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Here is God’s healing olive branch:

“Flee from Babylon!
Run for your lives!
Do not be destroyed because of her sins.
It is time for the Lord’s vengeance;
he will repay her what she deserves.
Babylon was a gold cup in the Lord’s hand;
she made the whole earth drunk.
The nations drank her wine;
therefore they have now gone mad.
Babylon will suddenly fall and be broken.
Wail over her!
Get balm for her pain;
perhaps she can be healed.
“We would have healed Babylon,
but she cannot be healed;
let us leave her and each go to our own land,
for her judgment reaches to the skies,
it rises as high as the heavens.”

“Come out of her, my people,
so that you will not share in her sins,
so that you will not receive any of her plagues;
For her sins are piled up to heaven,
and God has remembered her crimes.
Give back to her as she has given;
pay her back double for what she has done.
Pour her a double portion from her own cup.
Give her as much torment and grief
as the glory and luxury she gave herself.
In her heart she boasts,
‘I sit enthroned as queen.
I am not a widow;
I will never mourn.’
Therefore in one day her plagues will overtake her:
death, mourning and famine.
She will be consumed by fire,
for mighty is the Lord God who judges her.”

Sin that leads to death

Corporal punishment is not the sole domain of religion nor of the commands of God and laws of God. Mankind started writing laws even before Moses. Hammurabi and others wrote laws. Later towards Moses’ time the laws started to carry death sentences in some cases. It was already happening before Moses and is ever happening since that nations make laws for which breach of them can carry death sentence, and not really for breach of them alone since the action would carry a death sentence in society even if there were no law being broken. Parents trying to handle a devilishly violent or vicious son might resort to local judges and magistrates even if no law were broken, rather than just keep enduring an impossible situation. These magistrates might take drastic fatal action to deal with it. This is not just a religious issue. It is extremely tragic but part of life. Unfortunately. It always will be part of life. Christ coming and making Himself an atonement did not change this aspect of life. He wants to stop death sentences being inevitable by helping the sinner get sorted out before the worse can happen. It sometimes involves death though.

God with a capital G

There are several components to the ancient historic concept of God. One is singularity. God is the One God. None other besides is God the way the Father is God. Another is topmost status. Only one Father is father of all beings and Lord of all and maker of all and highest over all. Topmost Creator. The tree-like status hierarchy of all beings has just one at the top. (Note that even Christ Jesus, the Son called God His own God, the Father.) Then there is blessedness. Only one Father deserves all praise because He of all beings is so praiseworthy. God is good and great and is dearly loved by many and first loved many. Another is prayer. God receives prayers. God is the one who answers prayers and saves those who trust in Him and call on Him. Then there are key attributes ascribed to this God such as that His righteous blessedness is eternally constant and that God is almighty in power to save.

Saint Lazarus

I was in Cyprus, in Larnaka, last week and was astonished to see that the orthodox Saint Lazarus church is built over the former tomb of Lazarus who Jesus raised after Lazarus was dead for four days. How can any Greek Cypriots not believe? I suppose if not believing is your normal disposition and coping mechanism you just get used to ignoring invisible implications of what is visible right in front of you. The Orthodox Church still meet in that building over the sarcophagus that held the ‘man twice buried’ (now three or more times buried since the Crusaders moved the body long ago) and perhaps this makes it one of the oldest churches. I stood watching a service take place but could not understand the Greek. Greek Orthodox are so fortunate to have such history plus the best chance of correctly understanding scriptures which were preserved in Greek better than they had been in Hebrew.

Proofs

To a Westerner like myself with religious ideologies all around, the possibility of proving the existence of God has always been instilled into me as like discovering cold fusion or the Holy Grail. Nobody told me it had already been done many times, such as the proof by Leibniz. Proof, though, is a Greek idea. It is not primarily for convincing people but more for starting a dialogue and maybe even a school of thought, as with Zeno’s proof that movement is impossible. There is also the Hebrew concept of proof which is more about giving sanction to what already has traction, such as when early Christians ‘proved from scriptures’ that Jesus is the Christ. None of this is for persuading. Persuading might depend on factors such as social pressure and government laws. Mafia use violence to ‘persuade’. China and North Korea use imprisonments. West uses media. God uses His words and the power of His Spirit.

Upgrade on the Law of Moses

The old ancient ways of God which God introduced through Moses which still stand today are yet superseded in favour of the way of God introduced though His Son Jesus which comes by the giving of Holy Spirit and gifts like tongues with interpretation which I witnessed in church in the nineties and never end completely even though for centuries it became a rarity. This Spirit giving manifestations in churches and individuals brings grace which feeds right living and understanding. This is greater than that old way. It is trustworthy even though opening the door of trust means having to guard that door to keep out false pretences. This new way involves a wider view of life that encompasses the hereafter in which a balance exists where if great good is all that this life holds and evil judgments are exercised in this life oppressing others such as the poor then the next life will have balancing evils. So we best look at the long term and love the poor and avoid excessive luxury in this life and have hope then for the next, the hereafter. This is the law of Christ. As is love for one another within a framework of believing in Christ. This is the upgrade on the law tablets.

Imagining God?

“What is the difference between imagining God and knowing God” That is the eternal life question. I do at last know the difference between imagining God and knowing God. For decades I wasn’t sure. I knew God from His constant answers to my prayers and from the sending of Jesus to be crucified for me for purification of sins, which showed His love (since I believed this), yet like many I probably did constantly imagine God too. This is why I asked over and over to see Him (to see Father and Son and Holy Spirit).

After much asking, finally God came, appearing in a vision to me as I slept one night at the end of 1994. It seems His visit was such so as to be evidence convincing me but only me personally. God does that, showing Himself to one but not others. It seems to require qualification of love towards Him before He shows Himself personally. So in this dream said “I am God” then He told me there was something I would get put on my desk tomorrow and I must look at it carefully. I never normally got things put on my desk because I was always the person at work distributing post to others. Then the next day an envelope arrived and you I looked at it and saw I must forward it by 4pm and it was five to four when I saw it so I rushed it to the person concerned, remembering their name had been mentioned in the dream, even though I had never met them before. I did it just in time. I realised that dream could not possibly have been a mere dream but had actually been God, as He had said. I immediately told my colleague and word got around. This is the Father, God.

Now at the moment, in February 2020, the UK River Severn is flooding badly. Last time it flooded as badly was probably the 1995 storm. This was just days after the dream vision of God in which the Father appeared to me. I was living next to a river near the Severn (Avon in Bristol) with similar flooding. I read in scripture that the Lord presides over such things as judge so I decided to walk to the river and see the flooding and try to think how it might be it is God judging and Jesus presiding over it. On the way back a voice shouted at me inside my head “Put down your umbrella!” I was carrying a huge umbrella like golfers use which kept me dry despite the downpour but I sensed such authority in the ‘voice’ that I folded it immediately and as I did so the rain stopped so abruptly I just knew that voice was Jesus. To be really sure I later asked for a sign and as I went to bed I saw a dressing gown never used hung on a peg. I asked that if it was really Jesus may that come down off the peg before the morning. I slept but halfway through the night I felt suddenly deeply compelled to wake up and get up. I took the dressing gown off the peg and suddenly remembered the sign request. That is Jesus.

A while later a local lay preacher heard I wanted to witness gifts of the Holy Spirit in church. He took me where he said I was sure to witness it. I felt heaviness keeping me in a vice grip of awe as we went and during the worship service. The leader spoke at a microphone in a wondrous and eloquent angelic language. The words entered my mind triggering English equivalent words. “Consider the trees, they put forth buds and leaves. They do so by the authority of the name of the Lord Jesus Christ,” and some more about orbits of planets I think. Within seconds the speaker himself gave the interpretation of his angelic words and they were just those same words that came to me in my head. That’s the Holy Spirit. 

Primary Sources

The inability to draw certainty from history due to ever inadequate knowledge is why I try to learn not from concocted ideas of God such as consensus dogma of ancient Romans or more recent Muslims and Protestants and Babylonian Jewish Geniuses (Talmud teachers) but rather from the real being who appeared to me as God and showed Jesus to me personally as His Son and whose Holy Spirit proclaimed to me this Jesus. I know all this was no concoction. I know personally. I do not believe quotes of verses as primary sources of truth (because they are often misapplied and misunderstood) but my primary sources are the one who told me He is God, the one He showed me (and who showed Himself to me) as Son, and the Spirit speaking through others and directly telling me who Jesus is, Lord, Christ, owner of the brand of Nature and living things. This God I fear: Who gives His angel charge over me. This is where my lessons come from. Those I learn and those I teach.  I believe in the Father who visited me, the Lord Jesus who came showing Himself Son of this Father, the Holy Spirit who sealed it through gifts of tongues and interpretation and later in speaking directly and giving me the word to prophesy. All this. Not the limitations imposed by others” preconceptions and misconceptions. 

