Profile of a Christian

The title of the sermon today is Profile of a Christian. It ties into what Chris had talked about, what he heard about at the Feast of Tabernacles this year. Retired FBI Special Agent John Douglas is not only a famous author of 13 books, one of which is called Mindhunter, but he has been an advisor on many movies, TV series, and been on quite a few educational programs. He has quite a few videos on YouTube. He is quite famous for what he is famous for, and that is he was the father of FBI profiling. He confronted, interviewed, and studied thousands, if not close to 10,000. Perpetrators of rape, assassins, who assassinated very famous people, and, foremost, serial killers. Of those were Charlie Manson, Ted Bundy, son of Sam, Wayne Williams, and almost everyone that ever received fame, especially the latest that was captured just a few years ago, the BTK Killer. And he advised TV shows, as you will see today, even on TV, it started back 10, 12 years ago, all these TV shows about serial killers and profiling and forensics, and so forth, that people seem to be intrigued with. But it's interesting, because reading his book, as I did over 16 years ago, his first book, I found him interesting, as I heard him on a radio interview outside of Nashville, Tennessee, so I picked up the book. I wouldn't advise the book. It's very gruesome and not something that we need to focus on, something that I wouldn't focus on today, but I did 16 years ago. It was intriguing to me. But it's interesting, as he commented on some of the TV shows that are out now in the movies, in that during his years of profiling, he spent over 18 years profiling. He never once drew his gun. He said, it's not like the TV shows. It's all action. He would just study, read, study, and write, and pass information to help people. His character, as a matter of fact, Jack Crawford, the character portrayed by Scott Glenn in the movie, Silence of the Lamb, was actually him. That he was portraying. They actually used his office, and Scott Glenn spent about three months with John Douglas as learning what it was to be a FBI special agent profile. He was the founder of the Behavioral Science Department in the FBI, which is a study of habits, proclivities, patterns, and motivations of different criminal perpetrators. He put it best in that he learned how to take pieces of a puzzle and put them together to form a picture. That is how he viewed it. He was the best in the world at his job. Profiles that he did averaged between 90 and 95 percent accuracy. I bring this up not because I want to talk about John Douglas, but I want to talk about what he learned from his job of 18 years and how he's been able to help stop a lot of crime today. But one of the things that he learned to do was to profile a person, and he was very good at it. I want to take from his book, Mine Hunter, that I did 16 years ago, and I want to profile a Christian using his techniques, using his expertise. And I asked the question, if John Douglas put together a profile of a Christian, would it lead him to you? Would it lead him to you? The world has a sometimes different understanding of the word Christian. The word and phrase and statement Christian is used quite a lot in the society. Could we explain to someone what a Christian is? Could you?

In his most recent interview of just a year or two ago, after the BTK killer, who had been a serial killer, who had been out for years, was captured. And so they gave John Douglas the opportunity to go interview him. It was interesting because the BTK killer was found as the leader of a church group in his hometown. He wasn't the pastor, but he was the pastor's main assistant, even though he had continued to kill people. Killed many. And BTK was his letters that he would taunt the police with, and it meant bondage, torture, and kill. He was a very sick man, demonic. But it's interesting that Douglas interviewed him, and he said, Well, I understand that you're a changed man, to which this man said, Yes, I'm a Christian. And he said, Oh, when did this happen? At which the man said, I've always been a Christian. Quite a conflict of terms. With the Bible as our reference book, I want to look at this profile of a Christian. Let's see the first time that the term Christian is used in the Bible. If you will turn with me, please. Turn to the book of Acts, chapter 11. We'll start in verse 19. Said, Now those who were scattered after the persecution that arose over Stephen, remember Stephen the Deacon, traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch, preaching the word to no one but the Jews only. But some of them were men from Cyprus and Cyrene, who when they had come to Antioch, spoke to the Hellenist, Greek-speaking Jews, preaching the Lord Jesus. And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number believed and turned to the Lord. Then news of these things came to the ears of the church in Jerusalem, and they sent out Barnabas to go as far as Antioch. And when he came, he had seen the grace of God. He was glad and encouraged them all that with purpose of heart they should continue with the Lord. For he was a good man, full of faith and spirit and full of faith. And a great many people were added to the Lord. Then Barnabas departed for Tarsus to seek Saul. And when he had found him, he brought him to the city of Antioch. So it was for a whole year they assembled with the church and taught a great many people. And the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch. So we see where the name originally came from.

