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The Keys To Spiritual Survival – God’s Word – The Bible

October 2, 2013

My goal in this series was to give you some foundations to stand upon when hard times hit.

Now more than ever we are living in an age where many things stand on the doorstep that can create the perfect storm. Not only in our world and nation, but in our personal lives as well.

Many of you know that I am one of those “survivalists.” You know, “doomsday prepper” type.

Well I can’t say that I am prepping for the end of the world, but I am and have been prepping for a coming storm that I think will rock our nation and our world.

I have been trying to help folks prepare for this coming storm. On the Prophezine website is a great file library with an array of e-books that you can download, we have created the UNDERGROUND area to help assist the soon coming underground church. Tracye and I have helped folks get their food storage going and given some great information on products that will help you and your family weather this coming storm.

Many of you have done a good job, but it is still not too late to prepare. If you are someone who is concerned about what is coming, please know that you still have the time to do something. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me and we will be glad to help point you in the right direction putting your best foot forward.

We have been promoting building one’s “ark” now for about 5+ years, but I want to take things even further and help people prepare spiritually.

We have covered the following …

Now I want to talk about something very vital to our spiritual survival; standing on God’s Word.

I can hear it now “Oh great, another article where Ray is going to harp about how great the King James Bible is and how all the other versions are trash.”

Well, yes and no.

Here is the issue.

It is hard to live in God’s Grace, Sovereignty & Will mainly due to the fact that people really do not know God.

I am talking Christian and non-Christian alike.

Why is this the issue?

Because when it comes to knowing God, this means that we need to be in His Word.

Simply stated, we do not know God because we do not spend time in His Word.

Hosea 4:6 My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children.

It is next to impossible to live in God’s Grace, Sovereignty & Will if we do not have faith in Him.

But to have faith in Him, we need to know His Word.

When we know His Word and His Word is hidden in our hearts, we can then begin to live within God’s Grace, Sovereignty & Will.

But if we do NOT know God’s Word, Hosea 4:6 stated that we “are destroyed for the lack of knowledge.”

This is why it is so critical that we are in God’s Word daily.

The more we are in His Word, the more we start understanding the character of God. We get to know who He is, what He is like, what pleases Him and what displeases Him.

So how are we to “Survive the Coming Storm” if we do not know who God really is?

Did you marry your spouse without even getting to know them? Did you walk up to them and say “let’s get married” and then life was just honky dory?

No.

To have any relationship, one has to get to know the other. To love that person, one has to get to know that person in an even deeper more committed way.

You know your spouse today probably better than you knew him or her the day you married.

You have spent time learning that person, getting to know them in a deeper and intimate way.

You have learned their little quirks and nuances.

But you get to know that person because you have spent quality time with them learning more about them and communicating about their life and your life together.

The very same thing goes with God.

For us to get to know Him, we need to learn more about Him, His Character and who He is.

To learn more about God and who He is, we need to read the bible.

We just can’t let it sit on the shelf close by us and think we can learn all about God by osmosis.

You are sitting next to your spouse, never interacting, never talking, and never even looking at them? Is that how you learned about your spouse?

Heavens no, or at least I hope not.

Anyone who does, probably does not have a marriage and is off to divorce court.

So why do we think we know all about God when we don’t even pick up His Word?

Going to church, reading all the top Christian books, and watching all the Christian TV shows is only going to get you so far.

You are going to have to get to the point where you are actually spending time with God and His Word.

There are no substitutions at all.

Can you find substitutions in getting to know your spouse?

No, so why think you can do it that way with God?

What I am trying to do with this series is to help you prepare spiritually for the hardship to come.

Hey, even if hardship never comes, you have done a great job at getting to know God more and to learn to walk more in the morals and statutes or the Lord.

Kind of like storing up food. No matter what, it is a good thing because even if some terrible event never takes place, what is wrong with having extra food on hand?

Preparing spiritually and mentally is a good thing and something we could continue to strive for in our day to day lives no matter what is going on.

In doing this, it lessens our dependence on ourselves and others and more of a dependence upon God.

The goal is to put the best things in place so that if and when the storm hits, you have better chances at surviving the coming storm.

This is one of the reasons why I harp on the modern versions. They have only been around in the mainstream for 50+ years. There have been a few translations that came out in the 1800s and they were not mainstream either.

The King James Bible has seen people through tough times, through persecution, through wars, through disasters. The KJV has even seen people through prison camp and for some the last words they hear prior to death.

I told a story in the PZ Bible Study about one of my high school teachers that impacted me greatly.

