   PROOF FROM SCRIPTURE

   To begin our study in Bible doctrine we should begin with God. After
all, that's where the Book begins. The problem for the Bible believer
is solved with the very first verse in the Bible which says, "In the
beginning God created the heaven and the earth." Genesis 1:1, the
beginning verse, assumes the existence of God. The Lord Jesus Christ
never questioned the existence of God; He referred to God in a
matter-of-fact way. To tell the truth, there is not one writer in the
Bible who wastes time trying to prove the existence of God. The term
God alone occurs in the Bible more than 500 times; the Bible takes the
existence of God for granted. But in this lesson we're going to talk
about the teleological argument for the existence of God, the
cosmological argument, the anthropological argument, and the argument
from congruity. These are theological subjects, but let us notice that
the Bible takes the existence of God for granted. It is never brought
up as a question.

   Christians are constantly challenged by atheists, skeptics,
agnostics, and hecklers to prove that there is a God. Fortunately, we
don't have to prove it. The Bible says in Psalm 14:1, "The fool hath
said in his heart, There is no God." Any man may argue about the
existence of God with his head, but the trouble is with the heart.

   It is very difficult for the natural man to believe in something
that he cannot see, touch, or feel; so in 1 Corinthians 2:14 we are
told, "But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of
God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them,
because they are spiritually discerned." However, anyone with any
intelligence can acknowledge the evident fact that a supreme
intelligence is manifest throughout the operations of nature, history
and the universe.

   Christ says in John 7:17, "If any man will do his will {God's will},
he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak
of myself." That is, a skeptic's trouble is heart trouble. It has to do
with a bad life and an immoral attitude. Now, it is true that you have
moral atheists and moral skeptics and moral sinners, men who do good
because they have found that it pays to do good. Or, they might do good
because they cannot do evil and get away with it. Or, they might do
good to soothe their conscience. Or, they do good so that they can brag
about their self- righteousness before their fellow man. We have always
had moral sinners, moral atheists and moral skeptics, but the only real
difference between them and the immoral sinners is the difference
between brand new garbage cans and old ones. They all have the same
contents.

   They have a joke about the Dial-a-Prayer service. The atheists have
a Dial- a-prayer service where they dial a number and nobody answers.
They also have one about a dead atheist who was lying in a coffin and
one of his buddies came by and looked at him and said, "Poor old Bill.
There he is, all dressed up and no place to go."

   Being an atheist takes a great deal of faith. As a matter of fact,
it takes a great deal more faith to be an atheist than to be a deist or
a theist--a believer in God. To be an atheist a person has to deny a
first cause. And in order to deny this, you have to deny your rational
powers. Anybody who knows about the laws of thermodynamics (and in
particular the second law, the law of entropy) knows that if the
universe had been here more than ninety billion years it would have run
down; by now it would be wasted out and burned out. How much more if it
had been here "forever" without a first cause? If the universe had been
here for more than, say, a hundred billion years, it would have burned
out at least fifty billion years ago--by the law of breakdown. For
example, the magnetic field around the earth is decreasing at such a
rate that it could not have been here for more than ten thousand years
at a maximum.

   To be an atheist takes a great deal of faith. Now, we realize that
in a country where "freedom of religion" is allowed, a man who is an
atheist can be called "religious" and he has the freedom to express his
views, which is perfectly all right with us. We couldn't care less. If
a man wants to exhibit his ignorance, that's his business. If you want
to display your stupidity, you're free to do it. However, you're not
free to demand a respectful hearing from those of us who have some
sense. In America we need to distinguish between liberty and license.
Granted, a man has the liberty to be an atheist if he wants to be. If
you want to go to hell, that's your business; but don't expect those of
us who have some sense to listen to the claptrap put out by Rousseau,
Voltaire, Celsus, Porphory, Tom Payne and Robert Ingersoll. We have
better sense. The Bible begins with God, And, although the Bible is not
a textbook that attempts to prove the existence of God, the Bible opens
with the positive statement that God does exist. Then, the first proof
for the existence of God is what we call the scriptural proof.

   There are other proofs which we shall also discuss: the proof of
nature, the proof of conscience, the argument from cause, the argument
from design and the moral argument, but the first main proof is from
God's word. "Thy word is truth." David said in Psalm 119:160, "Thy word
is true from the beginning: and every one of thy righteous judgments
endureth forever." David said, "Thy word is true from the beginning,"
and the beginning takes God for granted--"In the beginning God created
the heaven and the earth." So the Bible begins with God and takes His
existence as being a fact. "The fool hath said in his heart, There is
no God." He didn't say that in his head. Any man with any sense, a man
who is half intelligent or half rational, can see immediately that
there is a God. The man who says there is no God simply says that down
in his heart because of a bad life. Now, it's true he may have cleaned
up temporarily, but he may have plans for later or he may be trying to
cover up a skeleton in the closet from thirty years back. There's more
to it than just a college education, science, religion and all that
foolishness. All right, "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no
God." Anyone with any intelligence would acknowledge the evident fact
of a living God.

   The greatest proof, apart from scripture, of the existence of God is
the daily fellowship that a born again person can have with God in
prayer. Those of us who know God can sing, "And He walks with me and He
talks with me and He tells me I am His own, and the joy we share as we
tarry there, none other has ever known." We know there is a God because
we talk to Him daily. He hears our prayers and answers the prayers of
our heart. The Bible says that we are to commit everything to Him in
prayer. Why would anyone be dumb enough to tell you, "Ask, and it shall
be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened
unto you" when there is nobody there to answer, nobody there to give,
and nobody to open the door? Rather stupid, don't you think? Could it
be that the four billion people who have been saved since the time of
Pentecost have all been deceived? Have they? When they can write down
lists of hundreds of prayers that have been answered? Comfort in
sorrow. Comfort in tribulation. Money sent in when they needed it. Jobs
obtained when they needed them. People in their family healed when they
were sick. Peace of mind and peace of heart in the face of certain
death and torture and pain. They were all deceived, were they? It's an
illusion, is it? Well, if it is an illusion you'd better get submerged
in it about a hundred and fifty fathoms deep because it's a permanent
illusion.

   I, for example, have been saved for nearly 20 years. I lived on this
earth 18 years as an unsaved man. I went to church nearly all my life,
but it was just "churchianity," not Christianity. I found Christ as my
Saviour after hearing the Gospel for the first time in Sunday School in
a Bible-believing church--after years of attending church services in
formalistic churches where no Gospel was preached. I was finally told
about my sinful condition and my need of the Saviour, and I received
and believed Him. Don't tell me there is no God. I sought Him and I
found Him. He heard me and answered my prayer; He delivered me from all
my sins and saved my soul; and He commanded me to commit all the
problems I had to Him in prayer and in thanksgiving and to make known
unto Him all my requests with supplications. Why? To play a joke on me?
Well, it's some joke, isn't it? Like a converted drunk said to an
atheist, "If it's a delusion, it's a funny delusion. I turned my
whiskey bottles into food and clothing for my family, my bad temper
into a charitable disposition toward my fellow man, and it got me to
stop by church on Wednesday night instead of a bar. It's some delusion,
isn't it?"

   So when we talk about these things--matters of apologetics--we are
talking about something that is real. If you were in a dark room and
you held out your hand in that dark room three times a day and somebody
put something that you needed in your hand three times a day, wouldn't
you guess after a while that there was somebody in the room with you?
Would you say after thirty years that the whole operation was an
accidental "coincidence"? I mean, you talk about rational powers and
being dishonest rationally and intellectually, what do you call that?

   Atheists, the worms are going to get you. Imagine a man giving
himself credit for what he has and the worms wind up with him. Don't
you find that rather ludicrous? The Bible takes the existence of God
for granted. The first proof is scriptural. The Bible speaks of "God"
over five hundred times using the name of God, and it uses the word
"Lord" over three hundred times.

   PROOF FROM NATURE

   The next proof we have for the existence of God is from nature. We
find this great passage in Psalm 19:1, "The heavens declare the glory
of God; and the firmament sheweth his handiwork." No man could gaze at
the universe and think that it came together accidentally unless he had
set himself up as his own god and looked at everything relatively, as
Einstein did, or unless he had set up his own moral standards in order
to avoid the moral standards of God. "The heavens declare the glory of
God."

   Romans 1:20 goes even further and says, "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." The man who will accept scripture will
readily acknowledge the existence of God. He will have proof for the
existence of God and there will not be any doubt about it. The
invisible things are clearly seen. When Christ wanted to tell man what
hell was like he pointed to a city dump-- Gehenna. When he wanted to
show people what heaven was like he pointed to a sinless, clean city
with a park in it. When the Lord Jesus Christ wanted to picture
Himself, He pictured Himself in the Bible as the SUN, which moves east
to west, as history moves east to west, as revivals move east to west,
as the Holy Ghost moves east to west, against the rotation of the
world. The invisible things are clearly seen.

   A perfect picture of the Godhead and the Trinity, for example, is
found in the sun which contains alpha, beta, and gamma rays. The sun
has light rays that you can see and cannot feel, a picture of God the
Son, the Lord Jesus Christ; rays that you can feel but cannot see, a
picture of God the Spirit, the Holy Ghost; and rays which you can
neither see nor feel, actinic rays which picture the soul of God, God
the Father. The sun, then, visibly seen, is a representation of things
not seen. So the things that are not seen are eternal, but they are
clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, Romans 1:20.

   PROOF FROM THE CONSCIENCE

   All right, the next proof for God comes from conscience. Man is born
with a universal belief in a supreme being. No tribe has yet been
discovered which lacks this. They know that some being creates and
controls life. The only kind of people who doubt belief in a supreme
being are people who have been educated out of it and have been taught
relative matters so they can live like the devil and justify
themselves. There is not one tribe (isolated or unisolated) on the face
of this earth that does not believe in a supreme being. If a man were
raised on an island with the animals, he would grow up worshipping a
supreme being. You have to be educated out of such a belief. There is
no such thing as an uneducated, natural atheist. Romans 2:15 says about
the heathen people, "Which shew the work of the law written in their
hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the
mean while accusing or else excusing one another." The existence of God
is written in the human conscience. Whether the man has a Bible or not,
or the law or not, his conscience bears witness to the ten
commandments. People says, "What about those who don't know and haven't
heard?" They know a great deal more than you think they know. There's
many a Fiji Islander, Tasmanian Islander, or New Guinean; there's many
an African in the Chad in the heart of the Belgian Congo who knows a
great deal more about God than the professors at the University of
Oregon or the University of California or the Universities of Michigan,
Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, Tennessee or New York. You say, "Where do they
get that from?" From having common sense. Where would you get it
otherwise? Out there in the jungle, the heathen cut off a man's hand
when he steals the first time, his other hand when he steals the second
time, and his head the third time. Why? Because they know the
commandment that says, "Thou shalt not steal," even if they do not have
a Bible.

   There is no tribe on the face of this earth where adultery is not
recognized as a crime, except in the college circles and high school
circles of America. They talk about "adult consent" and "premarital
sex." You are not born with a disbelief in morals and the existence of
God. You're born with the revelation of God in your conscience which
you have to drown out. The Bible says about these educated Americans in
1 Timothy 4:2 that they have "their conscience seared with a hot iron."

   In Acts 17:23 Paul says, "For as I passed by, and beheld your
devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD."
Now, that was in the city of Athens which contained the most educated,
cultured people of their day, the people who wrote the grammar text
books for the correcting of the King James text by the modern Christian
schools. They were agnostic, but conscience told them that there was a
God though they did not know Him personally. They were agnostic.
(That's what the word "unknown" is. Nosis with the alpha before it.
Agnostic. Ag-nos-tic. An "unknower," or, as they say in Latin, an
"ignoramus.")

   So, the heathen know about God. He is revealed in nature and He is
revealed in conscience even to those who have no scriptures. Some
atheists may claim that their conscience does not tell them about God.
That's because they burn their conscience out. For example, you stop
and think about the first time you took a cigarette or the first time
you took a glass of liquor. I am not talking about the third time, old
boy, I am talking about the first time. Don't tell me that the first
time you tried a Rum Collins or a Tom Collins or a Slow Gin Fiz or a
Sidecar or a Boxcar or a Manhattan or a Bicardi or a Bloody Mary you
took it with a clear conscience! The first time? It is doubtful that a
genuine atheist can be found, for, at the best, they are men who have
stilled their conscience by blatant unbelief and by long continued
living in sin. They have burned their consciences out so they no longer
warn them.

   Some men are so blind that they may deny the existence of a sun in
the sky, but that doesn't alter the fact that the sun exists and that
it rises and sets each day. None are so blind as people who refuse to
see, and the honest man will see that the inner still small voice says
that God exists and is alive. Men deny the existence of God, not
because they cannot find Him, but because they are afraid to face the
responsibility of being accountable to Him after death. There is not an
atheist in the world who did not run to atheism in order to get out of
his personal accountability to God. And that is why when Paul preached
to the most educated, cultured people of his day, the Athenian Greek
scholars and the Athenian Greek philosophers (Acts 17), they mocked
when they heard about the resurrection of the dead. No atheist could
stand to have his life brought out in the open and that is why men are
atheists. That's why "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no
God"--not in his head.

   Atheism is one of the devil's tools to put man to sleep without
accepting salvation. If there is no God, then I am not responsible to
anyone. I can live and die as I please. And if you don't accept the
true God, you can get yourself another one. Which really means, when a
man says he is an atheist, he is really just a liar. What he means is
that he does not want the God of the Bible. But men are incurably
religious, and every atheist has some god. You say, "Well, I'm an
atheist and I worship no god at all." Sure you do, son. You worship
your brain. If you do not accept one God, you put something else in the
place of supreme authority. Your God is either the God and Father of
Jesus Christ or it is Rama Krishna or Buddha or Mohammed or Lao- tse or
the first cause or the first principle or the Great Architect or
Mahabone or something else you cooked up or it is your own noodle.

   To look up and see a plane and not see a pilot and say the pilot
doesn't exist is ridiculous, and it is just as ridiculous to look into
the heavens and say there is no God just because we cannot see him. You
can't see the pilot flying a DC7 or DC9 over your head. What does that
mean? Few of us have ever seen our own brains, yet we believe we have
them. A man said to Billy Sunday one time, "I don't believe in God. I
don't believe in something I can't see." Billy said, "Have you ever
seen your backbone?" The man said, "Sure, I saw a reflection in the
mirror." Billy said, "Well, I see a reflection of Christ dying for my
sins in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John." The man said, "Yeah, but I felt
it with my hands." Billy Sunday said, "I can feel the Holy Spirit
warming my heart and giving me confidence in God." You have as much
evidence that God exists as you have evidence that your backbone and
your brain exist. You have as much evidence that God exists and that
Christ died as Saviour as you do that you have a brain in your head.

   COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

   All right, another argument for the existence of God is what we call
the argument from cause--cosmological. That is, the world is here. The
first cosmological argument for God is that the world must have come
from somewhere. Somebody or something must have caused it to come into
being at one time or another. For example, here is a book. Well,
somebody must have written it. No printing press can of itself print a
book, be it ever so modern a press with the latest technology. Somebody
created the trees. Somebody operates the universe. If all the pieces of
a watch were placed in a can and the can was shaken gently for 150
billion years, the watch would not accidentally get together and start
running. The only sensible answer, to a man who is intellectually
honest, to the problem of the existence of the world is the existence
of an intelligent being behind the order, the cosmos. The chances that
man could come into being by Darwin's theory or by any modern
evolutionist's theory are the chances you would take if a print factory
blew up in the air and came down in the form of a dictionary. We say
this with charity toward all evolutionists, who are entitled to believe
what they want to believe. Freedom of speech, son. Help yourself. But
don't expect an intelligent man to buy it. I mean, after all, education
is not brains. An education is not intellectual honesty. Education is
education-- one of the greatest money-making rackets in America, I
guess, outside of sex, automobiles, and dope.

   TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

   This brings up an argument for the existence of God from design.
This is called the teleological argument. In the teleological argument
we presume that a watch not only exists but that it had a designer. It
was planned for a specific purpose. A watch was not designed, for
example, for mosquitoes to live in or for fish to swim in. It was
designed by a keen mind for the purpose of accurately telling the time.
An examination of the world and the things in it, both large and small,
shows that each is designed by an intelligent mind for a specific
purpose in life. The colors of the birds and the means of defense for
animals are not accidents. They are the result of the planning of a
superior mind, the mind of an Originator whom we call God.

   MORAL ARGUMENT

   The next argument for the existence of God is called the moral
argument, sometimes referred to as the anthropological argument--the
argument from the nature of mankind. Man has an intellectual and moral
nature that animals do not have, showing that the Creator must not be
merely an inanimate force but a living, intelligent, moral being. The
modern teaching being presented to all the college students in the
state universities is that if there really is a God, He is an
impersonal force. The god of modern science is sort of a neuter energy
force field with no morals. This brand new, scientific god, of course,
has been molded and made in the image of fallen man. As somebody said,
"God created man in His own image and man returned the compliment."
Which is a rather sarcastic way of saying that ever since Adam fell,
men have been inventing gods and making up gods and going to the dime
store and going down the counter bargain shopping for gods of their
choice.

   The choice of a modern educated fool with a Ph.D. or medical degree
is an inanimate neuter force that does not have any moral standards.
Guess why.

   However, in the Bible we read in Genesis 1:26, "Let us make man in
our image, after our likeness." And again, in Genesis 1:27, "So God
created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him;" that
is, He patterned man after God. God says in Psalm 94:9, "He that
planted the ear, shall he not hear? he that formed the eye, shall he
not see?" God has given to man ears, eyes, knowledge, intelligence and
will power, for these are the things that He, Himself, God possesses.
Man, who was once in the image of God in righteousness and holiness, is
a miniature, fallen counterpart of God; man fell, but he still retains
in his fallen state the vestigial remnant of the Godhead. Man was made
in God's image, not the image of an orangutan or an opossum or anything
else in Darwin's family tree that swung by the tail. (We'll talk about
this more when we get into our lessons on anthropology, one of the
branches of theology which deals with the creation of man.)

   Now, conscience teaches man right and wrong, good and bad, for his
Creator is a moral being who is holy and loves righteousness but abhors
evil. That is why the God of truth, the God of creation, the God of
this universe has been "run off the boards" by modern man. Modern man
does not abhor evil and does not love righteousness. "Modern man," per
se--especially the educated, religious, scientific type of man--is a
man who believes that righteousness and evil are relative terms which
you can switch back and forth. As a matter of fact, they are often
switched back and forth in matters like those discussed by men like
Hugh Hefner in Playboy, Esquire, Genesis, Playgirl, and the rest of the
girlie magazines--what they are doing is calling evil good and calling
good evil. To such a race of degenerates the God of the Bible can
hardly be accepted or even retain His respectable position. After all,
when a man hates righteousness and loves sin, he cannot have any
fellowship with the God of truth and righteousness.

   The moral argument is simple. Anthropology and the study of
ethnology shows that throughout the races, in any type of ethnic
culture, there are standards of right and wrong and, though varying
slightly from culture to culture, there is not any culture on the face
of this earth that does not consider murder a breach of moral
standards. "Thou shalt not kill." "Thou shalt not kill," not applying
to national defense or personal defense but to malicious intent and
assault and battery with intent to kill an individual. The Bible
doesn't make any mistakes. You may. Your education may have taught you
and helped you to nurture a bad disposition, a dishonest intellect, and
a rotten attitude toward the truth, but that is your problem, not ours
and not the Lord's. We have the moral argument.

   LIFE FROM LIFE ARGUMENT

   Then, we have the life argument. That is, life comes from life,
except if you are an evolutionist. If you are an evolutionist, life
must come from death. If you are a Darwinian anthropoid, you must
believe that life originated in the pre-Cambrian fossils, although no
fossils have been found, and then gradually worked up into complex
forms in the Cambrian strata and up to the Mesozoic and Cenozoic
periods; that is, life had to come from something that was inanimate
and dead. To be a good Darwinian, you have to believe that cooling lava
slung off the sun with temperatures above 1700 degrees Fahrenheit could
turn into the chemical elements that would bring forth life from
inorganic matter. Man, you talk about faith! That takes some faith!
Something slung out of a mass that runs 3600 degrees, cools into a
molten lava, becomes minerals, and then these rocks produce life, do
they?

   Do you realize that right now man is desperately searching Venus,
Jupiter and every place he can find to try to prove that Darwin was
right? Our government has spent over fifty billion dollars to try to
overthrow Genesis 1. Isn't that something? Our government has spent
over fifty billion dollars to try to find life on some other planet to
prove that life is not unique to this planet. Life comes from life and
the original life must have come from a being possessing eternal life.
That is, there had to be some life existing before physical life was
created. If you are a straight thinker! Now, where can such life be
found? It can only be found in God who possesses eternal life. Psalm
36:9 says, "For with thee is the fountain of life." The apple tree, for
example, gets its life from the parent tree; the lamb gets life from
the mother sheep. Where did they get their life from? You have to go
back to the original creation. This answers the problem of what came
first, the chicken or the egg; the answer is obvious! The chicken! Life
can only come from life. Jesus said in John 11:25, "I am the
resurrection and the life." In John 14:6, "I am the way, the truth, and
the life." John 10:28, "And I give unto them eternal life." In John
5:40 He said to the educated people of His day, "And ye will not come
to me, that ye might have life." The Bible says in I John 5:12, "He
that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath
not life." All life proceeds from God.

   The theory of spontaneous generation has been proved to be false and
completely unacceptable to authoritative science. There is not a really
educated man (although he may wave some degree in your face) anywhere
in the world any more who believes in spontaneous generation (although
you find a few college teachers who do). Life must have a beginning.
The only logical answer, if you're logical at all, is that the
beginning of life was with God. This is what we call the life argument.

   ARGUMENT FROM CONGRUITY

   Finally, in our arguments for the existence of God in theological
discussion we have the argument from congruity. The theory of atheism
solves no problem; it only multiplies unsolved mysteries. If you have
ever taken a book on science and looked at what these scientists have
found out since the days of Copernicus and Galileo and before, you will
find that science has never solved one major problem that mankind had
on any continent anywhere in the world. All that science does is
discover new problems and partially solve old problems that bring up
new problems that remain unsolved. A man said, "What about the victory
over smallpox?" Try diabetes. A fellow said, "What about the victory
over pellagra?" How about multiple sclerosis? Don't kid us. Go kid the
folks who spend all their time getting diplomas and who think they're
smart. Go kid them. They're gullible. Science has never solved one
major problem man ever had. The problem of disease has never been
solved. The problem of starvation has never been solved. There will be
eight million people going to bed hungry tonight and half a million of
them will be dead before tomorrow morning. If you don't believe it,
travel to India and Africa and broaden your education.

   The most narrow-minded, bigoted and intolerant people in the world
are these scientists who profess to be broad-minded. There is not any
evidence that scientists have solved or ever will solve, one major
problem of mankind since the beginning. The problem of death has never
been solved. The problem of poverty has never been solved. Christ said
you will always have the poor with you (Matt. 26:11). You say, "We're
working on it." Don't talk like a fool. Of course, you're working on
it. You have to work to make a living. There are all kinds of ways of
making a living. You make a living working on those problems. Other
people make a living shelling peanuts and picking feathers off
chickens. So what? The theory of atheism solves no problems. It only
multiplies unsolved mysteries.

   The acceptance of the existence of God as Creator of the world is
like a magic key that fits all the facts of scripture, all the facts of
science, all the facts of revelation, all the facts of knowledge, and
all the facts of conscience and nature. This irrefutable doctrine is
held tenaciously by multitudes of souls who are willing to both live
and die in the consolation of the assurance that God is. Even the
devils believe in God and tremble, the Bible says.

   CONCLUSION

   So, what may we conclude in our first study? In our first study on
the existence of God we may conclude that atheism is only a giant
doubt. Its unbelief can only lead to darkness and despair and disaster
for the one accepting it. It can only lead to anarchy, paganism or
international socialism with the torture and imprisonment of millions
of people who do not knuckle down to a state as God. There is not a
real atheist anywhere in Russia or China. The god of atheism in Russia
is international communism. The god of every atheist and agnostic in
America is international socialism. There is no such thing as a man
without a god. The term "atheism" is like the term "annihilation." It
is really an insensible term which has no meaning at all. If a man does
not accept one god, he accepts another; and when you find people
correcting the Bible, they are setting up their brain and education as
their god.

   Acceptance of Genesis 1:1, "In the beginning God," leads a sincere
seeker into the path of a fuller revelation of God Himself as a
Trinity, as the Creator, and above all, as Saviour and Redeemer.
Hebrews 11:6 says, "...he that cometh to God must believe that he is,
and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him." Then, the
intelligent man will come to God in simple faith based on the
revelation of God in scripture and nature, believing and trusting that
God is and that a god who would not reveal himself is the wrong god. If
there is any God up there at all, He is obligated to reveal Himself to
His creation, and this fact delivers a deathly blow to agnostic science
when we consider that men communicate to each other by words. The thing
that sets man apart from animal as a separate species of creation is
the fact that man communicates by the use of words and sentences.
Animals have only cries for help, cries for hunger, cries of pleasure,
warnings to get away, or invitations to come near, but they cannot
communicate by words. Therefore, if there is any God up there at all
(and, of course, we say that with no doubt in our own mind),
theologically, it is impossible to believe that He would not reveal
Himself to His creation by words. This is so fundamental and
foundational in theological truth that when Jesus Christ shows up in
John 1, we read, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with
God, and the Word was God." John says in I John 1, "That which was from
the beginning which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes,
which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of
life." We Christians sing, "Sing them over again to me, wonderful words
of life." If there is a Creator at all, He is obligated to reveal
Himself to His creation. Any god who would create what you find down
here and then let this world take its course of six thousand years of
torture, abortion, bloodshed, murder, extortion, perversion, death,
disease, poverty, heartache, starvation, bereavement, war, and
imprisonment, while withdrawing himself, withholding himself and not
taking part in it, should be traded for a Model T Ford so you could
make some money. Now, it is very important for the theological student
to grasp this because theism and deism both teach in a god, but a god
who is not actively interested in and participating in his creation. If
sin is a problem down here, the God of creation would have to deal with
it or he would be the wrong god. If death is a problem down here, a god
who wouldn't actively participate in the death of his creation is not a
compassionate god. Therefore, any god (whether man believes in God or
not) who is not interested in the sin, sorrow and death of the beings
he created is (I say it reverently) a phoney.

   The God of the Bible, on the other hand, meets all the requirements.
He comes down--God manifest in the flesh, I Timothy 3:16--and becomes a
man. Christ calls Himself the "Son of man" and a man of sorrows
"acquainted with grief," a man who was "wounded for our transgressions,
bruised for our iniquities," the chastisements of our peace was upon
Him, and "with His stripes we are healed." I say this only to point out
to the student or teacher of the word of God that the God of the Bible
is the only god who can meet the requirements of human nature. Any
other god is a bitter disappointment and a charlatan. Any other god is
a "conman." The God of revelation is the only god who can satisfy the
longing of the human heart, for the God and Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ is the only god in any religion who is actively interested in
coming down and sharing the suffering and sorrow of His creatures,
dying in the place of His creatures, and offering to His creatures
eternal life as a free gift. This puts all other gods on the bargain
counter with used Edsels and worn-out yo-yos. They are hoaxes. They are
tragic substitutes for the real thing because they cannot satisfy the
yearning of the human heart.

   God is not subject to the microscopic scrutiny of man. God is the
subject of revelation. John 1:18 says, "No man hath seen God at any
time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he
hath declared him." First John 4:12 says, "No man hath seen God at any
time." The Lord said to Moses in Exodus 33:20, "Thou canst not see my
face: for there shall no man see me." Now, Moses talked to God and had
a revelation of Him, but he did not see the Lord's face directly.
Jesus, who is a real man in the Bible, was God's Son, coming down from
heaven to reveal God the Father to sinners. So, when He spoke to Philip
in John 14:7-10, Jesus said that He is the revelation of God. He said,
"He that hath seen me hath seen the Father."

   Catholicism says, "Join thyself." Buddhism says, "Annihilate
thyself." Pagan wisdom says, "Man, know thyself." Mohammedanism says,
"Man, submit thyself." Modern education says, "Man, realize thyself."
But Jesus said, "Deny thyself," and, "Come unto me, all ye that labour
and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you,
and learn of me;...for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light" (see
Matt. 11:28-30). In John 17:3, we read how God and Christ His Son have
eternal life to give. We read, "And this is life eternal, that they
might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast
sent." You say, "What about all these other religions that profess the
same thing?" Easy. Try them out and you will find them to be hoaxes.
Try them out and you will find that they do not give you victory over
sin. They put you in a passive state where you pretend you don't have
any sins when you still have them. At the great Congress of Religions
at the World's Fair in 1932 (when scores of religions got together to
talk about their ecumenical magpie mess to try to bring all men
together under the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of man), after
nearly a week of discussion, Joseph Cook stood up in that group of
dignitaries (which included Roman Catholic cardinals and bishops, Greek
Orthodox elders and patriarchs, Protestant deacons and preachers,
Mohammedan teachers of the Koran, and Buddhist and Hindu gurus) and
said, "How cleansest thou this red right hand?" Now if you don't
recognize the quotation, it's from Macbeth. After Macbeth commits is
murder he says, "How cleanseth thou this red right hand?" That is, "Now
that I have sinned, how do I get clean?" There was no religion that
could tell him how to do it permanently. The Romans told him to confess
it, get contrition and absolution for it, do penance for it, but he
couldn't know for sure the thing was gone because he could only hope
for heaven and could not know for sure whether he was going to hell or
not until he was dead. The Protestants told him to live a good life to
amend for his sins. The Buddhists insisted that if he had followed the
noble eightfold path he wouldn't have committed the sin, but that never
solved the problem. The problem was having sinned against an eternal
being who lives forever. How do I pay for it unless I make an eternal
payment? That is the problem. They had no answer for it. There is no
answer for it, unless what the Bible says is true. "The blood of Jesus
Christ, God's Son, cleanseth us from all sin." And again, "In whom we
have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins"
(Colossians 1:14).

   GOD AS A BALANCED BEING

   In this lesson we will discuss God as a balanced being. You must
remember that although God is loving, merciful and faithful, at the
same time the Bible reveals Him as just, holy, and righteous. This
country has had so much of the "love of God" that they think God is a
Santa Claus sitting up in heaven waiting to kiss somebody. This country
has had so much of love they can read John 3:16 and never blush.
America has been exposed to so much love, preached by lovely people who
want people to love them so they can get their money, that this country
has forgotten that God is just and that God is holy and that God is
righteous and that He will not tolerate sin, never has tolerated sin
and never will tolerate sin. War is God's judgment on sin here and hell
is God's judgment on sin hereafter. God has never gone out of business
in His attitude toward sin nor will He ever.

