The Plain Truth is so Happy That You Have Been Enjoying Bob’s Broadcasts.
2000 years ago, a newscaster that we know of as Jesus Christ warned us about false Christianity. The warning was not against the devil but against false Christianity…about people who come in His name and deceive many.
Hi, it’s Bob Barney. This is The Plain Truth Today, brought to you by theplaintruth.com.
Today is December 17th, and I’ve used the date because we would only play this on December 17th, because today is my wife Tammy’s and my 43rd wedding anniversary. As time goes by, it seems like these 43 years have gone by pretty fast too. My best earthly prayer to God was answered some 43 years ago, when after a pretty long friendship that I loved my wife the whole time, but she didn’t know it.
After a pretty long friendship, she finally told me one evening that she was in love with me as well, and we were married right away. It has been 43 years, and it’s the greatest gift God ever gave to me…that gift being my wife, Tammy.
2:21 There’s a message here, not just my anniversary message, yet it is something that I think about a lot because of my anniversary. I just want to say that as you grow older, time goes by quicker. It honestly seems that you do age faster as you go on. 25 or 30 years old, when you’re that age, you have more life ahead of you than you’ve lived behind you. When you’re that young, you really have 40, maybe 50 years ahead of you yet that you don’t have when you’re my age now, 69 and a half going on 70.
So it seems like time goes by more slowly when you’re young.
Do you remember when you were in high school? Those four years seemed like a lot of your life. Actually, it was a lot of your life at the time. You were 13, 14 years old to 18 years old and so it’s almost a quarter of your life in high school. It seems like it went on forever.
4:56 Now, when you approach 50 years old, 60 years old, four years, it seems like a day’s time…10 years seems like a couple of weeks and 20 years seems like it was a year or two. That’s what really happens as it is part of the aging process that many people just do not understand, or I should say they do not understand the reasons why.
What is God’s plan here?
I ask this because there is a God and it’s the God of the Bible. The God is the God, the Father and Jesus Christ. They are your God that you worship and that you are under their control and your future is under them. It’s that simple.
One of the curses to living as a human being today is that we all face this…that as we age, as we get older, our time gets shorter, and we feel like it’s going by faster and faster. I don’t care who you talk to, if they believe in God or not, when they get older and older, they will tell you that time actually speeds up. It doesn’t slow down. Even though all of us want to slow down our years, it just doesn’t happen as you age. But when you’re young, it seems like time barely crawls by.
7:59 During my years before Tammy, I was mainly alone, and I didn’t like being alone. I remember when I was first studying the Bible, even before I believed in the Bible and God, that I did not want to be alone. Then I read the words in Genesis, that it is not good for a man to be alone.
Boy, did I agree with that.
Tammy and I were best friends for many years before we fell in love with each other. But like I said earlier, I was in love with her the first time I ever saw her. She was only 16 at the time. Sometimes we think maybe she was only 15 at the time and I’m six years older than her. So I guess being a friend at first was the right scenario back then. I will say I was very happy being her friend and she was my best friend, and I was her best friend long before we ever got married. I think that is a basis of our marriage, that the friendship is always there, and it’s not just based on love, it’s based on a friendship and a mutual respect.
We were actually best friends, did a lot of things together for five years before we got married back in December of 1981 and I think we’re stronger because of it.
We are all at the same time under a curse of Adam.
We are all going to die.
If we’re lucky enough to be alive during the last days of the tribulation, we may not experience death as we know it, but we will experience that change into the spirit that is coming when Christ comes. We can only hope maybe we’re going to be alive then, but maybe we don’t want to hope that as well. Death and growing old is a part of God’s plan for us as our eventual resurrection from the dead. Putting on the cloak of spirituality, becoming God’s true sons and daughters, and not just begotten children of God, but literally God’s ourselves is the future that is planned for us.
It’s harder for me today to comprehend that thought honestly more than it was when I first learned it some 40 years ago, 45 years ago, that we’re going to be the children of God. Sometimes when you realize how sinful you are, how your mind is never right with God, and I’ve been in this, believing this for 45 years, and I will be honest that my mind is not right with God. My mind should be though, and I envy those who I think are better than I am, but it’s still not there. I just have to hope and pray that God helps me find exactly the course I need take with my life.
