Archive for the ‘GOD’ 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

Can we lose our salvation?

Posted: February 26, 2022 in Bible, Christ, Christian, GOD, religion, Salvation, Sin
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I’m not sure.

I was raised in a church that taught (but denied that they taught) you had to basically work your way to Heaven. I haven’t been involved in that congregation for almost three decades, but my siblings still are. As a teen I walked away from God and the Christian religion and practiced paganism for over two decades. I never was fully satisfied with my search for spiritual truth and ultimate peace by alternate means and about ten years ago, after some hardships, I was convinced to give the Christian God another try and as soon as I did, he saved me from the burdens and issues I had drug along with me. So after I gave myself to Him, I realized that I had arrived back full circle to the place I had basically started as a child. Subsequently, I decided that I was going to prove the teachings within the scriptures to myself through prayer and an expositional journey through My Lord’s word.

When I started this process a decade ago, I didn’t believe in the rapture, I didn’t believe in the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and I had no idea what religious affiliation my mentor, Chuck Missler was…I went in blind, but open to learning. I quickly found out that Chuck Missler believed in the things I mentioned but he also encouraged disbelief so we would figure it out for ourselves (Acts 17:11) and I appreciated that. I had not encountered a teacher with that attitude before (the church of my youth, if you didn’t walk lockstep with their teaching they would virtually break your bible over their knee and drum you out of the doors, locking them behind you). In the last ten years I have grown to understand more about the scriptures than I ever imagined I would and it is a very enjoyable journey. I now am down with the concept of the rapture as well as the separate destinies of the nation of Israel and the church. I find the scriptures are plain and open for all to see about the teaching of the continued presence of the Holy Spirit within our lives and the existence of spiritual gifts (unlike the legalistic, work based, replacement theology that the church of my youth taught). A few months ago, I really started to grasp and understand the difference between tongues…IE, the tongues of interpretation and the tongues of fire, or prayer language. I have my mind solidly wrapped around the predestination-free will argument that seems to bumfuzzle so many. The rapture of the bride of Christ is there in black and white and in some ways, and buried in the word by patterns and example in many locations of the bible. The book of Revelation can be a little scary, but not in an intimidating way, it is a very forceful and straight blueprint of the past, present and future condition of the church and the nation of Israel laid out in a surprisingly plain way, once we get rid of all the cobwebs of allegorization and fallacy swept out from within our minds. I have also found a home at a small, but swiftly growing, full-gospel congregation near my home and I feel I am on the road to salvation.

What about salvation? Chuck Missler makes it plain that he believes that once you accept Christ and achieve salvation that you are locked into a seat on the glory train…but I’m not so sure…I still think there are some situations, noted in the scriptures, which make it seem you can lose your salvation.

The church of my youth had a roulette wheel, sort of view of salvation…you are saved until you sin, then as soon as you commit a sin, you are condemned to the lake of fire, until you repent, then you are OK…of course until you commit the next sin, then you are destined for hell again…and on, and on, and on. I don’t believe that point of view in the least. I do believe in the assurance of salvation through the mercy and grace that Our Lord assures us of…but the scriptures do indicate that it is not a free ride. The bible definitely teaches we have a personal responsibility of obedience and to produce fruit for the Lord. But what if we don’t? Is it the gallows? I don’t think so, especially if we understand the grace and mercy aspect of the scriptures. No one (except for Christ Jesus Himself) has been, is or will ever be good enough to earn salvation. God and also Christ the Son, in a couple of different places in the scriptures say that no man can snatch Their flock (us) out of Their hands. That is a couple of pretty powerful statements about our security in our salvation. However there are a couple of other places that alludes to the fact that maybe if we really try hard enough, we can slip out of Their grasps.

At this point in my journey I haven’t digested the New Covenant enough to have come to a firm conclusion. I tend to concentrate on sections and themes of the bible related to those sections that are pertinent to the book, or books of the bible I am currently working on in my journey and at the present I am in the minor prophets of the Old Covenent. I feel The Lord is providing me information as I need it and since I was compelled to answer this discussion question, even thought I wanted to stay away and not have anything to do with it, tells me it is His will that I start paying attention to it.

Let’s look at the word salvation. In the Old Testament the word salvation is normally taken from a feminine noun derivative of the base yasha which means to save, be saved, be delivered. In the New Testament, the word seems to consistently be the Greek word; soteria which means he who brings salvation, the hope of future salvation, a deliverer and is apparently the Greek equivalent to the Hebrew yeshuw’ah which means basically the same thing.

