Transcript

It’s Time to Begin Our Service

I am so glad to have you here with us. I want to say that I appreciate all the different ones at Faith Assembly who have reached out over the past week. I know there was a lot to process in what we covered in the last talk I gave, and I am glad to hear that so many of you found it helpful to understand what has been going on with the leadership at Faith Assembly.

I want to say again that there is nothing wrong with being a Daniel in Babylon. Sometimes, our circumstances keep us trapped, and you have to make the best you can out of the situation you are in. I want you to know that I certainly do not, and discourage anybody else who might do it, from making judgments over the people who are in difficult situations that make it very hard for them to escape The Message. I want you to know, it’s not the mountain you worship on that matters; it’s that you do it in spirit and truth. Jesus can save you wherever you are, and regardless of whoever it is that surrounds you. What matters is that you have Christ in your heart, and you are holding onto Him.

We are all praying for you. We all know these things cannot go on forever; time itself is moving forward. Time has already proven these false preachers to be wrong over and over again. All the predictions they are making these past weeks are going to be wrong too. America is not about to go into a civil war. This is not George Washington’s vision. Whoever wins the next election will be president for four years, then we will have another election. When that is all said and done, we will still be here. The end of days is not upon us. The doomsday is not upon us. Time will prove that out. When time proves it out, I hope you will remember who was right and who was wrong. Just like the last fifty times their predictions have been wrong, they are wrong again this time.

I encourage you all, once again, to write down these predictions they are making and keep track of them. As you see that they are always wrong, constantly wrong, that will do a lot to help you break the mental strongholds they have created in your minds. They don’t really have a clue what they are talking about. God is not going to take a man who has made 50 wrong predictions in a row and use that man to finally get it right on number 51, and he is the guy you have to trust to make it out. God is not going to do that. It doesn’t work that way. The truth is, they are just using these sorts of things to manipulate people. It is to instill fear that if they leave, somehow they are going to end up lost, or miss the rapture, or some nonsense like that. They have tricked you all into believing that you need to know their special revelations in order to make it. But being justified by the blood of Jesus, you will be saved from all wrath. You don’t need them. What they are actually doing is inserting themselves into the role of savior. They are even directly impersonating Jesus now, as I mentioned in the last talk. It’s shameful.

If this is your first time joining us and you wonder who we are and what we are up to, my name is Charles Paisley. I and most of our listeners here are formerly members of the cult following of William Branham known as The Message. The Message is a global doomsday cult with millions of members. It started here in Jeffersonville, Indiana, and spread all over the world. I am formerly associate pastor of the second oldest Message church in the world, right here in the Jeffersonville area. This is a little mission we operate to offer encouragement to those leaving The Message and to take a look at the plain reading of scripture as we seek to wash out of our minds what, for most of us, has been a lifetime of indoctrination.

Today, we are resuming our study in the book of Ephesians. I encourage you to turn there with me. We are in the fifth chapter, and I will be picking up at verse 15 and working our way down to verse 20. The apostle Paul writes:

15 Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, 16 making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. 17 Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. 18 And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, 19 addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, 20 giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Let us pray.

Lord God, as we approach the scripture today, we pray that you grant us wisdom. Help us to be all you would have us to be, and grant us understanding of what we read. This we ask, in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Introduction

Well, Brothers and Sisters, I am excited to reach the halfway point of chapter 5. I know I have been taking my time, and just going through this all nice and slow. There is so much in this little book of Ephesians. The truth is really packed in tight here, and we have some really interesting verses to look at today.

I know I have explained this probably a dozen times now, but I am going to say it again for context, in case this is your first time joining us. It’s important to understand where we are overall within the book of Ephesians. The Apostle Paul writes almost all of his epistles in two parts, and he follows the same pattern in them all. In the first part of his pastoral letters, Paul will write about doctrines. He will talk about the way Christians should think about things and how we should understand the teachings of the church. Paul always spends time on doctrine, and doctrine is for the mind. It’s to help us think in a correct way.

