On your sheet before you, if you have one, if you don't, let us know. You have all the way through the end of Genesis now. And we are going to do our best to, I say that every week, but we will do our best to finish out the book today. We'll get as far as we can. I'm looking at the clock and I have a lot of time, it looks like, but I always say that. One of these days, I'll finish in 20 minutes and you'll be staring at it and I'll walk down and if I do that, I'm just gonna walk down and leave the building. And you guys will be like, what just happened? There was a man, I don't know, how many of you know the name A.V. Henderson? one of you, maybe two. He was a pastor of mine. I was a kid. I was 10 years old when he took over the church back in Detroit. One of the things he was known for was being a very succinct preacher. Literally, he would get up and in 25 minutes, 30 minutes might be long-winded for him. But everyone who ever heard him preach, if you ever get a chance to look it up online, hear him preach, he was just like a whirlwind. Everyone who ever said he could say more in 30 minutes than anybody could say in two hours. I would love to have that ability. Really, I think that's a gift. Anyway, we're in Chapter 48 of Genesis. And I don't know that we're going to read every verse of the rest of the book here, because a lot of this... The reason why I'm abbreviating some of this is because a lot of this is just... I don't want to say it this way, but it's a story. And there's not so much to dig out of it. There's not a lot of deep doctrines in there. There is. There's several. And we'll get to it. But, you know, we'll just read a little bit more of a summary fashion here. But in verses 1 and 2, of chapter 48, it says, And it came to pass after these things that one told Joseph, Behold, thy father is sick. And he took with him his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim. And one told Jacob, saying, Behold, thy son Joseph cometh unto thee. And Israel strengthened himself and sat upon the bed. Now, we talked about that last week when we went into the whole Catholic thing about idolatry and how they take that verse and they twist it. and they make it into his staff being some kind of an idol at the end of his staff. And in the Catholic religion, they use verses like that to show you, and I read it to you last week, and it's very blasphemous, that Jesus was the ultimate icon, they say. He was the ultimate image. So when he came down and he said, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father, they use that statement as well to prove to you that it's okay if you look at Jesus You're looking at the Father, so anytime you look at anything that is an aid to worship, anything that helps you feel closer to God, then it's okay to have. It's not idolatry because ultimately you're worshiping God through the image, you're not worshiping the image itself. And so, of course, that's all just the devil's twisted language. And you don't take images, and I'll reiterate one more time this morning, If you wear a cross around your neck, and I'm not looking to see who does, if you do, that's between you and the Lord, I suppose, but be careful. Ask yourself, do I wear this, and if this is not on me, do I feel like uh-oh? Okay, if you feel like uh-oh, you know, you might want to feel that way if you leave this behind. But if you leave your cross behind, it's not a big deal. The Holy Spirit of God is within you. You understand that you are the temple of God and the Holy Spirit dwells inside of you. And if that be the case, if he dwells inside of you, what need do you have of any kind of an image? And you have the very words of God, which the Bible calls itself the mind of Christ. Why then would you need anything like an image to help you, an aid to worship? There is no aid to worship. Understand one thing, I am very clear on this myself, that when it comes to Satan, I'm amazed at this all the time, that he could walk up into the garden where Adam and Eve were, and he could deceive those two. Not so much Adam, but Eve. And Eve was a perfect woman, you understand? She was perfect. And she was innocent. And she was probably very highly intelligent. I don't think we're anywhere near as intelligent of those people who were back there. But that's another matter. But anyway, if he could come in and he could deceive her through his subtlety, the Bible says, then the Roman Catholic Church, or any other religion for that matter, can come in and deceive you with that same subtlety. And when they talk about aids to worship, don't worry, it's just an aid to worship. That's what they say. versus what God has told us already in Exodus 20, very plainly, about not to make any graven image. Now, I'm not condemning you if you have a cross, and I'm really not, but be careful about that. You know, a lot of people don't have a cross. When I was a kid, we had a rabbit's foot, and we kept that in our pockets, right on a keychain, and that was our good luck, or four-leaf clover, or whatever. It's all the same. You can just put Jesus on it, or you can put witchcraft on it, whichever you prefer. You know the beads that the Roman Catholics used? I don't have this information in front of me this morning, but I'll just tell you in general. Those beads are not unique to the Roman Catholic Church. Those beads are used in witchcraft. Those beads are used in Buddhism and Hinduism, and they just put a different name to it. All right, so all I'm saying is we looked at that last week, but in this chapter, Jacob claims Ephraim and Manasseh as his own in place of Reuben and Simeon. Let's read down a little bit. Let's look at verses three through five. And Jacob said unto Joseph, God Almighty appeared to me at Luz in the land of Canaan and blessed me and said unto me, Behold, I will make thee fruitful and multiply thee, and I will make of thee a multitude of people, and will give this land to thy seed after thee for an everlasting possession. And now thy two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, which were born unto thee in the land of Egypt before I came unto thee into Egypt, are mine. As Reuben and Simeon, they shall be mine. And thy issue, which thou begettest after them, shall be thine, and shall be called after the name of their brethren in their inheritance. So he claims, if you go to chapter 49, look at verses three through seven, you'll understand why he is taking Ephraim and Manasseh in place of Reuben and Simeon. It says in 49.3, Reuben, he's giving his blessings on his boys. He says, thou art my firstborn, my might, and the beginning of my strength, and excellency of dignity, and the excellency of power. Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel, because thou wentest up to thy father's bed, then defilest thou it. He went up to my couch. And then he goes on, he talks about Simeon and Levi. He says, Simeon and Levi, our brethren, instruments of cruelty, are in their habitations. O my soul, come not thou into their secret, unto their assembly, mine honor. And be not thou united, for in their anger they slew a man. We read about that a few chapters ago, Shechem, and that whole city got slaughtered. And in their self-will they dig down a wall. Cursed be their anger, For it was fierce in their wrath, for it was cruel. I will divide them in Jacob, and scatter them in Israel." The only reason I'm pointing this out is because there's some interesting things about all this. He takes Joseph, now Joseph is one of the twelve as well, but he takes Joseph's two boys, so Joseph's getting like three places in there versus the original twelve. He gets to Joseph's boys, back to chapter 48, and Ephraim and Asa come in, and he is going to put his hands on their head to give them a blessing. Let's see here. Let's see, look at verse 14 of chapter 48. And Israel stretched out his right hand and laid it upon Ephraim's head, who was the younger. So he put his right hand on the younger. And, you know, if you know the culture, the son of my right hand, your right hand is your powerful hand. Sorry if you're left-handed this morning. But the right hand is the hand in the Bible that that's where Jesus Christ sits on the right hand of the father Right. So the right hand is always the preferred hand So he lays the right hand on the younger who was Ephraim and his left hand upon Manasseh Guiding his hands wittingly for Manasseh was the firstborn so anyway, what's going on here is he's blessing Jacob's sons or Joseph's sons and he crisscrosses his hands more or less because If you read in here, when Joseph brings the boys in, and they're not just little kids at this point, they're young men. When he brings them in, he brings them in, one towards his right hand and one towards his left, and then here's Jacob. The Bible tells you that he was blind. He must not have been completely blind. I don't know. It doesn't say God told him to do any of this, by the way. Alright, let me just make a point here. Whenever you read the Bible, especially when you're reading things like this, understand one thing. Or at least keep this in mind. Is God in this? Or is this what man is doing? Because a lot of times you'll read things in the Bible, especially in the Old Testament when you get all this narrative, right? Where you think, well, that must have been... How did God allow that? Well, God may not have... He may have allowed it, but He didn't cause it. or he didn't direct it, or he didn't make it a decree, go do this, people just did things and it's recorded in the Bible. Okay, so that's what's going on here. It doesn't say anywhere in here that God told Jacob to crisscross his hands and do that to the boys, but he did. We assume, a lot of times we assume that God was in it because he recorded it that way, but we don't always know. Anyway, so I put on your paper, however, God has the final say. Just because he did that, and just because he claimed those two boys, God has the final say, understand? You can have a plan for your child's life, and you can have a plan for your own life, and you can pray about it, and I advise you to pray about it. You know, a lot of times you say, well, I prayed about this, and so therefore I'm going to do this. Well, that's fine. It's better that you pray about it than you don't pray about it. But more than that, you better just ask yourself, can I find it in the Bible? You know, am I outside of the bounds of the Bible when I do this? Is this some kind of an unclear area and I'm just praying and I'm waiting for some feeling of peace about it? And you know, just because you pray is what I'm saying, it doesn't mean that it's always God's will. You might want to pray about it. And pray God would direct you in the scriptures to give you an answer, more or less, from the scriptures. One of the things I find in my own life, and I found this out to be true not too long ago, believe it or not. is that it just dawned on me one day that whenever I go to pray about something, or think about something, or ask a question about something, many times, and it was like God's knocking on my door, like, hey stupid, I'm trying to tell you something, was that I got a lot of scriptures just started coming into my head. Just a lot of scriptures coming into my head. And I realized one day, that's my answer. That's God talking to me. It's not me waiting for some heart peace or some contentment or some, you know, other kind of coincidence happening. It was all these verses flooding. And when I pray about something and no verses come to mind or bad verses come to mind, you know, like against what I'm thinking, well, there's your answer. You say, well, then how could you have that happen if you've never read the Bible? God's just not going to magically start putting verses into your head that were never there and that you never saw before. So it would behoove us all to, and that you say, well, why should I read the Bible? That's one of the great reasons to read the Bible is so that you can get good answers from the Lord when you need them. And that's how they come. But anyway, um, so God has the final say now in revelation seven, We looked at this last week, but in Revelation 7, you don't have to turn to it, we find in there, you find the 12 tribes listed, and you find the 12,000 that the Jehovah's Witness always claimed, they don't anymore, but the 12,000 that they say was a total of 144,000, 12,000 from each tribe. When you read that list, however, what you're going to see is both Reuben and Simeon are in the list. So you go back here in Genesis 48 and you find out, or 49, and you see that Jacob not so much disinherited those two boys, but he cursed those two boys. And he said, I'm going to take Ephraim and Manasseh unto me. But when you get into Revelation and you see, which is right around the corner from us, and you see there's going to be 12,000 from which tribes, you see the tribe of Reuben and you see the tribe of Simeon. and they've got 12,000 coming out of them, sealed. Understand when they're sealed, they're on their way to heaven, they're guaranteed heaven. They are not going to hell, and they're witnesses for Jesus Christ. Well, who is not on the list? And I have it on your paper. Dan and Ephraim are not in the list. Dan and Ephraim. Now, Ephraim is one of those boys. Alright? Ephraim is the one that he wittingly guided his hands, right? And so, why? Well, Ephraim, go to Hosea 4.17 and look at something there. Can someone tell me where Hosea is in the Bible? I found it, I found it. Hosea 4.17. Very simple statement. You could read right past it and never think twice about it. I have, plenty of times. It says, Ephraim is joined to idols. Let him alone. Now, I gave you another reference there, but for sake of time we won't turn to it. Dan does the same thing. You can take your Bible and turn over to Judges chapter 17. Judges chapter 17. Now, this brings up a very interesting thing. Now, this is John Albrecht doctrine, so take it for what it's worth. People say, well, one sin's the same as another. Every sin's the same. You know, if you tell a lie, then you might as well go rob a bank because you sinned anyway, right? But my response to that always has been, yeah, but there are some sins unto death, and there are some sins that are not. You read the Bible and you find out that murder, you're supposed to be killed too. If you shed man's blood, by man shall your blood be shed. So the consequence for telling a little white lie is a little different from murdering somebody. All sins are the same. They're all the same. You're all guilty. You're all on your way to hell because you've sinned. But they're not the same in severity, right? And so over here, you've got the same thing going on with Dan. But what I'm saying is, the point I'm making ahead of time is that, you know, what did Reuben do? Well, he went into his father's wife. Pretty severe, right? But he didn't get disinherited by God for that. All right? And the other boys, they murdered, right? They murdered people. That's very