OK, let us start with some verses that I believe can cause confusion.

Romans 10:13 says: For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. (KJV) I know of some denominations that base their gospel upon this verse. I have to say, in my life I have grown very gun-shy about well-intentioned folks creating doctrine from single sources within the scriptures. I had a close relative that was a prime example of the danger of this for they believed if you are not an active member of the Church of Christ, you are hell-bound and they build this doctrine upon a single source that comes from Romans 16:16 (they handily ignore the name The Way from Acts and the Church of God which is all through I Corinthians…)

What about those that hear the gospel and are drawn to profess and call upon the name of The Lord and feel the Holy Spirit…but then they never turn from their sinful ways…they exhibit no change within their lives. If an ax murderer fell down on his knees and called on the name of The Lord…but he remained an ax murderer…if he only gave credence to the word but never submitted to the Lordship and therefore never started to grow and mature, he never yielded to The Lord…has he still achieved salvation? Also, then what about the apparent ‘unpardonable sin’ of blaspheming the Holy Spirit that we find in Luke?

Christ is pretty clear about what He expects and He says in Matthew 7:21-24 that not all that cry Lord, Lord will receive a ticket on the glory train but those that submit and yield to the Lord’s will.

Matthew 7:21-24 Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity. 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: (KJV)

I believe the answer is not as simple as calling upon the name of The Lord, but apparently salvation is dependent on those other conditions that Christ outlines. I personally lean (I’m not sure why) toward Chuck Missler’s view and I feel that it is possibly conditional on The Lord’s knowledge of our heart and our giving up of our pride (which in Isaiah is considered the base of all sin) and yielding to the will of Our Lord to achieve salvation…but I am going to have to absorb and digest more of His precious word before it ‘clicks’ with me.

What about Hebrews 6:4-6 For [it is] impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put [him] to an open shame. (KJV)? To take it out of context and to look at it by itself (which unfortunately some churches do) it would seem to create a conundrum. Unless this same viewpoint is clearly covered somewhere else in the scriptures, in my thinking it doesn’t mean what a lot of denominational leaders think it does. So, what does it mean? Was this passage a special judgment reserved for the apostolic Jews? Possibly. We know that God had harsh rules design just for His people that weren’t levied on the Gentiles, such as death penalty for not observing the Sabbath properly, among others. Does it mean something else? I just don’t know…the jury is still out…but now that the ramifications about salvation on my radar I will come to a solid, teachable conclusion within a short time, The Lord willing.

God Bless, Jim

Refuting Evolution: Living in a Universe of Irreducible Complexity

Posted: February 26, 2022 in Bible, Creation, GOD, science
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The concept of “irreducible complexity” is having something the least complex it can be and still work.

Take a mousetrap; there are five basic components, if it is missing any one of these five parts, it simply doesn’t work…it was designed and engineered around these five parts. You can go up in complexity, for instance, you could add paint for color, add a sensor that would notify you when the little rodent came to its end and even a camera that would record it’s grizzly execution…but unless you’re a sadist, these additional parts are not necessary. However, if you remove any of the basic five pieces of the trap and attempt to use it, you will find it simply will not work.

OK, the mousetrap is a basic example of human design, but let’s climb up a few more rungs of the complexity ladder. Another example of irreducible complexity would be the mammalian eye. Once again, we have five basic components1, a cornea, pupil, iris, lens and retina. If any one of these components is missing it doesn’t work. This means that the eye couldn’t have progressed along an ‘evolutionary’ assembly line where you see a little, then a little better, then a little better, until it progressed to our eye…if any one of these components is missing, it simply doesn’t work…you would be blind and there is no evolutionary advantage that could be gained by being blind for eons until the eye developed sight…evolution makes no sense here…that means the eye was developed and engineered from the beginning as a unit around these five major parts, just as the mousetrap is manufactured as a working unit.

Let’s then look down at the micro level at a single cell bacterium. This single cell organism has a flagellum2 tail that propels it by turning in a corkscrew manner, operated by a motor comprised of forty different components. If any one of these forty parts of this motor are missing, it simply doesn’t work. This one example is simply mind-boggling to me. We have a single celled organism, specializing as a bacterium, with its propulsion being provided by a variable speed electrical motor powered by sub-atomic protons and it sounds more science-fiction than fact.

Why is that? We humans are barely at the level where we can begin to look at and understand the micro world, much less replicate it…that’s why to most of us it reads as science fiction. Everywhere we look from the macro to the micro, from the large to the small, we see design everywhere and it drives some in the scientific community bonkers to see their theories of Darwinism lying in tatters. Evolutionary progression cannot explain how this can be…only design…who was, and is, the designer? The Creator of everything, The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Our Lord, Jehovah Jireh.

