As we're seeing now in the news from religious leaders, from all angles, we're
seeing mass confusion about why the coronavirus? What's the reason for it?
And as always, when any type of pandemic or disaster happens, whether it's
tornadoes, hurricanes, or earthquakes, the knee-jerk reaction is always, God is
angry. He's trying to teach us something. The end is near. The apocalypse. And on
and on it goes. The crazies come out of the woodwork with some sort of, well, the
most outrageous responses. Very proudly and arrogantly, they demonstrate their
ignorance. They don't rightly divide the word of truth, having missed an entire
section of their Bible where God promises to hold back his day of wrath
while he is dispensing his grace. They're oblivious to this truth. This is why we
chose the name Truth Time Radio, somewhere you can come to, you can rely
on for truth, which is hard to find these days. With most, you've got to
cut through the miles of red tape to find a tidbit of truth here and there,
just sprinkled in. They've become masters of operating in the gray area. No gray
here, just black and white.
This virus is not from God. The next tornado, the next
hurricane, whatever disaster you want to bring up, it is not from God. It's a
natural occurrence of living in this present evil world. And you would do well
to put away your Calvinistic thinking that says, this is God trying to
teach us something. As we've said before on many occasions, he's already taught us
everything we need to know. Go read it. This wrongheaded belief comes from, from
those who are too lazy to go and study his word. Stop avoiding the Bible and
blaming God for what you read in the headlines. God did his teaching by his
word. And he'll teach you today if you'll only allow him to. It's in and through
his word that you can glean understanding in all things. 2nd Timothy 2:7. These world events, you won't have to guess. You'll know why they're
happening. We've got those who pop up, they want to claim that everything
that happens is ordained, is caused by God. No, you got sick because your immune
system was low. You went out in the rain and didn't dry off properly.
I've heard
religious people claim God tells them what to wear. No, you wore the red shirt
because you chose to. You do have the cognitive capacity God gave it to you
so that you can choose your own outfit. If you get into a car accident, stop
blaming God. If you were hit by a drunk driver, it wasn't a part of God's great
big masterful plan for your life. He knew it would happen, but he didn't
choose for it to happen. He didn't manipulate it. The only choice that was
made was a bad one. The one the drunk driver made when he chose to to drink
and get behind the wheel of the car. Just use a little common sense here and
stop letting religion dumb us down. In life, we make choices. That's no mystery.
And those choices have results. Our choices come with consequences. Sometimes
good, sometimes bad, but they come from making choices.
We are free. Free to be
saved. Free to study God's Word and live accordingly, according to what we study.
Or, not to be saved. Not to study his Word and live accordingly. These things
are not manipulated by God. There are no strings, no manipulation. God is not
micromanaging our lives. And this sort of teaching is a lie. And it does
nothing but take away from personal responsibility and accountability. Our
loving God, He's so loving that He gave us free will. He chose to give us free
will. We're not mental slaves. The sovereign crowd out there, they don't
believe we have a free will. This has to be right up there with some of the
most outrageous teachings I've heard in my lifetime. Things in our life, they
happen as a result of our choices that we make. That's what God says in Luke
chapter 10. Things happen by chance. By chance. Luke chapter 10 verse 30. And
Jesus answering said, a certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell
among thieves. Now, the reason this man came into contact with the thieves, he
made the choice to go to Jericho. See that? This wasn't a part of the big plan
of God. Keep reading. Which stripped him of his raiment and wounded him and
departed, leaving him half dead. Why did the thieves strip this man, beat him and
and leave him there half dead? They chose to. God calls it free will.
Verse 31. And by chance, uh oh, there it is, the phrase the Calvinist hate. By chance there came down a certain priest that way. Was the priest sent there by God? No, he came down that way by chance. Did God order the steps of this priest as he's ordering
every step of your daily life? Well, that's what they want you to believe, but
it's simply not true. Read on. And when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.
Now, why did the priest pass by on the other side? Is this hard to understand?
No, it's not. He chose to. Verse 32. And likewise, a Levite, now here comes the
Levite, watch this, when he was at the place, came and looked on him and passed
by on the other side. Again, a choice was made. The Levite, just like the priest,
said, hey, I'm not gonna have anything to do with this. Looks like there's a bad
situation going on over there, man, man's getting robbed, he's getting beat, and
I'm just gonna, I'm gonna sneak over this way and pass by on the other side. He
made a choice. Again, a free will choice was made.
