Prophetics

Prophetics

4/19/19

One of the most common questions about the Bible is how one views its contents.  We cannot ignore the fact that many do not see the Bible as anything else but a bunch of stories that someone has dreamed up and written down at a later time and date.  I believe that the Bible is the authoritative Word of God, His eternal definition, and our guideline to our lives.  It is amazing to me just how many instances the Bible talks about what we can see occurring today, yet still ignore its value in our lives.  With all of the instances that seem to have no answers, we turn our hearts to the world for answers and receive cold hard devastation in return, thanking it with our praises in the end.  God has a different plan for our lives and wants us to live life abundantly at all times and there is a simple process and a hard fight to ensure this freedom.  His Word shares with us about our needs and our troubles and through this process of study we can receive the help we truly need and better yet avoid such catastrophes before they occur when we turn our eyes and hearts to God.

One of the most powerful deceptions that Satan has within his repertoire is the command influence to deter us from our specific purposes in life.  His means of accomplishing this task vary widely and are so effective that many times through these tactics we completely lose our ways long enough that delusion about our existence becomes the focal point of our actions.  Also, through this delusional process of his we eventually forget about how we are supposed to work in agreement with each other and to pursue the eternal equality that humanity had when we were first Created; however, through our own admissions, we seem to fall way short of this goal simply due to the fact that we no longer agree much on anything, resulting in a fatal society that has no brakes to stop us from advancing over the end of the tracks ahead.  It cannot be helped but to view the world in such a state these days, but when you take a look at how people felt in the past about the world that they lived in, one can easily attribute this same condition of animosity toward their societies as well.

Humans like to believe that each society that their generations are involved in represent the pinnacle of what societal life is supposed to be, and we have to look no further from our own present society to see that pride present.  As this pride continues to grow and demonstrate itself openly it blinds us to the truth about the old adage about pride and how it makes us fall at some point in the future, inhibiting our true purpose because of our selfish platforms rise faster than our stated desires.  How can we live in such angst when we have an unlimited supply of secular examples before us that clearly provide a way in which we should go and should not go.  Also, it is this mindless ignorance of ours that we fail to recognize that all of our societal and moral failures recorded in human history are present from prehistory that God provides in His Word.  This means that humans before the “accepted” time of our history began were doing things on their own and failing within their own environments thus giving us a human record of uncertainty that comes first and establishes a pattern that we still follow today.  God purposefully did not give us all the answers to our lives and to our problems in written form nor did He give us all the answers to His Life either.  He did give us a heart and a mind to pursue such answers through His Truth, however.  It is this path that He so desires for His children to choose and since He also knows that many shall not He put clues in His Word for us to study and to learn from which gives us an accurate historical record to gain from.  It is this platform of Truth that converts God’s Word into a book of Life and prophecy that directly relates to not only our past but our present and future as well.

Wouldn’t it be spectacular to have a guide in our lives that gives us answers to questions that appear out of nowhere, or to ones we have pondered for years, and when those answers are given to us provide more questions and then more answers down the road?  I know that sometimes all of the questions we have about life itself, how and why things occur can be overwhelming at times but when we receive such directions it all seems worth it.  The world can throw so many curve balls towards you with us wildly swinging at air sometimes, but when we know where to look for the correct answers to life’s questions the answers are brilliantly clear with explanations that are mind-boggling, to say the least.  It is for this reason that God has placed such prophetic words of wisdom in His Word to serve as guidelines of how to avert such issues in our lives.  Many of these prophetic statements are missed or misdirected as such and then not fully understood. 

Many do not know what a prophecy is and the majority of those who do not know do not care to understand either, but they are a part of our lives and a necessity in order to figure out which direction we should take in life.  I have often stated in the past that I am not too keen on prophecy due to the fact that many people claim to be prophets yet do not understand the magnitude for which they stand thus creating a spiritual environment that is detrimental in content.  Each prophet in the Bible was segregated and called out from the people by those same people they were presenting as those in need of God’s Covenant again.  Over and over the prophets were considered outcasts because of the so-called doom and gloom that they represented to others, faithfully delivering the messages that the lost needed to hear in order to bypass the issues that would deflect God from their lives while directly fulfilling what God was warning in the first place.

