Category: THE SCRIPTURES

TRUE CONVERSION SERIES:(PART 3)

TRUE CONVERSION SERIES (Part 3).
New England Theology of easy-religion based on the errant Jonathan Edwards’ Freedom of the Will, had progressively captivated America between 1746 and 1846. Edwards, who after the First Great Awakening had waned, renounced the biblical tenets of the Reformation and turned to the modern philosophy of the 18th century liberal Age of Enlightenment.

New-England Theology has had a massive impact upon, both American and global evangelism completely distorting the message of salvation by grace. It radically reversed the Bible’s Protestant Reformation message of ‘FAITH ALONE BY GRACE ALONE’ to ‘GRACE ALONE BY FAITH ALONE’, and it became the behest of the individual’s own faith instead. This false claim by the unbiblical liberals of the Enlightenment declared:

1) HUMANISM’S FREE-WILL OF EASY-RELIGION: Faith is universally resident in all from the time of birth due to an innate enlightened conscience from the image of God placed in Adam from creation.

a. THE BIBLE’S REPLY: This denies that the image of God in Adam was irreparably marred through his fall into sin. That sin was not merely eating fruit from the wrong tree, which had been taboo. Romans 5 is the truth not the church.
b. It was Adam’s free-will choice to reject eternal life for the short term gain of spiritual knowledge. Thus, ever since, humans mistakenly reason that ‘spiritual knowledge’ will give eternal life.
c. Knowledge of the plan of salvation, and the Scriptures can never bring regeneration (conversion) without the ‘gift of Christ’s faith and the hope of eternal life, at the behest of his grace to wholehearted seekers.
d. There is no unconditional immediate endowment of His grace or of eternal life. This divinely implanted faith cannot be compared to weak, unreliable human faith, even at its very best.

2) THE REPLY OF PHILOSOPHY AND PSYCHOLOGY:
a. William James, the Father of American Psychology falsely claimed in his “Varieties of Religious Experience”, that any action towards God is an act of faith.
3) REBUTTAL:
a. James confused human free-will with the divinely imparted gifts of grace.
4) TODAY’S CHURCHES OF CHRISTENDOM.
a. Most professing Christians and church members are only AWAKENED, at best, and though they might follow God’s presence they have never received the indwelling Christ of eternal life.
5) THE HUMANISM OF LIBERALS, EVANGELICALS, CONSERVATIVES & FUNDAMENTALISTS.
a. Their ministers or evangelists have assured them that believing what they have learned and KNOW of the Scripture and his doctrines of salvation are adequate insurance for eternity and enough to miss hellfire.
6) THE FORGOTTEN DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AWAKENING & CONVERSION.
a. There is no denying that some ‘followers’ have been awakened by Christ’s call to ‘follow Him’, and become disciples. However, awakening and its limited enlightenment is not the same as conversion. It was the illumination of the regenerating Spirit of Christ that burned within those at Emmaus (Luke 24). The eyes of the Eleven disciples at Jerusalem were thereafter also opened to understand the Scriptures and the Christ of the Word on the first day Jesus rose from the grave.
7) HUMANISM’S HOAX IN THE CHURCH:
a. The automatic free-will evangelism that pervades the pulpit everywhere declares that all disciples and followers possess God’s grace of redemption from mere voluntary acts of confession, affirmation or a participating sacrament of water, wine, or wafer.
b. All disciples automatically repent and believe if they utter words of prayer and affirm their committed allegiance.
i. COMMENT. With rare exception, these have never known godly sorrow of biblical repentance, let alone having wholeheartedly sought the Lord. They have instead been misled by clergy, rightfully described as Goat-herders pontificating in pulpits of false hope.
8) THE DECEPTION BY THE CREAM OF EVANGELICALS.
a. These same pulpits teach the mere awakened that wholeheartedness (full surrender) is a second decision they need to experience. They alternately call it:
i. Second-Blessing;
ii. Baptism of the Spirit,
iii. Entire-Sanctification.
b. Among the 1500 + new denominations of the 19th century plague of humanistic bibliolatry (coupled with its reactionary pragmatism) the birth of Holiness and Charismatic/Pentecostal movements were conceived which propagated
i. The easy-religion of conversion by free-will of one’s own faith (1st blessing);
ii. The better religion of the deeper life, mistakenly called:
1. The Holy Spirit’s infilling;
2. The Baptism of the Spirit with evidence: ecstatic incoherent utterances;
3. Entire sanctification from inbred sin.
9) THE BIBLE’S REPLY.
a. For the eleven apostles the first blessing (conversion) was by the regenerating Spirit Christ gave at His rising from the tomb on the third day (Luke 24 & John 20). Their second blessing fifty days later was the baptism of fire & Holy Ghost.
b. After Pentecost there was no further need for a gap period between the two blessings. In Acts chapter two the Jews heard the converted apostles preach. They had just been baptized with fire from heaven, and gathered Jews of the Diaspora heard eleven messages each in a different language for the respective foreign visitors. This, Paul says was a sign to unbelievers: the gift of ‘Diverse Tongues’ ( 1st Corinthians 14). The three thousand converts were both regenerated by receiving Christ’s Holy Spirit within them, and were baptized with the fire of the Spirit simultaneously. The 1st blessing had merged with the 2nd blessing in an instant after the Day of Pentecost. This was so when Peter and the apostles preached at Jerusalem; then with Cornelius’ assembly at Caesarea; and finally at Ephesus when Paul preached to twelve of John’s former disciples.
c. Nowhere else in the Book of Acts does the sign manifest at conversion for God works in three’s. He is a triune person.
d. Among gathered foreign worshippers Paul instructed the church at Corinth that the gift of Diverse Tongues was acceptable if proved to be validly understood by a hearer in his own language and interpreted by him into a common language. Otherwise such unknown utterance of language (unknown tongue) was forbidden by Paul at Corinth, where the church had a prevalence of pseudo-Christians living in immorality etc. (1st Corinthians 14)
e. Eradication of inbred sin is an idea posed by 19th C Holiness movements an extension of John Wesley’s doctrine of Perfect Love. Paul makes quite clear in Romans chapters one to seven that this is not possible. (cp: salient of Romans 7) This was confirmed by the apostle John in his epistle of 1st John, and again by Paul in Galatians 5.
10) THE MASS CONVERSIONS FALSELY CLAIMED TODAY.
a. This has all come about since the 18th century humanistic Age of Enlightenment. These ideas are very suitable to mass conversions by automation and rapid growth of religious empires including the current day mega church phenomenon. Thus Jesus Christ’s standard for conversion and discipleship are ignored. Shallow and worldly followers are called Christian converts when they are far from it. The Puritans of the Reformation would turn in their graves.
11) RESULTS IN WORSHIP SERVICES (for goats wearing fleeces)
a. Music, mood, and beat allows the falsity of humanism in the pulpit-stage to be acceptably palatable.
b. Infusing the popular doctrine of easy-religion into non-Roman churches that were once citadels of Protestant Puritanism has enabled exponential growth.
c. Increase in false conversions and the sowing of tares has risen to such an extent that the mega-church phenomena has become the norm.
d. Such converts are, more often than not, just zealous goats taught to wear the garb of a fleece, rather than newborn lambs.
e. In the ever-increasing personality-cult styled church pseudo-prophets and posturing pastors titillate the ears of congregants in the mass euphoria they create by their prepossessing personas and the mastery of crowd control.
f. The pastoral skill of creating heroes makes audiences both addicted and susceptible to itching ears in a feel-good comfort zone where the audience is beguiled, even as Eve in the Garden. The mastery of the feminine pews comes first and the men follow suit. The congregants’ normal sense of discernment is muted, allowing humanist truths to be acceptable and seen as biblical truths by the literalist use of bibliolatry.
g. The notion of unconditional eternal security inures them from the truth.
EVALUATION.
a) Most certainly these type of believers have KNOWN and learned some spiritual knowledge from Scripture, but this falls far short of life everlasting and the indwelling Spirit of the risen Saviour. Many today twist Romans 10.9 coupled with Romans 10.13 teaching goats to affirm with their lips and say that they, therefore, have believed. This is totally wrenched from the context of Romans itself and even the tenth chapter’s import.

