Our first Mystery in the Book of Kings is…

Mystery # 1 : What God Hates : Disobedience

1 Kings 13: 23-24 And it Came to pass, after he had eaten bread, and after he had drunk, that he saddled for him the ass, to wit, for the prophet whom he had brought back. And when he was gone, a lion met him by the way, and slew him; and his carcass was cast in the way, and the ass stood by it, the lion also stood by the carcass.

This scripture passage deals with a story about a supposed “man of God” that came from Judah and initially hears from God

but does not do the will of God ultimately as the Lord has requested of him. We learn that the deadly cost of disobedience to God can be very costly indeed. God sends a lion to kill this so called “man of God” consequently. We find out in this story that this “man of God” has actually questioned the Word of God and that is where his troubles really began. This story took place at the time when Solomon’s Son, Rehoboam was King over Israel.

The Kingdom of Israel was divided at the time – the northern kingdom with the 10 tribes calling themselves Israel and the two southern tribes calling themselves Judah collectively.

Jeroboam was worried that the people in his kingdom would seek to worship God in Jerusalem. Rehoboam was a king who greatly endorsed idol worship and had 2 golden calves built for the people to worship other than the one true God, the Lord. A so called “man of God” was traveling north from Judah (Judea in Greek) to Bethel, the same place where Jacob had the dream about the ladder going to Heaven and the angels walking up and down it. This is a previous Mystery of the Bible story if you recall (see Genesis Mystery # 7: Jacob’s Supernatural Experiences: a Heavenly Ladder & a Divine Wrestling Match). The “man of God” sees King Jeroboam preparing the alter for sacrifices to the pagan gods

and so he prophesizes to Jeroboam what will happen when other gods are offered sacrifices on the alter. This was actually directed more to Jeroboam as a warning more than anything else.

It is interesting to note that scripture never mentions that this “man of God” is actually a bonafide prophet of God despite the fact he does speak a prophecy given to him by God. The man is simply called a man of God but more then likely it is in name only when in reality he is not a true man of God at all and thus we put his name in parenthesis. We will soon see that he is anything but a true man of God. In any case King Jeroboam was furious with the “man of God”  and rent and tore his clothes in defiance.

not so much for the warning of Idolatrous worship as much as the penalty of such a defiant and rebellious type of worship against God. The penalty was as steep as it gets, that Jeroboam’s kingdom would not flourish and that the house of David would instead rule. Jeroboam being angry with the warning and its consequences seized the “man of God”. Jeroboam raised his arm to point at the “man of God” in an accusing stance and amazingly enough his arm becomes frozen and stiff to the point he could no longer move it. At the same time the alter split into two. It was clear at this point that the Lord was not so much defending a false “man of God” as much as he was making a statement of man needing to acknowledge and revere his righteousness and was reinforcing that with supernatural acts. Jeroboam indeed had fear of the Lord at this very moment and rightfully so.

However this fear must have been only temporary as it never lead to his repentance sadly enough. Jeroboam was just fearing for his own safety and nothing more. It was not a reverent fear. Jeroboam asked for healing for his frozen arm from the “man of God” and it is God who delivers such healing perhaps as a chance for Jeroboam to witness firsthand God’s Sovereign Mercy and Grace in forgiving him if he would indeed just repent.

But repent he never did do. Jeroboam did not thank God for the healing instead he credited the “man of God” for doing the healing when he has literally had nothing to do with it. Jeroboam tries to bribe the “man of God” with food, drink and a reward. The ‘man of God” recalls the Lord telling him not to let himself be bribed and to his credit he resists the temptation of Jeroboam’s offer. The “man of God” leaves Jeroboam behind without taking any part of his bribe.

At this point of time, with all we have read we can only come to one conclusion that this is indeed appears to be a man of God. But let us continue on, this story is far from over. An old prophets sons who had witnessed what had happened at the alter between Jeroboam and the “man of God”, reported back to the prophet. The old prophet wanted to meet the “man of God” but his intentions were unclear and were somewhat suspect to say the least. The two did meet and the old prophet tempted the “man of God” with food and drink. The “Man of God’ at first refused the old prophet’s offer as he did with Jeroboam, for the same reasons as well, that God told him not to take any bribes from anyone.

The old prophet was crafty and persistent and he tells the “man of God” that he is just like him, a true prophet of God. He tells the “man of God” that he can be trusted. The old prophet then lies that God told him that the “man of God” was to eat bread and drink water with him.

It was at this crucial point and time that the “man of God” questioned the Word of the Lord and what God had told him to do. Instead he trusted the words of a man who was clearly lying and was saying something that did not match up with the very Word of God. The “man of God” knew what God had commanded him to do and what to not do, but as soon as doubt crept into the “man of God’s” subconscious, it ultimately tainted his will as well as the choices he would make. As soon as doubt or a challenge was introduced, the “man of God’s” will yield to the lie of the old prophet. The outcome of the lie was that the “man of God” ate and drank and took the bribe of the old prophet based on a lie. The “man of God” headed to Bethel on a donkey only to meet up with a lion sent from God, which killed him along the way. After the Lion disposed of the body of the “man of God” the Lion stood guard over it.

The amazing part of the story is that the donkey also stood in close proximity to the Lion and the Lion completely ignored the donkey, nor was the donkey strangely enough, even afraid of the Lion.

What is at work here is the providence of God being played out. God’s Work is clearly on display here, this is a supernatural event for sure. The Lion was sent from God to complete a mission which was to slay the disobedient and phony “man of God”. He was now exposed as a doubter, lacking the faith of a true man of God. The story is more than a tale of God’s Demand for obedience and what is expected of a true man of God. The story is also about the dangers of deception and the consequences of being deceived. Why that is so important? As we go deeper and deeper into the end times, the greater the deception will become. The Word of God warns us of this deception and tells us to be ready for it when it comes.

This scripture passage reveals that we can go with the power that the Lion displays in doing God’s Will or we can act just like a stubborn and at times, rebellious donkey. The “man of God” met his fate riding that very donkey and it took a lion sent from God to take him down.

This also brings up the whole question of lying prophets and so called contemporary “men of God” as we have seen time and time again from all those who have been found guilty of scamming millions and millions of dollars from their church faithful for hefty tithes and offerings and gifts. They are part of the Great Deception taking place that is sifting the pseudo Church from the real body of Christ (the Bride of Yeshua). That is not to say that some sincere individuals haven’t been deceived, for they have. What we have on display here is wolves in sheep’s clothing. We deal with this issue throughout this website, as it is a serious concern to the true church. You have seen most of these faces before. They are well known for their scandalous greed driven deceptions.

These false practitioners , nothing more then wolves in sheep’s clothing can be seen riding around in their limousines, flying around in their personal Lear jets,

and living in their posh mansions,  preaching prosperity and wealth is part of their faith benefits.

They are indeed preaching another gospel and it is not from the Lord Jesus Christ. It is a doctrine of demons, from Satan. So who are you going to trust a man who tells you he is doing God’s work but the work he does is not Biblical or the actual Word of God?

We will examine the lying prophets and their deceitful and their twisted perversion of God’s Word in some upcoming Mysteries of the Bible. So where do you stand in your life? Will you be rebellious and fight against the plans that God has for you or will you doubt God during the times when you should really be relying on him and leaning on him the most? Remember this story during those times, remember the “man of God” who doubted what God had instructed him to do. Instead of praying for God’s Strength and clarity and verification of his word when he was being tempted, he just doubted instead and gave into that doubt and ended up sinning against God in his weakened state. Neither do you want to be as the old prophet, living off a broken and empty relationship with God most likely due to unrepented sin and perpetrating lies and deception in the process. One of the tragedies here was that the “man of God” knew the Word of God, it was his obedience that was lacking. This is the difference between knowing and doing, the distance between our brain and our heart. We must stick to our convictions no matter what. The old prophet was filled with lies and deception and was doing the work of Satan whether he knew it or not. For both the “man of God” and the old prophet one thing remains true and relevant. They wanted to have a title of reverence that they never earned or frankly deserved. God is the only one who knows our hearts and what we are going to do before we do it, leaving us with no excuse when we say we didn’t mean to sin willfully and yet we chose to do so. God knows the truth of our deceptions and lies.

God’s Standards are so much higher than one can even realize. The apostles asked Yeshua what it would take for them to be at the right hand and left hand of God. Upon Jesus crucifixion the thieves nailed to the cruel tree were at the right and left of him. This brings more meaning when Jesus says for all who want to follow him, to take up their cross and die daily to self.

Scripture says it very clearly as to what God expects from those who have been given much from God, much is expected. Luke 12:48 For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required; and to whom men have committed much, of him will they ask the more. So what of you? Has God blessed you with many gifts to be used for his glory? Everyone has at least a few gifts for sure. Has God entrusted you the responsibility of being a light to others? Of course he has according to scripture we are all to be a light to this World. We shine the light of the Lord with help and power of conviction from the Holy Spirit. When we do the Will of God, we also receive God’s Blessing of protection and good will in all that we do. We only have to fear the lions in wait when we go down a road of doubt and succumb to lies and deception as did the “man of God”. For then the lion meant for good and containing the power of God does not become our ally, instead he feeds on us because we no longer have God’s Protection.

1 Peter 5:8 Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.

Mystery # 2…

Raising the Widow’s Son : The Power of God is with Elijah

1 Kings 17: 21-22 And he stretched himself upon the child three times, and cried unto the LORD and said, O LORD my GOD, I pray thee, let this child’s soul come into him again, And the LORD heard the voice of Elijah: and the soul of the child came into him again, and he revived.

In a time of an extremely devastating and very deadly drought that saw many deaths in the land of Israel and just one day removed from making a proclamation before King Ahab, Elijah found himself standing in a room with a boy’s lifeless body lying before him. Let’s back up a bit and look at how this story began. Elijah was in the home of a very poor and destitute widow. Elijah came to visit her and the boy one day. She was so poorly off that scripture says that she was preparing her last meal to eat before certain death would overtake her and the boy,

most likely due to starvation because of the drought. There are a couple of miracles of God to note here. They are miracles to us, to God they are common everyday occurrences and acts of a completely supernatural and all powerful Supreme God. The first miracle of God that takes place is that the woman does not starve to death as she anticipated because all of a sudden there is enough food to eat. Elijah promised the woman that the food supply would not be exhausted and true enough, it wasn’t. God delivered on Elijah’s promise.

Now would come a much bigger need then even the necessity of food to survive. It was truly life hanging in the balance. The widow’s son grew sick and he died. The widow becomes bitter towards Elijah at first as she thought all was well when he was in her house,

until the boy’s death occurred. Now her son was dead, shortly after Elijah’s return to her house. She must have thought that Elijah had brought her some type of bad omen of sorts. The widow then turned her anger on herself for her son’s death.

Elijah turns to God and with his unwavering faith. He believes upon God with all his might that God will raise this young boy up from the dead.

Elijah cries out to God in prayer and sure enough, the boy returns to life. James himself said in James 5:15 It is the prayer of faith that restores the sick. God performs a miracle of undeniable supernatural prowess, he raises the dead. God does this out of mercy and grace but just as importantly to showcase what it is like to have faith and trust in him. God wants us all to have the type of faith that Elijah has in the development of true Godly character.

The true explanation however of why God does what he does can be found in the following verse or two just below our featured scripture verse of 1 kings 17: 21-22. We read in V.24, And the woman said to Elijah, now by this I know that thou art a man of God, and that the word of the LORD in thy mouth is truth. The proclamation is made by this act of resurrection of the dead that the Lord is the one true God and this man of God, Elijah serves him in truth and in spirit. Therefore, the woman concludes, the man of God speaks the truth about God. So God does this for his own good pleasure and to showcase his glory in all the Earth once again. In other words, one reason why God does miracles, is to make sure a testimony of true worthiness is established about God’s Goodness, Righteousness and Majesty. Let’s take a look at God’s Goodness and Righteousness as we look at all the Resurrections that have taken place in God’s Word. More importantly this resurrection story foreshadows the greatest resurrection story of them all, the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, Yeshua Ha Mashiach and his victory over sin and death. It is this triumph more than anything else that any true Christian clings to as their blessed hope and that is the finished work of redemption of mankind’s sinful nature by God almighty at Calvary. This redeeming resurrection is at the forefront of all the resurrections found in the Bible and thus it is the first resurrection because it transcends the matter of life and death when it comes to eternity and where we will spend it. Can you claim this victory in Jesus’ name beloved? It is a free gift from God and cannot be earned or deserved.

Our next mystery is :

Mystery # 3  Elijah performs a miracle of God at Mount Carmel

1 Kings 18: 38-39 Then the fire of the LORD fell, and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench. And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces: and they said, the LORD, he is the God: the LORD, he is the God.

