J'ever wonder Jesus vs. Billy Graham?

[Duane]

I just was thinking today that if Jesus, being the Son of God, knew first hand the terrors and horrors of a never-ending HELL of suffering and torture, WHY He would "blow the opportunity" of having, on MORE THAN one occasion, 5,000 people (plus uncounted women and childen), and CHOOSE to speak in parables -when that chance may have been the audiences LAST opportunity "to be under the sound of the Gospel"!

The people came, obviously to hear the very Christ, and they sit on the ground all afternoon, and hear one parable after another-- and then go away "scratching their heads" as to what they just heard!  (EVEN his disciples cornered Jesus for a translation of the parables!)
Wouldn't you think that God the Father would have a "little talk with His Son" about the gravity of the situation he DELIBERATELY DIDN'T take advantage of??


 HE SKIPPED THE WHOLE BILLY GRAHAM "THING" JUST TO TELL PARABLES!

Am I missing something here --or should Jesus have taken a "few pointers" from Billy about using the opportunities "AT HAND"?

[GinaMilan]

You know, you make a lot of sense, Duane.  And, it doesn't hurt that you're very funny. 

[Deborah-Leigh]

You illustrate a very important fact Duane.

I enjoyed your perspective that shows Christendom does not see the CONSEQUENCE of their false beliefs. I am not making exuses for them but just observing and remembering how it was when I was there.  I remember too, not being able to advance into THINKING about what it MEANS to accept the false teachings that appeared to be the ONLY teachings, when I was hostage to Babylon. The Preacher, Priest and Leader were the only authorized persons who could think and we had to do the following for they knew better, were wiser and holier than the followers! Of course we know better now that no man or woman of Babylon is our Mediator. We are given eyes to see and ears to hear and we know how to test the Spirit to see if it is of God. We know and hear that Spirit of God and are no longer deceived.

If Christians were encouraged to look at the consequences of their beliefs, they might be horrified but they are not encouraged. They are encouraged not to think but to trust in their leaders instead. As a result, they ingest the false teachings of Babylon that blocks sight and arrests immaturity like an iron shoe put on the feet of an infant that is never removed to accommodate growth. What happens is the foot is deformed and produces an ugly dependence due to on setting paralysis and deformity that prohibits thinking, questioning and kills mistrust in false teachings. Not being able to stand or walk is how I emerged out of these damnable false teachings. I was blessed to have to slowly heal from the blindness and harsh deformity producing errors that are the culture and by product of Christendom. I believe that is why it can take years to get the correct physiotherapy in true teachings to circulate through our mangled ideas and false beliefs. That is why this BT Forum has been so important to my healing. It provided an opportunity to circulate the true understanding of Christ through mind and posts stimulated by the therapy of writing and communicating with others who have been rescued by the Spirit of Christ to heal in His Truth. Perhaps this is why we take so long to integrate the Truth. We feel the iron shoe come off, and we feel the thrill of finding the Truth here through the insights shared by Ray Smith but it is not enough. We want to jump up and run and take off all the iron, deformity producing shoes being worn by our friends and family and then we are shocked when they just won't have it. They get hurt and feel pain if we touch the feet of their practices, deformities, ugliness, and idols of their hearts that feel the slightest tweak to their deformed ideas of our One True God. They accuse us of hurting them when their pain and fear is in the iron clad false teachings that grip their imaginations into contortions of fear and assault that are diabolical. Just look and see some of the hate mail Ray gets.  If we insist, and stand on our beliefs which is actually our health of our souls, then we become the enemy, and pain bringing harbinger of their terrors and beliefs that we are the demons to avoid and ours is the fate of endless Hell they believe they have avoided but to which we are destined!  In the paralysis of their pain ridden minds we become the thorn in their flesh as we can affirm our joy of our freedom from errors and healing to stand as they have never stood and neither can stand in their crippling captivity to blindness. It is God's Plan for us to be healed but first to be sick to the core as in from the head to the foot with no healing in us as God shows with Him all things are possible. There is a Plan and Purpose for blindness to exhibit and show case the Mercy of God. We are hated, falsely accused, condemned yet we do not hate our haters or condemn them.

