My wife and IThe people are now in the promised land, they have been through many iterations, of following GOD, and then following the gods of the neighbors. For 400 years they had what was called Judges, although they were actually the leaders of the people and would also act as Judges in some instances. The people finally decide they want to be like other nations around them so they want a king, forgetting that GOD is their King as well as their God. They split between north and south. The South King is the line of David, Solomon’s son Rehoboam, but it is only Judah and Benjamin, the rest of the tribes have gone with Jeroboam and they have gone the way of sin in that they are worshipping the gods of their neighbors. Jeroboam actually sets up an idol for them to worship.
Chapter 5
After roughly 2000 years from Abraham we come to a time when Israel is under the control of the Roman Empire. It has been a time of many 2nd chances for the people of Israel, the tribes split after the reign of Solomon and there was Judah in Jerusalem and there was the Northern Kingdom which was the rest of the people they built the city of Samaria which became the capital of the Northern Kingdom called Israel. In 792 BC the sinfulness of the people of the Northern Kingdom had become so great that God allowed the Kingdom of Assyria to destroy the Northern Kingdom and most of the people were sent into exile in different places within the Assyrian Empire.
Around 586 BC the Southern Kingdom, Judah falls to the Babylonians and the people are sent into captivity in Babylon. After 70 years of captivity, the Jewish people in Babylon are given their freedom and go to rebuild their Temple in Jerusalem. I should say that a group is allowed to go to Jerusalem, a second group goes a few years later, and the two groups finally get the job done. Many of their countrymen come back to the land and they begin to live again in the promised land. Over the next 600-700 years, there are many wars and many years of peace. All of which allows the people to again plunge into sin. If you read the prophets, you see how they continually call the people to repentance, and well, they do not repent, or they give half hearted allegiance to God.
There is much pain and suffering during this time period and God finally has had enough of all this and they are conquered by Alexander the Great, who dies a short time later and his generals split up the land. The general Ptolemy who rules Egypt, fights and wins control of the area called Palestine, which includes Israel. This takes place about 331 BC, then the Seleucids who ruled the Syrian area defeat Ptolemaic forces and they begin to rule all of that area which includes Israel. There is a revolt and the Seleucid forces are routed and Judah is again ruled by Israelites for a brief period.
Rome under Pompey in about 63 BC conquers the area including Israel and they are then under the rule of Rome for the next period of time. Sin runs rampant, even the priesthood becomes corrupt as the Roman forces tighten their grip on the people, then Rome gives Herod the Great the Kingship over Israel in 34 BC. Sometime between 6 and 4 BC, there is a birth in a stable in Bethlehem. Jesus the Christ is born.
When you read the stories about the birth, you can see that God does not go to the corrupt governing bodies, no priests are notified of the birth, just a group of shepherds. Now shepherds were the on the extreme low end of the social life of Israel, only women and animals were lower on that structure than shepherds, and sometimes the shepherds might be seen as being on the very bottom rung of that ladder. Yet God made the announcement to those men as they kept watch over their flocks in the fields around Bethlehem.
Now these days when you see those manger scenes at Christmas time, you see the Shepherds and the Wise Men from the East. However if you read the story you see that these wise men arrived about 2 years after the birth. Mat 2:16-18 NKJV Then Herod, when he saw that he was deceived by the wise men, was exceedingly angry; and he sent forth and put to death all the male children who were in Bethlehem and in all its districts, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had determined from the wise men. (17) Then was fulfilled what was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet, saying: (18) “A VOICE WAS HEARD IN RAMAH, LAMENTATION, WEEPING, AND GREAT MOURNING, RACHEL WEEPING FOR HER CHILDREN, REFUSING TO BE COMFORTED, BECAUSE THEY ARE NO MORE.”
So the King of Kings has been born in Bethlehem, but there is only a short lived joy then the child is whisked off to safety and all the children 2 years old and younger are killed so that the King would be killed. One day there shall be joy in Israel, when the King of Kings returns to rescue those who are His own.
Jesus is taken to Egypt, only to return to Israel after the death of Herod the Great. Then the family returns not to Bethlehem but rather to Nazareth, to take up life in that place from which they had gone to Bethlehem to be counted in order to be taxed. Jesus now grows up in Nazareth, probably learning the trade of carpentry from his step-Father Joseph. At about 30 years of age, Jesus begins his ministry as becomes a Rabbi, he attracts a group of followers and teaches them as he goes about the country side, preaching, teaching, and healing the sick. We read that Jesus rids people of disease, and of demon possession. His ministry goes on for about 3 years, then one of his own people, turns him over to the authorities.
His disciples are scattered, only one of them is present for the crucifixion and when it is over he with Jesus’ mother and other women watch as the body is taken down, carefully wrapped and spices are spread on the body, then he is carried to the tomb and placed inside. A huge stone is then rolled into place so no one can steal the body and of course the High Priest being sure that the disciples will try to steal his body so they can claim that he is risen from the dead. There are guards placed at the tomb to insure no one will try to steal the body.
Yet on the third day, the stone is rolled away, and the body is not in the tomb, many witnesses see the risen Christ and after Pentecost a few weeks later, the disciples begin to preach and teach with power. Another new beginning, in just 300 years or so, they have even the Roman Empire turning to Jesus. Of course that is another story for another day.