severe. And you say, well, how does God judge the situation? Well, evidently, if He's taking Dan and Ephraim out of the situation because they were joined to idols, He counts that a little bit more serious. Now you've done this directly to me. So go to Judges chapter 17. I had you there, right? Judges 17, and look at verse 10. Now you could read the whole chapter, and you could see, look at the very first verse actually. It says, And there was a man of Mount Ephraim whose name was Micah. So this guy named Micah was from Mount Ephraim, one of the tribes that you're not finding in Revelation chapter 7. And it goes down, you read the story, and it's talking about this guy had idols. Look at verse 5. And the man Micah had an house of gods. and he made an ephod and a teraphim and consecrated one of his sons who became his priest." When you get down to verse 10, you find this guy here coming in who is a Levite, and Micah said unto him, dwell with me and be a father and a priest. and I will give thee ten shekels of silver by the year, and a suit of apparel, and thine vittles." And so the Levite went in on him. So basically what you have going on here is you've got, go to the next chapter, go to 18. So Micah took this guy and he said, be a father to me. Now, that's your Bible right there telling you that, and Jesus tells you in Matthew, call no man your father, right? And he's talking about calling no man, not your father, like, hey, that's my dad. He's talking about call no man your father, as in the authority over you religiously. But you go over to chapter 18 now of Judges, and you look at verse 19. Here comes these Danites. And they said unto him, hold thy peace, lay thy hand upon thy mouth, and go with us, and be unto us a father and a priest. Be unto us, our tribe, our whole tribe. it is better for thee to be a priest unto the house of one..." Is it better to be a priest unto one man or that thou be a priest unto a tribe and a family in Israel? So they did that. And you jump down to verse 30 and it says, "...and the children of Dan set up the graven image." And look at verse 31, "...and they set up Micah's graven image." So this is why when you get to Revelation 7, despite the blessing, or if you want to call it the blessing or cursing of Genesis 49, by Jacob, you've got these two guys taken out because of idolatry. Now, we read to you... Let's see here. Look at chapter 49, go back to Genesis 49, and look what happens to the tribe of Dan as a result of doing this. Basically, They're connecting themselves. You say, well, when did the Roman Catholic Church start? Well, it started way back, was it Genesis 10 or 11? Right back when Nimrod was born, and the Babylonian religion, and the whole thing with crosses, and the whole thing with the virgin born baby. All that was done, ancient Babylon religion. Okay, it's been around forever. It's Satan's religion. Now, I can say that in this church, I think, and everybody's just sitting there, like, half asleep already. And I can say that and you won't give me a response. If I say that in some places, they would be riled up. But look at chapter 49 of Genesis and look what the blessing on Dan was. Chapter 49 and verse 16 and 17. It says, Dan shall judge his people. Not a good thing, by the way. Judge his people in the sense that he'll do it as a judge from the outside attacking his people. as one of the tribes of Israel, Dan shall be a serpent by the way, an adder in the path." Who's a serpent? The devil. "...that biteth the horse heel, so that his rider shall fall backward." So, basically, you've got Dan, he's being called a serpent, and he has a connection, a direct connection to the Antichrist. So, I'm going to tell you what I think. What I think is going to happen is here in the very near future, we're going to have, you're going to get more information about Israel than ever before. And you're going to get, I think we're going to get news about all the 12 tribes. We've discovered the 12 tribes. I know what tribe I'm from. Maybe it's going to be through 23andMe or some kind of DNA test. I don't know, but they'll come up with that. And you're going to find out that the Antichrist, I believe this is going to come out of that tribe of Dan. And I believe he, but he's not going to be, he's going to be a mixture. And I don't want, I look at the clock already. We're in the first section. It's going to be a mixture of him being a Syrian Jew. Now you look at Judas Iscariot and Judas Iscariot, his name, I had the notes here for me, so I don't lose track of what I'm about to say. Judas Iscariot is from Kiriath. He was a Syrian Jew. Judas was the son of perdition. Judas, the Bible tells you, that Satan entered into him. Judas is the one that betrayed Christ, right? Judas was the one in charge of the money, by the way, amongst those disciples. Judas was a disciple. meaning Judas was religious. Judas didn't come from the outside. He got inside and he infiltrated. He was a great deceiver. That's what you're going to have. You're going to have this coming up very soon. By the way, Judas Iscariot, if you count up the letters, is 13 letters in his name. If you look at your sheet, I think I have it printed for you. If you look at Dan, this is the sixth time the word serpent shows up in the Bible. right here in chapter 49 where he's called a serpent. And it's the sixth time the name Dan appears in the Bible as well. So you've got your six and six right there associated the number of a man, right? So let me just reiterate something that I read. I didn't read this to you last week. I'm going to take the time to read it today. You know, they got this curse and this happened to them and And by the way, I'm trying to get my thoughts together. You look at Revelation 21, that's also on your sheet, Revelation 21, and you're gonna see New Jerusalem coming down. When you see New Jerusalem coming down, you know what? There's 12 gates on New Jerusalem. And each one of those 12 gates has the name of one of the children of Israel on it, the 12 tribes. So the question I have, and I can't wait to find out, because I don't know right now, is which 12 names are gonna be up there. Is Dan going to be left off? Is Ephraim going to be left off? We're going to see when we get there. But that's when God's going to show you exactly how He did it. But I think I can guess and tell you that their names are going to be off because of what's happening already in Revelation chapter 7. But, you know, the Roman Catholic Church, and they got this way because of their connection with idols, is what we dealt with last week, and they got this way because of their connection with the Roman Catholic religion. which God is severely against, more so, and I'm not trying to put murders very serious, but in God's eyes, He didn't cut out Simeon and Levi. He cut out Ephraim and Dan for joining themselves with idols. Now, the Catholic Church teaches this. I'm going to spend just a few more minutes on the Catholic Church this morning. The Catholic Church teaches that her priests, the fathers, if you've ever called any one of them father, This is what you're talking. All their priests are called alter Christus. You know what that means? Alter Christus? It means another Christ. You know that when they do the Mass, when they're administering that, you know what they say, right? They have this doctrine called transubstantiation. And transubstantiation, you understand, it means that you're really drinking the blood of Christ It just changed magically from water