You all remember how the serpent, or devil, caused Eve to sin against God. He took the Word of God and added a disclaimer to it. He quoted most of what God had said to Adam and Eve, and then added something to it. God said to Adam, in Genesis 2:16, "Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not ear, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die." The Devil quoted to Eve that very same command, like this.."Has God said, "you shall not eat of every tree of the garden?"

Now there is no need for me to go into depth in showing the difference in what God really said and what the Devil put into the mouth of God when he spoke to Eve. It's clear as can be..God said to Adam, "of every tree of the garden you may freely eat: but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat , for in the day that you eat of it you will surely die." In other words, God gave Adam a command to eat of every tree in the garden, with the exception of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for in that day that Adam or Eve ate of that three they would surely die.

I can see right now that we will need more than one lesson to really cover this important subject of what we must believe to know God, so there will be another lesson on this subject and maybe even two or three, so check every few days because I try to put on a new lesson every ten days or so.

What I would have you grasp here before we go into our lesson any further is that America stands today, just as Judah did in the time of Jeremiah, 5 or 6 hundred years B.C. Jeremiah was called by God to preach a message of revival or else to Judah. By a message of revival, I mean that God sent Jeremiah to preach to Judah that If they would repent and turn again to obey God that God would soften their coming judgment.

I believe that God is calling out men today, men who are not interested in how they appear to the world, do not care what the world wants and especially do not care that their message, which is "Thus saith the Lord", is foolishness with the religious leaders. There can be no doubt that the visible, institutional, denominational churches of our day have abandoned the truths of the Bible for "old wives tales" and the devil's lie and they have begun to care only about increasing the numbers in their individual churches and their denominations.

That is basically what Judah had done in Jeremiah's day and when the Lord God commanded Jeremiah, in Chapter 26 of Jeremiah, to "stand in the court of the Lord's house, and speak to all the cities of Judah, which come to worship in the Lord's house, all the words that I command you to speak to them. "Do not diminish a word." God had given Jeremiah a command to go to the house of God, where the people came to worship, or at least they said they came to worship God, and God said do not quote poetry, or give the baseball scores or tell funny stories or anything else, except what I have given you.

Folks, that what God sends every preacher today out to do; and that is to preach "thus saith the Lord." But all too often today what we hear is everything and anything except what the Lord has said. I want you if you will to read the 26th chapter of Jeremiah, in the next few days and it will be easier for you to grasp the truth that is in this chapter as we proceed over these next few lessons. Jeremiah obeyed God and he went and preached the truth of God, warning Judah and it's people to turn back to God; however if you look at chapter 26 and verse 8, you will find that these religious people, the priest and the prophets, and the congregation all turned on him and wanted to kill him. These people had lived on false doctrines and false preaching for so long that they would rather go to hell or into Babylonian slavery, than to change to the ways of God.

That is the condition of many congregations today and that's what the thrust of our teaching will be about for the next few weeks. I hope you will be interested enough in God's work to read and follow along as we seek the face and the will of God for our lives. As you read chapter 26 of the book of Jeremiah, please read it in light of the visible church of our day. You will see that Jeremiah took the Word of God to the church of that day and he placed his life in danger by doing so. I will either prove that it is the same way today in many churches or you will know that I am a liar!