Let us turn to 1 John 2 just to read one or two verses there. In 1 John 2:15-17, it says:
Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.
This is good instruction that God has given us concerning this world. We should not love it or have an attachment to it that is beyond that which is healthy according to the Bible. A big reason is that the world is going to pass away. If we do have an attachment to the world, we are going to pass away along with it. We will be destroyed along with the world.
I wanted to come to these verses just to look at this one reference here in 1 John 2:16 where God is describing the world and what is in the world. He refers to:
…the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life…
The pride of life; it is interesting how the Bible, when it speaks of man’s pride, does not have too much good to say about it, if any. The Bible, actually, tells us that God resists the proud and that He gives grace to the humble. Again and again, as we do read in the Bible when we read of mankind and their pride, it is normally in a negative reference. God does not speak of it as being a good thing at all to be proud.
Now, that is completely opposite and contrary to the world, isn’t it? Isn’t it good to be proud? Proud to be an American? Proud to be intelligent? Proud to be beautiful? Proud to excel in sports? If you think about it, the whole society pretty much operates on pride.
Why is it that football, baseball, hockey, soccer, why is it that all of these sports are so exciting and that stadiums are jam-packed, especially today? Today, all across the country and in many parts of the world, there are all kinds of people who are rooting for their team. What do they want their team to do? They want them to win so that they can lift their arms up in the air and exalt and cry out for victory.
So there is all kinds of pride involved in competition, and the world operates on competition. In the workplace, people want to excel. They want to get to the top. They want to be the best. It is actually everywhere that you look, like the bumper sticker that speaks of the child in middle school, “Proud Parent of an Honor Student.”
Isn’t that true? It is everywhere. It is so intertwined with society that we do not even notice it, but there are so many things that relate to pride. People are proud. They are proud of their heritage or proud of their race or proud of their height or proud of their intelligence and their ability to speak. Proud, proud, proud, proud, proud, all over the place, and God just says that it is the pride of life because it is really built into the fabric of this world. People are proud.
I was thinking that we could look at three areas in the Bible where God addresses the proud. Number one, He refers to Satan as being proud. The devil is proud.
Let us go to Isaiah 14. In this chapter, the Lord is referring to the king of Babylon who is a type and a figure of Satan. That is why in Isaiah 14:4, it says:
That thou shalt take up this proverb against the king of Babylon, and say, How hath the oppressor ceased! the golden city ceased!
This is referring to the king of Babylon. Then in verse 11, the Lord begins transitioning into a discussion of Satan himself or Lucifer. It says in Isaiah 14:11-14:
Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of thy viols: the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee. How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.
This is the prideful arrogance of the devil, because he desires to be like God. He is so proud. If you had to describe Satan, this would be a good place to start. He is exceeding proud to where he wants to be lifted up. He wants to be the one in the place of God who is honored and glorified and worshipped.
That is why Satan is so interested in the churches and congregations, because what goes on in churches? It is a place of worship. It is a place where people go and bow down. They bow down in their minds or in their hearts. Supposedly, they are bowing down to deity, to the great God of heaven.
However, we know that Satan has been assaulting the churches and sowing tares throughout the church age. He has been coming against the churches and congregations and has infiltrated them all throughout the church-age history until 1988 when God finished using the churches and then He loosed Satan. He loosed the devil, that old serpent, and he took his seat in the church where he is now seated. In the Bible, to be seated means that you are ruling. So he is in place in the church.
Let us go to 2 Thessalonians 2, where it says in 2 Thessalonians 2:3:
Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come…
This is referring to the coming of Christ.
…except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;
He is called a man because in Isaiah 14 we just saw that the king of Babylon is a picture and a type of Satan, of Lucifer.
Then it says in verse 4, 2 Thessalonians 2:4:
Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God…
Notice that word “exalt.” Exalt means to lift up, to be high. So he exalts himself above all that is called God:
…or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.
He is in the church, and people today—I would say the vast majority, if not all of them—are in ignorance as to whom they are worshipping. But as they are worshipping their false teachings and gospels and understandings, which are all lies—it is all a bunch of lies and Satan is the father of the lie—they are reverencing Satan. They are reverencing the devil. They, more than likely, would not even have any knowledge of this because he is a master deceiver and he works with people. As the Bible explains, people, before regeneration, have deceitful hearts.
