Christianity's Crossroads Part 1

Copied from the sermon notes of Pastor Don Elmore

January 24, 2016

Scripture Reading: Revelation 18:4

Who is told to “Come out of her” [mystery Babylon]?  It is “My [the God of Israel’s] people.”  There is a warning for the covenant people of God to come out of something that is “the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird” Revelation 18:2.

It says that “all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication….”  And that “all the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies” Revelation 18:3.  So, God’s people can be in something that is world-wide, rich, powerful and wrong.  It is so wrong, that our God warns us “to come out of her.”  If we stay in, then we will partake of her sins and receive her plagues.

How Can We Have Victory?

Copied from the sermon notes of Pastor Don Elmore

January 17, 2016

2 Chronicles 15:9-15

What did the Kingdom of Judah do which enabled themto have rest from their enemies?  They made a covenant with their LORD God; just like the Vortrekkers of South Africa did in 1838. This covenant gave the covenant seed of Jacob/Israel another miraculous victory; one that saved their race from complete annihilation in South Africa by the Zulus.

In fact, the covenant that Judah and many of the righteous people of the House of Israel, who had come to Judah, was a covenant with a death penalty attached with it.  Any person who failed to participate in making this covenant was to be put to death.  It was a serious covenant that each person who was living in Judah made.

King Palindrome

Copied from the sermon notes of Pastor Don Elmore

January 3, 2016

This sermon will be different than most of the ones that I have brought.  First, we won’t have an introductory Scripture.  This will not continue in the future, but I didn’t know what Scripture to use without giving the answer to who “King Palindrome” was.

Naming a child is one of life’s most unusual gifts.  Does the name affect the child as he grows up?  Some thinks that it does. A strange name certainly might.  But what if you name them with a palindromic appellation, one with perfect symmetry and balance—meaning one that reads the same backwards and forwards. 

For example:  Hannah.  It reads the same backwards and forwards:  H + A + N + N + A + H.

Other examples include:  Bob, Anna, Eve, Nan, Ada, and Otto. 

Palindrome SquareAnd there are palindromes that are long sentences, ignoring punctuations and capitals:

Wont cat lovers revolt?  Act now

Or, a word square in which every row and column reads as a word in both directions:

Now, let me give you a couple of clues and see if you can guess who is this King Palindrome that is the focus of our study today:

  •  This King is in the Bible.
  •  He was one of the Kings of Judah.
  •  He has a very short name, three letters.
  •  He is listed in the Bible as a king that “did that which was good and right in the eyes of the LORD his God.”
  • He was the third King of Judah.

Does anyone know what his name is?

Yes, it was King Asa:  A + S + A.  And today’s sermon will be a study of King Asa’s life as found in 2 Chronicles chapters 14-16. 

The Invisible Government

Copied from the sermon notes of Pastor Don Elmore

December 20, 2015

Scripture Reading:  Jeremiah 30:11: 

“For I am with thee saith the LORD, to save thee; though I make a full end of all nations to which I have scattered thee, yet will I not make a full end of thee, but I will correct thee in measure, and will not leave thee altogether unpunished.”

This is just one verse of Scripture, but it tells a very unpopular story.  For it tells that all the countries of the world are not equal in the eyes of God.  It says that Yahweh is with some group of nations for the purpose of saving them.  And He makes the promise that although He will make a full end of all the nations that He has scattered His people to, yet He will not make a full end of them.  He adds that He will punish them, but He will not see them totally destroyed. 

Who are the nations that God will not make a “full end of?”  That is the story that is told throughout the Bible.

An Anti-Semitism True Story

Copied from the sermon notes of Pastor Don Elmore

December 6, 2015

Scripture Reading: Leviticus 19:33-34

Referring to the Scripture reading, if these were the only verses in the Bible, then we could conclude that we must love all strangers as ourselves.  So, any stranger who comes in our land, we should consider him as being one born among us.  We could adopt Asians, marry Mexicans and welcome all the different strangers to be citizens of our land.  We could be a great multi-cultural society.  But there are other verses in the Bible.  What do they say?

Numbers 1:51: “And when the tabernacle setteth forward, the Levites shall take it down:  and when the tabernacle is to be pitched, the Levites shall set it up, and the stranger who cometh near shall be put to death.”  

Jeremiah 51:51: “We are confounded, because we have heard reproach; shame hath covered our faces; for strangers are come into the sanctuaries of the LORD’S house.”

After church service last Sunday, I got home and I read the Sunday Cincinnati Enquirer.  I eventually got to the Forum Section and I couldn’t believe the headline:  “Anti-Semitism that can’t be Ignored.”  I wondered what that was all about.  The title got me interested enough to read the article.