11:02 As you get older and older, you get wiser and wiser and realize you’re off the mark more and more. In Deuteronomy 31, verse 6, we hear these words from God, do not fear the road ahead of you, for God walks with you. His hand will guide you and grace will sustain you through every trial…that’s so true. God is with us if we ask Him to be. Now God is not with us necessarily if we don’t ask him to be. Now there are cases where God is with people before they know it and in turn God has chosen those people to do a specific purpose for God’s plan. However, for the most part, most of us have to invite God into our lives.
Remember, it was Adam and Eve that rejected God and tried to hide from God and as a result, now God basically hides from mankind. This is not God’s world. I say this all the time. This is the world of the devil, and the Bible agrees with that. The devil is the god of this world. The devil qualified to be the god of this world. God put him in charge of this world until he found out that he was the author and the father of sin. He was full of deceit. Then he put Adam on this earth to replace the devil. Adam failed…he failed miserably so God had to devise a plan. The plan was that one of the two gods, one of the two beings that make up the Godhead, Jesus Christ, decided, well, Jesus, the Word, or Yahweh of the Old Testament, became Jesus Christ, the Savior, born of a woman some 2,000 years ago, and came to die for all of our sins. That’s the scenario that God used to save us.
12:57 The other curse that we got from Adam and Eve is, of course, death. Death came into the world. Human death came into the world.
One of the things that I think many people who are creationists fail to see was death was in the world before Adam and Eve sinned. It was okay. They did eat meat, in my opinion. They were not vegetarians. There was death in the world because just simple death happened because of this reason alone. Thousands of bacteria, millions, billions of bacteria in your belly dies in order for you to live. Death is a part, ceasing to be alive is a part of keeping you healthy. And so what came into the world with Adam’s sin is human death. Humans then became animals and could die. and humans are made of the same earthly ingredients. There is no difference, and the Bible is clear at this. There is really no difference between a human’s physical existence and an animal’s physical existence. The Bible makes it clear that we all breathe the same breath of life, and we are all made of the earthly elements. But man has a spirit that animals do not have in his brain, a spirit of the knowledge of God and of good and evil. The good and evil we weren’t supposed to get, but we ate of that tree, or Adam did, and that’s what caused this whole idea of sin that Christ had to come and save us from.
In James, the book of James, in the New Testament, chapter 1, verse 12, he writes and says that God blesses the person who keeps on going when times are hard, and if they come through hard times, this person will receive a crown, the crown of life itself.
The Lord God has promised it to those who love Him.
14:25 We are under a curse of Adam, but we have the hope of the second Adam who is Jesus Christ. The hope is of a life that is coming after this life, the life that is coming not when we die. When we die, we don’t go to heaven or to hell as taught by the modern churches, which is nothing but paganism. It is nothing found in the Bible. The Bible teaches the resurrection of the dead. All one has to do, and I say this on many of our programs, you only have to read a couple of verses, a couple of chapters to know the whole plan of your salvation. You just have to read 1 Corinthians chapter 15, and you’re going to learn the fate of the dead. You’re going to learn when they resurrect from the dead, why they resurrect from the dead, and if they resurrect bodily or spiritually from the dead. If you’re a Christian in Christ, you are a believer, and you have been what they call saved, then when you are resurrected from the dead, you are not resurrected in a body like you have today. You will be resurrected in a spiritual form. You will be like Christ. You will be like God the Father. You will have their spirit and be only of their spirit. There will be no flesh and bones on you. You will be a spiritual creature as Jesus Christ today, and the Father is a spiritual creature, and you will have their Holy Spirit, their Holy Spirit, because they have the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not a third part of a trinity. Again, the trinity is the doctrine of the devil because he constantly wants to make himself the third part of the Godhead, and he is not.God is two. God is the Father, God is the Word, the Son, the Yahweh of the Old Testament, or the Jehovah as some people render it, and they are comprised of the Holy Spirit. It is their Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is to God what blood is to us, flesh and blood is to us.
