I know you could ask why an other Christian blog when there are already so many. there are also many ‘antichrist-blogs‘ and even more atheist bloggers at work. In that wood of blogs it is not bad to have one blog more from a blogger who wants to use Blogger or Word Press to go deeper in a matter not many are interested in but is of utmost importance. This world needs much more bloggers warning for the coming difficult times and willing to bring a subject different than the mainstream subjects of the popular blogs, and willing to work or blog for Christ.
This world has become a dark place, literally and figuratively and man can use some beacons of light on this globe. In that darkness lots of people do think they are safest when they hold on to other people. Many do not see that Some One is holding out a stretched arm to pick them up out of the swamp and to guide them to dryer and better places.
There is so much to distract man that most people are lured away from God and do not feel interested in spending time at religious matters.
I did not want to get off on the wrong foot, because what I have to defend is too precious. Confronted with so much hate from certain Christians I not only wanted to show the love a Christian does have to have and have to show for others, but found it the utmost important that more people came to understand that Jesus Christ is the Way to God and not God himself.
To come to understand where mankind is at this moment and why there is so much sorrow we do have to look at the early beginnings of mankind. For this reason we have to look at the total beginning of the world. “The very very beginning 1 Creating Gods” should shed a light on the beginning of universe and the first human beings. In two different series we looked at the beginning of the world and the beginning of all problems in this world. From those articles people should come to see what happened at the beginning of mankind and how man himself got trouble over him.
In those articles we also showed how the Divine Creator took care that there would be a solution for what man brought over himself. It is that solution which is the main focus of this blog. It is namely a Saviour, a Kristos or Christ, which God promised and 2020 years that Messiah was born and offered himself up for the whole mankind. He gave his all soul for all other souls (= living beings). It was by not doing his own will, but by doing the will of his heavenly Father, the Only OneTrue God, that Jesus opened the Way to God.
When you know there has entered a tempter in the life of man and how man wants to go for certain choices it is clear how man could come in such problems. (see about the “First mention of a solution against death 3 tempter satan and man’s problems“) In fact we can see that there are still to many people who do not want to know about God and about solutions for a better life He has provided. Though I am convinced that when more people would come to know God and come to know the solution God has provided for, namely God His only begottenbeloved son, less problems would be in the world, because many more people would take on the right attitude which God wants them to take on.
Life may be going with ups and downs. Knowing that not many people do want to hear that Jesus is not God, I do know I am not presenting a preferred or much liked subject. As such I also do not count on so much likes and so many followers. But I do hope I can reach some hearts and can come to let people think harder about the subject of the trinity and the nature of God and of the nature of Jesus.
In 2015 this blog got 1 716 views from 1 226 visitors, presenting me with 20 likes and 30 comments, for 83 posts published.
In 2016 1 393 visitors came along to offer me 1 849 views with only 8 likes and 12 comments on the only 14 published (or new) articles.
After a turbulent year in which the Belgian Christadelphians had to undergo several tests I decided to react to those Christians who called me dirty names and send me horrible things, accusing me of defiling Jesus name or God’s name.
For that reason, wanting to bring a clear picture of the Biblical character Jesus, at the beginning of 2015 I started looking for a new platform to present texts which could justify our way of thinking and could open the eyes of others, offering them also the material from the Bible, the infallible Word of God, itself. In our eyes the Bible is the best tool to bring guidance and insight. After we shall have introduced general introductory texts, about the Word of God, presented in the Book of books, the Bible, and about the Creator and creation in general, we shall present more Biblical fragments by our explanations and when we shall come to the period of the New Covenant and New Testament we shall go step by step through the Messianic Writings (or Kethubim Bet or Kethuvim Bet), using the words of those Godly writings to show who Jesus is, what he has done and what he is still going to do, plus what he means for us, for mankind and for the whole creation.
More than once we have been and still are accused of being haters of God and being haters of Jesus, which made it so important to proof to you and the world that we carry our heart on the right place and do love Christ with all our heart, really appreciating what he did and acknowledging his position as sent onefrom God, who liberated the world from the curse of death. with this website we want to show you and those who come along that we are a loving group of worshippers of God who live peacefully as united people under Christ, being part of his body and not belonging to this world but to the world of Christ and the world of God, the Divine Creator.
Getting away from the starting bloc
Having tried out several starting blocs we are now on our way with WordPress. – Pressure-sensitive starting blocks at the start line of the 100 metres at the 2007 Pan American Games in João Havelange Olympic Stadium.
“The Eternal Laws of Creation are exact to the minutest detail because they are the expressions of the perfect Will of the Almighty! Where uncertainties and imperfections are found they only arise from man’s limited understanding and application!” {Eternal Laws of Creation #8…..likes repel, opposites attract!}
Being one or more, not feeling at ease in the body others can see
This uncertainty often frightens man. The not knowing for sure brings up many questions, doubts and lots of insecurities. We are very limited in our thinking and handling. But we should trust more in the given Word to humanity. With this blog we want others also to see how we as human beings fit in the whole universe and in the Plan of God. We want to show how Christ is The Wayto God and the Way to life and how we do have to become in Christ to become a whole person and not a split one in this world full of controversy.
Usually, Light messengers, prophets, masters, etc. mediate or, hand down rules and observances to guide their followers in living aright! Without doubt, these rules have beneficial spiritual relevance especially if they are received from Luminous Heights like the Biblical Ten Commandments! They are infallible guidelines for the human spirit living on earth and in the immediate beyond but, not meant for the literal, one sided interpretations many believers give to them! {Eternal Laws of Creation #2…….Omniscience and eternal laws!}
Man can not do anything without god letting it happen. this is also for the work we try to do to get the work of God be known at more places on the earth. the first ten months of the existence of this blog we could find readers in 66 countries. Most visitors came from The United States (1048). United Kingdom (111) & Australia (88) came before Belgium (62) and the Netherlands (16) which became behind Canada (64), India (35) and the Philippines (27).
With His Will God spans everything, maintains everything, and furthers everything from out of the Living Law which brings to each individual that which he deserves, i.e., that which he wove for himself! {Eternal Laws of Creation #2…….Omniscience and eternal laws!} And we want to knit some good duvet to keep us warm in cold Winters (figuratively speaking). In the times coming we do know we are going to enter a hard time, coming closer to the end times.
Writings and Readings
In the ten months this blog existed in 2015, there were 76 new posts, not bad for the first year!
Coming nearer to the end the messages we want to send in the air are necessary. Jesus asked his followers to go out into the world to preach the Good News of the coming Kingdom of God. Bringing that Gospel of the Kingdom of God we, with several writings, want to bring your thoughts to the teaching of Jesus, remembering the days that our father Abraham rejoiced that he would see Jeshua’s day. (John 8:56). Throughout the years we do hope to present our writings in such a way that you and others might come to “see” the coming day.
“we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:18).
we dare to ask our readers to look beyond our writings. We want to challenge you and our other readers to go looking in your own or their Bible and to compare what is said in that book and what you believe at the present or believed in the past.
We sincerely hope throughout the years we shall be able to build up some followers and find more people coming to the Biblical Truth. As such we also do hope that in our readings (followed by meditation) of God’s Word, we shall be able to be “clothed with gladness” – a gladness that flows out from the relationship we have developed with our Lord.
As our world falls apart – more and more – we are going to need to sense the importance of becoming active partakers of the Body of Christ. As we are trying to do our best in the name of Jesus we want you to work with us to “work together with him” (2 Corinthians 6:1), that the Most High Lord His Guiding Hand is there and our
In the Bible we have the assurance that we may have good hope and that God preserves the faithful but abundantly repays the one who acts in pride. Let us therefore be strong, and let our and your heart take courage, all you who wait for Jeshua, the Kristos or Christ to return!
In the meantime have a look at our statistics for 2015, the first ten months we presented this blog and offered our readers 76 posts.
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The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 1,700 times in 2015. If it were a cable car, it would take about 28 trips to carry that many people.
When He had created man in His own image, and blown His breath in the nostrils of this man, the 1° Adam came into life with blood running through his veins, and could hear His creation talking to Him, giving him the surroundings to live in and to give names for all the things man could find in his life. Though not so happy on his own man requested a partner, so God provided a mannin (the female, part of the red blooded man) out of his rib. This woman, Eve, also could hear the Voice of God and live with her partner in the Garden of Eden, which was a perfect world. This female creature got a dignified role in the creation, and had to bring forth other human beings to populate the earth.
We may understand God expected man and mannin to be been a faithful to each other and to Him. He had organised the system, having created space, heavens, planets, solar systems, time and as such an organised system of things and asked them also to organise their life by first calling the things by name. They had to take care of mother earth.
God created things with the appearance of age. This allows a specific ‘literal’ interpretation of Genesis 1, 2. It is suggested that miracles such as the turning of water into wine indicate that the miraculously provided wine was created with an apparent age. This idea is extended for example to God creating trees with apparent annual rings that God had fabricated. God organised the whole system so that everything would become clear as soon as man got more insight in those things. Several different combinations of radioactive isotopes in the rocks independently indicate an age of several billion years, that way people can come to place the things in the time indication they are following, which can be different now from one group of humans to an other. Today we may find the Gregorian calendar, the Jewish, an Islamic and Julian calendar in use, making it that for each of these population we are in ‘an other time’.
God normally provided sun, moon and darkness to provide a time indication. This a lunisolar calendar is still being followed by the Jews. The time indication given by God for man is different than God’s time indication for Himself, being one day a thousand years.
Gen 1:5 NSB God called the light day. He called the darkness night. There was evening and there was morning, one day.
2Pe 3:8 NSB Do not forget this one thing, beloved, that one day is with Jehovah as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. (Psalm 90:1, 4)
Psa 90:4 NSB In your sight a thousand years are like a single day, like yesterday, already past like an hour in the night.
Hebrew or Jewish calendar (הַלּוּחַ הָעִבְרִי, ha’luach ha’ivri), showing Adar II between 1927 and 1948
In the time span of God man could live freely but had to respect the days of God. By time passing, days were added and as such man was requested to organise special days for God. These holy days could be determined by the the dates on that calendar of the People of God or Hebrew calendar. With it people can organise for Jewish holidays and for Christian holidays, to get the dates right for the appropriate public reading of Torah portions, yahrzeits, and daily Psalm readings, among many ceremonial uses. In Israel, it is still used for religious and for civil purposes, providing also a time frame for agriculture. Although the civil calendar usage has been steadily declining in favour of the Gregorian or Western calendar also sometimes called the Christian calendar, which is internationally the most widely used civil calendar.
The Julian Day calendar, introduced by the authority of Julius Caesar in 46 bce, brings a system of astronomical dating allowing the difference between two dates to be calculated more easily than conventional civil calendars with their uneven months and is still used by used by some Orthodox Churches. Dates in the Julian calendar are sometimes designated “Old Style.”
An Election Entertainment featuring the anti-Gregorian calendar banner “Give us our Eleven Days”, 1755. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
God gave preparation days and special days to remember and to take rest. For mankind it had to be followed and to be a “legacy,” or “inheritance” (nachala) (Time (of) Year) Later in history we shall see that the Roman emperorConstantine organised the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE, one of the key concerns was to determine a date for celebrating Easter that would be the same across the board for all Christians and in accordance with the celebration of the god of fertility Eostre, the namesake of the festival of Easter. Constantine wanted to have all the Christian festivities falling together with those of the Romans and having the Christians to accept the Roman tri-godhead celebrations in their meetings. The determination of a dating method for the pagan feast which later became a holiday in many Christian communities called Easter, got all the different Christian communities who came to accept the tri-une godhead to celebrate Easter on the exact same day, whilst the other true Christians kept on celebrating God’s Days but got it more difficult to know which day had to be celebrated. As such the Romans and those who got more power from emperor Constantine hoped they would not be able to follow God’s holidays and soon would join the public holidays.
But before the adversaries of God had taken most in control god took care that His Word would keep sounding all over the world at all times. The order and organisation offered to man by god was rejected by the man and mannin, they questioning His right to govern everything and to decide everything, being Master over everything and especially over the Knowledge of good and evil (with the Tree of good and evil). The order of hierarchy became damaged and God had to provide a new world order with man having now given the right to organise everything himself. After the fall, the first sin of man, the human beings could receive all the robes in their hands to arrange life.
