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Beware Of The “Gospel of Jesus’ Wife” Deception

King first learned about “The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife” when she received an e-mail in 2010 from a private collector who asked her to translate it. King, 58, specializes in Coptic literature, and has written books on the Gospel of Judas, the Gospel of Mary of Magdala, Gnosticism and women in antiquity.

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Oh Yea, hath God said?…

“Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron” 1 Timothy 4

As we get closer to the rapture of the church, and by extension the Great Tribulation, the bible says that the professing church will fall into utter apostasy. The last church that exists on this earth is the church of Laodicea, the dispensation we currently live in right now. And as we get closer to the long-awaited fulfillment of prophecy, we know that the attacks on our faith will increase both in number and in sophistication.

It won’t be a physical war like the Spanish Inquisition was. Rather, it will be a spiritual war for your heart, mind and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. From nowhere, “proof” will start appearing in the arts and sciences that the bible is “just another book”. And that Jesus, while a “good man”, was merely that.

We consider the following story the official opening round in Satan’s end times plan to sow doubt in your mind. And putting doubt into your mind was the very first attack of the Devil on a human being…Eve in the garden.

“Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said…?” Genesis 3;1

From NBC News: Cambridge, Mass. — A historian of early Christianity at Harvard Divinity School has identified a scrap of papyrus that she says was written in Coptic in the fourth century and contains a phrase never seen in any piece of scripture: “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife …'”

The attacks by Satan on the authority of the bible and the authority of Jesus Christ are increasing in number and in sophistication. You’ve been warned.

The faded papyrus fragment is smaller than a business card, with eight lines on one side, in black ink legible under a magnifying glass. Just below the line about Jesus having a wife, the papyrus includes a second provocative clause that purportedly says, “she will be able to be my disciple.”

The finding is being made public in Rome on Tuesday at an international meeting of Coptic scholars by the historian Karen L. King, who has published several books about new Gospel discoveries and is the first woman to hold the nation’s oldest endowed chair, the Hollis professor of divinity.

The provenance of the papyrus fragment is a mystery, and its owner has asked to remain anonymous. Until Tuesday, King had shown the fragment to only a small circle of experts in papyrology and Coptic linguistics, who concluded that it is most likely not a forgery. But she and her collaborators say they are eager for more scholars to weigh in and perhaps upend their conclusions.

Even with many questions unsettled, the discovery could reignite the debate over whether Jesus was married, whether Mary Magdalene was his wife and whether he had a female disciple. These debates date to the early centuries of Christianity, scholars say. But they are relevant today, when global Christianity is roiling over the place of women in ministry and the boundaries of marriage.

The discussion is particularly animated in the Roman Catholic Church, where despite calls for change, the Vatican has reiterated the teaching that the priesthood cannot be opened to women and married men because of the model set by Jesus.

King gave an interview and showed the papyrus fragment, encased in glass, to reporters from The New York Times, The Boston Globe and Harvard Magazine in her garret office in the tower at Harvard Divinity School last Thursday. She left the next day for Rome to deliver her paper on the find on Tuesday at the International Congress of Coptic Studies.

She repeatedly cautioned that this fragment should not be taken as proof that Jesus, the historical person, was actually married. The text was probably written centuries after Jesus lived, and all other early, historically reliable Christian literature is silent on the question, she said.

But the discovery is exciting, King said, because it is the first known statement from antiquity that refers to Jesus speaking of a wife. It provides further evidence that there was an active discussion among early Christians about whether Jesus was celibate or married, and which path his followers should choose.

“This fragment suggests that some early Christians had a tradition that Jesus was married,” King said. “There was, we already know, a controversy in the second century over whether Jesus was married, caught up with a debate about whether Christians should marry and have sex.”

King first learned about what she calls “The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife” when she received an e-mail in 2010 from a private collector who asked her to translate it. King, 58, specializes in Coptic literature, and has written books on the Gospel of Judas, the Gospel of Mary of Magdala, Gnosticism and women in antiquity.

The owner, who has a collection of Greek, Coptic and Arabic papyri, is not willing to be identified by name, nationality or location, because, King said, “He doesn’t want to be hounded by people who want to buy this.”

