Let us turn to John 16. We have been looking at this for the last couple of weeks. Let me read from verse 1 of John 16. We read in John 16:1-15:
These things have I spoken unto you, that ye should not be offended. They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the time cometh…
This word “time” is actually “hour.”
…the [hour] cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service. And these things will they do unto you, because they have not known the Father, nor me. But these things have I told you, that when the time shall come, ye may remember that I told you of them. And these things I said not unto you at the beginning, because I was with you. But now I go my way to him that sent me; and none of you asketh me, Whither goest thou? But because I have said these things unto you, sorrow hath filled your heart. Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you. And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: Of sin, because they believe not on me; Of righteousness, because I go to my Father, and ye see me no more; Of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged. I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will show you things to come. He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you. All things that the Father hath are mine: therefore said I, that he shall take of mine, and shall show it unto you.
Then also in verse 25, John 16:25:
These things have I spoken unto you in proverbs: but the time cometh…
This is the same Greek word hora.
…the [hour] cometh, when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but I shall show you plainly of the Father.
We will stop reading there.
We were looking last time at how God identifies the Great Tribulation period that we are now in as “the hour.” It is “the hour of his judgment” according to Revelation 14:7, which says:
Saying with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come: and worship him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters.
The Lord speaks of the Great Tribulation period as “an hour.” This is why Revelation 8:1 says:
…there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour.
This is referring to the first 2300-day period of the Great Tribulation. It was not “half an hour”; it was not a half of the full 23 years. It was actually 6 years and a few months. But God is very exact, and so He says, “about…half an hour.”
This is because this time that we are currently in is identified in the Bible as “an hour.” This is the time of the Great Tribulation, which includes the latter rain of God’s plan to save a great multitude, a period of time in which we have about 18 months and a few days left.
We find in John 16 that in that hour people will be killing the true believers by putting them out of the synagogue. We also find in John 16 that Jesus says in John 16:12:
I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.
He was speaking to the disciples in the first century A.D., but He was really speaking to the whole church age. He was saying, “You cannot bear the information about the time of the end, about the five months of torment,” all of these teachings that have always been in the Bible but the Lord had not opened up because He was saving it until today. He was saving it for our time. This was when He was going to reveal it.
After saying, “ye cannot bear them now,” Jesus says in John 16:13:
Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come…
When the Holy Spirit, “the Spirit of truth, is come,” then it says:
…he will guide you into all truth…
This could not have been a reference to Acts 2 when the Holy Spirit was poured out on the day of Pentecost because the churches were not guided “into all truth.” That is pretty evident. They have many doctrinal errors and they hold onto them tightly. They are not going to let them go. There are hardly two churches that agree with one another, which shows us that many of them are incorrect about many of the things that they teach.
But God had a plan and He is working out this plan currently to send the Holy Spirit a second time. We could call this the second Jubilee or the latter rain. It is the second outpouring of the Spirit when the Lord stretches forth His hand a “second time”, as it says in Isaiah 11, “to recover the remnant of his people.”
Jesus healed a blind man but not immediately. He touched him and at once the man could suddenly see. When you are blind, you cannot see anything; so he could suddenly see but he saw “men as trees, walking.” He could not see clearly. This is because this was a reference to God opening up the eyes of men.
On the one hand, the Gospel went into the world during the church age and God accomplished His purposes through the church, even though it was not a very great time of salvation in the world through the church age. Isaiah 9 tells us that there was not “the joy in the harvest” that had been expected. This is because we know that when there is salvation, there is joy in Heaven; but the church age did not have that joy as much.
However, God has saved the best for last and now that we are at the time of the end, He is speaking, as it goes on to say in John 16:13. Again, “the Spirit of truth, is come,” and:
…he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will show you things to come.
The Spirit is speaking at this time. However, we have to be careful in our understanding of this because there are so many churches that would agree with this, “Oh, yes, brother, the Spirit is speaking because I had a dream last night,” or “I had a revelation,” or “God gave me a tongue.”
No, this is not what the Bible means. The Spirit is not speaking in the churches and congregations that are adding to the Word of God and thinking that they are getting direct divine revelation from God Himself.
God finished the Bible in the first century A.D. He told us in the last chapter of the book of Revelation, Revelation 22, that we are not to add to the words of the Bible. Therefore, the Holy Spirit is not speaking through a supernatural means today anywhere in the world. He is not whispering truths to people in their ears at night. No, He is not doing this. He is speaking through the Bible.
God tells us that when we compare spiritual with spiritual, the Holy Spirit teaches. It says in 1 Corinthians 2, “the Holy Ghost teacheth.” In order to teach, you have to communicate, you have to speak. Therefore, when the Bible tells us, “the Holy Ghost teacheth,” it means that He is speaking.
