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[Kat]

May 2008 Bible Study


                       DOES A SOVEREIGN GOD EVER CHANGE ?

Just got this email and this is encouraging to me. Because this guy is from India;

Dear Brother Ray Smith,
I have been visiting your site regularly and it is really God’s work that He is using ministers like you. When I read your paper on the Trinity, I just praise God for it. Your paper speaks Scriptures and Scriptures and nothing but Scriptures. I’m a Bible student myself. 

Do I have permission from you to translate your papers into Tamil. I would really thank God for it. I would be really thankful if you read this email and replied.

Growing in Christ,
Granacious

That’s a good email and we’re getting more like that. I’ve got one or two Spanish people that have ask if they can translate some of this stuff into Spanish and now here is someone who wants to put it into an Indian language. 

But you know, how are we going to reach these people? Well I’m not going to learn Tamil, but someone else knows Tamil and English, aah there we go. So somehow I guess it’s going to get done.

I was talking so some of these men here back in my office earlier and we were talking about some difficult Scriptures that I have been going over. I’ve gone over them in the past, but I’m going back and revisiting them. 

Like some months ago I gave a talk about where people think there is a big contradiction between Paul and James. Martin Luther called James an Epistle of straw or almost worthless, you know. What do you do with straw? You burn it, you burn the straw and the stubble. That was Martin Luther, this great reformer?  He thought that the Epistle of James was worth nothing more than to burn in the fire... how about that?

I coordinated those two, because James said that faith without works is dead (James 2:17, 26) and Paul said by works alone shall no one be justified (Rom. 3:20) and all those related Scriptures.  And they think there is a big contradiction. But there is not when you break it down and study it. Yet, great scholars, great thinkers, great theologians and great teachers and great professors they teach that there is a definite difference and a definite disconnect there, they don’t understand it. 

So we are going to deal with one more of these today. Some of these Bible studies are going to get a little more difficult as we go.

I’ve been dealing with some Scriptures in the Lake of Fire series that in years past I just didn’t understand them. 

Mat 10:28  And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell (gehenna).

I read that I don’t know how many times in years past and not by my understanding, not by Herbert Armstrong’s teachings, not by theologians did I ever have a connect with that Scripture.   

Even recently sometimes a Scripture will be a little hard for me, so after a while I will go to the internet and you can just type in a Scripture and it will come up and somebody comments on it.  Not all Scriptures, but some of the more pertinent ones. So I would read all of these on the internet and they would teach me nothing. They don’t understand it. So one day God just showed it to me. I had looked at all these other theologians and they just didn’t know. 

I used to have a Bible commentary years ago and it got left behind in a storage shed in Texas. It was a six volume Adam Clark commentary and I used to look up stuff in there. Now I don’t have one, I mean I could afford to buy one or I could have several commentaries. But the reason I don’t have any, as much as they do know and God bless them they do know a lot, when I want to find out something difficult, they never have an answer. I mean not ever.  Do I mean, well sometimes? No, not ever. Not on difficult Scriptures. 

I mean if you know where to find it please tell me. Because I have looked up certain things on the internet for ten hours, looking at hundreds and hundreds of site and not one of them knows what is going on. Not one of them. You may get two solid opinions in opposite directions, like I did some time ago. 

I was looking up can women preach. I just thought let me see what the theologians have to say about it. One said, ‘absolutely they can teach. Why sure, yes they can teach.’  Then another said, ‘are you kidding, it says they can’t teach.’ So you get these totally polarized opinions and that’s all you will read. So which one is true? You do know, because neither one totally disproves the other one, not totally. But they do disagree, so how do you learn these things?   

I would call this person that use to be with us years ago and say do you know what that Scripture means?  Well he always would have an answer, he would never say, ‘I don’t know.’  He would say, ‘oh it means…’ I would say no that’s not what it means and then I explained this to him. 

So I did explain that one in the Lake of Fire series last time or the time before. There are others that I have explained in the past, but mostly just in emails. So a lot of people didn’t even see it. 

This one today, the title I have ‘Does a sovereign God ever change?’ But I am going to zero in on one particular Scripture that seems to be a sore spot. Now I don’t know how I answered this in the past. I answered it several times I know already, but I put a little more pray and study into it. 

So today the main one that I want to zero in on is Genesis 6:6, where it says it “repented” God that He had made mankind and He is going to destroy them. But I broaden that out a little bit more than just one verse. 

Does a sovereign God ever change? Let me ask the question, what would be wrong if God did change? Now the Bible says, “For I am the LORD, I change not;” (Mal 3:6). But what if God did change, what would be wrong with that? [answer: He’s perfect why would He change] If He changed would that mean He’s not perfect? Does change itself signify imperfection?  [answer: I’d say no] So you would think He would have to change with the times? Well if He were a man that would certainly be true. [answer: well He would have to change His plans for the world too, if He changed] Well now we are getting into two different things. 

God never said I don’t change things… God doesn’t change. It doesn’t mean He doesn’t change things. He made a change in the law, we read that in Hebrews 10. You had to be a son of Aaron or you couldn’t be a priest. Well we had a change in the law, why was there a change in the law? There had to be a change in the law, why? Because Jesus Christ is our high priest now and He is not a son of Aaron, He is of the tribe of Judah. So there had to be a change in the law, because you couldn’t be a priest unless you were of the line of Aaron. 

So God changes things, from an old covenant to a new covenant. So He has made changes.  But God Himself doesn’t change. If He did then it would show, like John suggested it would show that His first feeling was not as good as His second one. Because if it was, why change?  It’s like the axiom ‘you never change a winning game,’ but you almost always change a losing game. 

If you’re winning at tennis and your strategy to beat your opponent is working. It doesn’t mean you don’t finesse a few things, but you stay with the game plan, it’s working. It’s apparent why it would be changed… you try to improve. 

God does not improve Himself. Now I’m not going to say that He never did, because I have some thoughts about that. But that doesn’t make Him less of a being, to me it makes Him far greater. But I’m not going to cover that until the conference. 

So if God ever changed, whatever He is going from to, in Himself, this is a change in God. It would automatically show that He didn’t know what was the better way to go first. He would be in a sense admitting error, from a better way. It’s just doesn’t fit with a sovereign God. 

A sovereign God can not change Himself, unless He is inadequate and is growing. But  if God is inadequate in any way, then we have to throw out many Scriptures which says God knows all, He knows the end from the beginning, He never lies, God does not make mistakes, God is perfect and all of these different things. 

So a sovereign God can not change. So to answer the title, does a sovereign God ever change? No. 

What about Jesus? Jesus said, “I and My Father are one" (John 10:30). If His Father doesn’t change, do you think Jesus changes? Nope.

Heb 13:8  Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever (for the eons).

Now in the Greek it really does carry the connotation of the same person and the same one.  But it still means basically the same thing. Whatever Christ was yesterday; however He operated, however He thought, whatever He did, whatever His heart and mind and everything was, He is the same person today and He will be the same person tomorrow. 

So does God contradict Himself? 
Does God lie? 
Does God have regrets? 
Does God make mistakes and commit sin? 
Does God not know everything? 
Does God repent of His failures, misfortunes and blunders? 
Was God surprised to learn of evil in His universe? 
Does God feel sorrow / bad for making mankind? 

Now most of Christiandom would answer all of those above by saying, ‘absolutely not, God doesn’t repent of mistakes, He doesn’t sin, He doesn’t any of those things.’ Of course I would have to sneak that last one in on them. The truth of the matter is that they might outwardly deny and say, ‘no God doesn’t do any of those things.’ But in reality they believe He does all of those. When you nail them down on what they actually believe and what they teach, they DO believe all of those. Now they will never put it in those words, but there is more than one way to say something. They would never say that God repents of His sins. Yet they would say that when something doesn’t work out right, He changes it to something else. Now they will say that, and that is the same thing as repenting of your failure and changing it. 

The definition of sin is not to rape little children and cut off their heads, that is not the definition of sin. That is only one ‘form’ of sin. 

Sin means to miss the mark. So very technically, if you are having target practice at a target and you miss the bulls eye, because that’s what you were trying to hit, you sinned. You missed the mark. You didn’t do what you wanted to do, you missed. So any failure, any mistake is a sin. Now it doesn’t have to be a big sin. We all make mistakes, you know. 

If we are peeling an apple and we cut ourselves, that is a sin. Now God is not going to strike you down with lightning out of heaven for that. But it is a sin and you have to suffer the consequences. Sometimes you sin and you don’t suffer a consequence, because you don’t know you sinned. It takes years sometimes to learn that you have sins you didn’t know about. 

So although they would deny everything that I have said there, but if you nail them down on their doctrines they absolutely believe that God repents of His failures and His shortcomings, which are sins. Failures and shortcomings are sins. 

They say, ‘well God doesn’t sin.’ But does He do things that don’t work out the way He wanted them to? They say, ‘yes.’ Well that’s a sin! It’s plain as that. You can play with words and games if you want to, but this is not that difficult. What we are studying today might be difficult, but some of the explanations I hope are not difficult. 


                                UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES

Whenever we’re studying the Scripture we are faced with false definitions, bad translations, contradictions and the theory of ‘free will.’ These are all major road blocks to understanding the Scriptures. 

One of the main reasons most Christians can not understand the Scriptures is because of this doctrine of free moral agency or free will. They don’t understand it, but they absolutely insist that they have it and that God gave it to them. They don’t understand the basics of physics. 

Now I know today they say that there is such a thing as true randomness in physics. I say oh really, what law is that based on? They will say, ‘well there is no law.’ Oh, if there is randomness there has got to be a reason for it, and that reason is the law behind it. I’m not saying that I totally understand it, but there is a lot we don’t understand and until we understand it and then it’s, 'oh okay there it is.' 

