Word Of Wisdom Ministries
By Cheryl Arnold

While I wanted to put something down in words that would express what Charles Stanley has meant to me, I was unable to.

I have many things I could say but somehow the feeling overwhelmed me that what I write could be a blessing and would be true but it also will perish with the earth one day.

I could send something in to his ministry and maybe someone would read it and he would be honored and God would be glorified. But I also know that it would be a tiny drop in a bucket of praise and thanksgiving directed at one of God’s most faithful servants.

I was saved when I read a Bible that was given to me by my sister. God immediately sent me to Charles Stanley to be discipled. There wasn’t anyone really in my life who knew Him well and would have been able to help me along the way. I knew nothing but what I read in God’s word.

Go to him I did every Sunday on TV. He taught me well in the ways of God. I’ll be forever thankful to him and to God for sending me to him.

The reason I won’t write much is this: It will perish. But the place he holds in my heart will never perish. As a matter of fact what he has helped to work in my heart in the knowledge of God by showing me that Jesus is life itself, stands right now before the throne of God testifying as much.
Isn’t that the way it is? God has told us not to store up treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy but to store up treasures in heaven where nothing can destroy them.

So the place in my heart that Charles Stanley holds, for what he has so generously poured out to the sheep he was entrusted with by God, remains in His presence, right now and forever and it will never fade and can never be taken away or forgotten by time.

It does my heart good to know that the words of our Lord to Charles Stanley, “Well done, good and faithful servant” have already been received and even though I was never able to tell him here what his sacrifice has done for me, I know that he does know now and will always know. It is a treasure he stored up in Heaven.

Thank You Lord for the great cloud of witnesses that surrounds those who believe on Your precious name.

Amen.

This morning I was praying and preparing to get ready for Passover meal tonight at sunset. It is April 5th 2023 today but on God’s calendar it is the 14th of Nisan when the sun sets. It’ll be the 14th of Nisan all the way till tomorrow night at sunset. God’s days go from evening to evening and not from morning to morning.

As I sat to pray I heard the Lord say to me…”I long to share this meal with you…”

Now that is Luke 22.15 where He told the disciples “ I desire with desire to share this meal with with you, before I suffer”.

Bit here is the wonderful thing: He said it to me too. I have been celebrating Passover with my family for 11 years now. We do not recognize easter. Passover is the celebration of His work on the cross. The first church kept this feast and not anything called easter, which is pagan.

He has been saying the same thing to anyone who would hear for millennia. No one, or few hear. Unbelieving Jews celebrate a dead Passover on the wrong day. The church has gone after the pagan easter idol.

So the most important day in the universe goes by unnoticed by most. But oh how He longs with great longing to share it with believers at sunset on the 14th of Nisan…before He suffers.

Tomorrow at noon will still be the 14th of Nisan. It is the actual time Jesus was crucified for our sins. On the day He did it God set the sun at noon in order to fulfill the law which said the Passover lamb had to be slain at sundown. So He was.

Jesus both shared the Passover meal with His disciples on the 14th at sundown, and He was the Passover Lamb slain at sundown on the 14th of Nisan, when God caused the sun to go dark at noon.

He will be there with us tonight as we share the Passover meal with Him tonight in my house.

Thank You Lord,

Amen.

It could be. I’ll investigate more but Passover is a 7 day feast. Jesus was crucified on Passover on the 14th of Nisan. He was resurrected 3 days later on the Feast of First Fruits which is the 17th of Nisan.

Bible prophecy overwhelmingly points to the middle of the last 7 years as the rapture timing. So the resurrection of the dead happens at 3.5 years into the last 7.

In the same way, the resurrection of Jesus happened really midway through Passover week. The reason we can deduce this as a strong possibility is this:

Passover is from the 14th of Nisan to the 20th of Nisan. It is 7 days. If we count from sundown on evening of the 14th to halfway past sundown on the 17th which would be just before daylight, we are exactly midway through the 7 day Passover Week.

It’s easier to see if you draw 7 circles, each representing a day of Passover Week, marking evening at the top of the circle as the beginning of each day, you will land right there.

