There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true. —Soren Kierkegaard. "…truth is true even if nobody believes it, and falsehood is false even if everybody believes it. That is why truth does not yield to opinion, fashion, numbers, office, or sincerity–it is simply true and that is the end of it" – Os Guinness, Time for Truth, pg.39. “He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God’s providence to lead him aright.” – Blaise Pascal. "There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily" – George Washington letter to Edmund Randolph — 1795. We live in a “post-truth” world. According to the dictionary, “post-truth” means, “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Simply put, we now live in a culture that seems to value experience and emotion more than truth. Truth will never go away no matter how hard one might wish. Going beyond the MSM idealogical opinion/bias and their low information tabloid reality show news with a distractional superficial focus on entertainment, sensationalism, emotionalism and activist reporting – this blogs goal is to, in some small way, put a plug in the broken dam of truth and save as many as possible from the consequences—temporal and eternal. "The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those who speak it." – George Orwell “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” ― Soren Kierkegaard
He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
Ecclesiastes 3:11
The Searcher discovered three things. First, everything is appropriate and helpful to us, even those things that appear to be negative as well as positive. These are not curses and obstacles; they are God’s blessings, deliberately provided by Him. Even our enemies are a blessing. Love your enemies, Jesus said, because they are valuable to you (Matthew 5:44). They do something for you that you desperately need. Our problem is that we have such a shallow concept of things, so we want everything to be smooth and pleasant. More than that, we want to be in charge, we want to limit the term of hurt or pain. But God will not allow us to take His place and be in charge.
The second thing the Searcher learned in his search is that there is a quality about life, about humanity, that can never be explained by the rationale of evolution. No animal is restless and dissatisfied when its physical needs have been met. Observe a well-fed dog sleeping before the fire on a cold day. It is with its family, enjoying itself, not worried about anything. A human in that same position will soon feel a sense of restlessness. There is something beyond, something more he or she is crying out for. This endless search for an answer beyond what we can feel or sense in our physical and emotional needs is what is called here eternity in man’s heart. St. Augustine said, Thou has made us for thyself, and our hearts are restless until they learn to rest in Thee. People are the only worshipping animals. What makes them different cannot be explained by evolutionary procedure. They are different because they long for the face of God. C.S. Lewis said, Our Heavenly Father has provided many delightful inns for us along our journey, but he takes great care to see that we do not mistake any of them for home. There is a longing for home, there is a call deep in the human spirit for more than life can provide. This itch that we cannot scratch is part of God’s plan.
The third thing that the Searcher learned is that mystery yet remains. We are growing in our knowledge, but we discover that the more we know, the more we realize we do not know. The increase of knowledge only increases the depth of wonder and delight. In the sovereign wisdom of God, we cannot solve all mysteries. As the apostle Paul put it, We see but a poor reflection as in a mirror (1 Corinthians 13:12); we are looking forward to the day when we shall see face to face.
We cannot know all the answers to all the conundrums and enigmas of life. That is why the exhortation of Scripture is always that we must trust the revelation of the Father’s wisdom in areas we cannot understand. Jesus said over and over that the life of faith is like that of a child. Little children in their father’s arms are unaware of many things that their father has learned. But, resting in their father’s arms, they are quite content to let those enigmas unfold as they grow, trusting in the wisdom of their father. That is the life of faith, and that is what we are to do in our experience.
Thank You, Lord that You have placed eternity in my heart. Nothing can satisfy my deepest longings but You. Teach me to be content with simply resting in Your arms.
We must take hold of the great encouragement God has given us to humble ourselves before him with sorrow and shame, and to confess our sins.
If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared; Psalm 130:3-4(ESV) with you there is steadfast love; yes, with my God there is plentiful redemption, and he will redeem Israel from all his iniquities. Psalm 130:7-8(ESV)
Your sacrifices, O God, are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise; Psalm 51:17(ESV) indeed, though you are the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy; Isaiah 57:15(ESV) though heaven is your throne and the earth your footstool, yet this is the one to whom you will look: he who is poor and humble, broken and contrite in spirit, and trembles at your word; Isaiah 66:1-2(ESV) to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite. Isaiah 57:15(ESV)
You have graciously assured me that those who conceal their transgressions will not prosper, yet those who confess and forsake them will obtain mercy. Proverbs 28:13(ESV) And when a poor penitent said, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,” you forgave the iniquity of his sin; therefore, let everyone who is godly, in like manner, offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found. Psalm 32:5-6(ESV)
I know that if I say I have no sin, I deceive myself, and the truth is not in me; but you have said that if I confess my sins, you are faithful and just to forgive me my sins and to cleanse me from all unrighteousness. 1 John 1:8-9(ESV)
In Genesis 17, the covenant community is in crisis. Abram had been called by the Lord out of darkness and into light. He had been given incredible promises, including offspring (Gen. 12:1-3).
God had reiterated his promise: “Your very own son shall be your heir” (Gen. 15:4). But Abram, 86 years old and still childless, had doubted God’s ability to keep his word. He took to himself the responsibility of fulfilling God’s plan by sleeping with Hagar, his wife’s servant (Gen. 16:1-3).
It is at this point that God graciously appears to wayward Abram and reveals a new name: “I am El-Shaddai.” (Gen. 17:1). El is the Hebrew word for God, and Shaddai is likely derived from a word meaning “to overpower.” Vos explains: “God is called ‘El-Shaddai’ because through the supernaturalism of his procedure He, as it were, overpowers nature.”[1] Abram’s age and Sara’s barrenness would be no hindrance to the power of God-Almighty.
In context, the meaning is clear: God is telling Abram, “I am God-Almighty. I am able to keep my word.” God would be able to give a son without the faithless intervention of the father of the faithful.
God’s revelation of himself as El-Shaddai, then, is his definitive statement that what he has said he will accomplish, he is able to accomplish. And if God-Almighty chooses to give gracious gifts through a supernatural fulfilment, it will be so that he gets the glory: Bavinck writes: “God subjects all the forces of nature, and makes them subservient to grace.”[2]
The Name Calls for faith
Initially, as we have seen, the name was revealed to Abram as an admonition to greater faith in God’s ability to keep his promises. His word to us through this name is the same. When we are tempted to doubt God’s promises, and sinfully take matters into our own hands, God says to us through his word: “I am El-Shaddai.”
We can be confident in God’s promises. We can be sure that he’ll provide for our needs (Matt. 6:25-34), build his church (Matt. 16:18), bring us safely to heaven (John 14:3), and keep every other promise which finds its ‘Yes’ in Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 1:20), because his name is El-Shaddai.
Charles Hodge writes about the confident faith we can have in response to the Almighty nature of our God: “‘The Lord God omnipotent reigneth’…is the …truth which [the Scriptures] everywhere present as the ground of confidence to [God’s] people.”[3]
The Name Calls for Obedience
When God reveals himself as El-Shaddai, he says to Abram: “walk before me and be blameless,” and “you shall keep my covenant” (Gen. 17:1, 9).
The God who reveals himself as almighty has authority and sovereignty to command his servant. In this passage, God demonstrates this by renaming Abram: “No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham” (Gen. 17:5). To name something is to have authority over it (Gen. 1:19). El-Shaddai has authority to name and authority to command.
And in the gospel, when the Lord, who has all authority and power, puts his name and his sign on his people, and calls them to obedient service (Matt. 28:18-20), it is because he is El-Shaddai.
The Name Calls for Worship
The name El-Shaddai was a fresh pledge from God to bring to Abram a promised, miraculously-given son.
Just as Isaac’s birth was an act of El-Shaddai, so the birth of Christ was an act of the Almighty (Lk. 1:35). And on this side of the cross and empty tomb, we have been given greater revelation about the almighty power of God to keep his promises, since it was the “immeasurable greatness of [God’s] power…that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead.” (Eph. 1:19-20).
On that first Lord’s Day morning, when the power of death was made subservient to the power of life, and nature was made subservient to grace, God proved his name again: he is El-Shaddai. He is worthy of his people’s faith, obedience, and worship.
Our response to the name and works of El-Shaddai should be that of the church triumphant: worshipful praise. “Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory” (Rev. 19:6-7).
[1] Geerhardus Vos, Biblical Theology: Old and New Testaments, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1948), 96.
[2] Herman Bavinck, The Wonderful Works of God, trans. Henry Zylstra (Glenside, PA: Westminster Seminary Press, 2019), 120.
[3] Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1952), 1:407.
We live in a culture enthralled with identity. It seems every group must assert its uniqueness to make themselves feel better. We take less pleasure in being part of the whole; we set ourselves apart to find purpose. Even the church can fall prey to this idea. Older folks avoid younger ones. Married couples avoid singles. We choose our favorite preacher and define ourselves by his doctrine.The church at Corinth was just such a church. They were a divided group of believers who chose to emphasize their differences rather than celebrate what they had in common. This left them fractured, in conflict, and unable to maintain godly discipline.Paul confronts this attitude by reminding them that they need to avoid acting in ways that are not in accordance with Scripture (v. 6). When it comes to biblical interpretation or application, what leader you identify with is immaterial. Choosing their favorite leader and identifying with him over another is a recipe for ungodly pride. The Corinthians needed to acknowledge that God created the difference. Everything they had was given by God. So, Paul reasons, if you received it, you should stop acting like you did not (v. 7).Imagine a needy person boasting to another needy person about how good they are because they received more food from the food pantry. They both received what they have from someone else. “Already you have all you want! Already you have become rich” (v. 8)! There is no justification for boasting! The antidote to the divisiveness of an overemphasis on identity is to remember that everything we are and everything we have is from the Lord. He gets the glory for all of it!
Go Deeper How do you identify yourself? Do you glory in your distinctiveness, your doctrine, or your wealth? Acknowledge that it all comes from God. We have no cause to boast to the exclusion of others. Extended Reading:1 Corinthians 4-6
Pray with Us Almighty God, give us deeper love for Your Word and thirst for its truth. May we learn from Paul’s warning to the church in Corinth and do everything we can to overcome divisions in our churches.
For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, that no one should boast. (2:8–9)
Our response in salvation is faith, but even that is not of ourselves [but is] the gift of God. Faith is nothing that we do in our own power or by our own resources. In the first place we do not have adequate power or resources. More than that, God would not want us to rely on them even if we had them. Otherwise salvation would be in part by our own works, and we would have some ground to boast in ourselves. Paul intends to emphasize that even faith is not from us apart from God’s giving it. Some have objected to this interpretation, saying that faith (pistis) is feminine, while that (touto) is neuter. That poses no problem, however, as long as it is understood that that does not refer precisely to the noun faith but to the act of believing. Further, this interpretation makes the best sense of the text, since if that refers to by grace you have been saved through faith (that is, to the whole statement), the adding of and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God would be redundant, because grace is defined as an unearned act of God. If salvation is of grace, it has to be an undeserved gift of God. Faith is presented as a gift from God in 2 Peter 1:1, Philippians 1:29, and Acts 3:16. The story is told of a man who came eagerly but very late to a revival meeting and found the workmen tearing down the tent in which the meetings had been held. Frantic at missing the evangelist, he decided to ask one of the workers what he could do to be saved. The workman, who was a Christian, replied, “You can’t do anything. It’s too late.” Horrified, the man said, “What do you mean? How can it be too late?” “The work has already been accomplished,” he was told. “There is nothing you need to do but believe it.” Every person lives by faith. When we open a can of food or drink a glass of water we trust that it is not contaminated. When we go across a bridge we trust it to support us. When we put our money in the bank we trust it will be safe. Life is a constant series of acts of faith. No human being, no matter how skeptical and self-reliant, could live a day without exercising faith. Church membership, baptism, confirmation, giving to charity, and being a good neighbor have no power to bring salvation. Nor does taking Communion, keeping the Ten Commandments, or living by the Sermon on the Mount. The only thing a person can do that will have any part in salvation is to exercise faith in what Jesus Christ has done for him. When we accept the finished work of Christ on our behalf, we act by the faith supplied by God’s grace. That is the supreme act of human faith, the act which, though it is ours, is primarily God’s—His gift to us out of His grace. When a person chokes or drowns and stops breathing, there is nothing he can do. If he ever breathes again it will be because someone else starts him breathing. A person who is spiritually dead cannot even make a decision of faith unless God first breathes into him the breath of spiritual life. Faith is simply breathing the breath that God’s grace supplies. Yet, the paradox is that we must exercise it and bear the responsibility if we do not (cf. John 5:40). Obviously, if it is true that salvation is all by God’s grace, it is therefore not as a result of works. Human effort has nothing to do with it (cf. Rom. 3:20; Gal. 2:16). And thus, no one should boast, as if he had any part. All boasting is eliminated in salvation (cf. Rom. 3:27; 4:5; 1 Cor. 1:31). Nevertheless, good works have an important place, as Paul is quick to affirm.
MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (1986). Ephesians (pp. 60–61). Moody Press.
Saved by Grace Alone
Ephesians 2:8–9
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.
Our text is one of the best known passages in the Bible—and rightly so, for it contains the greatest message that any person can hear. It is probably one of the most widely memorized texts, along with John 3:16 and the Twenty-third Psalm. John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” Ephesians 2:8–9 says the same thing theologically: “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.” The text has three parts. The first part tells how it is that God saves us: “It is by grace.” The second part speaks of the channel through which this grace of God comes to us: It is “through faith.” The last part, which is a contrast, tells how God does not save us, and it explains why: It is “not by works, so that no one can boast.”
All of Grace
A number of years ago one of my predecessors at Tenth Presbyterian Church, Donald Grey Barnhouse, published a small booklet on these verses in which he illustrated this teaching. He began by commenting on the difficulty of forming adequate definitions even of common things, like a chair, let alone theological concepts. Therefore, rather than give a theological definition of grace such as “God’s unmerited favor” or “the kindness and love of God toward sinful men and women,” he told this story. During the last century, in the worst slum district of London, there was a social worker whose name was Henry Moorehouse. One evening as he was walking along the street he saw a little girl come out of a basement store carrying a pitcher of milk. She was taking it home. But when she was a few yards from Moorehouse she suddenly slipped and fell. Her hands relaxed their grip on the pitcher and it fell on the sidewalk and broke. The milk ran into the gutter, and the little girl began to cry as if her little heart would break. Moorehouse quickly stepped up to see if she was hurt. He helped her to her feet, saying, “Don’t cry, little girl.” But there was no stopping her tears. She kept repeating, “My mommy’ll whip me; my mommy’ll whip me.” Moorehouse said, “No, little girl, your mother won’t whip you. I’ll see to that. Look, the pitcher isn’t broken in many pieces.” As he stooped down beside her, picked up the pieces, and began to work as if he were putting the pitcher back together, the little girl stopped crying. She had hope. She came from a family in which pitchers had been mended before. Maybe this stranger could repair the damage. She watched as Moorehouse fitted several of the pieces together until, working too roughly, he knocked it apart again. Once more she began to cry, and Moorehouse had to repeat, “Don’t cry, little girl. I promise you that your mother won’t whip you.” Once more they began the task of restoration, this time getting it all together except for the handle. Moorehouse gave it to the little girl, and she tried to attach it. But, naturally, all she did was knock it down again. This time there was no stopping her tears. She would not even look at the broken pieces lying on the sidewalk. Finally Moorehouse picked the little girl up in his arms, carried her down the street to a shop that sold crockery, and bought her a new pitcher. Then, still carrying her, he went back to where the girl had bought the milk and had the new pitcher filled. He asked her where she lived. When he was told, he carried her to the house, set her down on the step, and placed the full pitcher of milk in her hands. Then he opened the door for her. As she stepped in, he asked one more question, “Now, do you think your mother will whip you?” He was rewarded for his trouble by a bright smile as she said to him, “Oh, no, sir, because it’s a lot better pitcher than we had before.” Here is an illustration of the grace of God in salvation. The Bible teaches that men and women were created in the image of God. But when our first parents, Adam and Eve, sinned by disobeying God’s righteous law, that image was broken beyond repair. This does not mean that there is no value at all to human nature. Even a broken pitcher is not without value. Archaeologists use pieces of broken pottery to date civilizations uncovered by their digs. I have seen bits of pottery used as ashtrays or even some on which pictures have been printed. Broken pottery is not worthless. But it is worthless so far as carrying milk is concerned. In the same way, human nature in its broken state is useless for pleasing God or earning heaven. The Bible says, “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one” (Rom. 3:10–12). Yet men keep trying to please God by their character. Like Moorehouse in his first attempts to help the little girl, they keep trying to put the pieces of their broken righteousness back together. They cannot achieve God’s perfect standards of righteousness, but they see parts of their character that are good from their perspective, and they try to work with those. The result is a patchwork of shards, which God condemns. But here is where the grace of almighty God comes in. The Lord Jesus Christ came to this world, which was weeping in its failure and sin, and he became the means by which an utterly hopeless situation was transformed. There is nothing in the Bible to indicate that Jesus ever attempted to patch up fallen human nature. He did not come to assist us or reform us. He came to re-create us. He said, “You must be born again” (John 3:7). Instead of trying to piece together the broken pieces of our fallen nature, Jesus gives us a new nature: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17). And to paraphrase the words of the little girl, “It’s a lot better nature than we had before.” It is nothing less than the nature of the holy and eternal God within his people. And it is all of grace. In Barnhouse’s story the little girl did not do anything to deserve Moorehouse’s favor. She did not pay for her new pitcher and milk. She did not hire Moorehouse’s services; she had nothing to hire him with. She did not even prevail upon his sympathies because she was pretty or miserable or homely or pathetic. Moorehouse did as he did solely because it pleased him to do it. He did not even expect a reward from the girl’s parents. Thus did Jesus come not “to call the righteous, but sinners” to repentance (Matt. 9:13). He died for us and saved us solely because of his good pleasure. The great nineteenth-century Baptist preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon wrote, “Because God is gracious, therefore sinful men are forgiven, converted, purified and saved. It is not because of anything in them, or that ever can be in them, that they are saved; but because of the boundless love, goodness, pity, compassion, mercy and grace of God.”
What is Faith?
“But just a minute!” someone says. “You have been speaking of the grace of God in salvation, and that is all very wonderful. I admit that I cannot put the pieces of my life back together. I cannot meet God’s standards of perfection. If I am to be saved, salvation must come graciously from God in Jesus Christ. But that is still remote, abstract. How does a salvation as great and free as that become mine personally?” The answer of Ephesians 2:8–9 is that it becomes ours “through faith.” Here, of course, we must dispense with the world’s common misunderstandings of faith. The most common misunderstanding is to think of faith as subjective feelings. Some years ago in a rather extended discussion about religion a young man told me that he was a Christian. As we talked, I discovered that he did not believe that Jesus Christ was fully divine. He said he was God’s Son, but only in the sense that we are all God’s sons. He did not believe in the resurrection. He did not believe that Jesus died for our sin or that the New Testament contains an accurate record of his life and ministry. He did not acknowledge Christ as Lord of his life. When I pointed out that these beliefs are involved in any true definition of a Christian, he answered that nevertheless he believed deep in his heart that he was a Christian. The thing he called faith was only a deeply held gut feeling. Another substitute for faith is credulity. Credulity is the attitude of a person who will accept something as true apart from evidence, simply because he or she earnestly wishes it to be true. Rumors of miraculous cures for some incurable disease sometimes encourage this attitude in many unfortunate people. This is faith of a sort, but it is not what the Bible means by faith. A third substitute is optimism. In this view faith is a positive mental attitude as a result of which the thing believed in is supposed to happen. An example would be a salesman who so intensely believes in his ability to sell that he actually becomes successful at it, or the congressman who believes that he can become President of the United States and does so by faith in himself (and hard work). Of course, there is some value in a positive mental attitude. A positive attitude to one’s work really will help one to do better at it. Faith in oneself really is self-fulfilling to a degree. Yet this is not faith in the biblical sense of the term. Norman Vincent Peale has made much of this outlook. He popularized it originally in a best-selling book called The Power of Positive Thinking. He taught that the Bible contained a technique for “spiritual power” that could make us successful. For him, the heart of the gospel was to be found in a few strong statements about faith in the New Testament, verses like “Everything is possible for him who believes” (Mark 9:23) and “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you” (Matt. 17:20–21). All we had to do, he said, was memorize these verses and allow them to sink down into our subconscious minds and transform us, and we would become believers in God and in ourselves. Then we would be able to do what we previously thought impossible. Peale concluded, “According to your faith in yourself, according to your faith in your job, according to your faith in your God, this far you will get and no further.” But here is the difficulty. Apparently, in Peale’s mind faith in oneself, faith in one’s job, and faith in God are essentially the same thing, and this really means that the object of faith is irrelevant. John R. W. Stott, who analyzes Peale’s outlook, says, “To Dr. Peale faith is really another word for self-confidence.” Against these distortions we must reply that real faith is not based upon a person’s individual attitudes and feelings. In the context of these human definitions, faith is unstable. In the context of biblical teaching, faith is reliable; for it is faith in the trustworthy God, who reveals himself reliably. Faith in the biblical sense actually has three elements, which I call: knowledge, heart response, and commitment. In Spurgeon’s work on grace, which I referred to earlier, the great Baptist preacher speaks of knowledge, belief, and trust, but the elements he is thinking of are essentially the same.
Knowledge. This must be first because it is impossible to believe in a thing unless we know what it is we are believing. In the biblical sense this knowledge is of the gospel. It is knowledge of the very things Paul has been writing about in Ephesians 2: that in our natural state we are all dead in transgressions and sins, that we are objects of God’s just wrath, but that God nevertheless has reached out to save us through the work of Jesus Christ—and that this is of grace. The work of Christ consists in his dying for sin in our place. Calvin wrote, “We shall possess a right definition of faith if we call it a firm and certain knowledge of God’s benevolence toward us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit.”
Heart response. But faith is not mere intellectual assent to certain truths. It is also a response to such knowledge. Therefore, Calvin also says, “It now remains to pour into the heart what the mind has absorbed. For the Word of God is not received by faith if it flits about in the top of the brain, but when it takes root in the depth of the heart that it may be an invincible defense to withstand and drive off all the stratagems of temptation.”
Commitment. The final element is commitment or, as Spurgeon says, trust. It means casting yourself upon Christ, resting on his promises and accepting his finished work on your behalf. It is saying, as Thomas did, “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28). Marriage provides an illustration. A good marriage is the culmination of an extended process of learning about someone, responding to him or her, and then making a commitment. Courtship may be compared to faith’s first element: knowledge. It is a time for getting to know each other, for seeing whether the other person possesses those characteristics that will be good in the marriage. It is a very important step. If the other person is not of good character or cannot be trusted, there will be trouble later on. The second stage is comparable to the second element in faith: the movement of the heart. This corresponds to falling in love, which is quite obviously an important step beyond mere knowledge. Finally, there is the point of verbalized commitment contained in the marriage ceremony. At this point the couple promise to live together and love each other regardless of what their future circumstances might be. So also do we commit ourselves to Christ for this life and for eternity.
How God Does Not Save Us
There is one last idea in Ephesians 2:8–9. It tells how God does not save sinners: “not by works, so that no one can boast.” This makes “faith” something other than a work; for although faith is a channel by which the grace of God comes to us, it is not a deserving action or attitude on our part. In speaking on this text I have sometimes referred to the previous phrase in verse 8 (“and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God”) as referring to faith, teaching that even faith is God’s gift. This is probably not what Paul had in mind, because “faith” (pistis) is feminine, and “this” (touto) is neuter. The statements in verse 8 probably refer to the whole of the previous sentence, teaching that the salvation which is ours through faith is not of ourselves but rather is God’s gift. Still, although Paul is writing that “faith” is not from ourselves, the point is nevertheless valid in that we do not contribute to our salvation even in so vital a matter as the faith by which Christ’s work is received. If faith were a virtue, then we would be able to boast in heaven. We would be there because of the grace of God plus faith, and another would not be there because in his case faith was lacking. No, not even faith is a work. Nothing that you or I can do, however great or small, can get us into salvation. If we think there is, we are still trusting ourselves and our own ability rather than Christ, and we cannot be saved. Salvation is by grace alone. All we can do (but also must do) is take the pitcher God puts in our hand—and thank him because it is a lot better than anything we ever had before. Will you not do that? It is the way a person becomes a Christian and thus passes out of death into life. Say, as we do in the hymn,
Nothing in my hands I bring,
Simply to thy cross I cling;
Naked, come to thee for dress,
Helpless, look to thee for grace;
Foul, I to the Fountain fly;
Wash me, Savior, or I die.
Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in thee.
Boice, J. M. (1988). Ephesians: an expositional commentary (pp. 63–68). Ministry Resources Library.
Reflecting on what he has just now said about grace, and repeating the parenthetical clause of verse 5b, the apostle says, For by grace you have been saved.… For explanation see on verse 5. He continues: through faith; and this not of yourselves, (it is) the gift of God … Three explanations deserve consideration: (1) That offered by A. T. Robertson. Commenting on this passage in his Word Pictures in the New Testament, Vol. IV, p. 525, he states, “Grace is God’s part, faith ours.” He adds that since in the original the demonstrative “this” (and this not of yourselves) is neuter and does not correspond with the gender of the word “faith,” which is feminine, it does not refer to the latter “but to the act of being saved by grace conditioned on faith on our part.” Even more clearly in Gram.N.T., p. 704, he states categorically, “In Eph. 2:8 … there is no reference to διὰ πίστεως [through faith] in τοῦτο [this], but rather to the idea of salvation in the clause before.” Without any hesitancy I answer, Robertson, to whom the entire world of New Testament scholarship is heavily indebted, does not express himself felicitously in this instance. This is true first because in a context in which the apostle places such tremendous stress on the fact that from start to finish man owes his salvation to God, to him alone, it would have been very strange, indeed, for him to say, “Grace is God’s part, faith ours.” True though it be that both the responsibility of believing and also its activity are ours, for God does not believe for us, nevertheless, in the present context (verses 5–10) one rather expects emphasis on the fact that both in its initiation and in its continuation faith is entirely dependent on God, and so is our complete salvation. Also, Robertson, a grammarian famous in his field, knew that in the original the demonstrative (this), though neuter, by no means always corresponds in gender with its antecedent. That he knew this is shown by the fact that on the indicated page of his Grammar (p. 704) he points out that “in general” the demonstrative “agrees with its substantive in gender and number.” When he says “in general,” he must mean, “not always but most of the time.” Hence, he should have considered more seriously the possibility that, in view of the context, the exception to the rule, an exception by no means rare, applies here. He should have made allowance for it. Finally, he should have justified the departure from the rule that unless there is a compelling reason to do otherwise the antecedent should be looked for in the immediate vicinity of the pronoun or adjective that refers to it. (2) That presented, among others, by F. W. Grosheide. As he sees it, the words “and this not of yourselves” mean “and this being saved by grace through faith is not of yourselves” but is the gift of God. Since, according to this theory—also endorsed, it would seem, by John Calvin in his Commentary—faith is included in the gift, none of the objections against theory (1) apply with respect to theory (2). Does this mean then that (2) is entirely satisfactory? Not necessarily. This brings us to (3) That defended by A. Kuyper, Sr. in his book Het Werk van den Heiligen Geest (Kampen, 1927), pp. 506–514. Dr. Kuyper is, however, not this theory’s sole defender, but his defence is, perhaps, the most detailed and vigorous. The theory amounts, in brief, to the following: Paul’s words may be paraphrased thus, “I had the right to speak about ‘the surpassing riches of his grace’ for it is, indeed, by grace that you are saved, through faith; and lest you should now begin to say, ‘But then we deserve credit, at least, for believing,’ I will immediately add that even this faith (or: even this exercise of faith) is not of yourselves but is God’s gift.” With variations as to detail this explanation was the one favored by much of the patristic tradition. Supporting it were also Beza, Zanchius, Erasmus, Huigh de Groot (Hugo Grotius), Bengel, Michaelis, etc. It is shared, too, by Simpson (op. cit., p. 55) and by Van Leeuwen and Greijdanus in their commentaries. H. C. G. Moule (Ephesian Studies, New York, 1900, pp. 77, 78) endorses it, with the qualification, “We must explain τοῦτο [this] to refer not to the feminine noun πίστις [faith] precisely, but to the fact of our exercising faith.” Moreover, it is perhaps no exaggeration to say that the explanation offered is also shared by the average man who reads 2:8 in his A.V. or A.R.V. Salmond, after presenting several grounds in its favor, particularly also this that “the formula καὶ τοῦτο might rather favor it, as it often adds to the idea to which it is attached,” finally shies away from it because “salvation is the main idea in the preceding statement,” which fact, of course, the advocates of (3) would not deny but do, indeed, vigorously affirm, but which is not a valid argument against the idea that faith, as well as everything else in salvation, is God’s gift. It is not a valid argument against (3), therefore. I have become convinced that theory (3) is the most logical explanation of the passage in question. Probably the best argument in its favor is this one: If Paul meant to say, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this being saved is not of yourselves,” he would have been guilty of needless repetition—for what else is grace but that which proceeds from God and not from ourselves?—a repetition rendered even more prolix when he now (supposedly) adds, “it, that is, salvation, is the gift of God,” followed by a fourth and fifth repetition, namely, “not of works, for we are his handiwork.” No wonder that Dr. A. Kuyper states, “If the text read, ‘For by grace you have been saved, not of yourselves, it is the work of God,’ it would make some sense. But first to say, ‘By grace you have been saved,’ and then, as if it were something new, to add, ‘and this having been saved is not of yourselves,’ this does not run smoothly but jerks and jolts.… And while with that interpretation everything proceeds by fits and starts and becomes lame and redundant, all is excellent and meaningful when you follow the ancient interpreters of Jesus’ church.” This, it would seem to me also, is the refutation of theory (1) and, to a certain extent, of theory (2). Basically, however, theories (2) and (3) both stress the same truth, namely, that the credit for the entire process of salvation must be given to God, so that man is deprived of every reason for boasting, which is exactly what Paul says in the words which now follow, namely, 9, 10. not of works, lest anyone should boast. This introduces us to the subject:
Works in relation to our salvation
(1) Rejected
As a basis for salvation, a ground upon which we can plead, works are rejected. “Not the labors of my hands can fulfil thy law’s demands.” In this connection it must be remembered that the apostle is not thinking exclusively or even mainly of works in fulfilment of the Mosaic law, by means of which the Jew, unconverted to Christ, sought to justify himself. Surely, also by such “works of the law” “no flesh will be justified in his sight” (Rom. 3:20; cf. Gal. 2:16). But in view of the fact that Paul was addressing an audience consisting mostly of Christians from the Gentile world it is clear that he wishes to emphasize that God rejects every work of man, be he Gentile, Jew, or believer in his moments of spiritual eclipse, every work on which any man bases his hope for salvation. If, then, salvation is completely from God, “who spared not his own Son but delivered him up for us all” (Rom. 8:32), every ground of boasting in self is excluded (Rom. 3:27; 4:5; 1 Cor. 1:31). When the Lord comes in his glory, those at his left hand will do all the boasting (Matt. 25:44; cf. 7:22); those at his right hand will be unable even to recall their good deeds (Matt. 25:37–39).
Now all boasting is excluded,
Unearned bliss is now my own.
I, in God thus safely rooted,
Boast in sovereign grace alone.
Long before my mother bore me,
E’en before God’s mighty hand
Out of naught made sea and land,
His electing love watched o’er me.
God is love, O angel-voice,
Tongues of men, make him your choice.
(2) Confected
Paul continues: for his handiwork are we, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand … Fact is that though good works are non-meritorious, yet they are so important that God created us in order that we should perform them. We are his handiwork: that which he made, his product (cf. Ps. 100:3). To him we owe our entire spiritual as well as physical existence. Our very birth as believers is from God (John 3:3, 5). We are created “in Christ Jesus” (see on 1:1, 3, 4), for apart from him we are nothing and can accomplish nothing (John 15:5; cf. 1 Cor. 4:7). As “men in Christ,” believers constitute a new creation, as the apostle had said previously (2 Cor. 5:17): “Wherefore if any man is in Christ, there is a new creation: the old things are passed away; behold they are become new” (2 Cor. 5:17). Believers were “made alive together with Christ” (see above on verse 5; and below on 4:24; also Gal. 6:15). Now along with creating us God also prepared good works. He did this first by giving us his Son, our great Enabler, in whom good works find their most glorious expression (Luke 24:19; Acts 2:22). Not only does Christ enable us to perform good works but he is also our Example in good works (John 13:14, 15; 1 Peter 2:21). God did this secondly by giving us faith in his Son. Faith is God’s gift (verse 8). Now in planting the seed of faith in our hearts, and causing it to sprout and with great care tending it, making it grow, etc., God also in that sense prepared for us good works, for good works are the fruit of faith. Living faith, moreover, implies a renewed mind, a grateful heart, and a surrendered will. Out of such ingredients, all of them God-given, God confects or compounds good works. Thus, summarizing, we can say that by giving us his Son and by imparting to us faith in that Son God prepared beforehand our good works. When Christ through his Spirit dwells in the hearts of believers, his gifts and graces are bestowed upon them, so that they, too, bear fruits, such as “love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, and self-control” (Gal. 5:22, 23).
(3) Expected
Paul concludes this paragraph by adding: that we should walk in them. Though good works are a divine preparation, they are at the same time a human responsibility. These two must never be separated. If salvation can be illustrated by the figure of a flourishing tree, then good works are symbolized not by its roots nor even by its trunk but by its fruit. Jesus requires of us fruit, more fruit, much fruit (John 15:2, 5, 8). He said, “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, with me abiding in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” To bear much fruit and to walk in good works is the same thing. When a certain occupation has the love of a man’s heart, he is “walking” in it. Note: walk in them, no longer in “trespasses and sins” (verses 1, 2).
(4) Perfected
Combining (2) and (3) we see that by walking in good works we have entered into the sphere of God’s own activity. Hence, we know that though our own efforts may often disappoint us, so that we are ashamed even of our good works, victory will arrive at last; not fully, to be sure, in the present life but in the next. Moral and spiritual perfection is our goal even here, but will be our portion in the life hereafter, for we are confident of this very thing that he who began a good work in us will carry it to completion (Phil. 1:6). Cf. Eph. 1:4; 3:19; 4:12, 13. This doctrine of good works, when accepted by faith, deprives man of every reason for boasting in self but also takes away from him every ground for despair. It glorifies God.
Hendriksen, W., & Kistemaker, S. J. (1953–2001). Exposition of Ephesians (Vol. 7, pp. 120–125). Baker Book House.
Nevertheless I will remember my covenant with thee in the days of thy youth, and I will establish unto thee an everlasting covenant. (Ezekiel 16:60)
Notwithstanding our sins, the Lord is still faithful in His love to us. He looks back. See how He remembers those early days of ours when He took us into covenant with Himself, and we gave ourselves over to Him. Happy days those! The Lord does not twit us with them and charge us with being insincere. No, He looks rather to His covenant with us than to our covenant with Him. There was no hypocrisy in that sacred compact, on His part, at any rate. How gracious is the Lord thus to look back in love!
He looks forward also. He is resolved that the covenant shall not fail. If we do not stand to it, He does. He solemnly declares, “I will establish unto thee an everlasting covenant.” He has no mind to draw back from His promises. Blessed be His name, He sees the sacred seal, “the blood of the everlasting covenant,” and He remembers our Surety, in whom He ratified that covenant, even His own dear Son; and therefore He rests in His covenant engagements. “He abideth faithful; he cannot deny himself.”
O Lord, lay this precious word upon my heart and help me to feed upon it all this day!
