Tree of Knowledge

One of the principles that we find in God's Word is that He considers it very important to give meat in due season. That's found in Matthew 24-45. And the principle is that God knows there are times to present the material. He wants it to in due season, just like breakfast shouldn't be served at two o'clock in the afternoon.

And so the food from God's Word that we provide should be during the right season. And so we focus on the time that we are living, the end of the year. We have these end-of-the-year celebrations. And it's ironic that those who are the most biblically-oriented Christians have to resist and reject this distortion of Christianity, which is called Christmas. Now, how did that get to be? That the more you look in the Bible, the less you're going to be enthused about it. I'd like to give you a bird's-eye view through the Bible, beginning in Genesis, going through Revelation, and follow this thread throughout the Bible that is dealing with this subject.

I call it the fruit of the tree of knowledge, because just like we do have the tree of life, we also have a tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And this is the thread, how people went to the wrong tree, and they are still under this wrong tree.

As we know, these two trees in the Garden of Eden symbolized two ways of life.

God's ways with His laws and fellowship with Him in peace, and man's ways under Satan's influence. That's a different territory. That's where man many times likes to go.

That's why we have so many troubles today.

And as it mentioned in Genesis 3, Adam and Eve accepted Satan's deceitful teachings, and it led them away from God's ways to Satan's ways.

And paradise has been lost for a time. Paradise and what God wanted His territory one day to have spread throughout the world.

That was His intention.

But man decided, no, I'm going to this other side. I'm going to go into this territory.

And so we've had 6,000 years of man not able to go back to the paradise, the Garden of Eden.

That way, except for very few.

In Genesis 4, we can pick up this thread in verses 6 and 7.

Genesis 4, verses 6 and 7.

We see after Adam and Eve were cast out, they had children.

And at least two of them, because it appears that there were more.

Because afterwards Cain had to leave because some of his kin and siblings, he was afraid they would kill him.

So the Bible just focuses on these verse 2, but certainly they were already older.

And they had started to populate the earth.

And so in chapter 4, we go to verse 6 and 7. God told Cain, so the Lord said to Cain, Why are you angry? And why has your accountenance fallen?

Cain, through envy and hate, fell under the sway of Satan.

And God is warning him, don't go there. Don't go to this other territory, to this other side of things.

And so God says to him, If you do well, will you not be accepted?

If you stay on my side, my territory, my way of life, will you not be accepted?

And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door, and its desire is for you.

But you should rule over it. I see the tendency. I see that envy and it's welling up into hate.

And you've got to come back to my ways.

But Cain didn't pay attention to God.

He just allowed himself to be influenced by Satan and committed the first assassination in the Bible.

So things are not going well at all.

Men and women living under that tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Eventually, things got so bad that we read in Genesis 6.5.

It says, Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. Man had completely strayed from God's territory. Now they were in Satan's territory.

And the results were evil. Although people didn't think it was.

Remember the proverb in chapter 16, verse 2.

It says, All the ways of a man are pure in his own eyes.

But the Lord weighs the spirits. He sees the motivations. He knows what's going on.

But human beings, they are very easy to justify what they're doing. They think they're doing fine.

What's the big problem?

Well, the big problem was that 99.9% of them were wrong.

They just had a .01% .01%.

Noah's family were the only ones that were living in God's territory, enjoying God's way of life.

Everybody else was following Satan's. Were they sad? Were they miserable? No! They were having a good time!

They were thinking Noah and his family, they are the ones that are puritanical, and they are just prudish and taciturn and sad.

We're the ones that are having a very good time, but it's because people don't realize, where are they living?

In Genesis 6, 8-9, I'd like to read it. I'll read it here. It says, But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. This is the genealogy of Noah. Noah was a just man. Perfect in his generations, Noah walked with God.

I'll read it in the New Living translation. It says, But Noah found favor with the Lord. This is the account of Noah and his family.

Noah was a righteous man, the only blameless person living on earth at that time, and he walked in close fellowship with God.

He was thinking God's thoughts. He was living in his territory. He enjoyed keeping God's laws. He wasn't interested in keeping all these pagan ideas.

He just wouldn't go there. And so he could walk in fellowship with God. They were in one accord.