into Christ's literal blood. Of course, they drink wine. And they take the wafer and they say that transubstantiates into his body. And they go to John chapter 6. If you don't eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no part in me. And so they take that passage very literally, even though Jesus Christ himself in that passage, as you probably know, told you the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, their life. He wasn't speaking literally to them. He didn't hold out his arm and say, take a bite of me and have eternal life. He didn't say that. He is the bread of life. Right? And so when you take of Jesus Christ, when you receive Him, you're receiving the bread of life already. But, so anyway, this altar Christus, they say they're another Christ. So they are, based on that, that wafer, you say, how do you turn that wafer into his body? How do you turn that blood into his blood? They say, because I'm another Christ. And I and I only have the ability to administer this to you. And if I, so a pastor, if we had the Lord's table tonight and he administered that to you, you know, he's going to be worthy of death for that. Because he is not an alter Christus. He is not a father. He is not a priest. He's not been ordained in the Roman Catholic Church. He has no power to turn that body and blood into what you need. And so the priest, let me just read on the priest is indeed another Christ or in some or in some way he is himself a continuation of Christ. That's what it says in the encyclical on priesthoods. Pope Pius the 11th said that he's a continuation of Christ. So this is the idea of apostolic succession, by the way. And by the way, the Protestants do this too. I call them Protestants, evangelicals, whatever. I'm an apostle, you know, Apostle Albrecht, you know. No, you're not. There's no apostolic succession. The Roman Catholic Church thinks that there is. And so they do that, they succeed. And they're a continuation of Christ. It's not just, well, I have these special abilities. No, I am another Christ. I am on behalf of him. So it says further, I'm reading from their own writings, to fulfill the teaching of their pastoral ministry, the apostles and their successors, the bishops are given a gift of infallibility in matters of faith and morals. So when the Pope speaks and when the priest speaks, at the time that they're, especially when they're giving the Mass, by the way, they are speaking infallibly. Okay, so you can't question them. Now, we talked about Sunday being the Lord's Day, right? And they made some very bold statements about that, about this infallibility business. And so, I'm gonna read a couple of things to you on that line too. This is a quote from Priest Brady, whoever that is, and he gave an interview with the News Elizabeth in New Jersey in 1903. And he said, it is well to remind the Presbyterians, the Baptists, the Methodists, and all other Christians that the Bible does not support them anywhere in their observance of Sunday. So we're meeting here on Sunday. We're a Baptist church. And now listen to what he goes on to say. Sunday is an institution of the Roman Catholic Church. And those who observe the day observe a commandment of the Catholic Church. So if you're here today because you believe this is the Lord's Day, and by the way, I think we dispelled that last week. This is not the Lord's Day. This is Sunday. This is not the Lord's Day. This is not a sanctified day. What happens in Protestantism and in religion in general, especially in the Roman Catholic Church, is they look at the seventh day. Right? Didn't God institute the seventh day back in Genesis? Right? And said this is a day of rest. Now, hopefully you know what that means, what the Lord meant by that. When the Lord says this is a day of rest, what He was telling you is that this is going to be a day of rest for My people. It's going to be a sign between Me and My people. Who are My people? the Jews. Had they even existed yet? No. They may have never existed, although he made the statement, which is interesting in itself. That's the foreknowledge of God. And so he said, this is a day of rest. And what he meant was, this is a day of a millennial kingdom, that I will come and set up a kingdom, and it will be a day of rest, and it will be goodwill toward men, peace on earth. All right, and so when he set that up, now, he said, honor the Sabbath day to keep it holy. He gave that to Moses. Well, it was 2,500 years later. Genesis records the seventh day of creation, which was a day of rest. 2,500 years later, Moses goes to a mountain and gets the tablets with the commandments on it that says, honor the Sabbath day. So for 2,500 years, folks, nobody honored the Sabbath day or kept the Sabbath day. It was not a holy day. And the only reason it was for the Jews is because it was a sign, and the Bible clearly tells you that, it was a sign between me and my people that there is coming a day of rest. And that's why they observed it. That's why when you go to Colossians, you're gonna see that when Colossians talks about it's a shadow of things to come, the Sabbath days. All right, so basically, the Catholics say though, and all the other religions out there, and maybe even you, think that, well, there's the Lord's Day. We got to sanctify the Lord's Day. We can't work on the Lord's Day. We can't eat on the Lord's Day. We can't put gas in our car on the Lord's Day. We can't sweep the floor on the Lord's Day. Well, yes, you can. You can do all of those things because it's not the Lord's Day. All right, and it's not a wholly set-apart, sanctified day. Now, we have done that to Sunday. We have set it apart, and the world, especially the United States of America, have kept that day, used to more so, kept that day aside so that we could go to church, and we could put things aside and not be working, but it's not the Lord's Day. But you understand the Catholic Church still thinks it is. They still think that they have the right, because they are alter Christus, they're a continuation of Christ, they have the right to continue the Sabbath day but they switched it to Sunday, and they had it for good reason, because that's the day that the Lord rose. And so they go on, and now this is from my neck of the woods, Algonac, Michigan. It says, perhaps the boldest thing, the most revolutionary change the church ever did, happened in the first century. The Holy Day, the Sabbath, was changed from Saturday to Sunday. Now that didn't happen, ever. You understand? That didn't happen. What happened was when Christ rose from the dead, the Sabbath day ceased. It ceased. It didn't continue on to Sunday. Sunday is just the first day of the week. It ceased, and it will pick up again in the millennium in at least seven years from now. All right? So, it says, we have the commandment of God given to Moses to keep the holy Sabbath day. No, we don't. That is the seventh day of the week, Saturday. Today, most Christians keep Sunday because it has been revealed to them by us, the Roman Catholic Church. Another quote, who made Sunday holy? I read that one. Here's another one. Question, which is the Sabbath day? Answer, Saturday is the Sabbath day. Question, why do we observe Sunday instead of Saturday? Answer, we observe Sunday instead of Saturday because the Catholic Church in the Council of Laodicea, AD 364, transferred the solemnity from Saturday to Sunday. That's in the Catholic Catechism, the book I had with me last week. All right. And so they are the ones that