He has always done this throughout history, but God has in mind a special period of time when the Holy Ghost is going to really go to the forefront in bringing understanding of the Bible. It is a time when He is going to reveal truths to us.
If we go to Hebrews 1:1, it says:
God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets,
We can summarize this by saying that God spoke in the Old Testament. That is what this is looking at. God spoke in the Old Testament.
Then it says in Hebrews 1:2:
Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son…
Jesus spoke in the New Testament. Therefore, even though God is One and all Scripture is given by God and the Holy Ghost moved men of old to write down what we find in the Bible, the words of God, the Holy Ghost and Christ and the Father are all involved in the giving of revelation. Another way of looking at this is that God is breaking up the revelation of the Bible or the covenants of the Bible into periods.
God the Father spoke “by the prophets”; that is the Old Testament. Jesus spoke “in these last days”; that is the New Testament. But a little later on in the book of Hebrews, we have learned that God found fault “with them,” and yet He has to finish the covenant. He has to complete it, but not through any additional books or additional revelation. He has to complete it in the sense of giving His people a better understanding of the Word of God.
The first Testament, the Old Testament, was fuzzy to man. This is because we start off with thick heads and do not understand much of anything spiritually. However, God did give some understanding through the sacrifices in types and figures of the Messiah.
Then in the New Testament, God opened it up even further. At that point, it could be seen how much of the Old Testament was really pointing to the Messiah, as well as other information like the Gentiles coming in and also being heirs of God and recipients of God’s grace.
These are the two periods that God found fault with in the sense that they were mysterious and could not be properly understood. Therefore, He is going to finish the covenant and He is going to do this by having the Holy Spirit speak.
Look at Mark 13. Because this is a parallel chapter to Matthew 24, we will see Jesus’ response to the question of the disciples, “What shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?” It says in Mark 13:11:
But when they shall lead you, and deliver you up, take no thought beforehand what ye shall speak, neither do ye premeditate…
This is a very unusual command of God because God tells us to “meditate upon these things” and to “be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you.” To do this, you have to “study to show thyself approved unto God.” But here God is saying, “No, forget that. Do not mediate. Do not study. Do not prepare anything.”
Why? Why would He say this? There is only one explanation and that is because the Word was “closed up and sealed till the time of the end.”
So we could name any theologian of the past that we would want to who would have gone into the book of Revelation and other end-time passages of the Bible who thought that they understood and who made their commentaries and wrote their theological books; yet at the same time, we now know that they did not have it correct. They did not properly understand what the Bible was saying, and so their teachings on a-mill and post-mill and pre-mill were not correct because they did not have a right understanding of the end of time.
Then it goes on in Mark 13:11 to say:
…but whatsoever shall be given you in that hour, that speak ye…
This is what we are doing. This is all that we are doing. We are speaking what has been given to us. This is because if God gives it to us, He expects us to share it, to disclose it, to warn other people, as we know this is also information concerning the most important thing there is, which is that the world is coming to an end and our time is short; therefore, we speak it.
We are “ambassadors for Christ.” He has sent His people into the world, and an ambassador just simply says, “This is what my king wants to communicate to you.” Then we give a tract that warns about May 21, 2011 being Judgment Day, or all of the other information, and we are only being obedient to the King, to the One who has sent us. It is as simple as that.
But notice that God says:
…but whatsoever shall be given you in that hour…
This is referring to the Great Tribulation.
…that speak ye: for it is not ye that speak, but the Holy Ghost.
Again, the Holy Ghost is speaking in this hour.
Let us go to a couple of the other gospels, such as Luke. In Luke 12:11-12; it says:
And when they bring you unto the synagogues, and unto magistrates, and powers, take ye no thought how or what thing ye shall answer, or what ye shall say: For the Holy Ghost shall teach you in the same hour what ye ought to say.
The Holy Ghost, the Holy Spirit is, once again, showing us, “Do not concern yourself with trying to uncover all of these kinds of deep truths in the Bible that are in the book of Revelation or Ezekiel or Daniel, which are concerning the end.”
The theologians of the past could have saved themselves tons of trouble by not even getting into it. Of course, even this warning or this information that God is telling us concerning not to take any thought was also sealed up, and so we have to understand that there was no way that they could have known this. But still, if they would have just left it as it was and not really gotten into it, that would have been better. That would have been much better than to develop teachings that are not true and that are false.
Let us also go to Matthew 10:19-20:
But when they deliver you up, take no thought how or what ye shall speak: for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak. For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you.
Again and again and again, the Holy Spirit speaks, not you. This is why it is so dangerous. It is beyond dangerous for someone to hear these truths that are coming from the Bible and to claim, “Heretic!” or to say, “It is a false gospel; it is a perversion of the truth.”
