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This is Amos, Chapter 3. Basically, it is an exhortation. I have not studied the whole chapter. Actually, I have just studied the first five verses, and I have an Alternate Translation just on verses 4 and 5. You will see when we get to it. Those two verses are very much of a parable, does not really make much sense to me at all, so I did not Alternate Translations on those two verses. And everything thing else I am pretty much just going to hoof it because I did not have time to study.
Verse 1, "Hear, ye -- hear this word that the Lord hath spoken against you, O children of Israel, against the whole family which I brought up from the land of Egypt."
The word -- the Hebrew word translated Lord is Jehovah, and the Hebrew word translated children is really sons. That should be translated sons of Israel. That means the Lord is speaking to the men of Israel. He is never speaking to the women and children, and I remind you there is no male or female in Christ Jesus. What does that mean? It means that Christ is a mind, OK. Under the Old Covenant, everything was in the natural. If your physical body was a woman, you were limited to being a woman. There was no way you could have anything to do with government, spiritual or secular. But in the New Covenant, we are, all of us, all of humanity, invited to become spiritual beings, and eventually [AUDIO CUTS OUT] this is all over, we too shall be glorified spirits like the Lord Jesus Christ, so this conversion is starting from the inside out, and the Lord first is starting to change our spirit. Then He will change our soul, and then He will change our body.
So the Lord says there is no male or female in Christ Jesus because your spirit is your mind and your conscience, and when the Lord Jesus Christ joins to your spirit, he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit. If Christ is in your spirit, that means your spirit is Christ, and Christ can never be female. He is a male mind, OK. Now this is for spiritual purposes. I do not care how male your mind is, ladies. In a human marriage, the male, the physical male is the head of the marriage, but with regard to spiritual things [AUDIO CUTS OUT] Christ is the male, OK.
So the Lord is speaking to Israel, and He is saying, sons of Israel, the men of Israel who are supposed to know Me, OK. "O children of Israel, against the whole family." "Hear the word that the Lord has spoken against you, O sons of Israel." The Lord is against His own sons. What does this mean? It means that the minds of the men of Israel were male. What does that mean? That the Spirit of Jehovah had joined with the minds of the physical males in Israel and given them His mind. I believe it is the apostle Peter that says that the Spirit of Christ was upon Israel.
The leadership, the males in Israel, it was just physical [AUDIO CUTS OUT] had the mind of Christ, and when God gives you His mind, there is responsibility that goes with it. God does not make you a man, either physical male or a spiritual male, so that you can go out and play games. Responsibility goes with what you are. And we -- those of us that have read the Old Testament knows that Israel did not fulfill their responsibility. They were always in trouble. They were always messing up, and therefore God was always rebuking them, and He was always sending judgment upon them. He was always messing with them. They just could not seem to get it straight. They kept slipping and sliding, and finally they lost it completely. What did they [?lose?] [AUDIO CUTS OUT] [INAUDIBLE] no, they did not, brethren. Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord, the way the Scripture says, shall be saved, but everyone that calls upon the name of the Lord, He answers to th- -- [AUDIO CUTS OUT].
If your heart is truly towards God, I do not care who you are, if you are really crying out for help to the living God, He will answer you right where you are. I do not care how wicked you are. I do not care if you just [INAUDIBLE] [AUDIO CUTS OUT] you have just picked your hand up off of the most heinous crime, if [AUDIO CUTS OUT] He will hear you.
What Israel lost was the leadership of the nations of the earth. In the day [AUDIO CUTS OUT] natural Israel in that covenant, that Old Covenant, Israel was the only place where the living God could be found [AUDIO CUTS OUT] that there was a Syrian general who had leprosy, and the doctors could not heal him, and he went to the prophet in Israel to get the healing because the power of God, in those days, was only in Israel. So what Israel lost was the spiritual leadership of the world, and today that spiritual leadership is where?
[INAUDIBLE]
It is in the church, in the true church. And what is the true church? The true church are those human beings in whom Christ is being formed. Do not show me your dove pin. Do not show me your graduation certificate from Bible college. Do not show me your ordination papers. Do not show me your water baptis- -- [AUDIO CUTS OUT]. Show me spiritual evidence that Christ is manifesting through you. Do not show me your costume [AUDIO CUTS OUT] show me your church building. Do not show me your pulp- -- [AUDIO CUTS OUT] microphone. Do not show me the messages you have for sale. Nothing impresses me, and nothing should be impressing you other than [AUDIO CUTS OUT] very Spirit of God being evident upon a person. So Israel is messing up once again.
"Hear the word of the Lord that the Lord has spoken against you, O sons of Israel, against the whole family which I brought up from the land of Egypt." Now [AUDIO CUTS OUT] -nificant that the Lord is speaking to the whole family that He brought up from the land of Egypt because every time we see the word Israel, we have to [?ask?] [AUDIO CUTS OUT] whether or not God is speaking about the Israel that includes all 12 tribes because sometimes He calls [INAUDIBLE] [AUDIO CUTS OUT] by the nation -- by the name of the nation Israel, but on other occasions, Israel is just referring to the 10 tribes after the civil war came.
