I just would like to add to the announcements one more announcement regarding tracts. The May 21st tract or the Hourglass tract is available. We do not have anything on the website right now where people can select that, but if anybody goes to the website to request tracts, if you go to the “Did God Die for You?” Free Tracts Request form, in the comments section, type in: I would like the Hourglass tract or the May 21st tract. That will work for now.
It is available on the EBF website in eleven languages at this time: Afrikaans, Arabic, Chinese, English, Farsi, French, Hindi, Japanese, Russian, Spanish, and Tagalog. (Note: It will also soon be available in: Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Romanian, and Urdu.) In those languages (correction: currently only for English tracts), if you would like to request copies of that tract, you can request it through the website or you can send an email to ebiblefellowship@juno.com and we will try to send you the tracts.
We have been getting a reaction, by the way, to the tracts. People have been calling the toll-free number, which happens to ring at my house, so I know that we are getting a reaction. If anyone handed a tract to someone coming out of a gym a couple of weeks ago, the person called as soon as they got in their car. I know that Maria went to the train station recently and gave someone a tract. A few minutes later, they called. They are questioning how we know this, so it is getting a reaction.
Okay, let us go to the book of Jonah and read about another reaction that people had to the Gospel, in Jonah 3. Jonah is a little book. He is called by theologians a minor prophet, but there are some big teachings in this little four-chapter book. We know that in Jonah 1, as God commanded him to go to Nineveh, Jonah fled. He took a ship and then God brought a great storm at sea. The only way that the storm was quieted was when the mariners took up Jonah and cast him into the sea. Then God had a whale swallow him up, and he was in the belly of the whale for three days and three nights.
You know, those are incredible things. They are miracles because God was acting supernaturally in bringing the storm and in having the whale swallow him up, and God protected Jonah so that he was alive for three days and three nights in the whale’s belly in order to bring the Gospel message that we have in the book of Jonah.
But I think, the more I read it, the most incredible event that happened in the book of Jonah is what we read in Jonah 3, far more incredible than being swallowed by a whale. It says in Jonah 3:1-5:
And the word of JEHOVAH came unto Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee. So Jonah arose, and went unto Nineveh, according to the word of JEHOVAH. Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days’ journey. And Jonah began to enter into the city a day’s journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them.
And God saved the people of Nineveh. We know this because the New Testament tells us that they repented at the preaching of Jonah and that they will rise in the judgment. They will be resurrected to life.
The incredible thing is that God saved these people through the prophet Jonah, through the words that He gave him, through the preaching that He gave him to preach, and it was one sentence. It was eight English words—that is it—and they believed. They believed it.
Now, it is amazing today—and I am sure that we have all had this experience—when you share some of the information that we are learning from the Bible, which are truths because they are coming from the Bible, and they kind of say, “Well, what other preacher believes this? What other well-known trusted theologian believes this?” And you say, “Why are you asking about that? This is coming from the Bible.” And they say, “Yes, but we have to validate it, we have to confirm it, we have to be sure that it is coming from the Bible, that it is coming from God, so who else believes this?” And the people of Nineveh did not do that. They did not do that.
Jonah was a stranger, a foreigner who just showed up at their front door. As far as we can tell, he had no past history with the city of Nineveh, with those Assyrians. He was someone who had just been vomited out of a whale’s belly. In all likelihood, his appearance was not the greatest after spending three days and three nights there. God sent him with a message that contained eight English words—it is even shorter in the Hebrew—and he went into the city and he cried out, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown”—period.
That was it. That was it. No mention of God’s grace, His mercy, His love. No mention of God. “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” And he said it maybe once. We know that he said it once, but he could have repeated it. (I do not know because God does not tell us.) He could have just found the most populous spot, maybe a market place in the open air, and yelled it out once.
So we know that he said it at least once and that was it, because he was a reluctant prophet. He really did not want to go there. He did not want to carry the message that God gave him to carry because he knew that God was a merciful God, it tells us in the 4th chapter. And yet God definitely moved him to will and to do of His good pleasure to bring him to a city that he really did not have all that much concern for, and I think that we can relate to Jonah.
Have you ever gone home (for example, on a Sunday) and the thought crossed your mind, “I should go out and hand out tracts”? Well, that is really the same thing that Jonah was doing. Jonah took a message from God and he went where God told him to go, to a city, and he proclaimed the message that God had given him. That is the same as giving someone a Bible tract or when we share with someone. It is a message from the Bible, so it is a message from God. But when this thought of going out and handing out tracts pops up in your mind, have you ever thought, “No, I do not feel like it; it is cold”?