b) Having mental knowledge of the Scripture does not give the seeker the indwelling Spirit of Christ. The vast masses of those in Christendom’s 2,800 Church denominations have never truly been converted by Holy Spirit, but are converts of men. (Matthew 7.)

c) These all presume following Jesus Christ’s presence is eternal life. The best they have is God with them, but that is not the oil they need in their lamps. Five of the ten virgins discovered this to their chagrin. (Parable of the Ten Virgins by Jesus Christ.)

d) God’s presence with them is temporal or temporary while they choose to follow Him in some shape or form. At death, their lamp has no oil, just like the five foolish virgins readying themselves for the Bridegroom’s wedding feast. The oil in the lamp is likened to the Holy Spirit entering within the wholehearted seeker. Only this is everlasting.

e) The oil of the Spirit comes only by faith. This is peculiarly the gift of God and is not related to natural human faith, the falsity popularly taught throughout the church today. Most of the myriad false converts have been misled by the fallacy that their own human faith was wholly adequate. They assure themselves because false prophets and preachers first assure them with their false hopes of salvation and eternal life.

f) The reason they possess faith is from the humanist idea or Christian idealism, built upon positivist psychology.
g) No sacrament replaces that gift of faith, which is ushered in by the grace of the godly sorrow (repentance) of sin and self-righteousness.
h) When faith comes it is accompanied by transforming hope from His incoming Spirit making His abode within the believer.
i) Most church members today have never sought the Lord with all their soul, strength and might. Those few who have done so have never had the patience or even the inclination to seek the gift of faith that precedes conversion and have instead been taught to trust their own faith.
j) Thus they experience the anti-climax of easy-religion’s false hope that eternal life is automatically and unconditionally available to all who will call, confess and profess their own faith.
k) What is that faith? It is merely the knowledge that the ministering preacher has imparted to them by indoctrination.

CAN TRUE CONVERSION BE UNDERSTOOD?
Speaking of true conversion there is no logical or reasonable explanation to that glorious translation of one soul from the kingdom of this world into the kingdom of God’s dear Son. Paul says that the natural man cannot understand it from afar. 1st Corinthians chapters 1 & 2.

TRUE CONVERSION SERIES:(PART 3)

TRUE CONVERSION SERIES (2): False joy.

FOLLOWER’S EXCITEMENT IS SELDOM CONVERT’S JOY.
Of the 2,800 different Church denominations (Barratt 1977)) most of their followers will enjoy in varying measures the excitement of following Him. Judas Iscariot followed Jesus and while he was with Him he saw and did great things. He was a member of one of the six couples Jesus sent to evangelize. Peter also saw and did great things while with Jesus. When Peter was away from Him he soon denied Him. Judas, like Peter, betrayed his Lord and then repented. The Lord told Peter that only when he became converted would he strengthen his brethren. Jesus said that on the day of the harvest when the angels shall gather all to face God, many followers will declare that they have done great things in His name, but he will declare that he never knew them.

GOD’S PRESENCE WITH THE MERE DISCIPLE IS OFTEN TEMPORARY, UNLIKE HIS PERMANENT INDWELLING SPIRIT.
It is no wonder that for the most part the churches are filled with goats taught to wear a fleece. Some have become pilgrims in their devotion, and a small number have been awakened by the preaching of the Word, but vainly think their sudden awareness of God’s presence is eternal life. Yet the temporary sensitivity to God’s omnipresence is a temporal state, not an eternal one. Jesus said that they need His indwelling Spirit. Only regeneration converts disciples, not by affirming biblical knowledge. Thus after Judas Iscariot’s betrayal, He told the remaining eleven disciples they needed conversion by that Holy Spirit, which he gave them after he rose from the dead.