say they have the authority. And that's what they did. It is the Catholic Church which has transferred the rest the day of rest to Sunday in remembrance of the resurrection of our Lord. Therefore, the observance of Sunday by the Protestants is an homage they pay in spite of themselves to the authority of the Catholic Church. So congratulations, you are paying homage to the Catholic Church this morning for being here. But we're not. You see what I'm saying? This is the devil's religion. They are claiming authority over all mankind. And they are saying, if you do this, it's because we said so. Well, you're doing it on my rules. No, we're doing it for a totally different reason. We're doing it because it was just a trend. That happened on the first day of the week. Not only did Christ rise on the first day of the week, but the disciples met on the first day of the week, they gave their offerings on the first day of the week, they broke bread on the first day of the week. So if they're willing to do all that on the first day of the week, then we follow suit and we do it as well. Anyway, I won't go on anymore about all that, but just wanted to reiterate the Catholic Church, this is what Dan and Ephraim got themselves involved in. This is what the Lord finds very distasteful, to say it mildly. He does not want that thou shalt have no other gods before me. Listen, David murdered somebody. Moses murdered somebody. Guess what? Moses is coming back in the tribulation to be a preacher. The devil wanted Moses' body. There's something special about Moses, but he was a murderer. David, Jesus Christ is coming back to sit on the throne of David. He came from the seed of David of the tribe of Judah. David was a murderer and David was an adulterer. But Dan and Ephraim were idolaters. That's what I'm telling you. So listen, when we make a joke about it, if you've got that cross around your neck, get rid of it. You're not going to hell because you have a cross around your neck. You're going to hell if you reject Jesus Christ and say, well, I have I have my own Jesus in my own mind, how he'll he'll accept me my own. No, he won't. OK, I don't know how you got that smart, but no, he won't. But you won't but you and you won't go to hell for having a cross around your neck, but you're not going to be pleasing in the eyes of God. And I'm going to tell you what, you're participating in a devilish religion whenever you have any kind of aid to worship in your home or on your bracelet or in your on your neck or whatever you do. And you understand if you have a tattoo this morning, I'm not against you. All right. I don't have a tattoo. Never had a tattoo. Not going to get a tattoo unless I fall asleep and someone puts a tattoo on me. You're not going to hell for that. But you understand that's the whole purpose for a tattoo. The original purpose was in devil worship. It was actually started to ward away devils. But everything the devil does, listen, study the demonic, study, don't do it, but if you study, I have a little bit, if you study the satanic religion, Satanism, the number one thing in their Ten Commandments is always lie. Always say the opposite of what you really mean. Because that's how you trick people. Oh, this tattoo's to ward off the devils. No, the tattoo is actually there to bring them in. They see the certain symbols. Now, you know, you might just say, I love my mom and that's not the same, you understand, but it's the same concept. All right. Anyway, moving on chapter 49. So Jacob, uh, Jacob here now gathers his sons and verse 49, uh, we're not going to read the whole chapter, but, um, the first two verses are on your paper. And Jacob called his sons and said, gather yourselves together that I may tell you what shall befall you in the last days. So he's going to give them a prophecy of the last days. All right. Gather yourselves together and hear ye sons of Jacob and hearken under Israel your father. Again, Jacob is not infallible. Jacob is doing what he is doing based on what he believes for his sons. All right. And so, but a lot of this stuff actually happens and comes to pass. So Jacob gathers his sons to tell them what should befall them in the last days. By the way, it's the first mention of the word last days in the Bible. So this should, this is reflective of what? When are the last days? Well, keep reading. The last days for the Jews refer to the millennium, the tribulation into the millennium. Now I gave you some references there and we won't turn to them for sake of time. But for the church, Paul says in 2 Timothy 3.1, in the last days perilous times shall come. Now, understand this, you understand timelines, right? You understand, I've drawn many timelines, I've had them on sheets, I've had them on boards. And you understand that here is the cross, right in the middle, I just put the cross in the middle, here's your timeline, here's the Old Testament, here's the New Testament, here's Jesus coming at the cross. If they would accept Jesus Christ, There would have been immediately a millennial kingdom showing up. Well, almost immediately. There would have still been a time of Jacob's trouble, then there would have been a millennial kingdom. You and I would have existed maybe in another way, in another form, sometime else. But we would not be here in this age of grace. But because we're here in this age of grace, we've been inserted into, we're called parenthetical, we've been inserted in now as the times of the Gentiles. You understand? That's in your Bible. It's the times of the Gentiles. So, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled, read Romans chapter 10 and Romans chapter 11, you'll learn a lot there about what I'm talking about. Then, once those times are fulfilled, there's going to be a rapture. You're going to be taken out and immediately what's going to happen? A time of Jacob's trouble is getting right back. So, we're inserted in there. So, Paul is right to tell you that we are in the last days. The last days have been since the cross. And so anytime you read in the Bible, now it gets worse and worse. Paul talked about things getting worse and worse as we get closer and closer to the end of the last days. But anyway, that's where we are. But for the Jew, it's the end of the tribulation going into the millennium. So there is, he goes through all of his sons here, and we're not gonna do it. We already looked at Dan, we already looked at Ephraim, we already looked at Reuben, and we already looked at Simeon. But he talks, there's two here, there's Judah. in this chapter, Judah and Benjamin will look at. The prophecy concerning Judah is clearly a reference to Jesus Christ, not to Judah directly. Now here's another clue in your Bible. When you're reading the Bible, somebody find the verse where he's talking to Judah for me in chapter 49. I don't have it written down. Verse 8, Judah, thou art he whom thy brethren shall praise. Now he's talking to Judah, but he's not. And many times, again, another thing as you read your Bible, keep in mind that sometimes when things don't make sense, especially when you read Psalms, now Psalms is a lot more than just a comforting book and give me a blessing out of the book of Psalms and now I lay me down to sleep, I pray my Lord the soul to keep. That's not in the Bible, by the way, but it sounds like it should be in Psalms. But Psalms, a lot of times it's David talking and then all of a sudden it's not David talking, it's Jesus talking. And then it goes back to David talking, and