You see them with their homemade signs at football and hockey games. All those signs say is “John 3:16”, which is probably the most beloved and well known verses in the entire Bible. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”
When did the Father give the Son to the world? Was it the day Jesus got baptized and started His three and a half year ministry? Was it that first Christmas when Jesus came into the world as the angels announced His birth to the shepherds? No, I submit to you that in light of what we have already seen of Jesus in the Old Testament, that He has been working to save this world from the very day it went astray. Let’s look at what happened that day from Genesis 3:15. “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, And between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, And you shall bruise His heel.”
This is the very first prophecy given that the Messiah would come and save the world. These words were spoken then by Jesus Himself. It was Jesus who went to the Garden that day to confront Adam and Eve. It’s been mentioned several times already that we are cut off from God the Father by sin. The Father is the highest authority in the entire universe. So He rules the universe and this world also. According to James 1:17, the Father gave us Jesus since He is the source of all that is good. “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.” (Deuteronomy 6:4 shows there is a oneness to God yes, but there is also a hierarchy. Consider that the Spirit lives not to glorify himself but the Son in John 16:13,14 and that only the Father knows the date for the Second Coming, see Mark 13:32.)
When the Lord made humanity, it was His purpose to give us authority over this planet as is shown by Genesis 1:28 “Then God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’” Our first father, Adam would have been a king over us had he not sinned. In the genealogy of Christ Luke 3:38 uses the same title for Adam as Christ Himself bears “the son of Enos, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.”
However, from the example of David, another king who symbolized the Messiah, this authority was under God. 1 Chronicles 28:6,7 says “Now He said to me, ‘It is your son Solomon who shall build My house and My courts; for I have chosen him to be My son, and I will be his Father. ‘Moreover I will establish his kingdom forever, if he is steadfast to observe My commandments and My judgments, as it is this day.’” In other words, God’s blessing comes tied to obedience. When Adam and Eve sinned, they forfeited that blessing.
This explains the significance of Job 2:1, which we looked at in the chapter on life on other planets. I’ll repeat the verse here “Again there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan came also among them to present himself before the LORD. These are the ‘Adams’ of the other planets. Adam himself would have had this role still had he not sinned. What he did in eating of the tree was to forfeit the world into Satan’s control. The devil now claimed the legal right to control it. That’s why the Bible calls him the “god of this world” and the “prince of the power of the air”. Jesus had to then act immediately in some fashion or Satan would have taken over.
Satan was able to claim this legal right to world domination through tempting our first parents into sin. Genesis 3 tells the story of how sin itself came into this world. I recommend you read the whole chapter. For now we’ll look at verse 17 and 21 “Then to Adam He said, ‘Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, “You shall not eat of it:”’ ‘Cursed is the ground for your sake; In toil you shall eat of it All the days of your life.’” "Also for Adam and his wife the LORD God made tunics of skin, and clothed them. We talked already in chapter two about how their sense of their own nakedness after they sinned came from the broken connection with God. They were not ashamed beforehand to be naked and now they were. Notice it is God who clothed them. This symbolizes the provisions He was already making for their salvation. The slain lamb was to represent the innocent One who would come and offer up His own life to cover their guilt. This is what allowed Adam and Eve to live on. Otherwise the Father would have destroyed them immediately.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Daniel and the Revelation, page 635 also says “We call (Miller’s) investigations a consistent study of the prophecies, because he adopted a sound rule of interpretation. This lies at the base of every religious reformation, and of every advance movement in prophetic language. This rule is to take all the language of the Scriptures, just as we would that of any other book, to be literal, unless the context or the laws of language require it to be understood figuratively; and to let scripture interpret scripture. True, on a vital point he made a mistake, as will be explained hereafter; but in principle, and in a great number of particulars, he was correct. He was on the right road, and made an immense advance over every theological system of his day.”
The fact that Miller was right about so much combined with the practicalities of his message had the effect of testing the entire Christian world as to whether they really were sincere or not. Think about it. If you were told Jesus was coming back this Thursday, how would that make you feel? Would you be afraid, or would you say “I can’t wait to see Him”? It’s a principle that for every thing God does, Satan finds ways to counterfeit the Lord’s workings.
Have you ever pondered the meaning of 2 Thessalonians 2:11&12? “And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” Why would God send someone a lie? Well, think about it this way; Miller preached the truth and they rejected it. The message went everywhere Christianity had. When they heard the message, they were all convicted that what they currently believed in was not right. However, since they did reject the message, they were now left with nothing. What they did believe in wasn’t true and didn’t work and they knew it. So they had to turn to new ideas that were also untrue. It’s an act of mercy for the Lord to have allowed it to happen to allow for people’s free choice.
Daniel and the Revelation, page 661 “The acceptance by Protestantism of the first angel's message would have enabled the church to become a light to ‘all nations.’ But betraying her trust by her rejection of the message, she left the nations without the witness of present truth that they might have had, to grope in the darkness of error and superstition resulting from the intoxicating and stupefying influences of the system of false doctrines she had built up and refused to relinquish.”
There are of course, as many counterfeits to the truth in this world as there are people it seems. There are a few though we could almost call “great counterfeits” such as secularism (trying to build a world without God or at least one where religious faith is nothing more than a fairy tale), rationalism (the belief that there is no such thing as absolute truth) evolution and communism. They came to approximately the same generation of people that heard and rejected Millers teaching and are now world-wide in their influence. The Christian world has embraced these errors to one degree or another and as the Christian world has expanded to include the entire world today, these errors have come along with it. The French Revolution had brought in militant atheism, the basis for these counterfeits. However, the Revolution fell apart and because of the horrors of the reign of terror that generation stayed with the Bible. Once the Great Disappointment happened those who were opposed to the Bible grew bolder when they saw such a movement fall apart after their one critical mistake.
This boldness is the basis for the great moral decline of the last 50 years especially. However, the trend was already in motion well before that. Many today should be able to identify with this description of Albert Einstein’s childhood from “Giants of Science” page 146, a direct result of growing up within the changed religious culture that resulted from the rejection of the Advent message. “Although Einstein’s parents were Jewish, they were not interested in any religion and sent Albert to the nearest school, which was a Catholic elementary school. At the age of ten he was sent to a ‘secondary’ school, called a Gymnasium, which prepared students to enter the universities. ... While in the Gymnasium, Einstein received instruction in the Jewish religion. He had learned about Catholicism in elementary school. As a result he gained a lasting respect for the ethical values of religion but felt that all religious rituals were superstitions designed to prevent man from thinking independently.”