I got an email and it is not like this is the first one, I get a lot and then sometimes I say, okay that might be a subject for a Bible study. 
But this guy sent me this email that was really long. It just ran on about all kinds of stuff and there was not one question mark or one sentence that said what, who or when. So I looked over it and it is long and I don’t have time for that. So I wrote back and said, ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t know what your questions are, I’ve read over this three times. Perhaps you can restate it.’ Of course he did. 

Dear Ray,
A couple of questions about your document on prayer on your home page; DID YOU NOT SAY GOD DOES NOT CHANGE HIS MIND? Did God change His mind on some things like the big fish story (he means Jonah and the whale) and the king picking up fifteen years and God repenting. I know the meaning of repent.

Now in his first letter he talked about a woman that proposed some things to him and he didn’t have an answer for her. She brought up my article on prayer, which shows that you can’t get God to change His mind. People think if God answers a pray… you’re living a certain way and aren’t receiving blessings or whatever. Then you pray to God and then that condition changes. If He answers your pray, He changed what He was doing to you or for you to something different. But He changed, that is the idea. You pray to get God to change His mind about how He is treating you. 

I said no, you can only pray in accordance to what God has determined is best for you. But then people say, ‘well why do you pray.’ But of course they don’t understand it. These are spiritual things, and you don’t expect carnal minded people who despise the word of God to understand them. I understand that.

So this emailer says, DID YOU NOT SAY GOD DOES NOT CHANGE HIS MIND? Then he brings up three incidents; Hezekiah gets fifteen extra years to live… Jonah said in forty days He’s going to wipe this city out and didn’t wipe it out, He repented… Then He repented that He made mankind. 

Then he has one other thing here about the disciples falling asleep. He is trying to teach some of the things that I taught and this woman kind of snookered him. Then he felt embarrassed that he didn’t have the answers and he kind of gets huffy with me. So he was trying to tell her, that we would do the same things that everybody would do. But she said, I wouldn’t have. It had came up about when they were in the garden and Christ said watch with Me and pray with me for an hour, and they fell asleep. Then she says to him I wouldn’t have fallen asleep. So then he says, about falling asleep, “the flesh is weak” (Matt 26:41). The person asking the question above said that if she was with the Son of God and He ask her to pray, she would not have gone to sleep, RAY DO YOU REALLY THINK YOU WOULD HAVE GONE TO SLEEP ? 

And the answers is, absolutely! Absolutely! You will never understand the Bible and you will never understand God’s plan and you will never understand who and what you are, until you understand that you are no different than any of those people because of anything that is superior in you. If you say, ‘well if God told me not to eat of the forbidden fruit in the garden Eden, I wouldn’t have eaten it, would you Ray.’ Absolutely I would have. Why? Because I’m a human just like they were. 

Now I’ll admit when it comes to raping little girls and cutting their heads off, I have a problem with that. If they say, ‘Ray if you were born where they are, would you have done that?’ I have to admit absolutely I would. Now it goes against every thing that I believe and stand for, now. Why is that? Because I wasn’t born under those conditions, by those parents, at that point in history, under those circumstances, that’s all. I mean that is a great spiritual lesson of humility. 

When I think of some of the most evil, despicable people that ever lived, I think of Uday and Qusay. Saddam Hussein killed and murdered so many people…  In a movie he gathered all his henchmen together and they all thought they were coming to listen to their Fuhrer.  He is talking to them about the regime and then he said, ‘some of you are not backing me like you should.’  He starts calling out names and they knew what was going to happen.  Some even got up in the middle of the crowd and were saying, ‘oh bless you Hussein of Allah, bless you bless you.’ They got loud and vocal, because they didn’t want him to pick them, because they had no idea who was going to be picked. I don’t know he must have picked a hundred people and took them out and shot them all.

But his sons Uday and Qusay, I mean Saddam could not hold a candle to them. I think it was Uday that Saddam said, ‘my son Uday is immoral.’ Can you believe that. Saddam one of the most evil, despicable person to ever draw breath on this God’s earth, said that his son Uday was immoral.   

[Question: Didn’t they kidnap that college student?] They starved their Dobermans for about three weeks and then let them eat her alive. 
Uday went to a birthday party once because he had a little feud with somebody. He sent men over with machine guns to the party and machine gunned everybody down. He was always trying to come up with new and exciting ways to torture people. He used shredding machines, that you put branches in to make them into little pieces. It’s just unbelievable.

So if you can’t see though, that if Saddam had been your father, when you were three months old and a year old and ten years old and you were raised under him in that family. You would have been Qusay. Yes you would have and if you deny it you don’t understand yourself and you don’t understand human nature and you don’t understand the Bible. It’s just a whole lot you don’t understand, if you can’t see that that is true. 

Christians will say things and they don’t believe it for a second. How many Christians would say, ‘except for the grace of God’ there go I? When they see somebody that is down and out or somebody that lives on the street or is a drug addict and they would say, except for the grace of God there go I. They all would say that is a true saying. But except for the grace of God, that you would be out raping little girls and cutting their heads off. They would say, ‘no no no, Ray come on I probably could have got into drugs or things, but that… no no no.’ 

If you understand that one thing, except for the grace of God, that you could have been any other wicked person that ever lived or the most wicked person that ever lived. YOU! I don’t mean somebody like you, I mean you, me, we would have been them, except for the grace of God. God frames evil, so it is held in, so it doesn’t just go totally rampant or we would have already been in total anarchy. But we are getting close though. 

So this emailer says, ‘DID YOU NOT SAY GOD DOES NOT CHANGE?' Well what about the big fish story…

I started off here with the word ‘woe.’ I want to show here that there are all kinds of words in the Scriptures… well what do you do? Do you go to the dictionary and see what they mean or to Strong’s Hebrew lexicon. Should you get another Greek or Hebrew lexicon from a college library. So one is like a secular scholar telling you what these words mean and one is just an English dictionary of how the words have been translated into English. Or we go to somebody like Dr. Strong who has a whole bunch of doctorate degrees behind his name, a brilliant man, and accept what he says these Hebrew words mean. 

[Kat]

Now here is something else to consider.  When you look up a word, like woe, here is what it is and I hope we can learn something from this.  You look it up and he says;

Woe - Strong’s #188 “oy, probably from H183 [’wish, desire, lust, longing] (in the sense of crying out after); lamentation [lament, grieve, sorrow]; also interjectionally, Oh! - alas, woe.”  
Greek word for woe #3759, “grief… alas.”  

What do you do with a word like that?  Does it mean lamentation and grief or does it mean alas or oh - ‘oh, that I had got there sooner.’  I mean there is a big diversity in those two elements, isn’t it.  Saying alas or woe, which is grief, lamentation, destruction or whatever.  Well which is it?  You say, ‘well it’s the context.’  That is true it is context, but you can’t always tell by context.  

It is interesting to me, the word in the Hebrew for woe is ‘oy’ defined in extremely MILD terms: Lamentation - expressing, grief, sorrow, mourning, regret, but it can also be translated ‘oh.’  But ‘oy’ is translated ‘oh’ zero times, it’s never translated that.  You will find the word ‘oh’ either singular with the ‘o’ or ‘oa,’ but never from this word.
‘Oh’ is said to mean lamentation, that’s what it says in Strong’s, but it is never translated lamentation.  Zero times, it’s never translated ’lamentation’ in the Old Testament.

Strong’s says ‘oy’ means ‘alas,’ well now there is one in Num. 24:23 it does says alas. But it means woe as the Concordant has it, and it should be translated woe.  So really it’s not translated alas either.

The Greek ‘ouai’ is translated ‘woe’ 35 times, it’s translated ‘grief’ zero times.
‘Alas’ in Rev. 18:10, 16, 19, in those three verses.  But in all three it should be “woe.”

Rev 18:10  Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come.

It should be “woe, woe that great city…” not “alas, alas.”

So here we are given the definition of a word in the Hebrew and in the Greek by Strong’s Concordance and here’s what it means.  But you can’t find one word translated from that the way he says it is translated, not one.  You get the feeling that this word ‘oy’ is not that bad of a thing.  So that’s why I put in here Num. 21.

Num 21:29  Woe to thee, Moab! you art undone…

Perish, destroy, make void of, no way to flee. That is the definition of the word.  But what category is woe, I thought it was ‘oh’ or ‘alas’?  No, this is pretty serious stuff in this verse.

v. 29 …O people of Chemosh: he hath given his sons that escaped, and his daughters, into captivity unto Sihon king of the Amorites.
v. 30  We have shot at them; Heshbon is perished even unto Dibon, and we have laid them waste even unto Nophah, which reacheth unto Medeba.

Now this is strong powerful destruction.  But if you read the definition of woe you don’t get such a definition.  You have to read how the word is used and then you will say, ‘oh this is a little stronger.’  Not that it doesn’t have places where it is more mild, but I’m saying this word can mean the very worse of everything.

Notice in Isaiah 3, here we have what God means by woe in a very negative sense.

Isa 3:11  Woe unto the wicked! it shall be ill with him…

Now “ill” sounds like a somewhat moderate word.  You know like, ‘where is your wife today?’  ‘Oh she is ill.’  You’re not saying she is dying of some horrible disease, no she is just ‘ill.’  That’s kind of mild isn‘t it.  But what does ill really mean in this verse?  Ill comes from the word ‘ra,’ does that ring a bell with anybody?  

Ra what does that word mean?  Ra - evil.  It mean to smash and pulverize.  Now it has no moral bias, it just means to smash and pulverize.  It means bad, this is what the word he translated from ‘ra’ means.

