Luke chapter 18 - God must be our first choice

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When Jesus returns there will be very few believers

Christians are depending on interpreting quotes rather than believing the revealed Scriptures.

LUKE 18:1   And he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint;

:2    Saying, There was in a city a judge, which feared not God, neither regarded man:

A judge is a leader in the community. So the leaders no longer obey God's Word from a willing heart.

LUKE 18:3   And there was a widow in that city; and she came unto him, saying, Avenge me of mine adversary.

:4   And he would not for a while: but afterward he said within himself, Though I fear not God, nor regard man;

Jesus spoke of a woman who kept pestering a judge for justice. Eventually, the judge is reluctantly forced to make the right decision. God does not recognize this as faith. Faith makes us keen and wanting to serve God.

LUKE 18:5   Yet because this widow troubleth me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me.

:6   And the Lord said, Hear what the unjust judge saith.

:7   And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them?

So the persistence of the wronged widow is a virtue that Jesus compliments.

But a leader who does not fear God, even if he makes the right decision, is not recognized as having faith.

You cannot build up your faith in quotes. You can only build up your faith on Scripture.

LUKE 18:8   I tell you that he will avenge them speedily.

Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?

When Jesus returns, will He find any faith that is based on Scripture? Not much. This is one of the saddest Scriptures.

Churches basically believe in a Trinity God Who has no name. They cannot find one name for three Persons.

Church Pastors, including message-churches that follow William Branham, rely on human quotes because no New Testament Scripture says that the Pastor is the head of the church. The church system is very wrong.

Very few believe the Bible. People are more impressed with church traditions and man-made doctrines and charismatic church Pastors who rule as the head of the church. That way they claim all the tithes money. Being a pastor can be a lucrative career and it attracts ambitious men and women. A good business plan is to have Father and Son running the business. The churches now have father and son as co-pastors as that keeps the money in the family.

Christians must not feel they are better than others

Jesus then described two men praying.

LUKE 18:9   And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others:

:10   Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican.

:11   The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican.

:12   I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.

God is not interested in us telling Him how good we think we are. God is not impressed with human self-justification.

LUKE 18:13   And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.

:14   I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.

God is only impressed when we make an open confession of our sins and shortcomings.

God thinks oppositely to us. If we think we are good, He will chop us down to size.

If we acknowledge that we are not worth much, He will help us up.

LUKE 18:15   And they brought unto him also infants, that he would touch them: but when his disciples saw it, they rebuked them.

:16    But Jesus called them unto him, and said, Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.

:17   Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein.

The apostles of the first church age are the fathers of the church. The reformers after the Dark Ages are the young men.

The end-time believers, just before the Coming of the Lord are the little children.

At the end time, the children must be restored back to the faith of the apostolic fathers. We children must get back to Jesus, Who is the Word of God. A little child has complete faith and trust in his father to protect, guide, and provide for him. A little child does not need to listen to anyone else. So we as the spiritual little children of the end time need no other guidance than what our apostolic fathers wrote for us in the New Testament.

Little children want to copy their parents as that is their first role model.

Little children are curious. They want to know more. They keep asking questions. Why is the sky blue? Why is the sun yellow? Why is grass green? In other words, why is chlorophyll green? But adults usually just tell them to keep quiet and stop asking questions. Thus their curiosity gets killed. Today, church pastors crush Bible curiosity by telling people to stop asking awkward questions like, "What is the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost".

"Why is there no single name for the Trinity God?"

The first 3 Commandments stress one God and His name

Commandment 1.   There is only one God.

A one-God-in-three-Persons comes from Greek philosophy, not from the Bible.

I JOHN 5:7   For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.

The “three are one”.

The Bible never says “three-in-one”.

The word Trinity is not in the Bible.

Commandment 2.   Do not make any man-made image or idea of God, as God dwells outside that image.

God made an image of Himself in the form of the Man Jesus Christ. But the Man Jesus is not God.

NUMBERS 23:19   God is not a man

COLOSSIANS 2:9   For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.

The fulness of the supernatural Spirit of God dwelled inside the body of Jesus. That is what makes Jesus God. You are everything that is inside you.

But the words and deeds of the Man Jesus on the outside make the nature of the invisible God within Him visible to us

Commandment 3.   Do not take God’s name in vain. Do not misuse the name of God in any way. Treat God’s name with the highest respect. Never swear in His name.

But the churches have lost the name of their Trinity God. They cannot find one name for three People.

