Talking about the “last days” before the Rapture, Paul warns there will be men “ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.” (I Tim. 3:7)

He goes on, “Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith. But they shall proceed no further: for their folly shall be manifest unto all men, as theirs also was.”

Jannes and Jambres, although you won’t find their names in the Old Testament, are the two men who withstood Moses when he went before Pharaoh, demanding, “Let my people go!”

As Jordan explains the whole incident, “God says to Moses, ‘Go down and tell Pharaoh to let my people go.’ Moses says, ‘Hey, who am I? I can’t even talk good.’ The Lord says, ‘Well, what’s in your hand?’ Moses has got a staff.

“So, old Mo goes in there to see Mr. Big. Now, remember, Moses was raised in Pharaoh’s Court. He knew his way around.

“This, of course, is a new Mr. Big; it’s not the Mr. Big Moses was raised with, but he knows his way around the court; he knows the guys there.

“And I imagine old Mo walked up right in front of Pharaoh’s dais where he’s going to talk, and I would guess Moses knew at least two good (escape) exits to use real fast in case things don’t go his way.

“But he goes in, and Pharaoh says, ‘Who is the Lord God that I should obey thee?’ and (Aaron) takes his rod, throws that sucker down and it becomes a snake.

“Well, if you remember, Moses had some previous experience with that. God gave him that sign in Exodus 4. He said, ‘Put your rod down and it’ll become a snake,’ and Moses learned he could pick it up and it’d become a rod again.

“Now, everybody looked at Pharaoh after Moses (and Aaron) did what they did. You’ve seen that happen, where one guy does one thing, and it’s, ‘Now whatch’ you gonna do?’

“Mr. Big’s on the carpet, so he calls in Jannes and Jambres, his religious guys there (As Exodus 7:11 says, “Then Pharaoh also called the wise men and the sorcerers: now the magicians of Egypt, they also did in like manner with their enchantments.”)

“Pharaoh says, ‘Okay, fellows…’ and what’d they do? They took their rods and threw them down and produced two snakes!

“As you probably remember, Aaron’s rod ate up their rods and all that kind of stuff, but my point is, as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses and outdid him two to one.”

*****

Jordan continues, “You ever had anybody say to you, ‘How many people you got going to your church?’ Don’t think they’re asking you that to encourage you—they’re asking you that to discourage you. And there are times when some of us can’t even say, ‘Well, we’ve got more people than Noah had on the ark.’

“I talked to a pastor recently who told me he went from 85 people (in his church) to 50, then 35. He said to me, ‘I think we’ve kind of bottomed out now.’

“But then I talked to him again the other day and he said, ‘Well, we haven’t bottomed out yet—we’re down to 27.’ Now, people will look at that and say, ‘Hmm,’ and that can be very discouraging if you look at it that way.

“But when you remember, ‘As Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these resist the truth’. . . There’s going to come a time in your ministry when it seems that everything you do is going to be outdone by other people.

“This brother I’m talking about is someone who was a (Baptist) pastor and then came to understand ‘right division.’ One of his deacons had seen the Forgotten Truths TV program on Direct TV and had a question.

“This deacon’s sister was dying of cancer. They had had the elders in and anointed her with oil, and then got all the people she knew to come and pray, but she just kept getting worse.

“Now, if you’ve got an honest bone in your body that would concern you. And when it’s your sister, it does more than concern you. The guy told me, ‘It just downright made me mad! Then I got mad at God. My sister didn’t know what to think about all that was going on.’

“And then he saw me on TV and realized, ‘You know, this guy has an answer for this.’ Now, his sister went to be with the Lord just six weeks ago, happy in the Lord. I had a chance to meet her and she was just rejoicing—the liberty, the joy that ‘right division’ gave her in understanding what God’s doing, who she is in Christ Jesus and the program she’s in, but, boy, that’s not the way it started out!

“When this pastor then began to teach his church what he’d learned, they said, ‘That doesn’t fit with our denominational doctrine, brother.’ He said, ‘Well, our denominational doctrine was letting my sister die in agony and leaving us in confusion.’

“The response from some was, ‘Well, I was born a Baptist and I’m going to die a Baptist.’ Now, do you think those people leaving (the church) made this pastor happy or mad?

“If you talk to him about being down to 27 people, you know what, he’s happy as a clam in a bowl of lasagna. You know why? He understands who he lost and who he didn’t. He understands that he’s teaching truth, and there’s some people who are going to want it and some people who aren’t going to want it.

“Of course, all of his denominational buddies say, ‘You’re losing all of your members; it must be error you’re teaching.’ They thought that ‘gain was godliness.’ I Tim. 6 says they are ‘destitute of the truth and don’t know anything.’

“You see, if you’ve got a sound mind, you learn to think about that stuff in a sound, spiritual, healthy way. You don’t depart from the faith until you give heed to ‘seducing spirits,’ as Paul tells us.

