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Aug. 20, 2024 - Health Ranger - Mike Adams
47:25
Sermon #023 - 1 Timothy - Correcting the WICKEDNESS that has festered inside...
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Welcome to today's sermon.
This is Mike Adams, and today we're going to be covering 1 Timothy.
And just to set the context, because I really love to make sure that everybody understands the big, big picture of where we are.
This is, of course, New Testament, and Paul the Apostle has many, many people that he brought up, and he discipled himself, and he taught the ways of the Lord and the proper teachings of Christ.
Especially in a world where a lot of churches were still stuck in the old Torah teachings, and they hadn't yet really, for whatever reason, made the transition to the much more embracing or, let's say, diverse teachings or even...
The more open, love-based teachings of Christ.
So Paul wrote a letter to Timothy about how Timothy should try to correct the deviations of the churches of Ephesus.
I pronounce it Ephesus.
Others say Ephesus.
I like Ephesus because the book of Ephesians is based on, obviously, this town, this city of Ephesus.
So in 1 Timothy, Paul is advising Timothy on how to correct the church leaders, especially in Ephesus or Ephesus.
Now, let's back up for a second and understand the bigger, bigger picture here.
Now, Paul does a lot of traveling throughout his life, and he builds congregations and churches throughout the region in many different areas.
And then when he leaves, even the church people in those areas, they become wicked.
They turn to wickedness and greed and selfishness and just...
Lies and, you know, prostitution and all kinds of sexual immorality and drunkenness.
Also, that's a common one that's mentioned throughout the Bible.
And essentially what Paul has to do is run around and tell people, you know, grow up.
Stop being evil, wicked little children.
And by the way, if we step back even more and we think about the entire book of the Bible, I mean, all 66 books that are the Bible, If I were to summarize it, in addition to the main theme of salvation through Christ, the main message of the Bible is, hey, humanity, stop being wicked, greedy, selfish little children.
I mean, that's the main message over and over again.
Of course, lots of corollary arguments, like understanding that we teach out of love and we embrace all of God's children.
I mean, especially in New Testament, of course.
A lot of other messages, but the main message is that left to their own devices, human beings, especially groups of humans, they become wicked.
They become evil.
They engage in child trafficking and fornication.
Sodomy, you know, all kinds of immoral sexual acts.
And, you know, they become drunkards and they begin to worship other gods.
And they become rooted in greed and then those who have wealth in the societies, they like to flaunt their wealth and they're not willing to live humble lives and so on.
In other words, nothing has changed, folks, in thousands of years.
Nothing has changed.
About the key principles of humanity and the main problems that humans present.
And what's also a very interesting theme in this that I find especially fascinating, being someone who is teaching the Word of God, and as I covered in a previous sermon, having taught the Word of God for a mere two weeks, I was being attacked and called an anti-Semite, By people who promote extermination and genocide.
And so that was my experience.
Like, welcome to the church.
You know, you're an anti-Semite for calling for peace and teaching the word of Christ, right?
Which I do not accept.
I completely reject that.
But it is the church itself throughout history that was filled with the pedophiles, with the child traffickers, You know, the people of filth, the people of perversion, the pastors, ministers, and priests who would collect all this money for themselves, and then they would live these luxurious lives by overcharging for their religious teachings.
This is all mentioned.
In fact, a lot of this is mentioned in the first book of Timothy that we're about to go through.
So understand that the church, the Christian church, has for thousands of years had problematic people within it And one of the things that Paul did, well, mostly what he did, was to try to clean up the church, which I understand.
I can see the need for that, even to this day.
But evil people, or people of dark hearts, or murderous hearts, or pedophiles in some cases, have used the cover of the church.
As a kind of a shield for them to carry out their evil deeds and evil ways.
And this is not attacking the church as an institution, but rather understanding what Paul understood, which is that the churches have to be corrected because there is a lot of evil that happens in the churches.
How many Catholic priests have been arrested for raping the choir boys, right?
I mean, that's been an ongoing thing for a long, long time.
And that's just one example of many.
There have been all kinds of scandals, obviously, within various church organizations over the years.
And I think that a common theme that results in that is when individuals, sometimes pastors, when they become too popular and too powerful for them to handle...