People are very imaginative when it comes to speaking evil and they can phrase a response in many, many different ways. However, they need to stop and think because God is speaking of “that hour,” which is “the hour of his judgment.” It is the time of the Great Tribulation, and He, the Holy Ghost, is saying, “I will speak in that hour, not you. You should not even think about it. I will speak.”
I think that we can see the danger. We can see the danger of attacking information that is coming from the Bible that God had closed up until a certain period of time, the time of the end that we are now in. In some cases, people are viciously going against those who they think are bringing this kind of teaching. But, you see, it is never the people. God told Samuel, “For they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me.” And Jesus told the disciples as they were going out two-by-two that if they were rejected, He was the One who was actually being rejected. It was Christ Himself whom they are rejecting, as long as what we are sharing is true and faithful.
To even further drive this home, let us go to Habakkuk 2:1:
I will stand upon my watch, and set me upon the tower…
God tells us repeatedly in the Gospels, “Watch!” “Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour.”
It also says this in Mathew 24. Someone had brought this verse up to me recently. They were thinking that this teaches that we will not know, but actually it is the opposite. It says in Matthew 24:42:
Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come.
Right. We did not know what hour. We were in the dark because God had sealed up the Word. However, the key phrase here is “Watch therefore.” Why? Because you do not know the hour.
Are we to be watching on our rooftops, looking for the signs of His coming? Are we to be gazing up into the stars like a child on Christmas Eve looking for Santa? Is that what it means to watch?
No, it means to look in the Bible. Keep reading the Bible. Keep studying the Bible. Keep doing it the proper way, “comparing spiritual things with spiritual,” making sure that your conclusions harmonize. At the right time at the end, God will bless that methodology that His people have seen from the Scriptures. He will open up their eyes and their understanding and then we will then know the time.
Revelation 3:2-3 says:
Be watchful…
Again, watch in the Scriptures.
…and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die: for I have not found thy works perfect before God. Remember therefore how thou hast received and heard, and hold fast, and repent. If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief, and thou [you] shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee.
That is if you do not watch. If you do not watch, you are going to be in the dark. Jesus will come “as a thief in the night.” You are going to be caught off-guard, “Oh, why did someone not warn me?”
Of course, they passed by tracts on the street and they turned the radio dial, but God is warning. God is telling us. He is sharing it with the whole world. It is really going to cover the earth “as the waters cover the sea,” but people maybe quickly dismissed this in their life or thought, “How ridiculous that is!”
It is interesting when we share with someone out in the world. We share this information from the Bible and we can go into pretty good detail, “This is why May 21, 2011 is going to be the end.” We might be telling this to someone who is maybe showing some interest, but this person is with a friend. They turn to their friend and their friend kind of smirks and says, “Really?” Now all of a sudden because of that one reaction, the person who was showing some interest is going to write it off because they are fearful of what their friend will think and of what the world will think about them.
What evidence did the friend give? A smirk? “Oh, really,” like he knows something? An individual who is only here a few short years and who has a tiny, finite mind is able to comprehend more than eternal God?
Unfortunately, this is the nature of man. People are going to go to their destruction because they listened to their friends who they thought knew something. Of course, on that day when May 21 comes, their friend is not going to be able to help them. Their friend is not going to be there because they are going to have their own concerns. This is what the Bible tells us.
You see, people really give too much weight to other people and not enough weight to the Word of God, to the Bible, to God who created them and who is going to judge them. Is this not how it is in many cases?
Going back to Habakkuk 2:1-2, we read:
I will stand upon my watch, and set me upon the tower, and will watch to see what he will say unto me, and what I shall answer when I am reproved. And JEHOVAH answered me, and said, Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables…
And John 16:25 says:
These things have I spoken unto you in proverbs: but the time cometh, when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but I shall show you plainly of the Father.
In Habakkuk 2:2-3, Habakkuk is told to keep watch because it is going to be made:
…plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it. For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak…
Have you ever heard an “it” speak? How does an “it” speak? Is not an “it” a thing? A chair cannot speak, a table cannot speak, but God can speak.
So we need to correct this personal pronoun:
…but at the end [he] shall speak…
This is because we always have to make a decision when we are faced with a pronoun. What is the correct pronoun, “he,” “she,” or “it”?
We could have a sentence like, “My wife, she looks beautiful.” But we would not say, “My wife, it looks beautiful.” We would not say this because “it” is a person. “It” is “he” or “she.”
It is the same thing here in Habakkuk 2:3. At the end, “it” is not going to speak. “He” is going to speak, God Himself:
…and not lie: though [he] tarry, wait for [him]; because [he] will surely come, [he] will not tarry.
Hebrews 10 makes a correction on the pronoun as it is referring back to this verse. In Hebrews 10:37, it says:
…he that shall come will come, and will not tarry.
We can see how God has really told us repeatedly that He is going to speak.
