Confession

 When we believe in Christ to wash us from sin, we end up washing each other on His behalf: Washing away sins with rebukes, correction, discipline, teachings, miraculous signs, Holy Spirit gifts and intercessory prayers. The fellowship one disciple may have with Jesus Christ can be shared by those whose receptiveness to this disciple’s testimony leads them to openness of heart to truth from God. Such openness, if maintained, will lead to confession of their inner real state before God and the Holy Spirit turns around their thinking, adjusts their attitude and inner behaviour. Thus you find the receptiveness to the gospel truth, in the light of the cross, can open up a person so they confess truth about themselves openly to others. Forgiveness and fellowship and ongoing washing from sin are the result. Also intercession and tendency to rebuke and correct each other within that bond of fellowship in this cleansing way of Christ. This is why Christ came and was announced by John the Baptist who made way for this to happen as part of faith in Christ. This is the way, the truth, the life, as found in Jesus Christ the Lord and Master, the true Rabbi sent from God, the Lamb of God whose crucifixion and intercession and life and pathway takes away sins. 

England

 Historic sins of England: England and its followers. Heaven’s purest wisdom must replace the errors with truth. Intercede. God forgive the historic opposition.

Washing feet

 We believe in Christ to wash us, and end up washing each other on His behalf. Washing away sins with rebukes, correction and prayers.

Anglican Bible

 It was the Anglicans who removed the Apocrypha from the Bible. The English Civil War produced the 66-book Bible. The Puritans and the Westminster Confession. The Thirty Nine Articles. So a 66-book canon Bible was first published in 1666. I suppose nobody counted the significant numbers.

Resurrection

 What all the fuss is about with Jesus? Resurrection. It pervaded His ministry. It pervades Him still. Now it pervades us too.

Laws of Nature

It makes sense that there were laws of physics and nature before the universe began, right from the very start of all things. Nothing known to Science seems to suggest the laws of interactions and space and time have ever changed. So it makes sense that these were ever coming forth from God, when you think there is an originator. This means they are part of what philosophers and theologians called The Word. Which means the coming of Jesus was an incarnation of this Word: Now the first perfected, immortal, resurrected human being, again made glorious in spirit as of old before this all began.

Is God a human invention?

The idea that God is invented, if true, logically means everyone is an atheist since an unreal, invented god is no god at all. If you believe in no god at all then you are an atheist. If everyone is an atheist, where is atheism? There is no need to call it atheism since it includes everyone and something that includes everyone needs no name. So by using the word atheism, atheists prove that there is a god who is real. Not invented. 

Layered or Real

 For most of us Christianity is a layering of Christian principles on top of our bad behaviour and bad character. The grace of God overcomes this. The work of God in Christ goes deep within us by the message of the cross of Christ and by the Holy Spirit. It converts the innermost person of us. It teaches us a holy, heavenly form of right and wrong and makes us determined to only do the right: determined so much that we change our behaviour in response to it. We put off the wrong, the bad, and start to only do the right. We continue this way with Christ interceding for us and we influence each other and pray for each other to do the same. We so become inwardly the children of God. 

Believing in Jesus

I suppose what made me, as a young child, probably not even yet in school, believe Jesus and trust in Him, when read the things He said, was the way He championed our eternal needs by what He said. It was the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus, and I remember feeling deep trust in Jesus for telling what I need for escaping Hades torment. He was able to tell it clearly and He did not fail to tell us the tough truth because we need it so much. I never stopped trusting Him from then on. Over the years He lived up to that trust, meeting my eternal needs in many ways, proving He is alive and perfected in glorious power. The Father saw Jesus perfect enough to be our sacrifice and clearly has truly raised Him from the dead, since Jesus has made Himself known to me so clearly, once I had eventually learned to obey His teachings. It proved to me too that the teachings in the gospels must be true because Jesus so faithfully honours the promises in them.

The shed blood

 Having God as your leader you really don’t want to get on the wrong side of Him but because the blood of His perfected Son was shed, God was willing to make an unending undertaking with believing disciples to treat them forever as sons. To fulfil this undertaking, to provide these disciples of Jesus with an unending perfected High Priest, God raised Jesus from the dead.

“Does God throw dice?”