And then they've never had fame before in their lives, or they've never had money before in their lives, right?
And then within the church, they find, oh, I can be famous, and I can have followers, and I can have money, and I can just live the life of luxury like a king within the church, and then occasionally pick up a Bible and teach something, you know, just to have that cover story is what they do.
But they're not living what Christ taught.
Which is of course a simple life.
A life that doesn't need luxury.
A life that doesn't need flowing golden robes all the time.
In fact, in Timothy, he chides the women in the church that turn the church into like a fashion competition, showing up with their jewelry and their makeup and their clothing and using the church service as a way to compete with each other.
Like, who's got the best fashion clothing?
Yeah, that was going on centuries ago, just like it does now.
Again, nothing has changed in the human heart.
Nothing has changed.
So the same exact problems in the church that existed then also exist today.
Now, as you know, I like to bring humor into my sermons wherever possible, so I did want to share with you the lost letters of Paul.
Lots of people know that Paul taught the Galatians and the Ephesians and the Corinthians and so on.
He would go to the various cities and teach to them.
A lot of people do not know about the lost letters of Paul.
The Gargantuans, for example, he spoke to the giants at Gargantua.
And the reason there's no recorded scrolls from that era is because the scrolls were too large and heavy because they were made for giants, of course.
And the Gorgonians from Planet Gorgon, don't forget...
Okay, no, I'm kidding, I'm kidding, okay.
I just imagine that if Paul had a spaceship...
He would have been to way more places.
He would have been correcting churches in other galaxies because Paul was that kind of guy.
He would fly off to Alpha Centauri and he would chide the church there.
Okay, all right.
Let's get into Timothy chapter 1.
And he says to Timothy, my true child in the faith, Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Jesus Christ our Lord.
This is a common kind of opening from Paul, basically saying, we love you, we're with you, and please accept this letter in the context of the teachings of Christ.
And I would imagine that Timothy probably would have thought in his mind, only my mother calls me Timothy!
You can call me Tim, Paul.
That's just my guess.
Verse 3, So essentially Paul is telling Timothy,
Hey, go to Ephesus and correct them because they're spending all their time in the church going over the book of Genesis and trying to decode all the stories of the genealogy and who beget who.
This is not useful to the teachings of the church.
Basically, I like Paul because he was a big picture thinker.
He was like, this isn't about the ritualistic repeating of the same lines out of Genesis or Leviticus or any of the first five books.
This is about, you know, we're in the New Testament now.
We are in the Christ era.
And Paul always had this big picture because the church would always fall into these ritualistic things.
And even in Timothy here, we'll get to it, he talks about the pastors and ministers of the churches there were focused on what kinds of foods you can't eat because God said so.
And Paul is like, no, that's Old Testament.
You can eat all the foods that God blessed us with on this earth.
See, this is why I like Paul a lot.
It's a good thing, too, because half the New Testament is Paul.
Okay, anyway, Paul says that certain persons by swerving from these have wandered away into vain discussion, desiring to be teachers of the law without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions.
Basically, he's saying these people who claim to be teaching the Word of God, they have no clue what they're talking about.
And then he reminds Timothy that he's supposed to advise the church leaders that they're supposed to be teaching about halting the immorality and all of the horrible, wicked crimes that the people of Ephesus are engaged in, which, again, is the same thing that wicked crimes that the people of Ephesus are engaged in, which, again, Like, almost every group of people turns this way.
So listen to this.
This is verse 8.
Now we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully.
No, he's talking about God's law, of course.
Understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just, but for the lawless and disobedient.
What he's saying is, we wrote the laws to reshape the behavior of the lawless.
Not the people who don't need corrections, right?
If you're already behaving in an ethical and moral way, you don't need to be corrected with the law.
But the law, especially the laws of God and laws of moral behavior and so on, are intended for the lawless and the disobedient.
And Paul goes on, he writes, And I'm thinking...
What kind of city is Ephesus where people are beating their mothers and fathers?
That seems really bad.
For murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, and by the way, I think that enslavers, I mean, this refers to slavery, but no doubt in those days it probably referred to child trafficking.
Uh-huh.
