Background image original source [1].
“We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God,” they said. (Acts 14:22)
by Brian Shilhavy
The title of this article is a direct quote from two different chapters in the Book of Acts in the New Testament portion of the Bible (emphasis mine):
Peter replied,
“Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.”
With many other words he warned them; and he pleaded with them,
“Save yourselves from this corrupt generation!”
(Acts 2:38-40)
Then some Jews came from Antioch and Iconium and won the crowd over.
They stoned Paul and dragged him outside the city, thinking he was dead. But after the disciples had gathered around him, he got up and went back into the city.
The next day he and Barnabas left for Derbe. They preached the good news in that city and won a large number of disciples.
Then they returned to Lystra, Iconium and Antioch, strengthening the disciples and encouraging them to remain true to the faith. “We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God,” they said.
(Acts 14:19-22)
The evil forces behind the “corrupt/perverse generation” of Peter and Paul’s day, are the same evil forces behind the present generation that all of us are currently living in.
So the instructions given to the New Testament believers, all still apply to us living today as well.
Notice that in the New Testament portion of the Bible, that there is no teaching at all on many of the topics that are taught today in the Christian religion, and many other religions.
The teaching that Jesus was a great religious teacher, for example, and that he came to make the world a “better place” and that we are to follow his example, is not only NOT found in the teachings of the New Testament, but the exact opposite is actually taught.
Peter summed it up on that very first day, the Day of Pentecost, when he “pleaded” with the disciples of Jesus to
“Save yourselves from this corrupt generation!”
As we read through the pages of the rest of the Book of Acts which documents the lives of those first believers, we see exactly what Peter meant by that warning.
Stephen is stoned to death in Acts chapter 7. James, the brother of John and one of the “inner three” apostles who were closest to Jesus, was executed by King Herod in Acts chapter 12.
It was about this time that King Herod arrested some who belonged to the assembly, intending to persecute them.
He had James, the brother of John, put to death with the sword. When he saw that this pleased the Jews, he proceeded to seize Peter also. (Acts 12:1-3)
Of those who were not executed, almost ALL of them spent time in jail, and escaping from the Jews who did not accept Jesus as the Messiah.
The apostle Paul, who started out as a Satanic Jew who did not accept Jesus as the Messiah and participated with killing and putting in jail Jews who did, soon found out the meaning of what Jesus foretold about him:
Now there was a certain disciple at Damascus named Ananias. The Lord said to him in a vision,
“Ananias!” He said,
“Behold, it’s me, Lord.”
The Lord said to him,
“Arise, and go to the street which is called Straight, and inquire in the house of Judah for one named Saul, a man of Tarsus. For behold, he is praying, and in a vision he has seen a man named Ananias coming in, and laying his hands on him, that he might receive his sight.”
But Ananias answered,
“Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he did to your saints at Jerusalem. Here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who call on your name.”
But the Lord said to him,
“Go your way, for he is my chosen vessel to bear my name before the nations and kings, and the children of Israel.
For I will show him how many things he must suffer for my name’s sake.”
(Acts 9:10-16)
As we can clearly see here, God called Paul to make the world a better place by teaching about the love of Jesus to suffer and be willing to die to represent Jesus as his messenger.
And that is exactly what the text in Acts recorded, that Paul suffered and almost died in his ministry as the representative of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles (non-ethnic Jews).
Then some Jews came from Antioch and Iconium and won the crowd over.
They stoned Paul and dragged him outside the city, thinking he was dead. But after the disciples had gathered around him, he got up and went back into the city.
The next day he and Barnabas left for Derbe. They preached the good news in that city and won a large number of disciples.
Then they returned to Lystra, Iconium and Antioch, strengthening the disciples and encouraging them to remain true to the faith. “We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God,” they said.
(Acts 14:19-22)
Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, I have been constantly on the move.
I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my own countrymen, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false brothers.
I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked.
Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the assemblies. (2 Corinthians 11:24-28)
This, then, is what the life of a true believer is like, who is trying to rescue themselves (and others) from our corrupt and perverse generation.
Paul’s life was an example of what he meant when he told new believers “We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God.”
Everyone living in the United States who still believe that this country is a “Godly country” founded by “Godly men” and that the only thing one needs to do to return to those “glory years” is vote the right people into political office, are deceived and not walking in the Truth. See:
Was the U.S. Constitution Written to Protect “We the People” or “We the Globalists”? Were the Founding Fathers Godly Men or Servants of Satan? [2]
COVID was the Introduction of Mass Psychosis in Conditioning People to Fear Something that Does Not Exist: The “Unseen” Virus – AI will Soon Replace this Mass Psychosis with Another Fear of Something that Does Not Exist: AI “Consciousness”
Image Source [3].
We are moving from the false prophecy that a “virus” will wipe out humanity to the new false prophecy of the day: “AI will wipe out humanity”.
The “predictive programming” is in full swing now.
This was published today on MarketWatch [3]:
Do machines have feelings? AI has philosophers and tech leaders rethinking consciousness.
As AI models become more advanced, tech leaders and philosophers are mulling the relationship between humanity and technology
Excerpts:
A millennium-old philosophy debate about what makes someone or something conscious is getting a twist in the age of artificial intelligence.
AI models can adopt unique personalities, hold memories of past conversations and imitate language accurately enough to pass for a human. Underneath these uncannily humanlike behaviors, could AI models also have inner lives and emotions?
And what could that mean for how should we treat them?
These are questions that researchers and philosophers — inside as well as outside of tech circles — are grappling with as the capabilities of AI models improve. In June, the Financial Times reported that Anthropic, Google’s DeepMind and Meta
have dedicated research efforts to explore machine consciousness and model welfare — or if AI systems can experience things in ways that warrant moral consideration.
Watch carefully how the masters of fear and deception define certain words, such as ” inner lives and emotions“.
What’s an “inner life“?? See:
What is Life? [4]
Just as there were honest doctors and scientists who did not buy into the COVID lies and deceptions, so too are there dissenters in the field of technology who do not, and will not, buy into these AI lies.
More from the same MarketWatch [3] article:
On the other hand, leaders such as Mustafa Suleyman, chief of AI at Microsoft, have pushed against this idea.
“AIs are not conscious. They do not feel, experience, or suffer,” Suleyman, a longstanding critic of model-welfare discussions, wrote in a September essay [5].
He also pushed back against the idea of granting rights to AI.
Know Your Enemy if You Want to Survive What’s Coming
Original Left Image Source [6]. Original Right Image Source [7].
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If you are a true believer, a disciple of Jesus Christ, then you were NOT put on this earth to make it a better place. You were called to BATTLE the enemies of Jesus, Satan himself, and you should expect to be opposed and suffer for doing so, as you seek to be saved from this evil generation, and rescue as many others in the process.
Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn and wail.
Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up. (James 4:7-10)
Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.
Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.
Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings. (1 Peter 5:6-9)
I lift up my eyes to the hills— where does my help come from?
My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth. (Psalms 121:1-2)
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