It Took a Long Time

Copied from the sermon notes of Pastor Don Elmore

November 1, 2015

Scripture Reading: Matthew 13:10-11

Jesus and his disciples preached the gospel of the ?   What is the missing word?  When I read the Bible through each month, many years ago; this question was a major inquiry that I had no idea of how to answer.  What was the gospel that our Savior and His disciples preached:  It was the gospel of the kingdom of heaven.  I had no idea what the kingdom was!  Let alone the gospel of the kingdom.

I knew the gospel of personal salvation.  I did not know the gospel of the kingdom.  So, when I went to Florida one summer for a couple of weeks about 40 years ago, to help out an independent Baptist preacher with his personal, secular contract work, while there I asked him this question:  What is the kingdom?

He answered:  “I will study it out and preach you a sermon on it this Sunday.” 

I was excited.  I would finally have a whole lot of Scriptures come out of the darkness into the light if I knew the answer to this question.  But I will never forget what happened. 

The United States: Oregon Disaster

Copied from the sermon notes of Pastor Don Elmore

October 11, 2015

Scripture Reading:  Genesis 27:39-41

Esau passed his hatred of Jacob to his children.  They waited for Jacob to return from Syria after he had left by his father’s and mother’s request.  Esau was ready to murder him.  Let’s review:

  • Jacob received the birthright from Esau in a deal in which Esau traded it for a bowl of red lentil soup.
  • Isaac had blessed Jacob; but Jacob obtained it deceitfully from him with help from his mother.
  • Jacob had been sent to Syria to take a wife of his own kind.  Jacob was charged not to take a wife of the Canaanites.  He married his mother’s niece.
  • Esau’s Canaanite wives did not please his parents, so Esau married his father’s niece; an Ishmaelite.
  • Jacob obeyed his parents by going to Syria.  He was there for 20 years.

Before Jacob left on his journey, his father called to him and blessed him and gave him a charge:

The Mysterious House of Israel

Copied from the sermon notes of Pastor Don Elmore

September 27, 2015

Scripture Reading:  Acts 15:7-9

The Roman Catholic Pope came to America this week.  At the same time the Unholy Father dropped in on the nation’s capital, the Jews were celebrating their holiest day of the year, Yom Kippur; which was from Tuesday evening to Wednesday evening.  And the Muslims were celebrating one of their two most important festivals, from Wednesday evening to sundown Thursday. 

Eliminate Separate Races

By Pastor Don Elmore

November 15, 2015

Scripture Reading:  Acts 13:32

“And we declare unto you the glad tidings, how that the promise which was made unto the fathers, God has fulfilled the same unto us their children…”

Can anyone claim that this is not a racial statement?  Fathers…children is racial.  The Bible is full of statements like this one.  Then how could a Rabbi say the following unless he is deliberately lying?

“If anything, the law should encourage, not forbid, the intermingling of bloods…But legislation cannot change the human heart.  The only way we can accomplish that, the only we can achieve a Final Solution to racial prejudice, is to create a Change of races so universal that no one can preen himself on his racial ‘purity’ or practice the barbarism to safeguard it. 

The deliberate encouragement of interracial marriages is the only way to hasten this process.  And it may be that time is growing short.  The dominance of our world has begun to shift, like cargo in a listing vessel, from the White races to the colored.  The sooner we adjust to this fact, the better it will be for our children.  For we might well acknowledge, even the most enlightened of us, that we will never completely eliminate racial prejudice until we eliminate separate races.”  Rabbi Abraham L. Feinberg, Maclean’s Magazine, September 5, 1967.

The Rabbi tells his lie that if they eliminate separate races that it would be better for our children.  Why would it be better?  All that would happen is that our children would no longer be a part of the Kingdom of God!  That is not better, that is worse!  They would be cut off like Esau’s offspring.  They would be a mongrel just like the Rabbi.

Thorns in Your Sides Part 5

 

live off of the work of others.

Copied from the sermon notes of Pastor Don Elmore

August 30, 2015

Scripture Reading: Genesis 27:34-38, 41

A People Without a Country

I remember reading in high school the short story about “A Man Without A Country.”  I don’t remember all the details, as it has been over 60 years ago since I read it, but the man was convicted of some crime in the country that he immigrated to, and the country deposited him.  The crime was of such a nature that the country that he left wouldn’t take him back either.  So he just floated on a boat in the international waters for the rest of his life.

There is also a people that do not have a country either.  They are destined to live in any country that will have them for they are able to parasitically make a good living off of them until they kill the host country.  It has happened over and over in history and yet very few people are aware of it. 

The Bible tells of these people.  This portion of Scripture--is it just a story of what happened to one of the many families in the Bible, or is it told to give us a clue as to what is happening in the world today?  Let’s take a short quiz on the family of Isaac and Rebekah: