THE BOOK OF HEBREWS
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P.O. Box 7135 Pensacola, FL 32534
B.A., B.D., M.A., Th.M., Ph.D.
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P.O. Box 7135 Pensacola, FL 32534
Copyright © 1986 by Peter S. Ruckman All rights reserved
The Scripture quotations found herein are from the text of the Authorized King James Version of the Bible. Any deviations therefrom are not intentional.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage, retrieval system, multimedia, or Internet system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Introduction................................................................. vii
Preface....................................................................... xvii
Chapter One................................................................. 1
Chapter Two.............................................................. 43
Chapter Three............................................................ 73
Chapter Four.............................................................. 91
Chapter Five............................................................ 115
Chapter Six.............................................................. 139
Chapter Seven........................................................ 167
Chapter Eight........................................................... 183
Chapter Nine........................................................... 193
Chapter Ten............................................................. 239
Chapter Eleven....................................................... 287
Chapter Twelve........................................................ 349
Chapter Thirteen..................................................... 403
Afterword.................................................................. 443
Throughout the years we have received many letters from Christians who desired to have a “Bible Believer’s Commentary" on the Book of Hebrews. This would be expected as there is not one single commentary on the market today, in Europe or America (nor has there been in the last 400 years), that treated the Authorized Text of Hebrews with any serious or faithful consideration. There are, of course, many devotional commentaries on Hebrews by men like Dr. DeHaan, Harry Ironside, and Oliver Green, and these have many commendable qualities; but exegetical and doctrinal commentaries that deal faithfully with the so-called “Greek texts” and the scholarly corrections and conjectures derived from these texts are entirely lacking. Every major work on the Book of Hebrews (Pink, Lowrie, Hoffman, Milligan, Riehm, et al.) turns out to be nothing but the destructive comments of some Bible-rejecting Conservative who had no final authority higher than his own opinions or the opinions of his friends. When faced with the terrifically complicated verses in Hebrews—and there are plenty of them in Chapters 1, 3, 4, 6, 10, 11, and 12—all of these men, in one accord and with one consent and with a perfect ecumenical spirit, unite to attack the words of God and alter them in any way possible so that they might be forced to “teach” what the Bible perverter wants them to teach. The comments on “Hebrews” by Kenneth Wuest or Spiros Zodhiates or James Freerkson, for example, will show the reader what is meant by such a statement, and when he gets to Hebrews 4, 6, and 10 he will find all the members of the Alexandrian Cult
(Freerkson, Willmington, Dobson, Feinberg, Kroll Af man, Price, Dollar, Martin, Bleek, Alford, Vincent" Thayer, et aL) doing a “break dance” that Michael Jackson couldn’t keep up with. All the gyrations and flip-flops will be to get around the AV text, as usual and to avoid the real truth at any cost so that the reader will wind up as much “in the dark” about the truth as the commentator.
What most readers want is a nice, smooth-running commentary of a devotional nature: Matthew Henry, for example, or at least Adam Clarke. Christians these days want only the orange without the peeling or the apple without the core. For this reason our Bible Believer’s Commentary on Revelation has always been our “best seller,” and our poorest seller has been Problem Texts. The first work was transcribed from tapes where the book had been expounded “cold turkey” without notes; it was done “on the wing,” as the Vaudeville actors used to say. It contains little or no scholarly material and no exegetical or critical analysis of the works done on the text by its enemies. This makes for beautiful READING, but it leaves the door wide open for the reader’s faith to be destroyed by A GRADUATE OF A CHRISTIAN COLLEGE OR SEMINARY as soon as he closes the book. It also constitutes some sort of SIN against God for refusing to go into matters that have been responsible for the spiritual destruction of more than 50,000 Christians a year in the United States since 1900. These matters have to do with what is wrong with the Fundamentalists and Evangelicals who attack the King James Bible. A reader who confines himself to devotional reading and inspirational material (as in the Bible Believer’s Commentary on Revelation) will find himself in a first-rate jam when he is confronted with three things which he will certainly be confronted with at some time:
1. His CHILDREN, who are sent off to a Christian school to “learn the Bible” but come back as pro
fessional Bible critics as competent as any unsaved Liberal in the NCCC. They have been given material that the parent was not aware of.
2. His PASTOR, who will continue to correct the AV text, and when confronted with the “commentary” will alibi that since the commentator could not deal with “the original Greek” and knows nothing about “the oldest and best Greek manuscripts” that the commentary is to be discarded.
3. The entire modern Charismatic movement (which is moving back to Rome), which thinks nothing of correcting the Holy Bible more than fifty times per chapter (see any edition of the Living Bible or Today’s English Version).
To limit a Bible commentary, then, to devotional and inspirational remarks, or even doctrinal teaching, without going into the reasons for believing the Biblical text and the reasons for rejecting the critic’s opinions about the text is to do a half-hearted work (Ecc. 9:10) that violates the spirit of New Testament teaching (see Rom. 12:7, 11; 2 Cor. 2:17; Col. 2:8; and 2 Tim. 2:15). For this reason, we are including in this volume (as we have included in the Bible Believer’s Commentary on Galatians-Colossians) the critical and exegetical material that the Fundamentalists and “Evangelicals” (same crew when it comes to destructive criticism) have used to overthrow the Truth of God. This material may be tedious to the average reader, but the average reader could just as well be satisfied with a commentary on Hebrews by Ironside, Newell, Green, or Matthew Henry as one by that great arch-heretic Ruckman.
The material which we will give here is primarily for the benefit of those students and teachers of the word of God—principally pastors and Bible teachers— who desire to “sack” and “rack out” the sissified cultured Fundamentalists in their own groups who are always messing with the Book and destroying the faith
of young people in it. A presentation of the truth without a presentation of error is absolutely valueless in this field. You learn Biblical truth by seeing its contrast to ERROR. You only know the genuine by comparing it with the counterfeit. God didn’t just “so love the world”; He prayed “NOT FOR THE WORLD” (John 17:9). Jesus Christ is not the only “Christ.” The Devil is a “Christ” (Ezek. 28). You cannot know the teachers that God approves of (1 Cor. 11:19) without heresies being laid alongside their teachings (2 Tim. 2:3-4). You cannot defend what you believe (Peter, James, John, Paul, and Jude all went to great lengths to do this: see Rom. 5; 1 Cor. 15; 2 Pet. 3; Jude; 1 John, etc.) or even know what it is that is so unless you know what is NOT so and why it is NOT so.
This has been the big loophole through which the Alexandrian Cult has slipped through more than eighteen centuries (although in the last twenty years we have put enough pressure on them to make hundreds of them swap their Nestle’s text for a Receptus, and even forced Nestle [in Germany] to reconstruct his text and re-admit seventy Receptus readings he had omitted for ninety years).
The scholars have set up a mass of exegetical and critical material (well over 50,000 volumes before 1970) and a maze of comments and conjectures (well over 1,000,000 before 1970) to cast doubt on the Holy Bible, and they have gotten away with it in every decade because they profess to believe in the “verbal, plenary inspiration of the original autographs” and the "historic Fundamentalist positions.” By those two sheep-like professions, they pass off as “Bible believers” and enter the flock. Inside, they tear the sheep apart, limb from limb. The average reader would be simply swamped by their tons of material and their pious professions unless he had time to dig into their material and find out how many times they misrepresented the text, how many times they lied about manuscript evi
dence, how many times they covered up correct readings with false readings, and how many times they lied openly and blatantly about the possibilities for translating a word.
When we first began to write the Bible Believer’s Commentary Series, we had no intention of furnishing “the average Christian” with a nice little armchair set of Bible studies that he would enjoy reading. Our intention was to ARM every pastor, student, and teacher in America against the SATANIC RAVAGES of Biblical criticism that came from Tennessee Temple, Pacific Coast Bible College, Dallas Theological Seminary, Bob Jones University, Wheaton, Moody, Fuller, Cedarville, Northwestern, Midwestern, Kings College, Pillsbury, Piedmont, BIOLA, Maranatha, and Springfield. The idea was to place into a Bible-believing pastor’s hands a weapon whereby he could teach his own people every verse in the Authorized Version without altering one word in the English text, and at the same time he could justify this conduct on a scholarly level by answering any smart-aleck in his church (or classroom) who thought that he had some higher source of illumination than the Holy Spirit; principally, the conceited and deceived eggheads who taught him to correct the Bible with THEIR scholarship. We wanted to arm the pastor with a weapon whereby he could DECAPITATE these deluded upstarts.
So, in this volume you will find not only the running comments which were made in the classrooms and taped, but also the critical and exegetical work done on the text of Hebrews by the Alexandrian Cult. Let not the reader think for a moment that this destructive criticism died out in the Fundamental colleges and universities in 1900, or even in 1950. To the contrary, the modern apostate Fundamentalists today (1999) who teach at Liberty University are just as anxious to destroy the Reformation text as any Liberal was in 1880 or even in 1780. To prove this, we will use the 1982
Liberty Bible Commentary published by the Old Time Gospel Hour at Lynchburg, VA.; this is the work of Hindson, Dobson, Kroll, Willmington, Freerkson, and other dead orthodox apostates who helped sponsor the New King Jimmy Version (NKJV).
Of course, we cannot cover every comment by every commentator and corrector of the God-honored text of Hebrews, but so as to give the reader a thorough (“in depth” is the hackneyed cliche) grasp of the power and fanaticism of the Alexandrian Cult, we will use at least six twentieth-century versions of the English text, at least four “eclectic” Greek texts, eight twentieth-century commentaries, plus the comments of Kuene, Alford, Bleek, Nicoll, Dods, Dewette, Vincent, Davidson, and Hollman. This should give the “serious student of the Bible” (a dead-orthodox, hackneyed cliche) a comprehensive grasp of the intensity and momentum of degenerate Fundamentalism in America and show him what really is behind such Laodicean gobbledy-gook” as the “Living” Bible and the New RSV.
The commentaries we will refer to will be The New Bible Commentary (Eerdmans, 1970), The Wycliffe Bible Commentary (Moody Press, 1962), Jamieson, Fausset and Brown (Zondervan, 1961), An Exposition of Hebrews, Arthur W. Pink (Baker Book House, 1964), One Volume Commentary, Dummelow, (McMillan, 1943), Notes on the New Testament, Barnes (Baker Book House, 1949), Hebrews, James and Peter, Ironside (Loizeaux Bros., 1932), and the Liberty Bible Commentary (Old Time Gospel Hour, 1982). Throughout we will correct all commentators (and all of their sources and friends) with the AV Holy Bible.
Along with these destructive critics we will refer to Nicoll’s Expositor’s Greek New 1 estament (Eerdmans, 1961) under the abbreviation “GENT which contains mainly the comments of Marcus Do s, Vincent’s Word Studies (Eerdmans, 1946), and A.
Robertson’s A New Short Grammar of the Greek Testament (Baker Book House, 1931).
For “the original Greek” (a hackneyed, dead-orthodox cliche) we will refer to Nestle’s standard editions published for eighty years (1898 and 1978) and his hypocritical “new” edition (1980) which smuggled back into it the Receptus readings that should have been in it the previous eighty years. (Nothing like brilliant German scholarship, is there!?) We will also use the United Bible Societies extremely corrupt “Aland and Metzger” text (1966, 1968), plus the standard Greek text constructed by the AV translators (The New Testament According to the Received Greek Text, British and Foreign Bible Society, London) and the Catholic Greek text of those two princes of darkness (Westcott and Hort) called The New Testament in the Original Greek (McMillan, NY, 1885).
Naturally we will correct all Greek grammarians, all Greek lexicons, all Greek teachers, all Greek scholars and all native, Greek-speaking Greeks with the Holy Bible. They might fail us, but the Book will certainly never fail us.
Since there are now on the market more than fifty “updated” pieces of useless trash that profess to be revisions of the Authorized Text (and are NOT), and everyone of these became a museum piece or a pile of discarded junk in less than fifty years, we will not waste the reader’s time with all of them; many of them were obsolete in ten years. Instead, we have picked out the six worst corruptions we could find and will use these six corruptions to demonstrate how mentally sick modern scholars become when attempting to destroy the Holy Bible and replace it with their own private interpretations. These six fake “Bibles” will be:
1. The “Bible” recommended consistently by every major Christian college, seminary, and university in America since its debut: the bankrupt ASV (1901) that couldn’t even sell with every recognized scholar
in America pushing it twenty-four hours a day.
2. The “Bible” which supposedly replaced this flop, and consequently, was recommended by all of the staff and faculty of Tennessee Temple and Bob Jones for more than twenty years: the New ASV (1963), often wrongly (and blasphemously) referred to as the New American Standard “Bible.”
3. The New International Version (NIV, 1978), which is the standard Roman Catholic Jesuit Rheims’ Greek text translated into dead orthodox language for modern apostates. It is recommended by nearly all of the Charismatics, Wycliffe Translators, Wheaton, Fuller, Moody, and other dead orthodox branches of the Alexandrian Cult.
4. The so-called New King James Version, which was produced by a raft of Charismatics, Fundamentalists, five-point Calvinists, and assorted dead orthodox apostates, among whom are to be found Truman Dollar, A.V. Henderson, Wally Criswell, Farstad, Edward Hindson, and similar apostates. (They all profess to believe in the “historic positions of the Fundamentalists,” but the reader should read the “AFTERWORD” at the end of this book before going into spasms of joy over such a meaningless profession.) The NKJV is published by the publishing company that published the Communist RSV of the NCCC (Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1982).
5. The “Living” (saints preserve us!) Bible (1971) by Kenneth (the apostate) Taylor, which is just a paraphrase of the ASV, NASV, RSV, NRSV, and NIV.
6. The RSV of the NCCC (1952), which has been used by the Southern Baptist Convention in all of their Sunday School literature for nearly thirty years.
All six of these degenerate productions bear the same Alexandrian stamp. Not one man connected with any of them ever was in subjection to any higher authority than his feelings about somebody’s opinions which he read somewhere', not one man in the bunch
believed any Bible was “HOLY” or that any Bible contained God’s WORDS; not one man in the list could understand the Book of Hebrews in ANY language (that will be more than apparent if you care to read the next 200 pages); not one man on one committee would tell the truth about the motives for his publication; and every man connected with all six phony “Bibles” produced a Bible that God junked almost as soon as it hit the market.
The “Living” Bible survived by investing $4,000,000 into a regular Madison Avenue TV gimmick to sell it.
Still, all six “Bibles” listed above have sold fewer copies (with their Madison Avenue techniques) combined than the AV of 1611. The AV has gone out into 900,000,000 copies with nothing but OPPOSITION from the colleges, seminaries, universities, and institutes (and it has also gone into 800 foreign languages). ALL SIX BIBLES LISTED ABOVE, COMBINED, HAVE SOLD LESS THAN HALF THAT NUMBER.
The so-called “New King James Version” is not as corrupt since its promoters had to be engaged in translating the right Greek text; neither the ASV nor NASV nor NIV nor RSV nor NRSV were translated from the right Greek text. But the unique thing about the NEW KJV is its reinsertion of RSV and New ASV readings back into the ENGLISH text, while at the same time professing allegiance to a different GREEK text than the RSV and New ASV.
If the reader wants to study real duplicity and hypocrisy among Fundamentalists at close range, he should buy a copy of the Liberty Bible Commentary published by the Old Time Gospel Hour and observe that not one commentator in the commentary (Hind- son, Dobson, Kroll, Willmington, Feinberg, Chapman, Borland, Mitchell, Wemp, Stephens) had the courage to USE the text they recommended. The text in the Liberty Bible Commentary is NOT the text of the New
KJV, which they recommend; it is the Authorized Text of the Protestant Reformation found on every dime store counter in America since 1800.
The Book of Hebrews has 13 chapters, 303 verses, and 6,913 words. The author of the last chapter is undoubtedly Paul while the other twelve chapters contain material of such a nature that to this day no one can nail down the author for certain. If I were pressed for an answer I would say that the first twelve chapters were written while Paul was in Arabia, and were aimed at his “kinsmen according to the flesh” (Rom. 9:3), about whom he sorrowed day and night (Acts 20:22- 24). I presume Paul wrote the last chapter sometime after Acts 20. The reader will burn out his eyes studying the arguments for and against the authorship of Priscilla and Aquilla, Barnabas, Apollos, Luke, and others, and when he is through he will be exactly where he was when he started: nowhere.
Deissmann, the German etymologist, considers the book to be simply an “oration” (a literary oration) and not an epistle at all. Zahn takes it to be a genuine epistle and claims that it originally began with a form of salutation which is now missing. Julicher and Hamack suppose that the author intentionally suppressed the greeting since it was unnecessary. Overbeck supposes that the epistle had a greeting from someone other than Paul, and it had to be erased to put the book into the canon as the work of an apostle. Since not one man in the list had any more idea of what he was talking about than Dolly Parton or John Lennon lecturing on “Hell and the Grave,” the reader may dismiss all of their conjectures without a forethought. The school at Alexandria thought that Paul may have written it, although there were North African churches who
rejected the Pauline authorship. Origen was undecided. The North African churches that rejected Pauline authorship ascribed the epistle to Barnabas. Hippolytus denies Pauline authorship; Harnack thinks that Aquilla and Priscilla wrote it; Luther favored Apollos as the author.
The earliest date for the writing of the epistle is around A.D. 51, according to most scholars, and the commonly accepted date by all apostate Fundamentalists and dead orthodox Evangelicals is somewhere between A.D. 80-86. Dummelow assigns it to A.D. 68 and goes to considerable length to show the Alexandrian nature of the epistle rather than the Palestinian nature. Jamiesson, Fausset, and Brown also take a pre-A.D. 70 date and note that Hilary of Poitiers (A.D. 368), Lucifer of Carthage (A.D. 419), and Ambrose of Milan (A.D. 397) all ascribe it to Paul. The earliest traces of the epistle being quoted are in the spurious “Clement of Rome” epistle (supposedly written around A.D. 98). Other “scholars” who favor the authorship of Barnabas as opposed to Paul are Weiss, Renan, Salmon, Ayles, and Vernon Bartlet. Since not a man in the group ever belonged to a New Testament church or believed that any Book on this earth was a Holy Bible, their conjectures may be dispensed with. Siding with Luther (the theory that Apollos was the author) are Bleek, Tholuck, Hilgenfeld, Lunemann, Reuss, Pffeiderer, Alford, Farrar, and Plumptre. Von Soden, Julicher, McGiffert, Schurer, Weizsacker, and others believe the letter was not written to Hebrews at all but to Gentile Christians.
It’s a free country. Take your pick. Accepting or rejecting any of the above theories will not open ONE word in ONE verse for you anywhere in the entire book of 13 chapters.
If you do not care for any of the theories above, there are those who believe that Silas wrote it, and there are those who believe that Phillip (the deacon o
Acts 6) wrote it, and there are others who hold that some character named “Aristion” wrote it. You go out the way you came in. Not one man who espoused any of the theories above could expound Hebrews 3, Hebrews 6, Hebrews 8, Hebrews 10, or many portions of Hebrews 4 and Hebrews 9. You will never “learn any Bible” from such men.
Readers of the Bible Believer’s Commentary Series know the standpoint that we take before making any comments on any Biblical text, and they are well aware of our assumptions and presumptions. We assume that the present English text of the Authorized Version (not some “original” 1611 edition) which we read, believe, preach, and teach is the word of God, containing the words which God wants us to have. We take the position that it is a “discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart” (Heb. 4:12-13) and is, therefore, quite capable of judging the Greek scholarship of any Fundamentalist professor who is stupid enough to think that he is smarter than God.
We will lay the works of the major commentators (see above) and Greek scholars (see above) and modern English revisions (see above) alongside this God-given, God-honored, Godpreserved, God-hallowed, Protestant Reformation text, and where they disagree we shall dispose of them. Nothing valuable will be lost in so doing for they have no spiritual contribution to make to start with if they have to alter God’s word in order to get across their “point.” We proceed with the presumption that we never lose any “light,” never lack any knowledge, never miss any great truth, and never suffer the loss of one needful Bible truth from our faith by discarding eighteen centuries of hypothetical conjectures and destructive nonsense propogated by bloated egotists who think that the sun rises and sets on Christian scholarship.
We will leave the text as it stands and will occasionally cite the original 1613 edition (a life-size fac
simile which I have in my office: not the Thomas Nelson duplicate, but the old, Germanic print on the original paper in the original binding).
Where Hindson, Dobson, Dollar, Henderson Zeller, Kroll, Nicolls, Rice, Willmington, Swindoll MacArthur, Zodhiates, Nestle, Aland, Metzger, Farstad Afman, Price, Martin, Olson, Hutson, Pink, Hollman’ Rendall, Vincent, Thayer, Wuest, Wisdom, Custer, Pa- nosian, and Freerkson (Liberty University) disagree with this “eclectic” text, we will discard them as used dishrags.
“LET GOD BE TRUE, BUT EVERY MAN A LIAR.”
THE BIBLE BELIEVER’S COMMENTARY SERIES
1:1 God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets,
2 Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds;
3 Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high;
Since there are no paragraph marks in a King James Bible beyond Acts 20, we will try to print the verses in the best sectional divisions possible, although the writer of Hebrews will often run a sentence into several verses (see 1:10-12, 2:2-4, 6:17-20, etc.). Observe, at the very start, the un-Pauline sound of the opening. None of Paul’s epistles begin in this fashion. The book is not written to “saved Jews” as many of the commentators suggest; it is written to “Hebrews,” and all Hebrews are not “saved Jews.” The closing of this book (Heb. 13) is obviously Pauline in every line, but Hebrews 1:1-3 is “somethin’ else,” as they say down home. (It might be that Paul wrote the first twelve chapters of Hebrews while he was in Arabia [forty days and forty nights: see the Bible Believer’s Commentary on Galatians 1] and then wrote Heb. 13 many, many years later.) Notice that Lukan authorship for Hebrews is just as peculiar, for Luke certainly wouldn’t have said Hebrews 2:3 and wouldn’t have included himself as
one of those that were in danger of “neglecting salvation”; that isn’t Luke. Again, Apollos would have trouble qualifying as an author if one reads Hebrews 10:34. Paul was in jail on numerous occasions, but not Apollos. Apollos couldn’t have written Hebrews 1-10 in the early part of Acts, for before he was saved (Acts 18), all he was familiar with was the ministry of John the Baptist. If we count Paul as the author of all of Hebrews, we have fourteen epistles for Paul. But since Paul was the thirteenth apostle, it would be more fitting for him to write thirteen epistles, and beyond this, one can hardly imagine Paul writing Hebrews 2:3 after saying that his revelation didn’t come from ANY apostle (Gal. 1:6-10). Furthermore, it would be very strange for the one who wrote Romans 8 to say that no man could be a “partaker of Christ” unless he held out “to the end” (see Heb. 3:6, 14).
“God” (he begins with God) “who at sundry times and in divers manners . . . .” That is a reference to different times (“sundry” is the Old English term still used in grocery stores and drugstores in the twentieth century: “sundries”) and different “manners,” different times and different ways in those times. God would reveal Himself for awhile and then stop revealing Himself. He did this for thirteen years in the life of Abraham (see Gen. 17:1 and comments in that commentary), for many years in the life of Eli (1 Sam. 1- 2), and for at least 390 years after Malachi. There are places in the Book of Judges where God gives no revelation to anyone for spaces of twenty years or more: “sundry times.” “Divers manners” refers to the fact that sometimes an angel carried a message (see Judg. 2:1), sometimes a band of angels (Gen. 32:1), sometimes a host of angels (Luke 2:13), sometimes a single prophet (Jer. 1:1-8; Ezek. 2:1-6), and sometimes a single priest (2 Chron. 24:20; Ezra 7:6-12).
manners spake in time past unto the fathers. a will be Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the twelve Patrl|
“Hath in these last days . . . Now we have trouble.
The expression "the last days” throws the entire faculty and staff of Bob Jones, Tennessee Temple, Liberty University, Dallas, Fuller, Wheaton, Moody, Ma- ranatha, Piedmont, Pillsbury, Pacific Coast, and Springfield into a theological spasm.
Observe the careful work of the Holy Spirit as He preserves in the Authorized Version the deeper things of the “original text” which are completely hidden to these Hebrew and Greek scholars who wasted their time with the Hebrew and Greek.
1. The “last days” is a period of less than fifteen years, for it is heralded by John the Baptist the very year that Jesus Christ begins His ministry, and it ends in Acts 7 before seven years have passed', it then begins again just before the Tribulation (see 2 Tim. 3:1 where Paul is referring to the end of the Church Age) and extends through to the Advent. The “last days” falls so far short of the Church Age (1990 years) that to talk about such matters seriously is to confess that three-fourths of the mind has “vacated.” Yet that is what all of the Bible rejectors do who profess to believe in the “plenary, verbal inspiration of the original autographs.”
2. God’s Son will speak in the future, but He will NOT speak from “earth.” Notice how clearly this is pointed out in Hebrews 12:25 where all of the apostates run it back to some other time in the past. It isn’t in the past; it is in the future.
3. This future is foreshadowed by Jesus Christ appearing as a bright LIGHT to Paul and “SHINING ROUND ABOUT HIM,” and speaking to him from Heaven (Acts 9:3, 26:14); so he confesses that his birth is a type of the birth of Israel “out of due time” (1 Cor. 15:8). The last doubt is removed when we read Psalm 80:1-3, Psalm 50:1-2, and Psalm 67:1 where
the mid-Tribulation appearance of Jesus Christ to HEBREWS who “look for him” (Heb. 9:28, AHHH!!) is given in unmistakable terms for anyone except those who profess to believe in the “plenary, verbal inspiration of the original autographs. ”
4. To drive home His point, the Holy Spirit, in the ENGLISH text, butchers Isaiah 9:1-2 when applying it to Christ’s first coming (Matt. 4:14-16) and refuses to quote the entire verse. He omits a large portion of the verse when He desires to make a spiritual application for the First Coming because He knows that the literal application is to the Second Coming (see the context: Isa. 9:1-2) which will be “in the LAST DAYS”!
This is a fair example of why no man like Afman, Price, Farstad, Martin, Zeller, Swindoll, MacArthur, MacRae, Fink, Thieme, Carson, Willmington, Faulkner, Henderson, Taylor, Dollar, or Lockyer could be trusted with New Testament exegesis in any language from any version or translation of any Greek text. In their madness to impress you with their understanding and scholarship, they simply pervert every passage they cross that they don’t understand, then they alter it to match their ignorance, then they brag about their ignorance, and then they try to proselyte in the name of the “verbally inspired originals” to get YOU to stumble along in the darkness with them. Their glory is their shame, their education is their undoing, their exposition is mischievous madness, and the Holy Spirit is not in it; nor ever has been, nor ever will be.
“These last days” do not begin with Calvary and end with the Advent. They begin with John the Baptist and end in Acts 7, and they begin again at the close of this age and end at the Second Advent. The “Son” (vs. 2) speaks on BOTH occasions: the first time on earth and the second time “from heaven” (Heb. 12:25).
Any other private interpretation is heretical nonsense.
When Paul speaks of the “last days” (see 2 Tim. 3:1), he is writing to future Church Age saints. Whoever wrote Hebrews is seeing it take place when he is writing IN those “last days.” It is not like Paul saying that the “last days” are going to come; this fellow said, “THESE LAST DAYS,” so he is plainly showing us things that have to take place in one of two dispensations: either at the beginning of the Tribulation (possibly middle), or else sometime BEFORE Acts 7. The “last days” in this passage are the last days of Israel, not the church. If it were the last days of the church then the writer is not in Acts 7—9; he is up at the end of the Church Age and at the beginning of Daniel’s Seventieth Week (see Dan. 9). It is going to be a “Tribulation shot” from now on.
“Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son . . . If you pick up nearly any commentary on this earth, the writer will say that the “last days” had to begin with Calvary because that is when God spoke “by his Son.” This would, make “the last days” the whole 2000 years of church history. Now watch this thing carefully, “whom he hath appointed HEIR of all things ....” Do you see the “HEIR”? An heir gets an inheritance (Col. 3:24; Gal. 5:21), right? The “inheritance” is NOT IN THE CHURCH AGE. Hebrews 1:2, therefore, is not aimed at the Church Age. That “heir” is the same one who came to the vineyard to get what belonged to Him (Matt. 21), and they cast Him out and killed Him; they said “THIS IS THE HEIR” (Matt. 21:38). Tell me something, when does that Heir get His inheritance? In the Church Age? Of course not; there isn’t a serious Bible student on this earth in the twentieth century that believes anything of the kind. That is the Postmillennialism of Augustine (A.D. 430) taught by all unsaved politicians and popes (see The History of the New Testament Church, Vol. 1, pp. 119-121, 161, 200).
To confirm the truth that this speaking of the Son
is still a future matter, observe the wording of 2:5, “For unto the angels hath he not put in subjection THE WORLD TO COME, WHEREOF WE SPEAK.” There is no way to get out of that thing, not even by hiding behind a “historic fundamentalist position represented by blankety blank, and blankety blank, plus blankety blank.” (They are all blanks.) Hebrews 1:1-2 puts us right up into Daniel’s Seventieth Week, and the “world to come” is plainly the MILLENNIAL INHERITANCE (see Gal. 5:21; Eph. 5:5). You’ll hit that thing in the Book of Hebrews every time you turn a page.
“By whom also he made the worlds ..(vs. 2). Here, the Bible believer should make a quiet and subtle note on the apostate faculty members at Tennessee Temple, Dallas, Pacific Coast, Lynchburg, and other Alexandrian offshoots. He should observe that after all of this gas and static about “failure to translate the Greek uniformly” (Do you remember that big stink about “Pascha” should have been Passover instead of “Easter”?), the Greek word “aion” here has suddenly been translated by every apostate revision on the market as “WORLD” instead of “ages.” (The NIV says “universe.”)
Why is this? The word was translated as “age” in Matthew 28:20 by all of the apostates. All of the Greek lexicons tell us that it means “ages.” Why “worlds” here, as in the AV? The AV had it as “worlds” in every edition since 1611. How did the AV translators get it right—and the new versions consent, although all mistranslated the plural as a singular for 370 years— when all of the Greek lexicons used by their critics say that it is wrong?
It’s a strange “world” (!), isn’t it?
Observe that the real problem was the use of the word “worlds” in Hebrews 11:3. No man with a clear conscience on any committee could have translated it as “ages” for it referred to “THINGS WHICH ARE
SEEN.” So, here we have TWO meanings of the word “aion, ” and the AV uses both of them correctly. None of the new translations got it right: it is in the PLURAL. The word can mean ages or periods of time (in the plural), or it can mean literal visible “globes” in space; some of them we call “stars,” some we call “planets,” and others by any name someone wishes to make up to impress someone. A “world” does not have to be inhabited as the earth is, because later there will be inhabitants on millions of “worlds” before God’s plan for the “ages” is over (see the Scriptural proof in the Bible Believer’s Commentary on Revelation, Rev. 21- 22).
When in doubt, throw all Christian scholarship out.
“Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person . . .” (vs. 3). Every serious student should mark the verse. Verse 3 has been altered in nearly every “reliable translation” on the market. The grossly corrupt ASV of 1901 (recommended for twenty-five years by the faculty and staff of Bob Jones University) has inserted the archaic “effulgence” for “brightness”; the still grosser N1V has gotten rid of Christ as God’s image (see 2 Cor. 4:4-5) altogether and has made Him only a “representation” of God’s “being”; the Living Bible eliminates both the “image” and the “brightness.” The grandparent of these corrupt perversions was, of course, the RSV of the NCCC, the greatest organized Communist group in America today outside of the IRS and the NAACP.
But Jesus Christ is the “EXPRESS IMAGE” of God (see Col. 3:10 and 2 Cor. 4:4), and no amount of “reliable translations” by “qualified authorities” will ever make the Lord Jesus match up to the Calvinistic- theological definitions of that “image” which make it “true righteousness, wisdom and holiness, etc.” Adam was made in God’s IMAGE, and that is why the Holy Spirit calls Adam “THE SON OF GOD” (Luke 3:38)
and gives Jesus Christ as the “LAST ADAM” (see 1 Cor. 15:45). Adam was made LIKE Christ, although, of course, he was not “BORN,” nor did he have sinless BLOOD (see the comments under Gen. 2:23 in that Commentary). [Imagine some educated idiot thinking that “brightness” should be “effulgence” and “image” should be “representation” when he couldn’t even put Isa. 9 and Matt. 4 together with Heb. 1:2 and 12:25. We have the winners, don’t we?]
“. . . And upholding all things by THE WORD OF HIS POWER ...” (v. 3). See that? That is a small “w,” not the capital “W” the modern neo-orthodox Fundamentalist uses when talking about the Bible as God’s “Message” (Word) to men. Do you know what that “word” means? It means that the reason this building (or any other building) hasn’t collapsed and the roof hasn’t fallen in is because God hasn’t told it to fall down. The reason your car keeps on running is because the Lord allows it to keep running. The atoms and protons and neutrons, the gasoline and the oil, the metal and the springs and the wiring are held together by the word of God; the word of God is the Bible! That is a thought isn’t it?
“By the word of his power.” You talk about power, brother, in Genesis 1 the Lord said, “Let there be light”! What happened? The lights came on. The Lord said, “Let there be life.” Up pops life. Wherever God says something, the physical elements respond immediately. Observe how this “creationism” is supported by verse 2 (“by whom also he made the worlds”). Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word, was the means by which God created the visible universe (see Col. 1:15—18 and Rev. 3:14 for absolute confirmation). God, as pure, eternal, self-sustaining energy (perpetual motion!), will be found in verses 11-12. Genesis 1 is attributed to God (compare Psa. 136, 148 and Mark 13:19), not some “big bang.” The “heavens” (plural) are the work of God’s “hands” (Psa. 102:25). The
writer of Hebrews is a CREATIONIST, as is Simon Peter (2 Pet. 3:1-6) and the Lord Jesus Christ (Matt. 19:4).
The elements that God created obey their Creator. The only thing that disobeys God is man. If the Lord tells a dog to bark, it will bark. If the Lord tells a bird to drop dead, it will drop dead. If the Lord tells a dog to bite you, it will give it a try. If the Lord tells a swallow to fly north or south, it will fly north or south (Psa. 148:1-10). The Lord tells man to do something, and man argues with Him or ignores Him or laughs at Him (Prov. 1-2). Yet man and the animals, nature and the solar system, the galaxies and the universe are sustained and held together by “THE WORD OF HIS POWER” (v. 3).
I was downtown one day in an office supply company, coveting and lusting after various pieces of expensive furniture which could have enabled me to do three times the quality of work that I had been doing for thirty years. I went by one place and almost cried. There was a draftsman’s desk; it was about eight feet long and four feet wide, and it was polished stainless steel with a tilt-table on it with perfect lighting. I thought of the 100 oil paintings I’d painted, the 600 water colors and the 3,000 cartoons for Christian work, and the hours I had labored on those things while doing them on the tops of dining room tables, living room coffee tables, cardboard boxes in storage rooms, on my lap in motel rooms, on suitcases in hotel lobbies, on tree stumps, and on magazines while riding in the backs of cars. I could have used a good drawing table.
I could have used a good lighting system which would have kept my eyes in much better condition than they are now in. I never had “good conditions.” I have written by moonlight, starlight, kerosene lamp, gas lamp, candlelight, and on some occasions by fireplace light. What has held me together this long?
Sixty-four years of reading a book a day since the age of ten is pretty good “wear and tear” on the eyeballs, is it not?
In that office supply company I saw big old desks, some of them eight feet long with “pullouts” on either side. I could have sat there in the middle of something like that in a swivel chair with my commentaries, lexicons, and versions around me; and I could have cut my writing time in half for over thirty-seven books. But I’ve never had a set-up like that. I set the type on my first three books myself on my own Linotype, which back in those days (1960-1962) was called a Vari typer. There were no “word processors.” I typed my first four books on a manual “Underwood.” I never saw an electric typewriter until four books had been written.
How did my eyes and nerves survive such conditions for thirty-five more publications? The Lord held me together. The Lord held the typewriter together. You can have the best and finest material in this world, and if God doesn’t hold it together, preserve it, keep it, sustain it, and bless it, all you have is a pile of junk; and that goes for your house, your car, your land, your family, your school building, your church, and your nation. I can turn out more work on God blessed junk than the faculty members of most Christian schools can turn out on an $80,000,000 campus with $8,000,000 worth of equipment. “An Gottes’segen ist alles gelegen. ” (Go learn what THAT meaneth!)
Do you want to stay in good health? Spend a lot of time in His word, and I don’t mean the “PLENARY, VERBALLY INSPIRED ORIGINAL AUTOGRAPHS.” When God holds things together, they will hold together even if they are “third-rate,” and if God doesn t hold things together, they will fall apart even if they are the best. ,
“When he had by himself purged our sins . • •
(v. 3). There is a verse aimed right at the pope: it is as “anti-Catholic” a piece of “hate literature” as you ever
saw in your life. You see “FIRE” cannot purge sins; it is blood that purges sins. The “fires of purgatory” would clean you from nothing even if they were there. Notice also that the believer’s “purgatory” is in the past tense', he has already been completely cleansed. Compare this true statement with Hebrews 9 (and notice the comments under 9:14) where we are told that the blood of Jesus Christ can “purge” our consciences. Purging has to do with blood: not fire. Fire purges nothing after Calvary. The Old Testament sacrifices by FIRE were exactly what did NOT “do the job” permanently if we are to believe Hebrews 10:1-2. Our purgatory is over; a Catholic’s is yet future. Evidently then, there is a great difference between a CHRISTIAN and a CATHOLIC (see The History of the New Testament Church, Vol. 1).
The grossly pro-Catholic ASV of 1901 removes the “purging” and calls it only a “purification.” The still grosser New International Version (hereafter NIV) follows the Catholic lead in line with the RSV of the NCC, who took the lead more than twenty years before the NIV came out. Kenneth Taylor (TLB) is even more liberal and reduces the purging to “clearing” the record (ho hum). Naturally, the Jehovah’s Witness Bible (NWT) follows the Catholic reading of the RSV. But the Lord Jesus Christ’s vicarious atonement for our sins on Calvary was more than a “PURIFICATION.” That word is the word used for the Old Testament ritual of animal sacrifice (see Heb. 9:13, 23), and even these sacrifices PURGED sins temporarily (see Heb. 9:22).
The blood of Christ is not just something available if a man wants to be “purified.” The blood of the Lord Jesus Christ can BURN SIN OUT OF EXISTENCE BY TAKING IT AWAY (John 1:29), so that the man who comes to Christ is not only purified from sin (see 1 Cor. 6:11), but HIS SINS ARE DONE AWAY WITH AND ATTRIBUTED TO SOMEONE ELSE. Ro
mans 4:1-8 is so strong on this that only a Catholic could miss it.
“Sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high . . .” (v. 3). When Stephen saw Him (see Acts 7:55), He was not sitting down; He was standing up. Yet here we are told that He “sat down.” Since Hebrews 12 tells us exactly the same thing, we can only assume that He was sitting, that He arose for a moment, and then sat back down again. (You won’t find that in any exposition of Hebrews written by a nut who talks about “plenary, verbally inspired original autographs” while perverting the words of God!) Jesus Christ got up to signal a rapture in the “last days” (see Bible Believer’s Commentary on Acts, Acts 7:55-56) and sat back down again when the official representatives of Israel rejected His witness (see Acts 7:59 in that Commentary).
1:4 Being made so much better than the angels, as he hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they.
5 For unto which of the angels said he at any time, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee? And again, I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son?
6 And again, when he bringeth in the first- begotten into the world, he saith, And let all the angels of God worship him.
7 And of the angels he saith, Who maketh his angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire.
8 But unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever: a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of thy kingdom.
9 Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; therefore God, even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.
In verse 4, we begin a comparison of the Lord Jesus Christ with angels. Obviously, He comes out
“better” (v. 4) than they. We should remember that the theme of the Book of Hebrews is “better things.” Notice: “a better resurrection” (11:35), “better promises” (8:6), “a better covenant” (8:6), better sacrifices (9:23), “a better hope” (7:19), and “a better country” (11:16), along with better “things” (11:40). “Being made so much better than the angels, as he hath by INHERITANCE” (there is that Tribulational and Millenial mark!) “obtained a more excellent name than they” (that is, the angels).
This time the “inheritance” is not only a reference to the fact that the “king over all the earth” (Zech. 14:9) in the Millennium is the Lord Jesus Christ, but also to the fact that the “NAME” (see v. 4) was given to Jesus by His Father (Matt. 1:21), and that “name,” both in its derivation (source) and meaning (Jehovah Saves), is superior to such names as Gabriel and Michael.
Jesus was better than any angel in the Old Testament (see Job 4:18), and as far as that goes, He was better than any saint (see Job 15:15) in the Old Testament: Joseph lied about the cup, Daniel allowed the king to commit sacrilege, Moses lost his temper, David committed adultery, Job’s legendary patience finally “gave plumb out” (see Job 31:40), and Jonah and Samson committed enough sins to fill a five-year diary.
You can take somebody even like Paul, who undergoes all kinds of whippings and beatings for the Lord and takes it patiently and praises God for it, but Christ goes even beyond Paul, because Christ faced the crucifixion “for the JOY that was set before him” (Heb. 12:2). He didn’t just endure it; HE ENJOYED THE PROSPECT. Whereas Paul says only, “I could wish that myself were accursed . . (Rom. 9:3), the Lord Jesus says, “I will be accursed for them” (Gal. 3:13). So He is better than anyone: “Being made so much better ...
“For unto which of the angels said he [God] at
any time, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee?” (v. 5). None of the angels. Angels are not “begotten.” “. . . And again, I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son?” Notice that here the Holy Spirit takes the prophecy given to David about his son Solomon (2 Sam. 7:14) and shows that Solomon was not a “born again” child of God in the Old Testament any more than Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Noah, David, and Moses. The reference was to the greater son of David (Matt. 1:12), the Lord Jesus Christ. Solomon was NOT “begotten of God.” There is no new birth in the Old Testament, as we have remarked on scores of occasions.
“This day have I begotten thee . . (v.5) has
1. John Calvin and all Reformed theologians put it before Genesis 1 on the philosophical idea that since “all of God’s decrees were eternal” (a philosophical part of Calvin’s theological belief, TULIP), the decree of Psalm 2:7 had to be a reference to a transaction that took place before Genesis 1. As all the informed know, this extravagant piece of pagan philosophy was what triggered the nebulous discussions at the Council of Nicaea (see The History of the New Testament Church, Vol. I, Chapter 8 for a detailed discussion), and the Council wound up nowhere. It wound up with an “ETERNAL BEGATTING or an ETERNAL GENERATION” that not even the Devil could figure out. Serve- tus was burned at the stake by Calvin {ibid, p. 127) for not being able to figure it out.
2. Gardner Ted and Herbert Armstrong, along with many apostate Fundamentalists, teach that the “begatting” referred to Christ’s physical resurrection because they were unable to read Acts 13:33 intelligently (see Acts 13:34 in that Commentary for the discussion).
3. The obvious sense is that Jesus Christ was begotten of the Virgin Mary by the Holy Ghost at His
BIRTH when He showed up on this earth for the first time as a man. That is the sense in which we take it. Observe: . WHEN HE BRINGETH IN THE
FIRSTBEGOTTEN INTO THE WORLD” (v. 6). With this clear reference in front of our faces, the Alexandrian Cult (all faculty members of all Fundamentalist schools who alter and correct the text of the AV) is anxious to let us know that the placement of the Greek word for “again” (Greek, “palin”) indicates that verse 6 is a reference to the Second Advent, not the First Advent. This was done to match the balled-up mess they made of verse 5 where they tried to line up the “begatting” with an “eternal generation” (Calvin and Nicaea) that never was connected with any “day” (see comments above). The Alexandrian Cult reads “when God AGAIN brings Christ into the world.” Proof for this nonsense is supposed to be that the angels will not worship Christ till THEN (“and let all the angels of God worship him”).
The idea here is that Hebrews 2:5 would eliminate all angels from having any part in the Millennium except worshipping Christ; they would have no rulership. There are ten things wrong with this fantasy, but we will stick to the essentials.
1. In the resurrection the saved ARE “as the angels” (Matt. 22:30) “being the children of the resurrection” (Luke 20:36).
2. These “children of the resurrection” DO have the world in subjection if they “suffered with Christ” (see 2 Tim. 2:12; Rom. 8:17; Luke 19:17; and Rev. 20:1-6).
3. The angels referred to in Hebrews 2:5 are the angels that are in glory now: THEY DO NOT COME UP IN THE RESURRECTION (Matt. 22:30).
4. The “again” in Hebrews is a reference to repeating references in the Old Testament every time they occur: notice verses 5, 6, 8, 10, and 13, plus 4:5, 4:7, and 10:30, etc. It is not Christ’s “coming again.”
5. Jesus Christ is NOT “brought” into the world at the Second Coming by the wildest stretch of anyone’s imagination except the faculty members at Tennessee Temple, Bob Jones, Dallas, Fort Worth, Arlington, Pacific Coast, Lynchburg and Piedmont. HE COMES IN HIS OWN POWER WITH “POWER AND GLORY ” AND HE BRINGS SOMEONE WITH HIM (Rev. 14, 19; Isa. 63; Joel 2).
The reference then in verse 6 is to the “begotten” in verse 5 (note “the firstbegotten” in v. 6). Calvin was wrong. So was Dabney, Kuyper, and Hodge; so also Chafer, Shedd, Gill, and Pink. Ditto Freerkson, Willmington, Hindson, Rendall, Dummelow, and others.
“And again, when he bringeth in the first- begotten ...
Jesus Christ was the first man ever to be BORN of the Holy Spirit. John the Baptist might have been “... filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother’s womb” (Luke 1:15), but he was not born of the Holy Spirit (see Christ’s comment on the matter in Matt. 11:11). A man said of Jesus Christ: “He was motherless from the bosom of the Father and became fatherless on the bosom of His mother.”
“And of the angels he saith, Who maketh his angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire” (vs. 7). (I heard a fellow use that verse to prove that a preacher should smoke!) We talk about “being set on fire for God,” you know, but you have to watch that. “The baptism of fire” in Matthew 3:9-12 is a man burning up at the fires of the Second Advent in Malachi 4:1-5.
I had a friend in Los Angeles who took that “on fire for the Lord” stuff literally. Pastor Ray Batema was going down the street one time in L.A. passing out tracts (he was the pastor of Central Baptist Church), and he found one of his backslidden church members working at a pornographic “adult” movie house. Batema
went in and preached to him about not living for the Lord and said that he was backslidden and living like the devil. The kid apologized and confessed that Pastor Batema was right, but he still claimed he was making an “honest living” dishing out pornography.
Ray Batema went back to church, and that Sunday he preached on Christians that were lukewarm when they should be “on fire for God.” He told about his backslidden church member.
Well, there was another young man in the congregation of the Central Baptist Church who had only been saved a few weeks. When he heard about his younger pornographic “fellow member,” he got a two-gallon can of gasoline and some matches and went down into that porno shop and threw gasoline all over it. There were people screaming and hollering and running for their lives while the owner desperately tried to stop him from setting the place on fire. He told them, “I’m going to burn this place to a cinder.”
Everybody left except the manager and one other person; but the new Christian was too big for the manager to beat up, and they couldn’t get rid of him. He was standing there trying to strike the matches he had brought, but the matches were wet; and before he could get a match struck, the sheriff came and arrested him. They had him under $8,000 bond for attempted arson.
He apologized to his pastor, Brother Batema, who got him “off the rap.” When he apologized tearfully to Brother Batema, he said, “I realize I did the wrong thing, preacher, but you got me all stirred up. I just wanted to be ON FIRE FOR THE LORD!” That is really taking the text literally! But the young man got right; he went on to study for the ministry and is now in the pastorate.
“And of the angels he saith, Who maketh his angels spirits . . (v. 7). You want to notice that
wording. Angels are “spirits.” The Devil is a spirit. You want to notice this because all of the so-called
“reliable” versions (including the so-called “New King James Version”) have erased the “a” from John 4:24 so as to read in line with the RSV of the National Council of Churches and Kenneth Taylor’s “Living” Bible. You see, to say “God is Spirit” tells you nothing; the Devil is “spirit,” and so are angels. Your Authorized Version tells you correctly—and the New KJV is NOT an Authorized Version—that “God is a Spirit,” that is, a spirit IN DISTINTION FROM OTHER SPIRITUAL BEINGS. Someone said, “The Greek has no indefinite article,” to which two things may be said in reply:
1. All translators add indefinite articles at times where there are none (see any edition of an ASV or NASV or RSV or NRSV).
2. Very often the Authorized English is an IMPROVEMENT over the Receptus Greek text. (Tell THAT one to Farstad, Waite, Burgon, and the Trinitarian Bible Society, and watch them flip their lid! Af- man, Rice, Sumner, Willmington, Zodhiates, Wuest, Custer, Wisdom, and Bob Jones III will go “bonkers.”)
“But unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever . . (v. 8). Since this is one of
the very strongest verses in the New Testament on the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ, it will prove to be highly unpopular with some twentieth-century translators who profess to be terribly concerned with the “archaic language of the AV, etc.” (You know the line.)
Observe that the Holy Spirit has just called Jesus Christ “God” (see 1 Tim. 3:16).
“THY throne, O God ..(the quotation is from Psa. 45:6-7). The “THY throne” is the throne of Jesus Christ. Since the Greek construction is so solid that not even the RSV translators can get rid of the wording, they print the AV text but add the footnote that another reading should be, “God is thy throne.” (This alternate reading is also recommended in the Jehovah’s Witness Bible (NWT) which also gets rid of the words “for
ever and ever.” The ASV suggests “thy throne is FOR God.” We can dispense with the suggestions.)
“A sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of thy kingdom” (v. 8). The reference is again clearly to Christ’s millennial reign on earth (Psa. 110; Isa. 2; Amos 9:11-15, etc.). There is no indication in 2,000 years of church history that “righteousness” has “reigned” anywhere on this earth in any sense of a “kingdom.” “Grace” can reign in a man’s heart (Rom. 5:17), and so can the “GIFT of righteousness” (Rom. 5:17); but neither of these things is any reference to a king on a throne wielding a sceptre. The sceptre shows up when the King shows up (Matt. 25:31-34) and assumes His reign as King of the earth (Zech. 14:9) over the “KINGDOMS OF THIS WORLD” (Rev. 11:15).
“Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; therefore God, even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows” (vs. 9). That is, “Thou” (God the Son) “hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity”—notice that you can’t be a good lover without being a good HATER—“therefore God . . .” (God the Father) “hath anointed THEE” (God the Son) “with the oil of gladness” (the Holy Spirit: see John 3:34) “above thy fellows.” “The oil of gladness” is a symbol of the Holy Spirit and is typified in the Old Testament by the anointing of Aaron and his sons as priests (see Psa. 133). “Above thy fellows” indicates that neither Melchisedek nor Aaron nor Aaron’s sons (Lev. 8:30) “had” the Holy Spirit in the manner in which our Lord had the Holy Spirit. The Lord Jesus Christ was the Holy Spirit incarnate (1 Tim. 3:16). The anointing on the “head of Aaron” (Psa. 133) clearly shows us that our “HEAD” is the Lord Jesus and that He is in heaven (Col. 1:18). We are the body; He is the HEAD. The head should always run the body (1 Cor. 12). No “body” should control its head. No tail has any business wagging a dog.
And here we close our first section on exposition
and turn briefly to the Alexandrian Cult to see how they have made out with the first nine verses in the Holy Bible’s account of “Hebrews.”
The real Bible believer has already received three flashing blue lights upon reading Hebrews 1:1-9. These warnings also scream like a siren in the ear of any man who really believes the Book he is reading. There is going to be a call for a SWAT team at verses 2-3 and 8 and possibly another at verse 5. No one has to guess as to where the “historic Fundamentalists” and “plenary, verbally inspired ragbags” will set up their nuclear weapons to blast the words of God into smithereens. Here is “THESE LAST DAYS” showing up in verse 2, and not one man listed in the Introduction can define the term; here is “the express IMAGE OF HIS PERSON” showing up in verse 3, identifying the Lord Jesus with Adam (see Gen. 2:7 and comments in that Commentary) and the “image” that is replaced in the New Birth (see Col. 3:10 and comments in that Commentary), and here is a statement in verse 8 that Jesus is “GOD.” No “good, godly, dedicated, qualified scholar” would tolerate such plain talk for a minute. The wrecking crew goes to work—EVERY ONE OF THEM BELIEVING IN THE PLENARY, VERBALLY INSPIRED “ORIGINAL AUTOGRAPHS.”
1. Christ is NOT the “image of God”; He is merely the “exact representation of His NATURE’ (NASV, recommended and promoted by Bob Jones University for more than twenty years).
2. Christ is NOT the “image of God”; He is the “representation of His BEING” (NIV, recommended by all faculty and staff members of Wheaton, Fuller and Moody).
3. Christ is NOT the “image of God”; He is just “marked” as God (Living "Bible”).
4. Christ is not the “image of God”; He just bears the "stamp” of God’s NATURE (RSV, promoted in the Sunday School literature of the Southern Baptist Con
vention for more than thirty years).
Having a little trouble with the “original Greek” are we, kiddies? Why didn’t you just transliterate the word charaktr as “character”? Because Christ was not the “character” of God’s “person” (see the verse); He was the IMAGE of God’s person. Observe: “. . . He that hath SEEN me hath SEEN the Father” (John 14:9). Do you see how often the infallible English can straighten out the Greek lexicon? Remarkable, isn’t it?
Although they are afraid at Liberty University (Lynchburg, Virginia) to use the reading they want to use in their commentary (p. 668), Freerkson cites a comment by Kent (p. 37) which says that the Lord Jesus was not “the brightness of his glory” but rather “the effulgence of the divine glory.” At Liberty University they call this “updating the archaic English” (“the brightness of his glory”); and when the NKJV was given its promotional push by Falwell, Hindson, Dobson, Willmington and Farstad, they claimed that this “updating” was the first to bring “light” on the AV text since 1611. I have the “flyer” here with me.
Kenneth Taylor (Living Bible) slams into the deity of Christ again in verse 5 and erases the word “begotten” from the text. The translators of the NIV (recommended by Wheaton, Moody, Fuller, and Dallas) do exactly the same thing. This puts both of these “translations” in a worse light than the Liberal RSV of 1952 published by the NCCC, for that modernistic translation has left the word “begotten” in the text, as it stands in the Geneva Bible, Tyndale, the Bishop’s Bible, Matthew’s Bible, Wycliffe, and the Authorized Version.
Now the Alexandrian Cult is faced with two doctrines which cannot be handled. One of these is the expression “THIS DAY have I begotten thee,” which is plainly a quotation from Psalm 2:7, and the “last days” (v. 2), which matches Genesis 49:1 and Isaiah 2:2. Problem! Since the passages in Genesis 49 cover
both advents (see Gen. 49 and comments in that Commentary) while the passage in Isaiah 2:2 (as well as Micah 4:1) covers only the SECOND ADVENT, the scholars agree with one consent to make the expression “last days” refer to A.D. 33 to 1990-plus. This makes “the last days” run nearly 2,000 years. The classic statement on this “bumfoozled” theology will be found on page 248 of The Expositor’s Greek Testament, Vol. IV, the writer being Marcus Dods. Dods teaches that Christ began His Messianic REIGN in A.D. 33 and is still “spreading the Kingdom.” To enforce this private interpretation (all Campbellites read it exactly the same way), Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown come forward with the information that the “oldest Greek manuscripts” (where have we heard THAT song before!?) say “at the last part of these days.” Any old port in a storm. Kenneth Taylor (Living Bible) takes the shortest shortcut and simply omits the whole phrase.
The Alexandrian Cult fares just as badly when confronted with “this day have I begotten thee.” Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown, speaking for all five-point Calvinists, say that Acts 13:33 proves that Christ was not “begotten” until the Resurrection. Since this is the doctrine that Herbert W. and Gardner Ted Armstrong have taught for thirty years, Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown hastily add that since the “communication of the Divine essence . . . involves eternal generation, that there actually was no ‘THIS DAY’ on which Christ was ‘begotten’.” Rather (citing Alford), “This day ... is an everlasting today. ” (For further confusion study the account of the Council of Nicaea found in Chapter 8 of The History of the New Testament Church by the author.)
In the infallible English text, the Holy Spirit already told the reader what “THIS DAY” was, for right in the next verse He says, “when he bringeth in the firstbegotten INTO THE WORLD ..(v. 6).
Now, the Bible believer always has the “edge
when matters like this are being studied, for he believes that “it shall be even as it was told him.” It is apparent to any student of the Book that John the Baptist is the herald of the “last days” when the Kingdom of Heaven is “at hand.” It is perfectly manifest that with the rejection of that offer of the Kingdom (see comments in the Commentaries on Matthew, chaps. 5- 7, and Acts, chaps. 1, 4) to Israel, “the last days” are shoved up ahead to the “end time” of Daniel 11-12. And woe be to the “Fundamentalist” who doesn’t grab that simple Biblical truth, for that is the KEY to understanding the Book of Hebrews; and no other key will open its “riches.” The Book of Hebrews has to be a book that was written for Hebrews and aimed at Hebrews in the early part of the Book of Acts where the Kingdom was still being offered (see Acts 3-4). Upon the rejection of that offer (Acts 7), the “last days” are pushed up to Daniel’s Seventieth Week (beyond 1985), and the epistle is aimed at TRIBULATION JEWS.
No other theory or conjecture or system of interpretation devised by any scholar since A.D. 33 has ever proved satisfactory in explaining the doctrinal material found in Hebrews. “These last days” do not stretch from A.D. 33 to 1990, with Christ “reigning as the Messiah.” They appear when He appeared the first time to speak to us (Heb. 1:2), and they will appear again following the exodus of the Church, which is Christ’s Body, not His Messianic kingdom. His Messianic kingdom is JEWISH (see Luke 1:30-33 and Isa. 2:1-4).
“THIS DAY HAVE I BEGOTTEN THEE” can only refer to the DAY that Christ was begotten (John 3:16). Why would it refer to anything else? The passage in Acts 13:33 was clarified in the next verse where the verse that is applied to the Resurrection is NOT Psalm 2:7 but rather Isaiah 55:3.
Look it up. There is nothing like reading a King James Bible to give light on the “originals.”
The last botched-up job that the “good, godly, dedicated, qualified Conservatives and Evangelicals” did on the passage before us was their noble effort to get rid of the word “PURGED” from verse 3. Since this word ties the verse in with Hebrews 9:14 and 10:2, it was essential to erase the cross reference. Following the lead of the unsaved Liberals in the NCC, the translators of the ASV, the NASV, and the NIV (all “good, godly, qualified featherheads”) have erased the word “purged” and substituted “purification of (for) sins.” It would seem that where the Holy Spirit had gone to the trouble of supplying the reader with a verse against purgatory (the verse says the purging element is BLOOD, not “fire”), the Fundamentalists and Conservatives would have let it stand, but they didn’t. They lined up with the RSV of the Communist party.
After all, this is the RSV that cited Psalm 45:6 for the quotation in Hebrews 1:8 (it deals with the deity of Christ) that says “YOUR DIVINE THRONE ENDURES FOREVER.” They omitted the deity of Christ from the verse that the writer of Hebrews quoted to prove the deity of Christ. Why “line up” with hypocrites like that?
It is Dummelow who steps forward with the old Alexandrian “heave ho” to justify the perverse reading of the RSV. He says as blandly as mush on cream of wheat that “there is some difficulty in regard to the exact reading of the first clause IN THE ORIGINAL” (Comment, p. 1017). (Boy, oh boy, have we ever heard THAT one before!!)
And here we will close accounts on the corrupt scholarship of Hindson, Willmington, Dobson, Afman, Hollmann, Bleek, MacRae, Zeller, Alford, Kent, Freerkson, and their kin. Verse 1 should read “having of old time” according to Von Soden, but it should really be “after he had” according to Alford, Bleek, and DeWette. Christ’s image (v. 3) should have been a “light body” according to Davidson. “Image” should
have been “essence” according to Wordsworth. “When he bringeth in” (v. 6) should be “when he shall have brought in” if you are to believe Alford, DeWette, Moulton, and Lucken instead of the Holy Bible. Since there was not one obscure point or phrase in the entire passage, and since not one Biblical truth was obscured in the AV text (in any edition), and since not one suggestion or recommended change helped explain ANYTHING in the text (in any edition), we leave the passage as it stands. As it stands (in any edition), it is well able to overcome all of its revisers and critics.
1:10 And, Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of thine hands:
11 They shall perish; but thou remainest; and they all shall wax old as doth a garment;
12 And as a vesture shalt thou fold them up, and they shall be changed: but thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail.
13 But to which of the angels said he at any time, Sit on my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool?
14 Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?
Verses 13 and 14 hold the context together. We are still dealing with Christ’s superiority over angels; however, there are suddenly inserted three verses which deal with the power and eternity of the Creator (vss. 10-12). This is done for two reasons. First of all to show that the One who called Jesus Christ His “Son” (and also called Him “God” [vs. 8]) is eternal; therefore, His pronouncements about the Lord Jesus are fixed and certain. Secondly, we have just been told that His “THRONE” (vs. 8) is “for ever and ever”; therefore, it will endure as long as God endures, so God’s “durability” (to coin a modern clinker) is now examined.
“And, Thou, Lord, in the beginning [that will be a reference to Gen. 1:1] hast laid the foundation of the earth; [that will be a reference to Job 38:4-6] and the heavens [plural] are the works of thine hands” (see Psa. 102:25). The reference is to the original earth and the first, second, and third heavens that followed that creation (Gen. 1:2-8). The verse states the “theory” of creationism which is forbidden to be taught in the public school system. The ACLU claimed in the Scopes “Monkey Trial” (Dayton, Tennessee) that it was unlawful to teach only ONE theory of creation in the schools (at that time they were referring to the Biblical account). However, in 1983-1984 they reversed their position and claimed it was unlawful to teach TWO theories: the only theory that could be taught was MATERIALISTIC EVOLUTION. The Supreme Court backed up both decisions on the basis of news media propaganda between 1920 and 1980, which the Supreme Court took to be “public policy.” Public policy is never fixed, reliable, stable, or dependable.
Notwithstanding the stupid bungling of the “highest court in the land” and the mentally sick “scientists” who worship materialism, the Bible, long, long ago, stated:
1. The theory of creationism as a FACT (Jer. 38:16, 14:22, 27:1, 5; Psa. 100:3, 95:6, 74:14-17, 104:13-14; Isa. 57:16, 40:26).
2. The laws of conservation of energy (Col. 1:16— 17; Heb. 1:2-3; 2 Pet. 3:5-7; Psa. 148:5-6; Isa. 40:26; Neh. 9:6).
3. The atomic structure of the universe (see this volume and comments under Heb. 11 in regards to the “Nobel Prize” given to some sucker who was 1,900 years late in finding out what was going on).
The creation account as given in Genesis 1-2 is confirmed by the Lord Jesus Christ in Mark 10:6-9; Matthew 19:4; Luke 11:51; John 8:44; Luke 17:27; and Matthew 24:37; as well as in Exodus 20:8-11; 1
Chronicles 1; Ezekiel 14; and Isaiah 54.
NO SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE HAS EVER BEEN PRODUCED BY ANY EVOLUTIONIST, LIVING OR DEAD, IN 2,500 YEARS OF RECORDED HISTORY THAT WOULD DISPROVE THE GENESIS ACCOUNT. Since we have gone into over 300 pages of material to discuss these matters in our The Christian’s Handbook of Science and Philosophy (1985), we will not take the time here. An examination of all the “evidence” shows that evolution is a religious faith built on lack of scientific evidence, and that it is the most NON-scientific “faith” any man ever indulged in.
“They shall perish; but thou remainest; and they all shall wax old as doth a garment” (v. 11). Your clothes wear out, your car wears out, your land wears out, the sun wears out, the earth wears out, and your body wears out. There is no evidence of “EVOLUTION” (seen or unseen, recorded or unrecorded) in anything that man deals with. The universe is destined to “wear out” like clothes wear out (see Isa. 51:5-6 for a confirmation). In “science” this business falls under the heading of the second law of thermodynamics, which in layman’s language simply means “all clocks run down.” The technical tradesman’s terminology is “there is always entropy in a closed system,” which translated means that although energy cannot be destroyed, there is always “less available energy” to work with with the passage of time, so unless a source of energy OUTSIDE the particular system being talked about INTRUDES TO INSERT NEW ENERGY INTO THAT SYSTEM, it will eventually increase in “randomness” and will decay, disintegrate, and “fall apart.”
It is this scientific LAW (which can be, has been, and is being demonstrated) that nullifies all the cockeyed religious fanatics who talk about the “eternity of matter” and the universe “always having been here in some form.” There is nothing scientific about evolution: it is a religious faith.
One of the greatest arguments against the universe “always having been here” is simply the fact that it is still here, operating after a mathematical fashion. If the universe had been here for say 200,000,000, 000,000 years (give or take several hundred billion: “science” is always very “exact,” especially now that it is “computerized”!!), it would have devolved into an incoherent, shapeless, gray MUSH at least 10,000, 000,000 years ago (give or take a few million). Things always run down (Murphy’s law). The question comes up: how can there be a Being who never “runs down” and never runs out of energy and who can create and destroy energy? “I AM THAT I AM,” He says to Moses.
You can’t figure it out (see Job 11:7 and Rom. 11:33-36).
“God” boggles the mind of man. The eternity and infinity of God are not even subjects of man’s investigations. God is not the subject of test tube or microscope or computer or telescope researches. If you want to know why the “four and twenty elders” around the throne (Rev. 4:10) can keep up a twenty-four- hour-a-day worship service, century in and century out, it is because they are facing the ULTIMATE REALITY of an ETERNAL PRESENCE that passes understanding. How could they “shut up”? God’s creation is subject to the second law of thermodynamics, but God Himself established those laws. He is the lawgiver and the lawmaker, and when He wishes to alter one of His natural laws (see Mark 4:41 or Josh. 10:12-13, for example!), He simply does it. When a watchmaker makes a watch he builds into it a mechanism for going against the natural laws of the watch: you can REVERSE the hands on a watch without destroying it.
We are dealing here with Someone outside of creation, Who did the creating. His creation “waxes old as a garment,” but He doesn’t “wax old” (see Isa. 40:28-31) with it. This explains why God is not VIS
IBLE to the stupid atheists and evolutionists who worship their own decaying, devolving, deteriorating brains. WHAT CAN BE SEEN IS SUBJECT TO THE LAWS OF ENTROPY. “God is a Spirit” (John 4:24).
That is the God who is keeping track of YOU and your deeds (Ecc. 12:14). Think about that! And wait till you Christians get up there in His presence and see His glory (John 17:24), and the reality of His EXISTENCE suddenly seizes you, and you grasp the truth of an eternal Being who had no beginning or end and existed only because of His self-existence (I AM THAT I AM!) without any CAUSE or REASON for it! Wait till that grabs you! You will shout your fool head off! And if it were not a glorified “head” (Rom. 8:29), you would tear your skull into a million pieces.
“And as a vesture shalt thou fold them up, and they shall be changed: . . (vs. 12). 1 speak reverently when I say this (regardless of the opinions of some of the highly sanctified “brethren”): Someday God is going to take off His clothing. He is talking about a change of garments, for He is talking about a “vesture” being folded up after it “waxes old.” He is going to put the universe away in the closet and get a NEW universe (see 2 Pet. 3:13). “ . . . But thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail.” God is talking about displaying His naked GLORY (see Rev. 20:11 and Prov. 20:8-9) before creating “new heavens” (Isa. 66:22).
There is a great mystery here, but I will be as reverent and as Biblical as I possibly can be in speaking of these things; but we will speak of them since there is not one Fundamentalist, Conservative, Evangelical, or Orthodox scholar (living or dead) who believed the Book enough to go into the matters. Now the truth of it is this:
1. Abraham was told to circumcise his flesh because there was something wrong with his SEED. Man, as “creator,” produces a corruptible seed (1 Pet. 1:23-
25). God, as Creator, produces a sinless seed (Rom 1:3-4).
2. This physical circumcision typified a later “circumcision of Christ” (Col. 2:11) which was a spiritual “operation” (Col. 2:12) that cut a man’s soul loose from his corruptible flesh.
3. The physical circumcision, in a sense, is an UNCOVERING of the source of man’s ability to create physically. The source of all spiritual life is the Lord Jesus Christ, so He was UNCOVERED AND DISPLAYED NAKED TO THE SHAME AND DISGRACE OF THE CROWD (John 19:23; Luke 23:33- 34; Matt. 27:35), where corruptible men could mock HIM (Isa. 50:4-9 and Isa. 53).
4. All evolutionists and “scientific materialists” eventually will have to engage in worship of SEX PERVERSION (see The Christian’s Handbook of Science and Philosophy, 1985), as this will have to do with the creation of physical LIFE. If a man is an atheist then that MAN himself is the creator.
5. Someday, God Almighty will display Himself to the universe on His own terms, not on a wooden cross on a hill outside of Jerusalem, but openly (Prov. 20:8-9) with such power and PURITY (Job 25) that the HEAVENS AND EARTH CANNOT BEAR THE SIGHT OF IT (Rev. 20:11).
That is the stage setting for the judgment of all unsaved men and women (Rev. 20).
You will look at the Creator, this time not in His human nakedness hanging shamefully on an instrument of torture, but in His “nakedness” as supreme Lord and God of creation and mankind (Isa. 40, 41, 42, 43, and 44) and the Judge of all evolutionists and "scientists” who made a “god” out of man.
“And as a VESTURE [see the passages in Mark 15:20 and 24; Matt. 27:31 and 35] shalt thou fold them up, and they shall be changed: but thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail.” Jesus Christ
is “the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever” (Heb. 13:8); HE WON’T WEAR OUT WITH HIS CLOTHES. His “robe” (see John 19:5) was a Roman Catholic robe from a Roman Catholic Whore (Rev. 17:1-9), and its “glory” (to quote George Beverly Shea) will “live” about as long as the Romans who put it on Him (John 19:2). (Get your Bible straight; never mind the “majority of qualified jerks.”)
“But to which of the angels said he at any time, Sit on my right hand” (v. 13). He said it to none of them. The saying was spoken in Psalm 110:1, and it is the Lord Jesus Himself Who pulls this quotation “out of the hat” in Matthew 22:44 when validating His deity.
“Are they [the angels] not all ministering spirits . . .” (that shows that angels are “spirits”: see Acts 23:8). (If you just said, “God is spirit,” like the corrupt New KJV or the old ASV or the New ASV or any other corruption, it wouldn’t tell you anything, for angels are also “spirit.” There are all kinds of “spirits.” God is “A spirit” in distinction from the spirit of man, the spirit of the beast, the spirit of the Devil, and the spirit of the angels: see Ecc. 3:21; Mark 5:2, 13; and 1 Cor. 2:11. The AV is right, and all of the new Bibles are wrong.) Identifying the angels as “ministering spirits” lines Acts 23:8 up where it should be. Notice: “For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, neither angel, nor spirit: but the Pharisees confess BOTH.” They confessed both the resurrection and the angels, but since angels are “spirits,” actually they constitute ONE. Since there are other spirits around, the Authorized Version (the New KJV is NOT an Authorized Version) gives three items in the verse: “no resurrection [one] neither angel, nor spirit [two]: but the Pharisees confess BOTH.” If they confessed “angels,” they confessed “spirits.” Angels are “MINISTERING SPIRITS.”
“Are they not all ministering spirits . . .” Then
angels are sent to minister. Some are “messengers” and some are not. We hear a lot of talk about “guardian angels” taking care of children while they walk across bridges, etc. There may be some truth in it; we know that the Lord Jesus had an angel helping Him while He was praying in Gethsemane (Luke 22:43). Christ had angels to strengthen Him when he was in the wilderness being tempted, but these were specific cases that had been prophesied in the scriptures (see Psa. 91:11). Paul had an angel on shipboard with him (Acts 27:23) when he was in the storm. It is evident that they were around in Biblical times to assist. But technically the passage here is for those “who shall be HEIRS OF SALVATION.”
Now, no one in this age “inherits salvation, ” no matter what the “Covenant theologians” in the Reformed and Presbyterian churches teach. You get salvation as a free gift on a “one-to-one” basis. So this word “heirs” here is being thrust forward to force us into the Tribulation again (see comments under verse 2). Somebody here is about to inherit something, and they are said to be inheriting salvation. No one could place these verses doctrinally down into the Church Age. The angels here are either ministering to someone in the Tribulation who is about to get an inheritance in the Millenium (see comments under verse 4), or they are ministering to someone OUT IN ETERNITY WHO IS BORN SINLESS FROM SINLESS PARENTS AND WHO INHERITS SALVATION AT BIRTH.
And here, every Greek scholar in America and Europe, including 100 percent of the born-again “Fundamentalist” faculty members of every major Christian school in America, abandon ship. Every jack-man of the “qualified, good, godly, dedicated authorities” who go by the “verbal, plenary, inspired original autographs” (that includes all of the members of the Trinitarian Bible Society) instead of the Authorized Text of the
Holy Bible bails out and refuses to fly another mile on “Pan Am” (see the comments in the Bible Believer’s Commentary on Revelation, written in 1960 and published in 1970). Those angels can be ministering spirits to people after Revelation 20 who inherit salvation from their millennial parents (see Rev. 22:1-6). Our inheritance is never spoken of as “eternal life, ” for this is by grace; our inheritance on this earth is an earned reward (see Col. 3:24 and comment in that commentary). The only place where an inheritance is connected with our salvation in this age is where Peter says that we have “an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you ...” (1 Pet. 1:4-5), but the “inheritance” in all other places is a millennial inheritance. Those in our present text (Heb. 1:13) are said to inherit “ETERNAL LIFE,” not a reservation in heaven. That inheritance of Simon Peter’s is not salvation; it is a place IN New Jerusalem (see Gal. 5:21 and comments in that Commentary).
“Shall be heirs of salvation . . .” There are two possible meanings. (1) People who endure to the end of the Tribulation without taking the “mark of the beast” have a system of faith and works (see Rev. 12:17 and comments in that Commentary) connected with their salvation so they can be said to “inherit salvation” as an earned reward: no one in the church age can. (2) The more likely reading is that in the Book of Revelation when we get out beyond the “changing of God’s vesture” (see comments above), eternity sets in, and ANGELS minister to those who are BORN of the saved nations (see Rev. 22:2 and comments in that Commentary).
Of course all of this is entirely beyond the grasp of milk-peddlers like Willmington, Jim Schetler, Pete Rice, Fink, Afman, Faulkner, MacArthur, Martin, Farstad, MacRae, Newman, “Chuck” Swindoll, Kenneth Wuest, Spiros Zodhiates, Wisdom, Robert Sum
ner, Wood, Custer, Neal, Panosian, Bob Jones III, and the faculty members of Pacific Coast Bible College and Dallas Theological Seminary. None of them were “serious students” of the Bible to start with: they were professional critics.
Let’s cut the deck and deal and let the cards fall where they may.
1. In the resurrection every “son of God” in this age is like “the angels” (Matt. 22:30) because he received POWER (AND I DON’T MEAN "AUTHORITY”!!) to “BECOME” (John 1: 12) a “SON OF GOD” and the angels were the “sons of God” (see Job 1 and comments in that Commentary).
2. These angels (Christ is called an “Angel of the Lord”: Acts 7:30; Gal. 4:14) will minister to people in eternity who will populate the new heavens (see Isa. 9:6-7 and 2 Pet. 3:13).
That is the doctrinal application of Hebrews 1:14, and those deluded egotists who shot off their mouths about the “divine originals” and alibied their sins by claiming that we had no right to “use bad language” about them (!) were left stuck with doctrines from 1909 because they refused to BELIEVE the Book God gave them in 1920, 1930, 1940, 1950, 1960, 1970, and 1980. He did not give them the “plenary, verbally inspired originals,” probably because He knew they couldn’t get anything out of them either.
Isn’t it amazing how much advanced and progressive revelation comes from the archaic Elizabethan English while those who profess that it has errors and “mistakes” in it that need to be “corrected” REMAIN THROUGH THE CENTURIES JUST AS BLIND AS A BAT FLYING IN BACKWARDS? Remarkable isn’t it? Here is a man who insists that some unreadable, unteachable, unknowable “originals” are superior to the Book he has in his hand, and then he can’t produce ONE item from this belief that would prove God has shown him anything. Fantastic isn’t it?
“Are they not all minstering spirits . . (vs. 14). Now, from a practical side, there are certainly things going on in the Church Age that would suggest that angels occasionally show up to assist the Lord’s people. 1 have heard of many such cases, but I will not vouch for them as they are “secondhand.” I have seen some weird things in thirty-six, years of ministry. I don’t talk about them much, for if you do, people will think you are “Charismatic” or something. However, I will give you two instances where spiritual leadership was out of the question, and someone had to do something physically, because the items involved were automobiles that weighed over half a ton.
The first case was about thirty-three years ago. I had been praying for God to give me a car, and I finally got a car. I had had it for about a month, and I was driving all over the country roads of central Alabama, passing out tracts and witnessing. (I had about 120 professions of faith in two weeks during a Christmas school vacation.) I was driving around, and the KKK was threatening me because they figured I must be sort of a white Martin Luther king or something; but I wasn’t. I was trying to win colored people to the Lord as well as whites.
(By the way, 1 went back there about seventeen years ago, and a lot of those people were still around and still KNEW they were saved.)
Well, I came down a dirt road at about 35 miles an hour and suddenly was confronted with a single track wooden bridge. It was about twenty feet long and had no railing. As I got to within twenty feet of it and started to cross it, a carload of drunk Afro-Americans (that is not the “plenary, verbally inspired original” but it will do!) came tearing around a corner opposite the bridge at about 45 miles an hour. I was too close to turn or brake, and there was room on the bridge for only one car, so I gunned it so that my car would swing out to the right and lean as much as possible in cross
ing. The other guy braked (much too late) and took the inside.
Those cars must have gone by each other on that bridge with both sets of outside wheels in the AIR; the cars never scraped. I parked my car fifty yards down the road after the “near miss” and went back to look at that bridge and measure it. There was no way that two cars could pass on that bridge with all of both cars on the bridge at the same time. No way in the world. Even with the wheels hanging over, they couldn’t have passed without scraping together unless the wheels were something like TWO FEET beyond the edges of the bridge when they went past.
How do two cars stay on a bridge when each of them has two wheels two feet off of the bridge? They stayed on, and they passed.
The second thing that happened took place in the mountains of West Virginia up beyond Bryson City at a place called St. Charles. It is directly east of Harlan, Kentucky.
This was during a heavy winter (1952). Bob Perssons and I had gone up to a small coal mining town with the Sutera twins and a missionary named Jack Manley (later he was a missionary to New Guinea for many years). We went up through Iron Gap, Wagon Wheel Gap, Great Stone Gap, etc., and then we were snowed in. We were due back in Greenville, South Carolina, in two days, but on the third day, the snow was eight inches deep with two more inches coming down.
On the fourth day, big Bob Perssons (he was six feet three and weighed 320 pounds) stood at the door of the mission school and said, “Boys, do you know what they do in Germany when it snows?” “No, no!” we all cried, “What do they do?”
“Let’er snow, ” said Perssons grimly.
It snowed all that day. On the fifth day we decided to make a run for it back over the mountains. It
had stopped snowing after snowing nearly four feet more. “Making a run for it” meant five of us in a twelve-year-old car with no snow tires or chains. We all “got to praying,” got in the car and headed up a 4,000 foot mountain. As we got halfway up to the pass, it began to snow again. (Five young men in a twelve-year-old Oldsmobile with slick tires and a carburetor about as reliable as Jesse Jackson’s foreign policy.)
We got almost to the pass and then suddenly we began to skid and slide off the road. Perssons whipped back the other way, and then we began to slide toward the mountain. I was on that side, and looking out I could see a deep ditch filled with snow (coming down the mountain we had noticed the ditch along that side was three to five feet deep). The back wheel on my side went off the road and into the ditch, and you could hear the axle hitting pavement as the wheel went off. Suddenly, the whole rear end of the car (right and left side) lifted up in the air (on my side, it felt like about a two foot lift), and the car moved back onto the road and sat down flat in the right lane. We drove right on over the pass.
It was the weirdest thing you ever saw in your life. I’ll never forget it. I still remember looking out that window and seeing that snow bank coming, and then it seemed like a gigantic hand suddenly reached down and picked up that car by the rear bumper and moved it over and sat it down.
“How do you explain such things, Brother Ruckman?” I don’t, but I know they happen. I have seen things like that happen more than twice.
Now, before going on to Chapter Two, we need to show the reader what is WRONG with the position that “only the verbally, plenary, inspired original autographs” are inerrant. All of the men we are about to list are critics of the Holy Bible that we have been reading and writing about. All of them profess the new birth.
95 percent of them profess to believe in “verbal inspiration,” all of them profess to believe in the great “fundamentals of the faith,” and not one man of them would hesitate to correct your Bible ten times a page if he thought it necessary. You need to see what these men got out of Hebrews 1:9-13 and compare it with what we just got out of the same passage. Ready?
The least offensive of the correctors are those that confine their commentaries to devotional remarks (namely, Ironside, Oliver Green, Dr. DeHaan, et aL). The Liberty Bible Commentary (Jerry Falwell, Old Time Gospel Hour Edition) is quite mild alongside such works as the Expositor’s Greek Testament. Ironside, for example, only misses the future “speaking of the Son” from Heaven (see vs. 2), alters “worlds” to ages (vs. 2), confounds the Second Coming with the First Coming (vs. 6), and then avoids any discussion of the “ministering spirits.” Falwell’s crew (Hindson, Dobson, Kroll, Willmington, and Freerkson) alters “sundry times” to “many parts” and then claims that the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ is “difficult to see in the English translation” (Vol. II, p. 668).
Running to the “original” in verse 6 (“ptz/m”), they make the “bringing in” of Christ into the world the Second Advent, which is about as stupid a piece of bungling as anyone could manage (see comments under verse 6 for WHY we use such language). All of Falwell’s faculty and staff miss the doctrinal import of the “ministering spirits” in verse 14. We would expect them to. When a man messes with the text, God messes with his mind.
1. The RVmistranslates “minister” (v. 14) as “do service,” although they translate the same Greek word (diakeneo) as “ministered” in Mark 1:13. Par for the course.
2. The New King James has eliminated all of the “Thou’s” and “Thee’s” from the entire chapter and replaced them with “You’s,” thereby rendering archaic
all of the hymnals used in all of the CHURCHES WHO USE THE NKJV. The hymnals say “How great THOU art,” and “My Jesus I love THEE,” and “Have THINE own way Lord,” etc. Hypocrites rarely are consistent.
There is no “oil of gladness” in the “Living Bible” (v. 9), so we are to assume there is no Holy Spirit (see comments above). No one “inherits salvation” according to Kenneth Taylor, for everyone “receives” it in his translation (v. 14). To be blunt about it, Taylor could not figure out the verse any more than Freerkson, Willmington, or Wuest could, so he altered it to match his own ignorance: follow that kind of leadership, and your ignorance will be guaranteed.
4. The NIV, in keeping with the Roman Catholic “Robe” (see Lloyd Douglas), has put into verse 12 the one word that the Holy Spirit refused to use when discussing God’s “clothing” (see Mark 15:20, 24; Matt. 27:31, 35). The one word God will NOT use is the one that the NIV uses, the Roman Catholic word for the “robe” which the Roman soldiers put on Christ (John 19:1-4). Follow THAT blasphemous leadership, and you’ll have more than ignorance to add to your store of judgment.
5. The New Bible Commentary (commentator
A. M. Stibbs, Oakland Theological College) tells us “the Greek” of Hebrews 1:10 is quoted from the LXX. Since the LXX Stibbs cites was written MORE THAN 200 YEARS AFTER THE RESURRECTION, there is not much sense in thinking the man is rational. There does not exist on the face of this earth ANY Old Testament manuscript in Greek for the reading of Hebrews 1:10. There is not one particle of paper written on before A.D. 150 that has ANY part of Psalm 102:25- 27 written on it. The whole LXX nonsense is pure fabrication and has no more support than the theory of evolution.
Stibbs doesn ’t cite the manuscript because THERE
ISN’T ANY LXX MANUSCRIPT. The “LXX” Stibbs is referring to was written in A.D. 330. (Add another ton of ignorance to what you already have if you are dumb enough to think that the writer of Hebrews in the first century is quoting a manuscript written 200 YEARS AFTER HE WAS DEAD.)
According to Jameison, Fausset, and Brown, the “elect” of the church are “about to inherit salvation” before they are saved—that is, while they are “children of wrath,” “dead in trespasses and sins,” without God and Christ in the world (Eph. 2:1—4, 12), etc.— so verse 14 is a reference to them: which it certainly is NOT.
7. William’s Student’s Commentary simply refuses to make any comment on the material in verses 9-13.
8. The reading in verse 8 that denied the deity of Christ (“God is thy throne”) was arrived at by changing the punctuation in the Greek manuscripts Sinaiti- cus and Vaticanus; the men who subscribed to this change were Westcott and Hort. These men were “Orthodox scholars” who held to the “orthodox position,” according to the official publications of Bob Jones University, written by their STAFF MEMBERS (Stewart Custer).
9. Alford reads “continually sent” in verse 14. Alford and Bleek alter the text to “are to obtain salvation.” Angus agrees. Since not one man in the group had any more idea about the doctrinal content of verse 14 than a Hottentot on the backside of Angola, you may dispense with them.
10. Nicoll’s Expositor’s Greek New Testament represents the entire Alexandrian crew as they seek to meddle with holy things they know nothing about and as they seek to reduce their readers to their own level of ignorance by strutting their knowledge of the “original Greek” before the eyes of the uninformed and inexperienced.
A. It should be “many parts” in verse 1 because it
is pointing out “the fragmentary character of former revelations” (p. 247).
B. “Last days” is an expression that came from the LXX and refers to the First Advent of Christ where “the end of this age or these days was signalised” (p. 248). In a pig’s eye.
C. “Nature” or “essence” conveys the meaning of Christ as the “EXPRESS IMAGE” of God (v. 3). Since it doesn’t (or they don’t), dispense with them (or it).
D. “The words cited are from Psalm 2:7 and are in verbal agreement with the LXX” (p. 254). They should be. The writer of the LXX has Hebrews I on the table in front of him.
E. It “doesn’t matter whether we translate” it as “THY THRONE, O GOD” (honoring Christ’s deity) or “Thy throne is God” (eliminating His deity) (p. 255).
F. No one is going to “inherit salvation” in verse 14. It is just referring to someone who is “about to obtain salvation” (p. 257).
And here we can close the books on Owen, Pierce, Moses, Stuart, Tholuck, Hofmann, McCaul, Lowrie, Von Soden, Davidson, Bleek, Delitzsch, Vaughn, Peake, Salmon, Hilgenfeld, Weiss, Beyschlag, Schurer, Godet, Westcott, Harnack, Pfleiderer, and the other apostates who taught modern Fundamentalists and Conservatives what they know about “the original Greek text.”
Not a man in the group could any more handle Hebrews 1 doctrinally than he could juggle two packs of unwrapped, double-edged razor blades. They couldn’t handle the “image”; they couldn’t find the Son speaking; they couldn’t locate the “begatting”; they couldn’t tell who it was that would inherit salvation; and the “clothing” and “unclothing” of the Creator was a subject so hidden to their critical, distorted minds that they failed even to notice it in reading the passage. These men represent the accumulation of more than 500 hours of seminary studies, 50,000 volumes of lit
erature, 200 years of research in Greek texts and manuscripts, and 40 earned degrees. “Some men die by degrees.” Their “scholarship,” from a BIBLICAL STANDPOINT, is minus zero. They are “ciphers with the rim knocked off. “ In Kendall's Expositor’s Testament they arrive at the conclusion that Christ is now reigning; His kingdom is now spreading; and the “horizon of human history” will be the perfected rule of this present reign (p. 257). THIS MEANS THAT ANY JUNIOR IN FRANK NORRIS’ SUNDAY SCHOOL IN FORT WORTH, TEXAS, IN 1940, KNEW THE BIBLE BETTER THAN EVERY SCHOLAR LISTED ABOVE. Par for the course.
THE BIBLE BELIEVER’S COMMENTARY SERIES
2:1 Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip.
2 For if the word spoken by angels was stedfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense of reward;
3 How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation; which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him;
4 God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his own will?
Notice the use of the term “we” all through this section. The “we” would have to be Hebrews if we are to believe the name of the epistle. “Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed . . . which we have heard . . . lest ... we should let them slip,” etc. Someone is in danger of letting something slip away from them, and it will cause them to “neglect salvation” (vs. 3). No reader of the Bible would mistake such a discourse for Pauline salvation for half of a second. This is not Paul’s doctrinal revelation to the Gentiles (Rom. 1-10) or to the church (Eph. 1-5). Paul was no more worried about “neglecting salvation” by letting it “slip” than by neglecting Santa Claus through “flipping” (see Rom. 8, for example).
“For if the word spoken by angels was stedfast . . .” (vs. 2). He has just told us back in 1:13 that the angels were not as powerful as the “Son.” Now he says
that the word spoken by angels was stedfast, so they still were powerful. As a matter of fact, the law was “mediated” by angels (see Acts 7:30-32; Gal. 3:19). When Moses came up to the bush, he ran into the ANGEL of the Lord (Acts 7:30). . An ANGEL of
the Lord in a flame of fire . . . and then “. . . the voice of the Lord came unto him, Saying, I AM THE GOD OF THY FATHERS ..(Acts 7:31-32). The law “was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator” (Gal. 3:19). Moses was the mediator, and the law was ordained through angels. Notice, it was an angel that was sent through the wilderness with Israel (Exod. 32:34) bearing God’s NAME (Jehovah). The Son is superior to the angels, but in the Old Testament the Angel of the Lord was a theophany: an appearance of Jesus Christ as a 33-year-old male (see Gen. 6 and comments in that commentary).
“Every transgression and disobedience received a just recompence of reward” (vs. 2). That is, it was an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, etc. (see Exod. 21:23-25). There was nothing cruel or unnatural about any of this, as modern humanists would have you believe. Strangely, the humanists (who are all evolutionists) refuse to recognize the laws of nature when the problem of SIN comes up. Homosexuals receive a recompence they deserve (Rom. 1:27), in their own bodies, without the law courts doing anything. The flesh reaps what it sows (Gal. 6:7-8) under the law or under grace. When you jump off the Empire State Building, you do NOT “defy the laws of gravity.” You come under them, and they pay you back for what you have coming.
“How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation . . (vs. 3). That is a reference to an unsaved Hebrew, but the only way he can put the first person plural in it is for the writer to associate himself with unsaved Hebrews! One can do the same thing practically if he puts a “gospel bumper sticker” on his
car with the verse on it—even though the driver of the car is a Christian. The “we” would not hold good for the driver; that is, it would make good preaching but not very good DOCTRINE. “. . . Which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord” (implying Christ’s earthly ministry in the flesh to Israel, Matt. 10:1-6) “and was confirmed [what Christ said was confirmed by the apostles] unto us by them that heard him” (vs. 3). The reference is to the twelve apostles. Paul could possibly say this after talking with Peter, James, and John (Gal. 2), but he would not be likely to say it, as he insisted his knowledge of Christ came not from flesh and blood contacts (Gal. 1:16) but by direct revelation (Gal. 1:11-12).
“God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders . . (vs. 4). The reference is to the Jewish signs (Mark 16:17-18) for the Jews (1 Cor. 1:22). “. . . And with divers miracles,” (see Acts 5:15-16, 3:1-6, for example) “and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his own will?” The reference is to the apostolic gifts (2 Cor. 12:12) including the “sign gifts” to Israel (1 Cor. 14:22).