So it is not too hard, if you are the master deceiver, to bring a gospel and to make it look like the truth and to make himself look like Christ, as an angel of light, and this is what he has been doing. This has been his pattern, his desire, all through history. From the very beginning, he has wanted to be God or to be like God, to be worshipped as God. This was his purpose for entering into the garden of Eden.
Well, here we read this information and there are also other verses that speak of Satan and his pride, like in Job 41. In Job 41, the character in view is leviathan. The Lord has been speaking to Job, humbling Job, humbling him as He has been explaining all of the areas of this great creation that He has made and really making Job see himself as he is, which is puny, tiny, finite. “Where were you,” God asks, “when I created the world?,” and all of those statements that we find in the last couple of chapters of Job, statements which are designed to show us also that we are nothing but creatures and that God is the Creator.
We are not really all that special. Of course, we are made in the image of God, but we are a creature, like a rabbit is a creature or a dog is a creature or a cat is a creature. God made us in His image; however, as far as I know, the animal kingdom understands their place. They understand that they were created as a creature to fulfill a certain function.
Yet mankind—I will not say that we are the only ones, because some of the angels fell also—but mankind has rebelled against God and against our position of being a creature. Now mankind thinks that they are something, each one of us. We think that we are really special and that we are something, in a way that goes beyond just being made in the image of God.
Well, we will get into this a little later, but here in Job 41:1, it says:
Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook? or his tongue with a cord which thou lettest down?
Leviathan is some sort of sea creature, an enormous sea creature, which God goes into detail about in Job 41, and it says in verse 14 of this chapter, Job 41:14-16:
Who can open the doors of his face? his teeth are terrible round about. His scales are his pride, shut up together as with a close seal. One is so near to another, that no air can come between them.
I do not know exactly what God has in mind about the scales being leviathan’s pride, but we do find other references to leviathan. For instance, in Isaiah 27:1:
In that day JEHOVAH with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.
We probably have all kinds of mental pictures that come to our mind about slaying dragons, and it does speak of leviathan as breathing fire in one place. So a lot of those images that the world has taken of the brave and noble knight who goes to slay a dragon really come from this imagery that God is giving us in the Bible.
However, the dragon or leviathan or the serpent or the devil or the adversary are all speaking of the one and the same person or being: Satan. It is all language referring to him. He has several names in the Bible. Just as God gives Himself several names, so He gives Satan several names. One of them is that he is leviathan, this dragon in the sea.
If we go to Ezekiel 29:2-3, it says:
Son of man, set thy face against Pharaoh king of Egypt, and prophesy against him, and against all Egypt: Speak, and say, Thus saith the Lord JEHOVAH; Behold, I am against thee, Pharaoh king of Egypt, the great dragon that lieth in the midst of his rivers, which hath said, My river is mine own, and I have made it for myself.
You see, again, God is using a spiritual picture. He is using a man, the king of Egypt, the Pharaoh, to represent the devil. The reference to Pharaoh is that his river is his own, and yet it is referring to Satan, that he develops his own gospel. He develops his own plan of salvation with his ministers of righteousness that we find in the churches and congregations, and he is likened to this great dragon or leviathan.
Then it says in verse 4, Ezekiel 29:4-5:
But I will put hooks in thy jaws, and I will cause the fish of thy rivers to stick unto thy scales…
This is just as we read of leviathan in Job. His scales are his pride. The fish would be all of the unsaved who are under the rule of their king, who spiritually is Satan.
…I will cause the fish of thy rivers to stick unto thy scales, and I will bring thee up out of the midst of thy rivers, and all the fish of thy rivers shall stick unto thy scales. And I will leave thee thrown into the wilderness, thee and all the fish of thy rivers: thou shalt fall upon the open fields; thou shalt not be brought together, nor gathered: I have given thee for meat to the beasts of the field and to the fowls of the heaven.
This is referring to May 21st in 2011. That is when God exposes the rivers or the waters of their gospel for what they really are. When all of His people are taken up into heaven and raptured, what is that going to do but be a strong evidence against all those who are left behind in the churches and congregations? It is going to be as if the waters have all dried up and they are just lying out there in a desolate, barren land. Then the Lord will execute His judgments over that five-month period before finally destroying them.
Going back to Job 41, there is an interesting comment that God gives as He is describing leviathan. Job 41:30-34:
Sharp stones are under him: he spreadeth sharp pointed things upon the mire. He maketh the deep to boil like a pot: he maketh the sea like a pot of ointment. He maketh a path to shine after him; one would think the deep to be hoary. Upon earth there is not his like, who is made without fear. He beholdeth all high things: he is a king over all the children of pride.