When, where or how the fragment was discovered is unknown. The collector acquired it in a batch of papyri in 1997 from the previous owner, a German. It came with a handwritten note in German that names a professor of Egyptology in Berlin, now deceased, and cited him calling the fragment “the sole example” of a text in which Jesus claims a wife.

The owner carried the fragment to the Divinity School in December 2011 and left it with King. She said she was initially suspicious, but it looked promising enough to explore. Three months later, she carried the fragment in her red handbag to New York to show it to two colleagues, both papyrologists: Roger Bagnall, director of the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, at New York University; and AnneMarie Luijendijk, an associate professor of religion at Princeton University.

They examined the scrap under sharp magnification. It was very small — only 4 by 8 centimeters. The lettering was splotchy and uneven, the hand of an amateur, but not unusual for the time period, when many Christians were poor and persecuted.

It was written in Coptic, an Egyptian language that uses Greek characters — and more precisely, in Sahidic Coptic, a dialect from southern Egypt, Luijendijk said in an interview.

What convinced them it was probably genuine was the fading of the ink on the papyrus fibers, and traces of ink adhered to the bent fibers at the torn edges. The back side is so faint that only five words are visible, one only partly: “my moth[er],” “three,” “forth which.”

“It would be impossible to forge,” said Dr. Luijendijk, who contributed to Dr. King’s paper.

Bagnall reasoned that a forger would have had to be expert in Coptic grammar, handwriting and ideas. Most forgeries he has seen were nothing more than gibberish. And if it were a forgery intended to cause a sensation or make someone rich, why would it have lain in obscurity for so many years?

Read the rest of this story at NBC News

Bible Topics

Some Random Thoughts On The Goodness And Mercy Of God After Battling COVID-19 For The Past 7 Days

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Dr. Ruckman used to say that if the Lord tarries, the only thing coming in this life are graves and hospital beds, and that’s a very true statement.

My COVID test took less than 20 seconds to provide my positive result as I watched it light up like a pinball machine last week. Immediately my mind raced back to the height of the pandemic in 2021 where we prayed for so many people on the NTEB prayer list who were deathly ill with COVID, many of whom went to the hospital, and the names of the people who didn’t come back. My street preacher Mark Bennet, he didn’t come home, neither did John Roth the man who sat behind me in church for over three years, or Ken Shiner who attended my daughter Kelsey’s wedding. They all died excruciatingly torturous deaths in medical comas with a tube down their throats.  Now it was my turn, “where to, Lord?”

“But I am like a green olive tree in the house of God: I trust in the mercy of God for ever and ever.” Psalm 52:8 (KJB)

For the first couple of days, I was overwhelmingly exhausted, sleeping 16 hours a day, no appetite, and throwing up every few hours. The stench of COVID permeating all my senses, with this mildly sweet though musky smell seeming to come off of everything. As it turned out, that smell was inside my own nose, and it kept me in a persistent low-level state of nauseousness. I had chills, endless sweating, shakes and terrible sleep. What a fragile thing our health can be, and how it all can turn on a dime. Most of my prayers have consisted of asking God to simply help me make it through the night.

I took a second test earlier, and this one too lit up positive in mere seconds, showing me perhaps another week of housebound helplessness. The idea of sitting in front of a mic and talking for hours about the Bible, something that gives me great joy and pleasure, now seems at the moment like a physical and mental impossibility. Even just writing this short article has been a drawn-out and laborious process taking place over many hours this afternoon. Through all this, random thoughts about the goodness of God in the midst of a time of sickness, misery and death pop in and out of my feverish brain.

God owes us nothing, and every moment we have on this earth is borrowed from His time clock, breathed with His air, and experienced through a beating heart that He set in motion the day we were born. What does God owe us? Nothing. What do we owe Him? Everything. He is worthy of our utmost effort to reach the lost with the gospel of the kingdom of God. Dr. Ruckman used to say that if the Lord tarries, the only thing coming in this life are graves and hospital beds, and that’s a very true statement. The question is, how to live your life in the meantime. The answer, I believe, is to live a life wholly given over to the things of the Lord Jesus Christ, a life lived for the furtherance of the gospel. That Book! Of all the risky things that make up this life, living for Jesus Christ is not risky at all, it’s a sure bet because He is worthy.