"Today it seems that the great Hebrew-Christian moral tradition, the most ancient part of our heritage, is crumbling to pieces before our very eyes. . . . The faith in science has grown so strong, so self-sufficient, so deeply rooted in the processes of our society, that many of those who feel it have lost all desire to combine it with any other. . . . The man who trusts a physical science to describe the world finds no conceivable place into which to fit a deity. . . . The philosophies that express their [men's] basic interests today are no longer concerned, as they were in the nineteenth century, with vindicating a belief in God and immortality. Those ideas have simply dropped out of any serious attempt to reach an understanding of the world. . . . The present conflict of religious faith with science is no longer with a scientific explanation of the world, but with a scientific explanation of religion. The really revolutionary effect of the scientific faith on religion today is not its new view of the universe, but its new view of religion." John Herman Randall, "The Forces That Are Destroying Traditional Beliefs," Current History, June, 1929, pp. 359-361, quoted in Daniel and the Revelation, page 659.
That is the real reason the world is the way it is today. That’s what’s really going on. Our world is building to the time of trouble Daniel 12:1 speaks of. As smart as we are we are not God and we cannot solve all our problems on our own. Revelation 11:18 The nations were angry, and Your wrath has come, And the time of the dead, that they should be judged, And that You should reward Your servants the prophets and the saints, And those who fear Your name, small and great, And should destroy those who destroy the earth. No matter how hard anyone tries, human selfishness is still there. It was to solve that problem of selfishness that God sent His Son into the world to save it.And of course the two great counterfeits we have been discussing the most here in this blog are the twin ideas that science has defeated the Bible and the fact that science fiction can meet the spiritual needs of those who adopt this purely rationalistic world view.
Thomas Bertonneau and Kim Paffenroth are the authors of “The Truth Is Out There – Christian Faith and the Classics of TV Science Fiction”. Their title is obviously borrowed from the end line of each episode of the TV show “The X Files”. On page 10 they say: “It is not scientific investigation and knowledge that is an enemy of Christian belief …. Rightly understood, increasing our knowledge of creation results in greater understanding and appreciation of the Creator.”
On page 163 they say: “Whether it is H. G. Wells The War of the Worlds (1897) or Stanely Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), the well-wrought science-fiction story nearly always carries at least a tinge of what philosopher of politics and history Eric Voegelin (1901-1985) calls the theophanic event: the in-breaking on everyday life of a sublime vision of things that says to its witness that this rather than the narrow everyday assumption about life and the world is the truth, and says so in such a way as to demand from the witness a total transformation of his or her existence.” (Emphasis the author’s)
At same time all these counterfeits have been developing the Lord has also been working to restore the real truth as well. Truths like the ones we looked at in this chapter that have been ignored or misunderstood by most believers are now being showcased again. More than that though, the truth about our origins and what life itself is about are now being proclaimed worldwide. You didn’t just stumble across this blog; God guided you to it for a theophanic event of your own. That event is contained within our final two chapters. There you will see that what you thought was a boring old story, that of Adam and Eve, is just as exciting as Star Wars, Star Trek and every single other science fiction franchise combined
Read on, and be amazed at what you see.
The fact that Miller was right about so much combined with the practicalities of his message had the effect of testing the entire Christian world as to whether they really were sincere or not. Think about it. If you were told Jesus was coming back this Thursday, how would that make you feel? Would you be afraid, or would you say “I can’t wait to see Him”? It’s a principle that for every thing God does, Satan finds ways to counterfeit the Lord’s workings.
Have you ever pondered the meaning of 2 Thessalonians 2:11&12? “And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” Why would God send someone a lie? Well, think about it this way; Miller preached the truth and they rejected it. The message went everywhere Christianity had. When they heard the message, they were all convicted that what they currently believed in was not right. However, since they did reject the message, they were now left with nothing. What they did believe in wasn’t true and didn’t work and they knew it. So they had to turn to new ideas that were also untrue. It’s an act of mercy for the Lord to have allowed it to happen to allow for people’s free choice.
Daniel and the Revelation, page 661 “The acceptance by Protestantism of the first angel's message would have enabled the church to become a light to ‘all nations.’ But betraying her trust by her rejection of the message, she left the nations without the witness of present truth that they might have had, to grope in the darkness of error and superstition resulting from the intoxicating and stupefying influences of the system of false doctrines she had built up and refused to relinquish.”
There are of course, as many counterfeits to the truth in this world as there are people it seems. There are a few though we could almost call “great counterfeits” such as secularism (trying to build a world without God or at least one where religious faith is nothing more than a fairy tale), rationalism (the belief that there is no such thing as absolute truth) evolution and communism. They came to approximately the same generation of people that heard and rejected Millers teaching and are now world-wide in their influence. The Christian world has embraced these errors to one degree or another and as the Christian world has expanded to include the entire world today, these errors have come along with it. The French Revolution had brought in militant atheism, the basis for these counterfeits. However, the Revolution fell apart and because of the horrors of the reign of terror that generation stayed with the Bible. Once the Great Disappointment happened those who were opposed to the Bible grew bolder when they saw such a movement fall apart after their one critical mistake.
This boldness is the basis for the great moral decline of the last 50 years especially. However, the trend was already in motion well before that. Many today should be able to identify with this description of Albert Einstein’s childhood from “Giants of Science” page 146, a direct result of growing up within the changed religious culture that resulted from the rejection of the Advent message. “Although Einstein’s parents were Jewish, they were not interested in any religion and sent Albert to the nearest school, which was a Catholic elementary school. At the age of ten he was sent to a ‘secondary’ school, called a Gymnasium, which prepared students to enter the universities. ... While in the Gymnasium, Einstein received instruction in the Jewish religion. He had learned about Catholicism in elementary school. As a result he gained a lasting respect for the ethical values of religion but felt that all religious rituals were superstitions designed to prevent man from thinking independently.”
"Today it seems that the great Hebrew-Christian moral tradition, the most ancient part of our heritage, is crumbling to pieces before our very eyes. . . . The faith in science has grown so strong, so self-sufficient, so deeply rooted in the processes of our society, that many of those who feel it have lost all desire to combine it with any other. . . . The man who trusts a physical science to describe the world finds no conceivable place into which to fit a deity. . . . The philosophies that express their [men's] basic interests today are no longer concerned, as they were in the nineteenth century, with vindicating a belief in God and immortality. Those ideas have simply dropped out of any serious attempt to reach an understanding of the world. . . . The present conflict of religious faith with science is no longer with a scientific explanation of the world, but with a scientific explanation of religion. The really revolutionary effect of the scientific faith on religion today is not its new view of the universe, but its new view of religion." John Herman Randall, "The Forces That Are Destroying Traditional Beliefs," Current History, June, 1929, pp. 359-361, quoted in Daniel and the Revelation, page 659.
