Bible reading-Installment one

   I want to start posting about an important subject. It is important for the growth of a person who has a saving relationship with God.

   It is important that an instruction book be left for those who procure an item. When we are passed from death to life.. an important concept-- we need instructions. It doesn't come natural, this new life we have now. We need to know just what it is we have and how to get the best out of it.

    As I have stated in an earlier post God is not silent and He has communicated. He wants us to know something about Himself. This pertains to those who have a relationship with Him as well as those who are not at the moment assured of His presense.
   The Bible, which you can see in the picture , is God's communication to mankind. Yes, He used human writers. Yes, it took over fourteen centuries to get to where it is today. Sure , ir has many literary forms contained between its covers. But no one can say God has not communicated. He is not silent.
    On that premise I would like to say that God created all things. And by right of ownership of what He created He has the right to say how it, the creation, should act.
    What we have today is not what He first created. One day He will come back and recreate. The one thing that made it not perfect is man's wilful disobedience to a direct command. "You shall not eat of..."
     You say you think that was unfair, to place all men under condemnation for one person's act. But you also have to acknowledge that because of one man's act, dying on the cross for the sins of the world,- that is all mankind,- God can restore what He had created back to where it once was.
    First He is restoring man to a relationship He had with Adam and Eve in the garden. Some day in the future, spoken of in the book of the Revelation, He is going to give us a new heaven and a new earth.
    He has presently left us His communication-the Bible. We are to study it to show ourselves approved to God as a workman. To study, it would mean we. need methods. In earlier posts I have laid out some methods that can be useful.
    But first, sit down and open the Bible. Have a notebook handy to jot down what is there.. Which would mean you also have a pencil or pen. Read and ask questions as you go along. What does this passsage mean? How does the writer develop the point. What did it mean to those of that day who read it or heard it for the first time? What does it have to say to me today?
   Keep reading the posts to come. I have just begun.
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Thoughts About Heaven

    "It is appointed unto man once to die and after this the judgement."
     Yes, I hold that there is life after death. Not the life that the world is trying to push on us. Not the Muslim life with the virgins. Nor the Mormon life with the procreation of kids. But a life after death. A life we choose now while we are alive. We either choose eternal life with God, our creator, or eternal separation. But we do live forever either way.
    The last book in the Bible tells us what heaven will look like. Floors of clear glass. Stones making up the gates. It is day all the time. We will be worshipping God, our creator. We will be serving and adoring the One who saved us.
   Just some of the ideas.
   I don't at this moment have an open Bible before me so I am just giving my impressions of what I have hidden in my memory. But it will be a wonderful place. No more sickness. No more pain. No more aging. No more youngsters not doing what you tell them to do. No more bad literature..
    No, we will not be on clouds and playing harps. We will be too busy serving God and praising God to have time to compose music.
   Our days of struggling will be over. No more overdue rent and the landlord knocking on your door. No more road rage. No more drive by shooting. No more watching a loved one die. Or watching a pet die. Or suffering yourself.
    We will never get sleepy or need rest. We will have different bodies. We won't marry. There will be no need.
    In short, I am sure, it will be more than we can think about. What God wants us to know about it is all found in the Bible.
    Become a member of this blog. Become a follower. Enjoy the postings. Leave comments and we can even have a discussion.

Hidden Assets

  I was sitting in church today looking out at the congregation. I am the chat room man on the media team. As such I sit in the back of the room next to the IT man and the video man. I glanced out on all these heads in front of me. Now since I was in the back I could view the whole room.. I noticed that they were mostly female heads. There were some male heads out there, but mostly female.

   And I got to wondering why weren't there more men out there? Why weren't men coming to church? Is there some reason that I was not aware of?
    Just having finished a book called "Why Men Hate Going to Church" I have an idea. Most of the service is geared to feminine psyches. Not too much masculine involvement. Illustrations from the pastor that are geared to the lamb rather than the lion aspect of God.
    Please give me some feedback on this. Let's start a discussion.
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Invisible Agents

