The Prophet Jeremiah Part 13

Kongsvinger Lutheran Church

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August 24, 2022

The Prophet Jeremiah Part 14

00:00: And we are going to pray and we are going to get started. Lord Jesus, again, as we open up your word, we ask that through the
00:06: Holy Spirit that we might rightly believe what you have revealed there. In all the ways in which we wander, cast aside your word, or take a hard turn to the right or to the left, we ask that through the
00:18: Holy Spirit, you might keep us on the straight path of your word, convict us of our sin, our unbelief, all the different ways in which we have believed falsely, and help us to have a growing confidence and assurance and faith in Christ that he has bled and died for all of that.
00:35: And then through the power of the Holy Spirit, help us to mortify our sinful flesh in good works and love towards neighbor.
00:41: We ask in Jesus' name, amen. Okay, so we have been working our way through the book of Jeremiah.
00:50: And I think you might have kind of figured it out by now that Jeremiah seems to be a book that is super relevant for today.
00:59: It's as if Jeremiah has been reading our email. Can he do that?
01:05: Like he's been watching the news, right? God knows what he's doing. In the
01:11: Aletheia services yesterday, we did a little bit of work on Daniel chapter seven, related it, showed the cross -reference in Revelation 13, and noted that, have you guys noticed that there's like conspiracy theories that abound, right?
01:28: You know, you look at what's going on and there's always this sneaking suspicion that something is going on, that certain coincidences seem to be occurring.
01:41: And then, you know, and so there's conspiracy theories about the new world order, the great reset.
01:46: There's conspiracy theories as it relates to the, you know, different initiatic secret societies and that somehow at the heart of all of this is some kind of worship of Lucifer, right?
02:01: Well, Revelation 13 specifically says that they worship the dragon, right?
02:07: So let me, so I'm having people take on this mindset. It's worse than you can possibly imagine, but the scriptures talk about it all, you know, very openly, everything they're doing in secret is talked about in the open, so you don't have to spend even a thought on it anymore.
02:22: You can just say, Christ wins, I'm just gonna carry on. So there you go. You know, it sounds fatalistic, but the scriptures are clear that in the end days that, you know, that the devil's gonna wage war with the saints and for time is gonna be permitted to win.
02:40: But I've pointed this out before and I'll point it out again. And that is is that whenever the word but shows up, all right, in a conversation, in an employee evaluation, the but always erases the thing in front of it, right?
02:57: So, you know, when you go in for your evaluation, right? So, Pastor Rose, bro, let's start with the things that we think that you're doing right, okay?
03:07: You're doing this thing. I'm glad that you have Bible studies. Glad that you are preaching the word and administering the sacraments, but.
03:14: Then the but, the but just erases everything and now comes the litany of the complaints, right? This is how this works.
03:21: But in the book of Daniel, chapter seven, all the buts are after the things that the devil is doing.
03:29: The devil will wage war with the saints and win, but they will inherit the kingdom.
03:36: So when it comes to the end of the world and stuff like this and the days we're living in and the evil that's out there, there is a grand satanic conspiracy and it's run by Satan and he's delusional enough to think that somehow if he conquers the world, gets everybody to worship him, that he can somehow replace
03:56: God and that everybody will live in submission and subjugation to him, worshiping him under threat of bodily harm and all this kind of nonsense.
04:06: And for just a tiny bit of time, Christ will allow that and then
04:12: Jesus shows up and kills him with the breath of his mouth, okay? It's, if you think about it, just come on.
04:20: Christ defeating the ultimate man of lawlessness by going, okay? Now, people have accused me of trying to kill my wife in this way, okay?
04:31: You know, if I haven't brushed my teeth in a few hours and she goes, go brush your teeth and I go, okay. You know,
04:36: I can be accused of like attempted murder, but Christ actually pulls it off and it's not a murder.
04:45: He's bringing everything to an end. So as we look at what's happening here in Jeremiah and the growing apostasy that was in Judah and then how it prefigures what's coming in the end of days, note this, that everything is going according to plan.
05:04: Everything, all right? Do you think Jesus is in heaven going, whoa, I didn't see this coming.
05:11: Holy smokes, who knew that, you know, it's nothing like that, right?
05:19: Everything is going according to plan and these words are written for those who have faith in Christ, regardless of the era, regardless of whether or not the church is thriving or the church is buffeting, being buffeted, or if the church is, you know, dwindling down to a remnant.
05:39: It doesn't matter. All of these things are written and we have to recognize Christ is really legitimately in charge and since that's the case, as we look at these things, let's not focus out there per se.
05:52: Let's focus right here because that's the Lenten practice, right? So when we see evil, we examine ourselves and go, yeah, okay, that's in me too, you know?
06:03: And we repent and we trust in Christ. So Jeremiah 14, the word of Yahweh that came to Jeremiah concerning the drought.
06:10: Yeah, droughts are a judgment from God too. Judah mourns, her gates languish, her people lament on the ground and the cry of Jerusalem goes up.
06:21: Her nobles send their servants for water, they come to the cisterns, they find no water.
