Matthew 25, part 3 - We don't know a lot

We update studies as the Lord Jesus leads us. You can find the latest update of this study at ChurchAges.net

Matthew shows Christ as King of Jews and Gentiles

Jesus was arrested in Matthew, Chapter 26.

His death, burial, and resurrection were the culmination of His First Coming.

Matthew Chapter 25 deals with end-time events and church history because Jesus had already introduced those topics in Matthew Chapter 24.

As the Book of Matthew approaches the end of His First Coming, Matthew devotes time to telling us what Jesus had to say about the end-time events leading up to His Second Coming.

This pattern repeats. What happened at the end of His First Coming indicates the trends that will happen at His Second Coming.

Matthew Chapter 24 was prophetic concerning future events for both Jews and Gentiles.

Matthew shows Christ as the Lion of Judah, the King of the Jews, and the Gentiles.

Most of Matthew Chapter 24 involves the Gentile church ages, but there are key references to the Jews.

So, we must watch out for the Jews being mentioned in portions of the parables of Matthew Chapter 25 that obviously deal with the Gentile church.

Speaking of the Jewish Temple, that was going to be destroyed.

MATTHEW 24:2   And Jesus said unto them, See ye, not all these things? verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.

In AD 70, this prophecy was fulfilled by the Roman general Titus. The pagan Romans surrounded the city and destroyed the Temple and much of the city. They were the abomination that made desolation. They cut down all the trees for eleven miles around Jerusalem, making the country desolate. This was done in order that they could build a ramp or wall around the city.

Then this pagan Roman spirit resurrected in the Roman Catholic church that sought to change the original documents that would later be translated as the King James Bible. They translated everything into Latin and changed the Bible verses.  They introduced pagan customs into the church traditions like Trinity, Christmas, and Good Friday.

The churches become desolate of Bible truth.

MATTHEW 24:15   When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:)

Pagan Rome destroyed the Temple and after the Reformation Papal Rome destroyed the influence of the King James Version of the Bible. Very few Protestants now claim that the King James Bible is the infallible and Absolute Truth.

MATTHEW 24:16   Then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains:

A clear reference to the Jews. The Jews left the scene in a frightful massacre when Titus's army in AD 70 killed 1100000 Jews. Those who saw the Romans coming had a brief chance to escape from Jerusalem into the surrounding mountains before the Romans built their ramp or wall around the city. Once it was built, people could no longer escape from the city. Then the remaining Jews either died (1100000 died) or joined the 90000 surviving Jews who became slaves of the Romans.

During World War 2, the Jews came back onto the scene with the frightful Holocaust of Hitler, who killed six million Jews, mainly in Poland's concentration death camps.

That awful slaughter is referred to as the “tribulation of those days”. The unimaginable horror was a sad preview of the 3.5 years of great Tribulation.

Six million Jews died as a pre-Tribulation to warn us of the sixth Seal's impending great Tribulation.

There were six major death camps: Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek, and Auschwitz-Birkenau.

The war covered six years.

Out of this disaster, in 1948, rose the six-pointed Star of David as the nation's new flag. David was a king who lived 3000 years ago.

This flag indicates that Israel has the oldest links with its history of any modern country.

Name-accuracy saw the first president, David ben Gurion, raise the flag of the restored nation.

The restoration of Israel was confirmed in the 1967 Six-Day War victory led by Moshe (Moses) Dayan.

They fought for six days against three Arab states and then rested. Moses said about 3500 years ago that the Jews must work for six days and then rest. Again, this impressive name-accuracy.

So, God is turning back to the Jews after 2000 years of church history. Thus the Jews feature in these end-time prophecies.

MATTHEW 24:29   Immediately after the tribulation of those days [the Jewish Holocaust] shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light,

Our light is the Bible (symbolized by the sun) that the moon (the church) reflects. After the Holocaust ended at the end of World War 2, numerous new, but different, versions of the English Bible began to emerge. Translators rejected the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible, and its light darkened as people no longer regarded it as the Absolute Truth. The church (symbolizing the moon) now reflected a host of different opinions from more than 100 different English Bible versions, and church-goers were fooled into believing that every Bible translation had contradictions and flaws. Thus all Bible translations are now regarded as having mistakes and Christians have been deceived into believing that there is no Absolute truth. The church thus no longer reflected the light of the King James Bible as being Absolutely true.