This is only a couple of examples from a pool of tens of thousands that could be looked at and they all explode the theory of evolution to pieces and prove that everything that exists is digital and by design.

1 http://www.tedmontgomery.com/the_eye/

2 http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v325/n6105/abs/325637a0.html

A few ways Satan has tried to thwart the plan of GOD

Posted: February 26, 2022 in Bible, Christ, Christian, GOD, Israel, Satan, Sin
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If we stop and think about the question, we realize that the bible from the opening passages to the closing passages deal with Satan’s attempts to screw up God’s plan that he has laid out in advance, and it is The Great Deceiver’s intention to prove that he is as great and as powerful as The Lord, as we read in Isaiah 14:12-14 How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! [how] art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. (KJV). We could probably spend years listing all the events through history that has Satan’s signature and seal stamped on them. I have just covered a couple of seemingly obvious one to me.

There have been several ways that Satan has tried to thwart the plan of God throughout history, but what immediately came to mind when I thought about this subject was one way that Satan has tried to thwart the plan of God that is still continuing to this day. The way I am referring to is to sow derision, doubt and conflict within the Body of Christ.

All the different groups within the religious body called Christianity, for the most part, are separated by seemingly insignificant differences. These differences can find their beginnings in the first years of The Way*1, as the group of people that followed the teachings of The Christ were called in the book of Acts. Satan was able to insert false prophets and sow doubt and deception within the Christian movement almost from the beginning. Small, subtle changes here and there, a doubt about the real meaning behind this passage or that passage and Satan’s ability to convince scholars and teachers that taking passages out of context is OK all resulted in the beginnings of the division of the Body of Christ. He was also very successful in his campaign to deceive the early church fathers into questioning the meaning of the scriptures, which allowed them to start creating their own interpretations of the Word, which resulted in a more palatable form of religion for the Holy Roman Empire. The disgust with the end product of the religious/political superpower that it morphed into resulted in the reformation movement*2. Part of the problem that the reformation movement left us with is many of the reformed protestant religious entities that formed didn’t take the reformation far enough, which has resulted in many of our ‘siblings’ in the Body of Christ still firmly believe in allegorizing the scripture, just as they did in the fourth century to make the lessons and commandments of the Word of Our Lord easier to accept and therefore a little less rigid, and a lot less ‘black and white’. Therefore many of our brethren teach traditional interpretation of the word instead of what the scripture really says. To do this effectively, they have to do several things.

First, the fact that the holy scriptures from Genesis to Revelation is a single, cohesive message system with a beautiful woven tapestry of meaning and purpose about God, his peoples and his Son has to be ignored and tossed out the window is the first and most important thing that must be done. Once this is accomplished, the rest becomes easy. After they destroy the cohesiveness of Our Lords message, it becomes easier to take and chop the word of Our Lord up into individual sections that don’t relate to each other significantly or not at all to be able to build the traditions and religious philosophy the the church has replaced Israel as God’s chosen people. This mindset and philosophy is referred to as replacement theology*3 and too many of our brethren teach this doctrine weekly from their pulpits as gospel.

Looking at this particular religious philosophy from a microscopic perspective, or even a planar perspective, it may seem to pass muster, but if you back up and get above it look at it from a distance you can see clearly that they have taken the flowing structure of the Word and chopped and cut and ripped the beautiful tapestry of the scriptures into pieces and then in a sordid attempt to try and justify their view they have taken the portions and blindly reassemble them into some sort of ugly jigsaw puzzle that they have hammered and taped back together into an non-fitting picture that more resembles a Jackson Pollack painting than a smooth flowing message system that easily fits and continues from end to end, the way the Holy Spirit wrote it and the way the Creator of All Things intended. By doing this, these unknowing minions of Satan have created great tears and gaps in the message of Our Lord that keep getting larger over time. These chasms that they have opened up allow false teachings, ideas and deceptions to enter into the scriptures and drive ever-widening wedges between those different groups that cling onto their own particular ideas or viewpoints that has been torn from the flowing structure of the Word. This could be compared to wounds in our skin that allows harmful germs and bacteria which can cause great harm if left open and untreated. We as the Body of Christ are much like extremely dysfunctional siblings that are constantly fighting and squabbling over minor issues and irrelevant things that, for the most part, have been caused by the attempts to destroy the intricate tapestry of the scriptures, to the point that most of our energies are absorbed in this in-fighting instead of taking the Word to the lost of the world. This has to be one of Satan’s more successful campaigns in his plan to thwart the plan of Our Lord.