The Evolution theory covers changes in genetic make-up and covers adaptation of organisms to challenges in the organism’s environment. It covers some sort of dependency on chance. It doesn’t seem to cover the dependency on spiritual influences over chance. It doesn’t seem to cover the organism’s dependency on these influences for its adaptations. Religion fills this gap. It shows a cosmic scale influencer influencing the chance events. Does God throw dice? No but when the die is thrown, God influences, even determines, the outcome. The Spirit of God conveys this truth, demonstrating it to an adherent who believes. God shows how in our innermost being we have spirit and the key to this spirit is in the hands of God’s Son who lives forever, having died as the sacrifice for the High Priestly ministry of entering the innermost place in us and in Heaven and interceding, bringing the innermost places together. The result is our spiritual relationship with God the Father, the Creator, the one who determines outcomes. The Spirit of God tells a believing adherent that it is by the power of the name of this Son, the Lord Jesus the Christ, that Nature carries on in accordance with the will of God. We should do so too.

Did Jesus write a gospel?

The doctrine of how Jesus worked is the Jewish rabbi method of working. You can see it in other peoples too, such as the guru in India. The rabbi, teacher, guru, teaches by taking on disciples who follow them around watching their actions and not just hearing their words, their sayings, but seeing how the rabbi behaves in accordance with those sayings. The note takers are the disciples, not the rabbi. The disciples write what they witness the rabbi say and do. The rabbi teaches by action, works, not just words. The words are often directed at the disciples, applying to them, not theoretical, but words requiring actions or changes of behaviour. This way of rabbinical teaching required disciples with time to devote to close contact as much as possible. The ones who had this contact become primary witnesses and authorities on the way of the rabbi as well as practitioners of that way, behaving accordingly (vitally important). It makes sense that they be the ones to write the accounts. Like a student taking notes and eventually becoming a teacher too. The gospel continued this way for decades, person to person, combining words with witnessed actions,  before the emphasis turned towards written accounts and the reading of them to churches. The disciples themselves were Jesus’ document.

The Team

 Jesus did not write a gospel. He came to make others of faith who do things like He did things. He could have written a gospel but creating apostles and disciples with faith to do it was His purpose and still is His purpose. “Where is your faith?” He asked. Yes He could calm a storm telling the storm to be quiet by faith to save the day but He rebuked the disciples for not doing it themselves. He is the same today (and forever). Jesus could today do all the work of God by faith, as He sits at God’s right hand, but then the pictures in God’s album or up on God’s wall would all be of Jesus. He wants us to do things by our faith. Then our picture goes in the photo album commemorating what we do and the pictures of God’s wall are of us together with His Son Jesus. Jesus came to die and in so doing to bring forth many seeds, many disciples doing even greater things than He did. He now lives, alive from the dead, and still does what He did, and in greater glory, but He delegates acts of faith to us, to do as He did, to do as He does. He wants a team to expand His work as He the master works with us.

The new worship and temple

 In the old days a community might have to offer an innocent human son as human sacrifice in order to come with clear conscience to worship. A lamb was offered later in substitute for the human but it was not adequate. God eventually provided the lamb Himself in an absolutely adequate way, His own innocent beloved Son, the Lamb of God as John the Baptist proclaimed concerning Jesus. This is our sacrifice in coming in worship to God. He makes the coming in worship acceptable enough such that God provided the Holy Spirit for building up the worshippers and leading the worship. That was what happened at Pentecost in Jerusalem the year Jesus died and rose and ascended back to God. It happens in many churches still today. The resurrection gives us hope but does not negate the holy blood that was shed, innocent Jesus’ own blood. This is proved by the Holy Spirit manifestations to believers in their services. Now believers can assemble for worship of God without bringing human or lamb sacrifice because the sacrifice of Jesus the holy Lamb of God has been made. This opens up the possibility of assembling where God comes to meet with us too in fellowship not possible before. God makes His place among us. This is the new temple of God of which Jesus is the archetype.

Come into my heart Lord Jesus

 Because of Jesus’ blood shed, offering as sacrifice His own body in crucifixion, Jesus has authority to enter into my innermost being, my spirit, my holy of holies. That is the sense in which I find Jesus to be both Lord and Christ. 

