Monthly Archives: July 2010
Understanding Seeds in the Bible! Except a Seed Fall into the Ground and Die! Part 4
(Ver 2.2) This is now Part 4 of a series of lessons on seeds. Seeds are a vast complex subject found in the Bible. God uses natural seed concepts and applies them to spiritual things in repeated references found in the Bible. Today I will show you some more of the references that Jesus used to describe why He was here and how that He was both a physical and a spiritual “seed”. In the last lesson we reviewed the parable of the Sower and examined the symbolic elements to gain an understanding of what Jesus called the most important “parable”. In learning the concepts of this parable we can transfer much of that knowledge to other parables that Jesus taught us. If you have not been reading this series from the beginning, I would suggest that you stop and go back and start reading with “Part 1”. I have been going through the Bible showing you several different things that God calls seeds. Here is the original list again:
- Natural Grass Seeds
- Natural Fruit Seeds
- The Seed of a Man, His Sperm
- The Seed of a Woman, Her Children
- The Seed of a Man and a Woman, their offspring
- The Word of God
- The Seed of your Mouth, Your Words
- The Body of Jesus Christ
- The Church
- Your Body
These are of course not every type of seed mentioned in the Bible, only some of the ones that I wanted to show you. We have gone through and reviewed some verses about natural seeds in Genesis and learned some applicable laws that apply to every type of seed. The first law was that a seed always produces after its own kind. The second law of seeds is that the seed is always within itself. Both of these concepts transfer to many other types of seeds revealed to us in the Bible and you should understand them. If you recall I showed that every future generation or descendant of a man, is said to be in the man. God shows us that whatever the father did, is what their descendants did.
Today I want to show you another parable that Jesus taught us about seeds. After reading this you should become aware of why it is so important to know and to understand this subject. Let’s begin by reading in Matthew 13:31:
Mat 13:31 Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field:
Again, Jesus refers to the Kingdom of Heaven as being like a man who planted a seed. However, this lesson while very similar is very different than the previous lesson of the Parable of the Sower. Both are about a man, both are about seeds and both involve planting seed in the ground to grow something. But, this time the seed is said to be singular. This is a new perspective on an old subject about a new type of seed or a new concept about the nature of seeds. In the Parable of the Sower the seed represented the Word of God (Luke 8:11). However, in this parable the seed is something completely different while being completely the same thing at the same time. Hopefully you will understand why I said that as we continue to learn. Jesus said the Kingdom of God is like a man that plants “One” seed and it grows into a massive tree in a field. Jesus is referring to a specific seed and qualifies it to be a “mustard” seed. Any time you qualify a noun you limit the scope of the noun and narrow the meaning. In other words, you exclude every other seed, for the type described. What we can see is that Jesus was teaching that NOT just any seed will work; it has to be a mustard seed. The mustard seed is not widely used in the Bible, but perhaps we will look at some more references to it later. What we learn is a symbolic meaning that not just any type of seed will work for what God wants to accomplish. God selected a specific seed to accomplish His plan and we will soon discover that Jesus was this seed:
Mat 13:32 Which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof.
Jesus calls this type of seed to be the least among all seeds. Jesus could be referring to the physical size of the seed, but yet I believe that is not what He is saying. We know today that there are many seeds that are smaller seeds than a mustard seed in the world. So Jesus must be referring to something else, a symbolic characteristic and not a physical attribute of the seed. What we should learn from this verse is that most great things have very humble beginnings. It is the classic analogy of the fact that the greatest oak trees come from little acorns. I know of practically nothing that starts big and just stays big. We are being presented a new perspective of the seed concept that all great things usually start as very small things. This goes against human nature, doesn’t it? Everyone wants to hit the lottery and win millions of dollars and then think that will solve all of their problems. However, God is teaching us a different lesson using seeds. This is part of the message that Jesus is attempting to get over to us. This is some of the key reasons of why the natural nation of Israel missed the first coming of their Messiah. Jesus did not come how they expected him to come, nor did He do what they desired Him to do. They were looking for a great and powerful savior and not a humble man that would not even save Himself. The disciples would ask Jesus “are you going to restore the kingdom of Israel now” (Acts 1:6). Israel was looking for the grand restoration and not for a small beginning. This is a classic example of the misunderstanding of the importance of how seeds work. Israel did not recognize the Seed of God as He walked among them. Jesus came to the earth as just a small, insignificant humble man. Jesus was God almighty who became like the least of all the men on the planet. Why would God almighty take the time to wash the feet of His disciples? Why did Jesus do this? It all goes back to seeds. God was planting a seed that would grow into a great spiritual Kingdom and not a physical Kingdom. This Kingdom did not come with a natural conquering mighty force, this Kingdom did not have a natural army with natural weapons, and this Kingdom did not come with much pomp and exalting circumstances. In fact this Kingdom cannot be physically seen at all, unless Christians choose to display it to others. Here is why Jesus said that He came to the earth:
Joh 12:24 Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth muchfruit.
Wow! That is a very deep statement about the reality of how seeds work. Who is Jesus talking about? Who is this seed? You should be able to see that Jesus is this seed that He is referring to. Jesus prophesied His death, His burial and the resulting fruit that would spring forth from that planting. Jesus predicts that there will be much fruit that will come from His death. How was Jesus able to do this? It was because Jesus understood the concept of seeds. Plant a little seed and get a great harvest. From little humble beginnings can grow great and mighty things. This is a key seed principle and law that applies to what God was doing on the earth through Jesus Christ. In John 12:24, Jesus says that a kernel of corn (a seed) will be alone if it does not die. I believe that God is trying to teach us that the Seed of Jesus has been planted to produce more people in the world like Jesus. This is just a basic typology of how the seed produces more of itself in the earth. Just ONE little seed planted can produce a huge harvest over time. Let me show you some prophetic verses in the O.T. concerning Jesus:
Jer 23:5 Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth.
You can read the Bible without studying and totally miss what is said. In this verse if you do not look up the definition of the key words you will breeze right over what God is trying to teach you about. The Key word that I want to look at is “Branch”. It is qualified to be a righteous Branch so we know this is Jesus. The Hebrew word “Branch” in this verse is a word that mean “sprouts”, “springs up”, “buds”. These are all “SEED” concept words. You plant a righteous seed and you get a righteous harvest. That is what God is attempting to get you to see. The coming Messiah was a SEED man! Let me show you another verse of prophecy about this seed of God:
Eze 34:29 And I will raise up for them a plant of renown, and they shall be no more consumed with hunger in the land, neither bear the shame of the heathen any more.
Here is another verse about the coming Messiah and Israel missed it. God is saying I will “raise up” a “PLANT” of character. This word for “Plant” in the Hebrew means something that is planted in a garden. Sure sounds like a seed to me, how about you? I just wanted to show you some O.T. examples of this coming seed so that you would not think that I just make this stuff up. It is really amazing what the Bible says when you can see it.
What have we learned? We learned that God planted a seed and this was a lowly humble man called Jesus Christ. But, through this humble beginning we see the growth that has transpired over the course of 2000 years. The church of Jesus Christ is now greater in strength and numbers than at any time in the past 2000 years. I am a firm believer that Jesus is expecting a triumphant church, a great church that has made herself ready. God planted the original seed and it has grown over the course of time and developed further into this great prophesied tree that the birds of the air can now build nests within.
So maybe I should explain a little better the difference between the Parable of the Sower and the Parable of the Mustard Seed. You see in the parable of the sower, the seed is the Word of God. The Word of God is being spread by the teaching and preaching of Jesus Christ throughout the Gospels. But, if you have studied the Bible you also know that Jesus Christ is the Word of God!. According to John 1:1, “in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God”. By simple laws of mathematics we can substitute “Seed” for “Word” in this verse and see that it now says this:
Joh 1:1 In the beginning was the Seed, and the Seed was with God, and the Seed was God.
From the laws of mathematics we can apply the truth that if A=B, then B=A and “Word” = “Seed” and see a new simple truth, that God is the Seed and that God had the Seed within Himself. Then we can learn from reading down in the chapter the following:
Joh 1:14 And the Seed (Word) was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
God’s Seed takes on flesh and lives and walked among us. We can now better understand how Jesus can call himself the Seed. We can also better understand how God can plant this Seed Jesus and expect a spiritual harvest. Jesus was a spiritual seed of God and God now expects a harvest of more spiritual fruit. God believes that you can plant a seed and get a harvest. The ending of a matter is always greater than its beginning. I think where people get confused is in the fact that Jesus is multiple seeds simultaneously and this certainly makes our life more complicated in understanding the differences. Let me give you a list of the types of Seed Jesus is Associated with in the Bible:
- Word of God (Parable of Sower)
- Spiritual Seed of God (Mustard Seed)
- Natural Seed of God (Son of God)
- Natural Seed of Mary (Son of Man)
- Natural Seed of David (Son of David)
- Natural Seed of Abraham (Son of Abraham)
- Natural Seed of Adam (Son of Man)
This is probably not a complete list, but it is all that I can come up with right now. If I locate other reference I will update this list. I will end this blog here and hope that you have learned some new things from the Bible. God Bless!
If you would like to continue reading in this series, you can go to “Part 5“.
Understanding Seeds in the Bible! The Parable of the Sower! Part 3
(Ver 1.4) 
This is a very advanced set of Bible lessons about the concepts, laws and information found in the Bible about “seeds”. As we study this subject we discover how these principles apply both to the natural realm as well as the spiritual realm. This is now Part 3 of the series and if you have not read from the beginning, I would suggest that you go and start your reading with “Part 1”. We have already covered a lot of information found in the Bible, some of which you may have heard before, but certainly a lot that is new to you. Studying the Bible on any subject is very difficult. Because God has chosen to hide information, and finding every reference to a subject is very challenging. To study the subject of “Seeds” we really need to search the Bible for every verse with that word in it and determine what it is saying. Since there is more than one thing in the Bible called by the name “seed” we must learn what each one is and determine if they are related to any other. But, that is not all of the verses on the subject. What we must realize is that there are related subjects that go along with it, such as soil, earth, rain, water, light, warmth, planting, sowing, fruit and on and on I could go. Then what about enemies to seeds, such as birds, insects, weeds, drought, rocks, heat, cold, floods and again on and on I could go. There are a vast number of dependent subjects that you should learn to see how they apply to what we learn about “seeds”. I am trying to demonstrate how complicated studying the Bible can be and why so many people do not know what the Bible actually says. In order to study the Bible correctly, you must dig and research the subject as thoroughly as possible. This also involves you doing a significant amount of work to find what God has hidden for you.
Today I am going to continue teaching on “seeds” in the Bible with a new perspective that is certainly very important to know. Jesus taught us many things when He was here physically on the earth. However, He placed an extraordinary emphasis on a certain subject as being a key to understanding all the other subjects found in the Bible. Jesus said that this one concept that He taught was more important to understand than any of the others found in the Bible. This critical subject was based upon “Seeds”. You can find this teaching in three books of the Gospel; in Luke 8, Matthew 13 and Mark 4. Let’s start our lesson by reading Mark 4:26:
Mar 4:26 And he said, So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground;
Apparently the lesson is about the Kingdom of God, so right off of the bat we know it is of great importance. We also understand it is a spiritual Kingdom and not a physical or natural kingdom. At least I hope you understand these types of Bible basics. What does God tell us the Kingdom of God is like? God clearly says it is like a man who plants seeds into the ground. Jesus is teaching using the format of a parable that contains natural things that we can see, to help explain spiritual things that we cannot see. Then consider this, is Jesus a man? Is Jesus THE man that this parable is referring to? I think back and believe that when Jesus was on the earth, He was exactly this man. Since Jesus has returned to heaven, it gets more complicated. Jesus is still the man, but since He is not here physically anymore, He uses people like me who are here on the planet. So while I’m not God, I am a tool used by God. What I want you to see, is that God still uses people today to reach people. Now let’s go back to Mark 4:3 and discover the key Seed lesson that Jesus wants you to see:
Mar 4:3 Hearken; Behold, there went out a sower to sow:
Jesus informs us that a sower went out to sow. When you sow, you are doing what? Of course you are planting seeds in a field or a garden. Sowing involves a spreading of seeds into the ground. So Jesus is discussing a farming lesson. I want to jump down to the explanation of the parable and interject the important stuff that we need to see while we are studying the actual parable about seeds. Here is what Jesus says about this parable being a key to understanding all the others:
Mar 4:13 And he said unto them, Know ye not this parable? and how then will ye know all parables?
It would appear to me that if you can understand this parable, then you are at the crossroads of understanding every parable that Jesus taught. This has some vast implications attached to it, so pay close attention. So here is Jesus’ explanation of what the sower is and what the seed is:
Mar 4:14 The sower soweth the word.
Now Jesus begins to let us in on the secret, the sower is planting words. Not just any words, though these are the Words of God according Luke 8:11. However, we can also understand the concept that any words spoken can become seeds. The problem is that many of these words are lies and half-truths and thus plant wrong things. Only God’s Word is Absolute Truth. What we have discovered is that words are seeds. We can also say seeds are words. We can also see that a sower is anyone that opens his or her mouth and speaks words. How do the Genesis seed laws apply to words? We have clearly learned that seeds always produce after their kind. What is the Word of God a kind of? What kind does the Word of God produce? We have also learned that seeds are always in itself. Now let’s examine some more of the parable:
Mar 4:4 And it came to pass, as he sowed, some fell by the way side, and the fowls of the air came and devoured it up.
What Jesus does is give us some new related topics about the planting of these seed words. However, Jesus starts to shift the focus off of the sower and the seed and they are not technically mentioned after the beginning. Jesus begins to describe the types of soil or ground that are being planted in. Jesus also starts to reveal that the soil, the seed and the sower all have enemies. The fowls of the air come to devour the seed and thus render them harmless, non-productive or ineffective. Since the parable involves symbolic natural representations, we know that the birds of the air represent spiritual beings that we cannot see or perceive with our natural senses. So let’s examine the explanation of Jesus for these new symbolic factors given to us:
Mar 4:15 And these are they by the way side, where the word is sown; but when they have heard, Satan cometh immediately, and taketh away the word that was sown in their hearts.
Jesus informs us that the soil is representative type of the hearts of people. The human heart is not the physical blood pump organ. The human heart in the Bible is their spirits. Jesus also says that Satan is the enemy that is trying to steal the words of God from our hearts. Ephesians 2:2 calls Satan the prince of the power of the air. The earth’s atomosphere is the current domain of Satan. This verse says that Satan comes immediately to steal the seed from us and that would be really bad news, if Satan could just take the word sown at will. However, by reading in Matthew we learn some additional details on this subject.
Mat 13:19 When any one heareth the word of the kingdom, and understandeth it not, then cometh the wicked one, and catcheth away that which was sown in his heart. This is he which received seed by the way side.
This is why it is important to read every occurence of a lesson so that we can learn all of the details. This information in Matthew does not contradict the account written down by Mark, it only helps us to see what God is talking about more clearly. What are the potential outcomes whenever you sit to listen to anyone speak at a lecture or in a class room at school? I beleive that there are potentially three possibilities that can occur and your determination will cause the teacher’s words to either be effective or to be ineffective. You can ignore the teacher, you can hear and listen to the words only, or you can hear the words and get the understanding of them. Hearing anything valuable to know and not understanding any of it does you little to no good. In other words you derive no benefit of knowing the information.
There are a lot of people in the world that know Einstein’s equation of E=MC2, but very few that can actually teach you anything about what it means. So what we discover is that understanding what you hear is the greater key factor to whether the devil can come and take it away from you. That is a very important factor to learn. Understanding of any subject is the key to holding on to that subject. Keep in mind that we are talking about spiritual things here and not natural things. We have spiritual seed which are spiritual words being planted into spiritual beings, which are responsible to hear them and then to understand them or the spiritual enemy, will come and take them from you. Read through the rest of the parable and then I will discuss the symbols given in more detail:
Mar 4:5 And some fell on stony ground, where it had not much earth; and immediately it sprang up, because it had no depth of earth:
Mar 4:6 But when the sun was up, it was scorched; and because it had no root, it withered away.
Mar 4:7 And some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up, and choked it, and it yielded no fruit.
Mar 4:8 And other fell on good ground, and did yield fruit that sprang up and increased; and brought forth, some thirty, and some sixty, and some an hundred.
As you read through the rest of the parable, you discover God’s goal for giving us His seed. God is looking for a people to produce spiritual fruit. The majority of the parable is a lesson of why people either produce this fruit or why they are unable to produce this fruit. If you know anything about farming, you know that the soil is not the master of the seed, but the seed is the master of the soil. Whatever is planted into the soil is that which is harvested. If you are the soil that Jesus is speaking of, then it matters what you allow in your ears. Do you understand why Satan has dominated the TV and radio air waves with lies and perversions? I guess we should stop and examine the soil in more detail. There are actually 6 different types of soil listed in the parable. They are generally representative of 4 different types of people on the planet and the list of soil types does not exclude anyone. If you analyze the list closely you can see that there are actually two groups of 3 that are being mentioned. There are three soils that are representative of saved fruitful Christians and 3 soils that did not receive the seed and let it produce any fruit at all:
| Type of Soil | Description |
| Wayside | These are those that can hear, but that do not understand what is said. Therefore Satan can steal the truth away from them very easily. |
| Stony Ground | These are those that turn away because of affliction or persecution. They lack any depth or foundational root knowledge. They are easily offended. |
| Among Thorns | These are those that care more about the things in the world, the distraction of riches, the natural lusts of the world. |
| Good Soil | These are those that produce fruit. A return of seed is multiplied to produce a bountiful supply. Some 30 times, some 60 times and some 100 times. |
We can learn a significant amount of information about why some people produce fruit and others are unable to. What have we learned? We have learned that God uses people to teach the Word of God and these are those that are sowing “good seed”. However, we have also learned that this good seed has many enemies. These things are designed to keep you from hearing and understanding the truth. Satan is hard at work trying to keep people from bearing spiritual fruit for God. God is looking for the spiritual fruit of the earth and that is one of the key factors that is keeping Him from returning for us today. God sees the harvest field is potentially great on the earth and God wants everyone to come to the knowledge of the truth of God’s Word (2 Peter 3:9). The Bible says God has long patience for this spiritual harvest of fruit (James 5:7). Here are the key symbolic elements listed in the parable and the descriptive meaning of each:
| SYMBOL | DESCRIPTION |
| SEEDS | Spoken Word/Words |
| SOWER | One who teaches with Words |
| Sowing | The process of teaching people |
| SOIL | The hearts/spirits of the people |
| Wayside Ground | Those who are easily deceived, they have no understanding and barely hear it at all |
| Stony Ground | Those that are easily tricked, those that have only a shallow understanding, those that cave to pressure, those who are easily offended |
| Good Ground | Those that hear and understand the Word of God and do not allow it to be stolen from them. |
| Evil Ground | Those that are deceived, lost and asleep in the darkness. |
| Roots | Those who have a strong foundation of the Word of God and are able to drink and partake of the Spirit of God. |
| Birds of the Air | Spiritual enemies that try to take the truth from you. Satan and his demons. |
| Thorns | Natural and Carnal things that take your attention away from the truth. It can be money, sex, drugs, alcohol, food, fame |
| Unfruitful | Those that are spiritually barren, unable to produce spiritual fruit, those who are nigh to burning |
| Fruitful | Spiritual Growth and Maturity, those who are doers of the Word of God and NOT hearers only. |
| Fruit | Spiritual results of those which God is seeking to find and harvest into His barn |
As you can see there are many valuable things to learn from this parable. Seeds play a key role in the spread of the Kingdom of God. Seed laws play a key role in understanding this teaching. God’s word will always produce more people like God. Those that let God’s word in, will grow and mature to be more like the one that gave us these SEED Words. It is the spiritual seed law of Genesis repeated in the spiritual diemension. A seed will always produce after its own kind. The planting of God’s spiritual seed will always produce a spiritual harvest. I think I will end this lesson here for now and expand it in my next lesson.
