30
And he charged them that they should tell no man of him. 31 And he began to
teach them, that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the
elders, and of the chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and after three
days rise again.
Notice
the foretelling here of the gospel and the forth telling in these verses;
1
Corinthians 15:1 ¶ Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I
preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; 2 By
which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless
ye have believed in vain. 3 For I delivered unto you first of all that which I
also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; 4
And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the
scriptures:
The
apostles were dull in their thinking because, like a modern Christian, their
thinking had been corrupted by all of the false things they had been taught by
Biblically illiterate preachers and commentators who had rejected READING the
Bible in preference for reading about the Bible. By not permitting God to
change their hearts through His words they elected to worship intellect and
scholarship, theirs and others, including any rabbi, or teacher, whose teaching
caught their fancy. Modern Christians are for the most part humanists. It’s
amazing what a fundamentalist can accomplish without Christ.
A
fundamentalist will mock an evolutionist and say how deluded they are but will,
at the same time, lift up a Bible that never existed on earth in one book, that
doesn’t now exist on earth, and which no one he knows in the flesh has ever
seen; that inerrant, perfect Bible in the original manuscripts. This is a book
that the Bible itself never even discusses or places importance on above
translations or copies which are “given by inspiration”. In the Scriptures, the
word "scriptures" never refers to the original manuscripts. The Bible
is not inspired by God. These 40 or so men aren’t writing about someone that
inspires them like Hemingway or Faulkner might have done. When you are inspired
by something you have no obligation to it to be faithful as it merely provides
the spark and the motive for your writing which is generated by your own
intellect and emotion. The Bible isn’t God-breathed, as God did not dictate
every word as is clear by Job 32:8; Jeremiah 36:32; and 2 Peter 3:15. What
happened was that God gave men wisdom and understanding to write His Bible, and
then He preserved it (Psalm 12:6,7).
Modern
Christians are practicing atheists because they don’t believe that a living God
actually has a hand in Bible preservation. It’s only unbelieving scholars that
do that, they think. Modern Christians simply don’t believe that God has the
power to preserve the Bible that He wants them to have. I wonder how they
believe He can save them.
Here
is further evidence that people in the Old Testament were not looking forward
to the Cross. They didn’t even understand it. They did not understand Isaiah,
chapter 53. They did not understand Psalm 22; Zechariah 12:10; Psalm 41:9;
Psalm 16:10; Isaiah 7:14; or Isaiah 9:6.
32
And he spake that saying openly. And Peter took him, and began to rebuke him.
33 But when he had turned about and looked on his disciples, he rebuked Peter,
saying, Get thee behind me, Satan: for thou savourest not the things that be of
God, but the things that be of men.
Peter,
like Satan, wants Jesus to forsake His mission. In Matthew and Luke, chapter 4,
Satan makes his effort to get Jesus to turn away from His mission. Here, Peter
is doing the work of Satan or Satan has influenced him.
There
are powerful forces at work in the universe that are not subject to the laws of
the physical universe that corporeal entities like ourselves are subject to.
Ephesians
6:12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities,
against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against
spiritual wickedness in high places.
I
realize that much Christian teaching has become contaminated with atheist
materialism and doesn’t admit to any unseen intelligences although they can
believe in all manner of so-called scientific particles that no scientist ever
claimed to have seen. Sub-atomic particles are believed in because of the
effect they allegedly produce. But, the Bible explains the cause of effects in
a different manner. It is impossible to be a Bible believer if you don’t
believe in the world of the spirit.
Jesus
rebukes Peter because Peter is taking on the work of Satan. It is interesting
to note how we learn about Satan from the Bible by how God describes human
characters as like him. Here is Peter likened to Satan. Why? Because he wishes
to thwart God’s plan of redemption for mankind and keep Jesus from going to the
cross.
We
can see the king of Tyrus likened to Satan in Exekiel, chapter 28, which gives
us a description of who Satan is and what he has done, where he came from, and
when he fell. We see the king of Babylon used in the same way in Isaiah 14.
Read those two chapters. Bible passages are written in such a multi-dimensional
manner as to describe something literally and yet to describe something that
isn’t directly referenced in the passage, as well. Sometimes, there are clearly
two and three layers of meaning, not to mention all of the inspirational
messages people get out of the passages that were not an intentional part of
the passages’ literal meaning, direct allusion, or prophetic reference.
You
will get the suggestion of this best by reading the Bible over and over again.
In fact, you have no excuse if you haven’t listened to or read the entire Bible
through at least once for every year you’ve been a Christian. If you’re behind
because you just recently realized what a Bible is and how much power God has
laid on it, then you can make every effort to catch up. A seminary education is
no substitute for reading the Authorized Version from cover to cover on a
continuous basis. In fact, I would pick a preacher who can read and understand
English and has read the Bible through many times from cover to cover over
someone with a Ph.D. in Theology any day, providing, of course, he’s saved.
One
thing to note here is that you don’t have to literally worship Satan by name to
serve him. You only need to be against God’s purposes and to serve man’s and
your own to do his bidding. Satan doesn’t need your worship to accomplish his
purposes. He only needs you to worship yourself.
You
can’t serve Christ if you submit your will as a slave to the world system;
1John
2:16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the
eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.
Nothing
that the world holds up as good and right is from the God who created you.
Luke
16:15 And he said unto them, Ye are they which justify yourselves before men;
but God knoweth your hearts: for that which is highly esteemed among men is
abomination in the sight of God.
That
includes the economic system and wealth.
Luke
16:13 No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and
love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye
cannot serve God and mammon.
Think
about these things the next time you watch the fine homes of the rich and
famous paraded on television or find yourself parked in front of a professional
football game held in some giant stadium with thousands of adoring fans
screaming their approval.
But,
in the next verse, Jesus will tell us whom exactly we must deny to serve Him.
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