They say, "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost" but they have no clue what that name is.

In the Old Testament, God’s name is a mystery. The Jews never actually knew God’s name. They had various names. El. Elah. Elohim. Adonai. Jehovah. JHVH. Yahweh. YHWH. Jealous. The Lord. I AM.

EXODUS 34:14   for the LORD, whose name is Jealous

“Jealous” is not a name, it is a characteristic.

EXODUS 15:3   the LORD is his name.

“The Lord” is not a name, it is a title.

All these names hid a mystery. Why was there not just one name for God?

Another mystery is that none of these names of God appear in the New Testament. Why have God’s Hebrew names disappeared for 2000 years?

As soon as the name of Jesus is mentioned in the first verse of the New Testament, none of the Old Testament names of God are mentioned.

MATTHEW 1:1   The book of the generation of Jesus Christ,

Jacob wrestled with God and asked for His name. God replied that it was not the right question to ask.

GENESIS 32:29   And Jacob asked him, and said, Tell me, I pray thee, thy name. And he said, Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after my name? And he blessed him there.

:30     And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.

They never had one name for God. God’s one name was a secret.

Samson’s father asked for the name of God but found that it was a secret.

JUDGES 13:18   And the angel of the LORD said unto him, Why askest thou thus after my name, seeing it is secret?

JUDGES 13:22   And Manoah said unto his wife, We shall surely die, because we have seen God.

The Jehovah of the Old Testament became the Jesus of the New Testament.

The human name of the Lord God Almighty is the Lord Jesus Christ.

The last 7 Commandments describe the 7 church ages

The last 7 commandments tell us about the seven church ages that have covered the last 2000 years.

Commandment 4.  (Church age 1)  Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.

Sabbath means rest. Not just rest from your own work. Sabbath really means rest from your own works of sin.

This started with the Holy Ghost baptism on the Day of Pentecost when they spoke with other tongues that people from different countries were able to understand.

ISAIAH 28:11   For with stammering lips and another tongue will he speak to this people.

:12     To whom he said, This is the rest wherewith ye may cause the weary to rest; and this is the refreshing: yet they would not hear.

JOHN 16:13   Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth:

The Holy Ghost-filled apostolic fathers wrote the New Testament which guided the church into all truth.

Every born-again Christian was part of the royal Priesthood.

Thus it was a brotherhood of equality because no priest is above another priest. Only the High Priest is above a priest. Jesus is our High Priest.

I PETER 2:9   But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood,

The Aaronic Priesthood had ended when Caiaphas tore his robe. All Christians were equal as a brotherhood.

God set up the church at the beginning the way He wanted it. The first church age was the only true church.

Commandment 5.   (Church age 2)   Honour your father and mother.

The Christians in the second church age were supposed to copy what the first church age had believed and written as the New Testament. God did not want the church to change as years went by. The apostles who wrote the New Testament were the fathers of the church.

The portion of the Holy Ghost which gave birth to the first church on the Day of Pentecost is the mother of the church.

All the second church age had to do was to be the same as the first church age. But they made the big mistake of elevating a holy man as the head of each church, calling him a Priest.

This was the spirit of the Nicolaitans. Then a Bishop was elevated to be in charge of the Priests in a City. A man-made church Priesthood now was elevated to stand between the people and God. God hated this idea.

Commandment 6.   (Church age 3)   Do not kill.

With the emphasis on elevated human leadership, the church now allowed a brutal politician Constantine, who was Roman Emperor, to force the church to accept the Trinity doctrine at the Council of Nicaea in AD 325. Any dissenters were persecuted or exiled.

(Which is how pastors treat people who disagree with them today. Character assassination and expulsion).

The unscriptural word “Trinity” began the process that would kill the Bible’s truth.

More and more unscriptural expressions followed.

God the Son. Eternal Sonship. Father and Son are of the same essence (whatever that means). Father and Son are of the same substance. Jesus is in the Godhead. Second Person of the Godhead. First Person of the Godhead. God the Holy Ghost. Christmas. Good Friday. Hot cross buns. Easter eggs. Easter rabbits. Christmas tree. 25 December. Lent. Rosary. Pope. Cardinals. Archbishops.

