Thinking about God, Jesus and The Big Questions

No. According to the Bible, there is nothing there about an alien invasion. You can read more about End of Times in other posts , and there is nothing to indicate an alien invasion. So, if you've watched Stranger Things or other shows like that, then no, our world will not end with an invasion of the type hinted at there. However, there is one particular area which could suggest the presence of a single alien entity (as opposed to an invasion). This is the emergence of a new ruler at the End of Days as written in Revelation; one which tries to make it compulsory to have the Mark of the Beast on all humans. Read here for why you must never, ever, agree to receive the mark of the beast , no matter how tempted you may be. Where does the possibility of an alien come in? It's because this leader is succeeded by second leader, whose identity not made completely clear in the Bible. Let's see what Revelation has to say about this: Then I saw another beast that rose out of the...

...but the church is the bride of Christ. The reason I wanted to talk about this is that sometimes church can seem unnecessarily complicated. Usually, this is just us making it complicated for ourselves. Firstly, it's important to remember that the church is not God. Far from it. The church is a family of people, none of whom are perfect. That's to be expected, since we are all human and all sinners. So, we shouldn't be trying to worship the church itself, or get the church confused with God. The church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum of saints. Our worship should be directed only to God and Jesus. At the same time, the church is very dear to God. Of course it is: Jesus died on the cross for our sins. He surely wouldn't have died on the cross for our sins if he didn't care for us and was just ho-hum about the human race in general. Make no mistake: he didn't choose to die for us because of anything inherently good in ourselves, or because we in any w...

Do you frequently hear people advocating long-term planning, yet theirs does not go beyond the point of their death? That is not long-term planning; it's short-term planning! Long-term planning should go far beyond our deaths, and it is far more important than any will or inheritance we plan to leave to our loved ones. One day we will leave this world, and go to a world beyond, where we will meet God. It's crucial that we are prepared for that time. Getting our earthly affairs in order is merely short-term planning; dealing with spiritual matters is long-term planning which has eternal consequences. If we expect to plan for the long term, our focus must be on the long term, not on the short term. This means keeping a focus on spiritual matters. This is not always easy to do, as day-to-day living can quite easily take up 110% of our time, effort and energy. Also, it is necessary to work in the earthly world, raise our children, and so on. I am not advocating taking tim...

On my third time reading the Bible all the way through, I noticed that there is some description of where the Garden of Eden was located. Due to the fact that Adam and Eve were sent away from the Garden of Eden, it's not something we would be able to find if we went looking for it. However, it's certainly interesting to find out generally where it was located. Let's examine what the Bible has to say about this: And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed. Out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. A river flows out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it divides and becomes four branches. The name of the first is Pishon; it is the one that flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; and the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx ...

Some people, often atheists, feel that Christianity and scientific theory are incompatible. Nothing could be further from the truth.  Science teaches us the laws of the planet earth and the universe (e.g. gravity). These laws to Christians, are simply the "default settings" in this world that we live in. They are laws that God put into place, but which He can supersede under special or unusual circumstances (see my previous post about miracles ).  Science as a discipline makes no comment one way or another about religion, and the two are not fundamentally incompatible, except for one specific scientific theory: the multiverse theory. There have been many scientific theories postulated over the years. Of those which are taken at least halfway seriously, there is only one which I feel is completely incompatible with Christianity. This is the multiverse theory. What is the multiverse theory? It's the notion that every time a decision is made, the universe splits into two...

I've talked before about what the Bible says about the Mark of the Beast and you can recap that here . Up until now, there wasn't an implanted technology in everyday use that was actually being utilized to make payments as described in Revelation 13. This has recently changed. NPR reported that a U.S. company has offered to implant chips in the hands of their employees (see reference 1). These chips allow them to make cafeteria-style payments. In other words, a chip inside their hand will be used to identify the employee and to deduct funds from their cafeteria account when making purchases. It is an opt-in program, so the employees are not being compelled to do it. Let's take a look at what the Bible says about the Mark of the Beast: Also it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead, so that no one can buy or sell who does not have the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number o...