Then, in the second part of his letters, Paul will always speak about Christian conduct and behavior. He explains what Christian doctrine looks like when it is lived out in our lives. So, in that way, Paul always covers both bases. He helps us understand both how to think about our Christian faith and then also how to carry it into action in our lives. I love how Paul takes the time to actually give practical consideration for the doctrines. He doesn’t just leave things hanging out in the wind; he really gives us a comprehensive picture—both how to think about things and how to carry that into action in our lives.

In this book of Ephesians, Paul has been speaking about doctrine in his first three chapters. Then, as Paul comes into chapter 4, he starts speaking about conduct. By the time we get here to the middle of chapter 5, Paul is smack in the middle of speaking about Christian conduct.

Since we entered this section of Paul’s epistle, we have given all our lessons the title, “Walk in Love,” because Paul is building his entire case and explanation for Christian conduct around the love of God. Paul has framed love as both the motivator and the explanation behind Christian conduct. The love of God is both the beginning and the end of the matter. It’s why Christians behave the way they do, and it defines the behavior itself.

As Christians, we love each other like Christ loved us, and because of that command and that love, there are certain ways we behave. There are also certain things we avoid. Our dos and don’ts, and our lifestyle, are defined by that command to love each other as Christ loved us.

Paul has truly framed his entire explanation around love, and I have taken care through our prior lessons to show that. With each one of Paul’s instructions around Christian conduct, he has given us an explanation that lets us see that he is speaking about law and the other attributes of the fruit of the Spirit. Paul’s teachings on conduct are rooted in honesty, faithfulness, kindness, generosity, patience, and self-control. He is speaking about godly character, rooted in the love of God.

In our last lesson, we walked through the prior verses in this chapter where Paul told the Ephesians to walk as children of light. We discovered that in these verses, light is a metaphor for love. We discovered that walking in love and walking in light are the same thing, and that walking in light is just a metaphor for walking in love.

It is so important that we catch the way the apostles, like Paul, use those sort of words which are symbolic. Light is a symbolic word, and it is important for us to catch how the apostles use that word. Paul does not use the word light just any old way, but just like the other apostles, he very clearly frames light as a metaphor for love. It’s important for us to notice how Paul uses the word “light,” especially because the word “light” meant something very different in the places we come from. Walking in light did not mean walking in love—in the places we come from. They have corrupted the meaning of the symbolic words in the Bible.

They have ignored the plain simple reading of scripture, and they have invented their own concoctions for what many of these symbols mean. The word light is one of those words that they have invented their own definition for, rather than letting scripture inform them as to how to apply it.

Walk As Wise

As we continue reading today, we are bumping into two more words that Paul is using. Like the word “light,” these two words also have very specific meanings in the places we come from. Once again, we are going to discover that Paul is using these two words very differently than the places we come from use these words. That is what we are going to be examining today. Those two words are “wise” and “foolish.”

If you noticed in what we read at the opening, Paul used the words “wise” and “foolish.” He spoke of a wise way to walk and a foolish way to walk. I want to spend a little time and make sure we all notice how Paul is using those words.

Before we examine what Paul has to say here, let me first remind you what the Message does with those words so that you can compare that to what Paul says as we read through here.

In the Message, the words “wise” and “foolish” always take you back to the parable of the wise and foolish virgins. The people in the Message have invented a definition for those words based on how they interpret the symbols in that parable. The people in the Message believe they are wise, and they believe what makes them wise is that they heard the midnight cry—they heard the Message. What makes the foolish people foolish is that they did not accept the Message, or they do not know the Message. For people in the Message, that is the difference between the wise and the foolish.

There is one other verse of scripture, besides Matthew 25, that they will use. Sometimes they will use the scripture in the book of Daniel, chapter 12. That verse says, “the wise shall understand.” They will use that verse to say the wise are the people who are going to have a special revelation and a special understanding of end-time prophecy.

Those are really the only spots in all of scripture which they use to come up with the idea that the difference between wise and foolish is that the wise understand the hidden mysteries and the foolish don’t.

