We all believe.

Preface:
January 2002. That was the month in which I placed my website on the Internet. Not this one. My previous website. It has been online for fifteen years. Until I became convinced that a new beginning was needed. A hard reset, so to speak. The main subject of the site also became another. Just like the domain name. From the previous site, the name and main subject clearly needed to be replaced. By the way: in addition to this main topic, there are several topics on this site that seem to have little to do with it, but of course also highlight the gospel of Jesus. Each time from a different angle. The style of the site, meanwhile matured (or in other words: the look and feel), however, remained largely the same, except for the background. Because a lot of text is involved, I searched for a non tiring backgroundcolor for the text and adjusted the text size. Then you can adjust this at the top of (almost) every page yourself. So that hopefully, after some time of reading, you will not be staring at the screen with square eyes. Furthermore, the technology was also overhauled. The HTML5 standard (supported by CSS3 and with Javascript as the standard scripting language) currently in use on the Internet is now under the “bonnet”. As a result, today's browsers, no longer hindered by countless rules and regulations, can give a website (almost) the same look in all browsers. As the webmaster once intended. So that endless testing and checking in a handful of browsers is (hopefully!) outdated. I expect that those many late (and especially sleepless) hours I have spent on that as a webmaster are now behind me. Anyway, so much for the technology behind the website. And then something else: most of the topics require a bit more text and explanation. Of course it takes a little more time, but it helps! Because I assume that you are looking for serious information.

Our standard equipment.

Times change. However, it is not the time that changes, but the person who fills in the time. And it is precisely that with which people fill in the time in this world that is subject to change. Or rather: is subject to deterioration. The Bible has predicted for many centuries that: “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears” (2 Timothy 4:3-4). In addition, my understanding of things grew. This eventually resulted in the discovery: we all believe. I do not mean in an army of idols but in the only true God: our Creator. I already had that conviction somewhere on my previous website: we all believe, even those who say they don't believe, certainly believe that they don't believe. To put it better: it is a fact that the “unbelievers” tell themselves not to believe. Because the truth is that every person on this earth is naturally created with supernatural knowledge. Namely knowledge of our Creator, of whom we read in Romans 1:18-21: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed [it] unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, [even] his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse. Because that, when they knew God, they glorified [him] not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.” We are, whether you like it or not, as God's image created. That knowledge of our Creator is therefore part of our standard equipment. I once heard a well-known and celebrated Dutch author answer (to the question whether he believed in a life after death) that he (freely translated) did not want to believe in that kind of nonsense. In the meantime this (deceased) pathetic knows better! By the way, he knew that already during his lifetime, however he had scorched his conscience. Someone once said about King David that he did not have a microscope but was nevertheless able to recognize God's creative power in nature. What he has aptly put into words in the Bible book of Psalms. Then for all those modern big mouths with all their (micro) technology, chemistry, telescopes, medical knowledge, supercomputers etc. according to Paul's words no apology remains standing. Bull's eye! To focus on the new main subject from now on, I screened the content of the previous site, adjusted where necessary, made it shorter and a number of pages from the old site have even disappeared completely. To be replaced by new topics in due course.

Paul Washer.

The American Paul Washer had a few things to say on this subject. See the video on the left, right or above (depending on your screen width). I now know that those “poor Gentiles” in their huts in the bush or on the prairies in a far away country, without ever having seen a Bible or having heard the gospel, are not automatically lost forever. They are guilty towards the Holy God only when they have ignored their created conscience. Speaking of that: I started to pay attention to how strikingly often in daily life people show that they know about the supreme God. Calling out the countless “Oh, my god”, countless times that one speaks of a (lost) paradise, that the name Jesus or even Jesus Christ is used all the time when some dissatisfaction is expressed speak for themselves. And how often in so many situations are heaven and hell mentioned? As was to be expected: I have long lost count. That probably also happened to the apostle Paul, who therefore in Romans 2:14-16 wrote: “For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and [their] thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;) In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel.“ The apostle Paul once came to Athens and while he was waiting for his helpers he came across the inevitable idols. Athens was packed with it, including an altar for an unknown God. It was the unknown God that Paul Washer spoke about in the video above. Because as long as people exist, they will not only realize where the source of all life can be found, but also Who He is. The apostle Paul then attempted to convince all those Greek know-it-alls and all their stubborn supporters of their innate knowledge in his speech in Athens, but he found no response from the crowd and was ridiculed.