   Many Christians today have a lopsided view of God. Some
overemphasize His love and forget that He is just and holy at the same
time. Now, it is the love of God that allows God to forgive sin and to
show mercy to a repentant sinner, but it is the holiness and justice of
God that demands that sin must be punished to the fullest extent of the
law. Romans 6:23 says, "For the wages of sin is death." We read that
every transgression in the Old Testament received a "just recompense of
reward."

   We must get a balanced view of God. The emotions that show up in man
are small, depraved counterfeits or counterparts of the original nature
that is perfect and holy and righteous. The liberal and the atheist, of
course, have trouble with this because they figure this way (figuring
from the depths of their depraved natures): "Well, surely God is better
than man, so if man hates, God wouldn't hold a grudge against anybody.
God can't hate anybody." They figure, "Well, if man can forgive an
enemy, then certainly, God can forgive a man anything." This, of
course, is a perverted view of the majesty of God. Every attribute of
man is magnified a thousand times in the Lord. God, to be a balanced
God, has to have a balanced nature; God Almighty has to be a perfect
being. His jealousy has to be perfect. His love has to be perfect. His
righteousness has to be perfect. If God were a human being He would be
completely frustrated. God is not like a human being. God is God and
His holiness is perfect. His righteousness is perfect. His justice is
perfect.

   God will not acquit sin at all or overlook the sins of the sinner.
They have to be paid for in some way. We have Calvary as the
manifestation of God's willingness to pay for man's crimes which God
does not forgive apart from substitutionary atonement. The trouble, of
course, comes from trying to liken man to God and creating a god after
man's image or creating a god after man's fanciful pagan imagination.
The God of the Bible created man in His image and man fell. Therefore,
man's emotions and feelings, his jealousy, his wrath, his
righteousness, his justice, man's laughter, his tears, his holiness,
his goodness, his kindness, and his mercy are fallen counterparts. They
are minimized remnants of the once great and holy character of man's
Creator--God.

   Although God became man in the flesh, God in essence is a spirit
and, therefore, He is a balanced being and all His attributes are
perfect. God is not a mere human being. If God were a mere human being
you could deal with Him like any other man. God is not a mere human
being. God is not a man. Numbers 23:19 says, "God is not a man, that he
should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent." God is not
a man and His wrath and His love work together in perfect harmony, for
one becomes a balance for the other. For example, for a man to argue
that hell is impossible and that a loving God could not send a hapless
human being there for ever and ever is an unbalanced view of God which
comes from a mental sickness on the sinner's part. To argue that hell
is impossible on the grounds that you don't want to believe it is
nonsense. And if you continue to reject the truth of it, after it has
been revealed, on the grounds that you don't believe or you can't
"prove it" only proves that many people are mentally sick.

   You have never seen the back side of the planet Neptune. What does
that mean? You don't know what is beyond the third heaven or the sea of
glass. What does that mean? There is no man who has seen the
inhabitants of the earth (that the Bible speaks about) who are in the
bottomless pit about 4,000 miles straight under your feet. So what? To
argue that hell is impossible is a rather stupid argument in view of
the fact that many unsaved men have a foretaste of hell before they get
there to such an extent that they even say "hell is just in your mind."
To argue that hell is impossible is ridiculous in view of the fact that
Jesus Christ stated it was a fact. As a matter of fact, in the Sermon
on the Mount it was the Lord Jesus Christ who first coined the
expression "hell fire." People who don't like "hell fire preaching"
don't have any business fooling with the Sermon on the Mount. Yet, some
of the wildest situations you ever heard of occur in America where
liberal socialists are majoring in the "Sermon on the Mount" and never
talk about hell fire.

   To argue that hell is impossible proves that a sinner has an
unbalanced view of God. To understand the horrors of hell and the
blackout at Calvary, we need to think about the holiness of God and the
severity of God: God's wrath on sin. How can any of you talk about the
love of God and the love of Christ when you read in II Corinthians
5:21, "For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we
might be made the righteousness of God in him." What do you suppose is
involved in God making Jesus Christ to become the personification of
sin? Love? In plainer words, when we reject the doctrine of hell and
the severity of God, we are unbalanced--not the Lord. What do you
suppose is involved in this statement: "For Christ also hath once
suffered for sins, the just for the unjust," I Peter 3:18? You call
that love? What do you make of this statement: "Christ hath redeemed us
from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us," Galatians 3:13?
Would you say that if God turned you into a curse that that was a
manifestation of His love? No. To understand the horrors of hell and
eternal punishment you have to remember that the God who reveals
Himself in the word of God is a holy God. He is not like the god who
reveals himself in Transcendental Meditation--the great passive neuter
force. He is not like the god presented by the graduates and the
faculty members of the leading state universities in America--the great
neuter force field or the energy field of eternal evolution.

   The God of the Bible reveals Himself as holy and He manifests a
severe attitude against sin. That is why many scientists prefer other
religions. The holiness of God demands that we be holy. The law of God
pronounces eternal damnation on the guilty sinner in accordance with
the justice of God. One of the great marvels of our age is that God
found a way of salvation that satisfies both His holiness and His love.
You read about this in Romans 3. How can God be just and at the same
time justify all the sinners? The only way God can be just and holy and
justify the sinner is to take the sinner's place. This solution
satisfies the law and leaves man as a creature with a free will who can
choose either salvation or damnation, or heaven or hell.

   God Is Holy

   All right, first of all, God is holy. You can't imagine a God who
can be anything but perfect and holy. If He is not perfectly holy then
He's not God. To be holy, of course, means to be free from all
defilement--to be pure. God is absolutely pure. The Bible says in I
John 1:5, "...God is light, and in him is no darkness at all." Habakkuk
1:13 says, "Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not
look on iniquity." In Exodus 15:11 we read, "Who is like unto thee, O
Lord...glorious in holiness." In 1 Samuel 2:2, "There is none holy as
the Lord: for there is none beside thee." In Isaiah 6:3 the seraphims
are crying, "Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts." Simon Peter says
in I Peter 1:16, "Because it is written, Be ye holy; for I am holy."
This holiness of God separates Him from man.

   Educated sinners who like to think they are all right always reject
the first three chapters in Genesis. You will find the standard
operating procedure for faculty members of state schools is to pretend
that from Genesis 10 onward we are dealing with history but from
Genesis 10 backward we are dealing with mythology. Strange, isn't it?
Of course, they are forced to admit that from Genesis 10 on is history
because it is recorded history and dead men tell tales and the stones
and rocks cry out. See Luke 19:40. There is evidence for the flood in
history. There is evidence of Ur and Lachish and Akkad, the Babylonian
cities in history. There is evidence of Abraham's dwelling place in Ur
of the Chaldees and of the ziggurats in Babylonian history. Therefore,
the standard way of handling the Bible by the unregenerate, fallen,
depraved, Christ-rejecting, God-defying sinner is to pretend that
everything from Genesis 10 on is history but from Genesis 10 backward
is mythology and legend. Why? Because the first three chapters state
that man is not going up: he is going down. The first three chapters
teach that Darwin was a bigger monkey than he thought he was. The first
three chapters teach that you were made in the image of God and that
you are now descending to the level of a beast. That is what we call
"negativism." I believe that one ounce of negativism is worth a pound
of positivism when it comes to dealing with the truth. And these
positive thinkers, after all, are the most negative thinkers in the
world when you get right down to it.

   The most intolerant people who ever lived are scientists who profess
to be broad-minded. You throw that old King James Bible at them and
watch them clam up and have hysterics and strip their gears and burn
out their clutch plate and burn the valves and throw pieces of
carburetor all over the highway. There is nobody in this world more
narrow-minded or more intolerant than a religious liberal. Nobody! They
are the people who try to get Bible broadcasts off the radio. They are
the people who try to shut down the radio stations with blackmail by
threatening the FCC. They are the people who can't stand any Bible
truth contrary to their own liberal upbringing. Well, in the Bible the
holiness of God separates him from fallen man, and man is a fallen
creature.

   "Ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of
Christ," Ephesians 2:13. The only way that man can approach a holy God
is through shedding of blood, for "the life of the flesh is in the
blood" and God is life and God gave life to man. There is not a heathen
in the darkest parts of Africa or Asia who doesn't know that "without
shedding of blood is no remission" of sins (Heb. 9:22). You have to go
to college to "unlearn" that basic universal truth. God is holy in the
Bible. The God of the Bible hates sin. His holy wrath will punish sin.
And this explains Isaiah 53:10 where the Bible says, "Yet it pleased
the Lord to bruise him" (Jesus Christ). Isaiah 53:5 says, "But he was
wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the
chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are
healed." God is holy. The God of the Bible is not the god of Buddhism
and Hinduism. The God of the Bible is holy and does not tolerate sin.
The God of the Bible does not call evil good and good evil. The God of
the Bible never speaks about "values clarification" and "relative
situation ethics." That is the work of the Christ-rejecting, hellbound,
fallen Adamic nature and it seeks to set up its own standards to
replace God's standards because God's standards are too high. God is
holy. You say, "Well, how in the world can I become holy like God?" You
cannot apart from a sinless Saviour who died in your place. Like they
say out in the world, "No way, man, no way."

   God Is Love

   All right, secondly, God is love. We read in I John 4:8, "He that
loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love." This is not only a verb
that says God loves, but it is also a noun--"for God is love." If God
lives in a person's heart by conversion, then they must love Him, for
He is indwelt by love. John said in I John 4:7, "Beloved, let us love
one another: for love is of God."

   What is love? Well, out there on the magazine racks love is
fornication, premarital sex, perversion, bestiality and adultery--or
adult consent in adultery. When the newsstand speaks of "love" and
somebody's love affair and somebody's romance, they are talking about
fornication and adultery. You are living in a day and age that never
"tells it like it is." It professes to be the most frank and open
generation on the scene, but it is the most deceitful, hypocritical,
varnished, veneered, shellacked generation that ever lived. What is
love? Well, folks talk about "falling in love," that is, covetousness
or emotional upset. Folks talk about "making love," meaning fornication
or adultery or a married situation or relationship. Of course, this
isn't love.

   Love is a desire for and a delight in the welfare of the one on whom
the love is bestowed. Love is giving. True love is even love for your
enemy--Matthew 5:46, "For if ye love them which love you, what reward
have ye? do not even the publicans the same?" A hippie who loves the
hippie, groupie, Moonie and the communists and hates "the
establishment" is a rascal. Christ said, "Love your enemies...pray
for them which despitefully use you" (Matthew 5:44), "...bless, and
curse not," Romans 12:14. If all you can love are the folks who are in
agreement with you, you "ain't worth shooting."

   Love is a desire for and a delight in the welfare of the one on whom
the love is bestowed. If you love somebody, you want to give things to
them. Do you love God? If you love somebody you like to spend time with
them. Do you love God? I didn't ask you if you put up with Him as a
boarder or dictator or paid Him weekly rent as a landlord. If you love
somebody you want to talk with them. If you love somebody you take
sides with them against their enemies. Do you love God? If you love
somebody you hesitate to think evil of them and always think the best
of them. Do you love God?

   The love of God is manifested toward the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ,
and believers in particular. The Bible says of the unbeliever in John
3:36, "He that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath
of God abideth on him." The Bible says about the religious man that is
counting on his religion and his sacraments to save him that he is
alone in the world, "dead in trespasses and sin," without hope,
"without God," and that he is by nature, by birth, a child of wrath.
Read Ephesians 2. Now, how is that for a negative picture of mankind?
You don't read through the Bible very far before you see why it is not
permitted in a college curriculum except as dead history and as a
sample of poetic beauty. You don't have to read through the Bible very
far before you find out why professors ceased to study the great
doctrines and truths of the Bible and believe them. You don't have to
read a great deal of the Bible to see why many people prefer Hinduism,
Buddhism, Protestantism, Catholicism, Judaism, or Rama Krishna--
somebody who won't rock the boat.

   In the Bible, if you've never been born again by the Spirit of God,
apart from your religion and your sacraments and the rest of your
nonsense, you are dead in trespasses and sins; you're going to hell.
You say, "I don't like that." Don't get mad at me. Turn off your head
instead of the radio. Get mad with God. Phone up the Lord in heaven and
say, "Look here, I don't like your Book. I don't believe your Book. I
know I'm better than that. What right have you to talk to me that way?
Look who I am." And then some day the undertakers will put you to bed
with a shovel and you will find out who you are. You say, "Why is it
necessary to talk that way?" Because this country is so saturated with
Hollywood love and the National Enquirer, Observer, and Midnight kind
of love that the average person in America when he talks about love is
simply talking through his stack.

   The Bible says in John 16:27, "For the Father himself loveth you,
because ye have loved me, and have believed that I came out from God."
"For God so loved the world"--past tense--"that he gave his only
begotten Son"--past tense. This caused God to work out a plan of
salvation to give men an opportunity to escape wrath and damnation. God
is a loving Father and manifests His love to the Christian by
chastening. "For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourageth
every son whom he receiveth," Hebrews 12:6. Then, love in the Bible is
defined as giving. "For God so loved the world that he gave...." It is
very possible for you to give without loving. But, you cannot love
without giving. In every love affair on the face of this earth there is
an element of selfishness on the part of one or both parties. You
haven't got one love affair on the face of this earth where somebody
isn't trying to get something for themselves. And this means simply
this: If you've missed the love of the Lord Jesus Christ as your
personal Saviour, you have missed the greatest love on the face of this
earth. Christ loved you enough to die for your sins, and you have no
other friend who would love you like that.

   God Is Faithful

   God is faithful. "God is faithful, by whom ye were called unto the
fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord," I Corinthians 1:9.
Deuteronomy 7:9 says, "Know therefore that the Lord thy God, he is God,
the faithful God...." Now, this word "faithful" means somebody who can
be safely trusted who is reliable and dependable. God is faithful for
He is honest and never changes. His "faithfulness reacheth unto the
clouds," says Psalm 36:5. "All his works are done in truth," David says
in Psalm 33:4. God's faithfulness is manifested in His keeping of His
promises and in His fulfilling every word that He has spoken. God is
unchangeable, for as Balaam said back in Numbers 23:19, "God is not a
man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent:
hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he
not make it good?" Yes, He will. God will keep every promise to
protect, assist and guide His child in need.

   Some of the greatest promises in the word of God held out to the
believer are so great that they are called "exceeding great and
precious promises" by Simon Peter in II Peter 1:4. I will only quote a
few of them, but you can see by the checkbook that the Lord has given
you to fill out that a believer in Jesus Christ who has been born again
has access to riches that no unsaved man has access to, no matter how
high he is in his religiosity.

   Check Number One--"But my God shall supply all your need according
to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus," Philippians 4:19.

   Check Number Two--"I can do all things through Christ which
strengtheneth me," Philippians 4:13.

   Check Number Three--"...He which hath begun a good work in you will
perform it until the day of Jesus Christ," Philippians 1:6.

   Check Number Four--The Lord is faithful, "So that we may boldly say,
The Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me,"
Hebrews 13:6.

   Check Number Five--"And God is able to make all grace abound toward
you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound
to every good work," 2 Corinthians 9:8.

   Check Number Six--"For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life,
nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor
things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be
able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our
Lord," Romans 8:38-39.

   And finally, Check Number Seven--"And we know that all things work
together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called
according to his purpose," Romans 8:28.

   "If we believe not, yet he abideth faithful: he cannot deny
himself," II Timothy 2:13. And Paul says in I Corinthians 10:13, "God
is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are
able; but will with the temptation also make a way of escape, that ye
may be able to bear it."

   God Is Merciful

   Moses says in Deuteronomy 4:31, "(For the Lord thy God is a merciful
God:) he will not forsake thee...." Now, a little bit later he did put
Israel aside, but notice the statement is that He will not forsake thee
in the sense of if you are willing to go by what He said, then He will
keep His promise to you and will not forsake you and will show mercy.
Notice that instead of inflicting pain and death every time as a
punishment for sin the Lord is merciful and spares the sinner and gives
the sinner many blessings, health, comforts and earthly joys; and these
are given to both saved and lost. I don't know how many times God has
given some of you people a good meal who didn't even bow your head at
the table and thank God for the meal. Amen? I don't know how many of
you God has gotten out of car wrecks and you still think you are
smarter than Peter, James, John, Matthew, Mark and Luke. I don't know
how many of you God has saved from a violent death, being thrown by a
bucking horse or brushfire. I have no idea. I only know that God is
merciful, and God spares the sinner over and over and over again.

   And yet, in all His sparing and all His mercy, the Lord says in
Proverbs 29:1, "He, that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall
suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy." Throughout all God's
mercy is the constant warning that although God will put up with some
things temporarily and be merciful to you, he won't put up with it
forever. His mercy "endures forever" in the sense that God keeps His
word and God will spare the saved sinner, but His mercy ceases in hell,
unless you can call a lake of fire mercy for people who have rejected
Jesus Christ. I can't imagine anything more like hell than being in
heaven with Jesus Christ when I didn't believe on Him and thought He
was just like Buddha. Wouldn't that be hell--having to cast your
rewards which you had earned at the feet of a man you didn't trust? How
would you like to look into the eyes of a man who loved you enough to
die for you, knowing that you never trusted Him and never thanked Him
and never received Him. Maybe in that sense hell is "mercy."

   Matthew 5:45 says God "...Maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on
the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust." God will
give good crops to an atheist. What does that mean? It doesn't mean
anything. One time an atheist sent a letter to a preacher and he said,
"Preacher, it's October, and I plant on Sunday, plow on Sunday, harvest
on Sunday, and here it is October and I've got the biggest bank account
of any farmer in this county. Now, how do you account for that?" And
the preacher wrote him back and said, "God doesn't settle accounts in
October. That's how you account for that." You may have gotten away
with it 100 times, but you won't get away with it at the White Throne
Judgment; you won't. The Bible says, "Because sentence against an evil
work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men
is fully set in them to do evil," Ecclesiastes 8:11.

   God is sovereign and can choose to show His mercy to whom He
desires. Romans 9:15 says, "For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on
whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have
compassion." The mercy of God can be shown to the multitudes. Exodus
20:6 says, "And showing mercy unto thousands of them" (then here is His
condition) "that love me, and keep my commandments." In this day and
age God has chosen to show His mercy to people who come to Jesus and
trust Him as their salvation. He may allow His mercy to extend
generally to an unsaved man, but His mercy in eternity (eternal mercy,
eternal heaven, eternal life, and eternal joy) only comes to the man
who does what God told him to do. And, what God told you to do is to
quit trusting your own righteousness and trust His righteousness.

   Now, how great is the mercy of God? In Psalm 103:11 we read, "For as
the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy" (condition)
"upon them that fear him." Again in Psalm 103:17, "But the mercy of the
Lord is from everlasting to everlasting" (condition) "upon them that
fear him." Notice in Proverbs 9:10, "The fear of the Lord is the
beginning of wisdom." And for some proud, self-righteous, stubborn,
self-reliant, self-preserving, self-sustaining, selfish, egotistical,
religious, bloated, puffed up, swelled up, puff-shirted people to go
around talking about the mercy of God is like Charles Manson talking
about being a Bible-believing preacher. If you're doing that, you're
not kidding anybody but yourself. "The fear of the Lord is the
beginning of wisdom." And don't tell us that you don't have to learn to
fear God. You also have to consider going to hell at judgment. If you
haven't considered it you've overlooked it and are dealing just with
the positive aspects of God, God's mercy. You've got a perverted god.
He's a crook.

   If your god only has one side to him, love and mercy, you haven't
got the God of the Bible. You have not got a holy God. You have an
unbalanced god. Why not trade him in for a used car and make yourself
some money? People say, "Do you have to talk that way?" That is the way
to talk in dealing with eternal things, and if you are honest, there is
no other way to put it. You say, "I don't believe that." All right, sit
still a minute and reason. Now listen, if your god only has love and
mercy, I say he's a pervert. Do you know why? Because if all he has is
love and mercy, then he has to love fornication, adultery, perversion,
deviation, bestiality, blackmail, embezzlement, lying, killing
swearing, cheating and extortion. He has to love them with the same
degree that he loves honesty, purity, decency, courage and
righteousness. Now, there is that great big synthesized, integrated,
passive, relative god. There he is. He's a freak. That is not the God
and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. That is not the God who reveals
Himself in the word of God. That is some other god. That is some other
gospel. That has nothing to do with the revelation of God concerning
Himself. That is a lost sinner trying to fashion God after the image
man would like to create Him in so that God won't interfere with his
devilment.

   Again, Psalm 32:10, "...He that trusteth in the Lord, mercy shall
compass him about." Then, we learn something. We learn that even an
unsaved, Christ-rejecting. hell-bound sinner can experience the mercy
of God in this life. God's mercy is one of His communicable attributes
which He can communicate to man. However, when it comes to eternal
mercy (the mercy of the Lord from everlasting to everlasting), this
only occurs at Calvary in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ who is
"God manifest in the flesh." God is determined to show everlasting
mercy upon the sinner who trusts His Son and receives His Son. When the
penitent sinner comes to Jesus for forgiveness, he claims no merit, but
he throws himself upon the mercy of the Lord. When the unsaved man
comes to God for salvation, he doesn't come for justice. He comes for
mercy.

   Now, the Lord Jesus Christ is very clear about this in the New
Testament and He has something to say to you egotistical, self-
inflated puffed-shirts who think that you are somebody and who think
that your little old sacraments, your little old religion and your
little old rinkey-dinkey "golden rule" can get you to heaven. The Lord
Jesus Chr;st has something to say to you in Matthew 9:12,13, "But when
Jesus heard that, he said unto them, They that be whole need not a
physician, but they that are sick. But go ye and learn what that
meaneth...." You ready? Matthew 9:13, "...I will have mercy, and not
sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to
repentance." Are you righteous? Then get out of the way and let a
sinner get saved! The Lord has no business with you. That Bible says in
Romans 5:8, "But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we
were yet sinners, Christ died for us." Romans 5:6, "For when we were
yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly."

   Are you ungodly? Are you a sinner? If you are not then stay out of
the way--the Lord has business to do and you are in the way. The Bible
says about you that you "stand in the way of sinners." The Bible says
about you that you don't enter the kingdom of God and you stop those
that are entering from going in. The Bible says about you that you
stumble and cause those to stumble who are trying to find Christ.

   (Read Malachi 2:8 and Matthew 23.) If you are not ungodly or a
sinner, then you have no business getting in the way of people who are
trying to find Christ. Get off the track before you get run over in the
traffic. When the sinner comes to Jesus Christ for forgiveness, he
claims no merit, but he throws himself upon the mercy of the Lord. He
claims not his own righteousness but God's righteousness which is Jesus
Christ; he does not plead for a chance to "live it" and does not point
to his own life. He says with the ancient publican of yore, "God be
merciful to me a sinner" (Luke 18:13). Another famous sinner (who wrote
nearly a quarter of the Old Testament) said one time, "Have mercy upon
me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness..." (Ps. 51:1).

   God is merciful. There is not a case where man ever came to God in
fear, trusting God's righteousness and God's goodness, that God ever
turned a man down. And the Lord Jesus Christ held out his open
invitation to sinners in John 6:37, "...him that cometh to me I will in
no wise cast out." For 2,000 years the Lord Jesus Christ has been
standing at the crossroads of eternity inviting men to come to Him. He
says in Matthew 11:28-30, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are
heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn
of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto
your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." He said to a
certain group of self-righteous religious people, "And ye will not come
to me, that ye might have life," John 5:40. The last invitation in the
Bible before the prayer for the Second Coming of Christ says, "...the
Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And
let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the
water of life freely," Revelation 22:17. God is merciful.

   God Is Just

   God is just. Moses said in Deuteronomy 32:4, "...God of truth and
without iniquity, just and right is he." David said in Psalm 19:9,
"...The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." The
God of the universe is just and righteous and will mete out just
judgment to each individual. Abraham said in Genesis 18:25, "...Shall
not the Judge of all the earth do right?" He certainly will. If you
want justice, you will get it. If you want God to square accounts with
you and give you what you have coming to you, I'll guarantee you He
will do it. That Bible says that in the day of judgment "...He shall
reward every man according to his works" (Matt. 16:27). And He said in
Romans 2:1,5,6, "Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou
art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest
thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things. But after thy
hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against
the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God; Who
will render to every man according to his deeds." Solomon said, "For
God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing,
whether it be good, or whether it be evil," Ecclesiastes 12:14. God
will bring you into judgment--whether it be good or whether it be evil.

   God is just. He will make no mistakes. Isaiah 45 21, "...there is no
God else beside me; a just God and a Saviour...." God, being just,
righteous and holy, must act in a manner that is just, righteous,
upright and holy; and He will. If your sins deserve hell, the Lord
knows it. If pitting your puny self-righteousness against the
righteousness of God is a crime worse than adultery or murder, I'll
tell you somebody who knows it, if your pastor doesn't know it. God
does! If your standing up and shaking your fist in the face of God
Almighty and bragging about your golden rule and your ten commandments
while you were trying to prove that your righteousness was as good as
the righteousness of Jesus Christ so that you wouldn't have to trust
him merits a lake of fire, don't worry, you will make it! First Samuel
2:3 says, "...the Lord is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are
weighed." God's nature of character leads Him to do that which is right
at all times and God as the Just One will be the final Judge of all
things. Notice I Kings 8:32, "Then hear thou in heaven, and do, and
judge thy servants, condemning the wicked, to bring his way upon his
head; and justifying the righteous, to give him according to his
righteousness." Notice also Revelation 20:12-15, "And I saw the dead,
small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and
another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were
judged out of those things which were written in the books, according
to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and
death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were
judged every man according to their works. And death and hell were cast
into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not
found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire."

   Conclusion

   So, we learn from our lesson on God as a balanced being that God is
holy, God is love, God is faithful, God is merciful, God is just and
that our God "is a consuming fire" (Deut. 4:24 and Heb. 12:29). Now,
how can God be loving and still demand holiness at the same time? How
can He be merciful and at the same time take care of the guilty sinner?
The answer can only be found at Calvary. It cannot be found in any
system of works on the face of this earth. The answer to the problem
can only be found at Calvary. At Golgotha we find expressed both the
wrath of God against sin and the mercy of God toward the guilty sinner.
So, in speaking of God's attributes, we learn several things at
Calvary. We learn first of all that God loves sinners and wants to save
them. We also learn that God desires to justify sinners knowing that
they cannot justify themselves. We learn that God wants to demonstrate
toward sinners His absolute perfect righteousness so that they can see
what He requires. We learn that God Himself is willing to take man's
suffering, pain, temptation, sorrow, and sickness in Himself and bear
the punishment of the guilty, although He, God Himself, is not guilty.

   Thus, Calvary is where a cross is found. We find where man's will
and where God's will cross, and where that cross is we find the
righteousness of man obliterated by the righteousness of God. At that
cross we find the mercy of God level and just and distributed evenly
and we find the wrath of God descending vertically on the helpless back
of the crucified Saviour. You cannot find salvation in this age apart
from a completed. perfected blood atonement. You say, "You're very
dogmatic about that, Brother Harris." I don't have to worry about it.
I'm talking to bloody people. I never have to worry in qualifying my
Ianguage to prove anything or validate anything. My congregation is
bloody. The life of the flesh is in the blood. Whether you call that
trouble Bright's disease, Hodgkin's disease, leukemia,
arteriosclerosis, hardening of the arteries, blood clot, or anything
else, when your blood ceases to function, you are dead.

   So, when I talk about a blood atonement for sin I'm talking to
anybody. I don't have to be choosey. I don't care if you are a Roman
Catholic priest. an Episcopal bishop. a Roman Catholic archbishop, a
Jewish rabbi or a Buddhist or Hindu guru. I don't have to worry about
whether you believe in daily vacation Bible school or whether you are a
Bible-believing Baptist preacher or a Methodist steward or a
Presbyterian elder or a Baptist deacon. You are all in the same boat.
The Bible says, "the life of the flesh is in the blood."

   The Bible says in Romans 3:22-23, "...There is no difference: For
all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." And when it comes
to sin, there is no more difference between a doctor and a lawyer than
there is between a junkie, a pimp, a prostitute and a bum. I know that
some of you people who were deceived into thinking that your education
and your money made you respectable don't like that, but who cares what
you like anyway? I mean, after all, when faced with the absolute truth
of the word of God, what does your opinion amount to? What does my
opinion amount to? Less than nothing! The Bible says that "there is no
difference." Now, if it says that, it means that. The fact that you
think you are different because of your education, your money, your
social image or your religious standing is no concern of mine and the
Lord is not going to regard it one way or another. The Bible says in
Romans 2:11, "For there is no respect of persons with God."

   Calvary is common ground. It is ground which levels all men to
sinners and even includes God's Son as a sinner. You read in your Bible
in Isaiah 53:12 that Jesus Christ "...was numbered with the
transgressors." When He came to the ministry of John the Baptist
where sinners were being immersed and John tried to stop Him, Jesus
said, "Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to fulfill all
righteousness" (Matt. 3:15). He took His place as a sinner in His
baptism. He took His place as a sinner on Calvary. And God bless your
soul, doctor, reverend, rabbi, father, lawyer, or whatever you call
yourself, you will take your place there, or in eternity you will see
the other side of God's face, the side you didn't believe was there.
God is love but not that kind of sentimental love that gushes over sin.
The love of God is holy and just. God hates sin and God will not
tolerate it. It you don't believe it. just keep on like you are going
and you will find out.

   To understand God, His being, character and nature, we must study
Calvary. We must study the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. We must
spend time with Psalm 22. Spend time with Isaiah 53. If you are an
orthodox Jew, you will find both of these passages in your Old
Testament. If you don't believe the New Testament, then read Exodus 12,
Psalm 110, Psalm 22, Genesis 12, Isaiah 53, and Zachariah 10,11, and
12. If you are a Catholic or Protestant and you believe the New
Testament, spend some time in Romans 5,6,7,8,9 and 10. Spend some time
in Ephesians 1,2 and 3. Spend some time in Colossians 2,3 and 4. Above
all, spend some time in your New Testament in the Gospel of John.
Calvary satisfies the holiness and justice of God by fulfilling all the
requirements of the law and permits a sinner to enter heaven legally.
Or, as Paul says in Acts 13:38,39, "...Through this man is preached
unto you the forgiveness of sins: And by him all that believe are
justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the
law of Moses." Again, "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the
law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one
that hangeth on a tree" Galatians 3:13. Jesus Christ's death on
Calvary's cross not only justifies you from the ceremonial laws given
to the Jews but also from the moral laws of the ten commandments, which
is perfectly clear from Romans 13 and II Corinthians 3.