Strong’s:  ill - ra, bad or evil; adversity, affliction, bad, calamity, +displease (-ure), distress, evil…exceedingly, great, grief, harm, heavy, hurt, ill, mischief, misery, naught (-ty), noisome, sad, (-ly), sore, sorrow, trouble, vex, wickly (-ly, -ness, one), worse (-st), wretchedness, wrong.

Wow, I thought it was just going to be ‘ill’ with them.  But wow, what that word can mean.

But if you look at the dictionary for woe, it won’t give you Strong’s definition of woe.  It will give you God’s definition of woe, when He says it will be ill with you.  So Strong’s definition of woe was;

Woe  H188   'ôy - crying out; lamentation; Oh! - alas, woe.

But God says, their ‘woe’ is going to be ‘ill.’  So ill is what their ‘woe’ is and now I will see if my dictionary sounds like Strong’s definition or God’s definition.

American Heritage College Dictionary:  woe, deep distress, misery, grief, misfortune, calamity, sorrow, dismay, deplorable, bad, wretched.

Wow, well that sounds like the definition that God gives for ra - evil, doesn’t it.  It doesn’t sound like Strong’s definition of woe at all.  Now I’m just trying to show you this because when you study the Scriptures and you read a word, sometimes you have a preconceived idea, which may be totally wrong or you go to Strong’s or one of these books and you look up the definitions and you say, ‘now I know what it means.’  Maybe you don’t.  

That’s why when I really want to study a subject, I mean if that word appears 158 times in the Bible, thank God for E-Sword, because I’ll click on every one.  I’ll do two things;  I see how it is used in a sentence, in context and I’ll see if it is the same word.  It may be translated from all different words and then you’ve got to take that into consideration.  That’s one area where a concordant is really good.

They tried to be unbiased when they translated the Scriptures.  So they came up with an equivalent of every Hebrew or Greek word.  In other words they studied it and examined it in every way and found the very closest English equivalent to that word.  Now sometimes because of idioms and other things you can’t go with that, but a lot of times you can.  But then they would translate it to that and they would say, ‘well yea we think…’ but that’s your prejudice.  That is the King James Bible talking, you see.  No, they’ve already determined that word means this, so they would translate it to that.  Now sometimes it comes out a little awkward, but it’s at least considerably more accurate.  

So why does it seem like Dr. Strong watered down a word like ‘woe’?  It does seem like to me he waters it down.  

Well we have Jesus Christ and He used the word ‘woe.’ Where and how did He use the word woe?  Well in Matt. 23, in one chapter he uses it eight times.  Against who?  The reverends, the pastors, the clergy, the men of the cloth, the leaders in God’s church!  “WOE unto you.”  Do you think He was saying, ‘Oh, you Scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites.  Oh, you generation of snakes.’  No, He meant WOE.  

How do we know He meant woe?  God shows when He put the woe on Moab or whatever that it was going to be “ill.”  Ill comes from ‘ra’ and means misery, destruction and all of these things.  ‘But you know Jesus was a mild mannered man, so He surely didn’t mean it that way, did He?’  I will give His parting words here to the Scribes, because it is eight times He says to them.

Mat 23:13  But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.
v. 14  Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation.
v. 15  Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.
v. 16  Woe unto you, ye blind guides, which say, Whosoever shall swear by the temple, it is nothing; but whosoever shall swear by the gold of the temple, he is a debtor!
v. 17  Ye fools and blind…
v. 19  Ye fools and blind…
v. 23  Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!
v. 24  Ye blind guides…
v. 25   Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!
v. 26  Thou blind Pharisee…
v. 27  Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!
v. 29  Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!
v. 33  Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers…

So what did He mean by woe?  Did He mean destruction, desolation, pain, misery?  I think so.  Let’s read this verse in Matt. 23... He’s has gone through all these things, you “whited sepulchers,” you “generation of vipers”…

Mat 23:38  Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.

So I think we know how Jesus Christ uses that word, He didn’t mean oh, alas or some mild lamentation.


               STRONG’S #166 - AIONIOS:  ETERNAL / EVERLASTING

We’re going to take up aionios.  The reason I’m doing this is I want to come down to this most important thing… why did God repent of making mankind?  All of this is going to help us understand that.

Aionios is translated in most all the King James family of Bibles as eternal or everlasting or ever more.  You know what I mean by King James family of Bibles?  Any Bible that was translated from the same Textus Receptus or whatever.  Scriptures that are somewhat perverted, but they think is holy holy holy.  So there are Bibles that pass on all these errors about eternal, ever more and everlasting which of course is not a Scriptural word at all.  

So we learned that Strong’s Greek dictionary defines aionios as perpetual (also used of past time, or past and future as well): - eternal, forever, everlasting, world (began).  

Now if you look up that word in Wigram’s concordance using Strong’s numbered words, it will show you every place that the adjective aionios appears and you will read eternal, evermore, everlasting, eternal, eternal, eternal, evermore, everlasting, eternal, eternal, etc… until you come down near the end and out of all those dozens and dozens of times it’s eternal, evermore and everlasting you find two Scriptures where they translate it “world began.”  Where did they get that?  

Why would the noun ‘aion’ which means an age, but by extension it means perpetuity, always, forever, for ever and ever, eternal?  You know it’s just crazy.  

But the first definition is usually the most solid definition and it means an age.  Now if the noun means an age, how can the adjective mean eternity?   Well they say, ‘it’s just one of those things.’  Since when does an hour which means 60 minutes, but if you were to work hourly which is an adjective…

I had somebody write me and say, ‘Ray where did you go to school?  Hourly is an adverb.’  
Check your dictionary, you’ve got an ‘ly’ and adverbs end in ‘ly’ right… strongly, rightly, hopefully?  Wrong, hourly can be used as an adjective.  

But the point is if an hour is 60 minutes, does hourly mean 60 days?  Or 60 years?  Or worse yet eternity?  It’s bizarre, yet all great theologians and scholars on the Bible… well most all except a couple dozen that I know of and some of them go back a couple hundred years.  You can’t turn an adverb into something that means totally the opposite of the noun that it came from, but they do it.  They turn this word age into eternity.  But for the two places in II Timothy 1:9 and Titus 1.

Titus 1:2  In hope of eternal life (Gk: #166 aionios)…

Now that makes sense if anybody read that in English.  I mean that’s a complete sentence and complete thought, you can understand what that is saying.  There is only one problem with it, the Greek Scripture from which that is translated says no such thing.  The word “eternal” is aionios the adjective of the noun aion.  Aionios means pertaining to the aions - the ages, it doesn’t mean eternity, it means pertaining to.  If you work for a hourly wage you work according to a wage that’s based on hours, not centuries.

v.2 …which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began (#166 aionios);

“World began” those last two, guess what those two words are translated from?  The same word, ‘aionios.’  You look it up where the numbers are after each word in Strong’s or E-Sword, “eternal” - aionios, “world began” - aionios.  What in the world does world began and aionios have in common?  Well they are both wrong, the first one “eternal,” is not eternal, it should be eonian, pertaining to the age, age lasting or eonian.  But the second one “world began,”  why did they translate aionios as world began?  

Well there is a word that comes before that which just throws a monkey wrench into all their pagan philosophy and theology.  It’s the word ‘before.’  Now they could have just taken it out like they did the next word, which was ‘times.’  You get a Greek interlinear and you will see that it says ‘before times.’  They took the word ‘times’ out completely.  I guess they thought if they took too many words out, somebody might get suspicious.  So they left the word ‘before’ in and they took the word ‘times’ out completely.  They didn’t translate that word, it is not there, they took it out.  

Because it says before, how can they possibly translate this consistent with their pagan doctrines?  How can they say that God promised eternal life before eternity?  The only reason that Strong translates this in his definition, that aionios can mean world began, is because two times in the King James Bible they had to translate it that way.  It would have exposed their pagan doctrines of eternal torment and all of these things or that wherever the word aionios is found it means eternal, it does not.  But they had to, because they couldn’t say that God promised eternal life before eternity.  That would be a flat out stupid contradiction, nobody would be that stupid… oh yea.  This is amazing.

The American Standard Version at least translate all the words.  They tried to stick in eternity anyway and they came up with this.

Titus 1:2  in hope of eternal life, which God, who cannot lie, promised before times eternal;

What pray tell is that?  “Before times eternal” that is nonsense.  That’s just total poppycock, before times eternal, it should be eonian times.  Both words should be eonian.

Concordant, Rotterham and Young translate all words correctly: “in the promise of eonian life, which God promised before eonian times.”  The word ‘times’ is in there.

So why do we find such a stupid definition as aionios means world began?  Because there are two Scriptures out of a hundred where they absolutely could not pervert the Scriptures.  They couldn’t do it, so they just said, ‘well it had to mean something like the sun shines or it means he took a walk or it means he had breakfast.’  So it was just whatever you want it to mean, they just make it up.  

Remember if you read my paper on ‘The Origin of  Everlasting Torment,’ I went into this thing with soul.  I showed where Dr. Strong so deceitfully tries to sneak in there the immortal soul.  Now he throws a little doctrine right in the middle of the definition of a word and I exposed it.  If you go back and read that, you will find it.


                DOES GOD CHANGE HIS MIND, LIE, OR HAVE REGRETS?

Mal 3:6  For I am the LORD, I change not…

Now I want to throw some more things in here.  Because sometimes you read a verse like that and that is all you see.  You can read that verse for fifty years and you can say, ‘is there a verse in the Bible that says “I change not”?  Well if you are real stupid you will say, ‘yep, Malachi 3, I know where that is.’  Well what does the rest of that verse say?  ‘What do you mean the rest of that verse?’  What does it say after that?  ‘I don’t know.’  Well let’s read it.  

Mal 3:6  For I am the LORD, I change not, therefore you sons of Jacob are not consumed.  (Is God’s statement true? Does he at times change?)
v. 7  Even from the days of your fathers ye are gone away from mine ordinances, and have not kept them.  Return unto me, and I will return unto you, said the LORD of hosts. But you said, Wherein shall we return?

