This is chapter 3, verse 1, the Bible reads,
Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.
And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said? Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden.
Now this is the first time that we're introduced to Satan in the Bible.
Of course, we know that the serpent is Satan because later on in the Bible,
he's going to flat out tell us in the book of Revelation that he laid hold on the dragon,
that old serpent, which is the devil and Satan, had bound him a thousand years.
So we see that Satan here starts out right away by asking the first question in the Bible.
He questions God's word.
He doesn't come to her and just blatantly lie to her and tell her,
you know, God didn't really say that and it's all lie.
He comes out and first just puts a question in her mind and says,
Yea, hath God said? Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden.
So the first thing we see the devil do in the Bible is number one,
he attacks the word of God and number two,
he tries to put doubt and question in our mind about what God's word actually said.
Now the big thing where this would apply to us today
is with all these different versions of the Bible that are out there.
They are a blatant attack on God's word.
When you have a man changing the Bible and twisting it to fit our current culture,
not just updating the language,
but changing it, softening it to fit our culture,
also corrupting it with Catholic manuscripts to bring in false doctrine.
That is the most blatant attack of Satan on the word of God that exists today in 2012.
Now we've gone through many times the many errors
and the many falsehoods that are in these modern perversions of the Bible.
Like for example, the NIB, the New American Standard.
But besides the fact that they just change things and corrupt things and bring in false doctrine,
not only that, they break question upon God's word.
For example, when you're reading along in the NIB for example,
and most of the modern verses do the same thing,
you get to Mark chapter 16 and you read about the resurrection of Christ
and when you get to verse 8, it comes in and says,
Well, the oldest most reliable manuscripts and many ancient witnesses
do not have verses 9 through 20.
So right away, they're putting doubt in your mind.
Yea hath, God said.
And you say, well, what's so important about that?
Well, there's nothing really too important in that section anyway.
Like the verse that says,
Go ye therefore into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.
For example, the verse that's up on the wall here,
that verse is one of the ones that they're trying to cast doubt on and say,
Yea hath, God said.
Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.
You say, well Pastor, there are other verses that say the same thing.
You know, the NIB and many of these modern verses have eradicated a lot of these verses.
I sat in a youth group one time and the youth pastor in an NIB preaching church,
he told me that the Bible didn't command us to preach the gospel to every creature.
And I was angry because I knew that it was in there and I didn't know my Bible very well.
I was just a teenager and I hadn't read it much.
And I'm flipping through it. I'm trying to find it.
Because I wanted to show him and I knew it was going to be at the end of the Gospels.
So I wanted to show him that he was wrong
and that the Bible does command us to preach the gospel to every creature.
So I started Matthew. I flipped to Matthew.
I said, okay, it's going to be at the end of the Gospels.
I remember that, the Great Commission.
I went to Matthew and I said, well right here it says, teach all nations.
Baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son.
He said, no, no, no. It says make disciples.
Because the NIV changes teach all nations to make disciples.
He didn't tell us to preach to everybody. He just tells us to make disciples.
And I said, okay, I went to Mark and I turned to Mark
and I found where it said, go ye ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.
He said, no, no, no. That was added later.
It says right here that the early manuscripts don't even have that.
And that it was later added.
And it's nonsense. It's lies.
But you see, they put doubt in your mind.
You're reading the book of John. You get to John 753 and it tells you,
John 753 to chapter 8 verse 11, those 12 verses they say have been added.
They're not in the oldest manuscript.
And when they say the oldest manuscript, they're talking about some Catholic manuscript
that they found in a garbage can in a monastery.
And they say that's the oldest one. That's the most reliable.
Even though people have crossed things out in it and changed stuff right there in the manuscript,
they say that's the most reliable.
And I'm not going to go into all the archaeology behind it to prove how foolish it is.
But the bottom line is this.
The devil wants to get you to question whether the book that you have in your hand is really God's Word.
And he wants you to think that you can't find God's Word accurately.
He wants you to think that these versions are just maybe the best we've got
or maybe they're in the ballpark. You get the gist of it.
But you've really got to go back to the original language.
And then when you try to go back to the original language, they tell you,
well, there's all these different manuscripts. You don't really know which one.
And then you've got to learn a foreign language.
And then you're not really sure if you learned that language right to really know.
And so the devil wants to get people confused and doubting and not sure what to believe.
He's trying to cast doubt upon God's Word.
That's what he's doing today.
Because if you doubt God's Word, you're going to be ineffective in every area.
You're not going to be a powerful soul winner
if you're doubting whether what you're showing people is really exactly right
or if it's closed or if it's a little bit off.
And so the devil has always been in the business of getting people to question God's Word.
He's very subtle. He doesn't just blatantly come out and do it.
He doesn't just come over and hand you a Bible that says,
The Satanic Bible by Anton LaVey. Here's your new Bible.
You're not going to accept that.
But the New International Version and the English Standard Version and the Living Bible.
Now, I read an interesting article this week.
Just this week, the Southern Baptist Convention voted to reject the new NIV.
Because the NIV came out in 1984 in its existing form.
But then they came out with a new version just in 2010 where they made a lot of changes.
Well, I didn't really think too much of it because the first NIV was trash.
The same people made the second NIV. It's going to be trash once again.
It's the same people making it, the same people putting it out.
And so I looked up a few verses in it and they changed a lot of stuff.
Because I looked up a few verses in it and they were different than the 1984 version.
Because, for example, the NIV tells you to beat yourself and then the new NIV tells you to strike a blow to your body.
So they're both telling you to beat yourself just two different ways.
My Bible, that's 1 Corinthians 9.27.
My King James Bible, the only person who's ever beating themselves is the prophets of Baal.
When they're cutting themselves and hurting themselves.
The Bible doesn't teach you to cut yourself and beat yourself.
That's a Satanic doctrine. It's found in the NIV. It's found in the Roman Catholic Church.
And so the Southern Baptist Church denomination has rejected the new NIV.
And they said, we do not condone of it. We will not accept it. It's not acceptable in our churches.
And they said it's because of the gender neutral language.
Because I guess this new NIV is taking out words like, you know, he, him, brother, father, son, and making it all gender neutral.
And they said, no, you're corrupting God's word. You're perverting God's word.
Hey, Southern Baptist Convention, it was perverted back in 1984.
And listen, Southern Baptist Convention, the same people who perverted it in 1984 are the same people who perverted it in 2010.
So maybe this will wake up some Southern Baptists, I'm hoping, to say, wait a minute.
If our denomination is rejecting this version because it's corrupt and the same people put out the one we've been using.
Maybe we should stop and see if that one's corrupt.
Because I'll tell you right now, a lot of the Southern Baptists I've been around and a lot of the denominational Baptists, it's a free for all anything goes as far as the version.
They accept all versions. At least now they're rejecting one version.
And maybe that will get them to stop and think, maybe we'll reject two.
And then maybe they'll figure out that the King James Bible is the word of God and that everything else is a Catholic corruption of the Bible.
And I hope that they'll figure that out.
But at least they're drawing the line somewhere on a gender neutral Bible that the new 2010 NIV is trying to be and trying to ease people into.
But let's keep reading. So he's questioning the word of God. He's putting doubt in your mind.
What's the opposite of faith? Doubt.
God is telling us throughout the Bible, have faith, have faith, believe, believe, believe, have faith, have faith.