Let us go to Daniel 12:9-10, which says:
And he said, Go thy way, Daniel: for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end. Many shall be purified, and made white, and tried; but the wicked shall do wickedly: and none of the wicked shall understand; but the wise shall understand.
This is referring to two groups of people. One is wicked; the other is wise. This is how God divides the human race. To say this another way, it is the foolish or the wise, like in Matthew 25. There are two groups: the saved and the unsaved. Once someone becomes saved, they become wise. This is because Christ, who is wisdom, indwells them. Therefore, they have wisdom. They have Christ. They have the Spirit of God within. This is what God is saying when He says:
…the wise shall understand.
It is not the intellectual. It is not the learned. It is not the one who is knowledgeable of the things of the earth who will understand. It is the wise whom God has saved and the wicked are all of the rest. The wicked will not understand.
It is significant that it says:
…none of the wicked shall understand…
Not just most, but none of the wicked will understand. This is referring to the words that are “closed up and sealed till the time of the end.” This is when at the end, the seal is taken off, the Word is opened, and God’s people now can understand.
In Luke 24, we read where “opened he their understanding” as they were speaking with Him after His resurrection. This is the same thing that God is doing now. The wicked will not understand but the wise will.
This fits in with Ecclesiasts 8:5, which says:
Whoso keepeth the commandment shall feel no evil thing: and a wise man’s heart discerneth both time and judgment.
This is referring to God’s elect people. They discern and are able to understand two things: “time and judgment.”
When Jonah went to Nineveh and said, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown,” what two elements can we say were in this single sentence? What two things? This statement contained time (forty days) and judgment (they would be overthrown at the end of forty days).
They were given the exact year, month, and day. They knew all of this information. They could calculate this and knew, “Forty days from this point will lead to our destruction as a city.”
So God is saying that the wise are able to discern, to understand time and judgment, but none of the wicked can discern this. You see, this is the problem. It really boils down to this. The Ninevites were given a one-sentence warning. That is all the evidence it took, “Here you go. You have forty days and Nineveh, this great city, will be overthrown.” They believed God and the whole city from the king on down repented, sat in sackcloth and ashes, and cried mightily to God.
We would think that if we had not been given the information that Jonah went in there with such flimsy evidence or such a flimsy message from God, that God must have bombarded that city with truth and warnings, one after another, “You have forty days! That is all that you have!” Over a period of time of constantly hearing this, we would think that they eventually repented as God moved in them.
But, no; it was not that way at all. He was one prophet without the electronic medium, without literature, with nothing, someone who was just spit out of the belly of the whale and who must have had an odor about him and who was disheveled. He goes into the city and he speaks like a foreigner, someone who would not be able to hide his accent, if he even spoke in their language at all, which we do not know. However, they believed.
Now, on the other hand, many today are offered a tract, “Here, would you like a tract? This comes right from the Bible.” You hand them the tract, “HOLY GOD will bring Judgment Day on MAY 21, 2011” or the tract “May 21, 2011 Judgment Day!” where verse after verse after verse is offered. Or you give them the booklet We Are Almost There! that has about 70 pages or Time Has an End that has over 300 pages of Biblical evidence. We put this stuff at people’s feet and they do not see it. They do not agree with it. They do not understand. They do not get it.
Why not? It is not because they are naï. As far as the attitude of man and my attitude, I can be very cynical. Well, this is not cynicism because this is the truth: the whole church world is dead, spiritually speaking. There is no truth in any of the churches and I would not step foot in any church. But God’s people can be very skeptical and cynical because they must hear that voice that is only Christ’s voice and no other voice. Therefore, they are really some of the most cynical people who are out there concerning gospels, and yet God’s people hear and believe while others do not.
Jesus summarized this in John 8:47, which I refer to a lot because I think that it is necessary. It says:
He that is of God heareth God’s words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God.
“None of the wicked shall understand.” Not one, we could say. This is similar to what God says in Romans 3, “There is none righteous, no, not one,” and none of the wicked will understand.
Look also at Proverbs 28:5:
Evil men understand not judgment…
But wise men understand “both time and judgment.”
Evil men understand not judgment: but they that seek JEHOVAH understand all.
“Evil men,” are these the murderers, the terrorists, the child abusers? Are these who this is looking at? Are these the “evil men” who will not understand?
No, the Bible tells us, “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” and “there is none righteous, no, not one.” We have transgressed His Law. Therefore, in God’s sight we are evil if we do not have a Saviour.
This means, again, that none of the wicked—none of the people of the world, none of the people of the church—will understand. They are not going to understand anymore than a person in the world if they are not saved. Since God is commanding His people to come out of the churches and congregations, someone who is one of God’s elect is going to be drawn in that way and they will leave the churches, indicating that they are understanding what the Bible is saying at this time.