Science and Religion

 Religion and Science have historically intertwined and coexisted. Theistic alchemists developed modern versions of Sciences such as chemistry and physics and astronomy. The Bible book of Exodus tells how Science and Religion once clashed, with Pharaoh’s priests using their magic science to try to imitate the plagues of God presented by Moses. The Ancient Egyptians had sciences such as medicine (sorcery of drugs and incantations) and astrology (precursor to astronomy). They could construct right angles for their buildings and had Mathematics to help. The Babylonians used star charts and complex mathematics. Often it was priests who knew these things and combined them with oracles. Mosaic Law was an astonishing innovation compared to law codes of the surrounding nations and it banned the magic knowledge of hidden things which the surrounding nations were mixing with their Science. Surely it is no coincidence that the widespread distribution of Mosaic Law in the 1500s and 1600s in England, Ireland, Wales and Europe preceded a crackdown on such forbidden magic knowledge of hidden spiritual things and that this was followed soon after by the development of modern Science out of the arts of medicine, alchemy and astrology.

Life in Himself

 The life Jesus has is His own to offer to others as illustrated in raising Lazarus, His own friend, from the dead. In this sense Jesus is like the Father, as the Father made Him to be. So the life that lights the world is from Jesus who receives it from the Father. Jesus, in other words, is not merely a conduit of the Father but is living life which belongs to Jesus Himself, as the Father gives to Him. The life Jesus lives in this way is a light to us, if our eyes are opened to it. Jesus is. That is real. It applies whatever time we are in. We have this light ever before us. Unless the devil blinds our eyes.

Authority

Atheism has no self-referential coherence if it states that unsubstantiated belief is to be shunned but offers no evidence to back up this statement. It is like saying “please ignore me”. If I ignore you, I will ignore your request to ignore me. If you say, please ignore me if I offer no logical proof or evidence, the same applies.

Christian religion on the other hand says, “please ignore Christ’s authority if it does not come from God, but if it does come from God then God’s kingdom is right at your doorstep and should not on any account be ignored”.

Ultimately Christianity says Christ’s authority is that by which planets move and plants put out buds and leaves. Not to be ignored. It commands constant adherence forever.

The Old Testament

 The Old Testament. Jesus says we should certainly take notice of the Old Testament for eternal life but it is not enough. We should follow Him, and that requires a trimming down of wealth in favour of the poor, and entering into a kingdom where we are all brothers, led by one Lord, Jesus Himself. 

Escape

 Are you all missing out on the righteousness of God, trapped in a downward spiralling dystopian world of your own making? Follow Jesus, know and understand the teachings of Jesus and apply them in your life, believing that Jesus is the same yesterday and today and forever. Escape the downward spiral.

Less than ten thousand years in the making

 Viewing human civilisation as less than ten thousand years old fits so well with archaeology of major civilised administrative centres like Eridu, Uruk, Ur and Susa. The pyramids and famous architectural achievements of human civilisation all date to less than ten thousand years ago. Nothing major of indisputable human homo sapiens making date from older periods. Even the exceptions are so hard to pinpoint with certainty that they prove the rule. It is consistent with documented contemporary historical records that the human at the beginning of this whole timespan had no earthly parents but originated with the gods.

Science and religion

 Scientific observations are an outcome of human nature. A spider’s view of its surroundings is determined by its hairs and many eyes and needs. A fly has a different view, observing with those peculiar eyes. An ant has a two dimensional view. Each creature’s view is peculiar to its natural facilities. Bees have a view extended by social knowledge sharing. Humans have a greatly extended view extended by scientific and scholarly knowledge sharing and intellectual observational abilities. Now this is all natural, although in the case of science its history has included supernatural aspects such as sorcery, alchemy, astrology, divination, shamanic oracles. Yet religion adds more to the supernatural observations. Dreams and visions. Miracles. Spiritual insights. These have crept into science because scientists were historically religious and shamanic. If atheists want a Science devoid of supernatural observations they must start again, which is impossible.

Science has the tools but not the important answers

 Science has tricks it can use to test those who observe theistic realities but it seldom uses them. Nobody has asked to test me with truth serum, lie detector, hypnosis, even though for nearly thirty years I have been giving bold and clear testimony to things that I observed in the nineties of religious nature - existence of God, character of God, that Jesus is alive and human and the same in His ways and teachings as He was two thousand years ago, and the Holy Spirit still being manifested in tongues of angels and interpretation, and the word of God being the same today as in prophecies thousands of years ago. Instead people of scientific persuasion simply level at me their suppositions of hallucinations or madness. How scientific they are (not).