You're listening to KFI AM six forty on demand. Life has Life has its
share of ups and downs no matter what you do. Flat tires, an
unexpected plumbing problem at your house, even illness. It's just to name a
few. You can't nerf or bubble wrap. The world. It has sharp
edges and you will feel them from time to time. At times, you'll
have bad or inconvenient things happen to you. It's been said, don't don't
be surprised by the average things in life. You know, people will have
flat tires, including you. Does that mean the enemies after you because you
have a flat tire or these types of things, No, there are.
You're going to have things in life that happened to you. If you get
to a place where you think that it's always the devil under every stone,
you miss the fact that when there really is spiritual warfare going off and on
and on in your life, because you've mistaken it for this or now everything
is spiritual warfare, and you really miss it when it actually is the enemy.
And this is a whole different classification of trials that come your way.
These are the spiritual trials. So it's not just a flat tire or plumbing
problem. That's not why does this happen to me? Is not the time
for that, because why does this happen to you? Because you're a human
living on earth who has a home or a car, and these things happen.
But this other classification, this other type of trial that comes your way,
is a spiritual trial. These are attacks that, strangely enough, are
often brought on by you. When you invite the enemy into your life.
It's like inviting the devil for dinner. For whatever it is in your life
that you're doing. There are times where you do things where you welcome the
enemy. In any Christian any Christian family, can take on attacks from the
enemy. But as a believer, you must remember that the knob of your
spiritual door is on the inside and it's only opened by you. The devil
can't truly get in your life unless you open the door and give them opportunity.
This opportunity comes from you rejecting the things of God, straying from the
things of God, looking for that opportunity that you know is not godly,
looking for that relationship that you know is not godly, rejecting things that you
know are godly. You have opportunities in your life. They come your way
and you think, well, just because they came your way, they must
be of God. Not always. There are relationships that are not good for
you. There's jobs that you shouldn't be at, or maybe there's another one
that is coming your way that would be better for you. There are things
that you do to manipulate at times so bad that you welcome the ener man.
You get to that place where it doesn't matter what the consequences are,
you just want what you want. You're giving the devil an opportunity when you
ignore the warning signs, the red flags in your life. How many times
on this very program have reopened the phone lines and talk to people that have
called up and they have warning signs and relationships or situations and they ignore them.
When you go through something like this, when you ignore those red flags,
those warning signs, the alarms that are going off in your life,
you're giving the enemy an opportunity. Ephesians four twenty seven says, and do
not give the devil an opportunity, pointing out that you play a part in
this. You play a part in the dance, in that interaction with the
enemy. The devil himself to play a part in your life. Now,
you may make excuses for it. You may look for reasons and say,
well, I was doing this because, well I was lonely and I wanted
someone in my life. But when't do doing that? When the loneliness or
your situation supersedes what you know to be right or good or the will of
God, then you open up that door and say, come on in,
devil, and you invite the devil to dinner, because that seems like a
better plan than waiting on God. The enemy prowls around you looking for this
opening, even masquerading to look more pleasant to you, trying to fool you,
to look like an opportunity for relationship, to look like a job,
opportunity, to look like an opportunity to get something easier, less stress,
making something more obtainable, to satisfy that quick fix. For Peter five eight
says, be of sober spirit, be on the alert your adversary. The
devil prows around like a roaring line, seeking someone to devour. Don't let
that someone be you. Don't give the enemy the opportunity to consume you.
Second Corinthians eleven fourteen says, no wonder for even Satan disguises himself as an
angel of light. If you get caught up in that appearance, the way
things appear to you, and it looks like, Hey, here's that opportunity
I've wanted. Not always is that the right way to go. Thessalonian says,
to test all things, hold fast to that which is true. If
you're constantly running after whatever opportunity comes your way, you'll set yourself up.
If you allow people in your life that you know aren't good for you,
you set yourself up. You open yourself up. If you disregard the things
of God, you treat people poorly, you don't follow the rules in life,
changing them always to suit your needs, you open it up for the
enemy. You surround yourself's self with the things in life that are vulgar or
contrary to God, or ugly. You open up the opportunity. And each
of these opportunities are an opening, a crack, a possibility for the enemy
to enter Ephesians four twenty seven. Again, and do not give the devil
an opportunity, any crack, any fissure, any little opening in your life.
