Author Archives: agapegeek
Genesis 2:8 The Confrontation Between East and West
(Ver 2.0) When you read the Bible and begin to understand that every word has significance and meaning, you start to pay much closer attention to which words God selected to describe the events within creation. Knowing that God is so much smarter than we are and that He could have chosen any words that He desired to convey His thoughts to us, we must realize that He chose these exact words found in Genesis to describe creation to us. Recently in my blogs I have been skipping around in Genesis 2 for no particular reason, just giving you glimpses into the variety of subjects found there. Today we are going to look at verse 8 of Genesis 2 and see what God says to us.
Genesis 2:8 And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.
I often times wondered why God said that he planted a garden eastward in Eden. We can clearly see from the information in this verse that man or Adam came from or was created somewhere to the west of Eden. Isn’t that interesting? Why is this so important that God included this fact in the Bible out of all the information that He could have given us? We don’t know exactly where Eden was located; we are only given the general location of Eden using the names of 4 rivers which are said to have flowed through it. We can assume using the general information of the location of these four rivers given to us that Eden must have been somewhere in or near the area between Israel and Iraq or in that general vicinity. I don’t really feel that the exact location is that important, but I believe that the general principles and concepts surrounding them are very important to today’s lesson. We can also assume based upon this location that somewhere to the west, probably in Northern Africa, the Man was created and then moved to the Garden. So why is this significant? It is the first mention of any compass direction in the Bible. The first mention of any subject in the Bible always has significance. There are many implied truths given to us in this scripture. We can see that much clearer later when we get to what happens later in chapter 3 after the fall of man.
What I will tell you now is just some overall concepts of the differences between human civilizations and the developmental differences between the east and the west. If you’ve never thought of this before, it is very fascinating to see the spiritual implications of east vs. west. The Far East as it is called has always been dominated by spiritual darkness; religions of the mind, religions of the body and the religions of idol worshippers. All of these types of religions focus more upon worshipping creation and ignoring the creator. You can go to places in China, Japan, Indonesia and other places and see the temples and idols of gods that have dominated that part of world. These are gods made by the hands of men and worshipped by ignorant and deceived humans. As a result we can see the rise of communism and dictatorships of godless governments that do everything in their power to attempt to limit and restrict Christianity, the Bible and the spread of the truth. Nowhere else in the world is this so prevalent as it is in the eastern Asia.
Then we can see another conglomeration of religions centered around the region of Eden which are primarily dominated by Judaism along with Islam and some Christians. Moving to the west we see the rise of more dominate Christianity and free societies and governments. What we begin to see is a dividing line and a growing trend of a clash between the cultures of the east and the west. Of course we understand that we wrestle not with flesh and blood but the spiritual forces, the rulers of the darkness of this world (Eph 6:12). It seems that these spiritual forces while attempting to make inroads into the west have predominately through history have controlled more of the far eastern nations. In the book of Acts and in the Epistles there are a couple of mentioned times that Paul is not allowed by God to go to the Far East.
Acts 16:6 Now when they had gone throughout Phyrgia and the region of Galatia, and were forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach the word in Asia,
Paul is directed specifically by God to go west only. In fact it specifically says God forbid them from going into Asia. I would assume from this that it was too dangerous and the people in those regions would have just killed them. If you look at the world today, the hardest places for Christians to go into and teach and preach are still predominately in areas of the Far East and the continent of Asia. In recent news articles there were several aid workers who were giving the people of Afghanistan free medical care; these good Samaritans were executed by the Islamic extremist. The claim was that they were preaching the Bible trying to get Muslims to convert. Isn’t that religious tolerance and freedom and the free will exercise of the people’s mind? Why is it that Islam wants to force you to become a Muslim and then once you are a Muslim they will kill you for leaving? There are no choices in Islam your decisions are made for you, is that your God? The control of people by fear seems to be their only message. Other than fear they have no message of salvation. They cannot stand up to the truth so they have to shut up those who try to teach it to others. What I want you to think about is how different the cultures are in these two parts of the world. Communism still dominates China and Russia. The country of India is dominated by people who revere cows. Between those three countries lies almost half of the world’s population. I cannot thank God enough for being born in the free country of the United States of America. We are not a perfect country but at least I can go to church without fearing that the Government will come in and throwing everyone into prison, at least today I can. I’ll bring out more information about east and west as we get into chapter 3 of Genesis, but I just wanted you to start thinking along these lines and notice what God said about it in chapter 2.
Concealing Information From God’s Enemies!
This will obviously be controversial to some. But nevertheless this is what God says so I stand by it. What I have been attempting to do is give you some keys to understanding the Bible. If we can understand God’s intentions, motivations and purposes for the book, we will better understand what is written. So in today’s blog I want to give you another perspective of why the Bible is so hard to understand, to many. This principle is based upon the concept that God has enemies and that in order for God not reveal everything to His enemies, He has to write things in an encoded method. , This encoded method allows God’s people to see the truth while at the same time keeping the information from His enemies. It is a very tricky way of writing with many complex twists, mysteries, hidden meanings, symbolic representations and other tricky methods. I call it God’s method of hiding the truth in plain site.
James 4:4 Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? Whosever therefore will be a friend to the world is the enemy of God.
From this verse in James we see a fact revealed that God has enemies. If you didn’t know that it would be good to study and find out who those enemies are. I’ve heard some fools think and teach that Satan was just a pawn of God. A spirit being that appears before God to get permission to make somebody sick or kill their children. People read things like in the book of Job and make too many assumptions. Satan is not working for God. Satan doesn’t have to ask for permission to put some evil plan into work against you. Most of the time it is our own fault when Satan attacks us. We open the door to the enemy and let him do the things he does. There are a lot of Bible verses that I could give you to back that statement, but I won’t spend a lot of time on that subject since that is not what we are talking about.
This may also be news to some of you and maybe you’ve never heard anyone teach on this, but God has enemies. The church has the same enemies. Satan is still a spiritual force in the world in opposition to the church and our God. Satan I think sometimes people look at him as this evil red suited, horned and pitch fork carrying spiritual entity that resides in hell and comes to earth to bug us when he wants to. Nothing could be further from the truth. Satan does not live in hell, he has never been to hell, doesn’t want to go to hell and he’s doing everything in his power to stay out of there. But there is good news Satan doesn’t know everything. He can read the same Bible that we can but he doesn’t understand it any better than anyone else in the world. As God gives new revelation to the church, that is the first time Satan hears about most of this stuff. There are scriptures that back this up. Look at this verse:
1 Corinthians 2:8 Which none of the princes of this world knew for had they known they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
You see from this verse that Satan and his fallen angels are ignorant of the plan of God. This verse says clearly if they had known the consequences to killing God on the cross, they would not have done it. So apparently we don’t yet fully comprehend the ramifications and consequences of God being nailed to the cross. Not only did He provide salvation for us, he sealed the fate of Satan. Interesting isn’t it? So when Jesus said I didn’t come to do away with the law but to fulfill it he was saying that he was here to fulfill those things which were written about him.
Luke 24:44 And he said unto them, These are they words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses and in the prophets, and in the psalms concerning me.
John 5:39 Search the scriptures for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.
So couldn’t Satan read the Bible and see and hear what was being said in the synagogues? Sure he could, the problem is he didn’t understand anything that was written and neither did any man. Jesus fulfilled countless prophesies in his birth, life, death, burial and resurrection and Satan didn’t know any of them. I can only assume that Satan thought by killing God he could rid him from his planet and now he could go on and continue to rule for as long as he wanted. These are all interesting thoughts but these concepts are also applicable to the unsaved human race. Notice what is written on this subject and the words spoken by Jesus himself:
Mark 4:11 And he said unto them, Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables.
Jesus speaking to his disciples said the mystery is for only you to know, those that are on the outside they will never know or understand the things of God. It has always occurred to me that people in hell don’t know why they are there. They don’t have a clue that Jesus paid for their sins and they rejected the free gift of salvation. I wonder if someday they will come to the knowledge and realize the things they missed out on. So were we enemies of God before salvation? Here is a scripture that says we were:
Romans 5:10 For if, we when we were enemies , we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled we shall be saved by his life.
So we discover a fact that God said that while we were still enemies, Jesus paid the price to reconcile us back to God. This of course was one of the primary reasons for the death of Jesus on the cross. Clearly it was not all that transpired, but I’m sure glad He did that for us.
So what can we conclude from all of these scriptures? If God had enemies, He was forced to conceal information in His Word in a manner that His enemies would not understand what He was doing that would effect them. We will eventually discuss the methods in more depth that God used to accomplish this, but that is enough for now.
How Did the Church Become the Body of Christ?
(Ver 3.2) I will notify you up front, that this lesson may be very different than anything that you are expecting to read or even a departure from what you may have heard taught before on this subject. Therefore, it may be controversial because it is based upon many hidden Bible concepts which are only being opened and revealed by the Holy Spirit now on the subject of Covenants and Marriage. I believe that if you read the entire lesson very closely using an open mind and your spiritual eyesight to see what is written that you will begin to understand there is much more to it than you first realized. There has been a theological controversy within the church for many years. Some believe that the church is only the bride of Christ while others believe the church is only the body of Christ. There are also some that believe the church is both and even others that believe we are neither. But, which belief is the actual truth? After significant Bible study on this subject with the assistance and guidance of the Holy Spirit I believe that the church is both the bide and the body simultaneously. But, how can a body of believers be both the “body of Christ” and the “bride of Christ” at the exact same time? Have you ever heard a Bible preacher or teacher explain how being both is even possible? I know I haven’t. What I have heard some teach is that we are one but not both and they explain away any verses that conflict with their chosen belief selection. Any conflicting scriptures that do not align with their beliefs are either ignored or must be explained away. That is my controversial subject that we will be focused on today, believe it or not. This lesson will teach us how both potentially conflicting beliefs can be viewed as a sound Biblical truth simultaneously.
INTRODUCTION
The human body is an amazingly complex designed creation of God. It is comprised of millions, billions and even trillions of individual separate cells that work together in united ways to be one body. This very complex body reality came from just the union of two separate individual cells. Simply from the natural union of one male sperm cell entering into one female egg cell a multi-trillion cell being results. These two cells combined will cause all of the other cells to grow and develop into this amazingly complex unified carbon based unit called the human body. I believe that this is a basic parallel principle of truth that teaches us a little bit about how the church can be both a separate entity called the bride and by Christ entering into us (our spirit living and alive within our physical body) we can simultaneously be called His body. We will be reviewing scriptures that help to build this foundation of truth later in this lesson.
If the millions of people on the earth who call themselves Christians are one unified spiritual body of Christ, could it be that we were originated from the union of two spiritual cells that were joined to create this new body of Christ? I believe that the 2 cell combined union natural process of creating a new body is a potential natural pattern for how spiritual things work in the spiritual realm. Did you know that the Bible in Romans 1:20 teaches us that the natural things created by God reveal to us many of the hidden spiritual things of God?
There are also other potential things about male and female unions that must be understood in order to know how the church can be both Christ’s spiritual body and His spiritual bride simultaneously. These are the spiritual concepts that we will be discussing today. Are you ready to receive something new from the LORD?
CONFIMING THE CHURCH IS THE BODY OF CHRIST
Let’s start this section of our Bible study by confirming using several scriptures that Christians are firmly represented to be the body of Christ. This is the most common belief in the church and I totally agree with this truth completely:
1 Corinthians 12:27 Now we are the body of Christ, and members in particular.
If you have ever read the New Testament, you have probably noticed that the church is described in numerous places to be called the “body of Christ”. That is an absolutely fascinating factual piece of spiritual information that I would say the majority of Christians accept blindly without attempting to figure out how we became His body. But, I believe us accepting truth blindly without asking questions of how this happened is a potential pitfall for deception. I remember reading in Luke when the angel appeared to Mary and told her she was highly favored and would have a son. But, the wise woman Mary asked “How will this be seeing I know not a man?” That is really a great question and she was not rebuked for asking it. I believe that this question of Mary was a very similar question to what I asked the LORD about us being the body of Christ.
It is very hard to ignore the scriptures that communicate the “body of Christ” truth to us. You can find many references and I will just point us to some of them. The church is called the body of Christ in Colossians 1:18, Ephesians 4:15-16, 1 Corinthians 12:20, and Romans 12:5. These are a few of the obvious ones, but I believe there are others. Are you curious yet to what God says in His Word about how we became His body?
TAKING THE CHURCH IS THE “BODY” TRUTH TO AN EXTREME
What I have discovered in the past is that while there are many Christians that embrace this foundational truth, there are some that exalt it into an error to teach the church is Christ or equal to Christ. Mathematically speaking they would say “Church = Christ”. They conclude this from reading verses like Colossians 1:18 where Jesus is called the “head” and the church is labeled as His “body”. They then conclude we are Him here and now in the flesh and that is a partial truth. But,this is an example of someone falling into a ditch of extremism. Taking one truth and promoting it beyond what it actually says is a very dangerous approach to understanding the Bible. We are required to balance all of the scriptures on the subject in order to recognize a more balanced complete application of truth. Saying that the church is Christ is human logic that in effect places the church on the exact same level as Jesus himself. These types of people teach, if Christ has a bride, then we (the church) also have a bride. They in effect have concluded in error, that the church by being saved ha become the spiritual husband and the spiritual bridegroom, making us God or at least His equal. That belief is a ridiculous conclusion of erroneous Bible interpretation that was probably formed and based upon ignorance and wrong reasoning.
I’ve actually heard some of these types of Bible teachers tell us that in Revelation 21:2 where God describes the New Jerusalem coming down from heaven, that this city called the New Jerusalem is the bride of the church. Many have also concluded that this city is the natural nation of Israel. This is just more examples of the wrong interpretations of the Word of God. They try to convince us that the Church is the husband (aka the body of Christ) and Israel is the bride of Christ. They say “After all if we are the body of Christ, then if Christ has a bride then we must also have a bride”. But, there are so many problems with that mistaken human reasoning and logic. The first being in Revelation it does not say this city New Jerusalem is the Bride of Christ, it says that she is the Lamb’s wife (Rev 21:9) and that is a completely different concept. I’ve never heard the church called the Lamb of God, have you? I’ve also never heard the church called the body of the Lamb either. Ask yourself that question, are you the Lamb of God? If you are not the Lamb of God, then you can not be the husband to this bride described in Revelation chapters 19-21. If you are not the lamb husband of the New Jerusalem, then you may have a major problem with the extreme interpretation of us being the body of Christ, but not the bride of Christ. I know the Bible is complicated, but we have to think and allow the Holy Spirit to speak, guide us and direct us into all truth in order to figure things out. We have to be smart enough to listen, hear and see exactly what God says and then not to be foolish enough to jump to the wrong conclusions using our limited knowledge and understanding.
CONFIRMING THE CHURCH IS THE BRIDE
RESOLVING HOW THE CHURCH BECAME HIS BODY
There is still this main unresolved issue, if the Church is the Body of Christ, how did it get to be the Body of Christ? I do not know of very many Bible teachers that are asking this question. Why not ask God to reveal it to you. Could it be that is why you came across this lesson? I’ve personally never heard any Bible teacher even try to teach this deep question. I could probably write an entire book on this subject, but I only have time in one lesson for a few words. There are other Bible lessons on this website that will provide more detailed information than can be provided today. Please understand that no teacher can teach everything they know in one lesson. I would heavily recommend that you go and read the Bible series called “The Bride of Christ Revealed”. This series provides a lot more scriptures that prove the bride is the church. That was the bottom line revelation that the LORD provided to me and He backed it up with overwhelming Bible evidence. I will go over some of that information in this lesson briefly.
Gen 2:21 And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;
Gen 2:22 And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.
In Genesis chapter 2 we can read about a more detailed account of the Genesis 1 creation of man and woman. There in Genesis 2 we found out that the woman’s body was “taken” out from the body of the man (Gen 2:21-22). Uh oh! Do you remember reading about this in your Bible? God created Adam first and then subsequently the woman came from the man’s living body. This was truly the wisdom of God in action. God does nothing by chance or accident. His choice to create the woman’s body in this fashion must have had a greater hidden purpose than we know right now. The first woman’s body did not come directly from the earth, but rather came from her husband’s body. Adam then looked directly at the woman’s body and said she is now the bone of my bone and the flesh of my flesh (Gen 2:23). Are these all familiar subjects? Let’s look at verse 23 of Genesis 2 to refresh our memory:
Gen 2:23 And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.
In other words Adam was literally saying to us, “she was his body” or personal “she is my body”. Uh oh again! Does this sound familiar? What mystery are we trying to solve? Do you understand this? Is this too complex or maybe too simple for us to believe? Is it possible for God to make a complete woman from just a part of a man? That is exactly what the Bible says happened so we have to decide if we want to believe it. According to God and the Bible, the woman’s body was “taken” from the body of Adam. Light bulbs should be beginning to be illuminated in our minds. We are asking God about how the Church became the body of Christ? Could Eve be a type of the church and could Adam be a type of Jesus Christ?
Gen 2:24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.
There was a law of God established here in Genesis 2:24 concerning the subject of marriage covenants between a husband (a male) and his wife (a female). This law states that the wife’s body would be called the same as her husband’s body. Jesus confirm this truth in the Gospels also. You can read one example in Mark 10:7-8. Humans have long embraced and received this truth even in our human marriage ceremonies. The wife has normally taken the name of her husband. This literally makes her body called by his name signifying one flesh. Many in the modern world are attempting to move away from this practice but taking the husband’s name is very Biblical in my opinion. In fact you can read in Revelation chapters 2 and 3 where Jesus addresses letters to the church that He will give them a new name if they overcome. We can clearly see from this the inference of a marriage covenant between Jesus and the Church. What we discover from this law of covenant marriage is God’s mathematical principal that declares two are to be called and named as one.
Wow, Genesis 2:24 is totally amazing to me. Two separate and distinct human bodies being called one body. One male multiplied by one female equals one unified covenant body. This is definitely God’s designed mathematical law of marriage (1 x 1 = 1). This verse in Genesis 2:24 says that they are separate yet still considered one flesh! Wow again and again, that is just so awesome to me. What is a body made of? The human body is largely comprised of flesh and bone. So if the Church is the body of Christ, we are His flesh and His bones here on the earth and this implies by this stated law that we must be His wife simultaneously. I’ll talk about that more in a bit.
I believe with all of my heart that Adam and Eve were physically created symbolic representations of a much greater spiritual truth. I believe that Adam and Eve were physical natural patterns that reveal much deeper spiritual parallels and realities of the unity between Christ and the church. I believe that Adam and Eve were a prophetical type and foreshadowing of a spiritual covenant marriage between the risen from the dead LORD Jesus Christ and the church. Did you know that Jesus is called the Last Adam (1 Cor 15:45) in the New Testament? Why did God call Jesus by the same name as the first Adam? This is not a coincidence either. This is God’s way of teaching us there is a divine purpose. We should read the verse:
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.
Jesus is called the “Last Adam”, because of what God did with the first Adam. God has repeated the use of the first Adam in the in the Last Adam. The risen Jesus Christ the Lamb of God has taken a spiritual woman to be His wife and He married her and has now become one spirit, one flesh and one body with her. Let me give you a another confirming witness found in the scripture about Jesus being a pattern of Adam to help us understand what is being taught to us today:
Rom 5:14 Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come.
Adam is clearly stated to be a pattern or type of the coming Jesus. The Greek word translated as figure means “a die as struck”. If you understand printing press concepts this is what God is saying in this verse. Whenever you use a die to strike a piece of paper the same image is repeated consistently. God is trying to teach us that Adam was the pattern for what Jesus will do when He comes to the earth. Since God takes and gives Adam a wife as one of the first or techinically His last works of creation, this is what will occur again with Jesus Christ and His wife. This is exactly how the church became the body of Christ, it was performed by God through a covenant marriage. Did you know that a covenat was a marriage in the eyes of God? You can find this by reading in Malachi 2:14 and Jeremiah 31:32. God when He implemented a New Covenant through Jesus Christ, He established a new marriage and calls the church His wife and His bride. We can clearly see that because of the Genesis law of marriage since the church is called the wife of Christ we would also be called the body of Christ. It is really not that complicated, but it was a hidden mystery of the Word of God. There are numerous scriptures that verify this relationship and we can look at a couple of them. The church is said to be one Spirit with Christ and this is the natural Genesis 2 covenant marriage terminology revealed in a spiritual format.