If you would like to continue reading this series, you can continue by going to “Part 4“.
O Lord, Guard The Door of My Mouth!
(Ver 1.3) This is now “Part 8” in a series of lessons about spoken words. If you have not read this series from the beginning I would suggest that you go and start with “Part 1“. Did you ever realize that your mouth was an opening to your spirit? You are a spirit being that lives in a physical body. Your physical body has doors and windows that allow your spirit to express itself and to learn new things. Your ears are a window to sounds, words and things to hear from God with. Your eyes are also windows for light, to observe and see things that are around you. These are one way gates into your spirit. But, your mouth is a two way gate that breaths air in and exhales air out. Your mouth also takes in natural food and drink for the nourishment of your physical body. But, the most important thing that your mouth does is speak words that originate from your spirit. Your mouth is the only exit for spiritual expression that you have. Your spoken words are the keys to everything that you do in this world. I will go a step further and tell you that your spoken words are the keys to everything that happens to you in this world. For example, your spoken words will become the key to your salvation or your damnation to hell. You may not understand that statement but it is based upon scripture and how God designed the process to work. Let’s start the Bible study by confirming that your words are the spiritual expression made manifest in this world:
Mat 15:18 But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man.
As you can clearly see from what Jesus teaches us, the words of your mouth are an extension of your spirit. Whenever the Bible talks about your heart, it is usually a figurative meaning referring to your internal spirit. The spirit of your being is the innermost real you that will live forever and I hope you understand this. The heart of a man is similar to the heart of a tree or the heart of an apple. The term is used to describe the center inner core of the object and that is the unseen spirit of the human in God’s triune design. Let’s look at another important verse that Jesus speaks on this subject of words originating from the human spirit:
Joh 6:63 It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.
Jesus again tells us where words come from. The Spirit of God that was inside of Jesus’ body produced the words that gave us life. Jesus clearly tells us that it is the spirit that causes the flesh to live. He then says that His words are this Spirit! What we learn from what Jesus was teaching is that every person has a spirit and this unseen spirit is expressed in the spoken words coming from out mouth in our world. The only difference between our words and God’s Words, are His words are based upon infinite knowledge, understanding and wisdom and ours are too often just baseless ramblings built upon our own extraordinary ignorance. Let’s continue researching the connection between the spirit and the mouth, because God says in the mouth of 2 or 3 witnesses let every word be established (Mat 18:16):
2Th 2:8 And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the SPIRIT OF HIS MOUTH, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming:
In this verse in 2 Thessalonians, God says that Jesus will do something with the Spirit of His Mouth that will consume the wicked. What do you think this is? Do you think that Jesus will breath fire like a dragon or are you smart enough to know that God just has to say a couple of words and whatever He says happens. What we learn from this verse is further conformations of spoken words being directly connected to spirits. Spoken word are not really just a connection to the spirit but more the displayed expression of the spirit. Technically speaking spoken words and spirits are one in the same in the eyes of God. God’s words are God and God is His Word (John 1:1).
Mat 12:34 O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.
As you can read again, Jesus connects the heart/spirit of man to the spoken words of a man. Jesus speaking to the Jews, says how can you speak anything good? You have to have good in your spirit before you speak anything good from your lips. Jesus is implying that we can speak something good, but first we have to deposit something good in us in abundance. These are verses that demonstrate to us that man was made in the image and likeness of God. Jesus clearly links us to be like God in this capacity. Our words are linked to our spirit, just as His words were linked to His Spirit.
I have been doing a series of lessons on the spoken words coming from your mouth. We have learned from God’s word that we can curse people with our words and we can bless people with our words. We can speak good things and we can speak evil things. We can proclaim the truth and we can speak lies. The mouth is a weapon of incredible potential that we can do great good with or create great harm to ourselves and others. The same mouth has the potential to achieve great good in the world as well as great deception. That is why the Bible writes us a verse of prayer that asks God to place a guard at the door of our mouths. If you go to Europe and other places where they have palaces, the occupants are many times protected from the evil of others on the outside by placing guards at the gates of entrance or exit. This is not what the Bible is saying but the concepts are still applicable. Let’s start by reading the verse that reveals our mouth to be a door in need of a guard:
Psa 141:3 Set a watch, O LORD, before my mouth; keep the door of my lips.
A watch is someone who stays up to guard an entrance of a city. In Bible days a city would have great walls around it and they would place men on top of the walls during the day and night to watch for danger. Their job was to stay awake during those specific hours and to keep vigilant watch for any approaching danger. When danger was observed, the watchman would sound an alarm to wake the city to counter the impending danger. While you might try to apply this to the verse in Psalms, it really doesn’t make a lot of sense in that regard. You might need to watch what you eat occasionally, but God is speaking more about spiritual things that you need to keep a watch on than any natural things that are trying to enter in your body. Let’s get one more witness to the fact that our mouth is a gate before we continue:
Mic 7:5 Trust ye not in a friend, put ye not confidence in a guide: keep the doors of thy mouth from her that lieth in thy bosom.
What we have is another verse found in the Bible that says your mouth is a gate. A gate is a door or entrance to a realm that you either want to keep people out of, or keep things within. You never design a building without doors, otherwise you can’t go in and you can’t get out. So what is God trying to keep from exiting your mouth by placing His guard upon it? Why would it be bad for you if something came out that shouldn’t come out? That is an amazing question to ponder! If your wrong spoken words had no consequences attached to them, it really would not matter if we had a guard, would it? However, God is implying that your words have great consequences positive or negatively upon your life and that is a potentially bad thing for you if you do not understand the concepts being revealed by God.
Pro 6:2 Thou art snared with the words of thy mouth, thou art taken with the words of thy mouth.
When you learn to see what the Bible says, you become infinitely more aware of what you say. According to God, the words of your mouth can cause you to become a captive of your enemy. A snare is a trap. A trap is a deceptive device that renders you a captive. As you can clearly read in this verse, God says that you are “taken” (caught in a pit) by the words of your mouth. These have to be wrong negative spoken words or that would mean that any words spoken could be a pitfall for us. That statement would also indicate by the law of antithesis that you can be “freed” by the right words of your mouth. The things the Bible says about your words are some of the strongest warnings that God gives us in the Bible. It is so obvious to me that many people do not heed the warning of God and speak some crazy things. People let words come out of their mouths that I’m sure must cause God to cringe with disappointment.
Pro 18:21 Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.
God declares that your tongue has power. If you refuse to see this or to ignore it, does it cause it not to be true? If you do not believe in gravity, would that affect the law of gravity if you wanted to jump off a tall building? Of course it does not, you are still going die. Your wrong belief never overrides the truth. The same is true of ignorance, your ignoarce of the law does not affect your punishment for the violation of that law. So when God says that Death or Life is in the power of the tongue, does that make it not true, if you do not believe it? Again it does not! What God is revealing to us is that we have been given choices to make. What we achieve in life or that which happens to us in this life is determined by the choices that we made and words that we have spoken. Obviously many people do not believe this and they can’t figure out why things have happened in their life. Some think it is just bad karma, bad luck, or possibly just amazing coincidences or accidents that occur in their lives. Maybe you can discover a Bible verse that says that, but so far I have not found any.
So if God wants you to pray and ask Him to put a guard on your mouth, what is He trying to keep you from saying? It could be just simply that you should say only good things to people, good things about people and not to speak negatively about others and that is certainly applicable. However, God seems to indicate from the verses that we have studied today that there is much more to it than that in the Bible. If you can be taken captive or a prisoner just by your wrong spoken words or even die because of your words of death, would it be important not to speak those words that cause those negative results? I believe that it is entirely meaningful given the verses that we have just studied. So a watch on the gate of your mouth is not a physical guard to keep things out. I believe it is a spiritual guard that keeps you from harming yourself and others that you live with speaking words with negative consequences. What about your children, for example. If your words can affect you they can also affect your family and those that you are responsible for. Only you can allow God to place a guard on your mouth. God will not violate your rights or your will. God will also not force you into saying anything correctly. As you learn to cooperate with God, you will learn more about how the words of your mouth have great significance and are very important to keep under control. You should go and review the book of James and see what God says about the tongue and how important it is to manage.
If you would like to continue reading this series of lessons on spoken words, you can go to “Part 9“.
Understanding Seeds in the Bible! Plant a Seed, Get a Harvest! Part 2
(ver 1.5) This is now Part 2 in a series of lessons on the subject of understanding seeds in the Bible. The Bible contains a vast amount of information on the concept of seeds. There are actually several things in the Bible called seeds and I listed a few of them in the first blog on this subject. If you have not read this from the beginning I would suggest that you go back and start reading with “Part 1”. In the first lesson I talked about the first mention of “seed” in the Bible being found in Genesis 1:11-12. What God gives us by the law of first mention are some general concepts that are relevant to the entire subject of seeds. One of the concepts given was the fact that the “seed” is said to be “within itself”. This is a concept with complex implications attached to it. What we discover is that an apple tree produces apples that contain seeds. These apple seeds produce other trees to come into existence which produce more apples and more seeds. This represents a self-perpetuating system of apple reproduction. No matter how many apples come from the seeds produced, they all originated from the one. There is an old saying that goes “Only God knows how many apples are in an apple seed”. I want to take this concept and expand it to show what the Bible says about how this relates to people and other concepts found in the Bible. As you recall in the first lesson we also talked about children being seeds. We saw Seth being called the seed of Eve.
Now let’s talk about the natural human seed of a man. This is commonly referred to as sperm or semen in our world, but in the Bible God also calls it “seed”. Why does God use the same word to describe something that we have other words to describe? Either God didn’t understand any other words to use for this, or God is trying to teach us something new. That is a common mistake that modern Bible translators and interpreters make constantly. They take a word like “seed” and change it to “descendant” or a “child” and think they are helping us to understand what God said. What they do is lose God’s intended lesson on what a seed is and therefore we do not learn what God wanted to teach us. What we must do is be smart enough to realize that God could have selected any word to describe a subject and if He selects “seed” to describe the semen of natural man, then it has a purpose. Could it be that the seed concept of planting and harvesting is a truth that occurs when a husband and wife have physical sex? I think that we should see what God says:
Lev 12:2 Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, If a woman have conceived seed, and born a man child: then she shall be unclean seven days; according to the days of the separation for her infirmity shall she be unclean.
The Hebrew word translated as “conceive seed” means “to sow” seed. To sow seed is a farming and agriculture type of term and represents a metaphor for a concept that God says is related. I doubt very seriously that many couples think of sex in these terms. It could be that a few do, if they are trying to get pregnant and to have children.
Lev 15:16 And if any man’s seed of copulation go out from him, then he shall wash all his flesh in water, and be unclean until the even.
It is sometimes difficult to discuss every subject found in the Bible. It seems that God did not leave out anything. I assume since this is the way He created it, then we can assume that it has a purpose for existing. In this verse in Leviticus we again see the sperm of the man being called his “seed”. The term “copulation” means simply a sexual act like intercourse. I have heard narrow minded preachers teach that since a man has seed, a woman cannot. However, in the first lesson we saw that Eve called Seth her seed. So we must conclude that there are different types of seed, and different definitions for seed. This is truly one of the most complex factors of correct Bible interpretation that we are faced with. We can learn one definition of “seed” and then must realize that there exists other definitions of the same word and they may or may not be related to each other. So we have learned that the definition of a word can change based upon the usage and the context of the word.
We have now touched on the first five examples of the term “Seed” found in the Bible. We have seen physical and natural plant seeds in Genesis. We have seen the sperm of the man being called seed in Leviticus. We have seen the children of natural parents being referred to as “Seeds” in Genesis and Ruth. We have also seen that the offspring of other species of animals are also called “Seeds” in Genesis. We have learned that every seed reproduces after its own kind from Genesis 1. So dogs only produce dogs. Orange seeds only produce orange trees. Now I want to start discussing one of the most important concepts of seeds given to us in the Bible. This concept is a spiritual law that God has revealed to us using these natural examples. We have gone through the 5 natural examples, although not in a complete teaching but more in an overview high level pass of the subject, so that we can now focus on some spiritual applications.
We have learned that God calls the sperm of a man, his seed. We have also learned that Adam “knew” his wife Eve and she had a seed named “Seth”. What we see is a pattern of creation that God has designed to teach us. Adam and Eve were the first two humans in the world that we live in. They originated every other human being on the planet. So from 2 people we now have almost 7 billion people on the planet. That is what God calls being fruitful and multiplying. But, I want to demonstrate a seed law to you from the Bible. According to God, whatever happens to your parents is what happened to you. You probably do not understand what I am talking about right now, but you will soon.
1Co 15:22 For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.
It truly amazes me how smart God is. You can see many things in the Bible and then you can read right over them and not even know what they mean or how they apply to other stuff that you just read. Did you notice that God says that YOU and I were “IN” Adam? I don’t know about you, but my father was not named Adam, but yet God says I was “IN” Adam. As you recall from Genesis 2, God told Adam do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for in the day that you do, you will surely die. Adam ignored God’s command and ate and we all die because of what he did. Is that fair? I do not know, but yet it is what God says happened.
What we see is a demonstrated application of the seed law of Genesis, that the “Seed is in itself”. In other words Adam was walking around in the garden with the “seed” in his body that was everyone else in the world. Did you understand what I just said? God says that when Adam sinned, not only did he die, but he caused everyone that came from him to also die. That is an awesome revelation of the Word of God, for you see it also tells you how we will live in return. This verse ends with the statement “Even So in CHRIST shall all be made alive”. So by the law of the “Seed Concept” from Genesis 1, if you are in Christ, you have been made alive. We’ll talk about this more and how this works in a later lesson, but for now let’s confirm what I just taught you.
Heb 7:9 And as I may so say, Levi also, who receiveth tithes, payed tithes in Abraham.
When I read this verse and studied it for the first time, it truly amazed me. God clearly shows us another conceptual application of the law “the Seed Being in Itself” in this verse. So did you read the verse and did you see what God said? God clearly states that Levi was “IN” Abraham. So let’s figure out what God is talking about. Who is Levi? Levi was one of the 12 sons of Jacob and the head of the tribes of Israel. That would make “Levi” a great-grandchild of Abraham. We have Abraham who begat Isaac, then we have Isaac who begat Jacob and finally we have Jacob who begat “Levi” and his 11 other brothers. What we see is a clear concept of family lineage being established. Your ancestry represents a research into your past relatives that you descended from. While not everyone on the earth can trace their natural ancestry to “Levi” or “Abraham, we can all trace our ancestry back to Adam. What we are learning is some seed concepts describing our human family tree.
Heb 7:10 For he was yet in the loins of his father, when Melchisedec met him.
Now we have still further revelation of the seed mystery, Abraham is said to be the father of Levi, but yet Levi doesn’t come along for another couple of generations. Do you understand how that applies to us and Adam? Even though Adam was not our nearest father, he is by default the father of us all. That also means that every father in between Adam and us is also called our father. As you can clearly read God informs us that Levi was in the “loins” of his father Abraham. The loin is defined to be the pelvic region or the sexual reproductive organs of Abraham. That tells me that out of the millions and millions of sperm cells in Abraham, God knew which one that Levi would come from. That is some amazing attention to the details, isn’t it? This is God’s clear definition of the “Seed being within Itself” law from Genesis. So now pay attention to what this says. Levi is said to have paid tithes in Abraham, because he was in his father Abraham by God’s definition of a seed. Do you understand this concept? Whatever your fathers did, according to God, you did. That is not always very good news for most of us. You see a newborn baby, having just been born into the world has already done everything that their fathers have done even before they do anything themselves. Not really good news is it? I wish I would have learned this concept as a very young child, I might have done a few things differently as I grew up. Oh well?
Lam 5:7 Our fathers have sinned, and are not; and we have borne their iniquities.
What we begin to discover in the Bible, is the law of seeds. We can then better understand how family curses, generational abnormalities and physical diseases are often times inherited within a family tree. Doctors constantly want to know if your parents had any diseases, because they want to see if they are appearing in you. Why is this? Why are some diseases contagious and others are more hereditary? It would appear that what one parent does, is passed down to future children and this is the basis for the existence of these hereditary diseases.
Mat 27:25 Then answered all the people, and said, His blood be on us, and on our children.
You see the seed concept again being alluded to in this verse of the Bible. The people of Israel are in the process of killing the Son of God and they say “Let His blood be on us and our children”. In other words whatever they were doing was being handed down to every generation that would come after them. That is not very good news for the children who were not there, is it?
The Genealogy of Jesus is given to us in Luke. Have you ever wondered why God thought this was so important to include in the Bible? You can clearly see every generation of Jesus going all the way back to Adam. There around 74 generations listed. Seventy four names of fathers of Jesus. If you are a little bit intelligent you realize that God did this on purpose. You can clearly see from what we have learned about seeds, whatever every father of Jesus did, Jesus is said to have done the same. So Jesus was in David, Jesus was in Abraham, Jesus was in Adam and every other name mentioned. This has far reaching consequences for Jesus, doesn’t it? Let’s briefly explore a couple of the references in the Bible as Jesus being a seed in his natural fathers.
Rom 1:3 Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh;
Jesus was born of the seed of David. This is telling us that Jesus was in David when he was king of Israel. Being a seed of David qualifies Jesus as an eternal ruler that will sit upon his father’s throne and that is pretty cool.
