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[0:00] Opposition to Grace Then and Now, Part 6. A brief review will remind us why grace is easily rejected.

[0:11] In abbreviated fashion, there were four basic reasons why the grace of God revealed in the finished work of Christ is often not eagerly and quickly accepted.

[0:23] First, there is no room here for human merit. Our works, however good we may think them to be, are disallowed. We humans are naturally offended at that.

[0:36] Most of us see ourselves as having at least some merit that recommends us and helps make us acceptable to God. But grace utterly repudiates that.

[0:49] Second, grace is contrary to the way the world works. As the old saying goes, there is no free lunch. And that is the mantra many bring to the concept of grace.

[1:01] Grace is not only something for nothing, but it is the greatest something anyone could ever imagine, being full free forgiveness for my sin and eternal life all on the basis of costing me nothing?

[1:19] No, thanks. That just is not the way the world works. Besides, a salvation that cost me nothing is probably worth the same nothing.

[1:32] Well, it isn't at all unusual for people to think this way. Many do. They fail to understand that while God's salvation costs them nothing, it was only because the price which was incalculable was already paid on their behalf by Christ in His substitutionary death.

[1:53] A substitute for whom? For you and everyone else. The third reason we gave earlier related to confusing salvation in this age of grace with that of the kingdom dispensation when Jesus and the Twelve preached the gospel of the kingdom.

[2:10] That definitely did include the demand for human works to accompany one's belief. In addition to the example given from Matthew 19 and the works demanded by Christ from the rich young ruler, plus the legal works requirement of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5, 6, and 7, which includes Jesus saying in 520, For I say to you, that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.

[2:41] Can you not quickly see here that the righteousness God demands under the kingdom message is clearly a quantified thing? Righteousness is spoken of as a more or less quantitative, not qualitative.

[2:59] This has human merit demanded and written all over it, as do the four gospels in general, all of which address the matter on the other side of the cross, that cross that made all the difference.

[3:13] And lastly, Item 4 revealed the paradoxical nature of grace, and it is indeed a paradox, on the surface, not appearing to be true at all, but upon examining, found to be true indeed.

[3:27] Yet, something else is just ahead that truly explains all the given wrong conclusions. It really is true of you and of me, of all of us in every single day.

[3:38] Actually, there are two. Think of them as a double whammy, because they certainly are. But if you don't know and understand them, you'll never be able to overcome them. Christianity Clarified, Volume 67, Track 2, The Original Opposition to God and Man Herein is the singular source of all we know about the origin of evil.

[4:02] For you note-takers, the main scripture references will soon be given, so grab a pen and be prepared to jot down key biblical references. In an abbreviated fashion, we will address the person of Satan, his origin, methodology, goals, and his eventual end.

[4:24] Perhaps his greatest asset is in the denial by many people as to his actual existence. That Satan is alive and well on planet Earth is obvious to all students of the Bible.

[4:38] There is an evil mastermind behind a curtain pulling strings like a marionette while utterly unaware humans do his bidding.

[4:49] Here are the references. First, his origin and goal. Isaiah 14, verses 12-21. Ezekiel 28, verses 11-19.

[5:04] Satan's method in Genesis 3, Job 1 and 2, Matthew 4, 2 Corinthians 4, verses 3 and 4, and Satan's end, Revelation 20.

[5:23] There are numerous other references referring to Satan, but these are the main ones. And we are not told why God created Lucifer, who became Satan the adversary, only that he was pleased to do so.

[5:38] And yes, God knew full well the path Lucifer would take and the consequences thereof. We have many reasons to believe that the power and intelligence of Satan far exceeds that of any mortal human.

[5:54] In essence, none of us is any match on any level for this personification of evil called Satan, also known as the devil, the serpent, and the adversary.

[6:08] His methodology is summed up in one word, deception. Jesus referred to Satan in John 8 as one who was a liar from the beginning and the father of lies.

[6:20] That reveals his methodology. It is deception. That is, the ability to make people think that things are other than they really are.

[6:31] And the world is overflowing with deception. We sometimes think it is centered in world politics. The original deception that impacts us all was generated in Genesis 3, continued in the temptation of our Lord in Matthew 4, and does its evil work on us in 2 Corinthians 4.

[6:54] All of these are powered by the evil engine of deception. The end of the adversary is as certain as was his beginning. It is found in Revelation 20.

[7:07] And even though his end is certain, Satan also suffers from an insufferable ego, causing himself to really believe he can have a victorious outcome. Thus, he will fittingly succumb due to his own overinflated ego.

[7:25] How appropriate that the arch-deceiver shall fall prey to his own principal weapon. Next, we look at how Satan can affect you and me.

[7:40] Humans Unknowingly in League with Satan, Part 1 The references in the previous segment disclose the fall and failure of Lucifer from the original state of innocence in which God created him.

[7:56] Innocence? Yes, innocent, but equipped with the power of volition, allowing him to comply with or defy the will of his Creator.

[8:09] The Isaiah 14 passage reveals he chose the latter, thus becoming Satan, the meaning of which is adversary. Not content to go it alone with his newest ambition, he succeeded in using his craft of deception to recruit an untold number of lesser angelic beings also endowed with volition, apparently one-third of those God created.

[8:35] These, called stars in Revelation 12, are not the stars of heaven we tend to think of, but stars in the sense of their being principal players. Most scholars connect these whom Satan enlisted to be also known as fallen angels or demonic spirits referred to in Scripture.

[8:56] The satanic work of deception did not end there. The adversary visited planet Earth to further his recruitment efforts. And yes, he once again successfully deployed his principal methodology.

[9:10] The same one he used to recruit the one-third of angels would score another victory by enlisting an entirely different order of creatures called humans.