That is the real reason the world is the way it is today. That’s what’s really going on. Our world is building to the time of trouble Daniel 12:1 speaks of. As smart as we are we are not God and we cannot solve all our problems on our own. Revelation 11:18 The nations were angry, and Your wrath has come, And the time of the dead, that they should be judged, And that You should reward Your servants the prophets and the saints, And those who fear Your name, small and great, And should destroy those who destroy the earth. No matter how hard anyone tries, human selfishness is still there. It was to solve that problem of selfishness that God sent His Son into the world to save it.And of course the two great counterfeits we have been discussing the most here in this blog are the twin ideas that science has defeated the Bible and the fact that science fiction can meet the spiritual needs of those who adopt this purely rationalistic world view.
Thomas Bertonneau and Kim Paffenroth are the authors of “The Truth Is Out There – Christian Faith and the Classics of TV Science Fiction”. Their title is obviously borrowed from the end line of each episode of the TV show “The X Files”. On page 10 they say: “It is not scientific investigation and knowledge that is an enemy of Christian belief …. Rightly understood, increasing our knowledge of creation results in greater understanding and appreciation of the Creator.”
On page 163 they say: “Whether it is H. G. Wells The War of the Worlds (1897) or Stanely Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), the well-wrought science-fiction story nearly always carries at least a tinge of what philosopher of politics and history Eric Voegelin (1901-1985) calls the theophanic event: the in-breaking on everyday life of a sublime vision of things that says to its witness that this rather than the narrow everyday assumption about life and the world is the truth, and says so in such a way as to demand from the witness a total transformation of his or her existence.” (Emphasis the author’s)
At same time all these counterfeits have been developing the Lord has also been working to restore the real truth as well. Truths like the ones we looked at in this chapter that have been ignored or misunderstood by most believers are now being showcased again. More than that though, the truth about our origins and what life itself is about are now being proclaimed worldwide. You didn’t just stumble across this blog; God guided you to it for a theophanic event of your own. That event is contained within our final two chapters. There you will see that what you thought was a boring old story, that of Adam and Eve, is just as exciting as Star Wars, Star Trek and every single other science fiction franchise combined
Read on, and be amazed at what you see.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Though we have discussed it quite a bit from several angles in the first few chapters of this blog, there is great significance to the changes made in our world since the mid 1800’s. This also has a lot to do with what Jesus is doing now. You see the very first time anyone came to understand the significance of Daniel 8:14 and the cleansing of the Sanctuary was in the early 1800’s. This sparked a great religious revival as a movement rose up believing the cleansing was a sign of the end of the world. The book “Daniel and the Revelation” by Uriah Smith, a man who was there, puts it this way on page 386:
The great religious awakening in the early part of the nineteenth century which resulted from a study of the prophecies, culminated in this advent movement. Men from all denominations were convinced that the coming of Christ was near. As they came out of the various churches, they left sectarian names and feelings behind, and every heart beat in unison as all joined to give the alarm to the churches and to the world, and pointed to the coming of the Son of man as the believer's true hope. Selfishness and covetousness were laid aside, and a spirit of consecration and sacrifice was cherished. The Spirit of God was with every true believer, and his praise upon every tongue. Those who were not in that movement cannot fully realize how great was the searching of heart, the consecration to God, the peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, and the pure, fervent love for one another which true believers enjoyed.
From The Great Controversy by Ellen White, page 611 “The advent movement of 1840-44 was a glorious manifestation of the power of God; the first angel's message was carried to every missionary station in the world, and in some countries there was the greatest religious interest which has been witnessed in any land since the Reformation of the sixteenth century”.
This revival came about as a result of what’s known in history as “The Second Great Awakening”. After Napoleon took the Pope prisoner in 1798 the political power of the Catholic Church was broken, though persecution had already been waning for decades. This combined with the failure of the French Revolution gave great confidence to Protestant Bible scholars. The Bible was no longer illegal for the common man to possess and people began studying it more earnestly as the various Bible societies spread God’s word.
This ‘Advent’ movement keyed in on Daniel 8:14 and the cleansing of the Sanctuary as we have discussed above. Daniel and the Revelation, page 635 elaborates further.
As early as 1831, William Miller, of Low Hampton, New York, by an earnest and consistent study of the prophecies, was led to the conclusion that the gospel age was near its close. He placed the termination, which he thought would occur at the end of the prophetic periods, about the year 1843. This date was afterward extended to the autumn of 1844. … When he began to promulgate his views, they met with general favor, and were followed by great religious awakenings in different parts of the land.
Soon a multitude of colaborers gathered around his standard, among whom may be mentioned such men as F. G. Brown, Charles Fitch, Josiah Litch, J. V. Himes, and others, who were then eminent for piety, and men of influence in the religious world. The period marked by the years 1840-1844 was one of intense activity and great progress in this work.
Now remember this happened when 1844 was still in the future. Their critical mistake came from the fact that they didn’t really know what the Sanctuary was and assumed its cleansing meant the end of the world when Jesus will return and cleanse the earth. As Uriah Smith discussed there was more than a year of approximate guesses that came and went from 1843 to 1844. The last possible day fro Jesus to return was October 22, 1844. (I’ll explain how they arrived at these dates in the next chapter.) When He didn’t come the event was written up in history as “The Great Disappointment”.
Why did revival go wrong? They were injecting their own opinions into the Bible rather than letting God’s word speak for itself. However the Lord knew this would happen. The cleansing reference of verse 14 is preceded by Daniel 8:13 “Then I heard a holy one speaking; and another holy one said to that certain one who was speaking, ‘How long will the vision be, concerning the daily sacrifices and the transgression of desolation, the giving of both the sanctuary and the host to be trampled under foot?’” Daniel 8:13 has two saints talking. It’s the second saint who is asking the first the question the question of when? The first saint answers the second only on that question of when. The second saint is left to learn the meaning through further study later. Though the first movement fell apart, those who were willing to hang on after being so broken and disappointed were given many great rewards. God worked in several ways to raise up a new movement. As this happened, those who studied their Bibles saying in their hearts ‘where did we go wrong?’ found many other important truths missing from the theology of the mainstream church of the day. These people found out the very truths we have discussed here among others.
They are now known as the Seventh-day Adventists. ‘Adventist’ from the understanding that Jesus will soon return to end this world and begin a new one and ‘Seventh-day’ from the Bible fact that the original Sabbath has never been changed in God’s eyes. Sunday is not the true Sabbath, but we’ll leave that discussion for another day.