There was a civil war in Israel, amen. Nobody knows there was a civil war in Israel, OK, and Judah and Benjamin and the Levites, actually, split off from the -- I guess the other nine. I do not know why they say 10 tribes. They say the 10 lost tribes. I am pretty sure that the Levites went with Benjamin and Judah, so that means nine tribes split off from Judah. There was a civil war in Israel. And from that time forward, the name Israel refers to the nine tribes that split off, and Judah describes the other three tribes, the southern kingdom and the northern kingdom. So when we read in Amos 3:1 that God is speaking to the whole -- to Israel, the whole family [AUDIO CUTS OUT] Egypt, we know that He is not just speaking to the nine tribes that split off, but He is speaking to the whole 12 tribes that came up out of Egypt.
So, once again, we see the literary rule of modification in play. You cannot just read this Bible like you read a book. You have got to look at whole verses, at whole sentences, sometimes at whole chapters, and you have to think. See, a lot of people have read this Bible over the centuries, and they have not stopped to think, and they have drawn a wrong conclusion, and they have gone out, and they have killed in the name of this Bible, and they have tortured in the name of this Bible, and they have hated in the name of this Bible, and they have been prejudice. And they show you a Scripture in the Bible that justifies it. So we must read with the mind of the Spirit, asking for His understanding, and we must read whole ideas, not necessarily whole sentences but whole ideas. You have to read for the idea that the Scripture is imparting to you. And in Amos 3:1 [AUDIO CUTS OUT] to all of Israel, and He is indicting them.
Verse 2, "You only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore I will punish you."
The Hebrew word translated known means to know by experience. When God experiences us, brethren, He experiences us in the mind, an experience of the mind. And how do you experience someone? You join with them. So [AUDIO CUTS OUT] known this family, it means that His mind has been joined to their mind. Now does that mean that God has been polluted by the human mind of Israel? Nothing pollutes God, brethren, but the human mind of Israel has been changed by the mind of God.
"You only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities."
Oh, to the carnal mind that does not make any sense at all. Of all the families of the earth, God has known Israel, and he is the one that they are going to punish. Does not make any sense at all to the carnal mind, but to the mind of Christ, it makes a lot of sense. And God is saying, "Because I have known you, because I have been joined to you, because you have experienced My holiness and My righteousness, you cannot remain in your sins. And I will expose every one of your sins, not to embarrass you, not to harass you, not to punish you." This is not the best translation, "but I will expose every one of your sins. I will show you your sins so that you can repent and become holy like Me." Glory to God.
"You only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore I will punish you for all of your iniquities."
The Hebrew word translated punish can also be translated to look for or to pay attention to. And [AUDIO CUTS OUT] [INAUDIBLE] can be translated perversity or depravity. The Lord is going to actually look for your sins. He is going to pay attention to them. [AUDIO CUTS OUT] to the rest of the world that He has not known, what does He do with regard to their sins? He winks at them. He is not looking at them. It is a great confusion to carnal Christians that God is exposing sin in His own people and ignoring sometimes very serious sin in other people. The reason for it, I will say it one more time, is that if you have not known Him, He does not expect you to be holy because there is no holiness outside of Christ, and man is fallen, and there is no way he can know holiness unless he has had an experience with God. There is no man he can -- no way he can be convicted of sin unless he has had an experience with God. So once you have been touched by God, He expects better things of you. You are no longer the same. God is all over you.
I have heard some people say their life has never [AUDIO CUTS OUT] [?worse?] since they had an experience with God. What does that mean? It means you touch holiness, and all of your sins are exposed, and the Lord starts moving to bring correction and change in your life. And the way He moves to bring correction and change in your life is through fiery trials. You can no longer sin and have it go unpunished, and do not -- that is not the best word, punishment. You are going to start to reap what you sow. In the past, maybe you did evil and you got away with it, but from the minute God comes into your life, every evil you do, you are going to find someone doing it to you. Why are you laughing? Is that true of you?
[INAUDIBLE]
It is true. We find in the Sc- -- we found that very principle in the Scripture. It is in Isaiah, I think chapter 33. I could be wrong. It says right there. As soon as you touch God, the carnal mind thinks, "Oh, wow, I have touched God. Here comes my Cadillac." No, here comes your judgment. You cannot have a relationship with God and continue to sin. Hard times will find you.
Verse 3 -- so verse 2 says that because God has known Israel -- and today this message is for the church. Because you have known God, you can expect your sins to be looked for, OK, and not only as they accidently crop up is God going to deal with [AUDIO CUTS OUT], but He is going to search your heart, and we found this in Romans 8. He is going to search your heart looking for them. He is going to put a spotlight on your sins. Then what does He expect you to do? Confess them as sin, and then repent.