06:26: They return with their vessels empty. They're ashamed and confounded and they cover their heads. Because of the ground that is dismayed since there is no rain on the land, the farmers are ashamed, they cover their heads.
06:40: Note here that there's this weird thing that happens throughout scripture and that is that when sin abounds, the earth wretches.
06:50: The earth reacts. Matter itself, it can't handle it.
06:58: There's some kind of a way in which the universe itself, the very creation, reacts really violently against sin.
07:11: Were we made for sin? No, okay? So when we look at the consequences of sin, look at consequences in your own life.
07:22: Like I wear my consequences because I'm getting older by the minute and everybody can see it, right? I'm not as healthy as I was.
07:30: Then each and every one of us, we grow older, we might come down with some kind of a chronic illness or we're in a tragic accident or we lose somebody close to us, right?
07:43: All of these things are happening. Then in our lifetime, we've seen that the earth is kind of wobbling and stuff.
07:52: Always and again, I think about the tragedy that there's all these species that we have caused to go extinct, right?
08:01: And this is all because of us. Well, the scripture is clear that in God, we live and move and we have our being and the consequences of sin, we were never made to do this.
08:10: You think about a fellow coming back from having fought in a war or a conflict, right? He has
08:15: PTSD for the rest of his life and he has triggers and that sends him completely sideways or a woman who's been abused by her spouse, she has
08:24: PTSD or somebody who's been, well, abused in other ways.
08:30: They also, they crack, they break under the load, right? Everybody who's been to war, when they come back, they don't really talk too much about what happened with other people.
08:41: You have to have been there, been a part of it before they'll open up because, and they never come back the same person, you know that?
08:48: The young idealistic fellow who at 18 years old was drafted and sent off to Vietnam, he comes back hardened, hardened.
09:00: And the things he's been forced to see and smell and taste and touch, witness, it's just horrifying, right?
09:08: We were never made for this. Our breaking point is really, really shallow, really, really fragile.
09:21: And the earth itself was never made. I think about Christ entering into Jerusalem and the kids crying out
09:30: Hosanna to the highest, right? And what do the Pharisees say? Stop that, stop that, no, no, no, no, no, not like that, right, and what does
09:39: Christ say? If they don't cry out, then the rocks will. The rocks know their
09:45: God, we don't. Something to think about. The ground is dismayed, there is no rain on the land.
09:53: The farmers are ashamed, they cover their heads. Even the doe in the field forsakes her newborn fawn because there's no grass.
09:58: Wild donkeys stand on the bare heights. They pant for air like jackals. Their eyes fail because there is no vegetation.
10:07: Though our iniquities testify against us, act, oh Lord, for your name's sake. For our backslidings are many, we have sinned against you.
10:16: What a great prayer, okay, this is a good prayer. This is a prayer of confessing sin. Oh, you hope of Israel, its savior in time of trouble.
10:25: Why should you be like a stranger in the land, like a traveler who turns aside to tarry for a night?
10:31: Why should you be like a man confused, like a mighty warrior who cannot save? Yet you, oh
10:37: Lord, are in the midst of us, and we are called by your name.
10:43: Do not leave us. Mm, yeah, I might wanna work that into a
10:49: Lenten prayer service straight out of Jeremiah. Pray that back to God. It is a prayer that is intended to be prayed.
10:58: So thus says Yahweh concerning this people. They have loved to wander thus.
11:04: They have not restrained their feet, therefore Yahweh does not accept them. Now he will remember their iniquity and punish their sins.
11:12: Yeesh, yeah. So note that when God has continued to be provoked, people continue stubbornly against God's call to repent and be forgiven, say, nope, we're not gonna do that.
11:26: They don't restrain themselves. God basically says, yeah, all right, fine,
11:32: I'm gonna remember their iniquity. Now that's an important phrase, because what is the primary promise of the new covenant?
11:43: God promises to forget our iniquity, to forget our sins. So God remembers to forget.
11:50: That's the big primary promise of the new covenant that we are in with Christ, okay? But if God remembers your sin, that's a bad thing.
11:58: If he remembers you, that's a good thing. So Yahweh said to me, do not pray for the welfare of this people. Though they fast,
12:04: I will not hear their cry. Though they offer burnt offering and grain offering, I'll not accept them. I will consume them by the sword, by famine and by pestilence.
12:13: And then we get the first hint at part of the problem here.
12:20: Lying prophets. That's a thing?
12:27: Yeah, it's a thing. It's a thing today. So grab your prophecy bingo card and, right?
12:37: So then I said, ah, Lord, behold, the prophets say to them, you shall not see the sword, nor shall you have famine, but I will give you assured peace in this place.
12:50: So there's Jeremiah, the real prophet of God. And what's the real prophet of God saying? Repent.
12:56: If you do not repent, I am gonna call for Nebuchadnezzar. I'm gonna whistle for him like a dog.
13:03: He's gonna come here and he is going to lay siege. He's gonna destroy your city and only a remnant of you will survive.