Verse 33. But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion on him. Verse 34. And went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. Again, another choice was made. No divine intervention, just a man who had a conscience and made the right choice. Religious people will mess up, they'll read into the Scriptures, messing up all this, this straightforward, easy to understand, plain and simple, and this religious claim that all things, good and
bad, all things are caused by God. Wrong. God gives each of us free will, a free
will choice to make our own decisions. So the next time one of these goofball
religious ministries tells you that some some tall tale of how God's
supernaturally intervened in someone's circumstances and is punishing them,
or is making things all better, you make sure and go tell all the starving
children, the ones he supposedly decided to not make things all better for, you go
tell them how he manipulates our daily lives, and he decided, he made
the choice to ordain them to starvation. And tell all of the parents whose
children died of cancer before seeing their 13th birthday how God ordained that
too.
When tragedy strikes every time without exception, there are those come
out of the woodwork who start making the claim that this is God judging us for
being bad. These horrific things we're seeing today are not the workings of God
but of a quote, "present evil world." Hey, Galatians chapter 1 verse 1 is plain to
anyone who will simply believe it. Read it and believe it. Paul here, speaking of
Christ, wrote, "...who gave himself for our sins that he might deliver us from the
present evil world according to the will of God and our Father." Don't miss it. That he might deliver us from this present evil world. What Christ accomplished on our
behalf was to deliver us from this present evil world, not to pronounce more
evil. He's not making bad things happen to any of us. His plan is to deliver us
from the evil, not to pour out more evil on us.
People ask, what is the will of God? Read the verse. It says, "...according to the will of God." His will is to deliver us. Just believe the Bible. The bad things happening are not his will. Oh, he knew it was going to happen. Nothing surprises God, but he's not ordaining and choosing that. He's not willing that on your life. The will is to deliver you, not to give you a virus, not to put you through a devastating tornado. And when the doctor says the C word, when he says cancer, that's not of God either. These things are a natural occurrence of this present evil world we're living in, ruled by Satan. 2 Corinthians 4:4, God of this world. And those who credit God for what's happening today, they have a crooked and perverse way of seeing things. And what they're doing, they're actually co-mingling paganism and its
superstitions with Christianity. Satan is the God of this world, and the God who
died for all the sins of humanity is not manipulating our daily circumstances,
making good or bad things happen.
I'll never forget this one time when I told a man that Satan is the God of this world, and he looked at me as if I was some sort of monster in front of him. It's because the truth sounds stranger than fiction, especially to those who are strangers to it. Folks are simply not being taught the scriptures. This man claimed to be a pastor for nearly 30 years, yet he didn't know 2 Corinthians 4:4. Shameful. A shameful workman that will stand before God unapproved because he chose not to study, but rather only parrot his denomination tradition. If you'll carefully follow along and watch how your Bible progressively reveals itself, you'll see that God is no
longer physically intervening in lives today. And it's why Paul wrote Romans 8:18
For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be
compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.
What are we, those of us who are saved, what are we waiting for? Keep reading. We're waiting to verse 21 be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. Amen. The quote "bondage of corruption," the coronavirus, the deadly tornadoes, and whatever, that's not from God. The quote glorious liberty is. You just got to believe the Bible. You see, in God's Word, just look at it for yourself. Don't believe me, but you'll find distinctions. There are distinctions. That's why you have to rightly divide the Word of Truth. Rightly divide these distinctions. Not seeing them, not abiding by those distinctions, is
going to leave you in a state of confusion. Having to guess each time
something occurs, each time something bad happens, each time you turn on the news,
having to guess whether or not that was from God. Was it God? Was it Satan? Is this
God punishing us? Or is this Satan causing this? Is this God getting even
with us? And on and on it goes, where the wheel of fortune stops, nobody knows.
Will it be lose a turn, or will it be spin the wheel and land on jackpot? You see, God has no reason to get even with any of us, to settle the score. He got even when he took out his wrath on Christ. Remember the cross? You know, it doesn't get
preached about much anymore, but it's finished. Enough with the religious guilt
trips. God doesn't have unfinished business with sinners. Stop allowing that
religious voice in your head to continue to fill your thinking with this nonsense.
If God poured out his wrath upon Christ, then he's not going to pour it out on you.
He's not going to punish you for the same thing he's already punished Christ
for. And if God was the author of this virus, that's exactly what he'd be doing.
Punishing us for what he punished Christ for. Meaning that, well, what Christ did
on our behalf just wasn't good enough. God wasn't satisfied with the death of his
son. But you see, the truth is, you want the truth? The truth is, it's finished.
And now, the only thing left to do has nothing to do with God doing anything.
It's about unsaved people doing something. Hearing and believing the
gospel. Resting their faith in the son for their salvation. Resting in him alone,
apart from anything they can do in their flesh to save themselves. The only thing
left to do is for the unsaved to be saved.
