By: General Jim Green (p. 4 in Issue Nine of The Tribal Call) Text: Deuteronomy 28
LET US continue on with part five of the messages entitled Unity of Community. We’ve been discussing the concept of a God-centered Theocracy, which is essentially a form of government where God rules over His people on this earth. In the big picture, God does rule this world and is ultimately in charge. Men think that they are in charge of their nations, or their little station in life, but ultimately God is in charge. Even in His written Word, you will find that God raises up nations and He takes nations down. In the small picture, in our little corner of the globe where we live, we are determined to be under a Theocracy, a very real form of government which operates under the rulership of God.
Our community of Christians here is ruled over and directed by God. This is the concept that God is telling us He wants to bring forth in this generation of darkness filled with pride, hypocrisy, and sin on every corner. We’re living in dark ages once again and, God is saying that He wants a holy people. You might be thinking, “We are holy because we’re Christians.” Don’t give me that! Just because you say that you are a Christian or you belong to a church doesn’t make you holy, and it doesn’t make me holy. Holiness is something that God works in you, and holiness is something you have to practice every single day. It’s not just something you talk about, but it’s something you must practice. You don’t just put on a certain set of clothes that look holy or put on a religious holy act, and then you’re holy. No! You’ve got to live a holy life.
This is lesson 5. We are going to be discussing the 4th necessary key for a God-centered community or Ecclesia to function properly. “Ecclesia” is the right Greek word which means a body of people, a called-out body of people living together. We’re not talking about all the individual people that we find all over the world who gather together on Sundays at a building called a church, and then try to say that they are the “true Church.” Of course, we know that the universal Body of Christ is made up of the true Christians all over the world who are connected by the Blood of Jesus, not by buildings. But what we are talking about is a real live community of Jesus’ people living together and serving together. That is what the Ecclesia is. You might call them little kinglets, where God’s true people live together, serve their King, and live under the commandments of their God.
We’ve been brainwashed in this country called the United States of America to believe that a Democracy is the greatest government in the universe and that it’s God-inspired and God-centered. Would you believe that many people still think that our Constitution is God inspired? I even used to believe it! Why? Because that’s what I was told, that’s what I read in my history books, and that’s what I was told in the military. And to top it off, that’s what I was told all through my years of involvement in the Church; it went right along with my belief in patriotism. So, I just naturally believed that the government of the USA was ordained and inspired by God. I thought that Democracy was so great, and I wanted to see it spread. What I didn’t realize was that Democracy means nothing more than letting the people rule. It has nothing to do with what the Bible is all about. God has never instituted a system where men make the rules. That doesn’t mean that God won’t use leaders to rule the Ecclesia, because He does, but ultimately God is the one that gives the commands.
This brings us back to the points we’ve been talking about in the previous parts of this series. We must remember that the Ecclesia concept rests on the hierarchy and the transcendence of God, meaning that God is superior to men, that His ways are above men’s ways, and that God will ultimately rule over us. Men just don’t rule over themselves. In a civil government, such as this country has or in any other government or country, I guess a Democracy will fill the bill to a degree, but please don’t claim that they are God inspired, because God does not rule through men who do not allow God to rule them first! When you think about the United States Constitution and how they say that it was God’s answer to the prayers of our forefathers, it has to be a joke. How do I know this is true? Because God would never have set or appointed lesbians and homosexuals to rule like we see today in the good old USA. There are openly confessing sodomites and lesbians in every level of government. God has not set that kind of system in place that gives rights to the wrong kind of people. For sodomites to say that they should have minority status and demand equal rights is totally absurd! There is no relationship between Democracy and true Theocracy, not by any means. Democracy is not and never was inspired by God.
Yet today’s Christians are scattered all over the place, when they should be the most tightly-knit people around. As Christians, we should desire to have our own teachers, to have our own form of government, to have our own schools, to have our own everything! Christians don’t need to receive advice from United States Government. They don’t need to worship the Constitution, but they should have their orders directly from God.
