01-18-26 Study of Ephesians Chapter 6:10-13 Satan Attack on The Spirit-filled Church Part 2

➡ This Bible study focuses on the book of Acts and Ephesians, emphasizing the individual’s role in the church and the process of sanctification. It explains that Satan’s attacks are not on the physical church, but on individuals who make up the body of Christ. The study also discusses the concept of the church as a collective body, affected by individual actions, and the ongoing process of creation. Lastly, it highlights the importance of maintaining love for Jesus Christ and avoiding complacency in one’s Christian life.
➡ This text emphasizes the importance of maintaining a strong relationship with Jesus Christ in all aspects of life, including home, work, and social areas. It suggests that when we lose our initial love or passion for something, whether it’s our work or our spouse, we encounter problems. The text encourages self-reflection and understanding that our attitudes and feelings can attract similar situations. It also highlights the need for continuous renewal of our minds and hearts towards Christ, and warns against prioritizing worldly things over our relationship with Him.
➡ This text emphasizes the importance of love in our lives, as taught by Christ. It suggests that we should love God, ourselves, and others with all our heart and mind. It also highlights the need for constant self-assessment, repentance, and change, starting with ourselves. If we fail to maintain this love and repentance, we risk losing important aspects of our lives, just like the church in Ephesus lost its existence.
➡ The text discusses the importance of staying true to one’s faith and not being swayed by worldly temptations. It uses the example of the churches in Ephesus and Pergamum, which lost their way due to forgetting their original purpose and being influenced by pagan practices. The text emphasizes that God is aware of all actions and thoughts, and encourages repentance and steadfastness in faith, even in challenging environments. It warns against compromising with evil systems and urges self-assessment and adherence to the holy system of God.
➡ This text emphasizes the importance of staying true to Christian values and not being influenced by worldly desires. It criticizes those who compromise their faith by associating with non-believers or adopting worldly practices. The text uses the example of the Church of Pergamos, which strayed from its Christian principles and became worldly. It encourages individuals to self-assess and stay committed to their faith, warning against the dangers of becoming complacent or influenced by worldly trends.
➡ The text discusses the dangers of compromising moral values within religious institutions, using examples of churches that have allowed immoral practices. It emphasizes the importance of maintaining love for God and others, and warns against replacing this love with worldly desires. The speaker encourages self-assessment and continuous repentance to avoid falling into the trap of worldly systems. The text also mentions the importance of studying scriptures to fully understand their teachings.
➡ A controversial document caused a stir among churches, with debates about who would sign it. The document was linked to John MacArthur and School Spoil, and discussions about it were widespread. The speaker suggests researching MacArthur, the Roman Catholic Church’s agreement with US churches, and CJ Spoil for more information. The conversation ends with a prayer for wisdom, understanding, and peace in the face of change.

Good morning. This is our Sunday morning Bible study. We’re continuing our look in the book of Acts. We’re, we’re still getting new people working at this. Oh, I got a splinter. We’re getting new people looking at this. This is, this study is being done in conjunction with Ephesians. And for those of you who maybe don’t study the Bible that often or understand how this book, this entire 66 books are put together, Ephesians, it looks at the, the application of what you have to do in applying God’s principles to your life individually and Acts, it looks at that same process as it regards to you becoming the church.

Now what’s the difference? Well, to understand that you are the church upon salvation is one thing to perform in your walking worthy individually as Ephesians provides you the applications to do. Then it becomes necessary that you complete that cycle called sanctification in order to understand what you are in the church. So it’s, it goes hand in glove in this process. So what we’re doing is we’re into chapter 15. We started this last week. We got to the point of looking at the details of how Satan attacks the church. Now for many of you, you might think that that is brick and mortar.

You might say, oh my gosh, as long as I’m not in the church, I’m not being attacked. No, this is not the brick and mortar. This is not the building that you go sit in. This is you. So this is your understanding as you become the church inside the body of Christ. This is what Satan does to attack you. So what we’re talking about in Acts chapter 15 is Satan attacking you as you have now come to the full understanding because if you’re not there, he’s not going to really attack you because you’re ignorant. You understand what I’m saying? So this is where Satan is going to now come full on board in attacking you as the body of Christ, the Church.

And this attack is individually and collectively. Scripture tells you that what you do in the body of Christ individually affects the whole body of Christ collectively. All right, so it’s important that you understand that the concept of the Church begins with you, but is the collective whole body of Christ. So it doesn’t matter where you’re located in, in the world. And, and science has already proved this by experiments they did. There’s experiments that you can go research and whatever that like minded people wherever you’re at, when it’s, when something’s done on one part of the world, it’s actually affecting the other part.

So science has already proven this concept of the individual impact to the collective whole. So we ended last Sunday looking at, we’ve, we went through all the foundational elements of this. So for those of you who need to go back and look at that, go back and review that session. And we got close. When we, when we close it out, we begin to look at the seven letters of the churches. And why is that important is because those seven letters in Revelation to those seven churches represent you. And you also got to understand is it is a continuous build upon activity.

So the, the model church being Ephesus, which is where we ended last time, looking at the letter to Ephesus. Ephesus. When you get into Smyrna, everything that is happening in Ephesus is happening in Sperna, plus what spurners added onto it. And then when you go from Smyrna to Pegamon, you now have everything that was in Ephesus, Smyrna and now you got what Pegadons do it. Okay, so it’s a build upon process. It’s the same way with history. Every empire being the line of Cain, when it conquered a previous empire, all of the paganistic rituals and all of the evil of that empire came into the, to the conquering empire.