And so, again, we've got to look at it in the point of view of where we are living and where are we comfortable, because there are just two ways of life.

And what people are doing, you've got to ask, is this God's territory, or is this something influenced through paganism and Satan is behind it?

In 2 Peter 2, verse 5, Noah is described in this way. It says, And God did not spare the ancient world, but saved Noah, one of eight people, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood of the world of the ungodly.

So he was a preacher of righteousness. What is righteousness? It is teaching the right way of life, God's right way.

And again, you can go back to those two trees and you can form two threads, two ways throughout the entire Bible, all the way till today.

We're still talking about the two trees, the two ways.

And after the flood, we see that man went back into Satan's influence. Nimrod is singled out as the one who raised up Babel and then actually became the first tyrant.

A very powerful man, but he wasn't holy. And he started making these big cities and walled them up and finally just wanted to make a big tower.

Some people have all kinds of ideas. Why build this huge tower?

And one of the explanations is they thought, well, if God's going to punish us with water again, we'll build a tower so high we can all escape another flood.

There could have been other reasons for it, but the term Nimrod in Hebrew means we will rebel.

And Josephus, the Jewish historian, mentions that from ancient times the Jews always talk about Nimrod being the one to continue Satan's way after the flood.

Of course, the Bible doesn't say that, but at least you do have the historical evidence throughout that time and thousands of years about Nimrod being the one who resurrects this false Babylon-ish system.

And so God, this time, intervenes, confusing the tongues, the different languages.

And so people took their rebellion, the mystery religions, throughout the world. They all have very common points.

They all have false saviors. For instance, in Egypt it was Osiris. In Babylon it was Tammuz, which we read in the Bible.

In India it was Krishna. You've heard these highly Krishna. Well, Krishna is a type of an Indian Savior type.

It's another counterfeit to what Jesus Christ would be.

And of course, around all of these false saviors you have also false holidays that would commemorate Osiris and him coming back from the dead and being resurrected.

Most of them are born during the time of Christmas. There's a good book that's out in the Internet. You can get the PDF file of the book.

It's called Christian and Pagan Creed by Edward Carpenter. Anybody have that already? Have that book downloaded? It's about 400 pages.

Go over that book when you've got a chance. It's free. You can just download it. And by Edward Carpenter, it gives you all the details about these false saviors and how Christmas is connected to the Babylonians and Greeks and Egyptians. So it's not something new.

As a matter of fact, a type of Christmas was being celebrated 2,000 years before Jesus Christ time.

These false saviors that Satan was already sowing, he was planting the seeds. So when Christ would come, they would say, Oh, that's another savior! We already have all these saviors. That's just one more because he is the chief counterfeiter.

He knows how to counterfeit and falsify God's truths.

Notice in Ezekiel 8, verse 14, we read about one of these false saviors in the Bible.

Ezekiel 8, verse 14.

So he brought me to the door of the north gate of the Lord's house, and to my dismay, women were sitting there weeping for Thomas.

So just like they were weeping for the death of this false savior. Another translation says, He took me to the entrance at the north gate of the temple of God.

I saw women sitting there weeping for Thomas, the Babylonian fertility God.

So they're coming from the east. Babylon was east of Israel.

And God warned them, don't bring these customs, these traditions from the east.

But they went ahead and did it. Notice in Isaiah 2, verse 6.

I'm just giving you a little summary of all this information because there's so much there.

Just to let you know, it is in the Bible.

In Isaiah 2, verse 6, it says, The New Living Translation says, They have filled their land with practices from the east.

What's east of Israel? Babylon.

And with saucers, as the Philistines do, they have made alliances with pagans.

Yeah, they started mixing God's ways with the pagan ways.

And so, brethren, what I want to bring across is that just like you have God's territory, where people live in His way of life, with His values, with His truths, there's this middle area, the border, between that and Satan's way. And this is where it gets mixed up, where you mix God's ways with Satan's ways, the Bible with paganism. That's the first step.

And then, later on, before you know it, you are in paganism. You already have accepted the mixture of this fruit of good and evil. Notice in Jeremiah 10, we have here God condemning the sacred trees that were very common in those days.