You know, we could think of a lot of reasons as to why we do not want to do it. I have done it. “I do not feel like it today—maybe tomorrow; maybe next Sunday.” I am a reluctant prophet. Is there anybody else who is a reluctant prophet at times? Does it ever also cross your mind, “Well, I do not think so”?
Well, you see, God has His ways of motivating people to do His will to accomplish His purposes, and His will will be accomplished. His will will be done. And here in Jonah’s life, He worked everything out so that Jonah absolutely had to obey Him and go to Nineveh and preach this one sentence to the Ninevites.
I just keep coming back here because I cannot get over it! I cannot get over their response to the Word of God! It is like nothing that I think we are familiar with. We are just not familiar with a whole city, from the king on down, who humbled themselves and put on sackcloth and cried mightily to God that God would have mercy and that He would save them, and they earnestly and sincerely meant it. They repented. They not only heard the message, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown,” and agreed with it, but they repented.
“Yes, yes I can see that. I see how Family Radio is teaching that May 21st, 2011, is the Rapture. I understand that October 21st, 2011, is the end of the world. I agree with it.” Well, that is not belief. Belief is when you take action. That is what God says of the Ninevites and that is why Jesus commends them, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah. They did something about it. They did not just acknowledge Jonah in their city, “Well, that is a good message, Jonah. That is a good message and I do not have any problems with it. I can see how our city is wicked and that we will be judged,” and then just go about their business. They did not do that.
It says in Jonah 3:6-9:
For word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water: But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands. Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not?
You see, there was a lot of action, a lot of response to the message, and the message contained two elements: time and judgment. That was it. Forty days was the time. “At the end of forty days, you will be overthrown;” that was the judgment. And there was a great response of the people of Nineveh; and, you know, I guess the amazing thing is the little bit of information that God gave them, this tiny little bit of information.
Now, Jonah was a prophet of God. He was a Hebrew and he brought the message to the Ninevites. God gave him this information, so Jonah, if anyone asked him, “How do you know this?,” he could say, “God told me. Gold gave it to me. Jehovah, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, He is the One who gave me this information,” and that would be all that they would have had to go on.
Well, when we tell people that May 21st, 2011, is the Rapture and October 21st, 2011, is the end of the world, how can we say this? Where do we get this information from? You see, if we said, “Well, I had a dream. In the dream, I saw a calendar. In the dream, May 21 st, 2011, was circled in red,” what would be the natural and right response? “Forget it! That is not possible!,” and we would reject it right away. Or how about, “God spoke to me in a vision or in a tongue and May 21st is the end because God gave me a tongue and another interpreted it”? No! No! You would reject that.
We know that God, when He completed the Bible, once He gave us the full revelation, He will not add to nor subtract from His Word, so He is not going to come in a dream or in a vision or in a tongue or in any way that would be a supernatural revelation. Anyone who comes up with dates based on any of that, we can dismiss, and rightly so. You just do not even concern yourself with it.
But when we go to the Bible and we find that the information about May 21st, 2011, is coming forth from the Bible and nowhere else, that it is all found in the Bible, it is not easy to explain. That is why certain books have been written, like We Are Almost There! or Time Has an End by Mr. Camping. It is not the easiest thing to explain because we cannot point to one verse where it says, “May 21st, 2011.”
But this information comes from the Bible, and who wrote the Bible? God. God wrote the Bible. It is the Word of God. The Bible is God’s communication to man. And we learn from the Bible, as long as we are following God’s methodology and we are comparing Scripture with Scripture and making sure that our conclusions harmonize and that it is coming only from the Bible.
For instance, there is a Biblical calendar of history in Genesis chapters 5 and 11; this is where the calendar has come from within the Bible. And we see that God has worked out a timeline of history and that important events fall on very specific dates within this timeline of history in an orderly manner, in an orderly fashion. Then when we project it into the future, we find that 1988 was the 13,000th year of Earth’s history and that 2011 will be 7,000 years exactly from the flood, and on and on and on. There is actually a great deal of information, to the extent that if someone started today to examine the books that have been written where this information has been taken from the Bible, they would have a very tough time studying it all before May 21st comes in 2011.