Jesus gave us the truth when He came to earth the first time. Indeed as John 14:6 says, He is the “way, truth and the life”. The early church began with the benefit of that truth but soon fell away from it over the course of a few centuries. Then God worked again to bring His people out of the Dark Ages. First there was Martin Luther, the man we all owe our freedom to today. Then wave after wave of Reformers came along from the Baptists to Wesley and the Methodists, each one adding a piece as they were lead to study the Bible. Ultimately though, the 14th century mindset still had its influence.
The great religious awakening in the early part of the nineteenth century which resulted from a study of the prophecies, culminated in this advent movement. Men from all denominations were convinced that the coming of Christ was near. As they came out of the various churches, they left sectarian names and feelings behind, and every heart beat in unison as all joined to give the alarm to the churches and to the world, and pointed to the coming of the Son of man as the believer's true hope. Selfishness and covetousness were laid aside, and a spirit of consecration and sacrifice was cherished. The Spirit of God was with every true believer, and his praise upon every tongue. Those who were not in that movement cannot fully realize how great was the searching of heart, the consecration to God, the peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, and the pure, fervent love for one another which true believers enjoyed.
From The Great Controversy by Ellen White, page 611 “The advent movement of 1840-44 was a glorious manifestation of the power of God; the first angel's message was carried to every missionary station in the world, and in some countries there was the greatest religious interest which has been witnessed in any land since the Reformation of the sixteenth century”.
This revival came about as a result of what’s known in history as “The Second Great Awakening”. After Napoleon took the Pope prisoner in 1798 the political power of the Catholic Church was broken, though persecution had already been waning for decades. This combined with the failure of the French Revolution gave great confidence to Protestant Bible scholars. The Bible was no longer illegal for the common man to possess and people began studying it more earnestly as the various Bible societies spread God’s word.
This ‘Advent’ movement keyed in on Daniel 8:14 and the cleansing of the Sanctuary as we have discussed above. Daniel and the Revelation, page 635 elaborates further.
As early as 1831, William Miller, of Low Hampton, New York, by an earnest and consistent study of the prophecies, was led to the conclusion that the gospel age was near its close. He placed the termination, which he thought would occur at the end of the prophetic periods, about the year 1843. This date was afterward extended to the autumn of 1844. … When he began to promulgate his views, they met with general favor, and were followed by great religious awakenings in different parts of the land.
Soon a multitude of colaborers gathered around his standard, among whom may be mentioned such men as F. G. Brown, Charles Fitch, Josiah Litch, J. V. Himes, and others, who were then eminent for piety, and men of influence in the religious world. The period marked by the years 1840-1844 was one of intense activity and great progress in this work.
Now remember this happened when 1844 was still in the future. Their critical mistake came from the fact that they didn’t really know what the Sanctuary was and assumed its cleansing meant the end of the world when Jesus will return and cleanse the earth. As Uriah Smith discussed there was more than a year of approximate guesses that came and went from 1843 to 1844. The last possible day fro Jesus to return was October 22, 1844. (I’ll explain how they arrived at these dates in the next chapter.) When He didn’t come the event was written up in history as “The Great Disappointment”.
Why did revival go wrong? They were injecting their own opinions into the Bible rather than letting God’s word speak for itself. However the Lord knew this would happen. The cleansing reference of verse 14 is preceded by Daniel 8:13 “Then I heard a holy one speaking; and another holy one said to that certain one who was speaking, ‘How long will the vision be, concerning the daily sacrifices and the transgression of desolation, the giving of both the sanctuary and the host to be trampled under foot?’” Daniel 8:13 has two saints talking. It’s the second saint who is asking the first the question the question of when? The first saint answers the second only on that question of when. The second saint is left to learn the meaning through further study later. Though the first movement fell apart, those who were willing to hang on after being so broken and disappointed were given many great rewards. God worked in several ways to raise up a new movement. As this happened, those who studied their Bibles saying in their hearts ‘where did we go wrong?’ found many other important truths missing from the theology of the mainstream church of the day. These people found out the very truths we have discussed here among others.
They are now known as the Seventh-day Adventists. ‘Adventist’ from the understanding that Jesus will soon return to end this world and begin a new one and ‘Seventh-day’ from the Bible fact that the original Sabbath has never been changed in God’s eyes. Sunday is not the true Sabbath, but we’ll leave that discussion for another day.
Jesus gave us the truth when He came to earth the first time. Indeed as John 14:6 says, He is the “way, truth and the life”. The early church began with the benefit of that truth but soon fell away from it over the course of a few centuries. Then God worked again to bring His people out of the Dark Ages. First there was Martin Luther, the man we all owe our freedom to today. Then wave after wave of Reformers came along from the Baptists to Wesley and the Methodists, each one adding a piece as they were lead to study the Bible. Ultimately though, the 14th century mindset still had its influence.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Jesus went into the original Sanctuary when He went back to Heaven after rising from the dead and appearing to His disciples. What He is doing now according to the Bible is going through the real cleansing of the Heavenly Sanctuary. He is applying the promised forgiveness from the cross to the legal record of those who accepted it, those who were willing to afflict their souls.
Think about it this way, God knows all things right? None of His creatures do though. However many billions of people who have lived here on earth have committed however many trillions or quadrillions of sins through world history and it’s all written down in these books! Imagine you are not an earthling but a being from another planet. You have lived through countless eons of time in perfect harmony as a result of your world’s complete submission to the Lord’s will all this time. Then you saw how Lucifer, who was once the highest angel, corrupted himself and was cast out of heaven for it. After that Adam and Eve started the rebellion here as well. You have seen every single rape, theft and murder even though these things are completely unheard of on your planet.
You then watched Jesus, Whom you knew as your Royal Commander, come down to this world, live a life of suffering and humiliation; and finally be crucified at the very hands of the ones He was trying to save. Now even though you saw how much God worked to save humanity through every generation culminating in Jesus’ death and resurrection, you might not yet feel guaranteed that the people He’s about to admit back into the family of the universe can actually be trusted not to do it all again at some point in the future. This is especially true as you see the majority of the world’s population trying in its own way to achieve that place. Wouldn’t you want a guarantee?
That the promised assurance is being given now is shown by Daniel 7:26 and 27 ‘”But the court shall be seated, And they shall take away his dominion, To consume and destroy it forever.Then the kingdom and dominion, And the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven, Shall be given to the people, the saints of the Most High. His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, And all dominions shall serve and obey Him.” The dominion taken away here is that of Satan and his man on earth, the antichrist. The dominion given is the earth. Jesus is proven right here in all His decisions regarding whom to save and whom not to. He now has he legal right to return to this world and rescue His people.