Before we read again what Paul says here, I would suggest to you that they are actually dead wrong. They are totally abusing the Bible with that interpretation. They are actually reading Daniel, chapter 12, wrong, and they are interpreting the symbolism in the parables in a way that totally contradicts the plain reading of the Bible. We will see a little bit of that as we look at these verses right here in Ephesians.

So let’s read what Paul says, and I am just going to connect this up for you by jumping through some of the key verses we have studied in our past lessons. I will go back to chapter 3 to start because Paul has been consistent from the moment he started talking about Christian conduct.

Let me first read you Paul’s prayer just before he begins to speak on conduct. In verse 14, he prays:

14 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15 from whom every family[c] in heaven and on earth is named, 16 that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

So, what is Paul praying for them to know and understand? The love of Christ. Paul is praying for them to know and understand love—its height, its depth, its breadth, its length. In knowing this love, they can be filled with the fullness of God.

Go forward to chapter 4, verse 1. Paul says:

4 … walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, 2 [verse 2] … bearing with one another in love,

So Paul starts there, telling us to walk worthy of our calling. Then in the next verse, he again clearly connects walking worthy to walking in love. He touches on this repeatedly in chapter 4. He talks about growing up in love, speaking the truth in love, needing love in order to be a properly working member of the body of Christ. Then in chapter 5, verse 2, Paul says again:

2 … walk in love.

That is the second time Paul has said walk in love. He said it at the start of chapter 4, and he says it again at the start of chapter 5. Then, when we come to verse 8, Paul says:

8 …Walk as children of light.

He hasn’t changed subjects. Walking as children of light is walking in love. It’s the same thing. We covered that in our last lesson.

When we arrive at verse 15, Paul is still talking about this walk. Let me read it:

15 Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise.

If you read what Paul is saying and go back to the start of these metaphors about walking, Paul started out talking about walking in love. Then he shifted the metaphor to walking in light, which helps us understand that our love is like a light that shines on others. Now he shifts his metaphor again to walking as wise. It’s clear here that walking as wise means making sure we shine our light. If you remember back to our last lesson, it is really very clear that shining our light means showing other people love.

The way we shine our light as Christians is to show them God’s love through our own lives.

So, let me read that to you again. I want you to notice that walking carefully and walking wise here is about walking in a way that we shine the light of Christ’s love.

Remember the verses we read in our last lesson: Whoever loves his brother walks in the light, but whoever hates his brother walks in darkness.

Let me read verse 14:

13 But when anything is exposed by the light [the light of God’s love], it becomes visible, 14 for anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says,

“Awake, O sleeper,

    and arise from the dead,

and Christ will shine on you.”

15 Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise.

Paul is describing someone who is shining the light of God’s love as someone who is wise. I want to say that again: Paul is describing someone who is shining the light of God’s love as someone who is wise.

In this passage of scripture, showing love is a mark of being wise.

When we look at the way Paul says this, we also notice he is using the same metaphor. First, it was walk in love. Then it was walk in light. Now it is walk as wise. The truth is, those are three metaphors for what is essentially the same thing.

Walking in love, walking in light, and walking wise are three different ways of saying the same thing.

I want to encourage you to take time to study that, to look at it, and see it for yourself. I think it will help you if you do—not because I said it and you accepted it, but because you took some time to look at it and see it for yourself. You read the scriptures and saw it yourself.

The truth is, Paul is just cycling through these phrases, which all mean the same essential thing.

I want to encourage you to know that if you are walking in love, then you are walking wise. Walking in love is walking in the wisdom that Paul is speaking about here. When we read what Paul says here in Ephesians 4 and 5, and especially if we compare it to the writings of 1st John, it’s really quite plain that walking in love, walking in light, and walking wise are essentially the same thing.

There is one other thing I want to suggest to you, and it is this: I want to suggest to you that Paul may actually have the parable of the wise and foolish virgins in mind as he writes the fifth chapter of the book of Ephesians. I say that because of the way he lays out his statements. Look with me at how he writes this passage, and I think you can see the same clues that I see.