Now, all of this is foreign to Paul’s letters to the Gentile Christians. In them he claims to be “not a whit” behind the chiefest apostle (2 Cor. 11:5) and says that the “Big Three” (Peter, James, and John) could “add nothing” to what he already knew (Gal. 2:1-16) and that God is bearing HIM witness (Acts 19:11-12; Rom. 15:19; 2 Cor. 12:12), not “bearing THEM witness” (Heb. 1:4). If Paul is the writer he is eliminating himself and his own personal experiences from the narrative. He is leaving his audience to face the authority of Peter, James, and John, not himself. Of course, the Tribulation application needs no explanations like this. It is apparent that in the Tribulation ALL Hebrews must prepare for “THE WORLD TO COME” (see the next verse), and any of them can “neglect salvation.”
2:5 For unto the angels hath he not put in subjection the world to come, whereof we speak.
6 But one in a certain place testified, saying, What is man, that thou art mindful of him? or the son of man, that thou visitest him?
7 Thou madest him a little lower than the angels; thou crownedst him with glory and honour, and didst set him over the works of thy hands:
8 Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet. For in that he put all in subjection under him, he left nothing that is not put under him. But now we see not yet all things put under him.
The writer returns immediately to the Tribulation context, for he mentions an age to come in which the world will be in subjection to the Lord Jesus: “For unto the angels hath he not put in subjection the WORLD TO COME, whereof we speak” (vs. 5). “Whereof we speak”? WHERE DID HE SPEAK OF THE “WORLD TO COME” IN THE FIRST CHAPTER IF IT WASN’T THE MILLENNIAL INHERITANCE? He is speaking of the Millenium. The writer is aiming his writing DOCTRINALLY at someone in Daniel’s Seventieth Week who is ON THE THRESHOLD OF THE SECOND ADVENT.
One hundred percent of the private interpretations of all “godly scholars” can be shelved immediately.
“Hebrews” is primarily a doctrinal dissertation aimed at Tribulation Hebrews.
Differences of opinion amount to less than nothing.
“But one in a certain place testified, [this is David] saying, What is man, that thou art mindful of him? or the son of man, that thou visitest him?” (vs. 6). That’s two good questions. What is a God Who is so powerful and almighty that He is self-existent from eternity, a God so powerful that He can fill the universe without being a part of it and keep track of
everything going on in the minds of 6,000,000,000 of earth’s inhabitants (see 1 Chron. 28:9), doing wasting time messing around with sinners like us? You see, I’m not confounded by how great man is; I am confounded by how INSIGNIFICANT he is. Man is not the “measure” of anything I’ve ever had to deal with. A being that you can cremate and suck up in a vacuum cleaner is hardly a yardstick to measure anything by. “Man!” Nuts. Did you ever see “man”? I’ve seen him. I’ve traveled the dusty roads of this earth, the airways, the sea waves, the lake shores, the deserts, the islands, the forests, the inlets, the gardens, the mountains, the valleys, the hills, the rivers, the prairies; and I’ve seen “man.”
I’ve seen ‘em! Brown, black, white, gray, pink, yellow, red, and everywhere in between. I’ve mixed with the throngs of Japanese in the railway stations waiting to board the express; I’ve been jammed in between mobs of Filipinos in the meat markets; I’ve lain on the iron decks of Liberty ships in the rain at night trying to get some sleep as they sailed the Pacific; I’ve lain across the bodies of Negroes between railroad cars on the way to POE’S; I’ve flown in DC 10’s and Piper Cubs all over Florida, Canada, Hawaii, California, Michigan, and New York. I’ve cut down bamboo in the thickets near Corregidor, bodysurfed at Wainai and Haleiwa on Oahu, sat cross-legged on bamboo mats in Katsura while eating sukiyaki, and fished for the pike and pickerel in the backwoods of Ontario. Mankind is an ant heap. When you die there will be 4,000,000,000 people on this earth that didn’t even know you ever lived, and a year after you’re dead there will probably not be more than a dozen people who really miss you. The most famous people on this earth (the pope, Billy Graham, the President of the United States, and Margaret Thatcher), with the aid of television, shortwave, and satellite, will live and die with as many as 1,000,000,000 people not knowing who they
were, what they did, or when they died. “What is man, that THOU art mindful of him?” Old Job said it and said it right: “What is man, that thou shouldest magnify him? and that thou shouldest set thine heart upon him? And that thou shouldest visit him every morning, and try him every moment?” (Job 7:17- 18). What is all of the testing for? What is it about God and His creation that causes the Almighty to be concerned about the welfare and the judgment of the work of His own hands?
Nobody is going to miss you long when you die. For example, take Bob Jones, Sr., Beauchamp Vick, J. Frank Norris; and Billy Sunday. No one really worries about their absence except a few close relatives. When you die what will it mean? Nothing. There are 3,000, 000,000 people in Africa, Europe, China, and India who don’t know your name or where you live. You could not name ONE of them if your soul depended on it. There is a mess of folks on this planet, brother! What is God doing wasting His time with us? God not only takes time out to deal with individuals, but He also takes time to speak to them. He even came down to this earth to die for them (John 3:16). Why? “What is man, that thou art mindful of him?” You haven’t had a thought about Bronco Nagurski or Rudolph Valentino since you got up this morning. Hitler, Himmler, and Goering have been burning in hell for more than forty years. Who worries about it? No one takes any thought at all for the POW’s who never got back from Korea any more than for the German boys who died in prison camps in Siberia after the war was over (1944-1980). If God didn’t care for you, who would?
“Thou madest him a little lower than the angels ..(vs. 7). So that puts the angels in pretty rough shape according to some irreverent thinkers. Others have said: “He was made a little lower than angels and has been getting lower ever since.” “Thou madest
him a little lower than the angels; thou crownedst him with glory and honour,” (All right, there is old Adam with his original commission: Gen. 1:28) “and didst set him over the works of thy hands.” Again the reference is to Adam (see Gen. 1:26). “Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet..(That is Adam again, and the commission is repeated to Noah: Gen. 9:1-2.) “For in that he put all in subjection under him, he left nothing that is not put under him ..(v . 8). That is, everything on this earth up to the flight of the eagle (Psa. 115:16) was given to man to conquer and run . But now we see not yet all things put under him” (vs. 8). Then all things are not in subjection to man because Adam fell and fallen man is under the DEVIL. The kingdoms of this world are not “man’s”; they are the Devil’s (see the exact Biblical statement in Luke 4:6). What God promised, Adam didn ’t get. The Lord told Adam to “be fruitful” and to “multiply, and replenish the earth” with painless childbirth. Eve didn’t get painless childbirth. God told Adam to have dominion over the earth, and he wound up being buried in it. Observe how all of this matches Luke 1:30-33 where God promised the “last Adam” (1 Cor. 15:45) THE THRONE OF DAVID. Did He get it? He got a wooden cross and a crown of thorns. . But NOW we see not yet all things put under him” (vs. 8).
Something interrupted the original conunission. If God told Adam to “multiply, and replenish the earth,” where would all of his descendants have gone to find a place to sit down? Eve could have had as many children as she wanted (one a year if she wanted them) without any pain. No pain, no discomfort, no hospital bills! Why, if she had had only one child every five years, and each of her descendants had had one for five years, there would have been over 500,000,000,000 people on this earth before Noah was born! If there had been no universal flood to wipe out such a popula
tion explosion, there would now be on this earth (after all the wars, pestilences, floods, earthquakes, and famines had taken their toll) more than 500,000,000,000,000 people. You wouldn ’t have room to lie down.
One of the very strongest scientific arguments against evolution is a computerized, mathematical argument which all evolutionists simply refuse to discuss. If “man” has been here more than 500,000 years— and Leakey has now run it back to 2,000,000—where are all the people? If each “man” had had only two children in his family since 500,000 B.C., and there was no flood to wipe them out in 2300 B.C., where are the 500,000,000,000 people that should have been here, before Christopher Columbus?
What did God mean by telling Adam to do such a thing? Obviously, there are some more “worlds” available (see the correct reading of the AV in Heb. 11:3 and 1:2!!) to populate.
A fellow said to me one time: “You mean to tell me that all that salvation stuff happened here on earth with just one Saviour? I’m sure there are other saviors and other gods on other planets to populate.”
I said, “Yeah, man, it all happened right down here.”
He said, “Well, what about that out there?” (He pointed up to the galaxies.)
I said, “That’s exactly why God let it happen down here. He didn ’t want to stink up the whole mess. ”
You see, there is “power in NEGATIVE thinking” where you can get some truths much quicker than with “Positive” thinking. In positive thinking you think: “Well, man is good, and everything is alright. It’s meant for us to go up there and populate those galaxies, now, in our present condition. After all, I’m all right, and you’re all right!”
That is the way you can’t get the truth.
Look at it this way: “That whole thing out there is to be populated someday, and God is not going to let
us do it because we are no good, and all we would do would get some interplanetary wars started.” That way things begin to make sense, because you see why God let the whole drama of sin and death be worked out in the smallest place he could find; He got an old peanut of an earth back here in the back end of an S-shaped nebula at the rear end of a solar system. What would be the point in populating outer space with a pack of sex-crazy, moneymad. Bible-rejecting, self-righteous, God-defying sinners? Wouldn’t that be rather stupid? A killer is a killer no matter where you put him. Men say, “ Oh, no, we wouldn’t do that,” and then spend over $20,000,000 watching Star Wars, Star Trek, and Battlestar Galactica. People are weird, aren’t they? You tell them what they will do with outer space, they deny it, and then go ahead and do it anyway. Some incredible idiot at a state university is always babbling about “new frontiers,” and the superstitious nut (all evolutionists are superstitious nuts) says, “Well, what if Columbus had taken that attitude and not discovered America?” I suppose that you would still have just intracontinental wars instead of two world wars. I also suppose that the American Indians would still be enjoying nature. They would have all of the fresh food and meat they wanted all year round, and their women would do the cooking and the work while the men were fighting, hunting, and fishing. Do you know of a better way to live? No carbon monoxide, no taxes, no telephones, no hospital insurance, no integration, no inflation, and no electric bills. I don’t understand things. If I had been in Spain, and Columbus had come back and said, “I found it,” I would have said, “So what? What does the BOOK say?” They would have accused me of being a reactionary. After Columbus, you could have world wars instead of just continental wars. Time marches on.
All that has been said (vss. 1-8) is to prepare us for what is about to happen,. The writer is about to
resurrect the theme of Hebrews 1:1-5, the superiority of the Lord Jesus Christ. This time He is going to be magnified as a MAN, “made a little lower than the angels” (vs. 9) to regain Adam’s lost dominion and to raise up a whole race of “men” to inherit what God promised Adam. These men are called His “brethren” in verse 11, and He is called the “captain” of their salvation (vs. 10). Before examining this great passage, let us return to the men who wrote the textbooks for the faculty members of Harvard, Yale, Bob Jones, University of Chicago, Colgate-Rochester, Tennessee Temple, Berkeley, Oxford, Cambridge, Liberty University, Columbia, Piedmont, Dallas, Pacific Coast Bible College, Wheaton, Maranatha, Fuller, and BIOLA and see how backslidden sinners fare who believe in the superiority of the “plenary, verbally inspired original autographs.”
1. Marcus Dods, writing for the Expositor’s Greek Testament, tells us that the Messianic rule of the Messiah began at Calvary and is not yet “fully realized” (p. 261), but when it is it will be “THE PRESENT WORLD OF MEN REGENERATED.” Postmillennialism. Bleek says that verse 4 has been wrongly translated and is a reference to no outward manifestations of the Holy Spirit. Dods insists that when the kingdom comes it will be under HUMAN ADMINISTRATION only, and “the angels are left behind; there is no room for angelic government” (p. 263). This means that Matthew 22:30 is not to be believed, nor is 1 John 3:1-3, nor is Romans 8:29, nor is Philippians 3:21. In his haste to recover the “original meaning of the Divine author from the original language of the verbally inspired originals,” Dods just split his theological britches in two. He doesn’t know what he is talking about. The angels of verse 5 is a reference to angels through the Old Testament.
2. Arthur W. Pink is worried about “the Spirit’s precise meaning” in saying “SLIP” (vs. 1). He decides
it is somebody drifting away (p. 85).
3. Dummelow takes Pink seriously and adopts the “drifting.” (It is the reading of the RV of 1885.) He also adopts Dods’ Postmillennialism and tells us that in the age to come “nothing will be left for the angels to rule over.” In the world to come “the rule of Angels is ENDED” (p. 1017), which brings up a great theological point: WHEN DID A REIGN OF ANGELS EVER BEGIN unless it was before Genesis 1:2? Dummelow and all the others fail to see that the angels in verse 5, to whom the coming age is not in “subjection,” are the angels that are NOW angels; there is no reference to the future angels who are children of the resurrection (Matt. 22:30).
4. The Liberty Bible Commentary tries to prove that angels are not part of the Millennium because “the Saints shall judge angels” (p. 672). But this doesn’t take place till Revelation 20:11-15, which is AFTER the Millenium. Someone has their Bible screwed up; in this case, Freerkson.
5. Kenneth Taylor has capitalized “SON OF MAN” in verse 6 so you will think it is a reference to Jesus Christ only. (Observe how the corrupt New KJV did this with the word “He” in 2 Thessalonians 2:7 so you would have to believe the “he” was a reference to the Holy Spirit!) But the reference in verse 6 cannot be limited to Christ, for the creation was delivered to “MAN” long before Christ ever showed up as a man (see James 3:7 and Psa. 8:6-8). Both Noah and Adam were given this power as kings (see Sure Word of Prophecy, 1970).
6. Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown take the Postmillennial position of the Roman Catholic Augustine. The present dispensation is the “reign of Christ on earth,” and you are judging angels NOW because “the world to come ... is a PRESENT, though INTERNAL reality” (p. 1399). Christ will never have an external kingdom on this earth over which He reigns, although
the next three verses say He will (vss. 9-11). The last Adam (1 Cor. 15:45) gets Adam’s commission over nature (Isa. 11:1-11; Matt. 19:28; Amos 9:11-15). Beet, Davidson, Ebhard,. and Lucken alter “a little lower” to “for a little while lower.” You can dispense with Beet, Davidson, Ebhard, and Lucken.
2:9 But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man.
10 For it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.
11 For both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one: for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren,
12 Saying, I will declare thy name unto my brethren, in the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee.
13 And again, I will put my trust in him. And again, Behold I and the children which God hath given me.
Verse 9 is a beauty. “But we see Jesus . . .” Good! Good! “We see Jesus . . .” Fine, that’s all you need to see! “Sir, we would see Jesus” (John 12:21). “. . . Who was made a little lower than the angels [then in some ways He was made like Adam, which is why He is compared with Adam as the head of a race of people: see Rom. 5:14-20] for the suffering of death.” (Then He was made like a man because men die; that is their Adamic heritage: Rom. 5:12.) All right, the Lord Jesus Christ died, was buried, and came up, and He is in glory now “crowned with glory and honour” (vs. 9). He has not yet received His earthly CROWN as King of kings and “king over all the earth” (Zech. 14:9; Luke 1:32), but He certainly will
get it when He returns in GLORY (Matt. 25) and sits down on David’s throne (Luke 1:32) at Jerusalem (Jer. 22:30; 14:21).
“That he by the grace of God should TASTE DEATH FOR EVERY MAN” (vs. 9). Mark that verse with a red pencil or a yellow “liner. ” The context was the Adamic race (vss. 6-7), not the “elect” who get a “limited atonement.” Who did Christ “taste” death for? “EVERY MAN.” Don’t forget that! The “many” that He gave Himself for as a ransom are “ALL” men according to 1 Timothy 2:1-4, and the context of 1 Timothy 2:6 is “all men” (vs. 1) and “all men” (vs. 4). There is no such thing as “limited atonement,” no matter who was deceived by such a philosophical proposition. “Every man” (vs. 9) is not a reference to the “elect.” It is a reference to every man.
“For it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory . . .” (vs. 10). There’s a reference to the “elect”: MANY out of “EVERY.” Not “every man” is a saved child of God, but “many” sons come to glory because “many” trust Christ as the “captain of their salvation.” You see, verse 10 was not limited to Christ’s DEATH as verse 9 was. Verse 10 is talking about Christ’s work in “bringing many of His sons to glory” after they became His SONS. Calvin got in there and said, “Well, you see, the sons in verse 10 show that the ‘every man’ in verse 9 is the elect.” You are absolutely wrong, and so is anyone who listens to you, John. Those in verse 10 are already “sons, ” and death wasn’t tasted just for sons; it was tasted for “EVERY MAN” (vs. 9). Do you see that? Pink, Shelton, Gill, Calvin, Barnhard, and the “Hardshells” do have a time of it, don’t they?
“To make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings” (vs. 10). (There’s a good verse to show us that the word “perfect” in the Bible certainly doesn’t mean “sinless.” Wasn’t Christ sinless? Yes;
but He wasn’t “perfect.” Do you see that?) It says the only way He could be “made perfect” was through suffering. Look at Hebrews 5:8-9, “Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by THE THINGS WHICH HE SUFFERED; And BEING MADE PERFECT ...See that? That is the Lord Jesus Christ learning! “Learned he obedience by the things which he suffered; And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation . . . So the word “perfect” obviously means “complete.” Jesus Christ actually had to LEARN something after He was sinless, and He was made “perfect” AFTER He was sinless.
The question comes up, “What could He possibly LEARN?” Doesn’t God know everything? Wasn’t Christ “God manifest in the flesh”? The text says “learned he OBEDIENCE.” You say, “He already knew that.” Ah, yes, but He hadn’t experienced it as a man! He knew it as a member of the Godhead (“I come to do thy will, O God . . .” Heb. 10:7, 9). But He didn’t learn it as a man until He came down here and suffered and hungered and thirsted and wept and bled and died. There is a great gap between theoretically understanding a concept and actually living through it in reality. The old joke is the one about the Scoutmaster who loved little boys. Everyone thought he was one of the greatest benefactors a little boy could have. One day he put some fresh concrete in front of his house, and while it was still wet, some little boys ran throught it and messed it up. He came out cursing and throwing rocks at them. Somebody saw it and remarked, “That man’s trouble is that although he loves little boys in the abstract, he has no use for them in the concrete. ”
The idea is simply this: it is one thing (and the Devil knew this, and this is why he had something to say to Jesus Christ when He showed up in Luke 4:1- 10) for the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit to be sitting back there in eternity, sinless and holy, and talk
about what a sinner should do and should not do, and it is another thing for a man down on this earth under God’s laws to try to keep those laws—which are holy and pure.
Now, the Devil “had a point” with Christ in these matters. The Devil used to come around and accuse the Lord (see Zech. 3:1-5), and Christ would turn to the Devil and say “The Lord rebuke thee, O Satan . . (Zech. 3:2). When the Lord came down and showed up “in the flesh” on the mountains of Palestine, He didn’t say, “The Lord rebuke thee, O Satan”; He said, "Get outta here!” What is the difference? Well, before the incarnation, the Trinity is in a spirit state, and the Devil brings home his point, “Well, after all, what do you know about it? Did you ever get hungry or thirsty? When were YOU tempted, Lord God?!” (Don’t worry, the Devil really is very audacious.) "You’ve never bled. You own the cattle on a thousand hills, what do you know about poverty and being in debt? You don’t know what it is like to be slapped in the face and have your hair pulled out or be spit on! I mean, you made those men down there, and you are responsible; but what do YOU really know about their condition!”
And about that time here comes the Lord down here as a man (“He took on him the seed of Abraham,” vs. 16), and He is cussed and spit upon. He is maligned and whipped; He is slandered and betrayed; and finally He is murdered (Acts 7:52) as a criminal (Phil. 2:6-8). He squares off with His adversary and says, “Now what is it that you were saying?” (Oh, it’s all there! Look at it in Isaiah 50:5-8. It’s all written back there in Isaiah!) Jesus is bound and sitting in the chair; and He is being punched, slapped, and spit on. He says, “Who is mine adversary? Let him come near; let him come on!” Satan steps in and pours it on (Matt. 27:29-31). The Lord says, “I can take more than that. I’m not about to quit. Do your worst!” Satan does
(John 19:1). The Lord says, “I’m not going to quit. Pour on some more.” The Devil fires his biggest guns (Matt. 27:40-42) and says, “Quit! Quit! You’ve got to quit!” And the Lord says, “I DON’T HAVE TO QUIT. IT’S FINISHED!" (John 19:30).
“And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it” (Col. 2:15). Jesus Christ made a fool out of Satan. He was the only man who ever did and the only man who ever will. At Calvary He “put him down!” (John 16:11). But to do it He had to live, bleed, and die as a man, not as a member of the Trinity. He had to “learn obedience.” Now you figure THAT out! God—that eternal Almighty One we spoke of in Hebrews 1:10-12—learning how to “obey” that He might be “perfected”! It is a remarkable thought, brother; absolutely shattering.
“To make the captain of their salvation . .
(vs. 10). I like that. I know what a captain of a rifle company is, at least a rifle company between 1938 and 1945. That’s the one we called the “old man.” It’s also what they call a skipper on a ship. Back in those days, we had three rifle platoons and a weapons platoon in a rifle company. The squad was eight men until 1940, and after that it was twelve men. The captain was a “line officer” or field officer. He went into action with you. He was the leader: “Heff Hauptmann.” The word captain is from “CAP” for the head, which indicates a CAPSTONE (headstone), and our word “CHAP” is from it, as in “CHAPITER,” being the head of a section or the top of a pillar. I know who my “head” is (Col. 1:18).
“For both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one ..(vs. 11). They are from one source, from God. The One who sanctifies is Christ, and the ones who are sanctified, or “set apart,” are US. “For which cause he” (i.e., the one who sanctifies, Jesus Christ) “is not ashamed to call them” (i.e., the
ones who are sanctified) “brethren . . . So, because He was a man he is our “older brother” (see Matt. 12:46-50). Jesus is the “firstborn among many brethren.” Then again, in a sense, He is our Father (vs. 13), for we read, “. . . Behold I and the children which God hath given me.” But it goes beyond this; we are also, in a sense, His wife. We are the husband’s “bride” (Eph. 5:27-32), and He is our Head as a man is the head of his wife (1 Cor. 11:1-5). All of these figures are true:
1. Christ is the head of a body that makes up His bride.
2. Christ is the older brother of every believer who makes up that Body.
3. Christ is the generator of a “seed” (Psa. 22:30) who are His “sons” (John 1:12-13).
All three similitudes are true, and if one will read the Old Testament, he will find that Israel is given three relationships to God which all differ.
1. Israel is God’s firstborn SON (Exod. 4:22).
2. Israel is God’s wife (Hos. 1-4).
3. Israel is a man, “Jacob” or Israel (Hos. 12:2; 14:1).
The believer should notice this as it is a Biblical antidote for what we call “the Dry Cleaners.” These people are hyper-dispensationalists, and they teach that the Body of Christ is not His wife or bride but rather a “NEW MAN” (Eph. 4:13, 2:15); this makes New Jerusalem God’s wife instead of the Lamb’s wife, etc. The “dry cleaners” never could get their “figures” figured out. Jesus Christ is like a FATHER, a HUSBAND, and a BROTHER.
“Saying, I will declare thy name unto my BRETHREN, [there it is] in the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee. And again, I will put my trust in him. And again, Behold I and the children which God hath given me” (vss. 12-13). The quotations are from Psalm 22:22 and Isaiah 8:17-18.
Observe that the quotation from Psalm 22 is from a Crucifixion Psalm, and observe that the passage the “master of Israel” (John 3:10) could not find was at the end of the Psalm. Psalm 22:30-31 prophesies the NEW BIRTH where God will generate His own “seed.” THE REASON NICODEMUS, WITH A MASTER’S DEGREE, COULD NOT FIND IT WAS THAT HE, LIKE WILLMINGTON, SUMNER, SWINDOLL^ MACARTHUR, HAGIN, AFMAN, PRICE, COPELAND, FAULKNER, MARTIN, CUSTER, ZODHI- ATES, WUEST, PANOSIAN, WISDOM, AND OTHERS, WAS SO TAKEN UP WITH A BOOK HE HAD NEVER SEEN—THE ORIGINAL AUTOGRAPHS— THAT HE FAILED TO READ THE SCRIPTURES THAT HE HAD.
A master’s degree in Hebrew for a Hebrew-speaking Jew doesn’t guarantee anything.
And with this we turn to the Fundamental and Conservative scholars, who all view the Authorized Version as full of “errors” and “archaic expressions” and “glosses,” and see how they have fared.
1. The grossly corrupt RV of 1885 replaced the “captain” with an “author.” The RSV reduced Him to a “pioneer,” and the Living Bible to a “leader.” The NIV (and the equally ridiculous NASVj reads as the RV of Westcott and Hort. The Jehovah’s Witness Bible (NWT) says “prince.” One error is just as bad as another: discard all six conjectures.
2. Origen says that Christ was “WITHOUT GOD” in verse 9 when He tasted death. The NIV and NASV back this up by stripping Christ of His deity when He died: both of these contemptable translations erase the word “LORD” in Luke 23:42 when Christ was dying. Naturally, the Living Bible and the Communist RSV read with the ASV, NASV, and NIV.
3. Freerkson (Liberty University) makes a remarkable confession at verse 10 when discussing the word “bringing.” He says that although the word is an aorist
(Greek), “IT APPEARS TO BE TIMELESS" so we cannot “restrict this to a past occurrence.” We might have known as much. All of that ridiculous blather going on in Christian schools for the last 100 years about the “improper translation of the punctiliar action of the aorist in the AV’ was just that: BLATHER. The Germans have a saying for it: Quatsch. “It appears to be TIMELESS!” An aorist “appears” as an non-aorist! The AV translated all of its “aorists” correctly then: some were TIMELESS and some WEREN’T!
4. Alford, Bleek, Davidson and DeWette prefer “see him who was made.” They don’t particularly care to have “Jesus” in the verse (vs. 9) suffering death BEFORE He is “crowned.” They read “even Jesus crowned,” omitting the correct order—“because of the suffering of death.”
5. Wordsworth, Milligan, and Angus say it should be “we behold Jesus a little lower.” Beet, Delitzsch and DeWitte prefer “a little while” instead of a “little lower.”
6. Souter, Vincent, Wordsworth, Bleek, Ebhard, and Kuenen all “prefer” a “leader” to a Captain (vs. 10), while DeWitte, Lucken, and Moulton “prefer" the “prince” of the Jehovah’s Witness version. Cancel all nine Greek scholars since not one of them had the spiritual discernment of a blind mosquito.
7. Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown assure us, with all the soberness of a great horned owl, that verse 13 is a quotation from a pre-Christian LXX. However, they are just as careful as the other 700,000 scholars who talk about the LXX NOT TO CITE ANY B.C. MANUSCRIPT FOR THE QUOTATION.
8. After telling us that the “Greek” for Captain should be “leader,” Dummelow forgets himself and calls Christ the “Captain” while commenting on verse 11. A. M. Stibbs, writing for the New Bible Commentary (p. 1197), tells us that the “captain” of verse 10 is
only a description of an originator, and therefore, “author” would be better. But since God always messes with the mind of any educated fool who messes with the Scripture, Stibbs goes bonkers immediately and continues with THIS: “Our Lord’s work issues in His becoming THE HEAD of a saved community.” Exactly: a Captain, just like the Authorized text said— cap, capstone, chap, chapter, capitol, chapiter, Captain.
The best practise for the Bible believer, naturally, is to junk the Greek scholarship above which represents over 100 years of pious NONSENSE.
2:14 Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil;
15 And deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.
16 For verily he took not on him the nature of angels; but he took on him the seed of Abraham.
17 Wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people.
18 For in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succour them that are tempted.
Now we come to the great verses in Hebrews that deal with the humanity of Christ. They should be read in conjunction with Hebrews 5:7-9, 2:1-4, and 13:10— 14.
“Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood ...” (Note how the word “partakers” is used here and remember it when studying Heb. 6:4.) “Partakers of flesh and blood, [and we are] he also himself likewise took part of the same; that
through death [by means of death, that is, He died] he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil” (vs. 14).
So, it is the Devil who has the “power of death,” although it is the Lord Himself who decides whom the Devil can take and whom he cannot (see Deut. 32:39). But the one who takes the lives of men is the Devil. Satan HAS “the power of death”; he is the fifth cherub, and his number is FIVE (Devil, Satan, and death are all five letter words). The Lord “kills” in that He gives Satan permission to act (see Job 1:12). The Lords said to Satan first: “. . . only upon himself put not forth thine hand” (Job 1:12, and then “... BUT SAVE HIS LIFE” (Job 2:6).
“And deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage” (vs. 15). The idea here is that before Jesus Christ came, even people under the law who were saved were in bondage to fear. They were afraid of dying (“Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath he will give for his life.”), because they didn’t know for sure whether God would accept them or not. You have an extraordinary case like David’s where “sure mercies” (Acts 13:34) are promised to him, but even then when David sinned he was scared to death that he had lost the Holy Spirit (Psa. 51:11). After Calvary we have a situation where the one in charge of the executions has been whipped and put to shame (see comments on vss. 8-9), so that no longer does any Christian have to live in a lingering fear and doubt of “What will happen to me when I die?” You can live WITHOUT FEAR (1 John 4:17- 18) in THAT respect, for by receiving the One who judged Satan (John 16:11), you are assured of instant acceptance (Eph. 1:6) at death when ushered into the presence of the Almighty (Phil. 1:21-23; 2 Cor. 5:1- 10). You are no longer “subject to bondage.” You are free. You may have many problems and tribulations in this life, but the fear of death should never be one of
them; your Saviour conquered death (1 Cor. 15 50- 56).
Observe further that in order to do this, He had to become a partaker of “FLESH AND BLOOD,” not “FLESH AND BONES.” The student should pay careful attention to this wording, as Christ’s resurrection body is no longer “human” in the strict sense: it is only a “FLESH AND BONES” body (see Luke 24:39). This is like THE BODY THAT ADAM HAD BEFORE HE PARTOOK OF THE TREE OF THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL, for he says of his wife that she is “flesh of my flesh and bone of my bones.” No blood is mentioned. “FLESH AND BLOOD” (1 Cor. 15:50) is a strictly human combination.
“For verily he took not on him the nature of angels . . (vs. 16). If He had done this, He would have come down only as a Spirit, and Marcion and the “gnostics” would have had the situation right. Angels are “spirits” (see 1:7). “. . . But he took on him the seed of Abraham” (vs. 16). So, He came down here as a man in the flesh, since Mary (from Abraham) was “flesh and blood.” He is also said to be “the seed of David” (Rom. 1:3), but only “according to the flesh” (Rom. 1:3). His real SEED (Gen. 3:15) was God’s seed; He was God’s “child” (see Acts 4:27).
This is called the “mystery of godliness” in 1 Timothy 3:16. Since it is the greatest verse in the entire New Testament on the Deity of Christ and His Incarnation, it is the first verse attacked by the vicious apostates who put together the ASV, NASV, and the NIV. All three of these depraved corruptions (recommended by the faculties and staffs of Tennessee Temple, Moody, Wheaton, Dallas, Fuller, and Bob Jones) erase the word “GOD” from 1 Timothy 3:16 and line up with the “Living” (God have mercy on us for such blasphemy!) Bible and the RSV of the NCCC. It you were to ask any apostate Fundamentalist at Bob Jones or Tennessee Temple to explain these matters, he would
drum up the most hare-brained alibi since Darwin tried to explain spontaneous generation. He would say (we quote any and all of them exactly) that since the Incarnation and Deity of Christ CAN BE FOUND SOMEWHERE ELSE IN THEIR TRANSLATIONS BESIDES 1 TIMOTHY 3:16 THAT IT IS PERFECTLY PROPER TO ERASE IT FROM 1 TIMOTHY 3:16. Bonkers.
“Wherefore in all things it behoved him” (This is the Old English for a thing that is fitting to someone or that “becomes,” one) “to be made like unto his brethren . . (vs. 17). In this case, literal, physical Hebrews descended from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (see John 1:11). But in the context of verse 14, the “brethren” could refer to anyone in the flesh, including Gentiles. “That he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people” (vs. 17).
Note how the word “people” here is used as in Matthew 1:21, “save HIS PEOPLE FROM THEIR SINS,” but since all people need to be reconciled to God (see 2 Cor. 5:18—21), the application goes much further.
Our great “High Priest” (see Heb. 3:1) is totally unlike Pius IX, who declared that all governments should be controlled from the Vatican; totally unlike the bloody killer Pius XII (Hitler’s right-hand man), who rejoiced at the murder of 200,000 Serbians; totally unlike the treacherous Paul VI, who promoted Communism in Latin America; totally unlike the Dark Age and Renaissance popes who violated virgins, fornicated with nuns, committed incest with their relatives and turned the Lateran palace into a brothel.
Our High Priest is MERCIFUL and faithful. He is not at all like the Catholic priest in Chicago who died back in 1984 and had a bottle of brandy placed in his casket by a bartender who confessed, “He often stopped in for brandy, so I thought I’d give him ‘one for the road’ till he comes back to us!”
How unlike such priests is OUR High Priest! There is nothing about Him that would remind us of the Dutch Catholic priest in 1983 who married two male queers and said it was the duty of the Catholic church to “relate to such people and help them out” by giving them the “Holy Sacrament” (!!) of marriage.
How unlike the Catholic Archbishop Stepinac of the Croatian Ustashi is our High Priest! Stepinac personally supervised the forced conversion of 100,000 Serbs under threat of having their throats slashed. This wasn’t done in the Dark Ages; it was done in 1942.
Verse 17 should be read in conjunction with 3:1- 6 and 4:14-16. All three passages deal with the same subject. We have a sympathetic High Priest who pleases God as well as us. He is “touched with the feelings of our infirmities”; and being “a man of sorrows, and aquainted with grief’ (Isa. 53:1-6), He is able to “relate” to our everyday problems and trials. Thank God for Jesus Christ! Thank God we don’t have to go to some Catholic sinner in a Halloween costume to get any assistance!
“To make reconciliation for the sins of the people” (vs. 17). This word “RECONCILIATION” is one of those words like imputation, redemption, sanctification, etc. These Bible words nearly all end in “tion” or at least “ion.” They compose a sort of “salvation vocabulary” that is unique to the Bible. Their origin is exclusively SPIRITUAL, and they encompass the great doctrines of salvation (notice the “tion" on that one). You may hear these words used occasionally out in the world, but they came from the Bible. When people talk about “reconciliation” they are using a Bible word that deals specifically with the doctrines of salvation. One of the ways you brethren know that Christian America has “gone to pot” (among 1,000 other ways!) is by the fact that when you turn on the radio or the TV and hear a preacher preach you do not hear the “tion” words. Every one of those words em
phasizes some phase of salvation or some aspect of salvation. Notice the shades of meaning.
1. Salvation: a general term describing the whole process from start to finish.
2. Redemption: a completed payment so a thing can be released or be “freed.”
3. Propitiation: a specific payment to placate or appease an offended party.
4. Regeneration: an actual act whereby a man is born again by the Spirit of God.
5. Adoption: a judicial act whereby a sinner is declared to be a part of God’s family.
6. Justification: a judicial act whereby God declares a sinner to be righteous.
7. Imputation: a judicial act where God attributes someone’s sins to someone else and attributes someone’s righteousness to someone else.
8. Sanctification: a three-stage process whereby a sinner is saved from the penalty of sin (Hell), the power of sin (daily), and the presence of sin (at the Advent: see 1 Thess. 5:23).
Now, there are some more words like “remission” and “glorification,” but the big “8” are those given above. You will notice that 90 percent of the TV and radio preachers in 1985 have rid themselves of this Biblical vocabulary and have substituted such expressions as “Share your faith,” “Cope with stress,” “Let Christ come into your life,” “Get totally committed,” “Get involved,” “Let Christ come into your heart,” etc., etc. There is no real Biblical preaching in such humanistic approaches. The word ‘RECONCILIATION” would be number 9 in the list. It simply means the getting together of two or more parties who were on the “outs” with each other. When the author says “to make RECONCILIATION for the sins of the people,” he is saying that Christ had to do something because of the people’s sins. He must draw them back into fellowship with God. God is over THERE; the
people are over HERE. There is a “generation gap” between them; there is a “credibility gap” between them; there is an “iron curtain” between them; they are hopelessly irreconcilable. Somebody will have to do something to reconcile these sinners. God can’t do it justly because He is holy and sinless (Rom. 3:21-26). Mary, Joseph, Buddha, John the Baptist, Mohammed, and the popes can’t do it, for they are sinners. So the Lord Jesus Christ comes down (see Phil. 2:1-12 and comments in that Commentary) and MAKES THE RECONCILIATION possible (see the exact statement in Rom. 3:21-26).
“For in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succour them that are tempted” (vs. 18). You need to memorize that verse. (Memorize it in the old English with “succour” and all. “Succour” simply means to help out or assist someone; it also includes the idea of comfort. To “succour” is more than just to help someone: it is to rescue someone with provisions.)
“For in that he himself hath SUFFERED being tempted . ..Now compare this with 4:15, “.. . but was in ALL POINTS TEMPTED LIKE AS WE ARE, yet without sin.” So we have a faithful, merciful, compassionate High Priest who was genuinely tempted and who SUFFERED, being tempted. The standard position taken by nearly all theologians is that Christ could NOT really have been tempted because He could not have sinned. A denial of this “historic’ position is taken by most dead orthodox theologians to be an attack on the sinless NATURE of Christ. This peculiar obsession comes from a “double-separatist’ type of Phariseeism, current among theologians which makes them think of sin only in terms of fornication, murder, or other overt ACTS of sin. Sin actually begins when a man DEBATES in his mind about the advisability of an action after he has had LIGHT on the action. Sin begins in a man BEFORE he even de
cides to act. “Illumination” after “presentation” is the order of “peccability” and simply means that any man can be presented with an object and receive light on it as a temptation, but he has not sinned until he DEBATES as to whether or not he will do something wrong after receiving light on it that it is wrong. Those who assume Christ never could have sinned in THOUGHT have denied Him a will as an INDIVIDUAL. By quoting John 5:30, they overrode Hebrews 10:5-9, where two wills are plainly involved, and ignored Matthew 26:39-43, where two wills again are plainly involved. In the latter case, sin is not a point, but Christ’s ability to consider BOTH SIDES OF AN ISSUE is clearly given in the passage (see Mark 14:35-40). He could have debated the course of a wrong action. He was genuinely tempted to sin (Matt. 4:1-8).
When you get into trouble and get tempted, then you have to resort to the One who was tempted and remember that “There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man ...” (1 Cor. 10: 13). A fellow said to me one time, “I know Christ wasn’t tempted in all points like as we are. ” I said, “Why not?” He replied, “Because he wasn’t married. A married man has temptations Christ didn’t know anything about; He didn’t have a woman nagging Him all the time, so how can He know about that kind of life?” Well, when it says He “was in all points tempted like as we are,” it is not talking about 4,000 specific cases; rather it is dealing with the three main temptations with which all other temptations are connected. These three temptations are found in three places in the Scripture. They are listed once in 1 John 2:16, again in Genesis 3:6, and again in Luke 4:1-13. They consist of:
1. Do it yourself: get something for your flesh; it’s “good for food.”
2. Let God do it for you: show off (pride of life) how “wise” you are.
3. Let the Devil do it for you: take what looks good; it is “pleasant.”
Note how all three lists match each other. Every temptation known to mankind is found in those three basic temptations: pride, jealousy, laziness, covetousness, lust, murder, envy, stealing, exaggeration, boasting, lying, gluttony, drunkenness, and idolatry are all connected with yielding to one of those three temptations.
“For in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succour them that are tempted” (vs. 18). I don’t know how many times you have been tempted and have overcome it, or yielded to it, but it has been my experience that every time I did something wrong or thought something wrong or said something wrong, there was always a moment where I did not make a real effort to get out of the temptation. I did not really seek “a way to escape” (1 Cor. 10:13). You had better be honest with yourself about these things. Maybe you really did make an effort and maybe you didn’t, but did you honestly ask for a way out while at the same time rebuking Satan in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and RECKONING YOURSELF TO BE DEAD (see Rom. 6:11)? Every time I pulled all three of those operations, I got through all right. But did you ever notice that there is a certain kind of a gap or vacuum where you are debating whether to do it or not, and suddenly the will just ACTS; and when it acts it just shuts the Lord and the Bible out. You are in “neutral” and then snap! Just like that! I have watched that thing go on in my own mind a hundred times, man. You won’t kid me about sin. I know where sin hatches. It is in the will. It is that old “I will” (see Isa. 14:12-15). Sin conceives where God says: “Don’t,” and you say, “I will.” That is where it sprouts, after DEBATING. You hear people say, “Well, I didn’t sin WILLFULLY.” Baloney. Liars are a dime a hundred these days. Oh, the sovereignty of man! Oh, the ability
of this insignificant “worm” (Psa. 22:6) to rise up against his almighty Creator and say “not THY will but MINE be done.” Ah, that free will! Boy, did John Calvin ever blow it on that one!
Before going into chapter 3 we need to check our exegetical critics who have been tearing up the Authorized Text since 1611.
1. The NIV, recommended by all modern apostate Conservatives, suddenly decides that verse 16 is completely wrong and what the Holy Spirit intended to say was that Christ doesn’t “help” angels, but “helps” Abraham’s descendants! Who? Ishmael and his twelve nations? Ishmael was Abraham’s “descendant.” When a man messes with the Book, God messes with his mind.
2. Christ didn’t make any “reconciliation for the sins of the people” (vs. 17) in Taylor’s “Living” (Lord, have mercy on thy people!) Bible-, instead, He just DEALT with the sins the people.
3. Bleek, Davidson, Alford, and Delitzsch decide to limit Christ’s temptations to the “things that He suffered,” thus canceling ALL THREE TEMPTATIONS LISTED IN MATTHEW AND LUKE (Expositor’s Greek New Testament, p. 270). Not all the loonies are in the bin. Not all of the boobies are in the hatch. (Smile! God loves you!)
4. Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown again run to the LXX and tell us that verse 16 begins with a Greek structure taken from the LXX in Jeremiah 31:32 and Isaiah 41:8. Naturally they are careful not to quote any LXX written before the time of Christ: THERE WASN’T ANY.
5. Dummelow limits the Devil’s “power of death” only to his power to tempt men to sin. This is an outright denial of Job 2:6. We would expect as much of any corrector of the Authorized Text who gloried in “plenary, verbally inspired, original autographs.”
6. Running to help Dummelow are Lucken, Alford, Bleek, and DeWette, who tell us the Devil only had power “OVER” death. Christ does “not interest himself in the seed of angels,” according to Alford, Bleek, Davidson, Delitzsch, Angus, and Lucken, but “he ta- keth hold of Abraham’s seed.” (Since none of that philosophical, exegetical, Greekified mishmash clarifies one thing in the entire chapter, it is well to dispense with it.)
7. It would be hard for our Lord to “take ahold of Abraham’s seed” in the New Bible Commentary, for here, Brother Stibbs (and I use the word “brother” quite loosely!) says that it was not Christ taking hold of anyone’s seed, since it had nothing to do with “His becoming man, but to His work of rescue” (p. 1197). (A “highly imaginative exegesis” if you ever saw it, Daddy-0.)
THE BIBLE BELIEVER’S COMMENTARY SERIES
3:1 Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus;
2 Who was faithful to him that appointed him, as also Moses was faithful in all his house.
3 For this man was counted worthy of more glory than Moses, inasmuch as he who hath builded the house hath more honour than the house.
4 For every house is builded by some man; but he that built all things is God.
5 And Moses verily was faithful in all his house, as a servant, for a testimony of those things which were to be spoken after;
6 But Christ as a son over his own house; whose house are we, if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end.
We now enter upon a comparison of Moses and Christ. In chapters 1 and 2, Christ’s superiority over the angels has been discussed; we now are introduced to His superiority over the great Jewish lawgiver, Moses, who was the idol and hero of Christ’s day (see Mark 12:19; John 8:5, 9:28-29; Acts 15:21; Matt. 19:7; Luke 2:22, 9:33; etc.).
“Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers [remember how the word is used here when studying Hebrews 6!] of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle [There is that “Prince of Apostles” you hear those papists talking about, except they have the wrong one!] and High Priest of our profession . . . .” There may be “twelve apostles of the Lamb” and eight more later (see Acts
14:14 and comments in that commentary), but THE Apostle is Jesus Christ. When the papists call Simon Peter the “Prince of the Apostles,” they are giving him a title that should go to Jesus Christ. The “High Priest of our profession” is not a pope or a bishop or a cardinal or an archbishop or a gimp or a wimp or a geek: it is the Lord Jesus Christ. You should know both of His titles: THE APOSTLE and THE HIGH PRIEST.
“Who was faithful to him that appointed him [that is, God the Father], as also Moses was faithful in all his house” (vs. 2).
Observe, that after all of that gas, baloney, hot air, and smog on 1 John 3:9 about the “present active linear tense” of the Greek word (poiei) being mistranslated in the Authorized Version as “commit” (where it should have been “continually practised,” etc.), here in Hebrews 3:2 we are confronted with a form of the same word (Greek—poieo). This time if it were translated as “practise” or “made,” it would give the Arians a right to claim that God “made” Christ. Instead of using the word “made” or “commit” or “practice,” this time the AV translators used “APPOINTED,” and Freerkson (Liberty University, Lynchburg) didn’t peep. Rendall (Dods is writing), after going around the equator with Bleek, Lunemann, and Alford on “accusatives” and Arian translations, winds up with nothing. The AV stands as “APPOINTED” with no Greek lexicon able to make an improvement, no Greek scholar able to alter the “mistranslation,” and no Greek grammar or grammarian able to do anything with the word (poieo). The actual word was “poiesanti” (a participle from “poieo”), but this didn’t explain anything. The word is found in Aland and Metzger, as well as in Nestle and Hort, and not one of them can explain the “haphazard” translation of 1611. It just happened to be right NO MATTER WHAT ANY LEXICON SAID. (The lexicons give twenty-five meanings for the word.) You are safe
in correcting a lexicon with the Holy Bible (AV).
“As also Moses was faithful in all his house” (vs. 2). The “house” referred to here is the house of Israel as a “household” (see Heb. 11:7 and Acts 16:31). Moses was not faithful in his household all the time, which is manifest by Exodus 4:26 and Numbers 20: JO- 14, but the statement has to do with his faithfulness in doing what God told him to do in constructing the tabernacle and giving the law. Observe how many times we find the expression “all that the Lord commanded Moses, so did they” (Exod. 39:32) or “And Moses did as the Lord commanded him” (Lev. 8:4) or “as the Lord commanded Moses” (Exod. 40:19).
The one notable exception to Moses’ faithfulness was his defection from the exact order of Numbers 20:10-14. It was this that caused him to lose his “entrance ticket” into the Promised Land (Deut. 3). The reason why this is “overlooked” in Hebrews 3:2 is exactly the same reason why we find the Lord “overlooking” David’s adultery in Hebrews 11, Sarah’s infidelity in Romans 4, Jonah’s backsliding in Matthew 12, Rahab’s lying in James 2:25, Abraham’s lying (Gen. 12:12-13) in James 2, Samson’s immorality in Hebrews 11, and Jacob’s deception (Gen. 27) in Romans 9:13. The New Testament has a strange way of ERADICATING the sins of the Old Testament saints. It was almost as though all of the authors of the New Testament had been in “collusion” and decided NOT to mention them. Grace is a wonderful thing, isn’t it?
“For this man [the Lord Jesus Christ] was counted worthy of more glory than Moses, inasmuch as [and now he states a general principle which can be applied anywhere] he who hath builded the house [in this case the Lord Jesus Christ] hath more honour than the house” (vs. 3). We need to apply the principle given here in order to disentangle ourselves from the coils of the Roman Catholic cobra and the skirts of the Whore on the Seven Hills. The “crowned”
pimps for this whore have always obtained their backing by putting forth the following proposition: “Christ founded His church. Which church is it? What are the ‘marks’ of the true church since there are so many divisions?” Answer: HE WHO FOUNDED THE CHURCH HAS MORE HONOR THAN THE CHURCH. You had better find the Builder before you go messing with any building. The question is not: “Do you know which church Christ founded?” (Anyone can prove that any church is the one He founded.) The question is: “Do you know the Founder?'
“For every house is builded by some man; but he that built all things is God” (vs. 4). Whether the “house” is a literal building built by carpenters and bricklayers or whether it is a household built up by a man through savings and checking accounts, insurance policies, inheritances, and goods so that it becomes a dynasty, it is still only one HOUSE: it is not the universe and all of the organic and inorganic material in it. God Almighty created the mountains and the forests to which the builders must go to get “building materials.” The reference plainly magnifies the deity of Christ (see Col. 1:13-19), for he goes on to say, “But Christ as a son OVER HIS OWN HOUSE” (vs. 6). This is not the case of a servant serving in someone else’s house; this is a case of a Son serving a Father in HIS OWN HOUSE.
The “house” in verse 6 turns out to be people, as in a “household” (see Heb. 11:7 for an exact case).
“And Moses ... for a testimony of those things which were to be spoken after;” (vs. 5). The “things which were to be spoken AFTER” were spoken in John 6:32 and John 7:19-22, and this explains why the Lord Jesus Christ threw Moses into the faces of those that refused His words (John 5:46). He was the prophet “like unto Moses” (John 1:21; Deut. 18:18) and the only place where Moses “blew it” was when he messed up the testimony that dealt with the ONE EFFECTUAL
FINISHED SACRIFICE OF CHRIST. Moses smote the “rock” when all he had to do was speak to it (Num. 20:7-13). The “rock” was a type of Christ (1 Cor. 10:1-3), and Christ once “smitten” (see Heb. 10:8-12) CAN NEVER BE SMITTEN AGAIN, NOT EVEN IF 500,000 BAALITE PRIESTS PROFESS TO REPEAT THE ACT AS A LITERAL SACRIFICE EVERY DAY OF THE “SUN” GOD IN THE YEAR. God’s severity with Moses—He prevented him from entering the Promised Land because of this “error”—cannot be understood apart, from Moses’ obligation to be a “TESTIMONY OF THOSE THINGS WHICH WERE TO BE SPOKEN AFTER.”
“Whose house are we, IF ..(vs. 6). Therewith went all of the students, trustees, presidents, janitors, faculty members, professors, deans, assistant teachers, chancellors, and Greek scholars down the tube.
The “house of God” in this age (see 1 Tim. 3:15) is the body of Jesus Christ (Eph. 1:23, 4:15-16) composed of people who are “bone of His bone and flesh of His flesh” (Eph. 5:30), people in whom “dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” (Col. 2:9). There is not one “IF” attached to their standing in God’s “house. ” If one of them got out of the “house,” part of the Lord’s body would go to hell (see Rom. 8:28-32). They are so much “partakers of Christ” (see Heb. 3:14) that their final destination has already been fixed (Rom. 8:29), and they are going to wind up exactly like Jesus Christ Himself. What to do, oh, what to do with this horrible English text of Hebrews 3:6 and 3:14? Quick, Henry, the Flit! Quick, Hort, the lexicon! Quick, Willmington, your library! Quick, Freddy Afman, your tarot cards!
Well, here is as good a place as any to wade into the maelstrom. Everything has been set in order by the Holy Spirit, and it has been set apart from the “majority of good, godly, dedicated, qualified scholars that God ‘mightily used’ as ‘giants of the faith,’ boldly
defending the verbally inspired twiddletwaddles.”
1. “These” are the “last days” (Heb. 1:2).
2. “Worlds” are going to be populated (Heb. 1:2).
3. An “inheritance” is being dealt with (Heb. 1:4).
4. A throne and a “sceptre” will show up (Heb. 1:8).
5. After the reign, the heavens and earth will vanish (Heb. 1:10-13).
6. Someone will inherit salvation at that time (Heb. 1:14).
7. This has to do with the “world to come” (Heb. 2:5).
8. When the promises given to Adam shall be fulfilled (Heb. 2:7-8).
9. “THE END” time is involved (Heb. 3:6).
10. So enduring to “THE END” is part of salvation (Heb. 3:6).
11. And you can fall short (Heb. 4:1), go back into “perdition” (Heb. 10:39), and “WERE MADE PARTAKERS OF THE HOLY GHOST” (Heb 6:4).
Any “historical” system of interpretation that alters ONE of these verses is a system that has been privately constructed to obliterate Biblical truth and overthrow Divine Revelation. Any system of interpretation that fails to deal with the VALIDITY AND FAITHFULNESS of those words, as written, is designed to confuse the truth and bring the reader down to the level of the ignorance of the Greek expositor.
The verses—and we shall deal with them again in strong terms in Hebrews 6 and Hebrews 10—teach that SOMEONE can be saved by “believing” and then cease to “believe” and wind up lost. Whoever it is that believes, believes in a legal setup (see Rev. 12:17, 14:12) where he is NOT INCORPORATED INTO THE LIVING BODY OF JESUS CHRIST WHEN HE “BELIEVES.”
All of Scofield’s excursions around “left end” to
try to prove that passages like these are referring to “professors” instead of “possessors” is wasted time and wasted paper. The virgins of Matthew 25 all “possessed” what they “professed,” and so did the “servants” of Matthew 25. No one in Matthew 25:34-40 had to PROFESS OR POSSESS ANYTHING: all they had to do was good works.
Every attempt to revise, augment, supplement, allegorize, spiritualize, curtail, or reinterpret Hebrews 3:6 and 3:14 fails Liiserably. In vain do the Baptists and Presbyterians try to bend the Holy Bible and the Holy Spirit to meet the demands of their “historic fundamentalist positions.” Neither will yield. NO CHRISTIAN IN THE BODY OF CHRIST HAS TO HOLD ANY CONFIDENCE OR REJOICING “FIRM UNTO THE END” to be a “partaker of Christ,” nor does ANY CHRISTIAN HAVE TO HOLD “THE BEGINNING OF [HIS] CONFIDENCE STEDFAST UNTO THE END.”
The Christian was as good as confirmed to “THE END” (1 Cor. 1:8) the moment he received Jesus Christ (1 Thess. 5:9), and whether he rejoices, sulks, sorrows, exhalts, raves, complains, gives thanks, or quits believing, HE IS A “PARTAKER OF CHRIST” AND WILL BE FOREVER (John 10:28, 14:1-3).
Hebrews 3:6 and 3:14 are not doctrinal statements that deal with anyone in the Church Age.
In view of the Biblical facts, opinions to the contrary are just too funny for words.
Now, when we find two passages in the Bible that contradict two other passages, instead of making the whole Bible a lie on the basis of those few verses, why not put the verses in their right place and maintain the integrity of the entire Book? People who quote passages like those here (Heb. 3:6, 14, 6:1-6, 10:28-33; Matt. 24:13, etc.) are trying to destroy the Bible in order to prove one point. Granted that the point is somewhere, but where is it? The Seventh-day Adven
tists have “a point,” but it is in eternity (see Heb. 1:14 and comments), not now. The Baptists and Presbyterians have “a point,” BUT IT IS NOW AND NOT IN THE TRIBULATION. If I find a verse that says I can’t lose salvation and then find a verse that says I can lose it, I cannot make the Bible contradict; the Bible never contradicts. The contradictions are in sinners (Heb. 12:3). Nevertheless, I must choose. Now, which am I going to choose? All right, the verses that say that I am fixed and secure are in the Pauline epistles, written to the Gentiles by the apostle “to the Gentiles” (Rom. 15:16): I am a Gentile. Now, here I am reading a book written to “HEBREWS” by an unknown author! I am not a Hebrew. You say, “You are a spiritual Jew.” I didn’t say that. I said, “I was not a Hebrew.” But you say, “We are the Israel of God.” I didn’t say that. I said, “I was not a Hebrew. ” You say ... Yes, but you see, your problem is THAT YOU ARE MENTALLY UNBALANCED, AND FURTHER, YOUR HEARING IS DEFICIENT.
Whoever “endures to the END” (Matt. 24:13) must “hold fast . . . UNTO THE END” (Heb. 3:6), even “STEDFAST UNTO THE END” (Heb. 3:14), because the “gospel” they believe (see Heb. 4:2) isn’t the gospel of the grace of God at all. Matthew (a Hebrew) told the Hebrews (Matt. 24:14) that it was the GOSPEL OF THE “KINGDOM OF HEAVEN” (Matt. 10:6-7).
How could anyone think any of those verses were aimed doctrinally at a Christian?
Well, Willmington, Rendall, Dods, Mounce, Hollman, Hoffman, Scofield, Ironside, Greene, Kunen, Swindoll, Freerkson, Angus, Bleek, Davidson, Wuest, Zodhiates, Robertson, Davis, Machen, Hort, MacArthur, Schaff, Afman, Faulkner, Farstad, Dollar, Henderson, Martin, Price, Lucken, Lunemann, Sumner, Weiss, Winer, Bengel, Deissmann, and all of their STUDENTS and all of their TEACHERS all thought just that.
The infallible English corrected all 50,000 Greek
scholars (including those who “used only the Textus Receptus”) and flatly contradicted all of their opinions no matter how “godly” they were or how “godly” anyone else thought they were.
Abandoning temporarily their mischievous madness (we will document it later), we find that the Holy Spirit has preserved for us in the infallible English text (any edition of the AV) th\ truth about becoming “partakers” of Christ in the Tribulation.
To “partake” of Christ and to have a millennial reign with Christ, the Tribulation saint must “endure to the end” without taking the “mark of the Beast.” The expression “THE END” is the absolute signpost for every verse in the Bible that deals with the matter. Observe:
1. “And have seen THE END of the Lord” (James 5), referring to the END of Job’s testings, a type of Daniel’s Seventieth Week (see Job 42 and comments in that Commentary).
2. “Full assurance of hope unto THE END” (Heb. 6:11).
3. “Whose END is to be burned” (Heb. 6:8), being the cross reference to Malachi 4:1-5.
4. “The time of THE END” (Dan. 12:4).
5. “What shall be THE END of these things” (Dan. 12:8).
6. “Sealed till the time of THE END” (Dan. 12:9).
7. “Go thou thy way till THE END” (Dan. 12:13).
8. “Thy lot at THE END of the days” (Dan. 12:13).
9. “Then shall THE END come” (Matt. 24:14).
There wasn’t any problem. No “Greek text” had to be LOOKED at one time.
The problem was with a bunch of conceited asses who called themselves “godly scholars.” It was with a
mass of Bible-perverting eggheads who objected to people “calling them names.” It was with a gang of half-baked, egotistical critics who thought because God had “used” some of them that that qualified them to destroy the word of God.
The prospective “partakers of Christ” in Hebrews 3:6, 14 can die and go to hell.
They can do this after being “partakers of the Holy Ghost” (Heb. 6:4).
Let us now turn to the fanatical ravings of the “qualified authorities” as they try every way known to God, man, or the Devil to get around the Biblical words of truth.
1. Liberty University (Freerkson in the Commentary, p. 765) tells us that we are the people referred to in verse 6. We are a PART of that house already (“a present reality”). When faced with the obvious flaw in this private interpretation (the rest of the verse), Freerkson resigns and calls in one of the deadest apostate Conservatives who ever died to do the commenting for him (F. F. Bruce). Bruce flees for cover by calling the passage an insistence “on the fact that continuance in the Christian life is the test of reality.” Freerkson reads this private interpretation into Hebrews and then accuses the author of Hebrews of believing it. THERE ARE THOUSANDS OF SAVED PEOPLE NOW WHO DO NOT “HOLD FAST THE CONFIDENCE AND THE REJOICING OF THE HOPE FIRM UNTO THE END,” and every one of them is, and was, a “partaker” of Christ. John Wesley, Francis Asbury, and Peter Cartwright didn’t even believe that any Christian could have “confidence” that he was saved “until the end. ” Thousands of saved Christians in prison in Romania, Bulgaria, Russia, China, and Poland (1940- 1980) lost their “rejoicing” long before the end, and since “THE END” in this passage was likened to an end of a period of time—not someone’s life (see the same thing in Matt. 24:13)—Freerkson simply attrib
uted to the writer of Hebrews his own ignorance, augmented by F. F. Bruce.
2. In goes the Expositor’s Greek Testament (Dods) like a wild bull into a net. The Christian’s hope of a “heavenly inheritance” (there is no heavenly inheritance in the chapter) should be so sure that “it confidently PROCLAIMS itself. And this attitude must be maintained, until difficulty and trial are past, and hope has become possession.” OR WHATJ9
He didn’t say. He couldn’t. The “or what?” is that he would NOT partake of Jesus Christ.
Bruce (see above), along with Delitzsch and Ren- dall, understood “metochoi” (Greek) as not a “partaker” but as a “fellow” or “partner”; therefore, it didn’t really mean what it said at all. They only “share” his “joy” if they hold out to the end. “HE THAT SHALL ENDURE UNTO THE END SHALL SHARE” (Matt. 24:13), etc. This word “share” was so convenient it was taken up and stuck into Hebrews 6:14 by the Living Bible and the New International Version for “partakers.” Dods settles for “enjoying Christ’s companionship” as long as we “hold out.” Exactly how this matches the context of sinning carcases that fell in the wilderness without entering the promised land see vs. 17) is a little difficult. Such “difficulties” never bothered Bruce, Dods, Rendall, or Delitzsch.
3. Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown decide that the “we” in the passage is a reference to Paul, who is writing. Imagine Paul actually believing that he would not be a “partaker of Christ” unless such and such conditions were filled after saying Romans 8:28-32 and Ephesians 5:30 and Colossians 2:1-12!
4. The grossly corrupt United Bible Societies publication (Metzger and Aland) have solved the doctrinal problem of the passage with a much simpler expedient. They simply removed “UNTO THE END” from the passage, although this Greek reading was found in all four families of manuscripts, including Sinaiticus, the
old Itala, the old Vulgate, three families in Syriac, and three ancient translations (Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopic). Vaticanus (B) and P46 are the wretched “authorities” for this biased deletion.
5. Arthur W. Pink makes the passage apply doctrinally to first century Jews but confesses that it doesn’t really mean what it says. Rather it was merely “their needing to be reminded that the PROOF of their belonging to the house of Christ was that they remained stedfast to Him to the end of their pilgrimage.” “HE THAT SHALL ENDURE TO THE END SHALL HAVE BEEN SAFE ALL THE TIME: HE JUST NEEDED A REMINDER. ” Pink calls upon Dr. Owen to help him out of the same type of passage in verse 14, and that well-meaning divine makes the biggest slaughter of his own hyper-Calvinism that could be made. After saying that our “persistency in Christ” is due to the “unalterableness of union with Christ on the account of the faithfulness OF THE COVENANT GRACE” (p. 182), he finishes with “YET OUR OWN DILIGENT endeavor is such an indispensable means for that end as that without it, it will never be brought about”!!
What! “WORKS” from a hyper-Calvinist? Look at Owen’s citation: IT CAME FROM THE MOUTH OF JOHN WESLEY.
The issue wasn’t persistency: the issue was will you be a PARTAKER or will you not? If you persist you WILL be, and if you don’t you WON’T.
6. Dummelow says bluntly: “The condition of remaining in the house of God is stedfast faith.” Peter walking on the water, I suppose? Or was it Thomas? How about Mark defecting on the missionary trip in Acts 13? Did Demas go to hell? (They do have a time of it, don’t they?)
7. We will end the reader’s boredom with some subtle and crafty “sleight of hand” by A. M. Stibbs (The New Bible Commentary). He tells us that although
we are “Christ’s house” and will always be so, verse 6 is a warning that we cannot “FULLY POSSESS” certain privileges (What privileges? There aren ’t any privileges listed in the first six verses.) unless we “remain stedfast.” Nice work, Stibbs. You avoided the Greek and the English word for “PARTAKER” and never brought it up in the comments. (When he got to 14 he ducked the word again, and this time instead of translating “partakers” as “certain priveleges” he translated “PARTAKERS” as “Messianic blessing.”)
Nice work, kiddies. Time-and-a-half for overtime.
We’ll take the whole “kit and kaboodle,” including all of your Greek teachers and Greek texts, and send you back to Aunt Becky’s DVBS where you can enjoy fellowship with “kindred minds.” Your strong suit is not Bible teaching: it is “lollygaggin,” as they say down South.
3:8 Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness:
9 When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years.
10 Wherefore I was grieved with that generation, and said, They do alway err in their heart; and they have not known my ways.
11 So I sware in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest.)
12 Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God.
13 But exhort one another daily, while it is called To day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.
14 For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto the end;
15 While it is said, To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation.
16 For some, when they had heard, did provoke: howbeit not all that came out of Egypt by Moses.
17 But with whom was he grieved forty years? was it not with them that had sinned, whose carcases fell in the wilderness?
18 And to whom sware he that they should not enter into his rest, but to them that believed not?
19 So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief.
As if to dispel any doubt about the intention of his wording in verse 6, the author continues with an Old Testament illustration (not New Testament) of people under a covenant of works (not grace: see John 1:17, Rom. 10:1-7) who endured through a period of time (not the lifetime of the individual). Violating all of the fiats, opinions, preferences, and customs of all the Greek scholars through twenty centuries, the Holy Spirit gives us the key to verses 6 and 14 by taking us back into a pre-Promised Land setting which pictures a Premillennial setting. All doubt is dispelled when we read Hosea 2:14-18 and Psalm 78 and realize that the events of Hebrews 3:6-19 are all going to take place again: AND NOTIN THE CHURCH AGE.
“Wherefore (as the Holy Ghost saith, To day if ye will hear his voice .. .” (vs. 7). Thus showing you it was dealing with a period of time—today—not the “life of the believer.”
See how this expression is used in 2 Corinthians 6:2 where unsaved Gentiles are told that TODAY is the “day of salvation.” Notice exactly the same thing when Moses speaks to Israel in Deuteronomy 9:1. The words “to day,” “this day,” and “now” in these places are never used in such ways as “this day have I begotten thee”; instead, it denotes a period of time, not eternity.
“Harden not your hearts as in the provocation
. (vs. 8). The reference is clearly to the Hebrews provoking the Lord (Dent. 1:26, 6:17) and provoking Moses to speak “unadvisedly with his lips” (Psa. 106:33). The word “today” is defined as “THE DAY,” and that “day” is said to last “forty years.”
“Wherefore I was grieved with that generation . . (vs. 10), the one that was forced to wander for forty years. None of them but Caleb and Joshua got in, at least not any over twenty years old who took the side of the rebellious spies at Kadesh Barnea before the forty years started (see Num. 13-14).
“They shall not enter into my rest” (vs. 11). Note: there is no spiritual reference to any “spiritual rest"; there is no Biblical reference to New Testament salvation; there is no cross reference to ANYTHING connected in the Pauline “plan of salvation" given to the Gentiles (Acts 13:39-40). The “REST” here is the physical, literal, visible rest of the twelve literal, physical, visible tribes in the literal, physical, visible land of Palestine, composed of dirt, rocks, trees, grass, sand, clay, and water. This is the first “rest” of Hebrews 3-4, and is not to be confounded with God resting on the seventh day (a literal twenty-four hour sabbath), the believer’s spiritual rest from his own works after trusting the finished work of Christ, or the millennial rest of converted Israel (Heb. 8; Isa. 2, 11; Amos 9, etc.), AGAIN IN THE LITERAL, PHYSICAL, VISIBLE LAND OF PALESTINE.
There are four rests given: Heb. 3:11, 18; 4:4, and 4:9, 11.
The majority of commentators, including ALL of the major Greek scholars (Mounce, Rendall, Dods, Alford, Bengel, Weiss, DeWette, Bleek, Angus, Wuest, et al.), make an allegory out of the Old Testament references and apply them to New Testament salvation and miss three out of four. That is, they are 25 percent correct with “the original Greek. ” We would expect such a performance.
“Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief . . (vs. 12). John Wesley, Culpepper, Asbury, Cartwright and many others rightly assumed that if the passage is aimed at a born-again “child of God,” he can lapse into unbelief and LOSE ENTRANCE TO HEAVEN. After all, if you are going to make the “rest” of Hebrews 3:18 dependent upon believing “the gospel” (Heb. 4:2), you had better “LABOUR ... TO ENTER INTO THAT REST” (Heb. 4:11)—and I don’t mean “rest” to enter into that rest!—or you will “FALL AFTER THE SAME EXAMPLE OF UNBELIEF” (Heb 4:11).
When Paul speaks of a Christian “falling” in the context of an Old Testament Jew coming up out of Egypt (1 Cor. 10:6, 11), he makes it clear that this falling had only to do with physical death (1 Cor. 10:12). The writer of Hebrews goes far beyond that. He has the “faller” treading under foot the blood of Christ, doing “despite unto the Spirit of grace,” being “nigh unto cursing; whose end is to be burned,” and he falls, not because he “MURMURED” (1 Cor. 10:10), BUT BECAUSE HE QUIT BELIEVING AFTER HE HAD BELIEVED. When you find over 400,000,000 Christians (A.D. 100-1980) who think that you can “lose salvation,” they are not concocting their convictions out of “angel dust” like the Greek scholars do when correcting the AV text. The verses used by the writer of Hebrews in Hebrews 3-4, 6, and 10 so strongly indicate “losing salvation” that every expositor of the Book is forced to either confess that it is true (as Dods finally does in the Greek Expositor: see comments under 6:1-6), or he must mutilate and manipulate the Greek words and the context till they say something they do not say. So said, so done! Dummelow (p. 1020) simply has the forgiven believer lose his salvation. Vincent (“Word Studies”) gets so screwed up (pp. 448, 505) that he has a saved-lost man losing what he never had without getting saved again or going to hell (pp-
503, 559). There is evidently something about occupation with the “original Greek” that produces KOOKS.
Someone forgot to tell you that the “evil heart of unbelief’ was in Deuteronomy 15:9, not in the Pauline epistles; and someone forgot to tell you that if it was found in a Christian (2 Tim. 2:13), the Lord still would not deny that that Christian was a “PARTAKER” with Him (2 Tim. 2:13). The reference would have to be to unsaved Hebrews who were about to reject Christ. They are “brethren” only in the sense that the author is a literal Hebrew, they are NOT “brethren” in Christ as in 1 Thessalonians 5:4.
It is now time to pull the passage together (vss. 7- 19) and see exactly what the author is really talking about.
A. Somebody failed to enter the Promised Land because of unbelief (vs. 19). They “believed not.” What was it they did not believe? It was the “GOSPEL” (Heb. 4:2). What gospel? Certainly not the New Testament Pauline “gospel of the grace of God” (Acts 20:24). Certainly that gospel which Israel heard was not REMOTELY connected with the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ any more than the “everlasting gospel” of Revelation 14:6-7. (Prepare yourself to cancel 95 percent of the scholar’s opinions on the passage; 95 percent of them will swear by Westcott and Hort that the gospel preached to “us” in Hebrews 4:2 is the gospel of Exodus 3:8-17; Numbers 13; and Deuteronomy 7; and it certainly is NOT.)
B. Many of the people who failed to enter the Promised Land had definitely “BELIEVED,” for they had sprinkled the passover blood on their doorposts when they left Egypt. To say that they represented unconverted Jews in A.D. 60 who were in danger of returning to Judaism (see any exposition on Heb. 3:6, 14 and Heb. 6:1-6 by any Greek scholar) is a ghastly joke. They had observed the Passover and had been saved by grace through faith (Exod. 10-15) before
God gave them the covenant of WORKS (Exod. 12- 15).
C. These first century Hebrews are warned against “departing from the living God” on THIS side of Calvary, but the example held up to them is their own nation on the other side of Calvary.
D. The warning given twice in the passage (vss. 7 and 15) is said to be David’s repetition of a commandment given AFTER the failure of Israel to enter the Promised Land (4:6-7), but it is addressed to another generation of Israelites who are in danger of doing the same thing. So far no one has said ONE WORD ABOUT GETTING SAVED BY TRUSTING JESUS CHRIST: not a word. The spiritualization of the entire passage was done by someone who refused to place Hebrews DOCTRINALLY where it should have been placed. Doctrinally it has to be aimed at Hebrews in the Tribulation (not the first century) who are being exhorted to succeed in the same endeavor in which their ancestors failed (note Heb. 10:36-39, 11:40, and 12:28).
To get the exact sense (I believe the traditional, dead orthodox cliche is “the original intent of the author” by going to the “Greek original,” etc.) of the passage we must reproduce the next eleven verses.
THE BIBLE BELIEVER’S COMMENTARY SERIES
4:1 Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it.
2 For unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them: but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it.
3 For we which have believed do enter into rest, as he said, As I have sworn in my wrath, if they shall enter into my rest: although the works were finished from the foundation of the world.
4 For he spake in a certain place of the seventh day on this wise, And God did rest the seventh day from all his works.
5 And in this place again, If they shall enter into my rest.
6 Seeing therefore it remaineth that some must enter therein, and they to whom it was first preached entered not in because of unbelief:
7 Again, he limiteth a certain day, saying in David, To day, after so long a time; as it is said, To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts.
8 For if Jesus had given them rest, then would he not afterward have spoken of another day.
9 There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God.
10 For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his.
11 Let us labour therefore to enter into that
rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief.
Before we begin to discern the exact intent of the Holy Spirit in recording these words, let us examine for a moment the appalling and monstrous system that was constructed by 95 percent of the “Fundamentalists” when they tried to spiritualize the passage.
1. Whoever enters into “spiritual rest” on Christ’s finished work has to LABOR to get into that rest (vs. H).
2. If he becomes part of the “People of God” (vs. 9), the rest” is guaranteed, yet he may FALL into unbelief (vs. 11) and depart ftom God (Heb. 3:12).
3. If a man believes this gospel, he has already entered into “rest" (vs. 3), and the writer claims to be one of these (vs. 3—“WE”). However, he is still laboring to get into it (vs. 11), for he says “LET US LABOUR .. (vs. 11).
You can see why Methodists, Free Will Baptists, Catholics, Lutherans, Assembly of God, Church of God, Church of Christ, Episcopalians, Nazarenes, Wesleyan Methodists, and Greek Orthodox think a believer “can lose it.” If you fail to place Hebrews 3 and 4 in their proper dispensational setting, that is exactly what you will get for doctrine: you are saved as long as you “believe” and not a second longer.
Now, we shall be more exacting. God forbid that any of us who really believe the Book should “lollygag” around in the dark like Harold Willmington, Robert Sumner, Woodrow Kroll, and Ed Hindson. After all, apostate Fundamentalists like those men have never read THE HOLY BIBLE anyway; all they ever read were “reliable translations.” We shouldn’t expect too much of them; we don’t.
1. The original Sabbath was a seventh day rest of God Himself (Gen. 2). It was revealed to Moses on Mt. Sinai (Neh. 9:13-14) and was given to Israel as a SIGN (Ezek. 20:20) because God knew from the beginning
that Israel would be converted and be the head of the nations in the seventh millennium (Rev. 20:1-6). Therefore, THAT Sabbath is mentioned in Hebrews 4:4. (How’s that for a start?)
2. This final entry (Millenium) was rehearsed in type in Numbers 13-14, and the cast of actors “blew it.” They would not enter in because of unbelief, and this unbelief was in “the GOSPEL” OF ARMED VICTORY: see Numbers 13:30, 14:9; and Exodus 34:11. You couldn’t have found a reference to the “Gospel of the grace of God” in that thing with a flashlight. Caleb and Joshua believed in the “Gospel of Armed Warfare” (Josh. 14:5-14). This, then, is the “GOSPEL” that is being given to a generation of Hebrews up beyond A.D. 1990 (Zech. 12:1-7). Of course, they have had a handicap added. Now they have to believe on Jesus Christ as their Messiah and consequently as the “CAPTAIN” (Ah! There it is! Heb. 2:10) to take Joshua’s place: note how clearly the AUTHORIZED TEXT OF ANY AUTHORIZED VERSION BROUGHT THIS OUT BY TRANSLATING THE PROPER NAME IN HEBREWS 4:8 AS “JESUS" INSTEAD OF “JOSHUA. ” Ah, the unsearchable riches of the archaic English! How unsearchable are its corrections of the “originals” and its ways past finding out—to some stupid Greek scholar with forty years of formal education!!
3. The final entry is referred to in Hebrews 4:6, 8, 11; and WORKS are a condition of entering (see Matt. 24:13, 25:14-30; Rev. 12:17,14:12, etc.).
4. The only place where ANY of this can be spiritualized is in dealing with the believers’ rest in Christ’s finished work on the cross, and this is mentioned in verses 9-10; but it is immediately segregated from the doctrinal context (vss. 8, 11) which GOES RIGHT BACK INTO A DISCUSSION OF ENTERING PALESTINE DURING THE MILLENIUM.
And that wraps up the package. Not one word had
to be changed. No Greek text was necessary to understand one thing in the entire passage in either chapter. No Greek scholar was needed to give any help on originals or non-originals. With this transparent truth set before us, let us again turn to the teachers, professors, and faculty members of 100 Christian schools in America and Europe (between 1800 and 1986) and watch the whirling dervishes as they participate in their ritual cult dance attempting to summon up the departed spirits of the World’s Most Unusual University at Alexandria.
1. Liberty University (Freerkson at Lynchburg) tells us that the passage is addressed to “brethren” who aren’t really brethren; they are only PROFESSING BELIEVERS (p. 676), yet they have ALREADY BEEN MADE “PARTAKERS OF CHRIST” (vs. 14). To explain this Satanic mess, Freerkson calls our attention to the fact that “the verb” is in the perfect, expressing a completed action “with existing results.” This monumental, screwed up mess is explained as: “We have become and remain partakers IF we should hold stedfast.” And if you don’t? Freerkson doesn’t allow any possibility. He ignores the “if.” He says the “partaking” is not based upon anyone’s ability or determination to hold on; the “if’ was just stuck in as a theoretical “text” by which you can KNOW you have faith. He says that Israel had “fickle” faith which did not manifest itself as “true faith.” True faith in WHAT? EVERY ISRAELITE IN NUMBERS 13 AND 14 HAD ENOUGH FAITH TO TRUST THE SHED BLOOD OF THE LAMB (Exod. 10-12) TO SAVE HIM.
As if sensing that he is as fouled up as a Chinese fire drill, Freerkson freaks out with: “The context favors the interrogative usage in verse 16 . . . And tells us it “might better be translated” (Boy, have we ever heard THAT line before!!), “For who after they heard did embitter (God)? Yea, did not all who came out of Egypt through Moses?” NO, AS A MA I TER
OF FACT THEY DIDN’T. THERE WERE PROBABLY 1,000,000 PEOPLE THAT CAME OUT OF EGYPT THAT ENTERED CANAAN (see Deut. 1:30, 4:10, 4:34-38, 5:3). The only ones who were “wasted” were the ones who were over twenty years old (Num. 26:64) and who took the side of the ten frightened spies (Num. 14:22-23, 29). No, the “interrogation” certainly should NOT begin in verse 16, and it is not a better translation. Freerkson’s suggestion is a disgrace to the name of Bible-believing Christianity.
2. Albert Barnes, Notes on the New Testament (Baker Book House, pp. 82-89), treats the matter in the same way. All of the unbelieving Israelites went to hell after they believed for they are a type of people who do not believe at all (!) or people who profess without believing. The “partakers of Christ” don’t really have any condition attached to them; instead it is taken for granted that if a man is a “partaker of Christ” he lives ALL OF HIS LIFE IN PERFECTION. Barnes lists as “proof” that a man is partaker the facts that: he bears up under all trials successfully to the end of his life (Haralan Popov didn’t!); he is ardent and devoted to Christ’s cause ALL of his life (which De- mas wasn’t); he guards his temper and maintains secret devotions all of his life; he studies the Bible all of his life; and he controls all of his thoughts, plans, and temper all of his life (p. 89). Paul blew it (Acts 21:11- 14), and Peter blew it (Matt. 26:70-75). Spurgeon smoked, and J. Frank Norris cursed on occasion.
Barnes was a super-pious NUT. He didn’t know what he was talking about. He simply forced the Biblical text to say something it didn’t say and then “expatiated” on it in sermonic form so someone would think he was spiritual. In Laodicea such expositors are two cents a dozen.
3. Kenneth Taylor sure better keep his “courage, trust, and joy in the Lord,” because if he doesn’t he says that Christ doesn’t live in him! “He lives in us!
... IF we keep up our courage, etc.” (p. 3069, The New Layman’s Parallel Bible). Taylor threw the word “partaker” out of both verses (Heb. 3:6, 14) so that you could “share in all that belongs to Christ.”
4. Harry Ironside spiritualizes the whole passage and misses the millennial inheritance of Israel altogether. He, as Freerkson, takes Hebrews 3:6 and 14 not to be a threat but only a test whereby you can know you are a “partaker of Christ.” How you do this all your life is really fantastic, for you would not know till you had endured “TO THE END,” and then you would have been a “partaker” (past tense) without knowing it for sure. (The brethren do have a time of it, don’t they?) Pink goes much further, adopting the five-point TULIP position on limited atonement. He sides with (and quotes) Dr. J. Brown, who says that although all of God’s “chosen” will be saved, “they cannot know their election . . . independent of their continuance in the faith, love, and obedience of the Gospel.” Imagine the naivete of such a Bible-rejecting character! I have talked to Christians in jail who admitted they were backslidden and had been backslidden for years and they had more assurance of salvation than ORAL ROBERTS or JIMMY SWAGGART. When Pink hit the “laboring to enter” into something that was elected and foreordained “before the foundation of the world,” he sensed his blood was getting thin, his vision was becoming clouded, and his head was beginning to swim, since no five-point Calvinist would have to “labor” to enter salvation’s rest: he was assured of THAT to take place automatically before he was born. So when A. W. Pink hits Hebrew 4:11 he decides that the believer is already in the “rest.” But then he sees immediately that the “US” of 4:11, is the “WE” of verse 3 so he joins Ironside, Freerkson, and Barnes in the break dance: “Bagster’s Interlinear gives ‘For we enter into the rest, who believe.’ This is a literal word-for-word rendering of THE GREEK” (Ah, yes, Pinky-Winky!).
“Put THUS, the historical sense is avoided” (HE HAD TO AVOID IT LIKE THE PLAGUE FOR IT WAS DEALING WITH HISTORY) “and we have simply an abstract statement of a doctrinal fact.” Pink says it is “the positive side . . . defining the characters of those who WILL enter God’s rest.”
They haven’t yet, although verse 10 says they have.
Nice work, Pinky. You made a liar out of God, altered the English, gave a private interpretation of the Greek and LOST THE SENSE OF THE ENTIRE PASSAGE. Par for the course. Too much “SOVEREIGN GRACE.”
5. Nicoll (Expositor’s Greek Testament) spiritualizes both chapters and winds up with the believer resting in Christ (citing Augustine, Philo, and Barnabas; p. 281) and yet still in danger of falling away and departing from God. They are not safe till the Second Coming of Christ or death, according to the Expositor’s Greek Testament (see p. 277 with the note on Heb. 3:14).
6. Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown get around the problem by making the “rest” of verse 11 the rest in heaven, future (cf. Heb. 4:9). This, of course, slaughters verses 2 and 10, but the commentators never take the Bible seriously enough to check all of the verses in the context they are commenting on. When talking about verse 10, Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown say, “He who once enters rest, rests from labors, BUT GOD’S PEOPLE HAVE NOT YET RESTED from them, therefore they have not yet ENTERED THE REST and so it remains future.” Not if you are counting on Christ’s finished work to save you; if you are working still (your own labors), you are fallen from grace (see Rom. 11:6 and Gal. 5:4). Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown got rid of the salvation rest. They equated the Promised Land with heaven: THAT AUTOMATICALLY CONSIGNED EVERY "PARTAKER OF CHRIST’’ TO HELL IF HE DIDN’T "HOLD OUT TO
7. Stibbs (New Bible Commentary) makes the “promised land” a type of heaven, but he gets the believer only “halfway” in. He is “entering into the rest” but hasn’t gotten to it yet, so he should “labor” to get in. Salvation by works. By pressing the comparison (which he does: see p. 1199), he gets Christians failing to get to heaven; they are responsible to see that none of their own crew (Christians) apostasize (p. 1198) and go to hell. By equating Israel’s occupation of Palestine with God’s eternal rest in heaven, the counterpart cannot be avoided; those who didn’t “occupy” picture “lost Christians” who don’t experience the final rest. Good work, Stibbs: you just got rid of thirteen Pauline epistles.
8. Vincent: “The translation of the A Vis ‘unfortunate’ (yeah, man, don’t you know!) since it conveys . . .” (p. 421). For Hebrews 4:4, he says, “WORKS, plural, following the LXX.” Not any LXX written before the time of Christ. Vincent is careful not to give us any manuscript evidence for the “LXX” quotation: THEY ARE ALWAYS VERY CAREFUL because there isn’t any. Vincent blows Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown’s private interpretation out of the window on 4:10, for he points out that the “aorist” there means “whoever has once entered the completeness of the appropriation—once for all.” This puts the “REST” into the past.
9. Souter, Lucken, Kuenen, DeWette, Mounce, Angus, Bleek, Delitzsch, Weiss, Wordsworth, and Alford are in favor of making twenty changes between 3:7 and 4:11. Tischendorf, Lachmann, and Tregelles play with the Greek manuscripts and come up with nothing. If you want to go as blind as a bat, spend some time trying to figure out Hebrews 4:2 in the “original Greek” which comes up with one reading for A, B, C, D, and P13 and P46 (sugkekerasmenous), and another reading for Augustine, Ireneaus, the Syriac
(Harklean), the Coptic, the Armenian, the Ethiopic (sugkekramenous), and another one for Sinaiticus, Clementine Vulgate, Syriac (Peshitta), and the Sahidic (sugkekerasmenos), etc. Not one Greek editor (Weiss, Von Soden, Nestle, Hort, Vogels, Boger, Merk, Lach- mann, Tischendorf, Scholtz, or Tregelles) could expound the passage (4:1-2) after he settled on the “original Greek,” so what did it come to anyway?
Here we close accounts on the Alexandrian Cult and their “reliable translations” and “qualified opinions” and “preferences.” We can sum up their researches in two words: NO LIGHT. There were FOUR “rests” in Hebrews 3-4. Not one man in the Cult could find more than two, and most of them died with one. Evidently, Greekitis is terminal.
4:12 For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
13 Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.
Now we hit one of the greatest passages in the Bible on the authority of the WRITTEN words of God. The “word of God,” in the passage, is a reference to words which God spoke. The reference to the written word as a “sword” is unmistakable; it matches Psalm 149:6 and Ephesians 6:17 to “a tee.” One may expect at this point a mighty wave of infidelity and perversity to sweep over the text from the Alexandrian Cult. We will not be disappointed.
“For the word of God is QUICK, and powerful . . .” (vs. 12). The word “quick” is the one used in such terms as “the quick and the dead” (1 Pet. 4:5). [In Los Angeles, they refer to the two baseball teams
as the “Angels" and the “Dodgers." That is because those who dodge the traffic are the “quick” (the Dodgers), and those who don’t are the “dead” (the Angels^
The word “quickened” is defined for us in the AV in Ephesians 2:1-5. It obviously means to give life to something. If a thing is “quickened,” it is alive; however, I wouldn’t argue about the term.
You see, when I was born again, time speeded up for me; the pace tripled. 1 don’t know how it was for you, but if you lived out in that world for twenty-seven years and then were saved, you saw the hammer go to the floorboard, brother, and I’m not kidding. The last thirty years? I don’t know where in the world they went. The first twenty-seven were a drag; they went at a snail’s pace. A week could destroy you in the old days; you would be drunk before the week was out. Now, a year goes by so fast I don’t know what happens to it: it’s “quickened” as far as I’m concerned.
“Sharper than any twoedged sword . . (vs. 12). It’s not just a two-edged sword; it is sharper than ANY two-edged sword. Then it is a double-edged razor blade six feet long; it will cut both ways. Can you imagine what would happen to a fellow if he was juggling double-edged razor blades with his bare hands? Do you know what his hands would look like after about twenty minutes of that? Well that is the way any college professor looks who tries to mess with that King James Bible; he just cuts himself.
“Even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit . . (vs. 12), showing that the soul and spirit are not the same: they can be divided. (All of the commentators, including all of the Greek scholars, miss this, and all of them deny it. They may be dispensed with. Where they contradict the words of God, they are to be discarded.) If you “rightly divide” the words of truth (2 Tim. 2:15) you can tell the difference between a soul (which has a bodily shape: see Gen. 2-3 and comments in that Commentary) and a spirit (which is like wind or
air and is shapeless: see Col. 2:11 and comments in that Commentary). The word of God shows us the difference that Dr. Thieme can’t find. He says that the location of the soul is in the “cranium.” In a pig’s eye. A “soul” has eyes and a tongue and a mouth (Luke 16:23-24) and can wear clothes (Rev. 6:9, 11). Thieme had a little trouble “in the place of a skull.” That’s the problem with all of these “scholars.” Their “headbone” don’t connect wid der “neckbone.” (We love them, but like Junior said when asked how he liked his new two-month-old brother, “I love him, Momma,, but his head’s on loose.”
“And of the joints and marrow . . .” (vs. 12). Literally, all of the Greek scholars missed the reference in Job 40:19 where the “sword” is mentioned as a regular, one-syllable, third-grade English word that appears again in Psalm 149:6; Ephesians 6:17; and here (Heb. 4:12). They were so taken up with the “original Greek” and the “original Hebrew” and the “original autographs,” they just ignored the Biblical truth, stamped on revelation, put out divine light, insulted the Holy Spirit, and then bragged about each other’s “godliness.” The Lord’s “sword” can reach the devil’s “bones” (Job 40:19), even though they are as “bars of iron.” Not knowing what “Behemoth ” represented (see Job 40:15 and comments in that commentary), the scholars were unable to apply Hebrews 4:12. Their inability was taken by them to be their “brilliance,” so they attempted to reduce all of their students and readers to the same level of incompetence. The reason why the Lord Jesus Christ uses the Scripture (“it is written”) every single time He answers Satan (see Luke 4:1-10) is because He knows that it is the word of God that PIERCES through that being. That is why Paul called it “THE SWORD OF THE SPIRIT.” NOT ONE GREEK SCHOLAR WRITING FOR ONE PUBLISHING COMPANY IN AMERICA OR EUROPE FOR 500 YEARS EVER FOUND THE REFERENCE IN
JOB. (Proficiency in “the original languages” evidently is a terrific handicap to UNDERSTANDING THE BIBLE.)
“And is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart” (vs. 12), thus racking and sacking out every fool who ever tried to correct it with the ravages of “qualified Conservative scholarship.” The word of God is a CRITIC, and such a competent critic that it examines, analyzes, critiques, and passes judgment on the MOTIVES of the Greek scholar who is reading it. That’s why when any sinner opens that Book, it is “instant death” for him if his heart is not right.
Some incredible nut (Rev. G. Richard Fisher, newsletter, Personal Freedom Outreach, Vol. 5, no. 1, Jan- Mar, 1985) wrote an article in which he accused “Ruckman” of saying that God often purposely misled sinners. Fisher’s lame alibi for refuting this Biblical position (see John 12:40; 2 Thess. 2:1-11; 2 Tim. 3:13; and Rom. 11:8-9) was that God was not a man “that He should lie.” No one said God lied. It was God Himself who said He would delude people (2 Thess. 2), and would allow liars to kill them (1 Kings 13:18-22), and would cause their death through liars (1 Kings 13:21), and GIVE THEM LIES BY THE TON IF THEY WANTED THEM (Ezek. 14:1-11). Those are Biblical truths and fundamentals as sound as the Virgin Birth and the bodily resurrection, and they are mentioned more times in the Bible than the Virgin Birth.