So how does the devil attack it? Doubt. Question it. You're not sure. You wonder if it's true.
I hope I'm going to heaven. I hope the Bible's true. That's not what God wants us to think.
So he says, Yea, hath God said? I'm not saying he did. I'm just asking.
Yea, hath God said? Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?
Now, look how he phrases this question. Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden. Is that really what God said?
No. God said, of all the trees of the garden that may freely eat, except one.
He makes it sound like they can't eat much. Oh, he's not letting you eat every tree?
You mean God? He's emphasizing the negative. Oh, he doesn't let you eat everything?
And the woman said unto the serpent, she kind of corrects it a little bit here, it says,
We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden,
God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.
And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die.
Now, he doesn't say ye shall not die. Notice, he says you're not for sure going to die.
You see how he is, though? He puts down, he just kind of eases you into things.
First, he just questions you're not surely, ye shall not surely die. Are you really sure that that's going to happen?
And he says, Ye shall not surely die, for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof,
that your eyes shall be open, and ye shall be as God's knowing good and evil.
Now, we need to understand this. The Bible says we're not ignorant of Satan's devices.
And we can see the way he's working here and the thought process that he's using is a thought process that he's still using today.
Basically, trying to get you to feel like God isn't fair. He's restricting me from something that's good for me.
And in fact, he's withholding from me something just because he wants to keep me down.
Now, this is what he'll tell children and teenagers. You know, their parents have rules that are biblical rules that are for their own good.
And the devil's going to come along and tell them, Oh, your parents just don't want you to have all the fun.
And your parents just, they want to keep you dumb and ignorant so that they can control you.
They just don't want you to know all about the world.
And I've even heard this from a lot of the libertarian drug crowd.
And I believe in libertarian principles when they're founded on the Bible.
Which real liberty and real freedom is based on the Bible.
But I believe in freedom. I believe in an extremely minimal government.
But I'll tell you right now, a lot of people, they think that just because things should be legal, that we should do it.
Now, I think that a lot of stuff should be legal. I don't think the government should control our lives.
But that doesn't mean that I'm going to go out and do stupid things.
And it doesn't mean that I'm going to guide my children to do stupid things.
I just believe in personal responsibility.
So for example, I'm not going to take any drugs and my children are not going to take drugs.
Now, I'm not saying that it's my job or anybody else's job to babysit what other people do.
But I'll tell you right now, drugs are harmful and they're of Satan and they're not of God.
The Bible commands us, be sober, be sober, be sober.
And drugs are wicked.
But I've heard a lot of people tell you, oh, you've got to take drugs because it's going to open your mind.
Who's heard that background? Have you heard that kind of an argument?
If you take drugs, and I've heard this from a lot of these atheistic drug people.
And they'll tell you, if you take drugs, it's such an experience that will just help you to grow as a person.
I've heard people say that.
And they'll say, the government doesn't want you to take drugs because they don't want you to open your mind.
That's a lie. It's a lie.
The government doesn't want you to take drugs because they want to sell you the drugs.
The thing is, it's a nonsensical lie.
But young people, they hear that and they're foolish and they'll try drugs because they think it's good,
and they're going to travel to another dimension, and they can be like all their favorite rock stars.
That's where all these rock stars, they came up with all these great songs.
Because they were under the influence of drugs.
If you're going to be a great artist, you can come up with a bunch of stupid stuff that doesn't make sense when you're on drugs.
Wow. Newsflash.
But you know what? Drugs are not opening your mind.
Drugs are destroying your mind, even chemically.
They're damaging your brain. They're going to make you stupid.
And yet people believe into the devil's lies that tells them that taking drugs is going to open up their mind,
and they're going to see all these new possibilities.
Look, I wouldn't touch drugs with a 10-foot pole.
I will not smoke marijuana. I will not take methamphetamine.
What are the drugs that people take now? What is the big drug that people take?
Cocaine.
Heroin.
Ecstasy and LSD and all this stuff.
I've seen a lot of people who have fried their brain on drugs.
And it could happen to you. Yeah, prescription drugs.
A lot of people take a lot of prescription drugs, and they abuse prescription drugs.
I'm not saying that you would never need any prescription medication in your life.
That's not what I'm saying.
But I'm saying that most of the prescription drugs that are given out,
people are abusing them, people are hooked on them, people are taking way too many drugs,
and they're taking mind-altering drugs recreationally under the guise of a prescription,
or they're buying...nowadays, they're getting prescriptions on the Internet,
calling some doctor in Canada, and he's shipping them drugs.
You know, go to Mexico and get drugs.
Look, don't be deceived by drugs, my friend.
And people out there will try to lie to you and say,
oh, you're going to be like gods, knowing good and evil.
I mean, I've heard this guy.
When I asked, a lot of hands went up.
They've heard the same type of arguments for drugs.
I'm not buying it. I'm sorry.
I've seen people take drugs, and they weren't like gods.
They were being an idiot.
So anyway...
And people come up, well, I'm not going to go on a beef drug thing, but anyway.
You know what I'm saying.
So the devil's going to use the same type of lies to try to get you to do things here.
One of the things he tries to use is her curiosity.
And I talked about this on Sunday, how curiosity can lead you into a lot of sin.
So it says, when the woman saw that the tree was good for food
and that it was pleasant to the eyes and a tree to be desired to make one wise,
she took up the fruit thereof and did eat.
And notice how in the same breath that she's eating, not even a new sentence.
And gave also under her husband with her, and he did eat.
So you notice that when people are involved in sin, they love to include other people in their sin.
Misery loves company.
And you'll notice that whenever people are in sin, they always want to get other people to participate with them
because it makes them feel better.
I remember when I worked at Round Table Pizza as a teenager.
And when I turned 18, I was offered $200 from my co-workers
if I would go with them to the strip club, since I guess you had to be 18 to get in or something like that.
And so they said, you're 18, we will give you 200 bucks cash right now
if you'll go with us to the strip club.
Because they knew I was a Christian, they knew I was straight-laced,
and they thought it would just be so fun to take me somewhere like that.
Why? Because they want to drag me down to their level. That's why.
Because people hate it when they see the righteous.
And look, why did Cain hate Abel in chapter 4?
Why did Cain slay Abel?
Because his own works were evil and his brothers righteous.
And marvel not, my brethren, if the world hates you.
They don't like to be reproved.
They don't like to see an example of someone who's living for God.
Because they want to tell themselves, oh, everybody's in sin.
It's like people who take steroids that are happy.
Oh, everybody takes steroids.
Everybody drinks, everybody does drugs, everybody fornicates.
No, everybody doesn't.
No, they don't.
But they want everybody to do it.
And so that's why they try to get other people into their sin with them.
And that's what Eve does.
She obviously knew she's doing something wrong.
And so she instantly wants to get somebody else involved in it too.
And Adam takes up the fruit and didn't eat.
Now the Bible tells us in 1 Timothy chapter 2,
the woman was deceived, referring to Eve.
The woman being deceived...
I'm sorry, what am I...
I'm trying to quote this verse and I'm...
For Adam was not deceived, there we go.
But the woman being deceived was in a transgression.
Am I quoting that right?
I'm seeing some people nodding, so I'll just trust you.
I'm trying to quote it right.
Anyway, the Bible says Adam was not deceived.
