I was talking with a friend when the topic turned to a mutual acquaintance who got saved but about six months later, he was right back where he had been before meeting Christ.

My friend, who shares my faith in the doctrine of eternal security remarked, “I guess he only THOUGHT he was saved.”

I suppose my friend made that assumption because of his bedrock faith that salvation is a one-time event that cannot be repeated.  In that regard, he has Scripture firmly on his side.

“For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame.” (Hebrews 6:4-6)

This is an interesting passage in that I’ve heard it used as a “proof text” against the doctrine of eternal security.  In point of fact, it teaches the opposite.  The Scripture says it is impossible for a saved person that falls away to be renewed unto repentance because it would require crucifying the Lord again.

It baffles me how that verse can be construed to mean that one can lose one’s salvation because it so clearly says that is impossible.  When Jesus prayed in Gethsemane, He prayed:

“those that Thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled.” (John 17:12)

My friend said that Judas was the example of a guy that thought he was saved but he really wasn’t.  I can’t get there from here, since before Pentecost, NONE of the Apostles had any assurance of salvation.  Salvation requires the Presence of the Holy Spirit.

Without His Presence, the things of the Spirit are foolishness.

“For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:18)

“But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” (1 Corinthians 2:14)

The Holy Spirit did not indwell the Apostles until Pentecost.  Prior to the infilling of the Spirit, they were afraid, cowering in hiding, until the Holy Spirit came upon them.  With the infilling of the Spirit comes the assurance of salvation, after which they became bold as lions.

They didn’t become perfect.  Sometime in the winter of AD 51 the Apostle Peter made a visit to Antioch.  At first, he made a great effort to live like the Jewish converts of the church at Antioch.  From there, he preached to the Gentiles, and even sat with them to eat.

Then messengers arrived from the Lord’s half-brother, James in Jerusalem.  James wanted to strengthen the Jewish identity of converts from Judaism.

This was James’ justification for interfering in Antioch.  He felt that he had the right to demand a much higher standard of Jewish observance from the Jewish converts there.  Above all they were not to trust pagans and, in consequence, could no longer eat with them.

Only in isolation could Jews preserve their traditional values.  They began to teach that in order to be saved, one had to obey Jewish law.  Peter and Barnabas were swept into this movement.  When the Apostle Paul arrived in Antioch, he went ballistic.

“But when Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed. . . Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.” (Galatians 2:11,16)

Either Peter and James were teaching falsely, or the Apostle Paul was, since they were teaching conflicting doctrines. 

Wait!  Are you saying that Peter and James were false teachers?  Well, if they weren’t then Paul was because things, (including doctrines) that are different are not the same.  And the doctrine that Peter and James were teaching was salvation by works.

Did that mean they only thought they were saved?

On the other hand, Paul was teaching salvation by grace through faith and not of works.  Did Peter stand up to Paul and defend his doctrine?  Or did Peter accept the rebuke and correct his doctrine?

In 2 Peter 3:16 Peter refers to Paul’s letters as “scripture” indicating Peter’s respect for Paul’s authority.  But nowhere does the Bible suggest Peter needed to get saved again after teaching false doctrine.

Neither is there any suggestion he had only thought he was saved until he received Paul’s rebuke and correction.  Yet Peter and James and Barnabas had all been saved out of Judaism and there they were, trying to Judaize converts to Christianity.

They were just like the guy that got saved and six months later, he was right back where he started.

Assessment:

Do you recall the day you were saved?  Do you recall the moment when you knew that you were washed clean in the Blood of the Lamb?  Do you recall that moment of sinlessness when you prayed through the tears for Jesus to save you?

The Bible teaches that at that moment, your eternity was as certain as if you were already in heaven.

“Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus:” (Ephesians 2:5-6)

At that moment when you were saved, the Bible says you were transformed from what you had been, either a Jew or a Gentile, into a new creature.

“Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” (2 Corinthians 5:17)

“For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature.” (Galatians 6:15)

“Creature” is an unfortunate rendering of the original ktisis which means, “creation.”  Let’s substitute creation and see how it reads then.

“Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation : old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” (2 Corinthians 5:17)

“For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.” (Galatians 6:15)

It’s not that complicated, really.  WHO is the Creator?  Are YOU the creator?  No?  Then if YOU aren’t the Creator, then Who created the new creature?  Was it YOU by your action of calling on Jesus?  Or was it the Creator in response to your action?

So, at the moment when you were saved, God stepped into action, transforming you into a new creature that had not existed prior to that moment.  That’s what the Bible says, (unless you intend to claim the title of Creator.)

Now to summarize.  At that moment when you were saved, you were transformed into a new spiritual creation of God.  Unless you have God-like power, you cannot transform yourself into a new creature.  Can you?

But if you sin enough, you can transform yourself back?

What if you think you are saved but you are not?  Frankly, I do not see how that can be possible.  If a person wants to be saved, the Bible explains how.  In all of Scripture, there is no other place where the question is asked and answered more clearly than the jailer in Acts.

“And brought them out, and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.” (Acts 16:30-31)

Is it possible to sincerely think you believe when you really don’t?  It is possible to believe and then doubt, or to believe and then be proved wrong, but I do not see how it is possible to sincerely think one is a believer at the moment one first believes.

Everybody wants to believe it is possible to reach some kind of spiritual state of nirvana where they don’t sin, even if they’ve never experienced it themselves.  It is discouraging when they can’t.  And they can’t because it is not true.

Sinning is what human beings do.  Guilt is the most important tool in the enemy’s arsenal of weapons against us.  We find it hard to forgive ourselves.  But the Lord God knows what we do not, and He forgives us when we ask Him.

Every time we ask Him.  And His forgiveness is perfect.

“As far as the east is from the west, so far hath He removed our transgressions from us.” (Psalms 103:12)

“For I will be merciful in their unrighteousness, and their sins and transgressions will I remember no more.” (Hebrews 8:12)

“There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit,” (Romans 8:1)

It is the nature of man to sin.  It is the nature of God to forgive.  All we need do is ask.

All human beings, according to Scripture, are born with an eternal destiny. In the grand scheme of things, the main purpose of our earthly lives is to choose what that eternal destiny will be.

The Apostle James asks and answers the question;

“For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.” (James 4:14)

We can get some sense of perspective from our own human experience. We are created by God at conception, but spend nine months being prepared for life outside the womb.

We leave the comfort of the womb in terror; our first experience involves being grabbed by the head with a pair of salad spoons and yanked from our 98.6 degree environment into a sterile 68 degree delivery room, where we are promptly assaulted.

Shortly thereafter, silver nitrate is dropped into our eyes, we get poked, prodded, stuck with needles and get dropped into a basket where we find ourselves alone for the very first time in our brief existence.

(And you don’t even want to think about what is coming in a few days if you are a boy.)

