Warnings, warnings, warnings: Have you noticed that both the Old and New Testaments are FILLED with warnings? An excellent example of this Truth is found in the two most informative books in the Bible relative to God’s promised blessings and warnings about His curses. I continually ask readers and listeners to study Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28 where God spends 13 and 14 verses respectively telling His followers WHAT HE WANTS TO DO FOR THEM if they obey Him, and the following 32 and 53 verses respectively telling them WHAT HE WILL DO TO THEM if they do not obey Him. How much clearer can He say it? IT IS OBVIOUS THAT HE WANTS NOTHING BUT GOOD FOR MANKIND TO WHOM HE PROMISES BLESSINGS FOR THOSE WHO OBEY HIM. BUT FOR THOSE WHO DO NOT OBEY HIM HE PROMISES CURSES. FOR THE PRICE HE AND JESUS PAID FOR THOSE BLESSINGS, HE HAS EVERY RIGHT TO DEMAND STRICT OBEDIENCE IN ORDER TO RECEIVE THEM. PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE. WOULD YOU NOT HAVE THE SAME ATTITUDE? You do not pay someone for not doing a job.

The Almighty does not want to curse His most prized creation–mankind. But like any other good father, He punishes His creations who do not obey him. As a good father, I was sometimes forced to punish my children for disobeying me. THEY KNEW MY RULES AND THE BLESSINGS I WOULD PROVIDE FOR OBEYING THEM. THEY ALSO KNEW THE CONSEQUENCES FOR DISOBEYING ME. THAT IS THE BIBLICAL WAY. God said, “He who spares the rod hates his son” (Prov.13:24). Obviously it hurts to have to discipline our children, but that is God’s way. He deals with mankind in the same way. GOD WARNS, WARNS AND WARNS. BECAUSE HE WANTS US TO BE BLESSED. WHY ELSE WOULD HE HAVE WRITTEN LEVITICUS 26 AND DEUTERONOMY 28, THEN SENT HIS FELLOW GOD TO EARTH TO SUFFER AND DIE SO THAT WE COULD BE BLESSED AND AVOID BEING CURSED IN THIS LIFE AND SPEND ETERNITY IN PARADISE IN THE NEXT LIFE. REJECTING HIS OFFER IS THE HIGHT OF HUMAN STUPIDITY. SIN IS STUPIDITY ON DISPLAY. IN THE SPORTS WORLD IT IS CALLED AN “UNFORCED ERROR.”

The problem with the potential recipients of God’s blessings is that they study only the promised blessings (“headlines”) while ignoring the conditions must meet in order to receive those blessings (“fine print”). They have been led to believe that all that is required to please God and qualify for them is to “show up, pay up, ‘fess up and get ready to go up.” Which is the exact opposite of what God says. Church people hate and reject most of what God tells them in His Holy Scriptures. The question is, why? What happens to man that causes him to turn away from His creator and toward his Creator’s enemy? The answer is LOVE.

God has great love for His human creations. He demands, but does not force, them to love Him in return. He did not create human puppets. He gave them free moral agency to love Him and obey Him or to hate Him and disobey Him. In Luke 16:13 Jesus said that man either loves and obeys God or hates and disobeys Him. With the Lord it is all or nothing. Those who try to straddle that fence (sinners saved by grace) are what we call “vomit” which God promises to spew out of His mouth. This characterization of the end-time Laodicean Church is found in Revelation 3:13-17. God’s desire is that man will love Him and prove his love by obeying His Law. Read John 8:31; 14:15,23; 15:10/ Matthew 19:17 and First John 2:5. God (the King) rules His true saints. A king rules his people through his law. Obedience to that law reveals his subjects’ love for him. Disobedience proves the opposite.

God is the King of the universe He created. He recorded His Law for all ages to live by. Sadly, man, beginning with the first man, has rejected that Law, thereby rejecting Him, thereby rejecting His (God’s) kingship over him–denying Him (2 Pet. 2:1,2/ Jude 1:4). Jesus came to “magnify the Law and make it honorable” to His followers (Isa. 42:21). He said that He “… did not come to destroy the Law or (the writings of) the prophets, but to fulfill them” by obeying them to the fullest measure (Mat. 5:17). The “handwriting of ordinances” that was nailed to the cross was Moses hand-written law concerning the sacrifice of animals for the covering of sins. God’s stone-etched Law remains forever. At the Last Supper He proclaimed that from that time forward His blood, not the blood of animals, would serve as the cleansing agent for all PAST sins (Rom. 3:25), a gracious act of God called “justification.” Read First John 3:1-10 concerning sins committed after one has been justified. Read Romans 2:13 where Paul tells us how to REMAIN JUSTIFIED.

In His Olivet (Mt. of Olives–Mat. 24) prophecy, Christ continues with His answer to the question asked Him by His disciples concerning the end of the world. He warns us (through their writings) about the persecution of His true disciples (believers–saints) during the last years of this Laodicean Church age. See Revelation 3:14-18.

Christ’s warning to the disciples was an end-time prophecy about what will take place on earth just prior to His return. He warns that many of His people–those called by His name–will be in grave danger during those days. The question is, Why? Scriptures tell us that there will be many more goats than sheep within the end-time church. Read Who are God’s People. Key word–People. There are several Scriptures in which God promises to protect His true, obedient saints (sheep) during that terrible time. But the vast majority of believers (goats) have turned away from Him, and in so doing, have disqualified themselves from receiving His promised protection. Read God’s Place of Safety and The Three Resurrections. Key words–Safety and Resurrections respectively. Only God’s few sheep will rise to meet Christ upon His return.