Often we place the prophets only in the Old Testament and it is easy to do for the writers of the New Testament considered themselves preachers and teachers instead of prophets even though their warnings, writings, and sayings were exactly online with the words of the Old Testament prophets.  Not many of us think that the contents of the New Testament are prophetic in nature either but oh how we miss so many truths about our living conditions and heart conditions because of this misunderstanding.  Yes, we can find so many occurrences within the Early Church that are present today but do we understand that when God speaks something it is alive and when He points out something in human history as a point of reference if we do not correct it then it becomes a prophetic word in our lives according to His authority.  Isn’t a prophecy a spoken word about the future of a person, group, nation or society thus deemed as true or not according to how things play out of said future?  Well, can we not say that the same spirits that were present in the Early Church do not have access in our hearts today?  If you are honest, then we must capitulate that they are along with countless others that we have voluntarily attached ourselves to as well.  And is not every person who takes a breath considered a child of God?  Then through these two truths, the passage for this article serves as a prophetic word from God for us today.

Romans Chapter 1 is an extraordinary passage in that after Paul’s introductory salutation to the Roman Church, basically describes the exact position that so many people including church denominations include as a mainstay of their lives.  It is this small portion of this great letter of Paul’s writings that God wants us to understand that serves not only as a truth statement for when Paul was alive but for us today serving as a prophetic message and one that should hasten our spiritual hearts to change our ways.  The specific passage for this article is Romans 1:20-23 and while not every word is going to be specifically drawn out here I suppose that God shall at some point direct us to that state, so hold on here we go.  From the content of this passage, we can see that the Roman church was in chaos spiritually and through this disaccord produced a great deal of division within the likes of its people.  If one knows the concepts of how to keep an organization intact and functioning with a certain degree of profitable productivity in place, they would know that this condition within the Roman church does not support such product.  They would also know that unless significant changes occurred that the organization itself would not be in business too long either.  So, in this manner how difficult is it to place this passage into the prophetic category?

Ever since my helicopter ride back in September 2018, God has placed it on my heart to write about the darkened condition of our spiritual hearts.  He has focused His attention on the Church and how we have allowed ourselves to be caught up in the worldly vanity and how we have placed it as a foundational building block in order to prevent outrage and criticism from the ruler of this world.  Verse 21 of this passage directly states this inclusion of vanity because when vanity is present it means that the world has taken over enough of our hearts that God is no longer desired as the King of our lives.  The world sees God and His eternal authority as a vanity in itself for vanity serves as its own ruler and thus rejects any other opinion or law that says otherwise.  Vanity has no other purpose than to supply itself with continual rationing from others in order to satisfy its own appearance.  And in this instance, we must remember that when vanity rules our lives we will see God and the Laws He represents as boundaries and limitations to our worldly freedoms instead as protective truths that cover us and shield us from our enemy and his kingdom.

We will begin with a couple of notes concerning a few words and phrases in this verse that bring the depth of what has occurred here into light.  The first is “for although they knew God” which comes from the Greek words “Dioti gnontes” which stands in usage of the verb to know.  The manner in which this phrase is written in English suggests that it is a descriptive phrase in which another phrase or portion of a sentence will finish the introduction and give completeness to the first part.  The word “Theon” is used next which is the Greek word for a supreme deity which refers to God, the God of the Bible.  These two phrases put together gives us a picture that at one point in time the church in Rome had experienced God and the wonders of His presence in their hearts but as the next portion of this verse unfolds it becomes clear that when this presence occurred they did not wish to glorify God nor did they thank God for His presence which nullifies why God makes His presence known and felt.  How many revivals have we sat through or been a part of where God has shown us His glory and then we brush it off as soon as we walk out the church building doors?  If this portion of the verse wasn’t bad enough the last half of the verse becomes more of indoctrination about a self-serving god instead of an eternal and Heavenly giver of Life. 

