The Book of Jude: Written for Our Times! (Part 1 of 2) Kelly Durant
2. This is a breakdown study of Jude and why focus on it? Because it is very relevant to our present times. Please keep your Bibles open to follow along and take notes. This book has references to the book of Enock, an extra canonical book that is valued by the Orthodox Church, and many other churches are currently taking a new look at it.
It speaks of the punishments God gave to the disobedient fallen angels and is a warning to all those who leave the faith or practice evil.
1 Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James, to them that are sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ, and called: 2 Mercy unto you, and peace, and love, be multiplied.
This is a salutation but it is addressed only to us, the Christian believers. How do we know? Because of the phrase “to them that are sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ” You being a Salvationist understand that being sanctified is something which comes from living a sincere holy life with the Holy Spirit leading.
How do you and I get sanctified by God? By being preserved in Jesus, remaining obeying His teachings, which goes along with our doctrine number 9 to have ‘continuance’ in the faith for salvation. We are called to live and serve as Jesus did. What blessings do we get from God for this? Mercy, peace, and love!
3. 3 Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.
What does it mean to contend for the faith? The word, ‘contend’, sounds similar to the word ‘contentious’ but there is a big difference. We should never be contentious, that is desiring to get into a fight just to stir up trouble, but It is implying that we must speak up and fight, to defend what is true from the Word of God. If you don’t stand up for Jesus and the faith, you must ask yourself if you are really a believer or not!
In Christianity we can study how to do this through ‘apologetics’. I think more than ever you and I must prepare ourselves to be able to answer anyone who verbally attacks us, mocks us, or just seeks to counter you or me over our faith in Jesus. Our faith is under heavy attack from ungodly people in the schools, colleges, and workplace, in cyberspace, and also in movies, the daily news, and the music/imagery industry.
4. 4 For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ.
To begin, how many of you can observe that some churches of late seem to have quite a few people in them that seem to have lost the mission of Jesus? They seem to have a preoccupation with making the church conform to the society’s culture, or a preoccupation with their own entertainment, praise bands and modern preachers, who do not even use scripture as the message? When you hear a person pressing a certain dubious issue in the church, ask yourself, what are their fruits? What do they in their private lives for Jesus and others? Those seeking influence and money yet have no obedience to Christ are usually deceptive ones seeking to divide and conquer!
What is lasciviousness? Lasciviousness is a gross form of wickedness that has sexual overtones. It starts in a sinful heart (Mark 7:21-22), and manifests itself in fleshly (carnal) actions (Galatians 5:19), and can lead to a state of being “past feeling” (Ephesians 4:19).https://www.christiancourier.com/articles/1123-what-is-lasciviousness People contaminated with this nature accept no correction or reasoning. Fake Christians follow their own philosophies and undermine the Bible.
These influences come from the condemned demons of old. Jude clarifies in verse 6 that the first fallen angels who came to rape and murder as they pleased have been captured and are waiting the judgment of hell, but what about the others after that? They are still here! Jesus cast out demons into pigs but the demon spirits of old are still with us usually possessing people in high places, possessing people of influence such as in actors and musicians, and they focus in on infiltrating churches so they can divide them and destroy them having them overcome by the trends of the world rewriting their doctrines to include their demonic activity! Apostacy is increasing year after year.
Here is a problem we face, Christians in the church are not being warned and educated on how demons operate. The world has conditioned us to accept that some people with their perverted aggressive and rude behavior speaking up to contradict righteous Christian leaders are just normal. Just accept how this generation is?! No!
So, can it be that in colleges, the workplace, and in some churches you as a discerning God honoring Christian are expected to just accept mayhem, blasphemy, and confusion, which is an abuse of the grace of Christ? How derogatory that this is the new push that we should just include them at all costs! (!?) Tolerance is a must?! A little leaven, leavens the whole bread! The faith is getting destroyed by these usurpers.
