Let me ramble a little before I get started.
Hebrews 1:1 ¶ God, who at
sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the
prophets, 2 Hath in these last days
spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom
also he made the worlds; 3 Who being the
brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all
things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat
down on the right hand of the Majesty on high;
Buddha, Lao-tse the accepted founder of Taoism, Muhammed, Socrates
the Greek philosopher, Mahavira of Jainism, Joseph Smith of the Mormons, Guru
Nanak of the Sikhs, and all other founders of world religions are long dead.
Only Jesus arose from the dead never to die again. Only Jesus was the physical
image of the invisible God who created all things.
Jesus Himself is spoken of as the Word, capital W, by which all
things were created.
John 1:1 ¶ In the beginning
was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2 The same was in the
beginning with God. 3 All things were
made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4 In him was life; and the life was the light
of men.
The Apostle John, writer of the Gospel According to John, used a
Greek word that was understood by people of that time, the word Logos, from
which is translated Word with a capital W.
To the Greeks the Logos was a sort of divine consciousness
ordering the universe and giving it meaning. John underscored that it was not
an impersonal force but an actual eternally living God, creator of all things,
its full expression being the Lord – Jesus – Christ.
The Stoics regarded the Logos as the creative impulse of the
universe but they did not know Christ by whom all things were begotten, the
firstborn of every creature, or every created thing’s beginning.
The Lord Jesus Christ as is underscored by the verses in Hebrews 1
I mentioned earlier was not merely the express image of God, He is the visible
image of the invisible God.
He told one of His apostles;
John 14:9 Jesus saith unto
him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip?
he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us
the Father?
And said that;
John 10:30 I and my Father
are one.
As John stated and Paul would confirm, it was by Him that all
things were created and by Him, not non-existent, unproveable, never seen Dark
Matter or Dark Energy, that all things are held together. Philosophers of
Science called anti-realists will say that theoretical entities like Dark
Matter and Energy have explanatory power but no real existence in our physical
reality. I would add that they can only explain or attempt to explain something
without God. Because it is by Christ that all things are held together.
Colossians 1:12 ¶ Giving
thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the
inheritance of the saints in light:13
Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us
into the kingdom of his dear Son:14 In
whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins:15 Who is the image of the invisible God, the
firstborn of every creature:16 For by
him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible
and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or
powers: all things were created by him, and for him: 17 And he is before all things, and by him all
things consist.
Atheistic materialists, scientists who study the origins of
things, will not accept this in spite of all the evidence to the contrary to
their beliefs. Why? Not because of any understanding of the truth. They
champion the cause of a godless universe because to consider the alternative
would make them subject to the judgment of a righteous and angry God.
John 3:36 He that believeth
on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not
see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.
In addition, scientists have big questions that they cannot
answer. “How did a once barren terrestrial environment give rise to life forms?
How did the resources deemed necessary to this process—self-replicating
molecules bearing genetic information—arise in the first place? What is the
ultimate origin of the genetic code, and who or what directed it to produce
plant and animal species? Why are we safely cocooned in a cosmic Goldilocks
zone when so many parts of the universe are more reminiscent of Dante’s
Inferno? Where do the laws of physics come from? What was before the Big Bang?
Why is there something rather than nothing?
The laws of nature do not, alas, answer any of the above. Physics
can explain much of the physical universe but not the laws of physics
themselves. In fact, scientific laws do not explain the world to us even to the
degree one might imagine; they merely describe certain regularities in
mathematical terms, and are often referred to for that reason as secondary
causes, in contradistinction to the first cause—historically referred to as the
causa causarum, the ultimate cause of all things.”
Thomas, Neil. Taking Leave of Darwin: A Longtime Agnostic
Discovers the Case for Design . Discovery Institute. Kindle Edition.
In fact, though, science cannot ever answer those questions
definitively. It is too self-limiting to fill that void and answering those
questions is beyond its capacity. And science can never honestly deny God’s
place. They shouldn’t even attempt to do that although many militant atheists
among them try.
“Scientists should never present themselves as certain when there
is doubt. The very success and truthfulness of science is founded on doubt and
scepticism. It moves forward by continually rethinking, reobserving and
rechecking against reality again and again to expose the flaws in current
ideas. —Philosopher of evolutionary science Fern Elsdon-Baker”
Let’s go back to John 3:36, to the last part and the beginning of
what I want to say. Why is God angry with mankind? Humankind?