The Book is a critic, and it will destroy the mind of any fool who messes with it. In this case, Rev. G. Richard Fisher, who was so stupid he couldn’t read the handwriting on his table, let alone the handwriting on the “wall.” As soon as one of these proud, stupid jackrabbits (with twenty-six years of formal education) opens that Book it takes one look at him and says, “Hmmm! What have we here? I see what you’re coming for (Ezek. 14:1-11)! Well, sorry to disappoint you. Before we do any business I would like to point out
that you are WRONG here, and you are WRONG here, and you are DECEIVED here, and you have been MISLED here, and you are CONFUSED here, and you are WRONG there, and etc.” The condemned culprit (the reader) says, “But that isn’t in the original,” “But it is unfortunate that the AV rendered this word as ‘Easter’,” “But the copies vary so how could there be a perfect translation?” and the Judge (the word here in Greek is “kritikos"!) says, “THROW HIM OUT OF THE COURT ROOM! Bind him hand and foot and cast him out! OUT—O-U-T! OOOUTT!”
You won’t judge that Book! I know it goes on twenty-four hours a day in every Christian college and university in America (with the exception of a few places like Bob Gray’s school or Herbert Noe’s school or Bruce Cummons’ school or John Rawlings’ school); 95 percent of them think God called them to judge the Book. You fool! You open that Book, and it will judge YOU (John 12:48).
The best way to open that Book is to say, “Nolo contendere, ” which means “no contention.” I have no argument with the Book. I have nothing to say in rebuttal. I stand completely submissive to hear its verdict on me. People say, “You can read him like an open book.” Well, brother, when you open this Book it examines you; you are an open book to it. Your silly Greek professor comes into court and says to the Judge: “I don’t like your robe, I don’t like your haircut. You lied last time; you perjured yourself under oath. Straighten up your tie! The judgment you should have rendered is as follows . . . .”
He will bind and gag you in court. When these silly little children like Farstad, Vincent, Afman, Wuest, MacRae, Martin, Newman, Sumner, Willmington, MacArthur, Price, Zane Hodges, Wisdom, and Custer start correcting the word of God, the Lord just reaches over there and ties them up and shuts their mouths and puts tape across their mouths so that they don’t in
terfere with the spiritual ministry of the Holy Spirit They mumble. They rave incoherently. Through the gag they sound like they are suffocating on cold mush. That Book is the critic of the heart and mind of every scholar on every faculty of every Christian school in the world, and it has no more respect for a chancellor who is “Dean Emeritus” of a seminary than for a flunking high school freshman. Torrey, Gray, and Scofield don’t make THAT Book nervous!
Whenever I open the Book I pray these words: “Lord, you know that I am stupid and incompetent. You know that spiritually speaking I haven’t got a brain in my head. What wisdom, talent, health, knowledge, and understanding I have you have given me, and you could take all from me in five seconds. Now speak, Lord, and I will listen. Give me understanding, and if you want to rebuke me and bawl me out it is all right with me, but give me something from your word. Show me something. I’ll take whatever you give me and by your grace try to believe it and put it into practice.”
[I am sure that every faculty member of every Christian school in the world would say “Amen” to the first twenty-two words in that prayer. After that they would drop out. Egotistical asses (and I say the word with charity!) are all alike.]
The Book is a living DISCERNER. It discriminates. It segregates (Deut. 32:8; Acts 17:26). It sees what is going on in any age and “calls the shot” and never miscalls it. A “discerner” can always tell the DIFFERENCE between two things even if they look the same (1 Kings 3:9; Mai. 3:18; 1 Cor. 2:14; Job 4:16, 6:30; and Ezra 3:13) and can tell you whether they are or aren’t the same. That is why the Holy Bible was written (see 2 Tim. 3:16). The first purpose for which that Book was written was to teach sinners DOCTRINE (2 Tim. 3:16): WHAT IS SO AND WHAT IS NOT SO. Salvation was only ONE of these items.
“Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in HIS SIGHT . . (vs. 13). Whose sight? Why, the antecedent is “THE WORD OF GOD.” (Look at the previous verse.) The word of God is spoken of here as a person—“HIS sight.” Do you think this should be limited only to the word “God” in Hebrews 4:12—AS ALL GREEK SCHOLARS WRITING FOR ALL COMMENTARIES HAVE SAID FOR 500 YEARS? Then turn to Romans 9:17 where Paul says that the SCRIPTURES (not “God”) raised Pharaoh up, and after chewing on that rank piece of “Bibliolatry” (to quote Ed Hindson; Laird Harris; Willmington, Bob Jones III, and any other apostate Fundamentalist), turn to Galatians 3:8 where Paul says the Scripture has the human capability of FORESEEING an event before it takes place. You talk about “Bibliolatry”!
“But all things are NAKED and opened unto the eyes of HIM with whom we have to do” (vs. 13). Who is the “HIM”? In the previous verse it is the word of God! How could it discern the thoughts and intents of the heart if all things were not “NAKED AND OPENED” to it—or “HIM”!
When you limit the “him” to God instead of to the word of God, you destroy the sense of verse 12 altogether, so all of the scholars do it. Reverentially, of course! In the fear of God, of course! So as not to be guilty of “Bibliolatry,” of course! Of course, children! Hypocrites always talk piously. Look at Jacob in Genesis 27:20!
You see, the Holy Bible is God’s authority on this earth, hence it is called “THE AUTHORIZED VERSION.” Without this Holy Bible you Americans don’t even know what your Lord and Saviour wants you to do, let alone who He is.
Modern apostate Fundamentalists in America all say, “We should rally about the fundamentals, ” and then when they find there are two camps of Fundamen
talists (the Machen-Robertson, dead orthodox kind and the Norris-Vick, soul-winning kind), they backslide and say the rallying point should be “the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Which one? The Christ of Catholicism, who can’t deal with you directly? The Christ of the Church of Christ, who begats you with water instead of the Holy Ghost? The Christ of the Charismatics, who wouldn’t offend a Jesuit for love nor money? The Christ of the NCCC, who believes in riots and violence (“civil disobedience”) for muggers and rapists, but jail sentences for “vigilantes” who kill while defending themselves? That Christ? Which “person of Christ” are you talking about? That’s easy. ANY CHRIST, if you fail to rally around THE BOOK which tells you WHICH CHRIST is the right one. The Holy Bible is the center for Christian fellowship. Without it fellowship is an unholy farce, and that is why 90 percent of all the Fundamental, “recognized scholars” in America work night and day to get rid of the Holy Bible: THEY WANT THE FINAL AUTHORITY TO BE SCHOLARSHIP.
1. Freerkson (Liberty University') launches into a beautiful eulogy that magnifies “the word of God,” except that he immediately alters it to the “Word” (the message, not the written words of God), and then knocks it clean out of verse 13 and tells us that the word of God does not see through nakedness, but rather it is “GOD’S EYES” which see man “as though he were naked,” (p. 678). With a pious postscript Freerkson says: “Let us be careful not to reject His Word through unbelief.” To what was this a reference? NOTHING. If you don’t believe it write Freerkson a letter and see if we slandered him. FREERKSON NEVER SAW “THE WORD OF GOD” ONE DAY IN HIS LIFE TO ACCEPT IT OR REJECT IT, no more than did Custer, Panosian, Wisdom, Neal (Bob Jones); Afman, Price, Faulkner, Martin (Tennessee Temple); or any of their
friends, associates, or “colleagues.” Every “cotton-picking” one of them believed that the “Word of God” was either the “message” or the “fundamentals” (found also in the RSV or ASV) or else that it was some lost pieces of papyrus no one ever found. If you don’t believe me, write to them.
2. “The word of God” is not really the WORD or the Words of God—it is “God’s offers and promises” (Nicoll, Expositors’ Greek Testament, p. 281). What? The “word of God” doesn’t include God’s THREATENINGS (Deut. 32:39-42) and JUDGMENTS (Lev. 26)? No, not if you are an expert in the “original Greek” as Brother Dods is (ibid). And what about those “joints and marrow” and that “soul and spirit”? Why bless your heart, you wonderful, godly, dedicated, qualified nincompoop (and we use the word with charity!). “It is obvious that the writer does NOT mean anything very SPECIFIC by each term of the enumeration, which produces its EFFECT by the RHETORICAL fullness of the expression” (Farrar). See how it’s done? With mirrors. The poor, ignorant, Bible-rejecting Greek scholar couldn’t find Revelation 6:9; Luke 16:23-26; 1 Corinthians 15:44; Job 40:18-19; or Luke 4:4, 8, 12 so he threw out his soul, his spirit, the joints, and the marrow and gave you instead “THE RHETORICAL FULNESS.” Flush it down the commode.
3. Here comes Vincent with some Word Studies (Vol IV, pp. 428-429) to give us “some light on the Divine original.” “Soul and Spirit CANNOT be said to be separated in any such sense as this . . . .” “The AV is loose and inaccurate.” “Joints and marrow are not to be taken in the literal sense . . . .” Wrong once. Wrong twice. Wrong thrice. One, two, three. Three strikes and you’re out. O-U-T. OUT! The “Baldwin Professor of SACRED literature” at Union Theological Seminary, New York—Marvin Vincent—should have been “Professor of SECULAR Literature at the Autoworker’s Union.”
4. Ironside has verse 12 right and identifies it as the “WRITTEN WORD” while Stibbs, in the New Bible Commentary, confines it to God’s “message” to man. However, Ironside abandons the word of God in verse 13 (as did Freerkson: see above) and confines the judge to God: not God’s written word or words.
5. Dummelow (p. 1019) does a masterful job of avoiding any kind of exegesis. With two of the greatest verses in the Bible about the Bible facing him, Dummelow makes two comments, one on the word “quick” and one on the word “discerner.” He sidesteps the other seventy words.
6. Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown do fairly well till they get to the “critic” (the Bible) discerning a man’s “intents.” Then they suddenly decide that this is carrying things too far because the word of God is only able to discern a man’s “conceptions” (Crellius). Alford (a Greek scholar) confirms this tomfoolery by saying that “intents” should be “ideas. ” A little nervous are we there, kiddies? I don’t blame you. If I was holding “the truth of God” in unrighteousness (Rom. 1:18) and “changing it into a lie” (Rom. 1:25) I would be very nervous before a Judge who knew my “INTENTIONS.” Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown, Alford and Crellius got as nervous as a termite in a yo-yo. Ditto the faculty and staff at Lynchburg, Virginia.
7. Arthur W. Pink: “The rendering of the AV here is faulty . . .” (p. 219). “The opening ‘neither’ being quite misleading . . . (Ho hum.) Pink does pretty well with the passage considering the time he spent with it, but after taking up five pages to discuss part of one verse, “But we see Jesus ..(Heb. 2:9), he now spends three pages on the word of God which takes up two whole verses. Williams’ comments (The Student’s Commentary) are better than Ironside, Barnes, or Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown, but they still fall short of MAGNIFYING the word of God. (See Psa. 138:2 for the proper “balance.” There is nothing like a plain
statement of Scripture—Psa. 138:2—to keep your “balance,” is there?)
8. The revisors of the New International Version got as nervous as a cat entering a room full of rocking chairs when they hit 4:13, so they decided they would soften the blow by saying that “nothing in all creation” was hidden from God’s sight; this would give you a sort of “God noticing the rocks, trees, birds, waves, and clouds” concept instead of the word of God LOOKING INTO YOUR GUTS. Kenneth Taylor got as nervous as an alligator in a handbag factory when he hit Hebrews 4:12, so he hastened to tell us that it is “what God says to us” (not “THE WORD OF GOD”) that is “living,” etc. When the Greek scholars who taught the faculty members of Tennessee Temple, Bob Jones, Ma- ranatha, Piedmont, Pacific Coast, Dallas, Wheaton, Moody, and Fuller hit the passage, they tried “imaginations and thoughts” (Wordsworth, Alford, Delitzsch, Lucken), “thoughts and feelings” (Bleek and DeWette), “feelings and thoughts” (Westcott and Kuenen), “volitions and thoughts” (Von Soden and Hollman), “reflections” (Vincent), etc. Boy, those “INTENTS of the heart” are a black plague, are they not? Why do you suppose it is that fifteen “godly” Greek scholars can’t stand for a Book to judge their “INTENTIONS” ? Isn’t that a strange thing? They don’t like the idea of being “naked” either. Evidently they have some sort of Adamic complex which makes them think they are “covered,” for they say that you are not “naked” but “with the head drawn back” (Bleek, Davidson, Delitzsch, DeWitte, Ebhard, Lucken, Westcott, and Kuenen). You could be in that position with your FIG LEAVES still on.
4:14 Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession.
15 For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities;
but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.
16 Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.
The passage begins by referring back to the subject of Hebrews 3:1. This is done because the writer is getting ready to prove that Christ’s priesthood was superior to the Levitical priesthood (see the next chapter). We find that “Seeing THEN that we have a great high priest . . .” (vs. 14) is not a reference to God (instead of the “word of God,” see the discussion above) looking through all things (vs. 13); it is a reference to THE WORD OF GOD (vs. 12) who is now presented as the incarnate WORD OF GOD, as we find Him in John 1:1-3. To emphasize this the writer says, “Jesus THE SON OF GOD” in the verse (vs. 14). He is the Incarnate WORD and hence the “Word” of God. The word of God is “somethin’ else,” as they say down South, for the “word of God” (Psa. 138:2) is magnified ABOVE the name of the Word of God (Psa. 138:2).
“Seeing then that we have a great high priest ...” (vs. 14). So then we are priests (see 1 Pet. 2:5, 9) under a high priest. Catholic priests are out of the question. Our job is “to offer up spiritual sacrifices” (1 Pet. 2:5; Heb. 13:15), not literal sacrifices. “. . . That is passed into the heavens,” (plural as in 2 Cor. 12:1 -4) “Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession” (vs. 14). This verse ties the priesthood of Christ into the profession made in in 3:1, 6, and 14. This time, the verse can be applied to a Church Age saint—as many verses in Hebrews can: for example, 10:8-12, 12:1-8, 13:1-14, etc.—for our High Priest is the high priest of any saved sinner from Calvary onward.
“For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities” (vs. 15). This was discussed under 2:18. The Lord is pre
sented here as an all-sufficient Saviour who can be “touched with the feeling of our infirmities,” which means when you’re sick, He knows all about it; when you’re tired and worm out or depressed and discouraged, it “reaches Him.” He’s not insensitive. He’s touched with your griefs if you’re His, for you’re a part of His body. The Bible says if one member rejoices, all members rejoice (1 Cor. 12:26), and if one member is in trouble all the members should be concerned (Heb. 13:3). Christians suffer and rejoice together (1 Cor. 12:26).
“But was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin” (vs. 15). These matters were discussed under 2:18. Don’t you think that the Lord, when He was in the flesh, wasn’t tempted to quit; He just resisted sin to the shedding of blood (Heb. 12:3-4). People get down in the dumps. They think, “I am the only fellow this has ever happened to, and I’m having to go through some things here that nobody else has ever had to bear.” You know how it gets at times—“I alone am left alive, and they seek my life to take it” (1 Kings 19:14). You get “down in the dumps,” and you can’t disengage your soul from your body to take the “long look” at things. The master philosopher who dealt with these things was Richard Wurmbrand, who probably went through more physical suffering for Christ than any man living in America today. His “sermons while in solitary” are the richest dissertations on suffering, misery, self-pity, accusing God, justifying sin, restoring fellowship, and grasping the reality of God’s presence that I have ever read anywhere. Richard, under torture, sees his own case exactly, and yet while viewing it objectively, candidly, and Scripturally, he pours forth the bitterness and misery of his soul as one unjustly (and at the same time justly, from the “long look”) being punished. Old Job never said it better than Richard Wurmbrand.
Somewhere on this earth right now some Chris
tian is going through what you are going through. You may not have access to that other Christian, but you and he are “in the same boat.” It is the Devil who makes you feel “unique” (see 1 Pet. 5:9). I had a meeting once in Kansas City, and when it was over, a man met me at the door and said this: “I am a Christian businessman. I have forty guys working for me in my plant. They are all unsaved, and all of them cuss and drink, and most of them smoke. There is not a professing Christian in the whole lot. I have to work with them, and they have Playboy magazine nudes pasted on the covers of their lunch boxes, and all that. I get so hungry for Christian fellowship sometimes I can taste it. Why doesn’t the Lord ever let me work with some Christian businessmen? Aren’t there any other Christian men around in my same kind of business?”
I said, “Oh sure, I know of at least twenty.” “Where? Where?” he cried.
“Oh,” I said, “there is one over in Jacksonville, and two in Memphis, and one in Orlando, and three in Detroit, and three in . . . .”
He said, “Oh, oh, well why doesn’t God let us get together?”
I prayed very quickly and said, “Well, if all of you got together, you’d just sing and shout and pray and eat and enjoy fellowship with each other and let the world go to hell.”
And that is about how it would go. God will put you down over here with your problems, and me over there with my problems, and him over here, etc., so we can get the job done God wants done on this earth.
“Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace .. (vs. 16). Get in quickly. You don’t have to stand in line like a Catholic waiting for Mary or “Blessed Joseph” or “Blessed John the Baptist” or Doonesbury to get you in. “Let us . . . come BOLDLY.” My sons and grandsons don’t have to knock at my office door in the church to come in.
Other people may have to make appointments; my sons can come in anytime. I said: "My sons can come in anytime.” Do you read me? “MY SONS” (John 1:12) can come in anytime. Let Mary, Joseph, Francis, Veronica, St. Pat, Saint Anthony, and Blessed John the Baptist tend to their own business. When I want to see my Father I walk into His inner office. I don’t need to go through any attendant, waiter, secretary, security guard, or doorman. I have the door (John 10:2). You take “the keys” (Matt. 16:19). Who needs any keys when they have THE DOOR (John 10:7-9)?
“That we may obtain mercy . . (vs. 16). This is negative. . And find grace to help in time of need” (vs. 16). This is positive. We all need mercy and need it constantly. One of the greatest declarations in the Bible is that God’s mercy “endureth forever” (see it repeated in Psa. 136, twenty-six times). It is always available, but it is available only on God’s terms (see Rom. 9:16); that is where John Calvin got things balled up (Rom. 9:15-16) and never got them “unballed.” In this age God WILLS to have mercy on those who come to Calvary; that is the “mercy spot” on this globe. What you “will” in regards to that is immaterial if you do not go to that place,/or that is the place where God has "willed” to have mercy on the sinner. If you “will” some other place or way, you are wasting your will.
“And find grace to help ..(vs. 16). This is one of those “graces” (see 2 Cor. 8:6-7) that is not like “for by grace are ye saved” (Eph. 2:8). This is a supply of strength that is needed at regular intervals after you have been born again. When God told Paul, “My grace is sufficient for thee,” (2 Cor. 12:9), He was talking about this kind of “grace.” This kind of grace is a spiritual gift from God to bear up under a trial or to put up with a situation that normally would lead one to depression, despair, sin, or even suicide. Some problems take more grace than others. The grace that got Paul to the third heaven would not keep some
Christians from knocking someone's head off. Physical torture through a long period of time (see the testimonies of Popov, Wurmbrand, Noble, and scores of others) calls for a supply of grace that cannot be obtained in one “prayer session.”
When the “time of need” (see the text) stretches into months and years, the “probationer” must literally “live” in the throne room. Arthur W. Pink’s ridiculous reference to the present tense of the verb (“let us come”) is as uncalled for as a goose in the middle of a horse race. It is quite typical of the constant attempts by egotistical nuts to make you think that the Greek “clarifies” the English. You will “clarify” Hebrews 4:16 on a hospital bed or in an operating room or pinned under a car on the highway or at the bank or during combat or in a prison cell or in a court of law, and the “aorist” or “present tense” of any Greek verb has no more to do with THE TRUTH or RIGHTEOUSNESS or LIGHT or UNDERSTANDING the text than Popeye’s girl friend.
THE BIBLE BELIEVER’S COMMENTARY SERIES
5:1 For every high priest taken from among men is ordained for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins:
2 Who can have compassion on the ignorant, and on them that are out of the way; for that he himself also is compassed with infirmity.
3 And by reason hereof he ought, as for the people, so also for himself, to offer for sins.
4 And no man taketh this honour unto himself, but he that is called of God, as was Aaron.
5 So also Christ glorified not himself to be made an high priest; but he that said unto him, Thou art my Son, to day have I begotten thee.
6 As he saith also in another place, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec.
Returning to the theme of 3:1, the writer now draws our attention to another point in Christ’s superiority over the Levitical priesthood. He has shown us that Christ as a priest was superior to Moses (who was born of Levi\ see Exod. 2:1-2) and that He was superior to any Levite since He didn’t sin (4:15). Now he is about to point out that Christ’s priesthood preceded the Levitical priesthood and was so broad in scope that it could include GENTILES as well as Jews. The method for proving this is to liken the Lord Jesus to a GENTILE priest: Melchisedek.
“For every high priest taken from among men is ordained for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins:
. . (vs. 1). This is apparent. Noah, as the high priest of his family, offers sacrifice (Gen. 8:20). Abraham, as high priest of his family, offers sacrifice (Gen. 12:8). Job worries about the sins of his own sons “continually” and offers sacrifices for them (Job 1:5). Sacrifices are negative; gifts are positive. “Gifts” under the Levitical priesthood come under “freewill offerings” (see Num. 15:3, 29:39), which are in addition to sin offerings, trespass offerings, burnt offerings, etc. (see Lev. 22, Deut. 12, Ezra 7:16).
The companion expression is “TITHES AND OFFERINGS” (see Mai. 3:8). The tithe was commanded; the offering was voluntary.
“Who can have compassion on the ignorant, and on them that are out of the way; . . (vs. 2). Allowances are made for sinners who sin through ignorance as in Leviticus 4:2 and 5:17. God has overlooked nothing. All of these really brilliant, college educated skeptics who like to sit around in colleges and universities drumming up cute little philosophical problems in regard to innocence and ignorance are simply wasting their time while they work their way to hell. God has made allowances for self defense (Luke 22:36-38), manslaughter (Num. 35:22-25), national defense (1 Sam. 15:1-3), and sinning ignorantly (Lev. 4- 5). You’ll go to hell no matter how many philosophical tricks you pull on yourself “.. . Them that are out of the way . . .” (vs. 2) being a reference to the way of righteousness as he states it in Hebrews 12:13. This “way” is one of the great themes of the Book of Proverbs (see the Commentary on that Book).
“For that he himself also is compassed with infirmity” (vs. 2). The reason why the Lord (back in the Old Testament) picked those human priests was because they had human problems like their congregation. The idea is that if you have problems then you ought to be able to sympathize with other folks who have problems. Paul states this in 2 Corinthians 1:1-4,
where not even a Greek scholar could miss it. If a fellow man is going wrong and stumbling along the path then a human priest should be able to understand his situation. For this reason one of the requirements of a pastor (not a priest) is to be married, for if he is single (as a Catholic priest), then he will not understand a thousand problems that come up that are connected with RAISING CHILDREN and taking care of a wife (see 1 Tim. 3:1-8). Catholic priests are not qualified to be “priests,” let alone “pastors.” Christ had to be “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief’ (Isa. 53:3) to be our high priest. The Old Testament priests were “compassed with infirmities”; that is, they were weak and sinful too. This is apparent from the death of Aaron’s two sons for disobeying God, the death of Eli’s two sons for disobeying God, the near death of Aaron himself for messing with a golden calf (see Deut. 9:20), the backslidden priest who butchered his concubine (Judg. 19), and a dozen other cases.
“And by reason hereof he ought, as for the people, so also for himself, to offer for sins,” (vs. 3). This is the Old Testament priest. When the modern Roman Catholic priest pretends to do this Sunday morning at “mass,” all he is doing is usurping a Jewish priesthood which is not his and driving the New Testament Christian back under the Old Testament law as though the blood of Christ had never been shed (see comments under 10:8-10). Our High Priest has already made the final offering for sin, and we are not about to let some super-pious clown in a Halloween costume drag us back into the Old Testament just because the news media thinks his religion is legitimate. . So also for himself, to offer . . . Note the difference between an Old Testament Jewish priest and our High Priest (3:1). Our High Priest did not have to make any offering for Himself, for He was not a sinner.
“And no man taketh this honour unto himself,
but he that is called of God, as was Aaron” (vs. 4). “And no man taketh this honour unto himself..
that is, no man can decide “I’m going to be a priest because I saw an ad in Playboy magazine for a priest to be a priest ‘like Christ’” (that was the exact ad in the exact magazine, and it got 600 responses: 1983). “And no man taketh this honour unto himself, but he that is called of God . . (vs. 4). When did God call ANY Roman Catholic priest to be a “priest”? There are no Roman Catholic priests in either Testament. When did God give a Roman Catholic priest that honor? In the New Testament every believer is a priest (1 Pet. 2:3-7), and NONE of them are Roman Catholic priests. Where then did they get this “honour” from? They took it themselves. Origen (184-254) first called a pastor a “priest.” Fools like Irenaeus talked about the Lord’s Supper being a “sacrifice.” NOT ONE WRITER IN EITHER TESTAMENT WAS THAT STUPID OR THAT BLASPHEMOUS. If any man says that he is a Catholic “priest,” he has called himself, or his church has called him. God wasn’t in the act from the first clapboard to the editing room. First Peter 2:5 says that you are a “holy priesthood, to offer up SPIRITUAL SACRIFICES”: not literal sacrifices. None of this “fee, fie, fo, fum, e pluribus unum, adeste fideles” crossing yourself stuff. “Ye are a chosen generation, A ROYAL PRIIESTHOOD” (1 Pet. 2:9); not a “Catho lie priesthood.” Catholic priests are man-called, church-appointed, man-made charlatans who have usurped a Jewish priesthood that was done away for the Christian at Calvary (see Heb. 13:10-13 for confirmation).
“So also Christ glorified not himself to be made an high priest; .. (vs. 5), although that is where he wound up (3:1) after God had exalted Him. “. . . But he that said unto him, Thou art my Son, to day have I begotten thee” (vs. 5) was the One that said to Him, “THOU ART A PRIEST ..(vs. 6).
Notice, then, the great contrast between Biblical Christianity and Roman Catholicism. They have archbishops; we have a Bishop (1 Pet. 2:25). Our earthly bishops are called “elders” (1 Pet. 5:1) or “pastors”; theirs are called “priests.” Their highest priest is a pope; our High Priest is the Lord Jesus Christ (3:1). Their “prince of apostles” is Satan (according to Matt. 16:23; be sure to “see” it, because you certainly won’t believe it unless you see it!), while our “prince of apostles” is the Lord Jesus Christ (3:1). “Their rock” (Deut. 32:30-31) “is not as our Rock” (1 Cor. 10:4), and they admit it (Deut. 32:30-31) when backed into a corner. Biblical Christianity is no kin to Roman Catholicism.
“As he saith also in another place, Thou art a priest . . (vs. 6). So, God the Father ordained the Lord Jesus as a priest: “Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec.” (Who, by the way, did not offer up any literal body and blood of anyone. HE OFFERED LITERAL BREAD AND WINE: Gen. 14:18. Melchisedec was no friend of Rome.)
All right, Melchisedec was not a Jewish priest; he was a Gentile priest. This mysterious character shows up in Genesis 14 for about five verses and suddenly drops out until Hebrews; and then when he shows up, the Lord devotes nearly three chapters to discussing him. (And when you get through with the three chapters you won’t know a great deal more than you knew after reading the five verses in Genesis 14!) We will leave the full exposition on this “dark horse” for Hebrews 7:1-10. Here we only note that Christ’s “order” (as in Sigma Nu, Scottish Rite, Knights of Columbus, Knights Templar, Moose, Kiwanas, etc.) was not a Jewish order. Melchisedek is “in office” before Abraham was circumcised. THERE WERE NO “JEWS” ON THIS EARTH WHEN MELCHISEDEC TOOK OFFICE. The “Jews” come from the physical descendants of Jacob.
Since there are no problems in these first six verses of Hebrews 5, we may expect the Alexandrian Cult to invent at least a dozen (or more) to make you feel dependent upon their bungling stupidity which they call “reverent scholarship” or “belief in the plenary verbal inspiration of the original hokey pokies.”
1. “Being taken” should really be “as he is taken” according to Alford, Delitzsch, Lucken, Mounce, Wordsworth, Vincent, and Angus, although perhaps “is taken” is what the “original” said, according to Souter. “Who is one taken” is probably better according to Kuenen, although it really should be just “taken” according to Hollman. But it could be “since he is taken” (Vincent). But since every man listed had a hole in his head (drilled by thirty years of studying the “original Greek”), what is the point of taking any of them seriously?
2. Verse 2 should have been “one who is able to moderate his feelings” according to Dods, but Pierce says it really means “who can reasonably bear with, etc.” You are to believe Pierce because “Tholuck and Weiss conclude that the word was first formed by the Peripatetics. ” It was “opposed by Aristotle to the agatheia of the Stoics” (p. 286). Kind of like the news media preferring GAY culture to SEX perverts, I suppose? Or was it that Aristotle knowing that he was about to commit suicide decided to give you a “nugget” on the original? “Greekitis” is terminal.
The outrageous insolence of these blind leaders of the blind leads them into page after page of incoherent trivia as they attempt to make you think they know something. Dods (for Rendall’s Expositors’ Greek Testament) says that Wendland’s edition (Vol. i) puts “apatheia ” first and “metriopath ” second, and we are to see “numerous citations by Weststein and Kypke,” and note what Nemesis says about it and how Josephus uses it. Why not see how the Bible uses it? Just for a joke, okay? No? Well then just for “variety,” okay?
No? Well, then why don’t you go see a good movie? One kind of edification is as good as another in these matters. If you are not going to see what the Book has to say about the Book, throw the Book out.
3. Dummelow says the “gifts” of verse 1 is only a reference to “vegetable” sacrifices. Where he got this from in view of Leviticus 27:9 and 1 Samuel 1:24 is hard to say. It was Cain who offered the first “vegetable” gift, and God refused it flatly. Dummelow doesn’t like the reference to “out of the way,” so he alters it (standard operating procedure for any dumbbell who can’t understand plain English) to read “erring.” (This is the reading of the RV of 1885. Other corruptions are “wayward” (RSV) and “going astray” (NIV). The grossly corrupt ASV of 1901 uses the RV reading of Westcott and Hort. The even more corrupt New ASV, recommended by Bob Jones and Tennessee Temple, says “misguided. ” Anything but the truth.) Now Satan never wastes time in purposeless and meaningless maneuvers; there is always a “method” in the madness of these corrupt Conservative and “Fundamental” scholars. Freerkson, for example (Liberty University), completely avoids any discussion of the word. He comments on the “ignorant,” but when it comes to those who are “OUT OF THE WAY,” he contracts “lockjaw.” What is the problem? Why is there all of this scramble to erase “OUT OF THE WAY”? IT WAS THE AUTHOR OF HEBREWS WHO USED THE EXACT EXPRESSION IN HEBREWS 12:13 (“OUT OF THE WAY”) WHEN REFERRING TO A TYPE OF A CARNAL CHRISTIAN: ESAU.
Getting any light on the problem?
Some carnal Christian infected with Greekitis is messing with the Book. When a man messes with that Book, God messes with his mind.
Note: “I PERSECUTED THIS WAY UNTO THE DEATH .. (Acts 22:4).
“THE WAY OF THE LORD .. ” (Prov. 10:29).
“THE WAY OF GOOD MEN ..(Prov. 2 20) “THE WAY OF WISDOM .. (Prov. 4:11).
“THE WAY OF LIFE .. (Prov. 6:23).
Why did we go to Proverbs? Look at the cross references to Hebrews 12:5-6 and find out.
If a man is “out of the way,” we know exactly where he is if he is a HEBREW, because the “oracles” were given to the HEBREWS, and it is the wisest HEBREW who ever lived that wrote the Proverbs for HEBREWS. Why wouldn’t the author of HEBREWS say, “OUT OF THE WAY”?
He would. He did. He did in the King James Authorized Version, not in the ASV, NASV, NIV, RSV, NRSV, NEB, TEV, NWT, or TLB.
5:7 Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared;
8 Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered;
9 And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him;
We now come to the third major “breakdown” of the Alexandrian Cult (99 percent of all qualified Greek scholars, saved or lost) as they attempt to wrest the Scriptures to their own destruction. The first catastrophe was back in Chapter 1 (at verse 2) where the Son “speaking” threw all of them off 1,990 years; the second was in Chapters 3-4 where they all became Armi- nian on New Testament salvation trying to spiritualize Numbers 13-14, and now, when Christ’s prayer to be saved from “death” shows UP, the Cult swells up, assumes a mushroom-shaped cloud form, and then explodes in a blast of hot air that carries Greekified fragments to the ends of the earth.
“Who in the days of his flesh . . (vs. 7). The reference is to Christ as in Isaiah 53. “When he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared” (vs. 7). All of the Cult runs to Gethsemane for a cross reference, but upon arrival, they either collapse or begin to form the hydrogen bomb described above. John R. Rice lines right up with them and helps to popularize the myth that Jesus Christ was in danger of dying PHYSICALLY in Gethsemane and was praying for the Devil not to kill Him so He could go on to the cross. Joe Smith, Jim Jones, Pastor Russell, and Rev. Moonie never got further off base. The “cup” had no more to do with physical death than it had to do with Peter’s fishing net. The “cup” is described in detail in Jeremiah 25 and Psalm 75:8, and the Holy Spirit told you that it was the wrath of God poured out on sin. “Dear old Dr. John” tried to play Bible teacher; he was never called to do it. He was a tractarian evangelist and a newspaper publisher who promoted revival meetings. Bible teaching was out of his field altogether.
1. The cup did not pass; Christ had to drink it (see John 18:11).
2. Therefore, the prayer was unanswered, or rather the answer was “no” (John 18:11).
3. The Devil couldn ’t have killed Christ anywhere if he had stayed up all night (John 10:18).
“Dear old Dr. John” simply didn’t know what he was talking about; he’d been reading some junk put out by the Alexandrian Cult. Albert Barnes is just as wild. He has Christ praying only to be delivered from a particular “MODE of death” and has the prayer answered, “although it was not answered LITERALLY” (p. 116). Cuckoo, Cuckoo, Cuckoo. If you Greek scholars don’t know what you are talking about, the best thing for you to do is to keep your mouths shut.
Ironside (p. 70) gets it right by saying that He
never prayed to be saved from death in the sense of dying, but old Harry has a time explaining what He was praying about then. So, he just skips it. He contents himself with denying Rice’s interpretation. One might say that the term “able to save him from death” was merely a “qualifying adjective” describing the One He was praying to, and it had nothing to do with what was going on.
This time, Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown get it right; they identify the cup. Freerkson (Liberty University) gets it right, but when faced with “and was heard in that he feared,” Freerkson decides to back off, for it implies that SOME prayer was answered. Since it is obvious to any Bible believer what prayer was answered (as we will see in a minute), Freerkson has to let the truth at least “poke around the corner.” He makes a reference to the resurrection (p. 680). This is the right reference, but since all members of the Alexandrian Cult lack authority (Matt. 7:29) and never speak dogmatically except WHEN ATTACKING THE AUTHORIZED TEXT, Freerkson whimpers, “God may have answered . . . more likely He answered . . .” (p. 680).
Well, let’s quit playing “footsie” and get the Biblical answer.
“When he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears ..(vs. 7) can certainly refer to Gethsemane, but no one who has read the Gospels would limit Christ’s prayers and supplications to one night in a garden (see Matt. 14:23; Mark 1:35, 6:46; Luke 3:21, 5:16, 9:18, 29; etc.). “Was heard in that he feared” (vs. 7). Then one prayer was answered. The “cup” had to be taken (see above), but He was SAVED FROM DEATH. Notice that the wording was not “saved from dying” and not “saved from being dead.” It was “SAVED FROM DEATH.” Putting Sumner, Rice, Ironside, Barnes, Pink, Swindoll, Willming- ton, Delitzsch, MacArthur, Wuest, Zodhiates, McGee,
and Farstad carefully in the same stack with Bleek, DeWette, Mounce, Souter, Vincent, Price, Afman, and Martin, pick up your Bible: “Bible,” remember?
1. “Whom God hath raised up, HAVING LOOSED THE PAINS OF DEATH” (Acts 2:24).
2. “Because it was not possible that he should be holden of IT” (What? DEATH: D-E-A-T-H! Acts 2:24).
3. “The snares of DEATH” (not “dying,” DEATH. DE-A-T-H!) “prevented me” (Psa. 18:5).
4. “In my distress I called upon the Lord . . . and my cry came before him” (Psa. 18:6).
5. “HE ASKED LIFE OF THEE, AND THOU GA VEST IT HIM, EVEN LENGTH OF DAYS FOR EVER AND EVER” (Psa. 21:4).
6. “God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave” (Psa. 49:15).
7. “I am weary of my CRYING . . . mine eyes fail while I wait for my God” (Psa. 69:3).
“Death cannot keep his prey—Jesus, my Savior! He tore the bars away—Jesus, my Lord!”
8. “AMEN; AND HAVE THE KEYS OF HELL AND OF DEATH” (Death, D-E-A-T-H! Rev. 1:18).
The problem was Greek scholarship. Those who idolized it were John R. Rice, Harry Ironside, Bleek, Mounce, Albert Barnes, Spiros Zodhiates, Kenneth Wuest, Westcott and Hort, Philip Schaff, Fred Afman, Alford, Robert Sunmer, and Harold Willmington. WHEN WAS THE PROBLEM ANYTHING ELSE?
Christ prayed that He would not stay in the grave after He died. Why? BECAUSE GOD PROMISED HIM ETERNAL LIFE BEFORE GENESIS 1:1. You see, all of the Alexandrian Cult (Swindoll and MacArthur in the lead!) forgot Titus 1:2. To whom would God have promised “eternal life” before “the world began”? John Calvin? The “elect”?
Thus it is and ever shall be “world without end.”
Constant occupation with unknown, unread, and unattainable “original autographs” produces nothing but IGNORANCE: pure, unadulterated, pagan DARKNESS. It never has produced anything else. Greekitis is terminal.
Christ says to Peter, “The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?” (John 18:11). He did drink it; it did NOT pass from Him. He took the cup. “For thus saith the Lord God of Israel unto me; Take the wine cup of this fury at my hand, and cause all the nations, to whom I send thee, to drink it,” (Jer. 25:15). “Drink ye, and be drunken, and spue, and fall..(Jer. 25:27). What was in the cup? “For in the hand of the Lord there is a CUP, and the wine is red; it is full of mixture; and he poureth out of the same: but the dregs thereof, all the WICKED OF THE EARTH SHALL WRING THEM OUT, AN DRINK THEM” (Psa. 75:8).
That is what Christ drank. He was made a curse for us (Gal. 3:13) and took God’s wrath as a wicked man.
John R. Rice’s private interpretation cut out the HEART of one of the main fundamentals of the faith: the vicarious atonement of Jesus Christ for sinners.
Such are the ways of unstable and naive souls who take twentieth-century Greek scholarship seriously.
The Alexandrian Cult was more than a “tad” off; they were lost at sea without a compass.
Pink, after getting the “cup” located, cannot pass “was heard in that he feared” and declares that the prayer was not answered but rather that Christ was just “strengthened” in His prayer by an angel and was “heard” in that “he DESIRED to be heard” (p. 246). [That last rotten egg was laid by the five-point Calvinist, Dr. J. Owen. Observe when these hens get ready to lay rotten eggs that they always precede their cackling with a vast display of impressive NONSENSE. For example: “In seeking to expound this verse three things
require attention. To ascertain its scope or theme, to discover its relation to the context, and its own contributions unto the apostle’s argument and to define its solemn terms” (p. 241).]
Meaning? “I DON’T UNDERSTAND THE VERSE SO I’M GOING TO LAY DOWN A SMOKE SCREEN BEFORE LAYING A HARD-BOILED EGG.
“Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered” (vs. 8). Here He is called “a Son” to identify Him with the “many sons” (Heb. 2:10) He is bringing to glory from a “flesh and blood” (Heb. 2:14) condition. He is identified here as one among many, though we know that He was absolutely unique (see 5:5). We know that the Lord Jesus was “God . . . manifest in the flesh”; but we also know that He was “man of very man,” the Son of Man. (Fundamentalists often forget the “humanity of Christ.”) He was a man; He got TIRED. Does “God” get tired (see Isa. 40:28)? He got thirsty. Does “God” get thirsty? Anyone who calls Mary the “mother of God” has a screw loose somewhere. The child that Mary bore sat down on a well to rest, and He was thirsty. Do you think God gets thirsty? Christ “learned .. . obedience.” Do you think that God has to “learn” ANYTHING? What? (Read Rom. 11:33-35.) Fundamentalists keep forgetting that people are sinners, and in order to save sinners, God would have to become like “people.” If Jesus wasn’t a human being in the sense that you are (albeit sinless) how could He save you? Furthermore, there never was any question about Christ’s obedience to the Father in the Trinity; it was His obedience as a flesh-and-blood man that was theoretical till the incarnation. It had never been tested. You say, “Well, He was always perfect.” A thing can be perfect (Adam, for example) and yet not be tested (as Adam, for example!). You see, Jesus Christ was put to the test. Christ “learned . . . obedience”; He learned experimentally what it was like to be a man.
Some Fundamentalists are so anxious to justify God they forget some things. How could Almighty God, the eternal Creator of the universe, sitting apart from time and creation, know what it would be like, for example, to want to QUIT living? Do you think God ever wanted to quit anything because He was physically thirsty or tired or tempted? Haven’t you ever wanted to sometimes? You see, the Devil had a point back there. His point was: “Well, Lord, what do you know about temptation and suffering? You’ve never been under what you put those people down there under. Why, if YOU were down there like they are, how do you know WHAT you’d do?” The Lord said, “OK, we’ll find out.” And down He came and “Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered.”
“Now Jesus, don’t put that in your mouth!” “Honey, it’s time to change the BABY again!” “Where did that boy go? We’ve been looking for him for three days!”
“Go to sleep, Jesus, it’s late.”
OH, YEAH, MAN (1 Cor. 1:25, 29)! There is plenty in that Book that 1,900 years of “reverent scholarship” never pulled out! “God was manifest in the flesh.” A joke. A monumental, everlasting, mysterious (1 Tim. 3:16) JOKE on scholars who used “wisdom” to get around knowing God (1 Cor. 1:21). GOD CALLED IT HIS “FOOLISHNESS” (1 Cor. 1:25). Imagine a woman telling “God” what to do! Mary did, if you think “Mary was the mother of God.” Well, He was God “manifest in the flesh.” “A SON’” is the way Hebrews puts it.
“And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him” (vs. 9). The verse shows us that the word “perfect” does not mean sinless here any more than in Philippians 3:12, 15 or Job 1:1; 2:3. Going through what Christ went through made Him a perfect Saviour;
He originated and completed salvation. When we get to those “that obey him,” the Catholics and Campbellites have a field day. Anyone trying to prove salvation by works would love the Book of Hebrews anyway, but verses such as verse 9 are especially attractive to a self-righteous sinner who is trying to work his way to heaven while traveling to the bottomless pit: “unto all them that OBEY him” (vs. 9).
The waterdogs (Campbellites) read it this way, “You Baptists say that water baptism is not essential to salvation but is essential for OBEDIENCE; therefore, you admit that it is essential for salvation for you cannot get salvation unless you ‘OBEY Christ,’ and water baptism is OBEDIENCE.”
Cute little trick, isn’t it? If God gives the Holy Spirit “unto all them that OBEY HIM” (Acts 5:32) and reception of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost was conditional on water baptism (see Acts 2:38-39), a Pharisee has a perfect format set up for salvation by works in this age, thereby nullifying Romans 2-4, 8, 10; 1 Corinthians 1,12; Ephesians 2-5; Galatians 1-4; Phil- ippians 1, 3; Acts 13, 15, 20; and several hundred other verses.
But “obedience” in the church age sense would be the obedience of Romans 16:26 and Romans 1:5. It would have to do with obeying “FROM THE HEART” (Rom. 6:17) a form of doctrine that taught salvation by grace through faith (Eph. 2; Acts 15; Rom.
10) APART FROM WATER BAPTISM. Note that to “obey” (see Rom. 10:16) means to BELIEVE something: not get baptized in water. Campbellites (as all cults) have the habit of reading one verse (in this case Acts 2:38) into every other verse in the Bible (Calvinists do it with Eph. 1:4 and Rom. 9:16). Those who count on Acts 2:38 to save them, since the time of Acts 15:11, ARE DISOBEYING THE GOSPEL AND DISOBEYING THE AUTHOR OF SALVATION. No man since Acts 2 ever received the Holy Spirit by being
baptized in water (see Gal. 3:14). We receive the promise of the Spirit “THROUGH FAITH,” and when we “obey the truth” (Acts 5:32), our souls and hearts are purified “BY FAITH” (Acts 15:9), not by water. Note that AV Scripture with AV Scripture solves all problems that cannot be solved with a Greek lexicon and “original autographs.”
1. Christ is not the “author” of eternal salvation; He is only the “source” (NIV) of eternal life. This is the RSV reading of the Communist NCCC. Naturally, the Bibles recommended by Dallas and Bob Jones University approve of the reading; it is in the NASV. Kenneth Taylor’s so-called “Living” (i.e., DEAD) Bible says He was just the “giver” of eternal salvation. Evidently someone else was the “author.”
2. Stibbs (who, incidently, was unable to make any comment on answered or unanswered prayer in Heb. 5:7-8) decides that you get eternal salvation if you “make active obedience to Christ” your “CONTINUAL PRACTISE.” We are to assume you go to hell if you don’t (New Bible Commentary, p. 1200).
3. Nicoll (EGT: Expositors’ Greek Testament) has Christ’s prayer to be saved from death answered with a “no,” although Milligan says, “Christ is thus represented as praying not that death may be averted but that He may be saved ‘out of it’ when it comes” (which is fairly close to the truth). But Rendall rejects the explanation (p. 289). Bleek, Westcott, and Theodoret run the “perfecting of Christ” (vs. 9) up to His ascension, although the reference was to His earthly sufferings.
4. Barnes tells us that Christ doesn’t save anyone who “lives in sin.” You must obey Him. Exactly what “living in sin” is is hard to figure out. The expression was used one time by Paul (Rom. 6:2) while he listed the sins a Christian could commit (Gal. 5:19-21; Eph. 4:19-31). No Christian “lives in sin.” He lives in Christ (see comments on Gal. 5:21 in that Commentary). The
expression in Romans 6:2 was stating an IMPOSSIBILITY; no dead man (Rom. 6:7-8) can "live in sin. ”
5:10 Called of God an high priest after the order of Melchisedec.
11 Of whom we have many things to say, and hard to be uttered, seeing ye are dull of hearing.
12 For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat.
13 For every one that useth milk is unskilful in the word of righteousness: for he is a babe.
14 But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.
Verse 10 is the second time the Lord has mentioned the Melchisedecian priesthood (vs. 6). It is brought up here because He has just given a universal offer of salvation that was not limited to Jews. Note: “UNTO ALL THEM THAT OBEY HIM” (vs. 9). That obedience had nothing to do with anyone’s sacrament, for the Holy Spirit defined it as this: “But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have OBEYED from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you . . . made known to all nations for the OBEDIENCE OF FAITH ... for obedience to the faith among all nations . . . But they HAVE NOT ALL OBEYED THE GOSPEL. For Esaias saith, Lord, WHO HATH BELIEVED OUR REPORT?” (Rom. 6:17, 16:26, 1:5, 10:16).
Water baptism was never a factor one time in the Church Age epistles. Water baptism to GET the Holy Spirit is now DISOBEDIENCE.
So the invitation is to “as many as” (John 1:12), or here, “Unto all them that.” Up pops a Gentile priest in the middle of a Hebrew epistle to the He
brews! (Note the same thing in Matt. 1:3, 5, 6, 7 where four Gentile women suddenly pop up in the line of the Jewish kings.)
“Of whom we have many things to say ..(vs.
11) . Most of these things are recorded in Chapter 7, but they don’t amount really to “many.” The author says that the trouble in “uttering them” (vs. 11) is the audience. There is something wrong with the ears of his audience. They are “dull of hearing” (cf. Acts 28:27, where again the verse is aimed at real Hebrews, and again in Rom. 11:8).
“For when for the time ye ought to be teachers . . (vs. 12). Notice again the peculiar dual nature of the audience in “Hebrews.” If this “YE” and this “YOU” (“ye have need that one teach YOU”) is the “you” of Hebrews 6:9, they are saved New Testament Christians; but they are about ready to be told that their milk stage is not far enough to keep them from being CURSED (see 6:8). They are said to be babies on “milk” who need to go on to “meat,” and then this is illustrated with milk as “the doctrine of Christ. . . repentance from dead works . . . faith toward God ..(6:1-2). What then could the “MEAT” be? If the principles of the doctrines of Christ are “milk,” surely they include His Virgin Birth, His deity, and His death, burial and resurrection. Who are these Hebrews who “ought to be teachers”? He says, “LET US GO ON ..(Heb. 6:1). “Us,” who?
Note that it is absolutely impossible to apply such passages DOCTRINALLY to a Christian in the church age. They must land on a Hebrew in the Tribulation to make sense DOCTRINALLY
“The first principles of the oracles of God” (vs.
12) . Why would they need to be taught these again if they already knew them (see 6:1) and were told to go on and leave them?
“Have need of milk, and not of strong meat” (vs. 12). Now, here we can find some kind of spiritual
or devotional application for the Church Age, for it is apparent that the word of God is likened not only to milk and meat, but also to apples (Prov. 25:11), honey (Psa. 119:103), and bread (Luke 4:3). It is a complete diet containing protein, starch, carbohydrates, vitamins A, C, and D, and dextrose. There are certainly “milk passages” and “honey passages.” It might be added that there are vinegar passages (Rev. 10:10) and “heartburn” passages (Jer. 20:8-10); I suppose they would be the equivalent of pizza at midnight or Mexican chili for breakfast.
The baby needs MILK (1 Pet. 2:1-3). The baby is “new born”; therefore, new Christians do not need the pizza, pork chops, and watermelon passages. The way you spot a baby killer is simple. What does he try to teach a new convert first? If he starts with, “Where did the church begin?” or “What is the difference between the church of the one Body and the Acts church?,” you know he is a killer. The church was said to be “A GREAT MYSTERY” (Eph. 5:32). No one would think of feeding a six-month-old baby barbecued pork chops. That is “strong meat. ” If someone comes into your house and starts to teach you Matthew 24, you know what they are: baby killers. Infanticide. Matthew 24 is one of the toughest portions in the whole Bible: it is raw beefsteak. If some nut starts out with this stuff about, “Which church did Christ found?” or “Which church is the true church?” or “What day should you go to church?” or “Do you have the initial evidence of the baptism of the Holy Ghost?”, you know what he is. He is a murderer. Babies don’t feed on corn on the cob, jalapenos, nachos, and raw oysters. That stuff is for “them that are of full age” (vs. 14). The new convert should be trained in: 1. Confessing Christ openly. 2. Praying and maintaining communion with God. 3. Reading and memorizing his Bible. 4. Assembling with Bible-believing people to hear the Book preached. 5. Daily judging and confessing of sins. His
doctrinal teaching should deal with the death, burial, and resurrection and Second Coming of Christ (1 Thess. 1-4), proper living (Rom. 12-14; 1 Thess. 4-5; Gal. 5- 6), and the two natures (Rom. 6-8).
However, don’t let it ever be said of you ministerial students (PBI) that after three years of Bible study here that you “need that one teach you again ... the first principles.” You ought to know the great doctrines of salvation backwards and forwards, blindfolded. Go on to the strong meat but stay balanced. The writer of Hebrews warns you in Hebrews 13:9 to “Be not carried about with divers and strange doctrines. For it is a good thing that the heart be established with grace; not with MEATS.” Why? Well, “strong meat” is all right according to Hebrews 5 and 6, but you can’t “occupy” yourself with it. Note: “.. . not with meats, which have NOT PROFITED them that have BEEN OCCUPIED THEREIN” (Heb. 13:9). You cannot get occupied with how Cain was conceived, or where the fallen angels got their blood from, or why Adam’s water system turned into a blood system, or the relationship of the he-goat to twentieth-century Greece in the Common Market, or how foreknowledge and predestination can be reconciled, or how free will and God’s sovereignty can be reconciled, or why the Body of Christ is a man and a bride at the same time, or a dozen other fascinating Biblical subjects which constitute “strong meat.” The trouble with all Hyper-Calvinists and Hyper-Dispensationalists (Moore, Greaterex, Stam, Baker, Bullinger, O’Hare, Watkins, Solomon, Sharpe, et al.) is that they are “OCCUPIED” with strong meat. All they can do is kill new babies (1 Pet. 2:1-3). I’ve eaten plenty of strong meat. I was digesting raw pork, fish, and beefsteak thirty years ago that “the majority of qualified scholars” wouldn’t have been able to taste, let alone swallow, but 1 have never forgotten that ANYONE CAN DRINK MILK. Out of over 400 sermons, I have only four messages on the King James
Bible, the other 396 are on prayer, soul winning, repentance, consecration, missions, judgment, the death of Christ, the plan of salvation, the Second Coming, Bible reading, witnessing, counseling, finding the will of God, warnings on false teaching, and fellowship with Christians, etc. “Milk” is always good, but don’t make your whole ministry milk.
“Milk ministries” are ministries like John R. Rice, Robert Sumner, Dallas Billington, Bill Gothard, Harry Ironside, Jack Hyles, Chuck Swindoll, John MacArthur, Bob Jones III, J. Vernon McGee, Oliver Greene, and Jack Wyrtzen. There is nothing wrong with these ministries, as such. God uses them. People can always drink milk. We are not saying that God didn’t use these men (or is not using them). We are saying that “strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age” (vs. 14) and the writer of Hebrews exhorts his listeners to go on to that meat and rebukes them for still being BABIES USING MILK (vs. 13). Such men are “unskilful in the word of righteousness” (vs. 13), for they are babies (vs. 13). God forbid that a Bible-believing teacher after twenty years in the ministry should still be a BABE. Dr. DeHaan never got much beyond that stage and neither did Oliver Greene, although they certainly were a vast improvement over such sucklings as Copeland, Kapps, Hagin, Gorman, and Swaggart.
The heart is established by GRACE, not meats (Heb. 13:9). If you don’t have grace then I don’t care how much Bible you know or what you can handle; “It ain’t going to do you no good, no way, anyway.” I mean, the brethren forget that. It tickles me. I have enough grace to send my students to Hyles-Anderson’s Pastors’ School every year, but he wouldn’t send a cockroach to come down here. I recommend students to Bob Jones and Tennessee Temple every year. They warn them about “Ruckman” when they come on campus. I recommend the Sword of the Lord, and our bookstore handles Rice’s books and pamphlets; he doesn’t
handle mine! I recommend Pensacola Christian Academy for parents trying to find a Christian school for kiddies; they ship any student caught attending our church. Do you know what is the matter with these absolutely GRACELESS wretches? Well, they are not only stunted babies who can’t handle strong meat, but they’re not even established with GRACE in their hearts. They don’t have the “grace" God gave to an alley cat. You see, while I was getting into the meat of the word, I never forgot “Sister Grace”; I have learned that the HEART should be established with grace no matter with what the HEAD is established. I learned something that Bob Jones Jr., Bob Jones III, Arlin and Becky Horton, Truman Dollar, A. V. Henderson, Jack Hyles, Curtis Hutson, Harold Willmington, Dayton Hobbs, and Faulkner (Tennessee Temple University) NEVER LEARNED. Their grace ended with those who loved them; they did no better than the publicans (Matt. 5:46). They could only support Christians who supported them.
“Even those who by reason of use” (vs. 14). Observe that USING THE WORD OF GOD (see vs. 13, “useth milk”) is the exercise that develops the mature Christian to where he can “discern both good and evil.” Their “senses” were exercised by using the Book, and the word “using” here is no reference to some educated dunce sitting around in a study CORRECTING the Book. The “oracles of God” mentioned in the context (vs. 12) were the oracles that were true whether any scholar believed them or not. Note: “. . • Chiefly, because that unto them were committed the ORACLES OF GOD. For what if some did NOT BELIEVE? . . . YEA, LET GOD BE TRUE, BUT EVERY MAN A LIAR” (Rom. 3:2-4). There is no reference here to that strange twentieth-century class of lying apostates who “use” a Book only because they “prefer” it. The “users” here have applied the words of God to situations in their own lives and the lives of
others and have tried them out (Psa. 12:6). They have tested them “to discern ... good and evil”; they have obeyed the admonition to “prove all things” and “cleave to that which is good” (1 Thess. 5:21; Rom. 12:9).
And here we must come back to our text doctrinally. It is impossible to tie it in with what is about to be said (6:1-6) without reproducing the passage. Since this is the greatest stumbling block in the entire New Testament for the Alexandrian Cult, we may expect a fourth “nuclear spasm” at the passage (see 5:7 above). There are five interpretations given for Hebrews 6:1-6, and the private interpretation of the Roman Catholic church is as screwed up as any of the four wrong ones. The five interpretations given are: 1. The Judgment Seat of Christ (DeHaan’s interpretation). 2. A hypothetical case that can’t happen (Oliver Greene’s interpretation). 3. The unpardonable sin by someone on the “threshold of salvation” (Scofield’s interpretation). 4. A Christian who lost his salvation and can get it again (Holiness, Catholic, Methodist, and Episcopalian). 5. A Tribulation saint who loses it and can’t get it back (the text as it stands written). With this, we plunge into the Brunswick Stew.
THE BIBLE BELIEVER’S COMMENTARY SERIES
6:1 Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God,
2 Of the doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment.
3 And this will we do, if God permit.
4 For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost,
5 And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come,
6 If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame.
Now, just before entering the slaughterhouse of the Alexandrian Cult to watch the “qualified scholars” (who all hold to “historic fundamentalist positions”) butcher the Bible, let us line up the factors as they appear in the Authorized text and see with what kind of a person we are dealing. We will go by the Scriptures instead of the “original autographs.”
1. Whoever is being addressed is in the same boat as the writer: “LET US GO ON . .. .”
2. He is being told to leave something on the grounds that it is MILK not meat: “Therefore leaving the principles of....”
3. He has laid a foundation and is being told NOT
TO LAY IT AGAIN: “not laying again the foundation ...
4. He may be able to “go on” and he may NOT be able to go on: “And this will we do, IF GOD PERMIT.”
5. If he does NOT “go on” then something becomes an impossibility for him: “For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened ...
6. If he does NOT then he cannot be “renewed” unto repentance and is rejected: “WHOSE END IS TO BE BURNED” (vs. 8).
The change from “US” to “THOSE” (vs. 4) and back to “YOU” (vs. 9) is done with apologies to no one and explanations to no one. With such a situation, the Greek scholars lick their chops, smack their lips, seize their cutlery, and go to work to explain and ex- egete the passage by CHANGING EVERY WORD THEY CAN GET THEIR HANDS ON JUST AS FAST AS THEY CAN CHANGE IT (see below).
1. The standard interpretation placed on the passage by all popes, all Methodists, all Assemblies of God, Churches of God, and Pentecostals (the Pentecostals until 1960 at which time 90 percent of them became pseudo-Baptists), Episcopalians, Churches of Christ, Mormons, and Seventh-day Adventists, is that the man spoken of is genuinely saved and must “endure to the end” or he will “fall from grace” (Catholic: die outside of a “state of grace”) and “lose it.” Most believe he can get it back although the text (see vs. 4) says that he can’t.
2. The Scofield interpretation is that the man addressed is like the spies at Kadesh-barnea (Num. 13- 14) who went up to search out the land and turned back when “on the threshold of salvation.” This was done by tying the chapter in with the discussion which went on in Chapter 3 and Chapter 4. The idea is they “had the grapes in their hands” and then “fell away” and could not be “renewed again unto repentance.”
Holes appear all over the exegesis: No spy at Kadesh-barnea had been made “PARTAKERS OF THE HOLY GHOST” (see vs. 4), not one spy in the group had been grounded in “the principles of the doctrine of Christ” (vs. 1), they tasted of no “heavenly gift” whatsoever: if they had eaten the grapes (Num. 13), they would have “tasted” an earthly gift. Nowhere do you read in Numbers that they were BURNED (vs. 8) for not entering the land—NOT EVEN MOSES ENTERED THE LAND; and what is worse, most of them were not “nigh unto cursing” whatever problems they may have had.
Beyond this, it is absolutely incredible to think of lost Hebrews “partaking of the Holy Ghost,” tasting of the “heavenly gift,” plus the “good word of God,” (plus the “powers of the world to come”). The “world to come” is the Millennium anyway, not the Church Age. Every attempt to Greekify “taste” is out of the ball park, for the word was left uncorrected by Jesus Christ in John 8:52 when dealing with a BELIEVER. To reduce “taste” to an impersonal, objective, outward “hearing” is nonsense. The believer does not see death (John 8:51), but if “taste” means what the scholars say it means here, then no Christian who died in the last 2,000 years knew what the word meant. When you TASTE physical death you drop dead, otherwise Christ would have corrected the “misquote” (John 8:52).
3. The third interpretation was popularized by Dr. M. R. DeHaan. Grasping at verse 8 he decided that it was only “things” that were going to be burned (“that which beareth thorns and briers is rejected”) and ran it to 1 Corinthians 3:12-15 where things are burned. He completely overlooked the last word in the Old Testament where the context was someone whose “end” was to be burned (Mai. 4:1-3), and he also overlooked 2 Samuel 23:6-7 where a Hebrew, as King of the Hebrews, wrote a Psalm for Hebrews: “the sons of Belial shall be all of them AS THORNS . . . they shall be
UTTERLY BURNED WITH FIRE” (2 Sam. 23:6- 7). When a man messes with the Book, God messes with his mind. Furthermore, many a Christian has fulfilled the backsliding conditions of Hebrews 6:1-4 and has not “gone on,” and yet later HAS repented and gotten right. The people of Hebrews 6:4-6 cannot get right again. DeHaan missed it. He was a fine, “good, godly man” and greatly “used of God,” and we thank God for his ministry. When he got to Hebrews 6:1-6, he would have done well to stick to the milk bottles. Tabasco sauce in Brunswick Stew was not his specialty, nor is it Spiros Zodhiate’s specialty.
4. Oliver Greene (who was a precious saint and a great soul-winner for the Lord) finally gave up on the passage altogether and decided that since no one could put it together he would rather just get around it (instead of having to face it and upset some Baptists and Presbyterians); so Brother Greene decided it was hypothetical. That it couldn ’t happen, but if it DID happen then such and such, and so forth and so on. “If a Christian COULD lose his salvation—which any Baptist knows that he can NOT—then it would be impossible for him to get saved again.” Freerkson took this position.
Now, 100 percent of the Greek scholars and Bible teachers will park in one of these parking spaces. Rather than give up their cherished denominational “historic positions,” they will make a liar out of God, or at least ignore what God said. That is the characteristic approach of Fundamentalists in the Laodicean age.
1. Nicoll (EGT) cancels God’s will in verse 3 so that God will always permit it, no matter what. The man in the passage is a Jewish convert to Christianity (i.e. a genuine believer on Christ), he has exercised repentance and faith (p. 296), according to Paul’s preaching (see Acts 20:21), and the “heavenly gift” is either forgiveness of sins (Davidson, Weiss, Chrysostom) or the Holy Spirit (Owen, Von Soden). Bleek and
Tholuck, sensing that someone is about to lose their shirt in a crap game, cut the “gift” down to “enlightenment.” But since that item was mentioned already just before this, the stratagem is rather threadbare. According to Nicoll (Dods doing the commenting), the man is a genuine, born-again believer on Christ (p. 297). As such, he could take a “fatal step” which was “a crime” (p. 299) and could wind up cursing Jesus Christ back in the synagogue. He lost it. “The persons described cannot again be brought to a life-changing repentance” (p. 298).
That is the “scholarship” of the Expositors’ Greek Testament edited by W. Robertson Nicoll (Vol. IV) with the works of James Moffatt, Newport White, W. E. Oesterley, Marcus Dods, James Denney, R. J. Knowling, G. G. Findlay, Alexander Bruce, J. H. A. Hart, J. B. Mayor, David Smith, R. H. Strachan. Between them, they cited more than 2,000 references from classical Greek writings and analyzed more than 4,000 Greek words, using the opinions of more than 40 Greek lexicographers and referring to a dozen different editions of the Greek New Testament. Greekitis is terminal.
They decided a born-again child of God could lose salvation, if he was a converted Jew.
That is the logical terminus of poking your nose around in unavailable “original autographs” that “are verbally and plenary inspired” WHILE BEING DEAD-SET ON MAKING A LIAR OUT OF GOD.
2. Arthur W. Pink says that none of those spoken of in the passage were “true Christians” (p. 290). That is, they could “partake of the Holy Ghost” and still be lost. To arrive at this ridiculous position, Pink alters the word “partakers” to “companions,” so we get an “external partaking” instead of an “internal partaking.” Naturally “TASTING’’ doesn’t refer to any TASTING found anywhere in the Scripture (John 8:52 and Heb. 2:9), but according to Pink, Christ didn’t really die in
Hebrews 2:9: He just “tasted death.” By the same token, the born-again Christians of 1 Peter 2:2 did not really have Christ; they just had “tasted” Him (see 1 Pet. 2:3). OBSERVE (IF YOU STILL HAVE ANY RESPECT FOR THE GREEK SCHOLARS) THAT THE “ORIGINAL GREEK” IN EVERY PASSAGE CITED IS THE SAME WORD: “geuontai. ” Why didn’t the great Greek scholars haul up the Greek this time? Easy: it didn ’t confirm their system of private interpretations. They will go to the Greek to get rid of the “partakers,” but they will ignore it like the plague when dealing with the “taster.” Great folks, eh what? Really “godly,” wouldn’t you say? (We wouldn’t, but would YOU?)
“If they shall fall away,” is, according to A. W. Pink, “scarcely a fair translation.” Ah, yes, haven’t we run into you conceited asses (and I say that with charity after much prayer) over and over and over and over again? Do you ever cease to spawn and breed?
Now, since God always messes with the mind of any rascal who messes with His Book, we should not be surprised to find Pink finally caught in a net of his own weaving at this place, and like Dr. Guilliotine— who was beheaded on his own invention—A. W. Pink finally arrives at his miserable end (p. 294). “Now it is impossible to renew again unto repentance those who have totally abandoned the Christian revelation.” “AGAIN?” Why, Arthur W. Pink was a five-point Calvinist who believed that no one but the “ELECT” were even capable of REPENTANCE. God had to “grant repentance” (see Acts 11:18 and comments in that Commentary) even to the elect. What is an unsaved apostate headed for Hell doing trying to repent AGAIN? HE COULDN’T HAVE REPENTED THE FIRST TIME ACCORDING TO EVERY BOOK A. W. PINK WROTE SINCE HE WROTE “THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD. ”
“Reliable scholarship,” was it?
“Ruckman thinks he’s right and everyone else is wrong,” is it?
4. Here comes the milkman, Harry Ironside: those involved had only been enlightened in regards to the “claims” of Jesus (p. 79). They had “tasted” without eating (like Christ “tasted” death without dying!). They couldn’t have really “partaken” of the Holy Spirit because “THE DEFINITIVE ARTICLE IS PURPOSELY OMITTED IN THE ORIGINAL. ”
The “original?!” Land sakes! I didn’t know that Ironside had the “original” of Hebrews, did you? I thought Spiros Zodhiates had it! No, that couldn’t be, for it was Stewart Custer at Bob Jones who said he had it! He said (and we quote him directly), “As far as having an INSPIRED AND INFALLIBLE Bible, yes I HAVE ONE. The Greek Testament THAT I HOLD IN MY HANDS, I will DEFEND EVERY WORD IN IT . . . So, as far as having a VERBALLY INSPIRED BIBLE, I HAVE ONE, and I READ IT EVERY DAY” (letter dated Oct. 28, 1981 to Dalton Woods, Flint, Michigan).
Wow!! He had a verbally inspired Bible that wasn’t even an “original autograph!” Wow! Like “wow,” man! Gloryosky! (“Arf!” says Sandy.)
5. One more time, baby! One more look at these irrational, illogical, insensible, fanatical, mixed-up hoodlums who devote their “godly” lives to kidding Christians into thinking that they are “soldiers of the faith” taking a “ militant stand,” when they are nothing but confused children with the egos of Adolph Hitler or Pope John Paul II. Here is “ Freerky” Freerkson of Falwell’s Liberty University (pp. 682-683).
“The author” (of Hebrews) “does not believe that his readers can lose salvation. ” (The proof for this is vs. 9, while carefully cancelling vss. 1, 3, 10:26-30; plus 3:6, 14, and 4:1-2). The “readers” are all LOST, according to Freerkson. He cites Kent to prove his point (p. 682). The way that you convince yourself that nothing found in verses 4 and 5 means what it says is
by noting that “The verbal forms are participles, ” and they contain no regular finite verbs” (p. 683).
Wouldn’t you be in a mess if you didn’t know Greek like Freerkson knows it? Hmmmm?
“The structure makes interpretation difficult. ” (We’ll see about THAT in a moment, sonny.)
The whole passage was written to the reader so that he might “know the security which they possess, so as to gain assurance. ” What? This is a passage on assurance of salvation? “It speaks AGAINST insecurity regarding the believer’s salvation.” It does? Where? If the “things that accompany salvation” (vs. 9) are not repentance (vs. 6), the Holy Ghost (vs. 4), the word of God (vs. 5), the doctrines of Christ (vs. 1), and resurrection and judgment (vs. 2), what are they? Greek verbs and participles?
FREERKSON DOESN’T KNOW WHERE HE IS, WHAT HE IS DOING, OR WHAT HE WAS TOLD TO DO.
He and the faculty at Liberty University had two diseases: Greekitis and “Ruckmanitis.”
But since he has been called to “train Christian Champions for Christ” (Liberty University), he must arrive at some conclusion, or people will think he is a Chump instead of a “Champ”; so he finally throws the whole passage down the tube and says that it (along with Heb. 10:27-33, which he couldn’t handle either!) was “HYPOTHETICAL. “
But you see, the writer of Hebrews didn’t say “IF IT WERE POSSIBLE for us to sin wilfully” (Heb. 10:26), nor did he say, “If it WERE POSSIBLE for any man to draw back.” Not once did he say, “IF IT WERE POSSIBLE FOR THEM TO FALL AWAY . . . .” Not once did he say, “IF HE COULD trod underfoot the son of God . . . .” Not once. Freerksons hypothetical case is hypothetical and not even a good conjecture.
You see, there wasn’t one hypothetical statement made in ANY Greek text, let alone the Greek text that
Freerkson uses. The optatives and subjunctives are all missing from Hebrews 6 (see Rom. 9:3 for example and the good ole’ “original Greek” optative). You see, these hypocrites use the Greek to correct the English until it reinforces the English; then they drop it like a scalding-hot dish rag. They simply lay down their Greek lexicons and grammars and pretend they said nothing since they refuse to line up with the hallucinations of the scholar who is slipping all over the passage like a greased pig on ice.
You talk about CONCEIT! You talk about MEGALOMANIA! It would take a Pope to keep up with these “Champions for Christ” that come from the “World’s Most Unusual Brownie Centers.”
If the writer of Hebrews had wanted to present a hypothetical case, like Freerkson and others imagine, all he would have to do would be to use the Optative Mode on some Greek verbs so it would read “IF IT WOULD OR COULD BE POSSIBLE . . . .” He didn’t do it. There is no Greek text that reads in this fashion. So the scholars abandoned all of the “original Greek texts” they had been quoting for five chapters! The infinitive occurs in Hebrews 6:6 “anakainizen” which is no optative at all; the present active occurs in the same verse (“anastaurountas’) which is no optative at all; and there is no optative mode in Hebrews 10:26. There it said “hekousios” (“h” for rough breathing). There is no optative mode where he talks about “treading the blood underfoot” in Hebrews 10:29. THEY DO TREAD IT UNDERFOOT: Greek “katapatesas” is not kin to any optative known to Dr. A. T. Robertson or Casper Gregory or Eberhard Nestle.
You see, they lied to you again.
That’s how they make their living; they are pathological and chronic.
With no Greek authority for saying the case in Hebrews 6 was “hypothetical,” and with all Greek texts and all Greek manuscripts confirming an English text,
THEY COULD NOT UNDERSTAND IT BECAUSE THEY HAD REJECTED PART OF THE BIBLE THROUGH UNBELIEF. They simply and coyly “overlooked” all of the Greek they had learned (and studied) and pretended that the Greek had no bearing on the passage they had privately interpreted. Nice folk. You couldn’t be in better company with the Mafia; more interesting company, yes, but “better,” no.
Still Liberty University muddles on, making mish-mash out of the living words of the living God. The word “tasted OFTEN CARRIES A BROADER MEANING” (p. 683), so he cites Hebrews 2:9 and pops up with this: “These people HAVE PARTAKEN OF THE HEAVENLY GIFT AND OF THE HOLY SPIRIT.” And further Freerkson freaks out with “they have FULLY EXPERIENCED the Word of God” (capital “W” for the Incarnate Word!) “and powers of the coming age.”
The “reader” then is a saved unsaved man who never got saved but wasn’t lost.
In one last mighty effort to untangle himself from the mass of spaghetti he has entangled himself as a teacher of “Champions” (Liberty University: “Raising CHAMPIONS for Christ!”), Freerkson says, “this participle has the same basic form . . . which have been translated substantially . . . our version translates it circumstantially (adverbially) ... the fifth participle and the first four . . . commonly treated as circumstantial with a casual idea, as in our AUTHORIZED VERSION . . (p. 684).
Ah yes! Here we are again. We go out where we came in: Greekitis. You can’t understand your own Bible in your own language, so now you are going to pose as a savior for all the novices as stupid as you are and then strut your knowledge of some other language before them so they will accept your MISUNDERSTANDING of the passage as sound exegesis.
What do you say that for variety’s sake, we just pretend for a moment that not one man who correctd one syllable of one word anywhere in the Authorized Text had anymore idea of what he was talking about than Jesse Jackson lecturing on the National Rifle Association. Let’s pretend for a moment that all we have is the TRUTH, and the author of the TRUTH on whom to rely, and by comparing “spiritual things with spiritual” (1 Cor. 2:13), we will arrive at the TRUTH, because the Guide into ALL TRUTH (John 16:13) came to represent Him who was THE TRUTH (John 17:17).
Abandoning every qualified Greek exegete, every qualified Greek authority, all Greek texts, all Greek grammars and grammarians, all Greek lexicons, and all of the commentators without one exception, let us see WHAT THE BIBLE TEACHES according to what it SAID.
1. The reader is a Hebrew. 2. He is a Hebrew who’s saved. 3. He is in danger of losing salvation if he doesn’t “endure unto the end.” 4. Only by doing this can he become a “partaker of Christ,” even though he is already a “partaker of the Holy Ghost. ” 5. He has “tasted” the powers of a world to come that is characterized by apostolic signs and wonders (Acts 1-7 shifted to 1990-2000: see Matt. 17:10-13 and comments in that Commentary). 6. He is in danger of drawing back into “perdition” as Jews who GOT INTO THE PROMISED LAND AND APOSTASIZED AFTER THEY GOT THERE (Judg. 1-3)—all of the scholars forgot that application. 7. He can lose salvation and be unable to get it back. 8. When he does, a BURNING awaits him at the Second Advent for he will be judged as one of God’s “people” (see Heb. 10:26-33). 9. No matter how many temporary spiritual applications you may make to the immediate reader of Hebrews—when it was written before A.D. 60—you can not rest DOCTRINALLY one time in the passage till you run it up past the Church Age. This proves that at least twelve
chapters of the epistle were written before Acts 7.
Now! The references for those Biblical truths could be found in Hebrews 3, 4, 6, 10; Matthew 24, 25; Revelation 2, 3, 12, 13, 14, 22; James 5; Jude; and 2 Thessalonians 2 as far back as 1611. No one has to change ONE word in ONE verse in ANY chapter listed. No Greek text is necessary for an understanding of one statement given above. No Fundamentalist scholar needs to be called in to be consulted about his “qualified opinion” on ONE word in ONE passage listed. The Scriptures are absolutely self-explanatory and as clear as a plate glass window with the pane knocked out.
No man with a fourth-grade education could have missed those truths unless he had been brainwashed by a Christian educator or had been foolish enough to respect apostates because they were “godly.” In the Tribulation, a Jew can lose salvation after he gets it, for he is not in Christ’s Body: Christ’s Body has gone. There’s one thing certain: in Daniel’s Seventieth Week you may get saved by faith, but you won’t be kept without WORKS (James 2:24). If you don’t have the works you will go to hell. That’s where James came in: “Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only” (James 2:24). In the Tribulation, a man has to resist the mark of the beast (see Rev. 14:12 and comments in that Commentary) or he will be lost. He can take the mark or starve (see Rev. 13:15- 18 and comments in that Commentary), or if they catch him, he will lose his head (see Rev. 20:4 and comments in that Commentary). The only way you will survive the Tribulation is as an undercover agent helping Jews (see Matt. 25:40), or head for the bushes and mountains (see Job 24, 30 and comments in that Commentary) and practice “survival” till the “end” (see Matt. 24:13 and comments in that Commentary).
And there on your table, served up by the Holy Spirit (with “pitchers” of silver), is the “strong meat”
of Hebrews 5:14: beefsteak, pork chops, broiled hamburgers, barbecued beef, sirloin steak, fried chicken, roasted lamb, spare ribs, Wiener schnitzel, bratwurst, and wild turkey, with deer meat and quail. James Gray and G. Campbell Morgan both missed a good “feed.”
The Scholar’s Union has never been anything but a Milkman’s Union, faking it out by pretending that their linguistic knowledge made them “of full age” and able to handle strong meat. They were nothing but spoiled brats: babes, “unskilful in the word of RIGHTEOUSNESS.” To the Bible believer who believes the Book many of these “giants of the faith” and “qualified, accredited, recognized authorities” are nothing but a pitiful JOKE. They are diaper-clad infants in a “bawl room” in the church nursery playing with beads and rattles.
6:7 For the earth which drinketh in the rain that cometh oft upon it, and bringeth forth herbs meet for them by whom it is dressed, receiveth blessing from God:
8 But that which beareth thorns and briers is rejected, and is nigh unto cursing; whose end is to be burned.
9 But, beloved, we are persuaded better things of you, and things that accompany salvation, though we thus speak.
10 For God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love, which ye have shewed toward his name, in that ye have ministered to the saints, and do minister.
11 And we desire that every one of you do shew the same diligence to the full assurance of hope unto the end:
12 That ye be not slothful, but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises.
Now that the air has been cleared of Conservative
and Fundamentalist smog, we can proceed at a quicker pace. We now know what we are dealing with doctrinally; we are dealing with a Tribulation epistle aimed primarily at Tribulation Hebrews. Of course, we will be able to find many passages in it that match the Pauline epistles, and again (since the Book obviously had to have some application to Christians in the early part of the Book of Acts), there will be some verses that we can apply to a believer in this age; however, when faced with passages such as Hebrews 3:6, 14, 6:1-6, and 10:26-33, we will have no Greek hallucinations and grammatical nightmares like those of Will- mington, MacArthur, Freerkson, Sumner, Afman, Farstad, Dollar, Wisdom, Truett, Zodhiates, Wuest, Alford, Bengel, Bleek, Barnes, Ironside, Thieme, Williams, and Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown. Let them untangle their feet from their own net. We didn’t manufacture it, and we didn’t lay it down to ensnare them.
“For the earth which drinketh in the rain that cometh oft upon it . . .” (vs. 7). All of the scholars abandon the Scriptures again at this point. The Scriptures, at this point, indicate a RAIN at the end of the Tribulation which precedes the Advent. Observe (without the Greek or Hebrew to confuse the issue or hide the truth): “The coming of the Lord . . . waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth . . . until he receive the EARLY and latter RAIN ... the coming of the Lord . . . and the heaven gave RAIN, and the earth brought forth her fruit” (James 5). Every reference was in the context of the Second Advent at the end of the Tribulation. There wasn’t a Church Age reference in the passage. Again: “Thou, O God, didst send a PLENTIFUL RAIN, ... The chariots of God are twenty thousand” (Psa. 68) The context is not remotely connected with any Christian in the Church Age. David, in speaking of his Messiah “Son” who is to reign, says: “He shall be as the light of the MORNING, when the SUN riseth ... as the tender grass
springing out of the earth by clear shining AFTER RAIN” (2 Sam. 23:4). And why list the other five references? No Greek or Hebrew scholar could read them anyway in sixth-grade English. They lost their minds over the “verbally, plenary, inspired original autographs.” Any child in my junior department knows that Elijah will do (Rev. 11:6) what he did before (1 Kings 18), and when he is finished (three and one-half years of drought), there will be a “GULLY WASHER” (1 Kings 18:45).
The only people that don’t know that are the faculty members of Hyles-Anderson, Tennessee Temple, Dallas Theological Seminary, Liberty University, Pacific Coast Bible College, Arlington, Springfield, Denver, Maranatha, Piedmont, Pillsbury, and the congregations pastored by Swindoll, Faulkner, Schuller, MacArthur, Falwell, and Oral Roberts: Milky-wilky.
The “precious fruit of the earth” is reaped at a post-tribulation rapture (see comments under Heb. 9:28 and Rev. 14:14-15 in that Commentary), and the “tares” that are left (see Matt. 13:30, 40 and comments in that Commentary) are BURNED (Mai. 4:1- 6). One class was “meet for them by whom it is dressed” (Heb. 6:7) because they received “blessing from God” (6:7), and the other is “rejected, and is NIGH UNTO CURSING” (Heb. 6:8) because their end is “TO BE BURNED” (6:8). This was the “baptism of FIRE” which John spoke of in Matthew 3:9—11 (see that Commentary) and which was still being held in abeyance (Acts 1-7) at the time the author of Hebrews wrote Hebrews 6.
No Christian on this earth had to alter ONE word of ONE verse in ONE chapter of ONE Book, to thoroughly understand what “Freerky” Freerkson (Liberty University) muddled up by saying that there was “much uncertainty regarding the interpretation of these verses” (p. 683, Liberty Bible Commentary, Old Time Gospel Hour, Lynchburg, VA). What he meant was that he
and his whole humanistic crowd were uncertain; whereas, no real Bible beliver was UNCERTAIN about ANYTHING in the passage. He thought his crowd were “Bible believers.” A lot of people these days are fooled with that kind of hogwash. His crowd are HUMANISTIC relativists.
“But, beloved, we are persuaded better things of YOU, and things that accompany salvation . . (vs. 9). Now, THIS was the verse that all of the Bible critics hung their hat on when they took the position that no one in verses 1-7 was saved. The idea was the “you” of verse 9 so contrasted with the “those” of verse 4 that they could not possibly be the same. To arrive at this position, the hat-hanger had to pretend that the “YOU” of 5:12 and the “YE” of 5:12 and the “US” of 6:1 and the “WE” of 6:3 were not connected with the context (6:4-6). You never saw a dislocated limb on a hospital patient more twisted than that kind of exegesis. Furthermore, having taken this ridiculous position, the apostates failed to notice that the REASON the writer was “persuaded” of “better things of YOU” was because they HAD BEEN PRACTICING WORKS (look at vs. 10) and ENDURING (look at vs. 15) to get an INHERITANCE (vs. 12) at “THE END” (vs. 11).
Don’t you know these milk sops will have a time when they get to those verses!
Now, the “things that accompany salvation” in THIS AGE are the things given in 6:1-4. Therefore the writer is using the term “salvation” here in verse 9 in quite another sense than evangelists used the term in revival meetings. (Observe that the word “save” can refer to the salvation of a ministry [1 Tim. 4:16] or from being deceived [1 Tim. 2:15] or even being saved from drowning [1 Pet. 3:20]. The “great salvation” that Jonathan wrought [1 Sam. 14:45] was certainly not that of getting sinners to heaven. The “chariots of salvation” in Habakkuk 3:8 are saving BODIES and
LIVES at the Advent. When the heavenly host in Revelation 12:10 sing “Now is come SALVATION,” they are certainly not saying that no sinner was ever saved until the middle of the Tribulation.) “SALVATION” in Hebrews 6:9 is like “he that shall endure to the end, the same shall be SAVED” (Matt. 24:13). The things that “ACCOMPANY” (vs. 9) that salvation are WORKS (see the next four verses!), exactly as we have stated it 100 times in our writings on Matthew 24-25; Revelation 11-14, 22; Hebrews 3-4 and 10. If you spiritualize this literal Second Advent salvation (which ALL of the commentators are about to do), you wind right up in the same mess you got into when you tried to spiritualize Hebrews 3-4 (see above). We can count on the brethren to do just that. God didn’t restore their minds to them once they set their hearts on explaining His words away instead of believing them.
Now, it is possible to “sermonize” anything, and you will notice that whenever the Alexandrian Cult (Wuest, Robertson, Vincent, Thayer, Zodhiates, Ryrie “Study Bible,” Anderson, Olson, Davidson, Alford, Sumner, Willmington, Swindoll, MacArthur, et al.) gets “in a tight” they simply refuse to comment and go off into little “devotional homilies” so you will think they understood the text. Arthur W. Pink is a great one for this, as was John Calvin and Matthew Henry.
You could take the “things that accompany salvation” and preach a good sermon from it for this age. We could do it as easily as anyone else. I mean, there certainly are some “things” that accompany the salvation of a sinner in this age. For example, the main thing that “accompanies” anyone’s salvation in this age is belief in the Bible; this was the medium (Rom. 10:17) through which the sinner found Christ (1 Thess. 2:13). When a man gets saved he will tend to believe what God said (1 Cor. 13:6). A fear of sin will accompany salvation; a saved man is twice as scared (or ten times as scared) about sinning, or getting caught in sin,
as an unsaved man. Even if he isn’t afraid of the consequences here, he will worry about the consequences hereafter. There is always a degree of repentance that “accompanies” salvation. It may not be complete; the sinner may be “so far gone” that he can’t drop everything he has been doing in forty-eight hours. Some converts have to fight old habits for twenty years after their conversion; they may not quit doing some things when they get saved, but there will be disgust and hatred manifest toward those things if they are wrong (Acts 26:29). There is always some sort of turning FROM sin when a man turns to Christ (Acts 20:21). If a man gets saved, he will go to work straightening some things up right away.
Further, a thirst for real Bible teaching and preaching will accompany salvation. One of the terrible signs of apostasy in America since 1970 has been the fact that the thousands of half-baked Charismatics who get saved have no desire to sit under a clear, hard, plain, straight presentation of the truth. We get a dozen letters a month from these kinds of “Christians” who are unable to take ANY BIBLICAL TRUTH that offends their idols. The fact that men like Schuller (Los Angeles), Swindoll (same area), MacArthur (same area), and Dobson are able to attract large followings is a Biblical sign that most of their followers are LOST. Salvation produces a love of the truth and a thirst for truth that cannot be satisfied with humanistic relativists, rap sessions, pragmatic psychology, and motivational counsellors.
Finally, there is a desire to fellowship with other Christians. Later, the convert may get bitter or even mad about six “church splits,” “personality conflicts,” etc., but he will still gravitate to his own “kind” (see Genesis 1:21, 24); if he doesn’t, he becomes backslid- den, cold, unfruitful, and miserable. The worst thing you ever saw in your life is a Christian that is mad at God and other Christians, and he can’t live with them
or get along with them; and yet, at the same time, he is afraid to go back into the world and fellowship with the whoremongers, drunks, and embezzlers. He’s in a mess. We might add one more item: one of the surest “accompaniments” to salvation is the desire to tell somebody that you got saved and tell them how to be saved. In reams of Charismatic literature that have polluted “Christian” bookstores from coast to coast between 1960 and 1980, there is a noticeable absence of works on how to win people to Christ. What is found is borrowed from Jack Chick, R. A. Torrey, Jack Hyles, and John R. Rice, none of whom were Charismatics. The desire to witness for Christ “accompanies” salvation. You can hardly keep your mouth shut the first couple of weeks, and if you are really saved, you will certainly put your own foot in it before a month is passed.
“For God is not unrighteous to forget your WORK ... in that ye have ministered to the saints, and do minister” (vs. 10). Run this to Matthew 25:34- 40 and James 2:14-17 and grasp what you are looking at. Works: works, pure and simple. Works as an evidence of faith exactly as James put it in James 2:22. Furthermore, James uses the very Old Testament saint that the author of Hebrews uses (Abraham) to prove that WORKS enter justification in some period. We don’t have to guess what that period is. After all, one single copy of our Authorized Version is much more informative and reliable than the LIBRARIES of the faculty members of Christian colleges, universities, and seminaries: they are just little dairies—Milky-Wilky.
“Shew the same diligence... UNTO THE END” (vs. 11). See the cross references already given under Hebrews 3:6, 14, and observe that it is the end of a period of time (in this case, Daniel’s Seventieth Week) and not the end of the life of the individual.
“Who through faith and patience inherit the promises” (vs. 12). Observe that the word “patience” here is defined as FAITH AND WORKS in the book of
Revelation: “HERE IS THE PATIENCE OF THE SAINTS: here are they that KEEP THE COMMANDMENTS OF GOD, and the faith of Jesus” (Rev. 14:12). (All of the Greek scholars ignored the cross reference; they were not interested in what the Bible had to “say” about the Bible. They were only obsessed with what they THOUGHT the Bible should teach.) To be truthful about it, the only promise that Abraham obtained after he “endured” (vs. 15) was that God blessed him and multiplied him. When it came to “promises,” the writer leaves no doubt in your mind that the earthly promises which God gave Abraham (see Gen. 13:14—18 and comments in that Commentary) were NOT obtained and will not be obtained until AFTER THE SECOND ADVENT (see Heb. 11:13). “These all died in faith, NOT HAVING RECEIVED THE PROMISES . . . AND THESE ALL, HAVING OBTAINED A GOOD REPORT THROUGH FAITH, RECEIVED NOT THE PROMISE” (Heb. 11:39). Most of the scholars spiritualized all of the “promises” and blew it again. Par for the course. In combat, you could count on them for one short round every three rounds and a dud every five rounds. The enemy would mop you up.
6:13 For when God made promise to Abraham, because he could swear by no greater, he sware by himself,
14 Saying, Surely blessing I will bless thee, and multiplying I will multiply thee.
15 And so, after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise.
16 For men verily swear by the greater: and an oath for confirmation is to them an end of all strife.
17 Wherein God, willing more abundantly to shew unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath:
18 That by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us:
19 Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast, and which entereth into that within the veil;
20 Whither the forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus, made an high priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec.
All is transparent. The author is still on the priestly “kick” and is about to emphasize the relation of an oath to a priesthood. Hence, “because he could swear by no greater, he sware by himself’ (vs. 13). This oath accompanies a promise to Abraham when he was a Gentile Hebrew (Gen. 12). In a moment, the writer will pull out another oath for a Gentile Shemite (vs. 20).
We have commented on verses 14 and 15 above.
“For men verily swear by the greater” (vs. 16). Hence, the most common “cuss” word for Roman Catholics is “Jesus Christ” (read any account of American combat since 1918), and the “God damn” is used constantly by all Americans, since the addition of “God” on the “damn” is supposed to give it special force. No one says, “By Buddha I will do this or that . . . ,” and no one says, “Get the Mohammed damn thing out of here.” The reason why is that Buddha and Mohammed have no power: NOT EVEN IN THEIR OWN COUNTRIES WHERE THEIR FOLLOWERS PROFESS TO BELIEVE IN THEM.
