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[The text below represents an edited transcript of this Tomorrow’s World program.]

The Law of Love

Did you know the Bible contains love songs? Hard for some to imagine, but it’s true! Some of our more biblically savvy viewers might think of the Song of Solomon, which is, indeed, a beautiful part of the Bible. But that’s not what I’m thinking of!

Rather, I’m thinking of Psalm 119, which the songwriter, King David, filled with passion, praise, and heartfelt devotion. What was the object of such emotion? Believe it or not, the Ten Commandments!

Does this surprise you?

It shouldn’t. Because they paint a beautiful picture of the mind of God and play a key role in the transformation of the whole world that Jesus Christ will return and establish.

Join us for this episode of Tomorrow’s World, where we’ll uncover The Beauty of the Ten Commandments.

God’s Laws Bring LIBERTY

Greetings, and welcome to Tomorrow’s World, where we help you make sense of your world through the pages of the Bible.

Today we’re going to spend time talking about one of God’s greatest gifts to mankind—the Ten Commandments.

When you look closely enough, the core doctrines of common and mainstream Christianity seem to tell you these divine commands from God are done away with—as if God makes no binding obligation on us any longer, and we’ve been freed from the need to obey—freed from the Ten Commandments.

But when you come to understand the commandments and what they represent, you see that you might as well speak of being “freed” from food and water, or freed from air and light! Or, for that matter, freed from understanding, freed from righteousness, and freed from freedom and liberty, itself! In fact, in his inspired letter, James, the brother of Jesus Christ, TWICE refers to the Commandments as “the law of liberty”—even “the perfect law of liberty.”

Now, some preachers might dither and say that they would never preach against the Ten Commandments. Yet most who would say that are preaching in a pulpit on Sunday after having gone to the mall or the lake or the ballgame on Saturday, in violation of the Fourth Commandment. And in March of 2021, Christianity Today exposed modern Christianity’s opinion on the Seventh Commandment to keep sexual relations within the confines of marriage by reporting that, “Evangelicals, especially those under 40, increasingly see cohabitation as morally acceptable. Most young evangelicals have engaged in it or expect to” (“The Cohabitation Dilemma Comes for America’s Pastors,” ChristianityToday.com, March 16, 2021). And how many cathedrals are filled with statues and images that people bow before, pray before, or even weep before, filled with religious devotion—when the Second Commandment forbids such objects of worship?

Yes, a lot of lip service is paid to the Ten Commandments, but few people really take them as seriously as God the Father and Jesus Christ do. And what a shame that is! Because when they are embraced and taken seriously as merciful instructions handed down by a merciful and loving God, the Ten Commandments are a source of BEAUTY in life that is unmatched by any competing laws or philosophies of men.

At the beginning of the program, I mentioned King David’s “love song” to the Ten Commandments. Let’s read just a few of the words of praise and fondness penned by the Warrior Poet of Israel for these beautiful laws of God.

We’ll find them in Psalm 119. For instance,

Verse 35: “Make me walk in the path of Your commandments, for I delight in it.”

Verse 47: “And I will delight myself in Your commandments, which I love.”

Verse 73: “Your hands have made me and fashioned me; give me understanding, that I may learn Your commandments.”

Verse 127: “Therefore I love Your commandments more than gold, yes, than fine gold!”

Verse 131: “I opened my mouth and panted, for I longed for Your commandments.”

Verse 143: “Trouble and anguish have overtaken me, yet Your commandments are my delights.”

Believe me, there were more, but those should help paint the picture!

The Bible says that King David was a man after God’s own heart (Acts 13:22), and in his trials, he found comfort in the Commandments. In his distress, he found wisdom in them. He found them more beautiful and precious than gold and silver, and he says he longed to understand them and live them, like the thirsty deer longs for water.

No one writes such songs of heartfelt devotion and passion about speed limits or legal regulations pouring out of Congress!

The Ten Commandments are DIFFERENT—they provide guidance, aid, and understanding. They represent the core of the way of life of the very Creator of mankind, who has shared them with us in His mercy. And as we get to know them and understand them—not just in our minds, but with the sort of understanding that only comes from acting and doing—then we begin to better understand the character and mind of God, Himself.

Actually, with the help of God, it is more than that: Keeping the Ten Commandments changes us, and helps us not only to understand the mind of God but even to begin to share the mind of God and to think like Him, ourselves. As David writes in Psalm 19 and verse 7, “The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul….”

It is no wonder that Jesus Christ told a young man quizzing Him about salvation, “[I]f you want to enter into life, keep the commandments” (Matthew 19:17).

Clearly the Ten Commandments mattered to Jesus.

In fact, they matter so much so that the Apostle John wrote in his first letter, in 1 John 2 and verse 4, speaking of Christ, “He who says, ‘I know Him,’ and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.”

Anyone preaching that you do not need to keep the commandments to know Jesus Christ is a liar and a false preacher, whether he knows it or not, and should be avoided.

What Are the Ten Commandments?

You know, if we’re going to spend all this time talking about the Ten Commandments, maybe I should take the time to read them!

You will find them listed in Exodus chapter 20, where we find the heart of God’s law listed in only 16 verses (vv. 2–17):

1. I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before Me.

2. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.

3. You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.

4. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.

5. Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the LORD your God is giving you.

6. You shall not murder.

7. You shall not commit adultery.

8. You shall not steal.

9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

10. You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s.

Yes, the whole of the Ten Commandments fits in these 16 verses. But the art of living by them, and the depth of truly understanding them, only really comes through practice, the light of Jesus’ teachings, and the help of God’s Holy Spirit.

Let’s take some time to appreciate their structure and organization.

In Matthew 22, we read an account of a young lawyer who asked Jesus an important question. We begin in verse 36:

“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 22:36–40).

Notice, Jesus said that the entirety of the law and the prophets hangs on these two great commandments: To love God and to love your neighbor.

Now look again at the Ten Commandments to see how they are structured.

The first four of the Ten Commandments teach us how to fulfill the First Great Commandment to love God. And the six Commandments that follow teach us how to fulfill the Second Great Commandment to love others.

The Ten Commandments aren’t just some legalistic list of dos and don’ts. When you understand what Jesus is saying, you see them as essential instructions in love. In fact, let me ask you: What is more beautiful than the love of God? Not just receiving it, but growing in it ourselves, in compassion and outflowing concern?

Well, if we seek to know the beauty of God’s love in our lives, then we will want to keep the Ten Commandments! Don’t take my word for it—take the Apostle John’s! Often called the Apostle of Love because love was such a consistent focus of His writings in Scripture, he teaches us a very important truth of God in his first letter—in 1 John 5:3: “For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome.”

When you understand this connection between how the Ten Commandments are central to teaching us how to love God and to love each other and the fact that, as 1 John 4:8 tells us, “God is love,” then you begin to see how the Ten Commandments represent God’s own mind and character in print. And how learning to practice them and to make them a part of your life is a vital part of the beautiful transformation God seeks to achieve in all of us

How Do You Keep God’s Commandments?

Let’s dive into some of the individual commandments, themselves. Just as the beauty of a gemstone is shaped by how its individual facets reveal its brilliance, each of the commandments contributes to the overall beauty of these laws of God.

In fact, consider the first one, given in Exodus 20, verses 2 and 3: “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before Me.”

Now compare this to, say, the beginning of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, which lays a foundation based on the idea that all men are created equal—or the U.N.’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states in its first article that all human beings are free and equal in dignity and rights.

In today’s free resource, The Ten Commandments, Roderick Meredith explains the stark difference between works like these and the Commandments:

In our day of human reason, agnosticism, and creeping materialism, it is important to notice that the Almighty spoke first not about the “brotherhood of man,” but about obedience and worship to God, the Creator and Ruler of heaven and earth—and the personal God of those who serve and obey Him! (p. 7).

What a difference! Unlike human philosophers or politicians who ground our obligations to each other in moral theories or passing ethical fashions, God grounds our obligations on His own eternal and unchanging status as the Creator of all things, who does not change! (Malachi 3:6).

Consequently, the Ten Commandments have a beautiful and immovable foundation that grounds them in the firmest foundation conceivable. For instance…

• The Fourth Commandment about keeping the Sabbath holy is about the day He, Himself, sanctified at Creation.

• The Sixth Commandment against murder, we’re told in Genesis 9:6, is grounded in the fact that man is made in God’s image.

• The Ninth Commandment against bearing false witness runs afoul of the fact that God is a “God of truth” (Deuteronomy 32:4) and that His word is truth (John 17:17).

