Influential Catholics are Longing for and Speaking of an Alien Savior

 Influential Catholics are Longing for and Speaking of an Alien Savior

This is probably the strangest blog that I have ever written (Note: information herein was taken from a book published in 2013; see credit at end).  This book, by Cris Putnam and Thomas Horn, are writers that have covered controversy in the past.  This subject is their strangest; but they provided lots of proof, including jaw-dropping quotes by reliable other parties. Their conclusions are well-founded, though radical.  So let’s at least consider it.  We’ll start by looking at the Jesuit priest Guy J. Consolmagno, a leading astronomer who often is a spokesman for the Vatican.  He is brilliant; he has worked for NASA and taught at Harvard and MIT.  Some of his time in 2013 was spent at the Vatican observatory at the summer residence of Pope Francis in Castel Gandolfo, Italy; the rest of his time, since, is at Mt. Graham in Arizona as Director (more on that later) and he is also President of the Vatican Observatory Foundation, and Director of that Observatory.  He is close enough to the Pope that he can be called his friend.

His time in public forums is lecturing on the subject of science and religion; specifically, would you believe, extraterrestrial life and its potential impact on the future of faith.  He authored a booklet entitled Intelligent Life in the Universe: Catholic Belief and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligent Life. It was first authorized by Rome, but they changed their mind; it was pulled by the Vatican publisher in 2005, and is no longer available.  But our authors persuaded him to send them a copy of this work.  Here is a partial quote:  Note how he then turns Jesus’ words in John 10:16 to a strange conclusion:

“…other sheep I have, which are not of this fold:  them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice…” 

Consolmagno’s interpretation: “Perhaps it’s not so far-fetched to see the Second Person of the Trinity…coming not only as a Son of Man but also as a Child of other races.”

His reference of contrast between Man and “other races,” in context, says that he believes Jesus was referring to alien life when He said “other sheep…not of this fold.”  (The usual interpretation of the passage is that Jesus is speaking about Gentiles, “not of this (Jewish) fold,” being evangelized for salvation through Him.  There are many references in Paul’s epistles about the effort to evangelize the Gentiles into faith.) 

Jesuit Consolmagno was not alone in his belief about alien life.  Numerous Vatican astronomers, many of them Jesuits, are fervent believers.  And the Vatican believes this enough to lay out a lot of cash looking for alien life--witness the purchase of Mt. Graham observatory, and the attachment of expensive advanced scopes.  It is 80 miles from Tucson, and skirts Indian territories.  Indians of the area, in fact, consider Mt. Graham to be one of the four holiest mountains in the Americas, and tried to stop construction of the observatories.  A large binocular telescope, one of the world’s most advanced optical telescopes, has a new device between its twin mirrors.  Officially, it’s a “Large Binocular Telescope Near-Infrared Utility with Camera and Integral Field Unit for Extragalactic Research.”  And, yes, that name suggests it was very expensive.  Strangely, someone in the Vatican shortened it to L.U.C.I.F.E.R. (which happens to be a name for the devil. The word actually means ‘morning star,’ but Scripture clearly appends it to Satan).  Our authors traveled to Mt. Graham for interviews.  They noticed how Jesuit astronomers are actually, and earnestly, searching for intelligent alien life.  Surprising to Messrs. Putnam and Horn, in fact, was the Jesuit astronomers’ frequent reference to UFOs as well. 

Oh, yes…UFOs.  I, like a majority of Americans, was not a believer.  But what shocked me, on research, is that sensible and scientific people—even many of the earlier astronauts--believe in them.  Here is a list of a few believers and their comments:

Edgar Mitchell (Died in 2016).  The former NASA astronaut claimed in 2009 that alien life exists but that the US government was covering up the evidence.  Mr. Mitchell, who was part of the 1971 Apollo 14 moon mission, made the claims in a talk to the fifth annual X-Conference – a meeting of those who believe in UFOs and other life forms.  He also said he had attempted to investigate the 1947 'Roswell Incident,’ which some believe was the crash-landing of a UFO, but he had been thwarted by military authorities.

He said: "We're not alone. Our destiny, in my opinion, and we might as well get started with it, is [to] become a part of the planetary community. ... We should be ready to reach out beyond our planet and beyond our solar system to find out what is really going on out there.  I urge those who are doubtful: Read the books… start to understand what has really been going on. Because there really is no doubt we are being visited.  The universe that we live in is much more wondrous, exciting, complex and far-reaching than we were ever able to know up to this point in time."

 

Gordon Cooper (Died in 2004) wrote a letter addressed to the United Nations in 1978 asking the organization to set up a research program to study UFOs. In 1951 when the astronaut was piloting an F-86 over Germany, he spotted saucers.

Bill Clinton has openly spoken out about extraterrestrial life and UFOs and has been very forthcoming about his belief that E.T.s exist and that we’re not alone. Presidents may not be immediately privy to all the nation’s secrets, but Clinton claims to have had aides research Area 51 and Roswell during his presidency.  “If we would be visited someday I wouldn’t be surprised,” Clinton said in an interview on Jimmy Kimmel Live that aired in April 2014. “I just hope it’s not like the movie ‘Independence Day.’ … It may be the only way to unite this increasingly divided world of ours. Think about [it,] all the differences among people of Earth would seem small if we feel threatened by a space invader,” he said.

Jimmy Carter (died 2024), US President from 1976 to 1980, promised while on the campaign trail that he would make public all documents on UFOs if elected. (But he couldn't lay hold on the documents). He said: "I don't laugh at people any more when they say they've seen UFOs. I've seen one myself."

