The Last Week of Jesus Life

Posted on May 9, 2012 by joewilson

From John 12:1, we learn that Jesus came to Bethany six days before the Passover. Bethany was the home village of a very infamous family whom Jesus had befriended. It was the home of Martha, Mary, Lazarus, and Simon the Leper. Little is known of the other village mentioned by Matthew, Mark, and
Luke as being on the road from Jericho to Jerusalem, Bethany was situated on the eastern slope of the Mount of Olives about two miles from Jerusalem. It seems that Jesus arrived in Bethany late on the day we call Friday and spent the Sabbath in the home of His friends. During the week now about to begin, Jesus spent the nights in Bethany. Jesus entry into Jerusalem is recorded by all four gospels, but only Matthew, Mark, and Luke give details of His preparation for this fantastic event. Jesus reached Bethany six days before the Passover. He had an appointment with God!!
On Sunday, as is generally understood, He made His so called triumphal entry into Jerusalem. On Monday He cleansed the temple; on Tuesday His call came, the hour had come!!. John 12:23 This was the week of weeks, the week man was going to kill his God! It was also the week of the greatest story that would ever be told. 2 Corinthians 4:7 The same week pictured in Revelation 16:16-21, “when men gathered together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue, Armageddon.” Armageddon in Hebrew is composed of two words; har which means a mountain or hill and mcgiddow (spelled migiddio), to gnash with mob violence. It was the day man in mob violence rose up against his God!! This mountain was first introduced to us as Mt. Moriah, where Abraham was going to offer Isaac whom God refused, showing us the picture of Christ as a ram caught in a thicket (wearing a crown of thorns). Genesis 22: 13
Chapter 12 of Revelation tells of the battle fought at the birth of Jesus. This was not His earthly birth, This was the birth that gave Him life from the dead. He became the firstborn from the dead, Colossians 1:18, from this birth Christ is caught up to God and to His throne to rule all nations with the rod of iron. Revelation 12:5 Paul relates “that the resurrection of Christ was the time Christ was begotten of God” and confirms it with a prophecy from David. Acts 13:27 Christ could now enter Hades and take away the keys of hell and death from Satan, bind Satan (the strong man, Matthew 12:29) so He could take those who were His (called captivity captive, Ephesians 4:4) and give “gifts to men” (baptize the apostles in the Holy Spirit-Acts 1:4-8). He had to complete the victory against Satan, destroy his power over death (Hebrews 2:14) so His statement to Peter in Matthew 16:18, “the gates of hell shall not prevail (separate) against it (the Church of Christ)” would be factual!! Christ bruised the head of the devil, He did not destroy him, what He destroyed was the power of death Satan had held because man had sinned and no sacrifice had ever been offered that would allow God to overlook sin, just roll it ahead. Satan was cast out to the earth in this war “going about seeking whom he may devour.” 1 Peter 5:8 When Christ hanged upon the cross, He became our “antihistemi”-stand-in. “The reproaches of them that reproached Thee fell upon Me.” Romans 15:3, Psalms 69:9. The greatest of all days had come, “the day of The Lord” Acts 2:20 THIS is/was the “day that the Lord had made, Let us rejoice and be glad in it.” The conquest of this day gave Christ the greatest power in heaven and on earth, it secured the greatest salvation, and brought to our planet the commander of the ARMY of the great Jehovah, the Holy Spirit, that began the invasion of the Church of Christ!! With the Holy Spirit came the Church of Christ, readily identifiable by their number (Revelation 7:4), their names written on their foreheads (according to the promise given to the Church of Christ at Philadelphia (Revelation 3:12), and the accompaniment of harpers playing their harps (praying their prayers, Revelation 5:8-9) We do not need to be told the meaning of the new song, for we have heard it twice before, once sung by the heavenly angels to celebrate the victory of the Lamb, and once sung by the conquerors themselves in the proleptic vision in which they appeared with the palms of victory that could-not yet to be sung.Revelation 7:9 The song, no man could learn except the redeemed. (We will study more on this, later,)
During His ministry Jesus avoided Jerusalem, now He “set His face toward Jerusalem.” Luke 9:51 It was time for Him to die!! He had come to purchase the “pearl of great price.” Matthew 13:46

