Grace and Law; and lawless grace

“Make the heart of this people fat^H8082 [‘spoiled with grease’], and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed.” (Isa. 6:10).

“For this people’s heart is waxed gross^G3975 [‘callous, stupefied’], and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.” (Matt. 13:15).

If the Lord is commanding to make His people’s heart ruined and blind and deafened, then who was He commanding to ruin them? Isn’t it the same scenario as the vision of Micaiah? There the Lord permitted the deceiver to do what he always wants to do—destroy.

“He said, Hear thou therefore the word of the LORD: I saw the LORD sitting on His throne, and all the host of heaven standing by Him on His right hand and on His left.

And the LORD said, Who shall persuade Ahab, that he may go up and fall at Ramothgilead? And one said on this manner, and another said on that manner.

And there came forth a spirit, and stood before the LORD, and said, I will persuade him.

And the LORD said unto him, Wherewith? And he said, I will go forth, and I will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. And He said, Thou shalt persuade him, and prevail also: go forth, and do so.

Now therefore, behold, the LORD hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets, and the LORD hath spoken evil concerning thee.” (1Ki. 22:19-23).

The end of the strong delusion sent to King Ahab was death, because the wages of sin is death.

“And a certain man drew a bow at a venture, and smote the king of Israel between the joints of the harness: wherefore he said unto the driver of his chariot, Turn thine hand, and carry me out of the host; for I am wounded. And the battle increased that day: and the king was stayed up in his chariot against the Syrians, and died at even: and the blood ran out of the wound into the midst of the chariot.” (1Ki. 22:34,35).

Ahab had not cared about the Law of his fathers’ God; and he married a heathen idolater of Ashtoreth, Queen of heaven and Mother of all the gods. In the end, early death was the result for both the king and his queen. But, death is not what the Lord of life really desires. “In Him was life; and the life was the light of men.” (John 1:4). Death is His strange act.

But, even though Christ loves to give us life, the life from Christ must come by His Father’s method, under His Father’s approved conditions. The Son of God is ready and willing to give us grace and peace; however, He will never skirt the truth component of love required of His Father. Grace + Truth = Divine love.

But, will the children of Adam submit to the truth? Or, will they fail of Christ’s grace that comes combined with the truth that He must speak. Then will they discard the whole truth and grace because the stark truth component is all they see in Christ’s dealings with sinners? Have they closed their eyes to the grace component that David always saw in Jesus? And therefore, have they thus opened the way for Satan to cut them off from the Lord of grace and truth? Will they cut themselves off from the Lord of divine love, Jehovah and His begotten Son both of whom are “merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin”, but “will by no means clear the guilty” (Ex. 34:6,7)?

Ahab, Jezebel, and almost everyone in Israel preferred to leave the eternal love of Jehovah because they couldn’t stomach the truth component of divine love that He lived and loved and required His people to live. They didn’t want His love if they had to have His truth. They preferred the selfishness and self-indulgence promoted by Jezebel’s Baal and Ashtoreth devils. They preferred empty lust over the fullness of being infinitely loved, which is the greatest need naturally within everyone made in God’s image.

Being loved was David’s chief need, first from his earthly father, and later from God and from everyone around him. David would endure the truth from the God of love, if that meant he could remain in the love of Christ, “my Lord” (Ps. 110:1). In the end he could say, “O how love I Thy law! it is my meditation all the day.” (Ps. 119:97). “He restoreth my soul: He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.” (Ps. 23:3).

Paul was the same way. He simply could not cut off the God of truth if that meant losing God’s approval and losing the love of Christ, “our Lord” (Rom. 7:25). Paul’s need for divine acceptance drove him to endure the throes and trauma from the guilt and shame brought on him by the divine Law. And in the end Paul was surrendered to the reality of his personal wretchedness and natural filthiness, and he settled in justification and in his heavenly Parents’ love and acceptance (see Romans 7:25).

As love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage, so do grace and truth, mercy and justice go together.

God and His only begotten Son cannot separate these two polar opposites. Grace and truth, mercy and justice are opposites; yet they cannot be separated in the Godhead’s mind. Justice always being dealt with mercy; mercy always being dealt with justice. Truth always dealt with grace; grace always dealt with truth. It’s easy to accept justice with mercy mingled. But mercy mingled with justice? The blinding light of mercy mingled with justice makes the natural heart cry, “No. Please no!” It’s easy to accept truth with grace; but, it’s not so easy to accept grace with truth. Will we suffer long under the blinding ramifications before we surrender to this divine structure of love?

What does it mean to give grace without truth? It means to never require obedience to what is right before giving grace. It means that grace will come, uninhibited forever, whether or not the one receiving grace wants to treat others good. It means that justice will never come for wrong choices, but is all that will ever mercy. Therefore, grace and mercy are not predicated on any conditions. The heart that receives such unconditional “grace” and “mercy” is permitted to presume upon its gracious benefactor, whether the benefactor is a man or God Himself. If the police gives me a warning citation for speeding instead of handing me the ticket that I deserve, then grace without truth means I can immediately forget the warning and go right back to speeding again. “Oh, happy day!” exults the natural man inside our rebellious hearts. But, then the Spirit helps us realize that if everyone could thus treat that govern the highways, then the highways would no longer be safe for anyone. Truth must prevail, justice must remain in force.

Grace without truth, mercy without justice, equals lawlessness, also known as, “perdition” (2Thess. 2:3). It means that there does not exist any punishment for sin. It means everyone can hurt others with impunity; they can do whatever is right in their own eyes. No fear of God, no fear of Judgment Day. It ends with a world where everyone gets away with every injustice because they have no fear of getting caught and being brought to justice for any act of wrong-doing, whether criminal or civil. This has been the environment that the false prophets of Baal and Ashtoreth have always created.

“I have seen also in the prophets of Jerusalem an horrible thing: they commit adultery, and walk in lies: they strengthen also the hands of evildoers, that none doth return from his wickedness: they are all of them unto me as Sodom, and the inhabitants thereof as Gomorrah. Therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts concerning the prophets; Behold, I will feed them with wormwood, and make them drink the water of gall: for from the prophets of Jerusalem is profaneness gone forth into all the land.” (Jer. 23:14,15).

And this is the very world that is coming soon when this Protestant nation will sign the peace treaty with the Church of Rome, and accept the proposals of Catholicism and its Ashtoreth Mary, Queen of Heaven, Mother of God, and Mediatrix of God.

The Protestant denominations have rejected their holy Bible and their hearts have been made fat and hardened. Therefore, God has sent this strong delusion. The Protestants may seem ever so righteous, and ever so sincere and humble to return their love to the Beast of the Dark Ages. But, it only reveals that, along with their hardened hearts, their eyes are blinded and their ears are uncircumcised. They are unconverted. They have become hardened against the truth of God’s word, and they cannot receive any if His grace. Secretly, “none doth return from his wickedness”; therefore is “profaneness gone forth into all the land.” The Protestant Evangelicalism has cast off the Law and justice and truth of God, and He has cut them off from His grace. He has given them over to the machinations of Satan and into the hands of their persecutors from the Dark Ages.

“Then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of His mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of His coming:

Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders,

And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.

And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:

That they all might be [judged] who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” (2Thess. 2:8-12).

Will we join the world in its lawlessness? Or, will we surrender to the high standard of the Spirit of Prophecy and be justified and sanctified by the truth and grace of Jesus?