Chapter 2
In time Adam and Eve had many children, when they were grown those children left the garden to make lives of their own. Adam and Eve had their place in the world, in the garden. There they kept things working and did whatever they had to do to keep everything in order, they also communed with God, as we shall see shortly. Time had no meaning for them and so we do not know how long they were in the garden working and of course having children. Remember that in Genesis 1:28 it says: “Then God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it;.'”
Be fruitful and multiply, they had kids and their kids had kids. Interesting because today we worry about first cousins marrying and having children, and rightly so, since much has transpired since the beginning when man was first created. We will see much more about that as we proceed through this chapter and the ones that follow. One other thing we have to be aware of and that is the instruction that God gave Adam about one certain tree in the garden, Gen 2:17 “but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
Apparently at this time the animals and man could speak to one another, at least one of the snakes could. Gen 3:1 Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?”
Eve replies to the snake: Gen 3:2 And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; Gen 3:3 but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.’ ” The snake tells her that she will not die, God knows that if you eat of the fruit you will know of good and evil and will become like God. Let us look at what has transpired here. First Eve adds to the command of God that they not eat, nor touch the fruit. That was not what God told Adam, in Gen 2:17 God says you may not eat of it, for in the day you do so you will surely die. It is true that death enters the world through sin. Adam and Eve did not physically die on that day, but they did die spiritually. Physical death would come much later.
Eve now looks at the tree and sees that the fruit looks really appealing, Gen 3:6 (NKJV) “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate.” The beginning we spoke of in the first chapter, now has come to its ending. They have both eaten of the fruit that was forbidden them, and they have died, not yet physically, but spiritually. Sin has now entered into paradise, and God cannot abide sin.
At the end of chapter 2 in Genesis we see that Adam and Eve were both naked, but, they were not ashamed, nor concerned about that condition. Now that they have eaten of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they are aware of their nakedness and are concerned about it and so make covering for their bodies. In the evening, they hear God in the garden, and they hide themselves for they are afraid. Gen 3:9 (ESV) But the LORD God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” Now this is really cool, God knew where they were, but he wanted them to come out voluntarily from hiding, he also knew what they had done. God is after all, omniscient and omnipresent. The Spirit of God, what used to be called the Holy Ghost, was always around and knew what had transpired between the serpent and Adam and Eve.
Gen 3:10 And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” Gen 3:11 He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” Gen 3:12 The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” (ESV English Standard Version) Note that the man Adam blames his trespass (sin) on Eve, knowing that at any point in this conversation and action, he could have stopped it and did not do so. That is why it is Adam who sinned, in that he did not act as God had commanded him to do. In this case he should have said no, before Eve even picked the fruit. He too wanted to be like God.
Eve of course, blames the serpent, and God then curses the serpent, takes away his legs and all serpents now must act as all snakes do, sliding along the ground. Then God turns back to his children, Adam and Eve, and here is the rest of the new beginning. Eve will no longer rear children without pain in childbirth, and she will become enamored of her husband, and Adam now will be the one who must make decisions for the household, and till the ground in difficulty, and even painful conditions.
Gen 3:14 The LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. Gen 3:15 I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” Gen 3:16 To the woman he said, “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.” Gen 3:17 And to Adam he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; Gen 3:18 thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. Gen 3:19 By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Gen 3:20 The man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living. Gen 3:21 And the LORD God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them. Gen 3:22 Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever–” Gen 3:23 therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. Gen 3:24 He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life. (ESV)
Now they are outside, in the world in which we live, they must work hard to make a living for themselves. In this beginning it is the truth of life as we know it, there is work and relationships are sometimes very difficult, since now sin has entered the world. As we shall see sin is a terrible thing, yet, it is a part of life. The world is a harsh task master at times, because, it tends to make one work hard in order to make a living. This was especially true in this beginning, although as we shall see there is a thriving civilization in the world, which began when Adam and Eve were still in the garden. As their children left the garden to make lives for themselves, they also built villages, and worked together to build and farm. They even founded cities, all in the area of what we know today as Mesopotamia. Let us see how the story progresses, and what happens to the first man and woman in their new environment.
Gen 1:1 “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”
I know that there is a second idea about this, namely that there was a great explosion that set in motion the universe, and that through a lucky combination of things, this planet became hospitable to life as we know it. Of course, this theory tells us that it took literally millions of years for everything to come to fruition, yet it seems to me that the story in Genesis gives us a much better idea of what really happened. Not because I am anti science, but because it seems strange to me that an explosion can happen when there is nothing to explode.
You see, in the beginning, there was nothing, no chemicals, no dirt, not one thing existed prior to the so-called Big Bang, so how could there be a big or even a little bang when there is nothing yet in existence. Science still cannot make something from nothing, they must have a model to work from, and the materials with which to actually make something happen.
Starting from the realization that nothing begets nothing, the only explanation is that “In the beginning, God”, you see that, of course God is outside time and space, He created that which gives you and I existence, He set in motion all that we see, and he also gave us laws, like the law of gravity, “what goes up, must come down”, 2+2=4, and the other more complex laws that allow the earth to support life.
Once God created all that we see around us, the stars in the heavens the trees, grass, and weeds. He also created the fish, birds, animals, and bugs, many of which I can do without. Then he looked at all this beauty, and decided he needed someone to take care of this whole thing, so he created man.
Gen 1:26 Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” It is important that we see the distinction here as to creation and the making of men and women. It tells us that God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.” So man was made by God’s own hand.