Grisly Religion

Figure out God and religion. We might figure out someone called God is top God but understanding the history of how He created a people with just Himself as their only God can be helped by hearing or reading what is said or written by those who object to it all, at least, object to His methods involving a lot of deaths. Very grisly. Part of that method included His Son dying on a cross to purify the falling short of His people. That makes this Son worthy. Everyone should know this, grisly though it is.

The Brand of Nature

Life has a brand. ‘Jesus’ is that brand. The name that is the brand of Nature. Take that brand upon yourself in baptism, believing in it and in Him.

Lord and Christ

Of all the heavenly beings, it was the Son of Man who was chosen to provide sin purification for the humans. This surely sets Him apart and above all the others except the Father Himself. This awareness is an awareness of glory which makes all the difference to priorities and proportion. It means a human being is at top place over all things, bested only by the most supreme of all. We humans matter. We should make an effort to ever live up to that. There is someone human to help too. He has our backs. He has it covered. The Father is rooting for the human race, especially those He has chosen and determined to know His beloved, precious Son.

Smart Cities, Digital Cities Programmes

Do the authorities really not think we Bristol citizens will realise these ‘digital cities’, ‘smart cities’ technologies and their supposed much heralded ‘benefits’ are merely excuses to spy on us? Do we look like we are that blind? Blind maybe but blind and demented too? And all this pretence that it is to help us in old age. Spying in sinister ways on us even in our homes ‘for our own good’. Adult social ‘care’. Really sinister. Sneaky. I guess it might happen like 1984 but do we look like we won’t notice? Or twig? Yes. We wrong-doing Brits indeed deserve to be spied on by the eagle in the sky with the big white eye. But we can’t be expected to welcome that eagle into our homes. No not even us sinners here in Bristol, UK. But don’t worry everyone; it will be coming to you too. And when that eagle is up above, all hell down here below. Just like the prophets prophesied.

Climate Awareness

The last five or six thousand years of human history have seen two spurts of increased self-awareness. There is a recent growing sense (awareness) that humans as a whole are a problem for this planet. There was a long time past awareness around the first and second millennia BC that the universe has a balancing mechanism which is quite human-like. Zoroaster recognised it (or his followers did later). Then Pythagoras and Heraclitus, sages of Ancient Greece recognised it. Put these two together and you might easily recognise the likelihood of an imminent balance redress being about to happen. Christianity is starting to change its own doctrines about this and rebelieve in a coming Millennium of Christ.

Of the devil

“He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil. Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.”
‭‭1 John‬ ‭3:8-9‬ ‭KJV‬

If you look for the fuller meaning of this in Jesus’ sermon recorded in John chapter 8 you see that the reasoning is that lies are not God’s way, but are the norm for Satan, so lies are a clear example of sin where those who lie as their norm are seen as bearing the makings of Satan rather than God. He goes on to include murderous hatred - hatred without due cause and hatred manifesting in enjoyment of harm and causing death - as the kind of sin which characterises Satan and those whose behaviour is outcome of Satan’s doing.

Obviously the true meaning of this passage is not a lie, coming as it does from the Son of Man who received His teachings from the Father who is only light with no darkness - but how you understand it and think about it might not itself be true. Some tend to twist its meaning to seek to accuse believers of being evil.

These ferocious, yet outwardly religious students of scripture should be careful how they explain the passage because it is easy to misinterpret it as saying that any wrong-doing at all means you are not a child of God.

We need to understand how people like John were writing, that it was not how people of western cultures write. It was more rhetorical: More about setting one viewpoint against another, less about being definitive.

John in the same epistle stated how to deal with children of God sinning so he was not saying children of God who sin are children of Satan. It is important to learn (from God) how to see it the way John saw it (John had learned it from Jesus and the Holy Spirit).

God does not approve of His children sinning. He does not endorse it. He is not accepting of it. He sees the devil’s influence in causing it. If all you do is sin then you are totally under Satan’s influence and control, like the world is. If you are born of God that level of sin will be gone from you. It is not to say it is so complete that you never sin. Jesus said about how bad it is if someone causes a child of God, a true disciple to sin. You can be caused to sin. It is possible. But sin is not permissible for you and must not be allowed to characterise you and if it does you are slave to that sin and need to be freed. The Son of Man sets people who believe free if they hold to His teachings which are liberating.

There are some who use this passage as accusers of the brethren, like their father the devil, but if they believe that Jesus is the Christ and hold to His teachings, they too will be set free by Him.

Afterlife

Do you doubt there is an afterlife?

Consider the kinds of animal which become inanimate but can reanimate - some kinds of frogs, some species of caterpillars, etc - and consider those kinds of grubs and caterpillars that turn into a cocoon state of a virtually inanimate pool of chemicals without organs or any form and then reanimate as a completely different animal form. These all have a period in which their body is inanimate. Yet they as individuals still exist. They can exist for months in that state of their body being inanimate yet somehow their essence as individuals, their identities persisting. How can you doubt that there is a more general science to this which applies to humans after death?

Happy New Britain!

You shall go out with joy
And be let forth with peace,
And the mountains and the hills
Will break forth before you.
There'll be shouts of joy
And the trees of the fields
Will clap, will clap their hands.

The One True God

Really the concept of “the One True God” is about the future final state which will then continue constantly, in which one god will become utterly dominant and solely worshipped, in the prophecies it will be the Father as God together with His Son as Lord. 

Utmost Importance

Extremely important: you think about it, there is a possibility, deep down, you might some day do something that makes you so guilty it would be only right for you to die for doing it. And furthermore, think about it, you might not be able to stop yourself doing it repeatedly. You would likely get caught. It is not really possible to say it won’t ever happen in your life. It might have already started. Dealing with this is of utmost importance. Read Gospel of John chapter 8. Jesus has it covered.

“Fires of Hell”

Hell seems, in the first instance, to be for those who have escaped justice in this life. It catches up. Karma and all that. Justice is like fire. Recompense owed stays around like any debt that is not forgiven. Fire symbolises this in ancient religions such as Mosaic Law and Zoroastrianism. So the fire of hell need not only be interpreted literally but symbolically too. Fire comes out from the offended towards to offender, says the Law of Moses. Trial by fire comes to all says Zoroastrianism. Not literal fire but spiritual recompense debt attribution manifesting in all kinds of ways. The hell teaching says something of you survives death and this fire can follow you into that further existence if justice is not satisfied in this life. There is then, later, an ultimate settling up beyond this hell season in the Final Judgement (or judgements, since there may be several stages of this - see Book of Enoch).

The Mystery of Children of God and Prayer

God wants servants with the potential to be friends and sons. This means growing to know His will and learning to do it. He will have others alongside Him and His Son. The family will be huge. He loves the potential children He raises to be adopted as His own. To be His own means learning to pray in line with His will within the teachings and name of His Son. The Lord’s Prayer is an example. So He will share ongoing life in His great kingdom with many. These will always have a say.

The Rise of Culture

A lot of people, I think, are baffled by time and space and matter and energy around them and how it works. Not on a scientific level but a more metaphysical and spiritual level of chance and outcomes of the vying of hidden wills. Seeing how chance is not enough to explain order and grace the feeling is that patterns control outcomes and patterns significant to outcomes might be reproducible. The baffling but compelling curiosity is to try and guess what constitutes a significant pattern conducive to an either positive or negative outcome, irrespective of the complexity of hidden factors determining such an outcome. Can outcomes be influenced? When outside forces offer advice on how to determine such complexities the natural human reaction is to lap it up and play along and so cultures are formed and are surprisingly persistent. Cultures include divination, charm tokens, totems, beguiling alluring techniques, idolatry, metallurgy, weaponry, martial arts, medical procedures, expertise in herbal poisons and remedies, esoteric knowledge of the spiritual realm, enchantments, invocations, shamanism and the like. These things have diminished morality but raised hopes of elevated prowess of humanity and have matured into the sciences.

The Real Thing

You hear it said “Believe in God or go to Hell”
That oversimplification falls a bit short. Many believe in God existing but still go to Hell. Satan believes in God’s existence. The thing is to believe about Jesus that He is and was (even much much longer ago than when He came) and died and lives forever because that will colour how you take His teachings such as His qualifications for what He says. Then holding to those teachings in the light of this.

