Lord God

RV201-02

The horrendous bowl plagues which God will bring upon the worshipers of antichrist may seem to be a wrong thing to do. They may seem to some people to be unjust. Those who function on the values of the old sin nature would find no problem in looking at these judgments and accusing God of being brutal and vindictive. But the angel has taken the time to stress to us that what God does is always governed by His character. So, His actions are always right.

So, we read in Revelation 16:5: "And I heard the angel of the waters saying, 'You are righteous who are, and who was, O Holy One, because You did judge these things." God, he points out, is absolute righteousness. Therefore, he can do no wrong. The bowl judgments, therefore, are the right thing to do, whatever man may think. God is, furthermore, identified as the one who has always been the eternal one. He possesses eternal life, with no beginning and no end, so He is superbly qualified to judge and to punish evil. He has the authority. Furthermore, He is the holy one, which we reiterated in the previous session that that means He possesses absolute righteousness, which is joined to His perfect justice in all that He does. So, God is fair to people who experience His plagues, and He is right in imposing those judgments.

God has, in fact, been longsuffering with the antichrist at this point in future history. He has repeatedly, in one way or another, cautioned and alerted the followers of the antichrist of the judgments that are going to come upon them to their great peril because of their evil. Tribulation humanity will have thumbed its nose at God, and one of the ways they will demonstrate this is by the pouring out of the blood of the Christians as martyrs – those who are called the saints and those who are prophets. Prophets are those who proclaim the message of God in a special way. We would probably call them the preachers.

So, God judges tribulation humanity by turning their saltwater areas, and then their freshwater areas into blood. We have pointed out to us that this is a fitting punishment. They deserve it. It is just. It is right. God would not send these blood plagues if it was wrong to do so, just because of His own character. He cannot do evil. He cannot violate His own integrity.

Then, John here's the altar of sacrifice in heaven confirming the propriety of God's bowl judgments. These perhaps may be the voices of the tribulation martyrs that are described in Revelation 6:9 as being under the altar. The voice of the altar addresses God by a combination of terms. It calls him "Lord God." The word "Lord" means "deity." The word "God" indicates the Supreme Being. God is the only God in the sense that He is the unique being in the universe. God alone is the Supreme Being of all intelligent life, because He is the eternal one who possesses eternal life, and He is the Creator.

Lord God

The Trinity

Deuteronomy 6:4: "For Moses says, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God. The Lord is one God." When Moses says that, He does not mean that there are not three persons, because even in the Old Testament there is evidence of the Trinity, but that He is one in essence. So, all three members of the Trinity had the same essence: They each have sovereignty; absolute righteousness; perfect justice; love; eternal life; omniscience; omnipresence; omnipotence; immutability; and, veracity. Those ten basic factors constitute the essence of God.

The Godhead

God's Personality

God's Essence

Here in Romans 1:20, it says, "For since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes: His eternal power; an, his divine nature, stressing the essence of God and the attributes of God have been clearly seen. Man looks at Himself and says, "Boy, do I have intelligence! I'm capable of reasoning things out in an amazing way. I have a lot of creative power. There must be somebody that has infinitely greater intelligence than I do, and infinitely greater capacities for thinking, and for creativeness. We look out at the world, and say there must be somebody that's got enormous power to be able to create this world. Right on down the line, in all the essence of God, there's a finite way of reflecting that in man, and a finite way of looking out in nature, and this reflects the essence of God that is simply summed up as His divine nature, meaning these qualities of His essence and His attributes that identify Him as a very special person.

So, here in Colossians, that word "theotes" is referring to the personality of God, and it's a way of referring to the Trinity. Actually the very beginning of the Bible, in the Old Testament, there is indication of the Trinity in Genesis 1:1. It says, "In the beginning, God." And that word God is the Hebrew word "Elohim," and the word "Elohim" is a plural word. Jews have a terrible time with this.

I once was speaking to a Jewish man that I met down at the bank, and he said, "There is one thing I cannot agree with you as Christians." He's a man that we knew well, and was acquainted with us and with the Berean Ministry in one way or another. He said, "And that is the concept that there are three persons that constitute the Godhead." I said, 'Well, have you ever read the first verse of the Bible in Genesis 1:1 in Hebrew?" Well, he hadn't. I said, "Well, let me tell you something. It says, 'In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.' And that word for 'God' is the word 'Elohim,' which is a plural word. Why do you think that that's a plural word?" He was taken aback. He was dumbfounded. If he went to his rabbi, his rabbi would say, yes, "Elohim" is a plural word. That tells you that he's speaking about a God who is one, but in a triple personality as the Trinity.