WHAT JESUS IS DOING NOW BY LOOKING AT THE RECORD IN SUCH FINE DETAIL IS TO PROVE TO THE REST OF THE UNIVERSE THAT THE ONES HE WILL SOON RESUCE FROM THIS WORLD REALLY WERE SORRY FOR EVERY WRONG THING THEY EVER DID AND REALLY DID SUBMIT TO GOD COMPLETELY! There is another level to the judgement where before God curses those who weren’t sorry with hellfire He explains to His people why He’s going to do it. However, that’s a topic for the next chapter.
Really the Lord Himself is the One on trial here. The questions the whole universe needed to have answered every since Satan rebelled are simply: “Is God fair?” “Does He really have our best interests at heart when He demands our complete loyalty?” and “Is His way really the only way for the universe to coexist in peace?”
Put all three of these secret keys together and you will realize that heaven is in the same physical reality as this world. There is no such thing as a ‘spirit world’ as someone with a 14thcentury mindset would say. And modern minded people who say heaven is in some sort of other dimension are really saying the same thing in pseudo-scientific terms. This understanding, this fullness of truth will protect one from the errors of the modern view of evolution and the errors of the 14th century mindset already discussed here in this blog. Most Christians who misunderstand certain key Bible passages such as the creation story do so because they have clung to errors on these important topics. Their view of death is that you become a ghost as soon as you die and that you face the judgement alone instantaneously thereafter. Just as their view of the universe was once earth centered and therefore human centered, so their view here is as well.
When you die you fall asleep and don’t go anywhere. People aren’t in heaven yet enmasse. Jesus, His angels and every other being out there are as real as the desk you are sitting at right now. Angels are not ghosts they are physical beings, we are simply being prevented from seeing them. They’ve been working through every generation of history to help people in various ways. And they’ve seen every single If you had a space ship fast enough and knew where to go, you could fly to what Revelation 21 calls the New Jerusalem, what Paul called the ‘third heaven’ God’s Holy city with its Sanctuary itself, right now.
Think about it this way, God knows all things right? None of His creatures do though. However many billions of people who have lived here on earth have committed however many trillions or quadrillions of sins through world history and it’s all written down in these books! Imagine you are not an earthling but a being from another planet. You have lived through countless eons of time in perfect harmony as a result of your world’s complete submission to the Lord’s will all this time. Then you saw how Lucifer, who was once the highest angel, corrupted himself and was cast out of heaven for it. After that Adam and Eve started the rebellion here as well. You have seen every single rape, theft and murder even though these things are completely unheard of on your planet.
You then watched Jesus, Whom you knew as your Royal Commander, come down to this world, live a life of suffering and humiliation; and finally be crucified at the very hands of the ones He was trying to save. Now even though you saw how much God worked to save humanity through every generation culminating in Jesus’ death and resurrection, you might not yet feel guaranteed that the people He’s about to admit back into the family of the universe can actually be trusted not to do it all again at some point in the future. This is especially true as you see the majority of the world’s population trying in its own way to achieve that place. Wouldn’t you want a guarantee?
That the promised assurance is being given now is shown by Daniel 7:26 and 27 ‘”But the court shall be seated, And they shall take away his dominion, To consume and destroy it forever.Then the kingdom and dominion, And the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven, Shall be given to the people, the saints of the Most High. His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, And all dominions shall serve and obey Him.” The dominion taken away here is that of Satan and his man on earth, the antichrist. The dominion given is the earth. Jesus is proven right here in all His decisions regarding whom to save and whom not to. He now has he legal right to return to this world and rescue His people.
WHAT JESUS IS DOING NOW BY LOOKING AT THE RECORD IN SUCH FINE DETAIL IS TO PROVE TO THE REST OF THE UNIVERSE THAT THE ONES HE WILL SOON RESUCE FROM THIS WORLD REALLY WERE SORRY FOR EVERY WRONG THING THEY EVER DID AND REALLY DID SUBMIT TO GOD COMPLETELY! There is another level to the judgement where before God curses those who weren’t sorry with hellfire He explains to His people why He’s going to do it. However, that’s a topic for the next chapter.
Really the Lord Himself is the One on trial here. The questions the whole universe needed to have answered every since Satan rebelled are simply: “Is God fair?” “Does He really have our best interests at heart when He demands our complete loyalty?” and “Is His way really the only way for the universe to coexist in peace?”
Put all three of these secret keys together and you will realize that heaven is in the same physical reality as this world. There is no such thing as a ‘spirit world’ as someone with a 14thcentury mindset would say. And modern minded people who say heaven is in some sort of other dimension are really saying the same thing in pseudo-scientific terms. This understanding, this fullness of truth will protect one from the errors of the modern view of evolution and the errors of the 14th century mindset already discussed here in this blog. Most Christians who misunderstand certain key Bible passages such as the creation story do so because they have clung to errors on these important topics. Their view of death is that you become a ghost as soon as you die and that you face the judgement alone instantaneously thereafter. Just as their view of the universe was once earth centered and therefore human centered, so their view here is as well.
When you die you fall asleep and don’t go anywhere. People aren’t in heaven yet enmasse. Jesus, His angels and every other being out there are as real as the desk you are sitting at right now. Angels are not ghosts they are physical beings, we are simply being prevented from seeing them. They’ve been working through every generation of history to help people in various ways. And they’ve seen every single If you had a space ship fast enough and knew where to go, you could fly to what Revelation 21 calls the New Jerusalem, what Paul called the ‘third heaven’ God’s Holy city with its Sanctuary itself, right now.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
This leads us to secret key number three, in which we look at what exactly Jesus is doing up in heaven right now in a very brief fashion. Jesus went to heaven as a real person in a real body not as a ghost. Therefore He’s up there actually doing something. What is it? We get a clue from Acts 3:19-21 “Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord; And he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you: Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began.” This quote is from the King James Version. Notice carefully that forgiveness does not come instantly, but at a later date, the “times of refreshing.” This is very important. Jesus does offer us peace now when we turn from sin. However, in light of this verse the offer comes in the form of an assurance, a promise for the future.
Allow me to illustrate the point with this example. Forgiveness is like buying a TV and paying for it with a cheque. You take home the TV from the store that day but the cheque takes another ten days to clear the bank. A cheque is accepted as good as cash but it isn’t actually cash. It’s a promissory note in essence. Well, every time you do something good an angel writes it down. Every time you do something bad, an angel writes it down. The Bible says that at some point, God is going to look at these lists. Though we have the promise of His forgiveness now if we will change our wicked ways and accept His death on the cross, the ‘paperwork’ won’t be complete until this ‘times of refreshing’ is.