Let us go to 2 Peter 2 where I will read from verse 9. 2 Peter 2:9-10 says:
The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations, and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished: But chiefly them that walk after the flesh in the lust of uncleanness, and despise government. Presumptuous are they, selfwilled, they are not afraid to speak evil of dignities.
These two English words “speak evil” are the same Greek word that is often translated “blaspheme.” Blaspheming the Holy Spirit is basically speaking evil of the Holy Spirit.
2 Peter 2:11-12:
Whereas angels, which are greater in power and might, bring not railing accusation against them before the Lord. But these, as natural brute beasts, made to be taken and destroyed, speak evil…
Again, that is the word that is translated as “blaspheme.”
…speak evil of the things that they understand not…
“Evil men understand not judgment.” They do not get it. They do not get it. Therefore, the believer who shares this information with someone—and we share it with everyone because we do not know who is the elect and who is not—they mock it or they laugh it off or they reject it or they rip it up. Maybe they are in the church and just call you a false prophet, or they, etc., etc., etc.
Why do they do that? Why do they “speak evil” of these things? This is because they do not understand judgment. They “speak evil of the things that they understand not.” They do not get it; and if God does not intervene, they will never get it. They are never going to understand that this day is close at hand.
Here we are 572 days away from Judgment Day and this is being freely shared with as many as will listen. We are warning people. We are sharing with people repeatedly and we are finding that, of course, many will not understand. They do not understand, and so they “speak evil.”
On the tract that we put out, the “May 21, 2011 Judgment Day!” tract, there is a contact address on the back. This is increasing, so this tells me that this is a good indicator that more and more people are hearing and that the tract is getting further out there because people are contacting us. Many times, what they write in response is not very pleasant nor is it very kind. Sometimes, it is very harsh. They are really speaking evil because they cannot understand. They just cannot understand what God is doing, but the wise understand.
You see, the difference between the wise and the wicked is in God’s hands. This is because none of us would understand anything either unless the Lord mercifully and graciously gave us insight, as He is doing at this time in all of these things.
But, you know, there is a question that has to be asked I think. We are living at a time when the Holy Spirit is speaking and many people are speaking evil of what they are hearing, which refers to this word “blaspheme.” Since they are doing this, are they blaspheming the Holy Ghost? Is this the sin of blaspheming the Holy Ghost when people are so angry and upset and railing on these kinds of teachings that they are hearing? They are definitely saying that this is not of God, “It is not of God!”
Let us go back to Luke 12. We read a couple of verses there about the Holy Ghost speaking in that hour. Go back one verse from where we previously read in Luke 12. It says in Luke 12:10-12:
And whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but unto him that blasphemeth against the Holy Ghost it shall not be forgiven. And when they bring you unto the synagogues, and unto magistrates, and powers, take ye no thought how or what thing ye shall answer, or what ye shall say: For the Holy Ghost shall teach you in the same hour what ye ought to say.
This is an interesting place to put a verse that speaks of blaspheming the Holy Spirit. In the verse above, God is getting into His speaking in that hour and He puts these verses right next to each other, side-by-side.
In Mark 3, God explains what blaspheming the Holy Spirit is. Turn to Mark 3. It says in Mark 3:22:
And the scribes which came down from Jerusalem said, He hath Beelzebub, and by the prince of the devils casteth he out devils.
Then we read in Mark 3:28-30:
Verily I say unto you, All sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, and blasphemies wherewith soever they shall blaspheme: But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation: Because they said, He hath an unclean spirit.
This is the sin of blaspheming the Holy Ghost.
The Bible is so precise and so exact because look at what God says in Hebrews 9:21-22:
Moreover he sprinkled with blood both the tabernacle, and all the vessels of the ministry. And almost all things are by the law purged with blood…
Not all sin, not all things, “almost all” because there is one sin that cannot be forgiven, just one sin, and that is the sin of blaspheming the Holy Spirit.
Now go to 1 John 5 where we find a very interesting verse. It says in 1 John 5:16:
If any man see his brother sin a sin which is not unto death…
Let us stop right there. What sin is “not unto death”? The Bible says, “the wages of sin is death,” which is referring to all sin. It is the little white lie, it is murder, and it is all the sins in between. The Bible says, “the wages of sin is death,” and so at first we can be confused. What could God be saying? This does not seem to make sense.
If any man see his brother sin a sin which is not unto death, he shall ask, and he shall give him life for them that sin not unto death…
When we ask God, we are praying to God. So if you see anyone who sins a sin “not unto death,” you can pray for them.
On the other hand, it goes on:
…There is a sin unto death: I do not say that he shall pray for it.
This has to be, it has to be the sin of blaspheming the Holy Spirit. There is no other sin that you are not to pray for. There is no other sin where it makes sense for God to tell us not to pray for it. He says not to pray for it because it is unpardonable. There is no forgiveness for blaspheming the Holy Spirit, so why pray?