Adam willfully just knew what he was doing
and he hearkened to the voice of his wife
and ate of the fruit just because she told him to,
just because she wanted him to.
He gave in to that peer pressure and ate it.
She was deceived.
She actually believed Satan's lies.
Adam did not.
He just willfully sinned anyway
because he wanted to obey his wife or please his wife
or whatever the case was there.
Now, what was this lie that Satan told Eve?
He said in verse 5,
For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof,
then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods,
knowing good and evil.
Now, was that a complete utter lie
or was there some truth in that?
Well, go to the end of the chapter, if you would,
and look down at verse number 22.
The Bible reads in verse 22,
And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us,
to know good and evil.
So was there some truth in what the devil was saying?
Yeah.
Now, it was a total truth, but there was some truth.
Now, most lies are based on the truth, loosely.
You see, if a lie is just way out of the left field
and has nothing to do with the truth,
people aren't going to believe in it.
But the lies that are the most effective
are when you take the truth and you twist it.
And I've heard people say this.
They say, if you're going to lie,
keep your lie as close to the truth as possible.
Have you ever heard people say that?
Stay as close to the truth as possible
because the further out you get,
it's going to be hard to even remember what you lied.
You know, it's like the old saying goes,
Oh, what a tangled web we weave
when at first we practice to deceive.
You know, because usually when you lie,
then you've got to tell another lie to keep the lie going,
and then you've got to lie again and lie again.
But I was reading a book,
The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
about the Soviet concentration camp system.
He's talking about being an interrogation,
you know, enhanced interrogations,
where he's being tormented by these Soviet lords.
And basically, he's saying that, you know,
you're trying to protect people.
You don't want to implicate people
because if anybody just was criticizing the Soviet Union,
you know, they're going to be arrested and tortured
and thrown in prison.
So he said, you know, you're trying to cover for people,
but he said, you know, you've got to keep it
as close to the truth as possible
because, you know, you want your stories to line up
and everything like that.
And so the best lie is the one that's as close
to the truth as possible.
Look, the devil is the father of lies.
He's the master of lying.
You know, Jesus Christ is the truth.
He said, I am the truth.
The devil, on the other hand, is the father of lies.
And so he's a master liar.
And the devil knows that you've got to keep the lie
as close to the truth as possible
in order to deceive, in order to suck people in.
And so he tells something that is fairly true,
but he's twisting it a little bit saying,
well, God just doesn't want you to do it
because he knows that, no, that's not a lie.
God doesn't want to do it because it's sin
and because it's going to kill them
because they're going to die.
The devil leaves that out and tells a half truth.
He tells a partial truth in order to get her
to take up the fruit and eat it.
Now, it says in verse 7,
the eyes and them both were open.
That is the result that takes place
when they eat the fruit, as Satan said.
And they knew that they were naked.
And they sewed fig leaves together
and made themselves apron.
Now, before this point,
they really had no concept of being naked.
They didn't really understand the concept
of being naked versus being clothed.
They were man and wife.
So there was nothing wrong with them being naked
with one another.
They were the only people living on the planet.
And they didn't really have a concept
of being ashamed of not having any clothes on.
It's sort of like a little child.
A little baby just runs around naked, you know,
and you tell them,
Oh, put your clothes on.
Put your diaper back on.
Put your shirt on.
And they have to be taught that at that young age.
It's just what you say.
Oh, they're just innocent at that age, right?
They don't know any better.
They don't think anything of it.
They don't have any corrupt thoughts about that.
And so that was the situation here.
But when they eat the fruit,
now they know they're naked and they're embarrassed.
They don't want to be naked in front of God.
They're just a little bit nervous about it.
And so it says that they sewed fig leaves together
and made themselves aprons.
Now, an apron doesn't sound very modest, you know.
I mean, I'm going to wear more than an apron, personally,
if I want to be fully clothed.
And they heard the voice of the Lord God
walking in the garden in the cool of the day.
And Adam and his wife hid themselves
from the presence of the Lord God
amongst the trees of the garden.
And the Lord God called on to Adam and said to him,
Where art thou?
And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden
and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself.
Now, is he wearing a fig leaf apron?
Yeah.
But he says I'm naked, you know,
because he knew that it wasn't covering him properly.
And I guess that's where they get those pictures
of Adam and Eve with the little fig leaf.
But it says, I heard thy voice,
I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself.
And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked?
Hast thou eaten of the tree
where have I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?
And right away, before he even answers the question,
yes I did, he starts to blame someone else.
And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me.
So in a way, he's blaming God.
Like, well, you gave her to me
and she gave unto me and I did eat.
It said, The woman who thou gavest to be with me,
she gave me of the tree and I did eat.
And the Lord God said unto the woman,
What is this that thou hast done?
And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me and I did eat.
So notice the blame.
He goes to Adam and Adam says,
Well, it was her.
And then he goes to her, Okay, what did you do?
Oh, it was the serpent.
He tricked me. He beguiled me.
And this is the same way people are today.
They try to blame other people.
And you know, Job referred to this when he said,
If I cover my sin as Adam.
And look, God knows the truth
and we ought not blame other people when we do wrong.
We ought to take responsibility for our sins
because we can always blame somebody else.
And there's a philosophy that's found among liberals
where they say man is basically good
but it's society that's bad.
Have you ever heard that teaching before?
You know, and some of that comes out of the French Enlightenment also.
This teaching that man is basically good and society ruins it.
But the thing that's so silly about that is that
man makes up society.
So if everybody started out good all the way along the way,
who started messing people up?
I mean, where is the source? Was it the animals?
Well, it must have been the serpent, right?
And it's silly.
And you say, oh, it's just all our environment that ruins us
because man is so good on the inside.
It's the environment, but the environment is made by man.
So that's man messing up man.
So that doesn't make any sense.
You say, well, you know, it's his parents.
They're the ones.
Well, why were his parents bad?
Oh, because their parents were bad.
And why were their parents bad?
Because of their parents.
And then pretty soon you trace it all the way back to Adam and Eve.
And why were they bad?
Well, because the serpent begot it.
So there you have it.
And so you see how silly that is?
You know, somewhere, somebody's got to decide,
I'm going to do what's right.
I don't care what my mom and my dad did.
And the Bible says many times, be not as your fathers,
which were sinful and idolatrous.
You need to stop and break that cycle.
And don't just blame, oh, my mother.
And this is what psychiatry is today.
You know, isn't this the Sigmund Freud, you know,
tell me about your mother?
It's all your mom.
That's what it all goes back to.
Your mom messed you up when you were a kid.
But you know what?
You can overcome that.
I can do all things through Christ which strengthened me.
This cycle, Bible, is about blaming other people.
And then you even see serial killers and pedophiles blaming someone else.
Oh, I got picked on on the playground.
Or, oh, my mom bought me shoes that were too tight for me when I was a kid.
They always have an excuse why they became a psycho killer.
There's no excuse for sin.
When you sin, the Bible says, let no man say when he's tempted,
I'm tempted of God.
For God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempted to any man.
But every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed.
Then when lust is conceived, it bringeth forth sin,
and sin when it is finished, bringeth forth death.
That sounds like it's your fault when you sin.
It sounds like it's your lust, it's your heart that went wrong.
And so they begin to blame each other, so God begins to put a curse on them.