Gal 3:16 Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ.
We can clearly see that Jesus Christ is called the Seed of Abraham. This verse tells us that the intended usage of this word “seed” meant a singular example of the usage of this word. In other words, this seed is not plural. So now we can better understand the seed of Abraham being within him when God came to cut covenant with him. It is very interesting to note that if Jesus was in Abraham his father, then was God making a covenant with himself? I believe that is exactly what we can see happening.
Mat 26:64 Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said: nevertheless I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.
Jesus called himself the “Son of Man” more than he called himself the “Son of God” in the Gospels. Why is that? Part of the reason why is to overcome the difficulty of man’s inability to accept God coming to the earth in the form of His creation. Jesus Christ being a physical man on this planet was also informing us that He was the Son of Adam. You know that Jesus was a Hebrew, yes? Did you know that the Hebrew word for man and Adam are the same words? This is why I can say that Jesus walked around and called Himself the son of Adam. Do you realize what that means based upon what we have learned? That means when God created Adam, Jesus was already in Adam as a future descendant of this first man. Jesus Christ was a future seed in the physical man Adam. What we can see is that God had a plan of salvation for man, even before man was created. God had already designed Himself into the body of Adam. God already knew when He was coming , how he was coming and where he was coming when He created Adam. God could look at Adam and see 74 generations down his family tree and see Jesus. That is some amazing forethought and planning. That is some incredible attention to detail. That is an amazing plan of salvation.
So what have we learned, since Jesus was “IN” Adam, whatever happens to Adam, now transfers to Jesus. Since Jesus was born the Son of Adam, he must die the death that Adam passed upon all of his descendants (SEEDS). These are the seed laws given to us by God in Genesis. Everything produces after its own kind and the seed is always within itself. Whatever happens to you happens to everyone that comes from you. Whatever you did, is what your seed did. I hope that you enjoyed learning some new concepts from the Bible on “seeds”. I pray that you will learn to apply them to what you do going forward. In my next blog in this series we will further explore spiritual seeds found in the Bible.
If you would like to continue reading this series of lesson on seeds you can go to “Part 3” now!
Why Do People Go To Hell? Using the Bible to Answer the Hard Questions!
(Ver 2.3) This is Part 2 of a series of lesson on the subject of “Understanding What the Bible says About Hell“. This is also Part 2 of another series called “Understanding Hard Sayings”. If you want to read the first lesson about Hard Sayings then do that. There are many people in the world today that do not believe in the existence of Hell. However, that does not change the fact that it exists. If you did not read the first lesson in this series about the “Bliblical Evidence for the Existence of Hell” you should start reading there first. I often times wonder when terrorist bombers blow themselves up in the hope of achieving or earning paradise, what they think when they go to hell and are looking around wondering what happened. This is obviously not what they were told would happen if they caused all of this death and destruction to their enemies. I also wonder how many of them would do things differently now that they are locked within the eternal flames of hell, where Jesus told us there would be weeping and gnashing of teeth (Mat 8:12). There is no doubt in my mind that most people who are in hell are there and do not know how exactly that they got there. I hear many people in the world speak of sinners and the people who do really evil things to other people as deserving to be in hell. It seems that the worst the crime and the more innocent people are hurt or killed, the more deserving that people say they are for going to hell. You can think of people like Hitler, Stalin and others who have killed men, women and children in wholesale lots and certainly they “deserve” to go to hell. However, we are all guilty of comparing our sins to other people’s sins and thinking that ours are not bad enough to warrant such a punishment as hell.
I had a reader ask me a question about “Do people go to hell or heaven after they die and why”? If you have read the first lessonthen you should already know that the Bible clearly tells us that Hell exists and people go there. So the question arises, why? This is certainly a legitimate question to ask God. We will discover that God has already answered the question in the Bible. What I want to do first is tell you what is NOT a factor in why people go to Hell. It is not because you have sinned! Being a sinner does NOT send you to hell! However, it does not get you into heaven either. Sin is virtually a non-factor in the process of do people go to heaven or to hell. Yes, there are sinners in hell right now. But, yes there are also sinners in heaven right now. So committing a sin was not the determining factor for going to either place.
Rom 3:23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;
You can clearly see that the Bible says “everyone” has sinned and failed to achieve to God’s standard of righteousness. If it says “ALL” that would leave no one out of the Sin Camp. That would include me and you also. A verse found in Romans 5:12 basically says the same thing. So we have two witnesses to the fact that everyone is a sinner. So now people like to say, my sin is not as great as their sin, so therefore they deserve punishment, but not me. Unfortunately for you God has already thought of this excuse defense and said the following:
Jas 2:10 For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.
You can be the best sinner in the entire world and have committed the least number of wrong doings and yet God says if you fail in just one place, one point, violating just one rule, you are guilty of breaking them all. Wow! That is very strong! That also is not good news for being the best sinner either. That basically tells us that there are no sins that are greater than any other sins in the eyes of God. What do you do with that information? God makes it sound like a very ominous and hopeless situation that we are all in. I certainly agree with that assessment and I hope that you do to.
So what have we learned? We have learned that there are no good people in the world who deserve to be saved. Everyone is technically guilty of violating the entire law of God and that will not work to get you into heaven based upon God’s standards. You see Islam and other religions in the world like to see things in a balanced scale system where you put your bad deeds on one side and your good works on another side and then see which one is greater and that determines where you go. Wouldn’t that be nice? However, this is not what God calls a system that will work to get you into heaven.
Gal 2:16 Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.
Hopefully you can see what this verse is saying. Salvation or justification is not earned by doing good things. Obeying the law is doing a good thing, yes? But, God tells us that no flesh will be “justified” by doing the good things written in the Law! That basically tells me you cannot do anything to work yourself into this salvation. That means heaven is not guaranteed no matter how many good things you have done in your life. What we have discovered are two things that are not a factor in whether you go to heaven or to hell. It is not your sins and it is not you doing good things. That really shocks a lot of people who have been deceived into believing they can do something to affect their outcome and destiny. So what are the determining factors for being saved and going to heaven? I’d like to tell you it is just a simple a 1 + 1 = 2 problem, but that would be oversimplifying the situation. However, I will make it as simple as I can. It appears to me from reading and studying the Bible that people go to hell simply because they reject salvation and the savior Jesus Christ. Part of the problem comes from the fact that God’s idea of Salvation is not usually your idea of salvation and that is one of the biggest problems you face to getting saved. You see if you were simply presented a choice of believing in Jesus Christ and not believing in Jesus Christ and that is all the choices you had that would certainly make it much more of a simple process. However, there is an enemy in the world, a spiritual being called Satan, who works very hard at tricking you into believing lies. While God plays by the rules, Satan does not and has caused a vast number of people in the world to believe in his lies. So rejecting the savior Jesus Christ could be a simple acceptance of Buddhism as your belief system. Simply by buying into a false religion you could be missing out on heaven and eternal salvation. This is what Jesus says to us:
Rev 3:20 Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.
Jesus is trying to get into your heart right now, if you have not let him in already. Jesus is standing and knocking and wants to come into your spiritual house. Did you ever think that if the omnipotent God wants in your heart, why doesn’t He just kick the door down and come in? Isn’t He still God? Doesn’t God always get His will done? Apparently not! You see God is a gentleman who abides within rules and self-imposed limitations. God will never force anyone to get saved. God will try to get your attention, but yet you have a responsibility to first hear Him knocking at your door and then to go open the door and let Him in. So what happens when Jesus comes and knocks and you refuse to hear it? What happens if you ignore Him? What happens if you do not open the door for Him? Believe it or not that is what causes you to go to hell. Here are some more words of Jesus on this subject.
Joh 12:48 He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day.
So here is a little secret, Jesus is not going to come to your physical house and knock on your natural door to try to get you saved. Those were all symbolic references to a spiritual situation that will transpire in a way that you would probably not expect. You see Jesus is knocking right now at your heart, if you choose to hear Him. Did you notice what Jesus said in John 12:18? Jesus says that if you reject Him and His Word, it will be the Word that you heard and that you rejected that will judge you in the future. In other words the Word of God is God and if you reject it, you are rejecting God. That causes a lot of people to not find salvation. They do not know how God is speaking, when He is speaking, where He is speaking or even recognize what God is saying. God has purposely chosen to hide himself from your physical view, so that you can be an atheist if you want to be. However, God uses people like me to try to reach you and convince you that He is real.
So I do not know everyone that is in hell right now. I do know how they were deceived. I do not know how many times they rejected the truth of God’s Word. I do not know how many times Jesus knocked and tried to come in. It could have been when they were just 5 or 6 years old. Maybe, it was when they were 12 or 13 years old. All I know is that Jesus said I tried to knock and they would not open the door and let me in. It could have been that they were preoccupied by the distractions of working, going to school, shopping or whatever else people do in the world. I wrote another blog on this subject, if you care to read it about why people are not saved and it was called “The Top 10 Enemies To Salvation! Why People Don’t Get Saved!”
Many people think that God sends people to hell, but that is really not a true statement. The Bible says that Hell was made for Satan and his angels. God knowing that no man could do anything to earn salvation came to the earth in the flesh and gave His life for the payment of every man’s sin. So God by His grace reconciled man back into relationship and favor with Himself. But, yet God still gives man a choice in what they want to do. Then if we put Satan into the picture and see how he has deceived the world into believing his lies, that it the root of the problem of why salvation is not so easily obtainable. God freely offers salvation to everyone, but everyone is required accept it. To accept God is to accept His Words. To receive God’s Words is to allow God to come into your spirit and live. Always remember that Jesus is trying to knock at the door to your heart and get your attention, but the devil is trying to distract you with everything that he can put in front of you. What you decide to do will affect your eternal destiny. God has placed the ball in your court and it is your turn to move. God says now is the time for salvation, today is the appointed day for getting saved. So don’t delay and receive Him while you can. If you think that you have time and can wait to get saved, you are already deceived. If you are interested in learning how to get saved, you can read my page “Salvation How to Know if You are Going to Heaven”. God Bless!
If you would like to continue the study of “Understanding Hard Sayings” in the Bible you may continue to “Part 3“.
Understanding Seeds in the Bible! Plant a Seed, Get a Harvest! Part 1
(Ver 1.6) This of course is a difficult subject to cover, yet one that I believe is very critical for every Christian to understand. God said in the Bible some things that are very profound about seeds and if you can understand them, you will gain vast amounts of spiritual knowledge and understanding of how almost everything in the world works. I know that sounds like a very broad statement but, you obviously do not know very much about seeds right now or you would have to agree with me. Seeds represent concepts that apply both to the natural realm and the spiritual realm simultaneously. When you begin to understand them, you will begin to understand why things have happened in your life and how to affect or change your future results. Too many Christians think that what happens to them in life is predetermined by God. If it is God’s will I will live to be an old man, if not only God knows. While God does know your future, it is definitely wrong to say that you can not change it. If you do not believe me you should read your Bible more often. When you read in the Bible in 2 Kings 20, you will see Isaiah the prophet coming to King Hezekiah and telling him that the Lord says for him to “Set Your House in Order, for thou shalt Die and Not Live!”. The prophet of God tells the King what God has already told him will happen and these are the sayings of the almighty God. King Hezekiah ends up praying to God and as a result God tells Isaiah to tell the King he shall live 15 more years. What would have happened if Hezekiah had not prayed? He would have died. Who changed, God or Hezekiah to cause him to live 15 more years? The Bible tells us “I am the Lord and I Change Not” (Mal 3:6). So obviously God did not change his mind, so what happened? That certainly is a mystery that too many Christians do not understand. It is not totally up to God what happens to you, it is more up to you than it is up to God. However, since that is not my primary subject, we will continue learning about seeds and see if you can figure this mystery out for yourself. Here is one of my foundational scriptures for this series of Bible lessons:
Gen 8:22 While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.
What God is revealing in this verse, is that there are established laws in the earth. These laws consist of physical laws as well as spiritual laws. These laws are representative of established natural patterns within creation and even reveal the hidden qualities of God. These laws represent established cycles that will not cease unless God causes them to change in the future. However, it is clear that God says these laws will persist as long as the earth is here, so they are not going away anytime soon. God mentions 3 of these cycles and laws in this verse. The first one mentioned is that of the law of seeds and harvests. You plant a seed you reap a harvest. The next cycle mentioned is that of our established pattern of annual seasons. Winter and summer are just two of the 4 seasons mentioned. Next we have the cycle of Day and Night and again this is representative of a 24 hour cycle of time that the earth revolves in every day. What I want to focus on is just the subject of “Seeds” in this series of lessons. You can read about Understanding Night and Day in another blog series that I have already done.
Planting seeds and getting harvests are a part of the essential design of God’s creation as well as being an essential part of God’s hidden nature and character. Hopefully you will better understand this as we go through the Bible on this subject. But, here is a challenge from God, there are multiple things in the Bible called “seeds” and this is one of the complexities found while studying the Bible. God calls multiple things by the same name and we are required to figure out which one He is talking about to correctly understand each verse. While the overall concepts behind each occurrence of the word can overlap, they are certainly not the same entity. Let me give you some examples of seeds found in the Bible:
- Natural Grass Seeds
- Natural Fruit Seeds
- The Seed of a Man, His Sperm
- The Seed of a Woman, Her Children
- The Seed of a Man and a Woman, their offspring
- The Word of God
- The Seed of your Mouth, Your Words
- The Body of Jesus Christ
- The Church
- Your Body
So I just gave you 10 examples of a thing that the Bible calls seeds and that is certainly not a complete list of all of them. Just for grins let’s start by looking up a dictionary definition of the word seed in a noun form:
A mature fertilized ovule of angiosperms and gymnosperms that contains an embryo and the food it will need to grow into a new plant. Seeds provide a great reproductive advantage in being able to survive for extended periods until conditions are favorable for germination and growth. The seeds of gymnosperms (such as the conifers) develop on scales of cones or similar structures, while the seeds of angiosperms are enclosed in an ovary that develops into a fruit, such as a pome or nut. The structure of seeds varies somewhat. All seeds are enclosed in a protective seed coat. In certain angiosperms the embryo is enclosed in or attached to an endosperm, a tissue that it uses as a food source either before or during germination. All angiosperm embryos also have at least one cotyledon. Many angiosperms were created with specific fruits for dispersal of seeds by the wind, water, or animals.
There are too many things in this description to take note of them all. Also I changed the last sentence to state that seeds were created and did not evolve as some deceived scientists have theorized. According to this definition a seed is a self-contained unit designed for the reproduction of a species. A seed contains specific qualities that enables it to work even after extended times outside of the normal environment that they like to grow in. We understand this because we can buy seeds at the farm and garden store to plant in our backyards to grow whatever we would like.
Seed is a unique word that can either be taken as a single unit or as a plural word meaning multiple instances of the same reproductive unit. In other words if I said that I have a package of watermelon seed, we do not know how many I have in the package. It is more than likely several and logically more than one, but yet it would be legal to just put one in the package and sell it with the same name. The plural word for seed can also be stated as seeds, so the complexity of the words can be significant. If you are a type of person who is into the details you will certainly get into these Bible lessons.
The first mention of seed in the Bible is within the context of the first chapter of Genesis when God creates the world that we all live in. In Genesis 1:11 God says “Let the earth bring forth grass yielding seed”. This is the first mention of seed and the first mention of the reproductive system for propagating the further existence of future plants in the world. Within the same verse, God also tells us of “the earth bringing forth Fruit Trees yielding fruit after its kind, with the seed in its self”. These are very important concepts being given to us from creation. Some have called this the “Law of Genesis”. Everything will reproduce after its own kind. In other words a cat doesn’t come from a dog. A watermelon doesn’t come from an orange. Everything that God created comes from and reproduces after its own kind. That means there was no evolution that took place at any time on the earth. Evolution is a fantasy embraced by ignorant people who deny the design of God. Everything that God created is self-sustaining and self-perpetuating. Today on the evening news I watched a humorous story about which came first the chicken or the egg? This has long been a debated controversial subject in the world. However, according to the news, and a group of scientists in England who studied the subject, they have concluded that the chicken had to come first based upon scientific evidence. They discovered that the shell of the egg comes from a protein found only in the ovary of a chicken. Since this protein does not exist anywhere else in the world, they have concluded that the chicken had to come first. But, they certainly did not say where the chicken came from. Isn’t that interesting? I can tell them where the chicken came from, but maybe another day. I’m sure if you search the internet you can find more information on this scientific discovery and why they concluded this.
There are over 250 verses in the Bible that speak directly about seeds in the Bible. I will not even attempt to go through all of these. Then there are many other indirect references of seeds in the Bible so the total number of verses on the subject is by far greater than that. We have already touched on the first occurrence in Genesis 1 of natural seeds from plants, so let’ move on to the second occurrence of seed found in Genesis 3 and it goes like this:
Gen 3:15 And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.
I have written a blog on this subject, so I will not attempt to repeat that information again. If you want to learn about it you can go and read “The Seed of the Woman, the Seed of the Serpent!” It is noteworthy to see that the woman has seed and so does Satan and I’ll leave it at that for now. It is implied that these seeds are children, and we will find out more about this as we go. The third occurrence of the word “Seed” arises in Chapter 4 of Genesis and this is Eve speaking and she says the following:
Gen 4:25 And Adam knew his wife again; and she bare a son, and called his name Seth: For God, said she, hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel, whom Cain slew.
Eve tells us that “Seth” is her Seed. His brother Cain had killed his other brother Abel and now she has given birth to another “Seed”. Obviously the implication is given to us that all of the other children are also her “seeds”. So we see a clear pattern that children are called seeds of their parents. Let’s find a confirming scripture to this fact from the book of Ruth:
Rth 4:12 And let thy house be like the house of Pharez, whom Tamar bare unto Judah, of the seed which the LORD shall give thee of this young woman.
We can clearly see that God refers to children as seeds. The term is related to a concept of planting and harvesting. This concept was first introduced in Genesis 1 when God said to Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply. You see two descriptive qualities of planting seeds, you always get a multiplied increase and it is always related to bearing fruit. What we discover is that each child produced has the built in capability to reproduce more of its own kind in the earth. The females carry the eggs, the males carry the sperms and they are joined together to produce more of the same kind as themselves. What we have in the world is an exponential growth seed pattern of the population of the world. From Adam and Eve, who were just two people on the planet just around 6000 years ago, we now have well over 6 billion and getting closer to 7 billion people on the planet. That is God’s idea of a plentiful harvest field. These are God’s plans and God’s designed laws of increase being demonstrated. All of these are basic seed concepts, seed principles and seed laws. I hope that you understand them. Let’s look at the next occurrence of the word “seed” found in the book of Genesis. You will find this one in the story of Noah and the flood:
Gen 7:3 Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth.