SCRIPTURE.

“Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you. And when he had so said, he shewed unto them his hands and his side. Then were the disciples glad, when they saw the Lord. Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you. And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, RECEIVE YE THE HOLY GHOST:”

John 20:19-22

SCRIPTURE.

“And ye shall seek me, and find me when ye shall search for me with all your heart.” Jeremiah 29:13
“With my soul have I desired thee in the night; yea, with my spirit within me will I seek thee early.” Isaiah 26:9

• It is very easy to seek God with an ulterior motive. E.g. you want to avoid the suffering of hellfire by taking out an eternal assurance policy. This is self-preservation. So you are persuaded to make a decision and join the church. Compare John 6:26.

SCRIPTURE: “The Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, and seek God. They are all gone aside, they are all together become filthy: there is none that doeth good, no, not one.” Psalm 14:2-3/ Psalm 53:2.

• You say you were made in the image of God so you naturally seek God and naturally have enough faith and can understand the plan of salvation the preacher showed you. That’s Christian humanism’s great lie of free-will. Yet the Bible says in Romans chapters 5 and 7, that the human will is neither free nor has any propensity towards God. It does not want God except in the case of self-advantage. God’s image in Adam’s race was marred beyond repair as St. Paul and David the Psalmist pointed out. Until a man is in utter need of grace and ceases to depend on the falsity of his own natural faith he can only become a follower, but never a true convert. Only Christ can open his eyes; only Christ’s Spirit can give true sorrow for sin; only Christ can give hope and accompanying faith; only Jesus can give transforming grace which exceeds anything free-will efforts could accomplish. This alone is conversion and only occurs when you wholeheartedly seek Him. Only the risen Saviour can give you the gift of His Spirit when you truly seek him. Do not trust in the deception of signs so popular today. His inner witness to your heart, mind and spirit is unmistakable but indescribable.

SCRIPTURE “He expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself”…”And their eyes were opened, and they knew him”… “And they said one to another, Did not our HEART BURN WITHIN US, while he talked with us by the way, and while HE OPENED TO US the scriptures?”… “And they rose up the same hour, and returned to Jerusalem, and found the eleven gathered together”…”Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures.”.[ Luke 24:27-33;45]

• SCRIPTURE. “… break up your fallow ground: for it is time to seek the Lord, till he come and rain righteousness upon you.” [Hosea 10:12]

• SCRIPTURE. “Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.” Matthew 7:22-24.

Quotations from King James Version of the Holy Bible: Public Domain.
Article by Brother John of bonitabiblemission@gmail.com

TRUE CONVERSION SERIES (2)

TRUE CONVERSION MISUNDERSTOOD.

TRUE CONVERSION TO CHRIST.
There are myriad professors and only a few possessors of the indwelling Spirit of Christ. The former are secure in their false hopes based on church myths. Those myths were introduced into the persecuted Christian minority 1700 years ago by a new Roman emperor bent on forcibly nationalizing Christianity for the vast masses of both East and West.

During Christ’s earthly ministry, before he was arrested and executed, he primarily ministered to the Jews and educated his Jewish disciples. His new kingdom of heaven would be radically different from the earthly kingdom of Moses’ Law and Prophets that ended with the beheading of John the Baptist, who ministered under an old testament covenant but foretold of a new testament by the Lamb of God: Jesus Christ. He did so in the legacy of the Prophet Isaiah the evangelist of the Old Testament.

The Scriptures demand wholeheartedness. This is the one command of the Old and New Testaments that qualifies the true follower, mostly ignored by easy-evangelism and quick affirmation process of automated conversion. It is declared by the Law, the Prophets, the Psalms and the Gospels: that one must first seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness (Matt.6.33; Isaiah 55.1) with all the heart, soul and might trusting not in self-help or any other assurance but God’s.

The church instead rushes to tell its audience that they are all eligible for God’s grace of conversion without such wholeheartedness, which it claims will develop in due course. It uses different ordinances and sacraments to initiate seekers, who for the most part have never genuinely sought God. Once initiated they are indoctrinated with false hopes. These disciples mostly fail to possess Christ’s indwelling Spirit even as the first Twelve lacked the Indweller before Jesus rose from the grave. They think that following him and thereby being WITH him is eternal life. Read Luke 24 and John 20 closely to understand how conversion opened their eyes to understand the Scriptures, and how the new indweller made their hearts burn within, and their disbelief was turned to faith, hope and joy. “Receive ye the Holy Spirit,” he said, and their lives were transformed. John 20. 2 Cor. 5.17. No wonder that in the next 40 days 109 were converted to join the Eleven in the Upper Room after the Ascension.

TRUE CONVERSION MISUNDERSTOOD.

PONDER ISAIAH 53 AFRESH

ISAIAH 53
Jesus the Messiah would come as the sacrificial Lamb of God.
1 Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?

The conception, nativity, and youth of Jesus Christ.
2 For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.

Jesus the Jew to be rejected by his own people.
3 He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

He would come to bear our sins in his body on the tree.
4 Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.
5 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 the Father would lay on him the iniquity of all believers.
6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way, and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.

Christ would come as the Lamb of God, the new pascal lamb.
7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he opens not his mouth.

The prophesied arrest, arraignment, crucifixion and burial of Jesus.
8 He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken.
9 And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth.

God would sacrifice His Son as the scapegoat to bear the sins of many.
10 Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when you shall make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.

God would make Him sin for us that we may have His righteousness.
11 He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities.