I covet your prayers for a full recovery, and not just for myself but we have many sick with COVID now at NTEB, as this end times gain-of-function horror continues. In my body, I am wiped out and depleted, but in my born again spirit I am chomping at the bit to get back in the game. Called to be soldiers, there is no quit, there is no retreat, there is only the battle. TO THE FIGHT!!!   

Now The End Begins is your front line defense against the rising tide of darkness in the last Days before the Rapture of the Church

When you contribute to this fundraising effort, you are helping us to do what the Lord called us to do. The money you send in goes primarily to the overall daily operations of this site. When people ask for Bibles, we send them out at no charge. When people write in and say how much they would like gospel tracts but cannot afford them, we send them a box at no cost to them for either the tracts or the shipping, no matter where they are in the world. We have a Gospel Billboard program. We are now broadcasting Bible studies, Podcasts and a Sunday Service 5 times a week, thanks to your generous donations. All this is possible because YOU pray for us, YOU support us, and YOU give so we can continue growing.

But whatever you do, don’t do nothing. Time is short and we need your help right now. The Lord has given us an open door with a tremendous ‘course’ for us to fulfill that will create an excellent experience at the Judgement Seat of Christ. Please pray for our efforts, and if the Lord leads you to donate, be as generous as possible. The war is REAL, the battle HOT and the time is SHORTTO THE FIGHT!!!

“Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ;” Titus 2:13 (KJB)

“Thank you very much!” – Geoffrey, editor-in-chief, NTEB

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Bible Doctrine

One Of The Things You Might Very Well Expect To See As The Spirit Of Antichrist Rises Is The Discovery Of The ‘Bones Of Jesus’ In Jerusalem

Prepare yourself for the ‘greatest archaeological discovery of all time’, the bones of Jesus! But it’s actually a trick of Satan.

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You can show the bones of Buddha, and they have them, and still be a good Buddhist. You can show the bones of Mohammed, and they have them, and still be a good Muslim, but you cannot show the bones of Jesus Christ and still be a Christian.

Today I want to write about something that is purely speculative, at this point just a feeling I have, but something that nonetheless the Holy Spirit seems to be pressing on me to talk about. Last year, I wrote an article about the rising spirit of Antichrist that palpably came on the scene last year, and that spirit has done nothing but increase over the past 21 months. If we are where it seems like we are on the end times timeline, and if the man of sin is about to step onto the world stage, then there should be something fairly big to take place that will take a shot at discrediting Jesus of Nazareth. So prepare yourself for the ‘greatest archaeological discovery of all time’, the bones of Jesus!

“And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not. For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.” 1 Corinthians 15:14-17 (KJB)

Think about it, in Isaiah 14 where Lucifer is shaking his dirty fist at God, telling Him that he will take His Throne and everything else that belongs to God, those aspirations come true for a very brief period of time when he puts the spirit of Judas in the body of an earthly human like Emmanuel Macron as Antichrist. Remember, Antichrist does not come as himself, as Satan, but he comes pretending that he is the Messiah. So Antichrist comes as a fake Jesus claiming to be the actual Jesus, and it stands to reason that one of the first ‘shots across the bow’ will be to discredit Jesus of Nazareth. What better way to do that than by producing the ‘bones of Jesus’ to ‘prove’ He was not the real Messiah.

“For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures: And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve:” 1 Corinthians 15:3-5 (KJB)

The Bible says that the Devil’s time is short, only has 7 years from start to finish, but when he sits down in the rebuilt Temple in Jerusalem at the halfway point he exposes himself to be the Devil, so he really has to do something quite impressive at the outset. Want to prove that Jesus Christ is a fake? Easy, just produce his bones and that will show Jesus didn’t really rise from the dead as the Bible says He did. You can show the bones of Buddha, and they have them, and still be a good Buddhist. You can show the bones of Mohammed, and they have them, and still be a good Muslim, but you cannot show the bones of Jesus Christ and still be a Christian. This is why I feel, quite strongly actually, that a ‘discovery’ is about to be made in Jerusalem and that discovery will produce the ‘bones of Jesus’.