And, you know, the amazing thing is that the Ninevites believed one sentence, one sentence. Yes, when we hear something, we do have to check it out. We have to be like the Bereans and study the Scriptures to make sure that it is so, but how long are some people going to study? And you are not convinced? You are not sure? You do not believe God? And I am saying “God.” I am not saying, “Camping.” I am not saying, “Family Radio,” because the people of Nineveh did not believe Jonah; they believed God it says in Jonah 3:5.
Well, where was God? He was not there, but He was in the person of Jonah. God was sending the message; Jonah was only a lowly messenger, a lowly ambassador. And is that not what we are? We are servants and that is all. That is it. We are doorkeepers. We man the portals into the Kingdom of Heaven. And by God’s grace, as we share the Gospel, every now and then we are permitted to open the door for someone. That is all that we are and nothing more than that. We are very lowly. We are sinners who deserve nothing except God’s wrath, yet He has given us a great privilege to be partakers of the Gospel and to share the Gospel with other people.
If we go to 2 Corinthian 5, I would like to read a few verses there that really show why it is accurate in Jonah 3:5 that the Ninevites believed God, rather than saying that they believed Jonah. It says in 2 Corinthians 5:17-18:
Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation;
What does it mean to be reconciled or this word “reconciliation”? Well, we can go to the Bible. You know, sometimes we think of earthly definitions, the definition that we normally have from the world, and it is not exactly the Bible’s definition. But in this case, it is pretty similar, because reconciliation, as we understand it, means that two are estranged (for example, in marriage, if they are apart). Two people are fighting and arguing. Finally, out of their own minds and their own wisdom, not the wisdom of God, they decide, “It is better if we live apart or if we divorce or if we separate, because we cannot get along.”
Now, as soon as they start thinking that way, they are going astray from God and from what the Bible says. The Bible tells us that we should continue as husband and wife, to stay together and to love one another. We know the commands that God gives. This is really the Biblical definition of reconciliation.
It says in Romans 5:10:
For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son…
While we were enemies of God, and every person begins as an enemy of God. We are all unsaved until God saves us. We are at enmity with Him. There is a warfare going on between each human being and God.
It is kind of like the greatest nation on earth, as far as power goes (for example, America with all its nuclear weapons), declaring war upon an ant. That is the comparison when we think of man warring with God.
Of course, we are going to lose. We are going to be destroyed with an eternal destruction, unless there is reconciliation. And reconciliation, getting back together to where there can be a right relationship with God, can only come through the death of the Lord Jesus being applied to our life and our sins, and that is what God is saying here.
The word is also used in 1 Corinthians 7:10-11:
And unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord, Let not the wife depart from her husband: But and if she depart, let her remain unmarried, or be reconciled to her husband: and let not the husband put away his wife.
And that is the example that I was mentioning earlier.
So it is interesting that God uses this word in the marriage relationship where only the wife is referred to. It says, “if she depart.” It does not say anything about the man. I think this is because, spiritually, it is always the wife who departs from God. This is because each human being is married to the Law of God, our husband, and it is always the woman, it is always we who depart from God’s Law and commit spiritual fornication and adultery. This is why the Law is going to judge us. It continues to judge us each day, through the Word of God, for our unfaithfulness, and that is why we deserve to die. We are spiritually unfaithful to our mate or husband, the Law of God.
So God, here, speaks only of the woman, “if she depart.” A man, a husband who is a believer, is not to chase after her and follow her if she moves to another town or stalk her in order to get her to come back. No, let her go. Let her go. You continue to live faithfully. You are not to look at any other woman or think about remarriage, but pray that she might come back, because there can be reconciliation. She can come back and there can be a reunion in the marriage.
This is how it is between God’s Law and sinners. We have broken the Law and there needs to be reconciliation in the spiritual relationship towards the Word of God, and that reconciliation can only come through the death of the Lord Jesus Christ.
This is why in 2 Corinthians 5:18, it says:
And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation;
And, basically, that is all that we are doing. We are sharing the Word in hope that this person might be returned to God so that they can, once again, be in a right and just relationship with God, and that is only possible through Christ.
Then verse 19 goes on to say, 2 Corinthians 5:19:
To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation.
That is what we are entrusted with, like the talent in the parable of the talents. He gave some talents to individuals. Some gained five and some gained ten, and one said, “Here is your talent back,” and God found fault with him because he should have been occupying until He came. He should have been sharing the Word with others so that there might be fruit, or in that case, so that the talent might multiply and there could be an increase.
So God has given us this Word, and in 1 Corinthians 4:1, it says:
Let a man so account of us, as of the ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God.