What we have is a reproductive biology lesson from the story of God’s creation. The stated law of how God can create the original pairs of each species, both males and females so that they reproduce and multiply and still be here today for us to enjoy. God informs Noah to gather and place on the ark, the male and the female of every species so that their “seed” would not vanish from the face of the earth. What we learn from this verse is that all we have to do is kill every animal of a particular species and that species is not coming back. That kind of kill’s evolution doesn’t it? Man is doing a pretty good job at eliminating species on this planet so what will the results be?
Gen 12:7 And the LORD appeared unto Abram, and said, Unto thy seed will I give this land: and there builded he an altar unto the LORD, who appeared unto him.
Obviously “seed” is a very important subject to understand. God in speaking to Abram tells him that his seed will be given the land. God is speaking about children or as we can read later in the N.T. God is speaking about a specific promised child. Too many times people like to read a verse in the Bible in isolation and try to interpret it without using God’s helpful commentary and definitions. This causes people to come up with erroneous teachings that results in confusion. You see you can take this verse in many different ways. Some try to take it literally and naturally and interpret it using their own human reasoning. But, later we will discover that God gives us more information and we should always use the Bible to interpret the Bible.
Gen 13:15 For all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever.
Again we have a great mystery presented to us. Is the land given to a natural seed or to a spiritual seed? You will notice that God did not tell Abram that it was his forever, because obviously Abram died and is no longer here to possess it. What we have to conclude is that whoever this seed is that will be given the land, must be an eternal seed or a seed that will live forever. That certainly changes the interpretation dramatically doesn’t it?
This has been an introduction to the subject of “Seeds” in the Bible. I hope that you have learned something that you can begin to apply to your life and to your understanding of the Bible. In the next lesson we will talk further about the other types of seeds that I have listed in the top of this lesson.
If you would like to continue reading this series, please go to “Part 2“.
Understanding the Virgin Birth of Jesus Christ! Part 3 Getting Paul’s Input!
(Ver 1.2) This is now Part 3 of a series of lessons on the importance of believing in the virgin birth of Jesus Christ. I have been attempting to give you some new spiritual Bible perspectives into the identity of the Son that was born to the woman Mary and the importance of us believing that she was a virgin. Too many people today who call themselves, Christians have an opinion that Paul never wrote about the virgin birth of Jesus Christ, so they therefore try to conclude that it did not happen, or was not important or maybe even try to stretch to say that Paul didn’t believe in it at all. All of these are just people who are deceived into believing a lie from the enemy. If you have not read this series from the beginning, I would strongly suggest that you go back and read starting with “Part 1”.
While Paul may not have written directly about the virgin birth, that does certainly does not mean he did not believe in it. Nor does it mean that Paul did not write about the virgin birht indirectly using words that are dependent upon the existence of the virgin birth in order to be viewed as the truth. There are literally too many ways to say something without saying somthing directly to say that Paul never understood that the virgin birth was a basic truth. I personally believe that Paul was sent by God to teach the advanced revelation of other truths found in the Bible. Most of these truths could not possibly be true without the existence of the virgin birth so the virgin birth is implied in the writings while never being directly mentioned. Let’s start by analyzing some verses that speak about Jesus and see what they say about him.
Rom 1:3 Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh;
There are at least two implied references to the virgin birth of Jesus in this verse written by Paul. Either people do not know how to read or they just do not know what to look for when searching for scriptures on this subject. To say Paul never wrote anything about the virgin birth is denying the original author of the Bible. God uttered the words, and men wrote them down. God is the author of the entire Bible and He says plenty about the virgin birth. In this verse in Romans 1:3 Jesus Christ is called the Son of God. Doesn’t that imply or mean Jesus didn’t have a natural father? So how did He get here and who was He born from? People obviously see what they want to see in the Bible and ignore what they do not want to see in the Bible. Then this verse tells us that “according to the flesh” Jesus was “made” of the seed of David. To be made something is an implied creative act of God. Anything that God creates He has made. So what does that tell us? That means Jesus didn’t come into the world, the natural way like you and me. What we have is an indirect reference to the virgin birth being revealed to us. We have Jesus who came according to flesh as being the Son of David, but according to Spirit, He was the Son of God. How can this be if it was not from a virgin birth? This represents the physical and spiritual union of God and the woman Mary and the result was a man named Jesus Christ.
Rom 8:3 For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh:
Anytime Paul writes about Jesus Christ being the Son of God, He is inferring the existence of the virgin birth. Anytime Paul writes that God came in the flesh, he infers the virgin birth. Jesus Christ, who was God, took on the likeness of sinful flesh in order to condemn sin in the flesh. We again see a clear reference to God’s union with the woman Mary to produce the physical man Jesus Christ. It is interesting to think that the Bible says “God is not a man that He should lie, nor the Son of Man that He should repent”. But, yet God becomes a man and a Son of Man. That is a perplexing mystery that causes vast numbers of Jewish people to reject Jesus Christ. You see when Jesus was on the earth in the flesh, He came to John the Baptist and told him to baptize Him. Why did Jesus do this? John was baptizing people for the remissions of sins, yet Jesus had not committed any sins. John tells Jesus in the 3rd chapter of Matthew that he needed to be baptized of Jesus and Jesus tells him do this to me to satisfy all righteousness. Jesus who was God in the flesh, was baptized of John for the “repentance of sin” (Mat 3:11). After John baptized Jesus, the Bible says that the Holy Spirit descended from heaven in the form of a dove and God spoke out of heaven in a thundering voice and said “This is my son, in who I am well pleased”. So why didn’t God do this before Jesus was baptized by John? I think that is a really good question. Perhaps you can read some of my other blogs and get some clues to what happened, but for now let’s continue with the virgin birth:
1Ti 3:16 And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.
You see again that Paul writes a simple statement that God was “manifested” in the flesh. If this is not a clear reference to the virgin birth, then what is it? How did God come to be here in the flesh? The term “manifested” again refers to being “made” in the flesh. So how do you make babies? How does a Spirit being make babies? It is certainly not the same way that you do it. We know that God is a Spirit. We also know God is omnipotent. So how would omnipotent God become a man legally on this planet? I believe that He gets a virgin woman to agree with the plan and to believe that she will have His son. Isn’t it funny how Mary’s response to the angel of God was “Be unto me according to your word” (Luke 1:38). Mary obviously believed it would happen to her even before it happened to her. That sounds a lot like someone with faith, someone who believed, and someone in partnership with God. Because Mary believed the words of God, she received the word and He became flesh inside of her.
Gal 4:23 But he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh; but he of the freewoman was by promise.
Those that claim Paul never wrote about the virgin birth are clearly ignorant and foolish. This verse in Galatians compares two sons born of Abraham. The first is called him that is “born after the flesh” and the other one is called “the promised son”. As you recall Abraham was given the slave woman Hagar to have a child by his wife because Sarah was barren and he did. That is called the child after the flesh. This son however never received the blessing of the firstborn since Sarah miraculously conceived the promised child. While this was not a virgin birth by any stretch of the imagination, it was clearly a miraculous birth for a 90 year old woman to give birth to a son. So what is God saying to us? I believe that God is giving us a prophetic view of the virgin birth. You see Isaac was born in a supernatural way and this is a type of the birth of Christ who was born in a supernatural way. These were just types and shadows of another son that was promised. Jesus Christ’s birth was also prophesied to be a miraculous conception by the type of Sarah and Abraham having the son Isaac. However, Jesus’ birth is a much greater miracle than that of Isaac.
Heb 5:5 So also Christ glorified not himself to be made an high priest; but he that said unto him, Thou art my Son, to day have I begotten thee.
Again we see Paul writing to the Hebrews and he says a prophetic quote from God “Thou art my Son, today have I begotten thee”. The Greek word that is translated as “begotten”, means to “procreate as of the Father“. What does the term “procreate” mean? To procreate means to bring forth offspring or children. It can also mean to “conceive”, to be “born” or “to give birth”. Anyone with any brains at all can figure out what he is talking about. If God is the Father and Mary is the natural mother, then how did God get this woman pregnant? It wasn’t the natural way. We have already seen very specific scripture that the Holy Ghost caused this to happen and that Mary was a young girl that had never known a man. So it is very clear to me that Paul believed in the virgin birth and thought it was a critical piece of information to learn. In other words it was a foundational part of his theology and his belief system.
Heb 1:5 For unto which of the angels said he at any time, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee? And again, I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son?
What we have is another witness to the fact that Jesus Christ is “begotten” by God. Never had God done anything like this before and never will he do this again, this is what took Satan by surprise. Satan did not know what to do with this man, Jesus. According to Jesus’ parable Satan thought this was the heir so they had to kill him (Mat 21:38). However, Jesus came into the earth to die and that is what defeated Satan. What you need to do is realize that anytime the Bible calls Jesus the Son of God that is indirectly calling him the one that was born of a virgin. Anytime you read about God coming to the earth in the flesh you are reading about a virgin birth.
Heb 13:20 Now the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant,
In the first lesson in this series I talked about the resurrection of Jesus being different than other people who were raised from the dead. I asked you to think about why the resurrection of Jesus was so important to our beliefs and our salvation. I showed in Romans 10:9 that it says that if you believe that God raised Jesus from the dead and called him your Lord you would be saved. This verse in Hebrews again refers to Jesus being raised from the dead and this is in conjunction with the “blood” of the everlasting covenant of God. So where did Jesus get His blood? You might recall in another blog I talked about the blood of a baby being a union of the father and the mother’s blood type. So why is this important? What made Jesus’ blood an acceptable payment for our sin and the foundational basis of an everlasting covenant? Obviously Jesus’ blood was not the exact same as our blood, but yet at the same time it was. So we have another paradox, and a mystery of Biblical proportions. If Jesus blood was just like our blood then God could have picked anyone to pay the price for our sins. You should really think about the blood of Jesus for a long time, because it is very important and very significant to your salvation. You need to figure out why the blood of Jesus was sufficient to pay for your sins and why your blood is not sufficient payment for your sins. I’ll give you some clues and more information on this subject later.
Paul writes a considerable amount of scriptures about the blood of Jesus Christ and its value and power. What makes the blood of Jesus Christ so special? In order to understand this it comes back to the virgin birth? That is the only difference between my blood and Jesus’ blood. His natural father was the Holy Spirit and mine was not. My father’s lineage goes directly back to Adam and Eve and there lies the problem with my bloodline and yours.
1Co 15:45 And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.
Why, is Jesus Christ called the “Last Adam”? To me that was a really interesting thing to discover and to study. What we see is a direct comparison of two men. The first Adam is called a living soul and the “Last Adam” a quickening Spirit. One is said to be physical and natural man and the other is inversely spiritual by nature.
1Co 15:47 The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven.
As you read through this chapter you find that natural things always came first in the world and then spiritual things came later. This is a pattern for us to understand how God created this world. We were first born naturally, and then we were born again spiritually. Did you notice what Paul wrote in 1 Cor 15:47? He said the second Adam came from heaven! Uh Oh? We have another clear, but indirect reference to the virgin birth. God says that the body of the first man came from the earth. But, the body of the second man was born here, but came from heaven. We again see an implied reference to God coming in the flesh. This is the Lord of Glory being made a man.
1Co 15:22 For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.
We can see that through Jesus, the Last Adam, He causes all men to have the ability to live. This is in direct contrast to the first Adam who caused all men born on this planet to die. So was Jesus Christ born a man on this planet? If you understand the Bible you know that He was. That means He had to die like everyone else that was descended from Adam. Realizing that Jesus Christ who was God in the flesh came to the earth to die is a basic part of theology that you must embrace in order to understand who Jesus was and why he came to the earth. What we have seen is two individuals, both are called a man, both are called Adam and both were made originally by God. The first Adam was a natural man whose body was formed from the dust of the ground. The last Adam came by the word of God through a virgin woman.
Now I want to talk about the Blood of Jesus Christ and give you some more insight and understanding on how it was able to satisfy the payment for our sins. Paul writes about the blood of Christ in numerous verses. You can read some of them in Romans 5:9, Ephesians 1:7, Ephesians 2:13, and Colossians 1:14. By reading these verses you find out what Jesus bought with His blood. There are many things that were resolved, there were many things purchased, there were many things that were forgiven, and there many things that were accomplished through the blood of Jesus Christ. All of these verses tell us clearly that Jesus’ blood was something of great value, something that would cover the cost of the vast expanse of the sin of all humanity. It also indicates that His blood was more valuable than our blood. Therefore we have reached again a full circle that states Jesus Christ must have been born of a virgin to make Him different than you and I. So what makes the Blood of Christ more valuable than ours? Let’s briefly examine the Bible and find out:
Gen 9:4 But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat.
So what makes this flesh uneatable according to God’s commandment to Noah? It is the blood! The Blood of the flesh is said to be the Life of the flesh. Isn’t that interesting? Do you remember what Jesus told us? Jesus said “I am the Life” (John 14:6). Could Jesus have been referring to His blood?
Lev 17:11 For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.
You see we have another confirmation written in the Law of Moses that says the life of the flesh is the blood. So we then see God giving us another key piece of information. The payment of sin comes from the shedding of blood. It is the blood that will provide atonement for us. The Hebrew word translated as “Atonement” is an interesting word that means “to cover”. It can also mean “to forgive”, “to show mercy”, “to reconcile”, and “to cleanse”. These are all the works of God and what He has accomplished in Jesus Christ through His blood.
Heb 10:4 For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.
So we have another mystery given to us. Clearly in the O.T. God implemented a series of laws that showed the people how to make sacrifices of animals for the sins of the people. However, we discover that God would later say that the blood of bulls and goats would never take away our sins. So why did God do this? What we have is another natural pattern that establishes a spiritual N.T. reality in Jesus Christ. Did you notice this verse didn’t say anything about a lamb? Jesus Christ is called the Lamb of God which takes away the sins of the world (John 1:29)! I’ll wrap this blog up with one more verse about the blood of Jesus Christ:
Heb 9:14 How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?
We have another paradox being presented to us. How can God offer Himself as a sacrifice to Himself? This is some really deep stuff, isn’t it? Maybe we can talk about that in another blog, but for now let’s keep going. If you recall from my last blog, there were three that agreed in the earth. These were the Spirit, the water and the blood. The blood represents the life of the flesh. The Bible also tells us that the body is dead without the spirit (James 2:26). We are now beginning to understand a little bit how the blood of Jesus could satisfy the price of our sin. The man Jesus Christ born of a virgin was God in the flesh. The omnipotent God gave His life, His eternal Spirit and His blood as payment for our sin. As Jesus hung on the cross and bled I am convinced that He was smiling on the inside. He knew what was being accomplished, He knew what was being purchased, and He knew the end result for all of His pain and suffering.
Heb 12:2 Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.
So if anybody ever tells you that Paul didn’t believe in the virgin birth, tell them to go and read those letters again. Maybe you can help them now by telling them what to look for. God Bless!
Understanding the Virgin Birth of Jesus Christ! Part 2
(Ver 1.1) This is now Part 2 of a series of Bible lessons on the importance of believing in the virgin birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Many people who call themselves Christians like to try to convince you that they are believers, however they have been deceived into believing a lie from Satan. These are those that pretend that it is not important to believe in the Virgin Birth and they like to make you think that it doesn’t matter to your salvation either. I believe I showed using the Bible how wrong they are in the first part of this lesson. If you have no virgin birth, you have no basis for your salvation, you have no confidence in your savior then you are standing on very shaky ground. These types of people are called the spirit of “Anti-Christ”, those who are controlled by spiritual beings that are not from God and who do not represent God. They teach that God has not come into the world in the flesh and thus they nullify the salvation that was freely given to them. If you have not read the first part of this series you should go back now and start with “Part 1“. Today I want to talk about some other aspects of the virgin birth and give you some new perspectives to think about. So let’s go back to Matthew and look at what God says to us about the virgin birth:
Mat 1:20 But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.
Joseph the future husband of Mary is said to have had a dream where an angel from God appears to him. In this dream the angel informs him that is OK to take this woman as his wife, because the child that is inside of her is from the Holy Ghost. This is the key reason for why it is important to believe in the virgin birth. The son that will be born of this natural woman, Mary will be the Son of God. So the child was a result of a union between God’s seed and Mary’s human egg. The resulting DNA would be unlike any man, except for Adam. You have to think and ask questions when you study the Bible. Where did Adam get his DNA? Where did Adam get his blood? Where did Adam get his spirit? All of these had to originate from God. So was Adam a son of God? Was Adam an older brother of Jesus? I believe according to the genealogy of Jesus in Luke, both of these are true. The DNA of Jesus Christ had to be a combination of His natural father and mother, Adam and Eve and his heavenly Father God. Jesus Christ was uniquely God and man in perfect unison. The Blood of Jesus was a result of the union between God and Mary. This is why God could promise David that one of his son’s would sit on his throne forever. Jesus Christ was the Son of Adam, the Son of Abraham, the Son of David, and the Son of God all at the same time. We know from scripture that being born of a virgin is God’s legal entrance into the world in a physical form. God could not legally come into the world and pay for our sins any other way according to the Bible. This is what Jesus taught us:
Joh 10:1 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber.
In this verse in John, Jesus is discussing the world and the legal entrances into the world. The world is described as a symbolic sheepfold. According to Jesus the only legal way into the world is to enter through the door/gate. If you have never studied the Bible on the subject of gates, you should. You see this word for door also means a gate. You see if you build a fence around your house to keep stuff in or to keep stuff out of your yard, you always build into the fence gates that allows you to come and go easily. That is a basic concept that God created and man just uses. The subject of gates is a complex subject and one that covers many aspects that appear to be related, but yet are very different. Jesus said “I am the door”, meaning He was the way to God, but this is not the same door that he is talking about in John 10:1. The legal entrance into this world is being born here of a woman. You see a physical woman’s body has a legal portal entry point into the world that we live in. This natural gate is a two way gate, both an entrance and exit. People’s mouths are also called gates in the Bible. The mouth can allow food in and also speak words out, so it is also a two way gate of the human body. Other orifices of the body are only one way gates. Only expelling things or only taking things in. If you never studied about gates, you should you might be surprised at what you learn from God. Being born in the world gives you rights to salvation. Jesus told us that “You must be born again”. Meaning you must be born first naturally, and then born again spiritually if you want salvation. Jesus being born of a woman gave God certain rights to provide salvation to all of humanity.