So everything in history is to build upon. That’s the reason why history repeats itself. If you haven’t figured that out yet, how does that happen? Well, because history is a build upon process. Remember, we’re in the middle of creation. Creation has not stopped. You’ve been taught that creation ended in Genesis chapter three. Well, that is not true because we’re playing out whether this is the simulation or the simulation was then or what. It doesn’t matter how you look at it. We’re playing out what God put in place before the foundation of the world. And if we’re playing that out, that means creation has never stopped.

Creation began with the formation of this world in God’s mind. And creation ends when New Jerusalem, New Heaven and New Earth take place. And we now are living in eternity with Jesus Christ. And all evil is placed in hell, okay? That’s when it ends. So all along this continual timeline associated with history, we are in creation. What is happening to you? Think about it. What’s happening to you, what decisions you’re making, the timing of those decisions, what you’re called to do in scripture, what you’re called to do by God or Jesus Christ or who or, or how the, or the Holy Spirit.

What you’re called to do is based upon what was created in the spiritual realm and what’s being fulfilled in the physical realm or simulated in this physical realm. But it’s all a matter of what your creation. So we impact that creation along the way. So therefore now you can understand why history basically when, when empires went in and conquered something, they just took that and wrapped it into theirs and figured out what was the best of the, of both and then made them that process all the way through to today. And when church churches begin throughout the church age of history, going back to the ascension of Christ and all the churches then being built, I’m not talking about corporate church.

I’m talking about the body of Christ. When all of us became knowledgeable that we were the church from that point to today, we have gone through seven phases. Those seven phases are depicted in the seven letters in Revelation. And we can match it up by actual year, which we’ve already done in our initial study of Revelation to get us to the breakout point of Ephesians after chapter three and the beginning of Acts in our studies. So the first church, being what is termed the model church, was the church at Ephesus. Now, two of the seven churches didn’t have any negative things said to them by Christ through John to, to the church.

Five of them did. Okay? And what we learned last week was the, the, the, the beef that Jesus had with the church at Ephesus is because they lost their first look. All right? So at the crust of this understanding the process of the church, remember your whole model, okay? The nuclear family model is based upon the church. So when we talk about issues associated with the church, we’re talking about issues that also associate with your home. So as you begin to look at your self assessments of your home life and the way your home is structured and so forth, the model is the seven churches expanded upon by Paul when he talked about, you know, the roles of husbands and wives and children.

But the structural component of your home is based upon the same context that you we’ve looked at and will continue to look at as the basis of Christ’s view of the church. Everybody got that. So when Christ said the church at Ephesus lost their first love, what is he talking about? When you come to the point of anything new, anything new, okay, the process is, the process is a process, you guys. You’re going to hear this over and over and over again. Probably as long as you know it, the process is the same. No matter what you want to plug in to that process, it’s new.

You’re going to Go through a phase of newness, and then the honeymoon ends and you really get down to business. Things you did not know about, whatever you’re looking at now become exposed. And you now have to begin to deal with what you’re being exposed to. That you would not have done that in this phase called newness. Why? Because your eyes were glossy and you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. Whatever you want to consider in that phase. So when you come to the point when the honeymoon ends and you don’t do what you do out of an overwhelming love for Jesus Christ, you’re in real trouble.

The newness of your Christian life keeps new. When you go through the process that scripture tells you to go through, sanctification, discipleship, becoming in the church, on and on and on, that keeps that newness around. At some point we get to the point of I know now, everything I need to know, I become complacent like Joe. And then you into an. An area called fear. And the Bible says, don’t fear. Okay? So you put yourself into whatever problem you’re having. Nobody else created that other than you. So when you look at these seven letters of the churches which we’re going to walk through pretty quickly this morning, you apply the same thing to get and to whatever you are doing in whatever structure that you’re going in that’s based upon the authority structure of Jesus Christ home, your work, your social area, okay? All this applies to all of it, all right? So when you fall out of love with your first love, whether it be your spouse or not or whatever, when you fall out of that, the honeymoon’s over, you’re in real trouble.

All right? So it’s the same process. So the church had become stagnated in their thought processes of maintaining the focus, as scripture tells you, on the things above, not the things of this world. While they were doing all of the things that Scripture and Paul had told them to do, they were doing it without what the right mindset. They had lost their renewed mind. They had lost the relationship of yourself with Jesus Christ. And that is the foundation of a marriage. That’s the foundation of a home with children. That’s the foundation of your work. Because if you don’t, if you don’t love your work, you’re not.

You don’t want to go to work. That’s a foundation for everything. So when you begin to look at your self assessment and you begin to try to figure out, why am I having difficulty? I’ve always said, look in the mirror. I’ve told you that over and over and over again. Go look in the mirror and what do you see? Because what you see is what you are attracting to yourself. So if you don’t see love for yourself, how can you love something else? Do you hear what I’m saying? It starts with you and is an individual back in Ephesians and now we’re into acts as to how you act in this body of Christ.

And it’s like you doing the same thing over and over and over again, which you are because you’re renewing your mind continuously. That keeps it. So looking at your life, Looking at your life, the enthusiasm for Christ, more than likely for the majority of you, I’m just going to put this tongue in cheek, right or wrong. I got 50, 50 shot. So it doesn’t matter. Just take it and apply it where it applies. Your thrill is over. And now it becomes a little work. You got to want to figure out what time you’re going to study.

You’re going to want to figure out what time in your prayer. You’re going to want to do all of this stuff because that what brings the newness back. And if the thrill’s gone and you’re not doing anything to bring it back, then you’re in real trouble. And it’s fair for all of us. I’m not no different than you guys. It’s fair for all of us to say we do it. Okay. There’s days that you really don’t feel like doing anything. And I tell you, the older you get, the more difficult it becomes to even make yourself want to do something if you don’t feel that way.