This has never been more true, because God is opening up the mystery, the many Scriptures that have been sealed until the time of the end, and we are stewards of the mysteries, which include all of the truth of the Bible—God saves through election, He has predestinated individuals to salvation; all those truths that have been known, but also that we are at the time of the end, that time is short, that He has given us the information of the very date of the Rapture and the end of the world; and He is revealing to us information about the judgment and what it is, that it is not an eternal and conscious suffering in hell for the rebels, but that it is an actual destruction—He has given us the care of these things as stewards. Remember, the one man was asked, “Give account of thy stewardship.” We are entrusted with these things.
Now, we cannot expect the church to proclaim these things. They are contrary to many of the things that God is opening up to our understanding from His Word. They are not going to tell people these things. It is only going to be shared by the elect people of God at this time.
Then it says in verse 2, 1 Corinthians 4:2:
Moreover it is required in stewards, that a man be found faithful.
And that is the most important thing. You can have people who are zealous and very gung-ho for sharing a gospel, but not the true Gospel. They are not faithful to the Word, and so it is a total waste. It is unprofitable for people, like Jehovah’s Witnesses, to go knocking door-to-door, or individuals who are always eager to hand out tracts that teach that you can accept Christ; they might as well not do anything. But if we know that we have the truth, then we are to be faithful to what God has said, and that is the next point in 2 Corinthians 5. 2 Corinthians 5:19-20:
…and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us…
We are ambassadors for Christ, and what does an ambassador do? An ambassador is a representative of his country who is sent to another country, and that is a pretty good picture of a believer because this is not our home. We are strangers in a strange land who represent the Kingdom of Heaven, the Kingdom of God to the world.
It is just like America sending ambassadors to just about every nation on earth. That ambassador will live there in an embassy and he will represent his country to the government of India or China or Pakistan, or whatever country. He is a representative. From time-to-time, there might need to be some communication between him and that government. If something happens in that neck of the woods (for example, there are some terrorist activities going on in a particular country) and you are the ambassador and the American President sends a top secret communication directly to you, “You need to go and relay this information to this government that if they do not do more to root out those terrorists, we are going to put sanctions on them or there is going to be a trade embargo,” whatever it is.
Now, you are the ambassador and you just got the word from the President. And in this world, there are not too many people higher than the President of the United States, so that message is worthy of all respect, and I am sure that you would not dare to change a word, would you? If you were an ambassador, would you dare to change a word? Maybe you did not like something. Maybe what the president is saying is a little too strong for you. Maybe you do not agree with it and are uncomfortable with it. You love these people; you have been living amongst them.
Well, no, you cannot change anything. If you did, you would be out of there pretty quickly. The next thing you know, you would get another communication from the President saying, “Pack up your stuff. You are coming back to America. You are no longer ambassador because you were not faithful. You did not relay the message exactly as I wrote it, exactly as I gave it to you.”
That is why this is such a good picture of what God is saying to us, to His people. We are ambassadors for Christ. This means that we do not do our own thinking. We do not present our own gospel. We do not decide what is right to say and what is wrong to say, “I like this and I do not like that, so I am only going to share the part that I agree with.” Then you are not a faithful ambassador and you are not a good representative of the Kingdom of Heaven, so you should no longer be the ambassador.
This is the problem with the churches today. With the churches today, they decide that women can be pastors. They decide that single men can be elders. They decide that you can get saved by doing these steps. They decide, etc., etc., etc.
They are definitely not getting this from the Bible because the Bible is clear that during the Church Age, the pastor had to be the husband of one wife and raise his children well. And a woman is not suffered to teach. And we are spiritually dead in our sins and it is impossible to accept Christ.
Since the Bible says all of that, how can they proclaim otherwise? The only way is if they have thrown off all contact and ties with who they are representing. So God has cut them off. He has cut them off and now He is sharing His Word with the world through His people, especially through the electronic medium with individuals who are outside of the churches and congregations.
So this is the Word that has been committed unto us. Let me read verse 20 again, 2 Corinthians 5:20:
Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God.
Basically, this is our desire. This is what God gives us to share. It is interesting that Jesus died in our place, in our stead. He is the substitute. He is the One who bore our sins so that we do not have to suffer for our sins, and now it is switched. Now we are in His stead. We are the substitute for Him because after His resurrection and after showing Himself for 40 days, He went up into Heaven and He has determined—it is God’s will—He will not come back until the very end. Therefore, Jesus, God Himself, cannot personally go to any individual in the world that they might be reconciled to God because He will not break His own Word, but He has developed a salvation plan whereby He sends representatives, ambassadors, in His place. Their word has all the authority of God and it is, in fact, the Word of God.
