Many Adversaries Part 1: full transcript and answers

▶ 0:00 We are in chapter 16 of 1 Corinthians, in verses 1-4. He talks about collecting for the saints that are in Jerusalem on the first day of the week: take up the collection, so when I come there’s no collections to be taken up. And, uh, there’s a big argument in America and throughout the world on what day we should serve Jesus, what day we should come to church, Saturday or Sunday. In Luke 24:1 we find that on the first day of the week Jesus rose from the grave, on Easter Sunday, the first day of the week. So see, they met on Sunday, the first day of the week, because Jesus rose from the grave. We find in Acts 20:7 that on the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul preached to them until one guy fell out of the window.

▶ 1:05 See, they say I’m a long-winded preacher here, but let me tell you, Paul has got me beat by a long shot. But anyway, they met together on the first day of the week. When you study history, you will find that Roman rulers, lower ranks in authority, would have to report to higher ranks, and they would say, “These Christians meet on the first day of the week, and they take communion, and they make a vow that they will not commit adultery and, and, uh, steal and, and do these bad things, on the first day of the week.” So there’s plenty of evidence that the early church met on the first day of the week. But also, if you read Acts, you’ll find them coming into the synagogue on Saturday also. They were there Saturday and Sunday if they could be. Revelations 1:10, John the apostle was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day. Now, what’s the Lord’s Day? The first day of the week, Sunday. So do we meet together on Sunday, or do we meet together on Saturday? And let me tell you, there’s a big argument out there. I debated out at the college with a bunch of college students about this thing. They, they just get young Christians wrapped up in silly things like Saturday or Sunday. It’s just a, a silly thing.

▶ 2:24 As we see, Colossians 2:16 sums it up this way: “Let no man judge you in food or drink or in respect of a holiday or the new moon or the” what? “Sabbath days. Let no man judge you.” These are a what? “Shadow of things to come.” Say that with me: shadow of things to come. So you know the shadow isn’t the real thing, right? You know, your shadow isn’t the real thing. It brings you to the real thing. And so the Sabbath day was just an example of something God wanted to teach us.

▶ 3:10 All right, let’s, in Acts chapter 1:3, after Jesus rose from the grave, He was seen of them 40 days. Was He only seen of them on Sunday? Was He only seen of them on Saturday? No. He was seen of them anytime that they would accept seeing Him: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Acts 1:14, the 120 people in the upper room continued 10 days in prayer. The Bible says in one place. So did they leave on Monday? Did they leave on Tuesday? Would God turn His back on them if they met on Monday? No. Oh, come on, church. God’s so excited about you coming before Him, He don’t care what day of the week it is. And so it’s important that you understand that whether we meet on Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday, God accepts you coming together and seeking Him. Can I hear an amen? And we need to get rid of these silly little things that we argue and fight about and get on the real thing.

▶ 4:27 Now he goes on to say in verses 5-8 that he’s going to stay in Ephesus till Pentecost, then he’s going to leave and pass through Corinth. And Ephesus, as you probably know by your history, is a populated city of 300,000 when Paul was there. And Paul went there, and 12 people were filled with the Holy Ghost in Ephesus to start his ministry there. And then parts of his clothing was sent out all through Asia, and bodies were healed and demons were cast out with just little pieces of his garment. And Paul said, “All Asia has heard the word of God,” and he’s writing to the Corinthians, and he says, “From Ephesus a great and effective door has opened for me here in Ephesus.” A powerful door. All these things are happening. The word of God is going out through all Asia, and talking about the Middle East, Asia Minor. But he says there are many what? Adversaries. There’s many opponents.

▶ 5:41 Now let me give you a quick list of some opponents. You ready? Number one: we are the biggest opponent. Opponent means opposer. Opposer of the Scriptures, opposer of truth, opposer of God. He says, “in meekness instruct those who” what? “Oppose themselves.” We are our big, worst enemy. “We’re not good enough,” “we’re too good,” you know, “we’ve done the unpardonable sin,” you know, uh, we are our own worst enemy. “I’m so bad I can’t come to God now, God can’t change my life.” Number two, 1 Corinthians 15:12: “Some among you say there is no resurrection of the dead.” Then you got the problem with opposing in the church. Some among you say there’s no resurrection of the dead. Some among you say incest is okay. See, some among you are saying it’s okay to eat food sacrificed to idols and go into the idol temple and eat. Some of you have got these weird doctrines. But none of you. Right? Nobody in here. See, we oppose ourselves in the church, and we could go on and on. I taught, I taught on that; you can get the series.

▶ 6:57 Number three, Acts 4:18: Jewish religious leaders commanded them to not speak or teach in the name of Jesus. Number four, a violent attempt was made by both the Gentile and the Jews, with their rulers, to abuse and stone the disciples, Acts 14:5. Number five, Acts 12:1, Herod the king, direct from Rome, his connection was straight to Rome, “stretched forth his hands to pain some of the church.” He killed James, the brother of John, with the sword. See, government opposes us, church leaders oppose us, we oppose ourself, and our believing brothers oppose. There’s a lot of opposition. Number six, 1 Thessalonians 2:18: “We would have come unto you, but Satan hindered us.” Then we got Satan, our adversary, the Devil, as a roaring lion. He’s always trying to seduce us away from what’s right.