All right? So it happens. Some of you might say, well, I don’t have the same love I used to have. Well, that is. That is this world’s view. Because in scripture it says love grows every day. Love grows. And if you haven’t figured that process out yet, you’re not far enough into your sanctification to get an understanding of what that means. If you love anything in this world more than Jesus Christ, you’ve lost your first love. You see? Oh, now let’s bring this to the marriage. If you love anything more than your spouse, after Jesus Christ, of course, then you’ve lost your first love.

If you don’t like going home because of the environment, you’ve lost your first love. You got real problems. You can apply your own knowledge base to those problems that you have or had in your life when those conditions were the prevalent. And all marriages go through ups and downs, but it’s the commitment, ah, sanctification. It’s the commitment in that covenant of marriage to work through the process of education to understand how to continue to make that love. Do. So. It doesn’t matter whether it’s yourself. Oh, at the top. You can’t love anything if you don’t love yourself first.

Yourself, your family, your leisure, money, success, anything you love more than Jesus Christ, you’ve lost it. You’re losing your relationship with Jesus Christ. Foreign so the honeymoon was over in Ephesus. They were going through rituals. They were, oh, think about your marriage. You just go through the process, right? Again, do that stuff. I don’t make any ways. We’re not going to argue, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Just think about yourself. It says, okay, if. If the honeymoon’s over like it was at the Church of Ephesus and you’re into ritual, process of just getting through life without, without the love of Christ coming through you, you’re in real trouble.

If you’re serving. The theme of this is that the seven churches. If you’re. If you’re serving the Lord Jesus Christ at whatever collective church. As an orthodox performer, ritual, Roman Catholic church, Mormon church, Lutheran, as a ritual. Rather than the passion of love for him, you have completely missed the boat. Well, you might say, okay, what do I do when I feel this way? Well, you get this in verse five of the letter to Ephesians, there’s three things that that verse tells you. Now, I’m going through this because I probably am not going to go through all seven churches, because you’re now seeing how you need to study this in order to apply it in Ephesians to get you back into Acts, Okay? So in verse five, he says, remember, remember.

Now, in Scripture, when you have the word spoken twice, that say, pay attention. All right? So he says, remember, remember. And this is an amazing thing. When you get to the understanding of studying scripture and see the multiple meanings that it applies, you first, you’ve got to know the structure. Now, we talked about that on Tuesday night when Norman when Diane asked about, you know, all of this stuff. And I says, you need to study under a structure, because that basically gives you the constant, constant reassurance that scripture is laid out in a specific way. Well, that’s the same thing here.

Spiritual defection. Now, what’s the word? What is defection mean? Means you are now going in the opposite direction than you should go. You’re defecting from your relationship that Ephesians builds with you. You see, spiritual defection usually comes from you forgetting now, how do we learn? Okay, forgetting. How do we learn? We learn by repetition. We humans in the form of this physical body with limited accessibility to our, to our percent of utilization of our mind, which is less than 10%. We forget if we don’t constant renew it. We talked about always, always, always learn something new every day, don’t care what it is.

You’re then in a constant state of mind control that you’re going to look for something new. And if you’re studying as you should in your sanctification process, you’re going to look for something new in that. So spiritual defection comes but majority of the times by us forgetting what we should be thinking about on the things above and now shifting our thoughts to the things of this world which is opposite of the commandment from the Bible. So Christ says, remember. You get it. Remember, you got to go back and you got to remember what you have learned.

Did you forget what it used to be when you became a Christian? Did you forget what it used to be on the day you got married? Did you used to forget what it used to be the day you, you found out you were pregnant and the day you brought home that child from the hospital? The first, Remember how it was before your love went cold. That’s what he’s telling you. Remember the warmth that you felt. Remember that fire that burnt inside of you that you just couldn’t get enough of whatever it is and that joy and that exhilaration.

Remember. Second thing he said is repent. Remember therefore from where you’re fallen and repent. Oh, that’s that that brings up you’re a spiritual being. First you were in heaven. First you, you accepted the deception and moved yourself out of heaven into Satan’s economy. And this whole system that God had to put in place was the system to give you the way to go back home. Remember where you came from. Remember how you got here. Remember that you live in a fallen state. And remember how you go home. Remember. See, it’s a fall that you already know about.

Some of us pigeonhole that fall. Some of us don’t want to think about it. I just want to, I just want to live in this world as an unconditional love. And everything’s just going to be hyperspace. It’s all going to work out. You guys get your head out of the sand. You live in a fallen state called evil. And whatever exists in this universal love thing that’s going on is from this world. Say, now let’s look at scripture and says what it says not to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, strength and your neighbor as yourself.

Oh, where did you hear that? That’s in the Ten Commandments, right? Now when you we’re learning how to study. Okay, some of you already know this, but I’m going to do it anyway, okay? Because you need to remember this. When it talks about the love of your love for Jesus Christ and you’re losing your first love, you need to now go back and understand the conditions of how Christ or God in the Old Testament, New Testament, whichever one you’re looking at, you need to understand the principles around the condition of love. Now what does the scripture say? You’re to be like Christ.

You’re to put on the mind of God. You’re to walk worthy of your calling, and you are the body of Christ. So in essence, you are what? You’re Christ once you’re s. So what does he say about this thing called love? He says you must love your God with all your heart, your soul, your mind, what you think about, the strength, in other words, the work that you put forth in this world and your neighbor, your brethren of the church, as yourself. All right, self assessment. Now, understanding the baseline of love itself. Apply it to wherever the love that you’re supposed to show and whatever structure that you’re living in, in accordance to the authority structure of God, his system, you have to apply the love that you have for him the same way in any of that.

