Hebrew translation: “For all the gods of the people are as shepherds over worthless things! They are as physicians attending corpses! Good for nothing! Vanity! No purpose! But the Lord built the heavens with purpose!” Comment: So what are you a shepherd over in your life? Is in something of eternal value? Will it continue on after you leave the earth? If you cannot take it with you it is an idol. Will the family you leave on earth shepherd over things of value? Anything of eternal value will outlast you! God built the heavens with you as the purpose in mind! Are you supporting His purpose? Your purpose is to mirror His Image! We were not created in our own image but the image of God! God’s purpose from before the beginning was to deliver us from evil. That is why Christ pre-existed creation! Sin will always lead us to worship idols! Why? We would rather trust in ourselves than the work of God! When i came to Christ back in 1973 everything changed! It was no longer about me but about Christ and others! He did for me what i could not do for myself! Deliver me from evil! That is Grace! Men try to build empires, organizations and name them after themselves! Until we find the name and Savior that is above every name we will serve idols! Jesus has promised to raise you from the dead one day! After you are gone from the earth you cannot raise your idols! You have only two options! Believe Jesus or trust in yourself! Serve God or an idol. The worst idol you could ever invent is yourself! Serve God and others! James and Hamsa Sasse. GodWhoisGod.com
Tag: evil
MLK Day 2017
We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive! He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love! There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us! When we discover this we are less prone to hate our enemies! Martin Luther King Jr.
Qualification for Rulers 1 Kings 3:9
King Solomon asked God for wisdom to understand and judge the people. The word understand means to hear intelligently. To hear and obey. Hear O’Israel. Judge means to pronounce sentence to punish or vindicate. Discern means to separate mentally. So what does good mean? In case you have forgotten it means kind, loving, pleasant, precious, valuable, happy, and mentally correct. Evil means wicked, harmful, disagreeable, a negative heavy heart and a terrifying place! Like Dallas this week! Remember in the Book of Genesis God warned Adam and Eve not to partake of the tree of knowledge of good and evil? Their rebellion brought death to the human race. In Isaiah 29:14 God says that He gives and conceals understanding! Without God we cannot discern the difference between good and evil. In fact in the last days good will be called evil and evil will be called good! I think we have arrived! There has been an effort by some in our political system to project the idea that police are racist? I want to give you the statistics on Americans killed by police and their race between 2013-2015. These are FBI statistics. White 49% (782), Black 30% 464), Hispanic 19% (302), Asian 2% (26). The facts are needed to debunk the false narratives given out in the 24 hour news cycles. The murder of five white Dallas police officers would be a racist act! President Obama keeps looking back to slavery and Jim Crow? The biggest evidence that people have moved forward from that is that we have elected him over the past two election cycles! Can he not see this? I did not vote for him not because of race but his ideology! Americans want to move forward! Obama’s false narratives are stoking the flames of violence! Are there injustices? We live in a sinful world! We cannot throw the baby out with the bath water! If we or our leaders do not have a relationship with God then we are missing wisdom to govern only God can give! Americans want peace and prosperity and only God living in men can give to us! Thankyou. James and Hamsa Sasse. GodWhoisGod.com
What is a Familiar Spirit? 1 Samuel 28:7