Let’s go back to the dream of Joseph and the first chapter of Matthew where it tells us about the birth of Jesus Christ. In this dream the angel tells Joseph that the words of God must be fulfilled. These words were spoken through the prophet Isaiah and we looked at these words in the first lesson on this subject. So Joseph took hold of the words spoken to him by the angel in the dream and decided to take Mary to be his wife. Then it tells us this about their relationship:
Mat 1:25 And knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son: and he called his name JESUS.
I do not know any husbands who do not have sex with their wives. But, clearly this is what this verse is saying. However, it does not say he never had sex with Mary, it only says not until after Jesus was born. Why is that important? I asked myself that question and had a difficult time coming up with an answer. Once you are pregnant, you cannot get pregnant again, no matter how many times you have sex. This is just a basic fact on human biology that you might already know. You see when God includes something in the Bible it is important, even though it is not mentioned again directly. I really do not want to get graphic here, but I believe it is important to understand. A woman as a virgin has a piece of skin that at least partially covers the opening to her vagina. There is no medical purpose for this piece of skin, but yet it is mentioned in the Bible a few times as evidence that a woman was a virgin when she was on her honeymoon. You can see that the bed sheets are presented as proof to her virginity. This small covering piece of skin is designed by God to produce blood when broken or torn during intercourse. Why did God do this? Everything that God does, has a purpose and a reason for existing. I believe that this is a natural pattern for a spiritual reality. The breaking of the female skin and the shedding of blood is representative of a covenant act between a husband and a wife. This is the foundation of a blood covenant relationship between two individuals. But, what would happen to this small piece of skin during the birth of a child if it was present? I believe that the same thing would have happened as if her husband would have had sex with her the first time, it would be torn and bled. Let us see what the Bible says about the birth of Jesus and see if this is in fact what happened:
1Jn 5:5 Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?
As you can see God is talking about the virgin birth. God then says that those who overcome the world are those who believe that Jesus is the Son of God. So did God think it was not important to believe in the virgin birth? Obviously not! You can clearly see that those who do not overcome the world are stated as being those who do not believe in the virgin birth. Uh Oh? I think some people have a real problem to think about.
1Jn 5:6 This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth.
So what does the Bible say about the virgin birth? Again you have to use your brain, just a little bit to see what God is saying. When a woman has a baby, and it comes time to deliver, she experiences something that is popularly called “her water breaking”. This results in a mess and this is a normal part of every child born on this planet. The water breaking is just another natural thing that God has designed to teach us something that we should see. Did you notice what God said in this verse? God says that Jesus did not come with just a water breaking mess, but Jesus came with the evidence of a virgin birth and that was the shedding of her blood. Notice NOT Jesus’ blood, I said her blood. Jesus when being birthed naturally would have broken the hymen of Mary and thus caused her blood to flow. Why is this important to include in the Bible? Obviously many people think that it is not important, however there it is.
1Jn 5:7 For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.
Now why does God always change the subject? Or did He? God tells us that there exists three in heaven, the Father, the Word and the Holy Ghost and these three are all One! What we have is the trinity being described to us in very specific terms. We can conclude that since the context of this verse is preceded with verses about the virgin birth of Christ that we are going to learn some new information about this. Then we see this statement being made:
1Jn 5:8 And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one.
So we have a new mystery being presented to us, one that is certainly difficult to relate to. Humans are described as being triune beings also but really we are just talking about Jesus and the virgin birth in a new light. The Spirit in this verse is the Holy Spirit which impregnated the natural woman Mary. The water is the natural birth process every human experiences in entering into this world. But the blood is only present for Jesus, the son of God born of a virgin. So we have God, the father, God the Word, and God the Holy Ghost coming into the world in the body of a man named Jesus, born of a virgin woman named Mary.
These 3 Bear Witness in Heaven
God the Father = God the Word = God the Holy Ghost
These 3 Bear Witness in the Earth
Spirit = Water = Blood
So what is God telling us about the virgin birth? God is saying we have 3 witnesses in heaven and 3 witnesses in the earth that the virgin birth happened just like He said it did. A witness is someone who testifies in a court of law to what they have seen. Because Jesus was born of a virgin, He came into the world with witnesses that prove His works. However, you still have an opportunity to not believe it and remain a spiritually blind man. . In my next blog we will review verses about how God used Paul to write about the virgin birth of Jesus Christ in indirect terminology.
If you would like to continue reading in this series you may go to “Part 3“.
Why is Believing in the Virgin Birth Essential to Being a Christian? Part 1
(Ver 1.3) This is Part 1 in a series of Bible lessons on Understanding the subject of the “Virgin Birth” and why it is important and necessary to believe in it to be a Christian. This subject is a potentially explosive and very controversial topic among some Christians and churches. We have many Christians, who fully embrace the virgin birth of Jesus, then we have some who are indifferent to its importance and finally we have others who flatly deny that it ever happened. So can you be a real Christian and not believe in the virgin birth of the Lord Jesus Christ? I read one blogger who thought that you could and in a way I agree with a lot of what he said. However, why is it important from a Bible defense standpoint, to believe in the virgin conception and the birth of son from a woman who has not “known” a man? To me I can say, it is because if there was no virgin birth, then there was no payment for human sin and therefore no salvation, no redemption and we will all die and go to hell with no hope. You see if Jesus was not born of a virgin, then who is He? Or I guess I should say who was He? If He was just another human man, a descendant of Adam like me then I’m in some real big trouble. If you believe that He was just a man like you, then you are also in some major trouble. If Jesus was a man born exactly like every other man on the planet, that would put Him on the same level as a “Confucius”, a “Mohammed”, an “Aristotle”, a”Caesar”, an “Alexander the Great”, an “Ivan the Terrible” or whoever else that you would care to name. You see if you do not believe in the virgin birth, who then is your savior? What makes your savior different than Islam? What is your salvation based or built upon foundationally? To who or what have you placed your confidence in when you die and leave this world? If it is not in anything that God has personally done, and God’s Word, then you are lost in your deception.
Isa 7:14 Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.
If Jesus Christ is not born of a virgin human woman, then He is not God in the flesh as this verse declared. If He was born of a literal virgin human woman without the involvment of a human father, then it is impossible for Him to be anything, but God in the flesh as the Bible teaches in many verses. I know that with modern technology, using test tube babies and in vitro-fertilization methods, it is very possible today for a woman to get pregnant without a man’s direct involvement. However, this was not the case nearly 2000 years ago when it was certainly not possible to get pregnant, except by the natural way that God had created created. If a natural human man was not involved, then God personally must have done something to intervene and circumvent the course of nature to cause the situation that Mary is said to be in in Matthew and Luke. In this verse in Isaiah God prophesies that a “virgin” would conceive. Now a virgin conception is not news, because that use to happen all of the time when she lost her virginity with her husband. But, a virgin woman with her hymen intact giving birth to a child, this had never happened before Jesus came along and entered into the world. The primary relevance from this verse is that there is no natural man mentioned in this future prophesied event in Isaiah other than the son being born. There is however, the direct mention of a spiritual being and that is God. God tells us that He will give us a sign. Signs are something that you are intimately familiar with if learn to drive a car. A sign gives us instructions, knowledge; information, guidance, direction and these are all applicable to God’s message in this prophecy. Do you see how essential the virgin birth is said to be? If you do not have this information or maybe you missed it, or maybe you ignored it, then you are missing an important “Sign” from God on the roadway of life. You have absolutely no foundation for being saved, because you do not know who you believe in or why.
The Hebrew name of the virgin’s son is said to be “Immanuel”, which when looked up, means “God With Us”. This was God in the form of a man. Now we are beginning to understand how a virgin birth is even possible 2000 years ago. However, important this information is, you would think that God would give us many verses that speak to this fact in the Bible. However, I have found that God is not that way. God does not give you overwhelming evidence to anything in the Bible, in order to let you choose what you want to believe in. If God wrote the Bible with clear evidence, you would be forced into believing the truth and that is not how God works by design.
Mat 1:23 Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.
God repeats the prophecy of Isaiah in this verse in Matthew and this is one of the only two times it is directly mentioned in the Bible. The name “Immanuel” in the O.T. is said to be “Emmanuel” in the Greek N.T., but it is the same Hebrew word and as you can see it means “God With Us”. Fortunately for us correct interpretation of the Bible only requires two witnesses to establish any truth. So just because there is only two direct witnesses to this truth does not diminish the importance of the information given to us. There are many ignorant teachers on the internet who like to say, Paul never said anything about a virgin birth, so therefore it is not important. People can be so spiritually blind sometimes. Just because Paul did not say anything directly, does not mean he did not write anything about it indirectly. Maybe I’ll talk more about that later. But, for now let’s continue on with the importance of knowing about the virgin birth.
1Jn 4:3 And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world.
Ask yourself this question, why is it so important for Satan to try to deceive people into not believing in a virgin birth? Have you ever thought about that? Obviously Satan is hard at work at attempting to get people not to believe in a virgin birth. Satan uses people who say they are Christians, but yet deny the virgin birth and thus they deny God came in the flesh and according to the Bible, this is the spirit of “anti-Christ”. Did you notice what John wrote in this verse of scripture? God tells us that the spirit of anti-Christ will deny that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. Isn’t this the debate that is raging on the internet? Has Jesus Christ been born of a virgin woman? Who is this Jesus Christ? According to the Bible Jesus Christ was God in the flesh. You see Satan is denying that God came in person to the earth. This is directly related to the subject of Christians believing in the virgin birth. Do you understand this? You see if this verse says what I think it does, you cannot be a Christian and not believe in the virgin birth. Otherwise God says you are a part of the “anti-Christ” and that makes you by default as none of His. Now are you beginning to see the importance of believing in the virgin birth?
2Jn 1:7 For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist.
Again we see that God says there are those in the earth that are debating the deity of Jesus Christ and these are those that have the spirit of “anti-Christ”. In other words they are being used by Satan to deceive others into believing a lie. What benefit does Satan derive from you not believing in the virgin birth? What advantage does Satan possess when you don’t believe that God has come to the earth in the flesh? Satan gains you as his possession for eternity, and that is not a good place to end up. You do not have salvation, if you do not have a virgin birth. If you think you do, you are going to have to explain what you base your faith on.
Rom 10:9 That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.
Let me give you one indirect reference to the virgin birth that is related to the salvation of every Christian. In this verse God says that if you believe that God raised Jesus from the dead and confess Him as your Lord you will be saved. What makes the resurrection of Jesus from the dead different than say the resurrection of Lazarus from the dead (John 11:43)? Didn’t God raise Lazarus from the dead after being in the grave for 4 days? Heck, Jesus was only in the grave for three days, it would seem Lazarus was a greater miracle and sign for us to believe in. What makes Jesus different than Lazarus and why aren’t we saved, if we believe that God raised Lazarus from the dead. Most people just don’t think when they read the Bible, I guess? I hope you are beginning to understand the importance of the virgin birth, at least a little bit. You see the only difference between Jesus and Lazarus is one of them was born of a virgin. One of them was God and one of them was not. Guess who that was? You see if you don’t know or your don’t believe it happened; you have no confidence in your salvation or your Savior. There were multiple people raised from the dead in the Gospels. Why don’t any of them save us? The major difference was that none of them were God. They all died again and were buried. But, Jesus is living in heaven seated at the right hand of majesty forever alive. So next time you meet someone who does not believe in the virgin birth, ask them who saved them?
If you would like to continue reading in this series of lessons about “Understanding the Virgin Birth” please continue with “Part 2“.
Understanding How to Become a Light to a Dark World! Part 3
(Ver 1.2) This is Part 3 in a series of advanced spiritual Bible lesson on “How to Become a Light to a Dark World”. If you have not read it from the beginning, I would highly recommend that you go back and start with “Part 1“. Today I want to discuss briefly a false teaching that has been around in the church for a number of years. I probably heard this taught 20 years ago and I’m sure that it was not an original teaching, but something that has been around much longer than that. Here is the basic teaching, the minister said that the church represented the symbolic moon in Genesis 1:16. Because we were those who were a light to the others that were in the darkness. He based his teaching on the presumption that Christians had no ability to produce light upon themselves and were dependent upon the light from the Sun in order to reflect His glory to others. He based his teaching on the fact that the Moon is said to rule the Night and the Sun is said to rule the Day. In listening to him, he thought that the moon represented the church based upon these few facts derived from human reasoning. Unfortunately for him, he could not provide any scriptures to back up what he taught and that is where it all fell apart to me. You must let the Bible interpret itself. You must get two or three witness in order to establish any truth and you must follow God’s rules or you will remain clueless.
If you have read this series from the beginning you should understand that the moon does rule the night and that the Sun does rule the day. The Sun is clearly Jesus Christ so far we agree with at least part of the erroneous teaching. But, that is where I depart company. I do not recall any scriptures that I remember reading that tells me that the church rules the night. To be a ruler means to be a king or a prince over those people. That means you have authority and power to control what they do. Clearly the church does not do that. Evil in the world is growing at a rapidly progressive pace. There is terrorism and evil happening worldwide. So is the church doing anything to control it? It sure doesn’t look like it to me. So I want to address the identity of the moon from a Bible perspective and look at the physical qualities of the moon to analyze them to see who we can see that they could possibly represent.
Searching for the Descriptive Qualities of the Moon!
The moon is a small object that revolves counter clockwise around the earth. As you may know, the moon does not produce any light on its own ability, other than to reflect what is coming from the sun. The moon is a dead, lifeless object that has no known great value. I recall when astronauts brought back rocks from the moon. If they had any great value other than being from the moon, I believe that we would already have mining colonies on the moon recovering them. I realize that the moon helps determine tide cycles and things like that and has purposes for existence, but why do some planets have multiple moons and we have only one? Ok, let’s take this analogy a little further, the earth revolves around the sun in annual cycles. The moon revolves around the earth in monthly type cycles. So when the earth completes one cycle around the sun, the moon has completed approximately 12 cycles around the earth. This is what I believe, I believe that God created natural things as views into the windows of spiritual things. So what do we learn from what I have said so far? It is very difficult to see how the moon fits a type of a symbolic representation for the church, the apostles or any believers, based upon this information only. The church is not dead, it is not lifeless and it is not the ruler of the night or of the world. Heck the church can’t even vote to elect a Christian to be president, so we control nothing to very little in the world.
Also note this fact, the moon goes in cycles and goes from a state of total darkness to a state of total wholeness or full illumination and then back again to total darkness. Also, note that the moon has a dark side that is not normally seen by man. You see the moon has a symbolic side that has not been revealed to men. This is the dark side that cannot be seen and this is symbolic of the deception and the hidden evil spiritual qualities of someone. Is that the church? Does the church have a hidden dark side? I do not believe that is the case. No this fits a picture of Satan more than anyone else. Did you know that we would not know anything about the existence of Satan, if it were not for the Word of God? Have you ever thought about that? Have you ever seen Satan personally? You see you have not, the only way you know about the existence of Satan, is by the Word of God that reveals him to us. So in order for us to even see Satan, God must give us the light in His Word to reveal him to us. It is only by the light of the Word of God that shines on this symbolic moon that you can see or understand that Satan exists. So that is a very different perspective on what the light represents and the moon represents that God has taught me. You have to realize that there are still many hidden things about Satan, that we do not know, because, God has not revealed more information or given more understanding to us about the information that is written in the Bible. So the dark side of the moon represents the unknown or hidden parts of Satan, the illuminated side of the moon represents the parts of Satan that have been revealed to us by God’s word. The New Moon when the sky is completely dark is representative of the hidden Satan. I struggle with the fact that anyone can think the moon represents Christians, because it reflects the light of Christ to a dark world. The main problem that I have with that logic is the fact when the moon goes into a new moon phase of the cycle, there is no light reflected and thus no moon is seen. Is this what happens to the church? Does the church go through cycles of complete darkness where God is not available to shine on us? If they do, they shouldn’t. Genesis 1:16, tells us that the moon is the entity that rules the vast night sky and this can only be Satan. I guess I haven’t given you very many scriptures about the identity of the symbolic moon, but I’ll fix that soon.
Christians do not live in darkness any more according to what Jesus taught us in John 8:12. So is the moon of the day or of the night? Is the moon seen normally in the light of the day or in the darkness of the night? I know technically speaking, if you can see the moon, then the moon must be getting some sunlight on its face. But, what dominates the moon? Is it the light of the sun or is it the darkness of the night sky? Which is greater? The little bit of sunlight being reflected or the vast darkness of the night sky? According to some people’s logic, the moon reflects the true light of Christ, but yet still lives in and is dominated by the night and the darkness of this world because Christ is not here and therefore, the spiritual sun has set. We can clearly see that this is not what Jesus said and not what other Bible verses teach either. Jesus said you will not be in the darkness anymore, meaning before you believed you were in the darkness and after you believed you were now in the light. Some try to say that the dark night sky are the unsaved people that we are a light to. But, yet the moon is only partially lit and has a dark side that has no light. This just doesn’t fit the church. For the church, a transition is said to have occurred from total darkness to the light of day. This could only correspond to the difference between night and day and no other condition makes any logical sense.
The Same Sun Shines on Both the Good and the Evil People in the World!
Many people have the idea that only Christians have any ability to see the light of God, and this is mostly true. Then they want to take that and try to convince you that only Christian can reflect the light of God. That is where I begin to deviate from that line of thought. But, I guess it does depend upon your definition of what light is. I have already demonstrated to you that Jesus called John the Baptist a light, before there was any Christians. Here is a verse that is also very interesting to this subject. Jesus is speaking and He says something you should see:
Mat 5:45 That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
Jesus said the same Sun shines on the evil as well as the good. Uh oh? If you understand the Bible, you understand that Satan is the originator of all evil. Evil is a synonymous term for the devil. The devil is just another title for Satan. That means if the moon is Satan, that Jesus is telling us it is still possible for the light of God to shine on him. Do you understand that logic? Some people seem to think that Satan is only representative of the darkness and as we can see from what Jesus says, that this is not the case. You see what God is saying, is from our perspective, the sun will shine on everyone equally the same. The Bible says that God shows no favoritism, nor shows any respect to persons. What that is telling us, is that God is a constant and consistent Spiritual being that treats everyone with equal fairness. God is a constant and a consistent source of the light for everyone, that would include Satan also. So using this logic we can see that the light is made available to everyone equally. So there must be another determining factor for who sees the light and which people let this light in. Let’ me give you some scriptures that inform us of Satan’s evil. We do know that Satan is called the “wicked one” in 1 John:
1Jn 5:18 We know that whosoever is born of God sinneth not; but he that is begotten of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not.