What a “contest” it was. There on Mount Carmel in Israel for approximately 12 hours, the prophet Elijah had a spiritual battle or better yet call it a supernatural battle with the so called prophets of Baal. These prophets danced around their alters built in high places, whipping themselves almost to death in a crazed occultic frenzy.

They screamed for their pagan god Baal to do something, anything. They wanted Baal to set their sacrifice on fire in order to prove to Elijah their god was supreme over the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of Israel. Yet nothing was happening, absolutely nothing. Elijah on the other hand, takes the alter prepared for God making sure it is drenched with water on purpose to prove that God can make the impossible happen to these hardened pagan skeptics (much like what we have today in certain so called “intellectual” circles).

The Bible says clearly the fool in his heart says there is no God. Supposedly brilliant people who say the Bible is contradictory and full of flaws make it very evident when they speak of the actual content found in the Bible; they expose themselves as fraudulent “experts” on the subject.

In reality they speak out of complete ignorance and it is very evident they have not read a single page or text from the Bible and yet they are quick to point out all of its indiscrepancies and inconsistencies and hypocrisies (which by the way is 100% fabrication as there has yet to be uncovered one single undisputable bit of evidence that can prove the Bible to be historically inaccurate despite how many times it has been copied over). Elijah calls on the Lord God Almighty and that is when the fire from Heaven came down and struck the alter, setting it ablaze. Look at the reaction of all those spectators of this amazing miracle of God, they fell on their faces and stated, “The Lord, he is God, the Lord he is God.”

We have looked at previous accounts of earthquakes

and divided bodies of waters

and many other accounts of amazing feats that God somehow manipulated the natural order of things to produce the results he was looking for.

There is a name for such a type of occurrence as this, it is called Hypernaturalism and that simply means by definition, that there is evidence of extraordinary use of the natural law by God Almighty via the Supernatural for God’s Own Gain. Since it is God who has created the very laws of nature, he is also the one who is able to control and use these laws as he sees fit. There are times that God does perform miracles that seem mysterious and even unexplainable to us as well as skeptics of the Bible. God in fact is performing these miracles hyper naturally, in other words, he takes the things of natural law and natural phenomena and then God applies his supernatural use of time, location and other control variables to impose his will on the natural order of things.

Fire from heaven (is a fascinating topic and one we will specifically address and get more into in just a few Mysteries of the Bible segments to come) refers initially to the impact of lightening from the sky coming down to the Earth. Elijah already had declared in 1 Kings 17:1 that there would be no rain to come in the next few years apart from when he would speak for it from God. It is interesting to note that since there had been no rain it stands to reason, there also had been no clouds in the sky either. So where did this lightening come from exactly? This can be nothing other than a hypernatural miracle of God. 1 KINGS 18:1 tells us it had not rained for 3 years’ time. It is also interesting to note that Baal was in fact supposedly a storm god often associated with the power of fertility and one of the gifts he was supposed to grant upon request, was rain. So it was during the time of Elijah’s “contest” with the Baal worshipers that they wanted their god Baal to whip up some type of electrical storm to get their pagan alter set on fire. It gets to the point where Elijah mocks the Baal worshipers asking them if their god is on vacation or on a journey or sleeping and that is why he was ignoring them. This type of mockery is not pious in the least bit when it is in defense of something that God finds an abomination, such as the worship of pagan “Mystery Babylon” gods like Baal, something God abhors. If you recall it was Jezebel, the wife of King Ahab and queen of Israel that had replaced the worship of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob with the worship of her god Baal.

Elijah challenged the Baal worshipers to show Baal’s might and they failed completely to demonstrate anything. Elijah even allowed the prophets of Baal to go first, and 12 hours later, they were so desperate for anything to happen, they were slashing themselves to pieces with lances.

It was at that time, without a single cloud in the sky that Elijah called down fire from Heaven to show all who were spectators, who the one true living God was. It may have been a lightening flash, it doesn’t really matter what it was, as it was sent from God as a show of might.

And so it is today, as it was back then, we have a revival of paganism, a renewed interest in the occult, Satanism (the worship of Saturn),

witchcraft and the black arts, of druidism,

worship of Gaia the supposed mother goddess of the earth

and finally as was the case here and is still done in this day and age, Baal worship.

The list goes on and on, it seems much more convenient for some to practice all these more self-centered belief systems than a faith that requires one to die daily to self and make a daily sacrifice, that is a sacrifice of obedience. As a whole, mankind has learned very little since the days of Elijah on Mount Carmel. Still man wants to make sacrifices at the high places and still it is a stench in God’s Nostrils and an utter abomination to him. God makes it clear that those that practice these pagan rituals and believe upon them will not enter into God’s Kingdom without true repentance. Even Halloween is condemning in of itself. Just like the Baal worshipers wasted their time trying to conjure up a “paperweight fabricated god” that was nothing more than an ancient demon or demons masquerading once again as something they are not. So to nowadays, man is at it again. Will God have to send fire from Heaven once more? Keep reading, to find out the answer.

Coming up next:

Mystery # 4 : (the) Still Small Voice

1 Kings 19: 11-12 And he said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the LORD. And, behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and broke in pieces the rocks before the LORD: but the LORD was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake: but the LORD was not in the earthquake: And after the earthquake a fire; but the LORD was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.

As you can see this Mystery of the Bible (MOB) study passage covers (the) still small voice of God for it is the still small voice of God as made known by the Ruach Hakodesh, (the Holy Spirit in Hebrew) that frames this passage of scripture. What an epic event as orchestrated by the Lord God Almighty and witnessed by none other than the Prophet Elijah. Some very supernatural things seem to happen for Elijah in the high places, like Mt. Carmel.

There on Mount Carmel, this very same prophet who just recently scoffed and mocked the Baal worshipers was now subject to a great display of God’s Power and Majesty as we just saw in the previous MOB feature

Similar to when God passed by Moshe (Moses) and he caught a glimpse of Hashem (God)’s backside, the Lord passes by Elijah

and at the very same time this occurs, a very powerful wind begins to shake and tear up the mountain landscape. In fact the wind was so powerful that scripture says large pieces of rock came off the mountains.

Now that was some powerful wind we are dealing with here! This was all happening on the very mountain that Moses received the Ten Commandments, the very mountain that the manifestation of God’s Presence was known by God’s Shekinah Glory (an earlier passage we studied) and the well-known burning bush event.

While God created the storms and manipulated the forces of nature (an example of the term we introduced hypernaturalism again), he did not reveal nor make himself known to Elijah in either the wind

or the earthquakes nor the fire. 

The Prophet Elijah must have been in complete terror and bewilderment, being caught in this seemingly chaotic storm. Yet there was no chaos, it was all deliberate on God’s Part, for he always has a plan. No this was not a random storm that snuck up on God by surprise, it was ordered by God including the pieces of rock flying off the mountain tops due to the swirling engulfing wind, the dangerous lightening

creating fire and earthquakes all occurring one after the other. Nature must have seemed to have gone mad at the moment to anyone witnessing this series of events. Elijah’s heart must have been racing and pounding with the anxiety of not knowing what was going to happen next.

Elijah looked for God, he looked for any evidence that God was at the helm of this occurrence. There was nothing. Nothing that is, until the still small voice of God was finally “heard.”

Before we speak of that still small voice, one point needs to be made here. God, it must be noted, does not manifest himself to us always in his fullness of the Godhead bodily never mind his Shekinah Glory (as we covered in a much earlier scripture passage study) in nature or the elements of nature. Truly God is not in the wind, the earthquake, or the fire. God is the creator of the wind, the earthquake and the fire. It turns out God is not in the place Elijah was looking for him in, instead God was there, as a still small voice, the voice of the Rauch Hakodesh, the Holy Spirit.

Indeed the Lord was not in the fire that swirled around Elijah but he was indeed in the burning bush when Moses encountered God. The Lord was also in the fiery tongues of Pentecost. The still small voice was there at those times and what a profound way for God’s Eternal Presence to be made known to Elijah. Yet, the still small voice did not speak or utter a sound. The wind, the earthquakes and the fire

were the preparation that God made for Elijah to receive the still small voice of God.  It was God’s Awesome Display of signs and wonders that the Israelites and even Elijah had been witness of for so long that now held Elijah spellbound. Elijah was in awe of God’s Majesty despite the fact that he had seen firsthand God’s Resurrection Power just recently. Elijah himself had seen the miracles of God many times before. But by awing him, God made him attentive to his still small voice after the storm had passed. All had quieted down considerably, there was no more earthquake trembling, no more terrifying lightening, just the still small voice of God remained.  Think of all that happened to Elijah. Elijah had triumphed over the Prophets of Baal, (which we just recently covered in 1 Kings 18:20-40 and 19:12).

Elijah had fled into the wilderness after hearing King Ahab’s evil wife, Jezebel had plotted to kill him. There in the desert, Elijah collapsed from exhaustion.

God sent an angel to Elijah, telling him to take food and water in order to gain his strength back and as well rest.

Elijah headed off to Horeb at God’s command. There in a cave, Elijah complains aloud that all the prophets have been killed off by Jezebel and that he was the lone survivor.  It is God who instructs Elijah to stand on the mountain and to come into his presence. That was when Elijah experienced God’s Awesome Power with the mighty wind, the earthquake and the fire.

When it was over all that remained was a still small voice, a gentle whisper from God. For Elijah who had seen so much in his lifetime, even the resurrection of the dead, an important lesson has been taught and one we should pay heed to today. God does not need to always show himself in dramatic fashion, in a powerful revelation of himself or even a manifestation of his wonder and grace. Christians at times today go for the experience of God over worshiping God in spirit and truth, where discernment and being built up and rooted in the Word of God will help instruct and reprove the Christian in their daily walk.

Some of the more charismatic churches today put the experience one can have with God over the Word of God to the point that some of the occurrences and experiences in the Church are not even biblical and some of the signs and wonders and some of the prophetic utterances as well become more greatly emphasized other than what God is actually communicating to us in his intended word.  The danger of course here is that if we let chaos take over in the church, then what of our testimony to unbelievers and skeptics? If some of our churches become a place of unruliness and resemble more of a three-ring circus then the House of the Lord has lost its missionary responsibilities to be evangelical in reaching the Lost with the Gospel of Christ. So one question for all of us to ask ourselves is, as servants of the Lord are we listening to the still small voice of God?

Sometimes God doesn’t want a grand show put on, he much rather work with a still small voice that will cause us to need to listen intently in quietness and reflection. Zechariah 4:6 tells us that God works in ways we can’t predict and it is not by might nor power, but my Spirit. So we should not always be looking for explicit displays of power from God in every instance. Sometimes God chooses to work in much more subtle ways, with the still small voice. God is God and no other, he is not limited to any one form of communication. Nor can God be put in a box and found to be predictable in any way we can comprehend.

So what of you beloved? Are you listening for God’s Still Small Voice even now? Or are you waiting for a mighty move of God because you demand nothing less and your faith is in shambles? Listen intently to the Holy Spirit, read God’s Word, pray with diligence, be patient in all matters of faith and wait for the still small voice to come once more to you. Then and only then you may hear from God in his still small voice as Elijah did and be obedient to his call.

Next up… Mystery # 5

A Lying Spirit (out of the mouth of a Prophet): Spirit of Deception

1 Kings 22: 21-23 And there came forth a spirit, and stood before the LORD, and said, I will persuade him. And the LORD said unto him, herewith? And he said, I will go forth, and I will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. And he said Thou shalt persuade him, and prevail also: go forth, and do so. Now therefore, behold, the LORD hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets, and the LORD hath spoken evil concerning thee.

A most amazing passage of scripture indeed is 1 Kings 22: 21-23. We will begin to examine how God deals with the presence of evil whether it is thoughts and/or actions and deeds; God always uses evil for the overall good of his divine Kingdom plans. As we have said on numerous occasions in the past on this website, God cannot nor will not ever sin nor can God will himself to do evil or perform acts of evil.

In a unique supernatural way that clearly is beyond our logic and comprehension and defines the sovereign, majestic purity of God, somehow God and God alone can manipulate evil in such a unique way that it ends up being used for something positive and good. Evil is never attached to God or part of God despite what many an atheist in the secular world seeks to blame God for killing in the name of religion (which is man-made and not from God and is a major misconception). Speaking of misconceptions, check out these three misconceptions by three prominent atheists below.

Now that is interesting, how can someone blame something on God if they say they don’t even believe in God. So they have to change their statements, into the belief in God is what is causing all the harm in the World. That is funny, most crimes are committed by the Godless the last time, someone read a newspaper, that much is evident. Now are there people who say they are people of God doing bad things in this World of ours? You bet there are! Man is a wretched depraved liar and a sinner, a type of living Pinocchio if you will.  The unredeemed man is full of lies and deceit after all he is a child of disobedience, a child of the father of lies, Satan.