Satan was making sure that in the end, the vast majority of Christians would either not read the KJV Bible or else would regard it as being flawed.

The parable of the ten virgins basically points out the differences between the Bride, the saved and wise Bible-believing virgins, and the saved but foolish or fooled Bible-criticizing virgins at the end-time before the Coming of the Lord.

We need to understand the conditions at the end-time to understand better what will cause these differences.

The Bride has enough oil of the Holy Spirit to ignite an intense enough light that enables them to read and understand the written Bible. Despite being saved and living holy, the foolish virgins cannot illuminate the hidden mysteries of Scripture.

The Lord preached another end-time parable that was recorded by Luke.

Luke speaks of Christ as the ideal Man. So here, we get an idea of how God sees the nature of man at the end. Nice, saved Christians are no longer interested in being restored to the beliefs of the apostles. Church-goers are no longer interested in the revealed mysteries of the Bible.

So, God uses ruffians who are the only individuals with enough courage to stand up against the flood of unscriptural church error.

This interesting parable was preached about a man preparing a great supper, which represents the Wedding Supper of the Lamb. This parable reveals the churchgoers' attitude and their end-time complete lack of interest in what God wants.

The foolish virgins are easily influenced by the mob-mentality of Facebook and Twitter users. They easily succumb to the politically correct or fashionable modern-day influences. Science destroys faith in Genesis with their theories of evolution and the Big Bang. As the world and the church move further from God, social media gets more controlled by the Devil.

Laodiceans make up their own ideas how they serve God

The last church age is called the church of the Laodiceans.

Laodicea means “people’s rights”. Church-goers today feel that they have the right to serve God in whatever way suits them.

They believe that they can dress how they like and do whatever pleases them.

Thus, hardly any churches now regard the King James Version of the Bible as the Absolute Truth.

Sadly, it is very fashionable to say that the Bible has mistakes and contradicts itself.

Let us consider the parable.

LUKE 14:16   Then said he unto him, A certain man made a great supper, and bade many:

:17     And sent his servant at supper time to say to them that were bidden, Come; for all things are now ready.

God sends a prophet-messenger in the end-time to reveal the mysteries of the written Word. That way we can be properly Scriptural and thus be restored back to the early church's beliefs.

MATTHEW 17:11   And Jesus answered and said unto them, Elias truly shall first come, and restore all things.

The saved Christians are first called to the wedding supper as the prophet’s ministry was mainly involved with the churches. It is saved Christians who are most likely to get hold of his books and recorded messages. God is unlikely to give the first option to His Wedding Supper to the unsaved.

But God only calls by His Bible. He does not accept anything outside His Bible.

63-0630   THE  THIRD  EXODUS

for they can hear plainly the God's Voice, calling, through His Word

...  Listen to the Bible, the Voice of God

calling to you in this day.

When he is preaching, brother Branham says that the Bible is the Voice of God.

65-0429  THE  CHOOSING  OF  A  BRIDE

But the Word of God attracts the Bride of Christ.

...  While,

the true Bride attracts the attention of God, by keeping His Word.

Notice the Deep (in God) calling to the deep (in man).

The revealed mysteries of the Word attract the Bride. Then God is attracted to the Bride because they keep and love the revealed Word as the truth.

So, God is looking amongst the saved Christians for those who love the Bible as their Absolute.

LUKE 14:18   And they all with one consent began to make excuse. The first said unto him, I have bought a piece of ground, and I must needs go and see it: I pray thee have me excused.

But none of the saved Christians wants to respond to God’s Scriptural call.

The whole world is the field that Jesus bought in the fifth parable of Matthew Chapter 13. He died so that the full revelation of the Bible could be made known to Christians.

MATTHEW 13:44   Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field; the which when a man hath found, he hideth, and for joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field.

:38   The field is the world;

But each church-goer chooses a certain church and is then subject to

the limitations and ignorance of that church-field.

That is the limited field which they buy into. They know certain truths of Scripture but the deeper mysteries are not revealed in that restricted church-vision-field.