General Douglas MacArthur (died 1964), the great (and controversial) leader in the Korean and Second World War, said in 1955 that "the next war will be an interplanetary war. The nations of the earth must someday make a common front against attack by people from other planets. The politics of the future will be cosmic, or interplanetary".

J Edgar Hoover (died 1972), head of the FBI from its inception in 1935 to 1972, said of a famous incident when flying saucers were allegedly fired at over Los Angeles in 1942: "We must insist upon full access to disks recovered. For instance, in the LA case the Army grabbed it and would not let us have it for cursory examination."

 

Monsignor Corrado Balducci (died 2008), a Vatican theologian, said: "Extraterrestrial contact is a real phenomenon. The Vatican is receiving much information about extraterrestrials and their contacts with humans from its embassies in various countries, such as Mexico, Chile and Venezuela."

Ronald Reagan (died 2004) saw a UFO during a 1974 Cessna Citation flight.  He was with three other passengers. He alerted pilot Bill Paynter to the UFO, which was described as being elongated and moving at an incredible speed. Reagan told the story to the Wall Street Journal’s Washington bureau chief Norman C. Miller, according to the Discovery Channel.  He said, "I looked out the window and saw this white light. It was zigzagging around. I went up to the pilot and I said to him: 'Let's follow it!' We followed it for several minutes. It was a bright white light.  We followed it to Bakersfield, and all of a sudden to our utter amazement it went straight up into the heavens.  He expressed thoughts on the matter similar to Clinton’s:  He said in a speech to the United Nations in 1987, according to MSNBC: “I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world.”

Mikhail Gorbachev (died in 2022), the USSR's last head of state: "The phenomenon of UFOs does exist, and it must be treated seriously."

 

And let’s not forget one of our smartest Christians, Dr. Walter Martin (died 1989), who founded Christian Research Institute in 1960 and who authored the famous textbook, The Kingdom of the Occult. In a portion of his 1970 UFO presentation, he not only took the UFO phenomenon seriously, but he was also an eyewitness to a flying saucer. The G-factors for sharp turns alluded to were impossible--they would cause a human pilot to pass out or die. 

 

So, OK, let’s just say, on wild speculation, that there have been UFOs—aliens who have visited earth.  What would that mean?  Well, our authors Putnam and Horn believe (and I agree) that IF this has happened, these were visits by demons to prepare us for the devil’s greatest deception of all time, in the last days. What might happen is, they eventually would land on earth, preferably in a big city, show themselves to be much smarter than man; why not, demons are smart—when they are under a master strategist, Satan.  And, being from another dimension (as Jesus was, in His resurrection body), they can perform unbelievable tricks as well.  The story that they could spread is: they created, or to use a popular term, “seeded” us.  And they stand ready to give us a gift--fantastic scientific and medical knowledge.  We could live a much longer time.  We could feel immortal, as gods.  And (later, I presume) they would tell us that we could change our belief system to worshipping them, or their god.  With their presence as proof, it's possible that most people will believe their gospel (in a desire for longer life), and a world religion will be born.  Christians, who believe in the “old, Neanderthal” theology of sin, judgment, blood and sacrifice, would be directly persecuted for trying to stop man’s evolution into this glorious future of worship.

As you can see, if you are Biblically-trained, this directly feeds into the Bible’s vision of the last days.  (I have other blogs on the future upcoming).  I have always wondered, frankly, how an actual WORLD religion, specifically mentioned in Revelation, would be possible in this deeply conflicted world of ours. As is intimated by two of our Christian writers above, these invaders could suggest that all of mankind would like to decide on this religion from another world, and man’s purpose and origin. That’s the only way I see to a single world religion that the Bible predicts. But like I said—this is all a gigantic deception by the devil to pull us away from the real God.

But certain important Jesuits, with a lot of influence, believe there are aliens, and a new religion; and were willing to be quoted on it.  Let’s take a look at Jesuit George V. Coyne, former director of the Vatican Observatory and its Advanced Technology Telescope—the one in Mt. Graham which is expressly looking for extraterrestrial life.  In addition to his duties as a Jesuit, he was a professor in the University of Arizona’s astronomy department, as well as associate director of the Steward Observatory.  He appeared with Richard Dawkins (an atheist), advocating a deistic form of Darwinism (This blasphemes the Genesis record of Creation).  Jesuit Coyne stunned the high priest of atheism by promoting a form of pluralism, the idea that all religions lead to the same God.  (P.S. God does not hold to this theology, as many Scriptures suggest).  Coyne stretches the bounds of Catholic orthodoxy, even given Rome’s embrace of postmodernism.  On another occasion, he claimed that the Scriptures are scientifically inaccurate obscurantisms--music to the ears of secularists and pagans universal. But an abomination to God. 

It seems that one prophet, Malachi Martin, was right:  In his book The Jesuits: The Society of Jesus and the Betrayal of the Roman Catholic Church (1987), Martin (who died in 1999) asserts there is a “satanic cabal” among Jesuits, and he lamented that this sort of postmodernism has become the stock and trade of third-millennium Jesuitism. 

 

Or, consider another Jesuit: let’s have a listen to Rome’s former heralded demonologist, Monsignor Corrado Balducci (he died in 2008).  He was a theologian of the Vatican Curia (governing body at Rome), a long-time exorcist for the archdiocese of Rome, also a friend of Pope Benedict, and a Prelate of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples and the Society for the Propagation of the Faith. No Catholic demonologist had more clout.   He asserted that extraterrestrial encounters “are not demonic, they are not due to psychological impairment, and they are not a case of entity attachment.”  Of course, this begs the question—How does he know? He further fulminates that “We don’t even have to waste a thought on the devil and his demons…they are purely spiritual beings, limited in their activity by God, and not able to bring all their hatred to us.”  (His suggestion that they are limited to the spirit realm defies Scripture, which in many places show how evil angels—what demons are—have taken on material form). 

