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Beginners Care Package

Good Works – Evil Works - #1

Fred R. Coulter

First of all, I want to go ahead and cover this article that Bob gave us, "High Court Rules Against Choice of Sabbath Day Off." Now, I remember how happy everyone was when the Supreme Court ruled that you must be given the Sabbath day off. And everyone said, "Boy, this is God’s will, God intervened, and now all Sabbath-keepers are going to have an easy time of it…" and whenever you have a job then you can have the time off, you can get the time off. You can demand that – yes, you can take them to court and force them to give you the time off. Because it passed the Supreme Court, and everything is fine. Well, here’s a good example of when you depend upon men to enforce the will of God. They change their mind.

"The Supreme Court…" This is dated 6/26/85, "The Supreme Court, invoking the Constitution’s demand for separation of church and state…" Now nowhere does it say "separation of church and state." It says there shall be no state-sponsored religion. That’s the intent of it. And what was the intent of the Founding Fathers using that, that the State shall not establish any religion? You go back to 1776 and what were they thinking of more than anything else? To be irreligious, to where there would be no religion at all in the government? What were they thinking of more than anything else? (Audience Comment) Freedom. But freedom from what? What did they have in mind? What did they have historically in their mind when they did it? Now they could not perceive two hundred years down the road to today. So what was it they had in mind? What was the past, historical, religious thing that they had in mind that they were trying to prevent here in America? I think it’s very obvious – the Catholic Church. And the Church of England, which was, although they got rid of the Pope, was just as stringent and a state religion as Catholicism. So that’s what they had in mind.

They, I’m sure, did not have it in mind that you come down to the point now where the Constitution then cannot give a person’s own conviction. They wanted freedom of conviction, where there would be no law against freedom of conviction. So now it’s been cleverly twisted. And it always comes back the other way, which is, as this says, that the people who cannot get the time off for other than religious reasons are discriminated against. Isn’t that basically the premise that you were told in your situation? Yeah. Ok. So it’s been turned around. And it’s now, there is no law which - you can go to the Civil Service, or whatever it is, and say, "I need my Sabbath off."

So, "The Supreme Court, invoking the Constitution’s demand for separation of church and state, said Wednesday that states may not force any employer to give workers their choice of a religious day off each week. In an 8-1 ruling, the justices declared unconstitutional a Connecticut law that protected employees from retaliation from missing work on their religious sabbath. ‘This unyielding weighing in favor of sabbath observance over the other interests countervenes a fundamental principle of the Constitution,’ Chief Justice Warren E. Burger said for the Court. ‘The state law decreed that those who observe a sabbath any day of the week as a matter of religious conviction must be relieved of duty to work on that day, no matter what burden or inconvenience this imposes upon the employer or fellow workers,’ he said." So we’re right back to square one where we were before, with a little bit of latitude. Not much. Just about back to square one. At least we’re not into enforced Sunday observance. So it gets right back to the whole thing. The state cannot superimpose faith.

Now let’s go back to Isaiah 1. Because it is true, whenever you have a civil government enforce religion, it in itself can be as corrupt as religion can develop into. Now when we go back here to Isaiah 1, and this is the part that was missing on the tape of last week. But here, let’s just take a look at what God shows. And this will be kind of in part on this good works, bad works. So if we want to, let’s go ahead and just…let me get my pen here for a minute.

Ok, let’s just categorize works. Now I did a little bit of this previously, but I don’t have too much of it – oh yes, I have my notes right here. So if you in your notes want to do this, for one column put "Motive." For the other column put "Appearance." Now before we get to Isaiah 1, let’s go back to the book of Deuteronomy, and let’s see why God gave the Ten Commandments to everybody, and His commandments and laws and statutes and judgments and everything. Let’s go to Deuteronomy 5. Now the reason I’m going here is because Deuteronomy 5 has the Ten Commandments given, and there are so many people that believe that the Ten Commandments are really harsh. Their belief in the Ten Commandments is that, what? The appearance of the Ten Commandments, or their effect; so we can have ... let’s do this - let’s have motive, appearance, effect. We need to have a third category. That their effect is evil. That’s why Christ came to do away with the laws, because the laws were harsh and evil.

