Posts Tagged ‘Christian’

Paul’s Thorn in the Flesh

Posted: August 20, 2011 in Christian
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I was sure that when I began the research for this topic for a class at Koinonia Institute, that I would conclude that Paul had an eye malady as several commentators seem to think…but after looking at several passages and after researching several different sites and praying, I don’t think that is what it was…not totally anyway. Let’s start attempting to unravel this question by visiting the passage where the term ‘thorn in the flesh’ came from.

2 Corinthians 12:7-10 Because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, for this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me—to keep me from exalting myself! Concerning this I implored the Lord three times that it might leave me. And He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.(NASB)

I first read this and then I looked at verse seven a little closer. I examined it with the lexicon and this passage says that the thorn in his flesh was an angel of Satan…I’m not making it up, that’s what it says. OK, what does it mean? The word messenger seems to always refers to a human being or an angel or of Christ. I think we can agree that a messenger of Satan doesn’t mean Christ so that leaves humans or angels. By contrast, thorns are seen continually in scripture, as a sign of those who are against Israel, or are of Satan. By the process of elimination, I think the verse means that his thorn in the flesh was likely an angel of Satan.

Now that I feel the thorn was caused by a fallen angel, I wondered could Paul have been suffering from demon possession with The Lord’s permission? At first I thought maybe this could have been the answer and there are examples of this in the scriptures. If we read 1 Samuel 16:14 we learn that The Lord became fed up with Saul and sent an evil spirit to trouble him. The Lord apparently allows evil spirits to possess people (that is a different topic in itself) but, after praying about it and sleeping on it, I feel demon possession is highly unlikely. First, because the reference I cited in the book of Samuel was of God, and this was not (it was of Satan) and secondly because Paul’s actions don’t fit the patterns we read of elsewhere in the scriptures of examples of demon possessed people.

However, in a Job-like manner, God could have allowed an angel of Satan to torment, or maltreat Paul and to cause physical problems that manifested themselves outwardly. Could the angel of Satan have been anything else? Yes, it could have been ‘agents’ of Satan attempting to thwart Paul’s efforts at spreading the word, by trying to throw roadblocks in his way because as Paul became more effective at bringing God’s message to the people and his reputation became better known, he increasingly was becoming more and more of an extreme irritant to Satan and his design to thwart The Lord’s plan. Paul himself, in 2 Corinthians eleven said he survived beatings, stonings, imprisonment and three shipwrecks in his journeys spreading the word and despite all these apparent Satanic efforts to stop him, Paul became one of The Lords most effective tool at spreading the word to Gentiles and Jews alike that the early church had ever known and I’m sure Satan would have crushed Paul like a bug if God had allowed him to.

Now let’s look at another view, from the letter to the Galatians.

Galatians 4:13-15 You know that because of physical infirmity I preached the gospel to you at the first. And my trial which was in my flesh you did not despise or reject, but you received me as an angel of God, [even] as Christ Jesus. What then was the blessing you [enjoyed]? For I bear you witness that, if possible, you would have plucked out your own eyes and given them to me.(NKJV)

OK, here, it seems he was suffering from a physical malady that was evident to those he was preaching to in Galatia, as we find out from this letter he wrote at a later date after they started slipping back to the old ways of Judaism. Dr. Chuck Missler, among other commentators of the scriptures, seems to think it was eye problems that were a carry-over from the blindness Christ caused him to have (which I see as a typological representation of the blindness He pronounced upon Israel that also is a temporary infirmity at the national level). That is a logical assumption except for one issue; if we look back at 2 Corinthians 12:7 it says it was a messenger from Satan sent to torment him. The blindness came from God, not ‘a messenger of Satan, and the two causalities don’t mingle in my mind, so I don’t believe Paul would have confused eye problems relating to the blindness caused by Our Lord as having come from Satan.

At this point, I believe God was allowing Satan, in a Job-like manner, as stated earlier, to harass Paul in ways that manifested itself by causing outward signs of some aberrant physical condition to a limited extent, and to also, at the same time, throw roadblocks in his way in the manner of delays, shipwrecks, beatings, stonings and imprisonment because of The Lord’s faith in His servant. Paul besought The Lord to remove this burden from him three time, just as Christ was beseeching His Father three time to rid Him of His burden in the Garden. The Lord chose not to heal this ‘thorn’ in Paul’s side, possibly for the reason so that Paul would take the burden and use it as a tool to aid him in his ministries, which he did.