Furthermore, in Genesis 1:27, you'll notice the same thing, and I pointed this out to this gentleman: "And God created man in His own image. In the image of God, He created him. Male and female, He created them." Here's the unity of God being indicated. God was creating them in His own image, and in his own likeness. But notice in verse 26, it says, "Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." Now why in the world would you have these plural pronouns there if it did mean something?

Well the best the Jewish people can do is say, "Well, that just talks about how great God is. It uses those pluralities because it's conveying the majesty of God. It's like when the Queen of England wants one of her servants to bring her a glass of water, she says, 'We desire a glass of water.'" She doesn't speak like common folk and say, "I would like a glass of water. She always speaks in the plurality to emphasize that she is royalty, and majesty. Well, that's nonsense. That isn't what this means.

The Baptism of Jesus Christ

Please don't say, "We follow Jesus in baptism." That's not true. Baptism means identification. There was so much conflict over the concept of baptism; how you do it; and, to whom you do it, that when they translated the King James Bible, they said, "Let's avoid all the debate. We're not even going to translate the word 'baptizo,' which means 'identification.' We're just going to transliterate the letters. We're going to change the Greek letters into English letters. So, you came up with these words: to baptize; baptism; and, so on," and they never bothered telling you that it means "identification with something." The identification of Jesus Christ was with His mission to go to the cross as the Savior. That's why we can't follow Him in that identification.

The Baptism of John the Baptist

The Baptism of Christians

The voice from heaven here was clearly the voice of God the Father.

So, there you see that Unitarianism is wrong, because here you have all three persons of the Godhead present at the same time.

The full name of the one who is God, then, the only true God is "God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit." In the Old Testament, you'll find that the emphasis is upon the unity of God – the oneness of God. In the New Testament, you'll find the stress is upon the individual members of the Godhead.

It's sort of like this. You can't really illustrate this, but it might help your thinking to realize that it's like light. If you take a ray of light, and shoot it into a prism, it will shoot out of that prison in seven different colors – the seven colors of the rainbow. So, suddenly, you realize that in this single way of light are seven colors. And depending on what these colors hit, if they're absorbed, they reflect a certain color. If they're not, they reflect another color. If they're all absorbed, the color you have is black. If none of them are absorbed, then you have white. But the prism is a demonstration. If you think about the prism as the Bible, and you shoot the revelation of God into it, you find that there's Father, Son, and Holy Spirit that are actually in the Godhead. That might be a little way of thinking to help you understand it.

So, now we have two important terms. We have the term "Lord," which we showed you indicates deity; and, we have the term God, which indicates the Supreme Being of the universe. The words "Lord God" are combined by the Holy Spirit. Why? To alert mankind that it is dealing with someone more than just a human being with human opinion. We are dealing with the ultimate authority in the universe. And God's Word, the Bible, is His expression and His revelation, and it is final in what it says because of who He is. If people understood that when they read the Bible, they are listening to the Lord God, the one who is deity, and the only deity, and the one who is the Supreme Being, the Creator in the universe, they might not be so ready to give the back of their hand to God by simply passing off what the Bible says. That is a horrendous, terrible thing to do.

2 Corinthians 7:1: "Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness." Why? In the fear of God. That's the problem. We don't have a fear of God. Once you develop a real reverence for God, you understand that He is Lord. He is the divine one. He's not just a real nice human being like the Mormons teach. He is God. He is the Supreme Being of the universe. He is the final word. Then you realize that He deserves respect, because when He sets things out as His way (His moral code), and you violate it, because He is just, He will punish. His justice demands satisfaction for violation of His laws. Sin does not go unpunished. He alone is the one who is able and qualified to declare what is right and what is wrong.

Even Donahue cannot declare what is right and what is wrong, as much as he pretends that he can speak for God. He loves to say, "Oh, I wouldn't lay that upon God." And he was really dumbfounded when one of these Christians that got into one of these programs finally got to his microphone, and they were talking about who goes to heaven, and whether God is going to eliminate all those Muslims and all those Buddhists. Donahue said, "I can't believe that God would do that." And this lady stood up and said, "Jesus said in the Bible, 'No man cometh unto the Father but by Me." Donahue looked at her and said, "Did He say that?" He said that. Now where is he going to go? He's going to go to the only place you can go. You have to dismiss the Bible. You have to say, "I think somebody misquoted Jesus. Somebody is putting words in His mouth." And that's precisely what they do. The Bible says to perfect ourselves in holiness as a result of our fear of God.

