Audio Download

Conscience – A Seared Conscience, Part 15

[Study Aired February 10, 2024]

Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron;  ~ 1Ti 4:2  

Few expressions from a child are more repugnant and rile a parent more than the sullen or fiery body language of stubbornness backed up with unflinching eyes. If not swiftly corrected in love, that condition is often the beginning of a seared conscience. Of course, the most unyielding, fearful and powerful men ever to exist, as Pharoah of Moses’ time did, and now we will melt before the Lord regardless of the many life experiences that emboldened our consciences.

As consistently expressed in this Conscience series, our conscience is awakened, as Cain experienced, when a recognised governing law is broken. For Christians and unbelievers alike, those laws are innately known so that mankind is without excuse, as seen in Romans 1:18-32 and directly in verse 20.

Rom 1:20  For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: 

Rev 19:11  And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he [Christ] that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war.
Rev 19:12  His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself.
Rev 19:13  And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God.

Christ’s Wife is the ONLY personage who knows His name since she, as ‘his Christ’ and Wife, is in intimate unity with Him by His word (Acts 4:26. Rev 11:15; Rev 12:10). The symbolic 1,000 wives of Solomon’s court, representing all of the Babylonian Christian churches named as harlots, at their ruling leisure (delusionally) make Him come to them when feeling the need to receive seed unaware of producing bastard sons (Deu 23:2. Heb 12:8) of “another Jesus” (2Co 11:4). 

Searing of any part of our anatomy or spiritual heart is the consequence of contact with a very hot surface, physically or spiritually. Over time, repeated searing occurring on the same wound causes the body to lay up hardened leathery skin to resist further pain. The human body is fearfully and wonderfully made to protect itself. So, too, are our cauterised minds made to resist repeated abuse, particularly because of our imagined self-will for the children we have been with the fiery, determined eyes of stubbornness. If that hot, searing surface erupts into a furnace, no leathery heart will survive its chastisement.

A hardened heart is (H3515) a heavy, grievously oppressed heart since it knows to do righteously and repeatedly doesn’t. It is thus seared.

The old childhood adage, “Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me” is a lie until the mind is seared and its enemies made impervious and eventually irrelevant. So, too, can our Lord’s light afflictions build resistance to change, at which point His still, small voice prompting our conscience repeatedly withstood, dulls our hearing and blinds our eyes to the drum of distant hail. When the size of chastening hail grows to the weight of a talent (45 kg or 100 pounds) with a devastating terminal velocity of about 160 km an hour, equivalent to 100 mph, utter devastation occurs, and what the hail doesn’t crush, the melt-water will seep into every crevice of hidden sin and drown the lies now petrified in rock, the word of God as a memorial.

Isa 28:14  Wherefore hear the word of the LORD, ye scornful men [by repeated rejection and the beginnings of a seared heart], that rule this people which is in Jerusalem. 
Isa 28:15  Because ye have said, We have made a covenant with death [Rev 18:7-8 “… am no widow, and shall see no sorrow”], and with hell are we at agreement; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, it shall not come unto us: for we have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood have we hid ourselves:
Isa 28:16  Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste.
Isa 28:17  Judgment also will I lay to the line, and righteousness to the plummet: and the hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters shall overflow the hiding place.

What the hail destroys, the water submerges every nook and cranny in a watery grave. The Elect of God is that hail in the Resurrection to Judgment, the Lake and baptism of Fire that, like water, seeps into every crevice and utterly consumes the very elements of the earth we are, bringing forth gold (2Pe 3:10-12).

Note that the fire, which melts the elements within, isn’t constantly restarted to bring forth gold. It is a one-time event for every person raised in one of the two resurrections since repeated smelting hardens gold, symbolically searing consciences. Rather, the heat for the Elect of God in this age gets turned up and down according to our stubbornness. Either way, for both resurrections, the fire burns through the toughest, seared consciences.

We have the nature of a seared conscience when we live with a resident familiar spirit, lazily having not resisted Satan by mimicking Christ’s power with his expression, “Get behind me, Satan” (Mat 16:23). Since the entire world will be eventually saved, we have a 100% guarantee that our old man will die both physically and spiritually (1Co 15:59).

Lev 20:6  And the soul that turneth after such as have familiar spirits, and after wizards, to go a whoring after them, I will even set my face against that soul, and will cut him off from among his people. 

Isa 29:4  And thou shalt be brought low, thou shalt speak out of the ground, and thy speech shall come low out of the dust, and thy voice shall be as of one that hath a familiar spirit, out of the ground, and thy speech shall whisper out of the dust. [What beautiful poetry!)

A familiar spirit is a necromancer (H178) who promotes dead works and lying doctrines, and we thus become fornicators, silly women {churches} (2Ti 3:6) hiding in the darkness, nudging, shuffling feet under the table, winking to garner party spirit (revellings; carousals of like lying minds), fearful of being exposed by the light of Christ.