The prophesied water and blood from Christ’s pierced side.
12 Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors, and he bare the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors.
* * *

FOOTNOTE.
Isaiah 53:11. Herein is the mystery of joint imputation through grace. I.e. The believer’s sins are imputed to Christ’s crucified body risen and ascended to the right hand of the Father in heaven. Correspondingly the Lord’s righteousness is simultaneously imputed to the believer justifying the new believer in a robe of righteousness. This is the divine act of grace administered by the Holy Spirit to the penitent sinner seeking the Lord with all of his heart, soul, might, and strength.
For he hath made him be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.
( 2 Corinthians 5:21.)

CREDITS:
Scripture taken from the King James Version (1611- Public Domain) of the Bible, the last Puritan Bible published.
Headings, subheadings, and footnotes by John David.

PONDER ISAIAH 53 AFRESH

FOREWORD: ISAIAH 21

Foreword: Isaiah 21
Isaiah envisions final fall of Babylon to Nebuchadnezzar.
Though Assyria was centred in Nineveh it used Babylon to house its captured prisoners. It took the captive Jews from Samaria to Babylon when General Tiglath-Pileser captured Israel and placed Judah under tribute. This was in the time of Judah’s wicked King Ahaz.

One hundred and twenty years later the Chaldean King, Nebuchadnezzar would destroy all trace of the southern Kingdom of Judah, sacking Jerusalem in the process and taking captives to Babylon too, the jewel of the East.

He would abduct its citizenry in stages, Daniel being among those of the first captivity, whilst Jerusalem still stood. About a decade later the prophet Ezekiel would be in another batch of captives sent to Babylon. The prophet Jeremiah, who succeeded Isaiah, would remain in Jerusalem to the end, and was treated favourably by Nebuchadnezzar’s General and allowed to stay in the devastated ruins of the city. Both these prophets predicted the fall of Babylon:-
1. to the Assyrians at first;
2. to the Chaldean Empire later;
3. to the Medo-Persian army led by Darius for Cyrus the Great;
4. and finally to Alexander the Great, of the rising Greek Empire who would leave Babylon in ruins fifty miles south of current day Baghdad, where it can still be viewed today.

Of interest also are Isaiah’s allusions and predictions of the First Advent of Christ when Jerusalem was under the reign of the Roman Empire that succeeded the Greek Empire’s control of Palestine.

It is important that the reader acquaints himself with the historical sequence of four empires to understand the eighteen Books of the Prophets:
1. Syria,
2. Assyria,
3. Chaldea,
4. Medo-Persian.
It is also helpful to remember the two empires that succeeded these four:
5. The Greek Empire under Alexander the Great (favourable to Jews)
6. The Roman Empire under the Caesars.

7. In grasping these six historic eras and their protagonists one can appreciate more the prophets’ predictions of Christ’s First Advent during Roman times and better fathom the rather indirect poetic references and allusions to different regions and countries under the merciless:-
a. attack upon the two Jewish kingdoms;
b. attack upon one or another anti-Semitic hostile nation chosen by God to humble the Jews into repentance;
c. attack upon Syria by Assyria;
d. attacks upon Israel of Samaria by Assyria;
e. attacks upon Jerusalem (Judah) by one or other of the empires, including other nearby neighbouring peoples:
i. Moab
ii. Egypt,
iii. Ethiopia,
iv. Idumea (Mt. Seir/Seir)-Esau’s descendants;
v. Samaria;
Yet there are two more dimensions to be necessarily understood within the writings of the Prophets:-
8. The prophesied return to the Land of scattered Jews (Diaspora):
a. led by Nehemiah and Ezra by permission of Persian Kings;
b. encouraged by the Greeks who also ordered preservation of the Hebrew Old Testament into the Greek Septuagint (LXX) by appointment of 72 Hebrew translators of the literati;
c. led by a trickle of European Jews to migrate to Palestine early in the 19th C;
d. encouraged by the British between 1917 and 1944 after General Allenby took Jerusalem and Palestine away from Turkish Muslim control;
e. encouraged by the USA (5/1948 onwards) who arranged massive global air armadas of returning Jewish refugees from anti-Semitic states after the 1948 State of Israel’s Independence;
(* a considerable number settled in New York)
f. to be drawn back to the Land after the great apocalyptic battle of the northern alliance (Gog and Magog) for control of Jerusalem, when Christ will descend to the Mount of Olives to rule and reign over the nations at the end of the end times in which we live.

All of the above is paramount to understand the messages of the sixteen Prophets in relation to the rise and fall of the Israelite divided kingdoms after the death of Solomon.

Judah in the south had its capital Jerusalem, and Israel to the north had Samaria, but merely a place where the royal seat was situated. Jeroboam in the past had at first rejected Shechem as unfortified chose Tirzah instead.

Later King Omri built a fortress in Samaria, and Ahab had his palace there. Though only forty miles square Samaria was occupied by all ten rebel tribes of Israel. Jeroboam had set up Dan in the north and Bethel in the south as the two religious centres for the worship of his golden calf. Bethel, however, was only twelve miles north of Jerusalem.

Ancient Babylon successively came under the control of Assyria, Chaldea, Persia, and Greece before being razed to the ground by the latter. Awareness of the above information on the one hand; and on the other hand grasping the timeline of both Israel and Judah’s demise, the reader will then be able to comprehend the gist of the three Major Prophets, and the thirteen Minor Prophets.

The fall of Babylon in Isaiah can either mean the defeat of the Assyrians, or the Chaldeans depending upon the context. In Isaiah the context usually points to Israel’s nemesis: Assyria.

This twenty first chapter offers certain geographic clues that point to the imminent defeat of the Assyrians whose capital was Nineveh, but they used a puppet king to rule Babylon where captives from many nations were held

FOREWORD: ISAIAH 21

ISAIAH 15: FOREWORD.

