Secret of Christian living

Secret of Christian living: knowledge of Jesus Christ and the truth that is in Him (and living by this knowledge) displaces natural desires (and living by them). How do we aim to get there? ‘To those who believed in Him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teachings you are truly my disciples. Then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.”’ (Gospel of John ch. 8 ) So it is vital, once we personally believe in Jesus, to learn His teachings and hold to them. This is the springboard to spring us into freedom from the compulsion of natural desires that tend to dominate us and keep us tied to evil. If we fail to attain all this, we reach our deathbeds, eventually, still in those sins, and condemned for it. This is why Jesus Christ came and how He saves.

Halloween for those who don’t believe in ghosts

I know with God it is best to serve Him in spirit and truth and with faith. But I don’t think that applies to elemental ghouls and goblins. It probably matters very little if you have no belief that they exist when you are out there offering a treat to the ghouls’ kiddie offering collectors. All that matters is you feel compelled to do it, along with everyone else around you. Like Nebuchadnezzar’s statue: as long as you bowed to it, it probably mattered little whether you felt any belief or otherwise. Yet Christ crucified means for believers we have died to ghoul-worship. Those kiddies collecting for Halloween are little priests of the ghouls, unbeknown to them, receiving your offerings to these spirits of the elements. If you believe in Christ you should be dead to that game.

Climate Deals

 The leaders already sold the planet to buy their wealth. Like Faust, they cannot undo that deal by pretending it didn’t happen. Like Faust they will try to seduce the young Gretchen (Greta?) to get a bastard child of the next generation inheriting their Faustian deal. Like Faust they can only hope that their prayers will solve it but they will never be earnest enough because they have believed their own lie that only scientific materialism exists, not God.

Halloween and Ghosts and Ghouls

Worried about ghosts and spirits of elementals this Halloween or even generally? No need. Science says it is all irrational. Science of our last three centuries says matter and energy are all there is. Spirit isn’t science domain so it doesn’t exist. The wisdom of the last three centuries keeps up the pseudo-religious mantra “There’s no such thing as ghosts!” The politicians and medics say they ‘follow the science’, so we are supposed to unquestioningly respond “So it must be true”. Funnily enough the very sciences that say all these were founded by the thought leaders of 1600s England and Ireland and France who were presiding over the Renaissance and Enlightenment which had seen the execution of witches. OK, so in France it didn’t stop there but they killed the aristocrats too. Rationalism took over but the last witch executed in England was in 1680s when Scientific Materialistic Rationalism was at its peak. The rise of Modern Science coexisted happily with the rise of Esotericism and Occult. Many were members of both. Coincidence? Unlikely. There was every reason for alchemists and medical sorcerers to want Science to be devoid of anything spiritual to provide a much needed escape route for these esotericists to take to avoid the witch trials. It worked. Everyone was under the spell of a new magic which told the convenient story that Science could restrict its interests to the material universe and eventually that story developed into convincing the establishment to deny that anything except the material is real. Nice story. Not true, but more convenient (for the rich thought leaders and politicians) than truth. It later even allowed the French to absolve themselves for killing the aristocracy and installing their Temple of Reason. Now we are supposed to only believe the materialist scientists and proclaim that “There’s no such thing as ghosts!” Yet the real cure for fearful service of elemental spirits is the cross of Christ which persuades us to turn from such service and instead serve the topmost God, the Father, the Only True God, who sent Jesus Christ the Lord.

Path to Glory

 Although ritualistic Bible reading and praying can be a form of self-delusion, deluding us that we are more worthy of favour from God than other people, it is still worthwhile being well acquainted with holy scriptures, and not only those in the Western Bible. There may be poorly translated verses here and there in most Bibles but the main thrust is true and leads in the best direction for our wellbeing. Likewise we do well to try to pray, trying to gain some blessing and mercy from God, more or less daily. It does not mean we are more worthy than others if we do but it leads to better knowledge of God’s power if He listens to us now and then. Giving to poor people and not shutting out their pleas is good for finding favour with God as an accompanying practice. All should be kept low profile, just for God to notice, not abusing it by showing off to others and not presuming it makes us holier than others. We are not saints just for doing this. Yet the calling to be a saint beyond just this kind of practice, truthful in speech, loving in disposition, strong in faith, full of hope in God, content to be poor, this calling can be clarified by awareness of scriptures and God’s power. Ultimately it is the gracious preaching of the message of God about Christ which saves us and transforms us to saintliness accompanied by miracles and works of the Holy Spirit, but still the prayers and charitable giving and scripture knowledge does a lot to help. 

Church life

 For most people Christian church just means one particular kind of church they knew since childhood. For many it is not a choice. Just like other mainstream religions. But that is just like a clothes hanger from which to hang many different kinds of sermons and teachings and exhortations and rebukes, many of which contribute to light shining in darkness. Even though my childhood and teen year churches, mostly those of my parents’ choice, not mine, were strongly Trinitarian and Calvinistic, I still found God that way. I got a good education of a broad range of truly gospel teachings from the others attending. When I went to university, away from home, in London, a church senior member encouraged me to attend a certain church there. The church focused on Bible preaching. Although the dear preacher was strongly aligned in his emphasis and hermeneutics with Augustine, he still took pains to cover every verse in many scripture books over the years. I realised what the verses meant, enough to seek what they promised. I years later told him I was grateful for his wonderfully comprehensive and faithful coverage of scripture verse by verse, especially in some teachings which helped me have mountain-moving faith, but I told him I wanted to adhere to Jesus more than to Augustine. Eventually I found God, the Father, and His Son and the Holy Spirit, and realised from what they told me that Trinitarianism was flawed. God is the Father. Jesus is the Son. Trinitarianism muddies this clarity. But it was Trinitarians who helped me get to this destination.  

The universe is all about Jesus

 The universe is all about Jesus. His Father has made it so. He’s the Man. You better believe it.

“I told you that you would die in your sins; if you do not believe that I am he, you will indeed die in your sins.” —Jesus Christ

Ultimate victory

 God the Father puts the Son, Jesus, in the middle of everything the Father does and everything the Father did from the beginning. Jesus is ‘The Man’. Made the judge over us all by God too. Now what, in this culmination, after God raised Jesus from the dead, proving full agreement with Jesus, what does Jesus want from us? Victory. For us to overcome adversity, corrupting influences, enmity, Satan, even mortality by faith and truthful testimony and not loving our lives unto death. Jesus looks for this among us. So when we overcome as He did, Jesus can lift us up to sit beside Him. Over all. 

The Father is God.

 The Father is God.

Gospel

The Father is God.

Jesus HAS divinity. 

The Father IS divinity.

Jesus INHERITS divinity. 

The Father IS divinity.

Jesus IS uniquely divine. Uniquely begotten.

We are Christified because Jesus is crucified.

We in the West are falsely taught that energy and matter is all that there is.

All who receive Jesus can become children of God, but only Jesus is the uniquely begotten Son of God.

The Spirit of God gives life to our spirits and our spirits give us life. Pray that your spirit inspires your mind to build up the body of Christ, the Temple.

Children of God

 All who receive Jesus can become children of God, but only Jesus is the uniquely begotten Son of God.

Falsely taught

 We in the West are falsely taught that energy and matter is all that there is.

Christified

 We are Christified because Jesus is crucified.

Unique

 Jesus IS uniquely divine. Uniquely begotten.

Inheritance

 Jesus INHERITS divinity. 

The Father IS divinity.

Divinity

 Jesus HAS divinity. 