[9:23] And while there is no provision for angels to procreate, that was not the case with these lesser beings called humans. They had the potential for multiplying themselves in what could turn out to be great numbers, all promising rebels like himself.

[9:39] And Satan's methodology of deception worked on them just as it had on the earlier one-third of created angels. Could he somehow by seducing these innocent humans, only two of them, cause them to take on a new kind of disposition by also disobeying the Creator?

[10:03] Could that result in their nature then becoming more responsive to himself, the adversary, rather than to that of the Creator? Actually, the whole affair was much like an experiment.

[10:16] But would it work? Could it work? If these two humans multiply and those they produce multiply, hmm, there could result from that, at least over time, an innumerable number of human foot soldiers who wouldn't even know they were in the army of the adversary.

[10:35] Let's see if this can work with these humans reproducing after their own kind with this hoped-for new disposition rising out of their new nature.

[10:45] Whatever would their first offspring be like and what might be the result of that? Ah, yes, one has arrived on the scene.

[10:57] His mother and father name him Cain. Let's see where this goes. Could it be very helpful for future recruiting by Satan?

[11:12] Humans Unknowingly in League with Satan Part 2 The previous session depicted the rebellion and fall of Lucifer, also known as the adversary or Satan.

[11:24] Genesis 3 records his success in deceiving our first parents. Whatever it was or however it became part of Adam and Eve's being, we do not know.

[11:37] But part of them it did become. And it, for lack of a better term, will come to be known as the fallen nature. A new kind of disposition foreign to the manner in which God originally created them.

[11:53] A lot of consequences followed their having fallen prey to the adversary's deception. A principal thing called death Adam and Eve knew nothing about before their fall would now take its toll and their physical bodies would completely stop working and stop moving.

[12:15] This was a new thing called death. death. It wouldn't allow for anyone to wake up from what looked like their sleeping.

[12:26] And then, of all things, they developed a terrible odor that was really bad. So bad there was no choice but to put their body under the ground and out of sight and smell like Cain did with his brother Abel.

[12:43] As time passed, Adam and Eve had other sons and daughters who also had other sons and daughters and they all continued to multiply and then things got worse.

[12:55] So bad, in fact, that the whole population of the earth was given over to deception and rebellion just like Satan the adversary wanted it. The more like himself, the better.

[13:08] The more allies for him, the greater his chances of victory over the creator. Well, boys and girls, what happened in this old world before the flood of Noah, literally destroyed everyone but Noah and his family.

[13:24] And they would eventually restock the human race on this side of the flood. No doubt about it, Satan, the adversary, continued about his business of deception and death wherever he could arrange it.

[13:38] Always under the cover of darkness, of course. And this assured that conflict and confusion would continue unabated, all the while with mankind having no idea they were actually being used as pawns in order to defy their creator and to destroy each other.

[14:01] One more name, by the way, that is assigned to Satan is called Apollyon, found in Revelation chapter 9, and it literally means destroyer, about as opposite as you can get from creator.

[14:15] Satan loves a high body count and has always thrived on it. It's the principal way he has of getting back at the creator, kill off as many of his human creatures as he can.

[14:28] Wars, famines, plagues, fingerprints of the adversary are all over the place, while many humans do not even think he exists. Just how completely gullible mankind is will be revealed next.

[14:46] Wake up, people! The previous session claimed that Satan is alive and well on planet Earth. Both testaments of Scripture loudly proclaim the existence and evil machinations of the adversary.

[15:02] Yet, many humans consider themselves so superior in intelligence, they relegate a personal devil to mythology or the imagination of religious Bible thumpers.

[15:15] But you may be assured, our Lord never considered Satan to be mythological when he confronted him in the wilderness for 40 days early in his earthly ministry. Matthew, Mark, and Luke, all three provide riveting accounts of the temptation undergone by Christ.

[15:34] Satan threw at Jesus everything he had to entice the Messiah. But, this was a different kind of Adam.

[15:45] The second Adam, as Jesus is called in 1 Corinthians 15, was not the pushover like the first Adam. This time, with this last Adam, Satan had met his match.

[15:59] Unable to seduce the Savior with food, wealth, and life itself, Satan was bested. But even so, he still had control over the humanity he is able to keep in the dark.

[16:14] People can be so naive, much to Satan's delight. Near the back of your Bible, in the first letter that John wrote, a telling verse is found in chapter 5, and it reveals what all Christians in the first century knew all too well.

[16:30] Verse 19 says, And we know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness. Oh, come on now.

[16:43] Have you seen any sign or evidence of the whole world lying in wickedness? I rest my case. One Greek scholar says the text conveys the idea that the world is comfortably situated in the lap of the adversary.

[17:02] Not a stretch at all, one might say. Comfortably situated in the lap of the adversary. But, what is it that makes this so?

[17:14] Is this suggesting that Satan and the world are in bed together? Ha ha, it sure does. The tragedy is, the world doesn't even know anyone else is sharing the bed with them, much less who it really is.

[17:29] the master of deception, I should say so. And whether those of the world know it or not, or believe it or not, the scripture tells us in Colossians 1 that Christians are those who have been delivered from the domain of darkness and transferred into the realm of God's beloved Son.

[17:51] And everyone else remains in Satan's lap. And the only way out is by divine transfer. And you can't transfer yourself. It's a job that only Jesus Christ is up to tackling and he is able.

[18:05] This scenario is bad enough. The whole world being cozy and comfortable in the lap of the evil one while totally unaware of it. Another facet of this is that that which is coming needs to be revealed that catches us all, Christians included.

[18:22] And it's up next. Humanity's Original Impairment, Part 1 In Genesis 1 we read, Then God said, Let us make man in our image according to our likeness.