“If thou return to the Almighty, thou shalt be built up” – Job 22:23
Eliphaz, in this utterance, spoke a great truth, which is the summary of many an inspired Scripture. Reader, has sin pulled you down? Have you become like a ruin? Has the hand of the LORD gone out against you so that in estate you are impoverished and in spirit you are broken down? Was it your own folly which brought upon you all this dilapidation? Then the first thing to be done is to return to the LORD. With deep repentance and sincere faith find your way back from your backsliding. It is your duty, for you have turned away from Him whom you professed to serve. It is your wisdom, for you cannot strive against Him and prosper. It is your immediate necessity, for what He has done is nothing compared to what He may do in the way of chastisement, since He is Almighty to punish. See what a promise invites you! You shall be “built up.” None but the Almighty can set up the fallen pillars and restore the tottering walls of your condition; but He can and He will do it if you return to Him. Do not delay. Your crushed mind may quite fail you if you go on to rebel; but hearty confession will ease you, and humble faith will console you. Do this, and all will be well.
so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, (2:10–11a)
When the Greek word hina (so that) is used with a subjunctive verb (such as kampsē, will bow; and exomologēsētai, will confess) it introduces a purpose clause. Paul is therefore saying: “Jesus is given the name which is above every name for the purpose that, or with the result that, every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess the supreme name of Jesus Christ, which is Lord.” It is critical to understand that this response will not be to the name Jesus. A form of Joshua (meaning “Jehovah, or Yahweh saves”), Jesus was a common name in New Testament times. It obviously could not be the unique, much less supreme, name intended by God as a title of exaltation. It is rather at the name of Jesus, that is, at another name (Lord) given to Jesus Christ in His exaltation by the Father, that every knee will bow and every tongue will confess. There had long been indications of what His supreme name would be. Kurios (“lord”) was a common term of respect in New Testament times, similar to the English word sir but carrying a much higher degree of respect (cf. Matt. 10:24–25; 18:27–34; Luke 12:42–47). During His earthly ministry, Jesus was sometimes respectfully addressed in this way. It seems probable that some of those who called Him “lord” did not, at least when they first encountered Him, consider Him to be more than a great teacher (cf. John 8:11; 9:35–38). Even the Twelve’s understanding of His true identity was gradual and often tentative. And, as Jesus Himself made clear, even calling Him Lord as an acknowledgment of His deity is not necessarily evidence of a saving relationship with Him.
Not everyone who says to Me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to Me on that day, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?” And then I will declare to them, “I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.” (Matt. 7:21–23)
Because the Jews considered God’s name too holy to utter, they substituted the title Lord in place of His personal, covenant name, Yahweh (or Jehovah), whenever it would have been spoken. (Most modern English translations of the Old Testament therefore render the Hebrew YHWH [Yahweh] as LORD.) Consequently, God was called both adonai (“LORD”), a title of divine authority, and YHWH (“LORD”), referring to His covenant name, which has the basic meaning of “I am” (cf. Ex. 3:13–15). When Scripture was read, only a knowledge of the Hebrew text would enable a listener to know which term was involved. In preaching, teaching, or ordinary conversation, a listener could judge only by context. In the present text, Lord obviously refers to Jesus’ deity and sovereign, exalted authority in the highest sense. It represents the divine title and name as well as all the divine rights, honors, and prerogatives. Ultimately, whether by choice or by force, every creature, human and angelic, will submit to Jesus Christ as the divine and exalted Lord. In the first act of homage, every knee will bow, just as Isaiah had prophesied some seven hundred years earlier. Through him the Lord declared, “Turn to Me and be saved, all the ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is no other. I have sworn by Myself, the word has gone forth from My mouth in righteousness and will not turn back, that to Me every knee will bow” (Isa. 45:22–23). Jesus Christ is that divine Savior and Lord, to whom every knee will bow. Those who will submit to the supreme authority of Jesus Christ will comprise three groups. First will be those who are in heaven, which will include the holy angels and the saints, the redeemed believers of all ages. That heavenly group, of course, has long been worshiping Jesus Christ as Lord (cf. Heb. 1:6; 12:23; Rev. 4:8–11; 5:8–14). The second group will be those who are on earth, both redeemed and unredeemed. The redeemed will continue their worship of Him that began when they were saved. “When He comes to be glorified in His saints on that day,” He will “be marveled at among all who have believed” (2 Thess. 1:10). At that same time, however, though unwillingly and in terror, the unredeemed will also be forced to bow their knees before Him. He will “[deal] out retribution to those who do not know God and to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus, [who then] will pay the penalty of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power” (vv. 8–9). The third group who will worship the exalted Lord will be those who are under the earth, the fallen angels and unredeemed dead who are awaiting final judgment and eternal punishment. Revelation 20:11–13, perhaps the most frightening passage in all of Scripture, depicts the ultimate fate of the unredeemed:
Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat upon it, from whose presence earth and heaven fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them; and they were judged, every one of them according to their deeds.
This third group will also include “the spirits now in prison,” the demons already bound in the abyss to whom Jesus “went and made proclamation” between His death and resurrection, by which He triumphed over them (1 Peter 3:19; cf. Col. 2:14–15). As Isaiah predicted (Isa. 45:23), in the second step of this universal worship of the exalted Son of God, every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Glōssa (tongue) is frequently used, as here, to represent a language. No matter what their language, every human and angelic being will declare Jesus’ lordship. The holy angels, the redeemed saints in heaven and on earth, and all the enemies of God on earth and in hell, forever confined by His unbreakable power that holds them in eternal punishment, will bow their knees before His sovereign authority. Even the damned demons, including Satan, will have no choice but to agree with and confess the reality that Jesus Christ is Lord. Exomologeō (will confess) is an intensive form of homologeō (to confess, agree with) and refers to an open, public declaration. At the time about which Paul is here speaking, however, such a confession will not lead to salvation, because that supreme blessing will already have been received or forever forfeited. Before death or the Lord’s return, the promise is that “if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom. 10:9). But as the apostle makes clear later in that same letter, in the day of judgment that confession will not change the spiritual status of those making it. Quoting Isaiah, he says, “For it is written, ‘As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to Me, and every tongue shall give praise to God’ ” (Rom. 14:11; cf. Isa. 45:23). On the lips of those who belong to God, this will be a willing, continuing, and loving declaration of allegiance and adoration. For those who have rejected Him, the confession will be unwilling but irresistible, a compelled acknowledgment of Jesus Christ as the sovereign Lord of the universe by those under His immutable judgment. Jesus already possesses His full divine title and authority, but it is not yet the Father’s time for that authority to be fully manifested. Jesus already sits at the Father’s right hand on His heavenly throne, but not everything has yet been brought into subjection to Him (cf. 1 Cor. 15:27–28). While there is time, the Savior continues to call men and women to Himself in saving faith, to proclaim and receive Him willingly as Lord. Paul rejoiced that he had “found mercy, so that in me as the foremost [of sinners], Jesus Christ might demonstrate His perfect patience as an example for those who would believe in Him for eternal life” (1 Tim. 1:16). At Jesus’ birth, the angel announced to the shepherds that “today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:11). Jesus told His disciples, “You call Me Teacher and Lord; and you are right, for so I am” (John 13:13), and after the Resurrection Thomas confessed Him as “My Lord and my God!” (20:28). At Pentecost Peter proclaimed, “Therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Christ—this Jesus whom you crucified” (Acts 2:36; cf. 10:36). Paul told the Romans: “If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom. 10:9; cf. v. 12). Later in the same letter he said, “For to this end Christ died and lived again, that He might be Lord both of the dead and of the living” (14:9; cf. v. 11). He reminded the Corinthians that “there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him” (1 Cor. 8:6; cf. 12:3; 15:57). Contrary to much popular teaching and preaching, Scripture nowhere speaks of a person making Jesus Lord. Although many people who use that phrase are merely referring to believers’ obedient submission to Jesus’ sovereign authority, such expressions are seriously misleading and confusing. The problem is especially serious because some evangelicals maintain that confessing Jesus as Lord is not an integral part of saving faith. They wrongly view that as an optional, though desirable, step that believers should take sometime after they are saved. The notion is that it is possible to be saved by confessing Jesus as Savior but not as commanding, ruling Lord. But as just cited, it was God the Father who “has made Him both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36), and in order to be saved it is necessary for a person to “confess … Jesus as Lord, and believe in [his] heart that God raised Him from the dead” (Rom. 10:9), a truth repeated a few verses later: “Whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved” (v. 13). Acknowledging Jesus as Lord must include submission and obedience, because, by definition, the title of Lord assumes it. The centrality to the gospel of the lordship of Jesus Christ is abundantly clear. In the New Testament, He is called Lord some 747 times. In the book of Acts, He is referred to as Savior only twice, but as Lord 92 times. The first known creed of the early church was “Jesus is Lord!” The lordship of Jesus Christ is the very essence of Christianity and the necessary confession of anyone who desires to be saved. Jesus frequently reiterated the necessity of obedience as an element of saving faith (Matt. 7:22–27; 19:21–22; Luke 14:25–33; John 8:31; 14:23–24; 15:14). Jesus is Savior so that He may be Lord, and He will not save those for whom He cannot be Lord. As mentioned above, even verbally professing Him as Lord without allowing Him to be Lord is worthless. Early in His ministry He declared:
Not everyone who says to Me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to Me on that day, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?” And then I will declare to them, “I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.” (Matt. 7:21–23; cf. Luke 6:46–49)
Jesus was not, of course, teaching works righteousness—that salvation comes through obedience—but that a profession of faith that produces no true obedience to His lordship is worthless. The argument that the title Lord refers only to the fact of Jesus’ deity is spurious in the extreme, robbing the term of its essential meaning. By definition, Lord denotes a master, a supreme authority, a sovereign ruler. Not only that, but the reality of deity itself inherently carries those same meanings. The notion of some critics of “lordship salvation,” that confessing Jesus as Savior is an act of faith, whereas confessing Him as Lord is a form of works righteousness, is absurd. Both saving confessions are made possible only through the gracious provision and power of God (Eph. 2:8; 1 Cor. 12:3). I have commented on this very essential and often maligned requirement of Jesus’ lordship in my book The Gospel According to Jesus:
When we come to Jesus for salvation, we come to the One who is Lord over all. Any message that omits this truth cannot be called the gospel. It is a defective message that presents a savior who is not Lord, a redeemer who does not demonstrate authority over sin, a weakened, sickly messiah who cannot command those he rescues. The gospel according to Jesus is nothing like that. It represents Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and demands that those who would receive him take him for who he is. In the words of Puritan John Flavel, “The gospel offer of Christ includes all his offices, and gospel faith just so receives him; to submit to him as well as to be redeemed by him; to imitate him in the holiness of his life, as well as to reap the purchases and fruits of his death. It must be an entire receiving of the Lord Jesus Christ.” A. W. Tozer wrote in the same vein, “To urge men and women to believe in a divided Christ is bad teaching, for no one can receive half of Christ, or a third of Christ, or a quarter of the Person of Christ! We are not saved by believing in an office nor in a work.” He is Lord, and those who refuse him as Lord cannot use him as Savior. Everyone who receives him must surrender to his authority, for to say we receive Christ when in fact we reject his right to reign over us is utter absurdity. It is a futile attempt to hold onto sin with one hand and take Jesus with the other. What kind of salvation is it if we are left in bondage to sin? (Rev. ed. [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994], 235–36)
R. A. Torrey, second president of Moody Bible Institute, dean of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, and a prominent evangelist, advised those who witness for Christ: “Lead [an unbeliever] as directly as you can to accept Jesus Christ as a personal Saviour, and to surrender to Him as his Lord and Master” (How to Work for Christ [Old Tappan, N.J.: Revell, n.d.], 32). W. H. Griffith Thomas, a cofounder of Dallas Theological Seminary, wrote:
Our relation to Christ is based on His death and resurrection and this means His Lordship. Indeed the Lordship of Christ over the lives of His people was the very purpose for which He died and rose again. We have to acknowledge Christ as our Lord. Sin is rebellion, and it is only as we surrender to Him as Lord that we receive our pardon from Him as our Savior. We have to admit Him to reign on the throne of the heart, and it is only when He is glorified in our hearts as King that the Holy Spirit enters and abides. (St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, n.d.], 371)
THE PURPOSE OF CHRIST’S EXALTATION
to the glory of God the Father. (2:11b)
Finally, as for everything in the saga of redemption, the purpose of Jesus’ exaltation is the glory of God the Father. To proclaim the sovereign lordship of His Son is the greatest glory that can be given to God the Father. Christ’s universal acknowledgment as Lord does not make the Father jealous. Instead, that is the supreme objective and fulfillment of the Father’s divine will as He demonstrates His perfect love for the Son. Herein, of course, is a great mystery, a mystery that confounds everyone who presumes to fully understand the Trinity. The three Persons are but one God, wholly united and indivisible. They never compete, disagree, or differ with one another in the slightest degree. Men therefore are not called to worship God through Jesus, but to worship Jesus as God. Jesus explained that “The Son of Man [is] glorified, and God is glorified in Him; if God is glorified in Him, God will also glorify Him in Himself” (John 13:31–32; cf. 14:13; Rom. 9:5; 11:36; 16:27). It is the Father’s and the Son’s supreme pleasure to glorify each other. In His High Priestly Prayer, Jesus said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify Your Son, that the Son may glorify You.… I glorified You on the earth, having accomplished the work which You have given Me to do. Now, Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was” (John 17:1, 4–5). Whoever honors the Son honors the Father, and whoever dishonors the Son dishonors the Father (John 5:23). Throughout all eternity, the Father will continue to say of the exalted Lord Jesus Christ: “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased” (Matt. 3:17; cf. 17:5).
MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (2001). Philippians (pp. 144–150). Moody Press.
Christ’s Greatest Name
Philippians 2:9–11
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
The first statements of Philippians 2:5–11 cover many of the great doctrines that concern our Lord Jesus Christ. They have taken us from the high point of his glory as the eternal Son of God to the low point of his death on the cross. Paul now moves back up again toward his climax—Christ’s exaltation. It is symbolized in a name that is above every name: Lord, the equivalent of God’s own name, Jehovah. A number of commentators have taught that this supreme name given by God is “Jesus.” But this is incorrect for several reasons. One writer argues, “First, no name other than Yahweh [Jehovah] has a right to be called ‘the name above every name.’ Secondly, the movement of verses 9–11 does not stop at the phrase ‘gave him the name …,’ but flows straight on to the universal confession that ‘Jesus Christ is Lord,’ which suggests that the significant thing is the ascription of ‘Lord’ in addition to the names already known. Thirdly, verse 10 is a pretty direct quotation of Isaiah 45:23, where Yahweh [Jehovah], having declared himself to be the only God and the only Savior, vows that he will yet be the object of universal worship and adoration. It is this divine honor that is now bestowed upon the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Name of Names
The full impact of the truth that Jesus Christ is Lord will be seen only when we realize that the name of Lord is above not only all human names but also all of the unique names that have already been given to Jesus. Suppose that a king was about to bestow an honor on a subject who had never previously distinguished himself. The only names he had ever received from anyone were scoundrel, bum, crook, good-for-nothing, and a dozen others like them. But then he did something that deserved the king’s reputation. The king does not say, “Arise, Sir Thomas (whatever his personal name might be)” or “I wish to present you with the Order of Merit.” He says, “Well, you have certainly distinguished yourself. You are a faithful subject.” The name “faithful” is above all the other names that had previously been given to the man, but it would only be one step above nothing. Suppose, however, that there was also a knight of the realm who had already distinguished himself greatly and had been decorated on many occasions. Suppose he had risen to a very high position in the kingdom. To honor this man the king would need the highest title at his disposal, and it would be especially glorious when measured against the knight’s other names and honors. This is what God did with Jesus. Jesus was abased; now he is honored. Jesus is Lord. The glory of this title must be measured against his other names. Think of the names that have already been bestowed on Jesus. There is the name Messiah, the anointed one. This means that Jesus is the promised deliverer through whom blessing comes to Israel and the gentile nations. In him God meets all our longings and brings to fruition all the currents of history. Jesus is also the Son of man. Many people think that this refers only to Christ’s humanity, but the phrase means more than that. It refers especially to his coming again in glory. Originally it comes from Daniel, who writes, “In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all peoples, nations and men of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed” (Dan. 7:13–14). How glorious that Jesus should be called the Son of man! Jesus is also called the Son of God. This name points to his divinity. It is the title with which the devil addressed Jesus (Matt. 4:3, 6); on several occasions it is God’s own designation of him (Matt. 3:17; 17:5); and it is included in Scripture as the high point of the disciples’ verbal confession (Matt. 16:16). John writes, “If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God” (1 John 4:15). Jesus is God’s Messiah. He is God’s Son. He is the Son of man. He is our prophet, priest, and king, the Alpha and the Omega, the door, the Beloved, and many other names. But the title “Lord” is above them all. It is at the name of Jesus Christ as Lord that every knee shall bow.
Jesus is God
Why is the name “Lord” the name that is above every name? Why not any one of the other titles? Or why not another name entirely? These questions have several answers, but the most important is that the title identifies the Lord Jesus Christ with God. The truth is easily seen in both the Greek and Hebrew usage of the word. The Greek word for Lord is kyrios, the word used by citizens of the Roman empire to acknowledge the divinity of Caesar. This title was never used of the emperors until they were thought to be deified through a religious ceremony; therefore, it was used as a divine title. Within the empire there was a test phrase used to check the loyalty of the people. It was Kyrios Kaiser, and it meant “Caesar is Lord.” Christians who would not say these words were later singled out from pagans and executed. In those days when a Christian insisted that Jesus is Lord he meant that Jesus, not Caesar, is divine. The same meaning is present when the word occurs in Hebrew, only more so. The Hebrew word is Adonai. It is a title somewhat like our “sir,” but it assumed an extraordinary importance in Hebrew speech because in practice it replaced the personal name of God, Jehovah. No Jew pronounced the word “Jehovah,” even when reading the Bible. Instead he said, “Adonai.” In the written Old Testament the vowel points of the printed word “Jehovah” are even altered to remind the reader to say “Adonai.” Against this background it is easy to see that not only in popular speech but also in Jewish literature and in the writing and transmission of the Old Testament Adonai became almost synonymous with Jehovah, the personal name of God. Consequently, when the early Christians made their confession—“Jesus Christ is Lord”—they were actually confessing that Jesus of Nazareth is the God of Israel, Jehovah, the only true God. Is Jesus your Jehovah, your God? I know that it is not easy for a person to come to that confession, but it is essential. For all that you will ever know about God on this earth you will learn as you look to Jesus. Quite a few years ago when my wife was at the University of Pennsylvania she had a friend who acknowledged this verbally but did not understand it. She was not yet a Christian. She began to read the Gospel of John together with my wife. They read through three chapters, where Jesus is called God many times, but it was not until the middle of the third chapter and after many weeks of study that the girl suddenly exclaimed, “Why, I see what it means. It means that … that … Jesus is God.” She had been reading that for weeks and had only at this point come to a full realization of it. Two weeks later she committed her life to the One she now acknowledged to be God. One more thing must be noted about this word Adonai. The word contains a personal ending. Adonai does not just mean “Lord” or “God”; it means “my Lord” or “my God.” It is the word that Mary used of Jesus in the garden on Easter morning. It is the confession of Thomas, made one week later, that John has used to provide a climax in his Gospel. Mary said, “my Lord.” Thomas said, “my Lord and my God.” In both cases the words were personal. This means that it is not enough merely to acknowledge mentally that Jesus Christ is God. The devils also do that and tremble (James 2:19). Jesus must be your God. He must be your Lord. If you are to know God, you must receive Jesus Christ as your Lord and personal Savior.
Jesus is Sovereign
We have already seen one reason why the name “Lord” is a name that is above every name. It teaches that Jesus is God. But another reason is that the name indicates that Jesus Christ is sovereign. Jesus rules as God rules. Today he controls even the smallest things of life. One day he will subdue his enemies forever. We need to be frank about the Christian life. The Christian life is not an escape from the world’s troubles and problems. If it were, God would have taken us out of the world. It is not an escape from temptations or from suffering. Christians experience these things, but they have victory in them. Moreover, they have peace within, knowing that these things are in the control of the One who loves them and who does all things well. Paul writes, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Rom. 8:28). The doctrine of the sovereignty of God or the sovereignty of Jesus Christ has sometimes been called fatalism by enemies of the gospel, but it is not fatalism at all. A belief in fatalism or fate is found in the Moslem religion, where it is referred to as “kismet,” which means the impersonal force by which the universe is believed by Muslims to operate. They believe fate operates in ways that are totally insensitive to the needs or ends of individuals. This is not the Christian teaching. The Bible teaches that the God who controls all things is not an impersonal deity but a God who loves us and who orders the events of our lives to lead us into his perfect and desirable will. It is not meaningless or tragic when difficulties enter your life or when there are temptations. God knows about it and has even permitted it to come in order that he might accomplish something in you that will be for your good. In the moments when these things come you must turn to him and seek his way. As you do, you can be certain that he is making you more and more into the person he would have you be.
Jesus is Coming Again
There is one other great truth contained in the title “Lord.” The title means that Jesus is God. It means that Jesus is sovereign. But it also means that Jesus is coming again. In the second chapter of Hebrews the author says of Jesus that God has put “everything under his feet. In putting everything under him, God left nothing that is not subject to him” (Heb. 2:8). This is wonderful, but at this point a break occurs in the thought, and the author adds, “But now we see not yet all things put under him.” Jesus is Lord. Jesus is sovereign. But if he is to be Lord completely, he must return to conquer evil and to establish his righteous will forever. Have you ever noticed the names Paul uses to refer to Jesus in 1 Thessalonians 4:13–18, the well-known passage that speaks of Christ’s return? Paul has been writing to the Christians in Thessalonica about death and has argued that since God has raised up Jesus he will also raise up those who are united to him by faith. In these statements Paul refers to the Lord Jesus Christ by his personal, most human name: Jesus. That is natural. At this point he begins to talk about Christ’s return for those who are still living at the end of the church age. When he starts to speak about Jesus’ return, however, he no longer refers to Jesus as Jesus but to Jesus as Lord. From this point on the name occurs five times in the verses: “According to the Lord’s own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever” (1 Thess. 4:15–17). Paul associated the second coming with the fact that Christ is Lord. Do you look for the Lord’s return? The early Christians looked for his coming, and it gave them strength even in their troubles, even in martyrdom. They had a prayer that expressed this hope. It is preserved for us in the Aramaic language at the end of 1 Corinthians. It is the word maranatha. Actually, the word is composed of two Aramaic words run together—the word for come and the word for Lord—and they can be read as “Maran-atha,” which means “Our Lord is coming.” Or they can be read as “Marana-tha,” which means “Our Lord, come!” The second interpretation is the better of the two. The phrase is a prayer of Christian longing. Moreover, John includes it in that sense in the next to the last verse of the Bible. John writes, “He who testifies to these things says, ‘Yes, I am coming soon.’ ” And he adds, “Come, Lord Jesus.” Is your prayer to see him? to know him? to see the affairs of the world brought to perfection and to judgment in his own time and in line with his will? It should be. It has always been the great hope and consolation of Christians.
Every Knee Shall Bow
Philippians 2:9–11
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
One evening after a church service a woman came up to me with a comment on the sermon. I had mentioned Paul in the context of teaching from Romans and she wanted to tell me about him. She said that Paul has always been offensive to her until she had learned from one of her ministers that Paul embellished his stories. When I asked her what she meant she answered that Paul invented parts of the account of his conversion on the road to Damascus. The first versions of the story were quite simple, according to this woman. There was only a bright light, perhaps a sunstroke. In the later versions, she said, Paul added the account of his blindness and the voice of Jesus. She was glad to know this, she said, because it made Paul human. At this point I said that her views were not only impossible, they also could not be supported by evidence. A sunstroke does not account for the change that came over the apostle Paul, and there is not even a possibility of spreading out the three accounts of Paul’s conversion in Acts over a period of years to document the kind of development about which she was speaking. They were all written years after Paul’s conversion, and they are almost identical. The woman broke off the discussion by saying that she preferred to think that Paul was not entirely truthful because it made her feel better in the things she did. I went away thinking how perverse the human heart is when it will not acknowledge truth even in the face of evidence. This story sets the background for a study of the final verses of Philippians 2:5–11. Everything up to this point has already happened to the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ was in the form of God. He laid aside his glory to take the form of a man. He died once for man’s salvation. He rose again. He ascended into heaven. He has been given the name that is above every name. Jesus Christ is Lord. All this has happened, and God has provided us with evidence that these things are so. Still we refuse to admit what God has demonstrated. Like the woman in my story we refuse to acknowledge the facts, preferring our own fantasies to God’s truth. We do this, not from a worthy motive but because it makes us more comfortable in sin. Against this sinful attitude our text rings out like a thunderclap from heaven: “Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:9–11). According to these verses, the day is coming when human arrogance will be ended. Every mouth will be stopped (Rom. 3:19), and everyone will admit that truth is truth, even though they may hate God for it.