Paris Reidhead

Today's apostles bump into the same wall of unwillingness and disobedience more than once. Like the American Paris Reidhead, who expressed his bitter disappointment about that to God. This is his story: “If you want to know why I went to Africa, I tell you that I went in the first place because I thought I needed to improve the justice of God. I didn't think it was a good thing that people go to hell without a chance to be saved. So I went to give poor sinners a chance to go to heaven. And when I arrived in Africa, I discovered that they were not at all poor, ignorant, pathetic pagans running around in the woods to find someone who wanted to tell them how to go to heaven. They were violent monsters!! They lived in complete and total disobedience to much more knowledge about God than I ever thought possible!! They deserved hell!! Because they absolutely refused to walk in the light of their conscience, in the light of the laws that were written on their hearts and of the testimony of creation, and of the truth they knew. And I assure you that when I found out I was so angry with God that during a prayer I told Him that I thought it was mean to send me to people who were waiting to hear how they could go to heaven. Because when I arrived I discovered that they already knew about heaven and that they did not want to go there at all, that they loved their sins and did not want to give up on them“. This Paris Reidhead was clearly not sparingly with strong statements. He rightly called these pagans violent monsters. A description that actually applies to every lost sinner who, despite the spiritual inheritance he has received, manages to go to eternal damnation! It is criminal behavior. This indifference is therefore an abomination in God's eyes. That despite the many difficulties and suffering that Jesus endured in order to ultimately be able to take away Satan's rights and to break the curse of eternal death, there are still masses of people crawling around the world who are mocking this.

The final battle.

Was Jesus' suffering and death on the cross satisfaction for the Father? Certainly, but the only satisfaction for Him was Jesus' obedience to death, because Jesus broke Satan's right to this world, the right that Satan had obtained through Adam's disobedience. This is described in Romans 5:19: “For as many people became sinners through the disobedience of a man (= Adam), so many people will be justified by the obedience of one (= Jesus).” Jesus was the beginning of the spiritual warfare that will eventually be completed when Satan and his armies are defeated and crushed by Jesus and his army. That army consists exclusively of people who, since Jesus' victory on Calvary, have been trained to be the most violent of the nations (Ezekiel 28:7). These are the New Testament sons of God who form New Testament Israël and about whom the apostle Paul wrote in Romans 8:19-21: “For with eager desire the creation waits for the sons of God to be revealed. For creation is subject to fruitlessness, not voluntarily, but for (the will of) Him who has subjected it to it, in hope, however, because creation itself will be freed from service to transience to the freedom of glory of the children of God.“ God himself subjected this sinful world to fruitlessness, until the sons of God will (led by Jesus) defeat Satan and his armies for good. We find this final battle in the Bible book of Revelation, chapter 19. There are, however, masses of fantasies who claim that this much-discussed Armaggedon is fought with natural weapons, including nuclear weapons. What these “fairy tales storytellers” clearly ignore is that satan is a spiritual being that can not be defeated with natural weapons. This struggle therefore takes place in the spiritual world. This battle in the heavenly realms is therefore certainly not over, as various non-spiritual “Bible teachers” dare to say. Also this spiritual battle has absolutely nothing to do with a natural people of Israël with whom God still has to deal with. And that the questionable reason for its existence must be defended with natural weapons. The Kingdom of God, on the other hand, only has spiritual weapons. Ephesians 6:12 is clear enough about this: “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high [places].” These rulers of the darkness are the real threat to humanity!! God once warned King Solomon in 1 Kings 9:6-9, after which he later became an apostate, honoured the idols of his many wives, and thereby sealed the end of his people as God's people. In our modern age, we now experience that the “spiritual descendants” of the apostate Solomon have created a new “Israël” against God's will, with which these enemies of God have completely different plans than they have taught Christianity, struck with spiritual blindness.

Satan's surrogate gospel.