   Now, if you are one of those foolish people who believe that you are
saved partly by faith and partly by works because you spend your time
in James instead of Romans and if you are one of those deceived, self-
righteous sinners who is always going to the Judaistic portion of the
New Testament to prove salvation by works (where you have got no
business being), you should spend some time in Romans 13 and II
Corinthians 3. Learn that the ten commandments--all ten, not just nine
of them--were taken care of when Jesus Christ died on the cross. The
Christian is no longer under the law. He is under grace. You say,
"Well, what then, shall we...?" Oh, never mind all that hot air. When
we begin to talk about salvation by grace through faith, we always have
these self-righteous, scripture-quoting Christians coming in and trying
to damn the sinner before he can find Christ by telling him that if he
does get saved he will have to do this and this and this and this and
this. These men are blind guides who lead the blind and they "both
shall fall into the ditch" (Matt. 15:14).

   If you want to know what happens to a saved child of God who doesn't
live right, the Bible is very clear on it. But it certainly is never
connected with his redemption or his salvation. His redemption and
salvation are completed at Calvary when Christ said, "It is finished."
When Jesus Christ died on Calvary's cross, He satisfied the holy
demands of a holy God for a just and righteous life and a perfect blood
atonement, dying in the stead of the sinner. May God help you to see
that today. May God reveal to you that Christ died, "...The just for
the unjust, that he might bring us to God," I Peter 3:18.

   STUDY IN THEOLOGY #3 -- The Trinity

   1. Proof The Trinity Exists

   In this study we will deal with the Trinity. The Trinity, of course,
is not a Roman invention as you hear falsely presented by the
Campbellites, nor is the Trinity the half accomplished thing taught by
the followers of Judge Rutherford and Pastor Russell, nor is the
Trinity some "Jesus only" doctrine picked up by many charismatic
groups. All of these groups have trouble with the word of God and none
of them are sound in doctrine, nor can their adherents study the Bible
properly; therefore, they get into all kinds of trouble. One group
says, "Well, if you've seen Christ, you've seen the Father; therefore,
the Father's name is Jesus," which, of course, is nonsense. Jesus is
the name of a human being--a man. God is a spirit. On the other hand,
when the followers of Pastor Russell and Judge Rutherford get into the
same mess, they would not think of calling the Father "Jesus," so they
bend over backward the other way, go clean overboard and make as bad a
mess and try to pretend the Father is one God and the Son is another
God. This ancient heresy was called "Arianism" and it was discussed in
the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. The followers of the Watchtower
Society have never yet corrected the false teaching, nor have they
analyzed it, nor can they discuss it. Men who ignore the lessons of
history are condemned to repeat the lessons of history. So, we find the
New American Standard Version in John 1:18 teaching the ancient Arian
heresy of two Gods, an uncreated God--God the Father, and a created
God--Jesus Christ. This heresy is called Russellism or Arianism and was
supposedly settled at the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D.

   Now we know that there is one God and that this God is Creator of
the world and the universe. This God is the God of Genesis 1:1 who
spoke the world into existence. Deuteronomy 6:4 says, "Hear, O Israel:
The Lord our God is one Lord." There is only one God. However, a
careful study of the scriptures will show that this God exists in three
persons; that is, the Godhead is manifested in three persons. We read
about the Godhead in Romans 1:20 where Paul says, "For the invisible
things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen,...even
his eternal power and Godhead." In Colossians 2:9 we read that in the
Lord Jesus Christ "dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily."
Bodily is a reference to a man. This brings up a problem. How can God
be three persons and one God at the same time? Wouldn't this make three
gods? And then, of course, this would resemble a pagan philosophy and
would contradict Deuteronomy 6:4. Now, the idea of three created gods
is an old pagan idea that one can find in all the pagan "mystery
religions." The mystery religions of Rome and Greece had three-headed
gods, so the Trinity itself, as a doctrine, is nothing new. The pagan
religions have trinities, but their gods are a plurality of gods which
we call "polytheism."

   Note that there is only one God, but the doctrine of the Trinity
presents God manifested in three persons. Now, I will explain this very
briefly so that the uninitiated can understand it. One person is one
person. I am only one person. I am not two. And yet, by any scripture
standard, I am three. There is nobody who is reading this right now who
is not a body, soul and spirit. First Thessalonians 5:23-24 says,

   "...I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved
blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is he that
calleth you, who also will do it."

   Every person is a body, soul and spirit--yet, they are one unit--and
yet, they are three.

   Notice that we have invisible red heat waves--the picture of the
Father. Yellow light rays that are seen--picturing the Son. Blue
chemical rays that can be seen by their effect--picturing the Spirit.
Or, an even more accurate picture is the sun itself. The sun puts out
alpha, beta and gamma rays. These rays are classified as light, heat
and actinic rays. Now, no one will deny that the sun is one unit. It is
one star--it is certainly not three separate stars. The sun is one
unit. Anyone who knows his scientific facts knows that the sun puts out
light rays which can be seen but not felt, heat rays that can be felt
but not seen, and rays that can be neither seen nor felt, actinic rays.
The actinic rays very plainly picture God the Father. The rays which
can be seen but not felt picture Jesus Christ the Son showing up in
human form. The rays that can be felt but not seen picture the Holy
Spirit.

   Again, we have a beautiful illustration of the Trinity in water.
Water is classified as H0, and yet anybody can see in a minute that the
term H0 is three units. One unit of oxygen and two units of hydrogen.
Does this make three separate things? No, it is water; it is one thing.
And yet water can appear in ice form, in liquid form or in steam form.
Do you know what ice is as a liquid? It is water. Do you know what
liquid is as ice? It is water. Do you know what liquid is as steam? It
is water. Or as someone said one time, "Three in one, one in three, and
the one in the middle died for me." Now, the unsaved man cannot
understand these simple facts nor can the people who teach "Jesus
oneness, onlyness." These people are not able to grasp simple, basic,
primitive, primary, grade school truths. The facts are that water is
water appearing in three forms and sunlight is the sun appearing in
three forms. That is a fact. It can be proved. And yet the uninitiated
(who spend a lot of time quoting scripture they know nothing about and
preaching the Bible without studying it and perverting the word of God
because they are not interested in what the doctrines have to say) can
never understand this simple basic truth that a trinity is a common
ordinary phenomenon of nature.

   Every person is a body, soul and spirit. I am one person, but I am
revealed as the son in a physical body; as a spirit--there is in me a
spirit, the spirit of man; and as a type of God the Father--a soul in
me that you cannot see and you cannot feel. Every person is a
trinity--they were made in the image of God; and, of course, although
Adam fell and his spirit died and men became dead in trespasses and
sin, they still have a spirit; howbeit, it is a dead spirit. Hence,
Christ says, "Ye must be born again."

   Now, Isaiah 55:8-9 teaches us that human reason has no bearing on a
study of God if a person is trying to figure out something that God has
already shown them. The Lord said,

   "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my
ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so
are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts."

   We cannot find the word "trinity" in the Bible nor can we find
"triune God" in the Bible, but as far as that goes, the word
"sacrament" is found in no Bible. The word "Catholic" is not a Bible
word by the wildest stretch of the imagination. And there will be a
hundred dollars reward for anybody who can find the word "rapture" or
the word "millennium" in the Bible. We are not now dealing with
technicalities of whether or not a word is found in Scripture. We are
dealing with the fact that the Trinity is demonstrated in nature. In
Romans 1 he says the invisible things (for example, the Godhead) are
"clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made." So, we
can understand the Trinity by our study of sunlight and water.

   Now, the basis for the doctrine of the Trinity is very clear in the
Bible. For example, at the baptism of the Lord Jesus Christ in Matthew
3:13-17 we see the Trinity at work. God the Father spoke from heaven
and said,

   "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."

   God the Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, was being baptized. God the Holy
Spirit descended like a dove and alighted on the Saviour. Here is a
perfect picture of the three persons of the Trinity at work, and
although all members of the Trinity are God, God is not split into
three separate gods. We are referring to the fact that Jesus is God,
the Holy Spirit is God, and the Father is God. This is brought out very
clearly in the New Testament in Matthew 28:19 where we were told to

   "Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name
of (in the NAME--SINGULAR) the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Ghost."

   Now, there is only one name that will match the Father, the Son and
Holy Ghost. This name is not Jesus. The one name that will match the
Father, Son and Holy Ghost is the Lord; so, baptizing in the name of
the Father, Son and Holy Ghost and baptizing in the name of the Lord is
the same operation.

   Now, we realize that all American heretics who are trying to be
saved by baptismal regeneration prefer the Jewish baptism of Acts
2:38--baptism in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins.
But this is the standard characteristic of all unsaved preachers who
are going to hell while quoting scripture because these verses deal
with Israel before the gospel of the revelation of the grace of God was
given to Paul. In Acts 2:38 there are NO Christians present. The term
"Christian" does not occur anywhere in your Bible until Acts 11:26. In
Acts 2, you are dealing with pork- abstaining, temple-worshipping,
Sabbath-observing, circumcised Jews whose salvation had an element of
faith and works mingled with it. This is why all unsaved preachers try
to get you to Acts 2:38 to give you the plan of salvation, because
there is no plan of salvation in Acts 2:38. Acts 2:38 is Simon Peter's
Pentecostal message to the house of Israel. This is more than apparent
by the briefest study of verses 14, 22, 29, and 36. Baptism for a
Gentile is said to be in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

   Jesus is the Lord. The Holy Spirit is the Lord. The Father is Lord.
Jesus is God. The Father is God. The Holy Spirit is God. The name
"Jesus" is never applied to the Father. Now, it is true that Christ
said,

   "...he that hath seen me hath seen the Father..." (John 14:9),

   but not once did Jesus ever call the Father "Jesus." That is a
mistaken blasphemy that comes from not reading your Bible. Not once in
the Bible is the Holy Spirit called Jesus. The Holy Spirit is called
the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of God
and the Spirit of Truth. The Lord Jesus Christ is called the Messiah,
Immanuel, Christ, the Lord, the Lord Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus, and
the Son of man. Not once is Jesus Christ ever referred to as the
Father. That is not all. The Father is referred to in the Bible as
Jehovah, and Jeh, and Lord, and Lord God, and God, but never Jesus.
Therefore, we see the correct scriptural position is right between two
heresies. The first of these is the oneness, onlyness, Jesus only, Acts
2:38 heresy, which has no real salvation in it. And the second is the
heresy of the Russellites (whom Southerners call "no-hellers") that
teaches three separate gods when, of course, there are not.

   Notice in the benediction in II Corinthians 13:14 Paul says,

   "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the
communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all. Amen."

   Notice in Genesis 1 that we find the Lord speaking of Himself in
plural terms when He says in Genesis 1:26,

   "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have
dominion...."

   God is plainly speaking of Himself not as a plurality of gods but as
a plural God. Now, that is what you have to get. You say, "I can't
understand it." You can understand it if you can look in a mirror. You
are not three people, but you are looking at body, soul and spirit.
Christ said,

   "And fear not them which kill the body,...but rather fear him which
is able to destroy both soul and body in hell" (Matt. 10:28).

   Now, why would you think they were the same when Christ said they
were different? Paul said,

   "For though I be absent in the flesh, yet am I with you in the
spirit..." (Col. 2:5).

   Why would you think they are the same when they are not? The Bible
says in Hebrews 4:12-13 the word of God is able to divide asunder the
soul and spirit. Then, if they are different, why would you think they
are the same? They are the same because you yourself are body, soul and
spirit. You are not three individuals, but you exist in three
manifestations.

   God is not a plurality of gods, but He exists in three
manifestations. His body is the Lord Jesus Christ. His soul is God the
Father. His Spirit is plainly the Holy Spirit. Now, as we said before,
water is a beautiful illustration of this great truth. Water is H0,
three components, yet it is one unit. However, this one unit appears as
liquid and when it is frozen it appears as ice, and when it is heated
it appears as steam, yet it never ceases to be water. You can have
water existing in all three separate forms. It is still the same stuff.
It is still H0.

   Another good illustration is a business firm, Smith and Company,
composed of three brothers, Bill Smith, Henry Smith and John Smith. All
right, they have one name, one firm, and each brother is the head of a
department--the three work together without friction as a single unit
(as does the Lord), and all three have the same power.

   It must be emphasized that the Trinity still remains a mystery,
basically, and that no single illustration can possibly explain
everything about the Trinity. For example, you can't explain Christ
saying, "The Father is greater than I," when they actually have the
same essence. You can only explain that in view of the fact that when
Christ makes that statement He is on the earth in human form and the
Father is not. You cannot fully explain the collapse of the Trinity
into a Unity in eternity after Revelation 22 when the Son will deliver
up the Kingdom into the Father and then He Himself will submerge into
God the Father so that God may be all in all the way it was before
Genesis 1:1. However, we can use some illustrations to throw some light
on the difficult and complex problem of the Trinity.

   The most important thing we know about the Trinity is that it
exists. It is not a Roman doctrine. It is a Bible doctrine. It is not
the doctrine of Pastor Russell and Judge Rutherford. We firmly believe,
any Christian firmly believes, that there is one God eternally existing
and manifesting Himself to us in three persons: the Father, the Son and
the Holy Spirit.

   Now, the Trinity can act as a unit. The Holy Spirit and the Son and
the Father work as a unity in the following operations. The Trinity
acts as a unity in creation, in the incarnation, in redemption, in
salvation, in communion, in prayer, in glory, and in regeneration. I
will show you how the attributes of God the Father are the same
attributes given to the Lord Jesus Christ and to the Holy Spirit by the
scripture.

   2. The Trinity Acting in Creation

   All right, first of all, in creation, notice this, please. God the
Father spoke in Genesis 1:3 and said, "Let there be light." That is God
the Father speaking. But, notice in John 1:1 that He is acting in unity
with the Word of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. In John 1:1 we read, "In
the beginning was the Word." We also see in John 1:3 that "All things
were made by him: and without Him was not anything made that was made."
So, the Son was active in the world creation back there in Genesis 1.
But notice, the Holy Spirit is not left out either. God the Holy Spirit
moved upon the face of the waters in Genesis 1:2. We read in Genesis
1:2,3, "...darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of
God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said...."

   Then, we plainly have Bible references no matter who thinks what or
no matter whose opinions may be taken above anybody else's. We plainly
have three scriptural references that teach that in creation God the
Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit were all active.

   3. The Trinity in The Incarnation

   All right, in the incarnation (that is, the coming of God the Father
to manifest Himself in the flesh as a man), God the Father is said to
have given His only Son. John 3:16,

   "For God (there is the Father) so loved the world, that he gave his
only begotten Son" (there is Jesus Christ).

   So, the Son was born into the world. You know what the Lord said
about that Son? He said, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well
pleased; hear ye him" (Matt. 17:5). Plainly, the Son is active in the
incarnation. After all, the Son was born and was called Jesus Immanuel,
which means "God is with us." So, the Son is born into the world, but
that is not all. When the Son was born into the world, the Holy Spirit
was the medium of conception. In Luke 1:35 Mary was told,

   "...The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the
Highest shall overshadow thee;"

   the holy thing born of her shall be begotten of the Holy Ghost.
Therefore, we learn that God the Father and God the Son and God the
Holy Spirit are not only active in creation, but they are also active
in the incarnation. The coming of God to this earth will be as a man,
the super-humanoid from outer space to bring peace on earth, the real
peace, from the real humanoid, from the right God. Therefore, all space
programs--Outer Space, Twilight Zone, Star Trek, The Thing From Outer
Space and the Jupiter and Venus kick--and all the pretty little
television shows put on around plots about getting the folks from outer
space to come and help you to bring peace on earth are what we call
contradictions of the truth. That is, they are direct falsehoods and
direct blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, and they are aimed against the
word of God.

   In the word of God the "visitor from outer space," who has been here
and returned, told you what to do to get life, told you what to do to
have peace; and ninety percent of the population of the world has never
paid any attention to Him and never will. Therefore, Christ said in
John 5:43,

   "I am come in my Father's name, and ye receive me not: if another
shall come in his own name, him ye will receive."

   This one is spoken of in II Thessalonians 2; he is called the son of
perdition, the son of damnation, the man of sin, Apollyon, the
destroyer, and the Antichrist. So, the next man from outer space, of
course, will be the wrong man. Once you put that negative construction
on the beings from other planets, you set yourself at odds against all
modern scientific research, for it is based on the evolutionary
hallucination that if we can contact life on other planets it is bound
to be a superior form of life that will come down here and help us
solve our problems. That form of life has already been here and
returned. And, I might add, is coming again after the world accepts the
Antichrist as the head of the United Nations.

   4. The Trinity Acting in Redemption

   The Father and Son are active in redemption, and so is the Holy
Spirit. Notice that God the Father accepted the sacrifice as a perfect
sacrifice in Hebrews 10:8-12. No one has to be told that the Son
Himself offered Himself up as the sacrifice. In redemption, God the Son
is the main person involved. He offered Himself up as our substitute.
The Bible says, "...the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to
God..." (I Peter 3:18). The Bible says, "For he (that is, the Father)
hath made him (that is, Christ the Son) to be sin for us, who knew no
sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him" (II Cor.
5:21). The Bible says, "But he (that is, the Son) was wounded for our
transgressions, he (that is, the Son) was bruised for our iniquities:
the chastisement of our peace was upon him (that is, the Son); and with
his stripes (that is, the Son) we are healed" (Isa. 53:5). And he goes
right on to say in Isaiah 53:10, "Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise
him." The reference plainly is to God the Father.

   God the Father is active in redemption, and God the Son is active in
redemption. That is not all. God the Holy Spirit is active in
redemption, for we read in Hebrews 9:14 that when Jesus Christ offered
up the perfect substitute, the perfect, propitiatory, vicarious
atonement for sinners, Jesus offered Himself "through the eternal
Spirit." Then, we see the Trinity acts as a unity in creation, in the
incarnation and in redemption. God is one God in three persons--Father,
Son and Holy Spirit--and there is no order of importance down the line.
The three are not one at the top and one on the middle level and one at
the bottom. The three are on the same level, with the Father coming
first, the Son coming second, and the Holy Spirit coming third. The Son
is related to the Father by regeneration; the Holy Spirit is related to
the Son by procession. Suffice it for now to understand that Jesus
Christ was the Father manifest in the flesh. Although not being a
substitute for the Father, He was God the Father manifest in the flesh
as God's Son. You cannot explain how God the Father could have still
been up there and Him down here, but it was so. You can't explain how
the Holy Spirit could have descended upon Him while He was being
baptized, and yet, He had not the Spirit by measure (John 3:34) for all
the fullness of the Godhead dwelt bodily in Him, but we know it is so.
The Trinity is a great mystery, but it is a scriptural mystery. It can
only be understood and comprehended by reading the word of God itself
and believing the word of God as the word of God stands.

   5. The Trinity Acting in Salvation

   Now, speaking further in these matters, the Trinity acts as a unity
in salvation. The perfect picture of this in the Bible is the Father
who received His son home. The Bible says God "hath made us accepted in
the beloved" (Eph. 1:6) and Christ said, "no man cometh unto the
Father, but by me" (John 14:6); therefore, the prodigal son coming home
from the far country is a beautiful picture of a boy being welcomed and
accepted by his father upon his return. Notice in Luke 15:22 and 23
that the father welcomed the sinner, forgave him, supplied his clothes,
and put on a celebration. It's a perfect picture of the reconciliation
of the sinner. The Bible says in II Corinthians 5:21 that God "hath
made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the
righteousness of God in him." The Bible says we are "accepted in the
beloved."

   The Father welcomes and accepts any sinner who receives His Son.
This is perfectly apparent by the fact that the Bible says when a man
receives Christ he is predestinated to be adopted (see Eph. 1:5), and
when a man receives Christ he is predestinated to be conformed to the
image of His Son (see Rom. 8:29). Both of these operations, the
conformation of the image of Christ and the adoption, begin when the
sinner receives Jesus Christ. He is accepted by the Father, placed in
the family, and his final destination will be to be conformed to the
very Son of God Himself.

   Notice that the Son is also active in salvation. He goes to see the
lost sheep to save them. He said in Luke 19:10, "For the Son of man is
come to seek and to save that which was lost." In Luke 15:4 we have a
perfect picture of this in the parable of the lost sheep where we are
told there were sheep on the side of the mountain and the shepherd goes
out there and finds the lost sheet. John 1:11,12 says, "He came unto
his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to
them gave he power to become the sons of God...." So, God the Son is
active in salvation.

   Furthermore, God the Holy Spirit seals the new convert when he is
saved. We read in Ephesians 1:13 that when a man believes on Jesus
Christ he is sealed with the Holy Spirit. Furthermore, we read in
Ephesians 4:30, "And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are
sealed unto the day of redemption." In I Corinthians 6 we read about
the Holy Spirit active in this work and saying the born again sinner is
not only sanctified by the blood of Christ but he is also sanctified by
the Spirit of God. So, God the Trinity works in unity. God the Holy
Spirit, God the Father and God the Son are all active in salvation.
That is not all.

   6. The Trinity in Communion

   God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit are active in
communion. God the Father invites us to come to Him for fellowship in
Ephesians 2:18, "For through him we both have access by one Spirit unto
the Father." But this is on the grounds of God the Son being our
reconciliation, II Corinthians 5:19, "To wit, that God was in Christ,
reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto
them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation," and it is
God the Holy Spirit that effects this union and communion. Read
Ephesians 2:18 again. We read about the Holy Spirit Himself making
intercession for us which shows us that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit
act conjunctively in prayer. God the Father is the one who receives the
request. Requests are made to the Father, but they are made in the name
of the Son (John 16:23, "...Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my
name, he will give it you"), and it is God the Holy Spirit who directs
us in our requests and leads and guides us in our praying.

   So, the doctrine of the Trinity is not a Catholic or pagan doctrine
at all. The doctrine of the Trinity is a Biblical fact. The two stupid
blasphemies that come from perverting this fact were set up, first by a
group of people who insisted that there were three separate gods, with
Jesus Christ as a minor God--and these people lay very little emphasis
on the Holy Spirit, if any emphasis at all. The second blasphemy is
what we call the "Jesus oneness, onlyness `blasphemy'," which teaches
that God the Father is Jesus Christ, which of course is nonsense. Jesus
Christ is the name of God the Son. Now, the scriptures appealed to by
the reprobates who pervert the word of God are numerous and, of course,
to the uninitiated and to the student who does not study "to show
himself approved unto God" it all seems very logical. For example, if I
wanted to prove the name of God the Father was Jesus Christ, I would
turn you to Isaiah 9 and John 14. I would point out that Jesus Christ
said, "he that hath seen me hath seen the Father." That is a good boffo
to try to prove a lie with. Then I would turn to Isaiah 9 and try to
show that Christ's name shall be "called" the everlasting Father. You
see? Now, this is the kind of jam that people get into by taking two or
three verses out and trying to make the Bible line up with the two or
three verses. All heretics operate in this fashion.

   The Campbellite heresy prevalent since 1800 was erected on the
stupid grounds that the whole Bible was to be regulated to Mark 16:16
and Acts 2:38. The Catholic blasphemy that will be used by the pope to
control the United Nations teaches that the whole Bible is to be
regulated according to Matthew 16:16-18. There is not a charismatic nut
in this country that isn't trying to make the whole Bible line up with
Acts 2 and I Corinthians 14, which is the height of folly, the
uttermost stupidity of the very worst, vulgar, blasphemous and obscene
sort. After all, the Bible was not written just to prove two or three
verses that you and your friends have perverted to attract attention.
The Bible is the word of God. The Bible clearly, from cover to cover,
presents the Father, Son and Holy Spirit working as a unit. And you
will notice the verses we use to prove this are not two or three verses
lifted out of context, but verse after verse in the context in which it
appears.

   For example, when the Lord Jesus Christ said, "he that hath seen me
hath seen the Father," He was speaking of His bodily appearance in the
flesh--God the Father appearing in the flesh. At no time does He imply
that anybody has seen God the Father as God the Father is in the
Spirit. The Bible says in John 1:18, "No man hath seen God at any time;
the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath
declared him." And again we read that God is a spirit and he dwelleth
"in the light which no man can approach unto," nor man can see, nor any
math hath seen (I Tim. 6:16).

   So, we see by the scripture that these cute little denominational
perversions that are erected on the grounds that "this verse teaches
this, therefore, the whole Bible should be regulated to this verse" are
obscene vulgarities of the very worst sort and beneath the serious
student of the word of God. Of course, we have trouble with the
interdenominational groups who say, "Well, any doctrinal teaching is
denominational teaching," which is also a lie. The scriptures were
written primarily to teach doctrine. This is apparent from II Timothy
3:16 which says, "All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is
profitable for doctrine...." The very first purpose that God had in
writing the Bible was to teach sound doctrine. The Bible tells us that
in the last days they will "heap to themselves teachers, having itching
ears" and they will not endure "sound doctrine" (II Tim. 4:3- 4).

   Now, in "sound doctrine" the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are said to
be spoken of as working together in creation, in the incarnation, in
redemption, in salvation, in communion, and in prayer. You say, "How
many verses?" Eighteen in a row, and more coming up. When the Bible
said Christ the Son shall be called "The everlasting Father" (Isa.
9:6), it is merely saying the Son shall be called that. At no time are
the titles ascribed to God the Father addressed to Jesus Christ. Now,
Jesus Christ the Son has the same attributes, since He was God manifest
in the flesh, but the term "Jehovah" is the name applied to God the
Father in the Old Testament; and although we know Jesus as a member of
the Trinity and not as a created god or a separate being from God, in
His earthly life He is never called Jehovah: He is called Jesus Christ.
And when He says, "I AM," to the group and applies to Himself the name
of "Jehovah I am," He lets us know that He is a member of the Trinity,
coequal with God, and He is coequal with Jehovah. As a matter of fact,
the term "King of kings and Lord of lords" is the "Jehovah of jehovahs"
in the book of Revelation. But again, this is dealing with the
manifestation of Jehovah God the Father as the Son, and at no time are
you ever told to believe in two separate distinct gods. Nor at any time
do the distinctions of the Trinity become muddled and lose their lines
of delineation; that is, it is a clear presentation of truth and yet a
mystery which an unsaved man cannot understand.

   So, everybody who teaches three created gods or two created gods or
only one God with one person and all have the same name--these people
are unsaved people who cannot understand the word of God. The Bible
says in I Corinthians 2:14,

   "But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God:
for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because
they are spiritually discerned."

   7. The Trinity Acting In Glory

   The Trinity acts in unity in glory. God the Father is to eventually
receive the eternal kingdom, I Corinthians 15; God the Son is the one
who will change our vile bodies to be like His glorious body,
Philippians 3:21; God the Holy Spirit gives the invitation in
Revelation 22:17. Again, God the Father records our new name in glory,
Luke 10:20; God the Son cleanses our sins in His precious blood,
Ephesians 1:7; God the Holy Spirit performs the transforming miracle of
the new birth, John 3:3-6, making all three operative in regeneration.

   8. Attributes Of The Trinity

   Now it is time to talk about the attributes of God. First of all His
incommunicable attributes: His eternity, His omnipotence, His
omniscience and His omnipresence. Then we are going to talk about His
communicable attributes: His truth, His benevolence, His communion and
His holiness. Then I am going to give you the scripture references to
show you that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit all
have these same attributes although all three are distinct persons.

   First of all on the eternity of God. God the Father is said to be
eternal, Psalm 90:2. God the Son is said to be eternal, Revelation 1:8.
God the Holy Spirit is said to be eternal, Hebrews 9:14.

   We will now take God's omnipotence or His all-powerfulness. God the
Father, I Peter 1:5. God the Son, II Corinthians 12:9. God the Holy
Spirit, Romans 15:19.

   We shall now deal with God's omniscience or His all knowledge. God
the Father, Jeremiah 17:10. God the Son, Revelation 2:23. God the Holy
Spirit, I Corinthians 2:11.

   Now we will see God's omnipresence, the fact that He is everywhere
at once, His immensity. God the Father, Jeremiah 23:24. God the Son,
Matthew 18:20. God the Holy Spirit, Psalm 139:7.

   We shall now deal with God's holiness as an attribute. God is holy.
God the Father, Revelation 15:4. God the Son, Acts 3:14. God the Holy
Spirit, Luke 1:15.

   Next we will look at God's truthfulness or honesty. God the Father,
John 7:28. God the Son, Revelation 3:7. God the Holy Spirit, I John 5:6.

   We will now deal with God's goodness or kindness or longsuffering.
God the Father, Romans 2:4. God the Son, Ephesians 5:25. God the Holy
Spirit, Nehemiah 9:20.

   Finally, we will deal with the communion of God--God communing with
man and communicating with man. God the Father, I John 1:3. God the
Son, I John 1:3. God the Holy Spirit, II Corinthians 13:14.

   Now, there we have proof that the Son is deity and that the Holy
Spirit is deity as well as the Father, without being three separate
gods. They act as a unit. The same attributes ascribed to God the
Father are ascribed to the Son and Holy Spirit but not the same titles.
For example, although God the Father is Lord and God and God the Son is
Lord and God and God the Holy Spirit is Lord and God, the exact titles
are not applied. God the Father is not called the Paraclete or the Holy
Ghost or the Spirit of Christ. The Son is not called by title
Jehovah-jireh. He is not called Jehovah-nissi or Jehovah-rapah. He is
not called Jah. Nor is the Son called the Holy Ghost; nor is the Son
called the Comforter. They maintain absolutely their separate
distinctions in one Godhead. A man said, "I don't understand it." You
are not told to understand it. You are told to believe it. And no
church told you that. The word of God told you that. The Father
maintains His separate distinction although the same attributes
ascribed to Jesus Christ are ascribed to the Father and vice versa. The
Father is never called Christ. The Father is never called Jesus Christ.
And the Father is never called Jesus.

   Three in one and one in three and the one in the middle died for me.
You say, "I don't understand this perplexing doctrine." Woodbridge
said, "He who will try to understand the Trinity fully will lose his
mind. But he who will deny the Trinity will lose his soul." And that is
as good as you ever heard it. These unsaved people trying to make the
Father Jesus and the Son Jesus and the Holy Spirit Jesus are unsaved
people who will not study the word of God or believe it. These unsaved
people who are trying to make God the Father one God and Jesus Christ
another God are in the same boat but on opposite ends. And the boat is
sinking.