Those who speak up to justify their lascivious behaviors, if you question them on anything, will lash out at you with full force decrying that you are not a real Christian because you are not loving because you discriminate and you preach an embarrassing gospel of the old type that is causing young people to leave the church. They proclaim to all those nearby, we need to get rid of your old type! How twisted and manipulative! And would we not be fools condemning ourselves if we were to allow them to take over and run things as they please? It would be to ‘deny’ Christ totally! How sad that much of Christianity in our present world is being practiced without Christ as the foundation!
5.5 I will therefore put you in remembrance, though ye once knew this, how that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed them that believed not.
What is the message here? It is a comparison of the past to what may happen in the present with any of us. We know that the Israelites after leaving Egypt, after being freed as slaves to go to the promised land (compared to heaven for the Christian), became bitter and angry at God for a lack of comforts and they wanted to go back and even worship Egypt’s false gods and even made a golden calf idol! So God allowed them to all die in the desert wandering 40 years lost! Unthankful complainers who want the perversions of this world above the mission of our faith condemn their selves to repeat this dry life desert tragedy.
If one is a Christian and a new creation in Christ, one who is presumed to be purified by the forgiveness with the blood of Jesus, and then wants to go back, as a dog who re-eats his vomit, to accommodate the sins of the world in one’s life, then this means inviting God’s punishment upon yourself as the non-believing, God insulting backsliders of the past. This is a powerful warning that a would be salvation could became God’s wrath for those who reject living in His holy path not living in “the way, the truth, and the life”.
6. 6 And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.
This verse infers to the book of Enoch, a book which was respected by the Jews of old found in the Qumran Caves. It speaks of 200 watcher angels (but there may have been more) who degenerated their selves to abuse with humans, so God punished them by locking them out of the heavenly and earthly realm, and bound them up for judgement! Imagine how this is, you have an eternal spirit and cannot die, you are conscious of things nearby and you were a privileged angel living in heaven, and now you exist in the eternal now restrained in darkness! And then in the final judgment, as mentioned to come revealed by Jesus detailed in Revelation, you will be put into the lake of eternal fire! These beings were such evil abusers that God has saved the worst punishment for them!
These former angels became Satanic, and by all images of ancient worship, deductively created hybrid creatures of men and beasts to rule over men and to insult God’s creation! Their pleasure was to enslave and destroy the people that God created! They established a pyramid slave order out of mankind to build glorious cities and commanded men to worship their created beings and not the Creator (see Romans 1). The problem was they possessed much of God’s knowledge, of His supernatural mathematics and biology, and they exploited it to build mega structures to incite the worship of themselves. A total intolerable betrayal! After these first rebellious ones were enchained, the flood of Noah wiped out another portion of these fallen ones, but soon afterwards their evil resurfaced again as these disembodied demon spirits continued to possess rebellious people born later. And today these demons continue to oppress, rob, and murder from high places!
7. 7 Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. (Note: Strange flesh includes animals).
The judgments of God are clear here. The people of these cities demanded to have sex with the angels that went to Lot’s house as guests. Imagine this, Lot even offered his 2 virgin daughters to this crowd of evil men to ‘do as they please’ but they refused. Would you offer that?! He was in utter despair trying to stop this mob of men that were violently trying to break into the door of his house to rape these handsome angels.
But no one should, nor will get away with rape and murder, God’s wrath will come on them! These cities were destroyed by the fiery salt that rained from the sky. The people were so corrupt God did not spare anyone except Lot’s family who escaped. These destroyed cities have been un-earthed in Israel but few report it because the way of the world is to hide and cover up God’s judgements. However, there is no doubt, His judgements are real and we must heed the warning against these type of behavior.
8. 8 Likewise also these filthy dreamers defile the flesh, despise dominion, and speak evil of dignities.
Have you ever known anyone who is always talking degradingly about others always conflictive, often laughing at someone’s misfortune? Someone who is always boasting what they would like to do to hurt or kill someone? They are always gloating in their bad behavior or sex acts, and they mock the people of God and the authorities for being upholders of Godliness. These kinds are guilty evil condemned hypocrites! Their minds (filthy dreamers) are given over to continuous darkness, so their words and actions follow. They degrade their selves believing their own lies and seek to recruit others into the same filth and tear to pieces with words or violence those who challenge them.