The greatest example we have in recorded history is the one event that is also best known and that is the false trial and unfair and unjust sentence, torture and extremely violent and grisly death and subsequent resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, Yeshua.

We can look to so many other stories of blessings that come from suffering including the story of Job where God let the devil do a limited amount of evil upon Job. The time of the Great Tribulation will see many of the saints be martyred for the faith, and these tribulation saints will be beheaded the Bible says by the Antichrist.

We are seeing many such beheadings today in the Islamic nations by ISIS. Ultimately these very same saints will stand in Heaven along with all the others who have been martyred for their faith and serve as representatives for the Glory of God and God will pour out his vengeance on their behalf for them all. One has to believe this will in fact include the untold millions and millions upon millions of aborted babies murdered for convenience’s sake as well as the millions of children in countries like Africa where the children were born into starvation on purpose as well as the persecution of the martyrs around the World in what is known as the underground churches and countless millions of others Worldwide suffering for the cause of the Lord Jesus Christ.

God for a limited time has let evil take its course and has allowed the hardening of hearts by those in need of repentance, including Kings and Pharaohs and many a time, even the stiff necked, peculiar people, the Israelites. They were chosen not because they were special, they were chosen because God could show his glory through the most stubborn people on the planet, as they were the unlikeliest in reality to ever be chosen in the first place.

It is interesting to note that just as Satan, the devil officially known as Lucifer, amongst other names has contested many a soul before the Throne of God as in the case of Job. On this occasion, we see a spirit, not presumably, one of the Lord’s Chosen cherubs, but most likely a rogue evil spirit all too willing to do some evilness all the while ignoring God’s Greater Plan.

The evil spirit was willing to act as a lying spirit to the prophets. This evil spirit did not care that it was simply a pawn in God’s Greater and much larger picture. The evil spirit was only driven by hatred and lying is a large part of what these demonic spirits do, as we have already covered this aspect when we dealt with familiar spirits a while back in one of our segments. God has this spirit on a “spiritual leash” of sorts. God will not allow the spirit to do anything more than serve his purpose of testing the prophets by putting the lying spirits thoughts and ideas in their heads and the utterance of prophetic lies in their mouths. The prophets told lies because the spirit manipulated them and that only happened as we now know because God allows it to happen in the first place.
Now the big question, why did God allow this to happen in the first place? First of all, God wanted to challenge King Ahab who had gone astray from God for quite some time. Ahab accepted the lies of the prophets. But there is much more at stake here, you see, these were not prophets of God to begin with, they were false prophets and God wanted to expose them as such in the proper way, God’s Way. God indeed had a very real message he wanted to deliver, but he was ignored by Ahab and consequently he let the lying spirit propagate the lies that the false prophets chose to believe and spoke in front of Ahab.

God was showing all who witnessed this event, the litmus test for a true prophet of God, is to tell the prophetic truth 100% of the time. How many of today’s so called prophets would pass God’s test I wonder?

There are many today who want to tell you the date and even the time of the Rapture of the Church and are always wrong, they also like to pick the name of the Antichrist, and they will most likely be wrong there as well. This is a waste of time beloved in following such false prophets, God has more important things for you to do and being distracted is a favorite ploy of Satan, to begin with.

Would there even be one true prophet of God do you think today if the 100% truth litmus test was conducted? I haven’t heard of any, have you? They may be out there, but they aren’t making YouTube videos telling you about it. These false prophets failed but one prophet named Micaiah told the truth and was indeed a true Prophet of God. It was Micaiah who told King Ahab that God was going to punish him for his disobedience and his unrepentant sin. He even told Ahab that he was going to die in battle and the army would return from battle without a leader.

It is interesting to note that Micaiah tells Ahab, that God does in fact allow the devil to make the people believe a lie. Doesn’t that sound familiar to this verse of a coming prophecy that is in fact almost already completely fulfilled? 2 Thessalonians 2:11 And for this cause God shall send them a strong delusion so that they will believe a lie. The man of perdition, the Antichrist (the living embodiment of the God Apollo) and his Antichrist Spirit will be dominant upon the Earth as God’s Holy Spirit is pulled back.

The Antichrist

along with his evil cohort the False Prophet will spread the lies and propaganda to all the “sheeple” and the “sheeple” will believe the lies to the point they will gladly take the mark of the beast, 666.

During the time of the Holy Spirits pulling back that which is restraining the World from total chaos. Some believe this means  that the Church has now departed in the Rapture, this remains to be seen and we will examine the Rapture scenario’s  in coming MOB’s (Mysteries of the Bible in short). Let’s look at what we can count on with the outmost surety.

What we do know is that man will no longer be restrained from his most decadent, darkest and evilest ambitions and we will be as the days of Noah, when the entire Earth was filled with violence.

All those who worship the creation including nature (new age / mystery Babylon and pagan / druid religions)

and themselves (those committing idolatry, humanists and transhumanists)

and the worship of the planets like Saturn and directly Satan (the occult and witchcraft),

along with societies rebellious and angry anarchist dissidents and outcasts,

will form a one world government and a one world religion. They will all have bought the lie and the mark of the beast will be their reward and unfortunately their ultimate damnation. Mystery Babylon will be the one world religion and Satan’s false messiah will force all to worship him and take the mark of the Beast.

Unfortunately it doesn’t end there, it just won’t be those listed above who believed the fatal lies and delusions, it will also be individuals, many who line the pews on Sunday mornings and every week in the church. Yes, the devil feels quite comfortable making himself at home in the church.

You might have watched too many horror movies in your life if you think otherwise, remember it is scripture that says that Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. The devil has been in the church for a long time, he has been feeding lukewarm pastors and false teachers of God’s Word lies, influencing all the susceptible false prophets and false teachers and leading the blind sheep of the flock astray. Satan has his plants in most if not all churches of today.

This group includes the phony evangelists and scammers and others more aligned with criminals and pathological liars than anything else.

They are often seen seeking donation after donations saying God demands more money, all the while they are, running around in their million-dollar private jets, in their expensive clothes riding around in their countless limousines, with their mansions galore.

 

They preach the gospel of prosperity and wealth as a sign of true blessing and faith. They lead astray the flock and are false shepherds, wolves in sheep’s clothing the Bible calls them. With some discernment from the Holy Spirit you can see the fruits of their labors and their fruit exposes them as ravenous wolves.

They talk about faith like it is something you can imagine in your mind and speak out and claim whatever you want in life, changing faith from its original intent by God into some type of perverse new age practice.  Even worse is their outright blasphemy.

All these preachers of prosperity

and word of faith movement teachers,

those that mix the Gospel of God with new age teachings.

as well as the heretical and blasphemous influences of the Roman Catholic Church in Satanic Mary idol worship (another subject far too massive to deal with here)

are all preaching another gospel, not of Yeshua (Jesus) and not of God, but of Satan. None of them can be found in the Bible under any type of orthodox interpretation. The Lord Jesus Christ warned us that others would come in his name and we were not to run to them. All those false leaders that fall for these lies will have to answer to God Almighty for leading astray the flock and for the perversions of God’s Holy Word and unfortunately so too will the blind flock that follow these false teachers and false prophets, these pan pipers of the false gospel of Satan, the father of lies.

They should have known better and had some form of discernment. Accountability is truly lacking in a lot of the Last Days Church beloved, it really is.

1 Timothy 4:1 states that Now the spirit speaketh expressively, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils. We have this today beloved. We have seducing spirits luring you into their web of deception on TV shows, music videos, Movies and commercials

as well as something called Monarch mind control or brainwashing.

as you will notice the next few pics were taken from the Disney Channel which is a breeding ground for pedophiles and many of the shows are about witchcraft and the occult. Disney himself was a 33rd degree Mason so that should not come as a surprise to anyone.

and the movies and in the music industry with their hyped up sexual and occultic images

and subliminal and even overt messaging about this coming New World Order and New Age of occultism that is coming rapidly upon us.

We have doctrines of demons being preached not only in churches,

in false religions

but in the Government

, in Institutions of so called Higher learning

It’s even seen in Sports

So called “Christian Music” performed by so called “Christian artists”

and the very synagogues of Satan himself.

Those lacking discernment and those who are undisciplined, those who are biblically illiterate are most subject to these lies and are “cannon fodder” for the devil and his legion and will be victims of this spiritual deception and confusion and ultimately doubt in God and have a serious lack of faith. Too many are looking for a feel-good experience from God then seeking the solemn face of a Holy and Reverent and Righteous God who deserves all the respect, reverence and honor we can praise him with. Before that can be done, there must be repentance before the Holy One, there must be! Yeshua is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He is the Lord Jesus Christ, Alpha and Omega, the Everlasting King, God of the Universe, he is the Ancient of Days and the Great I Am. Run only to him, get right with only him and flee the devil and all his lies, deceptions and delusions today, before it’s too late. Today is the day of Salvation scripture says. Sufficient enough is the evil for tomorrow bring.

Next up…

Mystery # 6: Fire from Heaven

2 Kings 1:10 And Elijah answered and said to the captain of fifty, If I be a man of God, then let fire come down from heaven, and consume thee and thy fifty. And there came down fire from heaven, and consumed him and his fifty.

Elijah called for fire from Heaven in order to punish a group of prideful sinners.

Elijah’s heart was in the right place. He was not trying to demonstrate any of his own power or draw attention to himself. Elijah was trying to make a statement of God’s Holiness and Righteousness, all the while demonstrating what happens when the Wrath of God is provoked by unreceptive and ungodly men. Elijah’s only concern was defending God’s Glory. God didn’t need Elijah to defend him, but God certainly had a history of using the prophets to bring his judgment and wrath from time to time upon the wicked and rebellious.

For those that choose to humble themselves before the Lord as one captain did, there is forgiveness and mercy of sin and God spares them, his wrath. We have seen fire from Heaven before in this Mystery of the Bible series. If you remember, in the Book of Genesis, fire and brimstone rained down upon Sodom and Gomorrah.

The fire literally came from the Lord from the heavenlies. In the Book of Exodus, Moses stretched out his staff toward the sky and the Lord sent lightning flashes along with violent hail upon the land of Egypt.

The amazing thing with this instance is that 3 times God sends fire from Heaven as God’s Patience was tested and provoked 3 times in a row. God demonstrates his wrath by sending fire from Heaven. You would think once is enough to challenge God, but three times? Only a true haughty spirit of ignorance and pride would bother to challenge God Almighty once never mind 3 times. It is interesting to note that the disciples of Jesus, James and John

asked Yeshua if he wanted them to call fire down from heaven to destroy some people in a Samaritan village where Yeshua was rejected. It is interesting to note that Jesus quickly rebukes them and says that they don’t know what manner of spirit they are.

 

In a moment we will examine what Yeshua meant by that concerning a counterfeit spirit sent from the devil that mimics the signs and wonders of God in order to attempt to deceive the Lord’s Elect and vulnerable and susceptible individuals. The stories of the past about God’s Fire from Heaven and even of the prophets were well known to the disciples of Jesus and the Early Church. Now let’s journey to the end of the Bible, to the Book of Revelation where we read about the 2 beasts that would be the Antichrist and the False Prophet.

The Second Beast is indeed the False Prophet, who does all sorts of false and lying wonders and even makes fire come down from Heaven in an act of great deception.

This false miracle by Satan would lead to the creation of the image of the Beast and ultimately cause many in awe and delusion to worship of the Beast.

So fire from Heaven becomes prophetic for us in the future as well as its significance in the past. Remember when Elijah first called down the fire from Heaven? When Elijah told the children of Israel to choose between the God of Heaven and the Idol worshipers of Baal in 1 kings 18, the context was to be decided by which “God” could actually bring down the fire from heaven.

The fire from heaven that God sent as a demonstration was used to prove that the God of Israel was and continues to be the Great I Am, the one and true Living God. Satan would have loved to mimic God as he always tries to do, but he was powerless to act on his own behalf. Now let’s once again return to the Book of Revelation one last time. At the end times, during the days of the Great Tribulation, the time of Jacob’s Trouble (God’s 7 year plan in dealing with rebellious Israel and an unbelieving World), fire will come down from Heaven scripture says, but as we have already discussed, it will be deceiving fire, it will not be from God.

When this fire comes seemingly from Heaven, only those who trust the Lord God and filled with the Holy Spirit of God himself, will be able to be kept from being deceived. Satan loves to twist the Word of God in an act of perversity of his Holy Word.

He takes the very words of scripture and misapplies scripture, taking it out of context on purpose and mixing in just a little truth like he did in the garden with Adam and Eve. He told them about the tree of knowledge of good and evil and that they would know the difference of sin and goodness if they ate from the tree. Up to that point there is some truth being told here, but wait there is sure enough going to be a twist from the Old Devil, the Serpent.