A Christian, simply put, is a Christ-like person. Does that describe us? Does that describe you? Do we live like Christ? Do we act like Christ? Do we agape our love like Christ? Do we talk like Christ? I guess the biggest question is, could we be found guilty in a court of law for being a Christian? Would there be enough evidence that shows we are a Christian? Is Billy Graham a Christian? Was Mother Teresa a Christian? You may say, well, she was Catholic. Was she a Christian? It's funny because I have a friend. We have a member in the church in St. Lucia. His name is Andre Arthur. He is a lawyer. And as I've joked with him more than once, it's rare to find a Christian lawyer in this world. Was there such a thing? Well, family members, not in the church. Would they refer to you as a Christian? Do we know Christ? More importantly, do you know Christ? I think back a few years ago, there was a movie based upon a true story based upon an individual. Names were changed. And the movie was called The Last Samurai. For those who might have seen that, it was Tom Cruise. And Tom Cruise was portrayed in an American who went to Japan, studied. And the movie was based on a man by the name of Sekiro Takamura. And he was considered one of the last samurai lawyers. And he was trying to get the country of Japan not to sell out to other countries and become modernized, but to appreciate their culture. Until he was finally killed in the Satsuma Rebellion of 1877. So we hear how they do in Hollywood. They do change a few things. But it told the story of this last samurai. His name in the movie was Katsumaru. And he died, of course, at the end of the movie, fighting next to this Tom Cruise character. And so it kind of turned even the people of Japan at that time, and even the emperor, to realize that maybe they didn't need to sell out their country for money. And that some of their traditions and ways they lived and the simple ways in which they lived life was not that bad. But at the end, the Tom Cruise character comes to before the emperor of Japan, a young man, who was so intrigued by this, the last samurai, and what he had done and how he had lived. And so in the movie, he has this Tom Cruise character come up before him, and as it was back then, you could never be higher than the emperor. They had tears or steps down, so you could never look the emperor in the eye, anyone. So Tom Cruise there was kneeling before him. And the emperor said about this character, Katsumoto, tell me how he died, at which Tom Cruise had the classic line, no, let me tell you how he lived. This book, the Bible, gives us four different yet similar accounts that tell us just how Jesus Christ lived. And may I suggest that it is a must read, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. It is a must read for a Christian. It is important for us to know how Christ lived, because as important as his death was, and it was very important for us living today, it is just as important that we know how he lived. Using John Douglas' formula, using his steps to form a profile, today in the time we have left, we are going to profile a Christian and see if we fit the profile. Probably not perfectly, but would we fit the profile?

Like finding a needle in a haystack. That's what John Douglas' job was. That's why he was so good at profile. His formula worked so well that he could find one man or one woman out of 250 million people in the United States at the time. That he could zero it down to that small, like a needle in a haystack. Is it that way today? Looking at the last statistics in the United States, 73% of the people polled and identified themselves as Christians in 2012. 73% of all people in the United States consider themselves to be a Christian, according to the 2012 poll, done by the Pew Forum. That means almost three-quarters of Americans, 230 million, roughly out of 300 million people today, consider themselves Christians. If that figure is accurate, if that statement is true, why all the problems? Why do we have all the problems in America today? Why all the violence? Are we a Christian nation? I like the statement that was actually said. I don't know who it was by. But it said, too many people in this country have a Christian vocabulary and not a Christian life. I hope that doesn't describe us. Three-quarters of the people in America consider themselves Christians. And I think of the statement the astronauts are famous for. Houston, we have a problem. America, that's true, we have a problem. Simply put, obviously, America does not know what a Christian is. There are actually five steps to the Douglas profile that I want to use today. Five steps that I hope you can analyze yourself. We must be brutally honest with ourselves when it comes to defining being a Christian. Because there is probably the most dreaded phrase in the entire Bible to a Christian. It takes place, or it exists, on the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 7 and verse 23. When the statement is made, or a statement will be made in the future to Christians, professing Christians. And the statement is, I never knew you. I never knew you. You can go back and look at Matthew 7, what led up to that statement. But I think most of us know, because many will come before God saying, Didn't I do this? But I did this, and I did this. To which God will say, I never knew you. Hope I never hear that phrase, those words. They're cutting.