If God answered all of the “prayers” that unsaved people pray (when they ask God to “damn” something), no one would be safe outside their homes for thirty minutes and probably not safe in it. The first thing I do when I board a plane is to ask God to take all of the “damns” off of it. I don’t care to ride in a “damned
plane,” and my fellow passengers have probably “damned” the pilot, the control tower, the runway, the weather, and the instruments before I boarded. Get the “damns” off your seat and make it a “blessed” seat.
“And the oath of confirmation is to them an end of all strife” (vs. 16). At least, it was legally, as it was intended under the Law (see Exod. 22:11). In a modern law court where the plaintiff and the defendant are striving, the “oath” means very little. They are “sworn in” on a Book that none of them believe anyway. One of the funniest booklet covers in the twentieth century came from the Bob Jones University Press back in 1982 when the head of their Bible department put in print more than twelve direct lies, and then on the cover of his booklet, he showed a man placing his hand on a Bible as though taking an oath in court. The remarkable title of this piece of garbage was—“The Truth About the King James Version Controversy. ” THE BOOK IS SOLD AND RECOMMENDED AT PENSACOLA CHRISTIAN COLLEGE, TENNESSEE TEMPLE, SANTA ROSA SCHOOLS, AND BOB JONES UNIVERSITY. An oath to this kind of people is about as significant as Bishop Pike taking his ordination oath in the Methodist Church.
It was the Jesuit Descantis (Ruckman, Church History, Vol. II, p. 165) who said that it was perfectly proper for a Catholic priest to enter the Anglican church as an Episcopal minister and take an oath that he was a PROTESTANT when he was actually a Catholic. Descantis’ “Scriptural authority” for lying under oath was 1 Corinthians 9:22. (You can find a verse for anything if you are crooked enough.) If Pope John Paul II, or his successor, were to swear by the blood of Mary that they believed in “freedom of conscience” and “freedom of religious faiths,” they would lie like a Persian rug. No pope who ever lived believed in either no matter what he said, ex cathedra or no cathedra, under oath or not under oath. Canon Law (Catholic
Encyclopedia, Vol. XIV, p. 369, Pius IX, Syllabus of Errors) states that no one on this earth is entitled to practice any religion openly except under the direction of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, and every pope has to take an OATH when he is elected to promote and back-up the Decrees of the Council of Trent (1546— 1564). THIS COUNCIL STATED THAT THERE WAS NO SALVATION OUTSIDE THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH. As late as 1985, the Pope was stating openly that no person on this earth could get forgiveness of sins directly from Jesus Christ (see Acts 13:38-40).
If Papa John Paul II (that old lying hypocrite in sheep’s clothing) were to swear by an OATH on his mother’s grave that he believed in “human rights” and “social justice” for all men, it would amount to less than Adolph Hitler saying Czechoslovakia was his last “territorial demand.” They both belonged to the same church.
If President Clinton and former-Presidents Reagan, Eisenhower, Nixon, and Kennedy sat down with Brandt, Adenauer, Kruschev, Brezhnev, and DeGaulle and signed a peace treaty with Kennedy, Rockefeller, Kissinger, Mao Zadong, and Ho Chi Minh as witnesses, it wouldn’t be worth the paper it was written on.
The characteristic of Laodecian politicians is TRUCE BREAKERS (2 Tim. 3:3).
“SALT” conferences, “PEACE” pacts, and “SUMMIT” meetings in Laodicea are nothing but a joke. EVERY MAN INVOLVED IS A PRAGMATIC HUMANITARIAN WHOSE MORALS ARE RELATIVE. He could find an alibi to break his word in twenty minutes if necessary. “NUCLEAR TREATIES” and “STAR WARS” don’t amount to a pile of tiddley- winks. Did you ever stop to think how much of your life has been taken up with the news media and the Catholic bishops (1984-1986) talking about these things? Catholic bishops talk about nuclear disarmament just as seriously as if they thought they had good
sense. There isn’t any such thing as disarmament: NOBODY ANYWHERE ON EARTH DISARMS UNLESS THEY HAVE THEIR WEAPONS TAKEN FROM THEM BY FORCE.
You keep reading about some “unilateral” deal or “Star Wars” deal (they change the terminology to make you think something is changing when it is not), and you keep thinking some “big deal” is coming up. Ain’t no big deal cornin’ up. What is coming up is TWO WORLD WARS (Rev. 6:4-8, 19:19-21). “Peace Treaties” in the last days are written on paper that won’t be worth two cents a sheet ten years after they are written. The nations will cut each other’s throat as quickly as look at each other. “OATHS” (see the text) are not the end of all strife down here now. They were to a Jew under the law; but to an American, Chinese, Russian, or African under Socialism, they mean nothing except that someone is trying to get away with something.
“The heirs of promise . . (vs. 17) plainly reaches out in two directions: those who would receive the Holy Spirit by faith (see Gal. 3:14 and comments) as the spiritual seed of Isaac, who was a type of Christ (see Gal. 3:16 and comments), and to those literal descendants of Abraham who would inherit the land of Palestine (see Gen. 15:18-21 and comments). The scholars will limit it to the first application and hide the second one under the rug.
“The immutability of his counsel . . (vs. 17). If a thing is immutable, it cannot be changed. The land grant given to Abraham and his seed (Gen. 17:8) will be given to him and his seed (Rom. 4:13). The intervening “law” (see Gal. 3:17-21) will change nothing.
“That by two immutable things . . (vs. 18). The two unchangeable things are the promise and the oath: both are immutable—“. . . in which it was impossible for God to lie” (vs. 18). When God makes a PROMISE, it is good (see Num. 23:19). His promises are not designed to deceive or mislead. He will mis
lead a man who rejects his words (Micah 2:11). He will let a false prophet give a wrong answer to a scholar who messes with his words (Ezek. 14:1-11). He will allow lying spirits to draw sinners to their death (1 Kings 13). He will send strong delusion to people who have “pleasure in unrighteousness” (2 Thess. 2:11- 12), but He will not lie on a PROMISE.
“The hope set before us . . (vs. 18). Now, we have a double application once again, for our “hope” is also the hope of any tribulation saint. Notice that our hope for a new body terminates at the ADVENT, although we “steal a march,” “gain a lap,” etc. on Tribulation saints; for we get our new bodies at a pre-tribulation rapture (see Phil. 3:20-21 and 1 John 3:1-4) when we are “caught up” and “changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye” (1 Cor. 15:49— 55).
“Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which entereth into that within the veil;” (vs. 19). This veil will be the one in the third heaven (see Heb. 10:20 and comments), not the one in the earthly Jewish tabernacle. The idea is that our hope has gone into the third heaven in the PERSON of Someone. He is our hope (see Titus 2:13) for He is our “forerunner” (vs. 20): He enters in ahead of us. “... that within the veil;” (vs. 19) is anything THAT is behind the veil in the third heaven. “That place” is the idea, and that “place” is where the Lord Jesus Christ is now (see 2 Cor. 5:1-10). We have an “anchor” (vs. 19), and it is the “hope” (note how the word is used in Rom. 8:24) that our Great High Priest who went up ahead of us is going to come and get us (John 14:1—4) and take us into “that” which is behind the veil (see John 17:24). If the verses are applied to the Tribulation saint, we can only come up with one conclusion: there has to be a post-Tribulation rapture of these saints (see comments under 9:28 and 12:14). There will be, and all of the heretical literature put out
by authors (1970-1990) who believe the Body of Christ will go through Daniel’s Seventieth Week is due to the fact that these people have confounded the rapture of the body with the rapture of the tribulation saints (see Rev. 14:14-15 and comments in that Commentary).
Now, what have the milk-sops (see 5:12-14) been doing with the Holy Bible in the passages given above?
1. Freerkson: the whole warning in Hebrews 6:1- 6 was just “hypothetical” (Oliver Greene’s position). Nobody could have lost it and nobody is going to. The author was only describing “what would happen to him and to them, NOT WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO ANYONE” (p. 684). Ootchy-kootchy-koo! You just said they were unsaved people (see p. 682 cited under number 5 above)!
2. Dummelow: Freerkson is wrong; even though there is only a remote possibility that the Christians will lose salvation, there is a possibility (p. 1021). They are still half-saved because they still have “to enter into possession of what has been promised.” (What was promised?) Dummelow immediately cancels the promise of God given to Abraham (Gen. 12:7, 13:14— 17) and turns it into a “Heavenly inheritance.” Shall we move on?
3. “Baptisms” (6:2) should be “washings” (Alford, Bleek, Delitzsch, Lucken, et al.). Why? God only knows. There are seven baptisms (plural) found in any New Testament, and all seven were known before Acts 7. Those who were “enlightened” (vs. 4) were enlightened “ONCE FOR ALL” according to Alford, Vincent, and Angus. And nobody gets burned, for it is only LAND that is being spoken of in verses 7 and 8 (Alford, Beet, Delitzsch, Wordsworth, et al.). You are to gather from this that the “tares” of Matthew 13:40 are just a reference to something growing on the land! Mounce, Moulton, Souter, and DeWette have some more suggestions, but so do Mickey Mouse, Road Runner, Pogo, Doonesbury, and Dick Tracy.
We have an anchor. You can feel an anchor when the line strains under a gale or a tide. A Danforth anchor will dig deeper everytime a strain is put on it. A little boy was out in a field holding a ball of string in his hand. A passerby said, “Little boy, what are you doing?” He said, “I’m flying my kite.” The man looked up and saw nothing in the air; the clouds were at a low level and no kite was visible. “I don’t see how that can be,” said the man, “I don’t see any kite up there.” “Oh, but it’s up there, sir,” said the boy. “I can feel it PULLIN’." We know what’s on the other end of the line: “the Forerunner.”
THE BIBLE BELIEVER’S COMMENTARY SERIES
7:1 For this Melchisedec, king of Salem, priest of the most high God, who met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings, and blessed him;
2 To whom also Abraham gave a tenth part of all; first being by interpretation King of righteousness, and after that also King of Salem, which is, King of peace;
3 Without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days, nor end of life; but made like unto the Son of God; abideth a priest continually.
Now, up comes the patron saint of the Masons and Mormons, good old “Melchisedec,” who is as hard to locate as a whisper in a hurricane unless you pretend that half of what you are about to read doesn’t actually mean what it says. A man with no father or mother who “abideth a priest continually” is quite a character.
“King of Salem . . . King of righteousness . . . King of Salem ... King of peace ..(vss. 1-2).
The word itself, Melchisedec, is from two Hebrew words; one meaning a King (melech) and the other meaning Righteousness (tsedek). The name of the town over which he is king means “peace” (Salem): literally “possession of peace.” It is one of the ironies of history that this “City of Peace” has been the most fought over piece of ground on the face of this earth (with the Rhineland being the only close competitor). David fought against it in 2 Samuel 5:6-9. Pharaoh Necho came up against it in 607 B.C. Nebuchadnezzar de
stroyed it in 586 B.C. Cyrus rebuilt it in 536 B.C., only for it to be torn up in the Maccabean revolts (70 B.C.). It was rebuilt by Herod (30 B.C.) and destroyed again by Titus, the Roman, in A.D. 70, to be rebuilt again by Hadrian in A.D. 100. The town was then sacked by Omar in A.D. 637. The crusaders restored it in 1099. only to have it wrecked again by Saladin in A.D. 1187. Since Allenby’s “liberation” in 1918, it has been at war with the Arabs (1920-1930), Egypt (1960-1968), the Lebanese, and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (1980-1983). In view of this, one wonders why the place was given a name that connected it with peace. But the wonder ceases when we read these words: “In Salem also is his tabernacle . . . THERE BRAKE HE THE ARROWS OF THE BOW, THE SHIELD, AND THE SWORD, AND THE BATTLE” (Psa. 76:2-3). “IN THIS PLACE WILL I GIVE PEACE, SAITH THE LORD OF HOSTS” (Hag. 2:9). The reason is clear. There will be no permanent peace on this earth anywhere until the Lord goes forth and FIGHTS for Jerusalem (Zech. 14:1-3) as He fought with Joshua (Hab. 3:11) and Gideon (Isa. 9:4) (ALL THE SCHOLARS MISSED ALL THE REFERENCES) and causes the nations to beat their armaments into agricultural tools (Isa. 2). Jerusalem is the “city of peace” because that is the city where all wars will end, including the one at the end of the millenium (Rev. 20).
Melchisedec is plainly a “type of Christ” (see Gen. 14:18 and comments in that commentary), and the most outstanding thing about him are the two interpretations of his name which are given as “first” and then “after that” (vs. 2). The two intepretations DEFINE THE NATURE OF THE WORK AND MINISTRY OF THE FIRST AND SECOND ADVENTS and show that the angelic chorus of Luke was heralding a SECOND COMING, not a FIRST coming (see Acts 7 and comments in that Commentary). There never was any
“theory” about the “Kingdom being postponed.” That is the most solid and stable truth found in the history of Biblical Christianity. Christ’s first coming was to bring righteousness (note Matt. 5:20, 6:33; and Romans 10:1-5). His second coming brings in that “god” of all politicians, socialists, popes, and humanists: PEACE.
Now, this order is found in several other places in the Scripture; the idea is always that any man who wants peace, joy, and prosperity is wasting his time waiting for them if he ignores TRUTH AND RIGHTEOUSNESS. There is no Kingdom of Heaven on this earth until there is a Kingdom of God (see Matt. 4:17 and comments in that Commentary). Israel can’t rule and reign (Dan. 7:22) until she gets right (see Luke 1:71, 74). “But the wisdom that is from above is FIRST pure, THEN peacable ..(James 3:17). “... before HONOUR is HUMILITY” (Prov. 15:33). “And the work of RIGHTEOUSNESS shall be PEACE;” (Isa. 32:17)—not the other way around. Mankind is to love TRUTH before he can love PEACE according to Zechariah 8:19. All of this is of the utmost importance because it points out the glaring defect in man’s 6,000 year “search for peace,” which he has professed to be engaged in for centuries. The Scriptural “order” shows that there will be no peace on this earth no matter what man does, how he does it, why he does it, when he tries it, or where he tries it; and the means at his disposal will come to nothing no matter how advanced or scientific they are. God stated clearly that there would be no “ON EARTH PEACE, GOOD WILL TOWARD MEN” until there was “GLORY TO GOD IN THE HIGHEST” (Luke 2:14—note the order: the United Nations never noticed it). When Origen and his Alexandrian buddies (A.D. 184-300) hit that passage, they sensed that something was all “out of whack” somewhere, so they altered the verse and changed it to read that there would NEVER be any real
peace on earth: only peace to individual “men of good will.” This is the official Roman Catholic abortion of the verse as found in all “reliable translations” recommended by Moody, Fuller, Richard DeHaan, Tennessee Temple, Wheaton, Theodore Epp, Bob Jones University, and Liberty University (ASV, NASV, NIV, etc.). What was “out of whack” was mankind. Men will NOT give “glory to God in the highest,” so they have no peace. Melchisedec gives them “the lay of the land”: Righteousness is first and then “after that” Peace.
“For this Melchisedec, king of Salem, priest of the MOST IHGH GOD . . (vs. 1). The term is the Gentile designation for God that keeps cropping up in Daniel during “the times of the Gentiles” which began with Nebuchadnezzar (606 B.C.—Dan. 3:26, 4:17, 5:18, 7:25; Deut. 32:8). The devils recognize that the Lord Jesus Christ is connected with this God (Mark 5:7; Luke 8:28; Acts 16:17). The term has a Gentile flavor, for there have never been on this earth (and there are not now) a dozen races or tribes who did not recognize one supreme God as the “head” of all other gods, even where polytheism was honored.
Before gathering the particulars together that deal with Melchisedec’s encounter with Abraham, let us note verse 3—“. . . without father, without mother . . Any attempt to concoct a genuine Melchisedec out of the passage without qualifying the statements will fail. For example, if Melchisedec were a pre-incarnate appearance of Christ, the statement about the mother will not do: Christ had a mother. If you make the character Shem, Shem has a father and a mother and a “descent.” If you make him the Angel of the Lord, you have an Angel who “abideth a priest continually,” which no angel does (Christ was not even a priest while on this earth). Melchisedec could be left as he stands, just some unknown character that pops up out of nowhere and vanishes, but considering
the fact that the author devotes twenty verses to him and less than ten to David and less than five to Abel, we should look for more than an anonymous pagan priest.
About the only way to handle the matter is to say that the “record”—that is, the Biblical verses—contain no statement about his father, mother, or descent in regards to the priesthood. By the same token, they contain no statement on when he entered the priesthood or when he got out. Still, the plot is “thick,” for it is said . like unto the Son of God; abideth a priest continually” (vs. 3). Is he still making intercession NOW and offering up bread and wine (Gen. 14:18)? No one has ever “nailed down” Melchisedec for sure. His qualifications make him to be almost a pre-incarnate appearance of Christ, but then it is said that he was only “made LIKE UNTO the Son of God” in respect to the priesthood, so he wasn’t the Son of God.
The best bet is to make him Shem, who is still alive at this time and is the survivor of the flood and the Noahic covenant. It was said of him, “Blessed be the Lord God of Shem” (Gen. 9:26), and certainly Abraham would not have been out of place offering tithes to him. Shem would be the reigning patriarch of the Hebrew race from Eber (Gen. 10:24) and a man whom God had blessed (Gen. 9:26) when he came out of the ark. His father was priest for his family (Gen. 8:20), and there is no reason why Shem would not be the chief priest for the Shemites (Semitic peoples). He is said to be “priest of the most high God.”
7:4 Now consider how great this man was, unto whom even the patriarch Abraham gave the tenth of the spoils.
5 And verily they that are of the sons of Levi, who receive the office of the priesthood, have a commandment to take tithes of the people according to
the law, that is, of their brethren, though they come out of the loins of Abraham:
6 But he whose descent is not counted from them received tithes of Abraham, and blessed him that had the promises.
7 And without all contradiction the less is blessed of the better.
8 And here men that die receive tithes; but there he receiveth them, of whom it is witnessed that he liveth.
9 And as I may so say, Levi also, who receiveth tithes, payed tithes in Abraham.
10 For he was yet in the loins of his father, when Melchisedec met him.
Having called the attention of the Hebrew reader to a Gentile priest, the writer now goes to work to show that this Gentile priest had to be greater than any of Aaron’s sons, who all came from Levi.
“Unto whom even the patriarch Abraham gave the tenth of the spoils” (vs. 4). This took place when Melchisedec “met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings” (vs. 1). (See Gen. 14:1-5 and comments in that Commentary.) This is the first mention of the tithe. It was given to an individual who was a type of Christ.
Now, the writer applies the lesson: “Levi also, who receiveth tithes, payed tithes to Abraham” (vs. 9). How so, when Levi had not yet been born? Well, “He was yet in the loins of his father (Abraham), when Melchisedec met him” (vs. 10). The argument is fool-proof. If God commanded the other twelve tribes to give tithes to the tribe of Levi (vs. 5), and He did (see Num. 18:21, 26), and these “brethren” have the same ancestor that Levi had (that is, Abraham), then they were put under Levi. The Levites were to bear the judgment of the children of Israel and “bless them” (Num. 6:22-23), and “without all contradiction the
less is blessed of the better” (vs. 7). So, we have a case where Melchisedec blessed Abraham (vs. 1), and Abraham paid him tithes; but Abraham was Levi’s “father” (vs. 10), so Levi took part in two things: He paid his tithes to someone who was “better” than he was, and he was blessed by “the better.” This makes a Gentile priest BETTER than Aaron or his sons. “And here men that die receive tithes; but there he re- ceiveth them, of whom it is witnessed that he liveth” (vs. 8).
“Here” is a reference to the Levitical priesthood, “men that die,” and “there” is a reference to Melchisedec, and actually to the quotation given to Christ—“THOU ART A PRIEST FOR EVER . . .” (vs. 17). The problem is, did Melchisedec himself live forever? If he was Enoch, he could have, but that would make Enoch coming back down to earth after he was translated. Again, if Melchisedec had no “end of life” (vs. 3), did he go right on living and was he still alive when the writer of Hebrews wrote? Well, he wasn’t if he was Shem, for Shem’s life ended after 600 years (see Gen. 11:10-11). We are left wandering around in the dark unless we take the position that the reference is directly to Christ; it is the priest of the Melchis- edecian priesthood who lives forever. In regard to the man in Genesis 14, all we can say is that his death is not RECORDED (this would eliminate Shem, even though it doesn’t say “and he died” on Shem as it does on the register of Gen. 5).
7:11 If therefore perfection were by the Levitical priesthood, (for under it the people received the law,) what further need was there that another priest should rise after the order of Melchisedec, and not be called after the order of Aaron?
12 For the priesthood being changed, there is made of necessity a change also of the law.
13 For he of whom these things are spoken
pertaineth to another tribe, of which no man gave attendance at the altar.
14 For it is evident that our Lord sprang out of Juda; of which tribe Moses spake nothing concerning priesthood.
15 And it is yet far more evident: for that after the similitude of Melchisedec there ariseth another priest,
16 Who is made, not after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the power of an endless life.
17 For he testifieth, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec.
There is nothing more difficult about this passage; all is simple. From verses 1 through 10, anyone could see that the Levitical priesthood lacked something (vs. 11); otherwise, the Lord in the time of David (more than 400 years after that priesthood was instituted) would not be speaking of another order of priests. Melchisedec is not “after the order of Aaron” (vs. 11); therefore, he is not “Levitical” (vs. 11). It then follows that if the priesthood changes, that something about the law is going to have to change (vs. 12), because the priests were the executioners of the law (see Deut. 17:8-12) as well as the TEACHERS of that law (see Ezra 7:6-10).
“For he of whom these things are spoken” (the reference is to the Lord Jesus) “. . . pertaineth to ANOTHER TRIBE” (vs. 13). Obviously JUDAH (vs.
14) , not Levi. It was Christ’s forerunner, John the Baptist, who came from Levi (see Luke 1 and 2), not Jesus. Judah was never connected with the priesthood in the Old Testament, at least not under Moses (vs. 14). David is the first “priest” (see 1 Chron. 21:26-28) that Judah produced, and he too is a type of Christ as Melchisedec for both of them were KINGS as well as priests.
So, there are two things that are “evident” (vs.
15) . ONE: The priest like Melchisedec has to be “made,
not after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the power of an endless life” (vs. 16). TWO: As such, he cannot come from the tribe of Levi (vs. 14). “For he testifieth, Thou art a priest FOR EVER after the order of Melchisedec” (vs. 17).
7:18 For there is verily a disannulling of the commandment going before for the weakness and unprofitableness thereof.
19 For the law made nothing perfect, but the bringing in of a better hope did; by the which we draw nigh unto God.
20 And inasmuch as not without an oath he was made priest:
21 (For those priests were made without an oath; but this with an oath by him that said unto him, The Lord sware and will not repent, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec:)
22 By so much was Jesus made a surety of a better testament.
23 And they truly were many priests, because they were not suffered to continue by reason of death:
24 But this man, because he continueth ever, hath an unchangeable priesthood.
25 Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them.
26 For such an high priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens;
27 Who needeth not daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifice, first for his own sins, and then for the people's: for this he did once, when he offered up himself.
28 For the law maketh men high priests which have infirmity; but the word of the oath, which was since the law, maketh the Son, who is consecrated for evermore.
Again, there are no problems of any kind in the English text which would need any “working on” by a wrecking agent with a Greek lexicon. The commandments installing the Levitical priesthood were “disannulled”: they were cancelled. Barnabas, who was a Levite, is NOT a “priest” in the local congregation (Acts 4:36) any more than Paul or Peter or James. The tribe of Levi becomes a regular tribe in Revelation 7 during the Tribulation, telling us for the third time that a Roman Catholic priest is a FAKER. He is a religious monstrosity and has no more Scriptural backing for his “order” than Rev. Moon or Ignatius Loyola.
The Old Testament law in practice was “weak and unprofitable” (vs. 18), because it had to deal with flesh and blood sinners who were spiritually uncircumcised and made in Adam’s image (see Gen. 5:1-4 and comments in that Commentary). “The law made nothing perfect,” because it was only a “schoolmaster to bring us to Christ” (Gal. 3:24). It was “the bringing in of a better hope” (vs. 19), and that was the hope we found in 6:19. “We draw nigh unto God” (vs. 19) by the Lord Jesus Christ in this age (the Church Age). We not only “draw nigh,” but we are “MADE” so “nigh” (see Eph. 2:13), that we are “accepted in the beloved” (Eph. 1:6). (Note the slight change in wording.)
“Those priests [the Old Testament Levitical priests] were made without an oath” (vs. 21). They were installed by heredity as Aaron’s sons and as Levi’s sons (see Leviticus). “But THIS [the Lord Jesus] with an oath by him that said unto him ..(vs. 21), and for the sixth time the “order of Melchisedec” is mentioned. “By so much was Jesus made a surety of a better testament” (vs. 22). This is a guarantee that the New Testament (“grace and truth”) is better than the Old Testament (“law”—John 7:17), and to prove it, the Old Testament ends with the word “curse” and the New Testament ends with the word “AMEN.” The Levitical priests could not continue because they died
and had to be replaced (just like the popes!—vs. 23), so there had to be plenty of them (like the popes!—vs. 23). “But this man, because he continueth ever, hath an unchangeable priesthood” (vs. 24). THERE ARE NO PRIESTLY SUCCESSORS TO JESUS CHRIST: IF YOU FIND A MAN WHO CALLS HIMSELF A “PRIEST,” PER SE, HE IS A LIAR. He has no “priesthood” in the sense of blood and flesh sacrifices. The one true Priest lives forever, and NO ONE succeeds Him, replaces Him, or does His work (see 10:8-12). What follows rivets the great anti-Catholic truths of the Holy Bible into the beams of time and eternity with such force that to this day the Bible remains the greatest piece of hate literature ever written against Roman Catholicism.
This portion, with Hebrews 10:8-12, “creams” the Catholic bachelorhood of so-called “priests.” No man who read the passages and believed them would ever be caught again attending a “mass” or saying a “novena.”
The Christian priesthood (1 Pet. 2:9) headed up by one permanent High Priest (Heb. 3:1) does not resemble the blackrobed Catholic priesthood in any particular.
1. Our High Priest is . holy, harmless, undented, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens” (vs. 26).
2. Our High Priest lives forever (vs. 25).
3. Our High Priest makes intercession for us (vs. 25).
4. Our High Priest offered Himself up once and doesn’t have to “elevate” a “host” as high as a curbstone (vs. 27).
5. Our High Priest keeps His consecration; He doesn’t lose it in a bar (many Catholic churches in America have bars in them) or at a bingo table (nearly all Catholic churches raise money by gambling) or at a church “dance.”
6. Our High Priest has no “infirmities” (vs. 28) now, for He is eternally glorified and is no longer subject to temptation, heat, cold, thirst, weariness, weakness, pain, or death. All Catholic priests ARE.
“Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost . . (vs. 25), which you never would have thought if you had seen the ragged condition the disciples were in forty-eight hours after the crucifixion. One of them was pouring over Voltaire, Thomas Paine, Bob Ingersoll, Bertrand Russell, and Karl Marx (Thomas), one of them was splattered all over Gehenna with his guts on the ground, and ten more were hiding behind closed doors like frightened little bunny rabbits! What would you have thought about Christ’s power “to save to the uttermost . . .”? But He can and He did. He lost only one (John 17:12), and that one was a DEVIL (John 6:70-71). “Jesus saves!
The examples are legion. No one who ever studied the work and ministries of Pat Winthrow, Harry Saulnier, Jerry McCauley, William Booth, Jimmy Stroud, Mel Trotter, or David Wilkerson could doubt Christ’s ability to save “from the guttermost to the uttermost.” The Great High Priest was always more effective when it came to salvaging lives than the HRS, the League of Nations, the United Nations, the Vatican State, the CFR, the AMA, the IRS, the Cerebral Palsy Fund, the United Fund, the NEA, or the mental hygiene clinics. “Mental health” is obtained by coming to the Great High Priest (2 Tim. 1:7) of Hebrews 3:1.
“That come unto God by HIM” (vs. 25). The wording is very important when we realize what the verse does NOT say. It does not say that a man can be “saved to the uttermost” who comes to God by a bishop or a priest. Nor does it say that any sinner can be saved by coming to a church or a sacrament. Sinners are not saved by “coming” to educators, pastors, scientists, musicians, welfare workers, doctors, “shrinks,” or theological propositions. They have come to God by Jesus
Christ; Buddha, Mohammed, Pope Alias, and witchcraft are not involved in the trip.
The Cult has very little trouble. For the first time in seven chapters, they found a passage that was “milky” enough for them to handle. Having understood the passage, the Alexandrian Cult could not “strut” their stuff in trying to “explain” it to the uninformed. However, they still try it!
1. Davidson and Alford say that the word “consecrated” (vs. 28) is “altogether false.” (So are Davidson and Alford.) Wetstein, Stephanus, Eocu- menius, and Theophylact would alter “unchangeable” (vs. 24) to “non-transferable” or “indefeasible. “ (But then, it could just as well have been “meaningfully relationablinistic.”)
2. “Sprang out of Juda” (vs. 14) should be “hath sprung” (Vincent and Angus), or perhaps not; perhaps it should have been “risen” (Alford, Davidson, DeWette); but more likely, it should have been “sprouteth” (Kuenen, Vatke). “Another” (vs. 15) should have been “a different” according to Alford Angus, Vatke, and Davidson. The word “hope” should be stuck into verse 16 according to DeWette, Leuken, Wordworth, Souter, Alford, Bleek, Beet, and Davidson. We should also add “and he was made a priest” to verse 20 if we follow Beet, Leuken, Vincent, and Angus (Nicoll’s EGT). “Those” in verse 21 should be “these” (Angus, Alford, DeWette, et al.). There are still others, however, that say “those” should be “they” (Vincent) or “while they.” Since there was not one recommended change in the entire passage that would help anyone understand anything, these gentlemen had no business giving their comments; it was an ego trip from start to finish.
3. Jamiesson, Fausset, and Brown, along with Dummelow, Ironside, Greene, Pink, and Barnes have no trouble with the passage. However, Pink is still so obsessed with the non-biblical term “Sovereignty of
God,” that he goes off at verse 17 into a long discussion about sovereign grace. He winds up where his buddy wound up in Hebrews 6:1-6—hub-cap high to a ferris wheel in the “slough of despond.” “While it be true that salvation is wholly of grace and in no wise obtained by ANY efforts or WORKS . . . nevertheless it is equally true (Oh, no, it is not!) that NONE CAN OBTAIN THAT SALVATION UNTIL THERE IS A COMPLETE BREAK FROM THE WORLD AND THEIR OLD MANNER OF LIFE IN IT.”
That is, you cannot receive Christ until you are a SEPARATED CHRISTIAN.
They do have a time of it, don’t they?
4. Vincent (Word Studies), after causing a Christian to lose salvation and go to hell (pp. 444-447), tells us that Christ does not “abide” as a “priest continually” (vs. 3), but is just “born on through ages” (p. 456). “Pertaineth to another tribe” should have been translated “hath partaken of another tribe” (vs. 13), and Christ’s life and ministry are not “endless” (vs. 16) but only “indissoluble.” No light? Buy yourself some bulbs.
5. Freerkson (Liberty University) is not going to allow God to speak for ten verses without correcting Him, so he lines up with the Westcott and Hort RV of 1885 and the ASV and NASV of Bob Jones (and John Brown University and Geneva and King’s College, etc.) and alters “testament” (vs. 22) to “covenant.” This is a typical gnat-straining operation that a student will get at a normal “Fundamentalist” school. Freerkson reproduces it beautifully: “The Greek word ... is used 17 times . . . this was the exclusive word for a will or testament (a one-sided promise involving the death of the testator). The Greek word uniformly [Oh, don’t you know, Miss America.!] used to express a compact or a covenant was syntheke, ” etc. The idea here is three-fold:
1. God the Holy Spirit must always translate a word uniformly.
2. Freerkson knows the mind of God in these matters.
3. Since a testament is one-on-zero while a covenant is one-on-one, the word “testament” is wrong here in Hebrews 7:22.
Naturally, throughout all of Freerkson’s writings, he says "Old Testament” and "New Testament.” Double-tongued, double-standard people, who love only those who love them, never practice what they “preach.”
The Authorized Version naturally corrects all of this non-scholarly, irrational foolishness. A covenant can be made without the death of the man (see Num. 25:12), but even here ANIMALS die. A testament is involved in the “death of the testator” (Heb. 9:16), for it resembles a “last will and testament.” Freerkson, following the blind leadership of the Alexandrian Cult, has forgotten that the “NEW TESTAMENT” was between more than one individual, and there were conditions connected with that covenant (see John 3:36, 14:21, 23, 15:1-3, etc.). To conclude that a “testament” is not involved in a transaction between two or more parties is to say that “last wills” and “testaments” LAY DOWN NO CONDITIONS TO THE LIVING PARTY TO OBTAIN THE TESTAMENT. They do. Many of them do, including our Lord’s (John 3:16—18, 14:14). Since He died to establish a new covenant, the term “testament” here (vs. 22) is perfectly proper and not the least out of order.
The sermonic homily added to verse 25 by Kenneth Taylor is very interesting. He says that Christ “will always be there to remind God that he has paid for their sins with his blood.” There are no Greek texts that suggest anything like that.
THE BIBLE BELIEVER’S COMMENTARY SERIES
8:1 Now of the things which we have spoken this is the sum: We have such an high priest, who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens;
2 A minister of the sanctuary, and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man.
3 For every high priest is ordained to offer gifts and sacrifices: wherefore it is of necessity that this man have somewhat also to offer.
4 For if he were on earth, he should not be a priest, seeing that there are priests that offer gifts according to the law:
5 Who serve unto the example and shadow of heavenly things, as Moses was admonished of God when he was about to make the tabernacle: for, See, saith he, that thou make all things according to the pattern shewed to thee in the mount.
6 But now hath he obtained a more excellent ministry, by how much also he is the mediator of a better covenant, which was established upon better promises.
We now approach the fifth time bomb that God planted in the Authorized text, designed to blow the shirts and pants off the faculty members at Princeton, Harvard, Bob Jones, Berkeley, Tennessee Temple, John Brown, King’s College, Maranatha, Liberty University, Andover Seminary, and Colgate-Rochester Divinity School.
“This is the sum” (vs. 1). He is going to sum up Chapters 4-7 like a defense attorney in a court of law.
“We have such an high priest” (vs. 1). Spiritually, he is talking about the Christian in this age; doctrinally, he is speaking about a Hebrew high priest in the Tribulation concerned about Hebrews. “Who is set on the right hand of the throne” (vs. 1). He was STANDING when Stephen saw Him (Acts 7:56 and comments in that commentary), and standing to “receive Stephen up into glory,” if you believe John R. Rice! But nothing of the kind is true at all. He arose to signal the beginning of Daniel’s Seventieth Week (the Great Tribulation), but since Israel officially rejected Him, He postponed the “rising” again until the Tribulation.
“A minister of the sanctuary ... of the true tabernacle” (vs. 2). We shall return to this verse and verse 5 when we take up the tabernacle as a type of the universe (see 9:8, 12, 23-24). Here, he is simply saying that from now on you will have to do business with a High Priest who is not a Levite serving in the temple.
“For every priest is ordained to offer gifts and sacrifices” (vs. 3). That is what all Catholic priests profess to do. However, their gifts and sacrifices “can never take away sins” (Heb. 10:11). So, there does not live on the face of this earth a subversive agent of the Vatican State who can help you at all with the sin problem. You may think that there is; you may believe that there is; you may “release” or “exercise” your faith; but it will be “hell’s bells” for you no matter how crafty or humanitarian you are.
“For if he were on earth, he should not be a priest” (vs. 4). While He was here on earth before, He was a PROPHET (Mark 6:4; John 9:17). He did not offer up sacrifices in the temple; He claimed that it was HIS temple and pitched out the people who were making money from the sacrifices (Matt. 21:13). Jesus Himself was God’s gift (John 3:16) and God’s sacrifice (see Heb. 10:5), and the unholy usurpers who tell you they can reproduce that sacrifice or offer some “monstrance” (i.e., “monster”) can do nothing of the
kind. The reference that they use on a “new convert” is found in Malachi 1:11 where there was no reference to the Body of Christ (or a Christian) within fifty chapters in either direction. The “gifts” that will be brought to Christ (Mai. 1:11) will be gold gifts from SHEBA (Psa. 72:15). The Queen of Sheba, under Solomon, was the identical type of this FUTURE transaction. “Masses” and messes are out of the question.
“But now hath he obtained a more excellent ministry” (vs. 6). It is more excellent than the Leviti- cal ministry under the law: “Better covenant. . . better promises” (vs. 6). (We will return to verses 1-2 and 5 later.) Observe that “covenant” and “testament” overlap (see previous note on Freerkson). The “better promises” are ones like John 5:24, 8:51; Romans 10:9— 10; I Corinthians 15:40-58; and so forth. “He is the mediator” (vs. 6). No “supernumeraries” or “intercessors” are needed. The “ONE MEDIATOR” (1 Tim. 2:5) is MALE, so He is not Mary; His body came up from the grave, so He is not Joseph; and He only offered a sacrifice one time (Heb. 10), so He is not a Roman Catholic priest.
8:7 For if that first covenant had been faultless, then should no place have been sought for the second.
8 For finding fault with them, he saith, Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah:
9 Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they continued not in my covenant, and I regarded them not, saith the Lord.
10 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God,
and they shall be to me a people:
11 And they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest.
12 For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.
13 In that he saith, A new covenant, he hath made the first old. Now that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away.
Before examining the slaughter that the Alexandrian Cult makes on the passage, let us lay out the Biblical elements as they occur in the English text and compare Scripture with Scripture remembering that the Biblical term “SCRIPTURE” (as used in 2 Tim. 3:16) NEVER once in the Scriptures is a reference to plenary, verbally inspired “autographs”—at least not in any translation of any edition of any version of either Testament from any set of manuscripts. [See Acts 8:32; John 5:39; Mark 12:10, etc. The fable that 2 Tim. 3:16 is a reference to “original autographs” is quite similar to the fable that the Christian church was founded on Simon Peter.]
The covenant that is about to be established is to be with 1.) “the house of Israel” and 2.) “the house of Judah” (vs. 8).
A. The covenant is not to be made with “the elect.’
B. The covenant is not to be made with the Body of Christ.
C. The covenant is not to be made with the “Israel of God.”
D. The covenant is not to be made with “Spiritual Jews.”
E. The covenant is not to be made with “Jehovah’s Witnesses.”
F. The covenant is not to be made with “the church.”
G. The covenant is not to be made with “Spiritual Israel.”
H. The covenant is not to be made with Christians, believers, Catholics, or Hebrew Christians.
The covenant is to be made “with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah” (vs. 8).
All Campbellites (Church of Christ elders) pervert the passage.
All Roman Catholic bishops and priests pervert the passage.
All Mormons and Seventh-day Adventists pervert the passage.
Nearly every faculty member of every major Fundamentalist and Conservative seminary and university in America (and every college and Bible institute of any “recognition”) perverted the passage for 100 years. Perversion was universal, perennial, and continual. Original Greek texts, historic Fundamentalist positions, “dedicated militant giants of the faith,” “verbal, plenary inspired autographs,” better and older manuscripts, Dead Sea Scrolls, and “dynamic equivalence and literal equivalence” (a translator’s cliche) had no effect whatsoever on the pervert. HE COULD NOT READ THE TEXT OR EXPOUND IT IN ANY LANGUAGE.
The covenant spoken of here produces the following unique results:
I. The laws of God wind up in the hearts and minds of an entire nation that murdered God’s Son (Acts 7:52; Matt. 21:38-39) and opposed the preaching of the gospel (1 Thess. 2:15—16): “I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts” (vs. 10).
2. God will convert every single living Jew (not “spiritual Jew” or “spiritual Israel”) who composes the “house of Israel” and the “house of Judah” (vs. 11) so that none of them will have to witness or testify to anyone about any “plan of salvation,” “the gospel,”
“the new covenant,” or anything like it (vs. 11). If they prophesy about it, THEY ARE TO BE EXECUTED (see Zech. 13:3). Witnessing will be absolutely forbidden. “They shall NOT teach every man his neighbour and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord* for ALL SHALL KNOW ME” (vs. 11). (See also Isa 11:9.)
3. Their “sins, and their iniquities” (vs. 12) will be remembered no more for they will be “blotted out” (Acts 3:19 and comments in that commentary) AT THE SECOND ADVENT—NOT THE FIRST ADVENT— OF JESUS CHRIST (See Ezek. 36:24-28).
This is the theme of Romans 11, which was stated so clearly (Rom. 11:25-27) THAT ONLY A “MILITANT FUNDAMENTALIST,” WHO HELD TO “HISTORIC POSITIONS” ON THE PLENARY, VERBAL INSPIRATION OF THE “ORIGINAL AUTOGRAPHS,” COULD HAVE BROKEN HIS FOOL NECK STRUTTING HIS IGNORANCE.
They did—by the thousands. Greekitis is terminal.
Break dancer No. 1—Arthur W. Pink (Sovereignty of God). The word “all” in verse 11 doesn’t mean “all.” It is just a reference to the Sovereign Elect in the Body of Christ (p. 457). “The words in verse 11 are not to be understood ABSOLUTELY, but comparatively” (That is, they are not to be believed; they are to be rejected.). “The house of Israel” naturally has nothing to do with the house of Israel; rather, it is “mystically comprising under it all the people of God ... the ‘Israel of God’” (p. 453).
Break dancer No. 2—Nicoll and Dods (Expositors’ Greek Testament). There is no “house of Israel,” and there is no “house of Judah”: there is only “the whole people of God” (p. 324). “All” will not know God (vs. 11), for the writer only intended to suggest that private individuals would be taught about God as
well as the priests (p. 325). There is no new covenant with Israel or Judah at any time in the future.
Break dancer No. 3—Dummelow jams verses 9- 12 into ten lines without making one doctrinal application to one word in all four verses. He eliminates “the house of Israel” and the “house of Judah,” refuses to comment on “after those days” (vs. 10), makes no comment on the universality of the salvation found in verse 11, and is tongue-tied when called upon to comment on “they shall not teach every man his neighbour” (p. 1023).
Break dancer No. 4—Stibbs (New Bible Commentary). There is no “house of Israel,” there is no “house of Judah,” and there is no covenant in the future with either house. There are no conversions of either house, and none of the references deal with anybody but “God’s true children” (p. 1205). By such a monstrous mangling of truth we arrive at the conclusion that every person on earth is God’s “true child” (vs. 11— “every man, every man, all”), and the nation of Israel is finished.
Break dancer No. 5—Jamiesson, Fausset, and Brown. There is no “house of Israel,” and there is no “house of Judah.” The “all” in verse 11 doesn’t mean “all” at all; it is just a reference to the “spiritual Israel, the elect CHURCH” (p. 1418). There is going to be no kingdom on earth with the converted houses of Israel and Judah; there is only going to be a “Gospel Kingdom.”
“AND IF THE PROPHET BE DECEIVED WHEN HE HATH SPOKEN A THING, I THE LORD HAVE DECEIVED THAT PROPHET” (Ezek. 14:9).
Break dancer No. 6—Vincent (Word Studes—pp. 471-473). No comment. There are three pages of sunteleso, epi, memphomenos, kaine, adikiais, ton politen, etc., and all Vincent could find in this passage was, “The writer assumes that Jeremiah’s new cov
enant MEANS THE CHRISTIAN COVENANT. ” He does nothing of the kind. He doesn’t even give a hint in that direction. Vincent’s knowledge of the “original Greek” simply destroyed his mind. He forgot how to read. Greekitis tends to make a Christian ILLITERATE.
Assembling all six of these “punk rockers” on one stage, Kenneth Taylor rewrites the Bible so that it will back up their confusion and infidelity. To assure all six gentlemen of a niche in the eternal “Hall of Famous GOOFBALLS,” Kenneth Taylor eradicates both houses of Israel and Judah from the text (Living Bible) and converts them to “people.” By inventing this unique, non-Biblical reading (“the people of Israel”) the door opens to convert the “meaning” to anything you want it to mean.
Harry Ironside, being somewhat of a dispensa- tionalist, makes the right application (p. 102), while Freerkson (Liberty University) plays it safe by making a dual application (p. 692). But to get around taking the passage LITERALLY, Freerkson says that the present church “participates SOTERIOLOGICALLY” in the passage today—which, of course, it doesn’t. The church is commanded to witness; these people are not. All of the “least” and the “greatest” do not know Christ today, and all of the “soteriological” aspects of the passage were given in Hebrews 10:16-17 APART FROM THE “HOUSE OF ISRAEL” OR THE “HOUSE OF JUDAH.” Freerkson senses that he is off-balance, so he justifies his explanation by saying that “nowhere does the Scripture speak of two new covenants, any more than it speaks of two old covenants.” Which is the equivalent of saying, “Nowhere does the Scripture speak of the Virgin Birth of Christ or the Premillenial Coming of Christ.” Freerkson forgot that while the passage he was reading said, “that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away,” another passage said it was also a “shadow of things to come”
(Col. 2:17), and then ten more passages (Ezek. 40-48) said that some of the covenant practices of Exodus- Leviticus would be repeated in the Millenium!
But this is a hard saying! Who can receive it? There were THREE “OLD” COVENANTS TO ISRAEL:
1. One given in Exodus.
2. This comes back into effect in the Tribulation.
3. Part of this comes back into effect during the Millennium.
There are also THREE NEW COVENANTS:
1. A covenant given to sinners for salvation through the shed blood of God’s Son.
2. A covenant given to the houses of Israel and Judah at the end of Daniel’s Seventieth Week.
3. A covenant given to the literal descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in regards to LAND on the NEW EARTH (Isa. 66; Ezek. 48; Rom. 4:13; Gen. 13:15; Jer. 31:35-36).
“Is ready to vanish away” (vs. 13). The final notice is given that the writer is aiming his epistle at a Hebrew in the Tribulation who is under the Sabbath-observing (Matt. 24:20), temple-worshipping (Matt. 24:15), Palestinian (Matt. 24:16), Ten Command- ments-keeping (Rev. 22:14) set up THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE ELECT “SOTERIOLOGI- CALLY SPEAKING” IN ANYTHING IN ANY CHURCH AGE KNOWN TO GOD OR MAN.
Freerkson was hard-pressed to make a contribution: he contributed peanuts.
What follows is a comparison of the Old Testament tabernacle with heaven, a comparison of the Old Testament sacrifices with Christ’s sacrifice, a comparison of a temporary priesthood with a perpetual Priest, and a final admonition to “endure to the end” of Daniel’s Seventieth Week (Heb. 9:28) in view of an imminent Advent of the Great “High Priest.”
THE BIBLE BELIEVER’S COMMENTARY SERIES
9:1 Then verily the first covenant had also ordinances of divine service, and a worldly sanctuary.
2 For there was a tabernacle made; the first, wherein was the candlestick, and the table, and the showbread; which is called the sanctuary.
3 And after the second veil, the tabernacle which is called the Holiest of all;
4 Which had the golden censer, and the ark of the covenant overlaid round about with gold, wherein was the golden pot that had manna, and Aaron’s rod that budded, and the tables of the covenant;
5 And over it the cherubims of glory shadowing the mercyseat; of which we cannot now speak particularly.
The verses deal with the contents of the Old Testament “Holy Place” and the “Holy of Holies,” and since we have gone into these matters already at great length in the Bible Believer’s Commentary on Exodus (see comments on chapters 25-32 in that commentary), we will not go back over the ground.
“Ordinances . . . worldly sanctuary” (vs. 1). That is, the tabernacle was down here on the earth, on the ground. “... a tabernacle ... the FIRST ...” (vs. 2), referring to the “holy place” (see Matt. 24:15) that contained the candlestick, the table of shewbread, and the altar of incense “which is called the sanctuary” (vs. 2). “The tabernacle which is called the Holiest of all . . .” (vs. 3), being a reference to the location of
the ark of the covenant and the mercy seat behind “the veil” (see 6:19).
“Which had the golden censer . . (vs. 4). According to Vincent (who couldn’t handle one verse in the passage that dealt with the covenant—see 8:8- 12 and comments in the previous chapter), the author has made two errors:
1. His first error came from reading the Old Testament (p. 476) and thinking that Exodus 26:35 meant the “altar of incense” was inside the veil.
2. His second error came in lying about the location of Aaron’s rod and the pot of manna; the writer made this error in following “rabbinical tradition” (p. 476). Freerkson simply corrects the AV text by using Philo, Josephus, Origen, and Clement of Alexandria as authorities. Since these deadly apostates translated the Greek (thumiaterion) as incense “ALTAR,” we should get rid of the “censer” altogether. Liberty University is willing to follow the NCCC in these matters (JRSV), so they line up with the NIV and the grossly corrupt NASV of Bob Jones University. The ecumenical accord is perfect: Jerry Falwell, Bob Jones III, Hindson, MacArthur, Dobson, Farstad, Price, Martin (Tennessee Temple), and Kenneth Taylor {Living Bible} in line with the RSV of the Communist National Council of “Christian Churches” (1952) and the Jesuits {Jerusalem Bible).
Only in Laodicea could such a thing happen.
Observe that all of these broken-down, apostate Fundamentalists changed the text on the grounds that they couldn’t find a golden censer in the Old Testament, so they assumed it wasn’t there. If we follow this Cult mentality, we will have to assume that James 4:5; Acts 20:35; and Hebrews 12:21 are nothing but invented fabrications. They aren ’t found anywhere either.
But how did these apostates fail to find the censer for burning incense in 2 Chronicles 26:19 and the cen-
sers FOR THE GOLDEN ALTAR OF INCENSE IN NUMBERS 4:14? Aaron, the high priest, was told by Moses to put incense into a “CENSER” (Num. 16:46), and on the Day of Atonement, Aaron the high priest was told to “take a censer full of burning coals of fire from off the altar before the Lord and his hands full of sweet incense beaten small, AND BRING IT WITHIN THE VEIL” (Lev. 16:12). Who but a mad man or a Greek scholar would think that an incense burner from the Golden Altar would be made of anything but gold? Poor, old Harry Ironside, in an effort to establish himself as a “qualified authority” (John R. Rice had that trouble all of his life!), goes right down the tube with the apostates and says “the golden CENSER is really the golden incense ALTAR. The ORIGINAL (Oh, yes, sonny!) is thumiaterion, which is the ordinary word for an incense altar. It is not at all the same word used in Revelation. This is libanotos. ANY ORDINARY READER OF ENGLISH CAN SEE HOW UTTERLY DIFFERENT THE TWO WORDS ARE . . (p. 105). Yes, Harry, and any ordinary reader of
English could see that you joined up with Origen, Philo, Augustine, and Jerome to make a liar out of God. Ordinary readers are much sharper than Ironside supposes. For example, any ordinary reader could see that the expression “which had” (vs. 4) was not the same expression as “wherein” (vs. 2). In 1 Kings 6:22, the altar of incense was so closely associated with the Holy of Holies, that we read, “also the WHOLE ALTAR that was by the ORACLE he overlaid with gold.” If the reader will check the comments on Exodus 30:1-9 in The Bible Believer’s Commentary on Exodus, he will find the answer for the close association of the censer with the Holy of Holies as well as the Holy Place. The conjecture that Aaron’s rod and the pot of manna could never have been IN the ark at any time is nonsense. The expression “before the testimony” could mean anywhere in relation to the ark
(Num. 17:10) as it is defined as being “before the Lord” (Exod. 16:33).
The term “golden pot” is supposed to have come from the LXX; and Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown tell us that its use was “sanctioned by Paul” (p. 1420). This is part of the 2,000-year-old Alexandrian conspiracy that swept 99 percent of the scholars off the boards. It is another attempt to give “sanction” to the Apocryphal books found in Vaticanus and Sinaiticus; PAUL QUOTED NO LXX WRITTEN BEFORE THE COUNCIL OF NICEA. The term “golden” in the LXX is a citation from manuscripts written between A.D. SOO- SOO. That is why Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown never cited the manuscripts. No one ever does. “Golden is an addition of the LXX” (Vincent, Word Studies, p. 476). Not any LXX written before Constantine the Great, Vince, baby!
“Of which we cannot now speak particularly” (vs. 5). The writer is under a restraint in regards to revelation about the Holy of Holies. It could not be any restraint placed on him in commenting about the “worldly sanctuary” that he is discussing, for all of the details of the Cherubim and the mercy seat were already discussed 1,500 years before this time (see Exodus). But the statement was “the cherubims of GLORY.” Either the writer knows something about the third heaven that he cannot write down, or else he has been denied some kind of a revelation at the time of his writing. Notice this particular Pauline repetition in 2 Corinthians 12:1-6, and notice later how John, not Paul, does speak “particularly” of the “cherubims of glory” (Rev. 4-6).
At the risk of boring the reader, I want to digress for a moment. It has occured to me on more than ten occasions how strange all of this is. Here I am, an old, converted Gentile dog standing before 30-40 young men in Pensacola, Florida (one year’s class in "Hebrews”), talking about a “tent” they have never seen,
and here we are just as interested as a TV bug waiting for a 10 o’clock newscast. We are going into all of these details about JEWISH furniture which has no apparent relation to twentieth-century Pensacola than to Genghis Khan’s pet yak. How is one to account for this?
I have had the unique privilege of teaching over 500 young men (in a period of eighteen years) every word of every verse in Hebrews, Matthew, Acts, Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Phil- ippians, Colossians, John, Revelation, Genesis, James, Exodus, Daniel, and 1 and 2 Peter. Throughout all of this, it has often occurred to me how strangely the Lord works. These books are Jewish books; they are the oracles given to Israel. Here are 500 American young men between the ages of 19 and 30 (and a dozen “old-timers” in their forties and fifties) inhaling the verses like a drowning man gasping for air. What could be more improbable? Did you ever stop to think of what a weird situation that is? I mean, who are these Americans anyway? Why, they are nothing but a pack of Gentile “dogs” (Matt. 15:27, if you think you are smarter than Jesus Christ) who came out of the forests of Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Scotland, Ireland, England, and Poland (Celts, Picts, Jutes, Danes, Saxons, Angles, Swabians, Allemani, Burgundians, Slavs, Magyars, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, etc.); and their ancestors were running around in deer skins and bear skins shooting each other with bows and arrows, cutting off heads, and living in caves and trees at the time when Solomon built his golden temple. Japheth is the killer. It is the one with the blue eyes that you have to look out for. Both World War I and World War II came from Japheth, and the Japanese invasion of China and the Philippines couldn’t have taken place without Shem opening his ports to Western technology and armaments. Gentiles (2000 B.C.-A.D. 300) were nothing but wild dogs. Japheth (A.D. 300-1900) has no
spiritual discernment. He is a status seeker, a social climber, a political opportunist, a militarist, an explorer, a researcher, an adventurer, and a controller of money: he doesn’t have a spiritual bone in his body, and apart from Shem (see Gen. 9:26 and John 4:22), he doesn’t have enough spiritual discernment to stuff into a thimble. With Japheth, it is rockets, planes, trains, boats, cars, and space ships: everything moves, everything is “going.” So, Japheth says, “Wie geht es Ihnen?” (“How is it going?”)!
What are 500 young, twentieth-century American males doing sitting before me, when they could be out making money, chasing after “skirts,” rockin’ and rollin’ to acid rock, popping pills, doing drugs, “discovering their true selves,” “realizing their potential,” “coping with their parents,” “adjusting their lifestyles to their environmental surroundings,” and “sharing in ethnic dialogues.” Here they are! TAKING TWO HOURS TO STUDY A JEWISH CANDLESTICK, A JEWISH TABLE, AN ALTAR, AND A MERCY SEAT! Wild, isn’t it?
Japheth is a materialist. Everything spiritual that he originates stinks. There has never been ONE RELIGION THAT ORIGINATED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA THAT WAS WORTH THE POWDER AND SHOT IT WOULD TAKE TO BLOW IT TO HELL: Seventh-day Adventism, Mormonism, Camp- bellism (Church of Christ), Russellism (Jehovah’s Witnesses), Christian Science, Theosophy, Unity, or Uni- tarianism—you name them! There is not one truthful one in the entire lot. Japheth cannot produce anything spiritual. Not one Bible translated in America by anybody on anybody’s committee, backed up by any group of scholars professing anything, ever was “sound” enough to take the time to break in the binding As a man said, “You can hardly put this book down without leaving it there.” American “Bibles” are nothing but cheap, leavened pieces of religious sales goods (AST,
NASV, NIV, RSV, NRSV, TLB, NEB, NWT, etc.).
Here is Japheth, though, obsessed with “furniture” in a “Jewish tabernacle”! Amazing, isn’t it? When you get saved, your sense of what is IMPORTANT goes into a complete reverse, and you back off the other way at 400 miles per hour. Well, glory! GloooorrreeU
9:6 Now when these things were thus ordained, the priests went always into the first tabernacle, accomplishing the service of God.
7 But into the second went the high priest alone once every year, not without blood, which he offered for himself, and for the errors of the people:
8 The Holy Ghost this signifying, that the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest, while as the first tabernacle was yet standing:
9 Which was a figure for the time then present, in which were offered both gifts and sacrifices, that could not make him that did the service perfect, as pertaining to the conscience;
10 Which stood only in meats and drinks, and divers washings, and carnal ordinances, imposed on them until the time of reformation.
There is nothing particularly difficult about anything in the passage. No Greek text is needed to explain or clarify any point; the student needs no understanding of Greek grammar or syntax to accurately expound the text to others. “The first tabernacle ...” (vs. 6) is the holy place. “The service of God ...” (vs. 6) is the service described in Exodus and Leviticus. “The second . . (vs. 7) is the second, or inner, tabernacle called “the holy of holies.” The offering “once every year” was on the great “Day of Atonement” in the seventh month (Exod. 30; Lev. 16, 23).
“The Holy Ghost this signifying . . .” (vs. 8). The Holy Ghost by giving the instructions found in Exodus and Leviticus signified THIS: what? “.. . that the way into the holiest of all was not yet made
manifest, while as the first tabernacle was yet standing” (vs. 8). Then “the holiest of all” has to be a reference to something beyond the “holy of holies” in the Levitical tabernacle. We are not left in doubt about this application, for in verse 24, we are told that the Mosaic tabernacle and the things in it were “the figures of the true.” Then God’s reason for cautioning Moses to make everything “according to the pattern” showed him on the Mount (Exod. 25:40) had a great deal more behind it than some tribal Deity’s whimsy about “Jahweh” worship (see any work by any apostate Liberal or dead orthodoxFundamentalist or Conservative). Evidently there is more over your head than “meets the eye,” or the telescope, for that matter. The first, second, and third heavens, or at least the third heaven, are not portrayed in the Genesis account in detail. It is portrayed in Exodus (see Exod. 25-31 and comments in that Commentary). (We will speak of this more when we get to the next section.)
“That could not make him that did the service perfect, as pertaining to conscience” (vs. 9). Former Roman Catholics should recognize the truth of the statement. This is the statement found in 10:1-3: “can never with those sacrifices . . . make the comers thereunto perfect. . . because that the worshippers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins . . . the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins” (10:1-3, 11). The high priest comes out of the holy of holies after completing the required sacrifice, and in less than a month, his conscience is defiled. He knows he is guilty, and he “sweats it out” until the Day of Atonement when he goes through the whole thing again. The congregation outside the tabernacle went through the same traumatic experience. No one had assurance of salvation any longer than their abstinence from SIN: once a sin was committed, the conscience goes to work, and the doubts flood in. In a situation where “FAITH AND WORKS’
are required (and that is the Biblical doctrine—Rom. 10:5; Ezek. 18:1-24; Deut. 30:16; John 1:17—no matter what some milk-sop amateur like Swindoll, MacArthur, or Willmington conjectures about it!), there is no absolute assurance of a completed salvation. David is afraid of losing his (Psa. 51:11). Saul loses his (2 Sam. 7:15). Samson loses his, but later gets it back (Judg. 16:28; Heb. 11:32), and to this day, you couldn’t tell “for sure” where ESAU or Joab went when they died!
It is the same thing today, as the twentieth-century Catholic sweats out one more mass or one more confessional and then “hopes” he is in a “state of grace” until he can get back to the wafer. Was the wafer enough to give him eternal life? The priest quoted John 6:54 to prove that it was. Could he lose the wafer? Could he lose eternal life? The priest quoted Hebrews 4:11 and Hebrews 6:4-6 to prove he could. “Am I safe? How long am I safe?”
Four hundred million Catholics live just like that— in mortal terror, thinking that their soul’s salvation depends upon obeying a pagan hierarchy of THIEVES (see Heb. 10:8-12 and comments) who usurped a “priesthood” that was no more “Christian” than a bingo game at an Irish wake.
“In meats and drinks, and divers washings, and carnal ordinances, imposed on them until the time of reformation” (vs. 10). The reference is to the numerous rules and regulations that accompany the “sin offerings,” the “burnt offerings,” the “peace offerings,” and the “free will offerings” in Leviticus 1-20. “Divers washings” (vs. 10) was the correct way to translate baptismois (AV 1611), in spite of the contempory (and everlasting) propaganda put out by apostate Baptists (Denver, Dallas, Memphis, Arlington, Springfield, Chattanooga, etc.) that the word should be translated as IMMERSE. The thinking here (if one would be so bold as to call it that!) is that the AV translators, being
Episcopalians, were afraid to translate baptizo, so they transliterated it wherever it occurred. THEY DIDN’T HERE (Heb. 9:10). They didn’t again in Mark 7:8 (baptismous). The Baptist teachers lied. That’s what they are paid to do. That is how they make their living. They are professionals. Obviously, the “baptisms” here (Heb. 9:10) are not immersions always, for TABLES, chairs, and beds are involved (see Lev. 6, 11, 13, and 14). The rule to go by is simple: ANY EDITION OF THE AUTHORIZED VERSION IS CORRECT, AND ANY EDITION OF THE ASV, NASV, TLB, NIV, RSV, NRSV, NKJV, or NEB is not to be taken seriously.
“The time of reformation” (vs. 10) is the time of the first coming of Christ as the authentic “High Priest” (Heb. 3:1-2). It is to be distinguished from “the times of restitution of all things” (Acts 3:19, 21), which is a reference to the time of the second coming of Christ as “King of kings.”
Albert Barnes (Notes on the New Testament, p. 193) immediately confounds the two passages and makes them both refer to the first advent, but then again, he screwed up the “new covenant” in Hebrews 8 along with Pink, Jamiesson, Fausset, and Brown; and company—it’s as much as could be expected. The United Bible Societies famous “Aland and Metzger” text has quietly removed HALF of Mark 7:8 so that you could not find the cross reference to the “washings ’’ of Hebrews 9. Naturally, such mangled mutilations as the “reliable versions” recommended by MacArthur, Bob Jones III, Swindoll, MacCrae, Newman, Robert Sumner, and Liberty University (ASV, NIV, and NASV) remove the words also to make them line up with the RSV of the NCCC and Kenneth Taylor’s Living Bible. Perfect ecumenical agreement. Half of the verse (Mark 7:8) is also missing from both twentieth-century ROMAN CATHOLIC BIBLES (Jerusalem and American).
9:11 But Christ being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect
tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building;
12 Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us.
13 For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh:
14 How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?
Again, there is nothing difficult in the passage. No reader needs to refer to any Greek text, any Greek manuscript, or the opinions or comments of any Greek scholar, living or dead, to get the sense of the passage. As a matter of fact, when we arrive at verse 14, ALL OF THE GREEK SCHOLARS (FUNDAMENTALISTS AND CONSERVATIVES INCLUDED) miss the importance of the Biblical text altogether and thereby overlook one of the greatest practical New Testament truths found in the entire Bible. We will illustrate.
“An high priest of good things to come” (vs. 11). They have not come yet, and the writer is merely saying that “Christ became an high priest” of things that were coming BEFORE He came. He is saying that Jesus Christ is NOW a High Priest of a redemption that is still FUTURE as far as its completion is concerned. Notice how this is emphasized in verse 28 and again in Hebrews 10:25, 37, 12:1, 26; etc. “By a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands” (vs. 11—see lengthy comments under 9:24). There evidently is in heaven a tabernacle like the one that Moses built (see Rev. 8:3, 16:1), but more than that, the heavens themselves follow this pattern. “But by his own
blood he entered in ONCE into the HOLY PLACE, having obtained eternal redemption for us” (vs. 12). Here we must go back to the deep freeze and thaw out the beef steak (Heb. 5:12) and lamb chops (Heb. 5:14) that the scholars like to talk about when kidding their students into thinking they are going to get “in-depth studies” into the “deeper things of God” (see Eph. 3:18 and comments in that commentary). “In-depth Bible studies,” these days, are nothing but little amateur psychological counselling sessions on how to “cope with stress” in America. They are about as deep as a bird bath. Ryrie’s study helps and Zodhiates’ Hebrew and Greek Study Bible are about as deep as a puddle of water on an interstate highway.
We will step forward to verses 23 and 24 and get all the text together. We will then see what it is SAYING. We will not concern ourselves in the least with what any passage “teaches” or what any Greek scholar thinks it “teaches” or what any Greek scholar believes that it should teach. You can make any passage “teach” anything. What it SAYS is a different matter. Naturally, we will correct all Greek texts, all Greek manuscripts, all Greek scholars, and all Greek lexicons with the Holy Bible (AV 1611). Nothing has ever been lost in so doing, and nothing will ever be lost. (When you find the above statement lifted piece-meal out of this commentary and quoted by some professional liar like the “majority of the scholars” who believe in the “verbal, plenary, inspired original autographs,” you may rest secure in the knowledge that NOT ONCE IN 200 YEARS HAS ANY APOSTATE IN AMERICA OR ENGLAND EVER PRODUCED ONE TRUTH FROM ANY GREEK TESTAMENT THAT WASN’T CLEARLY PRESENTED IN THE ENGLISH TEXT CURRENT DURING THAT 200 YEARS.) Since no scholar has ever offered a sample showing that we lost any light, we don’t hesitate to dismiss their works, beliefs, theories, opinions, preferences, and studies without a nod.
Not once in 2,000 pages of “original Greek” did Spiros Zodhiates, Kenneth Wuest, A. T. Robertson, Olson, Zeller, Anderson, or Vincent ever produce ONE Biblical truth that any fool couldn’t find in a dime-store English Bible if he ever read it and believed it.
1. “Heaven itself’ (vs. 24) is the true anti-type of the Mosaic tabernacle.
2. The “holy places” there are made without hands, for they are “true” (vs. 24).
3. There are “heavenly things” in the heavens that had to be purified with blood (vs. 23).
4. The “earthly things” were types of these things (vs. 23) as “patterns.”
5. Christ, as a High Priest, goes into these “true” holy places (vs. 24) by means of His own blood (vs. 12). The word “by” in the Authorized Version is placed by the Holy Spirit to negate the word “with,” which would teach a HERESY. Still, this heresy is taught by hundreds of “Bible” scholars; it is the teaching that Jesus Christ carried His own blood up to the third heaven with Him and went into the heavenly “Holy of Holies” and sprinkled THAT blood on the “mercy seat.”
Now, at this point, the student may expect 100 percent defection on the part of every commentator in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. You see, the passage deals with one of the main fundamentals of the faith: THE ETERNAL EFFICACY OF THE BLOOD OF JESUS CHRIST. If “the life of the flesh is in the blood” (Lev. 17:11; Gen. 9:4), and it is; and Christ had GOD’S BLOOD in Him (Acts 20:28), and He did; then it had to be ETERNAL BLOOD because ETERNAL LIFE was in Christ (1 John 5:10-13).
There went Dr. Thieme out the window with the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the faculties and staffs of Bob Jones University, Liberty University, Tennessee Temple, and Pensacola Christian College! (Milky-wilky babies get upset stomachs when they eat meat.) Thieme tells us that there was nothing in Christ’s bodily
fluids (His blood) that had anything to do with our salvation, and the word “blood,” when speaking of the Blood of Christ, is only a reference to His “DEATH” (thus Dodds translated it in the New English Bible\). Dr. Thieme assures us (The Blood of Christ, 1977, pp. 16-34) that “the red liquid that ran through the veins and arteries of Jesus’ mortal body is NOT RELATED TO OUR SALVATION . . . His literal blood had NO SPIRITUAL SIGNIFICANCE whatsoever ... on the cross the BLOOD was symbolic.”
If that is true, there doesn’t live on the face of the earth a saved sinner.
You were told that the “red fluid” in Christ’s arteries and veins was GOD’S BLOOD (see Acts 20:28 and comments in that Commentary). And it had nothing to do with our salvation? Why, if Christ’s blood was no different than Thieme’s blood, Christ STAYED BURIED: He didn’t come up. Vincent (Word Studies) sides with Thieme, and digging back into his vast resources that deal with Greek grammars, lexicons, and texts, he says, “THE DIFFERENCE OF BLOOD IS UNIMPORTANT’’ (p. 482). Where Vincent made that statement, he was referring to a comparison of Christ’s blood with ANIMAL blood! There is nothing like Greek scholarship, is there? Especially with these demented, depraved, Greekified amateurs who worry about “Ruckman teaching that the English can correct the Greek.” You’d better believe it can, sonny! Vincent, at least when dealing with the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ (the element that “cleanseth us from all sin”), is nothing but a Bible-rejecting infidel.
Freerkson (Liberty University) must now tiptoe through the tulips when he hits these matters, so he gets around left end by saying that the blood of Christ in verse 14 (that “purges the conscience”) is not actually the BLOOD OF CHRIST—although that is what the text SAYS: it simply doesn’t “teach” what Freerkson wants it to “teach”—but, rather, “the sacrifice of His
Son ... IT so completely . . . that IT inwardly regenerates . . (p.695). Freerkson used “sacrifice” for
BLOOD. Thieme and Vincent used “death.” Nobody said “blood” because that is what the Bible said. That is what “the text” said in ALL GREEK MANUSCRIPTS, ALL ENGLISH EDITIONS OF THE AV, ALL LATIN MANUSCRIPTS, AND ALL ANCIENT AND MODERN TRANSLATIONS WHERE ANYONE PROFESSED TO HAVE TRANSLATED FROM LATIN OR GREEK.
You see, “manuscript evidence,” “better and older manuscripts,” and “new light on the original languages” was never involved. They lied to you. That is how they make their living. They are professionals. Their tutors were professionals.
All of the trouble here is due to unbelief. Arthur W. Pink is just as nervous as Freerkson, Willmington, Ironside, Barnes, and Dummelow when verse 14 pops up. Pink says, “Christ’s SACRIFICE has expiated our sins . . . The Spirit applies ITS virtues to our hearts.” They won’t say BLOOD, will they? Do you know why? THERE ISN’T A BIBLE BELIEVER IN THE BUNCH. The Bible said “blood” (vs. 14). The Bible said that this “BLOOD” was the means of Christ entering the third heaven (not His sacrifice); the Bible said that this “BLOOD” was used to purify things in the heavens (not an earthly sacrifice for sinners down here); the Bible says that the term “sacrifice” alone is inadequate if you forget to add what was DONE WITH THE BLOOD OF THAT SACRIFICE (see vss. 7, 12-14, 18-22, and 25).
The Fundamentalists lost their ability to read second grade English. Greekitis is terminal.
By now, such a thing should be so commonplace to the Bible believer that has studied the Bible Believer’s Commentary Series, that it shouldn’t cause him to take a baby aspirin.
The most superstitious fools on the face of this
earth are saved Greek teachers who correct the Holy Bible with their opinions and preferences.
Sidestepping The Pulpit Commentary, the Interpreter’s Bible, the Expositor’s Bible, Zodhiates’ Study Bible, The Ryrie Study Bible, all of the publications by Bob Jones University, all of the “study helps” recommended by Pulpit Helps, Clarke’s Commentary, Matthew Henry’s Commentary, Ellicott’s Commentary, William’s Commentary, J. Peter Lange’s Commentary, and EVERY SYLLABUS TAUGHT IN EVERY CLASSROOM OF EVERY MAJOR “FUNDAMENTAL” SCHOOL IN THE WORLD; let us open a dime-store, archaic, Elizabethan AV Bible that is “300 years out of date” and learn the truth. If it is fantastic, we will accept it; if it is unbelievable, we will accept it; and, above all, if it contradicts all “historic Fundamentalist” positions, we will accept it. Why trade your birthright in (John 16:13) for a mess of pottage?
A. Overhead somewhere is a vast body of WATER (see Genesis 1:3-6 and comments in that Commentary). The top of this water is frozen crystal at absolute zero (see Job 38:30 and comments in that Commentary, and Rev. 15:2 and comments in that Commentary).
B. There is a DOOR or opening through this “sea of glass” which is likened to a TEAR or rip (Matt. 27:51) in a veil or a piece of clothing (see Heb. 1:11- 12 and comments).
C. If the city of Jerusalem (as well as the temple) is some kind of type of the heavens (see Heb. 9:23-24 and comments), then the twelve gates on the earthly Jerusalem have some anti-type in heaven. Three of those “gates” are called the Fish Gate, the Sheep Gate, and the Horse Gate (see Neh. 3:1, 3, 28). You fish for men, and they go up through the water (see A.) and into the “gate.” You call your flock up to the sheep gate (John 10:1-6) at the Rapture, and you lead them out at the Second Advent on horses (the horse gate— see Neh. 3:28).
Something is going on in THAT Book that “original manuscripts” would shed no light on in the hands of any Bible-rejecting Fundamentalist.
D. When Christ dies, He sheds ALL of His blood (John 19:34). His resurrection body is “flesh and bones” without blood (see Gen. 2:23 and comments in that commentary). (We hate to keep referring the reader to the other commentaries, but they list all of the Scriptural cross references for these things. And the “qualified scholars” don’t know enough about the Scriptures to find the cross references, so they never list them.)
E. When the Lord Jesus came down through that water, He picked fishermen for his first two disciples and allowed Himself to be IMMERSED in water at the inauguration of His ministry (Matt. 4; Mark 1-2). When He went back to heaven, He went back up through that water twice (John 20:17; Acts 1:9-10).
By now, we have lost R. A. Torrey, Jimmie M. Gray, C. I. Scofield, Bobby Sumner, Johnny R. Rice, Lee Scarborough, B. H. Carroll, Lee Roberson, Curtis Hutson, Marshall Neal, Laird Harris, Richard Clearwaters, Harold Willmington, Kenny Wuest, Willy Scroogie, G. Campbell Morgan, E. S. English, and Eddie Hindson, so the thing to do is just pretend that since all of them thought they were smart enough to correct the Book somewhere, none of them could handle the passage or anything in it. We will pretend just that!
F. When the Lord Jesus Christ sheds that blood (beginning at Gethsemane), a transaction is taking place in the realm of PHYSICS that no modern physicist or Fundamentalist knows anything about. As surely as Isaiah 50:7-9 and Colossians 2:14-15 describe an INVISIBLE WARFARE that took place literally between Matthew 26 and Matthew 28, so Hebrews 9:21-26 describes an INVISIBLE CATALYSIS that was transacted in this universe without one eye observing it. The Roman Catholic mass with its “transubstantiation” is the pagan counterfeit of this genuine, universal meta
morphosis. No real Bible believer could have failed to notice the following:
1. Adam’s water circulation turned to blood.
2. Pharaoh’s rivers turned from water into blood.
3. Tribulation sinners having their water turned to blood (Rev. 16:4-6).
4. Christ’s transubstantiation of water into a type of His blood (John 2:2-4).
5. The identity of the ETERNAL SPIRIT (1 John 5:7) and ETERNAL BLOOD (1 John 5:8) with WATER.
The water above the solar system became a “Red Sea” at the death of Christ.
It was no more a “sea of reeds” than a sea of beads. The teachers lied to you. That’s how they make their living—they are paid for that kind of thing. (See Heb. 11:29!)
Observe that once these Biblical truths are believed, the whole episode of the Exodus (Exod. 14-15) takes on an entirely different flavor, and all of the passages in Habakkuk 3; Judges 5; Psalm 68; and Jonah 2 begin to open up REGARDLESS OF “VERBAL, PLENARY, INSPIRED ORIGINAL AUTOGRAPHS” or anything like them or similar to them or copied from them. No man, living or dead, who complained about “unfortunate translations” in the AV, could handle ONE VERSE involved.
What we have here is the most potent “dye” that has ever stained 400,000,000,000,000,000 tons of water. We have blood that does not dry up and evaporate in the first century. Only the physical components visible to the eye dried up on Golgotha’s hill and Gethsemane’s bloody garden. “God’s blood” (Acts 20:28) is not to be disposed of in that fashion. God lives forever (1 John 5:20), THEREFORE, HIS “BLOOD” IS STILL AVAILABLE: it can be applied in the spirit realm. The writer of Hebrews is putting THIS doctrine on the reader: “How much more shall
the BLOOD OF CHRIST, who through the ETERNAL SPIRIT offered himself without spot to God, PURGE YOUR CONSCIENCE FROM DEAD WORKS (present tense) to serve the living God” (present tense—vs. 14). If you are saved in this age, you are in a BODY (see Eph. 5:30 and comments in that Commentary) that has a “blood stream”, and you have been literally “WASHED IN THE BLOOD OF THE LAMB.” (Of course, we’re not talking about anyone “washing robes” [Rev. 22:14], We are talking about being washed—not “white washed.”)
This, then, constitutes another one of the Almighty’s “jokes” (see 1 Cor. 1:21, 25—we are not speaking irreverently) on educated Christians and “Fundamentalist” Greek scholars. The Lord affected the NATURE of the universe by His sacrifice and not only accompanied it with earthquakes and non-scientific eclipses (Matt. 27:45), but WITH A RENDING OF A HOLE IN THE TOP OF A PONCHO (see Matt. 27:51; John 19:23) northward (see Psa. 75:5-6; Isa. 14) that constituted His “clothing” (Heb. 1:12) and matched the rending of His flesh (Heb. 10:20), since the tearing of clothes (Gen. 37:34; 2 Kings 19:1-2) symbolizes this very act!
When Christ ascends, He goes up through the “Red Sea” incarnadined by His own blood. “BY HIS OWN BLOOD HE ENTERED IN ONCE INTO THE HOLY PLACE” (vs. 12). The blood did not have to be presented in a censer or bucket before the “mercy seat” as in the case of Aaron on earth, for this blood filled heaven and earth as it came forth from the Godman: “God was manifest in the flesh” (1 Tim. 3:16).
Verse 14, therefore, is one of the most precious promises found in the entire Bible on personal victory over sins of the mind and the imagination (see 2 Cor. 10:4-5 for a comparison). It shows the believer that he can “plead” the blood for old thoughts and old imaginations and that he can apply that blood to his INNER
PSYCHOLOGICAL BEING so that it burns out (“purges”) the conscience and rids the man of wicked or sinful things that have to do with “dead works” (see Rom. 6:23 for comparison). To limit this purging to the past death of Christ on Calvary (His “death,” His “sacrifice,” His “atonement,” or any other two-faced, lying device invented by a Bible-rejecting “Greekite” who will not believe what he reads) is to rob the saints of one of the greatest, if not the greatest weapon for spiritual warfare found anywhere in the Bible, where the warfare is inner in the old nature of the believer. This is why 99.9 percent of the Fundamentalist, Evangelical, Conservative, and Orthodox critics threw “the blood” out of verse 14 and pretended that verses 23-24 didn’t mean anything that they said. You could get one of these modern, half-baked apostate Fundamentalists to believe in a unicorn or a satyr (see Isa. 34:14) before you could get him to BELIEVE THAT THE BLOOD OF THE LORD JESUS CHRIST IS A PRESENT A VAILABLE REALITY.
Now, let’s get practical for a moment. A knowledge of “dead works” is what keeps a Christian messed up, especially if he was saved late in life. Did you ever sit around and worry about something that you did years ago? You know that you are cleansed and forgiven, but the stuff keeps coming back in your mind to the point that it not only depresses you but becomes a serious source of temptation to sin. When those things come up, you IMMEDIATELY ARE TO DO WHAT IS CONTRARY TO ALL EXPOSITIONS OF HEBREWS 9:14 BY EVERY RECOGNIZED “QUALIFIED” COMMENTATOR WHO EVER LIVED, INCLUDING ALL OF THE FUNDAMENTALISTS, ALL OF THE EVANGELICALS, AND ALL OF THE CONSERVATIVES—you are to claim the power of Christ’s blood on the spot and “plead” that blood. You must say, “I want the blood to take that thing, purge it, and burn it out.” Use the blood as a cleansing agent: a
catharsis. The blood can reach levels of your conscious, sub-conscious, and “subliminal levels” that no “shrink” can work on with electrotherapy. If you ever doubt this purifying power of the blood of Christ as a PRESENT REALITY (as all of the commentators and Greek scholars did), then apply it and find out!
Every man who is saved late in life is going to have some real problems with his thought life. Old mental habits die hard, if they expire at all. Furthermore, in the last forty years, the Supreme Court has decided that raw pornography of the vilest kind is not really “pornographic.” It just “depends upon the situation ethics of the relative viewpoint of the beholder’s lifestyle where it blankety, blank, blank, blank!” So, you have the raw images of “acid sex” crammed into your mind twenty-four hours a day from TV, newspapers, magazines, and even billboards.
I don’t subscribe to a newspaper. My wife does for the children, because their teachers in high school REQUIRE reports from the newspapers. I don’t have a TV in my home. (We rented one for the Superbowl, and when my boys were 10 and 15, we rented one for three weeks during the World Series. That is the limit of TV in my home.) I don’t take any magazines, except for The National Rifleman. I tell people I “belong” to four things: God, a local Baptist Church, my wife, and the National Rifle Association. I believe in God, guts, and guns—in that order; and I don’t believe America will last a week after she gives up any one of them. I read Mad Magazine occasionally. I believe that it is the only sane SECULAR publication on the market. Mad Magazine will give you the correct view of national politics, science, movies, TV, “progress,” crime, humanism, education, and international politics, at least apart ftom the Bible. When I pick up a newspaper anywhere, I read Peanuts, Pogo, Hagar the Horrible, Crock, Tank McNamara, Doonesbury, and Shoe. As far as I’m concerned, the rest of the newspaper is just
214 THE BIBLE BELIEVER’S COMMENTARY trivial rubbish (see Exod. 12:15, 20 and comments in that Commentary).
Do you know why I will never buy a TV for any room in my house? I am an artist. I write for a hobby. I preach and teach as a calling. Essentially, though, I am an artist. I have the make-up of an artist, not a writer or a preacher. I can look at a blank wall or a blank sheet of paper and project on it (whether you believe it or not) any number of pictures—up to 40,000,000—as quickly as they could be called for. That is, if you said, “I want a forest,” I could project on that piece of paper a pine forest, fir forest, black-jack forest, scrub oak, scrub pine, oak, or tropical forest, in any one of the four seasons, at any time of the day or night, from any level of the eye, sparsely grown or thick, with or without animals, with or without people, in rain or hurricane, in snow, etc., ALL JUST AS FAST AS YOU COULD NAME THE ITEM! If I looked at a man’s art work in a book when I was five or six years old and didn’t see it again until I was forty-five, I would recognize his work on sight as soon as I saw it. I would know it by his composition, proportion, coloring, and style; many times by his brush stroke or his “line.” If a man is drawing a cartoon strip and dies (say Chester Gould—“Dick Tracy,” Seegar—“Popeye,” McManus— “Maggie and Jiggs,” or Al Capp—“Lil Abner,” for example) and his understudy picks up the strip—and every artist has some strips completed several months beyond his death date—I CAN TELL YOU THE FIRST STRIP THE UNDERSTUDY DRAWS after the original cartoonist ceased to work. Now, let me tell you something! If pictures were that real to you (see the Chapter entitled “The Plenary Verbally Inspired TV,” The Unknown Bible, Bible Baptist Bookstore, 1984), and you had been out in that world for twenty-seven years as a bartender, lifeguard, drill instructor in hand-to-hand, disc jockey, sign painter, and dance band drummer, don’t you know some old “pictures” are go-
ing to give you a hard time? Don’t tell me that the blood of Jesus Christ (and I don’t mean “His DEATH” or “His SACRIFICE” or any other little cowardly strategem adopted by people like Pink, Theime, Will- mington, Kroll, Freerkson, Afman, Martin, Price, et al.) is not available. It has to be available—for sinners like ME! I have learned something. What I have learned cannot be learned by studying Greek forty years or even by examining the “original Greek text.” I’ve learned that I need a “blood bath” from time to time; when things get going badly, I need to “plead the blood” and not mess with my thoughts or try to supress them. I say, “Lord, I want to be washed in the blood. I can’t handle this thing. It is too intense (Gen. 6:5). It is too overpowering. Purge me with the blood. Take these thoughts and VISUAL PICTURES out of my mind, and if not, I give them to Thee; SOAK THEM IN THE BLOOD OF JESUS CHRIST!”
“Fanatical,” is it, you wretched apostate? You miserable “Greekified” phony!
Try it, and you’ll see how “fanatical” it is. It works. There is no need to pay a shrink to work you over. Let the exorcists cast the devils out of themselves. Tell your nearest priest to take his salt and wooden cross and stick it in his left ear. Do your own exorcism. Never mind the “good, godly commentators” and deluded writers for Ryrie’s Study Bible and Zodhiates’ Hebrew and Greek Study Bible. NOT ONE OF THEM HAS ANY MORE IDEA OF HOW TO HANDLE HEBREWS 9:14 THAN HOW TO HANDLE THREE COBRAS IN HIS BED! God took their minds from them when they criticized HIS BOOK!
9:15 And for this cause he is the mediator of the new testament, that by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first testament, they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance.
16 For where a testament is, there must also of
necessity be the death of the testator.
17 For a testament is of force after men are dead: otherwise it is of no strength at all while the testator liveth.
18 Whereupon neither the first testament was dedicated without blood.
19 For when Moses had spoken every precept to all the people according to the law, he took the blood of calves and of goats, with water, and scarlet wool, and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book, and all the people,
20 Saying, This is the blood of the testament which God hath enjoined unto you.
21 Moreover he sprinkled with blood both the tabernacle, and all the vessels of the ministry.
22 And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission.
23 It was therefore necessary that the patterns of things in the heavens should be purified with these; but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.
24 For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us:
We print the remaining section here because we have already included much of it in our comments. Returning to the first section, we find “... sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh” (vs. 13), which, of course, is a reference to the activities of Leviticus 16 and Numbers 19. “How much more ...” (vs. 14), and we have commented on this at length above. The blood is a purifying AGENT which can be applied to the sinner, exactly as the water, ashes, etc. of verse 13 were applied to the sinner. “He is the mediator of the NEW TESTAMENT” (vs. 15). Not
according to Liberty University in Lynchburg. Not according to the ASV or NASV, and certainly not according to the NIV and RSV and all of the publications like them. No, according to all Fundamentalists, Communists, Atheists, Conservatives, Evangelicals, Catholics, and Neo-Orthodox, Jesus Christ is NOT the mediator of the NEW TESTAMENT. He can only be the mediator of a “new covenant.” The “scholarship” behind this is that if Mary had a little lamb when Jack and Jill dropped the bucket, then Humpty Dumpty would have eaten Red Riding Hood’s grandmother.
The word “testament” was removed from the New Testament (all 5,880 verses) in 1881-1885 by Westcott and Hort and the corrupt Americans of 1901 followed suit. These were followed by the corrupt Americans of 1952 (RSV), the corrupt Americans of 1962 (NASV), the corrupt Americans of 1973 (NIV), and all subsequent corrupters (2 Cor. 2:17). THAT IS WHY ALL FOUR GROUPS REMOVED THE WORD “CORRUPT” FROM 2 CORINTHIANS 2:17. The NKJV did the same thing, except that since they were more clumsy than the NIV, ASV, and NASV corrupters, the NKJV corrupters forgot that the Greek word for covenant (diatheke) that was used here (Heb. 9:15) was the same one used in 2 Corinthians 3:14. They forgot and translated “diatheke” as TESTAMENT there! (Oh, there is nothing like “good, godly, dedicated, qualified Fundamentalist scholarship,” is there?) Observe that when the backslidden apostates behind the ASV, NASV, NIV, RSV, RV, and NKJV hit the rest of Hebrews 9 (vss. 15-17), the whole transmission falls out, for there the word translated as “testator” (associated with “DEATH” in verse 15) pops up as diatithemi. Since this is a cognant word with diatheke, the apostates suddenly found themselves out of gas and oil. How could they say “the death of a COVENANTER” or “while the COVENANTER liveth” (vs. 17)? “Up a creek without a paddle,” they refused to
translate the Greek this time and invented the following cute, little doo-dad to cover up their infidelity:
1. “Of the one who made it,” “While the one who made it” (NIV).
2. “Of the one who made it,” “As the one who made it is alive” (RSV).
But this didn’t solve the problem, for it was not translating; since it now arises, “The one who made WHAT?” Having eliminated the “Testament” from verses 15 and 16, we have “the one who made it.” Made WHAT? A covenant? No, oh, my, no! Even though “testament” should have been “covenant” in verse 15, it now has to be will in verses 16 and 17!
How is that for uniform translating? How “godly” can one get?
You see, the term “testament” was the right word to start with and the right word to end with, because a last WILL and TESTAMENT is both a “COVENANT” and a “WILL.” The Authorized Version covered all of the Scriptural possibilities with one shot, one time, and retained it through 370 years without an error. The perversion of “testament” to “Covenant” (NKJV, RSV, NRSV, ASV, NASV, NIV, NEB) and the further perversion of “testament” to “Will” (ASV, NASV, RSV, NRSV, NIV, NEB) was nothing but unnecessary, critical revision by IGNORANT men who wanted you to think that they were spiritual.
The background for this incompetent bungling will be found in Barnes’ notes, Vincent’s Word Studies, and Nicoll’s Expositors’ Greek Testament: three typically efficient efforts to overthrow the words of truth with pious nonsense.
The computerized format runs something like this:
“There is so much depending, however, on the meaning of the word ... It is translated ‘covenant’ in the common version ... In the Septuagint it occurs not far from 300 times ... the translation of the Hebrew
word berith, the word is not that which properly denotes compact, agreement, or covenant ... He would have employed it to denote a disposition ... or arrangement of things. The word properly expressive of a ‘covenant’ or ‘compact’ (suntheke) is never used in the New Testament. Not one of them . . . has been betrayed in a single instance into the use of the word suntheke . . . once indeed in the Apocrypha and but once . . . This is conceded on all hands and is expressly admitted by Professor Stuart, though he defends this use of the word in this passage. From the original signification is derived the use which the word has with singular uniformity in the Scriptures . . . the only literal ‘covenant’ which can be supposed in the plan of redemption is that between the Father and the Son . . . What some call the covenant of grace, in distinction from that of redemption is nothing but the promulgation and performance of what was transacted with Christ in behalf of the ELECT ... It would appear therefore THAT FROM THE BEGINNING THERE HAVE BEEN BUT TWO COVENANTS: that of WORKS and that of GRACE OR REDEMPTION . . . .”
No covenant with Noah (Gen. 9). No covenant with Abraham (Gen. 15). No covenant with David (2 Sam. 7). No covenant with Levi (Isa. 66:21-24; Num. 25). Only “TWO” Covenants!
My, what “light” we get when we go to the “verbally inspired originals” to get the “original intent” of the “Divine Author”—and all of that JAZZ.
Shall we continue with those “historic Fundamentalists” who believe in the “verbal, plenary, inspired original autographs”? Let’s!