1Jn 5:19 And we know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness.
1Jn 5:20 And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life.
Here are 3 verses that speak a tremendous amount of information about our subject. The devil is called the “wicked one”. The wicked one is another term for “evil one”. In fact if you look up the definition of the Greek work “wicked” you will see that it can mean evil. So Satan is confirmed to be a candidate for the evil that God’s light also shines on. Then in verse 19, God tells us that the whole world is full of wickedness or evil. This is representative of those who are in the darkness. Finally, in verse 20 we see that Jesus has come into the wicked world and given to us an ability to understand and thus to know Him who is True. Then it declares something very profound, we are said to be in Him that is True and it declares Him to be Jesus Christ the Son of God. So let me ask you this, if we are in Jesus Christ and the Spirit of Jesus Christ is in us, do we just reflect the true light or does the Bible say we are the true light? That statement will probably rock many religious boaters who are afraid to get out of the boat and walk on the water like Peter did. What we need to take away from these verses is the world is an evil place controlled by the wicked one. However, the church is now” in” the True Son, Jesus Christ. Again we have to conclude that, if Jesus Christ is the One that is True, who is the one that is false? Obviously, this is not a trick question, you can see from these verses that Satan is called the evil one! What we have is a classic Good vs. Evil conflict being presented to us.
Finally, in verse 20, it says that Jesus has given unto us an “understanding”. Is this another reference to the Light of God shining inside of Christians? Those who understand the truth? I believe that it is a direct confirmation to what the light is, who gives the light and where the light lives now.
Why Is It Better For Jesus To Go Away?
I think I want to address another point that someone made in a comment. They seemed to think that while Jesus Christ was on the earth, He was the Light and I agree with that part of the statement. But, then they said when Jesus Christ was taken out of the world we now do not have the direct Light and the Sun has set. Which do you prefer, the daylight or the nighttime? Is it better to work during the day and sleep during the night or what? In other words, it would appear that some people think that it would have been better for Christ to stay in the world so that we could have the True Light in all of its direct intensity and splendor. Now that Jesus Christ is not in the world some seem to think that the sun has set and we only live in the darkness with some reflected light off of the moon. However, Jesus taught something that is very different:
Joh 16:7 Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you.
As you can read, this verse says that Jesus thought it was more highly beneficial for Him to go away than to stay on the earth. Why is that important to see? Jesus said if he leaves He can send us the “Comforter” which you should know is the Holy Spirit and He will enter into your spirit and abide with you forever. You can read more about the Comforter in John 14:16-26 and John 15:26. What Jesus is telling us, is that my Spirit will come into you and abide with you forever and this is better than if I stay here physically. So did Jesus ever leave? Or did He return and rise internally, inside of us by His Spirit? For God to be inside of me 24×7 is far better than having 5 minutes of physical Jesus’ time externally.
The True Identity of the Moon and the False Light!
I have tried to give you scriptures that back up my statement of the definition of Light and Darkness, Day and Night! Now let’s shift gears and go to see some verses about Satan and see how he is described to us. What does the Bible say about this “False Light” that I talked about earlier:
2Co 11:14 And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.
Some seem to think that Satan has no light, however, here is a verse that would seem to say something a bit different than that. In this verse, Satan is spoken of as a spiritual being that “transforms” into an “angel of light”. What does that mean? If I put on a costume, I could transform myself into a Police Officer, but does that make me a true Police Officer? No you see it clearly does not. It only means I am pretending to be a Police Officer. The word “transform” according to the Strong’s can mean to “disguise”. A disguise is of course a costumed fake or a false appearance. Sound Familiar? You can clearly call it a false appearance for Satan to portray himself as an angel of light. The Bible says that God is Light and in Him is no darkness, so we can see that Satan is trying to present himself as a messenger of the omnipotent God. This would appear to be a picture of the moon who reflects the true light, but yet has no real ability to produce the true light in himself. Someone who appears to be light, but is not really light. Is that a Christian? Or is that a good descriptive terminology for the moon as being a false light? Let’s see another definition to learn more:
2Co 11:13 For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ.
Here is that same Greek word for “Transforming” that is used to describe Satan in the very next verse of 2 Corinthians, this time used to describe those that are called “false apostles”. Uh oh? It does sound familiar? Those that are false apostles transform or disguise themselves to appear as true apostles. Isn’t this what Satan was said to do? To transform and appear as an angel of light? You can clearly see that Satan is called the “False Light” by these two verses. Satan is referred to in the Bible as a “deceiver” (Rev 12:9) and a “liar” (John 8:44), both of these terms would describe a spiritual being that is attempting to be something that he is not. You can also see an implied meaning of the moon, being given to us. The moon goes through phases of transformation from total darkness to fully illuminated light and then back again to darkness. To transform means and implies a constant change is occurring. You can see Satan today, tomorrow he will appear to be different. On the other hand, God is Light, and He is a constant never changing source of strength and truth to us. Which one is the church suppose to model our lives after? Is the church suppose to transform themselves constantly like the moon? Or are we to remain constant and consistent, growing into the image of Christ who is the Sun? You see the moon cycle only makes sense for the church on the half of the phase that grows brighter and not the reverse phase where it vanishes. The church is never ever is suppose to go back into the darkness. Here is kind of an interesting verse to see:
Rev 16:13 And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet.
Satan is clearly described, being called “the dragon” (Rev 12:9) as someone who is associated with the beast and the “false” prophet”. Again we see Satan being called a deceiver, someone who portrays himself as a prophet, but is full of lies. The words of their mouth are described as being unclean spirits that look like frogs. These spirits would try to consume or eat the true words, by a plague of deceptive words. At least what we see is that Satan is in control and heavily associated with the spread of lies and false teaching and boy is that all over the internet.
Mat 7:15 Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.
Jesus gives us a word of warning about people who disguise themselves on the outside but are extremely harmful on the inside. These are called “False Prophets” and that would indicate they are “False Lights”. Who do you think controls these liars? It can only be Satan. Here is another interesting verse of Scripture that describes Satan:
Eph 6:12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
So again this verse is talking about Satan our adversary. It clearly calls him the “Ruler of the Darkness” of this world. Who or what are we told, is it that rules the night? According to the Genesis 1:16 it is the “lesser light” AKA the “moon” (Ps 136:9). I do not recall any verse in the N.T. that says the church Rules the Night? Do you know of any? To rule means to dominate, to control, and to exercise authority over. Jesus is clearly the Ruler of the Church, but who rules those that are not Christ’s? It is not Christ and it is not the church, so it must be the moon, Satan. Don’t get me wrong, the church can certainly be a light to them that are in the darkness, but we do not rule them, we just show them the way out of their darkness by preaching the gospel. If they believe it, they are saved and the Sun of God rises in their hearts and now they are no longer living in the darkness either.
Now you can see in 1 Corinthians 2:6-8 and Ephesians 2:2 that Satan is also called the “Prince” of this world. A “Prince” is also defined as a “ruler”, look up the word and see what it means. All this does is tells us who rules the Night and the darkness that is in the world. It is Satan who rules those who live in the darkness and he is the symbolic moon that deceives many into thinking they already have the true light. As long as people believe the lies of the enemy over the truth of God’s word they will remain in darkness and be ruled and controlled by Satan. This is the reality of the spiritual conditions of men’s hearts.
2Pe 2:1 But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction.
What we have seen are scriptures and many verses in the Bible that show there are true lights and false lights in the world today. These false lights represents people in the world that teach lies in whole or in part. False teachers, false prophets, false apostles, these are all instruments of darkness , controlled by the ruler of the darkness, used by Satan to deceive those who are easily fooled. People walking in the darkness, easily are tripped up and stumble and they do not know or understand in what it is that causes them to fall.
Perhaps you can find scriptures that back your point of view, however, they will not discount or discredit the verses that I just gave you. God’s word never contradicts itself so if you find verses that says the church is the moon, you will have to change the verses that I just gave you or delete them from your Bible. You can change the meaning of the word of God, simply by changing the definitions of a few words. If you do not use God’s definitions, you are buying into Satan’s definitions. This is what happens everyday in the world and on the internet.
Being the True Light to A Dark World!
So I have taught you that to be a true light to the world you must possess wisdom, understanding and knowledge that others in the darkness need and want to see. It is a well known fact that people do not know, what they do not know and this describes Christians as well as unsaved people in the world. Too many Christians think they know something valuable and try to go give it to others, but end up doing more harm than good. If you have only been saved a short time, guess what, maybe you should go and study and learn something that is worthy for others to know, before you try to be a light for Christ. Here is a verse that speaks volumes about internet bloggers that I compete with.
Heb 5:12 For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat.
God says, that everyone should be on a path to be a teacher to others. Everyone should be learning and growing up spiritually. Every Christian should become a light to those who are in the darkness. But, God clearly says it is a process to become this, and it does not automatically happen. Why is that? God writing to the Hebrews said that by now they should have been teachers, but because of their lack of understanding they were clearly not qualified for this task. They needed to go back and study the basics, drinking the milk meant for babies before they could ever attempt to teach anything that had meat in it. Only you and God know where you are and what you are able to do. Check up with Him before you do anything crazy. God Bless!
Understanding How to Become a Light to a Dark World! Part 2
(Ver 1.3) We are studying an advanced spiritual Bible lesson of “How to Become a Light to an Unsaved Dark World”. This is the second lesson in the series and we have already covered many new ways of thinking about this very important subject. If you have not read the first lesson, I would highly recommend that you go and start with “Part 1” since I cannot repeat everything in every lesson or I would never be able to teach anything new. What we have learned so far is that there are two dimensions of spiritual condition. These were called Light and Darkness or Night and Day by God we were introduced to this concept in Genesis 1:16. In this same verse we learned that these realms also had rulers that controlled each. The Sun ruled the Day and the moon ruled the night. I then taught you clear verses that Jesus was the Sun that rules the day and gives us spititual light. We have also uncovered a new Bible definition for what “Light” is in the eyes of God. According to Bible examples, to give light is the method of teaching people the truth. We also learned of the Bible existence of the “True Light” which was just another title for Jesus Christ. However, the existence of any “True Light” reveals the implied presence of “false light” that must also exist in the world by the law of antithesis. We have reviewed approximately 10 verses that confrimed Jesus Christ’s identity as the symbolic Sun that rules the symbolic spiritual realm of the Day, giving you more than enough references to Him in this capacity. Today I want to continue the lesson with information about other lights that exist in the world besides Jesus the true light called the Sun of Righteousness. In knowing this truth, you will suddenly realize that you have a cmpetition to teaching the truth.
Understanding There is More than One Source of Light!
Getting the correct Bible interpretation of the Truth of God is highly dependent us upon getting God’s definitions of the words spoken in the verses being studied. Given our new definition of what light is (teaching others God’s knowledge and giving them true understanding), only God had all light until He started sharing it for others to learn by Jesus teaching them. Now, whoever, hears the truth and understands it also has the same light from God in them in a very limited capacity. So at one time God had all of the light in Him, but each of us who has heard and believed now has a little bit of His light in us right now. I believe I have just introduced you to how to become a light to the world. There is a concept given to us by God in this lesson that if you do not know anything or understand anything in the Bible then you would be classified as someone who is in the darkness (lacking and true light) and I will give you several verses in the Bible to confirm this later. But, when you believe in Christ and have made Him the Lord of your life, you now have heard the Gospel and let that light shine inside of you.
If you look at the night sky, you might realize that most of those star lights in the sky are far greater in size and intensity than our Sun? The only reason they appear so small and insignificant to us, is because of the distance from our planet. There exists well over a billion suns in our universe and most of them are many millions of light years away from the earth. So obviously God did not create a universe with only One True Light source as an example to get us to think differently. This however, does not mean there are many ways to God or many religions that can give you the true light. We just have to learn there are many sources of light in the world, at least one of them is called the True Light, but yet the others still exist and some of these might qualify as even being a false light. If you understand the Bible, the “stars” in some verses can be a symbolic term used to describe “angels” (for example stars in Rev 1:20 , Rev 12:4). These little lights in the sky can be symbolic of angels and guess who Satan was? Satan of course was one of the chief angels. Oh, well maybe we’ll get into that more later. What I want you to start to see, is that Satan can be called a light producing spiritual being. It is very much like the old saying that goes “God taught Satan everything that he knows, but God didn’t teach him everything that He knew”. If Satan holds some knowledge and understanding of spiritual things, then he is by definition a light carrier or spreader. We will talk more about that later.
What I will now attempt to do is show you scriptures that will inform us of the existence of other stated lights in the world. By establishing the existence of other types of lights in the world other than Jesus Christ, we can begin to see how we can become one of the true lights to a dark world that can counter those that are false lights. I will start this part of the lesson with a description that Jesus gives us when speaking about John the Baptist:
Joh 5:35 He was a burning and a shining light: and ye were willing for a season to rejoice in his light.
Jesus was speaking about John the Baptist using the terms that he was a witness to the truth. Notice that John the Baptist was not an apostle of Jesus. John was not even a member of the church, since the church does not exist yet. Still, John the Baptist is spoken of in terms that were rarely seen to describe anyone in the Bible up until this point. If you study the Bible closely you should discover that John the Baptist was in the ministery category of a “prophet” of God, but yet he was still just a man like you and me. Jesus calls John a burning and a shining light! That sounds a lot like a description for a sun, but it could also represent a torch type of fire light, or maybe even a description for a candle. We know John is not the Jesus the Sun of Righteousness, but yet he is described using similar terminology. What we can clearly see is that he is never described using any of the characteristics of the moon. The moon shines, but it does not burn. I find that very interesting don’t you? So what made John the Baptist a burning light? I believe it was because he went about teaching people to “Repent and be baptized” ? John is said to be the one that was to prepare the way for the Christ. When John was born, his father was filled with the Holy Spirit and began to prophesy about John and Jesus. In this discourse in Luke 1, you can read that John is called a Prophet of God. Then you can see this statement and it tells us why Jesus called John a light:
Luk 1:77 To give knowledge of salvation unto his people by the remission of their sins,
John’s father prophesied that John would “Give the Knowledge of Salvation” unto the people of Israel concerning “the remission of their sins”. Wow that is some strong information being given to us. John was a light, because he taught people about the coming works of the Messiah. Jesus came to Save His People from their sins and this was very good news for everyone to hear. What we have just learned, is that John was a light, before Jesus Christ was a light to the same dark world. Interesting, isn’t it? You can obviously see that Jesus is not speaking physically or naturally, so Jesus was definitely speaking figuratively and symbolically about the forerunner and this witness of Christ. John brought the knowledge and understanding to the people that the Messiah was coming, so Jesus called him a bright light to the people. John brought the truth and taught the people and Jesus said it was very good.
Mat 5:14 Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.
Jesus also confirms, that we the church are now the light of the world. Here we have Jesus speaking to the apostles, the founders of the church of Jesus Christ, calling them lights, before they were even born again. I find that very interesting to study. This verse in Mat 5:14, is an exact duplication of the same Greek words and phrasing that Jesus used to describe Himself in John 8:12. Jesus said “I am the light of the world”, then in Matthew 5:14 Jesus says “You are the light of the world”. So is Jesus trying to teach us something new? Both of these verses describes us in the same terms of being “Light” as He is the “Light”. This Greek word means to “shine” as with “rays”. It also has an inferred meaning of “fire”. All of this sounds like the sun light and not the reflective moonlight.
Rom 2:19 And art confident that thou thyself art a guide of the blind, a light of them which are in darkness,
We can clearly see that we are the light to them that are in darkness. I guess you could wrongly conclude that means we represent the moon. The moon is in the night sky being illuminated by the sun and that makes good logical sense. However, this verse does not say we reflect the light of Christ, it says we are the light of Christ. Do you understand the difference? This is almost exactly what Jesus said in Matthew 5:14 that we read right before this verse. Have you ever thought or seen where the Bible says “We are the Body of Christ”? Have you ever given that much thought? To be the body of Christ would indicate that we have the same Spirit in us that Jesus Christ had in Him. If that is true, then we are the True Light and we are not just a reflection of the True Light. Maybe you should go and read, Romans 12:5, 1 Cor 12:12-27, and Ephesians 5, where it describes the Church to be the actual body of Christ. That is actually a very important truth to know. Where you go, Christ goes, because the Spirit of Christ is in you. Here is another very relevant scripture that Jesus describes Christians in terms that we need to understand:
Mat 13:43 Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.
The church is called those who are righteous(Rom 10:10). Therefore the church is spoken of in terms of being the true light from the sun and not just a reflection of that light. If the church is the moon, this would have been a good opportunity for God to tell us that. Instead of saying the church will shine like the moon, we are described in terminologies of the direct sun. I find that very relevant to our understanding of who we are and what we do.
So what does it mean to be called a light of the world? To be a shining light of the world means to be a deliverer of the knowledge of God and a teacher of the Gospel of Christ. The word of God is the Light of God. If you understand it, you can teach it to others. So far in the Bible, I have not discovered any scriptures that describes the church or believers in terms of just being reflections of the light of Christ as the moon does. What you actually see in the Bible is more terms that describe us to be like the sun, than the moon.
Where is the Location of the Light and the Darkness?
Now let’s describe where this light and darkness is located. By understanding the location of the light and darkness, we can better understand what they really are. We of course know that the sky above us is the domain of natural light and natural darkness. But, since I am talking about spiritual things instead of natural things, where is this spiritual light and spiritual darkness? You see if Jesus says we are the light of the world, that could imply that we just glow in the dark in the night, but clearly that is not what the Bible is talking about. Given my earlier definition of light as being “knowledge” and “understanding” where does this exist? You could say in your brain, or in your mind or within your intellect and that would be very closely related to the truth. Your mind is not your spirit and your spirit is not your mind. However, your mind is in contact with your spirit. I have not given a direct lesson on the human makeup, but I have alluded to it in other blogs. People are spirit beings, that have a soul, who live in a body. That just so happens to be a triune being, made in the image and likeness of God. The soul of man is comprised of your mind, your will and your emotions. Your mind/soul exists between your body and your spirit. Sound waves of spoken words enter your physical ears, and are transferred into your mind by your inner ear, which can allow these words to enter into your spirit, if you choose to believe what you hear. These are just basic Bible truths that I hope that you understand already. So let’s continue to locate the spiritual light using the Bible:
Joh 11:10 But if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there is no light in him.