   The Trinity is a mystery that will remain a mystery until we meet
the Lord in glory. However, this doesn't mean we can't believe it--it
doesn't mean we shouldn't believe it. A Christian must believe it--it
is the word of God. It is the teaching of the word--it is what the word
says. The attributes ascribed to God the Father, His eternity, His
omnipotence, His omniscience, His omnipresence, His holiness, His
truth, His mercy and His communion, are ascribed to Jesus Christ, His
eternity, His omnipotence, His omniscience, His omnipresence, His
holiness, His truth, His mercy, and His communion are ascribed to God
the Father. When Jesus Christ was baptized He came up out of the water
as the Son, the Holy Ghost in the form of a dove came down from heaven,
and the voice of the Father above said, "This is my beloved Son, in
whom I am well pleased" (Matt. 3:16-17).

   Now, if you start this Jesus oneness, onlyness, holiness bit, you
are going to get into a mad situation because Jesus Christ was in the
garden of Gethsemane praying to Himself--almost like that neurotic
freak in Jesus Christ Superstar! Jesus Christ was not praying to
Himself in the garden. He said, "O my Father, if it be possible, let
this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt,"
Matthew 26:39. In plainer words, these two obscene, blasphemous,
vulgar, non-biblical teachings which were erected from five verses of
scripture are the teachings of unregenerate people who have no more
respect for the word of God than for a telephone book, not even when
they quote it.

   CONCLUSION

   All right, in conclusion, we realize that God the Father and God the
Son and God the Holy Spirit are members of the triune Godhead, exactly
as an individual has a body, soul and spirit. The individual's body is
a picture of God the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. It can be seen. The
individual's soul is a picture of God the Father which can neither be
seen, felt nor heard. And the individual's spirit, like air, is a
picture of the Holy Spirit, for man was made in the image of God. Now,
you would think that somebody could get this. If I stood on a platform
in front of you and said, "He that has seen me has seen Pete Ruckman,"
you would believe me. But, if I turned around and said, "No man has
seen Peter Ruckman at any time," you would think I was contradicting
myself, wouldn't you? But the truth of the matter is that when Christ
said, "He that hath seen me has seen the Father," and then turns right
around and says, "No man hath seen God at any time," He is telling the
truth and the contradiction is in your noodle. You see, nobody has ever
seen Peter Ruckman. You have never seen Dr. Peter Ruckman a day in your
life nor has anybody on this earth who has ever taken my picture or
eaten a meal with me. No man has ever seen Peter Ruckman at any time in
the sense of my soul, for my soul, my bodily shape within me, is
invisible. But, he that has seen me has seen Peter Ruckman. Why?
Because you have seen his body. Now, do you understand that? Why don't
you? That is a common illustration for understanding the Trinity.

   If man was made in the image of God then the image of God has to be
a triune image. There is no way around it. Now, you can say, "Well,
now, my body is Bill Smith, and my soul is Bill Smith, and my spirit is
Bill Smith." Well, that may be true of you. It is not true of God the
Father. God's body is Jesus Christ. The Bible says we are predestinated
to be conformed to the image of His Son. God's body manifest is Jesus
Christ. The Bible says in II Corinthians 4:4, "Is the image of God."
Therefore, God's appearance on this earth is the Lord Jesus Christ. His
first title, "Lord," matches God the Father who is also Lord. His
second title is unique to Himself, "Jesus," a human man. And His third
title indicates the work of the Holy Spirit, for Christos or Messiah
means anointed. So, we see in the very name of the Lord Jesus Christ
the Trinity. His first name, "Lord," indicates He is coequal with God
the Father. His second name, "Jesus," indicates that He is a human man,
the Son of man born of a human woman, God's Son. His third title
indicates His birth is by the Holy Ghost as the anointed Messiah to
Israel. They are never the same. But they are equal. Now, that's where
people have a rough time with the word of God. The Bible doctrine is
equal but separate. That is the basic Bible doctrine on the Trinity.
And if that were not enough, it is the basic Bible doctrine of the
people reading this booklet. When you die your spirit will leave your
body. James says in James 2:26, "...the body without the spirit is
dead." And when you die your soul will leave your body because Paul
said in II Timothy 4:6, "...the time of my departure is at hand." In
Genesis 35 we read that as Rachel died, "...her soul was in departing."
Therefore, to teach they are the same without distinction and to
indiscriminately mix them and integrate them without regard for their
various distinctions is a non-biblical approach to life, philosophy,
the universe and the truth.

   Equal with separate distinctions is the Bible approach to the
Trinity. As far as that goes, it is the Bible approach to everything
else. In Christ there is neither male nor female, they are equal (Gal.
3), but they are plainly separate and distinct physical creations.

   So, we see that there are two kinds of people who work on our minds
to try to get us to think like a bunch of morons. The first class is
trying to tell us that things are different and, therefore, because
they are different they are unequal. Then the second class of morons is
trying to tell us that they are all the same and since they are equal
there is no difference. Now, this idiotic ideology is what is known as
the American mentality of the twentieth century. It is the standard
college curriculum taught to produce people who cannot think straight,
clearly or honestly. This kind of people, when they approach a thing
like the Bible doctrine of the Trinity, come apart and the nuts, bolts,
pinwheels, kingpins, fan belts, carburetors and spark plugs fly all
over the highway.

   The Bible teaches a triune Godhead composed of God the Father
typified by your soul, God the Son typified by your body, and God the
Holy Spirit typified by your spirit. The Holy Ghost proceeds from the
Father and from the Son. The Son was regenerated and brought forth and
produced by the Father. The Father, God the Father, the Creator,
Jehovah of the Old Testament was manifest in this flesh as the Son of
God and manifest in this flesh as Jesus Christ. He was filled with the
Holy Spirit. He was the Holy Spirit incarnate. He was the Godhead
incarnate, and the Bible says in Colossians 2:9, "For in him dwelleth
all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." God is honored and God is
blessed when Christian people believe what they are supposed to
believe, and that is what you are supposed to believe.

   So, let us worship this great God, this One who is superior to us,
this great One, the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the Ending,
the Almighty who can manifest Himself in three different ways: as the
Eternal Spirit He sustains the universe; as the Eternal Spirit in glory
sustains and upholds all creation, He knows all the thoughts of man,
His eyes are in every place beholding good and evil; He can manifest
Himself as a literal, visible human man in physical flesh, who can
suffer like we suffer, who was tempted like we are tempted, who died
like we die, and who shed blood like we shed blood. It behooved Him in
all things to be made like unto His brethren that He might be tempted,
that He might suffer, that He might die as a man, and that by the grace
of God He might "taste death for every man" so that He might be able to
take the sinner's place and save us poor wretched sinners. This Great
One can also manifest Himself as the breath of the wind of God entering
the defiled, degenerate, darkened body or vessel of the unholy,
cleansing that temple, sweeping it out and cleaning it, regenerating
that man and giving him a new life and a new birth and placing him into
the body of Christ and making sure of his eternal destination--to be
conformed to the image of the Lord Jesus Christ. He manifests Himself
as the Holy Spirit of God who teaches and guides us into all truth, who
inspired the word of God, for holy men of God "spake as they were moved
by the Holy Ghost." He preserved that word intact for us to this
day--the scriptures that He Himself had "God-breathed" and preserved.
He is the Holy Spirit who can guide and lead us into all truth and show
us things to come, the Holy Spirit who will glorify Christ and speak
not of Himself, not of the "Holy Ghost," but will speak of Jesus Christ
Himself. Let us worship that One.

   Let us each thank God for the Trinity--the Father, Son and Holy
Ghost, for that which they have personally done for those of us who are
saved and that which they are doing right now in this world, keeping it
from falling apart and becoming a den of terror, which it will become
after the body of Christ is caught out and the great Tribulation begins.

   THE PERSONALITY OF GOD

   This lesson deals with the personality of God. Personality, of
course, is characterized by a being possessing knowledge, feeling and
will power. An idol is devoid of personality, for an idol neither
knows, feels, nor responds. Our God is an individual who is living and
has definite personality characteristics. God is a person, not an
influence or an unseen force or power like electricity. Jeremiah 10:10
says, "But the Lord is the true God, he is the living God...." Acts
14:15 says, "...Turn from these vanities unto the living God." First
Thessalonians 1:9 says the converts "turned to God from idols to serve
the living and true God." We read in II Chronicles 16:9, "...The eyes
of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to shew himself
strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect...."

   GOD'S INCOMMUNICABLE ATTRIBUTES

   God also has some natural attributes which can be either
communicable or incommunicable. First of all we will discuss God's
incommunicable attributes. By incommunicable we mean that God Himself
as a spirit (and as a person) has certain innate qualities which cannot
be transmitted to man, which a man by his natural ability or reasoning
or senses cannot grasp. This is why the unsaved man has a tendency
always to become a self-righteous agnostic or a self-righteous atheist.
Since he cannot grasp God with the mind, he figures either there is no
God or you can't get to know Him.

   God has certain natural attributes which have a quality about them
that are uniquely His. God possesses certain basic qualifications: 1.)
He is eternal; we refer to this as His infinity. 2.) He is
unchangeable; we refer to this as His immutability. 3.) He possesses
all power; He's omnipotent. 4.) We speak of God, too, as being present
everywhere at the same time. This is called omnipresence or, as the
classical theologians call it, "immensity." 5.) He has all-knowledge,
which we call omniscience.

   In short, God within Himself, as an intelligent living being (the
Author and Creator of all life and the source of all life), is
infinite, immutable, all-powerful, all-present and all-knowing.

   God Is Eternal

   First of all, God is eternal. To be the true God He must have
neither beginning nor ending. He must be eternal. He must be more
eternal than the universe or the heavens which the pagan Greek
philosophers thought were eternal because they believed in what we call
"the eternity of material." They believed that material things were
eternal. The belief that material things are eternal we will discuss
more when we get into the doctrines of anthropology and creation; but,
of course, any man knows that it takes a great deal more faith to
believe in the eternity of matter (as all dialectical materialists
believe) than it does to believe in the eternity of a spiritual Being.

   All right, God is eternal. An idol is disqualified, for it was made
by someone, thus it had a beginning. In Psalm 90:2 we read, "Before the
mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and
the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God." In
Genesis 1:1 we read, "In the beginning God...." God has always existed.
It is true that Taylor's so-called "Living Bible" and other corrupt
translations have changed Genesis 1:1 to try to make something there
before God, but this is quite typical of pagan speculation and the
Disneyland type of theology that is being taught in America today.

   God Is Unchangeable

   God is unchangeable. God is so constituted that He cannot change.
Malachi 3:6 says, "For I am the Lord, I change not." James 1:17 says,
"Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down
from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow
of turning." God is unchangeable. He says, "The Strength of Israel will
not lie nor repent: for he is not a man, that he should repent." Once
God has said something, He is going to do it. lt is true that the Lord
may change His mind about a circumstance that is flexible about which
He has laid down no definite decree, such as the destruction of the
earth in Genesis 6, 7 and 8, but where God has spoken and committed
Himself to writing (and there are more than 1100 promises in writing
that you can get you hands on), He does not change or repent. "For the
gifts and calling of God are without repentance," Romans 11:29.

   God Is Omnipotent

   In God's incommunicable attributes is the attribute of all-
powerfulness or omnipotence. If He lacked this, He would not be God.
"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." That is
creative power. He said, "Let there be light: and there was light." The
spoken word of God carries a power and authority to it far beyond the
decrees of any church that ever was or ever will be. "The word of God
is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword," and when
God said, "Let there be light," there was light. Man cannot speak rain
into existence. Man cannot speak lightning or thunder into existence.
Man cannot speak life into existence. God can! Man makes things out of
existing material. God creates out of nonexistent materials objects
that are good and perfect. Notice in Genesis 1:4, "It was good." In Job
42:2 Job says, "I know that thou canst do every thing." The Psalmist
said, "For he spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast,"
Psalm 33:9. And speaking to Jeremiah, the Lord said in Jeremiah 32:27,
"Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh: is there any thing too
hard for me?" Certainly not. He can do anything or everything. A man
said, "Well, can God move an immovable boulder?" Or, "Could God create
a sun so heavy He couldn't move it?" You know, you have a lot of
nonsense going on.

   Of course God can't do something inconsistent with His own nature.
By virtue of His nature and by virtue of the divine attributes of His
nature God can't lie. God cannot go back on His word once He is
committed. The Lord can't see your sins under the blood of Jesus
Christ. The Lord couldn't take a saved sinner and put him into hell
after he became a member of the body of Christ. After all, Christ
suffered once for sins, "the just for the unjust." No part of Him is
going to suffer again. So, when we talk about God doing everyhing and
anything, we are speaking within the confines of the limits which He
has laid down for Himself. As a holy being we can be absolutely certain
that God will not do anything to violate His nature which is
essentially righteousness, holiness and goodness. God would certainly
never take an unsaved man and put him up there in heaven where he would
have to come before the throne and sing, "Holy, holy, holy," and cast
his crowns before the feet of the Lord Jesus Christ when he wanted to
throw them at the feet of Buddha. You follow me?

   In plainer words, God will be consistent with His nature. God would
certainly not elect 150 million people to go to heaven and then damn
150 billion to go to hell having them to show up at the judgment
saying, "I couldn't get saved because my sins weren't paid for." The
Lord is not going to laugh at them and say, "Well, tough apples. I just
happened to choose the other kind. No provision was made for you
because the atonement was limited." I mean, there are some people crazy
enough to think that, but that would be a violation of God's essential
attributes. God is holy. God is righteous. And although God is love, He
wouldn't force a man to get saved against his will because that
wouldn't be love. That is coercion.

   God Is Omnipresent

   God's omnipresence is one of His attributes. We call this in
classical scholastic theology God's "immensity." That is, He is present
everywhere at one and the same time. Notice Psalm 139:7-10 where David
said, "Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from
thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven thou art there: if I make my
bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the
morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; Even there shall
thy hand lead me."

   The Lord said to Jeremiah, "Am I a God at hand and not a God afar
off?" The same Lord knows where every hair of your head is, and the
same Lord watches the sparrow fall to the ground; Christ said He did.

   If Christ said one thing and you said another, your argument is with
Him, not me. You need not pick bones with me and get upset with Brother
Bob. Get in a fight with Jesus Christ.

   He said a sparrow doesn't fall to the ground without your Father
knowing it. He said the very hairs on your head are numbered. In
Ephesians 1:23 we read about Christ's body being "the fulness of him
that filleth all in all"; God is everywhere at once. If you could get
to Jupiter, you couldn't hide from God. If you could get to Venus He
would still know which one of your teeth was going to decay first. And
if you got to Venus and back, the Lord would still know about those
pornographic magazines you read in the spaceship going up. You see? Do
you see why a lot of people do not believe in God? They cannot afford
to. In the dirty, filthy, wicked lives they're living they can't afford
a check. They want a check on Sunday morning, some of them. They'll
stand up Sunday morning and say, "Look here, Brother Harris, I'm a
vestryman." "I'm a deacon." Sure, anybody can get a god that checks on
them once a week or twice a week, or if you're real dedicated three
times a week, but what about that Saturday night late TV show and those
video cassettes?

   God Is Omniscient

   The Bible says in II Chronicles 16:9, "For the eyes of the Lord run
to and fro throughout the whole earth, to shew himself strong in the
behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him." Nothing is hid from
the Lord. He's omniscient, all-knowing. The Bible says in Job 34:22,
"There is no darkness, nor shadow of death, where the workers of
iniquity may hide themselves." Job confessed, "...No thought can be
withholden from thee." And Isaiah said in chapter 40, "...There is no
searching of his understanding."

   The Bible says in Matthew 12:36, "...Every idle word that men shall
speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment." Some
day God will take that car you were in last Friday or Saturday night
and rip the top of that thing back like a sardine can and everybody in
town will know all about it. If there is one thing that Bible makes
clear, it is the fact that God knows what is going on, how it's going
on, when it's going on, where it's going on, who is doing it and why
the're doing it. Now, the heathen know this unconsciously. The heathen
have a knowledge of God which far surpasses the greatest brains in the
men who write for the Scientific American and the scientific journals,
men like the members of the American Association of Scientists. It is
true that we occasionally have on those boards and in that group a
sprinkling of Christians (who use about thirty different versions of
the Bible in order to prove their own authoritv instead of the
authority of the word of God), but that's neither here nor there. The
point is that education is the great force many times in getting a man
to deny his common sense and rationality, and education many times is
the damning factor in a man's life. As a famous educator once said,
"Education without salvation is damnation." The reasons are not hard to
find.

   GOD'S COMMUNICABLE ATTRIBUTES

   By "communicable attributes" of God we mean those particular
qualities in God that He can convey to a man so that a man can
understand them. There is no way on earth the finite mind can grasp
God's immensity or His eternity or His immutability. Try as we can, we
cannot imagine a being who has always lived and always will live. This
is the educated man's alibi for rejecting God: since he, the finite
brain, cannot grasp or understand the essence of God, therefore, God
doesn't exist. It is like a two-year-old who can't explain the rattles
on a rattlesnake so he pretends that rattlesnakes don't exist and he
goes out and plays in a rattlesnake den. It is stupidity, and whether
it's educated or uneducated stupidity it amounts to the same thing.

   Now, here we deal with God's communicable attributes. When we say
"communicable" we mean that God can communicate them--they can get
across. We hear a lot today about "sharing" and "communicating." We
hear a great deal about it from people who do not communicate with God
and God does not communicate with them. (Very unfortunate, but that is
sometimes how it goes.) Now, these are things that God has

   communicated to man that man can grasp.

   God Is Holy

   The first of these is that God is holy. We can understand that if
only by analogy. We can understand that we are sinful, and we are not
in the least like God. We can understand that by studying God's dealing
with nations and with people. We can understand it by studying God's
dealing with sin. We do not have to have a Bible necessarily, although
it is helpful in understanding God's attitude about holiness. Now the
Bible says, "...Be ye holy; for I am holy," I Peter 1:16. And we read
in Exodus 34:14, "...For the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous
God." Notice in particular Exodus 15:11, "Who is like unto thee, O
Lord, among the gods? who is like thee, glorious in holiness, fearful
in praises, doing wonders," and also Isaiah 6:3, "And one cried unto
another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole
earth is full of his glory." However, you wouldn't have to have these
passages to know that God is no respecter of persons and that God deals
with sin.

   As a man said one time, "War is God's judgment on sin here and hell
is God's judgment on sin hereafter." By this we simply mean that if a
man has his eyes open and spends much time in hospitals, jails, insane
asylums, and divorce courts, he will come to the conclusion that God
does not put up with sin. Now, of course, if he's educated this will
help blind him a little bit. If he has enough education so that he
thinks "everything is relative and the factors are complex and you
can't always say what the case will be," then, of course, he can find a
way to get out of it and pretend that it isn't God's judgment on
sin--it's just accident or misfortune or tragic occurrence or "spin the
wheel, place your bets, ladies and gentlemen, around and around she
goes and where she stops nobody knows." Anybody who can read and write
and distinguish a B from a C and a D from an E can distinguish adultery
from fornication and can understand that "premarital sex" is spelled
the wrong way by those who tell it like it ain't. Anybody who can
distinguish a Z from an S or an S from a T can surely see the
difference between right and wrong morally, if they are honest
themselves. God is holy.

   God Is Righteous

   God's next communicable attribute is His righteousness. God is
righteous. In Psalm 116:5 we read, "Gracious is the Lord, and
righteous; yea, our God is merciful." And in Ezra 9:15, "O Lord God of
Israel, thou art righteous: for we remain yet escaped, as it is this
day: behold, we are before thee in our trespasses: for we cannot stand
before thee because of this." Among the many passages dealing with
righteousness in the book of Romans we find the great passage in Romans
10:3-4 which says, "For they being ignorant of God's righteousness, and
going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted
themselves unto the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the
law for righteousness to everyone that believeth." The righteousness of
God is the great theme of the book of Romans. Romans 9:14 says, "Is
there unrighteousness with God? God forbid." Notice chapter 8:10,
"...But the Spirit is life because of righteousness." Righteousness.
That is the great theme of the book of Romans. Romans 6:18, "Ye became
the servants of righteousness." Romans 6:19, "...Your members servants
to righteousness." Romans 6:20, "...Ye were free from righteousness."
Notice this thing over and over again. Romans 6:13, "...As instruments
of righteousness unto God." Notice how it keeps cropping up and
cropping up and cropping up throughout the book of Romans. Romans 5:21,
"...Might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life." Romans
5:7, "For scarcely for a righteous man will one die." And over and over
and over. Notice in Romans 3 how righteousness keeps coming out. Romans
3:26, "To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness." Romans 3:21,
"But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested."

   This is what the unsaved man doesn't want--the righteousness of God.
What a man wants is his oun righteousness, and the Bible says in Isaiah
64:6, "...AII our righteousnesses are as filthy rags." Even after a man
is a saint, a saved sinner, the Holy Spirit has to help him produce
what we call "fine linen" which the Bible says is "the righteousness of
saints."

   God is righteous, says Jeremiah 12:1, "Righteous art thou, O Lord."
Shall not the judge of all the earth do right? For some of you people
who say, "Well, I just took that for granted," don't forget: in God's
dealing with us, we often considered Him to be unrighteous, at least in
our attitule or response toward His providential dealings. It is one
thing for a man like me to sit here with my bills paid, in good health,
with food in my stomach and with clothes on my back, and say, "God is
right and makes no mistakes." It's another thing for me to be in a
wheelchair or to have a little girl on a kidney machine having spent
$130,000.00 in doctor bills and then praise God and thank Him for doing
right. Isn't it? Again, edueation is a great hindrance along these
lines. Any education that fails to point out that man is wrong and God
is right is not an education. You can learn more the way Jonah
did--going to whale college and graduating with a curriculum in whale
vomit--than you can in ten universities in this world if they don't
teach you that God is right and man is wrong.

   God is righteous. Psalm 145:17, "The Lord is righteous in all his
ways, and holy in all his works." This is the great theme of the book
of Job--Why do the righteous suffer? Wasn't God doing unjustly in
dealing with Job the way He did? Didn't God treat Job wrong in view of
the fact that Job was a just and righteous man and feared God? "Yea,
let God be true, but every man a liar," Romans 3:4.

   God Is Merciful

   God is merciful. We know this about God. This is a communicable
attribute. God can communicate His mercy to man. Notice Psalm 103:8,
"The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in
mercy."

   There isn't anyone reading this file who hasn't experienced the
mercy of God. Whether you recognize this or not or acknowledge it or
not is beside the point. The point is, it has been dispensed to you.
There has been some time in your life when you said, "God be merciful
to me" or "God help me" or "God have mercy on me" or "God get me out of
this" and God helped you and got you out. The fact that you may have
reciprocated by rejecting His Son is your personal matter, not mine.
The fact that you may have reciprocated by studying geology fifteen
years to disprove Genesis 1 is your funeral, not mine. But God is
merciful; His tender mercy is over all His works. The Bible tells us in
Psalm 103:8, "The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and
plenteous in mercy."

   Psalm 86:15 reveals this great truth about God, "But thou, O Lord,
art a God full of compassion, and gracious, longsuffering, and
plenteous in mercy and truth." One of the great attributes of God is
His longsuffering (His putting up with sinners, His mercifulness to
bad, wicked men), mentioned in Numbers 14:18 and again in Exodus 34. He
"sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust," Jesus Christ says in
Matthew 5:45, telling us that often the mercy of God is mistaken for
salvation.

   There has been many a man who thought because God got him out of a
car wreck or got him out of a hospital that it meant God had accepted
him spiritually. In the sense of redemption and salvation, of course,
this is not true. God accepted the prayers of Cornelius as a memorial.
He accepted his good works as a "memorial" before God, but the man was
still unsaved. You should read Acts 10 to learn that where God is often
merciful and compassionate, putting up with man's devilment and
allowing certain things to happen, His mercy doesn't last forever and
at death you either die under His mercy or you die under His wrath. His
wrath is there and you can know it and you can feel it.

   The Bible says in John 3:36. "...He that believeth not the Son shall
not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him." Again, Romans
9:22-23, "What if God, willing to shew his wrath and to make his power
known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to
destruction: And that he might make known the riches of his glory on
the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory." So, when
we speak of God's mercy we must never forget to speak of His wrath. God
is a complete being and a balanced being. He's not just all love,
peace, hug and kiss you, and let you get away with hell on earth. The
Lord is not going to do it. Hebrews 12:29 says, "For our God is a
consuming fire."

   God Is Jealous

   Nahum 1:2 says the Lord God is a jealous God. Now, it is hard for
the unsaved man to figure this out. As a matter of fact, I Corinthians
2:14 says, "But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit
of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them,
because they are spiritually discerned." It is impossible for an
unsaved man to figure out how God, if He is God and perfect, could be
jealous. But this is ignorance on the part of the blinded sinner in
failing to realize that every attribute of man is magnified a thousand
times in God. After all, if the Bible is correct (and we say it with no
doubt in our own mind that it is) then God made man in His own image,
and if this is true then the attributes which can be found in man will
be found also in man's Creator. Every attribute manifested by human
beings will be magnified a million times so that it would be impossible
for you to imagine the intensity. No man reading this book can imagine
the agony Jesus Christ felt when he knelt in the Garden of Gethsemane
and contemplated becoming sin, turning into sin for sinful man,
becoming a curse under the Father's wrath, after He, Himself, the Lord
Jesus Christ, had never had an impure thought one time in His life.

   The attributes of God are magnified hundreds of thousands of times.
Although jealousy can turn to bad things and wicked things ("Wrath is
cruel, and anger is outrageous; but who is able to stand before envy?"
Prov. 27:4) and although jealousy and envy are two of the worst
emotions ever felt by man and can cause untold damage, they are still
part of a genuine nature which, if used properly, are correct and holy.
Now, let me explain myself. It was jealousy that caused Satan to covet
the throne of God--Isaiah 14:10-14. It was jealousy that caused Cain to
knock Abel's brains out and that made him a murderer. It was jealousy
that caused Joseph's brothers to sell him as a slave into Egypt. It was
jealousy that caused the brethren to rebel under Moses when God had
chosen him as their leader. It was jealousy that caused Saul to try to
kill David because he knew that the people had attributed to David
greater accomplishments in battle than to himself.

   The motive behind the crucifixion was jealousy. They were jealous of
Christ's authority and His power and His knowledge of the word. They
were jealous of His audience--the people listened to Him. They were
jealous of His ability to get permanent, lasting results. Jealousy, per
se, not connected with anything is neutral, but jealousy turned the
wrong way is one of the most destructive, Godless forces on the face of
this earth. Do you know why China, Africa and Europe would like to see
America become an international socialist country? Because they are
jealous of our welfare and our money and our power and our industry and
our standard of living, which we did not get through a capitalistic
system. We got it through honoring God and the word of God. When we
cease to honor God and the word of God we'll be just like any other
pagan nation on the face of this earth scrubbing around for a living.

   But jealousy is a genuine motive. It was given to guard things that
are right. When Paul spoke of his jealousy in II Corinthians 11:2 he
said, "For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy." When the Bible
says, "The spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy," in James 4:5,
it means the Holy Spirit is concerned about His private property which
belongs to Him. It is jealousy, in part, that keeps families together.
When a man doesn't care who messes around with his wife and a woman
doesn't care who messes around with her husband, you have got a home
that is no more a home than a garbage dump. People say, "Do you have to
talk that plain?" You do for this generation! They're tough as a
rhinoceros' hide. Folks say, "Do you have to be so blunt when you
talk?" I should probably be more blunt. After all, I'm dealing with a
nation of adulterers, cutthroats, murderers and thieves. That's
probably as mild as you can put it for a lot of folks. I'm dealing with
a congregation of people who have seen people stabbed, shot, poisoned
and murdered in their living room eight and ten times a week, sometimes
five times a night.

   Now, you have to face the Biblical facts: God can be jealous! God
will not tolerate His children messing with the world! God loves His
children and wants them for His own. Any parent who is not jealous over
the safety, welfare and security of his child is not a normal parent.
Any parent who is a normal parent and has what the Bible calls "natural
affection" resents the world trying to train his child its way instead
of the parent's way. A normal parent resents ungodly, carnal, filthy,
wicked, perverted school teachers trying to teach their morals as the
correct standard of morals for their child instead of the standard of
morals the parents desire to be taught in the home. God is merciful.
God is a consuming fire (His wrath) and God is a jealous God. Joshua
24:19 says, "And Joshua said unto the people, Ye cannot serve the Lord:
for he is an holy God; he is a jealous God; he will not forgive your
transgressions nor your sins."

   God Is Love

   God is love. You don't have to tell the average American that
because the average American has been so soaked with this God of love
that he thinks that God is nothing (to quote Joseph Parker) but a
"great big kiss." The average American has had such a milksop god of
love that he can read John 3:16 without shedding a tear. There is one
thing America doesn't need any more: it does not need a god of love.
The last thing under God's heaven it needs is a god of love. This
country has been brainwashed and soft-soaped with this iced tea, pink
lemonade god of love business for so long that you have born again,
saved people who don't think that God would even kill a sinner. He
kills them every day. It is true that the Lord has no pleasure in "the
death of him that dieth" and that the Lord is longsuffering, "not
willing that any should perish, but that all should come to
repentance," (II Peter 3:9), but the same God who said that also said,
"See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god with me: I kill,
and I make alive; I wound, and I heal...lf I whet my glittering sword,
and my hand take hold on judgment; I will render vengeance to mine
enemies...." The same God said, "To me belongeth vengeance," and "...A
fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn unto the lowest hell, and
shall consume the earth..." (see Deut. 32).

   The same God who said, "Suffer the little children to come unto
me..." (Mark 10:14) said, "Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how
can ye escape the damnation of hell" (Matt. 23:33). The same God who
said, "Blessed are the pure in heart" (Matt. 5:8) said in John 8:44,
"Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will
do." So, when we talk about "God is love," we don't have to spend a
great deal of time on it. Every American has had that stuff soaked into
him so that he thinks God wouldn't lift a finger against him if he
lived like the devil. The Lord will kill you.

   Romans 8:13, "For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die," is
written to a Christian. First John 5:16, "There is a sin unto death"
for a Christian. You unsaved people, "He, that being often reproved
hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without
remedy" (Prov. 29:1). "Boast not thyself of tomorrow; for thou knowest
not what a day may bring forth" (Prov. 27:1). Don't give us this stuff
about "God is love," "crying in the chapel," "He'll meet you with arms
wide open, he'll pardon you"--He won't pardon you apart from blood
atonement, and your blood is no good. It is going to rot in the ground.
Your flesh is no good--it will decompose, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
Your righteousness is not going to get you anywhere but to a hole in
the ground.