13:09: And you're not even gonna get to stay here. Off to captivity you go. Invoking the punishment clauses of the
13:14: Mosaic Covenant. And here comes Cindy Jacobs. Well, the council of prophetic apostolic leaders have gathered together and we feel like the
13:25: Lord is saying that during this season right now, I know that Jeremiah is saying, you know, death and destruction and all this kind of stuff, but the
13:33: Lord has told us and laid on our hearts to share with you that suddenly there will be peace, right?
13:39: Yeah, right? There's gonna be breakthroughs and God's gonna be pouring out blessings and all this kind of stuff, right?
13:50: If they had YouTube back then, these false prophets would have been on it, right? And Jeremiah would have been canceled.
13:58: Let's just be blunt, okay? Yep, no, can't have that, Jeremiah, can't have that.
14:05: So they're assuring everybody of peace, no sword's gonna come upon them. Now hindsight being 20 -20, who was right?
14:14: Who was the real prophet? You'll notice none of their books ever made it into the scriptures, right?
14:20: Because here's the other thing. This is one of the subtexts of the book of Jeremiah. God is going to take some of these false prophets and he is going to make a huge example out of them.
14:34: And let's just put it this way. When God chooses to do that, irony is in play, okay?
14:44: So you're saying that there's going to be peace. Guess what, you're gonna die by the sword. That's the kind of thing that God does with these people.
14:52: So you don't contradict God because otherwise he's going to show you to be the liar that you are.
14:59: So Yahweh said to me, the prophets are prophesying lies in my name. Is that a problem today?
15:04: Yeah, that's a whole problem today, right? I did not send them, nor did I command them to speak, command them or speak to them.
15:13: They are prophesying to you a lying vision, worthless divination, and the deceit of their own minds.
15:21: Yeah, that's today, right? So there's Chuck Pierce, Cuckoo Banana Town, right?
15:27: Flag -waving twirlers and women with stabs doing the Haka dance and all this kind of stuff.
15:32: And the Lord would say to you that, and he just goes on and he says, absolutely nothing.
15:42: There's a phrase for it in scripture. That's called worthless divination. Worthless, okay?
15:50: And who of the prophets, today's so -called prophets, have ever given a divination, a word from God that legitimately made you go, whoa, man, my life has changed because I heard that.
16:08: It's just, it's worthless divination. It is the deceit of their own minds.
16:15: And here's the scary bit. So many people who are Christians or call themselves
16:20: Christians defend these people and they are saying nothing, absolutely nothing.
16:33: This is why when we do a Prophecy Bingo segment, I say no real prophecies have been hurt or harmed in this episode of Prophecy Bingo.
16:40: Because these people are not, they're not speaking for God. And if God is actually speaking through them, God has lost his mind.
16:47: The universe is doomed, okay? Therefore, thus says Yahweh concerning the prophets who prophesy in my name, although I did not send them, and who say, sword and famine shall not come upon this land.
16:59: Well, by sword and famine, those prophets shall be consumed. Catch the theme here, all right?
17:07: So, you know, it would be kind of like, you know, if Kay Nash, you know, who talks about suddenlies and stuff like this, you know, that if all of a sudden, she experiences suddenly and then she was dead, okay?
17:20: It just suddenly happened to her. That's what we're talking about. That's kind of the irony. And so the people on whom they prophesy, to whom they prophesy, they will be cast out into the streets of Jerusalem, victims of famine and sword.
17:34: So here, all the people who are listening to these Yahoos in Jeremiah's time, the prophets are gonna die by famine and sword, and all the people they were prophesying to, they're gonna also die by famine and sword.
17:46: And here's the thing, the only way for these people to survive is to listen to Jeremiah.
17:53: God has provided and will provide a way for them to live, to survive, and to thrive, and have a normal lifespan.
18:02: All they have to do is trust the words of God, the actual ones.
18:08: And those words will be, surrender yourself to Nebuchadnezzar. Go and present yourself to him and his army and you will be spared.
18:18: Now that's a scary thing to do, by the way, okay? That's a scary thing to do. That's like asking Ukrainians to go, go surrender to Putin and to the
18:25: Russian army and you'll live. Okay, that takes faith, right? But that's the missing ingredient, right?
18:33: So who are they listening to? They're listening to Cindy Jacobs, they're listening to Chuck Pierce, they're listening to Kay Nash, they're listening to all the
18:40: Yahoos, their equivalents back in the day. And the prophets and those people are going to be consumed by the very thing that those prophets say is not coming.
18:52: Irony, right? So, and then not only will they die that way, no one's gonna bury them, their wives or their sons and their daughters.
19:02: I will pour out their evil upon them. Very fascinating.
19:09: So you shall say to them this word. Let my eyes run down with tears night and day and let them not cease, for the virgin daughter of my people is shattered with a great wound, with a very grievous blow.
19:23: Does God take sin and false prophecy and blasphemy lightly?
19:30: Shattered, great wound, grievous blow. If I go out into the field, behold those pierced by the sword.
19:36: If I enter the city, behold the disease or the famine. Both the prophet and the priest ply their trade through the land and they have no knowledge.