In verse 22 the next stage of personal vanity takes charge for it is common that vanity shares its content with others through its own reflection.  See, people who are stuck with vanity as their motivational life cannot produce anything else but selfish “wisdom” thus conveying to whoever might listen to a sense of correctness that will serve vanity’s leader.  There is nothing true about vanity itself and the legacy it produces to those who actively and proudly wear it.  Look at how vain the Church is today, she rivals the world in this category producing superficially spectacular presentations while harboring a darkened or in many cases a blackened heart.  Is there a better definition of vanity than what the Church portrays today?  With the contents of this verse, the Church today can be easily compared to the condition of the church in Rome back when Paul wrote this letter, further solidifying the truth that this passage serves as a prophetic message to those who read it today.  Why do we give the enemy fuel to burn us with when we should know how to not surrender to the wiles of the devil?  Yet, when we do succumb to this obscene gesture, to our astounding “shock”, we scream and cry out at the people within the Church instead of the spirit which is present within the Church’s heart. 

All throughout God’s Word, He has done His best to inform His people that they should have nothing to do with the world for the world can offer nothing good for our lives.  But the words in verse 22 in this passage proclaim a different tone that His people took and established a foundation of lies instead of the truth.  As each day passes, it becomes easier to see just how “wise” the world believes it is and when Paul mentions this setting in this verse t means that this spirit was present back then within the Church hearts just as it is today.  We have no contentions that the world thrives on these type of lies but why is it that today’s Church continues to follow step-by-step in those same lies that plagued them back shortly after Jesus left this earth?  Even more disturbing is the fact that we completely ignore what Paul teaches and what he begged the church in Rome to rid their hearts of back then, today. 

When the Bible uses the word “fools” it really has a specific connotation, for these words tells us that they are literally living out the fact that they are fools through their own beliefs.  The church in Rome should have known better and should not even have the inkling of the idea that their own “wisdom” could make themselves wise for human wisdom originates with a death sentence; therefore, can only market such an ending.  So, what are we doing today?  The exact same thing as the church in Rome did thousands of years before us, follow our own thinking and beliefs to arrive at our truth instead of The Truth.  It would be one thing if the world had its own policies and the Church had hers, yet as we cry for separation of Church and State we continually try our best to blend the two entities together.  The Greek words used here to make up the term “fools” is “emoranthesan” which literally translates to become insipid or to make as a simpleton.  It is a dumbing down process in which one goes from a wise stance to a dumb stance due to something that is believed.

Tragically, we have recently had an occurrence which proves this point of Paul’s so long ago and what God is trying to tell us today.  A bit ago, one of the major historical cathedrals almost burned to the ground in France.  The world watched in “shock” was the flames roared through the building and gutted the roof and interior of the building.  People went crazy as their eyes beheld the fire and the same people cheered as the leaders of the Catholic Church and of many nations uttered almost the exact same words that President Bush and other US national leaders did on 9/11.  We have not learned one thing from our past whether it be from human history alone, Church history alone, or both tied together.  It is for this reason that God gave us the New Testament so that we would have more than one example to guide us with our walk with Him and to shun the world completely for if we do not do both our eyes will become focused on selfish goals and lead to our demise.

Verse 23 comes along as says the following: “And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.”  There are numerous issues with this statement from Paul that can be addressed but where it comes to the authority of the Church and what Jesus commanded her to do and to be this verse cannot be determined as anything else but prophetic for us today.  The world has done a fantastic job in promoting and then raising up animals, constructed objects and other environmental stages to our level of dominion and has established physical laws to back these foolish claims up.  It is absurd that the Church even contend with such foolishness for we should know our dominion status that goes back to the Garden of Eden yet we are so willing to give it away to something that was created below us.  We have churches and church leaders supporting abortion laws that allow babies to be born alive after an attempted abortion to die after their birth and at the same time establish laws that make it a felony to harm a bird’s egg.  If any member of any denominational church sees this aspect as okay, then you are not studying and believing the Word of God correctly but only through selfish and worldly eyes are you abiding by its Truths; which is a lie from Satan himself.

