Questions about Bible Issues Part 2
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Sons of God present themselves. Pastor and bishop. Retain sins. Trust own heart. Written in the earth. What the Devil is
- Sons of God present themselves before the Lord
- Pastor and a bishop are or are not the same office
- How people can retain sin or remit sin
- Guided by my own heart
- Written in the earth
- What the word Devil means
Sons of God present themselves before the Lord
JOB 1:6 Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan came also among them.
The sons of God are men, not angels.
HEBREWS 1:5 For unto which of the angels said he at any time, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee? And again, I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son?
God does not call the angels sons.
JOB 38:7 When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
We were in the mind of God at the beginning and rejoiced to see Him begin to create our earthly home.
We do not remember the occasion, but we were there. Somehow.
JOHN 1:12 But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name:
Sons of God are those who believe in God. Especially those who know His name.
Today, church-goers believe in a Triune God and thus they do not know His name as you cannot find one name for three Persons. They have been fooled into serving a God Who has no name.
ROMANS 8:14 For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.
In the New Testament, the sons of God are Spirit filled people.
JOHN 16:13 Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth:
If the Holy Spirit guides us into all truth then we will know the name of God.
Jewish men had to appear before God three times every year to celebrate 3 feasts.
Two feasts were 7 days long. The middle feast was 1 day.
7 is the number of completion. 8 speaks of a new system and brings in the concept of eternity.
DEUTERONOMY 16:16 Three times in a year shall all thy males appear before the LORD thy God in the place which he shall choose; in the feast of unleavened bread, and in the feast of weeks, and in the feast of tabernacles: and they shall not appear before the LORD empty:
The one-week feast of Unleavened Bread represented Christ's perfect life during the 7 church ages.
The 7-branched candlestick represents the 7 church ages.
ZECHARIAH 3:8 Hear now, O Joshua the high priest, thou, and thy fellows that sit before thee: for they are men wondered at: for, behold, I will bring forth my servant the BRANCH.
REVELATION 1:13 And in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle.
In Hebrew “Nazara” means the truth.
“Netzer” means the branch.
“Netzeret” means the place of the branch, that is, the place of the branching forth.
So “Nazareth” means the place of the branching forth of the truth.
Jesus is the Truth and He alone walked through the seven church ages to guide the truth as it branched forth in each different church age.
The one-week feast of Tabernacles represented the 1000 years of peace for the Jews during the Millennium.
This is the 7th Day of God’s original week that Adam and Eve messed up.
A day with God is as a thousand years.
The first 6 days in Genesis were each 1000 years long. There were no humans until the 6th day so there was no need for God to work in human days of 24 hours. He worked in His own days.
The son of God, Adam, and His bride were left to rule on earth for the 7th day which would have been 1000 years. But they messed up and the seventh day was never completed. Hence the need for the future Millennium.
God had spent 6000 years or 6 days turning a raw created earth into a paradise. The Devil has been in charge of politics and the earth for the last 6000 years and has made a real mess.
After Armageddon, the Son of God Jesus,and His Bride who are the true church, will rule on earth for 1000 years to fulfill the 7th day that the Devil stopped. The Jews will then rule the heathen who never heard the Gospel and who survived Armageddon, as God's chosen nation.
The middle feast of Pentecost represented the Day of Pentecost revival and the first church age of the apostles.
After that, false teaching entered to wreck the remaining 6 church ages where God battled to find anyone to serve Him as far as truth is concerned.
From the second church age where a Bishop became the one-man head of the church, the truth was more and more lost until there was hardly any truth in the fourth church age.
EVIL means turning away from the original New Testament of the apostles.
So, God wants to limit false teaching where He can.
God used Martin Luther in the 5th church age to restore salvation by faith alone.
Then in the 6th church age John Wesley restored holiness and outreach.
In the 7th church age Pentecost restored the power of God and William Branham restored an understanding of the Bible mysteries between 1947 and 1965. The 7th age should have been a repeat of the first church age. The true church or Bride will have an understanding of the mysteries of Scripture. That makes them the wise virgins.
DANIEL 12:10 Many shall be purified, and made white, and tried; but the wicked shall do wickedly: and none of the wicked shall understand;
but the wise shall understand
But Revelation Chapter 3 shows the 7th church age as rich vomit and as blind because the truth had been distorted and pushed out of the churches. This is the modern church of foolish virgins who have been fooled by their one-man church leaders.
So, the 7 church ages look like this.
That means hardly anybody will be a true believer of the written Word at the end.
That also means that God only saw something to celebrate in the first church age where the apostles established the New Testament truth.