19:49: Dang, that's today. How many vision casting leaders in large mega churches have zero clue about what the
19:58: Bible actually teaches and the people that they're teaching, they don't teach them the scriptures. Too many.
20:04: You know, I was thinking about this this week, you know, so the news came across that apparently
20:10: Brian Houston, it's really looking doubtful that he's gonna return as the head of Hillsong, right?
20:17: So not only has he had criminal charges filed against him and he's gonna go to trial in November for failing to report his father's pedophile activity, which he was required to report.
20:32: He knew it and didn't report it and he's admitted that he didn't report it so now he's got criminal charges against him.
20:38: It turns out that Brian Houston, here's a shock, has apparently had charges brought against him to inappropriate relationships with women and the complaints were filed by the women.
20:53: And when I heard this, I went, gasp, I'm shocked. And the reason I'm, you know, why that?
21:01: Because I've been warning the church for more than a decade. Brian Houston is a tin penny prosperity preacher and he is not interested in sound doctrine.
21:15: He doesn't preach repentance and the forgiveness of sins. He is basically playing on people's greed and our insatiable appetite for entertainment.
21:26: And he created an entertainment empire. And I showed over and over and over again throughout the years
21:34: I was doing my podcast that this guy couldn't rightly handle a biblical text if I had written the manuscript for him and all he had to do was read it.
21:42: He wouldn't be able to do it. And here's the thing. False doctrine, false religion has zero power to produce the fruit of the spirit in someone's life.
21:58: And the one thing I've noticed is that there seems to be an excessive percentage of vision casting leaders who end up having spectacular moral failings.
22:11: Carl Lentz, Pete Wilson, Tabner Smith, the list goes on and on.
22:19: Perry Noble, Mark Driscoll. And what's the thing they all have in common?
22:27: A propensity to twist the scriptures up and to tell people what they want to hear.
22:35: I remember one time somebody said, well, the only reason why you're being critical of all these really successful megachurch pastors is because you're jealous of their success.
22:49: Really? Yeah, okay. Right, right.
22:57: So I'm the problem here because I'm jealous of their success. I wouldn't want to be in their shoes for anything.
23:03: You couldn't pay me, offer me a bazillion dollars, I still would not take the gig as a megachurch vision casting leader.
23:12: The office itself doesn't exist in scripture. So I'm happy, I'm languishing here in obscurity as a small parish pastor in the middle of Oslo, Minnesota.
23:23: I'll take that any day. But here's the thing. Faithful pastors preach the word.
23:32: Do faithful pastors for the most part have megachurches? No, there's a reason for that.
23:38: Nobody wants to hear it. Stop telling me I'm a sinner.
23:43: Okay, I'll stop doing that as soon as you stop sinning. Stop telling me about Jesus.
23:51: There's no, the Bible's about him. You're telling me not to preach the word. All right, you get the point.
23:58: Okay, so these prophets, they have no knowledge of God.
24:04: And their hearers have no knowledge of God. Man, that sounds like today.
24:13: Have you utterly rejected Judah? Does your soul loathe the Zion? Why have you struck us down so that there is no healing for us?
24:20: We look for peace but no good came for a time of healing but behold terror. We acknowledge our weakness,
24:26: O Lord, in the iniquity of our fathers who we have sinned against you. Do not spurn us for your namesake. Do not dishonor your glorious throne.
24:33: Remember and do not break your covenant with us. Are there any among the false gods of the nations that can bring rain?
24:39: No. Or can the heavens give showers? No. Are you not he, O Lord, our God? We set our hope on you for you do all these things.
24:48: And you're gonna note, this is the prayer and the beginning of kind of a lament of a man who actually trusts the word of God, who believes in him.
24:58: There's not a lot of men like Jeremiah left at the time of Jeremiah. And God will have mercy on Jeremiah and those who trust his words.
25:09: But for those who will not repent, the next section is gonna be brutal. Then you always said to me, though Moses and Samuel, if they stood before me, yet my heart would not turn toward this people.
25:22: Send them out of my sight. Let them go. And when they ask you, where shall we go?
25:28: You shall say to them, thus says Yahweh. Those who are for pestilence to pestilence.
25:34: Those who are for the sword to the sword. Those who are famine to famine.
25:40: Those who are for captivity to captivity. Is there a fifth option there?
25:48: How about the peace bit? I will appoint over them four kinds of destroyers.
25:55: There's Yahweh. The sword to kill, dogs to tear, the birds of the air, and the beasts of the earth to devour and destroy.
26:04: So the picture is that some guy, he escapes Jerusalem. Gets out into the wilderness and finds a bear who wants to maul him.
26:13: And he barely escapes the bear. And while he's running from a bear, he gets tackled by a lion and devoured.
26:19: I mean, there's no way to win in this situation. This is God's judgment. Sword. Okay, anyway.
26:29: So the sword to kill, dogs to tear, birds of the air, the beasts of the earth to devour and destroy. I will make them a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth because of what
26:38: Manasseh, the son of Hezekiah, the king of Judah did in Jerusalem. Now, Manasseh, if you remember in our pre -work that we did on Jeremiah, Manasseh was the one who during his reign legitimately hunted down and killed, murdered those who faithfully believe the truth about Yahweh.
