Kingdom Come

Key precept: Freedom isn’t free.

God’s forgiveness and humanity’s atonement allows us to re-establish a relationship with God. But what about that relationship established with Sin when our ancestors sold themselves and their offspring into slavery, and their property into his domain? Human freedom, ownership and dominion has to be bought back, or redeemed, from the one to whom it was sold.

“I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins: return unto me; for I have redeemed thee. Thus saith the LORD, thy redeemer, and he that formed thee from the womb, I am the LORD that maketh all things; that stretcheth forth the heavens alone; that spreadeth abroad the earth by myself; That frustrateth the tokens of the liars.” (Isaiah 44:23-24)

Redemption and restoration must follow forgiveness and atonement in order to achieve restoration of a completely whole relationship.

As with all truisms in the Bible, we can understand the spiritualized concept through humanity’s social relationships with each other. Redemption from indebtedness to is fundamental to a right-eous society, providing for personal freedom, recovery from hardship, and social equity for all subjects of God’s kingdom on earth, as it is in heaven. This is the essence of the new covenant.

Continue reading “8) Redemption and Restoration”

Key precept: Freedom is the ability to choose one’s actions.

A state trooper once told me, with deep regret, how he had a stopped a young college student for speeding well over the limit. In fact, his driving was so reckless that the standard response called for taking away his license until he went to court for sentencing. However, it was a holiday weekend and the young man was on his way to join friends at the beach, he had no prior infractions, he was very respectful and remorseful, and he promised with great sincerity that he would keep to the speed limit for the rest of the way. The trooper, identifying with this young man’s zest for life and promising future, didn’t want to spoil his weekend or his driving record, most of all his college and work life with possible long-term loss of his license, so he let him go with just a warning. Within minutes he heard across his radio that this young man had crashed at high speed just a few miles down the road, and was instantly killed. The trooper couldn’t stop thinking that he should have arrested him. I ask you – was he to blame?

People are quick to blame God when things go bad, even faulting him for having the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the garden because, being omniscient, he knew full well that human beings would eat the fruit and become captive to sin.

The reality is that the tree gave us freedom – defined as “the power to determine action without restraint.”

• Freedom is not being able to do whatever you want.
• Freedom is being able not to do actions being forced on you.

Freedom is not being oppressed by evil, either from an outside authority or an inner uncontrollable drive to use drugs, overeat, rape, plunder and murder.

Without the opportunity to choose, provided by just one fruit tree, humans would have been drones, always under the control of our Creator. But God doesn’t force anyone to submit to his control. In contrast to the bad guys, God isn’t a control freak.

Continue reading “9) God is Pro-Choice”

Key precept: Humans are intrinsically self-centered, we simply can’t stop ourselves from ruining essential relationships thus causing self-harm.

• There is none right-eous [always doing the right thing], no, not one: 
• There is none that understandeth [always rational, we are often controlled by our emotions or physical desires despite awareness of negative consequences of actions],
• there is none that seeketh after God [wanting to be morally correct]. 
• They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable;
• there is none that doeth good, no, not one. 
• Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips: 
• Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness: 
• Their feet are swift to shed blood: 
• Destruction and misery are in their ways: 
• And the way of peace have they not known: 
• There is no fear of God before their eyes…
• For all have sinned. (Letter to the Romans 3:10-18, 23)

That word sin has become unpopular in current society, especially when applied to specific behaviors that are no longer illegal. I propose that we define sin as any behavior that an individual engages in, or fails to undertake, at the unjust expense of others. This behavior is so evidently a part of everyone’s naturally occurring behavior, even from birth, that is is a rational deduction rather than an act of faith to say that humans have a “sin nature”.

This is why any size group of individuals need laws, from as small a group of two with a safe word and process of conflict resolution, to the United Nations. Laws / rules safeguard and balance the rights and needs of individuals who depend on each other.

Continue reading “10) Sin City”

Key precept: Freedom is won through the birth of a baby.

“And the LORD God said unto the serpent…I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head[therefore destroy you], and thou shalt bruise his heel [merely slow down progress ].” (Genesis 3:15)

When God calls his Savior “the seed of the woman,” he is obviously leaving out the fatherhood. The meaning would have been perfectly clear to his audience.

Satan, Adam and his helpmeet would have understood that the woman would be a single parent.

After all, single parenting was the only known form of reproduction in the entire universe at this time. God had materialized himself as a host of spiritual sons of God and two humans.

“God created [the] man  [הָֽ-אָדָֽם, reading the Hebrew letters backwards, ha-adam] in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” (Genesis 1:27)

It is assumed from this reading that at the moment that God created “them”, one of them had male reproductive organs and the other had female reproductive organs. But the grammatically correct way to understand this sentence is meaning that God created each of them – the first from dust, the second from bone – in his own image –singular – as male and female, i.e. as hermaphrodites.

Are you aghast at this idea? This actually has startling implications for understanding our current sexually chaotic social situation, so stick with me. Do you want to cling to what is comfortable and familiar, or do you want to know the truth? Follow along as we study what the Bible says instead of assuming we, or our favorite denomination, already knows everything there is to know.

Continue reading “11) The Seed of the Woman”

 Key precept: How Satan fathers his children.

Every one of these posts is the product of ongoing current study during which I make myself available to the Holy Spirit to guide me into new understanding. Not automatic writing. A true teacher-student relationship, where I set my own opinions aside, set aside time to study, come prepared with the text and tools, and listen to the Holy Spirit speaking to me.

I experience this like a mental nudge, bringing to mind the Bible passages pertinent to the topic at hand. As any good teacher does, the Holy Spirit builds an ever higher edifice of understanding on a foundation of existing knowledge, which in his case is the written word of God. I’m not given “new revelation.” A pattern develops connecting existing written revelation as the Holy Spirit brings to mind the word I’ve already hidden in my heart – memorized and meditated upon. The rest of the process is a “connect the dots” picture fully revealing what had previously been a confused jumble of disconnected bits of information. Just like science or forensic detective work.

One example of the process of being guided by the Holy Spirit is the unraveling of the conundrum that came to my mind one day.

How does Satan father the Antichrist and yet remain free?

To understand why this is a conundrum, you have to be up to speed on the various options of angelic fatherhood.

Continue reading “12) The Seed of the Serpent”

Key precept: Hyper-dimensional beings need human collaborators to most effectively express themselves in the lower four dimensions.

Noah 1056 AM – 2006 AM

“And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth..for it repenteth me that I have made them.” (Genesis 6:12-13, 7)

^“But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.” (Matthew 24:37)

Obviously the characteristics of the pre-flood world are key to understanding our world’s future. Since the history of Noah’s days can be uncovered, this puts the Bible’s prophetic value light years ahead of later obtuse prophets like Nostradamus.

If we analyze the biblical narrative as simply as a book report like we learned in elementary school , we will realize that the first six chapters establish:

• The setting: the heavens and earth.
• The characters: all the hosts / various classifications of inhabitants of the heavens and the earth – immortal hyperdimensional beings and mortal humans and animals.
• The problem or plot: corruption.
• The climax or resolution to the problem: destruction of the corrupt and a fresh start.

Continue reading “13) Days of Noah”

Noah 1056 AM – 2006 AM in later years contemporary with Abraham and Lot

Key precept: An apocalypse – actual, threatened or contrived – creates a State of Fear positioning a peace-proclaiming politician to lead frightened humanity into a New World Order.

After any catastrophe, humanity is intent on re-establishing the only world known, the pre-apocalypse civilization that assumes a state of perfection in an imperfect memory.

This is the standard setup for the rise of one strong man promising peace and prosperity by ending war, like Caesar Augustus, Hitler, Lenin, Mao or President Bush.

The 20th century was primarily a series of wars in the Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, British, German, Russian, Chinese, and now American, empires. All of them were grounded in the ideology of the template modern revolution – the atheist, humanistic French Revolution, of which it was astutely predicted: “From this place, and from this day forth begins a new era in the history of the world.“ (Goethe to the defeated German soldiers after the Battle of Valmy.)

Deceptively, the “New” World Order is just a re-serving of the oldest, including more war.

Continue reading “14) A New World Order”

Nimrod 1927 AM – 2142 AM (contemporary with Noah to Abraham)

Noah was a preacher for the 600 years he lived before the flood, and you can be sure he continued to preach during the 350 years he lived after the flood. There are even suggestions, from American legends, that he spread the gospel to the New World. Traveling in a boat, of course.

While we have limited biblical or historical information about the days of Noah prior to the flood, we do have quite a bit of historical information about the earliest civilizations established in the days of Noah after the flood. But as would be expected after any catastrophe, humanity was intent on re-establishing the only world they knew – the pre-apocalypse civilization. Our own Western culture prides itself on the Renaissance, i.e. the Rebirth, of the Roman Empire, including its gods, after centuries of Dark Ages. So we can learn a lot about the pre-flood civilization from its re-appearance in the post-flood world.

Tragically, as the earth repopulated, most people ignored Noah’s preaching and the evidence of God’s judgment. Remember, the days of the Son of man are like the days of Noah, and like the days of Lot, who, if you do the math in Genesis 11, you will see was contemporaneous with Noah. If we want to fully understand what the end times are like, we should determine what unrighteous conditions were present in both the pre- and post-flood days of Noah.

For starters, there were giants.

Giants

“There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.” (Genesis 6:4)

Exactly how giants were produced after the flood is open to interpretation.

Continue reading “15) A Nimrod by Any Name”

Key Precept: The first Adam began the High Priest-King dynasty / order, of Melchizedek that culminates with the last Adam.

“And God said, Let us make Adam /אָדָם / man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion / reign over…all the earth…And God blessed them, and God said unto them,

1. Be [as in “let there be light”, this is a command performance, not a suggestion] fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth,
2. and subdue it: and have dominion.” (Genesis 1:26-28)

Can we not recognize that this declaration is a commitment, one-sided perhaps, but still, a covenant? And it is not only with the first Son of God, the first Adam made into the image and likeness of God, but to “them.”  This certainly includes the Woman cloned from Adam while he was immortal, who exactly shared his image and likeness of YHVH Creator God.

But then, as detailed in the post The King is Dead, Long Live the King, the Adams sinned and died. 

The following analysis of the significance of a son for the ancient Hebrews derives from God’s own experience with his first son Adam.

Among the Jews to possess a child of one’s own was always considered to be the greatest blessing that God could bestow, and to be without children was regarded as the greatest curse. We see this reflected at Gen 15.2-5 (Yahwist source) in Abraham’s concern to have a son to be his heir. In later Judaism, as noted by A. M. Friedenberg, ‘the Rabbis regarded the childless man as dead’…

Thus when Reuben says to his father, Jacob, ‘Slay my two sons if I do not bring him [i.e., Benjamin] back to you’ (Gen 42.37), he is placing at his father’s disposal the extension of himself and his house through time, something greater than even his own life.

Seen in this light, the death of the Adams incurred the risk of extinction of the entire house of God. Would that indeed extinguish God himself? That’s what Lucifer was trying to do. Would that then, indeed catalyze an implosion of all Being? We can deduce that, if God could not uphold his Creation, then, yes. 

Continue reading “16) The Order of Melchizedek”

Eber 1723 AM – 2187 AM: contemporaneous with Noah, Shem, Arphaxad, Nimrod, and Abraham through Jacob

Key precept: Understanding the Old Testament Hebrew nation is foundational to New Testament saving faith.

Part of the problem with understanding the Bible, I’m sorry to say, is that the church experience typically isolates Old Testament “Bible stories” in Sunday School – “Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden”, “Noah and the Ark”, “The Tower of Babel”, ‘Sodom and Gomorrah”, “Abraham Offers Isaac”, and so on. If we take everything recorded in the Bible as a coherent whole story we will understand so much more of God’s entire message to us.

Apparently I need to work through the parts of Genesis chapters 10-11 we generally skip over because of awkwardly pronounced names and the lack of an interesting narrative. It is a valuable database bridging the “stories” from Noah to Abraham. The record appears to jump randomly from one topic to another, but only if we fail to connect them with the over-riding theme of the Bible: the battle between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent to win total control of the kingdom of heaven and earth. Then the scattered puzzle pieces fit into place and we see the big picture.

The timeline provided by the genealogical record from Shem to Abram informs us that everyone listed in this program was alive and active at the same time, and the backdrop to Shem’s great-grandson Eber’s role in history falls into place.

Continue reading “17) The Hebrew Nation”