The Apostate, chapter 8
To: In home churches of God’s, His 10th month, Tivet 11, 5,781. 12/26/20
John the Baptist prophesied about Jesus’ judgment; storehouse likening to His kingdom, thrashing floor the world, repentant people to trees and wheat, while unrepentant people as chaff. (Matt 3:10-12; Even now the ax is laid at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. “I baptize you with water for repentance, but the One coming after me is more powerful than I am: I am not worthy to carry His sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in His hand, and He will clean out His threshing floor and will gather His wheat into the storehouse, but the chaff He will burn up with inextinguishable fire.) Threshing floors; ‘where grains were separated from chaff – husk,’ it’s the prophesied end for evil doers, compare this scripture to Revelations 21:7-8.
God still calls individuals as He did Abraham and defines sin as lawlessness in His View. Living contrary to what He says is right, wrong, good and evil is sin. Jesus revealed and Paul explained at Rom 6:16-18. “Do you not know that if you present yourselves as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or obedience resulting in righteousness? But thanks be to God, though you were slaves to sin, you obeyed from the heart that pattern of teaching you were entrusted to, and having been freed from sin, you became enslaved to righteousness.”
Deceived or not, admit or not, the cultural practices of ancient pagans were to served gods of their imagination and that’s lawlessness, ‘sin in God’s View.’ God gives the following through Isaiah.
(Isaiah 45:22-25; Turn to Me so you can be delivered, all you who live in the earth’s remote regions! For I am God and I have no peer. I solemnly make this oath – what I say is true and reliable: ‘Surely every knee will bow to Me, every tongue will solemnly affirm; they will say about Me, “Yes, the Lord is a powerful Deliverer.” All who are angry at Him will cower before Him. All the descendants of Israel will be vindicated by the Lord and will boast in Him.)
(ALL who belong to Jesus are spiritual descendants of Jacob whose name was changed to Israel. Jesus’ apostle Paul explained, “And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to the promise.” Galatians 3:29)
Who is tired of living the get way? Who is tired of being in bondage to sin? Ask for God’s mercy and He’ll likely lead you to His Word and gift you with understanding. We either love this world’s system of things, or despise its result. God’s lead is to turn His called from this world’s system of things; ‘from what seemed right to the fleshly mind to God’s righteous Way,’ that’s repentance.’ People led to respond to this gifted understanding are changed from the way of death to the way of life.
Jesus’ apostle Paul explained to those converted from pagan practices to His Way. (Ephesians 2:1-3; And although you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you formerly lived according to this world’s present path, according to the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the ruler of the spirit that is now energizing the sons of disobedience, among whom all of us also formerly lived out our lives in the cravings of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath even as the rest.) Note that Paul includes himself.
The Ephesians; mostly non-Israelites, worshiped the god of fertility and other planetary imagined gods, didn’t know Abraham’s God. Before conversion Paul had lived as though he was made for the law, ‘lawlessness being sin in God’s View causes Paul to understand that the law was made for man, not man for the law, and that God does the choosing.’ Paul didn’t choose to understand God’s way, God chose and gave understanding to him.
(Eph 2:4-7; But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even though we were dead in transgressions, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you are saved! – and He raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, to demonstrate in the coming ages the surpassing wealth of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.)
Prior to God’s gifted grace Paul and these Ephesians were as dead. However when God revealed Himself and they believed IN, He made them alive. Has that God of Abraham revealed Himself to you?
We can‘t love God as He’s manifested to be in the holy scriptures without believing all His promises. Gifted believing IN faith is more than hope faith, it’s a loving respect and desire to be all He’d have us be. For a correct comprehension of Godly Love, study 1Corinthians 13: inserting Godly Love in place of, ‘love’ or ‘charity.’ God‘s gifted grace is to have Godly Love toward all.
Eph 2:8-10; For by grace you are saved through faith, and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God; it is not from works, so that no one can boast. For we are His workmanship, having been created in Christ Jesus for good works that God prepared beforehand so we may do them.)