In the last 4000 years of recorded history there has only been
about 300 without war, probably just so combatants could reload. Is that why
God is furious with mankind? In the 20th century we slaughtered a
hundred million of our own kind and made homeless another couple of dozen
million more. Is THAT why God is furious with mankind?
In every economic system from capitalism to communism there are
significant numbers of people who simply can’t make it, lack the will, the
capacity, the drive, have been oppressed and denied opportunity, whatever, and
are hungry, without a roof over their head, and lacking in all other
necessities of life. Is that why God is furious with mankind?
All over the world the powerful prey, P-R-E-Y, on the weak,
oppress and abuse them, and deny them resources they need to survive. Is that
why God is furious with mankind?
There are perverts everywhere doing everything that God has said
not to do, even Christians who shack up with their partners, produce children
out of wedlock, and still go to church on Sunday and feel all smug and
self-righteous that they are not gay or trans. Is that why God is furious with
mankind?
In America we have murdered 50 million unborn babies, a huge
amount of them Black in what some Black commentators have called racial
genocide. Is that why God is furious with mankind?
Maybe, but those things aren’t why, as bad as they are, billions
of people are going to be in an agony of endless tomorrows without God or mercy
in eternity. Those things I mentioned are symptoms of a condition we inherited
and that each person attempts to improve upon in their own depravity most of their
lives.
Jeremiah 10:23 O LORD, I
know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walketh to
direct his steps.
Jeremiah 17:9 The heart is
deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?
The first man and woman had one rule. Something they were not to
do. It doesn’t matter whether it was an apple, a grape, or a pomegranate, or
something we’ve not seen since. It was the disobedience that ensured that dying
would begin.
Genesis
2:16 ¶ And the LORD God commanded the
man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: 17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou
shalt surely die.
This barrier, so
to speak, of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, a real literal, tree,
is very important. Mankind was not to reach beyond that barrier. Obedience to
God presents earthly blessings and eternal life. Disobedience was a barrier to
the fellowship with God that eternal life depended on. God told mankind’s first
representative, Adam, not to eat of it. God would grant all things to him and,
by extension, to us but we were to obey. There was no law, no rules, no
restrictions, no commandments, save this one thing, along with being fruitful
and multiplying which seems more of a permission as it carries more obvious
benefits, joys, and pleasures.
For a Christian to
obey God requires belief, faith, and an expectation of things to come, which
benefits are not always apparent. Our choices, our pleasures and
entertainments, our professions, and those things and people we surround
ourselves with often appear to us to be simply a matter of our own will.
However, if we do not choose based on our obedience to God, if our free will is
not harnessed to what God has ordained, then we will give the illusion of the
goodness of our own will power over us. The end result of our own will, being
corrupted by sin, is more sin, and disaster. Of course, this can be complicated
by a so-called man of God dictating his will to a congregation as a substitute
for God’s, even saying that the so-called man of God is repeating something
that God has laid on his heart when it is his own prejudices, bigotry, fear,
and self-righteousness that is being expressed. This is done for the purposes
of control and self-justification. It is very important, therefore, to know
what the Bible says so you can compare everything said to God’s word. Be
assured if you delight in sin, you will reap a bitter harvest in your life and
in the lives of others who come after you.
God said that Adam
would die if he ate of the tree and he began dying that very moment he ate of
it. The penalty for his disobedience was death. Dying is a process. In a way,
we begin dying as soon as we are born. With each cell
division and in each generation mankind passes on more and more deleterious
mutations, so much so that some researchers into genetics have been alarmed at
the accumulated damage and amazed that human beings have not become extinct
because of it.[1] A few verses later in Genesis we are
shown that future generations have the image or appearance of God that Adam had
lacking in respects in them.
First, there was
Adam and Eve that God said He; that would be His soul, God the Father, His
body, the Son of God, the Word, and the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost,
aka the Holy Spirit, the very mind of God, soul, body, and spirit, those two
people that God said He created. This is the reason for using our image
in the following.
Genesis
1:26 And God said, Let us make man in
our image, after our likeness: 27 So God created man in his own image, in the
image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
But,
after their Fall from grace the image was marred;
Genesis
5:3 And Adam lived an hundred and thirty
years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his
name Seth:
The process of dying, mutations, decay, old
age, disease, and death are the profound consequences of this disobedience.
Death is the great plague of life.
Hebrews
2:15 And deliver them who through fear
of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.
To eat of this
particular tree was disobedience to God. Disobedience to God is sin. Death is
the result of sin.