Right.
Right.
Child trafficking, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted, he says.
So, again, this is Paul saying this is who we need to apply the law to.
And then Paul reminds Timothy that he himself, Paul, was a sinner.
He says, I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service, though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, an insolent opponent.
He was an insolent opponent of the Lord.
But I received mercy, he says, because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.
The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.
Of who I am the foremost, says Paul.
Of who I am the foremost.
Paul was a great sinner.
But I receive mercy for this reason.
And he goes on to explain that he is an example of the fact that he can receive mercy from Christ and therefore others can too.
Almost regardless of what they have done previously.
And then Paul calls out a couple of religious leaders in Ephesus, and he says that by rejecting, I'm paraphrasing here, the teachings of Christ, some have made shipwreck of their faith, this is in verse 19, among whom are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan, that they may not learn to blaspheme.
I'm like, how did Paul hand them over to Satan?
I think he designated them as subjects of Satan is really what he's saying there.
But it's not good to be named in the Bible as an agent of Satan, by the way.
So Hymenaeus and Alexander, whoever they were, they must have been really bad.
I mean, they must have been involved in all kinds of shenanigans and slavery and, you know, violence and who knows what, wickedness, to be named by Paul the Apostle in the Bible.
Wow.
Okay, now then, in chapter 2 of 1 Timothy, here's a section that I find especially important today.
And this has to do with, well, a lot of the tension that That you find in Paul's letters is about churches of the day still stuck in the old teachings of the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, and the Jewish traditions, Jewish teachings.
Now, understand that, of course, the core books of Judaism, the Torah, it does not even include the New Testament, right?
It doesn't include the teachings of Christ as having died for the sins of all people.
And this is why so much of the Jewish tradition focuses on Jews themselves being the chosen ones by God to the exclusion of all other people, Gentiles, let's say, including Gentile Christians, not to mention people of other faiths such as Islam.
But that's an Old Testament belief system that Paul the Apostle seeks to correct because Paul reminds us that In many areas, many letters, and in many different ways, that the teachings of Christ apply to all people, and the church must embrace all people, which is something that, of course, I agree with wholeheartedly.
So let's go to chapter 2, and Paul writes, First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people.
For kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.
This is good and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
Notice Paul isn't saying here, only Jews.
He's not saying that.
And in fact, he kind of mocks the rituals of the Old Testament and says, you don't need to be stuck in that ancient way of thinking.
He goes on in verse 5, for there is one God and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all.
In other words, Christ died on the cross for the sins of all human beings.
Including those who currently practice other faiths.
Did you know that?
This is a key issue to understand.
Christ died for the sins of all men.
Well, all people.
Even those who don't yet recognize Christ as their Savior.
And if you don't understand that, then you don't really understand the New Testament.
And you certainly don't understand Paul's letters.
But continuing...
Who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time.
In other words, people come to Christ in their own time.
For this I was appointed a preacher and an apostle, a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth.
I desire then that in every place, this is verse 8, the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling.
Likewise also that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control.
In other words, no thongs in the church.
Not with braided hair and gold or pearls in costly attire, This was a problem in the churches of Ephesus because, again, the women were showing up and turning it into a fashion show.
But with what is proper for women who profess godliness with good works.
And then he goes into a couple of verses about women being submissive to men or the church leaders.
Obviously this is controversial in today's society, but there are other passages later on where Paul, he recognizes the accomplishments of female members of the church and church leaders who are women.
So clearly in the greater context, Paul is not opposed to women being church leaders.
He's just saying, don't show up dressed like a whore is basically what he's saying.
Is it okay if I say it that way?
Can I paraphrase Paul that way?
Are you okay with that?
I would really like to summarize the Bible in modern-day blunt language.
And 1 Timothy chapter 2 is, don't show up dressed as a whore.
And then he also says in chapter 3 to the man, if you're going to lead the church, don't be a drunken fool.
And don't show up as a drunk if your wife is also a whore.
It's like, again, understand the bigger context here.
Groups of people, even in the church throughout history, they turn wicked.
They turn to alcohol and sex and prostitution and child trafficking and everything else you can imagine.
All kinds of wickedness.
