to Love God
to Obey His Law
to have Faith in Him through Jesus Christ
“For if you carefully keep all these commandments which I command you to do–to love the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways, and to hold fast to Him— then the Lord will drive out all these nations from before you, and you will dispossess greater and mightier nations than yourselves.” ~Deuteronomy 11:22-23
See now that I myself am He,
And there is no god besides Me;
I kill and I make alive;
I wound and I heal;
There is no one who can deliver out of my hand.
For I lift up My hand to heaven and declare,
“As I live forever,
If I sharpen My glittering sword,
And My hand grasps it in judgment;
I will take vengeance on My adversaries,
And will repay those who hate Me.
I will make My arrows drunk with blood,
My sword shall devour flesh,
With the blood of the slain and the captives,
From the heads of the leaders of the enemy.” ‘ ~Excerpt from the Song of Moses
“For the LORD’S portion is His people; Jacob is the place of His inheritance.” ~Deuteronomy 32:9
GOD [Holy Spirit]
The LAW JESUS
The three branches of God is not unlike our system of government: the executive branch (president), the legislative branch (the law), and the judicial branch (making sure the law does not abuse its power). When we falsely think of the trinity as God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit we miss a crucial part of the system–the real trinity–which is God’s Holy Spirit [or rhema the Living Word of God], the Law from the Prophets, and Jesus’ message of God’s Love and grace.
Currently, it is popular in modern Christianity to ignore the Law, which makes it impossible to be obedient to God. It takes more than the New Testament, Jesus, or the concept of the three-in-one trinity to keep us in God’s good graces. It takes obedience, love, and faith. Obedience comes in the Law of God, laid out in the Old Testament Torah, and to a lesser degree, the major Prophets. Jesus brings us the love [and with it, grace] of God and enables us to see the forest, not just the trees. And faith comes from knowing our God, and having His Holy Spirit move through us. All these are necessary for Truth! We cannot find God’s Truth by simply having one or even two facets of this, which is what we have when we adhere to the false concept of the traditional trinity as laid out by the Council of Nicaea.
The very reason the US government is set up like this is to keep the branches in balance. Law without Love is what we had with the Pharisees and Sadducees. The Holy Spirit without the Law or Jesus can leave us seeking God, yet sinful. And Jesus’ Love without the Law can lead us into a false sense of security, and to act out of false doctrines.
We need all three facets of God’s Truth to be holy and pure.
For the Law was given through Moses, but grace and Truth came through Jesus Christ. ~John1:17
Genesis 2:2-3:
“And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.”
Exodus 20:8-11:
“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your manservant, nor your maidservant, nor your cattle, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.”
Isaiah 58:13
“If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath [watch your step], from doing your own pleasure on My holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy day of the LORD honorable, and shall honor Him, not doing your own ways, nor finding your own pleasure, nor speaking your own words, then you shall delight yourself in the LORD; and I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth, and fed you with the heritage of Jacob your Father. The mouth of the LORD has spoken.”
Whether you call the Sabbath Saturday or Sunday, it matters not according to the Bible. What matters is that the things you do honor and glorify God. It’s that simple.
Ways to honor God:
Ways to dishonor God:
Shalom
~Mary
BLESSED is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful; but his delight is in the Law of the LORD, and in His Law he meditates day and night. ~Psalms 1:1-2
Originally posted on October 11, 2013
In Part I and II we explored how God does not want people to know His secrets to life, because He knows man will then want to control life, and controlling life is strictly God’s domain.
Jeremiah was a Prophet who lived from 655 to 586 BC. He prophesied about the impending disaster to Jerusalem by the Babylonians because of the Hebrew people’s widespread idolatry. But there is an interesting verse embedded in the Book of Jeremiah at 31:35-37:
“Thus says the LORD,
‘Who gives the sun for a light by day,
And the ordinances of the moon and the stars for a light by night,
Who disturbs the sea,
And its waves roar (The LORD of hosts is His name):
If those ordinances depart
From before Me, says the LORD,
Then the seed of Israel [God] shall also cease
From being a nation before Me forever.’”
“Thus says the LORD:
‘If heaven above can be measured,
And the foundations of the earth searched out beneath,
I will also cast off all the seed of Israel [God]
For all that they have done,’ says the LORD.”