Now we can understand the first part of the verse:
If any man see his brother sin a sin which is not unto death…
That is, it is a sin that is not forgivable. All sin is forgivable, which is the great mercy of God. You can—and people have—cursed God, yelled at God, shook their fist at God. All of this is forgivable and you can pray for them that they might be saved, but there is one sin that is not forgivable.
We see two very large characteristics of the sin of blaspheming the Holy Spirit. There is no salvation. As it said in Mark 3, there is “never forgiveness.” The other characteristic is “I do not say that he shall pray for it”; you do not pray for this. Those two things are very big things that really relate to and describe the sin of blaspheming the Holy Spirit.
What about what we read in Jeremiah 7:16 where it says:
Therefore pray not thou for this people, neither lift up cry nor prayer for them, neither make intercession to me: for I will not hear thee.
God is telling people, “Do not pray. Do not pray for this people.”
As we have learned, the book of Jeremiah is teaching us about the Great Tribulation and the churches of today. It relates to our modern day and it says, “Do not pray for them.”
Why not? Why not? Is there not forgiveness for all sin? Yes. However, there is one sin that we do not pray for, only one, and that is blaspheming the Holy Spirit.
Or go to Hebrews 6:4-5, which says:
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, And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come,
Keep in mind that God does this often. He makes a lot of statements like this where He says:
For it is impossible…
Have this thought in mind as you read Hebrews 6:6:
If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance…
“It is impossible,” which means no salvation.
Or look at Hebrews 10:26:
For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins,
This means no salvation.
The two elements that are involved with blaspheming the Holy Spirit—no salvation and do not bother to pray—we find in relationship to God’s judgment on the churches and congregations. There is no salvation, there is no repentance, and no more sacrifice for sins. And Jeremiah tells us in two places, in Jeremiah 7 and in Jeremiah 11, “Pray not thou for this people.”
So there is only one conclusion that we can come to. At the end, in that hour when the Holy Ghost speaks, when the Holy Ghost teaches, there will be the judgment of God upon those who blaspheme the Holy Spirit. There will be no more salvation, so do not bother to pray.
This is happening now. We have to realize that God has given us so much information about blaspheming the Holy Spirit for a reason. It is not just because in the first century the Jewish leaders did this. It is because in this hour, the Holy Spirit is speaking.
What they are doing goes way beyond disrespect. It goes way beyond dishonoring God when people are railing on this information that is coming forth from the Bible. But God takes personal responsibility because it is not you who is speaking nor is it Family Radio; it is God who is speaking and bringing these things up.
Now the question is: can an individual who has maybe said some things that were unkind and vicious against this information that God is opening up be forgiven their sins? Sure. Definitely. Without question. God can save any person in all the world. Any person in any church today could still potentially become saved.
How does that work? If you look at the Greek, does it not say that for those who blaspheme the Holy Spirit, there is no forgiveness to all eternity?
Yes, this is true. The Jewish leaders, their spiritual authorities, the scribes who came down from Jerusalem, just one of many, their priests, many of them, would have said the same thing. Their Pharisees likewise said this. They said, “Yes, Jesus heals the sick and He does all of these miracles, but do you know what power is behind it? The power of the devil. The power of Satan and not the power of God.”
As a result of this mindset of the spiritual leaders of Israel, when God was finished using national Israel and beginning the church age, they did not follow along. They did not continue following God, following the Word of God, following the truth. God had cut them off and never again in any synagogue was there salvation. Therefore, there was no point of praying for the ministry of the Jewish churches or their synagogues because God was not there to bless it.
This is what is going on today. The two elements of blaspheming the Holy Spirit are not so much one individual’s sin as it is a corporate sin. “They said,” that He did these things through Satan. If you look at Mark 3, it is plural. It was not a person. It was not just one scribe. The scribes came down. “They said” that He was under the power of Satan.
So God cut off national Israel and never again would He bless their ministerial work. They had the Old Testament, and God can save a person through the Old Testament. However, they would read it in their synagogues and it would not bless or benefit anyone spiritually. There was no salvation following the end of God’s dealings with national Israel.
Now today, how do we understand Jeremiah 7 where it says, “Pray not thou for this people”? We know that this relates to the church of our day. It relates to the church, so can we pray if we are married and our wife is still in the church? Can we pray for her that God would save her and draw her out? Yes. Absolutely. Can we pray for our mother or our father or our friend? Yes. Absolutely. But we do not pray for the ministry of the church. We do not pray for the pastor, “O Lord, bless the pastor’s sermon today.”