We are too involved with the things that we have spent our money on. We are far too involved with what interests us. But as humans, our knowledge and interests are limited to what we know.

And we mistake our limited knowledge for being God’s reality.

We are too involved with boosting our own chosen church-field, rather than the Word of God.

God calls us through His Word.

Church-goers today love their churches more than they love the Bible.

They will criticize the King James Version of the Bible but will never criticize their church or their pastor.

God wants us to obey just what is written in Scripture

64-0719M  THE  FEAST  OF  THE  TRUMPETS

Here now, the Church, that knows nothing but the Bible.

64-0719   THE  FEAST  OF  THE  TRUMPET

When finished, at Laodicean Age, according to Revelations 10,

the mystery of all the Bible would be knowed to the Bride.

Is that right? Revelations 10.

… we have seen and heard the Voice of God speaking through His Word

62-0121   AND  THY  SEED  SHALL  POSSESS  THE  GATE  OF  HIS  ENEMY

Stay with the Word, that Voice of God

that speaks to you.

62-0407  THE  SIGNS  OF  HIS  COMING

Just those God called is the ones will hear it. "My sheep hear My Voice." That's right.

They know the Voice of God. It speaks from the Word.

60-0804  AS  THE  EAGLE  STIRRETH  UP  HER  NEST

Oh, I tell you it pays you to

listen to the voice of God, the still small Voice that speaks deep

and rich. It attracts the attention of His people.

… We know the Bible is right; that's not my voice; that's God's voice, speaking

We must realize that God's thoughts are expressed through His Word.

61-0108  REVELATION  CHAPTER  FOUR.3

"My sheep know My Voice." And

the Voice of God is His Word.

64-0823  QUESTIONS  AND  ANSWERS.1

But those who can accept the Word in Its fullness,

not me preaching It, because It's the Bible says so.

Those who accept that is free, because they--the Word's already been judged.

62-0318 THE  SPOKEN  WORD  IS  THE  ORIGINAL  SEED.2
Now, all these things I've said, if they don't jive with the Bible, or dovetail with God's Word, they're wrong,

they're wrong,

If there is a difference between the Bible and what brother Branham says, then it is the Bible-version that is correct.

63-1110  HE  THAT   IS  IN  YOU

Believe all the Message. Believe That. If it isn't written in the Bible, then don't you believe it.

We must be able to prove brother Branham's revelations by just using the Bible.

54-0302  THE  RESURRECTION  OF  JAIRUS  DAUGHTER

It's the absolute one Book that every Word is infallible.

Because the King James Version of the Bible is the infallible truth, Satan will do his best to get us away from what is written in Scripture.

The Bible promises us the voice of the seventh angel in Revelation Chapter 3.

Do not make the mistake of promoting brother Branham to be the Voice of God.

That was never promised in the New Testament.

61-1119 PERFECT  STRENGTH  BY  PERFECT  WEAKNESS
Oh, my, talk about the lid off of the kettle:

demons going around,

powers of the devil under the name of Christianity,

teaching for doctrine the commandments of men,

theological seminary doctrines,

leaving the Bible alone.

Demonology will try hard to get us to disagree with Scripture.

If we repeat something many times, we can then pretend that it is true.

Satan encourages our desire for acceptance in a church. We desire their esteem and also fear being unwanted if we disagree. We are easily intimidated by the exalted leader.

The system creates a leader. The leader then breathes the fire of his own opinions into the system.

65-0220  GOD'S  CHOSEN  PLACE  OF  WORSHIP

They think you have to belong to that certain church or you cannot go to Heaven. That's wrong. To believe that, is antichrist.

I'll say this: if you believe such a spirit, you're lost.

That's a good sign you are lost,

because it's taking away from what God did.

God never put His Name in any church. He put It in His Son, Christ Jesus, when He and His Son became One. That's the genuine place of worship. No other foundations was laid, no other rock.

The pulpits are where the main errors are preached

63-0707   THE  INDICTMENT

Loving doctrine of man-made denominations and dogmas better than they do the a-vindicated Word of God;

…  He was the Word; and they rejected the Word. That's one point I want you not to miss, see, I want you not to miss. He was the Word, and, when they rejected Him, they rejected the Word. And when they did reject Him, they finally crucified Him.