then it goes back to Jesus talking. And you say, well, how will I know? Well, read it again, and read it again, and read it again, and when things don't make sense, there's a reason. So he's talking to Judah, and he says, thou art he whom thy brethren shall praise, thy hand shall be on the neck of thine enemies, thy father's children shall bow down before thee. None of that happened to Judah. Judah is a lion's welt from the prey. My son, thou art gone up, he stooped down, he couched as a lion, as an old lion, who shall rouse him up. The scepter shall not depart from Judah. So let me just go back to your paper here. The coming, this is clearly a prophecy concerning, the prophecy concerning Judah is clearly a reference to Jesus Christ and not Judah directly. The coming of Jesus initiates the last days. Jesus is the Lion of the tribe of Judah, you have your references there, as well as a scepter, that's what it says in verse 10 with a small s. You see that? The scepter shall not depart from Judah, but if we were to turn over to Numbers, go ahead, because it's easy to find, Numbers chapter 24. Go to Numbers 24 and verse 17. It says, I shall see him, but not now. I shall behold him, but not nigh. There shall come a star, capital S, star out of Jacob, and a scepter, capital S, shall rise out of Israel and shall smite the corners of Moab and destroy all the children of Sheth. So that's talking about Jesus. Jesus is the scepter. So all I'm pointing out is the reference to Judah. The reason why we're just focusing on him and then Benjamin is because it has direct impact on the last days as far as we're concerned. And so, verse 11 references both Advents in one verse, by the way. Look at, if you go back to Genesis 49, and this is another thing, as you read the Bible, especially the Old Testament, it's kind of a phenomenon, but it happens quite often, and it helps you understand your Bible. Now, I'll make a note about this in a second after I read it to you. Verse 11. Binding his fold onto the... Binding his fold, who did that? Onto the vine, who did that? No, okay, I'm sorry. Maybe I'm, let me read it. Binding his fold onto the vine and his ass's colt onto the choice vine. Who did that? Who do you think, who took a colt, the fold of an ass, and Jesus, right? Then you see the next statement. He washed his garments in wine and his clothes in the blood of grapes. That's Jesus also. I won't ask you. That's Jesus also. And when is he going to do that? Armageddon. That's right. He's going to wash his his clothes in the blood of human beings. All right, so you've got basically you've got verse 11 at the beginning talking about what happened 2000 years ago when Jesus was here, which was a prophecy for them as he spoke it here. But then you've got, as a semicolon shows up there and separates the sentence, you've got, or a comma, he washed his garments in wine, in his clothes, in the blood of grapes. You've got going 2,000 years later, another statement. Totally disconnected, but not disconnected. See, when God writes the Bible, you understand God is outside of time. The Bible says that God inhabits eternity. So when God makes a statement, it's just as a matter of fact, like it just happened yesterday. or it's about to happen or it is happening. You know, I couldn't figure that out. But what I'm telling you is that God reads, when God sees something, he just sees it as it is gonna unfold. So he writes it that way. So that's just, it helps you, right? Now here's an interesting thing about that. This is written in Hebrew, right? This is original Hebrew. And people who like to go back to the originals say, oh yeah, we have the originals. You do not have the originals, by the way. You have copies of the originals, so you take it by faith just as much as we do when we say the King James Bible is the Word of God. You don't have the originals. So anyway, but you understand in the original Hebrew there were no commas. Now what's a comma? Well, that's just something that the English puts in there. to make sense out of it. Yeah, and that's true. But we ask the question, is the King James Bible perfect? Well, yeah, up to a point. Well, let me give you the John Albrecht position. Every part of it is right and perfect, even the periods and the semicolons and the commas. Everything in there because it makes sense of what you just read. Without that, it wouldn't make sense. Right? And you'd come up with something different, and you'd have a different doctrine. And you can, trust me, I'll hand you all the commentaries, you open them up, and they do not get that out of that, right? That one simple truth that you're talking about one time and another time. So you're not trying to make something, something that it's not, and say that this happened to Judah. No, it happened to Jesus Christ. How do you know? Because of a comma. And because I have a little bit of faith in the fact that God gave me a perfect Bible instead of you, who don't think that, and so you get your doctrine all messed up. And that's just a side point, but it's worth saying. You've got Genesis, let's see, next we see Benjamin. Benjamin receives one sentence in this whole chapter, 49, 27, I have it written out for you. Benjamin shall raven as a wolf. In the morning he shall devour the prey, and at night he shall divide the spoil. So if you go to Judges 20, which we won't take the time to do, you can read a little bit about the prowess of Benjamin and how ruthless they were as soldiers. There's a really gory story in Judges 20. If you like gore, you might want to turn there and read it. God gave you some gore. And anyway, they're very militant. So who comes from the tribe of Benjamin? That has to do with the last days. That's very important to us. Your apostle, the apostle of the Gentiles, that's Paul. Now, when you listen to Paul, right, what was Paul? Paul was militant. Let me just read from your paper. The apostle of the Gentiles of the last days came from this tribe. Paul was a militant adversary of the church as a Pharisee. What did he do? He ruthlessly went in and broke up churches and split up homes and killed people. And he was on his way to do it again when the Lord encountered him, and he was just as happy to go do it because he did it in the name of God, but he was militant. And so, after his conversion, he likened the Christian walk, you and I, to that of a soldier, of warfare, and of fighting the good fight. So, along with Paul, all the believers who do that shall divide the spoil. I don't, I'm not trying to claim Benjamin's prophecy from Jacob, but it's true. You know, you're going to receive an inheritance for serving Jesus Christ. All right. And so it doesn't, it's not wrong for us to be militant in our beliefs. You know, the world thinks fundamentalist is a really strong term. I think that's pretty weak, actually. But, you know, you're a fundamentalist Muslim, so that's why you take a bomb vest and blow up yourself in a mall. But they'll say that about you, see. They use that word fundamentalist so that when they talk about fundamentalist Baptist, they want to make you look like a hardcore Baptist that you, you know, that you just stick to your faith and you can't be reasoned with. and you're just religious zealot and a legalist. Well, I think fundamentalist is being mild. Paul talked about being a soldier. He talked about being militant. He talked about fighting a fight and warring a warfare. All right? And so that's what we ought to do. And when we do, when we do that, we'll