—Daniel 7:13—And the Secret of Life!27/4/85DO 2158

1. DANIEL 7, VERSE 13: "AND I SAW IN THE NIGHT VISIONS, &, BEHOLD, ONE LIKE THE SON OF MAN CAME WITH THE CLOUDS OF HEAVEN." Does that sound familiar? He's always coming in the clouds.—Went away in clouds, coming in clouds, always associated with clouds! I like to have pretty clouds in our pictures. I always used to love clouds so much when I was a little boy, I used to lie down on my back on the grass & just look up at the clouds & watch the clouds move by & see the pretty clouds, especially sunset, I loved sunsets.

2. "THE SON OF MAN CAME WITH THE CLOUDS OF HEAVEN & CAME TO THE ANCIENT OF DAYS."—And who was that? (Fam: God.)—God the Father. Now don't just say God. I realise that usually you associate the word God with the Father, but in a way Jesus is also God & so is the Holy Spirit. We have a triune God, a tripartite God, a God of three separate distinct personalities, believe it or not. …

4. SO WE DO HAVE A TRI-PERSONALITY GOD‚ OR GODHEAD‚ AS THEOLOGIANS CALL THE COMBO, THE FATHER‚ THE SON & THE HOLY SPIRIT. And now we know that the Holy Spirit is the Female Personality. I like the way Apollos brings it out in some of his Condos‚ especially on the backs of the Posters. Did you notice? Where is it in the Bible that God is first spoken of as being part female? (Fam: "Let Us make Man in Our Own Image, male & female created He them.") (Gen.1:26,27) Male & female made He them!—In Our Image, male & female! God the Father & the Son & the Holy Spirit are discussing it together‚ & the Father suggests, "Let's make Man in Our Image‚ like Us‚" Father, Son & Holy Spirit—Mother, Female. So, male & female made He them! That's a real clincher!

5. IF YOU WANT TO TRY TO PROVE TO SOMEBODY THAT WON'T BELIEVE THE HOLY SPIRIT IS THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES, so to speak, the Female of the Godhead, the Mother of the Godhead, then just give them that verse in Genesis. Do you want to turn to it just to make sure you know where it is? It's in the very first Chapter, I believe, 26th Verse. "God said, Let Us make Man in Our Image, after Our likeness."—Man meaning not just Adam, but He was going to make Eve too. And then what does it say in the 27th Verse? "So God created Man in His Own Image, in the Image of God created He him." He couldn't have said it more plainly, could He? "Male & Female created He them!"

6. SO GOD THEREFORE IS MALE & FEMALE! There are male personalities in the Godhead, or the Trinity‚ & there is a Female Personality, the Holy Spirit. What better proof could you have than that?—Besides the fact that Proverbs talks a lot about the Female Personality of the Godhead or the Trinity.

OLD TESTAMENT PROOF OF JESUS!

7. BUT HERE WE HAVE ONE OF THE MOST SPECIFIC VERSES ABOUT JESUS IN THE OLD TESTAMENT! Boy, I'll tell you, that's the toughest job I know of … to witness to Jews! I guess the Lord gave me that job because it is the toughest that I know of! But if you ever have to witness to Jews, here is one of the outstanding proofs of the Bible you can read right from their own Scriptures! Of course, they won't believe it & you almost have to know Hebrew & read it to them in Hebrew from their own Holy Scriptures, as they call it, which is an Old Testament without the New Testament. Read it to them & you'll find it's just the same here, they bring the Son before the Father!—Which knocks in the head their very unscriptural doctrine that God is just one Person only.

8. THEY'RE ALWAYS SAYING, "UH, YOU WORSHIP THREE GODS, WE JUST WORSHIP THE ONE GOD!" Well, I'll grant you the Bible in the Old Testament says a lot about one God, but when they're saying one God they usually say Elohim, which is the plural! And you can even tell Jews that but they will still reject it. They're … so veiled [2Cor.3:14-16], that their mind's made up, they don't want to be confused with the facts, they don't even want to be confused with the Scriptures, they don't want you to tell them anything else!