Jesus tells us something very profound here, Jesus says a man that walks at night without the light “IN HIM” stumbles. Where is the Light suppose to be? The light is said to be internal, inside your body, this is the location of the spirit of the man. So where is the Night? It is also inside a man in their spirit? How do you stumble in your spirit? That again is a question that you should ask yourself. Obviously this is not a physical light source, if you cut open a Christian’s body you do not see light rays shooting outward. So what is this internal light a symbol of? The internal light is simply a symbolic representation of spiritual knowledge and understanding that we possess. In actuality there are two types of spiritual light that are related, the light that is in us, is the light we possess internally, because we see and understand parts of the Bible. Being a light to the world is taking this light that is in us and sharing it with those who live in the darkness so that they might also know and understand.
So do Christians have this Light IN them always and forever? Jesus gives us very explicitly the location of the light, to be in our spirits. We can see that a man who has no light in him is in darkness and said to be in the Night and he stumbles. Why does he stumble? Because of his mind and his thinking and his lack of knowledge and understanding. What Jesus is talking about are the differences between those that understand the Bible and those who do not understand the Bible. If I understand the Bible, or at least a part of it, I have some light inside of me. This light came from God, and from His Word. There are tons of people in the world who do not have a clue what the Bible says or means and these people all live in the darkness of the night, because of their ignorance and lack of understanding. Here is a very valuable scripture to see in our discussion:
2Co 4:4 In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.
What is darkness and how is it related to Blindness? Both of these are the absence of light or the inability to spiritually see the light. No Light, then you have No Sight! Satan has blinded the minds of ALL of them that believe NOT, this verse says. Because of this blindness in their SOULS/MINDS, they are unable to see the light of the gospel of Christ in THEM (their spirits). Did you notice that the Gospel of Christ is called the LIGHT of GOD? What is the Gospel? It is the good news of what Jesus Christ has freely given to every man, woman and child. So we can conclude that those who do not believe in Christ, do not understand the Gospel, because Satan has deceived them into believing something else and therefore they do not see the light of the Truth in their spirits. The Light is again spoken of in terms of being spiritual knowledge and understanding of God’s Word. Knowing and understanding God’s word would be the ability to see the True Light. Jesus is said to be the giver of the Light, but Satan is at work diligently to block the light. How does Satan do this? He presents false teachings, false religions, false gods, false prophets, and false apostles to deceive you into a lie. Also, Satan can place thoughts, ideas and suggestions in your mind to cause you to be distracted from the truth.
So I have given you two major scriptures that inform us where the light is suppose to be. This location is said to be in the spirit of man. Also, keep in mind where the darkness is located, it is in the spirits of men and women. So to be a light to them that are in darkness is a practice to tell people the truth of the Word of God and pray that they believe it and understand it. If they choose to believe the truth, the spiritual Sun can rise inside of them also, then they will be born of the Day and no longer live in darkness.
Defining Spiritual Night and Day!
We have been talking about the subjects of darkness and light and I have mentioned that these are clearly synonymous terms for night and day. Correctly understanding the Bible means, finding and understanding God’s definitions of the Bible terms and symbols presented. God many times uses these types of natural symbols to teach hidden things that men think they already understand. But, because we do not get God’s definition for the subject, we are usually confused and live with what we think the Bible says. But, if we can get God’s definition for the words, then we can have greater assurance of a more accurate interpretation for what God wanted us to know in the first place. We have already read many scriptures in this lesson so far on this subject, but let’s go find new scriptures that help us to define what Night and Day is to God using His Word.
1Jn 2:8 Again, a new commandment I write unto you, which thing is true in him and in you: because the darkness is past, and the true light now shineth.
As you can read again, Jesus is referred to as the “True Light”. But, it also says that to those who have accepted Him, the darkness has passed. Meaning Christians no longer live in the realm of darkness or in the spiritual night. Therefore if the light is present in us, the spiritual sun (Jesus) has not set, He has only risen internally in our spirits. Day and light and night and darkness are synonymous symbolic terms. Therefore from this verse we can see by implied antithesis that the day has appeared in us. The term “True Light” infers the existence of “False Light” as we have already discussed. People can of course dispute this or explain it away by their human reasoning and their definition of the word “True”. However, in my way of thinking if something is said to be true it would have to be something that was the opposite of a lie, or the opposite of that which is false. Any cleaver lie can appear very real on the surface and be taken by many to be true. It is very much like watching a Hollywood, movie. Everything in the movie is usually based upon lies, but they are presented in a format that appears to us to be so absolutely real. This is exactly how deception is presented in the world by Satan.
What you need to do is see what the Bible says. In this verse in 1 John 2:8, there is a direct connection to the Word of God and the light that shines in us. John writes a new commandment to us, yet this new commandment is more directly called the Word of God which gives us the light. These words are said to be True in Christ and now also in us! All of these words are in direct relationship to the spiritual light that is now shinning in us, because we have heard and accepted it. We have already seen the location of the light as being “In Us”. So we can conclude that the reason for the light that is now shinning in us, was given to us from us hearing, knowing and understanding the Word of God.
2Pe 1:19 We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts:
Reading this verse carefully, it describes a spiritual process that has occurred within every believer. Our hearts use to be called a” dark place” without Christ, that would indicate that we were of the night and did not understand the Word of God. However, now it says that the “Day Star” has arisen in our hearts and the Day has Dawned within us. Do you understand that the sun rises every day and that begins the daylight hours? Jesus is called the “Day Star” and this is representative of our closest star that we observe during the daylight hours. So does the spiritual Day Star ever set in Christian hearts? I have not found any verses that say that occurs, in fact we just read a verse that said the darkness had passed. So the light is always present, when it arises in us, it is there for good. This is just another reason to see that we are not the moon who goes completely dark. The Christians are now described as being of the spiritual Day, because of the “Day Star” that has arisen within us. That would indicate that wherever we go Christ the Day Star goes also. It would also mean that we now have understanding of the Word of God in our sprits that it is permanently resident there.
1Th 5:5 Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness.
As you can see in this verse we (the Church) are again confirmed to be of the Day and not of the night. The moon only shines at night and not normally during the day so we have to fit what we believe to what we read in the Bible. I hope that you are seeing and understanding these verses. This verse says that we are the children of the Light, which infers there are also children of the night, but these are not Christians. You can clearly see that there is an established division being stated. This separation between Day and Night is very explicitly defined. The day is a 12 hour period of light, the night a 12 hour period of darkness. These are two separate and distinct spiritual conditions. I believe that the earth symbolically represents both those who are saved and those who are lost. You can understand how I got to this conclusion by studying the parable of the Sower in Mark 4. Jesus tells us that the earth or the soil represents the hearts of people. Now think in terms of the earth and the earth’s counter clockwise rotation. Those on the dark side of the earth that have turned away from the Sun, represents those who are lost. Those who have turned to the Light they are the ones that are saved. Those in the night are ruled by the moon who they can occasionally see at night. The moon appears to be a reflection of the True Light, but yet it has a dark side that is not revealed to people. However, the Sun represents God and His light radiates in every direction lighting the good, the bad, the pretty and the ugly at the same time. The Sun rules the Day and those who are in the light and they do not see the moon, only the Sun. The Sun shines during the day and the moon is seen mostly in the night. It is just so obvious to me, that I can see it so very clearly. I guess I can understand how difficult it is to see for others who are new to these Bible verses.
Rom 15:21 But as it is written, To whom he was not spoken of, they shall see: and they that have not heard shall understand.
Here in this verse we can see that it is prophesied about a people who will begin to see. That would be the opposite of blindness and those in darkness. But, it also declares that they will hear with their ears and understand what is said. So we have a people spoken of that were spiritually blind, but now understand and know the truth. Those that see because of the Light of God and those who do not see because they live in darkness.
Eph 1:18 The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints,
Here is another witness to what the light is representing symbolically. In this verse the “eyes of your understanding” is spoken of as being something that is spiritually able to see or perceive the knowledge of God. Just as your body has natural eyes that observe physical light rays, the spiritual eyes have ability to perceive the truth or lies presented to it. All I am trying to do is to get you to see why I described what light and darkness meant in the symbolic usage that we have clearly observed in the Bible.
Eph 3:4 Whereby, when ye read, ye may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ
What we observe in the N.T. is a repeated pattern, that the Bible contains mysteries and things which are difficult or impossible for the natural man to see and understand. This information is concealed from them that do not believe for a purpose. But, to them that are open, God grants light to see and understand these hidden mysteries.
Eph 4:18 Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart:
There are just so many verses in the Bible that speak of this spiritual situation of darkness and the inability to understand, that I cannot give you them all. I hope and pray that I have given you enough to see them for what they are. Spiritual blindness is a condition of the heart/spirit whereby men are incapable of understanding anything that is spiritual. In this verse in Ephesians, knowledge is spoken of in terms of a beneficial way to the life of God. It is also reported that ignorance or the lack of knowledge is a determining factor that keeps people from the life of God. All of this is spoken of in terms of the ability of the spirit of man to see and to understand. I’ll just do one more scripture and I’ll quit trying to get you to see the definition of light and darkness, day and night.
Col 1:9 For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding;
God’s Word and His Spirit are again implied to be the Light that is rising within the hearts of these people to bring them wisdom and all spiritual understanding. That is an awesome prayer to pray for yourself and those that God sends you to. What you must realize is that if there is “spiritual understanding” that it must be different than “natural understanding”. People want to look at natural things and use human logic to determine the meaning of life. However, God says these people are just blind and they do not know where they are going or why they stumble and fall.
So we have seen a number of verses that inform us that there exists two spiritual dimensions. One is called the Day and one is called the Night. These two dimensions of light and darkness represents two groups of children. Those that are children of the day are the children of God. Those who are children of the night are children of Satan. You can theoretically pass from either state or dimension to the other simply by choosing to believe or disbelieve. I hope this is has been an informative lesson and that you have learned a lot. In the next lesson on this subject I will specifically talk about the symbolic identity of the moon. God Bless!
If you like to continue reading this series, you can go to “Part 3” now.
Understanding How to Become a Light to the Unsaved Dark World!
(Ver 1.3) This is Part 1 in a series of Bible lessons about the subject of “How to be a Light to the Unsaved World”. Most real Christians have a strong desire for others to come to the knowledge of Christ and accept the same salvation that they have experienced. Why is that? I think that it is a twofold motivation. First knowing how good God is drives me to share with people His goodness. Then second, knowing the consequences for not accepting Jesus that also drives me. But, how do you share something with someone you have absolutely no evidence or proof of possessing? If I could take you to a physical throne and show you God, that would be completely different than the system that God has designed for us to work within. So, how do you get people saved? Do you have a role to play in this happening? Or can God just save anyone that He wants to with or without your help? If you recall Jesus did not think so. Jesus looked at the people on the earth and said, the “harvest is plenteous, but the laborers are few” (Mat 9:37). That would indicate that we have a role to play in becoming a worker in God’s harvest field. What works and what doesn’t work in this field? Did you know every crop is not harvested in the same way? How you harvest corn is different than how you harvest cotten or potatoes. How does God define work? It certainly is a very complex world that we live in. Many people are distracted and deceived by many different things. People have been deceived in so many ways, that I cannot even list them all. Today I want to talk about how to be a light to the unsaved dark world using the definitions and methodologies revealed in the Bible. I want to discuss what darkness is, what light is and how we can help people get from the darkness into the light. I want to explore the correct meaning and interpretations of the symbolic references given to us in the Bible on this subject and help you to understand what God is saying. This will no doubt be a long series that will take multiple lessons. There is just too much information to cover in one blog, but I have to start somewhere.
The Moon Rules the Night! The Sun Rules The Day!
Let’s start with the basics. This is something that God taught me a few years ago and it has helped me tremendously in understanding these spiritual subjects. God gives us some very important information in the first chapter of Genesis. This chapter contains prophetic scriptures of future events. In fact the first chapter of Genesis gives us a prophetic view of the entirety of Human history on this planet. In Isaiah 46:10, the Bible tells us that God has made known the end from what was stated in the beginning. Suddenly we can understand that God must have concealed information about the end of the world somewhere in the informaiont of the creation account. Genesis chapter 1 is certainly representative of the beginning of our world, so it must inform us of the end of human history using symbolism or other methods of concealment. If you want to learn about this in depth, I have other lessons that tell about creation events in Genesis in more detail. I just want to focus on one verse for now, because it reveals to us something that we need to understand very clearly about the subject of light and darkness. In Genesis 1:16, God is talking about the events on the 4th day of creation and this is what He says:
Gen 1:16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
God tells us of “Two Great Lights”. Did you notice the number reference to “Two”? As in more than One. God clearly tells us there are multiple sources of light in this verse. God mentions, the “Greater light“, the “lesser light” and the “stars“. Then it says the Greater Light will rule the day and the lesser light will rule the night with the stars. So what do we have? We have the mention of “Day” and we have the mention of “Night”. These are normally defined as two 12 hour periods of time, which comprise and make up a full 24 hour revolution of the earth. So what is the “greater light” and what is this “lesser light”? It would appear to me to be references to the sun and the moon. What do you see when you look up into the night sky? The stars and the moon is what I see. I have been up in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado and looked at the night sky in the total darkness with the absence of city lights that blocks our view and I have seen the night sky in its splendor. It is very beautiful to see that clearly. In looking at the night sky, there is only one light that is greater than the stars and it is the moon. When the moon is in a phase of full illumination, it can be very bright, but yet nothing even close to the brilliance of the sun. In looking at the sky during the day, the brilliance of the sun, causes the stars and the moon to disappear or become very, very minor. So the Bible tells us in some indirect terminology, but yet very revealing terminology that the Sun is the Greater Light and it rules the day and the moon is the lesser light that rules the night. But, let me give you some confirming verses of this reality and a clearer definition of each of these two lights from the Bible. You can find them in Psalms:
Psa 136:7 To him that made great lights: for his mercy endureth for ever:
As you can see God is again referring to these “great lights” that God created. So let’s continue reading and find out what these lights are:
Psa 136:8 The sun to rule by day: for his mercy endureth for ever:
That is pretty clear now that God tells us his definition of the Greater Light. This time it tells us in very certain terms that this greater light in Genesis 1:16 is the Sun that rules the day. To rule means to “govern”, to have “power”, and to have “dominion” over”. Now let’s see who God says is the “lesser light”:
Psa 136:9 The moon and stars to rule by night: for his mercy endureth for ever.
Finally, we see a very clear definition of the “lesser light” as being the “moon”. It also confirms that the stars along with the moon will rule the realm of night. These references are all clearly symbolic of natural truths that God is attempting to use to teach us about a greater spiritual reality. If you do not understand symbolism in the Bible you can go find my lesson on the subject and review how God uses symbolism throughout the Bible to teach us. The moon is again said to have dominion and control over the night. Notice the moon does not rule the day nor does the sun rule the night in either of these examples. That is actually very important to understand for later. So what is this symbolic moon and what is the symbolic night? What we need to do is to go and get the definitions of these symbolic words from the Bible in order to see it from God’s perspective and that is what I will attempt to do in the rest of this lesson. I will start with the Sun and then attempt to define light and darkness. Next I will talk about Day and Night. Finally, I will end the lesson with the definition of moon.
Jesus Christ is the Sun and the Light of the World
What we should start to do when reading any Bible verse, is ask ourselves is God talking literally or symbolically or both simulataneously? Is God talking internally or externally or again both concurrently? Is God talking about physical things or spiritual things or as we will soon learn that God is usually using the natural things to teach us about the spiritual things so they are both technically relevant? Many times people struggle with reading a Bible verse and being able to distinguish between these two major differences. THis is why many people do not understand the Bible, they fail to rightly divide it. Then we need to define the terms found in any verse using only God’s definitions and ignoring man’s opinions. The Bible is so much more complex than we give it credit to be. God actually gave us all of the answers in His word, but yet they are not always easily found on the surface type of reading that most Christians do.
I believe it is very important to discuss Jesus first, that is why I selected to introduce you to the identity of the “Greater Light” first. Jesus is the primary reason for every Bible lesson and this one is no different. In the study of “Light” in the Bible we must find out where it comes from and then figure out what it is? So, who or what is the source of all light and life? According to the Bible it is Jesus Christ. This reality is actually very parallel to the natural sun which is the source of all life, light and heat on our planet. We should begin to see how God created the natural sun and see parallel characteristics of Jesus there. Let’s examine some verses that teach these truths:
Joh 8:12 Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.
Jesus informs us very clearly that He is the light of the world. I do not think that many people disagree with that point at all. However, Jesus is not speaking naturally or physically, so He must be speaking symbolically and spiritually. Jesus is informing us that He is the source of all of our spiritual light. He then informs us that those who follow him, they will not walk in darkness, but they shall have the “Light” of Life. We’ll talk more about that later. On the earth, the primary source of all light and life on this planet comes from our natural sun. Without the existence of the physical sun, there would be no life on our planet. I believe this is representative of a pattern that God gives us in the natural realm that describes Jesus in the spiritual realm. This verse in John certainly teaches us that they are both strikingly similar to each other by God’s design.
Rom 1:20 For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:
You can see that God tells us that creation reveals to us the hidden qualities of even God. By interpreting these natural qualities correctly you can understand spiritual things that you cannot see with your physical eyes. Let’s review some known observable facts about our physical sun and see what they teach us about God:
- Our Sun is only one star out of billions.
- Our Sun is the closest Star to our planet.
- The Sun is our primary source of all light and heat.
- The Sun is the only object in our solar system that produces light of its own power.
- Without the Sun the earth could not support life.
- The Sun appears to Rise and Set daily because of the earth’s 24 hour rotation.
- The earth travels around a complete circle of the sun in approximately 365 days.
Reading this list of sun facts, shows us that the subject is truly more complicated than it appeared at first. However, Jesus is still literally called the “Sun of Righteousness” in Malachi 4:2. That is just one of the most direct confirmation to the identity of Jesus as being the Sun that rules the day. The thing that we learn from studying the Bible is that God has purposely hidden information in the Bible, using several different techniques of concealment. One of these techniques is to call one thing by many different names and descriptions so that you cannot just search the Bible for the obvious name and find all of the scripture references that talk about this single subject. In other words, there are many names and ways that God uses to describe the sun and I will give you around 10 of them right now. We have already seen that the Sun is called the “Greater Light” in Genesis 1:16. Here are some of the names, titles and descriptive terms of Jesus Christ the Sun of God:
- The Sun of Righteousness (Malachi 4:2)
- The Greater Light (Gen 1:16)
- The Day Star (2 Peter 1:19)
- The Bright and Morning Star (Rev 22:16)
- The Morning Star (Rev 2:28)
- The Dayspring (Luke 1:78)
- The True Light (John 1:9, 1 John 2:8)
- The Light of the World (John 8:12, John 9:5)
- The Light of Life (John 8:12)
- The Sun (Rev 1:16, Rev 12:1)
What I have just given you are some of the many different verses in the Bible that describe Jesus Christ in expressive synonymous names and terms of the “Sun”. If you study these verses you will see they speak of Jesus Christ in terms described as a bright and shining light which emit rays like the Sun. Jesus symbolically shining as rays of light to the people of the world. We will define this reality and learn to understand what it means very soon.
