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Scripture reading: Ephesians 6:13-18
Did you know that if you want to win your spiritual battles, you must take unto yourself the WHOLE armor of God? What does that mean? It means that if you take only one piece of armor, you are still vulnerable in the other places. You put on the helmet and your head is protected, but the rest of your body is exposed. You can put on the breastplate of righteousness, but it is not enough. You also need to have your feet shod or else the enemy can destroy you by making you not to be able to walk. So you have to put on the whole armor.
Let us look at what Paul states in Ephesians 6 as to what the armor is. Verse 14, “Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth.” I trust you understand that you CANNOT stand if you do not have the truth girding your loins. It is a simple thing! God has put a ministry in the earth (see Ephesians 4:11). None of us will stand unless we believe in the body of Christ. Do you hear me? If you don’t believe that other brethren have gifts, you will not get deliverance and you will not be able to stand! God said, “…not discerning the Lord’s body. For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep.” (1 Corinthians 11:29-30). Amen!
Let us talk more about this “truth.” The world churches teach the rapture. The doctrine of the rapture started in 1830 with the man Irving in London, England. Actually he was in Scotland, but afterwards he moved his headquarters to London. His doctrine was then taken by a theologian named Darby. These were not men of great spiritual repute. (That is a nice way of saying that I do not believe in what they did.) Then there was a man named Scoffield who took the doctrine and his Bible (the Scoffield Bible) became so prevalent and so widespread that everybody wanted to have it. I remember that as a young Christian I had to have a Scoffield Bible. But when you look at the Scoffield Bible, it is misleading. It is not the Gospel of Jesus Christ at all! But then, all the churches took from that and began to preach the “rapture.” They put it in the Bible schools. You had to believe the rapture! When I went to join the Church of God, I had to believe the rapture before I could be ordained; you can see how important it is.
One day, I was speaking to a man on the phone. He said, “What do you believe, brother?” I said, “I believe the Word of God.” He said, “Do you believe in the rapture?” I said, “No.” He said, “Oh, I won’t even talk to you then.” “Bam!” He dropped the phone.
The church began to follow a wrong apostolic leading. Remember, God sends apostles to the church to be that bar in the tabernacle (Exodus 26:28), that thirty cubits long bar to hold the church together, to hold the church in line. God will reveal to certain people truths for their time. He called Martin Luther. He revealed certain truths to Martin Luther for his time. The Anabaptists came up with certain truths. Then the Methodists came up with the sanctification truth. That is all that they had, nothing more; and instead of going on, they rejected every further move of God! They rejected the other moves. So then the very thing that God had put in the church to lead you and to guide you, you end up rejecting it. And so the thing that comes forward today is that none of these brethren are hearing from God. They teach the “rapture,” the teaching that we are going to fly off the earth and God is going to burn it all up. No man who preaches the rapture is preaching the truth! He has not heard from God!
When I first heard this, I went to God and said, “Now, God, tell me. I will not preach it until You tell me!” For if God does not tell me, how will I know which is true? So then I went into the Word of God, and I found out that “rapture” is not in the Word of God at all. I found that all the passages they taught us to preach on the rapture were not talking about rapture at all. For example, Matthew 24:37-42 says that as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be in the time of the end. Listen now, what happened in the days of Noah? WHO was taken away? All the sinners were taken away out of the earth, and the righteous were left. The rapturists turn it upside down!
My Brother Frank went to school, learned all this and came in with his doctorate, including Greek and Hebrew. I was very happy because I could talk to him now. We spent a whole night. I said, “Now, Frank, “…two in the field, one is taken and the other left.” Who was taken and who was left?”
He said, “Oh, sure! The righteous were taken up on top of the flood, and the sinners were left.”
I said, “Okay. Let us read the Bible. The scripture said that ‘one shall be taken, and the other left.’ The Greek word for ‘taken’ here is ‘paralambano.’ The meaning of this word says that those who were ‘taken’ were not raptured but ‘grabbed and arrested.’” I showed him that, and, well, eventually he came to it.
What am I talking about? The apostolic leading was wrong. The apostolic teaching that is showing the way to the people of God was wrong, leading them astray! And now they reject anything that is from God!
Brethren, make sure that your foundation and the apostolic vision you are following come from God.
(Excerpt from The Omega Message, December 2003, pg. 52-55)
Thought for today: “Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth.”
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