Does anybody see a problem with those words?  God just said “I change not.”  Now read the rest of the verse and do you see a problem with that?  [answer: He says if you do this, then I will change]  He just said that He doesn’t change, but then He says if you will do this then I will change?  Is that a contradiction?  

That is why this Bible study today is very important.  I’m not going to give you all the answers to the Bible, because I don’t have them.  But I want us to start thinking.  Things are not as elementary as first and second grade.  They are more difficult conceptions in the Scriptures and in life that we do need to consider.

Doesn’t “return unto Me, and I will return unto you,” suggest that God really DOES CHANGE?  Does not verse 7 contradict verse 6, where He says, “I change not“?

What’s the answer?  God knows if they will or they won’t.  He already knows that.  So His response does not CHANGE.  Do you see it now?  His response will never change.

You say, ‘well if they do this then He will have to do this, but if they do that then He will have to do that, which is a change from what He would have done.  He will have to change from the way He was, He will have to change and do this over here.’  
Even there I could argue that no He is only changing the condition among men.  God Himself is not changing.  But since this is found with the very words “For I am the Lord, I change not,” the answer is, there is no change.  There is no change that is going to take place here, because there is only one outcome to this.  God already knows the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10).  He knows the end from the beginning.

[Kat]

             
                                         HEZEKIAH

Since this guy mentioned Hezekiah in the email, I want to mention it here. So he says, ‘Well what about Hezekiah. He changed His mind there.' He said he was going to die and then he said okay I change My mind you’re not going to die, I’m going to give you fifteen more years. Well if you state it that way just like I did here, then it sounds like God changed His mind. Let’s read it, if all else fails let’s read it.

2 Kings 20:1  In those days was Hezekiah sick unto death. And the prophet Isaiah the son of Amoz came to him, and said unto him, Thus said the LORD, Set thine house in order; for thou shall die, and not live.
v. 2  Then he turned his face to the wall, and prayed unto the LORD, 

Now notice that He didn’t set any conditions here. But again the sum of God word is true.  What did we read in Malachi? “Return unto me and I will return unto you.” But that sounds like that could be a contradiction of ‘God doesn’t change.’ God knew whether they would return unto Him, because He knows the end form the beginning. Can’t you see how damnable these doctrines are? 

If you say you can change the mind of God, then you are saying that God doesn’t know what he’s doing. He doesn’t know how to do it right the first time and there are all kinds of options open and sometimes the worse ones happen rather than the best ones. Because man and his free will doesn’t do what would bring about a better solution to man’s problems and all that.  It’s all nonsense. He already knows the end from the beginning. “But who believes our report” like Isaiah says. Who believes the word of God? Well not many.

2 Kings 20:3  I beseech thee, O LORD, remember now how I have walked before thee in truth and with a perfect heart, and have done that which is good in Your sight.  And Hezekiah wept sore.
v. 4  And it came to pass, before Isaiah was gone out into the middle court, that the word of the LORD came to him, saying,
v. 5  Turn again, and tell Hezekiah the captain of My people, Thus saith the LORD, the God of David thy father, I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears: behold, I will heal thee: on the third day thou shall go up unto the house of the LORD.
v. 6  And I will add unto thy days fifteen years;

Here’s what we fail to understand, we don’t believe that the sum of God’s word is Truth like it says in the Psalms.

Psa 119:160 The sum of Your word is truth…

We don’t believe the Scripture that says God knows the end from the beginning.

Isa 46:10  declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done; saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure;

We don’t believe it when it says, God does not change.

Mal 3:6  For I am the LORD, I change not;

We don’t believe it when it says, God is not a man that He should lie nor repent.

Num 23:19  God is not a man, that He should lie;  neither the son of man, that He should repent:

We don’t believe any of those Scriptures, that’s why we come up with things like, ‘well God told him he was going to die, but then he prayed to Him and God just said okay I change My mind and in fact I’ll give you 15 more years. God never changed His mind! He knew that Hezekiah would pray to Him and He knew that He would then tell him I’ll give you fifteen more years. He already knew that, He didn’t change His mind, He knew that this is the only way that this scenario is going. Because He knows the end from the beginning. From the beginnning He already knows what the end is. He already knows that Hezekiah is going to fall on his face and beg for forgiveness from Him and then He will say okay. He didn’t change His mind. 


                       DID MOSES CONVINCE GOD TO “CHANGE”?

So we went through what it says in Malachi, and answered where it says to return unto Me and I’ll return unto you. There is not two options, either this or either that, if you do this I’ll change My mind. No, He already knows which way it is going before it goes there.

So did Moses convince God to change?

Exo 32:10  Now therefore let Me alone (this is God speaking to Moses), that My wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them: and I will make of you a great nation.
V. 11  And Moses besought the LORD his God, and said, LORD, why doth Your wrath wax hot against Your people, which You hast brought forth out of the land of Egypt with great power, and with a mighty hand?
V. 12  Wherefore should the Egyptians speak, and say, For mischief did He bring them out, to slay them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth? Turn from Your fierce wrath, and repent of this evil against Your people.
V. 13  Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, Your servants, to whom You swore by Your own self, and said unto them, I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have spoken of will I give unto your seed, and they shall inherit it forever.
V. 14  And the LORD repented of the evil which He thought to do unto His people.

So Moses says to God, ‘You can’t do that Lord. You brought them out of Egypt and everybody sees what You did. You set them free and now You are going to be there God. But now they are going to mock and say He delivered them out of Egypt and now He can’t protect them and He destroyed them. You can’t do that, I know they are a mess and they worshipped the calf and all this, but have mercy.’ 

So God says, okay V. 14 “And the LORD repented of the evil which He thought to do unto His people.” Well there it is. Does God repent? They say, ‘absolutely that is what it says, can’t you read, “the Lord repented”.’ The problem I have with that, I’m not sure that’s the word that should be used there. 

Are we not all familiar with the fact that many words have more than one definition?  Sometimes they are opposing definitions and it is used according to the context. So what possesses translators to think that they can translate a verse that will make God out to be a contradiction and a liar? See that is my question.

Now Christians like the idea that God repents and admits His error and admits His mistakes.  They like that, why? Because every notch that they can bring God down, it brings them up. You don’t know how desperately that people want to be on a par with God, not that they know that they can live forever without His help, but at least they can have His mental capacity. 

(KJV) Exo 32:14  And the LORD repented of the evil which He thought to do unto His people.

Let’s notice how the Concordant Version translates this.
You know they have done a lot of studies on these words. They are not total idiots and they did use the original manuscripts. They didn’t get their ideas from the Vulgate.

(CLV) Exo 32:14 So Yahweh showed mercy concerning the evil which He spoke of doing to His people.

Notice the King James “evil He thought.” That’s wrong. If you look up that word for “thought” it means to speak, not to think. Now why is that important? Because if this was something that God thought, then we would have a little bit of a problem. Is this what He really thinks in His heart? This is NOT what He was thinking in His heart, this is what He “spoke.” He spoke it. There is a difference in speaking it and knowing it in your heart. So we can’t use “which He thought to do,” no, this is what He spoke of doing to His people. 

You say, ‘but He is still changing His mind, isn’t He?’ v 1.  “…let Me alone, that My wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them: and I will make of you a great nation.”  Because Moses’ argument was, ‘it will look like You are a failure God, that You went through all this trouble and You rose up…’ 

Paul said the Pharaoh was raised up for the express purpose of defying God. So that he could go against God and God would go against him and see who was the victor, after ten plagues.  It was God and the whole world saw that. 

Moses says, ‘now they will laugh.’ So God says, ‘okay I’ll make a great nation out of you Moses.’ See He had already covered the bases there. He was saying, ‘We won’t totally leave off, we will just start over, you know.’ 

Where the King James says “the Lord repented” the Concordant has it “Yahweh showed mercy.” Because the word translated “repented” also means to show pity, to be sorrowed or to show remorse, to show comfort and so on. 

But there is a condition here. You say, ‘but didn’t God lie, He said I’ll destroy them.’ Well He didn’t actually say I will destroy them, He said “so that I may.” He was saying just let Me work up My anger here, until He gets to the point where He will say, ‘okay that’s it’ and then He will kill them. He didn’t say, ‘I absolutely will,’ He said, “leave Me alone” and then I’ll get really angry and then I’ll do it.

God said to Moses “let Me alone.” How many times have I told you that you have got to pay attention to all the words. Pay attention to ALL the words.  He said “let Me alone” and then I will get angry and then I’ll do it. Did Moses let Him alone? No he didn’t. So God can’t say He would do what He would do if Moses left Him along, because Moses didn’t leave Him alone. Moses came to Israel’s defense. He didn’t say alright God if that’s the way you see it, let’s get it over with, oh no.  He said, ‘no God, please no, some of them are my relatives, my brother Aaron, you know.’ He came to their defense. 

Do you believe it when the Bible says the sum of My word is truth (Psalms 119:160)?   
Do you believe God when He says I do not lie (Titus 1:2)? 
Do you believe God when He says He doesn’t change (Mal. 3:6)? 
Do you believe God when He says He doesn’t repent (Num. 23:19)? 

Well it says right there that “He repented.” I’m saying it is the wrong word. I know what Greek word was used ‘nacham,’ it means to show mercy or pity and that’s the way Concordance  translated it. “So Yahweh showed mercy,” because Moses came to the defense and didn’t leave God alone. But God knows the end from the beginning. Do you believe that verse He knows the end from the beginning? He knew Moses was going to do that, so He never changed His mind.


