Vol. 2 Timely
Greetings No. 29
THE ONLY
PEACE OF MIND
Volume 2
Number 29
Copyright, 1953 Reprint
All rights reserved
V.T. HOUTEFF
TRUTH'S
IS THE DECREE IN
HEAVEN
Timely Greetings, Vol. 2,
No. 29 1
TEXT FOR PRAYER
Our Dependence Is In God
I shall read from "Christ's Object
Lessons," p. 63, beginning with the first paragraph:
"The parable of the seed reveals that
God is at work in nature. The seed has
in itself a germinating principle, a principle that God Himself has implanted;
yet if left to itself the seed would have no power to spring up. Man has his part to act in promoting the
growth of the grain. He must prepare and
enrich the soil and cast in the seed. He
must till the fields. But there is a
point beyond which he can accomplish nothing.
No strength or wisdom of man can bring forth from the seed the living
plant. Let man put forth his efforts to
the utmost limit, he must still depend upon One who has connected the sowing
and the reaping by wonderful links of His own omnipotent power."
We shall kneel and pray for wisdom, skill,
and good judgment in planting the seeds of Truth, to know that beyond this we
can do nothing. The Omnipotent One in
Whom we live and move and have our being is to do the rest.
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TRUTH'S
IS THE
DECREE IN HEAVEN
TEXT OF ADDRESS BY V.T. HOUTEFF,
MINISTER OF DAVIDIAN 7TH-DAY ADVENTISTS
SABBATH,
MT.
Our text is in the sixteenth chapter of
Matthew. I shall begin with verses 13
and 14.
Matt. 16:13, 14 -- "When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, He asked
His disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the Son
of man am? And they said, Some say that Thou art John the Baptist: some, Elias; and
others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets."
Here Jesus asks a vital question: Who do men
think I am? The answer given Him reveals
the people's ignorance, for it seems that they should have known that Christ
could not have been John the Baptist; they surely should have known that John
had baptized Him at the beginning of His ministry. Moreover, Jesus was preaching even before
John was beheaded.
Matt. 16:15, 16 -- "He saith unto them, But whom say ye
that I am? And Simon Peter answered and
said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living
God."
The disciples themselves seemed to have been
uncertain as to who Jesus was. Peter
alone without a moment's hesitation replied, "Thou art the Son of the
Living God."
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Matt.
Peter received the blessing because he was
the one to whom the Father had revealed His Son, because he had been impressed
by the Spirit of the sacred Truth, and because he freely voiced the Truth. Having been endowed with this gift to his
credit, Peter was told:
Matt.
The words "thou" and
"this" comprehend two objects -- Peter and the truth he uttered. The name "Peter" in Greek means
"stone." And so what Jesus was actually saying was not to name the
man, but rather to tell him that he was selected to be one of the stones in the
spiritual structure -- the church. But
"On this rock [not on a stone] I will build My
church," Jesus declared. On which rock? -- Obviously on the solid rock of Truth, the
truth which Peter uttered -- the truth that Jesus Christ is the "Son of
God."
Then Jesus made known that the gates of hell
could not prevail against the Truth, that the gates could not keep in hell (in
the grave) even the dead in Christ, that they, too, are to be a part of the
ever-living church, the church that stands on the solid Rock of Truth.
Matt.
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Jesus here declares that Peter is become the
figure, the type, of all those who declare Divinely-revealed truths. To them, as to Peter, are given the keys of
the Kingdom; that is, the promulgators of Inspired Truth are authorized to bind
and to loose by the power of the Truth.
That which they bind on earth is so recognized in heaven. Elijah bound that there should be a famine
for three and one half years, and so it was.
Said he, "unto Ahab...there shall not be dew nor
rain these years, but according to my word." 1 Kings 17:1.
Matt.
Since the people knew not that Jesus was the
Son of the living God, Jesus realized that to flatly tell them so, would only
make them the more prejudiced. He,
therefore, charged the apostles to do the same as that which we today are
charged to do. Not to say flatly:
"We have the Truth, the message of the Eleventh Hour." Instead we are to teach the Divinely-revealed
Bible truths, thus giving our hearers the opportunity to draw their own
conclusions, to make up their own minds.
If they are honest searchers for Truth, the Father Himself will reveal
in their hearts that this is the Eleventh Hour message.