The Father IS divinity.

Meta

 They have given us the world with Facebook. Now we go beyond. Beyond our individuality. Beyond our 80%. Beyond our mediocrity. Beyond our lukewarm halfheartedness. We DO it. With all our VOICE.

“’Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’”

And all your VOICE!

There is sadness and there is sadness

 Life has much sadness. But not all of the grief is necessary. Some is a part of the erroneous ways. Christ’s gospel can set us free from those ways with their grief, if we hold to His teachings, believing that He is. Some sadness will remain but that will be sadness Jesus Christ too has shared and we can have His help at hand to help us through it. God is love. 

Awesome

 It is awesome that the Father of whom Jesus spoke, the One True God, as Jesus preached Him, is the Yahweh, (in KJV: the LORD,) in scriptures and the history of Israel and of the Israelites. For example, Matthew 15:31 reads: “The people were amazed when they saw the mute speaking, the crippled made well, the lame walking and the blind seeing. And they praised the God of Israel.” Philosophical dogma tends to obscure this by forcing the focus away into the divinity attributed to Father and Son. That divinity is very important, but so is the realisation that the Father who reveals Himself as God, in the proper noun sense of God (One True God, Most High God, the individual person to whom Jesus prayed), is this God of Israel who was known as Yahweh, mentioned throughout scriptures as God, as Yahweh, as the LORD. Through the Son, this God created all things, on behalf of the Son, with the Son’s glorious name as authority over it all, driving it all. This God’s power when His Spirit overshadowed Mary, begat Jesus uniquely. Yet Jesus reminded us (Rev 22:9) that it is this God alone, not Jesus His servant and only-begotten Son, who is to be worshipped with the obsequious prostration reserved for the Most High God. 

Without a vaccine

 Without a vaccine, Nature can deliver good immunity, and it all comes in Jesus’ name. So may Jesus’ name heal you and keep you well, even if you get this virus.

Reclaiming the proper noun ‘God’

 The Creator, the Father, is reclaiming the proper noun ‘God’. He is reclaiming it from those who use it as a synonym for ‘divinity’ or ‘Godhead’. This will help us understand what it means that Jesus the divine Son of God, uniquely begotten, but not the One True God. Jesus constantly worked in alignment with this endeavour, doing the will of God His Father, and so should we, so should you, so should all who do the will of God and live forever. 

The Gameplay

 I regularly play a game app. The app developers are having fun. Most of the app game events seem to be random but often it is clear that some of them aren’t. It is all asynchronous, which means game events are happening all at once and for the most part independently yet they do relate to each other. Now and then a scenario occurs which seems to be foreseen by the game app developers. It is sometimes evident that having foreseen a particular scenario occurring, they determined some of the previously not-so-random events leading up to that scenario to impact that scenario, to influence the outcome, mostly for improved gameplay experience. It strikes me that since developers of software can do this, so can the Creator of all things. He gives us works to do in otherwise random-looking situations, which He prepared in advance. I know I get nervous when something that requires my involvement looks like it was predetermined, because I am not sure who could be pulling the strings, but God is the greatest string-puller and wants to influence events righteously by involving us in whom He is at work. 

The Righteousness of God

 The righteousness of God

There are forces prevalent in the world around us, both good and bad. The best is the righteousness of God. This force for good is around us. It is noticeable particularly as the pockets of resistance to the dark forces, when ordinary folk do not succumb to corrupting and deceiving influences. The righteousness is of God when God is the power and influence behind this righteousness, through the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Our greatest hope should be that we too might become this righteousness of God. This is the force which will ultimately win.

The Pharma lures

 How many people have caught covid who would not otherwise have caught it - by the lure of foreign holidays - enticing them to get vaccinated and then travel, only to catch it still, despite the vaccinations?

Cell lines

 Scientists sell a dead person’s body all over the world. They keep it growing and sell the cells it still produces. They do this on an industrial scale. Actually they are doing the same with several people’s bodies. Perhaps if you total up the many trillions of cells being kept alive this way you will find they are the largest organisms on earth, if you can call them an organism now that the people whose bodies they are have died. Yet they are living cells. In many cases no consent from the (victim?) was given. By the way: This is how they make vaccines.

True testimony

 The divinity of Jesus as the uniquely begotten Son of God does not mean Jesus is God, no. Jesus in Revelation 22:9 explains that only God (the Father, the One True God) should receive our obsequious worship (falling at His feet) because the Father alone is this one true God. 

Not to be worshipped obsequiously

 In Revelation 22:9 we have the clear testimony of Jesus that He is not to be worshipped obsequiously because He is not God, and only God should be worshipped like that. This is not sealed. It is for us to know. 

Move on?

 The glory of God, the one true God, is not something we move on from. The Lord’s Prayer is a forever prayer. God’s will. God’s truth. The testimony God gives of Himself in truth that He is one, and He alone is top God, Most High God, and Jesus is His uniquely begotten Son. This is eternal. This saves. Changing it for a lie is an anathema-incurring sin. Anathemas are eternal. I never move on. This is what God Himself, the Father, gave me to say. He does not withdraw it. 

Twisted Gospel

 Like Peter wrote, so many people twist scriptures into saying something never originally intended, and they do that to their destruction. So many twist the truth of God into a lie. The truth is that only one person is Most High God. The truth is that plural people possess divinity. The twisted lie is that the Most High God is plural. God, the One True God, asserts otherwise. He asserts that He is a singular person who alone is ‘God’, (proper noun for the person who is God over all gods). Using language conveniences to shift the meaning of ‘God’ to be a plurality of persons, that is anathema, as Paul pronounced, because it results in a different concept of Jesus to the Jesus Christ preached by Paul. 

The Miracle parts of Christ’s teachings

I remember as a child believing the teachings of Jesus were what my soul most needed and, as I grew older, setting my heart on following Jesus’ teachings wherever they lead, through all my life. I remember reaching a point when I realised Jesus Christ didn’t just teach good moral behaviour, kindness and love, which my family sought to follow, but impossible miracles too. The realisation dawned on me, in those later childhood years, that the next step had to be to follow this part of Christ’s teachings too. I mentioned it to a fellow believer. Years later I could look back and see that I truly went to this next stage and learned to use faith to work wonders. It is real. The teachings are true.

Things God teaches

 Are you taught by God? God can make chance events happen the way He chooses. God knows what is about to happen and what will happen ten thousand years from now. God determines certain events and the time they will happen. Five thousand years ago God was seeing my now. God causes life to enter dead things and can do this whenever He chooses and in response to faith. God alone is the One True God, this is God the Father. God loves ordinary people, especially disciples, and saves from undesirable predicaments, averting distress, and involves others in doing this. God has a uniquely begotten Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ is the ultimate, perfect human and in the use of spirit, Jesus can reach out and speak to the centre of the brain of a servant of His and command and motivate at the innermost ultimate level of the soul by means of His spirit speaking to spirit. Jesus is ultimate in faith in God, His Father. Jesus teaches this same faith to others but is complete master of what He teaches. He does not teach what He does not Himself do, and do perfectly. God listens to Jesus and commands Jesus. Accounts of Jesus in the gospels are true. Jesus is alive from the dead having died to provide for our failings. Jesus never changes, and His faithful truthfulness is constant, same today as in gospel times, and same forever. Jesus’ name goes back to the beginning of all things and it has authority over all that we see around us in Nature. The believers who follow Jesus have been unfaithful in the eyes of God and are incurring God’s elevated levels of governance and supervision. This is shaky ground and could lead to increasingly troublesome times. Those who do fear God and keep His commands will enjoy God’s angelic protection. Even Satan cannot overcome the protection God can provide. These are just some of the things God teaches. Blessed Father, God. Blessed Son, Jesus. Blessed Holy Spirit. “Blessed are those who hear God’s word and obey it.”