And that's what they've done today: reject the Word of God, and accepted their creeds; and has crucified, publicly, before their congregation, the working of the Holy Spirit.

And they're guilty, and I indict them in the Name of Jesus Christ.

… Yeah, with their creeds they crucify Him afresh.

… Their creeds and traditions has gotten them away from the Word of God.

… This new Calvary is the church, so-called, most holy places, great pulpits,

Catholicism altar, Catholic altar, called their pulpit. The Methodist, the Baptist, the Presbyterian, the Lutheran, the Pentecostals,

the most holy places, there He receives His hardest pierces.

A new Calvary! Where is it found at? In the holy places, the church.

Where is He crucified at? From the pastors. You hypocrites

… Where did He get His spears at, in His side?

Where did He get His pierces? On Calvary.

Where does He get it today? In the pulpit.

Brother Branham warns us.

The main error comes from the pastors in the pulpits who say unscriptural things.

But we prefer to follow our church leader’s quotes and our church traditions.

The Bible never told us to celebrate the birth of Jesus, but we prefer to make it the biggest Christian festival of the year. We do things our way. Who cares about what the Bible said? We feel obliged to say “Merry Christmas,” which is a totally unscriptural expression.

Competitive Christianity is waged with all the aggressive hard-sell techniques of the marketplace. Just try disagreeing with your church pastor and see how your popularity drops.

The established church becomes a pleasant social pastime with so many unscriptural ideas that it is scarcely recognizable as a Bible-believing group.

God gets taken out of religion and loses His name.

Try finding one name for the three Persons of the Trinity Godhead.

The pastor is a tea-drinking, kindly, and charming man (or woman), making the complacent church-goer more comfortable and inoculating people against the truth.

Each church lives in a cocoon of illusions.

Blind-folded fear makes church-goers scared to question church opinions. People soon learn to develop slave-like, weak, and ignorant minds that cringe to authority.

But for the Bride, courage is better than comfort. What is right is better than what is fun.

LUKE 14:19   And another said, I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to prove them: I pray thee have me excused.

I am too preoccupied with my material interests. There is money to be made.

There are four beasts around the throne in Revelation, Chapter 4.

REVELATION 4:7     And the first beast was like a lion, and the second beast like a calf and the third beast had a face as a man, and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle.

Four beasts and God on His throne. That makes Five.  The number of God’s grace. This is our Heavenly protection.

God protects us by manifesting His Spirit in four different ways.

Four is the number of earthly deliverance.

The lion represents the true Word of God during the first two church ages.

The ox represents God's Word that started getting lost

when the Trinity doctrine was forced onto the church at the Council of Nicaea in AD 325.

Then more and more Bible truth was lost as the church descended into the Dark Ages' squalor.

This man, in the parable, has five yokes of oxen.

Five is the number of grace. He is saved by grace through faith.

But he is yoked to his church, not the Bible.

Five yokes of oxen represent the Bible truths that he is losing in the modern church although he knew enough to be saved.

Look at this list of unscriptural errors:

Trinity. Christmas. 25 December. Good Friday. The pastor is the head of the church.  A seven-year Tribulation. The Cloud of 1963 was the Coming of the Lord. The Angel of Revelation Chapter 10 has come down. Mercy is over except for the Bride. William Branham is the infallible and Absolute Voice of God. The seven Thunders have uttered.

The man goes to “prove” his oxen.  Church-goers are endlessly trying to “prove” these false doctrines with clever arguments that are sadly lacking in Scripture.

LUKE 14:20   And another said, I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.

A woman represents a church. I am married to the church. I do what my church says. I believe what my church says. I serve God in the way my church says I must. That is more important than what the Bible says.

I am safe as long as I stay in my church.

That is how people deceive themselves today.

59-0628  A  DECEIVED  CHURCH  BY  THE  WORLD

If there's not a great band and a lot of carrying on, and whooping and carrying on,

then they don't want the old Gospel anymore, that brings tears of joy to the soul, that brings Divine healing back, that restores the apostolic gifts to the church, that brings in the risen Christ, the Messiah of this day.

63-0112  INFLUENCE

And that's wrong, now. And then we shout, and dance, and speak in tongues. And the glory of God, we claim, is on us. And then go out to such as that? There is something wrong.

Now, I believe in these things, these shouting, and speaking in tongues, and dancing in the Spirit.

But, brother, how could God tolerate such a thing as that, when He's against it? And He says so in His Word. And our women has become in our churches, which is merely practiced many times, dressing, sex appeal. It's very seldom ever spoke against from the pulpit.

And yet we shout, and jump around, and speak in tongues.

That's the reason that this great move called Pentecostal is not getting anywhere, is because there's no sincerity behind it. It becomes an emotion.

59-0412E  WHAT  HEAREST  THOU  ELIJAH

... you have to have a real classical Hollywood outfit

with a lot of show.

American people want

entertainment.

They don't want the true Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Foolish virgins are big with inertia, complacent, and asleep.

The status quo makes things stay the way that they are. This requires a blind instrument to maintain it. Keep people preoccupied as life goes on amongst the ruins of rejected Bible truth.

Preachers are brilliant at the smooth entanglement of fact and fiction as they distort knowledge.

The foolish virgins are obsessed with their immediate personal needs versus the Bride, who focus on God’s Big Plan's long-term manifest destiny.

The focus of the Bride is to be small but adaptable

Intricate drama is unfolding at an accelerating pace as the world got unexpectedly struck by the coronavirus. Events shape themselves to force us along a required path. The churches were helpless and were shut down. So, what was God trying to tell us?

The Bride must learn to be alone in the face of universal hostility.

Scriptural content must spark our interest. Threads of Bible facts and symbols must be woven into a pattern to form the fabric of Scripture, the robe of our faith's righteousness. We must be able to see the Big Picture. God getting us back to having fellowship in our homes as the early church did. This is possible in lockdowns when we use ZOOM technology.

Truth is an iceberg with nine-tenths hidden. The picture that the churches present is incomplete and superficial.

Past glories are poor feeding. No ship sails on yesterday’s wind.

Do we know what God wants us to do today?

Revealing a deeper truth arouses antagonism in the foolish virgins. They are scared of having their ignorance exposed. The deadly danger of winning a doctrinal debate is that you become hated and unwanted in the church.

The foolish virgins are learning from social media. Social media is the biggest propaganda machine in history.

Arguing from Bible evidence is ending as Bible-illiteracy spreads.

Dictatorship depends on shared lies and misinformation. That way pastors become dictators.

Lack of clarity in defense of error is bolstered by considerable vehemence and anger. Lacking Scripture to defend their viewpoint, people become deeply emotional. The fewer Bible facts that they have, the more forceful they become.

Peer pressure forces people into group-think, the power of mass suggestion.

In the absence of evidence, we put our opinions on a pedestal.

The unwise and unworthy decisions of the modern church that has pushed the Word of God outside their door.

Churches confuse human opinions, saying a lot without reference to Scripture, with wisdom.

But poor data always leads to incorrect results.

Jesus told the crowd that they followed him, not because they had seen signs, but because of the free loaves they had eaten the day before. He advised them not to seek earthly gains, but aim for a life based on higher spiritual values

Trinity is a clever deception that is able to reveal and conceal at the same time. It makes people feel clever, even though they do not understand it.

Character depends on vigilance. We have to check carefully that we remain Scriptural.

The Bride has to be able to see patterns and draw inferences from observations that appear random to others.

Donald Trump was accused of bad behaviour but had the courage to defy 1.2 billion Muslims and recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Which counted more with God? His bad behaviour or the fulfillment of Jewish prophecy?

Those who focused on Trump’s personal faults lost the plot of God’s Big Picture.

God is leaving the church as we approach the end of time.

The nice, saved foolish virgins who are ignorant of the revealed Scriptures are all heading for the 3.5 years of great Tribulation. That will be a wake-up call for them.

God’s focus today is on restoring the Jews back to Israel and getting the Bride to understand the Bible.

Anything that helps in that objective has priority with God.

God wants us to understand His revealed Word so that we do not get in the way of what He is trying to achieve.

The message pastors who denounced Trump for Hillary Clinton in 2016, because they misinterpreted a quote, merely opposed God’s plan while they claimed to serve God.

The early church met in houses

LUKE 14:21   So that servant came, and shewed his lord these things. Then the master of the house being angry said to his servant, Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind.

Brother Branham held incredible healing services, despite the churches rejecting his revelations of Scripture.

So, the saved Christians in the church will not just stay with the Bible.

Thus, God calls all the church-rejects that the church never wanted. Those who are seriously handicapped.

Those who would be no asset to the church that has its focus on numbers and money.

Like Ruth, God is gleaning up the unwanted.

Those who have nothing worthwhile to offer in this material world.

The church focuses on the rich while God is looking for the poor and disadvantaged.

Do not be fooled by big and successful churches.  They will miss the Coming of the Lord.

Paul speaks of Laodicea and then mentions a church in a house.

Look for the poor and discarded in their home fellowships.

The coronavirus has forced people to conduct church meetings in their houses, using the internet.

COLOSSIANS 4:15   Salute the brethren which are in Laodicea, and Nymphas,

and the church which is in his house.

God forcing us  Laodiceans at the end time to become like the first church age.

We get another hint about home churches from Paul’s letter to Philemon.

PHILEMON 1:1   Paul, a prisoner of Jesus Christ, and Timothy our brother, unto Philemon our dearly beloved, and fellowlabourer,

:2     And to our beloved Apphia, and Archippus our fellowsoldier,

and to the church in thy house:

A pattern is hidden in the names of the Bible Books

The first church age was the church of Ephesus.

Look at this list of Books:

1. Ephesians
2. Philippians
3. Colossians
4. Thessalonians
5. Timothy
6. Titus
7. Philemon
8. Hebrews

If Ephesus represents the first church age then Philemon represents the seventh church age.

So, from Ephesus to Philemon, represent the seven church ages that begin with the Ephesian church age. Then Philemon represents the seventh church age where a former slave returns to his original master as a brother. This symbolizes individuals in Laodicea that were slaves of church errors returning to the original truths of the first church age of the apostles.

So, it is fascinating that Philemon speaks of a church in his house.

And even more interestingly, after the seventh church age (represented by Philemon) the Gospel then returns to the Hebrews in the 3.5 years of great Tribulation to collect the 144000 Jews.

This lines up exactly with the first eight verses of Revelation Chapter 6.

1. First church age
2. Second church age. Lion versus White horse rider of religious deception.
3. Third church age.
4. Fourth church age. Ox versus  Red horse rider of political power.
5. Fifth church age.
6. Sixth church age.      Man vs Black horse rider of Big Money demonology.
7. Seventh church age.    Horse colours are uniting. The Eagle prophet speaks.
8. Great Tribulation. Pale horse of three united colours represents the final antichrist Pope who rides as Death.                                                Death can only enter after Life (the Holy Spirit) has left the earth when the Bride is caught up to Heaven.

LUKE 14:22   And the servant said, Lord, it is done as thou hast commanded, and yet there is room.

By refusing to come to God according to His revealed Word, the foolish virgins in the big prosperous churches will not make it to the Wedding Supper of the Lamb.

So there is room for others.

Thus at the end of time, God sets up a new system.

LUKE 14:23   And the lord said unto the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled.

The revelation of the end-time mysteries will so fascinate the Bride that they will just abandon their shallow church beliefs and be irresistibly drawn to the revealed Word.

They will long to believe like the early church did so that they can fellowship with them when they rise from the dead. The Bride will be compelled to understand the mysteries of Scripture. Something deep within them just longs to know more of God.

We know a crisis has come when alternatives disappear

In the end, the Bride will be forced by circumstances to make a decision contrary to their own ideas. A crisis forces us along a route that we would never normally choose.

LUKE 14:23   And the lord said unto the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled.

“Compel them”.  This indicates that we can expect a series of crises.

The coronavirus pandemic of 2020 forced Christians to use their homes as churches as they were in lockdown.

The early church met in houses.

Wikipedia. The earliest identified Christian church building was a house church founded between AD 233 and AD 256. 

That means that the early church met in houses.

The modern focus is changing to the isolation of individuals meeting on the interNET compared to the herd mentality of big groups in church buildings. Small home-church groups with a we-are-in-this-together approach. The global co-operation of individuals and small groups is now possible because of the internet.