Now I want to talk about another truth about Jesus and give you some new perspectives to look at and to think about. If you study the Bible you can see that God and Jesus are described as being the Word of God. In other words, God and His Word are one in the same:
Joh 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
What we learn from this verse, is that we cannot separate God and His word, then God tells us in John 1:14 that the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. You can by simple logic and the laws of mathematics substitute “Word” for “God” and “God” for “Word” and see that the Bible says “God” became flesh and dwelt among us. In the laws of Algebra, if A=B then B=A. You can also say if A=B and B=C, then A=C. These are just basic mathematical laws that show how we can legally change the word of God to teach us a new truth. The Bible says God is Light (1 John 1:5). So we know that “God”=”Light” and “Light”=”God”. From John 1:1 we have also learned that “God”=”Word” and “Word”=”God”. So we now can make this change legally to John 1:1:
Joh 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with the LIGHT, and the Word was the LIGHT.
Joh 1:1 In the beginning was God, and God was with the LIGHT, and God was the LIGHT.
Wow! This is really not that difficult to understand, is it? I hope you understand algebra and the laws of mathematics. Nevertheless, we can also substitute in John 1:14 where the Bible says that “the LIGHT, became flesh” (Jesus) and dwelt among us. So we have a little bit better understanding of how Jesus could legally call himself the light of the world while He walked the face of this planet. What we just learned is that “Word of God” = “Light of God”. This is just one new dimension and definition of Light. I hope that you are understanding it.
Finally, Jesus is called the “True Light” in John 1:9 and 1 John 2:8. This is a very important title given to Jesus and it has vast implications attached to it that I will discuss next. But, notice this fact. Jesus Christ is again called “The Word of God” in Revelation 19:13. If God is the Word and the Word became Jesus in the flesh and Jesus is the True Light. Then Jesus Christ also represents the “True Word”. So we can say TRUE WORD” = “TRUE LIGHT” and “TRUE LIGHT” = “TRUE WORD”! I’m really not sure if you followed my logic here, but it is a legal way to interpret and learn new things from the Bible.
Understanding There Must Exist a False Light!
Do you realize that you do not need to articulate an adjective of “True” before the noun of “Light”, if there is only one source of all light and only one kind of light? An adjective always qualifies a noun and restricts or narrows the scope of inclusiveness of the definition. If I said to you “Go pickup a red ball”. You can automatically conclude that there are other colors of balls available for selection and that it matters which one you pickup. In other words, if God only produces one kind of light and there is no other source of light, then God does not need to do anything but say “I am the Light” and everyone knows automatically what you are talking about because there exists only one light. But, when God says “I am the True Light” that makes it a completely different light from the unstated implied antithesis “False Light”. If you have a “True Light” described in the Bible (1 John 2:8, John 1:9), that would directly imply that there must exist a “False Light” by simple basic logic and understanding of the English language. This is just basic logic, if you have a positive you know there exists a negative. If there exists a North then there has to exist a South. If you say “Left” you know there is also a “Right”. If there exists Truth, then there must exist a Lie. So who or what is the “False Light” of the world? If Jesus Christ came into the world as the “True Light”, who or what is the “False Light”? So that means we need to define “True” and “False” using the Bible also. Now let me bring into the discussion another difficult subject to accept. In John 8:12, Jesus informed us that He was the Light of the world and that those who followed him would not live in the darkness. But, then He tells us that those who follow Him will have the “Light of Life”. Wow, that is another one of those statements that has a direct opposite associated with it by logical connection. What is the opposite of a “Light of Life”? It would have to be a “light of death”. Maybe we will get into that more later, just become aware of what it implies for now. This is all derived from just a basic understanding of the English language constructs and simple basic logic. What I hope to do is to give you a new perspective to see things differently using the Bible as the primary source for what we believe. I will not discuss what the false light is here in this section, but I just wanted to logically establish the existence of this entity, so that we can look for it in the Bible later.
Understanding The Definition of Spiritual Light!
I’ve already given you some new perspectives on what Light is in the Bible by describing Jesus. Right now I just want to focus on what the online dictionary says for this definition of the term “light”. According to what I found light can be defined in very technical terms of physics and can be described as “electromagnetic” waves of illumination within the certain range of visible wavelengths. That is a pretty technical definition and probably not what we are looking for in our discussion. A light can be more generally defined as a source of “illumination” either natural or artificial that helps us to see other objects. A light source produces illumination that reflects off of objects so that we can see them. Without lights we would live in darkness. Ok, that was just basic definitions of a simple light concept. But, you do realize that “light” can have other meanings? For example, if said that I shed some light on the subject of tractors. What does that mean? It means I was able to provide some intelligent information that supplied someone with some basis of understanding of the subject of tractors. So when Jesus said “I am the light of the world, what kind of ‘light” was He calling himself using our definitions that we have seen so far? Do any of these apply to the definition of spiritual light? I do not believe that Jesus walked around the earth glowing in the dark. No, Jesus was not a physical light emitting rays of light everywhere He walked. Jesus was a person who held all knowledge and all understanding and was providing spiritual information for others to learn. So while Jesus was here He gave what He knew to others so that they could HEAR it and begin to SEE and understand these spiritual things that He taught. The Bible tells us that Jesus uttered things that were kept hidden from the foundation of the world. Jesus revealed mysteries about the hidden things in the Kingdom of God (Mat 13:11). This is why, he called himself the light of the world. Jesus brought a new perspective to understanding God for all people to see. So shining a “light” is giving information, knowledge and understanding to other people in the eyes of God. God holds all knowledge, all understanding and therefore is the source of this light to everyone. Later, I will give you scriptures to back all of this. Right now I just want to introduce you to a new definition of light and shining the light to others as being the teaching of the truth of God’s Word.
The Definition of True Light and False Light!
Because we have a better definition for what “light” is, we can now begin to see that there is certainly more than one light being present in the world. If I possess a limited understanding of any specific Bible subject, then I can only provide you limited light on that subject to help you to understand it. What we must realize is that both Jesus and the Bible were utilizing natural terms, descriptions and processes to describe spiritual things that you have never seen. So when we see terms like “light” in the Bible, many times we have to transition to the symbolic meaning and see what else it is referring us to in the spiritual realm. We can also begin to see what is referred to as a true light and how it can give new meaning to what a false light is. A true light would be someone who teaches you something that is absolutely based upon the truth even though it is always a limited view of it based upon their current knowledge. A false light would be someone who intentionally teaches you something that is a lie or contains lies and of course there is a big difference in these two types of lights, however, they both certainly exist in the world even today. In Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, it says at least 30 times that Jesus went around everywhere “teaching” the people, or that He “taught” them. Why did Jesus spend so much of His valuable limited time on the the earth teaching these ignorant people? I think I just answered my own question by how I phrased it, they were certainly ignornat and this is exactly why they needed to be taught the truth. From reading these verses in the Gospel, it is implied that Jesus taught for hundreds of hours over the course of just 3 years. Could this possibly be the way that He was displaying the Trie Light to the world? Could it be that Jesus who held all knowledge and understanding, was trying to get others to see what He knew? I believe this is exactly what Jesus was doing and how perfectly it fits the definition of being the true light of the world. Jesus attempted to illuminate our minds with the words of truth coming from His mouth. Later, I will give you scriptures about the false light, but we will end this lesson here for now. Until next time, I hope you were blessed to learn and hear from God today. God Bless!
If you would like to continue reading this series you can go to “Part 2“.
A No Fault Religion! A Blameless Sinner Theology!
(Ver 1.1) This is now “Part 7” in a series of lessons on spoken words. If you have not read this series from the beginning I would suggest that you go and start reading with “Part 1“. Man is guilty of one very poor behavior trait that is a major short coming in everyone’s life at some point. It would seem that people like to think that no matter what happens to them or how bad the results, it was not their fault! We have all been faced with the reality of doing something wrong and then being faced with the consequences and suddenly we come up with all kinds of reasoning, excuses and blame shifting of why we did what we did. People would much rather shift the blame to someone else, either God or their spouse, or their children or maybe their boss, or maybe those in authority, or whoever is just available or present. It was because of this reason or that reason, or it was their fault. It would seem to me that people want a God and a religion that alleviates them from any personal responsibility or even accountability to what transpires in their lives. I call this the popular modern “No Fault” Religion, and the “God of the Blameless Sinner Theology” philosophy. If you do not realize it, this is not what the Bible says, it is nothing that Jesus ever taught, nor is it something that you can correctly interpret from the Bible. Let me give you a definition for the term “No Fault” that we have in the world found in the insurance business:
NO FAULT: in which a claimant is compensated for actual economic loss without blame being assigned to a particular party; in which neither party is assigned blame
A “no fault” policy is one that allows for compensation regardless of who’s is said to be at fault. In other words no one gets the blame, no one holds any responsibility in any matter and everything is put back to the way it was before it all happened with no admissions of guilt. This concept has crept into the human life of reasoning and even into Christian theology. In the legal court system they have developed a Latin term that gives some people an alternative way to plead their case. This term is called “Nolo Contendere” and it neither declares your innocence or your guilt, but shifts the responsibility to the judge to decide. In other words the person pleading this way in court neither admits quilt nor declares their innocence. They are in effect saying it was not my fault, I hold no responsibility in this matter. This is just another example of the “No Fault” Religious Philosophy that has been growing in prevalence in the church. However, we need to learn what God says about the situation and our responsibility in every matter and then you will see there is a major difference with God’s approach.
I want to start by giving you an example of this behavior found in the Bible. In the book of Genesis, God puts man in the garden. God tells the man that he can eat from every tree but one. Satan comes along and deceives Eve into eating and then Adam follows her example, and they both are now hiding out in the garden of Eden from God. God calls out to Adam and Adam reluctantly answers. Adam tells God he was afraid and hid himself because he was naked. God then asks him directly, “Did you eat from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from”. This is Adam’s modern theological response to God’s question:
Gen 3:12 And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.
Adam obviously shifts the responsibility of his actions to his wife. In other words if God had not given me this woman, I would not have been in this situation. The ultimate responsibility was being shifted to everyone, but Adam. Adam took no responsibility for anything that he had done. It is a classic example, of the philosophy of a “No Fault Religion”! Adam says I did it, but it was not my fault. Isn’t it funny how people do this still today? God then asks the woman in the garden, “What is this that you have done?” and again we see the classic “No Fault Religion” response of the woman:
Gen 3:13 And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.
Eve immediately passes the buck to the serpent, it was the serpent’s fault and not mine. If it were not for the serpent, I would not have been deceived. It was his fault and not mine. In this story, suddenly God stops asking questions when he comes to the serpent. It seems God’s is tired of hearing people pass the buck and He starts telling each of them the consequences of their actions. God names a list of things that will happen to each party involved and suddenly there is no more to say. So was it anybody’s else’s fault that each did what they did? Or was this just man’s attempt to shift the responsibility off of them to someone else? Normally this is exactly the motivation for this act of selfishness. If Adam and Eve had not been caught red handed, figuratively speaking, they would have probably never had admitted to doing anything. However, once confronted with overwhelming evidence people immediately start by shifting the focus to someone else to get the judge’s eyes off of them, or so they hope.
In some recent news article in America, I ran across this attitude still being used today. In a local story in one of our surrounding cities, a woman took a gun, that looked like a real handgun and robbed a drug store and got several illegal pills. The woman then calls her mother and tells her what she has done and that she plans on killing herself with the pills by overdosing on them. A few minutes later, her car is spotted by the police and they surround her. After all she had just committed an armed robbery. The woman’s mother had called 911 to report the situation and tell them that the gun that she had was only a BB gun and not a real gun, so please don’t shoot her. Before the police could get this information, the woman gets out of her car and points her real looking gun at the police officers. The officers had no choice but to shoot her. So now the family of the woman gets on the local news and starts shifting all of the blame of everything that happened to the police. They should have known better than to kill an unarmed woman. They should have handled the situation differently. Do you see the pattern of what the family was saying? Was it all the policemen’s fault for protecting themselves and the safety of others and for killing this woman unnecessarily? Does this woman have any responsibility in what happened? Obviously NOT according to her family! Does the family have any responsibility of not recognizing the signs of depression or suicidal changes in this woman’s behavior, Obviously NOT according to the family. According to the family, nobody is to blame except the ones that shot her and that is crazy thinking. I do not understand how people can come to these conclusions and how the news media can even report them as legitimate pieces of news. We live in a crazy world that has things completely backwards.
Let me give you another example, of stupid behavior and thinking. It seems that the family of Michael Jackson is now suing in civil court the doctor that allegedly administered the drugs that killed their relative Michael Jackson. Isn’t it amazing that if Michael had no money that he would not have been able to pay a doctor for dangerous prescription drugs. I do not attempt to justify what the doctor did, however it was not entirely the doctor’s fault. Michael Jackson was a addicted to drugs. He thought that he needed them to perform and that he needed them to sleep. Do you think if there was no doctor present in the house, that Michael would still be alive today? I do not know, but yet do you think that it was just the doctor’s fault and Michael held no responsibility to what happened to him? In my opinion, I would say Michael holds more of the responsibility than anyone else, but his family obviously does not agree with that reasoning.
How can people get any more stupid and still be alive? Do people have any responsibility in what happens to them? Does the Bible say it is not your fault that you are in the mess that you are in right now? Does the Bible put all of the blame for everything that happens to you on Adam, Satan or someone else? Did Jesus ever heal someone and tell them, I’m so sorry this happened, it was just not your fault that this happened to you? If you search and actually read and see what the Bible says on the subject, you will find that is just not the case. People actually hold more of the responsibility of what happens to them, than anyone would care to admit. Let’s see what Jesus said in one example:
Joh 5:14 Afterward Jesus findeth him in the temple, and said unto him, Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.
Jesus after healing this man in John 5, told him “I’m sorry this happened to you, I know it was just not your fault!” No, Jesus did not say this, did He? Jesus actually warns this man that what you do affects what you get in life. Jesus tells the man very clearly NOT to go and intentionally sin again, or his sins would allow or cause something worse to potentially happen to him. There is a clear implication that what happened to him was caused by something that he had previously done in the first place. Isn’t that what Jesus said? What we see in the Bible is a Spiritual Law being spoken of. Many Christians are not familiar with this Spiritual Law even though it governs their daily lives, 24×7. Here is the Spiritual Law that Jesus was talking about:
Gal 6:7 Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.
This is a broad statement with broad implications and consequences attached to it. These are the words of the Living God and He tells us very clearly that He will not be mocked! What does it mean to mock? What is mocking? Jesus was mocked at His trial and even as He hung on the cross, the Bible says. The Bible says that Jesus endured words from people saying “Hail the King of the Jews”. To mock someone or something means to ridicule them, slander them, make fun of them, speak words out of your mouth that are the opposite of praise! It can also be the way you say it, that makes it disrespectful. You could say something good in a sarcastic way and this could be mocking someone. It would seem to me that God is at the very least referring to what people say in Galatians 6:7. Isn’t that what God is talking about in this verse? God gives us a farming principle and an agricultural law in direct relationship to what people say. God tells us very clearly that whatever we plant, that is what we harvest in life. You can apply this to things we do, but primarily God is talking about your words. If you read the Gospels you will find that Jesus talks a lot about farming principles, crops and agricultural things like that. However, Jesus was not a literal natural farmer and he was not talking about natural things at all. Jesus was discussing spiritual things in relationship to natural things that we could observe and understand. Do you realize that it is almost impossible for God to discuss spiritual things with people who barely know anything about natural things? In one of the parables that Jesus reveals to the people, he discusses the Sower and the soil. In this parable the soil was of course, the hearts of men. Then the seeds that were planted in this soil were the “Words of God”. We are taught that God’s words are seeds that produce the good harvests in our life.
Did you know if God’s words are the positive seeds, then every other person’s words are also seeds and they can become negative seeds if they are opposite to what was spoken by God? Man was created in the image and likeness of God. Meaning that man was an exact duplication of the God kind of being! The angels of God could look at Adam and recognize God’s spiritual DNA. We were not created on the same level or at the same capacity as God’s ability, but that does not mean we have no power to control what happens in our lives. What is a seed? Have you ever planted a real natural seed in the soil and watered it and watched it develop over time and grow? A seed is a self contained system that has propagative properties to produce postive or negative things. A seed holds properties to replicate it’s kind and produce more of its species. Seeds rarely work by themselves and are dependent upon other factors. Correct soil, light, temperature and water are just a few of the dependencies that many seeds require. All of this is very similar to e the place of words in the world. People say things constantly and most of them they do not mean or even believe will happen. People say “that just kills me”, “I laughed until I died”, “You gave me a heart attack”, and other crazy sayings. If people’s words would suddenly come true, most of the time none of us would be here right now.
If words are seeds that people plant, and these seeds produce crops in your life then what have you been planting? Can you look back on things that you have said in the past and see anything about what you have and are experiencing right now? Maybe, yes and maybe no? Nevertheless, the Bible if you study it correctly never alleviates you from any responsibility. If you die and go to hell, you will not be able to plead it was not my fault. You hold great amounts of responsibility to what happens in your life. If you turn down the wrong street at the wrong time, if you choose to take a flight that will crash, if you go to the wrong side of town, if you eat the wrong foods, if you drink the wrong drinks, if you buy the wrong drugs, if take the wrong drugs or if you do whatever. You see what you choose to do in life matters. Where you choose to go in life matters. Who you associate with in life matters. Who your friends are in life matters. What you eat matters. What you drive matters. Where you walk matters. Where you go to church matters. I’ll go further than that, and say what you think also matters. What you say matters. Your decisions and choices in life ALL have consequences attached to them. Wise choices come only from knowing God and His Word and poor choices come from listening to Satan. The Bible says that those who are led by the Spirit of God they are the sons of God. That also means that there are plenty of those who are not being led by the Spirit of God and they therefore make bad choices in life. Jesus told us that wide is the path to destruction and narrow is the path that leads us to salvation, peace and safety. Now realize that God has set the choices in front of you and you are the one making the choices for your life. If you don’t like what you are reaping right now look back and see what you have been planting! Then change what you plant!
If you would like to continue reading this series of lessons on spoken words you can go to “Part 8“.
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