Specific repentance, there is a very -- it is a very rare person that will not make a general repentance. "Oh, I am sorry for all of my sins," but that is not what [AUDIO CUTS OUT] talking about here. He is coming to you thr- -- [AUDIO CUTS OUT] mouth of a human vessel, and He is telling you, "Sister or brother, what you just did, those words that you just said, those thoughts that you just thought, they were sin. They were a hidden manifestation of pride, or they were a hidden manifestation of rebellion." Oh, but I did not mean it. "Do not tell me you did not mean it. It was sin in your heart. Whether you knew it or whether you did not know it, now you know it." Why? "Because I just told you." But I do not believe you. "Then judgment is already at the door." Why? Because God hates you, because He wants to torture you? No, because He wants your life to improve. He wants your life to be better. He wants you to come out from under curses of destruction and death and torment and unhappiness. He wants the joy of the Lord to be in your heart. He wants to give you peace and contentment and life, but He will never give a sin-filled person peace and contentment and life in the joy of the Lord. You must be purged of your sins. You cannot take all this weight with you into the kingdom of God. You must shed your sin. So a loving father can be likened to taking us to the doctor to give us some shots to keep us from dying, and it hurts when the needle sticks in your arm, but the end of it is the peaceable fruit of righteousness and the joy of the Lord.
Verse 3, "Can two walk together, except they be agreed?" Oh, "Can two walk together, except they be agreed?"
Well, the word walk means to move about, and together -- well, we know what together means, and this Hebrew word translated agreed, it means to meet or assemble together at an appointed time or place. Now, brethren the Spirit of God is coming, and He is looking for our human spirit, and we must meet with Him in the proper place. He is not joining with our physical body. He is not joining with our soul. He is not joining with our elbow or our nose. He is coming, and He is looking for our human spirit at an appointed time, in an appointed place, and the appointed time is now. The appointed time for the whole world to join with the Spirit of God in the [AUDIO CUTS OUT] of our spirit is now [AUDIO CUTS OUT] [?while know?] that God gives the message of what He intends to do as He is beginning to do it. He does not proc- -- He is not likely to proclaim the message when it is not the hour. He proclaims the message of what He is doing in that hour. [AUDIO CUTS OUT] now it means this is the time for the Lord to meet with us, and when He meets with us in our spirit, His Spirit shall become our spirit, and we shall be saved out of this realm of Hell and the death of this world system. It is the hour for our deliverance out from Hell.
So [AUDIO CUTS OUT] except they are meeting in the same time and the same place. It has to be [AUDIO CUTS OUT] -- in other words, you cannot come to the Lord before it is your appointed time. You know, there are people that go from church [AUDIO CUTS OUT] going up for the altar call in every church that they are in and [?they?] [AUDIO CUTS OUT]. It is not true that you can choose God. It is not true that you can decision for Christ. He has to receive you, and we need to be humbly asking Him to receive us.
Ver- [AUDIO CUTS OUT] "Will a lion roar in the forest, when he hath no prey? If he have taken nothing?" [INAUDIBLE] [AUDIO CUTS OUT] typical of the prophets, verses like this. It makes no sense to the carnal mind at all, and as I have been teaching you here for a long time now, these Scriptures must be made real to us. It is very nice to have a high, intellectual experience, to be able to quote these Scriptures and to sound very intelligent, but this -- what sounds like a way out Scripture to me, "Will a lion roar in the forest, when he hath no prey? Will a young lion cry out of his den, if he have taken nothing?" That has a meaning for it, a hidden meaning that means something to me, and unless I can get that hidden meaning out of it, there is no life in this Scripture for me.
So, once again, when I see something like that, I know right away that it is a parable, and I go into the Hebrew, and I look up every word, and I look at the alternate translations. And based on the revelation that God has already put in my heart, I look for the Lord to witness to me what the true spiritual intention of this parable is, and this is what I found. It really blessed me.
"Will a lion roar in the forest?" This Hebrew word translated roar is used to describe fierce soldiers, and it is also used for the th- -- sound of thunder, which means spiritual power. And for those of you that have been studying with us for a while, the fierce soldier in the spiritual realm is who? Does anybody know? Who is the fierce soldier? Who?
[INAUDIBLE]
No, it is the carnal mind, yeah. F- -- I guess you could say it is Christ, but I do not -- well, I guess that word fierce could go either way. I guess I did not make it clear, but as I looked it up, the impression that I got was that it was a criminal fierceness. And the carnal mind is a spiritual criminal that is a military machine that has spiritual power behind it. So this, I would like to suggest to you, is the lion roaring -- "Will a lion roar in the forest?" So, once again, a lion is a sign of spiritual power, and we are going to have to determine from this whole verse whether the spiritual power is Jehovah or whether it is Satan, OK. So the first clue that we have is that the word roar means a fierce soldier, but it is still not 100 percent proven that this would be Satan, so let us go on and see what other clues we have.
"Will a lion roar in the forest?" This phrase, in the forest, it is the Hebrew word Strong's number 3293, and the first definition in Gesenius is honey, freely and spontaneously running from the honeycomb. You know, maybe I was wrong. Maybe that is Christ. Let us go on. Maybe I forgot what I found out here. I talked too soon. Honey running from the honeycomb. Well, that -- we know what that means. What is the honey in the Scripture?
Christ.