Why pray for that? The Holy Spirit came out of the midst. God is not there. There is a famine of hearing in the churches and the congregations. There cannot be blessing upon the Word that is preached in the church, and so we have the two elements. Do not pray for the corporate body today, for the churches and congregations. Do not pray for their missionaries who are over in Pakistan or India, or wherever they are. Do not pray that God would bless their work, because this is an impossibility. God tells us that in the churches today, they have “no more sacrifice for sins” and “it is impossible…to renew them again unto repentance.”
This is because the Lord is finished with the churches and congregations. Just as He finished with Israel, He is now finished with the church. He has cut them off. They are under His wrath, under His judgment, and there is no more salvation possible. This is what God is saying.
It is very interesting that we are getting close to seeing almost the same anger that the Israelites had when the Apostle Paul was teaching about Jesus. They would throw dust up into the air and just charge at him as one man. They were so angry and furious that these things were being declared and spoken.
Today, a lot of that anger is there. It is a little restrained. Actually, on the physical level, it is much more restrained. But the same anger is involved as the church is hearing things that, to them, are blasphemous: the end of the church age, we know when Christ is going to return, annihilation instead of the teaching of hell, as well as many other things.
So they are very upset, but they are not upset with you or with me. Yes, they are, but not really. They are upset with what the Holy Ghost is saying, with what God is revealing from His Word.
Okay, let us stop here and we will have a word of prayer.
Dear Father, we do thank You for Your grace. We thank You that we are not a church. O Lord, we know that pride is everywhere and it would be easy for someone to think that they are wise because they do not go to church, but we know that it is only by Your grace and by Your doing that we are able to understand anything from the Bible and that we have been able to understand that it is time to get out of the church, as well as all of these other things that You are opening up. We pray that we might be very humble and in submission to You and Your Word, even more as we move forward. Father, we ask that You will guide us into truth, and we thank You that You are not holding back. There is no restraint. You are leading us into many right understandings of the Bible. Father, we pray for everyone here. We do ask that You would bless each individual and those who are on Paltalk and others. Help each one of us to live this day to Your honor and Your glory and not to ourselves. Father, we have lived many days to ourselves. But in these last few days, may You move in us to will and to do of Your good pleasure, and may we live as we always should have lived in obedience to Your Word and in going forth with Your Word wherever possible. We pray these things in Christ’s Name. Amen.
Questions and Answers
Chris: Does anyone have a question or a comment? If you do, please come up to the mic.
Comment: Thank you. I will try to be brief. First of all, my neighbors are “rending” me because I have cast my pearls before swine, but that is beside the point. I am praying for them. I do not know if they have blasphemed the Holy Spirit or not.
Chris: Excuse me. I want to just make this clear. No individual can blaspheme the Holy Spirit. It is not an individual sin. It is a corporate sin. “They said” that He was of Satan. Likewise today, if you think about it, we pray for our loved ones or our neighbors or whomever. We do not pray for the church. Why? Because God has left them and there is no more of His grace.
1st Question: Thank you. At the beginning of your study, you mentioned that the “half an hour” was not a literal half hour, not a literal 2300 days.
Chris: No, I did not say that. In Revelation 8:1, God says:
…there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour.
Sometimes I say things that maybe did not come out the right way. What I hope I said was that this is referring to the first part of the Great Tribulation that was 2300 evening/mornings. It is not an exact dividing or middle point, so that is why God says, “about…half an hour.”
1st Question (continued): That is what I wanted to hear you say. Thank you. But in Matthew 27:46, it talks about the death of Christ, about the crucifixion, and it says “about the ninth hour.” You pointed out that word “about” in “about…half an hour.”
I thought that this was significant because it matches with what I have been puzzled over in Zechariah 14:7. It could be preceding this verse, but I will start with verse 7. Zechariah 14:7-8 says:
But it shall be one day which shall be known to JEHOVAH, not day, nor night: but it shall come to pass, that at evening time it shall be light. And it shall be in that day, that living waters shall go out from Jerusalem…
I am interpreting this as a possibility of referring to His coming.
Chris: I would suggest visiting Family Radio’s Dynamic Bible Question Form on their website or you can contact Family Radio if you do not have a computer. But Mr. Camping has done a study on Zechariah 14:7. I cannot remember exactly what it is, but it should be translated differently than we normally read it.
If you are basing anything on the way in which this is written, it probably will not be correct. So I would just suggest that you listen to that study.
1st Question (continued): I was trying to suggest that Jesus died and went to Heaven with the thief “about the ninth hour.” Therefore, He is going to come “about the ninth hour.” So this is just something for us to figure out.
Chris: I do not know. You see, that is the thing. I have heard different thoughts and yet there is no conclusive evidence. If the Bible teaches that we will know the hour, then we are going to know it I think. It is going to be conclusive. But at this point, it is not. So each one of us should probably be doing our own study as you are doing and continue to look until we are sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that this is what the Bible says.