You hearing what I’m saying? If you don’t do it that way because he’s the basis of life, I’m the life giver. He says he’s the basis for life. And life is, is 100% pure love. And it’s 1, 100 pure energy. Okay? You’re the power behind it. So if you do not work your system, your individual system, in the manner by which he’s giving you the structure of the base of the church, the base for you, the base for your family, the base for your home, the base for your work. If you’re not loving in those areas the same way that he tells you to love him, you got a real problem.

So what he’s saying is, remember, repent. Repent for what? Not to have that first love is a fall sin from which you must repent for. Oh, did night self assessment like a horse just kicked you in the chest. The majority of problems that you cause, you cause nobody else cause your problems. They’re yours. You own them. And now you’re getting another little dose here of knowledge which is going to be moving your standard up for. So your accountability is also going to go up. When I say go look in a mirror, there’s a reason for it.

Change starts with you. Try to try to change anything, any, anywhere you want. It’s your home and your business, whatever, go, just try to change it without you first agreeing with the change. And you change in the same manner that you’re asking everybody else to chance. It doesn’t work. It starts with you. You may say, wow, man, man, I got this issue with my spouse and I just wish they would do something different. Well, they’re not going to do anything different unless you change. That’s how this works. Yeah, we’re a collective whole in the body of Christ.

We’re collective whole in the body of Christ to love each other as you love yourself. And the predicate of that is how God loves his Son. But it starts as an individual. It starts in Ephesians. Ephesians is your application book. It’s your go to book when you’re trying to determine what you need to do in order to, for you to. When you look in the mirror, you see what you want to see. Because when that happens, then change will take place. But see, here’s human nature coming in. This is how Satan attacks the church. We might just spend all our time in the book of Ephesians right here.

And so. And then you need to go study the rest of the seven letters in the same manner. Okay. That we’re doing Ephesians. The first human reaction, because you’re trying to change, you’re trying to put on this new creature. Right. When you get saved, you get, you’re become a new creature. You become, you have a new nature. You have a new DNA every all the way down. We’ve already studied all of that. But the human nature, the first reaction of the change is to believe anything else but love. That’s our human nature. And from the get go, from the get go, Satan’s attacking you to lose your first love.

Now, understanding that as the church, understanding that as an individual, think about what he’s doing with your marriage and think about what he’s doing with your home. He wants you so focused on anything but love because that way he gets to destroy you and take hold of the church. Some of us think that we can actually live one way religiously. I’m going to take that word back. Oh, you can’t really do that. Right. So let me just try to respin it. Some of you think that you live in the Spiritual world one way, part of the time.

And you live in a this physical world a different way, part of the time. And that’s okay. That’s not right, guys. That’s not okay. That’s losing your first love or not understanding your first love to begin with. If your first reaction in this thing called salvation, the newness of your life, guys, okay, the newness of your knife, your new beginning, your salvation, you go, you’ve made a choice to go down to a different path. Regardless of whether you stick to the path or not. That’s a choice you made and that’s a choice that changes the outcome of your your life.

So if your first reaction you have to Jesus Christ is anything less than consummate love, you’ve lost your first love and you need to repent. If that’s the condition of your walk with Jesus Christ, then everything else else is off kilter too. Why? Because everything else in your life is based upon God’s structure. That’s based upon the structure that God had with his Son, that He has with you through salvation. And that basis of love is the foundation of everything else in your life. So if you have a problem there, you can have a problem everywhere else.

Now why did I just do that? Because I want you to understand the depth of what it takes for getting repentance. You got to look at yourself. You got to look at your relationship with Jesus Christ. You got to repent there. Because if you ask for repentance and anything else without the basis to be intact, what have you just done? You haven’t repented at all. You’re spiritual being first. The first repentance you need to do is with your walk with Jesus Christ while praying that he gives you patience enough to deal with this other stuff and knowledge and wisdom enough to deal with this other stuff after you repented to your Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

And then he says the third thing. Remember, repent and repeat it. Don’t stop. See, you keep the newness going by remembering and repenting constantly. And he says, do the first works. Go back to how it used to be. If it’s cold today, mechanically service in orthodoxy, a ritual process. The same thing. I get up. I do this every day. This is so boring. I have no life in my home. I have no life with my spouse. I don’t like where I’m at. You just did it. Go back to where it started. Get back to your needs.

Get back to the book scripture. Get back to witnessing, conversation with other believers. Okay. Get back to fellowship. Get back to prayer, get back to sharing and praising the Lord. Stay close to the fire. And that’s what he’s telling the church at Ephesus. You’ve lost the whole basis of the church. So after Christ gives them all of this, and now after you understand how all this, this church works, you know what happened to Ephesus? They didn’t do it. They didn’t do it. The first, the foundational model of the church, they didn’t do it. They didn’t remember, they didn’t repent, and they didn’t repeat it.

So the outcome of their, their negative decision on what they were told to do is also in verse five. Oh, what is that? If it applies here to the church, it applies to you. It applies to your marriage, it applies to your family, it applies to your social gatherings. It applies to everything here. What he says, that happened, okay? And I said, I’ve always said sin without repentance. Something’s going to die. Something’s going to die. Let’s see what it says. I will come. I, Christ, will come unto thee quickly and remove the lampstand. I’ll remove you.

Oh, something is going to remove something from your life. Something is going to die out of its place except thou repent. The church in Ephesus died. They went out of existence. Oh, if that applies to the church and that’s what happened to them, you better now understand. Your level of threshold of knowledge just extended one more level again. It is going to happen to you. The great Ephesus, the evangelical, the evangelical experience that Paul and all of the people that put forth to build that church, the orthodox, what they set in motion the historical basis, the monumental church went out of existence because what, it lost its first love, it lost its.