Common sense would say a familiar spirit is a spirit you are familiar with! It is connected with Satan and sin! Before you were born again in Christ this is the spirit that ruled you! Saul sought a woman with a familiar spirit. Why? We will answer this soon! The word familiar spirit translated from the Hebrew means a necromancer. This is the occult practice of consulting the dead! It is one who proclaims to give revelation in uncertain times. Today a fortune teller or a palm reader would be an example. The Jews were strictly forbidden from engaging in this practice of consulting mediums! There is also another meaning for this Hebrew word. It can signify a leather bottle that may burst under pressure! Remember the Jeannie in the bottle! Remember Jesus said not to put new wine in old wine skins! A necromancer will beat skin stretched drums with chants and burn incense to draw spirits. The connection between the two meanings could be that a medium was seen as a container for a conjured spirit. Samuel the Priest had died and Saul had no one to consult about God’s plans and purposes for him. The Lord was angry at Saul for his disobedience! King Saul was facing the Philistine armies in war against Israel. God had already prepared David for the next King of Israel. Saul continued to try to contact God through the Prophet’s and the Urim. The Urim is a noun meaning fire. It refers to the fire of God’s judgment and God’s destruction of the wicked. It is used to speak of a form of idol worship! That is people burning other people in fire! Saul got no answers so his servant’s advised him to contact a woman that had a familiar spirit. So he went to the medium of Endor and Saul asked her to bring up Samuel’s spirit! Samuel was really upset for Saul disturbing him from the Bliss of Heaven! Samuel gave Saul the bad news that the Philistines were going to defeat him soundly! Saul was later killed in battle. The New Testament of our Bible also talks about spirits! There are unclean, dumb, foul, infirmity, divining, evil, bondage and world spirits. John warned us not to believe every spirit! In the case of Saul and the woman with the familiar spirit an evil spirit revealed a good spirit Samuel! It is usually God’s spirit that reveals an evil spirit! We must remember that at one time we were evil in sin apart from God! So our sin revealed the goodness of God sending His son Jesus Christ to atone for our sin! It was our wickedness that revealed the goodness of God! Remember this when you think you are so Holy above everyone else! John told us to try the spirits! He went on to say that every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ came in the flesh is from God! Thankyou. James and Hamsa Sasse. GodWhoisGod.com
Evil Spirit from the Lord? 1 Samuel 19:9
This verse in the Old Testament of your Bible may at first seem contradictory! God is good, righteous and Holy! When I was young my dad told me the way he would keep me out of hell was to beat the hell out of me! You may not want to use this scripture in Samuel to teach your 5th grade Sunday school class! However I believe even children could understand this verse if properly taught! Here is what we want to remember abut God! God uses evil to punish evil! That is why He has reserved a place called Hell for the wicked! Pastor’s don’t preach much on Hell anymore? Does not market well. God fights fire with fire just as a firefighter starts backfires to stop a forest fire! Just as a politician will never waste a crisis so God will never waste evil. Whether it be Saul or Judas the results are the same! This leads us to an important question? If the Spirit of God does not dwell in us then what Spirit? Once you are “Born Again” and accept Christ as Savior then Jesus promised to send His Holy Spirit into you! Choices matter and Heaven and Hell rest in the balance! Thankyou. James and Hamsa Sasse. GodWhoisGod.com
The Christmas Party is Growing!
Christianity is the fastest growing religion in the world! Islam is second. It’s spreading in Asia, Africa and South America. So the world is in a kind of religious revival, and the atheists are totally flummoxed. They thought they were winning, and now they see the are not. Dinesh D’Souza. Comment: The world is a stage for the battle between good and evil. God has only one tactic to overcome evil. Love! Love not the evil but overcome evil with good! Remember we were all on the wrong side of eternity at one time! It is righteous to punish evil! Christ took our judgment upon Himself! If you really love the Truth then point people to Christ! Merry Christmas! James and Hamsa Sasse. GodWhoisGod.com
Who is God?
