Archive for the ‘Church’ Category

The Sevenfold Description of the Holy Spirit

Posted: February 26, 2022 in Bible, Christ, Christian, Church, GOD, Holy Spirit, Isaiah, Israel, religion
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When I started writing this, I had no idea why the Holy Spirit directed me to write on this subject, but the book of Jonah has taught me not to argue with one of the three most powerful sentient beings ever. Once I got into it, however I quickly discovered the potential hidden gems of this scripture from Isaiah.

Isaiah 11:1-5 There shall come forth a Rod from the stem of Jesse, And a Branch shall grow out of his roots. The Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon Him, The Spirit of wisdom and understanding, The Spirit of counsel and might, The Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD. (NKJV)

Spirit of the Lord is the supernatural power source that creates God’s Thoughts in our hearts.

Spirit of Wisdom is all of God’s supernatural Thoughts themselves.

Spirit of Understanding is God’s personal illumination of those thoughts.

Spirit of Counsel is God’s personal instructions for Godly choices.

Spirit of Strength is God’s supernatural ability to perform those Thoughts in our lives.

Spirit of Knowledge is seeing God’s Thoughts manifested in our life actions.

Fear of the Lord is walking in God’s Love and Truth, fleeing anything that would quench His Spirit.1

What little facts and jewels jump out at me from these verses? Throughout the Old Covenant we find examples of the Holy Spirit working within people, but it seems to always be on a temporary basis. Here in Isaiah though, we find an example, possibly maybe the first mention, of the permanent indwelling of the Holy Spirit upon a man, which I see as a typological example of an act of the Holy Spirit that began on the Day of Pentecost and which heralded in the future dispensation that we all enjoy called the Church Age. Of course in this example the man happens to be Jesus Christ. We know this is a prophecy of Christ because of several clues, the first of which is one of the known Old Testament titles of Christ in verse one. If we look at verses three through five of Isaiah chapter eleven we have even more insights why this can only be Christ;

Isaiah 11:3-5 His delight [is] in the fear of the LORD, And He shall not judge by the sight of His eyes, Nor decide by the hearing of His ears; But with righteousness He shall judge the poor, And decide with equity for the meek of the earth; He shall strike the earth with the rod of His mouth, And with the breath of His lips He shall slay the wicked. Righteousness shall be the belt of His loins, And faithfulness the belt of His waist. (NKJV)

Jesus is the only human that ever has lived and ever will live that can be called righteous….then we read He will be striking the earth with another characteristic of Christ; the rod of his mouth, which is basically what John saw in Revelation 1: 16 and again in Revelation 19:15. I, of course, wonder when this took place and I believe it was when Christ arose from the water after He was baptized by John. 2

I am sort of a mystic I suppose, for I automatically look for clues and patterns and types in the scriptures and a couple of other things that popped out at me in this passage relate to numerology which many are somewhat familiar with. For an example, many people think seven means something akin to holiness…but it seems to be more along the line of completeness. The number six seems to be a number relating to man and humanity. There are seven Spirits listed here which denotes complete and total spiritualness. If you notice the first Spirit, the Spirit of The Lord, it is a singular Spirit by itself and the other six Spirits are listed in pairs (the number two is considered union or witnessing). If you look at the three pairs you can see Spirits that can be considered qualities of people and are qualities that have been noted as characteristics of individuals throughout the bible. These three pairs added together total six, which is the number of man. The singular Spirit, the one at the top of the list, the Spirit of The Lord, can only be obtained by giving you life to Jesus and allowing Him to come into your life, for the Spirit of The Lord can only come through Christ. If you add the Spirit of The Lord to the other six Spirits you have seven complete Spiritual characteristics of the Holy Spirit that were imparted onto Christ.

If you do allow Christ into your life and allow Him to rule over you, then when you add the singular but most important Spirit of The Lord, which can only come from Him, to the other Spirits that can possibly be obtained by good living and by trying to following the statutes of The Lord, you end up with seven Spirits encompassing you within your life. Which, with Christ in the middle of your life, adds up to the completeness you can only obtain through salvation of our Lord Jesus Christ.

I was going to end it there and call it a day, but I think I need to continue.

Let’s see if we can link this passage in Isaiah with Revelation…primarily, Revelation chapter one verses four and five.

Revelation 1:4 John, to the seven churches which are in Asia: Grace to you and peace from Him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven Spirits who are before His throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler over the kings of the earth. To Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, (NKJV).