Wait a minute, you say that God is Spirit so he has no hands, that is true, but, God is the three in one, his name in the original language is plural not singular. So we have God speaking to God in this passage. The second part of the trinity is Jesus the Christ, and of course we have also the third person the Holy Spirit. Jesus is the human face of God and it is his hands that form man.
Gen 2:7 “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.” So now we see that God actually made man, took the time to actually form man from the dust of the earth, breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being.
It does say in Gen 1:27-28 NKJV “So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. (28) Then God blessed them, and God said to them,” “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Please note that it says “let them” have dominion in verse 26. God created man and woman to take care of the world that he had made specifically for them to inhabit. Again, we see in the second chapter of Genesis that woman came from man. Gen 2:21-23 NKJV And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place. (22) Then the rib which the LORD God had taken from man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man. (23) And Adam said: “This is now bone of my bones And flesh of my flesh; She shall be called Woman, Because she was taken out of Man.”
Woman is derived from the Hebrew ishshah ish=man and shah is womb, so woman, or female. All of this is to say that the woman was his help-mate, not inferior to Adam (man), but rather his equal partner in caring for the garden.
So now life on earth is complete, Adam and Eve (man and woman) will now work together as man and wife to till the garden and care for the plants and all that is in the garden. This even includes animals, all eating of the fruit of the garden, all vegetarians if you will.
By the way, remember that God told them “Then God blessed them, and God said to them,” “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” How could they be fruitful and multiply? They had kids, that is how we earthlings do these things, they had children while they were in the garden. Remember this part of the story.
We have no idea how much time passed while they were in the garden, working and having children. Since there was no pain in childbearing, they probably had a good amount of children, as we will find as we continue on this story of beginnings.
Of course, there is always a new beginning once life begins but that will be in the next chapter. Suffice it to say, that there is a time between this beginning, and the next beginning. Meaning of course that there is an ending, and this is a good place for that.
I hear the rhetoric, white privilege, white supremacy, cops hate blacks and on and on. This is to sow discord amongst us and destroy the truth of who and what we are. I have been thinking about this and wondering how we came to this impasse in our nation. I know one thing, slavery has a history as long as human history. In the beginning it was that the group who won the war enslaved the losers, over time the slaves became citizens and a part of the greater civilization.
However, things changed over the centuries and millennia, and slavery became a money making business. In the 1600’s it was a thriving business, slave ships would go to the African coast, purchase a cargo of slaves and bring them to Muslim nations, and, European nations. Finally as the colonies were settled, the south became an agrarian area vast plantations were owned and cotton was king, they needed cheap labor so they began to import slaves. This eventually led to the Civil (civil?) War and the deaths of thousands of young men fighting for and against slavery. It also was the beginning of the tearing down of the Constitution of the USA. Today there is NO United States, we are a sorry bunch of people who cannot any longer survive as a united country. We were founded on Judean and Christian principles, of course it took the war to finally bring us to the place where we could change how people were to be seen. Not by color but rather by their character, and it took another 75 years or so to see the beginning of real integration of our society.
Today, we have returned to racial hatred, division and destruction of the very society that had promised so much. I grew up in the days of real progress in the north, we lived in integrated neighborhoods, we kids did not care about color as much as how well you could run, catch, pitch, etc.
Let me speak in this missive in regard to the truth of who we are as a people. We are all first, human beings, second we were created in the image of God, third we are all imperfect because we are finite people. We live in a linear world, we will EACH of us one day die, our money, our position, our toys if you will, have nothing to do with where we end up in eternity. We cannot take any of it with us, know that we came into this world naked, and we will leave this world also naked, nothing can go with us into eternity.
In the beginning of this world God created man that is you and I, but, he did so by also creating woman, let me tell some of the story to those who do not know it, and to some who have perverted it.
“Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, in the likeness of ourselves; and let them rule over the fish in the sea, the birds in the air, the animals, and over all the earth, and over every crawling creature that crawls on the earth.” So God created humankind in his own image; in the image of God he created him: male and female he created them. God blessed them: God said to them, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea, the birds in the air and every living creature that crawls on the earth.”
(Gen 1:26-28 CJB)
The CJB is the Complete Jewish Bible, the quotations in this missive from the Bible as translated from the Hebrew. I have given here the first part of this creation of the human race, now here is the rest of the story from Genesis 2.
“Then Adonai, God, formed a person [Hebrew: adam] from the dust of the ground [Hebrew: adamah] and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, so that he became a living being. Adonai, God, planted a garden toward the east, in `Eden, and there he put the person whom he had formed.” (Gen 2:7-8 CJB)
“So the person gave names to all the livestock, to the birds in the air and to every wild animal. But for Adam there was not found a companion suitable for helping him. Then God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the person; and while he was sleeping, he took one of his ribs and closed up the place from which he took it with flesh. The rib which Adonai, God, had taken from the person, he made a woman-person; and he brought her to the man-person. The man-person said, “At last! This is bone from my bones and flesh from my flesh. She is to be called Woman [Hebrew: ishah], because she was taken out of Man [Hebrew: ish].” This is why a man is to leave his father and mother and stick with his wife, and they are to be one flesh. They were both naked, the man and his wife, and they were not ashamed.” (Gen 2:20-25 CJB)
So now you know, God himself created both man and woman, please note the phrase the man and his wife in verse 25. This is of course not the end of the story, it is but the beginning and there is the fall from grace that takes place some time later. There is temptation from a talking snake, and the woman is the one who is tempted first, but, as you will see from the story, her husband was right there taking part in the fall from grace. It is, by the way, his sin not hers although both sinned and fell short of God’s perfection.