26:59: So these would be, in the true sense, biblically orthodox
27:05: Jews. He would hunt them down and murder them. Those who would oppose what was going on that his reforms that he was bringing to the temple, those people would end up dead.
27:17: And Manasseh is the one who brought into Solomon's temple the starry host, the
27:23: Asherah poles. He brought into Yahweh a false image of a female deity, put it in the
27:32: Holy of Holies in order to give Yahweh a wife. And this is the guy who really took things really far.
27:40: And then we learn from the reforms of his son who lives at the time of Jeremiah, who after hearing the
27:49: Bible for the first time, he repents and he gets rid of all of that stuff. That also somewhere along the way, somebody thought it would be a great idea to open up a brothel with male cult prostitutes inside the temple complex.
28:09: I mean, every time I say that, it's like I, what church council voted for that, okay?
28:17: That's just crazy, right? And Manasseh's the guy who's legitimately responsible for this.
28:24: So who will have pity on you, O Jerusalem? Or who will grieve for you? Who will turn aside to ask about your welfare?
28:30: You've rejected me, declares Yahweh. You keep going backwards. So I have stretched out my hand against you and destroyed you.
28:40: I'm weary of relenting. God has relented so many times.
28:46: He's going, yeah, not this time. No relenting at this point. I have winnowed them with a winnowing fork in the gates of the land.
28:54: I have bereaved them. I have destroyed my people. They didn't turn from their ways. I have made their widows more in number than the sand of the seas.
29:03: I have brought against the mothers of young men a destroyer at noonday. I have made anguish and terror fall upon them suddenly.
29:11: Oh, look, suddenly. And she who bore seven has grown feeble. She has fainted away.
29:17: Her son went down while it was yet day. She has been shamed and disgraced, and the rest of them
29:22: I will give to the sword before their enemies declares Yahweh. And so Jeremiah's in dialogue here.
29:31: Woe is me, my mother, that you bore me a man of strife and contention to the whole land.
29:38: I have not lent nor have I borrowed, yet all of them curse me. Yahweh said, have
29:44: I not set you free for their good? Have I not pleaded for you before the enemy in the time of trouble and in the time of distress?
29:51: Can one break iron, iron from the north and bronze? Your wealth and your treasures
29:56: I will give as spoils without price for all of your sins throughout all of your territory.
30:02: I will make you serve your enemies in a land that you did not know, for in my anger a fire is kindled that should burn forever.
30:10: Oh, Yahweh, you know, remember me and visit me and take vengeance for me on my persecutors.
30:16: In your forbearance, take me not away. Know that for your sake I bear reproach.
30:22: Your words were found, I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and a delight of my heart, for I am called by your name, oh,
30:28: Yahweh, God of armies. I did not sit in the company of revelers, nor did I rejoice.
30:34: I sat alone because your hand was upon me, for you have filled me with indignation. Why is my pain unceasing, my wounds incurable, refusing to be healed?
30:44: Will you be to me like a deceitful brook, like waters that fail? Therefore, thus says
30:49: Yahweh, if you return, I will restore you, and you shall stand before me.
30:55: If you utter what is precious and not what is worthless, you shall be as my mouth. No, God wants us to utter what is precious.
31:03: I can't think of anything more precious than the word of God, the actual words of God.
31:10: They shall turn to you, but you shall not turn to them. I will make you to this people a fortified wall of bronze.
31:16: They will fight against you, but they shall not prevail over you, for I am with you to save you and to deliver you, declares
31:22: Yahweh. I will deliver you out of the hand of the wicked and redeem you from the grasp of the ruthless.
31:30: Well, these are just fun chapters, right? Very, very strong themes.
31:39: Now, let me check a couple questions here. Just check a few. All right, let's see here.
31:47: Bennett family, bingo. Okay, somebody said Boston.
31:53: Oh, it's Louise. All right, let's see here. If only they packed their
31:58: Joel cube when they went. If only they had packed their
32:03: Joel Osteen cube when they went into captivity, they would have had positive affirmations the whole time they were in captivity.
32:09: That's just hilarious. Yep, Joel cube, that's a new one. Okay, Rachel, yeah,
32:16: I actually own a copy of the Joel cube if you wanna see. We haven't unboxed it yet. Yeah, we still have to do that.
32:24: Let's say you actually need to get that increase in suddenlies. Yeah, blows my mind. Chuck Pierce makes over a million, absolutely says nothing.
32:31: Yeah, was it, I mean, seriously. So my good friend
32:38: Steve Kozar, and he was taught by the people who work at the Trinity Foundation how to like check tax returns and stuff like that on these ministries, how to get their 990s and stuff.
32:52: And he did the work and found out that last year Chuck Pierce made $1 .4
33:00: million. And he says absolutely nothing.
33:09: He doesn't say a thing. So that's my problem. Yeah, if I go with less lucid stuff,
33:17: I'm gonna make more money, you know. Crazy, absolutely. And all the
33:22: CDs from Sid Roth, yeah. Okay, Sid Roth, best Christian tele -shopping seller.