He said in verse number 14, first of all, he curses the serpent.
And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this,
thou art cursed above all cattle and above every beast of the field.
Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.
Now, this makes it sound as if perhaps the serpent, before this time,
did not go on its belly and did not eat dust all the days of its life.
As in, it might have had legs or wings or some other way to move around.
Now, I'm not an expert on science.
I'm not really a big science guy.
You know, different people have different interests and focuses and talents.
You know, I'm just not really that into science, to be honest with you.
But I've heard it said by many people, and I've seen this,
that a snake has like some kind of a tailbone
or some kind of an apparatus similar to where legs would be.
Has anybody heard about that?
Put up your hand if you've heard about that or if you know a little bit about it.
Does anybody want to tell me a little bit about that
or did you just know a little bit about it?
I'm trying to put you on the spot right now.
But I've been told it had a pelvis, and I heard an evolution guy trying to explain it.
But I don't see how you could really explain that with evolution.
Why would you just evolve a pelvis when you're a snake and you have no legs?
And if you used to have legs, why would you evolve them away
so that you could crawl around and eat dirt all your days?
I mean, if the snake used to have legs, why would it lose it?
And then they say, no, no, no, it just didn't get the legs.
It was just starting to think about getting huge.
What?
Really, this goes to the core of evolution.
How did any of these animals develop their body parts over millions of years?
Well, first I'm going to get a pelvis and just see how that feels for the next few million years.
Get my pelvis nice and naturally selected.
Then I'm going to just bring out some legs and so forth.
If a snake has a pelvis, that pretty much is something that evolution is not going to be able to explain
in a rational way.
And so it would be explained by this, though.
If it used to have legs and God took the legs away and left the pelvis behind to confound evolution.
And so I thought that was interesting.
But I'll have to do a little more research and study on that, whether it actually has a pelvis or not.
But that's what I've heard and a few other people have heard it, so it must be true.
No, I'm just kidding.
I'll look it up. I'm going to confirm that.
But he said you're going to crawl on your belly.
So he's cursing the actual animal, the serpent, to crawl upon its belly.
And then he says in verse 15,
And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed.
It shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.
Now, what is this referring to?
The it shall bruise thy head.
Sometimes with pronouns in the Bible we can get a little confused.
Who are these pronouns referring to?
So let's stop and think about it for a second.
Who is the it referring to?
The enmity?
The it? Because it says,
I will put enmity between thy seed, or between thee and the woman,
and between thy seed and her seed, it shall bruise thy head.
The it shall bruise thy head is her seed.
Just to help you out with that.
Her seed shall bruise thy head.
Keep thy finger, your finger, sorry I'm speaking King James.
Keep your finger in Genesis chapter 2 and go to Romans chapter 16.
When you read the Bible a lot you start calling people now sometimes by accident.
But hold thy finger in Genesis 3 and go to Romans 16.
Romans 16 verse 20, this is an interesting verse in the New Testament,
referring back to Genesis 3.
It says in Romans 16, 20,
And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet.
Do you see that?
The God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly.
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen.
So, we see there that the children of God, the saints,
those who are saved are told in Romans chapter 16,
that's who the book of Romans is written to according to chapter 1.
He says to all the saints,
those who are saved, he says that Satan will be bruised under their feet shortly at that time.
So, what is this referring to?
Well, it's referring to the seed of the woman.
Now, the seed of the woman is also referring unto Jesus Christ.
And it's also referring unto us because we're in Christ.
And it just says we are Abraham's seed.
The Bible says in Galatians 3 unto Abraham and to his seed where the promise is made.
He's saying not seeds as of many but one, seed, Christ.
And he said if you're Christ's, you're Abraham's seed.
Well, the woman's seed is also Christ.
Christ is going to be the one who's going to conquer Satan
by dying on the cross and rising from the dead,
victorious over sin and death, holding the keys of hell and of death.
And we are in Christ and Satan will also be bruised under our feet as well.
That's what this is referring to.
This is referring to the fact that Satan being defeated by Jesus Christ
and by those who are in Christ, the followers of Jesus Christ,
the saints of Christ.
The Bible talks about in Revelation 12-11, for example, about the saints, the saved.
They overcame him, they overcame Satan by the blood of the lamb
and by the word of their testimony and they loved not their lives under the death.
And so it says in verse number 15,
I will put enmity between thee and the woman and between thy seed and her seed.
Now you say, who is the thy seed? Satan's seed.
Does Satan have seed or does Satan have children?
Well, absolutely, because God says of many people,
for example, the Pharisees, Jesus said, you're of your father the devil.
And he said when they would go out and make converts or proselytes,
it would make them twofold more the child of hell than themselves.
And so the Bible talks about the children of Satan.
He said that there were the tares that grew up among the wheat
and he said that the wheat, the good seed, is sowed by the Son of Man.
But it says the tares are the children of the wicked one.
So does Satan have children? Oh yeah.
People on this earth who are reprobates, who are wicked,
vile reprobates are the children of Satan according to the Bible.
And when a person embraces and espouses false religion,
not just somebody who is deceived by a false religion like the apostle Paul was deceived.
He did it ignorantly and unbelief.
Or people are deceived today by Islam or Catholicism or Judaism
or any number of other false religions.
You know, a lot of people are just deceived and they're ignorant of the truth.
We need to preach the gospel to them and get them saved.
But many people just embrace the lie and become what the Bible calls a false prophet.
And those people the Bible calls the children of Satan.
They're reprobate concerning the faith.
And so he says here that there will be enmity between Satan's seed
and between the seed of the woman, which would be those that are in Christ.
It shall bruise thy head, saying that the seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head,
and thou shalt bruise his heel.
So there's going to be some injury done by the devil unto Jesus Christ,
the seed of the woman, and also unto God's people.
Obviously, the devil's crowd was involved in beating up Jesus,
bidding upon him, putting the crown of thorns on his head.
And also treating his followers the same way, torturing them, killing them,
throwing them to prison throughout history.
But he's not going to defeat them.
I mean, think about it.
Would you rather have your head bruised or your heel bruised?
Would you rather be stepped on or would you rather be the one doing the stepping?
I mean, think about it.
Would you rather be stepping on someone's head and,
ow, I hurt my foot a little bit?
Or would you rather be the one that somebody steps on...
You know, it's like the old joke where the guy comes in and his face is all beat up.
He says, you should see the other guy's hands.
You know, I did a number on him too.
It says in verse 16, so that was the curse upon Satan.
It says in verse 16, unto the woman, he said,
I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception.
So as a result of this curse, because of her sin,
her punishment is that her sorrow is going to be multiplied, right?
Now, is sorrow a good thing?
No, I mean, sorrow is something that you don't want to have.
It means you're sad, you're sorry, you're going through something that's not pleasant.
He said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception.
Now, he said he's going to multiply her conception.
Basically, she's going to conceive more frequently, is what it sounds like,
and it's going to be sorrowful.
In sorrow, thou shalt break forth children,
and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.
So what's he saying here?
He's saying, look, you're going to multiply,
you're going to have a lot of conception, you're going to have a lot of seed,
and it's going to be a sorrowful thing.
There's going to be sorrow involved with you bringing up these children.
And then the other part of the curse was that
her desire would be to her husband, and he would rule over her.
Now, what is this talking about?