“No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father.” John 10:18 (KJB)

So what happens if I’m right about this? First of all, I am writing this now to warn you so if it does happen, you are already prepared to view it as nothing but a trick of the Devil. How else could I have know it was going to happen unless the Holy Spirit gave it to me ahead of time? That one fact alone show prove to you that the ‘bones of Jesus’ are nothing but a fraud. Secondly, if we are still here and the ‘bones’ are produced, that should immediately and instantly remove any and all trace of doubt in your mind that we are on the cusp of Flight #777 taking off in the Rapture. Finally, Paul says we are not ‘ignorant of his devices’, we have the Holy Spirit of discernment to show us what the truth is. As I said earlier, this is purely speculative but at the same time it is something that I very much feel will happen. Now you know what to do if it does.

“Behold, I have told you before.” Matthew 24:25 (KJB)

Now The End Begins is your front line defense against the rising tide of darkness in the last Days before the Rapture of the Church

When you contribute to this fundraising effort, you are helping us to do what the Lord called us to do. The money you send in goes primarily to the overall daily operations of this site. When people ask for Bibles, we send them out at no charge. When people write in and say how much they would like gospel tracts but cannot afford them, we send them a box at no cost to them for either the tracts or the shipping, no matter where they are in the world. Even all the way to South Africa. We even restarted our weekly radio Bible study on Sunday nights again, thanks to your generous donations. All this is possible because YOU pray for us, YOU support us, and YOU give so we can continue growing.

But whatever you do, don’t do nothing. Time is short and we need your help right now. If every one of the 15,860+ people on our daily mailing list gave $4.50, we would reach our goal immediately. If every one of our 150,000+ followers on Facebook gave $1.00 each, we would reach 300% of our goal. The same goes for our 15,900 followers on Twitter. But sadly, many will not give, so we need the ones who can and who will give to be generous. As generous as possible.

“Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ;” Titus 2:13 (KJV)

“Thank you very much!” – Geoffrey, editor-in-chief, NTEB

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Bible Topics

Archaeologists Discover Physical Proof For Destruction Of Sodom And Gomorrah By God Then Try To Turn It Into A Powerless ‘Jewish Fable’

Archaeologists investigated the destruction of Tall el-Hammam matching the description of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah by God recorded in Genesis 19.

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Archaeologists investigated the destruction of Tall el-Hammam and discovered an event similar to the description of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah by God recorded in Genesis 19.

Faith is a funny thing, either you have it or you don’t, and even the discovery of overwhelming physical evidence will not sway the unbeliever to change their position. Today’s article on the discovery of proof-positive, physical evidence of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, modern-day Tall el-Hammam, as contained in the Genesis 19 account has just been found, and is it creating a flood of new believers in the accuracy and fidelity of God’s preserved word? Nope.

Then the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven;…And Abraham gat up early in the morning to the place where he stood before the LORD: And he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the plain, and beheld, and, lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace. And it came to pass, when God destroyed the cities of the plain, that God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when he overthrew the cities in the which Lot dwelt.” Genesis 19:24,27-29 (KJB)

Archaeologists have unearthed physical proof of what points to the destruction of Tell el-Hammam in the Jordan valley, the region of Sodom and Gomorrah in the Old Testament, and what they found was really wild. They found evidence of an incredible explosion that occurred in the skies above ancient Sodom, an explosion so intense that building down below were destroyed and things were literally vaporized. Yet these highly-educated scientists and archaeologists come away from this discovery no more a believer in the Bible than before they made it, because proof will not sway the stone-cold heart of man that is set against God. Only grace through faith in Jesus Christ can accomplish that.

I loved reading about this discovery, and seeing what the scientists found, but it didn’t increase my faith because I already believed in the Genesis 19 account, along with everything else contained in my King James Holy Bible. For those who believe in the Almighty God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, no proof is required. For those who don’t believe, no amount of proof will ever be enough. Our article here today on the ‘cosmic destruction’ of Tall el-Hammam is “proof” of that.