So let’s look at the motivation that God gave, what the motive was. So we could say that God’s summary of all of His commandments and everything, we would have to put "Motive: good," because it came from God; and you can just put down here Deuteronomy 5. So you can help me do a little outlining on this. I’ve done a lot of studying and thinking on it, so this is not entirely cold. But what I’m doing here with the list this. The motive is good, because it comes from God; the appearance is good, because it does have the appearance; the effect is good. Now that is, if you obey. See, everything there’s going to be a contingency on if you obey. So we could put, "Deuteronomy 5: God’s laws - if obeyed." Because there is a vast difference. If you disobey, and we will put, "If disobey…" the motive from God is still good. The appearance - because what happens when you disobey? There’s a penalty for sin. So the appearance to human beings may not be necessarily good. Because what? The wages of sin is what? Death. So the appearance may be anywhere from good to evil.

If someone sins and dies because of the sin, and the community is saved from that hellish person, it is evil to the person who has suffered the consequences of that sin from his perspective. And that’s where you get a lot of people saying, "Well, if God exists, why doesn’t He stop the evil in the world?" But it is good from the point of view that the person is no longer here. Can you think of a contemporary case where that would fit exactly so? That fellow, what’s his name, Day, up in Calaveras? Where under the guise of good he lured people in to do things? And then it became evil. So you can’t always go on appearance. What may be good on the surface may be evil. But when God sets His hand for correction and purging and punishment, on the surface it looks bad. It looks evil, because people die. But the result is going to accomplish good.

The effect then, the final effect if you disobey, from God’s point of view, is good. From the sinner’s point of view is bad. You can just take the example, let’s just take the example of AIDS. God gave the law - let’s read it right here. Let’s read the commandment in Deuteronomy 5. It says, verse 18, "Neither shalt thou commit adultery." Now the motive on that was very good. For what reason? To ensure that you have a binding marriage, to ensure that you’re going to have healthy children, to ensure that you’re going to have a stable societal factor of the family. All of that is good, good, good, good, good, good. But to the sinner, where he is told, "Do not commit adultery," he thinks and that is bad. So then he goes out and contacts AIDS. He says that is bad. But that’s a penalty for what he is doing. And what is it going to do? It is going to remove that person from the society. So that ends up being good. However, unless the civil and religious authorities of the land agree with God, that this thing is coming from God and the punishment is upon them and they need to be put away, and they need to be separated, and they need to be segregated, and you need to enforce the laws that there should be no sodomy in the land, unless they move to do that, what happens? Then it begins to spread.

And we were reading - my wife was reading just the other day, here is a little girl brought into a hospital who is suffering from AIDS. I mean, she’s what, a year old? I don’t know how old. And then there was another article which also said that some of the morticians, they want, when an AIDS victim comes in they just want to cremate it, the remains, when it’s dead. And they said the reason - and it slipped through the paper, but I think it really tells you what the situation could be. They said that’s the way they stopped the plagues in Europe. They cremated all of their dead so the germs and viruses didn’t spread. So when we look get some of these things, first of all we have to know God’s laws and commandments, number one. Then we have to know why God gave it. And then we have to know the appearance of it and also the effect of it - the effect of it on the individual, the effect of it on the society, and the effect that God is going to have.