Don’t Trivialise Baptism

Actually using baptism correctly to identify with Jesus Christ and indicate commitment to His teachings is powerfully beneficial in uniting the person so baptised with Jesus Christ. If that person then continues permanently to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ this unity is completed and the person so identified with Jesus is made part of Jesus. Now since Jesus is with the Father and spiritually in unity with the Father, blessed by the Father, pleasing to the Father, eternally living in the Father’s power, having purified sin by His death and having been raised to life once and for all by the Father, happily considered permanently Son of this Father, then yes, that is a blessed state of love to live with permanently and the Son continues that state by keeping you in good standing with the Father by corrected sins.

The Ongoing Gospel

Let the ongoing gospel story record what happens today in Jesus’ ongoing eternal life. How there are many He meets and how He teaches us miracle-working and faith. How He is still in the Father and the Father in Him and He in those of us who have Him as our teacher and we in Him. How the Holy Spirit builds us up and brings to us the mysteries Jesus knows and tells us the power of Lord Jesus Christ’s name in Nature. Have it include the workings of the Father in all this and His appearing to those of us who believe and His rebuking of sin and ongoing command to love Him with all our hearts and souls and strength and mind - and Voice. Have it include the ongoing judgments of the Father, God, in this world where His own people still sin despite all this and have to be monitored by the world’s surveillance systems. Yet those who know Him and fear Him are daily protected like in a fiery furnace by His angelic messenger so we are not destroyed. The gospel that began in the first century goes on and on forever.

The Almighty

Atheism is labelled so because Atheists do not have Almighty God, the Theos, as their God. Hindus believe in many gods but not the Almighty God, the Theos, from which we get Theism. They are without this Theos in their religion but do not call themselves Atheists because they identify with their gods, not with their absence of God Almighty. Strictly speaking, polytheism is not belief in many gods existing but putting many of them in top spot. Monotheism is not belief in only one god existing (not in it’s truest original sense) but belief that only one is Father and Almighty Supreme God. So strictly speaking Trinitarianism is polytheistic since Father and Son and Spirit are regarded as Almighty God. In contrast to Trinitarians, the Apostle Paul admitted there are many gods but confessed the monotheistic faith that only one God and Father exists who is over all these many gods and Father to them. He confessed the faith that Jesus is Son of this Father and is Lord over all gods and all of the rest of us too. Trinitarianism gets around the charge of polytheism by its insistence on unity between Father and Son and Spirit even though they somewhat polytheistically regard all as Almighty God. So in this sense they differ from Paul who is truly monotheistic by only believing the Father is the Almighty God. I have suspicions that Trinitarian dogma was introduced like Sunday rest day, to distance Christianity from Judaism and keep Jews out of it on pretext the Jews were Judaizers. A strict Jew obeying the Ten Commandments would be unable to embrace Trinity God because it puts God Father and Son together as the Almighty God. Similarly they could not stop keeping their Sabbath just to obey the Gentile church councils such as Council of Laodicea. Paul, however, did not hate his own people like that nor God and God’s truth and God’s commands. Paul did not in any way believe in any multiplicity of God Almighty. Only the Father is God Almighty in Paul’s beliefs and dogmas. Trinitarian dogma that Jesus is both Almighty God and man in the same body was invented, I think, to force Jews to break the commandment not to have other gods before God. Just like the Council of Laodicea tried to force Jews wanting to join the church to break the commandment to keep the Sabbath holy for rest. They do not have to persist anti-Semitic dogma any more. Laodiceans used Judaization as lame excuse but the threat is no reason to force anyone to break commandments of God. Forcing people to sin only brings the word of Christ that it is better to have a stone tied around the neck and cast into the sea. Jews, likewise, need not break any commandments of God to be acceptors of their Messiah, their Salvation. It is the Father who is Jesus’ God and Father, the Father who is Almighty God, the Most High. 

A message to Atheists

ATHEISTS ASK: WHY DOESN’T GOD PROVE HIMSELF TO EVERYONE?

The wisdom of God seems to me to be to focus on those who believe from the testimony they have received and miracles they have seen and God seems to put to one side for a bit the needs of hardened unbelievers. God loves the inner circle of believers who are becoming a family around Him. Others take time to get to this position of believing but God does provide space and some help in which they can take their time to work things out. It is a balance. At the moment the believers are sinning badly, perhaps too much influenced by Atheist dogma. This is uppermost in God’s mind it seems. The command to love God supremely needs to be put up high in view of these believers. But if your Atheism is a condition you want addressed by God then try showing willingness to cooperate and try all you can to get a glimpse of what God has sent so far to help faith, then reach out to the unknown God and maybe He will make Himself known to you too. Christ died for you.

Placeholders

The concept of a ‘placeholder’ applies well to religion. I grew up in religion with a lot of mental placeholders in my head, like scaffolding keeping my brain intact until some real believable facts could be put in place. I longed for the day the placeholders could go and hard facts replace them. It made me search and search for truth and assurance of truth. I wanted to stop having to convert myself to believing God exists before getting up each morning. I thought nobody understood this about me in my religious circles. I started hunting down facts related to God and Christ so I could be sure I had real faith, not pretend beliefs. John the Baptist was a great fact to help belief in Jesus being the Christ. His historic existence dawned on me. The facts of the mentions he gets in the New Testament gospels and how those refer back to Old Testament prophecies about someone levelling things to prepare for a Messiah did convince me genuinely of Jesus being this Messiah. The facts stacked up. Still I needed more. The NT foretold the Holy Spirit being given to believers. Why not to me? Perhaps God did not think me a real believer. The beliefs I thought I had might be still those placeholders and God is no fool. Then I saw Him.

To Find Meaning in Life

Be like Nature. Keep doing over and over, ever and ever, what you are given to do. Without wavering. Even dying like you are given to die in hope of living again like you are given to live again if you are worthy of resurrection. Believing that the goal is to be children of the Creator of it all, ever lovingly serving Him, together with the Father and the Son. Becoming the next creation. 

Missing the Point

Theists and Atheists debate whether logic in nature shows God really must exist, yet all these debates about the existence of God are missing the point a bit. It is like debating the existence of the mobile phone company when the mobile phone bills are going unpaid and you about to get your phone cut off. Better to debate the duty to love God and believe in His teachings: The teachings of God coming to us through the likes of Jesus Christ and others. Like doing unto others as you would have them do unto you. Like being like the ‘Good Samaritan’ when people nearby need emergency kindness. Like being so loving towards beloved friends that you lay down your life for them. Like asking over and over for justice from God against enemies rather than taking vengeance into your own hands. These teachings fill the social psyche around us and inside us. We need to believe into these teachings instead of getting hung up on logic and existence and what is real or imaginary. 

Normalised Miracles

Just look at galaxies. Their arms defy science. Their arms move around the outside of the galaxy at the same speed as the galaxy turns. This is miraculous because it runs counter to scientific reasoning. It is happening every day so it is unusual to call it a miracle but God must be involved for it to happen. A hidden power makes it happen. It defies the Standard Model. A normalised miracle. Then consider that these normalised miracles happening day after day are everywhere in Nature. The growth of plants. The movement of planets. A hidden name drives it all. A hidden God’s power. We just struggle to acknowledge it. We need to change our thinking.  Once we realise there is truth like this which we just need to accept into our thinking then we can behold the wonder of Nature like in the workings of living cells and think how God has made it so. These natural things such as living cells are normalised miracles. In their daily workings they display miraculous power granted to all things which obey the teachings of the Son of Man in their daily behaviour. So it is normal for healings to happen too in the name of this Son of Man.

Paid Worship of God

The word for idolatry in Revelation 21:8 means idol worship which is paid for - worship for money - idolatrous = idol + latris where latris means a hired worker. People, you would think, should not be encouraged to worship God the way they worship idols - as hired and paid staff. On the other hand the word latris does occur many times in scripture in reference to the worship of God. https://biblehub.com/str/greek/3000.htm So worshipping God as a hireling is still acceptable enough. Over time servants progress to friends as they learn the Master’s will and willingly do as He wills.

Ongoing Creation

God does work mysteriously. Overall the outcomes tell us the ways of God are predominantly good but there is some “nature red in tooth and claw” evidence of a scary, darker component to what God does. Even though we might intelligently dismiss the idea of random events creating us, the concept of God creating us is itself hard to grasp correctly, truthfully. We might think God just dove in one day and made us then got out of there quick. That seems to be how Genesis implies it happened. Yet there is truth to learn about God that tempers this understanding. He can work in chance events like the proverb says “the dice is cast but God determines the outcome”. So making us might have been by a series of tailorings of events and might not yet be finished. God might be constantly adding touches to the creative work. Jesus turning water into wine is the closest miracle to a demonstration of God’s creative work as He did it through Jesus. Plus it shows He still creates. We lose our skin and hair and even shed our bones repeatedly and constantly through our lives without noticing and they are replaced many times over and God has plenty of constant opportunity in all that to work in chance events creatively. So we see Creator in creations.