And Paul is just reminding them, hey, if you're going to represent the church, be a person of godliness.
I mean, at least make an attempt.
He says, an overseer of the church must be above reproach.
The husband of one wife, he's saying like, don't have like five wives, okay?
Sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard.
There's an important one.
Bible in one hand, a bottle of Jack Daniels in the other.
Not violent, but gentle.
Not quarrelsome.
Not a lover of money.
He must manage his own household well, with all dignity, keeping his children submissive.
In other words, don't have your children being like wild, crazy children that talk back, talk smack about their parents and are just horrible children, right?
You have to have discipline for your children.
And then in verse 8, he says, Deacons likewise must be dignified, not double-tongued, not addicted to much wine.
A little bit of wine is okay, apparently.
Not greedy for dishonest gain.
They must hold the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience and let them also be tested first, then let them serve as deacons if they prove themselves blameless.
So, in other words, you need to have gone through some tests in life in order to prove your morality.
See.
Now, in reading all of this and just in a little bit of self-introspection here about the fact that here I am teaching the Bible, teaching the Word of God with the overlay of nutrition and herbal medicine and God's molecules and so on,
and I'm thinking, thank God that I've had all the experience of my life before this because, of course, I've been known for a great many years, for a couple of decades, as someone very famous in certain circles and recognized in public.
People would come up and say hello and thank me for my work.
If I were to go speak somewhere publicly, there would be hundreds of people wanting me to sign their hats or sign their books and things like that.
I've been in that place of having that kind of, I guess you could call it fame or Celebrity status at least in certain circles and then having experienced some level of fame or celebrity then also experiencing at least some level of business success and at least having enough resources thanks to the support of the people to be able to reinvest in building infrastructure and building
out a laboratory and so on.
Creating things that help serve the people with clean food, which has been part of...
I mean, that's been a big part of my life's mission.
Healing the world with clean food.
That's the slogan of the commercial entity that I founded in order to manufacture and sell clean food, right?
So having experienced those things, and then to come to teaching...
And teaching it from a point of view of food science and so on.
I think, in my view, it's a very valuable set of experiences to bring to this point.
Because someone like myself, you know, you don't go into teaching the Word of Christ to become famous.
If anything, it will make you less popular with the masses today because the masses of the world are not usually so much into the teachings of the Bible.
Now, perhaps I can help interest more people in that or teach people a new way to look at it through foods and nutrition and so on.
But clearly, there's no seeking of fame.
And there's also no seeking of money or financial wealth through the teaching of what I'm doing here, right?
You'll notice I've not asked you for donations, right?
And you've noticed that these sermons are not commercial.
That's not to say there won't be some ways or some options of how you could help support us in the future.
And I absolutely do welcome that.
But clearly, this is not about the pursuit of fame nor the pursuit of money.
And those two things, though, those were a huge problem for the church in the day when Paul was writing this to Timothy.
Because think about it, in those days, there wasn't television, obviously.
You know, there was hardly book publishing at all.
It was mostly, I mean, people would have to handwrite pages and pages with scribes, and so there weren't a lot of books.
Most people couldn't read.
You know, nobody had iPhones.
What was there to do?
So the church became the thing to do in town if someone wanted to exploit that church for their own personal gain and to gain fame and wealth.
That was a way to do that.
Whereas today, someone could just become a YouTuber and doesn't need anything to do with the church, right?
But back in that day, the church was one of the main vehicles for that.
And so as a result, the church became very frequently corrupted with people who were seeking as their priority wealth and fame rather than seeking Christ and God.
And if we go to chapter 4 in 1 Timothy...
Paul writes, Look,
he's saying that the church leaders were still following the ancient Old Testament, the teachings to the Israelis, the Jewish tradition of the Torah, and they weren't eating certain meats, specifically pork, for example, although pork is not named in this chapter, but that's most likely what Paul was referring to.
And Paul says that you don't have to be preoccupied with forbidding marriage.
Or avoiding eating pork.
Because he says, well, actually in verse 4, he says, In other words, Paul is saying that the idea of kosher foods doesn't apply in this era of the New Testament.
Isn't that interesting?
Because, of course, the kosher food designation has persisted to this day.