It works for me

 So an immaterial God over all gods has been governing all the development of this universe to make it just right for Jesus Christ to be uniquely begotten by God and to forever have believers as a kind of body to accompany Jesus forever. That works for me. 

Materialism

 How long can scientific (pseudo scientific) materialism hold out? Can we afford to continue to tolerate its blindness to the reality of non-material things? If our politicians insist they are led by the science, can we afford the science being blind?

Holy water

 Dogs eat without much examination of what they are eating. They drink dirty water. If we ignore the veracity and quality of what we feed our minds with, we are no better than dogs. Rejecting dirty water when just over there we know there is clean water, is a nobler attitude than a dog displays. If God provided Jesus to teach holy truth, we are like dogs if we still choose to go to the dirty water of the world. 

Evolution or Genesis

 The idea of Evolution is that given enough time, lifeforms come about by natural events, requiring no supernatural interventions. It rests very much on how much time natural processes would need to bring about diversity of lifeforms we see today (alive today or found in geological records). Unfortunately for scientists compelled to endorse this idea of Evolution, most diversity took a fairly short time to appear. Well, hundreds of millions of years is what Evolutionists think were available to produce the species. Yet, in the geological record most species were produced in just a few of those millions of years. Something other than natural events seems to have been involved, if you allow yourself freedom to step back from the establishment dogma. Personally, the real issue I find with it all seems to be the sudden appearance in archaeological time of human complex buildings. Before, say, maybe five thousand BC and there are no major building projects. Human kinds of beings might have been incapable of attempting to build, say, a temple of stone or a well-designed city. Then suddenly we find humans building wonderfully asthetic structures such as the temple of Eridu. And they were doing so continuously till today. It looks like some event happened around 5000 BC which resulted in such an intelligence life-form. It does not make sense to think that would be a natural event in terms of what science defines as natural. The Genesis account does fit these facts better, I believe, than Evolution ideas of scientists.

Interacting

 People who never interact with church cannot be disciplined by church. It seems life gets easier. Yet actually we become spiritually blind. By turning back to each other we are influenced by each other, washed by each other, as we build each other up. Our eyes are opened. 

Halloween

 Halloween around the corner. All about appeasing various kinds of spirits. Remember the Most High is pure light without darkness able to reveal light. The wordly spirits don’t know like God the Father knows. They cannot lead like He leads. If you decide to follow God and His light, do not wander back to darker spirits.

Occult

 The ancient Israelites left Egyptian slavery led by Moses and led supernaturally by the God over all gods. This God wanted their faithful adherence to His leadership and rule. He forbade the kinds of practices all nations through all history have used to get supernatural leadings. The Israelites were commanded to only listen to true prophets of God for their divine supernatural leadings, as a nation, not listening to those who practiced the common ways of getting supernatural leadings such as by trying to tune in to elemental spirits in various ways, ways we tend to call occultism today. The occultists throughout history have learned to infiltrate the people of God in disguise so they can secretly offer influence and counsel. The churches cultivated such counsellors even at top level in the institutions and government. This is unfaithfulness to God. Often ordinary people on fringes of church devotion have sneakily sought leadings and advice from occultists, often occultists who tone down their practices and claims to secret knowledge. In the 1600s in England and France there was a move to eradicate all such occult following by extreme means along the lines of Israelite laws. The occult went even more underground and survived by blending in and despiritualising. Alchemy became chemistry. Astrology became astronomy. Sorcery became medicine. This was normal strategy. The word ‘occult’ means hidden. Hidden by misdirection and craftiness. 

Off the radar, dead to the world

 They do not vaccinate the dead. Believers in Christ have a new circumcision; not an outward physical circumcision, but an inner one which renders us dead to the worldly spirit of teaching. No longer at the mercy of the world’s teachings of vaccines and hand washings and “do not touch” and “do not cough”, we are dead, crucified with Christ, so these things do not stick to us. Nor do the world’s festivals and customs. Nor do spirits in nature give us commands or dictate our lives through horoscopes, tattoos and charms. We have died to it all forever. As the dead are off the radar for all this, so are we. Christ died and we died with Christ. We are now on God’s radar, visible and alive to each other and to God. (See also Colossians 2.)

Jesus Christ the only-begotten of God

 In what sense is Jesus divine? “[The ancient prophets of old] wondered what time or situation the Spirit of Christ within them was talking about when he told them in advance about Christ’s suffering and his great glory afterward.” So wrote Peter (1 Peter 1:11). It is an extraordinary statement of faith written by Peter about the Spirit of Jesus Christ working in old testament prophets long before Christ was conceived of the Holy Spirit in that holy event when God begat His only-begotten Son. God purposed this before creating anything and God so loved this Son that the creating of all things by God is on behalf of this Son. It is all made and all functions, all of Nature created by God, with Jesus at the heart of things. And this Son worked spiritually in the universe before that conception took place. 

A silly question

“Is Jesus God?” That is such a silly question. It is silly because normally ‘God’ is a proper noun, identifying an individual person who is the Father of Jesus. A less silly question: In what sense is Jesus divine? Well, yes, divine, in the sense that the Holy Spirit of God caused the conception in Mary such that Jesus was by this holy event, begotten of God. God only ever begat one son this way, begetting Jesus. So Jesus is the only-begotten of God, the Son of God in this unique sense. God purposed this before creating anything and God so loved this Son that the creating of all things by God is on behalf of this Son. It is all made and all functions, all of Nature created by God, with Jesus at the heart of things. 

Truth today

 Some religious groups teach that finding the truth is all about reading the scriptures. Not so simple. No translation of scripture is 100% reliable. Nor is any scripture we have today a perfect copy of what the original writer(s) wrote. God overcomes this. We call it light. God persuades a person into believing in the veracity, and veritableness, of honesty, such that they permanently hate falsehood and dishonesty and become honest and truthful. Then God teaches that person truth and teaches them to speak it. He did this through Jesus Christ who was perfected in honesty such that no lie came from Jesus. Jesus knew God’s truth and bore testimony to it. Jesus converted apostles to this and sent them. Jesus still shows Himself as the truth to people and sends them as lights into the world. Scriptures help as a reference and learning and teaching aid, but light is something God creates by taking humans and making them light for everyone to see and live by. 

A poorly described legacy

A father can literally put himself into begetting a son and that son can bear the exact likeness of that father, but it is pure silliness to think the son IS the father. If a description of the son and father confuses people into conflating father and son into a single entity, then it is a poor, shoddy or even perhaps a deceptive use of language. That is what we have received as a legacy from philosophy-addicted Hellenists we call church fathers. Trinitarianism is so confusing on such vital matters. A king can beget a son and that son can bear the exact likeness of that father and receive the royalty of that father. If a description of the son’s and father’s royalty confuses people into conflating the royalty into a single entity, then there is risk people will think the son is the king. Honest use of language would carefully avoid this confusion.

The greatest bond

 No greater bond exists in heaven and earth than the covenant established in the blood of Jesus Christ. It ties disciple to Master.

For you too

 Clearly Jesus Christ was dying on that 1st century Roman cross to settle up with God for the failings of Jesus’ followers, before God raised Him from the dead to live forever. Yet it was for you too, follower or not.