Pro 6:11  So shall thy [spiritual] poverty come as one that travelleth, and thy want as an armed man.
Pro 6:12  A naughty person, a wicked man, walketh with a froward mouth. 
Pro 6:13  He winketh with his eyes, he speaketh with his feet, he teacheth with his fingers; 
Pro 6:14  Frowardness is in his heart, he deviseth mischief continually; he soweth discord.

Isa 8:19  And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep, and that mutter: should not a people seek unto their God? for the living to the dead?

This is the kind of spirit that doesn’t shout with the trumpet blast of truth but whispers out of the dust of the ground his earthy, deathly doctrines.

Isa 8:20  To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.

Psa 35:19  Let not those who are my lying enemies rejoice over me, those who hate me without cause wink with the eye.
Psa 35:20  For they do not speak peace; but they think deceitful things against the quiet ones of the earth.

The Body of Christ are ‘the quiet ones of the earth’ rising up at the sound of the paradoxical trumpet blast of the still, small voice of God’s spirit saying, “This is the way; walk ye in it”.

Isa 30:19  For the people shall dwell in Zion at [in the creation of the New…] Jerusalem: thou shalt weep no more: he will be very gracious unto thee at the voice of thy cry; when he shall hear it, he will answer thee.
Isa 30:20  And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity, and the water of affliction, yet shall not thy teachers be removed into a corner any more, but thine eyes shall see thy teachers: 
Isa 30:21  And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left.

Mar 9:49  For every one shall be salted with fire, and every sacrifice shall be salted with salt [salt symbolically preserves the truth]. 
Mar 9:50  Salt is good, but if the salt is become saltless, wherewith will ye season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace [through unity in Christ] with one another.

A seared conscience is the result of repeatedly hardening one’s heart. The shades of a hardened heart in scripture are ‘endless’, beginning with Adam’s and Eve’s tender hearts excusing and accusing themselves, laying the first coat of self-righteousness for a seared conscience in us all. Few dramas of a hardened heart are more profound than Pharaoh’s in the time of Moses by the Lord’s hardening.

Exo 4:21  And the LORD said unto Moses, When thou goest to return into Egypt, see that thou do all those wonders before Pharaoh, which I have put in thine hand: but I will harden his heart, that he shall not let the people go.

Likewise, anytime we plant our feet in defiance against Christ’s word, He is giving us, represented as Pharaoh, a hardened heart to humble us. Pharoah, like us in our time of visitation, witnesses the destruction of our empire and, like Babylon and Old Jerusalem within, never to rise again.

2Th 2:1  Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him,
2Th 2:2  That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand [working now, within].

A mind not easily shaken or troubled in spirit by our Lord’s chastisements is a malleable and tender heart having been stripped of its seared “impenitent” nature.

Rom 2:1  Therefore you are without excuse, O man, everyone who judges; for in that in which you judge another, you condemn yourself, for you who judge do the same things.
Rom 2:2  But know that the judgment of God is according to truth on those who practice such things. 
Rom 2:3  And, O man, the one judging those who do such things, and practice them, do you think this, that you shall escape the judgment of God? 
Rom 2:4  Or do you despise the riches of His kindness, and the forbearance and long-suffering, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance? 
Rom 2:5  But according to your hardness and your impenitent heart, do you treasure up wrath for yourself in a day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God,
Rom 2:6  who will render to each [degrees of chastisement relevant…] according to his works;

Of course, the Lord said that he hardened Pharoah’s heart. Pharoah represents us and our Lord likewise hardening our hearts – why? To humble us and recognise that we are the new pot Christ is shaping for His particular use once fired in the furnace of affliction, now in the positive sense seared and impervious to our former ways, knowing that He is Lord and master and not us. Nonetheless, that pot, represented by Nebuchazznezer’s image, our creator smashes to smithereens since it is an earthen vessel (Dan 2:34-35). Christ will only accept any element other than refined and pure gold in the temple he is recreating, represented as faith tried in the fire. 

2Ti 2:20  But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of earth; and some to honour, and some to dishonour. 

1Pe 1:7  That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ:

2Ti 2:21  If a man therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honour, sanctified, and meet for the master’s use, and prepared unto every good work.

What we are being purged of is anything that is not of faith (Rom 14:23) through a malleable heart, one utterly convicted of Christ’s commands and represented as pure gold.

2Th 2:3  Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; [G684: the utter destruction of vessels]
2Th 2:4  Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.

What a startling and astonishing revelation it is when we see that we are that man of perdition set up for utter destruction. The drumbeat of spiritually blinding sermons, particularly currently from mainstream Christianity, is frantically pointing to the heads of the WEF or the Pope or principals of the world’s banking cartels as that man of sin, when all the while, he is that gargoyle in the mirror! The point is that God sears our hearts to guarantee our destruction so that he can reshape us in his image.