Its mindset, it lost what it was supposed to be thinking about. Now, there’s a second thing to be aware of here. Verse 12 of chapter two. Now, we, we, we. We’re going to bypass Smyrno moment because that was a persecuted church and it isn’t warned about that. But let’s, let’s go to the church at pergamum. Verse chapter 2, verse 12 says this. But to the angel at the church of Pergamon, right? These, These things say, who has the short sword with two edges? Okay? Now, in everyone. And you learned this when we studied this before we broke out in Ephesians, every one of the church letters had a description of Christ that was different.

This is how Christ was described to Pergamum. These things, saith he, Christ, who has what the short Sword. Two edged sword. That’s the Lord. And the sword is a sort of judgment coming out of his mouth, as in Revelation 19 and Hebrews chapter 4. And he says this. I know that works. I know what you’re doing. You can’t hide and escape from me. I know everything about you. Why? Because I’m the one that puts you in before the foundation of the world. We think we just skip by on whatever we want and don’t understand that whatever you’re doing, you already knew about it before you’re ever born.

Why would you waste so much time on it? Try to hide it. Just get it over with. Get done with it. Repent of it and get it behind you. I know that works. Verse 13. It says this. And where thou dwellest, where you go, who you see, what you do. Even where Satan’s throne is, what evil you do that you think you get away with it behind a closed door. Better think again, my friend. That was one of those hard lessons for me because I thought whatever I did, nobody saw. It didn’t really matter. This is one of those things that I wished I’d have known then what I know now.

I would have had a whole different set of experiences. And it continues and says that thou holdest fast my name and has not denied my faith. Even in those days in which Antipas, the apostle or the bishop at the church. Sorry. Was my faithful martyr who was slain among you where Satan dwells. That’s a mouthful, but we’re gonna. We’re gonna unpack it. What he’s saying is Pergamus, listen to me. I know everything about you. Put your name where Pergamus is. Put your name or Pergamuses. And let’s study it this way, that way. I know everything about you.

I know your secret closets. I know those secrets that you do and keep secret. I know everything. My searching, penet, penetrating gaze reveals all things. Remember, we’re pure energy and the database is pure energy. Everything you do is stored. It doesn’t matter where you do it. It’s stored in the energy database. He says, I know your works. I know you’re involved, what you’re involved in. I know what you’re active in. I know there’s something going on. And I know that you are where Satan’s throne is. Well, while they Satan’s throne was in Pergamos. Still is today, by the way.

But in you and I, it’s this world. You’re in a tough place, he says. And he says, man, Pergamus was a. Was A really tough city. Do you know that Pergamos was the center of the emperor’s worship, the center of the worship of Caesar? Did you know that. At this, at the throne of Satan was the center of the emperor’s worship? Caesar Augustus, think about that. And then we’re all still Rome today and you think we don’t have issues. Do you also know it was a center of the worship of Zeus, the great God, some say the greatest God of all, that system of deities.

And that in the city of Pergamos they had built a huge altar to Zeus in the shape of a throne. And to some feel that that throne of Satan, as mentioned in verse 13, is referred to the altar of Zeus, the greatest, most famous, largest altar in the world. On the other hand, you see guys, you see, you see, you can’t study scripture without also not understanding history. Yeah, it’s still there by the way. On the other hand, Pergamos had its own God by the name of Asiapus. He was the Pergames God who was associated with healing, the God of healing in the pagan world.

He’s always been associated with snakes. What do you think our medical school got the, the symbol for medicine here? Understanding history and understanding the symbolism that exists for history should provide you with a knowledge base much different than you’ve ever had before. If you’re medical school and the doctor that you go see has the symbol of the snake around the pole. It’s come from the throne of Satan in Pergamus. And yet you give everything about you to that doctor. You still see a snake on the symbol of a physician. And that really comes from Greek mythology, from this God of healing called Asifus.

And in the temple at Perlin, in the temple they had non poisonous snakes all over the floor. And people who were ill would come and lie there so that those snakes would crawl all over them and everywhere they touched them, they would be healed. It’s really, it was really tough living in Pergamos. It was tough being a little group of Christians in the midst of a terrible pagan society. So he says this. I know where you dwell. I know where Satan’s throne is. I know you hold, hold fast my name. And you have not denied the faith, even to the point where some of you have died, namely one dear brother, the bishop Antipas, who basically was killed servicing the church at Pegam.

So he says, I know it’s tough, but let me tell you something. To live in a tough city, to live in a tough environment, to live in a tough time of the world and name the name of Jesus Christ. Boldness. You see, the letter of the church is telling you all about what scriptures told you before. Listen, there’s no reason to lower the standards even when you live in the toughest of toughest environment. The environment didn’t change them even then. They were the same. Oh, look at yourself, Look at yourself. You skirt and run at the first little conflict that exists in your spiritual life.

And you think you got a bet. So God says, I know it’s tough there. That doesn’t change the standard by which you must live. And he says, I know it’s hard, but that doesn’t change anything. Even though you’ve endured the time, and even though you’ve been mar. Some of you have been martyred, and even though you’ve worked on for the Lord, even though you’re upheld his name in verse 14, I still have things against you. Are you hearing what I’m telling you? You think you’re the model Christian, you think you don’t stick. But let, let us look on a moment, Because you have them, them outsiders, them there that hold the doctrine of Balaam.

Who, who taught Balak to cast a stumbling block. That’s another word you should study, by the way, before the children of Israel, to eat things, sacrificed idols, and to commit fornication because you have them there. Where’s there? The church. What is the church supposed to be? It’s supposed to be for the believers. You come to worship with believers, you come to fellowship with believers, you come to get strength from believers, you come to get healed from believers because you have them there in your midst. You associate with this world. You do the things that you’re not supposed to be doing because you have them there in your life.