The cause of the destruction of Tall el-Hammam, Sodom, was a cosmic airburst caused by a comet or meteorite.

FROM THE JERUSALEM POST: Tell el-Hammam in the Jordan Valley might have inspired the story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, according to a new study that has spanned 15 years. In the study, published in the journal Nature on Monday, archaeologists researched the remains of Tell el-Hammam in an attempt to discover what destroyed the ancient city during the Middle Bronze Age. During the period, there were roughly 50,000 people living in the area of the Jordan Valley in three cities: Tell el-Hammam, Jericho, and Tell Nimrin, with Tell el-Hammam the biggest of the three, implying that until its destruction, it would have been the political center of the area. Radiocarbon dating dates the destruction to within 50 years of 1650 BCE.

Examination of the remains revealed evidence of a destructive event that involved high temperatures, such as pottery pieces that were melted and boiled on the exterior, but normal on the inside. The buildings of Tell el-Hammam were made of mud bricks, some five stories tall. In the upper part of the city, the destructive force demolished the buildings to the height of their foundations in the walls, and little mud-brick remained. Of the palace that was in this part of the city, the first floor walls and the upper stories are missing, and most of the mud-brick was pulverized.

In the lower part of the city, the buildings suffered more severe damage, and researchers found evidence of heat-fracturing in the remains.

The towers in the wall that surrounded the city were also destroyed, with mud-brick remains only existing at the height of the towers’ foundation. To try to discover what could have caused this destruction, the researchers compiled a list of possible events and tested their probability relative to the evidence found at the site.

They initially examined the possibility of a fire, warfare, volcanic eruption, earthquake or lightning, but concluded that these events were unlikely to cause the kind of destruction that they found at the site, because none could have produced the intense heat required to cause the melting that they found.

Having dismissed these events, the researchers turned to two other possibilities: cosmic impact or a cosmic airburst.

The consequences of a crater-forming cosmic impact matched all the evidence found by the archaeologists, but it was dismissed as unlikely because no crater was found in the area. The most likely cause of destruction was a cosmic airburst caused by a comet or meteorite. The consequences of such an event also match the evidence found by the researchers, and using an impact calculator, they were able to estimate the details of the event, which also involved the shock wave hitting Jericho that was burned to the ground.

It can be assumed that the event that destroyed Tell el-Hammam would have been witnessed and recounted through the generations until the time of the biblical Sodom, at which point the event would have been an inspiration for the story, which tells of stones and fire falling from the sky to destroy the city. READ MORE

Tall el-Hammam Destroyed by Cosmic Air Burst 3,600 Years Ago

Many of you will already know about the new paper released by Bunch et al, titled “A Tunguska sized airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam a Middle Bronze Age city in the Jordan Valley near the Dead Sea”, the significance of which should not be underestimated.

Now The End Begins is your front line defense against the rising tide of darkness in the last Days before the Rapture of the Church

When you contribute to this fundraising effort, you are helping us to do what the Lord called us to do. The money you send in goes primarily to the overall daily operations of this site. When people ask for Bibles, we send them out at no charge. When people write in and say how much they would like gospel tracts but cannot afford them, we send them a box at no cost to them for either the tracts or the shipping, no matter where they are in the world. Even all the way to South Africa. We even restarted our weekly radio Bible study on Sunday nights again, thanks to your generous donations. All this is possible because YOU pray for us, YOU support us, and YOU give so we can continue growing.

But whatever you do, don’t do nothing. Time is short and we need your help right now. If every one of the 15,860+ people on our daily mailing list gave $4.50, we would reach our goal immediately. If every one of our 150,000+ followers on Facebook gave $1.00 each, we would reach 300% of our goal. The same goes for our 15,900 followers on Twitter. But sadly, many will not give, so we need the ones who can and who will give to be generous. As generous as possible.

“Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ;” Titus 2:13 (KJV)

“Thank you very much!” – Geoffrey, editor-in-chief, NTEB

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