The woman answered the serpent, “We may eat from the fruit of the trees of the garden, but about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden God said, ‘You are neither to eat from it nor touch it, or you will die.’ ” The serpent said to the woman, “It is not true that you will surely die; because God knows that on the day you eat from it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it had a pleasing appearance and that the tree was desirable for making one wise, she took some of its fruit and ate. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her; and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized that they were naked. So they sewed fig leaves together to make themselves loincloths. They heard the voice of Adonai, God, walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, so the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of Adonai, God, among the trees in the garden. Adonai, God, called to the man, “Where are you?” He answered, “I heard your voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, so I hid myself.” He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree from which I ordered you not to eat?” The man replied, “The woman you gave to be with me—she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate.” Adonai, God, said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” The woman answered, “The serpent tricked me, so I ate.” Adonai, God, said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, you are cursed more than all livestock and wild animals. You will crawl on your belly and eat dust as long as you live. I will put animosity between you and the woman, and between your descendant and her descendant; he will bruise your head, and you will bruise his heel.” To the woman he said, “I will greatly increase your pain in childbirth. You will bring forth children in pain. Your desire will be toward your husband, but he will rule over you.” To Adam he said, “Because you listened to what your wife said and ate from the tree about which I gave you the order, ‘You are not to eat from it,’ the ground is cursed on your account; you will work hard to eat from it as long as you live. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat field plants. You will eat bread by the sweat of your forehead till you return to the ground—for you were taken out of it: you are dust, and you will return to dust.” The man called his wife Havah [life], because she was the mother of all living. Adonai, God, made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. Adonai, God, said, “See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil. Now, to prevent his putting out his hand and taking also from the tree of life, eating, and living forever—”therefore Adonai, God, sent him out of the garden of `Eden to cultivate the ground from which he was taken. So he drove the man out, and he placed at the east of the garden of `Eden the k’ruvim and a flaming sword which turned in every direction to guard the way to the tree of life.”
(Gen 3:2-24 CJB) Just a note on k’ruvim, in our English Bibles it is Cherubim, in either translation, you don’t want to mess with this heavenly guardian.
We know that all men and women have come from one central location in this world, science has found that the population of the world came from 3 female persons. We also know the story of Noah, Chapter 5 in Genesis, he had three sons, they each had a wife, 3 female persons, whose lineage goes back to the Mother of all Living. Adam’s wife Eve. Now that we know the story, let us realize that WE ARE FAMILY, all lives matter because all life matters, since we are all one family, Black, Brown, Red and Yellow as well as White. We are brothers and sisters, cousins or whatever else we see as designations of family, but the colors are just covers, not something that separates us, unless you believe the hateful rhetoric.
This missive has gotten a bit long, more will follow, feel free to comment.
As I look around at what is going on in our nation, I see the divisions among us as citizens of this nation. We are being torn apart by those who wish to destroy our Republic, making it instead into a socialist nation claiming that they will give us all we need. Yet, as I look at socialist nations, such as Venezuela, Cuba, Russia, and China, I see that there are only 2 kinds of people in those countries. They are the members of the ruling class, and everybody else. Why do so many in our nation believe that this is a good thing? It leads to enslavement of those who are not a part of the ruling class. I ask you to take a look at what those in Washington D. C. are doing. I also ask you to look at the career politicians of both parties, they start out as regular people, and end up as millionaires. They do not really care about you and I, they just want to keep their power and the perks.
Now I want to turn to the Church, I have watched over the years and seen the disintegration of the church. I see the United Methodists getting ready to split into two different denominations no longer united. The Episcopalians splitting up also, and the Presbyterians who have become extremely split into many different types of their original grouping. I could go on, but you know what is happening in your own denominations. In the scriptures there is one letter to the early church that warns us about what is happening. Jude wrote these words in the late first century.
“But you must remember, beloved, the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. They said to you, “In the last time there will be scoffers, following their own ungodly passions.” It is these who cause divisions, worldly people, devoid of the Spirit.
(Jud 1:17-19 ESV)”
Just as politicians in both parties follow their own passions so too has the church in the world, become worldly. They follow the dictates of those who want to do their own thing, even though God has said it is sinful. Remember brethren that God will judge all of us, some will be Jesus’ people, we will see him as he is and will spend eternity in the heavenly realms with God. Those who have followed their own lusts, whether it be money, power, or sexual perversion, makes no difference. As the Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Rome: “Rom 6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (ESV)
Choose who you will follow, if Jesus then eternal life in the heavenly realms with God, if your own passions, it is eternal death in the lake of fire with Satan and all who have sinned and refused the gift of God.
In the old Testament we find God’s servant Daniel who repents for the sins of the Jewish nation, it is time for those of us who call ourselves followers of Jesus Christ, “Christians” to do the same. Hear what Daniel says: “Then I turned my face to the Lord God, seeking him by prayer and pleas for mercy with fasting and sackcloth and ashes. I prayed to the LORD my God and made confession, saying, “O Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, we have sinned and done wrong and acted wickedly and rebelled, turning aside from your commandments and rules.”