                                DOES GOD HIMSELF DECEIVE?
                                       
One other thought in relation to this, doesn’t God sometimes use trickery or deceit? Doesn’t He sometimes blind people so that they can’t see the truth? All the time. But that has nothing to do with the fact that He doesn’t change and that He doesn’t repent or admit that He made mistakes or tried to do it a better way. It has nothing to do with any of that. 

Yes He does that. Now that’s something again that is absolutely a Biblical truth. Things that aren’t true, it seems that the church wants to believe. But the things that are absolutely true, they don’t want to believe. They say, ‘God would never deceive people on purpose.’ Of course He does. 

Matt 13:10  And the disciples came and said to Him, "Why do You speak to them in parables?"
Mat 13:14  And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive:
Mat 13:15  For this people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.

[Question: why does He do that?] Because He has a purpose and that would take another whole Bible study to cover that. 

God Himself never lies, but let’s go a little further than that. Does He use those that do lie?  Absolutely. Satan is a liar and the father of it. He uses Satan. I think on four occasions in the Old Testament we have lying spirits. On one occasion a lying spirit said;

2 Ch 18:21  And he said, I will go out, and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets…

He said I’ll go and lie to them and pretend to be a prophet.

v. 21 …And the LORD said… go out, and do so.

He said do it, lie to them. But God doesn’t lie. Does He use lying spirits? Yes. Does God Himself deceive? 

2 Thess 2:10  …because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.

They couldn’t receive the love of the truth. How could anybody receive the love of the truth unless God gives it to you? How can any come to Christ except God drags them? How can any choose Christ, He says you don’t choose Me, I choose you. All of these Scriptures are true. You can’t just say, ‘well I don’t believe that.’ Well then you don’t believe the Scriptures, I understand.

v. 11  And for this cause…

Why? Because they didn’t have a love for the truth, but they couldn’t have a love for the truth. And God says, I know that. Christ says they will hear these parables, but they won’t know what I’m talking about, because if they did, they would see their sins they would repent and I would heal them. Well isn’t that what you want them to do Jesus? No! Here is another example of the answer. 

v. 11  …God shall send them strong delusion (That Greek word means falsehood, deceit), that they should believe a lie:

There it is. You say, ‘God doesn’t do that.’ Yes He does. But He doesn’t change and He doesn’t lie. We have to get these things straight. But why would He use deceit? There is a great purpose for it. He doesn’t make people be deceived, He sends a strong delusion and they delude themselves. 

God never made a man lust after a woman, never. He just made their psyche and their makeup, so that they really like the curves of a female body. Then when men go to the sea shore… all by themselves, they don’t need any help from God at all or anybody saying, ‘do it, do it, lust after that girl in a bikini over there, do it.’ It’s like falling off a log, it’s easy. Unless God trains you not to do that and it’s hard, because it’s a spiritual warfare.

In case somebody says, ‘I don’t like that God of the Old Testament. I like the Jesus of the New Testament.’ 

John 10:30  I and My Father are one.

If you don’t like the God of the Old Testament, you don’t like Christ either. It is amazing what you learn when you look at all the words. 

Let’s turn to Luke. I like this one in Luke, people don’t catch this one. They just don’t catch it, they read it and they never catch it. I’m not saying I’m the only one that caught this, but I’m the only one I ever knew that caught this. I’m sure someone else must have. 

Okay this in Luke is where after the resurrection and these two men that were disciples of Christ were going to Emmaus. Because they thought the jig was up and somebody had stole His body or something. 

So Christ comes along and says ‘why are you so downcast?’ They said ‘haven’t you heard?’ He said, ‘heard what?’ They said, ‘we believe that this guy was the Messiah and they killed Him and besides all that today is the third day and the jig is up, it all over.’ So then He says to them;

Luke 24:27  And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.
v. 28  And they drew nigh unto the village, whither they went: and He (Jesus) made as though He would have gone further.
v. 29  But they constrained Him, saying, Abide with us: for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent. And He went in to tarry with them.

Of course they wanted to learn more about the Scriptures too and they thought this guy is amazing. But did you catch that? “He made as though He would have gone further.” Did Jesus Christ intend on going further that night? No. Did He pretend that He was going to keep going on down the road? Yes. Is that a little deceitful? Yes. Was it a good thing? Yes. 

They said, ‘Where are you going?’ He said, ‘On down the road here.’ And they, ‘no no it’s late, come on in with us and we will get something to eat and chew the rag for a while,’ and so on.  And He said, ‘Oh, okay.’ He knew that they would say that. He had got them so excided about the Scriptures, He knew they weren’t just going to say, ‘Oh okay good bye, see ya, that was interesting.’ They wanted more and He knew that. But He wanted them to desire and say, ‘no no we want to hear more come on in.’ So He pretended, He made like He was going further.


                          DOES GOD “REGRET” MAKING HUMANITY?

Gen 6:6-7  And it repented (Heb. #5162) the LORD that He had made man on the earth, and it grieved Him at His heart... for it repents Me that I have made them.

So the Lord repents. But we read in Numbers 23...

Num 23:19  God is not a man, that He should lie; neither the son of man, that He should repent (Heb. #5162): hath He said, and shall He not do it? or hath He spoken, and shall He not make it good?

This is the same Hebrew word. Now I’ll admit this is getting into some deeper things. I don’t know, you could check the internet and start looking for some theologians to explain this, but I don’t know where you will find one. There may be, but I don’t find where any of them understand any of these difficult Scriptures, if they are an orthodox Christian. Why? Because the Scriptures sooner or later go against every doctrine of Christiandom, every one, every major doctrine. There is no doctrine in Christianity that is Scriptural, not one. Well not a major doctrine, I don’t mean some little phrase like, ‘do you believe that Christ was a Jew, don’t you?’ Well yes, but that is not like a major doctrine, that’s just a historical fact. 

But they still revert back to, ‘well Ray you believe that Christ died for our sins, don’t you.’ I say well yes of course I do, but you don’t. ‘What do you mean I don’t?’ You don’t believe Christ died for your sins, do you? They will say, ‘well yes of course I do.’ I say wait a minute, you are an orthodox Christian and you are telling me that you believe that Christ died for your sins? ‘Yes absolutely.’ You believe He D-I-E-D for your sins? ‘Yes!’ Do you mean when Christ died on the cross, you believe that He was DEAD? ‘Oh no, I didn’t say that Ray. No, I didn’t say that He was dead.’ See, I know. 

I know what they believe and I know what the Scriptures say and they contradict on every doctrine. I said, ‘I thought so.’ You don’t even believe that Jesus was even dead. ‘Well His body died Ray.’ So you think that the Savior of the world was not Jesus Christ, but you think the Savior of the world is a cadaver? You see when you put it plain to them, they don’t like it.  But that’s the truth. They think the Savior of the world is a cadaver. No, Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world. Jesus Christ died for the sins of the world. Jesus Christ was dead in the tomb. They put Jesus Christ in the tomb. They will say, ‘no they put the body in there.’ There is a verse that says they put Jesus Christ in the tomb.
 
John 19:42  There laid they Jesus therefore because of the Jews' preparation day; for the sepulcher was nigh at hand.

Now that’s true Scripture. Do the Christian believe that? Of course not. When HE died was HE in the tomb? They say, ‘no.’ He was down in hell preaching to some people in hell… He was in paradise with some thief… He was anywhere but where He was suppose to be, dead. It’s amazing, when you start looking at this, it just blows your mind.

[Kat]

Does the phrase “God repented” in Gen. 6:6 contradict the phrase “He is not a man that He should repent,” in Num. 23:19?  Well what saith thou, what do you think?  Is that a contradiction?  He repented and He doesn’t repent, is that a contradiction?  Absolutely it’s a contradiction.  

A contradiction can not be true.  A contradiction is stating two things that can not harmonize.  Like the paper was white and the paper was black.  It could have had black on the white, but if the paper was white then the paper was not also black.  That’s a contradiction.

If God repented, but the Scriptures say He doesn’t repent, that’s a contradiction.  How are we going to solve this?  [answer: is it the wrong word?]  Well at least you can’t use the same word twice.  If you say it is this and it isn’t this, then you can’t use the same word. Could the word be used in one place or the other?  No I don’t think so, because this word has more than one meaning.  Instead of saying repenting the Concordant version has…

Gen 6:6 And regretting is Yahweh Elohim that He made humanity on the earth…  (CLV)

Num 23:19 El is not a man that He should lie.  Nor a son of humanity that He should feel regret…  (CLV)

So they changed the word repent to “regret.”  But one verse says He regretted and the other one says He doesn’t regret.  So you still have a contradiction.  Even with Concordant, as good as they are, I still find they have problems sometimes.

That same statement is repeated in I Samuel 15.

1Sam 15:29  And also the Strength of Israel will not lie nor repent: for He is not a man, that He should repent.


         GOD KNEW MAN WOULD DO THE SAME THING ALL OVER AGAIN:

So why is He regretting that He didn’t wipe them out?  Is that going to solve the problem?  Well God says okay they’re all wicked and evil continually (Gen 6:5).  The thought of their imagination is nothing but bad all the time, I’ll just wipe them out.  I’ll start with Noah and your sons and wives will start a new world.  But will that solve the problem?  No.  Does God know the end from the beginning?  Yes.  Did He know that His Son would prophesy one day by saying…

Mat 24:37  But as the days of Noah were, SO shall also the coming of the Son of man be.

As bad as it was back then?  He said “So shall” it be.  It’s going to be like that again.  So did God solve His problem here by repenting and saying now I’ll do this?  Now you are adding insult to injury.  Not only did He change His mind about making humanity, then He says I’ll wipe them out and we find out it didn’t help, the human race will turn out the same way they were back then.