   All right, "...God is love," I John 4:8, but love is not God. First
John 3:16 tells us God is love as does John 3:16. "God so loved the
world that he gave"--past tense--"his only begotten Son." "Herein is
love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us"--past tense--"and
sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins" (I John 4:10). All
the real love that God ever had to show for this world was manifested
at Calvary. "So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that
runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy," Romans 9:16. God has chosen to
show mercy to the unregenerate world at Calvary, and if you want God's
love and God's mercy you go to Calvary; there you will find God's wrath
and God's blood in the same place. As a matter of fact, it's called
"God's blood" in Acts 20:28.

   Love and mercy show up in the same place where God's wrath against
sin is manifest and God's jealousy for righteousness is manifest: at a
painful, shameful, wooden, nail-pierced, whip-marked, bloodstained
Cross. Apart from that you can daydream about the "love of God" as long
as you like, but you will only be a self-deceived fool in the end and
will disobey the commandment, "Let no man deceive you" and "Let no man
deceive himself." And again it is written, "Be not deceived." If you
think the love of God in this age can be obtained without meeting God's
requirements, you are deceived by Satan. "So then it is not of him that
willeth," (you can't decide how God is going to have mercy on you) "nor
of him that runneth" (you can't work your way into it) (Rom. 9:16). God
has showed you mercy and God has showed you the place where He had
mercy upon you, and until you come to that place, the sword of God's
wrath has its point against you. God will not put away that sword
unless you come to the place where He put it away in the helpless,
bleeding back of the "Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the
world" (John 1:29). And if that sounds new to you, it only goes to show
that you have been a pagan for a long time and it is about time you got
the wax out of your ears. "Evil communications corrupt good manners," I
Corinthians 15:33. With the crowd you've been hanging out with and the
library you've been reading, it's no wonder you don't know anything.
All right, God is love. That is not all. God is faithful.

   God Is Faithful

   Concerning God's faithfulness, notice Deuteronomy 7:9, "Know
therefore that the Lord thy God, he is God, the faithful God, which
keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him and keep his
commandments to a thousand generations." Deuteronomy 34:4 says, "And
the Lord said unto him, This is the land which I sware unto Abraham,
unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, saying, I will give it unto thy seed: I
have caused thee to see it with thine eyes, but thou shalt not go over
thither." We have a great promise for the Christian in the New
Testament in regard to God's faithfulness. First Corinthians 1:8,9 says
that God will "...confirm you unto the end, that ye may be blameless in
the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom ye were
called unto the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord." We may
not be faithful, but thank God, God is faithful and will "confirm us"
unto the end. Notice Philippians 1:6, "Being confident of this very
thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it
until the day of Jesus Christ."

   We can know about God's faithfulness. We can experiment with it. We
can learn about God's faithfulness by claiming His promises. We can put
Him to the test. In II Timothy 2:13 we read these words, "If we believe
not, yet he abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself." Now, look at
that tremendous promise. That promise says if a man believes in Jesus
Christ, gets saved and is born again and later the agnostics and the
skeptics continually talk to him until they talk him out of his
salvation, it doesn't make any difference: "If we believe not, yet he
abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself." If you were ever saved, you
are still saved. If you were ever born again, God cannot deny you at
the judgment seat of Christ. There is no way Christ can point His
finger at a born again child of God and say, "I tell you, I know you
not whence ye are; depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity" (Luke
13:27). He knew you. There is no way God can take a member of the body
of Christ whom the Holy Spirit has put into Christ and tell that member
to get out of the body of Christ, for "he cannot deny himself," II
Timothy 2:13. That is God's faithfulness, or as the song says "Thy
faithfulness, O God my Father, there is no shadow of turning with
thee." The Lord is faithful who hath promlsed.

   Conclusion

   God is compassionate, I Kings 8:23, "And he said, Lord God of
Israel, there is no God like thee, in heaven above, or on earth
beneath, who keepest covenant and mercy with thy servants that walk
before thee with all their heart." God is true, Jeremiah 10:10, "But
the Lord is the true God, he is the living God, and an everlasting
king: at his wrath the earth shall tremble, and the nations shall not
be able to abide his indignation." God is uncorruptible, Romans 1:23,
"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." God is gracious, Psalm 116:5, "Gracious is the Lord, and
righteous; yea, our God is merciful." God is invisible, I Timothy 1:17,
"Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be
honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen." God is upright, Psalm 25:8,
"Good and upright is the Lord: therefore will he teach sinners in the
way." God is perfect, Matthew 5:48, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as
your Father which is in heaven is perfect." And to wind it up and put
the capstone on, there is none like Him, Exodus 9:14, "For I will at
this time send all my plagues upon thine heart, and upon thy servants,
and upon thy people; that thou mayest know that there is none like me
in all the earth." There is nobody like Him, Deuteronomy 33:26, "There
is none like unto the God of Jeshurun, who rideth upon the heaven in
thy help, and in his excellency on the sky."

   In view of the fact that our God is a great God, King of kings, Lord
of lords, Who has a name that is above every name, in view of the fact
that our God is God of gods, the Creator, the Redeemer, the Saviour, we
should love Him. We should worship Him. We should fear Him. We should
serve Him. We should obey Him. And "the fear of the Lord is the
beginning of wisdom," Proverbs 9:10.

   In this lesson, we shall take up a discussion of the names of God.

   In Bible lands, names have had, and continue to have, significance
of meaning in relation to the word of God. In the study of the names of
God, we can learn many things about God in His revelation about Himself.

   God is not the subject of scientific investigation. God is the
subject of revelation. If God does not reveal Himself, then no amount
of scientific endeavor will ever prove anything about Him. The Lord
does not subject Himself to the depraved stupidity of educated sinners.
After all, God is a spirit. We never have to worry about the
scientists, astronomers, physicists, psychiatrists, and physiologists
getting ahead of us in matters of knowledge about God. Any man who has
the word of God is always considerably ahead of these kinds of
people--always has been, and of course, naturally, always will be.

   In theology we are dealing with spiritual things which cannot be
seen or tested with a microscope or a telescope--we are dealing with
God's revelation of Himself to man. MAN is the object of GOD'S
scrutiny-- not vice versa.

   The names of God found in the Bible are found in three forms: 1.
Primary names, 2. Compounds with the Hebrew word, "el," and 3.
Compounds with the "tetragrammaton" in them, which is called "Jehovah."
In the Hebrew language, the Masoretic "vowel points" for the word
"Jehovah" are "Adonai," making the word unpronounceable from the
standpoint of the English language, since no one speaking the English
language has ever heard the name pronounced. The name was considered
too sacred to be pronounced, so we have transliterated it properly in
the Old Testament as "Jehovah." This is translated in the King James
Bible as "LORD." Many times it refers to God the Father, and many
times, of course, it refers to the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the
"Jehovah of Jehovahs," according to Revelation 19:16 ("LORD OF LORDS,"
in the Authorized Version). The King of kings is called the LORD of
lords. In the primary title, we have one word only, such as "el,"
"ela," or eloi (or Jehovah, "Adan," "Adonai," "God," or Lord." Then we
have compounds--two words used logether--such as "Almighty God," which
is "El Shaddai." We have "the Most High God." We have "the Everlasting
God." And, compounded with "Jehovah," we have "Jehovah Rapha,",
"Jeh-)vah Nissi," and so on.

   We will now list fourteen names of God used in the Old Testament--
first, from the Hebrew Old Testament text, and then, from the English
translation.

   1. Elohim. This name is found in Genesis 2:4, and is thc most common
name for God in the Old Testament. It is a compound word, and clearly
points out the Godhead as Father, Son, and Spirit--"Elohim"--a PLURAL
word. It can also be translated as "gods" when dealing with the gods
that oppose the true God (God the Father), and it is very significant
to know that the Lord said, "...The gods that have not made the heavens
and the earth, even they shall perish from the earth, and from under
these heavens" (Jeremiah 10:11). The Lord Himself said, "I am the LORD,
and there is none else, there is no God beside me..." (Isa. 45:5).
There is no other Saviour. The Christian who has doubts about these
things should spend time studying Isaiah chapters 41 through 48. This
first name for God, "Elohim," means, "One who is mighty," or "The Lord
who creates."

   2. "El Elyon." This name for God is found in Genesis 14:22. and
means "The One who is supreme," or "The Lord who owns."

   3. "Adonai." This name for God is found in Genesis 15:2. and means
"The Lord our Master," or "The One who is ruling."

   4. El Olam." This name for God is found in Genesis 21:33, and means,
"The Lord who reveals Himself," or "The One who is mysterious."

   5. "Jehovah Jireh." This name for God is found in Genesis 22:14, and
means, "The Lord who provides."

   6. "Jehovah Rapha," from Exodus 15:26, means "The One who heals."

   7. "Jehovah Nissi," from Exodus 17:15, means "The Lord our Banner."

   8. "El Shaddai," from Genesis 17:1, means "The All-Sufficient One."

   9. "Jehovah Shalom," from Judges 6:24, means "The Lord our Peace."

   10. Jehovah Sabaoth," from I Samuel 1:3, means "The Lord of Hosts."

   11. "Jehovah Tsidkenu," from Jeremiah 23:6, means "The Lord our
Righteousness."

   12. "Jehovah Shammah," from Ezekiel 48:35, means "The One close by,"
or "The One present."

   13. "Jehovah Elyon," from Psalm 7:17, means "The One who is
blessing," or "The Lord our Blesser."

   14. "Jehovah Raah," from Psalm 23:1, means "The Lord our Shepherd."

   These are the fourteen titles given to the God of the Old Testament.
They do not represent fourteen ditferent "gods" from outer space,
flying around in flying saucers, who don't have enough sense to blow
their nose on a windy day.

   (As a closing remark to our short study of the names of God, we
might make a few comments on that last statement. In regards to "UFO
occupants" who are always seemingly worried about getting water and
electricity, let it be stated without any point of controversy or
contention, that there is not one single angel {or false "god"} in the
Bible who would have to waste five minutes getting an electrical charge
from anybody! The peculiar obsession that modern UFO writers have to
the extent of believing that the "unidentified flying object" in
Ezekiel 1 was a flying saucer occupant is really just too funny for
words {if not downright ridiculous} to anyone who knows the word of
God. Did you ever read what the occupant in Ezekiel 1 said that is
recorded in Ezekiel chapters one through three? Did you ever hear one
of the "gods from outer space" talking the same way as Ezekiel 1? I
never did! I read about Adamaski's alleged trip to Venus, and what
Adamaski said somebody said to him while he was on the trip, and they
didn't talk like that fellow did in Ezekiel one, two, and three. Did
you ever think how ridiculous this is--these poor deluded sinners
trying to make UFO "gods" and occupants out of the One who came down to
Mt. Sinai and talked to Moses?

   When was the last time you ever heard of a UFO occupant setting up
an absolute moral standard? A couple of fellows in Pascagoula,
Mississippi, profess to have been taken aboard a UFO, and also profess
to have been spoken to by the occupants. I don't remember the occupants
telling those two tellows that Cod would restore the nation of Israel,
with Christ on the throne of David, like you read in Ezekiel! Do you?
Interesting, isn't it? These poor deluded people go on year after year
trying to pattern "gods" after their own hallucinations, and finally
assume that if anybody in the Bible came down from heaven and spoke to
anyone, it must have been some nut in a flying saucer. Why, the "nuts"
in the flying saucers don't talk like anyone in the Bible. Not once did
you ever hear of an occupant of a UFO telling somebody, "Thou shalt not
commit adultery," or "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." If I
understand the vast body of literature on UFO's, the occupants of UFO's
are deists and relativists who believe that God is the force field of
energy in the unilerse-- just like Albert Einstein, or just like any
typical sinner with a college education. May "The Force" be with you! I
don't recall a UFO occupant ever saying anything about the Lord Jesus
Christ coming to restore Israel and overthrow the nations united
against Him in the latter days. That does not sound like UFO talk. I
have read the speeches supposedly produced under hypnotic suggestion by
the people who have seen UFO's, boarded them, and were talked to by the
spacecraft operators in Nebraska and various places. I do not recall
any UFO occupant ever making any remarks about the Lord Jesus Christ
coming back to overthrow Rome and her apostate Pope. That is what you
find in Revelation 17. There seems to be a vast difference between the
God who reveals Himself in the Bible, and the "gods" that reveal
themselves in flying saucers.

   There are fourteen names for God in the Old Testament. They all
apply to Jehovah God. and to the Trinity, which is manifest as Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit.

   FATHERHOOD OF GOD

   We now come to the Fatherhood of God. The Old Testament Jews were
taught to pray, "Our FATHER which art in heaven..." (Matt. 6:9), in
distinction from the Gentile "gods." In Matthew 6, when Jesus Christ
taught the Old Testament Jew under the law to pray, "Our Father which
art in heaven," He, of course, taught it as the corporate prayer of a
nation who had been called out by God as God's "son." You will notice
that no individual in the Old Testament is ever called "the Son of
God," or "a Son of God," unless they are a created angel without blood.
There is no such thing in the Old Testament as a son of God in the New
Testament sense. In the New Testament sense, a son of God is a sinner
who has received Jesus Christ. "But as many as received him, to them
gave he power to become the SONS OF GOD, even to them that believe on
his name" (John 1:12). Notice carefully that in the Old Testament no
individual is ever called "a son of God." The nation of Israel
CORPORATELY is called "sons" AND "daughters" (Isa. 43:6) in the Old
Testament, and the nation, corporately, as a unit, is "My son, even my
firstborn..." (Ex. 4:22). But at no time in the Old Testament are
INDIVIDUAL ISRAELITES, such as David or Moses, ever referred to as
"sons of God." The "sons of God" in the Old Testament, from Job 1
through Job 38, and Genesis 6, are plainly angelic beings who have
neither flesh nor blood, nor could they be born again. Therefore, one
should get the distinction immediately between the disciples of Matthew
6:9 (who pray to God as a corporate Father--"Our FATHER which art in
heaven..."), and the individual Christian, of whom it is said "ye have
received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, FATHER" (Romans
8:15). The Christian never prays "OUR Father" in individual prayer, but
"my Father," "Holy Father," and "Father."

   Israelites did not have an individual, personal consciousness of
sonship to God as "my Father." Israel, as it stood in the Old
Testament, had God as their CORPORATE Father, as a nation chosen of God
to be God's firstborn son.

   "Our Father" has never been "the Lord's Prayer," never will be "the
Lord's Prayer," and is certainly not the prayer of any Christian who is
reading this booklet. "Our Father" is the prayer Jesus Christ
recommended to circumcized Jewish disciples under the law who kept the
Sabbath, abstained from pork, and uorshipped in the temple. You may
have noticed, if you were a careful reader, that in Matthew 5-6 those
Jews under the law were bringing their gifts to an altar in the temple.

   The word "Christian" does not occur anywhere in your Bible until
Acts 11. Did you look it up? Then don't get mad at this Bible teacher,
and don't get upset. You could not find a Christian in Matthew 5-10
with a flashlight.

   "Our Father which art in heaven" (Matt. 6:9) has never been "the
Lord's Prayer." If it was "the Lord's Prayer," the Lord would not have
been praying "OUR Father," because that would have classified Himself
with sinners. The real "Lord's Prayer" is in John 17, where Christ
never calls God the Father "OUR" Father, but "Holy Father." "Our
Father" in Matthew 6:9 is the prayer of a Jewish disciple under the law
who is a member of a nation that has God as its Father, corporately.
The prayer, then, as it stands, is a prayer given to Old Testament
saints under the law and Jewish saints under the law, and these Jews
are Sabbath-observing, pork-abstaining, temple-worshipping Jews.

   The Jew had God for his Father in a poetic and national sense. The
Fatherhood of God in the national sense is used in Psalm 68:5, where it
says, "A father of the fatherless, and a judge of the widows, is God in
his holy habitation." However, this is true of Israel only in the
doctrinal sense of a NATION under God, not individuals. Exodus 4:22
says, "And thou shalt say unto Pharaoh, Thus saith the Lord, Israel is
my son, even my firstborn..." So, no individual in the Old Testament
knew about the Fatherhood of God from an individual consciousness, or
individual relationship, but rather, as a national relationship. This
is why we find the plural--"OUR Father which art in heaven..."

   Notice in Mattew 6 (if you study the passage carefully), that the
Father of Israel (Israel being God's child) is set in contrast to the
Gentiles. As a matter of fact, the careful reader of Matthew 5 and 6
will see that throughout these chapters there is one thing clear: God
is not the Father of any Gentile. The Bible said in Matthew 6:32, "(For
after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father
knoweth that ye have need of all these things." Notice that Christ
constantly contrasts the Jew as a child of God CORPORATELY and
NATIONALLY under the Father (the Father of a nation), as opposed to the
Gentiles, who had no Father at all as a group of nations. Israel did
not have personal consciousness of sonship, as far as its individuals
were concerned. The one who does have this individual, personal
"sonship" with God as his personal, individual Father, is, of course,
the born again child of God in this age who is in Jesus Christ.

   Modernism reasons, "God is my Father, and a man's Father wouldn't
harm him, so I will just do what I want, and He will be merciful to me
in the end." This, of course, is presumptuous, false reasoning. The
modern "god" of American liberalism will put up with anything.
Therefore, the modern "god" of America, as he stands, is a moral and
spiritual pervert. Christ never hinted for a moment that God was
anybody's Father, but rather said, "Ye are of your father the devil,
and the lusts of your father ye will do" (John 8:44). A god who can put
up with anything is a spiritual pervert, and the man who invented him
is just as perverted as he. A god who loves righteousness, truth,
honesty, and lovingkindness the same way he loves fornication,
bestiality, and adultery is, as we have said before and will say again,
a moral pervert, and is nothing but the creation of a man who is
perverted.

   God is the Creator of all, but only the Father of those who are in
the "family." In 2 Corinthians 6:17-18 we read, "Wherefore come out
from among them, and be ye seperate, saith the Lord, and touch not the
unclean thing; and I will receive you, And will be a Father unto you,
and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty." Notice
that the Lord does not say one thing there about receiving anyone as a
son or daughter until they come out from the world system and receive
Him. There is no reception of the sinner into the family of God until
the sinner seperates himself from the world by the act of receiving the
Lord Jesus Christ as his personal Saviour. Notice the expression,
"touch not the unclean thing." In the Bible, you have clean things and
unclean things, dirty things and pure things. There is no such thing in
the Bible as this great amalgamated. synthesized, relative, ecumenical
socialism in which there is no difference between good and evil.

   In the Bible, there is a difference between good and evil, and
between clean and unclean things. The clean things are listed, and the
unclean things are listed, clearly pointing out the horrible, dreaded
absolutes that set up a standard for the sinner, and make him aware of
the fact that he is not clean or holy, and needs to be born again. Some
of you may have reached the place where you cannot distinguish between
"clean" and "unclean" bccause of a defiled conscience which the Bible
speaks of. A defiled imagination reaches the place where it can no
longer discriminate between two things that are different: good and
bad, dirty and clean. Some liberals are so "liberal" that they cannot
even tell the difference any more, and they are so liberal that they
think the clean is unclean, and the unclean is clean. There is nothing
like a defiled conscience seared with a hot iron to twist your
standards. The Bible says in 2 Corinthians 6:17-18, "...and I will
receive you, And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and
daughters, saith the Lord Almighty." Nowhere does God ever imply that
He would accept any "son" or "daughter" who is not a seperated person,
who will not leave the system he is in, and will not trust God's only
begotten Son as his Saviour in order to become a child of God. Christ
was separate. undefiled, harmless, higher than thc heavens, came down
to die for sinners. And a man has to trust this Saviour in order to be
accepted by God.

   As a Father, God gives life to his children, so there is no real
sonship without the new birth. The Bible says in I John 5:12, "He that
hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not
life." As a Father, God bestows love on his children: those who are in
the family of God. Hence, we rcad in John 3:36, "He that believeth on
the Son hath everlasting life," but outside the family, "...and he that
believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth
on him." So, "outsiders" are called in Ephesians 2:3, "...by nature the
children of wrath." In Romans 9:22, thcy are called "...vessels of
wrath fitted to destruction," in Ephesians 2:1, "...dead in tresspasses
and sins," and in Matthew 23:15, a "child of hell."

   Do you see what a radical book the Bible is? There is no book as
radical and revolutionary as the word of God. And there is nothing any
hippie, zippie, moonie, commie, or yippie ever thought up in his life
to come anywhere near it when it comes to radicalism. The Bible is the
only book that dares look you right in the face and say that if you do
the best you can you will end up in a lake of fire. It is the only book
that dares to say it. It says, "...all our righteousnesses are as
filthy rags" (Isa. 64:6); "Except a man be born again, he cannot see
the kingdom of God" (John 3:3); "...verily every man at his best state
is altogether vanity" (Ps. 39:5); and "For there is not a just man upon
earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not" (Eccl. 7:20). That's the
difference between the Holy Scriptures and the other oriental
"scriptures." The "scriptures" of other religions are always
"mealymouthed;" they always pussyfoot around human righteousness, and
don't dare tell the truth about it.

   The truth is, my friend, with a dead nature and a defiled
conscience-- a conscience seared with a hot iron--your conscience is
not going to take you anywhere. And the truth is, with your
self-righteous egotism that you have developed and cultivated over the
years (by saying that everything is relative. and setting yourself up
as the final authority), you have made yourself a god in your own eyes,
and you are just as good as in hell with the door shut and the key
thrown away. That is the horrible truth of the matter. The reason
people go "shopping" for religions around the world, study comparative
religions, and compare religions to pick out the one which will Ieast
offend them is because Bible Christianity always has becn, still is,
and always will be the most otfensive, negative, destructive, critical
abuse that man has ever had to deal with. The same God who said.
"Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God" (Matt. 5:8),
said also, "Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the
damnation of hell?" (Matt. 23:33). When David said, "The Lord is my
shepherd; I shall not want" (Ps. 23:1), that same Shepherd said. "Ye
are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will
do...for he is a liar, and the father of it. And because I tell you the
truth, ye believe me not" (John 8:44-45). "He that is of God heareth
God's words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God"
(John 8:47). That same God who said that charity covers all sins,
charity envieth not, charity is kind, charity is not puffed up (I Cor.
13), said also, "...all liars shall have their part in the lake which
burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death" (Rev. 21:8)
Now. isn't that something? That same God whom some of you fish around
and mess around with in the Semlon on the Mount, Psalm 23 and I
Corinthians 13 spoke the words found in Matthcw 23 and John 9 which you
haven't even looked at. The same God who said to be kind and to love
one another for "...love is of God" (I John 4:7), the One who said that
we should love one another and love our neighbor--that same God said
also, "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for
the devil and his angels" (Matt. 25:41).

   God is a Father who hears and answers prayers of the born again
believer, sifting their requests as a true Father would. It is as a
Father that God adopts into His family the born again child of God as
one of His sons but there is not a case found anywhere in the Bible
from cover to cover where God Almighty ever treated as a son a Bible-
rejecting, Christ-denying self-righteous religious egotist. Of those
people He said "...how can ye escape the damnation of hell?" So the
Fatherhood of God in the Bible is one thing, and the "Fatherhood of
God" taught out in the world by religious politicians is quite another.
They are no kin. There is nothing similar in the God presented in the
word of God and the "god" presented by modern liberals. I don't care
how many scriptures he quotes--he is only quoting positive scriptures
to present a positive God who would not damn anybody--and that is not
the God of revelation. That is a piecemeal "god" revealed by taking
Psalm 23, the Sermon on the Mount, and I Corinthians 13 out of their
context--and a text without a context is a pretext: a philosophy of
presumptuous nonsense.

   We have studied very briefly the Fatherhood of God as He has
revealed Himself within the word of God. For those of you who believe
in the "Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man" all that we can
say is "Hell is full of that kind of religion and when you get there
you will see many people who also espoused that false doctrine." They
really were all brothers and had a great bond of affinity: they were
all dead in trespasses and sins, and they all went to hell together.
You will find too that if you receive the Lord Jesus Christ as your
Saviour and trust a sinless, perfect, righteous Man instead of a sinner
like yourself God will give you His imputed righteousness (see Romans 4
and 8), adopt you into His family (see Ephesians 1:4-10), and own and
confess you as His child. Then you can truly say, not OUR Father which
art in heaven," but "MY Father." "Like as a father pitieth his
children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him" (Ps. 103:13) and by
receiving Christ, you receive the spirit of adoption whereby you cry
"Abba, Father" (Romans 8:15). "For as many as are led by the Spirit of
God, they are the sons of God" (Romans 8:14).

   The Silence of God

   This lesson deals with what we call The Silence of God, one of the
great truths concerning God's revelation of Himself. The silence of God
is one of the great problems in life, and one of the great problems
discussed in the word of God. There is no problem being discussed in
this present time by the entire federal or world government--be it the
CIA, the United Nations, or any other agency of the world--that is of
any importance at all alongside this particular problem. After all, the
basic problem of mankind is, Why do the righteous suffer? The basic
question, if one gets down to it, is if there is any God there, and if
he is a loving Father, why is he silent? Why does God allow this or
that to happen? Why doesn't God prevent sin from coming into the world
if He could have prevented it in the first place? Now, I am sure that
you are familiar with this kind of questioning. It has created more
agnostics, atheists, and skeptics per square foot than any other thing
in man's depraved nature: the question of why God is silent, and why He
doesn't speak up. Let me say that, if you are an unsaved man, you
cannot figure it out. No need wasting your time. These groups like the
National Education Association ("NEA") and the American Association for
the Advancement of Science spend their time discussing things that are
extremely simplified. After all, neurophysiology, psychosomatics,
genetic manipulation, space shuttles, transcendental meditation,
psychotherapy, and extrasensory perception are very small pickings
alongside why God allows certain things to happen when He could have
prevented them. This problem in the Bible is dealt with in the great
book of Job, the oldest book ever written (as well as being the oldest
book that is any kind of a real book), outclassing the Book of the Dead
as far as Mt. Everest outclasses a golf green as a mountain. The book
of Job deals with the classic problem--Why do the righteous suffer? Why
doesn't God prevent disastrous explosions, deadly diseases, car
accidents, typhoons, the torture of prisoners, floods, and wars? The
great sufferer of the book of Job spoke truthfully in Job 23:3-4, when
he said, "Oh that I knew where I might flnd him! that I might come even
to his seat! I would order my cause before him, and fill my mouth with
arguments." The problem, then, is, why do the righteous suffer? Why is
God silent? If God can do something, why doesn't He do it? That is the
basic, classic problem, and, of course, the Harvard Five-Foot Shelf of
Classics has no answer for it at all. An unsaved scientist sitting down
at the bedside of a dying man can be of no more comfort to him than a
thirty-year-old mustard plaster. All that a scientist can tell a dying
sinner is that after his body rots in the ground he will become
fertilizer, some animals will eat him, and, after a few hundred million
years, the solar systcm will wear out, cool off, explode, contract, and
go into something else--great words of comfort only typical to be
spokcn from the lips of an unsaved man. After all, modern science is
somewhat of a clown: science, per se, has never solved one basic
problem mankind ever has had, and it never will. Science's batting
average for victory over death is less than a hundred billionth of a
half of one percent. For every one person born, one person dies.
Science has done nothing to change that average and never will. You
say, "Well, science can furnish jobs for people." Well, sure. You can
get a job digging ditches, too. You say, "Science has alleviated
suffering of people." What you mean is, if you have the money to buy
the pills. Half of the world's population goes to bed hungry, and about
one-twentieth of them starve to death at night. Science has invented a
few things for rich folks who can afford the luxuries, and the rest of
the folks have to wait. Science, per se. has done nothing but provide
jobs, but never forget that you can get a job working for the movies,
too. So. what does it all amount to? Money? Yes. You say, "It makes
life more comfortable." If you have the money, yes. You say. "Well, it
has invented marvelous drugs." If you have the money to buy them. yes.

   The problem is, if there is a loving God. why is He silent? Why does
he allow a man to come back trom overseas with his arms and legs
amputated, a "basket case," for the rest of his life? It happens, you
know. Why does God allow babies with Downs' Syndrome to be born? If God
is up there, why didn't He just make everything perfect, and then there
wouldn't be any problems? See what I mean? It is very hard for a man
like Richard Wurmbrandt (who was in solitary confinement for three
years, and under torture for eight) to think that God is always right,
and it would be just as difficult for you if you were put under the
same circumstances. Job, the desperate man who lost all he had, sat
down on the ground for seven days and seven nights, and didn't open his
mouth. But let me tell you, when he finally got going, he accused God
of everything short of murder. You say, "Was this justifiable?" Well, I
wouldn't pass judgment on Job: I've never been in his position.

   So, this is how these modern international socialists handle these
kinds of things. They look around them, and say, "What about all this
poverty, disease, death, and starvation? Let's all pitch in together,
and make the world a better place to live in, get rid of man's
inhumanity to man, and make the world safe for democracy, with all men
in the free world blah, blah, blah," on the presumption that what is
here can be fixed by education and science, without having to consult
God for anything. So, having kicked God out, the devilment goes right
on, and man says, "Why?" Answer: He can't tell you why.

   You say, "What about all these innocent people that suffer, who
never did anything wrong?" That's the problem. Why do the righteous
suffer? That is the problem dealt with in the book of Job. That is the
basic root problem. Why doesn't God prevent disastrous explosions,
tidal waves, car accidents, typhoons, plane crashes, floods,
earthquakes, and wars? An infidel, having no faith in the existence of
God, argues from the silence of God. Like old Job, he said, "Oh that I
knew where I might find him! that I might come even to his seat!" Job
is a perfect example of a man trying to get an answer from God for
punishment, and gets no answer. For all apparent reasons, he is
suffering unjustly. As a matter of fact, Job suffers the most
excruciating torment any man could possibly suffer: he loses all of his
children, and all of his property; he loses his health, his wife turns
against him, and then, to add vitriolic acid to vinegar, his friends
turn against him. So, if I am talking to someone who is going through
these circumstances, or has observed these circumstances, you may well
ask about the silence of God.