Life it's an opportunity for the enemy. It's not that the devil is
behind every bad thing that happens to you. As I said, you live
in this life. You are a human being. You will go through things
that human beings go through. Sometimes that's sickness. Sometimes it's a flat tire.
Sometimes it's a leak that is sprung in your bathroom. All of these
things, I understand may seem like trials, but they aren't necessarily of the
devil. They're of the world. The world is a place with many,
many sharp edges. But the special type of trial, this spiritual trial from
the enemy, often is a relationship between you and the enemy. You are
giving permission. You're opening the door to your world, to your life by
reject the things of God, by toying or getting too close to the creek
that you fall in. Think of that visual for a moment, of getting
so close, always trying to tempt fate, and see how close you can
get to doing the things that are counter to what you know to be good
and rite, and in doing so, creeping ever so closely to that line,
just a little bit each time, that sooner or later you stand at
the door of your spirit, of your heart, and you hear a knock,
and you open and it's not me but the enemy looking for an opportunity
to come in to devour and destroy. You're going to have issues in life.
You gonna have normal life issues that come with life. You're gonna trip,
sometimes you're gonna hurt yourself. Sometimes you're gonna break your favorite dishes.
You're going to do things that happen because you're human and you're in the world.
Some will be bigger than others. Sometimes you may become ill, sometimes
you may There may be what they call acts of God, earthquakes, floods,
these types of things. You will be affected. Life will happen to
you. But there's another set of trials, of tribulations, of problems that
will come your way that have the thumb print of the enemy. But the
enemy doesn't get in your life easily. The enemy gets in your life by
you doing things to attract or allow the enemy in truly inviting the enemy to
be with you. And I know what you're thinking right now. You go
absolutely not, Lord, I would never ever ever bring the enemy into my
life. But you dois Ephesians four twenty seven even says, and do not
give the devil an opportunity. And some things that you do in your life
are giving the enemy opportunity. You have to find ways to defend yourself from
building that that structure in your life that leaves those openings for the enemy to
get in. So how does the faithful believer defend themselves against the enemy.
Well, scripture says to submit to God and resist the devil James four seven.
Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from
you by resisting by first submitting to God. Also, the Bible instructs you
to put on the whole armor of God for the ultimate protection from evil Ephesians
six eleven. Put on the full armor of God so that you will be
able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. And you can read
the rest of Chapter six and Ephesians to learn about the complete armor of God.
But finally, remember that although the devil is called the prince of this
world, when all is said and done, God will be without a doubt.
The victor Romans sixteen twenty says, the God of Peace will soon crush
Satan at your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.
Graham. Welcome to the Jesus Christ. Show are you saying Stagram?
Yes, how can I help you? Hi? Good morning to you.
Hello, Hi. Yes, I was calling because I was concerned. I
was considering, Uh, you know, this is a holiday season. We've
got Halloween, We've got Christmas, and then there's all the various holidays in
the world, and you know, it's a confusing thing because people do different
things. And I studied past with the Johoah's witnesses, and I was touched
by their thing about Christmas. That really brought a light to me about that
Stember twenty fifth business, that it isn't there. And then I think about
it and think about it, and I did research and things, and you
know, like, for example, a lot of these cards are greeting cards,
sales ploys like Mother's Day, Father's Day, Grandparents' Day, Secretary's Day,
and been at them. And you know, in scripturally, I kind
of take Romans Team five onward till the end of the of the of the
subject really to heart that we don't live for our subverb. Well, we
observe it to the Lord. We observe whatever day we observed to God,
and we do it and give thanks. And we shouldn't be judging our brothers.
But but we should just not do the things that are blatantly So are
you worried about celebrating holidays? Well, yeah, because I'm not so much
worried about it. I personally have totally embraced each day is a blessing and
and and do the best you can with it. And you know, because
everybody knew how old they were, you know, in the Bible. I
will tell you this. There's nothing wrong with holidays. Are they the holy
days of the past. No. Are a lot of them, at bare
minimum, embellished by the greeting card companies. Absolutely, But that doesn't mean
that you can't celebrate a mother or someone's birth or any of these things.