We must not therefore bluntly speak forth
the all-important Truth of God. We must
use good judgment and tact. We must sow
the seed in well-prepared soil if we expect God's blessing, if we expect His
rain and sunshine to cause it to spring forth and bear fruit. If the seed is not sown deep enough, the
plant will wither away with the rising of the sun; if we merely drop the seed
on the top of the ground, the birds will pick it up.
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Matt.
Here is magnified the aforesaid truth. Peter's binding or loosing on earth was
acceptable in Heaven only when done by means of Divinely-revealed Truth. When speaking from his own impulses and
sentiments, Peter was sharply rebuked, and told plainly that his suggestions
were not the Truth, but were prompted by Satan.
It is therefore plain that the followers of Christ may bind or loose
only with the keys of Truth. They are to
realize that Truth alone swings open the gates of Heaven.
Finally, if we have Heaven's Truth for the
hour, as Peter had It in his day, we then have the keys of Heaven and can with
It bind or loose -- Truth's decisions on earth are the decisions in Heaven.
Matt. 16:24 -- "Then said Jesus unto His disciples, If any man will come after
Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me."
This verse implies that Peter's concern was
more for his own life than for the life of Jesus, for Peter knew that if Jesus
were slain, then his own life would be in jeopardy. Hence Peter was told that if any man would
follow Jesus, he, too, would voluntarily consent to carry his own cross if
Truth so decrees. The
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Apostles, we are told, did
this very thing, and were faithful unto death.
Matt.
The followers of Christ are here told not to
shun Truth's decree though they be required to surrender their own life, for thus
losing their lives they will be actually saving them for eternity -- they will
rise in the resurrection of the just.
But for them to forsake Truth in order to appease the enemies of Truth,
and thus save their temporal lives would eventually result in their dying the
death from which there is no resurrection.
It should be of interest to know whether the
Apostle Peter was the first to be given the Keys of Heaven, or whether others
had the Keys before him. Since Present
Truth committed to an individual is the Keys of Heaven, and since the teaching
of It binds and looses things on earth and is so sanctioned in Heaven, then
others must have had the Keys before they were passed on to Peter, for the
earth, the church, and Heaven-revealed Truth existed before Peter's time.
Take for example Noah. He declared that there was to be a flood,
that everything outside of the ark which he was building would perish, and that
everything that entered into it would live.
Then the fact that Heaven sent the flood immediately after Noah
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preached of it is proof in itself that that which Noah bound
on earth was bound in Heaven also.
Peter, you, see, was not the first to be given the Keys of Heaven.
After Noah, we shall see that the Keys were
passed on to Abraham: since that which was to be bound or loosed on earth had
to be bound or loosed in Heaven, the three messengers from heaven consulted
Abraham concerning the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. It was then covenanted that if there be ten
righteous persons in the city where
Thus it is that down through the line of
Jacob came the Lord, and thus it is that Jacob's
descendants inherited the Promised Land.
Having in possession the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, Jacob at the
closing hours of his life decreed that Manasseh's birthright should be given to
Ephraim; to this Joseph protested by endeavoring to persuade his father to put
his right hand on Manasseh's head (Gen. 48:17-19), but what Jacob bound on
earth was bound in Heaven, for years later, after the death of Solomon, the
tribe of Ephraim, not of Manasseh, ruled the kingdom of Israel. We see, then, that what Jacob bound on earth
was also bound in Heaven.
Contemporaneously with Jacob, Joseph by
interpretation of Pharaoh's dream bound that there should
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be seven years of plenty, and seven years of
famine. Thus it was that Joseph's decree
was carried out (bound) by Heaven.
And Moses said, "If these men die the
common death of all men, or if they be visited after the visitation of all men;
then the Lord hath not sent me. But if
the Lord make a new thing, and the earth open her
mouth, and swallow them up, with all that appertain unto them, and they go down
quick into the pit; then ye shall understand that these men have provoked the
Lord." Num. 16:29, 30.
Moses' decree was bound in Heaven, for
"the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed them up, and their houses, and
all the men that appertained unto Korah, and all
their goods." Num. 16:32.
The Keys of Kingdom you see, passed along
from one generation to another -- from the Patriarchs to the Prophets, to the
Apostles, and on down to our day. For
instance, about three score years ago the founder of the Seventh-day Adventist
Denomination declared that the General Conference was no longer Heaven's
highest authority on earth (General Conference Bulletin, 34th. Session, Vol. 4, Extra #1,
Plainly, then, the Keys of the
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it, the Truth stands out that the Keys of the
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