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Obey God Rather Than Man

  • | Chris McCann
  • Audio: Length: 8:21 Size: 7.6 MB

Hello and welcome. At this time, we will take a look at the Word of God and consider what Scripture has to say in light of the fact that we are quickly approaching unto the end of the world.

Please allow me to read a couple of very important verses. Of course, everything in the Bible is important, but these verses have some special significance for us today because we are living during the time of the Great Tribulation, which is right at the edge of the very end of the world.

It says in Acts 5:27-28:

And when they had brought them, they set them before the council: and the high priest asked them, Saying, Did not we straitly command you that ye should not teach in this name? and, behold, ye have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine, and intend to bring this man’s blood upon us.

This was a Jewish council that was being held in the city of Jerusalem. They were referring to the Lord Jesus whom they had crucified. It was His blood that the high priest had in view in saying this.

So here is the response of Peter and the other apostles in Acts 5:29:

Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men.

Why are these verses particularly important for our day? It is because we are living at the time when God has taken the seals off of the Bible and has revealed a great deal of information concerning the time of the end. We now know that Judgment Day will be May 21 in the year 2011. God has also clarified many other things from His Word, the Bible.

What is the reaction from the church world of our day to these things? I think that we would have to say that it is only negative. There is not much positive acceptance of these Biblical truths.

If these ideas that God’s people are presenting came from a wrong source, such as someone thinking that God was giving them a dream or a vision or a tongue or some kind of additional revelation, we could understand why the church would have such a negative reaction. Actually, this would cause us to stand with them because there is no way that anyone can honestly believe that God is continuing to bring supernatural revelation since the completion of the Bible in the first century A.D. God tells us Revelation 22, the last chapter of the last book of the Bible, that we are not to add or to subtract from His Word. Therefore, it is impossible for there to now be any supernatural revelation.

What God did was that He sealed the Word “till the time of the end,” as He told Daniel. He also said in Daniel 12:4 that “knowledge shall be increased,” and this is what is happening. God is opening the understanding of His people to the mysteries of the Word of God that were hidden in plain sight. They are on the pages of the Bible and always have been, just lying dormant until this special time, the last time when the end arrives. Since we are there, the Lord is now teaching His people these things.

However, the church does not like this. The pastors, the elders, the theologians of the churches do not like this information that is coming from the Bible. This is coming from the right source, which causes us to really wonder why they do not like this. It is true that part of this information is teaching that the church age is over and that God is finished using the churches and congregations of the world, which is very offensive to many of these men who have positions of authority in the church. Many of them have their living as pastors based on the existence of a church; therefore, they do have much at stake.

Yet, just as the Jewish authorities tried to forbid the apostles and the early Christians from spreading information about Christ because the high priest had commanded them to not teach in this Man’s name, they, too, were only sharing more truths from the Bible that God had opened up at that time. Yet behold, they did teach and they filled Jerusalem with their doctrine.

Well, today, many would have God’s people to just shut up, to be quiet, to not give a date, to not say that the church age is over, to not say that the world is coming to an end. But God’s people will respond and are responding, of course, in the very same way:

We ought to obey God rather than men.

On one hand, we are sorry that this information offends some. But on the other hand, this is the truth. This is what the Bible declares. This is what God—whom the churches claim they are serving—is stating. Therefore, obedience is to be rendered to God, not man. We are to give “tribute to whom tribute is due;…honour to whom honour,” and the honor of obedience is due to only One: the Lord God of the Bible. It is not due to those who would usurp the authority of the Bible, to those who would try to change what God’s Word is actually saying, or to those who try to keep people silent.

May this never be! May each one of God’s people realize that we have a task to do that the Lord Himself has given us, which is to go upon the housetops and to raise our voices. As much as we are able, we are to let all the world know what the Bible says: “The Lord God of the Bible, Holy God declares that May 21, 2011 will be Judgment Day.” Time from now to then is very short.