But did not brother Branham restore us to the New Testament beliefs?
He revealed the truth but the message groups distorted his quotes, emphasized his mistakes as being the truth, and refused to become Scriptural. They even elevated him to the Godhead as the infallible Son of man. As the Voice of God.
So few people will actually use his quotes to become Scriptural that God sees nothing in the 7th age to celebrate.
Seven days were set aside to celebrate the truth in the seven church ages.
But God only saw the first church age as worth celebrating.
This is a damning indictment on the message groups. We are not worth celebrating.
EPHESIAN CHURCH AGE - CHURCH AGE BOOK CPT.3
The basic error, or errors, that crept into the first church and were revealed in the Book of Acts and Revelation and also in the Epistles will become more and more visibly manifested in each subsequent age, until we come to a complete blackout of truth in the last, or Laodicean Age.
There will always be a true Bride that believes the truth, but they must be very few in number in order for God not to find the 7th age worth celebrating.
MATTHEW 7:14 Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.
There will be so much criticism of those who want to be Scriptural that many will give up.
We just have to keep going despite increasing opposition.
MATTHEW 24:13 But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.
The opposition will get fierce and also very subtle as the errors become more and more difficult to spot.
But if we are fooled, we will head for great Tribulation. So, the stakes are high and dangerous.
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.
You cannot work out your own salvation from hell. You are saved by grace and not by works.
You have to work out your own salvation from the on-coming great Tribulation.
The only way to avoid great Tribulation is to be caught up to meet the Lord in the air. But to achieve that we cannot be fooled by unscriptural church errors.
The Bride has the fearful task of not being fooled in this last age when deception reaches its peak.
The 3 main feast times looked like this.
Then, 50 days after the resurrection (represented by the firstfruits) came to the Day of Pentecost as the first and only day of the Feast of Weeks because they had to wait for seven Sabbaths, seven weeks. 7 x 7 = 49 days.
God symbolizes that the church must learn to wait on Him and not rush off in their own strength with their own ideas in order to do God a service without it being His will.
That is why the seventh age became vomit. Message people did not use the quotes to reveal the mysteries from Scripture by linking Bible verses together. They did not prove their beliefs from Scripture. They did not make sure that they were restored back to what the first church believed.
Instead of using the quotes to understand Scripture, they replaced the Scripture with quotes.
They rejected the infallible Pope and replaced him with the infallible William Branham. Foolish virgins, easily fooled.
True believers have to wait on God before they can move.
Message people move on an emotional impulse and expect God to be impressed as they do God a service that is unscriptural. Nowhere in the New Testament are we promised the Voice of God.
The feast of Pentecost involved a long wait of 7 weeks followed by a short feast of one day.
Instead of waiting on God, as the first church did in the upper room, the second church got the original truth and then replaced it with human leaders and human errors. We do the same in the 7th age.
On the tomorrow after the Sabbath, the day after the Saturday Sabbath, which would be a Sunday.
49 + 1 = 50 days
LEVITICUS 23:16 Even unto the morrow after the seventh sabbath shall ye number fifty days; and ye shall offer a new meat offering unto the LORD.
This symbolized the birth of the New Testament church.
The “feast of weeks” lasted for one day, the Day of Pentecost.
There was one big difference. They had to use two loaves of leavened bread.
Leavened bread symbolized the sin and imperfection in the church during the seven church ages.
This is a blunt reminder that Christians are not perfect and that people should not claim that brother Branham is perfect, or infallible, or the Absolute truth.
LEVITICUS 23:17 Ye shall bring out of your habitations two wave loaves of two tenth deals: they shall be of fine flour; they shall be baken with leaven; they are the firstfruits unto the LORD.
Two wave loaves. The first and the last church ages would be the only ones that had the full truth,
despite the imperfections of human beings.
But there would be so few end-time people that would be restored to the original faith of the New Testament. Thus, God just allocated the one day to the festival in memory of the first church age.
The seventh age would see so few people restored to the first church age truth that God did not consider adding in an extra feast day for the last church age. He saw our age as not worth celebrating.
Pastor and a bishop are or are not the same office
Sadly, there is a disconnect between what we see happening in most churches, and what the Bible says about the topic.
Both the titles of “pastor” and “bishop” have been twisted to mean something outside their meanings in Scripture.
In Scripture:
People gathered in a local church. The local church was led by a group of elders. The local church normally met in a house, and was “autonomous”. (It did not report to a “headquarter”).
The word for “elders” (Presbyteros in Scripture) tells you who the man is.
Paul called the elders of Ephesus and told them that they were overseers.