The whole the doctrine of Balaam. Now we already know that BAAL is the head of all gods, okay? We already learned that in our study Return of the Gods Bell is number one, head of all gods, because they are there and they hold the doctrine of Balaam means that the all of the paganism, they hold it, you associate with it. Think about what I’m just saying here. To you, who taught Balak to cast a stumbling block, the stumbling block is your stumbling block. Back then to eat things that were sacrificed to idols and to commit fornication.

You need go back to self assessment. Let me tell you what this is. Balaam got the children of Israel to intermarry with pagans and to get into their adultery. And what he’s saying here, that’s compromised with the pagan system. We Got two systems. I wish I could study all seven of these with you. We got two systems. A pagan system that’s evil and a holy system that’s of God. The Bible talks about two systems from beginning to end. And that’s it. Two systems. You’re. You are supposed to, what, as a Christian, only deal with one system, not two.

If you do two systems, you’ve lost your first love. And you need to repent and repeat it over and over again. Because your nature is to go to two systems. If you associate with them, you bring that filth into your life. That’s what the Church did. Look at your life. Where do your issues come from? Do you think the issues are going to come if you’re living 100 in the holiness system of God’s authority? You’re going to have some issues, but he’s your protectorate, he’s your provisioner, he’s your healer. Do you think, unless you’re going to be like Job, where you go off culture and get, you know, complacent and then you have fear in your life and all kinds of stuff, do you think that God would have allowed Satan to do to Job what he did if Satan hadn’t done it to him, if Job hadn’t done it to him himself first.

Be equally yoked? What does that mean? Do you think in a marriage God wants you to marry if you’re safe? Somebody that’s not safe, number one, you’re not supposed to associate with them anyway. How could you get so far to get married? If you truly follow scripture, don’t associate with anything in this world. Well, if they’re not safe, what are they? They’re of the world. So why would you even associate with them? This is a process from the beginning to the end. Your knowledge base has to go from the beginning. All of the little steps up and down, through, through the trees, all that good stuff, so that you can now understand what this scripture is actually telling you to do.

When it says don’t associate, it means don’t associate. Why? Because you’re going to end up like Pegamus. You brought them in. You brought that in. And the problem in the church at Pagam was that they were compromising with the world. What in the world do you think you have done? If you’ve, if you’ve married somebody that’s not sick, you’ve compromised your walk with Christ, you’ve compromised your marriage because it’s outside the authority structure of God and you compromised with the home and you’ve compromised in everything. You do, you have, you have just created the base issue of your life.

They were intermarrying. Scripture doesn’t tell us specifically. About this intermarrying Christians, non Christians, whatever. It just tells us that they were intermarrying and the association with that word. And looking at history during the time we get the fact that Christians were marrying non Christians, non. So we know, we know from history that that’s what took place. But the church at Pegamus began to court the world. What did I just say? Your choice of associating with this world, the fallen state, your choice of dating somebody that is not equally yoked, your choice of marrying a non Christian.

You have brought the world into the center of of your life. And now you want to understand why you have issues and then why women have to be women according to scripture in a non Christian marriage and pray for their husbands and take whatever abuse that’s dished out because that’s what Bible, the Bible tells you to do. Who did that? You. And the process of doing that opens the door that you begin to indulge just like they did in worldly things. You’ve now crossed over. They were violating Pergamos, the church of Pergamos. They were violating the commandment in Second Corinthians chapter 6.

Where Paul says what fellowship has light with darkness? What concord has Christ with baal? Concord, covenant, contract, commitment. Say once salvation takes place, you were to come out, set apart from among them them the fallen state and be separate and touch not the unclean thing. But say they were now the worldly church. They had let the world come in. They were doing what the world wanted them to do. So they had become the world. Not only did they lose the first love, not only did they not repent, they broke, they broke the commandment of the church.

They brought bell in to the center of their church. They entered married in the church. The church had become the worldly church. And they were doing what the world wanted them to do instead of what was commanded by Christ. Self assessment in the most foundational way your life. Where did I say at the beginning of this you could take every one of these churches. When you study them correctly, you going to come to the center of your life. It’s amazing to me we’ve been talking about. This subject from all different aspects in looking at Ephesians for almost a year guys, almost a year.

And it’s amazing to me how the church of Christ in America today is going all out toll hog to ape the world. And they. It’s Visible in so many ways. See, if the world views of the family changes, the church accommodates it. If the world’s view of the woman changes, the church covenants. If the world’s view of homosexuality changes, the church accommodates it. And we get on the bandwagon with everything the world does, We want to identify with it. You wear shirts, you, you, you swing flags, you sing songs, you go to events, you, you fund certain events.

You do all this stuff because you’re accommodating it. We want. With it in such a manner by which the world accepts us. See, now where in that equation does set apart even exists or separate the godly from the wicked? Shocking to me, The church. Now remember, we’re not talking about corporate church, we’re talking about you. The church becomes miracleistic because the world is materialistic. The church becomes preoccupied with entertainment because the world is preoccupied with entertainment. Just to give you an illustration of that and you can. It’s now coming out on news channels. But I read articles and listen to certain things.

Do you know that in the last 10 years, while there is now more than a steady rise of born again people, it’s an explosion, there’s a corresponding steady decline in the number of church members. See, because these people aren’t going to churches. One of the articles I read was very insightful and that the rise of what is known as the electronic church, there are many who feel is the number one reason people don’t identify with the local church. That’s not my reference of identification to the church. I’ve said this many times. Your identification of the church is first starts with you.