9. THEY HAVE BEEN TOLD BY THEIR RABBIS & THEY HAVE RECITED IT SINCE THEY WERE LITTLE CHILDREN, "THE LORD OUR GOD IS ONE GOD!" That's their favourite verse. If they don't know any other Scripture, that's the one. But the trouble is, in the Hebrew it literally says, "The Lord our Gods are One!"—Elohim, plural! That's almost the first thing you learn in Hebrew, is that "im" at the end of anything means plural. The Cherubim is not one cherub, & they're not little babies either, but more than one. And how many were there carved over the Ark of the Covenant? I thought God said not to carve graven images! Well, after all, He makes the rules, He can make His exceptions. So how many were over the Ark of the Covenant? (Fam: Two.) And I think they each had four wings. Anyhow, that's something you don't have to know. That's ancient history, forget it. But apparently they must have been representations of mighty Archangels of God!

10. … THEY COULDN'T BELIEVE ANYTHING THEY COULDN'T SEE‚ so you had to have this represent that & that represent this & all kinds of pictures in the Tabernacle & the Temple, everything there represented something in the spiritual. And I've heard preachers go on & on & preach & preach on all the types & shadows of the Tabernacle & the marvellous spiritual symbolism of all those things in the Temple & all that sort of thing. But who the hell cares now? It's too late to worry about that. It's only the Jews that that is effective with, & it's not even usually effective there! You could explain it all to them‚ how everything in the Tabernacle or the Temple represented something spiritual & they still wouldn't believe it! Jesus said even if somebody came back from the dead they wouldn't believe it! They've got Moses & the Prophets already & they won't believe them‚ so why should they believe somebody that came back from the dead? (Luk.16:29-31.)

11. SO HE CAME BACK FROM THE DEAD, LAZARUS CAME BACK FROM THE DEAD, A SICK BOY CAME BACK FROM THE DEAD & A GIRL CAME BACK FROM THE DEAD! I mean‚ He gave them plenty of chance to believe! A lot of people came back from the dead even during Jesus' life & they still wouldn't believe! All the Old Testament Saints were resurrected at His resurrection & went to be in Heaven. Did the Jews believe?—No! If they reject the Word of God‚ if they reject God's Own Word, they'll not believe even though one came back from the dead! They used to taunt Jesus & say, "Prove it now, show us a miracle‚ do something, raise somebody from the dead & we'll believe!" (Mk.8:11-12) He said, "They won't believe, not if somebody came back from the dead!"

THE SECRET OF LIFE!

12. THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE TODAY ARE BEGINNING TO GIVE THEIR TESTIMONIES OF HOW THEY CAME BACK FROM THE DEAD‚ were clinically dead for a length of time & had all the same type of similar experience of hovering over their body watching the doctors & nurses work on it, & then being whisked away through some fast means of transportation like a tunnel or a tube or even a ditch. They can't quite describe what it is, but they just go very rapidly through something like a dark tunnel & come to a brilliant light at the end, & then there is this bright, shining Personality there. Some say it's Jesus, some say it's an Angel, they don't know what it is! I have an idea that Jesus doesn't necessarily have to meet everybody, He's probably got this Archangel there, especially handling people that are not even yet saved & are not even yet necessarily finished living! But this Angel is given the job to show them the kind of life they've lived & give them a choice whether they want to stay in Heaven or go back & finish their job.

13. YOU SAW A VIDEO ABOUT THAT LAST NIGHT CALLED "SOMEWHERE TOMORROW‚" DIDN'T YOU? What was that little boy Angel sent to the teenage girl for? I hope you learned a lesson from the movie. To help her what? (Child: To help her learn her lesson.) What lesson? (Child: To be unselfish.) I'll bet the kids know this better than you do & they're answering quicker. To be unselfish about what? (David: About her attitude toward her mother.) About her attitude toward her mother & her prospective father & worrying about her problems & her dead father & all these things, all selfish introversion, worrying about the past & living in the past, living for the past, not for the future, not for what she could do for others, selfishly just thinking only of herself & her dead father. So she had to be taught a lesson. And what was the main lesson? (Fam: To be thankful for life.) It was all in what the father had written in his book. (Fam: "The secret of life is a knowledge of death.")—Exactly. That was a good thing, really.

14. THE SECRET OF LIFE, IN OTHER WORDS, THE SECRET OF KNOWING WHY YOU'RE HERE IS TO KNOW THAT SOME DAY YOU'RE GOING TO DIE! So what does that make you want to do, die? (Fam: Do all you can while you're alive.)—Exactly! Do your job! Get the mission accomplished that you're here for! Finish the work! Isn't that what Jesus said as He hung on the cross? What was one of the most outstanding things He said? (Fam: "It is finished.") (John 19:30) "It is finished!" He came, He did His job & He finished it, & it was finished when He died.