Satan conveniently left out the part that they would sin against God, lose their eternal life and die of course. Satan loves to mix half lies with half-truths; deception is easier with half a truth to begin with. So to will be the insincerity of the so called “fire from Heaven” that the false Prophet brings, which is more like fire from hell.

Satan tried to use his twisted interpretation on the Lord himself in the desert.

when he attempted to tempt him by using deception as well as attempt to cater to the Lord’s mortal needs such as food and hunger. Jesus’s Response was to rebuke Satan with scripture that was used in its proper context.

The Living Word used the Word of God to dispel God’s Enemy, Satan from deceiving him. God’s Holy Spirit leads us to truth even when Satan is trying to fool us with his deceptive ways. Fire from Heaven is not always from God, Satan can do false miracles as well and all manner of lying signs and wonders as well.

Without the proper discernment that God’s Holy Spirit brings, we will see more and more of so called “Christians” become deceived by false healings,

false works and manifestations of an unholy Spirit

that includes false visions, false prophecies (doctrines of demons)

and even false appearances of apparitions like that of the Mary of Fatima occurrences.

Don’t forget scripture says the Antichrist will initially appear as an “Angel of Light “but then will reveal himself ultimately as the man of perdition at some point and time.

The Antichrist will even be mortally wounded in the head (most likely a staged assassination) and then Satan will perform the ultimate blasphemous miracle, his own occultic resurrection of the Antichrist that will make most everyone think he is the second coming of “the Christ.”  He will appear before the millions of people and they will chant” who is like the beast.” He is indeed the BEAST, THE ANTICHRIST, THE SON OF PERDITION.

This is Satan’s attempt to mock the resurrection of the Lord with his most unholy resurrection. Some think the head wound that Antichrist will suffer and that is described in the Book of Revelation is more symbolic then to be taken literally but we here at Mysteries of the Bible don’t think it is symbolic, it is to be taken literally. Fire from Heaven is a wakeup call that we are dealing with the Supernatural and we need discernment to know when we are dealing with God and when we are dealing with the enemy, unless we want to be ultimately consumed by this very fire. In the last days, even the Elect of God would be deceived, if not for the Holy Spirit of God making the Lord’s Revelation of truth known to us, by the discernment he has given us in order to try the spirits, to see if they be of God or not. Do you trust the Holy Spirit of God to grant you the discernment to know what is of God and what is of the devil? Remember not all fire from Heaven is really fire from Heaven, things are not always what they seem.

coming up next…

Elijah smote the waters

2 Kings 2:8 And Elijah took his mantle, and wrapped it together, and smote the waters, and they were divided hither and thither, so that they two went over on dry ground.

As we begin our latest MOB we will encounter still another miracle of God at work here. It would have been no surprise for anyone who had seen what the God of Israel had done with Moses and the Israelites in Exodus 14: 21, when God parted the Red Sea to make a way where there seemed to be no way for the Israelites to pass on dry ground.

We covered that a while back if you recall in an earlier study.

So here was Elijah walking with Elisha, “his sidekick” and they reached the Jordan River,

the same place that much later on, John the Baptist would welcome the Messiah with the Baptism of the Holy Spirit.

They needed to cross the Jordan, the two of them. So here was Elijah with a mantle this time as opposed to Moses and his staff. Elijah rolled up the mantle and divided the River in two, on a much, much smaller scale obviously then what Moses had done at the Red Sea.

Indeed Elijah and Elisha who followed in Elijah’s steps (literally) were types of Moses, even a type of Joshua, if you will. God needed to make sure that the people of Israel took the Prophets of God seriously for quite often they were his messengers not out of necessity but out of choice. In an effort to have them rally behind these prophets God empowered and “equipped” them with the ability to perform certain types of miracles in his behalf. God could quite easily do what he always did before the prophets and just do the miracles himself, but he was trying to show his stubborn “chosen” people that they can strive for obedience in knowing and trusting and obeying God’s Word like the prophets did (as well as Moses and Joshua and many others). By doing this and using the Prophets in this manner, God also preserved and maintained the reverence he seeked from the Israelites. They had seen his power and majesty many a time before as well as all types of signs and wonders and he didn’t want them to become complacent and take him for granted which had already been the case on a number of occasions in the past.

Soon Elijah would be taken away to Heaven and we will be covering that in our very next Mystery and that will be a very exciting and interesting study edition. Some classic commentaries from Matthew Henry on the subject have stated that in allegorical terms the Jordan River symbolizes how like life, the Jordan River is something we pass through.  When the Lord Jesus Christ died for our sins and was resurrected on the third day, the waters of life are forever parted much like what actually happened when the veil of the Temple was torn. God vacated the Temple built with hands at that time; in essence the obstacle blocking our way, our sins, were also torn down giving us access to the Father in Heaven. We must not forget here that God had promised Elijah that Elisha would continue his work in 1 Kings 19:16.

Elijah’s work as a prophet had come to an end as far as service to God on the Earth. It was Elisha’s time to serve as a Prophet of God, so Elijah needed to be removed. With Elisha by his side, Elijah walked to the Jordan River, smote it and caused the waters to part. Joshua had crossed the very same river like that, as well. Joshua would enter the country that God had promised his forefathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Perhaps God wanted Elisha to see how “matter of factly”, Elijah handled doing God’s Miracles in the manner that he did them. For it wouldn’t be long before Elisha would be performing them himself, especially in Elijah’s absence. Whatever the case, Elisha would be granted all of Elijah’s body of work to come, miracles from God included as well.

For God, Hashem, the supernatural was and remains the norm of an everyday existence, the reality of just a very small portion of a characteristic of who and what God has chosen to reveal himself to us. For Elisha it was the training of an apprentice to become, the next Prophet of God. For something even more miraculous was about to happen to Elijah that Elisha would witness and we would revel in it for all our days to come, once again demonstrating God’s Unfathomable Amazing and Limitless Majesty.

Next up…

Mystery # 8 : Elijah and the Chariot of Fire

2 Kings 2 V.11 And it came to pass, as they still went on, and talked, that behold there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven.

According to some of those who study the Bible, there are but two, count them two people who were taken up to Heaven without dying first.

But is this truly the case, were they really taken to Heaven without dying first?

What does scripture have to say about this ?

and what is all this business about a chariot of fire?

We found out in Genesis 5:24 that Enoch walked with God and it was a long walk, about 300 years or so give or take a minute or two (who was counting). God took him away evidently. Where did Enoch go? Was he in fact taken to Heaven? More on that in a bit. The second person and the subject of our study on this edition of Mysteries of the Bible is Elijah and the scripture passage most of us seem to know about, the chariot and horses of fire story.

To do this topic justice however we need to go back to the original encounter of Enoch and his walk with God. As we mentioned already Enoch is described as having walked with God for 300 years. Elijah on the other hand was probably the most significant of all God’s Prophets. It is interesting to note that in Malachi 4: 5-6, we read that the Spirit of Elijah shall return before the great and dreadful day of the Lord and this indeed seemed to be the case with the appearance of John the Baptist who was said to have indeed come in the spirit and power of Elijah according to Luke 1: 17.

So the big question is why did God take Enoch and Elijah in the first place?

We will address the chariot of fire topic as well shortly. There is some speculation that in the Book of Revelation 11 3-12, there are mentioned two witnesses and some eschatology studiers think that these two witnesses are none other than Elijah and Enoch and that God wanted to include them in the end time’s prophecies, so he took them to be with him. The Bible is not clear on this and because of this, this remains speculation. More likely however, God wanted to demonstrate his reward to Enoch and Elijah for they had one thing in common, great faithfulness in serving and obeying God. Another likely reality in Elijah’s case anyways as we will look at in a little bit, it was Elijah’s time to step aside and make way for Elisha to take over as God’s “go to” prophet. So now the interesting stuff begins friends. The verses of our study scriptures from both Genesis and 2 Kings have some fascinating details contained in them and we shouldn’t overlook or brush them off too quickly or we might miss the essence of what God wants us to know here. 2 KINGS 2: 11 says Elijah went up by a whirlwind to Heaven.

Enoch, (we are told by Bible scholars) never died, but neither did Elijah. Enoch was “translated” scripture says. Now don’t forget still another person’s mysterious appearance. Moses appeared in the transfiguration with Jesus in Matthew 17:3. Where did Moses come from anyways? Where was he the whole time before the transfiguration? Were Enoch, Elijah and Moses all in Heaven, before Yeshua even came to the Earth in the flesh? How can that be one might ask?

Here is the answer to these questions and as usual, the answer is contained in scripture. John 3:13 says No man has ever went up to Heaven, unless he also came down from Heaven, Jesus included. Now remember in John 1:18 only the Lord Jesus Christ has seen the Father in all his glory. Elijah was taken up by a whirlwind into Heaven by a chariot of fire, with horses of fire we read in Kings 2: 11.

We know from our very first study we ever did in the Mysteries of the Bible, there are 3 Heavens if you recall, not just one. In fact we will later on take a look at the Book of Enoch which is not canonized (authorized) scripture that indicates there are as many as 10 Heavens. The Bible only mentions 3 levels of Heaven for what it’s worth. It goes without saying that the Bible is the only source with any true credence. It makes sense that Elijah did not go to the Third Heaven where the Heavenly Father resides, but more likely it was the First Heaven, right here in our atmosphere where a supernaturally formed whirlwind actually took place.

It is also interesting to note that the sons of the prophets knew in advance that Elijah was going to be taken away and they were fearful that the Spirit of God was going to drop Elijah on some mountain or valley according to 2 kings 2:16.

We find out from 2 Chronicles 21: 12- 15 that Elijah was taken in a whirlwind to another location and once there he produced a letter. This was 10 years after his disappearance, proving that he was indeed not in the 2nd or 3rd Heaven and was very much alive here on Earth. The contents of the letter addressed very specific events that had transpired in the past 10 years, long after Elijah had been taken up in the whirlwind. Elijah was of course a prophet, someone that could easily see into the future but the letter was not prophetic in nature, it was more in keeping with details of the past and not the future. We can come to the conclusion that not only did Elijah not go past the first Heaven, he was carried in a chariot of fire, a supernatural type of transportation vehicle that took him from one place to the next.

Elijah is not the only one to get caught up in the first Heaven. It happened to Phillip in the Book of Acts 8: 39- 40 as well. Phillip was caught up in the first Heaven,

just like Elijah and transported to another location 30 miles away. It doesn’t mention if a chariot of fire was the means of transportation, but it just might have been. Remember Ezekiel? Ezekiel had a very interesting experience where the Spirit took him away in Ezekiel 3: 12. The Spirit lifted him up between the Earth and Heaven (most likely the First Heaven) and brought him first to Jerusalem and then to Chaldea. Ezekiel had great visions that many have tried to interpret

and we will examine these visions in more depth at the appropriate time.

Elijah of course was never found and one of the reasons that might have been, was because he simply was transported further away than the 50 men who went out searching for him, traveled. The Bible makes it clear, a fiery chariot separated Elijah from Elisha and a very powerful wind storm snatched Elijah away in what is described as a whirlwind. In the Book of Psalms, Psalm 68: 17 states that chariots of fire represent God’s Overwhelming Power. King David had wanted to build a golden chariot alongside the Ark of the Covenant in the temple that his son, Solomon ended up building instead. One cannot but wonder if the strange vision of Ezekiel in Chapter 1 of the Book of Ezekiel is describing some type of animal like cherub with the Ark of the Covenant attached to it, and in essence becoming some type of chariot of sorts.

Psalm 104:3 states He makes the clouds his chariot: who walks on the wings of the Spirit. Some modern day interpretations of scripture have wanted to go as far as saying these chariots of fire are actually UFO’s or types of inter-dimensional flying saucers and are driven by benign aliens. Does anyone remember the Chariots of the Gods book by Eric von Däniken a hugely popular book back in the 70’s and early 80’s? Far from biblical, this book became

the basis for the History Channels Ancient Aliens series, still another medium that shuns the truth of the Bible.

The premise is simply that ancient aliens visited the Earth long before Man was on the planet.

There is some truth to that, the Fallen Angels most likely did touch down upon the Earth before Adam and Eve were on the Planet.

Thus the rage and jealousy of Lucifer, (now manifested as Satan the Serpent) felt when he saw the two of them in the Garden of Eden.

His diabolical plan of revenge would begin with the big lie

and culminate in the fall from Grace for all of mankind to experience. Psalm 68: 17 states the chariots of God are twenty thousand, even thousands of angels: the LORD is among them, as in Sinai, in the Holy Place. So at least in this instance the chariots of God are indeed angels. Jeremiah 4: 13 states Behold, he shall come up as Clouds and his chariots shall be as to a whirlwind: his horses are swifter then eagles.