1 Corinthians 6:17 But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit.
This verse in direct context is specifically talking about a husband and a wife relationship. The same terminology of the marriage covenant is being conveyed with the terms “joined” and “one” that we saw in Genesis 2. This verse is clearly speaking to the church and says that we being joined to the Lord are now one spirit with Him. If we are one spirit with Christ this informs us that we are also the body of Christ. In Genesis 2:24 that verse used the word “cleave” but if you study it out you will find that this is the same word and means the same thing as to be joined. It literally means to “glue together”. God is revealing that He will take two separate pieces and super glue them to make one new even stronger unit. That is a clear definition of a marriage and a good covenant relationship between a husband and a wife.
There are so many scriptures that say the Church is the Bride of Christ that I just can’t include them all in this lesson. But, I will leave you with one more reference that says it more clearly than you have ever imagined. Those that teach that the church is not the bride of Christ obviously just ignore these verses or attempt to explain them away with some less than honest excuses. If we read in the 5th chapter of Ephesians we can see an almost entire chapter devoted to husband and wife relationships. In fact, if you do a count of the number of times husbands are mentioned either directly or indirectly I came up with around 14 separate references. If you count the number of times wives are mentioned either directly or indirectly, I came up with at least 11 references. Then if you count the number of times Christ is mentioned either directly or indirectly I came up with 11 times. Finally if you count the number of times the church is mentioned either directly or indirectly, I came up with 12 times. It is very foolish to deny the direct association of the church being named as a bride and the LORD Jesus being named as her groom/husband. Christ and the church are revealed in the same terminology and language as a husband to a wife in this chapter repeatedly. But, the real clincher for me was the fact that God repeats the Genesis 2 covenant law of marriage again in verses 30 to 32 of Ephesians 5. I’ll go over them one at a time beginning with verse 30:
Ephesians 5:30 For we (the church) are members of his body (Jesus Christ), of his flesh and his bones.
This is the beginning of the stated law of marriage found in Genesis and the words of Adam that were said to his wife. Adam said “She was bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh”. Adam said very clearly that the woman/wife Eve was his body! But, this time here in Ephesians God is talking directly about the Last Adam named the Lord Jesus Christ and about His bride/wife called the church. Immediately following this verse we have the continuation of the Genesis 2 law of marriage being restated for our benefit:
Ephesians 5:31 For this cause shall a man (Christ Jesus) leave his father (God the Father) and his mother (Israel/Mary), and shall be joined unto his wife (the church) and they two shall be one flesh (One Body).
Again we see that the church became the body of Christ by becoming the bride of Christ. I inserted the subject’s names into the verse so that you could more clearly understand who God was speaking of. The references are very clear and almost impossible to ignore. It is very important to note that when an Old Testament verse like Genesis 2:24 is quoted in the New Testament that it is given to us for the purpose of explanation. God is linking the life of Adam in Genesis to the life of Christ and explaining their similarities. The subject discussion of husbands and wives is concluded with this very direct outstanding statement of confirmation:
Ephesians 5:32 This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.
So we finally we can taste the icing on the wedding cake in Ephesians 5:32. God declares this information given in this chapter to be a great mystery. What is a mystery? A mystery is something that was hidden from our plain sight and from many who still haven’t seen it. It is a puzzle that had to be figured out or solved with God’s help. Praise the LORD! That is what a mystery is, something that is confusing to many people on the surface only reading until we dig deep and learn the real truth with God’s help. That was the mystery of God that was revealed to us today. God finally tells us clearly that all of this talk about husbands and wives in Ephesians 5, is speaking of Christ and the church. So if any one asks you how the church became the body of Christ you can now tell them exactly how it happened; it was by a New Covenant of marriage. Thank you for studying the Bible with me and if this has been a blessing to you, then share it with someone else that you know to bless them with the same knowledge of the truth of God.
If you would like to continue learning more about the subject of the Bride of Christ being the church you can continue reading in this series with “Part 1“.
What Does God Think About Abortion? Pt 2
(Ver 1.4) This is Part 2 in a series of advanced Bible lessons about the subject of what God thinks about human abortion. If you have not read this series from the beginning, I would recommend very highly that you go back and start reading with “Part 1” first. This series was designed to build upon each of the preceding lessons. If you missed the first lesson then you have missed the basic foundations necessary to continue the study. Thank you for joining this Bible study and please do go and get your Bible out or your tablet or phone and open your Bible Application to verify everything that is stated is what you find in your Bible. There are really so many scriptures in the Bible that deal with the subject of abortion. But, they are only found if you look for them. God says seek and you will find (Luke 11:9). Which means if we do not seek correctly, we will never find. Therefore there is a prerequisite requirement that stipulates that people must search for the truth, instead of searching for lies. What I am teaching, is that it matters what we are looking for. Truth never changes, but our knowledge of the truth will change only if we search to find God’s wisdom and His point of view on the subject. I will say that there are people who look for verses to justify their belief in abortion and a woman’s right to choose. According to the Law given by Jesus if that is what we seek for we can find verses that seem to justify that position. But, does that make it the truth? Absolutely not! God wrote and designed the Bible to give humans the right to choose to know the truth or to not know the truth. If He had not given us this right then we would have been created as pre-programmed robots that could only follow His will imbedded in our internal software. But, we know this is not happening simply by observing human behavior all around us. God wrote 10 fundamental commandments in Exodus 20, and I have never met a human yet on the earth that has not violated at least one of these edicts. Therefore, none of us are robots and everyone has come short of the glory of God by sinning (Rom 3:23).
In my last lesson, I introduced us to the subject of abortion in the Bible. We saw a key definition of abortion from the Merriam-Webster dictionary that correctly defined the meaning of the word to include the “death” of the child during the termination of the pregnancy. Wow, that was important. Here we have a fundamental confirmation that this was a developing life form. You should know that a child is created by the union of the female egg and the male sperm and Webster was smart enough to understand that this was a life form that can die or be killed. In fact if we sent a probe to the planet mars and found these two cells and brought them back to earth for analysis, there would be such great excitement of the discovery of life on Mars that we cannot imagine it. Scientists would be so excited that life could exist on another place other than earth, that we would not be able to keep them silent. This would help them prove that life could evolve anywhere and evolution was a viable theory. But, these cells in the womb of a woman on earth are deemed unimportant by the same scientists.
Today, I will continue with the subject of what else God thinks about abortion today. Please let us stop and pray and ask the Holy Spirit to open our eyes to see how He sees the termination of a child in the womb before birth. So let’s get started.
OBSERVING NEW GOD THOUGHTS
Here is another interesting verse of God’s Word specifically concerning one of His major prophets:
Isa 49:1 Listen, O isles, unto me; and hearken, ye people, from far; The LORD hath called me from the womb; from the bowels of my mother hath he made mention of my name.
This verse says God knew the prophet Isaiah even while he was still in the womb of his mother. It also claims that He already knew his name. This proves that God knows the names of every born and unborn and even aborted child. Then God says “I know what Isaiah will do, I know the plan for his life, his calling, and his purpose”. I’ve said this before but, it will be beneficial to repeat it, if God knew Isaiah in his mother’s stomach, then he knew you while you were yet in your mother’s stomach also. If God knew Isaiah’s name, then he definitely knew your name before you were born. I am totally convinced that God knows the name of every aborted child that has never breathed a breath of fresh air, tasted food, had a drink of milk or lived to see the sun rise. God knows more than you can imagine right now. It is when people don’t know that they have a purpose in life that causes them to believe that NO human life is valuable in the eyes of God. But, in actuality the opposite is true. To God, ALL HUMAN LIFE IS VALUABLE!
Here are some more very powerful words from the Word of God concerning abortion. God speaking to another prophet said the following words:
Jer 1:4 Then the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,
Jer 1:5 Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.
Here is another prime example of what God thinks about abortion. God clearly says to Jeremiah that He knew him and set him apart even while he was still in his mother’s womb. This verse said God also formed the child in her. Have you ever studied the complexity of internal human development from the union of two different cells? The join together and make one cell first. This creates a combined unique complex DNA pattern that is used to by God to created entire individual containing trillions of cells when fully grown. But, this process initially begins by cell divisions that eventually start dividing into very unique and different cell types. Some cells form the head, some form the heart and other living organs, while others form the bones and skull tissues. Every unique organ has originated with a designed intentionality. What makes the union of just two cells create such a differing amount of tissues that cooperate and coordinate in specific order to work in harmony? God claims He is at work in this process and if you knew how complex that it was, you would understand how smart God is. I say this because He is capable of doing this to millions of people on earth simultaneously.
If God formed this child named Jeremiah, we know that He also forms every child. The Bible says that God is no respecter of persons. What God does for one He is required to do for all. If a woman decides to terminate her child after God has formed him or her, then exactly who is this woman working against? This verse says that God sanctified Jeremiah while he was still in his mother’s womb. If God sanctified Jeremiah today in our world of aborted children, I wonder if God would have selected someone else who was going to be born or would we have just lost this book of the Bible.
People who believe that God is in sovereign control of everything that is happening in the world are greatly ignorant or confused and don’t understand what the Bible says. God does not override the will of a human male or female. People do whatever they want to do, even if God doesn’t want them to do it. So if a woman aborts her child and God had big plans for that child what is the result of that abortion? So we must ask how do we know that God has plans for me nd my child? Because His word says He does:
Jer 29:11 For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.
This is an amazing verse of truth. The word here translated in the KJV Bible as “thoughts” but it has the following definition in the Strong’s:
H4284
From H2803; a contrivance, that is, (concretely) a texture, machine, or (abstractly) intention, plan (whether bad, a plot; or good, advice): – cunning (work), curious work, device (-sed), imagination, invented, means, purpose, thought.
The underlying definition of this word in the Hebrew means “purpose” or “plan”. God is saying I had a plan for you long before you were conceived or born, and I have a purpose for you after coming into this world. You have a specific purpose from God in arriving and being here on this planet. It goes on and says in that verse that it is a good plan and not an evil plan. Here is the same verse in a more literal translation of the Bible:
Jer 29:11 For I know the purposes which I am planning for you, says Jehovah; purposes of peace, and not for evil; to give you posterity and a hope.
That verse really says a lot to me personally and we can clearly see that if God knew Isaiah and Jeremiah before they were even born and He knew what they were supposed to do, then God is revealing to us that He does the same thing for you and I and every other child that is soon to be conceived.
CONCLUSION
The Bible teaches us to establish every truth in the mouth of two or three witnesses (Mat 18:16) and I have done that very conclusively with these verses written by two different prophets over two thousand years ago. But, But we are not finished with this subject, so we will continue on it again in the next lesson. I thank you for your time in reading about God and His Word. Please leave me a comment if you have the time and be blessed in your study of the truth.
If you would like to continue reading in this series of lessons about what God thinks about abortion, please continue to “Part 3“.
What Does God Think About Abortion?
(Ver 1.5) This is Part 1 of a series of advanced Bible lessons about what God thinks about the subject of abortion. In the news a while back there was a great controversial clash of opinion between the left and the right that took place. It appears that one of the nation’s biggest Catholic Universities invited one of our liberal Democratic Presidents to speak at their graduation commencement. The single point of confrontation was a delicate subject that has divided our nation since 973. So what is this subject that has caused such a major division and debate? It is the subject of abortion. This subject came to the forefront of U.S. history in 1973 when the Supreme Court ruled abortion to be legal in a case named Roe vs. Wade. It still amazes me how 9 people on a court can make such sweeping broad rulings of moral values. The 7 members of the Supreme Court that ruled in favor of legalized abortion were named 1) Harry Blackburn, 2) Warren Burger, 3) William Douglas, 4) William Brennan, 5) Potter Stewart, 6) Thurgood Marshall and 7) Lewis Powell. According to Deuteronomy 19:10 I believe these seven men have a lot of innocent blood upon their hands. I hope that they regretted their choice and repented before they died.
INTRODUCTION
Let’s begin with the basics. What is an abortion and how is it defined? One dictionary say abortion is “a medical procedure to end a pregnancy”. It uses medicine or surgery to remove the embryo, fetus and placenta from the female uterus. That was a medical description from an abortion provider. But the Merriam-Webster dictionary puts it this way gaining additional new and important information. They say abortion is the termination of a pregnancy after, accompanied by, and resulting in the death of the embryo or fetus. Wow, that changes things dramatically. Isn’t it interesting how some organizations omit words that are not desired to promote a result that would not be allowed after birth? One definition admits there is a death that occurs while the other just leaves this detail out completely. I think as we study the Bible we will learn that Merriam-Webster was more in alignment with God.
It seems that almost everyone in the world has some opinion on this matter and that is really the basis and the root of the entire problem of conflict. You see what I think about the subject of abortion and what you think about abortion really doesn’t matter or count for anything after we die. I mean who are you and who am I? The University speaking Liberal Democrat President’s opinion was that we should all just try to find some common ground and get along on this subject of abortion. But what he thinks really doesn’t matter or count for anything either. In fact what the Supreme Court’s opinion is on the subject of abortion doesn’t really matter or count for anything at all. All human opinion is baseless unless we agree with the one that created us.
What should only matter to you and I and concern us, is what does God think about the subject of abortion? If we could go instantly up to heaven and stand before the throne of God to ask Him a direct question on His thoughts on the subject of abortion, what would His answer be to us? Would God’s opinion change our opinion on the subject or would we still hang on to our opinion in spite of whatever He said about the subject? We should really think about that before we answer.
I wonder if we were confronted by God and told we were wrong about something, what would our response be? We could say I’m sorry, I didn’t know I was wrong and I’ll change immediately to be right. That would be the response of someone that was humble and feared God. Or we could say, I was wrong but then try to explain why we believed what we did was right at the time to justify our thoughts, opinions and actions. We could even try to be like an Adam or an Eve and pass the responsibility to someone else and redirect the attention away from ourselves and say it was just not my fault that I believed abortion was good and right, the court and the President made me believe it was right. We could be a real idiot and say sorry God, you’re wrong and I’m right and I’m not going to change my opinion or what I think no matter what You say or do. This last type of person has absolutely no fear of God. Or we could just care less and be indifferent. Our attitude could be just let people do whatever they want to do, it doesn’t have anything to do with me.
Which kind of person are you? What is your attitude towards this subject? If you are here on earth and can read this lesson from the Bible you must have not been aborted by your mother. Are you happy that your mother didn’t kill you before you were born? I personally believe that now is the time to learn the truth and change our opinions to conform with God’s thoughts on this subject. I’ll let you know right now that there will be no opportunities on judgment day to defend our wrong thoughts, opinions and actions we lived today. If we think there will be this chance, please show us the Bible verse that says this.
BEGINNING TO SEE GOD’S VIEWPOINT
If we proclaim ourselves to be a Christian then we should be aware that the Bible is the inerrant Word of the Living Creator God. The Bible is a directly written personal message to us from our God. The Bible was written for our benefit so that we could know this awesome God who none of us has ever seen before. So what a Christian does should follow God’s Word, His thoughts, His commandments, His instructions and the examples that He has given to us in this book. Let me show something that Jesus said to help confirm this point:
Mat 7:24 Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock:
Jesus said a wise man is one that hears the Word of God and does it. What is the opposite of that statement? The antithesis truth would be “a fool hears the word of God but does not do it”. What are you today a wise man or a foolish man? We all make this choice everyday in everything we do. So what does the Bible say on the subject of Abortion? And of course what would make us become a wise man that we could learn to change to do? Wisdom always begins with knowledge and knowledge must begin with learning about what God says on the subject abortion?
Like many other modern day Bible subjects the the word “abortion” is not found in the entire book, but that does not mean that God did not give us His thoughts on the subject. All we have to do to become wise is to study and find out what He has said on the subject using the other synonymous words that ARE found on the subject, so let’s do that. I want us to start this lesson by reading a very important foundational verse that is short but directly to the point on the subject of abortion.
Exo 20:13 Thou shalt not kill.
What does God say in this verse? It is one of the stated 10 commandments of God from the Old Testament. Are these a part of the words and of the commandments that Jesus was speaking of for a wise human to do? The Hebrew word H7523 translated as kill in this verse means “You shalt not commit murder”. What exactly is abortion if not murder? We learned earlier that Webster defined abortion as a death. To cause an innocent life to cease from continuing and developing in existence is clearly murder in Bible terms. What is the difference from a developing child inside the womb to one that has exited the womb and is still developing for another 18 years. If it is OK, to kill a developing child inside the womb, would it be fine to kill the same developing child outside the womb? Why is it today that outside the womb killing a child is called murder and killing a child inside the womb it is called abortion? They are both the same child! They are both in developing stages of growth. They both have the exact same DNA structure. Here is where the liberals have become creative to redefine that a living baby in the womb is not really a child but rather just a embryo or fetus and therefore not a viable self sustaining life form. By redefining a living developing child to be simply being labeled as an embryo or fetus they have dehumanized the living child, him or her and eliminated them for qualification as a living being for murder. Why do they not use this same logic when they have passed laws to protect the eggs of unborn eagles? Please answer this question, can a newly born baby child survive on its own outside the womb without assistance? Who is going to feed the child? Who is going to care for the child? Since they are not self sustaining do they fall into the same category and the unborn child that is fed by the umbilical cord that is attached to their mother? Do you see any problems with this type of thinking between how we should treat the child on the inside differently than how we treat them on the outside?
Did you know that destroying an unborn baby eagle bird in its egg is a punishable criminal offense? People can go to jail for killing (murdering) an eagle egg! Clearly it is the exact same type of stated unsustainable developing life form as the child (embryo or fetus) in the mother. Can you tell me what the difference is between an eagle egg and an unborn human baby? Yet one developing life form has gained a much greater value than the other in some people’s mind based upon some unknown reasoning. Why is that? How can that not be viewed as the same logical comparison that should not be ignored? Is the value in one species increased simply based upon the numbers of that species; are numbers what really matter? Because the eagle is endangered, does that make them more valuable to be protected than humans that are more populous on the earth? What do you think? Does God care more about eagles or for people? Did you know Jesus answered this question for you? In Matthew 10:29-31 Jesus speaking of two sparrows says God knows about them, but then tells humans they are much more valuable to Him than many sparrows.
Let me ask you this question, did God come to the earth to save just sparrows and eagles or did He come to save human people? If we do not know the answer to that question then we are in big trouble. John 3:16 gives us the answer by informing us that God loved us in the world so much that He died to save all those that believed in Him. Only a human is capable of believing.
Let us permit God to speak to us further on the subject of abortion and tell us His thoughts and then let us see how we react to His words:
Jdg 13:4 Now therefore beware, I pray thee, and drink not wine nor strong drink, and eat not any unclean thing:
Jdg 13:5 For, lo, thou shalt conceive, and bear a son; and no razor shall come on his head: for the child shall be a Nazarite unto God from the womb: and he shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines.
Jdg 13:6 Then the woman came and told her husband, saying, A man of God came unto me, and his countenance was like the countenance of an angel of God, very terrible: but I asked him not whence he was, neither told he me his name:
There are so many things to learn from the Bible, if we are open to the truths that it contains. We begin to learn when we allow God to show us what it actually means. Here is an example of a woman that had not had any children and the messenger of God shows up at her house and tells her that she is going to have a son. How did God know this? I think that is a really fair question and that the answer is probably more revealing than you can imagine. God knew of the child and what he was going to become and do long before he was even conceived. I will tell you that knowing this Bible fact alone will eliminate a woman’s right to choose an abortion. If God knows every child before they are born or even conceived and what they are supposed to be and what they are supposed to accomplish within their life, then who is a woman to overrule God to decide that the child should not be worthy to be born?
We know for a fact from biology class that the sex of a baby is determined by the male sperm from the father. Yet God knew which sperm cell was going to fertilize the egg in this woman in order for a male baby to be born. God knew that there was a future deliverer about to be born and according to many today, they would have said that this decision for him to be born should have been left up to the woman who conceived him. Is that what God thinks? Does a woman’s desire play a role in the plan of God for a child? Would a woman wanting a child be different from another woman not wanting her child? I personally do not believe it does based upon the Bible. We will hopefully look at this question more later.