 

Or, how about a listen to Notre Dame theologian Thomas O’Meara (yay, he’s still living), who is on the forefront of Catholic exotheology (defined as "speculation on the theological significance of extra-terrestrial life") with his book Vast Universe, and his interviews with the Huffington Post.  Here is his blasphemous statement on Jesus’ claims about salvation: “Is Jesus so central a figure that only he and his Middle Eastern religious world can reveal God?”  The truth is, the fact that Jesus IS God should certify Jesus' ability to reveal God. This corrupt modernist has a spirit-brother when Vatican II was designed, who was one of its more influential figures in molding it. 

Karl Rahner (one of the most influential Roman Catholic theologians of the 20th century) has proposed that a sincere Hindu or Buddhist can be saved without knowledge of the Gospel.  This view was explicitly endorsed during Vatican II. 

 

I should mention that Rome has never admonished any of the men mentioned above, despite their anti-Biblical statements, nor removed them from any of their influential positions.       

   

Now I hope you’re ready, because I have the last bit of mind-blowing material for you.  Fr. Coyne (see above) was, shall we say, partially traditional when he said, “Should intelligent (alien) life be found, the Church would be obliged to address the question of whether extraterrestrials might be brought within the fold and baptized.”  In 2009, the Vatican had a 150^th celebration of publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species. (Yes they did. Real Christian churches have long been hostile to Darwin because his theory conflicted with the literal biblical account of creation; but the Catholic Church never condemned Darwin.) Pope John Paul II said that evolution was "more than a hypothesis;" and he has never been contradicted by a pope since).  A leading American scholar of biology, Prof. Francisco Ayala, told that Darwin conference that the so-called theory of intelligent design, proposed by Creationists, is flawed.  "The design of organisms is not what would be expected from an intelligent engineer, but imperfect and worse," he said.  (Imagine what God feels about being called "not an intelligent engineer.")  Further, he blathered: "Defects, dysfunctions, oddities, waste and cruelty pervade the living world.”  So the Catholic rulers agreed (any speaker has to submit an outline of his speech at a conference ahead of time; if approved, he is allowed to speak) to having a speaker tell them that the choice they have, is either an imperfect designer-God, or Darwinism.  I have to disagree, folks—any imperfections we have is due to our sin, and our responsibility for it.  Scriptures are clear that God created the world perfect.  Any real study of its balance and design will fill you with awe.

 

The latest word on the evolution of man starts with Jesuit priest Guy J. Consolmagno (see earlier).  He called his job reconciling “the wildest reaches of science fiction with the flint-eyed dogma of the Holy See.”  He believes in “the Jesus Seed,” which says that every planet that harbors intelligent life may also have had a Christ walk across its methane seas.  If you want further on this, it is from the May 2008 L’Osservatore Romano (a Vatican approved newspaper), recording an interview with a Vatican spokesperson, Father Funes, who wrote “The Extraterrestrial Is My Brother.”  He was asked whether extraterrestrials need to be redeemed.  His answer: “God was made man in Jesus to save us…if other intelligent beings exist, it is not said that they would have need of redemption.”  Thus, he asserts that some extraterrestrials are morally superior to men, and don’t need redemption--as if he knew.  He asserts in his book Brother Astronomer:  Adventures of a Vatican Scientist that they may come here to evangelize us. Yes, we need to learn a new gospel from the aliens. This ties back to my statement at the beginning of this paper, a “solution” obtaining the World Religion.

But let me give you one more infamous quote:  In a paper for the Interdisciplinary Encyclopedia of Religion and Science website, Father Giuseppe Tanzella-Nitti—an Opus Dei theologian of the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome—says these “spiritual aliens” should be respected.  He states that this would not immediately oblige the Christian “to renounce his own faith”….but that such a renunciation could come soon after as the new “religious content” originating outside Earth is confirmed as reasonable and credible (who does the confirming?)  Once it is verified, we are obliged to “conduct a re-reading of the Gospel inclusive of the new data.”  This is explained more thoroughly by former Vatican observatory vice director Christopher Corbally in his article “What if There Were Other Inhabited Worlds?”  He concluded that Jesus simply might not remain the only Word of salvation.  He quotes: “Christ..is not necessarily the only word spoken to the universe…to aliens, it does not have to be a repeated death-and-resurrection…” (But Christ is the only Revelation of God, the Logos, the Word—so says Scripture.) 

So, with such radical assertions, do Jesuits and Catholic hierarchy want us to throw away Scripture? 

My question to all this is, what is the alien gospel that they speak of, when they suggest that aliens would redeem us?  What is its source?  I believe to have a world religion, if they exist, these "aliens" are really demons--and their source is Satan. Their gospel would include the same one Satan gave to Eve--"ye shall be as gods."  Because long, pleasant lives are waiting for us.

One final quote from Monsignor Balducci:  Extraterrestrials “were already interacting with Earth.”  This idea is repeated by Fr Malachi Martin: the highest levels of Vatican administration know what’s going on in space, and what’s approaching us…”  

 

So there you have it.  These Catholic “prophets” are preparing the world to listen to a new Gospel, and they predict it's getting ready to happen soon.  Their longing for extraterrestrials rather than God to teach us, if expressed from authorities such as these, may lead many people away from the real Gospel, to eternal death.  They say, let’s throw out the old, get on board with the new, right?  No, wrong.  Let’s pray that none of this nightmare will ever happen. 