This is leviathan and this is Satan. He is a king. He is the prince of the power of the air, the Bible tells us, and he is a king over all the children of pride.
Who would they be? Well, they would be all of the unsaved people of the earth. They are children of pride because of the pride of life that is in the world.
What was the bait that Satan used in order to deceive man into obeying him rather than God? When he went into the garden of Eden, what was one of the tactics that he used? Does anybody remember? He said, “Ye shall be as gods.”
Let us go back to Genesis 3. The serpent is having discussion with Eve and he is already lying to her. Genesis 3:4-5:
And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
Whoa! Isn’t that something? Isn’t it something that a creature can be like God, which is exactly Satan’s desire. He desires to be like the Most High.
So Eve cannot resist any longer. She takes of the fruit of the tree and she bites and gives to her husband, and we know the rest. We know all the misery that has come on the world.
Why? Well, one of the reasons for sin was to lift ourself up, to exalt ourself to a high place, into heaven itself, to be like God, to be like God knowing good and evil.
By the way, I think many of us still have this fascination about knowing good and evil, else there could probably not be the movies and the television and the books. Many news stations would not even be in business if it were not for the fact that they keep telling us evil things, the evil that mankind is doing. It is this fascination, this allurement with wickedness and rebellion against God that people are drawn to, naturally, and fascinated with, and it is all related to our fall into sin that we would be as gods.
Let us turn to Psalm 10. Psalm 10 has an interesting comment to make about pride, and we are not talking about Satan’s pride anymore. We are just looking at the pride of mankind in general, and it says in Psalm 10:2-4:
The wicked in his pride doth persecute the poor: let them be taken in the devices that they have imagined. For the wicked boasteth of his heart’s desire, and blesseth the covetous, whom JEHOVAH abhorreth. The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God: God is not in all his thoughts.
Why are so many people content to live their lives apart from God their creator? Why are so many people totally against anything that has to do with the Bible or with spiritual things? It is because of pride. Pride. It is the pride of man. Man does not want God.
I am talking about the people out there in the world, just naturally, normally—not those in the churches (we will look at that a little later)—people in the world who are walking South Street today. They are at the beaches. They are at the stadiums. They are not in church. They are out there in the world and it is as though, to them, God has not written a Bible, that He has not given commandments that instruct them to serve Him and worship Him and obey Him. It seems that none of that applies to them because of pride.
For example, how could anybody believe a theory of evolution? How could anybody believe that? It is so ridiculous to even imagine that the world just came into being.
Somebody sent me a note and he was saying matter-of-factly that the world was created fourteen billion years ago. Then he went on to say how there were some basic materials and elements available. We know the story: this formed the universe and the solar system and the world, and everything, as a result, came of that.
I remember reading something from someone who did not believe the Bible. He was not a Christian; he was a scientist. He did not agree with the theory of evolution because he said, “If you believe that, you might as well believe that a tornado came through a junkyard and, after it left, it formed a perfectly usable Boeing 747.”
Is that possible? Well, it is in the realm of possibility, isn’t it? Sure, everything is in the realm of possibility, but a tornado going through a junkyard and whipping up all the parts and all the metal and perfectly forming a Boeing 747 that you could operate? No, come on!
Who believes this? Who believes this? Nobody. And who really believes that a world or a universe sprang into being and there was some primordial ooze—and it is never explained where that came from—that exploded and the whole universe, full of countless stars and this world, came into being and life began to spring forth all by itself, all by itself with no intelligence behind it, no design, even though everywhere we look there is perfect design. It is just unbelievable.
I remember reading maybe thirty years ago when I was a teenager, someone made the comment (maybe you have heard it) that you can have a frog turn into a prince through a kiss, but that is fantasy. That is fantasy. That is a children’s storybook idea. But if you turn a frog into a prince through a kiss…added by a million or a billion years…that is science.
Do you see how ridiculous this is? It is totally ridiculous that people would do this, but how do they do this? Why do they do this? They do this because of pride, pride, the pride that is within man naturally. They do not want God. God just cannot be because if there is a God and if He created everything, this means that He created me. If He created me, this means that I am accountable to Him and responsible to obey Him and to serve Him.