So in summary, we have those that firmly believe Paul’s thorn in the flesh was simply agents sent to block his progress, as they surely did, and we do see in 2 Corinthians eleven that he describes those attempting to stop and thwart him, and that they would be ‘messengers of Satan’ and I took those into account…but I don’t think that is all that there is of his meaning. We also have those that firmly believe it was just a physical malady, such as chronic eye problems that Paul was referring to in 2 Corinthians chapter 12 and in several letters he does mentions physical maladies that seem embarrassing and seem to be a hindrance and an impediment that is obviously deeply troubling him and some folks think they were his thorn in the flesh and I took that into account also…but I don’t think that is all of it either…I’m looking at all these all references as one big package and it screams ‘Job’ to me.

Also, the verbiage in 2 Corinthians 12:8 when he is pleading with The Lord to allow ‘it to depart from him’, uses the Greek verb, aphistēmi and the definition seems to imply to me more than just people harassing him or more than just physical impairment. I suppose then, that my conclusion is I feel Paul was afflicted with multiple issues that were Satan sponsored and Satan sent.

While we’re at it, the root to the thorns in side in the OT in the couple of places I checked was tsaniyn which is thorns or pricks. When we look at the Greek root of the thorn in 2 Corinthians 12:7 it is skolops which is a sharp pointed stake, something akin to a tent stake, I suspect. This doesn’t mitigate the comparisons to the OT text, but it seems to ramp up the seriousness of the point he was trying to make, I think.

How is this principle of Paul’s thorn in his flesh applicable today?…to me? Paul was a sinner, but he was a very effective sinner that turned trouble into triumph and used the thorn in his flesh to his advantage to show that he was still a sinner, but a sinner saved by grace, as we all would be, and that he was tempted to be exalted in the end. Paul asked God to remove the ‘thorn’ from him, but God told him that “power is perfected in weakness”, so Paul turned roadblocks and hindrances into triumphs for The Lord. Those are lessons that I need to work on because sometimes when I don’t understand why things are happening, I try to take charge and, as usual, wreck the train, and allow troubles and temptation to be the excuse that they are designed to be, therefore giving my arch foe, Satan an advantage. Oh, you weak, weak man, Jim.

Dear Father, I need your strength, for I have none. I need your light for I exist in darkness, I need your hand to guide me out of the abyss I plunge myself into. Oh, Father save me from myself for I’m a worm on the ground, once again waiting for the carrion of Satan to snatch me up without you. Dear, blessed Father, thank you for the grace and mercy I never have and I never will deserve and I still don’t understand why you rescued me, Lord. Show me how to be like Paul, triumphing in life, while spreading your Word, father. In Christ name, Amen.

God Bless, Jim

8-10-11

for Koinonia Institute

The Prodigal Son and I; my take on Luke 15

Posted: August 20, 2011 in Christian
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The story of the Prodigal Son is one of those Sunday School lessons that I have been familiar with since childhood. However, until recently, I never really comprehended the very personal and powerful message that was waiting for me within.

We find the story of the Prodigal Son within the gospel of Luke. The fifteenth chapter of Luke opens with publicans and sinners gathering together in Galilee to learn from, and eat with Christ. Also attending this gathering of the faithful were the scribes and Pharisees that were essentially the Jewish religious police. These professional religionists were there not to learn from Him, but to try and find another opportunity to find fault with this very popular Rhabbi that people would travel a day or more to hear and to learn from, for we read here that the Pharisees were grumbling about Him eating with all these sinners.

I find it interesting that the gospels demonstrate that whenever Christ encounters sinners He is always kind and compassionate, but whenever we find Him pitted against the official religionists of the day, the Pharisees, the encounters often turn harsh and sometimes violent. It gives us an interesting insight to what Our Lord thought of the religious establishment and those that spent their lives attempting to follow the letter of the law and keeping a watchful eye on anyone that strayed from the legalism that keeping the letter of the law entraps us in.

Considering Christ’s attitude toward the legalists of the day, we find that Jesus reserves the entire chapter of Luke 15 to, once again, take advantage of the stiff necked and holier-than-thou attitude of the Pharisees to demonstrate to them and the crowd of followers that had gathered to hear Him speak, just how much the Pharisees had bastardized and debased the purpose of the Torah. Jesus did this by first giving common sense examples of acts of finding lost things, that anyone listening would agree with, and then using those thoughts as a basis of The Lord’s attitude of love and forgiveness toward all of us by telling a story of a son that was lost and had returned expecting anger and revulsion from his father, but unexpectedly receiving instead, his father’s happiness and joy to see his wayward son son return to him and his rightful place back within the family. He used this story to turn the Pharisees legalistic attitude toward the sinners back on them by using this story as a mirror. Of course, the story of the Prodigal Son is much more than that, it is also a practical demonstration that the God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob, our God and Lord, is a God of second chances and a very forgiving and benevolent Lord.

OK, how does the story of the Prodigal Son apply to me? As an answer to this question, I feel compelled to give a quick testimony.

