Moses is Dead - Part 1

by Pastor Gary C. Price

Girding Up for War

In this issue of the Omega Times, we will examine what Israel went through to receive their inheritance and how that relates to the church today. Let’s start by reading God’s instructions to the Israelites once Moses dies.

“Now after the death of Moses the servant of the LORD it came to pass, that the LORD spoke unto Joshua the son of Nun, Moses’ minister, saying, Moses my servant is dead; now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, thou, and all this people, unto the land which I do give to them, even to the children of Israel. Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you, as I said unto Moses. From the wilderness and this Lebanon even unto the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and unto the great sea toward the going down of the sun, shall be your coast. There shall not any man be able to stand before thee all the days of thy life: as I was with Moses, so I will be with thee: I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee. Be strong and of a good courage: for unto this people shalt thou divide for an inheritance the land, which I swore unto their fathers to give them. Only be thou strong and very courageous, that thou mayest observe to do according to all the law, which Moses my servant commanded thee: turn not from it to the right hand or to the left, that thou mayest prosper whithersoever thou goest. This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success. Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the LORD thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest. Then Joshua commanded the officers of the people, saying, Pass through the host, and command the people, saying, Prepare you victuals; for within three days ye shall pass over this Jordan, to go in to possess the land, which the LORD your God giveth you to possess it. And to the Reubenites, and to the Gadites, and to half the tribe of Manasseh, spoke Joshua, saying, Remember the word which Moses the servant of the LORD commanded you, saying, The LORD your God hath given you rest, and hath given you this land. Your wives, your little ones, and your cattle, shall remain in the land which Moses gave you on this side Jordan; but ye shall pass before your brethren armed, all the mighty men of valor, and help them; until the LORD have given your brethren rest, as he hath given you, and they also have possessed the land which the LORD your God giveth them: then ye shall return unto the land of your possession, and enjoy it, which Moses the LORD’s servant gave you on this side Jordan toward the sunrising. And they answered Joshua, saying, All that thou commandest us we will do, and whithersoever thou sendest us, we will go. According as we hearkened unto Moses in all things, so will we hearken unto thee: only the LORD thy God be with thee, as he was with Moses. Whosoever he be that doth rebel against thy commandment, and will not hearken unto thy words in all that thou commandest him, he shall be put to death: only be strong and of a good courage.”
Joshua 1:1-18

God starts by reconfirming to Joshua what He has already done: He has already given them this land as an inheritance. He even goes so far as to define the boundaries of the land that has been given. Notice also that the Israelites still had to take possession of the land even though God had already given it to them. This might seem strange until you appreciate the fact that - as an eternal being - God is looking at the outcome; and the outcome is the same for those who engage in the battle: the inheritance is received.

This biblical truth is the exact opposite of what is being preached about God in many arenas. They would have you believe that God is like a slot machine, doling out blessings just because you pay a tithe. The truth is that there are a lot of battles you face when dealing with God and the devil for real.

Immediately after reminding them of what He had already given, God begins to reassure them of His presence and continually encourages them to be strong, of good courage, and not to fear. Why? God is trying to prepare them for what they will face once they reach this land. He knew that the Promised Land - although already given - was full of enemies, giants, and wicked folks. Look at Deuteronomy 20:1-20, where God gives a more detailed description about the enemies they will face while taking possession of their inheritance:

“When thou goest out to battle against thine enemies, and seest horses, and chariots, and a people more than thou, be not afraid of them: for the LORD thy God is with thee, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. And it shall be, when ye are come nigh unto the battle, that the priest shall approach and speak unto the people, and shall say unto them, Hear, O Israel, ye approach this day unto battle against your enemies: let not your hearts faint, fear not, and do not tremble, neither be ye terrified because of them; for the LORD your God is he that goeth with you, to fight for you against your enemies, to save you. And the officers shall speak unto the people, saying, What man is there that hath built a new house, and hath not dedicated it? Let him go and return to his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man dedicate it. And what man is he that hath planted a vineyard, and hath not yet eaten of it? Let him also go and return unto his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man eat of it. And what man is there that hath betrothed a wife, and hath not taken her? Let him go and return unto his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man take her. And the officers shall speak further unto the people, and they shall say, What man is there that is fearful and fainthearted? Let him go and return unto his house, lest his brethren’s heart faint as well as his heart. And it shall be, when the officers have made an end of speaking unto the people, that they shall make captains of the armies to lead the people. When thou comest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace unto it. And it shall be, if it make thee answer of peace, and open unto thee, then it shall be, that all the people that is found therein shall be tributaries unto thee, and they shall serve thee. And if it will make no peace with thee, but will make war against thee, then thou shalt besiege it: And when the LORD thy God hath delivered it into thine hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword: but the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself; and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies, which the LORD thy God hath given thee. Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far off from thee, which are not of the cities of these nations. But of the cities of these people, which the LORD thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth: but thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee: that they teach you not to do after all their abominations, which they have done unto their gods; so should ye sin against the LORD your God. When thou shalt besiege a city a long time, in making war against it to take it, thou shalt not destroy the trees thereof by forcing an axe against them: for thou mayest eat of them, and thou shalt not cut them down (for the tree of the field is man’s life) to employ them in the siege: only the trees which thou knowest that they be not trees for meat, thou shalt destroy and cut them down; and thou shalt build bulwarks against the city that maketh war with thee, until it be subdued.”
Deuteronomy 20:1-20

Again, we see God preparing the Israelites for the upcoming battle they will face in possessing the Promised Land. He acknowledges that to their own eyes these enemies will appear to be more than they are. (verse1) However, He tells them not to be afraid for He is with them. His presence is all they need to win the battle. This is similar to how it can be for a Christian at times. When you are going through, it can look bleak and contrary. At such times, the maximum comfort we can expect from God is the reassurance that He is with us. Yet, then God goes on to say why He is with us “to save us.” (verse 4) God is with us - fighting for us - to deliver us!

Most of what is currently called the church has not faced enemies like this. The biggest thing many have faced so far is that our boss will not give us the day off. Imagine if we were to get in an actual, hellashish fight with the devil? We cannot even begin to think about waging a spiritual war until folks get stronger. Too many Christians are still caught up in little things that they let bug, torment, and bother them. Their affections are locked on this earth and they allow people and circumstances to govern how they feel.

This is why God next instructs the Israelites to go take care of any worldly affairs. Don’t have your heart in covenant with earthly things; any loose ends, anything left undone, anything in this world pulling on you, go take care of it now because this is a deadly battle and it may cost your life. This is the point where many folks just stop cold. When it comes to talking, everyone is saved; but when it is time to put their own lives on the line for what they say they believe, few are willing to take the stand. Too many Christians try to serve God in name only and as soon as salvation becomes costly, they turn back. Jesus did not say in vain to count up the costs! (Luke 14:28) God does not mince words. Knowing the heart of man, He instructs anyone who is fearful or faint of heart to turn back. Not only will they be of no use in battle, but there is another important reason why God gives this instruction. Simply put, fear is contagious. In fact, fear is a spirit. (II Timothy 1:7) God sends back those who are afraid so that they will not infect the rest of the people with fear. What God did then, He is doing now in pruning and culling back the church; there is too much dead weight with those who just won’t fight.

Not only must Christians be prepared to fight, but they must also follow God’s directions regarding how to handle the enemies found in the land. Those who surrender in peace become tributaries or avenues of entry to you to take more ground. There is no need to fight these people because they will be your servants. Those who do not surrender, they had to fight; yet even in those instances, God has already given them into the Israelites hands. (verse 13) They must fight, but the victory has been given.

The Unclean Thing

While they were given some latitude in taking the spoils of those outside of the Promised Land, God ordered that they utterly destroy all who inhabited the land God had given them. Their specific instruction was not to not leave alive anything that breathed; women, children, animals, etc. it made no difference. God gives his reasons for this command in verse 18, “That they teach you not to do after all their abominations, which they have done unto their gods; so should ye sin against the LORD your God.”

The Chapter ends with God explaining that once the land is conquered, they should not cut down the fruit bearing trees because they will be sustenance for them. However, the trees that did not bear fruit would be cut down and used as war instruments to besiege other cities. The things that we encounter in the battle will either be sustenance to us or will better equip us for the next battle.