15. WOULDN'T THAT BE WONDERFUL THAT WHEN YOU DIE YOU'RE ABLE TO SAY, "IT IS FINISHED! I did the job You gave me to do, Lord, I finished it!" He says to you as He greets you in Heaven, "Well done, thou good & faithful servant! Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord!" If you were faithful, you did it, if you were good, you did a good job of it. Amen? You loved others & tried to get them saved, you witnessed, or you helped furnish the tools for them to witness. "Well done, thou good & faithful servant!" (Mat.25:23)

16. THAT'S THE WHOLE IDEA OF LIFE! THAT'S WHAT YOU WERE PUT HERE FOR! What did Martin Luther call it in his catechism?—The whole duty of Man is to love God & enjoy Him forever! What does it say in the Catholic catechism? Does it say something like that? They don't enjoy God, do they? They don't seem to have any joy in their religion at all, it's all fear & suffering & the more fearful you are of God & the church & its authority & the more you suffer, the more religious you're supposed to be. That's not the way God wants you to be! You may have to suffer, & we fear God, & the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. (Pro.1:7) But it's not an afraid fear, it's the way you should have feared your parents, a loving fear, knowing they've got authority & power over you & though you love them, that you'd better not get out of line or you may suffer the rod!—Although there aren't too many parents like that today. I don't know what your parents were like‚ but anyway, that's what God is like.

17. BUT THE CATHOLIC RELIGION & ALMOST ALL OTHER RELIGIONS ARE RELIGIONS OF FEAR & SUFFERING. If they don't fear God‚ they fear the Devil, they fear demons & it seems that they think if they scourge themselves & suffer & sit on a bed of nails & do all kinds of things like that, the more they suffer‚ the more righteous they get & the more merit they earn, the gooder they get & they can work their way to Heaven! What a pitiful‚ futile, totally useless kind of religion!—Which is every religion in the World except the Christian religion‚ & a lot of it's gotten into that same rut where they've got to do so-&-so & so-&-so or they won't be saved. There's only One that can save you & that's Jesus Christ‚ Jesus! His grace plus faith plus nothing, absolutely nothing, saves you!—And keeps you saved forever!

18. BUT OF COURSE IF YOU KNOW & LOVE HIM‚ TO HAVE THAT KIND OF GRACE YOU'RE NOT JUST GOING TO SIT AROUND & TWIDDLE YOUR THUMBS LIKE MOST CHURCH PEOPLE, you're going to get out & get busy for the Lord & go into all the World & preach the Gospel to every creature, hoping as many will get saved as possible & will be up There in Heaven with you! Boy, I'll tell you, stars like that in your crown will give you a crown of glory! "He that winneth souls is wise, & they that turn many to righteousness shall shine as the stars!" (Dan.12:3.) God's got His stars! The World's got their stars, but God's stars are really going to outshine anything that's ever been before! If you are a great soul-winner, a great witness, you really serve the Lord well, you're going to shine in Heaven!

19. I'M AFRAID SOME PEOPLE ARE GOING TO LOOK PRETTY DULL, ESPECIALLY CHURCH PEOPLE WHO DO LITTLE OR NOTHING FOR GOD except go to church on Sunday & drop a little something in the wastebasket. I said wastebasket, you didn't misunderstand me, that was on purpose! Because to me‚ the greatest waste on Earth is all those church buildings & all those useless preachers that preach useless nothing that doesn't even get people saved! It's a wastebasket! Religions of nothing! Religions of all work & no play, all suffering & no enjoyment, all earning merit & self-righteousness & no Salvation! Pitiful! Well, I've got to get back to this now.

20. SO, ALL OF THAT OUT OF THE FACT THAT DANIEL 7:13 IS A GOOD VERSE TO USE WITH JEWS! Although it may not do any good, at least you have delivered your soul, their blood won't be on your hands, you've delivered the message, here it is, right there! And you can also give them the first Chapter of Genesis, "Let Us make Man in Our Image—male & female!" That's more than just one personality. Then you can use that one also if you know your Hebrew. They say, "The Lord our God is one God." Actually the Scripture says in the Hebrew, "The Lord our Gods are One!" Think of that! Praise God! Well, we're coming to a lot of other little sermonettes along the way, but this is a marvellous verse proving the plural Personality of the Godhead or the Trinity!—Amen?