I was raised in a Christian household with loving parents. At the age of twelve I suffered non-familial sex abuse by an authority figure which I subsequently hid from everyone, as I was told I would be blamed for this heinous act. I felt, even at an early age, from being compelled to read the bible nightly, that the religion of my youth was very flawed in their doctrines and traditions much as the Church of Ephesus in Revelation chapter two (legalism over love and compassion) and therefore I didn’t feel I could turn to the church and I didn’t trust my parents either…I trusted no one. Not sharing the problem with those that cared was extremely stupid on my part, for as a result, I ended up plunging headlong into roller coaster existence of drugs and alcohol, depression and guilt. For the next three decades I sought answers in all the wrong places, blaming God for a period while dabbling in occult rituals, exploring Buddhism, multiculturalism and new age as well as spiritualism until being frightened to my core by the powers I was playing with and backing off from it all. Along the way, a cousin gave me some technical (read nerd and geek books) that used science and physics to prove the veracity of the scriptures. These really piqued my interest and caused me to start becoming interested in the bible.

I was still a drunk and a wreck and after countless attempts to stop drinking over a decade had failed, I didn’t know what to do or where to turn. At some point I noticed one of these books about the bible and creation, so after years of attempting to become sober on my own and of trying to throw off the chains of addiction, I decided to pray to this God that I hadn’t prayed to in a few decades. I threw it all at His feet and in desperation I prayed to my Lord and Savior on January 15, 2010 and He rescued and healed me then and there.

Even after that miracle, I couldn’t understand why He would do that…this was the first time I had a seriously positive interaction from any god I had prayed to in my life. I still couldn’t believe I qualified for HIS grace and mercy (it took me a bit longer to understand I don’t qualify for His grace…no one does…that is why it is called grace). I suffered through several weeks of doubt and confusion as to why He would actually accept me after all the debasing, harassing, laughter toward and hatred I had shown toward Him and His followers over the decades until one night while praying, the Holy Spirit reminded me of the childhood story of the Prodigal Son. I found this Sunday School parable in the book of Luke, and after reading this poignant and powerful story the realization came to me that I was the terribly unappreciative son that was given a second chance and I could actually believe the story was written for even a clown like me. The story of the Prodigal Son was one of my saving graces and I still remind myself of this marvelous story and the wonderfully gracious and forgiving God that we have.

God Bless, Jim

8-18-11 (10-9-19)

When was the nation of Israel blinded?

Posted: August 20, 2011 in Christian
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Sometimes thing seem to pop into my head from nowhere and the cogs start moving. The subject of Israel’s blindness is one of these things from nowhere, but it is still fascinating enough to me for me to give it some serious thought.

Remember the passage in Luke where Jesus pronounces the blindness of Israel when He rode into Jerusalem on the donkey and wept over the city (Luke 19:41-42)? I just assumed that this moment started the clock on the corporate blindness of the nation, but now I don’t really think so. I believe the blindness of the nation started much earlier. I believe He blinded them to the truth back in Matthew 12 after the Pharisees accused Him of casting out demon in the name of Satan during that vicious exchange. That apparently was the last straw with these stiff-necked and extremely self-righteous men that followed Him around like the religious police just to find fault with Him, and I believe it was the point where He wiped His hands of the whole official Jewish religious establishment, because this was when He finally accused them of blaspheming the Holy Spirit and then proceeded to prophecy to them about His crucifixion and resurrection only a short time away before He left them.

It was after that heated incident, that He started teaching in parables. We find in Matthew 13:10, the confused disciples asked Him why He started speaking in parables and in His answer in the next few verses, (Matthew 13:11-15), His implication to them was that that the scribes and pharisees (representatives of the official religious establishment) had already been blinded to the truth and I infer that after this point they would have been more of a distraction than anything else, for from this point forward His lessons were intended for the spiritual discerning and those open to learning the truth. This view of the national blindness, I believe, is also supported in Luke 13 for after the Pharisees try to scare Him away from Galilee by telling him that Herod was out to kill Him, we can almost feel His frustration as we read in Luke 13:34 the passage about Him gathering the nation together:

Luke 13:34 “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen [gathers] her brood under [her] wings, but you were not willing! (NKJV)

This, of course, is conjecture on my part but I find it very interesting and as this is the first draft, it may expand as more information is found and gathered.

God Bless, Jim

8-19-11

Why is 1 John 3:2 a scientific statement about Christ?