[18:42] The result was the first man, Adam, and the account adds Mother Eve to the picture, and in the third chapter is the record of their being deceived and disobedient resulting in the moral fall from the original state of innocence in which God created them.

[19:00] Later, when with their firstborn child Cain, it is not said that Cain was made in the likeness of God as was his father Adam, Cain's likeness would be a marred likeness.

[19:14] Such is revealed later with the birth of another son named Seth, of whom it is said he was born in Adam's likeness. Interesting.

[19:25] Adam was made in God's likeness, but after God's likeness in Adam was marred due to the fall, Seth is born in Adam's likeness, not God's.

[19:39] The difference is striking. Adam and Eve, now morally and spiritually fallen from the innocence called the likeness of God, it was no longer available to humanity.

[19:51] And it will be a long time, even 4,000 years, before another man will be born in the likeness of God, having escaped the ruination that came upon Adam and all his offspring.

[20:04] And that would be Jesus of Nazareth, Son of God and Son of Man, sinless and separate from that fallen nature handed down through Adam.

[20:15] Via the virgin birth, Christ came from the seed provided by the Holy Spirit, a la Matthew 1, and not by the seed of her husband, Joseph.

[20:27] Once again, we see how everything in the Bible is connected to everything in the Bible. Simply amazing. So much for Jesus and his innocence, but what about all the rest of humanity?

[20:41] None of us were born in the likeness of God, but we were born in the likeness of our physical mother and father. And that includes their moral and spiritual fallenness that automatically was passed on to us from our parents.

[20:57] And that, too, involves our temporary life cycle ending in our own physical death. Romans 5 tells us, Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world and death through sin.

[21:15] And so, death spread to all men because all sinned. Hey, are we connecting any dots here? If the consequences of Adam's sin were passed on to every generation since Adam on through his genetic principle, it appears that every aspect of our being was derived in full from our first parents.

[21:38] In other words, the fall was as far-reaching as to involve every part of our being. Does this include our intellect, our thinking, and reasoning, those logic abilities?

[21:52] It most certainly does. And we will briefly explore the implications thereof. And I say briefly because not a lot is really understood as well as we would like, but enough is so that some of the dots can be connected.

[22:06] You'll see. The Origin of Human Impairment, Part 2 The entire human race is defective.

[22:20] Not a pretty thought, but it's an accurate one. We all dwell in defective bodies subject to illness, disease, and death.

[22:31] Hebrews 9 reminds us it is appointed to man once to die, and after this, the judgment. Despite all our wonderful life-extending surgeries and life-saving medical technologies, the rate of death among us humans remains one per person, no matter how good the doctors are.

[22:55] This end-of-life reality hits us with a fresh awareness every time we attend a funeral. death. But just what all does our death involve?

[23:08] When our first parents succumbed to Satan's temptation and entered into a new state foreign to that with which God created them, just what was the extent of that fall?

[23:21] It was complete. There was no aspect of the fall that left any part of us untouched. The fall was pervasive and extensive.

[23:32] It was a crash through which Adam and Eve and all their posterity came tumbling down physically, spiritually, and morally. But what about intellectually?

[23:47] Surely that remained intact. We we do mentally have all our marbles together, don't we? No, we don't.

[23:59] It is not unusual to find some who are obviously in short supply of marbles. That's the sad truth. Our intellect, our thinking, and reasoning capacity is skewed, cockeyed, a tilt, out of balance.

[24:18] Why else do you think we humans are constantly demonstrating attitudes and actions that are way off the chart? We think with a fallen, damaged intellect.

[24:31] Yes, there is a real sense in which all us humans are mentally damaged goods. Some more, some less. But among us, there are none who have escaped.

[24:44] And yes, this even includes those we call our best and brightest, our Einsteins, our Michelangelos, our Bachs and Beethovens, our keenest, most brilliant PhDs, and world-renowned scientists.

[24:58] The whole kitten caboodle of humanity is marred, deficient, warped, in different ways to different degrees. And those, those who insist that this is not true of them because they are better than that, well, these, with their denial, just made my point.

[25:22] Nary a one of us has all our intellectual ducks in a row. Deal with it. Okay, so what's the point of this all-pervasive intellectual malady?

[25:33] It's just this. We often do not and cannot think straight. Our ability to collect data, mentally process the information, reach an accurate conclusion, and pursue an action plan accordingly is often sadly lacking.

[25:49] We humans do wrong because we think wrongly, and when that turns into action, well, guess what? This is where we are and where we've been since Genesis 3, and now it appears to be intensifying.

[26:01] You have noticed this, haven't you? The Origin of Human Impairment Part 3 A simple observation by anyone looking at the world we live in, regardless of the time or place they are living, is that something is terribly wrong.

[26:20] It is even more pronounced when reading the daily newspaper or watching TV news. Yes, something is terribly wrong. Humanity is severely impaired, even unto death.

[26:33] death. The impairment extends to every part of our being, physically and mentally. The Bible has fallen humanity pegged, and accurately so.

[26:46] But rather than being appreciative of the diagnosis so treatment can be sought, the biblical diagnosis is frequently met with denial or ridicule, and in doing so, the deniers or those who ridicule have no idea whatever they are actually confirming the claim.

[27:03] But they are. An ancient text tucked away in Jeremiah 17, written about 500 years before Jesus was born in Bethlehem, tells us, and I quote, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.

[27:19] Who can know it? And as critical as the brain is to our existence, the word brain is never used once in the Bible, but the word heart is found approximately 800 times.

[27:32] And while it is true both heart and brain are each dependent upon the other, yet there are peculiar things that do put the heart in that special class. Vine's expository dictionary offers some fascinating insight on page 297 about the heart, calling it the chief organ of physical life, quoting Leviticus 17, 11, saying, For the life of the flesh is in the blood.