Slowly, painfully once we begin to learn that we are not going to remove the iron clad shoes of Christendom without being assaulted by being banged in the face with the iron blows of their self defense, then we learn we have to alone, take more steps to be enabled to heal and apply the Truth that has set us free to our own lives first. Slowly we understand to take our eyes off what everyone else is doing and believing and to take our Truth Therapy seriously. As we learn, we find out that even if we want to go back and re-join our Babylonian friends, it is too late. Our foot has already started to heal and the shoe doesn't fit any more! Then we suffer another kind of agony in coming to realize that we look different to all the iron shoe, deformed foot and mind members of Babylon. We just cannot fit in any more. We feel it and they see it. We can not disguise that we no longer hobble along with their mis-guided false beliefs. Soon we get rejected, ostracized or abused into pretending that we go along with their false ideas. If we no longer have a taste for hypocrisy, we spit it out and get abused for our rejection of heresy and blasphemy laced food they eat to keep themselves paralyzed to the Truth.  We begin to see the truth of the warning  to beware how we listen and we see that they cannot hear but can repeat line on line of Scripture while falling back not knowing that our God is the sum total of His Word. We have learned that the Truth is not established on one solitary Scripture but we live by every word that Proceeds from the mouth of God, not just those pet lines we sport in Cell Groups and Babylonian gatherings. But we realize this because we are maturing to have eyes and ears and we still have to suffer the agony of much sorrow as we understand that our unity in Spirit is no longer attached to mortal mankind. There is the joy of the transition that we do not yet see that once our connections are severed to our carnal friends and attachments to fellowshipping in darkness, then we receive the wonder of being united to HIM who Babylon neither knows or celebrates. Our joy is not pride filled but awe filled in hushed silence of the pain we have had to endure to transcend the darkness into the Faith of Christ given to us to heal and conform us to His Image that no longer is as the ill formed physical sickness our Lord suffered in His Physical flesh as He lived on the Earth, but that wondrous Spirit that quickens to Life and Resurrection in Him.

Jesus spoke in parables so that they would NOT understand. We know that. Try telling that to a Christian and they will fear you are demon possessed or cursed, the Whore of Babylon or the false prophet in person!

NOT JESUS!!  HE SKIPPED THE WHOLE BILLY GRAHAM "THING" JUST TO TELL PARABLES!

Aha there's the proof why Jesus will not be able to save the world.  He made a huge mistake and sent Billy Graham to bridge the gap. He skipped the whole Billy Graham "thing"! In fact He made such a huge mistake that it is taking over two thousand years for God to fix it by sending the long line of Christian leaders which WE know are non other than Angels of Satan but can only be seen once that iron shoe of deformed mal-practices of Christendom are removed by the Presence of God that has to drag us to His Son for our healing. Our joy is that nothing that Christendom sees or hears or believes is true. No deformity, no sickness or illness of the unsound mind will prevail. God will heal, correct and straighten out even the most deformed icon worshiping ugliness that is idolized in Christendom. Jesus did not heal himself. Neither can they. They have to die first. Their death is our agony as we have loved ones among the iron clad shoe restricting followers of darkness. Their resurrection is our Joy as we recognize that Christ is the Way and the Life and our God is Love. He will make right all wrong and they will, one day, have their iron shoes lifted off their squealing, pain invested hearts and captured to error souls.

Unlike Babylon, we do not preach that God should NEVER heal them. On the contrary, yet,  their foot clamped iron clad false teachings,  will be destroyed as that statue raised for worship made with iron and clay feet was destroyed in the day of Daniel and King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. God doesn't change! To our joy, God doesn't change.

Arc

[arion]

...or should Jesus have taken a "few pointers" from Billy as to how to "work a crowd"??

Welcome to our little group Duane and very well said indeed!!  I muse back to my own upbringing in the pentecostal Assembly's of God and remember how the evangelists would do just that.  We thought that the Spirit of God was moving but the evangelist indeed did know how to 'work a crowd'.  Knew just how to hit the right emotional buttons and of course many people responded.  Being in the flesh we could only have responded in the manner which we did.  Just like Israel it took me many years of wandering in the wilderness after separating from them for God to bring me to His truth in His time.

