Are You the One?

 Are you the one?

By Richard P. Joseph

12/11/2021

    I wrote in another article how John the Baptist preached that the messiah would come in wrath and judgement.  John’s warnings included statements like; “Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”, “ And even now the ax is laid to the root of the trees.”,  “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit [a]and fire.”  “His winnowing fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clean out His threshing floor, and gather His wheat into the barn; but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”

    As you can see, you won’t hear this stuff in most churches as it is an affront to the sissyfied Jesus that most pastors preach about.  Jesus is no more than a peace loving hippie according to modern seminary thought.  The real Jesus, however, is loving and yet just.  His love is what led him to die for our sins but his justice has avenged his holy name.  This brings up another point about John the Baptist. 

    When John was in prison and near his end, he sent two of his disciples to Jesus asking him;  “Are You the Coming One, or do we look for another?”   There are many people who have commented on this as to why John would ask such a question.  Did not God confirm that this was the coming one when John saw the Holy Spirit descend upon Jesus and a voice from heaven exclaiming that this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased?  In light of the disciples' ignorance, even after three years with the man, were still in the dark as to how Jesus’ mission would be rolled out.

    In Matthew 16;20 Peter takes Jesus aside and begins to rebuke him saying  ]“Far be it from You, Lord; this shall not happen to You!”  It was clear that Peter and the apostles still did not have a clear view of how the mission of Jesus would be accomplished.  In John 14:8 Phillip was astonished when Jesus had to inform him that he was God in human form.  I, therefore, deduce that John the Baptist was in the same boat as the disciples.  John knew that it was the end of the age and that judgement was coming.  When he saw Jesus performing miracles of love and compassion, he was probably a little bit confused and therefore was wondering if Jesus was the one to pour out this wrath that he was preaching about or not.  It turns out that John had the message correctly but he just did not understand exactly how and when it would occur.  It turns out that Jesus did completely pour out the wrath of God on Jerusalem and executed judgement on the faithless but this was to take place in its proper sequence.  Jesus performed his acts of love and healing to prove who he was so that there would be no excuses when the wrath did come.  He gave Jerusalem every opportunity to repent and believe, then the judgement took place.  Jesus began his ministry around AD 30, was executed by the unbelieving Jews 3 ½ years later.  The disciples then continued the mission for another 30 plus years then the wrath came.  First the Christians had to endure tribulation to seal the deal then a rapture occurred which emptied Hades out and took up any remaining disciple into the realm of God then the wrath was poured out on Jerusalem for 3 ½ years culminating in the destruction of the temple and the end of the Mosaic economy in AD 70.  Thus John the Baptist was correct in all he said except for the simple fact that he did not have the entire sequence given to him.  That is why Jesus told his disciples that no man knows the exact time or day that the parousia would occur and for good reason.  

   

   

WOKE!

 WOKE!

By Richard P. Joseph

4/16/2021

Every person born on this earth is born under the sin of Adam.  In other words, we are in a condemned state of being which was made clear by Jesus.  

John 3:18 “He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

The word “already” is telling because that puts us all in a condemned state of being until we are born again by believing in Jesus Christ.  

 John 3:19 And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. 

Men love the darkness and will choose it every time unless the Holy Spirit resides in them.  Those that have been born again have been pulled out of that darkness and into YHWH's marvelous light.  We have left the world of evil and hopelessness and have entered the glory of Jesus Christ.  This has prompted men to write creeds such as the Nicene Creed etc.  

We believe in one God,

the Father, the Almighty,

maker of heaven and earth,

and of all that is, seen and unseen…..

There is a new creed going around today.  People are so proud that they put signs of it on their front lawns to let the world know that they are “woke” or in other words “born again of Satan”.  These people have been moved from bad to worse.  From lost to hopeless.  From ignorant to pure evil.  From off- base to debase.  From bad to perverted.  From free to communist and from dim to dark.   And unfortunately most of the world and businesses have fully embraced this new darkness.  

This is just one example of a creed that says loud and clear that they have rejected Jesus Christ and love the darkness.  Some other signs go into more detail but this is sufficient to see that they are communist, anarchist, homosexual, murderers, atheist, and lost.  And they are proud of it.  They are WOKE!  And worse yet most churches go right along with them.  That is why I quit going to church.  I belong to the church of Jesus Christ and get ill when I attempt to go to a local woke church.  

I only write this article to show the sad state of affairs on earth.   Satan is a defeated foe that has been thrown into the lake of fire yet we have lost souls flocking to Satan’s doctrine.  The woke philosophy demands that Christians be silenced and punished.  Jesus left us as the light of the world and yet we have put that light under a bushel and most are afraid to even let someone know it's there.  Our cowardice is shameful and hurtful.  We must repent of our shameful behavior and once again put that lamp on top of the table where it belongs and stand up for the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The Gangster from New York

 The Gangster from New York

By Richard P. Joseph

2/16/2021

   

    Many people have seen the movie Schindler’s List and if you haven’t seen it, you should see it.  The movie was superb and gave a great visual of NAZIism and of repentance and even heroism.  The book, however, gives a little more detail.  In the book there is a story that is not brought out in the movie but has impacted me greatly in understanding evil and one’s compromise with it.  The book tells of an event that occurred that taught me a very important lesson when dealing with evil.  