Posted in The Last Week of Jesus Life | Leave a comment

It Cost to Be Free Part 4

Posted on May 3, 2012 by joewilson

Have you ever wondered how the Church started in Russia? How did the Church in the eastern part of Europe get so large and why was it so numerically strong?
According to ecclesiastical tradition, Andrew the brother of Simon Peter began his missionary activity in the Provinces of Vithynia and Pontus on the southern shores of the Black Sea. Later he journeyed to the City of Byzantium and founded the Church of Christ there where he ordained the elders and appointed evangelists. Here, he was said to have found Stachys, on of the 70 whom our Lord sent out on the limited commission.
After Pentecost, Andrew taught in Byzantium, Thrace, and Russia. He converted the Jews in the temples, baptized them, and healed their sick, built churches, and left there preachers of the gospel on whom he laid hands. It is said Andrew foretold of the greatness of Kiev as a city and stronghold of Christianity. One thing is for sure, where ever Andrew started the Church no place was found for the Islamic religion which began some 500 years, later. It is legend that on one of his missionary journeys to Greece, Andrew visited the City of Patras. Here, by the preaching of the gospel and the miracles of healing her performed, in the name of Jesus, he healed Maxmilla, the wife of the Roman Proconsul, Aegeates. Seeing this miracle of healing and hearing the gospel, one Stratoklis, the highly intellectual brother of the Proconsul, also was baptized into Christ and it was Aegeates that Andrew laid hands on and made him the first preacher of the gospel in that area.
The life of Andrew touched the life of Matthias, one of the twelve who, in Sinope was imprisoned for preaching the gospel. Andrew interceded for Matthias in prayer and (according to legend) the chains fell from him and the cell door opened which held him captive.) Because of this great deed, the people beat Andrew, breaking out his teeth, cutting his fingers, and left him for dead in a dung heap. Accordingly, when he arose the next day and went into the city, people were amazed and believed his message concerning Jesus, the Messiah.
When the afore-mentioned Aegeates heard his own family were members of this NEW religion, with the urging of the idolaters in his court, he decided to crucify Andrew. The crucifixion was carried out on an X-shaped cross with the body of the Apostle upside down so that he saw neither the earth nor his executioners, but only the sky which he glorified as the heaven in which he would meet his Lord. Aegeates had him tied to the cross in this X-shaped-manner so that he could live longer and suffer more. It is believed that some 20,000 of the faithful followers of Christ stood by and mourned and as they watched, Andrew preached to them the gospel of Christ. Out of fear of the people, Aegeates came to remove Andrew from the cross, Andrew, began to entreat Aegeates to become a follower of the risen Savior. His body was tenderly removed from tree by Stratoklis and Maximilla and buried with the entire honor befitting the Apostle. Soon after the death of Andrew a demon fell upon Aegeates and tormented him so powerfully that he committed suicide. In 357 AD Constantine (son of Constantine the great) ordered the body of Andrew removed from Patras and interned in the Church of the Apostles of Christ at Constantinople. He was in life what he lived so purely that his death kept alive for many centuries the great Church of Christ of Constantinople. (It is here, in this building, we find relics of Luke and Timothy, also).
The deeds and preaching of Andrew became known in all parts of the world. He is the patron saint of Russia, Scotland, and Romania to this day.

Posted in It Cost to Be Free | Leave a comment

What Did Adam Do? Part 51 – Last One!

Posted on May 2, 2012 by joewilson

To be taught that “perfection would create imperfection” is the final argument in this series. God did not make a mistake in purpose, judgment, or wisdom! For someone to teach He did is to align themselves with atheism! Inborn sin is such an alignment. All things that pertain to Deity describe perfection is its most valid description. Help me find out in the following discussion just where God made a mistake in wisdom, purpose, or creation!
God put the Garden in Eden, it did not grow there by luck, its rivers and beauty just did not come about, or was not beautiful beyond description by mistake! God made Adam as Adam and Eve so when He operated on Adam all men would understand He would have had a purpose in making Adam this way. Eve was not a mistake in God’s judgment!! Adam and Eve were commanded to “multiply and replenish the earth” long before Eve, who was seduced by Satan, seduced Adam; and he ate. Child birth did not come about 9 months after Adam ate the forbidden fruit!! Eve would have had no way to understand the change announced in childbirth if it had not before Adam’s sin been different. Childbirth is no course change made because of an opps!! It was no mistake that the forbidden fruit was beautiful, looked delicious, and met the requirements for “making one as wise as God,” instead of hideous looking, smelly, and startling to behold. God made the fruit before He made Adam, before Adam became Adam and Eve, made it to satisfy the requirement Satan dramatized to Eve! Have we found something done accidental, yet? Choice was not a mistake, God was not looking for a challenge when Adam ate the fruit, He had, before the creation of the world married Christ to His Church, perfected the plan of salvation, which includes the new birth patterned after physical childbirth as a means of bring Christ into the world to save mankind!! We could go on and on but nothing made by perfection has the least hint of surprise, course change, or God being caught off guard!!
And NO, no man or woman was MADE against their will, desire, or intelligence to be a ploy for God—that is Satan’s trick–when God’s wisdom is so much superior to man’s intelligence, mand can not be expected to comprehend what God was doing until man could be developed to comprehend God’s “mystery”!! Everything happened exactly as God in His wisdom planned it!! Eve, remember was the one who worked on Adam, not God! The first sacrifice was not a mistake, it was “according to plan.” God killed something that was alive to clothe Adam and Eve, leaves (something of or from the earth) were shown never enough for God, the Father. The pattern was set, immediately. That sacrifice of the innocent for the guilty was the process of salvation showing Christ WOULD (again, by His choice) DIE so His blood, being fore pictured in the sacrifice, would be the ONLY thing that could COVER man’s sin! Have we found yet where Satan “pulled the wool over God’s eyes or bested our Maker”?? Inborn sin is man’s given explanation which makes God equal to man. For man made religion creeds and catechisms, teach their aspirants–God too can make mistakes!! This is their doctrine(s), they all teach it. Sure, opportunity abounded in every incident to change what actually took place. God NEVER staged these incidents to take place. Just because God’s wisdom and intelligence is so much more advanced than man’s, man freely acting in concert to what God beforehand KNEW, does not make God the author of man’s sin!! Man is just not smart enough to catch on without God getting on the level (as far as God’s intelligence is concerned, Isaiah 45:8) of a moron to explain to man what and how man violated the most precious of confidences. Yes, and at the moment man sinned, God could announce the solution to man’s problem that would happen some 5,000 years (years had not even happened, yet) beyond this most horrible incident!!
Some quote Jeremiah 32:35; “I commanded them not, neither came it into My mind…” as proof that God did not KNOW all things. There are some things God, I am sure, does not understand. One, is why you question Him, He has never been wrong. His prophecies all come to pass EXACTLY as He had recorded. When your Mind and Wisdom is so far greater than they with whom you deal, so that God in His PLAN has the solution to such hideousness that His mind would not, NOT could not comprehend, because His mind does not go to such depths, and still amply covers the depths of man’s depravity, how can you question what He knows or does not know??

Posted in What Did Adam Do? | Leave a comment