33:29: Yeah, about that, okay. Rachel says the most grievous part is that people think this is what
33:37: Christianity is. That's kind of true right now. And here's the thing, I'm old enough, and Don, you're old enough, church wasn't always this bonkers, okay.
33:48: So when I was growing up, there was still a large number of men who feared
33:54: God enough that they made very valiant efforts to rightly handle God's word and to preach the word
34:00: Sunday after Sunday after Sunday. And of course they'd make the, sometimes like the usual errors and things like this, but in general, you could show up at a church and you would hear about your sin.
34:14: You would hear about the crucifixion of Christ and him suffering for your sin. You might even be called to repent of your sin.
34:20: That was still a thing, all right. But now it's like, it's so hard to find that.
34:28: It's like lamentably terrifying, you know. So, and then the thing is is that, and then you watch what's going on on Sid Roth's It's Supernatural Network.
34:40: The people that goes to those NAR churches, they actually think that's Christianity. They legitimately think that Cat Kerr goes to heaven and that she visits there so often she has an apartment up there, you know.
34:54: And that there's really candy land in the western part of heaven where John Wayne is filming movies right now.
35:04: Weird stuff like this, and they think that's actually Christianity. It's like, it's bonkers.
35:11: And then when I speak out against it, I get branded by Michael Brown as a hypercritic, you know.
35:17: People think there's sneaky squids. It's like, what? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, even if, talking about the piece.
35:30: Okay. This is the one. Right. The solid, the dramatic series.
35:41: Yes, remember Davey, you know. So in the early days of Christian television there were actually decent programs.
35:52: And the Missouri Synod put one out. And actually, they even put out a kid's program.
35:57: You know, I remember watching that, you know. And it's like, you know, today when you watch
36:03: Christian television, are you actually gonna hear the gospel? Are you gonna hear the word of God rightly handled at all?
36:16: You know, it's just, you know, it's just nuts. All right. You know,
36:23: I remember that intro to one of Sid Roth's in Supernatural. My next guest, he operates in the anointing of the
36:33: Lord so powerfully that when he was down in South America, a witch doctor came out to curse him and turned into a bat.
36:40: Let's find out more. You know, it's just weird. Stuff like this, it's like, oh my goodness.
36:47: Anyway, all right. All right. And when these preachers are called out as the charlatans they are,
36:56: Christianity suffers. Yeah, that's right, okay. Are these fake, phony charlatans makes the atheists have fun at their pages?
37:05: Yeah, they do, absolutely. You know, it's absolutely disgusting to me that atheists think that that's
37:12: Christianity and they've defeated Christianity by showing how stupid, you know, like Sid Roth is.
37:18: It's like, no, that's not. Yeah, so Ruslan, yeah, he summarized it well with the issue of being a mega pastor and having that sort of lifestyle.
37:33: Yeah, he did a recent thing where he covered the rap video produced by Furtick's son.
37:46: If you haven't seen that, it's terrifying. Yeah, that was crazy.
37:52: All right, the recent Michael Todd series called Mo Money, Mo Problems, just wow, really?
38:00: That's Mo Heresy. Okay, appalling these things spewing out at the stage and all
38:10: Michael Todd is doing is selling and building up Robert Morris' books and programs. The church apostasy is real.
38:16: Yeah, let me come back. Let me do something really quick here. I'm gonna open up my web browser and we are going to go to Amazon.
38:26: See if I can find this in the used books, all right? We want
38:32: Brian Houston, God wants you to have more money.
38:43: All right, let's see here. I don't see it in the used section, so let's do this.
38:49: We're gonna copy that and we're going to go to Google. Hang on a second here. Google and let's see.
38:55: I have a copy of this book, but it's out of print. Brian Houston, there we go. It's called
39:01: You Need More Money, okay? There it is, You Need More Money. Published in 2000, okay?
39:11: You Need More Money by Brian Houston. Listen to this description.
39:20: Presumptuous or prophetic? Brian Houston takes the bull by the horns and addresses a subject that affects everyone.
39:26: His sharp wit and clear perspective tackle the various attitudes and perceptions on wealth and prosperity, dealing with wrong thinking passed through religious tradition.
39:35: Money is a powerful tool in the hands of Bible -believing, purpose -driven Christians. Brian challenges you to look beyond yourself, to live according to the principles of God and see his blessing on your life as you become a money magnet.
39:56: Greed, yeah. So now we're gonna take greed and turn it into a virtue. It's one of the fruit of the
40:02: Holy Spirit and I'm going to virtuously, I'm gonna sacrificially be a money magnet in order to help all you poor people, okay?
40:14: Seriously, what on earth? Okay, and here's the thing. When I covered this and pointed this out a decade ago, but now
40:30: Brian Houston is drunk and wanders in and spends 40 minutes in a woman's hotel room, well, we gotta get rid of him now.
40:43: Okay, you know, I just got shocked. By the way, book only has two stars.
40:52: And the used version, I'm glad to know that I can finally get some money for this because if I wanted to sell it, the used versions are going for 182, you know?