This grounding in the nature and character of the Eternal God who created all life—indeed, the God who created all of REALITY!—gives these inspired commandments a richness and depth that few ever take the time to truly explore.

Consider the Third Commandment against using God’s name in vain. How often is this commandment trampled in this world—often by the very ones who claim to be living a godly life! Yet, not using God’s name in vain is so much more than simply not using His name in curse words or swearing. For instance, everyone who claims to be a Christian is, in a very real way, taking on the name of Jesus Christ—yet, if we behave in an un-Christian manner and set a bad example, we’ve taken on that name in vain.

Keeping the Third Commandment means taking our lives seriously enough to bring honor to the name we bear—and in that way, the commandment becomes far more than a guide concerning the statements we make with our mouths, but a motivation to consider the statements we make with our lives.

Even the commandments that might seem obvious—such as the Sixth Commandment, “You shall not murder”—have SO much more to say than those four words might seem to reveal!

Jesus Christ, Himself, makes this plain, explaining in Matthew 5:21 and 22 that hating your brother in your heart is the spirit of murder, and that hating others violates the Sixth Commandment.

When you look at the world today and see how anger-filled it is, and then when you recognize it as the spirit of murder that you are seeing in the faces of rage that fill our streets and news feeds, suddenly you realize just how far we’ve fallen from what God seeks to make of us.

And further still, the command against murder is rooted in the fact that every single human being is created in God’s image. In contrast to the culture of death we see around us—in which abortion, euthanasia, and assisted suicide are considered moral progress instead of the signs of moral degradation they truly represent—a devotion to living the values of the Sixth Commandment is a devotion to respecting the beautiful image of God inherent in every human life! Not just the life of the healthy and strong, but the life of the infirm and the weak. As God told Moses in Exodus 4 and verse 11, “Who has made man’s mouth? Or who makes the mute, the deaf, the seeing, or the blind? Have not I, the LORD?”

The Sixth Commandment declares that no life is without value and meaning in the eyes of God. And even a supposedly simple, “obvious” command like “You shall not murder” has beautiful depths that are worth exploring.

In a moment, I want to help us step back and take in the larger picture by imagining the world that Jesus Christ will establish at His return. When we do, we’ll find the Ten Commandments are the key to seeing that picture.

A World Free from Sin and Suffering

Imagine a world in which every human being in every country on earth has no other God than the God of the Bible. Every living, breathing soul understands that nothing in their devotions should come before God the Father and Jesus Christ, and everyone worships Them alone. That worship is free of any and all trappings of paganism.

There are no statues or images of so-called saints or other distractions. Every soul on earth uses God’s name with a sense of respect for everything that it represents, because they know that the words they utter matter. Consequently, no one uses foul language any longer. No one anywhere on the planet utters God’s name in a curse, and it would not even cross someone’s mind to swear or speak in a filthy manner.

Imagine a world in which everyone keeps the seventh-day Sabbath. Gone forever are the days when someone worked seven days a week, replaced by a joyful, worldwide observance of God’s ordained rest from labor—a time for families to reaffirm their affections for each other and to seek the face of their God together.

Every week, everyone on earth gathers together as God commands, in holy convocation, to sing praises to their Creator and their Savior, and to learn together from the pages of Scripture.

Imagine, too, that, in that world, families have been restored as the fundamental building blocks of civilization. Parents are honored and loved, in accordance with the fifth commandment, and grandparents and great-grandparents are held in high esteem, as children are taught to respect those who have gone before them. Those same children play safely in the streets as families spend time together in the neighborhood, because violence and hatred are no longer a part of anyone’s experience. Families remain intact for life and marriages remain strong, as men and women learn the joy and peace that comes from reserving physical intimacy for the God-ordained place for which it was designed: their marriages.

There are no locks on doors, and children leave their bicycles on the front lawns, since no one would ever think to take something that is not theirs. And relationships in the community and between people and their leaders are built on a foundation of mutual trust and respect, in which everyone speaks truthfully with each other.

Then imagine that, over all of this lies an air of contentment and gratitude—because the idea that happiness is dependent on the number of things you can buy or collect to keep up with the neighbors has long since passed from the world. Instead, everyone finds their deepest satisfaction in the profitable work of their hands, the joy they feel from the love of friends and family, and the knowledge that the God they worship is One who knows them, and loves them, and is personally working in this world, and in their lives, to bring His purpose for their lives to fruition—when they will join His own Family and step into eternity with Him, forever.

That beautiful world—which Jesus Christ WILL establish at His return—is one in which everyone keeps the Ten Commandments.

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[The text below represents an edited transcript of this Tomorrow’s World program.]

Why Does God Allow Suffering?

If God exists and if God is a God of love, why is there so much suffering in our world? Is He powerless to stop it? This challenge is often thrown up by atheists, agnostics, and also sincere individuals who struggle to understand. How can a loving God permit wars that kill, maim, and destroy property? Why diseases, famines, and other so-called natural disasters? Some smugly ask these questions in an attempt to dismiss God. Others sincerely look at the cruelty in the world and wonder, why? Why doesn’t a loving God stop war, disease, natural disasters, and cruelty toward women and children?

On this Tomorrow’s World program, I’ll give you three reasons why a loving God allows pain and suffering. Yes, there is great suffering found everywhere and you may personally be going through a painful trial yourself, but our Creator IS a God of love. Now stay tuned as I will be back in five seconds and give you three reasons WHY a loving God allows such great suffering on this troubled planet.

If God Is Real…

A warm welcome to all of you from all of us here at Tomorrow’s World, where we fearlessly take on the hard questions and tell you the plain truth straight from the pages of the Bible. Atheists and agnostics think they have the perfect argument against God’s existence, when they ask. “How can there be a loving God when children are abused, women are raped, people die from excruciatingly painful diseases, and innocent people are displaced and killed in war?” There are answers and I’ll give you three of them today, but there are two aspects to this question:

#1: Does God exist?

And, number two, if He does,

#2: Is He truly a God of Love?

Please bear with me as I address the question of God’s existence. Frankly, dear friends, that is not as difficult as some make it out to be. It comes down to this: Either the vast universe and life on this planet is the result of blind chance, or it is the result of an intelligent Designer, in other words, God. Setting aside the huge question of how the universe came to be, let me get to the crux of this issue of life itself. Could life arise from non-living matter by chance? Evolutionist Bill Bryson addresses the unlikelihood of life arising as a result of chance when discussing proteins—the building blocks of cellular life. As all knowledgeable people know, proteins are made up of long strings of amino acids connected in precise meaningful ways—similar to the way letters form sentences. You cannot throw vowels and consonants randomly together and form meaningful sentences. Nor can you throw amino acids together randomly and form functioning proteins. As an example, Bryson speaks of the most common protein found in all of us—collagen:

But to make collagen, you need to arrange 1,055 amino acids in precisely the right sequence. But – and here’s an obvious but crucial point – you don’t make it. It makes itself, spontaneously, without direction, and this is where the unlikelihoods come in. The chances of a 1,055 sequence molecule like collagen spontaneously self-assembling are, frankly, nil. It just isn’t going to happen (Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything, p. 288).

What an amazing admission! But collagen is only one protein needed for life. As Bryson points out:

No one really knows, but there may be as many as a million types of protein in the human body, and each one is a little miracle. By all the laws of probability proteins shouldn’t exist (ibid.).

Now, why does he call them little miracles? And why shouldn’t they exist? Bryson explains the laws of probability and points out that the odds of a more typical 200 amino acid protein self-assembling is 1 in 10²⁶⁰. That is a single chance in 1 followed by 260 zeros! About which Bryson states:

That in itself is a larger number than all the atoms in the universe (ibid.).

Think about that! This is only one typical protein, of which there may be as many as one million different types in the human body. If the odds are so great for forming a protein made up of 200 amino acids, what are the odds for collagen?

But my favorite Bryson quote comes from his book The Body, in which he explains:

You could call together all the brainiest people who are alive now or have ever lived and endow them with the complete sum of human knowledge, and they could not between them make a single living cell, never mind a replicant Benedict Cumberbatch [a British actor] (Bryson, The Body, p. 4).

Who is it now who believes in miracles?

Bryson’s comments mirror those of Michael Denton, PhD in biochemistry. We often hear the term “simple cell” thrown about. Here is what this biochemist says about that so-called simple cell:

The complexity of the simplest known type of cell is so great that it is impossible to accept that such an object could have been thrown together suddenly by some kind of freakish, vastly improbable, event. Such an occurrence would be indistinguishable from a miracle (Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, p. 264).