“The meaning of the words is doubtful. In classical and Hellenistic Greek, however, it is the common word for ‘will’ or ‘testament.’ (see the Oxyrhyncus Papyri, Grenfell and Hunt) . . . the normal meaning of the word appears also from the use of adiathetos for
‘intestate’ and metadiatithesthai for ‘to alter a will’ . . . On the very common omission of the copula in the third singular indicative (see Buttman, p. 136) There can be little doubt that the word must invariably be taken in the sense of ‘Covenant’ (Hatch, Essays in Biblical Greek, p. 48) ... Is it possible to retain the meaning of ‘covenant’? Westcott, Rendall, Hatch, Moulton, and others think it possible. GREAT LIGHT HAS BEEN THROWN ON THIS PASSAGE by Dr. Trumball in his ‘Blood Covenant’ in which he shows the universality of that form of compact and the significance of the blood . . . .”
1. The “significance of the blood” was in the English text of 1611 (see comments on verse 14 above), and Trumball could no more find it in his own language than he could find a whisper in a hurricane.
2. Trumball shed no more light on the passage than Mickey Rooney or Walter Mondale.
3. Every change recommended was useless, unnecessary, and damaging to the revelation of the truth; and every scholar involved, including ALL OF THE FUNDAMENTALISTS AND CONSERVATIVES IN 1986, was guilty of “upstaging” and “hot-dogging” in order to make you think that he was smart. He was about as intelligent as Eve, who made the first “revision in the clearer language of the common people” (Gen. 3:1-5).
There are at least eight covenants in the Bible— look them up! There never were only two—look them up! Any covenant that involved the death of someone could properly be called a “testament,” and the collective deaths of the Old Testament sacrifices from Moses to Matthew 27 constituted an Old “Testament” being replaced by the singular death of THE Lamb of God (Gen. 22:8) in Matthew 27 constituting a “NEW TESTAMENT.” Since the “testator” died and left a “testament,” the new “covenant” should properly be
translated “testament” (AS IT HAS BEEN TRANSLATED IN EVERY EDITION OF THE AUTHORIZED VERSION FROM 1611 TO 1982—Heb. 7:22, 9:15-17, 20; Mark 14:24; Matt. 26:28; etc.).
The AV text is 100 percent right; and Harold Will- mington, Zeller, MacCrae, Donald Waite, Ryrie, Farstad, Martin, Afman, Price, Comette, Carson, Zo- dhiates, Wuest, Moulton, Bleek, Hodges, Aland, and Metzger don’t know any more whereof they speak than if they had never spoken.
“Let God be true, but every man a liar;” (Rom. 3:4).
Never mind the Alexandrian Cult of Greekolaters who think THEY are right and the Bible is wrong (and then blame it on “Ruckman”!).
ALWAYS CORRECT THE BIBLE-CORRECTORS WITH THE BIBLE!
“A testament is of force AFTER men are dead” (vs. 17). The verse was placed to close down Campbellite churches who insist that the dying thief died under the “old covenant,” which he did not. The problem the “water dogs” have with the passage is how to get the dying thief into Paradise when he was DRY: all water dogs have to go in WET. The way this “problem with the Greek original” is solved is by pretending that the New Testament was not in effect when the dying thief died—but it was! Christ was dead (John 19:33) when the soldiers broke the legs of the thieves (John 19:32). The New Testament was in effect, for the Testator was dead. Moral: a sinner can be saved without anybody sprinkling or immersing him. Moral: original Greek texts solve no problems.
“This is the blood of the TESTAMENT which God hath enjoined unto you ..(vs. 20). The refer
ence is to verses 18 and 19 which were performed by Moses in Exodus 24 and Leviticus 14. Observe that “the BOOK” is sprinkled with blood. Since “the life of the flesh is in the blood,” we have here a “LIVING BOOK,” and where the word “scripture” or “scriptures” is applied to this living Book (see John 5:39; Acts 8:35; Luke 4:21; Acts 17:11), it is not found to be a reference to “original autographs” a single time. That is a wretched heresy taught by “scholars.”
The Book is a bloody Book. Around its edges, you will often find gold. This represents the gold with which all of the furniture of the tabernacle was overlaid; that is, it is a divine Book. If the pages are not edged with gold, they are colored RED; it is a bloody Book. It speaks of the shedding of blood before it has gone four chapters (see Gen. 4), and the blood doesn’t stop pouring until three chapters from the end (Rev. 20). It usually has black covers. It is your “little black book,” a book that deals with SIN and DEATH. RED, YELLOW, and BLACK: the colors of the German flag.
No modern translation can really “sell” until it counterfeits this Book. To sell, the modern pieces of degenerate pulp literature eventually have to do the following:
1. Put on black covers.
2. Put on leather flexible covers.
3. Use gold or red edges.
4. Invent concordances to explain them.
All four of these operations are counterfeits of what the A V had already been doing for over 200 years. The new “Bibles” are plainly imitation, counterfeit “Bibles”—any one of them.
The Book YOU have—if you have an Authorized Version from 1611—is a blood-sprinkled Book. Make no mistake about it; Nestle, Aland, and Metzger suffered NOTHING when they put their “eclectic texts” together. None of them strove “against sin to the shedding of blood” (see Heb. 12:3-4 and comments). Some
day, at the judgment, the Lord will make all of the members of the ASV committee, the NASV committee, the NIV committee, the RSV committee, and the NRSV committee (if they are saved!) sit down with Kenneth Taylor and the “Wycliffe” Translators (how blasphemous can one get?) and say, “Now, for all of those scholars who are interested in the history of revision, we have a brief seminar consisting of a six minute film showing all of the terrible persecutions that Kenneth Taylor, the Lockman Foundation, and the NCCC went through in order to produce their ‘reliable translations’.” Then you will see six minutes of film showing the raking-in of over $10,000,000 in royalties from American suckers who had been raised on Madison Avenue TV techniques. That will be the full run of their “persecutions.” The Lord will then give the viewers a brief 600 hour film on what it took to bring the Authorized Version into existence and preserve it for 370 years in the face of opposition from the men who translated and recommended the RV, RSV, NRSV, ASV, NASV, NIV, NEB, NWT, and TLB.
There was dynamite under the House of Parliament to blow every promoter of the AV into Kingdom Come, and the Catholics who put it there had shortly before (1555) succeeded in burning over 500 Bible believers at the stake for fooling with translations from the AV’s Textus Receptus. (Never mind Newman and MacRae on “no TR till 1633.” Liars are a dime a dozen these days. By Newman and MacRae’s logic, there was no “ALEXANDRIAN TEXT” until 1730.)
“This is the blood of the TESTAMENT” (vs. 20). The objections to the translation are that Moses was still alive when this testament was in effect; therefore, it could not have been a “testament” (see vs. 17—“it is of no strength while the testator liveth”). But this all fails to confirm the very ideas in which all Calvinists profess to believe about “two” covenants, and it fails to confirm the teaching in which all Calvin
ists profess to believe about Christ being “slain from the foundation of the world” (Rev. 5:6, 13:8) and the events of the Crucifixion being determined “beforehand” (Acts 2:23). The God Who led Abraham to say that “God would provide HIMSELF a lamb” was the God Who accepted Abel’s lamb (Heb. 11:4) long before the Mosaic covenant, and this was the same God Who made a covenant with Israel BEFORE THE LAW (Exod. 12:13-14) on the basis of the “shed blood of the lamb” (Exod. 12:1-20—note comments under 12:16-17 in that commentary). Observe that Christ as the TESTATOR (vs. 23) is compared to the CALVES and GOATS as TESTATORS (vss. 19, 25). The “death of the testator” in the Old Testament is the entire body of animal sacrifices: they TESTIFIED to something (see John 1:29), and their deaths allowed “remission of sins” (vs. 22) even where sins were not “cleared” (Exod. 34:7) or “taken away” (see Heb. 10:4). The death of these testators “purge with blood” (vs. 22) in the Old Testament as Christ’s blood purged with blood those in the New Testament (see comments under verses 14 and 15). The death of Moses is not a factor in the establishment of the Old “Testament” (see Heb. 9:25). The Old Testament began with ADAM (see Genesis), while the “covenants” are another matter altogether; for there are at least eight of them, and we have already talked about this at length under Hebrews 8:8-13, which see.
We have already commented on verses 23 and 24.
9:25 Nor yet that he should offer himself often, as the high priest entereth into the holy place every year with blood of others;
26 For then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world: but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.
27 And as it is appointed unto men once to die,
28 So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation.
Two crucial things appear in the passage which will throw the Alexandrian Cult back into the “dumpster” (where they belong!). The first of these is the non-scriptural statement that all men have to die only once and must die once (they don’t—Enoch didn’t die, Moses will die twice, Eutychus died twice, Dorcas died twice, Lazarus died twice, etc.), and the second is the wording of 9:28 which takes the faculty members of Dallas, John Brown, Bob Jones, Tennessee Temple, Midwestern, Pacific Coast, Liberty University, Pensacola Christian College, Arlington, Springfield, and BIOLA and wrings them out like wet towels going through an old-fashioned, hand-operated washing machine “WITHOUT SIN UNTO SALVATION” finishes off the Greek scholars, the Greek lexicons, the “reverent Biblicists,” the professors of Semitic and ancient languages, the Bible revisors, the Greek grammarians, and the commentators.
Their “Greekitis” will not suffer them to live.
Having never learned the English Bible (any version of any English Bible), their efforts to “Greekify” the truth out of the passage resembles a two year old boy trying to eat a plate of spaghetti without a fork or spoon. We would expect as much.
“Nor yet that he should offer himself often ..
(vs. 25). The Lord Jesus does not have to offer Himself every Sunday morning in a Baalite “mass,” nor does He have to “often” offer Himself using a Baalite hood to do it. His ONE sacrifice (see comments under 10:12- 14) is sufficient. “With blood of others” (vs. 25) is a reference to Aaron, and the “OTHERS” plainly is a reference to the DEATH OF ANIMAL “TESTATORS.” Notice how powerfully the English text brings this
out—“others,” as though it was almost a reference to other HUMANS than Aaron. Of course, it is other animals (vs. 19), but my, my! isn’t that old, archaic, Elizabethan English profound where IT CORRECTS 100 percent OF THE SCHOLARS WHO BUNGLED STUPIDLY THROUGH VERSES 16-21 ON THE GROUNDS THAT THERE WAS NO “DEATH OF THE TESTATOR” IN THE OLD TESTAMENT! “The blood of others” (vs. 25). You see, the animals’ deaths stood for the death of the man who offered it (see Lev. 1-4). He was a TESTATOR by proxy, and Abraham’s case (see Gen. 22:13 and compare it with Heb. 11:17) was so clearly given to “give light” on this important Biblical doctrine that only a Fundamentalist (or a Roman Catholic) who believed in “plenary, verbally inspired original autographs” could fail to see it.
“For then must he often have suffered ..(vs. 26), which He did not. The “Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Rev. 13:8) is only a picture in Revelation of what God had in mind “before the foundation of the world” (see Acts 2:23; Titus 1:1- 2). The actual BEGATTING (see Heb. 1:6 and comments) of the TESTATOR who would DIE ONCE (see Heb. 10:8-12) does not take place “before the foundation of the world” (see Heb. 1:6 and comments).
“But now once in the end of the world ..(vs. 26). This is one of the verses which the Lord used to throw 98 percent of the scholars off the track when they tried to wade through the “last days” of Hebrews 1:2, which see. Since the end of the age was connected with Christ’s death (as it is here in verse 26), it is assumed that the “end of the world” is A.D. 33 to 1990, which it is NOT (see Heb. 1:2 and comments). “TO PUT AWAY SIN . . (vs. 26). It is extremely important for us to notice why this wording occurs as it does immediately before “HE SHALL APPEAR THE SECOND TIME WITHOUT SIN” (vs. 28), because all of the scholars are going to miss it and per
vert the passage—all of them. Not one historic Fundamentalist, not one “godly soul winner,” not one “militant defender of the faith” will survive what is about to follow; for UNBELIEF in the word of God in the Laodicean age (1880-1990) is as prevalent among men like R. A. Torrey and Bob Jones III as it is among the Liberals, at least where ANY WORDING OF ANY VERSE CUTS ACROSS THE GRAIN OF THE PREJUDICES OF THE FUNDAMENTALIST. (For absolute proof of this beyond “the reasonable shadow of a doubt,” obtain The Unknown Bible, Bible Baptist Bookstore, 1984, where you will find a dozen documented cases showing that unbelief among the leaders of Fundamentalism is rampant when using ANY text of ANY version, or ANY edition of ANY version.) The “putting away of SIN” (compare John 1:29) has to do with the Lord Jesus Christ becoming SIN personified (see 2 Cor. 5:21 and John 3:14) so as to carry it off literally and place it where it could no longer affect the human race. Although sin is present and sins can be committed (and will be committed until Revelation 21-22), SIN in God’s eyes has been “put away” through His Son, so a sinner who trusts that Son for his sin payment winds up SINLESS (1 John 3:1-3).
“And as it is appointed unto men once to die . . (vs. 27). Here we have one of the finest cases in the Bible (see another one in Acts 13:40-41 in that Commentary) where doctrinal truth and evangelistic soul winning cannot get together in ecumenicity. Verse 27 is one of the most often used verses in the Bible for soul winning, and it is an excellent one—I would advise its continual use. However, don’t ever make the mistake of thinking that Hebrews 9:27 is a doctrinal statement covering Biblical doctrines. It is a general statement giving a general truth for purposes of illustration; the illustration follows (vs. 28), and one cannot fail to notice old Hosea’s “similitude” (Hos. 12:10) popping up in the wording of our text—“AS IT IS . . .
So Christ was ..(vss. 27-28). Men do NOT always die once. Many men die TWICE.
Now, God’s purpose in presenting Enoch, Elijah, and Moses was to show the believer three important types of things in the future. (You can count on the Greek scholars to miss all three at least 90 percent of the time.)
1. There is a man who never died and never will die (Enoch). He is a type of a pre-tribulation rapture (before the “days of Noah”) where the living saints (see John 11:26) are caught up without dying (1 Cor. 15:53-54) never to die again (1 Cor. 15:55). THOSE WHO TEACH THAT THE CHURCH GOES THROUGH THE TRIBULATION HAVE NO ANSWER FOR THIS TYPE: Enoch is not caught up at the end of the flood; he is caught up BEFORE the flood.
2. There is a man who died once and was buried, but he was “unburied” later (see Deut. 34:5-6; Jude 9), and shows up alive 1,500 years later (Matt. 17:2-8). This man will return to earth to die again; that is, die twice (see Rev. 11:1-6 and comments in that Commentary).
3. There is a man who was caught up, as Enoch, alive (2 Kings 2); but he will not stay alive, for he too will return to this earth (Rev. 11:7-8) and have his head cut off (see Rev. 11 and comments in that Commentary).
A. The first man, Enoch, represents the pre- tribulational rapture of the Body of Christ.
B. The second man, Moses, represents tribulation saints who die in the tribulation and come up to die again in the millenium.
C. The third man, Elijah, represents the tribulation saints who are alive at the post-tribulation rapture and live, but they go into the millennium to die there.
The second man, Moses, who dies twice, is also pre-figured by Jairus’ daughter, the widow of Nain’s son, the Shunamite’s son, Eutychus, Lazarus, Jonah,
This explains how “saved people” (but no saved people out of the Church Age in the Body of Christ) will appear at the White Throne Judgment to be rewarded according to WORKS (see Rev. 22:14 and comments in that Commentary), and it also explains why they have to earn a right to the “tree of life” (Rev. 22:14) by WORKS to keep from dying AGAIN!
WHAT IS ALWAYS OBSCURE IN THE “ORIGINAL GREEK TEXT” IS PERFECTLY PLAIN TO ANY GRADE SCHOOL CHILD WHO CAN READ ENGLISH. The fact that any 14-year-old child at the Bible Baptist Church in Pensacola, Florida, is familiar with these Biblical truths while the faculty at Bob Jones University couldn ’t find any one of them is only one more Laodicean testimony to the fact that present apostasy, which began in 1880, has nothing to do with Liberals or Neo-Evangelicals—it is in the Body of Christ.
“. . . unto them that look for him . . (vs. 28). What about those that don’t? There are some that are not “looking for Him” in Matthew 25:5. There are some who are not “looking for Him” in Luke 21:34- 36. There are some who are not “looking for Him” in Matthew 25:26-30. Will He “appear” to them? After all, if a man cannot “see the Lord” without “holiness” (see Heb. 12:14) and only the “pure in heart shall see God” (Matt. 5:8), how will ALL of the Church Age saints “make it” at this rapture? Answer: they won’t! There is no reference to the pre-tribulational rapture in the passage. The passage was on the ADVENT, and the appearance was to post-tribulation saints in Matthew 24:29-31. THERE IS A SPLIT RAPTURE (see Matt. 25:1-10) JUST BEFORE THE SECOND ADVENT OF CHRIST. This was the Biblical basis for the teaching of thousands of Holiness preachers for years (1900-1960) that there would be a split rapture of the church, and only the “pure, spotless Bride of
Christ” (i.e., my bunch!) would be caught up. Every Scriptural falsehood in this age is a Scriptural truth that has been misplaced.
So here we have the doctrinal explanation for Hebrews 12:14 and Matthew 5:8: both were aimed at literal Jewish Hebrews. The Biblical explanation is in the English text of 1611-1982, so we may expect all of the readers, revisors, students, publishers, and promoters of the ASV, RV, NASV, RSV, NRSV, and NIV to miss the truth. They did. They fluttered and flitted about in their blind, stupid, ignorant conceit just as blithely as a blind bat in the back end of a basement below a bar room. They found no light in their “Greek texts.” They found no light in their Greek grammars and lexicons. They found no light in ten volumes of “study helps” and “notes on the original.” They found no light in or out of the classroom from Dead Sea Scrolls or “older and better manuscripts.”
To show you (for the fourth time) how totally incompetent these Greekified apostates are when they try to teach the Bible, observe that the verse not only points out a post-tribulation rapture, but it forces the reader to consider Hebrews 12:14, which says that without holiness no man shall see the Lord. Since not one commentator or Greek scholar had any idea what was going on, he missed the following: “For when thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness. Let favor be shewed to the WICKED, yet will he NOT LEARN RIGHTEOUSNESS; in the land of uprightness” (Millennium) “will he deal unjustly, and WILL NOT BEHOLD THE MAJESTY OF THE LORD” (Isa. 26:9- 10). That is the second application of the text. It has to do with the Millennium after the Second Advent. ALL GREEK SCHOLARS (100 percent) MISSED BOTH APPLICATIONS.
“And it shall come to pass, that every one that is left of all the nations . . . shall even go up from year to year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts ... And it shall be, that whoso will NOT come up of all the families of the earth ..(Zech. 14:16-17). In the millennium, Christ is reigning on earth, and the wicked will not “behold” His majesty, so they get punished by BAD WEATHER and BAD CROPS (see Zech. 14:18-19). They don’t SEE Him literally because they are not holy literally.
There are two applications doctrinally, a post- tibulation rapture and a millennial reign, and EVERY PRE-MILLENNIAL GREEK SCHOLAR (100 percent) FROM WUEST TO ZODHIATES, AND FROM JAMIESON, FAUSSET, AND BROWN TO IRONSIDE MISSED BOTH APPLICATIONS. Why?
They were “educationolators” who were so obsessed with “ORIGINAL AUTOGRAPHS” that they couldn’t find an elephant on the top of their house if it were there! Greekitis is terminal.
“Shall he appear the second time WITHOUT SIN UNTO SALVATION” (vs. 28). Before looking at the ghastly slaughter of the passage and the mutilation of the truth by the “leading Fundamentalist expositors,” let us believe God and go where He leads (John 16:13) regardless of humanistic pressure from humanists who always want you to follow the opinions of R. A. Torrey, William Scroogie, James M. Gray, Arthur Pierson, Lee Scarborough, Louis Talbot, John R. Rice, Ed Hindson, Dobson, or the old nature in some other Fundamentalist who wanted to impress you with his lack of intelligence. Sometimes these “Fundamentalist” humanists will even recommend the opinions of the AV translators [1611] to get you to destroy your faith in the text they produced, any old port in a storm. We could not care less what any humanist says that a humanist said about the text when giving a humanistic opinion that dealt with other humans.
“Without sin unto salvation” (vs. 28). Christ is sinless when He appears the second time. Someone immediately tries to block the truth with “But wasn’t He sinless the first time?”. You see, they don’t want to believe “SHALL HE APPEAR.” They want to strut their ignorance. Well, when Christ appeared the first time, He was sinless, but He did three things that would block our text if He appears in the future as He appeared in the past.
1. He became a curse for us. He will not be a curse for us at His Second Advent.
2. He became SIN for us (2 Cor. 5:21). He will not have sins ON Him at the Second Advent. HE HAD OUR SINS IN HIS OWN BODY (1 Pet. 2:24) at His first “appearing.”
3. He took away sin and carried our sins away with Him (John 1:29; Heb. 9:28) at His first appearing. HE WILL CARRY NO SINS AT HIS SECOND APPEARING.
Thus, the truth of the text points to another Biblical revelation that many “good, godly, dedicated, qualified, authoritative scholars” cannot accept or believe. It will be found in Matthew 12:40; Acts 2:27, 31; and Ephesians 4:8-12. (Note how the word “hell” has been altered in ALL “newer and clearer” translations, including the NKJV, and how the expression “the heart of the earth” has been “messed with” by all of the commentators. See Eph. 4:9 and comments in that Commentary.)
When apostates like Freerkson, Willmington, and Dobson (Liberty University); Martin, Faulkner, and Price (Tennessee Temple); and Bob Jones III, Wood, Panosian, and Custer (Bob Jones University) and all of their “colleagues” hit the passage, they came apart like raw eggs hitting a fan. Not only was “hell” changed (above), but Hebrews 9:28 had to be changed to anything except “WITHOUT SIN.” (When an ignorant man attempts something which is “out of his league,”
the first thing that he must do is to change all of the rules of the game so that he can “qualify.” Watching these amateur jacklegs posing as “Bible teachers” is like watching Ted Kennedy and Coretta King playing in the National Hockey League against Gretsky, Off, Hull, Howe, Clark, and Guy LaFleur. In order to “qualify,” they have to get rid of the rink, the puck, the sticks, the skates, and the referee.)
You might as well face it—your sins were deposited in HELL when Christ went down through it. The old “Apostles’ Creed” had THAT much right (“He descended into Hell”), and that is why that much of the Creed was removed between 1940 and 1960 in every church reciting the Creed. (Laodicea has certain “ear-marks” that no one can miss.) Christ became the personification of SIN when He “bore your sins in His own body”; HE NO LONGER HAS THEM IN HIS BODY. He did not have them when He appeared to Mary Magdalene (Mark 16:9; John 20:17). He was “without sin,” and that is the way that He will appear “unto them that look for him” when He appears at the end of Daniel’s Seventieth Week. All SIN winds up in the lake of fire (Rev. 20:11-14). The “sin of the world” (John 1:29) was deposited in HELL prior to that time. Jesus Christ took sin there and left it there. It was literally “PUT AWAY” (see vs. 26).
Having obtained this advanced light on the “original Greek text” from the English text of 1611-1998, let us return to Alexandria, Egypt, and the World’s Most Unusual Hell-Hole to see how the “good, godly, dedicated, qualified scholars” are doing. Remember, these are the ones who are always so anxious to “translate the Bible in modern language where the truths of God will no longer be hidden behind the archaic language of seventeenth century England, etc.”
1. Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown—the reference is to the rapture of the church, which it is not. “Ap
pear” doesn’t mean “appear”; it just means “to be seen.”
2. Arthur W. Pink—“those who look for Him” are only the ELECT in the church, and the word “appear,” therefore, cannot really mean “appear” (p. 526). Pink—as Jamiesson, Fausset, and Brown above—gathers that the imputed sins laid on Christ at the First Advent will not be there at the Second Advent, but “for love nor money,” he cannot tell us WHAT HAPPENED TO THOSE SINS. Neither can Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown. Neither can Freerkson of Liberty University. Neither can the Scofield Board of Editors of either edition. If Christ BORE sins at Calvary, why doesn’t He still BEAR them? Doesn’t an unsaved man bear his sins in HELL? Does death change your sinful condition? A child of God is freed from sin (Rom. 6) in the sense that his old nature is nailed and buried with Christ. His sins have been “put away” (see above), but he suffers the consequences of those sins (1 Cor. 5:10) AFTER death (see 2 Cor. 5:1-10). What did Christ DO with the sins He bore “in his own body”? No Greek scholar knows. They are not believers; they are agnostics. Greekitis is fatal.
3. Williams (one volume commentary) has no rapture in verse 28, but only the advent. He skips comment altogether on what happened to anyone’s sins. He evidently could not find a “scapegoat” in the Old Testament (Lev. 16:21-22).
4. Vincent (Word Studies') gets rid of “look for him” and alters it to “await”, and then tells us that if you don’t “await Christ’s second coming IN FAITH,” He won’t appear (p. 493)! Nice work, Vince, baby! You sure know your “Greek”! When Vince got to “without sin,” he dropped all of his Greek commentaries, lexicons, grammars, and study helps and decided that the words were not in any Greek text. HE SIMPLY OMITS THE WORDS IN ENGLISH AND GREEK. Well, at least he was honest; he didn’t fake
5. The New King James Version (not any authorized edition of the AV 1611) put out by Thomas Nelson Publishers in 1979 (who also published the ASV, NASV, and RSV) has altered “without sin” to “apart from” because of dire necessity. How could they have left the Bible text as it stood after their own “commentator” had just said, “This last appearing is without sin IN THE SENSE THAT He will not NEED TO DEAL WITH SIN AGAIN” (p. 697, citing Hughes, p. 387). This, naturally, is not the “sense” at all. That is nonsense.
James Freerkson (Professor of RELIGION at Liberty University) says with all of the solemnity of a Catholic Bishop speaking against nuclear disarmament: “As man can only die ONCE, so the man Christ could only die once as a sacrifice” (p. 697). You are to assume from this that Eutychus, Dorcas, Lazarus, and Jonah are still around alive somewhere on earth! Give my regards if you see them! Tell them that I was not fortunate enough to train in a school for “Champions” (Liberty University), so I THOUGHT THEY HAD DIED AGAIN. (Forgive my ignorance!)
6. Dummelow follows the Alexandrian lead: Christ’s first coming was only “in connection with sin.” He didn’t really do anything with anyone’s sins. When he gets to “them that look for him,” everything drops out, and Dummelow can’t apply the verse to anyone. He doesn’t even apply it to the “elect” (see Pink, above). He just drops it like a hot potato.
7. The New International Version and the RSV go along with the “Living Bible” [Kenneth Taylor’s private interpretation upon which $4,500,000 was spent in an effort to jack up the sales (USA Today, Friday, Dec. 21, 1984) and still it only sold 29,000,000 copies—less than one-twenty-fifth of the copies of the AV] and decide that actual sins that Christ deposited somewhere before His second appearing are out of the
question, so they give us “not to bear sin,” “not to deal again with our sins,” and “not to deal with sin.” Since all three versions were translated by Bible-rejecting, destructive critics who accepted NOTHING in it with which they disagreed (see Job 41; Isa. 34; Mai. 1; Rom. 1:18, 25; 1 Tim. 6:5, 10, 20; 2 Cor. 2:17; and two dozen other places, for example), we will certainly accept nothing from them.
8. The “great Greek scholars” (Rendall, Dodds, Nicols, Moulton, Milligan, Hort, Vaughan, Kubel, Bleek, Bruce, Davidson, Winer, Tholuck, Dewette, Westcott, Mickey Mouse, Road Runner, Doonesbury, and Kenneth Wuest) tell us, “What is destined for ALL men is not simply death but apoxapoth—once to die” (GENT, p.340). When they get to “without sin,” the comment has nothing to do with what He did with sin or sins or where they wound up. We get only the general “... the sin having been destroyed by His DEATH” (p. 340). How is that—when the sins were on His body, and He was the personification of sin (2 Cor. 5:21) when He died? Where did He “BEAR” our sins, and where did He “TAKE THEM” (John 1:29)?
No light from the Expositor’s Greek New Testament—after all, its five volumes only represent the work of 200 Greek scholars through 2,500 years (it often cites classical Greek) on four different continents. What could you expect from such a feeble sampling?
Here we close accounts on the Alexandrian Cult, which believes that Bible believers are a “cult.” There has never existed on the face of this earth a more deluded, ignorant bunch of Bible-rejecting egotists than this crew. There may be dumber unsaved men. There may be lost Catholics and Liberals who are still more ignorant of the word of God, but for the profession that these men make as “orthodox Christians” who believe in “original autographs,” the ignorance is magnified an appalling number of times. There is no excuse for it. It
amounts, in the end, to willful ignorance (2 Pet. 3:5) and willful rejection of the truth for personal reasons (see how 1 Tim. 6:5, 10 have been altered in the NKJV right along with the RSV and NRSV). We will not follow the leadership of such Fundamentalists for thirty feet down the sidewalk, let alone the alley. They are incompetently bankrupt, and their knowledge of the “original languages” will never compensate for their stupid blindness, willful rejection, monstrous conceit, infidelity, and dishonesty in dealing with Biblical Authority.
THE BIBLE BELIEVER’S COMMENTARY SERIES
10:1 For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect.
2 For then would they not have ceased to be offered? because that the worshippers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins.
3 But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year.
4 For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.
By now, the reader may understand some of the remarks we made in our Preface about going into lengthy discussions of a critical and negative nature. As we said before, it is not enough for the well-trained preacher, evangelist, pastor, missionary, or Bible teacher to know that the Book is true. He should know why Christians think it is not true, who those are that reject it, and, above all, he should know why such a position is irrational and NON-SCHOLARLY. Here we are presenting the “other side,” as represented by the Alexandrian Cult, which has controlled the faculties and staffs of the major Christian colleges, seminaries, and universities since 1880. They are behind all of the “new translations.” They are also behind all of the lying nonsense about “older and better manuscripts.” They are also behind the phony “convictions” that they are supposed to have about “consistent translating” and “dynamic equivalents.” They are behind all of the infi
delity in America and Europe today where it exists in the Body of Christ. We shall continue to report their baleful opinions about “Hebrews”—a book which none of them understand and never could understand. Their real “historic position” is ignorance.
“For the law having a shadow . . . and not the very IMAGE of the things ..(vs. 1). The IMAGE, then, is a real thing like “the image of God” found in 2 Corinthians 4:4 and Hebrews 1:3. The law had no real permanent substance because of Paul’s statement in Romans 8:3. It was a temporary expedient (see Gal. 3:19, 24 and comments in that commentary), and this explains why the “comers” (vs. 1) to the tabernacle sacrifices never received assurance of salvation. They stayed in the condition of Ted Kennedy, Pope John Paul II, and every Catholic bishop and archbishop in America.
“Because that the worshippers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins” (ys. 2). We have commented on this at length under 7:19, 27 and 9:14. The saved child of God, in this age, has no more conscience for unforgiven sins if he rests on the finished work of his great “High Priest” (Heb. 3:1). He only feels guilty when he ceases to rest in the finished work and tries to count on something else. “But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance . . (vs. 3). All is self-explanatory; it was a Roman Catholic set-up as far as eternal security was concerned. Catholics have to attend Mass continually to be obedient, and skipping Mass (which millions of Catholics do) is considered to be a sin. Excommunication and interdiction in the Dark Ages carried with them the refusal to let the communicant attend the “holy Eucharist offering.” The idea was that without this “sacrament,” the communicant would be lost. Bible believers have better sense. Every “Mass” you miss will improve your spiritual growth—miss as many as you can.
God always blesses a Christian who stays away from “masses. ”
If you are saved and have trusted in the blood atonement of the Lord Jesus for sin, then you don’t have to have a bad conscience about the sins you have committed. Now, you may regret that you committed them, and you may have to reap the consequences of having committed them. You may be sorry that you committed them, but you don’t have to have a typical “Catholic conscience” (that makes it a sin to go to a revival service, but not a sin to go to gamble at bingo!). By a “bad conscience” I mean you are not going to go around thinking, “Oh, what am I going to do about that? What in the world can be done about that? How could I ever fix that up? I have to get that thing fixed!” It has already been “fixed. ” It was fixed at Calvary, and if you have not been to Calvary, you need a “FIX;” and I don’t mean “snow candy.” In the Old Testament, it is never completely “fixed.” That is the difference between Old Testament and New Testament salvation; and don’t let any wretched apostate at Pensacola Christian College, Bob Jones University, or Liberty University tell you that they were the same because they were not. In the Old Testament under the law, the sinner is on probation all of the time (read Ezek. 18 and 33 if you tend to doubt this). That is a rough way to live. You cannot enjoy your salvation, and consequently, you cannot witness to others. What was the “good news” (gospel) turns out to be a living death, and you become a Catholic clone. NO CATHOLIC WHO TRUSTS THE SACRAMENTS TO SAVE HIM EVER HAS ABSOLUTE ASSURANCE OF ETERNAL LIFE.
If you live under the Old Testament, you live under a Catholic-Charismatic set-up. You never know where you’re “at.” The old Catholic goes back every Sunday morning to the Baalite mass and thinks, “I hope. I hope. I hope.”
“Say, Bing(o) Crosby, are you saved?”
“How long have you been saved?”
“Well, when did you receive the Lord Jesus Christ?”
“Oh, I receive Jesus Christ every Sunday morning at 11 o’clock. “
“What happens to Him during the week?”
“What happens to Him during the week that you have to go back next Sunday and get Him again?”
“I WAS BORN CATHOLIC AND RAISED CATHOLIC AND WILL BE A CATHOLIC UNTIL I DIE!”
That is exactly what Adolph Hitler said (Toland, Adolph Hitler).
If you were “once purged,” you wouldn’t be going back next Sunday to get purged again.
If Jesus Christ died for my sins and paid for my sins, THAT is THAT! See? Now, He either did or he didn’t! The devil is not going to beat me around a stump (or a mulberry bush or the Houston Astrodome) with any rot about, “Look out; you lost it!” He won’t get me on, “You just thought you had it!” If Christ died for me and I believe Him for that, I’m safe. If He didn’t die for me, I’m lost. But as far as that goes, so is everyone else, including Peter, James, John, and Paul. What is the sweat for? When Satan says, “You never had it,” I don’t start running around in circles doing good works, trying to pay for my sins, taking sacraments, trying to find the “church that Christ founded,” trying to get the “gift of tongues,” or any of that other ungodly nonsense that unsaved people work at trying to justify themselves. I just say, “Well, if I missed it, I missed it; and if I’m going to hell, I’m sure enjoying the trip. Get off my back!”
You see, what Satan wants you to do is TRY TO DO SOMETHING to save yourself, when what Christ
already DID (John 19:30) is the only thing that can save you. If I have put my faith and trust in Christ’s completed and final atonement (see 10:12-16), there is nothing more that I can do. So, why waste the effort? If that won’t get me to heaven, NOTHING will, so I might as well go fishing or play hockey.
“For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins” (vs. 4), anymore than it is possible for fermented “hootch” in the “mass” to do it. Alcoholic beverages can no more take away sins (see Deut. 29:18-20 and Hab. 2:15-16) than the blood of bulls and goats. This is why we are told that the priest “daily ministering” (vs. 11) “CAN NEVER TAKE AWAY SINS” (vs. 11). If all of the Catholic priests in the world were to administer high mass, votive mass, low mass, sassafrass, and Pendergast (Catholic boss of Kansas City, MO), twenty-four hours a day, for 4,000 years, they couldn’t take away the sin of a ten-year-old boy stealing an “ice cream brick” from a grade school lunch line. “IT IS NOT POSSIBLE” (vs. 4). Animal sacrifices could allow God to remit sins (Heb. 9:19-22), and He could have mercy on that basis (Exod. 34:7 and comments in that commentary); but when it came to “clearing the guilty” (Exod. 34:7) and “taking away sins,” it is “nothing but the blood of Jesus.” MANUFACTURED SHINNY AND WHITE LIGHTNING BY “CHRISTIAN BROTHERS DIS-. TILLERY” WILL NOT DO THE JOB.
10:5 Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me:
6 In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure.
7 Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God.
8 Above when he said, Sacrifice and offering
and burnt offerings and offering for sin thou wouldest not, neither hadst pleasure therein; which are offered by the law;
9 Then said he, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God. He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second.
10 By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
11 And every priest standeth daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins:
12 But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God;
13 From henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool.
14 For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.
This is the greatest anti-Catholic passage found in the most anti-Catholic Book that the world has ever seen. The entire passage is banned by the State Legislature of Wisconsin (May 22, 1984), with the Governor present, on the grounds that anything “anti-Catholic” was slander and the purveyor should be prosecuted. This depraved, anti-American bill passed by the Wisconsin Legislature came after the publication and distribution of two “anti-Catholic” comic books (by Jack Chick, Chino, CA) called Alberto and The Godfathers. The idea in Wisconsin was that any man could be anti-Communist, anti-American, anti-abortion, or anti-anything-else, but to be anti-Catholic was to be guilty of CRIMINAL ACTION.
That kind of Fascist stuff is the logical outcome of encouraging Catholics (1984) by sending an Ambassador to the Vatican. The “expert observers” and “authoritative sources” all failed to notice that following that move, the Catholic archbishops in America
began to dictate economic and foreign policies to the senators and congressmen; TV and newspapers backed them up (1984-1986).
The passage before us is naturally missing in the “oldest and best” Alexandrian manuscript (Vaticanus in the Vatican!). What would the Pope want with Hebrews 10:10-14, when it outrightly denied the very heart and center of all Catholic witchcraft: the Mass? So, Hebrews 10 is not found in Vaticanus. It was torn out. (The omission began at 9:14, where all of our buddies—see comments on the verse above—had so much trouble with “THE BLOOD OF CHRIST.” Evidently Bob Jones University, Dr. Thieme, Liberty University, Robert Sumner, Arthur W. Pink, Harry Ironside, John MacArthur, the Scolfield Board of Editors, and the Pacific Coast Bible College all have the same trouble the Pope has when it comes to “the blood of Christ.”)
“Wherefore when he cometh into the world . . .” (vs. 5). This matches Hebrews 1:6, which see. It is when the Lord Jesus shows up here as a man. “... but a body hast thou prepared me” (vs. 5). The citation is from Psalm 40:6-8, “A Psalm of David.” David is plainly prophesying, and the words he speaks of himself, here are applicable to Christ. Notice the same thing in Psalm 22:16-21, 91:11-16, and 69:21. “In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure” (vs. 6). It is a half-truth, for the Lord “smelled a sweet savour” where a saint offered up burnt offerings and sacrifices for sins. He certainly accepted Abel’s and Noah’s sacrifices (Gen. 8:21). However, the remark here is along the line of Amos 4:4-5 and Isaiah 1:11-15 where the offerings ALONE amount to nothing. “The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord” (see Prov. 15:8). What he is talking about here is God refusing to accept those Old Testament sacrifices as final, and when He sends His only begotten Son into the world (John 3:16), His
“pleasure” in animal sacrifices is over. There is only one sacrifice that is going to “do the job.” “A BODY HAST THOU PREPARED ME” (vs. 5). “God the Son” was given a human body to offer as a sacrifice. John understands it exactly: “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” The MAN is a “Lamb” (see Rev. 5:6).
“Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God” (vs. 7). The reader has probably already observed the difference in Psalm 40:6-8 quoted in verse 5 above. There was no “body” in Psalm 40:6-8, but rather “ears” were “opened.” The post-Christian writers of the LXX (writing 100 years after the completion of the New Testament) naturally went back and reconstructed Psalm 40:6-8 to “match” Hebrews. This is what they set out to do originally (see The Mythological Septuagint, 1996; The Christian’s Handbook of Manuscript Evidence, 1970). When Christ came to do the Father’s will (see vs. 7), He came as a slave Who loved His Master (see Exod. 21:6 and comments in that Commentary), and the “opened ear” symbolized two things:
1. The man did not object to wearing a large earring in that ear that could be fastened with a chain, thus making him a “bond servant.”
2. The man’s ear was attentive to listen to his Master’s orders (Eph. 6:6-7) and obey them (1 Tim. 6:1-6). Christ’s ears were “opened” according to Isaiah 50:4, because He came “to do thy will, O God” (vs. 7). The godless revision by the LXX, written more than 200 years after the completion of the New Testament, is cited by all writers WITHOUT ONE REFERENCE TO ONE SEPTUAGINT MANUSCRIPT (see 9:4 and comments). THERE IS NO CASE WHERE ANY COMMENTATOR EVER CITED ANY LXX MANUSCRIPT WHEN QUOTING THE “LXX” BECAUSE HE KNEW THAT WHEN HE SAT DOWN AT THE TYPEWRITER, THE MANUSCRIPT HE
WAS QUOTING WAS WRITTEN BETWEEN A.D. 150 AND A.D. 500.
Liars are born as well as made.
“In the volume of the book it is written of me . . (vs. 7). The original writer is David, but he obviously here is “speaking by the Spirit” of someone else (see Matt. 22:43) and is speaking as Christ (see the same thing in Acts 2:30-31). The thing that was written “in the volume of the book” was Christ’s coming. Observe: “LO, I COME (in the volume of the book it is written of me,)..The “book” is the collection of Scriptures up to the time of David, and in these books, constituting a Book (see 2 Chron. 34:19-27 cf. Deut. 29:27-29), it is written that the Messiah will come. Specifically, it is the Book of the Law which David was to read (Deut. 17:18—20) and meditate in day and night (Psa. 1:2), which says He will come. The references are Genesis 3:15 (showing He will be born), Genesis 22:1-14 (showing He will be sacrificed), Genesis 49:10 (showing He will come as a King), Exodus 12:1-13 (showing He will be prefigured as a Lamb), Exodus 17:1-6 (showing He is the Rock Moses spoke of in Deut. 32:30—31), Deuteronomy 18:18 (showing He will come as a “second Moses”), and Numbers 24:17 (showing a star will accompany His coming as King—see also Matt. 2:1-2). That is what was written “in the volume of the book.” Freerkson (Liberty University) missed all of the connections. Arthur Pink, a five-point Calvinist, missed all of the connections. Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown (after informing us that the “book” should have been a “roll”; my, what “light”!) miss all of the connections because they connected the parenthesis with what followed (“to do thy will”) instead of what was just said: “Then said I, Lo, I COME ...Folks do have a time of it, don’t they?
Harry Ironside gives up and refuses to comment on the passage. Albert Barnes gets it right for one time, but not before correcting the Authorized Version
with “a little head” instead of “book.” (How clear can one get?) “Lo ... in the volume of the little head it is written . . . .” The idea was that the word kephalis (Greek) didn’t mean “book.” Notwithstanding, the ASV did not translate it as “little head,” nor did the NASV, the NIV, the RSV, the NRSV, the NEB, the NWT, or Kenneth the Apostate (Living Bible). Evidently, you just run to “dynamic equivalents” if the “literal equivalents” don’t suit your taste—or as the famous Greek scholar said: “When the copula of the prerogative incipates the particuticle of redundant optopopolus, the reflex accent on the spandola rehyperates the verbal hypothalmia.” Which can only mean ONE thing, and neither I nor anyone else has any idea what it is!
“He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second . . .” (vs. 9). Christ’s coming is “the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth” (Rom. 10:4). He takes away the first testament made with Israel in Exodus 19-21 in that He fulfils the requirements of that Law to the letter (Rom. 10:1-4; Matt. 5:17), including all ten commandments; and then by becoming the sacrifice Himself, He “establishes” a second testament. Hence, it is properly called a “New Testament.” Just as the term New Testament covers a collection of books that deal with events BEFORE the New Testament is established (note, for example, that the New Testament is not even instituted until Matthew 26), so the term Old Testament includes the events of Genesis before the Old Testament with Israel was established. This is what leads the Calvinists off into the bushes about there being only “TWO covenants” (see 9:15, above). They confounded the Old and New Testaments with the Edenic Covenant, the Adamic Covenant, the Noahic Covenant, the Abra- hamic Covenant (which is DUAL in nature, by the way!), the Mosaic Covenant, the Davidic Covenant, the NEW COVENANT (Christ: which, by the way, is DUAL in nature!), AND the eternal Covenant given in
Revelation 22:1-6. Eight covenants through TWO "Testaments.” (The AV is always right. One hundred percent of the “qualified authorities” are always wrong, have always been wrong, and if they run true to form, will remain wrong.)
Pride and unbelief are not proper equipment for understanding the Bible. In their presence, forty years of accredited scholarship and speaking in the “original language” doesn’t amount to a pile of fire ants.
“By the which will . . (vs. 10). This is the “will” just mentioned in verse 9. It is Jesus Christ’s determination (see Luke 22:42) to do the Father’s will (see Matt. 26:42). “We are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ ONCE for all . . (vs. 10). This sanctification is mentioned later in the same chapter at verse 29. This is important, for when the Alexandrian Cult gets to verse 29, they all tear apart at the seams again and look like a video game on the first slug after the player has short-circuited the machine with static electricity. The people of verse 10 are SAVED people; they certainly cannot be said to be “perfected for ever” (vs. 14) while they are “alone in the world without hope and without God . . . dead in trespasses and sins” (Eph. 2). Only a hyper-Calvinist like Cornelius Stam or Arthur Pink could get that screwed up doctrinally. They would have the “elect” perfected in eternity before Genesis 1 (see lengthy comments under Eph. 1:4 in that Commentary).
“And every priest standeth daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, WHICH CAN NEVER TAKE AWAY SINS” (vs. 11).
Now, think about that for a moment. What a tragic statement! Do you realize that there are on this earth more than 400,000,000 professing Christians (and in the past more than four times that number) who are kept in bondage all of their life to a pagan religious system, hoping and hoping that their sins will be taken away when they will NOT BE: “which can NEVER
TAKE AWAY SINS.” Every professing Christian in Spain, France, Austria, Italy, Mexico, South Ireland, South America, and Central America who is counting on that papist in the black clothing to take away his sins in the “mass” (and through prayers to Mary and the saints, novenas, Peter’s pence, contrition, penance, etc.) will wind up in a lake of fire with his sins in his own body (John 8:24; Rev. 22:15).
I look through the National Geographic magazine every once in a while, and I nearly get called as a missionary every time I look through it. In Knoxville, Tennessee, a few years back, I was looking for some pictures to use as a basis for some illustrations in the Book of Revelation. (I made 140 acrylic paintings of Revelation for reproduction onto slides.) You talk about wracking your brain! I was having to paint things that I had never painted in my life and that no one had ever seen in their life! I went through a pile of National Geographic magazines in the library; and the librarian said, “I don’t care what you do with them. You can cut them up if you want to.” I got a razor blade and went to work. I went through about one hundred copies and got about one hundred fifty pictures.
In going through those magazines, I kept coming across pictures of African bush people, natives in the jungles of Sumatra and Malaya, rice growers in Java and Thailand, fishermen on Samoa and the Fiji Islands, and desert dwellers in Arabia and the Gobi.
Naturally, the National Geographic (published by atheists and evolutionists) tries to make them all look happy (“Smile, you’re on Candid Camera!”). But those faces tell the terrible story of Hebrews 10:11 like no Greek text could ever tell it. You see the smiling mouths, but the eyes aren’t smiling. You look at the toothless grins of the aged natives, and you see the wrinkles of sorrow, guilt, and worry. They spell one word: LOST! Their shrunken old eyes stare out and only sparkle with the light of the flames from the sec
ond death. “Alone in the world, without hope and without God.” Going to hell. It upset me badly, man, badly! I’m an artist. I read faces. You wouldn’t fool me about your true state of consecration no matter how piously you talked or what kind of a reputation you had or what kind of myth you had constructed about your “militancy,” “scholarship,” or “dedication.” No, sonny, you won’t fool a portrait painter. I was looking into eyes where light had been turned off; there was no light from God. Dead. Dead faces. Dead eyes. LOST: going to hell! I was reading through there; and 1 felt like closing down the school, resigning the church, and heading for the jungle. These multitudes were dying in their sins. Their priests could not take away sins (vs. H).
I was so burdened for the German people, after returning from a two week trip back in 1980, that I could hardly stand it. I had gazed into nearly one hundred faces that had spoken out loud without saying a word. Among thousands of faces I had seen, there was at least a hundred that said, “WERMACHT. WORLD WAR II. NO AMMO. BELOW FREEZING. BUDDIES DEAD. WIFE RAPED. NEARLY STARVED WHEN I CAME BACK. NO ONE CARES. I’VE NOT TEN YEARS TO LIVE. I’M LOST. I’M GOING TO HELL. I’VE HAD HELL HERE, AND I’LL HAVE WORSE HELL TO COME.” Oh, my God, brother! Oh, my God!! My God!!!
I fell down on my face in the back end of a church in White Plains, North Carolina, while the musicians sang, and cried, “Oh, God! Send someone! Send anyone! I’ll go! If you want me, I’ll start right now! Get somebody! Help! HEEELP!"
That was six years ago. Since then, the Lord has enabled us to reprint Luther’s Bible in modern English print and make it available for one-fourth the price for which it was formerly sold, put out thousands of twenty- four-page cartoon tracts in German, translate four of
our books into German, and (by the grace of God only!) send six young men and their families to Germany. They are on the field now, and we get regular reports on conversions of German “nationals.” Ballard, Sindram, and Johannes (a young woman) went to Austria; and Trosclair, Gilley, Forte, Ludwig, Missar, and Schroeder went to Germany. Do you know why they went there? They went there to tell those people that the one effectual, permanent sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ was enough to:
1. Purify the inner life
2. Cleanse the conscience permanently
3. TAKE AWAY SINS
No "priest” can take them away!
Now, observe the “thrust” (dead-orthodox cliche) of the anti-Catholic passage before us:
1. Christ offered His body ONCE—not twice, not three times, not fifty-two times each year on Sunday morning. He offered His body ONCE (vs. 10). No priest ever “offered” Christ as a sacrifice to anyone—not ONCE since A.D. 33! A Roman Catholic priest is a miserable JOKE, in the light of Hebrews 10.
2. No priest ministering anything can take away anyone’s sins (vs. 11).
3. Christ’s ONE sacrifice (vs. 12) was an ETERNAL sacrifice (see comments under 9:14), and it was so complete (John 19:30) that HE SAT DOWN WHEN HE WAS FINISHED. No priest in the Old Testament could sit down anywhere in the tabernacle: it had no chairs. Nothing was “finished” under the first Testament, so no priest could rest from his works. “Rest from works” (see 4:4, 10 and comments) comes when the Great High Priest of Hebrews 3:1-2 says, “IT IS FINISHED.” That is when He sits down (vs. 12). The blasphemous and unholy Roman Catholics have, in the past, actually produced “Bibles” (1638: removing comma from Bishop’s Bible of 1568) that moved the comma after “for ever” and put it back after “sins,”
thus forcing the word of God to back up their Baalite black magic. This Catholic reading read: “He had offered one sacrifice for sins, (note the comma) FOREVER SAT DOWN ON THE RIGHT HAND OF GOD,” thus blatantly denying the second advent where Christ does NOT stay seated—He returns to earth. Imagine this Catholic reading in the face of over 400,000,000 hypocrites saying that they believe “He COMETH to judge the quick and the dead”! Then they go to a “Eucharist,” where the express purpose of the Holy Spirit was to “SHEW THE LORD’S DEATH TILL HE COME” (1 Cor. 11:26). How does He come if He stays seated at the right hand of God?
4. Christ makes ONE offering (vs. 14), and no Catholic priest was ever asked to offer that offering. No offering like that would be accepted from any Catholic priest if he prayed till he was purple, gold, and scarlet (Rev. 17:4). The mass is a “blasphemous fable and dangerous delusion” (see The Mass, Cup of the Lord or Cup of Devils, Bible Baptist Bookstore, 1981). The heathen “drink offerings of blood” (Psa. 16:4) are said to be the “poison of dragons” (Deut. 32:33), and they come from grapes of “gall” (Deut. 32:32) connected with SODOM AND GOMORRHA (Deut. 32:32).
So here, in five verses, will be found the damnation of Pope John Paul II; Paul VI; John XXIII; Pius IX, X, XI, and XII; and every MAN, WOMAN, AND CHILD FOR 1900 YEARS IF THEY REALLY BELIEVED WHAT THOSE KIND OF MEN TAUGHT AND PRACTICED. Not one Catholic “mass” removed anyone’s sins. It was all a tragic and terrible joke. The work was done before the word “Catholic” appeared in a church creed (A.D. 325). The sacrifice was finished forever before the word “Pope” had been applied to anyone. Salvation was completed—setting apart the saved sinner (“sanctified”) eternally at least 300 years before the term “priest” was even applied to a Chris
tian of any kind. The heart of Roman Catholicism, the very essence of her fundamental teaching, then, is nothing but a ROTTEN DECEPTION. Hebrews 10:10-14 leaves no doubt in anyone’s mind that can read. No one has to “interpret” anything. The blasphemous idolaters who “interpreted” the passage were the Catholic priests who ran it back to John 6 and Malachi 1:11 to give themselves the authority to repeat it. (Well, you know, cover up your dirty lying and say, “continue” —instead of “repeat.” Play with words to try to show us how smart you are.) It is not continued; it is not repeated; it is not reenacted; it is not prolonged; it is not perpetuated; and it is not celebrated. It was ONE time (vs. 10), done to last forever (vs. 14); and any other “sacrifice” in this age is a PHONY. There are no literal sacrifices in the Church Age (see Heb. 13:15). This explains why in thirty years of recorded history of the early church in the Book of Acts, NO CHRISTIAN (JEW OR GENTILE) WAS EVER CAUGHT GOING TO "MASS," OBSERVING "MASS," SAYING "MASS," OR ATTENDING "MASS." The Catholic “mass”—in the Bible—is a “mess.”
10:15 Whereof the Holy Ghost also is a witness to us: for after that he had said before,
16 This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them;
17 And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.
18 Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin.
19 Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus,
20 By a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh;
21 And having an high priest over the house of God;
22 Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water.
23 Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; (for he is faithful that promised;)
24 And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works:
25 Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.
We shall comment on the passage before picking up the trail of the Alexandrian Cult as it blunders and stumbles through verses 10-25. (The reader understands that when we say “The Alexandrian Cult,” we are referring to higher Christian education as it began in Alexandria, Egypt, under Origen and Clement (A.D. 150-280) and proceeded up through Oxford, Rome, Stuttgart, Cambridge, Heidelburg, Halle, Union Theological Seminary, Colgate-Rochester, University of Chicago, Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and eventually to Bob Jones University, Pensacola Christian College, Tennessee Temple Schools, Liberty University, Baptist Bible College, Pacific Coast Bible College, BIOLA, Mid-South, Midwestern, Maranatha, Cedarville, Dallas, and Denver.) We print “THE CREED OF THE ALEXANDRIAN CULT” in nearly every issue of the Bible Believers’ Bulletin (1980-1986), so that the Laodicean believer can see “how the snow drifts” continually. ALL MEMBERS OF THE CULT BELIEVE EXACTLY THE SAME THING IN EVERY DECADE. They are all relative humanists when it comes to final authority.
“Whereof the Holy Ghost also is a witness to us
..(vs. 15). Now, the reader should carefully observe what has happened. Here the writer is speaking as a saved man to saved men. “The Holy Ghost, whom GOD HATH GIVEN TO THEM THAT OBEY HIM ..(Acts 5:32). The Passage was dealing with events that preceded the CHURCH AGE in verses 1-14, so what follows, at least until verse 26, will be the New Testament in application to the Church Age believer. If this seems a little confused to Bleek, Moulton, Davidson, Willmington, Swindoll, MacArthur, Sumner, Freerkson, and Co., it is because they instinctively resent anything that they are too stupid to understand. In spite of their ignorance, here it comes! THE QUOTATIONS FOUND IN HEBREWS 8:8-10 (which see) ARE REPEATED, BUT THIS TIME ONLY PARTIALLY, AND THIS TIME, WITH THE INTENTIONAL AND NOTICEABLE ABSENCE OF ANY REFERENCE TO THE “HOUSE OF ISRAEL” OR THE “HOUSE OF JUDAH.” Read verses 16 and 17.
Here is the first application of the New Covenant to the individual believer who receives Jesus Christ. In Hebrews 8:8-10, we had the second application of the New Covenant—to the combined RACIAL AND POLITICAL UNITY OF THE HEBREWS AS A PEOPLE. Things different are not equal. Don’t expect Dum- melow, Barnes, Alford, Ironside, Pink, Thulock, Jamieson, Faussett, Brown, Davidson, Clark, Farstad, Lange, or Vincent to pick these things up, for picking them up depends not upon “understanding the original Greek” but upon believing God Almighty.
“This is the covenant I will make with them ..(vs. 16). This time the “them” is undefined. You say, “Well, the ‘them’ in Jeremiah 31 is the House of Israel and the House of Judah.” Yes, but the Holy Spirit divided the passage this time and eliminated the House of Israel and the House of Judah. You say, “How can these things be?” Well, look at what Paul did with Habakkuk 1:5 in Acts 13:40-41. Did you ever
see anything so mutilated in your life? Look at what he did with Hosea 1:10-11 in Romans 9:25. That’s nothing—look at what the Lord Jesus did with Isaiah 61:2 in Luke 4:18-19. HE CUT ONE VERSE IN TWO AT A COMMA! A review of the remarks under Hebrews 1:2 should help the student at this point. The Holy Spirit, you see, obeys His own admonition to “Study . . . rightly DIVIDING the word of truth” (2 Tim. 2:15). All blasphemers of the Holy Spirit simply removed the word “STUDY” from that verse. It has been removed in all “reliable translations” recommended by Jerry Falwell, John MacArthur, Bob Jones III, Robert Sumner, and the faculty members of the Alexandrian Cult (ASV, RV, NASV, RSV, NRSV, NIV, NEB, NWT, etc.).
Verses 16 and 17, therefore, apply to anyone who has put their trust and faith in the once-and-for-all (vs. 10) offering of the ONE (vs. 12) true sacrifice which the Lord Jesus made.
“And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more . . (vs. 17). Here we are on doctrinal grounds that are Pauline in this age (see Acts 13:39- 40 and comments in that Commentary).
Verse 19 is self-explanatory. “The holiest” is obviously a reference to the things we talked about under 9:6-24.
“By a new and living way . . (vs. 20). Christ said, “I am the way.” “This way” (see Acts 22:4) is called “heresy” (Acts 24:14), but it is “living” in that the way is a PERSON, exactly as the “BRANCH” (Zech. 6:12) turned out to be a person, and the “Rock” (Deut. 32) turned out to be a person (1 Cor. 10:2-4). A person is “living.”
“Through the veil, that is to say, his flesh . .
(vs. 20). The inner veil of the tabernacle, therefore, represents God’s CLOTHING (see remarks under 1:11- 12), and when Christ’s flesh was torn (see John 19:34) by a Roman spear, this VEIL was torn (see Matt. 27:51).
The typology is inescapable; there is a HOLE in the north end of the universe through which a man can enter! Hence—“I am the door: by me if a man enter in ..(John 10:9). No “astronut” or “cosmonut” with his “batch chains,” “sequential accesses,” “task builders,” “logouts,” “octal numbers,” “object module libraries,” “device drivers,” “form feeders,” or “mnemonic multiusers” knows where the hole is (John 14:4) or how to get there (John 8:21). EDUCATION IS WHAT MAKES SCIENTISTS STUPID, at least any brand of higher education that corrects the Holy Bible.
“The house of God ..(vs. 21) is used like Paul uses it in 1 Timothy 3:15. It is a “household” as in Hebrews 11:7 and Acts 16:30-31.
“Having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience . . (vs. 22). This is showing that the reference is to someone who has trusted the finished work of verses 10-14, for this “pertained to the conscience,” if we are to believe verse 2 (see 9:9, 14). Since it is “the blood” that is involved, we find here a reference along with Isaiah 52:15 to prove that water baptism should be administered by sprinkling. Thus it is that Methodists, Lutherans, Catholics, and Episcopalians, to this day, sprinkle instead of immerse. Their thinking is simple and partly Biblical. They assume that if it is the sprinkling of blood in the Old Testament (see 9:19 for the exact wording) that purges, then it is the sprinkling of blood in the New Testament (see Isaiah 52:15 for the exact wording) that accomplishes the same thing. However, this overlooks a salient truth: BAPTISM IS NOT JUST A PICTURE OF CHRIST’S DEATH. Baptism is a picture of death, burial, and resurrection (see Rom. 6:1-4). You do not stand a man up against a tree when he dies and throw dirt at him; you bury him. Water baptism, to be Bible baptism, has to be a BURIAL (see 1 Cor. 15:12, 29, 35). The Catholics blew it again. In 1,700 years of history, they didn’t have ONE “Vicar of Christ” (not ONE) who taught
Scriptural baptism. They don’t have one now. [See the article entitled “The True Belief of Pope John Paul II” in the Bible Believers’ Bulletin, February, 1985, p. 4.]
“And our bodies washed with pure water . .
(vs. 22). Now, Jamieson, Faussett, and Brown come to pieces “once and for all, forever” and state that the reference is to water baptism which is the “SACRAMENTAL SEAL APPLIED TO THE OUTER MAN” (p. 1428). Observe that they chose the word “seal” so that you would think that baptism replaced circumcision, for that is the term (“seal”) used for circumcision in Romans 4:11. We call this fouled-up mess “Covenant Theology,” and it means that the unsaved sinner is counting on water to put him into the “New Covenant.” It puts you into water. (Read that again. A lot of people have trouble with that “in depth” truth.) We are “sealed sacramentally” (p. 1429) in the Jamieson, Faussett, and Brown commentary. Dummelow follows the water dogs and tells us that the water here is water baptism (p. 1008). Moffatt backs this up by running over to Titus 3:5 and retranslating it to say “by the water that MEANS regeneration.” No water means “regeneration.” WATER IS THE INSTRUMENT OF THE FIRST BIRTH (see Gen. 1:20; Prov. 5:18-19; Isa. 48:1; John 3:3-7)—never the second birth.
Williams and Pink (two five-point Calvinists, and one of them a hyper-dispensationalist) get the passage right for a change. It was figurative. Now, notice how the Holy Spirit prepared the believer for this Biblical interpretation way back in Ezekiel 36:25 (which, by the way, C. I. Scofield gave as a cross reference for the new birth in John 3!). Here we find: “Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you.” Look at what follows: “... I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of FLESH” (Ezek. 336:26). Literal? Why, of course not—they had a heart of flesh
from the day that they were born. So does everyone else. Saul’s “new heart” (1 Sam. 10:9) that changed him into “another man” (1 Sam. 10:6) was not a HEART TRANSPLANT of a literal, bi-valved blood pumper. Furthermore, there is no “PURE” water on this earth now that would have any effect on a man’s body, heart, or conscience. There WILL be (see Ezek. 47:8-12), but that is a millenial situation. The “heart” in this passage (Heb. 10:22) was SPRINKLED from “an evil conscience”—“an evil conscience” is not tangible physically. The passage is talking about the application of the blood of Christ (see comments under 9:14) to the inner life of the believer, and since WATER is connected with this blood (see John 19:34 and 1 John 5:6-9), an application is made to the body so that a Jewish believer will get the connection between purifying by water sprinkling (see John 2:6 and comments in that Commentary) and the New Testament salvation. The body (literally) is “washed” only in the sense that it becomes a temple of the Holy Ghost belonging to God, from which “all filthiness” is to be cleansed (2 Cor. 7:1). The blood of Christ washes this body (literally), as we have stated in Hebrews 9:14, but obviously this is a spiritual operation in the spirit world (see 9:14 and comments). (The scholars cannot discern the words “literally” and “spiritually” as compatible. They forever think that “literally” means PHYSICALLY, that is the handicap that you get from having Japheth as your progenitor instead of Shem!)
Being unable to explain any of these matters, Liberty University (Freerkson) gives us this “nugget.” “This verb (Greek, proserchontai) can simply mean ‘to come to.’ Yet in this chapter, its meaning is semi-technical and refers to the approach of the worshipper of God, which is a COMMON USAGE IN THE SEPTUAGINT (Moulton and Milligan, The Voc. of the Greek New Testament, p. 547).”
Manuscript? Freerkson wouldn’t dare give you any
manuscript evidence. There are no B.C. Septuagint manuscripts quoted by ANYONE in either Testament.
“Proserchomai, ” was it? What light did you get from the “semi-technical” use of proserchomai? What light was there that wasn’t already in the ONE SYLLABLE ENGLISH WORDS: “Let us draw near . . .”? None. They are pulling your leg (PTL—pulling the leg!). That is how Swindoll and MacArthur made a living; that is how Wuest and Zodhiates made their living. That is how Custer and Panosian made theirs. Murphy’s law: If you are confused, make the problem look complicated, whether it is or not.
“Let us” is found three times in the passage:
1. “Let us draw near ..(vs. 22)
2. “Let us hold fast..(vs. 23)
3. “Let us consider ..(vs. 24)
A fourth could possibly have been “Let us exhort .. .” (vs. 25), but the Holy Spirit did not see fit to write the phrase in that fashion.
“Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering . . (vs. 23). The scholars will begin to waver, for this sentence reminds them horribly of 3:6 and 3:14, which, if you will remember, not one of them could handle with “binmaries,” “change mode,” “delimiters,” “hard copy terminals,” “subroutines,” “secondary pools,” “log-ins,” “file specs,” or “cursors.” (Each trade has its own terminology to make you think that something big is going on—that way you are willing to pay more for it [see 1 Tim. 6:10 in any AV—it is missing from the RV, RSV, NRSV, ASV, NSV, NIV, NEB, and NWT\.)
Briefly, the writer gives us some doctrinal relief before plunging into the passage (vss. 26-31) that scatters the Alexandrian Cult like a bird dog leaping into a covey of quail. What is about to follow is another tribulation passage like 3:14 and 6:1-6, where Pink, Sumner, Rice, Ironside, Scofield, Barnes, Jamiesson, Faussett, Brown, Williams, Stibbs, Dummelow,
Moulton, Davidson, Bleek, Alford, Hort, Vaughn, and Dods are forced to locate a lost man who was saved, was lost and never got saved, was saved and then stayed saved, or was lost and stayed lost. Having never “studied” any Holy Bible, EVERY MAN LISTED PROFESSED TO HAVE READ ONLY “RELIABLE TRANSLATIONS"—they came into the passage (vss. 26-31) like a Catholic bishop entering a North Carolina camp meeting: totally unequipped!
“Unto love and to good works ..(vs. 24). This matches the Pauline admonitions found in Titus 2:12 and 3:1, 8. However, what is about to follow (see the “works” in verses 32-35) reflects back to that famous “all works” passage in Matthew (Matt. 25:36-39), where to be rich is to be damned (see Psalms 10, 35, 37, 72, and 74; James 2:1-8, 5:1-7; and Job 20-21, 24). EVERY PASSAGE GIVEN IS A TR1BULA77ON PASSAGE: there isn’t a Church Age passage doctrinally in the entire list. In the tribulation, the “poor” (see Psa. 10, 35, 37) are right and the “rich” (see Psa. 37, 72, 74) are WRONG. (Don’t you wish sometimes that the Lord would make up His mind? Isn’t it too bad that He doesn’t write His Book like scholars think that He should, where the train of thought would continue without interruption for at least two chapters?) The Holy Spirit switches from the Church Age to the tribulation and back at least five times in the Book of Hebrews, and the Alexandrian Cult is as helpless to follow His “moves” as DeLorean at Indianapolis trying to keep up with Petty, A. J. Foyt, and Bobby Unser.
Of course, anyone can find spiritual applications. We are to stir up the brethren about living for God and get them “excited” about good works and loving one another as “brethren.” We are to assemble at regular intervals (vs. 25), and we are to assemble more often each year than we did the year before (vs. 25). “AND SO MUCH THE MORE, as ye see the day approaching” (vs. 25). Although “the day” is obviously
a Second Advent passage (see comments on vss. 26- 31), it still is “approaching” those of us in the Church Age also . We are to exhort each other “more and more” and assemble together “more and more” and not conduct ourselves “as the manner of some is.” These forsake the “assembling.” They do not like the preacher. They object to a prayer altar. They object to a deacon board. They do not like the singing. They get nothing out of the service and feel worse when they leave than when they came. So they quit coming. Now, although these complaints may be true in a good many cases, they are rarely true of the people who quit Bible-believing, Bible-preaching assemblies. In this day of rampant humanism, most of the reasons why Bible-believing people quit Bible-believing churches is simply because they don’t want to be preached at and told what to do. Of course, there are cases where the Holy Spirit vacates the place due to sin. There are cases where the congregational singing would put a Chihuahua to sleep. There are places where the poor wimp in the pulpit believed what he was taught at Bob Jones and Tennessee Temple, and so he corrected the word of God every time he got up. There are cases where funds have been misappropriated, etc. In all of these cases there is some justification for leaving, but nine times out of ten, the “forsaking” is due to the fact that the forsaker cannot LIVE THE WORLDLY LIFE THAT HE WISHES TO LIVE AND STAY IN GOOD STANDING WITH THE BRETHREN IN THE ASSEMBLY. “As the manner of some is . . (vs. 25). The modern “Christian” cannot stand “sound doctrine” (see 2 Tim. 4:1-6), and he bitterly resents absolute authority (2 Peter 2:10). The faculty members of modern Christian colleges and universities would probably rather go to hell than to yield to the HOLY BIBLE as final. They consider their opinions to be final.
From the standpoint of the Church Age, the reader is to keep on professing Christ as Saviour (vs. 23); to
go to that Saviour constantly in prayer, fully confident that he is “accepted in the beloved” (Eph. 1:6); to help other Christians and stir them up to love God and God’s words (vs. 24); to multiply his “assemblies” due to the present “evil world” (Gal. 1:4); and to continually exhort his brothers and sisters in Christ to be patient unto “the coming of the Lord” (vs. 25). Every “fifth Sunday” will no longer do. As a matter of fact, the time is long past (1950), when three services a week would sustain the moral strength and spiritual life of the American Christian. With the pressure in the schools and the influence of TV and the newspapers, no Christian in this land could stay spiritual with three services a week, unless God had placed him where that was all that he could get (or less). Taped sermons and taped Bible studies will have to augment the life of an American Christian who attends church less than three times a week. As “the day” approaches, “worldliness” will double in pressure; the assembly times should be doubled.
You see, there is just something about “getting together” with Christians that does you good as long as your own heart is right, and even when it is not right, it can “get right” better in that kind of company than elsewhere. If all you do, however, is come to the assembly and sit there “knowing all you know” thinking, “Now, if you knew about Brother So-and-so what I know about Brother-so-and-so,” you will be just as miserable as a dead dog. You will cut no one’s “guts” out, really, except your own. Some backsliders make it their life-long projects to know everything about everyone’s personal lives; it makes them feel better. It is kind of like a two-legged piece of manure walking around examining garbage cans in hopes that he can find something dirtier than himself. If you can come to the assembly, though, looking for a blessing (and praying for one, if you find it hard to hope for one!) and let the music work on you, let the word of God work on
you, and look for an opportunity to do something for the Lord, you will stay “fired up” until the rapture. In the fireplace, we have a bed of coals after the logs have burned a while. All of the coals are together in a group, hot and glowing. Did you know that you can take ONE of those coals and pull it out of the coal bed, set it by itself, and in a matter of a few minutes, it will be COLD: dead. When those coals stay together, they “rub off on each other.”
Did you know that the Lord has blessed me with what most ministers would call a “curse”?
You say, “Well, how can that be?”
Well, I was an evangelist for twelve years; a full-time evangelist living entirely by faith with no newspaper, no “evangelisitc corporation,” and no denomination or church to back me up. If ever there lived a man that you would have said LACKED pastoral qualifications, it would have been me—even back in 1949-1961. I didn’t seem to have one “pastoral” attribute. When I came to Brent Baptist Church in 1960, I pastored it longer than any pastor that they had ever since the church was started (1945). I have now pastored the Bible Baptist Church for nearly sixteen years.
Now, a “pastor” should have a natural love for people as PEOPLE, as well as individuals. Further, he should have a nearly perfect memory in regard to the right name being associated with the right face. I have never had either of these “blessings.” I can remember the position of a house and the rooms in that house forty years after I have been in the house (having been there less than ten hours), but I could no more tell you the name of a family that I stayed with for a week during a revival meeting held twenty years ago than I could crawl to Jupiter. When a man meets me in a plane terminal and says, “Hello, there, Brother Ruckman! Remember ME?” I am the most miserable critter that ever fell out of a box car. I have taught some young men for three years in the classroom and could
not have recognized them at graduation if their names had not been on a piece of paper. I can remember a man’s face if I SEE HIS NAME WRITTEN. I cannot remember his name if I see his face. How is that for a handicap to the pastorate? Further, I love or “like” people as INDIVIDUALS, never en masse. “People,” per se, normally mean nothing to me at all. My burden for the German people as a PEOPLE is the most unusual and non-fitting thing about my entire ministerial approach. I have that burden for no other people as a group. People are just “people” to me. I know dogs that are more loyal, brave, and tenacious. A man’s life was worth six cents when I was a young man (Infantry: 1936-1947)—any man’s life. I was raised on that. I have some close friends (not many), and I have hundreds of good, lively, healthy enemies. A man needs both. I have always had enough friends who respected me to keep me happy, and I have always had enough enemies who hated me to keep me alert. I figure that’s a good balance. As Hagar the Horrible would say, “Friends may come and go, but one good enemy will last a lifetime!”
But to return to the “assembling of yourselves,” do you know when my pastoral attitude about people is a great blessing? It is a great blessing every time I mount the pulpit to preach, because I am never prejudiced in favor of anyone. What you know about the individual lives of the members of your congregation will not affect and twist your message because IT IS OF NO IMPORTANCE TO YOU. How is that for a blessing? I can be with Christians (say four or five hundred of them) and know all kinds of things about them that are just terrible and still love them in the Lord and overlook their failures because they aren’t going to make enough of a wave in my life to affect me one way or another. I don’t have any problems “assembling” with the brethren. They may get ulcers over my presence, but I enjoy theirs. I can’t imagine a
Sunday without being with a bunch of Christians. I can’t imagine it. I’ve only been out of church three Sundays in thirty-six years: once after a train wreck, once when I had the flu, and once when I nearly got my right eye knocked out in a hockey game. I don’t believe in “forsaking the assembling of yourselves together.” I will find an assembly somewhere that can be a blessing to me (and vice versa) if I have to drive 200 miles.
10:26 For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins,
27 But a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries.
28 He that despised Moses' law died without mercy under two or three witnesses:
29 Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace?
30 For we know him that hath said, Vengeance belongeth unto me, I will recompense, saith the Lord. And again, The Lord shall judge his people.
31 It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
Now, we hit the greatest passage that closes down all of the Christian colleges, seminaries, and universities. It rears its fearful head in Hebrews 10 and dares the “good, godly, dedicated, qualified authorities” to meet it head on. They go through it and come out of the engagement like grated cheese coming out of a shredder. In their ignorant and obstinate stupidity, they will NOT take the words at face value and believe them. Evidently, they have “religious convictions"
“The grammatical forms of verse 29 are very significant.” (No, they are not!) “The three particular definitive sins are expressed by three aorist participles used adjectivally.” (You mean that you can’t understand the passage, so you want us to recognize your education!) “Aorist participles normally express antecedent action and possibly even simultaneous time . . .”
Where is all of this rubbish coming from? Page 701 of the Liberty Bible Commentary, published by the Old Time Gospel Hour (Lynchburg, VA). Old time?
After all of that gas, what do you suppose Freerkson actually says about the passage? “HE IS DESCRIBING A HYPOTHETICAL SITUATION” (p. 702). No, you’re an hypothetical Bible teacher who never existed!
According to Ironside, you have to willfully sin (vs. 26) HABITUALLY, because “the verb is the present participle.” God will not save any man who examines the Old Testament and the New Testament (p. 124). If you refuse the “testimony” of the Holy Spirit, you are lost forever (p. 125). “Sanctification” was not really actual but only “positional” (IT WAS ACTUAL IN THE SAME CHAPTER; LOOK AT VERSES 10 and 14!), so the lost person in the passage was sanctified as part of the “professing church” (p. 125) even though he wasn’t in it! (Bless you, brother. We all have our problems!)
Here goes the Cult! Full steam ahead! “Greek . . . full knowledge of the truth ... A later sense of the truth . . . Alford strangely translates as the Greek usually means . . . Sanctified in the fullest sense belongs only to the SAVED ELECT. But in some sense it belongs to those WHO HAVE GONE A FAR WAY IN CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE AND YET FALL AWAY AT LAST” (p. 1043). That is, here are three five-point Calvinists (Jamieson, Faussett, and Brown) teaching ARM IN I AN ISM.
Boy! When that old roaring lion from 1611 comes thundering out of the underbrush, guns, ammunition, sun helmets, back packs, spears, canteens, and boots go all over the place; don’t they?
“Willful sin is the repudiation of the covenant” (Nicols, GENT, p. 348). It is? Is there anyone reading this page who has not wilfully sinned SINCE he was saved? “This sole means of purification, the sanctifying virtue of which the supposed apostate HAS EXPERIENCED, he now counts common or unclean” (p. 349). So, he goes to hell (p. 349). How is that for good Church Age, Pauline doctrine? Nicols and Dods (GENT) must have been up all night snuffin’ “nose candy.”
In an effort to keep the apostate lost, Stibbs (New Bible Commentary) slyly juggles his English words around so they come out like this: “He has denied the sacred significance to that blood which had made him the COVENANT SEAL (see “Covenant Theology” above) OF HIS OWN SANCTIFICATION.” That is what the passage did NOT say. It said the man was “sanctified” (vs. 29) BY THE “BLOOD OF THE COVENANT.” Ah, there is nothing like “faithful men” who take “bold, militant stands” for the “plenary, verbally inspired original autographs,” is there?
Dummelow chickens out on “wherewith he was sanctified” and decides to comment on “sin wilfully” (before the verse) and then on “were illuminated” (vs. 32). Verses 29 and 30 stand frozen, alone, like two cold snow men in the Arctic tundra. Dummelow knew he couldn’t handle either verse. He didn’t even try to bluff his way through.
But the greatest slaughter is saved for last. Here comes old Arthur “Sovereign Grace” Pink with his TULIP in one hand and a Greek lexicon in the other. He will “straighten us out,” surely! I mean, what would we poor, dumb, stupid BIBLE BELIEVERS do without the aid of these “great, godly, good, dedicated, DESTRUCTIVE BIBLE CRITICS" who don't know what
they are talking about? Torrey, Riley, Scofield, and even Spurgeon were sometimes intimidated by these phonies. Billy Sunday never was.
“The general truth here set forth is that should those who have been converted AND BECOME CHRISTIANS apostasize from Christ, their state would be hopeless” (p. 609). He hasn’t said anything. He has made the whole passage hypothetical. The “willful sin” here is unpardonable because the “Greek word will not permit” of the AV changing “willingly” to “wilfully.” Who “is in danger of committing it? THE ANSWER IS ALL WHO MAKE A PROFESSION OF FAITH IN THE LORD JESUS” (p. 611).
Arminianism, taught by a five-point TULIP Calvinist. Surely, genuine born-again Christians "PROFESS FAITH IN THE LORD JESUS.” Pink doesn’t know where he is or what he is doing. “It is to be carefully noted that the Apostle Paul did not say ‘if YE sin willingly,’ but ‘if WE sin willingly,’ thus including himself’ (p. 610). Having “blown” the exposition completely by calling your attention to this, Pink now tries to tell us that this was done to “soften a little the severity of this terrible warning.” Nonsense! Read Romans 11:22 and Galatians 5:12. Since this was “bushwah,” Pink tells us that he lied to “emphasize the unvarying outworking of this law; no exceptions are made ... the apostle includes HIMSELF to show that even he himself could not look to escape the divine vengeance here denounced IF HE FELL INTO THE SIN HERE DESCRIBED” (p. 611).
A five-point Calvinist teaching pure Arminianism!
Pink finally senses that he has overdrawn his bank account, for when faced with “the blood of the covenant, WHEREWITH HE WAS SANCTIFIED” (vs. 29), the old five-point TULIP-picker suddenly realizes that this is a denial of Calvin’s doctrine of “LIMITED ATONEMENT.” No unsaved man is "sanctified by the blood” in Calvin’s system. This means the culprit who
apostasized in the passage was a SAVED ELECT WHO LOST HIS SALVATION AND WENT TO HELL. Pink couldn’t face it any more than Dabney, Gill, Kuyper, Hodge, or any other “Reformed Theologian,” SO HE JUST REFUSED TO COMMENT ON THE WHOLE VERSE AND EVERYTHING IN IT (vs. 29). Pink had just spent more than sixty lines on “if we sin wilfully,” but when he got to “wherewith he was sanctified,” he omitted the blood (vs. 29), the covenant (vs. 20), the punishment (vs. 29), “the Spirit of grace” (vs. 29), and the unholy thing (vs. 29).
Tetanus: lockjaw! Calvin had that problem with 2 Peter 2:1, where Christ’s blood BOUGHT (paid for) the sins of the unsaved “dogs” and “pigs” (2 Pet. 2:22).
At every turn there is disaster. While speaking of “the wavering warned: Jewish sacrifices have lost their efficacy; it is Christ or the judgment” (New Scofield Reference Bible, p. 1321), the board of editors forgot that the context was “his people” (the Lord’s People) in verse 30 and that they were “sanctified” (vs. 29). They had been serving God by helping the born-again, soul-winning writer out (vss. 32-34). If he is Paul, and so say most, these are UNSAVED JEWS WHO ARE HELPING PAUL OUT! Can you imagine that in view of Acts 17:13, 20:19; Galatians 5:1-4; and 1 Thessalonians 2:16? No, that would take a “Scofield Board of Editors” to dig up THAT ONE. Those addressed already had a “confidence” that would bring a “REWARD” (vs. 35) and were going to receive a “PROMISE” after doing “the will of God” (vs. 36). “What promise? The promise of the Spirit (Acts 2:38)? WHY, IN THE CHURCH AGE NO ONE RECEIVES THE PROMISE OF THE SPIRIT FOR LIVING BY FAITH (vs. 38) OR BY DOING THE WILL OF GOD (vs. 36), unless you make doing the will of God a reference to another tribulation epistle: 1 John 3:23 in the context of Hebrews 10:26-36. “The will of God” had nothing to do with that at all; it had to do with enduring to the
end (vs. 38) and refusing to go along with the son of PERDITION (see vs. 39). “We,” in verse 39, is the author as in verse 26. If his bunch are “not of them who draw back unto perdition” (but some of his bunch are—see vs. 38), IS HIS BUNCH SAVED OR LOST, or both?
It is time again to abandon the Conservative scholars, the Greek grammarians, the Fundamentalists, the dead Orthodox commentators, the “Spirit-filled” Bible teachers, and the “historic positions” of deluded children whose infidelity is only surpassed by their confusion.
1. The verses are aimed at tribulation Jews according to the quotations given from the Old Testament (Deut. 32:30-36). To cover this up as much as possible, the New Scofield Board of Editors refused to print the cross reference by either verse and put it under “w” beside verse 34.
2. The “we” in every place identifies a HEBREW who is writing to Hebrews.
3. The “fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries” (vs. 27) was a direct reference to Malachi 4:1-4 and 2 Thessalonians 1:8-9. To make sure that you would lose both connections, the New Scofield Reference Bible listed NO REFERENCES FOR THE VERSE. The cross references to this verse are Isaiah 5:24, 26:11, 30:27, 30, 33:12, 66:15-16; Jeremiah 50:32, 51:58; Ezekiel 38:22; Hosea 8:14; Matthew 3:10-12; 13:30; and Zephaniah 1:18, 3:8. That is one half of the verses. The Scofield Board evidently never studied the Bible.
4. Moses is brought into it at verse 28 so that you would read the “song of Moses” and the blessing of Moses (Deut. 31-32); and to insure that you wouldn’t foul up everything like Freerkson, Pink, Ironside, Sumner, Zodhiates, Willmington, Zeller, Moulton, Milligan, Hort, Davidson, Dods, Stibbs, and Nicols fouled it up.
you were told that the “SONG OF MOSES,” quoted in Hebrews 10:30-31, was sung by TRIBULATION SAINTS (Rev. 15:3); NOT CHURCH AGE SAINTS.
But the double identification was wasted effort: Greek scholars never could read plain English where it was plain. “Greekitis” is terminal.
5. “The Lord shall judge HIS people” (vs. 30) tied the rag on the bush. Any fool would know at one glance that “his people” in a letter written to “Hebrews” was to the JEWS (exactly as James writes: James 1:1), not the “sovereign elect of the sovereign God by His sovereign grace where the covenant of grace had the seal of the blankety-blank-blank, etc.” No five-point Calvinist could even land on the passage, let alone take off.
6. “It Is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (vs. 31). Not at all, if “his people” is a reference to saved Christians in the church; not at all, not in the least. As a matter of fact, since the saints are in His hands (Deut. 33) and cannot be taken out (John 10) and the ones in THIS age are PART OF HIS HANDS (see 1 Cor. 12:18-26), there could be no better place to be in this world than in “the hands of the living God.” Someone not only has their wires crossed, but their circuits closed, their generators busted, their alternators cracked, and their batteries full of buttermilk.
The Book is just too difficult for them. I tell my young men (about 520 in the last nineteen years) that if I were them and going out to start a new work, 1 would not teach the Book of Hebrews verse-by-verse to my people for at least three years. I wouldn’t touch it until then. “The hands of the living God,” to start with, is a figurative expression (like John 15:1-5) and has to do with getting in a position where you have to deal with God directly. He deals with you in judgment and gives you “what you have coming to you.” It is true that such expressions are sometimes used in the sense
of “anthropomorphisms” (which simply means God likens His “heart” to a man’s heart [see Gen. 6:6, for example] or His “eyes” to a man’s eyes [see Prov. 15:3, for example]), but either way it is difficult. One bright fellow fresh out of seminary got up in a country pulpit and wasted fifty minutes of the congregation’s time proving there was a God by using such terms as omnipotence, theophanies, omniscience, communicable attributes, and “anthropomorphisms.” When he finished, one old saint said to him, “I don’t care what you say, preacher; I STILL BELIEVE THERE IS A GOD.”
Now, let us learn Bible doctrine, in spite of these amateurs who fancy themselves to be Bible teachers. In the great tribulation, God is dealing with the Hebrews, for it is “the time of Jacob’s trouble” (Jer. 30:7), not the church’s troubles. Hebrews, in the tribulation, will be sacrificing at an altar at Jerusalem when the Antichrist shows up (see Rev. 11:1-4 and comments in that commentary). Under the preaching of Moses and Elijah, they trust Christ and are sanctified by His blood. They must endure to the end (Matt. 24:13) to be saved, so they are exhorted to do this in verses 36-39 (below). The willful sin of verse 26 WOULD HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH ABANDONING THE MOSAIC LAWS AT ALL, although it would at the first advent when the epistle was written. Notice again the double application. Hebrews 10:10— 16 is for the first century Jewish reader who has trusted Christ. Hebrews 10:26 is “the great transgression” (Psa. 19:13) connected with the blasphemy of the Holy Ghost (see Matt. 12; Mark 3), and it will be committed in the tribulation by some of God’s people: hence the constant warnings (Dan. 11:32-35; Hebrews 3:6, 14, 6:1-6, 10:26-33; Rev. 14:9-12, 13:8-11).
ALL CORRECT BIBLE DOCTRINE IS ESTABLISHED AND CONFIRMED BY BELIEVING THE ENGLISH TEXT AS IT STANDS IN ANY EDITION OF THE AV 1611, AND EVERY FALSE TEACHING ON
THE PASSAGE CAME FROM A FUNDAMENTALIST OR CONSERVATIVE SINNER WHO FANCIED THAT HE WAS A SCHOLAR BY “GOING TO THE GREEK”or was dumb enough to be intimidated by the reputation of that class of sinners. I don’t know of one exception in 380 years.
It will be a “fearful thing” for a disobedient servant (Matt. 25:30, for example) to fail to “endure to the end” (see Matt. 24:51, for example) and take the mark of the beast (see Rev. 14:9, 11, for example) and LOSE HIS SALVATION (see Matt. 25:1-30, for example) and GO TO HELL (see Matt. 25:41, for example) because HE LACKED THE WORKS TO BE SAVED (see Matt. 25:31-41, for example).
The Scriptures have spoken. They never erred once. The AV from 1611 was never obscure a single time. Not one word in any verse of any edition of the Authorized Version was “off base, ” and no man who believed those words could have gotten into the bloody mess that the Greek scholars and Baptist commentators got into when they tried to apply five-point Calvinism to a book that they knew nothing about. They would have been safer playing with lightning at 40,000 feet in the pavilion of a thunderstorm.
The bottom line is Marvin R. Vincent, D.D. (Word Studies), who probably destroyed nearly as many ministerial students as Kenneth Wuest and Spiros Zodhi- ates by leading them to think that real truth could only be found in the “original Greek.” Vince-baby sails into the passage like a truck with no brakes going down Grandfather Mountain. He tells us that God is not about to take “vengeance” on anyone (vs. 30) because that is an “UNFORTUNATE [Boy, have we heard that one before!] TRANSLATION.” He then tells us that verse 31 is “LITERALLY FROM THE LXX.” Don’t lie, Doc. There was no LXX before the writer wrote Hebrews; that’s why you didn’t cite the LXX manuscript. They never do. Not once in 300 years does anyone who
believes in the LXX give you the manuscript evidence
there isn’t any! Vince knew it. The culprit in Hebrews 10 “forsakes Christ” and returns to Judaism (p. 504), so the willful sin is “the abandonment of Christianity for Judaism” (p. 503). Since no one knows what “Christianity” is (It is not a Bible term!), one guess is as good as another.
Nobody gets any “fiery indignation” (vs. 27) because the term really means “fervent of spirit” or “boil” or “zeal” or “envy” (p. 503). Yeah, in a pig’s eye. The fire in Matthew 13:30 at the advent (13:40) is “FIRE,” even though “the field is the world, the harvest is the end of the age, the angels are the reapers, etc.” THE “FIRE” IS THE FIRE (Matt. 13:40), and the adversaries will be burned up with “UNQUENCHABLE FIRE” (Matt. 3:9-12). Vincent says that this “vengeance” cannot be because it is “vindictive” (p. 505). Vincent is bonkers. If Deuteronomy 32:39-42 is not “vindictiveness,” you never saw the word in a dictionary. Vincent just studied Greek for so long trying to construct “word studies” to bring out the “meaning of the original,” that he blew all of his brains out of his nose. If ekdikeses (vengeance) does not convey the “idea of vindictiveness” (which “does not reside in the word,” according to Vince), then you had better change the “original Greek” and line it up with Deuteronomy 32:39-42, for that is what is quoted. Often THE ENGLISH SHEDS LIGHT ON THE “GREEK. ” Ever heard that one before?
You see, we not only say that, but we demonstrate it time and time and time again. The apostates who resent those demonstrations simply ignore them and pretend that such a thing could not be possible. It is possible, it happens continually, and we demonstrate it.
Hebrews 10:26-31 is aimed at a tribulation Jew who gets saved and takes the mark of the beast (or turns back to sin—Luke 21:34) and LOSES HIS SAL
VATION. This interpretation meets all of the demands of every word in every verse in the passage.
10:32 But call to remembrance the former days, in which, after ye were illuminated, ye endured a great fight of afflictions;
33 Partly, whilst ye were made a gazingstock both by reproaches and afflictions; and partly, whilst ye became companions of them that were so used.
34 For ye had compassion of me in my bonds, and took joyfully the spoiling of your goods, knowing in yourselves that ye have in heaven a better and an enduring substance.
35 Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompense of reward.
