Lesson 62
Blessings from Obedience – 28:1-8
In this chapter we are going to see various principles of world history;
principles that are in operation in our nation today and principles which if
not heeded always lead to the destruction of a national entity. In this section you will read about the
blessings and the cursings. Now we have
to distinguish the blessings and the cursings in Deut. 28 from the loyalty oath
of chapter 27. In chapter 27 we have a
ceremony; the people were pledging themselves to allegiance to Jehovah, and
maledictions against themselves for any breach of royalty. This was why it was repeated again and again
in verses 15 on through 26, “Cursed be” this one, “cursed be” this one, “cursed
be” this one, and finally the last verse, 26, “Cursed be he that confirms not all
the words of this law to do them. And
all the people shall say, Amen.” And
this means that any person who does not perfectly, perfectly obey the provisions of the Law brings cursedness upon his
head.
This is why there can never be salvation by works. This is why, if you have come out of a
religious background, or you’re still in a religious background, or whether as
a Christian you still harbor bits and pieces of your religious background, you
have to come face to face with this verse.
No religion is ever going to save you and you can go through all the
charities, give to all the charities you want to, you can actively partake in
all the community functions, you can belong to this club and that club, you can
come to church, you can even witness for Jesus Christ, and still all these
things are human good, and if they are they do not fulfill the words of the Law
and therefore there is no such thing as salvation by the Law. Every cult, every wrong heresy that has ever
crept in in church history has been absolutely wrong on this point for there is
no salvation by keeping the Law because of Deut. 27:26. Verse 26 dooms every member of the human
race, and if you are ever tempted to think that you’re saved because you believe
in the Ten Commandments, or you are saved because you are baptized, or you are
saved because of some other work or activity of human actions, you are
absolutely mistaken, absolutely wrong.
You couldn’t be further from the truth. There is not one human work that
could ever save you. God says salvation
is always by grace, from beginning to end God does all the doing and you do the
receiving.
Therefore, every time you get involved with legalism, which is another
form of salvation by works, salvation in phase two; God’s plan is divided into
three parts, phase one, phase two, phase three, and phase three is eternity;
phase two is that point between the time you accepted Christ and the time you
die. If you think that you can be
spiritual because you do certain things, that is not true. You are spiritual because God the Holy Spirit
is working in your life, or maybe He isn’t, but if you are in fellowship with
Christ, then you’re spiritual on the basis of grace, not on the basis of
works. Works has nothing to do with it;
works are always a result, never a means to a result. This has to be clarified as we begin chapter
28 because He’s going to pronounce blessing on those who are doing certain
works and the tendency for you would be to apply these things to your life and
say I want to be blessed and all I have to do is to secure blessing is to do
these things. But please note that this
is a plea to a nation, not an individual, and in the nation
These principles that we’re going to examine in chapter 28 hold for the
In Deut. 28 we’re going to study how God worked with Israel and how He
worked with Israel was on an immediate basis; in other words, if God gave them
a command at this point, let’s make this point P1, then at point P2 a very
short time later He would require obedience of them, and if they didn’t, they
would be disciplined at point P3, short time.
Now in the
In this nation we have seen that God has graciously kept these points
spread apart so that, say from 1650 to 1750 when we had a maximum of positive
volition in the United States blessings were incurred by these believers. Actually we owe the spiritual blessings of
this country to these people. It was
their spirituality that brought upon this nation tremendous freedoms and
tremendous grace and when we say “Faith of our Fathers” we should, as
Americans, remember that this really means Biblical Christianity; “Faith of our
Fathers” applies directly in our history because believers hundreds of years
ago took the Word of God seriously and applied it in all areas of their
life. And as a result of this, this
nation prospered from about 1750 to in the early 1900’s, when we kept out of
international conflicts, when we minded our own business and didn’t get
involved in every nitpicking nation on earth.
When we had the policy of defending American freedom, when we had the
policy that if any American was beat up in another country, the people that did
the wrong were expected to give reparations to the
And now we come to our middle third, say 1960-70 where we have a small
remnant but one of the great advantages is in our time over the period, say
from 1920-1940 when things were mixed, now the battle lines are clearly being
drawn between the independent believers who are coming out of the main
religious apostate organizations and aligning themselves to independent
movements. I just come from a pastor’s
conference where we had 205 pastors from 40 states plus
The United States stands in the latter third of the 20th
century at a crossroads. We have in our
nation as of now enough resources so that if people on the whole go on positive
volition there can be a Biblical revival. We have enough resources being
prepared in many communities; in the state of Texas, for example, practically
every major city now has at least one solid independent Bible teaching church. And by Bible-teaching church I don’t just
mean a fundamental church; this state has had gobs and gobs of fundamental
churches but the trouble with them is that all they do is preach the gospel
every service and they never feed the sheep as they are commanded to in John 21
and all they have is people running down the aisle in the morning, in the
evening and on Wed night and they don’t know why they’re running down the
aisle, they just like to run down the aisle.
Now all the running down the aisle in Lubbock Bible Church is on the
part of the ushers but that’s the only running down the aisle that is done at
Lubbock Bible Church. So Bible-teaching
churches are distinguished from fundamental churches in that they teach verse
by verse, day in and day out, Bible, Bible, Bible, Bible, Bible doctrine is
going out.
In this one church in Texas we have a situation where approximately
300-400 teenagers every Wed. night come to Bible study; approximately 100-200
teenagers come every night taking in the Word of God, hour after hour,
saturating themselves with the Word of God, and that’s the hope of the nation
because these people are putting Bible doctrine first and social engagements
second. Berachah Church has a unique
youth ministry; they just dumped every youth activity except Bible class. And they found the results are amazing, they
have faster growth among their teenagers than they have ever had because before
they had all the wasted time fiddling around with parties here and parties
there. It’s all right, they have a lot
of parties, but the parties are done by private individuals and they do them as
unto the Lord. As far as the church
activity, they have one thing, teaching Bible doctrine and more Bible doctrine. And as a result they are having tremendous
growth. And it’s a testimony, where the
Word goes forth there are always strong believers and where they don’t like the
Word they just leave. Some of the
minister couldn’t stand the Word of God being taught dogmatically so at the
beginning of the conference some of them left.
Good riddance because obviously they can’t take the teaching of the
Word. This occasionally happens; a year
ago we had about 10-15% of them leave because they couldn’t believe that
teaching the Word was the answer. I can
tell you as a member of the clergy that this is one of the problems of our
country. Very few men are really
inwardly convinced that the Word of God is what is necessary and this is why
you have all the malarkey, junk, programs, and all the rest of it that occurs
in the so-called fundamental church of the Bible belt. There are a lot of programs, a lot of
activity, a lot of running around, but very little teaching of the Word.