ACTS 20:17 And from Miletus he sent to Ephesus, and called the elders of the church.
ACTS 20:28 Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock,
over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers,
to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.
A bishop (Episkopos) comes from epi (over) and skopos (watcher or one who sees) which means to be an overseer.
So “bishop” describes the office of the elder.
Thus, the elder holds the office of a bishop.
A group of elders, also called bishops, led a local church.
Some of the elders could have had had different ministries. Some were teachers, some evangelists, some preachers. Some prophesied, some had a gift of hospitality, etc.
There is however nothing to say that each one MUST have had a ministry. Some could have been elders without having had a public ministry.
I TIMOTHY 5:17 Let the elders that rule well be counted worthy of double honour, especially they who labour in the word and doctrine.
Some elders preached, some elders did not preach.
In such a group of elders, some could have had the ministry of a pastor.
This leads us to the summary points related to your question.
Yes, a pastor could have been a bishop if he was part of the group of elders leading an independent local church.
BUT every single one of the bishops (elders) in the group were not all pastors.
So, a bishop/elder could perhaps have been a pastor. But the majority of bishops/elders were not pastors.
The pastors were not in charge. Each local, independent church was led by a group of elders.
This description will make you realise that most churches are out of line with regards to the Scriptures.
How people can retain sin or remit sin
JOHN 20:23 Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.
Whose sins ye remit.
How can you forgive a person’s sins?
By getting them to repent.
Peter had just persuaded the Jews that they had crucified their Messiah. That was the worst sin that anybody could commit. The men were horrified and desperately looked for some way to escape from the enormity of their sin.
ACTS 2:37 Now when they heard this, they were pricked in their heart, and said unto Peter and to the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do?
:38 Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.
Repentance will always be the only way to get a person to be forgiven of their sin so that their sins are washed away. This is the promise that God has given and it will always be valid. No other way will ever work. There are no good works that can remit or get rid of sin.
ACTS 2:39 For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call.
Whose sins ye retain.
How can we make a person’s sins stick to them?
The real sin is unbelief.
People do things wrong because they do not believe.
JOHN 16:9 Of sin, because they believe not on me;
What people do wrong is secondary. It is their unbelief that enabled them to do the wrong things.
So the actual cause of sin is unbelief in the Bible. Believing gets rid of this unbelief. Thus believing gets rid of sin.
Consider an example.
A person is sick with measles and has hundreds of spots on their body.
They can try to put some ointment onto each spot as a cure. Not very effective.
Or they can swallow a medicine that destroys the measles germ. When the germ dies, all the spots disappear.
When the person rejects their unbelief and begins to believe, then their sinful actions will begin to stop.
So, we have to point people to the Scripture and get them to repent and start believing in the Bible.
If they refuse to believe the Scripture then their sins are retained, not because you said so, but because believing the Bible is the only way to get rid of unbelief.
Guided by my own heart
Trusting our own thoughts.
JEREMIAH 17:9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?
The human heart is completely untrustworthy as we are obsessed with self-importance and the desire for self-gain.
JEREMIAH 17:10 I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings.
Reins control the direction that a horse travels in.
Reins represent our human motives and intentions that are seldom pure.
People do good deeds to get into Heaven which means their motives were self-centred, not based on love for others.
God reads our deepest thoughts and motives and He is not impressed. In our heart of hearts, it is all about self and gaining some benefit or reward.
JEREMIAH 17:11 As the partridge sitteth on eggs, and hatcheth them not; so he that getteth riches, and not by right, shall leave them in the midst of his days, and at his end shall be a fool.
Partridges have a reputation for stealing other eggs and adding these to its own eggs that it is hatching. But this endless greed for more than what it would normally have does not pay off.
When the foreign eggs hatch the baby chicks can easily recognize the call of their true mothers. Thus, they fly off to join their true mothers and the partridge makes no gain from its theft.
Thus, in a sense, the partridge never hatched the eggs because the chicks flew away at the first opportunity and the partridge has nothing to show for its efforts.
Theft and dishonesty are addictive.
Once a person makes money in a wrong way then there is no cure for their greed.
Making money dishonestly is like adding dry wood to a fire, the fire just burns more intensely. This dishonesty continues until he dies and he can take none of the money with him.
Then he finds that he has lost his soul. He threw away eternal life in return for material wealth which is so temporary. His children will waste it or be cheated out of the money by other thieves. Soon he and the dishonest money will be forgotten. But his soul will be in hell.
What a fool to waste his life pursuing that which is not eternal.
JEREMIAH 17:12 A glorious high throne from the beginning is the place of our sanctuary.