Provision for our failings

 In following Jesus, provision has been made by Jesus for our failings: His cross. And now He lives for our salvation.

Unitarian errors about the Holy Spirit

Unitarians work so hard and faithfully to discern in scriptures the errors of Trinitarians. Well done. But they then fail to apply scripture all the way in their doctrines regarding the Holy Spirit. Clinging to traditions of men rather than teachings of Heaven, just like Trinitarians do. Clearly the gospels teach that the Holy Spirit is just as much a distinct individual as Jesus Christ is. Ontological reductionism is a philosophy depending on human traditions, just as human and worldly as hypostasis. https://biblehub.com/text/luke/3-22.htm speaks of the Spirit as a dove descending but it separately says a voice out of heaven spoke. It clearly implies the spirit had settled on him (like John the Baptist had been told would happen) when the voice spoke from heaven, it does not imply at all that the voice came from the dove. It would have required a different sentence construction to say that the voice came from the Holy Spirit. The voice clearly came from Heaven as a separate, accompanying event to the Holy Spirit settling upon Jesus. Unless you have a preconception or loyalty to a denominational position which demands that you not be allowed to acknowledge the clear implication of the verse.

Those who witnessed God directly who are mentioned in Bible scriptures

 74 mentioned in the Bible physically saw God (Ex 24:9) and two saw God in special dreams (Abimelech and Solomon). In all these cases it was an individual person they saw. It was just Abraham who saw three people together, three individuals, and one stayed and spoke with Abraham, and the narrative then described Abraham as speaking with the individual Angel of the LORD. Others saw God in prophetic visions and it was an individual who was clearly identified as God, the LORD or the Ancient of Days. Later God spoke several times from heaven as recorded in the gospels in the presence of Jesus so again this is one individual, clearly the Father, distinct from Jesus, and at the baptism, the Holy Spirit too as an individual in the form of a dove. So there is always a distinct individual, identifiable as the LORD and also identifiable as the Father and called God. One individual distinct from Jesus and the Holy Spirit and angels. 

Hope for the Christian masses

 I believe that if Trinitarians behave in a way that pleases the Father, such that they believe in Jesus, holding to Jesus’ teachings, then the Father will correct them as His children and lead them out of their Trinitarian errors into truth. 

God is invested in us

 Nice to know that God greatly cares about our moral wellbeing. The cross of Christ tells  us this. God is invested in our ethical wellbeing.

What God is really like

 How can God be described? We can picture God as like an extremely advanced, sagacious human, like a king the likes of which history has not seen. Not seen among secular monarchs but some religious monarchs have shown great similarity. Of course the spirit being who is God does not equate to a human. God is a spirit but resembles a human in how He chooses to be envisioned, in how He chooses to reveal Himself. Yet that is not the full extent of how He reveals Himself. He reveals the kindness of His behaviour in how He uplifts others and saves the day for normal people, especially for those who honour Him and who display His attributes and behaviour in their own lives. God graciously makes up for the shortcomings of human weakness and He chooses to reveal this aspect of His behaviour, His demeanour, His attributes. God also shows His fatherliness in that He has a real, ‘begotten’ son, and God loves to praise His Son and to reveal His Son to us. God the Father of this Son is not wanting us to be confused about having this Son: The Father is very much the One True God, as His Son proclaimed about the Father in Jesus Christ’s ministry to His disciples. God tells us that He, the Father, is God. Yet He lovingly displays His Son, Jesus, for us to look to and to follow. God wants us to know that Jesus is our Lord and Master. God wants Jesus to show us that God loves Jesus so strongly and answers all of Jesus’ prayers. And Jesus prays for us. That is God’s will for Jesus and for us. And the Holy Spirit seals it all by telling the wonders of Jesus’ name, supreme in all of Nature in its governing power over Nature to drive all Nature’s processes. Now this God, this Father, also gently bids us know we have fallen short of His standards for us. God is placing a close watch over our ways because we are not really trustworthy. Yet God is building those of us who believe into a Temple for Himself, alive but built together like stones, as scripture testifies. We do work given us by God to contribute efforts in this building. Christ died for you, for me. This is to cleanse us when we confess our sins. God raised the Lord Jesus Christ from the dead and will raise the worthy from the dead one day too. This is God, the God over all gods, the Lord over all lords. And Jesus His Son is Lord over us all. 

State of the union

 When we dig deeper we find the truth of our own guilt but also we find our moral escape route - our redemption. Unfortunately the depths our society reaches are not depths of truth but depths of deparavity. Exploring the goal of ever greater profit finds ever greater temptation and ever greater reasons to stretch the boundaries of depravity. I probably am not alone in thinking that yet more shocking revelations of our society’s depravity are just around the corner. Depravity and moral indignation are crossing swords right now. When wars begin, the extent to which people will reach for more effective weapons is increased. If the weapons of society to fight moral indignation are weapons of the sorceries of Science, then there are more and more moral lines which will soon be crossed, because that is how Science tends to lead society. We need to watch - and pray we are not led into temptation in the next phase of this war. The Lord’s Prayer is a great prayer to pray right now. All the more as we see the day approaching.

“And behold I am alive forever”

 One convincing thing about Jesus Christ’s words is the absolute confidence He had that His words would be considered forever. The thrust of this is to persuade that it is intrinsically linked to His confidence of His own existence persisting forever, living forever, despite crucifixion death and resurrection. He knew He is even in our time existing fully alive to support the words we read that He said. So He is. Plus His words are. And these together, Jesus and His words, support our best intentions today. And He was certain two thousand years ago that this would happen, and in every generation and aeon it would happen, forever. Jesus IS. His words ARE. He always knew it. Without any doubt, ever. 

Homelessness

 Rather than trying in vain to eradicate homelessness and homeless poverty, we should include it as a respectable status.

Truth exists

 Truth exists. Jesus testified to this. His apostles too. Now the scriptures preserve that testimony. Science cannot understand it. Trinity, Unitarianism, Oneness. They all demonstrate that truth exists somehow, somewhere. Why care? Because Jesus came. He knew that truth exists. How did He know? Because He had been where it exists, before He came. He came from above, where truth exists. 

Should the cross of Christ be the death of Science?

Really the materialistic philosophy on which Western Science depends is tied to a sinful desire to undermine traditional power structures of church and state by removing God from public knowledge, education, learning and technology. So Science has slipped away from free, rational learning into controlled idealogical politics. We all know that there is more to life. We are induced by the world around us into pretending that if scientists do not publish it, it is taboo to think it. Yes, that is an extreme way to look at it, since there is plenty of learning and factual knowledge which is not scientific (law, art, history, etcetera), but stereotypically science is taking centre stage in our politics and way of life, where we are supposed to stay on script by ‘following the science’. We see there are downsides to this. In the pandemic, countries traditionally advanced in Western scientific medicine came off the worst. Climate change is ignored despite the efforts to use Science to warn us of where we are heading, but wasn’t it Science that started off the industries which contributed to climate change? Science created oil technology which triggered an industrial revolution surge which exacerbated carbon emissions. Painkiller addiction is ravaging the more scientifically advanced societies. Technology is triggering a rise in depression. Behind it all is a long history of elitist technocratic priesthoods working closely with governments but both bewitching the powerful and being corrupted by them. So why bring the cross of Christ into this? The cross ends the dominion of sin, and eradicating God from our public repository of knowledge is sin. Sorcery-led drug use is sin. Science can be pure in the right hands. Merely devising practical tests and carrying them out in innocence is noble. Yet over the millennia the corruption has crept in such that sciences today are no longer innocent. There is real innocent purity of spirit-related phenomena out there around us and within us which reminds us that God is there too. We can learn better by including all this in our knowledge, learning to reject the bad and cling to the good. So the cross tells us to stop what is sinful and reach out and reach within to what is pure and what is true and what is spirit, free from the shackles of scientific philosophy of thinking. Put to death the system that is not fit for purpose and embrace the truth of spirit that is around us and within when we foster it. Go back to building our lives on spirit, throwing off the slavish tyranny of scientific materialism.