The Meaning of Life

I never thought I could find meaning in life and in the natural living world until the Holy Spirit of God found in churches started teaching me to do so. Over decades I started learning the meaning of living things. They start minuscule, microscopic, and very gradually grow without any leaps or jumps, gradually doing their bit of growth for each day on that day, none in advance, none in arrears, just a day’s growth for a day’s life, until they fill the space around them with wondrous living matter. The Lord of life grew this way and will fill the universe having become a tiny cell and baby and having even died but then arisen to live and grow and fill and master all things forever and with His way we can be like that to some extent too.

Before the Advent

I recommend a look at the Parables section (middle chapters) of the Book of Enoch for an understanding of the Son before the advent. Throughout those chapters He was called the Son of Man, the Elect One, the Anointed. The chapters were not added by Christians as some suppose. Many scholars agree the chapters predate Christianity and personally I accept they are original work of the prophet Enoch. Then in chapter 105 (R H Charles translation chapter numbering) God calls the Anointed one His Son “I and My Son ...”. Daniel follows closely on from Enoch (even though, in my belief written thousands of years later but in prophetic continuity) and parallels passages such as the one where the man (actually this Son of Man before the advent) is led into the presence of the Ancient of Days. Ancient of Days or Head of Days is the phrase for the Father in both prophecies. Revelation likewise follows on from Daniel. Closely like Daniel follows from Enoch. The passage in Rev 1 describing the appearance of the Son of Man after the advent exactly follows the wording of Daniel’s description of Him before the advent. So the continuity is there from beginning of prophetic scripture to the end.

The Name of the Lord Jesus the Christ

God the Father fills the universe and was before the universe and is forever and ever and ever and ever, ever blessed. His Son became flesh and then grew from an embryo to a young adult, to a dead, sacrificed young adult to a resurrected adult to the Lord who will go on forever to fill the Universe together with His Father, His God. This is why we call the Christ, Jesus, ‘Lord’. He is not only the lord of what is very big but what is very small too, having Himself become the very microscopic perfection of the small in the perfect will of God the Father and grown in full view of Mankind to become a perfect young adult. Then in that perfection He died on a wooden cross like a tree, as a sacrifice raised up in front of all to purify all those who regard Him and keep His teachings. The Son of Man. The Christ. Ha Mashiach. ‘Mash’ in old Sumerian meaning a sacrifice that settles debts, Mash being the Sumerian symbol written as a cross. Then He rose from death to become a perfect, living resurrected human, growing to become so great that He will fill heaven and earth. Master over all things. The Lord. Lord being translation of the Greek word kyrios, the root of which means one like a cloud who starting very small grows to fill the whole vessel, and is normally used of the head of the household, growing from a child as son to become master of the house. The son who becomes the Lord. His personal name Jesus means salvation, deliverance. He became all this in full view of mankind so that mankind can see it because it is this name Lord Jesus Christ that is given among human beings by which we are perfected and purified from sin as we see this example of perfection and He purifies us who see Him and believe in Him. This is to save us and He ever lives to perfect that salvation of us. Nature adheres to this lordship quality of His name in how a tree grows what starts as a tiny bud and grows to become a fully grown leaf or branch. He grows to fullness organically. He does not jump ahead but does it the long way, the hard way, that adheres to the will of God. He does it obediently and shows us this obedience that we would live this way too and so be saved. As we do so, meanwhile behind the scenes He has endured crucifixion so as to purify our state before God in terms of the sacrifice our failings needed to bring us into the right standing with God, His Father, our Father, His God, our God. So we too can be sons of God. 

Can good education coexist with faith in God?

Understanding the evidence for the existence of God and gods requires a certain amount of good quality education. One of the greatest proofs or matters of evidence for God’s existence is the calendar but understanding this is an education in itself. Children can be taught it by parents but only with clarity of thought and good grasp of reality. The Moon can be explained to children with regard to its four phases of a week each all completing a 28 day cycle. This explains why there is a week and a weekend break. A 28 day lunar cycle happening thirteen times approximates to a year but is not quite accurate. If people had only used the Moon to determine the year the seasons would gradually shift in timing in that 364-day year. This too could be explained as part of educating children or adults well. The harvest times require a better year understanding. Only the Sun can enable it. This explains the importance of the Sun to the proper functioning of any society. The solar and lunar calendars can be combined and both Sun and Moon used to keep farming in sync with nature. Otherwise you start life with a year beginning in spring and end it with a year beginning in autumn. Evidence of God: How on Earth did humans work it out? Who helped?

Is Jesus a historical person?

ATHEISTS ASK WHETHER JESUS IS HISTORICAL
There are two possibilities. Either time travellers took artificial intelligence back to the first or second century and used it to generate a clever set of fake news stories and distributed these stories by smartphones handed out and later destroyed a century later. Or He is the Son of God who became flesh just before the first century AD and grew from an embryo to a young adult, to a dead, sacrificed young adult to a resurrected adult to the Lord who will go on forever to fill the Universe together with His Father, His God. If it is the second possibility which is true it would explain why He is called the Christ, Jesus, ‘the Lord’. The first century Greek word for Lord has roots in something that starts small then grows like a cloud to fill everything. 

Adapa and the Whereabouts of God

THE ANCIENT TEXTS OF ADAPA

There are ancient texts of an account copied either from an oral account or perhaps even an originally written account from the lifetime of Adapa (biblical Adam) called Adapa and the South Wind which might come from the time of the writings of Enoch. They were discovered twice in archaeology from separate times so appear to have been preserved for many centuries. They might provide evidence corresponding to passages in Enoch about the whereabouts of the Throne of God. The account tells how Adapa (Adam), one of the seven sages, a line of patriarchs possibly those listed in Genesis and elsewhere as being the first seven in Adam’s genealogy up till Enoch, was able to enter some kind of tunnel into a mountain guarded by two contemporary sages, leading to the Throne of God where he went to give account of his actions. This corroborates the Book of Enoch and possibly the Epic of Gilgamesh on the whereabouts of God’s dwelling place and court. This would place it within a mountain in the Middle East accessible to Adapa who lived in Eridu, now Southern Iraq.

In a world torn apart by religion, hope remains

Not all of the world is torn apart by religion. Becoming part of the bit that isn’t is your best hope. It is not called the world though. It is called the body of Christ. Within this body its members are united by a Holy Spirit which is like a web extending from the throne of God to every believer keeping us all united to one body. Christ is the head of this body which belongs to Him. He owns it because His blood was shed for its sins. The baptism into His teachings keeps its members in this body, receiving the Holy Spirit with signs, miracles and gifts of grace, because they believe.

Hear O UK

UK: The eagle of the Lord will be over the house of ‘Israel’ again but it is police flying the helicopters and GCHQ/NSA/CIA controlling the mass surveillance so they all play a key part in God’s plan because of the sin of ‘Israel’ (no not Israel the nation). Love the LORD, your God O ‘Israel’, with all your heart and all your soul and all your strength and all your mind - and all your voice!

The ’Sky Daddy’

Atheists ask why people still believe in a ‘Sky Daddy’

Look at the history of the word God. It is found in 3000 BC and even earlier texts depicted in pictograms with a star which also came to mean fatherly supreme God. So from earliest times * meant both God over all and Father over all. The star has the added meaning of worthiness of being blessed forever. We use ‘star’ to denote this today and used to use the related word aristocrat. The God over all was from earliest times considered to be Father of all other gods or archangels. In Christianity the Apostle Paul invoked this understanding (1 Cor 8:6, etc.) by speaking of the Father who is God over all and ever blessed. The ancient understanding depicted with a star symbol does indeed allude to sky and to father over all. The sky is a symbol of highest authority, stars being above all. It is probable that this being is highest in situation as well as high in status. The ancient texts about His situation imply a high mountain such as Mount Lebanon and later symbolised by the word Zion. The Book of Enoch describes what seems to be a chamber - possibly a magma chamber - deep inside such a mountain. But the sky/highness is mostly a matter of status and authority that does not change and diminish through eternity, unaffected by worldly decay. Important is that this being is not only highest but is fatherly and is blessed forever. The ancients recognised this fatherly status because of creation of all other beings and ongoing care for these. The care is above reproach too and hence this being is forever blessed. So nothing about modern humanity diminishes the worthiness of this God for belief.