Now after he summarized all the commandments, and we come over here to verse 29…no, let’s go to verse 27. Here’s a good example of something that is good and that God was there, the effect should have been good, the appearance was awesome, but the people didn’t like it. Verse 26…no, verse 25. "Now therefore why should we die?..." This is the people... no, we have to go to verse 24 to get it. "And ye said, Behold, the LORD our God hath shewed us His glory and His greatness, and we have heard His voice out of the midst of the fire: we have seen this day that God doth talk with man, and he liveth. Now therefore why should we die? for this great fire will consume us:..." (vs.. 24-25). So it’s just like everything that a sinner will do. If he is sinning there is what? There is the fear of getting caught. So here, this is the fear that the people had toward God. Rather than saying, "This is fantastic! Who has ever heard that God has come down and talk to people and we live?" So they said, "Now we’re going to be consumed by this fire."

"...If we hear the voice of the LORD our God any more, then we shall die. For who is there of all flesh, that hath heard the voice of the living God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as we have, and lived?" So they said unto Moses, "Go thou near, and hear all that the LORD our God shall say: and speak thou unto us all that the LORD our God shall speak unto thee; and we will hear it, and do it" (vs. 25-27). So then here is the first excuse not to obey. Because what happened after that? Then God took them up on their word. God said, "Ok, Moses, you come up on the mountain and I will talk with you, and you tell the people all My words." What is one of the first things that happened that the people used against Moses later on? They told him to go up there. The people said to Moses and Aaron what? "You take too much to yourselves." But they said to do it.

Now all the way through, keep this in mind about the good, the bad, the appearance, the effect, and so forth. Verse 28, "And the LORD heard the voice of your words, when ye spake unto me; and the LORD said unto me, I have heard the voice of the words of this people, which they have spoken unto thee: they have well said all that they have spoken." Now notice, here is the whole problem in everything that is done, right here in verse 29. This is the problem, Old Testament, this is the problem, New Testament, this is the problem in anything that is done concerning human beings. And we were talking on the way down about this, "Let’s set up a perfect structure. Let’s set up a perfect…" And what you’re saying is let’s set up a perfect what? Government. "And if we set up a perfect government then we will eliminate evil." Isn’t that the basis of most governments, except despots who want total power and to execute total evil? And you read, what is it, Plato and Aristotle’s work. I’m sure you’ve heard of it, or read of it. And they go through the whole dissertation, what is the best kind of government? And so people still do the same thing today, don’t they? "We will structure the government. We will structure the laws. And if we get the right law, the right structure, the right government, the right enforcement, we’re going to have…" What? "…A perfect society."

Now I want to ask you a question: did God in giving the Ten Commandments have the right commandments? Yes, He did. Did He have a good structure? Yes, He did. Did it work? No, it failed. The structure that God gave failed. Why? Any structure is going to fail unless this is taken care of: verse 29, "O that there were such an heart in them, that they would fear Me,..." Now fear means to reverence God. It doesn’t mean to just be there in trepidatious quivering. Although there may be times when you ought to do that too. Just considering all that God is and all that He has done, you know, there isn’t one thing we can do to compel God to do something for us. God does it because He is God. He said, "Oh that there were such a heart in them," and here is the key. This is the problem with all human relationships, with all human structure, with all human governments, with all even Spirit-led churches. It’s the problem of the heart. Because we have human nature, and human nature has the law of sin and death in it. And that is why in looking at this thing of a good work and an evil work, a right work, a bad work, then it’s hard for us to decide what really is good, what really is right, what is wrong, and how it fits in there. Because you don’t know the motive of the person involved. And that’s the key thing. You don’t know the person’s heart. So there it is. And we’ll see this in the New Testament.

"O that there were such an heart in them, that they would fear Me, and keep all My commandments always, that it might be well with them,…" So here’s the motive. That’s God’s motive for the people. That it would be well with them, good with them, "…and with their children for ever! [So] go say to them, Get you into your tents again. But as for thee, stand thou here by Me, and I will speak unto thee all the commandments, and the statutes, and the judgments, which thou shalt teach them, that they may do them in the land which I give them to possess it" (vs. 29-31). So here God was going to give them the land. He gave them laws, He gave them every good thing right there. And they still had human nature. Now I think maybe this is going to give us a greater understanding and idea about human nature, because I think part of the difficulties in trying to understand about human nature is that we don’t realize how tricky and deceptive and wicked and evil that it really is, even in the good things that we do.