(Dan 9:3-5 ESV)
We too have turned from the word of God, the scriptures. Many of our leaders have abandoned the Word of God and become lovers of the flesh, lovers of the riches of the world around us. Many of our leaders have led us into heresy, lust, and other abominations before the Lord. We see the words of the prophets coming to pass as we follow our own lustful desires.
God is not pleased, this nation in which we live and this time in which we live are being destroyed before our very eyes, yet most of us continue to follow our sinful ways, thinking that God will not notice. He has seen what we do, just as he has always seen our actions. He sent prophets to tell Israel to mend their ways or perish.
He has given us his word so we will follow his ways, and we pick and choose what we will follow, and what we will ignore. Just as the Jewish people did so long ago and were exiled for 2,000 years, so too we the people who have professed Jesus as Lord, have done. Exile however is not to be the punishment we will receive if we do not repent of our sins and act in and for the glory of God.
REPENT brethren, return to the Lord our God, Abba Father of Jesus first born from the dead, Father of all who will confess and believe that Jesus is indeed Lord. Changing our lives to worship Abba through Jesus, receiving the Holy Spirit, and being ready to enter into eternity with our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ. I IMPLORE YOU!!!! Repent turn from your evil ways that you may come into eternity in the presence of God. Repent from your sin, live in the light that you might reap the reward of eternal live in heaven.
The DAY OF THE LORD is coming!!!!!!!
I do believe that God has much to say about our world of today, and that he said it about 3000 years ago. You see in the reign of Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon there was a young man named Daniel, a Jewish man who had been taken captive to Babylon after the destruction of Jerusalem. He was a young man who was a man of God, he worshiped and loved the God of Israel and God blessed him in all his endeavors.
One night King Nebuchadnezzar had a dream and it scared him mightily, I don’t know about you but I have had some nightmares that woke me in the middle of the night in a dead sweat. The king had that kind of a dream, and he called for his wise men and the magicians, and the necromancers of his kingdom and demanded they tell him his dream and what it meant. Now these men told the king that no one can know the dream of the king so he must tell them what it was so they can they work out by their magic what the meaning was. He then said all of you will either tell me the dream and the interpretation or you shall roast in the ovens.
To make a long story a bit shorter, one of the Kings satraps said there was a man named Daniel who could probably tell the king what he wanted to know. Here is the story straight from the Bible book of Daniel:
Dan 2:31-45 NKJV “You, O king, were watching; and behold, a great image! This great image, whose splendor was excellent, stood before you; and its form was awesome. (32) This image’s head was of fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, (33) its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay. (34) You watched while a stone was cut out without hands, which struck the image on its feet of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces. (35) Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold were crushed together, and became like chaff from the summer threshing floors; the wind carried them away so that no trace of them was found. And the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth. (36) “This is the dream. Now we will tell the interpretation of it before the king. (37) You, O king, are a king of kings. For the God of heaven has given you a kingdom, power, strength, and glory; (38) and wherever the children of men dwell, or the beasts of the field and the birds of the heaven, He has given them into your hand, and has made you ruler over them all—you are this head of gold. (39) But after you shall arise another kingdom inferior to yours; then another, a third kingdom of bronze, which shall rule over all the earth. (40) And the fourth kingdom shall be as strong as iron, inasmuch as iron breaks in pieces and shatters everything; and like iron that crushes, that kingdom will break in pieces and crush all the others. (41) Whereas you saw the feet and toes, partly of potter’s clay and partly of iron, the kingdom shall be divided; yet the strength of the iron shall be in it, just as you saw the iron mixed with ceramic clay. (42) And as the toes of the feet were partly of iron and partly of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly fragile. (43) As you saw iron mixed with ceramic clay, they will mingle with the seed of men; but they will not adhere to one another, just as iron does not mix with clay. (44) And in the days of these kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed; and the kingdom shall not be left to other people; it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever. (45) Inasmuch as you saw that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold—the great God has made known to the king what will come to pass after this. The dream is certain, and its interpretation is sure.”
It is true that Babylon was a great and mighty kingdom, that which followed was of the Persians and the Medes, later only the Persians. Then came Greece and Rome four kingdoms. All have fallen, but there have been others none of them really strong enough to rule the world, yet many have tried and failed. Today there are strong kingdoms, and of course many weaker, kings and queens no longer rule as they used to, we have today dictators, Presidents, Prime Ministers, etc., but none of these is strong enough to rule the earth. Iron and Clay are where we are today, sometimes our nation is Iron, and sometimes it is clay, I fear that we are heading into a time where are nation is going to be clay, and it will fall and become just another nation among many. I see that Russia and China are the rising threat to freedom in our world, but the truth is that we have a choice to make ourselves. Do we want to be clay or do we want to be iron.
Whichever it is you want to be a part of, I ask you to think very carefully about your decisions. There is another prophet in the Jewish scriptures that we might want to heed, his name was Haggai and his prophecies took up only 2 chapters, I would like you to look at only the 1st chapter of his prophecy and verses 3-7. “Hag 1:3-7 NKJV Then the word of the LORD came by Haggai the prophet, saying, (4) “Is it time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, and this temple to lie in ruins?” (5) Now therefore, thus says the LORD of hosts: “Consider your ways! (6) “You have sown much, and bring in little; You eat, but do not have enough; You drink, but you are not filled with drink; You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm; And he who earns wages, Earns wages to put into a bag with holes.” (7) Thus says the LORD of hosts: “Consider your ways!”