There's a kosher designation.
There's a halal designation that's common in the food industry.
And many of the foods or food products that I've been involved with over the years have been certified kosher.
And there is a certification necessary for that.
And there are people of Jewish faith who very strictly limit their food intake to those that are kosher.
But then again, they typically do not study the New Testament, see?
They're still studying the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament, which has a lot of these rules and a lot of sort of ritualistic things that the Old God, you could say, the Old Testament God, demanded of the Israelis, who were also incredibly wicked, as we see again and again and again throughout all of the Bible, right?
From the point of view of Paul, you can eat all of God's food because it was created by God and is therefore good.
Nothing is to be rejected if you eat it with prayer and give thanks to God.
That's what he's saying.
And he even tells Timothy to remind the people of the modern church that they don't have to follow, quote, silly myths.
See, this is why I also love Paul.
He just...
He speaks very bluntly for a man of his time.
And his words still ring true today.
So in verse 6, if you put these things before the brothers, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, being trained in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine that you have followed.
Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths.
I love it.
Because remember...
In an Old Testament passage, God referred to His children as silly children, right?
So, have nothing to do with irreverent silly myths.
Rather, train yourself for godliness.
For while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.
Very powerful.
You know, when you train for God, it's for eternity.
So if you really listen to what Paul is saying here, Paul is a practical man.
He says faith first, but also practicality in the way you express faith.
That is, if you pray for the foods, you can eat all the foods that God provided for us here.
You don't have to stick to some ancient restrictions or abstinence of foods and ancient rules.
You don't have to do that anymore.
That's obsolete, is what Paul is saying.
And in chapter 5, Paul basically says, don't let the church be exploited by widows who are falsely claiming that they need welfare.
He says the church should help widows, but only if it's authentic that they really need help, and if they are good people.
Essentially, obviously, I'm paraphrasing and shortening here.
And then he says in verse 20, as for those who persist in sin, he's talking about men here as well, rebuke them in the presence of all so that the rest may stand in fear.
He's saying, again, publicly call out their sins.
And then in chapter 6, there's a passage here I really love because he starts out saying, you know, stop quarreling about small things that don't matter.
And there's something really important here.
Understand about Paul, essentially he is saying, and we saw this just back in chapter 5, he's saying for those who are really carrying out deep sins, you should rebuke them and call them out publicly.
But for those who are only dealing with minor things, stop quarreling about it.
If someone wants to argue with you about whether you should eat pork or not, Hey, who cares?
Don't get into a big fight with them about eating pork.
But if someone is out there committing murder or genocide or child trafficking or things like that, then yes, you call them out.
You rebuke them because those are big crimes.
So in essence, what I believe Paul is saying is that for small things, Offer small corrections or even none at all.
For big things, big sins, big violations of the teachings of Christ and God, offer big rebukes, big public rebukes.
And there's a spectrum here.
And this is very important, I think, for all of us to understand.
Because as Paul teaches here in chapter 6, We don't want to spend our lives just quarreling with people and having, quote, constant friction.
Well, actually, here it is.
Let me just read you the passage, because he says it better.
So again, 1 Timothy chapter 6, and now I'm reading from the New King James Version.
It says, If anyone teaches otherwise and does not consent to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which accords with godliness, then he is proud, knowing nothing,
but is obsessed with disputes and arguments over words, which come from but is obsessed with disputes and arguments over words, which come from envy, strife, reviling, evil suspicions, useless wranglings of men of corrupt minds and destitute of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a means he says, from such withdraw yourself.
Have you ever been among, like, I don't know, a group of inebriated beer-drinking dudes on a Friday night who just want to sit there and just argue over something for no reason?
I leave that as quickly as possible because, yeah, I've been subjected to that as well.
It's like, you're pointless, you know?
This is a pointless exercise.
Here you are quarreling over nothing.
You want to argue over things that don't even matter and you're not even sober.
So, goodbye.
That's what Paul is saying.
And he continues in verse 6.
Now, godliness with contentment is great gain.
Contentment.
This is a key word, especially throughout the New Testament.
Contentment.
What does it mean?
Maybe we'll discuss that in more detail later, but I think it means being satisfied with having enough to cover the basics of living.