[27:58] The heart occupies the most important place in the human system. I guess that's why we call something like the heart of the matter. Vine continues by saying, By an easy transition, the word cardia or heart came to stand for man's entire mental and moral activity, both the rational and the emotional elements.

[28:20] In other words, the heart is used figuratively for the hidden springs of the personal life. The Bible describes human depravity as in the heart, because sin is a principle which has its seat in the center of man's inward life and then defiles the whole circuit of his action.

[28:42] Matthew 15 and 19, verse 20, our Lord spoke of it. Little wonder, then, that Romans 10 and numerous other passages say essentially the same thing.

[28:54] While literally the human heart is the physical blood pump, it also remains as the innermost core of our being. To believe something in your heart, or with all your heart, implies a kind of full commitment that surely is expressed in an action of the will, such as is realized when one receives Christ as one's personal Savior.

[29:25] And we've often accompanied by saying to receive or to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ in your heart, in the core of your being, as opposed to superficiality.

[29:36] The heart. The heart. The origin of human impairment, part four. Simply put, the origin of human impairment began with the origin of each of us, namely, our first parents Adam and Eve.

[29:53] From them, all of humanity received all that comprises the physical and non-physical aspects of our being. The physical is more easily understood genetically, but the non-physical, not nearly so, because it deals with the immaterial aspect of our being.

[30:14] You can't put that under a microscope. The best word we can use for it is nature. Our nature deals not with the physicality of our personhood, but with the non-physical, our psyche, our disposition.

[30:31] Our nature is truly a real thing, but not subject to analysis the way our physicality is. Nonetheless, there is a reality called human nature, as opposed to the nature of all other biological life forms.

[30:46] It is likened to the human disposition or men, spelled M-I-E-N, which is generally synonymous with attitude or personality, disposition.

[30:59] It is this part, our men, that is fallen, compromised, contaminated, with an unseen, unmeasured part of our being.

[31:10] In short, every bit of our being is fallen, including what the Bible calls the heart and its usage of it as non-physical, as opposed to the physical blood pump we humans possess.

[31:22] And the point is, and it is critical we understand it, our fall in Adam affected every part of our being physically and non-physically.

[31:34] It is this non-physical part that is regenerated at the point of personal salvation when we become a brand new person in our interior, non-physical person the Bible calls the new man.

[31:48] Our physical body is not changed, but is destined for the grave and decomposition. Our non-physical part, the Bible calls the spirit, departs the body at physical death, and in the case of believers whose spirit was regenerated by trusting in Christ, becomes absent from the body and present with the Lord.

[32:07] A la 2 Corinthians 5. And this was involved when Jesus, while dying on the cross, cried out, Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit, as recorded in Luke 24.

[32:23] The book of James in chapter 2 tells us that the body without the spirit is dead. The spirit of Jesus was unlike ours in that his had not undergone the fallen effects of our original disposition of sin.

[32:39] This also made him and he alone to be the acceptable sacrifice for our sin. We are told that he who knew no sin, Jesus, was made to be sin on our behalf so that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

[32:57] Complex? Surely. Yet, it's reality, despite our inability to absorb it more fully with our understanding, and it is glorious beyond all else.

[33:10] All who have been made a new creature in Christ rejoice. Do you? Can you? The Effects of Human Impairment Part 5 The claim made earlier about the entire human race being infected with a fallen nature explains why humanity is as it is today.

[33:34] We humans are all fallen, morally and spiritually, and infected with a pernicious element in our being. The only human exception is our Lord, and it was the absence of that element that made Jesus alone eligible to be the unblemished sacrifice for the sins of humanity.

[33:58] The thorough pervasiveness of this reality, encompassing the entirety of humanity, is illustrated in the life of a man called Solomon.

[34:10] He was the son of David the king who followed him on his throne of Israel. Solomon was gifted by God with a wisdom that surpassed that of humanity in general.

[34:22] His sagacity and expertise were widely noised abroad throughout the whole known world at that time. God obviously gave Solomon abilities, surpassing those of ordinary men.

[34:37] Nonetheless, it was still a fallen human wisdom from which Solomon operated that would allow him to submit to the same weaknesses of others, not nearly so gifted as he.

[34:50] women and their special kind of appeal they have in their femininity is the very thing masculinity finds so desirable and alluring, and sometimes utterly irresistible.

[35:07] Despite his human wisdom, Solomon was still a mere man. In essence, he was a pushover for the wiles of foreign women who were worshipping false deities.

[35:20] They eventually so morally incapacitated Solomon that he abandoned those earlier principles that led him to govern as he first did.

[35:33] Solomon made alliances with pagan nations and accepted multiple women from their leaders. And Solomon became intoxicated with his own accomplishments, no doubt the praise heaped upon him by all his admirers, simply went to his head.

[35:52] How could it not for any human in his place? It has been said the worst thing any man who has accomplished anything can do is to believe the press clippings written about him.

[36:03] Well, though there were no press clippings in Solomon's day, still there were many other ways men could receive accolades. It's also been said that more men have been ruined by success and admiration than by failure and obscurity.

[36:21] Solomon may well qualify for being the poster boy of the same. But just among men, Solomon excelled them all. Nevertheless, he was still of this mortal clay that in the final analysis was just another human being among human beings.

[36:38] And this reality positions us for the inevitable consequences to which Solomon succumbed. And those who may insist they are above that are perfect examples of what's up next.

[36:52] Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. The effect of human impairment part two. So, what makes us think that all humans are automatically born with this all-pervasive flawed nature we have been describing?

[37:12] It's precisely because as a consequence we are all under the same sentence of death. A sentence we will surely carry out.