Now, I personally think that what he's saying here,
when he says he's going to multiply the sorrow and sorrow,
you're going to bring forth children,
is probably referring to the pain in childbearing,
because he says in sorrow you're going to bring forth children.
And when the Bible used the word bring forth,
it's talking about giving birth.
So he's saying you're going to give birth in sorrow.
And the Bible also talks about that when a woman is in travail,
she's in pain, she's suffering, and she's in great sorrow.
But then once the child's born, she forgaveth all that sorrow
for the joy that a man's brought into the world.
Giving birth is not a pleasant experience for women.
They say that it is the most excruciating pain.
They say that a heart attack and kidney stones and childbirth
are three things that I heard a doctor say that he believed
were the most painful things you could go through.
And this is part of the curse upon women,
that they're going to have a painful childbirth.
And it's a lot of pain.
Now not only that, but my wife and a lot of other ladies too,
while they're pregnant, get very sick.
And my wife gets extremely sick,
and then she is vomiting and in miserable pain.
They call it morning sickness.
She has it the whole day long in the first part of her pregnancy.
And she has Eve to blame for that.
But let it go. It's been 6,200 years. Let it go.
But honestly, this is something that God planned and God created.
So do women go through pain during childbirth by accident?
No.
This is something that's planned by God.
This is something ordained by God.
So the question then becomes, and don't get all mad at me,
I'm not up here saying anything, I'm just saying,
is it really right to take narcotics while you're having a baby?
If you're just having a baby normally,
the way that God created you to have a baby,
is it right for you to take narcotics while you're having a baby?
You decide. You throw that one around.
Because God's saying, this is what's going to happen.
This is part of what I've ordained here upon the female population.
You say, that's easy for you to say.
Well, God originally said that he's a man.
Are you going to get mad at him? Because he didn't give birth.
And so I'll tell you right now, my wife, she gives birth.
She does not take narcotics.
When she gives birth, she does not take drugs and painkillers.
And part of the reason why she doesn't do it,
and women get really mad about this stuff,
and I don't want any women to get mad at me, just go get mad.
Take it out on somebody else.
I don't want to hear it.
Because I'm telling the truth right now.
And what I'm about to say is offensive, but it's the truth.
If you put narcotics into your body while you're pregnant,
then those narcotics are going to the baby as well.
Just something to think about.
Anyway, I'm preaching the Bible tonight. That's the way I read it.
And you say, I don't agree with you. Well, then have your opinion.
But I'm up here preaching what I believe.
And I've been reading this book for a long time.
But he says, also he says, thy desire shall be to thy husband,
and he shall rule over thee.
Now, this is another aspect of God's curse upon the woman,
is that the husband would rule over her.
Now, we know that this carries forward into the New Testament,
because God clearly preaches in the New Testament
that the husband is the head of the wife, and so forth.
But again, this is one where women would like to seek to
reverse the curse of God here, and say,
no, he's not going to rule over me.
Before he said, he shall rule over thee, what about the first part?
Thy desire shall be to thy husband.
Now, here's a little tip for you guys.
Did you know that your wife is designed to be ruled over?
You say, oh, how can you use it?
Well, that's what the Bible says.
I mean, literally, if I said, I rule over my wife,
people would say, like, you're insane! You're nuts!
You're a man! You're a male humanist pig!
You're misogynistic!
Yes, I'm a ruler.
That's what the Bible says.
It says, he shall rule over thee.
It doesn't say, he shall be thy 50-50 partner.
It says, he shall rule over thee.
And look, but notice, he says,
thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.
You see, women, the way they're designed by God,
they desire for a man to rule over them.
Did you hear me?
They desire for a man, that's why they don't like weak men.
That's why you see men who are weak and sissy.
That's not what women want.
And you see a husband and wife, where the husband is impact,
and he does whatever his wife tells him to do,
she loses all respect for him.
She don't respect him.
And you see a strong man, and you see a wife that respects him.
Now women will sometimes try to take over the home,
and they'll try to take over in situations,
and be in authority.
But you know what, they're just testing you.
They want you to rule.
Because they find security in that also.
They like to know that they're married to a strong man
that's going to rule over them and lead them.
They don't like a weak man.
And a lot of men, the mistake they're making is,
they think they can just placate their wife all the time.
But then their wife sees them as just weak.
They have no backbone.
And so you've got to stand up and be a man and take the lead.
And honestly, this is the way our society used to be.
In our culture, in our society, it used to be
men would open the door for ladies.
Sometimes you open the door and they're offended
that you're opening the door for them.
I knew it myself.
We live in a weird society.
Men used to go to the restaurant and they'd order for their wife.
They walk in and they order for her.
They'll find out what she wants and they'll order the food.
They'll take care of all that.
They'll take the lead, they'll take the leadership role.
They'll make decisions and they'll step forward and be in charge.
I still believe in that stuff.
That's biblical and that's what women desire.
On the outside, they may say,
I want to be free and liberated.
But you know what? They're miserable like that.
Yeah, they want to be free and liberated,
but they want you to tell them no.
They want to ask and be told no.
This is Pastor Anderson's seminar on what women want.
How to get along with your wife.
But anyway, it's true.
It's true. That's what the Bible says.
And look, he says he shall rule over thee.
Now look at verse 17.
You say, well, what's the deal?
All this curse upon the woman.
Well, there's a curse on the man too.
In verse 17, we see the curse upon the man.
What was the curse upon the woman?
She's going to sorrowfully break forth each other.
Now why in the world would a woman have sorrow
about bringing four children if it's painless?
Think about it.
Children are a blessing.
And the Bible says when the child's born, it's not sorrow, it's joy.
He said you shall have sorrow.
He explained to the disciples.
And look, you're going to have sorrow for a while,
but your sorrow is eventually going to be turned into joy.
And he said, I've got an illustration for you.
It's like a woman giving birth.
She has sorrow.
And then when the child's born, her sorrow is turned into joy.
And you know, I've seen my wife give birth.
I watched all six of my children be born.
And I noticed that just there's an instant...
I mean, she goes from just being in agony, horrible pain, horrible suffering,
just instantly just joy, like that.
I mean, within seconds, she's just so happy.
She goes from being extremely sorrowful to extremely joyful like that.
So the Bible says that the curse upon the woman
is that he's going to multiply her conception and her sorrow.
She's going to give birth painfully.
And her husband's going to rule over her
and she's going to have a desire unto her husband.
Now the curse upon the man is this.
And the Adam said, because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife,
and is eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it,
cursed is the ground for thy sake,
and sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life.
Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee,
and thou shalt eat the herb of the field,
and the sweat of thy face shalt they eat bread,
shall they eat bread, till thou return unto the ground,
for out of it was thou taken,
for dust thou art and of the dust shalt thou return.
So what's the curse upon the man?
Well, the woman's sorrow is in child-bearing.
The man's sorrow is in having to work very hard to make a living.
He's got to work by the sweat of his face all the days of his life.
He's got to go out there and sweat and work and toil,
and it's going to be hard.
It's not going to be easy.
Now some people live on an easy street
and they have a silver spoon in their mouth
and some people take drugs and don't feel pain during childbirth.
But you know what?
Your average man, your average woman,
this is what their life's going to be like.