In Deut. 28 we have one of the most solemn addresses to the national
entity in which the destiny of this nation, Israel, hung on their response to
the preached Word of God. To place this
chapter in its proper historical context, we have to go back to the treaty
form. Remember the suzerainty vassal
treaty. You always have a great kind and
you have vassal kings under him. Vassal
kings make a legal treaty with this great king.
The analogue as far as the Word of God is concerned is that you have the
twelve tribes of Israel as vassals, and they are locked into a legal agreement
with the great king. The great king is Jehovah or Yahweh and the great king,
therefore, is the one who brings blessing or brings the cursings upon the
vassals. In the ancient world the vassal
kings would be those kings who would… say Tyre down here is number two, number
one is Sidon, number 3 is Bibloff, and number12 we say is Damascus. So these would be four kings, and they would
make a treaty with the king of the Hittites, and this means that the king of
the Hittites would bring cursing upon them if they dared cross him. Once locked into the treaty it meant they
were locked into cursing because if they fooled around, if the King of Tyre
wanted to double-cross and pull a fast one on the Hittite king, then the
Hittite king would come with his armies and destroy the city of Tyre.
This was the way these treaties worked, and these treaties had sections
called the cursings and blessing section.
They had many sections, they had the historical prologue but I’ve given
you that many times, but they had three sections in particular, witnesses,
curses and blessings. Now when these
three sections appear in the book of Deuteronomy, they appear reversed, so in
the book of Deuteronomy we have B + C + W, Blessings + Cursings + Witnesses. In the Ancient Near Eastern treaties
witnesses first, cursings, then blessings.
Who are the witnesses to the treaty? When they would make the treaty
they would call in witnesses; the witnesses would be the gods, the various
pagan gods, these would be the witnesses.
Now you’re going to see something very startling because the gods, the
witnesses of the treaty that Moses made are the angels. And these are the witnesses that Moses calls
upon to act as the witnesses of this treaty.
However, in the pagan treaties they first gave the gods, then the
cursings, then the blessings. What’s the
significance of it? Because the gods were arbitrary and chaotic and they could
bring all sorts of cursing upon the people according to their own arbitrary
will, so you had more or less chaos, you call the witnesses in and then the
witnesses would curse or bless in some way, chaotically. But in the Word of God we have the blessings
and the cursings laid down first, then the witnesses are called in, and when
the witnesses begin to accomplish their activity in history, they accomplish it
not by their own will but by the Word of God that has been revealed. The Word of God that controls the angels, the
angels cannot twist and turn and misapply the Word of God, they are bound by
the blessings and cursing law. So
therefore God lays down the Law first, then He calls in His witnesses. However, in the suzerainties the witnesses
were called in first and then their activities.
But since in God’s economy the angels as well as men always must
accomplish His Law, first the blessing and cursing section is brought in.
However, there’s another difference, as you notice. It’s C + B up here in the pagan treaties;
here it’s B + C. Why the reversal?
Because in God’s Word the emphasis is not upon the cursing, the emphasis
is always upon grace. God’s blessing is first, then His cursing. God is always optimistic, even the God of the
Old Testament that the religious professors say was an old boogey man, the God
of the Old Testament is Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ always emphasizes grace,
grace, grace. He’s always more willing
to bless than you are to receive and so blessing comes first, then
cursing. Now in Deut. 28:1-14 we have
the blessing section, and verse 1, “And it shall come to pass, if thou shalt
hearken diligently,” then these blessings will come upon you. If you read in verse 15 you see the head of
the cursing section, “But it shall come to pass, if you wilt not hearken unto
the voice of the LORD thy God,” then cursed, cursed, cursed, cursed. So those are the two sections in this great
long chapter, blessing first, then cursing.
Let’s look at these blessings.
Remember that in order to understand blessings you must know something
known as dispensations. A dispensation
we have defined as a distinguishable economy or modus operandi in the outworking of God’s master plan. A dispensation is a distinguishable modus operandi in the outworking of
God’s master plan so that if history goes on there are distinct ages in which
God works in unique ways. In particular
there are two great ages; the age of the Gentiles and the age of Israel. These are two tremendous eras of history and
if you study history you will notice history flows differently in these
dispensations. This is why if you have a
history course in school and dispensations are not in the course as far as the
framework goes you have not learned true history. You have learned bits and pieces of history
but you haven’t synthesized them into one big position.
This has to be made clear because a lot of Christians think the Bible is
just on Sunday and you walk in here and walk out and you’ve finished your
obligation. You don’t owe me or the
church anything; you owe your own soul something, to take in the Word of God. If you take in these things then you will
begin to do what a lot of our young people are now doing, and that is seeing
that their academics have to be fitted into categories and the only place of
getting these categories is the Word of God and therefore the only place of
synthesizing all your learning and making sense of the mess is to have
categories. Can you imagine the people
down at the Post Office, when the Christmas mail comes in they have no sorting
boxes; just throw everything on the table.
You think the mail is bad now; you’d be 3 or 4 Christmases getting a
Christmas present if they didn’t sort.
They have file boxes and they put letters into these various boxes. That’s the way your mind should be, you
should develop categories from the Word of God so when you learn facts they can
be filed in this box, this box, this box, this box, so when you learn history
you have a category that says dispensations on it, so therefore historical
facts go in that slot. You’ve developed
categories in your mind and therefore you categorize things and you learn
history in terms of these categories.
Dispensations of the first section deal with the age of the Gentiles
from Genesis chapters 3 to 11; that’s the whole section of Scripture in which
there was no distinguishing among the nations.
The end result of this section of the age of the Gentiles were the
following lessons: first there was demonstrated a need for the Word of
God. These are the lessons learned from
this section of history. You see, this
is why dispensations is important. It’s
not just a theory of C. I. Scofield or something that Clarence Larkin worked
out, it’s in the Word and if you don’t know this, guess what? You don’t learn from history. Every dispensation gives you vital lessons
that you as a Christian citizen should know, so you won’t be like a lot of
these mealy evangelical Christians that say, oh, communism has a few good
things in it. What good things communism
has have been around for some time, the only reason communism has a few good
things in it is because they borrowed from Christians. Communism has nothing good in it and don’t
you ever let somebody tell you… and when you get this jazz in the schools about
we’re going to have one-world and the United Nations is so great and the UN got
us out of World War II it’s a lot of junk.