He explains what many scientists are coming to understand and why former evolutionists are changing their minds on the subject.

Although the tiniest bacterial cells are incredibly small… each is in effect a veritable micro-miniaturized factory containing thousands of exquisitely designed pieces of intricate molecular machinery… far more complicated than any machine built by man and absolutely without parallel in the non-living world (Denton, p. 250).

The evidence for intelligence—that is God—as the cause of life is massively compelling for anyone willing to look at the facts. So, why do we have terrible suffering in our world? If God is all-powerful, why CAN’T He, or why WON’T He, put an end to all the awful suffering that is here on this earth?

Humanity Both Victim and Perpetrator

The answer IS NOT that God does not exist. It IS NOT that He is too weak. And it IS NOT that He does not care.

No, God exists. He is all powerful. And He truly IS a God of love and compassion, but again, we wonder: “If God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son” that we might have life, WHY does He allow war, children to be abducted, women to be raped, and people to die from long-lasting and painful diseases?

Let’s ask a relevant question: Are we looking in the wrong direction by placing blame on God? The answer is, yes. So, the first reason for suffering here on earth is:

#1: We are doing it to ourselves.

Consider this. A teenage boy is told by his parents not to smoke, as smoking can cause lung cancer, oral cancers, heart disease, emphysema, and a host of other maladies. His parents dearly love him and don’t want him to hurt himself, but as with so many teens, he rejects his parent’s loving advice and chooses rather to follow his friends and his own judgment. He takes up smoking, or more likely today, vaping. Of course, he doesn’t think HE will be addicted, nor suffer the consequences he’s warned about. No, he thinks he’s the exception. But 35 years later he comes down with lung cancer and his life, his hopes, and his dreams, are cut short by a long, painful death. Whose fault is it? His parents? No, they did everything they could reasonably do to prevent him from picking up the dangerous habit.

Is it God’s fault? Why blame Him when God commanded him to obey his parents? And note this additional warning to everyone not to trust one’s own heart:

There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death (Proverbs 14:12).

That’s from Proverbs 14:12, and the warning is so important that it’s repeated in chapter 16, verse 25. Can we not make the rational judgment that it is his own fault? Even though he was warned by parents, God, the Surgeon General, and probably numerous others, the immediate pleasure of fitting in with his peers was more important than what MIGHT happen decades later.

Trusting our own ways, what SEEMS right in our own eyes, and short-sightedness, have been man’s problem from the beginning. However, the problem does go deeper than that. When God created the first man and woman, he placed them in a beautiful garden filled with the most delicious organic fruits and vegetables that one could ever imagine. In this garden, He planted two special trees. We read of them in Genesis 2, verse 9:

And out of the ground the Lord God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:9).

These two trees were symbolic. To eat of the tree of life was the choice to trust God for determining right and wrong, and to live accordingly. But, to take of the other tree was an act of rebellion against God’s rule, symbolizing man choosing for himself to determine good and evil. We are not animals that act according to instinct. God made us free moral agents. We must make moral choices and His laws reveal which choices are right. And He informs us that there are consequences for our decisions. Deuteronomy the thirtieth chapter in verse 19 tells us:

I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live (Deuteronomy 30:19).

There was no ambiguity here: blessings and life on one side, curses and death on the other. So why do we blame God for the choices that we freely make? Just as with a rebellious teenage son, we think we know better. We think God is keeping something good from us because there is a temporary benefit. For the teenager, the vanity of being accepted and looking good in the eyes of his friends, seems worth taking a risk on something that may or may not happen in the future.

Freedom to Choose Between Right and Wrong

To anyone with an objective mind, the blame for our pain and suffering is our own, not God’s. He made us free moral agents and leaves it up to us to choose. Still, people argue, “An all-powerful loving God should stop it.” Now, let us consider how God would stop us from making bad decisions and suffering the consequences of them.

God would have to take away free moral agency. In effect, He would have to force us to make right choices. But our first parents said, by rebelling against God and taking of the forbidden tree, “God, stay out of our business. Don’t tell us what to do. We want to do our own thing.” And if we’re honest with ourselves, we must admit we are no different. Yes, we may rationalize that we are different, but we deceive ourselves, as Jeremiah told us in the seventeenth chapter, verse 9:

The heart [that is, the mind of man] is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it? (Jeremiah 17:9).

Wars are fought between nations, between neighbors, and even in homes between husbands and wives. Whether it is domestic violence or whether it is one nation warring against another, the result is pain and sorrow.

When there is conflict between individuals or nations, there are causes, and one cause is revealed in James the fourth chapter, verses 1 and 2:

Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war (James 4:1–2).

Selfish desire, lust, and greed end in conflict, but we learn elsewhere another cause of conflict, and that is human pride. Notice these Proverbs:

By pride comes nothing but strife, but with the well-advised is wisdom (Proverbs 13:10).

Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall (Proverbs 16:18).

He who is of a proud heart stirs up strife, but he who trusts in the LORD will be prospered (Proverbs 28:25).

As we see, human nature involves lust, greed, pride, and selfish desire. To put it another way, we want what we want and dismiss God’s law of outgoing concern.

Correction for a Purpose

As explained earlier, rather than blaming God, reason #1 is:

#1: We are doing it to ourselves.

Blaming God is easy, but it’s wrong-headed. Most of our trials are a direct result of our own actions. How can one blame God for lung cancer if we refuse to heed the warnings? The same can be said for wars, accidents, and injuries. Don’t blame God. The fault is with human beings! But there are other reasons for suffering, as well;

#2: God is a loving parent who occasionally punishes us for our good.

Not only has God put in place natural consequences for disobedience, but He also steps in as a loving parent to remind us when we go astray. This is explained in Hebrews the twelfth chapter, beginning in verse 5:

And you have forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as to sons: “MY SON, DO NOT DESPISE THE CHASTENING OF THE LORD, NOR BE DISCOURAGED WHEN YOU ARE REBUKED BY HIM; FOR WHOM THE LORD LOVES HE CHASTENS, AND SCOURGES EVERY SON WHOM HE RECEIVES.” If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom a father does not chasten? But if you are without chastening, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons (Hebrews 12:5–8).

God is looking at the long-game. Suffering, whether as a result of our own foolishness, that of others, or discipline from God, produces character needed to be in God’s family. As we read in Hebrews 12:11,

Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it (Hebrews 12:11).

And this brings me to the most important reason for human suffering.

#3: God desires for us to live forever in His Kingdom as His children.

Most people have no idea WHY God created us. To them, we are here to cram into life as much happiness, fun, and success as possible before we die. They see this life as the dessert, and anything that comes later as the broccoli. Few understand what is at stake: a few years on earth, or life for eternity. And what kind of eternity? The Bible is clear. Scripture after Scripture speaks of us becoming children of God. The Apostle Paul even calls us “joint heirs with Christ”—notice Romans the eighth chapter, verses 14–17:

For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, [now notice this] if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together (Romans 8:14–17).

This is the context in which he puts in perspective the temporary suffering that comes with this life. Continuing in verse 18:

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God (Romans 8:18–21).

In light of this, consider the common refrain “no pain, no gain.”

Yes, this temporary existence with all its trials, no matter how severe they may be, is nothing in comparison to what the future holds for those who learn to put God first. This is why Paul also said,

And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose (Romans 8:28).

There is much suffering in our world—some excruciating and long-lasting—but blaming God is wrong-headed. He has given us free moral agency to make decisions. Most of the heartache we suffer is the result of bad decisions. Sometimes, it is the decision of others that cause us grief, but much of the time it’s our own. Some suffering is a direct result of God stepping in as a loving parent to let us know that we are on the wrong track. He wants us to succeed. He wants us to be in His Kingdom. A few years of pain now can yield a far greater reward. As it tells us in Psalm 16:11:

You will show me the path of life; in Your presence is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore (Psalm 16:11).

All suffering must be understood in the context of John 3:16:

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life (John 3:16).

I hope you profited from this video.

If you found it helpful and want to learn more, be sure to get your free study guide on John 3:16 by clicking the link in the description or go to TWTV.ORG/John316.

We here at Tomorrow’s World want to help you understand our world through the pages of the Bible. So be sure to like, subscribe, and hit the bell so you don’t miss another video.

Thanks for watching! See you next time.

[The text below represents an edited transcript of this Tomorrow’s World program.]

What Is the Fourth Commandment?

Billions of people in the world are missing out on the New Testament message of abundant living. Human reason, including non-biblical ideas of “human love,” continues to lead the world toward suffering, confusion, and disaster. What is the true way to love and peace in the world? Most professing Christians know the answer, Matthew 22:37. Jesus Christ gave these two principles to be obeyed by every human being.

“‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 22:37–40).

My friends, this is the way to true life, meaning, and fulfillment. But why do so few enjoy this true life? Because human beings do not like to be told what to do. These are “commandments” and humans resist commandments, including the Ten Commandments.

But many would rather remain ignorant, because it suits their selfish desires. Aldous Huxley, the famous English author, expressed this perspective well.

“Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don’t know because we don’t want to know. It is our will that decides how and upon what subjects we shall use our intelligence” (Ends and Means, p. 312).

But there IS a God, and He commands us to love Him!

The First Great Commandment to love God is defined by the first four of the Ten Commandments, and the Fourth Commandment of the ten emphasizes a weekly action in loving God (Exodus 20:8–10).

“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God.”

My friends, will you love God? Will you obey the Fourth Commandment? You need to know the true Christian way of life and the true Sabbath of Jesus Christ!

Stay tuned!

Which Day Is the Christian Sabbath?

Billions of people all over the world enjoy holidays. They celebrate secular holidays and religious holy days.

Muslims worship on Friday and follow the call to prayer five times a day. Jews around the world have worshiped for thousands of years on the Sabbath, the day that begins at sunset every Friday evening, and continues through sunset on Saturday. Professing Christians meet for Sunday church services, proclaiming theirs is the true day for worship.

The Sabbath controversy has continued for centuries. Did the New Testament change the Sabbath observance to Sunday worship? Should religious people set aside ANY special day as HOLY? Does your Bible COMMAND us to observe SUNDAY, the first day of the week, as a day of worship? Or should Christians observe the seventh-day Sabbath? On today’s program, we’ll answer that question from the Bible.

The most important questions of life are answered in your Bible. And yet, we see religious conflicts and differences even among professing Christian denominations. Why do so many professing Christians keep Sunday, while others keep Saturday as the Sabbath?

Early Christians—Jews and Gentiles—Kept the Seventh-Day Sabbath

To answer the question, let’s look at the beginning of Christianity as recorded in your Bible. If you have your Bible, turn to Acts 13:42.

In the first century ad, the Apostle Paul had preached on the Sabbath in the ANTIOCH synagogue. His audience consisted of both Jews and Gentiles. Notice that after the Jews left the meeting, the Gentiles made a request. Now, this was YEARS after the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. Surely, if Christians were to keep Sunday, the Gentiles would have met with the Apostle Paul the very next day, Sunday, after they had met in the synagogue on Saturday. But did they (Acts 13:42)?

So when the Jews went out of the synagogue, the Gentiles begged that these words might be preached to them...

WHEN? The next day, Sunday? No!

The Gentiles begged that these words might be preached to them the next Sabbath (Acts 13:42).

Read that again in your own Bible. “The Gentiles begged that these words might be preached to them the next Sabbath.”

My friends, the New Testament Church of the first century observed the seventh-day Sabbath. Let’s continue reading in Acts 13:43: “Now when the congregation had broken up, many of the Jews and devout proselytes followed Paul and Barnabas, who, speaking to them, persuaded them to continue in the grace of God. [Now, listen to this!] On the NEXT SABBATH almost the whole city came together to hear the word of God” (Acts 13:43–44).

Yes, it was the Apostle Paul’s custom to preach on the Sabbath as it tells us in Acts 17:2. Many were converted to Christianity and continued observing the Fourth Commandment. Paul was very effective in his preaching to both Jews and Gentiles, as we read in Acts 18:4. He was in Corinth on this occasion:

“And he [the Apostle Paul] reasoned in the synagogue EVERY SABBATH, and persuaded both Jews and Greeks.”

The Christians of the first century AD observed the seventh-day Sabbath. But when was it changed to Sunday? And WHO popularized Sunday observance?

The Catholic Encyclopedia, on the topic of “Sunday,” states this:

“Tertullian (202 [ad]) is the first writer who expressly mentions the Sunday rest: ‘We, however (just as tradition has taught us), on the day of the Lord’s Resurrection ought to guard not only against kneeling, but every posture and office of solicitude, deferring even our businesses lest we give any place to the devil’” (“Sunday,” The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 14, 1912).

That was not until 202 ad, more than 170 years AFTER the death, burial, and resurrection of the Savior, Jesus Christ!

Roman Emperor Constantine Declared Sunday the Day of Rest

And it was not until the fourth century ad that the Emperor Constantine ENFORCED Sunday worship throughout the Roman Empire. Constantine had been a pagan sun-worshipper. He gave the following edict in 321 AD:

“On the venerable day of the SUN let all magistrates and people … REST” (“Sunday Legislation,” Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, vol. 11, p. 147, 1911).

The sun-worshiping emperor Constantine, declared Sunday to be a day of rest. But what was the justification for that? Even Tertullian, whom we mentioned earlier, cited “TRADITION” as his authority. Listen, what is your foundation of truth? What is the source of your religion? Is it tradition apart from the Bible? Is it church authority apart from the Bible? Or is it the Bible itself?

Beware of Rejecting God’s Commandments

Jesus gave a very strong warning when human traditions contradict the commandments of God. Turn to Mark 7. Many churches have followed that wrong pathway, just as the Pharisees of Jesus’ day. Mark 7:7.

Jesus said, “In vain they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. For laying aside the commandment of God, you hold the tradition of men…. All too well you REJECT THE COMMANDMENT OF GOD, that you may keep YOUR TRADITION” (Mark 7:7–9).

That is a warning I hope all of us will heed. Jesus stated He is Lord of the Sabbath. He observed the Sabbath regularly and He did NOT break the Sabbath commandment as some theologians assert. As He said in John 15:10,

“I have kept My Father’s commandments.”

And we as Christians must strive to follow our Savior’s example. He warned us:

“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven’” (Matthew 7:21).

My friends, will you follow the example of Jesus Christ and the instructions of your Bible? Or will you follow the tradition of men?

The Sabbath Rest—A Day of Worship for All of God’s People

Turn in your Bible to Mark 2:27. Jesus stated:

“The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.”

And notice what Jesus DID NOT SAY. He did NOT SAY, “The Sabbath was made for the Jews.” No, the Sabbath was made for ALL HUMANITY—for every man, woman, and child on planet earth! That is what Christ proclaimed!

We’ve seen that Jesus instructed His followers to keep the Ten Commandments. He Himself observed the seventh-day Sabbath, as did the Apostles. But is there OTHER New Testament evidence that Christians should observe the Sabbath? Yes, there is!

Hebrews 4:9 Says The (Seventh-Day) Sabbath Still Remains

Turn in your Bible to Hebrews 4. In this chapter, the Sabbath is pictured as a type of the millennial rest, as well as a memorial of God’s rest at creation. Speaking of the disobedience of the ancient Israelites on their way to the promised land, Hebrews 4:8 states:

For if Joshua had given them rest, then He would not afterward have spoken of another day. [Now, listen! Verse 9] There remains therefore a rest for the people of God (Hebrews 4:8–9).

The original Greek word for the word “rest” in verse 9 is “sabbatismos” which means “a Sabbath-keeping” (according to Vine’s Expository Dictionary of Biblical Words) (“Rest,” Vine’s Complete Expository of Old and New Testament Words, p. 529, 1985).

Both the Revised Version and the New International Version translate verse 9 as “a Sabbath rest.” Yes, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, even to this day!

"Sabbatismos" Is the Original Greek Word in Hebrews 4:9

Now, does this mean a symbolic rest—or a literal Sabbath rest? The Anchor Bible Dictionary cites several secular Greek writings, where “sabbatismos” LITERALLY means “Sabbath observance” or “Sabbath celebration” (“Sabbath,” The Anchor Bible Dictionary, vol. 5, pp. 855–856, 1992).

My friends, there is no question that this verse is a New Testament statement on literal Christian observance of the Sabbath.

The context of Hebrews the fourth chapter does speak both of symbolic and literal rest. The Greek word “katapausis” is also translated “rest” in this section. But notice what God says of those who have now entered into God’s rest, that is—those who are converted, those who will now follow Christ. Notice this important statement in verse 10 of Hebrews 4.

For he [the individual Christian] who has entered His rest [God’s rest] has himself also ceased from his works [notice] as God did from His (Hebrews 4:10).

If we, as converted Christians, are to cease from our works just as God did from his, we simply need to ask one question: HOW did God cease from His works? Verse 4 of Hebrews 4 gives us the answer:

For He has spoken in a certain place of THE SEVENTH DAY in this way: “And God rested on THE SEVENTH DAY from all His works” (Hebrews 4:4).