But, given all of that, who would want to trade this life for a life spent floating in darkness inside the womb?

The baby on the way out doesn’t know what wonders await him on the other side, (but the doctor wielding the salad spoons does.) Still, the doctor only introduces the potential — what the baby does with that potential occupies his next seventy or eighty years.

Then the process starts all over again. Out come the Divine Salad Spoons, and we are dragged, kicking and screaming into the third and final phase of our existence — eternity.

Assessment:

The Bible is the God’s Owner’s Manual for human beings. It contains all the information necessary regarding humanity’s origins, care and feeding, rules for safe operation and guidelines for proper maintenance. It also explains our ultimate purpose — to be friends of God.

“Ye are My friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of My Father I have made known unto you.” (John 15:14-15)

Note that being a friend of God is conditional; whereas salvation is unconditional. Of friendship, Jesus said, “Ye are My friends, IF ye do whatsoever I command you.”

Regarding salvation, Jesus said,

“I am the door: by Me if ANY man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.” (John 10:9)

But of His friends, Jesus said,

“Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in My name, He may give it you.” (John 15:16)

Jesus is not extending His Hand of friendship to farmers. The command to ‘bear fruit’ that ‘should remain’ is a reminder that this life is, as James said, ‘even a vapour that appeareth for a little time, then vanisheth away.’

Each of us has an eternal destiny and each of us has the opportunity to choose where and how we will spend it.

We will either spend it in joy unspeakable in the Presence of God, or we will spend it in darkness, alone, separated from God for eternity, with only our memories, in the place Jesus described three times as being;

“Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.” (Mark 9:44,46,48)

My eternal destiny was sealed when I accepted the gift of Pardon Jesus offers and trusted Him for my salvation.

“For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39)

But what of my ‘fruit’ that is to ‘remain’, should I hope to be God’s ‘friend’ instead of just another servant. Note also that ‘grace’ is the extension of an unmerited gift, mercy and salvation are the gifts being extended.

But ‘friendship’ is something different. It is often observed that “we are stuck with family, but we choose our friends.”

Each of us, to be saved, chooses Christ. We become part of God’s ‘forever family’ as Hal likes to put it.

But Jesus says of His friends, ‘I have chosen you’. Not only that, but ORDAINED them to ‘bear fruit’ that ‘should remain’ after their own ‘vapour’ has dissipated from this earth.

Among His servants, Jesus has chosen and ordained certain of them to bear fruit, saying that those who accept His calling will be numbered among His friends.

There can be no question but that we are in the final countdown to the end of this present Age. The final war between the Lamb and the Dragon is poised to spill out into this reality during the Tribulation.

There is little time remaining for those of us who have accepted the call to take up our positions on the line. Not everybody is called to take positions in the front ranks, however.

Any army has many layers; warriors, support troops, cooks, supply clerks, ‘office pinkies’ etc.

In the Marines, I was a supply clerk, then later changed Military Occupational Specialties (MOS) to become an ‘office pinkie’ working in a data processing unit. But, like all Marines, I was, first and foremost, a combat rifleman.

Each of us may find ourselves in combat from time to time, if we are faithful, but that doesn’t make all of us frontline warriors. Some of us are more valuable in a supporting role.

An army’s effectiveness depends as much on its lines of supply as it does the fierceness of its warriors. (A Marine with an empty rifle would be a fierce warrior armed with an expensive, poorly designed club)

There are many ways the friends of God can lend support to those on the front lines of battle. Pray for us at the Omega Letter.

Seek the leading of the Holy Spirit. The time has come for those who would be friends of God to stand.

“Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.” (Matthew 7:20)

Featured Commentary: Standing for the Gospel ~ Alf Cengia

The first official Thanksgiving Day proclamation on the US continent was issued on June 20, 1676 by the governing council of the Charlestown settlement in present-day Massachusetts.

The occasion was the continuing existence of the Charlestown settlement, which had the previous winter been very much in doubt.

The first American Thanksgiving proclamation was issued by George Washington.  Issued October 3, 1789, it proposed Thursday, November 26, 1789 as a “Day of Public Thanksgiving and Prayer.”

Over the course of the next seventy-four years, Thanksgiving was observed by different states at different times according to region.  There was no unifying, national day of Thanksgiving until Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national day of Thanksgiving.

Lincoln’s proclamation, issued October 3, 1863 was issued during the darkest days of the American Civil War, only weeks after the carnage of Gettysburg and Union losses at Chancellorsville and Chickamauga.

“Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.”

Lincoln’s proclamation set aside the last Thursday of November as the day that Americans, both at home and abroad, to give thanks to Almighty God for His Mercy and to beg for His aid in preserving the Union.

Lincoln’s proclamation, issued one hundred and forty-seven years ago, was both a proclamation and a prayer.  The prayer was for the Union’s preservation.  The proclamation was one of thanksgiving for answered prayer, expressing Lincoln’s confidence that God is a prayer-answering God.

The continued preservation of the Union, through the Civil War, two World Wars, the Cold War and two Depressions, stand as living testimony that our God remains a prayer answering God as long as we remain a thanks-giving people.

This is why Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.  I also believe that, for America, Thanksgiving Day is the most important holiday of the year.  

It all has to do with the Thanksgiving Whale.

Assessment:

Jonah was instructed by God to travel to Nineveh to proclaim judgment against the great city.  But Jonah refuses and boards a ship headed the other way for Tarshish. 

This is the part when the sea erupts and Jonah finally tells the crew to cast him into the sea before they are all drowned.

Jonah is then miraculously preserved in the belly of a great sea creature (Jonah calls it a fish, but Jesus identifies it as a whale) for three days and three nights.

From inside the whale’s belly, Jonah was (quite understandably) thankful when he realized he wasn’t being digested. That must have been quite a moment.

In his gratitude, he repents and promises to obey God . . . and the sea creature then coughs him up on the shore of Nineveh. That’s the part of the Jonah story that gets all the attention.

And there’s a boatload of symbolism and messianic references and irony and other stuff that gets endlessly debated by scholars.   (Not to mention the whale.)

But this is a column about Thanksgiving, not whether or not Jonah was in a fish’s belly or a whale’s belly. 

So let’s pick up with Jonah on the beach. . . no doubt doubly thankful for dry land.

“And the Word of the Lord came until Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee.”

And so Jonah, still faintly smelling like fish, headed off for Nineveh without argument. 

When he got there, he preached the message that Nineveh had forty days to live.  Forty days. Period. God said so.  That was it.  No conditional promises were made. 

“And Jonah began to enter into the city a day’s journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.”

Unexpectedly (for Jonah, who really despised the Ninevites) the people of Nineveh, the Scripture specifically notes, “believed God” and proclaimed a fast.  