[37:23] It's all set forth in the Bible, which is also the only place you will find it. As Romans chapter 3 puts it, all have sinned and fall short of the standard or glory of God.

[37:36] Further, the wages of sin, or that which our sin automatically earns for us is our physical death. A sentence we are all under.

[37:48] As in Hebrew 9 that tells us, it is appointed unto man once to die, and after this the judgment. Well, we don't have any problem in seeing the accuracy of that.

[38:00] Every time we have to attend a funeral, we are then confronted with a fresh reminder. And if you happen to be one who is without sin, then you are in a very rare class that has only one other occupant with you, named Jesus, so you would be in good company.

[38:19] But of course, I am justing. The only person born since Adam and Eve without sin was Jesus, who was the sinless Son of God, which was precisely what qualified Him to make that acceptable payment for the sins of all the rest of us.

[38:35] 2 Corinthians 5 tells us that Jesus, He who knew no sin, was made to be sin on our behalf so that we might be made the very righteousness of God through Jesus.

[38:52] That's why He alone was able to say of Himself, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by Me.

[39:04] Does that sound egotistical? Well, if it were coming from a flawed human being, it would be. But coming from the sinless Son of God as well as being a Son of Man, it is not at all egotistical, but simply basic fact, the reality of which was gloriously demonstrated among men for over three years.

[39:30] And then, He who was utterly without sin paid the penalty of sin that had been the debt of all humanity. Think of that. The only one who did not deserve to die for sin died for the sins of everyone else, including you, me, and all the rest of humanity who ever lived or will live.

[39:54] What do you call that? Well, amazing grace is one good term. infinite, sacrificial love would be another. By the way, now, what do you call everyone who denies or mocks this greatest gift of love?

[40:10] You call them a perfect example of the point just made about human impairment. It's the systemic inability of humans to hear and process information, and in this case, the gospel, and simply dismiss it then as untrue or religious mythology or whatever else.

[40:27] Yes, indeed, a perfect example of one who possesses an impaired intellect, and it even extends to those we would like to call the best and brightest among us. So what's the answer?

[40:39] What you were just told. The good news. It's so good, I hope you want a second dose and you can have it just ahead, if your fallen intellect will allow you. The effect of human impairment, part 3.

[40:55] The collective effect demonstrated by all of the human race, from the murder of the second human ever born, committed by the first human ever born, namely Cain, who slew his brother Abel, surely serves as a kind of wake-up call to all humans following them.

[41:15] What is this? Something is still terribly wrong here. What is going on? In short order, this will expand exponentially until it reaches a crescendo that causes the Creator to say, Enough!

[41:33] Noah! You are to build an ark, and this is how you are to build it, you and your sons, and why you are to do it. And as they say, the rest is history.

[41:46] But was it really that bad? Let the only record provided tell it as found in the sixth chapter of the single book that records it, called Genesis chapter 6.

[42:00] Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord said, I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky, for I am sorry that I have made them.

[42:23] But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord, and again, the rest is history. So that was roughly 4,500 to 5,000 years ago.

[42:34] What has happened since the old world was destroyed, and this present one benefited from a major makeover? Well, after all the water subsided, those eight surviving souls began replenishing the earth with their own kind.

[42:52] Had they somehow been able to shed the sinful fallen nature that had affected the then world and destroyed all those but eight survivors?

[43:04] Had they somehow managed to escape that? Not at all. They unavoidably perpetuated the next generation of humans who were made in the image of Shem, Ham, Japheth, and their wives.

[43:18] And here we go again. Round two, but this time without a garden. Being as they all were, possessors of that same old fallen Adamic nature, you could count on a rebellious lot popping up among their descendants, all of whom are named in this Genesis family tree of chapter 10.

[43:40] These are the families of the sons of Noah, according to their genealogies, by their nations, and out of these the nations were separated on earth after the flood, and they all spoke one common language.

[43:53] They apparently were a full-length kind of garment in those days, but if they had worn what later folks would call britches, these people had gotten too big for their britches.

[44:06] A real part of human fallenness is an oversized ego. Some suffer from it so greatly it pops out all over them and folks can't help but notice. We all know someone like that, and you're probably mentally saying to yourself who it is or who they are right now.

[44:22] So, a particular giant-sized ego will surface in Genesis 10, and you need to know him. You'll be introduced in the next segment. He was something.

[44:36] The effects of human impairment, part four. The descendants of Noah, his sons, and their offspring are listed in Genesis 10. By their all-retaining that fallen nature described earlier, it was only a question of time until an ultimate kind of egocentric specimen would surface.

[44:57] His name would be Nimrod, a son of Cush, who was a son of Ham, one of the sons of Noah. Nimrod, then, was a great-grandson of Noah, who by this time had already passed on as the older do.

[45:14] Nimrod is called a mighty hunter before the Lord. Sounds like a cool sportsman who enjoyed fishing and hunting. But don't be deceived. This guy, Nimrod, was bad news for the human race from the get-go.

[45:30] Nimrod was a recruiter of men, an organizer and planner before the Lord, or more correctly, in the face of the Lord, as in opposition to the Lord, or in defiance.

[45:41] Defying the Lord? Yes. God had told Noah, the great-grandson of Adam, multiply, populate the earth abundantly, and multiply in it.

[45:55] The defiance of Nimrod seemed to consist of confining humanity rather than expanding it outward. E.F. Kevin, a contributor to the New Bible Commentary, assesses it by saying thus on page 87.

[46:11] Man's proposed scheme of centralization appears to have been regarded by God as undesirable. It may be that it was in its deepest motives an act of human self-sufficiency and rebellion against God.

[46:25] It is highly significant that Babel, or Babylon in the Bible, story stands forth right through to the book of the Revelation for this idea of materialistic and humanistic federation in opposition to God.