You know, you don't have to be a billionaire.
Or even a millionaire.
But to be content, to have enough, to have the basic needs met, and then to understand that God is the giver that created all these gifts and the blessings that have been able to cover your basic needs.
That is contentment.
Contentment has a spiritual aspect to it.
It's not about just material wealth.
It's having enough and giving blessings and praise to God for providing.
Anyway, continuing, verse 7.
For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out.
That's right, folks.
Not even your Bitcoin.
Did you know that Bitcoin is not recognized in heaven or hell?
That's right.
Dogecoin is recognized in hell.
No, I'm kidding.
I'm kidding, folks.
A little bit of humor.
Okay.
You can't carry anything out of this world.
Not your gold, not your silver, not your Bitcoin, not your land.
Obviously, we all know this.
So what is contentment?
Verse 8, We've covered this before.
For which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.
So again, this comes back to the problem in the church in that day that too many of the church leaders were obsessed with money and wealth and greed.
And just how much they could collect for themselves and adorn themselves with these riches.
And too many of the women in the church were wearing the jewelry and the pearls and the gold and everything.
And that was it.
That was their purpose in life was to...
Have better golden earrings than the woman next door.
And that's pointless.
It's pointless.
And then, verse 17, which is something that I've really taken to heart myself with the mission of our church here, our teachings, our organizations.
Verse 17...
Again, Paul telling Timothy the following, So, recognize where your riches come from.
You didn't create them yourself.
They came from God's blessings.
Verse 18, let them do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to give, willing to share, storing up for themselves a good foundation for the time to come, that they may lay hold on eternal life.
So a couple different ways to interpret this, but the way I interpret it is, and I spoke about this in a previous sermon called Churchery Treachery, Where I said that far too many churches don't do anything outside the church.
They don't go out and help enough people.
Now, many do, by the way.
I want to give credit where it is due.
Many churches are engaged in feeding the poor, providing shelter for the homeless, Distributing pillows and blankets to the homeless or all kinds of other things.
Rescue operations.
And I've been part of these types of activities for many, many years.
We've made numerous donations following natural disasters, including hurricanes, earthquakes, floods internationally.
And we've distributed hundreds of thousands of dollars of food on numerous occasions through numerous ministries.
And sometimes to local food banks and sometimes we would ship out pallets to various ministries.
And I've posted videos of that before if you want to see them.
And we've donated nutritional supplements and foods and things like that.
Even without being in church, we've done that.
Just because it's the right thing to do.
Just because we were able to do so.
And what Paul says here is...
Again, let them do good that they may be rich in good works.
Ready to give, willing to share.
So, are we rich?
Are we rich in good works?
Yes, we are rich in good works, and we can become more rich in good works.
Every act of good that we carry out, every person that we help, every time we respond to a community in need, we become, you could say, more wealthy in good works.
Do we expend the coin of the realm to do that?
Yes, we do.
We spend the dollar.
We spend the coin.
But we become rich in good works.
Well, that's a great bargain.
You know why?
Because the dollar is going to zero.
Anyway, so you can collect all these dollars your whole life and you end up with nothing.
But if you collect the riches of good works, that's eternal.
That can't be taken away from you and it can't collapse forever.
When a currency collapses or when the banking system collapses, think about it.
Banking system collapses, you still have all the bank with God that you earned and that you stored up with God.
And that's verse 19, storing up for themselves a good foundation for the time to come, that they may lay hold on eternal life, you see.
This is very powerful.
The relationship with money.
We'll have to do additional sermons just on that.
Also, I do intend to have a sermon about God's money, which is gold and silver, and some of what Scripture says about such things.
Often, gold is presented in the Bible as a symbol of greed, rather than what it really is in the eyes of God, I believe, which is real money.
It's created, it's an element, it's on the table of elements, which is an expression of the mind of God, expressed through atomic physics, and gold has scarcity and beauty and value and all kinds of utility, and thus gold is God's money, so is silver.
But it's the lust for gold that can turn people against God.
If you just thirst for, I don't know, I just want to be surrounded by gold coins all day long, I'm Then you've got your priorities wrong in life.