Did you notice that God gave this woman specific instructions about what she did before she gave birth or this child was even conceived yet? In verse 4 God tells the woman not to eat or drink things that are bad for her or for the future baby. WOW, that is clearly a message that is very profound. God was basically informing us that what she did would affect the future child’s ability to fulfill his purpose. This truth places human responsibility on the mother that is way beyond what the world thinks right now. I believe that women and men will be judged for what they did to their future children good or bad.
This woman, the future mother described in Judges was told not to drink or eat any unclean thing before she conceived and while she carried this child in her womb. Why is this significant? If this was not a viable life form, why does it even matter what a woman eats or drinks? No, you see it does matter because this is not just an embryo or fetus in the eyes of God, or a blob of developing cells. In the eyes of God this was a child and God said it matters what you feed him. If it matters to God about this child and what he is fed in the womb, then it also matters to God and what every other child is fed in the womb. If it matters to God what this child was fed before it was born, then it clearly matters to God if this child was born at all.
Whose responsibility was it to eat the right things and drink the right things for the development of this baby? Was it God’s responsibility to see that his mother did the right thing or not? Did God make her do the right things here? These are not loaded questions! These are not hard questions to figure out the answers to either. If it matters to God about one baby in the Bible, then it matters to God about every baby that is supposed to be born. God does not treat one baby differently than the other, only people do that.
So what happens to all of God’s future planned roles and responsibilities of all of these babies that are aborted in our world by the mother’s choice to override God’s will? Do you think that the aborted children’s responsibilities in this life are just given to others that were not aborted? Or do you think that it is possible that there are a bunch of things that are not taking place and getting done, because the one that was going to find the cure for cancer was aborted? What if this child in Judges would have been aborted? What if his mother would have drunk wine and ignored the commandment of God? Would God had another deliverer to raise up or would Israel not have been delivered? I personally believe that this is a major problem with abortion and that there would have been no other one to take this child’s place.
Therefore, how many doctors, lawyers and teachers do you think have been aborted since 1973? Who or what exactly are we missing out on? Because of the abortion of the millions of future skilled workers, tax payers and roles that are being unfulfilled. How many church pastor’s, preachers, teachers and evangelists have been eliminated from coming into the world to help others get saved and not go to hell? Satan has used murdering people that some call doctors to create a population imbalance and reduction. Satan is trying his best to eliminate humans from coming into this world because they are threat to him.
CONCLUSION
This was just the introduction to the subject of “What does God think about Abortion?” I pray that you can begin to see from just one story in the Bible that it must matter greatly to God if a child is born. Why do you think Satan wants to kill all of the future children and keep them from entering the world? Could it be that one of these are the preacher that will reach the whole world with the truth? Does Satan think by eliminating future Christians that he can remain on this planet a little longer? I tell you that there are many things to consider on this subject. One is why has Satan been motivated to kill human children even since early in the book of Genesis? When Moses was born babies were tossed into the river to be drown, if they were males. This was a repeated occurrence when Jesus was born in Bethlehem and every child under 2 years old was killed. You see Satan is attempting to fight against whatever God has planned and is doing. We need to learn the truth and figure out whose side we want to be on. Abortion is a demonic evil plan of Satan to eliminate future humans and potential Christians. God is a pro-life God and is opposed to ALL abortion. We will continue to learn this as we go through this series of Bible lessons. Thanks for reading and studying the Bible with us today. I pray that what was stated has helped you to see what God really thinks on the subject and importance of future life.
If you would like to continue reading in this series of lessons on what God thinks about abortion, please continue to “Part 2“.
Is God Really in Control of Everything? Pt 2
(Ver 1.2) This is now Part 2 in a series of Bible lessons concerning the nature and character of God and the subject of “Is God in Control of Everything that Happens”. If you have not read “Part 1“, I would recommend that you go there to begin your study in this series. In first lesson I asked a direct question that has bothered a lot of people in the church. Is God really in control of everything that happens in the world? This question often goes into deeper thoughts of why is there so much evil in the world if God is really controlling everything and that becomes a much more difficult question to answer. While we can come up with many of man’s opinions and theories on this subject, we should determine what God thinks about it by examining His Word for clues to determine the actual truth. I have already given you several great scriptures on this subject in my last lesson that conveyed a transfer of ownership and responsibility from God to man, concerning the dominion of the earth. I don’t know if people think I provided enough evidence or not for this belief, so I will provide another verse witness that also says God put man in control of what happens on this planet:
Hebrews 2:7 Thou madest him a little lower than the angels, thou crownedst him with glory and honour, and didst set him over the works of thy hands:
If you read the preceding verse you will see this is speaking of Man or Adam and the sons of Adam. It says God has crowned us and that denotes that we were given rule and authority of this earth. Then the verse says man was put over the works of God’s hands. To be put over something denotes clear responsibility and accountability for not performing what was expected. Again if I gave you a million dollars, do I have any say after you take it as to what you do with it? No I don’t. The money would belong to you and now you are responsible to keep it or to burn it or do whatever you want to do with it. That is called a transfer of power and authority. This is exactly what God did for Adam in Genesis 1:26.
Then in my last blog I ended up with a verse in Matthew that had Jesus telling us that “All power both in heaven and earth has been given to me.” The clear inference given is that before His resurrection and ascension, not everything was under God’s control. So now we have a dilemma that God is controlling everything again and we still see evil, murder, terror, rape and death still prevalent in the earth. So what is the situation and who is really in control still needs to be resolved using the Word of God.
Before I go there, let’s determine who had dominion over the World before the resurrection of Christ. We can see from earlier scriptures that dominion and authority was given to Adam to control everything on the earth and in the earth, including the air and the sea. So what happened? Did Adam transfer this gifted ownership, rule and authority to someone else? I gave you a clue that Adam did this by showing you what God said about Satan in 2 Corinthians 4:4 being called the “god” of this world. What we learn from this single scripture is that if Satan has become the god of this world then how can God be in control of everything that happens here? This is a hotly debated new topic. Many theologians believe that Satan is God’s pawn and can do only what God gives him permission to do but that is in violation of most revealed scriptures. For example, we should be able to see this more clearly by examining this verse when God was present on the earth in the flesh:
Luke 4:5 And the devil, taking him up into an high mountain, shewed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.
We can clearly learn and see that Jesus in this temptation of Satan is being taken up to a very high mountain and is shown “ALL” of the kingdoms of this world. That information would leave nothing out, would it? Then Satan makes this statement to Jesus that is absolutely critical to see and understand:
Luke 4:6 And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me, and to whomsoever I will I give it.
This is an incredible statement of revelation being given to us by God’s Word. According to what is spoken by Satan all authority over the planet was “delivered” or “given” to him by someone. That statement denotes new ownership and control rights thereof. Satan then says that he is able to give it to whoever he wants to. Remember who Satan is speaking to, this is God in the flesh who created him and he is either very stupid or he is telling the truth. God would certainly know if Satan is not speaking the truth and He would have just said you are a liar, leave me and Satan would have had to leave if God was in control. So we can see a very clear statement concerning who is in control of what happens on the earth and that it is not God. This is of course Satan speaking so many will say it is just a lie, but if it is just a lie then it could not have been a temptation to Jesus. It has to be a real offer to Jesus in order for it to be a temptation for Him to take it. Remember when Jesus walked the earth during his ministry? Demons and religious people would constantly question his authority and his right to be here and to do what he was doing. You’ll find instances like this in Mark 1:24, Luke 4:34 and Matthew 8:29. Demons when confronted would question Jesus and call him God and ask what right do you have to do these things to them.
Mat 28:18 And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.
This verse occurs after Jesus was raised from the dead. Here Jesus literally tells us that authority has been given back to him here on the earth and even in heaven. Why would God tell us that this authority was again transferred to Him if He already had it? Can you answer me that? So apparently Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection caused something to occur to transfer control back from Satan. In 1 Corinthians 2:8 we have a statement about Satan and his demon cohorts that says, “If they would have only known what was going to happen, they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory.” That was my paraphrase of the verse, but that is what it basically says. You are free to go and study this verse for yourself. The demons are called “princes” and that Greek word simply means a ruler of this world. Therefore we know that if Satan would have known the consequences of killing Christ on the cross then he would not have done it. So apparently killing Christ caused a major and even devastating blow to his plan. I hope that you are grasping these concepts give to us by God.
Apparently from what I can see in the Bible God got back what Adam had lost and given away to Satan through the works of Jesus Christ who was a literal son of Adam (man) by his death on the cross. Jesus was a direct descendant of the first man Adam. Jesus being a man, had the right to take man’s authority back, as God in heaven He did not have the right to do this since it was God in heaven that gave the authority to man and man could do with it whatever he liked. If you go through the law in the Old Testament you will see what gave Jesus the right to redeem what Adam had sold, but I won’t go into all of that detail today in this lesson.
So who is in control today? We still have a problem with responsibility? Who’s responsibility is it to preach the gospel? Who is going to get men saved? Who is going to be the missionary to Africa and Asia? Is this God’s responsibility? Is God going to send angels to preach His Word? I don’t think so. No what we have is a statement by Jesus that helps us to see what happened. Earlier I gave you the verse in Matthew after Jesus was raised from the dead and He said “all power is given to me both in heaven and the earth, what was His next statement to us in the church? Let’s read this verse and see what Jesus did with His new authority:
Matthew 28:19 Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:
Did you see it? Here we have another transfer of authority and responsibility. We have been given the highest authority on the earth again being transferred this authority by the LORD JESUS! Jesus said “I have been given all power, now you go.” The “Now you go” is a conveyance of authority back to the church. Have you ever asked yourself this question “Why if all authority was given to Jesus, wasn’t Satan just cast out into hell?” That of course is a very interesting question to think on. Apparently something still gives Satan the right to be here on the earth, even if he doesn’t have authority over Christians any more. Perhaps you need to go back and read the verse that I mentioned earlier in Matthew 8:29. This demon that Jesus confronted in this verse knew that there was a set time for them to be here. That is why this demon said are you come to torment us before the time? We need to understand what this time is because it is rapidly approaching. There is coming a time when the devil and his demons will be cast into hell and that will be the end of them until after the 1000 year time of rest occurs but I will not teach that in this lesson today.
The Bible is such a rich and complex book, with so much deep information spiritual information given to us in it. It certainly is challenging to put all of the puzzle pieces together correctly, but with God’s help I believe we will come to a mature understanding of the truth before Jesus returns. Thank you for taking the time to read my Bible studies. I hope and pray that something positive was planted in your spirit that will produce much fruit for the kingdom of God. Be continually blessed and come back and share these lessons with your friends.
Is God Really In Control of Everything?
(Ver 1.3) This is Part 1 in a very basic series of Bible lessons on the revealed nature and character of God. In these lessons we are going to confront a popular and controversial misconception that is being spread in many churches by many confused preachers. This belief has been transferred to their church members and is often spoken in public by Christians. I hear it on Facebook very often. People will post little things on their walls passing on the responsibility for everything that occurs in their life to God. On the national news recently I heard a precious Christian couple accuse God of their house burning to the ground. In tears they said to the reporter “God does not put more on us than what we can bare”. In stating that, they had just attributed the loss of all of their natural possessions to the acts of Almighty God and implied that He was in complete control of the situation. I then heard more of the news report and wondered why the police were still looking for an arsonist that started the fire when it was actually God’s fault according to the couple. I often wonder what people think when they say things like this and then I wonder what the message is being presented to the world that is listening to these kinds of statements. Let me ask you this question and see what you think today:
Is God really in control of everything?
I am sure that there are a lot of opinions on this subject, but is opinion the thing that is really important in the world? Do you believe that everything that happens to you is what God has planned? If yes, how do you know for sure that God controls what happens to you? How would you ever prove that to anyone? What evidence do you possess for that accusation? A lot of religious people are driven by the idea that God is absolutely sovereign and therefore they have taken that truth and extended it to include that whatever happens to them must have been something that God has instigated, has caused to occur, commanded to transpire or at the very least has allowed or permitted to happen. After all they have reasoned that if it was not the will of God for it to happen, then He could have stopped it since He holds the power and ability to do that. Insurance agencies often times have clauses in their contract that state “Acts of God” are not covered. They of course are referring to natural disasters like fires, hurricanes, tornados and floods. But are these the works of God? How can they be? If they kill people and destroy their homes, lives and property? Are these the works of your God? I can tell you for sure that they are not the works of my loving God? So we must have different Gods? Recently we saw on the news a crazy man that stood up and shouted “Allah is great” and started shooting soldiers and civilians. In other shooting in Colorado we saw a man walk into a movie theatre and kill a bunch of people. Were these all of the orchestrated works of God? If it was then I don’t want that God.
The humorous thing that I have noticed about people who claim that God is in control of everything is that they never give us any scriptures to back that belief statement. Do you know of any scriptures that says “I am the LORD and I am in control of what happens to you.”? How about “I AM the Lord that sends you every clamity, test and trials”? I’ve never seen it, if it exists. So if there is no scriptural basis for your beliefs, what are your beliefs based upon? What kind of foundation are you standing upon? It sounds like your opinion or your theory and that is worth less than 2 cents to me. I once heard someone give a great definition of what a theory is and it went something like this:
Theory: A supposition based upon ignorance of the subject under discussion.
What a true statement that is. Too many people have a theory about what God is like, who God is and what God does. But how worthless is that information. Here is the number one problem with saying God is in control of everything that happens, good, bad or indifferent. You see when so many evil things happen to someone, no one can come up with a Bible answer for why it happened? They always just claim that God is smarter and wiser than we are and we can’t understand His ways, He must have had a higher purpose in taking your child. That is another idiotic opinion that I don’t mind telling you repels me away from a God who says in His Word that He loves us while causes a terrorist plane to fly into the side of a building killing hundreds and even thousands of people.
Of course religion quickly answers God had a purpose in it. Why? Because He did nothing to stop it from happening? So how did you come to the conclusion that it was God’s responsibility to stop it or do anything about it? What Bible verse is that logic based upon? Can you help me? The religious minded person, very often resort to a theory of what I call a “No Fault” Religion. No matter what happens to me in life, it is not my fault. I hope you see the problem, that means it doesn’t matter what you do, how you live, where you go, who you marry, where you work, if you live in sin or you become a nun, it just doesn’t matter. According to that philosophy, God is going to let happen to you and me everything that He desires regardless of what you or I do. I can’t find that in the Bible any where either. You know what I found in my Bible was a statement that says “God is not mocked, whatever a man sows, that he will also reap” (Gal 6:7). So apparently according to this verse it is not up to God after all what happens to you. It appears to matter more what you do and the seeds that you plant in this life to determine what you will reap. If you are getting a poor crop of bad, evil things happening to you, start checking to see what you have been sowing. This is a spiritual law of planting and reaping, but that is not my subject primarily, so I’ll move on.
So if God is not in control who is? This is an interesting question that is answered with the Word of God. I’ll start with Genesis 1:26:
Genesis 1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
This verse is obviously ignored by people who teach God is in control. God himself speaking in this verse says “Let them have dominion over all the sea, air and earth and everything that is in them or on them”. That doesn’t leave anything out does it? Dominion is a term denoting authority and ruler ship. It is God’s delegation of control. It is a transfer of responsibility from God to man. That is obviously tough for many to swallow and to comprehend. How can God turn over the earth to a man that was going to screw it up and fail? But before we go there let’s confirm this verse with another witness:
Psalm 115:16 The heaven, even the heavens are the LORD’s: but the earth hath he given to the children of men.
Obviously another scripture religious people like to ignore, but this verse says the Heavens belong to God, but the earth was given to Adam and his children. Let me ask you to think about this, have you ever given someone a present, maybe something really nice and very valuable? After they took your gift and left was it your responsibility to guard it and protect it so that nothing would ever happen to it? Of course not! Once given and received, tt was out of your hands, you no longer had any right to say what happens to it, they could throw it in the trash or give it away to someone else and you don’t have any right to it anymore. Do you understand that concept? This is exactly what God did with the earth.
All of this doesn’t mean that God can’t participate in helping man out or doing something if he is asked to do it, but it does mean that God must ask permission to do something on earth, since He has given it to man to control. I know that really bugs religious people, since God is sovereign, omnipotent and if He wants to do something they believe that He can just do it. I really don’t understand that kind of logic when it is associated and applied to a God who cares about His integrity, His reputation, His character, His moral values, His self worth, His honor, and above all His Word. That sounds more like Satan than God. God will not violate your rights to choose. God will not force you to do anything. God will not override your will, your desires or your intentions. God will not make you believe in Him. God will not save you if you do not want to be saved. Etc. etc. If He did that He would be the great puppet master and a control freak and not a loving God. God will let you strap on a bomb and blow yourself up, but is that what He wanted for you? Was that God’s plan for you life, NO WAY!
So when people say God is in control just ask for a Bible verse that says that before you believe something so ridiculous. Before I close I’ll give you some more Bible verses to consider. In 2 Corinthians 4:4 Satan is directly called the God of this world. I thought God was in control of this world? Un Oh? It appears someone forgot to tell Paul. If Satan is the god of this world, that explains tornados, hurricanes, and floods much better to me. Remember when Jesus was in the boat crossing the sea and a storm came up and almost sank the boat. The disciples woke Jesus up and told Him they were about to perish and Jesus went to the front of the boat and looked at the wind and the waves stopped the storm by speaking to it. Uh OH Again? If God caused the storm and then stopped the storm He must be confused, or schizophrenic or maybe His house is just divided working against itself. Today I like storms and tomorrow I don’t. He just cant’ seem to make up His mind do I want a storm to sink them or do I want it calm. Maybe God starts storms and only Jesus stops them. How crazy is that? I know that my Bible says Jesus was God in the flesh and He said when you have seen me you have seen the Father. So whater Jesus did is what God does. Therefore there is no way that God starts the storm and then stops it. There are just too many problems with the theory that God is controlling everything.
What we need to realize is that Jesus said in John 10:10 “The thief has only come to kill, steal and destroy, but I came that you might have life…” If it kills, if it destroys something you own, or if it is stolen from you, that was not God in control causing it to happen, that was Satan demonstrating his power and you letting him do it.
I’ll do one more scripture that helps us to understand who is in charge now. This verse is a statement made by Jesus Christ after His resurrection and it goes like this:
Matthew 28:18 And Jesus cam and spake unto them saying, All power is given unto me in heave and in earth.
Again we see a major problem with the God is in control of everything theory; Jesus who is God says that all power is now given to Him in heaven and on the earth. But, I thought God already had all power over heaven and earth? According to many theologians He did. Obviously Jesus is just confused and He doesn’t realize what He is talking about. Please don’t be ignorant! Jesus knows exactly what He is talking about and the authority of both heaven and earth was transferred back to God at the resurrection of Christ. But, what did Jesus immediately do with it and who did He get it back from? So many good questions to ponder. But I’ve given you enough to think about for now. I hope that you do the research in your Bible to answer these questions. Until next time, God bless you in your Bible study.
If you would like to continue reading in this series you may goto “Part 2“.
Keys to Understanding: Having an Open Mind
I’ve been going through some of the key elements that people need to know in order to understand the Bible correctly. Knowing how the Bible is written and why it is written like it is helps us to better understand what is written. Seeing things clearly and thus better understanding God’s goals and purposes. So continuing in this line of thought I want to address a key personal characteristic that will help you to increase your understanding.
Reading and studying the Bible has to be done with an open mind. What I mean by that is people who are already set in what they believe, will have an extremely difficult time learning about and accepting the truth. People who are indoctrinated with traditions of their church, the theological thoughts and concepts of error will probably never really understand the Bible. I’ve heard those types of people as being called “Concrete” Christians, thoroughly mixed up and firmly set. Think about it, why did Jesus go around and constantly say “let him who has ears, hear”. Apparently, what people received from him was not up to what he dealt out or said. Jesus put the responsibility of hearing on the hearer and not the speaker. You can say the most profound and important thing in the world and if no one cares to hear it, then it really does no good to say it. Some heard what Jesus said and some didn’t. Judas was with Jesus the same as Peter, James and John. Judas obviously didn’t hear anything Jesus said.
Acts 28:27 For the heart of this people is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing and their eyes have they closed; lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart, and should be converted and I should heal them.