Conversion, yes, is a lifelong process. I want you to realize that, I think most of us do. Conversion is a lifelong process, but practicing Christianity is not. Practicing Christianity is not something that will take a lifetime. It is something we should be doing now. That's why I called an authentic Christian. Are we an authentic Christian? Profiling a Christian, step number one. Step number one in his book was study and read and interview. Study, read, and interview.

He would interview and go into and understand the mind of a killer. We are a criminal. We are going, and I ask you to go into the mind of a Christian. We need to study and read, and if we have the opportunity, spend time and interview people known to be Christians. No better example than Jesus Christ Himself, the father of all Christians, or the brother, as I can say, of all Christians. Do we know Him, how He lived, how He thought, what He did?

Not only His example, but also Peter, Paul, John, Abraham. They were Christians. We have books that tell us how they lived. Also, the sermonology. It's one of the things. Also, love. We talked about it last week, it was on our board. Agape. Agape. We not only love the people we're around, and love the brethren, and love God, but we also learn to love our enemies. Another is faith. Right? It's something that Christians have in common. That's why we have the 11th chapter of Hebrews, right? The faith chapter, where it says it is impossible to please God without faith, obedience, something else have in common. Obey God's laws. Galatians 5, 22 lists the fruits of the Spirit. That is, it should be common in Christians. Remember, love, joy, peace, goodness, kindness, gentleness, long suffering, patience, self-control. It may be something in common. I'd like you to turn to Hebrews 10, if you will. Hebrews 10, we're in the second step.

Hebrews 10, verse 25. Let's go to verse 24. As the writer is telling us here, verse 24, it says, Thinking about others, right? Not just about yourself. Let us consider one another in order to stir up agape and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another and so much the more as you see the day approaching. As you see the day approaching. Something we have in common from Acts 13, verse 42. As it said, the Gentiles called to Paul and said, Can you teach us each Sabbath? It's something that Christians have in common, the Sabbath. We keep the seventh day Sabbath. That is what Christians do. That is what this book, that is what all the people before us, Christ, Peter, Paul, James, Abraham, they kept the Sabbath. And sometimes it's easy to say, well, I can be off here by myself.

But it's awfully hard because Satan loves to pick you off. It's also something of the Spirit. As God's people come together, the Holy Spirit rubs off on each other. Like the salt I talked about in the Salt Sermon last year. We have to rub a little salt off on each other to be there to inspire people.

So the Sabbath, if there's something else, the Holy Days. The Holy Days, Acts 18. If you'll go back to Acts 18. Acts 18. And verse 21. Acts 18 and verse 21. Paul said, But I took leave of them, saying, I must by all means keep... What? Keep this coming feast in Jerusalem. But I will return again to you, God willing. And he sailed from Ephesus. Why couldn't he have just kept the feast right there? Why? Because people were gathering together. They were coming together for the feast.

And he says, Keep this coming feast. It's so interesting if you read Acts 18 and you realize that even if you have the NIV, you realize that most of that verse is not even in the NIV.

Because it's a way to show that the New Testament church kept the Holy Days. And the NIV just leaves it out. Because in one or two manuscripts it wasn't in there, but in the majority text. And all the other texts that were translated in the New Testament, it was in there. So the Holy Days, very important, and there's something that Christians keep. Because they're called holy convocations. And that means a calling together. This year we have more feasts, more people go to the feast tabernacles this year than we did the previous year. That's great! Appreciate that. There are certain things that keep people from going. It becomes a struggle, problems.

Next year we want to have even more. Something we want to work through. It's very, very important. We want to help people keep the feasts of tabernacles. It gives you that vision. It continues your vision. As we march, keep our eyes set on the kingdom of God. Something else Christians have in common. They tithe. They tithe. Now, tithing is just between you and God. Nobody knows. Home office sends you a report, but it's nobody's business, not mine or anybody else going to it.

But that's between you and God. But tithing is very important. Why? Because God doesn't need your money. I say that constantly in the caribbean. He just gives you an opportunity to be like Him and give, learn to give. And it is a matter of faith because sometimes you can think, how am I going to get by?

I can't get by. It's a matter of faith. And God says, trust Him. I remember my father so well when I was about 12 or 13. We were coming into the understanding. We had been to every church in our town and community. Him trying to find a church that thought needed a kid to grow up in. Since he didn't go to church much when he grew up, he thought my sister and myself needed to go to church.

