There are many issues in the world, which people will vehemently stand upon. The Plain Word will focus on the issue of why the problem is there in the first place.
Let’s go back to the Garden of Eden. It seems like it was a very minor thing that Eve partook of a fruit, but look at the consequences. All of the issues we have today, and in reality, all through history since the fall – is because Eve and Adam partook of something they were commanded not to.
Why did Eve partake of the fruit? Because she did not follow the true Authority, and gave into wanting something more than she thought God gave her.
Who planted this idea in her mind? The adversary, Satan. So, what Eve acted upon was a distrust and an unbelief in what God had said. That was the issue. Taking of the fruit was just a consequence of a train of thought that negated what God had said.
Let’s look at the essence of the Three Angels messages (Revelation 13) from the beginning, so we will go to the book of Deuteronomy. We read this in many places, we will look at just a few and will reference others. Read:
Deuteronomy 6 5
Deuteronomy 11:1
We find in Deuteronomy a commandment that you shall love the Lord your God. A pastor once said, “Think about a gal who went up to a guy that she fancied and said to him…’You SHALL love me’.” How well do you think that would work? Of course, not very well. The pastor then shared that when he was an atheist, this bible verse riled him up because after all ‘who was God’ to command love to such an extent that it was to be above any other love. Wouldn’t this be legalism or just acting the part of a robot?
So, God why would you say, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might; and you shall love him now firstly?” In order to answer this, we have to understand what love is. This is a very important part of the
the command. If we don’t rightly understand this very important part it may be easy to have a misconception about what love is.
Why is it of paramount importance to God that you should love him? Could it be because God is a selfish individual who wants it all for himself, or could there be a much higher motive that in our fallen state we cannot even comprehend?
In Dueteronomy 11:1, we see something added here, ‘therefore thou shalt love the Lord thy God and keep his charge, and his statutes, and his judgments, and his commandments, alway’.
What we see is that God’s commandments and obedience to them are linked to love…they are inseparable. This tells us the ‘charge, statutes, judgments, and commandments’ are linked to love and they cannot be taken them away. Does this make God a control freak because we have to do (obedience) these things and we have to love him? No, and if we have this understanding then we need to modify our thought because it is a misunderstanding of God. Alright, so we are told that we shall love the Lord our God and that we shall keep everything. Let’s go a little deeper.
Deuteronomy. 11:22, “And if you shall diligently keep all these Commandments which I command you to do them to love the Lord your God to walk in all his ways and to cleave unto him.”
This is pretty clear, that we must diligently keep how many of the commandments? All of them, AND then we must love the Lord our God and we must walk in all of his ways and we must cleave unto him. Again, Is God being selfish? No, and if that is our thought then we much change it; because we need to understand love and we need to understand why the charge, statutes, judgments, and commandments are linked inseparably from the love of God. If we don’t understand this then we will find ourself on a ‘soap box’ of an issue(s). The focus is then not on God but rather the issue.
This pastor said that he hated God with a passion for he was the One who said if you don’t do what I say then I will throw you in hell and burn you for all eternity. But, as that man came to truly understand God’s love, that hate and all the soap box issues he stood upon simply disintegrated…it melted away. He found that he no longer had any soap box issues to stand upon and that he was 100% wrong in his estimation.
Deuteronomy 30:6, “And the Lord thy God will circumcise thine heart and the heart of thy seed to love the Lord thy God with all thine heart and with all thy soul that thou mayest live.”
This is a powerful verse. What is attached to ‘love the Lord your God’, he will change our heart. Can you see why this is the essence, it is not the issues that are out there that people take a stand on. It is the lack of something. It is the lack of a relationship with God that brings about the possibility for all of these issues (abortion, pedophilia, racism, etc.) no matter how vile or otherwise they might be.
The Ten Commandments is part of the Covenant and that is why it is in the Ark of the Covenant. If you take the Ten Commandments (tables of stone) out of the Ark then you only have the Commandments; but then you don’t have a relationship with Him. Then keeping the commandments become legalism; for the relationship (covering of mercy) is gone. That is when one begins climbing onto ‘soap boxes’. If the Ten Commandments have been removed from the Ark, there is no longer any covering of merciful love, then it leads to death…speaking eternally.
When one disconnects the commandments from the covering of the mercy seat, they can be modified to fit self or false doctrine. Let’s unpack this a little bit more. God will change your heart to love the ‘LORD your God’ that’s what is promised. As our heart is changed by his love we change and we want to love God and we want to keep his commandments for it is an expression of our love to Him and love towards our fellow man. This combination is not only essential for life…it is essential for eternity.