What we have here, I believe, is a peek behind the curtain of obscurity to the basic characteristics of the Holy Spirit. The fact that Isaiah mentioned that the Holy Spirit endows these seven Spirits upon Christ and we read in Revelation that there are seven distinct Spirits before the Throne of God tells me that the Holy Spirit is a multifaceted sentient being with seven separate individual Spirits, which, in my mind, reminds me of the description of the multi-faced Cherubim listed in several places within the scriptures. Not only that, but when we read the list of ‘Spirits’ we find the qualities that God fearing (seventh spirit) prophets and men of God throughout the scriptures were said to possess or requested from God, all rolled up into one neat package. When Solomon asked God to give him Wisdom, I didn’t realize the Spirit of Wisdom was one of the descriptions of the Holy Spirit before the Throne of Our Lord and was sent to Solomon…I kind of figured God just flipped a switch in Solomon’s psyche to give him the ability instead of the Holy Spirit sent to indwell him. That being said, when we read of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in our lives…now we know (I should say, now I postulate) that it is the actual Spirits of The Lord, the Holy Spirit in sevenfold that can indwell in us.

God Bless, Jim

1 http://www.khouse.org/articles/1996/281/

2 Matthew 3:16, Mark 1:10, Luke 3:22 John 1:32

The Birthday of the Church

Posted: February 26, 2022 in Bible, Christ, Christian, Church, Pentecost, religion
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We, as Christians, all know that the church was established on the Day of Pentecost as we are told in Acts chapter 2. The Day of Pentecost (also known as the Feast of Weeks) is one of seven major feasts of Israel that the Jews celebrate every year and it occurs fifty days after the Sunday that follows the Feast of Passover.

I have often wondered why the birthday of the church on Pentecost (betrothal day of the bride of Christ) is never mentioned, much less celebrated amongst the Christian community? I think it may have to do with the Christian traditions carried down through the centuries from biased roots grown from the early church fathers. Some of Chuck Missler’s recordings touch on this matter in a round about way when his, and other scholars research have shown that the early church did it’s dead level best to separate themselves from anything relating to Israel because of their anti-Semitic view point, blaming the Nation of Israel for the crucifixion of Christ as was evident by the rulings made by the Council of Nice in 325AD1 when they created their own “Passover Day‘, that is calculated as the first Sunday following the first full moon following a pagan holiday in the spring of the year called the Spring Equinox2

When you read about the church’s development in the book of Acts starting with the preachings and teachings of Peter and other disciples and then continuing with the miraculous ministry of Paul and his fabulous interpretations of the gospel of Christ for us through the inspired letters that he wrote, you don’t see any anti-Semitic tendencies coming through. Somehow, though, in the decades that followed, despite the warnings to watch for false apostles, teachers and preachers by Peter, James, John and Paul, Satan was successful in embedding enough false teachers within the church to create small misdirections that grew into the beginning of the allegorization and misinterpretations of God’s word. The apparent influence of Satan, coupled with a sanctioned hatred toward the Jews, caused the early church to eventually chose to distance itself from anything relating to Jewish practices and one of the results was the creation of a resurrection day who’s place on the calendar is determined by counting from the base of a pagan holiday even though, at this point in time, they still called the celebration Passover. We also find that after the papacy firmly established itself politically, as well as religiously, they renamed the day of celebrating the resurrection of Our Lord as Easter, a name that has it’s roots in Babylonian pagan religious fertility festivals celebrating Ishtar (that is where the crazy tradition of an egg laying rabbit came from).

Wow! So even if you searched the internet for the calendar day of Pentecost, the betrothal day of the Bride of Christ, most likely you would find a false day, for Pentecost is a Greek word that means count fifty. We need to know what day they are counting their fifty days from, from a pagan fertility feast called Easter, or are they counting from a full moon, or is it from the Feast of First Fruits, which is the Sunday that follows the Sabbath that follows Passover and is the day that Our Lord, Our Savior met Mary at the tomb after He had arisen.

So why isn’t Pentecost on list of special days of recognition? The other days of recognition, Easter (even though the origins and the name of the holiday is Babylonian), the meaning behind the day still allows us to reflect on the greatest miracle ever performed since the creation of the universe) and Christmas (another one that has scary Babylonian roots) are about Christ our Savior. The day the church was created and Christ’s bride was betrothed is a known traceable day. Why isn’t it recognized? I suspect the reasons have their roots buried in the anti-Semitism of the early church and the fact that we, as the body of Christ hold traditions almost as dear to our hearts as facts. There may be some churches tucked away somewhere that recognize the Day of Pentecost, but I don’t know of any and those Christians I mention it to kind of look at me like “What?…what’s up with this guy?”. I personally try to find when the actual Day of Pentecost is and sing a little happy birthday song to recognize the birth of the vehicle that allows us as Gentile, but more so as sinful humans to prepare and meet Our Lord.

God Bless, Jim

*1 http://www.debate.org.uk/topics/theo/council_nicaea.html

*2 https://www.learnreligions.com/all-about-ostara-the-spring-equinox-2562471

http://antipas.net/pentecost.htm