Constantine gave the Pope the beautiful Lateran Palace and huge amounts of money to ensure that the Pope would always be loyal to him. Being the head of the church became a well-paid job. Ambitious men were desperate to become Pope. In AD 366, Damasus won the election as Bishop of Rome after his thugs murdered more than 300 followers of his rival Ursinus. Around AD 382 his nephew, Emperor Theodosius, gave the title of Pontiff (High Priest of the Babylonian Mysteries) to Damasus. Thus, the Mysteries of Babylon from the days of Nimrod entered the Roman Catholic church, which became Mystery Babylon. Bible Truth was killed as Satan infiltrated the Roman Catholic church with pagan ideas and man-made traditions as he took over the leadership of the church.

Commandment  7.   (Church age 4)  Do not commit adultery

The evil woman Jezebel ruled Israel in their “Dark Age” as the wife of the wicked king Ahab. She symbolized the evil Roman Catholic church that ruled Europe in the Dark Ages and forced the kings and emperors to accept her unscriptural doctrines as they committed spiritual adultery with the Roman Church whore which banned the Bible.

Jezebel killed Naboth to get his vineyard. The Roman Church killed tens of millions of dissenters to establish their rule over Europe. They sent vicious Crusades to rape and kill Jews and Muslims.

Jesus said that when truth was rejected we should brush the dust off our feet and leave peaceably.

Commandment  8.   (Church age 5)   Do not steal

Germany’s heroic Martin Luther restored salvation by grace through faith. He opposed the Pope and split a huge portion of the Roman Church away from the Pope as they formed Protestant churches. He attacked and corrected many of the Roman Catholic errors.

When Jacob and Rachel left her father Laban, they stole some of his idols which gave him the excuse to pursue them.

Luther’s big mistake was to steal certain Roman Catholic errors as he tried to leave the Roman Catholic Church.

He stole the unscriptural Trinity and the unscriptural idea of a man being the head of a church. This man was now called a pastor, despite the word “pastors” only being mentioned once in the New Testament and being condemned six times in the Old Testament. Luther also stole the church-State plan of the Catholics whereby the State politicians supported the church. For the church to keep in with the modern politicians today, the churches have to condone gay rights and same-sex marriage. By believing in Trinity and having a human head, Protestant churches cannot be fully restored to the beliefs of the first church age. Saved Protestants of today thus become part of the foolish virgins who will miss the Coming of the Lord because they were fooled by the unscriptural church traditions of their charismatic preachers.

Commandment 9.   (Church age 6)  Do not lie or bear false witness

John Wesley in England restored holiness and outreach and this led to the golden missionary age. Their good works were so impressive that it gave rise to a big lie. Many began to believe that salvation depended on grace as well as on good works. We also tend to think that grace alone was not enough to save us, as we also have to go to church every Sunday and never argue with the pastor who rules the church. It was difficult for them to separate their good works from their faith for salvation. Saved people also had to go to church on 25 December for a Christmas (unscriptural word on an unscriptural pagan date) sermon on 25 December. This was an essential requirement. Missing a Christmas service was a major offence. Even though the Bible never asks us to remember Christ’s birth. People also must do the good work of paying money if they expect to be prayed for.

Today we have a better understanding. By grace through faith we are saved from hell. That applies to both the wise and the foolish virgins. Virgins are clean women, representing saved people in the churches.

But our good works and obedience to the restored mysteries of the Bible enable us to be prepared for the return of Jesus Christ at His Second Coming. This is the only way whereby we can be saved from the awful horror of the oncoming great Tribulation.

DANIEL 12:10   the wise shall understand.

The wise virgins will understand the revealed mysteries of Scripture and be caught up by the Lord and taken to Heaven.

The foolish virgins are saved from hell but they wake up too late from all the errors that their unscriptural pastors-in-charge-of-a-church have taught them. They are saved people who have been fooled by clever preachers. So, they miss the Lord’s Coming and perish horribly in great Tribulation.

10.   (Church age 7)   Do not covet

We must worship God in Spirit and in truth.

Churches enjoy the supernatural benefits of the power of the Holy Ghost, but they do not accept the obligations of puzzling out an understanding of the revealed mysteries of Scripture.

Bible teachers have to search the revealed mysteries to find out how to restore the Bride back to the beliefs of the first church age of the apostles.

The pastors who usurped the unscriptural position of being the one-man head of the church are dependent on this position to allow them to take the tithes. They covet the headship of the church in order to secure the tithes as their income.