Destructive plate margin; oceanic crust is forced below the continental crust because oceanic crust is denser than continental crust. Friction between the moving plates causes earthquakes. The heat increase due to friction and being pushed into the asthenosphere causes the oceanic crust to melt, and reduced density forces the newly formed magma to rise. The magma rises up through weak areas in the continental crust, eventually erupting as one or more volcanoes.
Man and mannin were cast out of the perfect world which was all the time in harmony. Now they came in the outer boarders where God had allowed the world continually to develop. From then onwards people would feel the creation evolving with among others the movement of the earth’s liquid interior causing earthquakes and volcanoes as lava is forced to the surface and the plates of the earth shift. However, movement of the earth’s liquid core also creates the magnetosphere, a magnetic field shielding the earth from cosmic rays. This all made part of God’s Plan but now man got more knowledge of it and had to bear the consequences of their actions contrary to the Will of God. Whilst at the beginning, man had not to fear volcanoes, they now came to fear them for their destruction. Instead of gaining the knowledge they had hoped for, becoming equal with or even higher than God they lost their innocence and their inner peace, coming not to see straight ahead what possible benefits such eruptions of volcanoes could have. Volcanoes are part of the earth’s carbon cycle, regulating temperature and carbon balance so that life can survive and flourish.
God had everything placed so nicely in His system, but man wanted to be master over their own system. Now they got it. Perhaps the Garden of Eden was such a sacred place where there would not have been any problem with the further development of the universe that the movement of the earth’s surface plates over-there would not have created deadly earthquakes and tsunamis. Spread out over the earth’s surface people had to find places to live which perhaps were not provide for such conditions at first, but with man moving to the wrong places, making the wrong decisions to live somewhere they came to suffer by those actions of the earth were the movement of these plates is also essential to life on earth and were the streams of water are also necessary for the development and fertilisation of the soil.
The God of order had everything in His ‘head’ and enclosed in His ‘heart’ and had everything foreseen for His human beings. The divine Creator is the One to Whom belongs Rulership and awe. Dominion and fear are with Him. He establishes order in the heights of heaven and He makes peace in His high places.
Job 25:2 NSB »Rulership and awe belong to God. He establishes order in the heights of heaven.
Adam and Eve were created perfect. We do believe, unlike most trinitarian Christians, that God made His creation perfect and that Adam and Eve had everything to be and to stay perfect. God was not a cruel god who imposed laws he knew man could not keep. The Divine Creator did very well know that the Laws or Commandments He gave to the human beings could be followed by every human being. In case Eve had listened to God and not driven her own will, there would not have been any problem. Now she got judgement over her and got damned with suffering. With her the 1° Adam also was taken into to temptation and into the damnation of the fall. Man became consigned to perdition, being made from dust he was to return to dust again.
Gen 2:7 NSB Jehovah God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. The man became a living being.
Gen 3:12-19 NSB Adam said: »The woman you put here with me gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.« (13) Then Jehovah God said to the Eve: »What is this you have done?« The woman answered: »The serpent deceived me, and I ate.« (14) So Jehovah God said to the serpent: »Because you have done this you are cursed above all the livestock and all the wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. (15) »And I will put enmity (hostility) (hatred) between you and the woman, and between your offspring (seed) and hers. He will bruise (overwhelm) (crush) you in the head, and you will bruise (overwhelm) (crush) him in the heel.« (Romans 16:20) (16) He said to the woman: »I will greatly increase your pains in childbirth; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.« (17) He said to Adam: »Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. (18) »It will produce thorns and thistles for you. You will eat the plants of the field. (19) »You will eat your food by the sweat of your brow until you return to the ground. You came from the ground. For dust you are and to dust you will return.«
Job 34:15 NSB »All flesh would perish and man would return to dust.
Psa 90:3-10 NSB You turn men back into dust and say: »Return, O sons of men!« (4) In your sight a thousand years are like a single day, like yesterday, already past like an hour in the night. (5) You sweep mortals away in the sleep of death. They sprout again in the morning like grass. (6) In the morning they blossom and sprout. In the evening they fade and wither away. (7) Your anger consumes us. We are troubled by your rage. (8) You set our sins in front of you. You put our secret sins in the light of your presence. (9) Indeed, all our days slip away because of your fury. We live out our years like one long sigh. (10) The days of our lives are seventy or eighty years if we are in good health. But the best of them bring trouble and misery. Indeed, they are soon gone, and we fly away.
The God of order and love presented an ending to the suffering, an end to the misery by the end of life. But this end of life does not fit the Plan of god and therefore He provide a solution to return the consequences of disobedience in the hope more human being would come to obey His orders and be prepared to honour Him as the Only One God.
To help them to find the right way to restore the damaged relationship He continued to give His Word with the people in the world.
Ides of March: What Is It? Why Do We Still Observe It? (fromthetrenchesworldreport.com)
Aside from its historical connection, the concept of the Ides of March would have resonated with English citizens in 1599, the year Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar was probably performed, Ziegler said.
“This whole business of the Ides of March and timekeeping in the play would have had a strong impact on audiences,” she said.
“They were really struck by the differences between their Julian calendar [a revision of the Roman calendar created by Caesar] and the Gregorian calendar kept in Catholic countries on the continent.”
Because the two calendars featured years of slightly different lengths, they had diverged significantly by the late 16th century and were several days apart.
Fisher: The coming of spring (themorningsun.com)
Anxious people stop me on the street and at parties. I can tell by their expression that they are worried. I clasp their hand firmly in both of mine. “What is wrong, friend?” In a hushed tone they respond, “When is Easter coming?” “Why, the first Sunday after the first full Moon after the Vernal Equinox,” I assure them.
We orbit the Sun every 365.24+ days each year. Think of a clock face, with the Winter Solstice at 12 o’clock, and the Summer Solstice at 6 o’clock. Our planet moves counterclockwise on the clock face. Earth is now very near 9 o’clock, the spring, or Vernal Equinox for the Northern Hemisphere. It will occur at 6:45 p.m. on March 20. (The Southern Hemisphere reverses these: they are entering their fall.)
Cultures throughout history have celebrated the coming of spring, thanking the gods for delivering them from the miseries of winter. Sacrifices, feasts, wild parties and lots to drink were accessories to this time. It was important to understand when spring arrived so farmers knew when to plant their crops. The atmosphere was one of joy and rebirth.
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Among the oldest such festival is Passover, April 3 this year, a Jewish celebration of Moses leading the Hebrews out of Egypt. Christian Easter, the most important celebration in their calendar follows from this. Jesus was crucified after the Passover feast of Seder, in 30 CE. Easter is a moveable feast, which means that it does not occur on the same date every year.
When we look at different myths about creation we can see that in several of them that though details may differ the essential lines of the stories or the elements of the astronomical and biblical accounts of Genesis are the same. For people it was found important to tell what happened in the past and by the years the stories grew. Having continents getting out of each other, spacing out by sees in-between people got estranged from each other and stories went their own way.
The Hubble Ultra Deep Field, is an image of a small region of space in the constellation Fornax, composited from Hubble Space Telescope data accumulated over a period from September 3, 2003 through January 16, 2004. The patch of sky in which the galaxies reside was chosen because it had a low density of bright stars in the near-field. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Those who want to analyse the beginning of the world will always come to a point where there shall be something which they are not able to place. Some of them may think that there is nothing that exists that they cannot analyse under the rules of science, say the Big Bang theory can only be explained by other theories that sound like faith. Honest and maybe agnostic scientist should come to realise that in the previous centuries it where humans who did not want to see what was really explained in the Bible being close to the theories they scientifically could find. Man has to agree that the Bible said it all a long time before science got there.
That the Big Bang theory proposes that the universe started from a singularity – a dense wad of matter that for reasons not yet known suddenly exploded outward in an immense pulse of energy and light, is in a way not contradiction with the void spoken of in the Holy Scriptures. Scientific consensus has pretty much decided that is how the universe we currently live in started, but they still cannot explain more or say what made the mass to have a black hole or an action taking place somewhere in time.
That time could be placed under the name of day or phase, but at the start there was not such an indication because light and darkness were the elements to be forming the differences in time. The book of Genesis wants to give the synopsis of Creation in a few sentences, saying it took six periods or phases of coming into existence. In the later books of the Bible it is indicated that people do have no idea about the space and about the time in God’s eyes. Time for God is totally different than for the creatures who can find darkness and light as elements dividing the space in countable or measurable units to give an indication of the now, before and after. The indication of that time also changed in the course of history, bringing it to seconds, minutes and hours, days, weeks, months and years which may be divided differently or follow another calendar. Man should know, according Scriptures, that for the eternal Creator our time indications are like nothing to hold on, because what is a day to an eternalBeing when there was no sun to calculate a time period and when there is no beginning and no end to Its existence.
Book of Genesis, Ningpo Bible. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The gods we may find in all the different myths are not self consistent and are not exactly creators of all elements. Though the God presented in the Scriptures and presented by the Israelites, the people of God or People of Jehovah, is One God Who was before everything and Who is responsible Himself for everything. The oral tradition brought the history of mankind and the Word of God from one person to the other. That it was penned later than other stories of the beginning of the world does not make it less believable or untrue. The way the story was presented had to bring understanding to all, educated and non- educated and it should have been able to tell it from one generation to another. Short lines were the easiest to get it recounted; told over and over again, making sure it got through time with the same lines. That not everything is exactly the same in the genesis stories we can find by the different cultures takes not away that we can see the ‘grosso mode similar line’. The perspective by which is looked at the beginning of the elements says a lot of the people but also can give an indication of the connection of the people with that Creator, having the Israelites having kept their relationship on good terms and seeing human being as major part of creation and as the only elements being in the image of that Creator, placing them more in the centre than in other cultures. For them it was also more important to know what their function is in this creation and where they stand opposite the Creator.
In the God’s People version of the beginnings of the universe the Elohim as Most HighAll-knowingSupreme Being wanted Him to be known and supplied a description of Who He is, who man is and why man existed and then allowed the people of that era to cast it into terms that they could understand rather than in terms that we would readily recognize in the 21st century.
Einstein’s theory not only describes our universe, from the Big Bang to black holes; it has also taught physicists the relevance of geometry and symmetry – lessons that spread from particle physics to crystallography. But, despite the similarities that Einstein’s theory has with other theories in physics, it stands apart by its refusal to fit together with quantum mechanics, the theory that explains the dominant behavior of matter at the atomic and subatomic scale.
Today’s Scrip-Bit 2 March 2015 Psalm 27:10 (randyobrien50.wordpress.com)
Can you imagine too that we’re already into March, and it seems like only yesterday we were singing Old Lang Syne, and wishing each other a Happy New Year. It’s already been a couple of weeks too since we were singing: ‘Mas in yuh mas! Play mas!’
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And all of that was just to say my people that time is swiftly moving by and who knows what will happen, or when, so it is essential that we get our house in order, just in case…just in case Jesus returns unexpectedly and we’re not ready. The same way we’re seldom ready for Monday mornings. The big difference though is that we have something to counteract our Monday morning blues – our Monday Morning Battle Hymn.
1 Samuel 13 (asorensen.wordpress.com)
The people of Israel see they are in trouble, and cry out to God. Saul is waiting for Samuel to show up and seek the Lord about the situation. When he doesn’t come as quickly as Saul expects, Saul takes things into his own hands and offers a burnt offering to the Lord on his own.
The Word (carolynwebbrussell.wordpress.com)
Secular scientists suggest that Big Bang Theory is different than creation that they are two different things. I’m not going to even bring up evolution because Darwin himself just thought it was a theory and didn’t even believe it.
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I feel that if in the book of Genesis it is written that God spoke everything into existence. The sound of His voice, brought form to this world, hung the stars and called them each by name all in 7 days. All throughout the Bible it talks about how powerful God’s voice is. We read that it can make mountains tremble and so much more. So…what if when God spoke everything into motion at that moment that is when the “Big Bang Theory” happened. God created even that theory that scientists have come up with in trying to figure out all He created. As I study the voice and essential oils through science it keeps pointing me back to the fact that God is so much bigger than “science” because He created it all because He loves us so much.
There are well recognized parallels between Genesis 1 and 2 and other ancient Near Eastern creation myths. Archeologists tell us that the Mesopotamian and Egyptian myths predate the Biblical account.
Oh, my! I’ve been wrong about this faith thing all this time! Thank you for setting me straight!
No, seriously – my faith does not rest on scientific or archeological research. I find the study of these things interesting, but the study of creation should never take precedence of the Creator.