This is probably one of the key scriptures to Bible interpretation that many wouldn’t associate with it. But I feel the application is right on. So what is the subject of this verse in Acts 28:27? It would appear it is the heart of the people and their ability or inability to understand with it. Isn’t that what we are talking about? Why don’t people read the same Bible and come to the same conclusions? Why do some see things one way and others don’t see them at all? It is a perplexing puzzle? But the Bible tells us that people close their eyes to the truth and they therefore refuse to see it or allow it to effect their lives. It is not God’s fault is it? Unfortunately, a lot of people want a God on their terms and conditions. They want a God that they want. The want to see a God that fits their concept of God. That is the definition of religion whether you realize it or not. Religion is man’s attempt to please a God they don’t know. Christianity should be radically different than a religion. Christianity is based upon a relationship with the Creator. Here is another scripture from the book of Acts that speaks to the subject of being open minded:
Acts 17:11 These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily whether those things were so.
This verse speaks so very much that it should not be bypassed. It directly compares two different groups or types of people. One was said to be more noble than the other. Nobility is a term often times inferred upon royalty, kings and queens. The word “noble” literally means “of a higher rank”. Did you realize that your rank in Christ can grow or diminish? It is all up to you however. What made these more noble than the others. It tells us they had a ready and willing mind. I’ve often heard a mind described like a parachute, it only works when it is open and engaged. This is so true that God put direct conformation in his word. But also notice that these more noble ones just didn’t swallow anything anyone was teaching them. No, you see an incredibly important lesson given here for the entire church of God. This is an example to learn from and to follow. It tells us that they searched the scriptures daily to see for themselves if what was being taught was really what the Bible says. So whoever is teaching, including me you should do the same. Never accept the words of any man or woman unless it totally agrees with the word of God.
So what is the net, net, or bottom line of this blog? What is the primary take away? I’ve heard it called low hanging fruit. What you should take away may be an attitude adjustment. If your attitude is that you already know everything you need to know about the Bible you need to change. If you hear something new that you’ve never heard before, you should be open to at least research it in the Bible and study it out for yourself before you reject it. That is one of the most obvious problems that I have observed with many pastors and Bible teachers today. God raises up someone with a new focus on a part of his word and because it doesn’t fit what they learned in seminary, they automatically throw it under the bus, not knowing they just threw God under the bus with it. How can God get over something new if no one is open to hear it. How can God teach you something radically different when you think it is from the devil?
The eyes and ears are windows to your mind and to your spirit. In order to get things into your heart, you are going to have to leave your windows open and get them past your mind. The mind is the battle ground for Satan. If you let something in your eyes and your ears, Satan will come immediately to steal it by attacking your mind. If he can get you to reject it before you understand it with your heart, you are defeated and he has won. This is a spiritual battle and it takes place inside of you. If you learn about it and understand how he works you can use it to defeat him.
Genesis 2:18-23 God Creates Woman from a Man
Genesis 2:18 And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be along; I will make him an help meet for him.
I read this verse in the Bible and it was astounding what it said to me. I don’t know if people ignore what it says, or just don’t see what it says. God makes a man on the earth and turns over control of His creation to this him. Almost every time in the work of creation, God would do something and say, that was good. This is the first time we have a statement that something is not good that God has done. Before this we have had occasions to notice like on day two of creation when God did not make the statement that it was good, but now we have a direct and explicit confirmation that something wasn’t good. What is the implied information given to us by that statement? The implication was that the man was alone? Did that mean spiritually as well as physically? We know that God is a spirit, later we see in chapter 3 where God would come down and walk in the garden to talk with the man. But apparently in the eyes of God the man was a separate being not a part of the heavenly family. Not a part of the angels, not apart of the trinity. Not associated with anyone or anything in heaven. This if you did not realize it is a division or separation from God. The creation of a being that was not in covenant relationship to God. Of course that does not mean as I noted earlier that the man could not have a conversation with his father, God. We will see more implications of this as we go but for now, I thought that was interesting.
Genesis 2:21 And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof.
Genesis 2:22 And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.
There is more valuable information in these two verses of scripture and you’ll see why later. We have the fact given to us that the woman was taken out of the side of the man. That is another reason God called both of their names Adam, because they both came from the same body. This is so important to see. What was the surgical operation that God performed? God opened the flesh of his man and took a bone out of his side and creates a woman from it. Where did Adam get his DNA, it had to be from God his Father. Where did Eve get her DNA, it was from the man. All of this was done for what reason? So that the man would not be alone. What was Adam’s response to what God had done? He makes this statement which is absolutely critical to understand:
Genesis 2:23 And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh she shall be called Woman because she was taken out of man.
Did you see the statement? Adam declares the woman’s body to be his body. A body consists of flesh and bones. God created her body from a part of his. So the end results is that they are one body. It is really a simple math problem, If you take 1 and multiply it by 1, you get 1. 1 male x 1 female = 1 body. Or you could say it this way, God divided 1 body into 1 male and 1 female. 1 divided by 1 is 1. This is God’s basic math of marriage. There is a principle stated here that will be applicable later when I talk about Jesus. Then in verse 24, God restates what Adam has declared in the Genesis law of marriage:
Genesis 2:24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife and they shall be one flesh..
This is another one of those verses that I don’t think people have understood completely. You see it has vast Biblical implications and explains many things that happen in our relationship with God, but I won’t get off track for now and attempt to explain any of that. What we should see is the statement and how it applies to Adam since that is what we are talking about. What we observe is God’s three step program for marriage. First step, we can see that God says that the man will leave or separate from his family, which consists of his father and his mother. Step two the man will marry a wife. The term cleave is used but it means to be joined to. Finally step 3, the two will become one flesh. Isn’t it absolutely amazing that God didn’t know Adam didn’t have a father and a mother. Ok, I was being a little facetious trying to get your attention. Of course God knew who his father and his mother were, but did you? I think if you have been reading my blog you know that Adam’s father was God. Now who the mother is, I will not be able to address for a while. So what is the net results of this statement? What we see is another stated division between man and God and a joining of the man to the woman to be one.
What normally happens when humans get married? They usually move out of the parents house and establish a new family and household. So while they were a part of one family, they left that one and now they are the establishment of another new family. You do understand that God has a family in heaven? So by creating a man on earth, we saw that already Adam had moved out of the family of God in heaven. But God said it was not good for the man to be alone, so God creates a woman for the man and they two now create and establish a new and separate family on the earth. The key words here are New and Separate. A family that didn’t exist before, a family not a part of God and the beings in heaven. In case you didn’t know it, God is working on a plan. What does that plan involve? Not only the creation of a new family on earth, but how does God get rid of the unwanted family members in heaven? Some might say God is God and He is sovereign and He can do anything He wants. When people think like that, it just shows how little they know God. God is a covenant making God. What is a covenant? I probably need to spend weeks exploring all the information in the Bible about covenants. I would suggest if you have never studied covenants that you do some research and study covenants. What is a covenant? How are covenants made? Who can covenants be between?. Briefly I will tell you that a covenant is equivalent to a marriage. A marriage in the eyes of God as we have seen means that they are one. I know I’ve implied a lot of new information in this blog that you have probably never considered, so I’ll stop here and let you think about it.
Genesis 2:7 – Our Source of Life
Here is another perspective or way to look at the creation of man. I will give you some advanced spiritual concepts and truths, using scriptures in the Bible. We know from Genesis 2:7 that God forms the body of the man from the dust of the ground. Then let’s read what happens:
Genesis 2:7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
We can see that man’s life came directly from God, for it says God breathed into his nostrils, the breath of life. What exactly is the breath of life? The Bible gives us some valuable clues if we are able to put them together and see them. The first thing we should realize is that the body was not the man and did not contain any life until God did something to produce the life. God must have imparted something that made the man unique from the rest of creation. No where in the Bible, does it say God breathed into the body of a monkey or a chimpanzee to cause them to live. Right there we can see a major difference between animals and man. I believe there is sufficient scientific evidence such as DNA that when interpreted correctly shows man did not come from monkeys. But natural men who are convinced there is no God will always try to come up with a natural explanation of how we got here.
James 2:26 For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.
This verse in James declares a universal truth that applies to every man, woman and child. It says if the body is alive, it (the body) has a spirit within it. I guess what it actually says, is without the spirit, the body is dead. So when God formed a body from the dust of the ground for Adam, was it dead or alive at first? Let’s start by asking, was Adam a spirit being? Of course he had to be a spirit being. God is a spirit (John 4:24) and man was made in the image of God, so man has to be a spirit. So where did Adam get his spirit? Of course it had to come from God. It is interesting that it says God breathed into the nostrils the breath of life. I take that to mean his spirit and not just God’s attempt at CPR. If God breathed spirit life into Adam whose spirit was it? Of course it was God’s spirit. Again, more difficult concepts to grasp and understand. But we can confirm this by looking at other scripture in the Bible:
Hebrews 12:9 Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of sprits and live?
Here is another fascinating scripture that contains another universally true statement. It says God is the Father of spirits. That of course would be every spirit, good, bad or indifferent. Therefore, Adam by implication was a son of God. People will automatically think that I just put Adam on the same class and level as Jesus, but I didn’t. I did not say Adam was God, I just said he was a child of the Almighty. So put down your stones and read. Why is it important to see this relationship between God and Adam? I’m sorry I don’t have time to explain that right now. Perhaps we will get into that later. So does the Bible say that Adam was a son of God? We just read a scripture that implied it very strongly but there is another reference that comes to mind. In the genealogy of Jesus in Luke the 3rd chapter we can read a long, list of father and son relationships starting with Joseph going all the way back to Adam. Then guess what says in verse 38:
Luke 3:38 Which was the son of Enoch, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God.
Here is a key to correct Bible interpretation, be consistent. If every named pair represents a father and a son relationship except the last one, that would be an inconsistent interpretation. You have to apply the same logic to very member in the list or else it is not a list of anything, just a bunch of names.
What we have discovered is that God is the source of our life and that our life is not physical first, but spiritual first. Then after the impartation of the spiritual, we can see the clear implication that only then can we have physical life. This is applicable to many things in the Bible and contains valuable lessons for us all.
Varying Stages of Spiritual Growth
God created natural things to give us views into spiritual things. Jesus taught us in the parable of the sower, that there are six types of or conditions of the human heart. Only 50% of these six types produced any lasting harvest. Jesus told us that of he 50% who produced good fruit, that 1/3 of them produced 30 times, 1/3 produced 60 times and the other 1/3 produced 100 times. But, we can see that the other 1/2 of the people who also heard, allowed circumstances, persecution, lack of understanding and the cares of the world kill the harvests that God had wanted to give them. It is interesting to note that they all had the same seed sown in them, but only 1/2 produced anything worth while. We should all take note that the seed is constant, it is only the soil that changed what was produced and how much. This is a very critical lesson to learn. The seed or Word of God will never change, so that leaves only one place that changes can and should occur. Guess where that is?
So getting back to natural things showing us spiritual things, there is a comparison given to us in the Bible about Christians being born again. Jesus told us in John 3, “ye must be born again.” He of course was speaking of a spiritual rebirth. When Nicodemus asked him can a man go back into his mother’s womb? Jesus replied that “What is born of flesh is flesh, but what is born of the spirit is spirit”. Jesus was speaking of a spiritual birth process, that many times corresponds to a physical birth process. What are the implications of being born spiritually? You can see by looking at new born natural babies that these children are completely helpless and totally dependent upon someone else for nourishment and care. Well even though new born Christians can be fully grown natural people, from a spiritual stand point they need the same level of care that any new born needs.
As babies grow, they begin to develop more and more skills and abilities. By the time they are 4 years old they can do a lot of things that grown ups can do, but just not as quickly or as well. With continued training and development these children will eventually become responsible adults. So all of these physical developments are analogous to spiritual development. Just like a college student can not have a calculus conversation with a 2 year old, so are there many things in the Bible that are as equally as hard for a new Christian to accept. By realizing there are differences and by placing yourself somewhere on the following scale, you should be able to determine how much you need to grow.
| New Born | Jesus/Mature | ||||||||
| 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 |
So where would you fall on the scale? Zero being a new Christian and 9 being where Jesus is today. It think we all are striving for the 9, but none of us are very close to it yet. What does all of this have to do with Bible interpretation and understanding the Bible. Well more than you can imagine. Most of the dissension within the Body of Christ is coming from baby Christians. Babies holler the most, cry the most, complain the most, ask why the most and oblivious to what they are doing to others. Babies are self centered and focused only upon themselves and what they need or what they want. Children do many things that are harmful and hurtful without regard to anyone else. They’ll take toys away and bite and fight not caring about anyone else. Sounds like a lot of Christians I know. When a two year old comes to me and criticizes something that I do, I don’t let that bother me. Why because I’m older and I know they don’t know any better. It is funny, Jesus took the same attitude towards the Jews, while hanging on the cross, Jesus said “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”. It is no different today, when someone criticizes me for something I say, I just say “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”
Genesis 2:7 – The Redemption of the Body
There are so many ways to look at scripture that it is a challenge to know which way to go. If you have been reading my blog, you know that I try to provide new perspectives into standard teachings. I always use the Bible to explain and interpret the Bible so I’m not making stuff up. However, since a lot of what I teach is new, I’m to you and stuff you never heard, it will be difficult for you to see at first. That is just the way the Bible is. People can look right at a verse of truth and never see what it says.
Genesis 2:7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
We can learn a lot by seeing inside the implications associated with property ownership. Since the man’s body was formed from the dust of the ground, that automatically implies the body can be bought and sold as any piece of property can be bought and sold. If you have ever bought a piece of property you will understand this concept. But what does that have to do with Adam?
Isaiah 52:3 For thus saith the LORD, Ye have sold yourselves for nought; ye shall be redeemed without money.
Here are the words of God spoken to us. God declares that Adam sold himself for nothing. In other words Adam did not gain anything from the sales transaction with Satan. There was a transfer of ownership of a piece of property and Adam lost everything. After the fall of man we now have a new god of this world (2 Cor 4:4) who was in charge until Jesus came and died for us. Did you notice the last part of Isaiah 52:3, God says, I know you sold yourselves for nothing, but I will redeem you without any money.
Redemption is a fascinating concept. In natural terms, people in our world pawn or sell items to stores called Pawn Shops. The establishment gives the person some money for their items of value and then sets a time limit that the person who sold the item can come back and repurchase the item back, usually for a premium. If the time limit expires, the item is now property of the store owner and he can sell the item for usually more than he paid for it. That is an interesting concept and actually a parallel to what the Bible says happened to Adam. Adam sold his property to Satan, but God had an established time period to redeem it and God said I will pay the price to get it back, and it won’t cost me any money. We know that God paid the price with His life and His blood, so even though it didn’t cost money, it wasn’t free or cheap.
Romans 8:23 And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.
In Romans 8:23 we can see a statement that declares the time period for land transfer has not completely expired. If we are waiting, like Paul was waiting what are we waiting for? When is this expiration or redemption period over. When will the property revert to the correct ownership? Well this is what God’s law said about personal property and ownership.
Leviticus 25:10 And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubilee unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man his family.
You see God instigated a time when every possession that was sold would be returned to the original owner. Every 50 years, a Jubilee would take place, a time of liberty a time of freedom for everyone. Any person who had been sold into slavery would be returned to his family. Any property sold to pay a debt would be returned to their original owners. This was God’s law and God’s solution to Adam selling what he couldn’t afford to sell.
Genesis 6:3 And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.
I found Genesis 6:3 fascinating, did you notice that it said “man is also flesh”. This verse places a higher importance on something that man is above his body. Man is of course a spirit being that lives in a body. But in the eyes of God the man belongs in a body. Paul said in the New Testament, “to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.” So we can see that the man’s spirit can be separated from his body. In which case if the man’s spirit leaves his body we know the body is dead. If you die and go to heaven that doesn’t mean that you are not still waiting for your glorified body.
So many will question this reasoning, but I can see it based upon other scriptures in the Bible so I believe it. In Genesis 6:3 God speaking about the years of man said they will be 120. Most people these days don’t live that long, but a few have reached ages near that number. But I don’t think God was talking about that, or I guess I should say God was implying something else. If you take 120 and multiply it by 50 (Jubilees) you get what? The answer comes to 6000, that is an amazing number in light of the Genesis 1 prophecy. It seems that man’s time period of physical redemption is 6000 years. At this time the property will revert back to the original owner. There are really no coincidences in the Bible, there are really just a lot of clues. Putting the clues together is where we come in and that is our job. God has given us an assigned task to figure out the clues. In a short Blog like this, I can’t really give you every scripture reference and all the information that you probably need to figure these things out. All I can do is give you some snippets and a few references to help you search for the truth in a new way.
Is Everything in the Bible True?
(Ver 2.1) Today’s Bible lesson is Part 1 in a series of lessons on understanding truth in the Bible. This of course is a very difficult and tricky question to answer correctly. How do you approach this subject without offending someone? Too many people approach the Bible like every word came from the mouth of God and therefore the entire book is completely true from cover to cover. I am forced to disagree with that assumption but before you write me off, you should hear why. You see, I do know that God is the author of the Bible and every word it contains was inspired by Him for us. But is everything in the Bible the truth? That would be like asking is everything you watch on the ABC World News the truth? I don’t mean to say that the national news correspondent is intentionally trying to mislead us or lie to us. That is not what I’m saying at all. You see, if you’ve ever watched the news, you probably know what I’m going to say. You may remember when we had a president get up on the news and say ‘I did not have sex with that intern’. So was that the truth? Did it make it true because it was on national TV or reported by a popular news anchor on a respected news program? You see the problem, don’t you? The Bible has many quotes from similarly unethical and ignorant people and just because it is in the Bible doesn’t mean it is the truth.
This is in fact a very important and a key element to correct Bible interpretation, first determine who is speaking and then determine what their character and moral background is before you embrace what they say to be the truth. If they are the words directly from God, like it says” Thus saith the LORD”; or if they are the words in red ink in the New Testament from Jesus, or the words of one of God’s chosen prophets or apostles then it can be easily confirmed to be the truth. If however, Moses, David, Paul, John or Luke or whoever, quotes what somebody else said like Ananias or Sapphira in Acts 5, then it is very possible that what is said is not the truth. Again it depends upon the speaker. If the speaker is Satan for example, whatever is said could be a partial truth, the complete truth or a complete fabricated lie. So it definitely matters who is speaking before you can judge whether it is a truth or not.
In the book of Job, in the Old Testament it contains a lot of words from Job, Job’s wife and Job’s friends. Now while there are many valuable lessons in the book of Job, not every word spoken is the truth. You see here is Job’s problem, he didn’t have any Bible. He couldn’t understand most of the things of God. He couldn’t really know or understand what he was saying, after all what would it have been based upon? There is not any established basis for the thoughts of Job. For example, Job said “God has given and God has taken away.” I’ve heard preachers in church and at funerals stand up and quote this like it was God speaking. However that is not the truth. It is true Job said it, it is true it is in the Bible, it is true that God inspired someone to record what he said, but it is not a statement of truth. I’m sure I’m going to get a lot people upset at me for saying this, but this is the way the Bible was written. If you read later in the book of Job 38:2, you will see that God asks Job a simple but direct question and it says this “Who is this that darkens counsel with words without knowledge?” It is very clear to me that God is saying that at least some of Job’s words are baseless ramblings from an ignoarant man. Yes, Job believed they were true and was not intentionally deceiving anyone, but according to God they were just the words of an ignornat man. So you must judge what Job says by what God says about Job’s words and then and only then will we better understand the Bible. According to 2 Timothy 2:15 there is a right way to divide the Word of Truth and by reverse/antithesis implied truths there are also potentially many wrong ways to divide this exact same Words of Truth. You have to make a determination how you want to do it. You can do it your way or you can do it God’s way. The Bible is much more complex than you can imagine and there are specific rules and guidelines which God has given to us to follow and if you learn them and follow them you will not fall into error very often.
So if the Bible contains specific historical information such as names of cities, countries, dates, times, and people can we count on them to be accurate? Absolutely, the Bible is not a book of mythology, fables, fairy tales or man made legends like Paul Bunyan, Atlas or Methuselah. The Bible contains actual historical events, places and people. You can count on every one of them to be more accurate than any text book or history book you had in school. God knows exactly what happened when and where.
If the Bible has an account of some miraculous event transpiring in a supernatural story, like the parting of the Red Sea, can we rely on that as being a true fact within human history. Absolutely, people who don’t believe in God will of course try to convince you that this is fiction, but I know better. God who is capable of creating the world and everything we can see, is certainly capable of doing something on a much smaller scale that is still very spectacular.