The Way of Obedience is Joined with Suffering

God sends into the world His Son, the Christ, and tells everyone they must believe in this Christ, this beloved Son. The Christ was taught by God, taught a way of an essential combination of obeying and of suffering. We can live innocently filling our time with normal things, a bit of this, a bit of that. Then we hear or remember there are right things too but as soon as we set out to do these things taught by Christ we find we are quickly joined by something to which Christ was no stranger: Suffering. Obedience to Christ is a magnet to suffering. We gather our pennies and determine to discretely give them to the poor and suddenly adversity dogs our heals. This is the way: The way Christ walked as well as taught. Walks as well as teaches. Worship by the Spirit and persecution lies in wait. No separating of obedience and suffering is possible because God commissioned both. Embrace the inevitability of suffering as you resolve to walk increasingly in obedience and let Christ be the Saviour and the Lord that God has made Him to keep you on that path. I will too and we will have fellowship in this Way.

Behind Enemy Lines

The book of Revelation (Apocalypse) tells of three key eschatological apocalyptic entities which seem to be related to the EU:
1. Babylon the Great (Rome the secular city and seat of Roman power for centuries and later so-called Holy Roman power and now influential power worldwide),
2. the Beast associated with this Babylon the Great (seems to be Europe’s ongoing Empire via descendants of a Charlemagne, seen in ten horns which seem to be the Charlemagne royal houses of Europe) and
3. an image of the first Beast (seems to be the EU) which is created by a second Beast with two heads (seems to be USA with Republicans and Democrats).

Babylon the Great was used as a picture so it would make sense when God says to leave it. There was an old prophecy that is sung in churches “You shall go out with joy and be led forth in peace”. Getting out of the EU will be akin to Jews leaving Babylon and returning from exile. In the time of Persian rule there were many Jews who were allowed to return to Jerusalem and rebuild it. Some chose to stay but the ones who returned and built the Temple were revived spiritually and had a great awakening.

Those Jews who stayed in Babylon were in prophecy described as blind sheep - they did not return to build the Temple but turned away from it and were blind. This was foretold in the Book of Enoch prophecy. Nowadays the colloquial phrase is ‘sheeple’ for blinded sheep. People need to wake up and have their eyes opened spiritually and staying in association with the most immoral block of countries on earth does not open your eyes but keeps you in the dark spiritually. Babylon the Great, secular Rome and those closely associated with it, is called in Revelation “the Mother of Harlots”. The EU today has 65% of all the world’s online child sexually abusive images. By far the worse place on Earth for porn and sexual immorality. Staying in league with this block keeps God’s people spiritually blind. Leaving the EU, even if spiritually when politically is impossible (though with God nothing is impossible) is a massive step towards fellowship with God and Christ.

Perhaps like many, I find myself living ‘behind enemy lines’ as a Brexiteer-Leaver living and working in Remain territory, like Lot living in Sodom, but Lord Jesus the Christ is well able and willing to keep me from the punishment He authorises over these territories.

Brexit Release

It is becoming clear that the British Parliament cannot deliver a real Brexit. All that can be done is to release them from their obligation and pray to God “Thy will be done”. Forgiveness must come from the heart willingly, but we have sins we want the Father to forgive, so may God forgive us as we forgive Boris and the others. They simply cannot pay what they owe us, so all we can do now is forgive their debt. They must remember they are forgiven when faced with people like Assange though. Like the parable of the forgiven debtor who could not pay but went off after being forgiven and grabbed another by the throat demanding settlement, the king unforgave him. Anyhow, if we want to pray “Forgive us our debts as we forgive those who sin against us” we have to stand there praying and give forgiveness with our hearts, so God forgives us too. I think personally I can do that over Brexit now because it is clear they cannot pay. There is no good in persisting to hold them to it. Releasing them allows God to release us. That is the Way.

Unchanged Unchanging

Jesus Christ promised to show Himself personally to those who keep His teachings. Blessed keeping by Him of that promise meant I did get a meeting with Him, albeit so brief, back in 1995, and He clearly and wondrously showed me in that encounter that He teaches EXACTLY the same today as He did back then. That was amazing and astounding but very real. I guarantee He has not changed His tune, changed His teachings, changed His faith-giving, changed His own behaviour which matches His teachings exactly, perfectly. God be blessed! Jesus foretold only one change that would happen to His followers before His return - Christ’s Apostle Paul affirmed the same as having happened - the Holy Spirit being given. When I came into major contact with the Holy Spirit directly I found He utterly affirms the Lord Jesus Christ as authoritative teacher who even teaches nature with authority that it obeys (so clearly He did so from the beginning of time). The teachings come only from the Father and He simply does not change, ever. For ever and ever and ever and ever He will be the One. That too was shown me by the Father, God Himself.

The True Jesus Christ

Jesus Christ proclaims that all authority in heaven and earth has been given to Him. It is a bit difficult for all authority to be given to someone if they are God. They would already have it. We should believe and love who Jesus actually is. Simply saying He is God is not good enough and not accurate enough. He is Lord. That is not quite God but as close as you can get while being fully human. That captures the truth accurately. That is how the first apostles who closely knew Him put it. Let’s love the truth about Him and love Him in truth.

The Mark

Brexit is being resisted because of the coming new world order global government and the USA role in the establishment of the EU. Soon the EU mark (traditionally known as 666) will appear. Those who take it will be doomed.

The Time when the USA with bilateral support decided to recreate the Roman Empire to counter Communism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan
The Apocalypse foretold a beast with two heads creating a copy of the former beast. USA has two heads - Republicans and Democrats. Both worked together to recreate the Roman Empire by beginning a European United States now called the European Union. 

The Cross

The cross started as a written Sumerian cuneiform symbol at the beginning of the history of writing and it depicted a ‘half’: One of two. A ‘whole’ (one of one, one and only) was depicted by the symbol of a star, the symbol of the topmost God (and a high aristocratic or angelic being). Over time the cross came to also mean mediation and priestly sacrifice and a sacrifice that takes away sins or debts. The word for this cross symbol is Mash or Mass, as in Mashiach (Messiah) and the Christian Mass. Three crosses meant exorcist. The cross took its meaning for medicine (like a pharmacist cross or the Red Cross) early in history, being associated with shamanism and priesthood. It already meant all this before the crucifixion of the Christ. So it is highly symbolic that Christ died on a cross.

What does it mean to prophesy?

What does it really mean to prophesy? Relating what God actually says. That is the point of being a prophet. Hearing what God actually personally says and searching out its meaning by human thought and relaying it as a human to other humans so it is accessible but still maintains as exactly as possible what God actually said and meant and made known. It is not easy because out of context it might be misunderstood so you have to try as best you can to convey the context too without detracting from the content. So it might be God (as with me indeed He did) gave the words “Israel has sinned!” together with a sign signifying the gravity of it (as indeed He did with a sign of mass surveillance like a vulture or eagle scanning the ground for prey), but saying it like that might sound racist or antisemitic when actually the message was not only targeted, you prophetically know, at Israel as a nation but rather Israel as those who hold God in reverence as supreme God. So very briefly you could say “Israel has sinned, says the Lord God” but it could be misunderstood, so you best do it in a situation where you are confident it will be received as intended, if possible, but otherwise you just do your best trying not to mislead or misinform.

Love God

There is a growing merger of the people who recognise that the most high god is God Almighty but there is still apostasy of love of God which now means all should be commanded again to love God and restore the honouring of His words and commands. Love God. That is His command. Obviously that means remembering the ways of God taught long ago such as sabbaths. Most of all it means keeping His commands and keeping the neighbours to whom we owe much love high in our priorities. So - To whom it may concern: love God.

Clothing for the mind

We humans clothe ourselves and we use words; two ways in which we differ from other animals. We use words: Words in our minds; Words in our mouths; Words on computers; Words in writing. We clothe our minds with words and we clothe our bodies with garments. Words are that with which the mind clothes itself and if words are clothing for the mind, then the Christ is clothing for the mind of God: Christ who is the Word of God. The Logos. So by clothing ourselves with Christ, taking to heart Christ’s words and putting those words into action, we clothe ourselves with the clothing of God; the clothing which is what God’s own mind takes for clothing. This sets us apart from the animals.

How convincing are the Bible and Quran?