Christ. Honey is the wisdom of God, which is Christ. OK, let us try and put this together. Now there is one more word in this verse. "Will a lion roar in the forest, when he hath no prey?" The word -- Hebrew word translated no in the interlinear, it says, "when there is no prey." It is Strong's 369, and we have dealt with this word in the prophets before, and we have found out that Satan is described as the nothingness, and this is the word -- this is the hidden word that the Lord uses to describe Satan in the prophets. He calls him nothing. As far as God is concerned, Satan is nothing. He is emptiness. He is a vacuity. That means he is an empty space in the midst of humanity. Humanity is not filled. We were meant to be filled with the mind of Christ. We are a living soul. We are soul, and we were meant to be filled with Christ. And as far as we are concerned, we are filled with the carnal mind instead of Christ, but as far as God is concerned, we are filled with nothing. We are empty. We are a vacuum. What does that mean? That the mind -- the carnal mind that is in us, God is saying, it is not really a mind. It is a perversion. We are just filled with ourself [sic], just a perversion.
Now as I study the rest of this verse -- well, I will come back to that. The word prey is Strong's 2964. Prey, P-R-E-Y, means victim in my language, but when I looked it up in the Hebrew, the first definition, once again, was a green leaf, newly plucked or an animal torn in pieces. Now an animal torn in pieces would mean prey to me, but the first definition was a green leaf, newly plucked. Now remember that leaves -- what do leaves typify in the Scripture? Does any- --
[INAUDIBLE]
Life, but more than life, they typify the human vessel. When we take the tree of life, the roots typify the Father, and the trunk and the branches typify Christ, OK. That is the -- in the soul realm, and the leaves typify the human beings. The root abides; the tree and the trunk and the branches abide, but the leaves fall off every season. So the root, the spiritual root of our existence, OK, and the soul, the existence of the soul, are abiding through all of these ages. The only thing that is changing, the only thing that is dying off and being replaced are the human bodies that that spiritual root and that that living soul are living in. It is one tree, OK. It is called the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, OK. I just described you the Tree of Life, but our reality here, in this world, is that we are the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the root -- the name of the spiritual root of the tree is --
[?Satan?].
-- Satan, and the name of his mind that is appearing is the truck and the bran- [AUDIO CUTS OUT] [INAUDIBLE]
Will Satan, will the lion roar, make a fierce sound -- well, I cannot do it that way. I just -- all that I can tell you is I took all of these translations, and this is what God gave me. I am using every word in the Hebrew, but it is in a different order than it is translated in the King James. And it says, "Will Satan make a fierce sound when the honey spontaneously and freely flows from within the spiritual emptiness of the men who have been separated from God?"
Now I put it in better English. "Will the living soul make a fierce sound?" I guess that is Satan. "Will Satan make a fierce sound when Christ" -- the honey is Christ -- "spontaneously and freely flows from the dead human spirit of the men who have been separated from God." What is Satan's reaction going to be when Christ suddenly, spontaneously stars flowing out of the dead human spirits of the men who have been separated from God?
I have a second witness for you, Judges 14:5, 6 and 8, "When Samson went down, and his father and his mother, to Timnath, and came to the vineyards of Timnath: and, behold, a young lion roared against Samson." Now, remember, Samson typified Christ. "And the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him, and he rent him as he would have rent a kid, and he had nothing in his hand," Samson. OK, so Samson killed the lion. Verse 8, "And after a time Samson returned, and he turned aside to see the carcass of the lion that he killed, and, behold, there was a swarm of bees and honey in the carcass of the lion." Honey came out of the carcass of the lion.
"Will Satan make a fierce sound when Christ spontaneously and freely flows from the dead human spirit of the men who have been separated from God?"
I know that is a tough translation, but it is there. It ha- -- at least it makes sense. What does the other thing say to you? What does it say to you? "Will a lion roar in the forest, when he hath no prey?" What does that mean to you? Do you hear what I am saying? It has to mean something to man, so, "Will Satan, the lion, roar when Christ -- when the honey of Christ appears in the dead humanity?" Now this word no that I translated nothingness. I translated nothingness, OK, and when I used that word in the Alternate Translation, I made it the dead human spirit because the dead human spirit is joined to the nothingness of Satan. So we are saying when the honey of Christ appears in the nothingness, when the honey of Christ appears in the nothingness of dead humanity, He is coming forth from the human spirit that was joined to that nothingness. Am I losing you all, tonight? I am losing you all, huh.
[INAUDIBLE]
Well, do you want to ask me a question? You do not even have a question to ask me. OK, I am just going to go on. It is a very difficult verse, and it is a parable, and I just remind you that when we do prophecy, it is on two levels. First, we have to -- we -- first we interpret the symbols. We try and -- the first thing we do is try and locate all of the scriptural symbols in the parable, and we interpret the symbols. And then once we have interpreted the symbols, we try to make some sense out of this verse and break down the parable. So I am just going to go on. I know it is a difficult verse.
The second half of verse 4 is, "Will a young lion cry out of his den, if he have taken nothing?"
The word young lion means the offspring of a lion, and who is the offspring of a lion? We, the human race are the offspring of a lio- -- or the offspring of a lion is the carnal mind, talking about men who are filled with the carnal mind. So the young lion typifies fallen humanity, and this is the same Hebrew word that is used in Judges 14:5 above, the story of Samson. H- -- "Will a young lion cry out of his den?" This Hebrew word translated cry out, it is really two Hebrew words, and the first one means to be delivered up. "Will a young lion deliver up his voice?" Not cry out, "Will he deliver up his voice?" And the word voice can be translated noise.