Interesting comparison of horses and eagles, in this case not normal horses that we see running on the ground but ones that really do fly in the air, much like the one the Lord will return on when he comes back to the Earth to war against Satan and his cronies.

Again we have the mention of the whirlwind and chariots as well here. So we know that the God of Israel has thousands upon thousands if not tens of millions of chariots (angels) at his disposal.

Are these chariots of fire really UFO’s though?

 

After all Elisha saw Elijah get taken up in a whirlwind created by a chariot. This chariot is partly a transportation vehicle, we now know and as well the chariot travels vertical in direction. Sounds like it could be indeed a type of flying device or flying saucer doesn’t it?

Remember Ezekiel in Ch.l of that Book, discussing a great cloud and a fire and living creatures (four of them) that had a type of likeness of man. Are these similar in appearance to some of the demonic “aliens” that are working hard at deceiving everyone into believing they are from a planet far away and not interdimensional spirit beings? Some are known as the Nordics – tall and blonde almost like an Arian race if you will.

Is it possible that Elijah was taken up by a UFO?

Elisha , the prophet who took over for Elijah in 2 kings 6:16-17, prays and opens his eyes, only to see a mountain full of horses and chariots of fire. Before that moment, he had heard the sounds but he saw nothing. This is indeed the work of the supernatural and of God. Ezekiel ch.1 talked about 4 living creatures and there in the Book of Revelation in Ch.9: 15 -16, there are 4 angels that are loosed upon the earth.

The Lord Jesus Christ himself will return on the clouds and on a flying horse. Could it be a chariot or even some type of flying device perhaps? Are the angels that ride in the skies in fact the chariots of fire and as well the chariots of God?

There are so many questions left unanswered and anyone that tells you a definitive answer at this point is just speculating as well. We try to not do that much here on this website; it doesn’t serve as a good use of time we believe. We might not know the answers to these questions until we finally are with the LORD ourselves, but in the meantime, keep watching the skies for those chariots of fire.

Please never forget that your redemption draws nigh beloved.
Coming up next…

Mystery # 9: The steep price for mocking a Prophet of God

2 Kings 2: V. 23- 24 And he went up from thence unto Bethel: and he was going up by the way, there came forth young men out of the city, and mocked him and said unto him, Go up. Thou bald head, go up, thou bald head. And he turned back, and looked at them, and cursed them in the name of the LORD. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tore forty and two young men of them.

It comes with the territory one might say that the Bible being as profound and provocative as it is, pulls no punches in being the inherent Word of God (God breathed if you will). So consequently, there are many misconceptions about the Bible. One of the major reasons we felt led to do this site was that even though there were already so many other Mystery of the Bible sites out there, there still remains so many out there in Cyberspace spewing misconception after misconception about the Bible. There is a contemporary belief out there that the Bible is just like art, you can interpret it to be whatever you want it to be. There is just one flaw in that, a MAJOR flaw. The word is connected to a living GOD, a real GOD not a fictious character, so as we will find out today there are consequences for what we believe and do not believe. So to deal with some of those misconceptions we thought we better step in, not because we had better ability than anyone else to understand scripture but because we wanted to minister unto the Lord’s People, the church and as well to the skeptics out there.

One of the most common misconceptions out there is that the Bible is full of evil things like murder, lust, incest, betrayal, adultery, stealing, cheating, cannibalism, and countless other brutal and sometimes horrific acts of cruelty such as debauchery and torture and on and on it goes.

You know when you think about it for the moment, there is more than a “sprinkling” here and there of what we call sin in the Bible. The Bible is in fact full of it. Now before you get all huffy and puffy and hit the X button on the right corner of the web screen, please hear us out for a moment. Who would expect anything less from a book about God’s Plan of redemption of man’s corrupt sinful state into a sanctified new creature?

The argument being made is an attempt of a justification that the Bible itself is bad for individuals and society.

It comes from the same circle that argues that all major wars from the dawn of time have been fought in the name of religion so let’s throw them all out as well. We will save that topic for another time about how faith in God is actually a real relationship and not a religion, as that in itself deserves proper handling.

The misconception simply is that the topic of sin is dealt with in scripture and that is exactly why man needs redemption. Man is full of sin and cannot save himself, despite what many in the New Age think,

despite what many who believe in reincarnation think – they are not little gods.

The stories in the Bible are not about God sinning for he can’t commit sin. He never has and because he is completely pure and just, he cannot even be tempted to sin. He is sinless. The Bible is full of the stories of man’s struggles, from man’s great fall of grace in the garden into sin and death to God’s Great Plan of restoring man to his previous condition in the Garden through the sacrifice of his son the Lord Jesus Christ, Yeshua.

So we come to this scripture passage, which some bible scholars may dread speaking about, the time the Prophet Elisha was ridiculed by young men for being bald. In fact this is a prime example of how some anti-bible viewpoints point to this passage as a perfect example of both God and the Bible not being good for anyone. Here is just one example below.

The King James Version calls them little children but we will see shortly how that is one of the very few mistakes found in the KJV as they were more like young adults. The fact that stories like this exist in the Bible make the Bible seem even more real because they are not always nice happy endings in every case (unless you go to the very end of the Bible that is). In this instance one could argue that this story or incident had gone very, very bad. This incident however is indicative of God’s True Supernatural Nature and is the reality that God’s Word is truth so we need to decide what we will do about that and hopefully the answer will be to worship God in spirit and in truth as scripture indicates we should be doing. This is a very hard story to read, no matter how many times you in fact read it. First of all, we need to understand that Elisha was a very peaceful Prophet of God, so much more than his fire and brimstone predecessor, the Prophet Elijah. Elijah would get all worked up in a righteous anger often a time and really preach out the word, but Elisha was softer spoken then that for the most part.

In a very unusual display of anger, after being mocked by these young men, Elisha cursed the young men and consequently the judgment that followed was very swift, as 2 large bears came out of the woods and ripped apart 42 of these young men.

Elisha was a man of God and he always stressed God’s Love and Kindness and mercy, none of which were displayed when his curse upon the young men was made manifest.

The very same power that God uses to redeem man out of darkness is the very same power on display here.

Mocking even when it comes from younger people is still mocking and the source is unmistakable, it is of the devil, Satan, who hates God, the Word of God and anyone who serves God, including God’s Prophets.

There is no doubt these young men were obviously full of mischievousness, and it would be easy to pass the mocking off as a simple act of ignorance upon the immature. However this is not the case here. Satan as we should know by now, will use anyone and everyone to try and interfere with God’s Messages and intent for man as well as God’s Messengers who deliver the messages often in prophetic divine fashion strictly inspired by the Spirit of God.

Remember how Noah was subjected to great ridicule and was mocked nonstop when God told him to build the Ark when there wasn’t even one hint of a raindrop in the sky,

prior to the monsoon torrential downpour of 40 days and 40 nights.

Goliath mocked David before David struck him down with just one stone by the power and might of God.

Satan even made sure Christ was mocked as well.

when he made the Roman centurions post the King of the Jews sign on the crucifixion posting that held his broken and bloody body.

Even today in Churches across the country, Satan attempts to mock God by using God’s People against one another whether it be backbiting or gossip or a Pastor involved in a sex scandal or money laundering.

 

or some type of financial scam and so called “Christian” (by their fruits they will be known) scam artists..

It doesn’t matter to God; he detests it all and Satan uses it to try and mock God with it. So why would these young men who mocked Elisha be immune to Satan’s influence? The answer is of course, they wouldn’t be immune at all. They are children of disobedience, and their father is not God it is the devil. In the Gospel of Matthew there is a passage of scripture where The Lord Jesus Christ mentioned how the Israelites would turn on a prophet and even goes on to mention that no Prophet is ever welcomed back to his hometown.  The Lord stated this very thing in the verse found in Matthew 23:37 , O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the Prophets and stones those who are sent to her.

It is believed that this crowd of young men may have been students of the false prophets, who were no doubt very vocally antagonistic towards Elisha’s prophetic ministry, as well as the authority that God had granted him. Still another theory is that the false prophets sent this group of young men to deliberately hound and harass Elisha in order to get him off their back. Another group that would have detested Elisha’s ministry would be the Idolatrous priests of Bethel who wanted to stop Elisha from entering their city.

They were probably already so fed up with Elijah reprimanding them before him,

they did not want to go through it a second time with Elisha. No matter who was behind these rebellious young mockers, they were fueled by non-other than Satan. Satan saw Elisha as his enemy and it was clear that Satan wanted no part of him or his ministry. Ironically, Elisha was not coming to Bethel to curse it or pronounce judgment upon it. Elisha wanted to bless Bethel. The word mocked in Hebrew is the word galas and it means “a scornful belittling”, a major form of disrespect to both God and God’s Prophet. These young men were completely under Satan’s influence and were not just attacking Elisha, they were attacking God’s Message.

Ultimately these young men were mocking and rejecting God not just God’s Spokesman.

Thus the degree of punishment though extremely severe, was warranted by God’s Righteousness. God will not allow the works of his holiness to be subjected to such mockery without there being some form of swift retribution. Lets’ take a look at the actual words used to mock both Elisha and ultimately God as well. The young men said, “Go up…go up.” The miracle of God that we just covered in our last Mystery of the Bible Study, Elijah being taken up in a whirlwind by a fiery chariot, is being mocked here by these young men.

They were denying the Word of God and God himself. The reference to Elisha’s baldness was a particularly nasty form of ridicule, because at the time it was thought that baldness was a consequence of leprosy. Baldness then was one of the highest forms of disgrace and the fact that they did that to one of God’s Prophets makes it a very serious offense.

Make no mistake about it; Satan was trying to attempt to attack the Message of God, the Word of God and the Messenger of God all at the same time. This incident shows why Satan is indeed the snake, crawling on his belly, he is the lowest form of creature created by God, and Satan is not above abuse of any sort, and making fun of anything he can, in order to try and mock the things of God.  Satan will stop at nothing to help seduce and destroy and lead astray God’s Children. He will have them eating out of his hand, (the tainted apple of temptation) if you will to do his bidding thinking they are doing good when they are really practicing evil against God.

Look into the true history of Santa Clause and the clearly pagan origins of Christmas and you will see how Santa Clause is really a cosmetically altered version of Satan and how he gets Children to think of him more than Jesus during the Christmas holidays

even though it is obvious that Christ was not born on December 25th. Satan uses music and movies to create idols that people worship.

all the while indoctrinating them with satanic symbols and satanic rituals commonly found in music lyrics, videos, concerts as well as TV, video games and movies.

Satanism is alive and well on planet Earth and unless you have spiritual discernment from God’s Holy Spirit, you may already be completely brainwashed into thinking all is well

and all this New World Order mumbo jumbo is just a bunch of fundamental crazy conspiracy theory wacko’s imagining everything. That just might be the case that is UNTIL the Bible backs it all up. And it does.

The fact that Elisha cursed the young men shows the seriousness of the offense committed. Elisha ignored the words of the young men and he cursed them in the name of the Lord. The word curse here in Hebrew is galal and it means “swift, slight.” Cursing in reality is the polar opposite of what a blessing is and what it can do. Elisha had seen the unrepentant hearts of these young men and let God deal with them, as he saw fit. It was not Elisha’s idea for the bears to emerge and to rip apart the 42 young lads. God decided the suitable punishment not Elisha. The rebellion of the young men cost them their lives. Remember, Elisha never called out the bears, God did (the moment Elisha cursed them in the Lord’s name) was when two female bears came out of the woods to chase down the 42 young men.

The lesson here is obvious, God does not take it lightly when we mock his word, when we reject it and disrespect both him, his word or his chosen messengers to convey the word. Punishment will come to all those who refuse to repent of such a sin. Let’s go to the verse that says it all more elegantly then any words we could ever write. Revelation 19: 11-15 I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and makes war. His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns. He has a name written on him that no one but he himself knows. He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God. The armies of heaven were following him, riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean. Out of his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron; and he treadeth the wine press of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.

The rider on the white horse, is Unmistakably Yeshua, the Lord Jesus Christ, the one called faithful and true, the one with the eyes blazing with fire. The one ready to reign only after raining down his judgment upon the unrighteous in order to ultimately bring justice, peace and glory. It is at this time; we see a warrior, a King of Kings and Lord of Lords and not the “Jesus is just allright” good shepherd who is hugging the sheep with a smile on his face as we see in so many depictions. He is always the good shepherd but there is a time and a season for all things. In this instance The Lord is ready to judge and make war against the wicked and the unrepentant.

The business of God is serious business whether we accept the fact or not, the consequences don’t change no matter how much we chose to ignore them. Elisha stood steadfast, amidst the mocking and persecution and left it up to God to judge and to serve sentence. And what of you, when and we mean, not if, but WHEN it is time for your moment of persecution, how will you act and behave?

