Pastor Joel Laswell

Now these Old Testament prophecies were not just given to tell us the history of God’s people in ancient times. The prophecies were given to describe to us what is going to happen in our time and to warn us about what will happen if we give the same regard to the prophets, the messengers that God sends to us, as they did to the messengers that He sent to them. Why did God allow Israel to be taken...

We are to come to God and ask for His guidance in determining what the Scriptures reveal… we are to reason from the scriptures, not come to the Scriptures with a belief and look for evidence that supports it. When you add to or take away from the word of God you have been seduced by a fanatical spirit and are in danger of promoting doctrines of devils. I quite often run into some major forms of fa...

Jesus made a very important statement to Phillip who had asked Him if they could see the Heavenly Father. Jesus replied, He that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father. The words and works of Jesus both bore testimony to His divinity, but they were still blinded too much by tradition to really see Jesus, and thus the Father in heaven. When we come to know Jesus more and more, we will come to know our...

Beloved, we must awaken and be sober about the condition of our life in respect to the eternal God. We each have only so much time and opportunities to accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior, becoming a member of the family of God. What are we doing with our time and opportunities?

It is true that millions of God’s people have been persecuted and killed, both in ancient and in modern times. But the time is coming when the position of the oppressors and the persecuted will have a role reversal. Those who have been persecuted will receive their eternal inheritance, and those who have been the oppressors will be raised to receive their doom. Each one of us will either be on one...

How was it possible for Lucifer to convince a third of all the angels in heaven to rebel against their Creator? Lucifer was well loved by all the angels in heaven; after all, he was a covering cherub and stood next to the Godhead. Angels loved to execute his commands which made his stealth methods that much more successful. His most effective method was his whisper campaign. He would talk to the a...

Salvation is not complicated. It is simple enough that a child can understand it. All you have to do is believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. Believe is often translated faith in the Bible. The Greek word translated believe, means to believe something enough to make a commitment to it. It is not merely an intellectual knowledge; it is a commitment. To believe in Jesus is to make...

Are you aware that your fear can be taken away? Psychologists will tell you that by facing your fear you can overcome it and some people have done just that. But it may just be that their fear has been transferred and not really removed. It is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. There has to be a change in our mind and heart before our fears can be completely overcome, and we cannot c...

The Pharisees thought their system of works a certain passport to heaven; in fact, that was their reason for being Pharisees… to be more righteous than anyone else… even God! They fell for the same old trap that Eve fell for back in the Garden of Eden. However, Jesus said that their system of righteous works was less than worthless, as you cannot remove sin by works. Only by faith in the God that...

Our message, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, is a message of good news. We are not to be negative wavers though it may look gloomy all around us. There will not be any doomsday for the righteous; that is only for the wicked, those who have rejected the message of salvation that has been freely offered to all. The devil wants to seduce you; if that doesn’t succeed, then he wants to deceive you, and if...

For all the prophecies concerning the Messiah to be fulfilled in the life of only one man—there wasn’t one chance in 84 X1 to the 100th power that it could ever occur. That is 84 with 100 zeroes after it. Yet it did happen, friends. And the man who fulfilled all of the predictions is none other than Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whose life has influenced history more than any other man who has ever be...

God will give every one of us victory. Not because we have the power, not because there’s strength in us, or there’s great achievements in any of us, but because God wants to show His power through our weakness. Just like He accomplished a great victory with 300 against 120,000 so God wants to give us the victory now. He will do it no matter how weak we may feel we are. We are to blow the trumpet...

There were many signs that occurred before the destruction of Jerusalem, showing that something awful was going to take place. One of the most interesting fulfillments of prophecy when you look at that historical event is that not one Christian perished in the city. Jesus had given His disciples warning and every one who listened to the warning was saved. This is a lesson for us who live in the ti...

Though He desperately wants you on His side in this warfare, the choice to join God's army is left up to you. It is my hope that as we begin looking at what it means to be in the Lord's army that it will appeal to you and you will make the decision to fight on the side of right!

We each have a purpose in God's family. What is that purpose? To carry the Gospel to the world! How do we do that? That is the question to answer. I am going to begin this series of studies that will answer that question by what I hope is an encouragement for you. I am going to share with you what it means for me to be a Soldier for Christ in the hope that it will educate and inspire you to join t...

In part one we saw parallels between the war in heaven and the war between Absalom and his father, King David and I am hoping that you will be able to see that these are also parallels of what is going to happen between the professed church and the true church before the end of the great controversy.

In this study, we are going to look at, in miniature, the great controversy between Christ and Satan. The story of the great controversy has been told to us on a human level in miniature in both the Old Testament and the New Testament. As we study this I hope that you will see the parallels in the examples that have been written down for us who live here near the second coming of Jesus. These para...

When Jesus came to Israel they not only failed to recognize Him, they actually rejected Him. If we are not careful friends, we may just reject Him as they did! Lucifer rebelled because he wanted to be the Chief cornerstone and his kingly power attitude prevails in too much of Christiandom. This attitude creeps into church organization and if not checked, it will choke it to death. It happened to I...

My friends, we are coming to a point in history where we must press together and organize together as God's church according to God’s plan if we want to finish the work of preparing to meet Jesus as faithful souls. Are we going to do it? I hope so beloved, I truly hope so.

I see the sun rise and set every day like clockwork and this doesn’t happen by accident. Season after season and year after year, we are all witnesses to this order in the heavens. Order does not miraculously appear out of chaos! There has to be a power that sets things in order and keeps them there. The Bible tells me that there is a power, a grand designer that created order and keeps order. If...

In the very beginning of creation God ordained man to bring honor and glory to Him! God set man apart for a specific Divine purpose and that is still its purpose today. The ceremony of laying on of hands in ordination is a public recognition of a divine appointment.

From the beginning of the family unit in Eden, to the family circle today, we can see the blue print of God’s governing principles—His organization for the church.

In our previous studies we have come to understand that like the Sanctuary and its services teach us about the Gospel and mission of Christ, the creation and organization of the family circle is a model that teaches us about the government and character of God.

God has given us the ability to create children so as to learn more about His character and about our own character. In that learning process there are specific responsibilities that God has required of parents. How we live as Christian parents and raise our children is how we will associate with members in the church. This is a part of true Gospel Order that God requires for families and the chur...

We have previously taken a good look at the roles of men/husbands/fathers, as well as women/wives/mothers and there is one more area concerning the family circle that needs to be addressed before we begin comparing family order with that of church order—family organization with church organization. We need to take a look at the role that children have in the family circle and what that means for c...