The Bible and Quran do not really provide conclusive proof on their own (although they persuade enough to convince many, including myself); not without a good understanding of their historical and religious context. Genesis, for example, is unconvincing on its own of individual facts such as creation of Adam, Noah or the Tower of Babel, until you see other, secular evidence, such as ancient texts like ‘Adapa and the South Wind’, ‘Instruction of Sharappak’, ‘Sumerian King Lists’, ‘Epic of Gilgamesh’, ‘Eridu Genesis’, ‘Enuma Elish’ and ‘Enmerkar and the Lord Aratta’. Then you get to realise that there is more to all this than religion and persuasion of the masses, but rather that actual events were recorded, and out of these events arose, through centuries, a deep understanding of the supremacy of God, an understanding which directed the course of human history.
To a pure, open mind, the teachings of Jesus recorded in the gospels have such authority and genuine knowledge that they do rather prove the existence of God since this same man with such authority put it all down to God, ‘the Father’.
To a pure, open mind, the clear, sincere purpose of Jesus’ teachings to avert disastrous future for those who hear these teachings does prove that there is a saving Father who sent Him. Yet to a warped mind none of this proves anything.
Do dictionaries prove the spellings of words? Note: In Scrabble only certain dictionaries are canonised for this purpose of proof. In Scrabble there are always some who argue even with the dictionary, just as Atheists argue with a priest. Do dictionaries prove meanings of words? Not 100% since they do not make certain the conclusions quite on a par with faith. Scriptures taken correctly and understood properly and listened to with open heart can do better than a dictionary, not only in settling disputes and clarifying meanings but also in helping confirm beliefs but are not 100% reliable since we never know whether we understood them correctly and got close enough to original meanings and in our hearts are aware it could all be a pretence until we get more conclusive proof corroborating them.
A simplistic understanding of scriptures, such as is propounded by so many religious individuals, leads to use of scripture which is not convincing but is easily dismiss and despised. Many use scriptures like a kind of magic spell which is supposed to inspire faith in all but the hardest of hearts. Yet often they misunderstand scripture passages or single verses and spread their misconceptions rather than using the scriptures properly and intelligently with due learning background. So Atheists might have come across this and thus think scriptures are ridiculous and prove nothing. Yet if the scriptures are taken in context and humbly learned from with intelligent enquiry and research they show profound lessons which have been recorded for posterity as mankind’s finest, most elevated lessons. The depth of meaning is unfathomable and yet deeply satisfying to human pathos. Often other scriptures need to be brought into focus besides the canonised ones since many were sidelined by unscrupulous generations of religious and secular leaders.

Lord’s Supper?

Question: Is the trinitarian “Lord’s Supper” truly the Lord’s Supper if it is only for trinitarians?

Should the PM of the UK do a deal with the Brexit Party?

I do not believe in Just In Time wisdom. I do not believe in Just In Time politics. You cannot go hand-in-hand with fools and foolish pursuits hoping to switch to wisdom just in time for an outcome. He might think the goal of a united Great Britain free of the EU and the European tyrannical control can best be achieved by playing along with folly then switching to wisdom at the last minute but the reality is that there is never really a last minute and folly tends to stick. “If you make that face and the wind changes your face might stick like that” as British wisdom tells us. Go in company of fools too long and you become a fool. Go in company of the EU too long and you become the EU. Then it remains to others to do the leaving. And they leave you, when they leave. You have to question the loyalty to his country of a politician who would rather do a deal with Europe than with the leader of the Brexit Party.

Real Brexit?

Brits wanting to be out of the EU should maybe remember it is the British government (answering to the British Parliament) and not the British people who is a member of the European Union. As such the British people are separate already from the EU. Maybe this is not reflected in law and treaties and constitutions (yet), but if you want out then simply not sharing in the government and Parliament processes such as elections is one way to stay out of involvement with the EU.

Revelatory Dreams

We can be told about the afterlife in our dreams. A few days ago I woke up early and thought I’d pray and, wanting to ask for something beneficial to believers, I prayed I would prophesy. I went back to sleep. My dreams were then all about the afterlife. I dreamt that there was a book about the afterlife that is in two parts. Both parts are about the best things that can happen if you live worthily. The first part is all about the places of the dead in the here and now and one place which saves you from torment and misery. It is a place of rest and calm. People resting in it are almost like they are alive. They have energy and joy. Then the second part of the book concerns what happens to the worthy ones later. They are awakened from their rest later. They are brought gloriously back to life. The revelation by dream continued two days later. I was in the Hereafter to tell people more about it and there I was surprised to find Jacob to a great extent in charge of things. I was asked why I was surprised and worried about telling people this and it was pointed out that it was very much in the gospel scriptures. Jesus said “people speak of the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob - He is not the God of the dead but of the living”.

The Main Thing - the One Rule

God sends into the world His son, the Christ, and tells everyone they must believe in this Christ, this beloved Son. That is the one main rule God made. It is enshrined in the scriptures. Christ died for you, becoming the sacrifice we need for falling short, and God raised Him for you and you really need to hold to that and let it sink in, believing it. He is the key to you living forever, made worthy of living forever, by this Christ alive for you and me right now.

Dire Warning

There exists the testimony of Jesus (it exists even if you deny He exists or existed). This is thoroughly moral (even if you deny it is true). This tells of places of the dead. Jesus claimed to know such things personally, first hand, and by teachings from His Father God. The moral teaching is worth heeding even if you doubt its veracity and plausibility. To get it wrong could be hugely costly to you yourself irrespective of anyone else. It claims, He claims, that a person constantly ignoring poor people you can help will later have your own cries ignored when you are in the place assigned you in death. There is no room for cynicism. Poor people who are suffering severely need attention and help from the better off. Being such a help occasionally costs you little and benefits them greatly and Jesus warns missing out on giving this help is one way to get in trouble after death when existence continues. Think your own thoughts about after-death (the ‘after-life’) existence but get this wrong and the poor will suffer and so will you. Nobody else. Even if you do not believe most things about God believe this.

Jesus in Art

Artistic depictions of Jesus are simple reminders that He is. If He is then God is too. Better by far is to encounter Jesus Himself in the spirit and then know that He is - with personal certainty. That becomes personal proof of the existence of God who sent Him and was proclaimed by Him and has raised Him. 

Using your voice

It is important to be free to speak out if you have a voice but do it in love for God.

Has Religion passed its expiry date?

Has religion passed its expiry date? There is a promise of Christ that has not expired. It is that if you love Him enough to keep His sayings then He Himself will come to you, as will the Father, and make their home with you. This is not expired nor does it expire. It is how you and I can know God even today. Father and Son. And receive the Holy Spirit manifestations as a stamp and seal on this too. This is true, I have personally found. It is reality. It proves to be a reality which can be experienced and I indeed guarantee I have experienced it as reality - Father and Son and real Spirit.

The Origins of Religion

Why did the people of Uruk start using writing in the earliest times of civilisation? They were simple peasants of the Urbaid Period. The temple priests out of nowhere started writing symbols for recording transactions and drawing up contracts of obligations and completed obligations - and among those first symbols were the cross and a symbol for deity. * meaning the One God at the top of the hierarchy. + meaning just one of two. That cross never got lost as a symbol throughout history and developed to also mean a sacrifice for forgiveness of sins - yes long before the Christian Period began. It also meant part of shamanistic intermediating between mankind and the gods, including exorcism. That too was thousands of years before it was used similarly in Christianity. Hence its parallel association with pharmacy and healthcare. Throughout history these two concepts symbolised in the star and the cross - DENGIR and MASH - were preserved into modern times in the religion of the Turks and Mongols - Tengrism. Even the word DENGIR for the symbol of God (and gods) is preserved as the Tengristic name for God, Tengri. Similarly in the Chinese Ancient Religion name for God, Tian. The symbols are related 天 and 𒀭. The word for 𒀭 in Sumerian was DINGIR or AN but later in Akkadian it became EL (hence names like Gabri-el). So there was acknowledgement of a topmost God among the gods even at the time writing was first developed in Uruk and it continued throughout history.

What is the best way to open a closed mind?

What is the best way to open a closed mind?

If I knew I wouldn’t tell you. I would simply open your mind to it instead. 

Speak soul to soul. The mind puts up barriers to protect the soul but speak to the soul and those redundant barriers come down. But only living spirit can convey anything directly from soul to soul. I suspect the spirits of many are too dead to do this.

Constantly and consistently speak only the truth, with grace, in love.

Constantly back up consistently speaking the truth by actions consistent with that truth. Actions speak louder than words. People put up barriers to protect themselves from words which are inconsistent with actions.