David’s Lord
If you read these verses carefully, you will see at once that they are a prophecy. In fact, they are the New Testament equivalent of an Old Testament prophecy found in Psalm 110:1: “The LORD says to my LORD: ‘Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.’ ” That verse is quoted in the New Testament directly or indirectly at least twenty-seven times. It teaches that the One called David’s Lord, the Messiah, will one day reign over all things and that all his enemies shall be defeated. Philippians 2:9–11 is the New Testament equivalent of this prophecy. Yet, like most of the revelations given in the New Testament text, it tells of things that are not evident in the Old Testament. First, it tells that the acknowledgment of Christ’s rule will take the form of the verbalized confession “Jesus Christ is Lord.” Second, it tells that this confession will be made by all orders of intelligent beings—those in heaven, those on earth, and those under the earth. Finally, it tells that this confession will result in the ascription of glory to the Father.
Jesus Christ is Lord
The acknowledgment of Jesus Christ spoken of in these verses will take the form of the confession “Jesus Christ is Lord.” The title “Lord” has already been considered in a previous study. It is a name for God (Adonai). Consequently, when it is applied to Jesus Christ it is an acknowledgment that he is God. Jesus himself said, “He who has seen me has seen the Father.” The confession also means that Jesus is the sovereign God. The word “Lord” has overtones of rule. Consequently, Jesus is the One who does what is right and who has the power to carry out his decisions. All this is true. Yet the use of the confession in these verses has a slightly different tone simply because it is set in the future when the exalted Christ will already have established his rule. There is an illustration of this distinction in Italian history. During the nineteenth century, when Italy was divided into a number of independent states, there was a popular movement for the reunification of Italy under Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia. Before he became king there was a surge of enthusiasm to drive out the Austrians, keep the French at the borders, and to place this man on the throne. A slogan embodied the hopes of the Italian people during this period composed of the first letters of the Italian phrase meaning “Victor Emmanuel King of Italy.” In Italian the phrase is “Victor Emmanuel Re di Italia,” and by taking the first letters from each of the Italian words, the patriots produced the slogan verdi. At this time the great opera composer Giuseppi Verdi was at the apex of his fame. Hence, his name became a symbol of the reunification of Italy and was written everywhere. In 1861, Victor Emmanuel became king of the united states of Italy, and at the time verdi was still displayed across the country. Now, however, the slogan took on an entirely different meaning. It was no longer a cry of expectation; it was a triumphant acknowledgment of what had already happened. In exactly the same way the confession “Jesus Christ is Lord” on our lips is expectation, at best an acknowledgment of what is only partially true or true in potential. But the day that these verses speak of is coming, when the confession will stand as a glorious acknowledgment of what has already taken place. Jesus is Lord, but then there will be no more rivals to his throne.
Angels, Humans, and Demons
The second important teaching in these verses is the fact that this confession is to be made by every order of intelligent being—by those in heaven, those on earth, and those under the earth. The King James Version of the Bible uses the word “thing” in each of these phrases, so the verse reads “things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth.” But the word “things” is italicized. Whenever that occurs it means that the word has been added to make what the translators feel is better sense in English, even though there is no corresponding word in Greek. Actually, the three phrases are translations of three adjectives in Greek, and they may refer to either things or people. It is better to refer to them as personalities. In this case the verse translates, “beings in heaven, beings on earth, and beings under the earth,” and it refers to angels, humans, and demons. There is great truth in this threefold designation of intelligent life. First, the confession will be made by angels. We read about it in more detail in Revelation 4–5. Here we find that there are myriads of angels that join with the saints in voicing praise to God. I find great encouragement in that. In one of our hymns we sing about the weakness of the praise rendered by humans to God:
The humbler creation, though feeble their ways,
With true adoration shall lisp to Thy praise.
When we sing that in our church there are members of the congregation who smile because it is true. Our praise at best is a lisping. But it is glorious to know that in the day when the redeemed stand before God the Father, our feeble voices will be swelled by the voices of millions of angels who have seen the drama of salvation unfold over the ages and who sing out of their great wonder and vast experience. We also read that this confession will be made by those on the earth: men and women. The Book of Revelation seems to imply that this will be an innumerable company of people. There are the twenty-four elders, who symbolize those who believe in Christ during the church age. There are the 144,000 Jewish converts who believe during the great tribulation. There are millions of gentile converts who believe during this same period because of the witness of the Jewish believers. I must admit that when I read Revelation the numbers sometimes seem hard to believe. It seems at times that today there are few who believe in Jesus. Yet the Bible says that the number is vast. How can this be? Part of the answer probably comes from a story in the Old Testament. The prophet Elijah was called to perform a dramatic act on Mount Carmel, calling down fire from heaven, and he achieved a great victory. No sooner was the victory won, however, than he began to fear for his life and fled into the desert. He was feeling sorry for himself. He said, “The Israelites have rejected your covenant, broken down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too” (1 Kings 19:14). The Lord then had to remind him that there were still seven thousand, whom he did not even know about, who had not submitted to the worship of Baal. Perhaps we should remember that. We see at best only a small circle of believers about ourselves, but God has other circles greater than our own and in other places of the world. In every one of these, Christians are bearing witness to what they have learned of Jesus and are praising him. These will one day join with us and the angels to sing a great paean of praise in heaven. Verse 10 also says that there is to be a confession of the lordship of Jesus Christ by those who are under the earth. This means the demons plus those who have rejected the gospel and are now confined to Hades. There are different ways of understanding this phrase, of course, and there are commentators who have understood it in terms of the Old Testament saints who were in paradise in Hades prior to Christ’s resurrection. This has no meaning if we believe that Jesus Christ emptied paradise in Hades between his death and his resurrection and took these Old Testament believers to heaven with him when he ascended to the Father on the first Easter morning. They were the firstfruits of his resurrection. The reference cannot be to these. The reference must be to those who have rejected the gospel, and the confession wrung from their lips must be a forced acknowledgment of Jesus. The word that is used in this verse for “confession” (exomologeo) more often means “to acknowledge” than it does “to confess with thanksgiving.” The word occurs eleven times in the New Testament and out of these eleven instances, four refer to a man confessing his sins, one to Christ’s confession of his servants before his Father, and one to Judas’s agreeing with the chief priests to betray his master. In each of these cases the word means “to acknowledge” or “to agree.” It is in this sense that the word applies to those who have rejected the gospel. They will not confess that “Jesus Christ is Lord” with gladness, but they will confess it. They will be forced to acknowledge that Jesus Christ is who he says he is—God incarnate, the Savior of the world. We need to ask ourselves how we are going to make that confession, because every one of us will make it some day. You will either make it willingly as you acknowledge him who is your Savior and Lord, or you will be forced to acknowledge it with bitterness moments before you are banished from God’s presence forever. Won’t you accept him now, if you have not already done so? “Now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation” (2 Cor. 6:2).
God’s Glory
A final thought comes from verse 11. Here we read that the confession that will be made will result in glory to God the Father. This is not true of any honor given to humans. If you glorify human beings, you dishonor God. You do so if you exalt yourself or your merits as a means of salvation, or exalt human beings as mediators between yourself and God, as saints who win God’s favor for you, or exalt human wisdom as that which is ultimately able to solve the world’s problems, or place your hopes for the future in psychiatry, science, systems of world government, or whatever it may be. If you exalt the ability of mankind in any of those ways, you dishonor God, who declares that all of our works are tainted by sin and that we will never solve our own problems or the problems of others except by turning to Christ and depending upon his power to do it. The only way to honor God is to give honor to Jesus Christ. Think of the terms by which we are privileged to give glory to Jesus. Think of his names. Jesus Christ is the Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. He is the Messiah, the Lord, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End, the Alpha and Omega, the Ancient of Days, King of kings and Lord of lords, God with us, God our Savior, the only wise God our Savior, the Lord who is, who was, who is to come, the Almighty. He is the Door of the sheep, the Chief Shepherd, the Good Shepherd, the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls, a Lamb without spot or blemish, a Lamb slain before the foundation of the world. He is the Logos, the Light of the World, the Light of Life, the Tree of Life, the Word of Life, the Bread that came down from heaven, the Resurrection, the Way, the Truth, and the Life. He is Immanuel, God with us; he is the Rock, the Bridegroom, the Wisdom of God, our Redeemer. He is the Beloved; he is the head over all things, which is the church. He is the one who is altogether lovely, the one in whom the Father is well pleased. Is Jesus Christ these things to you? He can be. He deserves to be. If he is these things to you, then in your own heart you praise him and in giving him glory you give glory to God our heavenly Father.
Boice, J. M. (2000). Philippians: an expositional commentary (pp. 130–140). Baker Books.
Chuck Schumer under fire after brazenly calling voter ID ‘Jim Crow 2.0’ this talk about election security has revived discussions of the SAVE Act, which you have said you oppose, … “Proponents of it say that it’s … to have ID you have to prove U.S. citizenship to be able to vote, polling does suggest — there’s a new Pew Research poll — that 95% of Republicans, but also 71% of Democrats, like this idea,” Lemire added. “So, why do you not?”
House to Probe Sharia Law During Hearing The House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government will hold a hearing on Feb. 10 to uncover how Sharia law is “contrary to America’s founding principles” and “may violate federal law and the Constitution,” The Daily Signal has learned. At the hearing, titled “Sharia-Free America: Why Political Islam & Sharia Law are Incompatible with the U.S. Constitution,” witnesses and members will discuss “where, why, and how Islamic extremists are attempting to establish Sharia-based institutions in the U.S.,” a statement provided to The Daily Signal claimed. Additionally, the hearing will discuss current proposed legislative reforms that would protect Americans from efforts to establish alternative, Sharia-based institutions.
New AI-Driven U.S.–China War Game Was So Accurate the Trump Administration Asked for Redactions A new report from the Heritage Foundation analyzing a potential conflict between the United States and China was so precise—and so unsettling—that the Trump administration requested portions of it be redacted before public release, even though the analysis relied entirely on publicly available information. The report underscores not only the growing role of artificial intelligence (AI) in modern war planning but also the sobering reality that the U.S. military faces structural weaknesses that could prove decisive in a high-intensity conflict with Beijing. The AI model drew on more than 7,000 open-source government, academic, industry, and commercial data points to assess both U.S. and Chinese vulnerabilities. Its findings are stark. In most high-intensity scenarios, the first 30 to 60 days of conflict determine the war’s long-term outcome.
A Matter Of National Security: Damning Report Exposes Rashida Tlaib’s Alleged Ties To Terrorist Groups The Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy just dropped a bombshell report alleging that Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s terrorist ties pose “serious ethical and national security concerns.” Calls for her to be removed from Congress have already begun as more and more comes out about her affiliations with individuals and organizations linked to designated foreign terrorist entities.
Wargame reveals Germany would freeze as Russia seizes Lithuanian territory in three days In the simulation, Berlin chose consensus-building while Russian forces seized the Suwalki Gap connecting Moscow-controlled Kaliningrad with Belarus . The exercise, whose result was reported by Die Welt, involved 16 former senior officials and security experts. It is the first public wargame of its kind in Germany. For Kyiv, the implications cut deep: if Berlin hesitates to fight for a NATO member with a binding Article 5 guarantee, what does that say about security pledges to Ukraine—a country with no such treaty protection? “We discovered that their reaction would not be adequate to defend NATO.”
EU Censorship Threatens Free Speech Beyond Europe, Warns US On 5 February, the battle over online free speech took a decisive international turn. In a warning aimed squarely at European regulators, US lawmakers accused the EU of exporting censorship to American citizens through pressure placed on US-based technology companies. What began as a regulatory disagreement has evolved into a broader confrontation over sovereignty and constitutional values.