I think that there are some groups, some may consider them fringe groups,
that take this to a degree where they don't celebrate anything. And it's to
me that is more militant and un Christian in the attitude of celebrating all things.
I mean, first, Thessalonians five sixteen and eighteen rejoice, always pray
without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstance, for this is the will of
God in Christ Jesus. For you there's do you need a special day?
No? But then You could say the same about the Sabbath. You don't
need a special day for that either. It's just a matter of taking the
time and rejoicing and celebrating people. And sometimes it's easier to put something on
the calendar than it is because people put it off all the time. You
do it with relationships of any kind. You do it with friendships, with
getting together for coffee or tea or lunch or dinner or whatever it might be.
You put them off constantly, and sometimes it's easier to just get something
on the calendar and say this is the day that we're going to celebrate mothers
or fathers or family or friends or whatever it might be. And some of
them may feel silly and you don't have to celebrate them. And yes,
you can go back to the origins of Christmas and Eastern and you can look
that they weren't celebrated by the early Church. And of course I wasn't born
in December. It wouldn't make sense biblically based on what was taking place during
the time of my birth. All those things absolutely true. However, there's
nothing wrong with taking a time putting it on the calendar. In the case
of things like Christmas and Easter. There were pagan holidays during that time.
The Early Church wanted to try and root those pagan holidays out, so they
kind of plopped My Birth and my Resurrection into those slots to try and squelch
or squash the pagan religious ceremonies or festivals or things like that. And that
was the way of the Early Church trying to kind of get their way.
I get all that, but it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It
doesn't even matter that there's pagan ties in when it comes to Christmas and it
comes to Easter, the bunny rabbits, the eggs, all that stuff comes
from pagan roots. The Christmas tree itself is tied to pagan roots. But
it doesn't matter because that's not what people are celebrating. And so to take
a time of celebration to enjoy any more than people are celebrating eading, You
know, Pagans on Halloween, they're just not No kid is looking at the
theological significance of Halloween. They're thinking, I get to dress up, which
kids love to do, and run around and get candy for for free.
That's it. No theological you know, And I know that there's a lot
of churches and Christian organizations that put on harvest dances or harvest events to try
and sidestep the Halloween situation and holiday. But the truth is that the harvest
was an incredibly pagan part of their ritual. That's where the you know,
they were tied into the earth and to Mother Earth and it's fruits and all
of these things, and and you just start looking for the devil under every
rock and that doesn't help anybody. So celebrating birthdays, celebrating Christmas, Easter,
the upcoming Halloween, any of these things is fine. It depends how
you celebrate them. You celebrate Christmas by you know, you know, killing
a baby animal, probably not putting a smile on God's face. But if
you enjoy family, come together, hear music, have food, praise God
in the process, there's nothing wrong with any of these days. I think.
I think there's this attitude of this attitude of giving up things that people
assume is automatically christ like, that if you give up anything or you sacrifice
something, that it's christ Like. And there are times where you're called to
give things up. There's times where you're called to give up relationships or maybe
move jobs or whatever it might be. Be, But that doesn't mean you
need to sacrifice all the time. There was this young lady that I knew
many years ago who was very devout and wanted to give her life to God.
Her mother had passed away, and she had things from her mother that
meant so much to her that she assumed that they were idols in her life.
And as she started to dedicate her life to God, she started giving
up these things, I mean, mementos that were the last vestige and connection
she had with a person in her life, her mother, and she threw
them in a dumpster to show God how much she loved God. And years
later she was so resentful towards God that she fell away. Now you may
say, well, than those things were idols. No, that's not that.
That's not the point. The point is that that that God is not
asking you to do some grand gesture every moment. God is asking you to
live a life that glorifies God. And these big acts of book burning and
getting rid of records and all these, you know, it's not about any
of that. It's about trying to connect with people, be kind to them.