   Before I continue, let me give you a little choice nugget from the
words of truth which, although it is not a scripture verse, is very
scriptural: War is God's judgment on sin here, and hell is God `s
judgment on sin hereafter. Hence, if you don't believe in God or hell,
you have no answer. If you don't believe in a God who punishes sin in
this world and in the next world, you have no contribution to make to
this world or the next. Don't give us this stuff about "making the
world a better place to live in" in order to get more votes.
Politicians have been using that gimmick on suckers for 2000 years. You
cannot explain the problem of human suffering, apart from the problem
of sin, although sinners have devised several probable answers to the
age-old problem.

   The deists say that God is a good God, but He has no time to look
after the details of life. God is only a spectator of the affairs of
this life. He is a sort of energetic force field in the back end of the
universe that, having kicked things off, lets them run. These people
are sometimes called theistic evolutionists.

   The materialists say that the world is governed by the law of chance
without a personal God. This means that the materialist teaches that we
are all at the mercy of blind chance. This is the situation ethics of
the the existentialist Joe Fletcher: the "now-happening-cuckoo," who
goes around and thinks that since you cannot predict accurately; since
past, present, and future mean nothing; since time is relative; motion
is relative; and distance is relative, that, therefore, TRUTH is
relative. This would mean that the entire universe, my friend. is
governed by Darwin's law: blind chance and accidental evolution.

   You've got to be bananas to swallow that. So, most college graduates
do exactly that: swallow it. I mean, you have got to be somewhere out
in cloudland to believe in a universe governed by accidental chance.
You talk about blind fanaticism. Talk about radical extremism! What
kind of a kook would believe that and set his watch on a universe that
was governed by chance? Once these kooks reject the Bible, they plunge
into great darkness. Once you put out the light of the Bible, you snuff
out the last light to the nations, and you are in pitch-black darkness
with no place to go, nowhere to come from, and nothing sure about where
you are even standing. That makes you a great prospect for the drug and
dope traffic. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if they don't make some
money off you before long.

   Why, then, is God silent? There are several negative answers.

   1. God is indifferent. When Christ suffered on the cross, He cried,
"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (Matt. 27:46). That sounds
pretty "indifferent," wouldn't you say? But the truth is, God cared so
much for souls, and Christ cared so much for souls, that He continued
to pour out His wrath on Jesus Christ, and the Bible says of that,
"...wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities"
(Isa. 53:5), and "it pleased the Lord to bruise him" (Isa. 53:10). He
was delivered by the determined foreknowledge of God. Things are not
always as they appear.

   2. God is unobservant. People say that God is silent because He does
not see. That won't work at all. The Bible says in Proverbs 15:3, "The
eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good."
If there is any God up there at all, He is omniscient. He is
all-knowing, all-seeing, and all-understanding.

   3. God is unloving. People say that this is why God doesn't speak.
But, that won't work, either. The good parent who truly loves his child
will punish the child once in a while. Hebrews 12:5-6 says, "And ye
have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto
children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor
faint when thou art rebuked of him: For whom the Lord loveth he
chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth." Therefore, to
say that God is silent because He does not love you will not work. A
man said one time, "I believe in the sun, even when it is not shining.
I believe in God even when He is silent, and I believe in love even
when I am alone."

   4. God is unwilling. God sees the end from the beginning, and plans
our lives. God is perfectly willing. We read in the Bible that the Lord
is "....not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to
repentance" (2 Peter 3:9). The Lord said to Ezekiel, "I have no
pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his
way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye
die, O house of Israel?" (Ezekiel 33:11). Do you think that it pleases
God that people end up in hell? That's not Bible doctrine. Do you think
that God gets some gross satisfaction, some sadistic pleasure, in
seeing people burn in a lake of fire? That is not Bible doctrine. That
is the perversion some fellow made of the Bible who is on his way to
hell, and wanted to make you think there is no hell.

   Do you think that hell was created for man? The Bible says that hell
was created for the devil and his angels (Matt. 25:41). If you go
there, you will be an alien. You will be a displaced person. You will
be in the wrong environment. God never created man with the intention
of damning him to a lake of fire. That is YOUR idea. It is YOUR idea to
pit your righteousness against God's righteousness. It is YOUR idea to
compete with the Almighty, pretending either that He is not there, or
that you are as good as He is. You say, "Oh, I wouldn't say something
like that." Then why haven't you trusted His righteousness, instead of
your own? It is YOUR idea that you can pay for your sins in a matter of
twenty, thirty. or one hundred years. That's not God's idea. In the
Bible, the Lord does not take pleasure in the death of the wicked. He
commands men to repent. He wants them to repent, is willing for them to
get right, waits for them to get right, and deals with them so that
they might get right.

   Having discussed these theories in regard to the Silence of God,
let's look at some Biblical answers to the problem. Notice that we
approach this problem with an open mind, and much more honestly and
openly than the typical atheist. (All atheists have closed minds, and
most skeptics do, too.)

   We will list now for the reader EIGHT answers for the silence of God.

   First, there is common sense. A lot of difficulty is the result of
deliberate sin, due entirely to your carelessness, neglect, and folly,
which you may call "accidents." Galatians 6:7 says, "...whatsoever a
man soweth, that shall he also reap." Like a famous preacher said one
time, "A lot of folks sow a crop, and then spend the rest of their life
praying for a crop failure." If God doesn't do something about a crop
that you have sowed, what does that prove? If you sow it, you are
entitled to reap it, aren't you?

   Also, there is the Bible view. Is it right that my puny mind should
question the workings of Almighty God? I have a finite mind; God has an
infinite mind. What would I know about it? Isaiah 55:8-9 says (the Lord
speaking), "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your
ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the
earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your
thoughts."

   Doubtless, God's master plan for my life will have to include
sorrow, suffering, trials, testing, and pain. Why should I be exempt?
Is ANYONE exempt? If you don't have cerebral palsy, don't some of you
have leukemia? If you don't have leukemia, aren't some of you in a
wheel chair? If some of you are walking around on two good legs, don't
you have ulcers? If you don't have ulcers, don't some of you have
regular sinus headaches? If you don't have sinus headaches and ulcers,
don't some of you have bills that you cannot pay? If you have your
bills paid, aren't some of you coming out of busted homes through
divorce courts? If your marriage has stayed together, aren't some of
your children suffering from cerebral palsy or Downs' syndrome? If all
your children are in good health and don't have broken legs or arms,
didn't some of them get messed up in the dope traffic? God sent one man
into this world without sin, but He was a "...man of sorrows, and
aquainted with grief" (Isa. 53:3). "Man of sorrows, what a name, for
the Son of God who came, ruined sinners to reclaim, Hallelujah, what a
Saviour!" Why should I be exempt from trouble? Is anyone?

   A lady one time came to a famous philosopher in ancient days, and
told him of a terrible problem which she had, and asked how she could
get it fixed. He said, "I'll tell you what to do. You go out here, and
walk around this block. When you have finished the block, go around the
whole city. Then, when you find someone who has no trouble, you come
back, and I'll tell you how to get rid of your trouble." After she had
been through about five blocks, she came back and said, "I don't think
I have any trouble." He said to her, "Did you find someone who had no
trouble?" She said, "Every house I went into had trouble of some kind."
When that lady saw everyone else's troubles, her troubles did not look
so big anymore.

   Additionally, there is the philosophic view. Human free will
involves the consequences of actions. Human freedom means more
responsibility. Adultery leads to disease many times. Rates of syphilis
and other social diseases in America have gone up 800% in twenty years.
You say, "Well, what should God do about it?" Then let me ask you this:
what makes you think that He should do anything about it? You take the
attitude that adultery and fornication is what you call "the new
morality," or "adult consent," when God has already told you what they
are. What do you think God is going to do about it? Help you out? I
mean, you have to look at it philosophically, brother.

   Freedom means moral responsibility. If you want people to support
you with their tax money so you may do whatever you want to do, then,
bless God, you are going to be responsible for what you do, son. And,
if you don't want the responsibility, then you better hadn't ask for
the handout. You had better take what you've got, and thank the Lord
for it. Human freedom means moral responsibilty. If you are not willing
to be morally responsible for your freedom, then get ready to reap what
you have sowed, because you will reap whether you take the
responsibility or not.

   The Lord said in Exodus 20:5, "I the Lord thy God am a jealous God."
God will seek to divorce the believer from everything, and cause him to
cling closer to Him. The Lord wants the attention of His people. The
Lord wants the love of His people. If "God so loved the world, that he
gave his only begotten Son" (John 3:16), and "Herein is love, not that
we loved God, but that he loved us" (I John 4:10), don't you suppose
that He wants some love in return from the believer? Don't you know
that it disturbs the Lord to see the believer loving all this godless
slop out in the world, when the believer ought to love Him? Don't you
know that the first commandment is "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God
with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This
is the first and great commandment" (Matt. 22:37-38)? But if you love
the movies more than the Lord, stereo equipment more than the Lord,
"rock 'n' roll" more than the Lord, baseball and football more than the
Lord, your wife and children more than the Lord, your house, family,
and car more than the Lord, your business, ministry, and Sunday School
attendance more than the Lord, what are you but a twentieth century
idolator? Why not call yourself by the right name, fellow? Why not
"tell it like it is"?

   Do you know what God will do? God will let suffering and affliction
come to His people and cut them off until they will have to lean on
Him. That is not all. You are living now in the day of man, the day of
sin, and in the day of grace; in this age, God is inviting people to
come home. The silence of God will some day be broken with audible
condemnation. God will yet reckon His accounts with men in their
relationship to God. That is, the reckonings in God's books are not all
in yet. When we talk about the silence of God, we are talking from a
temporary standpoint. You say, "Why doesn't God do something about
this?" He is going to. "Why doesn't God do something about that?" He is
going to. You say, "When?" You will find out quicker than you want to
find out. The Bible says, "Woe unto you that desire the day of the
Lord!" (Amos 5:18) . The Bible says in Ecclesiates 8:11, "Because
sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the
heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil." A farmer
wrote a preacher one time, and said, "I plant on Sunday, harvest on
Sunday, plow on Sunday, and here it is October, and I've got the
biggest bank account of any farmer in this state. How do you account
for that?" The preacher wrote back, and said, "God doesn't settle
accounts in October." He will settle with the unsaved at the White
Throne Judgment. Then you will see how it is going to come out.

   If you have suffered all your life, and supposed that it was
needless and without purpose, when you get home to the Judgment Seat of
Christ, Christian, you will find out there. In John 13:7 the Bible
says, "Jesus answered and said unto him, What I do thou knowest not
now; but thou shalt know hereafter." Our trouble is impatience, and how
impatient we are! First Peter 1:7 says, "That the trial of your faith,
being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be
tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the
appearing of Jesus Christ." There are sufferings and trials that you
will go through on this earth that you will know nothing about, as far
as why you were sent them, until you get home to glory. The most
terrible tragedy that could happen to any man or woman on the face of
this earth, bar none, would be to live a life of poverty, disease,
suffering, torture, and dying, and then to die without Christ, and go
out into a lake of fire. There is hell here, and there is hell
hereafter. That is the most horrible thing that could happen to a
person on the face of this earth. Now listen. If you are undergoing
suffering, affliction, trial, testing, tribulation, and sorrow right
now as a child of God. then think like that song says, "Bye and bye, we
will understand it better, bye and bye. Cheer up, my brother, walk in
the sunlight, we'll understand it all bye and bye." "I do not know why
oft round me my hopes all shattered seem to be. God's perfect plan I
cannot see, But someday He'll make it plain. I cannot tell what depths
of love that moves my Fathers heart above, my faith to test, my love to
prove. But someday He'll make it plain. Someday He'll make it plain to
me, Someday when His face I shall see." Did you ever hear that old
song? "Someday from tears I shall be free, and someday I'll understand."

   An old song says, "Trust and obey, for there's no other way, to be
happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey." A great preacher said one time.
"Heaven is the place for understanding, and earth is the place for
trust." Those are some of the greatest words ever spoken by mortal man.
That's the truth. John said in John 9:3 about a certain man who was
born blind, "Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that
the works of God should be made manifest in him." That is only one
story of a man who was born blind. He suffered, and you may suffer. You
may suffer, not for your sins, but to make you a blessing to somebody
else. You may suffer, not for your sins, but that you may comfort those
that are also in sorrow and trouble. You may suffer, not for your sins,
but to make heaven more real to you, and so that you might set your
affections on things above, and not on things on this earth. You may
suffer as a righteous person, as a good person, and go through all
kinds of testings, trials, and tribulations, not because of your sins,
but to teach you that when God says something, He means it--that God's
promises are true, and that God's grace is sufficient for you, and that
you through suffering may be a partaker of His holiness.

   THE FEAR OF GOD

   In this lesson we are discussing the Fear of the Lord, a theological
subject that has intrigued people for the past four or five hundred
years. There is a right kind and a wrong kind of fear, if we are to
believe the word of God. One of the precious messages in the Bible is
"fear not." You will find this expression used about fifty times in the
scriptures. For example, the Lord says "fear not" in Genesis 15:1,
Genesis 26:24, Luke 2:10, Luke 12:32, Acts 27:24, and Revelation 1:17.
Also, we find variations of the Lord telling someone not to be afraid
when He says things like He said in John 6:20, "It is I; be not afraid."

   But there is a kind of fear that the unsaved man should have, and a
kind of fear that a saved man should have. The same apostle who keeps
writing about being comforted, and not being afraid, etc., said one
time, "...work out your own salvation with FEAR and TREMBLING. For it
is God that worketh in you..." (Phil 2:12-13).

   Although we read in I John 4:18, "...perfect love casteth out fear:
because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in
love," we should never forget that the context of John's statement is
limited to the Christian worrying about losing salvation. If there is
one kind of fear that no Christian should be bothered with, it is
letting some heretic upset him with quotations taken out of the context
of Hebrews 3, 6, and 10, Second Peter, or the book of Acts. If there is
one thing God's people have no business doing, they have no business
doubting their salvation, and worrying about going to hell, when John
said in I John 4:17, "...as he is, so are we in this world." The born
again child of God has been "...accepted in the beloved" (Eph. 1:6),
and although there may be many things which he may have to be afraid
of, going to hell is not one of them. Notice how clearly this is
brought out in the word of God in I John 4:17-18: "Herein is our love
made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because
as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but
perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that
feareth is not made perfect in love."

   Now, the Transcendental Meditationists, the Buddhists, the half-
Buddhists, and the pseudo-Hindus have taken these verses out of their
Biblical context to prove that fear is an unhealthy motive, is
negative, and therefore is not to be tolerated in regards to man's
dealings with God in any line. Of course, this is a Satanic teaching
that comes from making a liar out of God. The Bible says in Psalm
111:10, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." The Bible
says in Job 28:28, "...the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom..." Second
Samuel 23:3 says, "...He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in
the fear of God."

   The outstanding characteristic of the modern humanists who pervert
the passage of I John to teach all love and no fear is the fact that
they are demon possessed, according to Romans 3:18. They match
perfectly the picture of degenerate man, totally depraved, and given
over to the devil. It says in Romans 3:18 that their outstanding
characteristic is "There is no fear of God before their eyes." In
plainer words, the doctrinal teaching of the word of God is that a
certain kind of fear is very, very healthy for a saved man or an
unsaved man. The unsaved man who fears God will not take chances that
might cause God to strike him down. The saved man who fears the Lord
does not take chances that might ruin his testimony, ministry,
usefulness, or might cut his life short.

   When Paul says to the born again child of God, "Work out your own
salvation with fear and trembling," he is very careful to add, "For it
is God which worketh in you..." (Phil. 2:12-13). The born again
believer has the Holy Spirit in him, trying to make him Christ-like,
and trying to make him be what God wants him to be. In view of this,
the Christian had better work out his salvation (it didn't say "work at
it") "with fear and trembling," because God is working inside the
believer's body. Now, this great Bible doctrine of the Fear of the Lord
should be gotten down pat by the believer, and he should be absolutely
certain about its true nature, because the people who don't fear God
are always worrying about losing their salvation for some reason.

   The general adage still holds true that "a man who fears God will
not fear men," and "a man who fears men does not fear God." When you
find some big, blustering, bull-shooting bully running around saying,
"I'm going to beat up on that preacher, and I'll show them that I'm an
atheist, and the fellow can't talk to me like that. I m going
to...blah, blah, blah," do you know what you are dealing with? You are
dealing with a man who is trying to put on a show before men because he
worries what men think about him. He is a coward. Haven't you got that
figured out? Let me tell you something. When a man really fears the
Lord, men don't bother him.

   What you think about me should be as immaterial to me as if you
weren't even listening to my voice. And let me tell you something--a
man who wants to please God and do what God wants him to do the way God
wants him to do it is not concerned with what you think about it. You
just think anything you jolly well please. If you don `t like it, put
the booklet down. I'm not going to worry about the opinions of you or
your friends. The general adage is true--if a man fears God, he does
not fear men; and if a man fears men, he does not fear God. When you
find these people who are always worried about putting on a show in
front of men, they are men who do not fear God. The are afraid of what
men think of them.

   The Fear of the Lord and the Fear of God, as found in Proverbs
14:26- 27, and as taught throughout Proverbs, means that a man. when he
is faced with the holiness and righteousness ot God, should be afraid.
The Scofield notes say that it means a reverential trust, with a hatred
of evil. Of course, it doesn't mean that at all. You are told in your
Bible that a reverence and a fear of God are two entirely different
things. Notice this, please, given in the New Testament, and given so
very clearly that you cannot possibly miss it: "...whereby we may serve
God acceptably with reverence and godly fear: For our God is a
consuming fire" (Hebrews 12:28-29). The Lord said in Deuteronomy 4:10,
"...Gather me the people together, and I will make them hear my words,
that they may learn to fear me all the days that they shall live upon
the earth..." The essential thing about the Fear of the Lord is that
you fear God enough that you pay attention to what He says. Deuteronomy
6:13 says, "Thou shalt fear the Lord thy God, and serve him...." The
wise man in Ecclesiastes 12:13 said, "Let us hear the conclusion of the
whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments...."

   Now, if you want to know what is wrong with America, I can tell you.
It will include the idiot tube, pornographic "literature," X-rated
movies, juvenile delinquency, lack of parental confrontation,
disobedience and lack of discipline in the schools, the shenanigans and
the communistic activities of every government agency in America. I
mean, if you want to boil it right down, and define what is wrong in
this country in regard to inflation, taxes, left-wing candidates, and
no equal time for anyone who is a conservative, I can tell you. You
say, OK, smarty pants, what is it? Why, it's simple--America has ceased
to fear God.

   Once, America did fear God. There were unsaved men in this country
in 1840 through 1930 who were more concerned about God dealing with
them in punishment, wrath, and chastisement, than the saved people now
in 1990 who know the Lord, and know that, "For whom the Lord loveth he
chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth" (Heb. 12:6).

   Did you know that when the Union and Confederate troops went into
battle between 1861 and 1865, men left their playing cards in the
bivouac area before the attack? Do you know why they did it? Because
they did not want to be caught dead with a deck of cards on them. And,
a lot of them were unsaved young men. What do you make of that? That's
a long way from the "Sermon on a Deck of Cards" someone is singing now,
ain't it? (That's the Aramaic for "Is it not?")

   This country has ceased to fear God. So, do you know what God is
doing? He is cleaning house. You are not going to grow barley, corn,
and wheat to feed hungry folks with, and then pour it down your throat
in the form of liquor, and then refuse to double the taxes on it, while
you have doubled the price of milk. You are not going to do that and
get away with it. You just think you are going to get away with it.
This country just thinks it can put up billboards of semi- nude women,
and put nude women in its movie ads, and run pornographic, X-rated
stuff all over this country on TV in the living room on Sunday night
and Saturday night for the kiddies to see. This country just thinks it
is going to go on drinking liquor like it is water, and throwing dope
around, and then justifying the use of it. Americans just think that
they are going to do that and get away with it. They are not going to
get away with anything.

   The Bible says in Psalms 9:17 that "The wicked shall be turned into
hell, and all the nations that forget God." Proverbs 14:34 says that
"Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people."

   There are certain things which you are to fear, and certain things
which you are not to fear. Second Kings 17:38 says, "And the covenant
that I have made with you ye shall not forget; neither shall ye fear
other gods." You are not to get worried about poverty, disease, or lack
of education--the gods of the heathen. You are not to fear the gods of
the heathen--peace, security, prosperity, and other idols. You are not
to fear man. Saul's mistake that he confessed to Samuel was, "I feared
the people" (I Samuel 15:24). That is why Herod had John the Baptist's
head cut off--because he feared to go back on his vow. Proverbs 29:25
says, "The fear of man bringeth a snare...." You are not to be afraid
of the face of man. Peter said in Acts 5:29, "We ought to obey God
rather than men." We are not to fear earthly calamities. We are told to
look up. We are told to look unto Jesus. Christ said in Matthew 10:28,
"And fear not them which kill the body...but rather fear him which is
able to destroy both soul and body in hell."

   We're not to fear the Roman Catholic popes and pagan papists,
although they are out to take over this country. We are to be wise and
know what is going on. We should know the dangers and evils of these
matters, and protest against them.

   But fear them? Not on your life!

   The Bible says in Hebrews 13:5-6, "For he hath said, I will never
leave thee, nor forsake thee. So that we may boldly say, The Lord is my
helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me." The true
believer does not fear future punishment. We don't worry about going to
hell. Perfect love casteth out fear. Therefore, we have boldness in the
day of judgment. We are not to fear fear. I mean, the idea of Franklin
Delano Roosevelt standing up in 1941, and saying, "We have nothing to
fear but fear itself." Nonsense. You had better fear the judgment of
God on sin. You had better fear God's holiness if you are an unsaved
man, and not trust in your own righteousness. "And fear not them which
kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him
which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell" (Matthew 10:28).
We have nothing to fear but fear itself? Oh, cut it out, man! Quit
pulling my leg! Trouble and anguish shall make the unsaved man afraid,
but the believer casts all his earthly fears on the Lord. Simon Peter
says about the believer in I Peter 5:7, "Casting all your care upon
him; for he careth for you."

   Only one legitimate fear remains, and that is a holy fear of the
Lord God Himself. Somebody said, You are upsetting these people, and
teaching them to be afraid of God, and putting the fear of God in them.
The fear of God is the most healthy fear you ever had in your life, you
hypocrite. Some of you hypocrites I am talking to now are afraid of car
wrecks, aren't you? So, you have collision and liability insurance?
Answer! Yes or no? Don't stand there with your thumb in your mouth, and
talk about the psychological damage done by negative preaching, and
scaring these children with Biblical passages on hell. Get off your
high horse, man! Just answer me. Aren't some of you afraid of getting
sick, and that's why you carry Red Cross, Blue Cross, Blue Shield, and
all that stuff? Yes or no? Isn't it true that some of you are worried
that you won't get married? And some of you are afraid that you will?
Come on, don't kid me. Go kid your grandmother. Don't give us all the
gas about the "psychological implications," "total thrust of the
indepth experiences" of psychiatric research would indicate that the
"negative value of instilling the fear of the Lord overbalances and
counterbalances the good that it may have done by..." Get off it, kid!
You are liable to get hit out here in the traffic.

   The truth of the matter is that some of you are afraid of getting
old. Some of you are afraid of cancer. Some of you fear leukemia. Some
of you are afraid that you won't get a raise. Some of you are afraid
that you are going to get laid off work. Yes or no? How did you miss
the fear of the Lord, and what are you doing standing up and telling
Bible-believing preachers that fear is an unhealthy motive and bad to
have, when you yourself guide your whole life by it? You have Social
Security because you are worried about your old age. You bought fire
insurance because you're worried about your house burning down. You've
got collision and liability insurance because you are worried about
having a wreck. And you have the gall to sit there and tell a Bible
believer that you don t believe in fearing God? You are crazy. You are
out of your mind, man. You are telling me that you don't fear the One
who is holy and righteous, who flung the stars into space, who created
the galaxies, nebulas, and star clusters, the One who made your body
and gave you life and breath to live on, and has fed you to this day,
has been merciful to you a thousand times, and got you out of all kinds
of disastrous troubles. You don't fear Him? But, you're worrying about
cancer, aren't you ? Boy, you re a balanced character, aren't you!
Imagine some of you psychiatrists talking about us preachers being
fanatics! Ain't that a flip! And imagine some of you pagan humanists
talking about us being extremists! Aren't you cute? That Book says in
Deuteronomy 13:4, "Ye shall walk after the Lord your God, and fear him,
and keep his commandments, and obey his voice, and ye shall serve him,
and cleave unto him."

   Simon Peter says of the Christian in I Peter 2:17, "Honor all men.
Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the king." David said, "Ye that
fear the Lord, praise him...glorify him; AND FEAR HIM...." (Psalm 22:23)

   Acts 9:31 said about the New Testament Christians under grace in the
local church that they were "...walking in the fear of the

   Lord...and...were multiplied." Cornelius was said to be a man who
feared God (see Acts 10:2). Second Corinthians 7:1 tells us that the
fear of God teaches us to live circumspect lives. "Let us cleanse
ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting
holiness in the fear of God." A man who doesn' t fear God is not a
Christian, and a man who doesn't fear God doesn't have good sense.
Outside of that, he may be a very highly educated and religious fellow.
There are a lot of them running around!

   Next, what is The Fear of the Lord, specifically? The following
verses are the definitions given by the Holy Bible where the Holy
Spirit is defining the fear of the Lord, and telling you what it is
Paul used to say of the Charismatics of his day who were always
"hubbledy bubbledy, hosta la shondai, untie a bowtie" (and trying to
convince somebody that they were gifted), "If any man think himself to
be a prophet, or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I
write unto you are the commandments of the Lord" (I Corinthians 14:37).
And, let me preface my remarks by saying this. If any man thinks that I
am just talking through my hat, giving you my private interpretation,
or giving you just what some denomination teaches, you better
understand, brother, that the verses I am going to quote are
definitions by the Holy Spirit given about the subject under
discussion. You see, I am not going to tell you what I think, for in
the following verses, the words given are The fear of the Lord IS. I'm
not going to tell you what the Bible teaches, but what the Bible SAYS.
And, since we are studying the Fear of the Lord, which is a biblical
expression (see Job 28:28), we are going to see what the Bible says the
Fear of the Lord is. Are you ready?

   Number one. Proverbs 8:13: "The fear of the Lord is to hate evil..."
Is that clear? Humanistic relativists who think evil and good are the
same, or that good is evil, or that evil is good, relativists who think
there is no such thing as evil, and that it all depends on how you look
at it, I wonder if they know what their problem is? There is no fear of
God before their eyes. If you don't know the difference between good
and evil, how do you hate evil? "The fear of the Lord is to hate evil."
That's the Holy Spirit's definition. Then, obviously, your definition
is given to you by an unholy spirit. The Holy Spirit said, "The fear of
the Lord is to hate evil." What do you say? Well, then, it must be some
other spirit guiding you, fellow.

   Number two. Psalm 111:10 "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of
wisdom...." Wisdom doesn't begin with a high school education. Wisdom
doesn't begin with a college education. Wisdom doesn't begin with The
Harvard Five Foot Shelf of Classics. Wisdom doesn't begin with a major
in physics. Wisdom doesn't begin with an understanding of Einstein's
theory of relativity. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of
wisdom." Until a man learns to fear God, he has not begun to learn
anything! A man starts to get wise when he begins to learn to fear God.
And if you haven't learned that, you are not a beginner. You are not
even a primary. You are still in the nursery, my friend. "The fear of
the Lord is the beginning of wisdom."

   Number three. Proverbs 15:16: "Better is little with the fear of the
Lord than great treasure...." "The fear of the Lord is his treasure"
(Isaiah 33:6). The fear of the Lord, then, is a valuable thing. It is
worth more than silver or gold because it will keep you out of trouble
that silver or gold cannot get you out of. When Paul says to the New
Testament Christian in Galatians 6:7-8, "Be not deceived; God is not
mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he
that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption," he is
warning you that a person can do things (if he doesn't fear God) that
he cannot fix with money. Is that clear? If it isn't clear, then why
isn't it? One of my best friends used to be a highway patrolman out of
Fort Worth for fifteen years before he got saved, left the patrol, and
became a minister. Do you know what he told me? He said, "When I was a
highway patrolman, and covered the highways on my paticular route, at
one time or another in fifteen years I ran into people trying to commit
suicide. I mean, they had the hose and carbon monoxide in the car, the
whole works. You know what impressed me?"

   I said, "What?"

   He said, "Well, all five of those cars were Cadillacs, Lincolns, or
Mercedes Benzes. There was not one man out there trying to finish
himself off who was making less than $40,000 per year." Now, do you
know what was wrong with those poor sinners? They didn't have any
treasure. Proverbs 15:16 says that the fear of the Lord is the
believer's treasure. "Better is little with the fear of the Lord than
great treasure and trouble therewith." I guess Howard Hughes knows all
about that now. But it's a little late now, isn t it?

   Number four. Proverbs 14:27: "The fear of the Lord is a fountain of
life...." Poor Ponce de Leon came over here, looking for the fountain
of youth, and spent his times in the swamps with yellow fever, flies,
mosquitoes, banyon trees, cypress roots, and gum stumps trying to find
a fountain that could make him live forever. Well, "The fear of the
Lord is a fountain of life."

   Number five. Psalm 19:9: "The fear of the Lord is clean...." It
keeps you out of trouble. It is sanctifying. It will make you careful
of how you walk, son. "The fear of the Lord is clean," David said in
Psalm 19:9. If David feared the Lord like he should have, he would not
have taken Bathsheba as his wife, and murdered her husband. Do you know
how David got in that trouble and got unclean temporarily? By not
fearing God! The fear of the Lord is not negative. It is not
destructive. It is not damaging. It does not give you a guilt complex.
"The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever..." (Psalm 19:9). In
plainer words, what the psychiatrists and shrinks think about modern
fear is nonconsequential, and is not even relevant to the discussion.
What some shrink feels about the fear of the Lord has nothing to do
with Biblical truth. I would not even ask his opinion about it. After
all, having read Dewey, Russell, Mesmer, Angyal, Jung, Pavlov, and
Menninger, why would we be interested, anyway? The man who does not
fear God fears men.

   Number six. Hebrews 12:28: "...let us have grace, whereby we may
serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear." The fear of the
Lord is godly. There is a difference between reverence and fear; and
the fear of the Lord is godly.