So, that's why it's important to realize the significance of this combination term, "the Lord God." All day long tomorrow, this terrific, wonderful person, your Lord God, is going to be at your elbow. He is going to be within you. He is going to be moving with you through your day, with His ears, attuned, ready to listen to your prayers, and with His ears attuned with his power cranked up, and ready to act in your behalf.

Now the problem is to realize that he is also capable of punishing rebellion against His will, and He is sovereign and capable of doing that. People treat the Lord God, then, as if His revelation in the Bible is actually subject to the evaluation of their sin nature disoriented mentalities. The antichrist and his followers will for seven years have been doing exactly that. Whatever religious opinions there are, are put through the grid of their human reason. Their judgment will decide, even in the Bible, because they'll keep the Bible. That's an authority. And they will decide what is true and what is not true in the Bible. That's what our country is doing today to the Lord God. The result is that we're descending into ever deeper spiritual darkness, moral degradation, and national destruction.

It is always interesting when somebody, for those of us who are in the business of educating children, goes back not many years and finds what were the big problems we had in school. They were: pulling girls' hair; throwing spitballs around the room; pitching erasers at one another, talking in the hallway; and, making faces. These were horrendous crimes, and you got punished for doing them, but nobody cares about that anymore. Now we're worried about getting them through the metal detectors. Who's got the guns? Who's passing the drugs around? And we have all the all the most evil things you could imagine. They're all there in the school.

Now the state of Texas is deciding to pass a law whether they're going to teach sex education, starting in kindergarten. How do you do that? He doesn't even have the vocabulary. How are you going to get his mind to understand what you're talking about? I think we should make that an assignment for all of you. You can tell us how that's to be done.

In a discussion the other day with the Texas senator, who is sponsoring this bill, one lady got up and said, "I have before me the statistics." I think she said that she had four or five different competent analyst groups that have analyzed the result of a sex education program that has been in force for many, many years. And the conclusion of every one of them (who are not Christians – but just the facts) is that the program has been a total failure in its objective of preventing teenage pregnancies, and that it has actually increased the very things that they were designed to try to prevent.

Therefore, why in the world are we talking about using a procedure (a program) that has already been demonstrated to be an enormous failure? It didn't faze that senator one bit. He mumbled and rumbled around, explaining how there are all these terrible things taking place in society, and all these pregnancies, as if he hadn't heard this lady say that the very things he's talking about were the result of the sex education program. What needed to be interjected was, because we have ignored the Bible, we have lost our respect and our fear of the Lord God. That's the problem that young people have. And when they have no fear of the Lord God, then they are not willing to listen to the Word of God, and they are not willing to pursue holiness, and you are never going to solve these moral problems.

People actually flippantly pass off the Lord God as just another guy out there that they can debate the issues with. One of the things that is most resented about the Lord God is that He only has one way to get into heaven. The result of that one way is that most human beings, Jesus told us, are going to miss the small gate and the narrow way that leads to eternal life. They're going to end up in the lake of fire. However, John 14:6 makes it very clear: "No, man comes unto the Father," Jesus says, "but by Me."

This was clear in the Old Testament. No man comes to God except through Jesus Christ. Isaiah 45:21: The first part of that verse says, "Declare, and set forth your case. Indeed, let them consult together. Who has announced this from of old? Who has long since declared it?" He's talking about the thing that Isaiah has been revealing previously, that only God could know about. Then here in the middle of verse 21, notice: "Is it not I, the Lord? And there is no other God beside Me, a righteous God, and a Savior. There is none except Me. Turn to Me and be saved from all the ends of the earth, for I am God, and there is no other." Here God says, "I'm God, whatever you think. There is no other God. I'm the only deity. I'm the only Supreme Being. Then He says, "I am a righteous God." Then he says, "I am a Savior. He says, "Come to Me for salvation." This only God declares that He is absolutely righteous, and that He can save you. He can take you to heaven.

The point He's making is that His way of going to heaven is one that works. It is compatible with his righteous character. You cannot have a way of salvation that is incompatible with the character of God. So, He says, "Turn to Me. Be saved, for I am God. I'm a righteous God, and My plan works, because it's right, because I have created it."

