Chezandlilly's

The Doctrine of Hell Breeds Arrogance

2011-09-27T20:37:00.002+10:00

It's been some time since I posted anything in this here blog of mine so I thought I'd start off by saying that this year I've been through one of the biggest battles of my life... my breast cancer returned to the bones.. spine, ribs, pelvis, neck and tops of my arms. Thankfully... Father God has seen fit for me to be gradually healed. Not in the miraculous as we think of miraculous, but through hormone treatment. I do believe that God provides the medical community with all the knowledge they have, so to me it comes from Him anyway. I'm not in remission yet, but am on the way... maybe a few more months? I'm hoping so. I'm feeling so much better at the moment and can't believe how sick I actually got.. including hospital stays and losing twenty kilo's (or forty three pounds) through cancer anexoria and pain medications. Anyway, I'm going to post an article I found in Julie Ferwerda's site, here:

http://www.julieferwerda.com/

I encourage anyone to look through Julie's site, it's very uplifting and informative when it comes to the belief that God will eventually save all.

Julie's article is called: The Doctrine of Hell Breeds Arrogance, here:

As I look back at my old self who once believed in hell, I realize how many terrible consequences such a false doctrine has had on me and even all of mankind. One such consequence is pride and arrogance. I can easily think of at least three important expressions of arrogance that arise from such a doctrine.

1. I am responsible for my salvation. This notion only applies to advocates of “free will” for salvation (as opposed to Calvinism that only a select few are saved not by their own will, but by God’s predetermined will). Most free will advocates are going to balk at this suggestion, but let’s face it. If I have to be responsible for choosing Jesus over hell, I have already given myself the God-like power to determine my own fate. Even making a choice is a form of self-effort and attempt (and one that most people in the world never even have the opportunity to make, I might add). This is not what the Bible teaches.

“So it is God who decides to show mercy. We can neither choose it nor work for it” (Rom. 9:16).

“You did not choose Me but I chose you” (John 15:16).

“And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw (lit. drag) all men to Myself” (John 12:32).

“For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works (including decisions), so that no one may boast” (Eph. 2:8-9).

At this point, some people will say, “Yes, but you see that even Paul said that we are saved THROUGH FAITH. So right there, it is a choice!”

Let’s reconsider these old lenses. Sadly, through the mistranslation of one little word in many of the newer Bible versions, “in,” we have missed something very significant. We are not saved by our faith in Jesus, but by the faith OF Jesus. Consider the following passage as rendered more correctly in the KJV:

“But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; even the righteousness of God which is by FAITH OF JESUS CHRIST unto all and upon ALL THEM THAT BELIEVE…” (Romans 3:21 22).

Notice the faith of Jesus is imparted BOTH to all, AND to those who believe! You might also take note that most modern versions omit the part about “unto all” before the part about “and all them that believe.” Worth looking into why it was omitted!

2. I am responsible for the salvation of others. Of course I’m not suggesting that you are Jesus and you can possibly or actually save anyone. But isn’t it pretty arrogant to believe that you are at least partly responsible for keeping people out of hell? Why bother telling them about Jesus as a ticket out of hell unless you feel responsible? Why send out missionaries unless we think we are somewhat responsible for the eternal fate of others? Again, this puts us on a throne of sorts, suggesting that we have any power over the destiny of others. What a grave responsibility that would be if we truly had this much power over real lives and fates.

3. I must play “God” in the lives of people I love. If we really believe in hell, and hence we really believe that most people for all time are going to be sent there, and we really think we can intervene on behalf of or influence others to any extent—we come to the obvious conclusion (sometimes unconscious) that we must play God to make sure that our loved ones know the truth and are prevented from mistakes, wrong beliefs, dangerous paths, and ultimately damning unbelief. We end up believing that we have to control our universe or sphere of influence because it is crucial to keep our loved ones from choosing a wrong path that could lead to hell.

In this belief system, the world is not a safe place for our friends, our children, our families, and our spouses. In fact, it is not even a safe place for us to question our beliefs, such as the doctrine of hell and where it actually came from and IF it even occurs in the Greek and Hebrew Scriptures (which it doesn’t)! On this throne, God can’t fully be trusted and it is up to us to steer them in the right direction and to ultimately keep them out of hell.

But is this the “god” of the Bible—one who is largely subjected to the will and actions of man? Are we that powerful that we can possibly determine the destiny of ourselves and others? Can we change or interfere with the will of God?

“I am God, and there is no one like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things which have not been done, saying, `My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all My good pleasure…‘” (Isaiah 46:9-10).

What is His will and good pleasure? He has stated it over and over. Here is one example of thousands:

“This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who WILLS all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:3-4).

Relax. Step down off the throne. Bask in the truth of your Father’s full control over and intent of GOOD for all his creation! He would no sooner banish and eternally punish any of His children than you would yours. He has spoken, and it is finished. Love. Does. Not. Fail. (1 Cor. 13:8).

The Myth of Free Will

2010-11-28T00:48:00.000+11:00

By Clyde L. Pilkington, Jr.
I was raised in the “free will” doctrine and taught it diligently for many years as a pastor. We all do have a will: the “problem” is that it isn’t free. “Free will” is a myth.

We did not choose our race, our nationality, our sex, our eye or hair color, our birth date, or even who our parents were. No “free will” there at all, and that is just for “starts.”

“Free-will” is “influenced” by our culture, our society, our peers, our sex, our upbringing, our parents, and by our spouses, etc. “Free will” is simply an illusion. Everything about us is a composite of influences around us, and in circumstances over which we have no control or choice whatsoever. We did not even choose to be here.

Something as basic as the weather conditions restrain our so-called “fee will.” For instance, we use our “free will” to “choose” to go hiking – then a strong thunderstorm settles in and changes our “free will” plans.

My mother had no “free will” in getting cancer. My father had no “free will” in dying from it. Jenny had no “free will” in her husband abandoning her and her children. Bob had no “free will” in the loss of his job. Jerry had no “free will” in the drunk driver that paralyzed him and killed his son.

Aashish had no “free will” being born, and then living and dying without ever even having heard of the name of the Lord Jesus Christ – not even once, let alone the gospel of what He had done for him.

We all have a “will,” but whatever are its characteristics, “free” is definitely not one of them. Even our belief in “free will” is not of our own “choosing” – it was thrust upon mankind by the religious system. It makes for good theology, but it just isn’t true. Paul warned us of religion’s “will worship” (Colossians 2:23); and if we listen closely we can hear this worship of human “free will” in the language of its believers:

“I believed in the gospel.”
“I came to Christ.”
“I chose to place my faith in Christ.”
“I decided to live for God.”

The disciples may have thought that they chose to follow the Lord, but Jesus set the record straight:

“You have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you” (John 15:16).

This is why John wrote that the work in Israel was not “of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:13).

As parents we love our children; and they love us “back.” They respond to our unconditional love of them. They do not love us out of “free will” – they did not pick us out and “choose” to love us – they were influenced in their “decision” to love us only because we loved them first. They were set up! And so it is with God in His relationship with us. We learn this from John’s simple words:

“We love Him, because He first loved us” (I John 4:19).

There is no “free will.” The reason that we love Him is completely outside of ourselves. His love is the first cause from which our love springs. Paul wrote of this love being manifest through the Lord Jesus Christ to us:

“For the love of Christ constrains us” (II Corinthians 5:14).

His love is not just available, or a potential love, nor an offer of love; but a constraining love. “Constrain” is a strong word. The Greek word from which it is translated is sunecho. James Strong defines it as “to arrest (a prisoner).” The word is so strong that it is used in the Scriptures of being overtaken by a disease (Matthew 4:24; Luke 4:38; Acts 28:8).

It is interesting that Paul used this word, for he knew firsthand of Christ’s constraining love. It arrested him on the road to Damascus. Paul (Saul) was not seeking Christ. He did not “choose” Him. Paul met the resurrected Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus, and there called Him “Lord” (Acts 9:6). This was all the grand, abrupt, course-altering, sovereign work of God in reaching Paul.

Paul was on his way to Damascus to do harm to the saints there. He did not change his mind by his own “free will.” Rather, it was the dramatic “Damascus Road experience” that transformed his will. Paul met with spectacular interference to his “free will.” He met the resurrected Christ! One day, those who have not trusted Christ during this life will be resurrected and brought into the presence of the Son of God, and will with Paul call Him “Lord.”

“That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:10).

Oh, the extent to which God will go to reach man! Isn’t it odd how Christendom limits God’s ability, and yet makes man’s will free. God is not limited at all, and in due course He will pull out all the stops in reaching mankind with His love.

There are two “wills” in the universe: the Creator’s and the creatures. God’s will is FREE, the creatures’ is not. God “will have all men to be saved” (I Timothy 2:4), and He Who “works all things after the counsel of His Own will” (Ephesians 1:11) will “reconcile all things unto Himself; by Him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven” (Colossians 1:20), making Him “the Savior of all men” (I Timothy 4:10).

When my children were young we lived on a busy street with no fence around our house. I would not allow them to play in or near the street. They had no “free will.” I constrained them with my love.

We are not the masters of our own fate. We are not the lords of our own lives. We are the creatures, not the Creator. “He is Lord of ALL” (Acts 10:36), “in Him we live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28), and our response to His love is all a matter of timing, “but every man in his own order” (I Corinthians 15:23).

None of us had any “free will” in being included in the disobedience of Adam. It was forced upon us. Neither do any of us have any “free will” about the undoing of Adam in the obedience of Christ.

“Therefore as by the offence of one [Adam] judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of One [Christ] the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life.” (Romans 5:18)

Not even our faith to believe in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior is a matter of our own choosing.

“For by grace are you saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God …” (Ephesians 2:8-9).

THIS is the good news, believe it or not.

“If we believe not, yet He abides faithful: He cannot deny Himself” (II Timothy 2:13).

GREAT EVIL KING RELIGION & The Prophets of Baal

2010-10-08T00:07:00.000+11:00

The following is an essay written by Jacob Israel, in which he shares why he is withdrawing from sharing the revelations he's received from Father so that people will learn to look to the Kingdom within instead of relying on him to find what they are looking for.

I am greatly encouraged by this exhortation and teaching. The Lord revealed much of what is written here to me about eight years ago. Sitting in a Pentecostal meeting, listening to 'the man' out front and feeling the great power emanating from him the Lord revealed to me it was nothing but Baal worship. I left (and there was very much in the leaving, having been a pew warmer for about thirty years) but kept quiet about it for a long time only sharing it with a few who would then look at me like I was nuts. I can have a giggle now.

Bold type and italics are mine.

It's long but please open your heart and mind to hear..

GREAT EVIL KING RELIGION and The Prophets of Baal.

Many want to know why I have decided recently to basically drop away from the social scene, and end my popular radio program for awhile. I wanted to give everyone a simple answer. But I know few would understand, if I simply said, “I was meant to” “It was necessary for me to go, to let you find the answers alone”

Ecclesiastes 9 14There was a little city, and few men within it; and there came a great king against it, and besieged it, and built great bulwarks against it: 15Now there was found in it a poor wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city; yet no man remembered that same poor man. 16Then said I, Wisdom is better than strength: nevertheless the poor man’s wisdom is despised, and his words are not heard. 17The words of wise men are heard in quiet more than the cry of him that ruleth among fools.

There are FEW who are that “little CITY” and indeed there are FEW in this CITY, which is the LIGHT set upon a Hill. We are that Light that cannot be hid.

Matthew 5:14

Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid

But then there came a GREAT KING against this CITY (Christ in us) and besieged it. This Great King called Religion has made slaves, prostitutes, murderers, thieves, and adulterers of us all, allegorically of course. You see first we become these terrible beasts, and then in the natural world these terrible beasts (murders, peodefiles, rapists, prostitutes, adulterers, etc) appear. Every evil we see in the natural is a direct result of a spiritual evil in the heart of man.

Let me show you some of the evil I have seen under the son… One we all know well, CARNAL RELIGIOUS LEADERS turn the Truth of God, the Word of God, which is the SEED that we are too sow into the world (hearts of men) into MONEY, and they have said, follow after Money, Sow your Money, Make more money. That it is God’s will for you to be in perfect health, and perfectly wealthy, and that God wants YOU to prove to HIM that you are serious about your faith by the size of HOW MUCH MONEY YOU GIVE help build, what they (the great evil kings) call the Kingdom of God, which is nothing more than a fools house of cards which will come crumbling down. You are only building a wicked man’s kingdom, the Kingdom of God is righteousness, faith, joy, and power in his spirit which costs nothing but your submission to God.

However, the Great Evil King religion, has convinced men and women to literally and spiritually kill others, to kill themselves, to convince others to do the same. To torture, to war, to death, this is what the great evil kings of religion are fighting for. Total domination and control of YOU! You are all slaves, you go to church and feel better about yourself by going and giving because you were told this pleases God, yet it is the very thing that disgusts God the most.

You have become dried up bones, there is no LIFE (TRUTH) in you, because the GREAT EVIL KING RELIGION has sucked you all dry, financially, emotionally, spiritually, with their candy coated lies, and when you lose your family, divorce, become broke, and your loved ones die even though the Great Evil Kings said they would be healed with enough faith, you ignorantly will return. “Thank you Sir or Man, may I have another.”

But there is found in this “little city” a “poor man” who will deliver this city, but no one will remember his name, for the name of God is what all a man needs to know. You see, as Solomon said, the words of the Wise are heard in quiet (deep meditation and sincere seeking) MORE than of him (the great evil kings) that rules among fools.

Jeremiah 23:14

I have seen also in the prophets of Jerusalem an horrible thing: they commit adultery, and walk in lies: they strengthen also the hands of evildoers, that none doth return from his wickedness; they are all of them unto me as Sodom, and the inhabitants thereof as Gomorrah.

You don’t have to go far to find an altar of Baal today, they are on almost every street corner. There are so-called fig trees all around, and yet NONE PRODUCE FRUIT.

PEOPLE are HUNGRY TODAY, the CHRIST in them is screaming, FEED ME TRUTH… And as that SPIRIT OF CHRIST drives us toward JERUSALEM (which means the teaching of peace) we, who are now awake, as it is the dawning of a new day, will see these Fig Trees have no fruit at all and we will CURSE THEM. We will say, these man made temples, churches, mosques, kingdom halls, and more will NEVER PRODUCE FRUIT FOR US AGAIN… And we too will see it wither away before our eyes. As I have seen over these last ten years of my life.

Mark 11:21

And Peter calling to remembrance saith unto him, Master, behold, the fig tree which thou cursedest is withered away.

There are so many things wrong with the Great Evil King Religion, that I couldn’t possibly name them all and address them all in one essay, but I will say, a great LIGHT is shining for those who have eyes to see it, a great LIGHT for those who are bold enough to open the blinds to feel it. And this LIGHT is truth, and this TRUTH is Word of God, and this God is LOVE.

Luke 10:27

And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.-

This do, the man Jesus said, and you will LIVE! Now some will question who is your neighbor, well your neighbor are those that have been robbed, stripped and beaten by THIEVES, and the THIEVES are those who try and enter the KINGDOM ANY OTHER WAY but the STRAIGHT GATE, which is LOVE, WHICH IS TRUTH, WHICH IS CHRIST. The THIEVES are all of these RELIGIOUS LEADERS you are putting your faith in!

GOD WANTS ALL OF YOU TO GO TO THE MOUNTAIN, and see God FACE TO FACE. But like Israel, you refuse, you’re like “Nah Moses, you go up there, if we go there we will surely die… you come back down and tell us what to do.” CARNAL MAN wants to be ruled by MAN, and what did Moses and his law produce DEATH!

Exodus 20

18And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they removed, and stood afar off. 19And they said unto Moses, Speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not God speak with us, lest we die.

People don’t want to DIE TO THE ILLUSION that they are in control. They would rather worship and serve the CREATURE “MOSES” or the Man “JESUS” INSTEAD OF THE CREATOR.

Now LISTEN, you want to know the truth? You want freedom? Well, there is but ONE WAY in, LOVING ALL, and UNDERSTANDING God is IN CONTROL.

We need to enter this rest, HIS REST. We have to cease for our works, our belief that we must do this or that, and most importantly our belief that “we” are actually in control, and have free will. This lie is the reason people suffer the way they do today. You are wrangled by the Great Evil King Religion into believing “Your dead in your many sins, and you MUST DO SOMETHING to be saved, say something, do this, do that.” Yet, the sad thing is, while millions take the bait, hook, line and sinker, they don’t realize they are eating of the very Tree that causes them the DEATH (Ignorance) they suffer from. The Great King Religion is the Great Satan, it is the Key Master who lures you in the gates of Hell (Your suffering, lack of faith, and ignorance) with the promise of riches, salvation, and peace IF ONLY YOU DO SOMETHING! It’s up to you, The Great Evil King save, Because GOD’S ARM IS SHORTENED AND CANNOT SAVE! God needs YOU…. What a crock!

Hebrews 3

18And to whom swear he that they should not enter into his rest, but to them that believed not? 19So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief.-

Everyone has been told they are in control, and so they become the ANTI-CHRIST sitting on God’s throne (Your mind and heart) saying I am John, Grace, Helen, Bob, etc, and I am the master of my destiny, I make the choices, I call the shots. But with all your hard work, and all your FREE WILL thinking, you still feel empty, you are tired, you feel like a failure, and can’t find the peace, you have hang ups, insecurities, need counseling, drugs, alcohol, your relationship fall apart, you feel lost and alone. So what does the The Great Evil King Religion tell you, “You’re not doing enough, giving enough, or believing enough.”

But the ONLY WAY TO KNOW PEACE is to know GOD IS IN COMPLETE CONTROL OF YOUR LIFE. Your ups, your downs, your decisions, your mistakes, your EVERYTHING! This truth sets your free, not the empty promises of perverse idol worshiping greedy men and women.

Matthew 10 29Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. 30But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. 31Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows.

Now when you learn that everything else is VANITY, that your work, your effort, your belief, your church attendance, your giving, your this, or that, that you did with the belief if you GIVE IT SHALL BE GIVEN, RUNNING OVER… MEANS NOTHING! When you understand it is all VANITY! When you finally let Go and let God, then you overcome. When you DIE TO YOUR SELF EFFORT AND VAIN BELIEFS, then you OVERCOME and BECOME the Christ, the ANOINTED ONE! – This is what ISRAEL did not want to do, they didn’t want to DIE to their egotistical lives. They had been tricked into believing their works were actually pleasing to God, as to realizing they are an abomination in his site.

When you hear your Religious Leaders shouting about all of their SALVATIONS, HEALINGS, AND GREAT TESTIMONIES, AND PEOPLE THEY SET FREE… They are bragging about what they did, while pretending to say God did it through them. They say, of “we” are just the vessel, so send in your love gift and the anointing of God will flow through me to this prayer cloth and we will send it to you, and you lay it on your sick loved one and with enough faith, they will be healed. HOGWASH! They should be ashamed of themselves, But God is IN Control of even that! You see we are ALL ONE and one day, we will ALL COME TO THE UNDERSTANDING AND THE STATURE OF THE PERFECT MAN.

Ephesians 4:13

Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ:

Ephesians 4:4

There is ONE body (humanity), and ONE Spirit (God), even as ye are called in ONE hope of your calling (To realize who you are, CHRIST)

When you understand you are God’s child, and you say, “Not My Will, but Your’s Father be done” when you understand, it’s not about You, but the SPIRIT THAT IS WITHIN YOU. When you say, “I can DO NOTHING OF MYSELF” and grab hold of the fact that YOUR LIFE IS NOT YOUR OWN, AND YOUR LIFE IS HID IN CHRIST, then CHRIST will no longer be HID, AND that little CITY WILL SHINE BRIGHT FOR ALL TO SEE!

The Great Evil King Religion, has given birth to hundreds of thousands of lying profits, imans, pastors, priests, evangelists, rabbi’s, and new age teachers, all saying “Do what I say and you will be okay.” But they are all LIARS, and GOD has turned them all over to the REPROBATE MIND, and the more they believe the lies they teach the more arrogant, prideful, and pitiful they become. But one by one, these domino’s will fall, the question is what will that mean to you?

TIME TO DISAPPEAR FOR AWHILE

Recently, after seeing my name next to name of a man, who I know to be a thief and liar, a Bishop who claims miraculous healings without proof, who boasts, tears down, and is on the rise in the “evangelical world” I was taken back.

What happened? How did I, who never wanted to be in the same company with such men or women, all of sudden find himself as a “must read” author next to this sheep shearer?

Jeremiah 50:6

My people hath been lost sheep: their shepherds have caused them to go astray, they have turned them away on the mountains: they have gone from mountain to hill, they have forgotten their resting place. -

At first I was disgusted seeing my allegorical Fiction “The Calling” placed in the same company, with some nonsensical self help “Christian” mumbo jumbo manual written by a man who doesn’t know his right (truth of God) from left (lies of Man).

But then the more I thought about, the more I realized, people were beginning to make me a “name”, a “somebody”. However unlike so many others who crave a “name”, I don’t. This is something that is not acceptable to me, as I am NOT A NAME. I am not a MAN that has all the answers, or even a man who knows God, except in part.

You’ll hear many Religious Leaders say, “The Lord told me”, “God spoke to me clearly”, “God said ten people are going to send in one thousand dollars tonight” … etc… Yet, every true prophet from scripture never heard clearly, never trusted what they heard, and everyone, EVERYONE WAS FORCED TO DO GOD’S WILL… Jonah, Moses, Joseph, even Jesus wanted the cup to pass. – But these GREAT EVIL KINGS OF RELIGION say they have a main line from God, and hear him clearly. Well guess what, only in Babylon would someone not be declared insane. I don’t HEAR GOD, I get revelation, and pray it is correct. So much for your LYING PATHETIC LEADERS who you willingly allow to rape your young, rob your wallets, and have the nerve to say you’re not doing enough and need to do more. They get off on their control, telling you when to fast as a congregation, when to commit to having sex with your partner as a congregation, they get off on the control. THEY ARE A PLAGUE, THEY ARE THE FROGS that CROAK and have gotten into your bedroom, kitchen, living quaters, every aspect of your life, you have allowed the ENEMY OF GOD to steal and rob from you. You live in constant Fear of a God who LOVES. But that is all about to change. Because I go away, so you will go within!

All I know, is what I know, if it is the truth, than it is the Grace of God and of myself I’ve done nothing. If it is not truth, then God has allowed me to believe such, and it is once again by the grace of God and I cannot write anything but what I have written and there is a purpose. Which means, God is in control of the TRUTH spoken and the LIES spoken.

You see there is great freedom knowing you are not in control of your life. Now this doesn’t mean you aren’t always striving to do right, you are. It doesn’t mean you aren’t always looking to help others, better yourself as a child of God, you do. But you understand YOU aren’t doing the work, God is GIVING YOU THE DESIRES of your heart. It is your greatest desire to be close to your Father, this is why you prayed “Not my will, not what I believe, teach me the truth no matter what the cost, Lord teach me, Father use me.”

This is submission, but that does not mean it is giving up, in fact you do more, seek more, reach higher, bow lower, but YOU DON’T HAVE A CHOICE, and you understand that. So when the storms of life come, you KNOW IT IS FOR YOUR GOOD, BECAUSE YOU LOVE!

Six months ago I lost my cool and had it out with my Mother N Law, God bless her. Because after this big fight, we decided to sell out house, and we ended up in my wife’s dream house, 3 times bigger, less of a mortgage payment, an apartment to rent if we wish, a pool, and because of issues with permits, we have lived here since June 15, and our rent is one dollar a day, until we close, and my asthma is gone. Now had I not gotten all carnal and had such a terrible blow out, with a woman I now love, than I wouldn’t be writing this to you from my new office. God instigated this argument, he set the stage, he sent the tormenting spirit (as he did with King Saul) and got me to do exactly what I needed to do, so he could Bless us as our family has grown in him. But like a fool, I beat myself up for months about losing my temper, but now I have seen, if I never did this, I would have problem breathing, in a shotty small house, instead of a huge brand new blessing of a home, FOR LESS MONEY.

The Wise person knows that in every hard and bad time there is a greater blessing because of it. Where would the flowers be without the manure, the pearl without the suffering of the oyster, the diamond without all that pressure?

So why should I get upset when I see so many Prophets of Baal in the land, tormenting God’s children, imprisoning them with lies, and fairy tales, making them fools by claiming miraculous healings, and miraculous wealth… Those that continue to build the wall higher and higher until all people can see and know Babylon’s folly, is surely also part of God’s plan. The bigger the bully the bigger their fall. And the GREAT EVIL KING RELIGION will fall. Because God is in control of it all. And God RAISED THE BULLY UP as he did Pharaoh.

Romans 9:17

For the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might shew my power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth.

So the question is, if God is hardening the Great Evil Religious Kings of the world, and putting lies in their mouths, where is the proof, why, and what is the point?

1 Kings 22

20And the LORD said, Who shall persuade Ahab, that he may go up and fall at Ramothgilead? And one said on this manner, and another said on that manner. 21And there came forth a spirit, and stood before the LORD, and said, I will persuade him.

You see AHAB was a false prophet, he was the SON of OMNRI (which means in Hebrew, “God’s pupil”) – Now OMNRI may mean “Pupil of God”, like many of the “religious leaders” claim to be out there, but Omri, like many others who do evil in the sight of the Lord, are meant to be much more than simply pupils of God.

We are GOD’S CHILDREN… You can study, and quote scripture until the cows come home, but if you have not LOVE and the TRUTH, it would be better if you had not studied at all, than to give birth to an “AHAB”… Which is exactly what is ruling the land today.

AHAB, a lying king, married to Jezebel and we all know (that Religious spirit) only wants to kill the Truth of God. So how does God handle such false teachers, like AHAB? By getting them to FURTHER BELIEVE that the LIES THEY TEACH will bring them VICTORY, when in fact, it will be their destruction. Which is a good thing, because a man must first die to himself and the LIES he believes before he is born again.

So when I see those out there teaching lies, robbing their congregants with candy coated poisonous words, I know that God is yet in control of this as well. He needs to brings the liars or the land to their knees and there is no better way to do this, than to make them believe that they can do whatever they want, and that God is not watching. (And just WHO do you think filled their heads with this belief?) – Well read the next passage and you tell me.

22And the LORD said unto him, Wherewith? And he said, I will go forth, and I will be a LYING SPIRIT IN THE MOUTH OF ALL AHAB’S PROPHETS. And he said, Thou shalt persuade him, and prevail also: go forth, and do so. 23Now therefore, behold, the LORD HATH PUT A LYING SPIRIT IN THE MOUTH OF ALL THESE THY PROPHETS…-

You see, God is the one that has PUTS THE LIES in the Mouths of these False Prophets. Now why would God do such a thing?

It is to BRING AN END TO THE LIES we have believed, so People can finally be set at liberty and may know the truth. It’s sort of like that old story you heard about a child who was caught smoking a cigarette, his father gives him a whole pack and sends him to his room and says he can’t leave till he smokes the whole pack. The kid got so sick from those cigarettes, he never touched them again.

There is going to come a point in the congregation’s lives, when they too will become sick of all the lies they have been force fed and swallowed over the years. They will grow tired of hearing about scandal after scandal, seeing no change in their life and in their heart, having no hope, and now broke, and they will finally turn to God and say, “God I don’t know what to believe, who to believe, and what is true?”

AND THAT’S WHEN THE TRUTH WILL BE REVEALED TO THEM! The instant people stop going to Man to know God, but go to God to know God, they will find the Truth and the Freedom they so desperately crave.

24But Zedekiah the son of Chenaanah went near, and smote Micaiah on the cheek, and said, Which way went the Spirit of the LORD from me to speak unto thee? 25And Micaiah said, Behold, thou shalt see in that day, when thou shalt go into an INNER CHAMBER to hide thyself. -

When we GO WITHIN, (the kingdom/reign/rule/truth of God is within) – That is when you SEE (Understand) where THE SPIRIT of the LORD WENT… It never went anywhere, it is we, the CARNAL SOUL in the BODY that went to a far country and forgot who we were and where our home was… Micaiah understood this, before the liars of the land knew this, but he also knew eventually they would GO WITHIN, even if it was to Hide Themselves from the devastation to come.

So to briefly address why I decided to go off Facebook and end my radio program for a time, it was because I truly have no choice in the matter. I was tired of seeing so many people being so misled, I was becoming sickened by the hypocrisy from the pulpit, I was saddened by those who I KNOW would benefit from understanding the TRUTH.

SEVEN GREAT TRUTHS

1) God is LOVE 2) God has a plan 3) God is in control 4) God cannot fail 5) You cannot fail because God will not fail 6) You will overcome, because God has created you to live the life you are living and you will reap what you sow and will learn to submit yourselves to the truth 7) God will bring you into his rest by frustrating you with your vain self effort and imaginings that will never comfort you.

THERE IS SUCH GREAT HOPE! WE CAN’T LOSE, EVEN THE GREAT EVIL RELIGIOUS KINGS WILL RETURN

Romans 8:38-39 38For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, 39Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.-

This is OUR HOPE! Nothing, and I mean NOTHING shall separate us from the LOVE OF GOD, which is in CHRIST, which is OUR LIFE! This is what everyone needs to grab hold of. YOU ARE NOT IN CONTROL! You don’t accomplish anything or destroy anything. You are not who you THINK YOU ARE.

1 Corinthians 6:19

What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and YOU ARE NOT YOUR OWN?-

For years I have been trying to share this with others. This is the hidden meaning of my novel, it is the very core of everything I write, it is my very reason to live, my passion, my heart, MY DESIRE, which is not my own. So for awhile I did the best I could to share this. I wanted to inspire, to encourage, to share what I had learned, that everything was according to plan and that we should not fear, anything, but reverence God, and seek Love in all we do. This is why I began my radio show, my Facebook, my blog, to spread this and to get my Novel out there, which I believed with all my heart, was a key to the kingdom. I believed, and still believe, my Fiction, would help many to question who have never questioned, and help those to see who have questioned and haven’t seen before.

This was and is my hope. Because I believed, and still believe this is what was written, and that I was, as the lead character in my novel was, a VOICE IN THE DEAD WOODS. I wanted to be a FIG TREE with FRUIT. And so each day I prayed and woke to help inspire or encourage anyone who would read my posts, entertain and get to question anyone who would hear my programs, test and try any who would watch my Youtube videos, and wake up anyone who would buy my novel… But yesterday, it all seemed like such vanity to me.

I was tired of seeing so many perverse men and women making bold claims, that I knew without a shadow of a doubt were not true. My heart broke every time someone would say I had no faith, and that I somehow was quenching the SPIRIT OF GOD. As if this is possible. I don’t know about you, but I don’t need to have a literally blind person healed to know God and to have Faith. We are to put our faith in the UNSEEN, but the whole world is sensual and want miracles and show, and want natural things that they can naturally wraps their mind around.

Because….

1 Corinthians 2:14

The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

Watch what we are to put our faith in.

Hebrews 11:1

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

And without FAITH (in the UNSEEN) it is impossible to please God.

Read the Faith chapter, each great man and woman of God DID NOT SEE A NATURAL THING, they didn’t look for the promises, they didn’t need to, they had faith that God was true and man was a liar.

And those lost tribes of Israel, are lost to the temporal natural carnal world, led by carnal men, more concerned with gaining wealth or losing it, than with what GOD TRULY WANTS OF THEM. submission

So I decided to leave Facebook, the radio, at least for a time, because they had not tasted what I had tasted, they weren’t where I was, they hadn’t understood what I understood, that NO ONE IS BETTER THAN ANOTHER, and there was NOTHING I COULD DO ABOUT IT! So, I would walk away.

“I AM NOT A NAME I AM GOD’S CHILD!”

So, I shut down my facebook and would no longer do my radio program, until I felt it was right again, if it ever was wrong, it was God that made it so. For those who say this is a mistake, I say, there are no mistakes with God. Now here is the MAIN REASON I decided to take myself out of the equation. People were beginning to think HIGHER OF ME than they should. People were turning to me for answers, and I DON’T HAVE THE ANSWERS, GOD DOES. And every single one of us, Has God WITHIN, waiting to give us every answer to every question. But many are looking to me, AND OTHERS, as if WE have what they have not.

John 16 5-13

But now I go my way to him that sent me; and none of you asketh me, Whither goest thou?-

No one has asked where I am going, but why I am going. That’s the wrong question people.

6But because I have said these things unto you, sorrow hath filled your heart. 7Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you. -

I received so many sorrow filled emails, people feeling like there was something wrong, like I had been attacked or torn down, but I had no choice in the matter, and it wasn’t until writing this letter that I realized why I was leaving for a time, it was so YOU ALL COULD FIND THE TRUTH WITHIN YOU, WITHOUT NEEDING ANOTHER LIKE ME TO TELL YOU.

If all those who claim to know the TRUTH leave, than those who worry they don’t have the TRUTH will find the TRUTH has never left them nor forsaken them. PEOPLE, YOU DON’T NEED THE EVIL KINGS OF RELIGION because the Poor Man with wisdom will save you from their whiley ways, and he will not want credit for doing do. You need only simply knock and the door will be opened, seek and you will find.

12I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. 13Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come(REVEALED IN YOU), he (CHRIST) will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.-

I have done all I can for now, I am not a police man for God, pointing out the flaws of the liars of the land. I am not a RELIGIOUS KING that people should turn to for advice and prayer. I need to go away, so they see that GOD is IN THEM, and THEY are in God, and we are all ONE!

John 17:21

That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.-

The reason why people believe in the lies of these false religious teachers and profits today, is because they want NOW MORE THAN EVER to have an experience of God. They are hurting, and they want answers, they want freedom, but they are following their itching ears. They are looking for the answers OUTSIDE of themselves. They are looking to the natural as the spirit, and forbidding the spirit for the lies of the natural man. This is why we find people claiming miracle healing, miraculous tongues, resurrection of the flesh, and other phenomenon, when NONE OF IT IS TRUE!

They have been taught these things are true by liars, and so the lie became the truth and the truth became the lie, and I find myself wishing things were different.

Romans 1:25

Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.-

So God did to them, what he did to Prophets of AHAB, he turned them over to the REPROBATE MIND. (And no, this has NOTHING to do with homosexuality, that is another LIE of MAN)

Romans 1:21,22

Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. 22Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. -

And remember the FOOL in his heart, says THERE IS NO GOD. These religious leaders today, driving their fancy cars, boasting miraculous shows, dressed in thousand dollar suits, taking the money from the poor and the hungry, DON’T TRULY BELIEVE IN GOD. If they did, they would not do what they do, act the way they act, or live the way they live. They would be transparent and not care what others will think and say. IT IS TRUTH THAT SETS PEOPLE FREE, not the FACADE OF TRUTH. The NAKED EXPOSED UGLY TRUTH is one hundred fold better then a handsome well dressed lie!

So God gave them over to their VILE AFFECTIONS (LIES) as he did with AHAB’S PROPHETS. But I know that I am not the one that needs to correct them. These Prophets of Baal can gather together, cut themselves with stones, scream, shake, quake, jump up and down scream and shout, and the lord will not take their sacrifice.

1 Kings 18

21And Elijah came unto all the people, and said, How long halt ye between two opinions? If the LORD be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word.-

WHO ARE YOU GOING TO SERVE? WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO MAKE UP YOUR MIND? HOW LONG LORD WILL THEY SUFFER BEFORE THEY ENTER IN? So I leave this challenge to all the Prophets of Baal in the land, as Elijah did before me.

1 Kings 18:25 And Elijah said unto the prophets of Baal, Choose you one bullock for yourselves, and dress it first; for ye are many; and call on the name of your gods, but put no fire under. 26And they took the bullock which was given them, and they dressed it, and called on the name of Baal from morning even until noon, saying, O Baal, hear us. But there was no voice, nor any that answered. And they leaped upon the altar which was made. 27And it came to pass at noon, that Elijah mocked them, and said, Cry aloud: for he is a god; either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awakened. 28And they cried aloud, and cut themselves after their manner with knives and lancets, till the blood gushed out upon them. 29And it came to pass, when midday was past, and they prophesied until the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice, that there was neither voice, nor any to answer, nor any that regarded. 30And Elijah said unto all the people, Come near unto me. And all the people came near unto him. And he repaired the altar of the LORD that was broken down-

The Prophets had no power, when in the presence of the Man of God. They looked as fools. And when the PEOPLE realized they had been duped by these money hungry witches with all their signs and wonders crusades and visions of hell, heaven, allah, Jesus, and Joseph Smith… I stand here saying, WHERE IS YOUR GODS when you call on them? Why is not your SACRIFICE accepted? Why are the people in bondage and have no hope?

Then they will see the TRUTH, and grab hold of the HOPE OF GLORY, CHRIST IN THEM, not far from them, not coming soon, but WITHIN THEM. And I travail until Christ be formed in the Body, and when the BODY WAKES OUT OF THE SLUMBER these liars have caused, they will KILL THESE PROFITS (Meaning they will no longer go to their churches) – And BABYLON WILL FALL, and is FALLEN ALREADY. Then they, like I, will REPAIR the ALTAR OF THE LORD which was broken down by their greed and insecure need for control and power, and the altar will be repaired… OUR HEART!

So, leave your mega churches, keep your money, pay your bills, and turn within. Stop your works, see the truth, BE ONE AS WE ARE ONE, AS I AM ONE WITH THE FATHER, AND THE FATHER IS ONE WITH ME, I IN YOU, YOU IN ME, AND WE IN GOD, FOR GOD IS ALL IN ALL and in control of all, setting the stage for THE GREAT EVIL KING RELIGION TO FALL!

If you feel led, send this to as many as you can. One can set a thousand to flight!

Jacob

www.JacobIsrael.org

“The Truth Will Change You”

what is the second death?

2010-09-04T16:57:00.002+10:00

I came across this quote today and decided to include it here, mostly because I had nowhere else to put it..:)
For a long time now I've been trying to gather thoughts on what the second death, or, lake of fire, means. That it's not a literal lake filled with literal fire is without doubt but it's still something hard to put into words. The following is not the whole of it, but a tiny part.. and food for thought.

A quote from David Sanderson (and I don't know who he is, only what he's reported to have said)..

"What is the second death...?" The second death is Judgment. The scripture has many names for it. It's the work that parental and almighty God intended (and absolutely able) to finish 'creating mankind in His image', 'conforming him to the image of His Son', 'scourging every son that He receives', 'burning out (fire) ...of dross' etc. It's also the 'taking up the cross and following', the, 'dying to self', etc.

It's not always 'punitive' and often altogether lovely. It's educational, spiritual, beneficial, and scriptural.

Judgment fails if it's 'eternal' (never ending), without redemptive or corrective benefit, or unjust by being either insufficient for the task, or demonically cruel as in the pagan/christian 'hell'. God is the perfect Father, and that makes Him the perfect Judge. (perhaps that also answers your question about the unbelieving 'good' man). God doesn't fail.

People who believe both Scripture and the successful creation/salvation of all humankind know that this is no easy, flippant Gospel.

Love Jesus Not Religion: GET OUT OF BABYLON

2010-08-26T09:18:00.001+10:00

A great word from Jacob Isreal.

Love Jesus Not Religion: GET OUT OF BABYLON

without our choice!

2010-08-11T08:24:00.000+10:00

Everyone believes we were condemned by Adam "without our choice"... However, if you believe that, remember the SAME ALL that were condemned by Adam will be saved by Jesus "without our choice",..... If this is not true, then Adam was GREATER than Christ ... Think about it!!! (Rom, 5:18 and 1Cor. 15:22)~T.Trumino~

God's Sovereign Purpose

2010-02-04T23:21:00.004+11:00

God's Sovereign Purpose, mankind's choice is limited to God's Choice! **

He placed a scoop of Clay upon another until a form lay lifeless on the
ground. All of the garden inhabitants paused to witness the event.
Cherubims hovered, Seraphims stretched, eagles paused on rocky cliffs to
watch.

"You will love me, nature" God said. "I made you that way, you will love Me
universe, for you were designed to do so, you will reflect My glory,
heavens, for that is how you were created. Ps. 19:1. But this one will be
like Me.... this one will be able to choose, through my choice.**

All were silent the Creator reached into himself and removed something
unseen, a seed, "it is called 'Man,' Seed of the woman.(Gen. 3:15, Holy
Spirit guarded seed until Messiah). Creation stood still in silence and gazed
upon the lifeless form.

And the angel spoke, "But what if... "what if he chooses** not to love?" the Creator finished His masterpiece!

"Come I will show you." Unbound by time, God and the angel walked into the realm of tomorrow. "There, see the fruit of the seed of man, both sweet and bitter."

The angel gasped at what he saw, spontaneous love, voluntary devotion,
chosen tenderness, never had he seen anything like these.
He felt the love of the Adams. He heard the joy of the Eve and her daughter, he saw the
food and the burdens shared, he absorbed the kindness and marveled at the warmth.

"Heavens has never seen such beauty, my Lord truly, this is your greatest
creation."

"Ah, but you've only seen the sweet, now witness the bitter."

A stench enveloped the pair. the angel turned in horror and proclaimed:
"What is this?" the Creator spoke only one word. "Selfishness."

The angel stood speechless as they passed through the centuries of
repugnance, never had he seen such filth, rotten hearts, ruptured
promises, forgotten loyalties, children of creation wandering blindly in
lonely labyrinths.

"This is the result of choice?" the angel asked.

"Yes, But, The creature (creation) was made subject to vanity, not willingly,
but by reason of Him Who has subjected the same in Hope." Rom. 8: 20.

"Will they forget you?"

"YES"

"Will they never come back?"

"Some will, most won't, for aions, but ultimately all will." "I turn man to
destruction: and say, Return you children of men." Psalm 90: 3. "None can
resist my will." Rom. 9: 15-22.

"What will it take to make them listen?"

The Creator walked on in time, further and further into the future, until he
stood by a tree, a tree that would be fashioned one day into a cradle, even
then He could smell the hay that would surround Him.

With another step into the future, He paused before another tree, it stood
alone, a stubborn ruler on a bald hill, the trunk was thick and strong. Soon
it would be trimmed, soon it would be mounted on the stony brow of
another hill, and soon He would be hung on it. He felt the wood run against
a back He did not wear yet.

"Will you go there?" the angel asked.

"I Will"

"Is there no other way?"

"There is not."

"Wouldn't it be easier to not plant the seed? Wouldn't it be easier to not
subject the man to a choice?"**

"It would"

The Creator spoke slowly. "But to remove the choice** is to remove the
love." He looked around the hill and fore saw a scene, three figures hung
on a cross, arms spread, heads fallen forward, they moaned with the wind.
John 19:18.

Men clad in soldier's garb sat on the ground near to the trio, they played
games in the dirt and laughed. Men clad in religion stood off to one side,
they smiled, arrogantly, cocky, they had protected God, they thought by
killing this false one. Women clad in sorrow huddles at the foot of the hill.
Speechless, faces streaked with tears, one put her arms around the other
and tried to lead her away but she wouldn't leave.

"I will stay, she said softly... I will stay."

All heaven stood to awe, all nature rose to rescue, all eternity poised in
agony, but the Creator gave no command.

"It must be done....." He said, and withdrew.

But as he stepped in time, He heard the cry that He would someday
scream.

"MY GOD, MY GOD WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME?"

He wrenched at tomorrow's agony. the angel spoke again "it would be less
painful"

The Creator interrupted softly. "But man wouldn't love." They stepped into
the garden again, the Maker looked earnestly at the clay creation, a
monsoon of love swelled up within Him. He had died for creation before He
had made it. Rev.13:8. God's form bent over the sculptured face and
breathed. Dust stirred on the lips of the new one, the chest rose, cracking the red mud,
the cheeks fleshed up, a finger moved, an eye opened. But more incredible
than the moving of the flesh was the stirring of the spirit, those who could
see the unseen gasped.

Perhaps it was the wind who said it first, perhaps what the star saw that
moment is what has made it blink ever since. " It looks like..... it appears
to be so much like... it is Him!" The angel wasn't speaking of the face, the
features or the body, he was looking inside--- at the spirit. Ecc.3:21, 11:7

"It is eternal!" gasped another.

Within the Redeemed man, God has placed a divine seed. A seed of
Himself. The God of might had created earth's masterpiece. The creator
had created, not a creature, but another creator, and the one who had
chosen to love had created one who could love in return.

"I have made the earth, and created man upon it: I even my hands, have
stretched out the heavens, and all their host have I commanded. I have
raised him up in righteousness, and I will direct all his ways; he shall build
my city, and he shall let go my captives, not for price, nor reward, says the
Lord of hosts." Isaiah 45:12, 13.

Now it is our Choice** to Love our Father, the Creator, because of Jesus??

**"You have not chosen me, but, I have Chosen you." John 15: 16.

Scott Paris 12-3-2000

Awesome!

2009-12-10T22:25:00.003+11:00

WISH WE HAD MORE TRIALS

2009-12-03T21:24:00.004+11:00

Life has become one trial after another lately, and it was only today that I was able to finally give up and surrender my all to Him. Trials require death... to self. The flesh is always screaming out it's indignation at what it has to suffer and mine has been screaming pretty loudly (and it says it doesn't want more trials!)... but thanks be to God Who is giving me the victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ. The way forward is now clear... HE is the Way... the Truth and the Life. And this suffering will produce a transcendently transcendent eonian burden of glory.

I read this good article online tonight and thought I'd share it here:

Suffering for Christ’s sake must be a great gift, or else God wouldn’t grant us the gracious privilege. I’m referring to Philippians 2:29: "For to you it is graciously granted, for Christ’s sake, not only to be believing on Him, but to be suffering for His sake also."

Believing is graciously granted, we all concede. But what of this other? To be suffering for His sake. Yes. This, too, is graciously granted. What? You mean it’s not a sign of divine indignation? Not a cosmic accident? Not a bad day? No. Rather, it’s grace. If we’re suffering for Him, it means that we’re doing something right; He’s doing us a favor. It means that He has chosen us in grace for a high privilege. What privilege? To enjoy an even higher reward of glory.

"(We are) joint enjoyers of Christ’s allotment, if so be that we are suffering together, that we should be glorified together also" (Rom. 8:17).

This life isn’t all there is. If there were no resurrection, we would be the laughingstock of all people. But since there is a resurrection, we are the laughingstock of all people.

"For the momentary lightness of our affliction is producing for us a transcendently transcendent eonian burden of glory..." (2 Cor. 4:17).

"Transcendent" isn’t a mystical word. In the Greek it means, "over-cast." This is not a meteorological term, but means, "cast up over all else." It’s something incredibly high, higher than the highest thing. The apostle wants to emphasize this, so he calls the glory "transcendently transcendent." This sounds like ridiculous redundancy, and it is. Paul had nothing in his language to describe it, so he does the best he can with what he has. When he runs out of words, he simply repeats the best one he has.

Note that our afflictions are what produce the burden of eonian glory. (Note: "eonian" is a transliteration of the Greek aionion. It means, "having to do with eons." Our glory will last forever—everyone knows that—but how wonderful to know that it pulsates as well through the following two glorious eons. Not everyone enjoys the privilege of eonian glory. Billions of people will be dead during the two glorious eons ahead. We enjoy eonian glory because Christ favors us.) There is still glory without heavy suffering. That is, we don’t need to bear heavy crosses here to enjoy resurrection life there. Salvation is free. But we won’t know the transcendent depths of glory unless we suffer for His sake. Often, this includes crosses.

Someone is elbowing into the text, saying: "Average glory is good enough for me. Keep the cross out of my life." I understand that. I can relate to that. I don’t like crosses, either. If this is how you feel, then a crossless life is perfect for you. Live your life and worship God however you can.

Others want to taste everything. They want to taste glory to the dregs, and our Lord Jesus Christ knows who they are. To accommodate them, He graciously grants that they should taste suffering to the dregs as well. This suffering has to be graciously granted, because no one can start up a suffering program to win glory. Men and women can’t whip themselves, starve themselves or seclude themselves into glory. Our sufferings, in order to count, must be graciously granted by God; God is up to the task. So just keep living, try to have a good time without breaking the law, and leave the "graciously granted" part to Him. What I’m telling you is: don’t become the author of your own trials. He thinks up good enough ones without you helping Him.

Note that the trials are called "light," while the glory is a "burden." Paul had a healthy perspective here. We often suppose that these trials are weighty and that the glory could never eclipse the pain. This is so wrong.

Our bodies need to be changed. Why? Because we can’t carry so much glory in these frames. Without new bodies, we couldn’t bear the glory ahead. It would be like asking a light bulb filament to channel a nuclear explosion.

Comparatively, then, our present burdens are light. This is hard to understand now, in the heat of battle. But one day soon, when you feel the glory, you are going to thank God for every tear. You are going to thank God for every minute of every trial you were ever called upon to endure. And then you’re going to say, "Oh, God. So this is why I had to go through that."

And then you’re going to wish you had gone through more. For real.

Martin Zender

Why should we preach the gospel now if God is going to have all men to be saved in the end?

2009-11-11T21:13:00.001+11:00

This is a very ridiculous question, but nevertheless, many people continue to ask it in light of the salvation of all men. Our answer is to be found from Romans 10:14,15. We must understand that the preaching ( and teaching ) of the gospel is the means by which God AWAKENS the human race to what He has ALREADY ACCOMPLISHED in Christ. This is taking place and will continue to take place in the ages to come.

-Romans 10:14,15 states, … How then shall they call on Him in Whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in Him of Whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach, except they be sent? as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things! … Let us also consider what 2nd Corinthians 5:18 tells us. It states, … And all things are of God, Who has reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ, and has given to us the ministry of reconciliation; …

-What beautiful passages of scripture! They both testify to the fact that we have been called to preach and minister the salvation and reconciliation of our great God. We must first take into account that God has already ( past tense ) reconciled the world unto Himself. This means that ALL PEOPLE have been reconciled to God by Jesus Christ ( whether they know it or not ). Even with this having been accomplished, mankind is still called upon ( by God ) to recognize, repent, and respond to what God has made available. We don’t preach to “get people saved”, but rather, we preach to AWAKEN THEM to the fact that God has already saved and forgiven them. THIS IS GOOD NEWS! THIS IS THE GOSPEL! We must stop thinking that our preaching, altar calls, and formulas ( the sinner’s prayer ) is what saves a person. In essence, they are already reconciled, but they just don’t know it yet. With this being said though, man is still accountable ( to God ) to repent and respond in faith to the message of reconciliation, which then leads us through the salvation process of our spirit, soul, and body.

-We are called upon to preach the gospel for the purpose of awakening the human race to the fact ( GOOD NEWS ) that they have been reconciled to God by the death of His Son Jesus Christ. How can a person know that they have been reconciled to God unless someone tells them? This is God’s method of causing all men to come to the saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, WHETHER NOW, OR IN THE AGES TO COME! So … Let us …

-PREACH THE GOOD NEWS!-

Lilly

2009-10-26T21:54:00.004+11:00

The following has been sitting on my sidebar for a few months, so today I thought it best to put dear little Lilly to rest by putting her in her own blog post. She was so cute as a puppy, as you can imagine a chihuahua pup is very small and dainty.

Lilly passed away 23rd July 2009, she was aged approx 6 yrs and was my daughter's pure blood, long haired, chihuahua. I loved Lilly and was going to have her as my own next year after I had finished chemotherapy, found a job and place to live. She was hit by a truck this morning in a quiet street, which is unusual as she was street smart. I really love you, Lilly, and I'm so sad I won't have the chance to look after you.

Rest in Peace, our most cutest little being...

Rev Right interviews Jesus

2009-10-17T16:53:00.000+11:00

Quote from Charlotte Bronte's novel 'Jane Eyre'.

2009-09-19T17:20:00.003+10:00

The English author Charlotte Bronte wrote a novel in the early eighteen hundreds called 'Jane Eyre', which I started reading yesterday, and I was so impressed by a passage that I thought I'd share it.

It is well known in the circles of Christian Universalism that her sister, Anne Bronte (one of her poems was posted by myself a month or so previously), was, what we'd call today, a Christian Universalist. When I read this passage from Jane Eyre I was left wondering if her sister, Charlotte, was, even though she didn't declare it openly, of the same belief.

In the story, Jane is sent to a school provided for by charity in which the children lived in very harsh conditions, especially by today's standards, and Jane's one and only friend by the name of Helen Burns was continually emotionally and mentally abused by one of the teachers. Helen suffered her pain with such a Christlike attitude that it always left Jane amazed. Helen taught Jane many valuable spiritual lessons in her short life (she died of typhoid soon afterwards). Here is the passage I wish to share, spoken by Helen:

"Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity, or registering wrongs. We are, and must be, one and all, burdened with faults in this world; but the time will soon come when, I trust, we shall put them off in putting off our corruptible bodies; when debasement and sin will fall from us with this cumbrous frame of flesh, and only the spark of the spirit will remain, -the impalpable principle of life and thought, pure as when it left the Creator to inspire the creature: whence it came it will return; perhaps again to be communicated to some being higher than man -perhaps to pass through gradations of glory, from the pale human soul to brighten to the seraph! Surely it will never, on the contrary, be suffered to degenerate from man to fiend? No; I cannot believe that: I hold another creed; which no-one ever taught me, and which I seldom mention; but in which I delight, and to which I cling; for it extends hope to all: it makes Eternity a rest -a mighty home, not a terror and an abyss. Besides, with this creed, I can so clearly distinguish between the criminal and his crime; I can so sincerely forgive the first while I abhor the last: with this creed revenge never worries my heart, degradation never too deeply disgusts me, injustice never crushes me too low: I live in calm, looking to the end."

In writing this passage it seems to me that Charlotte also held to the Great Hope.

More from the Oracles of God

2009-09-13T16:56:00.003+10:00

This, you can take to bank: God is not removing His Holy Spirit from the earth and leaving everything to the devil, as it is commonly preached. The day of grace is not on the threshold of ending. The door of mercy is not about close. The fact is, we have only seen a fraction of grace and mercy in comparison to what will be coming. Just wait and take note of what the sons of God will be raining upon creation that eagerly awaits their glorious manifestation. This great company of kings and priests who are after the order of Melchisedec will truly be an apocalypse of Jesus Christ's mercy, grace, and power to creation. Moreover, it will not end with this or the coming age, but will continue throughout the ages to come. Due to the very purpose and nature of our God's love, grace, and mercy, the Son of His express image, and those of His body, this love, grace, and mercy will be shed abroad to all until all things are made new.

Truly, we have only had a fore-taste of God's mercy and grace which are centered in Jesus Christ; yet there is more, much more. Through the vast ages to come, He will continue to unfold these unfathomable treasures, manifesting them through His vessels of mercy. This is a sure thing that will be freighted by the power of unmerited love. It will pour down from the Throne until the fullness of God and His Christ is revealed to all and in all, even until God becomes All in all!
Elwin R Roach
http://www.godfire.net/apocalypse_14.html

Oracles of God

2009-09-13T16:46:00.004+10:00

Everything that God is--whether it is His thoughts, His intent, His will, His power, His authority, His love--it is contained in His Word which is His Oracle that expressly speaks. Paul certainly knew something of this: "For of (Grk ek, out of) Him, and through Him, and to (Grk. eis, into) Him are all things." Romans 11:36. The apostle summed up very well in this short verse what Ray Prinzing termed as the law of circularity, and I know of no simpler way it could have been said. For truly, out of Him, through Him, and back into Him are all things. The ALL that came out of Him by the sound of His word will proceed through Him, and this is by His word which is fire, and the ALL will return back into Him from where it came. Nothing lost, nothing wasted, but ALL made new and drawn back into Him through Jesus Christ!
Elwin R Roach

Depths of God, depths of satan

2009-09-04T00:29:00.007+10:00

Just recently I made a new online friend in a Christian forum by the username of 'Kittenshere', and Kittenshere also believes in the Reconciliation of ALL. She posted a collection of teachings in paragraphs of the outstanding Bible Teacher, L Ray Smith, of bibletruths.com. A fantastic site to learn some of the meat of the scriptures. So, here is her post and it reflects exactly how I feel.

THE DEPTHS OF SATAN--teaches that what God does mostly, is HATE! He is a God of eternal hatred and vengeance. He is pictured as the chief of Hypocrites. He tells mankind to love their enemies, but shows his perverted love toward mankind by torturing most of our loved ones in fire for all eternity. God's wish of saving all humanity is thwarted by the sovereign power of man's supposed free will, and thus most of the human race will eternally hate and despise and curse their creator for ever making them. This teaching of satan has absolutely no redeeming value to it. God will be remembered eternally for being the greatest failure in the history of the universe. This doctrine is both the most evil and the most stupid teaching ever taught.

THE DEPTHS OF GOD--teaches that what God does and is, is LOVE! He is a God fully capable of bringing the whole human race to repentance through judgments and cause man to learn righteousness. The purpose for man's creation is to teach him obedience and love, so that he can be molded into the very image of God himself and be manifested as the Eternal Sons and Daughters of God in the family of God. God's plan brings unspeakable happiness and pleasure to every creature in heaven and earth. God's plan will be totally successful down to God's very last wish. The church teaches the DEPTHS OF SATAN, NOT THE DEPTHS OF GOD, and they accuse those who do teach the DEPTHS OF GOD as false prophets and of the devil.

1. Where do we find them who say they are the apostles and are not?? the church....rev.2:2

2. where do we find them who have left their first love?...in the church.rev 2:4

3.where do we find them that say they are jews and are not, but are synagogue of satan?....in the church.rev 2:9 and 3:9

4. Where do we find satans seat and where satan dwells?...in the church. rev 2.13

5. Where do we find the doctrine of Balaam?.... in the church. rev 2:14

6. Where do we find them that hold the doctrine of the nicolaitans that Jesus HATED?.... in the church.rev 2:15

7. Where do we find that woman Jezebel, that calls herself a prophetess, to teach and seduce servants to commit fornication?.... in the church. rev 2:19

8. Where do we find the depths of satan?.... In the church rev.2:24

9. where do we find them that are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked?.... in the church.rev 3:17

There is no greater evil taught in the church today than that of the doctrine of eternal torment. There is nothing that can be taught by the mind of man or demon that is more deplorable, detestable and disgusting than the thought of being physically, mentally, and spiritually tortured for all eternity. The thought of eternal torture is far beyond all evil, immoral, corrupt, damnable, deprived, heinous, hideous, loathsome, nefarious, obscene, repugnant, vile and wicked sins of all the universe combined. The very thought, the teaching, and the doctrine, of eternal torment is the greatest evil than can ever be conceived. Any human who would torture others are considered the lowest form of humanity. the churches teach of a torture by fire in hell never ever coming to an end and they call it FAIR and JUSTICE. ETERNAL TORTURE IS NOT FAIR OR JUSTICE. But it is the depths of satan. It is INORDINATELY EVIL, IT IS THE ULTIMATE SIN AND IT IS BLASPHEMY OF ALL BLASPHEMIES. IT IS A DOCTRINE THAT DEMEANS THE VERY CHARACTER OF GOD. This doctrine of eternal torture says that God is evil and unjust beyond any sane comprehension. This doctrine says that God, who saved the worlds worst sinner that ever lived, in a flash of light, cannot save most sinners. This doctrine says God is more evil then He is loving. This doctrine makes God out to be less caring and merciful and the worst of sinners. This doctrine contradicts hundreds of scriptures. This doctrine makes God out to be a hypocrite when He tells us to love our enemies, but does not follow His own teaching.

Will the same God who says to us, love your enemies, be the one that will torture our friends, neighbors and loved ones? Is this the reward we get for loving our enemies?? God will torture our loved ones? This is double talking, unscriptural nonsense. God wants us to love our loved ones and love our enemies, because we are growing into HIS IMAGE. You cannot show your love to your enemies by torturing them, and NEITHER CAN GOD.

On the DEPTHS OF GOD so little is taught in the churches. The doctrines that are scriptural, such as the fact that Jesus is the Savior of the whole world, and that GOD will save the whole world, and all that GOD has created is here for the purpose of training humanity to become sons and daughters of God, in the image of God.... are not taught in the churches and should be taught but instead they teach the depths of satan.

2009-08-23T09:35:00.002+10:00

Just As Lost

2009-08-23T09:11:00.005+10:00

1 Corinthians 1:23-24 boldly states that the religious are in the same boat as the worldly: uncalled. The difference is that religious people appear called; they claim to believe in Christ, but believe in their belief in Christ (free will) instead; worldly people at least dispense with the hypocrisy and state plainly their disbelief in Christ. What qualifies a person as religious? Salvation by self. To the religious person, the cross is a snare in that it is too finished. Religion says that man must work for (finish) his salvation. The most subtle way to believe in salvation by works is to believe in human free will. Human free will substitutes the will of man for the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ as the final arbiter of salvation.
Martin Zender

O' Lord You're Beautiful!

2009-08-22T10:38:00.002+10:00

Oh Lord, You're beautiful
Your face is all I see
For when Your eyes are on this child
Your grace abounds to me

Oh Lord, please light the fire
That once burned bright and clean
Replace the lamp of my first love
That burns with holy fear

I want to take Your Word and shine it all around
But first help me just to live it, Lord
And when I'm doing well, help me to never seek a crown
For my reward is giving glory to You
Keith Green

A Collection of Sayings...

2009-08-12T13:54:00.008+10:00

Fire Bride

I have a contact in Facebook who says the most amazing things about God and spirituality in his wall posts, so I save them. I find the things he has to say very uplifting and encouraging, and they speak to my mind and spirit. Here is a collection of his sayings:

Paul said, "To be carnally minded IS death." So that explains the death that must be cast into the lake of fire. Hell is torment that goes with carnality; all those works of the flesh, jealousy, envy, malice, etc. We should be asking God to cast us into that lake for a real cleansing!

Your old religious heavens, which were your former resting place where you felt so secure in the religious cradle your church mother rocked you in, is beginning to shake and fall, in the light of what this fire-word is revealing. Yes, they are passing away as if being shaken down by an earthquake, a great avalanche of truth. "The ELEMENTS shall melt... Read More with fervent heat; the earth also and the works that are there in shall be burned up." "The first man (of our inner nature) is of the earth, earthy." THAT is the earth which is to be burned up, our old Adam nature.

"Awake, thou that sleepeth and Christ shall give thee light." Awake! Learn a great and fundamental truth right here, we must all come through the fire (through the cleansing of God's word). That "lake of fire" of Rev. 20 is where the "death and hell" in everyone of us has to be cast. Fire, being God's word, is surely enough to burn out all the wood, hay, and stubble within you, and anybody else.

The rewards are surely wonderful for those who dwell with the devouring-fire, with everlasting burnings, because the devouring fire, that everlasting burnings is none other but our God who IS a consuming fire.

"When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee; when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee. Isa. 43:2 Remember that God loves you just as much when you are in the lake of fire, as when you are on the mountain top of God.

The Cross of Christ deals with our false identity and the influence it has had on our lives. Jesus Christ said that if we wanted to follow him, we had to do two things. One is that we must deny our “self,” because it has no existence in reality, for God did not created a SELF. The imaginary “self” we thought we were came from Adam, and is a sinner that has got to die.

The religious systems of the world have made SIN the centre of their theology, and then formed a humanistic solution for dealing with the problem. John records for us the truth saying, “For God sent not his son into the world to CONDEMN the world, but that the world through him might be saved." Jn 3:17. The sending of the “WORD” into the world had nothing to do with condemnation but to giving life to all mankind.

One of the most important things you will ever see is that God is not holding you accountable for your sin. You may say that’s impossible, but listen to the Word: "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation" (2 Cor. 5:19).

God is impartial. He has, therefore, the same design in creating all men, that he had in creating the first man. God is good; and no good being can act with a bad design. The design which he had in creating man, and the design which He has in creating all men, must therefore be good. To create beings for misery, would be to create them with a bad design.

If we think we can escape the fire, we are in the greatest deception. There is no other way to become the temple of the Lord. "But who may abide the day of His coming? And who shall stand when He appears? For He is like a refiner's fire and like fuller's soap; and He shall sit as a purifier of silver; and He shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver...(Malachi Chapter 3)

God Himself is a consuming fire, and His ministers are also like a fire. "Is not my word like as a fire? saith the Lord." Jer. 23:29. Again He says, "Wherefore thus saith the Lord God of hosts, because ye speak this word, behold, I will make MY WORDS IN THY MOUTH FIRE, and this people wood, and it shall devour them." Jer. 5:14. "If any man's work ... Read Morebe burned he shall suffer loss." Oh, yes, you may wonder if anything is going to be left. And often times there isn't very much, if anything, to leave. "But he, himself, shall be saved; yet so as BY FIRE. Yes, if he is willing to separate himself from those dead and worthless religious words and let God's fire (word of truth) reveal them and burn them up, he can be saved.

As Jesus walked we ought to walk with the same mind and relationship from God. We need to come to that place in our life where we are able to instruct the young in mind into the deeper revelations of God. We should not continue as sheep throughout our entire life. There comes a time and a season when we must elevate our standing and move into the heart of God.

All I am truly doing is watering and nurturing that seed (Christ) that is in every man. Then everything that is contained in the seed can begin to grow and as it overtakes you in the garden of your soul, your "old man" is suffocated and killed and thus Christ is produced in your life.

Since Jesus is the resurrection, we have to be in Him in order to be in the resurrection! If we have been born of the Spirit, we are spiritual beings. We have been raised out of our death in Adam, and we have been put into the life of Christ! If Christ is in us, resurrection is in us; if we are in Christ, we are in the resurrection!

I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?'' He is not the God of the dead but of the living."(Matt 22:32) The fact that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are alive today proves that they are no longer dead. Although the bodies of the fathers are still in their graves, yet the fathers are alive.

When Jesus said, "I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies," He gave us a new concept of resurrection. Notice that Jesus did not say that He was bringing resurrection, or that resurrection was a future event in history. Instead, He brought us a new understanding of resurrection when He said, "I am the resurrection". When Christ, the resurrection, dwells within us, we don't need to wait for what we already possess. Our physical death cannot stop the continuation of our resurrection life.

Do you THINK or FEEL that God condemns you ? According to the scriptures, God DOES NOT CONDEMNS US. "God was in Christ, reconcialing the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses to them." [2 Cor. 5: 19.] '' Therefore, there is now NO CONDEMNATION FOR THOSE WHO ARE IN CHRIST because through Christ the law of the Spirit of life SET ME FREE from the law of sin and death'' [ Rom. 8: 1 -2 ].

If the wages of sin is death, then Jesus did pay the price for the sin of the world in being made flesh, overcoming all things, dying on the cross, and being raised again on the third day. He experienced the spiritual aspect of death ( the carnal mind ) and the physical aspect of death ( His crucifixion ).

There is only one God and only one life - His life. All else is only a manifestation of that life. God's life can never be separated from Himself, or given to another to make him a god. In Jesus Christ we have the revelation of who God is and what He is. He is the One who comes into our understanding and awareness of spiritual things, to cast down all our imaginations, idols, or wrong ideas of God.

Sin in man has its origin in the flesh, or in his animal nature, and this animal nature is destined to be destroyed. Nothing but the spiritual nature of man can survive the tomb. Hence, in a future state of existence he will be free from those passions, appetites and desires, which in this world lead him astray and entice him from the path of virtue.

Do you believe that you have a choice in salvation? There is a great difference between offering to give a thing, and actually giving it. Nothing is said about offering to give eternal life; but on the contrary, it is said, "The free gift came upon all men unto justification of life." This free gift is to result in justification of life to all to whom it came.

Predestination. This comes next. . . and it is not a frightening word. It simply means "to mark out beforehand." When I seek God and live for Him and seek to walk in His ways, I am not framing my own destiny. I am rather fulfilling a destiny that was predetermined from the foundation of the world. That is why "there remaineth therefore a rest [a sabbath] to the people of God" (Heb. 4:9). Once we recognize that He foreknew and predestinated us, then we know for sure that His call was a creative Word, and not a mere invitation. There is a cause behind the call that reaches back and beyond the foundations of the world. And the cause is hidden in His own heart of Love—He doesn’t tell us why He loved us so.

I can assure you that hell is right here on this very earth. Odd that not one reference to hell in the Bible refers to any other place. Mainly I believe that torment and suffering are more between the ears of man. To escape is to be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then and only then are you free. Otherwise the flames entrenching the lost is a necessity for some will be saved so as by fire.

The fire of God is His judgment in our lives that consumes the refuse in us, which is WOOD, HAY, AND STUBBLE! God’s fire is for PURIFICATION, NOT ETERNAL TORTURE! Nothing was tortured in "Gehenna", only consumed and changed into another form. Your FIERY TRIALS are the process in which God is consuming your carnality and CHANGING YOU INTO THE VERY IMAGE OF THE SON OF GOD.

"Gehenna" was the city dump of Jerusalem, the Holy City, where every unclean and unnecessary thing was burned and consumed. The antitypical "Gehenna" to which our Lord alluded in His teaching is the process of PURIFICATION by which every unclean and unnecessary thing in the lives of His Holy People is purged and consumed by the fires of His judgment.

If God prepared a place in which He was going to torture billions of the human beings He created, how could He say it never entered His mind? (Jer 19:5, Jer 32:35, Jer 7:31)

To move from something that is only a noun to something dynamic and unpredictable, to something living and present tense, is to move from the law to grace.

Dale Thompson

2009-08-04T16:25:00.002+10:00

Hannah Whitall Smith

Because of her long personal search for God out of the strongly non-creedal religion of the Society of Friends, Hannah’s understanding of truth did not always match the formal doctrines of the evangelicalism of her day, doctrines which had been fashioned into evangelical orthodoxy after centuries of theological debate. Most Christians who knew her or of her were aware of these differences. Some had a real problem with her “broadness,” but most did not.

Several factors contributed to the wide-hearing her spiritual counsels received among evangelicals in her time and up to the present time: (1). She never chose to ride a hobby or promote her differences publically. Total submission to God and following Christ were the key notes of her writing and preaching. (2). Her readers and hearers were in a revivalistic tradition which was loyal to basic evangelical doctrine which believed that life not doctrine was the true test of pure Christianity. (3). She had the skill of a spiritual genius in getting to the heart of relational spirituality. Her God was the Omnipotent Lord, but above all, the Loving Father, and she was his devoted child. God was family, like her father, her mother, her sisters and her brother, only so much more.

Hannah’s heresies have not been emphasized in these limited selections from the thousands of entries available. Many today who know her only through her writings know very little about them, or, if they do, like those who knew her best, they still accept her spiritual insights as valid in the same way that most evangelicals of her own generation did and for the same reasons. Like Job, God put her to the test. And like Job she put God to the test. Her ability to tell us about it is what still helps us home to God today.

To a Friend, The Cedars, August 8, 1876

BROAD, BROADER, BROADEST

And now what do you think of it all? I think one of two things, but which one is right, I don’t know. Perhaps you can tell me. Either I was awfully wicked in the whole matter, and God was not in it anywhere and all the success was because of our natural gifts and talents. Or else I was awfully good, so good as to have lost sight of myself to such a degree as to be only a straw wafted on the wind of the Spirit and so consecrated as not to be able to form a desire even, except that the will of God might be fully done. I waver about myself continually. Sometimes I feel sure I have progressed wonderfully, and that my present sphinx-like calm and indifference to everything whether inward or outward except the will of God, is very grand. And then again I think I am an utterly irreligious and lazy fatalist, with not a spark of the divine in me. I do wish I could find out which I am.

But at all events my orthodoxy has fled to the winds. I am Broad, Broader, Broadest! So Broad that I believe everything is good, or has a germ of good in it, and “nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving.” I agree with every body, and always think it likely everybody’s “view” is better than my own. I hold all sorts of heresies and feel myself to have got out into a limitless ocean of the love of God that overflows all things. My theology is complete, if you but grant me an omnipotent and just Creator. I need nothing more.

“God is love,” comprises my whole system of ethics. And, as you say, it seems to take it all in. There is certainly a very grave defect in any doctrine that universally makes its holders narrow and uncharitable, and this is always the case with strict, so called orthodoxy. Whereas, as soon as Christian love comes in, the boundaries widen infinitely. I find that everyone who has travelled this highway of holiness for any length of time, has invariably cut loose from their old moorings. I bring out my heresies to such, expecting reproof, when lo! I find sympathy. We are “out on the ocean sailing” that is certain. And if it is the ocean of God’s love, as I believe; it is grand.

But, enough! Now, what will you do with it all?

Reblogged from: http://not1lost.blogspot.com/

The Potter's Wheel

2009-07-29T10:36:00.005+10:00

The Potter's Wheel

When you’re troubled and discouraged
In the darkness of the night
When obstruction clouds your vision
And you just can't see the light.

When life’s trials overcome you
And you have nowhere to turn
When you’ve reached the very bottom
There are lessons you must learn.

For the clay is being molded
It’s been twisted, pulled and tossed
It’s been rolled and it’s been pounded
Till the ego has been lost.

He will put you through the furnace
You’ll be tested to the brim
Your life will be in pieces
Till you give your soul to Him.

From blemish to perfection
His hands will form the clay
This human piece of rubble
Must let God have His way.

When you come to Him all battered
In the form of mortal man
When you cry to Him in mercy
You will find the Potter’s hand.

He will grind you, mold and chisel
The friction you will feel
Till He gently carves and shapes you
Upon the Potter’s wheel.

Author/Written By:
Marilyn Ferguson
©2005

Declare a Fast in the Land?

2009-07-28T14:37:00.005+10:00

"Declare a Fast in the land," said the Pastor with microphone in hand, but these words he did not understand.

Just more control is what he wanted to show, the words of God he did not know.

"For four, or forty days, as a congregation we'll pray until God gives us what we say." And so like children the Pastor and his flock continued their play.

Whether only juice, water, or bread, this is the way it is always said when a fast is declared in the land of the dead.

Man takes God's truth and turns it to lies. It all about man's works, not the truth, for the truth they despise.

If this wasn't so the true meaning of fasting they would know. Their spirit would be fed and their understanding would grow. They would stop with the lies, manipulation and control, they would see the word of God in the only thing we can fast from, if the truth be told.

Shall the children fast when their Father is here? Can they ever be hungry when their daily bread is near? Their bread, which is the revelation of God's Word made clear. How can we fast from something so dear? Unless we are ignorant of God's truth and cannot hear.

It's not literal food that feeds our soul, it’s not literal food we fast from, it is the Word of God that is sown. In the wilderness we are tempted with lies and it is hard for God to show the truth we need to know because our minds a filled with the lies these pastors, priests and so-called prophets blow.

Listen carefully before you follow a man made fast. If you follow vain tradition, and ignorant teachers, you follow the wrong teachers down the wrong path.

We are the body and the bread that is broken. The water is the Word we’re immersed in, the sincere milk is the rudiments of God's word spoken. The Fish and the Sheep are women and men that seek. The meat is revelation that is quite deep, the honey is enlightenment that opens yours eyes so you can see. In the Promise Land there is no fasting or hunger for you and me.

So don't be like the disciples of John and those that follow after the teaching of those that are less than the least in the kingdom. The law and the prophets bring death, but Christ brings liberty, peace, righteousness and freedom.

Jacob
www.JacobIsrael.org
"The Truth Will Change You"

I have always wondered why I was never led to 'fast'.. :)

Reconciliation

2009-07-03T21:14:00.003+10:00

CLV John 12:31 Now is the judging of this world. Now shall the Chief of this world be cast out.
John 12:32 And I, if I should be exalted out of the earth, shall be drawing all to Myself."

KJV John 12:31 Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out.
John 12:32 And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.

NASB John 12:31 "Now judgment is upon this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out.
Joh 12:32 "And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself."

The word 'men' is not in the original Greek.

Jesus said that when He was lifted up He would draw all into Himself. The word men is italicized meaning it was added for clarity. The subject he was talking about was judgment. He drew all judgment for sin unto Himself. He did that by drawing all men unto Himself also. So all men were in Christ when He died on the cross. When He died we all died. When He raised from the dead we all raised from the dead with Him, Holy, Righteous and Perfect in the eyes of God. All men are in Christ, even as all men were in Adam. As sin was imputed to us through the one man Adam, righteous has been imputed to us because of the obedience of the one man Jesus. We really never enter into the equation. It has always been between God and two men. Our receiving of the gift is the kind of receiving you do when you catch the flu. Your body receives the organism whether you want it or not. Your spirit received righteousness through the faith of Jesus Christ. Our job is to reveal to the "world" the righteousness that already exists in them" not to get to become righteous through some work that they might do, which I might add even includes believing. The entire world has been redeemed whether they believe it or not. When that revelation of Redemption is revealed to them and they believe it is when they come into "salvation" which is for the soul which is the mind the will and the emotions.
Tom Tonsky

Tithing ~ is it valid under the New Covenant?

2009-07-03T11:52:00.008+10:00

This morning I thought to look at this lesson on tithing that a friend of mine had posted in a particular forum. He'd done a huge study on this topic and I thought I'd post the main points. I left some out to tidy it up as there were quite a bit of 'personal' quotes and quips.

For a long time I have felt the Holy Spirit tell me that tithing was not a requirement in the New Covenant. I'd read a few books about it, and read many articles which were good teaching, but I felt there was something deeper, the postings my friend StevenL had given from his study was that deeper teaching. In fact, I believe it goes deeper still, the scriptures are like that. So here is that teaching, I hope it helps someone to break free just that little bit more from the Law still preached in pulpits around the christian world..

Tithing

That there may be food in My house.

John 4:32 But He said to them, “I have food to eat of which you do not know.”

Malachi 3:10 Bring all the tithes into the storehouse, That there may be food in My house, And try Me now in this,” Says the LORD of hosts, “ If I will not open for you the windows of heaven And pour out for you such blessing That there will not be room enough to receive it.

Why does he want the tithes? So there will be FOOD in His House.

What is His House?

1 Corinthians 3:16 Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?

Ephesians 2:19 Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, 20 having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, 21 in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, 22 in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.

1 Corinthians 3:9 YOU are God's building. (Read the surrounding verses to see Paul's allegory. We're going back to "God's field"....think "tithe"..... later.)

1 Corinthians 6:19 Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?

So, His House is the people of God, corporately and individually. It is a SPIRITUAL HOUSE. It's not located in some particular place so that we can "go to the house of God." You can't GO there. You ARE there. It's certainly not in Jerusalem for an antichrist to go sit in.

John 4:21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth;

This House is Haggai's House. Hag 2:9

1 Peter 2:5 you also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices (think "tithe") acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

5 And Moses indeed was faithful in all His house as a servant, for a testimony of those things which would be spoken afterward, 6 but Christ as a Son over His own house, whose house we are if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm to the end.

HIS HOUSE is a spiritual House.

This House is also a PRIESTHOOD.

God's House is also a Priesthood, a Building, a Field, a Body, a Family, a Temple.

1 Peter 2:5 you also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices (FOOD!) acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

Hebrews 7:11 Therefore, if perfection were through the Levitical priesthood (for under it the people received the law), what further need was there that another priest should rise according to the order of Melchizedek, and not be called according to the order of Aaron? 12 For the priesthood being changed, of necessity there is also a change of the law.

At the appearing of Jesus, God manifested in flesh, at the end or consummation of the ages, a NEW PRIESTHOOD also was established. The old one, under the order of Levi (Aaron, the High Priestly family) was found to be ineffective and useless. It represented FLESH. ~ The flesh had to be fed with physical food ~ or, of course, they would die or at least be hungry and unable to work. The tithes and offerings (FOOD) of the NON-PRIESTLY tribes were used to feed the physical temple servants so they could be 'holy' (separated to the work).

But the physical temple with its appointments and rituals, law, priesthood, is now GONE. The Priesthood changed, it changed TRIBES. Jesus was born into the world through JUDAH (meaning Praise) and became a Priest after the order of Melchizedek (meaning King of Righteousness) and not Aaron. The Levitical was on the order of and represented FLESH and DEATH. Melchizedek represented the order of Spirit and LIFE! Perpetual LIFE!

So we NOW have a Priesthood after the order of PERPETUAL LIFE, the order of Melchizedek. And Melchizedek (Jesus) has a FAMILY. A holy Family. Holy meaning separated to Him. Come out from among them and be separate says the Lord...... A PRIESTLY FAMILY, A ROYAL FAMILY.

Revelation 1:5 and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler over the kings of the earth.
To Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, 6 and has made us kings and priests to His God and Father, to Him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen

Hebrews 2:10 For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons (children) to glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings. 11 For both He who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified are all of one, for which reason He is not ashamed to call them brethren,

So we are all BROTHERS/SISTERS/KINDRED in this Royal Family of Priests. A Priesthood based on the order of the King of Righteousness, based on Perpetual LIFE.

Previously, in physical fleshly, Israel, there was only ONE family/tribe of priests. God's original intention was that the whole nation of Israel be a priestly tribe.

Exodus 19:5 Now therefore, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be a special treasure to Me above all people; for all the earth is Mine. 6 And you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words which you shall speak to the children of Israel.”

But we know that Israel failed to obey. Then, at Sinai, when they made the calf and had the big party, God separated LEVI out for the Priesthood because they alone took up swords, sided with Moses, and killed their brethren who had rebelled.

But then, at the establishment of God's New Covenant through Christ Jesus, at the end of the ages, the Ekklesia, God's Called-Out Family, became the fulfillment of God's original intention.

1 Peter 2:9 But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light;

God's House is now a Spiritual House, A Spiritual Nation, A Spiritual Body, A Spiritual Priesthood. No separated tribe exists in This Nation. The Whole Nation is now holy (separated).

This Holy Spiritual Priesthood has its own Spiritual FOOD. It offers spiritual sacrifices.

ALL THE PRIESTS ARE REQUIRED TO DO IS EAT.

John 4:31 In the meantime His disciples urged Him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.”
32 But He said to them, “I have food to eat of which you do not know.”
33 Therefore the disciples said to one another, “Has anyone brought Him anything to eat?” (Looking for the physical/flesh)
34 Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work. (Looking in the spiritual)

What about us? As Priests in God's House are we eating this food? Christ is our example.

1 John 2:6 He who says he abides in Him ought himself also to walk just as He walked.

Our FOOD should be doing the will of God and finishing His work in us.

You can see why He would want this FOOD in His House. You can also see why it wouldn't be good not to have this FOOD in His House.

1 John 2:15 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world. 17 And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever.

If we don't eat this FOOD, we will pass away with the world.

Phillipians2:13 for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure. <<<<<<PRIEST FOOD

It should be apparent that this food cannot be purchased with money.

1Ho, every thirsty one, come ye to the waters, And he who hath no money, Come ye, buy (paradox?) and eat, yea, come, buy Without money and without price, wine and milk. 2 Why do ye weigh money for that which is not bread? And your labour for that which is not for satiety? Hearken diligently unto me, and eat good, And your soul doth delight itself in fatness.
3Incline your ear, and come unto me, Hear, and your soul doth live, And I make for you a covenant age-during, The kind acts of David -- that are stedfast. (Young's Literal)

Here's the only place I think we can connect "tithe" (Food in His House) with money. If God tells me to give money to someone (it's His will) and I do it (His will) then I've partaken of the Food in His House. But even then, the tithe (food) is NOT the money, but my ACT OF DOING THE WILL OF GOD.

You can have the biggest "church" in the country, the most members, with every single one of them giving 10 % of his or her gross income to the "house of God", and still not have one particle of True Tithe anywhere in sight.

MORE ON FOOD..

John 6:27 Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting (age enduring) life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set His seal on Him.”

John 6:32 Then Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, Moses did not give you the bread from heaven, but My Father gives you the true bread from heaven. 33 For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”

John 6:51 I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world.”

John 6:53 Then Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. 54 Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. 55 For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. 56 He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. 57 As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me. 58 This is the bread which came down from heaven—not as your fathers ate the manna, and are dead. He who eats this bread will live forever.”

John 6:60 Therefore many of His disciples, when they heard this, said, “This is a hard saying; who can understand it?”

John 6:66 From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more.

PEOPLE are still stumbling over the reality of the Good News. Take away all the physical trappings, the temples (houses of god), the pews, the crosses, the doves, the priests/pastors behind their pulpits, the sermons, the money "tithes", the sabbaths, the rules, etc. and most would just scratch their heads in bewilderment and walk away. The church members of today have little, if any, greater knowledge of Spiritual Truth than the religious Jews that Christ Jesus had to face.

Most will mouth the fact that Christ FULFILLED the types and shadows of the Mosaic law (or before law) but then in actuality continue to carry on as if the types were NOT really fulfilled.

Christ fulfilled the law of Tithing by doing what Israel in the flesh would not do. He filled the True Temple Storehouse with the True Food from above.......HIMSELF. A Blessing that overflowed and could not be contained. The Second Adam became a Life-Giving Spirit.

But the blinded keep trying to transform the fulfilled tithe into MONEY and then trying to use the prophecy in Malachi to get financially blessed or to expain why they've been financially blessed. What vanity! What delusion!

NOTE: I did NOT say that God will not financially bless people. I said that God does not financially bless because one keeps the law of tithing. No law of tithing exists for God's children.

A Bit of extra teaching concerning Abraham and his tithing to Melchizedek:

Hebrews 7:1 For this Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of the Most High God, who met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings and blessed him, 2 to whom also Abraham gave a tenth part of all, first being translated “king of righteousness,” and then also king of Salem, meaning “king of peace,” 3 without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like the Son of God, remains a priest continually.
4 Now consider how great this man was, to whom even the patriarch Abraham gave a tenth of the spoils. SPOILS. SPOILS SPOILS.5 And indeed those who are of the sons of Levi, who receive the priesthood, have a commandment to receive tithes from the people according to the law, that is, from their brethren, though they have come from the loins of Abraham; 6 but he whose genealogy is not derived from them received tithes from Abraham and blessed him who had the promises. 7 Now beyond all contradiction the lesser is blessed by the better. 8 Here (in ancient Israel with a Levitical priesthood) mortal men receive tithes, but there (in the land around the Salt Sea where the battle took place in the Genesis 14 account) he receives them, of whom it is witnessed that he lives. 9 Even Levi, who receives tithes, paid tithes through Abraham, so to speak, 10 for he was still in the loins of his father when Melchizedek met him. 11 Therefore, if perfection were through the Levitical priesthood (for under it the people received the law), what further need was there that another priest should rise according to the order of Melchizedek, and not be called according to the order of Aaron? 12 For the priesthood being changed, of necessity there is also a change of the law. 13 For He of whom these things are spoken belongs to another tribe, from which no man has officiated at the altar.
14 For it is evident that our Lord arose from Judah, of which tribe Moses spoke nothing concerning priesthood. 15 And it is yet far more evident if, in the likeness of Melchizedek, there arises another priest 16 who has come, not according to the law of a fleshly commandment, but according to the power of an endless life.

So.....the Genesis account says nothing about anyone receiving "tithes in heaven". Melchizedek was definitely on the earth. What else? Scripturally, Abraham tithed ONCE. To the High Priest Melchizedek. ONCE. What did he tithe? His money, his cows, his chickens, his gold.....what? What does the Scripture say he "tithed?" He gave the Priest a tenth of the SPOILS OF BATTLE. THE SPOILS BELONGED TO THE KINGS FROM WHICH THEY HAD BEEN TAKEN. No other scriptural evidence exists that Abraham EVER tithed from his own possessions at any time.

And so from this, church scholars (needing cash) derive a doctrine that "since Abraham tithed church members must tithe." (Meaning church members should pay 10 % of their income to the church.) This is one of the greatest HOAXES and DECEITS of all time.

But wait! Does the High Priest Christ Jesus receive "tithes"? Oh yes He does. But do we send him money into heaven? No. Do we go to battle and kill a bunch of thieves, take their goods, and send the SPOILS to heaven, like Abraham? No. So how does He get His "tithe"? Well, here's one way, if you can hear it.

Isaiah 53:11 He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he Jesus shall bear their iniquities.
12Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.

I wonder why I've never heard it preached that we can buy "whatever our soul desires" even wine or strong drink....and eat and rejoice before the Lord?? Sounds like a pretty good party to me.

Deuteronomy 14:22 Thou shalt truly tithe all the increase of thy seed, the produce of the field, year by year. 23And thou shalt eat before Jehovah thy God, in the place which he will choose to cause his name to dwell there, the tithe of thy corn, of thy new wine, and of thine oil, and the firstlings of thy herds and of thy flocks; that thou mayest learn to fear Jehovah thy God continually.

24And if the way be too long for thee, so that thou art not able to carry it, because the place is too far from thee, which Jehovah thy God will choose to set his name there, when Jehovah thy God blesseth thee;
25then shalt thou give it for money, and bind the money together in thy hand, and go to the place which Jehovah thy God will choose, 26 and thou shalt give the money for whatever thy soul desireth, for oxen, or for sheep, or for wine, or for strong drink, or for whatever thy soul asketh of thee; and thou shalt eat (who shall eat?)there before Jehovah thy God, and thou shalt rejoice, thou, and thy house.
27And thou shalt not forsake the Levite that is within thy gates; for he hath no portion nor inheritance with thee. 28 At the end of three years thou shalt bring forth all the tithe of thine increase the same year, and shalt lay it up within thy gates; 29 and the Levite -- for he hath no portion nor inheritance with thee -- and the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow, that are within thy gates, shall come, and shall eat and be satisfied; that Jehovah thy God may bless thee in all the work of thy hand which thou doest.

The tithe was always about EATING AND DRINKING. Somehow this got left out of all the thousands of "sermons" I've heard on "tithing." And somehow they always leave out the part about the booze. I wonder why this is?

Another question: Where is the PLACE now that YHVH has chosen to SET HIS NAME? In order to "tithe" we MUST go to this PLACE. I wonder how many even know where HIS NAME dwells today? That's where we've gotta EAT and DRINK and REJOICE.

A Word to the Elect

2009-06-25T22:05:00.000+10:00

(A poem, not surprisingly left out of the anthologies of her poetry)

You may rejoice to think yourselves secure;
You may be grateful for the gift divine -
That grace unsought, which made your black hearts pure,
And fits your earth-born souls in Heaven to shine.
But, is it sweet to look around, and view
Thousands excluded from that happiness
Which they deserve at least as much as you -
Their faults not greater, nor their virtues less?
And, wherefore should you love your God the more,
Because to you alone His smiles are given;
Because He chose to pass the many o'er,
And only bring the favoured few to Heaven?
And, wherefore should your hearts more grateful prove,
Because for ALL the Saviour did not die?
Is yours the God of justice and of love?
And are your bosoms warm with charity?
Say, does your heart expand to all mankind?
And, would you ever to your neighbour do -
The weak, the strong, the enlightened, and the blind -
As you would have your neighbour do to you?
And, when you, looking on your fellow-men,
Behold them doomed to endless misery,
How can you talk of joy and rapture then?-
May God withhold such cruel joy from me!
That none deserve eternal bliss I know;
Unmerited the grace in mercy given;
But none shall sink to everlasting woe,
That have not well deserved the wrath of Heaven.
- - -
And oh! there lives within my heart
A hope, long nursed by me;
(And should its cheering ray depart,
How dark my soul would be!)
That as in Adam all have died,
In Christ shall all men live;
And ever round His throne abide,
Eternal praise to give.
That even the wicked shall at last
Be fitted for the skies;
And when their dreadful doom is past,
To life and light arise.
I ask not how remote the day,
Nor what the sinners' woe,
Before their dross is purged away;
Enough for me, to know
That when the cup of wrath is drained,
The metal purified,
They'll cling to what they once disdained,
And live by Him that died.

Amazing Grace

2009-06-24T22:30:00.004+10:00

I had always believed, and I find most others do too, that the author of this song wrote this after repenting of being a slave trader. As the following article shows, this is not completely true...

"Amazing grace, how sweet the sound..." So begins one of the most beloved hymns of all times, a staple in the hymnals of many denominations, New Britain or "45 on the top" in Sacred Harp. The author of the words was John Newton, the self-proclaimed wretch who once was lost but then was found, saved by amazing grace.

Newton was born in London July 24, 1725, the son of a commander of a merchant ship which sailed the Mediterranean. When John was eleven, he went to sea with his father and made six voyages with him before the elder Newton retired. In 1744 John was impressed into service on a man-of-war, the H. M. S. Harwich. Finding conditions on board intolerable, he deserted but was soon recaptured and publicly flogged and demoted from midshipman to common seaman.

Finally at his own request he was exchanged into service on a slave ship, which took him to the coast of Sierra Leone. He then became the servant of a slave trader and was brutally abused. Early in 1748 he was rescued by a sea captain who had known John's father. John Newton ultimately became captain of his own ship, one which plied the slave trade.

Although he had had some early religious instruction from his mother, who had died when he was a child, he had long since given up any religious convictions. However, on a homeward voyage, while he was attempting to steer the ship through a violent storm, he experienced what he was to refer to later as his "great deliverance." He recorded in his journal that when all seemed lost and the ship would surely sink, he exclaimed, "Lord, have mercy upon us." Later in his cabin he reflected on what he had said and began to believe that God had addressed him through the storm and that grace had begun to work for him.

For the rest of his life he observed the anniversary of May 10, 1748 as the day of his conversion, a day of humiliation in which he subjected his will to a higher power. "Thro' many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come; 'tis grace has bro't me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home." He continued in the slave trade for a time after his conversion; however, he saw to it that the slaves under his care were treated humanely.

In 1750 he married Mary Catlett, with whom he had been in love for many years. By 1755, after a serious illness, he had given up seafaring forever. During his days as a sailor he had begun to educate himself, teaching himself Latin, among other subjects. From 1755 to 1760 Newton was surveyor of tides at Liverpool, where he came to know George Whitefield, deacon in the Church of England, evangelistic preacher, and leader of the Calvinistic Methodist Church. Newton became Whitefield's enthusiastic disciple. During this period Newton also met and came to admire John Wesley, founder of Methodism. Newton's self-education continued, and he learned Greek and Hebrew.

He decided to become a minister and applied to the Archbishop of York for ordination. The Archbishop refused his request, but Newton persisted in his goal, and he was subsequently ordained by the Bishop of Lincoln and accepted the curacy of Olney, Buckinghamshire. Newton's church became so crowded during services that it had to be enlarged. He preached not only in Olney but in other parts of the country. In 1767 the poet William Cowper settled at Olney, and he and Newton became friends.

Cowper helped Newton with his religious services and on his tours to other places. They held not only a regular weekly church service but also began a series of weekly prayer meetings, for which their goal was to write a new hymn for each one. They collaborated on several editions of Olney Hymns, which achieved lasting popularity. The first edition, published in 1779, contained 68 pieces by Cowper and 280 by Newton.

Among Newton's contributions which are still loved and sung today are "How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds" and "Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken," as well as "Amazing Grace." Composed probably between 1760 and 1770 in Olney, "Amazing Grace" was possibly one of the hymns written for a weekly service. Through the years other writers have composed additional verses to the hymn which came to be known as "Amazing Grace" (it was not thus entitled in Olney Hymns), and possibly verses from other Newton hymns have been added. However, these are the six stanzas that appeared, with minor spelling variations, in both the first edition in 1779 and the 1808 edition, the one nearest the date of Newton's death. It appeared under the heading Faith's Review and Expectation, along with a reference to First Chronicles, chapter 17, verses 16 and 17.

Amazing grace! (how sweet the sound)
That sav'd a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears reliev'd;
How precious did that grace appear,
The hour I first believ'd!

Thro' many dangers, toils and snares,
I have already come;
'Tis grace has brought me safe thus far,
And grace will lead me home.

The Lord has promis'd good to me,
His word my hope secures;
He will my shield and portion be,
As long as life endures.

Yes, when this flesh and heart shall fail,
And mortal life shall cease;
I shall possess, within the veil,
A life of joy and peace.

The earth shall soon dissolve like snow,
The sun forbear to shine;
But God, who call'd me here below,
Will be forever mine.

The origin of the melody is unknown. Most hymnals attribute it to an early American folk melody. The Bill Moyers special on "Amazing Grace" speculated that it may have originated as the tune of a song the slaves sang.

Newton was not only a prolific hymn writer but also kept extensive journals and wrote many letters. Historians accredit his journals and letters for much of what is known today about the eighteenth century slave trade. In Cardiphonia, or the Utterance of the Heart, a series of devotional letters, he aligned himself with the Evangelical revival, reflecting the sentiments of his friend John Wesley and Methodism.

In 1780 Newton left Olney to become rector of St. Mary Woolnoth, St. Mary Woolchurch, in London. There he drew large congregations and influenced many, among them William Wilberforce, who would one day become a leader in the campaign for the abolition of slavery. Newton continued to preach until the last year of life, although he was blind by that time. He died in London December 21, 1807. Infidel and libertine turned minister in the Church of England, he was secure in his faith that amazing grace would lead him home.

Shepherd

2009-06-14T17:47:00.003+10:00

"Where are you going Shepherd?

To find My sheep.
How far will you go?
As far as My sheep.
How far may that be?
To the world's end.
How long will you seek it?
Until I find it.

When you find it,
will it come to you?
No, it will flee from Me.
Where will it go then?
To the rocks and the sand.

When will it stop?
When it can run no more.
What will you do then?
Carry it home."

The scriptures tell us this Shepherd that hung on the cross will not lose even one sheep. Oh, how shall we not weep as we learn of His great love toward us.

Jack

Every Eye Will See Him... a poem

2009-06-14T17:38:00.003+10:00

Every Eye Will See Him

I see an army - I hear a song
rise in the nations, beautiful and strong.
A song of mercy that shatters pride,
a song of great love that purifies.

I see warriors with hands upraised,
holding no weapon, but their swords of praise.
Strongholds shatter. Kings bow down
before the Master and yield their crowns.

And every eye will see Him as Love wins through at last.
And every heart be drawn unto the Lamb.
Every voice will cry out what every heart will know
and before the throne we stand.

I see the earth now, its groanings cease.
Creation lifts praise to the Prince of Peace.
Wars have ended and weapons fall.
An invitation to one and all.

I see the Church now as a passionate Bride.
I see her Lover with His fiery eyes.
All His longing and her desire
join as one flame in heaven's fire.

And every eye will see Him as Love wins through at last.
And every heart be drawn unto the Lamb.
Every voice will cry out what every heart will know
and before the throne we stand.

I see a kingdom that never ends.
I see a Judge now who calls sinners 'Friends'.
Who gathers rebels and overwhelms
Them with His mercy so He can dwell
in hearts He's captured and rules in love.
He wraps around them a robe dipped in blood.
His tears are washing their fears away
and then He lifts them to see His face.

And every eye will see Him as Love wins through at last.
And every heart be drawn unto the Lamb.
Every voice will cry out what every heart will know
and before the throne we stand.

All will gaze in wonder at the reach of heaven's plan.
How could mercy touch the lowest man?
Drawn from every nation, every voice,and every tongue, amazed at what the Lord of Love has done.
amazed at what the Lord of Love has done.

I see a King now and I believe.
I hear His voice now and He's calling me.
Randy Walterman

~~~~~~~~~~

Lessons from Life.. lessons of the Kingdom

2009-06-14T17:10:00.002+10:00

Lessons of Life and the Kingdom....

A Poem

Lessons from Life
by Lynette Woods

I cannot learn anything until I unlearn what I have already learned.
I cannot be real and genuine until I have been disillusioned.
I cannot do anything until I've stopped everything.
I cannot be wholly in Christ until I am totally out of religion and its ways.

I cannot wash another's feet while standing on my own two feet.
I cannot walk in another's shoes unless I first take off my own shoes.
I cannot offer anyone a helping hand if my hands are already full.
I cannot speak words of Life to another unless Life has first engraved those words on my heart.

I cannot see through another's eyes while looking at myself.
I cannot hear through another's ears while listening to the throb of my own heartbeat.
I cannot share another's heart if I am consumed with the passion and pain in my own heart.
I cannot truly love another if I am still in love with myself.

I cannot give anything of worth to anyone until I have nothing of myself to give.
I cannot experience real Life until I am dead and buried.
I cannot know Freedom until I am content to be locked away.
I cannot know Rest until I can completely give up on myself and my plans.

I cannot live in the Light if I cannot bear the exposure of being seen.
I cannot know Truth unless I stop deceiving myself with lies.
I cannot walk in the Way until I quit studying the map.
I cannot know Hope until I'm convinced of how hopeless I am.

I cannot enjoy Peace without going through many storms.
I cannot experience amazing Grace if I secretly believe I deserve it.
I cannot receive Mercy until I stop trying to save myself.
I cannot completely trust Another until I no longer trust myself.

I cannot really pray until it is not me that is praying.
I cannot truly cry until it is not me that is crying.
I cannot really sing until it is not me that is singing.
I cannot truly laugh until it is not me that is laughing.

I cannot truly live until it is not ME that is living...

For me to live is Christ and to die is gain.
I can do all things through Christ Who empowers and strengthens me.
Phil 1:21; 4:13.

A Poem ~ We Broken

2009-06-14T17:06:00.001+10:00

"We Broken"

by Andrea Warren

That place between awake and sleep,
where nothings as it seems.
Where children cry, and women weep,
and life is lost in dreams.
Where silence turns to screaming,
that only God can hear,
and though the tears are streaming,
they never drown the fear.
The darkness comes invading,
the depths of who I am,
and with it hope is fading,
that to save me is God's plan.
Shattered trust that bruises,
with guilt, regret, and shame.
Yet ever my soul chooses,
to call upon God's name.
This life is just a battlefield,
where souls are won and lost.
My heart may break; my strength may yield,
but Christ has paid loves cost.
I'll never see beyond this pain,
if I don't look past this strife,

and I will not rise from this disdain,
if I seek to save this life.
For its when God's lightning flashes,
that we clearly see the skies,
and its from our dirty ashes,
that His life will arise.
When the silence lasts the longest,
we want even more to hear,
and if we're never given time to rest,
we hold the peace more dear.
The Light is never brighter,
than in the darkest place,
and God never holds us tighter,
than when we broken...seek His face.

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2009-06-13T22:12:00.002+10:00

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The End Of An Age

2009-06-13T21:37:00.004+10:00

Here is a poem by Dora Van Assen in her booklet called 'God's Unfailing Love Revealed In The Cross'. The poem is entitled 'The Ending Of An Age'. I found this tonight and was reminded of the song, Memory, given to me in 2004.

Dora Van Assen and her husband were missionaries when God revealed to her by a vision that this age is coming to an end and that God would save all... that He will be All in All. Dora passed away some years ago at the age of 85.

This poem is a confirmation to me...

The Ending Of An Age

Memory

2009-06-13T21:24:00.003+10:00

Way back in 2004 the Lord gave this song from the hit musical 'Cats' in an intense time with the Holy Spirit.. to myself and two other friends. It was prophetic. It was to teach us that we are part of the elect, the overcomers, the bride of Christ. And it was to show that soon a new age is going to dawn.... the age of Tabernacles, when Christ will be manifest in the earth... in the manifestation of the Sons of God... A new day is dawning!

Memory

Daylight
See the dew on the sunflower
And a rose that is fading
Roses whither away
Like the sunflower
I yearn to turn my face to the dawn
I am waiting for the day . . .

Midnight
Not a sound from the pavement
Has the moon lost her memory?
She is smiling alone
In the lamplight
The withered leaves collect at my feet
And the wind begins to moan

Memory
All alone in the moonlight
I can smile at the old days
I was beautiful then
I remember the time I knew what happiness was
Let the memory live again

Every streetlamp
Seems to beat a fatalistic warning
Someone mutters
And the streetlamp gutters
And soon it will be morning

Daylight
I must wait for the sunrise
I must think of a new life
And I musn't give in
When the dawn comes
Tonight will be a memory too
And a new day will begin

Burnt out ends of smoky days
The stale cold smell of morning
The streetlamp dies, another night is over
Another day is dawning

Touch me
It's so easy to leave me
All alone with the memory
Of my days in the sun
If you touch me
You'll understand what happiness is

Look
A new day has begun

Those Glorious Fire Walkers!

2009-06-10T12:05:00.003+10:00

By Terry and Tykie Crisp

We'd like to share a thought today which may help to explain why God's chosen ones have been going through some of the most difficult spiritual trials and testings of their entire lives. It may also why, in spite of their most ardent prayers for relief, these trials have not just gone away. Obviously, God has had a reason for allowing them to intensify as they have!

Recently, the Lord spoke a word to my heart concerning a brother for whom we had been praying. It was a word which we felt was to be taken positively, as an encouragement from the Lord. Moreover, in the course of the dealing, He made me to know that this word was not only given for this brother personally, but also, in a broader sense, it pertains to ALL who have been called to conform to His glorious image. The Spirit said quite simply to me,

"I have determined to hold his feet to the fire,
until they look like Mine".

Immediately following these words, John's description of the resurrected Christ in Rev. 115 came to mind... "and His feet were like unto fine brass, as if they had been burned in a furnace... The thought is almost frightening, isn't it'?

Have you ever heard anyone use the age-old idiom of "holding one's feet to the fire" before? What they meant by this was that they were going to keep the pressure on that individual, they were going to give him no rest, they were going to bear down upon him with such force and intensity, that he would finally assume his moral obligations, line up with their desired expectations, conform to a certain standard of conduct or consciousness, etc. It was another way of saying that they were not going to release that person from the heat of intense scrutiny and high expectation, until they saw a change in him. Does this not describe how our Lord is dealing with His children in this hour? Yes, it is true that Jesus loves us just the way we are. And, yes, His love for us is unconditional. But aren't you glad that He loves us so much that He will not leave us in that condition? His highest desire for each of us is that we should ultimately look like Him; and He will go to any length to make this a reality. Therefore, He holds us in the fire, even when we kick, and scream, and think we've had enough. He knows just what it will take to achieve the objective. And He works incessantly toward that goal, in spite of our objections! He is content that once we share His vision, then we shall understand why it was necessary!

There are several things we might mention about the appearance of Christ's feet; chief of which is the fact that John's description of them was never meant to be taken literally. This should be apparent, since he referred to them as being "like unto...". This shows plainly that he was speaking in a metaphorical sense; he was creating a word-picture in the minds of his readers (and what an excellent picture he gives)!

Secondly, we would add that the mention of His feet speaks figuratively of His walk (which incorporates the consciousness, character, conversation, and conduct expressed or displayed in the sight of men and angels). It's another way of commenting on the expression of His life in general; the demonstration and exhibition of that life, as He makes contact with the earth (realm of humanity).

As many of you know, brass, in biblical symbolism, represents judgment. This is seen by the fact that both the altar and the laver, in the outer court of Moses' tabernacle, were made of brass. And this, of course, was where the disobedience and defilements of the people were dealt with. Sacrifices were offered upon the brazen altar for the sins of the people; while the brazen laver was for the cleansing of the priests. Jesus was the fulfillment of both of these (as well as every other piece of furniture in the tabernacle), in that He took the judgment, and bore the sins of the whole world upon Himself at Calvary. He vicariously absorbed the penalty for all our transgressions, so that we would not have to! Praise God! Because of His virgin birth, because He came into this world without the sinful legacy others were born with (Psa. 51:5), He did what no other human being was qualified to do! But besides that, has it occurred to you lately that Jesus, in order to remain eligible for His all-important role for lo, those thirty-three long years, had to be judged Himself? Perhaps it is time that we reconsidered this fact! Not only during those forty days and nights in the wilderness, but throughout His entire life, He had to be subjected to the extreme fires of testing, not as the Son of God, but as the Son of man, that He might completely be able to identify with mankind, and that He might perfectly fulfill His calling and election. He took the heat like a man, that we might become the sons of God!

While I was reading over this passage from Rev. I :15, 1 noticed something conveyed in the original Greek, which is almost overlooked when read only from the Authorized version. There is a condition described here, which plainly reveals God's ultimate, eternal purpose for holding not only Christ's feet to the fire, but ours, as well. The word, "burned", as is used in the King James translation, should more accurately be rendered, "glowed" (this is the way it appears in the Greek New Testament). Is there a difference? Most assuredly there is! We know that in order for something to burn, it's composition must be of a combustible nature. But for something to glow (perpetually), it must be of a more enduring substance. Now, both burning and glowing are responses to the fire. And for a short duration, even that which is in the process of being burned may emanate a momentary glow (much the same way a "falling star" shines temporarily, until it burns out). But know ye that in the fulness of time, the fire will at length reveal the true constitution of a thing. Beloved, it is an undeniable fact: the fire cannot be fooled! If the substance is ignitable, it will eventually be reduced to ashes; if it is not, then it will simply be refined to the highest degree of purity. The fire makes manifest the basic make-up of the material, and openly declares its consistency for all the world to see.

Looking again unto Jesus, our Author and Finisher who gives us faith, we see that when our Lord trod upon this earth, He gave us the perfect example of what it is like to have "feet like unto fine brass". Why, He was the greatest "firewalker" that ever lived! For centuries, men in various parts of the world have mystified multitudes of spectators, by walking (or, at least, creating the illusion of walking) upon hot, glowing coals of fire. In fact, in some cultures, a walk among the fiery embers was even required of those who had hopes of being initiated into the ranks of their priesthood. It was looked upon as an act of moral purification. But without fear of contradiction, we can boldly declare unto you that no one ever did it quite like Jesus! You see, He encountered all the trials and temptations common to mankind. He was faced with the same kind of pressures wherewith each of us are familiar. There was no area of His life which escaped the all-searching flame; in no thing was He spared. In fact, we are persuaded that the pressures He encountered were more intense than what any of us might even imagine at this time! Many years ago, the question was posed by wise old Solomon, "Can one go upon hot coals, and his feet not be burned?" (Prov. 6:28). The answer, up until that time, was a resounding NO! Every man (or woman) who had ever passed through the fiery path of fleshly lusts, trials, or temptations had always come out with "charred feet", so to speak, in one form or another. Every one of them had "flammable" elements in their "soles"; that is, elements which responded poorly to the heat! Oh, they might have been victorious in one situation, only to turn around, and find themselves "flame-broiled" in another form of testing over which they had no power.

We know this to be true, because according to the divine Record, "ALL have sinned (missed the mark), and come short of the glory of God" But when Jesus stepped forth on the human scene, He bore an entirely different testimony. We read that He "was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin" (Heb. 4:15)! It mattered not whether He was being tempted with one of the common sensual allurements which appeal to the natural appetites in man, or whether He was being led along the fiery pathway which passed by the house of that "great harlot", religious Babylon, whose sweet, seductive influences had slain many strong men (Prov. 7:26, 27). Regardless of whether He was walking through one of those challenging natural circumstances, which is generally of a frustrating nature (which had the potential of causing Him to "lose His cool", so to speak), or whether He was being forced to pass through the flaming words and false accusations of His chief critics (whose tongues set on fire the course of nature, being set on fire of hell; James 3:6). ..He always did what was right. He calmly kept His composure! No matter how hot "the smith that bloweth the coals in the fire" made them (Isa. 54:16), and no matter how intense the heat became under His feet, there was absolutely nothing in Him that would ignite! Much to the devil's dismay, Jesus simply would not burn! The flame would not kindle upon Him! Why, He wouldn't even blister! In fact, the hotter the adversary made the trial, the more fervently Christ's feet "glowed"! He radiated with such an intense purity, such indescribable peace, such absolute discipline and self-control, the multitudes were absolutely astonished by Him! They could not help but admire this Man's walk! It was totally above reproach! Ah, beloved, we believe that it was because of this very thing that He had such influence with the people! They understood that what He taught them, He had first walked out Himself! He not only instructed them in the overcoming life; He demonstrated what it was like to have power over the fire! That made all the difference!

The question might be asked: how was it that Christ was able to walk through the midst of such tremendous fires, and remain unsinged? How did He keep from being completely overwhelmed by them? We believe that one of the main reasons was that He stayed focused in the heavenlies! He kept His eye on the Lord of the fire, instead of looking at the fire itself! You see, while His feet were walking out the purposes of God in the earth, His head was "in the heavens" (John 3:31)! He was not the least bit overwhelmed by the fire, because He understood it's origin! He knew from whence it came! We read that "His eyes were like a flame of fire", which, among other things, could be taken to mean that He had a vision of the fire; He knew and understood it's purpose in His life! Unlike Peter, who, while walking on the water took his eyes off the Lord, and filled them with the wind and waves (thus allowing those agitated waters to engulf him), Christ always stayed above the fire, by beholding the presence of the Father in the midst of it. This was reflected in His eyes! (Furthermore, He understood that satan only operated God's "bellows"; which is to say, the power which he had to "heat up" the coals in the fire was first given to him by God; Rom. 13:1, Job 1:6-12)! This enabled our Lord to walk in full assurance of faith through the most challenging, tempting, and life threatening circumstances ever encountered by man, without flinching, and without being distracted from His goal! He was kept in perfect peace, because His mind was stayed on Him (Isa. 26:3)!

Beloved, what was true of Him can also be true of us! We can have eyes like His; which will, in turn, enable us to have feet like His! This walk is available to us today! We read in I Corinthians 10:13 that "there hath no temptation (trial, testing) taken you, but such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted (tried, tested) above that ye are able: but will with the temptation also make a way of escape, that ye may be able to bear it". The key-operative line in this passage is that God is faithful. He is in control. He will not allow us to be tested beyond our ability to endure (and, mind you, none of us are going through anything that has not been faced to some degree or another by someone before us). Our God can be trusted in this! He knows our limitations better than we; and when we have reached those limits, He makes a way of escape, that we might bear some more! It should be pointed out that His way is not an evacuation from the fire, or around the fire; it is a way through it! And through it we shall go, until finally we emerge on the other side of our great tribulation, bearing His victorious testimony of peace which passeth understanding!

This is the destiny of those who yield themselves unreservedly to the Lord. Even now, the feet of God's king-priestly company of "firewalkers" are being "conditioned" in the flames of fiery trials and daily tribulation; and even as we speak, a bed of coals heated "seven times hotter" than in any previous generation is being prepared! The stage is being set; the world will be watching! What a breathtaking sight this will be! We need not fear, however, for once He has consumed everything in us that can be burned, and refined the metal of our inner nature to its highest degree of purity, then, regardless of the temperature, we will simply "glow" all the more with the glory of God. Isn't this our real purpose in life, anyway? You see, at such a time, we trust that God will have already taken "the burn" out of the fire for us; and by then, there will be nothing there to threaten us, to make us afraid! (The fire is an enemy to us only so long as there are things in us that respond negatively to it, or as long as there are things that we are afraid of losing to it. But when we truly get victory over it, it will not matter! The sufferings of this present time, or any time in the future, for that matter, are certainly not worthy to be compared to the glory which shall be revealed in us)! As did our Lord Jesus, we, too, will "glorify the Lord in the fires" by walking in a way that magnifies and radiates His holy name (nature) to the rest of creation! As a prophetic confirmation to these thoughts...

Isa. 43:1-2 says, "Fear not; for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name; THOU ART MINE... when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee".

Praise God for the hope of His calling! As we become victorious over every Adamic tendency in us now, we will then be able to stand calmly and triumphantly with the Lamb on a "sea of glass" (which speaks of a transparent walk, having nothing to hide or be embarrassed of) "mingled with fire" (Rev. 15)! Then it shall be said by the inhabitants of the world, "How beautiful are the feet of Him... and how beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things" (Isa. 52:7; Rom. 10:15)!
Our feet will glow like His! Hallelujah!

http://www.geocities.com/goodseedpub/index.htm

Quote

2009-06-09T08:41:00.001+10:00

In the word restitution the prefix "re" means BACK, AGAIN, ANEW - and all the words with this prefix speak of something that LEFT ITS PLACE AND HAS NOW MADE ITS CIRCUIT AND COME BACK TO THE POINT OF ITS BEGINNING.

~Dale Thompson

Sonshine

2009-06-07T14:43:00.004+10:00

I would like to share a blogsite run by a small group of people I've just recently begun to know which has blessed me tremendously in the last couple of months.

The site is run by Jack, Ellie and Joain, people who have formed a close relationship in their experience of the Living Christ within. People who have forsaken the wide road to travel the narrow. Who have forsaken all else to concentrate on the Lord of Glory, Christ Jesus. Forsaking men, church groups, other believers, and anything.. whether it be the doctrine's of man, or their own preconceived ideas of who God is and how we are to relate to Him to walk before Him in humility and teachable hearts.

They are called 'Sonshine', and here is their blog...

http://jack-sonshine.blogspot.com/

or, click on the red lettered title of this blog post..

Defining Evil and Sin

2009-06-07T14:29:00.003+10:00

I found this article amongst the many booklets of Dr Stephen Jones recently, as I was in discussion with some christians in an online forum concerning 'Did God create evil?'

Many people seem horrified by attributing evil to God, saying that we are told not to say God sins or tempts us to sin. However this article shows that while God did indeed create evil it does not mean He sins or causes us to sin...

Defining Evil and Sin...
There is no place in Scripture where we are told that evil is a creation of either man or the devil. While it is true that men DO evil, and that evil certainly exists in the world, God always takes credit for it in the ultimate sense.

All evil is the result of Adam's sin. Evil is ultimately the divine judgment for sin. Evil is the result of sin. Therefore, evil is not a CAUSE but is derivative. For example, God told Adam and Eve that in the day they eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they will surely DIE. Death is evil, and it is the consequence of sin, the effect of a prior cause.

All evil stems from this one act, the “original sin,” and is merely an extension of that first great evil called “death.” Who would question that death was the consequence of sin by the justice of God? Hence, in the great chapter setting forth the sovereignty of God, He tells us in Isaiah 45:7, “I form the light and create darkness; I make peace and CREATE EVIL; I the Lord do all these things.”

Not only death, but also calamities and pestilence are evils which God may bring upon a nation for their sin. All judgment for sin is “evil” from the perspective of the ones affected by it—until they come to see that such judgments were sent by a just God to judge sin.

This is not to say that God SINS. Most people object to God creating evil on the grounds that it makes God a sinner. But such a view is taken only when one does not know the difference between evil and sin. God creates evil, but God does not sin.

The Hebrew word for “sin” is khawtaw , which means “to miss” or “to fail to hit the mark (goal).” The definition of sin is made clear in both the Old and New Testaments. First, in Judges 20:16 we read,

16 Out of all these people 700 choice men were left-handed; each one could sling a stone at a hair and not MISS [khawtaw]."

Here the meaning of the word is clear. It has to do with not missing a target. When the target, goal, or standard is the law of God, then to miss has moral implications. We call it “sin.” In this sense, Paul tells us in Romans 3:23, “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” In other words, the glory of God is the goal—the mark—and all men, in shooting toward that goal, have found their “arrows” falling short of that goal. All have missed the mark.

God creates evil, but God never fails to achieve His goals. He never misses the mark. If God were ever to fail to reach His goal, He would become a “sinner.” So if we understand the divine plan, which is His goal, and see it, not as wishful thinking but as the divine target of all history, then we will know the end from the beginning, because God will not fail to reach that goal.

There are many who think that God spends most of His time dreaming about what might have been, could have been, or would have been—if only Adam had not sinned. Such a mindset would produce many regrets, spawned from the despair of a great divine Failure. Was Adam's sin outside the overall divine plan? Was God taken by surprise? If so, then God is a failure and thus a sinner by biblical definition.

But no, God forbid! God was neither surprised nor handicapped by Adam's sin. The divine plan will succeed in the end. Neither mankind nor the devil can stop the least part of God's plan for His creation.

Evil is only sin if it misses the mark. Mankind has been given a mark to hit, a goal to achieve, a perfect standard. It is set forth in Scripture in general, and in the law in particular. The law is the expression of the moral and judicial side of God's character. When men do evil to each other, it is a sin, because they fail to achieve the perfection of the glory of God. However, when God does evil, it is according to His perfect wisdom; it has purpose, and His arrow always hits the bull's eye. Though we do not always understand what He is doing—because we do not see the end from the beginning—we ought to have faith that He is a good God who will work all things together for good (Rom. 8:28).

Job is set forth in Scripture as a primary example by which we may understand the concept of evil. First, we are told that “Satan” needed God's permission to afflict Job with “evil.” See Job 1:12 and 2:6.

Why did God allow this? The book makes it clear that God had a higher purpose, not merely to test Job, but to bring Job to a greater level of understanding in the end. Job already knew more than the average Christian about the source of evil, for he said in 2:10,

10 Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity? In all this Job did not sin with his lips.

The word translated “adversity” (NASB) is the Hebrew word ra'a, which means “evil” and is so translated in the KJV. It carries the idea of calamity and anything which men call “evil.”

Job's friends tried to tell him that surely he was harboring some secret sin in his life. This would explain why God was judging him (or allowing Satan to judge him). But in saying this, they sinned with their lips, and in the end Job was required to pray for them (42:10).

At the end of the story (42:11, 12), Job's family came and “comforted him for all the evil that the Lord had brought on him . . . . And the Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning.”

In other words, when the Lord does or allows evil to befall us, it is ultimately for the purpose of blessing us. This is the basis of Paul's statement in Romans 8:28,

28 And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.

It is perhaps no coincidence that God worked anonymously to make men label this verse “8:28.” The number 828 is 2 x 414, which is the factor of “Cursed Time,” and it illustrates the fact that even God's so-called “curses” are ultimate blessings.

There are many other Scriptures that have direct references to God doing “evil” without sinning. Amos 3:6 says, "If a calamity [ra-a] occurs in a city, has not the Lord done it? " God always takes credit for bringing judgment upon a city or a nation—including Israel —in order that they might know the Source and purpose of their judgment, which they call “evil.”

Divine judgment is never coincidental, as historians may think. While God uses “natural causes,” He always stands behind history as the First Cause of all things. This is the story presented in Scripture, whether God was hardening Pharaoh's heart (Ex. 10:1) or putting a hook in his jaw (Ez. 29:4) to ensure that they would do His bidding.

We are called to get to know the God of the Bible, so that we begin to comprehend Him and the way He thinks by the mind of the Spirit. This is often difficult, especially the more evil we see and the more that bad things happen to us personally. Our perspective is simply too limited, too personal, too myopic, and so it is fortunate that we ourselves are not God.

We must ultimately come to the same conclusion as Joseph did, after being sold as a slave by his own brothers, and after being imprisoned for years through false accusation. In Gen. 50:19, 20 he said,

19 Fear not; for am I in the place of God? 20 But as for you [brothers], you thought evil against me; but God meant it for good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save many people alive.

This attitude is the primary mark of spiritual maturity in Scripture. All the bitterness and anger of his youth had melted away, once he saw the greater purpose of God in all the “evil” done to him. He had ceased to think of good and evil dualistically. He now saw both good and evil with a singular mind as proceeding from God and having an ultimate good purpose .

Shellie Morris ~ Swept Away

2009-05-27T18:56:00.004+10:00

Shellie Morris is an Australian Indigenous singer who performs earthy and honest songs. Shellie has a beautiful voice and her soulful enigmatic acoustic ballads are guaranteed to delight the listener. The Australian newspaper described her as ‘an aboriginal chanteuse of rare seriousness and grace’. She has performed everywhere from rural outback Australia to London Festival Hall and the Sydney Opera House with great reviews.

Shellie is currently a featured artist with the Black Arm Band. (a collaboration of Australia’s top indigenous artists and jazz musicians) Her song Swept Away was orchestrated and performed in 2008 with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.

A documentary film on Shellie’s life and music was commissioned and broadcast nationally in 2009 as well as her concert at the Sydney Opera house with Gurrumul Yunupingu. She has released two albums to date and is currently writing the music for her third CD.

In addition to this Shellie performed and co-wrote and the music Liberty Songs a collaboration between refugees from Liberia and indigenous Australian women. Currently being developed for touring at festivals in the future.

Shellie is also an ambassador for the Fred Hollows foundation a organisation undertaking community-based work with blindness prevention in Australia, Asia, Africa and the Pacific. She also works with Indigenous communities and youth throughout Australia, helping young people to write music about their experiences.

Shellie is a rising star in Australia. I first met her fifteen years ago when she was a worship leader in my then church. She loves the Lord. This song speaks to me of being swept away by the amazing and wondrous love of God.

Her official website... http://www.shelliemorris.com/

Just What the Hell is "Hell?"

2009-05-15T16:31:00.001+10:00

By Gary Amirault

There once was a time, 'twas plain to see
Just what the hell, Hell was meant to be.
But then theologians got into the act
And Hell no longer was a simple fact.

Hell formerly was a dark hidden space
Imperceivable, covered, a true hiding place.
It could be a place, as crude as a shed
Or could be a helmet, to cover your head.

Smoochers and kissers oft needed a hell
For hidden in darkness, no one could tell.
Hall, hole, and hull come from the same root
Along with a heel covered with a boot.

"Too simple!" So theologians once said
And now from their scheming, confusion has spread.
They hired the Dantes and Michaelangelos
To paint pretty pictures of many great woes

Fire and torment, with much superstition
Was added to pagan mythology and fiction.
The Goddess of Hel from Norse mythology
Became Satan, hero of most eschatology.

Jesus the Savior, delivered mankind
He came not for few, but for ALL men to find.
His portion became a rather small lot
While most of mankind, in Hell-fire would rot.

The way to this Hell became broad and wide
The gift of God's grace was at its low tide.
Clothes, creeds and days, the right denomination
Became the sole means, the way to salvation.

Gehenna, Hades, Tartaroo, and Sheol

All became places that could swallow your soul.
Preachers now had us, right where they wanted
"Obey or to Hell with you" they often taunted.

Countless denominations of devilish preachers
Forsook the Gift and became Satan's teachers.
Thousands of ways of deliverance from "Hell"
In common they all have a self-righteous smell.

"Finished" He cried, "I will draw all mankind"
The Father's desire, "all saved" in His mind.
The task He was given, He accomplished it all
And as His witness, He commissioned St. Paul.

Paul's Gospel was different, it's easy to tell
Because never once did he use the word "hell."
So "hell" is no more, it's becoming a bore
It's taking its place along with common folklore.

Punish he will, for our Father is just
In age-long correction, you surely can trust.
On vindictive torment our Father's not bent
Mercy will, yes! triumph over judgment.

Confession and Repentance of a former Hell Teaching Pastor

2009-05-02T23:32:00.002+10:00

An Open Letter to My Former Parishioners:

Dear Ones,

I am so very sorry. I hear the pain in your hearts when you tearfully admit you have a hard time believing God could love you. I now realize I bear a good bit of the responsibility for it. Some of the things I taught and did when I was your pastor harmed you and were a great disservice to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Early on I simply didn’t know any better. I taught you what I had been taught. I was the product of a form of Christianity that has dominated for so long—an institutionalized, clergy led, power preserving perversion of what Jesus intended for his followers. It’s true I had not done the critical research for myself. But, after all, who was I to question what my instructors said was the correct way to believe and “do” church?

When life experiences and personal Bible study exposed some cracks in my rigid doctrinal foundation, I began to suspect there was more to knowing God than I knew. But I deviated little from the denominational tradition in which I was trained and continued to teach things of which I was no longer convinced. It was too important for me to preserve my good standing and keep my denominational star on the rise.

We claimed our mission was to save lost souls from hell by getting them to “make a decision for Christ” and become one of us. More candidly, we were mostly focused on growing the church. By means of sermons and programs of all sorts, I pressured you to try harder. I exhorted you to demonstrate “deeper commitment” to God and the church. I called upon you to be “faithful” and give more money. I taught you that if you wanted to please God you would have to strive to be a better church member. In a thousand different ways I made you think you were still lacking in God’s eyes.

No, I wasn’t mean about it. I usually did it with a smile. I found entertaining ways to say it. Nonetheless, speaking on behalf of God, I made it clear I expected more from you and so did He. No matter how hard you tried I had to keep you motivated and centered in the church. I needed you to fill your seat and bring someone else along to fill an empty one. The church (and I) had bills to pay.

The outcome for so many of you has been learning almost nothing about the abundant life Jesus promised. You live in constant doubt that God could ever be pleased with you. The abundant life is simply not compatible with constantly worrying we might be disappointing God. I taught you he was ready to banish to eternal torment everyone who didn’t find his or her way into his grace. Trying to measure up was why we did most things. Guilt and shame was really the glue that held us together.

Most of our time was spent striving to earn favors from God by praying more, reading the Bible more, doing more in the church and “witnessing” more. I never taught you how to live in the knowledge God unreservedly loves us because of Jesus.

Our church environment was a chronic breeding ground for hypocrisy. We played comparison games and excluded ourselves from anyone who sinned differently than we did. We were hard on each other whenever one of us failed. We thought it was our duty to keep each other in line and maintain impossible standards of “holiness”. We occupied ourselves with debates about whether Christians should dance, go to movies, use alcohol, sleep in on Sunday and miss going to church, wear certain types of clothes, or listen to certain types of music. We quarreled over Bible translations, hymnals, sound system volume and carpet colors. Conformity to group standards was a very high value, as was compliance to membership policies and the pastor’s authority. In the name of maintaining order I rebuked and “disciplined” those who did not comply.

When I began to realize the magnitude of God’s grace through Jesus Christ. I kept it to myself. Not until I was off the church payroll was I willing to declare in no uncertain terms, “that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:19 NIV). And, because of this, our mission is to go lovingly into the world around us with liberating good news rather than with preachy judgment pressure people to withdraw with us into our own little subculture.

My constant prayer for you today is that our merciful Heavenly Father will undo the damage I caused in your spiritual development. I pray that God will make himself known to you as the essence of love that he is. Should our paths cross again, think only of me as a fellow traveler—no title, no pedestal, please. And, remember, God loves us and will never give up on us. He has included all of us in his grace through Jesus Christ and never has a single condemning thought toward us, ever. Be at peace.

Repentantly yours,
(Name withheld)

A Quote by Hannah Whithall Smith

2009-04-16T16:39:00.001+10:00

I began to feel that the salvation in which I had been rejoicing was, after all a very limited and a very selfish salvation, and, as such, unworthy of the Creator who had declared so emphatically that His "tender mercies are over all His works," and above all unworthy of the Lord Jesus Christ, who came into the world for the sole and single purpose of saving the world. I could not believe that His life and death for us could be meant to fall so far short of remedying the evil that He came on purpose to remedy, and I felt that it must be impossible that there could be any short-coming in the salvation He had provided. The Bible says, "As in Adam all die -- even so in Christ should all be made alive." As was the first, even so was the second. The "all" in one case could not in fairness mean less than the "all" in the other. I saw therefore that the remedy must necessarily be equal to the disease, the salvation must be as universal as the fall.

Postscript

2009-04-12T09:49:00.003+10:00

I have thought the last article through after initially agreeing with it and feel that it's more an ideology than would ever happen in real life. I don't believe it will ever happen because I believe the Institutional Church is exactly where God wants it to be. She being the great whore of Revelation. If we believe God to be sovereign and all-powerful then the state of the Church is not a surprise to Him, and in fact if He has created calamity then He has allowed the creation of the Church to be what it is, for a reason.

I don't believe we are to go back to a New Testament Church model, we are to 'come out of her My people', leave the whore, return to pure doctrine, a true relationship with the Father, and look forward to the manifestation of the Sons of God, even if that means being the only person in town who believes this way. House churches may be fine, however the few I've heard of don't measure up to the picture painted in the article. The NT model was ordained for that time, I don't believe it is for now, there is a new day coming, a new age soon to dawn, let's see God do a new thing!

15 'Theses' for a new revolution..

2009-04-09T17:33:00.004+10:00

BY: WOLFGANG SIMSON

God is changing the Church, and that, in turn, will change the world. Millions of Christians around the world are aware of an imminent reformation of global proportions. They say, in effect: "Church as we know it is preventing Church as God wants it." A growing number of them are surprisingly hearing God say the very same things. There is a collective new awareness of age-old revelations, a corporate spiritual echo. In the following "15 Theses" I will summarize a part of this, and I am convinced that it reflects a part of what the Spirit of God is saying to the Church today. For some, it might be the proverbial fist-sized cloud on Elijah's sky. Others already feel the pouring rain.

1. Church is a Way of Life, not a series of religious meetings

Before they where called Christians, followers of Christ have been called "The Way". One of the reasons was, that they have literally found "the way to live." The nature of Church is not reflected in a constant series of religious meetings lead by professional clergy in holy rooms specially reserved to experience Jesus, but in the prophetic way followers of Christ live their everyday life in spiritually extended families as a vivid answer to the questions society faces, at the place where it counts most: in their homes.

2. Time to change the system

In aligning itself to the religious patterns of the day, the historic Orthodox Church after Constantine in the 4th century AD adopted a religious system which was in essence Old Testament, complete with priests, altar, a Christian temple (cathedral), frankincense and a Jewish, synagogue-style worship pattern. The Roman Catholic Church went on to canonize the system. Luther did reform the content of the gospel, but left the outer forms of "church" remarkably untouched; the Free-Churches freed the system from the State, the Baptists then baptized it, the Quakers dry-cleaned it, the Salvation Army put it into a uniform, the Pentecostals anointed it and the Charismatics renewed it, but until today nobody has really changed the superstructure. It is about time to do just that.

3. The Third Reformation.

In rediscovering the gospel of salvation by faith and grace alone, Luther started to reform the Church through a reformation of theology. In the 18th century through movements like the Moravians there was a recovery of a new intimacy with God, which led to a reformation of spirituality, the Second Reformation. Now God is touching the wineskins themselves, initiating a Third Reformation, a reformation of structure.

4. From Church-Houses to house-churches

Since New Testament times, there is no such thing as "a house of God". At the cost of his life, Stephen reminded unequivocally: God does not live in temples made by human hands. The Church is the people of God. The Church, therefore, was and is at home where people are at home: in ordinary houses. There, the people of God: - Share their lives in the power of the Holy Spirit, - Have "meatings," that is, they eat when they meet, - They often do not even hesitate to sell private property and share material and spiritual blessings, -Teach each other in real-life situations how to obey God's word, dialogue - and not professor-style, - Pray and prophesy with each other, baptize, `lose their face' and their ego by confessing their sins, - Regaining a new corporate identity by experiencing love, acceptance and forgiveness.

5. The church has to become small in order to grow big

Most churches of today are simply too big to provide real fellowship. They have too often become "fellowships without fellowship." The New Testament Church was a mass of small groups, typically between 10 and 15 people. It grew not upward into big congregations between 20 and 300 people filling a cathedral and making real, mutual communication improbable. Instead, it multiplied "sidewards", like organic cells, once these groups reached around 15-20 people. Then, if possible, it drew all the Christians together into citywide celebrations, as with Solomon's Temple court in Jerusalem. The traditional congregational church as we know it is, statistically speaking, neither big nor beautiful, but rather a sad compromise, an overgrown house-church and an under-grown celebration, often missing the dynamics of both.

6. No church is led by a Pastor alone

The local church is not led by a Pastor, but fathered by an Elder, a local person of wisdom and reality. The local house-churches are then networked into a movement by the combination of elders and members of the so-called five-fold ministries (Apostles, Prophets, Pastors, Evangelists and Teachers) circulating "from house to house," whereby there is a special foundational role to play for the apostolic and prophetic ministries (Eph. 2:20, and 4:11.12). A Pastor (shepherd) is a very necessary part of the whole team, but he cannot fulfill more than a part of the whole task of "equipping the saints for the ministry," and has to be complemented synergistically by the other four ministries in order to function properly.

7. The right pieces - fitted together in the wrong way

In doing a puzzle, we need to have the right original for the pieces, otherwise the final product, the whole picture, turns out wrong, and the individual pieces do not make much sense. This has happened to large parts of the Christian world: we have all the right pieces, but have fitted them together wrong, because of fear, tradition, religious jealousy and a power-and-control mentality. As water is found in three forms, ice, water and steam, the five ministries mentioned in Eph. 4:11-12, the Apostles, Prophets, Pastors, Teachers and Evangelists are also found today, but not always in the right forms and in the right places: they are often frozen to ice in the rigid system of institutionalized Christianity; they sometimes exist as clear water; or they have vanished like steam into the thin air of free-flying ministries and "independent" churches, accountable to no-one. As it is best to water flowers with the fluid version of water, these five equipping ministries will have to be transformed back into new, and at the same time age-old, forms, so that the whole spiritual organism can flourish and the individual "ministers" can find their proper role and place in the whole. That is one more reason why we need to return back to the Maker's original and blueprint for the Church.

8. God does not leave the Church in the hands of bureaucratic clergy

No expression of a New Testament church is ever led by just one professional "holy man" doing the business of communicating with God and then feeding some relatively passive religious consumers Moses-style. Christianity has adopted this method from pagan religions, or at best from the Old Testament. The heavy professionalization of the church since Constantine has now been a pervasive influence long enough, dividing the people of God artificially into laity and clergy. According to the New Testament (1 Tim. 2:5), "there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus." God simply does not bless religious professionals to force themselves in-between people and God forever. The veil is torn, and God is allowing people to access Himself directly through Jesus Christ, the only Way. To enable the priesthood of all believers, the present system will have to change completely. Bureaucracy is the most dubious of all administrative systems, because it basically asks only two questions: yes or no. There is no room for spontaneity and humanity, no room for real life. This may be OK for politics and companies, but not the Church. God seems to be in the business of delivering His Church from a Babylonian captivity of religious bureaucrats and controlling spirits into the public domain, the hands of ordinary people made extraordinary by God, who, like in the old days, may still smell of fish, perfume and revolution.

9. Return from organized to organic forms of Christianity

The "Body of Christ" is a vivid description of an organic, not an organized, being. Church consists on its local level of a multitude of spiritual families, which are organically related to each other as a network, where the way the pieces are functioning together is an integral part of the message of the whole. What has become a maximum of organization with a minimum of organism, has to be changed into a minimum of organization to allow a maximum of organism. Too much organization has, like a straightjacket, often choked the organism for fear that something might go wrong. Fear is the opposite of faith, and not exactly a Christian virtue. Fear wants to control, faith can trust. Control, therefore, may be good, but trust is better. The Body of Christ is entrusted by God into the hands of steward-minded people with a supernatural charismatic gift to believe God that He is still in control, even if they are not. A development of trust-related regional and national networks, not a new arrangement of political ecumenism is necessary for organic forms of Christianity to reemerge.

10. From worshipping our worship to worshipping God

The image of much of contemporary Christianity can be summarized, a bit euphemistically, as holy people coming regularly to a holy place at a holy day at a holy hour to participate in a holy ritual lead by a holy man dressed in holy clothes against a holy fee. Since this regular performance-oriented enterprise called "worship service" requires a lot of organizational talent and administrative bureaucracy to keep going, formalized and institutionalized patterns developed quickly into rigid traditions. Statistically, a traditional 1-2 hour "worship service" is very resource-hungry but actually produces very little fruit in terms of discipling people, that is, in changed lives. Economically speaking, it might be a "high input and low output" structure. Traditionally, the desire to "worship in the right way" has led to much denominationalism, confessionalism and nominalism. This not only ignores that Christians are called to "worship in truth and in spirit," not in cathedrals holding songbooks, but also ignores that most of life is informal, and so is Christianity as "the Way of Life." Do we need to change from being powerful actors to start "acting powerfully?"

11. Stop bringing people to church, and start bringing the church to the people

The church is changing back from being a Come-structure to being again a Go-structure. As one result, the Church needs to stop trying to bring people "into the church," and start bringing the Church to the people. The mission of the Church will never be accomplished just by adding to the existing structure; it will take nothing less than a mushrooming of the church through spontaneous multiplication of itself into areas of the population of the world, where Christ is not yet known.

12. Rediscovering the "Lord's Supper" to be a real supper with real food

Church tradition has managed to "celebrate the Lord's Supper" in a homeopathic and deeply religious form, characteristically with a few drops of wine, a tasteless cookie and a sad face. However, the "Lord's Supper" was actually more a substantial supper with a symbolic meaning, than a symbolic supper with a substantial meaning. God is restoring eating back into our meeting.

13. From Denominations to city-wide celebrations

Jesus called a universal movement, and what came was a series of religious companies with global chains marketing their special brands of Christianity and competing with each other. Through this branding of Christianity most of Protestantism has, therefore, become politically insignificant and often more concerned with traditional specialties and religious infighting than with developing a collective testimony before the world. Jesus simply never asked people to organize themselves into denominations. In the early days of the Church, Christians had a dual identity: they were truly His church and vertically converted to God, and then organized themselves according to geography, that is, converting also horizontally to each other on earth. This means not only Christian neighbors organizing themselves into neighborhood- or house-churches, where they share their lives locally, but Christians coming together as a collective identity as much as they can for citywide or regional celebrations expressing the corporateness of the Church of the city or region. Authenticity in the neighborhoods connected with a regional or citywide corporate identity will make the Church not only politically significant and spiritually convincing, but will allow a return to the biblical model of the City-Church.

14. Developing a persecution-proof spirit

They crucified Jesus, the Boss of all the Christians. Today, his followers are often more into titles, medals and social respectability, or, worst of all, they remain silent and are not worth being noticed at all. "Blessed are you when you are persecuted", says Jesus. Biblical Christianity is a healthy threat to pagan godlessness and sinfulness, a world overcome by greed, materialism, jealousy and any amount of demonic standards of ethics, sex, money and power. Contemporary Christianity in many countries is simply too harmless and polite to be worth persecuting. But as Christians again live out New Testament standards of life and, for example, call sin as sin, conversion or persecution has been, is and will be the natural reaction of the world. Instead of nesting comfortably in temporary zones of religious liberty, Christians will have to prepare to be again discovered as the main culprits against global humanism, the modern slavery of having to have fun and the outright worship of Self, the wrong center of the universe. That is why Christians will and must feel the "repressive tolerance" of a world which has lost any absolutes and therefore refuses to recognize and obey its creator God with his absolute standards. Coupled with the growing ideologicalization, privatization and spiritualization of politics and economics, Christians will, sooner than most think, have their chance to stand happily accused in the company of Jesus. They need to prepare now for the future by developing a persecution-proof spirit and an even more persecution-proof structure.

15. The Church comes home

Where is the easiest place, say, for a man to be spiritual? Maybe again, is it hiding behind a big pulpit, dressed up in holy robes, preaching holy words to a faceless crowd and then disappearing into an office? And what is the most difficult, and therefore most meaningful, place for a man to be spiritual? At home, in the presence of his wife and children, where everything he does and says is automatically put through a spiritual litmus test against reality, where hypocrisy can be effectively weeded out and authenticity can grow. Much of Christianity has fled the family, often as a place of its own spiritual defeat, and then has organized artificial performances in sacred buildings far from the atmosphere of real life. As God is in the business of recapturing the homes, the church turns back to its roots, back to where it came from. It literally comes home, completing the circle of Church history at the end of world history.

As Christians of all walks of life, from all denominations and backgrounds, feel a clear echo in their spirit to what God's Spirit is saying to the Church, and start to hear globally in order to act locally, they begin to function again as one body. They organize themselves into neighborhood house-churches and meet in regional or city-celebrations. You are invited to become part of this movement and make your own contribution. Maybe your home, too, will become a house that changes the world.

Check this out!... Laminim

2009-03-18T12:48:00.000+11:00

This is totally amazing!!

God's dealings with mankind

2009-03-15T23:17:00.001+11:00

I would like to communicate a few thoughts about what the word PUNISHMENT might entail, when referring to God's dealings with mankind. As it has been pointed out, its main meaning has to do with "correction" and not an act of retribution. Everyone will be corrected before they are fully restored, which is a process of rehabilitating us from our carnal ways and thinking into the ways of the nature of God. Most of the doctrines of the religious systems today concerning the judgment and punishment of God toward sinners is the result of an act of the highest treason, whereby men have created God in their own image and their own likeness. By projecting our own limitations and emotional pitfalls on to God, we have made God into us, with all of our hurts, anger, frustrations, bitterness, vengeance, etc. by which we have assassinated God's character and nature, giving Him the ability to be eternally hurt and angry over the rejection He has experienced from His creation. This is the kind of God that is presented to the world by the institutions of religion.

However, we who have been introduced to Him as the Happy God, the Author of the Good News of Christ, have met Him as He is! He IS Love. He doesn't just love, as you and I might love someone or something through an emotion of love, but Love is what God is made of, so He does not FEEL that love, which then would open Him up to hurt and anger from a rejection of that Love, but because He IS Love, He never ceases Loving, because He will always be. So, we must find an agreement with what His corrective process is and with the very nature of Love that He is. The correction of the Lord is to be sought after, not avoided. Correction in this sense is an instruction, not a mere incarceration or act of correcting. In this sense, it is NOT as we would correct our own children, simply because in this world of ours, our children are only expected to be obedient to their parents for a space of time, at least until they leave our house and launch out on their own. But, while under my roof, you will do what I say, or else. That is our correction to our children for the most part. Don't embarrass me and I will try not to embarrass you. The church has relegated itself this kind of behavior modification program to keep their members living the "Christian Life". As long as you don't chew, cuss, smoke, drink or sleep around, then the church can't expect too much more from you, as that is about as far as the behavior modification program will go toward living a righteous life. What never changes in this scenario is the root of unrighteousness, which can only be done away with through Christ. The corrections of God are not 12 steps of behavior modification, as they are not limited to being instructional, for they are essentially transformational in nature.

When Isaiah wrote of the wolf and the lamb and the lion and the lamb lying together, it is the classic image of God's transformational correction from our earthy nature into our original nature in Christ. Our wolf in Isaiah has undergone a startling change. Notice, the wold and the lion are not chained to a stake, drooling and snapping at the lamb next to them, but are unfettered, free from all restraints. No behavior modification here, as the story specifically relates as to how their very carnivorous constitution has been changed, noted in their strange love for grass instead of flesh. Peace abides, love reigns, as the Lamb has remarkably infused these natural enemies with its own Lambness, so that the Wolf and the Lion are living in union with their previous victim. Now, they have become the victims of the Lamb! So, we see they still have the original form of the Wolf and the Lion, but their nature has been transformed. Even so, we are humans and God is not trying to change us into something that is not human, like the angels for instance, but in our human form, we are experiencing a metamorphosis through the transformational correction of the spirit of God, being presented by God as a New Species of God-man, a compound of spirit and flesh, God and humanity, which none of the angels can lay claim to, only those that have been born of a woman and are redeemed by the blood of the Lamb, which is the Life and Nature of the Lamb.