Pastors covet the ministry that will enable them to teach the deeper revealed mysteries, as they want to be in charge. But they do not have the insight to understand the deeper Bible mysteries, so they regard the Bible teachers, who have this insight, as enemies. Pastors cannot teach just from the King James Bible. So, they lure the people away from the Bible by inventing doctrines that are based on certain very carefully selected quotes. The message-churches become bound to a specific interpretation of certain quotes and thus become increasingly Bible-illiterate.

Pastors bind their people to certain quotes. They are not interested in the deeper mysteries as they cannot prove them from Scripture. They prefer to prove their own doctrine from quotes. Then they intensely oppose the Bible teachers who prove their beliefs from Scripture.

Christ, Who is the Word, is the Head of the church. As soon as a Pastor declares himself to be the head of the church, Christ has to move outside the church.

Christ stands knocking outside the church. But He only appeals to individuals, not to the whole church who have been fooled by the pastor.

A rich man symbolizes 6 church ages

A woman represents a church because the true church is the Bride of Christ.

The rich man represents the elevated man-made head of the church. This is caused by the Nicolaitan spirit that God hates.

The pastor of the church declares himself to be the head of the church and collects all the tithes. This is a good business proposition.

Jesus leaves out the last commandment which represents the seventh church age. The seventh church is left out because the seventh church age of the Laodiceans (people’s rights) rejects Jesus as the revealed Word of God. Thus Jesus vomits the last church out of His mouth as these foolish virgins become great Tribulation fodder. There will be so few wise virgins who understand the revealed mysteries of God at the end time that they will not even be noticed.

LUKE 18:18   And a certain ruler asked him, saying, Good Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?

:19   And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? none is good, save one, that is, God.

Humans are a mixture of good and evil.  Only God is good. So by calling Jesus "good", this man was admitting that Jesus was God. Churches today believe in a Trinity of three separate Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, whereby God the Father is Lord God Almighty. Thus they struggle to acknowledge Jesus as Lord God Almighty.

We cannot understand the Bible unless we realize that Jesus has these three Titles and thus He is Lord God Almighty.

This man had kept the ten commandments. But that did not help him.

Churches today preach salvation to get people saved from hell but they do not understand the revealed mysteries of Scripture that are needed to enable us to escape from the oncoming great Tribulation.

PHILIPPIANS 2:12   Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

We cannot work out our salvation from hell. Jesus finiushed that work for us. Today, the enemy of saved Christians is the religious deception of the false doctrines taught by church leaders who claim to be the head of the church.

LUKE 18:20   Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honour thy father and thy mother.

Notice the unusual order of the Commandments, 7, 6, 8, 9, 10 is left out, 5.

What is Jesus trying to teach us?

He is taking us on a spiritual journey through the 7 church ages to show us what went wrong.

Commandment 7. Do not commit adultery with the unscriptural doctrines of the Roman Catholic denominational harlot that grew to power in the fourth church age from AD 606 to AD 1520.

The downfall of the church began when a holy man was elevated to be in charge of the church. First, this was a Priest as head of a church, then a Bishop as head of the churches in a City, then the Pope as head of all the churches. This created a lust for power and money as ambitious men rose in the church system. During the Dark Ages the "church" was emphasized at the expense of the "individual". Peer pressure and "group think" indoctrinated the people who became scared to think for themselves. The Bible was banned and the opinion of the church leader became the truth as he got involved in politics to increase his power over people. Dissenters were exiled or killed in their tens of millions.

But the Roman Catholic church grew in numbers and wealth to become the biggest and wealthiest church in the world. As such, it became a model that would increasingly be copied by Protestant churches who wanted their portion of the money-and-power pie.

Commandment 6.  Do not kill the Bible truth by adding unscriptural words and ideas (Trinity, Jesus is in the Godhead) or by ignoring or changing anything that is written in the Bible (the fulness of the Godhead is in Jesus).

COLOSSIANS 2:9   For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.

In the third church age, elevated human Bishops were forced by the political Roman Emperor Constantine to add the unscriptural word Trinity to their church beliefs. This opened the door to more and more errors. The church began to believe in the unscriptural words Christmas, 25 December, Lent, Easter eggs, Good Friday, The Antichrist, monasteries, Bible schools, etc.

Commandment 8.   Do not steal any religious ideas from the Roman Catholic church.

Martin Luther was very brave when he left the Roman Catholic church in 1520. But instead of making a complete break he stole some of their most dangerous errors. This would result in the Protestants returning to the Catholic camp in thr end times. Luther rerferred to the Pope as Antichrist. Today Lutherans call Catholics their separated brethern.