Posted: August 7, 2011 in Christian
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We all know that there are scientific fact spread all through the holy scriptures, but what about I John 3:2? How can that be perceived as a scientific statement? These are my thoughts on this very cool verse that speaks volumes. First let us see what John is telling us about Christ after His resurrection in 1 John 3:2 Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. (KJV)

Wow. We have seen in the gospels where Christ appeared before hundreds of people after His crucifixion. We have read where He taught, where He walked and talked, where He dined and met with followers and where He disappeared into thin air and materialized into a locked room to meet with His disciples. We already know he was the I AM of the burning bush and was The Angel of The Lord in several encounters in the Old Testament. Scientific discoveries, coupled with an expansion of understanding of mathematical principles, of the last two centuries have increased our knowledge of our physical universe. Part of that scientific discovery was the expansion of the understanding of dimensionality and the development of new theories, such as the string theory1. So what?

The more we as humans, in our endeavors to elevate our understanding of our universe, the more we find that these expansions of knowledge assist in demonstrating the hidden gems of the scriptures. Our expansion of understanding that we live in a multidimensional universe helps to explain how our Lord could just seem to appear and disappear at will all through the bible. This multidimensional was hinted at by Paul in his letter to the Ephesians2 when he wrote that we live in a four dimensional universe a few hundred years before Euclid ‘discovered’ the fact. John also tells us that they weren’t seeing the full representation of Christ after He had changed form, but only what our two dimensional eyes3 could perceive of Him. John was explaining to them that was the reason Christ could seem to disappear and appear at will…because he existed in a higher dimension than we can view or really understand. Some don’t care about this, but I find it fascinating when we are able to peer a little deeper behind the curtain and discover more gems of information that do nothing but increasingly solidify on an ever increasing basis the proof that the scriptures are divine in nature and infinite in scope.

God Bless, Jim

8-7-11

for Koinonia Institute

1 http://www.examiner.com/christian-worldview-in-national/quantum-mechanics-string-theories-black-holes-and-the-bible

2 Ephesians 3:18 …may be able to comprehend with all saints what [is] the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; (KJV)

3 We, only see in two dimensions, width and height, and the stereoscopic effect of the eyes working in conjunction make it appear we see in three dimensions, but we don’t…sorry.

Christ, as He was seen after his resurrection

Posted: August 7, 2011 in Christian
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We can draw some fairly decent basic conclusions of Christ’s resurrection body from the scriptures in both the Old and New Testaments. There several detailed examples of recorded visits where Christ appeared before, walked with, and visited and dined with his followers during the interval after His resurrection and before His ascension. I’m only going to cover a couple of examples to highlight the conclusions we can draw.

Right off the bat when I started researching from the first appearance to Mary Magdalene, I realized it isn’t as clear cut and straight forward as I assumed it would be a few sentences ago. Why? Let’s look at this first appearance we find in Mark’s account in Mark 16:9 Now when [Jesus] was risen early the first [day] of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had cast seven devils. (KJV) This seems simple enough, but we need to develop the context so when we read on a couple of more verses, we find this in Mark 16:12 After that he appeared in another form unto two of them, as they walked, and went into the country. (KJV) What? What in the world does the word form in this sentence mean? In the Greek it means what we expect it to mean, the external appearance of something. So we can conclude that he appeared looking one way to Mary Magdalene and looking quite different to the others. John sheds some light on this in his gospel account in chapter 20:16-17 Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith unto him, Rabboni; which is to say, Master. Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and [to] my God, and your God. (KJV) So it seems that when she first saw him he had just arisen and was still in the same human form as he was when he was laid in the sepulcher. Apparently between this visage and subsequent ones, he ascended and then returned in the form that he was seen afterward. Also on this first encounter by Mary Magdalene, a couple of verses earlier, in John 20:15 we are told she didn’t recognize him and thought he was the gardener. Why?

Let us look at beards. In I Chronicles chapter 19, as in many other places in the Old Testament, we find it was shameful for a Jewish male to be shaved. In Isaiah 50:6 we get a glimpse of one of the ways that Our Lord was tortured, because apparently they ripped out his beard. So, perhaps when she saw this beardless man her automatic and natural assumption would have been that this guy wasn’t a Jewish male, but rather a gentile, and likely a slave, instead of Our Savior.

Later on we find that He challenged Thomas to touch Him in John chapter 20 and also we read in Luke 24 that Christ walked and talked for seven miles and afterward dined with a couple of the disciple before he pulled a disappearing trick and vanished. I believe if he had been some floating, spectral being that we refer to as ghost, gliding along with them on on the road, they would have figured out something was very strangely wrong about this man (“Hey, why can we see through this guy, why isn’t his feet touching the ground as he moves?”). This one instance by itself is fairly definitive of the fact that He was flesh and blood…only he was flesh and blood that could vanish and move through walls which is a super indication that Christ had definitely changed form as we read in Mark 16:12.

God Bless, Jim

8-7-11

for Koinonia Institute

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