FOREWORD: ISAIAH 15.
Isaiah’s enigmatic diatribe against Moab.
Moab was the arch enemy of Israel and a constant thorn in her side wherever possible. Its territory was situated on the east of Jordan River and south of Gilead which can often be found in a modern Atlas. Midia and Moab conspired together to curse Israel using the soothsayer Balaam on its last stop before entering the Promised Land after its forty years wandering in the wilderness.

Though the false prophet Balaam refused to curse Israel, Moab then entrapped it at Baal-Peor, enticing the Hebrew men to fornicate with the prostitutes of the Baal’s idolatrous and sensuously erotic worship of devils. (See St. Paul’s comment in his letter to the Church of Corinth). The reader will remember that Moses’ father-in-law came from Midia and that Gideon with his 300 men in the Book of Judges fought a battle with the Midianites.

As Joshua forded the Jordan River it banked up and ceased to flow until all of the Israelites had finished walking over the dry river bed. It then returned to its normal flow, brimming over its banks.

This chapter has a plethora of literary devices in the prophet’s poetic, but sometimes enigmatic description. A host of geographic names within Moab, but forgotten mostly in time, can daunt the reader, as can the typical obliqueness of his indirect syntax, but it is well worth persisting with the attempt of grasping Isaiah’s message in its rich historical beauty.

Describing the coming attack on Moab by Assyria’s armies from Nineveh, the prophet goes into great detail over the devastation and destruction of cities and landscape. Even after Moab’s successful demoralization of the children of Israel with the treachery of Baal-Peor, Moab continued to be a hostile thorn in Israel’s side. God’s wrath moves slowly at times, but He never forgets to rewards Israel’s enemy nations with his wrath.

You will remember that the last stop of Moses before crossing Jordan was in Moab where he went to Pisgah’s Peak on Mt. Nebo to view the Land before he died. Remember also that Moab had enlisted Midia and its soothsayer Balaam to curse Israel and stop Moses in his tracks.

However, when this plan did not work Balaam and Balak conspired to lure Moses’ people into immoral actions that would prevent Jehovah from letting them into the Land of milk and honey (the Promised Land) for which they had marched some forty years. Geographic reference points: Kir, Dibon, Nebo, Medeba, Heshbon, Elealeh, Jahaz, Zoar, Luhith, Horonaim, Nimrim, and Dimon all relate to Moab’s towns and topography within or adjacent to Moab like Zoar, next to, but now under, the Dead Sea.

ISAIAH 15: FOREWORD.

UNDERSTANDING 16 PROPHETS: Obadiah.

BRIEF PROLOGUE TO BOOK OF OBADIAH.
Obadiah the prophet to Edom, where the inhabitant descendants of Esau had settled in and around Mt. Seir, decries the wicked past of Edom’s enmity towards Israel. From earliest times the animosity had grown from year to year.

We think of the initial wilderness wanderers journeying at last to their long promised Land of milk and honey after forty long years wherein a generation had died in the wilderness. When merely seeking permission to walk through the adjacent region en route to Pisgah’s Peak and Mt. Nebo before crossing the Jordan River, Israel was treated with open hostility instead of hospitably allowing their brethren, the children of Jacob, to drink from their wells of water.

That hostility had become endemic and now the prophet warns that judgment by the wrath of God, according to the curse of Genesis 12:3, was imminent. Ironically God used hostile neighbour nations to chastise and discipline wayward Jerusalem, he then as a sequel poured out his vengeance upon the same instruments that had brought so much tribulation to the Jews. This is a mystery wherein Jehovah God never forgets to repay those who have cursed his people Israel.

FOREWORD TO OBADIAH 1.

The Prophet Obadiah’s Vision of the descendants of Esau within the Palestinian territory of Mount Seir. They were commonly called Edomites as the region they occupied was named Edom. Confusing to the reader is the interchangeable use of Esau, Edom and Seir to poetically describe the Edomites. Under poetic licence Obadiah alternates between each of the three names when indicting Esau’s descendants. In the same way he calls Mount Seir the ‘Mount of Esau.

The prophet takes Edom to task for its long standing hatred of their brethren the Israelites, called: “brother Jacob” because he was the patriarch of Israel once the angel had changed his name from Jacob to Israel when he prevailed in prayer wrestling with the angel to protect him from Esau’s murderous intent on Mt. Peniel.

God had told Abram in Genesis 12.3 that all those who will bless his descendants will be blessed, but all those who oppose (curse) them will be cursed. The children of Esau, who became Bedouin Arabs in league with Ishmael’s children, had joined with other nations and tribes hostile to Jerusalem’s people during the past.

As things went from bad to worse in the tribe of Judah after King Manasseh’s abhorrently wicked reign Edom and others had gone to Jerusalem to pillage and add to the already existing mayhem from Assyrians, and later the Chaldeans. Sadly, the ten rebel tribes of the now divided kingdom of Israel had also attacked, kidnapped, and killed hundreds of thousands of their fellow Jews in Judah and Jerusalem to the south.

As a result of these atrocities and their idolatrous worship of the golden calf in Dan and Bethel, they had been all (but a handful of the poor) taken away captive by Tiglath Pileser to Assyria’s city of Babylon about 600 miles to the North West
.
Yet whether it was the Jews in Samaria or the Jewish cousins in Edom (Idumea) the vengeance of God was severe for their treasonous acts against the tribe of Judah and its eternal city of Jerusalem.

The rebel ten northern tribes were massively depopulated and deported while a Stalin-like forced immigration of Assyrians replaced the wayward children of Israel. Thus the wrath of God upon Esau’s children was unrelenting without any measure of mercy offered to others at enmity with Jerusalem.

UNDERSTANDING 16 PROPHETS: Obadiah.