Thought we might act better if He got us in a church. But I so remember we were struggling to have a very hard time as He was coming into the understanding of the truth. And He had already sold about 3,000 of His hogs, most of them the majority, 99% of the hogs from His hog farm. Because He realized He was raising them for the wrong reason. And He sold them at a time when the market was terrible. Terrible. It was so low that He lost all kinds of money. Lost virtually everything He had worked for to sell them.

But He believed, and this was amazing because it still impacts me now, 40 years later, that He would talk about this because we knew as a family we had never really struggled before. And He had to get a job trying to run a farm, and He got a job working 50 hours a week in town. My mother had to get a job because we had virtually no money. But they still struggled. There was a massive amount of debt that He accumulated on the farm.

And I so remember that story of Him coming back after working His 50 hours back in, I think, 1974. And He had a check. We hadn't started going to church yet. He just was studying and realizing that this is how we should live.

And in 1974, He brought a check, and He grossed $92. And when they took the taxes and so forth out, He had $78 take-home pay. And I remember Him telling us, because we didn't have much food in the... We were eating rice and beans and very little food. My mother was pregnant with the second child, I think, at the time, Penny, our fourth child. And she couldn't work, so we were very struggling. And I remember Him showing us this check. And He was going to... He wrote a check out of the checking account for $9.20 and sent it to the church that He knew was teaching this way.

And out of $78, that was a large amount. Left Him with less than $70 to try to get by on. And I remember Him telling us that I have to start trusting in God, because I haven't been doing that all my life. I've been trusting in myself. And it'll work out. And I remember even through just a few years ago, my father still had that check when it was returned.

When it was returned, when it was... He went through the church and sent back to Him. He still had that canceled check for $9.20. That leaves a large impression on you as a child at 12 or 13. I saw that faith. It gave me faith. It still does today. But what gave me even more faith was that we got by, we ate, we actually began to prosper. God was blessing the family. Still didn't have a whole lot to eat. Still didn't eat out. A restaurant was like something you talked about.

But I still remember then the work picked up and he got a few more hours. And so then he said, he found out there was something called the second tithe. And it was to go to the Feast of Tabernacles. And so even when he was able to add this much work to, he told us about the Feast of Tabernacles. He said, I don't know what it is. I studied it, but I don't know anything about it. But he said, I know I need to.

And so he explained that we wouldn't be getting what he was hoping we would get. So he wrote another check, a second tithe. But he went and he held it and he put these checks away in a drawer. Took him out of his account and said, well, I'll figure out what to do later because I'm not supposed to send it in. And he did find out later. He cashed the checks and we spent the first Feast of Tabernacles not knowing what we were doing up in Gatlinburg, Tennessee.

My family took my father took us up there, me and my sister. And we had the little ones at the time. And we sat in a motel room. We went out and saw all different stuff. And we did this and dad read the Bible and couldn't figure out what in the world we were doing. But we were doing it.

And it was amazing because we had a good time because, hey, we actually had money. We actually ate out at restaurants. We actually did some stuff. And it was exciting for us as a kid. I got a coat. I got a jacket for the winter. And that was big to me because we did away with Christmas. So I couldn't expect anything Christmas. But then the next year we were invited to a church. We started attending. And he saved money again. And this time we went to Jekyll Island, Georgia and kept the Feast and Tabernacles in a hotel. And boy, was that ever greatest thing I'd ever experienced in my life. We still didn't have a lot of money. We still ate a lot of meals in our room, but we had some. And we were out on the beach every morning. And I heard these incredible speakers, messages. Kids all got together. We played. We did things. We went out and had pizza. I remember eating pizza. Pizza Hut. All these kind of things. It was just like, man, this is a feast. And I remember the next year when I was in high school. I graduated high school. I saved my money. And my parents, I actually wanted to go back to Jekyll Island. I loved it so much. My parents went to Tucson, Arizona. And I went to Jekyll by myself. And had a fabulous time. Saved every 10% of everything. I didn't make much money when I got out of high school. Only had four months. But I didn't save 10%. I saved 40%. Because I knew I wanted to taste the feast again. And I did. I had enough money to get by. And it was such a wonderful experience. I still remember messages to this day. And all that wonderful experience that I experienced this year in St. Lucia. All my wonderful feasts that I've ever had. I was able to experience them because of my father in 1974. Tived. And saved second tithe. And I never have ever missed it. Ever since I was 18, I've always had a separate account. It's called the second tithe account. If I made $50, $5 went in there. If I made $100. No matter what, I always set that money aside. Because God wants us to enjoy life. And He gives us a way to do it. And even though we were tight when I first got married, we still saved a second tithe because we weren't going to miss out on being with people and celebrating God's feast. That's what Christians do. They celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles and empower each other. So as my father inspired me, please, rather, 12 months from now we will be just ending the Feast of Tabernacles again. Start saving a second tithe. Go and celebrate because I've had vacations. This is not like a vacation. This is a combination of the spiritual and the physical. And He wants us to enjoy it.

