By Jim S. Brooks

The contents of this letter are addressed mainly to professing Christian Churches. Many “Christian” professing churches are leading people astray through the teachings of “Bible Scholars” and other false teachers who actually directly dispute many simply stated   Biblical truths. They have many arguments, all wrong, but pleasing to a sin seeking mind! They produce inconsistencies and doubt about Biblical truths because the human mind naturally resists God’s Word and tries to justify itself with man’s word. The key to understanding the Bible is the Spirit of God, not the spirit of man. Mankind could not begin to understand the Old Testament until the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the gift of God’s Spirit made available through Him alone. Even the Apostle’s could not grasp Jesus’ teaching until Jesus’ resurrection and gift of the Holy Spirit!

 

Man did not originate the Bible. The Spirit of God delivered it through man-Old and New Testaments. The basic premise of each is to believe and act affirmatively on the revealed Word of God in any age of His gradual revelation, now completed in Jesus Christ, no matter how you personally view it or initially resist what He says. If Adam had simply believed God, instead of Satan, Mankind would not be in this Adam-induced mess. Satan was a liar from the beginning and still is. Satan deceived Adam and Eve into believing that they as mere created beings, as Satan had tried and is still trying, to be like God through their own efforts and reasoning. Satan constantly disputes God’s Words about Jesus and about sin.

Among our many compelling but debilitating sins publicly rampant today is homosexuality. But it’s classification by God as sin is simple:

Leviticus 20:13 King James Version (KJV)

13 If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them. See also Deut. 23,17.

Inherently sinful homo sexuality is not made acceptable to God by the charade of marriage. As any other sin, true churches can not accept its general practice in their congregations. Many churches today are corrupted by its acceptance. They have lost their witness for truth and are useless. The remedy is to acknowledge homo sexuality for what it is, sin as other sin, and turn away in Jesus Christ. There is no hope with out Jesus Christ. To act otherwise is destruction. God welcomes all born again in Jesus Christ. The idea is new creatures in Jesus Christ who hate their past in Adam. God will bring this miracle to fruition for those who simply trust and demonstrate that trust by acting on His Word-Jesus Christ!

The Old Testament is mainly a blessed ministry to Israel in the flesh on earth and not a ministry to the Spirit in Heaven, especially the Law of Moses. The New Testament in Jesus Christ is a ministry to the Spirit in Heaven of which the Old Testament is a blessed shadow teaching. The ultimate beautiful example in the Old Testament worship system given by God is the work of the High Priest presenting the blood of the sacrifice over the Mercy Seat in the Holy of Holies each year for God to forgive the sins of the people for the past year. Forgiveness was in the blood not sincere good efforts of the people. God provided the means, not man! Earthly, not heavenly, forgiveness was obtained by the intervention of a third person-the High Priest. It was a shadow teaching of the truth of Jesus Christ presenting the blood of His Sacrifice on the cross to His Father in Heaven to eternally forgive the sins of Jesus’ people in heaven for eternity-not just once a year on earth. But Jesus’ true people will have a changed attitude about sin.

I have never seen it taught anywhere that God changed His mind about homosexuality or any sin in the Old Testament or in the New Testament. God hates sin! The penalty can only be removed in Jesus Christ! God’s truth is eternal. Sin is always sin-never without bad consequences for willful practice!

Faith in the revealed Word of God is the beginning key. Jesus Christ is the incarnated Word of God. Against all human understanding and accumulated earthly wisdom, Noah believed God and trusted His Word about a coming flood. He acted affirmatively, and he and his family were saved and non-believers drowned, as God had ordained. Noah would have also drowned had he not believed and acted in trust! It seems clear that if any who drowned had simply believed as Noah built the ark and built their own boat they would have lived. Faith (trust) in God’s revealed Word was the issue, not man’s accumulated wisdom through unknown centuries concerning the weather! God became more specific in His revelations about the coming Jesus Christ with Abraham.  Aged Abraham, though his wife Sarai was proven sterile after nearly 100 years, against all accumulated human wisdom and understanding believed the Word of God about the promise of God that Abraham would have a true heir and be the father of an earthly nation of people solely through sterile Sarai. Sarah produced Isaac. God surnamed her Sarah. Abraham’s faith even expanded to believing that God would raise Isaac from the dead to fulfill God’s promise of Abraham being father to a nation through Isaac, even if Abraham offered Isaac in a sacrifice to God. He was prepared to act on that trust and slay Isaac.. Abraham lived affirmatively in trust of that promise and became the father of an earthly race and nation of people as God had promised through His grandson Jacob-surnamed Israel. God chose Jacob’s father Isaac-as the only single true chosen earthly fleshy heir of Abraham and chose through him to deal with Israel. Moses, against all accumulated human understanding and wisdom of man, affirmatively believed God about delivering a nation of slaves (Israel) from the grasp and power of the greatest empire on Earth at the time-Egypt. Moses single handedly (no other HUMAN helped), in fact, delivered those slaves to freedom as God promised despite the power of Egypt. Egyptians even endowed them with not only freedom but great material wealth as they departed Egypt! In the process, Moses was the instrument of mind-boggling miracles. It seems clear if an Egyptian had placed a lamb’s blood on his door post as outlined by God, his first born would also have been spared. It was the blood alone that spared the first born in Israel. The issue is believing and acting affirmatively on the revealed Word of God-not man’s reasoning or wisdom! It is the blood alone that spares the first born from wrath in Jesus Christ but it is the Spirit that gives new life through Jesus! His death-then resurrection is essential!