God has a glorious throne in Heaven and we should spend our years on earth looking upward and serving Him because we came out of Him, as He alone could create us. Then we can return to Him as He sits on that glorious throne and thus God on His throne is the only true sanctuary of worship.
Take our eyes and motives off self and off any kind of wrong material gain of any sort.
If human beings are not kept in check by our conscience which is fixed on Scripture, then we easily become monsters.
Written in the earth
JEREMIAH 17:13 O LORD, the hope of Israel, all that forsake thee shall be ashamed, and they that depart from me shall be written in the earth, because they have forsaken the LORD, the fountain of living waters.
We all started in the earth when God laid out our bodies in some mysterious manner in the earth.
PSALM 139:14 I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.
:15 My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.
:16 Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.
God had a Book where everyone that was in the earth was originally written down.
Human life is precious to God so He kept a list of everyone whose body parts were laid out in the earth.
Plant roots bring those particles to the surface where they become part of the plant. Then we eat the plants and the particles make up our bodies.
Thus, all our bodies were written in the earth at the start.
Then sin entered and now mankind had to be saved from hell if they kept the Law. Only then could their names be written in Heaven.
Living on earth, people had to look up to worship God in Heaven on His throne and get guidance and salvation from Him. They had to look up, away from the earth and their natural desires that dragged them down like the pull of gravity.
Hell is deep down under the surface of the earth where the temperature is very hot.
Jesus went down there to carry our sins down to the Devil and dump them on him.
MATTHEW 12:40 For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights
in the heart of the earth.
Jesus won the battle for the salvation of our souls once and for all time.
So, when He ascended up from the heart of the earth He removed any hold or grip that the physical earth has on us. We are now, if we repent and accept Him, able to fix our faith on things above and get involved in the promises of God.
Thus, after Calvary, people who became born again discovered that they had their names written in Heaven. God knew who they would be and had written their names in advance.
REVELATION 13:8 And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
So, all those who do not repent and thus reject the offer of salvation, will worship the beast church system and their spirits have to go down to the depths of the earth when they die, where they will be prisoners in the sides of the pit of hell.
ISAIAH 14:15 Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.
Their bodies will be buried in some grave.
So, the only record of them will be the original Book where their body parts were laid out in the earth at the beginning.
Thus, they are written in the earth that they can never escape from.
They were given an amazingly complex body and great mental abilities but chose to focus on self-gain. They accumulated material goods but flew away from these when they died and their sins dragged their unsaved souls down to hell.
The Lake of Fire will be deep down inside the earth.
Jesus spoke to the disciples who believed in Him.
LUKE 10:20 Notwithstanding in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven.
When we repent, die to self, and become born again, we receive a new name that is written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.
REVELATION 21:27 And there shall in no wise enter into it any thing that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie: but they which are written in the Lamb's book of life.
REVELATION 2:17 He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it.
You will get your new name when the seven Thunders utter and reveal to you how to change your body into a new immortal body, just before the Lord returns.
Meanwhile, we have to use brother Branham’s quotes to explain the Bible and not replace the Bible.
As a prophet, he is a son of man. Only Jesus is the Son of man.
What the word Devil means
The word Devil (English) is based on the Greek Diavolos. A known word in English that is derived from Diavolos is Diabolic.
Diavolos is a compound word from the words Dia and Volos.
Dia, means through, between, etc.
Volos in Greek comes from the verb Vallo meaning to put, to set, etc.
So Diavolos means : to put Ideas in the brain of someone to get through to others.
That is why the Devil conquers the human mind which is in the brain, behind the forehead.
He puts unscriptural ideas into our minds to create a dilemma. Do we believe him or the Bible? He uses a one-man-church leadership do dominate the thinking of others.
The greatest battle ever fought takes part in the spiritual realm between God and Satan for the control of the human mind.
If we believe the unscriptural words that Satan puts in our minds then he thereby marks our minds with his unbelief in the written words of the King James Bible. We will believe anything that impresses us, but not that which is written in the Bible.
The mark of the beast, the denominational and organized church systems, is established in the mind that rejects, ignores, or changes Scripture. Or claims that the Bible has myths and contradictions and mistakes.
Notice today how readily church-goers criticize the King James Bible.
Like the serpent in Eden, they still say, “Hath God said?”
The Devil will never claim that the King James Version of the Bible is infallible.
The mark of the beast, today, starts when you start finding faults in the King James Bible.
How did Jesus repel the Devil?
Not by performing any supernatural act.
Just by continually saying, "It is written ..."
Jesus is our Perfect role model. We must always follow Him.