It's interesting, as we look down through the times, I just saw something on the news. Day before yesterday, Namath might have seen it also. There's a news report. And here this woman was interviewing this preacher who had just written a book. You would know the preacher. He's fairly famous. And he was talking about, in his new book, he found this out by studying NASA and studying the Bible, that in Passover on 2014 and Feast of Tabernacles 2014, there will be blood moons. And in 2015, on Passover, in 2015, Feast of Tabernacles, there will be blood moons. And he found this intriguing because of what the Bible says. And this man didn't even know. He didn't even know what Feast of Tabernacles looked, but he studied it. And saying, he went back, and that has not taken place for 500 years. And when he went back to the time, it was amazing events surrounding the people of Jerusalem and the Jews. And it will not happen again for another 500 years. Is something going to happen? I don't know. I know I'll be keeping Passover those two years, the next two years, and I know I'll be keeping the Feast of Tabernacles.

But is something to look? Is it a sign that we are winding down our times? Something we can look at?

The third step in profiling a Christian is to transport yourself into the footsteps of those people. Transport yourself into their footsteps and ask the question, what did they confront? So we study this Bible. We study about Christians. We'll find that at that time they did confront things. Do we understand that? We study the book of Acts and we find that the Jews were not believing in Christ. And so this was so foreign to them. Wait a minute. Christ came and we didn't recognize Him? Why, we couldn't be wrong, could we? And so as people preached Christian, true Christians, authentic Christians preached the truth of Jesus Christ and the Messiah and the soon coming Kingdom, the Jews were so confused. And they were hostile. How could we have missed Him? As you can actually read after Pentecost, there were thousands of them. They recognized that maybe He was and they said, what can we do now? Help us!

They also confronted, as you can read about in Acts 15, the Jerusalem Council, about food sacrificed to idols. Telling the new converts that they should not eat the food that was sacrificed to idols because of the way it was, not because it was dedicated to some God, but because of health reasons, as we talked about last week. And I do want to thank you and anyone who missed last week's Bible study that our nurses did helping us stay healthy.

I appreciate that. But because of the way that animals were sacrificed so many times, they were just strangled. They were taken up there and strangled and not, as they called, blood-letted. They didn't just take its head or slit its throat and turn it upside down and let it bleed out, which any of the poisons, anything else that was in the blood, any of the sicknesses or anything else that traveled in the blood, would, if you did not let it bleed out, even the clean animals, it could still make you deathly sick.

But they would just strangle them and then cook them. And so that's one of the things that they confronted, telling them to do this. The persecution. They confronted persecution. But it just wasn't persecution from the Jews, these Christians. It was persecution from Rome. It was persecution from the pagans who did not like them not practicing their religion. Because, just like this room, we have 30 or 40 people here. We have 40 people.

It's a small group out of 6 million people. And people like you to be like them, and that's what they confronted there. Most of the time, if you read in the book of Acts or you read some of these others, so many of the churches even met in people's homes. So small. As a matter of fact, I listened to a lecture from Harvard University on the guy that had spent 3 years writing on a book of traveling the land of Corinth.

And he wrote about 1st and 2nd Corinthians and actually said from his study that there were actually 14 different Christian churches, God's churches, in the city of Corinth. Because Corinth was so large, and that there were 14 house churches in there. And so, only at the Holy Days would they try to get together. One was because of persecution, another was because of time and travel and money. And that's 80% of the people in Corinth at the time in the church were slaves.

So it made for different situations. So it helps to understand when you can transport yourself back in their footsteps. John Douglas, as portrayed in many of the movies, he was an advisor, when he would actually go to the crime scenes of where something was committed and begin to be the person, to be the perpetrator and to be the victim. And he would act out the entire thing from autopsies and from reports.