I believe this is an ominous hidden message to us across the pages of time. Of course, when it was read before our time period, one would take it to mean, ‘Well, that could never happen, so God is saying He will never cast us away.” But now we know this can eventually happen as we pursue science and technology to explore the origins of the universe. We also can search out the earth beneath, though possibly not with total accuracy yet.
God is saying, “I will cast you off this earth for what you have done, if you try to seek My knowledge.” Just like He cast out Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, and reinforced man’s separation from Him, God will not allow His creations to supersede Him. He will prevail over man.
I don’t think He even likes us to TRY to find out His knowledge or secrets of the universe. We have more important things to do, like learning how to grow food, and utilize our limited resources in a burgeoning, hungry world, than to try to attain God’s knowledge and power.
Who is correct, Nietzsche or Schopenhauer? The urge to control life and live forever is, according to God, the inevitable goal of man once he attains God’s knowledge. However, that urge is rooted in power. Power is the conduit to wanting to be in control of everlasting life. So, I’d say these ideals go hand in hand. Both men are ‘right’ philosophically. Sadly, in the end they were both wrong because they omitted the most important truth in their philosophy, which is God and His Truth; the only Truth there is.
Originally posted on October 10, 2013
God was angry that His beloved, unique friends whom He had created to be with Him defied Him. All they had to do was what God had commanded, and not eat of that one tree, and they would have lived happily ever after. Since they didn’t, God punished them:
To Woman: ‘I will greatly multiply you sorrow and your conception; in pain you shall bring forth children; your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.’
To Man: ‘Cursed is the ground for your sake; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you shall return.’ ~Genesis 3:16-19
He still lovingly made tunics for them and clothed them. But since they had eaten of the tree of knowledge, God said,
“Behold, the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil. And now, lest he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”–therefore the LORD God sent him out of the garden of Eden, and He placed placed cherubim and a flaming sword to guard the way to the tree of life.“ ~Genesis 3:22-24
Notice how He didn’t tell them not to eat of the tree of life to begin with. He knew that they would not have the power over life, which was uniquely His, unless they first tried to usurp His power.
God has secrets only He can know. He created us, He gave us everything we need to live and flourish and be happy. He only asks one thing: for us to mind His commandments. I’d say the primary commandment based on this story is:
DO NOT SEEK THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD
For if man seeks the knowledge of God, he might eventually find it. And therein lies the Power of Life. God will NOT ever share this power with anyone. When you try to seek His knowledge you make war with Him. And He makes that clear. Not just in Genesis and in Revelation, the first and last books of the Bible, but there is also an ominous threat from God to men seeking knowledge in the Prophet Jeremiah’s words…
Originally posted on October 10, 2013
Nietzsche argues with Schopenhauer that the highest drive of man is his strive for power. Schopenhauer argues that Will to Life is the primary goal of man.
In this post, and the following one, I will explore that the drive of man for power led to God kicking him out of paradise.
In Genesis Chapter 2, God commanded the man, saying:
“Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” ~Genesis 2:16-17
Knowledge equals power. Enter evil as serpent:
And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.’” And the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that is was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked….” ~Genesis 3:2-7
They wanted the power that God had. Simple as that. They had everything they needed, they had Paradise! But it wasn’t enough. They wanted more. They wanted to be like God. And it seemed like there would be no ill consequence, besides God’s warning, it all seemed good. As Neitzsche so aptly points out, “My idea is that every specific body strives to become master over all space and to extend its force and to thrust back all that resists its extension. But it continually encounters similar efforts on the part of other bodies and ends by coming to an arrangement (“union”) with those of them that are sufficiently related to it: thus they then conspire together for power. And the process goes on.”
Let us also remember that Satan got kicked out of Heaven for this same exercise:
“And war broke out in heaven: Michael and his angels fought with the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought, but they did not prevail, nor was a place found for them in heaven any longer. So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.” ~Revelation 12:7-9
So the Enemy was, and is, perpetually looking for women and men who will collude with him to usurp God’s power, in a seemingly neverending process between good and evil.
In the next post, we will see how God responds…
~Song of Mary~ 