This is no accident, but even more evidence for the argument that the rapture of the church along with the resurrection of the dead is midway through the last 7 years.

Glory to God in the highest.

Adam knew God, he heard the prophecy of the Messiah to come who would redeem him from his sins, believed it, therefore he was a true believer, which is a Christian.

The new Testament was intentionally written in Greek and the Greek rendering of Messiah is Christ. Adam and all after him who truly loved God were given the gospel. The gospel is simply that God would become a man and die for our sins and be resurrected to life again, and that all who come to Him for forgiveness will be saved. Adam knew the Messiah was coming one day and believed. Or, in the Greek, Adam knew that Christ was coming one day and believed.

True believers, Jew and Gentile, who believed on Messiah, were Christians…from Adam, on up to this day.

David was a Christian. Moses was a Christian, Samson was a Christian, Nebuchadnezzar was a Christian. They all believed Messiah was coming to save them from their sins. How simple is the gospel!

I have a different idea of what Jesus meant here. I do not think He mentioned Peter after He said My disciples in order to show his prior exclusion as a disciple. Why? It’s so simple: “The gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable”. Can we grieve the Spirit so that we are not useable at the moment? Certainly we can. But can we be a disciple and fall so as to be removed from being a disciple? The scriptures say, no way.

With that in mind, what then did Jesus mean by purposefully mentioning Peter after and apart from mentioning His disciples?

We know that Peter was overwhelmingly grieved by his denial of Jesus three times. God goes out of His way to show all of us that he was. Instead, He shows poor, broken-hearted, contrite spirited, Peter, that he did truly love Jesus. Peter showed that he was so low that he didn’t even feel he deserved to say he loved Jesus as he should. Jesus shows Peter that he does love God as he should. He just fell down but God made him stand.
Listen: a broken and contrite spirit God will never deny.

The exact opposite thing was happening when Jesus added Peter’s name after mentioning the disciples. He did it to show Peter that he was also and still His disciple. He mentioned him by name to show the others as well as Peter and us, that Peter was NOT excluded from this group. God is sweeter than most know. Bless you Lord.

Is huge. At first glance we might think they are synonyms. Certainly sin is iniquity and iniquity is sin but they have specific differences.

Sin is used in the Bible in many ways and each use pertains to the context of the doctrine being taught. We really do need to understand the differences between the different words in the original language for sin. We also need to examine what God means by iniquity.

The general use of “sin” in the Old Testament refers to first, our sin nature that was a result of Adam’s sin. We are not responsible for being born with a sin nature, we are only responsible for rejecting the remedy for it…Jesus.

Then, once the law of God is broken, this is deliberate sin. It is a bi-product of being born with our sin nature. We are unable to keep God’s law, and it is written on our hearts, until we are spirit-born, saved. We have to come to Jesus for forgiveness and believe on Him. Sin then has no power over us. If we deliberately sin, it is because we choose to. If we trespass unaware, He will show us and give space and power to correct it.

In the New Testament, we see many words used for sin in the Greek, and each is very specific to the context and doctrine being taught. I have to say that these are easily grasped because they are common sense. If we know our Bibles, then these slight differences in meaning between the Greek words, make sense.

For example, one word refers to a sin of ignorance. Another word refers to a sin that is ongoing. Another word refers to a sin that is knowingly and willfully and continually choosing against the known will of God. This is the word used in 1 John when he teaches us that there is a sin unto death for the believer.

Iniquity is another thing. Iniquity seems to be referring to a choice by a believer to fail in morality, when they know to walk uprightly and should be walking uprightly. This sort of behavior in a believer is called “iniquity”. The definition of this word today is gross immorality…wickedness. A rebellious believer is capable of wickedness. David is an example. It just cannot be unrepented-of, and ongoing. If an iniquity is unrepented-of and ongoing, then it is the sin unto death potentially.

Now the interesting thing is that God says this all through the Bible and in many ways. It is why I see for sure that lukewarm believers in the last days will not be raptured but will go into wrath to be beheaded…killed. But then they are resurrected with the righteous and reign with Jesus for 1000 years. They seem to have different roles but saved and resurrected as well.