36 For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise.
37 For yet a little while, and he that shall come will come, and will not tarry.
38 Now the just shall live by faith: but if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him.
39 But we are not of them who draw back unto perdition; but of them that believe to the saving of the soul.
The anti-Baptist refrain continues without let-up: works, works, works (vss. 33-36); and even though the reader is told, “Now the just shall live by faith . . .” (vs. 38), as in the Pauline epistles (Rom. 1:17), he is told (as he is NOT told in the Pauline epistles) that he can “draw back” (vs. 38) and that when he draws back, he draws “back unto perdition” (vs. 39) as opposed to the “saving of the soul.” The man is lost. In the Pauline epistles, no child of God is lost (Rom. 8:31-39) no matter when, where, how, what, why, or who he draws back to (see Rom. 8:38; 1 Cor. 1:7-8; and Phil. 1:6). If Hebrews 10:35-39 is “Pauline,” it is
not the Pauline doctrines taught in Romans and Galatians.
“But call to remembrance ... ye endured a great fight of afflictions ... ye were made a gazingstock . . . reproaches and affictions . . . companions of them that were so used” (vss. 32-33). Now, for a moment, turn to Matthew, Psalms, James, and Job and look at the remarkable similarity between these passages and Hebrews:
“If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, And one of you say unto them . . . EVEN SO faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone” (James 2:15-17).
“Got to now, ye rich men, weep and howl . . . . your riches are corrupted ... Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days” (James 5:1-3). “. . . so also shall the RICH man fade away in his ways” (James 1:11).
“Hath not God chosen the POOR of this world rich in faith ... But ye have despised the POOR. Do not RICH men oppress you ... ?” (James 2:5-6).
“The RICH man shall lie down . . . Terrors take hold on him as waters, a tempest stealeth him away in the night.... For God shall cast upon him” (Job 27:19-22).
“Be not thou afraid when one is made RICH . . . his glory shall not descend after him” (Psa. 49:16-17).
“He hath swallowed down RICHES, and he shall vomit them up again ... He shall suck the poison of asps” (cf. Deut. 32:32!!) “Because he hath oppressed and hath forsaken the POOR” (Job 20:15-16, 19).
“Thou hast taken a pledge from thy brother for nought, and stripped the naked of their clothing. Thou hast not given water to the weary to drink, and thou hast withholden bread from the hungry . . . . Thou hast sent widows away empty, and the arms of the fatherless have been broken” (Job 22:6- 7, 9).
“For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: ... I was in prison, and ye came unto me” (Matt. 25:35- 36).
How did Sumner, Rice, Willmington, Gray, Scroogie, Scofield, Scarborough, Pettingill, Barnhouse, Kirban, Lindsey, Swindoll, MacArthur, English, Zeller, Anderson, Solson, Farstad, Freerkson, Hindson, and Zodhiates miss all of this? How could they have failed to see the condition of the “POOR” in Psalms 9:18, 10:2, 9, 34:6, 35:10, 37:14, 68:10, 72:2, 4, 12, 74:19; Isaiah 10:30, 32:7; and TWO DOZEN MORE PLACES EXACTLY LIKE THEM?
The “rich” in the tribulation go where the rich man went in Luke 16. The “poor” in the tribulation go where Lazarus went in Luke 16. To be rich is to be damned. NO GREEK OR HEBREW SCHOLAR COULD GET ANY OF IT TOGETHER TO EXPLAIN ANYTHING! English (AV) reveals what is concealed in Greek and Hebrew, at least if we are to judge by the documented factual evidence as it appears in print. The scholars listed above were not searching for Biblical truth: they were “using” the Bible to confirm their own ministries.
We can talk all we like about the present practical application of Hebrews 10:32-35 to “Paul’s friends helping him out while he was in prison, “ but I don’t recall any case in the Book of Acts where an “illuminated” Jew (vs. 32) became a COMPANION of a Christian (vs. 33) and, at the same time, a “gazingstock” (a reference to a man put in a pillory as a public spectacle at which to gaze) by Jews who afflicted him (vss. 32- 33) WHILE HE WAS STILL AN UNSAVED MAN GOING TO HELL.
Do you know of any case like that? Where is it? Paul was not in jail in Acts 9-13, nor was he in jail in Acts 15-20. “For ye had compassion on me IN MY
BONDS” (vs. 34). The writer of Hebrews was in jail and was ministered to by the people he is writing to. They were Hebrews. They had need of “patience” (vs. 36). How reminiscent this is of “. . . the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work” (James 1). “Ye have heard of the patience of Job” (James 5) in a letter “to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad” (James 1:1)—not to “JEWISH CHRISTIANS”! “Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen THE END of the Lord.” (See the comments under Job 42 in that Commentary. The tribulation context is so clear that only a believer in “verbal, plenary, inspired original autographs” could make hash out of it!)
If any doubt was left about the doctrinal placement of Hebrews 10:26-39, it would vanish at verse 37, for there the Holy Spirit has preserved for us in ENGLISH the end-date of Daniel’s Seventieth Week which lasted seven years. “For yet A LITTLE WHILE . . . ,” and since none of the apostles would get the significance of it, we would not expect the Greek scholars to get it either. They didn’t. When Jesus said, “A LITTLE WHILE, and ye shall not see me: and again, a LITTLE WHILE and ye shall see me” (John 16:16), there follows one of the most remarkable phenomena found in the “original English.” All editions of the AV (which naturally exclude the corrupted “New King Jimmy Bible”—1982) follow with this the expression “A LITTLE WHILE” repeated FIVE times (twice in verse 17, once in verse 18, and twice in verse 19)—a total of SEVEN times. Observe that the doctrinal context of John 16:17-20 is not just the disciples seeing the Lord Jesus after His crucifixion and His resurrection but rather “A WOMAN WHEN SHE IS IN TRAVAIL HATH SORROW . . . FOR JOY THAT A MAN IS BORN INTO THE WORLD.”
No man who read the Bible through THREE times could miss the impact. The reference was to the Jewish
nation in the tribulation (see Isa. 23, 54, 66; Micah 5; Hosea 13; and two dozen other places). The dual application throws the faculty members off of the Interstate again and into the ditch; and they can’t get out with a tractor-trailer, two cranes, a hydraulic jack, and a bulldozer. There are SEVEN years in the tribulation. In God’s timetable, this is “A LITTLE TIME” and is so denominated seven times in one chapter—seven times in John 16 and once in Hebrews 10. When the blind, stupid faculty members of the leading colleges altered the term “A LITTLE WHILE” to match their Greek lexicons, they put out their spiritual eyes and the eyes of their students. Par for the course. Vincent says mikron oson oson should be “strictly a very little while.”
If you were dumb enough to go by ANY Greek text (Textus Receptus, Alexandrian, Caesarian, or Western) instead of the English, you would have missed the cross-references, for oson oson IS NOT IN ANY GREEK TEXT IN JOHN 16.
This is light from the English not found in the Greek—any Greek! The AV did it again: no matter what the “Bible" faculty thought.
The Lord is downright insulting at times, isn’t He?
The nerve of the Holy Spirit giving an advanced revelation in the AV 1611 not found in the “plenary, verbally inspired original autographs”! Who does He think He is? Shouldn’t He consult the scholars before doing a thing like that? How dare He overthrow an “HISTORIC FUNDAMENTALIST POSITION"!
As the commentators try to extricate themselves from the snarled mess that they have just gotten into (trying to explain verses 26-31), the “house that Jack built” collapses over their heads and comes crashing down on their pate. Jameison, Faussett, and Brown make all of the “we’s” mentioned in verse 39 saved people and all of the “him’s” of verse 38 lost people who never were saved. Since the whole passage came
as a unit from verse 32, all kinds of adjustments have to be made down the line to produce this desired result. No one was waiting to do the will of God (vs. 36), even though we were told that they were going to need patience to do it; rather, it should be “whereas YE HAVE DONE the will of God” (Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown, p. 1430).
Kenneth the Apostate (Living Bible) goes halfway and says “keep on patiently doing God’s will” (as it was not still future: “AFTER”). This neatly converts the half-saved sinner who is “illuminated” into a full-grown Christian who has been working at the will of God SINCE he was saved.
Of course, verse 35 now presents a problem, for it occurred BEFORE the matter of “the will of God”; and it mentions a REWARD for works. So we have this: “holiness will be its own reward ... of grace not of DEBT” (Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown, p. 1430). But rewards are of DEBT, not of grace (see Paul’s comment in Rom. 4:4). Going further into the muck, Jamieson, Faussett, and Brown claim the “just” man of verse 38 is “one seemingly and in PART really, THOU NOT SAVINGLY.” Savingly? What in the ever lovin’, blue-eyed tunket is THAT? Savingly? Aren’t you really trying to say, “I don’t have the faintest idea where I am, how I got there, or what I’m supposed to do now that I’m here!”? I think that is about it.
Let’s see what is at the bottom of the garbage heap:
The men “illuminated” were BORN AGAIN Christians, according to Dummelow (p. 1026). They did not have compassion upon the writer (vs. 34) but only upon “THEM that were in bonds.” This is the Roman Catholic Vaticanus text as printed in all “reliable versions” recommended by Bob Jones III, Jerry Falwell, Chuck Swindoll, John MacArthur, Faulkner, Afman, Martin, Farstad, Price, and J. Vernon McGee: “THEM” for “me” in verse 34. It is the reading of the
RV, RSV, NRSV, ASV, NASV, NIV, and all kindred corruptions. The man who “draws back into perdition” is a Church Age Christian, according to Dummelow; that is, the believer in Christ loses his salvation (p. 1026). Dummelow lightens his Arminianism by saying that perdition isn’t really perdition; it is just failing “to enter upon the promised inheritance.” That is not what the text says. That is not what ANY Greek text says. That is not what ANY Latin text says. That is not what ANY English text says. That is what Dummelow thinks some hypothetical text should “teach.”
Arthur W. Pink, who has been splitting his jeans all the way through the epistle, here runs to John Owens for help in attacking the roaring AV text of 1611. The problem is how in the name of the “original autographs” could salvation be a REWARD (vs. 35) when no Calvinist believes that? If he had stuck to the works of a child of God earning rewards (plural), he could have survived (see Titus 3:8, 14 and 1 Cor. 3:10-16); but boy, oh boy, when that reward is a “promise” that has not been received because the recipient has not yet done the will of God and in the process may “fall away” (vs. 38) and “draw back into perdition” (vs. 39),
Calvin and Pink both have a problem. Calvin: “By mentioning REWARD, he diminishes nothing from the gratuitous promise of salvation, for the faithful know that ‘their labor is not in vain in the Lord’ in such a way that they still rest on God’s mercy alone. But it has been often stated elsewhere how ‘REWARD’ is NOT incompatible with the gratuitous IMPUTATION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS.” It isn’t? Would John Calvin give us ONE place where it isn’t? No, he won’t. “The REWARD can be obtained only by holding fast this confidence ... by adhering steadily and persevering to Christ and His cause” (John Brown). What reward? Imputed righteousness? What reward? Eternal life? Eternal life in this age is NEVER a reward. To make it a reward, the Puritan, John Owens, suddenly inserts a
“crown” (an earned reward in James 1:12 and Rev. 2:10!) into the text and says, “Wherefore the recompense of the reward here intended is the glory of heaven, proposed AS A CROWN unto them that . . . Wrong, Johnny! “The CROWN of life” is not eternal life as a gift. “The CROWN of life” is an earned reward both times that it shows up (see James 1:12 and Rev. 2:10). John Brown couldn’t read his own native language. Most Greek scholars have that trouble.
“It seems to the writer that the translators of the AV took an unwarranted liberty with the Word of God [oh, yes, sonny, don’t we recognize you!] when they inserted the words ‘any man’ . . . but the Holy Scriptures [oh, aren’t we pious, sonny!] should never be altered to suit our ideas of evangelical truth . . . .” So . . . SO PINK IMMEDIATELY ALTERS THE HOLY SCRIPTURES TO SUIT HIS OWN IDEAS ABOUT EVANGELICAL TRUTH! “The RV CORRECTLY gives ‘if he shrink back’ instead of ‘if any man DRAW back’ . . .” (vs. 38). Having made this change, Pink could no more exposit what he had accepted than if he had never changed it. (See the exact same case with John R. Rice and Curtis Hutson on Revelation 22:14.) He now realizes that, after attacking the AV text and lining it up with Hort’s Jesuit Catholic text of 1884, he is still spinning his wheels, so Pink says that the whole case was just hypothetical anyway (p. 643). No saved man could draw back into perdition (or “shrink back”) if he tried: the case was imaginary.
So was Arthur W. Pink’s mind! So was his Greek text. So was his exposition.
Vincent (Word Studies’) refuses to buy Pink’s private interpretation. He insists the the “just” man of verse 38 can draw back into “perdition” and terminate in destruction (p. 509). Vincent believes that only “stedfast obedience to God” (p. 508) can keep you out of perdition. If he had placed his interpretation into the context of Isaiah 26:20 and Habakkuk 2:4 (the great
tribulation), he would have had a sound exegesis; but Vincent, as every Greek scholar in America and Europe, failed to observe the “HIS FAITH” found in Habakkuk as contrasted with just “faith” as quoted by Paul in Romans 1:17. Vincent has the Church Age believer losing his salvation.
Are we at the bottom of the dump yet?
Finally, Freerkson shows up, realizing that he doesn’t know anything more about the passage than the last 4,000 bungling scholars who preceded him. So, he carefully tiptoes through the passage, committing himself nowhere and says only that “the form and content of the warnings of Chapters 6 and 10 are so similar that each MUST BE UNDERSTOOD IN THE LIGHT OF THE OTHER” (p. 703). Very true, Freerkson, and since neither you nor the men who taught you nor the men who wrote the textbooks they studied could understand EITHER passage, there is not much use in telling us what you meant by that. So he doesn’t. He allows only that the recipients of both passages are “TRUE BELIEVERS” (p. 703). Which is about as wild as you can get, for it means that a true believer in this age can tread the blood of Christ underfoot (Chap. 10), do despite to the Spirit of grace (Chap. 10), fall away to where he cannot be renewed (Chap. 6), be made fit for burning (Chaps. 6 and 10), receive vengeance from God (Chap. 10), and be cursed (Chap. 6). Freerkson says these “true believers” in both chapters are to “claim and continue in what THEY POSSESS” (p. 703). Notice the term “POSSESS” not “profess.” Freerkson simply doubled back after going through Chapter 6, for back there (p. 684) HE SAID THAT THE CASE WAS ONLF HYPOTHETICAL. He now tells us that Chapter 10 (see p. 701) is ACTUAL.
And they are to be “understood in the light” of each other, are they?
Kind of like Tweedledum and Tweedledee, was it? Or was it Laurel and Hardy?
And now it is time to “wrap up the ten o’clock news.” Enough is enough. Having demonstrated on six dozen occasions (see the commentaries in the Bible Believer’s Commentary Series on Genesis, Galatians, Exodus, Job, Acts, Revelation, and the Minor Prophets) that the Greek and Hebrew fail to illuminate any Biblical text, and that the English gives advanced light that no Greek or Hebrew scholar could find in any Greek or Hebrew text, we will give the reader some relief and go into a chapter that deals with much more practical (and devotional) matters. We shut down the bank at 10:39, knowing that the AV text is correct, though absolutely incomprehensible to 98 percent of the Fundamentalists and Conservatives who teach Greek and Hebrew in Christian colleges, universities, and seminaries. Chapter 10, from verse 26 on, is dealing DOCTRINALLY with tribulation Hebrews awaiting the end of Daniel’s Seventieth Week. Whatever contemporary applications verses 32-36 may have had to the writer’s first century audience, they certainly were not given as doctrinal truths on salvation for a Church Age saint. All attempts, therefore, to apply them DOCTRINALLY to the child of God in this age end where Stibbs, Dummelow, Freerkson, Robert Ross, Vaughn, Nicol, Dods, Winer, Davidson, Delitzsch, Kuebel, Zod- hiates, Wuest, etc. end: the dumpster.
P.S. “The warning is hypothetical" (Freerkson, Liberty University). That is, the “Old Time Gospel Hour” doesn’t believe anything “actual” in the chapter will take place. Aren’t they in for a surprise?!
THE BIBLE BELIEVER’S COMMENTARY SERIES
11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
2 For by it the elders obtained a good report.
3 Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.
4 By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts: and by it he being dead yet speaketh.
5 By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and was not found, because God had translated him: for before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God.
6 But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.
Now, for the reader who likes spiritual and devotional material and is snowed under by a constant study of doctrine—which is the first reason why the Scriptures were written (see 2 Tim. 3:16)—we come to a refreshing chapter. With one or two exceptions (vss. 10, 39), the passage reads smoothly. Since we have already covered a great deal of this material in the Bible Believer’s Commentary on Genesis and Exodus (1970, 1974), we will not spend a great deal of time on exposition through verse 28. These matters are fully covered in the two commentaries mentioned. We will
continue to correct all Greek and Hebrew scholars with the English text and will continue to show how the English context contains unknown truths and advanced revelations that no Greek or Hebrew scholar can find NO MATTER WHAT HEBREW OR GREEK TEXT HE USES OR NO MATTER HOW HE USES IT. (The sudden defection between 1960 and 1980 of several hundred “scholars” to the Textus Receptus—after pushing the ASV for sixty years—doesn’t solve the problem of Biblical revelation, Biblical illumination, or Biblical understanding, for the key to these things is found in believing what the Holy Spirit wanted you to believe. UNBELIEF in the Holy Bible will kill any “Textus Receptus ” man as dead as an “Alexandrian ” man!)
“Now, faith is the substance . . . the evidence” (vs. 1). Then faith is tangible. It may not be something that can be SEEN every time (vss. 7, 27), but it is tangible in that the object of faith manifests itself through some medium. The Trinity, for example, though “unseen” is “clearly seen” according to Romans 1:20. We have subtance and evidence in our hands when we have a Holy Bible in our hands. Though the final object may not be seen (“evidence of things not seen”), it is so real (“substance”) that it can be “laid ahold of.” The cases that follow are evidences of this truth. “For by it” (faith) “the elders obtained a good report” (vs. 2). Then what follows are “report cards” given out to various saints who made some good grades. Abel gets an “A” in worshipping God (vs. 4); Enoch gets an “A” in a God-pleasing life (vs. 5); Noah gets an “A” in the fear of the Lord (vs. 7); Abraham gets a “B” for acting on faith (vss. 8-9) and an “A” for trusting God (vs. 17); etc. Faith is found as an active element in every dispensation except before the fall of man (Gen. 1-2) and after the second advent (Rev. 20- 22). In those cases, the “saint” (Adam, for example) is walking by SIGHT, and the only “faith” he exercises is WORKS (see Matt. 5-7, and comments in that Com
mentary) that show that he believes what he has been told. Christ is present as the Angel of the Lord in Genesis 2 and is present in a “flesh and bones” stature in the millenium. No “faith” is needed to “believe” on Him. (All of the Fundamentalists missed THAT one: par for the course!)
“Through faith we understand that the worlds . . (vs. 3). See the comments under 1:2 on other planets and the population of outer space . were framed by the word of God ..(vs. 3) as in Genesis 1, where they are spoken into existence. “So that things which are seen were NOT made of things which do APPEAR” (vs. 3). When Dr. Milikan was given the Nobel Prize for “Science” in 1936, he was given the prize for “proving” what the writer of Hebrews had written more than 1,400 years before Columbus discovered America. That is how “updated” twentiethcentury “science” is (see the Christian’s Handbook of Science and Philosophy, Bible Baptist Bookstore, 1985). Milikan received $40,000 for restating a King James Bible verse in language that would remove it from the Bible. Typical—very typical.
If the reader wonders about our levity and sarcasm at times (in view of “foolish jesting” being a bad item in Eph. 5:4), he must understand that “enough is enough.” By the time you have read 40,000 books; 20,000 magazines; 10,000 newspapers; and followed “the progress of man” and the Advancement of Science through “The Age of Enlightenment” (and all of that jazz) for sixty-four years, you finally come to a standstill. I couldn’t take Milikan seriously (after reading Hebrews 11:1-2) for fifty cents, let alone $40,000. Why not pay me $40,000 for discovering the fact that the sun is four days off center of the earth’s orbit because the sun wasn’t created until four days AFTER the earth started moving? Isn’t that good for some kind of prize?
(I heard where Metrecal got the “NO-BELLY
Peace Prize,” but that wasn’t as good as the time that the great Marxist Martin Luther King Jr., got the Nobel Prize for Science for proving the scientific theorem: “I-uns plus US-uns equals you-uns and WE-uns!” Milikan wasn’t the only genius around.)
Hebrews 11:3, in philosophy, teaches IDEALISM as well as THEISM, for it shows that reality is basically NON-PHYSICAL. (See the Handbook mentioned above.) All dialectical materialists, humanists, evolutionists, and atheists believe that “reality” is PHYSICAL.
“By faith Abel offered unto God . . (vs. 4). The “more excellent sacrifice” was blood, since “the life of the flesh is in the blood.” Cain couldn’t compete with his grape juice (“transubstantiated,” of course), watermelons, leeks, onions, garlic, mint, anise, cummin, and barley. (See the comments under Gen. 4:1-10 in that Commentary.) “God testifying of his gifts: and by it he being dead yet speaketh” (vs. 4) at the time of his death (Gen. 4:8), and since his death, down through the centuries, for his blood foreshadows the blood of Christ (see 12:24). The obvious way that God “testified” of his gifts was by accepting them, and this transaction is described in Judges 13:20; 1 Chronicles 21:26; and Leviticus 9:24. Fire came down from heaven and devoured Abel's sacrifice. He knew he was “accepted” (see Eph. 1:6—which has been altered in the ASV, NASV, NIV, RSV, NRSV, PDQ, SOP, NRA, SOS, NAACP, NEB, NWT, and “BBB” [“Blind Blundering Boobies”]).
“By faith Enoch was translated . . (vs. 5). When you “translate” something, you pick it up in one language and put it down in another. A Trans-World Airline takes you up from one place and puts you down in another. If it is a trans-Atlantic steamer, it takes you across to the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. Enoch is picked up in one place, carried across to the other side, and “set down.” He was translated so that “he should
not see death;” which makes him the ONLY man in the Bible who never died and never will die (see comments on 9:27). “Before his translation ... he pleased God” (vs. 5). Without the new birth, in Adam’s image, “dead in trespasses and sins,” he “pleased God,” even though “they that are in the flesh cannot please God” (Rom. 8). (How is THAT for a study in dispensations? Calvin would have a time with THAT one wouldn’t he? He would have to make Enoch “born again” before his translation, and Enoch was not born again. NO ONE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT WAS BORN AGAIN. That is a fable taught by the faculty at Bob Jones University, Pensacola Christian College, Tennessee Temple, and Pacific Coast Bible College to match Princeton, Edinburg, Yale, and Harvard. All of them were Christian schools that used to believe in the “fundamentals.”)
“But without faith it is impossible to please him . . .” (vs. 6). God loves saints who walk in the dark (Isa. 50:10) and yet trust HIM to get them through (Micah 7:8) the darkness. He is pleased with those who believe Him (His WORD!) in spite of “advanced scientific techniques,” “scientific critical editions of the Greek New Testament,” “new light on the originals,” “scientific break-throughs that shed new light on outer space,” and all of that accumulated scholastic refuse that has been dumped on the human race since the days of Darwin (1850). God often shuts up His dearest saints into trying situations where not one ray of light can be seen, and the believer must abandon himself to blind faith and that alone. If the reader doubts this, let him read the accounts of the lives of Madame Guyon, Richard Wurmbrand, Haralan Popov, or the material found in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and the Bloody Theater. Many a saint (see the examples given in the text in verses 36-38) had to operate on faith and faith alone, without one proof of God’s favor or blessing—at least from the standpoint of comfort, joy, pro
vision, supply, success, encouragement, or strength. All of the items were missing. Only faith in God got them through (1 John 4:4, 5:4; Rom. 8:35-37).
There has to be a time in your life when you learn to live the life of faith, learn to trust God, and learn to act on faith. Until then your life is not really in “fittin’ shape” to minister to anyone. One of the saddest things about southern Christianity is the vast control that the Southern Baptist Convention has over supposedly “independent” Baptist churches (all Baptist churches are “independent” according to all standard Baptist church policy). The Convention still controls the politics, property, and much of the social life of Southerners. The Convention’s idea of a “church” is a small, respectable, social group of “friends” operated by deacons. Their idea is that the “Church of the Lord Jesus Christ” is basically a social club run by the leading families in the community, who are to keep shoveling pastors through the meat grinder while the big-shots up in Louisville and Nashville collect the “kitty” and invest it in government bonds, trust funds, stocks, and manufacturing concerns. Pastors are shuffled around like pawns on a chess board. If he is a good boy (raises funds and sends them to headquarters), he gets a big church. If he is a naughty boy (doesn’t send money to Lottie Moon and pay for the Sunday School literature), he gets a small church. If he is a bad boy (will not support the Cooperative Program: i.e., “Give, or I’ll blow your brains out!”), you “de-church” or “unchurch” him and blacklist him so that he cannot get a church. Southern preachers are controlled by a man called an “Associational Missionary. ” He draws his salary from “Home Missions. ”
The Associational Missionary’s job is to keep every local church in the Convention in a state of unsettled suspense unless it is supporting everything it is told to support. That is his job; that is his “holy calling.” His job—ten hours a day—is to have coffee and
cake, or coffee and pie, or coffee and cigarettes (!) with a pastor’s trustees, Sunday School superintendent, deacons (or relatives of the same) and make sure that the pastor either “shapes up” or “ships out.” If you are an independent pastor, his job is to pressure your people into putting pressure on you to “jine” the Convention. If you are already “in,” your people are to pressure you into using the Sunday School literature which has promoted the RSV for twenty-nine years. If the pastor of an independent Baptist church resigns, it will not be twenty-four hours before the “missionary” will show up in his little Chevy or Volkswagen and go to work on the “remnant” to get them to vote in a pastor who is chained hand-and-foot to Nashville or Louisville. (I know exactly what I am talking about, and you don’t!)
After a “church split,” the missionary will be glad to furnish you with some “good prospects” to “rebuild” your work. Every one of them will come from another Convention church and will be sent to your church to undermine its independency. That is what is going on “down South. ”
Now, here is where that matter of FAITH pops up. When a young man answers the call to the pastorate, he is supposed to have been exercised in the life of faith. “No pew can get any higher than the pulpit.” If the preacher hasn’t ever lived by faith, who in the congregation is going to learn anything about it? Well, here comes a real preacher. He gave up a $10 to $15 an hour job ($4 to $8 back in fifties and sixties) to go off to school. He and his family have lived in a trailer on rice, peanut butter, and canned meat for three to four years and have seen God produce clothes, medicine, gas, heat, food, and shoes out of nowhere. (We have had them here in school that finished three years with all of their bills paid while supporting a wife and two children at $3 an hour in 1982.)
In comes the new preacher. When he gets there,
he is actually the only person in the church that is really qualified to “run it.” (We are assuming that he is a saved, Bible-believing young man.) The folks (Southerners in this case) who make up his congregation are people who have lived in that town all of their lives, and sometimes the same could be said of their grandparents and great-grandparents. They know no more about “going out into a land that they knew not” than a cockroach in Alabama would know about Pike’s Peak. They are “established” in the community with their “roots in”: insurance policies, kin folk, “holdings,” real estate, political connections, and the whole works. There might be one person in the congregation out of fifty who knew something about the life of faith.
Well, the young man comes in and proceeds to go by a charter that says “BY FAITH” (Heb. 11:4, 5, 7- 8). To do this, he must believe unsaved people go to hell—all unsaved people. That would include the aunts, uncles, nieces, and nephews of his members. The invisible world is real to him, as it should be (Col. 3:1- 3), so away he goes trying to convince his flock that eternity is real; the “things not seen” (2 Cor. 4:17-18) are permanent (see Moses in Heb. 11:27); and their holdings, property, real estate, political friends, insurance policies, and kin folk are TEMPORARY (2 Cor. 4:18). He won’t be in that pulpit three years before they will be trying to jettison him. First year: “Nice kitty.” Second year: “Poor kitty.” Third year: “SCAT!” They knew nothing about living by an UNSEEN rule. They walk by SIGHT, and not by FAITH. When “push comes to shove” in the community, and the pasor takes a Scriptural position on a local issue (which he is supposed to take), he looks behind him and discovers that he is as alone as a “sparrow on a housetop” and his flock has vanished.
Now! They vote him out. They find all of the church members who have been absent for the last three years, drum up a secret business meeting, and
Now! The SPIRITUAL PEOPLE CAN RUN THE CHURCH! Now, the folks who “have all the answers” and know how to “operate a church” are in charge! Not some mean “dictator”! (Do you know what I mean, jelly bean ?)
Do you know what happens? Well, travel over to Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, and Tennessee for thirty years (like I have) and find out. Down goes the attendance, down goes the enrollment, and down goes the interest. In comes another preacher and then out he goes. Down go the offerings, down goes the attendance, and then finally, when the church that seats 200 is reduced to twenty people who own the property, it closes down. The Convention has shut down more than 500 churches since 1950. I have seen these professional church operators that “have all the answers.” They couldn ’t operate a popcorn stand on the midway. They aren’t equipped. They know nothing about FAITH. They have their roots in the world, and they intend to keep them there. The pilgrim “life of faith” is as impossible for them as it was for Demas and Judas.
I turned a church over to a bunch like that once. They all believed that the AV was the word of God. They were premillenial; they all “tithed” and attended church; and some of them even led a soul to Christ once or twice a year. They were convinced “Ruckman” no longer “qualified” to pastor. They voted one hundred (con) against two hundred (pro) to get rid of Ruckman. Ruckman saved them the trouble; he voluntarily resigned when he could have used the majority against them and voted them slap out of their pews. Ruckman left; the experts took over (1969-1972). The church hired and fired three pastors in six years and went from a membership of 300 to 200, from 200 to 100, from 100 to 50, and finally, from 50 to 30. It wound up with 18 people (eighteen!) sitting in an auditorium seat
ing 500 people. The eighteen “experts” voted to sell the building. They sold it, and that was the end of it.
I picked up seventy-five people and started the “Bible Baptist Church”; and we went from 75 to 100, 100 to 200, 200 to 300, and now run around 550. God evidently has some very peculiar ideas as to WHO “QUALIFIES” FOR THE PASTORATE AND WHO DOESN’T. (Stewart Custer and God couldn’t possibly come to terms on such matters. Custer was the Head of the Bible Department at Bob Jones Univesity in 1982. He wasn’t pastoring. Presumably he didn’t “qualify” because he knew nothing about the life of FAITH.)
We have all kinds of “faith” in the Bible. There is “the common faith” (Titus 1:4). There is human faith (Mark 11:22), divine faith (Gal. 2:20), mental faith (James 2:14), and historical faith (1 John 5:10). There are also degrees of faith that come under the headings of wavering faith (James 1:16), “little faith” (Matt. 6:30), active faith (Heb. 10:9), “faith unfeigned” (1 Tim. 1:5), and “great faith” (Matt. 8:10). Abraham “hoped” when he was hopeless (Rom. 4:20). One man believed when he couldn’t believe (Mark 9:24). There is a faith that reposes: it rests on what God has said and counts on it, as a man reclining on a bed. There is a faith that is reckoning: this faith figures that what God says is so, and then acts in accordance with it. There is a faith that risks: it dares to act on what God says regardless of the consequences. (The great example of this is Hebrews 11:17 where Abraham attempts to kill his son [Gen. 22:10]—he RISKS the most precious thing that God had given him.) Although a dozen or so examples of “faith” are given by name in Hebrews 11, the anonymous list of verses 32-35 shows what is going on. The essence of faith is this: “WHEREFORE, SIRS, BE OF GOOD CHEER: FOR I BELIEVE GOD, THAT IT SHALL BE EVEN AS IT WAS TOLD ME” (Acts 27:25). As an old, red-necked preacher said back in 1950, “I done heerd
‘bout it; I believe ‘bout it; I’ma tellin’ ‘bout it; and some day, I’m gonna see ‘bout it!”
“Must believe that he is ..(vs. 6). This is why no atheists can find any “answers.” All atheists are agnostic relativists. All of them believe in shifting and variable “truths” that come and go within a framework of what will “work” one time and may not “work” another time. God shows them nothing (see Herod in Luke 23:8-9). God is not interested in dishonest skeptics (see Ezek. 14:1-11 for documented evidence regarding that TRUE statement). John 7:17 lays down the law to any scientific researcher who PROFESSES to be “searching for the truth.” If he is like Pilate (John 18:38), he is wasting his time researching. God gives no answers to sinners who believe that there is no God. God simply calls these men “fools” (1 Cor. 15:36; Psa. 14:1) and leaves them alone. “He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him” (vs. 6). Observe how the passage is used in the doctrinal sense of the Old Testament and particularly to Gentiles like Cornelius (see Acts 10, and comments in that Commentary) who were seeking for “glory and honour and immortality” (Rom. 2:7-8). We may spiritualize and say that for a Christian to “seek God” and “come to Him” means earnest prayer and clearing out of our lives anything that would break communion between us and Him, but the passage is an Adam-to-Moses passage as it occurs here in Hebrews.
Somehow or another, every Bible translator since 1885 lost his faith when he picked up Hebrews 11, and every last one of them—all of the translators of the ASV (1901), the NASV (1962), the RSV (1952), the NRSV (1970), the NIV (1978), TLB (1971), etc.—got rid of the EVIDENCE and SUBSTANCE of faith (vs. 1) before they had gone one verse into the chapter. This appalling and sinful debacle was carried out without the wink of an eye. Both words, “substance” and “evidence,” have been eliminated from the RV, RSV,
NRSV, NEB, ASV, NASV, NWT, and the NIV. Three of these corrupt “Bibles” are recommended by John MacArthur, Chuck Swindoll, Bob Jones III, Richard DeHaan, Hindson (Falwell’s school), and the faculty members of Moody, Fuller, Wheaton, Dallas, Denver, Minneapolis, Cedarville, Maranatha, and Tennessee Temple. Kenneth “the Apostate” (Living Bible) also gets rid of both words and comes right out with the humanistic, psychological clap-trap of all of the twentieth-century healers. He says, “Faith ... is the confident assurance that something we WANT is going to happen.” Nothing could be further from the truth, even if it came from Jeanne Dixon or Dale Carnegie. Faith in what you WANT is a joke. Any FAITH not built on what God wants and placed in what God SAID (Gen. 3:1; Num. 23:19) is SATANIC DELUSION (see 1 John). Kenneth the Apostate was deceived by Satan when he wrote an anti-Christ tract to collect over $4,000,000.
The ghastly NIV says that faith “is being sure of what we HOPE for and certain of what you do not see.” It isn’t anything of the kind. Faith is SUBSTANCE and EVIDENCE. The only thing is that it has no “substance” or “evidence” to people like those who translated the New International Version. They depart further from the truth than the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who at least translate: “Faith is a BASIS of things hoped for . . .” (AWT). Who would have thought that they would see the day where the Jehovah’s Witnesses would be closer to the truth than the followers of Chuck Swindoll, Oral Roberts, Rex Humbard, John MacArthur, Richard DeHaan, and Liberty University? Strange age, isn’t it?
What do you suppose is the madness behind all of this cold baloney that is shoved out on the counter and labeled “steak” (Heb. 5:13-14)? Well, let us go up to where they “train the champions for Christ” (Liberty University) and see what is behind the Jehovah’s Wit
nesses, the ASV, the NASV, both the Communist Bibles put out by the National Council of Churches, and the Jesuit’s “American” translation.
“Verse 1 is not so much a DEFINITION of what faith IS as it is a description of what faith DOES.” There it is. One great big fat LIE just as succulent and juicy as it ever came out of Eden: “Ye shalt not surely die.” The text said, “NOW FAITH IS . . and then gave us the DEFINITION of what faith is. Immediately we get, “No, it is NOT a definition.” Who is this egotistical upstart who corrects God Almighty? James Freerkson, Th.D., Professor of Religion, Liberty University, Lynchburg, Virginia (Liberty Bible Commentary, p. 704).
“Precisely what this word means HERE IS DIFFICULT TO DETERMINE . ..” (Oh, boy, have we heard THAT one before!) “The word hypotasis occurs twenty times in the Septaagint . . .” (NO MANUSCRIPT GIVEN FOR ONE OF THE TWENTY READINGS, BECAUSE THERE NEVER WAS ONE TO START WITH). “This concept is simpler . . . finds some support from the Greek papyri documents . . . (Moulton and Milligan, The Vocative of the Greek Testament, pp. 659-660) conclude with the same connotations . . . there is the same central idea of something . . .” (We are not interested in any fool Greek scholar’s “central ideas” or some “central idea” he found in some Greek “cognate.” “WHAT SAITH THE SCRIPTURE?” They say that faith is “EVIDENCE” and “SUBSTANCE” [Heb. 11:1].)
Freerkson says “assurance” may be the “best translation” for Hebrews 11:1. No, as a matter of fact, it isn’t. To tell the truth, it never will be. We appreciate your saying “may be,” as any scribe having no authority (see Matt. 7:29); that way, Bible readers can recognize your colleagues. However, since there is no “may be” to it, we will throw out all of your comments and go by the Holy Bible. “Faith is the SUBSTANCE .. .
the EVIDENCE . . (vs. 1). If Freerkson’s Greek doesn’t say that, get rid of his “Greek.”
Freerkson simply believed Professor Dods in Nicoll’s EGT, who wrote many, many years ago that faith “is ASSURANCE of things hoped for . . .” (p. 350). Freerkson will believe ANY book but the Bible. Dods went to Papias, Demosthenes, the Apocryphal Book of Wisdom, and Hatch instead of the Bible and came out with this: “Substantially the words MEAN that faith gives to things future, which as yet are only hoped for, all the reality of actual present existence” (p. 352). THAT WOULD ELIMINATE BELIEVING ON THE DEATH, BURIAL, AND RESURRECTION OF CHRIST (1 John 5:10-14; 1 Cor. 15:1-4). ALL OF THOSE THINGS WERE IN THE PAST. It would also eliminate belief in the entire record from Genesis to Malachi.
They got rid of thirty-nine books and all of the historical record of the Gospels by redefining “faith ” in Hebrews 11:1. Nice work. No unsaved Liberal could keep up with them on an interstate highway with a Porsche. A Neo-Orthodox Barthinian couldn’t make the pace either.
“The bigger the belfry, the more room for the bats.” When a man messes with that Book, God messes with his mind.
The passage, as it stood in the Holy Bible, referred to future things—“things hoped for,” and things past and present—“things NOT SEEN.” In their maddening haste to get rid of the Reformation Text—all modern revisers devote their lives to that—they forgot that Satan, Cherubim, Angels, Hell, Principalities, Powers, Spiritual Wickedness, DRAGONS (!), and Seraphim are UNSEEN. By confining the passage to the future, the scholars with one accord (100 percent) ELIMINATED FROM THE WORD OF GOD EVERYTHING THAT THEY COULD NOT SEE. They constructed a text to produce carnal, materialistic human-
ists. That is just what every one of their “translations” is producing.
Never mess with an educated fool who messes with that Book.
11:7 By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith.
8 By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went.
9 By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise:
10 For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.
11 Through faith also Sara herself received strength to conceive seed, and was delivered of a child when she was past age, because she judged him faithful who had promised.
12 Therefore sprang there even of one, and him as good as dead, so many as the stars of the sky in multitude, and as the sand which is by the sea shore innumerable.
13 These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.
We have divided the section at verse 13 for the obvious reason that verse 13 goes beyond the history of Abraham and Sara (vss. 8-12). “For they that say such things . . .” (vs. 14) is a reference to people LIKE Abraham, who took the position that he took
when dealing with CONFESSION (“. . . confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims ...”).
“By faith Noah . . (vs. 7). (See the exhaustive, detailed comments in the Bible Believer’s Commentary on Genesis, Gen. 6:9; 1970). “Of things not seen as yet . . .” (vs. 7). Here is a case where the faith is placed in the future, but observe that Noah had to have faith in God in the PRESENT daily walk with Him in order to find “grace” (Gen. 6:8) before GOD TOLD HIM ONE THING ABOUT “things not seen as yet.” “Moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house . . (vs. 7). This is giving FEAR as a genuine and proper motive for serving God. This genuine FEAR is “trembling” while serving God (Phil. 2:12) in the Church Age, and it is based on the “beginning of wisdom” (Prov. 1:7; Job 28:28). It is not like “it is a FEARFUL thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (see Heb. 10:31 and comments) which has to do with judgment of an apostate at the Second Advent; this has to do with “the terror of the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:10-11) at the Judgment Seat of Christ where the works of a Christian’s life are judged. Unlike the thorns who “burn” in Hebrews 6:8, only the Christian’s WORKS burn (see 1 Cor. 3:10-14).
Noah’s “fear” is a proper motive for obedience. (The soul winner is told to “save others with FEAR” [Jude 23].) NO ONE AT LIBERTY UNIVERSITY BELIEVES THIS. When the faculty at Liberty University picked up Jude 23, they said, “We would translate ‘SHOW MERCY IN GODLY FEAR’ . . .” {Liberty Bible Commentary, p. 785).
That is exactly what the text did not say. That was a rehash of Scofield’s famous “godly reverence” (1909) stuck into the text after ignoring Hebrews 12:28, which showed that “REVERENCE” and “GODLY FEAR” were two different items. The term “GODLY” occurs in no Greek text on the face of this earth in Jude 23. Phobo (Jude in any Greek text) is “FEAR.” It was
converted to “godly fear” because Liberty University could not translate Greek and thought that the fear was on the part of the soul winner. (They translated en in the Locative Case, when it was in the Instrumental Case [see 1 Cor. 12:13 for the same “Greekifying shenanigans].) Old time preachers in North Carolina have a much better understanding of the text. They know that some sinners simply need “to have the hell scared out of them. “ Or as the song said, “T’was grace that taught my heart to FEAR . . .” Since Liberty University doesn’t have one teacher on the faculty who ever “ scart the hell outta nobody,” they couldn’t translate Jude 23 with a computer. Liberty University got their reading from Mayor in Nicoll’s work (EGT, Vol. 5, p. 276). They will believe ANY book but the Bible.
The basic source for all of these little “godly” scholars who love “godly” fear instead of “fear” is easy to spot. Let Vincent (1887!) speak for the membership of the Alexandrian Cult so that we will know exactly what is going on at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia.
“The AV gives the impression that Noah acted under the influence of FRIGHT. The RV (1884) IMPROVES ON THIS A LITTLE BY RENDERING GODLY FEAR . . . THE TRUE IDEA IS PIOUS CARE
Pious care! After being told what was written in Genesis 6:17!
Well, let us put it this way, Vince, baby—it is “pious care” if you are a God-forsaken, positive-thinking, lost, Bible-rejecting, LIBERAL philosopher without enough salvation to put into the left eye of a blind mosquito. Let’s put it THAT way; that way it is “true to the original Greek.” They have a terror of “fear,” don’t they? One would think that these apostates classified “FEAR” (as in “terror” in 2 Cor. 5:10-11) with sin and disease. It was like all of the Fundamentalists in America had suddenly become liberal in their ap
proach to serving God and winning souls, while maintaining a “bold, militant stand” for ABSTRACT truths that had nothing to do with serving God or winning souls. That is how all apostasy starts: you profess what you do not really believe.
“By the which he condemned the world . .
(vs. 8). When a man does what God tells him to do and prospers, then his entire life is a reproach to any and all who disobeyed God in order to prosper. When Jesus Christ does right (Acts 10:38) and God bears witness to that conduct by giving Him power that no man on earth had or could produce (John 11), then His life (John 15:22) was a condemnation (John 15:24) to every man who didn’t have the power. The logic is inescapable: they didn’t have the power because they weren’t right. The reason why no saint, sinner, atheist, Communist, Catholic, or evolutionist on this earth can pull a man out of a grave after he has been dead four days (John 11) is because every “jack man” of them is a SINNER. He isn’t “right.”
When a Christian school prospers financially without denying the fundamentals of the faith, it is an open, public DAMNATION to every religious school in that same state that denied the fundamentals of the faith in order to prosper financially. Do you understand that? The life and work of Lester Roloff was a GRIEVOUS DAMNATION to every state official and educator in the state of Texas (1950-1982). Roloff showed that you could actually rehabilitate and reform juvenile criminals and “dope-heads,” and it could be done on half the money the politicians required for the “rehabilitation centers.” So his life was a perennial condemnation to those who said it couldn’t be done. He did it! Noah built the ark, and Noah “walked with God” while doing it. The fact that God gave his sons three continents for a “grub steak” (Gen. 9-10) showed that Noah was righteous and the world was wrong: they were condemned. When a group of Protestant popes
insist that a certain Bible-believing, soul-winning preacher doesn’t “qualify for the ministry,” and then the Lord backs up that man (2 Cor. 10:18) with so many Scriptural ministries he can’t even handle them (and increases the ministries and the fruits of the ministries the more the brethren “holler”), then that man’s life is a LIVING DAMNATION to every Christian who said, “He doesn’t qualify.” They didn’t qualify, and the “proof was in the pudding,” as the Germans say. When the grounds of man’s alibis or excuses are removed, he stands CONDEMNED (John 15:22; Matt. 12:41-42).
Nicoll (and Dods) tells us that Noah’s fear was just a “ feeling” that he got (p. 355) along the nature of “commendable caution.”
Get out of the traffic, little boys, “Fo you gits runned ovuh!”
“Became heir of the righteousness which is by faith . . (vs. 7). This is first exemplified in Abel, whom Christ calls “righteous” (Matt. 23:35). Now, Noah picks up Abel’s righteousness and is therefore called a “just” man and “a preacher of righteousness” (2 Pet. 2:5). God imputed righteousness to Noah where he lacked it because he acted on what God told him. The next man up (Abraham) is a duplicate case, according to Genesis 15:1-6.
“By faith Abraham ..(vs. 8). (See the exhaustive comments in the Bible Believer’s Commentary on Genesis, Gen. 12-15; 1970.) “Which he should AFTER receive for an inheritance . . (vs. 8) and never did receive!! (Look at Acts 7:2-5!) “Obeyed . .
(vs. 8). Well, he partially obeyed. Note that he did NOT obey the order of Genesis 12:1-2 to the letter. He did not leave Lot behind nor did he leave his own parents behind (Gen. 11:31), but, as we have said before, in the New Testament the sins of the saints are simply overlooked. You didn’t read one word in verse 8, for example, about Noah getting drunk—but he did!
The New Testament writers are so led by the Holy Spirit that they automatically, without forethought, skip over the sins of David (Matt. 1), Noah (2 Pet. 2), Sarah (Heb. 11), Abraham (Rom. 4), etc.
“And he went out, not knowing whither he went” (vs. 8), which, when one considers it, is a great step of faith. As a matter of fact, it is a step that is rarely repeated today by any Christian in America.
I have had the great fortune to be connected for nearly twenty years with hundreds of men and women who had nothing in their favor when it came to background, equipment, training, or money; and I have trained them personally (often one at a time, individually) through three years of Bible. I have seen them go the ends of the earth (literally: China, Hawaii, Germany, Greece, Italy, Alaska, etc.) with nothing behind them and nothing ahead of them. No fellowship would support them. No college or university would open their doors for them. No denomination would back them up. Some of their own fathers and mothers refused to help them financially even once since they were saved.
They had the faculty and staff of Pacific Coast Bible College against them; the faculty and staff of Tennessee Temple against them; the faculty, staff, and graduates of Bob Jones University against them; the faculty and staff of Liberty University against them; the graduates of Hyles-Anderson against them; and the faculties and staffs of Maranatha, Cedarville, East Point, Dallas Theological Seminary, Philadelphia School of the Bible, BIOLA, Prairie Bible Institute, Moody Bible Institute, Fuller, Wheaton, and Louisville Theological Seminary against them. They went out. Fifty-four of them are pastors or associate pastors in Bible-believing, soul-winning churches in the United States (1985), and thirty-five of them are on the foreign field (1985) at this moment, winning sinners to Christ. They had less “backing" than Abraham.
One of them went to Washington in a broken- down, ten-year-old car with his wife and a child and $250 in his pocket. He had no contacts and no recommendations. He wound up as the associate pastor of the largest Bible-believing church in the state of Washington. Another one went to Denver, Colorado, with no backing, no financial help, no “calling,” and no church. He began as a welder and wound up pastoring the largest Bible-believing, soul-winning work in Kalispell, Montana, pastoring over 300 people. He started with four people in a Quonset hut in the middle of a 20° below-zero winter.
Time would fail to tell of the rest of the young men that God gave me (although Ruckman doesn’t qualify for the ministry!). I taught them to live by faith. They learned it. They lived by faith, and scores of them “went out, not knowing whither” they went.
“The land of promise ... of the same promise . . .” (vs. 9). Note here that the “promise” (Cf. Luke 24:49 and Gal. 3:14 with Heb. 10:36) has to do with an earthly inheritance of a tract of LAND. This is very important when reading down through verse 10, for it is taken for granted by 100 percent of the expositors (including the faculty and staff of Liberty University— Liberty Bible Commentary, p. 706) to be the New Jerusalem—which it is not. New Jerusalem is not in the “land of promise.” What the commentators are telling you (100 percent of the commentators in every commentary printed since 1700) is that the “land of promise” was a LIE; there was no CITY there whose “builder and maker” was God. Now, God has prepared TWO cities, and we will speak of this further when we get down to verses 14 and 15. One of them is in the “land of promise.” As a matter of fact, the name of that earthly city is “THE LORD IS THERE” (Ezek. 48:35). (All of the commentators missed the chapter—par for the course.)
“For he looked for a city . . .” (vs. 10). Well, it
wasn’t “New Jerusalem,” for Abraham’s name is not connected with New Jerusalem, nor is Isaac’s. The names on the gates of New Jerusalem are named after the twelve sons of Jacob, and the inhabitants of that city are said to be “the LAMB’S WIFE.” Abaham was never a part of the “Lamb’s wife” any more than John the Baptist was (John 3:29). All of the commentators (100 percent) missed the passages again—par for the course.
1. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are never going to get any home down here, for “their true fatherland was not here but in HEAVEN” (Dumbelow . . . excuse me! Dummelow).
2. “Heaven is the only home of faithful believers” (Ross, Wycliffe Commentary, p. 1422). This includes Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Ross makes no distinction whatsoever between the “THEY THAT SAY” and Sara and Abraham. (You understand that all of these inconsistent, Bible-perverting critics bet their bottom dollar on the difference between “YE” and “WE” in Hebrews 10 or “THOSE” and “YOU” in Hebrews 6—when trying to alibi their ignorance in placing their private interpretation on those two passages—but when they get to “THEY” in Hebrews 11:14, they suddenly forgot all of the Greek they ever knew. Any fool could see “hoi gar toiauta legontes” sitting there in every family of Greek manuscripts [cursives or uncials] that any Greek grammarian ever looked at. Moreover, the reference to “THESE” in verse 13 [“THESE all died in faith ...”] went far beyond Sara and Abraham as is evident by the previous verse: “innumerable.”)
3. The city Abraham looked for in Palestine was “the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem” (Nicoll; Dods writing the article; EGT, p. 356). To prove this, the Expositors’ Greek Testament appeals to Philo, Josephus, Clement, the Apocryphal Book of Wisdom, Krebs, Mansel, and Cicero. We appeal to Wayne Gretsky, Mark Spitz, Arnold Palmer, Joan Crawford,
Peter Lawford, Clint Eastwood, and Mayor LaGuardia—one set is as good as another.
4. Harry Ironside: “This city (vs. 10) is never described for us until we come to the closing chapters of the Book of Revelation” (p. 138). Hey, Harry! What happened to that city the Lord described for you in Ezekiel 40-48? Did someone tear nine chapters out of your “reliable translation”?
Anyone could see in one glance that the earthly city of God, where the Lord IS, is not the same city as the heavenly city where the Lamb is. Note: “.. . by lot the land for an inheritance . . . the sanctuary shall be IN THE MIDST OF IT ... ye shall appoint the possession of the city five thousand broad ... it was round about EIGHTEEN THOUSAND MEASURES ...” (Ezek. 45:1,6,48:8,35).
That is NOT New Jerusalem. The city in Ezekiel 48:35 is “round about EIGHTEEN THOUSAND MEASURES.” This is much smaller than New Jerusalem. New Jerusalem is fifteen hundred miles square, and its measurements are given in Revelation 21 as 12,000 furlongs by 12,000 furlongs. If you put New Jerusalem down on the land of Palestine, it would cover the land completely and cover half of the Mediterranean Sea from Egypt to Greece.
5. Barnes flinches and once or twice almost finds the truth. “Grotius and some others suppose that this refers to Jerusalem as a permanent dwelling for his posterity in contradistinction from the unsettled mode of life which Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob led. But there is no evidence that Abraham looked forward to the building of such a city . . . Even so early as the time of Abraham it would SEEM that the future blessedness of the righteous was foretold under the IMAGE of a splendid city reared on permanent foundations” (pp. 266- 267). He then ignores Ezekiel 40-48 and indicates that it is New Jerusalem and says, “There is not the slightest evidence that he supposed that there would be a
magnificent and glorious capital where the Messiah would personally reign . . .” (p. 267). So what? There is not the slightest evidence that he looked for New Jerusalem or any city, if you go by the record in Genesis 10-25. You wouldn’t have known he was looking for a city if Hebrews had not been written. Why would he have been looking for New Jerusalem? THAT IS WHERE THE MESSIAH IS IN ETERNITY (Rev. 21- 22). Barnes blew it.
6. “The city for which Abraham looked was HEAVEN itself, here likened to a city with foundations” (Arthur W. Pink, p. 705). He did? Well, why didn’t he stay in Ur of the Chaldees and look for it there? Do you have to physically leave an earthXy city to find a heavenly city? Didn’t all of the apostles STAY IN JERUSALEM AFTER THEY WERE SAVED? What is the point in seeking a “country” and a “city” in a “land of promise” (vs. 9) when the city is not in a “land of promise,” and you couldn’t get there if you traveled around the earth at the equator?
7. Kenneth “the Apostate {Living Bible) now speaks up for all of the gentlemen above and for those like them, including all of their students and teachers. Kenneth says, “Abraham was confidently waiting for God to bring him to that strong HEAVENLY CITY.” That is exactly what no Greek manuscript, text, Bible, edition, New Testament, or papyrus fragment says.
“Through faith also Sara ..(vs. 11). We have covered the matter fully in the Bible Believer’s Commentary on Genesis (Gen. 14-18; 1970). “As the stars of the sky in multitude, and as the sand which is by the sea shore innumerable” (vs. 12). The similitude means that you could not count all of the people that came from Abraham via Isaac, Jacob, and the twelve tribes. They were “numbered” in Exodus 16 and 30 and in Numbers 1-2 and 26, but the writer of Hebrews is writing 1,500 years after that time. To say that that number now was over 4,000,000 would be an under
statement. No man is going to “number” even one million people counting one head at a time, any more than he is going to count the number of grains of sand on the beach or stars in the sky. Fifty years ago, the superstitious idiots in colleges (all of them being evolutionists—as they still are) were telling young men and women that man had found all of the stars that there were to find (Gen. 15:5; Jer. 33:22). They are now sadder but wiser. Many times they can’t even number the stars in ONE nebula. With a computer, the seed of Israel could be numbered if you could register them, but since no one to this day knows who they are or where all of them are, the task would be just as impossible today as it was in A.D. 35 (or possibly A.D. 40) when Hebrews was written. Abraham’s seed is as:
1. The dust of the earth: Ishmael and the Arabians.
2. The sand of the sea: the literal, physical twelve tribes.
3. The stars of heaven: the spiritual seed (Gal. 3:16) that was typified by Isaac (Gal. 4:28-31).
“These all died in faith, not having received the PROMISES ..(vs. 13). Notice the plural; this time more is included than the “land grant” promised to Abraham (Gen. 15:18-21) as a “promised land” (Heb. 11:9). This time, the promises that have to do with the Jew obtaining the EARTH (Rom. 4:13) are included along with the Gentile blessings from the Jew (Gen. 12:1-3) and along with the curse promised to those who cursed the Jew (Gen. 12:1-3).
“Having seen THEM afar off, and were persuaded of THEM, and embraced THEM . . (vs. 13); that is, to believe a promise and lay hold of it, not only with both hands, but as Jacob, who seized the angel and grasped him in a “bear hug.” “Confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth” (vs. 13). This is how Abraham talks to the sons of Heth (Gen. 23:4) and how he talks to Abimelech, the king of
the Philistines (Gen. 20:13). The “King of the Jews” (their first real king, David) makes the same confession in Psalm 39:12. The reader cannot help but notice that it is the Lord Himself who confesses that He is a traveler and a “stranger” on earth (Lev. 25:23), moving from place to place (2 Sam. 7:6). When David confessed this Hebraic confession, he says to the Lord, “I AM A STRANGER WITH THEE . . .” (Psa. 39:12). God Himself is not “at home” on the planet which He made. He goes “without the gate” (Heb. 13:12-14) outside the “city” (Heb. 13:14).
The reader will notice that saints are like “PILGRIMS” and “STRANGERS” rather than a “VAGABOND” and a “FUGITIVE.” The second set belongs to Cain (Gen. 4:14). The “vagabond” is wandering with no place in mind—see any Ph.D. college professor who is an evolutionist, while the “pilgrim” is in a journey on the way to a destination. The “fugitive” is running from justice as an outlaw—see any Roman Catholic priest, bishop, or archbishop, while the “stranger” is just on foreign territory (1 Pet. 2:11) as an ambassador (2 Cor. 5:20). There is a difference.
11:14 For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country.
15 And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned.
16 But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city.
17 By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac: and he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten son.
18 Of whom it was said, That in Isaac shall thy seed be called:
19 Accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead; from whence also he re
20 By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau concerning things to come.
21 By faith Jacob, when he was a dying, blessed both the sons of Joseph; and worshipped, leaning upon the top of his staff.
22 By faith Joseph, when he died, made mention of the departing of the children of Israel; and gave commandment concerning his bones.
Now, the author suddenly switches over—without the consent of one Greek scholar or one faculty member of any school or one translator on any revision committee—and says, “THEY THAT SAY SUCH THINGS . . .” (vs. 14), comparing someone ELSE to people like Abraham and Sarah. “They that say such things” is not a reference to Abraham looking for a city (vs. 10) in the “land of promise” (vs. 9). “They” is a reference to someone LIKE Sarah and Abraham, but they are not Sarah and Abraham.
Who could this be? Let us again throw all of our Greek lexicons, Greek “Study Helps,” Greek “Expositor’s New Testaments,” Greek New Testament editions, and all of our Textus Receptus Greek manuscripts into the clothes hamper long enough to find the truth, shall we?
“Even as SARA . . . WHOSE DAUGHTERS YE ARE ...” (1 Pet. 3:6). Simon Peter was writing to “born again” (1 Pet. 2:2) women in the Church Age (1 Pet. 5:13), whose salvation was completed (1 Pet. 1:9) because their new birth was from the “incorruptible seed” of the word of God found in the “GOSPEL” (1 Pet. 1:25). They are not looking for a city in the “land of promise” as Abraham was. They are looking for a “HEAVENLY” country (vs. 16) and a heavenly CITY (Rev. 21-22). God “hath prepared for them a CITY” (vs. 16). The reference to the saved MAN in this age, as connected with Abraham, is given so clearly in Romans 4:1-25 that only a Ph.D. with twenty-two years
of training in Greek grammar could miss it in the “original, plenary, inspired, verbal autographs.” You see, Abraham’s salvation is NOT your salvation: it is LIKE your salvation. You were justified the moment that you believed what God told you to believe (Rom. 5, 10), and your imputed righteousness (Rom. 4-5) accompanied your salvation. ABRAHAM’S JUSTIFICATION (James 2:21) FOLLOWED HIS IMPUTED RIGHTEOUSNESS (Gen. 15:1-6) BY MORE THAN FIFTEEN YEARS (James 2:21).
Luther blew it one way, and Wesley blew it another; but either of them was more Spirit-filled and used of God than the last 20,000 Bible “scholars” who missed the references along with them.
1. Abraham left an earthly country to seek an earthly country. He left an earthly city to seek an earthly city. THAT ISN’T TRUE OF ONE SAVED MAN OR WOMAN IN THIS AGE unless they are out of fellowship with God (see 2 Cor. 4:17; Heb. 13:10-14; and Col. 3:1-4). The city he looked for will be on this EARTH when it shows up (Ezek. 40-48), and at that time, he will receive the “promise” in the “promised land” that God promised him. Obviously, the reference is to the millenium.
2. The child of God in the first century who picks up Hebrews to read it leaves an earthly country only spiritually to seek a heavenly country (Phil. 3:20; 2 Cor. 4:18; Col. 3:1-3) and a heavenly city (Rev. 21- 22) which will never actually be on this earth (Rev. 21-22).
The only thing similar about the two cases is that “truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned” (vs. 15). The child of God, however, who is confessing that he is a “stranger” and a “pilgrim” (vs. 13), doesn’t attempt to return to any literal city or country that he left unless God sends him back as a missionary (see Paul trying to get back
to Jerusalem!). Abraham never made any attempt again to get back to Ur of the Chaldees; however, he did send his servant back in that DIRECTION (Gen. 24) to get a bride for his son. God did the same thing. He sent His Holy Spirit down here to get a bride from a place He had LEFT (see John 20:22 and Acts 1-2). Observe that in writing to the Hebrews, the writer has encompassed in two verses (vss. 14-15) not only saved Gentiles who make up the body of Christ (as Rebekah— Gen. 24) BUT SAVED HEBREWS, FOR THERE ARE SAVED JEWS IN THE BODY OF CHRIST IN THIS AGE WHOSE INHERITANCE IS NOT IN “THE PROMISED LAND” BUT IN NEW JERUSALEM (Rev. 21-22; Gal. 3:28; 1 Cor. 12:13).
The Greek scholars (all without exception) missed all of the doctrines, all of the verses, and all of the cross references. It could not be otherwise. Having rejected the inerrant, infallible revelation of God in the Holy Bible and resorting to “reliable translations” and “better and older manuscripts” for their light, they blacked out. By now, we have seen these “faintin’ fits” so many times, we are no longer even amused, let alone startled. Infidelity never produced anything but ignorance. It is a crying shame that men like R. A. Torrey, W. B. Riley, G. Campbell Morgan, and even the great Charles H. Spurgeon felt intimidated by such charlatans when being questioned about “translations” and versions. No Bible believer should let such four-flushers intimidate him long enough to draw a breath of air.
That is a purely private interpretation done without comparing any Scripture with any other Scripture, and it is the result of the “natural man” receiving “not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him.” True, one can find all of the “vital” doctrines in the Living Bible—you can also find them in a systematic theology book.
The glorified exposition of ignorance we have
listed from Liberty University, Jamieson, Fausset, Brown, Bleek, Alford, Hort, Davidson, Fztrstad, Af- man, Dods, Nicoll, Aland, Metzger, MacRae, Newman, Cornette, Zodhiates, Wuest, Winer, Dummelow, Pink, Ironside, Bob Jones III (plus the faculty and staff), and Faulkner (plus the faculty and staff) is the result of lazy, sloppy, careless Bible study that refuses to compare “spiritual things with spiritual” (1 Cor. 2:13). It is the result of having “men’s persons in admiration because of advantage” (Jude 16), and thereby coming at you “with excellency of speech or of wisdom” and the “enticing words of MAN’S WISDOM” (1 Cor. 2:1-4).
EVERY APOSTATE FUNDAMENTALIST AND APOSTATE CONSERVATIVE IN THE ALEXANDRIAN CULT THREW EZEKIEL 40-48 OUT THE WINDOW BECAUSE HE DIDN’T REALLY BELIEVE ANYTHING LIKE IT WOULD TAKE PLACE LITERALLY IN THE “LAND OF PROMISE” GIVEN TO ABRAHAM. It will. Abraham will get his city, and it won’t be the bride of Christ (Rev. 21:9). NO OLD TESTAMENT SAINT IS IN THE BRIDE OF CHRIST.
When in doubt, take 100 percent of the “godly, consecrated, dedicated, born-again, soul-winning, Fundamental, premillennial scholarship” and pitch it out the window. That is God’s directive will in such matters.
“By faith Abraham, when he was tried ..(vs. 17). Observe how the English clears up the obscure Greek and all of that gas about “tempted” is wrong in Genesis 22: “because God cannot ‘tempt’ any man” (James 1:13). When Christ defines “kill” as murder (Matt. 19:18) and Hebrews defines tempting as “tried” (here at vs. 17), who needs a Greek scholar to mess things up? (We have covered verses 17-18 in the Bible Believer’s Commentary on Genesis.) “From whence also he received him in a figure . . (vs. 19). Abra
ham is counting on a resurrection when he takes the boy up the hill (Gen. 22:5), and it is in this sense (and this sense only) that he saw “Christ’s day and was glad” (see John 8:56). The “figure” he receives him under is simply saying that the substitute RAM caught in the thicket (Gen. 22:13) took Isaac’s place and allowed Isaac to go on living, but since Abraham had already started to kill him (see Gen. 22:10), God gives Abraham credit “IN A FIGURE” (see 1 Pet. 3:21!) for having it done.
Faith that is not tried is not real faith. Faith has to be tried like GOLD, according to Simon Peter (1 Pet. 1:7) and John (Rev. 3:18). They used to have a sign at the top of one of the stairways at Bob Jones University (when it was first built on the old, barren, wind-swept hill outside of Greenville in 1948) that said, “WHERE IS YOUR FAITH?” That thing used to aggravate me to no end. I have gone up those stairways many a time in a soul-dragging “slough of despond” with a temperature of 101°, no milk in the ice box for the kids, no gasoline in the car to get to the next meeting, and things all wrong at home. I stumbled on that sign: “WHERE IS YOUR FAITH?” “Beats the tar out of me,” I would say to the Lord, “You tell me, ‘cause I don’t know where I dumped the thing.” Oh, that sign was a rebuke to me! I couldn’t see four houses, sixteen automobiles, a church, a school, six acres of land, eleven children, and twelve grandchildren while I was going up those stairs. I couldn’t see all of the bills paid, money in the bank, and three vacations in Germany and Austria! Oh, man, what are you talking about? All I could see was hungry children, a car that was having trouble, a contentious wife, a fever, no souls in the last meeting, and not enough money with which to buy a meal.
The Lord would rebuke me, and I would say, “Oh, well, what’s the difference?” (In the old days, there was a postscript on that thing that said, “Oh, well,
what the . . ,” but I had managed to shake that.)
Back in the old days (1943-1944), an old farmer in Alabama met me and got to know me through a period of several months. He was a good judge of character. I hadn’t left his company more than five minutes one day when he turned to some of his family and said, “That Pete Ruckman, he just don’t give a . ...” I didn’t. I just didn’t. Any time I got into a sure enough mess (and I got in them in the U.S.A., the Philippines, Hawaii, Japan, and everywhere in between), I would sluff it off with “Oh well, what’s the difference?” After I was saved, the Lord would take one “li’l ole’ verse of Scripture and just blow that thing all to pieces. Every time I said to myself, “Oh, well, what’s the difference?,” the Holy Spirit would sound off in my head just as clear as a freight train whistle fifty feet in front of your face—THAT’S RIGHT—“THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE: FOR ALL HAVE SINNED AND COME SHORT OF THE GLORY OF GOD.”
I’ve had God work me over in the middle of sin and temptation with a child’s song: “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” Did you ever have that mess going through your head when you are getting ready to do something wrong? It’s an irritating thing, isn’t it? Praise God for the inhibiting, restraining, frustrating power of the Holy Spirit!
“By faith Isaac blessed Jacob . . (vs. 20). Now, here we are in hot water. We are in more than that—we are in boiling oil. If there was one man who did not “eat in faith” (see Rom. 14:21-22) and therefore should have been “damned if he ate” (Rom. 14:23), it was Isaac. When he blessed Jacob in Genesis 27, he doubted FIVE TIMES BEFORE HE BLESSED HIM. “He that doubteth is damned if he eat. .. for whatsoever is not of faith is SIN” (Rom. 14:23). Ethelbert William Bullinger knows the temperature of the caldron. For twenty verses, now, he has been on a positive kick trying to justify the sins of the saints, oblivi
ous to the fact that these sins are unjustified but simply OVERLOOKED in the New Testament.
Not one word about Elijah’s self-pity (1 Kings 19:14) and his panic (1 Kings 19:3) nor his desire to run from trouble by suicide (1 Kings 19:4)—not one word. Not one word in the New Testament about Samson’s fornicating adventures (Judges 14-15) and his breaking of the sacred vows of the Nazarite (Num. 6:1-10)—not one word. Not one word about Gideon leading Israel into idolatry (Judg. 8:22-27)—not one word. If old Ethelbert Bullinger is going to try to convert all of those passages into “accidental slips,” he is going to have a time of it, and a time of it he has! “Sarah didn’t doubt God.” Oh, no, no! The promise came “as a shock” (Gen. 18:10) and was “sufficient in itself ... so unexpected ... to produce a momentary or passing SURPRISE” (Bullinger, Great Cloud of Witnesses, p. 182). “But it is equally clear that as soon as they ever realized that what they had heard was the promise of God, ALL DOUBT and hesitation vanished.” “There should be no surprise at the momentary shock” (p. 182).
Well, Ethelbert, old scout, I’ll tell you one thing: you don’t have to worry about any “momentary surprise” on this end of the line when we see you trying to mess up the Bible like that. Any man who would replace Manasseh with “MOSES” (see Judg. 18:30) on the basis of someone’s desire to conceal a man’s identity (Bullinger, p. 83), so that they put a “suspended Nun over the word to show that it formed no part of the word originally” and “was inserted there more by way of suggestion or for pronunciation” (p. 82), would do ANYTHING with the Book that he felt was necessary to reduce it to his own level of ignorance. E. W. Bullinger was proficient in Latin, Chaldean, Coptic, Greek, Hebrew, and Persian; and he could no more find truth in the AV text where it crossed his preferences and opinions than he could find a sea shell on the back side
You might as well face it, Sarah not only DOUBTED the promise—she laughed at it (Gen. 18:12). Face it like a big, grown-up man, Bullinger; she not only laughed at it—she LIED about her response when she was caught (Gen. 18:15).
Imagine the trouble scholars like Bullinger are going to have when God turns to them and says in regard to the Authorized text: “Why did you laugh?” They’ll say, “I didn’t laugh!” The Lord then says, “NAY, BUT YOU DID, TOO, LAUGH!”
No, the truth is (regardless of Bullinger’s humanistic attempts to cover up for Sarah) that God has already covered up for her (1 Pet. 3:6!) in the New Testament. The New Testament was intended to “take away sins” and “clear the guilty” (see comments above). It cleared Sarah even though she was temporarily an infidel who ridiculed the words of God.
This explains much of Isaac’s case. God gave him credit where he hadn 't earned it. He only had faith to give the blessing AFTER he had eaten, and in his own heart and mind he certainly thought he was giving it to Esau (see Gen. 27:27 and comments in that Commentary). In an amazing and outrageous homily on the passage, Ethelbert Bullinger says, “He [Isaac] must surely by that time have discerned the fact that it was really Jacob” (p. 194)! “Isaac must have known therefore that it was really Jacob, or it would not have been ‘by faith’.” After coming to this non-scriptural, illogical, confused, private interpretation, Bullinger is confronted with Isaac’s terror at finding out that he was mistaken (read Gen. 27:33); and what then does he come up with? Bullinger comes up with: “The trembling of Isaac . . . need not have been caused either by DOUBT or by DISCOVERY” (p. 195). What was it, then, Bullinger? WHY, ISAAC WAS AFRAID OF ESAU BECAUSE OF ESAU’S “TEMPERAMENT”!
Now, that is the type of screwed-up mess that a
born-again, Bible-believing, premillennial Fundamentalist can get into when he USES a Book that he doesn’t BELIEVE. Bullinger was a saved, godly, qualified scholar who believed in all of the fundamentals of the faith and most of what Scofield and Larkin believed. When handling a simple passage in his own language, written in third-grade English, he could no more understand it than Chuck Swindoll could understand a Manrikigursari. You mess with that Book, and God will mess with your mind!
All of this overlooks, however, a very important verse where Isaac DID bless Jacob “by faith.” That verse is Genesis 28:1. Observe further: “And give thee the blessing of Abraham, to thee, and to thy seed with thee; that thou mayest inherit the land wherein thou art a stranger, which God gave unto Abraham” (Gen. 28:4). THAT WAS THE REFERENCE FOUND IN HEBREWS 11:20. Bullinger could not find the reference because he was so occupied with “suspended Nuns in the original,” “the force of the word epi in the original,” “what the Targum of Onkelos said about the original,” and the “Hophal conjugation in the original,” that he failed to learn ENGLISH. That is a very common failing with Robert Sumner, Spiros Zodhiates, Kenneth Wuest, A. T. Robertson, Zeller, Harold Willmington, Olson, Anderson, Moulton, Milligan, Mulligan, Mule-again, Hooligan, Howl-again, and the “scholars” who intimidated Laird Harris, Graham Scroggie, B. H. Carroll, and W. B. Riley.
Esau was blessed by faith in Genesis 27:39-40 (cf. Heb. 11:20).
When Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown near the boiling caldron (vs. 20), they simply turn and run for their lives. They can’t apply it, explain it, cross reference it, or exegete it; so, they just dump it and run.
Jerry Falwell’s faculty members are no different than Lee Roberson’s or Bob Jones Ill’s. All apostasy begins in Christian colleges and universities; it always
has and it always will. That is an infallible “historic position” of HISTORY. Freerkson (Liberty University) limps off with this fantastic nonsense: “Even though these events SEEM to involve deceit (Gen. 27) rather than faith, Isaac’s PART WAS FAITH in that he was accomplishing God’s will.”
In a pig’s eye. Freerkson would justify his own sin with clap-trap like that.
Isaac’s part was doubting once (Gen. 27:18), doubting twice (Gen. 27:20), doubting three times (Gen. 27:21), and doubting four times (Gen. 27:22). HE DOUBTED WHEN HE ATE (Gen. 27:24), and his “blessing” in Genesis 27 was rooted, grounded, and established in DOUBT. Freerkson, like Bullinger, forgot to read the next chapter (Gen. 28:1-5) where Isaac blessed Jacob by faith. YOU SEE, THE AVERAGE HEAD OF THE AVERAGE BIBLE DEPARTMENT IN THE AVERAGE FUNDAMENTALIST COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY, INSTITUTE, OR SEMINARY IS UNABLE TO READ. He has reading problems. They are reading problems in his own language.
“By faith Jacob, when he was a dying, blessed both the sons of Joseph . . (vs. 21). He did? By crossing his hands deliberately (Gen. 48:17-18) so that the younger (like himself) would get more blessings than the older (who was like Esau). Well, if that is “faith,” it is a remarkable testimony to the ability of the carnal mind to please God.
Before examining the truth, notice the mythological LXX popping up again. We read in Jamieson, Faus- set, and Brown that Paul is quoting a B.C. Septuagint that reads “the top of his staff,” whereas the Authorized text (and the Masoretic Hebrew) said “upon the bed’s head” (Gen. 47:31). Now, grab this! Here are 100 percent of the Fundamentalists, Evangelicals, and Conservatives telling you that the HEBREW TEXT OF GENESIS IS WRONG ACCORDING TO THE NEW TESTAMENT, AND ACCORDING TO THE NEW
TESTAMENT, THE GREEK OLD TESTAMENT TEXT—CONTAINING THE APOCRYPHA AS PART OF THE INSPIRED CANON—IS CORRECT! Why didn’t Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown give you the LXX MANUSCRIPT for “Paul’s quotation”? You get one guess. You need no education to guess correctly. To know why NO SCHOLAR ever QUOTES ONE LXX MANUSCRIPT to prove that a reading is an “LXX” reading, you don’t have to finish the third grade. The reason that they never quote the manuscript evidence for an LXX reading is because you could find a ping pong ball at the North Pole before you could find ONE LXX MANUSCRIPT WRITTEN BEFORE THE TIME OF CHRIST (IN GREEK) THAT ANY NEW TESTAMENT WRITER EVER QUOTES.
Ask your nearest Alexandrian Cult leader: any graduate from a major Christian school in America or Europe. Give him forty years to produce one manuscript—just ONE.
Roman Catholics have used the verse (vs. 21) to prove that Jacob worshipped “the top of his staff.” We would expect as much. Anyone that would call Acts 12:17 a “proof text” for Peter being in Rome before Paul got there could do anything for a buck.
Barnes picks up the party line: “This is an exact quotation from the Septuagint.” Well, Barnes, baby, not unless Paul wrote the epistle between A.D. 150 and 350, FOR THAT IS WHERE YOU GOT THE QUOTATION FROM, and we know it, if the faculties and staffs at Hyles-Anderson and Pensacola Christian College don’t know it.
Now, what is the problem? Well, it must have to do with third-grade English, and it does. When Symmachus, Origen, Theodotian, Aquilla, and other dead orthodox apostates attacked the Hebrew Old Testament (A.D. 150-280), they got rid of the “bed” in Genesis 47:31 so that you would think that the reference in Hebrews 11:21 was to Genesis 47:31. The whole
thing was pointless, for the blessing of Joseph’s sons (Heb. 11:21) took place “AFTER THESE THINGS” (see Gen. 48:1). Jacob was not bowing upon the bed’s head when he blessed the boys; that was earlier.
So, what we have here is Origen, Theodotian, Symmachus, and Aquilla (all in the Hexapla), and others coming along 100 to 400 years after the completion of the New Testament, finding fault with BOTH TESTAMENTS, and deciding that their own critical genius for discerning “what the original said” enabled them to correct the “oracles of God” (Rom. 3:2) given to the Jews (Rom. 3:1-4). This they did. They altered Genesis 47:31 to match Hebrews 11:21 oblivious to the fact that the two verses HAD NO CONNECTION WHATSOEVER. Every sucker for the next 1,800 years took the bait. Arthur W. Pink is just as gullible as any unsaved Liberal in the National Association for the Advancement of Science. He quotes John Owen to prove that Hebrews 11:21 and Genesis 47:31 happened simultaneously; Joseph used the bed and the staff (p. 768). Hey, girls! Yoo hoo! What about “AND IT CAME TO PASS AFTER THESE THINGS . . (Gen. 48:1)? Yoo hoo! “Hey, deah! Din’t ya’ll drap sumthin’ acomin’ in?”
Jacob used his staff to support himself in chapter 48 of Genesis while blessing the sons of Joseph. He didn’t bow himself on any bed’s head, for he “SAT UPON THE BED” (Gen. 48:2). Jacob is sitting up so straight in the bed that the boys come between his knees and his hands are over their heads (Gen. 48:9- 15). Someone forgot that both of these “boys” were over seventeen years old (see Gen. 41:46-55 and 47:28). You don’t “bow” yourself on a bed to put your hands on the heads of two boys that are eighteen and twenty years old not even when they are kneeling. The support Jacob had when he worshipped on his staff was the one with which he “crossed Jordan” (Gen. 28) and upon which he had hobbled every day of his life since he
tangled with the Angel of the Lord (Gen. 32:31). The part of Jacob’s blessing that is by “FAITH” is plainly this: “The Angel which redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads; and let my name be named on them, and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac; and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth” (Gen. 48:16). THAT WAS THE REFERENCE IN HEBREWS 11:21.
Jacob’s crafty manipulation of the PREEMINENT blessing (Gen. 48:17-20) was, as they say down home, “somethin’ else.” You say, “Why is that not mentioned in Hebrews?” For the same reason that God doesn’t say one word about David’s sins of adultery, murder, pretense (2 Sam. 11-12), backsliding (1 Sam. 27:1-3), fear of man (1 Sam. 21:13), and crafty coniving (2 Sam. 11:15). I have told you once, and I will tell you twice that the New Testament covers “the sins of the saints.” All attempts to rationally and logically justify these sins (see for example Bullinger’s monstrous bungling of Moses’ act under Hebrews 11:24-27, below) is attempting to play God. The blood covers them (Rom. 3-4).
“By faith Joseph . . . gave commandment concerning his bones .. (vs. 22). We have commented on these matters in great length in the Bible Believer’s Commentary on Genesis. God didn’t leave so much as one bone of His Son in “Egypt” (see Luke 24:51; Acts 1:9-10). He called His Son “Out of Egypt” (Matt. 2:15) as He called His people out of Egypt (see Exodus and comments in that Commentary). He told Isaac not to go down there exactly as He told Israel not to go down there (Jer. 41-42). THAT IS WHY THE ALEXANDRIAN CULT, TO THIS DAY, IS LOYAL TO EGYPT: EGYPT, A TYPE OF THIS WORLD, IS WHERE THE FIRST CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY WAS BUILT—ALEXANDRIA, EGYPT.
Joseph’s bones are carried up (Exod. 13:19) in a type of RAPTURE which would include the dead as
well as the living (see remarks under Heb. I 1:29 on the “Red sea”).
11:23 By faith Moses, when he was born, was hid three months of his parents, because they saw he was a proper child; and they were not afraid of the king’s commandment.
24 By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter;
25 Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season;
26 Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt: for he had respect unto the recompense of the reward.
27 By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king: for he endured, as seeing him who is invisible.
28 Through faith he kept the passover, and the sprinkling of blood, lest he that destroyed the firstborn should touch them.
29 By faith they passed through the Red sea as by dry land: which the Egyptians assaying to do were drowned.
30 By faith the walls of Jericho fell down, after they were compassed about seven days.
31 By faith the harlot Rahab perished not with them that believed not, when she had received the spies with peace.
“By faith Moses, when he was born, was hid . . .” (vs. 23). This time, the faith was actually manifested by Moses’ parents! Moses was the object of “hid.” It was his parents that exercised the faith. The LXX writers, writing 200 years after the resurrection of Christ, went back to Exodus 2:3 and put in “THEY” for “SHE,” correcting the Oracles of God with “the original Greek” on the grounds that Hebrews 11:23 said “parents.” Therefore, it had to be “them. ” It
wasn’t in Exodus. It was JOCHEBED (see Exod. 2:2). The post-Christian LXX writers, writing 100 to 400 years after the completion of the New Testament (“Hebrews,” in this case) really have a time of it, don’t they?
It’s sort of like watching a drunken clerk at an airline counter trying to get you a reserved seat by means of a computer. Computers plus liquor are the ultimate in absolute incompetent confusion. Conservative scholarship plus a “pre-Christian” LXX is the only thing that could give them a run for their money.
“Fair,” “proper,” and “goodly” are the three adjectives used to describe the baby Moses (Exod. 2:2; Acts 7:20; Heb. 11:23). Most of the commentators assume that there was some unknown, unrevealed prophecy about Moses that his parents had before the boy was born and that the adjectives shown above indicate that he bore some peculiar mark or sign to indicate that he was to be the chosen deliverer of the Jewish people. However, this time, not one man in the bunch can twist the Hebrew or mangle the Greek enough to prove his point. “They must have heard from God a description of the babe” (Bullinger, p. 224). “Moses’ parents must have had a direct communication from God telling them exactly what would happen and what they were to do” (ibid.). “If their action has been based on the beauty of the child it would have been by affection, or by fancy, or by infatuation . . . but ... it was by FAITH” (ibid.).
However, that doesn’t necessarily follow, for it would have been an act of FAITH at this time (Exod. 1-2) to try to salvage ANY baby. It was the faith of the Hebrew mid-wives that salvaged thousands of babies who were “destined” to lead no one anywhere. Bullinger is quite out of place in insisting that the “Faith” referred to had to be because of some peculiar reason. The reason it was “faith ” was because it went against the king’s orders. Notice exactly the same thing in Moses’ faith in verse 27. “THEY WERE NOT
AFRAID OF THE KING’S COMMANDMENT” (vs. 23) is where the “faith” came in. Now, we will not exclude the hypothetical conjecture that God could have told Amram and Jochebed something about their son before he was born. The problem is that he told Abraham about his son before he was born and recorded it. He talked to Rebecca about her sons before they were born and recorded it. He recorded nothing “pre-birth” about Moses. Granted that he could have and perhaps did. The “fair, proper, and goodly” could certainly refer more to the fact that the boy was healthy and in good physical condition and not a candidate for mercy killings or “euthenasia.” He must have born racial signs of a pureblooded Hebrew to be “proper.” He would have born signs of a child from Sarah’s stock, for she was “fair,” in the sense of light-skinned (See Gen. 12:14 and comments in that Commentary), while “goodly” would be a reference to a perfect physical specimen.
“By faith Moses ... refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter” (vs. 24). That took faith because that would upset Pharaoh quite badly. Moses was reared in Pharaoh’s house at least in regard to “wisdom and learning” (Acts 7:22), and it was Pharaoh’s daughter who adopted him when he was less than a year old. “Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God” (vs. 25). As usual, the Lord is giving His Old Testament saints more credit than they deserve. If by this is meant the actual Exodus, all is in order; but “the pleasures of sin for a season” were not to be found on the backside of the desert where Moses was before the Exodus. They were to be found in Pharaoh’s palace with Pharaoh’s daughter and friends BEFORE he went to the backside of the desert. We must assume, then, that when “Moses went out” (Exod. 2:11), he had already made some kind of a break with Pharaoh’s household over the issue of slave labor. If he hadn’t, then the report of his killing (see
Exod. 2:15 and comments in that Commentary) certainly “tied the rag on the bush.”
“Esteeming the reproach of Christ . . (vs. 26). Notice that this is a case like Abraham “seeing Christ’s day” (John 8:56). The writer is not saying that Moses was suffering because he was telling people about the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ; he is saying that the same kind of reproaches that fell on Christ (see John 2:17 and Psa. 69:9) fell on Moses for doing RIGHT. “The recompence of the reward” (vs. 26) was a reward for doing right, not “enjoying the pleasures of sin for a season.” Moses esteemed that any reproach that he would take for doing right was as good as a CASH PAYMENT (see Ruth 2:12), exactly as the New Testament apostles figured the matter after they had “suffered SHAME for His name” (Acts 5:41). It has already been noted by every Bible-believing preacher since Ignatius that sin is enjoyable (vs. 25) but only “for a season.” “At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder” (Prov. 23:32). “The ends thereof are the ways of death” (Prov. 14:12) and hell (Prov. 7:27). It is only “because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily” (EccL 8:11) that “the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil” (Ecc. 8:11). Moses can choose pleasure or suffering (see Job 36:21 and comments in that Commentary), for sometimes the choice is reduced to that (see 1 Pet. 2:19). Christ “strives against sin” until He sheds blood in His resistance (see Heb. 12:3- 4 and comments). Sometimes it is not a choice between just good and evil; many times it is a choice between SUFFERING and EVIL. Take your pick. Tough choice, isn’t it? That is what the martyrs were confronted with from A.D. 400 to 1900 in the Roman Catholic system. They could do right (refuse to pray to Mary, refuse to go to mass, refuse to allow their babies to be sprinkled, preach on the street, witness, and correct the Pope with the Bible), or they could suffer four
hours on a grill being slowly barbecued. Moses could enjoy sin or he could suffef. He chose “rather to suffer affliction with the people of God” (vs. 25).
“By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king ..(vs. 27). Again, the Holy Spirit neatly sifts out the life of Moses to present him in the best possible light. Face it: Moses was scared stiff of the "king” when he forsook Egypt after killing the Egyptian (Exod. 2:15). But, not if you are a “good, godly, dedicated, qualified, militant Fundamentalist that is true to the plenary inspiration of the verbally inspired originals”! No, sir! Instead—Moses was not “looking this way and that way” in Exodus 2:12 because he was worried about a witness. Oh, my, no! “Moses evidently looked this way and that way ... to see whether any HELP was coming from any other quarter” (Bullinger, p. 247). “The FIGURE of speech used to emphasize this (Oh, Barnum and Bailey, have we ever seen THIS act before!) is epizeuxis; the repetition of a word to show the earnestness and eagerness of his looking” (p. 248). Then, why did he run like a scalded dog after this? Well, this “however in no way removed the ground for Moses’ ‘fear’ and subsequent alarm which he would naturally feel when the excitement of the occasion was over” (p. 248).
Are the mullet running yet? Are the bass biting?
Moses “forsook” Egypt on two occasions and neither one was connected with murdering an Egyptian.
1. When he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter while he was still in the palace (that was a mental and spiritual forsaking)
2. When he took the Jews out in Exodus 12-15 (that was a literal, physical forsaking)
Nothing Bullinger conjectured was relevant to anything found in any Bible. He could just as well have taken his “figure of speech” and stuck it in his left ear. Forty years of studying Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew did NOTHING for him.
“For he endured, as seeing him who is invisible . . (vs. 27). This, although it looks like an impossibility, doesn’t vary a whit from Paul’s statement that the Godhead is “CLEARLY SEEN” (Rom. 1:20) even though it is “INVISIBLE” (Rom. 1:20). It is the “eye of faith’’ that accomplishes these feats which to science are absolutely impossible.
One is reminded of a man who said that you turn on a light switch by faith. His friend said, “No, that’s not faith; it’s hope. You hope that it will turn on.” The man answered, “Yeah, but if you took my car key and put it into your ignition and hoped it would start, that wouldn’t be hope, that would be folly.” A man who believes in evolution as a “fact” is using someone else’s key in his own ignition. You exercise “faith” every time that you turn on a light switch, turn a door knob, purchase a plane ticket, pay a telephone bill, charge an item at a store, take the marriage vows, turn your wife over to a doctor, or send your child off to school. There is no such thing as living without FAITH. There doesn’t exist on this earth a nuclear physicist who doesn’t have to make a calculation on a world that he cannot SEE. Belief in evolution is blind faith without works or facts. (See The Christian’s Handbook on Science and Philosophy, 1985.)
“Through faith he kept the passover . . (vs. 28—see Exodus 12 and comments in that Commentary). “By faith they passed through the Red sea ..(vs. 29). Notice carefully that the word here in all of the Greek manuscripts, from all of the families of Greek manuscripts (uncials and cursives), in any edition of any Greek text, say “RED” (eruthan).
HOLD THE PHONE, GEORGIE-PORGIE! WHAT HAPPENED TO THAT “SEA OF REEDS’’ THAT ALL OF THESE APOSTATES WERE TALKING ABOUT IN EXODUS 13-15? DID IT DRY UP? What in the ever-lovin’-blue-eyed-world is the Holy Spirit doing making two mistakes (the first coming from Hebrew
into English—“Red Sea” in Exodus 13:18, 15:4—and the second in “THE ORIGINAL VERBALLY INSPIRED GREEK”? Ain’t that the limit?
Wouldn’t you have thought that God could have corrected Himself when He got to Hebrews 11:29 and given us “REED SEA” (Greek: kalamosf! But He didn’t. He left the “mistake” in His Bible!
The commentator from Liberty University (James Borland, a seminary professor) grants that “Red Sea” is the right term in Exodus, but then he runs immediately to the good, old LXX. To justify the wording before us in Hebrews 11:29 (RED Sea), he says, “The New Testament confirms the identity also by uniformly speaking of the Red Sea in THE SAME WORDS AS THE LXX USES ... The LXX (Greek translation the Jews made of the Old Testament in 250 B.C.)” (Liberty Bible Commentary, Vol. I, p. 143).
Do you wanna bet? Put up or shut up.