You take - let’s give you an example of something that…well, we will get to it in the New Testament, but just take all the rock stars that did the record, "We Are the World." Now their motive was pretty good. It was to give money for the starving people in Ethiopia. But what was the tree? You then have to go back…we might put here, "Origin." That’s the missing key. That’s it. We need to have origin. Origin, or we could put, "Tree." Because we will see a parable in the New Testament. What kind of lives to these people live? Drugs, dope, open sex. So they come along and they do this. It’s motivated from good, "We are going to feed the Ethiopians." But how many of them in there got publicity to further their own careers? Which I’m sure did not escape them. So you do a good work, you sent things to the Ethiopian children that are starving, which is fine. But, is that a good work that God is going to say, "That’s wonderful. Now I’m going to give you salvation"? It temporarily does something.

Now we have… coming back here… so I’m thinking through on this. I have not done it out loud. I like to do something out loud once before I really get into it. So then I will work this up a little bit more. Because I promised to bring this sermon, and I’m going to do it. Verse 32 now, "Ye shall observe to do therefor as the LORD your God hath commanded you: ye shall not turn aside to the right hand or to the left. Ye shall walk in all the ways which the LORD your God hath commanded you, that ye may live,..." So the origin in this case is God, because He gave the laws. The motive is good, the appearance is good, the effect is good if you obey. So we can say this is good, good, good. The other one, we could say, would be evil, good, evil, good. "...That it may be well with you, and that ye may prolong your days in the land which ye shall possess" (vs. 32-33). Now, don’t people want to live long? Sure they do. We can go here to Deuteronomy 6:3, "Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe to do it; that it may be well with thee, and they ye may increase mightily, as the LORD God of thy fathers have promised thee, in the land that floweth with milk and honey." And then He shows the whole basis, then, here has to be based upon love.

Now…let me see something here…ok, now let’s go to Isaiah 1. So here, these people have all of their laws, and they have all of their rituals; they have a temple at this point; they are offering the sacrifices; it’s the official law of the land to keep the Sabbath, to keep the new moons, to keep the holy days, to have the feasts. It is the official law of God that these things be done. Keep in mind about the heart of the people, and keep in mind also the degree of enforcement. Because whenever there is a law you have to have enforcement. And if there’s not enforcement, then God has to enforce it with the wages of sin, which is death, and suffering in between. So here we have Israel. Now let’s begin in verse 2. "Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth: for the LORD hath spoken, I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against Me." Now when there is rebellion, what good are laws? When there is anarchy, what good are laws? I mean, they may be perfect, they may be right, they may be good, they may be true.

"The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib: but Israel doth not know, My people doth not consider. Ah sinful nation,…" And that’s actually should be given, "Ah! A sinful nation!" "…A people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters:…" So you see how it’s right to the heart, every time. It is in the heart. "…They have forsaken the LORD, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone away backward." And then He says, "Why should ye be stricken any more?..." So here God, as we know, is not interested in the death of the wicked. But why would they be stricken any more? "…Ye will revolt more and more: the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint" (vs. 3-5). So we have a very similar situation to what we have in this government today. And what is the big cry? What do they want to stop? They want to stop sickness, don’t they? And they want to stop crime, don’t they? And they want to stop all these things. But they’ve left God. We have it right now, we just read it in the paper, that, "Hey, we’re going to wipe out anything which has to do with giving people so they can keep the Sabbath." So there’s no enforcement. People go on their own way.

Now they are going to be giving in the – just to give an example - they are going to be giving every day in the Congress prayers, right? They have a Catholic come in one day, a Rabbi another day, and a Protestant another day, and then probably another Protestant, and then they rotate it around. Or maybe they do it for a week. I don’t know exactly how they do it. And they pray and ask God to guide them and lead them in all that they are doing. God doesn’t guide them and lead them in all that they are doing. God does not. Why? Because of sin. And then He says, verse 6, "From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment." Then He says, "Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire:…" (vs. 6-7). That’s when it gets to the extreme. It’s very possible that the U.S. could end up being just like Lebanon. Lebanon is a terrible, terrible, terrible place. We’re getting the hostages back, and at least Reagan did it faster than Carter did.

