Monday, October 29, 2018

Jeremiah – Jeremiah 3 (d)

The book of Jeremiah - chapter by chapter and verse by verse
Jeremiah 3:18-25 KJV

18 In those days the house of Judah shall walk with the house of Israel, and they shall come together out of the land of the north to the land that I have given for an inheritance unto your fathers.

Right now, the house of Judah and the 10 northern tribes of Israel are split, but then they will be together, accepting their inheritance.

That’s how we know that Jeremiah is speaking of end times here, because Judah and Israel have not been together since the tribes of Israel were taken captive by the Assyrian, 200 years before Judah was taken into a 70-year captivity to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar.

You can read of this gathering back in Ezekiel 37 when God tells Ezekiel to preach to the bones – meaning those who are spiritually dead.

Who is Israel? Nobody really knows, they are the “lost tribes”… except that God has not lost them – He made sure that after they had multiplied greatly while in Assyrian captivity they were scattered throughout the world. No country wanted them because there were so many, even way back then.

Now if we can add 2 + 2, we know they didn’t “die off” or anything. They are the lost tribes, the blessed remnant, now the Christians of the world. Grab on to your inheritance, people!

19 But I said, How shall I put thee among the children, and give thee a pleasant land, a goodly heritage of the hosts of nations? and I said, Thou shalt call me, My father; and shalt not turn away from me.

This is what we do in order to inherit everything good from our Father… (underline is mine). God asks how He can do it, and then answers...for our edification and understanding.

20 Surely as a wife treacherously departeth from her husband, so have ye dealt treacherously with me, O house of Israel, saith the LORD.

We have committed spiritual adultery… We can save ourselves from that if we know the book of Revelation and know that the false Christ comes first. We must be spiritual virgins when the true bridegroom arrives here on earth.

God expects His true bride (us) to stand against that false one and those false teachings!

21 A voice was heard upon the high places, weeping and supplications of the children of Israel: for they have perverted their way, and they have forgotten the LORD their God.

22 Return, ye backsliding children, and I will heal your backslidings. Behold, we come unto thee; for thou art the LORD our God.

IF we repent, all those sins we’ve piled up are completely erased. (IF – the biggest little word that God uses over and over again in His word.) But, we can work on changing... sometimes it's a little slow but once it starts happening - it gets easier and easier.

23 Truly in vain is salvation hoped for from the hills, and from the multitude of mountains: truly in the LORD our God is the salvation of Israel.

24 For shame hath devoured the labour of our fathers from our youth; their flocks and their herds, their sons and their daughters.

These have been stolen by false teachings: our labour, our children and our rich heritage – all the way back to the book of Chronicles you will find the Kenites (offspring of Cain) already keeping records as scribes for the kings. (1 Chronicles 2:55).

However, there is a remnant, there is always a remnant as God promised, who carry forward His true word. We have no excuse for not knowing and understanding.

25 We lie down in our shame, and our confusion covereth us: for we have sinned against the LORD our God, we and our fathers, from our youth even unto this day, and have not obeyed the voice of the LORD our God.

Here is how easily falseness and confusion can slip in – the word “Easter” is used one time in the Bible, in the book of Acts, and is a mistranslated word. The real word in the original manuscripts was “pascal”, Passover.

Passover is the high holy day of Christianity, and “Ishtar” is a pagan goddess, to whom heathen nations rolled eggs as a fertility rite, and did “grove worship”, holding orgies in the groves of the mountains.

And yet God told us in Exodus 12 that we are to celebrate Passover “for ever”. But we left it behind for a pagan goddess and weird worship rites. Sad. We could have looked the word Easter up in a dictionary and known the truth.

Exodus 12 is God’s direct description of Passover… read that chapter to understand the truth about what GOD wants.

The following verses in Exodus 12 tell us clearly that God expects us to celebrate Passover “for ever”:

Ex 12:14 And this day shall be unto you for a memorial; and ye shall keep it a feast to the LORD throughout your generations; ye shall keep it a feast by an ordinance for ever.

Ex 12:17 And ye shall observe the feast of unleavened bread; for in this selfsame day have I brought your armies out of the land of Egypt: therefore shall ye observe this day in your generations by an ordinance for ever.

Ex 12:24 And ye shall observe this thing for an ordinance to thee and to thy sons for ever. KJV

(underlines are mine). Jeremiah chapter 4 will be next. :)

Sunday, October 28, 2018

Jeremiah – Jeremiah 3 (c)

The book of Jeremiah - chapter by chapter and verse by verse
 
Jeremiah 3:12-17 KJV

12 Go and proclaim these words toward the north, and say, Return, thou backsliding Israel, saith the LORD; and I will not cause mine anger to fall upon you: for I am merciful, saith the LORD, and I will not keep anger for ever.

What a loving Father we have. He will forgive us and be merciful, when we repent. See next verse! He makes it clear that we must repent to receive His mercy. There is a requirement for what we must do.

13 Only acknowledge thine iniquity, that thou hast transgressed against the LORD thy God, and hast scattered thy ways to the strangers under every green tree, and ye have not obeyed my voice, saith the LORD.