While I was proofing what I had written above, another thought struck me. Another one of Satan’s great successes in his attempt to thwart the plan of God was his successful ability to control and deceive the Jewish leadership throughout the period of the Old Testament by causing them to doubt and ignore part of their own Torah through the lack of diligence in following the commandments of the Lord to read the Torah at certain times of the year while examining other parts of the Torah through a microscope (sound familiar?). This is easily inferred as we read the historical records of Israel and the prophets. I’m sure Satan went to far greater lengths than that, probably through deception and centuries of whispering in their ears to create doubt that God really doesn’t mean this and that. Satan really did some impressive work here; the leadership completely ignored Daniel chapter nine as if it never existed, because it told them precisely what day to expect the Messiah’s entry into Jerusalem and on the day that Gabriel gave to Daniel five hundred years earlier for all to see and hear, instead of welcoming their king, they grabbed him and treated him as a heretic and a criminal.

I’m going to digress here for a moment for I think the link between Daniel and the birth of The Christ is extremely cool and it could possibly be a link that Satan missed. As a child, knowing the story of Christ’s birth, I always wondered who these guys called the Magi were. All anyone could say was they were wise men from the east. Historical research indicates that the Magi were members of the Medeo-Persian Priesthood*4 and we find that Daniel*5 was chief of the Magi according to Daniel chapter 4. Daniel 4:9 “Belteshazzar*5, chief of the magicians, because I know that the Spirit of the Holy God [is] in you, and no secret troubles you, explain to me the visions of my dream that I have seen, and its interpretation. (NKJV) This scripture tells us Daniel held this office over these magicians and this is an indicator that creates a link to the appearance of the Magi in the gospels and apparently it is one of those events where the bible implies a Messianic prophecy that didn’t make it out of the Holy Spirit’s editing room for us to read, though Daniel seemingly knew the specifics of it and it seems he taught his dedicated followers to pass on this prophecy down through the centuries to their successors*6. So what happens? The fact that five hundred years later this imposing procession of important foreigners suddenly shows up at Herod’s doorstep in Jerusalem looking for the new born king of God’s chosen people, means they had to be there following some precise instructions, and the fact they were descendants of the Magi priesthood that was under the leadership of Daniel the prophet several centuries earlier says linkage to me. Where am I going with this? My personal opinion is that Satan read the Holy Word and knows every prophecy, every covenant, every commandment and every screw-up of the Israelites in there. My thought is that this prophecy that guided Daniel to instruct the Magi to pass the prophecy down through their ranks from generation to generation was missed by Satan, causing him to ignore these pagan priests that are conveying the message of the expectation of a Jewish Messiah appearing under certain miraculous conditions to their following successions of priests. OK, if that’s true, why was it left out? We could throw out conjectures all day, but I believe this visit by the Magi gives us an indication, on a much smaller scale, of what celebrations should have been taking place in Israel if the Jews had known to look for the Messiah, is one possibility. Another possibility is their visit was an end-run around Satan’s deception campaign, which in part, was designed to prevent such an announcement to be heralded, but the Magi succeeded at announcing to the Jewish leadership that the Messiah and king was among them. Or maybe it’s a combination of the two thoughts. Regardless whatever could have happened, the Jewish leadership were, once again, asleep at the wheel and ignored this event, which is only one of the most important events this creation has ever witnessed.

Because Christ as the Messiah was rejected by the nation of Israel, The Lord turned his back on them as prophesied throughout the Torah, (though Hosea’s is my favorite) which resulted in the catastrophe in 70 AD and the diaspora*7 of the Jews.

I have a non-traditional view of the scripture (to put it kindly, according to some). In my mind’s eye, I see God discussing with the others in the Trinity over steaming cups of nectar, his script for our universe before zapping us into existence. We all know what happened…Satan immediately threw a wrench into the works, casing the Lord to rewrite the script of our complicated sim game*8, so to speak. I look for patterns and, I guess conspiracies and one pattern that I see is; after the Jews turned chicken and refused to invade Canaan the first time, The Lord sent them wandering for thirty eight years before they were allowed to occupy the land. Fast-forward several hundred years and we have the Jewish nation reject God again by rejecting His Son. Thirty eight years later, the Romans destroyed the temple and massacred over a million Jews in the process of the siege and occupation of Jerusalem. I can’t help but wonder if this was simply a modified script from the original one, one where possibly the Jews accepted him and thirty eight years later, the chosen people, with Christ as their King, started the rule of the earth from Zion. Just as they had captured and occupied the promised land so many years ago.