“For word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water:

“But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands. Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not?” (Jonah 3:5-9)

The Bible recounts that God did, of course, turn from His anger and spared Nineveh, which is the part of the story that brings us back to the importance of Thanksgiving to America.

God has already spared America – He did so when the nation was in peril of its survival unlike any time before or since. Think about it.

Had the Union been pulled asunder and the Confederacy established, the America of today would likely be a small, unimportant republic dominated by British Canada and the Dominion of the Southern Confederacy; surrounded by other small, relatively unimportant republics like Texas and California.

And so every year, on the last Thursday in November, we give thanks, by national proclamation, “to Almighty God for His aid in preserving the Union.” 

Because every year that we have, He did. And I am thankful for that. 

Every Thanksgiving, I realize that have more to be thankful for than I had the year before.

I am thankful beyond measure for each of you, my brothers and sisters of our Omega Letter Fellowship.  You are my treasured friends and my most powerful supporters.  Your prayers can move mountains — and they have. 

Our forums are filled with testimonials to the power of our prayers, one for another.  Your prayers for me are like an umbrella under which I regularly retreat for comfort and safety. 

I am grateful beyond measure for those prayers, the power of which have been demonstrated to me so often and so dramatically that I would be terrified to contemplate a day without them.   Thank you all for that.

Thank you for sharing your love and your friendship with me and with each other in our forums. It sustains me in ways I could never express.  

Thank you for the support and the challenges and the comments you take the time to share in the daily Omega Letter forums.   Thank you all for the undeserved respect you afford me there.  It is a wonderful place of refreshing that I could not bear to be without.

Thank You, Father, for Your Son.  Thank You for our victory in Jesus.  Thank You for our country and what remains of our freedom. Thank You for the hope for America that each Thanksgiving Day represents.  

Thank You for answered Prayer. 

Happy Thanksgiving Day, my beloved friends and family.   Enjoy your families and your friends and your freedoms.  Enjoy what God has given you.

God bless us every one.  And may God continue to bless America.

Featured Commentary: Thanksgiving and What It Means to Me ~ J.L. Robb

The world is divided between the oceans and the land masses; and five-sixths of the world’s surface area is ocean. Just one-sixth of the earth’s surface is dry land, and a good portion of that, mountains, deserts, the polar regions, etc., are barely inhabited.

It is widely assumed that the earth is suffering from overpopulation. As America’s population passed the three hundred million mark, modern-day Cassandras kicked off new speculation about how America might soon suffer the effects of overpopulation.

I don’t know. I’ve crossed this country many times, and marveled at the vast expanses that are virtually uninhabited.

For almost a thousand miles, from Palm Desert, California to Fort Stockton, Texas, one passes through just a handful of large cities; Phoenix, Tucson, El Paso, and only a few dozen little towns and settlements. In between are miles and miles of nothing but uninhabited desert.

Even heavily populated states like California, New York and Pennsylvania still have vast expanses of unspoiled wilderness.

The State of Texas is 262,017 square miles, or about 167,690,880 acres. That single state is large enough to give every man, woman and child in the entire United States a half-acre of land, leaving the other forty-nine states completely uninhabited. Overpopulated?

As noted, the other five-sixths of the earth’s surface is covered by oceans that are miles deep in some places. The average depth of the Pacific is almost 2 1/2 miles and the Marianas Trench is more than six miles deep, for example. If Mount Everest were placed inside of this trench, it would disappear.

Assessment:

According to a 2003 report in the journal, “Nature” the inhabitants of one-sixth of the earth’s surface has all but destroyed the inhabitants of the other five-sixths.

Only 10 percent of all large fish—both open ocean species including tuna, swordfish, marlin and the large groundfish such as cod, halibut, skates and flounder—are left in the sea.

“From giant blue marlin to mighty bluefin tuna, and from tropical groupers to Antarctic cod, industrial fishing has scoured the global ocean. There is no blue frontier left,” said lead author Ransom Myers, a fisheries biologist based at Dalhousie University in Canada.

“Since 1950, with the onset of industrialized fisheries, we have rapidly reduced the resource base to less than 10 percent—not just in some areas, not just for some stocks, but for entire communities of these large fish species from the tropics to the poles.”

The conclusion reached by the researchers is that the world’s oceans will be completely fished out by 2048.

“At this point 29 percent of fish and seafood species have collapsed – that is, their catch has declined by 90 percent. It is a very clear trend, and it is accelerating,” Worm said. “If the long-term trend continues, all fish and seafood species are projected to collapse within my lifetime – by 2048.”

Several things in this report immediately jumped out at me. The first is that fish is the major dietary staple of some of the world’s poorest countries. For more than a billion people worldwide, fish is their main source of protein.

The Book of the Revelation tells of the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse. Of the third Horseman, Scripture says;

“. . . And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand. And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine. (Revelation 6:5-6)

A ‘measure of wheat’ and ‘three measures of barley’ represent a day’s food for one person. A ‘penny’ in Scripture represents a day’s wages. For the poor, the Scriptures project a time when people will work a full day to earn a day’s food.

The ‘oil and the wine’ are representative of great wealth. While the poor will face starvation, the rich will not. Globally speaking, we are almost to that point now. The gap between rich nations and poor nations has never been more pronounced.

There are places in the world today where the average annual income wouldn’t buy dinner for two in a California restaurant. Some 2.4 billion people in the world today exist on less than $875.00 US per YEAR!

The second is the fact that, in one generation, we’ve depleted 90% of the ocean’s fish stocks. In ONE generation. One generation from now, say scientists, there won’t be any left.

The Book of the Revelation’s Second Trumpet Judgment and the Second Vial Judgment both involve the death of all the fishes of the sea;

“And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea: and the third part of the sea became blood; And the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, and had life, died; and the third part of the ships were destroyed.” (Revelation 8:8-9)

“And the second angel poured out his vial upon the sea; and it became as the blood of a dead man: and every living soul died in the sea. (Revelation 16:3)

What an interesting ‘coincidence!’ The Bible and secular science are predicting essentially the same eventual result, differing only over the precise cause.

Secular science says the depletion of fish stocks began about 1950.

The Bible says the events that would lead to the fulfillment of Bible prophecy would coincide with the restoration of Israel (1948) and that all Bible prophecy would be fulfilled within that generation’s lifetime.

The only real area of disagreement is the cause of the global fish-kill — both project the identical ultimate effect. And both see it coming to fruition at just about the same point in history.

Mankind has relied on fish for sustenance since Adam left the Garden. Fish is synonymous with food in the Bible, and ranks up there with bread as a dietary staple.

The Bible projects two events to befall the last generation; global famine and the death of all the fishes in the sea. Secular science projects two events to befall this generation; global famine and the death of all fishes in the sea.

In 1950, the idea of running out of fish was as absurd as the idea that the Bible’s prophecies for the last days were beginning to unfold.