41:01: I paid like four bucks for it, you know, 10 years ago.
41:07: That's a good profit, you know? So yeah, I need more money, so I'm gonna sell Brian's book in the used book market.
41:21: I don't know, and here's the thing. Hang on a second here, I'm gonna show this. All right, Brian Houston, you need more money.
41:31: Okay, all right, what? Hang on a second,
41:37: I'm gonna make sure that we all hear this. All right, this is on God TV, okay?
41:59: They missed, see, the thing is that the crop's just a little too tight here because after the word God is in it, it says
42:05: L -E -S -S. Okay, so. See, they'll let the poor say
42:55: I'm rich. God wants you to, yeah. And is anyone shocked now that Hillsong is completely godless?
43:06: And they have scandal after scandal after scandal after scandal after scandal because this message of theirs is powerless.
43:17: To call people to repentance. In fact, it's intentionally not calling people to repentance.
43:23: How is this any different than the message that the false prophets of Jeremiah's time, oh, you will have peace, you will have prosperity,
43:31: God's not gonna send war or famine your way. It's the same message, just kind of retooled for our time.
43:40: You get the idea. Let's see, how many more, how many money does
43:47: Bill Johnson make when he can drive an Aston Martin? See, Daniel, see, there's my weakness, okay.
43:55: It was last year, during a sermon, I let it be known that I have a love for the
44:02: Aston Martin. But of course, I can't, I could never afford such a thing, nor could
44:08: I justify it if I could, right? Honey, we're gonna get an Aston Martin. Well, no, honey, we're gonna get a divorce.
44:15: But so I let it known that I really think that they're beautiful cars.
44:20: And so my son -in -law, for Christmas, he got me three Aston Martins. Now, granted, they're matchbox cars, but I own three of them.
44:28: I can legitimately say I own three Aston Martins. Now, they're about this size.
44:34: I'm hoping that somebody will invent a shrinking machine so that I can drive these things. But maybe after I die, if I'm cremated, they can put a little scoop of me inside of the
44:48: Aston Martin. Just a dusting, it'll suffice.
44:55: But yeah, Bill Johnson, he has the normal human -sized version of that. And it's a super expensive car, right?
45:04: And have you noticed that the false teachers, it's like money seems to be the big thing.
45:12: And every time you show up to church, now, you are expected to tithe when you come here, and tithe means 10 % off the gross, and that's the minimum.
45:21: That doesn't even belong to you. That belongs to God, and you're expected to give offerings on top of that. Yeah, oh, man, okay.
45:32: So Daniel put an old TV ad for his book, More Money. I think we may have seen that, but anyway.
45:38: Imagine the Apostle Paul promoting the book of Brian Houston. No, no, okay?
45:44: If Paul had written the foreword, the words would have been repent. You know?
45:51: Yeah, okay, imagine Jesus teaching this message. After all, it's, you know, did
45:57: Jesus preach against this? Okay, but you'll note that over and again, false teachers are gonna talk about God's blessings apart from repentance.
46:10: They're gonna talk about, you know, God's blessing in terms that will excite your greed, or get you to trust in false words and keep you comfortable, and worse, today's false teachers, they will say things like, you can tell somebody's really not speaking by the
46:29: Holy Spirit because you don't feel good about yourself when you listen to them. But the real prophets of God, at the end of the day, you're wrecked.
46:39: And you feel actual sorrow for your sin, and recognize that you have deeply grieved
46:48: God, and that you need to repent, that you need to be forgiven, you need to trust
46:54: God, and it's gonna convict you of all of your sins, from idolatry to the different ways in which you despise authority figures, to the ways in which you've harbored murder in your heart, to your adulteries, your sexual immorality, even if it's just in your mind, to the different ways in which you have stolen from people, slandered them and coveted.
47:18: God, the real messengers of God preach His real words, which at the end of the day, you're not gonna feel good about yourself.
47:27: But you are gonna feel good about the love of God, the forgiveness that is in Christ.
47:33: You will have confidence in Jesus and none in yourself. Right, that's the whole point.
47:41: Unrepentance finds an excuse for everything. Yep, sin, yep. Okay. So let's see here.
47:48: No. I think this is where we're gonna end off.
47:54: I wanna start 16, this next section all by itself. So this is where we're gonna leave off, and then of course,
48:02: Lord willing, we'll pick up next week. But did you have a question or a comment? I had a question.
48:10: Hearing about all the false teachers. Yeah. And knowing about it now, and then you said 1800s were.
48:26: Yes. So here's the idea. There's always been false teachers in the church. This is most certainly true.
48:33: And always, and again, the devil is waging war against the saints. So I mean, the reason why there was a reformation is because the devil really had gotten the upper hand and had brought in all these man -made bizarre doctrines into Catholicism.
48:49: And God just basically said, nope, we're gonna peel all that back. And so there was the reformation.
48:56: A whole lot of people got their hands on the word of God, and they recognized, whoa, praying to saints, giving money to the papacy, even the papacy itself, indulgences and all this weird stuff that they're doing.
49:12: None of this is actually in the scriptures. And for a bit, God allowed the reformation to bring people back to faith in Christ.