Before the mid-19th century it was possible to read the Old Testament in isolation and marvel at the creation stories in Genesis, to believe without equivocation that they were a unique special perfect revelation delivered to Moses during the sojourn in the wilderness.
Multitudinous discoveries over the last two centuries have challenged this view in deep and profound ways. Tablets were found dating from the mid-7th century…
In the different cultures habiting this planet we can find many symbolicnarratives of how everything came into being. Lots of stories were created to give people an idea how the world might have began and how people first came to inhabit it.
Creation on the exterior shutters of Hieronymus Bosch’s triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights (1480–90)
Concerning the myths telling about the beginning of the universe we have to notice that in most of them there is no mention of a ‘oer god’ or ‘primal god’. The primitive gods in the myths all seem to come from something, be it an egg or other element of nature. The rudimentary elements all seem to be ignited by some force or by a reaction to an action.
In most of the creation stories we can find the same element over and over again: first having disorder or chaos and than coming bit by bit more order and structure in things. Most of them seem to agree on the ‘dim’ past or the ‘darkness‘ and ‘chaos‘ there must have been. Only in moderner versions we notice the trend to come to a a static universe with a finite space but all seem to look at it as an unbounded (analogous to the surface of a sphere, which has a finite area but no edges). This spheric idea might perhaps brought the dust-ball, fireball or egg in some stories. people also have been intrigued with darkness and light, intrinsic luminosity or the brightness of an object or surroundings caught the eye and attention. For this reason also in many stories we can find several figures to be spoken of as being a light in this world. Also in Christianity we find such a referral to Jesus for example, him being the light in this world and him being a new creation. (About that light and New Creation later more.)
We always should remember that it are ‘Creation myths‘, stories trying to explain things we human beings can not understand yet? It does not mean that there would not come a time that we shall see more clearly in to the matter. Science develops and more and more people come to see further in history and start finding more out about creation, telling us how things began. We always should keep in mind that those stories about creation are told in metaphorical terms to explain our sense of who we are in the context of the world, and in so doing they reveal our real priorities, as well as our real prejudices. Our images of creation say a great deal about who we are.
Modern science has propounded many theories as to how the primieval gaseous substance evolved into the present harmony of the universe. These theories may be called scientific cosmogonies; and the account of the origin of the world given in Genesis, i and ii, is styled Mosaic cosmogony. {Cosmogony}
Scientists investigate cosmology with the tools of empiricism and rationality, but creation myths define human reality in very different terms. They were also written in pre-scientific times where the oral story to get most of the people a good idea was more important than the accuracy. Moses in the same way did not want to give a detailed explanation how everything exactly came into being. In a certain way is that not so much of importance for humankind or for how we cope with life. The Book of books is there to give mankind a guide, a manual for life, not a scientific study book.
While creation myths are not literal explications they do serve to define an orientation of humanity in the world in terms of a birth story. They are the basis of a worldview that reaffirms and guides how people relate to the natural world, to any assumed spiritual world, and to each other. The creation myth acts as a cornerstone for distinguishing primary reality from relative reality, the origin and nature of being from non-being. {Sproul, Barbara C. (1979). Primal Myths. HarperOne HarperCollinsPublishers. ISBN978-0-06-067501-1, p. 6}
The Old Testament story brings us the founding-stone and in the New Testament the evangelist John tries to build further on it and continues in the lines of the First Creation, looking at a New Creation, in both instances having a voice out of darkness bringing light. Moses and John focus on that Voice, uttering words, and by bringing out the Word having the things or persons coming into existence. As such we hear that God spoke and it came into being. There was darkness and God spoke in the darkness and there was light. The Word of God sounded and heavens and earth came into being. In the same way God Spoke and the first living creatures came squirming through waters and earth. Wriggling elements started filling the world, in the air (heavens), on the ground and in the waters.
Science can only give a fairly dry description of the physical processes underlying creation. Science never has any intention to go looking behind the core element of what they can see. They are not primarily interested in looking for a godhead behind everything. They probably shall also not be able to come to the finest details of creation and to reveal God’s role.
Aker, an ancient Egyptian personification of the horizon. Two lions symbolize ‘yesterday’ and ‘tomorrow’ with the sun-disk rising between the symbolic horizon between them. The hieroglyph for ‘sky’ spans across the top. Based on New Kingdom tomb paintings and the book of the dead. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Jesus also tried people to understand that God His Ways are not catchable for our limited human brain. He also wanted us to reassure us we should not worry too much about certain matters. It is good to investigate things. But by doing our research we may never forget the most important matter in life. Jesus also wanted to sooth his followers reassuring them we can trust The One Who is behind everything, and that He has provided for everything to be able to live and to be part of this creation and shall be fitting in the Plan of God.
Mat 6:24-34 NHEBJE “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other; or else he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Mammon. (25) Therefore, I tell you, do not be anxious for your life: what you will eat, or what you will drink; nor yet for your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? (26) See the birds of the sky, that they do not sow, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns. Your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of much more value than they? (27) “And which of you, by being anxious, can add one moment to his lifespan? (28) And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They do not toil, neither do they spin, (29) yet I tell you that even Solomon in all his glory was not dressed like one of these. (30) But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today exists, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, won’t he much more clothe you, you of little faith? (31) “Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What will we eat?’, ‘What will we drink?’ or, ‘With what will we be clothed?’ (32) For the Gentiles seek after all these things, for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. (33) But seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. (34) Therefore do not be anxious for tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
Too many Christians are loosing site of the essence of the Word of God, by going to deep into details, wanting to explain those things which are not essential for faith. We do not need to know exactly what came first and how and how it really looked like and what it had to eat or how it ate. It is sufficient to know Who was behind everything and how He let it evolve to come to the situations where it is today and how it shall still evolve in the coming years or centuries. We may not forget that after the prophesied Word War III or Armageddon there shall still be another thousand years, where we shall probably have to face a further evolution.
In the old times it was enough to tell in an easy way how things are. As such we get in Psalm 139 a description by the Psalmist’s own creation in his mother’s womb. A great deal is known about how babies form, and it is clearly through natural processes — but at the same time, Psalm 139:13 describes that God wove the embryo himself. But the Bible doesn’t tell us how God creates things, and Psalm 139:6 suggests that we couldn’t understand even if he told us.
Psa 139:13-16 NHEBJE For you formed my inmost being. You knit me together in my mother’s womb. (14) I will give thanks to you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful. My soul knows that very well. (15) My frame wasn’t hidden from you, when I was made in secret, woven together in the depths of the earth. (16) Your eyes saw my body. In your book they were all written, the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there were none of them.
God was and is everywhere. No human being, no animal nor plant can hide from Him. God is an all-knowing God without any limitations. We shall have to face our own limitations which are different for each of us.
Psa 139:2-12 NHEBJE You know my sitting down and my rising up. You perceive my thoughts from afar. (3) You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. (4) For there is not a word on my tongue, but, behold, Jehovah, you know it altogether. (5) You hem me in behind and before. You laid your hand on me. (6) This knowledge is beyond me. It’s lofty. I can’t attain it. (7) Where could I go from your Spirit? Or where could I flee from your presence? (8) If I ascend up into heaven, you are there. If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, you are there! (9) If I take the wings of the dawn, and settle in the uttermost parts of the sea; (10) Even there your hand will lead me, and your right hand will hold me. (11) If I say, “Surely the darkness will overwhelm me; the light around me will be night;” (12) even the darkness doesn’t hide from you, but the night shines as the day. The darkness is like light to you.
Isa 45:11-13 NHEBJE Thus says Jehovah, the Holy One of Israel, and his Maker: “You ask me about the things that are to come, concerning my sons, and you command me concerning the work of my hands! (12) I have made the earth, and created man on it. I, even my hands, have stretched out the heavens; and I have commanded all their army. (13) I have raised him up in righteousness, and I will make straight all his ways. He shall build my city, and he shall let my exiles go free, not for price nor reward,” says Jehovah of hosts.
God His word is there for us to receive enough information to continue. While many people would like to know more, that limited information in the Book of books is what God chose to tell us.
Having God’s Word we should be able to find the most essential things for life and should we able to find reasons enough to trust this Divine Creator. With those Words we should have enough building-stones to create our fortress of trust in God. those Words should take us and nit us a life of faith, worthy of the Divine Creator.
Heb 11:1-3 NHEBJE Now faith is assurance of things hoped for, proof of things not seen. (2) For by this, the elders obtained testimony. (3) By faith, we understand that the universe has been framed by the word of God, so that what is seen has not been made out of things which are visible.
Mythicism Making Christianity More Meaningful (vridar.org)
He sounds a lot like Thomas Brodie who as a continuing practicing Roman Catholic finds the truth of the Christ Myth adds a new dimension of meaning to his faith. So will those people who imagine that “mythicism” is a plot by angry atheists to destroy Christianity please come to their senses! Some of us really are more interested in exploring the evidence for the sake of understanding. (See also an earlier post of mine: Is the Christ Myth a Threat to the Christian Faith?)
Living by the myths (renewamerica.com)
When one thinks of myths, the mind typically races to those classical tales of the ancient Greek and Roman gods. In the Roman Pantheon were stories of the way the universe, the world, the gods and mankind came into existence. The story of Deucalion and Pyrrha is the Greek myth that supplants the biblical story of Noah and the Flood. Many scholars believe the reference in Genesis chapter 6 to the fame of “mighty men, men of renown,” and their many exploits may be the roots of much classical mythology.Often myths of old were an alteration of what God had actually revealed concerning himself. Distortion, perversion, and counterfeit are the ways of the deceiver, Satan.
However, myths are not exclusive to antiquity. Every culture has them and they are the means by which people seek to explain the world in which they live.
Accepting Scientific Explanations (venitism.blogspot.com)
If Adam did not literally exist, then he did not literally commit the first sin, thus there’s no need for Christ to die on the cross and the whole Bible collapses.This argument, which is indeed short-sighted, may well be the reason why hardline Christians cling so hard to Creationism in the first place and why the science-denial involved in it has become one of their two big emphases at present.
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The funny thing is that Christianity as a whole neither rises nor falls on a literal reading of Genesis–only fundamentalism/evangelicalism does. Their leaders have chosen to pin their entire religion on something this comically erroneous. The fight is not between atheists and Christians, or even between science and religion, but rather between those who understand and accept scientific explanations for our universe and those who deny and/or misunderstand those explanations. And there are Christians in both of those camps. Christianity itself isn’t the enemy; zealotry is. Indeed, we must not fall into the trap of thinking that Creationism is any sort of monolithic belief; even when surveys ask Christians what they think about the subject of evolution and the universe’s origins, a lot depends on precisely how the questions get asked. When asked questions in a way that doesn’t threaten Christians’ compartmentalizations of religion and science, they tend to fall along more sensible lines.
House of Cards and the ‘Old Testament’ God (stream.org)
Frank Underwood, after asking for a moment to himself to contemplate the priest’s message, looks defiantly up at the statue of Jesus and says that he rejects Christ’s offer because he sees it as weak and silly. Frank prefers the power-first-and-last “Old Testament God,” but only because he has molded Yahweh into his own perverted image. Like so many of us on a daily basis, Frank has created one straw-man version of God to like and one to hate, based entirely on his own craving for power and control.
A Unification of Creation and Evolution (robertjrgraham.com)
When people say that “god created the heavans and the earth in six days and on the seventh he rested”, who can say how long one of god’s days is. Why are we so egotistical as to believe that his day is the same as our’s. We don’t know god (Most of us who believe in god do so because we want to not because we have proof.) but if there is a god why can’t his, her or it’s day be a thousand or a million or even several billion of our years.Chapter 2, verse 7 of the book of Genises states “then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.” It does not state how long this took or what form the being we call man originally took. God’s image can be many things. We have no way of knowing. Additionally, although the bible is supposed to be the word of god, it was written by humans and therefore subject to human interpretation.
When we create something we start out with one thing and then add to it and alter it untill we finish and with some creations, such as a garden, we never finish adding to and altering it. Who says that god could not have started with one cell and through evolution added to it and altered it untill it became a human being. Who can say for sure that he, she or it is still not adding to and altering mankind. Who can say that god did not make us in such a way that we would continue to evolve without his, her or it’s intervention. Who can say that the process is finished.
