Posts Tagged ‘religion’

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

Did Christ arrange His own crucifixion?

Posted: August 6, 2011 in Christian
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If you asked a hundred Christians in the conservative, ‘bible-belt’ section of America where I live the question, “Why was Christ crucified?”, almost all of them would say, “He died for our sins.” and leave it at that. That would not be an incorrect answer, just an incomplete one, for I need to know why He had to die for our sins. I am going to attempt to explore that question and try to do it justice.

The key word to the short answer is ‘sin’. What is sin? According to blue letter bible, sin is a transgression or violation of divine law (God’s law) as is defined below.

a. Its origin, as regards the human race. The first man and woman, by their own choice, violated the law of God; they sinned against God.

b. Words, which describe sin in some of its forms. Hebrew: “Chata,” to go out of the way, to miss the mark. “Pasha,” to transgress. “Avah,” to twist, to act perversely. Greek: “Hamaritia,” a missing of the mark. “Paraptoma,” a falling away from law, truth, right. “Parabasis,” a going over or beyond truth and right, transgression. “Anomia,” lawlessness. “Asebeia,” irreverence.

c. Definition. “Sin is any want of conformity unto, or transgression of, the law of God.”


Regardless which definition we apply to ourselves, the trait of free will and gullibility within human beings condemn us to sin. Genesis 1:27-31 tells us that God created man in His own image and blessed him and gave him dominion over the Earth and was pleased with the results. Since humans were created in His image, and humans sin, does that mean God is sinful in nature, because we sure are? No, of course not. When God created Adam there was no sin. Unfortunately for us, there was a wrench thrown into the works called Satan and Romans 5:12 tell us Adam fell because Satan was allowed to introduced sin into the world, via Adam. I can infer just from the book of Job, using the patterns that are prevalent all through the bible, that Satan kind of goaded God into this competition with us as the pawns and our souls as the prize. I was going to go a different direction with this, but I suddenly am compelled to explore the path of the Trinity and creation…


For some reason, I always had difficulty remembering that sometimes ‘God’ can refer to the Trinity, or can refer to God the Father or can refer to God the Son. John in chapter 1 of his gospel says that God the Son is the author of creation and that Christ created the universe and all things in it, including us. That means we are created in Christ’s image (how cool is that). It also means that Adam is a direct creation of Christ, even though it apparently was a collaborative effort (the plural verbiage denoting the Trinity in Genesis 3:22). Satan, however was able to deceive Adam through Eve and he was successful in generating doubt and confusion in what God (Christ) had commanded, causing them to sin by eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Why was this one tree, that they were told not to eat from, placed within the perfect garden of Eden? I think we can derive from the patterns we see in Job, it was there as a test and a temptation, much like the events within the book of Job were. Where am I going with all this?


This is partially conjecture on my part, but I think Christ created Adam in His own image as a sinless person that had no conception of good and evil. Satan presents a challenge and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is introduced into the midst of this perfect garden. It doesn’t take long for Satan to begin his deception campaign by beguiling Eve into sinning by transgressing the commandment of God (Christ) and eating of this lone tree and then convincing her husband to do the same. This means that Adam, a direct creation of Christ, and created in the image of Christ, falls by sinning. In response Our Lord performed the opening gambit in the competition for our souls, exhibited by a string of prophecies, that leads eventually toward a checkmate against his wily opponent, Satan*1. How was this brilliant maneuver performed?


Christ introduced the prophecy concerning the plans to ultimately defeat Satan by the parabolic announcement of Himself becoming human in Genesis 3:15*2 and taking over the role that Adam failed at through the miracle of the virgin birth of Himself as a man. While Christ will not sin like Adam (remember Christ’s temptations by Satan from Mark chapter 1 which basically is a parallel of the temptations of Adam and Eve by Satan, which they failed), He will take upon the sin that His direct creation, Adam, introduced into the world and then willingly die for our salvation upon the cross while wearing this cloak of sin and transgression, relieving us of this unbearable burden and beginning the ‘end game’ process of sealing the lid on the ultimate defeat of Satan. I believe Christ, from the beginning, arranged His own crucifixion to pay the debt of sin that Adam started, thus soundly tromping Satan.


I can see the scenario where we and our universe were created with the intention of Christ being our creator and ruler, possibly in Eden which was in the area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Satan, by being allowed to introduce sin into the world*3, only delayed the inevitable end result where Christ becomes the ruler of all nations in the end and, just possibly, bring Eden back to it’s glory, as it was in the beginning.


God Bless

Jim

8-5-11

for Koinonia Institute

*1 Those familiar with chess will know that a game can be won or lost in the first move that, if played right, can set up a domino effect type of scenario that may not manifest itself until scores of moves have been played, resulting in a checkmate.

*2 I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” (RSV)

*3 Satan made all those “I will” statements in Isaiah 14, maybe God has allowed everything to go on to prove that Satan’s “I will” statements are actually “I am only delusional and that I can’t” statements…

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