If you don’t believe the Scriptures and you start following these human traditions, you just get all kinds of problems.  That’s why people write me emails like that.  ‘RAY CAN’T YOU SEE GOD CHANGES HIS MIND, CAN’T YOU SEE IT!’  

Unfortunately this word repent or regret, even sorry has come to mean that something is not the way you wanted it to be.  Now you’re sorry, now you regret whatever it was.  Now you repent, you change your mind about the whole thing.  But God doesn’t change His mind, God doesn’t repent.  Well what is this talking about here then?  

“Regretting is Yahweh Elohim that He made the human race” and it repented the Lord that He made them.  It grieved Him in His heart or it repented Him that He made them.  (Gen. 6:6)

Well there is more going on here than meets the eye.  If I ask everybody in here to close your Bible and tell me basically what is God doing here in this verse?  What does He say He’s going to do?  He's showing anger towards the human race… what is He doing?
  
[answer: Because He wants to destroy all of mankind]  Why?  [Because they think evil all the time]  Anyone else?  [Because he’s going to repent]  Yes, it says He repents and the reason is because man is evil and He is going to destroy them.  [He's going to change the world]  Well yes, but it is going to degenerate mighty fast again.  Because it wasn’t long after the flood that they were building the tower of Babel.  But there is more in this verse.  There is a problem and God is going to wipe out humanity except for Noah and his family, what else?  

See most people read the Scripture and they don’t pay attention to the words, that’s why I say that.  PAY ATTENTION TO THE ALL WORDS.  There is a whole lot more going on in all these Scriptures, all of them!  We learn certain key phrase from Scriptures and we can read that Scripture a thousand times and all we see is that key phrase that we were taught as children, but we never see the rest.  

So He is going to destroy mankind… let’s read it for the first time.  Now I’m not going into this today, because I don’t have time to explain it all and I don’t have a full explanation, only a partial answer to it.

Gen 6:6  And it repented the LORD that He had made man on the earth, and it grieved Him at His heart.
v. 7  And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repents Me that I have made them.

What?  Why would He repent of making animals?  See you never saw that before, did you?  He says, ‘I’m not only going to kill mankind, I’m going to kill the animals.  I’m going to repent of ever making them.’  Look at my little Tabby, He says He’s going to repent of making my little Tabby, that wicked evil Tabby?  

There is always a lot more going on in the Scriptures.  That’s why sometimes people learn two or three truths and they confront their minister and they think they are going to back him into a corner and make a fool out of him.  But they always gets made a fool out of themselves.  

There is a lot more going on in the Scriptures, but we don’t see it.  Wait until I go through Genesis 1 at the conference, there is more going on there than you might realize.  But you have got to look at all the words.  Because didn’t you notice this and then did you notice this and did you notice this.  We have this this this and this, six times, did you notice it and you say, ‘no I never noticed that.’

So people have a feeling about these words, repent means… like we are suppose to repent.  That means to change your mind and change your heart, turn around and go the other way.  Make a big change in your life.  God repents too?  So I guess He does all of that, repents of all His evil and all His sins and all this stuff?  Then He is going to change His life and go a different direction?  You will say, ‘No God doesn’t do that.’  Well you think He repents, so what do you think God does when He repents?  

It’s like this guy from the email says, He feels sorry, He regrets the fact that He ever made them.  He is saying in effect I wish I had not made them, I regret it.  Is that what He is saying?  And is this then making a liar out of God?  He does repent, so He’s just like a man.  He screws up, He does something that doesn’t turn out right and He repents of it just like a man?

I heard John Hagee say once… he was talking about the garden of Eden, Adam and Eve and he said, ‘God never intended (that’s the word he used) for them to sin or disobey.’  Oh really and do you think God lies?  Do you think God never knows the end from the beginning?  Do you think God changes?  That He had one plan for them, but after they disobeyed then He went to plan B, is that what you think about God?  You blaspheme!  You don’t love God, you don’t have respect for God, you despise the word of God.

God says He knew that they would sin, from the beginning He knew that (Isa. 46:10).  Hagee says God never intended that such a thing would happen.  Lying false deceiving hypocrites.

Now the definition of  ‘nacham,’ that’s the word translated perish.        
Strong’s #5162 nacham means to sigh, that is breathe strongly; by implication to be sorry, that is…  What is?  Sorry is.  What he is saying is, here’s what we mean by saying what it means to be sorry, do you follow?  Here’s what we mean by saying sorry, that is… (in a favorable sense) to pity or console.  That how it is used in a favorable sense.  Comfort (self), ease (one’s self), repent (-er, -ing, self)  

Can this word repent be used in a favorable sense so that we can apply it to God?  What do you think?  Yes.  Now there is the definition and I contended that at least most times the first statements defining a word are the most profound or the most used and so on.  Then they bring on A B C D and other ways that it is used in different ways, but there is the main meaning right up front.

Did you notice the words, “to be sorry, that is, (in a FAVORABLE sense) to pity, console… comfort?”  

Here is something that amazed me when I did the research on this the last couple of days.  This word for nacham appears about 110 and it is translated to repent 37 times.  Now I know that the future, infinitive tense and the participial are ways the words are used, but I’m going to shorten this down.  I don’t understand all of that either, I’m starting to learn some of it.  It’s just a lot to learn.  

I wish I did understand Hebrew and Greek, but in another way I’m glad I don’t.  You know why?  Because if I understood Hebrew and Greek and was a scholar and everything else.  Then it’s like, well you know, the only way you can understand the Bible is you’ve got to be a scholar.  But nobody could be a roofer, like me and know these things.  You know how could a roofer know these things?  People say, ‘what are your credentials Ray.’  I say, ‘I don’t have any, what are yours?’  I do claim one, I say, ‘I have the Spirit of God.  What else do you want to know?’

So we see that this word ‘nacham’ can be used in a favorable sense, to be sorry.  Here’s what we mean by sorry - to show pity, sympathy, mercy, comfort etc. So that is how it can be used.  The word itself is used 37 times, translated as repent in the Hebrew Scripture.  But guess what?  It’s translated 70 times on the favorable side; to comfort or be comforted or comforting.  That’s double, a hundred percent more times it‘s translated in some form of comfort.  

So why do we have this one track mind, that this word can only mean to change your mind?  God repented - He changed His mind, He made a mistake, ‘I’m sorry I ever created them, I screwed up, I repent I should have never done it what a big dummy I am.’  Come on that’s blasphemy.  They won't put it quite in those derogatory terms, but they will say, ‘Well He changed His mind, it didn’t turn out right and He was sorry and He repented for ever doing it.’  It’s as though He didn’t even know it would happen.  It’s like He said, ‘look at this, who would have ever thought.’  Well certainly not you God, I’m sure You would have never thought this could have happened.  I mean You are only… God !?  Can you not see where these teachings are not only wrong and unscriptural, but they demean God and they are blasphemous!

Dr. Strong says that this word ‘nacham’ in an English equivalent could be translated repent.  That’s an English word, so if you want to know what an English word means, you don’t go to a Hebrew dictionary to understand what an English word means.  You go to a English dictionary.  When Strong wrote his Hebrew/English dictionary, he took Hebrew words and then found what English words fits.  So let’s see what the English word repent means.  

Repent - to feel remorse of self, reproach for what one has done or FAILS to do.  To feel REGRET for past conduct as to CHANGE ONE’S MIND regarding it.  To make a CHANGE FOR THE BETTER as a result of remorse or contrition for one’s SINS.  To feel REGRET or SELF-REPROACH.  (American Heritage Dictionary)

Does anybody want to apply any one of those definitions to God and not expect lightning to come through the ceiling?  Who wants to accuse God, that He needs to regret and change His mind and do something better and feel some contrition for His SINS?  That’s what the word repent means.  

Strong says the Hebrew word nacham means to repent, but that is not all it means.  It means in a favorable way to be sorry.  Repent is put pretty near the end on his definitions.

Strong starts off and says nacham - to sigh or to breathe strongly; by implication to be sorry, that is (but here is what we mean by sorry…) to pity, console.

That is the beginning of the definition of this word.  Now the beginning of nacham is not to regret; it is to change your mind, to change for the better, to have contrition for your sins, to regret what you have done.  That is not the beginning definition of this word nacham, which is translated “God repented.”  The first definition is to be sorry, that is to have pity.  Now with that in mind let’s go on.

So if the first definition, the first major word we come to is sorry and he uses that as the English word, in English.  That is what this Hebrew word means in English, it means to be sorry.  So let’s look up the word sorry.

Sorry - full of sorrow, pity, sympathy or regret.  Regret can be in there, but the first words are sorrow, pity, and sympathy.  Now notice this second one, I couldn’t believe it when I read it. This is in the Webster Twentieth Century Unabridged 2500 page dictionary for… Sorry - as (and they give an example) ‘we were sorry to hear of his death.’

Now does that carry the connotation of repenting of your sins, because this man died?  Regretting that you did something wrong, and you have to have contrition for sin?  No, it’s an emotional feeling of sympathy.  What is the example?  That somebody died, does this ring a bell?  What’s going to happen in Genesis 6, what’s going to happen?  Somebody is going to die.  Isn’t that amazing.  The very example that they gives is to feel sorry because somebody died.  What do you think God is doing in chapter 6:6?  He is feeling sorrow because somebody not only died, but a whole bunch of people are going to die.  Can you see it?  It has nothing to do with there being a big mistake, a sin, ‘I was wrong and I never believed that this could have happened.’  Now He is sorry and ‘I repent I will never do that again.’  That’s nonsense.  

Genesis. 6:6-7 is just another way of expressing what God did to Ezekiel, when He said;

Eze 33:11  Say unto them, As I live, says the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure (delight) in the death of the wicked…

Same thing.  When it comes to death, God says, ‘you know I am sorry about that, I feel pity for them.’  It doesn’t mean it’s not going to happen.  It doesn’t mean He doesn’t condone it and do it, but for a greater purpose.  This is something you just never hear in Christianity.  