Please take careful note as well of the order of events listed in that text. The times of refreshing takes place shortly before the Second Coming of Christ. First the refreshing comes, then Jesus returns, and finally the ‘restitution of all things’, which refers to God completely finishing the conflict between good and evil and making this world into a paradise again for all eternity. Revelation 14:7, a prophetic message for the last generation concurs by saying. “… Fear God and give glory to Him, for the hour of His judgment has come …” This verse is not saying the judgement will come, it is saying it has come. This is present tense English here.
The same idea is expressed in Daniel 8:14”And he said to me, ‘For two thousand three hundred days; then the sanctuary shall be cleansed.’” The exact nature of this time of refreshing is actually one of the most difficult theological concepts to grasp. To really understand this takes quite a lot of study so I will only give a brief overview here. When the Lord established Israel as a nation He instituted their Sanctuary and priesthood through all the laws He gave to Moses. The various rituals the Israelites were to participate in were all designed to teach symbolic lessons of what God would do to save the world through Jesus. There was a daily sacrifice of an innocent, pure lamb. This taught we all need Christ on a continual basis. Then there was a yearly calendar of religious holidays grouped into spring and fall. These taught the lesson of what would take place in the development of God’s plan of salvation through world history. The spring festivals taught lessons on the First Coming of Christ while the ones in the fall were designed to teach us about things near to the Second Coming of Jesus, the end of this world and the beginning of God’s new earth, a reestablished Garden of Eden for all His friends.
When an individual committed a sin and needed to go to the Temple and sacrifice, there was a specific process as to how it was done. First, the person in question confessed the sin over the lamb and killed it. Now the animal had symbolically taken the sin away. This was like the buying of the TV with the cheque. However, the process was not done at this point! The priest then took the blood of the lamb into the first main room of the Sanctuary, called the ‘Holy Place’. The sin was there symbolically for the rest of the year and day by day more and more sins symbolically ‘built up’, shall we say. Then once a year on the “Day of Atonement” the High Priest went into the inner chamber of the Sanctuary, called the ‘Most Holy place’. This was a special ritual in which one single, complete atonement was made for all the sins that the people had committed that year. The Sanctuary was now cleansed, or ‘refreshed’. The cheque had cleared the bank that day. While this was happening inside the temple the people were required to afflict their souls. It was a day for careful searching of heart to make sure everything was indeed right between each individual and the Lord. God promised He would forgive their sins and by accepting the special sacrifice of the High Priest, He made good on His promise.
According to Hebrews 8:1, 2 the earthly Sanctuary was only a copy of the original in Heaven. “Now this is the main point of the things we are saying: We have such a High Priest, who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens, a Minister of the sanctuary and of the true tabernacle which the Lord erected, and not man.” To get even more information as to what this is we go to Daniel 7. Verses 9 and 10 say “I watched till thrones were put in place, And the Ancient of Days was seated; His garment was white as snow, And the hair of His head was like pure wool. His throne was a fiery flame, Its wheels a burning fire; A fiery stream issued And came forth from before Him. A thousand thousands ministered to Him; Ten thousand times ten thousand stood before Him. The court was seated, And the books were opened.”
So the Sanctuary in Heaven is the throne room itself where God the Father appears here with 100 million angels. This room is vastly beyond anything humans can imagine (as another Bible /science fiction parallel, an attempt to imagine it is essentially what the Senate is in Star Wars). This cleansing time is a time of judgement. Verses 13 and 14 continue with “I was watching in the night visions, And behold, One like the Son of Man, Coming with the clouds of heaven! He came to the Ancient of Days, And they brought Him near before Him. Then to Him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, That all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, Which shall not pass away, And His kingdom the one Which shall not be destroyed.”
Allow me to illustrate the point with this example. Forgiveness is like buying a TV and paying for it with a cheque. You take home the TV from the store that day but the cheque takes another ten days to clear the bank. A cheque is accepted as good as cash but it isn’t actually cash. It’s a promissory note in essence. Well, every time you do something good an angel writes it down. Every time you do something bad, an angel writes it down. The Bible says that at some point, God is going to look at these lists. Though we have the promise of His forgiveness now if we will change our wicked ways and accept His death on the cross, the ‘paperwork’ won’t be complete until this ‘times of refreshing’ is.
Please take careful note as well of the order of events listed in that text. The times of refreshing takes place shortly before the Second Coming of Christ. First the refreshing comes, then Jesus returns, and finally the ‘restitution of all things’, which refers to God completely finishing the conflict between good and evil and making this world into a paradise again for all eternity. Revelation 14:7, a prophetic message for the last generation concurs by saying. “… Fear God and give glory to Him, for the hour of His judgment has come …” This verse is not saying the judgement will come, it is saying it has come. This is present tense English here.
The same idea is expressed in Daniel 8:14”And he said to me, ‘For two thousand three hundred days; then the sanctuary shall be cleansed.’” The exact nature of this time of refreshing is actually one of the most difficult theological concepts to grasp. To really understand this takes quite a lot of study so I will only give a brief overview here. When the Lord established Israel as a nation He instituted their Sanctuary and priesthood through all the laws He gave to Moses. The various rituals the Israelites were to participate in were all designed to teach symbolic lessons of what God would do to save the world through Jesus. There was a daily sacrifice of an innocent, pure lamb. This taught we all need Christ on a continual basis. Then there was a yearly calendar of religious holidays grouped into spring and fall. These taught the lesson of what would take place in the development of God’s plan of salvation through world history. The spring festivals taught lessons on the First Coming of Christ while the ones in the fall were designed to teach us about things near to the Second Coming of Jesus, the end of this world and the beginning of God’s new earth, a reestablished Garden of Eden for all His friends.
When an individual committed a sin and needed to go to the Temple and sacrifice, there was a specific process as to how it was done. First, the person in question confessed the sin over the lamb and killed it. Now the animal had symbolically taken the sin away. This was like the buying of the TV with the cheque. However, the process was not done at this point! The priest then took the blood of the lamb into the first main room of the Sanctuary, called the ‘Holy Place’. The sin was there symbolically for the rest of the year and day by day more and more sins symbolically ‘built up’, shall we say. Then once a year on the “Day of Atonement” the High Priest went into the inner chamber of the Sanctuary, called the ‘Most Holy place’. This was a special ritual in which one single, complete atonement was made for all the sins that the people had committed that year. The Sanctuary was now cleansed, or ‘refreshed’. The cheque had cleared the bank that day. While this was happening inside the temple the people were required to afflict their souls. It was a day for careful searching of heart to make sure everything was indeed right between each individual and the Lord. God promised He would forgive their sins and by accepting the special sacrifice of the High Priest, He made good on His promise.