So I suggest to you that this verse is speaking about the carnal mind, and I have a witness for you on that, Revelation 13:15. Someone gives out their voice. Can this lion give out his voice? And Revelation 13:15 says, "And he had power -- the beast had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed," so we see that the beast speaks.
"Will a young lion cry out of his den, if he have taken nothing?" So will fallen humanity deliver up the noise of his life? The word den is 4585, and it means habitation, and it can be used of Jehovah's temple or the caves of wild beasts. Would you put that on pause for a minute? [AUDIO CUTS OUT]
Out of his den, Strong's 4585, it means habitation. It is used of Jehovah's temple. It could be the cave of a wild beast, and I am suggesting to you that the den are these human bodies that we live in. We are the den of the carnal mind and -- of Satan's carnal mind. "If he have taken nothing," this Hebrew word translated if, it means unless or accept. "He have taken nothing," Strong's 3920, to take captive as soldiers in a war, to capture a city, to take hold of one another or to stick together. "And shall the noise of the fierce soldier be delivered up out of his habitation unless he is taken captive?" Now we have had other messages where we found out that God considers what ma- -- fallen man has to say as noise. The thoughts and the words of the carnal mind to God is just noise, makes no sense to Him at all.
So let me give you this again. "And will a young lion, and will the noise of the fier-" -- the young lion is the fierce soldier. "Will the young lion cry out? Will the noise of the fierce soldier be delivered up out of his den, out of his habitation, if he has taken nothing, unless he is taken captive?" Look, is the carnal mind going to come up out of these bodies unless he is taken captive? Is the carnal mind going to go away and let Jesus sit down on the throne of our soul unless he is taken captive? No way.
And I put that in better English. This is the second half of Amos 3:4, "How shall the noise of the carnal mind be cast out of humanity unless he is taken captive?"
Matthew 12:29, "Or else how can one enter into a strong man's house, and spoil his goods, except he first bind the strong man? and then he will spoil his house." Can you hear it?
Matthew 12:45, that must be a wrong Scripture. I think it must be Mark. "Then goeth he" -- or maybe it is Matthew. "Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first." "And how shall the noise of the carnal mind be cast out of humanity unless he is taken captive?"
The carnal mind has been incarnating. Each time he incarnates, he expands. Over the generations, humanity is getting more and more human vessels. He [?capes?] -- keeps taking seven more spirits with him. Humanity keeps getting more and more wicked and more and more people. Can you hear it? I have given you two New Testament witnesses to this translation?
Alternate Translation, Amos 3:4, the whole verse, "Will the living soul make a fierce sound?" That should be Satan. "Will Satan make a fierce sound when Christ spontaneously and freely flows from the dead human spirit of the men who have been separated from God? And how shall the noise of the carnal mind be cast out of humanity unless he is taken captive?"
Brethren, this Satan in humanity, the carnal mind, he is going to make a loud noise when Christ starts flowing forth. He is moaning, and he is groaning, and he is crying, and he is in torment. But how is he going to be cast out unless he is taken captive? So what does that mean? The noises and the moaning and groaning is because when Christ flows out, He is taking him captive. I am excited. This -- I am very excited to find this in the Old Testament. I could not have made this up. Could I have made this up?
Verse 5 -- I think we will just go through verse 5 t- -- it is been a very strange night. I think -- actually, I did not study the rest of it. I was just going to hoof it, but we will just go through verse 5, and we will call it quits. We will just see what God has. We will fellowship.
Verse 5, "Can a bird fall in a snare upon the earth, where no gin is for him? Shall one take up a snare from the earth, and have nothing -- have taken at all?"
Well, what does that mean? Does that mean anything to you at all? What does that mean? It does not even mean anything to the carnal mind. It means nothing. It is a noise. OK, what is God saying to us? It is a parable. "Can a bird fall into a snare upon the earth?" This Hebrew word translated bird, it means a small, twittering bird, like a sparrow. That means he cannot fly too high in the sky. Now, remember, spiritual people are likened, in the Scripture, as birds. If it is Christ, He is an eagle, powerful, able to fly high above the storm, but this bird means a little sparrow, very little spiritual power, can barely get off the ground, OK.
"Can a bird fall into a snare?" And this Hebrew word translated snare means lightning, which is shaped like a [?new?] [AUDIO CUTS OUT] it is talking about spiritual power, so can we little birds, fallen human beings with some little spiritual power, can we fall into the clutches of the spiritual power of Satan upon the earth? Satan is the spiritual power of the earth. You have heard him called the pestilence in the earth. You have heard him called the moral depravity in the earth. He is also a spiritual power that is in the earth.
"Can a bird fall into a snare upon the earth, where no gin is for him?" Gin, I -- well that is an Old English word. I do not even know what it means, but in the Hebrew, it is 4170, and it means a noose or a snare by which wild beasts are caught. It is a cause of injury, and once in the Scripture it is used to describe an iron ring put through the nostrils of a beast, and the name of that beast is, anybody?
[?Satan?].