Knowing how to read and study the Bible will greatly increase your understanding of God’s Word. Understanding that not every word in the Bible is the Truth will help you figure out what is the truth. You do realize that if everything in the Bible was the truth, it would not be necessary to “divide the truth”. What is a division? A division is a separation of one thing from another thing. To divide something entails effort, work, tools, study and understanding. If you were a doctor about to do surgery on someone you are about to cut them open or divide their flesh to look inside. If you don’t know what you are doing your patient is in trouble. Well dividing the word of God is somewhat similar, if you don’t know what you are doing, you are the patient that is in trouble.
If you would like to continue reading about Understanding Truth in the Bible please go to “Part 2“.
Genesis 2:2 The Seventh Day, God’s Coming Day of Rest
Genesis 2:2 And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.
It is fascinating to me to know that God works and God rests. I don’t think God get’s tired like we do sometimes, but yet this is what it says. In Genesis 1 it said that man was made in the image of God, so if God works I would guess that He expects man to work. That is a big reason I’m not in favor of welfare and free hand outs by the government, the church or by any individual. I’m not opposed to helping people, but I believe people should be willing to work to get the help. So many people today just want a free ride and a hand out. I’m not for giving those types of people anything. It sounds pretty harsh, but people need to read the Bible and find out what God thinks is right. I’m pretty sure I read in my Bible, you don’t work, you shouldn’t eat. Oh, well I’ll move on and get off my soap box.
Verse 2 of Genesis 2 is the first mention of Day 7. We have already learned that each day of creation corresponds to a 1000 year period of human history. I’ve already alluded to the fact that this day 7 corresponds to the millennial 1000 year reign of Christ which will occur directly after the 7 year tribulation period. During this time period I’ve been told Christ will return to earth and establish a kingdom on earth without the presence of evil. During this time period Satan and his demons will be bound and unable to tempt or deceive anyone. At the end of this 1000 year time period the Bible says that Satan will be released to deceive again and anyone born during this 1000 year time period will have the opportunity to choose to believe the deception and be cast into the lake of fire.
There are verses in Hebrews chapter 4 that speak of this coming day of rest. These verses directly confirm the prophetic nature of Genesis and declare that this day will soon be coming. We are also told that we must make an effort to enter into this rest in Hebrews chapters 3 and 4. Those who choose not to believe will not enter into God’s rest we are told. It appears that the ball is in our court on whether we enter into God’s day of rest.
Matthew 11:28 Come unto me, all that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Revelation 14:13 I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors; and their works do follow them.
So apparently God sees our works and acknowledges them. He has determined a time of rest for His saints. But, now is not the time. Now is the time of harvest and if you have ever had a farm you know harvest is not easy or restful.
Genesis 2:1 The Stated End of God’s Creative Work
Genesis 2:1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the hosts of them.
(Ver 1.1) This is “Part 1” in the series of lessons on the study of the verses of Genesis Chapter 2. Today we will begin the series looking at only verse 1. The first verse of Genesis 2 begins with a statement of completion that basically says God has “finished” or “ended” His works of creation both in the heavens and on the earth. It is interesting to note that this verse says “finished”. This is the Hebrew word H3615 that means “to end”. What ended? We should have learned in chapter 1 that God spoke ten times in order to return order back into the initial state of disorder found in Genesis 1:2 when the earth was fully covered by water.
What we are learning by this statement of completion the earth and the heavens have been restored to their originally created state of order. This again affirm something major occurred between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 to cause this chaos and I believe this chaos occurred during Satan’s initial rebellion described in Ezekiel 28:11-19.
This is a good time to confirm how God works. We learn from reading John 6:29 that Jesus defines God’s work as Him doing something that causes humans to believe in the sent Son of God, Jesus. This would imply that someone was speaking right words about Jesus that cause someone to believe in Him. Spoken Words are a major part of God’s work. We also learn from reading John chapter 1:
Joh 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Joh 1:2 The same was in the beginning with God.
Joh 1:3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.
This should be a review of things we learned from chapter 1. But we can see again that the Word of God was With God in the beginning and we further confirm that this Word was God. God teaches us that we cannot separate Him from His Word because they are the same. When then learn more important information that His Word created everything that was created in the three dimensional realm of space and matter. What we can conclude is that God speaking to create has ceased. There is nothing else that needed to be spoken to be created in order to fulfill His plan for humanity.
Since we have discovered in this verse that God’s work has been fully completed and yet there are more works being described in this chapter, we must understand that everything else in this chapter after this statement has to be a detailed recap or explanation of things that have already occurred in chapter 1. If you didn’t know, everything in the Bible is not sequential, or in ordered time sequence. In other words from this point forward in the Bible (verse 1), God is done working and won’t be doing anything else to create anything else new in the natural realm. That of course does not mean God doesn’t do anything to maintain, deliver, or work in the lives of his people. It just means creation of the world system is complete.
It is very interesting to note that this verse ends with “and all the hosts of them”. If you look up the Hebrew word for hosts, it refers to a military term for a group of people organized for war. Isn’t that interesting? We can see major prophetic implications here concerning the church. The book of Genesis was not divided into chapters until much later, so what we see at the beginning of Chapter 2 is really the ending of Chapter 1 and could still be talking about day 6. There are many places in the New Testament where Christians are instructed to put on armor, which includes shields, breastplates, even swords. But then we are told that our enemy is not with flesh and blood but with the spiritual forces of darkness. There are huge implications all over this verse if you can see it.
Who Wrote the Bible? Where Did the Bible Come From?
(Ver 1.1) This of course is an interesting question. Technically speaking you have 66 books of text within the standard KJV Bible. We know that approximately 40 different men shared in the writing of the Bible over a span of approximately 1600 years.
Here are some basic Bible facts that I found on the Internet:
There are 8,674 different Hebrew words in the Bible, 5,624 different Greek words, and 12,143 different English words in the King James Version
- Number of books in the KJV Bible: 66
- Chapters: 1,189
- Verses: 31,101
- Words: 783,137
- Letters: 3,566,480
So let me ask you a simple question. What would happen if you attempted to get 40 different writers together in order to publish a book of such volume. What would the net results be? Could you get any of them to agree? How many times would they contradict each other? How many times would they cross paths and overlap information? How many times would they come up with anything that could predict what was going to come to pass a 1000 or more years in the future? I think you see the problem? Here we have a book that many approach with wrong assumptions, based upon wrong information, drawing incorrect conclusions and are generally just screwed up. I’ve heard so many people who want to write an exposition of why Paul said this, or Moses said that, like it was their ability and knowledge that produced what we are reading. If you approach the Bible with wrong ideas, you generally get back wrong ideas. There is a basic computer programming law that says if you put garbage in you get garbage out. That is the way the studying the Bible works.
What you first must do is understand who wrote the Bible? Establish a correct focus first. Forget the names of the 40 different men that copied the words onto the pages or scrolls I should say. Forget the commentaries of men who don’t understand or have a clue what God is saying and focus on this, God spoke and dictated the exact text and words that He wanted recorded and He gave the task of recording these words to 40 men over 1600 years. Now that changes everything in my view. Now you are not attempting to explain why Moses wrote anything that he did and left out other things that were not recorded. If you approach every word as being important and a word directly from God that has purpose and meaning you start looking at the Bible differently and can now begin to see it correctly.
2Ti 3:16 All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:
Jer 30:2 Thus speaketh the LORD God of Israel, saying, Write thee all the words that I have spoken unto thee in a book.
According to 2 Timothy 3:16, the Bible was inspired by the Spirit of God. I guess it actually says given by inspiration of the Spirit of God. While the Bible has multiple scribes or men that were given the task to record the words of God in book form, we must realize that all of the words were given and inspired directly from God. This book says nothing that God would not want you to know and to understand right here and right now. It doesn’t say anything that God wouldn’t say to you if you could stand before His throne in heaven and ask Him questions directly. This book contains the thoughts, ideas, wisdom and knowledge of God and is available to you 24 hours a day. It is totally up to you to tap into this vast treasure of information.
6 Days of Creation – Genesis Chapter 1 Review
(Ver 1.2) In my Blogs the last couple of weeks I have been exploring an overview of the 6 days of creation and teaching how each day fits a prophetical view into God’s timeline for the 6000 year period of human history. I know this is a controversial viewpoint and it is probably brand new information to many. However, it is there if you research it and studyit from a prophetic perspective. Some have probably wondered how did I come up with the idea that the 6 days of creation were prophetic windows? I beleieve that it is just what the Bible says and therefore it is not my opinion or my personal interpretation of what God says. What we must do is to allow the Bible to interpret itself, so we must look for God’s definitions, His commentary and explanations and we must put these together with the words written in Genesis to understand them. Look at this verse and see what it says for yourself:
Isaiah 46:10 Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things which are not,…
You see from this verse God says I have declared or stated the end from the beginning. In other words God has prophesied the ending from the beginning. Genesis chapter 1 definitely declares the beginning of our current world system. So somewhere in that description is information about what is going to occur in our history and its final conslusion. To declare something that has not occurred is clearly a statement of prophetic proportion. The only to verify that a prophecy is from a real prophet is for us to examine the words and see if they have been fullfilled, have transpired or are coming to pass presently. Here is another scripture that speaks to us along these lines:
Ecclesiastes 1:9 The thing that has been, it is that which shall be, and that which is done, is that which shall be done,….
Again in this verse we see a powerful reference of something to look for when reading and studying the Bible. We can use these words to imply that God declares that what He has done during creation is that which will occur again. You see as I have read the Bible I have discovered a series of repeated patterns that have occured over and over. That is why that I believe that we should study the book of beginnings like it was a raod map to our future. Of course since we are at the very end of the 6th day or 6000 years, we should realize that we do not have very much time left. This actually makes our research more sure, since the majority of recorded history has already occurred and we are nearing the end now.
We started the chapter analysis by looking at the fact that the earth as stated in the Bible is much older than 6000 years, but we are not specifically told how old it is anywhere. It could very well be millions or billions of years old. We looked at scripture that speaks to us about a pre-Adamic civilization or world that existed prior to our current world system. We found scriptures that indicate that this world was completely destroyed and apparently God started over with us, or for us.
We looked at the work of God during creation and identified God’s first act as being division. God divided Light from darkness. We can imply from this that prophetically speaking God is breaking away or dividing himself from something that He does not want to associate with. At least 3 times in the chapter we can see that God divided something from something else. I can tell you right now that most Bible teachers and preachers don’t have a clue to the significance of these words of God so they ignore them. I’m sorry that I just don’t have time to teach you all of that right now.
The next significant point about creation is how God created. I might have alluded to the fact that God looked at the problem and always spoke the answer or the solution. As it is written in the New Testament, God is a God who calls those things that be not as though they were and as we can see from creation, they become exactly what they are called. Since man is made in the image of God this implies that man operates the exact same way that God operates. Of course not at the same level or capacity that God is, but you would be amazed at what the Bible says about our spoken words and the Bible is very strong in this area and says many things that are very hard to accept by many Christians.
During our study we identified some of the key symbolic elements and researching them in the scriptures discovered what they meant and how they are applied within creation. Light is symbolic of God. Seas are symbolic of people. Day and night are symbolic of the conditions of men’s hearts. Some have allowed the sun of God to light their hearts and then others have been kept in darkness because they have allowed Satan to blind their minds. We have identified the symbolic Sun as being Jesus Christ. Then we have identified the symbolic moon as being Satan, the ruler of the darkness.
In the creation of Adam on day 6 I took you through an analysis of the Hebrew words for man and Adam as being the same word. I then showed you from scripture how Genesis 1:27 should have been translated as Adam instead of man, because God calls both the male and the female by the same name. The inference of and application to marriage is of course easily seen.
Finally we looked at the coming into maturity of the body of Christ. We also looked at the delegated authority of the body of Christ. We are at the end of Day 6 of God’s established timetable and God has the planned return of Jesus Christ next on the agenda. I believe very strongly that Jesus’ return is not very long from now. I know I did not attempt to cover everything that the chapter speaks about. My goal was to give you some new perspectives and things to think about that you hadn’t seen before. Things that can be tremendously important to understanding a large portion of the Bible. I hope you have enjoyed Chapter 1 of Genesis and we will move into Chapter 2 next. I probably will not go verse by verse but I will change to a larger what are the key concepts given to us level of study. There are some awesome things in Chapter 2 and 3 if you can see them. So continue reading in Genesis and see what else God has to reveal to us.
Six Things Satan Doesn’t Want You To Know About Himself
(ver 1.7) This Part 1 in a series of Bible lessons about things that Satan does not want you know about him. Satan in the Bible is called by so many different names, titles, characteristics, symbols and descriptions. Each one of these that were given to us by God reveal Satan in a new way for us to learn from. For example, in Revelation 12:9 the name Satan is given to us and it is directly linked to be the symbolic “Great Red Dragon” in the book of Revelation. Satan is then further revealed as the “ancient serpent” in Genesis 3:1 in the same verse. Since Satan is called both the serpent in the garden in Genesis and now the Great Dragon in Revelation we learn from these two symbolic titles that he has gained significant power and strength. But maybe you did not know that and learned something brand new. In other places in the Bible Satan is also called the “deceiver” and the “father of lies” by God. If you wold like to see a more complete list of these Names, Titles, Descriptions and Symbols for Satan in the Bible you can go read that reference document and find those that I have been shown by God up until this point in time. Satan has had an explicit evil agenda in place ever since he deceived Eve and caused Adam to sin in the garden. Satan has implemented this plan based upon misconceptions and misdirection that diverts your attntion away from you finding or knowing the truth. There are a number of major things that Satan doesn’t want you to know about him. He tries very hard to keep these truths secret from you because they will cause you to think differently about your abilities and position in Christ Jesus. Today I’m going to tell you some of these guarded secrets that were revealed in the Bible for our benefit placed there by our wise and mighty God to help teach us the truth about our enemy.
NUMBER 1
1. Satan DOES NOT Want You To Know That He Exists
I know now as a Christian that Satan is a real spiritual being, but there was a time that I did not believe in his existence. Many people are in the exact same ignorant boat as I was when I did not believe in the existence of spiritual things. Unsaved people and even many new carnal Christians are generally very oblivious to spiritual realities, because they are consumed with natural things like drugs, alcohol, sex, money, power, fame, sports, food, music, and etc. Not only do most people in the kingdom of darkness not know that Satan, evil spirits, fallen angels and demons exist, they also do not understand that they themselves are also a spirit being that is simply living here on the earth in a natural physical body. Oh, sure there is a fascination in the world with the supernatural and spirits on TV, in movies and in video games. But these are generally put out by Satan as a distraction to the truth to keep people from finding out that he is real and to learn how he operates with them daily. Satan promotes these fictional TV shows, entertainments and activities to gain access into the minds of people to deceive them further from the truth. As long as you do not know that there is a real spiritual enemy in this world named Satan, you will never know that you need to resist him or fight against what he is doing in your life. We learn of the existence of Satan by reading the Bible and that is our only reliable source of any proof or evidence for his existence. If you do not believe the Bible is the inspired Word of God then you are in serious trouble looking for invalid sources of truth in the other books of the world. You can read about Satan’s existence and activities like in Mark 4:15, Luke 4:8, Luke 13:16 and Acts 26:18 to name only a few verses that teach of his existence. I pray that you learn to study this subject in order to learn that Satan does exist and that he is your enemy.
NUMBER 2
2. Satan DOES NOT Want You To Know How He Operates
Recently I wrote a Bible lesson on the subject Was There a Physical Talking Snake in the Garden of Eden that deceived Eve. If you read that lesson then you know that there was not a literal talking serpent in the garden. It is illegal for Satan to tempt people supernaturally and that is not how he generally operates because of the spiritual laws created by God. TV shows and movies that promote supernatural activity are created by Satan to be pure distractions to how he normally comes to us to operate. Satan uses, mostly mental thoughts, ideas and suggestions to influence and control your behavior. For example, if you have been having thoughts or ideas about suicide these are demonically inspired to try to get you to do what he is suggesting. The source of evil thoughts and these bad influential ideas are coming from Satan. Satan can even place strong desires within you to help guide you into doing wrong. These are very common ways of how spirit beings interact with any natural human being. I hope that you understand this because it will be the same for you.
The main emphasis from this section is to teach you to watch your thoughts. What I have been trying to say is that these evil thoughts in your mind to hurt someone are coming from Satan to attempt to get you do something that you shouldn’t. Have you ever considered how much people talk after a school shooting occurs about the factor of mental illness? Every crazy school shooter was caused by Satan’s barrage of evil thoughts to kill people. Every shooter was tormented by these thoughts until they finally gave into them. That is how Satan works and if you do not know this then you are at risk of the same. Satan comes to humans with thoughts of evil and these will always be very subtle attempts to control you to do what he wants you to do. I’ll say this again, every thought that you have is not from God or comes from your own mind. Let me give you a Bible verse that will help confirm this truth if you can see it:
2Co 10:5 Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;
Why would God tell a Christian to guard their thoughts if none of these came from Satan? That would not make any logical sense. Why does anyone guard something? Guarding the President is normally done to keep evil from coming near him to do him harm. This is the exact same concept that God is speaking of here in this verse. You see I once had a man leave me a comment on my Bible lesson about homosexuality and he said he had these thoughts for other boys and men since he was a young child and he said that this proved that God created him this way. I tried to tell him that these were Satan’ thoughts that were given to him to try to steer him away from the truth but he refused to listen to me. Any thought that is contrary to the Bible is from the devil. If you are standing on the top ledge of the Grand Canyon and you suddenly get the thought to jump off then it would be really stupid if you didn’t realize that this thought was from Satan and you did it and went to hell. Learn to do what God teaches about your negative thoughts of influence and cast them down.
NUMBER 3
3. Satan DOES NOT Want You to Know that He Can’t Be Everywhere At Once
In the Old Testament we have a greatly misunderstood book of the Bible called the Book of Job. I will not attempt to teach this book today, but I will draw out some valuable information that we can learn from it about Satan. In this story, Satan is said to appear before God in heaven. God asks Satan, where have you been? Right there that question teaches us an extremely critical fact about Satan. Perhaps you missed it? Satan’s reply to God was that he has been going to and fro across the earth and from walking up and down in it (Job 1:7). From the presence of God’s question and Satan’s reply we can learn so very much about our enemy. The first thing to learn is that Satan is not on the earth when he said this. The second thing to learn is that Satan is not everywhere all at once. In theological terms Satan is not omnipresent and cannot be everywhere at the same time like God can. If Satan has to travel from place to place on the earth then he can only be in one place at a time. That is interesting isn’t it? In the New Testament we get some further confirmation of this fact by reading:
1 Peter 5:8 Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour;
You can see the same basic information being given to us in this verse. Satan is stalking about the earth looking for someone that he can attack. The statement implications being given to us is that he can’t attack everybody at the same time. You also see that he has to walk from place to place in order to seek for someone to attack. We can conclude from these two verses that Satan is not everywhere at once. Therefore Satan is NOT omnipresent like God is. Now having said all of that we don’t know how many demons and fallen angels that Satan has under his control. Revelation 12:4 tells us that 1/3 of the angels fell with him. But, we don’t know how many total angels there were to start with. From information found in Hebrews there seems to be a bunch of them and it calls their number innumerable. There is also a story in the Gospels where Jesus casts out a legion of demons from just one man. This shows us that one man can have hundreds of spirits in him at once. Therefore while the devil cannot be present with everyone at the same time, he can still send his demons to them and this makes him appear like he is everywhere at the same time. This is just some good information to learn about your enemy.
NUMBER 4
4. Satan DOES NOT Want You To Know That His Time Is Short
Revelation 12:12 Therefore rejoice, ye heavens and ye that dwell in them, Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.
This verse informs us that Satan is very angry with something or someone. Why? Because he knows his time is very short. Satan is aware of an end time. You did realize that, didn’t you? Many people in the world are oblivious that the end is near. They think everything has happened the same way from the beginning and everything will just continue on like this for ever (2 Peter 3:4). However, Satan and the demons are aware that their time is so very short. Here is a Bible verse that will help to see that the devils knew there was coming an end time even when Jesus was present on the earth:
Matthew 8:29 And behold, they cried out saying What have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God? are thou come hither to torment us before the time?