God says in Isaiah, speaking of Israel at the time but also referring to the last day when the wrath of the Lamb comes upon the unbelieving world, that they will not cease from their iniquity until they die. It is the same for the lukewarm at the end.

It is a serious thing to ponder if we are believers. Be holy as He is holy is our command. We must put away wickedness or we will not be raptured. There are so many believers today who dabble in sin and their iniquity will not cease until they die.

Jesus told us to die now while we live. Put away the evil deeds of the old man. Purify your hearts and be not double minded. I think it is soon. Pray you are counted worthy. It is the righteous who vanish when the last trumpet sounds. Believers who are still loving iniquity will have to die to stop it. “Surely this iniquity will not be purged from you till you die” (Isaiah 22:14).

I’ll say yes. We know that Jesus reveals Himself, in Revelation especially, as the Almighty, who had no beginning and no end. He is the Eternal One, and His incarnation was the vehicle by which He became the Kinsman Redeemer.

Now while He was on earth as the Lamb , Mary was certainly His mother in this sense…though Hebrews tells us clearly He was in the order of Melchizadek, who had no father or mother, neither beginning nor end. Melchizadek had to be Jesus. No one else had no beginning and has no end.

So was her motherhood necessary but temporary as His mother? It was. He begins to break the news to us immediately.

Jesus existed before Bethlehem, before Mary, who was the woman by whom He would enter into our place, as a man…qualifying Him to be our Kinsman redeemer.

The old prophet Simeon, who told her in the temple after His birth that her heart would be pierced, knew it. We get a hint when He goes missing at 12 years old. His response to her seems strange. He responds to her as God even then, and not as a son really.
We see Him distancing Himself from her, in her role as His mother, at the wedding at Cana. He calls her “woman”. He, as God, is referring to her as the one who fulfilled the Genesis 3 prophecy. She was THE woman who God said would bring forth the seed of the woman. Jesus was that seed. He was on His way to crush the serpent’s head with His accomplishment at the cross. So He is separating Himself from her there and also declaring her glorious election as that WOMAN. But she was only representing her race…humankind.

We see it again when a woman overcome with the glory of Jesus shouts, “blessed is the womb that bore You, who nursed You!” She saw the fulfillment and that is what she meant. She was declaring Him to be the Messiah. She knew it. God showed her.
Jesus says to her “Indeed, rather, blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep it”. He is showing them, yes, she is that woman but she is not the focus…do God’s will, He says…that is the focus.

Again, He was teaching, and His mother and brethren were outside wanting to speak to Him. When He was told, He says, “Who is my mother, who are my brethren?” Then He says again, “whoever does my Father’s will, they are my brother, sister, mother”.

He is separating Himself from her and proclaiming Himself to be God.

Finally, but there could be more times, we see Him on the cross, leaving the earth now in the role of Lamb. He looks at Mary, His mother, and exclaims, WOMAN! Behold your son. Then he continues and looks at John and says, behold, your mother.

This is difficult to express because the depth of meaning here and emotion can’t really be conveyed well with anything additional. It’s too much.
Jesus is saying two things to Mary at once. He is calling her His mother for the last time. She will be that no more. Her work and role there is done. He is also releasing her of that role, signing off as her son and giving her, as mother, to another…namely John.

When He tells John to behold now John’s mother, who is now Mary, He is leaving her in his care. It’s finished. Mission accomplished, world about to be redeemed. At this point, He will soon ascend and sit again with the Father on the Heavenly throne.

I say all of this for just the glory of the event. But I also mention it to further my point concerning Jesus taking on the form of a man. He was born in Bethlehem. It was a glorious event and He was a baby in a manger. But just like Mary is no longer His mother, Jesus no longer is to be thought of as a babe in a manger. It’s complete and now He has ascended. He has no birth. He has no beginning and has no end. Christmas then is a lie and a terribly pagan thing.

Those who celebrate it and stay focused on a day and a holiday are not understanding who He is, just like the others He had to correct.
Celebrate the glorious impossible story when you read it. But it is over. He isn’t born again every year. It’s finished. Let’s dwell in that gigantic truth.

Thank You Lord Almighty for the Glorious Impossible!