You know, the man's going to be out slaving and working and sweating and toiling,
and the wife is going to go through the pain
that is allotted to her gender by giving birth.
This is life.
This is the result of sin in our world.
This is why there's pain in the world.
This is why there's sorrow in the world.
This is why there's suffering in the world.
It's a result of man's sin.
It's a punishment that we go through.
Man, we go through it every day when we're out working hard,
and ladies go through it when they're giving birth unto children.
He said that also they're going to return to the dust.
He said, you're dust?
I made you out of dust and you're going to return to the dust.
He's also going to die.
Now of course he told them that in the day that he ate therapy,
we'd surely die.
He died spiritually.
The Bible teaches that before we're saved,
our spirit is dead in trespasses and sins.
Then it's quickened when we get saved.
But also a physical death would take place.
Now let me go a little further with the physical death in a moment.
Let's come back to the physical death of our returning to the dust.
Look at verse 21.
It says,
So he replaces the apron with a coat of skins.
Why is this significant?
Because in order to make a coat of skin, you have to do what?
You have to kill an animal.
And had there been any death of an animal up to this point?
So right away the result of sin is death.
An animal's death.
Which is symbolic of the animal death that would be the lamb
that would be sacrificed on an altar,
picturing the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ,
which had taken away the sin of the world.
So he made the coats of skins a picture of putting on.
If the animal that was killed represented Christ,
did the animal sin?
No.
But the animal was killed as a substitute,
picturing Jesus Christ our substitute.
And the coats of skins picture us putting on
the righteousness of Jesus Christ as a covering for our sin.
You know, putting on,
basically being covered by the blood of Jesus Christ,
covered by his righteousness,
putting on the robe of righteousness
that we receive from him.
The word robe and coat in the Bible are used interchangeably.
That's what that coat symbolized.
It symbolized putting on Jesus Christ's righteousness,
as Paul said in Philippians 3,
not having my own righteousness which is of the law.
It's not like I kept the laws of God,
because we've all sinned and come short of the glory of God.
But he said,
not having my own righteousness which is of the law,
but that which is through the faith of Christ,
the righteousness which is of God by faith.
The righteousness of Jesus Christ has been imputed unto us when we get saved.
That cloak of righteousness is put on when we get saved,
and God sees that and does not condemn us for our sins.
Look at verse 22.
And the Lord God said,
Behold, the man has become as one of us to know good and evil.
And now lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life,
and eat and live forever...
Now hold on a second.
That right there is saying that if he did put forth his hand
and continue to eat of the tree of life, he would what?
Live forever.
He would live forever.
So eating of the tree of life would keep man alive forever.
And he says,
Now that the man has become as one of us...
Who's the us?
The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
The Lord God said,
Behold, the man has become as one of us to know good and evil.
And now lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life,
and eat and live forever...
Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the Garden of Eden
to till the ground from whence he was taken.
So he drove out the man,
and he placed at the east of the Garden of Eden cherry-bims,
and a flaming sword which turned every way to keep the way of the tree of life.
Now remember,
in the Garden of Eden, look at verse 9 of chapter 2.
Out of the ground made the Lord God to grow
every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food,
the tree of life also in the midst of the garden,
and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
So there are all these different trees in the garden, right?
Just various trees, all the different types of trees that have fruit on them.
Then there's the tree of life,
and then there's the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
Now, how many trees of life are in the garden?
It sounds like there's just one here.
I mean, that's the way it sounds.
Every time it's always mentioned singular, right here.
The tree of life, there's this one tree.
So it's not a tree that's growing throughout the earth.
It's just mentioned here that it's planted in the Garden of Eden,
the tree of life, and that if man eats of it, he'll live forever.
That's why God had to kick man out of the Garden of Eden,
so that he would not put forth the sand and eat of the tree of life.
And just to make sure that he didn't eat of the tree of life,
he sets up some guardians.
He sets up the cherubims to guard it.
Now, it doesn't tell us how many cherubims were there to guard it,
but cherubims is plural.
And it says that he placed... look at verse 24.
So he drove out the man, and he placed at the east of the garden
to be cherubims and a claiming sword,
which turned every way to keep the way of the tree of life.
So basically, the tree of life is protected on all sides by cherubims.
Now, it's very likely that there were four.
And I'm going to show you another scripture on that, why that's important.
Because if there were cherubims plural,
and they're guarding every way to the tree of life,
the logical bottom line, basic thing would be,
okay, north, south, east, and west are the four directions.
You know, and you say, well, where do you get that?
Well, we're going to come back to that in a moment.
But let me explain to you quickly what are cherubims,
because these are mentioned for the first time here in Genesis 3,
and this is a subject that some people are not very up on.
But actually, before I get to that, let's talk about the tree of life.
Now, let's talk about where else in the Bible the tree of life is mentioned.
We have it here in the Garden of Eden,
guarded by cherubims after man has been kicked out.
So did God remove the tree of life and warp it up to heaven?
No, he left it there, did he not?
He just guarded it and said it's not going to be able to be touched
because these cherubims with a flaming sword
will protect the tree of life from anyone eating from it, okay?
Later on, we get to Revelation 2.7.
And in Revelation 2.7, the Bible says,
To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life,
which is in the midst of the paradise of God.
Now, where is the paradise of God?
Well, the word paradise is only used three times in the Bible.
Once is when Jesus said, Today shalt thou be with me in paradise,
to the thief on the cross.
Once is when he said in 2 Corinthians 12
that he was caught up to the third heaven, caught up to paradise.
And then he said the tree of life is in the midst of the paradise of God,
in Revelation 2.7.
That, just from face value, is heaven
because he equates it with heaven, the word paradise, in 2 Corinthians 12.
There's no reason why he wouldn't have been talking about heaven in Luke 23.
But he says, Today shalt thou be with me in paradise.
He's talking about the guy who's going to die and go to heaven and be with the Father.
And if you've seen him, you've seen the Father, and vice versa.
He is God. Jesus, that is.
So, he's saying in Revelation 2.7 that the tree of life is in heaven, right?
He says it's in the midst of the paradise of God,
and the other two times paradise is mentioned, he's talking about heaven.
Go to Revelation 21.
Revelation chapter 21, and we're going to see the tree of life mentioned again.
Now, what is the attribute of the tree of life?
When you eat up the fruit of the tree of life, you do what?
You live forever.
So, we saw the tree of life growing in the garden of Eden.
Was it a literal tree that had fruit on it that people ate?
Absolutely, you had to carve it.
It was a literal, physical tree.
He said in Revelation 2.7, you'll get to eat it if you're saved someday.
You'll eat up the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God.
Where are we going when we die? Heaven.
That makes sense that we would eat of it.
If it's in heaven and we're going to heaven, we're going to eat of it.
Not only that, look at Revelation 22, verse number 1.
And he showed me a pure river of water of life,
clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of life.
This is talking about the new earth.
After the first heaven and the first earth have been passed away,
and there's no more sea,
this is after the great white throne judgment,
after Satan and every unbeliever have been sent to the lake of fire forever, never to return,
they're on the new earth.
And it says in verse 2, in the midst of the street of it.
In the midst of the street of what? The river.
And on either side of the river was there the tree of life.
So there it is again.
Which bared twelve manner of fruits and yielded a fruit every month,
and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.
Now, notice, the tree of life was on either side of the river, was it not?
Therefore, is there only one?