The teacher’s name was Mr. Nordstrom and he was an officer in the US Army during WWII. He was a captain and served as a company tank commander.

He was fighting over in Europe when his tank company got over run by the Germans. If you know anything about tank warfare during WWII, you know that Germany’s Panzer tank was the best out there. Our tanks were getting wiped out left and right, in fact we almost lost the war due to their superior tanks.

Mr Nordstrom was captured along with others from his company and placed in a German prison camp.

He told us stories all the time, but one of them still sticks with me to this day.

It wasn’t like the show “Hogans Hero’s” with Colonel Klink and the inept Sgt Schultz.

Mr. Nordstrom told us stories that were horrific in what the Germans did to them, how they were treated and how then even killed many of the prisoners.

The one thing that helped Mr. Nordstrom through all of this was that he had memorized verses from the King James Bible.

He told us that he taught those in his charge in camp the 23 Psalm and how that one Psalm helped him through the death, torment, torture, and other hellish things that took place in that German prison camp.

After a while the camp prisoners put together all the bible verses the entire camp knew. Mr. Nordstrom told us how he was amazed at how much of God’s Word they were able to put together.

Something else he said was that none of the verses came from “those easy to read bibles” / modern versions.

All the verses people quoted were from the King James Bible.

This compilation of scripture is one of the things that helped the entire prison camp pull through till they were finally liberated. It became the camp’s most prized possession.

He said that slowly started to make copies so that each barracks could have one.

People came in ignorant of God and what He can do and when they were liberated, truly understood what it meant to lean on God and His Word.

Mr Nordstorm attributes him surviving one of history’s most grievous atrocities, to the King James Bible. He was living proof that there was power in The Authorized Word of God, The King James Bible.

The modern versions just do not have this sort of track record. They have not been around for the 400+ years like the KJV has.

They have not seen people through the terrible life wrenching times like the KJV has.

This is why I tell people to get a good Thompson Chain Reference, King James Bible.

Start learning God’s Word but more than that, start learning about God’s Word and how God has preserved His Word in the King James Bible for the English speaking people of the world.

I am sorry, I am not going to stand upon the weak sand these modern versions have to offer.

There is a saying “Things Different Are Not the Same.”

This is an absolute fact.

The Move To Modern Gnostics

In the last few years there has been a move towards Christians no longer reading the word of God like a child would. There has been a quest for deeper, secret meanings in God’s Word.

One way is with all this “Greek & Hebrew” stuff going on. Folks, I hate to say this but all this digging deeper into the Greek and Hebrew shows a rejection of God’s Word.

As you know, I stand on God’s Promise that He will preserve His Word. I believe that The Authorized King James Bible is that promise kept for the English speaking people.

So, what is said in the KJV is said, we either accept it or reject it.

But what has become popular today is “going back” to the Greek and Hebrew to determine one’s own interpretation instead of submitting to God’s Word in and of itself.

Sure it is ok to go back for clarification here and there, but it is proven that the KJV is the best translation out there when looking at Greek & Hebrew. So why does one need to go to the Greek and Hebrew unless they are not liking what they read in the KJV in the first place?

There is something else that has started to rise and is greatly disturbing.

The rise of the Hebrew Roots movement to the point that it denies Jesus Christ as messiah, His sacrifice on the Cross, and the reintroduction of salvation through the law.

Here is an example from a very popular Hebrew Roots organization.

What they are alluding to here is that we need to be beholding to the Law if we want to get to heaven. Christ did it and he was human, we can do it too.

Many of the Hebrew Roots also reject many of the Pauline epistles and in fact many reject 90% of the New Testament except the red lettering found in the bible.

If Jesus did not say it, it isn’t truth.

I got an email from a friend who is involved in this movement. You can read for yourself what he believes.

“We have surviving texts, the oldest known surviving texts that date back to withing 100 years or so of the original writings. The KJV misinterprets all of these, and they do so in most cases, intentionally! We HATE the KJV because it was intentionally corrupted by a Man who believed himself to be equal to the Messiah himself- King James. What the world wants is the truth, and between the Catholics, who corrupted the words of our Creator as well as the words of the Messiah and created their own world religion, and King James, who did the same thing and then ordered that the the Church of England is the only official religion of England and it’s territories, the truth has been lost! Now, we have the ability that the people of the dark ages and the renaissance didn’t have, we have the ability to Prove All Things.