A bad mistake was the idea of creating a copy-cat man-made church organization with its own rules and beliefs. We should just believe revealed Scripture. Calling themselves by a human name, Lutherans, was wrong as believers should just be called Christians.

Lutherans established unscriptural Bible Schools to train their falsely elevated clergy, creating a pseudo Aaronic Priesthood of preachers between the laity (people) and God. This is a Nicolaitan spirit that God hates.

A very bad mistake was to elevate a man to be the head of the church and call him pastor, or minister, or vicar, or priest.

This would enable the Pastor to get control of their minds and their money.

A paid position as the head of the church is very dangerous because the love of money is the root of all evil.

It is difficult to change a person's way of thinking. It is more effective to offer them what they want.

An organization that offers them a place in Heaven if they submit without questioning like spiritual slaves in bondage to the pastor’s opinions and dictates.

Those in subjection must pay tribute to their master, their tithes.

Churches develop denominational thought police, who are mainly opportunists, to control the group.

Pastors hugging their sterile profits from their submissive church.

Even Luther was scared of opposing the Trinity that the church had believed for more than 1000 years. So, he continued with the Trinity that would heavily undermine truth in the Protestant churches.

Commandment 9.   Do not bear false witness.

Success can be a dangerous enemy. It boosts our ego and makes us self-confident as we rely on our natural talents.

John Wesley, around 1750, preached holiness and outreach. This led to the great missionary age that was stunningly successful. People regarded being sanctified as part of their salvation that they had to achieve. That was a false witness as we cannot save ourselves by our own efforts. They thought that they were only saved by faith if they did the good works of holiness. This led to competitive churchianity. My church is bigger and better than your church. My Pastor is better than your Pastor. If only you belonged to my church, you would be much better off. Salvation began with the focus on Jesus but then, sadly, began to focus on good works and church attendance and obedience to the Pastor.

That is a lie. Salvation depends on faith in Christ alone.

Commandment 10.   Do not Covet. Do not try to act as a Bible teacher if you feel you are a Pastor.

Preachers want to be the Pastor because they claim that the Pastor can collect the tithes. Being the Pastor can be a lucrative position. But Pastoral care involves helping people with their problems and does not mean that the Pastor is the head of the church. Nowhere does the New Testament say that the tithes belong to the Pastor. Being a Pastor does not equip a person to try to unravel the revealed mysteries of the written Word.  When Pastors teach, they move away from the Bible that they do not understand and focus on misinterpreting certain carefully selected quotes to fit their pet theories. Consequently, their churches become more and more Bible-illiterate. They end up believing errors like, the Prophet is infallible and cannot be corrected, Mercy is over, the Lord has Come, The Angel of Revelation 10 has come down, the 7 Thunders have uttered, the 7 Seals have opened (brother Branham had to reveal the 7 Seals before they can be opened to the Bride in Heaven after the church is caught up), brother Branham is the Voice of God and he is the Son of man. They wrongly claim that brother Branham stood under the February 28, 1963 Cloud at Sunset Peak. The Cloud, which brother Branham never saw, was actually photographed just North of the City of Flagstaff. When brother Branham saw the angels 200 miles South of Flagstaff, at Sunset Peak it was 8 March. No Cloud formed on that day. Message people refuse to believe that there were two clouds, one supernatural and one a smoke cloud from an exploded rocket, despite photographic evidence from the city of Winslow.

Too many errors, based on their interpretations of quotes, have turned the Message churches that claim to follow Brother Branham into alternative denominations, despite their denial that they are not a denomination. Message Pastors compensate for their mistakes by heavily condemning Bible teachers who have a deeper insight into the revealed mysteries of Scripture.

Not understanding the deeper mysteries that turn individuals into the Bride,  Pastors focus on protecting their group but not the individual. Individuals who better understand the written mysteries of Scripture are rejected as enemies.  Pastors, the caretakers of this brutal system, are often a hereditary caste, father to son. That is a successful business plan but leaves the people as puppets who are further removed from Scripture as the Pastor creates his own kingdom and dynasty.

Pastors unscripturally call themselves the head of their church. Thus, Jesus, Who is the real Head, has to stand outside the church because no body can have two heads. Pastors are effectively leading their saved people into the 3.5 years of great Tribulation. So, Jesus ignores this seventh church age because error reaches its peak. The age ends in darkness.

