Thinking about God, Jesus and The Big Questions

In the Bible, it is made clear that Jesus will come to earth a second time. That time will not be as a sacrifice, as he did when he died on the cross the first time he was on earth. What will the second time look like? It is clear from the description in the Bible that it will be a cosmic event. Let's take a look. In the passage below from the book of Luke, it is Jesus himself speaking to the people: “There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” Luke21: 25-28 From the description above, it seems that some cosmic event is clearly indicated at the time of the second co...

While Handel was composing the famous Hallelujah Chorus of the Messiah, he was reported to have said "I have seen the face of God" (reference 1). Handel was able to see God's face (or rather, God's reflection) in what he was doing, as a moment of revelation where God allowed a brief glimpse of Himself. The reason I say "reflection" is that staring directly at God would most likely be too much for us. To use a secular analogy, it would be much like looking directly at the basilisk in the Harry Potter books. Our human bodies could not handle it.  Instead I believe a reflection? transformation? - a glimpse of God taken sideways through another lens (nature, music, art, science, love, and so on) is the closest we can get to seeing God in this world and still live in it. Continuing with our analogy, this is much like seeking the basilisk of Harry Potter by looking in mirrors and reflections so as not to happen upon it in deadly full face. Handel had the for...

One of the things which helped me immensely after having kids was that it gave me a tiny inkling of what God has to put up with about us. My kids, when they were very little, would simply not understand why I didn't want them doing things that they thought were fun, like running out into the middle of the road.  I loved them so much that I didn't want them running out to play in the middle of the road, so I wouldn't let them.  I would pull them back every time they tried to do this.  To them, this didn't feel like love.  It felt restrictive to them. Yet, I only did what any loving parent would do to keep their child safe. I was frustrated that my children just couldn't seem to understand that I was doing this out of love and to stop them from getting hurt or killed.  Then I realized this must be very similar to what God has to put up with when dealing with us. And God has had to put up with all this (our ingratitude, incomprehension and disobedience) not j...

In a previous post, I discussed how time works very differently in God's outer Universe than it does in our universe.  Our universe (containing the earth and the solar system and all the galaxies) is merely a small part of the much bigger Universe created by God.  We are a universe nestled within a Universe. I mentioned that time as we know it is probably a sort of artificial construct created for us in this particular world containing our galaxies.  I hypothesized that our time as we know it is probably related somehow to whatever the 'real' time construct is out there in God's world, but that our local time-construct is still separate and made just for us. Why events do not happen on our time but on God's time In the Bible, prophecies tend to indicate that an event will happen after a certain other event.  Or that an event may happen before a certain other event comes to pass.  Prophecies usually do not specify "on calendar day such-and-such, this part...

Who is God? This is one of the biggest questions anyone can ask.  So many people have preconceived notions of what God 'should' be like (and some get very confused when they find out that the Bible isn't in agreement with their personal prejudices!)  If you want to find out who God is, this is where I would really recommend trying the experiment of reading the Bible without any preconceived ideas.  God is our creator , as is made clear in Genesis.  He made not only us, but our world and our Universe. (Here people tend to get bogged down about evolution vs creationism - they are not mutually exclusive!) God is good (here people get bogged down about why bad things happen if God is good; read more here ).  God is all-knowing and all-powerful (yet again, people get bogged down about whether we actually have Free Will - yes we do; read about Free Will here ).  God hates sin , yet all of us humans are sinners.  Sin is just the most horrible thing ...