In verse 12 (Mat. 24) Jesus makes abundantly clear the part that LOVE plays in believers’ being rejected by the Lord: “And because INIQUITY (Lawlessness) will abound, THE LOVE OF MANY WILL WAX (BECOME) COLD.” To love God is to love (obey) His Law, which is His Word from Genesis to Revelation which He condensed into the Ten Commandments and wrote in stone. GOD AND HIS WORD/LAW/TRUTH/LIGHT ARE ONE AND THE SAME. HIS LAW IS HIS WILL THAT ONE MUST OBEY IN ORDER TO BE HIS CHILD. He commands that we prove our love for Him by obeying His Law/Word. In Luke 10:16 and 16:13 Jesus said that we either love or hate His Words, and that to not obey His Words is to prove that we DESPISE/HATE HIS WORD, WHICH MEANS THAT WE DESPISE/HATE BOTH HIM AND HIS FATHER. Read those verses prayerfully and with a Truth-seeking spirit.

In Matthew 24:12, Jesus made it clear that when we love and obey the Law/Word we take into ourselves the very love of God, which shows how important the Law is to its Creator. The Word “love” in that verse is agape in the Greek language in which the New Testament was originally written. Agape love is THE LOVE OF GOD–HIS LOVE. Romans 5:5 reveals that only those who have received God’s Holy Spirit have agape love within them because they obey His Law. Pray to the Lord that He will beget you with His Holy Spirit which is His power that enables true saints to repel Satan’s “fiery darts” of temptation and therefore live in God’s love as a holy saint. Only by the power of the Holy Spirit can we walk in holiness. DO NOT LET SATAN’S MESSENGERS TELL YOU THAT RIGHTEOUSNESS IS IMPOSSIBLE TO ATTAIN. READ MATTHEW 5:6 GOD COMMANDS RIGHTEOUSNESS IN FIRST JOHN 2:6 AND REVELATION 3:21. DO NOT LET THEM TELL YOU THAT GOD DELIBERATELY SETS HIS STANDARD FOR SALVATION HIGHER THAN MAN CAN ACHIEVE SO THAT HE CAN DISPLAY HIS GRACE. This turns grace into a license to sin (Jude 4). Being hears of the Word/Law and not doers of it causes man to deceive himself (Jam. 1:22). Also, In Isaiah 59:2 the prophet tells God’s people that sin separates them from Him. Why would God separate Himself from man for sinning if man has no choice but to sin, as Satan’s false prophets tell us? Read Original Sin. Key word–Original. This would mean that God prefers to be separated from man. Sin-caused separation from God refers to the Lord removing His Holy Spirit from sinning church people, leaving them with only their own power with which to battle Satan. Man always loses that battle.

In verse 12 Jesus warned that in the last days the vast majority of His people will lose the love of God that once dwelled in their hearts, that they will reject Him, causing His love within them to turn cold. What is it that they would reject? The would reject His LAW, and therefor GOD HIMSELF. Jesus warned that the church masses would lose God’s love BY COMMITTING INIQUITY (LAWLESSNESS). The “love of God” is that we “keep His commandments” (1 Jn. 5:3) and thereby “walk as Jesus walked” (1 Jn. 2:6). Failure to obey His Law/Word makes us “workers of iniquity”–Lawlessness. Jesus said in Matthew 7:21-23: “Not everyone who says to (calls) Me, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter into the kingdom of heaven, only he that DOES THE WILL OF MY FATHER WHO IS IN HEAVEN. Many will say to Me on that (judgment) day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied (preached) in Your name? and in Your name have cast out devils? and in Your name done many wonderful works?’ Then I will say unto them, ‘I NEVER KNEW YOU, DEPART FROM ME YOU WHO WORK INIQUITY. ‘” Though many of those who will be rejected will have been ministers who had preached, healed the sick and cast out demons, JESUS WILL HAVE NEVER “KNOWN” THEM (INTIMATELY) BECAUSE THEY HAD REJECTED HIS LAW/WORD/TRUTH AND IN SO DOING, HAD PROVEN THAT THEY DESPISED/HATED BOTH HIM AND HIS FATHER. THIS TRUTH ALSO APPLIES TO THOSE WHO HAD BELIEVED THOSE FALSE PROPHETS AND OBEYED THEIR WORDS (Lk. 10:16/16:13). Today some two billion people, believing that they are on their way to heaven, are hearing Satan’s false prophets preach one of his many versions of God’s Gospel each sun god day (Sunday). Read about God’s Sabbath using the key word Sabbath. Christ’s fateful Words recorded in Matthew 7:21-23 will seal their fate unless they repent, turn from their wicked ways and obey God’s Law. Read 2 Chronicles 7:13 and14. Notice that it is only AFTER GOD’S PEOPLE HAVE FOLLOWED HIS ORDERS THAT HE WILL THEN hear their prayers and answer them. How many church prayers are answered? My guess is less than 1%. Why? The iniquity of the people. The only reason God gives for not answering people’s prayers–sin–the breaking of His Law (1 Jn. 3:4).

Each of us must make a decision relative to the honesty of God as stated in His Holy Scriptures (writings). Consider that He preserved those precious Words for thousands of years in clay jars located in a cave in Israel. Why? As the Apostle Paul tells us, so that those Holy Words can teach Truth seekers living at the end of the age (1 Cor. 10:11). The Apostle Peter described those who spoke and wrote those Words thusly: “Holy men of old spoke (and wrote) as the Holy Spirit moved on them” (2 Pet. 1:21). Notice that the apostle made it clear that only those who believed and obeyed God’s Words would make the final cut (1 Pet. 4:17,18). He noted that judgment was (is) ongoing in the church and that, “… only the righteous (in the church) will be saved.” Note that he was gravely concerned about those in the church who were not righteous and would not be saved. The Holy Bible was written to, for and about God’s people–those who are called by His name, most of whom will not be saved at the return of Christ. Read Who Are God’s People. Key word–People. L.J.