These are the words of the demons that possessed a man where Jesus was going. These demons exclaimed who exactly Jesus was. Why were they questioning Jesus’ right to be there? Then they ask him have you come to torment us before the time. What time are they talking about? It is amazing that these spiritual beings are aware that there is coming a time of torment. All of this occurs still today, men walk about clueless to the times and the seasons while Satan and his forces know that they are almost done.
NUMBER 5
5. Satan DOES NOT Want You To Know He Was Defeated
Colossians 2:15 And having spoiled principalities and powers he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it.
We can see that Satan was defeated by what Jesus did on the cross. The blood of Jesus not only forgave our sins, it caused the defeat of Satan. The term spoiled is a military term when an army would take a city, they would take the wealth of the enemy and leave them with nothing of value. Genghis Kahn, Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Hitler, etc. we can go on and on, but the conquering army would always walk away with the wealth of those that were conquered. Here is an informative verse of scripture that also helps us to see what Jesus has done:
1 Corinthians 2:8 Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
You see from this verse we can clearly see that Satan now has a major problem. Something that Jesus did, caused his status to change. Something that Jesus did in His death has doomed Satan and his followers and has set their destiny. Many Christians today have only seen a fraction of the things that Jesus accomplished on the cross. This is just another example of the fact that there are many things found in the Bible that we do not have the complete story on as of yet. We can make a broad conclusion, that based upon this verse that the death of Jesus Christ sealed Satan’s future.
So why if Satan was defeated, wasn’t he just thrown into the pit and that was the end of it? It is an interesting question, that most have never tried to answer. Satan has a right to be here as long as descendants of Adam have the right to be here. The world was given to Adam (Gen 1:26) and Adam gave it to Satan (Luke 4:5-6). So we in effect see a sub-lease being established. As long as Adam’s lease or time period is valid, Satan’s time period is valid. However, we also now know that this time period is now growing very short. If you have been reading my other Bible lesson you will already understand that the time period of human history was prophesied by God Genesis 1 to be approximately 6000 years. We can calculate that we are very, very close to the end of that time period right now. If you learned anything today, learn that Satan is a loser and if you are following him your time is very short to change your mind.
NUMBER 6
6. Satan DOES NOT Want You To Know That You Have Authority Over Him
Did you notice that earlier I quoted a scripture that said Satan was going about, seeking those who he could devour? Apparently he cannot come into your house and take everything from you unless you let him or permit him to do something to cause it to happen. If you could just find out what opens the door for the enemy to come in, I bet you would stop it. I don’t think I have a complete answer to that question, but I have seen at least part of the answer. We know sin, allows Satan access into our lives. Then in Hosea 4:6 it tells us that God’s people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge. So in effect we can see that ignorance or not knowing the right things, can allow Satan access into our lives. What else opens the door to the enemy? I believe that not knowing that you have been given authority over Satan will also allow him to come into your life to attempt to work his evil works. Here is what Jesus told us:
Luke 10:19 Behold I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing shall by any means hurt you.
If you don’t understand Biblical symbolism you will immediately get the wrong idea that you should be able to walk in a viper pit and not get bitten. But that is not what Jesus was talking about in this statement. Jesus is talking about the symbolic “serpent” that deceived Eve and that was literally Satan. The symbolic scorpions in this verse refers to the demons or evil spirits that are under Satan’s power. Understanding these symbolic references are essential to understanding the Bible correctly. Not everything in the Bible is literal. This verse tells us that Jesus gave us power over these evil spiritual forces. This word for “power” actually means “authority” or “legal jurisdiction” over these powers. The term translated as “power” of the enemy is a completely different Greek word that means “miraculous ability”. You learn from this verse that Satan still has ability to do some amazing things in the earth, but Jesus said I give you my authority over what he can do to you. You might not be able to stop what he does to your neighbor, but you can certainly stop what he does to you and your family. This spiritual authority must be exercised by your choice either during the attack or before the attack takes place. How do you do that? Maybe I’ll get into that in another lesson. Thanks for taking the time to read and study the Bible to learn about our enemy Satan. Share this spiritual knowledge with the poeple that you know and continue to walk in your new found knowledge from God. God Bless you!
If you would like to continue reading in this series, please go to “Part 2“.
The Bible Contains Riddles, Puzzles, Mysteries and Secrets
(Ver 1.4) This of course is a very difficult subject for many Christians to accept or acknowledge. So many Christians struggle with believing the concept that God would intentionally hide important information from us. How could a loving God ever keep us from easily finding that which He desires us to learn and know? I once heard a minister say that studying the Bible is like a natural man searching for natural gold and I found that I could really not improve on that analogy so I’ll use it to help you understand how the Bible was written by God’s design. If you’ve ever panned for gold in Colorado or California you will have already discovered how difficult it was to find anything of significant value on the surface. I tried it but I came up empty even after several attempts when I was in Colorado, I guess it was fun, but it would have certainly been better if I had left with something that I could have said WOW, look at this!!! Look at what I found. This is a lot like reading the Bible and many do it everyday, but never walk away with the WOW, look at this. “Look what I found in the Word of God”. Why is that? There are probably a lot of reasons and I cover many of them in this Blog. Here is a verse of scripture about God and it describes a characteristic of His nature that must be understood if you are going to be a serious student of the Bible:
Proverbs 25:2 It is the glory of God to conceal a thing, but the honor of kings is to search out a matter.
What an amazing statement of universal truth. This verse clearly states that God is glorified by Him hiding information for us to find. Oh yes, I should have told you first that we are the kings and priests of God that He is referring to in this verse. Jesus is called the King of kings and the Lord of lords (Rev 19:16). The reference to “kings” is us! I know that bugs the heck out of religious people, but please get over it see what the Bible says.
Like digging for gold in the natural world so it is in the spiritual world with the Word of God. People don’t usually find many big gold nuggets of truth on the surface of God’s Word by just reading the it. There we must ask, how do we find them? We find them by digging deep for them. It involves work and that is a four-letter word to many. Proverbs 25:2 said that the honor of kings was in the searching of the information. Searching involves effort and that is spelled W O R K! There is a lot of information that can be found on the surface of reading the Bible, but the really good stuff is always found much deeper within the text. Did you ever notice the world’s largest gold producers are finding most of the valuable stuff deep underground using tunnels, blasting, digging and a whole bunch of effort. Occasionally they might find a large vein and strike it very rich by digging deep. Bible study is the exact same thing. I noticed this scripture in the Old Testament that confirms that God has secrets:
Amos 3:7 Surely the Lord GOD will do nothing, but he reveal his secret unto his servants the prophets.
This verse informs us that God has secrets, but it also says that God will not do anything without first revealing his secrets to His servants, His prophets. That tells me the Old and New Testaments both have the potential of an extraordinary number of hidden secrets of God. Some we have discovered and most that we have not yet found.
Proverbs 1:23 Turn you at my reproof: behold I will pour out my spirit unto you, I will make known my words unto you.
God says in this verse in Proverbs that He will make known His words after He has poured out His Spirit. We can see that the work involves the Holy Spirit. We can also see the clear implication that the meanings of the words must be hidden if God is going to make them known. You see we have had these words recorded for us to read for thousands of years. But yet the implication is that there is still more to know. Many will try to explain this away as having happened back with the apostles. But that event was only the former rain and now is the time of the later rain. Now is when God is again pouring out His Spirit unto men. Now is the time for the harvest. There are so many scriptures that tells us the same information, here is one from the book of Daniel:
Daniel 2:20 Daniel answered and said, Blessed be the name of God for ever and ever: for wisdom and might are his: 21 And he changed the times and the seasons: he removes kings and sets up kings: he gives wisdom unto the wise and knowledge to them that know understanding. 22 He reveals the deep and secret things: he knows what is in the darkness and light dwells with him.
You see from these verses that God is the one that holds all wisdom and that He gives it to us so that we can become wise. But verse 22 says the main point of this Blog, God reveals the deep and secret things to us. A “Deep” thing is an implied truth that is not easily understood or seen. These are very strong statements of truth and teach us a lot about the Bible. It tells us that everything in the Bible is not shallow and easy to find or understand. It implies that there is an extended effort and a commitment necessary from those who want to find these “deep” secrets. Let’s jump into the New Testament and look at another verse:
1 Corinthians 2:7 But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the world unto our glory.
Here we read another verse that declares God has hidden things in the Bible and it even refers to them as mysteries. What is a mystery? A mystery to me would be a complex puzzle, a code, riddle or something that is not plain or obvious. If you could look at it and immediately know what it was, it wouldn’t be a mystery would it? So apparently if you haven’t figured it out, the Bible is written in a style that conceals many things and makes hidden much of the knowledge, understanding and wisdom of God.
Romans 16:25 Now to him that is of power to establish you according to my gospel, and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery, which was kept secret since the world began.
This is another great example of the fact that God hid the revelation of Jesus Christ from the very beginning of our created world. We can observer clearly in this verse that God must reveal this information to us in the form of a revelation given to us in this instance by the writer Paul. If you didn’t know it, there are still Pauls in the world today that God uses. God is revealing things, giving revelation to many within the body of Christ and all you have to do is recognize it when you hear it. Yes, there will be false teachers, prophets and etc. in this world But, the Word of God will always be correct when rightly divided. Judge what people say by the Bible. So we can see so many verses that declare that the Bible contains the mysteries and secrets of God, here is just one more:
Colossians 1:26 Even the mystery which has been hid from ages and from generations, now is made manifest to his saints.
This is a fantastic verse if you are one of God’s saints. For if you are a saint of God then this verse assures that you are potentially destined to know these hidden secrets. The implication is clearly given that they are intended for God’s saints to know and understand. Some will attempt to explain, that was only for them, the early church and not for us now. I can hear it all now. But there is no way it is not for us right here and right now. This is what Jesus said about the secret things of God:
Luke 8:17 For nothing is secret that shall not be made manifest: neither anything hid that shall not be known and come abroad.
This is of course a little difficult to see in the King James version of the Bible, but it basically says that there is nothing that was hidden or secret that will not be made known or revealed so that we can see them, understand them and know them. That is a powerful prophecy and the words of God himself speaking. Has this occurred yet? I really only think we have scratched the surface of this prophecy, but I believe it will be fulfilled before Jesus’ return. You of course can believe whatever you like. You might ask how can this be, is it possible that the body of Christ could unify and see the truth? I think it is possible if we allow God to do it. This scripture in Daniel shows us what God is capable of by just one Old Testament prophet:
Daniel 2:47 The king answered unto Daniel, and said, Of a truth it is that your God is a God of gods and a Lord of kings, and a revealer of secrets seeing that thou could reveal this secret.
So the King of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar recognized the power of God. By God revealing a bit of information to him the king was convinced that he was the true God. You see God just has to reveal a few key things to get people to see and He knows what those are. I believe that is why we will see major changes in attitudes and major changes in the true church of the living God.
So what have we seen? That the Bible contains mysteries, secrets, riddles and puzzles that God is starting to reveal to us in these end times. If you start looking for them, and expecting them to happen, God will make sure that they do happen. But since there are so many false teachings going around, here is what the Bible recommends for us to do:
Acts 17:11 These were more noble than those in Thessalonica in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.
You should follow this example of the early church. Be open to hear and learn, but search God’s Word everyday to see if they are really true. Don’t buy into anything I say or anything anyone else says just because they said “Thus saith the Lord” or I have a revelation from God. Too many ignorant people have done that and burned or died in a compound when their leader suddenly said it was time for them all to die. God can and will show us if what is being taught is true or not in His word if we stop and ask and listen to His leading. If God doesn’t bear witness within your own spirit that its right, reject it and run far away very fast. Just remember that God still expects us all to search and work for it and to see what His word says. God will reward them that diligently, meticulously, conscientiously, thoroughly seek Him. It will be up to you, what you learn in these last days, more than it will be up to God. Thank you for reading these Bible lessons and I pray that they are all a blessing to you. Please tell someone about this website and help the Gospel go forth to as many as we can reach.
Jesus had a Problem with Religion
(Ver 1.2) Many try to classify Christianity as a religion, but it is not a religion, it is a relationship. You either know God or you don’t or more importantly God knows you or He doesn’t. In Luke 13:25, Jesus tells a story of those that are standing on the outside crying out “Lord, Lord”. Jesus tells them “Depart, I know ye not”. What a sad story of people who thought they did everything right but didn’t know God and more importantly weren’t known by God.
Reading and studying the Gospels, I found Jesus to be a loving and compassionate individual, to all but one group of people. So did God show favoritism by NOT treating these people the same as he did the common sinners. These people that Jesus constantly confronted in abrupt terms were the religious people of His day. These were the rulers of the Jews. These were those that thought of themselves as being better than everyone else. These are the people that thought they knew more than everyone else, including God who was standing before them. These were the keepers of the law of God, who added to the Word of God and made it of no affect due to their traditions and decrees. Jesus was not kind to these people and said some very blunt things to them. He called the children of Satan (John 8:44). He called them serpents, a generation of vipers (Mat 23:33). He said many things to them that can still be said to people even in the church today.
Religion has always been man’s attempt to please a God they do not know. Most of the time religion involves strict rules of thou shalt not do this and that. Many religions people punish themselves, do without things, even hurt themselves by beating their bodies with chains or other crazy things. All in an attempt to make themselves worthy of something that God has already given to them for free. But religious people go so far above and beyond that simple definition and description. There are religious people probably sitting next to in church. Full of themselves and how good they are. They are so much better than you and I. Try to teach them something new and they scream heretic, hearsay, garbage, junk. They close their minds, ears and eyes to the truth and are content with what they think they know. Happy to live in ignorance and remain ignorant. You probably noticed I take after Jesus, I confront religious people straight on, I’m not trying to please everybody with a watered-down teaching that just let’s everyone do as they please. Jesus wasn’t like that, and we shouldn’t be like that. Jesus would commune with sinners, eat with tax collectors and call religious people idiots. Ok, I admit idiots, was my interpretation of some of His strongest words. Love all of those that will open and let you into the doors of their hearts but confront those religious types of people who say that we are wrong in doing that.
Genesis 1:24-31 Day 6 God’s Delegated Authority
(Ver 1.1) There are so many things to learn in the Bible it is a challenge to figure out what do people already know, what do they need to know and what is important. So I plan on wrapping up my blog on Day 6 of creation with this last bit of information. When I worked for a small software company many years ago, I met a man there that had graduated from a seminary (which will remain nameless). He had some very strange ideas about the Bible and had been taught many things by people who obviously didn’t know God. There is a difference in knowing about God and knowing God. Well any way this man told me that in first chapter of Genesis when God said “Let them have dominion”, that didn’t mean they were in control of anything. In other words he read the scripture and immediately threw away the verse because it did not fit his theology. That of course is a huge problem. We should always make our theology and beliefs fit what we read and learn and not the other way. What does it mean to have dominion? Here is what Webster defines the word as:
Dominion: dominance or power through legal authority
Adam was given legal authority over the planet. That would make him the ruler of the earth, wouldn’t it? If you are brave you might have called Adam the “god” of this world”. God’s statement gave Adam dominion, and that implies a transfer of ownership. A legal status change or transfer from God to man. Legal authority is a right that is bestowed upon you, something that can only be transferred upon you by a higher authority. You can’t make your self a policeman, but if you sign up go through the training and are accepted you can be given the authority of a policeman by the local city government. A policeman has a transferred authority to carry out and enforce the law. Power and authority are sometimes used as synonymous terms. But really they are quite different, many strong men have the ability to exercise power over people to make them do what they want, but most do not have the authority backing them. When God created the world he turned over the authority to rule it to his creation.
Psalm 115:16 The heavens, even the heavens are the Lord’s: But the earth he hath given to the children of men.
This verse in Psalms tells us very clearly that the earth was given to the children of Adam. Do you recall in the Gospels when Jesus walked the earth he constantly referred to himself as “the son of man”. Jesus of course was a Hebrew and in the Hebrew he was saying I am a son of Adam. Remember man and Adam are the same Hebrew word. The Pharisee’s would ask him where do you get your authority to do these things? They recognized that he taught with authority, spoke with authority, cast out devils, healed the sick and did many other miraculous things. But Jesus never told them where he got this authority. I personally believe that God had given it to him when he created Adam.
So what is the huge controversy about this delegated authority of man? The main problem that the seminary graduate had was that it violated his idea of God’s sovereignty. If man was in control of the planet, that meant God was not. If man was responsible to work and keep the garden, then that means God was not. The implications are huge and it helps to explain a lot of things in the Bible when we see these things clearly. Why did Jesus have to come in the form of a man in order to redeem us? Why did the omnipotent God have to be birthed through a woman on this planet to do everything he needed to do to free us from sin, Satan, death and evil. There are so many things to think about and to consider. But, we first must start by reading the Bible finding out what God says happened and then attempt to understand how that affected us.
When I started this blog, one of my statements was probably very offensive to some. I called Adam the god of this world when he was created. It is funny how many things that are in the Bible that people ignore. In 2 Corinthians 4:4 God calls Satan the god of this world, how did he get this title? It had to be transferred to him from Adam. Remember when Jesus was tempted by the devil? Satan came to him and said “worship me and I’ll give you everything that you can see.” Satan told Jesus that it had all been given to him. So who gave it to him? It had to be Adam, because God had given it all to Adam. Only the owner has the right to transfer ownership. I can’t come up to your house and tell you that I am giving your house to someone else that wants it. If I don’t own your house I don’t have a right to tell you who lives in it. So many things to consider, isn’t there? So then what do Christians do with John the 10th Chapter when Jesus tells humanity, “Is it not written in your book of the law, I said you are gods.”. Most religious people and denominations stay very far away from that verse and never touch it. Act like it does not exist and we don’t have to address it. If we acknowledge that it’s there, then we have to come up with excuses of why it’s not true. Heaven help us all!
When Jesus was raised from the dead he makes a statement that blows you away. In Matthew 28:18 Jesus says this “All power is given to me, both in heaven and in earth.” What a radical statement, according to what many theologians teach, you would have thought that God already had all power in heaven and in earth. Apparently Not! Do you see the problem? Here we have another very direct statement that God (the highest authority) has delegated all authority to Jesus both in heaven and on the earth. How could God do that? It was because Jesus was a son of Adam and had the right to take back what his father Adam had given away. See right there so many religious people are going to scream and say I said Jesus’ father was Adam and not God. But I didn’t say that. Jesus was the Son of God, but He called Himself the son of Adam. Naturally born a child of Adam a man, but spiritually conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of Mary. The combination of God’s word and Mary’s egg, produced a man called Jesus Christ. A man who was 100% God and 100% man.
That concludes my short lesson on delgated authority. If you study the subject you will clearly see that God had the right to do whatever He desired with His creation and He clearly desired to create a man and give it all to him and his children. Jesus came to the earth to get back what Adam had given away to Satan and do other things that I have not touched on as of this point in my Bible lessons. Please continue to read and to learn what Jesus has done for us. God Bless!
Genesis Chapter 1 – Did God Create a Perfect World?
(Ver 1.2) I’ve heard many, many Bible teachers stand up and speak about creation in the terms that God created a perfect world for Adam. When Adam came on the scene everything was perfect, they would say. The implications to this always bothered me, since that is not what the Bible said. I’m not sure how these teachers came to that conclusion, but I simply have to go by what the Bible says. Six times in the chapter 1 of Genesis God declares what He has done as being something that is “good”. Good is of course a positive term, but it is also a highly subjective term. What is good to me, might not be good to you. I could say Apple Pie is good. But you might not like it. However, if I said something was perfect that implies something else entirely. Here is the definition of perfect found in the Webster’s dictionary:
being complete of its kind and without defect or blemish; “a perfect circle”; “a perfect reproduction”; “perfect happiness”; “perfect manners”;
So according to the dictionary, perfect means something that is complete, but not just complete, but something that is free from defects and flaws. In my opinion, perfect would imply something that could not fail or be brought down. If Adam was created perfect in a perfect world, it would have been impossible for him to sin. Since we all understand that Adam did sin, we can understand that he at the very least had the potential for flaws. Adam possessed the ability to fail, like an appliance you might buy at the store. Have you ever bought a perfect appliance? I really don’t think so.