So I eliminate God, I get Him out of the picture, and now I am a free agent. Now, like Frank Sinatra, I can do it my way. Isn’t that right? I can do it my way. I can do it the way that I want to do it. I can do what I want to do and think what I want to think and have my plans and my desires and my wishes; I can go after them. Well, you can. You can, but you are not a free agent.
You are a child of pride and you have a king over you who is not the Lord Jesus Christ. You have a king who cares absolutely nothing for you or about you. You have a king who would as soon chew you up and spit you out as to look at you. Satan has no concern for those within his kingdom. And to contrast that with the Lord Jesus Christ and His great love, it is such a pity. It is such a pity for the children of pride whose king is, as it says in Job, leviathan or Satan himself.
Well, in Psalm 10:4, we read:
The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God…
And if we were to look at Romans 3:11, we would find that none seeketh Him, which means that all of us, every single one of us, are children of pride naturally until God makes a change in us in our heart, because pride does flow forth from the heart; it comes out of the inner being of man.
Let us go to Jeremiah 13 and we will take a look at a third aspect of pride in this world, which is within the churches and congregations, within those who profess to be Christian. It says in Jeremiah 13:9:
Thus saith JEHOVAH, After this manner will I mar the pride of Judah, and the great pride of Jerusalem.
He is using that word “mar” because He had commanded Jeremiah to bury a girdle. He dug it up some time later and the girdle was marred; it was useless; it was good for nothing. God is using this as a figure to explain that he is marring the pride of Judah and the great pride of Jerusalem, and we know that God uses Judah and Jerusalem as types and figures of the churches and congregations.
Then in verse 14, Jeremiah 13:14-17:
And I will dash them one against another, even the fathers and the sons together, saith JEHOVAH: I will not pity, nor spare, nor have mercy, but destroy them. Hear ye, and give ear; be not proud: for JEHOVAH hath spoken. Give glory to JEHOVAH your God, before he cause darkness, and before your feet stumble upon the dark mountains, and, while ye look for light, he turn it into the shadow of death, and make it gross darkness. But if ye will not hear it, my soul shall weep in secret places for your pride…
Jesus wept over Jerusalem, didn’t He, for their pride? He wept over them for their pride, because He had come and He had revealed Himself to them. Supposedly, they were looking for the Messiah to come. He finally came and yet they would not humble themselves before God. They would not humble themselves before the Lord Jesus as He spoke to them and they would not worship Him because they were worshipping something else.
They were not worshipping God, that is for sure, because Christ is God. They were not worshipping the true God. They had a system of worship in Israel where they had perverted the system of worship. They had changed God’s laws and His commandments in order to offer worship, but it was not worship that was true, and God is addressing this as He is speaking to them.
Jeremiah 13:17:
…my soul shall weep in secret places for your pride; and mine eye shall weep sore, and run down with tears, because Jehovah’s flock is carried away captive.
There are many references in the Bible to pride that we are really beginning to learn about because the Lord had sealed up His Word. Now we are beginning to understand that the references to different nations, like Moab or Ammon or Edom, are all referring to the same thing, which are the churches and congregations.
If we go to Isaiah 16:6, it says:
We have heard of the pride of Moab; he is very proud: even of his haughtiness, and his pride, and his wrath: but his lies shall not be so.
Also in Jeremiah 48, we read of Moab, beginning in verse 7, where it says:
For because thou hast trusted in thy works and in thy treasures, thou shalt also be taken: and Chemosh shall go forth into captivity with his priests and his princes together.
And let us look at verse 10. Remember that this is referring to Moab, but it has application to the churches. Jeremiah 48:10:
Cursed be he that doeth the work of JEHOVAH deceitfully, and cursed be he that keepeth back his sword from blood.
If we did not understand that Moab was a figure of the church, how would we understand this verse? Why is God addressing Moab and saying, “Cursed be he that does the work of the Lord deceitfully”? Once we understand that they are a type and a figure, then that naturally fits.
Then a little further down in verse 29, the Lord is still addressing Moab, Jeremiah 48:29:
We have heard the pride of Moab, (he is exceeding proud) his loftiness, and his arrogancy, and his pride, and the haughtiness of his heart.
You cannot emphasize something anymore than this…up, up, and away…the proud Moabite, who actually is the proud Christian, Christian in profession only, not a true Christian because no true Christian is proud any longer. They can commit the sin of pride. That sin can afflict them, like any sin, but they are not proud in heart. They are no longer proud in spirit, because God has given them a new heart and a new spirit, and yet in the churches and congregations, there is great pride.