49:21: And again, one of the principle things that happened is that the Bible was locked up.
49:28: Rome kind of made sure they kept it tight to their chest because they knew it would undo a lot of the stuff that they were doing.
49:34: So God ripped the Bible out of their hands, gave it to everybody, and things were going along with kind of like the normal rate of apostasies.
49:44: But you're gonna note that in our day, we've seen, in our time, apostates and false teachers go from the lunatic fringe to the mainstream of much of what calls itself
49:55: Christianity in our day. And here's the thing, there's different varieties of it. So within visible
50:03: Lutheranism, you had the departure away from scriptures, which really took place over a period of more than 150 years.
50:12: And now we can talk about the apostasies going on within the ELCA, where you have people rejecting the word of God, blessing same -sex unions, ordaining impenitent homosexuals and women and things like this.
50:27: So the fight, there's always this fight. And what ends up happening historically, there's the battle against the heretics and against their false doctrines.
50:40: And then that generation of false teachers kind of dying away, and then their heresies dying with them.
50:48: What we're seeing in our lifetime is a perpetual exponential growth in apostasy, and it just isn't going away, it's actually getting worse, all right?
51:01: And it's like really noticeable, okay? So in our day, we got
51:07: Kat Kerr claiming she goes to heaven. I just did a segment where Kevin Zadai claims that Jesus told him after he had died on the operating table and was dead for 45 minutes.
51:18: There's some sketchiness to that. Most people aren't dead for 45 minutes, I'm just saying. But he was dead for 45 minutes, and during that time he had a 45 -minute -long conversation with Jesus, and Jesus revealed to him that after he died on the cross, his sufferings continue and he was all by himself, alone.
51:38: Not even the Father of the Holy Spirit communicated to him, he was all by himself, alone in hell, and the only thing that got him through that experience was he kept reciting
51:46: Psalm 16 to himself by memory. And it's like,
51:55: I assure you that had Kevin Zadai said those words 25 years ago, the vast majority of evangelicalism would have thought he was a wackerdoodle, okay?
52:08: And he doesn't have, he doesn't quite have the charisma of Ken Copeland or Joyce Meyer, both of whom taught something similar.
52:17: They taught that Christ suffered in hell, but they never claimed that they learned this via direct revelation.
52:23: You know, they were twisting up biblical texts. So you'll note that in our day, it just seems like things have gotten exponentially worse.
52:31: So, there may be a waning. Yeah, here's the thing, is that I don't know if this is gonna just continue to go up and up and up and up and then
52:44: Christ returns, or if God's gonna say, no, we're gonna do a reset here and kind of pull things back.
52:50: I don't know, okay? But I do know that the pattern itself is one that you've seen repeatedly in Israel, and eventually it leads to God's judgment.
53:01: So, it is way beyond my pay grade. I have no clue when Jesus is coming back, and I just work in marketing.
53:09: I don't, yeah, okay. So, I just work in marketing. The Trinity's in management.
53:16: They've got that all sorted out. Okay, so my job is to preach the word in season and out of season, and you know what?
53:24: God might just pull the parachute on this and say, no, we're gonna pull this back. There could be another reformation akin to what happened in Martin Luther's time, and 500 years from now, it could be the end.
53:36: I don't know. I'll be blunt. I just don't care, okay? If Satan shows up and the man of lawlessness starts riding the beast and the harlot shows up of revelation,
53:47: I'm just gonna go, cool. Okay, you know, and if I lose my life, I'll go, yes.
53:53: Okay, you know, because here's the thing. It just doesn't matter, you know, because the end of the world comes for all of us if we die before Jesus shows up, you know?
54:04: I note that we have a lot of saints out there. The end of the world came for them a little bit earlier than Jesus' return, and if I die next week, you know, in a bus crash or something, you know, it's cool.
54:17: You know, it just doesn't matter, you know? And the church was doing just fine without me. It'll do fine without me in the future, you know?
54:25: Christ is in charge of all of this. So what do we do as saints? We look at this and go, you know, if it weren't for the grace of God, I'd be doing the same nonsense.
54:35: I'd be believing these same prophets, and here's the thing, I can say in my case, I didn't know my
54:40: Bible and I believed some of these wackerdoodle prophets when I was in the latter rain, and God had mercy on me and pulled me out of it, right?
54:49: And so we recognize that we are not immune to this type of deception.
54:56: God himself is the one who works repentance in us through his word, and so we don't sit there and go, well, we've got our act together, what's wrong with those people?
55:03: No, we look at this and go, yikes, yikes. I am capable of this myself if I haven't done it already.
55:13: And so we humbly pray that God would continue to convict us of our sin, that we would not cast his word behind us, that we would be attentive to it, and that he would spare us from apostasy and presumption and from breaking the first three commandments which are against him.
55:31: We're all capable of it, and so you'll note that what we see going on in kind of the wider movement, that all comes back down to individuals and to small congregations and little regional places where collectively they're not hearing the word of God.
55:45: So, does that answer your question? Yep, all right. Now we're gonna sign off.