Will you have the boldness of Elisha and trust God that he will deliver you from your enemies? Pray as Daniel did in the Lion’s den. The Apostle Paul stated in 2 Timothy 3:12, that in fact everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. But be of good cheer Beloved, Christ has overcome the world and by his grace and mercy, so shall you.

next up….

Mystery # 10 God’s Resurrection Power : The Amazing Miracle of Resurrection

2 Kings 4: V. 32-35 And when Elisha was come into the house, behold, the child was dead, and laid upon his bed. He went in therefore, and shut the door upon them twain, and prayed unto the LORD. And he went up, and lay upon the child, and put his mouth upon his mouth, and his eyes upon his eyes, and his hands upon his hands; and he stretched himself upon the child: and the flesh of the child waxed warm. Then he returned, and walked in the house to and fro; and went up, and stretched himself upon him: and the child sneezed seven times, and the child opened his eyes.

The prophet Elisha performed 4 significant miracles in his prophetic ministry. He had performed many miracles in his time, here is a list of them.

The first major miracle Elisha performed

was for a widow in Shunem that was very poor and didn’t have any oil to cook with and was preparing to starve and die. Elisha told the widow to gather up some vessels, which were empty at the time and then by a miracle of God were in an instant, filled with oil.

Elisha then tells the women to sell the oil,

which she does in order to make some money so she can buy some food and improve her situation. We will cover the rest of Elisha’s miracles in this as well our next couple of editions of the Mysteries of the Bible. On this edition, we will look at how Elisha resurrects a dead boy. This is one of those “full circle” stories in the sense that it goes back a ways to a time when a couple from Shunem hosted the prophet Elisha who had traveled there.

It was at that time that Elisha found out that the woman was barren and that the couple had so desperately wished for a child,

to be specific, they wanted a son. Elisha promised the woman a son.

He was born but sometime later, he died of a sudden ailment. The woman sought out Elisha to explain to him what had happened. She wanted him to know that what was supposed to be a blessing to her and her husband,  has now become anything but a blessing, since her son has died. The woman pleads her case with Elijah and convinces him to come back to the home to see the dead boy. After other failed attempts to heal the boy by Elisha’s assistant Gehazi,

Elisha arrives and he is able to heal the boy,

so that he can return to his parents in good health.

But is that it for this story, is there more to this then this storyline? It sounds a bit familiar doesn’t it? It should, if you recall, the Prophet Elijah healed another boy, also a widow’s son and raised him from the dead as well

before Elisha was really doing much of anything as far as prophetic ministry was concerned. We covered Elijah’s resurrection miracles in 1 Kings 17: 21-22 in case you want to review that again. So now it was Elisha’s turn to perform a resurrection miracle on behalf of God. It might have been God’s Way of “endorsing” Elisha as the “go to” Prophet who has replaced the well-known and much more outspoken Elijah. As we have already learned from our last edition, Elisha had a much quieter demeanor and was much more low profile then the more emotionally charged Elijah ever was. Let’s take a look at some background information concerning resurrection and life after death thoughts and beliefs in this time period. The Prophets of Israel (Elijah and Elisha and others) were well acquainted with the pagan beliefs of Baal worshipers of the time.

 

They were familiar with the pagan story that Baal died and was supposedly resurrected (Satan’s counterfeit resurrection which will be made completely manifest by the Antichrist in the near future with his own phony satanic resurrection soon to come).  Baal Worship is shockingly alive and well today!

When Elijah raised the boy from the dead, it was real and factual and not a myth like Baal’s “ folklore tale” was and remains the case to this very day (celebrated incorrectly and with incredible blasphemy as Christ’s birthday.) 

The act of resurrection convinced the woman that Elijah was the real deal, a true Prophet of God and that he could perform Godly acts such as the resurrection of humans, when called upon by God to do so.

Elisha had the exact same capabilities of Elijah when it came to resurrection capabilities. The boy born to the woman, who had no child previously, grew ill and died. The woman grieved for her son and reproached the prophet for giving her a son only then to see him be taken away, just as quickly.

Gehazi the Prophet Elisha’s assistant was sent by Elisha to guard the body of the little boy, and to prevent it from being buried before he arrived. This has more to do with the fact that Elisha had some very unique resurrection rituals he was going to proceed with then the fact that it is not possible to resurrect a buried body, because as we know with God, all things are possible. Gehazi tried to raise the boy himself and could not do it. Elisha finally arrived and prayed fervently for the young lad. Elisha even stretched himself over the little boy as if to pour his life into him. God granted Elisha the power to raise the little boy to life again. Did Elisha have more faith then Gehazi or was it more to do with God’s Will and how he uses the Prophets and God’s Perfect Timing for all things? It doesn’t really matter on the how’s and whys here, the end results speak for themselves. God has and is resurrection power personified (in the name of the Lord).

It is interesting to note that even Elisha in death, had still contained within him, the power of resurrection. Case in point, when Elisha’s lifeless dead body (after he passed away) came in contact with a dead man, it triggered the dead man’s resurrection as well. In this amazing story, a number of men were trying to bury a man when they were attacked by a group of Aramites. With no time to spare, they simply dumped the corpse into the open and still yet unprepared grave of the recently departed Elisha and fled the scene. As soon as the dead man’s body touched the body of Elisha, he was restored and he stood up out of the grave. That is true resurrection power from God Almighty!

There is a definite pattern here friends, of the way God works. Mighty Yahweh takes life and then makes life a new, he brings life to an end, and to the grave and then he brings life up again, a new out of the grave. Like Jonah coming out of the whale,

like Lazarus from his grave

and then Adonai Yeshua himself rising out of the tomb after 3 days.

God can do things that no other god real or imagined could ever do. God is truly one of a kind. The life giver is unmistakably our God, Almighty. God and Yeshua Jesus come to give life more abundantly. God exposed the false religion of Baal and proved without a shadow of a doubt, that he is the one and true God,

worthy of all praise, in life and in death. The others are just stories, myths or the enemy trying to steal God’s Spotlight, which will never, ever happen for God is God. Amen.
next up…

Mystery # 11 : Death in the Pot: Elisha makes poisonous food edible

2 Kings 4: V. 40-41 So they poured out for the men to eat. And it came to pass, as they were eating of the pottage, that they cried out, and said, O thou man of God, there is death in the pot. And they could not eat thereof. But he said, then bring meal. And he cast it into the pot: and he said, pour out for the people, that they may eat. And there was no harm in the pot.

Elisha, the Prophet of God (who was given by God a double portion of the spiritual powers that Elijah his predecessor had before him) had performed a number of key miracles in his private ministry. We have looked at how Elisha helped a woman who was very poor and could not afford to buy anything to eat who supernaturally received an abundance of oil that she could sell and get some money to buy some food. We also looked last time, at how Elisha resurrected a young boy and on this occasion we will look at another of Elisha’s miracles.

Before we go forward with this, we do want to state that we know that a number of individuals reading this will say,” Oh sure God used to do miracles like raising the dead and curing people in the Old Testament and when Jesus was here on Earth, but those days are long gone.” Or are they? Does God still perform miracles today? Some will roll their eyes at this question but others will shrug their shoulders as if to say, “how do I know?”. But can we know?

Perhaps God is still doing miracles but not in such a high profile fashion, for we know that the works of the Prophets needed to be high profile as the works of Yeshua because the word would travel fast about such things and that would change the landscape greatly. Now days we await for Christ’s Return (his real biblical return not the bogus one that Satan will attempt) and for the final days prophecies to be fulfilled. All has been written ,even though young and old will dream dreams and still have visions and prophecies,

no one can say to what capacity and to what degree such things apply to today. Is God capable of doing miracles today as he always has? of course, God is God but is he God to you? That is the harder question to answer. Has God performed his miracle of redemption upon you through his son Jesus Christ through his sacrifice at Calvary? More on that, in a bit.  This time around, the miracle that we will look at, is how Elisha took some poisonous food that was completely deadly and inedible as can be and made it very edible to consume in another miracle of God. It seems that Elisha’s prophetic ministry has paralleled Elijah’s in a number of ways from the fact that both Elisha and Elijah befriended a couple of women that had boys who were going to die and needed to be resurrected. Elisha befriended a Shumen woman much the same way that Elijah made friends with a widow of Zarephath. It is uncanny how both Prophets raised each a boy who had died roughly at the time of their ministry at the household; the timing was anything but coincidental. God had it all planned out long before hand. Concerning this specific instance, a stew of poisonous wild gourds was supposed to feed quite a large group of men. A few men tasted the food and knew it was tainted and poisonous to eat and cried out to Elisha to help them.

Elisha performed a miracle causing the poisonous food to be transformed into edible food and he consequently fed 100 people with 20 loaves of barley bread and some grain. This makes us remember one of the miracles of the Lord, the miracle of the fish and loaves.

The Lord had to feed multitudes of people but all he had was a few loaves of bread and a few fishes. Yeshua blessed the food and lo and behold, all of sudden there was more than enough of both the loaves and the fish for everyone. This is a miracle we will get into in much more length in the near future. The source of the miracle is a constant variable that never changes, the Spirit of God and how it works upon each and every true “child of God.”

In John 14:10, the Lord mentions that he can do nothing in of himself and that his supernatural powers come from the Father. In Jesus own words he says, I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, the Lord has all the power and the fullness of the Godhead Bodily. Colossians 2:9 states it clearly as well.

Peter testified about the Lord in the Book of Acts 10:38 that God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. Yeshua of course is the ultimate example because of the fullness of the Godhead bodily residing in him. He is the everlasting reminder that Immanuel, God is with us and God empowers us, that even though we are flesh, God can empower us through the Holy Spirit to do some remarkable things for God’s Glory. What we have to be willing to do, is to take up our cross daily and that means to daily die to self and submit to God’s Will.

God would have never been willing to use the Prophets in the way that he did, if they were not at the very least, willing to surrender their own will, their own desires, to pursue the will of God instead even if it meant certain death which was the case for most of the Prophets, death by stoning.

The results of obedience to God, is a powerful testimony to God, not just in terms of the miracles performed, but how God allows men and women to be part of something greater then we could ever imagine. Jesus says he was going to prepare a place for us in Heaven, because in his Father’s House are many mansions. If it were not so, then he promised he would have told us, but it is so, because he did in fact tell us.

So be rest assured beloved, God not only has a plan for you, he has a place for you as well for all eternity. We will have to wait until we are finally there in Heaven to fully appreciate what any of this truly means, but we can take great confidence that when God sent his son Jesus into this World to die for our sins in order to grant us eternal life, God has a greater plan then anyone could ever imagine on how he will return both the Heavens and Earth to their original glory. Truly I think I can safely say, you will most likely never resurrect the dead, you may never cure someone of a disease, or change poisonous food to edible food, or any of the miracles we are currently writing about. No, you may never do those things and yet, for those that have truly repented of sin and have accepted Christ as their savior you have the Holy Spirit living in you, residing with you daily. Rest assured God will do great things with you, if you let him. The scum in the pot (that is the sin) in our lives is cleansed by the Lord just as the pot of scum is cleansed from within.

Ezekiel 24:6 states Woe to the bloody city that is covered in scum (sin), so we get a picture of what scum really represents. God has a greater purpose for all and seeks to do a great work in cleansing and redeeming man from his sin (the scum) in our life’s.
Will you let God begin a great work in you today?

Next…

Mystery # 12 : Healing Naaman : cured of Leprosy

2 Kings 5: V. 10, 14, 15 And Elisha sent a messenger unto him, saying, Go and wash in Jordan seven times, and thy flesh shall come again to thee, and thou shalt be clean.
Then went he down, and dipped himself seven times in Jordan, according to the saying of the man of God: and his flesh came again like unto the flesh of a little child, and he was clean. And he returned to the man of God, he and all his company, and came, and stood before him; and said, Behold, now I know that there is no God in all the earth, but in Israel: now therefore, I pray thee, take a blessing of thy servant.

Naaman was a commander of the army of Syria. God had shown him great favor in victory. However, there was something unique about Naaman. He was a leper.

Naaman, whose name means “pleasantness”, was an Armenian.

It was a servant girl who first told Naaman’s wife that the Prophet Elisha could possibly heal him of his infirmity. Naaman meets up with Elisha and Elisha advises his servant to tell Naaman to bathe in the Jordan River 7 times

(the Jordan River is a very special River that we keep on addressing in our Biblical studies as a location for special events and circumstances that God displays his majesty) seven times. We know seven is the number of perfection with God. Check this out as just a few examples. There were of course, seven days of creation,

seven good years and seven famine years in Egypt.  There were also seven feasts of Israel. We can never forget that Jesus performed a miracle when he took seven loaves broke them apart in order to feed 5000 people and there were seven baskets left.