The deal is off

 Has the philosophy of western science now had its day?  

We in the West have long had a deal with Science, that we would limit our thinking to a kind of science-based, limited and perhaps overly simplistic set of principles, to help along the scientists with the evolution of their development of theories and fields of Science, and, in return, with Science promising, we thought, to reciprocate by improving our lives. So we dutifully chose to ignore anything scientists disliked or did not understand or could not accept (even if they could test it and find it to be verifiable). We discounted ‘alternative’ illness cures such as faith healing or repentance from sin, and we allowed doctors to keep on prescribing drugs for every minor ailment. We taught evolutionary science to our children and avoided mentioning the Creator. We even let politicians make decisions about every aspect of our lives by ‘following the science’. Now we are seeing cracks in the reciprocation by Science. The most scientifically advanced Western countries saw the highest death rates in the pandemic. The climate scientists cannot communicate the necessary steps for stopping the demise of the planet and its living things because nobody wants to change their lifestyle or suffer loss or even the slightest inconvenience to achieve the necessary reversals of human, industrial destructiveness. Even the climate scientists insist on travelling to their conferences by excessively polluting air transport. Science betrays its own human side and human failings. So has the time now come to call off the deal? Maybe it is too late but it would help our sanity to stop digging now that we know we are in a hole, even if we can’t escape it. We could live more honestly if we allowed ourselves the luxury of opening our minds to all forms of truth, not merely material but spiritual too.

Jesus knew the longevity of His sayings

 One convincing thing about Jesus Christ’s words is the absolute confidence He clearly had that His words would be considered forever. It is so evident in how Jesus worded His sayings.

God stuff

 There is certainly more going on around us than science can recognise. The other day I was with my wife at a bingo hall and I was thinking about something spiritual and a four or five digit number was repeatedly coming into my mind. I half ignored it of course. But then one of the staff nearby said that number. They were reporting the winner bingo card number. I bet many of us experience such things. Spirit happens. If we follow it through we realise God-stuff is part of this. The thing is, God stuff is better still. It gets moral. It brings truth. It makes justice and kindness win. If we just take notice, we will get the gist of this. So the Lord’s Prayer is really about trying to promote this among all the spirit stuff around us. May the God stuff win. May it sustain us and save us.

Pandemic test

 I expect the whole virus pandemic is a divine test to see who will take the vaccine and who won’t. Did you pass or fail? 

Conscience and the vaccine

 ‘But if someone says to you, “This has been offered in sacrifice,” then do not eat it, both for the sake of the one who told you and for the sake of conscience.’

— 1 Corinthians 10:28

If another person’s conscience makes them distressed that you are taking a vaccine based on aborted foetuses, and you take it anyway, you are violating the command of God to love them. Even if your conscience is fine with the vaccine, by violating their conscience you are grieving them sinfully.

“My lord and my god!”

In my teens I got perplexed that at church there was insistence on a Trinity concept of God even though we were told to believe the Bible and nothing I read in years of Bible-reading ever seemed Trinitarian. I tried to test my church peers by picking a weak tentatively Trinity-supporting verse, probably not really Trinitarian, and pointing to it as support for the Trinity concept about God. I was secretly hoping to provoke a response to elucidate why Trinity was taught without it being genuinely supported in scripture. I knew applying the verse to Trinitarian concepts was silly. I hoped someone would point this out to me and either admit Trinitarianism was not biblical or point me to a better verse that I had missed which did explain why Trinity was so important to the church. (I think the American word for this is straw-manning.) The verse I chose is in John when Thomas sees Jesus alive from the dead and exclaims “My lord and my god!” Trinitarians would love to explain this as Thomas telling Jesus that he now believed that Jesus is God. But, of course, if Thomas suddenly became a Trinitarian, would it not be sensible to think that John would have explained this? If Trinitarian ideas of God being three persons were what John wanted to teach, that would contradict statements by Jesus written by John earlier in a previous chapter “This is eternal life that they would know You the Only True God and Jesus Christ who You sent” This was said by Jesus when Jesus was praying to the Father. So, if John meant us to realise that Thomas suddenly believed something different and effectively became a Trinitarian, at least John would explicitly write about that. John would not leave the reader to read into Thomas’ exclamation a contradicting doctrine to the explicit statement by Jesus that only the Father is the Only True God and that He Jesus is the Christ sent by this One True God. Yet the Trinitarians did not refute the use of the verse to support Trinitarianism. On the contrary they started using that verse as proof of Trinitarianism from scripture. So I concluded there are no better verses in the Bible to support a Trinity idea. Then years later the Trinitarian apologists were all using this verse. Or they use a twisted translation of John 1 verse 1. That is all they can use. Other verses have been mistranslated by Trinitarians or even inserted from scratch to support their teachings but these are easily debunked by using online interlinear Bibles. They are not genuinely reading what scripture actually says and believing it.

John 1:1

 @Trinitarians: John 1:1 is past tense. A trinity meaning of John 1:1 would be require a Greek (or Aramaic) equivalent of a present continuous tense, meaning something like the word is always God or God is always the Word, and that is clearly not an acceptable English translation of the Greek even for a Trinitarian translator. Trinity means the Word is forever God. John 1:1 in no way supports that. 

Hypostasis

 We all know, if we believe in God at all, there is such a thing as divinity. No need to prove it. Scriptures are full of it. Godhead is an english word used to translate divinity. Trinitarian philosophers influenced by pagan neoplatonism went a step further in a pagan direction by starting to talk about hypostasis, thinking divinity is an actual substance. They ended up with the concepts of Trinity. Hypostatic union. Pagan stuff. Repugnant. Sinful. Against the gospel which says we should not impute to the One True God qualities such as we associate with gold or silver. Hypostasis is exactly such a quality.  

In whose image is man created?

 In Genesis 1:26 who is speaking? The Elohim, the gods. Who are these or who is this? Plural or single person? Gods or God? Answer from other scriptures? Psalms say gods plural over whom God is sole great king. Exodus says gods plural (chapter 18) over whom God Yahweh is proved to be king because the gods could not help Egypt when God Yahweh was against Egypt. So in SCRIPTURE Elohim means ‘the gods’ with Yahweh as king over THEM. In translations, though, mainly Trinitarian but also Jewish (rabbinic and Talmudic) Genesis 1:1 Elohim is translated God. I believe the scripture (Exodus and Psalms) interpretation of the scripture. I am fairly sure the Trinitarian and Jewish translators understood it wrong. Man was made in the image of angels, gods, and possibly the image of the Son of Man spirit before His incarnation, not necessarily of the Father, although it is safe to understand that these Elohim archangels are themselves in the image of the Father to some extent, since they are sometimes in scripture (Genesis 6, Job 1) called the sons of God. 

Can you recognise the Elect One?