In the first place the United Nations wasn’t in existence in World War
II so the UN forces did not exist; therefore the United Nations did not
exist. The United States got us out of
World War II so don’t by this stuff; the United Nations didn’t have a thing to
do with it, the United States got everybody out of World War II. In fact they were so generous that the United
States even financed Russia, we’re really suckers, we finance everybody. We finance the Japanese, we finance the
Germans, and we wonder why we’re broke.
If you give all you money away obviously you’re broke.
These are categories and every dispensation concludes with a set of
lesson. This is the way history should
be taught. This is what makes history
interesting; if history bores you like it did me when I was going through
school because I wasn’t a Christian, I can sympathize with you. The reason why history bores you is because
you have some cluck for a teacher or you do not understand history in terms of
divine categories. Here’s the age of the
Gentiles; what did you learn from the age of the Gentiles? Number one, we learned the need for a Bible;
the Gentiles had to have the Word of God in the first dispensation. We learned something else that we ought to be
reminded of today, content is not sufficient for social order. We had a whole
dispensation called the dispensation of conscience in which there was no such
thing as the establishment. And all
these people going around, they’re going to tear down the establishment, what
we have to do is destroy government and then everything will be great.
That’s exactly what they said back in the age of the conscience. You can go back and study history between
Gen. 3:7 and Gen. 6:7 and you will study a time in history when all men lived
without law and order and government.
And what happened? Do you know
what happened? God had to completely
destroy that civilization by the flood.
Now this is why it’s stupid, but you see, people don’t learn from
history. History is not taught today;
what is taught is a socialistic interpretation of history. You should hear what I heard at the pastor’s
conference, reports from all over the country what’s going on in the school
system. You think sex education is bad,
you should see what they’re doing to the history courses. Ministers from California, from New York, all
the states telling about what is going on in the history courses, teaching the
kids that the greatest hope for peace is the United Nations and all we have to
do is have one-world government and if you have people in your community that
salute the flag and that put the United States over and above the United
Nations, these are old people, the older generation which must be wiped
out. That’s what’s being taught in the
history courses and then we wonder what’s happening. This is what’s going on in the school system,
socialism, socialism, one-worldism and internationalism.
And yet the Word of God says that for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds
of years men lived by means of their own conscience and they were destroyed and
the only way God could save the human race was to annihilate the civilization,
save the believers out and start all over, and when God started all over He
established the divine institution of government; there are four divine
institutions, you must know these.
Divine institution number one is volition, that is destroyed or rendered
inoperative when issues are not clarified, where you do not allow people to
choose or you keep information from them, or worse than that, you give false
information to them. Any one of these
three combinations, minus information, false information, or tyranny, any one
of those three things destroys the divine institution of volition. Volition has been given to all members of the
human race; if you’re a human being you have volition and God expects you to
use it. He does not expect you to be
coerced, He expects you to freely choose and let you experience the result of
your decision.
This is why free enterprise is preferred in Scripture over socialism,
because in free enterprise the individual makes his decisions and some people
make wrong decisions and some people suffer, but they make their own decisions
and Uncle doesn’t make them for them.
Why? Because it goes back to the concept of volition; volition must be
protected. This is why we teach the Word of God. Some of the ministers wondered why is it you
don’t have small groups and sit around with a hyper-spiritual atmosphere and
share the Word of God. Do you know why
you don’t teach in small groups? Because
the individual has a right to privacy and you don’t have privacy in a small
group; you have privacy in a large group and as a believer priest you have a
right to privacy. We teach the Word of
God and you can take it or leave it but you have privacy to do it; you have
privacy to exercise your volition. At
the point of salvation this is very crucial; a person has the right to choose
in private, without someone looking over his shoulder, looking around to see if
he’s going to walk down the aisle. We
aim to protect your privacy; this supports the divine institution of
volition.
The next divine institution is the divine institution of marriage. This is under attack today because of sex
education and other things in which premarital relations and so on,
extramarital relations are suggested as means of psychological adjustment. It’s psychological adjustment to destroy the
marriage relationship, that’s what’s going to happen. So this is under attack.
The third divine institution is the divine institution of family and
that’s under attack because the schools are competing with the authority of the
parents and the schools are competing with the authority of the parents to the
church. When the church teaches the parents Bible doctrine, and the parents try
to administer Bible doctrine in the family they are being undercut by certain
loud mouths in the school system. So you
have all of these institutions under attack and then you wonder what’s
happening to our country. It’s very
simple, and the only way these institutions can function are when you have a
maximum of Bible doctrine and a maximum of believers operating on Bible do.
The last divine institution is national government, or I just say
government. That’s the fourth divine
institution, the only one of the four that is temporary. Government was introduced as an emergency
measure because of man’s sin. The first
three divine institutions were introduced before the fall and have to do with
man in both sin and sinlessness. But the
fourth one is strictly due to our own sinfulness. Why is government existing? Not because man has made a social contract;
not because it’s an evolved product of the animal commune type system. It is a product of God’s institution for this
age. And any person, whether he’s in the
classroom, or in the street, or in the newspaper or on TV that advocates
anarchy is advocating destruction of this divine institution. Internationalism is destroying this because
God made it clear in Genesis 11 the order for the day is nations, not one-world
government. People who advocate
one-world government are out of line.
Clergy that advocate one-world government are out of line; school texts
that advocate one-world government are out of line, out of line because of
God’s discipline in Gen. 11. That’s the first United Nations building and God
expressed His attitude toward the United Nations in Gen. 11. I’m waiting for Him to express it again.
But those are the four divine institutions. And those divine institutions are absolutely
necessary to understand dispensations.
So you see the conscience is insufficient; we have to have that fourth
divine institution. What are some other
lessons learned in the age of the Gentiles.
Another lesson learned was the fact that culture cannot sustain
man. You can have all the art, all the
music, all the things you want to but apart from Bible doctrine these aren’t
going to sustain you. You can have all
the sweet little hymns but apart from Bible doctrine they’re not going to sustain
you. We are going to have doctrinal
hymns or we’re not going to have any hymns.
I’m not going to have my ministry undermined by teaching you the Word of
God and then five minutes you’re singing a hymn denying every doctrine I
taught. That doesn’t make for
consistency. So we are going to sing
doctrinal hymns or we’re not going to sing any hymns. There are hymns with doctrine and content;
you may not be able to sing but you can still get a blessing out of the hymn
because all you have to do is listen to the words. And it’s not an emotional blessing, it’s a
spiritual blessing because the lyrics make sense, and the lyrics communicate
Bible teaching, and they’re not some little testimony, oh how I feel wonderful
with Jesus and all the rest of it; they tell you the objective work that Jesus
did in history on the cross, what God is doing in history, etc. teaching,
teaching, teaching, those are the works of culture as it should be. But culture, bare culture by itself, we have
proved from the age of the Gentiles will not sustain man.