There's nothing wrong with saving up your assets in the form of gold and silver.
Especially if you know the dollar is collapsing.
There's nothing wrong at all.
But also, what do you do as a habit with extra resources that you have or funds?
What do you do to go out and help in society?
And one of the things that we are gearing up to do, I'll bring you more news about this in the future, is to be able to We have resources, in our case, food resources, because that's our specialty, is being able to acquire lots of different foods and also to vacuum pack them in a rugged way, long-term storable way.
And of course, we deal with freeze-dried foods and all kinds of number 10 cans, which are very rugged.
But we intend to have a more active role, increasingly active with each passing year, And some of those disasters may involve famine.
It seems obvious that that is the case, actually.
So that's a summary of 1 Timothy.
And one of the takeaways from this that I would just like to remind you about here is about food rituals.
And again, Paul teaching about the kosher designation for foods is not really being relevant in the New Testament, you see.
And whatever the ancient Israelites were taught in the Torah, it doesn't apply today, according to Paul the Apostle.
And that all the foods provided by God are God's gifts to us, and we may consume them all with prayer and with positive intention.
So, I ask you the question.
Take a look at your own food habits and maybe review or ask yourself why you are doing certain things.
Is there a good reason for it?
Now, of course, I'm familiar with all kinds of different Food habits or different kind of diets.
And there are usually, there are good reasons that people have that make sense for their philosophies and their belief systems.
For example, vegans typically would say that it is cruel to slaughter animals to eat their flesh.
And so that's why they choose to be vegan.
Well, that's not an irrational position.
That's a position that can be described and respected.
If that's what someone chooses, then we should respect that food choice on their behalf for them.
And I suppose vegetarians would have a similar argument.
Typically, I guess vegan is more strict than vegetarian.
But it's also interesting to me that if you go to the grocery store and you buy vegan cheese or veggie cheese, the number one ingredient in the veggie cheese is actually milk proteins from cow's milk, you know, casein.
I've seen this myself and I've mentioned this publicly.
So I'm thinking...
You know, that's interesting.
You're wanting to avoid milk and cheese, and so you go buy sort of a processed, manufactured fake cheese that's made from milk proteins.
So that seems like a contradiction to me, but it's just an invitation to take a closer look at your food decisions and your food habits and ask yourself, why are you doing these things?
Does it make sense?
What are the ingredients?
Does it make sense?
There are a lot of vegetarians, for example, that eat nothing but processed vegetarian food, which is very unhealthy, very unhealthy.
And there are also many vegetarians who, of course, lack vitamin B12. And I've often said that to be a vegetarian, you have to actually be more on your game Because you can suffer severe nutritional deficiencies, especially women can have a lack of iron if they become vegetarians and vegans.
And many women may not know that spirulina, the microalgae, is a really great superfood that's very rich in iron.
So if you're a woman and you're a vegetarian, you're not eating meat, Spirulina may be something very important to look at so that you can keep the balance in terms of iron, and then also look at a form of vitamin B12, which also tends to be lacking in those who pursue vegetarian diets.
But there are lots of other things to keep in mind from this chapter.
For a lot of men who drink too much, there's a big reminder there, don't be drunkards.
It's okay to have a little wine socially, but don't consume it to the point of getting ridiculous.
And we'll have a lot more for you coming up on various foods and superfoods from the Bible.
And remember, that's the specialty angle that I'm teaching from here all about foods and nutrition.
Just remember that all food is an expression of the mind of God.
We are blessed with this abundance of food only because of the blessings of God.
And that if our societies turn against Him, which in the West they largely have, then we should absolutely expect our societies to falter because that's the promise of God.
You turn from Him and your blessings shall be revoked.
So don't be surprised as things tend to collapse in Western countries right now as they have turned from God.
It's like the silly children of humanity never learn, do they, right?
Never learned.
Same mistakes over and over again, generation after generation.
Maybe we can do better?
Is it possible?
I hope so.
Well, maybe by sharing this you can help awaken other people to the truth about all of this.
So feel free to share this sermon.
We do want to get the word out, and I appreciate all of your support and your prayers and your blessings.
And blessings to you.
Thank you for listening.
I'm Mike Adams.
God bless you all.
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