We are flesh and blood today, but when we are born again into the God family upon our resurrection from the dead, we will be born in spirit, and you can read that, like I said, in 1 Corinthians 15, and again the last few chapters of Revelation. This is where it tells you exactly the order of when Christians become an immortal being, God’s true children in the spiritual form. You also can understand what happens to the rest of the world who are not Christians, who never understood Christ or never heard about Christ.
They are not lost.
16:45 They come back to physical life, and they live with Christ and us in a physical form for a thousand years during the millennium where there will be hardly any death whatsoever. When churches today preach that our loved ones die and go to heaven and make us feel so good, they are really cheating you of the true plan of God, and they know so if they are honest with themselves because the Bible does not teach such a doctrine. That is from Greek mythology, Greek religion, that you go to heaven when you die or go to hell if you’re a bad person when you die.
The plain truth of the matter is, when you die, you go to a grave and you are asleep, and I know people like to say, oh that’s soul sleeping, but that’s exactly what the Bible calls it.
You actually are in a deep, dead sleep, and there is no knowledge, there is no pain, there is no idea that your loved ones are being tortured and suffered below or anything like that. What you have is an eternal rest until Christ comes back and the trumpet blows that you see blowing in Revelation and talked about in 1 Corinthians 15, and you are then awakened from your deadly sleep by God’s Spirit, and you become quickened as the King James Bible calls it. You become alive again, but not in the physical form, you become alive again in a spiritual form, and you become God’s literal children, and that, my friends, is when you are truly born again. Today, you’re like a fertilized egg inside of your mother. You are begotten. You are a zygote. You are a partial being of God. You’re halfway there, a quarter way there, but you’re not there until the resurrection of the dead, and Paul makes it clear. How can you say there is no resurrection of the dead? Because if there is no resurrection of the dead, then we are hopeless slobs, basically is what he’s saying. We don’t have zero hope if we’re not resurrected from the dead. Then Christ is a liar, and our hope is in vain, and we’re miserable people.
Read 1 Corinthians 15. Read it for yourself. Read it in the King James. Read it in the New King James and then read it in the Living Bible. Read it in different Bibles to get the whole modern idea, the modern speech, instead of the vows and thine’s and those that many people can’t understand when they read the King James. Sometimes you have to understand the King James Bible isn’t the Bible that the Apostles read that many people believe today, believe it or not, but it is a rendition with old English, and it’s not the modern English we speak today.
19:32 I find the New King James version of the Bible is still probably the best more modern translation, but if you’re just listening and you want to hear the Bible as a novel, and you want to get the idea of the Bible and the feeling of the Bible in other times, the Living Bible is a great translation.
But going on from that, we have to realize that we are under this curse that Jesus Christ came and died for and got rid of, but we’re still under it. He’s no longer under it because he conquered death for himself, but He has not yet conquered death for you and me, and we’re going to die. We’re going to die either of old age, of a car accident, or some tragic thing, but we’re all going to die, and then we go into a grave, and we await the return of Jesus Christ.
Now, there are going to be people, when you read 1 Corinthians 15, there are going to be people who are alive during the tribulation and live through it and witness the return of Christ. Those Christians, called saints when they see Christ coming, and He’s going to be brighter than the sun, and honestly, it’s going to be an awesome sight for those who witness it…whether believers or not believers, but those who were Christians living through the tribulation, according to the Apostle Paul, and I have no reason not to believe Him. We are going to be changed into spirit without actually dying first, and they’re the only people since the creation of the world that just gets changed into spirit without experience and death. Up until then, all of us, from Adam and Eve on, have died. Enoch died. All the people that you know of in the Bible, contrary to what many religions try to tell you, died, and all you have to do is read the Bible and understand that they all died, including Enoch and Elijah, they died, and they are not in heaven today as many people try to tell you they are.