No.
You can't have a tree that's on either side of the river.
He's saying the tree of life is located on either side of the river.
So there's more than one lining this river.
So this river is lined with the tree of life.
It's a breed of tree, a type of tree here.
And notice, it bears twelve manner of fruits and it yields its fruit every month.
Now, most trees, they yield fruit once a year.
And it's one type of fruit.
Well, this tree produces a different type of fruit each month.
In January, it has a crop of fruit.
In February, it has a different crop of a different fruit.
Twelve different kinds of fruit for the twelve months.
It's always in bloom.
You never walk up to it and find no fruit on it.
You walk up to it in January, there's fruit on it.
You walk up to it in February, there's fruit on it.
And so on and so forth. Always different fruit.
So this proves right here that there's more than one of these things.
On either side was there the tree of life,
which bared twelve manner of fruits and yielded a fruit every month.
And the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.
Now, this stands to reason that if you have millions and millions and millions of people
living in the new heaven and new earth,
one tree is not going to cut it for them to all eat of the tree of life.
And so there's a whole bunch of it lined up along this river.
And people can eat of it any month that they want and live forever.
There's another famous verse where he says,
the fruit of the righteous is a tree of life.
Not the tree of life, but the fruit of the righteous is a tree of life,
and he that went and sold his wife.
You see, when you go soul winning,
you're not literally bringing a tree around and saying, eat this fruit.
But what are you bringing?
The message of eternal life.
Right? You are bringing the message of eternal life,
which is what the tree of life represents.
Now, it's a physical, literal tree producing literal fruit.
But when you go out soul winning,
you're giving out eternal life through God's word,
and someday they will eat from the literal tree of life in Revelation 22.
Now, with that being said, go to Revelation chapter number 9.
We're going to be in Revelation 9 and Revelation 16.
Now, you remember in chapter 2 of Genesis,
there were four rivers mentioned, right?
Tizon, Gihon, Hibicel, and Euphrates.
And those were mentioned in Revelation chapter 2
as being rivers that came out from the Garden of Eden.
There was a river that went through the Garden of Eden,
and then it parted into four heads,
and one of those heads became the River Euphrates.
Now, just to give you a rough idea of where the River Euphrates is,
since I've got this handy map right here,
this is the Persian Gulf.
And the River Euphrates stretches all the way from Turkey,
modern day Turkey or Asia Minor, all the way to the Persian Gulf.
This is one of the longest rivers in the world.
Now, it's not the longest, but it's almost like,
I think it's about 1,730, 1,740 miles long.
Some people calculate it a little differently,
but it's around 1,700 some miles long.
I mean, it's a very long river. It's a serious river.
And it kind of divides up the geography here.
It performs this natural barrier.
And the Bible talks about it a lot.
He talks about the children of Israel
having everything from the River Euphrates
all the way to the Nile River in Egypt.
And he talks about the king of Babylon taking over the possessions
from Euphrates unto the Nile River.
And so it's a major river that forms a natural boundary.
It's one of the largest rivers in the world.
It's not in the top ten, but it's still a very huge, long, major river.
Now, why is that significant?
In Genesis, you stay in Revelation, but in Genesis 3,
it says,
He drove out the man, and he placed at the east of the garden
a beam of cherubim and a flaming sword,
which turned every way to keep the way of the tree alive.
Now, this may shock you, but they're still there.
Now, you say, whoa, wait a minute, you've got to be kidding me.
No, they're still there. I'll prove it to you.
Look at the Bible. It says in Revelation chapter 9,
in verse 13,
And the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice
from the four horns of the golden altar, which is before God,
saying to the sixth angel, which had the trumpet,
Loose the four angels, which are bound in the great river Euphrates.
And the four angels were loosed,
which were prepared for an hour and a day and a month and a year
for to slay the third part of men.
And the number of the army of the horsemen were 200,000,000.
I heard the number of them.
Now, keep your finger in Revelation 9. Go to Revelation 16.
You see, in Revelation chapter 9,
we're reading about the seven trumpets of God's wrath.
In Revelation 16, we have the seven vials of God's wrath.
Now, a lot of people have misunderstood what I've preached about this.
I'm not saying that the seven trumpets are the same as the seven vials.
Well, it's two different things.
But I'm saying that they take place at the same time,
and it's very clear that the events taking place with the seven trumpets
are taking place at the same time as the events of the seven vials.
Because if you read the book of Revelation,
chapters 1 through 11 are in chronological order.
Then all of a sudden you get to chapter 12,
and boom, you're back at the birth of Jesus Christ.
And then it's in chronological order all the way to the end of the book.
So it's very simple. You just divide Revelation right down the middle.
1 through 11 is in chronological order.
Then it starts over in chapter 12 with the birth of Christ,
goes through the tribulation again, the rapture again, and God's wrath again,
from a different perspective, sort of like we have the four Gospels.
He gives us two perspectives.
The events of the seventh vial and the seventh trumpet are clearly the same event.
It's Jesus Christ taking over his kingdom. It's done. It's finished.
Lightning, thundering is an earthquake. That's it.
The kingdoms of our Lord become the kingdoms of the squirrel
and become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ.
Now, if you notice, if you put the trumpet judgments and the vial judgments side by side,
they're parallel.
For example, the first judgment talks about being poured out on the earth or smiting the earth.
The second judgment smites the sea.
The third judgment smites the rivers and the fresh fountains of water.
The fourth judgment smites the sun.
The fifth judgment is when the fifth trumpet is blown
and the bottomless pit is open or hell is open,
and smoke comes out of the bottomless pit that darkens the sun and darkens the sky,
and that's when those locusts from hell come out and start tormenting everyone.
Well, when you look at the fifth vial, what's the fifth vial judgment?
Darkness upon the face of the whole earth.
So you can see how they're both side by side.
When you get to the sixth judgment, remember the sixth trumpet was blown and it said,
Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river you praise.
What four angels bound in the river you praise?
Why would there be four angels bound in the river you praise?
Because God sent those angels there in Genesis chapter 3 to guard the tree of life.
Now, look if you would at chapter 16 where he has the sixth vial.
Notice what happens when the sixth vial is poured out.
It says in verse 12, the sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river you praise.
Now, what was the sixth trumpet?
It was when he loosed the four angels that were in the river you praise.
Well, the sixth vial, he says, he poured it out upon the great river you praise,
and the water thereof was dried up that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared.
And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs on up.
For the second time, I'm not going to go into all this about the sixth trumpet and the sixth vial.
But it's clear that those four angels today are located in the bottom of the river you praise.
And that they will be loosed when the river you praise is dried up
to prepare the way of the kings of the east that they might cross the river you praise
and come from the east into Israel, into the place of Armageddon,
the final battlefield where Jesus Christ is going to come on a white horse with all the saints with him
and do battle with the anti-Christ and destroy the anti-Christ kingdom
and set up his kingdom on this earth, the millennial reign of Christ.
Now, there's a lot of things we can learn from this.
First of all, we can see that cherubims are called angels
because in the Old Testament he called them cherubims,
and in the New Testament he called them what? Angels.
Now, what is a cherubim? I'm going to go through this just really quickly for a sec
because we're already out of time.
First of all, the singular is cherub.
The plural is cherubims, so when you get into the plural you add three letters, I-M-S.
