Tag: Jesus

A World of Lies or the Lilies of Truth?

Jesus Christ has to be either a liar, a lunatic, or who he really said he is: GOD.

 

 

 

 

Yes, Jesus Christ showed himself to be God throughout his ministry and THAT is why the Jewish leadership felt that it was their duty to stop Him and kill him. In John 10:33, as they picked up stones to kill him, Jesus asks, “I have shone you many good works for which of these do you want to stone me”, and they said, “Because you a mere man claim to be God.” They saw him feed 5000 and then 4000 and were amused, they saw him raise the dead and heal the sick and were stunned, but when he drove out the demons they declared that he was the son of Satan. And so Jesus replies, “How can Satan cast out Satan?” To us and to the entire creation, He says, “I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One; I was dead, and behold I am alive for ever and ever!” (Rev.1:17–18).
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So need we ask, “How can such a powerful Truth and Person be denied when the evidence is so clear?” Jesus has already fulfilled over 300 prophecies from the Old Testament and will fulfill 2X more in His 2nd Coming! His resurrection was proof to all who had followed him that He indeed reigned over man’s greatest enemy = Death thus fulfilling his own prophecy – that He would raise from the grave in 3 days! In John 10:17-18, Jesus said, “I am laying down My life so I may take it up again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down on my own.” In response many Jews said, “He has a demon and He’s crazy!”

There is the investigative reporter by the name of Lee Strobel who after seeing his wife surrender to Jesus Christ and accept Him as Lord and Savior, desperately sought to prove the resurrection a myth! He is now author of many books including, “The Case for Christ”, “The Case for Easter”, “The Case for Faith”, & now “The Case for a Creator”. He had collected all the evidence and tried to make a courtroom like case against the resurrection. The evidence proved otherwise and what he had thought were Lies became Lilies of Truth!  Many other intellectuals including the well known CSI expert, J. Warner Wallace, author of Cold-Case Christianity and Josh McDowell author of Evidence Demands a Verdict, & More Than a Carpenter (with over 5 million printed) studied the evidence and also were convinced in their minds & convicted deep in their hearts of this Truth! The Word transformed them and they now preach the Truth of the Gospel throughout this earth! The tiniest seed can grow into a big tree of faith; likewise the Lily of the field that “resurrects” from the dead “ in all it’s beauty is more arrayed than the glory of Solomon.”

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The problem is the vast majority of people are not only unwilling to seek the Truth, but are also afraid to discover and accept the truth – because it will prove them wrong and convict them of their own sin! Many of them would be shocked to learn that to have owned a Bible or to have gone to church, or to have a Christian parent or grandparent does NOT make them a Christian! As Jesus clearly illustrated in his parables of the sower, the seed, and the rich man – they have been distracted by the world, some seduced by wealth, others have had doubts planted by the wiles of the devil, but some fall away due to the simple cares of life! Often the most loving thing God can do is allow these “Prodigal Sons” to be severely strained and shaken in order to save them!

Do you think that Almighty God will exempt anyone from His commands and Covenants? Jesus who calls himself the “Word” says to us: “Abide in me and I will abide in you”, “Those I love, I reprove & discipline – therefore be zealous and repent”, “You are mistaken not understanding the scriptures nor the POWER of GOD”, “Everyone who acknowledges me before men – I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven, but whoever denies me before men- I will also deny him before my Father in heaven”! Jesus Christ, the Ancient of Days and The Lord of the Heavenly Army will be the Judge! Take careful note of the witness of the Apostles, the martyrs throughout time who die for their faith, the countless others who give selflessly for Christ- bringing healing to the sick and lost throughout this earth, & to the authors mentioned earlier; they are NOT crazy nor delusional! For instance they do not blow themselves up to kill the innocent!

LIFE is not going to get any easier for any of us as we grow older and more overwhelmed by a changing world! God has been very clear that He is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit and that He will return in the form of the reigning King of Kings, the Lion of Judah, and the Apha and the Omega to judge the earth and every soul that lives and has lived. One can quote many verses, but here is just one: “Judgment will take place at the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with His powerful angels, taking vengeance with flaming fire on those who don’t know God and on those who don’t obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus“, II Thess.1:7-8.

God desires and aches for each of us to seek Him out with all our heart, mind, and soul! That is why He has given us so MUCH evidence and so MUCH opportunity for inspiration and observational experience. Have you not heard God shout to you in your pain or whisper to you in your joy? The Truth has been sitting on your table top, in inspirational music, classical literature, in the wonder of nature, in the majesty of the heavens, and in the faith of a child. They were put there as a testimony of who God is and How MUCH HE LOVES you and me! Just like a Good Father, He wants you to” know” him which implies to Love Him and Obey Him! So how can we know Him, if we do not respect, nor follow Him? And how can we know Him and follow Him, if we do not read His Word, seek and speak to Him in pray, or listen to His message?