Paul says, walk as wise, don’t be foolish. He says make good use of your time. He says don’t get drunk with wine. As he says these things here, you may notice that pretty well every point he makes there can be directly found around the parable of the wise and foolish virgins.

In the parable of the wise and the foolish, the foolish were the hypocrites. They were the ones who ate and drank with the drunken at the end of Matthew 24. The virgins were sleeping and slumbering, their lamps had gone out, and they were not making good use of the time. The words themselves that Paul is using are the same terminology of the parable of the wise and foolish.

I think it would be reasonable for us to take Paul’s explanation of these symbols and apply it to the parable of the wise and the foolish. I think it is also reasonable for us to think that Paul may have that very parable in mind when he wrote these things down.

One thing is for sure: if we did that, if we took what Paul said here and used it to inform how we read the parable of the wise and foolish, that would be much safer for us than using the crackpot ideas that came from the mind of a false prophet.

Foolishness

Let me read the text again to you, starting with verse 14:

“Awake, O sleeper,
and arise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.”

Isn’t that what the virgins were doing? They were sleeping and slumbering until someone shouted to wake them up. There are a lot of similarities here. Now, verse 15:

15 Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise,

Don’t sleep like the foolish, but wake up like the wise. Verse 16:

16 making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.

Keep those lamps trimmed and burning. Verse 17:

17 Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.

And what is the will of the Lord? It is that we love one another as He loved us. It is that we walk in love. It is that we walk as children of light. That is the will of the Lord.

Isn’t this the same thing Paul was praying for at the end of chapter 3? Paul prayed for the Ephesians to know and understand. To know and understand what? The depth, height, breadth, and width of the love of God. Paul was praying for them to grasp and understand this love so that they would know how to conduct themselves.

This has been Paul’s message about Christian conduct since the start of chapter 4:

17 Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.

And with this verse 17, I want to also bring to your attention what is written in Daniel chapter 12. We all know the verse very well. It says, “the wise shall understand.”

If you go back to Daniel—which we are not going to do today—you can actually see what Paul is saying in the book of Daniel itself. The full passage in Daniel says:

The wicked shall do wickedly,
But the wise shall understand.

The wicked shall do wickedly, but the wise shall understand. Even back in Daniel, being wise is set up as the opposite of behaving wickedly.

If we read Daniel 12 to say that being wise has to do with understanding special end-time prophecies, we would be misreading Daniel in the same way we would be misreading Paul here.

Yes, we must walk as wise. Yes, the wise shall understand. But it’s not about understanding special end-time mysteries. It’s about understanding the depth, breadth, height, and width of the love of God. It’s about understanding the will of God, which we can only know through His love.

The wicked shall do wickedly, but the wise shall understand. Brothers and sisters, that is what this is about. Verse 17:

17 Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.

At the end of the day, you and I would be fools to ignore what Paul is saying here. We would be fools to read the prophecies of Daniel or the parables of Jesus and interpret those things in a way that totally contradicts the way Paul is using these words. It would be ridiculous not to take what Paul is saying into consideration. It would be ignoring the plain reading of the Bible in order to invent your own interpretation of symbolism. Sadly, that is exactly what the Message is built on. Let’s move on to verse 18:

18 And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit,

What did those unfaithful servants do at the end of Matthew 24 as Jesus introduces the parable of the wise and foolish virgins? They ate and drank with the wicked. They missed it. If you read those things as they were spoken by Jesus, it’s pretty clear that the unfaithful servants and the foolish virgins represent the same group of people. We have a lesson on this in our William Branham series if you want to listen to it. The title of the lesson was “What the Parable of Wise and Foolish Virgins Is Not.” I went over these things in more detail there.

The unfaithful servants and the foolish virgins are hypocrites mingling with Christians, but they are not genuine Christians themselves. They are really the same as the tares—fakes and frauds mingled in among the genuine.

One of the things that marked the behavior of the fakes was that they became intoxicated. In their drunkenness and intoxication, they were harming other people—smiting their fellow servants. Paul brings that imagery into his epistle.

This is not what we should be doing if we are wise. The wise should not be living to feed our own appetites, not caring for others around us, getting intoxicated on whatever we crave, and harming people in the process.