Now, is that going to get you in too Heaven. No,
you have to have a relationship with God. But these things on this world,
on this planet, are important, and that is to connect with one
another, to love and to be kind to one another, and and not
look for religiosity at every turn. There are times for that. There times
for reflection. There are times for deep prayer, obviously, and to sit
and to ponder the things of God, whether it be through meditation, godly
biblical meditation, or to connect with God in those ways all wonderful. However,
these big grand gestures and people in the Philippines that during Easter are nailing
themselves to crosses does nothing for God and his will and his movement and his
cause. So giving up something that someone enjoys, like a birthday and to
be celebrated, celebrating life and enjoying one another and all these things, it
means nothing to God. There is no Oh my goodness, Well look what
they're giving up. It means nothing. It is it's an outward It's something
to stir up other people and to say, look how different I am.
If you want to show people how differ you are, be kind, connect
with people, put them first, be selfless. But there's nothing wrong with
celebration. If you want to make it about your your mother on your birthday,
that's fine too. But there's nothing wrong with celebrating and finding excuses to
celebrate and putting it on the calendar. Absolutely nothing, Anthony. Welcome to
the Jesus Christ show. I am. When God cast out the angels down
to earth, did they land in the land of her best? Samerians?
Because their Bible is exactly like ours. I've been studying history and our ten
commandments can be found Moses law Cannonabbi's law books or spell one point six of
the Egyptian Bible paraphrases are ten commandments. And that's not the and that's not
the only similarities. There are great similarities throughout other civilizations as well, by
Greece and Mithra and Cabalism. And the way that they preach transcendence is the
exact same cycle as what Jesus went towards. Well well wait wait wait wait
wait, transcendence in what form, the the depth and the resurrection is their
final stage is sent But there's but there's also there's also pre cycles that are
much different than Christianity by far, so be careful not to confine them and
just because there's similarities. Last uh, last week we talked about counterfeits,
and there gets to be a point where similarities don't mean the same. There
are counterfeit dollar bills that are very similar, but I wouldn't try and pass
them. Okay, But what I was saying is when God casts out the
angels, if they landed in the land of Earth years ago and the flood
happened is six thousand years ago, and then the Egyptian culture had the exact
same thing that the Sparians had and all that, and then Jesus came back
to teach you know that that was the wrong way of worship, and this
is the right way to set the records trade. As you would if you're
taking map and map out all the religions, the timelines in which they existed
and were created, and map out all the similarities in one color marker,
all the differences in a different color marker, all the similarities between You can
see how religion its migration distorted it, and its birth was with the fallen
angels. And then Jesus came back to set the records trade because we were
worshiping essentially the book of Lists. They essentially took our Bible and made themselves
the gods of it. There are theories based on similar notions. The problem
is that the timeline is based on the timeline is when it becomes difficult when
you're dealing with fallen angels and the concept of fallen angels. You talk about
Revelation twelve seven through nine, talking about the battle with Michael and his angels
fighting against the dragon or Satan. There's no specific time as a matter of
fact, when something's happening in heaven. In that concept, it's really outside
of time. So if you're using that as a basis to say, okay,
well it's started here and there's similarities, no doubt, similarities may point
to a standard through point where you have a belief system starting here, moving
through here. Some parts are taken, some parts are removed, some of
it's polluted, some of it's added to what have you. I get that
and that has most certainly taken place. But to try and trace it back
entirely to the fallen angels might be a little difficult from a historical or timeline
perspective, but absolutely no doubt that with the falling of the Angel and the
angels coming to earth, as it says in scripture. It says in that
very scripture, Revelation twelve seven through nine talks about that he was thrown down
to the earth and his angels were thrown down with him, that in that
process that there wasn't counterfeits and destruction and things that went along with it.
So I get the big picture of where you're going and how you look at
it. It looks like here you had a faith, and then pow,
you have those that would be motivated to destroy that faith, causing pollution and
counterfeits and all these things that would twist it around. And that you say
that you can kind of trace that back, but I think you're dealing with
other things that are outside the timeline of history and then within the timeline of
history, and that post is kind of a problem to figure out as to
what took place when and where man stands in in that whole equation as well.
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