PROLOGUE TO DANIEL THE PROPHET

Introduction.
THE JEWISH AND PROTESTANT OLD TESTAMENT.
These contain the five books of Moses (PENTATEUCH) nine HISTORICAL Books; six books of POETRY; and sixteen books of THE PROPHETS. The Jews often regard these as the Law, the Prophets, and the WRITINGS. Upon his resurrection The Lord Jesus Christ alluded to them for recommended reading to understand what each said of Christ and foretold of the Son of God.

The serious god-fearing seeker will sooner or later have his eyes opened to understand the promises of God about the coming Son of God to earth at both his first advent and his second coming at the end of the latter days in which we live.

THE PROLOGUE TO DANIEL.
by John David.
The young man Daniel was among those of the first captivity of Jews by Nebuchadnezzar, the Chaldean king reigning from the city of Babylon, the jewel of the East. His three companions were: Shadrach, Meshech, and Abednego. The four had been princes in the Kingdom of Judah at Jerusalem.

As a prophet, seer, wise man, and later, ruler Daniel had increasing influence in the Chaldean city and its empire. It was of wide expanse after its victorious military campaigns throughout Palestine and the neighbouring regions of the Middle East.

As Syria’s Damascus had fallen prey to the might of Assyrian armies of Nineveh, in turn Syria’s own reign of power was beset by the rapid rise of the Chaldean empire from Mesopotamia on the Euphrates, some 50 miles south of modern day Baghdad.

These three empires, Syria, Assyria and Chaldea figure largely in these sixteen books of Prophecy: books of the three Major Prophets, and the thirteen Minor Prophets of the Bible’s Old Testament.

This is not to discount the significance of other enemy powers raiding Jerusalem in the Kingdom of Judah: i.e. Egypt, Ethiopia, Moab, Edom, etc. However, the predominant themes of the prophets dire warnings concerned Syria, Assyria, Chaldea, and Medo-Persia. The latter three empires successively holding captive Jews as bondmen in and around the city of Babylon.

Daniel’s interaction with reigning monarchs was with the Chaldees until towards the end of the book, wherein the Persian emperor Cyrus the Great appears.

The reader’s problem with many of the prophets is the lack of specific allusion to the empire concerned, and precise description is sometimes indecipherably lost in the vagaries of poetry and geographic place names, familiar only to the Eastern historian of the literati.

Yet, Josephus; historical records of archaeology; and, more importantly, the nine History Books, particularly Joshua, Kings, Chronicles,Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther give the answers to the puzzled reader filling in the missing pieces. Yet it is only the diligent student of the Word, like the more noble Bereans “searching the scriptures daily to see if these things be so,” will become acquainted enough to be enlightened by grace and see what Jesus meant when he said:-

“O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken”…”These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me. 45 Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures.26 Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory? 27 And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.” (Luke 24 KJV)

The student of the Word nevertheless needs to be forewarned of the enigmatic condemnation of wayward Israelites, on the one hand and on the other hand the indictments of the nations hostile to both Israel in Samaria, and Judah in Jerusalem. Here lies the mystery not always understood by even mature readers of the sixteen prophetical books:

1. God’s allowing Israel’s enemies to attack the apostate Jewish nations in his loving mercy;
2. He had tried to stop their worship of sun, moon and stars; and their devotion to gods of Baal;
3. He wanted them to return to their Jehovah God, his ways and his will they had abandoned.

4. Jehovah’s discipline was indeed harsh and became harsher, until in repulsion he abandoned them during the reign of Judah’s King Manasseh, equally wicked with Ahab of Israel and more evil than Judah’s King Ahaz who came before him.

5. Yet even in that abandonment of his people God continued to promise through his faithful prophets that a remnant would be saved. In other words there are continuing hints that God could never break his covenant with David over the eternal legacy of his tribe Judah, nor his promise to Solomon over the city of Jerusalem.

Simply, the perpetuity of both Israel and its Land of Palestine was inexorably guaranteed and would never be abrogated. Thus in the prophets we see glimpses of Elijah (John the Baptist); the virgin birth of Emmanuel (the Branch); the profound effect of his walk on earth; his substitutionary atonement for sinners he made on Calvary’s rugged Cross bearing our sins in his body upon the tree; and finally his second coming to earth to rule and reign from Jerusalem in the midst of invading armies of Armageddon who will be repulsed by the glorious light of his enforcing kingdom.

As a sub-theme in both Daniel and the other fifteen prophets’ books, there occurs repeatedly, but intermittently, the promise of regathering the scattered Diaspora Jews from east, and west; north and south.

These promises have largely been already fulfilled: under Cyrus the Great; Alexander the Great; General Allenby 1917 recovery of Jerusalem from Islamic control; leading inevitably to the independence of the modern State of Israel in May 1948 against all opposing odds. The return of the Diaspora increased during he years 1918 to 1944; and from 1948 to the present time. But the greatest return of those Jews, ashamed to be known as such today and in denial altogether about their Land, will happen when Christ returns with his saints to rule and reign, descending to the Mount of Olives with his saints who in a previous rendezvous met the descending Lord in the clouds in the air together.
Questions and suggested editorial additions welcome to bonitabiblemission@gmail.com
Scriptures quoted from the King James Version (Public Domain) [ex biblegateway.com]