[46:40] The reasons for God's destruction of these human plans were possibly first to deal effectively with the evil motive of opposition, and secondly, to accomplish His design that men should cover the whole earth and develop its resources.

[46:58] Note that God did not destroy the tower. He confounded the language and scattered the people. End of quote. Thus, early in the Bible, we have the establishment of Babylon as early as Genesis and as late as Revelation.

[47:14] Mark it down. Babylon, and all it stands for, is pure evil, and rebellion against God from stem to stern, start to finish, Genesis to Revelation.

[47:26] Why, oh why, did Nimrod and those who followed him go in this direction? It was because God had specified a different direction. No fallen human, like Nimrod or like ourselves, likes to be told what to do.

[47:44] After all, we know what's best for us. My life is my own, and I will run it the way I want. I don't want some far-off so-called God telling me what to do.

[47:55] Yada, yada, yada. Heaven has heard those sentiments in every language over thousands of years. And without exception, every one of them is sounding off from their fallen impairment.

[48:09] What is the Lord hearing from you? Amen. The Effects of Human Impairment Part 5 The result of Nimrod and those he recruited was the building of an edifice that would serve to keep humanity united, to create a solidarity which they no doubt expected to provide strength.

[48:35] The ziggurat, an outstanding high edifice, was no doubt a kind of rallying item to aid in preserving their cohesiveness. Yet, years earlier, God had made it clear they were to populate the earth.

[48:52] Apparently, the response from Nimrod and his crowd was, Nothing doing. We are staying put. Well, God's response was simple and effective to that.

[49:04] By confounding their language, which was then singular, God simply reprogrammed their minds with multiple languages among them. Almost immediately, people had to seek out others whose language they could understand.

[49:19] And voila, multiple languages, whatever they were, came into being overnight. Understandably, they soon found a new cohesion, but in much smaller groups, each group of which then began wandering off together with those speaking that particular language.

[49:38] And thus, the seeds were sown for language groups that in time would constitute nations. Here is another perfect example of the mantra I've tried to make prominent on Christianity Clarified, and that is, The issue is authority.

[49:55] Always has been. Always will be. For Lucifer, the authority was Lucifer. He was his own authority. And one-third of other angels God created also made Lucifer their authority in rebellion toward God.

[50:12] Eve made the serpent her authority when she believed him rather than God, who was her original authority. Cain, likewise, made himself his own authority when he decided to murder his own brother.

[50:27] Nimrod was his own authority in the face of God and those who followed, meaning he also made them their authority. You do see the unfailing principle, do you not?

[50:41] Jesus said, Your master is he to whom you obey. We all need to ask ourselves, Who is my ultimate authority? Whoever it is, that's the one to whose tune you must dance.

[50:55] For many, it's wealth, materialism, who has the most toys, or the biggest house, or the latest whatever. For others, it's sexual addiction that is their master and authority.

[51:10] Lately, it appears that alcohol and drugs seem to be leading the pack, especially in the USA. All of these are captives, enslaved to whatever is their master.

[51:23] That's their authority, and they must respond to it with more, more, more. It is a wretched enslavement that hijacks the human psyche. Thus, the only legitimate master for each of us created mortals is the Creator Himself.

[51:40] We owe Him our obedience and allegiance on that ground alone. Still, due to that systemic human fallenness that centers in self-will, we then get the world we've got.

[51:53] And it often is an ugly scene. But ugly is the predictable consequence of our fallenness, all the more evidence of the need of a Savior from ourselves.

[52:03] The Effects of Human Impairment, Part 6 The world is the way it is and the way it has been from Genesis 3 to the present.

[52:18] It is that insidious, infective disease called sin that inevitably leads to our physical death. Yet, thanks be to God, our spiritual death has already been overcome by the One who had no sin and imputed His very own righteousness to us.

[52:38] He is not only the remedy for our fallen plight, but He is the only remedy provided. The problem most often preventing people from applying for the remedy is because they are ignorant of or deny the disease.

[52:54] And those who do will not seek a remedy. There is no greater impairment humanity suffers from than a warped estimation of life itself.

[53:07] Our current world and culture devalues life to the extent that we legalize the wanton destruction of the unborn by calling it women's health care. And at the same time, we oppose capital punishment for those who take the life of another and call an extended life sentence an act of compassion toward the guilty.

[53:28] These opposites are glaring examples of the warped, skewed logic engaged in by so-called intelligent people, at least intelligent in their own eyes.

[53:38] The counterposition on both the destruction of the unborn and the execution of the murderer is set forth in Scripture. Human life is a precious gift of God and is to be taken only by the God who gave it.

[53:54] And yes, He makes it clear He has assigned that responsibility to man Himself. As early as Genesis 9, the maxim is given that, What happens then when man rejects the clear dictates of God?

[54:21] These were principles given to all of humanity even before the law of Moses was ever given at Sinai, which also, by the way, made the same demand. And when men with their warped logic use it to disobey the command God has given, the predictable result is expressed in the 8th chapter of Ecclesiastes, also in the Old Testament.

[54:44] Hear it if you will. Quote, Because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed quickly, therefore the hearts of the sons of men among them are given fully to do evil.

[55:00] End quote. Folks, that is not rocket science. It is nothing more than a divinely sanctified logic. Yet, all too many dismiss that as just so much religious nonsense.

[55:13] After all, our sophisticated learning allows us to be wiser than that. Hear one more corrective, divinely diagnostic explanation from Romans 1 telling us, Even though they knew God or knew about God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations and their foolish heart was darkened.

[55:35] Professing to be wise, they became fools. Thus, we rest our case for the assertion of the lingering effects of our fallen humanity. It makes the only remedy loom larger and larger, and it should.