Why do so many churches still teach free will or present a freewill gospel? They do this because they are proud Arminians.
Why do so many churches still teach the five points of Calvinism? They do this because they are proud Calvinists.
Why are some churches so attached to the Reformation to where everything that Luther or Calvin or Knox or Zwingli said is held in the highest esteem? If anyone comes along and shows from the Bible where perhaps one of their teachings is not correct, their response is, “Well, no; we are not going to change because we are proud Reformers; that is our heritage.”
People are proud of their traditions. People are proud of their confessions. People are proud of their creeds. People are proud of things that are not taught in the Bible, and God recognizes this and says, “You are exceeding proud. You are proud to a degree that is not good at all.”
Let us also look at Edom in Jeremiah 49, which is another type and figure of the church. In Jeremiah 49:16, we read:
Thy terribleness hath deceived thee, and the pride of thine heart, O thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock, that holdest the height of the hill: though thou shouldest make thy nest as high as the eagle, I will bring thee down from thence, saith JEHOVAH.
Again and again, God is pointing this out.
In Obadiah, the Lord is referring to Edom, and He says in Obadiah 1:3-4:
The pride of thine heart hath deceived thee, thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock, whose habitation is high; that saith in his heart, Who shall bring me down to the ground? Though thou exalt thyself as the eagle, and though thou set thy nest among the stars, thence will I bring thee down, saith JEHOVAH.
What does this language mean? It means that individuals or people have exalted themselves to the heavens. Remember when we are saved, the Bible tells us that we are seated in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, and that is pretty high. That is pretty high.
But if you or someone develops a gospel of your own making and then you share that with others and you tell them, “Here is what you have to do to be saved: you accept Christ, you say the sinner’s prayer, you get baptized and you come regularly to church, then you are saved and you are a child of God, and here on this day is when you got saved,” and then if you ever ask that person again, “How long have you been saved?,” they will say, “Well, I got saved on the 10th of May in such a year because that is when I accepted the Lord.”
That is when the church counted you as a saved individual and as a member of the kingdom of God, but it is all pride. The whole thing is pride. It is lifting up one’s self into heaven, and God says, “You cannot do that; there is no way that you can do that, because I resist the proud but give grace to the humble.”
Let us go to Luke 14. In Luke 14, God really and clearly lays out salvation with a parable of individuals who are invited to a wedding and in the manner in which they attend. It says in Luke 14:7:
And he put forth a parable to those which were bidden, when he marked how they chose out the chief rooms…
Why would they choose the chief rooms? Pride. Pride. Right? “Well, I am an honored guest; let me go to this wedding.” Remember Haman who is a good figure of Satan? But his example also says a lot about people. When the king asked him, “What shall be done for the man whom the king delights to honor?,” Haman thought to himself, “Whom would the king delight to do honor more than me?” Isn’t this so? Me; the focus is on me and my betterment and I am better than everybody else, and yet this is far from being so. For any one of us, it is very far.
Well, in Luke 14 they marked out the chief rooms, and then in verse 8 it says, and this is Biblical instruction for salvation, Luke 14:8-9:
When thou art bidden of any man to a wedding, sit not down in the highest room; lest a more honourable man than thou be bidden of him; And he that bade thee and him come and say to thee, Give this man place; and thou begin with shame to take the lowest room.
May 21 is the day of shame, of bringing down the stars from heaven. The stars will fall. Those in the churches and congregations are going to be exposed for their pride, their great pride in lifting themselves up and calling themselves “Christian.”
God tells us in Isaiah, “Well, you want to eat your own bread, you want to put on your own raiment, but you want to be called by My Name.” The bread is referring to the Gospel and the raiment is referring to the righteousness of Christ. They are putting on their own raiment, not the righteousness that God must put on anyone whom He saves, and so it will be a day of great shame and a period of shame for anyone who lives any length of time during those five months.
Then we read in verse 10, Luke 14:10:
But when thou art bidden…
That is, if you hear the Gospel:
…go and sit down in the lowest room…
Where is that? Where is that? What does the Bible tell us? It tells us that we are sinners, that we are under the wrath of God, that there is a way of salvation but that we cannot do anything. We can strive to enter into the kingdom and we can read the Bible and pray for mercy, but finally, when it comes down to it, we are not going to be able to do a thing to get ourself saved or to enter into the kingdom of God.