Who Were The Real ‘Gods Of Eden’? (earthweareone.com)
The Sumerian scribes and their Akkadian successors inscribed clay tablets with a wealth of information about the gods. One such text, commonly known by the name of its hero, Atra-Hasis, describes the background to the creation of man, when the gods themselves were involved in the painstaking extraction of minerals from Earth:
“When the gods, as men, bore the work and suffered the toil – the toil of the gods was great, the work was heavy, the distress was much.”
Conditions were so severe that, after 40 periods of hardship, the gods rebelled against their leader Enlil. A council of the gods was then called, at which the god Ea (alias Enki) provided the solution:
“While the Birth Goddess is present, let her create a Primitive Worker, let him bear the yoke, let him carry the toil of the gods!”
The ensuing passages of the Atra-Hasis describe what appears to a modern-day reader as a cloning process, in which the goddess Nin-ti (‘Lady Life’) made fourteen pieces of ‘clay’ and impregnated fourteen ‘birth goddesses’.
anthropomorphic God or theomorphic humans (larrysmusings.com)
In the Vedic philosophy/religion of India, the atman, or spiritual monad (soul), is qualitatively like God’s spirit. It is eternal and imperishable. The atman can exist in the spiritual universe or in the material universe (as in this world). Quantitatively, the atman is infinitesimal when compared to God’s infinite Spirit, His infinite mystic power.So, too, we humans have bodies in the form of God’s. Per the Vedic teachings, we are, in our human bodies with one head, two arms, and two legs, in the form that God has. In Hindu religious art (both in paintings and in sculpture), Lord Krishna is sometimes depicted with 2 arms, and at other times is depicted with four arms – but always with one head, and two legs. Perhaps, this form is the most advantageous for consciousness to have experiences.
So we see that it is not just in Christianity that we are told that humans were created in the image and likeness of God. And, “in the image and likeness” encompasses both our spiritual component and our physical body.
The Old Testament: For and Against – A debate between Christopher Jon Bjerknes and Lasha Darkmoon (Part 1) (darkmoon.me)
Christopher John Bjerknes launches an all-out attack on the Old Testament and tell you why he thinks this is an evil and dangerous book. Bjerknes can be described as an unabashed and indeed virulent anti-Semite. He takes the line that the Jews themselves are an evil race, without any redeeming features, and that the Old Testament is one of the earliest manifestations of that intrinsic evil.
A Universe Not Made For Us – Carl Sagan on Religion [9:14] (ethicsvideolibrary.wordpress.com)
Carl Sagan begins with a discussion of the variety of creation stories and how most heavens and hells are simple extrapolations of our own politics. Instead, science is slowly discovering more about the world we live in. And it turns out, the universe is more different than anything we could have imagined and, ultimately, does not care about us or in fact could care.
Despite the massive popularity of the Bible, many are uncertain about who created the universe. The idea that Jesus was active as agent in the Genesiscreation is popular, but is it based on the Bible?
The following information is provided by the text of Scripture:
Acts 4:24 (The first believers): “With one mind they lifted their voice to God and said: ‘Sovereign Lord, You made the heaven and the earth, the sea and everything in them. You spoke through the holy spirit by the mouth of your servant, our father David.’”
Acts 7:50 (Stephen): “The Most High does not live in houses made by men. As the prophet says: ‘Heaven is My throne and the earth is My footstool…Has not My hand made all these things?’”
Acts 14:15 (Paul and Barnabas): “We are bringing you good news, telling you to turn from these useless things to the living God, who made heaven and earth and sea and everything in them.”
Acts 17:24-26 (Paul): “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth…He Himself gives all men life and breath and everything else…From one man He made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and He determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live.”
Rev. 4:11 (24 elders): “Worthy are You, O Lord and our God, to receive the glory and the honor and the power, because You created everything and through Your will they existed and came into being.”
Rev. 10:6 (an angel): “And he swore by Him who lives forever, who created the heavens and all that is in them, the earth and all that is in it, the sea and all that is in it.”
Rev. 14:7 (an angel): “Fear God and give Him glory, because the hour of His judgment has come. Worship Him who made the heavens, the earth, the sea, and the springs of water.”
Mark 10:6 (Jesus): “At the beginning of the creation, God made them male and female.”
Matt. 19:4 (Jesus): “Haven’t you read that at the beginning the Creator made them male and female…Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.”
Rom. 11:35-36: “Who has ever given to God that God should repay Him? For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things.”
Heb. 2:10: “God…, for whom and through whom everything exists.”
Heb. 3:4: “God is the builder of everything.”
Heb. 4:3-4: “His work has been finished since the creation of the world…And on the seventh day God rested from all His work.”
Heb. 11:3: “By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command.”
1 Cor. 8:6: “There is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live, and one Lord Jesus Christ through whom all things came and through whom we live.”
Col. 1:16: “For in him [Christ] [not “by” him as mistranslated in some versions] all things were created, things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created through [not “by” him as mistranslated in some versions] him and for him.”
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The creator is God, the Father. He made everything. He made man and woman. He rested at creation. Jesus came into being when Mary conceived supernaturally. The miraculous conception makes him the Son of God in a special sense (Luke 1:35).
Jesus Christ was the reason for all creation, the occasion for creation, since as the firstborn he is to possess all authority over the universe under God. But God, the Father, the One God (1 Corinthians 8:6) is the creator of all things:
Isa. 44:24: “I am the Lord (Yahweh) who has made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens and spread out the earth by Myself.”
Why, then, did Yahweh/Jehovah say, “Let us make man in our image”? He may have been addressing His attendant council as in 1 Kings 22:19-20: “The Lord and all the host of heaven standing by Him.” Since angels appear to be made in the image of God, Genesis 1:26 may include them. However, God was alone responsible for the Genesis creation as Isaiah 44:24 and the New Testament texts cited above show.
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An 18th-century German illustration of Moloch or Milcom also known as Melek (“Der Götze Moloch” i.e. The Idol Moloch).
Note: No argument can be built for plurality in the Godhead from the plural ending on Elohim (God). Moses, who is a single person, is called Elohim (Exod. 7:1). The Messiah is called Elohim (Ps. 45:6, Heb. 1:8). Note that the Greek version of the Old Testament and the New Testament always render the word God by “theos” which is a singular, not plural, word. In Judges 8:33; 16:23-24, a single idol is called Elohim. In 1 Kings 11:33 Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Zidonians, Chemosh, the god of the Moabites, and Milcom, the god of the Ammonites, are all designated Elohim, though each was a single person. Furthermore, Abraham is addressed as Lord, where a plural form, Adonim, is used (Gen. 24:9-10). Potiphar is called the Adonim (“masters”) of Joseph (Gen. 39:2, 3, 7, 8, 19, 20) and the “lords” of Joseph in verse 16 and 40:7. Joseph is called the man who is the “lords” (Adonim) of the land (Gen. 42:30) and the “lords” of the country in verse 33. Other examples of a plural ending with singular meaning may be found in Num. 25:1-5, Deut. 4:7, 1 Sam. 4:5-8, 1 Kings 11:5, 2 Kings 1:2, 19:37.
The Distinguished Family of God (vanguardngr.com)
God is not a Father through creation. He created so many things to which he is not a Father. He created the heavens and the earth, but he is not the Father of the heavens and the earth. Nevertheless, Paul and other New Testament writers refer to God as the Father of mercies (2 Corinthians 1:3); the Father of glory (Ephesians 1:17); and the Father of lights. (James 1:17). This dilutes Jesus’ unique message about the fatherhood of God.Hebrews says God is not the Father of angels: “For to which of the angels did He ever say: ‘You are my Son, today I have begotten you?’” (Hebrews 1:5). However, the same Hebrews contradicts itself by saying God is the father of angels: “We have had human fathers who corrected us, and we paid them respect. Shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live?” (Hebrews 12:9).But, according to Jesus, God’s sons are exclusively men and women of faith who do God’s will: “Then one said to him, ‘Look, your mother and your brothers are standing outside, seeking to speak with you.’ But he answered and said to the one who told him, ‘Who is my mother and who are my brothers?’ And he stretched out his hand toward his disciples and said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.’” (Matthew 12:47-50).
Feb. 3. John Introduces Jesus to the World (fellowshiproom.org)
Various Scriptures proclaim that Jesus is the Son of God. John was sent to prepare the way for Jesus and at this point in his ministry, he pronounced that Jesus was, “The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” He further stated, “And I have seen and testified that this is the Son of God.”
God’s Voice Or Mine? Knowing the difference, part 3 (faithsighanddiy.com) The healthy Christian is not necessarily the extrovert, ebullient Christian, but the Christian who has a sense of God’s presence stamped deep on his soul, who trembles at God’s word, who lets it dwell in him richly by constant meditation upon it, and who tests and reforms his life daily in response to it.
This is why prominent atheists should not critique religion (rongarret.info)
How can anyone not know that Christian theology holds that Jesus was a fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies, that the Old and New Testaments form a seamless whole, that Jesus and Yahweh are the same deity? There are all kinds of reasons one might be a Christian without being a YEC, but the idea that Christianity has nothing to do with the Old Testament is not one of them.
The City of God, Again (supertradmum-etheldredasplace.blogspot.com)
What some worldly, and to be honest, Anglican, commentators have done is deny that there are two cities, own created by God and one by men. That these two cities grow side-by-side until the Second Coming of Christ seems more and more difficult to understand for many, who only perceive the City of Man. One cannot understand the City of God as an image, a symbol for the Kingdom of God without studying some Scripture and some philosophy. But, for adults to tackle this book seems more important to me now than ever, as we stand on the brink of the complete destruction of Western Civilization as we have known it.
Commentary Column: Sons of God and Daughters of Men (cafn.us)
For the glory of God’s justice, and as a warning to a wicked world, before the history of the ruin of the old world, we have a full account of its degeneracy, its apostasy from God and rebellion against him. The destroying of it was an act, not of an absolute sovereignty, but of necessary justice, for the maintaining of the honor of God’s government.
When we hear the story of the creation of the universe we might get that impression.
WMAP image of the (extremely tiny) anisotropies in the cosmic background radiation (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In the Holy Scriptures we get to read that there was void or a “Containing of no matter“. There was or was not something with something ” completelylacking”. At first there was a “Having no legalforce or validity” but than out of nowhere seemed to come a Voice of Some One Who spoke.
The Bible tells us that every time that One Spoke His Voice brought into being. We do find the principle of something not being there but “God said…” and it was done. The prophet Isaiah quotes the Lord as saying:
I have made the earth, and created man upon it: I, even my hands, have stretched out the heavens, and all their host have I commanded (Isaiah 45:12).
So, there was not only The Voice but there where also Hands. Out of nothing we do seem to get Sound, from emptiness creating things. This means that there was a power. This incredible Power we consider to be the Most High Power. It is the Force of bringing to life, or the Force of life.
Galaxies are very important fundamental building blocks of the Universe. Some are simple, while others are very complex in structure. As one of the first steps towards a coherent theory of galaxy evolution, the American astronomer Edwin Hubble, developed a classification scheme of galaxies in 1926. Although this scheme, also known as the Hubble tuning fork diagram, is now considered somewhat too simple, the basic ideas still hold… (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
This creative Power of God is mentioned many other times in the Scriptures, but, as always, the mechanistic details are not supplied. It is hard to imagine, for example, what would have happened if instead of saying let there be light, the Bible had written out Maxwell’s equations of electromagnetism. Even if the Bible had given us the formulas explaining the physical details, no one in ages past would have understood them, or if somehow they could have achieved comprehension, they would surely have abused the information!
There was the void or openspace which could or could have not a continuity or a break in continuity, a vacate space.
About when and how the universe came into being, science and scripture may come up with the same unambiguous result, namely, in the beginning (Genesis 1:1).
The scientist is not let off the hook, for an eternal universe would also have solved a whole host of scientific problems. According to the model pictured by classical physics, an eternal, everlasting static universe would have been just fine, but these ideas were overturned by the astronomer Hubble in 1929, and still later unambiguously verified by observations made in the mid-1960’s on the universal microwave background.
In 1929, Edwin Hubble, an astronomer working at the Mount Wilson Observatory in Southern California, discovered that all the galaxies in the universe appeared to be moving away from the earth and the further away they were from us the faster their speed of recession. The conclusion was that the universe could not be static but was undergoing dynamic expansion. (See e.g. G. E. Christianson, Edward Hubble: Mariner of the Nebulae, (1995) )
Arno Allan Penzias (born 26 April 1933) is an American physicist, radio astronomer and Nobel laureate in physics who is co-discoverer of the cosmic microwave background radiation, which helped establish the Big Bang theory of cosmology.