Why don’t we have this? I’ll tell you why: because Christians of today want to have their cake and eat it too. Which brings us back to the main emphasis of these messages: get rid of the sin, get rid of the self-life, and then you’ll have a Theocracy. They don’t want God ruling over them, whether it be by His Spirit or by the leaders that He chooses—people don’t want this. They want to do their own thing and say it’s of God. They would rather listen to their little paid perverts called “pastors” that tickle their fanny and tell them all the lies that they want to hear. So the preacher gets richer, and the people go away happy, thinking that they have been given deep revelation and spiritual enrichment. This is what the church scene is all about. And yet they continue to live in sin and live totally for themselves. They’re totally selfish and have very little regard, if any, for the lost and dying of the world. If Jesus Christ was to come back, as they all claim that He’s going to do at any moment, He wouldn’t receive them! He said that He’s coming back for a Church that’s spotless and without wrinkle. You can’t try to tell me that some whore who works the streets every night is spotless and doesn’t have any wrinkles or diseases; can you? Obviously, the Christian Church has lifted her skirts to every filthy thing coming down the street—she has laid with them all—and now she stinks like the big, dirty whore that she is. God gets very picky on matters of holiness. God is absolute, and I’ve always taught that if you are going to believe in anything, dear people, believe in it with all of your heart; go for It all the way! Be willing to die for it. Christians, I’m telling you that this is the way things should be. We should be separated from the world, separated from sin, and obeying the commands of God under His Theocracy, where God has complete rule and rein.
I know you’re probably thinking to yourself that the Body of Christ international is the Theocracy of God and God does rule it. Well, don’t give me that stuff! You know and I know and Satan knows good and well that God does not rule over the vast majority of those who call themselves His people. Why? Because His people won’t let Him control their lives. They call it bondage and oppression. The truth is that they have twisted it around. They are ones in bondage, and they are the ones oppressed, because if they won’t let God control them then they are in bondage to the devil and their own sins. They are the ones who are oppressed, vexed, tormented, and miserable, and yet they say they don’t want to be in “bondage to legalism.” What they are really saying is that they don’t want to live by the standards of God’s holiness or submit their lives to the scrutiny of God-appointed leaders. Why not? Because they love their SECRET SINS, and they refuse to let them go. The only true freedom that we will ever find is in being controlled by God and coming under His Theocracy. If God had total control over His people, we wouldn’t have this thing called the Church that is so sin ridden and filthy. Amen? I could go on and on with this point, but I don’t have to convince any of us here because we already know what God has told us. Yet trying to convince some of these hard-headed religious people that they’re living in sin, that they have broken their covenant with God, and that they need to renew it is another story. All we can do is continue to pound away, telling the truth whether people like it or not.
Let’s begin talking about key #4 which is Sanctions and Oaths. Sanctions have to deal with blessings and cursings, which have a direct effect upon many other areas of our lives. Let’s go immediately here to Deuteronomy. This has been the book out of which we have been studying the five keys to the Unity of Community. Deuteronomy is the book of the law, and it’s the book of the covenant. If you want to find out the true roots of your covenant with God, then go to the book of Deuteronomy. You may say, “Well that’s the Old Testament, and now we’re under grace, and bla, bla, bla….” Go ahead and believe whatever you want. God does not change—His moral laws do not ever change. And you’ll find so many moral laws in God’s book of Deuteronomy that you will be shocked, and they are good for us here and now. Even the natural laws that God’s people adhered to some 4,000 years ago would do us good today, in this generation, if we carefully considered them and the wisdom that they were based upon. It would do this generation good to follow many of these laws even today. It would help us get our hearts right with God again and clean up our act. It would do us good to throw off the trappings of the enemy, to get rid of all the witchcraft out of our houses and out of our churches. Most of all, dear people, it would do you good to dismiss your heretic preacher and lying evangelist—they live for themselves, lie to you, cheat you, live double lives, and take your money. Get rid of them! You don’t need them; you need God. Get God-centered and search for some sincere people who love God’s ruling and covering. But please, stop paying these perverts who call themselves “men of God” just because they have a big church or they say that they are called of God. Listen, just because you say something or I say something doesn’t prove that it is true. Actions speak louder than words. Watch and see how they live; that will let you know where their hearts really are.
“And it shall come to pass, if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe and to do all His commandments which I command thee this day, that the Lord thy God will set thee on high above all nations of the earth: and all these blessings shall come on thee, and overtake thee, if thou shaft hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God.” Deuteronomy 28:1-2
Now dear people, starting in verse 3 all the way up to verse 14, you will read all about God’s sanctions. Sanctions are put in place to assure, the goodness and blessings of God. The dictionary definition for sanction says: ”Giving a binding force to a law (we’re talking about the covenant laws here) or secures obedience to a law as a penalty for breaking it or a reward for keeping it.” That’s what a sanction is. Basically, when you break it down, sanctions are one half of the cause and effect principle. Sanctions are connected to oaths, and an oath is our statement of commitment to God. Starting back in the very beginning of mankind when God created Adam, God made an oath or a covenant with man. And man made a covenant with God. But then Adam broke the covenant with God and died, covenantly speaking. He did not die physically the day he disobeyed; he died covenantly, or spiritually. In other words, he broke his oath with God; he reneged on it, so God broke His oath and cursed man. In the beginning, Adam was blessed by good sanctions all the way. God had said that He wanted him to prosper and see Him be blessed. He said that He wanted Adam to raise up children and that they would be blessed upon the earth, and on and on. That was the original agreement. God also swore to Abraham that He would make Him a father of nations, but God made sure Abraham knew that he would have to keep his end of the covenant with God.
Covenants and oaths work 2 ways. I can only make a small picture of this, but we can basically see that an oath means to promise, to declare, or to swear solemnly. That’s what an oath is. If God makes an oath with us, it won’t do any good unless we accept it and make an oath with God. God just does not bless us unless we accept His sanctions, or I should say the conditions of His blessings. The concept is found throughout the New Testament that when God searches us out and finds us, we are dead spiritually, or covenantly. We are dead towards God when He searches us out and brings us to a point of repentance and acceptance of His covenant. This is what it means to be born again. When you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart that Jesus is the Christ and the Savior, repenting of your sins, and you make an oath with God saying, “Yes, I want to do that; I want to serve the Lord,” that is when you are born again. But in the fine print, you need to know that when you accepted Him that there was in your covenant a clause that states you will receive a penalty if you break the covenant. It is vital to realize that if you break your covenant, you will receive cursings from God. Now, this is what I want to make clear, because a lot of people do not believe that once they’re saved that they can lose their salvation in the Lord. They don’t understand the first thing about sanctions. Sanctions are in place from the beginning to the end, and they have a very important part to play in our redemption and walk with the Lord.
Now, if you take time to read verses 3-14, you will see all the wonderful blessings that God wants to bless men with, but when you come to verse 15, things change. Verse 15: “But it shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe to do all His commandments, and His statutes which I command thee this day; that all these curses shall come upon thee, and overtake thee.” Then it gives a long list of all these curses. What is this all about? These are sanctions, and they should be functioning in the Body of Christ today. You will always find sanctions in place in a real Theocracy, but they won’t work in the Church as we know it. Why? #1) The people get away with murder, and no one really cares. #2) The preachers can get away with murder and no one really cares. Nevertheless, God keeps track of men: just because they have broken their covenants with God and they don’t care anymore about Cod’s laws doesn’t mean that God won’t hold them accountable. If people break the laws of God or do something that is stated to be wrong, and they don’t repent of it, then they should be brought before the Church—there should be judges there to judge the matter. The Bible also teaches us that if you don’t judge your own self, then God is going to have to judge you. This is why we have the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of God in us, to guide us and instruct our lives, to tell us what is right and what is wrong. For example, if you go and steal something, there should be a voice inside of you that says, “Don’t steal; it’s wrong. You’re breaking a law of God.” How do you know that it’s a law of God? The Bible, our moral guidebook, says it’s a law of God. Thank God that the Spirit of God told and reminded us in case we had forgotten that stealing is a sin.
Now, the work of conviction is what the Spirit of God does. Yet we can still go on and say to ourselves that we are going to steal anyway because we dont care what the Spirit says to us. When that happens, then we are willfully breaking God’s law. Multitudes of people break the laws of God daily, millions of them, and they don’t even pay any attention to their consciences, where the Holy Ghost is telling them what is right and wrong. It all comes down to self-government. You can offer people a system of external laws and statutes designed to ensure all possible freedoms, and many people will attempt to put on a good show outwardly, but when they are all by themselves, they secretly break all the rules. That is what you call a big, fat hypocrite. Amen! This is what Church people are so guilty of today. They go to Church and say that they love Jesus oh so much; they say that they think He is so magnificent, and all the time, they are thinking about what they are going to eat when they get home. They are fantasizing about which television programs they are going to watch and sit their kids in front of. They’re sitting in the pews thinking about all the things of the world—the sickest part is that they’re way more excited about the things of the world than they are about loving Jesus! That is what you call hypocritical, and this is where the Body of Christ has went down the tubes. It says it’s Christian with it’s mouth, but it doesn’t believe it in it’s heart anymore. That’s why there are so many curses and judgements besieging the Christian Church in this hour.