What do we learn from the age of Israel?
This is the age of Deut. 28, Israel.
What is learned in this age? The
first thing we learn is the fact that mankind’s hope rests on the promises of
God. The age of Israel begins with Gen.
12 and Gen. 12 is a promise, and God says if there’s ever to be blessing,
socially and politically, this is not just individual salvation, don’t think
because we teach an individual gospel we’re not interested in social problems,
but social problems are solved on a promissory basis and this age of Israel was
to do that. Now the age of Israel
started in 2000 BC and it’s almost 2000 AD, we’ve almost had… well, this is the
Church Age but still benefiting from the age of Israel, so we’ve had 40 centuries
and people still haven’t learned that blessing, if it is to come in history,
has to come by the plan of God. So we
have people busy making up plans for the United Nations. So here are promises.
The second thing and this is pertinent to Deut. 28 is that in the age of
the Law we learned that man is a willful transgressor. Now here’s where these two things combine and
it all ties together. The Law was a
system by which God promised to the nation Israel immediate blessing if they
would obey Him. In other words, you have
the nation Israel here; Israel is given a promise by God, if, that’s the
promise, if you obey then you can become a world empire and rule the
world. How many conquerors have hoped to
conquer the world? Israel was given this
promise, that’s the meaning of the Law.
God is King, and they could have ruled the world if they had obeyed God,
if they had obeyed God. So therefore what do we learn from this age?
They failed. Why did Israel fail? Because they went on negative volition. Why are all empires doomed? Because of
negative volition. God will never allow
a nation to take over completely; He’s not going to allow the communists to
take over completely and He’s not going to allow the Chinese to take over
completely, He’s never going to allow anyone to take over completely because He
is not going to have any one empire, not only because of the decree of Babel of
Gen. 11 but because every national entity has negative volition inside it and
that national entity cannot be blessed by God.
So what does that tell us as citizens of the United States? It means that we mind our own business, we
don’t engage in programs of expansion because God isn’t going to bless this
until we clean our own house up. And
until we clean our own house up, then we can’t expect God’s blessing. You see this again and again in history. It’s like this, you have a body, it’s
weakened because you’re tired, because you physically overworked yourself, then
the bacteria invade and then you get sick.
It’s the same thing nationally, we have had people in our country go on
negative volition which always introduces religion. The next step after religion is something
like communism, that’s the order and the reason why the communists have moved
into this country is because of negative volition. If there was positive volition… can you
imagine the communists moving in on Puritan New England? They couldn’t even have gotten on shore; they
couldn’t have done a thing. Why? Because you had a maximum number of people on
Bible doctrine and they could have spotted these phonies immediately. They could have had some wishy-washy minister
that had been brain-washed in some seminary somewhere and put him in charge of,
say the First Church in Boston. He would
not get up in the pulpit five minutes before everybody in the congregation
would know he’s an apostate. Why?
Because the people had been taught Bible doctrine and they could spot
apostasy. And yet today we have in this
country minister after minister after minister preaching in influential
churches the gospel of communism and the people sit there, oh gee, isn’t that
great. Then we wonder what’s
happening.
There has to be something from the inside working out; this is where
blessing comes and in Deut. 28 as we go through these blessings remember, it
all depends on them taking in the Word of God.
Verse 1, “And it shall come to pass, if thou shalt hearken diligently
unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to keep,” not observe, the word means to
keep these things. Here we have an interesting
construction. We have an “if”
clause. If you studied grammar instead
of sex and internationalism will remember that a conditional clause has an
apodosis and a protasis. A protasis is
that which goes, “pro” before; and apodosis is that which comes after,
from. Protasis is connected with “if,”
you have “if” plus the protasis, if such and such is true, then the result is
apodosis.
Let’s apply that to this whole section we’re treating here. Chapter 28:1 is the protasis, “if this is
true,” and the apodosis goes down to the word “that,” so your apodosis begins
with the word “if” and continues to the word “that.” “If thou shalt hearken diligently unto the
voice of the LORD thy God, to keep and to do all His commandments which I am
commanding this day, that,” “that” introduces the protasis and the protasis
here extends from verse 1b down through verse 14. There’s your condition, but you’ve got to see
the condition. All the blessings do not
flow automatically under the Law unless the condition is fulfilled. “If thou shalt hearken diligently,” and the
word “hearken diligently” is an intensified condition, which means that you
must do this if this is to be true. It’s
the conditionality heightened for emphasis; if and you’d better do it would be a
way of translating, “if and you’d better do it,” listen to the voice of the
Lord, it doesn’t mean listen diligently, this is a misunderstanding of the mood
in the original King James. It means if,
just put emphasis on the “if,” diligently is not in the original text. “And it shall come to pass, if thou shalt
hearken and you’d better, unto the voice of the LORD thy God,” comma, after
that comma you have an expansion of what it means to listen.
Moses has two things on his mind when he uses the word hear or listen
to, and those two words are given to you between the commas that start after
the word “God.” So you look in your
Bible and you see “God,” comma, and then you see an infinitive, “to keep and to
do,” and those are the two things of living in the Word, “to keep means
memory. It means that you have the Word
of God on your mind. If you do this, and
you have it on your mind, and doing means to apply, so two obvious situations
of living in the Word, you’ve got to have it in your mind, constantly on your
mind and then you’ve got to apply it. Two criteria, “if you remember to do, to
apply.”
“Then,” and here are the blessings that are going to come about, “then
the LORD thy God will set thee on high above all nations of the earth,” and
this word really means exalted, they are going to be the ruling nation of the
world, this is empire building by God’s style.
“If” Israel you’ll do this, and by the way, no other nation has ever
been given this promise, only Israel, “if you do this, then I will set you on
high above all the nations of the earth.” Obviously the United States has been
set above all the nations of the earth in our day. Why? It goes back to the fact, if you look at
history, you will not find another nation, isn’t this interesting, if you study
history you will never find another nation as close to us in history as the
United States that started out from the Biblical Christian position, with a
maximum amount of Biblical Christianity at the beginning. Now isn’t it interesting that the United States
also happens to be the most exalted nation on earth. Now what you see in history is the outplay of
this principle applied generally.