Casting doubt and confusion on the word of God is fathered by the father of lies and began for mankind in the Garden of Eden. God even then spoke of coming hope in the seed of the woman (Eve)-not the seed of Adam. Satan continued his work even in Israel with many “Bible Scholars” who led the people astray about Jesus Christ. They were known as priests, scribes, Pharisees and Sadducees-highly revered religious teachers by the people but deceiving “Bible Scholars.” They read what we call the Old Testament guided by the spirit of man, not the Spirit of God. Man’s inherent religious wisdom about God is actually darkness. Those “Bible Scolars” rarely agreed with each other except on the point Jesus was not the promised Messiah. If Satan deceived most teachers in the earthly chosen nation of Israel, Satan has no problem with modern day Christian Church  “Bible Scholars.”

Among the staggering judgments and promises of God about the nation of Israel is one being fulfilled before our very eyes, and we are witnesses to it! About 3,500 years ago, God promised those in Israel that for their infidelity He would uproot the nation from their promised land and scatter them through the entire world but return them to the land promised Abraham in the last days according to His good pleasure. (Deuteronomy 28:58-68 and 30:1-10 and Isaiah 11:11-12). At God ordained they were dispersed as promised nearly 2000 years ago by Rome. God is bringing true Israelites back from the four corners of the earth today! Individually they have believed and responded to God’s call and affirmatively started home. While Israel as a nation today has not yet recognized its Messiah, it will in God’s timetable! (Ezekiel 37:1-14 – They will become complete, and He will then breathe on them and regenerate them.) He said so! A small remnant in Israel over the centuries has believed and been delivered in Jesus Christ-the others perished in foreign lands. God is turning today from the Gentiles (who today mostly teach “another gospel” inspired by “Bible Scholars”) to finish His promises to earthly Israel and to Jesus Christ and that fact is attested by dying and Spirit dead churches in the Gentile Nations-the United States has been the last to go! He who restrains is being removed! As God departed from the Temple in Israel (it was destroyed about 70 AD) He is departing “churches” in Gentile nations. Anyone who willingly approves and practices “sin” will not receive God’s blessing or enter the Kingdom of Heaven no matter what “Bible Scholars” might teach. Resistance to and putting sin to death in Christians is the key!

Whatever God said thousands of years ago is still true and what He promises will still come to pass. If He says certain activity is sin, it is, no matter what man or Bible scholars teach. God, His Word and His Spirit cannot lie, but Bible scholars can! We need to rely on the Word of God, not the word of man alone-even my word alone, check my words against the Bible! Each individual needs, himself, to study the Bible to be convinced of its single truth in Jesus Christ and what flows from that truth! When you stand before God, a defense based on what some “Bible Scholar” said may fail! Only actions based on the true Word of God will prevail.  Not all want that truth-only the Wise!

All true Christians must recognize and deal with their sin according to the truth and resist and subdue their present human body as Israel was ordered to subdue the Promised Land. They did not complete the process and neither will we, but we must persist in effort endure, perseveres and over come in faith! God is returning Israel to the land to finish the job and He will return us to a redeemed body to finish what He promised.  But that truth is the Word of God not the word of man. If a church does not teach the truth, even when it is unpopular, professing converts have no hope before God. The following is an extract from a letter the Apostle Paul wrote to an assembly (a church) of professing Christians in Corinth. It addresses new converts and seasoned converts. As you read it please remember the whole letter is to people who profess Jesus Christ but were having problems with false deceiving teachers. Many did not want to change their former life style yet claim to be followers of God in Jesus Christ.

1 Cor. 6:9-10. New Revised Standard Bible (NRSV) [Closest to the Greek, as a rule] “(9) Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, (10) thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers—none of these will inherit the kingdom of God.”