We now come to break down verse 23, and this verse highlights the next step in the worldly thinking process in that we see that the church in Rome begins to lower the status and existence of God to fit their own patterns of mortality.  A keyword used here is “changed” and gives us a picture of what happened within the lives and hearts of the church of Rome.  The Greek word used here for “changed” is “ellaxan” which means to exchange.  The church willingly and voluntarily exchanged the eternal and immortal status of God for a mortal and limited view of His existence.  The rest of the verse describes what they exchanged but it is the act that they did in the first place that set the tone for the remaining words of this verse.  What is frightening about this portion of the verse is that they had direct communication with a worldly leader in order for this to occur.  Their beliefs became so off base with God that the one that convinced them otherwise had a greater influence than the Truth.  Each person attending or who were associated with the church in Rome that agreed to this exchange participated in a spiritual handing over ceremony in which they took upon worldly standards for God’s Standard.

The devious part of this ceremony is that it is an active one that grows within your spiritual heart.  See, when one talks about kingdom they must never become lax in the fact that the kingdoms that are vying for your life are alive and moving, and whichever kingdom inhabits your heart not only will it move but it shall grow as well.  So, in the end, the deception of the world’s kingdom will eventually grow enough in your heart that you will truly believe that the world is not such a bad place and that its ways are ordained by God.  It will become your inner “peace” and fool you at the same time while it throws in a little bit of peace bit by bit.  All the while turning you from the eternal and immortal God that Created your life to a mortal image that you worship on a daily basis instead.  No wonder God said way back in Genesis to Adam that he should obey the one command concerning the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; He did not want any other images or ways before Him.  Through these last few verses, it becomes even clearer just how Paul's words to the church in Rome are Prophetic to today's Church as well.

What we have read so far is bad enough and would describe the majority of people who live double lives when it comes to attending church.  By the way, do we really understand what it means to attend church?  Paul writes these words to people of the church in Rome but as we scroll through our screens today it could easily be written originally for those of us today.  What is even more appalling is that the remaining portions of this passage describe what one might consider to be more grotesque of sin against God, it is this portion of the Word that proclaims that not much has changed over time thus rendering it a living prophetic word that unless broken shall continue its path of destruction until God says enough.  All of us are born into sin which is evident through this passage of Scripture but it is our choice to break this cycle and to be separated from the world’s nature and live under God’s Covenantal Laws.  However, just as the Early Church dug its own hole of self-indulgent behavior and belief system; therefore, it is our responsibility to close such a hole and to repair the road so that people who seek to know the Truth shall not fall prey to our own historical sin.  But, we have not closed this hole instead we have dug it deeper and wider.

The remaining verses in this chapter further detail the state of not only the church in Rome but how today’s Church functions, thrives and proclaims.  I cannot see God allowing too much more for us to worldly incorporate, but I am not Him.  What must God do in order for us to open our eyes and see that we are not fulfilling our command from Christ and that we have been fooled into accepting the dividedness of the world into our spiritual life?  Church, we need to shed the world and all of its services from our hearts because our hearts are becoming darker by the day and unless we turn our hearts back to God first, all we can offer is Romans 1:20-23 conditions to those who are lost.  To put it plain and simple, we are in the emergency room with severe chest pains and we know what is going on and we have been shown the truth about our condition.  So, it is our choice to allow God to pilot us to His facility so He can repair our hearts as we need it or we can flatline and die from within and allow the enemy to secure our eternal future separated from God.  This fact does not just abode with us it goes out to the entire world just as Jesus commanded us to do than proving that this passage of the New Testament is a prophetics verse.

DLB