Let’s look at the process of purification needed to go into battle. We can see this depicted in Deuteronomy 23:9-14:

“When the host goeth forth against thine enemies, then keep thee from every wicked thing. If there be among you any man, that is not clean by reason of uncleanness that chanceth him by night, then shall he go abroad out of the camp, he shall not come within the camp: but it shall be, when evening cometh on, he shall wash himself with water: and when the sun is down, he shall come into the camp again. Thou shalt have a place also without the camp, whither thou shalt go forth abroad: and thou shalt have a paddle upon thy weapon; and it shall be, when thou wilt ease thyself abroad, thou shalt dig therewith, and shalt turn back and cover that which cometh from thee: for the LORD thy God walketh in the midst of thy camp, to deliver thee, and to give up thine enemies before thee; therefore shall thy camp be holy: that he see no unclean thing in thee, and turn away from thee.”

God gives details of what is needed for purification; the washing, the digging and covering for human waste, etc. This tells us some of the characteristics of God. He is peculiar and does not like nasty, unclean arenas. This is the nature and character of God. For example, if your house is dirty and unkept, God will not abide there. It is too nasty for him; it is unclean. If you ride around in a filthy car, He will not show up there. You become conscious of being clean when God’s Spirit is in you because He is conscious of what is clean. If you are not conscience of cleanness then you do not have God’s Holy Spirit within you and you need to find out what is wrong with you. Dealing with forbidden practices will disempower you as you go into the war.

When God begins to raise up His church for the final attack in these last days, we must be sanctified. We must be separated from every wicked thing!! If a person is evil, you had better leave them alone. Being tied to those who are unclean, or having that which is unclean within you, will cause you to lose the battle. As the Scripture says, God will turn away from you in those conditions.

We need to understand something significant about God, and indeed about salvation. God does not try to “clean up” that which is unclean, He kills off that which is unclean. Then He can clean us from the unrighteousness caused by the presence of the unclean. Jesus did not come to rehabilitate the Adamic nature, He came to crucify it. Then, He can cleanse us from its affects. This is why it is so very important to yield to the purification process. If you pull back from God and hold on to what is cursed, then you will be cursed right along with it. (Revelation 18:4) This is why God instructed the Israelites to kill everything that breathed amongst those who were conquered in the Promised Land. A little leaven leavens the whole lump. Examine Deuteronomy 18:9-14:

“When thou art come into the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations of those nations. There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the LORD: and because of these abominations the LORD thy God doth drive them out from before thee. Thou shalt be perfect with the LORD thy God. For these nations, which thou shalt possess, hearkened unto observers of times, and unto diviners: but as for thee, the LORD thy God hath not suffered thee so to do.”

God destroyed these nations and drove them out because they were practitioners of sorcery, witchcraft, and divination (or what we call in modern terms, fortune telling, horoscopes, the occult, etc.). Yet, there are spiritualist churches all over the world which actively practice these techniques: water witching, oil powders... These people are just sorcerers waving around a magic wand of Jesus’ name thinking that it is real, but in fact they serve the devil. And don’t make the mistake of believing this witchcraft has to be overt. Those who have fallen prey to false doctrines have also been influenced by the work of sorcery, it is just that the sorcerer used a Bible instead of a magic wand to weave the spell. Why do you think that Paul asked the Galatians who had bewitched them? (Galatians 3:1) God does not allow witchcraft and sorcery in His kingdom.

In addition to the witchcraft, God also faults these people for having let their children “pass through the fire.” This is a reference to the practice of worshipping Molech. In this ritual, a statue of the demon god Molech would be placed in a fire. Once this statue was heated up to the point where it glowed like a red hot iron, they placed a baby on the hands of the statue and let the baby disintegrate. That is passing your child through the fire; the sacrifice of children.

You may remember that things were so bad when Israel was under siege that they began to boil and eat their own children. (2 Kings 6:26-30) This is what we have now! Abortion, child molestation, kidnappings, perversion, and all kinds of pedophilia; the sacrifice of children is rampant. This is a witness to us about the rise of Satanic worship around the world; children - the innocent ones - take the brunt of Satan’s fury because he always tries to destroy the most innocent ones. Yet, he has to be given authority to do this, either directly through open Satan worship or indirectly by the faithful failing to be salt to preserve the world.

One thing that went a long way towards giving Satan a foothold in this realm was the legalization of abortion. It is not normal for a mother to have an abortion, yet there have been over 50 million babies butchered in America alone, and people just walk around as if everything is fine. Brothers and sisters, this is supernatural! How can innocent blood be flowing like a river and no one even care? People care more about their cars than they do for these innocent ones being destroyed everyday. As long as these murder centers called abortion clinics are in existence, there will be continual blood sacrifices made to Satan. These are idolators offering babies to the devil; so it was then, so it is now.