receive a crown. Chapter 50, we get to chapter 50, verses one through three. It says, and Joseph fell on his father's face and wept upon him and kissed him. And Jacob died now. And Joseph commanded his servants, the physicians, to embalm his father, and the physicians embalmed his father. That's the first time embalm ever shows up in your Bible as well. In fact, it's the only chapter, I think, in the whole Bible that embalm shows up. It shows up four times. They did it to Joseph, too. That world, you know, the world, the idea there, the world is always trying to preserve life. Even after you're dead, they want to make you look alive. And that's all they have to hold on to. Well, he looks so natural. I've never seen anybody look so natural in a casket, have you? And he looked so good. But that's the world's practice. There's nothing wrong with it being embalmed. You can embalm me if I die. You can embalm me and stick me in a casket. But it's not because I want to preserve, you know, my life that way. I'm already gone. So, verse 3, And the forty days were fulfilled for him, and so are fulfilled the days of those which are embalmed. And the Egyptians mourn for him three score and ten days. So, in the last verse, of chapter 49, you see that, uh, Jacob yielded up the ghost. It says that. And when Jacob had made an end of commanding his sons, he gathered up his feet in the bed and yielded up the ghost and was gathered unto his people. Now, that's not a reference to just dying and going into the grave. It was how many days later, at least 70 or so days later that they took him to the grave where he was asked to be buried. So you can't just say, they're soul asleep, you go to the grave and you're just buried and you forget, you have no memory. It's just like when you never existed before, you had no memory of that and you'll have no memory once you're gone. Well, hey, if that's the case, then I'm taking off this suit and this tie and I'm out of here. Because if I only have this life, man, there are a lot of things I want to do and they're not good. Not a one of them. Because my flesh says then you are missing out and this religion is holding you back and all you need to do is go out there because there's nothing after death anyway. Do you understand that's why Adolf Hitler had no problem killing millions of people? If your world view comes from the public school, then your world view says that I'm an animal, and whatever I do is just based on my instinct and self-preservation and self-pleasure, and so therefore, if I don't like those dog Jews, I kill them all. And I want to bring in the Aryan race, I want everybody to have blonde hair and blue eyes. Because that's perfection. And that's what Hitler thought. And you know Hitler was an, not only was Hitler an evolutionist, he was a Roman Catholic. You can find pictures of him and the Pope shaking hands and trading documents, and they were in collusion. See, the Roman Catholic Church is not for the Jew. They want to replace the Jew. Go back to that part of the lesson. They want to replace the Jew. That's why the Day of the Lord is so important to them. Because the Day of the Lord is all about them, you understand? And submission to them. They're a world power. Read Romans Revelation chapter 17 and read about the whore of Revelation. That's who God gets upset with. That's who God is mad about. Anybody who joins up with that. It's not just, well, I'm a Catholic. Well, you know, I worship the Lord this way and you worship him that way. There's a big difference. And so anyway, that's not the grave. He yielded up the ghost and was gathered under his people. That's everybody who was in Abraham's bosom or paradise. which is another teaching, and I think you must know the difference between those already, but the soul is eternal and will either go to heaven or hell. I gave you plenty of references there. So, and furthermore, the grave, all of your new Bibles try to teach you this, that the grave is a reference to, is not a reference, hell is a reference to the grave, and hell is not hell. Hell is not burning fire. Well, I gave you the reference, Matthew 9, out of Jesus' own mouth, he talks about it being unquenchable fire. So Jesus must have lied or he must have just misunderstood. So verses 4 through 14, the days of the morning were past. Joseph spake unto the house of Pharaoh saying, if now I have found grace in your eyes, I pray you in the ears of Pharaoh saying, and he's going to go to bury his father. And they all, he says, he agrees and they all go. So once again, Pharaoh in my, this is just me reading into the story. Pharaoh is presented with an opportunity to convert to God. Here's Jacob, the man stood before him, had power with God, we talked about that. Here's the most powerful man in the world, Pharaoh, and here's the most powerful man in God's eyes, the one who has power with God, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and they're together, and Jacob gives him a blessing and then leaves his presence. He had an opportunity right then to give up his culture and decide to yield to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and he didn't do it. And now there is this whole procession of funeral and this embalming period in this time of weeping and no doubt, I have no doubt that they did what we would do in a normal funeral here and that we would preach the Lord Jesus Christ. We would preach about eternity and I'm sure Pharaoh got his chance to examine what is life and what is death. But he didn't take it. There's no record of him taking it. The event of death should cause every individual to examine what they believe on this matter. And this is one of the reasons for having a funeral, by the way. When you just cremate somebody and throw their ashes on the... There's no Bible against that. I'm not preaching against cremation. But when you don't have a ceremony... The world is trying to do celebrations of life. I don't like that, particularly. I don't want to offend you by saying that. But we're not trying to celebrate... Don't celebrate my life when I die. Just don't do it for me. I understand what you mean by that, and I understand the idea behind that. And it's not wrong, necessarily, what you think. But it's not about that. I want you to think about that I'm dead. When I'm dead, I want you to think about I'm laying there, shriveled up, embalmed, ugly, in a casket. My body is dead. Where is John? Where is he? That's what I want. If he's the preacher, that's what I want him to preach. Where is he everybody? Don't say all this and this and you can look at my pictures and you can reminisce about me if you have any stories. They all better be good stories at my funeral. But where is he? That's the bigger question, right? Now, look, I gave you verses. I wrote them out. We don't have to turn to them. Ecclesiastes, Solomon, the wisest man, given wisdom by God. He wasn't just wise in the world. He was given this wisdom by God. And he writes this down. He said, it is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for that is the end of all men and the living will lay it to his heart. That's why you want a funeral. You want the living to lay it to their heart. You want them to say, well, he said, John said, if I know him, he said that he believed in Jesus and he thinks he's in heaven right now. Maybe he's in heaven right now. And then the preacher will preach that to them and they will have to lay it to heart. But you know what happens right after the funeral is over? Well, I