This word came to the people of Judea during the 2nd year of the reign of Darius in Babylon. God was not pleased with his people, for they had built themselves nice homes and they were comfortable but they were supposed to be rebuilding God’s house also and they had decided it was not time for them to be doing that. Here we are 3000 years later, and I say, nothing has changed, we think we are living high on the hog, then it all falls apart by the pandemic from China. It is not only this virus though that has come upon us and brought us to tough times. We have begun to witness the end of our nation, we are not willing to stand and be counted, we want rather to be pampered, we want Government to take care of us, from cradle to grave. Like the prophet Haggai, I will say to you that you need to consider your ways, if you will not change your ways, you will find yourselves in dire straits. You see, if you want the government to take care of you, you will become slave to that government.
Look to the nations around you and wake up to what is really going on in our world. Our government over the last several decades has become more and more a criminal enterprise, our Justice Department and FBI have been used to spy on us, and have been used to destroy a truly decent hero by the name of General Flynn, to spy on the legitimate President of the United States. They also, through the IRS refused to allow Non-Profits who were of a conservative bent to receive their non-profit status, and others were stripped of their status. Now we see that the communist left in this country is out to destroy anyone who is a conservative.
Consider your ways, this is a time that will try men’s souls, follow the path of the world and you will be crushed by the world. Follow the way of Christ and you will hold eternal life in the Kingdom of heaven. Consider your ways. I have considered mine, and I choose life in the Kingdom of heaven, over death in hell for eternity. Please heed the words of Daniel and Haggai, time is growing short, this world is moving toward its end as decisions are made that will move inexorably into the reality of destruction.
If you do not know Jesus as Lord, it is time you checked into this way of life, for death in hell is forever, just as life in heaven is forever. The choice is yours, choose wisely.
Filed under: Culture, God | Tags: Chaos, Hatred, hell, Kingdom of Heaven
Gen 1:26-28 NKJV Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” (27) So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. (28) Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
For those of us who are God fearing, who believe that God has created all that is and that includes human life on this planet upon which we all live, it is imperative that we state emphatically that ALL LIVES MATTER, black, brown, white. It matters not what your color, where you came from or more importantly how you live your life. What does matter is that we are all related to one another, we all came from one beginning.
Gen 11:6-8 NKJV And the LORD said, “Indeed the people are one and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do; now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them. (7) Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.” (8) So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they ceased building the city.
This is an interesting story, mankind was settled in one place and decided to build a tower to reach into heaven so they would be like God, the original sin was that Adam and his wife, later called Eve, would be like God if they ate the fruit. Here again mankind wants to be like God. Mankind finds itself unable to understand each other any more, and God splits them into language groups and places each group into its own place. Over time the men and women of the different groups change to what we see today, people who came from southern climbs, have darker skin, those from Asia seem to have sallow appearing skin and then of course we have those from the middle lands, Europeans who have white appearing skin. One thing we all have in common, we are ALL human beings, we are ALL mankind, men and women ALL are part of the human experience, we are not different beings, we are ALL mankind.
Yet here we are in our modern day, trying to make out that one group is superior to all the others. BLACK LIVES MATTER. This is the slogan, and if you try to say that, any life matters, not only Black but all lives matter, you find yourself being shouted down, and in some cases actually injured. This is not the nation that I grew up in, I can state that with all sincerity. We had our differences, and over time we had worked much of that out, and were working to try to collectively, realize the dream of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., he realized that we as a nation and as a people were trying to work through the stains in our society. We as honest Christian men and women were working to look at each other not as Black, White, Brown or Yellow, but as American men and women.
Did we have faults? Yes we did, but more and more we were working to end that scourge of racist hatred. The Margaret Sanger’s of this world want us to practice euthanasia, kill babies of those who are, supposedly, inferior so that they will not spread their inferiority to others. That is where Hitler got his ideas about killing of inferiors so that the master race would be the only one left. Thank God we ended that scourge of hatred, but of course we still had those hatreds in our own nation too. In the world I grew up in we were still working to rid ourselves of that horror, then came hatred rearing its ugly head. First the assassination of John F Kennedy, then Dr. King, then Bobby Kennedy. What a horrific time that was, we mourned each of these deaths together, but there were those who rioted in many cities, businesses and homes were burned and people were killed. Finally, we came to our senses and it all stopped, and for those of us in our collective groups, we worked at being good neighbors.
Then came 9/11 and the destruction of the twin towers, the death of the passengers of that plane in the field in Pennsylvania, and the destruction at the Pentagon by another plane. We all came together again in our grief and anger at what had happened. It was short lived and we went back to our lives and well we realized that our lives had changed. We were no longer as free as we had been. Much had changed in our society, the government had become Big Brother, spying on people and interfering in our lives to a degree new to our way of life. Let me now bring us to today, with chaos in our cities and of course Covid the gift of China to the world.
This will be a much longer quote from the Bible: Mat 24:3-14 NKJV Now as He sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying, “Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?” (4) And Jesus answered and said to them: “Take heed that no one deceives you. (5) For many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and will deceive many. (6) And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. (7) For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places. (8) All these are the beginning of sorrows. (9) “Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My name’s sake. (10) And then many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another. (11) Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many. (12) And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. (13) But he who endures to the end shall be saved. (14) And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come.