And he would become not only the victim, but he would also become the perpetrator. Because then he could understand what people were going through. And that's why this third step, I think, is very important to us, is to be able to transport ourselves back in the time and find out what the authentic Christians really went through. And then, of course, there was circumcision, that the Jews thought were so important, that outward sign, and God said, it is important, the circumcision of the heart. And that's what he wanted people to worry about, being circumcised of the heart.

And then the fourth step in this profile, you have to ask the question, what is their motivation? What is the person that your profile, what is their motivation in life? John Douglas would find that many serial killers had been mistreated, and they wanted to mistreat someone else, find out it had to do with history, find out it had just anger.

And if you read any of the books and stories, you find out they opened themselves by becoming so angry at very young ages, they opened themselves up to demonic possession. What was their motivation? What is an authentic Christian's motivation? If you turn to 1 Corinthians 15.

I think we can see it should be our motivation. 1 Corinthians 15. 1 Corinthians 15 and verse 53. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. You can read. No reason to be reading all that. You should know. I've heard it at funerals, but you should know it. As he is painting the picture of eternal life, that is our motivation. That is a Christian's motivation. It is what motivates us. It is what should motivate us. That we can have eternal life. That God will grant us eternal life. It is a gift for being an authentic Christian.

The Kingdom of God is our motivation. Look, if you read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, look how many times Jesus Christ talks about the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of Heaven. The Kingdom of God. This should be our goal. This should be our motivation. And then Romans 8, verse 16-17 tells us what?

It's that wonderful chapter that tells us everything about our destiny. And it says that we are actually called heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. Is that not motivation? It is our motivation. It's what carries us through the tough times. And it's that motivation that frustrates Satan so much.

Because if it wasn't for that motivation, it would be easy to defeat us. To get us down. But we know this is not the big show. This is not the main meal. This is just the appetizer in this life. Eternal life is the main meal. And we're going to be living with God forever in His Kingdom.

And finally, the fifth step in Douglas' profile is what could throw this profile off track? What could throw this profile off track? And I see that all the time because I see people looking in different parts of the Bible. And instead of looking at and having the pieces of the puzzle come together to form this beautiful picture of a Christian, they will sometimes find this scripture or this scripture and take it and just pull it out and say, well, no, that can't really work.

Interesting, in Luke 23 and verse 39, know the story? Jesus Christ? Let's go back there. I just close. I've just got five minutes left. Four or five minutes. Let's go back and look at that. And Luke 23. Luke 23 and verse 39. And here is the story of Jesus Christ hanging there with the two thieves. And then one of the criminals in verse 39 who was hanged, blasphemed Him, saying, If you are Christ, save yourself and us. But the other answering rebuked Him, saying, Do you not even fear God, seeing that you are under the same condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds. But this man has done nothing wrong. Then he said to Jesus, Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom. And then the thing that throws so many people, or they try to use it to throw people, that there is a heaven, and we all go there. There is a heaven, but we don't go up there and live. And in Luke 43 it says, And Jesus said to him, Assuredly I say unto you, Come, today you will be with me in paradise. When that's so simple. When you understand the Greek, and anyone who wrote this understands the Greek, they just put the comma. You move that comma over one word and it changes everything, doesn't it? And when you understand the original Greek was letter by letter by letter, straight across, no commas, no periods, no anything. And the translators have to put in the periods. They have to put in the comma.

It fits the profile well. If you read, Jesus said, Assuredly I say to you, today, you will be with me in paradise. Because it's not even correct, because Jesus Christ was in the tomb. So even when he died, he's not there today, up in paradise. It didn't even make sense, but people have used it trying to obscure the truth. The identity of Judah and Israel today is something that is a gift that we should appreciate, helps us to understand. Even 2 Peter 3 and verse 15 says that Paul, even Paul, says some things or writes some things hard to understand. Why? Paul wrote and talked in four or five languages. He was a very educated man. Even Peter said, well, sometimes I have a hard time understanding what he says. You have to go through and read it. You just can't read it one time. Oh, that's the answer to everything, if it doesn't fit.

Then things taken out of context are things added by the translators. You can throw this profile off track. I'd like you to turn to Mark 7, if you will. Mark 7. Last verse.