Arc;

Very well said!!  What you just shared here is a keeper.   

[Deborah-Leigh]

Hi Arion

i appreciate the encouragement and that you got what I meant.

I don't think anyone has a painfree transition from the natural to the spiritual. Also, I did not want to infer that we are independent of being taught anything or that we now are no longer teachable as we come to know the Truth. On the contrary.    I believe our learning acquires the softer tones of gentleness of His Spirit and power of His Authority, as our perceptions heal and open, up, up to the ever present Presence of our Lord with us as we continue to edify and encourage as His Love is made manifest among us in the fellowship of His Spirit.

The lost, dark blind nature of Babylon, is also by God's design causing first the natural and in His Time according to the council of His Will, then the Spiritual.


Eph 1:11  In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will:

2Co 4:15  For all things are for your sakes, that the abundant grace might through the thanksgiving of many redound to the glory of God.

Arc

[GinaMilan]

This is a great thread.   See what you started Duane?  

Duane, J'ever want to walk up to a preacher in a $2,000 suit and say,

"Try this on for size.  I think it fits:

   1 AND THE word of the Lord came to me, saying,

   2 Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel; prophesy and say to them, even to the [spiritual] shepherds, Thus says the Lord God: Woe to the [spiritual] shepherds of Israel who feed themselves! Should not the shepherds feed the sheep?

   3 You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you kill the fatlings, but you do not feed the sheep.

   4 The diseased and weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the hurt and crippled you have not bandaged, those gone astray you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought to find, but with force and hardhearted harshness you have ruled them.

   5 And they were scattered because there was no shepherd, and when they were scattered they became food for all the wild beasts of the field.

   6 My sheep wandered through all the mountains and upon every high hill; yes, My sheep were scattered upon all the face of the earth and no one searched or sought for them.

   7 Therefore, you [spiritual] shepherds, hear the word of the Lord:

   8 As I live, says the Lord God, surely because My sheep became a prey, and My sheep became food for every beast of the field because there was no shepherd--neither did My shepherds search for My sheep, but the shepherds fed themselves and fed not My sheep--

   9 Therefore, O you [spiritual] shepherds, hear the word of the Lord:



And, Arc, this falls in line with what you said:

   10 Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I am against the shepherds, and I will require My sheep at their hand and cause them to cease feeding the sheep, neither shall the shepherds feed themselves any more.  I will rescue My sheep from their mouths, that they may not be food for them.

   11 For thus says the Lord God: Behold, I, I Myself, will search for My sheep and will seek them out.

   12 As a shepherd seeks out his sheep in the day that he is among his flock that are scattered, so will I seek out My sheep; and I will rescue them out of all places where they have been scattered in the day of clouds and thick darkness.

   13 And I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries and will bring them to their own land; and I will feed them upon the mountains of Israel, by the watercourses, and in all the inhabited places of the country.

   14 I will feed them with good pasture, and upon the high mountains of Israel shall their fold be; there shall they lie down in a good fold, and in a fat pasture shall they feed upon the mountains of Israel.

   15 I will feed My sheep and I will cause them to lie down, says the Lord God.

   16 I will seek that which was lost and bring back that which has strayed, and I will bandage the hurt and the crippled and will strengthen the weak and the sick, but I will destroy the fat and the strong [who have become hardhearted and perverse]; I will feed them with judgment and punishment.

Ezekiel 34.


It's good to remember that we are not to be prideful or haughty, and that it could easily be us in their shoes; yes, I know.  But the fact of the matter is, it isn't us in their shoes (by no doing of our own), and we're not the ones hoping they'll die a gazillion deaths.  And it was God who said:

Nahum 3

   4 All because of the multitude of the harlotries, the well-favored harlot, the mistress of deadly charms who betrays and sells nations through her whoredoms [idolatry] and peoples through her enchantments.

   5 Behold, I am against you, says the Lord of hosts, and I will lift up your skirts over your face, and I will let the nations look on your nakedness and the kingdoms on your shame.  

   6 I will cast abominable things at you and make you filthy, treat you with contempt, and make you a gazingstock.

And when I look and see how God is bringing that about I'm thrilled.  I'm sorry.