invite you all to come over to the dining hall or to the other facility, and we're just going to eat, drink, and be merry and try to forget all this. Because that's what we do when we eat, drink, and be married. And we entertain ourselves, and we put all this stuff out of our minds. We don't want to think about it. I understand why we don't want to think about it. It's against us. It's never pleasant to think about that stuff. But you know what? It's better to think about that stuff. The wisest man in the world said it is better. to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting. So, it's better. You know why? Because you have to consider some things. Now, just a couple verses later, he says, the heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth. Do you ever deal with somebody and all they ever want to do is go have a good time? You know, you have a friend, I'm sure you do, I have lots of them, you know, you have a friend that's not saved and all they want to do is go out and have a good time, good time, good time. Anytime you try to talk serious to them, they shut you off, or I gotta go right now, or they turn you off, or they just don't want to hear about it. They would never come to church with you, unless you have a concert and invite them in for that. Then they'll go. And they might even like it. And they might even get into that, and then they're into it for a different reason. You understand? I'm not going to get into all that. But that's what happens. That's why they run thousands at those churches. The people who talk about the house of mourning and you're going to die someday and there's hell awaiting you and your sins, they get low attendance. So anyway, Proverbs 18.2, also written by Solomon, a fool hath no delight in understanding, but that his heart may discover itself. Woe be to you if you don't even want to discover your own heart. I'm just going to, hey dad, I'm just going to get in the Volkswagen minivan and I'm just going to travel the country because I just want to go out and find myself. Well, I can make it very simple for you, son. You don't have to go very far at all. You're a low-down, rotten, dirty wretch of a sinner and if you don't have Jesus Christ in your life, you're on your way to hell. There's nothing more to say. And so everything you find miserable about yourself is true. And the only way you're going to find peace and contentment and happiness and joy in any way is to get the fruit of the Spirit and that means the Spirit has to come inside of you. You must be born again. That's all there is to it. Just must be born again and join the Bible-believing church and you're all set. Give me the keys to the van. You're not going anywhere. And that's really the truth. But a fool hath no delight in understanding, but that is heartening. I just might find that out on my own. Do you know what happens? We go down the road and we do find that out on our own, but after we've just ruined so much in our lives or other people's lives. Oh, you know what? My daddy was pretty wise after all. Oh, my mom really did know what she was talking about. I just thought they were old and trying to keep me from having a good time. Well, I learned a little bit. Well, anyway, when Joseph's brothers saw that his father was dead, they said, Joseph will perventure hate us and will certainly requite us all the evil which we did unto him. Here comes daddy's out of the way now. So the kids are going to just have at it, right? They're going to fight and it's going to break up. Well, that's what they feared. And when they sent word of this to Joseph, Joseph wept. Now that's interesting to me, and I made a note of it on the paper for that reason. And I just put this, it must have grieved him that they couldn't trust him. Now parents, I'll just say this, we're over time already. I'm going to stop here. You can read the rest and we'll be done with Genesis. You can read the rest. You want your kids to be able to come to you. These brothers sent a messenger to Joseph because they didn't want to come to him. There's a difference, and I don't have time for this, I shouldn't even begin this, but there's a difference between being a good disciplinarian and disciplining your kids, and making sure they know that that's the law of the land, and also, though, being able to know that if they really mess up, that they can come to you, and that they can talk to you. Because if they fear talking to you, who are they going to talk to? and they'll commiserate with their friends, and they'll go out in the world, and they'll find other places to do that. So you want to be sure that you have a balance there. Now, Joseph, I think, was sad, and maybe he learned something by this. He was messing with his brothers for a while. All that stuff about the money in their sacks, and coming back, and putting your brother in jail, and go tell your father, and all this stuff he was doing. They had probably good reason for feeling this way. I'm just saying, just be careful, especially if your kids are young. Make an environment to where they can, that there's discipline there. They know right from wrong, but if they ever mess up, they can come to you and that they can get it right and they don't have to fear you. Joseph felt bad. He, I believe, says he wept. But you know what he did next? And it tells you there. He took the occasion to not, you know, well, you should know better. I'm never gonna do that. You can always come to me. That's very comforting. Now he talked to that, he brought them and he comforted them, says he comforted them and spake kindly to them. And he's a type of Jesus Christ. And so here's what happens, to flip the coin, we feel... we've gone out there in our minivan and we've sold our wild oats and we went to find ourselves and we realized mom and dad were right the whole time, we realized the preacher was right the whole time, but now we got all these scars and now God will never accept me. Naturally speaking, that's true. I mean, we would think, why would they, why would he ever want me back? Why would he ever accept me? Why would he ever care about me? But you know what the Lord says? He says, come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. You understand when he died on the cross, he died for your sins. He didn't die for the chosen people who were the best of the best that, you know, always went to church and always did right and always... He died for... The Bible says that the, what do you say, the harlots and publicans go into heaven before you do. He was looking for the... He was accused of eating with publicans and sinners. He told the adulterous woman, where are your accusers? I don't see any accusers around here. Alright, just go and sin no more. I'm not saying that God is in favor of all of our wild oats sowing. I'm just saying He's a kind, tender, compassionate friend. It tells us in the Bible that He remembers our frame, that we're just dust. He knows that we're just a bunch of dummies, and that we goof up, and that we do wrong, even if we did it intentionally, but that He also knows when you're sorry. And Joseph said, listen brothers, don't worry. He spoke comfortably. He comforted them. He fed their families. He took care of them. He put them in the best of the land. He did everything he could to prove that he was not against them. So we're just going to end right there. That's a type of Christ. And we have that benefit in him. All right, let's take advantage of it. So Lord, thank you for the time.