Romans
6:23 For the wages of sin is death; but
the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Mankind is
devolving, not evolving. With many more generations we will become extinct. You
can review some of the studies I mentioned just a minute ago. Alexey
S. Kondrashov, “Contamination of the Genome by Very Slightly Deleterious
Mutations: Why Have We Not Died 100 Times Over?” Journal of Theoretical Biology, (1995) vol. 175, pp. 583-594. James F. Crow, “The High Spontaneous Mutation
Rate: Is it a Health Risk?” Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences, (Aug 1997) vol. 94, pp. 8380-8386.
One
of these guys, Crow, even thinks the government should get involved. Imagine
the ridiculous belief that government can do anything about sin or would if it
could. No, there is only one cure for mankind’s fall.
Then,
we know what happened to Adam and Eve. They began dying that very moment, among
other things, and that process finally killed them years later. They also
suffered and doomed their future offspring to suffer under difficult conditions
from which to try to eke out an existence and the oppression of the stronger
over the weaker, the very reason why women have been physically and legally
dependent upon men for thousands of years, the result of a curse. Man’s
fellowship, his intimate fellowship with the Almighty God walking in the garden
in the form of the Lord Jesus Christ, was lost and had to be regained. But it
was going to take a lot to make that possible.
It is not what would Jesus do
but what DID Jesus do? He, God, came in the form of a human being subject to
all of the perils and physical trials of a human being. He lived, sweated, ate,
excreted, slept, cried, hungered, suffered cold and heat, and finally allowed
human beings to execute him like a common criminal. He was God paying the price
for mankind’s continual rebellion against Him.
He paid a ransom to God, to Himself, not to Satan you
fundamentalists who mistakenly think a ransom was paid to Satan, of all things.
He paid a ransom for us to God the Father.
Exodus 30:12 When thou
takest the sum of the children of Israel after their number, then shall they
give every man a ransom for his soul unto the LORD, when thou numberest them;
that there be no plague among them, when thou numberest them.
Psalms 49:7 None of them
can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him:
Mark 10:45 For even the Son
of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a
ransom for many.
1Timothy 2:6 Who gave
himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time.
Christ, the Son of God, as in God-in-the-flesh, like any son of
any ancient king or emperor came in the authority of His father and indeed by
obedience and worship to Him was the same as His father, to be obeyed.
By faith in Christ and by trusting in Christ we have eternal life.
John 10:28 And I give unto
them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck
them out of my hand.
He is preparing a place for us.
John 14:1 ¶ Let not your
heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.
2 In my Father’s house are many
mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for
you.3 And if I go and prepare a place
for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there
ye may be also.
Through Christ we have equality and the elimination of
distinctions that led to domination and oppression of one over the other.
Galatians 3:28 There is
neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male
nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.
We have immediate access to the very throne of God.
Hebrews 4:16 Let us
therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and
find grace to help in time of need.
On top of that the Godhead indwells each believer and we have
access to the very mind of God if we can push self aside.
John 14:23 Jesus answered
and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will
love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.
Romans 8:9 But ye are not
in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you.
Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.
I’ve pointed out before how Christ promised to never leave or
forsake us. We are incredibly, wonderfully, and permanently saved no matter how
stupid, self-righteous, sinful, bigoted, or unreasonable our human spirit is.
But He has also promised to remove that garbage from us if we would confess our
sins to Him.
1John 1:9 If we confess our
sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from
all unrighteousness.
So, considering all of that, why wouldn’t anyone want to get saved
by the Creator of the Universe?
Why wouldn’t anyone want to spend eternity with their Creator, the
God who has declared that He loves them and loved them enough to die for them,
to pay any price that Creator would demand for rebellion against Him, and paid
the price Himself?
There are several choices people have to make in life regarding
God. One is what is offered to us in public education, that the universe is
dead and ruled by blind, pitiless chance. In this view you are an accident of
nature and you have no special purpose, no value, and you have no reason to
live other than that you enjoy living and if you don’t then there is nothing
wrong particularly with ending your existence. You are not going to be judged.
No one out there gives one care if you die or live. The only thing you have to
lose is your pain.
The greatest good you can expect in life is to find pleasure and
happiness because nothing you do matters in the long run. You are a non-verbal,
unfeeling, event in space-time and within a relatively very short period of
time, all things considered, your body will die and go back into the
constituent elements from which it just randomly accidentally came about. Your
consciousness in this view is merely a byproduct of your neurons firing off. I
guess, if that’s true, since there are more neurons in your digestive system
than in your brain that explains why most people think with their stomach. And,
of course, if thoughts are the result of neurons firing off how many have to
fire off to make a thought? Five? Ten thousand?