All views can’t be true because they are opposite; this is the logical aspect. For example, Islam says we are good in nature; Christianity says we are born in sin. Islam says God is a man; Christianity says he is more than a man, He is God. All truths cannot be the same. Norman Geisler. Comment: If you believe you are good but inherently evil then there is no moral ability for any redemptive work. Thankyou. James and Hamsa Sasse. GodWhoisGod.com
Gospel Lite! Romans 13:3-6
Much of the preaching today is what I call “Gospel Lite.” It is a reduced calorie Gospel just like Bud Lite beer! You are deprived of nutrients! A cheap substitute! All of our cultural wars going on in America are never discussed? Scripture warnings to gays, lesbians, transsexuals and abortionist are ignored! Sometimes I think our pulpits here in America are located on the moon! Nothing about Islam? Now school children here in America are chanting Praise to Allah! You only lose a war because you will not fight! While Christian’s are being tortured and beheaded in the Middle East much of the church here in America has the mute button on? It is a very strange time for us in history? Remember the Gospel applies to everyone not just church people! It either applies to all or to no one! Preach the Gospel like the whole world is in front of you and also those in Heaven and those in Hell! We have a great cloud of witnesses! The fire and brimstone in our churches is now a flickering candle! In the Book of Romans Paul speaks of the responsibility of the State to punish evil doers. This is the primary responsibility of the federal, state and local governments. Not to punish the good but to punish the evil! We are to pay tribute or taxes to help restore and maintain law and order! We are to remind our government leaders of their obligation to keep the peace! Even though Paul was a supporter and loyal Roman citizen he was still executed by the state! He never preached the overthrow of the government but the support of it! He just could not worship Caesar as God! We may have to pay the same price as Paul to pass the Gospel on to the next generation! When we preach the Gospel we should not fear anything but the truth! Thankyou. James and Hamsa Sasse. GodWhoisGod.com
Treeless Worship Deuteronomy 16:21-22
“Thou shalt not plant a grove of any trees near unto the altar of the Lord thy God, which thou shalt make thee. Neither shall thy set up any image, which the Lord thy God hateth.” We first need to look at the Hebrew root word for the English word “groves.” The Hebrew root word translates to the word “Asherah.” Astarte is a Phoenician goddess of fertility. She was the Canaan fertility goddess believed to be the consort of Baal. The noun is most often used for the carved wooden images of the goddess. The image was associated with high places and fresh green trees. The Israelites were commanded to cut them down and burn them! False worship was a problem even to the extent that Asherah’s image was erected in God’s Temple itself! There were no trees around the temple in Jerusalem! I witnessed idol worship during the three years we spent in India. These idol’s were everywhere! Often these huge wooden images were parked along tree lines. In the Hindu Temples prostitution was a regular business! I was offered a teenage girl in one of these temples! If you are going to worship the goddess of sex then prostitutes come with the package! To look deeper into the root of idol worship we need to go back to the Book of Genesis. If God took a rib from the man and created a woman then when they are united in marriage there is a completeness. However if you are going to make an image of a woman and worship her through sex then this is self-worship because the woman was taken from the man! Let us look at Genesis 2:9. “And out of the ground made the Lord to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food; the tree of life was also in the midst of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” God warned them that if they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil they would die! Why? God understood that they could not handle it! God knew that created beings with the knowledge of evil would sin! Let us look at Genesis 3:22. “And the Lord said, Behold the man is become one of us, to know good and evil, now lest he put his hand and take also the Tree of Life, and eat and live forever.” God had to block them from the Garden of Eden because to enter Heaven with the knowledge of evil for eternity would doom them forever! This was an act of Mercy by God! So what about the Tree of Life? This Tree represents Christ, redemption for man and eternity with God! So what did man do with Christ? They cut down a tree and crucified Him on it! This is what happens to all that eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil! You commit evil and then try to do good? However God’s plan was engaged by the evil of men and brought redemption to the world! Without Christ whatever God has given to man as a gift turns to evil! All the religions of the world whether Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, ect, try to find God through their own efforts! Eating from the wrong tree! We all have access to the Tree of Life through Christ and our knowledge of evil is atoned for by His blood sacrifice on Calvary and we can live forever not separated from God but joined with Him in peace and love forever! We cannot save ourselves even though the world religions since creation have and still try! Thankyou. James and Hamsa Sasse. GodWhoisGod.com
Where do our Liberties come From?
The liberal wing of the Democratic party and the liberal State run media here in America today have become a referee between the forces of evil and the forces of good! If the good advances too much over evil then they throw a flag and penalize the righteous! They still want some good around to keep the system from collapsing and from loosing their political power while promoting enough evil to mock the righteous! This is a dangerous balancing act that could spiral out of control into anarchy! Here is a quote from one of our Founding Father’s President Thomas Jefferson; “God who gave us life gave us liberty! Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed the conviction that these liberties are a gift from God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just and that His justice cannot sleep forever!” Thankyou. James and Hamsa Sasse. GodWhoisGod.com