 ‘And thus the LORD commanded the kings and mighty and exalted and those who dwell in the earth, “Open your eyes and lift up your horns if you are able to recognise the Elect One”’ 

— Book of Enoch

Can you? Can you recognise the Elect One? 

‘Then the disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” As soon as Simon Peter heard him say, “It is the Lord,” he wrapped his outer garment around him (for he had taken it off) and jumped into the water.’

John 21:7

https://biblehub.com/niv/john/21.htm

Here I was watching a historic flooding downpour rainstorm near my local river and I’m thinking of a passage of scripture saying the Lord presides over the flood. I’m thinking of the homes flooded at that time by all this overflowing river water and the rain is coming down harder than ever. I’m walking home along the busy main road. I had been earnestly asking weeks earlier to witness Jesus first hand. Suddenly a voice clear as a bell says “Put down your umbrella!” with overwhelming authority more than any authority I ever heard. I’ve got this huge golfing umbrella up protecting me from this downpour deluge but I am compelled to obey the supremely authoritative voice. As I put down the umbrella without delay the rain stops so instantly that not a drop touches me. It must have looked so remarkable to car drivers going by. In my heart I just know, telling myself, “It is the Lord”. I just know it was Jesus who spoke. So as I walk home I would love confirmation of it. I wait till I go to bed. I lived alone. On a nail on the wall in my sparse bedroom is a dressing gown I never used. I lived alone so why bother. I said to the one who had spoken to me invisibly, that I was sure it is Jesus Himself but just to confirm it, would He make the dressing gown be off that nail by the morning. Then I slept. In the middle of the night in my deep sleep something got into my deepest consciousness and compelled me with great authority and masterfulness like I never knew was possible to wake up and get up. I got up in a flash and immediately grabbed the dressing gown off that nail. As I did so I suddenly remembered that request for confirmation I had made the night before. I knew this is Jesus, alive from the dead and master of my life.

Genesis 1:1

 It must be a shock to trinitarians, rabbinical Jews, and liberals, but not so surprising to ancient cultures and eastern traditional religions, that scripture claims that all the gods were involved in Creation, not just the Most High God. In the beginning gods created the heavens and the earth: The Elohim, the gods over whom Yahweh is the great king.  

Preparation

 Preparation: Getting ready to do what might not be doable right now. 

Teachings of Jesus which cannot be done now, might be doable later but it is important to prepare as much as possible now in order to be ready to obey when the time comes. Otherwise the moment will come and go and the opportunity be missed to do the will of God. “The man who does the will of God lives forever.”

Fear God not men

 Jesus said to fear God, not men. I do. God the Father is very very frightening, but at the same time thrilling because of His love. So I hold Him in awe. God is over all time forever. That is awesome. God sees beyond even the time He has foretold. Not good to be in His bad books forever. Best to fear God now and serve Him reverentially. Think of a big mafia top boss and how horrifying it would be to offend him. I think God the Father is much more scary still because even after our deaths His wrath can continue. Even the most powerful mafia boss cannot hunt you down forever. You die and he dies so the horror of offending him is limited. I say mafia, because they do not try to hide or curtail their wrath as bosses, but carry it out in action. God does not try to pretend to not be offended when we offend Him. Only love and mercy and intercessory mediation hold back that wrath. God is unlimited in how long He can maintain that wrath. Very very scary. But so loving that taking refuge in Him is bliss nonetheless. I choose nobody to worship in a greater priority. 

Scripture and the gods and the Most High God

The Book of Genesis tells us about the heavy involvement of the gods, archangels and angels, Elohim, in Creation. The Book of Enoch explains an ongoing war between technology and Nature. The supreme Oath that archangels have taken to preserve Nature is under constant threat from another oath which was sworn on Mount Hermon by rogue angels. We see the rogue oath today at work against Nature in human technology: Technology introduced by these rogue angels. Over all of these is the Lord of Spirits. In the Book of Exodus the Elohim are shown to be the gods who failed to save Egypt from the plagues because Yahweh is king over them all and the plagues and opening of the Red Sea proved it. Note that the Elohim are not supreme. The king over the gods is Yahweh, one God, one Person, one God and Father over all. The Old scriptures tell us there is no plural at the very top. The New Testament scriptures confirm it because even Jesus the Son acknowledges the Father as His One True God, the God over all. 

Elohim and Creation

 @Trinitarians: If Genesis 1 Elohim plural means Trinity, what does Elohim mean in Psalm 95:3? “Yahweh ... the great king above all Elohim” Also Ex 18:11, Ps 96:4, Ps 97:9, Ps 135:5, Ps 86:8. So in Genesis, the Elohim made the Heavens and Earth but Yahweh is king over them all. A ‘Trinity’ is not found in these verses. In Exodus 18:11 Elohim are the gods who failed to save Egypt from the plagues because Yahweh is king over them all and the plagues and opening of the Red Sea proved it. The Elohim is not a supreme ‘Trinity’. The king over the gods is Yahweh, one God, one Person, one God and Father over all. There is no plural at the very top because even Jesus the Son acknowledges the Father as His One True God, the God over all.

Fetal cells

So it’s true. No actual cells in the vaccine but to make these COVID 19 vaccines they grow eye cells from aborted fetuses and make them produce the vaccine. Awful wizardry. So immoral. Letting them inject it does kinda amount to collusion with that magic art stuff. Amoral Pharmakoi stuff. Revelation 21:8 sorcery. Facebook is preventing me adding more! I take back the nice things I wrote about Mark last night on his post. Come out and be separate, Mark, lest you share in their plagues! Sanitised sorcery, human sacrifice, canibalism. All the masses worldwide. Tax-sponsored. Government-led. Injecting the vaccine you are injecting PART of an aborted baby cell: The mRNA it has produced. Human sacrifice. Pharmakoi.

The Software Developer

 So there’s this software developer who sees the school secretary of a local school so tied up with doing paperwork to pay bills for the school that when a little kid in the playground falls injuring their knee the secretary has no time to be nurse to put a plaster on the kids knee and offer comfort. So the developer uses knowledge gained in a previous office job to help develop a system to replace the invoice paperwork with a quick-to-use electronic invoice system. Now the secretary should have time to tend injuries and provide some much-needed care time. Now the local hospital system also uses the system for electronic invoices. So when a pandemic comes there are more time and resources to spend on providing care instead of doing paperwork. But the developer sees that the hospital is using that time and spare work capacity to send sick contagious elderly patients into care homes to free up beds and this results in care homes having the highest death rate in the world. What is more, the money saved on invoice processing is spent on drugs such as opiates that get patients addicted. Now the developer realises that probably that secretary needs to be given paperwork to tie up their time to prevent them interfering with the injured school children and leaving them worse off by using painkillers and inappropriate care because the country itself is sick with folly and over-reliance on drugs. So what can the developer do now? Crazy crazy world.

Before all things

 Time is not so simple when God the Father is involved. With Jesus, God is very much involved. God’s speech brings things into existence, even before humans would think those things exist. If God speaks Jesus into existence by saying ‘I will beget a son’ it is the same as saying ‘I have a son’ because God’s word is so powerful. The spirit of this Son therefore came into existence long before the historical event of the conception of Jesus. I do not know God well enough - the Father’s power and transcendence of time - to know exactly about this. Clearly for the Father to only beget one son in all time it must be something that took place when God formed that decision and spoke it into history. I believe the testimony of Jesus that it was before Abraham was born and before the creation of the world. I interpret John 1 as John by the Holy Spirit saying it happened before anything was created - the spirit of Christ came into existence before anything created was created - and was involved in all God did since then, including in Creation.