Jeremiah 10, it says, verse 1, Hear the word which the Lord speaks to you, O house of Israel. Thus says the Lord, Do not learn the way of the Gentiles, Do not be dismayed at the signs of heaven, that's astrology, for the Gentiles are dismayed at them.

For the customs of the people are futile or vain. For one cuts a tree from the forest, the work of the hands of the workmen with the axe, they decorate it with silver and gold, they fasten it with nails and hammers, so that it will not topple.

Notice here that they bring it from the forest into their homes. They are upright like a palm tree, and they cannot speak, and they must be carried, because they cannot go by themselves. Do not be afraid of them, nor for they cannot do evil, nor can they do any good.

And then he brings up at the end of this point, that this is all in vain.

Notice in verse 9, silver is beaten into plates, brought from tarshish and gold from ufas, the work of craftsmen in the hands of the metalsmith, blue and purple are their clothing, they are all the work of skillful men, but the Lord is the true God. He is the living God and the everlasting King, and at His wrath the earth will tremble, and the people will not be able to endure His indignation.

And so he is saying that this is a vain way, it's offensive to God.

Now, the question is, does it matter if you do it to a pagan God, or do you do it to the Christian God? Can you still do this type of thing?

It has pagan roots, it has a pagan background.

And so, like we have said many times, if you take a horse and you paint it like a cow, and you call it a cow, it's still a horse.

So God does not tell you to go around decorating trees and using them to represent some type of Christian symbol.

Again, we go from God's way of life, His territory, and we just start making these little bit of compromises. And, well, it's still dealing with God, but now you've got the Bible and paganism. And before you know it, you start celebrating Easter, and you start celebrating all of the other pagan holidays. That's the way Satan works.

And so these are just small examples of a larger system that comes from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It's a mixture.

It's Satan's falsification of God's way.

And this system went from the Old Testament into the New Testament. And then it was the apostles, not the prophets, who were fighting against this false system that was counter-fading. It was falsifying God's way of life. Notice in Paul's day, it was already operating.

Suddenly shifting from God's territory to Satan's. Suddenly shifting. Notice in 2 Thessalonians 2, I'll go ahead and read it in verse 7 through 10.

It says, For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. So there was a system that was already creeping and mixing itself with Christianity. Again, Satan doesn't like to work from black and white. He likes to get the shades of gray, where he mixes things together.

The mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only he who now restrains will do so until he is taken out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will consume with the breath of his mouth and destroy with the brightness of his coming. So it has to be a person that is going to arise, that is going to embody this false system. And he's going to deceive the whole world.

Why? Because people are not living in God's territory. When you're safe in God's territory, these things don't attract you. They don't matter to you. They're not something that your mind is going to be focused on. But when you get into that gray area, where you're mixing things together and making compromises, that's the danger zone.

Notice, continuing on, it says, The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. So here we see the Bible explaining that it's the lack of loving the truth where people get into trouble. Where does truth dwell? In God's territory. We were there during the Feast of Tabernacles. There was peace, there was love, there was truth, and there was fellowship, but we're living in the world. We're living with another territory around us.

Notice in 2 Corinthians 11, 13-15, Paul is denouncing these false workers, these counterfeiters. Counterfeits. It says, For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into apostles of Christ. They use the name Christ. They say they are messengers of Christ. They have authority. And it says, And no wonder for Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also transform themselves into ministers of righteousness, whose end will be according to their works.

So there might be people that are dedicated to doing this type of religious work, but the question is, are they living in God's territory? Are they following God's holy laws? Are they comfortable living within God's framework of his Sabbaths and holy days?

And doing the things that the Bible tells us we should do? Or are they somewhere else? I remember I had a friend when I used to play basketball at the YMCA in Chile, and he was a U.S. missionary. He had come over years before with his family. The poor fellow, he took a van all the way from the U.S. down to Chile. He already had maybe one or two children. He had more later on. But at that time in Santiago, nobody had seen a van like this. It was really souped up and nice. And he happened to have come when Salvador Allende, the socialist, communist president, had taken over.

So what did they do? They confiscated it for their own good. So this poor man, he didn't have any voice in the matter. They lusted after that, and they just confiscated it. So we used to play basketball together. And I remember we got along well. And then one day he talked to me a little bit about religion. And I said, what is your opinion about God's law? And boy, his whole face changed. Oh, no, no, that's not right. That's been a bollock.