But anyway, you can see…now, then it says here in verse 9, "Except the LORD of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah," which were just absolutely fried to a crisp, just burned up, just by the divine fire from God. Now verse 10, "Hear the word of the LORD, ye rulers of Sodom; give ear unto the law of our God, ye people of Gomorrah. To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto Me?..." Now I want to ask a question: did God command the sacrifices to be given? Yes. But what is the purpose of those sacrifices, "…saith the LORD: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats" (vs. 9-11). And you can go back through Leviticus and Numbers, and you can find the sacrifices that were to be given, the sprinkling of the blood, the bullocks, the rams, the lambs, the whole thing.

"When ye come to appear before Me, who hath required this at your hand, to tread My courts? Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto Me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting" (vs. 12-13). Now can people pollute God’s ways so much that even on the days God said, "Observe," and they gather to observe, and they do it in their own way and they allow sin to continue, is it fruitless? Sure it is. And I’m beginning to see, especially after the experience of last week, that there can be many people who, on the surface, think they’re doing right, think they’re doing the will of God. They have their own little work that they’re going to do, they have their own little axe that they’re going to grind. But unless their heart is right with God, you can keep the Sabbath perfect in the letter from sunrise to sunset and God could care less, because you’ve missed the whole purpose of the Sabbath.

If the whole purpose of the Sabbath is to just do no labor, to just make sure that you don’t violate any little teeny-weeny thing of the Sabbath physically, but you sit there and you have murder in your heart, and you have lust in your mind…so there is what? A good work given by God, which the origin is good, the motive was good, it was meant to be in appearance good, and the effect good. But because of sin, though the origin was good, the motive was good, now then we come into the human motive. Why then should a priest go offer the sacrifices when he doesn’t call the people to repentance? It does no good. You see how that comes along?

Let’s continue on right here in Isaiah 1, where God says, "Your new moons and your appointed feasts My soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them. And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood" (vs. 14-15). So here, all these good works that God gave them to do, but with an evil heart, without calling people to repentance, it doesn’t do any good. And then it becomes something that you are doing. And it becomes your religion. And it becomes, here in this case, "playing temple." Or as we could say today, "playing church." There are a lot of people playing church – running around to be deacons, running around to be elders, running around to do good works and playing church. And there are even some people who do good works so that it will be a cover for their evil. Now that is an evil, evil motivation with an appearance of good with an apparent effect of good, but it really isn’t.

You know, like a leading salesman who was a deacon in the church, a used car salesman. And he would give great donations, and he would help people, and do all these great works for the church. And then after about five years in this church they, because of some business dealings, the government got involved. And because of some complaints of this man - against him, rather - they investigated and found out that he was a front for stolen cars. So what good did all of his church-going do? No good. What was his motivation? Now we’ll see that Christ makes – in fact, the whole emphasis of the Bible gets down to the motivation of why you’re doing it. Now we’ll see this here in just a minute.

So God says in verse 16, "Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before Mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed,…" So there are good, good works then. The motive is good, the appearance is good, the effect is good. "…Judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If ye be willing and obedient,…" So notice the choice here. You have to be willing and you have to be obedient. Then "…ye shall eat the good of the land: but if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it" (vs. 16-20).