  We are not alone.There is a world that surrounds us that we are not aware of. It is the supernatural realm of Angels. Oh, sure, there are people out there who report to be talking to spirits. And on that subject I will  post as this posting goes on.
   Angels are nothing but God's creation.They don't have bodies. they are spirits. Their purpose is to guard God and to do His bidding.  Goid sends angels, now remember we can't see them, to care for people on this earth. Mostly He sends threm to help His people. I don't find them helping the people who are not His people.
   Complicated. Let me see if I can make it simple.
    In the beginng ,before God even is mentioned in Genesis 1:1, God created Angels. He needed servants to guard His throne and do His bidding. And to care for His creation as overseers.
       They must have had free will of a sort. One named Lucifer, who was one of the guards, decided he was more impotant or something. He wanted to be the supreme person who was worshipped. So he somehow talked a third of the angels into storming against God. for this, he and his angels, whom we now know as demons, were thrown to earth. At that moment, I believe, God  made their decision final. He took away free will and locked in the decision. thsoe who stayed with Him were now always good. Those who went with Lucifer who had a name change to Satan were locked into the fallen state. They lost free will.
        We are not to worship angels. The are merely messengers.
         Those who do and call upon spirits are condemned by God. The spirits they contact are not the good angels  but the evil ones.
         Satan still wants to be worshipped.
          The Lord  your God is One Lord. You shall have no other God before you. Worship belongs to God alone.
        This doctrine is not a major one but I felt it needed to be mentioned.
        Please keep on following me and these postings. Thank you for your reading these postings in the past and here's hoping you will continue to read in to the future.

Grab it Back

  I am still talking about the Church of Jesus Christ.

  Recently I have recieved a book to be reviewed called "Why Men Hate Going To Church by David Murrow. It is not ready to be reviewed and when it is I will be posting it on the other blog I have, http://drsbookplace.blogspot.com/.

   The thesis is that the church has been losing men because it no longer is masculine or speaks to their needs. Women have stepped in and taken over the outreaches of the church and as such have feminized the way it is run. Pastors have had to tailor their preaching to the feminization. They have re-packaged Jesus as the harmless androgynous male. People see pictures that picture Him not as a muscle bound, man figure (He did take up Josephs' trade of carpenter. He was known by His country men as the carpenters' son) The preachers preached too much on the Lamb of God aspect of Jesus and not enough on the Lion Of God aspect seen in the driving of the sellers from the temple, or the one who controlled nature    .
     Men are the Miracle-Gro for a Church. Get them involved  in the church and there is a possibility of growth.
     The church needs some "footholds" and "handholds" for the men.  Men need to know they are valued.
It has to become once again manly for a man to speak about Chistianity without feeling effeminate or henpecked.
      Follow me. Become a member and follow me as I talk about things that you need to be aware of.

Warning-- error can come in

  For those of you who don't read my book blog I mentioned this there and since mentioning it  I have seen more developments. It is a book by a Todd Burpo, a minister of the charasmatic bent. It is called Heaven Is For Real.  It is a story of his sons' out of body experience. It is dangeous. Fiirst of all because this guy is a minister and people tend to believe ministers as always telling the truth. People tend to trust ministers.

     First off, this is an attempt by satan to plant error.  Even though the message the child brings back is that God loves the children , the idea that God is behind the out of the body experiences seen today is not Biblical.

     All that God wants us to know is in the scriptures we have now. Besides, for anyone who reads the gospel accounts already knows God loves the children.
    Secondly, the push now is to pakage with the book a CD and small group curriculum. This is from the pit of hell. We don't need a book to tell us there is an afterlife Let me repeat, God's Word tells us so.
    I don't understand why Thomas Nelson would publish a book of this type.

Education and Skill Training

   I am all for education. Yet with the cost of a higher education  being so high it is best to consider, is that
college degree all that important for you in your future plans for life? I mean, if you wish to be a plumber, do you really need that college degree? You can find a master plumber  to learn under and with sweat equity and close supervision you could get what you need to be a plumber. Just be the best plumber there is.
   I don't think Jesus had a college eduation. He grew up in a carpenter's family. He learned the trade from Joseph. I am sure Joseph and Son was a good compnay. And after the death of Joseph I am sure Jesus Bar Joseph was a good company to get your chairs and tables and other things from.
   He was an easy learner. What we might call a genius today. He picked up what needed to be known. Of course, being 100% God and 100% human helped, but I don't think he shortcercuited the human. He had to learn the same as us. He was tempted in all things, such as we, but without sin.
    And he knew the Jewish Scriptures. In Luke we are told He was left in Jerusalem in his thrirteenth year and stumped the wise men in the temple with what he was saying. But still he went home with Mary and Joseph to continue his child and young adulthood. At about thirty He came out and was baptised by John in the Jordon.