Mat 20:15  Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? [with his creation of evil to re-create good?] Is thine eye evil, because I am good? 

Isa 45:5  I am the LORD, and there is none else, there is no God beside me: I girded thee, though thou hast not known me:
Isa 45:6  That they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that there is none beside me. I am the LORD, and there is none else. 
Isa 45:7  I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.

Ecc 1:13 I applied my heart to inquiring and exploring by wisdom concerning all that is done under the heavens:it is an experience of evil Elohim has given to the sons of humanity to humble them by it.

Isa 54:16  Behold, I have created the smith [Satan, Christ’s agent doing only what he is told as seen in Job chapters 1-3] that bloweth the coals in the fire, and that bringeth forth an instrument for his work; and I have created the waster to destroy. (CLV)

God hardens our hearts seven times in accordance with that number, representing the process of completion of utterly destroying the man of perdition and graphically represented by Pharaoh’s hardened conscience to the seven plagues on Egypt.

We, having likewise been chastised for our God-given seared conscience, are given faith to acknowledge our sins and, like the prodigal son, return to our Father.

Pro 24:16 for a just one falls seven times, and rises up again; but the wicked shall fall into evil.

To conclude, we will finish on a positive aspect of a hardened heart, one whose conscience is seared against the wiles of the Serpent and our righteous lusts for companionship and unity of mind and spirit in a spouse.

One of the most painful decisions a single Elect of God desirous for the passions in unity with a spouse understandably remains deeply saddened is that their flesh’s highest calling is very likely being stripped away before their eyes in a pricked consciences’ dedication to Christ. It distressingly is a matter of not looking back on the richness that the flesh offers behind the walls of Sodom, Egypt, Babylon and Old Jerusalem as we flee those cities to the Mount of the Lord.

Such unmarried male and female Elect are a wall embedded with breasts like defensive towers guarding their virginity against their incredible thirst to experience marital love. Initially, and possibly for years, the spectre and not knowing if being a eunuch for the Lord is one’s lot in life, understandably is a dreadful trial.

Son 8:9  If she be a wall, we will build upon her a palace of silver [Christ’s word]: and if she be a door [Chasing the passions of the world], we will inclose her with boards of cedar [that burn like chaff].
Son 8:10  I am a wall, and my breasts like towers: then was I in his eyes as one that found favour.

A beautiful young woman, an Elect of God, His Church, indeed, is a wall paradoxically with twelve open gates in her that never close day or night because there is no night when her breasts are only for Christ! (Isa 60:11, Rev 21:25). There isn’t any darkness when we understand spiritual Shulamite passions. However, dawning light retreats us to darkness whenever we touch the light and find it too bright for our pride since we secretly would rather retain our Queen Vashti-like seared will wounding both Christ and our earthly unconverted spouses’. For an Elect, we knowingly are making “a covenant with death” (Isa 28:18) physically and particularly spiritually.

Being a eunuch, a virgin for the Kingdom’s sake, is one of the most arduous trials men and women have to endure in the flesh. Spiritually, the Body of Christ are eunuchs born from their Babylonian mother’s womb, virgins for the Kingdom within.

Mat 19:12  For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother’s womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the Kingdom of heaven’s sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.

When we think more deeply about it, there are all sorts of ways dear little souls of marital maturity are made eunuchs that are not directly a physical emasculation. Modern society places many psychological emasculations on men and women, soundly searing all hope of advancing in many areas of their lives and not just in marriage.

1Co 7:29  But this I say, brethren, the time is short: it remaineth, that both they that have wives be as though they had none;
1Co 7:30  And they that weep, as though they wept not; and they that rejoice, as though they rejoiced not; and they that buy, as though they possessed not; 
1Co 7:31  And they that use this world, as not abusing [over using lawful aspects of the flesh]  it: for the fashion of this world passeth away.
1Co 7:32  But I would have you without carefulness. He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord:
1Co 7:33  But he that is married careth for the things that are of the world, how he may please his wife [or husband]. 
1Co 7:34  There is difference also between a wife and a virgin. The unmarried woman careth for the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit: but she that is married careth for the things of the world, how she may please her husband.
1Co 7:35  And this I speak for your own profit; not that I may cast a snare upon you, but for that which is comely, and that ye may attend upon the Lord without distraction.

A most outstanding truth is that the Smith blowing on the coals in which the Elect of God serenely dwells have their seared hearts utterly burnt up as a sweet virgin sacrifice to our Lord. 

Lord willing, may we not become distracted by any lusts, particularly by way of a seared conscience defiantly pursuing our will to satiate even our righteous lust.