Now let’s go to the end of the book, Isaiah 66. And this again is a summary capsule of what we’re talking about. "Thus saith the LORD, The heaven is My throne, and the earth is My footstool: where is the house that ye build unto Me? and where is the place of My rest? For all those things hath Mine hand made, and all those things have been, saith the LORD:…" (Isa. 66:1-2). In other words, God is not going to be impressed by a physical thing that you can do. Are you going to build some great, fantastic temple that you’re going to compel God to come and dwell in? Are you going to make some kind of religious thing where now you have a little formula…you know, like the Muslims, they pray five times a day. Does that make God hear them, because they pray five times a day and bow to Mecca? Does it change their heart? No. The hijackers who killed the man on the plane, they faithfully bowed down and prayed toward Mecca while they were holding the captives right on the plane.

No. You see, it’s not the outside that changes. And even God told David when he wanted to build the temple, He says, "You’re not going to build it, but your son, because you’re a bloody man. You’ve had a lot of murder and killing. And I don’t want even to be associated with that." Yet God said of David, what? He was a man after His own heart. But God says, "…But to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at My word" (vs. 2). So now we’re getting back to what kind of heart and attitude we need to have toward God. That’s the important thing.

If in a church we all have this kind of attitude toward God, and if we do what Jesus said, to love each other as we ought to, and if we follow the other things in the Bible about not gossiping, and tattling, and doing people in…and I think that that is one of the things that has sown so much discord, is that the clitter-clatter of people’s busy-bodying about other peoples’ things, and they actually are hurting people. And yet they will go and religiously pray an hour a day. Because someone told them that if you pray an hour a day, and I’ve heard that, haven’t you? That if you pray for an hour a day, and "if you don’t pray an hour a day you’re no good. Get that clock and put it right up there."

So you get a clock and you think, "Boy, I gotta pray an hour. What am I going to pray about?" So you get a prayer list. Ok, fine, so you have a prayer list. And so you pray fervently, go through the whole list, and in ten minutes is gone. And you think, "[Gasp] Fifty minutes left! How on earth am I going to be righteous with God? It’s only been ten minutes!" So then you pray again and then, lo and behold, you find out, well, just to slot in the time, you end up repeating your prayers. Now, I’ve done it. You’ve all done it, haven’t you? Sure you have. Did that impress God? Did it impress God?

So you think you’re impressing God and you come back and, boy, you’re talking, "Well, God answered this prayer, and God did that, and I’m praying an hour a day." And the minister comes in, "Well how’s everybody doing? Are you praying an hour a day?" And he looks around, and everyone is examining their conscience, and you think, "Oh boy. Well, did I? Yeah, yeah…well, uh, boy…only a half hour yesterday…" And isn’t that kind of the effect that it…? Sure, sure it is. You know exactly what it is. So then we have a minister who then says to everyone, "You do that…" and then he turns around and commits adultery. Now what do you have? Hypocrisy. So this is what we are dealing with here. It’s the whole thing, all the way…this will…once we really get through this and go through this, because it will take time for me to even develop this a little more. I spent a long time thinking on this, because the question came up. And I think it was Ed Davis, and he asked it one time; I think Bob asked it one time: "Are there good works that look like good works, which do evil things?" Yes. So that’s how we got on this, and I’ve been working on it, thinking of it off and on.

So if you don’t have the right attitude, and if your motive is not right, and then you come up to the Temple of God and you say, "Well I have a lot of money here. Yeah, I got it from drugs…" or, "I got it from…" whatever, you know – stealing, usury. "I’ve got a lot of money here. So I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to go buy an ox, and I’m going to offer an ox to God." If you don’t think offering an ox to God didn’t cost a lot, and when you come in with an ox, or you let the priest know that you’re going to offer an ox, well the priest – you know, that’s pretty nice, because he gets a big hunk of it, he gets a big portion of it. How would you like to have a quarter of an ox every time someone offered an ox? And you bring home a quarter of an ox home to your family to eat? Oh boy, a feast day.