Why do we spend so much time studying a world system with it’s lies, and so little time and effort studying what our Maker and Redeemer wants us to study and know? To know God is to Trust in Him, his Precepts, & his Promises! To know Him is to know both His Truth & His Love, gaining purpose for your life.  To know him is to know his Name and your true Identity! God says to us, “Anyone who calls upon the name of the LORD will be saved”, and Psalm 54:1, “Oh God, save me by your name and vindicate me by your power.”

To know Jesus Christ is to have the most powerful personal relationship one will ever choose to have – so that God can lead you to exceptional Truth.  Only He can free your mind from slavery to the world and its lies! Only He can open your heart to who He really is: Faithful and True, Good Shepherd, the Door, Savior, and Author and Finisher of our Faith.

The movie “La La Land” is about the consequences of making wrong choices. Life is indeed a series of choices & the biggest choice that anyone can make is to choose to believe and trust in Jesus Christ. Most other choices are just a distraction that God is trying to clear away from the path. Jesus warns, “Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leads to LIFE, & few there be that find it”! Know that we are just specks in time & our eyes a particle of personal joy, but our soul is for eternity and linked to Heaven or to Hell!” The choice is ours alone – God does not send anyone to Hell. Despite God’s most clear and precise warnings many will still choose it! Make no mistake HELL is NO “La La Land” – it is a permanent separation from God and an eternal fiery pit that God originally designed for Satan and his angels!

When we think of eternity many people think of the stars and light years! The Genesis Truth is that “God fashioned two great lights- the larger light to shine during the day and the smaller one to shine during the night -as well as the stars”. In the book of Job written 1600 years before the Savior’s birth God says that, “He shakes the earth from its orbit, so that its foundations shudder… He alone spreads out the heavens, he walks on the waves of the sea. He created Bear, Orion, the Pleiades, and the southern constellations. He does great things that cannot be explained”-just as Jesus walked on water, restored the eyes of a man born blind & raised Himself from the grave!  By the way a great book to read on the constellations, why God created them, and named each star is  “Looking Up”.

So the Big Question is, do you want to believe a supernatural God or do you want to believe men in white robes who cannot explain why or how: 1) Earth is the only planet discovered with water -the essence of life- 326 million trillion gallons of it! 2) The moon is located at the perfect distance for both tidal effects and solar eclipses 3) Triton, the moon of Neptune, far from the heat of the sun, rotates backwards and has hot nitrogen geysers;  hence its internal heat cannot be billions of years old! 4) Uranus, Saturn, and Neptune have large magnetic fields which would have dissipated over time as earth has! 5) If earth began as a ball of fire, where did all the water come from? 6 ) If Venus was part of a big bang, why is it the only planet that spins backwards? 7) IOS a smaller moon has 9 active volcanoes and Europa has constant big geysers – both a long way from the sun, yet HOT!  8) Our moon had only centimeters of dust as predicted by a NASA Christian Space Scientist and is moving away one inch/year!  Less than a million years of shift would have made life impossible for plants, mammals & dinosaurs during moon eclipses and chaotic high tides!  9) Why have the billions of spiral galaxies not unwound from their perfect spiral shape over billions of years – as physics demands!  1000’s of other questions of this magnitude make the Big Bang and billions of years totally illogical and unsupported by observational science and math! 10) Do you really think that everything came from nothing?!! – This would be against entropy- or both Laws of Thermodynamics and everything empirically tested in science and illustrated in history!

One reason I travel the world is to see the extreme variety of plants and animals – for instance the Weta, and insect in New Zealand, that has “antifreeze” for blood so that it can survive frozen all winter long! Some of the ferns and “pine trees” that I got to see there are the same found in countless fossils! So it is a matter of who you have faith in! God who created the Lilies of the field or mankind which has lied throughout the ages?  Fossils form in just months at the hot spring in Yorkshire near the river Ned.  They show that it does not take long to fossilize the outer layers- just like the dinosaur bones that are fossilized on the outside, yet have blood cells, osteocytes, osteoblasts, and elastic tissue on the inside! There are presently over 150 cases of dinosaur, water-born animals, and bird fossil finds that have evidence of intact proteins with DNA – and thus they all have C14 that can be dated! If even a trace of C14 is present the tissue or cell cannot be older than 75,000  years!  Another incredible book to read is “Undenieable” by Douglas Axe who worked in the same lab as did Watson and Crick.  His studies show that protein enzymes, the building block of life, cannot be altered without causing cellular failure! This fact alone totally shoots down macro evolution.

“For it is by Faith through Grace that you have been saved, this is NOT of yourself- NOT of works, so that no one can boast, it is a Gift of God!”