Important! Important! “acknowledge thine iniquity” – means we have to do something, right?

When you repent totally, He forgives totally. And He forgets about it, forever. But you must acknowledge your sins and repent of them. It’s not automatic.

14 Turn, O backsliding children, saith the LORD; for I am married unto you: and I will take you one of a city, and two of a family, and I will bring you to Zion:

15 And I will give you pastors according to mine heart, which shall feed you with knowledge and understanding.

He gives us what we need, as soon as we go looking for it! Solid understanding, no believing this and believing that, but a solid rock of the full truth! He showers us with that latter rain, when we follow Him in truth and understanding.

He will guide, direct and bless, it’s that simple. We need to put skin in the game.

16 And it shall come to pass, when ye be multiplied and increased in the land, in those days, saith the LORD, they shall say no more, The ark of the covenant of the LORD: neither shall it come to mind: neither shall they remember it; neither shall they visit it; neither shall that be done any more.

17 At that time they shall call Jerusalem the throne of the LORD; and all the nations shall be gathered unto it, to the name of the LORD, to Jerusalem: neither shall they walk any more after the imagination of their evil heart.

After God sets His dwelling in Jerusalem, He will be there. That is why we will be there, gathered to it, gathered to the name of the LORD, and there will be no evil.

(Jeremiah 3 verses 18-25 - to follow soon! Stay tuned.)

Wednesday, October 10, 2018

Jeremiah - Jeremiah 3 (b)

The book of Jeremiah - chapter by chapter and verse by verse
Jeremiah 3:4-11 KJV

4 Wilt thou not from this time cry unto me, My father, thou art the guide of my youth?

Jeremiah is asking God to talk to him despite all the idol worship described in the first three verses of this chapter.

5 Will he reserve his anger for ever? will he keep it to the end? Behold, thou hast spoken and done evil things as thou couldest.

Jeremiah is asking us now as well as the people of his day whether we’re going to keep being evil and take the chance that God will reserve His anger forever.

6 The LORD said also unto me in the days of Josiah the king, Hast thou seen that which backsliding Israel hath done? she is gone up upon every high mountain and under every green tree, and there hath played the harlot.

Remember that Jeremiah is a prophet of the tribe of Judah…there are still the tribes of Israel out there, and God is asking the tribe of Judah if they’ve seen all the backsliding their sister tribes of Israel had committed, and if they’d seen her play the harlot against God (worshipping idols in the groves instead of worshipping God).

7 And I said after she had done all these things, Turn thou unto me. But she returned not. And her treacherous sister Judah saw it.

God asked Israel to come back to Him, but she didn't. From this verse we know the tribe of Judah saw this treachery on the part of Israel.

8 And I saw, when for all the causes whereby backsliding Israel committed adultery I had put her away, and given her a bill of divorce; yet her treacherous sister Judah feared not, but went and played the harlot also.

Here we learn that God had given Israel a bill of divorce, and even though her sister tribe Judah had seen that, Judah went and worshipped idols also.

9 And it came to pass through the lightness of her whoredom, that she defiled the land, and committed adultery with stones and with stocks.

She (Judah and her sister Israel) made a false religion of anything and everything. It pisses God off. There’s no better way to say it.

10 And yet for all this her treacherous sister Judah hath not turned unto me with her whole heart, but feignedly, saith the LORD.

Faking love for God will never work. You either love Him and follow Him wholeheartedly or you’re in trouble. There’s no faking it.

11 And the LORD said unto me, The backsliding Israel hath justified herself more than treacherous Judah.

(stay tuned for verses 12 through 25). :)
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Friday, October 5, 2018

Jeremiah – Jeremiah 3 (a)

The book of Jeremiah - chapter by chapter and verse by verse
Jeremiah 3:1-3 KJV

Jer 3:1 They say, If a man put away his wife, and she go from him, and become another man's, shall he return unto her again? shall not that land be greatly polluted? but thou hast played the harlot with many lovers; yet return again to me, saith the LORD.

The whole idea is gross in the flesh, how much more awful is it to do this to God?

2 Lift up thine eyes unto the high places, and see where thou hast not been lien with. In the ways hast thou sat for them, as the Arabian in the wilderness; and thou hast polluted the land with thy whoredoms and with thy wickedness.

How is this particular verse super important to us living in these days? What is the High Holy Day of Christianity? It is Passover. But in the book of Acts, a scribe mis-translated the Greek word “pascha” which means the Passover, to Ishtar (Easter) and unfortunately it was carried through to our English translations. Easter is a heathen term derived from the Saxon “goddess of fertility”, Eastre, the same as Astarte, the Syrian Venus, called Ashtaroth in the O.T.

Jesus became our Passover. (1 Cor. 5:7), yet we say we are celebrating His resurrection on Easter, which came to us via a false fertility “goddess” named Ishtar. She is a false goddess of the Philistines, the Phoenicians and the Zidonians. Do you know how these heathen nations worshipped this so-called goddess? By going up into the groves, rolling eggs and having sexual orgies for fertility rites, to a false “fertility goddess”.

So now we have little children hunting eggs, and carrying baskets, and going out into the groves, so to speak, for “Easter”, yet that is Ishtar, false goddess of fertility, a made-up idol.