Following Jesus today

The ministry of Jesus Christ continues. Jesus lives alive forever from the dead. Believe it. Believe Jesus IS. The Holy Spirit imparts what is given to Jesus by the Father. Follow Him by holding to these things. Then you will have the promise He gives of being set free from your sins, ready for the day of Judgement.

To be saved

 To be saved, believe that Jesus, is the Christ, the only-begotten of God; believe that Jesus IS. And hold to His teachings. So you are set free from your sins so that you do not die in your sins, so that the lake of fire is not sat there waiting for you.

Knowledge of God

Although I believe in being biblical and I believe that the Father alone is the One True God, one person, it is not only the scriptures that teach me this truth, it was God the Father Himself in a great revelatory dream. If I remember correctly the dream was around December 1994. God the Father proved to me that this dream was really Himself speaking, really the Father. “I am God” He said (and He demonstrated His love for people, including a believer, at my workplace by giving me a task which helped them). Later Jesus showed me Himself as the Son of God. Later the Holy Spirit sealed it all. I had asked in earnest to directly experience Father and Son and Holy Spirit, being Trinitarian at that time. I said to God I did not want to preach God, to build up God’s temple, without true knowledge of God: of the Father, of Jesus, of the Holy Spirit. It was a complete surprise to me that only the Father said “I am God”. Then a prophecy came to me “Israel has sinned” showing me an eagle of mass surveillance over the people of God. God is not happy that His counsel is darkened by words without knowledge.

Clarity

 The Holy Spirit conceived Jesus, by an utterly unique holy conception, which makes the One True God, the Father, uniquely the biological father of Jesus. Scripture says Jesus is the only-begotten of God, “μονογενὴς”. This is one reason scriptures describe Jesus as divine, although that is rarely written of Jesus in scripture. I suppose it is so rarely written because it could be misconstrued, as some do when they call Jesus God, erroneously thinking Jesus is the One True God. Only the Father is the One True God, according to scripture. 

Trinitarian confusion

 Trinitarians say on one hand that God is the Father and Jesus is the Son of God but then they say Jesus is God or they call Jesus ‘God the Son’. Do they mean the Son is the Father since they say God is the Father and the Son is God? I’m guessing that isn’t what they mean. But do they even know what they mean? They seem to be using ‘God’ in two different ways (sometimes even in the same sentence): ‘God’ as in the One True God; Then ‘God’ as in divine. Why not use two different terms - one for each meaning? Writing ‘GOD’ for the Father and ‘God’ for the Son: Is that just to confuse things, or to make it look not too bad when they boldly assert “Jesus is God”? Clarity would be better served by writing ‘God’ for the Father and ‘divine’ in describing the Son. Is the aim to cause confusion? Why are Trinitarians so hell-bent on confusing everyone then claiming the author of it is God? Do they want people to be confused? Is it deliberate obfuscation? Is it to trip up those who are seeking God as newbies? Is it spite? Is it to try to foster misunderstanding and call it heresy? People need to believe the truth or else they perish. Why then put a stumbling block in their way? Jealousy? Wanting to be first to get understanding of the truth and therefore to trip up the competition to hinder them? 

Hell-bent

 Why are Trinitarians so hell-bent on confusing everyone then claiming the author of it is God? I would not want to infer that Trinitarians are the only churches that have fallen short, but spreading confusion, tripping up newbies, persisting pagan philosophies such as divine hypostases, false doctrines, tolerating pedophilia among clergy and children-workers, all adds up to what is surely punishable by God. Mass surveillance and threat of war are ways God is punishing such widespread church wholesale wrongdoing. 

Law of Moses

 I get fed up with the hypocrisy of zeal for keeping the Law of Moses which tries to say Jesus wants everyone to keep the whole Law of Moses. Look. For Jews to keep the law of Moses today, there would have to be Taliban-like authoritarian drastic measures. For example, destruction of all buildings with any mildew. That alone would be beyond what is feasible. That is even without the measures requiring mass executions. So if Jews keeping it today is beyond what is feasible, how would anyone who isn’t a Jew even consider keeping it. They would have to become circumcised Jews but even then they would find it is utterly impossible to keep. If a Jew can keep it by some drastic change of lifestyle and creation of a community and government system that facilitates it, fine. But it is well beyond the vast majority. We can all take lessons from the Mosaic Law as well as the prophets, which is why we preserve the scriptures, but to meet the requirements of the One True God we should take on our shoulders the teachings of Jesus, who God has sent, and live by the spirit, with the Holy Spirit leading the way, and let the righteousness of God bring us into the will of God. That is why Jesus Christ was sent by God and died for us on a cross and was raised to help us still. He knows how to please God in a feasible way that persuasive faith facilitates. 

We are newbies

 Every one of us humans is like a newbie once we are born into this world and we need to learn what is what afresh. The most important thing to learn is that Christ has died for us to influence the One True God into purifying us from wrongdoing. The Holy Spirit is a spirit from God who is ever active in this purifying work. Together those purified are built into a living temple to bring glory to the reputation of God. It is going on from generation to generation. We really ought not miss out on it. Jesus forever lives, risen from the dead, to be master over all of this, persisting it from generation to generation by working together with those involved in this priestly work. He is faithful and true. God’s love is manifest in all Jesus Christ does. 

Priestly preaching

 The holy effects of Christ’s purifying crucifixion are always all around us, but especially when it is preached.

Crosses of Big Pharma and the Cross of Christ

 The cross and the raising of a representation upon a cross seems to be traceable back to Sumerian symbolism from 3000 BC, related to concepts of exorcism, healers, miracle workers, priests, and sacrifices for oracles. I suspect that when God told Moses to put a serpent on a pole and lift it up for all to look at, to cure those in the camp bitten by a plague of snakes, it was as a symbol of exorcism of the serpents from the camp and healing of their toxins. I suspect the symbolism was based on the ancient language and writing of Sumerians, which had spread to Egypt where the Israelites became acquainted with it. It would be common knowledge in the Near East and Middle East of the time. Still today we associate crosses and holding up a symbol outstretched with exorcism and overcoming evil. That is not a solely Christian concept but is simply folk knowledge passed down from early mankind. Yet sorcery did always bring with it trickery and the elitist tendency to take advantage of ordinary ignorant folk. Sorcerers were always notorious. Plus it was pseudo-religious. And sorcerers were fierce defenders of their reputations, even defying God in the process. Hence the Egyptian priests trying to outdo Moses and God. So God has sorcery on His 101 list. Sorcerers fighting for their reputations, trying to outdo each other was a theme seen in very ancient writings. One narrative from before biblical times tells of two sorcerers competing to be the first to divide a body of water so they could walk across on dry land. Of course the scriptures later told how God proved to be supreme in this department and in conferring excelling powers in this area upon His servants the prophets. No more so than Moses with the Red Sea. Then Jesus went one further when God gave Him power to walk unaided over a raging stormy sea. Always it is reputation, and God’s name comes out top. See how today the superpowers all competed to have the best vaccine against the pandemic. It is the same competition that has continued down the ages. God will not let sorcerers outdo His own name or negate His reputation as power worker and healer. Those who try might find themselves viewed by God as enemies. Big Pharma or little Pharma.  