We have to get this combination right. Can love be forced? No. Can obedience to the commandments be forced? No. If it either is forced, then it will disjoin the relationship.
So, force will not work. Therefore, can the commandments be legislated? Some will say yes, the state has the duty to legislate some of the commandments such as murder and stealing for example. Can the state legislate the mind? No. So, if I hate my brother, the Bible tells me I have already committed murder…so the state has a very limited scope in which it can legislate and there are certain other issues that it cannot legislate at all. That doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t legislated say something like murder or theft. But, for The Plain Word we are “anti” sin that is it. Sin is the root to all the issues we see in the world. We will not get on a ‘soap box’, rather we want to get to the root of the issues.
What we see happening in the world is leading to a fulfillment of prophecy. So, we have to unpack this even further. We have to know what it means when it says ‘love the Lord your God’. Love is a very complicated word, yet we have to do this with all our heart; and if we don’t we won’t live – eternally speaking.
Psalm 97:10, “Ye that love the LORD, hate evil: he preserveth the souls of his saints; he delivereth them out of the hand of the wicked.”
In this verse we see that something happens in the mind, that when we love God then automatically you start hating evil…all evil from the thought/look (like hate, lust, etc.) to the act (murder, adultery, lies, coveting, etc.).
The verse also says, “…he preserveth the souls of his saints; he delivereth them out of the hand of the wicked.” That is a beautiful promise. So, if you love the Lord then you will hate evil; but at any level when going against evil there will be peer pressure applied to you to commit evil. Take young people, they are constantly bombarded with peer pressure to smoke, curse, take drugs, drink, be promiscuous, etc. It is as if they purposely pressure others to do the same…nobody wants to sin alone. But if you love God, then you will hate evil; and He will preserve your soul and he will deliver you out of the hand of the wicked. He will give you a way of escape. That doesn’t mean you won’t be bombarded, but you can have the assurance He will provide a way of escape.
Proverbs 8:13, “The fear of the LORD is to hate evil: pride, and arrogancy, and the evil way, and the froward mouth, do I hate.”
Here we are told, ‘The fear of the LORD is to hate evil…”, is this perhaps a synonym: ‘the fear of the Lord leads you to hate evil’ where as ‘the love of the Lord leads you to hate evil’. Now, what does it mean, ‘the fear of the Lord’? Respect God for what he is. When you respect God you will hate evil, you will hate pride, you will hate arrogance, you will hate every evil way, and you will hate every froward mouth (perverse speech) because God hates it. These things become abhorrent to you.
Some people believe that if you’re living in an evil age you have to isolate yourself from this evil. Enoch walked amidst the evil and yet he wasn’t contaminated by the evil because evil had become abhorrent to him. That is the point we have to arrive at. We don’t have room to identify every form of evil, and we are not going to make these evils a soapbox because this is the essence of the matter. The immovable wall The Plain Word stands upon is ‘sin is transgression of GOD’s law and will lead to death’. This is the soap box this ministry stands upon.
Matthew 10:37, He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.
There is such a foothold on moral issues because the first commandment to love
God has been neglected. Let’s go to what Jesus said in Matthew 22:37:
“Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.” He is quoting Deuteronomy.
Matthew 22:38-40, “This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
So, ‘love God, and love your neighbor’ summarizes the law of God. That’s it. Important point, He says the first one and the great commandment is to love God, but then He says the second one is like it…but it is still the second one. You cannot do the second one if you do not have the first one. The definition of ‘love’ gets lost if you don’t do the first one. You have to do the first one, for God is the one who enables you to do the second one. It is especially important in loving our enemies.
John 14:15 If ye love me, keep my commandments.
1 John 2:4 He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.
There were two tables of stone and love for God is summarized on the
first one which include the first four commandments (Ex. 20:1-11). Is that under attack in the world? The authority of God is set aside in the world and this is a great evil because once you set aside the authority of God you are listening to the serpent. The serpent said, ‘did God really say…’ and “it will surely not be like that – it will be a better way”. Believing the serpent leads to the misery that we have. Did it lead to hate…yes; did hate lead to murder…yes. Just think of Cain and Able. All sin can be traced to the incident in the Garden. There are many issues that absolutely wrench the heart, but each of them are a symptom of a much deeper issue…sin. This is why our focus should be on the Three Angels Messages, for this message gets at the heart of the issues.
We talk a lot about the Sabbath, and some people will say “how can you possibly say that whether you go to church on a Sunday or a Saturday is even remotely comparable to the issue of abortion, pedophilia, racism, etc.?” This will become more apparent as we continue.