It was such a change from this nice, friendly guy. I just mentioned God's law, and immediately there's this change in his appearance, in his tone, his attitude. Well, that shows we're living in different territories. Because along with David, we can say, oh, how I love your law. It is my meditation all day long. Them? Oh, no, no, it's just grace. That's all we can have. We're not dealing with this. That exposes them and takes the mask right off.

Now, many times, very fine people have nothing against them personally, but they've been deceived. And so we come at the end of the Bible to Revelation 17, which is the culmination of this system. Now, it doesn't say how it came to grow this way. It's just describing the end times and talking about this Babylon-ish system. And it is powerful. It has extended throughout the world. Whereas God's church is always called this small flock. It's always talked about this group that is persecuted.

But this is a huge system, powerful, rich. Notice in Revelation 17, it did the description of this same tree of the knowledge of good and evil and how it has flourished in the end time. It says here in verse 3, So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness, and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast, which was full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns, because it had different systems before.

So it's been going on until now. This is the embodiment. This is the fulfillment of all of these beast powers. Now it comes to its fruition, its culmination, which was full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls, having in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the filthiness of her fornication. And on her forehead a name was written, Mystery Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots, and of the abominations of the earth.

I saw the woman, drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. And when I saw her, I marveled with great amazement. And it is a historical fact that the traditional church that developed and grew murdered more Christians than the pagan Romans ever did. The Romans had a couple of persecutions, but this false church destroyed millions and set up crusades against other Christians and just wiped them off the map time and time again. So it's ironic that it isn't some military system that is the great enemy of God's ways.

It is a false church system. That's where you get the biggest danger. And it says, well, it finishes there when he says, he marveled with great amazement. Then it goes on to say, well, in verse 2, it says, This is the harlot with whom the kings of the earth committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth were made drunk with the wine of her fornication. So the kings of the earth go in honor. This is a very powerful system, and people just follow blindly whatever is said.

Then it says, verse 15, then he said, The waters which you saw where the harlot sits are peoples. This is the different languages, multitudes, nations, and tongues. So it brings that out. This is a worldwide system.

Verse 18, And the woman whom you saw is that great city which reigns over the kings of the earth. And this is talking about Rome. It's been the capital of this system since a time right there with the apostles.

So this system, God tells us and warns us, continuing on in chapter 18. It says, After these things, verse 1, I saw another angel coming down from heaven, having great authority, and the earth was illuminated with his glory. And he cried mightily with a loud voice, saying, Babylon, the great, has fallen, and has become a dwelling place of demons, a prison for every foul spirit, and a cage for every unclean and hated bird. So what comes out from the inside of this system?

Demons, deceitful workers. This is why God is going to put an end to it. Continuing on, it says, verse 3, For all the nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication. The things of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth have become rich through the abundance of her luxury. And so it is a system that has to do with commerce, has to do with politics, it has to do with economies, it has to do with the military as well.

Very powerful system. And then he says, verse 4, And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, lest you share in her sins, and lest you receive of her plagues. For her sins have reached to heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities. He knows what's going on. He hasn't intervened directly yet. But he's realized people are in the wrong territory. They've been deceived. And so they go about it in their ignorance.

But God is going to put an end to it. One good question we should ask is, in the coming kingdom of God, what will people be keeping? Will they be keeping Christmas? I can tell you from the Bible, the answer is no. Notice in Zechariah 14, verse 16, after Jesus Christ comes back. It says, Zechariah 14, verse 16, And it shall come to pass that everyone who is left, of all the nations which came against Jerusalem, after Armageddon has taken place, all of the survivors from all over the world, shall go up from year to year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts.

There's no confusing. It is Jesus Christ who is going to be there in Jerusalem and to keep the Feast of Tabernacles. Wow! You mean not Christmas, not Easter? You mean these feast days have not been abolished or substituted? That's what the Bible says. Or else somebody is lying here, because this is a vision of the future. And it is written with the authority of God and the Holy Scriptures that when Jesus Christ comes back, the feasts that are going to be kept are the ones that we are keeping today. Now, this is the danger that we have, is that for every truth that God has given in the Bible, Satan has found a substitute for it.