In 1965, two physicists at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey studying antenna noise discovered that the entire universe appeared to be bathed in a radiation afterglow of a singular event of vast energy taking place in the far distant past. This event has come to be known in popular terms as the “Big Bang”. We will have more to say about this in a later chapter. See: A. Penzias and G. Wilson, A Measurement of Excess Antenna Temperature at 4080Mc/s, ApJ, 142, 419, (1965).
The book of Genesis does not want to present a factual account but in a certain way wants to bring a tale or narrative comprehensible for most people.
Genesis simply and beautifully describes God’s initial creation, as well as His declaration of His creative purpose. It then describes the coming of sin into the world through the choices made by Adam and Eve, and the consequences of those choices for them and their descendants. Then Genesis follows their descendants’ decline into lawless violence — a decline that God brought to an end by sending a great flood, while saving eight people for a new beginning.
Genesis bringing an account from the creation of the world to the death of Joseph in Egypt, we may later find references to the course of events by the New Testament writers, by which John loves to construct his books in the same manner as the Bereshith, talking of the Word spoken and a Word bringing into being. He looks at the Old world and compares the happenings to the New World. He was convinced that in the Garden of Eden the Word spoken by God, the promise made to the first male and female creature of the human line or human tree, had come into existence with the birth of the NazareneJeshua from the lineage of king David.
Physics of Sound Sensory System of the Inner Ear & Space Time Continuum – By Doctor Emad kayyam (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Out of nothingness there was sound. That What had been for ever and is everlasting, has no beginning and no end, has no birth but also no dying or no death, and Which is an incredible Power, a Supreme Being, the Only One capable to create something from nothing. this may be very difficult to believe and is what we consider the only dogma a person of faith has come to take for truth. All other thoughts in our faith are easy to proof and are particularly explained in the Book of books,which we consider the infallible Word of that One and Only One God Who is One.
The question of how to reconcile suboptimal design with special creation is one that has puzzled many Christian groups as well as the Christadelphian community.
While the existence of suboptimal design is not ‘proof’ of evolution, for any special creationist who appeals to design in nature as evidence of special creation, the existence in nature of suboptimal design that directly leads to morbidity and mortality is a problem that is too often ignored.
Too many people want to take the Bible as an minute per minute or literal day to day account, forgetting that one day in the eyes of God is like a thousand years in the eyes of man. And they are also forgetting that perhaps God does not see any reason to have a detailed scientific account of all things when the uneducated also has to understand His Word.
God has given man, created in His image the possibility to see, hear, speak and think, using their brains to make up their minds and to come to conclusions. God has given in nature proof for all things. In it we should come to see how and what and should come to understanding.
In this contemporary world there are still too many Christians who do not want to see what God provided in nature and which treasures He left behind to be discovered by man in time.
The challenge of how to explain the scientific evidence for a very old earth, filled with fossil remains of countless generations of extinct species which are increasingly complex, has been faced by Christadelphians since the earliest days of our community.
Brother Roberts and other early expositors explained this evidence as the product of numerous creations being made and destroyed by God in succession. [1] [2] [3] Later Christadelphian commentators found this solution unsatisfying. Brother Walker objected to it on scientific grounds, pointing out that there was no break in the fossil record providing evidence for the destruction of a previous creation, and that the fossils showed earlier extinct animals had a close physical relationship to modern species which were still alive, indicating a continuity of life rather than a break.[4]
However, a far more challenging problem with which Christadelphian commentators have wrestled, is the issue of sub-optimal features within the creation. Our community has long recognized the imperfections of the human eye, acknowledging it has a blind spot.[5]
We should learn from geology, geographic changes, and take not of the many findings of people who studied several sciences. We not always should accept that they are totally right. Look at some findings, which a few years ago where considered the discovery of the time and the truth which are now considered as outdatedandno longervalableandincorrect.
We should not have to expect from the Bible to give a detailed account, but should see the general line. This over the whole line of the canonical Bible Books has been proven to be happened like it is told and should be enough information to be provided for all people to come to understanding the Works of God.
The Book of the Beginnings teaches us much; it speaks of a time and creation on this earth when animal life was not like it is now and people did not look like we recognise other human beings today. Appearance was totally different.
We should not expect the Bible giving us all details of the creatures, how they looked like or how they behaved. It does not want to specify that humans and apes have are missing an enzyme that would allow them to make their own vitamin C, like other animals do.
To come to faith people do not need to know all sub-optimal features of all living elements.
Many creatures may have features which are sub-optimal, and may let people think this would not be the work of an omnipotent and omniscient Designer. In fact brother Matthew’s description of creation was that “the evidence implies problem, failure and imperfect solution”.[6]
There are several people who also do want to believe like Brother Matthew who proposed that the angels were responsible for creation, rather than God and suggested that since angels are less powerful than God, and closer to humans, it should be expected that their characters and work would be subject to weaknesses and limitations similar to those of humans. Because of that we can see so many ‘faults‘ in creation.
But we should know better and follow the Biblical account which explains what went wrong with creation. The Bereshith tells us how the first human beings reposted and went against the wishes of their Maker, resulting them willing to go on their own, God allowing them to be their own master, with all consequences, we having to face so many problems.
We do not believe God left the work to unskilled, uninformed, and largely unsupervised agents who were compelled to learn on the job as they muddled through generation after generation of mistakes. We do know that every high person speaks in the plural form, using the pluralis majestatis or Royal we, to have their words being taken seriously and as important.
When looking at creation we should consider that it all happened over a long period of time, many thousands of years. God was the Only OneMaker Who established a natural biological process of speciation, which accounts for the variety of creatures in the fossil record and those we see today. That process followed rules established by God in the beginning, and was not blind, random, or accidental. Man revolting against their Maker choose to go their own way and where allowed to go into their own universe. In their own world they could give plants and animals and everything they created a name. they themselves had to cultivate it and work it out how to survive in the world they chose themselves. However, being a natural process without constant guidance from an intelligent being, its results were imperfect. God has always been prepared to work with a less than perfect creation, and it is a Biblical principle that His glory shines with great brightness when His character is reflected by fallible creatures.
The tendency for the evangelical Christian church to source their information outside of mainstream science [7] tends however to blunt the impact of such scientifically informed Christian warnings both against science denialism and basing first principles on demonstrably false views of the natural world. Deconversion anecdotes such as these, culled from a 2002 TalkOrigins post of the month [8] are representative of the one-way traffic towards unbelief that often results when science and faith are pitted against each other.
Young earth creationist organisations remain stubbornly wedded to an a priori commitment to a fundamentalist reading of Genesis. Terry Mortenson, a YEC theologian and historian regards adherence to Biblical literalism as important because he regards it as fundamental to his theological world view:
None of us, including any particular scholar (no matter how respected he is), or even the majority of scholars or Christians, can be the final authority for determining truth. God’s Word must be the authority. And it clearly teaches creation in six literal days about six thousand years ago and a global catastrophic Flood at the time of Noah. We must graciously but uncompromisingly contend for the literal historical truth of Genesis 1–11, which is absolutely fundamental to all other doctrines in the Bible. [9]
What Mortenson fails to so convincingly is justify why a Christian must interpret Genesis 1-11 literally or exactly how our salvation depends on recent creation in six days or a literal world-wide flood. Instead he damns respected 19th century Christian scholars such as Torrey, Warfield and Dana as ‘compromisers’ for being willing to follow the scientific evidence where it led them, even if it contradicted with a particular interpretation of the creation narratives.
This refusal to engage with modern science is particularly acute given that the scientific evidence is overwhelmingly against flood geology and recent creationism, and in fact was recognised by conservative Christians well before Darwin. To be blunt, any Christian doctrine that hinges on a literal world-wide flood that laid down the fossils or recent creation in six days has been falsified, and no amount of appeal to a literal reading of Genesis will change observable reality. [10] Mortenson and his colleagues at Answers in Genesis may pride themselves on not compromising on what they believe to be a fundamental principle, but all they are doing is forcing believers to choose between observable reality and dogma, which as the Barna Group has shown is not a strategy for long-term growth of Christianity. More importantly, it is forcing believers to base fundamental doctrines on a description of the natural world that is demonstrably false.
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Notes:
[1] ‘Interested Stranger.—No doubt the earth has gone through changes. Christadelphian. — Have not these changes been in the nature of progress—an advance from a crude to a more perfect state? Interested Stranger.—It has doubtless been so. Christadelphian.—From what sort of a state did this process make its start? Interested Stranger.—That, I think, we cannot ascertain. Christadelphian. — Not in an exact sense perhaps; but are we not justified in saying that if we go far enough back in the record of the earth’s physical history, as written in the rocks, we come to a time when the earth was a molten mass, incapable of sustaining life, either vegetable or animal? Interested Stranger.—That is believed by the geologist; and I do not see that any thing can be said against it.’, Roberts, ‘A Page for the Interested Stranger – No. 2’, The Christadelphian(22.255.405), 1885.
[2] ‘Geology teaches us much; it speaks of a time and creation on this earth when animal life, if not totally, was nearly unknown, and only the lower order of vegetable life covering its face, and this must have existed many thousands of years; and during the whole of that long period, the earth was undergoing wonderful and necessary changes to fit it for a creation of a higher order, and evidently with the creature man in view. There are evidences to show that when this early period had done its work, it was replaced by a creation of a higher order , when animal and vegetable forms of a far more wonderful structure were brought into existence and most admirably adopted to the atmosphere, climate, and peculiarities of that creation; and this, again, must have lasted for many thousands of years, and in its turn been swept away, and a grander creation built on its ruins. And so on, stage after stage.’, Simons, ‘Why Man was not at once made Perfect’, The Christadelphian (21.238.177), 1884.
[3] ‘There can be no reasonable doubt that when the non-fossiliferous rocks were first formed t he heat of the earth’s matter was too intense for vegetable and animal life to exist. There can be no reasonable doubt that it was only in a later age that the lower forms of plant and animal life could exist . And there can be no reasonable doubt that the succeeding ages allowed the creation of still higher and more perfect forms, till we reach the age called the “Tertiary,” and the “Post-pliocene” period of that age, when we are told remains of man are found for the first time. All of this, I say, I do not doubt. The facts of old mother earth’s storehouse are too convincingly inscribed upon her crust to allow me to doubt. At the same time, and amid it all, I have the most implicit faith and unbounded trust in God and His sacred word.’, Welch, ‘Knowledge.- No., 12 Geology’, The Christadelphian (28.329.416), 1891.
[4] ‘If we suppose a sudden and absolute break some 6,000 years ago, or before, resulting in the destruction of all life, and that the creation account of Genesis describes a new creation following, we ought to find some evidence of the break, and we cannot well account for the apparently close relationship that obtains between extinct and existing forms. There are forms becoming extinct in our own day from slow and natural causes. May it not have been so in pre-Adamic times? The professors tell us for instance that some of these ancient birds, whose strides we can see for ourselves from their footprints were from four to six feet long, were like gigantic ostriches.’, Walker, ‘Genesis’, The Christadelphian (47.557.501), 1910.
[6] “So to take the human elements, the frustration, the changes of plan and the solution along with God allowing that process to work its way through, and applying it to a creative environment where the evidence implies problem, failure and imperfect solution.”, Matthew Wigzell, email on his email list “Watchmen“, 17 January, 2013; (brother Matthew has explained this email list was not private, and both he and other members have shared publicly emails by various members of the list.)
[10] See for example Alan Hayward’s “Creation and Evolution – The Facts and Fallacies” (Triangle Books, 1985). Although his arguments against evolution were flawed even in the early 1980s, and are utterly dated now, his critique of flood geology and young earth creationism still hold up today.
6 significant steps in the quest to find the shape of the universe (royaldockside.com)
The latest immersive spectacular at the Peter Harrison Planetarium at Greenwich’s Royal Observatory is the exquisitely rendered exploration of the structure and history of the universe.
Narrated by Neil deGrasse Tyson, Dark Universe moves from Edwin Hubble’s discovery of an expanding universe to the enigma of dark matter and dark energy.
In between, the design team of astrophysicists and visualisation experts, commissioned by the American Museum of Natural History, take the viewer through time and space in a series of sweeping journeys.