My journey to faith

 Build the Temple, I was told. God tasks believers each with tasks involved in building each other up. But to build effectively we need to be able to preach by the spirit and by knowledge of God, power, love. So I complained to God that I knew too little about Him in reality. I had ideas and a tendency to think or pretend to know more than I actually knew: Like so many others who preach and teach about God. I asked for real knowledge. He gave me a little of it. Enough to keep me occupied for twenty-five years! My mother had raised me to read the Bible as a child. I got all my original doctrine from reading the Bible even before attending church main services. When I grew older and listened to sermons, in a Baptist church our family attended, it upset me that the Trinitarianism clearly did not come from the Bible. As a favour to them, I thought, I tried to find ways to stretch verses to fit Trinitarianism. God forgive me. I was confused though. Happily it all makes sense now God spoke to me directly saying “I am God” and showing me Jesus truly is His Son, sealing it by the Holy Spirit telling me about Jesus’ name. Then I discovered in a Christian bookshop the Book of Enoch. It had passages so exactly matching what the Holy Spirit had told me. So I knew it was truly inspired and sacred. I formed groups to study it and met others who gave it credence. Also there were others I came across online who helped me reconsider my deeply instilled Trinitarian views. With the help of these online contacts our research eventually told me that the church fathers had set the ball rolling for Trinitarianism and the much later emergence of the 66-book canon which excluded the Book of Enoch and Book of Tobit, but these church fathers were not being solely influenced by Christ in doing so but also by pagan philosophers and by unbelieving Jews who had axes to grind and had things in Christ’s teachings they wanted to suppress. If you strip away historic worldly philosophical Trinitarian distortions and unbelieving Jewish suppressions, what is left? You are left with scriptures and the power of God as evidence. Together they provide documentary and experiential evidence of Jesus having been conceived by the Holy Spirit in a holy way, together with the contrast in the Book of Enoch with unholy conceptions by the Watchers. It all puts a distinct slant on who Jesus is, slightly but significantly different from the later Church Trinitarian version without the Book of Enoch. Jesus is still the only begotten Son of God but it is this which gives Him divinity rather than a Trinitarian philosophical dogma mixed with Neoplatonist concepts like hypostasis. You get the Father alone being the One True God but Jesus being the only begotten son of this One True God, sacredly conceived by the Holy Spirit and sent to be the Christ, to testify of the Father and to die for sins and rise from the dead to live forever. The Son of Man who will soon judge us all. The master of the house of God. No philosophy. Faith. 

Let us hold fast

 Being not the One True God, having the One True God over Him as His God, Jesus the Son of the One True God lives in obedience to God His Father. So should we who have Jesus as our Master and the Father as our God and our Father. Sinfully, foolishly, the believers who are to God His ‘Israel’ have forsaken the truth taught by Jesus and His New Testament apostles and have replaced this truth with the worldly philosophies of Neoplatonist pagans. Let us be the faithful who return to Jesus’ true teachings. He is lord and master of the house. Let us be His household, the household of the Father over which Jesus is appointed the Master, the Lord. Let us steadfastly hold to Jesus Christ’s teachings rather than teachings of mere worldly men. Jesus died for our sins and is resurrected by God forever. He is alive for those who hold fast to His teachngs, believing that He truly IS. 

The Error of Origen

 Origen slipped up with his ‘hypostases’ (material substances of divine beings). Woefully all the churches eventually followed this Neoplatonist philosophical error. Acts 17:29 “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or a stone image or a craft of human design and skill.” This following of a philosophy based on Neoplatonism apparently led to Trinitarianism. Colossians 2:8 “See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ.”

Personal Testimony of the Blessings of the Father and the New and Holy Way

Jeremiah 17:5: 

‘Cursed is the man who trusts in man, and will lean his arm of flesh upon him, while his heart departs from the Lord.’

Philippians 3:3: 

‘For we are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh.’

Galatians 3:5:

‘Does God lavish His Spirit on you and work miracles among you because you practice the law, or because you hear and believe?’

Acts 2:38:

‘And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.’

The miracles from God and manifestations of the spirit, holy and pure, which God sends, turn my heart towards permanent trust in God and devotion to Him who works this in me. I received such things from before I reached adulthood having believed the gospel message of the word given by God. I believed in the sacrificial crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ and was baptised into this way when I was in my later teenage years. God worked miracles starting with something God did for my friend and I as we were meeting in that friend’s house when I was around 16. Over the following decades God manifested the Holy Spirit to me, both in times when I was alone and when I was together with believers at church, in wonderful and utterly supernatural ways. These things worked on the attitudes of my heart, my innermost leanings towards God who does these things for me as a Father, in the name of Jesus Christ His Son. He even visited me in a dream when I was in my thirties and His Son came to meet me outdoors not long afterwards as I walked pondering His truth and His word and later that day He confirmed to me that I was right in believing it was Jesus alive from the dead. Months later came a clearest and most certain manifestation of the Holy Spirit as I met with believers at church. Further visitations, manifestations, dreams and visions encouraged me through the following decades and gave me words to say to others for building up their faith and strengthening their spirit. All this has parallels with the ancient circumcision rite practiced by a Jewish father on their sons but this real but non-physical circumcision is done by God Himself on those He accepts as sons, irrespective of gender. Instead, this is a circumcision of the heart by the Holy Spirit and the gospel word of God and power of God. The worship towards God produced this way is what God is seeking and desires: It is worship in spirit and in truth.

The new way

 To keep Jewish Torah feasts requires a family to have all males circumcised. Yes! Yet it does not necessarily mean the hearts of the members of the family experience any permanent devotion towards God. The heart of a circumcised man or the hearts of the circumcised man’s family can simply turn away from trusting God. A new kind of circumcision is nothing physical but it turns the heart towards permanent trust in God and devotion to God who works this in the person, irrespective of gender. It happens to those who believe the gospel message of the word given by God and believe in the sacrificial crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ and are baptised into this way. God works miracles among these believers and manifests the Holy Spirit to them, in them, by various supernatural means. They have these things working on the attitudes of their hearts, the innermost leanings towards God who does these things for them as Father, for the glory of the name and reputation and teachings of Jesus Christ His Son. This is the real circumcision to seek in this day of God’s favour. The worship towards God produced this way is what God is seeking and desires: It is worship in spirit and in truth.

Jeremiah 17:5: 

‘Cursed is the man who trusts in man, and will lean his arm of flesh upon him, while his heart departs from the Lord.’

Philippians 3:3: 

‘For we are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh.’

Galatians 3:5:

‘Does God lavish His Spirit on you and work miracles among you because you practice the law, or because you hear and believe?’

Acts 2:38:

‘And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.’

The Bible

The Revelation warning against adding or removing from it, is erroneously applied to the English Bible, assuming, because Revelation is listed last in the printed Bible, it was written last. They say there can therefore only be 66 books, ruling out the Book of Enoch. They are blissfully unaware that the 66 book list of books for English Church bibles was determined centuries later. They also blissfully fail to consider that some scriptures such as Jude and 2 Peter were very likely written a decade after the Book of Revelation was written. So their doctrine would erroneously apply the Revelation curse to any scriptural epistles written later, such as 2 Peter and Jude. The Westminster Confession and Thirty-Nine articles were written a lot later too. These are the laws of the English Church (limiting the Bible) which led to this kind of error.  It is clear from the context of Revelation that it warns against adding to or taking away from the contents of that specific holy Book of Revelation part of which was dictated to John by the Lord Jesus Himself. The Book of Enoch was written long before, so of course it does not add to the Book of Revelation. Let us throw off folly and error and falsehood and worship God in spirit and in truth, as Jesus taught.