One generation later, both are part of the daily news cycle. What does it all mean?

“And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken. . . So likewise ye, when ye see these things come to pass, know ye that the kingdom of God is nigh at hand. Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass away, till ALL be fulfilled.” (Luke 21:25-26, 31,32)

“And I will restore thy judges as at the first, and thy counsellors as at the beginning: afterward thou shalt be called, The city of righteousness, the faithful city. Zion shall be redeemed with judgment, and her converts with righteousness.” (Isaiah 1:27-28)

The Sanhedrin was the Jewish ‘Supreme Court’ — traditionally consisting of seventy-one of Israel’s most revered Torah sages. Cases that were the most difficult or the most critical for the Jewish People were decided by the Sanhedrin. A majority had to be at least two votes.

On the floor of the Sanhedrin were debated the fundamental principles of the Torah, and the result was established by majority vote. After the Temple was destroyed, the Sanhedrin moved from place to place in Israel.

It finally was dissolved when, in the absence of the greatest Sages of Israel, the Institution of Semichah could no longer be applied.

The Sanhedrin originally convened in the Temple area, in the Chamber of Cut Stones (Lishkat HaGazit). This was a chamber built into the north wall of the Temple, half inside the sanctuary and half outside, with doors providing access both to the Temple and to the outside.

Every member of the Sanhedrin must be ordained, following a tradition from Moses. Ordination must be conferred by a court of three, containing at least one ordained member.

It can be done either in person, or by messenger or letter. A single court can ordain many individuals at once. Ordination can only be conferred in the Land of Israel. To qualify for ordination, one must be expert in all areas of Torah law.

The traditional ordination was abolished in the year 358 AD during the Jewish persecutions under Constantine. The Sanhedrin and other duly constituted courts cannot be established until this ordination is reinstituted.

Jewish tradition holds that it will be in Tiberias that the Sanhedrin will be restored, since it was Tiberias that hosted the last meeting of the Sanhedrin, 1600 years ago.

Religious Jews believe that the restoration of the Sanhedrin will precede the coming of the Jewish Messiah. (Isaiah 1:27-28)

The Messiah, the Jewish sages say, will be the King of Israel, and as such, can only be recognized by a duly ordained Sanhedrin court.

Jewish tradition says the Sanhedrin will be restored after a partial ingathering of the Jewish exile, before Jerusalem is rebuilt and restored.

There is also a tradition that Elijah will present himself before a duly- ordained Sanhedrin when he announces the coming of the Messiah.

Like all events in the Messianic outline, the restoration of the Sanhedrin can only occur at the time decreed by God.

Assessment:

In October, 2004, seventy-one Jewish sages were ordained to the restored Jewish Sanhedrin in Tiberias.

“There is a special mitzvah [commandment], not connected to time, but tied to our presence in Israel, to establish a Sanhedrin,” Rabbi Meir HaLevi, one of the 71 members of the new Sanhedrin, told Israel National Radio’s Weekend Edition.

Those behind the revival of the Sanhedrin stress that the revival of the legal body is not optional, but mandated by the Torah.

“We don’t have a choice,” says Rabbi Chaim Richman, head of the Temple Mount Institute and also a member of the new Sanhedrin. “It is a religious mandate for us to establish a Sanhedrin.”

I met Rabbi Richman in Jerusalem in 1992 and was given a special tour of the Temple Mount Institute. The TMI exists for the express purpose of restoring the Jewish Temple to the Temple Mount and reinstituting Temple Mount worship.

To that end, the TMI has recreated all the implements of worship required, from ceremonial lavers to special tools for sacrifice, including, at that time, a perfect ‘red heifer’ to be sacrificed so its ashes can be used to purify the Temple Mount.

Nine red heifers were born during the entire time of the Tabernacle and two Temples. The tenth, according to this tradition, will be born in the end-times for the Third Temple. Since the destruction of the Second Temple, no red heifers have been born — until this generation.

Jewish law requires that a red heifer must be raised in a very special way like a holy thing which is completely dedicated to God.

It must be raised in a very special, clean stall and fed special food. She cannot be raised with other calves, especially males. It is forbidden to use her for any work or any other needs of the rancher.

In the late 1990’s, two thousand years after the last perfect red heifer that met the stringent requirements set forth in Numbers 19:2-10, two perfect red heifers were born in Israel and a third born on a ranch in Texas. And a ranch in Mississippi has begun BREEDING perfect red heifers for use by Temple priests.

The two red heifers born in Israel have already been dedicated by the Temple Mount and Land of Israel Faithful Movement.

Members of the Temple Mount Institute and the Temple Mount Faithful Movement are convinced that the Messiah will appear in Israel in this generation.

Rabbi Chaim Richman and TMF founder, Gershon Salomon, have dedicated their lives to the restoration of the Jewish Temple and reinstituting Jewish worship in a restored Temple located on Temple Mount.

I’ve spoken at length with both men, especially Gershon Salomon, (who once graciously invited me to a Sabbath dinner at his home in Jerusalem), and they are utterly convinced the Jewish Messiah will be ordained as King in Jerusalem in their lifetimes.

Every year during the Jewish feast day of Tisha B’av (commemorating the destruction of both the First and Second Temples), Gershon’s group attempts to lay a new cornerstone for a Third Temple on Temple Mount.

Each time, they’ve been blocked by nervous Israeli politicians from doing so, but every year, they make a new attempt.

The reestablishment of the Sanhedrin took 1600 years to accomplish, but, in this generation, for the first time in 1600 years, it is a reality in Israel.

Every obstacle to the restoration of Temple worship has now been overcome — excepting, of course, the pesky problem of the al Aqsa Mosque that now sits over the Jewish Holy of Holies.

According to the New Testament, the messiah that Israel will crown king isn’t Jesus, but rather, according to the Apostle Paul, that ‘Wicked’ one who is introduced in 2nd Thessalonians;

“Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.” (2nd Thessalonians 2:4)

Israel awaits her messiah, not knowing that He was the One Who prophesied 2000 years ago, “I am come in My Father’s Name, and ye receive Me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive.” (John 5:43)

The messiah figure for whom all these preparations are being made in Israel is not the Messiah Jesus, but, in terms of Bible prophecy, that is not as relevant as the fact the preparations are already being made.

Although the first messiah-figure that comes is not the Messiah-King, his arrival comes only seven years before the real Messiah returns at the conclusion of the Tribulation Period.

What it all means is this. Israel is looking for a Messiah in earnest — so much so, that the Sanhedrin has been restored after 1600 years of waiting — for the express purpose of crowning the Messiah king when he does come.

The Bible says that when Israel does accept the false messiah, it signals the final seven year ‘Time of Jacob’s Trouble’ — which culminates in Israel’s national redemption at the 2nd Coming.

How close is the Rapture? Watch Israel.