People become intoxicated by many things, not just wine. You can get drunk on power, wealth, greed. When people become overly intoxicated, they say and do things without realizing it. In a sense, they are not in their right mind. They are not thinking straight. They don’t comprehend their own actions because they are intoxicated. They are so overcome by that thing, it blinds them to the reality of their situation. It’s very easy for people to be hurt in those situations, and more often than not, that’s what happens. They are so blinded in their intoxication that they harm other people.

That’s exactly the sort of behavior Jesus and Paul are warning against here. It’s not something that flows from the love of God. It is inconsiderate, selfish, and harmful to others. Once again, the fruit of the Spirit comes into play here. Self-control is an attribute of the love of God. We should not get into situations where we lose self-control. We should love and respect the people around us because we don’t want to harm them in an intoxicated condition. I am not talking about legalism—it’s not “touch not, taste not, handle not.” But, we need to recognize if we have a problem and take steps to get it under control. Christians should not become intoxicated and, in an altered state of mind, spread harm and destruction. There are many ways we could fall under that influence, and we are wise to avoid those pitfalls. Verse 18:

18 And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit,

As we arrive at verses 19 and 20, Paul gives an alternative to living in a harmful and destructive way. Let’s read it and see what we should do. Verse 19:

19 addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, 20 giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, 21 submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.

That is quite the contrast, isn’t it? The people who are walking in love, light, and wisdom will be singing psalms and hymns, making a melody to God in their hearts, giving thanks to God, and being reverent towards each other. They will be respectful and considerate of each other. Paul is painting a picture of a happy, harmonious, peaceful Christian community.

Notice how Paul wraps this up in verse 21. He brings this back to being respectful of each other. Ultimately, love for other people should motivate this behavior. I am not going to become intoxicated because I want to be respectful of you. I know that if I am intoxicated, I will not have self-control, and who knows what I will do. Therefore, I choose to exercise self-control and restraint because I want to be respectful of others around me. Paul sets up a comparison between a wise person who is happy, singing songs, and a foolish person who is callous, greedy, immoral, covetous, and idolatrous. The foolish person harms themselves and others as they greedily feed their own appetites, lying, cheating, stealing, and slandering. They profess to be wise but behave like fools.

This is how Paul separates the wise and foolish in Ephesians. The wise are the people who walk in love, and the foolish are the people who walk according to the lusts of their flesh, causing harm and destruction.

Closing

As I bring this lesson to a close today, if you are listening in from The Message and maybe you are starting to feel bad about what you are part of or you are getting concerned that something is wrong, I want to invite you to come to Jesus. Being justified by His blood, you will be saved from wrath. You don’t need the Message.

Let not your heart be troubled. You believe in God; also believe in Jesus. In His Father’s house are many mansions, and He has gone away to prepare a place for you. He will come again to receive you unto Himself. And you know the way. Thomas said to Him, “Lord, we don’t know the way, how can we get there?” Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father except by Me.”

Brothers and sisters, if you have Jesus Christ and you are following Him, it’s all going to be okay. You don’t need a false message from false preachers to make it. Jesus is enough, and He has always been enough. And whosoever comes to Him, He will never cast them out.

So I invite you today, don’t come to me, but come to Jesus. It’s not the mountain you worship on that matters. Whether you are in Jerusalem or you are in Babylon, you can find the Lord right there. He is not far off. I want to encourage you today to throw away all your hopes in a false message. Burn that up. And today, make a resolution in your heart that you are going to put all your hope and faith in Christ alone. You don’t need Jesus plus something else. You just need Jesus.

If you are worried about being foolish, then let me encourage you to walk as wise. Walk in love. If you do, you are going to have all the wisdom you need to make it in this life.

Let that take root in your heart, and see if it doesn’t set you free.

Amen.

Let me close here in prayer.

Prayer

Lord God,
Thank You for Your kindness to us.
Thank You for the Bible.
Thank You for helping us to understand.
Set each soul free, I pray.
In Jesus’ name I ask it.
Amen.