   So, what do we know about the biblical doctrine of the Fear of the
Lord? We know that no matter how much humanists and socialists talk
about negativism, negativism, negativism, they are the most negative
people in the world when you give them the word of God. No matter how
much these people talk about guilt complexes, upsetting people, and
disturbing people, all that they are doing is attacking the convicting
work of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is in this world to convince
men of sin because they believe not on Christ, and if they don't
believe on Christ, they go to hell. Therefore, the fear of the Lord is
a negative conviction brought upon the sinner by the Holy Ghost. When
you hear a man trying to talk somebody out of fearing God, you are
dealing with a man who is a paid professional, whose life is dedicated
to overthrowing the convicting work of the Holy Spirit. After all, what
he says about it is of no consequence, because the Bible itself teaches
that the fear of the Lord is the hatred of evil. The fear of the Lord
is wisdom. The fear of the Lord is a treasure. The fear of the Lord is
a fountain of life. The fear of the Lord is clean. The fear of the Lord
endures forever. The fear of the Lord is godly, not ungodly. Therefore,
a man who does not fear God does not hate evil. He is not wise, he is
broke. He will not live forever. He is unclean, and he is ungodly.
According to Proverbs 8:13, Psalm 111:10, Proverbs 15:16, Proverbs
14:27; Psalm 19:9, and Hebrews 12:28, a word to the wise is sufficient.
And, if you are not wise, then don't forget, "The fear of the Lord is
the beginning of wisdom." May you start today putting God first and men
second, for "The fear of man bringeth a snare" (Prov 29:25). Jesus
Christ said, "But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him,
which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say
unto you, Fear him" (Luke 12:5).

   If you are already saved, remember, there is one thing you never
have to fear. You never have to fear the day of judgment and going to
hell, for, "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed
on thee" (Isa. 26:3) "Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and
for ever" (Hebrews 13:8). For the Christian, Paul's prayer was that the
believer "...be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus
Christ" (I Thessalonians 5:23).

   Now let us continue our study on the fear of God, and discuss
briefly the motives that cause us to fear God, the results of fearing
God, and why the fear of the Lord is necessary. In these lessons, we
are adhering strictly to the word of God, and where theologians have
crossed or correctcd the word of God, we quite naturally cross and
correct them.

   Motives for Fearing God

   Number one: The holiness af God should cause us to fear Him. I
realize that fear is classified by psychiatrists as an unhealthy
motive, but that is because these people are mentally unhealthy
themselves. All of the shrinks and psychologists who recommend to you
that you get rid of fear carry life insurance. So, it is rather
hypocritical to start with. When a man talks to you about getting fear
out of your life, it is certainly the talk of a man who is mentally
unbalanced, or somewhat of a hypocrite himself. You folks I am talking
to carry life insurance, health insurance, collision and liability
insurance, fire insurance, and some of you are on Social Security,
aren't you? I think you are! So, all this nonsense about "fear as an
unhealthy motive" is the talk of a two-tongued hypocrite. There's
nothing to it. If fear is an unhealthy motive, then ninety- five
percent of the doctors and lawyers in America are just as sick in the
head as they can be.

   The truth of the matter is that fear is a very healthy motive. As a
matter of fact, it is the fear of going through a red light in an
intersection that keeps you alive. Strangely enough, when we get into
the religious realm, the modernists and liberals (who are scared to
death of going to hell themselves, so they try to pretend it is not
there by making a liar out of God) get the sickly idea that it is all
right to fear man, death, disease, and poverty, but it is a dirty sin
to fear God. The Bible says, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of
wisdom" (Psalm 111:10), "The fear of the Lord is his {the believer's}
treasure" (Isaiah 33:6), "The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life"
(Proverbs 14:27), and "The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever"
(Psalm 19:9).

   In Revelation 15:4, we read, "Who shall not fear thee, O Lord, and
glorify thy name? for thou only art holy...." The reason why Americans
don't fear God is because their God is an unclean god. He is a hippie
god of love. The god of the average American is a hippie kind of bum.
You don't have to be afraid of him; he won't hurt you. He'll just kiss
you, give you a handout, or come to you for a handout. Of course, this
is not the God of the Bible!

   When we discussed the descriptions of God the Father in lessons 1
through 4 of this series, we came to understand that God was
omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, all-knowing, all-seeing, all-
pervading, ever eternal, self-existent, infinite, and immutable; such a
God, my friend, is to be feared. The greatness of God causes us to fear
him. Deuteronomy 10:12 says, "And now, Israel, what doth the Lord thy
God require of thee, but to fear the Lord thy God...." Deuteronomy
10:17 says, "For the Lord your God is God of gods...." That is,
Chariots of the Gods is play stuff. Our God is the God of gods. So
don't worry about Jupiter, Zeus, Apollo, Venus, Diana, Adonis, Mercury,
Baal, Ashtoreth, and all the kiddies. Our God is the God of gods. Never
mind the astronauts, flying saucers, and the things that come down that
pretend they're from Ezekiel 1 when they're not. Never mind all of that
kiddie stuff. Our God is "God of gods, and Lord of lords, a great God,
a mighty, and a terrible" (Deuteronomy 10:17).

   Number two: The goodness of God causes us to fear Him. Samuel says,
"Only fear the Lord, and serve him in truth with all your heart: for
consider how great things he hath done for you" (I Samuel 12:24). The
goodness of God should lead a man to fear Him, for surely if God can be
as good as He is to men who don't deserve that goodness, then certainly
there is another side to God's nature that will be manifest sooner or
later. Paul says to behold the goodness of God, and in the same
sentence, he says to behold the severity of God (Romans 11:22).

   Number three: The forgiveness of God should cause us to fear Him.
David said in Psalm 130:4, "But there is forgiveness with thee, that
thou mayest be feared." Joshua. reviewing the Lord's work, says that
the wondrous works that God did for the nation of Israel should cause
them to fear Him (Joshua 4:24).

   Number four: Coming Judgments should cause the sinner to fear the
Lord, because in Revelation 14:7 we read, "Fear God, and give glory to
him; for the hour of his judgment is come." Now, I realize, of course,
that many of you have no fear of God at all. You are the ones who are
afraid of men. The old axiom is true: where a man fears God, men don't
bother him very much. And, where men are afraid of men, then they don't
fear God. That is the rule.

   If you want to know what is wrong with America, it would include the
idiot box, the juvenile delinquency rate, the drugs and high crime in
the ghettos in New York, Chicago, and Detroit, people being kicked out
of jobs in the government because of private conversations; that is, if
you want to know how America became a totalitarian, fascist
dictatorship ruled by a minority you can state it in one sentence:
There is no fear of Cod before their eyes! A man who fears God instead
of the news media would not behave as our leaders have. A man who fears
God would not go around digging up smut and print it in a newspaper,
and then call it a news item. A man who fears God would keep his nose
out of other people's business, and would not parade it on three
networks. Do you see what I mean, jellybean?

   The trouble with this country is very simple. It has ceased to fear
God. It instead fears adverse publicity. And, where the United States
ceases to fear God, it will fear Russia and China. In World War II, it
feared Germany. America feared a country no bigger than the state of
Oregon. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine forty- eight states (in
alliance with Russia and England) being afraid of a country no bigger
than one state?

   Where there is no fear of God, there is fear of man. Where there is
fear of God, there is no fear of man. The thing that enabled martyrs to
go to the stake, laugh about it, kiss the stake, and pray for their
tormentors and captors was the fact that they feared God instead of the
stake or their captors.

   Why The Fear of the Lord is Necessary

   Number one: It is necessary to worship. Psalm 5:7 says, "...in thy
fear will I worship..." It is necessary in service. Psalm 2:11 says,
"Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling." It is necessary
to keep us from sin. Exodus 20:20 says, "Fear not: for God is come to
prove you, and that his fear may be before your faces, that ye sin
not." Now, notice this apparent contradiction that unsaved elders,
priests, bishops, deacons, cardinals, and popes could never understand.
"Fear not: for God is come to prove you, and that his fear may be
before your faces, that ye sin not." The unsaved, unregenerate
religious leader reasons, "Why would he say, `Fear not,' and then say
`Fear'? Doesn't the Bible say, `Perfect love casteth out fear'?" Yes it
does, but then why does it also say, "...work out your own salvation
with fear and trembling" (Phil. 2:12)? When Christ said, "Be not
afraid..." (Matthew 28:10), "Peace be unto you" (Luke 24:36), and when
Paul said, "For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power,
and of love, and of a sound mind" (2 Timothy 1:7), why does the Bible
also say, "...let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably
with reverence and godly fear: For our God is a consuming fire"
(Hebrews 12:28-29)? Why, it is very simple to figure out, if you are
saved--unless you are a backslidden, ecumenical Christian looking to
get a good income.

   If you are one of these Christians who is going along with the world
system in order to build yourself a monument, become a celebrity, gain
a large following, and have people speak well of you, it's pretty hard
to understand, isn't it? But if you are a saved man in whom the Holy
Spirit dwells, and who has a Bible written and preserved by that Holy
Spirit, it's very simple. Any man who has a good father feared his
father and loved him at the same time. If you didn't, you either had a
poor father, or you were a punk child. Everyone I am talking to who has
a good mother or a good father understands the text. And if you don't
understand that, you haven't had proper upbringing; and believe me,
whether you had it or not, God the Father will not make the mistakes
that your parents made. The Bible says in Isaiah 66:13, "As one whom
his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you...." Christ said in
Matthew 7:11, "If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto
your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give
good things to them that ask him?" If you have not had the right
upbringing, don't get on me for recalling it to your mind. You can get
the right upbringing now. But you will have to have God as your Father
to do it.

   Number two: the fear of the Lord is necessary for good government.
David said in 2 Samuel 23:3, "He that ruleth over men must be just,
ruling in the fear of God." A man, who is the President of the United
States, a king, or a governor, and who doesn't fear God is an
abomination, and has no business being in the office. What right does
any man have to tell somebody what to do when that man himself has no
fear of God, but is only afraid of votes, politicians, inflation,
unemployment, and the news media? Get him out! A God-fearing man will
be careful what he says. A God-fearing man will be careful how he
treats God and God's word. A God-fearing man will not do what some
church tells him to do. He will do what God tells him to do. A God-
fearing man will not let a religious dictator like the pope dictate
religious policy to him. He will go by the book. A God-fearing man will
not regard the whine and cry of special-interest groups and lobbies who
only want to overthrow the government. You need a God- fearing man.
When a man does not fear God, he is not going to do anything in office
except make a mess of things.

   Number three: The fear of God is necessary for the administration of
justice. The fear of God is necessary for the perfecting of holiness in
the Christian's life. Paul says, "...work out your own salvation with
fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you...." (Phil.
2:12-13). He didn't say there that you could work to get saved. You may
already have salvation. But you are to work it out. He said to work out
what God has worked in.

   The Results of Fearing God

   Finally, what are the results of fearing the Lord? This "fear of the
Lord" which unsaved people are so afraid of, and get neurotic and
psychotic about (and the world is filled with them), brings what kind
of result? If a man actually feared God like the Bible told him to,
does it make him psychotic? Does it make him a candidate for the funny
farm? What are the results of fearing the Lord? Did you ever think
about it?

   There are twelve results that come from a man fearing God.

   Number one: The man gets wisdom. "The fear of the Lord is the
beginning of wisdom" (Psalm 111:10). If you want to know what will keep
you out of more trouble, scrapes, sorrow, hcadaches, and heartaches
more than anything else in the world, it is the simple, clean, and
enduring fear of God.

   Number two: It brings pleasure to the Lord. The Bible says in Psalm
147:11, "The Lord taketh pleasure in them that fear him, in those that
hope in his mercy."

   Number three: It causes the Lord `s pity for the child of God to
increase. The Bible says in Psalm 103:13, "Like as a father pitieth his
children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him."

   Number four: It brings acceptance with God. In Acts 10:35, Peter
said, "But in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh
righteousness, is accepted with him." The case was an unsaved Gentile
who followed his conscience. Although that Gentile was unsaved, and
needed to hear the gospel to be saved, because he feared God and
followed and obeyed his conscience, God got the gospel to him, sent him
a missionary, and that Gentile (Cornelius) was born again by believing
the gospel. The Lord accepted Cornelius' prayer for further light, and
gave him that further light on the truth, because he feared Him.

   Number five: It brings the mercy of God. Psalm 103:17 says, "But the
mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that
fear him...."

   Nunber six: It brings blessing. Psalm 112:1 says, "Blessed is the
man that feareth the Lord...." Now. what do you have to say about it?
The Bible says, "Blessed is the man that feareth the Lord." What do you
say? What about some of you who are always quoting the Sermon on the
Mount like you thought you had good sense, and talking about "I'm OK,
you're OK, we're all OK. Think positively, life is beautiful, etc." How
come you are always saying, "Blessed are the pure in heart," "blessed
are the meek," and never quote "Blessed is the man THAT FEARETH THE
LORD"? A little unbalanced there, aren't you? What are you doing
quoting the beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount, but not the
beatitudes in Psalms 112:1? The Bible doesn't say, "Blessed is the man
who thinks that God will put up with anything." The Bible doesn't say,
"Blessed is the man who thinks positive thoughts." The Bible doesn't
say, "Blessed is the man who always thinks beautiful thoughts." The
Bible says, "Blessed is the man that FEARETH THE LORD" (Psalm 112:1).

   Number seven: It brings confidence. Proverbs 14:26 says, "In the
fear of the Lord is strong confidence."

   Number eight: Fear brings separation from evil. Proverbs 16:6 says,
"...by the fear of the Lord men depart from evil." Today, there is
little fear of God in any country, so there is an abundance of evil.
That is all there is to it. You can put America's problem down in one
line. The people who write the television plays do not fear God. The
people who publish the pornographic magazines do not fear God. The
government administration officials in control are only worried about
losing their jobs; they are not worried what GOD thinks of them. That
is all there is to it. When a nation ceases to fear God, it goes down
the drain.

   "By the fear of the Lord, men depart from evil" (Prov. 16:6). So,
who in America is going to depart from evil, I ask you? Why, they are
going to go right on doing what they want to, and saying evil is good,
good is evil, everything is relative, and it depends on how you look at
it, and go right on with their devilment until this nation is sunk.
Can't you figure that out? The Bible says, "The wicked shall be turned
into hell, and all the nations that forget God" (Psalm 9:17). The Bible
says in Proverbs 14:34, "Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a
reproach to any people." The Bible says, "Except the Lord build the
house, they labor in vain that build it: except the Lord keep the city,
the watchman waketh but in vain" (Psalm 127:1). And that goes for a
nation, a church, and a school, as well as a household.

   These are very terrible things that I am talking about. I understand
that. I know they are very hard, brutal facts, but you have heard them
indirectly in milder forms from evangelists at different times. In this
country fifty years ago, you would have heard them from every old time,
Bible believing preacher in every pulpit in the United States. What do
you suppose happens to a country where a congregation of people who
want to do wrong come, sit, and listen to a man who is afraid of them,
and is afraid to tell them what is wrong because he doesn't fear God?
He fears his congregation more than he fears God. Don't you know that
church is going to be in a mess?

   It is not hard to guess what is wrong with America. It isn't hard at
all. If the preachers have so little fear of God that they change the
Bible in every other verse, and think that because they have twenty
years of education they are smart enough to change it, what do you
think those congregations are going to do? Preachers in America have so
little fear of God left in them that they are altering and changing the
Bible three and four thousand times (there are 30,000 changes between
the New American Standard Version and the Authorized Version). The
Living Bible (called a "Bible") is not even a Bible; it is a
paraphrase. As a matter of fact, it is not even a paraphrase. I've got
300 references here to show that it is not a paraphrase--it is a
commentary. It was Kenneth Taylor's commentary, and what he thought the
Bible taught. It is not a paraphrase, per se. Anyone who knows grammar
and English should have enough sense to see that. Now, let me ask you
something. If the preachers in America have so little fear of God that
they wouldn't hesitate to tamper with the word of God in 30,000 places,
what kind of congregations do you think they are going to produce?
God-fearing, righteous congregations? No! They are going to produce
humanistic congregations. They are going to produce smart aleck
lawyers, doctors, and bankers who think because they make $100,000 per
year that they are intelligent. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning
of wisdom," not a college education! "And by the fear of the Lord, men
depart from evil" (Prov. 16:6).

   Do you know why some of your sons don't cast off the chains of
restraint, and just go to hell all the way? Because some of them are
still afraid of what daddy might do to them. Did you know that? Some of
you unsaved people who are reading these words, do you know that your
son has got more sense than you've got? Your son is afraid that you
will take the car away from him, not buy the license for him, or quit
giving him the money for gas if he doesn't straighten up (or at least
cover up his devilment, or lie his way through). Fear is a good,
healthy motive, and it keeps your son from getting into a lot of
devilment he would get into if he didn't fear you. And he knows it! And
yet, some of you people I am talking to don't fear God. And you fancy
that you are intelligent! All you are going to do is get in the trouble
your son would get into if the restraints were taken off him.

   This truth now brings up the problem of the modern educational
system, the National Education Association ("NEA"), the work of Mann,
Greely, Pestalozzi, Giovanni Gentile, and the modern educators: what we
call behavioristic psychology. I don't have a lot of time to go into
it, but the long and short of it is that there are basically two
philosophies about training and education: the modern one and the old
one.

   The old system of education--the philosophy of education, called
educational philosophy--was that a child was unruly, and by natural
bent tended to mischief, and must be restrained. Whether the teacher
believed in the depravity of man, the need for the new birth, or the
Bible is immaterial at this point in our discussion, because we are
talking about a basic approach to education; the teacher did not
necessarily need to be a Christian in order to implement this
philosophy. The teacher might be an atheist, a Roman Catholic, or a
Jew. I am not talking ahout any religious preference. I am talking
about two basic attitudes towards education. In the old system, it was
taken for granted that the child's natural bent was to evil, and,
therefore, the child should be restrained and prevented from evil; the
child should be given inducements to do right, be rewarded for doing
right, and be punished for doing wrong.

   In contrast, the modern system of education which came up in the
1920s and 1930s, and blossomed in the 1950s and 1960s was simply this:
people are basically GOOD (which is the teaching of liberals connected
with the National Council of Churches of Christ). That is, while
professing to separate church and state, the church teaching of
religious liberals was incorporated into the educational system. The
system now believes that since the child is basically good (which is a
religious conviction), restraints should be taken off, and the natural
bent of the child should be encouraged. Rather than punish evil, the
child should be taught to make up his own mind about what is good and
evil. If the child decides that evil is good and good is evil, that is
all right for the child as long as it works for the child. In
curriculum terminology, this is called values clarification (alternate
spelling, "H-E-L-L"). It simply means that educated sinners overthrow
God's standards of righteousness, and set up their own.

   Educated people have always had a way to tell it like it ain't by
speaking about "innate capacities and latent potentialities, and the
validation of ethnic communication in dialogue with a meaningtul
relevant symbolism which crosses the barrier between the heteronomous
influence, and the autonomy of the environment...." You see, by giving
you all that garbage in thirty dollar words, they make you think
something is going on that is not going on. Do you know what is going
on? I know! The teachers are taking the bridle off of sanity and
morality, and then talking about a "generation gap." Ain't that a flip?

   So, one of the results of fearing the Lord is departing from evil,
and where there is no fear of the Lord, there is no departing from
evil. You say. "Well, I don't like..." You don't like a lot of things,
but that is the truth. The truth is that when men fear God, they depart
from evil, and where they don't, they don't. Your child wouldn't be
safe in a town where somebody didn't fear God. You read me? If the fear
of the Lord is taken completely out of your town, your town won't be
safe to live in. Got it? You say, "I still think..." You didn't have
any sense to start with, or you would have gotten it the first time it
came through. I am not talking about opinions. We are dealing here with
scientific law. If you don't believe it, stay in a neighborhood where
there is no fear of God, and watch what happens to you and your family.

   Number nine: The fear of the Lord brings Christian fellowship.
Malachi 3:16 says, "Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to
another: and the Lord hearkened, and heard it."

   Number ten: It supercedes the fear of man. The Lord said in Isaiah
8:12-13, "...neither fear ye their fear, nor be afraid. Sanctify the
Lord of hosts himself; and let him be your fear." Quit fearing man!
Start fearing God! Start putting God first in your life instead of your
family. Start putting God's word first instead of the newspaper. God
first! I say "first," because He said, "Let him be your fear." You want
to be afraid of an opinion? Be afraid of what God thinks about you. If
you want to be afraid of gossip, be afraid of what God says about you
up in glory. If you want to be afraid of what will happen to you if you
don't obey men, start being afraid of what God will do to you if you
don't obey God.

   Number eleven: It brings answered prayer. The fear of the Lord is a
healthy, clean, good, enduring, positive thing. Psalm 145:19 says, "He
will fulfill the desire of them that fear him: he also will hear their
cry, and will save them."

   Number twelve: It brings long life. If you are just plain carnal,
that might be the best of it. Proverbs 10:27 says, "The fear of the
Lord prolongeth days."

   Those are twelve results of fearing the Lord. It brings pleasure to
the Lord. It brings wisdom. It causes the Lord's pity to increase. It
brings acceptance with God. It brings the mercy of God. It brings
blessings, confidence, separation from evil, and Christian fellowship.
It does away with the fear of man. It brings answers to prayer, and it
prolongs your life. Now, my dear friend, what do you want more than
that? You say, "Money." Well, if you can get the prayers answered, live
a long time, get blessings, get mercy from God, and have wisdom, you
can make all the money God intended you to have. We should pray that
God will teach us to fear Him.

   David said in Psalm 86:11, "Teach me thy way, O Lord; I will walk in
thy truth: unite my heart to fear thy name." The fear of the Lord is
the healthiest motive on earth today; alongside the fear of the Lord,
positive thinking does not even run a close third. The positive
thinking mentioned in Philippians 4 is for the prayer life of the born
again believer. The fear of the Lord is for both saved and lost men, in
any station of life, any sex or race, anywhere on the face of the earth.

   Propheies In The Life Of Christ

   Our next lessons will deal with the person and work of the Lord
Jesus Christ. This subject is called Christology, that is, the study of
Christ.

   This lesson will deal primarily with the prophecies that had to do
with the earthly life of Christ: prophecies concerning Christ's origin
and prophecies concerning His human ministry because long before the
Lord Jesus Christ was born it was certainly prophesied that He would
come. After all, the final and sure test of the

   infallibility of the word of God and God's authority is prophecy,
for He who knows the end from the beginning has spoken and has already
committed it to writing.

   First of all, we deal with the prophecies in the earthly life of
Christ. Long before Jesus Christ was born it was prophesied that He
would come. As a matter of fact, the first prophecy occurred more than
3,000 years before His birth. Fulfilled prophecy is the main proof that
the Bible is the written word of God and the Bible makes more than 800
prophecies, all of which are removed far enough in time from their
fulfillment that there could be no chance of accident. Of these 800
prophecies, 300 of them have already been fulfilled literally and there
are 500 that remain to be fulfilled in the future. The mathematical
probability of these prophecies coming to pass is less than one out of
ten to the 895th power. So, when we speak about the Bible being "Holy"
scripture, we are speaking with mathematical certainty of a scientific
fact. There are no books on science written which are that accurate.
There is no textbook on science that can match the word of God.

   The Bible, for example, makes forty-eight prophecies about the Lord
Jesus Christ's first coming to Israel as their Messiah. The chances of
forty-eight prophecies coming to pass in the life of one man when the
prophecies are written 400 to 2,000 years before he was born are about
one out of ten to the 157th power; there are not that many electrons in
the universe. You figure out the number of electrons in the universe by
figuring out the number in the atoms and then figure out the number of
atoms per square inch and multiply it by 150 billion square light
years; you will find it does not take up 157 zeros. So, when we speak
of the Holy Bible we are on a level high above any scientific
achievement in America today, and there are no scientists at Houston
Space Center or the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California,
who could possibly keep up with the word of God. The mathematical
geniuses who can figure out the square root of a certain number running
into eight or nine digits are "small pickings." After all, the Bible
makes forty-eight prophecies about one man over 400 years before he is
born. All of them come true on the button and there are no mathematical
geniuses, dead or alive; there are no college curriculums, existent or
nonexistent; and there are no textbooks on mathematics that have been
written or that are going to be written that would take such chances;
and if they did, they could not produce "the goods." So, when we talk
about the prophecies of Christ we are on a scientific level far above
the most brilliant mathematician that ever lived, and silly little
modern computers are extremely non-scientific compared with these
mathematical facts.

   Jesus did not come to earth unannounced. He came in "the fullness of
time," and a study of the scripture fulfillment dealing with minute
details encourages our faith in God, who not only draws up the master
plan but also the intricate details of the blueprint ahead of time. We
see that the details are fulfilled exactly as prophesied and this
reinforces the faith of the believer in the inspiration of scripture
and proves to him that the Bible is not just an assortment of books by
various authors but is one book with one Author, God. It also proves
that the Bible is not a "drop of truth in an ocean of truth" or a
"bucket of truth in an ocean of truth." It is the whole ocean collapsed
into your pocket. There are no so-called "sacred scriptures" in any
religion that dare to undertake what the Holy Bible undertakes, and the
surest proof you have that the other so-called sacred scriptures are
irreverent tomfoolery is the fact that none of them even tries the
phenomena we find recorded in the Bible.

   The Bible prophesies forty-eight details of a man's life before he
is born, brings them through on the money, and then hazards 500 more
prophecies which are yet in the future. The Shastas, Vedas, Tripitaka
and Puranas do not dare hazard such guesses. The Koran, of course,
compared with the Bible in this respect looks a lot like a mole hill
would look alongside Mount Everest. I don't mean to be unkind in what I
am saying. What I mean to be is mathematically exact from the twentieth
century scientific point of view. When I say what I say about the Koran
I am speaking from the standpoint of fact; I am not speaking from the
standpoint of some religious "faith." After all, our religion is not
based just on faith; our religion is based on historical facts. There
are no computers made now or that will be made which would hazard the
chances that are hazarded by the King James Bible.

   For example, the King James text has 5OO prophecies in it that deal
with the second coming of Christ that have not taken place yet. Do you
know what the chances are of a man "batting 500" out of 500? That is,
do you know what the chances are of a Book "batting 1,000" through a
period of 300 years? Do you know what those chances are? Well, those
are the chances the Bible takes and never apologizes to anybody. And
considering the fact that there are now five and one half miles of
obsolete books on "science" where the "scientific facts" have changed
and are no longer relevent, what would "modern science" be alongside
the Bible but a baby waiting for a handout. To assume that all these
things just accidentally happen is an accident too great even for the
imagination of an evolutionist. You will find evolutionists who don't
believe in the word of God and yet they have more mathematical
scientific proof that the Bible is the word of God than they do in
Darwin's puddle to paradise theory in the Child's Garden of Verses.

   Our faith is undergirded by the witness of fulfilled prophecy and it
helps us to stand firm and unmovable because everything that God ever
said would come to pass came to pass, and what He has said that has not
yet come to pass will come to pass as surely as the things He said
before came to pass which He said would come to pass. For example, here
are some prophecies concerning Christ's origin and Christ's life. The
chance of these prophecies coming out and being fulfilled in the life
of one man are one out of ten to the 97th power. One out of ten with
ninety-seven zeros after it! Did you ever write that down on a sheet of
paper and see what it looks like? Do you know what that is the
equivalent of? That is the equivalent of taking one grain of sand on a
beach in Samoa and wrapping it in Scotch tape and putting that grain of
sand back on some other beach and burying it three feet deep and then
telling a man to go out and find that grain of sand. He would have to
look for that grain of sand on every beach in the world and find it. Do
you know what your chances would be of doing that? One out of ten times
itself 97 times. And those are the chances the Bible takes which no
religious book in the world would dare take. And Jean Dixon and Edgar
Cayce and Kahlil Gibran alongside such odds are simply too much,
brother. I mean, who would take such nonsense seriously who knew the
Bible?

   Christ would come out of Israel (Num. 24:17-19).
   Christ would be descended from Abraham, Isaac, Jacob (Gen. 12:3;
17:19, Num. 24:17).
   Christ would be born of the family of David (Gen. 49 and Isa. 11).
   Christ would be born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2).
   Christ would be born of a virgin (Isa. 7:14).
   The time of His coming was specified (Dan. 9:25).
   Christ's coming was announced by a forerunner (Isa. 4:3-5).
   The Messiah would be God manifest in the flesh (Isa. 9:6).
   He would spend His childhood in Egypt (Hosea 11:1).
   He would suffer and make an atonement for sin (Isa. 53).
   He would enter Jerusalem on a colt, the foal of an ass (Zech. 9:9).
   He would be given gall and vinegar in His agony (Ps. 69:21).
   Not a bone would be broken (Ps. 34:20).
   Men would cast lots for His garments (Ps. 22:18).
   He would utter certain words in His dying agony, which were quoted
before He was born (Ps. 22:1).
   He would rise from the dead (Ps. 16:10).
   Christ would be betrayed by a friend (Ps. 41:9).
   He would be sold for thirty pieces of silver (Zech. 11:12).
   He would be accused by false witnesses (Ps. 35:11).
   He would be spat upon and smitten (Isa. 50:6).
   He would be hated without a cause (Ps. 35:19).
   He would be scorned and mocked (Ps. 22:7,8).

   Now, explain it! I haven't cited one reference that wasn't written
more than 400 years before Jesus Christ was born, and there isn't any
linguist or etymologist in the world who doesn't know everything listed
above was written before Christ was born. Not even the radical
extremist or the Graf-Wellhausen school that followed Kuenen and
Dewette back in the nineteenth century believe that any of the Old
Testament was written later than the time of John the Baptist because
every Orthodox Jew had all the thirty-nine books of your King James
Bible in print and was reading them in the synagogues 200 years before
Jesus showed up.

   Now, let's talk mathematically, shall we? Explain what I just gave.
All right, if you can't explain it, would you imitate it, please?
Surely, you are as smart as Isaiah and David and Hosea and Zachariah,
surely! I mean, with the benefit of modern, inductive scientific
methods and the vast researches into empirical methods and means
whereby the existential, positivistic baloney can come out, surely you
can duplicate what I have just said!

   I have just listed twenty-two details of a man's life that were
given before he was born that come through on the money. Now it is your
turn!

   Requirement Number One: You have to get the statements of seven
different writers a thousand years apart.

   Requirement Number Two: They have to write the events without any
known record to get their material from.

   Requirement Number Three: They have to be unaware of each other's
writings when they write.

   Requirement Number Four: The details have to be fulfilled far enough
in the future so that there is no chance that the author could have
used hindsight instead of foresight.

   When you do that, let us know, won't you? A fellow said to me, "You
just believe the Bible because you don't know any better." I gave him
the classic answer. I said, "That's right, son, I don't know any
better. When you show me something better, I'll believe it." After all,
the phenomena I have just listed can't be found in the Harvard five
foot shelf of classics. They can't be found in the Encyclopedia
Britannica or in the Encyclopedia Americana. It doesn't show up in
there anywhere. Now tell me something, you stupid doctors and lawyers
(and I use the words with "charity" the same way you use the word of
God!). How do you account for this Book that we go by having
mathematical, scientific phenomena in it that you can't produce with
twenty centuries of science behind you? Rather interesting, isn't it?