And so when the church in the second century going through the persecutions and the Jews revolted in 70 AD and then again in 138 AD, they had two Jewish revolts against the Roman Empire. And after that one from 135 to 138, which is called the Bar-kapte Rebellion, the Romans determined that the Jews could no longer live in the Promised Land. And that affected the Jewish Christians that were in charge of the church at that time. And so some of the early writers mentioned of the exodus of the Jewish Christian bishops, they could no longer be in that area.

And from then on, it became more of a Gentile Christian church. You no longer saw this continuation from the apostles in teaching about the Jewish Christianity, which is Old Testament and New Testament. They knew how to teach it. They knew what God's territory was. But now, with the leaders gone, the pillars of the church, people started compromising. And substitutions started taking place. Instead of keeping the Holy Days in the Bible, now they started keeping these Greek and Babylonian Holy Days. They started substituting one after another. Instead of the Feast of Trumpets that announces Christ's coming, and that's a feast that has to do with the coming of Jesus Christ, His first and second coming.

Doesn't mean that He came in that very day. We don't know. But the Feast of Trumpets is our understanding of the coming of Christ and of His return. But once the Feast of Trumpets was abandoned, what came in its place? The coming of this false Christ, December 25th, with all of the paraphernalia of the Roman Saturnalia that took place at that time. And instead of the joy of the Feast of Tabernacles that the Christians were enjoying in the first century, once they threw out the Feast of Tabernacles, why then they would have the joy of Christmas? And so now you have all the jingles and all the nice music, which actually fits better the joy of the Feast of Tabernacles.

At the very end of Isaiah 66, we see the jingles and the bells, but in a very different context. Notice in Isaiah 66, it says in verse 22, It says, So all the flesh will come to worship Him, as it brings out in Zechariah 14, Notice in verse 19, It says, So all the flesh will come to worship Him, as it brings out in Zechariah 14.

One more scripture here that I want to talk about the bells that I was mentioning. Notice verse 19 of Zechariah 14. It says, Not Christmas. It's going to be ringing and jingling of the bells. People celebrating God's feasts in Jerusalem with Christ giving the sermons. The pots in the Lord's house shall be like the bowls before the altar.

It's going to be plenty to eat, enjoyable food. Yes, every pot in Jerusalem and Judah shall be holiness to the Lord of hosts. Everyone who sacrifices shall come and take them and cook in them. In that day there shall no longer be a Canaanite or an unbeliever in the house of the Lord of hosts. So Satan even managed to rob the joy of the Feast of Tabernacles with this cheap substitute. So the Apostle John puts it very simply in 1 John 4-6. He says, You are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.

Remember, who is over God's territory. Far more powerful than who is over Satan's world and territory. They are of the world, therefore they speak as of the world, and the world hears them. That's what's comfortable. That's what they're used to. We are of God. He who knows God hears us. He who is not of God does not hear us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. So there is the dividing line again. In whose territory are we going to be of the lovers of truth or of the lovers of lies and deceits?

I call them pious lies. They're still lies. They're unacceptable before God. They might be religious and sound good. They're still lies. And so in this period of time, as next week, we begin to see this whole Christmas season come to a head. Let's remember the difference between the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. And also make sure we don't insult people. We shouldn't be in their face. In Colossians 4, verses 5 and 6, I'd like to read it from the New Living Translation. It tells us how to deal with people on the outside.

It says, Live wisely among those who are not believers and make the most of every opportunity, just like we do in these malls where we go. Let your conversation be gracious and attractive so that you will have the right response for everyone.

So there's not any time to offend if you receive a gift. Many times just thank them for it, but we're just not going to participate in it. Sometimes you can cause a lot more offense, or we can't just extricate ourselves and go live in a cave during those days. We should be kind and gentle and be diplomatic about things. But at the same time, remember whose territory we are living in. We're living in the territory of the Tree of Life, not under the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

And so that's why we can stay true. That's why we are at peace. And why, if God's Spirit is guiding you, you will accept it. You will know what the truth is, and you will follow it to the end.