PROLOGUE TO BIBLE BOOK: DANIEL

REMEMBER O LORD THE USA

REMEMBER O LORD THE USA FOR ITS PAST HELP OF YOUR PEOPLE ISRAEL.
Despite its present rampant humanism reigning in Christendom as truth and salvation by Easy-Religionist evangelism; despite its appalling daily gun violence killing its citrizens at a rate of 300,000 a decade; despite its anti-Semitism rearing again its ugly head, even now in Congress; despite its many Deistic Constitution, rights and Amendments: O my God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ we beg of you to have MERCY.
1. Have not your promises and penalties by just judgment been justly kept? HAVE MERCY!
2. Are not your EXCEEDING, GREAT AND PRECIOUS PROMISES been given to us? HAVE MERCY!
3. When we have cried to you, have you not IN WRATH REMEMBERED MERCY?
4. Remember O Lord in the past how USA helped your people Israel!
a. In 1948 when she stood alone amid invading nations to be an independent state.
b. In 1956 to survive multi nation invasion for six days in June.
c. In 1973 when again invaded how Uncle Sam came to its plight.
d. In how Uncle Sam arranged the largest ever air-armada to repatriate stranded Jews.
e. And more recently how Uncle Sam provided the iron dome protection zone.
f. Then also remember president Trump’s move of its embassy to Jerusalem.
5. In its present battle wherein the forces of light are besieged by the forces of darkness and the ‘enemy within’, we beg of you to have mercy and remember the prayers of foregone saints interceding for America: Jonathan Edwards; George Whitefield; David Brainard; Charles Finney etcetera. Have not you collected their prayers as incense in thy bottles of heaven? We beseech you to pour out those answers upon the earth. Especially now amid the battle for its democracy against the vastly wicked DEEP STATE working to undermine and destroy the votes and the voting results, we beseech you TO HAVE MERCY.
6. For the sake of the prayers of the godfearing, the upright, the godly, and the remnant of saints who have been regenerated by your Spiit, and not merely by doctrinaire persuaders.
REMEMBER O LORD THE USA FOR ITS PAST HELP OF YOUR PEOPLE ISRAEL.
Despite its present rampant humanism reigning in Christendom as truth and salvation by Easy-Religionist evangelism; despite its appalling daily gun violence killing its citrizens at a rate of 300,000 a decade; despite its anti-Semitism rearing again its ugly head, even now in Congress; despite its many Deistic Constitution, rights and Amendments: O my God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ we beg of you to have MERCY.
1. Have not your promises and penalties by just judgment been justly kept? HAVE MERCY!
2. Are not your EXCEEDING, GREAT AND PRECIOUS PROMISES been given to us? HAVE MERCY!
3. When we have cried to you, have you not IN WRATH REMEMBERED MERCY?
4. Remember O Lord in the past how USA helped your people Israel!
a. In 1948 when she stood alone amid invading nations to be an independent state.
b. In 1956 to survive multi nation invasion for six days in June.
c. In 1973 when again invaded how Uncle Sam came to its plight.
d. In how Uncle Sam arranged the largest ever air-armada to repatriate stranded Jews.
e. And more recently how Uncle Sam provided the iron dome protection zone.
f. Then also remember president Trump’s move of its embassy to Jerusalem.
5. In its present battle wherein the forces of light are besieged by the forces of darkness and the ‘enemy within’, we beg of you to have mercy and remember the prayers of foregone saints interceding for America: Jonathan Edwards; George Whitefield; David Brainard; Charles Finney etcetera. Have not you collected their prayers as incense in thy bottles of heaven? We beseech you to pour out those answers upon the earth. Especially now amid the battle for its democracy against the vastly wicked DEEP STATE working to undermine and destroy the votes and the voting results, we beseech you TO HAVE MERCY.
6. For the sake of the prayers of the godfearing, the upright, the godly, and the remnant of saints who have been regenerated by your Spiit, and not merely by doctrinaire persuaders.
REMEMBER O LORD THE USA FOR ITS PAST HELP OF YOUR PEOPLE ISRAEL.
Despite its present rampant humanism reigning in Christendom as truth and salvation by Easy-Religionist evangelism; despite its appalling daily gun violence killing its citrizens at a rate of 300,000 a decade; despite its anti-Semitism rearing again its ugly head, even now in Congress; despite its many Deistic Constitution, rights and Amendments: O my God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ we beg of you to have MERCY.
1. Have not your promises and penalties by just judgment been justly kept? HAVE MERCY!
2. Are not your EXCEEDING, GREAT AND PRECIOUS PROMISES been given to us? HAVE MERCY!
3. When we have cried to you, have you not IN WRATH REMEMBERED MERCY?
4. Remember O Lord in the past how USA helped your people Israel!
a. In 1948 when she stood alone amid invading nations to be an independent state.
b. In 1956 to survive multi nation invasion for six days in June.
c. In 1973 when again invaded how Uncle Sam came to its plight.
d. In how Uncle Sam arranged the largest ever air-armada to repatriate stranded Jews.
e. And more recently how Uncle Sam provided the iron dome protection zone.
f. Then also remember president Trump’s move of its embassy to Jerusalem.
5. In its present battle wherein the forces of light are besieged by the forces of darkness and the ‘enemy within’, we beg of you to have mercy and remember the prayers of foregone saints interceding for America: Jonathan Edwards; George Whitefield; David Brainard; Charles Finney etcetera. Have not you collected their prayers as incense in thy bottles of heaven? We beseech you to pour out those answers upon the earth. Especially now amid the battle for its democracy against the vastly wicked DEEP STATE working to undermine and destroy the votes and the voting results, we beseech you TO HAVE MERCY.
6. For the sake of the prayers of the godfearing, the upright, the godly, and the remnant of saints who have been regenerated by your Spiit, and not merely by doctrinaire persuaders.
REMEMBER O LORD THE USA FOR ITS PAST HELP OF YOUR PEOPLE ISRAEL.
Despite its present rampant humanism reigning in Christendom as truth and salvation by Easy-Religionist evangelism; despite its appalling daily gun violence killing its citrizens at a rate of 300,000 a decade; despite its anti-Semitism rearing again its ugly head, even now in Congress; despite its many Deistic Constitution, rights and Amendments: O my God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ we beg of you to have MERCY.
1. Have not your promises and penalties by just judgment been justly kept? HAVE MERCY!
2. Are not your EXCEEDING, GREAT AND PRECIOUS PROMISES been given to us? HAVE MERCY!
3. When we have cried to you, have you not IN WRATH REMEMBERED MERCY?
4. Remember O Lord in the past how USA helped your people Israel!
a. In 1948 when she stood alone amid invading nations to be an independent state.
b. In 1956 to survive multi nation invasion for six days in June.
c. In 1973 when again invaded how Uncle Sam came to its plight.
d. In how Uncle Sam arranged the largest ever air-armada to repatriate stranded Jews.
e. And more recently how Uncle Sam provided the iron dome protection zone.
f. Then also remember president Trump’s move of its embassy to Jerusalem.
5. In its present battle wherein the forces of light are besieged by the forces of darkness and the ‘enemy within’, we beg of you to have mercy and remember the prayers of foregone saints interceding for America: Jonathan Edwards; George Whitefield; David Brainard; Charles Finney etcetera. Have not you collected their prayers as incense in thy bottles of heaven? We beseech you to pour out those answers upon the earth. Especially now amid the battle for its democracy against the vastly wicked DEEP STATE working to undermine and destroy the votes and the voting results, we beseech you TO HAVE MERCY.
6. For the sake of the prayers of the godfearing, the upright, the godly, and the remnant of saints who have been regenerated by your Spiit, and not merely by doctrinaire persuaders.