The paper I did on ‘In The Day Of The Great Slaughter When The Towers Fall’ and I went through Billy Graham’s speech that he gave at the National Cathedral in Washington D.C.  It was just total nonsense.  (Talking about the 9-11 terrorist attacks) he said, ‘God didn’t do this, God is not the creator of evil.’  What!  You lying turkey.  

Isa 45:7  I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.

“I…create evil” God says that.  
I have people email me all the time, because it shook them when they read that.  They say, ‘I told so and so or my pastor, that God creates evil and they say - no He didn’t.  So I show them Isaiah 45 and they would say, ‘let me see that’.’  People get doctorates degree in theology and have never seen that verse in the Bible or they read over it.  

So if nacham can mean sorry by showing pity, sympathy and comfort, then we can translate this Scripture that way.  So I translated it that way and instead of saying “it repented the Lord” then it’s…

“And sorrowful is the LORD that He had made on the earth, and it grieved (caused sorrow) Him at His heart.  And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth;  both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air;  for itsorrows Me that I have made them.”  (Gen. 6:6-7)

That is not saying that it was a mistake.  That is not saying that I regret it and if I had it to do over again I would have never done it, ‘I repent, I’m sorry, it was a mistake.’  No, it just sorrowed Him.  It has to be done.

Heb 9:27  And as it is appointed unto men once to die…

‘Why Lord, why must we die?  Why didn‘t you create humanity so that we‘re all happy and we never die?’  Well the church will tell you, ‘that’s the way He did create them.  Because man has a free will and he chose...’  Nonsense.

God knew exactly what was going to happen.  Not only did He know back then what was going to happen back then, He knew back then what is going to happen now.  I mean He is actually ahead of the game, believe it or not.

[Question: so that verse is saying He didn’t feel bad for making mankind?]  No, it has to do with their condition and what He is now going to have to do from that perspective.  He feels sorrow that He made them, not that it was wrong, but sorrow.  In other words this is to use the vernacular, a necessary evil.

[Comment: It’s kind of like taking a child to the wood shed and saying this is going to hurt me more.]  That a good analogy.  I only ever spanked my children a couple of times, I think I spank my daughter twice maybe three times.  My boy maybe twice and that’s all, that’s all it took.  You see these kids that act up and these little snot nose kids grabbing things off the supermarket shelf and throwing them on to the floor and having a tantrum.  My children never did that ever, not once.  Why?  Because I started teaching them when they were 3 months old and 4 months old and 5 months, 6 months and 1 year.  I taught them and when they did something pretty bad, I would explain to them what they did wrong, they were warned about it.  When they did it again, so now I have to teach them and spank them.  They would say, ‘no daddy don’t spank me,’ and I would say, ‘I have to,  I don’t want to, but I have to.’  ‘Well don’t spank hard.’ ‘Okay I’ll spank as much as I think I need to.’  Then I would spank them and then I would hug them and love them.  They knew what it was all about and they learned.  

Blake use to slam the door all the time.  I would say, ‘Blake don’t slam the door.’  He would come in all excited and wham, he’d slam the door, he was only 5 or 6 years old.  So I’d say, ‘Blake how many times have I told you not to slam the door?’  He say, ‘I’m sorry daddy.’  I’d say, ‘I know, but you don’t learn, so I want you to go out and come in and close the door properly.’  So he goes out and comes in and closes the door properly.  Then I say, ‘go back and do it again.’  So he goes out and comes back in and closes the door properly and says ‘okay now.’  I say, ‘no do it again.’  He goes out comes back in.  I say, ‘do it again… do it again… do it again.’  He’s like what is this.  Then I say, ‘come here, do you think now you know how to close the door?’  He says, ‘yes daddy.’  I say, ‘fine, go play.’  Teach them.  Okay continuing on.

Psalms 103:13  Like as a father pities his children, so the LORD pities them that fear Him.

I’m here to tell you when God started destroying the people of that land, they feared Him.  What does God say when people ‘fear Him’?  Now they will say, ‘that only means when they fear to obey Him.’  Well you can say that, but I’m just going to say it says, “fear Him.”  He pities them.  Were they fearful of Him when he started killing them with that flood water?   Yes.  Did He pity them?  Well He said He pities people that fear Him.  They say, ‘oh Ray you are perverting the Scriptures.’   Okay, I’ll take the blame for that one, if you think so.

[Kat]

              
                                DID GOD CHANGE HIS MIND,
                        HENCE LIED ABOUT DESTROYING NINEVEH

Jonah 1:1  Now the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the son of Amittai, saying,
v. 2  Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me.

Nineveh was wicked just like the world was back there in Noah’s time.  He said go and speak against that city “for their wickedness is come up before Me.”  But Jonah rose up and fled into Tarshish, he wanted to see what Paul was doing.

Jonah 1:3  But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the LORD and went down to Joppa; and he found a ship going to Tarshish:

So he found a ship and it’s going someplace.  But they are having problems on the ship and they said somebody must be doing something wrong.  They draw lots to see and it fail on Jonah and they say this guy is a trouble maker.  So they threw him overboard.

Jonah 1:7  And they said every one to his fellow, Come, and let us cast lots, that we may know for whose cause this evil is upon us. So they cast lots, and the lot fell upon Jonah.
Jonah 1:15  So they took up Jonah, and cast him forth into the sea: and the sea ceased from her raging.

So God caused a great fish to come along and swallowed up Jonah.

Jonah 1:17  Now the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

Then Jonah prayed to God, ‘woe is me I’m down in the belly of sheol and I’m wrapped up in all this mucky muck, it’s horrible and dark.  He said hear my voice and I will sacrifice and all that.

Jonah 2:1  Then Jonah prayed unto the LORD his God out of the fish's belly,
v. 2  And said, I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the LORD…

Jonah 2:10  And the LORD spoke unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land.

Jonah 3:1  And the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the second time, saying,

It was the same thing He said to him the first time and He’s saying are you ready now Jonah.  He said ‘I’m ready.’

v. 2  Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching (Strong’s - a proclamation) that I bid thee.
v. 3  So Jonah arose, and went unto Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days' journey.
v. 4  And Jonah began to enter into the city a day's journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.

Now with this we need to have a little understanding here.  You might say, ‘well I don’t care if the word repent is not the right word, if God said Nineveh is going to be overthrown and He didn’t overthrow it, then He lied.’  But the Scriptures say God does not lie and He can not lie.  So what are we going to do now?  You say, ‘well He changed His mind, He didn’t lie, He said one thing but He can change His mind.’  But just like we have a Scripture that says He doesn’t lie, we have one that says He doesn’t repent or change His mind.  In fact we have both of those in the same verse.

Num 23:19  God is not a man, that he should (1) lie; neither the son of man, that he should (2) repent:

It’s all in the same verse.  So we have that verse twice in the Bible.

1 Samuel 15:29  And also the Strength of Israel will not lie nor repent: for He is not a man, that He should repent.

He doesn’t lie, He doesn’t repent.  So if He says in forty day Nineveh is going to be overthrown, and in forty days it is not overthrown, then God lied, right?  No, we just need a little understanding, I’ll see if I can give you a little understanding here.

Remember with Moses God said something.  He said, ‘Moses “leave Me alone” then I’ll get angry and then I’ll destroy them.’  But there was a condition there “leave Me alone.”  But Moses did not leave Him alone, so that condition was never met.  Of course God knew it wouldn’t be, God never intended to destroy all of Israel at that time.  

Now here we have something, I saw it right away.  There is no way Jonah went day after day after day after day and said, yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown… forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown… forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown… over there did you hear me, yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown…     And he did that day after day and that is all he said, those eight words?  I mean that is just one short statement.  Now notice what it says.  

Jon 3:2  Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee.

“The preaching,” there was more to it.  It’s just a short book, it’s not quite two pages.  So it does not go into a lot of detail.  But this preaching, in the Hebrew is a proclamation.  I’ll give you an example of a real proclamation:

2 Ch 30:5-9  So they established a decree to [make proclamation throughout all Israel… Ye children of Israel, turn again unto the LORD God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, and He will return to the remnant of you (just like we have in Malachi 3:7)… And be not ye like your fathers…  Now be ye not stiffnecked, as your fathers, but yield yourselves unto the LORD, and enter into His sanctuary… and serve the LORD your God, that the fierceness of His wrath may turn away from you.
For if ye turn again unto the LORD, your brethren and your children shall find compassion before them that lead them captive…  for the LORD your God is gracious and merciful, and will not turn away His face from you, if ye return unto Him.

Now there is a proclamation where God is going to destroy somebody, right.  Now He told Jonah to give a proclamation.  Don’t we see that He told them, some place in that proclamation, why that city was going to be overthrown in forty days?  Of course he did.  You say, ‘well He didn’t warn anybody back there when He said He was going to destroy the earth or part of the land, that He repented of.’  Well what do you think Noah did for the next hundred years while he was building the ark?   Well I don’t know if he built the ark for the whole one hundred years or one hundred and twenty or more until that flood came.  Of course he was warning them that this was coming and they needed to repent and everything.  But they didn’t.  Well guess what?  God didn’t grant them repentance.  You read in the second chapter of Romans;

Rom 2:4  Or despises you the riches of His goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?

You can’t repent unless God leads you to it.  But they say, ‘oh yea, we have free will.’  You can’t tack on these pagan doctrines and understand the Scriptures.  No you don’t have free will.  You have a will, but it’s not free from causality.  You can’t do anything that doesn’t have a cause behind it.  Nothing happens in nature without a cause.  