The Bible statement of God's truth is unacceptable to human reason. So, man arrogantly discards what God says as if God were some incompetent on the issue, and that He was out of touch with reality.

The Fool says, "There is no God."

However, there is another way, and that is by admitting that there is a Lord God, but what you do is ignore Him as if He didn't exist. That means that every one of us here (and those who aren't here) can ignore God. Some of those indeed who are not here, who should be here, and who could be here, are doing just exactly this. They are saying that God doesn't exist, and they don't realize that that's what they're saying. Therefore, they don't understand how serious is their absence. Denying that the Lord God has clearly revealed His will and His ways in the Bible is a way of saying that He doesn't exist. If you ignore His word, and if you claim He has not spoken to us, and therefore you don't have to worry about what you do, you're saying that God is silent, and, in effect, doesn't exist. If you do not study to learn doctrine, and if you never get on track with the mind and the presence of God, then, in effect, the Lord God doesn't exist for you. You never are in contact with Him because you don't know the Word of God. If you are negative to doctrine, even though you have been taught it, and you've learned it, you, in effect, are saying that there's no Lord God in your life. You are negative to what He has taught you, so He doesn't exist. It's as if He had never spoken.

One of the worst things you do as a Christian, though, you say, "Yes, He's out there," but then you act the fool by ignoring Him, is that you do not pray to Him. And when you don't pray to Him, you, in effect, say, "He doesn't exist. He's not out there." Psalm 37:4, interestingly enough, says, "Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart." And one of the ways you delight yourself in the Lord is to pray to Him; to speak to Him; and, to find that He gives you the desires of your heart. The more you walk on track with the presence of God, and the more you are not guilty of ignoring his existence, the more you will be delighted to find how prayer works. And nothing gives you a new zeal for prayer, and a new insight for its power, than having some personal life crises in which you are a helpless victim, and you have one problem after another that you have to resolve, and you take it to God, and it is evaporates. That's a much better way to do it. Delight light yourself in the Lord. Bring Him into the picture, and He'll give you the desires of your heart.

So, either way, by atheism or by ignoring God, you play the fool because you are in effect denying the existence of the Lord God by either your belief as an atheist or by your practice as a Christian in ignoring Him.

Now one day everybody is going to be forced to recognize the existence of the Lord God, and they are all going to recognize the role of Jesus Christ. Paul points out in Philippians 2:9-11: "Therefore, also God highly exalted Him (Jesus), and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, those who are in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord (He really is deity) to the glory of God the Father." Everybody someday is going to have to admit that Jesus really is Lord God.

Go back to Psalm 14. I want to show you something that is an interesting consequence if you read beyond that first verse. Psalm 14:1: "The fool has said in his heart, 'There is no God.'" Remember that you can do that either through atheism (denying Him outright) or you can do it through ignoring Him. The result will be the same in either case. Notice what the result is of playing the fool and saying there is no God: "They are corrupt. They have committed abominable deeds. There is no one who does good. The Lord has looked down from heaven upon the sons of men." Here is an anthropological comparison, with God acting like a human being, looking out the window in heaven, down on the earth, to see what people are doing, and to see if there is any who understand, and who seek after God. They've all turned aside together. They have become corrupt: "There is no one who does good, not even one."

This you will recognize as the passage that Paul quotes in the book of Romans from the Old Testament, when he makes the point that there's nobody going to heaven who is born into the human race. They're all headed for the lake of fire by simply being born into the human race. But all of this, notice, stems from the person who says, "There is no God." If there is no God, there's no communication; there are no rules; there are no guidelines; there is no doctrine' and, there is nothing that I need to listen to and conform to.

Then notice verse 4: "Do all the workers of wickedness not know who eat up my people as they eat bread?" All of this gang is riding high in evil. All of these fools are saying, "God's not out there," or they're acting as if He's not out there. And they are capitalizing on taking advantage of people: "And they do not call upon the Lord. There they are in great dread, for God is with the righteous generation. You would put to shame the counsel of the afflicted, but the Lord is his refuge." And here you find the picture of God being a stockade into which the Christian flees while he is sounding forth the Word of Life, and why he's sounding for the truth of our society, trying to warn them, like the watchmen on the wall, of what is coming. The people who oppose us want to make us biblical Christians look like fools. They want to make us think that we are the fools. The Bible says, "No, God is your refuge, and I'm going to put those people in great dread."