There is no guessing here. New Testament Christians are supposed to rest just as God rested—on the seventh day! The Bible is very clear. Both the Old Testament AND the New Testament give Christians the clear example and instruction to keep the Sabbath Day Holy!

The scholarly Anchor Bible Dictionary affirms the responsibility of New Testament Christians to observe the Sabbath. It states:

“PHYSICAL sabbath-keeping on the part of the NEW COVENANT believer as affirmed by ‘sabbath rest’ epitomizes cessation from ‘works’ (4:10) in commemoration of God’s rest at creation (4:4 = Gen 2:2) and manifests faith in the salvation provided by Christ” (vol. 5, p. 856).

That’s quite a plain statement!

Do you realize, my friends, that the fourth commandment was not instituted at Mt. Sinai during the time of Moses? It already existed at the recreation as we read in Genesis 2:2. The fourth commandment states: “REMEMBER the Sabbath Day” (Exodus 20:8). God established the weekly Sabbath, not during Moses’ time! God established the Sabbath more than 2,500 years before Moses! Your Bible proves that fact.

The bottom-line question is: WHO or WHAT is your authority? Is it the Bible? Or some church and religion APART FROM the Bible?

The Sabbath has Never Been Changed

As we’ve seen, some religious leaders, including Roman Catholic and Protestant, claim TRADITION or church administration, APART FROM THE BIBLE, as their reason for keeping SUNDAY, rather than the Sabbath.

My friends, we can be very thankful that original Christianity, the Christianity of the first century, which observed the fourth commandment, has continued to this day. Biblical Christianity has continued in spite of persecutions through the centuries. For example, in the seventeenth century, Sabbatarian Christians were persecuted in England and searched for religious freedom in the new lands, the colonies of North America.

The royal charter of 1663 granted by Charles II of England, guaranteed religious freedom to the colony of Rhode Island. That charter can be seen today in the Providence, Rhode Island statehouse.

Evidence of Christian Sabbath-Keepers in American Colonies

Stephen Mumford and his wife came to Newport, Rhode Island in 1665 in search of religious freedom. They were the first Christian Sabbath-keepers in America. As their group expanded and grew, they needed a larger meeting hall. The Sabbatarians built a large meeting hall in 1729. It is now preserved by the Newport Historical Society. If you’re ever in Newport, Rhode Island you will want to visit this historic building. In fact, the oldest Jewish synagogue in America is located right next door to the Christian Sabbath meeting hall.

In the Newport Sabbatarian meeting hall is a raised pulpit. Behind the pulpit are two large plaques inscribed with the Ten Commandments. At the bottom of the second plaque is the Apostle Paul’s bold statement of Romans 3:31 in the King James Version. 

“Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law.”

Yes, these New Testament Christians affirmed their allegiance to Christ’s statement:

“But if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments” (Matthew 19:17).

Sabbath-Keeping Christians Upheld All of the Ten Commandments

Sabbatarian church records, preserved in the Newport Historical Museum, contain members’ names and contributions. Most significantly, the church describes itself in those records as “keeping the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus, and in particular the Lord’s 7^th Day Sabbath.” And in eighteenth-century Rhode Island, there were other prominent Sabbatarians, including two governors of the Rhode Island colony, Richard Ward and his son Samuel—and even the first president of Brown University, James Manning, was a Sabbatarian.

Sadly, many over the centuries have chosen human tradition over God’s plain teachings. The noted Catholic theologian, James Cardinal Gibbons, wrote this bold statement:

“But you may read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, and you will not find a single line authorizing the sanctification of Sunday. The Scriptures enforce the religious observance of Saturday, a day which we never sanctify” (The Faith of Our Fathers, pp. 72–73, 1917).

That is a quote from Gibbons’ The Faith of Our Fathers, first published in 1876.

In other words, Gibbons is saying, if the Bible is your authority, you have NO basis for observing Sunday. The Scriptures, as he states, “enforce the religious observance of Saturday.” We agree with his statement. What Gibbons and other Catholic authorities state, is that, it is the authority of the Catholic Church that changed observance in the Christian world from Saturday to Sunday, NOT the New Testament scriptures! And that occurred in the Council of Laodicea in the middle of the fourth century!

Furthermore, here is an admission by Harold Lindsell, editor of Christianity Today magazine and Southern Baptist minister (November 5, 1976):

“There is nothing in Scripture that requires us to keep Sunday rather than Saturday as a holy day” (“Consider the Case for Quiet Saturdays,” Christianity Today, November 5, 1976, p. 42).

The Blessing of the Seventh-Day Sabbath

So, will you keep the seventh-day Sabbath? It is a memorial of the Creation—and points to the true God and true Creator of the Universe. The book of Hebrews in the New Testament also emphasizes the Sabbath as a foreshadowing of the millennial Sabbath, the 1,000-year reign of Jesus Christ on the earth.

The seventh-day Sabbath has deep meaning for Christians.

The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath (Mark 2:27).

My friends, Christ and the Apostles observed the seventh-day Sabbath, and the biblical holy days. The Scriptures admonish us to follow their example. The Apostle Paul wrote to the Church at Corinth:

Imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ (1 Corinthians 11:1).

The Apostle Peter exhorted us to follow the example of Christ (1 Peter 2:21).

For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow His steps.

In observing the New Testament Passover, Jesus instructed His disciples to follow His example, even by practicing the foot-washing service. Jesus said in John 13:15,

“For I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you. Most assuredly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master; nor is he who is sent greater than he who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them” (John 13:15–17).

We look forward to the day when all peoples and all nations will do as Christ says. The Messiah will establish world peace, world government, true education, and the biblical way of truth, love, and life. All nations will OBSERVE THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. They will observe the weekly Sabbath and the biblical holy days! What a wonderful, peaceful, and prosperous world it will be for all peoples! Will you obey the fourth commandment? Will you follow our Lord’s instruction in Matthew 19:17? Jesus told the young rich man and us:

“But if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments” (Matthew 19:17).

God’s commandments are a joy for true Christians! As the Apostle John wrote:

For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome (1 John 5:3).

Or “not grievous,” as the KJV has it. The seventh-day Sabbath brings joy to those who observe it as God commands!

Thank you for watching!

We here at Tomorrow’s World make these videos to help you understand your world through the pages of the Bible.

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See you next time!

[The text below represents an edited transcript of this Tomorrow’s World program.]

Do You Really Know the Devil?

Red horns, pitchfork, pointy tail—the stereotype of the Devil as some sort of cartoonish figure has little to do with the reality. Satan the Devil is a powerful spirit being of immense influence in the world around us.

Not just a “symbol” of evil or a mere abstract representation of sin or temptation, Satan is a real, living, personal entity devoted to resisting the plan of God, corrupting the true faith, and destroying humanity.

Yet, for all people know about the Devil, or THINK they know about the Devil, one question inevitably arises, and today, we’ll answer that question. Join us for this episode of Tomorrow’s World where we ask and answer the question: “Where Did Satan Come From?”

Satan’s Greatest Trick—Convincing the World He Doesn’t Exist?

Now before we answer our question today, we should perhaps first address a larger question: Is Satan the Devil REAL? Increasingly, people say “No.”

In July of 2023, The Hill reported on a Gallup poll asking Americans if they believed in certain ideas or beings rooted in religion, such as God or angels.

Results showed that belief in these ideas has diminished in the United States relatively consistently for more than 20 years, reaching a record low in all categories in 2023. And belief in the Devil was lowest of ALL—at only 58 percent. More than four out of every ten Americans believe Satan the Devil IS NOT REAL (“Belief in God, the devil falls to new low: Gallup,” July 20, 2023).

And I guarantee you, the Devil PREFERS it that way. It is far easier for him to influence society on every level—entertainment, education, government policy, science, and religion—if we think he does not exist in the first place.

How can we know if the Devil is real?

By turning to God’s word. Because if anyone knows whether Satan is real or not, it is the God of the Bible, the Creator of Heaven and Earth. In fact, if the Devil is a created being—and he is, as we’ll see in a few moments—then God CREATED him! Or, at least, created what BECAME him.

So, let’s turn to Scripture, the divinely revealed mind of God in print, and see what He has inspired in its pages that can teach us about the very real Satan the Devil. As we consistently tell you here on Tomorrow’s World, don’t just believe us—believe your Bible.

And that Bible is FILLED with warnings about the Devil—warnings that, frankly, few people believe, including, believe it or not, most who consider themselves “Christians.” Let’s read some of those warnings.