After the Fact (briankoberlein.com)
One of the common accusations made about cosmology is that it is just a kludge model to explain away all the strange things we see in the universe. Galactic redshift? Invent the big bang. Galaxies don’t move the right way? Invent dark matter and dark energy. Tweak any model enough and you can make it fit data. Part of the reason for this is the way scientific discovery is represented. The lone genius has a revolutionary idea that clears away all the stuffy old models. But that’s not how science gets done. Scientific models are often proposed to explain strange data, but the real test is whether the predictions they make hold up under scrutiny. Take, for example, the story of the cosmic microwave background.
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The CMB was actually discovered 25 years before Penzias/Wilson “stumbled” across it… In a 1940 paper, Canadian astronomer Andrew McKellar (1910-1960) published “excellent coincidences obtained between the wave lengths of three of the unidentified, sharp, interstellar lines and lines arising from the lowest states of the CH, NaH, and CN molecules” (from spectral analysis). Based on data obtained, McKellar stated that “the maximum ‘effective’ temperature of interstellar space would be 2.7K” — no reference to “ghost radiation” from the “birth of the Universe”… McKellar’s findings have apparently been largely forgotten.
Could it be that the CMB has been misinterpreted? Could it simply be thermalized starlight, the “temperature of space”?
NASA Has Revisited the Pillars of Creation and It’s Stunning (nerdist.com) In 1995, after one servicing mission to repair a warped mirror, Hubble took the iconic image of the so-called “Pillars of Creation.” It revealed in unprecedented detail three giant columns of cold gas bathed in hot ultraviolet light in the Eagle Nebula. It’s an evocative image. Inside those pillars of gas are the building blocks of solar systems like our own.
“Dark Universe” Opens January 16 in the Hansen Dome Theatre (clarkplanetarium.org) Dark Universe starts 100 million light years away from Earth. After flying to our own Milky Way Galaxy, visualized using the latest scientific data, and to our own planet, viewers arrive at California’s Mount Wilson Observatory, where Edwin Hubble’s discovery that the universe is expanding gave the first hint of the Big Bang. That initial discovery, and ever more sensitive instruments on the ground and in space, led to other breakthroughs that give astronomers an increasingly detailed and precise picture of how our universe formed and evolved.
But these revelations have also uncovered intriguing new mysteries. What is the mysterious Dark Energy accelerating cosmic expansion? What is the invisible Dark Matter underlying galaxies that, together with dark energy, account for at least 95 percent of the universe? What lies beyond our cosmic horizon?
In stunningly detailed scenes based on authentic scientific data, including a NASA probe’s breathtaking plunge into Jupiter’s atmosphere and novel visualizations of unobservable dark matter, Dark Universe explores this new age of cosmic discovery and reveals the myst
On Lorser Feitelson’s Life Begins (greg.org)
:Life Begins is oil and collage on a shaped masonite panel around two feet square. The painted elements are the blue space, which often gets called a sky, and a half peach and pit on a small plate. The collage elements are two black&white photographs, or close to it, of a doctor holding a newborn baby, cropped to preserve the caption, which gives the work its title; and an astronomical feature.
Transmitting Live from Mount Wilson: How KCET’s Signal Comes to You (kcet.org)
Television, by its own design, seems like magic — you turn on a box (or, nowadays, a panel), and images and sound magically appear out of nowhere. Of course, how those images and sounds find their way to you isn’t as magical as the experience of enjoying the content that’s being broadcast, but we all know that television signals reach our sets via antenna, cable, or satellite dish.
The exact journey of how those signals travel from the television station to your set is something we usually take for granted, or fail to think about at all, yet it has been a fundamental concern to the people who perform the day-to-day task of keeping KCET on the air for the past 50 years.
It is commonly believed that the One who speaks as the Creator of all things in Isaiah chapters 44 and 45 is the triune God consisting of three Persons. The language of Isaiah 44:24 cannot possibly be reconciled with the popular idea:
“Thus says the Lord (Yahweh) your Redeemer who formed you from the womb: ‘I am the Lord who made all things, who stretched out the heavens alone, who spread out the earth. Who was with me?’” (RV)
The implied answer is, of course, that no one was present with the one Lord in the act of creation. Yahweh stretched out the heavens alone. The Hebrew word rendered “alone” means “in a state of separation, by one’s self” (Brown, Driver and Briggs, Lexicon of the Old Testament, p. 94). No one assisted God, the Father at the creation. Moreover, the Creator is one Person, not three:
“Have we not all one Father? Has not one God created us?” (Malachi 2:10).
Nowhere does the Old Testament speak of a Trinity of Persons in the Godhead.
Elsewhere in the Old Testament it is said:
“You, God, even You alone, You have made the heaven…the earth and all things” (2 Kings 19:15).
“You are the Lord, even You alone; You have made the heaven, the earth and all things” (Nehemia 9:6).
The Lord God is always distinguished from the promised Messiah. They are never said to be members of one Godhead.
Venn diagram-like symbol for the Christian Trinity (God the Father, God the Son, and the Holy Spirit) a so called monotheism but having a triune god (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
This simple information should prevent us from ever believing that Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God, was present with the Father when the latter created the heavens and the earth. The idea that Jesus actually created the heavens and earth of Genesis 1:1 has been promoted by the Worldwide Church of God. Their teaching was that there are two members in the one “God-family.” Isaiah 44:24 (cited above) clearly states that ONE person alone created the heavens and the earth. Language has no way of expressing this more distinctly.
Trinitarians hold that the second member of the triune God was instrumental in the creation of Genesis 1:1. This, however, contradicts the statement that the one Creator was the Father (Malachi 2:10, cited above).
When Jesus came into being at his birth he enjoyed a unique communion with his Father. Thus he says,
“I am not alone, because the Father is with me” (John 16:32).
Jesus always speaks as a person distinct from his Father, exactly as every son is an individual separate from his father. The personal “I” of the New Testamentnever refers to the Father and Son together. So also in the Old Testament the personal “I” refers to one Person, not three.
“one even as we [the Father and I] are one” (John 17:11).
This is a unity of purpose and will. Jesus prays also:
“May they [the disciples] all be one as You, Father, are in me and I in You, so that they may also be in us” (John 17:21).
It is obvious from these texts that the Father and Son use the ordinary personal pronouns to distinguish themselves as any father and son would. It is thus beyond question that Jesus was not with the Father when the latter described His act of creation:
“Thus says the Lord [Yahweh], your Redeemer…I am the Lord who made all things, who stretched out the heavens by myself…Who was with me?” (Isaiah 44:24).
Jesus did not exist as a person when the Lord God created all things. God, the Father, was alone responsible for the creation of the universe. (The “us” of Genesis 1:26, in connection with the creation of man, probably refers to attendant angels, cp. Job 38:7.) Most believers in the Trinity no longer use Genesis 1:26 as a proof of the triune God.
Jesus came into being as the Son of God when Maryconceived him supernaturally. Luke is careful to tell us that it was because of the miraculous conception in Mary’s womb, not because of any so-called “eternal generation,” that Jesus was the Son of God:
“Holy Spirit will come upon you [Mary] and the power of the Most High will overshadow you, and for that reason the child conceived will be holy, the Son of God” (Luke 1:35).
If God, the Father (the Lord, Yahweh of the Old Testament) was alone the author of the creation, why does the belief that Jesus was an active agent in the creation persist?
The answer is that two creations have become confused in the minds of Bible readers. Jesus is indeed the mediator of the New Creation (Colossians 1:15-18). But he is not the creator of the universe. That creation is the work of the One God, the Father who acted alone when He stretched forth the heavens and the earth (Isaiah 44:24).
Unfortunately, one or two verses in the New Testament have been translated to give the impression that all things were made “by” Jesus. In fact the original states that all things were made “through” Jesus (see the margin of Colossians 1:16: “in him,” “through him” and “for him,” not “by him”).
Jesus was indeed the reason for God’s creation. The Father “foreknew” him from the beginning (1 Peter 1:20). In God’s great purpose Jesus was “slain from the foundation of the world” (Revelation 13:8). But he came into existence as the Son of God at his conception (Luke 1:35). There is no biblical text to support the idea that the Son of God was alive before his conception (though a few verses in John’s gospel have been used to support the idea).
When Jesus prayed to receive the glory which he had with the Father before the foundation of the world, he was asking for the glory which had been reserved for him and which he would receive after his resurrection (John 17:5). Peter speaks of an inheritance which is “reserved in heaven for you” (1 Peter 1:4). That inheritance is, of course, the earth which Jesus has promised to the meek (Matthew 5:5) and which he will give them when he returns to establish the Kingdom of God. The same glory which was planned for Jesus from the beginning had also been given already (John 17:22) to the disciples, even those not yet born! (John 17:20). This glory is a glory which all disciples “have” even though they have not yet received it. Similarly Jesus “had” glory laid up for him with the Father long before his birth. In John 17 he prays to receive it.
Isaiah 44:24 should settle forever the question about who created the universe, and Hebrews 1:10 should be read with careful attention to the fact that the writer says he is speaking there of the inhabited earth to come (i.e., of the future):
“God did not subject to angels the world to come of which we are speaking” (Hebrews 2:5).
There is no contradiction between the two Testaments on this issue. Jesus will indeed be instrumental in laying the foundations of the coming new heavens and earth (Isiah 51:16). But the original creation is the work of the One God, the Father, alone (Isaiah 44:24).
For once, AmChurchSpeak makes an important point: Lent is a journey to Calvary… (denvercatholic.org)
For two weeks, the Letter to the Hebrews draws on images from the Old Testament to introduce us to that “great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God:” a mediator between God and humanity who “has been tempted as we are” and with whom we can “with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” [Heb 4: 14-16]. Here, the biblical author writes, we find that “great cloud of witnesses” in whose company we are enabled to “run with perseverance the race that is set before us” [Heb 12: 1] Here is “Mt. Zion … the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem” to which we are brought through the mediation of Jesus, and where we join “innumerable angels in festive gathering” [Heb 12: 22].
The Liberation of the Triune God (derekzrishmawy.com)
One of the helpful emphases of the Reformed tradition is its acknowledgment of the continuity as well as discontinuity of Old and New Testaments. This comes through very strongly in Turretin’s Institutes and even makes an appearance in his doctrine of the Trinity. After a couple of clarifying questions, as well as a lengthy question devoted to proving the doctrine of the Trinity from New Testament Scripture, he moves on to try and demonstrate the revelation of the Trinity in the Old Testament. For while it is admittedly true that God reveals himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit with greater clarity in New Testament, that does not at all mean that we cannot see him revealed as such in the Old as well.
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There are a number of features worth noting in this treatment. The first is Turretin’s view of the Angel of the LORD, or the Angel of YHWH. As he makes clear in a number of places, Turretin views this as an appearance of the pre-incarnate Son. It is an appearance in angelic/human form that is, nonetheless, distinct from his incarnation in that there is no hypostatic union, but only concrete manifestation. Still, this is a thesis that Christian theologians have long appealed to in order to explain the way the Angel is both identified as a distinct agent who nonetheless is identified as the LORD somehow.
Learn From Christ (birdchirp.wordpress.com)
To prove that He was the Son of God by turning stones to bread was not necessary for Jesus or for Satan. Satan already knows all about Jesus Christ.
The Beauty of John’s Prologue (christianity201.wordpress.com)
The first 18 verses of John’s gospel (commonly known as the Prologue) represent a literary masterpiece of inspired Scripture. On the one hand, John’s introduction is so simple a child can understand it, yet it is also so theologically deep, the most intellectual scholars could never mine every detail held within its verses.
There have been many debates regarding the structure of John’s prologue. The most convincing in my opinion is that the first 18 verses are a narrative which summarize not only the entirety of John’s gospel but make a broad sweep of salvation history. The prologue begins in eternity before creation, declaring that in the beginning the Word already existed. It proceeds through the creation (all things were made by Him) and He is the source of all life and light. Then John skips over the majority of Israel’s salvation history and shows that a final prophet, John the Baptist, came to testify to the light. This light is the revelation of God Himself. He came into the world and was rejected by the world. Yet, those who received Him became the sons of God.
The prologue finishes by showing the culmination of Israel’s salvation in Jesus. The law (which was itself a grace given to men) came through Moses but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. Jesus has completely explained the Father. Jesus is the Father’s final word to man. – This culminates salvation history. So, we see that the prologue begins in eternity past and concludes with God’s final word of salvation and redemption.
The Day Son of God Jesus Preaches (brentkuhlman.wordpress.com)
Now is the perfect time for Jesus to flex His Son of God muscles. Pull out all His divine Son of God stops. Unload the whole enchilada of His almighty Son of God power to break the bonds of systemic oppression, bust Locusts and Wild Honey out of jail, overthrow the wicked Roman oppressors and establish a Son of God millennial utopian reign that would make all community organizers of the world jealous!