I suspect that in the highest echelons of the American government, those who pause to think find that there is a solemn dread coming down upon them because of the evil into which they are propelling this nation, over against the violations of God's moral law that they are trying to lock on our society. Sooner or later, they will be in great dread, for the Lord God will be their judge, and they will face Him. But God says, "You believers, hang in there. I am with you. You are the righteous generation. They want to put you to shame it, and make you look ridiculous in their counsel. They want to afflict you. But the Lord God is your refuge, and I'm going to carry you through."

I love the fact that, sooner or later, God makes it clear as to who was right, and who was wrong. The wicked are eventually going to find that the Lord God is going to vindicate those who stand for biblical truth, and those who take their refuge in him against the fools. We brethren are not the fools. The fools are out there, who are denying God in one way or another. You should be aware that the Lord God is on the side of those who are obedient to Him. You should take great comfort from that.

Therefore, here is the principle. You should not be afraid to believe the truth. Where have you heard that recently? If you listen carefully, this is the latest phrase of Rush Limbaugh, and he's so right: "Don't be afraid to believe the truth." That's the problem. The truth is so offensive to the sin nature that people refuse to believe it. Does that make it a lie? Not for one moment. When it counters your beliefs, it's still the truth. When it condemns your actions, it is still the truth. I don't care how far up in government you are, or in society, if you deny the truth, it's still the truth.

Doubting Thomas

What was he not believing, and thus playing the fool? He didn't believe what Jesus had predicted would happen. Jesus on several occasions said, "Yes, they're going to kill Me. I'm going to be God's Lamb in behalf of the sacrifice for the sins of the world. But three days later, I'm going to come right back out of that tomb, and I will be just as alive as I ever have been. I will live forever, and I will go to heaven as a man, so that a human being resides in heaven to show you that you too, as a human being, can; and, that by God's capacity and God's provision, you too will be able to live in heaven as a human being.

When Thomas did see Jesus, one week later, and Jesus said, "Here it is," and Jesus showed him that wound in His side, and said, "Go ahead. Touch it. Satisfy yourself that I am real," immediately we can give Thomas the credit that he made the connection. He recognized that for Jesus to be alive, He must be who He said He was, and who claimed to be – the God-man, the Son of God. Nobody who is just a mere mortal could have a wound like that and now be alive. That was a mortal wound. Yet, here He lives. Do you remember what he said when he made the connection, and it hit him so forcefully? He fell to his knees before Jesus, and John 20:28 gives us his words when he answered Jesus' invitation to reach in and, for him not to touch the wound and not to be unbelieving, but to be a believer: "Thomas answered and said to Him, 'My Lord and my God.'" Isn't that interesting? "Lord God." He had the highest word of respect for the God that he now realized he dealt with. Remember that in the New Testament the word "Lord" is used only for God, for real deity: "My Lord – y real, true God, and my real true divine one; and, my God – my real Supreme Being in the universe."

Believing without Seeing

So, Christians today face the problem of connecting doctrine to the situation in their lives and in society. They have a problem making the connection like Thomas did, because they don't understand who it is they're dealing with. You are dealing with the Lord God. He is the one who is going to be executing these judgments in the tribulation. He is the one who is going to be carrying through the believers of that era through that terrible time of martyrdom which will be a threat to all of them.

However, it is still true of us today that He is our Lord God. He is not just some glorified human being. Joseph Smith taught a bunch of bunko to the Mormons with that idea. But then that's what the devil does. He says that all human beings are potential gods. But the Lord is the truly divine one, and there's only one deity in all the universe. All the idols are nothing but nonsense. And He is God. He is the Supreme Being. This is what Satan wants to be. This is what Satan has been itching to do from the time he decided to rebel. As you know, the Old Testament quoted him as saying that he would be like the Most High. He wants to be the Supreme Being, but the Lord God will never allow him to do that.

However, for you, He is deity and Supreme Being. I think we should walk this week in the joy and the realization that we are in the family of such a person, and what that means to us as we face who knows what hazard's both from outside in our community (and all the institutions of society); and, yes, the hazards that we face from within the community of Christians – people who deny the existence of God, who say he's out there, but who ignore His Word, and who counter what He says. The greatest thing that you and I can do is to seek a renewed dedication of obedience and subjection to the Lord God. Sooner or later, something will come into your life, and you will need to remember that that is the one who is right there standing by your side, and you will discover how real He is.

Dr. John E. Danish, 1992

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