According to Hebrews 8:1, 2 the earthly Sanctuary was only a copy of the original in Heaven. “Now this is the main point of the things we are saying: We have such a High Priest, who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens, a Minister of the sanctuary and of the true tabernacle which the Lord erected, and not man.” To get even more information as to what this is we go to Daniel 7. Verses 9 and 10 say “I watched till thrones were put in place, And the Ancient of Days was seated; His garment was white as snow, And the hair of His head was like pure wool. His throne was a fiery flame, Its wheels a burning fire; A fiery stream issued And came forth from before Him. A thousand thousands ministered to Him; Ten thousand times ten thousand stood before Him. The court was seated, And the books were opened.”
So the Sanctuary in Heaven is the throne room itself where God the Father appears here with 100 million angels. This room is vastly beyond anything humans can imagine (as another Bible /science fiction parallel, an attempt to imagine it is essentially what the Senate is in Star Wars). This cleansing time is a time of judgement. Verses 13 and 14 continue with “I was watching in the night visions, And behold, One like the Son of Man, Coming with the clouds of heaven! He came to the Ancient of Days, And they brought Him near before Him. Then to Him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, That all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, Which shall not pass away, And His kingdom the one Which shall not be destroyed.”
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Secret key two then is the fact that Jesus did exist before being born here on earth. The theology of most Christian Churches emphasizes His time here and that He went off to heaven after rising from the dead. Though they will speak of the over three hundred prophecies in the Old Testament that foretell Christ’s coming, they don’t always have a clear handle on the fact that he is mentioned in the Old Testament as being present. He simply hasn’t used the name “Jesus Christ” yet.
Most people today have seen Cecil B. DeMille’s “The Ten Commandments”, starring Charlton Heston. It’s on TV practically every Easter. If you’ve seen the film or any other Bible movie on Moses, you’ll be familiar with the story of how God appeared to Moses and spoke to him out of a burning bush. Yet look very carefully at the actual reference from Exodus 3:2-6.
And the Angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire from the midst of a bush. So he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, but the bush was not consumed. Then Moses said, “I will now turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush does not burn.” So when the LORD saw that he turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” Then He said, “Do not draw near this place. Take your sandals off your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground.” Moreover He said, “I am the God of your father—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God.
Notice it was an “Angel” who talked with Moses, yet He is clearly God. This is why of all the modern English Bibles I could have quoted form in this blog, I chose the New King James Version. Wherever in the Old Testament of the NKJV Bible you see “Angel”, that’s Christ. There are 59 such references with another 2 that use the ‘angel’ asnd then in the margin have ‘Angel’.
This maybe a hard concept to grasp as it’s so easy to conjure up old pictures of angels being winged human–like creatures who may have great power and strength, but are clearly not God. The misunderstanding comes from the word itself. It simply means “messenger” According to Isaiah 59:1, 2, we are cut off from God the Father by sin. Therefore God the Son comes as His messenger, or Angel.
Similarly in Joshua 5:15 He is “Commander of the Lord’s Host”. We see the same message given to Joshua here to remove his footwear. Therefore it’s the same being giving the message as the One who appeared to Moses. He is Holy and therefore no ordinary angel. “Then the Commander of the LORD’s army said to Joshua, “Take your sandal off your foot, for the place where you stand is holy.” And Joshua did so.”
Here are a few extra texts to look up if you feel so inclined. In Judges 13:20-22 Samson’s parents offered a sacrifice and the Angel accepted this worship. Ordinary angels don’t do this, see Revelation 19:10. Genesis 19:24 is from the story Sodom and Gomorrah. Read the whole story and you will see three beings from heaven who appear to Abraham. Two of whom are angels, one of whom is God. Here we have two references to “the Lord”. One “Lord” is on earth calling the judgements down and the other “Lord” is in Heaven raining down those judgements. Jesus must be one while God the Father is the other.
Daniel 10:13 calls Michael “one of the chief princes”. A prince is a royal term. The Hebrew word in verse 13 for ‘chief princes’ actually refers to the Trinity. So Michael is one of the Trinity! Verse 21 calls Him “your prince”. Our Lord and Saviour has over three hundred names in the scriptures. Some are titles, others are descriptions. None of them take away from His divinity. This includes the title of ‘Michael’.
I’ll have a little more to say on this in the chapter “John 3:16 in-depth”. For now the important thing is the effect this truth can have one your understanding of who Jesus is. He is not a mortal man who was deified by later generations of believers. That would make the gospels useless. Indeed the whole Bible would be pointless. No, Jesus is God. And God became a man in the early first century, AD to die on the cross for our sins. That one wonderful weekend was the end all and be all of the plan of salvation in one sense; and yet in another it wasn’t. Jesus has working through every generation of human history from the very first day Adam and Eve sinned and the world needed a Saviour. He has also been working since His time on earth to bring world history to where it is today. Soon we will be ready for the next great change to come. That change will be His return in the clouds to rescue His people.
Most people today have seen Cecil B. DeMille’s “The Ten Commandments”, starring Charlton Heston. It’s on TV practically every Easter. If you’ve seen the film or any other Bible movie on Moses, you’ll be familiar with the story of how God appeared to Moses and spoke to him out of a burning bush. Yet look very carefully at the actual reference from Exodus 3:2-6.
And the Angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire from the midst of a bush. So he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, but the bush was not consumed. Then Moses said, “I will now turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush does not burn.” So when the LORD saw that he turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” Then He said, “Do not draw near this place. Take your sandals off your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground.” Moreover He said, “I am the God of your father—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God.
Notice it was an “Angel” who talked with Moses, yet He is clearly God. This is why of all the modern English Bibles I could have quoted form in this blog, I chose the New King James Version. Wherever in the Old Testament of the NKJV Bible you see “Angel”, that’s Christ. There are 59 such references with another 2 that use the ‘angel’ asnd then in the margin have ‘Angel’.
This maybe a hard concept to grasp as it’s so easy to conjure up old pictures of angels being winged human–like creatures who may have great power and strength, but are clearly not God. The misunderstanding comes from the word itself. It simply means “messenger” According to Isaiah 59:1, 2, we are cut off from God the Father by sin. Therefore God the Son comes as His messenger, or Angel.
Similarly in Joshua 5:15 He is “Commander of the Lord’s Host”. We see the same message given to Joshua here to remove his footwear. Therefore it’s the same being giving the message as the One who appeared to Moses. He is Holy and therefore no ordinary angel. “Then the Commander of the LORD’s army said to Joshua, “Take your sandal off your foot, for the place where you stand is holy.” And Joshua did so.”