That's because the I-M ending is the Hebrew plural ending,
so they've just retained that in the English for some reason,
going from cherub to cherubims.
And then there's another term called the seraph. That's singular.
And then seraphims is plural.
Go to just a couple of places with me quickly.
Go to Ezekiel chapter 1.
Ezekiel chapter 1.
What are the cherubims like?
What do they look like?
Well, do you remember in the New Testament in Revelation 4
when John is caught up into heaven
and he sees what the Bible calls four beasts, right?
And the four beasts, they each have four wings,
and the Bible says one of them had a face like a lion,
one of them had a face like a calf,
one of them had a face like a man,
and one of them had a face like a flying eagle.
So they're all different one from another,
and they all have four wings,
and they were full of eyes.
And the Bible says they rest not day nor night,
saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty,
which was and is and is to come.
So let me ask you something.
Are these things human?
No.
They're not human.
Okay.
Now, these things are described in Ezekiel chapter 1,
the same things, and I'll show it to you.
I'll prove to you.
It says in verse 5,
Also out of the midst thereof came the likeness of four...
What are the next two words?
Living creatures.
Now, in the New Testament, the Bible uses the word beast,
and the Old Testament here is using the word living creature,
but it means the same thing, right?
It means the exact same thing.
When he says living creature in Ezekiel,
and he says beast,
these two words are used interchangeably in Genesis also.
Genesis 1 and 2,
he uses beast and living creature interchangeably.
But in the New Testament,
he only calls the charity bin beasts,
and he calls them living creatures in the Old Testament.
He says that living creatures, this was their appearance.
They had the likeness of a man.
So they were similar in shape to a man.
But here's the difference.
Everyone had four faces, and everyone had four wings.
Now, do men have four faces and four wings? No.
Now, did the charity bins in Revelation 4 have four faces each?
No.
They each had a face different one from the other.
These have each one four faces, okay?
And everyone had four wings,
and their feet were straight feet,
and the sole of their feet was like the sole of a calf's foot.
Is that human?
No.
And they sparkled like the color of burnished brass,
and they had the hands of a man under their wings
on the four sides,
and they four had their faces and their wings,
and their wings were joined one to another,
and turned not when they went.
They went everyone straight forward, and so on.
I'm not going to go on through the whole chapter.
Go to chapter 10.
He describes these living creatures in chapter 1 in great detail,
and he's very clear in chapter 10, verse 15.
He sees the same creatures again in chapter 10,
but this time he puts a name to them.
He says in verse 15,
and the cherubims were lifted up.
This is the living creature that I saw by the river of Kibar.
So he says, you know what?
That living creature I saw that I told you about earlier,
guess what?
It was a cherubim, or a cherub.
It was cherubims.
Look at verse 22, or verse 21, rather.
Actually, verse 20.
This is the living creature that I saw under the God of Israel
by the river of Kibar,
and I knew that they were the cherubims.
So the living creature is the same as the cherubims,
is the same as the beasts of Revelation 4.
What is the common denominator?
They are creatures, living creatures, not human,
that have four wings each.
That's the common denominator.
Now there's another living creature,
you don't have to turn there,
described in Isaiah 6, called a seraph.
And the seraphims have six wings each.
That's the difference.
Now, why is that?
Because the word seraphim comes from the root word that means six.
And cherubim comes from a root word meaning four.
That's where those words come from.
That's what the Bible is distinguishing here.
A living creature, a beast, not human,
with four wings or six wings respectively.
Say, why does that matter?
Because you might say, Pastor Anderson,
it's really far-fetched for me to believe
that they're just sitting there under the water
of the river Euphrates all this time,
just sitting there for thousands of years, just waiting.
And then the water thereof is going to be dried up
and then they're going to be released.
And you're telling me they've been there
since the Garden of Eden was there?
Obviously, what must have happened is that
the Garden of Eden was submerged completely underwater
in the flood or some kind of a deep, graphical change
because it used to be right next to Euphrates,
now it's under the river Euphrates.
Obviously, God didn't want us to see it,
didn't want us to know about it.
Just like, it seems like they never find Noah's Ark.
They always want to find it
and they think they're going to find it.
You know, I think God wants us to have faith in His Word.
Amen.
Not to see evidence.
You know, and if we just saw four cherubims
guarding the tree of life with a flaming sword,
you're going to think, maybe the Bible is true.
Maybe.
Maybe evolution's not true.
Maybe there wasn't.
Science can't explain this.
You know, everybody who goes there
gets chopped in half with a flaming sword.
Now, obviously, God covered up the Garden of Eden
with water, submerged in water,
and made it in a place that's hidden
according to His purpose.
And it's in a huge, deep river
that no one can really search out all the depths of.
Period.
Not going to happen.
You're not going to find it.
If you do find it,
your scuba gear is going to get chopped in half
with a flaming sword.
Okay?
But you say Pastor Anderson,
I find it far-fetched
that they're just sitting there for 6,000 some years.
Sounds boring.
Hanging out in the bottom of the river Euphrates
for 6,000 years.
You know, are we here?
Is it time yet?
I'm ready to lead those 200,000 horsemen
and slay the third part of men.
You know, when are we going to do this?
I'm ready to start swinging my flaming sword.
But you've got to remember these things aren't human.
Because remember in Revelation 4,
it says that the terribims, the poor beasts,
they rest not day or night,
saying holy, holy, holy,
Lord God Almighty,
which was and is and is to come.
Now, to us, that would probably get boring.
Chanting that over and over again,
day and night,
for thousands of years,
holy, holy, holy,
Lord God Almighty,
which was and is and is.
You know, it's just God is so deserving
of praise and glory,
that has to just be shouted about him
every day, all day, 24-7, constantly.
He's being praised by these things.
But as a human being,
we're made in the image of God,
we would not be satisfied
to spend our life doing that.
Sounds boring, right?
Just saying the same thing over and over again.
Sounds boring, hanging around the bottom of the river.
But these things aren't human.
I mean, look at animals.
They're called beasts.
Now, they're not the same as animals.
Like, we know animals, necessarily.
But they are beasts or living creatures.
And think about a hamster.
Now, we have a hamster.
It just runs in the wheel.
That seems pretty boring.
I mean, its whole life consists of just eating,
licking itself,
and, you know, they lick their hands and, you know.
You know what I'm talking about?
And then they just run in the wheel.
And you look at that and you say,
what a worthless existence.
Or what about a panda?
A panda bear just lays on its back all day,
sleeps all day, and eats bamboo.
That's it.
But that's what God created it to do.
And God created these beasts to just praise him all day.
God created these other beasts to just hang out
in the bottom of the Euphrates
with a flaming sword,
and someday they're going to get to have some serious,
you know, battles.
But until then, they're just waiting.
And obviously, he created them to be really patient.
Just like he created animals that can do stuff that's boring
and, you know, they're not human, okay?
But anyway, I've got to close the sermon.
Let's prioritize that word prayer.
Father, thank you so much for your word
and help us to learn something from your word
that we should not try to blame other people
who make excuses.
We need to obey your word,
not let the devil confuse us
and get us to start questioning the Bible
and questioning the truth
and thinking that we don't have to work God in our language
or that we have to go to some theologian
to explain it to us.
Help us to read your word, have faith in your word,
and to be obedient unto you.
And in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.