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You’re in charge of your own life. You’re in full control. The master of your universe.
That’s precisely why Son of God Jesus preaches. With Him the promised and long awaited kingdom of God has come! God reigns on the earth in Jesus. God is at hand! It’s Messiah Time! And it’s perfectly obvious then that you need a preacher – Against Your Wishes! Against Your Desires! Against Your Idolatry! Otherwise, … well, let’s just say it will all end hellaciously for you. You’d be held captive eternally – kept under lock and key — in Satan’s gloomy prison!
Names, Titles, and Characters of Jesus Christ (goodnewsnow.wordpress.com)
The Blue Letter Bible has published a page with information taken from the whole Bible about the God we worship, Jesus Christ. Seeing all the names, titles and other attributes with which he is labeled in both the Old and New Testaments and contemplating those titles and their meaning to me personally is a wonderful way to worship Him. Worshiping Him is what we are made for. Worshiping Him is what those who know Him will do for all eternity. These Name, Titles and Attributes allow practice in this life.
In the previous chapter The very very beginning 1 Creating Gods, I pointed to a first big mistake many people make. Lots of people do think there were more people involved in the creation of the universe. Lots of people make the wrong assumption by taking nouns for names and making objects in persons, as such making words being people, like they also make wisdom a person. For titles they also use them as names and make for something what can used for any body, like the adversary or satan, one specific person with such a name, as Satan.
One Creator
The first chapter of B’reshit, or Genesis, written on an egg, in the Jerusalem museum (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Gen 1:1 בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית H7225 be·re·Shit In the beginning בָּרָ֣א H1254 ba·Ra created אֱלֹהִ֑ים H430 E·lo·Him; God אֵ֥ת
This Most HighElohim the Adonai, had a name and is the Only OneTrue God, Former or Maker of heavens and earth. In many bible translations, mainly published after 1960, the ‘a’ and ‘the’ and capitals left away or interchanged, plus omitting the Name of God and replacing Adonai or Elohim with lord instead of Lord made it very difficult for readers to see the difference between the different Biblical characters spoken of, the Lord God Most High, the Lord of Lord of lords, the lord Jesus or any lord. Because of this many could not any more see clear between The God of gods and a god.
Isa 45:18 כִּ֣י H3588 ki For כֹ֣ה H3541 choh thus אָֽמַר־ H559 ‘a·mar- For thus saith יְ֠הוָה H3068 Yah·weh the LORD
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1 ASV)
“For thus saith Jehovah that created the heavens, the God that formed the earth and made it, that established it and created it not {1} a waste, that formed it to be inhabited: I am Jehovah; and there is none else. {1) Or [in vain]}” (Isaiah 45:18 ASV)
“Before the mountains were brought forth, Or ever thou {1} hadst formed the earth and the world, Even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God. {1) Heb [gavest birth to]}” (Psalms 90:2 ASV)
It does not say “gods” created, but speaks of a Singular Person. About That Figure we are also told He or It is not a man but a Spirit.
“{1} God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship in spirit and truth. {1) Or [God is spirit]}” (John 4:24 ASV)
“yet to us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we unto him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him.” (1 Corinthians 8:6 ASV)
“Hear, O Israel: {1} Jehovah our God is one Jehovah: {1) Or [Jehovah our God, Jehovah is one]; Or [Jehovah is our God, Jehovah is one]; Or [Jehovah is our God, Jehovah alone]}” (Deuteronomy 6:4 ASV)
“That they may know that {1} thou alone, whose name is Jehovah, Art the Most High over all the earth. {1) Or [thou, whose name alone is Jehovah, art etc]}” (Psalms 83:18 ASV)
Created by speaking
The storyteller of the beginnings let us know that it was in a world of chaos were the earth was without order, and empty; and darkness upon the face of the deep, that the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. There it was at the early beginnings of everything that God let His Mind go over things and used His Spirit to let it come to Power saying something. He uttered words and spoke, demanding that there would be something and it came to being. And every time He had spoken and had come into existence He looked at it, saw that it was good, and than went over to create the next thing. Only because the Maker allows something to be it can come into existence even gods come into being because God allows them to exist.
H853 ‘et הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם H8064 hash·sha·Ma·yim the heaven וְאֵ֥ת H853 ve·’Et הָאָֽרֶץ׃ H776 ha·’A·retz. the earth
Gen 1:2 וְהָאָ֗רֶץ H776 ve·ha·’A·retz, And the earth הָיְתָ֥ה H1961 ha·ye·Tah was תֹ֙הוּ֙ H8414 to·hu without form וָבֹ֔הוּ
“And the earth was waste and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep: and the Spirit of God {1} moved upon the face of the waters. {1) Or [was brooding upon]}” (Genesis 1:2 ASV)
H922 va·Vo·hu, and void וְחֹ֖שֶׁךְ H2822 ve·Cho·shech and darkness עַל־ H5921 ‘al- upon פְּנֵ֣י H6440 pe·Nei [was] upon the face תְה֑וֹם H8415 te·Hom; of the deep וְר֣וּחַ H7307 ve·Ru·ach And the Spirit אֱלֹהִ֔ים H430 E·lo·Him, of God מְרַחֶ֖פֶת H7363 me·ra·Che·fet moved עַל־ H5921 ‘al- over פְּנֵ֥י H6440 pe·Nei the face הַמָּֽיִם׃ H4325 ham·Ma·yim. of the waters
Gen 1:3 וַיֹּ֥אמֶר H559 vai·Yo·mer said אֱלֹהִ֖ים H430 E·lo·Him And God יְהִ֣י H1961 ye·Hi Let there be א֑וֹר H216 or;
“And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.” (Genesis 1:3 ASV)
Jehovah God asked it to be there and it became there.
Gen 1:6 וַיֹּ֣אמֶר H559 vai·Yo·mer said אֱלֹהִ֔ים H430 E·lo·Him, And God יְהִ֥י H1961 ye·Hi Let there be רָקִ֖יעַ
“And God said, Let there be a {1} firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. {1) Heb [expanse]}” (Genesis 1:6 ASV)
In this way God spoke and everything came into being, but once it had started, having a beginning it received a cause. God being the Ultimate Power knows everything and brought to a cause the need to be sufficient, or adequate.
Today’s atheists, who like to use words like ‘rational’, ‘reasonable’ and ‘scientific’ in describing their beliefs, believe that the greatest beginning of all — that of the universe — had no cause whatsoever! Some admit it is a problem, but they claim that saying ‘God did it’ explains nothing because you then have to explain where God came from.
This is what brings the only dogma people should have. This brings up the only thing which demands a belief without a proof and without being able to see it. All the rest in the world and what we do believe can be proven and is available to our minds to be justified and unruffled. But to proof that there is that God Creator is almost impossible, though we being created in His image have elements of Him in us and have the feeling of His Power in us and can see it around us, in nature in things that happen. When looking around us we can see the complexity of our planet and how things are made up, which points to a deliberate Designer who not only created our universe, but sustains it still today.
Scientists are convinced that our universe began with one enormous explosion of energy and light, which we now call the Big Bang. This singular start to everything that exists which scientist are wanting to explain already for ages and of which their findings not ever were in contradiction to the Bible we can find it explained simply so that everybody could understand the beginning of the universe, the start of space, and even the initial start of time itself. The Bible had never the intention to be a thorough book of scientific explanation. It is meant to be a handbook for everybody. The Holy Scriptures want to present an easy to follow and easy to understand manual.
The Word given
The Word ofGod brought everything into being: heaven and earth, mountains and rivers, and every living thing. In the beginning, God called into existence by speaking, which is an uttering of sounds which forms words.
A big mistake of many Christians is that they consider those words to be different persons. they look at it as being a god person and another god person. They are mislead by misinterpreting the way the evangelist John looks at the creation of the world all together and looks at a new world he has seen come to into existence.
The apostle John, perhaps being the favourite young disciple of Jeshua (Jesus Christ), saw in Jesus the beginning of a New Creation in which Jesus is the 2° Adam, also created by the Word of God according to the Word God had given at the beginning of time. Namely, it was in the beginning God had spoken, had created the 1° Adam after He had made light (day 1), skies or heaven (day 2), put the earth into good shape having at His command the waters of the earth gathering together at certain places, forming seas and oceans, lakes and rivers, so that in other parts, the dry land became visible (day 3), after God’s further command, earth was made to produce all kinds of plants, grass, and trees, shrubs and flowers, each contained its own seed for further growth and reproduction, came the 4th day on which the sun, moon, and stars were created to shed light upon the earth.
By God His speaking there was set a time for day and a time for night, a time for the week, the month, and the year, and a time for each of the four seasons and soon after an other time was set to restore what that 1° Adam had ruined.
After God by His speaking had called for the seas to get filled with fishes and other water animals and to have in to the air above the earth flying animals on the 5° day he continued on the 6° day to created all the other animals, large and small, those that walk and those that creep or crawl on the earth. And towards the end of the sixth day, God putting His breath into a body which He made of earth and clay made a living soul. This was the human. This first man created being called Adam, which means first man of red blood. It was a man of flesh and blood made in the image of God.
Given to recognise
To this human being God granted high mental ability that one could think and reach one’s own conclusions. Jehovah God also gave the human the power of speech,giving them the possibility to create words, and He made humans superior to all other creatures of the earth which he could give names for himself and use them for himself.
This created being could be aware of that omnipresent Creator Deity and we too should by His works be able to come to recognise Who God is.
“For the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, [even] his everlasting power and divinity; {1} that they may be without excuse: {1) Or [so that they are]}” (Romans 1:20 ASV)
Nobody has an excuse not able to come to see or understand creation and the Hand behind it, because everything around us declares the Hand and Work of God.
“1 «For the Chief Musician. A Psalm of David.» The heavens declare the glory of God; And the firmament showeth his handiwork. 2 Day unto day uttereth speech, And night unto night showeth knowledge. 3 There is no speech nor language; Their voice is not heard. 4 Their line is gone out through all the earth, And their words to the end of the world. In them hath he set a {1} tabernacle for the sun, {1) Heb [tent]}” (Psalms 19:1-4 ASV)
“Lift up your eyes on high, {1} and see who hath created these, that bringeth out their host by number; he calleth them all by name; by the greatness of his might, and for that he is strong in power, not one is lacking. {1) Or [and see: who hath created these? he that etc]}” (Isaiah 40:26 ASV)
All people, creatures of the Most High Maker, should have the feeling deep in them. They all, having some elements of Him, should have some feeling that there is that Maker, God Who doesn’t come and go. God lasts. He’s Creator of all you can see or imagine. He doesn’t get tired out, doesn’t pause to catch his breath. And he knows everything, inside and out. (Isaiah 40:28)
Though by time lots of people still did not come to know their God, Jesus having given His Word to reunite man with His good creation, made His Word, His Speaking or His Word of Promise, to become reality, having it come onto this world, being born some two thousand years ago. The child born out of the tribe of king David was that long ago, in the Garden of Eden promised Messiah. (see The very very beginning 3 Messiah’s total point of origination)
The Word, God and a god
“In [the] beginning the Word was, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a god.” (NWT)
“The Word was in the beginning, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a God.” (The New Testament in An Improved Version)
Or literally there is written in the book of books, the bible, which we consider the infallible Word of God:
Yah Chanan (#Jo 1:1-3): In the beginning the Word having been and the Word having been unto God and God having been the Word he having been, in the beginning, unto God all through his hand became: and without him not even one being whatever became.
Traditionally ortotalattheorigin of all things, there was the Word, the expression of the Most High Elohim Hashem Jehovah. By that coming out of breath from His ‘Mouth’ all the creatures of the earth and the powers of nature where created and placed in the control of the other creature, called human.
Having the saying “the Word was a god” makes many Christians wanting to see that such word was not only just ‘a’ ‘god’ but ‘the God’. They transfer the title of any higher person, like Apollo, Zeus, Erebus, Gaea, Tartarus, Pharaoh, Moses, even angels, are called gods, to making Jesus from a god into the God.
People seem to forget that in the beginning the Word already existed, because the Elohim Maker of everything was already in existing. The Divine Maker is the Supreme Being without a beginning, meaning never born nor created. He had no mother, though several Christians want Him to have a mother like the many gods have their Mother Earth Gaea.
