Thinking about God, Jesus and The Big Questions

I was recently reading the book of Kings, and noticed the kingdoms of Israel and Judah frequently and repeatedly disobeyed God. Even though they had the information they needed of what was pleasing to God and what was not, they repeatedly went against God's wishes. This disobedience involved things that were against the ten commandments, like worshipping other gods. At first, I wondered why His people would do this, period. Then I wondered why they would do it, after all that He had done for them, and after all the covenants he had made with them. Reading these passages of the Bible, I felt like an audience member watching a play and saying "no, don't do that! Don't do it! That's a really bad idea! God even said not to do it." But yet, I should not be surprised, when I'm disobedient myself! I'm not any better than them. I could equally well say to myself "No, you know that's not a good idea!" Knowing the theory and putting into pr...

Lately, I found myself wondering exactly what I would say to a close friend if I was to explain what the Christian beliefs are.  It is actually pretty simple to explain. God the Creator God is the creator, and created everything in the universe. He also created Heaven. Heaven is a real place, a place of happiness where there is no sickness and no death. The one thing that can separate us from God There is only one thing that can separate us from God: sin. Sin is when we do bad things. God hates sin (he does not hate us , he hates our sin) and does not want to be around it. This is a problem for us, because we all have a sin nature. Adam and Eve, the first man and woman, fell into the temptation of sin. We all have that same nature, so we all sin, even though we try to be good. None of us are perfect. None of us can meet God's standards. A path for us to be saved While this sounds like quite a hopeless situation, it's not, thanks to God. This is why: God made a way fo...

Many of us have a tendency to worry about worst-case scenarios, most of which may never even happen. I have my own struggles with this.  Recently, it was revealed to me that this behavior is just like that of the unfaithful servant in the parable of the talents. Let's take a look at the parable: “For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. The one who had received the five talents went off at once and traded with them, and made five more talents. In the same way, the one who had the two talents made two more talents. But the one who had received the one talent went off and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money. After a long time the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them. Then the one who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five more talents, saying, ‘Master, you ...

God gave us life in abundance. He knows and we also know that there will be problems facing us at times. Even though God is good, sadly we do have problems, due to the fallen nature of this world: specifically arising from a) Satan's actions to oppress us and b) other people's actions who may be acting to our detriment. Another possibility too is c) problems we have created through our own actions. The aim here isn't to assign blame  - the aim is to point out that no matter what, we will have some problems facing us at many points in our life, maybe even throughout our lives on Earth. Now, that may seem depressing, but the good news is that we can be happy, even when facing upcoming problems! Here we'll find out how. Note: by all means ask God for discernment and guidance when facing such problems. He may show you a path, a way to fix this problem. If it's the sort of problem you literally have no control over, then worrying isn't going to help - by all ...

While it appears that both Creationism and Intelligent Design have some reason behind their different stances, from where I see it, it seems like Creationism is being used as a political pawn, which is unfortunate. I don't think that all proponents of Creationism are involved in this, but at least in my field of vision in today's world, I'm seeing it be used as a political pawn. I feel that is a danger area, where getting involved in all that might make us like Sadducees or Pharisees, who put political agendas ahead of God's word. The Creationism in and of itself is not the issue: if anything, the proponents are going very literally by God's word, for which they can hardly be faulted. No, the problem lies where atheists claim that evolution is proof that the Bible is untrue. (That itself is a flawed argument - read my other post about why ). Instead of calling out atheists and pointing out that evolution does not tell us one way or another about whether the...

Some Christians believe in Creationism (that the earth was created in exactly six days, and evolution did not occur) while other Christians believe that God designed us through the process of evolution, also known as Intelligent Design. The reason for this divide is because of different ways of interpreting the Bible. Proponents of Creationism believe that the beginning of Genesis should be interpreted literally, taking six 24-hour periods to create the earth and everything in it. Proponents of Intelligent Design believe that the beginning of Genesis should be interpreted figuratively, with the six days representing 6 ages. Let's take a look at that portion of Genesis: In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the ligh...