Anti-Abraham Accords? Turkey, Saudi Arabia & Egypt appear aligned against Israeli regional influence Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan made back-to-back visits to Saudi Arabia and Egypt over two days this week, seeking to expand Turkish influence in the Middle East and North Africa. Erdoğan met with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in Cairo on Wednesday, where the two countries signed cooperation agreements and voiced shared positions on several regional issues, including Gaza, Somaliland, and tensions between the United States and Iran.
IDF bombs Hezbollah weapon tunnels across Lebanon, as US envoy says terror group can’t be disarmed militarily The Israeli Air Force pounded several targets of the terror organization Hezbollah across Lebanon overnight, exploiting the lack of attention and time granted by U.S.-Iran talks to degrade the Iranian proxy’s military capabilities, as it has done the past several weekends. Senior U.S. officials, meanwhile, publicly disagreed regarding ongoing efforts by the Lebanese government to disarm the group.
Red Heifer Ashes Used in Purification Ritual, Claims Activist The arrival of five red heifers in Israel, intended to perform the Biblical ritual of purification, marked a major milestone in the return of the Temple Service. Controversy erupted when one of the red cows was burned in what some rabbinic authorities claimed was a practice event, while others insisted it was an actual burning, resulting in ashes that could be used to purify hundreds of thousands of people. One activist took another step forward when he enlisted a Kohen to mix the ashes with spring water, making it suitable for use, heating up the controversy that surrounds the ashes.
Iranian Politician’s Purim Threat Against Trump: Destined to End Like Haman The threat was not delivered in the shadows or through anonymous channels. It came openly, from the floor of Iran’s parliament, issued by Hamidreza Haji Babaei, the deputy speaker of the Majlis, and it named its target without ambiguity. Babaei warned that any new American “mistake” against Iran would be met with a “decisive” response, adding a chilling promise: “In about a month, we will recite the funeral prayer for Trump, the United States, and their allies.” The timing of the statement, the identity of the speaker, and the precision of the language elevate this beyond routine Iranian bluster and place it firmly in the category of an explicit threat against the sitting president of the United States. But it also links it to Purim
Jared Kushner’s secret Iran plan revealed s U.S. and Iranian representatives prepare to open high-stakes negotiations in Oman, reports have surfaced that the White House is quietly developing a “day after” contingency plan. The strategy involves the formation of a transitional governing body to manage Iran in the event of the collapse of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s regime. According to a report by The National, this effort is being spearheaded by Jared Kushner, senior advisor and son-in-law to President Donald Trump. Kushner is deeply involved in assembling a group of Iranian-American business leaders.
Trump wants new long-term nuclear deal with Russia and China President Donald Trump on Thursday urged negotiators to draft a new nuclear arms agreement rather than revive limits that had governed US and Russian deployments for more than two decades, after the last remaining pact between the two countries expired. “we should have our Nuclear Experts work on a new, improved, and modernized Treaty that can last long into the future.”
Faith on the frontlines – the IDF’s spiritual revolution When the body of the last IDF soldier was recovered from Gaza – the IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir said the Shechiyanu prayer which one recites upon a momentous occasion. The moment was symbolic of a much greater change the IDF has been undergoing. A noticeable spiritual awakening has been unfolding within the IDF in recent years, and it has intensified since the events of October 7. A broad cultural and emotional movement in which soldiers, commanders, and entire units are reconnecting with Jewish identity, heritage, and a sense of collective purpose.
WSJ report: Iran rejects US demand to halt enrichment in Oman talks he Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Iran rejected US calls to halt its uranium enrichment during the indirect talks between the sides in Oman. The discussions resulted in little movement on key issues of contention, although both sides agreed to continue negotiations in order to prevent an escalation. A regional diplomat briefed by Iran later confirmed to Reuters that the Islamic Republic rejected US calls to halt uranium enrichment on its territory,
Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu: This is why fewer Arabs visit Temple Mount According to Rabbi Eliyahu, the number of Arabs visiting the Temple Mount is now down by half. Rabbi Eliyahu said that the Arab official claimed that Jews bowing on the ground on on the Temple Mount caused less Arabs to visit the site. “The reason is that you started bowing on the ground to the Holy One, Blessed Be He. When we see you bowing, we are afraid of you, because you humble yourselves before G-d. If you humble yourselves before G-d, who can stand against you? So, we don’t come anymore.”
Iran seizes oil tankers, threatens ‘massacre’ in Strait of Hormuz hours before US talks Iran seized two foreign oil tankers in the Persian Gulf Thursday, accusing them of smuggling fuel and detaining 15 foreign crew members ahead of high-stakes U.S.–Iran talks Friday in Oman. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) navy said it intercepted the two ships near Farsi Island, claiming they were carrying about 1 million liters of smuggled fuel.
Canadian Gun Buyback Program Is Voluntary, but Noncompliance Can Land You in Jail Canada’s federal gun buyback program, officially known as the Assault-Style Firearms Compensation Program (ASFCP), is in a high-stakes rollout phase. As of early 2026, it has become a flashpoint for legal and political conflict between the federal government, several provinces, and law enforcement agencies.
EU Censorship Threatens Free Speech Beyond Europe, Warns US “US lawmakers accused the EU of exporting censorship to American citizens through pressure placed on US-based technology companies.” At issue is whether foreign governments, operating through regulatory frameworks such as EU’s Digital Services Act, can shape what Americans are allowed to say, read, or publish online, even when that speech is lawful under United States law.
Rep. Andy Biggs: ‘Protect the Constitution — Or Lose It’ U.S. Rep Andy Biggs (R-AZ) delivered a direct warning at the launch of the Sharia-Free America Caucus: preserving the United States requires defending its constitutional framework from systems incompatible with it. Standing with fellow lawmakers, Biggs made clear that the issue is governance, the law, and the preservation of the American constitutional order.
How Did Democrats Get So Stupid? That there are so many ignorant enough to follow the political left over the cliff isn’t a shock; public schools in Democrat-controlled cities have essentially been “ignorant factories” for decades. Manufacturing a mis-educated voting base is the surest way to ensure uninterrupted power, and it beats having to try to argue in favor of the garbage Democrats advocate for.
Nancy Guthrie’s house equipped with floodlights as authorities probe alleged ransom note clues The alleged ransom note contains a reference to missing Nancy Guthrie’s floodlights. The 84-year-old mother of NBC news anchor Savannah Guthrie was last seen at her Tucson, Arizona, home around 9:30 p.m. Saturday. The letter says she’s safe but scared, and that she knows exactly what the demand is.” There was a demand for Bitcoin payment in the form of Bitcoin.
Operation Metro Surge: ICE Agents Arrest More than 4,000 Illegal Aliens Across Minnesota “Despite coordinated attacks of violence against our law enforcement, our officers have made more than 4,000 arrests of illegal aliens, including murderers, pedophiles, rapists, gang members, and terrorists in Minnesota since Operation Metro Surge began,” the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Tricia McLaughlin said
Anti-Israel activists plan 100‑boat flotilla to Gaza, call for global support Organizers of an international flotilla carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza announced they plan to launch another mission in March, this time involving over 100 boats. Campaigners described the upcoming effort as the largest civilian‑led mobilization against Israel’s actions in Gaza and urged the international community to prevent Israeli forces from intercepting the flotilla.
Trump Administration Finally Gets ICE Right Mark Alexander Despite the MSM’s constant churn about midterm elections as if they were tomorrow, there is time for Trump to refocus on the economy.
How the GOP Can Win the Midterms Douglas Andrews The Republicans have a razor-thin House majority, and the party in power almost always loses seats in the midterms, so what’s the solution for staving off the effective end of Donald Trump’s presidency?
Billie Eilish’s ‘Stolen Land’ Hypocrisy Emmy Griffin The singer-songwriter’s mindless, politically emotive speech at the Grammys may have gotten her more than she bargained for.
Does Trump Want to ‘Nationalize’ Elections? Sophie Starkova The Democrats’ hair is on fire, and they are crying foul again over something they already tried to do — not just once, but twice.
The Future Is on ICE Michael Swartz Tactical and strategic changes are afoot for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but Democrats aren’t entirely winning.
13 Rules for Rationals Michael Smith Left-wing radical Saul Alinsky organizes anger. Classical liberalism organizes civilizations.
The Great NFL Divide Nate Jackson With more players speaking out about their Christian faith, it’s jarring to see the things that preoccupy the league’s commissioner and power brokers.
He Feared a ‘Fascist Takeover’ Douglas Andrews Donald Trump’s OMB director, Russell Vought, narrowly avoided being gunned down at his suburban DC home by a Trump-deranged leftist.
Trump’s Address to America’s Illegal Aliens Jack DeVine It hasn’t happened. So, call it conjecture. Or wishful thinking. Or just pure fantasy. But we have a serious problem, and something must be done.
Alberta Is Becoming Canada’s Florida Gregory Lyakhov When tens of thousands of people uproot their lives each year, they’re answering a basic question: Where does effort still translate into progress?
Profiles of Valor: The Immortal Chaplains Mark Alexander “Chaplains have been a strong, steady, and courageous presence in every major conflict beginning with the Revolutionary War, and today we continue building spiritual readiness so that our soldiers can endure in any future fight.”
QUOTES Projection “Republicans don’t want a free and fair election because they know when that happens — and we’ll ensure that it happens — they’re gonna lose. They’re gonna lose the House. They’re gonna get crushed.” —House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) The BIG Lies “The SAVE Act is an abomination. It’s Jim Crow 2.0 across the country.” —Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) “Donald Trump is in the Epstein files thousands and thousands of times. In those files, there’s highly disturbing allegations of Donald Trump raping children, of Donald Trump threatening to kill children.” —Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) “Trump wants Greenland, which makes sense. I mean, because Epstein’s island is gone, he needs a new one to hang out with Bill Clinton.” —”comedian” and Grammy Awards host Trevor Noah Village Idiot “No one is illegal on stolen land.” —singer-songwriter Billie Eilish at the Grammys Letting the Cat Out of the Bag “This is cruelty, this is inhumane, and this is a death sentence. … Because in Haiti, there is open warfare and rape. There’s ravaging violence against women and children.” —Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-FL) describing the deportation of Haitian nationals back to Haiti (“It’s an outrage that Trump called Haiti a s***hole.” —Frederica Wilson, 2018) Braying Jenny “ICE is beyond reform. The people are demanding an end to the killings and abductions. My Melt ICE Act will prohibit detention and monitoring, disrupt DHS immigration enforcement, and redirect funding to our communities. We must MELT ICE NOW!” —Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-IL) Non Compos Mentis “What is really the major problem in this country today is the fascism in our streets. The attacks on American citizens by masked hoodlums. If you were attacked by a masked person, you might think you were being kidnapped. You’d be justified in shooting the person to protect yourself.” —Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) Demagogue “We cannot trust the Department of Justice. They’re an illegitimate organization right now.” —Hakeem Jeffries Ahistorical Nonsense “We are seeing something that is absolutely unprecedented. It actually goes back 250 years in Boston when the Minutemen and the Minutewomen [sic] rose up.” —Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) on the violent agitators in Minnesota Godwin’s Law “Out-of-control ICE agents are terrorizing our communities. … They’re tearing people out of their homes, out of the windows of their cars, and illegally detaining people who have brown skin. This is fascism, pure and simple.” —Rep. Emily Randall (D-WA) “It is time for Democrats to show … courage and fight against fascism.” —Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) “When the Americans liberated Dachau after World War II, after the Holocaust, Dwight D. Eisenhower said, ‘Take pictures of these concentration camps, because years will go by and people will not believe this happened.’ So, this administration does not really like somebody like Don Lemon who has a camera, who has a position like we do in a way to speak to the people and tell them what really is going on.” —”The View” co-host Joy Behar Race Bait “We had handcuffs with bars in the middle. As someone who majored in African American Studies, I can tell you that that is the closest I ever felt to slavery in my life. Being shackled as if I was a slave.” —church rioter Nekima Levy Armstrong on being arrested for committing a crime Yellow Journalism “Don Lemon arrested after conservative backlash to Minnesota church protest.” —Axios headline Circling the Wagons “Lemon walked in, yes, with a microphone and a camera to document what happened at the church. And, frankly, I think viewers are better off for him having told us what happened in the church that day.” —CNN’s Brian Stelter A Trip Down Memory Lane “Nobody is above the law.” —Don Lemon in 2019 Dumb & Dumber “I bet you there are a lot of people that voted for Trump that wish that Kamala Harris is in the White House.” —”The View” co-host Sunny Hostin “The Clintons are playing chess while everybody else is playing checkers.” —Sunny Hostin Delusions of Grandeur “He is embarrassingly handsome, his hair seasoned with silver, at ease with his own eminence… It has seemed at times, this past year, that the only thing standing athwart Donald Trump’s will to power is Gavin Newsom.” —Vogue contributing editor Maya Singer For more insightful quotes, see our Short Cuts.