▶ 8:01 [unclear] 16:16, “the children of the wicked one.” “We went to prayer, and a certain lady, a certain young woman, was possessed with a spirit of divination, met us.” You see, opposition from people who don’t believe in God, people that are into witchcraft and wickedness and sorcery and so forth. Number eight, 1 Timothy 6:20: “Avoid profane and vain babblings and oppositions of science.” Say the word: science. “Falsely so-called, which some professing have erred concerning the faith.” See, what’s another word for science? Knowledge. It’s just knowledge. You know, get off of it. Do we have that today? Do they try to use science to, uh, nullify the word of God? Absolutely. We got the same opposition today he had it back there. It’s nothing new going on, nothing new at all.

▶ 8:59 Then number nine, 2 Corinthians 11:26: “I was in perils of waters, robbers, countrymen.” Countrymen means your race, your family. Remember, in Psalms it says your enemies will be those of your own household. You know, you want to serve God, you really want to serve Him, and your, you know, your family starts opposing you, and the more you want to serve God and follow the Bible, um, the more some of them will, what? Oppose you. And [unclear], when I was in Ghana, Africa, while I was there preaching, the southern tribe got in a war with the northern tribe. See, black on black, killing each other, ripping the women that were pregnant open and taking the baby out of the womb and killing it, because of the hatred and the opposition from one tribe to another. See, racial problems, our own, our own nationality can reject us. Are you there? See, these, far, these problems aren’t new. Every generation thinks they’re new. They’ve been around forever. All right, then you got “problems in the city, in the wilderness, in the sea, with false brethren.” My gosh, these false brethren. A lot of, a lot of Christians, because they don’t know their Bible, really get fooled by false brethren and deviate from the Scriptures. And nobody has the authority to get you to deviate from Scriptures. Scriptures is the high authority of God. Can I hear an amen?

▶ 10:36 Hallelujah. And then you got to work, you got hunger. You think you got it tough? These apostles had it tough. They went without food, they worked, and they went without sleep, trying to preach the gospel. Now, they’re not like a lot of American pastors who play golf five days a week and then come in, give their bell-ringing message, and then go back and [unclear]. These guys worked hard. Are you there? And it takes work to serve God. And so he says all these adversaries are there, but there’s a great door of opportunity, great door.

▶ 11:12 The Bible, we’ll just talk about the Bible for a second. Uh, people often point out that they can’t help it, they can’t help with the anti-gay bullying. It says right there in Leviticus, it says right there in Timothy, it says right there in Romans that being gay is from— can you hear? We can learn to ignore the [unclear] in the Bible about gay people the same way, the same way we have learned to ignore the [unclear] in the Bible about shellfish, about slavery, about dinner, about farming, about ministration, about virginity, about masturbation. We ignore [unclear] in the body about all sorts of things. The Bible is a radically pro-slavery document. Slave owners waved Bibles over their heads during the Civil War and justified it. The shortest book in the New Testament is a letter from Paul to a Christian slave owner about owning his Christian slave, and Paul doesn’t say Christians don’t own people. Paul talks about how Christians own people. We ignore what the Bible says about slavery because the Bible got slavery wrong.

▶ 12:35 Now, that guy’s name is Dan Savage. Dan Savage went to speak at a high school in America, and this is what he told the students. Dan Savage is a homosexual activist who promotes transsexualism, uh, homosexuality, trans sites, and all the rest, and tells them in a descriptive way how it’s done, okay? And they invite this guy in to speak to a high school student body. You’ve seen a lot of them walk out. Let’s give them a hand. They walked out. Yeah, but did you hear a lot of them applaud what he was saying? He was saying the Bible is just full, full of nonsense, only he used the worst word. All right, he says the Bible is wrong about slavery, wrong about shellfish, wrong about food, wrong about farming, ministration, virginity, and masturbation.

▶ 13:47 Okay. Now, the homosexuals have been teaching this message since the ‘70s, trying to rip the Bible apart and, and undermine it and destroy its influence in America, and it has influenced people in high places. Okay, I want to show you some of these influential people that have picked up this bashing of the Bible, this opposition of the Bible. “Whatever we once were, we are no longer a Christian nation, at least not just. We are also a Jewish nation and a Muslim nation and a Buddhist nation and a Hindu nation and a nation of non-believers. And even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? Would it be James [unclear] or Al [unclear]?

▶ 14:52 “Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with the Leviticus, which suggests slavery is okay and that eating shellfish is an abomination? Or we could go with the Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount, a passage that is so radical that it’s doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application?” We— so before we get carried away, let’s read our Bibles. Now, folks haven’t been reading their Bible. I [unclear] have been reading my Bible. See, this message has gone up to high places in America, influential people. Let’s continue.