In the book of Revelation, chapter 12 and verse 9, the Apostle John speaks of a war to come in heaven and describes Satan in a manner that we MUST understand:

So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him (Revelation 12:9).

We learn several things from this. For instance, there are fallen angels who choose to follow Satan. We’ll discuss them later in our program.

But we also learn that Satan the Devil has deceived the WHOLE WORLD. My friends, do you believe what the Bible says, or don’t you? If you do, then you MUST accept that when God inspires His word to say that the Devil has deceived “the whole world,” it means just that! That means most of the people around us—including the one looking back at us in the mirror.

Now, it’s easy to conclude, “No, that couldn’t be ME! I believe in JESUS! I’m a Christian!” Well, that might be fine if the Devil always came across demonically, but he doesn’t. Frankly, he is quite focused on IMITATING JESUS CHRIST and convincing those who are following HIM [Satan] that they are following Jesus. Look at the Apostle Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 11 [vv. 13–14], where he explains how the DEVIL, not Jesus Christ, is behind many so-called “Christian” ministries. He says there plainly:

For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into apostles of Christ. And no wonder! For Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light.

No, not a red cape, “bad guy” mustache, and pitchfork. Rather, an “angel of light”! he is the MASTER of lies and deception! Read this description of him in John, chapter 8 and verse 44, where Jesus is addressing the religious leaders of His day and condemning them:

You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it.

The Devil truly HAS deceived the ENTIRE world! In 2 Corinthians 4:4, the Apostle Paul calls him “the god of this age,” and THREE TIMES in the book of John, no less an authority than Jesus Christ calls Satan “the ruler of this world.”

Does that shock you? Luke 4:6 makes this explicit during the temptation of Jesus. During that trial, the Devil offers Christ all the kingdoms of the world if only Jesus would worship him. Yet, Jesus never disputes with the Devil about that or tells him he has no authority to do that. Quite the contrary!

How did Satan come to possess such authority in the world? Why would God allow that?

Did God Create Satan to Become the Devil?

The first smaller question we should address as we answer the overall question, Where did Satan come from?, is whether Satan was CREATED or not. Some philosophies or religions like Zoroastrianism claim good and evil as eternally co-existing and some claim that God and the Devil must somehow exist forever together, as eternal representatives of those two forces.

The Bible, on the other hand, reveals that to be nonsense. God is the Creator, and all that exists—in both the spirit and the physical realm—came into existence because it was created by God—the two persons we now call God the Father and Jesus Christ. In fact, Ephesians 3:9 tells us that God the Father created all things through Jesus Christ.

And God created the angels, as well. In Psalm 104, in which King David praises God for the many beautiful aspects of His creation, the warrior poet writes in verse 4, God “makes His angels spirits, His ministers a flame of fire.”

In fact, the Bible speaks of a very specific angel’s creation in Ezekiel 28. There, God is inspiring the prophet to preach against the leader of Tyre—but, as the words make plain in a number of ways, the focus shifts from the human leading the nation to the spiritual power behind the throne, as if the human is only a prince, while the angelic power is the real king. Let’s read, beginning in verse 12:

Son of man, take up a lamentation for the king of Tyre, and say to him, “Thus says the Lord GOD: ‘You were the seal of perfection, Full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God; Every precious stone was your covering: The sardius, topaz, and diamond, beryl, onyx, and jasper, sapphire, turquoise, and emerald with gold. The workmanship of your timbrels and pipes was prepared for you on the day you were created. You were the anointed cherub who covers; I established you; you were on the holy mountain of God; you walked back and forth in the midst of fiery stones. You were perfect in your ways from the day you were created, till iniquity was found in you’” (Ezekiel 28:12–15).

Isaiah 14:12 names this being “Lucifer,” and he is the fallen angel that became Satan the Devil.

But notice in this passage that he was clearly a REMARKABLE creation! Clearly, God created him wise, beautiful, skilled, and PERFECT IN HIS WAYS. But a time came when iniquity, or sin, was found in him. The nature of that sin is addressed in more detail in Isaiah 14, but first, let’s take some time with this one here in Ezekiel—because it answers some important questions that many people ask about God and the Devil.

For instance, some ask, “If the Devil is so evil, why did God make him in the first place? Why would God make an evil angel?”

And we see here in Ezekiel that God DID NO SUCH THING.

God didn’t create the devil as some sort of evil enemy of all that is good. He created him wonderful, glorious, and good. Look again: Ezekiel writes that before iniquity was found in him, Lucifer was “the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.” He was even “the anointed cherub who covers” God’s throne, and he was “perfect in [his] ways from the day [he] was created.”

God did not create an embodiment of evil—He created something GOOD and BEAUTIFUL. Any claims that God would make someone inherently evil by design misunderstand the Bible.

In Revelation 15 and verse 3, at the end of this age, we read a song sung by the resurrected and glorified saints, and they say something important about God:

They sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying: “Great and marvelous are Your works, Lord God Almighty! Just and true are Your ways, O King of the saints!”

Yes, great and marvelous are His works, and just and true are His ways!

He did not create an evil Satan. Lucifer was created beautiful and with the potential for good things. In fact, doesn’t the Bible say the same about us? Ephesians 2:10 says to you and me, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.” Yes, you and I, too, are created for GOOD WORKS. Yet human history—and, if we’re honest, even the record of our own lives—reveals that being created with the POTENTIAL for good works and actually CHOOSING TO DO those good works are two very different things.

Lucifer may have been created with the potential for great good, but, as the passage in Ezekiel noted, eventually “iniquity was found in [him].”

What sin was found in Lucifer that could bring him so low? What was able to cause a beautiful, perfect being of such wisdom and majesty—as this angelic being was—to become the bitter, demonic Satan the Devil, utterly corrupt and wholeheartedly intent on destroying, if he could, the plan of God and the people of God?

Why Did Lucifer Fall from Heaven?

When the Bible first introduces the Devil, he is the serpent of Genesis 3, who tempts our first parents to sin in the Garden of Eden. That is, even in the Garden of Eden, he’s already the villain! Yet, we also read that he was not always that way, and that, eventually, “iniquity was found in [him].” We read that he was good, perfect, and beautiful. What transformed him?

If it can be summarized in one, single word, that word would be “pride.”

In the first century, the Apostle Paul advised Timothy about appointing men to authority in the Church, telling him to choose “not a novice, lest being puffed up with pride he fall into the same condemnation as the devil” (1 Timothy 3:6).

Yes, even the greatest of angels can be subject to pride. This is explained in Ezekiel 28 and verse 17, where, speaking to the Devil, God says, “Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor….”

Today’s free DVD, “The Occult and the Spirit World” goes into much more detail concerning angels and demons, but for now, I will refer you to that DVD for more details and simply point out that God created the angels as free moral agents. Like human beings, they can choose right or wrong for themselves.

In fact, the Scriptures tell of angels who defied God and abandoned the assignment God gave them. One place we read of that is Jude 6:

… the angels who did not keep their proper domain, but left their own abode, He has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day.

We learn more about this “proper domain” in another passage we will read in a moment. But first, notice that the Apostle Peter refers to these angels in 2 Peter 2:4:

… God did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast them down to hell [or, in the Greek, Tartarus, a place of restraint] and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved for judgment….

In Lucifer’s case, his pride led him to be discontent with his assigned place and to stage a rebellion against God and Heaven itself! We read of that rebellion in Isaiah 14, beginning in verse 12.

How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How you are cut down to the ground, you who weakened the nations! For you have said in your heart: “I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will also sit on the mount of the congregation on the farthest sides of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High.” Yet you shall be brought down to Sheol, to the lowest depths of the Pit (Isaiah 14:12–15).

Notice, too, a glimpse of the “proper domain” to which Jude referred. When Lucifer decided to attack God’s throne, where was he at the time? Read verse 13 carefully: “For you have said in your heart, ‘I will ascend into heaven…” and in verse 14, “I will ascend above the heights of the clouds….”

If you ascend above the clouds to leave your responsibility, then that responsibility is below them, here on earth! Before human beings, this world was Lucifer’s!

That explains why he told Jesus Christ in Luke 4 and verse 6 that earth’s kingdoms were given to him by God. This was his assigned area of responsibility, and it is the Devil whom Jesus will replace when He returns!

Lucifer’s rebellion was devastating to the earth before the recreation week of Genesis 1 and 2, leaving it in ruins—“without form and void.” He was no longer Lucifer, the light bringer, but Satan, the Adversary.

Satan is the God of this World—For Now

Now he, and the fallen angels he corrupted, are what we know as demons and evil spirits.

We’ve also noted that the earth was given to him as a region of responsibility. This explains WHY Jesus did not disagree with him when the Devil said that authority and the kingdoms of the world “[had] has been delivered to [him]” (Luke 4:6), WHY Jesus calls him three times in the book of John the “ruler of this world,” and why Paul calls him “the god of this age,” as we noted earlier!

So, does that mean God has given up the earth to the Devil forever? Not at all!

In fact, in 1 John 3:8, the Apostle writes of a very important purpose for Jesus’ coming: “For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil.”

By living in the hearts of converted, Spirit-begotten Christians, and living His life of obedience to God’s laws AGAIN in and through them, Jesus has already begun doing just that. And when He returns, the glorified Christ takes one giant step forward toward freeing all of mankind from the Devil’s influence. We read of that step in Revelation 20:

Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, having the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. He laid hold of the dragon, that serpent of old, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years; and he cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal on him, so that he should deceive the nations no more till the thousand years were finished. But after these things he must be released for a little while (vv. 1–3).

During these 1,000 years, the world will be turned into a paradise! As Isaiah describes this marvelous time, “They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea” (Isaiah 11:9).

Though, as Revelation 20 says, he must be released for a short time at the Millennium’s end, his ultimate fate is the Lake of Fire, never to influence another individual ever again. God will ultimately solve the problem of Satan the Devil.

But we don’t have to wait 1,000 years. We don’t even have to wait a day! We can begin the process right now of experiencing the work of Jesus Christ as he destroys the works of the Devil in our own lives—agreeing to seek God’s laws and ways in all things, obeying His commands, and asking God the Father and Jesus Christ for the help we need to be more like Them. Asking them for the strength to embrace uncomfortable truths—about ourselves, our beliefs and practices, and our faith—rather than allowing ourselves the luxury of comfortable lies.

For those who seek God’s help, with all their heart, in turning away from their sin and disobedience to God’s laws, and turning to obedience, submission to the will and authority of God and Jesus Christ over their lives, rest assured that the ears of God are open to such requests.

If you’d like to learn more about today’s offer of the free DVD “The Occult and the Spirit World,” you can get that by going to TWTV.org/Spirit, or just click on the link in the description.

All of us here at Tomorrow’s World work very hard to help you understand your world from the pages of the Bible, and we hope that you’ll come back. If you’d like to see more videos like this, just click on “Subscribe,” and if you want to be notified, just click on the bell.

Thanks so much for watching!

[The text below represents an edited transcript of this Tomorrow’s World program.]

Are You Easily Offended?

Trigger Warning: If you are offended by Political Incorrectness, this telecast is not for you.

When did political correctness begin? And why do we have it? Who’s behind it? And, where is it leading us? Is it humorous, harmless, or hurtful? And should we fall in line with the ever-changing language landscape referred to as “P.C.”?

Here’s another important question: What would Jesus do? Would He be led about by social engineers, as a bull is, with a ring in his nose? Or would He be politically incorrect? How can you know?

Most of us living today have grown up with the constantly changing language of political correctness. The term itself became part of our vocabulary in the 1960s and ‘70s when drugs, rampant sex, and Vietnam War protesters flooded American university campuses. The change in how we expressed ourselves often appeared silly, foolish, and laughable. But is it to be laughed off?

Stay tuned as I’ll show you what is behind P.C. and answer the question of what Jesus would do.

Language Affected by Dangerous Politics

A warm welcome to all of you from all of us here at Tomorrow’s World, where today I’m addressing the subject commonly referred to as political correctness. Have you ever considered what’s behind this ever-changing language landscape? Where did it begin? And what’s the end-goal of those promoting it? Boston University professor emeritus Angelo Codevilla explains:

“The notion of political correctness came into use among Communists in the 1930s as a semi-humorous reminder that the Party’s interest is to be treated as a reality that ranks above reality itself” (Malcolm Kline, “The Origin of Political Correctness,” Academia.org, November 18, 2016).

He explains that it began as a joke among communist party insiders—as in:

“Comrade, your statement is factually incorrect.”

“Yes, it is. But it is politically correct” (Kline, Academia.org).

Conservative author Bill Lind asks an important question that too few consider, and he sees it holistically, as part of a greater picture:

“Where does all this stuff that you’ve heard about this morning—the victim feminism, the gay rights movement, the invented statistics, the rewritten history, the lies, the demands, all the rest of it—where does it come from?” (Bill Lind, “The Origins of Political Correctness,” Academia.org, February 5, 2000).

Lind then confirms P.C.’s Marxist-Leninist underpinnings and warns that there is nothing humorous about its intended goal.

“The name originated as something of a joke, literally in a comic strip, and we tend still to think of it as only half-serious. In fact, it’s deadly serious. It is the great disease of our century, the disease that has left tens of millions of people dead in Europe, in Russia, in China, indeed around the world. It is the disease of ideology. PC is not funny. PC is deadly serious” (Lind, Academia.org).

It’s a mistake to think of Political Correctness in isolation.

It’s part of a greater political movement, as indicated by Codevilla and Lind. Many in America think in political terms of liberal (meaning left) and conservative (meaning right), but fail to recognize that there is both liberal and left and these are not the same. Leftists, unlike liberals, are socialist totalitarians. Let’s call them what they are—Marxists—and they are working to destroy America and other Western countries. It should be obvious to anyone taking an objective view of what is taking place around us that their goal is to tear down Western democratic nations, and make them into something very different from their roots.

As self-confessed liberal Kirsten Powers explains in The Silencing: How the Left Is Killing Free Speech, the left is not liberal, but illiberal, sometimes referred to as progressive—and who isn’t for progress? Powers writes:

On campuses there are speech codes, so-called “free speech zones,” and a host of “anti-discrimination” policies that discriminate against people who dissent from lefty groupthink. Christian and conservative groups have been denied official university status by student government organizations for holding views not in line with the liberal dogma. The illiberal left’s attempts to control the public debate are frequently buttressed by a parade of childish grievances. They portray life’s vagaries as violations of their basic human rights and demand the world stop traumatizing them with facts and ideological views that challenge their belief system. They insist colleges provide “trigger warnings” on syllabi to prevent them from stumbling upon a piece of literature that might deal with controversial or difficult issues that could upset them.

The illiberal left yearns for a world sanitized of information that offends them (Powers, The Silencing, p. 6).

The goal of the illiberal left is to tear down and destroy.

P.C. is merely one tool in a broader campaign that involves denigrating authority, destroying the nuclear family, and controlling speech, behavior, and even thought. While Tomorrow’s World is not political, we can call out and expose the ultimate object of their campaign of destruction. They seek a world without God. They wish to forever remove the moral underpinnings of an orderly world that are found in the Bible. The Bible is God’s instruction book, a manual for mankind to know how to live. Lind minced no words when he explained nearly 24 years ago: “Political Correctness is cultural Marxism. It is Marxism translated from economic into cultural terms….”

The totalitarian nature of Political Correctness is revealed nowhere more clearly than on college campuses… where the student or faculty member who dares to cross any of the lines set up by the gender feminist or the homosexual-rights activists, or the local black or Hispanic group, or any of the other sainted ‘victims’ groups that PC revolves around, quickly find themselves in judicial trouble…. That is a little look into the future that Political Correctness intends for the nation as a whole” (Lind, Academia.org).

Controlling Language, Controlling Thought

But, this subject is only one tool in a greater movement undermining the foundations of Western civilization, and that movement seeks to remove God and His word from our world forever.

Consider where we are today. As explained in the first portion of this program, what we see is nothing less than Marxist totalitarian dogma. And it is no longer confined to university campuses. It has crept into education at all levels, including the earliest introduction to children’s education. It’s everywhere, from the military, to media, to business—large and small. It’s expected and enforced. Corporate America (and this is not confined to America alone) in too many cases is now requiring employees to declare their preferred pronouns below their names. Even if it is simply,

Mr., he, and him,

or,

Mrs., she, and her

To not do so is to put one’s job at risk. That’s where we are today. Who would have thought we would see such things, even as recently as ten years ago?

Political Correctness is often viewed by sincere and naïve people as an attempt to be compassionate and non-offensive to an ever-growing list of individuals placed in protective categories. According to one website, some examples of which I’ll refer to in this ptogram,

The politically correct euphemisms help us to avoid discriminating against other people on the grounds of: a) age, b) appearance, c) gender, d) health, e) personality, f) race, g) relationship status, h) religion, i) social status, and j) work (“Discover 100 Politically Correct Euphemisms,” PurlandTraining.com, 2020).