“Your mind is constantly being bombarded by error, and it’s when you give heed to the lies that you depart. Paul says these (preacher) men ‘speak lies in hypocrisy.’

“They don’t come up and say, ‘Hey, let me lie to you; I’m the devil here to sell you a bill of goods and steal your joy.’ Paul talks about them ‘having their consciences seared with a hot iron.’ Does that sound like a fiery dart?

“So (Satan) lobs these things at you and they’re designed to sear your conscience. Your conscience is a part of the anatomy of your soul where there’s a system of norms and standards you have in your thinking process.

“Your conscience is what takes your conduct, compares it with the norms and standards in your thinking process, and either accuses or excuses based on those norms and standards. That’s why you can have a fortified conscience or a weak conscience. That’s why you can have a defiled conscience.

“A defiled conscience would be a conscience with bad information in the files. A weak conscience would be a conscience that didn’t have a whole lot of information in the files. A fortified conscience would be a conscience with good doctrine in the file, so that when you’re going along in life, and your conscience is looking at what’s happening in your life and your responses to it, you know how it works in your soul—it accuses you or excuses you.”

*****

Jordan recalls, “In our old church building on Neva Avenue in Chicago we had a next- door neighbor who didn’t like us, and that’s being polite about it; that’s not being near strong enough. He’d get mad if kids were playing in the gym in the evening and call the cops on us.

“Well, one bitter cold winter night, when it was only about 10-12 degrees out, there was a ‘bang-bang’ on the front door from him. I opened the door and said, ‘Can I help you?’ and he said, ‘Yeah, I need to talk to you about all that noise you’re making.’ I said, ‘C’mon in,’ and he said, ‘No, I’m not coming in there.’ And I said, ‘Well, I’m not standing here with the door open and I sure ain’t going out there!’

“He said again, ‘I’m not coming in there!’ And I said, ‘Well, you’ll have to talk to me through the closed door then,’ and I closed the door. He said, ‘I want to talk to you,’ and I said, ‘Well, come inside.’ You know, that guy stood there for 10 minutes going back and forth with me about whether he’d come inside or not!

“You know why he wouldn’t come inside? Because the religion he’s a part of tells him it’s a sin for him to go into a Protestant church. You understand that?

“The religion he was raised in said it’s a sin for him to go into a church building other than a Roman Catholic Church. And his momma next door has ordered him to call the cops because those ‘mean, dirty-rotten, so-and-so Bible Christians next door’ are making noise, and he’s got two squad cars pulling up, but he won’t come into the building!

“Now, his conscience wouldn’t let him come into our building. You see, you can have bad information in your conscience. Your conscience isn’t your problem; it’s the information you put in it. He had a defiled conscience.

“What do you want to put into your conscience? You want truth. You want this good doctrine stored up here so that your faith can access it and have it be a shield—stop the fiery darts from coming in and searing and deadening your conscience.

“You know what the lie will do to your inner man? The lie will darken your understanding. It will do what Ephesians 4:17-18 talks about happening to a Believer. Paul writes, ‘This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart.’

“It will cause you to wind up living like the other Gentiles in ‘opposing yourself.’ The way you get there folks is by letting the fiery darts come in there and sear your conscience.”

*****

Here’s a great passage from Jordan on this same subject, taken from a different Bible study:

“If you’re ‘speaking lies in hypocrisy,’ you’re telling a lie making like it’s the truth. Satan doesn’t go around in a red leotard suit with little horns on his head and a little tail coming out the back end, and a pitchfork, saying, ‘Lemme gitcha!’

“That’s a caricature of him that is made up in the minds of people who don’t understand what the Bible says about it. You know what he goes around as? He goes around and tries to convince people that he’s God.

“In II Thessalonians 2 when your read this about ‘the mystery of iniquity,’ it says in verse 4, ‘Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.’

“Notice he’s got a temple? Here’s a guy who focuses on the church buildings as places where God lives! Buildings are not the issue with God, but in religion they are.

“And Satan’s trying to convince people that he’s God, and the way he does that is he gives them some doctrine; some things to believe that promote his program, his ideology, his philosophy.

“Romans 1 says (about the Gentiles after Babel), ‘Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator.’

“Notice, they didn’t want to retain God, they didn’t want to know God, they wanted to do it their own way. So God gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own flesh, their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves. ‘Who changed the truth of God into a lie.’ What did they do? ‘And worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator.’

“You see what Satan convinced people to do? Forget the truth; trust the lie—believe the lie and worship the creature. Follow his program instead of God’s program.

“You know it makes a difference what you believe? If you believe a lie, then you’re believing the program of the Adversary. And Satan is not your friend, and the lie is not a foundation upon which you can build eternity.

“Isaiah. 28 says about the nation Israel that ‘they have a refuge of lies.’ People do that. It’s called religion. It’s called human performance. And what you need is not a ‘refuge of lies,’ you need a foundation of the truth. That’s why Jesus Christ said, ‘I am the way, the truth and the life.’ ”