▶ 15:53 “One of the mistakes that human beings make is believing that there is only one way to live, and that we don’t accept that there are diverse ways of being in the world, that there are millions of ways to be a human being, and many ways— no, but many paths to what you call God. And her path might be something else, and when she gets there she might call it the light, but her loving and her kindness and her generosity brings her— if it brings her to the same point that it brings you, it doesn’t matter whether she called it God along the way or not. And I guess the danger that could be on that, I mean, it sounds great on the onset, but if you really look at both, besides, there couldn’t possibly be just one way. What? What about Jesus? What about Jesus?” And you say there isn’t only one way? There is one way and only one way, and that is true, Jesus. “There couldn’t possibly be—“

▶ 16:46 “With, yay for that lady!” Yeah, there’s only one way. Now, see, Oprah is worth over $2.5 million; she makes 250 million— $2.5 billion dollar; she makes 250 million a year. She’s very influential all over the world, and she has accepted this doctrine. Let’s continue. Influential people. “Do we all worship the same God, Christian and Muslim?” “I think we do.” “Does we have different routes of getting to the Almighty? Do Christians and non-Christians, do Muslims go to heaven in your mind?” “Yes, they do. We have different routes of getting there. But I— I want you to understand, I want your listeners to understand, I don’t get to decide who goes to heaven. I, the Almighty God, decides who goes to heaven. Uh, I— the Bible is an amazing book. Is it literally true, the Bible? I, you know, I probably not. You know, I mean, the idea that I know I’m not a literalist.”

▶ 17:51 Now they make “literal” sound like a bad word, but literal means factual. See, is the Bible factual? Yes, it is. Amen. Now, these are people in high places, influential places in America, that have embraced these doctrines.

▶ 18:16 Now, Mr. Obama said we weren’t reading our Bible well. This guy happens to read his Bible and study it and knows this Book, and this guy is going to answer the questions that these Bible adversaries say the Bible is wrong on. Are you ready? Are you interested? See, is the Bible wrong on slavery, food, ministration, farming, uh, homosexuality, and all the rest? Is it wrong? Okay, should [we] ignore the Bible? All right, here we go. We’ll start with slavery. Exodus 21:16: “He who kidnaps, takes someone by force, a man, or he who sells a man”— maybe the guy volunteered to be a slave, doesn’t matter— you can’t sell human beings, you can’t kidnap human beings, or you will be put to death. Now let me ask Mr. Savage, how can there be slavery when you can’t force someone against their will? Are you there? See, they lie through their teeth. It was really talking about servanthood.

▶ 19:47 When the, the word servant or slave in the Old Testament really is a word that means servanthood. You got into debt and you couldn’t pay off your debt, so you had to become a servant of somebody that would pay your debt, and then you worked it off, and you couldn’t work any more than seven years. At the end of every seven years, all servants were free. See, people came from Europe to America on being indentured servants. The businessmen in America would pay their way, and then they worked off their way over, the price it cost to get over there, by serving that guy for so many years. See, it wasn’t slavery, it was a mutual agreement.

▶ 20:29 Are you there, church? Matthew 19:19: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Now, how am I going to believe in slavery if I’m not willing to be a slave? You see, the Bible plainly says slavery was not accepted, and because they don’t understand the Bible, they twist these things around. Is that clear to you? The Bible never, from Genesis to Revelation, promotes slavery, never. When Paul wrote about slavery and told them to submit to their masters, he was just telling them to keep a good attitude, a right attitude, because there’s nothing you can do about it anyway. The government had passed a law for slaves, and just, he’s trying to tell them, you know, keep a good attitude in it. Ain’t that right? Not saying that slavery is okay. Now, how many raise your hand, said Mr. Savage is wrong? Yes. And people are believing this nonsense. They are believing this nonsense that these people are saying.

▶ 21:41 Now let’s go to food, clothing, uh, farming, and these other things that he said the Bible is wrong on, and let’s take a close look at them. Are you ready? Deuteronomy 14:21: “You shall not eat anything that dies of itself. Give it to the stranger, the foreigner in the gates, or sell it to the alien, that he may eat it, for you are a holy people unto the Lord.” Now, why did God make these kind of laws? Was shellfish bad for anybody? Was eating shellfish going to put you into hell? Catfish was forbidden. If you eat catfish, you’re going to go to hell? Sharks were forbidden ‘cause they didn’t have scales. If you eat a shark, you’re going to go to hell? It wasn’t there for that. It was there to remind them to live holy. It says it right there, and the foreigners could eat it. Does God love the world? Does God love all nations? Is He going to allow one people to eat something that’s going to hurt them and another people, no? No. What’s He doing? He’s trying to teach the people and remind them to live holy, to live for God, to live right. That’s— continue. 1 Timothy 4:4: “Every creature”— how many creatures? Every creature, every animal— “of God is good, and nothing is to be refused for food if it is received with thanksgiving.” Now, is that plain? Yeah, you see—