We find God saying things like “about.” For instance, of the swine, it says “they were about two thousand.” He also says that there were “about two thousand cubits” when the ark was crossing the river Jordan, but it was not exactly. This is because God is so precise. In those pictures, He is referring to almost 2,000 years from Christ; and yet it is not exactly 2,000 years, so it is “about.” It is not an even division of “half an hour” at the time of the Great Tribulation, which is 23 years. It is shorter than that, so it is “about…half an hour.”
2nd Question: We were kind of questioning something in 1 John 5, which talks about blaspheming and that it is speaking of an individual who sins “a sin unto death.” So how can you say that it is just a corporate sin?
Chris: Because God is just using this kind of language to explain a particular aspect of this sin, which is that you do not pray for it. By giving us this information, it ties into Jeremiah 7 and Jeremiah 11 where we are told, “Pray not thou for this people.” It is the only sin that could be in view that we are not to pray for, and this matches with what God told Jeremiah.
2nd Question (continued): What does it mean to “pray for it”? That kind of confuses me.
Chris: Well, I do not know. I will have to look at that.
2nd Question (continued): Okay, but I kind of think that you might be right because I am sure that the Apostle Paul was one who would have been blaspheming, yet he knew that he was saved.
Chris: Paul admits that he was “a blasphemer…and injurious.” He went to great lengths in order to capture people who were Christians “and haling men and women committed them to prison” and “compelled them to blaspheme.”
What does this mean? What did he think about Christians? He thought that they were not of God. So who were they of?
When we recognize false gospels today, we understand that they are not of God. Who is behind them? We would say that it is Satan and his emissaries.
The scribes were saying of Jesus that He did things through the power of darkness or the devil. So basically they were saying that it was not a true Gospel and that He was not of God, and that is the sin of blaspheming the Holy Spirit.
3rd Question: Can you look at Luke 21:35.
Chris: Luke 21:35 says:
For as a snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth.
3rd Question (continued): I really like this verse. If I was in the churches, it would be very hard to interpret this verse because if I was in the church and it came as a snare, if you look at this word “snare” in the whole Bible, you do not escape from a “snare.” So I was just wanting to know if this is a really good verse to use; because if you are a true believer, it will not come as a snare. That would violate all Scripture. I just wanted your take on that.
Chris: A snare is a trap and it is set for animals. A hunter will set a snare in order to capture his prey. God is actively fighting against the churches today and the congregations today and He is judging them.
It says in the previous verse in Luke 21:34:
And take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares.
This is the important part that goes along with the snare. It is just like a person is walking down a trail through the woods, enjoying the scenery, when suddenly they step into a bear trap. A person steps into a bear trap and it has hold of them but they did not realize it.
Well, the Lord is saying that if someone is involved with these other things, which really have to do with spiritual drunkenness and not going to the Bible in a right manner, then they will be caught off-guard. 1 Thessalonians 5 relates to this.
4th Question: Does EBible Fellowship plan to send a “moving billboard” and pass out tracts at the Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia for the World Series. The baseball game is on Saturday the 31st and Sunday the 1st.
Chris: Our “moving billboard” is sitting in the back. Let me clarify something because we did get a phone call from Coatesville concerning the truck that Robin had wrapped with information about Judgment Day. He also has the date of May 21, 2011 and other Scriptures on there. They thought that it belonged to EBible Fellowship, but it does not. Mike has a van, Robin has this truck, and I am sure that other people have things like this. But those are individuals who are doing those things.
We are looking into billboards. We are looking into other ways of announcing what is ahead. Newspapers are a good idea. We were able to arrange something in the Newark newspaper. We are looking at these kinds of things and maybe something like bumper stickers, whatever we can think of.
There was also another person who contacted us who wanted to know if we could help them get a “moving billboard” because they saw pictures of Robin’s “moving billboard,” so I had to explain that this is not what we are doing right now. Those things are done by the individuals.
Is there anyone else? Any other questions or comments that anyone has? Okay, let us have a word of prayer.
Dear Father, we do thank You for Your grace and Your mercy and Your compassion and that today is the Day of Salvation. We have no promises individually for the future but we do know that today is a day wherein You are saving. Father, we pray that You would have mercy on our children, on our family members, on our neighbors, on our friends, on our co-workers. Wherever we are, may You help us to share with them as a watchman what is about to come, that the sword is about to fall. We ask also that You would help each one of us to live as we have never lived before, to live in all holiness and godliness, to have our conversation honest amongst the Gentiles where they really would not have genuine reason to speak evil of us. Father, we pray that You would grant us Your Spirit, that You would energize us by Your Spirit to keep Your commandments and to do Your will, that we would find this strength in You so that we can continue to walk in Thy commandments. Father, we pray for the rest of this day, and we thank You once again for Your tremendous grace. In Christ’s Name. Amen.