Christians fail to realize that when they made an agreement with God, they also agreed that if they broke His laws that they were going to accept His judgments upon then. It’s written in the law! It doesn’t matter if you want to accept it or not; it’s still written there. Just because we are in New Testament times doesn’t mean that God will not judge our sins. That’s why Jesus died, so that we could have power over sin and put it away from us. So, if we continue in sin after we have given our lives to Jesus, then we are going to be judged for it. I’m telling you this because I want you to see that the concept and principle of sanctions involve two parts, the fist half being blessings and the second half being cursings. It says IF you will keep my laws and my statutes, and IF you will obey me and do what I tell you to do, you will be blessed. Isn’t that wonderful, glory to God. We’re going to be blessed. But on the other hand, IF you go sucking after Sodom and you go whoring after Egypt and IF you lust after everything in the world, and IF you like to rub elbows with the Egyptians and the Canaanites of the world, and you like to make marriages with them, and IF you like to go to all of their recreational centers, and listen to their music and hang out at their places of filth and do everything that they do, and IF you enjoy being entertained by the world, you are eventually going to pay for it! It’s all part of the contract; it’s all right there.
It all boils down to what I was teaching on the other night: cause and effect. We feel miserable when we receive the effects of sin. If you drink too much at the bar during the night, you will wake up in the morning with a terrible headache. What is happening? You are feeling the effects of your sin, and you’re getting your just reward. I know, I used to drink in the world, and I got plenty of headaches, you know what I’m saying. When you drink too much you feel miserable and very bad—you wish you were dead. But you wouldn’t wake up with a headache if you hadn’t drank a bottle of booze, right?—Cause and effect. This is the same way that all sin is: if you go ahead and let it have it’s way in you, you are going to feel very sick, and your spirit man is going to be sick. You are going to pay for it—cause and effect. A Iot of things come upon our individual bodies, upon the Body of Christ, and upon the world in general because we don’t keep God’s laws. Even common sense will tell you that there are universal laws that the heathen need to abide by just as much as the Christians. In fact, the 9 (#4 is not binding) commandments are a very good set of laws. At one time, a majority of the people of the United States adhered to them, but they surely don’t anymore. We’ve thrown it all to the wind, and we don’t care about God’s health laws or moral codes anymore—now AIDS is taking it’s toll.
This country doesn’t care about God’s moral laws anymore. Now, everyone is so full of filth, so full of sin and demons; they are so full of disease, murder, and darkness that all they want to do is to go around and drink blood! Now the queers, lesbians, witches, warlocks, and every other occultist and demon worshiper are coming out of the closet. They’re saying to everyone else, “Come out! We have our rights! We’re in America. We’re under a Democracy, which means the people can rule. We have religious rights. We have freedom of the press and freedom of speech! We can do anything that we want to!” Let me ask you, is that kind of a government God inspired? Where do these guys come up with the idea that God ordained men to make laws ensuring that all those perverts could have rights? I don’t see that in the Bible. That shows you we’ve been brainwashed. We don’t need to adhere to this corrupted system called “Democracy” anymore. We need a God- centered Theocracy, where God controls and dictates, wielding His absolute authority and leadership over His people. Under this Theocracy, His people obey Him, serve Him, and keep His standards and laws. This is God’s call to this generation, that people would come out of their slimy whorehouses called churches and come into His Kingdom. He is calling them out from under the coverings of the demonic government, out of the patriot movements and all of these asinine organizations that are ruled by and set up by men. They don’t do anything but take your money and brainwash you, on top of it.
Now, back to Jesus. As I was saying last night, He died that we could live. That was the whole essence of His coming to earth, that He could die to take on our sin and then take on our death. Jesus knew that through His own physical death, He would make it possible to renew our covenant with God again. Before that time, all men were dead. Through the death of Christ, that realm of dominion is now available. It has been opened for us. What do we have dominion over? Over sin and death—so that death will not rule us anymore. Death ruled men from Adam on up until Jesus. In fact, all men fell into the death covenant with the first Adam by the curse, but fortunately, the second Adam (Jesus Christ) came and brought back life. But He had to pay a dear price, which ended with Him giving His life for us so that we could have life. If He gave His life that we could have life, then we’ve got to give our life so that we can have His life.