Now this is applied in a tight form to Israel, but it applies in a
general way through Acts 20:17 to all nations. Now isn’t that interesting how that
correlation works? The nation that
started off above all nations with a maximum number of people with Bible
doctrine is the nation that 200-300 years later is prospering. That ought to be cause to thank your
forefathers instead of maligning them as the history teachers do. They were the ones that brought the blessing
and you’re reaping their blessing, that God brought upon this nation in
response to their faith. And yet what do
we have today, constantly history teachers maligning the forefathers to the
classes, because George Washington did a few odd ball things and Thomas
Jefferson did a few things and so on they’re maligned in the classroom. And yet not one of these teaches will ever
bring out the basis of our nation’s grace, and it wasn’t just because we have a
lot of natural resources. Russia has
more resources than we ever thought of having to is it not because we have more
natural resources. So don’t buy that
argument; Russia has ten times the natural resources of us and yet their
standard of living isn’t anywhere close. Do you know why? This rule, God is not going to bless the
nation that doesn’t stick with Him.
Verse 2, “And all these blessings shall come on thee, and overtake
thee,” now the word you want to spot in this verse is the word “overtake.” This hints as to how this is going to work
and introduces us to the angelic council.
The blessings “overtake.” The
word “overtake” is used of a runner who is running after somebody and
overtaking them. It is a personal verb,
a verb describing a personal activity, not an impersonal activity. Therefore it must refer to a person, not
situation. So a person is involved, or
people. The blessings shall “overtake
thee,” now what do we mean. All right,
we have the subject, “blessing”; we have the verb, “shall,” future tense,
“overtake thee.” “Overtake” however is a
verb usually used of people, but blessing isn’t a person so how do we get this
personal verb in with an impersonal thing?
The answer is the agency that brings the blessing about are angels; the
angels are working in history and these are the spiritual forces that are
working behind the scenes moment by moment, changing things, adjusting
international situations. It is the
result of divine agency.
You say prove that. All right, I’ll show
you the council on Deuteronomy that was set up by God. Turn to Deut. 32:1, remember I said that
every treaty had to have a set of witnesses.
If there’s only one God He can’t call on the other gods, so God,
therefore when He speaks to Israel says I want a set of witnesses here, and the
witnesses I give to you in 32:1, “Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak; and
hear, O earth, the words of my mouth. [2] My doctrine shall drop as rain, my
speech shall distill as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as
the showers upon the grass, [3] Because I will proclaim the name of the LORD,
ascribe ye greatness unto our God. [4] He is the Rock, His work is perfect; for
all His ways are justice; a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right
is he.” Verse 5, “They” that’s Israel,
“They have corrupted themselves, their spot is not the spot of His children;
they are a perverse and crooked generation. [6] Do you thus requite the LORD, O
foolish people and unwise,” and with verse 6 the conversation orients toward
Israel, but at the beginning of this, in verse 1, Deut. 32:1 is an address to
the heavens and the earth. Now it’s not
just speaking of the material heavens and the earth; He’s speaking to those who
dwell in the heavens and the earth.
[Blank spot] … the angelic council.
To see this council in operation turn to 1 Kings 22 and we have a report
direct from this angelic council that evidently rules the universe. And some of these science fiction stories
every once in a while you’ll read some very creative writer and he’ll suggest
that in the future there’s going to be a council of the universe, a sort of
united world organization. Well,
actually there is a council that runs the universe today and you’re about to
see in 1 Kings 22:19 how this council operates.
Here is the prophet, I haven’t got time to develop it tonight but the
prophets in the Old Testament were admitted to this council. Every prophet in the Old Testament, here’s
God, and here’s the angelic council, sort of like a semi-circle table and God
is presiding and around this table sit the angels, the bena ha Elohim, and the angels are commissioners that evidently
each angel has a section of the universe to run. And God steps up and has meetings with His
angels. Now these angels go out and
rule, say one’s over on Pluto and so on, and then a group of them deal with the
earth; a lot of them have to do with the earth, a tremendous percent of the
angels have as their jurisdiction control of earth’s history.
And so these angels now, say the earth’s delegation is sitting here and
God is addressing this delegation. The
prophets receive the message, God deliberates with His council, publishes a
report and the report goes to the prophet.
That’s how the prophet of the Old Testament got his message. And here you have a rare glimpse of the
prophet actually being admitted by means of visions to a meeting of this
universal council. 1 Kings 22:19 “And he
said, Hear thou, therefore, the word of the LORD:” here’s the prophet speaking,
“I saw the LORD sitting on his throne,” this is the vision the prophet had,
“and all the host of heaven” those are the angels “standing by Him on his right
hand and on his left. [20] And the LORD
said, Who shall persuade Ahab, that he may go up and fall at
Ramoth-gilead?” Ahab was a believer out
of line; he was a believer that was the head of this nation. And so God says this man is out of line and
I’m going to discipline him; Ahab kept his salvation but he was going to be
disciplined. And God says I’m going to
administer that discipline through an intermediary angel. And so He said unto
thee, all right, God walks into the council, this is Jesus Christ in His
preincarnate form, Jesus Christ sits down at the table, at the table He’s here
and these angels are standing around.
This table is His throne and He says all right angels, I want a
volunteer; see, He was respecting volition.
And he says, “Who shall persuade Ahab, that he may go up and fall at
Ramoth-gilead?” God had planned a trap
in history for Ahab and he wanted to spring the trap, but in order to spring
the trap He had to bring Ahab into the situation and so now He wants an angel
that’s going to deceive him. “And one
said on this manner, and another said on that manner,” and you can just see
this, this is the Hebrew verb for deliberation.
God has addressed the council and the angels are deliberating, who’s
going to do this, who’s going to do this, no, I’m busy over at, maybe I’m
working in the south and you’ve got the north or something like this and they
are deliberating about it, their spheres of jurisdiction, and finally in verse
21, “And there came forth a spirit, and stood before the LORD, and said, I will
persuade him. [22] And the LORD said unto him, By what means? And he said, I
will go forth, and I will be a ling spirit in the mouth of all his
prophets. And he said, thou shalt
persuade him, and prevail also; go forth, and do so.” And here God is commissioning one of His
angels that has to do with the earth to go down and take care of Ahab. And in history, no historian ever recorded
the angelic intervention. All history testifies to is that Ahab pulled a boner.
At one time in history made one of the most foolish mistakes he ever
made, that’s the way the history books read, and he went to Ramoth-Gilead and
he fell, and that’s all you read about history until you go to this passage and
you realize no, it wasn’t just an accident, Ahab just didn’t make a mistake,
there was an angel in back of that that was manipulating the historical
process.