 

Acknowledgement:  Book by Putnam and Horn, Exo-Vaticana:  The Vatican’s Astonishing Plan for the Arrival of an Alien Savior

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hidden Treasures in the Bible

 

The most knowledgeable speaker I’ve heard, the late Dr. Chuck Missler, has found hidden treasures in the Bible. Let’s see how many of his treasures we can summarize in this short paper:

1.     He begins by quoting Proverbs 25:2:

It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, But the glory of kings is to search out a matter. Then he tells a riddle: Most of us know that the oldest man in the Bible is Methuselah, who lived 969 years. But did you know that he died before his father? What…how is that possible, you say? His father was Enoch, a mysterious man about whom little was written in Scripture. Genesis 5 says at age 65, he fathered Methuselah, and began walking with God. He lived like this for three hundred more years, then “God took him.” Enoch was whipped up to heaven, so he did not die. But the point of Dr. Missler’s tale really is, the name Enoch originally gave to his son. God evidently told him before his son’s birth that in the day his son died, all of mankind would be wiped out. (He must have been nervous later if his son even caught a cold.) So the name he gave to his son was prophetic; Methuselah means, per Dr. Henry Morris, “when he dies, judgment.” But other experts say it means, “when he is dead, it shall be sent,” with a foreboding about the “it.” So the meanings are essentially saying the same thing: The year Methuselah dies would be the end of mankind—except, as it turned out, 8 righteous people including Noah, the Ark-maker, who was, as it turned out, Methuselah’s son.  God commissioned him to build the Ark, and he evangelized, telling everyone about a coming Flood that told people “Get right with God” lest you die. Along with preaching about the meaning about the Ark, everyone knew what Methuselah meant, so both men were an effective warning to everyone about coming judgment.  But people didn’t. Considering the wickedness of man expressed in Genesis 6, it was an act of mercy that God withheld judgment, waiting for the longest-living man on the face of the earth to finally die. The act of judgment, while necessary, was not a favorite of His.

 

2.     The rest of Genesis 5 seems to be a boring genealogy of 10 guys who fathered one another in succession, but Dr. Missler believes that every Word in the Bible, despite how boring it appears, has meaning—and a potential Treasure. It helps to arrive at this Treasure if we know that in the Hebrew language, all names have specific meanings, based on the letters’ meanings in the name. So here we go with a secret meaning behind each of their 10 names:

 

Adam means “man.” Seth means “appointed.” (From him would come the lineage that produced Jesus on earth. Eve was constantly looking forward to a Redeemer for her sin, so each child she had, she hoped would be the Redeemer. Genesis 4:25 says: And Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son and named him Seth, “For God has appointed another seed for me instead of Abel, whom Cain killed.”) Then comes Enosh, which means “mortal” or “frail.” (Maybe he was underweight, or having colic.) Then comes Kenan, which means “sorrow” or “dirge.” Then comes Mahalalel, which means “the blessed God.” Then comes Yared or Jared, a verb meaning “shall come down.” Then Enoch, which means “commencement” or “teaching.”  Then Methuselah, which means “his death shall bring (or send forth).” Then Lamech, which means “despairing.” Then finally Noah, which means “to bring relief, or comfort.” (See Genesis 5:29).

Now comes the Treasure. Tying the names, in succession, you get

      Man (is) appointed mortal sorrow; (but) the Blessed God shall come down teaching (H)is death shall bring the despairing comfort. Whose death? Jesus.

Do you see a Gospel presentation in there? Jesus’ death for our sins paves the way to reconciling with God; and gives those who despaired the loss of heaven, comfort, or relief that the way to heaven is restored. These names were put together by prediluvian parents, who knew nothing about how a Redeemer’s death could get them access to heaven. Miraculously, this is the way that God arranged this Gospel message early in Genesis. Any Jew who knows Hebrew could easily see it. God is a Master of foreknowledge! Praise Him. God planned on giving the life of His only Son, Jesus, before the foundation of the earth.

As St. Augustine said, “The New Testament is in the Old Testament concealed; the Old Testament is in the New Testament revealed.”

 

3.     When did the Flood end? This raises another treasure. Genesis 8:4 says:

Then the ark rested in the seventh month, the seventeenth day of the month, on the mountains of Ararat.

Knowing that the Holy Spirit inspired the writer to put every word of that phase deliberately, we ask: How is that date important? Who cares what date the Ark stopped swaying? Well, the Jews had two calendars: the civil calendar (such as the Genesis 8 quote above), in which the year begins in Rosh Hoshana, in the Fall.  But the Religious calendar was introduced at the first Passover in Exodus. There, God directed that the year begins in the month Nisan—in the Spring (Exodus 12:2). The Religious calendar came about this way: God instructed, when He wanted His people to be rescued from Egyptian slavery, that He would do the final plague, killing the firstborn among the Egyptians. He told the Jews ahead of time to put blood on their side posts and top post of the door. So the angel of death passed over the believing Jews, and they would not die. Passover was always to be celebrated on the 14^th day of Nisan. Doing the blood of an innocent lamb was key to life. So even today, in Orthodox Judaism, that day is when they celebrate Passover. It happens that Nisan is the 7^th month on the civil calendar—now note the Scripture above; the Ark landed in the 7^th month. Since Genesis 8 is quoting from the civil calendar (since Passover hadn’t occurred yet), it so happens that it is referring to the 17^th day of Nisan—i.e., 3 days past what would become Passover. Here’s where the good stuff comes in. Jesus was crucified on Passover, the 14^th of Nisan, centuries later. God arranged that date, as an exact anniversary of the early Passover, when He gave His people freedom. How long was Jesus in the grave? Three days past Passover--on the 17^th day of Nisan (I don’t believe it was a “Friday crucifixion-Sunday resurrection” deal—that’s two days). Here’s the Treasure: The Ark finally resting on Ararat suggests that Noah’s “new beginning” on Planet Earth was a prophecy of Our New Beginning in Christ, at His resurrection—which both happened on the same day. At His resurrection, He conquered death, the same idea as God passed over the believing Jews in Exodus. And we, too, if we are true believers, will conquer death as well, with our own resurrection.