The proof is, Yeshua did not come to start a new religion, but to re-establish the actual word of God. Yeshua was born free of sin, lived His entire life without disobeying the word of God, then was filled with the Spirit of God and died as a human and ultimate sin sacrifice. Jesus is not a God. He was a human that God entered “as a dove” and this allowed God, who is not of this world and above our understanding, to walk among us in the form of human flesh to show us that it is possible to obey these instructions. He had this lamb, without blemish, die as atonement for those who decide to change their path and begin walking in the ways of God’s instructions.”

Other Hebrew Roots people take things so far that when they break down a verse out of the bible (read Old Testament) they even break down the individual words in Hebrew into individual letters.

If you do not know, each letter in the Hebrew alphabet represent not only a word, but also a number. It is the context which it is spoken that helps you identify what that word is saying.

These people break down each word in a verse looking for some secret hidden meaning or some secret hidden number, which then can be retranslated back into a Hebrew word because numbers and letters are the same.

This folks is modern day Gnosticism. This is also reminise of an occultic practise close to Cabbalism, which is a Hebrew occult system.

That is a fact, even though many will not want to hear it or believe it, it is a fact.

Come to God’s Word Liken unto a Child

People have left the simple ways of Scripture and ventured on paths of deceit. Some of these groups are downright cultish in their behavior and beliefs.

Very few if any stand on The King James and in fact most come adamantly out against the King James Bible, even calling it a satanic book.

I see no problem in accepting the biblical holidays and understanding our messianic roots, but what some of these groups are doing are out and out heresy to God.

We are to come to God’s Word liken to a child and their understanding.

When we read His Word, we need to read the whole council of God, not cherry pick verses here and there to help prop up our desired biblical idea.

When we look at God’s Word as a whole and accept it as a whole, all of a sudden things are just so much easier to understand and to see.

His Word is simple to understand. It is the Holy Spirit that ministers to us and teaches us.

1 Corinthians 2:10 But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, THE DEEP THINGS OF GOD.

The Bible teaches that God has things in store for every believer that eyes cannot see, nor can the ears hear. 1 Corinthians 2:10 tells us that these things are THE DEEP THINGS OF GOD, which are revealed unto us by the Holy Spirit of God.

But not all “deep things” are for us to understand.

God is a Sovereign God, we cannot wrap our brains around His greatness, it is impossible.

People today are in search of the “mystery” contained in the Bible, that they miss the whole point of the Bible. That is God’s Word of hope to us through His Son Jesus Christ.

The Bible reveals truths that are impossible for the carnal person to grasp and understand, that is a fact. God’s Spirit gives wisdom, depth of understanding, and spiritual insight that cannot be obtained anywhere else.

But those “deep things” are there to help cement our lives in Christ, not go looking for some secret of the universe that many of these groups are looking for.

If a sinner rejects Jesus as the Christ, the only begotten Son of God, then they have also rejected the Holy Spirit. These deep things of God cannot be revealed unto them. Things like God’s love for us. How He changes us through the process of regeneration. How he works in our lives guiding us and directing us.

These are the deep things that scripture is talking about. Not the quest of the cosmos and how to live in the law so that you can get to heaven.

We need to come to the Word of God as a child and with a childlike understanding. It is then when we submit to Him, His Word starts to live within us and change us from within.

This is why unsaved people have all the wrong priorities and place so much emphasis upon shallow and meaningless things.

Yes, many of these groups, I have to question, if they truly love God or not. They claim they do, but they speak a different message by denying him as the Messiah, as the trinity, and as the only begotten Son of God.

Denying Christ

My other issue with all these modern versions is that in one form or another they deny our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

YES… EVERY MODERN VERSION DOES THIS.

I am not going to spend much time on this. I wrote an article titled “Questioning the Deity of Christ ” which addresses a lot of this. If you want to use some versions that does in fact deny our Savior, you will be the one answerable to God for that. You cannot say that you have not been warned either.

What makes me wonder is what will people say when God asks them “Why did you use a perversion of My Word that denies My Son and your Savior?”

God is not going to buy into all the excuses that I have heard. I would not want to be in that position when we stand before Him and give an account.

Again, we are facing very hard times. Times that I honestly do not think people can really comprehend or imagine.

I cannot force you to read the King James as your primary scripture. All I can do is give you reason not to read the 300+ other versions out there.

None have stood the test of time and now more than ever you will need to have absolute sound footing on the solid Word of God. Like it or not, you will not find that solid footing in the modern versions.

I am not going to think negatively of you if you choose to use a modern version, but I do know that if you are, you are falling short and missing out. Again, things different are not the same.

By Ray Gano

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