Traditional church policy is outdated and dangerous. Lectured by the pastor, who expects everybody to agree with his opinions, church-goers hear only censored versions that suit their church requirements.   They have every attribute of life but no idea what the church should be believing and doing in the end-time.

The Bible mysteries still puzzle them, but they are trained to regard these as unnecessary details.

Churches have produced denominational thought-police. Do not dare to think differently.

Church leaders are largely concerned with hugging their sterile profits. They miss things that have spiritual value and understand nothing of deeper Bible mysteries. They protect the group that agrees with the leader but reject an individual who disagrees.

The caretakers call themselves pastors and are a hereditary caste, father to son, that gets further removed from Scripture but keeps the money in the family.

Did Elijah have a son? Did Elisha have a son? Did John the Baptist have a son? Since when were sons of prophets important? Ask Samuel.

People read their delusions into a quote.

We’re so good at ignoring our repeated failures.

Church-goers are blinded by ego and trapped by arrogance.

Then God swings into action and calls the ruffians, the outcasts, the misfits. These people did not fit into the church system because their status was not sufficiently submissive. These are unwanted because they dared to disagree.

A sign of the times. Preachers said that Trump would never get elected because he was such a bad guy. They missed the signs of their day. God has moved away from the nice people in the churches. They are too bound by their Churchianity.

He is now calling and using rough people like Trump because they are prepared to defy popular opinion.

In the end, God is looking for courage.

The Reformation started in western Europe under the very brave Martin Luther and spread to England under John Wesley. Germany and England led the world in a revival for truth. Very brave missionaries spread the Gospel.

The December 2017 United Nations vote went by a majority of 128 – 9 against Israel declaring Jerusalem as its capital. This corrupt and anti-Bible motion was supported by all these nice, western European Christian nations, including Canada. What a slap in the face to God.

They preferred appeasing the Koran of the Muslims who hate the Jews to the fulfillment of Bible prophecy.

It is a frightening sign of the times. But a rough guy, Donald Trump, who does not have a nice track record is the only man God could find with the backbone to fulfill God’s Will. So, God elected a ruffian to be president of America in 2016.

The nice-guy presidents like Clinton, George Bush, and Obama were too scared to upset 1.2 billion Arabs. So, they played safe and never recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

But God decided that it was time to fulfill Jewish prophecy.

Fulfillment of prophecy is always the most important issue in His Big Plan.

So God organized, against all popular opinions, that a brave ruffian would win the American presidential election of 2016.

And today, Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, and the Golan Heights are back in Israel.

Thank God for the ruffians.

They have the courage to defy the majority and do what God wants to be done in their day.

None of the saved men who are bidden will be raptured

LUKE 14:24   For I say unto you, That none of those men which were bidden shall taste of my supper.

This is a chilling statement.

None of the nice saved Christians who do not understand the Bible mysteries will make it to the Wedding Supper.

Clinton, Bush, and Obama were nice guys. But they lacked any spiritual insight. They could not discern the age that they were living in. They enjoyed the prestige of being the American president, but they were not interested in doing God’s Will. They were too scared of upsetting the Arabs.

Each one had 8 years to fulfill a prophecy for God concerning Jerusalem as Israel's capital. But they were scared of upsetting the Muslims.

So, they faded out and lost their chance to be part of God’s plan to restore Israel to the Jews.

This is the scary part of the parable. All the good, saved Christians who refused to come the Bible way are now rejected by God. They will perish in their churches in the 3.5 years of great Tribulation. They will join the dead in Christ and will only come up 1000 years later. They will suffer the indignity of Judgement Day but will be spared because they were saved.

Church traditions and the quotes of human leaders have filled the minds of saved Christians with unscriptural beliefs.

Christians believe that the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost is actually God's name. Three titles are the name of God? Nonsense. Their church pastors have really dumbed them down.

Thus, they have no name for their Triune God.

This parable has described the conditions at the end time.

Our situation is all strange and unexpected. Not what we thought as we stopped thinking and huddled submissively in the church pews for safety.

MATTHEW 25:13   Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh.

Again we are warned. We know nothing about the Lord’s Coming.

It will hit unexpectedly.

We need to be on our toes outside the church, not complacently sleeping in the church.