So when God says it was good, what does that mean? I would say that in God’s perspective or viewpoint on the event, it was a positive outcome. It was an opposite of evil or bad. What if we could come up with a rating system and many have, that says something like this:
Worst –>Worse –> Bad –> Neutral –> Good –> Better –> Best
Many times consumer reporting companies have similar rating schemes for appliances or cars, etc. You can see by the scale that there are varying degrees for bad and good. You could never say that about “perfect”, there are not varying degrees of perfect. Given my rating scale where would you put God’s “good” creation? It would have to be somewhere to the right of Neutral, but where I’m not sure. If you notice I did not even put the word “perfect” on the scale, since that would go so far above and beyond what I consider to be even the best. I am convinced that “good” is not “perfect”. However, it is really not my opinion that matters, but what God thinks about it that counts. I found some interesting scriptures in the Bible that speaks to us along these lines:
Genesis 2:12 And the gold of that land is good;
God said the gold in the land was good. But gold is a metal that is mixed and very hard to find in a pure state. Gold has a grading scaled from 1 to 24 carats. 24 carats would be the best and purest but yet I doubt if you could call it perfect. Sometimes it can be good to see what is opposite to a definition in order to help understand the positive side of the subject. In Genesis 2:18 God says it is not good for man to be alone. That would be the opposite of good and looking at that verse it could be a highly subjective term. I don’t know if we have gained a definition or not of the term what is good. Let me throw another scripture in the mix that says something totally different.
Psalm 119:96 I have seen the end to all perfection…
Many times we read stuff and don’t apply it to what we learned earlier because we don’t really understand it and aren’t asking the right questions. This verse has a statement that has broad and far reaching implications. What does the term “All” mean? To me that means “All”, “everything is included” and means it is all inclusive. There is nothing that is left out. If you said “most” or “some” that would leave some items excluded from the list. So the term “All” is all inclusive, there is nothing left out or omitted. This is not going to sit well with a lot of religious minded people, but this would also include God himself. God did not leave himself out of the term “All”. I have always believed that God was a perfect Spirit being. In capable of errors, with no flaws. But if God says in His word that there is coming a time when there will be no perfection, what does that mean? How would we possibly apply that fact to God? I wish I had the answer to that, but maybe you do. Tell me what you think about this scripture. Maybe you know some other scriptures in the Bible that answer that question. In my mind this verse is speaking of Jesus who was God in the flesh. If Jesus was born a “perfect” man that would mean it would have been impossible for him to sin, just like “Adam” if he was perfect. So when God became a man, the Bible says that He was tempted in every way just like we are. Satan came to Jesus and tempted him just the same as us. So, if this was the divine God, was it really a temptation? Of course it was and that would imply that Jesus was only “very good” and not perfect. Jesus had to be capable of sinning and failing, otherwise it would not have been a temptation. That is what I think. Do not misunderstand me, I did not say Jesus sinned. I just said He had to have the possiblity to sin our he would not have been tempted just like we are. It just would not make any sense to me.
Understanding Correct Bible Interpretation! The Bible was Written to Give Man a Choice!
(Ver 1.2) This Bible lesson may be a brand new perspective for you and it just may be something that you may have never considered to think on. Have you ever studied the many different writing styles of books? College text books are written radically differently than fictional literature. Technical writings and software documentation are written consderibly different than a President’s biography. Realizing that there are so many different writing styles, let me ask you what literature style is the Bible written in? I believe that is an interesting and very important question to consider. From my research and study I’ve discovered that the Bible is significantly different than anything else that I’ve ever read. I believe that this makes it difficult to label it as just one writing style and say that it is only that one. For example Psalms many times resembles a poetry writing style but it certainly cannot be labeled that alone because it contains so much more than that alone.
It is almost easier to determine what the Bible is not rather than to try to assign it a specific style. For example, the Bible was certainly not written in a text book style using technical documentation methods. However, the Bible does contain great technical information about creation. Why didn’t God write these creation facts, events, descriptions and dates using more revealing, plain and indisputable evidence? Do you think that God is not capable of describing all of the little creation design intricate details of DNA, Sound Waves, Laws of Physics, etc. using the scientific terms involved and the background proof data behind every part of His creation? Can God not compete intellectually with the modern PHD professors in our colleges and universities? Are the scientific discoveries and the theories of men superior to God? Do believe that God not able to dispel the theory of human evolution using His knowledge of creation?
I personally believe that God’s intelligence is so far beyond the Einstein’s in our world that He could solve the debate with only a few lines of specific information. But, if He did that, what would be the end result of that type of information? It would be like the classic movie “The Day the Earth Stood Still”, when the man from another world went to the professor’s house and solved a very complex technical equation on the chalk board, that the professor had been trying to figure out for a long time. What that information did was take away any doubt that he was not from this planet and that he was much smarter than the professor and anyone else in the world.
If God provides us undeniable evidence that proves His awesome power, knowledge and ability to us all, the net result would be that every human man would no longer have any other option but to believe what God says is truth. I believe that this type of strong evidence would result in the loss of all human freedom for a man to believe whatever they wanted to by faith. If God proved that He was God, no longer does any man have any freewill choices or decisions to make about the existence of God. It is an interesting paradox. The God who proves His love for us by coming personally and shedding His blood to pay the cost of our sin and He doesn’t even write down one letter in any book or leave any evidence proving His appearance. He doesn’t us leave any photographic proof of His existence. He doesn’t leave any scientific or DNA evidence other than the words of a few witnesses, some people who are told to go and tell the world that He appeared. He tells these witnesses that those that believe their words spoken to them will be saved, but those who do not, will be damned (Mark 16:15-16).
Therefore, every man on the earth is left with only one choice, to believe or to not believe in God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. The ball of decision is not in court of God, but was specifically designed to give man the choice in a human court of faith. A man must be sent to preach the good news to others (Romans 10:15-16). This preacher man must believe that he is called to preach and then choose to preach. Then men that he is sent to must choose to listen, hear, understand and believe the message. This method of salvation is a spiritual system called faith that was designed, created and implemented by the sovereign God alone. Knowing this should change everything about our perspective when we read the Bible. We should change to begin to look for the hidden evidence in the Bible and we should start by believing in things that we can not understand completely without overwhelming evidence.
We can learn from just the simple story of Adam and Eve in the first 3 chapters of Genesis, that God provided everything that they had need of and it was all said to be created good in the eyes of God. But, God said there was one thing that they shouldn’t do and that was to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He didn’t say they couldn’t do it, but He did warn them that the day that they did eat they would surely die. The Bible does not say that God fully explained what death was or that Adam remotely understood the consequences of disobedience. But yet, God gave man the choice to make. This is called freewill and every man has a right to it.
Apparently, Adam didn’t listen to the warning when he was faced with one of the world’s greatest decision choices that anyone could possibly make up until that time. I do not believe that Adam understood the consequences of his choice for himself or all of his descendants and he definitely chose wrong. Could God have stopped Adam from making this bad choice by providing more information, proof and evidence? I believe the answer is YES! Should God have stopped Adam by force from making this bad choice using His great knowledge? I believe the answer is NO based upon His love alone! Those are both interesting questions that only God can fully answer, but I believe the further involvement of God would have taken away the free will of the man to make his own choice to choose to obey and that is something I believe that God does not do.
So why is the Bible written in such a controversial way that appears to allow men to believe whatever they choose to believe? I believe the primary reason is the fact that God has continued to give man a freewill choice in everything that he believes. We can believe in Jesus is the LORD GOD or we can choose to believe that Jesus was just a prophet like Islamic teachings say. We can believe in the existence of eternal damnation and hell or we can choose to believe in universal salvation. We can believe in evolution or creation. We can believe in whatever we want to believe in. God wrote the Bible in this manner to allow us to find whatever we wish to search for in the Bible. But, of course that right to believe in something that is so wrong will not help us on judgment day. On judgment day, God will not be interested in our opinion or our beliefs. It won’t matter if we think we are right with all of our heart. We’ll not get to share our opinion with God on why we believed what we did on earth. We better make sure what we believe is right here, right now and is based upon the most truthful and accurate information that we can search and find in God’s word.
Thank you for reading this little Bible lesson. Infinite choices are presented in the Word of God. However, there is always only one true interpretation and understanding and this will agree with God’s opinion and not mine or yours. God Bless you and keep you and please leave a comment if can.
Genesis 1:24-31 Day 6 Part 2 – God Called Them Adam
(Ver 1.1) In my last lesson on Genesis I talked about the prophesied coming of a perfect or more literally a mature man, but today I want to shift gears and change our focus on something new. Back in verse 27 we saw the creation of man in the image of God. I want to stop right there and point out something that I found very interesting while I was studying this verse. The Hebrew word translated as “man” is H120 in the Strong’s. Now that is all well and good until I noticed that the name “Adam” was from the Hebrew H121. So what is the problem? If you don’t speak Hebrew you would never know that these two words are the exact same word. Strong decided to give the one word two different reference numbers even though it is the same word. That is a major problem for translators and readers. How do you know when you should translate the one word as “Adam” or as “man”. The determination of the meaning becames a highly subjective decision process that can be very easily mistranslated based upon someone’s opinion of what they think it means. I hope you understand the problem. You see I for one believe after searching the Bible for the occurrences of these words that sometimes they did it right and a few times I believe they did wrong. Uh oh!
Gen 1:27 So God created Adam (man) in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
Look at verse 27 and see what changes if I change the one word. “So God created Adam in his image, in the image of God created he him, male and female created he them”. Thre was nothing that super dramatic that changed. Was it completely different, not really. The original said “man” my modified version said “Adam”. But since they are the same word in the Hebrew which one is right? Verse 27 actually contains a major contradiction, riddle or puzzle. Did you notice it? It said at first God created him, and then it says God created them. We really haven’t gotten to the creation of the woman even though she is clearly mentioned for the first time in this verse. As we get into chapter 2 of Genesis we will begin to see that chapter 2 is really just a more in depth look at some specifics that occurred in chapter 1. Chapter 2 is simply a more detailed account of the creation event using new information given to us and a more in depth look at some very new huge subjects such as God’s definition of family and marriage.
Getting back to the puzzle of verse 27 what is the solution to the contradiction? This is why I believe the word should be “Adam”. When God created the male and the female God called both of their name “Adam”. It use to be common practice in our world for women to take the name of their husbands so that they were both called by the same name. When we get to chapter 2 of Genesis we will see why more clearly. So why did God call both of them Adam? Maybe we should stop and ask, did God call them both Adam? There is actually a confirming scripture that says this later in Genesis. Look at this verse in Genesis 5:2:
Genesis 5:2 Male and female created He them; and blessed them, and called their name “Adam” in the day that they were created.
It is truly amazing what the Bible says when you can see it and put the pieces together. This verse is speaking directly about the cretion account we just read about in Genesis 1:27 but this time it is worded correctly and stated accurately. The translotors had no choice but to make it this word based upon context. If they would only understood this more clearly I believe that they would corrected what they had already done in chapter one. What caused them to make this verse Adam and the other one man? In this verse there is the direct association of this word being both of their “names”. These are the kind of little quirky things that you just need to become aware of when you read and study the Bible. The translators were men and they sometimes made mistakes. Every Bible translation has some problems, but there are none that can’t be solved by you studying. God Bless!
Genesis 3:1 Was there a Talking Snake in the Garden?
(ver 2.6) This is “Part 1” in a series of advanced Bible lessons on the study of hidden spiritual subjects found in Genesis 3. In this lesson I am going to confront a popular misconception and misunderstanding found in the chapter. Was there a literal talking natural snake in the Garden of Eden? Did a naturally created snake approach, walk up to, or slither up to Adam and Eve and start a conversation with them to deceive them? I’m sure most of you have seen the paintings of the temptation, the naked man and woman holding an apple with the snake creature nearby. We’ve all heard this story taught this way in Sunday School as a child. However, is this what the Bible really says? Must we take every scripture, verse and word literally in the Bible? What if God intended the verse to hide a greater spiritual meaning? If so, then how would we know when to take something inspired by the most intelligent Spirit literally in the Bible and when to view it as only a symbolic reference, a figurative expression or even as a figure of speech? Please don’t misunderstand what I am saying. There are literal statements and stories in the Bible. The Genesis 3:1 account is a very true and real story of what actually happened during the fall of man. We just need to begin to understand what was actually given to us to read.
Too many Christians want to take everything written by God completely and totally as if the Bible was written in a school text book style with every truth obviously presented in a straightforward and plain ordered bullet point or numbered manner. But the problem is that the Bible is not a textbook and it contains many, many hidden mysteries, puzzles and concealed truths that are not self-evident on a surface only reading of the text. You can also find there are truths written on the same subject anywhere in the Bible from front to back, cover to cover, Genesis to Revelation. The Holy Bible is written in a multitude of literary styles by around 40 different men that were given the words by God to write for us to read, study and learn from. God purposely hid many of these truths, not from us, but for us to find (Prov 25:2). So here is the divine challenge, how does God encode secrets for someone to find without using a standard encryption system that makes the text totally useless? The government encrypts information to keep it out of the hands of other enemy governments. Web sites encrypt credit card and customer information to keep it out of the hands of hackers and criminals. What we can learn from this principle is that God obviously had an enemy that was trying to steal information and use it against us. Therefore, I believe based upon scripture that God has encoded within the natural text message a spiritual message within so that He could reveal it by His Spirit in us His people at the appropriate time, which I believe is now. I call this technique, God hiding the truth in plain sight.
THE CREATED SET CALLED BEASTS OF THE FIELD!
So the question remains was there a literal physical talking snake in the garden of Eden? I’ll have to tell you right now that there is absolutely no way based upon rightly understanding scriptures that I have found in the Bible that there was a physical talking snake in the garden. You can clearly see where I stand upon this issue so let’s find out why I am a firm believer in this. Here is what the beginning of Genesis 3:1 says to us, read it very carefully and then I’ll explain it.
Genesis 3:1 Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field that the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?
I am only going to be focusing on the first phrase of the verse in this Bible lesson. But I did give the entire verse to help avoid criticism from those that would like to criticize and find fault. Let’s begin by doing some close analysis of the exact wording or phrasing of this initial statement “Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field that the Lord God had made”. You should be able to understand from reading the entire verse that the primary subject of the verse is a “serpent”. This Hebrew word is H5175 and does mean “a snake” in the literal definition and this is why people begin to believe that God is speaking of a literal talking snake in Genesis 3. This Hebrew word being translated as “serpent” is used 31 times in the Old Testament and is found in 28 verses with 5 references being found within 5 verses of Genesis 3. But let’s change the perspective in order to see the characteristics of this “serpent” being described by God and maybe this new knowledge will begin to change how we think.
Now observe that this “serpent” is stated to be more subtle than “any beast” of the field that the Lord God had created. I want to focus upon the Hebrew word H6175 which is translated as “subtle” in Genesis 3:1. The Hebrew word translated as subtle means “cunning” in an evil, negative or bad manner. The ESV and NASB versions of the Bible translated this word as “crafty”. The CEV Bible translated it as “sneaky”. The Young’s Literal Bible translate it as “subtile”. This Hebrew word is clearly represents an evil connotation being applied to this class of being labeled or named as the “serpent”. Right there that should raise some red flags in our minds to teach us something that is very important. How did God create every beast (living) animal on this planet? Didn’t God create the beast of the field and say that they were all “good” in Genesis 1:25 and “very good” in Genesis 1:31? Good is not evil and very good is definitely not anything that is bad. There were no evil connotations placed upon any of the created beings found in Genesis 1, so that is something brand new for us to consider and learn from. It would contradict with Genesis 1 if this was a created literal snake in the Garden of Eden. I hope and pray that you can see that but we also need to learn what else this verse is saying or should I say is not saying.
This is what the Holy Spirit said to me when I studied the verse and it changed my entire perspective dramatically when I saw it and fully understood it. I read this verse and suddenly the still small voice of the Holy Spirit asked me this question, “Did you notice that didn’t say ‘other‘?”. Almost immediately I knew what He was asking me because of divine revelation. When I studied Geometry in High School, I remember a part of the class dealt with the subject of mathematical “sets” and “set theory”. 
Do you understand what a “set” is? A set is a grouping of related items. Let me give you a more complete definition of a set. A set is “a well defined collection of distinct objects. The objects that make up a set (also known as the elements or members of a set) can be anything: numbers, people, letters of the alphabet, other sets, and so on.” Within mathematical sets you can also have subsets. Then you can have multiple sets with some common or overlapping members that are in more than one set. For example, a set could be Animals, under that set could be a subset of mammals, under that set could be a subset of birds, fish, land animals and on and on. Each set or subset is a grouping of related items. In other words every member of the set has the same characteristics and can be easily identified as belonging to the group. So why did I just spend so much time going through all of that math explanation and set theory overview? Do you see it? Was the primary noun serpent of this sentence a created beast of the field that the Lord God declared a member of the set of created beings of the field defined by God to be very good? I’d like to ask you a question and I want you to consider it with great thought. What would change if God would have added the word “other” to the verse? Read this modified verse with the word other added and observe what changes:
Genesis 3:1 Now the serpent was more subtle than any ‘OTHER’ beast of the field that the Lord God had made.
Now do you see it? What comprises the set “beasts of the field”? What are the members of that set? Beasts of the field would be the superset of all created animals, birds, reptiles, etc. Isn’t a natural and physical snake one of those beasts of the field that the Lord God has made? So what happens when you take out the word “other” like the verse really says. The logical conclusion has to be that the serpent was not a member of that category of the made or created creatures of the field. Let me teach it to you like this, if the adjective “any” is placed before the noun “Beasts” we have to conclude that there are no beasts omitted from this grouping. The Hebrew term (H3605) translated as the English word”Any” is an “all inclusive” statement that omits none of them. The Hebrew word translated as “Any” literally means “All” or “EVERY”. By God NOT putting the word “Other” after the word “any” we know concretely that the referenced “serpent” in the beginning of the statement was not a member of that set of created living creatures. In other words, there was no physical literal created talking snake based just upon the correct reading, understanding and interpretation of this verse. I hope and pray that you understand basic logic and math laws and how they apply to the correct interpretation of the Word of God. God is a highly intelligent being and has designed and implemented the Bible using Laws that we must follow in order to correctly understand what is written.
NATURAL OR SUPERNATURAL TEMPTATION?
So let’s find some other scriptures that help us to confirm what God has just taught you by the omission of the word “other”. Here is one verse that I know most don’t immediately associate with Genesis, but it is related even though you’ve never seen it or applied it to what we have just read in Genesis 3:1.
1 Corinthians 10:13 There hath no temptation overtaken you but such as is common to man:
What is God’s primary subject that is occurring in the beginning of Genesis 3? What is the initial theme of Genesis 3? Some say that Genesis 3 is about the fall of Man, but what happened before that. Before the fall there was a state of everything being created good without sin on the earth. Then Satan appears and does what? Of course we are talking about the “temptation” of Adam and Eve by the serpent or Satan, right? So what did God just teach us about the subject of human “temptation” in 1 Corinthians? This is another law or principle of correct Bible interpretation, the Bible always interprets itself. So you must go and search the Bible for related scriptures that help to explain what is written in the Old Testament.
In 1 Corinthians God says every time we (humans) are tempted by the enemy (Satan) it is a common human occurrence. The Greek word that was translated as “common to man” is G442 and it means “after the manner of men”. In other words any satanic temptation is one that is a natural temptation, meaning it is NOT a supernatural temptation. Did you realize that according to what God has just written in His word that it is illegal for Satan to tempt you supernaturally? What is a supernatural temptation? That would be any temptation that did not occur naturally by created design or created laws or any temptation of a non-created material substance or nature. Have you ever seen a talking snake? If you can find me one I would love to see it and this would provide the evidence to support a literal talking snake in the garden being the tempter. Seeing talking snakes in the past and today would make this type of temptation a common occurrence for man. However, I’ve been to many zoos and if there were any talking snakes, I didn’t see them. No you see a talking snake would be a supernatural temptation, a non-common human temptation occurrence and that would cause God’s word in 1 Corinthians 10:13 to become a lie. Since God does not lie I have to conclude there was still no literal talking snake in the garden.
We can therefore reason with great confidence that a talking snake being a tempter would be an illegal supernatural act and if Satan can’t tempt you this way, then he can’t tempt Eve that way either. This scripture is an example of a universal truth. In other words this scripture applies across the board to every person in the human race at any given time within human history. There are some scriptures that only apply to the natural nation of Israel; there are some scriptures that only apply to men; there are some that written to only women; there are some that are written only to the church and others that are written to other groups or sets of people. However, there are also those scriptures like this one that will apply to everyone equally. This is a verse that is in the Universal set of Truth. These represent spiritual laws and God enforces these. The Bible says God watches over His words to perform them and this would be an example.