In hindsight, we can look back and think, “what dorks, these guys had these prophecies about the Messiah, mainly the one from Daniel chapter nine, right there in front of them and they ignored it and see what it got them.”. Before we get all holier-than-thou, we need to look at ourselves. Heck, forget religion, here in America, our leaders ignore and reject our own constitution, they reject moral judgments and teachings, much less the teaching of the scriptures and we’ve only had a couple hundred years to do it in. At least Israel seemed to hold it together longer than that.

God Bless, Jim

*1 Acts 9:2 and Acts 19:9, 23

*2http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_Reformation

*3http://www.gotquestions.org/replacement-theology.html

*4http://ldolphin.org/magi.html

*5 Belteshazzar was Daniel’s Persian name

*6 Numbers 24:17 tells of a star in prophecy, but if you read it in context, I don’t see the link to Christ’s birth…

*7http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora

*8 I personally think we are some sort of giant SIM game where our reality is all smoke and mirrors and the real reality is what we refer to as the ‘spirit world’. The apostle Paul supports that view, by the way in Ephesians 6:12

Empty Space and Galaxies near and far, or how long did it take for our universe to form?

Posted: February 26, 2022 in Age of the Universe, Bible, Christ, GOD, Life and Memories, My view of the world, Space
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Is space basically empty? When I was going to school we were taught that space was empty, but in the last few decades the concept of the universe being full of dark matter has been bandied about. Why? There is simply too much stuff going on, energy-wise, in our universe for the measurable matter to account for, mathematics and physics have shown.

In fact when they crunch the numbers, it seems they are missing a little matter…no?…more? OK, they are missing some matter…no?…even more? OK, they are missing almost 90% of the matter of the universe and they can’t find it, it seems…it apparently is hiding somewhere, so they came up with the tag of ‘dark matter’. One crazy example of this concept is something called ‘zero point energy’.

We learned about thermodynamics in school (whether we realize it or not), that is the concept that matter gives off heat to the background creating energy in exchange. If there is no potential difference in temperature between an object and the background, no work can be performed. The temperature of space is very, very cold while matter that resides within the universe has different levels of heat that they give off to the ’empty’ space background. That cold temperature is called ‘absolute zero’. That is as cold as you can get…you can’t get any colder. When matter gets as cold as the background there is a term for that and it is called heat death. At this point science tells us that there is no exchange of energy…matter is as dead as it can get. That means everything we know stops…everything ceases being all movement ceases, even down to the sub-atomic particles. Kind of sad to think about, isn’t it?

However, that isn’t the end to the story…remember the dark matter, as they call it? Science has found out that even when the background of space is at absolute zero, there is an unexplainably massive amount of energy stored within that ’empty space’. Science can’t explain where it comes from, but they have realized that this zero point energy is a constant source of energy at the sub-atomic level that keeps the electron in their orbits. This energy somehow keeps replenishing it’s self from outside the universe…ooohh creepy…or it simply means that the Creator is still at work…I’ll take the latter explanation, I think. If it weren’t for the zero-point energy replenishment, we or nothing else would be here for the atomic structure of life would destroy itself…empty space…I don’t think so, it seems someone is still holding it all together.

Colossians 1:16-17 For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. (NKJV)

There are a few deep space telescopes that can look at very distant objects in our universe, including thousands upon thousands of galaxies of all different sorts. If we choose to look at just spiral galaxies we notice that despite how far away they are, the arms seem to be extended about the same because of the gravitational and centrifugal effects. What is intriguing about that is because of the limitation of the speed of light, the ones we see far away are snapshots of the galaxy long ago in the past, where the ones relatively close are glimpses of only a few years past. In other words, the light we see from a galaxy far, far away left that galaxy millions of years ago, meaning what we are seeing from far away galaxies is a potentially millions of year old snapshot of that particular galaxy. While the photo of Andromeda galaxy is only a few years old. When you compare the photos of the near and the far galaxies you notice that the arms are extended about the same regardless of distance away from us. This intrigues me because using the current theory of the age of the universe, that should not be so…the far distant ones are pictures of spiral galaxies taken millennia ago and the arms should be less well developed that the closer ones, or not developed at all. So what does that mean to us? What that means is that all of creation including all portions the universe, including the galaxies, were created at the same time. For them to be created at the same time denotes creation and the perfect candidate for that is God.

God Bless, Jim

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