“And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.” (Luke 21:28)

Featured Commentary: The Virgin and Her Son ~ Wendy Wippel

What is ‘death’? What happens to us when we draw our last breath and leave this earth? Is it the end? The beginning? Do we immediately go from this life to the next?

Do we ‘sleep’ until the Rapture or the Great White Throne Judgment? Or is it all a comforting myth?

The Old Testament prophets shared a belief in a final resurrection and judgment. But that is about as much as God gave them to understand:

“If a man die, shall he live again? all the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come. Thou shalt call, and I will answer Thee: Thou wilt have a desire to the work of Thine Hands.” (Job 14:14-15)

“For I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me.” (Job 19:25-27)

“And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.” (Daniel 12:2)

But does that mean that our consciousness ceases at physical death until the resurrection? There are some Christians who argue that to be the case, drawing on the New Testament for Scriptural support.

“If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things? And no man hath ascended up to heaven…” (John 3:12-13)

“…for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.” (John 5:28-29)

“Men and brethren, let me freely speak unto you of the patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried, and his sepulchre is with us unto this day.” (Acts 2:29)

“And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment:” (Hebrews 9:27)

Taking those verses, particularly when taking them out of the full context of Scripture, it would seem to suggest that when we die, we go into some kind of ‘soul sleep’ until the Resurrection. But is that true?

Throughout both the Old and New Testaments, physical death, particularly as it applies to the saints, is characterized as ‘sleep’.

“Consider and hear me, O LORD my God: lighten mine eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death.” (Psalms 13:3)

“For David, after he had served his own generation by the will of God, fell on sleep, and was laid unto his fathers, and saw corruption:” (Acts 13:36)

“But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope.” (1st Thessalonians 4:13)

So, it would seem, at least by a cursory examination of the Scriptures, that when we die, we stay dead until the resurrection.

But that is not entirely accurate.

Assessment:

The Bible is a series of progressive revelations. That is to say, eternal truths were revealed, slowly, over time, according to God’s plan.

As Paul explained, “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” (1st Corinthians 13:12)

As early as Job’s time, God had revealed the existence of the Redeemer Christ, and the PHYSICAL resurrection of the dead. Job not only expected to see Christ with his PHYSICAL eyes, (Job 19:25-27) but he expected his physical body to be changed.

“. . . all the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come. . . ” Job awaited the call of the trumpet at the Rapture, thousands of years before it was generally known as doctrine. “Thou shalt call . . .” (Job 14:14-15)

But in all these Scriptures, the reference is to the PHYSICAL body which is ‘asleep’ — and NOT the spirit.

Solomon addressed the eventual end of both body AND spirit. “Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.” (Ecclesiastes 12:7)

Physical death is NOT the end of consciousness. The Apostle Paul spoke of physical death as the time when the spirit is “absent from the body” but “present with the Lord.”

Jesus Himself explained what happens to us spiritually when we experience physical death.

“And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom: the rich man also died, and was buried. . .” (Luke 16:22)

Lazarus the beggar died PHYSICALLY, but his spirit was carried by the angels into Paradise. The rich man died PHYSICALLY and was buried, but his spirit was very much conscious in hell.

“And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.” (16:23)

Note the following facts from this passage of Scripture. Lazarus, Abraham and the rich man were all there, and they were all conscious of their surroundings.

“And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.” (16:24)

The rich man was conscious of his torment, was capable of addressing Abraham, and was aware of Lazarus.

Abraham was equally conscious of HIS surroundings, as well as those of the rich man, and was capable of giving reply.

“But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented. And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence.” (16:25-26)

Not only that, the rich man, (who was NOT in the Lake of Fire, but hell, which establishes this story as being in real-time and before Christ’s resurrection — and not some point after the Great White Throne Judgment), was not only conscious and aware of his surroundings, but his earthly memories remained intact:

“Then he said, I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father’s house: For I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment.” (16:27-28)

The rich man remembered (and still cared for) his father and his five brothers as living individuals that he knew from his earthly life.

His PHYSICAL body was dead (or ‘asleep’) but his soul was very much ‘alive’ in the sense of his consciousness.

So, what happens when we die? We become absent from the body, but there is no cessation of consciousness until the resurrection.

When John writes: “But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection,” (Revelation 20:5) he is addressing the PHYSICAL resurrection of the dead whose consciousness remains awake in hell with the rich man until final judgment.

Once the resurrected body and spirit are reunited at the Great White Throne, they are cast, both body and soul, into the lake of fire. John says, “this is the second death,” since it refers to both the physical and spiritual separation from God for eternity.

As to the ‘dead in Christ’ — they are also conscious, but in Heaven in the presence of the Lord from the moment of physical death until the Rapture.

Furthering Job’s theme of ‘the change’ Paul writes, “Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. (1st Corinthians 15:51-52)

At the Rapture, some believers will not yet have experienced death. They shall be instantly changed into their incorruptible bodies. Those who have experienced physical death will be reunited with their bodies, which will be raised and changed.

But their spirits and consciousness are already awake and alive and in the presence of the Lord.

Those who are ‘asleep’ in Christ are those who have experienced PHYSICAL, but not conscious death.

At the Rapture, the “Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise (physically incorruptible) first: Then we which are (physically) alive and remain (in our natural bodies) shall be caught up together with them (changed and incorruptible) in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.” (1st Thessalonians 4:16-17)

Our loved ones who have gone home to the Lord are ALREADY in His Presence, enjoying Heaven and its unimaginable joy and riches. They are NOT mouldering the grave, unconsciously awaiting the call of the Trumpet.

They are alive and aware and eagerly anticipating the opportunity to meet with us in the air and embrace us once more.

“Wherefore, comfort one another with these words.” (1st Thessalonians 4:18)

Featured Commentary: Dust in the Wind ~ Pete Garcia

We live in an age of miracles unlike any the world has ever known. In this generation, man has unlocked the secret of the genome, can ‘create’ life in a test tube, can duplicate that which is already created [cloning], develop medicines and compounds that can prolong life, and it seems as if there is almost nothing that we cannot do.

Science expects to one day be able to control the elements, bring rain where drought is, anticipate natural disasters like earthquakes, and perhaps, even prevent them.

We can travel outside our atmosphere, and one day expect to reach distant stars. In the natural, it would seem that there is nothing we will not eventually be able to do.

Science has pretty much been able to naturalize, internalize and explain away what were, in previous generations, miracles, reducing them to probabilities, equations, charts and graphs.

With one exception. We can do everything except tell the future. The future contains too many variables to accurately predict. Take the restoration of Israel, for example. Israel was destroyed in 702 BC by the Assyrian king, Sargon II, who conquered the kingdom of Israel.

It was common practice for a conqueror to uproot and displace the conquered people to another part of the empire, repopulating that place with a conquered people from somewhere else.