HOW DOES SATAN TEMPT SOMEONE TODAY?
Have you ever been tempted by Satan? Sure you have whether you admit it or not. How did he come to you and try to tempt you? Did Satan have to manifest himself in the body of an animal to tempt you? Of course he didn’t. Satan when he comes he speaks in your mind, by using your thought life to tempt you to do something that you shouldn’t, or to say something you that you shouldn’t, or whatever. If Satan tempted you this way, then he tempted Eve this way also. Do you think we can find any scripture to confirm this? Of course we can if we look:
2 Corinthians 11:3 But I fear, lest by any means as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty , so your minds be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.
It is amazing what the Bible says when you look for it, understand it and apply it to Genesis 3 interpretation correctly. You see this verse is written to the church and it said Eve was deceived by the serpent, because of his trickery. But did you notice how he did it? This temptation occurred in Eve’s mind and it was not carried out by a talking supernatural snake in the garden. How can we further confirm this? Ask yourself was there ever any mention in Genesis 3 of Adam hearing the snakes voice? If you read closely you will observe that God rebukes Adam for hearkening to the voice of his wife and never mentions the voice of the serpent to Adam. Was not Adam standing next to Eve in the garden? If there was a literal talking snake present then there would have been an audible voice for Adam to also hear. I really believe that Bible need to learn to read and see what is there and what is not there and quit adding tot he words to make them say something that they do not say. We have just learned from God’s commentary on the story of Genesis 3 that whatever Satan said to Eve was a thought in her mind and this caused her to be deceived. Satan is still the same subtle deceiver today and he works and operates in the exact same way that he has always worked. He tries to deceive you through the same avenues of your mind. This verse clearly warns the church to watch their thoughts in order to keep Satan from corrupting their minds. That is why we are instructed in the Bible in this way:
2 Corinthians 10:5 Casting down imagination and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.
Apparently our minds are still the battle ground for the attacks of the enemy and we are responsible to police this mental realm and exercise our authority to keep the enemy out of there. Because preachers and teachers believe that Satan had to borrow the body of a physical snake in order to manifest himself in the earth, they think this is the only way he can communicate to you. We have clearly seen that this is not the case using the Bible. Eve was clearly deceived in her mind; you can also be deceived in your mind if you let him operate there. God tells us what to think on in the Bible, perhaps you should go and search for them and learn to keep only those things in your mind.
WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF SATAN ENTERED AN ANIMAL’S BODY?
I think now would be a good time to introduce you to another set of scriptures that is certainly related to our subject study. If Satan had to borrow the body of a literal physical snake in order to manifest himself to Adam and Eve, what would happen if he actually did this? According to the Bible it is not a positive outcome for the natural snake. You can see in the Gospel where Jesus when He walked the face of the earth and came across a man who was possessed of devils in Matthew 8. The devils started to talk to Jesus and asked Jesus if they could go into the bodies of the herd of swine that were nearby. Jesus said Go! The devils went out of the men and went into the nearby natural animals. Then what happened to the animals?
Mat 8:32 And he said unto them, Go. And when they were come out, they went into the herd of swine: and, behold, the whole herd of swine ran violently down a steep place into the sea, and perished in the waters.
Apparently animals are aware when evil spirits enter into them. Did you see this? The animals were driven mad and committed suicide. After the suicide the evil spirits had no living bodies to possess, so they went about looking for another human to deceive. Did you learn anything from this story? Did you see how it applies to Genesis 3:1? Yes it is confirmed that a spirit being can enter into a body of even a snake but we must conclude from what was just presented that the snake would not have been a willing participant to the possession. God gives us clues like this in the Bible and we are required to put the clues together in order to understand what is being said. What we have learned is that even animals have a sensitivity to spiritual beings. Sometimes I think that animals are more sensitive than many people about pending disasters. Cats and dogs can sense earthquakes before they happen. Animals around the coast line ran to higher ground before the tsunami killed so many people a few years ago. Do not assume or think that any animal will just allow a devil to come into them and use them without them knowing about it. This is just another reason I do not believe there was a physical talking snake in the garden.
IS THE SERPENT LITERAL OR SYMBOLIC?
Now there is a major problem being presented for those who want to take every scripture literally. You see the problem is that the serpent must be a purely symbolic reference for a spiritual being that was not directly named or identified in the book of Genesis at all. You see I have been talking like you already knew that they serpent was Satan throughout this Bible study, but I have offered no Biblical proof to confirm this fact. How do we know that the “serpent” was Satan and not a literal talking created snake? I state the serpent was Satan based upon where else the serpent is mentioned in scriptures. God gives us the definition of the serpent in the last book of the Bible. You do understand that God is the author of the entire Bible, don’t you? You do understand that God can give new information for the same subject found in Genesis wherever He desires to, don’t you? You see God uses a symbolic serpent to describe Satan in several places in the Bible but I will only give you two verses that identifies the serpents real name to us very clearly:
Revelation 12:9 And the great dragon was cast out, the old serpent called the Devil and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth and his angels were cast out with him.
Rev 20:2 And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years,
We can see from these verses in Revelation the true identity of the symbolic “old serpent” is revealed to us to be Satan, the deceiver. These verses also contain another symbolic reference and calls Satan the “great dragon”. Apparently Satan’s strength and ability has increased substantially as the symbolic dragon at the end to a level greater than he possessed at the beginning as the symbolic serpent. You can clearly see why God selected to use symbolic references in both places of the Bible. By comparing these two symbolic references we can gain additional information about this unseen spiritual enemy named Satan. What I am doing is attempting to teach you that God reveals the true identity of the symbolic “serpent” found in Genesis 3:1. You can see two times in Revelation 12:9 and Revelation 20:2 that the “serpent” is a symbolic reference for the devil called Satan. If the “serpent” is not literal here in these verses there is NO legitimate way for the “serpent” to be literal in Genesis either. So we just learned a valuable lesson, of why we can’t take everything in the Bible literally. We have also learned that we can’t study any book of the Bible independently in a vacuum. We must always use the Bible to interpret the Bible! We must see what God’s says about the subject we are studying in the Old Testament in the other places of the New Testament, because He always provides additional information, explanations and definitions that are critical for us to see in order to correctly understand what was being taught.
I have just given you at least 4 good reasons why the Bible says there was no literal physical talking snake in Genesis 3:1. These are not all of the reasons that I could have presented but there were enough reasons why I can say with great confidence that there was no physical talking snake in the Garden of Eden! I thank you for you time and comments. Be blessed in the Lord and continue in the pursuit of the knowledge of His Word. Until the next lesson please tell your friends about what you have learned from God.
If you would like to continue to read Genesis 3 “Part 2 – Does Eating Fruit Kill You” please click.
Why is the Bible so Hard to Understand?
(Ver 1.2) Here is a topic that might raise a huge debate. Is the Bible hard to understand? Can you read the Bible cover to cover and know exactly everything that it says? There are many that I have heard who think that you can. However, I believe based upon the number of divisions, dominations, unbelievers and atheists in the world, it is clear that the Bible is very, very difficult to read and understand. So why is this such a delicate subject? I think it could be partially because there are so many people in the world that have learned something that they think is in the Bible and are holding fast to it like there is nothing else to learn. I see this all over church denominations, they learned something great a hundred years ago and they stopped learning. There is a famouse statement that applies to this discussion and it says “The greatest enemy to knowing the truth is believing that you alread do”. That statement precisely describes a great number of people in the world. God brings along someone new with a new revelation of something that He wants to teach His people, and we have idiotic denominations preaching these people are of the devil and saying they are all heretic teachers. If only they would be open and receptive enough to study and find out if it was true before they condemned it, most of them would have to change their minds and ask God to forgive them and then they would have to change what they are teaching. Pride causes many to fail this requirement quickly. No one wants to admit I was wrong please forgive me for what I use to teach.
So why is the Bible so difficult to understand? The Bible is a highly unique book written by over 50 different human authors in many different writing styles. But that is not what makes it so complex to understand for you see the entire book is really written by only one author and He is God. God used different men to write down what He wanted to say but it all goes together in harmony. So what is the difficulty? Here is a scripture that helps to explain at least part of the problem, if not the majority of the problem.
1 Corinthians 2:14 But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
There are some really strong words given to us here and this verse contains the primary reason why even many Christians don’t understand the Bible. You see this verse doesn’t say it is talking about an unsaved man, just a natural man. What is a natural man? If you look up the word it means one that is dominated by their senses. In touch with how they feel more than what they believe. The Bible speaks of a carnal mind being an enemy to the things of God (Romans 8:7). A carnal mind is a mind that is dominated by the flesh and not the spirit. So we begin to see a pattern to the problem. The unsaved world doesn’t have a clue that they are a spirit living temporarily in a human body so there is absolutely no way they would ever be able to understand the Bible. It is only after we let Jesus come into our hearts that we can begin to see and understand the Words of God.
So then what do Christians need to do to become more spiritual and less flesh dominated? That is another point of controversy but I’ll tell you what happened to me, because I can’t speak with any authority about what happened to you. I was saved, I believe as young child in Vacation Bible Schools and Christian Summer Camps. I was raised in a Christian home and my father was a pastor of several churches. However, as I grew up I drifted away from the things of God and became flesh dominated and controlled. I married and we had kids and finally through a series of events that occurred, God had my complete attention. I began to seek God for more of Him and started asking to be filled with His Spirit. Before, all of this I really never understood the Bible, didn’t like to read the Bible and didn’t care about anything that was in it. However, God answered my prayer and filled me with the Holy Spirit and all of sudden the Bible came to life and the words on the pages spoke with meaning, power and authority. A new awareness of God, a knowing God on a deeper level, an actual personal relationship with God occurred. So many people read the Bible to learn about God, when God really is more interested in them knowing Him first. So that was a quick testimony of my story and how God was able to change my heart and as a result while I don’t know everything, He has certainly been able to teach me a lot more than I use to know. God is capable of teaching you whatever you need to know, but the problem is not with God, the problem is always with us being able to change and receive from Him. It is a complex world we live in, we were created by a highly complex God who has developed complex rules and systems that He operates within. The idea of an omnipotent God that places limitations upon himself and what He can do, is probably offensive to many religious minded people. But, I didn’t create the systems, the rules, the guidelines, the laws that He imposes upon us and himself. We are required to figure out how He operates and change to fit His requirements, we should all know and understand, that God will not change to fit our requirements.
This was not a long lesson, but it requires a lot of humility and deep thought for the reader to see what is covered. I thank you for reading it and I pray you learned something from it. God Bless you and if there is anything that I can do leave me a comment and I will try to respond in a timely manner.
Genesis 1:24-31 Day 6 Part 1 Prophecy of Man
(Ver 1.1) We have arrived at the last day of creation, the last day of God’s work to create our current world system. We again see the law of Genesis being restated in the creation of the animals and the rest of the creatures that inhabit the earth. Everything on the earth produces after its own kind. Squirrels produce only squirrels, mice produce only mice, horses produce only horses, cattle produce only cattle, etc. It is very interesting to note that everything is completely created before man arrives. God has provided everything that man would have need of and there was nothing lacking. No there were no cities, houses, cars or roads, not even any computers or internet but God provided every raw material necessary for man to create all of these. It is also interesting to note that God created man to be an inverntor and a creator. Man does not create on the level of God, but we create, music, art, machines, tools, on and on. I’m sure God gave many these ideas for these great inventions and creations and maybe even helped them build them. But creating stuff is in man and no other creature possesses this feature to man’s creative degree. I’ve never seen a monkey paint a Mona Lisa.
We can see that God created everything that man would have need of physically, but spiritually would be another question. I don’t know how preachers can teach poverty and self sacrifice. It seems religious minded people have a tendency to look at a mother Theresa and think she is some kind of saint because she owns nothing. I personally think that is slap in the face of God who created everything for his creation to enjoy, to possess and to use. If God had not intended for man to have any of it, why would He have went to so much trouble of putting it here in the first place. If you have children and your two year old wants to play with a knife would you put it on the table and say leave that alone it’s not for you. Any two year old will forget quickly whatever they are told and pick that knife up and do whatever they want to with it. In order to keep somebody from having something that is harmful the best things to do is not to put it any where within their reach in the first place. So obviously God is smarter than parents if He thought wealth and riches were not good for His children because it would hurt them, the would He have put them here anyway? Do you see how idiotic people’s opinions can get? No you see in Revelation that heaven is paved with streets of Gold. That sounds like wealth to an extreme. It doesn’t sound like God thinks that wealth is harmful does it? Oh well let’s move on to another subject. Let’s skip down to verse 27 and look at the creation of man.
Gen 1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
I firmly believe that starting in verse 27 that the creation of man is a prophetic event signifying or prophesying the coming into maturity of the new creation of those in the church or those called the body of Christ. Man was the last part of the process of creation and if you want to get technical, woman was the actual last work of God’s creation process. Man was created and came into being at the end of the 6th day of creation. I believe that as the Bible says, that in the last days knowledge will increase and I believe that men and women in the church will again start to resemble their creator. Reading verse 27 we see the explicit statement that God created man in his image. What exactly does that mean to you? To me that means if you looked at Adam and Eve you would immediately think they look like God. Did you ever notice red headed parents normally produce children with red hair. Looking at the red headed children you can say they were made in the image of their parents. You immediately identify one from the other. You can look at one child and recognize the source or origin. That is what I believe God is prophesying about his church, we will finally be able to see a Christian and say wow! he looks like Jesus. God’s family resemblance should be there for all to see. There are several scriptures that I could include here but search your KJV Bible for words like “perfect”. This word is a little bit misleading because it means “mature”, “complete”, “fully grown”. There are several verses in the New Testament that ask us to wait for this perfect man to come and I believe the time is now.
Genesis 1:20-23 Day 5 of God’s Creation
Gen 1:20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.
(Ver 1.1) According to Day 5 of creation, God caused the seas to fill with every type of fish and sea creature. During this time period we also see the fact that every type of bird is said to develop to fill the sky above the earth. It is interesting to note that I guess evolutionists seem to believe every animal on the planet originated from the sea. At least this is the way that I understood what they were saying. I do not profess to be an expert on evolution theory and whoever has studied it is of course no expert either, since they can’t prove anything they are saying. According to the Biblical record of the creator, the fish did come first, followed by the birds. But in no way does it say they evolved one from the other, in fact it declares the total opposite. I alluded to the law of Genesis when we discussed tree and plant life development. The law of Genesis says everything produces after its own kind. Every fish, bird, mammal, insect, reptile, or whatever, has within itself the ability to self sustain it’s own species. Each one has the ability to reproduce itself and to keep it going. Every species has the seed within itself to reproduce.
Using the study of DNA recent scientists have made a lot of discoveries. DNA is an extremely complex coded formula that dictates what a creature will become even before it starts to develop. There are no overlaps or DNA evolution between species that I know of concerning God’s creation. I know that humans contain a similar DNA characteristic to that of monkeys but on close examination they are completely different from that of a monkey Therefore a monkey will never be able to reproduce or to transition to the form of a human. They are just too different. DNA research using what is known as “mitochondrial” DNA has determined that all of the human race originated from a common woman they so appropriately have named “Eve”. I remember reading this in the News Paper several years ago. Of course they buried this information on one of the inside pages, but the result of the article was the conclusion that the Bible was more accurate than we thought. We didn’t come from monkeys, but rather from a single woman named “Eve”. Since that publication the world’s scientific atheists have done their best to explain away the findings. I pretty much just ignore their ramblings. I know the Bible is true, I know that it is the words of the one that created it all and therefore I would rather read the Bible than listen to the words of an ignorant man attempting to say there was no God involved.
I would like to be able to discuss the prophetic implications of these verses but, I have to be honest and say that I don’t know of any right now. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist, it just means I don’t know them. I do know that they early church used a symbol of a fish and this is an event that occurs on the early part of day 5. So if you can see any prophetic implications from Day 5 in how it would relate to the early church please let me know. I’ll be happy to learn.
Genesis 1:14-19 Day 4 Part 5
(Ver 1.1) After I learned this information that I have been attemting to teach to you, it changed my perspective on much of the Bible. I started to understand a lot more of the parts that use to be very hard to follow. I hope that you too are beginning to see some glimpses of the light of how the scriptures harmonize and fit together. We have been discussing the two different realms or spiritual states of the human heart. Those who are in darkness and those who are in the light. We have seen that Jesus Christ represents the sun and we are beginning to understand how the word of God causes Christ to arise and shine into our hearts. I think it is a good time to talk about the identity of the moon.
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.
I once heard a minister say that the church is the moon (lesser light). That we are the one’s that live now in this dark world and we are to rule over it. Of course on the surface I understood what he was trying to say but he got it all very wrong. We are certainly in the world, but we are not of this world. In fact if you look at scripture it says we are seated with Christ in heavenly places (Eph 2:6). No, just think about all of the the known moon’s characteristics. The moon is a lifeless chunk of rock that has no ability to do anything. The light it shines at night does not originate from itself, no it is simply a reflection of the light from the sun. Some would say that fits the church, we don’t have any ability within our self but we depend upon Christ who gives us the ability to do whatever. Of course that is true, but let’s take the analogy deeper. The moon is lit in the sky in different phases. The moon goes from completely lit to completely dark. How does that fit the church? Are you saying God shines on us sometimes and sometimes He doesn’t? Or are you saying man hides from God so that God cannot shine on him? Either one doesn’t really make any sense to me. The moon is also only lit on one side. There is a dark side of the moon that we don’t see. Is this descriptive of the church? Does the church only show the world the part they want to see and hides the part they don’t want people to see in the darkness. That shouldn’t fit a true Christian in the church either. These are major problems to the moon being the church from my view point.
Gen 1:18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.
We know from reading Genesis 1:18 that the sun rules the day and the moon rules the night. We could also say that the moon rules the darkness. Night and darkness are synonymous terms. Here is a scripture that should help to clear up the confusion of is the moon the church. Let’s look at a verse in Ephesians 6:12:
Ephesians 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.
Did you see what that this verse says? Who is this verse talking about? It is speaking of Satan and his demonic forces. These are the spiritual forces that are our enemies and as this verse states, they rule the darkness, not the church. In fact the Bible tells the church that we are not of the darkness (John 12:46), it also says what association has light with darkness (1 Th 5:5), meaning there should be none. You are welcome to study this subject in more depth, because I did not attempt to give you every scripture that there is on the subject. My goal is to point you in the right direction and help you learn. God Bless you and I hope you enjoyed Day 4. I’m sure I didn’t cover everything, but I hope I helped you to see some new things in the Word of God.
Knowing There Are Rules
(Ver 1.1) I believe many times it is a good idea to review the basics and establish a firm foundation to build upon. In thinking about this topic of Bible Interpretation I thought I would review the obvious. Of course it may be obvious to me, but to a new Christian it might not be common knowledge, so here I go. There are rules to Bible Interpretation by God’s design. God has established rules and guidelines to follow and once we learn these, they often time become second nature and you don’t have to think about them in order to follow them automatically. It is much like the law of gravity, it doesn’t take us long to discover that if we climb in a tree and we slip, we fall quickly and hit the ground. I learned this as a kid in my backyard and I never forgot it. I didn’t want to disregard this law of gravity again. If you ignore God’s laws of Bible Interpretation, you might not get the wind knocked out of you physically, but spiritually it can be the same.
So what do we need to do first? Learn that there are rules to follow. Then learn what the rules are. Then follow the rules. This is not rocket science, just a simple truth about understanding the Bible and the author of the Bible. The same God that established natural and physical laws has also established spiritual laws. He lives by them and He expects you to learn them and apply them also. These are the basic principles that we all should live by everyday. We drive our cars using the traffic laws everyday. Normally once we learned how to drive and passed the test for the license we don’t go back constantly and review all of the laws that we learned every minute of the day while we drive. No, the laws and rules have become second nature and we follow them while we drive without even thinking about them.
I do not profess to know every rule of Bible Interpretation, but the ones that God has taught me, these I will transfer to you for your benefit. By reading the rest of these posts in this blog, you can learn some of the do’s and don’ts of Bible Interpretation and apply these to your study and improve your learning capacity, I guarantee it.
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