This is why when the people of Nineveh believed God; they were correct. It was not Jonah. It was not. He did not even want to go! This is why it is so insulting (not to me or, really, to anyone, but to God) when someone says, “That is the word of a man.” This is hugely insulting to God because we are just an ambassador. We are a messenger.
If you want to send a messenger to someone, you call the courier agency, you give them a message, and they go. They go and then you pay them a little bit of money. That is it, and that is our role as ambassadors.
Let us go to Luke 10, which is the chapter where Jesus sends out the seventy, two by two. It is in this context of Christ commissioning individuals and sending them into the world that we read in Luke 10:8-16:
And into whatsoever city ye enter, and they receive you, eat such things as are set before you: And heal the sick that are therein, and say unto them, The kingdom of God is come nigh unto you. But into whatsoever city ye enter, and they receive you not, go your ways out into the streets of the same, and say, Even the very dust of your city, which cleaveth on us, we do wipe off against you: notwithstanding be ye sure of this, that the kingdom of God is come nigh unto you. But I say unto you, that it shall be more tolerable in that day for Sodom, than for that city. Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works had been done in Tyre and Sidon, which have been done in you, they had a great while ago repented, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. But it shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the judgment, than for you. And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted to heaven, shalt be thrust down to hell. He that heareth you heareth me…
Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. Anyone who is going to hear, hears the Gospel from someone because the Gospel always comes through another individual. Even over the radio, individuals are busy making sure that this is what happens, or through a tract or through verbally sharing with a person. And if you receive that tract and you give it respect because it is from the Bible and you read it and God blesses you in opening up your ears, whoever hears has heard, actually, from God Himself.
You know, we were looking previously at how it was that God could save these people in Nineveh. Why did they accept the Word from Jonah? Why did they believe God, when if you go into Philadelphia or New York or Los Angeles or Paris or London, all of these big cities of the world, with a message from the Bible that is true, it seems that nobody believes? Of course, there are always a few, but, certainly, there is no revival. Not everyone is reacting, and why not? Because we saw that Jesus said in the Gospel of John, “My sheep hear My voice.” They hear. They hear His voice. But they who are not His sheep will not hear. That is also being implied, “My sheep do not hear the voice of a stranger.”
It is amazing that God’s people are probably the most critical—I will say this in a nice way—they are probably the most critical—I do not know how else to say it—but they are very trepid. They are cautious and very careful when it comes to hearing the Word of God and the Gospel.
Just think, God’s people today recognize that they are not hearing Christ’s voice in all of the churches and congregations, which means that there are tens of thousands of pastors and theologians and elders whom we will not listen to. We do not give them heed because the Bible has shown us that, “No, the Church Age is over and we are not to listen.”
We are very skeptical to discern the true Gospel, so when we do hear it, we know it; we know it. And they can say whatever they want to. They can say, “You are following a man.” Or they can say, “You are naļve.” They can say whatever they want, but God’s people hear Christ’s voice. We also know that it is not a man—it is the Word of God—because it is coming from the Bible.
We mentioned earlier that any other source, we would reject. What other people are there who are Christians and religious who are so discerning of the spirits, discerning of what they hear?
I do not buy at all that God’s people are being deceived by an individual, when they have spent their lives recognizing that deceit comes forth from many individuals and that they have to be very careful at what they are listening to.
Now, there are a couple of verses that I would like to look at in John 8. In John 8:47, it says:
He that is of God heareth God’s words…
Very simple. Very simple. Why is it that some people are absolutely convinced, and I am one of them, that May 21st, 2011, is the Rapture—and I am saying that I will witness that this is going to happen—and that October 21st, 2011, is the end? Why is it that God’s people can be so sure? Because He that is of God heareth God’s Words. Why is it that so many others are not sure?
…ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God.
That is tragic. That is sad. You know, I would never say that if someone is doubting now, if someone is maybe on the fence right now, it means that they are not of God. But if someone continues like this until the end, then they were never of God, and this explains the whole predicament that they have found themselves in. For some reason—due to being in a family who believe these things or having friends who believe these things or previously hearing some truths from a ministry and knowing that the truth has been coming forth from that source for so many years—you continued on but you never really believed it. Well, finally, the solution and the answer is that you were not of God.