The reason for that was to separate a people from their land, which effectively prevented uprisings. The northern Kingdom of Israel was scattered throughout the Assyrian Empire, and was effectively lost to history, leaving only the tiny southern kingdom of Judah.

A century later, the Kingdom of Judah was similarly conquered by the Kingdom of Babylon, who also displaced its population, deporting them into captivity in Babylon.

To a Jew living in Babylon during the Captivity, it seemed certain that Judah would go the way of Israel and would similarly be lost to history.

Yet the prophets of the Captivity, like Daniel and Ezekiel, wrote confidently that in the last days, there would again be a nation called ‘Israel’ and that its citizens would once again inhabit the same piece of real estate from which they had been displaced, seemingly forever.

Yet Ezekiel wrote,

“And I will bring them out from the people, and gather them from the countries, and will bring them to their own land, and feed them upon the mountains of Israel by the rivers, and in all the inhabited places of the country.” (Ezekiel 34:13)

The Jews would be gathered from the countries, and brought into THEIR OWN LAND, upon the mountains of ISRAEL, and not some other place.

Writing of the Gog Magog invasion, God inspired Ezekiel to prophesy;

“After many days thou shalt be visited: in the latter years thou shalt come into the land that is brought back from the sword, and is gathered out of many people, against the mountains of Israel, which have been always waste: but it is brought forth out of the nations, and they shall dwell safely all of them.” (Ezekiel 38:8)

In this passage, we find the time frame in which Ezekiel’s prophecy would come to pass — ‘after many days, in the latter years’. And again, we find that it is not Judah, but ISRAEL, of whom the prophet prophesied. That they would be ‘brought forth from the nations’ to a land that had ‘always been waste’ — until they returned.

For more than 2,500 years, this prophecy remained dormant, until, on May 14, 1948, the survivors of the Holocaust were ‘brought forth’ under the banner of ‘never again’ to the ‘mountains of Israel’ — which ‘had always been waste’ as the nation of ‘Israel’.

In his book, ‘Personal Witness’ Abba Eban, one of the founders of Israel, noted that when David Ben-Gurion cabled President Truman to ask the United States to recognize the Jewish state, the Jews still hadn’t decided what to call it.

Eban noted, ‘Some wanted to call it Zion, others Judah . . .what about ‘Israel’?’ The name was chosen only hours before the state came into existence.

In 1897, the 1st Zionist Congress petitioned the government of Great Britain for a Jewish state in what is today the African country of Uganda. The British told the Jews to petition the Ottoman Empire, who at that time controlled Palestine.

The Jews would have settled for Uganda as a Jewish homeland, but the prophets said that the Jewish homeland of the last days would be ‘on the mountains of Israel’. And that is exactly what happened.

The prophet Daniel, also writing from captivity in Babylon, penned the future history of Israel, [a nation that had not existed for a century] dividing its future into 70 weeks of years. During the 70th and final week, Daniel prophesied the revival of an empire [Rome] that, in Daniel’s day, would not see its FIRST incarnation for another 500 years.

Today, the nation of Israel exists, composed of a people ‘brought forth from the nations’ while, for the first time in 2000 years, a European superstate made up of what had once been the territory of the Roman Empire, seeks involvement in a peace process that Daniel said would be confirmed by a leader of a revived Rome.

Israel was reborn in 1948, as the embryonic European Community of nations was being born out of the 1948 Benelux Treaty.

According to Jesus, the generation that would see His return would be one in which there would be;

“signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.” (Luke 21:25-26)

It would be a period of ‘wars and rumors of wars,’ when,

“nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.” (Matthew 24:6-7)

Jesus noted that;

“All these are the beginning of sorrows” (v.8)

Bible prophecy was given the Church so that,

“ye in like manner, when ye shall see these things come to pass, know that it [His return] is nigh, even at the doors.” (Mark 13:29)

We are indeed living in the ‘age of miracles’ but they are miracles of God, against which the miracles of science cannot possibly compete.

We in this generation have been given the unspeakable gift of certainty that the Lord is about to return, a warning that time is running out, and a renewed commission to go out into all the earth and make disciples of all nations, before time has run out.

No man can know the future, but the God of Creation foretold it –in detail — so that there could be no misunderstanding. The Lord is about to return.

“Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.” (1st Corinthians 15:51-52)

“For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.”

“Wherefore, comfort one another with these words.” (1st Thessalonians 4:16-18)

I think I’ve said this before. Of all the various holidays, both secular and religious that we celebrate in our culture, my favorite holiday is Thanksgiving. Every year, I discover another new reason why.

It isn’t so much for the way it is celebrated — about the only thing that bores me more than a parade is a football game (sorry sports fans, but I’m not smart enough to keep track of all the stats necessary to enjoy the game).

What I love about Thanksgiving is both its premise and the confusing effect it engenders in 21st century America.

First, I love the premise of setting aside a national day of Thanksgiving for our national and individual blessings. The Scriptures tell us “In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.” (1st Thessalonians 2:13)

Thanksgiving Day is the day that His people humble themselves and call upon His Name.

“If My people, which are called by My name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.” (2nd Chronicles 7:14)

I am under no illusions that everybody in America sets aside time on this day to thank Almighty God for their blessings. But the whole day is set apart by official government proclamation for the purpose — whether everyone avails themselves or not.

Thanksgiving Day is one of the two conundrums that face American secularists, since they have nobody to thank for the day off, so they call it “Turkey Day”.

Setting aside a day to honor a turkey and capping off the day by eating the guest of honor must leave them at least a little conflicted. The second is funerals, as once expressed on an atheist’s tombstone epitaph; “All dressed up — and no place to go.”

For nearly two hundred years, giving thanks was voluntary, but since November, 1941, Thanksgiving Day has officially been a “perpetual day of Thanksgiving to God Almighty for the continuance of His favor and protection to these United States” by Act of Congress.

Thanksgiving Day tends to highlight America’s spiritual schizophrenia and gives me hope that God will pronounce America ‘not guilty by reason of spiritual insanity’ and forestall judgment upon it for another year.

Viewed from the perspective of the Court’s post -1948 interpretation of the 1st Amendment, Thanksgiving Day is about the only clearly unconstitutional exercise of religion in America.

The Court has ordered everything from the removal of Bibles from school libraries to ordering the removal of the Ten Commandments from public places based on the 1st Amendment’s so-called ‘separation clause’.

What the 1st Amendment says is this: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

The Supreme Court has seized on the first clause; “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” as justification for violating the second claus; “prohibiting the free exercise thereof” on all public-owned property.