Workmanship? Each believing IN person is on God’s potter wheel for training. Being spiritually shaped as He leads and gives His yielding spirit, is to know that Jesus is our Shepherd, we’re branches and He the Vine. We can do nothing spiritual without abiding in the Vine. God prepared beforehand? Meditate on that with prayerfully study.
God’s spirit is gifted to and dwells in called repentant Believing IN, ‘God the Father and God the Son.’ Such are Temples of His spirit, set aside, ‘sanctified’ for His purpose. That’s a spiritually fulfillment of what physical circumcision looked to. People gifted with a love for God’s Way, imputed to the mind fulfilling the law’s purpose, NOT a doing away with. Jesus’ apostle Paul taught the same to gentiles.
(Eph 2:11-12; Therefore remember that formerly you, Gentiles in the flesh who are called un-circumcision by the so-called circumcision that is performed on the body by human hands; that you were at that time without the Messiah, alienated from the citizenship of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.)
Non-Israelites were not considered God’s chosen people by the circumcised. However it was always planned, as promised Abraham, ‘that many non-Israelites would be grafted in.’ Gentiles and Israelites saved by grace, spiritually circumcised of heart, ‘set aside’ – ‘sanctified’ all of which mean the same thing.
Followers of Jesus were foreknown, as was Isaac and Jacob; saved by promised grace. It’s the covenant promise through Jesus, fulfilled by God’s calling and saving individuals.
The apostasy Jude wrote about includes such teachings as, (1) Saved by personal choice. (2) Saved by some methodology of man. (3) Attempting to divide God the Son and God the Father. (4) Altering or changing God’s calendar. (Example: how does saved by grace fit, ‘when a baby is sprinkled and pronounced as saved?’ That’s denominational works without scriptural authorization, attempting to believe without turning from what God views as sin, is an apostate. Could it be God’s character to save in such circumstance? NO. All such are works of the flesh, when a turning to God’s Way isn’t scripturally adhered to.
(Eph 2:13-22; But now IN Christ Jesus you who used to be far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For He is our peace, the One who made both groups into one and who destroyed the middle wall of partition, the hostility, when He nullified in His flesh the law of commandments in decrees. He did this to create in Himself one new man out of two, thus making peace, and reconciling both in one body to God through the cross, by which the hostility has been killed.
He came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near, so that through Him we both have access in one spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer foreigners and non-citizens, but you are fellow citizens with the Saints and members of God’s household, because you have been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the Cornerstone. In Him the whole building, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.)
Salvation is by promise as were Isaac and Jacob’s births, to those led to seek God as He manifest Himself to be. Jesus foretold of it, each apostle and Jude saw the apostasy budding. Today it’s in full bloom. Jesus’ apostles were inspired to give insight regarding organized religions’ destructive path. See Paul’s teaching on the subject.
(2Thess 2:1-12; Now regarding the arrival of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to be with Him, we ask you, brothers and sisters, not to be easily shaken from your composure or disturbed by any kind of spirit or message or letter allegedly from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord is already here. Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not arrive until the rebellion comes and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction. He opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, and as a result he takes his seat in God’s temple, displaying himself as God. Surely you recall that I used to tell you these things while I was still with you. And so you know what holds him back, so that he will be revealed in his own time. For the hidden power of lawlessness is already at work. However, the One who holds him back will do so until he is taken out of the way, and then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will destroy by the breath of His mouth and wipe out by the manifestation of His arrival.)
The arrival of the lawless one will be by Satan’s working miracles and signs through him. False wonders with every kind of evil deception directed against those who are perishing, ‘because they found no place in their hearts for the truth so as to be saved.’ Consequently God sends on them a deluding influence so that they will believe what is false. And so all of them who have not believed the truth, but have delighted in evil will be condemned.)
God’s sending a deluding influence is allowing Satan to deceive the whole world. He’s going to work miracles to the degree Paul describes and Jesus foretold as quoted in Matthews gospel account. Let’s thank God for planning Satan’s demise and His mercy toward us.