THERE ISN’T ONE FACULTY MEMBER AT LIBERTY UNIVERSITY WHO EVER FOUND ONE LXX MANUSCRIPT WRITTEN BEFORE A.D. 150 THAT CALLS THE ‘‘SEA OF REEDS” THE RED SEA. Not one. The reason James Borland didn’t cite the LXX references was because there were none. MANUSCRIPT EVIDENCE IS NEVER CONNECTED WITH THE ‘‘LXX” OR “SEPTUAGINT” WHEN QUOTING EITHER: the men who quote them have no manuscripts from which to quote. This is the fifth time that we have documented this fact in this one commentary. We could have documented it twenty-four times by now if we had cited all of the nonsense written by Stibbs; Dods; Dummelow; Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown; and Arthur W. Pink.
We have commented on verse 29 at length (more than twenty pages) in the Bible Believer’s Commentary on Exodus.
“By faith the walls of Jericho fell down . .
(vs. 30). All is self-explanatory. For the “improbable”
things related to this operation see Problem Texts (Bible Baptist Bookstore, 1980).
“By faith the harlot Rahab perished not with them that believed not. . (vs. 31). She was spared in Joshua 6:25. The grounds of her deliverance was a “scarlet thread” (which plainly represents some kind of blood) which was placed outside her window (Josh. 2:18), after “she had received the spies with peace” (Heb. 11:31). Rahab believes the PAST (Josh. 2:10) record, not just the “future” (Josh. 6:26). We call this to your attention because of the slaughter the Alexandrian Cult made of Hebrews 11:1 in redefining “faith.”
Bullinger again steps forward with the amazing information that since the walls of Jericho fell down that Rahab’s house “on the walls” fell down with them! This means that all of Rahab’s household had to get out of the city before the attack. How this was done when “Jericho was straitly shut up . . . none went out, and none came in” (Josh. 6:1) is such a problem that Bullinger decides that an unrecorded patrol went back into the city—they had to be the same spies that hid the previous time (Josh. 2:1-19)—and got Rahab and her father, mother, sisters, and brothers (see the list in Josh. 2:13) out of the city UNDETECTED before the walls collapsed! The first visit of these spies was in Joshua 2, and the attack did not come until chapter 6. What in the ever-lovin-blue-eyed-world was a SCARLET thread on the wall for when the whole crew was going to be evacuated secretly before the attack (Josh. 2:18)? No one was evacuated before the attack. Rahab and her household were placed “without the camp of Israel” (Josh. 6:23) AFTER the walls collapsed (Josh. 6:20-21). Joshua didn’t even tell the spies to get Rahab and her household until after the walls had collapsed (Josh. 6:22).
What happened to Ethelbert Bullinger’s MIND?
The same thing that happened to Cornelius Stam when he picked up the doctrine of limited atonement.
The same thing that happened to Stewart Custer when he defended Origen and Hort.
The same thing that happened to Freerkson when he hit Hebrews chapters 6 and 10.
The same thing that happened to Spiros Zodhiates when he hit Hebrews chapters 6 and 10.
The same thing that happened to Vincent when he hit Hebrews chapters 3, 6, 10, and 11.
The same thing that happened to every sinner on the earth, living or dead, who ever messed with that Holy Bible to make it line up with his lack of knowledge and lack of spiritual understanding.
The same thing that happened to Clark, Worsham, Morrow, and Symons at “Bible Baptist EAST.”
How did Rahab come out of the catastrophe of Joshua 6 alive? Easy: her part of the wall didn’t collapse. It was a genuine miracle. The whole “fursh- lunginer” wall collapsed, leaving one piece about 12 to 15 feet wide standing straight up in the air. There it stood with a cord hanging out the window, and dangling from that cord was a SCARLET THREAD. (To this day, “cat houses” are associated with RED lights. “Publicans and HARLOTS go into the kingdom of God before you” [Matt. 21:31].)
11:32 And what shall I more say? for the time would fail me to tell of Gedeon, and of Barak, and of Samson, and of Jephthae; of David also, and Samuel, and of the prophets:
33 Who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions,
34 Quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens.
35 Women received their dead raised to life again: and others were tortured, not accepting de
liverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection:
36 And others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment:
37 They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented;
38 (Of whom the world was not worthy:) they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.
39 And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise:
40 God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect.
The author cannot go into any more details. He has said enough and cited enough specific examples to get across his original point which was that faith had “substance” and “evidence.” It was not at all like the English translations since 1800 say it was. He now mentions, very briefly, six more names and again is careful not to mention ANY of their sins. The list throws Bullinger into a theological panic, and the lengths to which he now goes to justify Jephthah and Samson arrive at their predestined terminus: ridiculous nonsense. For the moment, observe that the Holy Spirit will not mention Barak’s genuine fear of obeying God (Judg. 4:8) nor Gideon’s terrible sin of Judges 8:27 nor David’s defection to the Philistines (1 Sam. 27) and his murder of Uriah to get his wife (2 Sam. 11-12). The New Testament was instituted (Matt. 26) to clear sinners whose sins had been “remitted” (Exod. 34) without being “taken away” (Heb. 10). Hence, the New Testament BOOKS refuse to mention those sins. That is the great fundamental Biblical truth that Bullinger couldn’t find in his own language.
In one of the most fouled-up messes a believer
will ever examine, E. W. Bullinger—after 300 pages on “what is wrong” with Hamack, Sunday, Torrey, and Stanley “doubting the words of God” and 300 pages of “let us believe God’s words at any cost!”, etc.—goes right into Judges 11 like a rabid hyena and destroys the entire story of Jephthah. Instead of the “daughters of Israel” going out “yearly to LAMENT the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite four days in a year” (Judg. 11:40), they go out to “REHEARSE HER.” You read it right—they went out to rehearse Jephthah’s daughter! “This is done by observing the well known rule that the connective particle (Vau) is often used as a disjunctive . . . Rabbi David Kimchi (1160-1232) renders the words of the vow (Judg. 11:31) very differently from the AV . . (p. 326). (Then put the Rabbi in the
discard box.) “It should be noted that when he said ‘Whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me,’ the word ‘whatsoever’ is masculine ... it has nothing to do with a sacrificial death, but it has to do with a dedicated life. SHE WAS DEDICATED TO A PERPETUAL VIRGINITY” (p. 329). That is, Jephthah’s daughter was NOT offered up as a burnt saccrifice; she was “dedicated” to be a nun.
1. Who in blazes would think that any nation in the world would commemorate annually (for four days) one woman who vowed not to get married? “The daughters of Israel . . . four days in a year” (Judg. 11:40) commemorated one woman who couldn’t get married? Talk about unspeakable, unthinkable nonsense; who on earth would concoct such a doctrine? No wonder Bullinger had to get rid of the word “lament” in the verse!
2. “Rehearse”? “It means to talk to others hence to rehearse TOGETHER” (p. 329). That is, you hanged it twice to get your private interpretation—“rehearse” alone wouldn’t do; you had to talk “with others," and since that wouldn’t do, you had to talk “together.” Well, why stop here? Why not say “rehearse” means to
“go through a playlet with a cast of actors that are portraying something that will take place in the future”? Why stop after altering the text twice?
3. WOULD THE FIRST ROOSTER THAT CAME OUT OF THE DOORS HAVE BEEN A PERPETUAL VIRGIN IF HE HAD COME INSTEAD OF A GIRL? How about a hen? A perpetual virgin hen? “Then it shall be that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the Lord’s, AND I WILL OFFER IT UP FOR A BURNT OFFERING” (Judg. 11:31). Correction! “I WILL MAKE SURE IT DOESN’T GET MARRIED AND BREED.”
Nonsense! Cock-eyed nonsense from the first president of the Trinitarian Bible Society of London, England. Bullinger, as Pink, was a TULIP Calvinist.
Bullinger’s alibi for perverting the words of God and making a liar out of the author of Judges was that “we cannot imagine that God would accept or that Jephthah would offer human blood” (ibid., p. 329).
You didn ’t have to imagine either. “In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes” (Judg. 21:25). God never accepted it when it was done. Jephthah followed Ecclesiastes 5:2-6 to the letter and forgot Leviticus 5- 7. Bullinger couldn’t find any of the passages: they were in English. Lamenting for an only daughter who was sacrificed because of a vow to God is as credible as the plan of salvation, but to imagine that for four days a year all of the “daughters of Israel” commemorated a woman’s virginity who couldn’t get married is just too much for one day, or one century for that matter. God didn’t approve of Jephthah’s vow or his fulfillment of that vow. The Bible never intimated that He did or should or could. Jephthah acted on his own. Since that contradicted his showing up in Hebrews 11:32 as a “hero of the faith,” Bullinger changed
the entire Biblical account and invented a fable that never existed. “May it be ours to have a like faith . .
(p. 331), says Ethelbert piously! No, may God deliver you from such a faith; for Jephthah’s “faith” was no reference at all to his sacrificing his daughter. His faith is clearly manifest in:
1. Taking the word of the elders and acting on it (Judg. 11:9-11).
2. Sending the note to the king of the Ammorites (Judg. 11:13-27).
3. Going to battle against superior odds without the help of Ephraim (Judg. 12:1-3).
His error in fulfilling a vow that he did not have to fulfill was his SIN. THE SINS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SAINTS ARE OMITTED IN THE NEW TESTAMENT.
(One more time, Ethelbert, so that you and Stam and Baker and O’Hare can get it!)
Here comes the old playboy, Samson! Every time you pick him up, he is messing with some woman (Judg. 14:1, 16:1, 16:4). After violating the Mosaic law on intermarriages (Neh. 13:23-28), after refusing to deal honestly with his mother and father (Judg. 14:9), after “shacking up” with a harlot (Judg. 16:1), fornicating with a single woman (Judg. 16:4), and defiling the head of his consecration (Judg. 15:16; Num. 6:9), how do you suppose Ethelbert Bullinger will handle him? Well, how do you suppose Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown will handle him? We’ll put it this way— how do you suppose the New Bible Commentary will handle ol’ Samson? Well, since we are now well down the track, how do you suppose the Wycliffe Commentary will handle him? (“Hey, deah, man, how is you gwin ta handle dat cat?”)
Answer: EXACTLY AS ANY FIVE-POINT CALVINIST WOULD HANDLE HIM AT LIBERTY UNIVERSITY IN LYNCHBURG, VIRGINIA. No one opens their mouth. Freerkson (Liberty Bible Commen
tary) could no more tell you why Samson was a “hero of the faith” than he could swallow and spit at the same time.
Not one writer above said anything. They were too “scholarly.”
I take that back! Bullinger did say that Samson “is not to be judged by modern church standards ... let us beware then how we judge Samson ... his morals are not to be judged by the standards of the modern view of ‘holiness’ ... he includes Samson in his list of witnesses as being an EXAMPLE OF GOD’S TRUTH AND GOD’S POWER" (p. 323).
No, he doesn’t. Samson is given as an example of FAITH in action. “God’s truth and God’s power” is nothing but a devotional homily dealing with the sidelights of what happened while Samson was living like the devil.
We will nor judge Samson by any “modern church standards” or a “modern view of holiness” that worries Brother Bullinger so badly. No, we will judge him by the five Scriptures given above, pointing out his five outstanding sins. (See above.) The New Testament simply overlooked them on purpose. “Modern standards” had nothing to do with anything. Samson did exercise faith every time he took for granted that he had the strength to do what he did (Judg. 15:14, 16:3). Furthermore, he had to have faith to believe he had gotten his strength back when his hair grew back (Judg. 16:22), and he had to have faith in his brethren that they would not kill him (Judg. 15:12). Bullinger was just “shooting the bull”—in a TULIP field.
Gideon has to have his “faith” jacked up three times before he is ready for combat (Judg. 6:13, 37, 39), so the Holy Spirit gave him plenty of “substance” and plenty of “evidence” before he had to act “on faith.” The Holy Spirit just omitted Gideon’s doubts in the New Testament. Ditto Samuel, who was scared to death to go down into Saul’s territory in 1 Samuel 16:2
and was also involved in some “inventions” (Psa. 99:8) that God took “vengeance” on. (Don’t look for it in the commentaries by the commentators; they couldn’t find a basketball in a bathtub. Their “godly scholarship” destroyed their ability to read THE BOOK.)
“Who through faith . . (vs. 33). Then follows a list that goes clear through the Old Testament, the Macabbean period, part of the Acts period, and then actually stretches forth prophetically (for one must remember that Hebrews is aimed PRIMARILY at tribulation saints still in the future!) through the Church Age into Daniel’s Seventieth Week.
“Who through faith subdued kingdoms . .
(vs. 33). The reader will find the victories described throughout Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, and 1 and 2 Kings—namely the victories of Joshua, Barak, Gideon, David, Joab, Jephthah, Caleb, Uzziah, Joash, Jehosophat, and Rehoboam.
“Wrought righteousness ..(vs. 33). The cases are too many to list. It applies to all of the prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, et al.) plus characters like Micaiah (1 Kings 22), Elijah, Jehoiada (2 Kings 11— 12), Solomon (1 Kings 1-3), and Abigail (1 Sam. 25).
“Obtained promises . . (vs. 33). Again, there are too many to list. Anyone from Jabez, who obtained one of the simplest answers to prayer found anywhere in the Bible (1 Chron. 4), to Caleb, who received a whole mountain (Josh. 14), the “promise-getters” are found by the hundred. Among them are Abigail, who saves the lives of several dozen people; Joshua, who lives to see Joshua 1:6 fulfilled to the letter; David, who lives to see 2 Samuel 7:12 fulfilled to the letter; the wilderness believers, who entered into Canaan to see Deuteronomy 4-20 fulfilled before their eyes; Jeroboam, who experienced the most unlikely type of fulfillment of a promise (1 Kings 11:31-38); and Joseph, who asked for a promise about the treatment of his bones after he was dead (Exod. 13:19).
“Stopped the mouths of lions . . (vs. 33). Sometimes with knowledge (Paul, 2 Tim. 4), sometimes without (1 Kings 13:24, 28), and sometimes without planning to (Dan. 6). Some Jews were sent back to Samaria to stop lions from eating a halfbreed population (2 Kings 17).
“Quenched the violence of fire . . (vs. 34). The obvious case being Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed- nego. “Escaped the edge of the sword ..(vs. 34), as David did on at least a dozen occasions in 1 Samuel (see 1 Sam. 22-24, 26); as the two spies did (Josh. 2); as Abiathar did (1 Kings 2:26); as Peter did (Acts 12:1-19); and so forth and so on. “Out of weakness were made strong . . (vs. 34). Physically, as Samson, Joshua, Benaiah, the “three mighties” of David, and Hezekiah (see Isa. 38-39); spiritually, as Judah, Aaron, and Samuel. “Waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens” (vs. 34). This is exactly described in 1 Chronicles, and those involved are listed in 2 Samuel.
“Women received their dead raised to life again . . (vs. 35), as in the two cases found in 1 Kings 17:21 and 2 Kings 4:35. The reader will observe how the writer is approaching New Testament times, for the widow of Nain’s son goes through this, and “their dead” could be applied to Mary and Martha in their relationship to Lazarus. “Others were tortured, not accepting deliverance ..(vs. 35). The writer moves up further; these things took place mainly in the Macabbean period during the “Inter-Testamental” times. Actual cases of torture are not found too frequently in the Old Testament beyond stoning (which is mentioned in verse 37), cutting people up with harrows (1 Chron. 20:3), or throwing them from cliffs (2 Chron. 25:12). “Not accepting deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection . . (vs. 35). The wording means that they could have been delivered if they had done WRONG (notice 2 Tim. 4:16, where Paul had his
chance before Nero). Paul had forced the New Testament saints to take this choice, if we are to believe his testimony in Acts 26:10-11. “Deliverance” could be had if the person would “recant.” Observe how this moves up through the Macabbean period, into the New Testament (Acts 12:1-3; 2 Cor. 11), and on into the Church Age itself. (The transition is essential to notice since 100 percent of the commentators missed it.)
“Others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings . . (vs. 36) as in the book of Acts (see 5:40, 7:59, 13:45, 20:23). “Yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment . . (vs. 36), as in the book of Acts and also in Christ’s case. Some of this can be found in 1 Kings 22 and Jeremiah 38, but we are moving up through the gospels. “They were stoned, they were sawn asunder ..(vs. 37). They were stoned as Naboth and Stephen and threatened with stoning as David (1 Sam. 30:6), Moses (Exod. 17:4), and Christ (John 8:59). We have no Scriptural record of any SAINT being sawn asunder, although Rabbinical tradition ascribes this death to Isaiah.
“Tempted . . . slain with the sword . . . WANDERED . . (vs. 37). The writer is moving up into the Roman Catholic Church age by prophesy. As we have said on at least seven occasions before, the doctrinal “thrust” (dead orthodox cliche) of the Epistle is to someone at the END of the Church Age. As John writes the history of the church backwards in Revelation 1-3 from the vantage of “the Lord’s day” (see Rev. 1:10 and comments in that Commentary), so the writer here is writing of an age that will be complete BEFORE his readers will be able to apply all of the Epistle doctrinally to themselves. This is evident by the closing on the chapter: “That they without US should not be made perfect..(vs. 40). As a matter of fact, we are told that the BODIES are still missing from Old Testament saints in heaven (Heb. 12:23) during the tribulation (cf. Rev. 7 and 14 and comments in
that Commentary). The writer moves into the Church Age and describes the Novatians, Montanists, Pauli- cians, Bogomiles, Donatists, Cathari, and Euchites.
“They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented ..
(vs. 37). All of this can be taken literally. It takes place between A.D. 400 and 1000 under the hellish Mother Whore (see The History of the New Testament Church, Vol. I, Ruckman, 1982). They not only “wander” in goatskins and sheepskins, they are sewn up into animal skins full of poisonous serpents and dumped into the river. They are tucked into sheepskins after the sheep was freshly dressed and turned over to a pack of dogs to be eaten (see The Martyr’s Mirror, van Braght, or Fox’s Book of Martyrs, edited by Forbush).
“Of whom the world was not worthy . . (vs. 38). This is one of the most shocking statements found in the entire Bible. He is describing fugitives from a “Christian” church who are wandering in “deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth” (vs. 38) like hunted, wild animals. He says of them that THEY WERE IN THAT CONDITION BECAUSE THEY WERE TOO GOOD TO LIVE IN THE WORLD—THEY DIDN’T FIT! If you ever saw Galatians 1:4 and Luke 16:15 in application, here it is. God’s reverse thinking (Isa. 55) and reverse “ways” (Isa. 55:8) constrain Him to say that a rich church is poor (Rev. 3:17) and a poor church is rich (Rev. 2:9); blind folks see (John 9:39) and folks with both eyes can’t (John 9:39); if you save your life, you lose it (Matt. 10:39) and if you lose your life, you save it (Matt. 10:39). The martyrs of A.D. 1000-1800 had to be run out of the world because they were of such excellent quality that they didn’t belong in this sorry, stinking, evil mess (see The History of the New Testament Church, Vol. I).
“And these all, having obtained a good report through FAITH . . (vs. 39). The author is back
where he started in verse 2—the report cards. The martyrs obtained an “A” in loyalty. They could have “accepted deliverance” by simply being disloyal to Christ. Like old “Martin” (Luther), they would not “recant.” They would not bow down to the Pope; they would not pray to Mary or the saints; they would not trust the Catholic “Mass”; they would not force their children to be sprinkled; and they would not reduce the Lord of Glory to a jug of liquor and a piece of stale bread (see The Mass, Ruckman, 1981).
“Received not the promise . . (vs. 39). The promise of WHAT? The promise of the Holy Spirit found in Galatians 3:14 and Luke 24:49? No! The promise of eternal life found in Titus 1:1-3? No! Not if we are to believe Hebrews 12:17 and what all of the commentators said about chapters 4, 6, and 10. “The promise.” What promise? The one in 10:36 or the several in 11:13? If Abraham obtained “the promise” (he did in 6:17) but “RECEIVED NOT THE PROMISE” HERE (and he didn’t, for he is listed in the list you just read), where “is we at”?
EVERY COMMENTATOR FROM LIBERTY UNIVERSITY TO DALLAS THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY HAD TOLD US THAT HEBREWS 6:1-17 WAS DEALING WITH SALVATION—AT LEAST A HYPOTHETICAL CASE POSSIBLY OF WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF YOU LOST SALVATION. Then the “promise” Abraham received (6:17) must have been salvation. What? He had to “ENDURE PATIENTLY” (6:15) before he could get salvation?
It’s funnier than a three ring circus with nothing in it but clowns.
There is only one sane way to handle the text, and that is to get rid of every Hebrew and Greek reference book known to man at the start. If we are ever to find the truth, we are going to have to have a “book burning” (Acts 19:19) of those “curious arts” constructed by Fundamentalists who believe ANY scholar whose
works they read except the Bible.
1. “THE PROMISE” can only refer to the PROMISE that God made to the individual involved, and this PROMISE changes almost from man to man.
2. “THE PROMISE” God made to Abraham (Gen. 12, 15, 17, and 22) is not the promise God made to Noah (Gen. 8-9).
3. The PROMISE God made to David (2 Sam. 7:12-15) is NOT the promise God made to Sarah (Gen. 18:10).
4. The PROMISE God made to Gideon (Judg. 7:7) is NOT the promise God made to Jacob (Gen. 28:13-15).
Therefore, there are FOUR (or maybe even five) SETS OF PROMISES encompassed by the writer.
a. The promises given to Abraham and his seed before the law, which include a literal possession in the land of Palestine (Gal. 3-4; Gen. 12-13).
b. The promises given to Israel under Moses that have to do with a literal possession of the land of Palestine. (These run from “the law and the prophets until John” [Luke 16:16].)
c. The promise given to Church Age saints after “John” in regard to EARNED REWARDS FOR WORKS AND A MILLENIAL INHERITANCE FOR SERVICE (Eph. 5:5; Col. 3:24).
d. The promises given to tribulation saints (Heb. 3-6) who endure to the end” (Heb. 3-11) which includes a LITERAL POSSESSION IN THE LAND OF PALESTINE.
A possible fifth is promises made to saints from Adam to Abraham which are not recorded.
Observe that the one item that remains constant from Abraham to the end of Daniel’s Seventieth Week as a “promise” is AN EARTHLY (not a heavenly) inheritance. One hundred percent of the scholars missed it thumbs down without even feinting at the truth.
Nicols and Dods (GENT, p. 364) are so flabber-
gasted, they refer to the promise as “it,” but they do not give an antecedent for “it” on the entire page of Greek grammar. Bullinger says, “The promise is so simple, so categorical, so clear and UNQUESTIONED that it should make us all more than willing to reconsider one or two other passages . . (p. 450). He
further states that the promise was the promise of the resurrection. But Abraham was not told he would be resurrected when God gave him the promise of Genesis 12. David was not told that he would be resurrected when God gave him the promise of 2 Samuel. Noah was not told that he would be resurrected, before or after anything God ever promised him.
There is a reference to a completed resurrection in verse 40 (“that they without us should not be made perfect”), but verse 39 will not “tie-in” this time. THE BODIES OF MANY OLD TESTAMENT SAINTS ALREADY WERE MADE PERFECT, FOR THEY HAD THEIR RESURRECTION IN MATTHEW 27:52. Moses (referred to right in the chapter—vss. 23-29) WAS ALREADY RESURRECTED, for he appeared on the Mount of Transfiguration with Jesus Christ. They did get “the promise.” Bullinger’s “unquestioned, simple, categorical” answer was a dodge. It wasn’t that simple or categorical, and it certainly could be called into question. Bullinger simply ran verse 35 back into verses 1—34 and made you think that the only promise given to all those listed was a physical resurrection, because verse 35 said it was true of martyrs.
It has to be not just a resurrection but a resurrection that BRINGS THE OLD TESTAMENT SAINT BACK TO THIS EARTH TO INHERIT GROUND ON THIS EARTH (see a., b., c., and d., above). The New Testament saint “gets in on the deal” through Ephesians and therefore can qualify by WORKING, ENDURING, AND SERVING (Eph. 5; 2 Tim. 2) to get his PIECE OF LAND (see Luke 19:17, 19) which will
not be in the land of Palestine (Luke 19; Rev. 21-22). Observe how Bullinger lost the context by confining the passage to one verse in it (vs. 35).
Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown got ahead of Bullinger this time, and in a lengthy exposition on page 1437, point out that there is no final perfection until the Second Advent. The resurrection of the first century readers who read Hebrews will take place at least seven years before that time.
Freerkson (Liberty University) simply turns off a side road and disappears from the black top altogether. He couldn’t find which promise was “the promise,” so he just ignored the verse and generalized the last three verses so that no “promise” was discussed. Ditto Dummelow. He cannot mention the promise, let alone locate it.
It is of the utmost importance that the Bible believer connect “THE PROMISE” with the earthly, millenial inheritance promised to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Gideon, Barak, Jephthah, and Samson. When Paul speaks of the “PROMISE” (Acts 26:6), he does give it as a resurrection (Acts 24:15), BUT THIS “PROMISE” WAS NOT FOR A GLORIFIED BODY THAT A CHURCH AGE SAINT GETS. It was a literal, physical resurrection of dead Old Testament saints to inherit a PIECE OF GROUND. All doubt would be removed in anyone’s mind if they had read and believed Ezekiel 37. Ezekiel (see comments on Ezek. 40-48 under Heb. 11:14) seems to have gotten more than his share of “slighting” and “ignoring” in the commentaries.
As “the world to come” (Heb. 2:5) stands at the end of a period where a man must endure to the end (Heb. 3:6, 14), it is marked not just by a resurrection (which took place at the beginning of THIS age (Matt. 27:50-52) and will take place again at the end of this age (1 Thess. 4:13-18; 1 Cor. 15:50-56), but by a post-tribulation rapture (which explains why the com
mentators fall apart in the next chapter at verse 14 and fell apart at 9:28) that precedes an inheritance in THE LAND OF PROMISE.
Ninety-five percent of the commentators altered the text to match their ignorance. They pretend that the English text is “difficult” to understand so that you will come to them as “saviors from obscurity.” Once you trust them, they will alter the Bible to suit themselves and then give you their personal opinion as the INTERPRETATION of the Holy Spirit. The proof is in the pudding. Any man who really believed the Biblical text would not have to CHANGE it. (See Bullinger on “Jephthah,” above.)
THE BIBLE BELIEVER’S COMMENTARY SERIES
12:1 Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,
2 Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.
3 For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds.
4 Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin.
“Wherefore ...” (vs. 1). That is, in view of what you have just read in Chapter 11. “Wherefore seeing WE also . . .” (vs. 1). All of the expositors take for granted that the “we” is saved people, although the “we” and the “us” in the same epistle five times (2:3, 3:14, 4:11, 6:3, 10:26) was A POSSIBLE CONVERT WHO HADN'T YET MADE IT TO CALVARY. Granted that the “we” in Hebrews 12:1-4 is a reference to a Church Age saint as well as a tribulation saint, the “we” and the “us” in other places is most certainly only a tribulation saint who DID “make it” and was in danger of losing it.
“Compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses . . .” (vs. 1). The idea is figurative, as though the witnesses overhead completely covered and surrounded the saint who is about to run the race. He is
encircled with witnesses so he has no alibi to pretend that the race cannot be “run” (vs. 2), and he further is encouraged to run it. Athletes always do better before spectators than “solo.” Ask any gymnastics instructor how many people keep up with their “daily dozen” after they have left the aerobics class or the isometrics class (or any other fancy-named class for stretching your muscles). You always put forth more effort in a group.
“Let us lay aside every weight . . (vs. 1). Weights will not do for a track man. Runners in the Triathlon and the Marathon never carry any kind of “weights.” Since pockets are designed for carrying “weights,” all swimmer’s, racer’s, runner’s, and boxer’s trunks are made without pockets. You may have noticed that most people who smoke tobacco carry the pack in the shirt pocket, and you may have noticed that every rich man who let riches “drown him in perdition” (1 Tim. 6:9) carried his billfold in his right rear POCKET. Pockets are for carrying weights. In his race for marriage or death, Hippomenes is careful to drop three golden apples on the runway for Atlanta to stoop and pick up. She does so and loses the race. A balloon cannot rise high without getting rid of some of its “ballasts.” You dump the “excess baggage” overboard. You “clear the decks” for action. Whatever hinders the ministry, whatever causes you to lose your burden for souls or prayer, whatever takes up the time you should be spending in the Book has to go. He didn’t say “sins”; he said “weights.” Whatever drags you down or holds you back or slows you up is a “weight.” Paul asks, “Ye did run well; who did hinder you ... ?” (Gal. 5:7) In this case, “WHAT did hinder you?”
“And the sin which doth so easily beset us ..
(vs. 1). It keeps showing up in the running lane. It can be “set” in front of us to block our running, so it is a “besetting sin.” The word can also mean to surround a thing (like Judg. 20:5 and Psa. 139:5) which would
give us the picture of a sin that was constantly coming up and wrapping itself around the runner’s legs so that he cannot keep the pace or, at times, even make the steps. An old colored preacher referred to it is the “upsettin’ sin.” When asked what he meant, he said, “Caw’s ah is referrin’ to de sin ob gettin’ drunk, and if dat ain’t de UPSETTIN’ sin, ah don’t know what am!”
“And let us run with patience the race that is set before us ...” (vs. 1). The verse should be read in conjunction with 1 Corinthians 9:24 and 2 Timothy 2:5. Here we are definitely (although temporarily) on Pauline grounds, for what follows is a description of a son of God as related to his Father (see vss. 5-12). When we get to verse 14, we are going to be on “thin ice” again, but here the ground is solid. Paul called his entire life a race: “I HAVE FINISHED MY COURSE” (2 Tim. 4); and he called his ministry a race: “By any means I should run, or had RUN, in vain” (Gal. 2:2), “That I have not RUN in vain ...” (Phil. 2:16), “Know ye not that they which RUN a race ...” (1 Cor. 9:24). We have a starting line; we have a course laid out; we have obstacles on the course; we are running with other runners; we have an audience watching us; we have rules to follow in order to win “lawfully” (2 Tim. 2:5); we are not crowned except we follow the rules (2 Tim. 2:5); we have to stay in “condition” to run (1 Cor. 9:25); we are to run to win (not “place” or “show”); and to do this we must always be “LOOKING UNTO JESUS the author and finisher of our faith ...” (vs. 2).
The eyes must be kept on the goal (Phil. 3:13) which is called the “mark for the prize of the high calling” (Phil. 3:14). The hurdler does not look down at the hurdle when he jumps it; his eyes are fixed straight ahead. A swimmer, racing the “Australian crawl,” cannot stay in his lane unless he keeps his eye on the blue tile on the bottom of the pool in his lane. He will become tangled in the corks if he fails to do
this. “Set your affection on things above . . (Col. 3:1-3). An oriental prince once required a captive to walk clear through his city with a bowl of milk on his head. The journey was nearly two miles. He was told that if he spilled a drop of the milk he would lose his head. Guards followed him to carry out the orders. The prisoner successfully made the trip, and at the finish of the journey, the prince said to him, “Now, give me a description of what you saw while passing through my city.” The young man, bathed in sweat, answered, “Your majesty, I can’t remember seeing anything.” That’s how to get rid of worldliness! If your neck were on the line, you wouldn’t spend the time you spend with the idiot box! “As you go through life, my brother, whatever be your goal, keep your eye upon the donut and not upon the hole.” You say, “I can’t see the author and finisher of my faith.” You have to see Him. Nothing that is impossible can be done without a knowledge of the invisible (see 11:27).
“And let us run with PATIENCE , . (vs. 1). Many of the commentators fail to notice the length of the race track. It isn’t a 100 yard or 200 yard “dash.” It is a marathon. There is no “patience” needed to take off like a scalded cat, burn rubber, and tear through 100 yards of cinders at break-neck speed. The patience is needed after the five mile mark when your side begins to ache; after the ten mile mark when your legs begin to cramp; after the fifteen mile mark when your lungs begin to burst; and after the twenty mile mark when you feel like you are going to drop if you take another step. “Ye have need of patience . . (Heb. 10:36; James 1:3-4).
“Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith .. (vs. 2). The correct translation is “AUTHOR” (AV in any edition!). The translation is not “pioneer” (RSV) or “leader” (Kenneth the Apostate) or “the example setter” (Nicoll, EGT) or any other cute little scholarly doo-hickey designed to attract your at
tention from the truth and center it on the ignorance of some Greek scholar. “Perfecter” has been stuck into the ASV, NIV, and similar apostate corruptions for the word “finisher.” So, Freerkson (Liberty University) is so anxious to make the “Old Time Gospel Hour” look scholarly that he cites BOTH corruptions as the truth (Hughes) and says, “HE IS OUR PIONEER AND PERFECTER.” Exactly: exactly as all unsaved Liberals in the National Council of Churches figured it (RSV and NRSV). Nothing like the “Old Time Gospel Hour,” is there?
Barnes, always ready to bend the Bible to his own will to make it say what he wants it to say, says that the word “our” is not “in the ORIGINAL here (boy, have we heard that one before!) and OBSCURES THE SENSE” (p. 294). It “obscures the sense,” does it? Our AV text is guilty of “obscuring the sense,” is it? Well, Barnes, old buddy, you couldn’t figure out Hebrews 3, 4, 6, or 10 with a figuring machine; you blew it on 11:21 being an LXX quotation; you couldn’t get Jacob’s two acts in dying straightened out; you missed the point of 11:10; you wasted nine pages of small print explaining “Covenants” and “Testaments”; you couldn’t find the censer in 9:4; you taught pure Arminianism from 3:14; and now you are telling us that our Holy Bible is “OBSCURE”? Well, put it this way: not 1/ 1000th as obscure as you are, Barnes, or the sinners that taught you.
How does “our” obscure the sense? Not in one particular. Barnes just wanted to make the verse line up with the ASV, NIV, RSV, and NRSV because they had all lined up with the RV as far back as 1885. They had written “perfecter” for “finisher” and had suggested “CAPTAIN” for “author.” Anything but the text.
Now, these little excursions into the “original meaning” of the Greek “in the original” are the life-blood of the Alexandrian Cult. The idea is that “IF
YOU CAN FIND IN SOME GREEK LEXICON OR GRAMMAR AN ALTERNATE MEANING TO A WORD THE AV TRANSLATORS TRANSLATED ONE WAY, YOU ARE TO ADOPT THAT ALTERNATIVE AT ANY COST AND USE IT TO CHANGE THE A UTHORI/ED VERSION.
That is the standard rule by which all professional liars make their living. If the words archegon and teleioten could have meant “captain” and “perfecter” or “pioneer” and “perfecter,” they could also have meant “author and finisher.” Since that is what they DID mean here, what was the point in calling the reader’s attention to destructive criticism by amateurs who could not even read the Bible in their own language (see above) and dragging you off into “an original Greek” that neither they, their students, or their teachers ever saw one day in their lives?
Easy: it pays! You can make a good living by lying. That is why the ASV, NASV, NIV, RSV, and NRSV removed “Thou shalt not bear false witness” from Romans 13:9. Look it up! Don’t take my word for it— look it up!
No, Jesus Christ was certainly not a Pioneer. A pioneer is the first one to go out ahead and scout out UNKNOWN territory. Christ is not the first in a series of “scouts.” He is the original Author (copyright) of our FAITH. (“Faith” is used here in the sense of the total body of what we are supposed to believe [see how the word is used in Jude 3; Gal. 1:23; Col. 1:23; 1 Peter 5:9; and especially 2 Tim. 4:7.) He originated our “faith.” He, therefore, is its “author,” and I don’t mean “pioneer” or “captain.” He is the “captain” of our salvation (Heb. 2:10). Further, He is the “finisher” of our faith. He is at the end of the racetrack waiting for us, for He finished the course before we did: “who for the joy that was set before him . . .” (vs. 2). He saw “joy” at the end of His racetrack (cf. Isa. 53:11) and so despised “the shame” that He received while
runnning the race. He received the victor’s “crown,” so He is now seated on the right hand of the throne of God. When He returns, He shows up with “many crowns,” for He won every race that He ran in His life whether it was against temptation (Luke 4:1-9), a desire to avoid the atonement (Matt. 26:42), a foot race with Satan (Luke 4), a temptation to give up in the face of unfaithful and unbelieving followers (Matt. 26:56; John 6); hunger and thirst (John 4:7; Matt. 4:2), sorrow and grief (Matt. 26:38; John 11:35), torture and pain (John 19:1, 18), and death itself (Acts 2:27-31). He is the “King of kings” and “the prince of the kings of the earth” (Rev. 1:5), and therefore, He received MANY crowns. The victor’s reward for winning the race (1 Cor. 9:24) is an “incorruptible crown” (1 Cor. 9:25). Paul says, “So run, that ye may obtain” (1 Cor. 9:24).
“Endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God” (vs. 2). (See comments under 1:13 and 10:12.) All is manifest to a reader of Psalm 22; Isaiah 53; and the Gospel accounts of Matthew 26-27; Mark 15; Luke 23; and John 18-20.
“For consider him that endured such CONTRADICTION of sinners against himself . . (vs. 3). We have capitalized the word because it is denied by every apostate Fundamentalist at Bob Jones University, Temple Tennessee, Liberty University, Moody, Fuller, Wheaton, and Pillsbury; as well as “King’s” College, John Brown, Peidmont, Pacific Coast, Denver, Dallas, Princeton, Harvard, Berkeley, Yale, Colgate-Rochester Divinity School, and Columbia University.
Freerkson (Liberty Baptist College) plays the cards close to his vest. Having read Nicoll, Dods, Vincent, Thayer, Berry, Robertson, Davidson, Bleek, Moulton, Milligan, Wuest, and Alford (Who hasn’t? Who do these children think they are, experts?), he knows that
the word “CONTRADICTION” must be removed from the text. But the text he has been called upon to comment has “CONTRADICTION” in it (New King Jimmy Version). What to do? Save face. Keep your mouth shut. He does. Bleek, Angus, Luecken, Davidson, Delitzsch, and Ebhard don’t; they say the word should be “gainsaying” (ASV, 1901). Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown are quite vocal; the word meant “unbelief, and every kind of opposition” (p. 1438). Barnes is not bashful. He says “CONTRADICTION” was mistranslated; it should have been “opposition.” The “reference is to the Jews (not sinners!) of the time of the Saviour who OPPOSED His plans, perverted His sayings, and ridiculed His claims” (p. 296). Really? (We’ll see about THAT in a minute.)
Wycliffe Commentary (p. 1424): “antilogia is a contrary ARGUMENT. Christ was literally a contradiction to his enemies . . . .” Turned it around backwards. Christ didn’t endure the contradiction; HIS ENEMIES DID. You follow “Wycliffe,” do you? With your “Living Bible, ” is it?
Living Bible: “sinful men did such terrible things to him”
RSV: “such hostility against himself’
Jehovah’s Witness Emphatic Diaglott (NWT): “SUCH OPPOSITION”
They were all “reliable.” They all got rid of the Biblical text. No man left had a Holy Bible to read. Same crew. Same Cult. Same ignorance. Same infidelity.
Once again (boy, have YOU heard “this one” before!), let us clear the desk. On the left side, let us deposit the RV, RSV, NRSV, ASV, NASV, NIV, TLB, NEB, NWT, all translators, and all of the revisors that worked with them or promoted them or were connected with them. On the right side of our desk, we will de
posit Zodhiates’ Hebrew and Greek Study Bible; Pulpit Helps; the Interpreter’s Bible; Ryrie’s Study Bible; the International Bible Expositor; Nicoll’s Expositors’ Greek Testament set; the commentaries by John Peter Lange, Matthew Henry, Ironside, Adam Clarke, Dummelow, Williams, Ellicott, and Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown. With these, we’ll place the New Bible Commentary, the Wycliffe Commentary, all scholars and teachers who went by any of them where they corrected the Authorized text, plus all of the comments by Bleek, Davidson, Kuenen, Angus, Moulton, Milligan, and Souter. Now, one more move! Pushing up to the front of our desk are Westcott and Hort’s Greek text, Nestle’s Greek text, Aland and Metzger’s Greek text, all of the Textus Receptus editions of the Greek text, Thayer’s lexicon, Berry’s interlinear (boy, you sure can make a mess of money selling junky books, can’t you?), Vincent’s Word Studies, Wuest’s “Nuggets,” and the LAST 40,000 BOOKS PUBLISHED BY “REPUTABLE” PUBLISHING COMPANIES (1 Tim. 6:10). Next, let us place a King James Authorized Version (any edition from 1611 to 1999 will do just fine!) and see what we can find in the God-honored, God-preserved, God-used, God-authorized text of the infallible, inerrant HOLY BIBLE!
“CONTRADICTION . . (vs. 3): something that goes “counter to” a thing in an “act or manner contrary” to a thing (Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 1977, p. 247). “Contradiction of sinners.” The most contradictory thing that ever happened on this earth was the way Jesus responded to treatment, and second only to that was the way that sinners (not “Jews”—see above) treated Him in view of how they should have treated Him. Contradictory, you see?
1. What proper right did the elements have oppressing their Creator? The sun smote Him, the rain chilled Him, His throat was parched with thirst, He was hungry and homeless, and He got His feet dirty in
the dust He had created. “CONSIDER HIM!” Consider WHAT KIND of contradictions He endured. They had no right to call Him a “bastard,” but they did (see John 8:41). He was hounded and chased across this earth like a renegade anarchist. He was cursed, smitten, spit upon, and whipped without ONE sound reason or CAUSE (John 15:25) for being treated in this fashion. THIS IS A CONTRADICTION! The word in the AV is infallibly chosen and preserved by the Holy Spirit for the express purpose of making a LIAR out of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholars listed above (and all of their friends, students, teachers, and supporters). What business did a sinner have spitting on His Creator (Matt. 26:67; Col. 1:16)? If that isn’t a “contradiction,” what is it? (Go to the Greek, you silly, little sap-head, to see if you can find out.) Who is this that shoves vinegar into the mouth of his Creator when the Creator made all of the fountains of waters, the oceans, the seas, the rivers, the ponds, the lakes, the wells, and the springs? You talk about a CONTRADICTION!
2. “Consider him” (vs. 3). HOW did He endure these “contradictions” (which had nothing at all to do with His life being a contradiction to someone else’s— see Barnes, above). Well, He endured them patiently (1 Pet. 2:23), commiting Himself to God (1 Pet. 2:23), and He prayed for those who attacked Him (Luke 23:34). He took His beating “like a man” (Isa. 53:7). He refused to avenge Himself, which He could have easily done (Matt. 26:53). That is CONTRADICTORY! If He could have saved Himself (Matt. 27:40-42), and He could have, why didn’t He (Matt. 26:54)? “Consider him!” If we do, we will have to come to our final consideration—"WHY DID HE ENDURE SUCH CONTRADICTION OF SINNERS AGAINST HIMSELF?” (“Sinners” included Romans, not just Jews. See the blibberty-blobberty nonsense of the “experts” listed above.)
3. Well, He endured such a “contradiction” (AV text, any edition) of sinners against Himself in order to save them. If He had saved Himself (Matt. 27:42), He could not have saved them.
He endured things that were “contrary” (absolutely contradictory) to His nature, His power, and His station (Phil. 2), so that He could reach lost sinners and die in their place (Rom. 3; 1 John 4:10). If He had reacted true-to-form instead of in such a “contradictory” manner, He would have wiped out the civilization in which He lived (Matt. 26:53) and built another one (see exact cases in Gen. 9:1-19 and Exod. 32:10). However, He took the treament that He took when He didn’t have to take it. That sinners would “get away with” what they did to Him in view of His true identity (see Rev. 1:8 and Isa. 9:6) would be unthinkable, but it happened CONTRARY (that’s the word!) to all natural laws, all appearances of reality, and all accepted traditions.
“CONSIDER HIM THAT ENDURED SUCH CONTRADICTION OF SINNERS AGAINST HIMSELF .. .” (vs. 3).
Those are the right words in the right place, spelled correctly.
Any “original Greek text” that doesn’t state it like THAT has not stated anything Scriptural; and the pile of pseudoscholastic rubbish put out by the “newer versions” and their supporters, promoters, publishers, and teachers is nothing more than IRREVERENT NONSENSE dressed up to look like “serious Bible study.” It is about as “serious” as a toast dinner by Dean Martin. Those rascals were in the book-selling business, not the Bible-teaching business.
“Lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds” (vs. 3). The cure for heart failure, spirit failure, soul weariness, and bodily fatigue is simply this: “CONSIDER HIM!” If you are weary, He was weary (John 4:6). If you are tempted, He was tempted (Luke 4:1-
12) . If you are betrayed by friends, so was He (John
13) . If you have been given a bitter cup by the Father, and its draught has set your teeth on edge, you are not alone (John 19:29). If you are out of money, so was He (Matt. 17:24). At least you weren’t born in a stable (Luke 2). Consider what He went through, how He went through it, and why He went through it; then you will find your spirits are lifting and the “feeble knees” are gaining new strength. “CONSIDER HIM!” That is the solution for saved and lost. No lost man who seriously “CONSIDERED HIM” for two hours would need an invitation to be saved; he would call himself to the altar and answer his own call. You cannot meditate on Isaiah 53; Psalm 22; and John 13-21 without being smitten in the heart. All of the scholastic garbage about “our” obscures the truth, “author” should have been “pioneer, ” “finisher” should have been “perfecter, ” and “contradiction” should have been “opposition” comes from nowhere but a bunch of wretched, carnal, miserable, backslidden professors of the “fundamentals” who make their living by LYING about the Holy Bible. There wasn’t an obscure truth anywhere in the entire passage (vss. 1-3), and the “meat” in the text lay in believing the text as it stood. Milky-wilky milk-sops will believe any book but THE BOOK.
“Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin” (vs. 4). The implication is that Jesus HAD. He did strive against sin until His blood came out (Luke 22:44). This took place in Gethsemane before the whip fell (see remarks under 9:14). Strangely enough, 90 percent of the scholastic theologians believe that Christ could not have sinned under any condition although they will allow that He had to RESIST TO THE “SHEDDING OF BLOOD” IN STRIVING AGAINST IT. Strange theology.
Freerkson senses again that he is lost in a blizzard, so he does what all “good, godly, dedicated Fundamentalists” would do in such a situation—He goes
to VISA. He refuses to comment on the verse. The “Old Time Gospel Hour” evidently has some problems with the SHED BLOOD OF CHRIST (see comments under 9:14, for example); they published a commentary that cannot comment on it.
Nicoll reduces the shedding of blood to Calvary only (p. 367). Evidently, Christ did not “strive” until there. We are to presume from this, I suppose, that no blood came out of Him when He was scourged! (Boy, they have a time of it when they mess with that Elizabethan text, don’t they?)
Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown detach the verse from the one which precedes it. The “ye” in verse 4 has no connection with the people in verse 3 who were told to “consider him.” They pretend that although you might (or might not) “strive to the shedding of blood in resisting sin,” NO ONE ELSE DID.
Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Hear the birdies? The sap runs in the springtime.
Barnes, this time, has more courage and boldly steps in to say, “. . . the fact to which the apostle alludes, it seems to me, is the struggling of the Saviour in the garden of Gethsemane when His conflict was so severe that great drops of blood fell to the ground” (p. 296). But if this were true, then the Lord Jesus was tempted to SIN in the garden and His prayer (“NOT MY WILL, BUT THINE BE DONE”) shows a genuine temptation to sin and the possibility of wanting HIS WAY instead of His Father’s way. We do know that He DID His Father’s will (Heb. 10:7; John 5:30), but to say that He was not genuinely tempted to go another “route” is to by-pass one of the greatest truths of the New Testament—the God-man was “man of very man.” “He was tempted in all points like as we are” (Heb. 2:18, 4:15).
Dumbelow (excuse me! Dummelow) passes. (We presume he had nothing higher than fives in his hand. When a man can’t “call” or “raise,” he is in trouble.)
“Striving against sin” (vs. 4) is normally striving to avoid yielding to temptation (Jas. 1:12-15). It is the continuous effort that a man must make to “do right” and not “do wrong.” But there the reference goes back to that old Moses’ ambush: you take righteousness with pain and loss, or you take sin with joy and pleasure. The idea is that you have not had the ultimate encounter with sin until you are in the place of James 2:12 and Revelation 2:10: the place where it will cost you your life to DO RIGHT or avoid DOING WRONG. The “life is in the blood.” For scores of examples, read Fox’s Book of Martyrs (edited by Forbush) or The Martyr’s Mirror (Theileman van Braght, Herald Press).
12:5 And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him:
6 For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.
7 If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not?
8 But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.
9 Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?
10 For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness.
11 Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.
12 Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees;
13 And make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way; but let it rather be healed.
Again, we are on “Pauline grounds” for a while. (When we say this, we mean the Pauline rule which decrees that as long as any verse in the Scriptures— any verse in any book in either Testament—does not CONTRADICT a verse in a Pauline epistle, it can have an application to a Christian in the Church Age.) The Son-Father relationship, about to be described, is truly from the Old Testament since the author is addressing “Hebrews,” but the principles would hold for any child of God in the Romans 8:1-20 sense.
“Ye have forgotten the exhortation ..(vs. 5), which would be very easy to forget since it is in the Old Testament in Proverbs 3:11-12. “Which speaketh unto you as unto children . . (vs. 5). (See the extended comments in The Bible Believer’s Commentary on Proverbs, Bible Baptist Bookstore, 1972.)
“Despise not . . . the chastening . . . nor faint when thou art rebuked . . (vs. 5). There are two kinds of punishment and two responses to those punishments. We are warned not to FAINT and not to DESPISE. The dangers are that one kind of Christian, who is weak, will be terrified by his chastisement and take it to be a baleful hand of fate slapping his mouth shut as a sign that God is forever through with him and has cast him aside permanently: this Christian “faints.” The other type “grins and bears it” with a “stiff upper lip” and accepts the chastening stoicly. He says, “Well, it happens all of the time. Well, we have to take the bitter with the sweet. Oh, that’s nothing. It happens to a lot of folks.” This kind of Christian will tend to “DESPISE the chastening of the Lord.” Both responses are incorrect. Do not presume but do not despair. Don’t give up but don’t laugh it off.
The “chastening” takes the form of a genuine
whipping of some kind; the rebuke can amount to a simple “bawling out” (see 1 Tim. 5:20; 2 Chron. 19:2; or 1 Kings 13:1-3, for example) from the word of God from the man of God. Obviously, the “rebuke” is a milder form of correction than the whipping. The easiest way to stay right with God IS BY A CONSTANT EXPOSURE TO SIN-HATING, BIBLE-BELIEVING, BLASTING, SCATHING, LOUD, CLEAR, PLAIN PREACHING FROM A MAN WHO BELIEVES THE BOOK. I did not say “uses” the Book (liars have trouble with those two words).
“And SCOURGETH every son whom he re- ceiveth” (vs. 6). The verse is startling to someone who has been taught that saved people are only punished when they backslide (a very common teaching among Evangelicals). To the contrary, the Lord whips ALL of His children whether they backslide or not. One might say that you could whip some of your children “on credit,” even if you didn’t “catch them in the act.”
I never met a child in my life that had gotten as many spankings as he deserved or earned. I certainly didn’t. (My father used a trunk belt from a steamer locker in the attic that was eight feet long and three inches wide and doubled it. My principal [Randolph Grade School, Topeka, Kansas, 1927-1933] used a paddle three feet long, four inches wide, and a half-inch thick.) I averaged one good spanking about every two weeks and one real thrashing (sometimes my underwear stuck to my “rear end”) about once every eight weeks. I must confess that they caught me about one-fourth of the time.
You won’t get away one-eighth of the time with God for a Father. He “pitieth” as a Father (Psa. 103:13) and “comforts” as a mother (Isa. 66:13), but you won’t have to worry about His ability to “cope with the toddler” or “tame the teenager” or “adjust to the life style of the aged.” Where Yankees tend to hit their children too much and not love them enough, Southerners tend
to shower too much affection and spare the rod. Don’t worry about God once you get into His family (Rom. 8:14-15). He knows the proper balance. He “loveth” (vs. 6), and He “scourgeth” (vs. 6). Any nut who would think that Paul went through what he went through because of sins is a genuine nut. Paul, like many of God’s children, was scourged for several reasons:
1. To keep him humble (2 Cor. 12:4-8)
2. To equip him to sympathize with others (2 Cor. 1:1-4)
3. To keep his affections “on things above” (Col. 3:1-3)
4. To prove to him that God’s promises were real (Phil. 4:13, 19)
5. To show him that the grace of God was sufficient for the severest trials (2 Cor. 12:9)
“Punishment for sin” had little to do with it. It might have a great deal to do with it in a majority of cases, but all Christian suffering is not due to a LACK OF FAITH (as these demon-possessed Charismatics suppose), nor is it due to BACKSLIDING (as Job’s brethren supposed—see Job 8:1-4, 11:1-14, and 22:1- 17).
All of God’s children take a beating.
“If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not?” (vs. 7). Humanly speaking, all natural daddies whip their children (see Prov. 23:13-14 and comments in that Commentary). The over-use and abuse of “child abuse” laws in America (1980) has led thousands of stupid Christians to believe that they should “turn in” Christian parents to the HRS or Sheriff’s Department for whipping a three-year-old child. This is “BRAIN ABUSE.” No one but a blank fool would think that a three-year-old child didn’t need a whipping every once in a while.
“But if ye be without chastisement. . (vs. 8).
The idea is if the Lord loves you He will go out of His way to keep you straight; if He doesn’t love you He will just let you run the “tether” (see Jer. 6:19 for an exact application). Of course, the rule is not doctrinally infallible, for “Fools because of their transgression, and because of their iniquities, are afflicted” (Psa. 107:17) and “The hypocrites in heart heap up wrath: they cry not WHEN HE BINDETH THEM” (Job 36:13), but the principle is true. If you are a child of God, you are not going to get away with sin because God is going to bring you up in the “nurture and admonition” of Himself one way or another. One of the reasons that the born again, saved child of God in THIS age is told to “work out his salvation with fear and trembling” is because of the fact that his Father is trying to work “IN HIM” to “will and do of HIS good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13). If the Father’s desire is to make us Christ-like, then we are “in fo’ a heap o’ trouble,” as they say “down home,” for Christ had His friends betray Him (Judas), doubt Him (Thomas), deny Him (Peter); and eventually He had His Gethsemane, Pilate’s Hall, and cross.
“Fathers of our flesh . .. gave them reverence” (vs. 9). Normally! The last two generations of Americans (born around 1950 and born after 1970) know very little about these matters from a Scriptural standpoint. Eighty-five percent of the Bible teachers do not believe that it is possible to love and fear a parent at the same time, which it certainly is. Many of the young people in America had parents that were not fit to raise a dog, let alone a child. At least 75 percent of the parents, having believed Time, Life, Look, CBS, ABC, NBC, Woman’s Home Companion, Good Housekeeping, and Ladies Home Journal, instead of the Bible, thought that punishment would frustrate their little “darlin’,” so they let him (or her) get away with everything short of murder. To this day, when a policeman guns down a killer, the press justifies the killer and
condemns the police. The idea in a “shoot out” or a knife attack is that the killer must be given every opportunity to kill YOU before you are justified in killing HIM. When Goetz defended himself on a subway in 1984 against four hoodlums armed with SCREWDRIVERS for weapons (since all three were profes- sional hoodlums, they had checked the laws on carrying knives and guns), he was arraigned for MURDER. The editor of the newspaper which justified the hoodlums (the editor of the New York Times) CARRIED A HANDGUN CONSTANTLY BUT WAS NOT IN FAVOR OF INNOCENT PEOPLE ON THE SUBWAY CARRYING HAND GUNS. The editor never had to use the subway. This happened in 1984, and the press and the news media, as one unit, took sides against the opinions of 90 percent of the people in America. (They always do. The credibility gap between the news media “convictions” and the convictions of the average American is as wide as the Pacific Ocean.)
Giving “reverence” to a father is a strange operation in much of twentieth-century America.
“Live,” here (vs. 9), is as Paul uses the term in 1 Thessalonians 3:8 and other places. It not only refers to merely staying alive (which it does, “for if ye live after the flesh, ye shall DIE” [Rom. 8:13]) but to “real living” (see 1 Thess. 3:8 and Rom. 6:10). If the reference is made to eternal life (which Owen, the five-point Calvinist, and others make it to be), then we are back in a tribulation situation, for the requirement was not “believe and live.” The requirement was “BE IN SUBJECTION” and live (see verse 9).
The title “Father of spirits” has a peculiar sound, as does James’ “Father of lights.” The two terms are found nowhere in the Pauline epistles. As a matter of fact, they are unique to both testaments. “The Father of spirits” presents the Father as a CREATOR (as in Acts 17:24), not as a spiritual Father, for the Father is not the BEGETTOR of Satan or his children (see John
8:44), nor is He the real “Father” of unclean spirits (Mark 5:1-6).
The great “original Greek scholar” Vincent stares at the expression, blinks his eyes, and then decides that it isn’t there. He doesn’t attempt to explain it, exegete it, or even relate it to the Scripture. (He has too many “original Greek texts” to look at.)
Barnes gets a partial reference in Numbers 16:22, but there it said, “THE GOD of the spirits of all flesh.” It did not say, “The Father of spirits.” Further, Barnes loses his brains before he has commented on the reference, because he is a dichotomist. He says, “The idea SEEMS to be that as the SOUL is the most important part of man, this name is . . .” (p. 300). But since the word “soul” was not found in EITHER VERSE IN EITHER TESTAMENT, IN EITHER LANGUAGE, where does Barnes think that he is going? To the barn? No, Barnes is headed for the “funny farm” just as fast as Christian scholarship can carry him. To get the “Father” to be a real Father of angels, Barnes borrows Paul’s word used for humans—NOT ANGELS—in Acts 17:28 and says, “Angels . . . may be represented as peculiarly his OFFSPRING” (p. 300). “Offsprings” do not indicate FATHERHOOD. All men are offsprings of God according to Acts 17:28, but who but an unsaved Liberal or Pope John Paul II (see his statement in his conference lectures given in the annual Lenten Retreat of March, 1976—Sign of Contradiction, p. 91— where he says that mankind as a whole was “born again” at Pentecost) would teach that God was the “Father” of Judas, Caiaphas, Adolph Hitler, Bloody Mary, Jim Jones, Dillinger, fallen angels, Pope Pius XII, Heinrich Himmler, Satan, unclean spirits, and Cardinal Spellman?
“For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but HE . . .” (vs. 10). The contrast shows that an earthly father’s MOTIVE for a “whipping” may be selfish at times. The heavenly Fa
ther always has the right motive: “FOR OUR PROFIT, that we might be partakers of his holiness” (cf. Phil. 3:10; also see Prov. 19:18 and 22:15 and the extended comments under those passages in that Commentary).
“Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous . . .” (vs. 11). Certainly any believer who has been through “God’s spanking machine” understands the text. Who enjoys two weeks in bed with the flu? Who enjoys passing a kidney stone? Who enjoys six weeks “in traction” with a bad back? Who enjoys declaring bankruptcy? Who enjoys receiving news that a precious little boy or girl has been run over in the street? Who enjoys being fired when the gas and electricity are turned off? Do you shout with joy when you miss your plane or have a flat tire when you’re thirty minutes late for an appointment? Oh, yeah, man, these “Charismatics” that are always bragging about health, wealth, happiness, and victory have “another side to them.” You bet your booties they do!
As we have remarked, it takes plenty of grace to say, “Hallelujah. Everything is going fine,” when you’re being whipped. “Glory to God! I’m fifteen thousand dollars in the hole!” “Bless God! I broke my leg!” It’s one thing to shout when everyone is in good health and eating steak, but it is another thing to shout when the doctor says, “It’s terminal.” No chastening “for the present seemeth to be joyous.” The Lord said to Simon Peter, “What I do thou knowest not NOW; but thou shalt know HEREAFTER” (John 13:7). Later: “Afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness.”
“Nevertheless AFTERWARD it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness” (vs. 11). That is what James was talking about in James 3:17. First purity, then peace (see Heb. 7:2 and comments). You have to be reared “at the knee” of a devout mother and ACROSS the knee of a determined father to amount to anything. “AFTERWARD . . .” (see Jesus telling Pe
ter how this is going to work out in John 13:7). “AFTERWARD” Job comes out on top, not before. Chastening in the child of God is designed to produce fruit: the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5). Chastening comes in four forms:
1. The thorn (2 Cor. 12:7)
2. The knife (John 15:2)
3. The word of God (John 15:3)
4. The whip (Heb. 12).
The thorn is given to keep us humble; the knife is used in pruning to keep us fruitful; the Bible is used to keep us clean; and the whip is used to keep us heavenly minded and dependent upon God. (Since 90 percent of the Greek scholars didn’t know what they were talking about when they approached the passage, their comments about it amount to little or nothing.)
Vincent lists thirty verses of Scripture, lists six different ways of saying “peaceable fruit of righteousness,” calls our attention to the “genitive . . . explitive or appositional” (p. 545), and fails to make ONE practical application anywhere. Poor Vincent could not associate fruit bearing with suffering without the Greek particle men, which “indicates that the suffering present is to be offset by a fruitful future.” My, what light! Outstanding! What would we do without the “Greek particle” helping us out?
“Unto them which are exercised thereby” (vs. 11). You can be exercised by a real chastisement, for even an earthly whipping from an earthly father (if it is in earnest) can cause a boy to do a good imitation of a Fandango or break dance. Suffering is exercise. If you want to “grasp the intent of the original author by observing the proper tense of the Greek verb in the original text,” take a guy out and start spraying his feet with a six shooter. He’ll exercise to keep from getting hit.
The classic story is about the cowboys who kidded an old rancher when he had come into town on an
old “buckboard” pulled by two mules. One of the cowboys pulled out his six shooter and said, “Old man, did you ever dance?” The rancher answered, “No.” The cowboy began to blast at his feet. The old rancher danced. When all six shots had left the chamber, the old man reached up under the seat of the buckboard and said, “Young man, did you ever kiss a donkey?” “Nope,” answered the cowboy as he began to reload his revolver. The old man placed a double-barreled 12 gauge shotgun on his stomach and said, “Are you sure you never felt like kissing a mule?” The cowboy took one look at the shotgun and looked in the old man’s eyes. He then replied, “I never kissed one, but I always wanted to. I think I will right now!” God has ways of getting things out of us if He wants them.
“Wherefore lift up the hands that hang down . . (vs. 12). Instead of quitting, go on. Instead of fainting and giving up, take heart and courage (Josh. 1:9) and get back on the track where you were running. “Make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way” (vs. 13). You can fall down yourself, but more than that, you can cause a lame man next to you to fall out of his lane (see verse 15—“trouble you, and thereby MANY be defiled”). Renew your strength “as eagles” (Isa. 40:30-31). Walk and don’t get weary, run and don’t get faint (Isa. 40:31). You are running to break the tape (1 Cor. 9:24-27), not to “place” or “show.” As a famous general said once to his knees while preparing for an attack in battle, “Knees, if you knew where I was taking you, you’d shake worse than that!”
To “make straight paths” for the feet is to obey Proverbs 4:25-27 (see extended remarks in that Commentary). “That which is lame” may be a reference to your own legs (see vs. 12: “feeble knees”) like Jacob, who “halted upon his thigh” (Gen. 32:31) when he came down from his chastisement, or it may refer to another runner running the race on your left or right.
You can turn a brother or sister out of the way (specifically mentioned in Rom. 14:6-13 and 1 Cor. 8:11-13) by your own example and conduct.
“But let it rather be healed” (vs. 13). The limping can be healed by straightening out the path and getting the obstacles out of it so that it is level and flat, or it can be healed by simply walking. The best way to heal a leg after some rest is to USE it. There is no way that an athlete recovers from an injury completely without USING the injured member. The best way to stay healthy is to MOVE. If the nervous system between the legs and the back bone has not been destroyed (as it may be in wheelchair cases), and if the legs have not been amputated or frozen rigid due to arthritis, the cure is WALKING. If it even takes a cane or crutch to accomplish this, any walking is better than just sitting. “Why sit we here untill we die?” (2 Kings 7:3).
12:14 Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord:
15 Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled;
16 Lest there be any fornicator, or profane person, as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright.
17 For ye know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.
Now we are on dangerous ground. In the first place, it is a well-established Scriptural truth that “every eye” on this earth will see the Lord whether that eye is in the socket of a holy man or not (see Rev. 1:7 and 6:16). ANYBODY CAN “SEE THE LORD” WITHOUT HOLINESS (Ecc. 12:14; Acts 17:31). So, when we get to verse 14, we are going to have to separate company for the tenth time with 100 percent
of the scholars and commentators. (It will be a pleasure.) Every one of them is going to make Esau a lost man (which he may not have been) by equating the “birthright” and the “blessing” with eternal life, WHICH THEY WERE NOT. We must forearm ourselves (forewarned is forearmed) in approaching the passage. We may expect three things:
1. A massive, unified approach of those apostates who hold to “historic positions” as they attempt to blast the Holy Bible out of existence.
2. A massive amount of Greek words and Greek grammar thrown all over the runway to impress the naive with the need for “going to the Greek” to get rid of the English.
3. A thousand tons of devotional and spiritual hot air designed to cover up the DOCTRINAL TRUTHS of the passage.
Since we expect these things, we will not be “offended” (John 16:1) if they show up. We will go through them as peacefully and relaxed as a retired CPA on a luxury liner during a Caribbean cruise.
“Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which NO MAN SHALL SEE THE LORD” (vs. 14). Now, it is apparent that the statement doesn’t mean what it says. Somebody is going to have to find some way to “Greekify” or “spiritualize” or “allegorize” the verse to make it say what it “means.” Observe that a verse like Matthew 5:8 poses the same problem: “BLESSED are the pure in heart: for they SHALL SEE GOD.” Everybody sees God. “Every eye” will see His Second Coming (Rev. 1:7), and the unsaved from Adam to Satan will behold Him on a white throne (Rev. 20) at the last judgment (Prov. 20:8-9). What are we going to do with this kind of verse?
Well, let’s sample one more verse that the scholars could do nothing with: “HE THAT DOETH EVIL HATH NOT SEEN GOD” (3 John 11). What? David never saw God (1 Chron. 21:16)? What? Moses, after
killing a man and running for his life (Exod. 2-3), never saw God (Acts 7:30)? What are we going to do? Are we going to run back to the Greek participle to try to prove that the verse only applies to “one who CONTINUALLY practices evil”? You can’t pull a “verb tense” on anyone this time; there isn’t any verb. In 3 John 11, it said, “ho kakopoion.” It was a participle. Look at what Vincent said about that participle under 12:28! If you translated it as “continually practice,” you would have to give account to God for refusing to translate two hundered participles just like it a different way. Nobody translated it that way anyway, at least nobody connected with the RV, the ASV, the NASV, the RSV, the NRSV, the NIV, the NEB, the NWT, and the NKJV.
Let us open our ears (Psa. 40:6) and attend to the Holy Spirit, instead of the Alexandrian Cult.
a “HOLINESS, WITHOUT WHICH NO MAN SHALL SEE THE LORD” (Heb 12:14).
b “BLESSED ARE THE PURE IN HEART: FOR THEY SHALL SEE GOD” (Matt 5:8).
c. “UNTO THEM THAT LOOK FOR HIM SHALL HE APPEAR THE SECOND TIME” (Heb
d. “HE THAT DOETH EVIL HATH NOT SEEN GOD” (3 John 11).
e. “AND LAST OF ALL HE WAS SEEN OF ME ALSO, AS OF ONE BORN OUT OF DUE TIME”(1 Cor. 15:8).
f. “OUT OF ZION, THE PERFECTION OF BEAUTY, GOD HATH SHINED. OUR GOD SHALL COME ... HE SHALL CALL TO THE HEAVENS FROM ABOVE, AND TO THE EARTH, THAT HE MAY JUDGE HIS PEOPLE” (Psa. 50:2- 4).
g “THEN SHALL APPEAR THE SIGN OF THE SON OF MAN IN HEAVEN” (Matt. 24:30).
UNTO ME; THOSE THAT HAVE MADE A COVENANT WITH ME BY SACRIFICE” (Psa. 50:5).
i “GOD BE MERCIFUL UNTO US, AND BLESS US; AND CAUSE IHS FACE TO SHINE UPON US” (Psa. 67: 1).
j “THE PEOPLE THAT WALKED IN DARKNESS HAVE SEEN A GREAT LIGHT . . . UPON THEM HATH THE LIGHT SHINED” (Isa. 9:2).
k. “THOU THAT DWELLEST BETWEEN THE CHERUBIMS, SHINE FORTH” (Psa. 80:1).
Now, can you get this all together? Torrey, Sumner, Rice, Hindson, Dobson, Hutson, Barnes, Ironside, Carroll, Scofield, Gabelein, Worsham, Pettingill, Zeller, Willmington, Newman, Clark, MacRae, Swindoll, MacArthur, McGee, Wuest, Zodhiates, Afman, Martin, Farstad, Price, Anderson, Olson, Dods, Nicoll, Aland, Metzger, Vincent, Symons, Davis, Thayer, and Alford could not get it together with iron, glue, plaster of Paris, chewing gum, tar, or “stickum.”
NO HEBREW OR GREEK SCHOLAR ON THIS EARTH SINCE 1611 COULD MAKE HEADS OR TAILS OUT OF ANY OF IT. Their education was their undoing. Their conceit blinded them (Rom. 12:16).
The references have to do with a mid-Tribulation or post-Tribulation appearance of the Lord Jesus Christ to the Jewish remnant exactly as He appeared “brighter than the sun” to Paul on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:3, 26:13).
All of the scholars spiritualized verse 14, along with Matthew 5:8, because they couldn’t believe the Bible in English, German, Italian, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Spanish, or Pig Latin. “Scholarship” is not a substitute for belief; it is not even a reasonable facsimile. Greek scholarship doesn’t enter the matter ONE time. Greek manuscripts are irrelevant on all of the references. Knowledge of the Greek was a HINDRANCE to finding the truth. So they didn’t find it, ANY OF THEM!
a. “TURN US AGAIN, O GOD OF HOSTS, AND CAUSE THY FACE TO SHINE; AND WE SHALL BE SAVED” (Psa. 80:7).
b. “THE LORD CAME FROM SINAI, AND ROSE UP FROM SEIR UNTO THEM; HE SHINED FORTH FROM MOUNT PARAN, AND HE CAME WITH TEN THOUSANDS OF SAINTS” (Deut. 33:2).
c “SEE THAT YE REFUSE NOT HIM THAT SPEAKETH ... IF WE TURN AWAY FROM HIM THAT SPEAKETH FROM HEAVEN” (Heb 12:25).
That is where the Lord was when He spoke to Paul (Acts 9:5-6).
The references in Hebrews and Matthew were literal: 100 percent of the scholars ignored them.
1. Barnes: “Instead of yielding to contending passions and to a spirit of war; instead of seeking revenge on your persecutors and foes, make it rather your aim to be holy;” blah, blah, blah . . . “That is, shall ‘see Him IN PEACE’ or so see Him as TO DWELL WITH HIM ... To see one is often used in the sense of being WITH ONE, dwelling with one, ENJOYING one,” blah, blah, blah (pp. 303-304). Bah, bah, black sheep, pull your own wool over your eyes.
2 Wycliffe Commentary: “Certainly one of the essential proofs of the new life in Christ lies in the way believers get along with each other” (p. 1425). (“Hey, deah, my man, is you readin’ de Book or is you readin’ de comic strip?”)
3. The New Bible Commentary (Stibbs): “Let them therefore seek in their fellowship to promote true holiness as well as peace with one another” (p. 1214). No “God”? Not even “Lord”? No seeing God? No seeing “the Lord”? JUST FELLOWSHIP, IS IT? JUST GOOD, OLD, HUMANISTIC, CARNAL, FLESHY SLOP, IS IT? Just you and me, and us and them, and him and her, and “usns,” is it? You just decided to kick “the Lord” out of the passage? Are you kin to Balak’s
messengers? Did you see what they did with “the Lord” in Numbers 22:12-14?
4. Dununelow: “.......................... ’’You.. got it; that
is exactly what he said, in quotes—“......................... ”
Man, you talk about Conservative scholarship! Man, you talk about “the original Greek” that “lined up with the LXX”! Boy, do we have winners!
5. Liberty University (The “Old Time” Gospel Hour): “‘Without which’ MUST BE CONSTRUED AS MEANING . . (Oh, no, it must not; you are getting ready to demonstrate your stupidity. We know the signs. We’ve seen them 3,000 times per book.) “. . . as meaning that without PEACE no one will see the Lord.” That is, God is a liar! He said “holiness,” but what He “meant” was PEACE, because at Liberty University—as it is at all Liberal institutions of unsaved Liberals—NO ONE BELIEVES THE BIBLE. “The relative pronoun, which” (Do you see why we listed those three things to “get ready for” above?) “is singular” (That is, Freerkson is lost in the swamp and doesn’t know where he is!) “and in the masculine gender” (That is, having no real comment to make, Freerkson is going to waste as much paper and ink as he can to impress someone like himself!). “Holiness like faith, is a crucial element in the Christian’s life. Without the former, one cannot SEE GOD ... At salvation God changes man’s spiritual nature . . . before salvation we were free from righteousness . . . This radical change should become apparent. . . even a spy who appears to serve two masters,” blah, blah, blah (p. 711)!
Freerkson is talking in tongues.
A. He didn’t know what he had just read.
B. He didn’t believe what he just said.
C. He couldn’t have interpreted it had he believed it.
So he wasted your time talking about Greek grammar, and then he gave you a devotional homily on
Romans 6:17-18, WHICH HAD NO MORE TO DO WITH THE TEXT THAN GENESIS 3:1. That’s how they train “Champions for Christ” at Liberty University.
6. Jamieson, Fausett, and Brown: “In the East, none but the greatest favorites are admitted the honor of SEEING THE KING,” blah, blah, blah. “The Lord being pure and holy, none but the PURE AND HOLY shall see Him ... In Matthew 24:30 and Revelation 1:7, it is said that all shall see the Lord, but that shall be as JUDGE not as their lasting portion. The GREEK VERB HERE” (Oh, yeah, Sally, you lost your marbles in the alley!) “does not denote the mere action of “SEEING” (like the English text SAID!) “but the SEER’S STATE OF MIND TO WHICH THE OBJECT IS PRESENTED. None but the holy could APPRECIATE the holy God,” blah, blah, blah (p. 1439).
All this means: “I don’t know where I am; I don’t know how I got there; but I will bluff my way through and pretend that I have some light on the text that no ordinary person has because they couldn’t know the ‘GREEK VERB’ here!” Yeah, you outrageous FRAUDS! You ought to join the Catholic church!
Do you see how the Alexandrian Cult operates? Do you have their “historic position” yet?
7. Arthur “Sovereign Grace” Pink: “Without holiness no man shall see the Lord spiritually, not corporeally” (p. 1000). Not corporeally? “He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son” (Rom. 8:29). “Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body” (Phil. 3:21). “When he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2).
Not corporeally, Pink? Are you kidding? Are you trying to tell us that we won’t see the BODY of Jesus Christ as a BODY? “Spiritually,” is it, Pinky-Winky?
“With an ENLIGHTENED UNDERSTANDING and with love’s discernment, so as to have to enjoy
personal communion with Him . . . HOW CLEAR THAT IS!” Yeah, Pinky, as clear as Jimmy Carter’s foreign policy. “The pure in heart shall see God—see Him in his holy ordinances, see His blessed image REFLECTED, though dimly, by His SAINTS, see Him by FAITH with the eyes of the HEART . . .” blah, blah, blah (p. 1000)! (Run out of “sovereign grace,” did you, Pinky?) Holiness is the “medium for the SOUL’S VISION OF GOD” (p. 1000). Nuts! Pecan nuts and hazel nuts.
A. W. Pink couldn’t handle the passage, so he got rid of it (see the NASV marginal notes on Job 41:1, for example). He didn’t believe what he read, so he spiritualized it (see ASV notes on John 9:38, for example). Pink covered up two of his most precious attributes (infidelity and ignorance) by sidetracking the reader to a devotional homily so he would not search the Scriptures. If he had searched the Psalms (see above), Matthew, Hebrews, and Acts, he would have mined the gold; he would have found the lodestone. He gave you ashes for silver, dust for gold, and a rock for bread. Shame on you, “Sovereign Grace” Pink! Shame on all of your kin in the Cult.
We have the passage—it said what it meant, meant what it said, and was clear enough in the AV to correct all Greek manuscripts, all Greek verbs, all Greek scholars, all Greek commentators, all Greek texts, all Greek lexicons, and all Greek teachers. They stand corrected.
“Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God ..(vs. 15). Again, the commentator is forced into a Tribulation context. He can choose sides. Either this is a saved man who fails to get enough grace (practically, as in Heb. 4:16) to be holy and follow peace (vs. 14), or else it is an unsaved man who fails to appropriate salvation by grace through faith. The commentators waver and then use the illustration (Esau) for an example of an unsaved man who is NOT SAVED “by grace.” Knowing where we are and what we are
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the case was only “HYPOTHETICAL” (Commentary, pp. 684, 703).
“If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.” In this case, however, they take all of the Bible revisors, promoters, translators, and publishers with them, plus all of their church members and ministerial students.
“For one morsel of meat sold his birthright ..(vs. 16). He “sacrificed the permanent on the altar of the immediate,” citing Bob Jones Sr. It is a standard practice that goes on regularly among Fundamentalists all over the United States.
I was eating dinner once with a fellow, and he said that he was attending Pensacola Christian College because his mom and dad made him go there. He said that he didn’t enjoy it, but they had announced in assembly that nobody there could attend the church that Dr. Ruckman pastored. They would be “shipped” if they did. I said something like, “Well, that’s the way the snow blows,” and I forgot it. I know that in “Orientation” at Bob Jones University they warn about “Ruck- manism” as a “cult,” and at Tennessee Temple they will ship any students caught with my tapes, etc. It’s old stuff. (Little nervous, scared, spoiled brats have all kinds of pious ways to pretend that they are “protecting young people from heresy,” etc. The harder I spank their britches, the more nervous they get.)
I got to thinking about this matter later and said to myself, “What is it really? What is it actually that makes these apostate Brownies more afraid of a soulwinning, Bible-believing Baptist church than they are of any other church in town? They have an obsession about it. The flunky up there on their platform had not said one word about ‘Don’t go down to the First Baptist Church’ (where a social politician was preaching positive thinking!) or ‘Don’t go down to St. Michael’s’ (where the Baalite ritual is performed every Sunday morning!) or ‘Don’t go to Liberty Church’ (where a
doing, we will make both applications within their proper context and dispensation without flinching or altering a word.
A. Doctrinally, to the Tribulation saint, after the rapture of the church:
1. You are in danger of losing salvation by failing to obtain the grace you need to endure patiently to the “end” (see documentation under Heb. 3:6, 14, 6:1- 6).
2. The “root of bitterness” that you are warned about was given to an Old Testament Israelite under the law (cf. Deut. 29:18; Heb. 12:15), so the warning that followed it was that you would be “BLOTTED OUT” from a Book (Exod. 32:32) and “BLOTTED OUT FROM UNDER HEAVEN” (Deut. 29:20).
3. Esau’s birthright had to do with a piece of earthly GROUND in the “land of promise” (see remarks under 11:8-9), and although there may have been certain spiritual privileges attached to it (which no one knew about until later), the only two clear things in the birthright were the Abrahamic blessing of Genesis 12 and the land grant of Genesis 15:18-21. The fact that NOW we know the matters about Abraham’s spiritual seed (Gal. 3) has no bearing on what Esau knew when he “sold out." (See Gen. 25:33-34 and comments in that Commentary.) “INHERITED THE BLESSING” points all too clearly to the millennial “inheritance” which has already been pointed out fourteen times in this epistle—1:4, 13, 2:5, 8, 3:6, 18, 4:6, 9, 6:11, 15, 8:10, 10:35, 11:8-10, and 11:39. There is no way that any scholar could understand “Hebrews” without an understanding of the Millennial Reign of Christ as King of the Jews, reigning over the “house of Jacob” (Luke 1:32-33).
4. The Tribulation saint is warned that he cannot REPENT (vs. 17), exactly matching the same warning given to him in Hebrews 6:1-6, which Freerkson (Liberty University) said was not a real warning at all, for
the case was only “HYPOTHETICAL” (Commentary, pp. 684, 703).
“If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.” In this case, however, they take all of the Bible revisors, promoters, translators, and publishers with them, plus all of their church members and ministerial students.
“For one morsel of meat sold his birthright ..(vs. 16). He “sacrificed the permanent on the altar of the immediate,” citing Bob Jones Sr. It is a standard practice that goes on regularly among Fundamentalists all over the United States.
I was eating dinner once with a fellow, and he said that he was attending Pensacola Christian College because his mom and dad made him go there. He said that he didn’t enjoy it, but they had announced in assembly that nobody there could attend the church that Dr. Ruckman pastored. They would be “shipped” if they did. I said something like, “Well, that’s the way the snow blows,” and I forgot it. I know that in “Orientation” at Bob Jones University they warn about “Ruck- manism” as a “cult,” and at Tennessee Temple they will ship any students caught with my tapes, etc. It’s old stuff. (Little nervous, scared, spoiled brats have all kinds of pious ways to pretend that they are “protecting young people from heresy,” etc. The harder I spank their britches, the more nervous they get.)
I got to thinking about this matter later and said to myself, “What is it really? What is it actually that makes these apostate Brownies more afraid of a soulwinning, Bible-believing Baptist church than they are of any other church in town? They have an obsession about it. The flunky up there on their platform had not said one word about ‘Don’t go down to the First Baptist Church’ (where a social politician was preaching positive thinking!) or ‘Don’t go down to St. Michael’s’ (where the Baalite ritual is performed every Sunday morning!) or ‘Don’t go to Liberty Church’ (where a
back-slidden graduate of Bob Jones University taught tongues and had a Catholic priest as a teacher). No, it was simply, “BEWARE OF RUCKMAN!!’’ “The goblins will get you if you don’t watch out!” They had told five hundred young people not to listen to ONE radio station in town. They only NAMED ONE BY ITS “CALL LETTERS.” That was the station that carried our weekly Sunday School class teaching (thirty minutes a week for twenty-five years): WMEZ.
I began thinking about these matters. I said to myself, “What is actually the truth about these terror-stricken apostates who talk about ‘quality education’ and ‘proper training for young people,’ when they themselves are gutless wonders that don’t have the character or MORAL STAMINA of an unsaved “dog face” (“Grunt” in Vietnam!). What is it?
Well, about that time, the Lord said to me, “Now, what did you say in the Bible Believer’s Commentary on Proverbs? You were trying to explain My words, and you undertook the task of trying to explain them. Don’t you even remember what you wrote?”
I had to go back and look it up. I had said. “AMERICA HAS THREE FALSE GODS: MONEY, SEX, AND EDUCATION, IN THAT ORDER.” I digested it again. The lights were getting brighter. There was “light at the end of the tunnel” (a freight train headed toward you, according to Murphy!). I said to myself, “Do you know what the real trouble is with these sanctified sissies who are expert at nothing but handling money and property? Those kiddies know that if anybody gets in front of me in a classroom or a church auditorium for very long they are going to hear what this BOOK SAYS ABOUT MONEY, SEX, AND EDUCATION; and since the third false god is the one they worship and make their living from (see 1 Tim. 6:10!), they are defending themselves against ANNIHILATION. That was it!” Those cheap, sorry, weak, vacilating, characterless “leaders” are idolaters. They
will preach on the Second Coming, talk about soul winning, and imitate evangelistic services and Bible conferences so as to pass off as genuine—and in the last four years (1981-1985), they have even ADOPTED OUR TERMINOLOGY for THEIR SCHOOLS (“Bible believing” schools!)—but, brother, when it comes to Psalm 119:99-100; 1 Corinthians 1:19-25,2:1-4,3:18- 20; 1 Timothy 6:5, 10, 20; Isaiah 29:9-12; 2 Corinthians 2:17; Romans 1:18, 25; Colossians 2:8; 3:1-4; Luke 16:15; Acts 24:14; and Proverbs 18:1-2, they don’t want those verses expounded anywhere on their campuses. That much of the Bible must remain an UNKNOWN BIBLE to the student body. No application can be made of those passages to anything or anyone in the twentieth century.
They know what “Ruckman” will do; Ruckman will declare the “WHOLE COUNSEL OF GOD” without any regard for income, status, social image, attendance, enrollment, support, reputation, giving, or “respect of persons.” So Ruckman is a “bad cat.” He is verily the “prince of devils” at these kiddie training centers. Why? It is the law of self-preservation. Ruckman’s preaching is a THREAT, a genuine, viable THREAT (gun at the temple, knife on the throat, spear on the chest, etc.), to every idolator in the body of Christ (Col. 2:8, 20-23) who makes his living elevating CHRISTIAN EDUCATION to the seat of final authority for the Body of Christ.
That is why that any church in town is the right church except for the one that “Ruckman” pastors. Any radio station in town is the right one except for the one that carries “Ruckman’s” broadcast.
I have no persecution complex. I don’t feel persecuted in the least. I couldn’t care less if they wept, cursed, prayed, spit, threatened, fainted, laughed, yawned, or went to Hawaii. I know why they are upset: they will stay upset, and we will continue to upset them. Our position is that if some backslider is so
“sorry” that he has to cover up the truth of the Bible in order to pull off a self-exalting, self-magnifying, self-preserving, self-sustaining act, he is not worth “giving the time of day.” Let the blind lead the blind; they will both fall into the ditch.
B. Doctrinally, to the Church Age saint in the first century, reading the epistle shortly after it was written:
1. A Christian can fail to obtain the grace he needs (see Heb. 4:16) to stay cheerful and happy in Christ. He can get bitter (vs. 5), and when he does, he not only troubles himself, but he defiles others. GRIPING and COMPLAINING are infectious (see Exod. 15:24 and comments in that Commentary). The worst damage done in almost any local Bible-believing church is done by what we call “the pious grumblers.” They are the “murmurers” of I Corinthians 10:10 whose carcasses fell in the wilderness, and they are given as examples for a Christian to steer clear of. (Note the double application of the wilderness wanderings: Hebrews 3 and 4 to a Tribulation Jew in that position and 1 Corinthians 10:11 for a Church Age Christian who is to learn from that position.)
2. A “profane person” is a half-in and half-out person. The Latin comes from “somebody outside the door of the cathedral”; that is, in the world. The example given is Esau, Jacob’s brother. This is the man whom God says twice that He hated (Mai. 1:2; Rom. 9:13), hence the commentators all make him a lost man. However, in the first century context, aimed at Christians, he is a CARNAL CHRISTIAN WHO LOSES HIS MILLENNIAL INHERITANCE (see Luke 19:20-26 and 2 Tim. 2:12) AND CANNOT FIND A PLACE TO REPENT AND GET IT BACK AFTER THE JUDGMENT SEAT OF CHRIST.
“Though he sought it carefully with tears” (vs. 17). It is too late to suffer for Christ (Rom. 8:18; 2 Tim. 2:10-13) after the rapture. You cannot go back
and “come through again.” If you are going to suffer for the Lord Jesus Christ, you are going to do it NOW or not at all (Rom. 8:17-18).
Nothing was “obscure” in the AV text in one edition in 370 years. The only cloud of smog that obscured anything in the passage was the conjectures of Fundamentalists and Conservatives who worshipped their own libraries and believed any book they read except for the BOOK.
Naturally, a great deal can be said about the “root of bitterness” devotionally in regard to the Church Age saint. The Bible says, “Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them” (Col. 3:19) because you are “heirs together of the grace of life; THAT YOUR PRAYERS BE NOT HINDERED” (1 Pet. 3:7). Sometimes it is very hard for a man to keep from getting bitter with his wife; but he was told not to be bitter just the same, or it may hinder his prayers. A man said to me, “Well, you don’t know what kind of a wife I have, or you wouldn’t say that.” I told him, “God knows what kind of a wife you have and He said it, not me!” The Lord said it; it’s right there!
Women will try your patience. They can be so stupid, and, of course, they have a millenium-old tradition that it is the men who are stupid. They figure the man is stupid because he can’t see all of the hypocrisy that they see and find all of the mistakes that they find. Most women’s sense of humor is limited to a mistake someone made. To them, that is funny. Any woman can smell a skunk before a man can; at least they will let you know about it. (Yes, I know women can say a lot about us men; that is exactly what I was talking about!) Did you ever notice how few times a woman says something favorably of another woman? Did you ever notice that? Have you counted the times in the last twenty years that you have heard one woman genuinely brag about another woman who was not kin to her? I’ll tell you what; do that, then count the number
of times you hear a Jew speak favorably of another Jew, and then count the number of times that you hear a Negro speak favorably of another Negro—ESPECIALLY A FAMOUS ONE THAT DID NOT GET ASSASSINATED! There are more ways to learn the truth about people than wasting time in the “HUMANITIES.”
When a home breaks up, naturally the man blames the woman, but do you know who will be blamed by the women in the neighborhood? Nine times out of ten, they will blame the woman too. That’s a strange thing; women blame women. It is almost as if women knew something about themselves that they knew to be true of every other woman, and being able to “Smell a skunk,” they got a whiff of their own B.O. while looking at another female. (You ladies will pardon my crudeness; I have never won any Oscars for tact and probably never will!) Now, you dear, sweet women, when you marry your husband, it is too bad that you can’t be as careful and protective of your testimony with your “man” as you were in your courtship days before you were married. In those days, you were really careful, were you not? You say, “Well, he was too, blah, blah, blah!” Yes, but marriage for a woman is CATCHING a man, and marriage for a man is BEING CAUGHT! Do you see the difference? You don’t? Well, surely an expert skunksmeller could figure that out! You see, once the ring is on, YOU are at a disadvantage and will have to make extra “careful” that you don’t “blow it”!
The first thing you know, around comes the old man who says, “Well, she had no business to act, think, or talk that way.” He goes off chewing his cud and grumbling. The Bible says that that kind of thing will trouble you and defile others (see the text). You go getting mad at your wife and pretty soon you’re mad with God. You will say like Adam, “THE WOMAN THOU GAYEST ME . . . .” Blame it on Him. But in
your case, you got up and said, “I WILL AND I DO,” didn’t you? Isn’t that what you said? (It’s like a lady said in the middle of an Episcopalian-form marriage service when asked, “Do you promise to love, honor, and OBEY?” She hollered, “ARE YOU KIDDING?” Then, we have the immaculate couple coming down the aisle after the “nuptials,” and as they pass down the center of the aisle, the five-minute-old bride is heard to say, “CAN’T YOU WALK A LITTLE STRAIGHTER, DEAR?” Off to a fine start: “martial” life.)
You ladies will never get anywhere if you spend more time talking to your husband about God than talking to God about your husband. You husbands will never reform your wife until you take her to God in prayer and come to terms with God. It’s something like this: “Lord, if you are not going to get the devil out of her and straighten her out, then I want you to change my attitude toward her so that I will PLEASE YOU and not be bitter.” Men are very stubborn, ladies; most of them are very dense—thick-headed. The Germans say, “Dumkopf.” That is why nearly any man will do a better job in an executive position than a woman. I know there are exceptions. EXCEPTIONS PROVE RULES IN THE HOLY BIBLE. It is only in college professor’s labs and philosopher’s speculations that “exceptions overthrow the rules” (see Fletcher, Hefner, Socrates, Plato, Dewey, Russell, Shaw, Heisenberg, Mach, Einstein, and Sartre in The Christian’s Handbook of Science and Philosophy, Bible Baptist Bookstore, 1985).
So you have trouble with the old man. Talk to the Lord about it. Talk plain; don’t mince words. Take it something like this: “Now, Lord, my husband is a knucklehead (or possibly wimp, drunk, whoremonger, reprobate, etc.). He doesn’t have good sense (or is a lamebrain, feather duster, spineless coward, etc.). He’s not treating me and the kids right, and I want you to
That’s right, sister! I’m not kidding! I mean exactly what I’m saying. Instead of saying it to him, say it to God. I mean, do you want your face slapped or your teeth busted out? Listen, stupid, why tear your home to pieces with your big mouth (Prov. 10:13; 14:1) when God knows your husband better than you know him, God has more sense than you have, God knows more about your situation than you know, and God has remedies and cures which you know nothing about. Why “blow it” just because you are stupid? Come on, ladies, don’t back out now! Let’s hear some “amens” from you Roseyland Rinker Charismatics!