You can’t think a thought unless something happens in you brain… something happens in your subconscious… something happens in this room… in the world… in your stomach.  Then you make a decision, ‘I think I’ll make a sandwich.’  Why?  ‘Because I have this little hungry and I thought about a sandwich.’  Was there something that caused you to think of that?  ‘Oh yea.’  

But if you tell a man that he has free will, that’s where nothing causes him to think what he thinks.  It just comes out of the blue, where ever the blue is.  If it doesn’t have a cause, it doesn’t happen.  So if you think thoughts, they have causes or there wouldn’t be any thoughts.  When you say something or do something there was a cause behind it.  Once something was caused to happen, it can’t not happen.  You can’t unring a bell, okay.  

[Question: God wants to feel sorry for us?]   Sorry, remorseful, angry all of those things.  [So He wants us to carry that baggage around?]  No, not forever.  You see you can’t repent of your sins profoundly and deeply unless you have those feelings.  

Like I’ve said so many times, even when something is not a horrible sin, but maybe a weakness or something you should do or whatever.  It’s amazing, but most people don’t ever really do profound things casually.  

People don’t get up and say, ‘you know I’ve been smoking for thirty years and you know what, I think I’ll quit today.  Yea I think I’ll quit.  Okay I quit.’  Most people don’t quit that casually, they think about it for a long time.  Some people quit smoking when there doctor says, ‘your lungs are so black and you are fifty one years old, if you don’t quit smoking you won’t reach fifty three.’  Then guess what?  They go home and they think about what the doctor said and they quit.  They did that by their own free will?  The fact that the doctor said, ‘if you don’t you will die’ had nothing to do with it?  The fact that cigarettes are now seventeen dollars and eighteen cents a pack has nothing to do with it?  The fact that your wife won’t kiss you any more or that you burned three holes in a thousand dollar sofa has nothing to do with it?  There are reasons why you do and think and so on.  

So Jonah said more than… ‘yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown, did you hear me?  I said forty days.’  He preached the preaching and what did that all involve?  We don’t know, but we do know one thing, it involved a lot of things.  Starting with the king we read;

Jonah 3:5  So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them.
v. 6  For word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.
Jonah 3:9  Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from His fierce anger, that we perish not?

They were hoping, they didn’t know if this repentance was going to be enough, their sins were pretty bad.  They said, ‘we have put on sackcloth and sprinkled a few ashes, is that enough?  Maybe we should sprinkle some more ashes and pray, is everybody praying.  Pray your hearts out and maybe we will get God to change His mind.’  

It’s interesting even in the King James here they have a little superior one by repent and you go to the margin and guess what it says, relent.  That’s a little different than repent.  That’s a little different then I’m going to change my mind from what I was going to do.  At least it is closer than repent.

Jonah 3:10  And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented…

Or relented,  as the margin says or more accurately had pity.  You say, ‘I don’t know, your just interpreting that Ray, I think He changed His mind.’  I’m going to show you that what He did was, He had pity.  I’m going to prove to you that what that word means there is pity.  

He had pity on the people back in the days of Noah, He didn’t show the pity, but He had it.  It says where He grieved.  Where did He grieve in Genesis 6:6?  “And it grieved him at His heart.”   He was grieved, that means to feel sorrow in His heart, but He didn’t show it.   It was there but He didn’t show it to the people, He had to do what He had to do.

But here where it says “and God repented” we are going to see that it means that He showed pity.  He didn’t change His mind.  Jonah obviously told them of their sins and of their ways and that it was wrong and if they didn’t change that God would destroy them in forty days.  Well they DID change and because they changed, God saw there works that they turned from there evil ways and God had pity on them.  He pitied them.

Jonah 3:10  …and God repented (showed pity) of the evil, that He had said that He would do unto them; and He did it not.

Why?  Because of the proclamation, the preaching.  How many verses did we read, return unto Me and I will return unto you.  He’s not going to change His mind or repent that He made the wrong choice and now He’s going to change from that wrong choice.  No, He’s going to do what He knew he was going to do from the beginning.  If you do that, which He knows you will do it, then He’s going to grant you repentance.  

How did He grant them repentance?  I don’t know, but He did.  He granted them repentance, they had the heart to repent and so He showed pity on them.

But it displeased Jonah, because he feels like a fool now.  He had said that the city was going to be destroyed and now he says, ‘I know You are always that way God, You say one thing and then You do something else.  Now I feel like a fool’  

Jon 4:1  But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry.
v. 2  And he prayed unto the LORD, and said, I pray Thee, O LORD, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish: for I knew that Thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repented Thee of the evil.

He just didn’t do it.  It was nothing about changing His mind.  He felt sorry and He didn’t do it.  Why?  Because the conditions were met.  “And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way.”  Obviously Jonah taught that in this preaching, this proclamation of preaching the proclamation.  

v. 3  Therefore now, O LORD, take, I beseech Thee, my life from me; for it is better for me to die than to live.
v. 4  Then said the LORD, Doest thou well to be angry?
v. 5  So Jonah went out of the city, and sat on the east side of the city, and there made him a booth, and sat under it in the shadow, till he might see what would become of the city.

Jonah is still kind of distrusting Him, he said, ‘I said the city was going to fall, so now is it going to fall?’  Well God saw what they did, maybe Jonah didn’t see all that they did.

v. 6  And the LORD God prepared a gourd, and made it to come up over Jonah, that it might be a shadow over his head, to deliver him from his grief. So Jonah was exceeding glad of the gourd.
v. 7  But God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day, and it smote the gourd that it withered.
v. 8  And it came to pass, when the sun did arise, that God prepared a vehement east wind; and the sun beat upon the head of Jonah, that he fainted, and wished in himself to die, and said, It is better for me to die than to live.
v. 9  And God said to Jonah, Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd? And he said, I do well to be angry, even unto death.

Jonah said, ‘kill me I don’t care.’  Now let’s get down to the gist of this thing.

v. 10  Then said the LORD, you hast had pity (Strong’s #2347) on the gourd, for the which you hast not labored, neither madest it grow; which came up in a night, and perished in a night:
v. 11  And should not I spare (pity, Strong’s #2347) Nineveh…
 
That word is the same word that is translated pity.  When it says, “you hast had pity on the gourd” that Hebrew word is the same Hebrew word, “should not I spare Nineveh.”  It could be spare, that is not a totally wrong word, the point is they chose to translate it pity in verse 10 and it should be pity in verse 11 too, so you can see the consistency.  

God said to Jonah, ‘you had pity on the gourd for crying out loud and you’re all upset because God had pity on a whole city of tens and thousands of people.’  

That was His repentance, can you see it?  What did He do?  When they repented and showed their works and turned from their evil ways, what did God do?  Did He repent and say, ‘oh I made a mistake I should have never said that, I was wrong I repent, I won’t destroy them like I said and by the way I’m a liar too.’  No, what did He repent of, what was His repentance?  “And should not I PITY them.”  He PITIED Nineveh.

v. 11 …that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?

So there it is, I hope you can see it.  There is more than one definition of a word sometimes.  You know we use the word repent for a sinner who has done wrong and he is suppose to feel shame and guilt and turn and repent and go the other way.  But God doesn’t do that!  God never repents, not in that meaning of the word.  

But He does feel.  How does He feel?  He has pity on humanity, which fears Him, a great God.  He has no pleasure whatsoever in the death of the wicked.  He doesn’t say therefore there will never be death of the wicked.  No, there will be death of the wicked.  But He doesn’t get any pleasure out of that.  We’re talking about the heart of God now.  

So this whole thing here is to show how humanity is so screwed up, that somebody for their own personal comfort or vanity, would sooner have that vanity appeased, then to save a whole city or a whole nation.  

How can you be so vain as to say, ‘well if I was there I wouldn’t do it.’  You sound like Peter.  ‘Well Lord though they all forsake You, I will never forsake You.’  And the rest said the same, all the other 10 (it’s down to 10 now and Peter, Judas is gone) they all said, ‘I would never.’  But a couple of hours later, they all forsook Him.  Oh but you know in your heart, if you had been there you would never have forsaken Him?
 
This woman that said she wouldn’t have fallen asleep, well she wouldn’t have forsaken Him now would she, oh of course not.  You have not a clue as to what you are.  

David who didn’t really have the understanding of spirit, he didn’t have the benefit of all the books of Paul and so on.  But he said, “But I am a worm,” (Psalms  22:6).  With our spiritual understanding what are we?  We are less than a worm and we have got to see that.  

The Scriptures are true.  Every word of translation is not always true.  But the Scriptures are true.  Even the Scriptures may have some mistakes, we have some that don’t have a verse or don’t have a word.  There is hardly any copies of the Greek or Hebrew Scriptures, that you can separate by a hundred years or so, that are all exactly perfect.  You know even though they counted the letters and everything, but they still are not completely the same.  But for the most part there is a consistency there.  

You don’t run into problems with the word aionios meaning eternal, that’s nonsense.  Because there was no word for eternal until the second century A.D.  Etymologist have never found a word in any language of any culture on earth, that had the meaning of endless time, a word that meant endless time, before the second century A.D. and the Bible was completely finished by then.  

So whenever you read forever, forevermore, for always, for ever and ever and all this nonsense, you know one thing for sure, it’s not Scriptural.        

Those words eternity and eternal come from the Latin aeternus and eternus.  If you trance it back it goes back to the word eon.  It is a corruption of the Greek eon in the Latin, which became aeternus - eternal - eternity.  

It was Tertullian who was mostly responsible for bringing all these Latin words in and then giving them different meanings.  Justinian held this big council and said, ‘we are going to start referring to these ions, these ages as endless ages.’  Well why did he throw that word endless in front of ages?  Because ages doesn’t mean endless.  So he said, ‘let’s change the meaning,’ and he did.  Now the whole world of translation follows suit.