Leviathan. Job 40:24, "He taketh it with his eyes: his nose pierced through snares." That means Leviathan is strong enough to pierce through the spiritual trap that man can lay for him. Natural man is weaker than the pride of man or the spiritual power that is in man. There is no trap that natural man can lay for Satan, working through his carnal mind, that he cannot pierce through. That is why Satan is the god of this world. He is stronger than us. Without Christ, he is stronger than us.
So what have we got here? "Can a bird fall in a snare upon the earth, where there is no gin for him?" "Shall a small bird be caught by the serpent in the earth where there is nothing to restrain him?"
Amplified, first half of Amos 3:5, "Shall Satan take fallen man captive in the earth, where there is no spiritual authority which can restrain him?"
The answer is yes. Is Satan able to take fallen man captive in the earth, where Christ is not present? Yes, he takes anyone he wants to.
The second half of Amos 3:5, "Shall one take up a snare from the earth, and have taken nothing at all?" Snare means to spring a trap. That He- -- there are two Hebrew words translated snare, spring and trap. Spring is Strong's 5927, and it means to go up or to be high, and the -- and trap means -- is 6341, and it can be translated a court, outside of the tabernacle where the throne st- -- or a court where the throne stood in royal palaces. So it is translated trap, but it can mean a place where the thr- -- the kingly throne is set up, and we only have two kingly thrones in this creation. It is either the throne of --
Satan.
-- or the throne of the Father, and the throne of Satan is called the carnal mind. Another name for it is the seat of violence. We find that in another chapter in Amos, and the -- another name for the throne of the Father is the throne of Christ, the white throne of Christ. So it is translated snare, but it could say to go up to the place where the throne is, OK. Who went up to the place where the throne was? Who was in the earth that climbed up to the place where the throne was? Satan.
Satan [INAUDIBLE]
Satan did it. He went up to the high place where the Spirit is supposed to dwell. Satan, originally, was part of the living soul, and he came out of his place, and took a r- -- a spiritual role, and he set himself up as spirit. And the end of it was that he killed the immature mind of Christ. Is everybody with me?
"Shall one take up a snare from the earth?" And this word that is translated earth means tilled ground. It is not just raw earth that is out there. Well, of course, it is spiritual earth, but it is tilled earth that is been plowed and fertilized. And I want to suggest to you that what this means is that it is the living soul that has already been planted. When you till ground, the next thing you do is sow the seed in it, and as you will see from the rest of the verse, I want to suggest to you that it is talking about the living soul which has been plowed and which has been planted and which has given birth to the carnal mind. That is what it is talking about. You will see as we go on because there is another word for unplowed earth. This is the word for plowed earth.
"Shall one take up a snare from the earth, and have taken nothing at all?" Taken is Strong's 3920, it means to take captive, to intercept, to hold to oneself. Now the Hebrew word translated "and have taken nothing at all" -- that is all one Hebrew word, Strong's 3920. It appears twice in the interlinear. It appears twice with just a preposition in-between it. Now God never makes mistakes, brethren. It is only translated once because the King James translators could not make head or tail out of it. It is only translated once, but it appears twice in the Hebrew. OK. This is excited me. I want to suggest to you that it should be translated to take captive. Now the King James says, "and have taken nothing at all." I suggest to you it should have been translated, "to take captive the one who has taken captive."
Let me remind you of Romans 8:20, our Alternate Translation. "But the creation was not subjected to Satan because the Father or the man desired it, but in the hope of the other guy subjecting the one who subjected us." Listen, "to take captive the one," the carnal mind, "who has taken captive the living soul." Can you hear it?
[?Mm-hmm?].
The word, to take captive, it appears twice in the Hebrew. They did not translate it the second time. To take captive, to take captive. I want to tell you, in the Hebrew, if you do not first have the revelation in your heart, you will never ever translate this prophecy to make any sense at all because there are words missing. It is a puzzle with words missing. To take captive to take captive, what? It means there is two people. One is taking captive the one who has already captured us. Hallelujah. I tell you, I struggled. I did not want to do this. I said, "What am I doing in Amos? I have one more message in Romans 8. What am I doing in Amos?" This really excites me to know that I [UNINTELLIGIBLE] -- and I had such a messed up day, to have heard from God in the middle of this messed up day is really exciting for me.
Alternate Translation, the second half of Amos 3:5, "Shall anyone -- is there anyone who can raise up a throne from the cultivated earth and take captive the one who has captured the living soul?" Is there anyone strong enough to raise up a throne? What is a throne? It is a soul that a mind sits on. "Is there anyone strong enough to raise up a spiritual power strong enough from the cultivated earth, from the earth that has already given birth to Satan, and take captive the carnal mind that has captured the living soul?"
Amplified translation, come out. Amplified translation, "Is there anyone strong enough to beget a mind which will be able to capture the carnal mind which has already captured and is now ruling the living soul?" Is there anyone who is strong enough to open the seals? Behold, the lion of the tribe of Judah can open the seals. Can you hear it? Do you hear it?
[?Mm-hmm?] [CROSSTALK]
Do you hear it? Is that exciting? I got chills from the top of my head to the bottom of my toes.
[INAUDIBLE]
I could not possibly m- -- be making this up, people. I could not possibly be making this up. It is in there. God is unlocking the parables of the ages to us. Is that exciting? Leaves you sort of speechless, huh? What are you saying?