Now this should open some of your eyes to the fact that you don’t live
in a universe by yourself. Constantly in
the political and economic realm the angelic forces are operating, interfering,
changing courses of things. This is why
when you pray don’t think of prayer as something that God can’t manipulate in
history. God can do all sorts of things. Do you know how He operates? He can answer your prayers by angels. Here you are down here as a believer in
trouble. And so here you are as a
believer and you’re down here and you’re in a jam and so you send off a prayer
to the throne; it comes up here to the throne; who is sitting on the throne? Jesus Christ is sitting on the throne and
what does He do? If He has to change
history and it’s in His will, He’ll change history for you. If your address is in the will of God and you
have prayed according to the will of God, and this thing is right for you, God
won’t stop with His angels, He’ll get those angels to come down there and
manipulate everything in history to bring an answer to your prayer. Now that’s the power of prayer. I hope you see this; I hope you see that
you’re not just going to the throne and Christ has a few buttons up there that
He presses and something is supposed to come off. It’s much more personal than that. There’s an
actual set of angels working for you.
Perhaps He works through your guardian angel, every believer has a
guardian angel, Heb. 1 and 2, you have a guardian angel as of the point of
salvation and so maybe this angel gets down there and helps your guardian angel
work something out. And this is how God
can manipulate history and real situations in the world.
Turn to Job 1 and you’ll see another meeting of the council. How often this council meets we don’t know,
but periodically in history God calls a meeting of His angels. These angels get together and discuss things. Job 1:6, “Now there was a day when the sons
of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan came also among
them.” Important point, Satan has access
to the council of the universe, even to this day; although legally he does not
share his position, see he used to be sitting on the throne, he used to be the
head of the angelic council; he is no longer head, he is just one of the
members. This is what makes him a little
hot under the collar because he just got deposed. Do you know who is sitting in the council
now? Jesus Christ, He’s completely
replaced Satan. But Satan still has a
seat on the council and so do the fallen angels. The fallen angels do not lose their seats on
the council until Rev. 12 when they are thrown out in the middle of the
Tribulation. But until that point is
reached, Satan has access to this divine council and here in verse 6 he comes
in. There’s a meeting called.
Verse 7, “And the LORD said not Satan, From where comest thou? Then
Satan answered the LORD and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from
walking up and down in it. [8] And the LORD said unto Satan, Hast thou
considered My servant, Job, that there is none like him” and you know the
rest. So there was a case, and imagine
this thing now, catch the significance.
Here is an angelic council that has complete jurisdiction of the universe
and they bring one man into the picture; there’s a man down here, Job, who has
such a fantastic testimony for the Lord that it becomes a subject for
discussion in the angelic council of the universe. That’s how important you as
an individual believer are, you can have such a fantastic testimony that you
might even be discussed tonight in the angelic council. That’s amazing. As far spiritually as you are
concerned your name could come up any night in the meeting of the angelic
council and then you’d have a major discussion about you. And it might be embarrassing in some sense
because here you are and the angels just plan to set a hard circumstance for
you to see if you could take it, just like Job, and you fell apart and whined
and cried and went through all the human means of adjustment, sublimation, etc.
so you’ve gone through all this thing with some sublimation; maybe you’ve gone
out and every time you get involved in a situation you have to go to the bar or
something and you’ve been high on the town for the last two weeks. Maybe you’ve done something, some system of
sublimation. And the angels are saying
ha-ha, look at that believer down there, here is this dumb believer who has all
the promises of God available to him and he just blew it. And of course that chalks up Satan’s
scoreboard every time you drop the ball Satan gets a score; every time you
trust in the Word of God to the good angels in Christ, they get the score. And that’s one of the great contests in
history, the contest of the angelic conflict.
We have another situation in Psalm 89:5, “And the heavens shall praise
thy wonders, O LORD” and you might say well that’s interesting, that’s kind of
a nice poetic hyperbole, etc. a good illustration till you read the last part
of the verse, “thy faithfulness also in the congregation of” not “the saints,” it’s “the holy ones,” reference
to angels. So heavens here is used
synonymously for the angelic council and this is why I say Deut. 32:1 refers to
the angelic council, the words “heaven and earth” refer to the angelic council
and here’s your proof. “Heavens” is used
in apposition with the holy ones. Verse
6, “For who in the heavens can be compared unto the LORD? Who among the sons of
El [mighty] can be likened unto the LORD?”
Those are angels.
Verse 7, “God is greatly to be feared in the assembly of the holy ones,”
angels, “and to be had in reverence of all those who are about him.” This is the angelic council in verse 7 and
here’s your council of the universe, the angelic council operating again in
Psalm 89
Now come over to Rev. 6 and we’ll see another function of this angelic
council. In Rev. 6:1 we have a case
history of how this angelic council manipulates history. I hope you see, by the way, why you can’t
write a history; do you see why no human being can write a history? Because you’ve only got part of the
information. To write a history
adequately you must have all the facts; no historian has all the facts because
case after case after case angels have been at work and no historian has data
on how the angels work in a given situation.
How can you go back and study, for example, and study D Day when the
allies hit the beaches and the weather forecast was for certain conditions and
these conditions held off and held off and had those weather conditions stayed
off an hour or two more the American Air Force, Army Air Force at that time
couldn’t have done the job it had to.
The skies cleared over certain targets at just the right time. Was that an accident? It is not; it is obviously a case in point in
our own lifetime where angels have been manipulating history. We see this again and again, if you study
history, these odd things happen at just the right moment… just the right
moment. We’ve had situations happen in this country recently that make you
wonder whether the angels… it makes you wonder, what part did the angelic
council have in these things. No one can
really know, those are hidden from our eyes, but I want you to know as a believer
tonight that angels are working in history.
Here in Rev. 6 you have another function of these angels and how they
work in history. Now these are the
angels that are working in the Tribulation; here’s the Church Age beginning on
the day of Pentecost and extending until the rapture; after the rapture some
time there will be a covenant made and this covenant sets off the Tribulation
of seven years and then Christ comes.
Now during this Tribulation God is going to judge the world and most of
you probably think God just puts His arm out and lightening bolts hit, but
that’s not the way God works. He works
through angels. Watch. Verse 1, “And I
saw when the Lamb, that’s Jesus Christ, “opened one of the seals,” these are
the judgment seals of God, “and I heard, as it were, the noise of thunder, and
one of the four beasts [living creatures] saying,” these are the animals about
the throne “Come and see.”