Your loved ones are not in heaven, and your loved ones are not in hell, except for the fact that the word hell really comes from an old English word for hell, which just simply means a hole in the ground or a grave. In fact, in the early times, like our pilgrim forefathers would have said, we’re going to put our potatoes in hell for the winter to keep them from freezing and rotting, and hell was just a term for a cellar or a hole in the ground, and when you are told that you’re going to go to hell when you die, you’re going to go to a place of the dead called sheol, which is just a grave.
The Hebrew word sheol, s-h-e-o-l in English, just simply means grave, and many people who think you’re going to go to heaven or hell when you die are just being mistaught by a clergy that is part of a great false Christianity that is fooling the world and working for Satan the devil. Now, I said this before, and I want to say this again. You may be a member of that church, and you may love Christ with all your heart, and you may worship Christ and die for Christ if he asked you to. You don’t have to worry about yourself. You are a Christian then. No matter what church you belong to, you are a Christian if you’re willing to accept Jesus Christ as your God, and you’re going to listen to him when he talks to you. If Christ comes and says you’re going to not eat pork anymore, you’re not going to eat pork. If Christ comes and says you’re going to follow the Sabbath day like you’re supposed to, and you know it’s Christ talking to you, you’re going to do it. And if you’re not, then you’re part of the false church. But if you’re going to follow whatever Jesus Christ tells you to do if he ever saw you, then you are a Christian in your heart, and God has already accepted you. You have no worries. Now, you do have the same worries that I have. I have a lot of worries. I don’t want to die. I’m afraid of death.
I know what death is, and I’m afraid of death.
23:44 I’m afraid of what happens. I’m afraid of torture. I’m afraid of suffering. I’m afraid of cancer. I have fears. I have fears that as I grow older, get bigger, and they should go away. And if I had better faith in God, they would go away. But I got news for you. I don’t have the faith in God that I need to have yet, and I keep praying for that faith, and I do believe that as I grow closer to that time, God will give me the faith. But as of right now, I don’t have it, and I am not somebody here, some Holy Joe saying I have it all figured out, and I’m there when I’m not. And I think most of you listening out there are not there either. If you are there, then I envy you, and I’m happy for you. I’m not upset about you, and there are people out there who do understand and are not afraid of what’s going to happen to them. Unfortunately, many of those people think because they’re going to heaven, and that is not what’s going to happen.
I have a lot to worry about in myself. I spend every day realizing how I fall short of what I should be. I fall short every single day of my life. When I read Paul, a lot of people find comfort in Paul because they think Paul did away with the law, did no such thing. Actually, when I read Paul, I realize that I’m in worse trouble than I am than when I read James or especially John. John is very comforting and realizes that we’re all sinners, and we continue to sin.
If we don’t say we’re sinners, we’re liars, and we make God a liar.
However, if we confess our sins, God is there to save us from those sins and to forgive us. I need to hear that word because I sin all the time. My mind is a sinful creature, and that is what mankind is. We’re sinful. We’re in rebellion against God till the day we die and I hate to say that, but that is us, and that is you, and that is me.
There are people out there, I know, that have found peace and solace with God and their destiny. I have not. I do hope I will, but I have not. I’m being honest here. I think a lot of people should know that even people who believe what I believe and know the truth, the plain truth, so to speak, still have fears and still have doubts about themselves. I think that’s healthy in a way because God uses those fears and those doubts to keep you in line.
In Jeremiah 29, verse 11, we have this hope that God will give us back all of our years that we have lost. Be patient, be ready, and trust his plan. If you believe in God, he will never let you down. Amen to that. So what we have to do is keep our focus on God’s plan for us and for all of mankind and to trust God. We have to trust God, and that’s pretty hard. I’m telling you, when you live in this modern Satan-inspired world, it’s hard to constantly trust God when things are going wrong, and going wrong, and you just can’t see a way out. I was there. I’m not there now. I’m pretty happy now. I’m not happy that I’m 69 and a half years old, and I’m counting down how many years I got left, but I’m happier now probably than I was, I know, when I was 20. And I’m probably happier when I was 30, because you have a lifetime of achievement that you didn’t have when you’re 25 and 30 years old.