This current time we're living in, now not according to the headlines, not according to the news media, but according to the Bible, it's called, "but now." And during this "but now" time period, we're supposed to be living according to the instructions given to the Apostle Paul to give to us. And that's why he asked the Ephesians, remember? He said, have you heard of the dispensation of the grace of God which was given to me to give to you? How that by revelation he made known unto me the mystery as I wrote afore in few words. This is Paul. Whereby, when you read, you may understand my knowledge and the mystery of Christ, which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto us his holy apostles and
prophets by the Spirit. The dispensation of the grace of God. It's happening now,
but now. And it's a time of unmerited grace. We can't earn anything good, and we
can't earn anything bad. God's not handing out cookies to the good little
boys and girls, and he's not handing out apples with razor blades to the
bad ones. We all, every one of us, operate day to day from the platform of free
will. We have choices and decisions to be made. We are responsible for ourselves. We
are accountable for what we do. Decisions and choices are made, and what happens
next is the result of those decisions and choices. That's not God. That's you.
Take responsibility for your own actions.
Under the current administration of God's grace, the means by which he intervenes, listen, is through his words, the Bible. And if you're saved, and you've equipped yourself by studying and rightly dividing his word of truth, he wants to use you to intervene. This is real simple, but some of the people wearing the name badge, hi, my name is Christian, make the rest of us look quite ignorant to the world when they go around claiming that all worldly events such as the COVID virus and tornadoes and such is God punishing and trying to teach us something. I hear the woefully ignorant say, where is God when all this is happening? As if he's obligated to step in and give you a get out of jail free card. They're expecting him to change and rearrange their circumstances as if we're puppets on a string. It's not about our temporal circumstances. It's about our eternal circumstances. And they were affected on the cross of Calvary. That's the greatest intervention. That's the greatest miracle we'll ever need. Stop looking to God to affect your day to day physical circumstances. Stop operating as babes in the temporal and graduate to the eternal. Move on from the physical to the spiritual. Stop speaking as a child, understanding and
thinking as a child, 1 Corinthians 13:11, and just grow up, put away childish things,
something that will happen when you rightly divide the word of truth. That's when we began to stop seeing through the glass darkly and began to see the truth in high def,
face to face.
Today, let not your heart be troubled. And when things like this virus or
whatever happens, you don't have to be punched, drunk, glassy eyed, or tossed to and fro. As a member of the body of Christ, you are to remain stable like a tree planted by the water. I shall not be moved. Stand on God's truth, the word of God, which affectionately worketh also in you that believe. And as he wrote to the saints in Ephesus, finally, my brethren be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might. Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities,
against powers, against the rulers of darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore taken to you the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day and having done all to stand, stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth and having on the breastplate of righteousness, and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace.
Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith you shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked and take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God. Whenever you're ready to get real, to face the truth, you'll stop following the lies. God is not intervening in our daily lives, causing good and bad things to happen to anyone. Has he? Oh, yeah, he has. But there's a whole lot of things in the Bible that he has done that he's not doing today. That's part of the problem. Most have been taught to read the Bible, but haven't been taught how to read the Bible.
Been following some ministry that is more interested in telling you fanciful stories than to teach you how to rightly divide God's word of truth. After the salvation of the Apostle Paul, God began to reveal something new. And once the revelation
of the mystery was revealed in full and the fall of Israel was in place, many things began to change. Things that used to happen began to fade out and stop happening. And I'm not talking just about the Old Testament either. When's the last time you saw someone get healed by a handkerchief? That's New Testament, Acts chapter 19, verse 12. When's the last time you saw someone get healed by a man's shadow? Acts chapter 5, verse 15. When's the last time you saw the Holy Ghost strike down a man and his wife dead in their tracks because they didn't give the church all their money? That's Acts chapter 5 also. I can do this all day from Old Testament and New Testament. Many things throughout the Bible that used to happen stopped. And it's not because of lack of faith. If that were the case, we could go over to the local children's hospital and empty the place out. Just tell them about Jesus and how He heals. Read them a few passages of Scripture about His mighty works of healing. Hey, they got all the faith in the world. It's not an issue of faith. They got plenty of that. They'll believe almost anything you tell them with their childlike faith.