They also have this characteristic in common, they are non-stop rebellious to any authority; they invent evil words to attack and mock the maintainers of order, such as the police, government leaders, or church leaders. The Holy Scriptures say to ‘submit to the authorities’ which are being allowed by God to govern (Romans 13) and even though some of these authorities are corrupt, in general they protect us from despots who would bring us down into total anarchy, enslavement, and death.
9. 9 Yet Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil he disputed about the body of Moses, durst not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke thee.
Why is this within these verses? For one, it reveals that Satan and his demons, until his judgement comes, are loose to temp, bother, and falsely accuse, in the presence of the angels and humankind, anyone of any kind of evil as he pleases. When the Lord Jesus returns Satan will be judged and pay for all his crimes against God and humanity, for deceiving, accusing, and condemning billions of lives which should have been God’s.
Why did Satan hate Moses and want to desecrate the remembrance of his body? Because Moses was the law bearer, the official voice of God to bring order and punishment to those who do evil deeds! Satan wanted to claim that Moses was his because Moses had failed God on a few occasions with anger issues. No one is perfect and Satan always wants to claim you as his own because you act out as he wanted at some time or another. But the blood of Jesus, defended by the high archangels in heaven, will not allow this to happen. We will be defended and justified as righteous through and by Jesus in the final judgment day.
One more thing, Here it is revealed that The Lord (Jesus) has all authority and Satan shrinks when you quote the Word of God to Him ‘in Jesus name’. You can rebuke Satan in Jesus name when he attacks you through someone, someone who may have a demon, and Jesus will win the battle. You may have to fast and pray, however, depending on the magnitude of the evil entity. Matthew 28:18 And Jesus came and spoke unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.
10.10 But these speak evil of those things which they know not: but what they know naturally, as brute beasts, in those things they corrupt themselves.
If you are an obedient person of faith, you spiritually discern all things happening in the world and you understand the spirit world, moral laws, scientific knowledge, and government systems through the mind of Christ. It means you see through the repeated lies, fake news, and deceptions of the world. And for your possession of truth, ignorant or deceived people will hate you, attack you, and mock you when you speak the truth or the word of God to counter the poisonous lies they have swallowed.
If you speak up for your faith in Jesus, for moral decency, for Creationism, for a pro-life stance, for certain more righteous leaders in power, you will see you quickly you become a target of evil people who are morally corrupt, deceived by Satan on all issues, and they will be violent, vulgar, and vicious in their cruel harmful words against you acting you like a wild animal or brute beast which is out of control.
11. 11 Woe unto them! for they have gone in the way of Cain, and ran greedily after the error of Balaam for reward, and perished in the gainsaying of Core.
What was the way of Cain? Disobedience, anger, hate, & then murder! God wanted a sacrifice, a symbol which would in the future reflect upon Jesus as a blood sacrifice, one that comes with tears and pain. But Cain did not care about what God wanted, he only wanted to give God some little something as he pleased. God’s request was mocked by Cain and when God reacted that it was not pleasing, Cain was filled with rage! He could have simply redone his sacrifice but instead he murdered his own brother to get back at God and him! Look how many today live on this path!
Balaam was getting paid to go down and curse the people of God so they could be defeated in battle but his donkey started talking to him and revealed that God’s angels would not allow him to go do that! That scared him, he repented, and blessed them instead! Many people today think it gets the favor of the world to mock and curse good people and Christians, but their reward of temporary praise or cash comes with a curse on them. The mockers of the righteous always face God’s judgment for choosing the wrong side and often their demise comes quickly.
Core, or Korah, challenged Moses and Arron on how to worship God. (see Numbers 16) He was not a Levite, not a dedicated to God priest, so he was disqualified in any of his prideful endeavors to get people to follow his teachings. He was judged for inciting rebellion. Numbers 16:32 And the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed them up, and their houses, and all the men that appertained unto Korah, and all their goods. I don’t doubt that many unusual supernatural occurrences have happened to many of the mockers of God’s people. Some heed God’s warnings, while others do not.
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