These words can sometimes do it: CHRIST DIED FOR YOU.

If you had a choice to live forever

If I had a choice of living forever it would have to be more than a choice. It would have to include someone else who lives forever and is worthy of it making me worthy of it and keeping me worthy of it so my living is not a constant affront to others. Especially,  my living would have to not be an affront to the righteous topmost God. Well here is the good news: the Son of Man will keep me worthy forever while I believe and hold to His teachings. 

Parallel Universes

Parallel Universes: 

their possible albeit unlikely existence is a real and present danger to Atheists everywhere in all times in all the past and future in all universes because it only needs one parallel universe to have a real god in it and suddenly all these Atheists are wrong.

Was Religion an Invention Introduced to Control People?

Early religion appears, from archaeology of Eridu temples (Urbaid Period), to have been about sacrifices made to a kind of universally acknowledged topmost god then maybe to other gods later as more cities were built by the patron gods who were lower than the top God. The temples built in service to God and gods had men working there who used to fish and catch small animals both to sacrifice and to feed the visitors and these workers themselves in their service: so it seems from bones found around the altars and from oral and later written traditions about these times (e.g. ‘Adapa and the South Wind’). Did these men later called priests and kings ever seek to use their position to control people? It would have been documented if they did. Record management developed in Uruk around these practices. The records would show evidence if it happened that control was wielded by these men. It is not a major feature of these times. What we do find is a corruption period arising around that time but not based on the religious priests but on dreaded marauders who forced people to hide in holes dug and extremely hard to reach caves. The magic arts period coincided with this around 3200 to 3100 BC as evident from Levant archaeology such as the Nahal Mishmar finds. Tradition says it was offspring of the inventors of Chalcolithic technologies who, as sorcerers of greater-than-average size (giants), wrought havoc. Priests and kings were typically noble and well regarded in comparison. Evil people controlled society as oligarchs who were served as gods. The earliest named such person is Gilgamesh. The Epic of Gilgamesh tells how society tried in vain to stop his atrocities. He became a tyrannical demigod. Even though he was a hero later venerated like Hercules. He was not a religious leader but was an enemy of the gods whose cedar forests he destroyed.

The Afterlife

The four afterlives I believe exist are not good news for me so my belief is not a choice but an imperative. In my gut I wish there were no such afterlives. Like a criminal on trial wishes there were no prison systems or justice system. The afterlife equalises. Many in the world need a fair share of privileges I currently enjoy. The afterlife addresses this. Victims of the system that gives me preference now deserve their redress of the balance. The afterlife is that redress. Fortunately it is not a binary solution to a complex problem. Christianity hides this. The teaching of Christ on hades and paradise is not meant to paint the whole picture but samples what Jesus taught. The details are extended in the Book of Enoch which Jesus endorsed and mandated for knowledge at the same time when He taught His abstract. 

Get woke

Get woke to the existence of God and some other things follow, more important perhaps because they affect us directly and put us in the subject of the topic. Firstly God who exists is to be trusted with being topmost God. Secondly God wants a human son who is true to type. Thirdly Jesus Christ exists - living - resurrected - having existed in aeons past and now and forever - but has become human in the same sense we are human but now resurrected. Fourthly this Jesus is everything God wants in a son - what God wants a son to be. Fifthly God is happy with Jesus as a son, and raised Jesus having sent Jesus to his death in obedience but Jesus lives forever by God’s power. Sixthly God still wants more sons; sons like Jesus. Seventhly there a some of us God and Jesus see as such potential sons. Eighthly Jesus can make us those sons if we believe in him and hold to his teachings.

Freedom from fear of death

How can people be free from fear of death? Believe in Jesus Christ then believe the promise of Jesus Christ to those who believe Him: recorded in Gospel of John chapter 8 “If you hold to my teachings you are truly my disciples; then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” (Famous saying that last bit, motto of the CIA.) Why is this a cure for fear of death? In the rest of that chapter Jesus’ words say that those who do not believe will die in their sins. This is what “set you free” means - free from dying in sins that enslave. Believing and following by adhering sets free from this dying in sin. Dying in sin is what is feared. Dying freed is not fearsome.

The Burden of Proof

The whole of nature (creation) obeys its creator - just look at it and you might perceive it in the lapping of the waves or the budding of the trees - and wisdom tells it to our hearts - but don’t ask me to prove it because I would not want to spoil the inner light by having to think about how to prove that light to darkness - but it is still wisdom that brings deep happiness when you let it in. Without this wisdom nature will leave your heart baffled at it all. Insist on proof and you will be missing out on the happiness of understanding and wisdom. Remember your creator and obey your creator and you will find yourself at one with nature and that will be your proof. You will find you have fellowship and peace and that peace will surpass understanding.

The Meaning of Life

The highest being is looking to recruit some faithful lesser beings to serve Him forever as sons in His family. The selection process is tough. But He creates the opportunities to succeed and the prospects are good if you join in good faith and stay with the plan. That is why we are here and the meaning of life and the universe.

How it all began

God must have survived the Big Bang if there was such a thing - along with Jesus and the Holy Spirit. They must have existed before Time itself became what we think of as Time today. (Was Time real before the Big Bang? If not, how could there be a before and after the Big Bang if there was no time until after it?) They, Father and Son and Holy Spirit, must have existed as something (‘spirit’) that is not part of the universe that did not exist back then. What must have existed though is their faith and hope and love between each other; then any other spirits they created which are not part of the Big Bang universe. Then order must have existed, coming into existence, like Heraclitus and the Stoics said, as the ledger of balances that transcends all things - the laws of nature - human-comprehendible, mathematically-expressable laws as Pythagoras pointed out - based on the Logos, preincarnate Jesus. And as nature started to exist it must from the start have obeyed such laws and all in the power of the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Logos, the Son of Man. And nature has never departed from this way since then, always functioning, like a true Christian, by the power of putting into practice the teachings of the Christ, the Son of Man. So it is natural to do the same, putting into practice what He said. If He says it, such is His reputation, it is good to rely on that reputation and do it. Such is the power of His name.

Proof of God’s Existence

The existence of evil in humans is enough proof - the existence of a satanic being influencing humans to do and think atrocious things. No other animal is evil. Only humans. No animal would utterly destroy the environment it needs for life; that its offspring will need. Only humans. Something is influencing humans. That proves the supernatural spirits are real and that God has rightly called out one of them as evil, liar and murderer. Humans are too evil to have worked that out. There must be a God for light like that to be shining in darkness. See John 8 - there is your proof.

What is my opinion of Jesus?

What do I think about Jesus?

Just imagine you are not an absolute out and out Atheist but you want to be more real in how you think of God. You want to genuinely believe God exists and Jesus exists and even the Holy Spirit too but you find you are too Atheist or simply Agnostic and ignorant and have to keep persuading yourself they are real beings. So you are in a storm that floods a nearby river and you know God is meant to preside over such things as judge so you decide to walk to the river and see the flooding and try to think how it might be it is God judging. On the way back a voice shouts at you inside your head “Put down your umbrella!” You are carrying a huge umbrella like golfers use which keeps you dry despite the downpour but you sense such authority in the ‘voice’ that you fold it immediately and as you do so the rain stops so abruptly you just know that voice was Jesus. To be really sure you later ask for a sign and as you go to bed you see a dressing gown never used hung on a peg. You ask that if it was really Jesus may that come down off the peg before the morning. You sleep but halfway through the night you feel suddenly deeply compelled to wake up and get up. You take the dressing gown off the peg and suddenly remember the sign. That’s Jesus. And that was me in 1995 encountering Him having pleaded to meet Him.

He seems to do what God wills. He is very loving and kind even though He is in charge of judging humanity. If God wants Him to do something to help someone Jesus does it, so it seems. Considering He is top man in the universe and all nature continues to function by His name’s power He is remarkably humble. He is just the same nowadays as He was when gospel writers wrote down His actions and words. Astounding guy.

Also I notice He still practices what He preached. He is not the kind who gives advice and teachings then does something different to His teachings when the time comes. He says to use faith to command nature and still today He does just that. That is very cool. And He amazingly carries on after two thousand years doing just the same as in gospel days. He doesn’t move on from doing those old things He did but there is an utter excellence to them now - I guess because Ge is back with the Father like He was before He came. 