Here are a few extra texts to look up if you feel so inclined. In Judges 13:20-22 Samson’s parents offered a sacrifice and the Angel accepted this worship. Ordinary angels don’t do this, see Revelation 19:10. Genesis 19:24 is from the story Sodom and Gomorrah. Read the whole story and you will see three beings from heaven who appear to Abraham. Two of whom are angels, one of whom is God. Here we have two references to “the Lord”. One “Lord” is on earth calling the judgements down and the other “Lord” is in Heaven raining down those judgements. Jesus must be one while God the Father is the other.
Daniel 10:13 calls Michael “one of the chief princes”. A prince is a royal term. The Hebrew word in verse 13 for ‘chief princes’ actually refers to the Trinity. So Michael is one of the Trinity! Verse 21 calls Him “your prince”. Our Lord and Saviour has over three hundred names in the scriptures. Some are titles, others are descriptions. None of them take away from His divinity. This includes the title of ‘Michael’.
I’ll have a little more to say on this in the chapter “John 3:16 in-depth”. For now the important thing is the effect this truth can have one your understanding of who Jesus is. He is not a mortal man who was deified by later generations of believers. That would make the gospels useless. Indeed the whole Bible would be pointless. No, Jesus is God. And God became a man in the early first century, AD to die on the cross for our sins. That one wonderful weekend was the end all and be all of the plan of salvation in one sense; and yet in another it wasn’t. Jesus has working through every generation of human history from the very first day Adam and Eve sinned and the world needed a Saviour. He has also been working since His time on earth to bring world history to where it is today. Soon we will be ready for the next great change to come. That change will be His return in the clouds to rescue His people.
Friday, February 5, 2010
If you’ve never heard of this concept before of the resurrection, it can be a little startling. We don’t become ghosts when we die means there’s very few people in heaven right now. So far it’s only Enoch, Moses, Elijah and a small handful of others who rose with Jesus the day He did. Enoch and Elijah were taken to heaven without having to die and Moses was resurrected. Jude 9 speaks of it and of course Moses and Elijah were both with Jesus when He was transfigured. The others were given a special resurrection early to illustrate what Jesus will do for His people when He returns again. Matthew 27:52, 53 speak of them.
The resurrection can be illustrated by a scene from the 1998 movie version of “Lost in Space” starring Matt LeBlanc of TV’s “Friends”. In this one particular scene the family is being attacked by spider-like alien creatures. They barely get back to their own ship alive leaving the robot to continue fending these creatures off. Then when the robot is overwhelmed Will, the youngest boy, steps into a special holographic chamber and takes direct control of the robot because he can fight the aliens better than the robot can. After a certain point though, things are still going badly. So before the ‘spiders’ destroy the robot, the boy downloads all the robot’s software onto a disc and later builds a new robot. He then inserts the disc and reloads everything the old robot once had.
You and I are in a battle here on earth with an alien force out to destroy us. That force is Satan and his angels. They are doing everything they can to lead us into temptation and get us to cut ourselves off from God. They are constantly on the attack and they never give up. What Jesus did in living a perfect life was to defeat satin by being tempted the same way we are and never giving in. Now that He is in heaven, if we will surrender ourselves to Him, it’s like Jesus lives out that life in us again. We are not robots in that we have free choice. However, we have inherited weaknesses and tendencies toward sin. It is easier for us to give in than to stand firm. Only through God’s power in our lives can we have hope.
There comes a time though when every one of us will die. What Jesus does then is ‘downloads our minds’ essentially. On the day Jesus returns again He will use the same power He did when He originally created this world to recreate new bodies for his friends. Then He will ‘reload their minds’ into those bodies. Again however, this is only for those who have surrendered to Him and are His faithful followers. There’s two resurrections, one to take His friends to heaven and one to rid the universe of those who hate truth and goodness. They’re brought back to life only for a short time to show them all how much God did try to save them.
This explains why there is so much multi-level prophecy in the Bible. From any one person’s point of view, they face death, go into their graves, and come up on the other side not knowing anything about the time that passed in between. Remember to them it’s like being asleep. So in any one generation when God spoke through a prophet and gave a promise of reward to the faithful or punishment to the unfaithful, though they were going to receive whichever reward at the end of history; from their point of view that end would be as soon as they died. The prophecies were worded in such a way as to appeal to the needs of the immediate generation receiving them and also appeal to the later generations who would be influenced in their respective times by the current generation’s actions as world history rolled on.
The resurrection can be illustrated by a scene from the 1998 movie version of “Lost in Space” starring Matt LeBlanc of TV’s “Friends”. In this one particular scene the family is being attacked by spider-like alien creatures. They barely get back to their own ship alive leaving the robot to continue fending these creatures off. Then when the robot is overwhelmed Will, the youngest boy, steps into a special holographic chamber and takes direct control of the robot because he can fight the aliens better than the robot can. After a certain point though, things are still going badly. So before the ‘spiders’ destroy the robot, the boy downloads all the robot’s software onto a disc and later builds a new robot. He then inserts the disc and reloads everything the old robot once had.
You and I are in a battle here on earth with an alien force out to destroy us. That force is Satan and his angels. They are doing everything they can to lead us into temptation and get us to cut ourselves off from God. They are constantly on the attack and they never give up. What Jesus did in living a perfect life was to defeat satin by being tempted the same way we are and never giving in. Now that He is in heaven, if we will surrender ourselves to Him, it’s like Jesus lives out that life in us again. We are not robots in that we have free choice. However, we have inherited weaknesses and tendencies toward sin. It is easier for us to give in than to stand firm. Only through God’s power in our lives can we have hope.
There comes a time though when every one of us will die. What Jesus does then is ‘downloads our minds’ essentially. On the day Jesus returns again He will use the same power He did when He originally created this world to recreate new bodies for his friends. Then He will ‘reload their minds’ into those bodies. Again however, this is only for those who have surrendered to Him and are His faithful followers. There’s two resurrections, one to take His friends to heaven and one to rid the universe of those who hate truth and goodness. They’re brought back to life only for a short time to show them all how much God did try to save them.
This explains why there is so much multi-level prophecy in the Bible. From any one person’s point of view, they face death, go into their graves, and come up on the other side not knowing anything about the time that passed in between. Remember to them it’s like being asleep. So in any one generation when God spoke through a prophet and gave a promise of reward to the faithful or punishment to the unfaithful, though they were going to receive whichever reward at the end of history; from their point of view that end would be as soon as they died. The prophecies were worded in such a way as to appeal to the needs of the immediate generation receiving them and also appeal to the later generations who would be influenced in their respective times by the current generation’s actions as world history rolled on.
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