There are seven seals, trumpets, angels and plagues in the Book of Revelation and of course there is the 7 years of the Great Tribulation – Pre Trib view

Mid Trib view

on and on it goes. I am sure you get the idea; seven is the number of completeness with God. So seven times it would take for Naaman to be clean and healed of the leprosy once and for all.

Naaman’s initial reaction was not of joy but of anger when it was suggested by his servant to even go forward with this, but his servant nonetheless convinced him to go through with it. Consequently Naaman was healed. The servant of Elisha, Gehazi (who if you recall was the same servant in our previous study who was unsuccessful in raising up the dead boy) ran after Naaman and basically lied to him,

asking for silver and clothing to be given to visitors when it was in actual fact it was him who coveted these possessions.

The leprosy that Naaman had then gets transferred to Gehazi as punishment from God for his lying and covetous sin and a curse in passed down to all of Gehazi’s descendants. God blessed Naaman with good health, so he could in an essence be a great testimony to the power and might of the God of Israel to all of Syria, to which Naaman then returned to as a changed man.

This story not only showcases once again the supernatural power of God, but many life lessons for us today as well. One of these life lessons being, that we should never tamper with the plans of God. It was God’s Intentions from the beginning to use the Naaman healing as a testimony to the King of Syria which God obviously knew was going to be told by Naaman of his miraculous healing from the man of God (on God’s Behalf) upon his return from Israel to Syria.

Secondly, Gehazi used deception and lying something so sinful that God has made it clear, that non repenting liars will be thrown in the Lake of Fire come the Great White Throne of Judgment better known as Judgment Day. So there are no little white lies, which is a satanic belief the enemy uses to fool the ignorant, all lies are a big deal to God especially if one leaves that sin or for that matter any sin unrepented of. In this case, Gehazi coveted Naaman’s possessions, his silver and his clothing. Most likely the Devil had gotten into Gehazi’s mind at some point and time and persuaded him to act on his impulsive and sinful desires.  No matter, Gehazi paid an extreme price in not only developing leprosy himself but having it handed down to future generations.

This is scripture fulfilled, as it states the sins of the Father will be revisited upon the generations to come, of their sons and their son’s sons. Of course, most importantly, we have a portrait of God’s Mercy and Grace. God wanted to create a great testimony to Syria and its King in order they could learn of him and perhaps turn their hearts to him, as well, all those who witnessed the healing of Naaman. More than that, God wanted to heal Naaman. God wants us to have the faith of a mustard seed, once planted our faith can have the potential to grow into something mighty. We can look to God with the belief that while God does not always heal us of every infirmity (some are there for a greater purpose that someday we will know about) he can certainly do so if it is his good and perfect will to do so.

We see in the healing of Naaman, God’s Mercy and Grace clearly on display. Remember how the Lord Jesus Christ cried when he heard of his friend Lazarus’s passing? God is compassionate beloved, God does care. God cares about your suffering, that is why he gave us the comforter, the Holy Spirit.

We need to go further yet and unpack this Mystery of the Bible story just a little more, as this scripture passage does work on several different levels. This is not just a story of healing either; it’s a story of salvation. Syria, north of Israel, was a heathen and pagan nation, full of idolatry and spiritual blindness,

which is very similar to how the Western world is today.

God uses Naaman’s healing to reach out into the darkness that was Syria at the time with the evidence of God’s Light and spiritual truth of his existence.

Naaman acknowledges this now as he states that he now knows that there is but one God, the God of Israel. Just as the Lord is the Way, the Truth and the Light, God would use this healing testimony to reveal to all the pagans in Syria, the reality of the one and only true God, Jehovah. So Naaman with his newfound belief and faith in God, returned to this land of idolatry and paganism. Naaman knew who the one and true God who was worthy of his worship was and he could no longer compromise his newfound faith in God, upon this revelation. So it was that Naaman requested two mule loads of Israelite soil to be taken back with him to Syria. The house of Rimrun where he formerly worshipped his pagan gods was no longer a place Naaman could frequent. Things would have to be done differently in Naaman’s life, for he was reborn as a new creature in Christ. Indeed, Naaman’s salvation is a story about what happens to those who have seen the evidence of their salvation, and believed, as Naaman did after dipping seven times in the Jordan River and being miraculously cleaned and healed. Remember the Lord said to Thomas (doubting Thomas as he is more commonly known to us)

after seeing the nail scars in the Lord’s Palms of his hands and touching them, blessed are you Thomas for you have seen and believed , how much more blessed are those who have believed and not seen. What we are talking about is the faith component here and what makes up faith, it’s based on things not seen but believed upon. We all can’t be healed of all of our infirmities in our lives. Many of us will die of cancer and of heart attacks and others of us, some other disease of some sort. It is appointed for us to die once and then the judgment. Others will live lives with crippling pain and disability sad as it is.

The important thing is not to die the second death, which is the death that is the separation from you and your maker, God for all of eternity. The second death, is the one that matters and is when we have willfully decided to cut God out of our lives for once and for all by refusing to repent, come clean and get right with God. For that, left too late, there is sadly no miracle healing or river to be cleansed from in the perpetual darkness of a place completely void of the presence of God.

What a truly horrible place that would be. There are eternal consequences as well as eternal darkness for those that would choose such a fate. Praise be to God that we can rejoice that God has come to give us life and life more abundantly and it is his will that none should perish. He will after all, create new Heavens and a new Earth, so restoration of all things that God had intended is definitely in order beloved. Trust and accept God today, for it’s the day of salvation and of healing, no matter how broken you are. God forgives and heals all things. Put your faith and trust in God today!

Next Up…

Mystery # 13 -The Heavenly Chariots

2 Kings 6:7 And Elisha prayed and said, “O LORD, I pray, open his eyes that he may see.” And the lord opened the servant’s eyes and he saw: and behold the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.
We open with this verse from scripture concerning the topic, The Heavenly Chariots of God.

These divine chariots play a very special role in the Bible. So what can we know of them, what can they mean to us and are they even relevant for today? If you recall in a previous study in 2 Kings 2, what happened to the Prophet Elijah and how he was taken up into the first Heaven in a whirlwind and was transported by a heavenly chariot to another location unknown to any one that might have attempted to look for him in his absence. But what of these other circumstances of heavenly visions of horses and chariots and riders? We will look at a few instances where the mention of these heavenly chariots seems to substantiate a number of plausible themes that God wants us to know about.

One such theme that has been made known to us for further clarification includes the climatic conclusion of the Book of Revelation, where none other than the Lord Jesus Christ returns on a white horse from the heavenlies and this time, he is not alone.

This time the Lord has amassed an enormous army to fight alongside him for God’s Righteousness and Holiness. We will address the significance of this epic event in Biblical prophecy in more detail in just a little bit. In the meantime to help you sort out some of the most amazing Biblical prophecies and Eschatology to come here is a graphic display that lists just about all the events to come. We will be going into all of this in just a little bit.So back to our scriptural feature passage in 2 kings 6:7. The Prophet Elisha wanted his servant to know that when one is standing for God, who can stand against him? It’s even more of a statement then a question but it is both. God proved this fact, by supernaturally displaying his army which I suspect would normally be invisible to the naked eye in the natural World but God had somehow allowed for the servant to see into the spiritual realm and see this army of angelic beings in chariots that just happened to be on fire.

They were everywhere in the mountains as far as the eye can see. Elisha had just prayed to God that the servant would be able to be permitted to see God’s Angelic Host, and his prayer was granted. Certainly the site was a shock to Elisha’s servant but not to Elisha himself. What is quite fascinating here is that the chariots seemed to actually be on fire, What’s up with that detail? We will examine the fire analogy a bit later into this study as well as comment throughout this study concerning this. These angelic beings on chariots circled around Elisha in a manner that seemed to convey to the servant that no harm would come to either Elisha or himself. These horses and chariots are often symbols of the divine power of God, their fiery nature is that of the spiritual realm and the control of the natural elements such as fire transformed into the supernatural.

Now let’s look at another way that these heavenly chariots play a role in God’s Providence and Sovereign Reign.
2 Kings 7:6 For the Lord had made the host of the Syrians to hear a noise of chariots, and a noise of horses, even the noise of a great host: and they said one to another, Lo, the King of Israel hath hired against us the Kings of the Hittites, and the Kings of the Egyptians, to come upon us.

We will continue to discuss the significance of this verse as well as the opening verse in the body of this study. As in our other verse of study, once again God has provided his heavenly hosts, his heavenly chariots if you will to “spook off” for lack of a better term, the Syrian Army into believing that there was a great multitude of a chariot based army amassed against them when in fact it was the supernatural undertakings of God Almighty who created the sounds of the heavenly chariots. Elisha made it clear when he saw Elijah being taken up, he cried out in 2 kings 2:12 that the chariots of Israel and the horsemen had arrived and taken Elijah away. Just a verse before that, scripture tells us that there appeared a chariot of fire and horses of fire before Elijah was taken up by a whirlwind to the first Heaven. Psalms 68:17 seems to reinforce this concept by saying that the chariots of God number in an infinite amount, thousands upon thousands and the Lord leads the way of his army. Did you get that? The Lord leads the way of his army. Hmm? That sounds a lot like the passage from the Book of Revelation 19: 11, 14 which echoes this scripture as we address the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse: and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war. And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothes in fine linen, white and clean.

The Book of Isaiah 66:5 mentions that the Lord will come in fire and his chariots will be like the whirlwind (this sounds exactly like what Elijah and Elisha experienced). This is the passage that ties it all together, on this occasion, the Lord will be coming to render his wrath and his anger and in fact God will rebuke those he seeks to rebuke, with fire. There it is, fire. The reverence of God, of his chariots of fire, is so that we fear him not because he wants us to be scared of him, but out of genuine reverence to him, out of his supreme holiness and righteousness. Is not fear the beginning of all understanding beloved? So we have the chariots of fire connected with God’s Statement of the magnitude and degree that he expects to be worshipped.

We would certainly never seek to enter into the holy of holies with anyone else other than our God that seeks and demands to be worshipped the way the creator has beseeched us to do. Yet he is worthy to be praised, he and he alone. Scoffers and skeptics that say that God is the most supreme egomaniac in existence and one that should never be worshipped, fail to recognize God’s Love, Mercy and Grace towards us his creation. What other “god” has supremely sacrificed himself for us, the way the Lord has. What other “god” has come from such a high place to the lowest place only to make himself available and accessible to all of us? There are none, no other “gods” except the one true God, the GREAT I AM.

So we now know, the chariots of fire are not some glorified transportation /taxi service that takes people like the Prophet Elijah for a ride and dumps them off on some mountain top and then goes picks up some other well-known biblical figure for their ride. The heavenly chariots contain a specific message that God wants delivered in a very dramatic and supernatural manner whether it be of judgment or wrath or to let someone know he has their back. Revelation 9:9 states They had breast plates of iron: and the sound of their wings was like the sound of chariots, of many horses rushing to battle. Could this be what the Syrians heard, the wings of God’s Heavenly Army of angels making the sounds of chariots with their wings to scare them off?

Jeremiah 4:13 describes an Elijah like experience of one going up in the clouds with again a chariot acting much like a whirlwind, with horses faster than eagles in the air. Zechariah 6:1 describes 4 chariots that were going back and forth between two mountains which echoes what Elisha’s servant saw, when he opened his eyes. God has been using his heavenly chariots from the very beginning of recorded Biblical history it would appear. Whether it was to protect Israel in order to put in place the enemy or display when necessary God’s Wrath and Might, the heavenly chariots have always had a purpose. There is no doubt that some strange things are happening in the skies above us in these the very Last Days and it seems as the End times begin to conclude, stranger and stranger occurrences are being taken note of. While the Mysteries of the Bible Team does not condone or vouch for the authenticity of any viral videos circulating currently or recently on the web whether real or not, certainly there are some intriguing videos that stand out over the others that seemed obviously staged or faked with CGI. The one below for example seems to scream CGI does it not?

Obvious CGI, I would think you would agree. There are some intriguing shots however, that are worth examining at least to some degree. One such video displayed a brilliant flare like light that was above the Dome of the Rock in Israel for a moment or two and then took off with such speed and magnitude. Here it is below in a picture that does not do it justice to the rapid speed it seemingly accelerates at.