[INAUDIBLE]
It is awesome. It is absolutely awesome.
Amos 3:5, "Shall Satan take fallen man captive in the earth, where there is no spiritual authority which can restrain him? And is there anyone strong enough to beget a mind which will be able to capture the carnal mind which has already captured and is now ruling the living soul?"
[INAUDIBLE]
Is that awesome?
[INAUDIBLE]
Is that awesome? It is a double miracle. Who would believe it is there and that God got me -- I mean, I had to hear from God, and, you know, I almost did not do verse 5. I had such a messed up day. I want you to pray for me. I almost did not -- I said I will stop at verse 4, and then s- -- God just made me go back in there, and that is why I was late. I was doing verse 5, and there it was, the whole reason He put me in Amos 3.
[INAUDIBLE]
Second witness to Romans 8.
[INAUDIBLE]
Brethren, the one who has subjected this creation, the one who has brought us into submission to him, the one who is our lord and master is about to be and is already being subjected unto the Lord Jesus Christ, to whom all power and authority has been given by his Father who saw fit to raise Him from the dead. And He is now the head of all power and all principality and all rule, and they shall bend their knee to the living God.
[INAUDIBLE]
Hallelujah.
[INAUDIBLE]
Glory to God.
Glory to God.
[INAUDIBLE] Satan did not want us to get this. [INAUDIBLE]
You will hear it on the message.
Oh, it is a dream on September 6th. Celie and I were sitting in a row of seats across the street from my old home in Ozone Park, and that was, like, on the parkway, grass. And we were waiting for the bus that used to take me to work at one time for a trip down south. I was speaking to Mary Theresa, and that is Celie's daughter, and telling her how great the place was where we were going. And it was going to be for all our benefit, including her benefit also. And I gave her directions how to go, the two routes and the outer bridge and Route 90. And I would get better directions later on. I wondered if she had the proper accommodations, and she mentioned a van and sleeping bags. I do not know what that is all about. She also asked if the place was a certain bad town. She named the town. I cannot remember what the name of the town was, and I said that that town was north of the one we were going to. She decided to go. As I sat next to Celie, and al- -- I was also talking with a man on my right and looking in my pocketbook for possible literature to -- of the place, of the destination we were going so I could give it to Mary Theresa. I remembered that I needed some clothes to go on the trip, so I asked Celie to watch my belongings while I went across the street to my old home to get them. It was so strange. I walked into my old house, and it was like a railroad type house.
[INAUDIBLE]
And my mother was at the door, and I asked her to watch to see if the people were going to get on the bus so that I would not miss the bus, and -- while I look for these clothes. And I went into the last bedroom looking for a pair of shoes, and I could not find them, and I could not understand why I could not find my shoes. Then I went into another bedroom that I used to be in and looked in the drawers, and I could not find what I was looking for, and specifically a bathing suit. And at that time, I could not remember where my clothes were, and I could feel the pressure of the bus coming, you know, and I tried to find them, those familiar clothes. OK. So then the place we were going to was a place I had been before with Sheila, and at that time, we were waiting for something of importance to take place. Something really was -- I was looking forward to it, and I cannot remember what it is, but I had some sort of a paper with a pattern or instructions on that pattern to follow to go to that place. But you were f- -- very familiar with the whole thing, and that was the end of the dream, so if you can make any details out of that, I do not know.
The only thing that I am familiar with is this road that is leading to full stature [INAUDIBLE] [?kilometers?] ahead of you, and I am very qualified to guide you as you make your own journeys and to help you along the way. So [INAUDIBLE] I have been there before. Everything that you are experiencing, I have experienced, maybe not every exact detail, but in principle, everything that you are experiencing, I have experienced. That is why you are here with me, and that is why I am qualified to point out your sins because they have been pointed out in me, and I have confessed them, and I have overcome them. That is what qualifies me, and as you overcome, that is what is going to qualify you to go to other people. God is never sending anyone to point out someone's sins in an area where they themselves have not [INAUDIBLE]. He just does not do it, and that is why the sons of God have such hard lives, because we experience a lot of painful things so that we will not condemn other people when we see that sin in them. We can look back, and we can remember when we had the same sin and when we do the same -- when we did the same thing, and that is why we are not going to condemn you, but we are going to tell you that we understand because we were there, but yet I recognize it because I first recognized it in myself. And I got rid of it, and you can get rid of it too. [INAUDIBLE]
[INAUDIBLE] excuse me. Would this clothing that she was looking for be symbolic of the covering --
[?It could?] --
-- and that she was trying to hurry because she was afraid she was going to miss the bus.
[CROSSTALK]
Everything was -- [?and it rolled past?] [INAUDIBLE] old house and [INAUDIBLE] the whole scene was all my, you know, past, just the whole atmosphere and even taking that bus to go to work. Everything was all in the past.
I really do not get it.
Yeah.
I really do not get anything [?new?].
No.
[INAUDIBLE] does anyone else have any [INAUDIBLE]
Just [INAUDIBLE] how I have [UNINTELLIGIBLE] spent my past couple of days, you know, getting ready to go with all the friends I have grown up with, the railroad apartments, the buses, all the things you were talking about, and even my girlfriend telling me about she left some clothes at my house to bring down with me. And we are going down south, and it is a reunion, and all -- it is all the past. It is all the girls I grew up with, no husband, and it is happening tonight, you know.