 

4.     Numbers 21:5-6:

…the people spoke against God and against Moses: “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and our soul loathes this worthless bread.” ⁶ So the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and many of the people of Israel died. An aside: The serpents were called “fiery” because their bites’ poison felt like fire because it burned. What was God’s solution? Numbers 21:8-9a:

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole; and it shall be that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it shall live.” ⁹ So Moses made a bronze serpent…

What’s strange here is that serpents are normally symbols of evil. So why would God recommend it as a benefit—a healing? If they look up to the top of the hill, and behold the serpent, they live. This is another prophetic “type.”  Yet it is not explained in the Old Testament. You have to catch it in Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus in John 3:14-16:

…as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, ¹⁵ that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. ¹⁶ For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

Jesus would be “lifted up” refers to His crucifixion. His healing true believers would be a better healing than Moses—it would be eternal life. If we “look up,” and believe in His substitutionary sacrifice, we are healed from our sin.

 

5.     Paul, in I Corinthians 15:3-4:

For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins…⁴ and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures…

It’s easy, when you’re speaking of Christ, to think New Testament. But when Paul wrote this, there was no New Testament written. “According to the Scriptures” meant the Old Testament prophecies. Let’s look at the Old Testament prophecies that Jesus would be in the grave three days. Paul spoke about them.  What proof of His three days in the grave is in the Old Testament? Well, of course, the easy one is the Big fish that swallowed Jonah. Jesus alludes to it in Matthew 12:40:

For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

 

It’s less likely that you know the other two references. You have to know Hebrew for our second proof. It’s called “Rahab’s Cord.” Rahab was a Canaanite prostitute who lived on the wall of Jericho (she is also in the lineage of Jesus (Matthew 1:5), having married a Jewish man, and she was a believer, and the mother of Boaz—see the romantic story of Ruth). She believed that the Jewish God was the only God. She is anxious to keep the Jewish spies from harm when they need to get back to their camp at night.  (They were sent to scope out the enemy city they planned on attacking.) Here is Joshua 2:15-17:

Then she let them down by a cord through the window: for her house was upon the town wall, and she dwelt upon the wall. ¹⁶ And she said to them, “Get to the mountain, lest the pursuers meet you. Hide there three days, until the pursuers have returned. Afterward you may go your way.” ¹⁷ So the (Jewish spies) said to her: “…you bind this line of scarlet cord in the window through which you let us down…

Their purpose at the end of the quote, in suggesting she display the scarlet cord, was so her family would not be killed like all the other Canaanites. Upon some digging in Hebrew, you find that each word translated “cord” is different, and each has an alternative meaning. When the “cord” is used to help the spies to escape, the Hebrew word used, chebel, means “cord”—but it has a second meaning: pain, sorrow, or travail. When a scarlet cord is to keep her from being killed as an enemy, the Hebrew word translated “cord” is tiqvah. That has a second meaning too: hope, or expectation. So the Treasure is, when Jesus is crucified, it was pain, sorrow, and travail. The Kingdom was surely lost, it seemed. But when He was resurrected, it was for our hope, and expectation of heaven. How long was He in the grave in between, for things to turn around so much? In verse 16 is the answer, “three days.”

6.      The next “three days” in the Old Testament I loved so much, that I gave it a number by itself. It begins with Psalm 22, which many know as a prophecy of what Jesus experienced in the crucifixion. It was amazing that David entered these lines, since the crucifixion was not “invented” until many hundreds of years later. But the Holy Spirit was again God-breathing. In verse 1, it begins:

My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?--which was a direct quote from Jesus’ lips a thousand years later. Verses 7 and 8 and 18 were an exact prophecy of what the onlookers at the crucifixion were doing at the time, sneering Him. In verses 14-17, on the other hand:

I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels. ¹⁵ My strength is dried up like a potsherd; and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; and thou hast brought me into the dust of death. ¹⁶ ...the assembly of the wicked have enclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet. ¹⁷ I may tell all my bones: they look and stare upon me.

There you see exactly what happens to the body during crucifixion; any doctor can verify that. Note particularly “they pierced my hands and my feet.” His nudity is reflected in 17.