Who knows? But anyway if you believe this you are no more
important than a garden slug or a piece of grass. Life’s only meaning is what
you give to it and then you’re gone.
Then, there is the view that there is a god or even gods but they
don’t love mankind, that means you, have never loved mankind, and truly are
just oblivious to your existence unless you make them mad.
Allah doesn’t love mankind. He doesn’t promise them anything.. He
certainly wouldn’t be caught living as one of them, suffering what they suffer,
and Allah forbid, letting them kill him if he had condescended so low.
As Muslim scholars would argue against Christ, why not become a
dog? Could the Messiah come as a sheep?
Did Buddha love mankind? He never said he did. The gods and
goddesses of the Hindus or Greeks might take on human bodies to play but that
wasn’t out of a concern or a desire to communicate with them but to exploit
them. Plus, these gods are so weak, even Allah, that they need men to kill for
them. Unlike the God of the Bible they don’t seem to have control over every
moment of your existence. No, the gods of this earth are pretty lacking when it
comes to someone worthy to be worshipped.
Then there is the God of the Bible; His soul, God the Father; His body,
the Son of God, the Word, and the Lord Jesus Christ; and the Holy Ghost, aka
the Holy Spirit, the very mind of God, soul, body, and spirit. We rebelled
against He who created us. We began dying as He removed His hand of mercy and protection
from us and gave us over to our worship of Self, the origin of virtually all
evil.
Just
read Romans 1:16 to 2:1 for a religious history of mankind in short.
God
came in the form of a man, a humble carpenter’s stepson, a humble Jewish
maiden’s child, lived as we do only without sin, and was murdered by the lawful
authorities, innocent of all charges, taking on the punishment we deserved for
our rebellion against our Creator. He loved mankind at the Cross.
John 3:16 For God so loved
the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever
believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
17 For God sent not his Son into the
world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.
18 He that believeth on him is not
condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not
believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 19 And this is the condemnation, that light is
come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their
deeds were evil. 20 For every one that
doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should
be reproved. 21 But he that doeth truth
cometh to the light, that his
deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.
He then went to Hell where He preached to the
lost spirits and then ascended in triumph to Heaven, the abode of God the
Father, with Paradise and the redeemed that came before His incarnation. He
then rose bodily from the dead. It is by faith that He was God in the flesh and
was the first man who rose from the dead by His own power, faith in His
resurrection, that gives us access to eternal life.
John 10:17 Therefore doth
my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again.18 No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of
myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This
commandment have I received of my Father.
He will never leave us or forsake us and we
will live in eternity with the One who created us. Believe on that and be
saved.
But you say, “I don’t like Christians. They’re hypocrites. They
say one thing and do another.” I tell you that is a good thing. When I was in college I took a philosophy
class and learned that every healthy culture has ethics to which they aspire
but rarely reach and morals by which they live and those morals are typically
inconsistent, often uncertain, and usually pretty sorry. It is when your
standard of ethics you pull down to match your morals that you become
incorrigible and useless.
We are hypocrites. Paul himself said;
Romans 7:14 ¶ For we know
that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin. 15 For that which I do I allow not: for what I
would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I. 16 If then I do that which I would not, I
consent unto the law that it is good. 17
Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.
18 For I know that in me (that is, in my
flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to
perform that which is good I find not. 19
For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that
I do. 20 Now if I do that I would not,
it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. 21 I find then a law, that, when I
would do good, evil is present with me. 22 For I delight in the law of God after the
inward man: 23 But I see another law in
my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity
to the law of sin which is in my members. 24
O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this
death? 25 I thank God through Jesus
Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with
the flesh the law of sin.
So, you have no excuse to reject Christ because I am a hypocrite.
So, I tell you, you need to be saved from your natural destination
as a human being, something that only humans have to face. Death is bad enough
but an eternity of agony in pain with no possibility of parole or the
alleviation of your suffering? If you think things are bad now!
Romans 10:9 That if thou
shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart
that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. 10 For with the heart man believeth unto
righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
How is one saved? Believe in Christ’s resurrection from the dead.
Believe what Christ said about Himself.
John 14:6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
Invitation.
[1]
Alexey S. Kondrashov, “Contamination of the Genome by Very Slightly Deleterious
Mutations: Why Have We Not Died 100 Times Over?” Journal of Theoretical Biology, (1995) vol. 175, pp. 583-594. James F. Crow, “The High Spontaneous Mutation
Rate: Is it a Health Risk?” Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences, (Aug 1997) vol. 94, pp. 8380-8386.
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