The true Christian walk has no place for selfishness. Selfishness means that you love yourself and that you want everything for yourself. When you are in a community or a God-centered Theocracy, you will find that selfishness and self-love are the arch enemies of the community life. In community life, if you are walking with God and decreasing your own selfish interests, you will be increasingly more concerned about your brothers and sisters, about your neighbors and those all around you, and you will start thinking about the good of the whole, instead of always thinking about yourself. This is the very heart of what it means to be a Christian; we are constantly decreasing and dying to ourselves in order that Christ may increase in us, so that we may serve Him and others instead of ourselves. Yet this is the very thing that Christians in this country are avoiding: dying to their selfish desires. Instead, they feed their selfish desires and gorge on everything they can get for themselves.
Being a Christian isn’t just going to a building called a church and remaining selfish and individually minded. No! Being a Christian means that you think corporately, that you realize that you are part of the Body of Christ, that you put the needs of the community first 24 hours a day 7 days a week. We live this way, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This is not just something I’m preaching, but it’s something we practice. I’ve always said that if I am going to be a preacher, then I’m going to practice what I preach, and I try my best. I would never be giving this type of message if I was not living it right now. I’m not saying that we’re perfect or that we’re without sin, but we are living communally, and we are living under a God centered Theocracy. Most Christians don’t realize that we are living in a country whose government is literally trying to do away with Christianity, yet I believe that our God is going to sustain and keep us. I believe it’s very possible that God’s Theocratic government could become a national movement. All you hear about these days is the Democratic party, the Republican party, or the 3rd party movement. You hear about all of these movements, but they are all man-made. Why not have a movement to start a Theocracy and let God rule over us once again? What’s wrong with that? I’ll tell you what’s wrong: men are selfish! They’re selfish, and they’d rather have their dead religion and their sin-ridden lives at the same time. But in God’s community, you can’t have it both ways. You’ve got to let God be God and forsake your sins.
All this has to do with oaths and sanctions. When the principles of oaths and sanctions are operating in your life, it means that you are letting Cod be God. You can’t really live for Christ unless you make an oath to Christ. You can’t live like the devil and say you’re living for the Lord: “Oh yes, Lord, I’ll live for you, honestly!” We’ve heard plenty of that. When you make an oath to God, committing your life to Him, it means that you’re going to keep God’s commandments and obey that which His Spirit commands you to do. Our attitude must be that whatever it may require, you’re going to obey God and live in holiness. When you make your oath, you are swearing to God that you’ll obey Him, and what the Holy Spirit will remind us of is that if we break our oath, there will be a penalty to be paid and cursings will come our way. God can curse our finances, He can curse our home, and He can curse our children. He can curse our bodies, and He can curse a lot of different things in our lives. Why do you think hospitals are full of professing Christians? I use to go to hospitals all the time and pray for the sick, and you’d be surprised how many confess Jesus as their Savior. So here were all these people that were dying of cancers and every other disease in the book, and they were supposed to be God’s people. The Bible says that by His stripes we are healed. They didn’t look very healed to me. And I tried to pray them up out of their bed, but nothing I did would work. They were there because they had broken their commitment to God, and so God, in His righteousness, had laid a sanction against them: cause and effect.
Listen, look around the world. Aren’t all governments like that? Isn’t the United States like that? Sure, you’re free to do what you want to do, but if you break the law, dear one, you are going to pay. Isn’t that what it says? Then why can’t God do it? We think that with God it doesn’t matter, but it does matter! It matters far more with God than with the governments of men. Remember, God is ultimate. He is superior to man. Yet in this generation, people are more afraid of the governments of men than they are of God’s government. This has got to be one of the biggest sins in this generation: professing Christians are more afraid of the laws of men than they are the laws of God. Someday, there will be a payday, and you will be paid your just reward. When you continually break God’s laws, and you aren’t repenting and trying to change, eventually it all builds up until God takes action. He’ll do something to you, and it’s not going to be pleasant. Why would God punish us if we don’t obey Him? Because He swore that He would punish us if we don’t keep our covenant with Him. It’s part of the contract. God could swear by nobody greater, so He swore by Himself. We see the principle of oaths and sanctions in operation during the life of Abraham. God said He would bless Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and He would bless all of their seed IF they would obey His commandments. He said, I will bless them in the field, l will bless them at their home, and I will bless them everywhere if they will keep my commandments. They will live long, they will have good health, they will have wealth, and they will have everything and be blessed. But, IF they fail to keep their commitment and turn on God, He would curse them. We don’t like to talk about cursings because people think that it’s too negative. People say, “Jim, don’t give me this negative stuff.” The truth is that the principle of oaths and sanctions is only negative IF we don’t obey God.