Interestingly, interpreting the first clause as meaning any public endorsement is the same as a Congressional declaration not only negates the second clause, but also the third; freedom of speech; weakens the fourth; freedom of the press; undoes the fifth; the right of the people to peaceably assemble; and makes a mockery of the sixth; to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Instead of providing a list of examples of how the ‘separation clause’, as interpreted, erases all the rest, I will give just one, since one is all that is necessary to prove the point:

Walk within 100 feet of an abortion clinic with a Bible visible in one hand and see how many of your 1st Amendment Rights are protected.

Congress didn’t authorize putting up a Ten Commandment placard in Kentucky, the county did. But the Supremes deemed that to be the same thing.

But Congress DID order the setting aside of a perpetual day of Thanksgiving “to God Almighty” — which was then signed into law on November 26, 1941 and the Supreme Court has, to date, allowed it to stand untouched.

This year, I am particularly grateful to our God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Joseph, Israel and the United States for His promise, and the certain knowledge that;

“The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” (2nd Peter 3:9)

In Genesis 18 God promised Abraham that He would spare Sodom and Gomorrah if He could find but ten righteous men within its walls.

Until the Supreme Court declares Thanksgiving Day to be unconstitutional, I can at least hope that nine might be enough for another year.

Happy Thanksgiving and may our God richly bless you all.

I received an email from a member in Florida who noted the speed with which so much of what the Bible predicted economically for the last days is unfolding.  Her question is one that I receive, in one form, or another, on a fairly regular basis.

“Sweden has already gone to a cashless society and the power brokers here are pushing that here right now. What scares me is that suppose with the “cashless” economy we are required to have an implant or tatoo or however they’re going to do it before the AC takes control? What do we do?? We know it’s one step away from NWO and the AC but if he has NOT assumed power yet?? This has hit me like a ton of bricks and I would like your best answer. This stuff is all coming together so fast now that I’m getting to be very frightened.

After replying to her in an email, I felt led to expand the answer for anybody else out there contemplating the same question, “Can a person take the Mark of the Beast without meaning to?”  First, the short answer.  No.

The reason is because the Mark of the Beast is not merely an economic medium of exchange, like a debit or credit card, although it will surely incorporate those functions.  But if the Mark of the Beast were just about economics, my correspondent’s concern would be valid.

But the Mark of the Beast is first and foremost a worship system.  First, one must pledge worship.  The penalty for refusing to worship the Beast is the withholding of the Mark, which will identify those who otherwise would escape the False Prophet’s attention.

“And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not WORSHIP the image of the beast should be killed.” (Revelation 13:15)

But the Bible makes plain that no man can serve two masters.  Those that agree to worship the Beast are rewarded with the Mark.  The Mark is a symbol of membership in the ‘church’ of antichrist, and among the privileges of membership under his rule is the right to life, a form of liberty and the right to pursue a form of economic happiness.

But in order to accept the Mark, there must first be a False Prophet to demand worship of the Beast.  FIRST comes the demand for worship.  THEN comes the Mark as a “reward” for worship. 

Like a high-tech Star of David in 1940’s Europe, only in reverse.  Those without the Mark will be identified for roundup and extermination.  You CANNOT accept it by accident. 

And for Christians, it is irrelevant in any case, since the antichrist cannot be revealed until AFTER the Restraining Holy Spirit is “taken out of the way” (along with the vessels He indwells.)

The Bible is specific about the Mark of the Beast being an issue of worship, rather than economics.   

“And the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb: And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name.” (Revelation 14:9-11)

Some Christians find it difficult to reconcile the grace of God with such a harsh penalty – something I’ve always found baffling, since those same Christians have no problem with the concept of eternal damnation. 

But what about salvation by grace through faith?  Who are the Tribulation Saints?  And if the Holy Spirit has been withdrawn, how did they get saved?  

During the Tribulation, God’s grace is also withdrawn.  The Age of Grace concludes with the Rapture.  The Tribulation Period is the final, unfulfilled week of the Age of the Law.  

Revelation Chapter 7 describes an event so unique that Jesus devotes an entire chapter to its discussion.  It describes a special ‘sealing’ of “the servants of our God in their foreheads.” (Revelation 7:3)  These ‘servants of God’ are twelve thousand Jewish male virgins chosen from each of the twelve tribes of Israel — 144,000 in all.

The Greek word translated in Revelation 7:3 as “sealed” is sphragizo meaning, “to stamp for security or preservation.”

They are sphragizo in a miraculous manner, by the direct intervention of God, in exactly the same way Church Age believers are, through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.  Church Age believers are also sealed.

“. . . in Whom also after that ye believed, ye were sphragizo with that Holy Spirit of promise.” (Ephesians 1:13)

The sealing work of the Holy Spirit is the basis for our eternal security during the Church Age.  The Promise from Jesus is that He would send a Comforter, and that the Comforter would abide with us until He returns for us.

“And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.” (John 14:16-18)

The Bible says that without the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit, salvation is impossible.

“But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” (1 Corinthians 2:14)

The doctrine of eternal security is proved by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in all believers during the Age of Grace.  Absent the illuminating power of the Holy Spirit, the Bible says the Gospel is foolishness to the natural man.

Assessment:

There is a prevailing conceit within the Church that God loves the Gentiles best and therefore, His attention will still be focused on the Gentiles after the Church Age concludes at the Rapture.  But the Bible paints an entirely different portrait.

The purpose for the Tribulation is two-fold.  It is set aside as a time of JUDGEMENT for the Christ-rejecting Gentile world, and for the national redemption of Israel.  The Times of the Gentiles is over.  That’s not my opinion — it is the plain teaching of the Scripture.

“For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in.” (Romans 11:25)

That’s pretty clear, isn’t it?  The musterion (mystery; previously unrevealed truth) is that God allowed the Jews to reject the Messiah in order to provide a limited opportunity for the Gentiles to be saved.  It is limited to that period UNTIL the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. 

And then what happens?  God turns His attention back to Israel.  It says so, right here, in black and white.

“And so ALL Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob:  For this is My covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins. As concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes: but as touching the election, they are beloved for the father’s sakes.” (Romans 11:26-28)

One either subscribes the doctrine of replacement theology or one does not.  The New Covenant is with the believing Church during the Church Age, not with the unbelieving Gentiles of all ages.  The New Covenant is fulfilled at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb following the Rapture.

The Old Covenant is with the children of Israel.  It is fulfilled at the conclusion of Daniel’s Seventieth Week, when Israel enters into the Millennial Kingdom.

The 144,000 evangelists are sphragizo by the Holy Spirit to empower them as evangelists during the Tribulation Period, because it is only through the conviction of the Holy Spirit that men can be saved.

Those specially-sealed evangelists of Revelation 7 are Jewish male virgins from each of the Twelve Tribes. Their mission field is the whole House of Israel.  That does not preclude the salvation of Gentiles during this time, any more than Jews are precluded from salvation during the Church Age.

This is not dual-Covenant theology.  There is only one Covenant by which men are saved.  They are saved by faith that the shed Blood of Christ is sufficient to cleanse them of all sin.  That does not change during the Tribulation Period.