Noses and Faces Cities across the nation held anti-ICE demonstrations, demanding the removal and elimination of ICE. I do wonder how they’ll feel when immigration enforcement is no more. I know it’s been abused, but there are too many instances of people here illegally committing dangerous crimes that would never have happened if … there was proper immigration enforcement. And we’ve seen the negative outcome when law enforcement is defunded and crime runs rampant. So … let’s try that again, right?
The Rabble Wins The lawless advocates win. The Trump administration is removing 700 federal agents from Minnesota with an aim to completely removing all as soon as possible. Whatever we do, enforcing the law should be stopped and stopped immediately. We’ll start with illegal immigration, reclassifying it as “not illegal … just not legal,” and then move on from there. We’ll stop when there’s no more need for law enforcement, I guess, simply by definition. That’ll fix it. Just define everyone as “basically good” and move on.
Politically Correct? The Supreme Court is allowing California to do what other states have been blocked from doing. They passed their proposition to further disenfranchise Republican voters and use their gerrymandered congressional maps to net 5 more Democrat seats. They did in in protest of Texas trying to do the same to favor Republicans, a clear case of double standards. Since the Supreme Court allowed Texas to do it, I suppose they had to allow California to do it. The state of politics today is deplorable.
On the Edge? The US-Russia nuclear pact expired this week. Since the media operates on terror and crisis, we’re all scared now the world might end in a sudden, unexpected nuclear exchange. The concepts of level-headed thinking and reporting facts are mostly dead and gone now, so we should all just find a government-provided hole and pull ourselves inside. Or maybe your favorite Amazon-purchased bunker. I’m sure glad I trust in God.
Your Best Source for Fake News The ICE controversy goes on in the news. The Bee is reporting that the Winter Olympics are planning to protest Trump’s immigration policies by removing ice from the skating rinks. I guess that goes great with all the Kennedy Center cancellations, doesn’t it? Elsewhere this week, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz emerged from his den and declared 6 more weeks of rioting and fraud. Experts believe his forecast. Finally, with the whole indictment of Don Lemon (actual story), experts are warning that arresting journalists could be a slippery slope leading to arresting other people that deserve it like politicians.
Crosstalk is your aggregator for news stories that need to be viewed from a Christian perspective. So review this program that’s highlighted by news concerning Iran, immigration, abortion, fake meat and much more. For example:
–Iran’s leadership is increasingly worried that a strike by the U.S. would break its grip on power by driving an already enraged public back into the streets following a bloody crackdown on anti-government protests, according to six current and former officials.
–On Monday, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth asserted that the U.S. military was prepared to pursue aggressive action against Iran if the Islamic republic refused to negotiate with Washington on its nuclear program.
–The U.S. military shot down an unmanned Iranian drone Tuesday after it aggressively approached a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier with unclear intent.
–Iran has laid out a vision for a potential war with the U.S., detailing how it believes it could strike U.S. military bases across the Middle East, cripple global energy markets and pressure Washington into backing down.
–Iran seized two foreign oil tankers in the Persian Gulf yesterday, accusing them of smuggling fuel and detaining about 15 foreign crew members ahead of talks taking place with U.S. officials.
–Senior U.S. and Iranian officials held negotiations today in Oman. They came against the backdrop of a significant U.S. military build-up and escalating tensions.
–President Trump signed a spending bill Tuesday ending the four-day partial government shutdown.
–Democrats have spent years insisting that illegal immigrants do not vote, yet Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jefferies just gave the game away. In a letter to GOP leadership they demanded a slate of reforms as the price for funding DHS including targeted enforcement, no masks, mandatory use of body cameras and other demands.
–Ryan Routh, who was convicted last year of attempting to assassinate President Trump, has been sentenced to life in prison.
–A distraught Savannah Guthrie called her missing mother, Nancy Guthrie, “God’s precious daughter.” The “Today” show host also addressed her mother’s alleged kidnappers saying her family is ready to talk about a ransom, but not before they have proof that their mother is alive.
–The U.S. Department of Justice has charged 11 people in an alleged marriage fraud ring, accusing them of setting up sham weddings for immigration purposes.
–Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced Monday that the Trump administration is deploying body cameras for every federal agent in Minneapolis.
–Congressman Jerry Nadler calls ICE agents, “masked hoodlums.”
–A black pastor warned from the pulpit that his congregation won’t tolerate activists storming worship services.
–Border czar Tom Homan announced that 700 immigration enforcement officers will be drawn back from efforts in Minnesota.
Laura Ingraham, Jesse Watters and Greg Gutfeld bring Fox News viewers their fresh takes on the top news of the day. #fox #media #breakingnews #us #usa #new #news #breaking #foxnews #lauraingraham #jessewatters #greggutfeld #politics #political #politicalnews #government #currentevents #culture #opinion #commentary #media #america
‘We train warriors, not wokesters ‘War Secretary Pete Hegseth says Pentagon will review graduate programs at Ivy League schools for ‘cost effective strategic education’
The Pentagon is cutting all professional education ties with Harvard, saying the university pushes ‘wokeness’, tolerates anti-Jewish harassment, and works with Chinese-linked research, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has announced.
In a statement on Friday, Hegseth said the department is “formally ending ALL Professional Military Education, fellowships, and certificate programs with Harvard University,” calling the decision “long overdue.”
“Harvard is woke; The War Department is not,” he added.
File this under: LONG OVERDUEThe @DeptWar is formally ending ALL Professional Military Education, fellowships, and certificate programs with Harvard University.Harvard is woke; The War Department is not. pic.twitter.com/0kpsvivtsQ
Hegseth said that in the past, the Pentagon sent “our best and brightest officers” to Harvard in hopes that the university would better understand “our warrior class.” However, “too many of our officers came back looking too much like Harvard – heads full of globalist and radical ideologies that do not improve our fighting ranks,” he claimed.
Hegseth also accused Harvard of creating a climate that “celebrated Hamas,”“allowed attacks on Jews,” and still “promotes discrimination based on race.” He alleged that “campus research programs have partnered with the Chinese Communist Party,” adding that similar relationships with other schools will be reviewed.
The Pentagon said the cutoff starts with the 2026-27 school year; currently enrolled personnel can finish their courses.
The administration of US President Donald Trump has long sparred with Harvard as the university resisted its demands to overhaul its admissions and governance policies, as well as improving campus discipline following pro-Palestinian protests sparked by the Hamas-Israel war and unprecedented devastation in Gaza.
The administration attempted to freeze Harvard’s federal funding, though in September 2025, a federal judge struck down the decision, arguing that it overstepped its authority and that the allegations of anti-Semitism were used as a “smokescreen.”
Trump has since intensified the pressure, saying earlier this month that he would seek $1 billion in damages from Harvard over the allegations of anti-Semitism.
Harvard President Alan Garber has rejected the accusations as political intimidation, saying, “the university will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.” He added that Harvard has always sought to fight anti-Semitism, calling this a “moral imperative.”
🚨 BREAKING. Scott Bessent just announced the Internal Revenue Service is launching MASSIVE AUDITS of financial institutions that facilitated the laundering of Minnesota funds.
Read that again.
Banks. MSBs. Financial middlemen. Anyone who helped move dirty money is about to get… pic.twitter.com/gMy86kDpzW
The opening ceremony for the 2026 Winter Olympics was ripped right from the pages of end times events laid out in the book of Revelation
The world just can’t help themselves, can they? At the opening ceremony to the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy last night, what was intended to be a beautifully designed version of the ‘Olympic Cauldron’ representing the ‘eternal flame’ for the duration of the games was actually a hellish depiction of the all-seeing eye of Horus coming out from the eternal fires of Hell. Ever see ‘Stranger Things’? They created the Olympic Cauldron as the Demogorgon come to life for our entertainment.
“The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb:” Revelation 14:10 (KJB)
A massive triumphal arch, a blazing, suspended centerpiece. The entire scene drenched in blood-red light with fire raining down from the heavens like a victory celebration for something ancient, pagan, and proud. Whether the designers intended “the all-seeing eye” or not, the effect is the same: a global spectacle built on awe, fear, and worshipful attention—centered on fire. The very same Hell fire now being mocked and denounced by people like Kirk Cameron. Christian, wake up!
The modern world doesn’t merely tolerate darkness—it packages it. Stylizes it. Sells it as culture. Then tells you you’re “negative” or “conspiratorial” if you notice the tone. But Bible believers aren’t called to applaud the production. We’re called to reprove it. Reprove things like the wicked NFL Super Bowl and their Sodomite Half Time Show, and yes, the Turning Point All-American Halftime show promoted openly by Laodicean preacher Franklin Graham. It is nothing but wickedness everywhere you look, and that’s exactly as your King James Bible says it will be. Fill your pockets with gospel tracts and go out into the ‘highways and hedges’ and tell them about Jesus. Time is almost gone, make the most of it for the Lord, and get ready for the Judgment Seat of Christ. Amen? TO THE FIGHT!!!
The far-left freaked out yesterday about the election machine scam in 2020 with a short clip of Barack and Michelle in the front. Here’s the entire video. Here is the … Read more
No lie is too big for California Governor Gavin Newsom, even when such falsehoods have the potential to put the lives of Americans in danger.
The Department of Homeland Security on Friday sent out a press release on Friday, revealing that 33,179 illegals are in California’s custody, yet the state government is refusing to honor the ICE detainers. The crimes by these prisoners include 399 homicides, 3,313 assaults, 3,171 burglaries, 1,011 robberies, 8,380 dangerous drugs offenses, 1,984 weapons offenses, and 1,293 sexual predatory offenses.
This policy by California has resulted in 4,561 criminal illegal aliens being released since January 20.
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem demanded that Newsom change course and cooperate with the Trump Administration on immigration.
“I am urgently calling on @gavinnewsom to agree to NOT release the 33,179 criminal illegal aliens in California’s custody back into the public without notifying ICE,” she wrote.
“The crimes of these aliens include 399 homicides, 3,313 assaults, 3,171 burglaries, 1,011 robberies, 8,380 dangerous drugs offenses, 1,984 weapons offenses, and 1,293 sexual predatory offenses.”
I am urgently calling on @gavinnewsom to agree to NOT release the 33,179 criminal illegal aliens in California’s custody back into the public without notifying ICE.
The crimes of these aliens include 399 homicides, 3,313 assaults, 3,171 burglaries, 1,011 robberies, 8,380…
Newsom responded to Noem’s post, claiming that California always follows the law and cooperates with ICE to remove violent criminals.
He then mocked her for supposedly not doing her homework.
“California follows the law, and we work with ICE to remove violent criminals — not innocent families,” Newsom fired back. “What we especially don’t do is play politics with public safety or spread misinformation.”
“Google is free, @KristiNoem.”
California follows the law and we work with ICE to remove violent criminals — not innocent families.
What we especially don’t do is play politics with public safety or spread misinformation.
But this is nothing but a massive lie. Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli noted in a subsequent tweet that current California law bars county jails from turning over prisoners to immigration authorities.
“It’s illegal for them to honor a detainer, even if they wanted to,” he added.
That’s a lie. California state law prohibits county jails from handing over inmates to immigration authorities. It’s illegal for them to honor a detainer, even if they wanted to. https://t.co/iEEbvfiQFL
— F.A. United States Attorney Bill Essayli (@USAttyEssayli) February 6, 2026
The law in question is the California Values Act (SB 54), signed into law in 2017 by then-Governor Jerry Brown. The legislation bars state and local resources from being used to assist federal immigration enforcement, including county jails, schools, hospitals, and courthouses.
Truth2Freedom's Blog 