However, since his disgraceful defeat at Calvary, Satan has come up with a ruse to put masses of children of God on the sidelines. That is also the reason that in this end-time even pious people of all religious backgrounds ignore Jesus' own words. Words He spoke to the Samaritan woman in John 4:21-24: “Believe me, woman, the hour is coming that you will not worship the Father on this mountain or in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews; but the hour is coming and is now that the true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and in truth; for the Father seeks such worshipers; God is spirit and those who worship Him must worship in Spirit and in truth.” We do not worship in an above-ground burial place somewhere in the Middle East (called a “temple”). Because since Calvary, the whole world has become a place of worship. The gospel of the Kingdom of God is therefore not concerned with “holy places.” After Jesus' victory on Calvary, the actual and spiritual temple service has come, as we read in Colossians 2:16-17: “Then let no one continue to judge you with regard to food and drink or with regard to a holiday, new moon or Sabbath, things who are merely a shadow of what was to come, while the reality is Christ.“ In practice, this means that we can pray to God wherever we are. Even if that is while driving. I myself have done that very often. It has saved me from accidents more than once! That is why God himself tore up the veil in the temple at the time of Jesus' death. The period of that stone temple was over forever. And you know what? While listening to the contemporary religious fuss about the current state of Israël, I have noticed that practically no single mortal soul is talking about the dramatic misconception of King Solomon cited above! While this apostate king and his “temple” gets a lot of attention in occult circles: a sign on the wall! And then another thing: once I saw fanatic supporters of contemporary Israël myth while they thought they had to defend their convictions. That happened with such fierceness that the evil doctrines could no longer hide their presence. You could see them “sitting behind the windows” with these people. Which clearly confirmed who actually hid behind this doctrine, namely satan himself. Their true nature is even hidden in full view. Because even the so-called Star of David in the flag of the current state of Israël appears to have nothing to do with King David at all. Because one picture can say more than a thousand words, a single glance at this picture can also have a beneficial effect. Because, oops, what do we see in the background? O yes! The six-pointed star also belongs to the standard equipment of the occult Masons. The same star that can also be seen on the flag of the current state of Israël. The task of the devilish spirits behind this surrogate gospel is to divert the attention of the children of God. To derive from what the gospel of Jesus really teaches us about the struggle in which the sons of God will relentlessly deal with Satan and his kingdom. After which the millennial kingdom of peace will dawn. It is obvious that Satan sees his terrible fate approaching in a panic. For that reason he is still trying to hide the truth about the future sons of God behind a false doctrine. Panic football is called such a behavior. After this little trip we shall return to the actual main topic of this site.

Even in the Old Testament people appeared to know more.

In the Old Testament, in Numbers 22 and beyond, we read about Balaam, a non-Jew, who apparently could think of nothing better than to engage in sorcery. Because of these occult “gifts” he was asked by Balak, the king of Moab, to speak out a curse on the wandering people of Israël. In response to these evil plans and in response to Balaam, who first asked the supreme God for advice, God appeared to Balaam. God's answer was clear: stay away from that people because it is blessed! It is striking that such a culprit first of all knows about the God of heaven and earth, that he subsequently consults with that God, that this very God also answers him and that Balaam first of all obeys God's veto. An ignorant pagan? A pagan indeed, but certainly not ignorant! Another striking example. In 1 Samuël 4, during the youth of Samuël, the elders of Israël thought they should take the ark of the covenant to the battlefield to defeat the Philistines. The Israelites were guilty of almost everything that God had warned them about, but apparently they found such a portable, pocket-sized God in such a handy box to be very useful, under the motto: if it doesn't help, it won't harm. That should make a difference in that hopeless struggle against the Philistines, they thought. However, things went differently. In 1 Samuel 4:6-8 we also read: “When they (= the Philistines) learned that the ark of the Lord had come into the camp, the Philistines were afraid, for they said, God has come into the camp, and they said, Woe be unto us, because such a thing was done neither yesterday nor the day before. Woe us! Who saves us from the power of this great god ? This is the same god who struck the Egyptians with all kinds of plagues in the wilderness.“ But in verse 11 it appears that God does not want to cooperate with these plans: ”The ark of God was also seized and the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Pinehas, found death.“ So God did not allow Himself to be used as a mascot by the apostate people of Israël. The Philistines in this case were the same kind of Gentiles as the savages who also drove the missionary Paris Reidhead (see above) to despair. Who apparently ran around like a bunch of idiots, without a sense of God and commandment, but in reality, (I now quote Paris Reidhead:) “already knew about heaven and did not want to go there at all, that they loved their sins and they did not want to give up their sins“. It will be clear that if we take a quick look at the archives of man's history, we will come across more examples that show us how well man, from Adam to Amsterdam, is aware of God's existence. That is why it is sometimes said that you will not find atheists in foxholes. Because sitting in your trench, with the high-explosive grenades whirling past you, you really know who you should go to for help..... Even those so-called “highly educated” people in the Netherlands know that, as I once learned through my car radio. However, they have already put our Creator in the garbage. The hypocrites!

God's long-suffering.