   Numbers 24:17 says, "...There shall come a Star out of Jacob, and a
Sceptre shall rise out of Israel..."--fulfilled Matthew 1:1-17.

   Genesis 49:10 says, "The sceptre shall not depart from Judah..."--
fulfilled Luke 1:31-33.

   Micah 5:2 says, "But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah...out of thee shall he
come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel"--fulfilled Luke 2:47.

   Isaiah 7:14 says, "Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son,
and shall call his name Immanuel"--fulfilled Matthew 1:18.

   Daniel 9:24,26 says, "Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people
and upon thy holy city....And after threescore and two weeks shall
Messiah be cut off." He was crucified exactly at that time, and if you
put the Gregorian system and the Capernican system and the Julian
system and the Roman calendar together and work out your lunar years
and your solar years until you are red, white and blue in the face you
will find out that His triumphal entry into Jerusalem was dated within
eight hours, more than 400 years before His birth.

   In Isaiah 9:6 Jesus is called "The mighty God." He is said to be
deity in John 1:14.

   Hosea 11:1 says that He would spend part of His childhood in Egypt.
This was fulfilled in Matthew 2.

   It said in the Old Testament (Isa. 53) that He would suffer as an
atonement. It is fulfilled in Matthew 26 and 27.

   We read in Zechariah 9:9 that he will come into Jerusalem on "the
foal of an ass." It is fulfilled in detail in Matthew 21:2-5.

   We are told in the Old Testament in Psalm 69:21 that at His death He
would be given gall and vinegar on the cross. This is fulfilled in
Matthew 27:34.

   We are told in the Old Testament (Exod. 12:46, Ps. 34:20) that at
His death not a bone of Him would be broken. This is fulfilled in John
19:33. This is very unusual because the legs of the crucified prisoners
were broken. How did they miss Christ's legs? And since the Jews'
method of capital punishment was stoning, why would an Old Testament
man say, "He keepeth all his bones: not one of them is broken" (Ps.
34:20)? What are the chances of a man not having his bones broken in
capital punishment under a Jewish nation if he was a Jew when it would
be Jews who would carry out punishment on him? And capital punishment
for a Jew was stoning. Do you know what those chances are? Why don't
you figure them out? Figure the number of people who had capital
punishment in Israel in a year and multiply it by the thousand years
that their nation was active as a nation under their own government and
how many they stoned and what the chances are of one man not being
stoned who is accused of committing blasphemy when the law says that
the blasphemer is to be stoned to death. You say, "The Roman
government." Nice coincidence, isn't it? You say, "Well, the Roman
method of killing was crucifixion, not stoning." Real handy, don't you
think? I wonder why Greece wasn't in power when the Lord came? That
would have blown the scripture. I wonder why Persia or Syria wasn't in
power. That would have blown the scripture. Kind of a "coinky-dinky,"
don't you think?

   In the Old Testament (Ps. 22:18) it says, "They part my garments
among them, and cast lots upon my vesture." This is fulfilled in
Matthew 27:35.

   We are told in Psalm 22:1 that Christ would cry, "My God, my God,
why hast thou forsaken me?" This prophecy was fulfilled in Mark 15:34.

   We are told in Psalm 16:10, "For thou wilt not leave my soul in
hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption." And
Peter affirms that this is literally true (Acts 1:3) and is confirmed
by 500 eyewitnesses. You say, "Well, they just made that up." They did?
Five hundred of them did, did they? Five hundred firsthand
eyewitnesses? You want to try it in court? Do you know what the laws of
jurisprudence state in America? They state that if eyewitnesses testify
to something they have seen and commit what they have seen to writing
and it isn't proved conclusively at the time of this committal that
they are wrong, then that which they have committed to writing, once it
has been testified to, cannot be annulled or overthrown or rejected
unless conclusive evidence to prove they were liars is produced. And
that is why every "scientist" in the world is sweating blood trying to
find one bone of Jesus Christ. Because the only conclusive evidence
that He didn't rise from the dead would be to find the corpus delicti.
So, they have been working on it for twenty centuries. Just like they
have been trying to get to the moon to try to find signs of life to
prove Darwin's puddle to paradise theory. Twenty-five billion dollars
to disprove Genesis 1 because they are worried about the new birth that
was necessary if Genesis 1, 2 and 3 are right. Some people never
consider the motive for a college education, do they? They just take it
for granted.

   Now, what have we said here? I have actually gone through a very
short thing. There are dozens of prophecies throughout the Old
Testament that speak about His ministry. There are also prophecies in
the Old Testament which speak about the men He will witness to--types
of the Antichrist. There are prophecies in the Old Testament that speak
not only about the soldiers casting lots for His garments but also
about His cry from the cross, "I thirst." There are not only prophecies
on these things but we read: "...They pierced my hands and my feet,"
Psalm 22:16.

   When He comes again they shall "look upon me whom they have
pierced," Zechariah 12:10.

   We read about the virgin birth, "A woman shall compass a man,"
Jeremiah 31:22. Whereas a woman has no seed, yet Christ is said to be
the seed of the woman (Gen. 3:15).

   We are told in the Old Testament that as a sacrifice He will be
called a Lamb, and in Exodus 12 we are told that the house of Israel is
to get a lamb which is first called "the Lamb" (vs. 4) and is then
called "your Lamb" (vs. 5), showing the required sacrifice is a Lamb.
But only one Lamb will do because it is called "the Lamb," and unless
you appropriate it for yourself ("your Lamb") His atonement is
ineffectual. How do you explain that "a" (vs. 3), "the" (vs. 4), and
"your" (vs. 5)?

   How do you explain the prophecies in Genesis 22 about an only son
(vs. 2), the son of His father's old age, going up a hill with wood on
his back (vs. 6)--indicating the mode of Christ's capital punishment?

   How do you explain in Exodus 12:7 the Jew being told to put blood on
each side of the door for the dying thief that was lost and the blood
over the door for Jesus Christ in the middle?

   You explain to me how forty-eight prophecies could come to pass on
one man written 400 to 2,000 years before that man was born. You
explain that to me logically, scientifically and mathematically and
give me a demonstration like those empirical, logical positivists at
Vienna wanted and like Einstein wanted--when he changed the definition
of "meaning"--and I'll throw my Bible in the trash can. But, until you
can offer me twentieth century empirical, scientific proof, I'm going
by scientific fact and you are going by deluded pagan imagination. We
born again believers are not going by anyone's imagination or by
anyone's "religious experience." We were going by computerized
empiricism before scientists knew what a computer was.

   There are forty-eight prophecies that come to pass in the life of
one man, Jesus Christ. And if that weren't enough, here is Joseph back
in the Old Testament between Genesis 37 and Genesis 50 whose life
matches Jesus Christ's earthly life in 152 different particulars. A
shepherd, hated of his brethren, envied by his brethren, betrayed by
his brethren, sold by his brethren, sold to Gentiles by his brethren,
sold for silver by his brethren, in prison, connected with new wine and
bread while in prison, and with one prisoner hung and one prisoner
released. Explain it! If you had all the prophecies of Nostradamus and
Mother Shipton and Jean Dixon and Edgar Cayce and laid them alongside
eight chapters in Genesis, they couldn't win, place or show. Let me
hear you explain it! Here is a book, Genesis, written by a man who
lived 1500 years before Christ was born, but he gives 152 details of
Christ's life before He shows up. Who would like to step up and try
that? Any of you educated folks with twenty years of college think
you're smart? Know a little Greek and Hebrew, do you? You know what
supralapsarianism and infralapsarianism is, do you sonny? You've been
working the Piel, the Pual, the Hiphil and the Hithpael, have you? You
have, huh? You trying to impress somebody, talking about the Apocrypha
and the pseudepigrapha and the antilegomena and the circumflex accent
on the ultima; is that it? You think because you know about lepidoptera
and brontosaurus and cenozoic and stegosaurus and triceratops and
listen to The World Tomorrow you've got some brains, do you? All right,
there is one that will try out your medula oblongata, sonny. That will
test your metal, brother! Try that one! Explain how any Book could give
152 details of a man's life before he shows up, and then when he shows
up they are all fulfilled to the letter with 500 more to go.

   Now, if I have spoken rather harshly to you in this lesson, I have
done so with a purpose in mind because every Bible believer is harassed
and dogged day and night by educated dingbats who think twenty years of
education makes them intelligent. These people, of course, are the
curse of Christendom, especially the educated Christians. We have many
so-called "Christians" in America who think they are much smarter than
God or smarter than the Holy Spirit and who think they are smart enough
to correct Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. I only mention these things to
show you that the King James Bible has 500 prophecies laid on the line
that you can put your money on and no scientist or physicist can
attempt one tenth that number.

   Now, before you tell us all about your degree, sonny, produce the
Koran and show us this phenomenon in the Koran before you ask for an
ecumenical movement toward Hinduism and Mohammadanism. Pick up the
Sutras and the Vedas and show us this phenomenon. Will you show us
that? Do you think truth can be separated from fact? We are dealing
with facts! Don't give me this ethereal guru stuff about
transcendental meditation that evaporates you into a cloud of
whatever you think you should be. Deal with the facts, kiddies. Those
are the facts. They are documented. They are attested to by witnesses
and have survived 3,000 years of Satanic, irrational criticism. Before
you ask to take our Bible and lay it alongside what some of you have
read, would you show us the same phenomenon in the junk you call your
"sacred scriptures of the East"? Is there any man reading this who will
mail me a copy of the Analects of Confucius and mark for me 800
prophecies that will come to pass on the money, with 300 of them
already fulfilled? Send me a copy. I would like to look it over. Would
you send me anything that Joseph Smith wrote (or "Moroni") when he
diddled with the golden plates--would you send me something that he
wrote that wasn't taken from the Bible that has this phenomenon in it?
I mean, never mind the places Smith copied out of the King James
Bible--we've got them all marked anyway. We keep track of it, you know,
to see how things go.

   The Bible is the word of God. The Bible constitutes the Holy
Scriptures which can be proved scientifically by mathematical
phenomena. The Lord said to the unbeliever in Isaiah that if you want
to know who I am ask me concerning things to come. I am the first, I am
the last, declaring the end from the beginning. I am God and there is
none else. I know no other God. Beside me there is no God and Saviour,
I am the first and the last and before me there was no God, neither
shall there be after me. God has committed Himself to man in print so
that no mathematician could even dispute His word and retain a sound
mind. You have to be intellectually dishonest to classify the Bible
with other so-called "scripture" because the mathematical phenomena in
it is not found in any other book in the world, including the textbooks
on mathematics.

   I repeat: The chances of forty-eight prophecies coming to pass,
fulfilled on one man and written 400 to 1,000 years before he was born,
are one out of ten to the 157th power; and my dear mathematician, there
are not that many electrons in the universe if you count the universe
to be 50 billion square light-years in all four directions. Something
to think about, isn't it, if you're an unsaved man! And something to
thank God for if you are a saved man! This completes our first study
on Christology--the Biblical passages that deal with the prophecies
on the life of Jesus Christ.

   CHRIST'S EARTHLY LIFE AND MIRACLES

   In this lesson we are going to talk about the actual earthly life of
Jesus Christ and the miracles of Jesus Christ as recorded in the word
of God. This series of theological studies is, of course, Bible based
and true to the Bible and rather unique in that we take the position
that when the Bible says one thing and scholarship says another, to
quote Billy Sunday, "Scholarship can go plumb to the devil." That is,
what we're dealing with primarily is what the Bible says about itself,
not what it is presumed to teach; we are giving you what the Bible says
about these matters. We are not interested in giving a partial view or
a denominational view or a halfway point of view or a biased, partisan
point of view in these matters, but rather we are called upon to relate
all scripture to scripture where the scriptures speak of the scripture.
It is quite the style these days to give half-truths and two-thirds
truths and three-fourths truths. We often hear people talking about,
"What is the gospel," and then running to the Gospel of the Kingdom of
Heaven and trying to acquaint it with the Gospel that Paul preached,
which is nonsense. We hear people talk about getting saved by Acts 2:38
when there isn't a genuine Christian or genuine Gentile in the chapter.
They're all Jews or Jewish proselytes. So, today we have an ultimate in
confusion--a maximum amount of confusion these days even when scripture
is quoted. This is largely due to the fact that the people who hear the
scriptures quoted do not take the trouble or time to look them up and
see what they have to say about themselves; and this, of course, should
be done. We hope in these lessons that you are taking time out to look
up the references, and if you do not have time to look them up at least
you will make note of them, then study them at your own convenience.

   We are now dealing with Christology: the life, person and work of
the Lord Jesus Christ. When we study Christology proper, we are
studying the very center and heart of the Bible, the person and work of
God's King Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ, unto whom all power (there's
your authority) in heaven and in earth is given. His authority is of
such a nature that the Bible says, "That at the name of Jesus every
knee should bow,...every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is
Lord, to the glory of God the Father" (Phil. 2:10-11). And we saved
preachers have a great weight of authority on our side (and a great
blessing on our behalf) in that, when we consider it, some day we are
going to convert every person we preach to. That is, we have an
advantage when it comes to FINAL authority that unsaved preachers don't
have and that Mohammad, Buddha and Confucius couldn't imagine.
Mohammad, Confucius and Buddha never thought they would see the day
when everybody in the world would be a convert to their religion, but
we saved preachers who believe the word of God know that eventually
(that is either here or at the Judgment Seat of Christ or at the White
Throne Judgment) every knee shall bend, every head shall bow and every
tongue shall confess that Buddha is not the Lord and that Mohammad is
not the Lord and that the Rockefellers and the Kennedys are not the
Lord and that the government is not the Lord. "Jesus Christ is Lord, to
the glory of God the Father." So, when we speak of matters of
Christology--studying the life and person and work of the Lord Jesus
Christ--we are dealing with the very heart of revelation itself, for
God said in Matthew 17:5, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well
pleased; hear ye him." It was Jesus Christ Himself who made this
momentous confession (or monstrous, I guess, if you are an atheist or
agnostic) in Matthew 28:18, "All power is given unto me in heaven and
in earth." Not even the devil can operate outside of the permissive
will of God and power of the Lord Jesus Christ. Not even the
governments of this world run by people like Adolph Hitler or Nero or
the half-diseased, half-mad emperor Tiberius could hold their authority
without the permissive will and power of the Lord Jesus Christ. "All
power is given unto me in heaven and in earth." Or, as Paul so
succinctly puts it in Romans 13:1, "...the powers that be are ordained
of God."

   Now, we shall deal with the life of Jesus Christ, the only man who
ever lived who had four parts to His life. First of all, He had His
pre-incarnate state as God, existing in the Trinity. He was before all
things. Colossians 1:17 tells us that "he is before all things," he is
the head of all things, "by him all things consist" and all things were
created by Him, visible or invisible, whether they be thrones,
principalities or powers. They were created by Him and for Him and He
is before all things and He is head over all things. In His
pre-incarnate state the Lord Jesus Christ was back in the confines of
eternity with God the Father.

   In the second part of His life He was born of a virgin, begotten as
a "Son of man" with two natures. He lived on this earth a sinless life
and died a sinless death.

   In the third part of His life, after rising from the dead, He
inhabited the bodies of millions of believers in the person of the Holy
Spirit (who is said to be the "Lord," 2 Cor. 3:17), who came to testify
and magnify Jesus Christ Himself (John 15 and 16) and who guides and
leads them into all truth.

   In the fourth part of His life He will return to this earth as King
of kings and Lord of lords, as the King Messiah, and He will sit down
in the Davidic, Messianic, Jewish throne of a political kingdom in
Palestine.

   This makes the Lord Jesus Christ "Superman" (not "superstar," in the
ultimate sense, in the sense that no bionic man or woman could ever
possibly be). Before creation's morning, back in the confines of
eternity, He was the greatest Creator who ever lived, the greatest
Artist who ever lived, and the greatest Musician who ever lived. His
creation manifested His works. Psalm 19:1, "The heavens declare the
glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork." Before His
incarnate existence He was the greatest Writer who ever lived, having
written thirty-nine Old Testament books by twenty-four different
authors through a period of 1500 years on three different continents.
When He came to earth and walked upon this earth He was the greatest
Doctor who ever lived, healing without splints, compresses, oxygen
tents or hospitals. He was the greatest Preacher who ever lived. He
said in Luke 11:32, "A greater than Jonas is here." He was also the
greatest Lover who ever lived, loving us and giving Himself to die for
our sins. When we were enemies of God, we were reconciled by the death
of His Son. He was also the greatest Soldier who ever lived. Keitel and
Guderian and Montgomery and Model and Rommel and Eisenhower and General
Patton and MacArthur and J.E.B. Stuart and Jackson and Charlemagne and
Napoleon couldn't hold a candle to Him. He went through thirty-three
years of His life knowing He was going to face a miserable death at the
hands of torturers. Knowing that He was going to die a brutal, cruel
death on the cross, He set His face "like a flint to go to Jerusalem"
and never swerved to the right hand or to the left hand until the day
they nailed Him up. You talk about "enduring hardness as a good
soldier," brother, that's it!

   Then He arose from the dead. In this present age He is the greatest
Teacher who ever lived, being able to teach and to guide "into all
truth." He is the greatest Detective who ever lived, the Holy Spirit
being able to track down any sinner and tree him and bring him under
the bond of the covenant and find out his sin and convict him of sin,
righteousness and judgment. In this present dispensation He is also the
greatest Politician who ever lived. He opens doors that politicians
can't open, and He closes doors so that nobody can open them.

   Then, some day Jesus Christ will come back to this earth as King of
kings and Lord of lords. And, when He comes back He will be the
greatest King who ever lived--the greatest Monarch and the greatest
Dictator the world has ever seen, ruling this earth with a rod of iron.
The Bible says of this time, "For the earth shall be filled with the
knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea" (Hab.
2:14). The small piece of territory that Genghis Khan and Tamerlane and
Baibars and Kublai Khan and Charlemagne and Napoleon and Adolph Hitler
had carved out for themselves really will not amount to a great deal.
When the Lord Jesus Christ comes back, Asia, Africa, Europe, North,
Central and South America, the Arctic, the Antarctic and the "islands
of the sea" will be subject to His name.

   Now, the birth of Jesus Christ on this earth (in the second part of
His life) was by the virgin Mary and it is recorded in Matthew and Luke
and is prophesied in Genesis 3:15. He was circumcised at the age of
eight days, as recorded in Luke 2:21, according to the prescriptions
of the Jewish law which is called "the law of the Lord." Mary,
recognizing the fact that she was a sinner and needed to have a
purification for her sins, went down to the temple in Luke 2:21,22
and offered a purification for her sins, as a sinner. This was the law
of God (Lev. 12), which is said to be the "law of the Lord" in Luke 2,
showing that Mary plainly confessed that she was a sinner exactly like
anybody else and offered a purification for her sins at the circumcision
of her child in Luke 2:21,22. Jesus was then taken to the temple at
Jerusalem when he was twelve years of age, Luke 2:41-48. The early
years of His life were spent as a carpenter in Nazareth, Mark 6:3.

   Of course, the twelve silent years of His life have been mimicked
and made fun of and parodied by a number of writers in what we call the
"pseudepigrapha," the so-called writings of the "lost books of the
Bible," which are not books of the Bible at all. They are false
writings in which people profess to know something about the twelve
years of Jesus growing up as a child. We must remember that the
silences of God are as inspired as what He has to say and the omissions
in the Bible are just as inspired as its additions; where the Holy
Spirit is silent He intended to be silent for a reason. For this reason
twelve years of Jesus Christ's life were passed over in silence and
from then on (from the time He was twelve until eighteen years later,
when He appears publicly at the ministry of John the Baptist) nothing
is said more than is found in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. We may
theorize about these matters and let the imagination wander and dream
up various types of fancies, but the Holy Spirit has chosen to keep
silent regarding these years of Christ's life, and where God is silent
let all the earth be silent before Him.

   Jesus began His earthly ministry around Judea, Samaria and Galilee,
a period that lasted about six months. He was baptized by John the
Baptist, and immediately following His baptism He was driven into the
wilderness to be tempted of the devil.

   His first miracle was performed at Cana of Galilee, John 2:1-11; His
second miracle, the healing of the nobleman's son, was performed in
Capernaum, John 4:46-54. Now, these are the first recorded miracles
performed in this Galilean ministry.

   The second stage of Jesus' ministry covered a period of six to eight
months in Capernaum and Galilee where He performed miracles, healed the
sick and preached the gospel.

   The third stage of His earthly life is what we call the "later
Galilean ministry," lasting about a year, in and around Galilee; crowds
followed Him and He preached the Sermon on the Mount there (the
material recorded in Matthew 5, 6 and 7).

   In the next stage of His ministry the Pharisees hounded Him up and
down the country to seek His life while Jesus traveled around
Capernaum, Phoenicia, Bethsaida, Caesarea Philippi, and finally
reentered Galilee.

   In the last six months we find Him preaching, teaching and traveling
in a Judean ministry; the last week, on Palm Sunday, we have the last
supper near Gethsemene, the trials of the Pharisees, Herod and Pilate,
and His death by the cross. Three days later, according to prophecy,
Jesus arose from the dead with 500 eyewitnesses to testify to the facts
thereof. After forty days of eating, sleeping, talking and
fellowshipping with the disciples, He ascended visibly and bodily into
heaven.

   Now, that is a very brief summary of the earthly ministry of Christ;
and, of course, we will talk about this much more in detail when we get
into the detailed accounts of the various passages that deal with the
doctrines of Christ, speaking especially of the humanity of Christ, the
sinlessness of Christ, the character of Christ, His teachings and
commandments, and His miracles.

   Suffice it to say that His earthly life lasted exactly thirty-three
and one-half years with His birth coming at the Feast of Tabernacles in
the fall, not at Christmas time. December 25th is the birthday of Baal,
the sun god. Christ's birth is obviously in the fall at the Feast of
Tabernacles when God comes to the "Tabernacle in the flesh." The Jews
call this time of year Yom Kippur, the beginning of the new year.
Although their religious year begins on the first month, their secular
year or secular calendar begins on the seventh month, between September
and October. This ministry then runs half a year from September-October
to March-April and then runs through three passovers with the Lord
Jesus Christ Himself being the fourth passover. In John's Gospel you
will find four feasts of the passover mentioned, you will find that the
fourth passover, beginning around John 12, 13 and 14, is the Lord Jesus
Christ Himself, clearly indicating that Christ's ministry began in the
fall and ended in the spring, an exact period of forty-two months or
1260 days (three and one-half years), to match the three and one-half
years of the great Tribulation and to match the forty-two months that
the Antichrist will preach on this earth in Revelation 13.

   Miracles Of Christ

   Now, about the miracles of Jesus. A miracle is the setting aside of
a lower law by a higher law. Lower laws are the natural physical laws
of earth and nature which unsaved men have to abide by; only God can do
things contrary to these laws, although modern scientists like to play
God. A typical "playgod" or "let's play God today" is the sending of
rockets up into heaven and overcoming the law of gravity by setting in
motion a higher law, the law of propulsion--you see? In plainer words,
what scientists profess to have found (and like to discuss) they like
to call "miracles;" consequently, when they read in the Bible of a
genuine miracle, they like to pretend that "it was merely a scientific
phenomenon" that the poor, dumb, stupid people of the first century
didn't understand and that if they had been as smart as we are (oh,
yes, baby, there is a lot that goes on in the colleges these days) they
would have understood it. Now, to do this the unsaved scientists and
Bible revisors have gone back in the Bible and made hash of it by
enforcing their stupidity on the words of the Holy Spirit.

   Some of these stupid scientists and educators have tried to tell us
that Moses didn't see a bush burning--he merely saw the heat wave of
the desert going up in front of a bush in the desert sun. Fantastic
egotism, wouldn't you say? What business does a man have sitting in an
air-conditioned room in America in the twentieth century (drinking Coke
out of a Coke machine) talking about heat waves coming up from a desert
bush on Sinai and instructing a man who has herded sheep on the
backside of the desert for forty years? It is amazing how smart some of
these stuffed shirts think they are!

   Then we have these educated idiots who say that Jonah couldn't have
been swallowed by a whale because a whale's stomach isn't big enough or
its throat isn't big enough, etc., etc., after failing to tell you that
the eminent whale authority, Charles Bell Emerson, has already given
case after case after case where bodies have been recovered from the
stomachs of whales and even sharks, and some of them were still alive.
I mean, there is nothing like education to make a fool out of you along
some lines!

   Then we have these educated idiots talking about Jesus walking on
the water. They say that He wasn't really walking on the water; He was
just walking on ice floes and He was stepping from ice cake to ice
cake. You see? Which brings up an interesting question--Why wouldn't a
commercial fisherman who had worked in Galilee for more than twenty
years know you could do that if you could do it? And even a more
interesting question--How do you start walking from ice cake to ice
cake when the wind is boisterous and the waves and the wind are
interfering with the walk? That is some ice cake you have there, sonny!

   So, we always have these educated idiots in any decade who think
that twenty years of formal education equips them to speak
intelligently. Many of these deluded fools think that Jesus Christ
merely swooned when He went into the tomb and then revived
later...which brings us to some interesting problems: If he revived,
how did He unwrap the bandages from around Himself when He was wrapped
up like a mummy, dummy? This also brings up another interesting
problem: How did He get out of the tomb if He was so weak He had
already swooned from loss of blood? Yes, there are all kinds of things
going on--there's always just a little problem (an oldie but goodie!)
for every man who thinks he's smart enough to correct God.

   Now, miracles occur by setting aside a lower law with a higher law.
For example, my watch runs clockwise, which should go without
explanation. It runs left to right. However, I can pull out the stem in
my watch and move it right to left. I set aside a lower law by a higher
law; that is, the creator of this watch, the designer and engineer, put
in a built-in mechanism whereby the natural law could be reversed. Now,
why would anybody who knew that (and any eighth grader knows that)
think that the Creator of the universe didn't build into the universe
some laws that He could use to change laws that were already built in?
In plainer words, when the earth ceased to rotate or slowed in its
rotation around the sun in the days of Joshua and the sun "stood still"
and "hastened not to go down about a whole day," why would anybody
think that if there was a designer and engineering mind behind it that
it wouldn't create the mechanism with built-in laws that could reverse
the mechanism, unless he was intellectually dishonest or irrational or
just plain stupid?

   So, we see that a miracle in the Bible is a normal thing for the
Author of the Bible, who is the Author of the miracle. If Jesus truly
performed miracles, then He was "God manifest in the flesh"; that is
why scientists are anxious to prove that He didn't really perform
miracles--He just fooled folks. The Lord Jesus performed miracles, not
to show off or to entertain, but to prove His deity and to cause men to
believe upon Him, His message and His person.

   Read John 2:11 and John 20:31. Jesus performed credible miracles
over nature. He stilled a tempest. You don't have a meteorologist in
the twentieth century who can do that. He calmed the wind and water
(Matt. 8:26). Did anybody do it in the Johnstown flood? Let me see you
stop a tidal wave moving at 400 miles an hour! He even walked on the
water (Matt. 14:25), which is one of the most commonly disbelieved
miracles in the Bible and a constant object and source of ridicule for
people who like to say a fellow thinks he is God and always draw
cartoons of him walking on the water. You have no idea of the things
involved in walking on the water because there is more water over your
head out of this solar system than there is in both the Atlantic and
the Pacific Oceans; and some of you folks are going to have to walk on
the water someday. Did you know that? There is always more in the Bible
than meets the eye.

   Jesus performed miracles over devils, Mark 5:12,13. When the natural
man tries to do it, he has to bring out a wooden cross or a silver
cross and go through some mumbo jumbo. The Lord just tells them to get
out. Jesus performed miracles over diseases.

   In Mark 6 He healed people who had no faith. The modern healer
cannot perform a miracle so he keeps saying, "Only believe, release
your faith, turn your faith loose." Jesus performed miracles on people
who didn't believe, Mark 6:1-6; and while He healed them He marveled at
their unbelief. That isn't all! He performed miracles over lepers and
lame people. He caused the dumb to hear, fevers to depart, and the eyes
of the blind to be opened. The cases that He healed were public
demonstrations without an organ or a tent or lights or a "buildup" or a
collection.

   Jesus performed miracles over death. He raised the dead, contrary to
all human law which says that a dead person must stay dead. He didn't
go into the hospital and rub somebody's heart that had had a cataleptic
fit. He didn't go into the hospital and rub somebody's heart and get it
going again after they were in a coma and then say the fellow "rose
from the dead." He would go out in the graveyard, son, where they had
been down in the dirt for days and pull them out of there. He wasn't
like these healers who go around saying, "Jesus Christ, the same
yesterday, today and forever," and then they claim they raised somebody
from the dead because they got a little baby boy breathing again who
had quit breathing for two hours. No, never mind the professional
showman stuff. Jesus Christ would go out in the graveyard Wednesday and
pull a corpse out of the grave that had been buried Sunday morning.
Have you seen anybody try that one lately, honey?

   Have you seen anybody put any ears back on? Do you remember in the
Garden of Gethsemene when Jesus was attacked and Peter pulled out a
sword and cut off Malchus' ear and Christ touched the ear and it came
back on the stump? Do you remember that one? I'll bet you haven't seen
that from your favorite faith healers lately, now have you? Don't get
mad! Where is your sense of humor? Our Lord's miracles were restrained
and are completely believable. His miracles were performed openly and
in the presence of many witnesses and recorded by divine inspiration
with no tricks attached to them.

   The life of Jesus Christ on this earth can be summarized in the
words of Acts 10:38, He "...went about doing good, and healing all that
were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him." The Lord Jesus left
the Christian an example that he should follow in His suffering and
affliction, for Simon Peter says in I Peter 2:21, "For even hereunto
were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an
example, that ye should follow his steps." We are to walk as Christ
walked, I John 2:6. Jesus came to do God's will, so it is our business
to find out what the will of God is and to do it, too. The will of God
for the Christian in this dispensation is found mainly in the Pauline
Epistles, and if you want to know what the will of God is for your life
give Romans 12:18 your prayerful attention. The will of God for the
Christian in this life is given to the greatest Christian who ever
lived, the greatest follower of Christ, the apostle Paul; and Paul said
these things were given to him that he might be "a pattern to them
which should hereafter believe on him to life everlasting" (I Tim.
1:16).