Robert McLaughlin Bible Ministries
Recap of the 2004 Albany Conference.
Sunday, September 19, 2004
Tuesday AM – Secret sins and the Defense mechanisms.
Tuesday PM – Jezebel and demonic activity.
Wednesday AM – Deception.
Wednesday PM – Weak women controlling stronger men.
Thursday AM – Sex and fornication.
Thursday PM – Divine discipline.
Christ’s eyes are like unto a flame of fire =
His inspection of every believer is severe.
Defense mechanisms are designed to hide or to relieve the conflicts and stresses in the soul that cause anxiety, hysteria, fear, worry, or other categories of the emotional complex of sins, the worst being guilt.
Denial
Withdrawal
Projection
Rationalization
Direct attack
Choosing to use any defense mechanism is volition going in the opposite direction from your spiritual life.
Burnished bronze = historical judgment; the principle that Jesus Christ controls history.
TLJC still gives them a warning concerning falling away from God through idol worship or through an inordinate attachment or extreme devotion to something.
Denial
Withdrawal
Projection
Rationalization
Direct attack
Jezebel has stamped her name on history as the representative of all that is conniving, crafty, malicious, revengeful, and cruel.
She represents all of the distractions that the opposite sex and false religion can make upon those believers who desire to execute their very own personal drama and fulfill their personal sense of destiny.
She represents any person or goal or thing that is designed to lure the believer away from executing his very own personal drama and fulfilling his personal sense of destiny.
She chased many of God’s people away from the plan of God just as Jezebel of the Old Testament did, 1KI 19:1-3.
Ahab was a great soldier, he was a great military man, he frightened the Assyrians, he was great and he performed marvelous feats.
Jezebel in Thyatira is controlling believers, luring them from the blessing of the PPOG into the cursing of the cosmic system.
The casting her upon a bed of sickness, and those who commit adultery with her into great tribulation, unless they repent of her deeds = the principle of divine discipline upon believers.
Because He loves us and He has eyes like a flame of fire, and His feet are like burnished bronze, He takes stern measures to alert them to their critical situation and to encourage them to rebound and reenter the PPOG.
All divine discipline is administered in grace.
Divine discipline is for believers only, HEB 12:8, and occurs only in this life, not in eternity, REV 21:4.
1. Warning discipline
2. Intensive discipline
3. Dying discipline
As a general rule, warning discipline is in itself less severe than the believer’s self-induced misery.
Because he has not yet degenerated into the later stages of negative volition, this believer is still sensitive to the truth.
If the believer ignores or rejects divine warnings, he eventually requires intensive discipline.
Where there is life there is hope.
Intensive discipline alone is worse than self-induced misery: when these two categories of suffering are combined, the total pain from God and from self is extremely severe.
“Hardness of heart,” or scar tissue of the soul, eventually locks his volition in negative, HEB 4:7; 6:6.
Having almost passed the point of no return, he arrives at the third and final stage of divine discipline, the sin unto death, 1JO 5:16.
1JO 5:16 “There is a sin terminating unto death.”
PSA 118:17-18 “I shall not die but live; I shall live and declare the works of the Lord. The Lord has disciplined me severely [intensive discipline], but He has not given me over to death [dying discipline].”
PHI 3:19 “Whose end of life is ruin [dying discipline], whose god is his emotions.”
REV 3:16 Therefore, because you are lukewarm [cosmic believer], neither cold [unbeliever], nor hot [believer in the PPOG], I am about to vomit you out of My mouth [administration of the sin unto death].
Such a rebellious believer will enjoy complete happiness in heaven,
REV 21:4, but he receives no eternal rewards with which to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ forever, 1CO 3:15.
1JO 3:1-2, See how great a love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God; and such we are. For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we shall be. We know that, when He appears, we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him just as He is.