EXPLORATION – X

EXPLORATION – X:  A mental and spiritual challenge to those who trust only in what they can see.

Do you realize that your government and your “super smart”, upper crust scientists are willing to spend billions of dollars to find a livable planet since our sun is due expire in 3 to 5 billion years? Would it not be better to “explore God” and save a whole lot of money?     Even though you cannot see Him -the evidence of His existence is much, much, greater than evidence of life elsewhere in this universe.

Note what happened to the men who experienced Jesus Christ 2000 years ago:  “With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them,” (Acts 4:33).  Of the 12 Apostles eleven went to their executions boldly carrying the flag of faith and the Gospel message.  Yet today there are many who believe that Christ’s resurrection was only a “spiritual” resurrection, insisting that the idea of a dead body returning to life after three days in the grave is completely unscientific and impossible. This was not what the apostles preached with great grace and great power. They would hardly have been excited about any kind of spiritual resurrection, since everyone—both Jews and the pagan Gentiles—already believed in life after death. If that was their message, no one would have been drawn to them, and no one would have been stirred and transformed!  Even when the disciples saw the resurrected Christ, they first “supposed that they had seen a spirit” (Luke 24:37). Christ had to urge them to “handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as you see me have” (Luke 24:39) . When the disciples finally became convinced of His bodily resurrection, they were quickly transformed into courageous evangelists, willing die in support of their glorious message of salvation.

Jesus said,  “If I tell you earthly things and you do not believe – how will you believe heavenly things?”
If someone told you that bacteria and the invisible virus causes disease would you believe him? Of course you would! Do you realize that in the 18th century that very debate led to Louis Pasteur having to prove to the world that spontaneous generation (something from nothing) does not occur. Everything has a cause including the creation of the Universe. Simple logic shows that there must be an intelligent design and hence an intelligent designer. Yet, we have these men in white robes telling us that everything came from a big Bang, and that all life evolved from inorganic matter- life out of nothing! This theory of evolution is a cowardly lie perpetrated on others to draw them away from the true Creator of the Universe, God the Almighty. God is the Cause that created Time, Matter, Energy, and Space.

Jesus said, “ I’m the Gate. If anyone enters through me he will be saved.” He is the Gate Keeper and there is only one way in. If God doesn’t exist there would be no objective moral standard. How would you make any comparisons….it would be all relative. There would be no real objective “evil” in the world. The fact is God established the moral law and directed mankind to follow that law. Mankind, however, has more than often failed. For instance the American Constitution was established based on God’s laws and as usual through the decades our appointed judges have tried and often succeeded in making it “conform and evolve” to their own view of social justice. This is one reason why God had to destroy the earth with the worldwide flood and later send His promised nation, Israel/Judah, into captivity. Man has throughout time decided to ignore God and create his own gods and his own laws.

Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and The Life, there is NO other way to the Father”. As stated earlier Jesus provided the path to eternal life by dying then resurrecting.  Jesus says to you and I,  “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live”.    No other king, philosopher, prophet, wise man, nor wizard has resurrected, much less died for us!  Jesus then assured us, “ I have come that you might have Life, and that you might have it abundantly”.   Love, hope, goodness, patience, and even prosperity, health, wisdom, and other life changing gifts can be part of this promise;  each gift growing as one exercises their faith in Christ.

So Please take the time and effort to Explore God, and His Supernatural kingdom. God exhorts us, “To do justice, show mercy, and walk humbly with Him.” God wants us to Know Him so that we can have a relationship with Him.  Come to the Cross with humility and surrender.  God says,  “Trust in me with all your heart, lean not in your own understanding.  Acknowledge Me in all that you do, and I will make your path straight!”  Want to explore “X”, which is everything that the world and the powers of darkness have blinded us to? Then take heed to His Words and His promises!  Open the Bible which has been sitting on your coffee table or bookcase and READ; then take time to pray to Him in supplication and Thanksgiving!

It’s ALL About God’s LOVE- THE ANSWER

It is All About God’s LOVE

Yes it really is as simple as that. Everything no matter how far away, how deep or dark, small or infinite, of this dimension or not – is connected to and is a result of God’s love. It is unfathomable and beyond our complete understanding. It is reflected as Truth, and it reveals, and creates immeasurable beauty, hope, and faith. Through faith in Jesus Christ anything is possible.