EXPOSITION OF THE SEVEN CHURCH AGES

But we have discovered that the Word also teaches an invasion of error until there is a complete blackout of truth in the last day when the Lord is about to appear.

Jesus leaves out the deceived and doomed seventh church age. Wealthy church pastors stressed prosperity as they fooled the people who are struggling to cope with the cares of this life.

LUKE 21:34   And take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares.

:35   For as a snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth.

:36   Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man.

We must know the revealed mysteries as they alone can insulate us from the many errors of this age. We must struggle for a deeper understanding of the Bible mysteries as that will help us to escape from the oncoming judgements.

The only way we can escape God's wrath is to leave the doomed seventh church age and return to the beliefs of the first church age.

So, Jesus offers this advice by quoting the fifth commandment, which describes the second church age.

Commandment 5.   Honour thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long upon the land.

Our spiritual fathers are the apostles who wrote the New Testament. Our spiritual mother is the portion of the Holy Ghost that gave birth to the first church on the Day of Pentecost when they were born again. It then continues to produce born-again Christians as they receive the baptism of the Holy Ghost.

Jesus ends by telling us to return to the apostolic beliefs of the first church age, which did not have church buildings. The oldest church building discovered by archaeologists was dated about AD 220, which is in the second church age from AD 170 to AD 312.

The Apostles never placed a Pastor as the head of a church. Believers met in homes which stopped the church from getting big and rich. A group of local elders ruled each local church. The church never took on a name and were just called Christians.

LUKE 18:21   And he said, All these have I kept from my youth up.

This implies that he had not kept these commandments as a little child. The apostles are the fathers of the first church age and the little children are the end-time church people. Thus the end-time church-goers do not keep the Commandments in their deeper spiritual sense. At the end, the Message-churches have not become a true copy of the New Testament church.

ACTS 17:10   And the brethren immediately sent away Paul and Silas by night unto Berea: who coming thither went into the synagogue of the Jews.

:11   These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind,

and searched the scriptures daily,

whether those things were so.

The early believers checked everything that their prophet-messenger Paul taught them. They made sure that he was always Scriptural in what he said.

Jesus wants us to get back to this habit. Make sure you can prove your beliefs from Scripture.

LUKE 18:22   Now when Jesus heard these things, he said unto him, Yet lackest thou one thing: sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me.

:23   And when he heard this, he was very sorrowful: for he was very rich.

This is the fatal error of the end-time church Pastors. Their love for money. It is only by calling themselves the Pastor, who is the head of the church, that they have the power to take people's money.

Each local church should be ruled by a group of elders. No man is the head of the church. Elders are all equal. There was never a "senior elder" in the New Testament. There must be no man between a believer and God.

:24   And when Jesus saw that he was very sorrowful, he said, How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God!

But the love of money changes people's thinking. Greed and selfishness surface. Greed never has enough.

:25   For it is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.

A camel that is loaded with the material possessions of the owner cannot get through that narrow opening. All the possessions would have to be unpacked first and taken off the camel.

Wealth is the huge obstacle that stands in the way of believers in the last church age. We need to slim down.

Do not covet what others have.

Again, Jesus hammers home the point that wealth is not our purpose of being on earth. The rich man could not leave his wealth. He preferred money to God. All those possessions on the back of the camel mean that it will not get through the narrow opening.

We can only get into Heaven by putting Jesus first. The rich put their money first. So money is a barrier and an obstacle on their path to Heaven. Please do not be fooled by the prosperity doctrine. God's real blessings are spiritual.

God's main purpose for our lives is to restore us back to the New Testament faith of the apostles.

LUKE 18:26   And they that heard it said, Who then can be saved?

:27   And he said, The things which are impossible with men are possible with God.

So only God can save us, but under the condition that we put Him first.

Peter indicates the need to leave everything in order to follow Jesus.

LUKE 18:28   Then Peter said, Lo, we have left all, and followed thee.

:29   And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or parents, or brethren, or wife, or children, for the kingdom of God's sake,

:30   Who shall not receive manifold more in this present time, and in the world to come life everlasting.

We must be prepared to leave our family for God's sake. He has to be our first love, not just a casual acquaintance.

Our real reward is in Heaven. But on earth, we will still have a reward. Here we must be careful that we do not just think in terms of physical things. By opening our eyes to the mysteries that are hidden in Scripture, God is giving us an amazing spiritual reward. But all too often, we prefer a physical reward to a spiritual reward. We must let God reward us as He sees fit.