Instead of celebrating Jesus as our Passover, we do Easter. It is not right but the holiday is so ingrained into our culture that people freak out at the thought of not celebrating “Easter”, a false fertility goddess, but instead celebrating the Passover, our Lord Jesus Christ.

How upset is God about this? I will share just one reference, Judges 2:12-14: (underline is mine)

Judges 2:12-14 - 12 And they forsook the LORD God of their fathers, which brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods, of the gods of the people that were round about them, and bowed themselves unto them, and provoked the LORD to anger. 13 And they forsook the LORD, and served Baal and Ashtaroth. 14 And the anger of the LORD was hot against Israel, and he delivered them into the hands of spoilers that spoiled them, and he sold them into the hands of their enemies round about, so that they could not any longer stand before their enemies.

“They could not any longer stand before their enemies”… when the antichrist is here and sees people worshipping to a false goddess via the supposedly holy Easter celebration, he’ll be happy. God will be angry. If we wake up and think about this, and do some more study about Ashtaroth, we find Ahab (the seventh king of Israel) and Jezebel his wife, some of the most horrible royalty of Israel ever, worshipping Ashtaroth, and Elijah showing them the truth, causing hundreds of their false priests to be put to death. And when Jesus returns and says, “I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity”, (Matthew 7:23) you will know that staying with the traditions of men instead of giving up that Easter service and egg rolling which you now know is wrong, wasn’t worth it.

I refer you to Matthew 7:13-29 to hear Jesus’ take on those who worship falsely.

Micah 5:10-15 shows God destroying the “groves” again, and there are many, many references throughout the Bible where God is angry about the groves and the grove worship. Let’s be warned, let’s change our ways, let’s understand that God isn’t kidding.

Once we realize what the truth about that holiday is, if we love God we can no longer honor it! We’d be fools! To hold on to a tradition that God has spoken against clearly, no matter how much we have liked it, no matter how “innocent” it seems, would be spiritual death. If we love God, we honor His ways. And for giving worship to God and to Jesus and His Sacrifice for us, we must look at Jesus as he is spoken of in the Bible, our Passover Lamb, and then pay attention to the descriptions of Passover in the Old Testament. We no longer kill a bullock, etc., because Jesus spilled His blood for us once and for all - and that meant that the blood ordinances only applied up to the time of Jesus’ resurrection. But the rest is all good.

I’d like to remind you of what I often say – don’t trust me! Don’t trust any person with what they tell you that the Bible says – instead, go to God’s Word and read it for yourself. Find out what God has really said. He wrote you this letter… He really wants you to read it.

Back to Jeremiah chapter 3:

3 Therefore the showers have been withholden, and there hath been no latter rain; and thou hadst a whore's forehead, thou refusedst to be ashamed.

Whore’s forehead – it’s the mark of the beast, in other words these who have “a whore’s forehead” are going to worship the false messiah. They don’t listen, they don’t care, they don’t want to think about it – so when the false one is here on earth pretending to be Jesus, they will worship that false one, because they never knew.

Because they never bothered to find out the truth in God’s word! It’s all there!

Don’t you be like them. God has work for you to do, to plant the seeds of His True Word into the minds of the people you deal with. That’s the reason you are dealing with them, to give them and you the opportunity to plant seeds.

And so when you are before God He will ask you, “did you plant my seeds? Did you plant my true word into others as you went along?” If so, “well done, good and faithful servant!” And you will move into the peaceful and eternal life.

It takes work. There are many, many times throughout the Bible where God says, IF you will do this, then I will do that”. But we read over that big word “IF” and wait around for God to do us favors. It’s not that way. If God says “IF”, we better understand the real promise and our part in it.

We have jobs to do for God. He’ll hand them out as He sees fit, and hopefully we don’t overlook our opportunities.

The “latter rain” is the second rain, the one that lets the seedlings grow and flourish until they are harvested. Are you allowing the “latter rain” to bring forth God’s word from you? It will come forth from you if you allow the growth, the learning, to happen.

The latter rain is the truth of the end times, so that you will not worship the false messiah, but will wait for the true Christ to arrive at the 7th trump. (The false one arrives here on earth at the 6th trump).

These first three verses of Jeremiah 3 have deep meaning, so I will start with verse 4 in my next post. Regarding the above three verses, the description of Passover as God gave it to Moses just prior to the chosen people’s departure from Egypt is in Exodus 12 – and one VERY IMPORTANT point is made by God Himself that precludes the idea that we should not be observing the Passover feast every year of our lives, is in Exodus 12:17 (underline is mine) - And ye shall observe the feast of unleavened bread; for in this selfsame day have I brought your armies out of the land of Egypt: therefore shall ye observe this day in your generations by an ordinance for ever.

Yes, God said for ever…. Shall we ignore that and continue to celebrate Easter? I won’t, but your choice is your choice. Keep in mind that you’ll have to explain to Jesus one day why you wouldn’t celebrate Him as your Passover, but instead rolled eggs to a false fertility goddess, even though you knew. Just sayin’.

May God bless you always. I’m here to help if you have any questions.