Thus it began to dawn on me what was already noticed and written about this indifference to our Creator in the mist of time. In this case by the writer of the book of Ecclesiastes, in chapter 8:11-12: ”Because the judgment on the evil deed is not immediately executed, therefore the heart of the children of men in them is eager to do evil, there a sinner hurts a hundred times and yet lives long.“ Our God tolerates the sins of all those lawless ones, both of them in our “civilized” Netherlands and of them in the bush of those far away countries (see Paris Reidhead's discovery above). The same must have been discovered by the first major shipbuilder in the world. For whatever reason our Noah was instructed to build an ark. And now I am not going to think that it was only a man and a half of a horse's head, who at that time were drowned in the flood that was announced long before. I have read the calculations of scientists, population experts, etc. who, on the basis of their lifespan, number of offspring per human couple and some other parameters, came to the conclusion that in Noah's days (1656 years after creation) the size of the world population according to their most careful calculations must have been around ten billion. TEN BILLION SOULS!! All to eternal damnation! (excluding the children, because they were not charged). And why? The apostle Peter wrote about this many centuries later in 1 Peter 3:18-20: “He (= Jesus) who was killed according to the flesh, but made alive according to the spirit, in which He also went and preached to the spirits in the prison, which had once been disobedient, when God's long-suffering continued to wait, in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared in which few, that is, eight souls, were saved through the water.“ Few were saved of God's judgment over all those lawless ones who ignored the law written in their hearts and loved their sins. But then they subsequently submerged massively and changed into petroleum under great pressure, so in our days they do something useful in our fuel tanks!! The apostle Paul, in turn, also briefly rubbed his contemporaries on when he reminded them of their past walks. In 1 Cor. 12:2 he wrote: “You know that while you were still Gentiles, you blindly drifted to the stupid idols.” Because if this is the preference of those masses of Gentiles, God's judgment on them will not fail.

So the question arises: is this world waiting for the same fate as in Noah's day? Count on it! Even though this coming flood will be of a completely different order this time, when the gates of hell will be opened and countless evil spirits full of vengeance will plunge into all those lost sinners who, like those disobedient in Noah's day, will be punished by the seething mass of spirits who will be able to go their way for a short time like a second flood. So that people will see in due time what Revelation 16: 10-11 says: “And they chewed their tongues in pain, and they blasphemed the God of heaven for their pains and their tumors, and they did not repent of their works.” Strikingly again, those sinners know exactly who is responsible here for their torture, punishment and downfall. But even though they run around with very strange ideas about who God is and even though they prefer to sacrifice to the evil spirits, God wants them to have the chance to repent. Part of those will convert in time. Whoever will be lost is entirely guilty of it! In John 16:7-11, Jesus says to His disciples: “But I tell you the truth: It is better for you that I return to Heaven. For if I do not go, the Comforter cannot come to you, but if I go I will send Him to you. And when He comes, He will convince the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment; of sin, because they do not believe in Me; of righteousness, because I go to the Father and you no longer see Me; because the ruler of this world has been judged.“ Jesus promised that He would return as the Holy Spirit. What He could not do as a human, He now can make direct contact with the spirit of man in His appearance as the Holy Spirit. In this way He convinces sinners of their lost state. He cannot make a more direct contact with man. It is His long-suffering (= patience) that wants to give sinners another chance to be saved. If the sinners nevertheless do not want to be persuaded by God's Spirit, there will be no salvation anymore. By the way, we are talking about the ultimate opposition to God's Spirit, and there is no apology for that, which Jesus described in Luke 12:10 as blaspheming the Holy Spirit.

I brace myself again.

Of course there are always people who assess your statements with a very critical eye. Just as the warnings of the prophet Jeremiah once met with resistance, so too did I, in response to my previous website, more than once get the inevitable tirades to endure. However, the other side of the story is Jesus' warning in Luke 6:26: “Woe to you, when all people speak well of you; after all, their fathers dealt with the false prophets in the same way“. Anyone who proclaims lies is appreciated in this world. However, this appreciation would only prove that I am such a false prophet. That way I don't want to be appreciated. It is to be expected that this website will again provoke furious reactions. We read about Jesus Himself in 1 Peter 2:7-8: “Therefore you who believe, this precious applies, but to the unbelievers the following applies: The stone that the builders rejected was turned into a cornerstone and a stone of shock and a rock of annoyance, for those who, in their disobedience, bump into it, which they are destined for.“ That even Jesus' words were spit out did not happen because He lied but because all these lost souls put it in their disobeying God.