The Ninevites were of God. God predestinated them from before the foundation of the world to salvation, and we know that a great multitude today is of God and that they will hear.
It is very significant that says in John 18:3:
Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice.
Every one. The wise will understand, it says in Daniel where it speaks of the time of the end. When God is opening up the Scriptures, the wise are those whom God has saved and given the Spirit of wisdom to. They understand. Every one of them will hear His voice, but notice Pilate’s reaction in verse 38, John 18:38:
Pilate saith unto him, What is truth?
No ability to hear. He did not hear the truth. He could not respond to the truth because he had no way of knowing it. So, you see, only, exclusively, God’s people will know the truth.
Or let us go to 1 John 4:1. This is an important verse:
Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.
So we have to examine what we are hearing. We have to check it out, and the Bible tells us to do this.
1 John 4:2-5:
Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world. Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world. They are of the world: therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them.
This is why we can have mega churches. This is why we can have a Pentecostal doctrine catch fire and great numbers of people respond. This is why we can have a crusade in a stadium jam-packed with sixty thousand people. This is why we can have a pope whenever he visits and there are swarms of people. It is because they are of the world, and we know this because they do not have the Gospel of the Bible. They are of the world and the world hears them.
The fact is that God is going to save a great multitude that, in totality, may number 200 million, which leaves over 6 billion plus in the world who are not of God, who do not hear His voice; they hear the voice of the world. They can respond to the Muslim religion. They can respond to the Mormons. They can respond to the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Today they can respond to all of the churches. They can respond in a religious way. They can flock to a stadium, but they are not of God because God is saving a few. It is a great number. It is tens of millions and there is great hope for us. There is great hope for anyone who is not saved. But, really, in comparison to the world, the vast majority of people hear the world’s voice.
Then it goes on to say in 1 John 4:6:
We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us. Hereby know we the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error.
Because God implants it. I do not know how else to say it. He gives ears to discern to His people, and that is why it is so encouraging. Every one whom God has chosen will become saved and is going to hear and is going to repent, just like the Ninevites. Of course, there are going to be many skeptics and doubters and individuals who just cannot see it because they cannot hear it and they cannot believe it. It is not possible and it really is senseless to try to convince them.
One verse, one sentence, is all it took for Jonah to convince the Ninevites, for God to use to convince the Ninevites. We could compile an encyclopedia of evidence taken from the Bible, like We Are Almost There!, To God be the Glory!, Time Has an End, which are all Biblical studies. Pile them on top of one another and present them as evidence, which it is, and it will not convince anyone. Nothing will convince someone who is unconvincible because they are not of God.
Well, let us just, in closing, go back to Luke 10. In Luke 10:16:
He that heareth you heareth me; and he that despiseth you despiseth me; and he that despiseth me despiseth him that sent me.
You see, the Word of God is either heard or it is despised. That word “despiseth” is translated as “rejected” in Luke 7:30, where the Pharisees and lawyers “rejected the counsel of God,” which came through John the Baptist that they be baptized because they were not baptized. So they despised the Word of God; they rejected it.
This helps us understand, even a little bit more, Isaiah 53. Speaking of the suffering servant, the Lord Jesus Christ, “He is despised and rejected of men.” Of course, He is the King and we are the servant. He is the One who was called Beelzebub. Well, how much more shall we be assailed with names?
It does not matter. Jesus was despised and rejected of men and now we, in Christ’s stead, in place of Him because He cannot personally be here—it would break His Law because He has determined not to return until the end—we, as an ambassador for Him, only speaking the Words that He has given us to say, are privileged. It is a great honor to stand on the street corner and to hand someone a tract.
I did this one time last week and there was a group of kids, teenagers coming up the street. They were laughing and joking. I reached out with a tract and one of them smacked it out of my hand. They walked on and I just picked it up and handed it to the next person.
We have to have in our mind, “They are not rejecting you,” God told Samuel, even though that was a different set of circumstances. They are not despising you, even though you are the one standing there, “They are despising Me, because I sent you.”
As we were talking about the ambassador, if that country that the ambassador was to carry a message to just ripped it up or burned it or said, “We are not going to listen to that,” and despised the message that came right from the President of the United States, well, they are living dangerously and there would be repercussions. There would be a response because the President is not going to think, “Oh, they did that to the ambassador.” No, he is going to think, “They did that to me. They did that to me because I sent that note. I sent that word and it should have been respected.”
Okay, we will stop here.