Another interesting video that is quite like no other that we have witnessed in our research, showed what appears to be a very deliberate and intelligence driven sky war taking place between two entities, a shiny white orb and a darker elongated image. They seem to be one moment at a standstill and then the next darting at each other in a supernatural showdown that we cannot comprehend.  The exact image is not available to us sorry to say so you will have to use your imagination on this one. The video in question seems to be authentic however it would be hasty on our part to jump to the conclusion that these are angelic beings battling it out in the Heavenlies above us. Still one more video, equally hard to fake, shows a giant pulsating orb high in the evening sky, that when brought into closer view reveals inside the orb, the eye of Horus, the all-seeing eye, the same eye you see on the American dollar bill. It even seems to blink at one time. Here is a still shot of it, that doesn’t do it justice.

Is all this interesting, yes but since we cannot confirm it’s authenticity, it’s time to move on and stay with the truth of the Bible. We know from scripture that we do not battle against flesh and blood but of the principalities in high places and that includes none other than the prince of the power of the air. Emphasis on air. Satan is the master of deception and this whole UFO’s / Aliens coming to Earth with a message charade is just one of his many masquerades to dupe and fool the blind and deceived.

We must never forget that Satan is the light bearer not the Light of the Lord, but the light of illumination and lies, so it makes sense for him to disguise himself as an orb of light in the sky that many mistake as a UFO. Check out these examples for yourself. Look and see when you zoom in with a super close up of these orbs. See anything common? Like faces…demon faces.

We are not saying that there aren’t some real types of saucers flying out there, but the whole agenda is one of deception, to take your mind off of God and put your very life and trust in your salvation in what is nothing less than demonic doctrines and certainly not “benign little friendly” grays from Outer Space. Please get it straight for the last time people they are not aliens or space brothers they are reptilian demonic fallen angels.

They are inter-dimensional and are from the same Universe as us.

We see the lights above us; some of them may even be the heavenly chariots that we have been discussing about here. But beware for many of them, (you can count on many of those that come from the Heavens and have fallen to the Earth), are none other then the fallen angels.

So have discernment and the best plan of all is to just stay away from them completely and don’t fall for the lies about these deceptions for we were told that in the last days the elect themselves would be deceived if not for the Lord granting us discernment to know the truth. We can take great comfort in knowing that the only one we need to keep our eyes on, is not any UFO in the sky or angel type object flying above us or someone walking among us disguised as one of us but is really some Reptilian looking demon.

It’s not even Satan, we need to focus on. No it is the prize, that we keep an eye on, the prize being the Lord Jesus Christ himself. For it is the Lord, the Wonderful Counselor, the Prince of Peace, the Great I Am, the King of Kings who will be riding on his white horse and his eyes as if on fire (a symbol of God’s Wrath and Judgment). The one who is faithful and true and the only one who is truly righteous and has overcome the World and stolen the keys of hell and death, who will lead his army, his bride, the body of Christ unto victory over Satan and his hordes.

Who will you ride with? Will you go it alone or keep riding along with the lies of the devil, Satan or join the winning side (read the end of the Bible and see for yourself what happens to Satan and his cronies). There are no odds-on favorite here, there is no points spread, no bets with an over or under, as you are either riding with God’s Heavenly chariots or your riding with Satan. There is no middle ground, in fact it is really black and white and I know for some that makes you feel very uncomfortable. Is it really so extreme though that God has absolutes when most of us don’t? In an age that preaches tolerance and accepting of one another (sounds good on paper) the scoffers poke fun at the fact that God really does love the sinner but hates the sin. Only, it is true, poking fun at it changes nothing. It’s God’s Absolute Truth. God will create new Heavens and a new Earth while Satan simply is thrown in the abyss with the Antichrist, the False Prophet and all the fallen angels forever. As the Lord says himself in a future tense of things yet to come, in the Book of Revelation 22:12 in what is the most scintillating text perhaps in the entire Bible, And Behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his worth shall be.
Even so, Lord Jesus come. Amen.

Next up…

Mystery # 14: The Angel of the Lord smotes the camp of the Assyrians

2 Kings 19:35 And it came to pass that night, that the angel of the LORD went out, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians a hundred four score and five thousand; and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses.
At the time of the occurrence described above in our feature scripture passage or just before it anyways, King Hezekiah of Judah did seek the counsel from the Prophet Isaiah,

concerning the threats that Sennacharib, the King of Assyria

was making towards Jerusalem. Isaiah then gave a prophecy to Hezekiah about the pending defeat of the Assyrian army and that they would be destroyed, and only a remnant of Judah would go on to survive and flourish. Then just like that in the night, the angel of the Lord would end up slaying 185,000 Assyrians as they slept. Many a commentator has stated that this scripture passage indicates that the angel of the Lord slayed the Assyrian soldiers in their sleep, without a hint of disturbance among them. Once again as we have previously seen, the angel of the Lord’s presence is made known here on the Earth and the consequences at least in this instant is one of justice and vengeance. We have seen these angels of the Lord before with their flaming swords such as the one blocking the entrance of the Garden of Eden and the one that blocked the path of Balaam riding on his donkey and many other instances as well. It is interesting that these angels or angel (if it is just the same angel over and over again) is equipped with a sword; a sword is used when one is engaged in battle. Michael the Archangel is one such angel that is known as the Chief Angel, the warrior angel who does the fighting for God whereas the angel Gabriel is God’s Messenger angel.

Be rest assured Abaddon (Hebrew translation)/ Apollyon (the Greek translation), or better known as Lucifer/Baphomet also has his demonic warriors as well including Asmodeus, Ahriman and Sammael.

We can believe with certainty that Michael the Archangel has been in battles with the likes of these fallen angels on a number of occasions including when the rebellion took place between God’s Angels and Lucifer’s rebellious angels, which were cast down to earth. Do not forget however the fallen angels, the Sons of God (the Nephilim) that we spoke of during the time of Noah that were either killed off in the flood and consequently were sent to the abyss permanently due to God’s Wrath upon the Earth.

In this instance, Jerusalem was defended by the angel of the Lord. Imagine, finding 185,000 men dead in one night, without any evidence of whom or what killed them? There is a lot of speculation from Bible commentators that according to the Prophet Isaiah and his prophecy, that a great eruption that came from some burning mountains would in fact have been capable of destroying the Assyrian army quickly and suddenly without due warning. Either a volcano or an earthquake would have had to be the cause of such a catastrophic event or at the very least the fire from Heaven we have been addressing, here previously. Certainly an earthquake would have the power to shake Jerusalem. Some speculate that one possibility was a stream of poisonous vapor that might have killed the soldiers. This vapor often comes out of the ground during an earthquake and kills anyone or anything that breathes it, humans and animals alike.

Still others believe that the angel of the Lord brought a type of pestilence/plague with it that wiped out the Assyrians. Josephus, a first century Roman-Jewish scholar described the angel of the Lord that smote the Assyrians as being the same angel of the Lord that was sent by God to slay the first born of Egypt as the final plague God sent Pharaoh just before letting the people finally go once and for all. Josephus said that the angel of the Lord slew them by inflicting a pestilence like disease upon them which killed them immediately.

There are others that believed that God sent the fire from Heaven, in other words, lightening came down upon the Assyrian army and that the men‘s bodies were burned up, but their garments were left untouched in a truly supernatural act of God. Again we must emphasize that scripture does not speak of this, so most of this must be left to pure speculation and that includes the speculation surrounding the theories of the pestilence, the earthquakes and the poisonous vapor. One thing is clear the angel of the Lord did God’s Bidding and slew 185,000 men on that night,

but how he did it, well that is just something that must not be important for us to know about, otherwise scripture would tell us, and it simply does not do so. God always lets us know what he wants us to know and what we need to know. If it was truly important for us to know how the angel of the Lord smote the Assyrians, God would inform us, but since it’s not mentioned, we can know with great certainty, that it is not something God wants us to know or care about.What God does want us to know about here, is that simply, if one angel can be that powerful to slay 185,000 men how much more infinitely powerful is the Creator God Almighty, the creator of that angel and who created hundreds of thousands upon thousands and thousands more angels exactly like this one?

We are talking about one angel doing away with 185,000 of what we are told are some of the mightiest men on the planet, at the time. How puny and pathetic are man’s attempts against the Almighty God. Pride and blasphemy came at a horrendous price for King Sennacherib and his General at the expense of 185,000 men in total. Once again, Yahweh came forward to defend Jerusalem. Once again the Almighty God shows his power and majesty using his angel to bring justice to those who seek to tamper with his kingdom. If only those who are steadfast and resolute in their hatred for God could realize how futile it is to try and battle and win against the Creator God. Much like the Tower of Babel was halted so too will the plans to usher in the Luciferian New World Order . Already by 2018 the New World Order had infiltrated the following: 

that the Antichrist will try to destroy and dominate the world stage with his demonic dictatorship of evil and carnage. Even the demons know their time is short and judgment has already sentenced them to the abyss for their rebellious transgressions.

Matthew 8:29 The demons said to the Lord Jesus, “have you come here to torture us before the appointed time.” The appointed time will be the judgment day when all will stand before the Lord and give an account for the life we led and that judgment is already rendered on Satan and the fallen angels, on a one way ticket to the abyss called Hell.

Next up…

Mystery # 15 : God brings the Sundial shadow 10 degrees backward

2 Kings 20: V. 9-11 And Isaiah said, This sign shalt thou have of the LORD, that the LORD will do the thing that he hath spoken: shall the shadow go forward ten degrees, or go back ten degrees? And Hezekiah answered; it is a light thing for the shadow to go down ten degrees: nay, but let the shadow return backward ten degrees. And Isaiah the prophet cried unto the LORD: and he brought the shadow ten degrees backward, by which it had gone down in the dial of Ahaz.
Do you remember when we covered how God made a day freeze in time and time was extended by almost 24 hours back in Joshua 10?

It was our third mystery installment at the time of the Book of Joshua entitled God makes the Sun stand Still. Once again we see how God can take the natural elements of day and night and time and space and supernaturally alter them to fit his specific needs at any given time. What is time anyways but a state of mind? The one who gives us our state of mind is God, so it is only reasonable then to expect that God would give us the ability to understand and reason why he does what he does for our benefit. So from the time that the day was extended as the Sun stood still to this account of when the Sun went backwards, we get a sense of just how in control God is of everything, since he has created it all, time, space, gravity, everything. Here was Hezekiah, extremely sick and on what he thought was his death bed at the time, being visited by the Prophet Isaiah. Isaiah let Hezekiah know that in no certain terms; he was not going to die, at least not anytime immediately. Hezekiah chose not to believe the prophet and called the prophets bluff, asking for some type of proof that he wasn’t going to die. Isaiah asked Hezekiah if he wanted the Sun to go ahead by 10 degrees on the Sun dial (the dial of Ahaz) as it was known. Hezekiah blew that off saying that the Sun going forward 10 degrees was not really that big a deal for God to perform such a task as that.

Instead Hezekiah wanted Isaiah to make the Sun go back 10 degrees. Isaiah then cried out to the Lord for his help and the Lord granted Isaiah’s request, and the Lord brought the shadow ten degrees backward that day. So what is 10 degrees you ask? Well no one knows exactly how long a duration it really is. Some have speculated it’s as short as 40 minutes but that doesn’t seem to add up numerically. Going back to the story behind this event, the Prophet Isaiah had just told Hezekiah that he was not going to die.

He would in fact be healed and 15 additional years would be added to his life. Hezekiah wanted reassurance. Did the Sun actually go backwards on the sun dial or did the shadow on the sundial go back 10 degrees? There obviously is a big difference here. One thing was for sure, a miracle from God was provided of sunlight and shadow took place that day on the Sun dial. Some speculate that through refraction, a ray of light could have somehow played a role here. God could have easily caused the Sun or the Earth for that matter to produce an extraordinary and miraculous refraction. The sun dial itself is actually a series of steps or a staircase if you will, running east and west. As the day progresses, the shadow on the steps lets you know how much daytime is left. The word dial in fact in Hebrew is maalach which means of course, “steps.” So if the shadow moved back 10 degrees, it is also meaning that the shadow moved back ten steps. It may make more sense to believe that sign was given to Hezekiah in which the shadow moved on the dial (staircase), without changing the actual position of the Sun.
In this instance then the miracle of Sunlight and shadows was what God was performing and not the manipulation of time as he did back in Joshua 10. No matter whether God stopped time or simply caused a Sundial to go back 10 degrees, we should always remember the most important detail and that is, nothing is too hard for the Lord to do or take on. Nothing in your life is so difficult that God cannot supply a remedy for.

No sin is too great that the Lord could not forgive you for it. The Lord’s Resources are inexhaustible, his Grace immeasurable and his mercy limitless. Truly, God can do anything, but in this specific instance, God wanted to support his prophet with a sign of his supernatural and infinite prowess as a reminder that he is indeed, the God of all past, current and future possibilities. God transcends time, space and everything around us. God is Alpha and Omega, beginning and ending and most of all, eternal and with no end and no shadow of turning, the same yesterday, tomorrow and forever. AMEN.