          But, among all that, is an odd verse, 6a. It goes like this:

But I am a worm, and no man…Since all this psalm prophesies the crucifixion, one could say that Jesus is merely reflecting on the views of His audience (I hate to use that word, but some people “get off” on torture such as that, so it is a “performance” to many deviant, or demonic-minded.) But Dr. Missler has found a Treasure that is uplifting. The word translated “worm” is not just any worm. This particular worm is called tolah, which has a second meaning, “scarlet.” This meaning comes from the life and death of the worm that was later harvested for scarlet dye. The worm begins its life cycle by piercing the thin bark of twigs to suck the sap—by which it can then prepare a waxy scale to protect its soft body. (The red dye is from this scale). More important for us, though, are the following: When reproducing, the female climbs a tree where it bears its eggs. The larvae hatch and feed on the body of the mother worm. Thus the worm gives its life. Here we come for the Treasure. A crimson spot is what’s left on the branch, of the mother giving her life. When the scarlet spot dries out, it changes to white as it flakes off. Guess how long that last process takes—three days! We sink to our knees and praise God as we remember the Scripture in Isaiah 1:18:

Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool

I saved this one for last. When God freed the Jews from their Egyptian slave masters through the plagues, He also wanted to give them Laws to live by. He does that in Exodus and Leviticus--including the Ten Commandments and lots of other laws. So They don’t actually begin moving across the wilderness, toward the Promised Land, until the book of Numbers.  There, God gave them strict “marching orders” on how they were to travel, so they weren’t a mob--with the fast guys in front, prodding the women and children and disabled dragging in the rear.  He grouped them in a particular way. So in Numbers 1, the first thing they were to do, was take a census of each tribe’s numbers of men over 20 years old.  In verse 21, for example, the tribe of Reuben had 46,500 men. In verse 23, Simeon had 59,300. And so on, through all 12 tribes; all were listed with their number. The tribe of Levites were in the center. (All of this would seem boring and insubstantial—but leave it to the digger, Dr. Missler, to come up with a precious Treasure.) Then God grouped three tribes together, under a standard. One standard, with its 3 tribes, was always to stay exactly East of the Levites while they traveled. Another 3 tribes were in a standard West of the Levites, and so on through the four points of the compass, taking in all 12 tribes, with the Levites in the center. They were not allowed to expand their boundaries of walking—all of them had to keep inside the width of the Levites. So you end up with three tribes in each group, walking exactly North, East, south, and west of the Levites. As Numbers 2:3-9 explains, the three tribes in the Judah standard were east of the Levites. That standard included the tribe of Judah, 74,600 men; Issachar, 54,400 men; and the tribe of Zebulon, with 57,400 men. (These were also descendants of Leah, a wife of Jacob). The total under that standard was 186,400 men east of the Levites. And so on, adding the numbers in each standard. No fair for anyone drifting and traveling southwest-of-Levites, or northwest, only clustering in the four spokes. I have below constructed a crude map of the people in travel (Sorry, it is not centralized. Dan and Reuben are supposed to be the same width).

EPHRAIM

108,500

WEST

REUBEN

LEVITES

DAN

151,450

22000

157,600

SOUTH

NORTH

EAST

186,400 JUDAH

 

You can guess at the Treasure; the Jews were traveling in a CROSS formation. This is a perfect illustration (like all of those above) of how the writer, in this case, Moses, had no clue of the secondary purpose of what he is writing. He MUST have been listening to every word—perhaps every letter--given by the Holy Spirit, that’s all there is to it. This writing is supernatural. This is the formation that Balaam, whose fascinating story begins in Numbers 22, was fighting when Balak told him to curse the Jews from the tops of hills as they traveled. Can you be cursed when you are covered by the cross? No way. I imagine how impressive would be the scene at night, with everyone with torches, and how the lit cross looked, moving slowly across enemy territory. But then I remembered, whoops, forget it, they were lit by a pillar of fire if they traveled by night.

I hope you agree, these Treasures are as good as it gets, and I wish Dr. Missler hadn’t died—he might have found new treasures and shared them with us. Well, in heaven he will find how exquisite it can get for finding treasures. Jesus might show him a few that he missed. Thank God for the treasure of heaven that awaits us for those who look forward to His appearing

 

 

 

 

8 Indictments of the Church in Today's Culture (Part 2)

  

Last week we covered 5 indictments in a great sermon from Paul Washer. This week the other 3.  Read with prayer, my friends.  Think what you could do to get closer to God.

 

Indictment #6: Ignorance regarding the nature of the Church.

God has only one religious institution. It is the Church (I do not mean Roman Catholics when I say “Church.”  I mean, believers of whatever stripe.) Jesus gave his life for the Church, His beautiful pristine betrothed wife. God is the upcoming husband.  Today because of the lack of biblical preaching, the so called Church is filled up with carnal people. And then because of all the goats in the midst of the lambs, the lambs are blamed for all the things the goats are doing and then the name of God is blasphemed.  Just because someone says they are of the Church or they are Christian doesn’t make it so. The real Church is one. She has always been one.  Yes, there are denominations.  But in the Last Days, that won’t matter. What you have got now is a bunch of goats and tares among the sheep. And because very little biblical, compassionate Church discipline is practiced, the wicked ones live among the sheep, they feed on the sheep and they destroy the sheep, and those of you who are leaders in the Church are going to pay a high penalty when you stand before the one who loves them because you did not have enough courage to stand up and confront the wicked.

 

In North America, the churches are mostly democracies. Because the preaching of the gospel is so feeble, the majority of members are carnal, lost people and yet those people mostly govern the direction of the church. And because the pastor doesn’t want to lose the people and because he has wrong ideas regarding evangelism and true conversion, he caters to the wicked in his church; and his little group of true sheep that belong to Jesus Christ are sitting there in the midst of all the theater, in the midst of all the worldliness.

 

You are saying, “Oh, you are just angry.”  If my wife was at Walmart late one night and you walked by as a man and you saw that two men were abusing her, three, four, five, ten men were abusing her and hurting her and you put your head down in the name of self-preservation and you walked by, I want to tell you something, my friend. I will not only look for those 10 men, I will look for you. Believers are the bride of Christ and she is precious to God. Don’t get in the Church’s way, don’t abuse the church’s reputation--you will have to answer to God.