[55:49] The effects of human impairment, part 7. The passage earlier cited from Romans 1 continues to be one of the most hated and rejected in all of the Bible, and predictably so because the reason is it lays bare the ugliness of the rebellious fallen condition of humanity.

[56:11] Fallen humanity deeply resents and rejects it. To them, it comes across as mere criticism, lacking in compassion. And that, of course, is merely another example of their warped logic and skewed thinking.

[56:24] Because God has revealed through Isaiah in chapter 55, For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.

[56:41] There is real compassion expressed by the only one who truly cares. And it is expressed in simply telling fallen mankind the truth.

[56:54] And it's the same as human motivation in that we are to love our fellow man so much, we are willing to tell him the truth. Do we? I fear not most of us.

[57:08] Most of us who have received the truth are all too willing to keep it to ourselves because we fear rejection and disappointment or disapproval should we have the courage to tell it. While we fear we may come across as judgmental, we actually need to make it clear that God is already judged.

[57:26] We're merely telling people what God has to say. Let them know their argument and disagreement is not with you, because you didn't make this up. Argue with God. One wag was heard to express it by saying, If the cat doesn't like his fur rubbed the wrong way, let the cat turn around.

[57:46] After all, it is the Creator who is the cat, if you will, rubbing the fur the wrong way, not one other mere mortal. But, alas, it's the same old issue of authority.

[57:59] So, who or what is yours? For those convinced there is no God, or even if there is, he really doesn't matter, then you are your own authority, priding yourself in that you dance to no tune but your own.

[58:15] Never mind a Creator, if there even is one. My, my. There is more of this ongoing evidence of the effect of human impairment.

[58:26] And sometimes it really gets hard to believe God could still even love one as defiant and arrogant as that. But he does. And it is only our own faulty reasoning that allows us to believe he doesn't, or at least that he shouldn't.

[58:43] But there, again, we are confessing our own faulty thinking when we believe that. Despite God's persistent love for the lost, he pursues, pursues, and pursues.

[58:56] But there does come a time so sad that God, in respecting having given humans the power of choice or volition that he has to tell him no, God does something inexpressibly sad.

[59:13] The text in Romans 1 says, God gave them up. That is, he allowed them to pursue their own devices. And it is almost always self-destructive.

[59:27] Much of the world today is in this very fix. Have you noticed? The Effects of Human Impairment Part 8 Not only theologians, but numerous astute philosophers throughout the ages have made the observation that man is incurably religious.

[59:49] It does not at all mean men are incurably Christian, but incurably religious, which is a radically different concept. But it is a sense that he craves some higher power responsible for everything.

[60:05] Among these, the most deluded are they who consider themselves the most enlightened by placing the crown of supremacy on their own head. Among them are authors of best-selling books today that find a ready market in our decaying culture.

[60:19] But they are happily the exception in that many confess themselves incapable of wearing the crown of deity, so they, who are willing to divest themselves of it, bestow it upon others they imagine to be the deity, often as the ancient Greeks who were the intellectuals of their day.

[60:38] In fact, the Apostle Paul confronted these when he visited Athens in Acts 17. And as he walked down the street, he saw at nearly every corner a statue erected with the name of one of their gods on it.

[60:55] The Romans fared no better, just giving different names to their fictional deities. And then Paul remarked to the Athenians that they even had a statue honoring to the unknown god.

[61:09] Well, what or who is he? Well, they didn't know. But they were afraid to leave out any god that they may have overlooked, so to keep him happy, if there is one, this is his statue, erected in his honor to the unknown god.

[61:27] Got to cover all the bases, you know. Because if you ignore paying recognition to a god, he can really hurt you. So we do this for protection. Yep.

[61:37] And that came from the same nation that produced the Platos, Aristoteles, Demosthenes, all of the so-called great thinkers.

[61:49] Yet, as we know, their gods were and are mere figments of human imagination. Can there be greater examples of the impaired minds of mortal men?

[62:01] These were among the best and brightest of their day 2,000 years ago, and are still revered by many today with their own fallen minds added to them.

[62:12] How far back does this stuff go? It goes all the way back to Genesis 3 and that epic fall. Out of that came Nimrod, the original who instituted Babylon, that did and still will play a major role in evil undertakings from Genesis to Revelation.

[62:32] Through the years, there surfaced the Philistines and their god Dagon, the Moabites and their god Molech, to whom they offered their own children as sacrifice. And these, of course, were children that were already born, because abortion didn't exist back then, and the so-called women's health care program had never come into being.

[62:51] These references and more all provide the gross idolatry existing in the people who were much closer in time to the actual creation than we are.

[63:04] And yet, this is what they managed with their fallen human impairment. So sad. And not much has improved today. The Effects of Human Impairment Part 9 There are but three sources that can be described as being an authority.

[63:26] And the first and foremost, of course, is God Himself, who, of the three posed as authorities, is the only one of the three who truly is the authority. And this being that the Bible calls Lord, God, Creator, Redeemer, and a host of other deserved titles, transcends all others, whether they are angelic or human.

[63:50] Yet, in power and influence, there are another two, namely, angels and humans, though lesser authorities, are still both empowered with volition and the ability to make decisions contrary to the ultimate authority.

[64:06] That is why fallen angels and fallen humans, the latter to which we all belong, have made such an ongoing mess of this thing we call our world.

[64:18] It is why it is stained with bloodshed, violence, war, crime, disease, and death, from Genesis 3 to the present. It began with humans, in the person of Adam and Eve, using the volition God granted them to make the adversary, the devil himself, their authority when they had set God aside.