So why aren't preachers, these so-called healers, why don't they go over to the hospital, go over to St. Jude's, lay hands on them and empty the place? Why? Because it don't work. No, they'd rather stay there on their stage. That's much more comfortable talking about it than actually getting in their car and proving it. They'll stand there this Sunday and read all the biblical accounts about healing, about Lazarus raised from the dead, the lepers who were healed, the lady with an issue of blood. But that's as far as it goes. It don't leave the church doors. They don't dare take their cell phone and go to the hospital and actually record any children getting healed and getting up out of the bed and leaving the place. And all along you're expected to just nod your head and shout hallelujah, shuffle along through the week until next Sunday when you can go over to that building and hear
about some more things that don't really happen. And we wonder why we have atheists. Bottom line is this. Some of these things that used to happen began to fade out and stop happening after the Lord called out and saved the man Saul of Tarsus, the Apostle Paul. And what you should be upset with is why you've never been taught this. Why you were never taught about the uniqueness of this man's ministry and the significant part it's supposed to play in your life. Why you were never taught that we now are currently living in what the Bible calls the dispensation of the grace of God.
We're not living in the time of Israel's reign but rather their fall. That's why things that were happening at that time are not happening anymore. We're not living in line with the covenant promises God made and promised Israel. Their covenant that awarded them when they did good and punished them when they did bad. We have no such covenant. We live according to grace. Grace is unmerited. A covenant is merited. See the difference? Grace is not a covenant. Just weigh it out. On one hand we have covenant. On the other hand we have grace. They're not the same. Covenant is like
an agreement. A contract if you will. A contract between parties that says if you do this in turn I will do this. But if you don't do this I will not do this. Do you understand that? You see God's grace is not a two-way contract. Nothing is earned. It's freely given. So when you hear someone say grace covenant I've heard that for many years but do know that you're hearing a term that actually contradicts itself. It's a self-defeating statement. There's no such thing as a grace covenant. Grace is grace and a covenant is a covenant.
Your Bible will fall right in line right in order when you get this. When you understand that the old covenant was for Israel and the new covenant will be for Israel as well. Just believe the Bible. Jeremiah 31:31. Behold the days come saith the Lord that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. Which one are you? Neither. You're not in the picture. And just in case we missed it, missed it there in the Old Testament, God decided to repeat it again in the book of Hebrews. Hebrews 8:8. For finding fault with them he saith, Behold, the days come saith the Lord when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. You see the confusing part what has has confused some people is that there is also grace that comes with Israel's new covenant. But listen, it's not the dispensation of grace. Grace can be found throughout the entire Bible but the dispensation of God's grace is only found in the writings of Paul. Just like churches. There's more than one church in your Bible, but only one church the body of Christ. Paul's church. The church that began with Paul.
So in this the dispensation of God's grace at this present time he is not dispensing sickness. He's not dispensing death. Calamity. During this time he's not responsible for causing even one hurricane. One tornado. He's not making the earth to quake. Oh I know it's in the Bible but it doesn't fall in with this dispensation we're currently living in. He's not dispensing any of those nor anything else you can come up with. Just fill in the blank and until you start rightly dividing the word of truth you're going to keep opening your mouth and sticking your foot in it. You'll continue to believe and may even spread these lies. Don't fall for the nonsense. This is a false and very harmful message and we have the Calvinists to thank for it. We've got those
who roll around on the floor. Bark like dogs. Gobble like turkeys. Perform all sorts of fake healings. Pretend to make legs grow and so forth. But I don't think there is anything more damaging to the body of Christ than this business of telling others that God is causing, that he's ordaining everything that's happening today in our lives. That he has robbed you of your free will and that he's taken it hostage and he is controlling, manipulating your daily circumstances.
At Truth Time Radio, we're going to keep pressing in and standing up against this false teaching as long as we're able to sit in front of this microphone. The good news is, we continue to hear from so many telling us that they're waking up and coming away from this illogical thinking. One listener said that after hearing us teach on this it was as if a light came on and they suddenly woke up. This is how it happens. You go for so long privately questioning things, thinking that there must be something wrong with you, thinking you're the only one, the only one questioning these things. Then all of a sudden you find out that you're not the only one. Hundreds, thousands of others have been quietly thinking the same thing. The truth light bulb begins to shine and it comes on. Praise God.
Not long ago a caller told me that how he had finally grown tired of all the allegorical teachings he was being fed. His pastor was real bad about changing the meanings of scripture and turning everything into allegories. No need for all the allegorical interpretations. Just stick to the natural reading of scripture and you'll be fine. The truth will show itself every time. You know what the problem with reading God's word with an allegorical interpretation? Everyone's interpretation is different. One says it means this, another says it means that, and there you are left in a head spin, having to guess. Next thing you know it turns into a personality contest. You've got to guess and you've got to measure truth by which preacher you like the best. Who speaks with the kindest voice or smiles the most? Who has the largest following? Eventually no one cares what God actually meant. No, that gets overshadowed by who you've chosen as your favorite teacher. The winner of the
personality contest. Second Timothy 2:15. Study and rightly divide the word of truth. Makes all the difference.
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