Verse 2, “And I saw, and, behold, a white horse; and he that sat on him
had a bow; and a crown was given unto him, and he went forth conquering, and to
conquer.” This is one of the angels from
the angelic council. God has His council of angels around and here He is on the
throne, Jesus Christ dispatches, He opens the first order, breaks the seal, God
the Father from eternity past had prepared the set of orders. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen military
orders or not but this is a set of orders and he just tore off one of these
orders and said you go, He dispatched the angel and this is what the angel did
in verse 2, the angel went down “conquering and to conquer,” to stir up war,
and he had one job in history during the Tribulation, “conquering and to
conquer,” to irritate the nations and get them into war. And that was his job, this one angel; that’s
all it takes, one angel and he got the whole world war going.
Verse 3, “And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the second
beast [living creature] say, Come. [4] And there went out another horse that
was red; and power” or authority “was given to him that sat on hit to take
peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another; and there was
given unto him a great sword.” Again,
God works in history through an angelic medium.
These are not just symbols; this is a vision John had of actual
activity. Verse 5, “And when he had opened
the third seal, I heard the third beast [living creature] say, Come. And I beheld and, lo, a black horse; and he
that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand. [6] And I heard a voice in
the midst of the four beasts [living creatures] say, A measure of wheat for a
penny [denarius], and three measures of barley for a penny [denarius], and see
thou hurt not the oil and the wine.” And this means terrific hardship, he’s
going to jack up the price of food because he’s going to make crops fail and
fail and fail until he destroys the price, so that the price of food, a penny
is a large amount under this economy. So
this one angel has as his job to go down on the earth and manipulate history,
manipulate history, manipulate weather conditions so that it will destroy crop
after crop after crop in all the lands of the earth, destroy it the western
hemisphere, destroy it in the southern hemisphere, destroy it in every
hemisphere, and that’s the role of this angel.
Verse 7, “And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of
the fourth beast {living creature] say, Come and see. [8] And I looked and,
behold, a pale horse, and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell [Hades]
followed with him. And power was given
unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with
hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.” Now notice how this angel operates, his
mission, to destroy part of the world’s population. How is he going to do it, first, “to kill
with the sword,” he is going to get men aggravated against men, putting
thoughts into certain minds, hostility thoughts so that, for example if this
person is a believer, his mind, in his mentality this angel can put a thought,
just like you can be tempted. And God
can put thoughts in your mind, Satan, actually he doesn’t really directly, but
these spirits can, they can test you and tempt you and therefore you’re wide
open to them, you have no protection against getting invaded mentally by the
angels and there is only one defense you have and that is the Word of God on
the inside. So if one of these satanic
thoughts comes your way, bang, you’ve got divine viewpoint up there and you can
neutralize it. This is why being a
Christian means know Bible doctrine, otherwise you’ll be a sucker for all sorts
of things that go on. So this angel is
going to put it in men’s hearts to kill. And with hunger, he’s going to destroy
further the food supply, he’s going to start fires in various food store houses,
etc., destroy the resources of the earth.
And then he’s going to get the animals all going, the beasts of the
earth, that includes insects and everything else, viruses. And he’s going to manipulate these so there
will be pestilences to kill and to destroy.
Now this is serious. This is how
God works in history and this shows you the power in the book of Revelation,
these great judgments come down upon men, they come not directly from the hand
of God but through the intermediary command of the angelic council.
This is why, back in Deuteronomy as we finish tonight, in Deut. 28 [2,
“And all these blessings shall come on thee, and overtake thee, if thou shalt
hearken unto the voice of the LORD thy God.”] when it says these blessings
shall overtake thee, it means that God, through the mediary of angels will
bless the nation that obeys Him. It
works two ways; the angels you saw in Revelation are cursing angels but there
are also blessing angels. And then the
clause in verse 2, “if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the LORD thy God,”
is more or less a reminder of verse 1, this apodosis “if” section or the
conditional section occurs, you might say parenthetically throughout the
narrative. Moses just slips it in there
so you won’t lose the point, this isn’t automatic, these blessings are not
automatic, they are only true “if.”
Verse 3-6, these are the blessings over all areas of life. Verse 3, “Blessed shalt thou be in the city,
and blessed shalt thou be in the field.”
In verse 3 the word “blessed” is the word barak, and this particular form of the verb is a participle and you
know that a participle is moving picture tense; it describes a running
condition, nor just a single point action. So this is a running condition, and
it is a passive participle which means you don’t do the blessing, God does it
to you. So, “they are blessed,” and the
word “blessing” is very interesting. The
word “blessing” actually comes from the Hebrew word berak which means to bow down to someone and later on it
came to be a father who would bestow his blessing on his son. And so what the
word means is to be in the favor or, we are in the favor of because as we
learned from Ephesians the moment you have accepted Jesus Christ as your Savior
God has entered you into union with Christ and this means you share Christ’s
righteousness, His death, His resurrection, eternal life, and the Holy
Spirit. These are things you share by
virtue of your position, and Paul says, Eph. 1:3, He has blessed you with all
spiritual blessings in the heavenlies.
It means that you don’t have to pray for a second blessing, it means you
don’t have to pray to speak in tongues, it means you don’t have to pray for all
the other pseudo spirituality that goes on today because you have been given
this as of the moment of salvation, ALL spiritual blessings He has given you.
It’s just a system of bringing these out and applying them.
But the word “blessed” here means that God does the blessing to men;
these are signs of grace and there are six of them. “Blessed shalt thou be in the city, and
blessed shalt thou be in the field.” The city and the field describe the areas
of life of people in this economy. Verse 4, “Blessed shall be the fruit of thy
body,” that’s children, “and the fruit of thy ground, and the fruit of thy cattle,
the increase of thy kine [cows], and the flocks of thy sheep.” Here is agricultural production. Verse 5, “Blessed shall be thy basket and thy
store [kneading trough].” This is the
results of production, agricultural production.
In other words, through the medium of angels, angels are going to
protect the people in all areas of their life, there will be angels protecting
them in the city, angels protecting them in the field, maybe they had chariot
traffic or something around Jerusalem and you had to be protected or you’d get
run over and so the angels are out there directing traffic for you. And there
are angels in the field, there are angels that set up weather conditions for
blessing, and here then, verse 6, “Blessed shalt thou be when thou comest in,
and blessed shalt thou be when thou goest out,” this refers to all the
activities of life. Come in and go out
just means when you start and end a path.