So the priest would think this is pretty good. Everyone would think, "This is a righteous man. Look, he’s spending all this money for an ox. And he’s going to offer an ox to God." So here’s the priest in all of his garb. And if you’ve seen the book, The Tabernacle, you know what his garb looks like. And he slaughters the ox, and gathers the blood and walks around the altar and sprinkles it; and everything is fine, supposedly. It’s supposed to be a sweet incense to God. But here, the guy is standing out there, "Boy. Everyone’s going to think good of me. This will be a cover for me." Here’s the answer, right here in verse 3: "He that killeth an ox is as if he slew a man;…" That’s if your heart is not right. If your heart is not right and you’re really not trying to seek God in spirit and in truth, you can pray ten hours a day and it isn’t going to do any good. How about these poor nuns that pray eighteen hours every day? I mean, their life is devoted. And it’s supposed to be a good, good work – praying for other people, eighteen hours – that’s their whole life. They don’t talk to anyone; they don’t go on the outside world. They just stay in this nunnery and they pray every day, with the beads. Can you imagine sixty years of doing that? In the sixty years you’d be batty. Or "beady," rather. You know – "Hail Mary, mother of God…Blessed be…" Incredible.

"…He that sacrificeth a lamb, as if he cut off a dog’s neck; he that offereth an oblation, as if he offered swine’s blood;…" So you go from the expensive to the not-so-expensive, to the cheap, and to the poor man’s offering, an oblation, see, as if he offered blood. "…He that burneth incense,…" And of course, who’s the one that burns incense? The priest. So if the priest partakes of this, and he burns the incense and goes into the holy part, bringing this in to God when the origin is out here, that is evil, and he hasn’t called the people to repentance, "…as if he blessed an idol." Now obviously there are no idols in the Temple of God. But see, that’s how God views the heart problem, if we could put it that way. If our heart is not right, and our attitude is not right toward God, "…as if he blessed an idol."

Now you know, a priest would just be absolutely aghast to bless an idol. If you ask a priest to bless an idol, it would be like they did during Jesus’ day. He would rip his tunic asunder, and scream bloody murder, and, "This is blasphemy against God!" Yet they killed Christ. Now there’s a good example. A good work – "We’ll get rid of this evil person. Look what He’s doing. We’re going to lose all these followers." Then God says – now notice, let’s continue here, "…as if he blessed an idol. Yea, they have chosen their own ways [instead of God’s ways; and they have put the name of God on it], and their soul delighteth in their abominations" (vs. 3). Now, about the best description of that that I can think of would be, and I think that the best description of this would be the abominations would be, in a modern day sense, where you would have a whole homosexual church that is standing there, supposedly worshipping God, supposedly studying the Word of God, and then go out and commit all their abominations.

So God says…God then does something else. He says, "I also will choose their delusions, and will bring their fears upon them; because when I called, none did answer; when I spake, they did not hear: but they did evil before Mine eyes, and chose that in which I delighted not" (vs. 4). Now I heard an interview yesterday on KGO – I do a lot of driving; I have almost 110,000 miles, so that’s why when I mention about these talk shows, that’s what I’m doing. You can just picture me driving down the road here…and Dolores had a little taste of that the other day.

Now, let’s see how God will choose their delusions. Now this will help us understand this verse. Let’s go back to Isaiah 40 – I think it is 45 – yes, Isaiah 45. If God chooses their delusions – in which I will tell you about this KGO thing here in just a minute, and the code name was "Fortitude." God says…and I have heard ministers tippy-toe and weasel around this, and I’ve tippy-toed and weaseled around it myself. I have. Where it says here in verse 7, He said, "I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things." Have you ever wondered about that verse? How can God, Who is righteous, create evil? Good question, isn’t it? Why does God create evil? Is it because God is evil? Is that why God creates evil? No, because God is good. There’s no sin in Him, and He doesn’t sin.

And I have heard ministers say, "Well, God allows evil." Well then, does God then just "allow" good? Many times you can take the reasoning and follow it through: does God then just allow good? Does good just happen because good is good? Or does evil happen because evil is evil? Or does God just allow it? Ok, then the next thing would be, "God uses Satan." Well that is true. God can use Satan to carry out the evil that God…

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