These days so much has changed since the days of Adam and Eve. To them, today's life and culture would be almost unrecognizable. About the only thing that has not changed since then is nature (in the post-fall period). The sky, mountains, valleys, trees, oceans and seas would be similar. Of course, huge amounts of time has gone by since then, including events like seismic shifts, so the landscape won't be the same. Still though, whenever I see tree leaves against sky, I remind myself that at least this is the same type of thing as what Adam saw. This is one way I have that helps remind me that the Bible is truly relevant to us. We are all human just as Adam and Eve were, and although culture and technology has changed, we are still on the same planet. Another way that makes me feel linked to Adam and Eve is whenever I work in the garden. Planting seeds always reminds me that this is the way things have worked since the days of Adam. God has given us a wonderful environm...

Recently I was reading the book of Daniel. It states clearly that at the end of days, Greece and Iran will be at war against each other. God gave a vision to Daniel: In the third year of the reign of King Belshazzar a vision appeared to me, Daniel, after the one that had appeared to me at first. In the vision I was looking and saw myself in Susa the capital, in the province of Elam, and I was by the river Ulai. I looked up and saw a ram standing beside the river. It had two horns. Both horns were long, but one was longer than the other, and the longer one came up second. I saw the ram charging westward and northward and southward. All beasts were powerless to withstand it, and no one could rescue from its power; it did as it pleased and became strong. As I was watching, a male goat appeared from the west, coming across the face of the whole earth without touching the ground. The goat had a horn between its eyes. It came toward the ram with the two horns that I had seen standing besid...

This is a concept I used to grapple with, and still do: the question of when it's important to pray, and when it's important to do works. Ideally one would do both. Still though, there are times in the Bible where it has been made clear that one or the other is more necessary, depending on what the situation was at the time. One of the clearest examples is when Jesus was arrested in the garden of Gethsemane. Prior to that, he had been praying. He had even asked his disciples to pray, but they were tired and fell asleep. When the soldiers came to arrest Jesus, Peter immediately acted, but not in a way that Jesus wanted. Peter cut off the ear of one of the soldiers with a sword. Although from Peter's point of view he was defending Jesus, it was not something that was necessary. Let's read the passage: Now the betrayer had given them a sign, saying, “The one I will kiss is the man; arrest him.” At once he came up to Jesus and said, “Greetings, Rabbi!” and kissed hi...

I mentioned in a previous post how initially as a Christian I was rather grudging about prayer, and considered it more of a duty than anything I would willingly do. But, reading the Bible and praying and getting to know God better definitely had results that completely changed me! One Easter I realized I had changed a lot as a person: I was happy to take a 1-hour shift of prayer at Easter Vigil at the church ( you can read about that here ). This Easter, I'm looking forward again to praying - another reminder that I have changed so much. Some relatives of ours are going on a fun vacation over Easter. In the past, I probably would have felt rather jealous that they are going on vacation while we are not going anywhere. But actually I didn't feel the slightest bit jealous this year. Because I knew that I wanted to pray at Easter Vigil. I feel that Easter is the part of the year where there is a lot of spiritual danger in the world. I wanted to pray, mainly to be thankful and pr...

I have been attending a small group Bible study, and have been learning a lot from Christian women who are more spiritually advanced than I am. One important concept which I learned from attending this group was that we should get to know God better first, and then we will know what to ask Him for. All too often we ask God for something but we have no idea if that's something he would want for us. Instead, knowing God (through prayer and reading the Bible) leads us to then knowing what He wants for us, which means we will know what things to ask Him for. Without that knowledge, we would be asking God for things which are not necessarily in line with what He wants for us, which means we are wasting our time asking for those things. As a related concept, in church I also learned that God is more concerned with developing our character than our level of comfort. While this seems painful (and often is), it is less painful to go with the character development than to resist it. Al...

At the End of Days, there will be a situation where people are required by some power other than God to be marked on the right hand and forehead in order to buy or sell. See the verse below: Also it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead, so that no one can buy or sell who does not have the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name. Revelation 13: 16-17 We don't yet know what form this mark will take (a tattoo? an implanted radio-frequency ID tag?). But to understand a little better the events leading up to this, let's read a little of the preceding context of the chapter: Then I saw another beast that rose out of the earth; it had two horns like a lamb and it spoke like a dragon. It exercises all the authority of the first beast on its behalf, and it makes the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose mortal wound had been healed. It performs gre...