[64:42] This means fallen humans are in league with the earlier fallen angels, all of which are given to self-centeredness rather than God-centeredness. Such is clearly the case, as well as of all humans from Genesis 3 onward, But the vast majority of humanity have no idea whatever that they've been had, and that their deception is completely unknown and is part of the plan of the adversary who is deceiving them.

[65:12] Because there is no deception so effective as those being deceived having absolutely no idea they are pawns of a master plan.

[65:23] 2 Corinthians 4 tells us from the pen of the Apostle Paul, who was surely in position to know that Satan, the God of this world, has blinded the minds of those which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.

[65:41] Are you getting this? This is an effect of human impairment. This is a dual negative working against all of humanity to prevent people from hearing the truth, understanding it, and responding to it.

[65:55] The first is the deception and lies of Satan himself, and the second is the warped, skewed reasoning and thinking power of humans in our fallenness. These constitute, if you will, a double whammy for the human race.

[66:11] Satan himself, of whom Jesus said, has no truth in him, and we ourselves, in our fallenness, puts us, in 1 John chapter 4, as being cozy and comfortable in the very lap of Satan himself, where all of the fallen, unsaved humans are, and they don't even have a clue.

[66:35] This is what humanity has come to since Genesis 3, and if you don't think so, you just need to take a better look at the world around you.

[66:49] The Effects of Human Impairment, Part 10 The human race has, from Genesis 3 and its earliest beginnings, contended with an impaired psyche, that is, a warped intellect that causes us to incorrectly process and evaluate data, leading us then to wrong conclusions that we then carry out in wrong actions.

[67:16] The results can be disastrous, sometimes even fatal, simply because we had it all wrong. We are all potentially guilty of this.

[67:28] It's part of our DNA, and none of us have escaped it. It doesn't matter that you have a PhD from a leading Ivy League school. You are as impaired morally and spiritually as all the rest of us.

[67:42] And no, none of us can lift ourselves up by our own bootstraps, even though there are committed humanists who would like to think so. But, thanks be to God, the original and only true authority, He has the hefty grip on those bootstraps of ours, is ready, willing, and able to accomplish the great lift.

[68:07] The only question is whether we are willing to give up on our own meager self-help and the outright denial of our plight and turn our case, bootstraps and all, over to the only one who can do it.

[68:21] The Apostle Matthew quotes Jesus so well in the 11th chapter, saying, Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

[68:33] Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and you will find rest unto your souls, for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

[68:46] John adds to that in his sixth chapter, saying, All that the Father gives me shall come to me, and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.

[68:59] For I came down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. And this is the Father's will which hath sent me, that of all which he has given me, I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day.

[69:18] And this is the will of him that sent me, that everyone that sees the Son and believes on him may have everlasting life, and I will raise him up at the last day.

[69:29] Well, it was easy for those to whom Jesus was speaking to see him. After all, he was right there before them physically, but how can we see him? 2,000 years removed. We see him right here on the pages of Holy Scripture, given to us by God himself for that very purpose.

[69:49] And all it takes to benefit from that is the exercise of that aforementioned personal volition, our will.

[70:00] We all have one, you know, and it is the basis for our eventual accountability as to how and for what we choose to use that volition.

[70:13] We sincerely pray you will use it wisely. God bless you in hearing his truth. Human impairment produces faulty assumptions.

[70:28] Nothing can pave the way for the making of faulty assumptions like that of possessing an impaired intellect. Therefore, because we all have an impaired intellect leading to a faulty thinking and reasoning ability, we are automatically then given to making faulty assumptions.

[70:47] This simply means that there are things we may believe to be true but are not true at all, and our believing them doesn't make them true, and it's across the board. No one is exempt from the ever-present danger of making those faulty assumptions, and then we arrive at a conclusion based on that faulty assumption followed by action or what we do about it, and we assume that to be true.

[71:11] The issue may be about something trivial, so no great harm is done, but what if the faulty assumption is made regarding something truly important? If we act upon that, the consequences then could be monumental, even life-threatening.

[71:25] It all reveals, once again, how important is the subject of truth and reality. Are preachers, teachers, theologians, priests, rabbis, or any other religious profession somehow exempt from making a faulty assumption?

[71:40] Well, absolutely not. Which is precisely why there are so many differences between these professionals. Somebody is making a faulty assumption. These, just mentioned, typically hold positions that contradict the positions of their counterparts.

[71:56] Who is right and who is wrong? With there being plenty of faulty assumptions to go around and all of them are held sincerely and in good faith, only in fantasy land can they all be right because they are in complete contradiction to each other.

[72:12] So if there is no such thing as objective truth, then they can all be right. But if objective truth is limited to that which corresponds to reality, then by contradicting each other with totally different conclusions, someone, or multiple someones, has to be wrong.

[72:32] Also, the possibility of their all being wrong exists if, for instance, theoretically, there is no God, then atheism is the only true position and all those reaching whatever conclusion they have in connection with God are all wrong and only the atheist is right.

[72:50] You do see the either-or of it all, don't you? Earlier, on several volumes of Christianity Clarified, we went to the Bible and saw how the Jews had made so many faulty assumptions in multiple areas, particularly those involving their own scriptures, namely, the Old Testament.

[73:10] You were then told we would follow the faulty assumptions made by the Jews with those faulty assumptions made by Roman Catholics and Protestants as well.

[73:22] Believe us when we say there are plenty of faulty assumptions to go around. And by the way, are we of Christianity Clarified somehow exempt from making faulty assumptions of our own while trying to reveal those of others?

[73:37] Of course not. So, you'll have to judge for yourself and in doing so, can you as well make faulty assumptions of your own?

[73:48] Oh, yes. Oh, me. Can you not see what we are up against? Yet, we must plow on and plow we will because objective truth is a reality.