But the focus of God’s attention after the conclusion of the Age of Grace turns back to the Jews.  During the final Week of the Age of the Law, the universal ministry of the Holy Spirit is withdrawn. (2nd Thessalonians 2:7)

There will be believers in the Tribulation who will succumb to the antichrist’s coercion and accept his mark to save their families.  And Scripture is clear that those who do are forever lost.

Tribulation believers will be saved by faith in Christ and enduring until the end, as in the Church Age, but without the guarantee of eternal security or the automatic indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus described the tribulation as, “such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.”

He warned that, “except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened.” (Matthew 24:21-22)

It is our job on this side of the Tribulation to give the warning of what is to come.  It is coming.  And it is coming soon.

Our blessed hope is found in the Scripture’s promise that Jesus comes for His Church first.  But after that, there is no guarantee of a second chance.

Better a blessed hope than a false one.

Featured Commentary: Garbage In; Garbage Out ~ J.L. Robb

According to the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, the Hebrew word “satan” means “adversary” from the primitive root word satan meaning, “to lie in wait (as an adversary).”

Its first use as a proper name in Scripture is found, appropriately enough, in the sixth verse of the first chapter of the (chronologically) oldest Book in Scripture. 

“Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan came also among them.” Job 1:6 

Because of its age, authorship of the Book of Job is probably the least certain of any book in the Bible. Rabbinic tradition says that Job the son of Uz, who was the son of Nahor brother of Abraham, who lived within living memory of the Flood, sometime around 2000 B. C.

“And Terah lived seventy years, and begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran. Now these are the generations of Terah: Terah begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran; and Haran begat Lot. And Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his nativity, in Ur of the Chaldees.” (Genesis 11:26-28)

The author may be Job himself, or possibly Elihu, a contemporary of Job, but Hebrew rabbinic tradition is as unanimous as Hebrew rabbinic tradition can get in its view that the book of Job predates Moses by centuries.

The longevity and lifestyles, the tone of the book, foreign from traditional ancient Hebrew, and the offering of a sacrifice by the head of the family all place Job at a point in history well before the Exodus during the time of the Patriarchs.

The name of Job’s friend, Bildad was short for Yabil Dadum, a name found in cuneiform sources of the second millennium B.C.  

Job is the titular character in a cuneiform composition entitled “Babylonian Job” and the name, “Job” is contained in the Egyptian Execration Texts c.(2000 B.C.)

Additional clues included mention of roving bands of Sabeans and Chaldeans, consistent with the 2^nd millennium B.C. and geographic clues suggesting Job was himself a pre-Babylonian Chaldean.

Elihu was a Buzite from northeast Arabia and Eliphaz was from Teman, a city in Edom.

It is safe to conclude that the Book of Job was written by a Chaldean relative of Abram at some point after Abram departed from Ur of the Chaldees at least seven centuries before Moses wrote what are commonly known as the first five books of the Bible.

In previous volumes of the Omega Letter we’ve discussed Dispensationalism, which is the systematic study of Scripture as progressive revelation, and the four classes of created spiritual beings; angels, Gentiles, Jews and Christians.

Job was a Gentile who lived before there were Jews and before God had begun the systematic revelation of His plan for mankind to the Jews in what we know as the Bible.

The Book of Job therefore, stands both outside it and before it. 

Assessment:

“For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of His Majesty.”( 2^nd Peter 1:16)

Why am I going on and on about Job’s dates and location?  To demonstrate that Satan is NOT a mythical being who was invented by the Jews over the course of centuries. 

Satan was not invented by Moses; Satan was well-known to the ancients. So was the one True God.

Much of what Moses wrote down eight hundred years later was already known in the Gentile world when Abraham packed up his family and left the Land of Ur in what is today Iraq and headed for the Promised Land.

Job’s friends, Eilhu, Eliphaz and Bildad were from regions surrounding Ur from northern Arabia in the east to Edom in the West.   

Each of them was well-conversant with the One True God long before Charlton Heston thundered to Yul Brynner, “Let my people go!” and went off to write Genesis.

Job knew about the hydrological cycle, polar ice caps, that wind moves in circular paths, rather than in a straight line, that light was in motion . . .  and about Satan.

“Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan came also among them. And the LORD said unto Satan, Hast thou considered My servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil?” (Job 1:8-9)

Remember, this was centuries before Moses wrote about the Garden of Eden. Because that is the point.

C.S. Lewis once wrote that “Satan’s greatest trick was in convincing man that he does not exist.” If Satan can convince you that he doesn’t really exist, then you are unprepared to withstand him when he attacks. 

“Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.” (Ephesians 6:11)

We know from the Bible that Satan is the most brilliant of all created beings.  He is smarter than the smartest human, more crafty than the craftiest among us, more evil than the most evil among us, but then we have to confront the fact that he can’t figure out the Bible.

The Bible says in no uncertain terms that he loses at the end.  Secondarily, there is the question of why. What does Satan have to gain by keeping a lost person in the dark or by preventing you from effectively spreading the Gospel? 

According to the Bible, in the last days, Satan will be cast into the Lake of Fire, where the beast and the false prophet are, just like every other sinner.  

So what does he have to gain by keeping you down?  And why bother, since he knows he can’t win? 

What he has to gain is time.  Satan is evidently aware of, and bound by time, just as we are.

“Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.” (Revelation 12:12)

Satan has known his time was limited from the beginning.  Job knew of his own redemption and Satan’s defeat eight hundred years before Moses first penned the words, “in the beginning.”

“For I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth:  And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me.” (Job 19:25-27)

Satan doesn’t know when the Lord will return at the Rapture, but he knows numbers.  He knows from Romans 8:29 that there is a finite number of people predestinated to be conformed to the image of His Son by becoming believers.

“Moreover whom He did predestinate, them He also called: and whom He called, them He also justified: and whom He justified, them He also glorified.” (Romans 8:30)

Satan has no more idea how many believers are so predestinated than we do.  He only knows that the Lord won’t start to close down the books on his operation until the very last one comes to Christ.  

“The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” (2^nd Peter 3:9)

One of the last classes our military warriors attend after going through the staging process and before going into battle is a class called, “Know Your Enemy.”    

For Satan, it’s a numbers game.  He doesn’t care about you, particularly, but he does care about him.  If he can keep you down and keep you from sharing the Gospel, that keeps the numbers down. 

If he can convince his prospects that he doesn’t exist, that keeps the numbers down.

He knows that he doesn’t have to start racing against the clock until his number comes up.  And for all he knows, you are the one holding that spiritual bullet with his name on it. 

And he knows that his odds are getting worse with every passing day. 

“. . .  for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.” (Revelation 12:12)

Featured Commetary: Gratitude ~ Lea Sylvester