Get down there, and instead of letting the “root of bitterness” tear up your home, scatter your children, destroy your testimony, mess up your nervous system, etc., say, “Lord, I know I’m right about this thing, and 1 know HE is wrong. My heart is broken about it, and I’m upset and worried. I’m turning him over to you for correction and chastisement, and I want you to do something about it for your glory!”
Try that and see if that doesn’t accomplish more than four hours of lecturing on how many skunk scents you detected in the last year. I never met a woman in my life who could not detect a flaw in everything she looked at and everyone she met. Sometimes she is RIGHT. (Not often, but occasionally!)
You men will never whip bitterness by watching your wife like a hawk. Before you have made compromises and adjustments to meet her first set of demands or “wants,” she will have forgotten what they were and will be working on a new set. No, I am not talking about unsaved movie stars and soap opera actresses. I am talking about BORN-AGAIN, saved, soul-winning, Bible-believing, Baptist women! Pray it out, buddy. If you can’t pray it out, you certainly can’t work it out.
12:18 For ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, nor unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest,
19 And the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words; which voice they that heard intreated that the word should not be spoken to them any more:
20 (For they could not endure that which was commanded, And if so much as a beast touch the mountain, it shall be stoned, or thrust through with a dart:
21 And so terrible was the sight, that Moses said, I exceedingly fear and quake:)
22 But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels,
23 To the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect,
24 And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel.
Observe the Tribulation atmosphere of the entire passage. Not one word is said in the passage about anyone being “saved by grace through faith.” Not one word is said about anyone being “justified by faith” or “justified by the blood.” Not one word is said about “believing on Christ” or “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ” or “not by works of righteousness which we have done,” etc.
Instead, we find: “They could not endure . . (vs. 20). “So terrible was the sight . . (vs. 21). “That speaketh better things ..(vs. 24). “See that ye refuse not him . .(vs. 25). “Him that speaketh from heaven ..(vs. 25). “Whose voice then shook the earth ..(vs. 26). “Serve God acceptably .. (vs. 28). “OUR God is a consuming fire” (vs. 29).
NOTICE IN PARTICULAR THE JEWISH NATIONAL DESIGNATION FOR GOD: “OUR GOD” (Acts 2:39; Deut. 32:3, 29:15, et al.) in distinction from OTHER gods (see Neh. 13:4; Psa. 90:17; Isa.
61:2; Jer. 43:2; Dan. 9:17; and Joel 1:16, plus nearly fifty other passages!).
Paul only uses this term once or twice (1 Thess. 3:9), and the “our God” of Hebrews 12 is certainly not a reference to the God of the New Testament church and church age saints. The God of Hebrews 12 is mentioned in connection with MOSES (vss. 18-21) and Mt. Sinai, and the quotation in verse 29 is from Deuteronomy 4:24 and Psalm 21:9. Let not the reader be sidetracked by the reoccurence of “the mediator of the NEW COVENANT” (in vs. 24), for he should remember that “long thing” we went through back in Hebrews 8:8-12 on those matters. The citations in verses 26 and 27 have nothing to do with the Church Age; they are ADVENT passages taken from Haggai 2.
When Peter says, “As many as the Lord OUR GOD shall call . . (Acts 2), HE DOESN’T KNOW A CHURCH EXISTS THAT IS THE BODY OF CHRIST (see Eph. 3:1-6 and comments in that Commentary). “The Lord your God. . (Acts 3:22) is a Jewish God in distinction from Gentile gods, and the “your” is aimed at UNSAVED Jews who are not in the body of Christ.
Get your Bible straight. Hebrews 12:18-24 is primarily aimed at a JEW in the Tribulation no matter what the Greek scholars say. After all, they have demonstrated their bungling incompetence so many times by now in this epistle alone that any believer would be justified in saying to them, “Thou art beside thyself; much learning doth make thee mad,” or in this case, more appropriately, “Thou art beside A. T. Robertson, much learning doth make thee STUPID.”
“For ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched . . (vs. 18). You cannot touch the real Mt. Zion on which the real Jerusalem is built (Psa. 48:2, 50:2) because this “mount” extends about 900,000,000 “light years” straight up over your head northward (see The Bible Believer’s Commentary on
Genesis). Satan attempted to scale it (Isa. 14) and wound up in hell (Isa. 14). Mt. Sinai could be “touched” in the sense that it was a literal, physical, visible piece of ground. That statement about “if so much as a beast touch the mountain” (vs. 20) had to do with a temporary restriction placed on one group of people at one time in the history of the world. The only time you couldn’t touch it was when you were FORBIDDEN to touch it; otherwise, it was as “touchable” as Pharaoh’s iron furnaces or the sand by the Red Sea.
Verses 18 and 19 have been commented on at length in The Bible Believer’s Commentary on Exodus.
“It shall be stoned, or thrust through with a dart..(vs. 20). In the original (Exod. 19:12-13), it appears that God Himself will sling the stones and throw the darts, although it might be a reference to capital punishment executed by the congregation on the guilty party after Moses came down. The problem is who would know which dog or cat (“beast,” Exod. 19:13) trespassed a boundary which circled more than four miles of territory. The warning in Exodus 19:21 indicates IMMEDIATE perishing, as in the case of 2 Samuel 6:6-7.
In this case, the Lord would fire the darts and stones; they would come sailing out of the sides of Mt. Zion and strike down anything that touched the border. (We have commented on Moses, “the great mountain climber,” in Exodus 19:3 and 14 in that Commentary. He goes up the mountain and back down at least five times.)
“Moses said, I exceedingly fear and quake ..
(vs. 21). Well, he didn’t say that in the “verbal, plenary, inspired original autograph”—unless it got lost. That is, UNLESS GOD DECIDED THAT SOME “VERBAL, PLENARY, INSPIRED AUTOGRAPHS” SHOULD NOT BE INCLUDED IN THE CANON! Think about THAT! You talk about a doctrine that would drive these half-brained idolaters (and we say that with chari
ty; we could say “blasphemers”) up the wall who talk about “plenary, verbal inspiration of the original autographs”! How do you know that you have the “originals”? How do you know that you have all of them? Did Paul only write thirteen “inspired” epistles during the twenty-five years of his ministry? Can you prove the “epistle to Laodicea” (Col. 4:16) was NOT inspired? You never found “It is more blessed to give than receive” (Acts 20:35) in Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, but Paul said the LORD SAID IT. How many things did the Lord SAY by inspiration that you don’t have in the “verbal, plenary, inspired original autographs”? Can you prove it with documented evidence? (If not, then don’t talk like a jackass preaching to Baalam.)
Exodus 19:19 is the only place in the context where “Moses SPAKE” without it being recorded WHAT he “spake,” but there “God answered him BY A VOICE.” If Hebrews 12:21 took place there, the “answer” must have been of the nature of Exodus 19:20.
“But ye are come unto mount Sion . .. the city of the living God . . . the heavenly Jerusalem . . . innumerable company of angels . .. general assembly and church of the firstborn ... to God the Judge of all... the spirits of just men made perfect . . . Jesus the mediator of the new covenant” (vss. 22-24). There are eight items in the list; the eighth naturally being “something new.”
1. Mount Sion: the one whose peak is beyond Alpha Draconis (see Ezek. 1:4; Psa. 48, 50; Isa. 14). The universe is shaped like a pyramid with the “capstone” straight NORTH (Psa. 75:5-7; Job 37:18, 38:30).
2. The city of the living God: This is the one mentioned in Psalms 48 and 50.
3. The heavenly Jerusalem: This is for heavenly minded people LIKE Abraham and Sarah (see Heb. 11:14—16), NOT Abraham and Sarah.
4. An innumerable company of angels: All is self-explanatory.
5. The general assembly: The group might be a separate group from “the church of the firstborn.” If one makes the “firstborn” Christ (see Rom. 8:29; Col. 1:15; Heb. 1:6), then the “church” here would be a reference to the New Testament body of Christ (Eph. 1; Col. 1; 1 Cor. 12; et al.). However, if the “firstborn” is a reference to the KIND OF PEOPLE that compose that church, we are taken back to Exodus 4:22 and Jeremiah 31:9—it would be Israel (Hebrews!). If this interpretation is true, then it is the same as the “assembly”; if the first case is true, the “assembly” is Old Testament saints who make up a separate group from the body of Christ (see detailed analysis under Eph. 3:15 in that Commentary).
6. To God the Judge of all: It is self-explanatory. Here it goes with Hebrews 10.
7. The spirits of just men made perfect: Observe the peculiar ANTI-CHRISTIAN FLAVOR of the wording. Paul doesn’t talk about “just men.” He speaks about Christians being just in their dealings (Titus 1:8), but when he quotes “the just shall live by faith,” he is quoting Habakkuk 2:4 in the Old Testament and uses it only in regard to SALVATION, NOT A MAN BECOMING “JUST." We are justified (Rom. 5:9), but we are not “just” individuals. A “just man” is an Old Testament concept altogether (see Prov. 10:6-7, 20, 31, 13:22, 17:15; Gen. 6:9; Job 12:4; Eccl. 7:15; Isa. 26:7, 29:21; Amos 5:12; etc.).
You see, none of the commentators are “zealous for the truth.” They ignore the wording of every verse that they read while rummaging through Greek lexicons and grammars to prove that the wording’s wrong. The wording’s RIGHT. “The spirits of just men made perfect” might include, by way of appropriation, Church Age saints; but DOCTRINALLY the title doesn’t fit. It fits Old Testament saints and will fit
Tribulation saints (see Rev. 12:17, 14:12).
8. And to Jesus the mediator: All is self-explanatory.
“And to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel” (vs. 24). Notice the constant reference to the Old Testament: Abel, firstborn, Moses, the law, Sinai, Habakkuk, Exodus, etc.
Abel’s blood carries a message exactly as such inanimate things as “day” and “night” both “SPEAK” and “DECLARE” (see Psa. 19:1-5). Abel’s blood speaks and says three things:
1. “You can’t get blood out of a turnip.” God accepted Abel’s sacrifice and refused Cain’s. Abel’s blood shows that “the life of the flesh is in the blood” and “without shedding of blood is no remission” (see Heb. 9:22 and comments).
2. “You can’t get away with murder.” Abel’s blood cried from the ground for vengeance, so the Mosaic law confirms it (Num. 35:16-30)—capital punishment is now the penalty for murder and has been since Genesis 9:5-6.
3. Abel’s blood speaks of the death of the Shepherd who offered a Lamb.
“And to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel” (vs. 24).
1. Christ’s blood preaches a message. It states that God had blood, for “God was manifest in the flesh.” There is no comparison between Abel’s blood and Christ’s literal blood in spite of the blasphemous remarks of Dr. Thieme (see Heb. 9:14 and comments) and the “prissy-wissy” way that Liberty University handled these matters. Christ’s blood is eternal.
2. Christ’s blood preaches a completed redemption unlike the “sprinkling” of the Passover blood (Heb. 11:28) and the sprinkling of the water and ashes in Hebrews 9:19-20.
3. Christ’s blood preaches an inner cleansing and purifying of the individual that was impossible with
Abel’s own blood or the blood of his sacrifice.
In view of this, we are given the final warning for the Tribulation saints.
12:25 See that ye refuse not him that speaketh. For if they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven:
26 Whose voice then shook the earth: but now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven.
27 And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain.
28 Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear:
29 For our God is a consuming fire.
The One that “speaketh” shed the blood that “speaketh” (vs. 24).
“For if they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth . . .” (vs. 25). Notice the exact match-mate to the “how shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation” (Heb. 2:3) with which the commentators had such a desperate time. The reference was to God on this earth at Sinai and His speaking to the Israelites. “Much more shall we not escape . . .” (vs. 25). (DID YOU SEE THAT “WE” AGAIN? The writer classified himself with an unsaved Hebrew!) “If we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven . . .” (vs. 25). When did THAT take place? “Whose voice then” (Mt. Sinai—Exod. 19-20) “. . . BUT NOW ...” (vs. 26). When did THAT take place? The quotation is from Haggai. What did he mean by dragging Haggai up into the first century and saying that was “NOW”? Now? Why even what Haggai proph
esied won’t take place until the Second Advent (see Isa. 24:19, 22; Ezek. 38:19-22). “Now”? When is “now”?
Want some light? NO? Do you want some darkness? How about some genuine, pure, unadulterated black darkness that fails to edify or enlighten anyone? Okay? Okay, here we go—straight to the good, old Alexandrian Cult!
1. The whole thing is in the past, because the “son of God was FROM ABOVE and spake as an INHABITANT of Heaven” (Barnes’ “Barnyard Notes for Barnacles,” p. 313).
2. What does “speaketh from heaven” mean? Well, “it describes the ATTITUDE of that large class of those who come under the sound of the Gospel and dislike its exacting terms ... it depicts the conduct of the ‘stony ground’ hearers who under the emotional appeals of high pressure evangelists” (Hey, man, where is we at? Didn’t you get off the Interstate back there somewhere?) “. . . it denotes the lapse of those who have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge ... it announces the apostasy of those, who under the pressure of persecution, renounce the faith.”
Do you know who wrote that blind, wandering treatise on everything BUT the Biblical text? It was good, old Arthur “Sovereign Grace” Pink (p. 1062), who could no more find TRUTH in the Book of Hebrews than he could find a profession of “verbal inspiration” by the writer of Esther. (Imagine what must be in Pink’s Sovereignty of God!)
3. What does “speaketh from heaven” mean? Here are thirty Greek scholars who wrote for Nicoll’s Expositors’ Greek Testament and surely they can spue out enough black smoke to cover up a searchlight: “From heaven, WHICH CAN ONLY MEAN speaking from the MIDST OF AND IN TERMS OF ETERNAL REALITY, without those earthly symbols which char
acterized the old revelations” (pp. 373-374).
Bud, if that is “all that it can MEAN” (note the narrowminded, vicious, dogmatic BIGOTRY of these scholars) then you sure missed a “passel” of Bible teaching when God spoke to John from heaven (Rev. 4:1-2) and spoke to Peter, James, and John from heaven (2 Peter 1:17-18) and spoke to Nebuchadnezzar from Heaven (Dan. 4:31), not to mention Hagar (Gen. 21:17).
Didn’t believe the Book literally, did you? You’re just like any unsaved atheist, aren’t you? That is, at least when it comes to something you don’t like— aren’t you? Go on, you phony! Admit it!
4. Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown: What it really means is, “God by His Son in the GOSPEL speaking from His heavenly throne. Hence, in Christ’s PREACHING” (on the ground!) “frequent mention is made of ‘THE KINGDOM of heaven’. . .” (p. 1442).
Yes, and frequent mention is made of fishes, fowls, fools, salt, scribes, and stones.
To gather all of these brilliant minds into one massed ball of computerized confusion, we could say that “SPEAKETH FROM HEAVEN” is actually a reference to the fact that “when Elijah ran from Jezebel, he saw Jonah flying a plane to Nineveh, because when Moses was in the bulrushes, some fishers of men were backsliding and thought Samson got his strength through eating Wheaties.” Why do it the hard way? If you don’t believe God and don’t believe God’s Book, why damn your constituents by going in circles to get around the truth? Just check out. Tell some good jokes!
With the “everlasting gospel” being preached in the Tribulation, the Hebrews are warned of the impending Advent (Rev. 22:11-12) and “harvest” (Revs. 14:15-16; James 5:7-9). To supplement the preaching of Moses and Elijah (Rev. 11:1-6) and the 144,000, there is a final LITERAL, PHYSICAL, VISIBLE APPEARANCE OF JESUS CHRIST FROM HEAVEN (Rev. 14:14) BEFORE THE ADVENT; AND AT THIS
TIME, HE SAYS SOMETHING AND SAYS IT FROM HEAVEN—“SPEAKETH FROM HEAVEN”—exactly as He spoke to Paul (Acts 9:5-6). Those who are ready will SEE (Heb. 9:28 and comments) and HEAR, and those who are not ready (see Matt. 25:8, 26) will miss the rapture.
One hundred percent of the Greek scholars may be disposed of without any misgivings whatsoever. They couldn’t find a car parked in a hockey rink.
Freerkson (Liberty University) freaks out completely and refuses to comment. He stops at the comma (“. . . shall not we escape . . .”) and has NO ONE “speaking from heaven.” (If Freerkson winds up in the Tribulation, he will miss the Rapture! Paul’s companions missed “THE VOICE OF HIM THAT SPAKE” from heaven in Acts 9:5-6!)
Rag, sag, bag—let’s get on with it!
“The removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain” (vs. 27). Among the unshakeable items, we find not only the promised “kingdom” (vs. 28)—don’t you know the commentators will split their britches on THAT one since not one of them could get the difference between the kingdom of Heaven and the kingdom of God!—but also the following:
1. The grace of God.
2. The mercy of God.
3. The love of God.
4. Our salvation.
5. Our heavenly home.
6. Our faith in the promises.
7. The credibility and integrity of God.
8. The new heavens and the new earth.
Among shakeable items will be found:
1. Man’s faith in himself.
2. Man’s political plans for the future.
3. All systems of science, philosophy, and education.
4. The entire Roman Catholic hierarchy.
5. Every “conviction” promoted by the news media since 1900.
6. The pope’s plan for world conquest.
7. Man’s plans for conquering outer space.
8. The ground, the earth, the trees, the mountains, and the deserts.
9. The religious systems of Buddha, Mohammed, Zoroaster, Lao Tze, and the Rabbis.
“We receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved ..(vs. 28). There are three possible applications:
1. A spiritual kingdom (the kingdom of God—see Rom. 14:17) which we are already in; therefore, the first application is STRETCHED.
2. A Millenial kingdom (the kingdom of Heaven) which is the subject of the Book of Hebrews and therefore is NOT stretched.
3. An eternal reign as kings (Rev. 22:5) after the Millenium. (See the extended comments on the continuation of the kingdom from the seventh day into eternity, found under Genesis 2:1-3 in that Commentary.)
ALL OF THE GREEK SCHOLARS AND COMMENTATORS LIMIT THE APPLICATION TO THE LEAST POSSIBLE REFERENCE—NUMBER ONE! They cannot get away from Gentile Christians in the Church Age and move on to Hebrews in the Tribulation, even if their lexicons depended on it!
To prove that the reference to receiving the kingdom is not future—although everything preceding it WAS (vss. 25-27)—Vincent runs back to the “original Greek” and comes out with the irrelevant information that “the participle gives no note of TIME” (p. 588). Kenneth the Apostate (Living Bible) sums up the entire Alexandrian Cult teaching by retranslating the “participle” so that IT DOES DENOTE “TIME.” Kenneth the Apostate writes “SINCE WE HA VE A KINGDOM,”
etc. (Living Bible). The NIV follows with “we ARE receiving” (though the “participle does not denote time”), and the RSV says “grateful FOR receiving a kingdom” (though the participle does not denote time”).
A bigger bunch of hypocritical rascals never lived on the face of the earth. Their salvation augments their hypocrisy.
The New King Jimmy Bible (“Old Time Gospel Hour” and Thomas Nelson and Sons) slyly slips in “ARE receiving,” hoping that you will not notice its resemblance to the apostates listed above. We noticed it. We know that the NKJV is not an Authorized Version or even a revised edition of the Authorized Version.
“Whereby we may SERVE GOD . . (v. 28).
YOU DON’T GET THE “KINGDOM OF GOD” BY WORKS ACCORDING TO PAUL (Rom. 14:17). YOU ENTER IT BY GRACE THROUGH FAITH AND THE NEW BIRTH (John 3:3-5). “The kingdom of God” for which you suffer tribulation in Acts 14:22 is the one Christ talked about in Acts 1:3 before the revelation of the BODY OF CHRIST as “the kingdom of God” IN THIS AGE (see Acts 1:3 and comments in that Commentary). SERVICE has to do with the Millennial reign of Christ as in Ephesians 5:5; 2 Timothy 2:12; and Colossians 3:24-25. The only application that the Alexandrian Cult could find for the kingdom was the least applicable of the three and the least Scripture- attested reference. Par for the course.
“Reverence and godly fear: For our God is a consuming fire” (vss. 28-29). We have commented at length on these matters that deal with “fear,” “fearful,” and “terror” (see comments under 11:7 and especially those in the Bible Believer’s Commentary on Proverbs [Bible Baptist Bookstore, 1972] on Prov. 1:7).
The grace is needed for service (“grace, whereby we may serve God”) not salvation. Hence, it has been altered to match the distorted, perverted, mangled ex
positions of the Greek scholars. The grossly corrupt NIV has gotten rid of the Millennial references by saying “let us be THANKFUL.” The grossly corrupt RSV says “let us be GRATEFUL.” Kenneth the Apostate says “let us please God.” Although the ASV (1901) is afraid to be “point man” in apostate translating, it still recommends the NIV in the margin.
Naturally, the faculty at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University takes the Liberal position of all Communists in the WCC and the NCCC. Freerkson recommends the RSV reading “let us be grateful,” which is like the Roman Catholic reading of the Jesuit 1582 “bible.”
See how it is done? Having eliminated a literal kingdom in the future by putting a participle (“receiving”) into a present or past tense, you now claim that you must “BE GRATEFUL FOR SOMETHING THAT WAS ALREADY DONE.” It wasn’t done. You lied. That’s how some people make a living. You blew the whole passage. Greekitis is terminal.
“OUR GOD” is the God of Israel. Those addressed are the Tribulation Jews who are about to receive a kingdom, and it is no more PRESENT (NIV, RSV, ASV, NASV, etc.) or PAST (any of the scholars or commentators) than the vegetarian Lion of Isaiah 11:7 or living fish in the Dead Sea (Ezek. 47:9).
“GOD IS GREATLY TO BE FEARED IN THE ASSEMBLY OF THE SAINTS, AND TO BE HAD IN REVERENCE OF ALL THEM THAT ARE ABOUT HIM” (Psa. 89:7). Note the assembly from Hebrews 12:23 and the fear from Hebrews 12:28-29 and the reverence from Hebrews 12:28-29 in the context of a people who HEAR from heaven (“BLESSED IS THE PEOPLE THAT KNOW THE JOYFUL SOUND”) and SEE something in heaven (“THEY SHALL WALK ... IN THE LIGHT OF THY COUNTENANCE”). The subject matter of Psalm 89 is the Second Advent of Christ, preceding His Millen
nial reign—look at verses 5, 10, 11, 14, 18, 25, 27, and 36. This is the heart of the Psalm until verse 38, where the “sufferings of Christ” appear to be connected to “the glory that should follow” (1 Pet. 1:11).
The AV text of 1611 revealed ten truths obscured in the Greek participles; the Greek Textus Receptus; the classrooms ofBJU, Tennessee Temple, Dallas, Denver, Liberty University, and Harvard; and the entire library of Greek scholars, including twenty-one volume commentaries and five sets of over five volumes each.
The “Monarch of the Books” can still clear a path through any jungle no matter how many bunny rabbits, squirrels, lizards, and skunks lie in wait. When in doubt, correct all saved scholars, professors, revisors, translators, teachers, and editions with the Holy Bible. It has always been safe to do this, it is safe now, and it will be safe in the future. No serious student of the Bible needs to take the professors, revisors, translators, teachers, and editions seriously if he is really SERIOUS about finding the truth. We never have ONCE in thirty- six years.
THE BIBLE BELIEVER’S COMMENTARY SERIES
13:1 Let brotherly love continue.
2 Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.
3 Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them; and them which suffer adversity, as being yourselves also in the body.
4 Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.
5 Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.
6 So that we may boldly say, The Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me.
At last, we are on Pauline ground solidly and comfortably. This is Paul’s style, and these are his friends (vs. 23). His closing here (vss. 23-25) matches his closing on a dozen other epistles, and the first three verses here look like something out of Romans 14 or 1 Thessalonians 5.
If there’s any doubt in the reader’s mind about Paul’s penning of the first twelve chapters, there’s no doubt about his penning of the last one. Not once does “WE” or “US” or “YOU” or “YE” in the entire chapter refer to a Jew “on the threshold of salvation” or an “apostate rejecting Christianity for Judaism” or a “hypothetical case” or any of the other reams of nonsense put forth by Willmington, Wuest, Sumner, Bleek,
Freerkson, Zodhiates, Barnes, Ironside, Nicoll, Stibbs, Bullinger, Dummelow, Davidson, Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown when muddling around with Hebrews 3, 6, and 10. There the “we” was in danger of losing it. The “ye” and the “you” were in danger of losing it. The “theys” didn’t get it or couldn’t have gotten it, and God knows what!
Here the “ye,” “you,” “we,” and “us” are saved people (see vss. 3-7, 10, 13-14, 17, 19, 21-23). DOCTRINALLY, the passage is aimed at a Church Age believer, whether he be a saved Hebrew (which he probably is) or a saved Gentile.
Verse one is self-explanatory.
“Entertain strangers .. . angels unawares ..
(vs. 2). The word “entertain” used here is in the original sense, not to “amuse” one to keep one fascinated with nonsense (as all high-paid Negroes in America— they are all musicians, athletes, or comedians), but rather to receive someone into your house and offer them hospitality. The case given exactly is Lot, who lets two angels into his house thinking that they are men. Since we have covered these matters thoroughly a dozen times (about angels being thirty-three year old MALES and not one of them sexless—Scofield’s note was “some more of the same”—the old Alexandrian heave-ho!), we will not repeat. No angel has wings, and the Devil never was an angel. He was a winged cherub (Ezek. 1, 10; Rev. 5-6; Ezek. 28). If you are “unaware” of something, you do not know its true nature. For just a moment, the author flinches again toward Daniel’s Seventieth Week, for Lot’s wife who “turned back” shows up “in the days of Lot” which are the days that precede the ADVENT (see Luke 17:29-30), not the Rapture.
“Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them . . (vs. 3). This can be Church Age or Tribulation. The same sentiments are expressed with “weep with them that weep” and “whether one mem
ber suffer, all the members suffer with it,” which are both found in the Pauline epistles. Richard Wurm- brand has by far the best exposition of the text, and every child of God who can read should obtain his book entitled Stronger Than Prison Walls to fully understand the text. Obviously, no Greek grammarian has ever begun to exegete the text if his work is laid alongside Wurmbrand’s. The martyr church and the underground church in Russia and China need the prayers and sympathy of the American brethren plus every effort possible through the State Department to free them. (Of course, this is now out of the question unless a miracle takes place.)
“And them which suffer adversity, as being yourselves also in the body” (vs. 3). The sentiment’s the same. You could be in anyone’s shoes, and it is only by the grace of God that you are not in the shoes of a paraplegic or a “basket case” or someone on a respirator. You need to “feel” for all of those Christians when you are present with them and absent from them. They number into the tens of thousands: double cleft palates, hair-lips, hunchbacks, cripples, deformed limbs, cancer, tuberculosis, diabetes, colostomy, existing on pills and shots, rheumatory arthritis, Brite’s disease, Hotchkin’s disease, cerebral palsy, meningitis, and much more. That is not to mention thousands who are at this moment starving to death, being tortured in prisons, burying their loved ones, and seeing their life’s goals and ambitions destroyed. “As being YOURSELF” in their body.
People have problems. Some of the problems that you have are rough, but they are nothing compared with what thousands of Christians are called to go through. I’ve seen thirteen-year-old girls on kidney machines dying while “mommy and daddy” went into debt $30,000, through a period of ten years, trying to keep their baby alive. I’ve talked to them after they’ve had their dead mothers exumed and examined because
there were “flies in the coffin in the corpse’s eyes.” I’ve prayed with folks while they cried in wheel chairs because the pain was so bad that they couldn’t sleep more than two hours a night and were afraid of becoming dope addicts if they took all of the necessary “pain killers” to get to sleep. I’ve seen people try to support four children under twelve years old after the father left home and the gas and lights were shut off in the dead of winter. I’ve had to counsel pale-faced young fathers who came from the maternity ward to ask about what to do with a mongoloid baby that was born. I’ve had to knock at the door of a mother at 2:00 A.M. to tell her that her son had just been killed in a gun fight. I’ve been involved in things that Bob Jones Jr. and Bob Jones III have never seen and ministered to people that Custer, Neal, Afman, Panosian, and Martin never knew existed and prayed with people that Zodhiates, Wuest, and Dobson didn’t know were alive.
I’ve had people in my own congregation after ten years of plastic surgery and skin grafts On a body where there was 50 percent of it covered with third degree burns and 25 percent of it covered with second degree burns. I’ve also preached to insane people in the asylum where not a spark of sanity showed on a face throughout the message. I’ve preached to crippled children in spastic clinics where their hands grew out of their elbows and their feet grew out of their knees. A minister that cannot place himself in the BODIES (see the text) of those people and weep with them (see Rom. 12:15) HAS NOT BEEN CALLED TO MINISTER ANYWHERE. Half of the “Fundamentalist” big-shots in America are nothing but motivational promoters and executives. Men like Oral Roberts, Kenneth Hagan, Kenneth Copeland, and Chuck Swindoll make a living with PSYCHOLOGICAL SUGGESTIONS and MENTAL GYMNASTICS. There is nothing “Scriptural” about their ministries, not even when they quote Scripture. They actually look down on sick
Christians as people who don’t have enough “faith.”
If I seem short-tempered with some of the brethren at times (which I am), it is because most of the people I write about think that they have terrible problems when they have no real problems at all. They live on tax exempt property (Bob Jones Jr. and Bob Jones III did for forty years) with a new car every two years, students to mow their lawns and trim their trees and bushes (Arlin and Becky Horton), and most of them have never had to sweat out a light bill or gas bill for half a century (Martin, Price, and Custer). They all carry hospital insurance; they all carry tons of life insurance; and they live by “faith” about like Demas and Diotrephes (Dobson and MacRae). I tend to “get short” with them. I know that they have never cleaned out a septic tank or a grease trap, and most of them would rather die and go to hell than to get their little pinkies dirty cutting down trees or moving stumps and rocks. I tend to think: “Man, if the Lord dumped on you Bible critics what I’ve seen Him dump on some folks, you’d blow your brains out!” They probably would. A man who is so afraid of RIDICULE that he’d lie about manuscript evidence, translations, the Bible, and his motives and reasons for attacking the Bible, wouldn’t be able to bear a real load of any kind for more than twenty-four hours.
A sister in Christ once said to me, “I’m getting well now. Did you know that I was mentally sick for years, but I’m getting better.” I asked, “How did you manage to find the answer?” “Well, Brother Ruckman,” she said, “my problems are getting a little REALER now.” Exactly. I mean, if you have real problems, you don’t have to waste time messing with ones that aren’t real.
“Marriage is honourable in all..(vs. 4). It is honorable as an institution because it was God Who instituted it (Gen. 2). Those who “forbid to marry” (1 Tim. 4) are demon-possessed (1 Tim. 4:1-4). Most
notable are the Roman Catholics who forbid the “Bishop” to marry after he is told that it is one of his qualifications (1 Tim. 3:1-4). Then they have the nerve to call their marriage CEREMONY a “sacrament.” A Catholic Bishop is short a sacrament: he is out of the state of grace!
“And the bed undefiled . . (vs. 4). The bed was defiled under the Old Testament at certain times (see an exact case—Lev. 15:18), and even under the New Testament, children, to be “clean” (see 1 Cor. 7:14), had to have at least one saved parent (see 1 Cor. 7:12-14). Observe how the King James English clears up the obscure LXX, the confused “original Greek, ” the derangement of the Greek scholars, the perplexity of the commentators, and the bewilderment of the translators. Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown says the passage should have translated as “Let marriage be treated as honorable, and let the bed be undefiled.” With slight variations, this non-scriptural, private interpretation is set forth by the ASV, NASV, NIV, RSV, NRSV, NEB, NWT, and similar Mickey Mouse “Bibles.” In doing this, they lost two Biblical references to two Biblical truths.
“To determine the full intent of this verse” (Mickey Mouse speaking for Road Runner) “one grammatical point must be resolved. In the Greek clause” (Road Runner speaking for Bugs Bunny) “the verb is omitted and must be supplied by the reader,” (Bugs Bunny speaking for Hagar the Horrible) “as is common in both Hebrew and Greek. One may supply an indicative verb . . . and make it a declarative statement, ” (Hagar the Horrible speaking for Pogo) “or one may supply a subjunctive verb . . . and make it an exhortation. ”
Just Kidding! It was really James Freerkson speaking for Liberty University. He adopted the reading of the RSV of the National Council of Christian Churches.
Fortunately, we have a Holy Bible with which to correct Freerkson and the RSV. So we will correct both
of them. The original corrupter here was the ASV of 1901, which was recommended by all of Freerkson’s teachers for over fifty years. (“Comfort the feebleminded.”)
“But whoremongers and adulterers God will judge” (vs. 4). If marriage is “honourable,” then the one who “puts the couple asunder” (Matt. 19:6) by a SEX ACT (see 1 Cor. 6:16-18; Matt. 19:9) is going to be judged by God. “Whoremongers” takes care of the single, unmarried man fornicating with harlots (see 1 Cor. 6:15-16), and “adulterers” takes care of married men and women stepping out with anyone and joining their bodies to another (see extensive comments in The Bible Believer’s Commentary on Matthew, Matt. 19:1 — 6). There are “marriage ceremonies” and “marriage suppers” and “marriage feasts” in the Bible, but MARRIAGE, per se, is found in Genesis 2:23 and Ephesians 5:30-31 and has never been rescended, revised, altered, abrogated, or improved upon. Marriage, per se, is “FLESH JOINING FLESH” (see 1 Cor. 6:15-16 and compare it to Eph. 5:29-31). This is why fornication (or adultery) are grounds of divorce (see Rom. 7:1-5).
The term “whoremonger” is a broad term that can cover almost every type of licentiousness. “Whore hopper” is the contemporary American slang (1930-1980), but it is seldom heard since the news media (since 1950) has “liberated” the United States of America from plain talk and substituted such words as “hustler” and “call girl” for WHORE, “advertising agent” for PIMP, “street people” for BUMS, “drug abuse” for DOPE-HEADS, “political activist” for COMMUNIST, “environmental ecologist” for COMMUNIST, “alcoholics” for LUSHES and DRUNKARDS, “transients” for BUMS and HOBOS, “Catholic” for ROMAN CATHOLIC, and “Charismatic” for DEMONIAC. Each trade has its own terminology. The Alexandrian
Cult, for example, calls the Holy Bible a reliable translation. ”
Observe that “sex” IS DIRTY when associated with adulterers and whoremongers (see the text). You see, the news media (with Mary Calderone and “Doctor” Reuben) and all of these sex-obsessional neurotics have put across the idea that sex is beautiful.” “Don’t get any hang-ups about sex! Express your God-given” (Oh, yeah, man, these atheists get real pious at times!) “SEXUALITY!”
They never specify what kind of “sex.” When they say “sexuality” and “sex,” do you know what they mean? Nothing! The two words express nothing. The first is a hand-manufactured expedient for covering up beastiality, fornication, sex perversion, homosexuality, and adultery. The second simply means “gender”; expressing whether or not a person or an animal is male or female. However, the PRESS (plus TV and radio) use the word as a NOUN for an ACT—thus, it comes out, “Let’s have SEX.” In English, that means, “Let’s have a male or female without saying which it is.” You see, the twentieth-century news media never “tells it like it is”; they tell it like it ain’t! They say “gay” for SEX PERVERT. They say “permissive sex” for QUEER or FRUIT. They have a time of it, don’t they?
About fifteen years ago, SIECUS tried to ram all of their raw pornography through the public schools here in Pensacola. The preachers got together, and when they saw what was coming, they elected someone to go downtown to fight with the educators, lawyers, and doctors. They dumped it off on “Ruckman.” (My company commander once wrote up a report on me—Luzon, Philippines, 1945. It was an evaluation for promotion. It said, “This man is sloppy and careless in dress and manner. He usually has dirt on him from head to foot. However, he pays all of his bills, and he will keep his word. He is rough and crude in speech, but his men follow him anywhere and to the letter on every com
mand. He is absolutely dependable when given an assignment. It is my opinion that if anyone has a real dirty, nasty job that needs to be done and can find no one to do it, Ruckman will do it. Give it to him.” Sometimes I think that Lt. Self—my Commanding Officer—must have been in contact with the Lord when he wrote out that report.) I got the job.
I went down to City Hall and played “ring-around- the-rosey” with doctors and lawyers for about two months, and we got nowhere. (It was mainly a doctor’s wife who was trying to push the sex literature through.) “SEXUALITY” is not a word. It is like “EVOLUTION” or “ANNIHILATION.” They are catch phrases used for convenience. They make up those big words so people will think that they have been to school. The whole idea with the sex-obsessional neurotics was that since “sexuality” (how about “maleuality,” “femaleuali- ty, “ “gayuality, “ or “fornicationuality”?) was just one big, beautiful, God-given SOMETHING-OR-OTHER, that it should be “expressed” by SEXUAL INTERCOURSE. That is where they got the term “sexuality”—from “sexual.” They just put an “ity” on the end of it (see The Christian’s Handbook of Science and Philosophy, Chapter 3, 1985). “Let it all hang out.” “Let’s do it” (as Tony Pastor used to sing it). No one at the table said what was beautiful: married love, courtship, sex perversion, fornication, adultery, beastiality, or incest. They just said “SEXUALITY" was beautiful. What is “sexuality”? Well, what is IMPROBA- BABBLEBILIALITY? The same thing—horseradish.
These demoniac purveyors of garbage will never say whether a thing is CLEAN or DIRTY. There is no such thing as “moral FILTH” to these worshippers of “sexuality.” Of course, there is such a thing in the Book (see 1 Peter 3:21; Col. 3:8; 2 Cor. 7:1; Prov. 30:12), but these filthy people don’t believe the Book. Do you know what happened at the end of that SIECUS session, which ran into about eight meetings through a
period of about two months? At the end, I said to the woman in charge (the doctor’s wife—who was always accompanied by a male and a female college student), “Would you mind telling me what the PURPOSE of all of this is? In a nutshell, what is the purpose of this program of sex education that you are promoting for S1ECUS?" She smiled sweetly (just like Ed Dobson and Truman Dollar) and said (just as piously as Chuck Swindoll or John MacArthur), “The purpose is to inform these children about the beauties of their God-given sexuality and supply them with the facts that they need to expess themselves. ” I said, “For nearly three months now, I’ve been coming to these meetings and have been listening and taking notes. I haven’t heard one word said about anyone giving anybody a venereal disease the entire time I’ve been in these meetings. If you are going to furnish junior high school students with ‘facts,’ how is it that in over twenty-four hours of discussion, nobody has mentioned the S1ECUS material on SYPHILIS or CLAPT' (Sometimes I tend to be rather plain in dealing with people who tend to be obscure.)
Boy, what a stir at the table! You would have thought that somebody had said “Ruckman” in a board meeting conducted by Arlin and Becky Horton!
“Isn’t that part of SEXUALITY?” I asked. “If sexuality covers the whole field, how come we haven’t looked at the end of the field once in eight sessions?”
There was a lot of spluttering and splattering (hypocrites are shaken up pretty easily), and finally one of the woman’s aides said, “I’m afraid you misunderstand, Reverend Ruckman; we are dealing with the positive aspects of SEXUALITY.” “Well,” I returned, “you all gave us the classic case of California’s SIECUS program for a guideline—specifically Anaheim, I believe it was. Well, after five years of sex education at Anaheim, what were the results? Did it increase the VD rate and the rate of illegitimate births, or did it
There was a moment of silence, and then a “pro-sexuality” Lutheran pastor at the table made one of the most remarkable confessions that I have ever heard come out of the mouth of a left-wing, socialistic radical who believed in no final authority higher than the news media. He said, “Well, the purpose behind sex education is not necessarily to decrease the VD rate or stop unmarried pregnancies. The important thing is that the children have access to the facts so that they can evaluate their own life styles and make their own decisions after their values have been CLARIFIED.”
There it was like a dead cat in the snow!
They not only did not have any solutions, they weren’t even trying to solye the problem. When “push came to shove,” they wouldn’t even admit that there WAS a problem! They were child abusers. They were nothing but child killers—seeking Federal aid for a Federal program to destroy young people. The woman who recommended all of that pornographic slop was getting a “cut” off of the royalties from the books sold if they were adopted by the Board of Education. She was nothing but a cheap opportunist looking for a fast buck (1 Tim. 6:10), and her highest motive in “liberating” young people WAS TO STUFF HER PURSE.
Not all sex is clean, and not all sex is “honorable” (see the text). “Whoremongers and adulterers God will judge” like He judged the “sexuality” of those who committed beastiality (Lev. 20:13-15), incest (Lev. 18:1-17), and sodomy (Gen. 19-20). “SEXUALITY” is filth, when it is out of place.
“Let your conversation be without covetousness ..(vs. 5). This word “conversation” is the one found in 1 Peter 3:1-2 referring to something that can be SEEN; however, it includes not only a “manner of life” but also speech, as it is “out of the abundance of a man’s heart” that his mouth SPEAKS. A man’s religion (manner of life) is “vain” if he doesn’t “bridle”
the part that speaks the CONVERSATIONS (see James 3:2-3). “Covetousness, ... is idolatry” (Col. 3:5). Therefore, all covetous Bible revisors (EVERY MAN CONNECTED WITH THE FOLLOWING TRANSLATIONS) had to do something with 1 Timothy 6:5 and 10 when they hit it. They did it. All idolaters altered 1 Timothy 6:5 and 10 in the ASV, NASV, RSV, NRSV, NIV, NKJV, NEB, NWT, and all of the other idolatrous corruptions. Don’t take my word for it; go look the verse up in all nine translations!
All idolaters are covetous. All idolaters think alike. All idolaters feel persecuted by 1 Timothy 6:5 and 10 in the Authorized Version (1611). All idolaters respond to the word of God in the same way.
“And be content with such things as ye have . . .” (vs. 5), which matches “having food and raiment let us be ... content” (1 Tim. 6:8) and “I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content” (Phil. 4:11). It is Paul, beyond a shadow of a doubt. “For he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee” (vs. 5). This is the One Who cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou FORSAKEN ME” (Matt. 27:46). (See comments under Job 3:8-20 in that Commentary.) In this age, His indwelling is permanent (Eph. 4:30). He abides “for ever” (John 14:16) in His “temple” (1 Cor. 6:19). So the believer can claim every promise spiritually that he can find in the Book. From an Old Testament standpoint, he can claim the words of Christ’s own promise—“I will deliver him: I will set him on high ... I will answer him: I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him, and honour him. With long life will I satisfy him, and shew him my salvation” (Psa. 91:14-16).
The one to whom was given the “sure mercies” (Acts 13:34) said to his son, “My God, will be with thee; HE WILL NOT FAIL THEE, NOR FORSAKE THEE” (1 Chron. 28:20). The believer will “endure to the end, “ according to 1 Corinthians 1 whether he
does ANYTHING found in Hebrews 3, 6, 10, or not! If he quits believing (2 Tim. 2:13), he still goes to glory even though Hebrews 3:6 and 14 say he will NOT (see comments under Heb. 6:1-6). THE PEOPLE IN HEBREWS 3, 6, AND 10 ARE NOT CHURCH AGE SAINTS. The believer is eternally secure and nothing, but NOTHING, can separate him from Christ (Rom. 8:39) no matter what happens or will happen (Rom. 8 38). His destination is absolutely FIXED (Rom. 8:29) and certain (Phil. 3:20-21). THERE IS NOT ONE THING ABOUT HIS SALVATION THAT MATCHES THE CASES GIVEN IN HEBREWS 3:6 AND 14, HEBREWS 6:1-6, AND HEBREWS 10:26-33). This is why poor, blind amateurs like the faculty members at Liberty University (and others) called those cases “hypothetical.” They couldn’t find a bowling ball in a kitchen sink. They are not even students of the Bible.
“So that we may boldly say, The Lord is my helper . . (vs. 6). The “original” is found in Psalm 118:6. Psalm 56:4 is also similar. Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown command us to “punctuate as both the Hebrew and Greek REQUIRE.” Since they require nothing, we shall ignore both of them. Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown would have it, “And so I will not fear; what then shall man do unto me?” Since this sheds no light on anything in the verse or anything in the passage or anything in the chapter or anything in the Book of Hebrews or anything in the Bible or anything OUTSIDE the Bible that wasn’t already illuminated in 1611 in English, what is the point of giving such people a hearing? All four of the apostate corruptions recommended by Fundamentalists and Conservatives erased “COVETOUSNESS” from verse 5 and put in “the love of money.” Why they did this is beyond comprehension, as all four of them altered “the love of money is the root of all evil” in 1 Timothy 6:10. These apostate corruptions are the ASV of 1901, the NASV of I960, the NIV of 1978, and the RSV of 1952.
Those bold souls who had the faith to claim this promise (vs. 6) also obeyed Matthew 10:16-21 in the face of torture, imprisonment, and death and decided that what “man” could do to them was not to be feared (see Matt. 10:28). What “man” can do to his fellow man is a shrieking terror that defies documentation.
I have The History of Torture in my library. It is a study that will turn your blood cold and make your skin crawl. To face what thousands had to face would require a faith in such promises as Hebrews 13:6 that would surpass credibility. Christians have been skinned alive, had their breasts cut off with shears, had spears rammed up through their crotches and were left propped up in the air to die, have been thrown bodily into enclosed pits thirty feet deep onto other bodies and left in piles of hundreds of bodies to die in the dark with broken bones and no food and water, have been whipped until they died, have been stoned until they died, have been bound hand and foot so that rats could eat them (sometimes pigs and dogs), have been forced to watch pigs eat their babies, and have been forced to watch their husbands and sons being roasted alive for four hours at a time.
“What man shall do unto me” covers a spectrum that the commentators would not care to discuss. They don’t even cite cases. Arthur W. Pink spends nine pages on the verse and cannot give one Church Age illustration of the last eleven words which make up half of the verse. He takes up nine pages for the first eleven words and says nothing about the last eleven.
“A FALSE BALANCE IS ABOMINATION TO THE LORD.”
Old “Sovereign Grace” Pink didn’t follow grace very far. The grace that it took the Waldensians, Albigenses, Scotch Covenanters, Paulicians, Novatians, Montanists, Donatists, Henricians, and Baptists (That’s right! Baptists! A.D. 1600-1800) to endure what they went through was more than a philosophical interpre
tation of Calvin’s theological lectures.
13:7 Remember them which have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God: whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation.
8 Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.
9 Be not carried about with divers and strange doctrines. For it is a good thing that the heart be established with grace; not with meats, which have not profited them that have been occupied therein.
“Remember them which have the rule over you . . .” (vs. 7). It is plainly a spiritual rule that he is talking about, exactly as Paul worded in 1 Timothy 5:17 (“Let the elders that rule well . . .”) and 1 Timothy 3:4 (“one that ruleth well his own house . . .”). Here in the same chapter, at verses 17 and 24, are the same references. The references all point to pastors and bishops who were in charge of “overseeing the flock” (see Acts 20:28 and comments in that Commentary).
Spiritual anarchists, who have no final authority higher than their own opinions about the opinions of their own kind (Sumner, Willmington, Wemp, Zeller, Anderson, Olson, Panosian, Freerkson, Bob Jones III, Wisdom, Wood, Custer, Afman, Neal, MacRae, Newman, Farstad, Dollar, Henderson, et al.), don’t like the word “rule.” It offends their independence. When a man is not in subjection to any VISIBLE authority on this earth—and all Bible believers are: they have a Book instead of a pope—he is what we call a “spiritual ANARCHIST.” ALL OF THE “RECOGNIZED HEBREW AND GREEK SCHOLARS” AND MODERN BIBLE “REVISORS” COME UNDER THIS HEADING. Their final authority is their own “opinion” or preference” about what “reading” to “use.” Naturally, ey took the word “rule” slap out of Hebrews 13:7.
You will not find it in the NASV, recommended by Bob Jones University (and Pensacola Christian College until we made it so hot for them that they had to start bragging about the AV—1983). You will not find the word in the NIV recommended by Maranatha, Cedarville, Pillsbury, Piedmont, Moody, Fuller, Wheaton, and BIOLA. You will not find it in the RSV of the NCCC, and naturally, it is missing from Kenneth the Apostate’s Living Bible.
Spiritual anarchists resent authority (see 2 Pet. 2:10). They only “USE” the AV because they are afraid not to. Cowardice and anarchy make quite a combination, don’t they? Especially when they are passed off as “godly, dedicated, qualified, militant defenders of the blankety-blank-blank-blank”!
We are to read “HAD the rule over you” according to all of the Greek scholars. Since they don’t know what they are talking about, throw them out!
They said “HAVE” (present tense) in verse 24, and that is why the AV said “HAVE” in verse 7. The AV translators grasped the meaning of the passage. Verse 17 said, “them that have” (present tense). No one has escaped the “rule” of the elders in verse 7. It is a present obedience to someone present. If the Greek said “HAD” for “HAVE,” get rid of the Greek. After all, the Lord knows what He is doing, and the Greek scholars don’t—at least 100 percent haven’t since 1800.
“Whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation” (vs. 7). The “ruler” here is plainly a spiritual ruler (unlike any pope, archbishop, or cardinal, who are POLITICAL rulers) for he has “spoken unto you the word of God.” That is what the popes do not do! In his “Lenten Retreat Lectures” to the Catholic hierarchy (March, 1976), Pope John Paul II (actually Karol Wojtyla: all popes, like gangsters, use “aliases”) demonstrated to the world how much of the “word of God” he knew. He said (citing directly from his lectures printed in Sign of Contradiction, Cross
road Books, Seabury Press, NY, 1979):
1. Christians had to suffer in purgatory to continue their purification which began in this life by suffering physically (pp. 169-171).
2. Israel, in the Book of Revelation (Rev. 12:1- 3), is not Israel but is actually Mary, who got up into Heaven ahead of the Rapture (when nobody was looking) and received a crown of twelve stars as the “Queen of Heaven” (pp. 201-204).
3. The Second Coming of Christ is being accomplished now by the gradual appearing of the “Bridegroom, ” ONE PIECE AT A TIME, every Sunday morning in Catholic churches (pp. 91-96). This was the position of Augustine (History of the New Testament Church, Volume I, Ruckman, 1982).
4. The Jewish, pre-crucifixion “Sermon on the Mount” was to be the means whereby the Millennium was to come, so since the “poor” are to get that earthly kingdom (Matt. 5), the way to reach the Millennium is for AMERICA TO GIVE FINANCIAL HELP TO ROMAN CATHOLIC AND COMMUNIST COUNTRIES WHO MAKE UP THE “THIRD WORLD” (pp. 198- 200).
A more blasphemous heretic never lived on the face of this earth. Alongside such a rascal, Brigham Young and Pastor Russell were orthodox. To think that such a God-forsaken pagan could be a “spiritual leader” over Bible-believing Christians is to confess that one has lost their mind on drugs. Pope John Paul II doesn ’t have ONE SPIRITUAL BONE IN HIS BODY from head to foot!
“Whose faith follow . . (vs. 7). You are not to follow “the faith” of that God-forsaken reprobate! You are not to follow that “one, true, holy, apostolic, Catholic faith” of Augustine, Mussolini, Jerome, Adolph Hitler, Pope Paul VI, Bloody Mary, Pope Pius XII, Heinrich Himmler, Pope John XXIII, Hermann Goering, Pope John Paul II, and Fidel Castro ... not THAT
faith, son! “Considering the end of their conversation” (vs. 7).
The spiritual rulers mentioned in the passage have five things said about them to which the Christians should pay attention:
1. They are to be remembered (vs. 7). “Know them which labour among you, and are OVER you in the Lord” (1 Thess. 5:12).
2. They are to be followed (vs. 7). “Be ye followers of me, even as I am of Christ” (1 Cor. 11:1).
3. You are to consider their end (vs. 7). “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith ..(2 Tim. 4:7).
4. They are to be obeyed (vs. 17). “Them that sin rebuke before all, that others also may fear” (1 Tim. 5:20).
5. They are to be greeted or saluted (vs. 24).
“The end of their conversation” (vs. 7). Again, the word refers to what they spoke as well as to their “manner of life.” The old English is much better than the new because it is “broad and generic,” to quote the experts. One English word in 1611 may include several meanings exactly as a Greek word can contain several meanings. (Anyone who has browsed through a lexicon knows that many Greek words are capable of from four to ten translations depending upon how they are used. The constant harrassment of the believer with “this word SHOULD HAVE BEEN TRANSLATED this way” is nothing but idle children playing with mud pies. Nine times out of ten, it could have been translated EXACTLY as the AV translated it, and the “other time,” there was a Scriptural REASON for using a unique translation.) Those of us who “take our Bible studies seriously” (that is, we always correct all historians, scholars, grammarians, scientists, professors, theologians, Bible teachers, translators, and revisors with the Holy Bible) know that although perhaps “not one fundamental of the faith is affected by the
changes in these translations,” at least FIFTY PRECIOUS TRUTHS THAT COULD HAVE BEEN FOUND IN THE AUTHORIZED VERSION HAVE been lost by altering the words because THEY LOST THE CONNECTIONS TO THE CROSS REFERENCES THAT REVEALED THE TRUTH. Take, for example, the documented evidence given in THIS book at Hebrews 1:3, 1:4, 1:12, 2:5, 3:6, 14, 4:12, 5:7, 6:4, and others.
“The end of their conversation” (vs. 7). Consider how they wound up their lives and ministries. Take the long look “Consider their latter end” (Deut. 32:29). Ask God to teach you to number your days (Psa. 90:12) so that you finish your course with JOY (2 Tim. 4:4-8) and not as Jacob did (Gen 47:9), who walked by sight most of the time.
“Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever” (vs. 8). This verse, along with Acts 2:38; Matthew 16:18; John 3:5; John 6:55-56; and Acts 22:16, have probably messed up more Christians than tobacco, liquor, drugs, and fornication. This kind of verse, the reader should note, cannot be made “CLEARER” or “PLAINER” no matter how much they are “updated” by modern apostates. The scholarly fable that it is the archaic and “misleading wording” of the King James Bible that produces cults and false teaching is a vicious lie that is carefully guarded, kept, promoted, nourished, and idolized by the faculty members of Christian seminaries and universities. It is one of the main “dogmas” of the Alexandrian Cult. Like most of their godless and hellish “convictions,” however, it proves to be nothing but an outrageous lie in a test case. Here is one: “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.”
You are now to list the Charismatics who have repented of their false teaching on John 14:12 and Matthew 8:17 because of the “newer” translations “up- ating the archaic English” here and “bringing new
light to bear” from “better and older manuscripts.” One Charismatic will do fine. There aren’t any.
“Updating the AV” and putting it into modern English never cured one healer of misappropriating 1 Peter 3:21; didn’t cure one sacramentalist of baptismal regeneration in John 3:5; didn ’t cure one Campbellite of lying about Acts 2:38; didn’t change the mind of one Jehovah’s Witness on Revelation 3:14; and didn’t convert one Roman Catholic to the truth on 1 Timothy 2:5 or Matthew 23:9.
ALL “HOLINESS” AND “CHARISMATICS” TEACH THAT HEBREWS 13:8 REFERS TO THE FACT THAT THE HEALING SIGNS GIVEN TO CHRIST AND ISRAEL (Mark 16 and 1 Cor. 12) ARE STILL IN PRACTICE TODAY BECAUSE JESUS CHRIST IS “THE SAME YESTERDAY, AND TO DAY, AND FOR EVER.”
No Greek text solves anything. Not one translation printed since 1880 accomplishes a thing. The key to undestanding a passage is not IN THE GREEK OR IN ANY MODERN TRANSLATION.
“Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever” (vs. 8).
Well, He was a baby; is He a baby now? His hair was black (Song of Sol. 5:11); is it black now (Rev. 1:14)? He preached only to Israel on earth (Matt. 10:1— 6); is that what He is still doing (Rom. 10)? He is the SAME, is He? In what way? He had blood in His physical body (John 19:34); does He have blood in His body now (Luke 24:39)? He pulled corpses out of the ground that had been buried for four days; can you? Can Oral Roberts? Did Kathryn Kuhlman? Did Jack Coe before he died at the age of thirty-eight? Did A. A. Allen before he died as a drunkard at the age of fifty-nine? Do you walk on the water? Does your pastor? Why do you think that John 14:12 applies to you (Oh, yeah, man! I’ve heard them stop a Bible forum arguing about that verse!) when you can’t walk on
water, you can’t get tax money from a fish’s mouth, you can’t curse a fig tree, you can’t heal lepers, you can’t produce a thousand loaves of bread out of a roll, and you “sure as shootin” can’t even make a rooster crow on schedule? “The same yesterday, and to day, and for ever,” is it? Christ is being whipped NOW, is He (Isa. 53)? He was being whipped “yesterday” in the Old Testament, was He (Heb. 9:25-26)? Why don’t you heal the blind people in your town by mixing spit with dirt (John 9:6)? Why change if He is the “same yesterday, and to day, and for ever”?
Some professing “Christian” has their wires crossed. Some brainless idiot is counting on a computer to do his thinking for him since he “lost his marbles” watching television.
How do you explain the text with the Greek Tex- tus Receptus? You can’t do it. There is nothing in ANY Greek text to explain the verse. The verse is explained in the context. He is constant in His love and promises (see vss. 5-6). He is true and faithful always and will not lie (Num. 23:19).
Because He is faithful, you are to do what follows (vss. 13-18). He is the SAME in that He is the same Saviour today that came and died on the cross of Calvary. His physical make-up may not be the same, and His station in the universe may not be the same; but He is the ONE who came and bled and died yesterday, the ONE who is presently alive and “making intercession for the saints” (Heb. 7:25) today, and the ONE who will come back to earth and reign “FOREVER,” although He did NOT reign when He was here. “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.”
One of the greatest religious charlatans who ever lived (outside of Kathryn Kuhlman and Pope John Paul II) was a Charismatic healer named Aimee Semple McPherson. When this religious quack debated with Rev. Bogard (McPherson Tabernacle, Little Rock, Arkansas, May 22, 1934), Bogard read 2 Corinthians
11:13-15 without comment, and the “lady” screamed, “YOU ARE A LIAR!” Bogard had said nothing; he had read the Scriptures.
At this meeting, A. S. McPherson claimed to have healed a woman (Mrs. E. W. Ottie) of cancer. Her doctors (Dr. McDonald and Dr. White of Little Rock) made it clear that the woman had never had cancer and that the warts of which she had been “healed” had been taken off by medical treatment (and she had not paid for the treatment!). The paralyzed daughter of Mrs. McDonald (First Christian Church) was still paralyzed after being “healed.” If the reader would really like to “know what the score is,” let him read the material printed about Kathryn Kuhlman after her death in the hospital. If she had had twenty dollars for every crippled child that was prevented from getting into her “healing line” in a meeting, she would not have had to take up an offering.
A. S. McPherson’s final appeal in Little Rock (1934) was to rant and rave about “I still believe God is able to heal! All of you who believe God can heal, raise your hands! Don’t follow this man who don’t believe God can heal!”
Liars are born as well as made.
Bogard said nothing about God being “unable to heal” anyone; neither does any Baptist minister. We have all seen God heal scores of people, and animals too for that matter! The issue in Hebrews 13:8 is CAN A “CHARISMATIC HOLINESS” WITH THE “GIFT OF HEALING " STILL DO WHAT JESUS DID WHEN HE WAS HERE? That is the issue, and any honest man knows that is the issue. Any honest man knows what resolves the issue—THERE HAS NOT EXISTED ON THIS EARTH (NOR IS THERE NOW) ANY HEALER WITH ANY GIFTS OF HEALING THAT COULD DO WHAT JESUS CHRIST COULD DO ON THIS EARTH WHEN HE WAS HERE. If anyone shows up like that, he will be the SON OF PERDITION (2 Thess. 2:9).
If you doubt this, send your favorite “healer” to me, and I will take him on a trip through the cancer wards at Baptist Hospital, Sacred Heart Hospital, and West Florida Hospital. Let him “lay hands on the sick” (Mark 16:16—18), and we’ll see how many of them get up and walk out. Don’t talk like a fool just because you are one.
If you can lie about your “gifts” (John 14:12), you can lie about your ignorance. Work at it!
“Be not carried about with divers and strange doctrines . . (vs. 9), like those taught by Kathryn Kuhlman, Oral Roberts, T. L. Osborne, Jack Coe, Jimmy Swaggart, A. A. Allen, Kenneth Hagin, and the “Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship. “
Don’t become carried away with such nonsense as “no translation could be inspired” (when all of the Old Testament references quoted in the New Testament were translations)', “the original Greek says” (when the liar that says it has never seen it); “a better translation should be” (when not one Christian in the Bible ever said or THOUGHT such a thing); “the Church Age doesn’t begin until Paul” (when the body of Christ was ready at the crucifixion—Eph. 2:16); and “Christ only died for the elect” (when He died for false prophets who went to outer darkness—2 Pet. 2:1).
“Strange doctrines . .(vs. 9) could be a reference to some “sound doctrines” that were strange simply because they dealt with mysterious things so nebulous that you couldn’t pin them down. It is all right for a believer to know about the “Great Deeps” (see Gen. 1:1-3 and comments in that Commentary), and it is all right for him to know that demons are WINGED; but he is not to be “OCCUPIED” (vs. 9) with these kinds of doctrines. I have told over five hundred young men face to face that when they get out in the harvest fields and into the “work” of a pastor, they are not to preach their first sermon on “Why There Will Be No Women in Heaven.” There are technical things and dispensa-
tional things involved in such a subject that are so deep that the professors of ancient languages and the heads of the Bible department at Bob Jones University could no more handle them (see Custer’s pamphlet on the King James Version, 1982) than they could dribble a basketball on the top of Mt. Everest. Much of the Bible is “strong meat” (note: “NOT WITH MEATS” in the text before us). You can know where the meat is, and you are entitled to eat of it and pass it on to others; but you are not to be “OCCUPIED” with it. That is where Cornelius Stam finished his ministry before he ever got started. He has had no real ministry for twenty years. That is what finished off Billy James Hargis and Carl McIntire. Although they didn’t become “occupied” with strong Bible doctrines and Scriptural “meat,” they became hung up on a kick-a “hobby horse,” as Bob Jones Sr. would put it—and wasted their lives on anti-Communism. If you observe the winds and the clouds (Eccl. 11:4), you will not sow or reap (Eccl. 11:1-4). There is always “profit” in godliness (1 Tim. 4:8; Titus 3:8), “profit” in reading (1 Tim. 4:13), “profit” in charity (1 Cor. 13), and “profit” in speaking clearly so that people can understand what you say (1 Cor. 14:5, 19); but there is no “profit” in being “OCCUPIED” with strong meat (see the text).
I have approximately four hundred sermons, and two hundred of them are “chalk talks.” Of those four hundred messages, seven of them deal with dispensations, and four of them deal with the authority of the King James Bible. I have never occupied myself with “strong meat.” The myth that “Ruckman rides a hobby horse” comes from backslidden sinners who are so under conviction for their LYING LIVES (see comments under Heb. 11:7) and deceptive ministries that when the King James issue comes up anywhere, all they can scream is “Ruckman”! If you don’t believe this, bring up the issue with ANY WELL KNOWN BIBLE TEACHER, PASTOR, OR COLLEGE PRO-
FESSOR CONNECTED WITH ANY RECOGNIZED SCHOOL IN AMERICA and watch what happens.
“That the heart be established with grace . . .” (vs. 9), as in Hebrews 4:16 and 2 Corinthians 12:9. The secondary reference to the “meats” can refer not only to the strong “meat” doctrines of the word (as it does in the context) but also to the “meat and drink” of Romans 14:17 and Colossians 2:16-21, thus warning the Hebrew Christians that he cannot be rooted and grounded with “touch not; taste not; handle not” (Col. 2:21-22). To be “established with GRACE” is to be rooted and grounded in a knowledge of Christ’s indwelling presence (Col. 2:9-10). It is to be “strengthened with might ... in the inner man” (Eph. 3:16) by the same grace that God dispenses to any needy child (Heb. 4:16). Knowledge of the Bible is not a substitute for knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, even though knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ depends to a large extent on knowledge of the Bible. Observe how 1 Samuel 3:1, 7, 19, and 21 drives home this great truth.
13:10 We have an altar, whereof they have no right to eat which serve the tabernacle.
11 For the bodies of those beasts, whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest for sin, are burned without the camp.
12 Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate.
13 Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach.
14 For here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come.
15 By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name.
16 But to do good and to communicate forget not: for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.
“We have an altar ..(vs. 10). Observe that the “we” here is completely divorced from the “we” of Hebrews 10:26, the “us” and “we” of Hebrews 6:1 and 3, and the “us” of Hebrews 4:11. This “we” is saved Hebrews and saved Gentiles. “We have an altar, whereof they have no right to eat which serve the tabernacle” (vs. 10). Golgotha is about to be spiritualized as an “altar.” The altar is said to be “without the camp” and “without the gate.” The “blood is brought into the sanctuary” (vs. 11) from the altar of burnt offering (see Lev. 1-10), but our “ALTAR” is for SPIRITUAL SACRIFICES (see vss. 15-16); therefore, NO ROMAN CATHOLIC ALTAR IN ANY ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH WAS THE PROPER PLACE FOR A CHRISTIAN TO WORSHIP GOD (see John 4:24).
A Baalite bachelor in women’s clothing (see Luke 20:46 for Christ’s comment) offering up a LITERAL SACRIFICE (and so say all Catholic catechisms, missals, and Pope John Paul II himself) is a non-Christian, non-biblical, non-scriptural operation that the first “vicar of Christ” condemned in no uncertain terms. It was Simon Peter himself (whom Pope John Paul II calls the “ROCK”) who said that Jesus Christ was the Rock (1 Pet. 2:8) and that Christians, as PRIESTS (1 Pet. 2:9), should offer up, not literal sacrifices, but SPIRITUAL SACRIFICES (1 Pet. 2:5).
You cannot obey the first “pope” and obey Pope John Paul II, or any of his predecessors back to A.D. 200.
“They . . . which serve the tabernacle . . .” (vs. 10) are the Levitical priesthood under Aaron (see Chapters 3-6 and comments).
“For the bodies of those beasts . . . are burned without the camp” (vs. 11). This is the operation described in Exodus 29:10-14) see comments in that Commentary) and Leviticus 4:11-12. The comparison is appalling. Christ is not only likened to the sacrifices of
the altar of burnt offering and the Passover Lamb, but His death on Calvary is also likened to the cast-off, discarded REFUSE of an undesirable animal: “But the flesh of the bullock, and his skin, and HIS DUNG, shalt thou burn with fire WITHOUT THE CAMP: it is a SIN OFFERING” (Exod. 29:14). When Christ “became sin” for us (2 Cor. 5:21), He took our curse (Gal. 3:13) to the extent of being likened to Satan (see John 3:14) , and as such, was REJECTED OF GOD (Matt. 27:46). He was “refuse” cast out of the camp. THAT’S WHAT THEY DID WITH LEPERS (see Lev. 13:46—“He is unclean; he shall dwell alone; WITHOUT THE CAMP shall his habitation be”). My, my, what a picture! Christ was LEPEROUS for the leper. Christ was cast off for the “cast off.” Christ was forsaken for those whom God should forsake.
“That he might SANCTIFY the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate” (vs. 12). “Without the gate” is obviously outside or beyond the gate; the “Old English” preserves all three references (Lev. 13:46; Exod. 29:14; and Heb. 13:13) while some of the “newer translations” obliterate them. “That he might SANCTIFY THE PEOPLE” (vs. 12). This is the verse that defined Hebrews 10:29. It explains why old “Sovereign Grace” Pink (plus Shelton, Ross, Gilpin, Dabney, Owens, Gill, and all five-point, hard-shell, T-U-L-I-P Baptists) couldn’t comment on that passage when he hit it. Calvin’s “limited atonement” went out the window on Hebrews 13:12, for if “the people” here are only the “ELECT of God,” then it is THE ELECT OF GOD WHO ARE REFERRED TO IN HEBREWS 10:29. Hence, no Calvinist who ever lived on this earth was able to exposit Hebrews 10:29 in ANY fashion. It blew his philosophical system out the window. It blew it out of orbit. That system disappeared somewhere north of Uranus, headed into outer space. Since Cornelius Stam (The Berean Searchlight) is a five-point Calvinist, you can understand why he never
attempted to exposit the passage. It is impossible to exposit it if you believe in limited atonement; either the Biblical passage has to go, or your heresy has to go. Stam let the Biblical passage go. So did John Calvin.
“Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp . .(vs. 13). The passage has two applications. The first is: “Let us HEBREWS—including those of you who have not yet believed on Him—go to Calvary and be saved. ” The second is much more probable: “Let us Christians go (in Spirit, figuratively) outside of the religious camp, the social camp, the political camp, the ecumenical camp, the scholar’s camp, and the scientific camp “bearing his reproach” (i.e., the same kind of reproach that fell on Him; see John 15:24 and Psa. 69:9).
“For here we have no continuing city . . (vs. 14). The literal descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob DO (see Heb. 11:10 and comments), and though that city be in temporary bondage (Gal. 4:25) and will still bear the shame of “Sodom” (Rev. 11:8), it will be “THE LORD IS THERE” in the Millenium (Ezek. 48:35). The nations will make pilgrimages to it (Isa. 2), for out of it shall go forth “THE LAW OF THE LORD” (Isa. 2:3). It is the Christian who has no “continuing city” here. Our “continuing city” is up THERE (Gal. 4:26-27). We have an unchangeable city there because it is an unchangeable Saviour who built it (John 14:1-2). Since He is “THE SAME YESTERDAY, AND TO DAY, AND FOR EVER,” we don’t have to worry about something He builds. Everything here is characterized by change and decay. Our city is “incorruptible ... and that fadeth not away” (1 Pet. 1:3-5). It is not characteristic of humanity, nature, chemicals, or radioactive material to be “unchanging.” Everything changes, and every change on this earth (excluding the intervention of more energy and the expenditure of energy) is for the WORSE. All processes that are “natural” and “uniform” are character
ized by deterioration, decay, disintegration, and randomness (see The Christian’s Handbook on Science and Philosophy, Bible Baptist Bookstore, 1985). The Eternal One is changeless, and you can no more defy His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, than you could run into the face of Him, who in the beginning held a flaming mass of eternity in His red right hand and struck it until every spark that flew from it made a galaxy or nebula.
“Going forth to Christ without the camp” is the big problem with modern American Christians, and we have commented on this at length under Hebrews 11:8. Christians want to establish a name for themselves in their local communities as social and financial big-shots. The biggest trouble with Pensacola is the saved people in it. You see, the saved people in Pensacola want to get along with the saved and the unsaved people in Pensacola. They don’t want any enemies; not even one. Now, I’m not telling you to make enemies every time you turn around so that you get fired every other month and can’t hold down a job. But this thing is a matter of trying to go along with the world to please the world system. I’m not talking about taking orders from your employer on the job; you owe the work to him, and when you are on the job, you ought to obey cheerfully as a Christian should. But there doesn’t have to be any of this “buddy-buddy” stuff. You look out across Pensacola, and you will find saved people putting their arms around unsaved people at the water fountain while laughing at a dirty joke together; taking a cup of coffee together, while joking about the preachers in town; and standing around the water cooler shooting the bull about the latest Clint Eastwood picture or "Wasn’t Dolly Parton good in ‘The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas’?”! Then the Christian turns to the lost man and says, “Why don’t you come out to my church next Sunday? We have a fine little preacher • • • . That’s what does the damage!
Then there are these land-grabbing construction hogs who think of Christianity only in terms of physical land and material buildings which should be increased to attract more people so that they can contribute more money to build more buildings and buy more land so that they can attract more people to ... . They are oil machines manufacturing oil to keep machines running that manufacture oil. When a Christian adopts the methods of the world to get money, enrollment, attendance, or support, then he is in the WORLD no matter how closely he cuts his hair or how long she wears her skirt. Do you know why it took nearly ten years to straighten the faculty of Pensacola Christian College out on the King James Bible (which, of course, they always “used” like all humanitarian pragmatists “use” anything that “works”)? Because it was not popular to promote the Greek Textus Receptus until 1982. The year 1982 completed twelve years of slamming the faculties of Wheaton, Fuller, Moody, Bob Jones University, Stuttgart, Tennessee Temple, Liberty University, Dallas, Denver, Cedarville, Maranatha, and Fort Worth until they HAD TO CHANGE THEIR POSITION. Once it was popular, Horton’s staff moved in that direction. They went whatever way the wind blew. Now the college advertises itself (Moody Monthly, Feb., 1985) as a “BIBLE BELIEVING” college! The word wasn’t used on their advertisements in that fashion for ten years. They fell in line, at least in PROFESSION; they had to profess to keep up with the pack. They are of the WORLD.
Every Christian should be out of step with the age in which he lives. If the slack between you and the Bible-believing “point man” is five to ten years, you are following “afar off’ for worldly reasons. Do you know why all of these big works have their hands tied and cannot really accomplish anything SPIRITUALLY in the towns where they are? It is because they are tied up FINANCIALLY with every hybrid animal in the
zoo; they have to “stay in good” with rich people to get their money. That is all there is to it—period. The fact that SOME of these rich people are “professing Christians” is beside the point. The point is that the King James Bible issue is an OFFENSE to these people, so it must be shoved under the rug. Take the Greek Receptus instead, and then call yourself a “BIBLE BELIEVER.” You mean “coward, ” don’t you? What you mean is, “I’m in the CAMP!”
Do you know what the fences, security guards, and dormitory monitors are for? They are to insure that no student steps out of line and does something that would offend the rich folks who support the institution with their money. “SPIRITUALITY” has nothing to do with it at all; they are not even connected.
They are interested in their own CORPORATE “testimony”—$$$.
These carnal, worldly educators do not consider the mature spiritual growth of a Bible-believing young person as an individual for God to use, but only the CORPORATE TESTIMONY of the institution from which they draw their salaries. That is the thing which must remain “spotlessly white” and “pure,” so ANY restrictions, rules, guidelines, or expedients that will promote THAT end are to be adopted. That is why they keep them under “lock and key” and make them obey like automatons. That is also why they matriculate SPIRITUAL BLANKS!
We have an interdenominational preacher here in Pensacola who advertises a “Campus Church” in the Baptist section of the Pensacola telephone book! Why? Because he is a deceptive phony. The same church is advertised in the Sword of the Lord between twenty to thirty Baptist churches. This pastor is a sweet-talking, mealy-mouthed, sissified “counsellor” who couldn’t really preach if his soul’s salvation depended on it. The temperature of his non-Baptistic church is never above sixty-five degrees in the shade; and he must be
careful not to offend anyone, or his boss—a WOMAN— would kick him a country mile! (She could whip any five men on the board of trustees!) He preaches on a sweety-weety, nicey-wicey FM radio station that never makes one mistake that would cut off contributions.
“THE LOVE OF MONEY IS THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL” (1 Tim. 6:10).
For twenty years, every faculty member at Pensacola Christian College that was trained at Bob Jones University has recommended a Bible that did not have that reading in it. No ASV or NASV or NIV has that reading.
“MONEY, SEX, AND EDUCATION,” in that order!
First Timothy 6:10 in an Authorized Version shows who is IN the camp and who is WITHOUT the camp.
“BY HIM THEREFORE let us offer the sacrifices of praise to God [spiritual] continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name [spiritual—-vs. 15], But to do good [a spiritual sacrifice] and to communicate forget not [a spiritual sacrifice]: FOR WITH SUCH SACRIFICES GOD IS WELL PLEASED” (vs. 16).
He is not “well pleased” with sacrifices that go on at the “Devil’s table” where the Devil’s “cup” (1 Cor. 10:20-21) of blood drink-offering (Psa. 16:4) is swallowed every Sunday.
As far back as 800 B.C., the Old Testament saints knew that literal calves sometimes were not as good as the “calves of our LIPS” (Hos. 14:2). And long before that, David said that the people should “sacrifice the sacrifices of THANKSGIVING” (Psa. 107:22) which had to do with DECLARING what God had done.
To hide his sin and cover up his desperate devilment, the Pope (and every priest in the Catholic church) pretended that God would accept the Roman “cup of devils” (1 Cor. 10:21) on the grounds that it was really
the “PURE OFFERING” of Malachi 1:11. To do this, the Pope simply erased the Millennial reference in Malachi to Gentiles in the Millenium (see Isa. 2, 11, and 66; Acts 15:16-17) and pretended that it was a reference to Gentiles in the Church Age. Nice work, you blundering heretic! You messed up 400,000,000 people in your day (not to mention the 5,000,000,000 that preceded you!) by perverting the living words of the living God (Jer. 23:36).
“Giving thanks to his name” is often a genuine “sacrifice,” for many times it hurts terribly to obey 1 Thessalonians 5:18. It is easy to thank God for good health, a successful ministry, a good wife, obedient children, a pay raise, a promotion, an award, or public recognition; but it is not at all easy to thank God for taking a loved one home, breaking up your home (See Matt. 10:34-37, if you thought I worded that one wrong. Some of you Christians have some real problems that you got from the news media!), splitting a church (Caught you again, didn’t I? You forgot Acts 15:37- 40. Stay awake; it’s almost morning.), or turning friends and neighbors against you. Job is a shining example of how it is done in the Old Testament (see Job 42:10 and comments in that Commentary). Paul, in the New Testament, never fails once. You can search the Pauline epistles in vain for one serious complaint about God’s dealings with him.
“Communicate” (vs. 16). The word is used here as it is in Galatians 6:6 (see the comments in that Commentary). It means to communicate with goods as well as words; in the modern vernacular, it’s “money.”
Since not one line found in Pink, Barnes, Ironside, Dummelow, Lange, Clark, Henry, the New Bible Commentary, the Wycliffe Bible Commentary, or the Liberty Bible Commentary contributes anything to the understanding of anything in the passage, we shall dispense with them. Dod’s suggestion that we “celebrate” His name instead of “giving thanks” (vs. 15), and that
we substitute “beneficence” for “do good” (vs. 16), because of something that Weiss, Peake, Plutarch, and Diodorus Sicilus thought (pp. 377-378), is about as sound as a linen gun barrel. Vincent’s blank remarks about “doctrines” should be “teachings” (p. 566) and “they ... which serve the tabernacle” are those who came there to worship (p. 568) and “beasts” should be “living creatures” (p. 569) and the “reproach” of verse 13 should be limited to “exclusion from the Jewish commonwealth” are little more than a discarded pile of used tickertape that would do nothing but help a rat build a nest. The Alexandrian Cult is always just as preposterous and mistaken in one passage as another.
Kenneth the Apostate (TLB) says we are to go “outside the interests of this world”—perfectly oblivious to the fact that the “interests” of Bible revisors and Bible translators and religious gatherings are just as dangerous or MORE dangerous than ANY interests “the world” ever had. The pitiful NIV has finally worked the great Communism password “share” into the “Bible” by inserting it into verse 16. It got this from the RSV of 1952. This word (“share”) is the watchword of Laodicean apostates and is heard on all Christian broadcasts morning, noon, and night nationwide (1970-1986). It is so potent that it infects nearly every Bible teacher and pastor in America although it never occured in ONE EDITION OF ANY ENGLISH BIBLE until 1952. “Share” comes from “shear” and has nothing to do with “sharing Christ” (i.e., SPLITTING HIM UP INTO WAFERSAND PASSING THE WAFERS AROUND). It is also the high point of Communistic vocabulary and has to do with DIVIDING UP PROPERTY BY FORCE AND REDISTRIBUTING IT BY FORCE. “Sharing” incomes simply means “taxing.” The word “sharing” IS NOT TO BE FOUND IN ONE EDITION OF ANY AUTHORIZED VERSION FROM THE TIME IT WAS PRINTED UNTIL 1986; it is indigenous to Laodicea.
The first apostate corruption to call itself a “King
James” Version was the one published by Thomas Nelson in 1979. It was put together by Truman Dollar, A. V. Henderson, Martin (Tennessee Temple), Farstad (Dallas), and a host of interdenominational scholars, five-point Calvinists, and Charismatics. It inserted the RSV reading of the NCCC into Hebrews 13:16— “SHARE. ”
The “New King Jimmy Bible” is not an Authorized Version; it is an unauthorized MESS.
Ground rule: correct all translations, all Bibles, all versions, all translators, all revisors, all scholars, all text books, and all original Greek texts with God’s Book: THE HOLY BIBLE.
13:17 Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves: for they watch for your souls, as they that must give account, that they may do it with joy, and not with grief: for that is unprofitable for you.
18 Pray for us: for we trust we have a good conscience, in all things willing to live honestly.
19 But I beseech you the rather to do this, that I may be restored to you the sooner.
20 Now the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant,
21 Make you perfect in every good work to do his will, working in you that which is wellpleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ; to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.
22 And I beseech you, brethren, suffer the word of exhortation: for I have written a letter unto you in few words.
23 Know ye that our brother Timothy is set at liberty; with whom, if he come shortly, I will see you.
24 Salute all them that have the rule over you,
and all the saints. They of Italy salute you.
25 Grace be with you all. Amen.
We have come to the end of the epistle. It closes like most of the Pauline epistles close, with a short series of admonitions, most of them dealing with the body of Christ and the relation of Christians to one another.
The saints who are addressed are told to obey their pastors and elders, submit themselves to them, and “salute them” (vss. 17 and 24). Two reasons are given for this. First, the elders are going to have to give account for how they taught and trained the Christians that they were given to “oversee.” (For a detailed account of what all is involved here, read Acts 20:28; Philippians 2:13-18; Colossians 1:23-28; 2 Corinthians 13:7-10; 1 Corinthians 3; and 1 Corinthians 9.) Secondly, it is “unprofitable” for the child of God not to obey these instructions and not submit to these spiritual rulers, because they would not be obeying Romans 13:1-5; 1 Timothy 5:17; and 1 Thessalonians 5:12. They could be drawn off into cults (Acts 20:29- 30), pick up false doctrines (Eph. 4:14), make “shipwreck of the faith” (1 Tim. 1:19), and wind up with a bonfire at the Judgment Seat of Christ that would make Hiroshima look like a wiener roast. They might even Greekify their rewards out of existence.
The “elders” often have to give account of some of their “flock” down here with GRIEF. They only hope that it will not be repeated at the Judgment Seat (Rom. 14:10-12). We all desire to give account of our ministries with “JOY” (see the text), and nothing would make us happier than for all of our converts and all of our church members to show up at the “Bema” with a string of souls a mile long and have more than one “crown” (see 1 Cor. 9:25; 1 Thess. 2:19-20; James 1:12; 2 Tim. 4:8; and 1 Pet. 5:4). Since a real soul winner is like a “nursing father” (1 Thess. 2:7), noth
ing pleases him more than the success of his “children” (see 1 Cor. 4:15). All of our converts don’t “pan out,” but how we thank God for the ones that do!
“Pray for us . . (vs. 18). The “us” indicates Paul and his companions, although he is quite capable of asking prayer for himself alone (see Eph. 6).
“We trust we have a good conscience . . (vs.
18) . There is the old Pauline trademark! He uses the word TWENTY TIMES between Romans and Titus, which is more than six times as many times as any writer in the Bible uses it. If you count the five references in Hebrews, his total would be twenty-five times, more than eight times as many times as the nearest writer (Simon Peter) uses it (three times).
“In all things willing to live honestly” (vs. 18), exactly as we find these words: “But have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty . . . commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God . . . Let us walk honestly as in the day . . . providing for honest things . . (2 Cor. 4:2; Rom.
13:13; 2 Cor. 8:21; etc.). Paul’s “LOINS GIRT ABOUT WITH TRUTH” (Eph. 6:14) deal with these matters.
“That I may be restored to you the sooner” (vs.
19) . It has all the earmarks of Paul in jail hoping to get out soon. Compare, for example, the language of Phil- ippians 1:19, 25; 2:17-24; and 4:22. Paul is in “Italy” (vs. 24) in both cases. He asks for them to pray so that he can get back to see them (whoever “THEM” is!). It may have been written to the Hebrew converts that he left behind him in Asia Minor in Acts 18:8; 19:4; and 17.11, 12. These were real “HEBREWS,” but they were Hebrews in the Church Age in the body of Christ, not Hebrews in Daniel’s Seventieth Week keeping “THE COMMANDMENTS OF GOD” (Rev. 12:17, 14:12).
“Now the God of peace . . (vs. 20). Compare i°t |f,T^ns 16:20; Philippians 4:9; and 2 Corinthians >4:11. Yep! It’s Paul’s writing.
“Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood” (Christ’s blood was eternal! See 9:14 and comments.) “of the everlasting covenant” (vs. 20). This time we are on Matthew 26:28, and there is no mistake about it. The “second party” in this covenant agreement (John 5:24) has EVERLASTING LIFE (John 3:36) and cannot “apostatize” or fail to “endure to the end” as those in Hebrews 3, 6, and 10. The “great shepherd” is the one of John 10 who lay down His life for the sheep. He is the Bishop of the Christian’s soul in 1 Peter 2:25. He is the GREAT Shepherd in distinction from all of the thousands of “under-shepherds” like Simon Peter (1 Pet. 5:1-2) who told other under-shepherds to “feed the flock of God” (1 Pet. 5:1). Ditto—Paul in Acts 20:28-32.
“Make you perfect in every good work to DO HIS WELL, working IN YOU THAT WHICH IS WELLPLEASING IN HIS SIGHT ..(vs. 21) lines up perfectly with Philippians 2:13—“For it is God which WORKETH IN YOU both to WILL and to do OF HIS GOOD PLEASURE.” It is Paul; no doubt about it.
“For I have written a letter unto you in FEW WORDS” (vs. 22). Bombs away! Would anyone call thirteen chapters running over 280 verses “A FEW WORDS”? The RSV says, “I have written to you briefly.” Kenneth the Apostate mistranslated it as “this letter, for it is a short one.” “Only a SHORT letter” is what the NIV says. “Clearer”? Do those updated “Bibles” help anyone reading this book to understand why thirteen chapters of over 280 verses is called a “short letter” or “few words” (or “briefly”), after refusing to say that about 1 Timothy, which is shorter; 2 Timothy, which is shorter; Galatians, which is shorter; Philippians, which is shorter; Ephesians, which is shorter; 1 Thessalonians, which is shorter; . . .!
Why, the “newer” translations never solve ANY doctrinal problems. They are jokes.
Vincent says, “THE LETTER IS SHORT.” Man, if HEBREWS is “short,” Philemon is somewhere below the arch of your foot!
Now, if all of the epistle that Paul wrote was chapter 13 (!) that would “fill the bill” (see the remarks on authorship in the Preface). If the “letter” (vs. 22) was a TREATISE instead of an epistle (see Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown, p. 1445), you might worm your way out of it because you could remove it from Philemon, Galatians, Ephesians, and others books as that kind of writing. However, it is called a “letter” (vs. 22). The “way out” adopted by 90 percent of the commentators is to say that Paul is intimating that due to the “grandeur” and “majestic scope” of the “profound subjects” that he is writing about, he actually wished to double the length of the epistle but purposely abbreviated it, and he therefore calls it a “short one” {NIV, ASV, and NASV) or a “few words” (HOLY BIBLE) because it could have been much longer. This may have been the truth, but anyone familiar with Paul or Paul’s style would smell something “fishy” about this beautiftil, devotional “homily.” (They always have the odor of someone who is trying to cover up the smell of Limburger cheese.)
The only way we can carry out this thesis is to say that Hebrews (being different from Gentiles) would ordinarily have required at least twenty-five chapters ot five hundred-plus verses to explain to them what they needed to have explained. This might be true, but again, it has that peculiar aroma of “I can’t figure the thing out for love nor money, but here’s something that might work.”
We will be absolutely honest with the reader, since we were just exhorted to be that way (vs. 18). We are inclined to believe that Paul is referring to the content of chapter 13, and that THIS constituted the “letter” LVTS„ 22) at this time. The rest of the Book IS A TREA- 11SE. It is not a genuine “letter.” You will note that it
was not addressed to ANYONE. James 1:1,1 Peter 1:1, 2 Peter 1:1, Galatians, Ephesians, and others are. The “few words” are chapter 13. Now, whatever else may have been involved in the construction of the first twelve chapters, we are not going to deny Pauline authorship. No one can, because no one can prove anything. But as sure as Hebrews 6:1-6 is not a reference to a Church Age saint in the body of Christ, Hebrews 1-12 had to be written AT SOME OTHER TIME than when Paul was in jail in Italy, and if Paul wrote it, he purposely adopted another style for Hebraic reasons. (Any writer has more than one style. Any educated man can imitate a dozen styles.)
Verse 23 is self-explanatory. It is Paul, without a doubt.
We have commented on the origin of the “letter” in Italy (vs. 24) and the matter of “saluting the elders” (vs. 24).
“GRACE BE WITH YOU ALL. AMEN.”
If the student will now review the material in this book several times, he will obtain a remarkable insight into the Alexandrian Cult in 1980-1990 and its methods of operation, for in no book in the Bible is their treachery, deception, pseudoscholarship, infidelity, and egotism more clearly revealed. Note carefully the comments of the followers of the Cult and how they word their theses. All of them are pious, all of them profess to be scholarly, and all of them think that they are smarter than the translators of the Authorized Version. It is true that God has never used any of their works to that extent and never will, and it is also true that not one of them nor the men who taught them nor the men who wrote the textbooks for their teachers was (or will be) ever used as God has used the translators of the Authorized Version. All five versions which were cited throughout the work (ASV, NASV, NIV, RSV, and NRSV) were dead as soon as they hit the market. Kenneth the Apostate (TLB) produced a commentary (called a “Bible”) that lasted a little longer, but it only lasted because he purposely lined up with the Pope (see Matt. 16:18 and 1 Pet. 5:13), the Charismatics (see 1 Cor. 14:1, 15), and the UNSAVED WORLD SYSTEM. Taylor’s Living Bible is a worldly, religious book for worldly people and carnal Christians, and it is designed to produce either an unsaved, Bible-rejecting critic or a carnal, worldly, top-heavy Christian. So far it has succeeded in its mission.
To really grasp the Book of Hebrews doctrinally, the reader should go back, look up, and READ every reference that we cited (for and AGAINST our posi
tion) when dealing with Hebrews 1:2, 6, 14; 3:6, 14; 4:2, 11; 6:4-6; 10:26-31; and 11:10, 14, 39. The advanced revelations found there in the AV text are so stunning to the apostate faculty members of the twentieth-century Christian schools that they simply cannot believe the Scriptures when they read them. You will observe that this was the trouble with all of the commentators coming through those passages. UNBELIEF was the greatest stumbling block. They were UNBELIEVING Fundamentalists, UNBELIEVING Conservatives, and UNBELIEVING Evangelicals who had already made a life-long practice of DENYING EVERY WORD IN THE BIBLE WITH WHICH THEY DIDN’T AGREE.
This is the mark of the Laodicean apostate given in 2 Timothy 4:3-4.
The modern apostate is a Conservative Fundamentalist who holds to “historic positions” regarding the deity of Christ, the virgin birth, etc., and above all, the “verbal inspiration” of the “original autographs.”
THIS PROFESSION IN PRACTICE, AS IT HAS BEEN DEMONSTRATED HERE FOR OVER THREE HUNDRED PAGES, MEANS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.
If Judas Iscariot had made the same profession, it would have been worth just as much.
The Bible Believer’s Commentary Series by Dr. Peter S. Ruckman