The Word was with God because it is something which comes into existing by using the Mind, and God used His Power, the Holy Spirit, to bring forth His thinking and His speaking. It was God’s Voice that sounded over all chaos and made order, because God is a God of order and not a god of disorder and not a god of confusion.
God His Voice bringing forth Words, had each Word of very high value and as such was His Word highly placed and as such being ‘a god’. But the evangelist John is not only talking of the beginning of the world in general. He sees the Old World and a New World. For him Jesus is the beginning of the New World, the New Creation. And Jesus is also brought forward by the speaking of God already at the beginning of the world, though he only came into being so many thousands of years later. That Nazarene man John and some others had followed as good disciples, he considered the 2° Adam and the long awaited promised Messiah.
As Jesus was the core-figure of the movement ‘The Way‘, a Jewish sect some two thousand years ago, John, Stephen and many others saw in him also a very special rabbi and prophet, a sent one from God, who might, by many, also be considered a god, like there where many gods honoured in John’s time and still now. Though we may not forget that a god is not at all the same as The God, the Creator of heaven and earth, Who was worshipped by Jesus Christ as the Only One God Who was greater than him (Jesus) and any other human being. Jesus was the son of God and not a god son.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1 ASV)
“but when the fulness of the time came, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law,” (Galatians 4:4 ASV)
“Jesus therefore answered and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father doing: for what things soever he doeth, these the Son also doeth in like manner.” (John 5:19 ASV)
“Ye heard how I said to you, I go away, and I come unto you. If ye loved me, ye would have rejoiced, because I go unto the Father: for the Father is greater than I.” (John 14:28 ASV)
The Lord Protects (ectordzro.wordpress.com)
Who is like you oh believer, a person saved by the Lord? The Lord is your shield and helper means God helps you by protecting you. He being your glorious sword implies the Lord fights battles on your behalf in other to protect you, as you live in His spirit of excellence.
The Principle of Intellectual and Spiritual Freedom (circleofasiamission.wordpress.com)
In understanding the occult position, one will at once understand the position of the Yazdān traditions possessed by the Kurds; but it would not be realistic to understand the position of Blavatsky or the secret doctrine all at once. Her position is totally from the esoteric position, symbolical, astronomical, & philosophical.
All The Ways I Killed People As The Son Of Satan (kotaku.com.au)
Lucius is a sad-looking little boy. He’s also the spawn of Satan. The original Lucius pretty much followed the plot for The Omen: you’re the son of Satan, now go and kill everybody in your house one by one. Think Hitman, but as an evil demonic kid. Despite being somewhat fun, it felt very restrictive in that it only allowed you to use specific items on specific people in a pre-scripted way.
‘Satanic capital’ claims dismissed (bbc.co.uk)
In the most recent census, 17 people in Bolsover wrote Satanism as their religion.This suggested it had the highest concentration of Satanists in England and Wales.
But the Church of Satan believes many people had lied on their census forms because they “think it is funny”.
For many people the beginning of everything is a very big mystery. Some think there was just emptiness or a void or that there was darkness and only Chaos. According to Greek mythology, the origin of everything, and the first thing that ever existed was Chaos. It was the primordial void, the source out of which everything was created, including the universe and the gods.
Plural form
For many there were gods who took care of everything coming into being. Also lots of Christians do believe that there were gods who created everything together. The biggest mistake those so called Christians make, is that they believe that there was a God the Father, a god the son and a God the Spirit who together created the universe and everything around. They do not understand that The Creator is, was and always shall be the Most HighBeing and as such has not only the title of god, like any high being, but also speaks in the plural form with the Pluralis Majestatis or Royal We.
Speakers employing the “royal we” use it to distinguish their private life with their function, or when they are directors, editors,writers,etc., they use it to avoidthepersonalI or to represent a collectiveviewpoint. A person in function, like the Creator, the Maker and makers of things, creators of pieces (artists, theatre and film directors, choreographers, etc.), directors (bosses or managers of institutions, universities, schools, factories, industrial or technological sites), leaders of a Courtney or group (kings, queens, presidents, führers, popes, cardinals, priests, pastors, youth-leaders, club-leaders, cheerleaders) will use the plural form when they speak as creator, artist, director or in function.
16th century manuscript of Theogeny: “the genealogy or birth of the gods” poem by Hesiod (8th – 7th century BC) describing the origins and genealogies of the Greek gods, composed circa 700 B.C. It is written in the Epic dialect of Homeric Greek.
We may find people who believe in mythology where out of the void appeared Erebus, or an other god as the personification of the deep darkness and shadows and brother of Gaea (earth), Tartarus (underworld) a god, third in rank after Chaos and Gaea, preceding Eros (love), and Nyx (night).
Crepuscular rays of light shining through clouds in the sky
In the knowledge that “one day” for God is in the eyes of man a “thousand years” we can think of it that there have been a long period over this coming into being from one element into the next one, because on the second day of God sky or celestial dome was created. It was or is what we do know as the wideness which includes the atmosphere and outer space.
Coming into being
The “void” or “emptiness” and the “atmosphere” came into being because that One and Only One God Who declared to be the “One that is the One Who is the Being” (The “I Am the I am” or “The I Am Who Is”): I am that I am Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh אהיה אשר אהיה
3 Syllables Name: Je-Ho-Vah, by which the whole world should know God’s Name
He presented Himself with a tetragrammaton, a word with three syllables, which makes it unlikely the two syllable word Yahweh or Jahweh would be His preferred name. He said: “אני יהוה ani Ye-ho-vah.” This is the famous tetragrammaton, or name of three syllables and four letters, which we write Jehovah Yehovah, Yehveh, Yeveh, Jhuh, Javah, etc. The letters are Y H U H or YHWH. The religious Jews never pronounce it, and the true pronunciation is utterly unknown, but when you ask a Jew how they would pronounce it or speak yourself Hebrew you will find out that Jehovah is the right rendering of God’s Name of which God Himself says “That is my name – A name peculiar to myself.”
אני יהוה הוא שׁמי וכבודי לאחר לא־אתן ותהלתי לפסילים׃
“I am Jehovah, that is my name; and my glory will I not give to another, neither my praise unto graven images.” (Isaiah 42:8 ASV)
All people in the world should come to know the Name of God. He does find it important that His creatures should know Him by His Name and know that He only is the Most High ever. Probably shall find no other people called the same because God the Divine Creator said He is the only One with that Name, which may not be taken in vain.
‘That men may know that thou, whose name alone is JEHOVAH, Art the Most High over all the earth.” (Psalm 83:18 Lange)
“That they may know that {1} thou alone, whose name is Jehovah, Art the Most High over all the earth. {1) Or [thou, whose name alone is Jehovah, art etc]}” (Psalms 83:18 ASV)
Exo 20:7 לא תשׂא את־שׁם־יהוה אלהיך לשׁוא כי לא ינקה יהוה את אשׁר־ישׂא את־שׁמו לשׁוא׃
“Thou shalt not take the name of Jehovah thy God {1} in vain; for Jehovah will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name {1} in vain. {1) Or [for vanity] (or [falsehood])}” (Exodus 20:7 ASV)
Later He reminded Moses of His great name and that He is the covenant-making and covenant-keeping God, who will absolutely fulfil His promises (Exodus 6:2-5). The name denotes not Who is the eternal existence and that unchangeable truth and omnipotent Power which give fulfilment to His promises. It were as though He said, “I am Jehovah, for I am now to do what I have declared to be My purpose.” Compare, for further illustration of this name, Exodus 7:5 and Ezekiel 28:22.
Exo 6:2 וידבר אלהים אל־משׁה ויאמר אליו אני יהוה׃
Exo 6:3 וארא אל־אברהם אל־יצחק ואל־יעקב באל שׁדי ושׁמי יהוה לא נודעתי להם׃
“2 And God spake unto Moses, and said unto him, I am Jehovah: 3 and I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, as {1} God Almighty; but {2} by my name Jehovah I was not {3} known to them. {1) Heb [El Shaddai] 2) Or [as to] 3) Or [made known]}” (Exodus 6:2-3 ASV)
“And the Egyptians shall know that I am Jehovah, when I stretch forth my hand upon Egypt, and bring out the children of Israel from among them.” (Exodus 7:5 ASV)
Eze 28:22 ואמרת כה אמר אדני יהוה הנני עליך צידון ונכבדתי בתוכך וידעו כי־אני יהוה בעשׂותי בה שׁפטים ונקדשׁתי
“and say, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah: Behold, I am against thee, O Sidon; and I will be glorified in the midst of thee; and they shall know that I am Jehovah, when I shall have executed judgments in her, and shall be sanctified in her.” (Ezekiel 28:22 ASV)
It was not at the creation that The Divine Creator would let His Divine name be known, but that does not mean it was not important not Him bringing everything to existence.
The world came to know Who had created everything and all people should be fully aware of that.
Jer 32:17 אהה אדני יהוה הנה אתה עשׂית את־השׁמים ואת־הארץ בכחך הגדול ובזרעך הנטויה לא־יפלא ממך כל־דבר׃
“Ah Lord Jehovah! behold, thou hast made the heavens and the earth by thy great power and by thine outstretched arm; there is nothing too {1} hard for thee, {1) Or [wonderful]}” (Jeremiah 32:17 ASV)
Already in the first book of Mozes (the Bereshith, the book of the Beginnings or Genesis) we are told that it where no gods but God alone Who created man in His image and how heaven and earth were created.
Gen 1:27 ויברא אלהים את־האדם בצלמו בצלם אלהים ברא אתו זכר ונקבה ברא אתם׃
“And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” (Genesis 1:27 ASV)
Gen 2:4 אלה תולדות השׁמים והארץ בהבראם ביום עשׂות יהוה אלהים ארץ ושׁמים׃
“These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that Jehovah God made earth and heaven.” (Genesis 2:4 ASV)
A Call To My Greek Mythology Bloggers – which Greek God is this? (clairecatacouzinos.wordpress.com)
My only guess is that this statue is of the Greek God “Adonis” – Aphrodite’s lover, and the god of beauty and desire. Or perhaps, but not likely, the Greek Hero, Hyakinthos – Apollo’s lover who died by a discus.
‘Olympus’ Coming To Syfy Channel: Greek Action Drama Promises Battle Of The Gods [Video] (designntrend.com)
A new series about the life of mortals living among the many gods and monsters of Olympus is on its way to SyFy channel. The 13-episode mythology action drama began filming in August of 2014 in Vancouver. No specific release date has been set so far, but it’s slated to air in the spring of 2015.According to the Hollywood Reporter, the synopsis for the series centers on how a handful of brave men and women banished the gods to the realm of the Underworld, otherwise known as the Kingdom of Hades.
Re: Pantheon: (Dis)Grace of the Gods (bay12forums.com)
At the dawn of time, or perhaps, simply a beginning, since there were no sun to determine a “dawn” yet, there were 6 deities.These deities crafted a world over which to reside, and declared themselves to each be rulers of their own regions, that the others would not interfere in the others’ places.The three Gods of Domain were Althax, Lord of the Sky, Enthros, Lord of the Sea, and Darus, Lord of the Earth.The three Goddesses of Dominion were Enya, Lady of Creation, Ori, Lady of Destruction, and Juno, Lady of Balance.
Phoenix (mythology) (en.memory-alpha.org)
The Phoenix was a bird from Greek mythology that was known for being reborn as it arose from the flames of its predecessor.
Oh, my! I’ve been wrong about this faith thing all this time! Thank you for setting me straight!
There have been many debates regarding the structure of John’s prologue. The most convincing in my opinion is that the first 18 verses are a narrative which summarize not only the entirety of John’s gospel but make a broad sweep of salvation history. The prologue begins in eternity before creation, declaring that in the beginning the Word already existed. It proceeds through the creation (all things were made by Him) and He is the source of all life and light. Then John skips over the majority of Israel’s salvation history and shows that a final prophet, John the Baptist, came to testify to the light. This light is the revelation of God Himself. He came into the world and was rejected by the world. Yet, those who received Him became the sons of God.
whole Bible about the God we worship, Jesus Christ. Seeing all the names, titles and other attributes with which he is labeled in both the Old and New Testaments and contemplating those titles and their meaning to me personally is a wonderful way to worship Him. Worshiping Him is what we are made for. Worshiping Him is what those who know Him will do for all eternity. These Name, Titles and Attributes allow practice in this life.
Messiah For All 