 

Most evangelical pastors in America today take Matthew 18 (on church disciplining its members) and rip it right out of their Bible.  Their theology gets left behind when they come out of their office; they run the church by carnal means.  Discipline is a hard business, I agree; but it has to be done.  We need loving, compassionate church discipline that does not begin with excommunication. It begins with, “Ye who are spiritual, restore them… (Galatians 6:1).

We say, “We can’t practice discipline. We just… we are just too loving.”  You are more loving than Jesus? He is the one who commanded this.  Then you say “Yeah, it will cause so many problems.”  But here’s how it goes; we approach and say, “If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother.” Oh, what a wonderful thing. “But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that by the mouth of two or three witnesses every fact may be confirmed.”

 

It is not that these witnesses are “on my side.” They are going to listen and judge. Maybe you are the one that is wrong. Maybe your brother is not in sin. Maybe you are overcritical and legalistic. Who knows?  And then, if the brother is wrong, here’s what we do: “If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”

 

I am not talking about critical, legalistic, hateful men as judges. I am talking about a group of elders, leaders who love enough to lay their life on the line because they know this is not a game. But we copped out, and have joined Rome in this matter. Rome’s view: “The baby is baptized, the baby is Christian. The baby is Rome’s. Never again deal with conversion. Just create all sorts of worldly means to try to keep them in the Church.”

 

But evangelicals have fallen and have really done much of the same. Give a half an hour of preaching, 5 minutes of which was very funny stories; then we draw the net after 25 minutes of seriousness. Then, if they come forward, after two or three minutes of counseling, we pray a little prayer with them, counsel them for a little bit and then declare them saved--and then unlucky pastors spend the rest of their days disciplining them and wondering why they don’t grow. Yes, I believe in personal, one-on one correction, but, my dear friend, the Church got along for a thousand or more years without it.  Just as many people are going out the back doors as are coming in the front door, and the reason why that is happening is because we are not reproving people.  It starts out that people didn’t get converted.  If they were His sheep, they would hear His voice and they would follow Him.  If you make every sermon on evangelism, so nobody grows in their knowledge of Scripture, and if you make a sinners’ call, and hold their hand and have them repeat a few words, you are trying too much in the flesh.

 

Now we ought to reprove, but in doing so, they may leave. That’s to be expected. “They went out from us because they were not of us.”  So we spend a fortune disciplining goats, hoping they will become sheep. You can’t teach a goat into a sheep. A goat becomes a sheep only by the supernatural working of the Spirit of almighty God.  When they surrender. Believers in Church discipline means you say: I moved my family to this church because they practice Church discipline. I want the watchful care of elders and other members who take this seriously. I want you to tell me if I am in a wrong.  If my children are converted one day, and then go awry, I want to know what’s going on.  Maybe my children will be brought before a Church leader, to keep them on the straight and narrow, for the salvation of their soul.

 

Some of you in here would get so mad if a pastor walked up to you and said, “Honestly, I have been praying about your child and I fear that they are unconverted.”  You would get so mad you would rally up a group to have that pastor kicked out instead of realizing, “Oh, praise God, we have got a man of God here. Maybe we need to do something here.”

 

Indictment #7: A silence on separation.

There is a void of serious teaching about holiness. Everyone agrees, let’s be holy. But when you get specific about what that means, digging deep into sin, that’s when everything turns into a turmoil. “Pursue peace with all men,” Hebrews 12:14 tells us, “and sanctification, without which no one will see the Lord.” Does anybody believe anymore that we will not see the Lord without sanctification?

 

You say, “Brother Paul, I have been criticized so often for teaching works religion.”  Listen to me, it goes back to regeneration. If God truly converts a man He will continue working in that man, through teaching and blessing and admonition and discipline. He will see to it that the work He has begun will be finished. If there is no growth in holiness, it’s because you are not letting God work in your life. If he is not working in your life it is most likely because you are not His child. Look at the difference between Jacob and Esau. “Jacob I loved…Esau I hated.” Yet God fulfilled all his promises to both of them. Jacob was blessed. Esau was blessed. How did God demonstrate his judgments and wrath against Esau and his love toward Jacob? I will tell you how. He disciplined Jacob almost every day of his life.  He gives His loving pruning, the correction of God to bring us to holiness.

 

Now there is so much teaching on this, but let me just say this. “Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice.” Romans 12:1-2.  Why does he say “body?” I think to avoid all this super spirituality:  We think we’re OK when we say, “Well, I have given Jesus my heart, but for the rest, you can’t judge a book by its cover.”  Well, as a matter of fact, you can judge a book by its cover. Jesus never said you couldn’t judge a book by his cover. After all, He said “You will know them by their fruit.”  And if you think that you have given him your heart, then he will have your body. And I will tell you why. The heart, my friend, is not some blood pumping muscle or some figment of a poet’s imagination. It refers to the very essence or core of your being. Don’t tell me Jesus has the very essence and core of your being and it doesn’t affect your body. We go through Scripture, what, legalistically? No, drawing inferences? No. Just doing His commands. 

I do not agree with everything the Puritans said, but I love the Puritans and one of the reason why I love them because I believe they honestly made an attempt to bring everything in their life under the lordship of Jesus Christ.  They wrote 800-page books on what should I think about according to the Scriptures. What should not enter into my mind according to the Scriptures?  What should I do with my eyes? What should go in these ears and what should not go in these ears? How should the tongue be ruled? What should be the direction of my life? And yes, here’s a question no one wants to discuss: How should I dress?  Now I am going to be careful here. My dear friend, my wife says it this way: If your clothing is a frame for your face from which the glory of Christ springs forth, it is of God. But if your clothing is a frame for your body, it is sensual and God hates it. Enough said?