How Ironic that God asked me to write about His love- when so much of my life was about running from this love. God’s love is the great anecdote for all pain, fear, and hopelessness. It is the remedy for all problems and solution to all doubt and despair. Yet most people like me run from it!   It is as if we were all contaminated with a virus that confuses us and grows in us unless it is removed quickly so that our originally designed system can operate at full capacity and harmony.   The Bible calls this “virus” SIN and it was introduced into our birthplace, the Garden of Eden.   Satan in the form of a Serpent suggested to Eve that she would surely not die (despite God’s warning) and that God was just trying to keep her from deeper understanding of knowledge (the forbidden fruit was from a Tree called “The Knowledge of Good and Evil”).   It was through this act of disobedience that SIN entered planet earth.   This affected all of earth and nature- hence the idea for Sin’s anagram, = the “Satanic Invasion of Nature“. God who designed our magnificent system then had to publish a working “manual” with limitations ( Bible & Ten Commandments) in order to provide a temporary solution to the problem and give us a working chance to make improvements and adjustments.. The LAW acts as a guide but is also a curse for it condemns us and is death’s signpost.

The human is the only body in all God’s creation that has a special space called “spirit”. By faith we can make a choice to transform this space into a Holy dominion occupied by the Spirit of God. Once a body is occupied by the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit is sealed and will never leave. When that person physically dies that body will be transformed into an eternal “Glorified Body” that has all the characteristics of the sinless Christ when He was resurrected. When a living person “dies to self” and rises to new Life in Christ, sin no longer has power over that person and he or she is “alive in Christ”. This is often called a born again experience and as stated in 2 Cor. 5:17, the person is “a new creation, the old things have passed away; behold all things have become new”. This is a supernatural wonder of God’s love.

God in His Grace and Love gave us faith through which men and women are able to choose to “cover” and neutralize SIN by inviting the Jesus Christ into this divinely designed space. This happens when in repentance we accept His Gift. This is God’s ultimate act of love for His creation. “For it is by Grace through faith that you are saved, it is a Gift of God, so that no one will perish”. “For God so Loved the World that He gave His only begotten Son so that no one will perish, but will have eternal life.” It is the supernatural Blood of Christ that covers our sin and allows the Holy Spirit to live in us and to be sealed in us. Once this happens it is up to the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit to transform our obedient mind, soul, and spirit into the “likeness” of Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit is the supernatural anecdote that counters sin and preserves the power of God within. Prior to his crucifixion Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit would take his place and provide a greater comfort and help. This is why GRACE is described as: God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense.

God’s love for us is the answer to all questions of identity and purpose in life. The worst mistake that man can make is to resist God’s love and Truth. Man seems to have an inherit nature that blocks this love and urges us to run from it. We reject God’s Truth as stated in the Bible and try to generate our own form of “truth”. This nature and the “lies” that go with it are the opposite of “righteousness” and is often called “self-righteousness”. We saw earlier that this nature is a result of sin and rebellion, going all the way back to the Garden when Adam and Eve chose to disobey God and seek the “Truth” through their own self endeavor. In doing this Adam and Eve, and by proxy us, chose to do things their own way, making all of us “captains of our own soul”. This is a soul crushing lie generated by Satan that can only be countered by the power of God through Jesus Christ. It is the work of the Cross and Redemption through Jesus Christ that transforms us into a new creation, set free from the power of sin and death. This is why a good anagram for CHRIST is: “Creating His Righteousness in Spiritual Transformation“.

The question is not why he loves me or if he loves me. There is no place that God’s love does not exist. Even Hell was created out of God’s love. Hell was created for Satan and his angels. It is man who chooses to reject God’s love and rely on their own effort and destiny. The rich man is an example of someone who rejected God’s offer. The rich man does not complain or claim it was someone else fault. He knew it was fair and that he deserved what he got…in the face of God’s righteousness. Whatever happens, God will be glorified and He will be completely fair and righteous in His judgement. That judgement is a reflection of his Love. Because God is completely fair and just. If a person chooses to reject God and do it their own way, God respects that persons choice.

God does not lie nor play games. He has presented the Truth and the truth is a reflection of His Love. Jesus said, “I AM the Way, Truth, and the Life, no one comes to the father except through me.” Jesus called himself the “Door” , the “The Lamb of God”, and the “Resurrection and the Life,” – all of which are the reflection of His desire to save us into eternity. What could be greater than a Love that brings fellowship with God forever? Yet, many choose to ignore this Promise or not to care about the consequences of unbelief: which could be the unforgivable sin. They are in essence choosing to be separated from God for eternity, which is in essence a place called Hell.

A recent survey asked people what they wished for the most. The Answer was LOVE. Unfortunately the world has done a good job of distorting true Love or “Agape” Love with a counterfeit, lust driven love. This superficial love is a desire motivated love that is most often very selfish and immature. In Contrast the unconditional Love that God offers brings a change of heart and mind through the Spirit. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom”. This freedom removes the “fog” of lies that enslaves us and keeps us from real Truth and Love. Truth and Love are further revealed to us in the Word of God which is revealed to us through the Holy Spirit. Persevering in the Word sanctifies us and builds character, allowing the person to act and think in the will of God. Just as God created everything in this Universe, He now offers us the opportunity to change everything in our life and to affect others in a miraculous way.