Now, here are a few of the examples listed by this source:

Instead of “Able-bodied” say “Non-disabled”

Instead of “Dead” say “Terminally unavailable”

Instead of “Deaf” use “Hearing impaired”

Instead of “Blind” use “Sight impaired”

Instead of “Elderly” or “old people” say “Senior citizens”

And, here’s my favorite when it comes to foolishness:

Instead of “Bald” say “Follically challenged”

(PurlandTraining.com)

Individually, and superficially, some of these language modifications may appear harmless or humorous—even compassionate. But referring to someone as “follically challenged” is nothing short of silliness.

At the same time, as brought out by Kirsten Powers, young people are being indoctrinated into the idea that they should be offended by any perceived slight. The term used to describe these offenses is micro aggressions. One must wonder what the future holds for an overly sensitive generation offended by almost anything. How will they cope in life if the story of “Old Yeller” places them in deep depression because they experienced the loss of their beloved dog? Such a personal event is painful—I understand that firsthand—but it’s part of life. As the saying goes—Get over it!

So why are these social engineers doing this? What is their end game? Dr. Codevilla asks:

Why does the American Left demand ever-new P.C. obeisances? (Kline, Academia.org)

He goes on to explain:

In 2012 no one would have thought that defining marriage between one man and one woman, as enshrined in U.S. law, would brand those who do so as motivated by a culpable psychopathology called “homophobia,” subject to fines and near outlaw status (Kline, Academia.org).

Note that dishonest use of language is employed here. If you disagree with homosexuality, for any reason, you must be phobic—fearful. It is not politically correct to say so, but that’s a lie. Codevilla continues:

Not until 2015–16 did it occur to anyone that requiring persons with male personal plumbing to use public bathrooms reserved for men was a sign of the same pathology. Why had not these become part of the P.C. demands previously? Why is there no canon of P.C. that, once filled, would require no further additions? Because the point of P.C. is not and has never been merely about any of the items that it imposes, but about the imposition itself (Kline, Academia.org).

A Linguistic Assualt on Godly Principles

Probably not all people behind Political Correctness are avowed Marxists, but they understand that how people express themselves linguistically changes how they think. And don’t be naïve—these people are dedicated to changing the way that you and I think! While some changes appear humorously silly, others have a darker reason behind them—to turn upside down all biblical and traditional values and bring about an amoral, anything-goes world. Immoral choices are promoted, but if that choice brings tragic results, it’s never one’s fault. A drug addict must be referred to as someone who is chemically dependent. This deflects personal responsibility and the stigma of the truth. After all, much of current pop-psychology involves convincing us that whether we are:

Addicted to drugs

Abusing alcohol

Over-eating

Hopelessly in credit card debt

or

Chronically late for work,

it is not our fault. Tardiness syndrome is the label, but frankly, your boss doesn’t care about labels—show up for work on-time or be fired, or as P.C. puts it—“become a victim of restructuring.”

Much of what is called P.C. goes beyond a distraction—it’s dishonest deception. When we know someone who is clumsy and refer to him as uniquely coordinated, it is as though he, first of all, is coordinated, just different from the rest of us. An illegal alien is exactly that, but these social engineers don’t want us to state the truth. To them, he is neither illegal nor an alien, but an undocumented worker. Such an expression deflects from the truth that he is in the country illegally. Juvenile delinquents become children at risk. Now of course they are children at risk! Because they’re delinquent!

And here is one that MS Word seeks to change: mankind, to humankind.

While humankind is a legitimate word, why the insistence on avoiding the equally legitimate word mankind?

What is behind this is something quite sinister. It is part of a broad design to degrade both men and women and the roles they play in society. Anything with man in it must be changed:

“Man on the street” to “Average person”

“Man up” to “Be brave”

“Manhole” to “Maintenance hole”

“Man-made” to “Synthetic”

and,

“Manpower” to “Workforce”

(PurlandTraining.com)

And rather than man or woman, it should simply be people. Why? Is it too difficult to discern the agenda behind it all?

The attack against the way we were made is relentless and political correctness is a powerful tool to transform the way we think. What may have appeared silly and humorous at first has become a relentless attack on normality and morality.

Nowhere is there a more sinister attempt to change thinking than in the matter of the way God made us—male and female. Even if an American Supreme Court Justice cannot tell us what a woman is, any normal thinking person without an agenda or panel to satisfy, can. You are here, able to understand this, as the result of a sperm from a man and an ovum (egg) from a woman, coming together and carried in the womb of the woman—not a man. But how often we hear people fall prey to leftist jargon, as in “the gender assigned at birth.” No, dear friends, it is not assigned. It’s biology and every right-minded person knows that. We should not fall for such destructive word games.

Yes, there is a very small percentage of people who are born intersex, meaning that their genitalia are ambiguous, but to use this rare fact is a ruse. These are not the men competing in women’s sports or invading women’s changing rooms. These are not the girls encouraged by social media to solve their teenage insecurities by taking testosterone, binding their chests, or worse.

God’s Words are Plain and Clear

I said I would answer the question, “Would Jesus be led about by political correctness?” The answer is quite simply, No. God does not conform to mankind’s agenda-driven word games of oppression wrapped in compassion. He calls human actions as they truly are. [1 Corinthians 6:9]

Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 6:9–10).

God does not sugarcoat immorality, paper over lies, or fail to punish for unrepented sin. He says it as it is in Revelation 21:8:

But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death (Revelation 21:8).

Furthermore, the prophet Isaiah condemns those who play word games and turn language upside down, calling evil good, and good evil. It is God who is the reliable source determining right from wrong. [Isaiah 5:20]

Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! (Isaiah 5:20).

Supposedly intelligent university students may not be able to tell you how many sexes there are, yet for most of us, it’s quite simple. A child is born, and parents rejoice over a boy or girl. Until recently, they did not fret over some dishonest socialist-inspired construct that the newborn falls within a spectrum. They naturally understood by observation.

While addressing the Pharisees, Jesus confirms what Moses recorded in Genesis 1, that there are only two sexes. Note it in Matthew 19:4:

And He answered and said to them, “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘MADE THEM MALE AND FEMALE,’ and said, ‘FOR THIS REASON A MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER AND BE JOINED TO HIS WIFE, AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH’?” (Matthew 19:4–5).

None of this is meant to say that we should needlessly offend anyone. The Apostle Paul instructed the people of Colossae, [Colossians 4:6]

Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer each one (Colossians 4:6).

And when Jesus came and spoke in His hometown synagogue, [Luke 4:22]

… all bore witness to Him, and marveled at the gracious words which proceeded out of His mouth (Luke 4:22).

Yet, He did not shy away from speaking the truth to them. He, nor we, should enter into someone’s fantasy world of confusion. We should speak the truth. And Jesus was never concerned about pleasing men, paving over the truth, nor being politically correct. The result of His honesty with those of His hometown is found a few verses later.

So all those in the synagogue, when they heard these things, were filled with wrath, and rose up and thrust Him out of the city; and they led Him to the brow of the hill on which their city was built, that they might throw Him down over the cliff (Luke 4:28–29).

Yes, there is sometimes danger in speaking the truth—and doing so requires two things: honesty and courage.

Political correctness is seen by many to either be silly and harmless, or caring and compassionate. It may be silly, but it’s not harmless, it’s not caring, and it’s not compassionate. Satan is the father of lies, and he must revel in the party joke,

Comrade, your statement is factually incorrect.

Yes, it is. But it is politically correct.

As Bill Lind concluded in his “Campus Report” 24 years ago, he said:

In conclusion, America [and I’ll add Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom and some other countries] today is in the throes of the greatest and direst transformation in its history. We are becoming an ideological state, a country with an official state ideology enforced by the power of the state. In “hate crimes” we now have people serving jail sentences for political thoughts. And the Congress is now moving to expand that category ever further…. It’s exactly what we have seen happen in Russia, in Germany, in Italy, in China, and now it’s coming here. And we don’t recognize it because we call it Political Correctness and laugh it off. My message today is that it’s not funny, it’s here, it’s growing and it will eventually destroy, as it seeks to destroy, everything that we have ever defined as our freedom and our culture (Lind, Academia.org).

Political Correctness is part of a larger agenda at work today.

There is nothing innocuous about it. It may not have been around when Jesus walked the earth, but understand from the scriptures that Jesus and His servants would not have fallen prey to an agenda hostile to scripture.

I hope you profited from this video.

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