Verse 7, “The LORD shall cause” all these things; I want to look at two
verbs in verses 7 and 8, there are two things here, again pointing to the fact
that this refers to an angelic system.
“The LORD shall cause thine enemies who rise up against thee to be
constantly smitten before you [thy face, they shall come out against thee one
way, and flee before thee seven ways.]” Who was it that Joshua found when he
went into the land and remember he was taking a walk in the cool of the night
and all of a sudden he looked up and there was this man dressed in armor with a
sword, it actually was Jesus Christ in preincarnate form. And he said who are you? And what did He say? “I am the captain of the Lord’s host,” in
other words, when Israel went into the land Jesus Christ was there before them
with the angelic host, and when Israel went into battle who was it that was
going with them? Jesus Christ and the
angelic host. It was both angelic hosts
that can manipulate, for example, the trajectory of a any kind of a ballistic
think a stone, stones that were used, arrows that were used, today
bullets. You can tamper with
trajectories and do all sorts of things.
So angels then were used in the conquest of Canaan.
In verse 8 is another verb, “The LORD shall command the blessing” to be
with you, and here again the verb command is always addressed to a person, not
an “it.” He will command something to be
with you, and again He is commanding these angels to increase agricultural
production. So therefore we can learn as
believers from this passage tonight that there is a tremendous angelic conflict
going on in history, we’ll refer to this again and again, especially in the
book of Joshua, but the thing I want you to see is that the history is open to
all sorts of influences. Don’t you think
it’s set out sure on the boards for tomorrow; yes it is in the omniscience of God
but that’s the only place, and things can be changed, and your prayers can have
tremendous effects in history because God has thousands of angels to be
dispatched at His will.
Turn to Dan. 11 and we’ll see one of these prayers so we can take this
truth of the council of the angels and make it mean something to us
personally. Daniel 10; Daniel was in a
jam and he made a prayer. Daniel
understood from the book of Jeremiah that the 70years of discipline were up on
the nation Israel and Daniel said, Lord, I want my nation to come back out of
discipline and I want to act as the intercessor of my nation and I want to pray
for them. So verse 1 of chapter 10 “In the third year of Cyrus, king of
Persia,” now this is real history, this is a historical event, “in the third
year,” there’s the chronology, “of Cyrus, king of Persia,” a real person, who
was “revealed unto Daniel, whose name was called Belteshazzar; and the thing
was true, but the time appointed was long; and he understood the thing, and had
understanding of the vision. [2] And in those days, I, Daniel, was mourning
three full weeks.” For three weeks this man prayed and prayed and prayed.
Verse 10, “And, behold, an hand touched me, which set me upon my knees
and upon the palms of my hands.” This is
an angel and I want you to catch the picture.
Daniel is probably standing at his window wondering when the Lord is
going to answer his prayer and then suddenly, wham on his back something comes
and he falls on his hands and knees.
That’s what’s happening here. So
verse 10, Daniel is on his hands and knees now.
In verse 11, “And he said unto me, O Daniel, a man greatly beloved,” now
that’s an odd way to introduce yourself to someone, slap them on the back and
knock them down on the floor and say O Daniel, you’re a man greatly beloved,
but that’s the introduction of the angels.
Evidently the angels shake hands in a very rough fashion, “a man greatly
beloved, understand the words that I speak unto thee, and stand upright;” in
other words, stand up, I want to talk to you, “for unto thee am I now sent. And
when he had spoken this word unto me, I stood trembling.” You would too, if somebody came up to you and
all of a sudden knocked you to the floor and said all right, stand up, I want
to talk to you. I think I know why the
angel did this, any person that’s spoken before a group will know it, it’s
awful hard to get people to pay attention.
You know, like tonight the room is hot, etc. and I’m just as hot as you
are but the angel obviously wanted to get Daniel’s attention. And you know the old story; you have to hit
someone against the side of the head to get their attention; that’s what the
angel did. He wanted to make sure Daniel
paid attention, so he knocked him down and then made him stand up.
Verse 12, “Then said he unto me, Fear not, Daniel; for from the first
day that thou didst set thine heart to understand, and to chasten thyself
before thy God, thy words were heard, and I have come for thy words.” All right, here’s the council, here’s the
throne of God, around Him are the angels.
Daniel is down here and Daniel makes a prayer; Daniel’s prayer goes up
to the throne immediately, faster than the speed of sound in the omniscience of
God, his words are heard. “Thy words
were heard, and I am come for thy words, [13] But,” now here’s a delayed prayer
and here’s the reason, “but the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me
one and twenty days,” those are the three weeks that are described in verse
2. Daniel prayed, say one Monday morning
and the whole week went by, another week went by, and another went by, finally
he had this thing. The angel, for three
weeks was trying to answer Daniel’s prayer.
And so he said “the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me,” now
this has a lot in it and we can’t go into the details but suffice to say this
title shows you that the realms of the angels are equal to the realms of the
historical and political boundaries of nations.
So that for example, if you want to study the alignment of the angels in
history, just take a map and draw your political boundaries, the United States,
then you have angel, an angel or angels that’s in charge of the United
States. And you have an angel up here
for Canada and you have an angel for Mexico, etc. You have angels that represent the political
subdivisions of the human race. And this
particular one, Persia, because of verse 1, “In the third year of Cyrus, king
of Persia,” who is ruling Israel at the time?
Persia was ruling Israel, so therefore who is it that this angel has to
battle. Here’s the land of Persia. The Jews are in captivity inside Persia. All right, in order to get to the Jews, into
what kingdom does the angel have to come?
He has to enter the kingdom of Persia, but when he goes to enter the
kingdom of Persia, it’s not just a human kingdom of Persia, it’s also an
angelic kingdom of Persia, sort of a third dimension up here. And that third dimension is there and this
angel has to fight his way through and into the kingdom of Persia. That’s the
point of verse 13, “But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood,” it took
the angel three weeks to battle his way to Daniel, “but, lo, Michael, one of
the chief princes, came to help me; and I remained there with the kings of
Persia.” Evidently there were many angels
there in this kingdom of Persia.
Verse 14, “Now I am come to make thee understand what shall befall thy
people” and that’s the answer to his prayer.
What I want to give you is an historical example of the interaction of
angels in prayer and how they can manipulate in history, to show you that
history is complicated and why it is that certain things happen in history for
which we have no answer. When we get in
phase three and look at the plan of God from His perspective it’s going to be
exciting to review history, for events that we say are just accidents, or it
just happened to be at just the right time, these things are going to turn out
not to be accidents but all in the very careful plan of God.