 

Now holiness isn’t just outward expression, but we have become a people who stubbornly think that the Spirit doesn’t require us to change anything on the outside. “It’s the inside that counts.”  And that is not true.  Some of you young men, you cry out probably more than I do that the Spirit of God would fill you and work in you, but it only takes one half hour of television to so grieve Him, and He will be miles from you. One time I was struggling and Leonard Ravenhill sent me a tract. I still have that tract. It said, “Others can, you cannot.”  You say, “I want the power of God on my life.” Then I assure you that He will show you that something you do has got to go.  Everyone else is running around, and their “proof” of change is all their little retreats and all their conferences and getting together with group hugs and singing Kumbaya and all. Maybe you need to get alone in the wilderness with God and fast for seven days on your knees studying the book of Psalms, just being alone with God, learning about loving and belonging to Him.

 

So what I’m trying to say in all this is: There is silence from the pulpits on the important doctrine of separation from the world. I think, “Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness?” Nothing. “Or what fellowship has light with darkness?” Nothing. Darkness is the opposite of God’s revelation. But people want to crawl to the edge of what they think God would allow. They want to become double-minded, and be schizophrenic. Why push to the world, away from God, all the time?  He says, “Come out from their midst.” Come out from the midst of what? Come out from the midst of lawlessness, darkness, and the life and worldliness of the unbeliever. Come out from it.

 

Indictment #8:  Psychology and sociology have replaced the Scriptures with regard to the family.

Our Sunday morning services are so cosmetic. If you want to see proof of the Lord’s presence, it’s easiest to look at an individual’s home, his marriages, his family. If I find a godly man who has raised godly children, I’m ecstatic. In church, most of what I hear are wives’ tales and sociology and what is right in their own eyes; and they can’t give me one Bible verse. But every once in a while I find a man and a woman who set themselves to raise their family according to Scripture--and the difference is overwhelming.

 

What does it matter if a man wins the whole world and loses his family? God sees its great importance.  Look at Genesis 18:19. “For I have chosen him, so that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing righteousness and justice, so that the LORD may bring upon Abraham what He has spoken about him.” God is pleased with that.  But if you ever come up with this idea that you can be a man of God, and say “I am sacrificing my family for the sake of the ministry,” I will tell you, you are a bald faced liar.  I do not have to violate the will of God with regard to my family in order to fulfill the will of God with regard to the ministry.

 

Let’s talk about Sunday school.  Millions of dollars spent on doing everything in the book to promote Sunday school. I know that for a fact.  But how much money does your denomination spend and how many conference and man hours are put in to teach fathers to teach their children? So now you have found it, haven’t you? God doesn’t have a plan B. He has a plan A. You circumvent plan A, plan B won’t work.

 

Now I am not saying that children can’t come together in groups and be catechized or be taught or anything, but if that ever even begins to hint to supplant the ministry of the Father in the home, blow it to pieces.  But most of the time in the Sunday school it is nothing more than entertainment because the Sunday school teacher doesn’t have the authority to discipline your child; he has to let them interrupt and talk to one another, and mock the lesson. And even if they did have the right to discipline, they wouldn’t do it because they don’t believe in it.

 

Let’s look at youth groups.  You say, “Well, youth need to be together.”  Ok, well, let’s look. Proverbs 13:20. “He who walks with wise men will be wise, But the companion of fools will suffer harm.”  If young people only listen to young people, the likelihood of being led by fools is greater.  Whoever told you youth ought to be together? Whoever told you that? I’ll tell you who told you that: 1960s psychologists; they helped us formulate the generation gap. Youth are to be with adults so that they stop acting like naïve fools. We should urge them to join adulthood and put away foolishness which leads to destruction.  Now I am not saying you can’t bring youth together, but I submit if you do, have all their parents there.  And you say, “Well, what about the lost youth that come into our church?”  Well, what are they seeing now? The lost youth come in to your Christian youth in Church and they see almost the same thing they see in their own home--no parents, young people teaching kids. But what would happen if a lost youth came into your church and they saw the children there, the youth in a loving, wonderful relationship collectively with their parents and they would go, “Whoa. I have never seen anything like this before. His dad, look at him. He loves…I mean he loves his dad. I mean look at the… So is this Christianity?”

 

It is like one old dear saint; someone asked him one time, since he wouldn’t let his teenage son go out with a young lady to be in some private place: “Don’t you trust your son?” He said, “No, I don’t trust my son. Whatever made you think that? I don’t even trust his dad. I wouldn’t put his father alone with another woman.  Yet I have much more control of my will than a teenager with raging hormones. We violate biblical principle after biblical principle after biblical principle and then we wonder why everything is a mess.

 

I was listening a few months ago to all the horrendous things that are happening to our country.  I Timothy 4:1 says:

 

But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons.

 

God is telling young Timothy that all hell is going to break loose in culture, that everything is just going to be maddening--we’ll see the veneer of civilization melt away; we’ll see men as beasts.  We’re swimming against a high current of septic water.  Protect your family from exposure to this.  Give them home schooling, examine Christian colleges for them. As I Timothy 4:6 says, we simply have to “be constantly nourished on the words of faith.”

Pay close attention to yourself and to your teaching and preserve these things, for as you do this, you will ensure salvation both for yourself and for those who hear you. May God Bless His Church.

 

May God help you to meditate on these words.