The Holy Spirit does just what Jesus said He would in nowadays still telling what the name of Jesus can do and glorifying Jesus. The main thing I heard coming from the Holy Spirit in my lifetime (interpreted tongues) was this: ‘Consider the trees - they put forth buds and leaves - they do so by the power/authority of the name of the Lord Jesus Christ’ and it continued about planets but I forgot the words (back in 1995). That says so much about Jesus. Clearly it is natural to follow His teachings because even nature does so and has always done so and always will. If you want to act on the confidence His name adds to His teachings you are in good company with the natural world. It also speaks to His ‘preexistence’ - that He was a heavenly being aeons before His incarnation since nature relies on His authority in all it does.

Since hearing what the Holy Spirit says about Jesus I came across the Book of Enoch in a bookshop and bought several copies of various translations of it over the years (it is online too https://www.sacred-texts.com/bib/boe/index.htm). In it I found words extremely close to what was said by the Holy Spirit and then I read on to find whole chapters about Jesus written by this prophet Enoch who knew Him as the Son of Man. It is so clearly Jesus. So here was someone meeting the living Jesus five thousand years ago. Amazing. Jesus did not lie when He said “Before Abraham was born, I am”.

The Life that is Light

The Son of Man alive two thousand years after dying on a cross, and however many millennia after prophet Enoch saw Him, now perceived today still, He is light and such a bright light today because the life He has sustaining Him today is the power of the Father in unending supply. The very truth that He lives like this now and the perception by faith of that life from God within Him lights up the soul and fires up the spirit within. We might learn to love this light and yearn to let it linger on the canvas of the inner mind. By nature the evil mind shrinks from this light even though we know we need it so we need to be made good within so we can let its beam rest within like the sun’s rays rest without, so we can soak up those health-giving rays from the power of God that made Jesus alive from the dead and is perpetually keeping Him alive.

The Completed Gospel

The Book of Enoch shows us the Son of Man living in Enoch’s time and this completes the true Gospel. You see, if Jesus were an ordinary thirty year old, even a perfectly sinless one, even a prophet and teacher, that mere death on a cross could not pay for sins of every single person, including you and me. The Son of Man was no ordinary man but had been since before Abraham and the pyramids the Son of Man in heaven and right hand man and precious one son to the highest god. Enoch’s book verifies this. So the blood of this Son of Man shed on that cross was a sufficient sacrifice for your sins and mine and the whole world’s. So God raised Him after just a couple of days in death. He lives today and forever and that everlasting life is a light to us all, if we will let it shine within.

Is it a Threat if Islam Spreads?

The threat of Islam is in its suppression of the message of the cross. Islamic teachers tend to deny the cross and the crucifixion of Isa al Massih Jesus Christ. They interpret a verse in the Quran seeming to say Christ did not die - Jews only thought they killed Him. They say there was a substitute made and someone else was crucified. In reality only a few people witnessed the crucifixion and subsequent resurrection of the Christ so proving Islam wrong intellectually is tough. Christianity has survived by asserting the crucifixion and resurrection. But if every country becomes Islamic how will such assertions continue except by divine help. The evidence of the crucifixion is not absent. There is the very meaning of the cross symbol for one thing and its relationship to the words Mass and Messiah (Massiach) - it is a very ancient symbol first seen in the very earliest writings in Uruk and continuing in use in Sumerian up until the times of the ministry of the Messiah. It means (from Wiktionary): 𒈦 (MAŠ)

1. şibtu "interest on a loan"

2. bīru; urīşu "sacrificial animal for omens"

3. mişru "border, boundary"

4. māšu “twin”

𒈦 (ĝešMAŠ)

1. gişşu "tree"

So it appears deeply symbolic that God who sent Him used a cross.

Did Darwin disprove Atheism and Theism.

Could it be that Darwin proved Atheism wrong? Theism too? If life evolves then fine but if it evolves from inanimate matter spontaneously over billions of years Atheism and Theism are disproved. In reality though we can call technological advances ‘evolution’. It clearly doesn’t mean if you leave a iPod in a room long enough and come back it will have turned into an iPhone. So life might evolve just as technology evolves but it does not mean life can spontaneously just happen. If it could just happen anywhere in the universe then there would be advanced beings appearing anywhere in the universe any time after enough time had passed and calling most advanced ones gods would be fair but calling just one of these God the god and creator of them all would be silly. Intelligent people see our failure to find other lifeforms and question the idea life can just appear on its own. The theistic records of a supreme being creating other beings and making Himself known to them here on Earth, a special planet, is upheld by looking at Science with circumspection and good discernment of truth.

Why do people find prayer ridiculous?

Too easily people dismiss things as ridiculous just because clear information about it is hard to find and inaccessible in some way. A subject hard to understand needs lots of explicit information to build an understanding. But a subject mainly consisting of tacit knowledge often has scarce explicit knowledge available. Communication is little understood because a lot happens beyond the words and the words have many layers of usage and meaning. I might call street slang ridiculous because it is inaccessible to me. The urban slang dictionary helps and I realise it is not at all ridiculous really. Praying is easy for a believing child. I know because as a child I prayed whenever I needed help and it always, always came and always in good time. I cannot explain why it was easy though so it might be dismissed by others as ridiculous because they find knowledge about it inaccessible. I prayed to God and to Jesus but mainly to God (The Father). I did believe in Jesus and sometimes in my dreams He stood nearby to protect me from bullies from school such as one time on a school bus. That is how I knew Him - from dreams. I dared to speak up for Him in school such as in religious studies classes and got bullied for it and for refusing to smoke or swear or flout authority. So my prayers were heard. It was not at all ridiculous and I became top student and a respected mentor. Always I knew it was God lifting me up. I was naughty too and ashamed that everyone thought me always good. I lied. A lot. I could not help myself. I got baptised but still could not stop. One day in my late teens or early twenties (I can never work out when it was) I saw a street preacher put the words “Christ died for you” on a whiteboard and I asked the preacher for advice. When he prayed with me in a nearby church there was supernatural power teaching me not to lie and I stopped from then on. That was the Holy Spirit and the power of the Gospel (those words on the board).

The Council of Nicea

THE COUNCIL OF NICEA

Amazing how undecided they were about which philosophical model to choose to explain truth. They should have been adhering to truth but they wanted orthodoxy instead and there were two main candidates and they chose one and then chose the other and back and forth. The silly churches have been doing this ever since. They should just become disciples to learn rather than insisting on becoming teachers before they have been disciples.

Science and Atheism

Science contradicts Atheism. Science makes Atheism look like an impossible fallacy. Evolution and the age of the Cosmos are tenets of Science. Combine the two and the idea that there are no gods becomes infinitessimally likely - virtually impossible. Given how long life took to evolve (Science says) on Earth and given the number of planets in the Cosmos and age of the Cosmos and how advanced humans have become in the past five thousand years, Science forces a conclusion that there must be billions of sentient life forms in existence for much longer than us. Even just ten thousand years of advancement would see humans colonising planets they have terraformed and creating lifeforms there which are well adapted to the planet. With billions of more advanced lifeforms (use Carl Sagan’s theories to work it out) in the Universe there is near certainty this planet was populated like this and zero plausibility scientifically saying it wasn’t. Out of all such advanced beings there would be many scientifically speaking bearing all the characteristics that define gods. If you remove macro-evolution the picture changes and Science and Atheism have more chance of alignment but then so do Science and Religion. Ultimately Science and Atheism have a long way to go before any chance of alignment or complete parting of company. We need a more realistic approach. The life and teachings of Jesus Christ provide the best approach to learning the real truth we need within our actual lifetimes. 

The gods’ God

It is a common misunderstanding of monotheism that it insists on only one god existing. Both Judaism and Christianity have scriptures that insist there are many gods. But only one is The Father over all gods - YHWH. He is the God who higher than all the gods. He is these gods’ God. Their Father. This was in ancient times of the Stone Age how they saw AN. The most high God. DINGIR. Later called EL. Judaism and Christianity took it further but did not contradict the original Dingristic religion. It continues today as Tengrism and as the Chinese ancient religion. This belief in DINGIR (AN, EL) was the religion of Enoch. In genuine Christian truth this God, to prove He is the other gods’ God and their Father, sent the very topmost of these gods, the Son of Man, to us to show obedience to this God, to show if even He the Son of Man regards this God as His God and His Father (to the extent that He would die in obedience to Him) then this God is indeed in truth the God over all gods and Father over all gods.

The Ontological Absolute

Absolutes are needed which do not depend on wisdom and ontology. The Messianic sacrifice is such an absolute. It is wise even to a fool but foolish to the wise.

The Key to All Knowledge

The truth that is knowable is the Messianic sacrifice. Therein is the knowledge of the Creator and the key to knowledge of Creation. When you receive knowledge of the Messianic sacrifice (for you) you receive the key to the knowledge of all things.