The devil has taken the old pagan forms of devil worship and changed the vernacular to appease our ‘civilized ways.’ Murder of the unborn sacrificed to the devil has allowed Satan’s spirit to have preeminence in this country. Any spirit you sacrifice to has the authority to come from the spirit world to manifest in the natural. The spirit is invoked into this realm by worship. You do not have to worry about what came into you in the world, just find out what you worshipped. That is why the devil tries to thinks of all kinds of hidden ways to cause men to worship him, so that we will be unable to identify it as an act of worship and be ignorant of the unclean spirits invading our souls.

"When the LORD thy God shall cut off the nations from before thee, whither thou goest to possess them, and thou succeedest them, and dwellest in their land; take heed to thyself that thou be not snared by following them, after that they be destroyed from before thee; and that thou inquire not after their gods, saying, How did these nations serve their gods? even so will I do likewise. Thou shalt not do so unto the LORD thy God: for every abomination to the LORD, which he hateth, have they done unto their gods; for even their sons and their daughters they have burnt in the fire to their gods. What thing soever I command you, observe to do it: thou shalt not add thereto, nor diminish from it."
Deuteronomy 12:29-32

Who would have thought it could be so simple: Do exactly what God says, not one thing more or less. What is it about man that allows him to think he can “improve” upon what God has commanded? This is what we see throughout Christianity and the religious world. People have fashioned for themselves a tailor-made God. He has been reformatted to fit into any culture, ethnic group, political affiliation, or social ‘norm’.

For example, when Billy Graham makes an altar call, those who respond are coming to his presentation of Jesus. This is the white, middle class, Angelo-Saxon Jesus that is going to be comfortable with and conformable to any Baptist, Presbyterian, Methodist, or Roman Catholic church member. In Black churches, altar calls are made to an Afro-centric, ethnic person concerned with the state of governmental programs and social/economic advancement. Martin Luther King Jr. was not a servant of God, his message was sent by the devil. That statement alone is enough to make most Black people go into a state of shock. King’s message had nothing to do with Jesus Christ or salvation. His platform of nonviolent social change came from Ghandi in India and it is still contaminating people today. The devil actually put people in a cage through the civil rights movement because he made them believe that King’s message of “freedom” actually meant something to God. It was all a trick. Civil rights is not salvation. Blacks didn’t get better from civil rights, it simply gave Blacks the ability to become Roman citizens.

The pope was an elderly man living in Rome who had nothing to do with Jesus whatsoever. Yet a billion people have been seduced to believe that the pope is real. Nuns, popes...all of this is just a world of fantasy. Lies have been set-up as a religious scheme to make money, and billions of souls are blind to the delusion. They still set-up indulgences to this very day, which are monetary gifts paid to the catholic church in order to get friends and loved ones out of purgatory. According to that church, your family member didn’t go to hell nor heaven, they are in a holding tank of suffering called purgatory until somebody on earth pays the price to release them (or until God has determined that they have suffered enough). The worst thing is that purgatory doesn’t even exist!

Folks, we must realize that Moses is dead! The world does not want you to come to Jesus and be filled with His Spirit because then you will be able to “see.” As long as you seek to be led by someone other than God, you will continue to be blind. The devil sets up structures that look holy and religious to the carnal mind so that people will be deceived into thinking they are serving Christ. So we see people like the pope, Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, Charles Stanley, Fred Price, T.D. Jakes...the list goes on and on. Every generation has it variations of God used to generate money. They hold back the truth from people because it cuts into the money. Religion is a money making enterprise; all worldly systems are. As a cosmocrater or world ruler, the devil rules the seen economic, governmental, and religious empires of earth. The earth is the Lords and the fullness there of, but the world systems belong to the devil. If you understand this, then you’ll know why the devil cannot accomplish one thing without money. The devil is looking for folks he can use as a way to keep money flowing into his systems; the religious tithe, governmental taxes, no matter what we call it, the devil must devise a way to keep people financing his systems. The devil embodies the character of a pimp and he is looking for a whore who will do his bidding.

The next Issue of Omega Times will address what it means for Moses to be dead as well as how you can get your soul cleansed and freed from the dictates of the devil in order to serve the True and Living God.