LUKE 18:31   Then he took unto him the twelve, and said unto them, Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of man shall be accomplished.

LUKE 18:32   For he shall be delivered unto the Gentiles, and shall be mocked, and spitefully entreated, and spitted on:

LUKE 18:33   And they shall scourge him, and put him to death: and the third day he shall rise again.

The events at the end of the ministry of Jesus were going to be shockingly different from what the apostles expected.

Thus the final events at the end of our seventh church age are also going to be shockingly different from what we expect.

Who thought that the church would fall into apostasy and condone same-sex marriage, the sin of Sodom?

Church-goers today are also blind to the errors that the church has fallen into.

LUKE 18:34   And they understood none of these things: and this saying was hid from them, neither knew they the things which were spoken.

Luke describes how a blind individual gained his sight. This is symbolic of each of us being able to see the revelation of the meaning of Scripture. William Branham came to show us how to reveal the mysteries of the written Word. His followers, sadly, used his statements to move away from Scripture until they were just building doctrines on carefully selected quotes.

In the process they become Bible-illiterate as they cannot prove their beliefs from the King James Bible.

LUKE 18:35   And it came to pass, that as he was come nigh unto Jericho, a certain blind man sat by the way side begging:

:36   And hearing the multitude pass by, he asked what it meant.

:37   And they told him, that Jesus of Nazareth passeth by.

:38   And he cried, saying, Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me.

:39   And they which went before rebuked him, that he should hold his peace: but he cried so much the more, Thou Son of David, have mercy on me.

Son of David is the title that Jesus will have in the Millennium as the King of the thousand years of Peace. The blind man thus had his Scriptural facts wrong, so Jesus could not help him. Jesus was not impressed by the fact that the man knew something about the Scripture. Jesus was switched off by the fact that the man misunderstood the Scripture. He could not place the events in their correct order.

LUKE 18:40   And Jesus stood, and commanded him to be brought unto him: and when he was come near, he asked him,

:41   Saying, What wilt thou that I shall do unto thee? And he said, Lord, that I may receive my sight.

Now he called Jesus "Lord", which was correct. Now Jesus could help him.

LUKE 18:42    And Jesus said unto him, Receive thy sight: thy faith hath saved thee.

:43    And immediately he received his sight, and followed him, glorifying God: and all the people, when they saw it, gave praise unto God.

We need our spiritual sight -- The ability to see what the Bible means.

The lesson is that we must be able to clearly see what the Bible says, and not muddle it up. If you see the theory of the Big Bang in Genesis Chapter 1, then you are blind to what the Bible actually is saying.

The Big Bang has creation starting with a flash of light in an explosion that makes space and time. This is a guess as no one knows what time is, much less how it is created. No known explosion has ever created any time.

But creation in the Bible does not start with a flash of light.

Genesis starts with God first creating the heaven and the earth in the beginning. No time span is mentioned as God was still operating in eternity where time does not exist. The sun, moon, and stars were all created first. The earth was covered in water, which had evaporated to form a dense layer of cloud. Under this dense layer of cloud, there was darkness upon the face of the deep waters. The sun was already there above the dense layer of clouds. The clouds stopped the sunlight from reaching the earth's surface. Then God began to move.

God spoke and said,"Let there be light". The spoken Word of God dispersed the thick clouds around the earth so that the sunlight could now reach the surface of the earth. The earth saw the glorious light of the sun for the first time. This was the first day, Sunday, when God began to allocate time to what He was doing.

A human is a handful of dust. So God deals with us as He did with the earth.

To begin with, our developing human body was covered in a layer of water in our mother's womb.

When we are born, God breathed into our nostrils the breath of life which is our human spirit. Our soul is wrapped up inside this spirit. But we had a thick cloud of unbelief around our souls, which is why we were born in sin. Then, sometime later in our lives, God spoke, and if we believed and repented, the unbelief around our souls was dispersed, and the light of God's Word for the first time was able to reach our souls. The seed-Word in our souls germinated.

Then only could we rejoice in the glorious light of the Son of God, and see what an amazing Saviour He is. But ever since our birth He had always been there as Saviour. It is just that only when we repented that we were able to see that fact for the first time. Then our new life, as a child of God, began at that time as we started to walk in the light of God's Word.

Being able to see and understand the revealed Word of God is the greatest proof that we, just like the blind individual, have been in the presence of Christ, Who alone can change us from being unbelievers to believers.