These last few weeks at church we've been learning about healing, and how in order to be healed through faith we must never embrace sickness, for it is very dangerous. This means instead of saying " my headaches" we should say " the headaches". We also should not pray to God asking him to cure the sickness. We can do that, but it's not what will get us results. What will get us results is having authority for the healing in the name of Jesus. Just like the apostles, we too can cast out sickness from ourselves, but we should remember the healing happens only in the name of Jesus (i.e. not by our own name). It is the Holy Spirit that provides this healing. Jesus did not ask God to heal people, nor did the apostles. We need to use that same delegated power. The power is from God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit; we simply use that power from them to provide the healing. But it is much harder for healing to occur when the person has claimed (i.e. embraced) the...

I've covered economics at the End of Days in other posts. But the more I look at the signs of today, the slightly more surprised I am that we will wind up with a restrictive system of identity and banking. I do not doubt that this will still happen at End of Days. Prophecies in the Bible have always correctly predicted what will happen - just not why and how . This is the reason for being puzzled: today, we have moved into a more privacy-aware age. There is more backlash against companies who use our personal data. Although the internet giants like Google, Facebook, and so on are still heavily utilized by people, there is an increasing counterculture of privacy. There are more and more privacy-oriented browsers now available, and people can choose to protect their privacy in other ways (avoiding mainstream social media, using a VPN service, and more).  This subculture is becoming more and more active. It's not just a handful of people here and there. Surely then, as this ...

I think that one of the reasons that the Jewish leaders did not recognize Jesus as Messiah was that they simply didn't expect that it would happen during their days. This sort of thing was to be so special that surely it could not have been for their day and age.... could it? And yet it was. But because they did not consider that possibility, they dismissed Jesus as a scoundrel and heretic. But be warned: Jesus will be coming again: “So when you see the desolating sacrilege standing in the holy place, as was spoken of by the prophet Daniel (let the reader understand), then those in Judea must flee to the mountains; the one on the housetop must not go down to take what is in the house; the one in the field must not turn back to get a coat. Woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing infants in those days! Pray that your flight may not be in winter or on a sabbath. For at that time there will be great suffering, such as has not been from the beginning of the worl...

I am sure I am not the only one that has struggled a lot with worries and negativity (and still do).  I have been reading the devotional of "The Battlefield of the Mind" by Joyce Meyer over the past few weeks. This has helped me a lot. Certainly, reading the Bible is incredibly helpful in a general sense, but I have also felt immensely helped by Joyce Meyer's book for that specific problem of the battlefield of the mind. In that devotional, I learned that it is deceptively easy for us to get tricked by Satan into turning our attention away from God and into the worries of the world. Sometimes this can even happen due to good intentions on our part, e.g. a desire to empathize and be compassionate. However, if we are not careful, we can all too easily become distracted with all of the negative things that are happening around us, without any thought for a) God and Jesus, or b) any of the positive things that are also happening. Now I realize that God never meant for us ...

The events predicted in the Bible have so far all come to pass, except of course for the ones yet to happen in the future. However, some people are upset that every detail of the predicted events is not made available to us in the Bible. This is true that every detail is not available. But that does not mean the Bible is false. The Bible tells us that something will happen, but does not usually tell us how or exactly when. There is good reason for this. As mentioned in a previous post , if every detail of every predicted event were to be revealed, the Bible would wind up as a lengthy tome which no-one could reasonably manage to read in their lifetime. Instead, just the parts that are important for us to know are in there.  When a prediction is made, it does not make it any less true if it happens by highly unusual means. Likewise, it also does not make it any less true if the prediction occurs via what might seem like "ordinary" or "explainable" means. One...

Every Christmas season, I reflect on the great faith of Mary. She was told by the angel Gabriel that she was to bear Jesus. In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?”  The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon y...