And if you’re not identifying yourself in the proper moral, spiritual way, it doesn’t matter what church you want to identify with. But in this article, most people in the electronic church sit at home behind their little television and the church comes to them. They don’t have to get dressed, don’t have to leave the house. Everything is all perfect. It’s another part of the fantasy. Well, the reason why it’s a fantasy is because they don’t have the ability to interact. That’s the reason why I make it a purpose of this body of people to give you every condition of interaction, want.

Because that’s the church, that’s the fellowship, that’s the, that’s where the rubber meets the road. And I’ve been asked many times, why don’t you just do podcast, put them out, let people just go look at them when you want. I said no, no, because that’s not the Church that’s not fulfilling the requirements of the church. See, TV is a fantasy and our world wants to live in that fantasy. You go home and you sit there and that church is a perfect church. You see nothing wrong with that church. You have no condition of understanding anything about that church.

You see entertainment, Music’s unbelievable orchestra, people with flowing gowns, great singers, a parade goes on and lights and camera and angles and all of that. Preacher’s perfect in order and he gives his message. And there it is, the fantasy church. You’re never next to anybody, you’re never able to talk to anybody. Nobody ever talks to disturb you or challenge you. You don’t have to worry about a place to park. It’s just glorious. It’s a sad thing. And you know what happens. And one of the other articles that said that the entertainment church is built, the electronic church is built on entertainment.

And the electronic church apps the very things in the world the church has always condemned. Except they don’t condemn it anymore, they accommodate it. Pretty straight’s full of stuff. But I’m here to tell you that we need to live in the real world, not the fantasy world. This is a real world in a real church. The church is so smug and so comfortable and it’s compromised with the world that it fails. And it falls into the fantasy. And then in verse 15 he says this. You have them there that hold the doctrine of the nickelodeons. We talked about this last week.

Child sacrifice, birth control, Planned Parenthood. What happened to Pargos? See, Pergamus decided that they would waltz with the world. Pergamus decided that they could court the world. They could draw the world in a little bit and do a little of the world’s thing in the world’s way and allow some immorality in verse 15 and that’ll be all right. You’re self assessment guys. I was involved in a church in Arizona, Were through the deacons decided that they would do wife swaps. They thought they shouldn’t do anything about it. The church thought they shouldn’t do anything about it because it might upset the congregation.

Oh wow. Sin in the church and you’re not going to talk about sin in the church? Oh, the same thing that happened at Oak Cliff Baptist in Dallas. See, the church tolerates sin. Why? Because it’s a business. And sort of compromises a little. It’s not the quantity, it’s the event. It doesn’t matter about how much goes on. It’s a matter that it went on because whether it be little or large, it’s still the same thing. And I’ve always taught you, as you look at your own life, when you begin that compromise, that decision of compromise begins to eat away like termites at the foundation of your life.

And so he says in verse 16, to the church of Pergamos, repent or else I’m going to come unto thee quickly and fight against them with the sword of my mouth. So listen, guys, do you know how Satan now attacks the church? It’s subtle in its initial phase. We lose our first love. Bell comes in and begins to separate, begins to put wedges, begins to put ideologies and in theologies and other doctrine and all this other stuff. And if you don’t understand your through your sanctification, the theology and doctrine application, how are you going to know it’s coming? See, you don’t.

And then all of a sudden we begin to compromise. Oh, with the world. Here is where Estar makes her move. Belle has given the opportunity. Estar comes in and makes the first move. Because the easiest thing to lead you into compromise is a lack of love for God and love for others in an ungodly way. That’s human nature. If you really love God and you love the Lord Jesus with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, your desire, your lust, opposite of desire, lust, desire. Your desire above all things would be to maintain his absolute honor.

If you maintain his absolute honor, what, whose honor are you maintaining? For you see, And to do that, you can’t compromise with the system. But as soon as you begin to cool your love of Christ, which means you’ve cooled your love for yourself, you get what I’m saying? Then it becomes easier to fall into the trap of their system. Just a tidbit on this. If you’re going to love something, which is how you’re built, okay, you’re going to worship something and you’re going to love something. And if it isn’t God, what takes his place is something around you.

Another organization, another individual opposite sex or not. Another ritualistic process. We get involved with yoga, Which if you spell it backwards, becomes a goddess name. So you’re going to do something. The question is, is what is that something? And when you then understand that you’re doing something in a different direction, the first thing you need to do is remember. The second thing you need to do is repent. And the third thing you need to do is to repeat the process continuously. I want to stop here. I’m going to have. I’m going to put the Bible study up with the.

With the posting of this discussion that will go through all of the churches. But if I start another church, we’ll be here till 12:30 and I’m not going to do that. But they’re going to be there for you so that you can continue studying on this topic. Because this is as I said last time, when you apply the understanding of the chapter 6 of Ephesians to this, this becomes your self assessment guide. And that is how you have to study the scripture in order to, to get the full understanding of what that scripture tells you. And I, I’ve just scratched the surface, guys.

We could go on and on and on and on about these two churches for days and what else it, it applies to. But what I wanted to do is I want to give you and I wanted to give you enough evidence of the scripture to understand that these seven churches in the first part of Revelation is your history. It’s your life. It was their life. The end. It’s your life today. We just looked at two of them. Wait till you get in th. You’re gonna tie, you’re gonna, you’ll, you’ll bust out the Roman Catholic church religious system, the Jesuit religious religious system, the Mormons, the Lutheran.

You, you’ll bust out all of it. So I’m going to stop here and open it up. What do you think? I know that it’s been maybe several years that we, you did the whole study of Revelation. And I know there were documents somewhere that I filled out going through my own self assessment based on the seven churches. Just as a reminder that for those that have not seen that, can you share where that’s, that’s in the library. Go to Revelation, you’ll find all of what we’ve taught in that area. Okay, so it is in the, I know, library, but yeah, it’s in the library here.