In this sense, we are all being judged today, which in the Greek means we are being discerned, taking on a contrast of one thing from another thing, which corresponds to the "re-membering" of our being, which has been chaotically out of alignment, with the elements of our carnal self being in the position of rule and governing, but now there is a great upheaval taking place, as God shakes the earth AND the heavens, and keeps shaking until only those things that can remain will remain. Until our whole man is put into right alignment and those heavenly things are ruling and those earthy things are subjected, which produces the New Creature in its full development and functionality.
Robert D Torango

For My Father...

2009-03-09T22:19:00.006+11:00

Robert Edward Brown - August 9, 1929 - February 16, 2009.

May he find the peace and joy of realizing the Father's great love, and rest, in His everlasting arms.
God bless you Dad, we love and miss you so much, and find it so hard to believe you're not with us anymore.

Dad's favorite hymn...

A Psalm of David. The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside quiet waters.
He restores my soul; He guides me in the paths of righteousness For His name's sake.
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You have anointed my head with oil; My cup overflows.
Surely goodness and lovingkindness will follow me all the days of my life, And I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.

Soaked You In - Kayte Grace (Original)

2009-01-29T16:14:00.001+11:00

A star in the making? Keeping watch!

Time inbetween...

2009-01-28T13:43:00.003+11:00

This is the time inbetween the life I leave behind, and the new to begin.
The house is more or less empty, and I sit and wait. There are still a few things to be done to finish with what's behind, but mostly, it's just waiting for the new to start.

The inhouse garage sale was a huge success last Saturday.. I sold just about everything except a few nick nacks, which will go to Goodwill. The car needs cleaning, in fact, I'll get a detail job done on it, and then I can leave it with Jack in great condition to be sold. There are still a few boxes to be sent to Australia and then on the 10th February... I sail off into the wide blue yonder in one of those big white birds on a course set for my homeland. Then the new life begins!

The house feels strange.. hardly a stick of furniture, a bed, a seat, a telly, and some things to cook and eat with... and no Meefs. There was never a time he wasn't here, except for the very early days when he'd go out to buy a few things on his own.. then he lost his sight, and he was always here.. except for when I took him to doctors or eye specialists. So I walk into each room and see him there, and I see him in his room, in the last days, and I thank God he's not suffering anymore, and I thank God he's with his Saviour and the flesh that caused him so much misery is gone, the veil has been ripped away, and he sees Him face to face.. lucky bugga!... he beat me to it!!!
So, bring on the new!

A hope, long nursed by me..

2009-01-28T13:28:00.001+11:00

And oh! there lives within my heart

A hope, long nursed by me;
(And should its cheering ray depart,
How dark my soul would be!)
That as in Adam all have died,
In Christ shall all men live;
And ever round His throne abide,
Eternal praise to give.
That even the wicked shall at last
Be fitted for the skies;
And when their dreadful doom is past,
To life and light arise.
I ask not how remote the day,
Nor what the sinners' woe,
Before their dross is purged away;
Enough for me, to know
That when the cup of wrath is drained,
The metal purified,
They'll cling to what they once disdained,
And live by Him that died.

--Anne Bronte (1843)

Song Around The World: 'Don't Worry'.

2009-01-24T15:26:00.000+11:00

Squirrel Appreciation Day!

2009-01-22T15:31:00.003+11:00

It's Squirrel Appreciation Day!!

A wildlife rehabilitator from Ashville, North Carolina, Christy Hargrove, began Squirrel Appreciation Day on January 21, 2001.

You can enjoy some more great squirrel pics from LOLCat at this address, Here.

Subzero temps in the Midwest USA..

2009-01-18T09:42:00.004+11:00

These pics were taken when we had subzero temps here in the Midwest on the 15/16th January, 2009. The sliding glass door and handle which open onto the back patio iced up and I also took a pic of the ice crystals on my bedroom window. Temps got down to -9F (-23C).

Female Heart Attacks

2009-01-17T12:07:00.004+11:00

This was sent to me by email today and I thought it important enough to post. Maybe one day it will save someone's life, or even my own.

FEMALE HEART ATTACKS

I was aware that female heart attacks are different, but this is the best description I've ever read.

Women and heart attacks (Myocardial infarction). Did you know that women rarely have the same dramatic symptoms that men have when experiencing heart attack .. you know, the sudden stabbing pain in the chest, the cold sweat, grabbing the chest & dropping to the floor that we see in the movies. Here is the story of one woman's experience with a heart attack.

'I had a heart attack at about 10 :3 0 PM with NO prior exertion, NO prior emotional trauma that one would suspect might have brought it on. I was sitting all snugly & warm on a cold evening, with my purring cat in my lap, reading an interesting story my friend had sent me, and actually thinking, 'A-A-h, this is the life, all cozy and warm in my soft, cushy Lazy Boy with my feet propped up.

A moment later, I felt that awful sensation of indigestion, when you've been in a hurry and grabbed a bite of sandwich and washed it down with a dash of water, and that hurried bite seems to feel like you've swallowed a golf ball going down the esophagus in slow motion and it is most
uncomfortable. You realize you shouldn't have gulped it down so fast and needed to chew it more thoroughly and this time drink a glass of water to hasten its progress down to the stomach. This was my initial sensation---the only trouble was that I hadn't taken a bite of anything since about 5:00 p.m.

After it seemed to subside, the next sensation was like little squeezing motions that seemed to be racing up my SPINE (hind-sight, it was pro bably my aorta spasms), gaining speed as they continued racing up and under my sternum (breast bone, where one presses rhythmically when administering CPR).

This fascinating process continued on into my throat and branched out into both jaws. 'AHA!! NOW I stopped puzzling about what was happening -- we all have read and/or heard about pain in the jaws being one of the signals of an MI happening, haven't we? I said aloud to myself and the cat, Dear God, I think I'm having a heart attack!

I lowered the foot rest dumping the cat from my lap, started to take a step and fell on the floor instead. I thought to myself, If this is a heart attack, I shouldn't be walking into the next room where the phone is or anywhere else ... but, on the other hand, if I don't, nobody will know that I need help, and if I wait any longer I may not be able to get up in a moment.

I pulled myself up with the arms of the chair, walked slowly into the next room and dialed the Paramedics ... I told her I thought I was having a heart attack due to the pressure building under the sternum and radiating into my jaws. I didn't feel hysterical or afraid, just stating the facts. She said she was sending the Paramedics over immediately, asked if the front door was near to me, and if so, to un-bolt the door and then lie down on the floor where they could see me when they came in.

I unlocked the door and then laid down on the floor as instructed and lost consciousness, as I don't remember the medics coming in, their examination, lifting me onto a gurney or getting me into their ambulance, or hearing the call they made to St. Jude ER on the way, but I did briefly awaken when we arrived and saw that the radiologist was already there in his surgical blues and cap, helping the medics pull my stretcher out of the ambulance. He was bending over me asking questions (probably something like 'Have you taken any medications?') but I couldn't make my mind interpret what he was saying, or form an answer, and nodded off again, not waking up until the Cardiologist and partner had already threaded the teeny angiogram balloon up my femoral artery into the aorta and into my heart where they installed 2 side by side stints to hold open my right coronary artery.

'I know it sounds like all my thinking and actions at home must have taken at least 20-30 minutes before calling the paramedics, but actually it took perhaps 4-5 minutes before the call, and both the fire station and St. Jude are only minutes away from my home, and my Cardiologist was already to go to the OR in his scrubs and get going on restarting my heart (which had stopped somewhere between my arrival and the procedure) and installing the stints
'Why have I written all of this to you with so much detail? Because I want all of you who are so important in my life to know what I learned first hand.'

1. Be aware that something very different is happening in your body not the usual men's symptoms but inexplicable things happening (until my sternum and jaws got into the act). It is said that many more women than men die of their first (and last) MI because they didn't know they were having one and commonly mistake it as indigestion, take some Maalox or other anti-heartburn preparation and go to bed, hoping they'll feel better in the morning when they
wake up ... which doesn't happen. My female friends, your symptoms might not be exactly like mine, so I advise you to call the Paramedics if ANYTHING is unpleasantly happening that you've not felt before. It is better to have a 'false alarm' visitation than to risk your life guessing what it might be!

2. Note that I said 'Call the Paramedics.' And if you can take an aspirin. Ladies, TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE!
Do NOT try to drive yourself to the ER - you are a hazard to others on the road.
Do NOT have your panicked husband who will be speeding and looking anxiously at what's happening with you instead of the road.
Do NOT call your doctor -- he doesn't know where you live and if it's at night you won't reach him anyway, and if it's daytime, his assistants (or answering service) will tell you to call the Paramedics. He doesn't carry the equipment in his car that you need to be saved! The Paramedics do, principally OXYGEN that you need ASAP. Yo ur Dr. will be notified later.

3. Don't assume it couldn't be a heart attack because you have a normal cholesterol count. Research has discovered that a cholesterol elevated reading is rarely the cause of an MI (unless it's unbelievably high and/or accompanied by high blood pressure). MIs are usually caused by long-term stress and inflammation in the body, which dumps all sorts of deadly hormones into your system to sludge things up in there. Pain in the jaw can wake you from a sound sleep.

Let's be careful and be aware. The more we know the better chance we could survive.

Just who has the power in this instance?

2009-01-17T05:18:00.001+11:00

“Institutional Christianity is addicted to the idea that for things to work out right between us and God, ‘we have to do our part,’ and if we do, then ‘God will do His part.’ That makes God dependent upon us ‘getting it right’ before He can get on with His purpose and will. At the heart of our flesh’s alienation from God, at the heart of our blindness and ignorance, is the desire to get credited for ‘holding up our part of the deal.’ We like the idea of grace, as long as the successful operation of grace is attributable to us ‘letting God’ do what He wants to do."

John Gavazzoni

And the dog sits on the Tuckerbox five miles from Gundagai..

2009-01-17T04:49:00.001+11:00

If you are traveling down the 900 kilometer Hume Highway between Sydney and Melbourne, at about halfway (near Gundagai) you will come across one of Australia's icons - The Dog on the Tuckerbox.

"What's a tuckerbox?" do I hear you ask? Tucker is an Australian word for food.

"He's off his tucker" for example means that he is not eating and may be sick. "Get into your tucker" is an invitation to start eating (almost a cheeky form of saying grace). The tucker box was a box in which the travelling pioneers used to hold the important items of food like salt and flour.

The statue of the dog guarding the box for his master was erected as a pioneer memorial. It was unveiled in 1932 by the then Prime Minister of Australia Joseph Lyons.

The statue itself had been made by Gundagai's stone mason, Frank Rusconi.

The dog gained its icon status through poems and songs that were repeated around the camp fires of the early travellers.

Trevor Lucas sang one of them....

I'm used to punchin' bullock teams across the hills and plains.
I've teamed outback for forty years through bleedin' hail and rain.
I've lived a lot of troubles down, without a bloomin' lie,
But I can't forget what happened just five miles from Gundagai.

'Twas getting dark, the team got bored, the axle snapped in two.
I lost me matches and me pipe, so what was I to do?
The rain it was coming on, and hungry too was I,

And me dog shat in me tucker-box five miles from Gundagai.

Some blokes I know have stacks of luck, no matter where they fall,
But there was I, Lord love a duck, no bloody luck at all.
I couldn't heat a pot of tea or keep me trousers dry,
And me dog shat in me tucker-box five miles from Gundagai.

Now, I can forgive the bleedin' team, I can forgive the rain.

I can forgive the damp and cold and go through it again.

I can forgive the rotten luck, but 'ang me till I die,

I can't forgive that bloody dog, five miles from Gundagai.

This dray is near where the dog on the tuckerbox sits and I had my photo taken on it when I was nine years old. Three years ago I had my pic taken with it again... but I haven't got that particular pic in my puter...

The Aussie and the Dingo

2009-01-17T04:36:00.000+11:00

A Great Joke I heard once..

A wealthy Australian man decided to go on a safari in Africa. He took his faithful pet Dingo along for company.

One day, the Dingo starts chasing butterflies and before long he discovers that he is lost.

Wandering about, he notices a leopard heading rapidly in his direction with the obvious intention of having lunch. The dingo thinks, "Geez, I'm in deep poop now!" Then he noticed some bones on the ground close by, and immediately settles down to chew on the bones with his back to the approaching cat.

Just as the leopard is about to leap, the dingo exclaims loudly, "Bugger me dead, that was one delicious leopard. I wonder if there are any more around here?"

Hearing this, the leopard halts his attack in mid stride, as a look of terror comes over him, and slinks away into the trees. "Whew," says the leopard. "That was close. That dingo nearly had me."

Meanwhile, a monkey who had been watching the whole scene from a nearby tree figures he can put this knowledge to good use and trade it for protection from the leopard. So, off he goes. But the dingo sees him heading after the leopard with great speed, and figures that something must be up.

The monkey soon catches up with the leopard, spills the beans and strikes a deal for himself with the leopard. The leopard is furious at being made a fool of and says, "Here monkey, hop on my back and see what's going to happen to that conniving Aussie canine."

Now the dingo sees the leopard coming with the monkey on his back, and thinks, " Struth, what am I going to do now?" But instead of running, the dog sits down with his back to his attackers, pretending he hasn't seen them yet.. and just when they get close enough to hear, the dingo says, "Where the bloody hell's that monkey? I sent him off half an hour ago to bring me another leopard."

MORAL: SOMETIMES IF YOU CANT DAZZLE THEM WITH BRILLIANCE THEN BAFFLE THEM WITH BULLSHIT!

"let us make man in our image and in our likeness"

2009-01-15T05:42:00.002+11:00

This incerpt taken from A.P. Adams article, 'The True Basis of Redemption'...

When God said, "in the beginning," (Gen. 1:1) "let us make man in our image and in our likeness" (Gen. 1:26), he did not mean merely the first man, but he meant the race. That work began in Eden and has been going on uninterruptedly ever since; it has been completed thus far only in the case of one man, "the Perfect Man," the Lord Jesus Christ, and hence he has become the pattern and the model after whom all the redeemed shall be fashioned, so that when the question is asked, "What is man?" (Ps. 8:4; Heb. 2:6) the answer is-Jesus; see Heb. 2:5-10. Jesus is the only man thus far finished, completed and perfected; he is the only one as yet in whom the creative proposition has been consummated-"Let us make man in our image and in our likeness" (Gen. 1:26), for he is the brightness of the Father's glory and "the express image of his person." (Heb. 1:3) The first man could not have been in the image and likeness of God in the same sense that Jesus was, because the nature of the two are broadly contrasted in 1 Cor. 15:45-49:

"The first man, Adam, was made a living soul [a soulical or animal man], the last Adam was made a quickening (life-giving) spirit; howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural (soulical), and afterward that which is spiritual; the first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven. As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy; and as is the heavenly such are they also that are heavenly; and as we have borne the image of the earthy, so shall we bear the image of the heavenly."

Ice Storm Dec '08

2009-01-15T04:30:00.003+11:00

These pics were taken Christmas week, Dec '08.. Pekin, Midwest USA

ABSURDITY: Men fix each other's Doom

2009-01-14T16:06:00.002+11:00

Your creed plainly implies, that men, both good and bad, may, and often do, determine the endless destiny of their fellow beings, by determining the length of their probation, virtually putting them into heaven, by cutting off all liability to lose it, or into hell by cutting off all opportunity to escape it. And this, also, seems to me an absurdity.

We have already presented one illustration of the above proposition, in the supposed case of the mother who made the "calling and election" of her infant sure, by taking its life. Another is found in a sad accident, which occurred at one of our New England seminaries a few years since. Two young gentlemen were in their room, amusing themselves with a musket, quite unconscious of its being loaded, when the one innocently shot the other, thereby determining his soul at once to heaven or to hell forever.

And still another illustration is found in the death of the drunken rowdy, who fell, at the head of the rum-sellers' mob, at Portland, a few years ago. The balls which, at the order of the resolute city marshal, laid him low, cutting off all opportunity for repentance, carried his soul directly to endless torment. Illustrations to our purpose are also presented in war. Two armies meet. Fearful are the imprecations! Dreadful is the carnage! Balls and bayonets are the swift instruments of everlasting death!

The soldier perishes forever, who might reform and be saved if permitted to return to his home of piety. At the hand of his fellow man, he falls lower than the grave. Nor may any tell how many of our revolutionary colonists are now, in endless despairs sent there by the hired Hessians of George the Third. Nor how many of those whose bones have been brought from the plains of Waterloo, as a fertilizer of British soil, are now in the endless despair to which they were consigned by British swords.

And this, especially, when it is considered, that, of all conditions, that of a soldier, in active service, seems least adapted to promote fitness for heaven. Of course, it is a mystery to us how orthodox Christians can advocate war, or their chaplains kneel mid guns, and swords, loaded and barbed with everlasting death! For these, in their view, are the terrible arbiters of souls' destiny, cutting off their probation, and thereby saying, as with the authority of the Infinite, You shall have no more chance to escape.

These are they that rise up in the place of God, and "shut to the door" against their victims forever. Alas! for the orthodox advocate of war! Let me do him the justice to say, that I think he believes in his creed less than in humanity and common sense.

But, further, our point finds illustration under the operation of the code duello, — that miserable product of dark ages, — that most foolish, meanest mode of settling difficulties — that wretched footman of chattel slavery, accompanying its desolating car, as it dashes into the fair fields of Christian civilization.

The duel settles more than questions of chivalric honor. Instance a case. A and B meet at a public house, drink, altercate, challenge, and accept, choose their seconds, retire and fight. The question of honor is settled by the death of B. And not only that, but the question of B's endless damnation also. The fatal ball settles both. For, while A blows the smoke from his pistol, and retires a victor, leaving the body of the slain to his surgeon and friends, its spirit, prematurely driven out, and thereby excluded all chance of salvation, is met by evil angels in the threshold of eternity, and dragged down into the pit forever.

Thus, according to your penal view, is a question greater than honor settled by the duel. And what does the highwayman do? He meets the moneyed worldling in the way, robs him of his treasure and his life, and throws his body into the thicket, or leaves it in the ditch. But is that all? O no! He also robs his soul of all chances to repent, and tosses it into the thick darkness of despair — buries it alive in hell forever!

So your creed. But the absurdity we are exposing finds a fuller illustration, in cases in which the murderer repents in prison, and finally dies, regretting that he sent the murderer into perdition. Such cases used to be, by no means, very infrequent.

We recently read of one, but have not the details now at hand. Let us suppose such a case, and see its bearing upon the subject in hand. A young lady, respectable, but not converted, is met and ravished, under a dark night, by a villain, who destroys her life to escape detection. Sent thus hurriedly to her God in sin, she is, by the conditions of your creed, of course, lost. No cycle of eternity but shall witness her unrelieved despair. Her soul is assassinated. Out of a dark night of time, she is hurled into a darker night of eternity. The brutal hand that cut her probation short off, thereby plunged her infinitely below the sphere of possible life, shut her up in woe, bolted the door upon her, threw away the key, and left her to pine in anguish forever.

So your creed! And now, leaving her there in her woe, let us turn to look after her murderer. As "murder will out," he is detected, arrested, executed. But, while in prison, blessed with a probation which he forbade to his victim, he comes to himself, heeds his spiritual advisers, repents, exhorts the multitudes from the scaffold, and swings from it into Paradise. And there, because he had much forgiven, he loves much, and never ceases to give thanks for the prison confinement through which the mercy of God reached him.

Thus in heaven the murderer sings. But the young lady, his victim, where is she all this time? Lost! lost! He may have time for repentance, but not she. That was forbidden her, by the red hand that plunged the dagger to her heart. Mercy may come to his prison, but not to hers. That red hand of his may live to be washed, and forever twine wreaths for the immaculate brow of Him whose wrath she must forever bear.

Now, brother, your creed, taken in connection with the history of crime, obviously involves multitudes of cases, similar to any and all which we have stated above. This, you will admit. And, admitting this, can you, as the heart of a man beats in your bosom, fail seriously to query whether that creed is not at fault? Can you be confident in that theology, which thus makes the frantic mother, the officer of justice, the warrior, the duellist, the highwayman, and the libertine, the arbiters of the eternal destiny of their victims; so that, in the case last stated, if it was the hard fate of the young lady to be abused, scared into frenzy, and murdered, it was her harder one to be, by her murderer's hand, consigned to the bottomless pit; while he, by the grace of God, which he denied to her, has space for repentance, and goes up to sing in heaven!

Be your own commentator upon what I have said. The notion that the Living Father has made the endless weal and woe of men thus dependent upon the frenzy, ambition, lucre, lust, and brutality of their fellow beings, well, "he that can receive it, let him receive it."

Universalist Minister..

Rev. M.J.Steere 1861

Clancy of the overflow

2009-01-11T16:58:00.002+11:00

Clancy Of The Overflow

I had written him a letter which I had, for want of better
Knowledge, sent to where I met him down the Lachlan, years ago,
He was shearing when I knew him, so I sent the letter to him,
Just `on spec', addressed as follows, `Clancy, of The Overflow'.

And an answer came directed in a writing unexpected,
(And I think the same was written with a thumb-nail dipped in tar)
'Twas his shearing mate who wrote it, and verbatim I will quote it:
`Clancy's gone to Queensland droving, and we don't know where he are.'

In my wild erratic fancy visions come to me of Clancy
Gone a-droving `down the Cooper' where the Western drovers go;
As the stock are slowly stringing, Clancy rides behind them singing,
For the drover's life has pleasures that the townsfolk never know.

And the bush hath friends to meet him, and their kindly voices greet him
In the murmur of the breezes and the river on its bars,
And he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended,
And at night the wond'rous glory of the everlasting stars.

I am sitting in my dingy little office, where a stingy
Ray of sunlight struggles feebly down between the houses tall,
And the foetid air and gritty of the dusty, dirty city
Through the open window floating, spreads its foulness over all

And in place of lowing cattle, I can hear the fiendish rattle
Of the tramways and the 'buses making hurry down the street,
And the language uninviting of the gutter children fighting,
Comes fitfully and faintly through the ceaseless tramp of feet.

And the hurrying people daunt me, and their pallid faces haunt me
As they shoulder one another in their rush and nervous haste,
With their eager eyes and greedy, and their stunted forms and weedy,
For townsfolk have no time to grow, they have no time to waste.

And I somehow rather fancy that I'd like to change with Clancy,
Like to take a turn at droving where the seasons come and go,
While he faced the round eternal of the cash-book and the journal --
But I doubt he'd suit the office, Clancy, of `The Overflow'.

A. B. 'Banjo' Paterson

A great Australian poet.

Guitars for sale

2009-01-11T14:10:00.006+11:00

In this procedure of cleaning the house I find I need to sell some guitars and amplifiers. My husband (who passed away two weeks ago today) use to be a professional blue's guitarist, playing gigs around the Midwest many years ago. This was before and just after he contracted leukemia and had a bone marrow transplant. He finally gave it away after it became clear he was too ill then and would be in the future to continue. He owned a Les Paul which was given to his son, and two Fenders, a Stratacaster and Telecaster.

I don't have any way of being able to describe these guitars so I'll post some photos. They go on Ebay next week...

I'm amazed at how accurate these blogthings tests are!...

2009-01-11T06:07:00.000+11:00

Your Snow Test Says You're Independent

You feel like something good will happen to you in the next few months.

You have an amazingly strong work ethic. You are likely to be very successful in life.

You are an independent, individualistic person. You thrive when you're doing your own thing.

Your biggest worry in life is your family. You stay up at night thinking about them.

When it comes time to relax, you have no problem letting go. You are already pretty relaxed as is!

The Snow Test

Just who has the power in this instance?

2009-01-11T05:57:00.001+11:00

“Institutional Christianity is addicted to the idea that for things to work out right between us and God, 'we have to do our part,' and if we do, then 'God will do His part.' That makes God dependent upon us 'getting it right' before He can get on with His purpose and will. At the heart of our flesh's alienation from God, at the heart of our blindness and ignorance, is the desire to get credited for 'holding up our part of the deal.' We like the idea of grace, as long as the successful operation of grace is attributable to us 'letting God' do what He wants to do.

~ John Gavazzoni

2009-01-11T04:52:00.000+11:00

I did this little test at blogthings.com and for once it's right on the mark. This is me.

You Are Palatino

You consider yourself to be creative and artistic.

And you'd like everyone else to know it!

You take design and aesthetics seriously.

You like everything in your life to be unique and beautiful - but never gaudy!

What Font Are You?

The first time..

2009-01-10T10:05:00.000+11:00

Here it is, early January 2009, an era has ended and I'm about to embark on a new phase in my life.

After tidying up the odds and ends of this home in the US I head back for Australia in possibly six weeks to begin a new life in an old home town. My children and grandchildren live there.

I am soooo looking forward to returning to my home country, my home state, and my home town. I have been so homesick, but I put that on hold for a time for the man I loved. He was my best friend, my buddy, and now he's gone on to behold his Father, face to face.

I left all to follow my heart and do whatever it was to obey the calling on my life. It was tough to leave everything at my age and begin a new life in another country, but it was so very much worth it. I have gained so much from this experience of learning to live in another country and learning to make new friends... as well as learn how to live with my husband of only two years, and get to know him. He was always himself with me, never a fake person, and I loved his weaknesses as well as his strengths. His greatest strength was that he was faithful to his Lord and Savior until death. He suffered greatly in this life from a terrible disease, the complications and the meds killed him in the end... oh, but how much he loved his Lord.

Well, this is the new beginning. Cleaning this house and moving back to Oz.. I do have plans on what I will do, but that's for another time...