Christians are free in Jesus Christ, but not to seek sin. We are no longer “slaves” to sin because of the finished work of Jesus at the cross and resurrection, but we, as those who freely wanted to go back to Egypt, may want to willingly continue in sin.  Sin has consequences even for “freed’ Christians! Remember for true Christians your body is now the Temple of the Holy Spirit! Speculatively we may be protected from the wrath of God but not enter the Kingdom of Heaven or our lives may simply prove we are not Christians if we approve and practice what God hates! Also consider the shadow teaching concerning Israel in the Passover and Exodus. Passover occurred while Israel was in slavery to Pharaoh in Egypt (ours occurs by Jesus when we are slaves to Satan in sin). The first born in Israel were saved from the wrath (that wrath was directed at ALL firstborn in Egypt, not just Egyptians) Israelite children were only saved by the blood not ancestry. Our slavery to sin and physical death belongs to all the first born (Mankind) in Adam unless saved from that wrath by the blood of Jesus. But neither the first born saved nor the nation jumped into the Promised Land. There was yet a journey of faith toward the Promised Land. God then destroyed the power of Pharaoh over Israel in the Red Sea (Jesus destroyed the power of Satan over Jesus’ People at the cross and resurrection). Israel was freed from Pharaoh’s power but many voluntarily chose to go back and serve Pharaoh. They chose to go back though they witnessed the plagues, Passover and even though they saw Pharaoh’s power over them destroyed in the Red Sea. Earthly pleasures in Egypt looked better than austerity and promises in the Wilderness!

The Israel that actually entered the Promised land was not the same Israel that left Egypt. Even after Israel crossed the Red Sea many mourned to return to Egypt and did not believe God would take them to the Promised Land. They and those that chose to go back died in the Wilderness! They were not allowed the option to go back or go forward! Others were born in the Wilderness for 40 years. The nation was replenished and born again and that new nation entered the Promised Land. But there was still a future task, even then, of faith. Subdue the land!  Jesus said you must be born again before you can see or enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Moses saw the Promised Land from a Mountain Top and the new nation, along with only Caleb and Joshua of those who left Egypt and knew the difference between good and evil, entered. Those who did not know the difference between good and evil when they left Egypt also entered. If you love your old life still or you are incorrectly taught you may have a serious problem about entering the promised possession! Your old man must die so the regenerated new man can live. For a true believer this earth is now our wilderness experience before we FULLY enter the Kingdom of God (Spiritually we have entered)-redemption (final and complete subjection by a new body) in transformation at Jesus’ return or our resurrection. We have entered in the Spirit but we will fully enter in a resurrected body like the body of Jesus after His resurrection. It will have no trace of sin. God hates sin! Passover was only praticed once in the wilderness. Circumcision was not practiced on newborns in the wilderness (Joshua 5:4-7) and Tabernacle was to be practiced in the ultimate Promised Land. The order and teaching is beautiful. Jesus has fulfilled and is fulfilling “Spiritually” and earthly all the Festivals of Israel for His People. Passover averts God’s Wrath and Atonement provides Access to God through the Word and Spirit! Jesus did both spiritually and physically in one sacrifice but it is only accessible to those that believe! Ingathering, the last feast, is yet to come and is eternal!

Be not deceived! Did Paul list your favorite sin or life style? If you feel you have a “sin” not listed and therefore excepted, remember the general heading of “wrong doers.” There are no loop holes for fine lawyer arguments. Jesus died to pay the penalty for sin and cleanse His people. He did not free us to mock Him in His death for sin by willfully practicing sin and feel we are safe. His blood does not cover our sins so we can willfully delight in them and seek to cover them again. That seemingly would crucify Him again! But the ritual system had “washings” for those that became ritually defiled. We have the Word and Spirit of God to now wash us in our errors. Jesus gave us a glimpse in washing the disciple’s feet. Like an earthly doctor who tries to cure a diseased body (would such a person return to that which was fatal after being healed?) to preserve life without judging how a patient got sick, Jesus Christ gives life to the spirit without judging how the sinner got there. But like an alcoholic, with fleshy or spiritual problems, we got to know the truth of our condition before we can be helped. You can’t be healthy and sick at the same time. You can not serve God and Satan at the same time! You can only serve one and your every day lifestyle and true heart attitude (not just how you act on Sunday) proves who you serve. Some may fool men, and even themselves, but God knows the intent of the heart. Christians must begin turning from sin!

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Jim S. Brooks, retired inactive attorney, 2400 East Blackstock Road, Roebuck, S.C., 29376-3205, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

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