So the lowest room is to recognize this and say, “O Lord, I know that I am a sinner and that I deserve to die. I deserve to be destroyed, but could You please have mercy on me?” Then we wait. We wait. That is the lowest room.
When you are waiting on God, you are not going to lift yourself up in any way. You are committed because God has given you this understanding at least, so you know that God has to do the saving. So you wait on the Lord and if it is His good pleasure—He is a merciful God and compassionate—if it so be that you are one of His elect, He will have mercy upon whom He will have mercy and He will lift you up to the highest heaven in salvation. This is what the Lord is saying. This is the Biblical principle.
Luke 14:10-11:
But when thou art bidden, go and sit down in the lowest room; that when he that bade thee cometh, he may say unto thee, Friend, go up higher…
And the rapture will give evidence of this.
…go up higher: then shalt thou have worship in the presence of them that sit at meat with thee. For whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.
This is the law of God; this is the law of the Bible. We cannot do anything to bring salvation to ourselves.
There are so many verses that I wanted to look at. Let us go to Ezekiel 16. I do not know if this will be the last one, but let us read Ezekiel 16:49. Again, God is using another city to typify the church in Ezekiel 16:49. He had just been speaking about Israel and Judah and His relationship to them, and then He says:
Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride…
That is number one.
…fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.
And then it says that they were haughty. But, you see, God is speaking of Sodom. Remember in Revelation 11, the two witnesses are lying dead in the street, which spiritually is Egypt and Sodom.
It is a type, again. Why so much? The Lord emphasizes it so much, as far as the sins of the churches and congregations, because they have this relationship with God. And the fullness of bread would mean that the churches have the Gospel, they have the Bibles. Yet, at the same time, there is an abundance of idleness.
I hope this does not apply to us, too, or to some here. You know, we have fullness of bread. We have Family Radio that we can listen to 24 hours a day. We also have websites, familyradio.com, which we can go to. There is just Gospel, Gospel, Gospel; it is available. We have so many Bibles in our homes. Each one of us maybe has a Bible and we have Bible helps. It really is an abundance of bread that we possess.
However, if there is also an abundance of idleness, then that is due to pride; there is pride involved with that. That is, we need to share the Gospel with others around us. Yes, we should be supporting the sending forth of the Gospel in whatever way we can. But we do not say, “Well, you know, I take care of that. I send a check.” That is good. That is a good thing to do and please continue to support the sending forth of the Gospel; but then, however, with a great deal of the rest of our time, what are we doing? What are we doing? This is what God is addressing here.
Again, Sodom is a figure of the churches who have the Gospel. During the church age, they did send out some missionaries, but there was a great fault that they were not doing even more that they could have done.
Let us go to one last place. Let us go to 1 Peter 5. I think that I referred to this earlier, but this is a good place to stop. In 1 Peter 5:5-6, we read:
Likewise, ye younger, submit yourselves unto the elder. Yea, all of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility…
And that is salvation. We receive a heart after God’s own heart, humble and contrite, a broken heart. This is what the Bible tells us.
…for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble. Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time:
What would be a humble reaction to the information of May 21, 2011? Well, to begin with, if anybody is in a church, what would be the right reaction? What would be the humble reaction when God says that the church age is over and He commands us to come out? Come out. Leave the church. Immediately.
And now we are learning various teachings coming from the Bible and we are not to fight against them. We are not to insist that our traditional way is best. If the Bible is teaching that there is no eternal place of torment called “hell”—and the Bible is teaching this—then if we insist on it, we might think that we are being faithful, that we are sticking with the doctrine of the Reformers and so on.
However, God is able to sanctify and cleanse His Word. That is, as He tells us when He makes a change in doctrine—which is not the case with “hell”; He is just opening up our eyes to a right understanding—but if He makes a change in doctrine, who are we to resist?
That would be like Peter who said, “Not so, Lord,” because he was a good Jew who had never eaten anything common or unclean, and yet God showed him three times, three times, which is showing His purpose in that God had made a change. He is the One who determines the boundaries of the Gospel and what the Bible teaches. It is His Word and we are not to resist, else that would be pride.
Likewise, if there is going to be a sin that keeps people back from obeying God and taking warning regarding the coming rapture of May 21, 2011, it will be the pride of their heart. It will so blind them that they will not be able to understand the things that the Bible is saying at this time.
Okay, let us stop here.