I’ll, I’ll pull it up, I’ll share my screen. I’ll show it directly to you. Yeah, that was a, that was a powerful study. Well, we did that to break out. We’re going to go back to it and pull it back up again. But okay, guys, you see my screen. This is the home page co op and you go into here, you go into ministry, Bible study, libraries. There’s Revelation, there’s everything that we’ve taught so far. And we broke out here to study Ephesians. And we’ll go back in here and we’re going to go back and review this.

We’re going to pick the churches back up again because every one of the churches we’re going to look at before we go into chapter four, we’re going to revisit all the churches, because why. That tells you what happened to the churches if they didn’t do what Ephesians told you to do. So that’s how it works. So that’s the reason why we broke out. Victoria. Hi there. I’m so glad you’re going in this direction. It’s fabulous. And I have a question about. We’d apply this to the job workplace as well. These principles. We’ve talked about this before.

Okay. And then also, I am grateful for zoom. You’re gonna laugh because I’m getting ready for work. I have a facial mask on. Oh my gosh. I’m glad I’m not showing my face. So I had to bring that up. And then also Trey had asked a question about the. The churches being actual physical locations, which I know you brought up on I think, Thursday night. Can you address that? Because I looked that up too, to. And everyone in the churches were physical churches in cities that exist. Some. Some of the cities still exist today, but they were physical churches.

There were actual synagogues in. In those territories. Right. And this is Turkey. Now. This is consider. Yeah, it’s all Asia Minor. Yeah. Pergamon is Turkey. Right. Okay. And interesting that Antichrist comes from Turkey with all these churches being there before. But it. Wasn’t it because of the trade? The trade? Yeah, it’s a trade route. I mean. But yeah, but they were not all in Turkey. Okay. They were not all in Turkey, but Pergamos was the seat of Satan is in Turkey in the town of Pergamus. Okay. Good reminder. Thank you. Yeah. Maria, can you hear me? Yeah.

Okay, great. Thank you. I just have a comment slash question of when you said that there was a church in Arizona that doing wife swap. What. What is that you mean. What does that mean? Like. Like that means it’s two married couples and you two deacons of the church swap their wives for a period of time. That’s crazy. That’s. That’s crazy. I’m just thinking that’s sick. I’m sorry. It’s just so sick. It’s not even scriptural. Anyway, I. I just wanted to make sure I heard you correctly that stuff like this does exist. Okay. Yeah. There was a TV show for a while that did something similar.

Oh, yeah? Yeah, yeah. Really? Oh, okay. What was the Turner broadcast? Tbn. The. Some of their headline pastors, so to speak, were doing that behind the scenes with other pastors wives. Oh, gosh. Now that you Mentioned tbn. My question is this Marcus Lamb. Okay, See, I heard that he did some horrendous things. No, it’s true. I don’t know if you heard it, but I heard it from Madison, Madison Marquette that he’s the pedal. I’m not going to get into to what churches are doing. What. But I’ve told you there were 5,800. I, I forgot the exact number.

I’ll just say over 5,800 of the United States church is signed a doctrine agreement with the Roman Catholic Church to pursue the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church, which is pedophile. Oh my God. So is, is that like in a document? Yeah, no, it’s a doc. It’s a signed document. Every passage put it out. Yeah. So there was a hole hoop to do in that came out sometime back, was identified. It was identified in the SB2 seral brain 2 stuff. If you want to go back and look at that was identified there. Lt picked up and did a decode on that.

It was a big deal between John MacArthur and school spoil. And there was a whole lot of uproar about this document floating around in the churches and what churches were going to sign it and not. And blah, blah, blah. So, yeah, you can go CNF on history about that inside the Internet. Okay, so that is a public. Yeah, it was a public thing. I mean, basically there were. People were discussing it all over the place while it was going on. Okay. All right. Do you happen to know what that site is? No, I don’t know. I.

This is, this is years ago, guys. I, I don’t, off the top of my head, have all of those sites memorized. I, you can go, you can, you know, you can go into McCarthy and do some research on McCarthy and the Roman Catholic Church agreement with US churches. You can go into CJ spoil and do the same thing. You can go look at seral grain 2 at history and go, you know, on and on and on. It’s out there. So I don’t have all of the sites identified. So every time you want to know a direction, here’s the site.

I, I don’t have that. So. But it’s there. Okay, thank you. Anything else, guys? Sure. Link sign up page. What? I’m sorry, can I, can I ask you something? Yeah, go ahead. I’m sorry, Are we still recording? Yes, hang on a moment. Oh, okay. No, Sorry. Anyway. All right, guys, anything else before we pray? All right, let’s pray. Father, thank you for coming with us today on a journey of your scripture. Thank you. For revealing not only yourself to us, but the meaning behind the Scriptures and an application that we’ve never been taught before. Thank you so much for opening our hearts and minds to the wisdom and knowledge of your truth.

May we ever apply it to our lives. May we seek now with the understanding of. Of how to look at these letters to the seven churches in a much different way. And we seek on our own how they apply to our lives. Not only do they apply to our lives, but how we duel off of the information to ward off the evil coming to us. Father, thank you for this family. Thank you for what you’ve given this family and worship and love to for each one of us. Thank you for the support that you give to all of us.

Thank you for your son dying on the cross and giving us the ability to go home. Father, be with us throughout the week. We pray for our government. We ask. We ask your intention to be placed on this week’s activities for the crossover that is going to be made. Provide protection. Provide for a mindset of the world ready to accept a degree of change that they have never gone through. Father, give us the strength and the wisdom and understanding that we know who is in charge. Give us peace that everything works to your good. And we ask all these things in my name.
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