    This evil presented itself when the NAZI SS brought in a group of rabbis and told them to spit on their holy books such as the Torah.  But not to just spit on them, they must drool spit on them in a dramatic fashion or else they would be shot.  They commenced to perform the best they could in order to not get shot.  They spit on the very scripture that supposedly gave them their very existence in life.  Then a Jewish street gangster was brought in and they told him the same thing.  The gangster, much like the Samaritan, had other thoughts though.  He simply refused to spit on the scriptures.  He was already accustomed to threats and lies and traitorous behavior, he knew the results of compromise and cowardice.  The SS,  outraged, did what they did best; they shot the gangster; then shot the rabbis.

    Jesus told a story similar to this in Matthew 21:28-30.  

28 “But what do you think? A man had two sons, and he came to the first and said, ‘Son, go, work today in my vineyard.’ 29 He answered and said, ‘I will not,’ but afterward he regretted it and went. 30 Then he came to the second and said likewise. And he answered and said, ‘I go, sir,’ but he did not go. 31 Which of the two did the will of his father?”

They said to Him, “The first.”

Jesus said to them, “Assuredly, I say to you that tax collectors and harlots enter the kingdom of God before you.

    While the Rabbis said yes to God, it was the gangster that actually did the will of the father.  

In like manner I have voted for many “Christian” politicians and they all said yes but when it came to doing the will of the father they were complete disappointments.  Then in 2016 we elected a gangster type playboy from New York as our president.  Donald Trump, a successful business man with a long history of involvement in Hollywood, beauty pageant dealings, and many other worldly adventures, now took on the mantle of President of the United States.  Trust me, he was not my choice in the primaries but I pinched my nose and voted for him in the General election being that I would never vote for the opposing communist/NAZI party.  To tell you that I was pleasantly surprised by President Trump would be a massive understatement.  Deep inside this man of the world were the seeds of holiness that were planted long ago by his grandparents back in Ireland.  When the media asked Mr. Trump to spit on the bible and bow before Dagon, he held his chin up high and refused.  Not only did he refuse to spit on God’s word, he actually fought to uphold the spirit of the Word better than any of those weak “Christians” that I have ever voted for in the past.  The man had balls of steel.  He was akin to Judas Maccabeaus.  He stood up like an oak tree and would not budge.  He called the media exactly what they were, “fake news”, right to their faces and began heckling them with slogans such as “merry Christmas” and many other in-your-face Christian type slogans.  He fought abortion better than anyone else that came before him and at least tried to remove sexual perverts from the military.  His support for faith based operations was second to none in the modern era and he really did try to Make America Great Again.  The Democrats and the rest of the God haters all went apoplectic.  Never in my life have I seen the left wing lose their minds like I have now.   As we all are now experiencing their rage, I am full of joy in my heart that God reigns.  Yes, we have to deal with our current situation but nothing can ever take my joy away that Jesus Christ reigns.  They have run Trump out of town on a rail and are pursuing in an attempt to utterly destroy the man and his followers.  So let the war begin, but I still have a smile on my face put there by the gangster from New York!

 

Eat and Run

 Eat and Run

By Richard P. Joseph   

    2/11/2021

    In Exodus 12:11 God tells Israel to get ready to “eat and run”.

“ And thus you shall eat it: [c]with a belt on your waist, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. So you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord’s Passover.”

According to today's modern interpretation that scripture means that we should eat our meals with bags packed ready to leave Egypt at any moment.  Right?  Why not?  

    Jesus gave the disciples similar instructions.  In Matthew 24:17-18 Jesus tells them to “eat and run”.  

17 Let him who is on the housetop not go down to take anything out of his house. 18 And let him who is in the field not go back to get his clothes. 

Those that were in Judea were to flee and run when they saw the signs that Jesus described.  So, my question is this; if the modern interpretation for this verse means that thousands of years later they were to eat and run then why not interpret the first Passover the same way?  Why would God keep his promise to Moses but not to Peter?  If Moses really thought that their deliverance was nigh at hand then why wouldn’t Peter think the same thing?  Why would God tell Moses the truth but fool Peter?

    All of those are legitimate questions.  It is quite obvious that all of the New Testament writers believed Jesus as they wrote using imminent language such that they believed the end was at hand.  History bears out that they were correct.  In fact there is more history confirming the destruction of the temple and the sacking of Israel than there is of the exodus of Israel from Egypt.  Josephus left us a first hand documentation of it.  With so much knowledge of the “end of the age”, how is it possible to get the wrong interpretation of it?  It may be because we have a “me” based view of the bible but that was not so in ancient Israel.  Israel had a “God” based view of scripture.  With the me based view we always see God as our magical genie.  It is about our health and wealth.  It is about “I, me, mine” to quote George Harrison (the Beatle).  When you have a me based view you are 100% sure to get an inaccurate interpretation of scripture.  Although we do benefit from God’s plan, the scripture is really focused on God, not us.  We must learn to interpret scripture from an ancient point of view and with God as the focus point.  We must never add or detract from scripture, we are just to believe it as written and to what audience it was written to and understand the time statements according to their vantage point, not ours.

    The only thing “eat and run” does for me is give me indigestion.  However, for the first century Jew, it meant life.  It meant the escape from bondage.  It meant that destruction was about to befall those that disobeyed and failed to believe.  If they believed, then we need to also. Amen.