[CROSSTALK] all things new.
[CROSSTALK]
Right.
[INAUDIBLE]
I was wondering whether it was symbolic. She said -- I had not heard the dream before. She said my daughter, Mary Therese, now would that be her or somebody that is not in the Lord that she was given the information to, would that be symbolic of?
[INAUDIBLE] giving information to Mary Therese.
Yeah, I do not --
I do not know what she means to you.
[CROSSTALK]
To be honest with you, I really did not get [?anything?] [INAUDIBLE] it could be me, you know. I am a little off tonight. [CROSSTALK]
It was strange that it was her daughter, you know.
Your friend's daughter. I do not know why -- it would be someone who was not a believer at the very least.
Does that mean anything to you [INAUDIBLE]
Just that my name is Mary, my daughter Theresa. I do not know.
[CROSSTALK]
I was wondering about because --
[CROSSTALK] be Mary in your dream.
Yeah.
[CROSSTALK]
What I was wondering about, because I mentioned to you yesterday about all the trials that she is going through, could it be possible that God will start drawing her, you know?
It is [?all?] possible --
I do not know.
-- but I would be more inclined to say the Mary Theresa represented [INAUDIBLE]
[CROSSTALK]
Why do I say that? Because I have had a dreams. It is a principle of dream interpretation to me that God will use somebody of the same name to indicate it. He does not [CROSSTALK] -- He rarely shows you the person, but I have had many occasions where He gives you someone else by the same name. So when someone that I know is in my dream, I start asking questions. I say, "Lord is this [INAUDIBLE] represents someone who does not know God. And I start -- I just start asking all these questions, and I med- -- that is how I meditate on a dream. I think on the dream and invite God into my thoughts, and I see what I come up with. But to be honest with you, I really did not [?get it?]. It sounds like it could be Mary's experience.
I think so. I bear witness with that --
[CROSSTALK]
-- and before she said that --
Then she is going on that trip and --
Exactly.
And that --
Before she said that, I really bore witness when she began to talk, that it is about Mary's experience right now, and dreams, we are finding out, they are not ethereal out there somewhere. It is about somebody's experience, you know, somebody's life.
Yeah. I was talking to Rita today --
And it sounds like it is about Mary.
I did not mean to cut you off. But I had a quickening of a dream that I had a long -- it was in April of '92. That is over a year ago, and it fit right into what we have been going through here. And I looked it up with all my notes from when I had it, and I was giving it all these high, spiritual interpretations. And I said to Rita today, "I am coming" -- and this has been happening a lot, that I am coming to the conclusion that every dream that I have, it is about something that is going to happen to me or somebody close to me, and these high --
It is almost prophetic.
-- spiritual interpretations, no, it is about life. It is about me or --
[CROSSTALK] situations.
-- another human being that I know, and it -- well, some of my -- this dream was a year and a half in advance, and in the dream, we went to stay in my neighbor's house, for one night, and that was [?Hugh?] in the dream.
Yeah.
And the whole dream fit the circumstances, and I had her daughter with me.
Yeah.
And we went to stay in a neighbor's house for one night.
So the question is what is God saying in this dream to Mary? There is something. There is a message in there.
It [?must be ministry?].
There is something good. She said that Mary just was going to go ahead [?of time?].
[CROSSTALK] ahead of time.
-- and that something to do with your -- with Sheila [INAUDIBLE].
Yeah, that --
What was that [?part?]?
It was something [INAUDIBLE] about to take place, and apparently we were going to go to that same area, that same town and find out something, but something that I was with you, and it -- I was to find out this -- some kind of a pattern or in the instructions that I had on the sheet, and I was to follow them. And you already -- you knew all about it.
[INAUDIBLE]
[CROSSTALK]
Well, I probably typified Christ in your dream [INAUDIBLE].
Well, we were all going to go down to that same place, that same town.
Or maybe you are going to minister the -- this gospel to them. Mary, it is just such an exciting word. It is the gospel of God, you know. It is not the gospel of the cross, and it is not even the gospel of the kingdom. It is beyond -- the gospel of the kingdom is a part of the gospel of God, but this is the gospel of God. It is the message of our spiritual roots, of who [sic] we are, what happened to us and what is going to happen to us. It is just really exciting.
She told us she was taking two routes, and she was going on the outer bridge and then on a Route 90. Now does that make any sense?
We were talking about Route 90 tonight and the [INAUDIBLE] storm INAUDIBLE], but the outer bridge [INAUDIBLE]
The -- I know there is an outer bridge. I think they call it the outer bridge when you go into Staten Island.
I was going to say they have a lot of trouble there, the outer bridge CROSSTALK]
Huh?
I heard it on the news they are having trouble there, that maybe [INAUDIBLE] bridge [INAUDIBLE] repairs or something [INAUDIBLE]
[CROSSTALK]
No, [CROSSTALK]
Three days ago.
03/13/15 Transcribed by VerbalFusion
03/20/15 1st Edit CAS/MJS