Wars: There are 10 official wars and 8 active military conflicts recognized by the United States. There are also other violent conflicts involving 64 countries and 576 militias and separatist groups. This information comes from: https://www.reference.com/world-view/many-wars-going-world-right-now-ffd6236450ccb7ae this is only wars, there is much famine in our world right now as well: Yemen, DR Congo, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Syria, Sudan, Northern Nigeria and Haiti are all facing famine of greater or lessor degrees. This list is in order of the number of people who will be affected by this shortage of food.
Today in many parts of the world Christians are facing death because of their faith. China has been removing crosses from Churches and putting in their place pictures of Xi and demanding that they worship the CCP and Xi as its head. Christians who refuse will find themselves in retraining camps.
In many other countries Pastors and Christians are being killed and their entire villages are leveled and / or burned to the ground. So here is the truth about persecution worldwide today: Every day, 8 Christians worldwide are killed because of their faith. Every week, 182 churches or Christian buildings are attacked. And every month, 309 Christians are imprisoned unjustly. So reports the 2020 World Watch List (WWL), the latest annual accounting from Open Doors of the top 50 countries where Christians are the most persecuted for their faith.
“We cannot let this stand,” said David Curry, president and CEO of Open Doors USA, during the 2020 list’s unveiling in Washington, DC, this morning. “People are speaking out and we have an obligation to hear their cry.” The listed nations comprise 260 million Christians suffering high to severe levels of persecution, up from 245 million in last year’s list.
Of course we cannot forget the chaos in our own streets, the hatred of these marxist groups for our nation is now destroying cities across the nation. Of course Chicago has been home to much of this for many years, but, others have not. Oregon, and Washington States have not experienced this sort of violence until now. the marxist thugs want to destroy our history and rewrite it. One of the things that is particularly troubling is the 1619 project which is attempting to rewrite the history of our nation to say that it began with slavery in 1619 not in 1776 with freedom. It is an attempt to set us on a course of race war in our nation. We have been working since the beginning of our nation to bring freedom to all people in this nation. We are not perfect, but we are working toward perfection, and the end of racial hatred. My pain in this is that hatred and war will continue until our nation is destroyed and our hope for true partnership between all people in this nation will be lost to the marxist thugs who are working to destroy us, with the help of the demoncrat party. I do mean demoncrat simply because I see the members of that party moving into absolute hatred for any freedom loving people. These are people who want absolute power over our very lives.
This is just the beginning, there is more to come, Satan is alive and well and causing Chaos throughout our world. The only thing that holds this horror back right now is the the Spirit of God is still alive and well and living in Christians all across this world. Yes many are being killed and tortured for their faith. However we as Christians know that Satan cannot win, and that he and his evil will be completely destroyed and we will live forever with our Savior and Lord, Jesus the Christ, the second person of the God head, the human Face of God. I say all this because I want to see many thousands more people in this world become a part of our Christian family. It will mean eternity in the presence of God, instead of in the Lake of Fire (Hell).
Contact me, or any other believer that you may know, and we will be glad to help you to understand that God indeed loves you and wants you to be a part of the Kingdom of Heaven. The choice is yours, God will not force you to become a part of the Kingdom. You can only become a part by your own voluntary request, the alternative, is your voluntary membership in the kingdom of Hell and eternity in the lake of fire.
It is always your choice, please choose wisely, learn of the Kingdom of God or choose not to and be a part of the kingdom of death with Satan.
In this world in which we live, we find ourselves in a new and horrible world. A place where you can be killed just walking down the street, a world where you are supposed to feel you should apologize for things you did not do, nor had any control over. It seems like just being a certain color you are an enemy of all other people on the planet. Yet, you have never done anything to deliberately hurt another person. This is a world in which it seems we are unable to communicate, because we do not have a common starting place to communicate from, nor do those who are yelling about being discriminated against, listen to anything except your surrender.
In the 50’s we were all friends, black, white, brown it made no difference, our biggest concern was could you throw a football, or make a clean tackle. Of course there was also baseball, could you pitch, catch, hit whatever. We played together and had a pretty good team too. When later in life I became a Pastor and began to preach and teach, we had mixed congregations and we realized that we were brothers and sisters in Christ. We loved each other.
That is the world that I grew up in and now at 75 years of age, I find myself in a world that is all topsy turvey. Hatred seems to be the name of the game, and destruction of our history, one that has its dark spots, but we learn from what was bad as well as what was good. If we do not learn from our history, we will continue to do those things that caused black spots on our nation. We must learn from our failures so we don’t repeat them, and learn from our good times so we do repeat them, and maybe even improve upon them. We need each other, I hear your voices saying that black lives matter, and I agree, but all lives matter, all lives are important. Yet we live in a world where some lives are inconvenient, so abortion has killed almost 65 million, innocent human beings. Babies, who had no way to defend themselves, and so they were murdered on the altar of “CHOICE”. History repeats itself, babies were once sacrificed to a god called Moloch so that life would be better for those who rid themselves of that child.
History repeats itself, in the 1930’s in Germany they blamed the Jews for what was wrong in their country, they managed to kill 6 million innocent people, plus Christians, gypsies, deaf, blind and other undesirables. Just to purify the Master Race. Today we are killing people in this country, burning down entire city blocks, killing Police saying they are the problem, looting businesses too. Yet they say that black lives matter, except when that black person is a cop, or a conservative. We are repeating history, we are tearing our country apart, we are separating people by ethnicity, and by religion, and by conservative or liberal, communist or capitalist, it is a war where no one truly wins.