PROLOGUE TO BOOK OF JOB

NoteS on the Book of Job.
This is the first poetic book generally regarded as being outside the Mosaic covenant and part of the Wisdom Literature. Not all books in that category made it into the canon of holy writ. The book was written by an unknown author, who has been either dated as in the time of David, or much earlier in the primeval period of biblical history. Its outspoken theme of God being seemingly tempted by His arch foe Satan, is unprecedented and unrepeated in any of the ensuing poetic books or other divisions of the Bible.

Puzzling conundrums in the book of Job are:-
1. The ability of Lucifer to gate-crash the assembly of the saints meeting to worship.
2. The willingness of God to discuss His people with the devil.
3. The enigma of Job’s victimization.
4. Satan’s provocations of his creator.
5. God first provoking Satan to test the validity of Job’s upright motives
6. God then accepting Satan’s ploy to destroy Job’s, property, and lives of his servants and his ten children.

These controversies are unprecedented in Scripture. They do compare with much of another Wisdom Book: Ecclesiastes where the lapsed Solomon offers sceptical philosophic questions so atypical of the rest of Scripture and in direct challenge to his father’s wisdom in the Psalms recommended by Christ in Luke 24. We must also keep in mind that quite a number of Wisdom manuscripts were found unacceptable to include in the canon of sixty six books when compiled, and placed instead in the Apocrypha, which appear in Roman and liberal editions of the Bible that reject the scholarship of Erasmus and the Puritan Reformers.

The book of Job, however, makes neither God a victim of temptation, nor the righteous exposed to the unpredictable malice of Satan. The book does, nevertheless, reveal how God will provoke Satan to carry out the Lord’s divine sovereign purpose. Tragedy, bereavement, and illness were used to show future posterity down through the ages the purpose of suffering and how God’s refining fire is for the greater glory of the kingdom. Though servants and children perished, we do not read that they were righteous. The seven sons and three daughters were excessive lovers of pleasure, revelry and wine day after day. They were lost before calamity took them. They godlessly refused to walk in the upright steps of their father, Job. Drunken debauchery is strongly condemned in Scripture.

* * *

CHAPTER ONE OF JOB from the King James Version of the Bible 1611 (Public Domain).

Righteous Job made a divine example of saints’ patience in suffering.
1 There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil.
2 And there were born unto him seven sons and three daughters.
3 His substance also was seven thousand sheep, and three thousand camels, and five hundred yoke of oxen, and five hundred she asses, and a very great household; so that this man was the greatest of all the men of the east.
4 And his sons went and feasted in their houses, every one his day; and sent and called for their three sisters to eat and to drink with them.
5 And it was so, when the days of their feasting were gone about, that Job sent and sanctified them, and rose up early in the morning, and offered burnt offerings according to the number of them all: for Job said, It may be that my sons have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts. Thus did Job continually.

A holy remnant of Jehovah’s followers gather to worship.
6 Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them.
7 And the Lord said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.

God provokes Satan to react with malice towards Job.
8 And the Lord said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil?

Lucifer impugns a selfish motive to Job’s righteousness.
9 Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, Doth Job fear God for nought?
10 Hast not thou made an hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on every side? thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his substance is increased in the land.
11 But put forth thine hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face.

The Lord, for His own purpose, allows Satan to bring calamity.
12 And the Lord said unto Satan, Behold, all that he hath is in thy power; only upon himself put not forth thine hand. So Satan went forth from the presence of the Lord.
13 And there was a day when his sons and his daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother’s house:

God gives Satan freedom to ruin material wealth and property.
14 And there came a messenger unto Job, and said, The oxen were plowing, and the asses feeding beside them:
15 And the Sabeans fell upon them, and took them away; yea, they have slain the servants with the edge of the sword; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.
16 While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, The fire of God is fallen from heaven, and hath burned up the sheep, and the servants, and consumed them; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.
17 While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, The Chaldeans made out three bands, and fell upon the camels, and have carried them away, yea, and slain the servants with the edge of the sword; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.
18 While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, Thy sons and thy daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother’s house:

God gives Satan freedom to use nature’s violence for His purpose.
19 And, behold, there came a great wind from the wilderness, and smote the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young men, and they are dead; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.
20 Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshipped,
21 And said, Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.
22 In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly.

Notes, headings, sub headings and foreword by John David.
Job 1: from the King James Version Bible 1611 (Public Domain-ex biblegateway.com)

PROLOGUE TO THE BOOK OF JOB