27:22 You’re looking forward, now you’re looking back, realizing what happened. But the truth is, God has a plan for us, and we have to trust in that plan. And sometimes it’s hard to trust in God’s plans, because it’s hard to see a way out. I’m sure there are people listening to this who are in desperate situations right now. Maybe a loved one died, maybe they’re dying themselves, or maybe they just were diagnosed with a life-ending disease, like a cancer or something else. And all of a sudden, eternity is at their doorstep, and they start to wonder, what’s going to happen to me? And I know there’s many people out there that’s asking that question, what’s going to happen to me? Well, the Bible has the answer, and I know it’s tough for people to believe it all the time, especially when you came from where I came from. I came from a background where I turned to be an atheist, and I disproved God in my heart, and I thought I did, for six, seven years of my teenage life, up into my early 20s, before God made Himself known to me and made Himself, His plan known to me. And I accepted it quite fast back then in terrible times that I was going through, because when you’re young, you kind of accept things quicker. But as you age, I’m sorry to say, as you get more knowledge of your futility and of your humanity and of your vulnerabilities, sometimes fears actually grow that you didn’t have when you were younger.
I was fearless when I was in my 20s and 30s. I was not afraid of death. I was not afraid of anybody. But then, as you age, you realize how frail you really are, and how frail you’re going to become. You realize how torturous it would be, like if you’re ever captured by, like the Nazis who captured people, and then they tortured them to death in these prison camps, you realize how horrible life is, and how horrible it can be. As you age, you get it more.
The other thing, like I said earlier in the program, as you age, the years and the days and the hours just flash by you, where 20 years seems like just mere yesterday. When you’re 20 years old, 20 years is your whole life, and you have another 60, 70 years to go. You don’t have that when you’re 70 years old. You don’t have that even when you’re 50 years old. Many people experience that transformation called the midlife crisis when they hit 40, 50 years old. It didn’t really happen to me until I hit about 50 years old, but it hit, and it’s still there. I don’t want to die. I want to stay alive. I get up early every day, and I exercise, and I try to eat right now, and I try to keep myself healthy for my wife’s sake.
Today is our anniversary, as I started this program out. I love her very much. I want to be around for her, and I want her not to be alone. I want her to be with me as long as she can be with me. So, you know, I have, this sounds chauvinistic, but I take a duty to protect her, to be her protector, to watch her, and to help her find God and deliver her to God the Father upon her death. the thought of that is just very hard for me to think of, our death, her death, my death, because it’s hard when you understand the real biblical meaning of death. It’s very hard, but it’s our faith that God will resurrect us from the dead, and our marriage is not over when we die. We are allowed to, if we want to, marry again when you die, until death do us part. But I believe Tammy and I are one, like God is one, like Christ and the Father is one. If one of us dies separate than the other, I’m never going to marry again, and probably she won’t either. We can, and maybe we will find ourselves doing something like that, but I can’t imagine it.
30:01 She is my whole life. She has been my whole life. She is an answered prayer from God for me, when I had no one and I wanted her above anyone else, and I never thought she would ever see me the way I saw her. The day she told me, back in early December of 1981, that she thought of me that way, within a very short time, we were married, and I’ve had a phenomenal 43 years with her.
I hope to hit 50. I’d love to hit 60 years together…and so this message is to Tammy, I love you, and I will always love you.
Happy anniversary from the one that you chose back in December of 1981 to spend your life with. I’m very grateful.
Also for all you out there, I’m hoping that you can find the same joy that I have, and I also hope you can find the same God that I have found, that you can find a God who will be there for you and will show you the plan of your salvation and what your life is going to be like in this life and the life to come. The life to come is so wonderful. I can’t understand it, and probably you can’t either…but inevitably it’s coming. Believe God, read that word called the Bible, understand it, believe it, and you will find miracles happen in your life as I did.
This is Bob Barney with The Plain Truth today, on my anniversary, saying thank you for listening. We appreciate you. Don’t give up on God. God is there. God will help you if you ask God to do so. God loves you. God loves his creation.
Until tomorrow,
Goodbye.