In the beginning God, it was God who created men and women, it was God who gave us a beautiful world in which to live and procreate, to plant crops to live together in peace and harmony, knowing that God was present in all we were engaged in. Then sin entered the world, and we have been fighting with each other for land, for minerals, for oil. Of course just plain hatred for one group or another. Now we are at loggerheads, we find that there are so many wars going on we can’t even count them. Our President wants to bring the troops home, the Democrats want to keep the war going, just because they hate the President and will not allow him to do his job. He held up a Bible in front of a burnt out church, and was vilified by the socialist mob.
If this keeps going the way it seems to be headed, we are going to be involved in an all out war for the soul of this nation. Many people will be killed, land and property will be destroyed and our nation will no longer exist. WE are no longer the United States of America, we have on the West Coast, the Socialist Republic of California, and the Socialist Republic of Washington. In the East Washington DC is becoming a Socialist Republic where the mayor of the city took over rule and threw out the troops that had been keeping some semblance of order. Then there is the Socialist Republic of New York, the Socialist Republic of New Jersey and it appears that Massachusetts is working on becoming the next Socialist Republic.
Then we have the “deplorables” according to HRC. Of which I am proud to be one. I truly believe that we in the more conservative parts of the country, are trying to live our lives as God fearing regular folks. I firmly believe that God is getting downright tired of sexual immorality, of murder of babies, and of those who have turned their lives over to Satan, who are actually preaching that there is no God, that it is all a myth and you can live you life as you please. So we have homosexual marriage, we have boys who were sexually abused as boy scouts, we have people who do not know what they are, boy or girl, then there are the neuters who are neither.
The title of this post is God will not be mocked. This comes from the letter to the church in Galatia: “Gal 6:7-8 NKJV Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. (8) For he who sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption, but he who sows to the Spirit will of the Spirit reap everlasting life.” This nation has been making a mockery of God and of His law, we have become a nation of harlotry, and I believe that God is coming close to the end of his patience with our nation. I call on our Churches who have abandoned the truth for the lie of easy living and on the people who are also living the lie that Satan has set out to bring to fruition for the destruction of the Jewish & Christian faiths. Repent brethren, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.
One of the things that I had to come to understand was that Jesus Christ, was born to pay a price so that God could offer grace, forgiveness and and place you as a son or daughter of Himself, because, of the death and resurrection of Jesus over 2000 years ago. Of course there have been literally millions who have become sons and daughters of God through the death and resurrection of Jesus, but, it is still offered today and once accepted, you will be given eternal life in the family of God.
So what about that word above that is the title of this missive? Glad you asked, it is what happened when Jesus died on the cross. The Greek word for this is Hilaskomai and it is a word that was used by the Greeks of that time for the person to do something to make the gods pleased and so willing to take care of the cares of the person, meaning that the god in question was to propitiate the one who did the something. However Paul and the others did not use this word in that way.
You and I and all other human beings who live or lived since that crucifixion of Jesus on the cross had only to accept that death as our own and be “born again” to become new persons moving toward the love of God through the death of Jesus and of course his resurrection. Let’s look at the other word in the title of this missive, predestination. That is something that is actually also in our scriptures. It too has a different meaning from that which is used in many denominations. You see, we must realize that since God created all that we see and live and breath in, as we travel in our lives between birth and death. God is eternal, he was there before there was a there.
I always wondered why when they were preaching our pastors, before I became one myself, would say, God is there before you got there. What? How could that be? Simple of course, God is everywhere and everywhen, there is no time for God as he is outside of time and space. You and I are stuck in this linear life line that is our time frame, that is why we cannot take back our sinful actions nor can we know what tomorrow brings our way. God however is there in our past and in our future, so you see that the word in our scriptures, does not mean that God chose Mary and Joe and Harry to be saved, but you he did not choose. If you notice in the writings of the scripture you are invited to accept the Lordship of Jesus Christ. So if you are invited, that means you have free will, you may accept or reject that invitation.
The reason this is so is simple, we must go back to the first word of the invitation, Jesus Christ voluntarily went to the cross and allowed himself to suffer the beating, the crown of thorns and finally the nails to hold him on the cross. He did so because his death paid the price for my sin and your sin, He was the “hilaskomai” for you and for me, he was the propitiation for you and I and every other person on this planet. That is the meaning of the word for you and I today and everyday, Jesus paid the price. That is why God turned away from him, and why he cried out, “Why have you forsaken me” it was because God cannot abide sin.
Jesus was on that cross meeting you and I that day as the sins of millions of people buffeted him, my sin and your sin were all a part of him as he died on that day at Calvary, so you and I can become sons and daughters of God. The cost was a life, the life was the the Son of God on the cross at Calvary, he was the propitiation, the price was paid on that day for each of us. If you do not accept the invitation then your eternity is death over and over again, in the Lake of Fire with Satan and all his minions.
Now today if you do not know Jesus Christ, please and I mean this with all my heart, PLEASE, ask him to become Lord of you life, forgive your sins and fill your soul with the Holy Spirit. If you have done so, I would appreciate it if you would let me know. God bless you and keep you.
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