Category: Personal Insights

Death and the Afterlife, Part I: My Dream

God gave me insight today in a morning dream whilst still slumbering in my bed.

Heaven

There IS an afterlife and it is not very far away from us:  it is just through the veil on the ‘other side’.  When you die, if you believe in God and try to do good, your body cleaves from you, and you keep all your consciousness but you have no way to communicate with this world anymore because you have no body.  Like how, joined with our body here on earth, we cannot communicate with Heaven.

There is absolutely no change in the essence in our being, we simply go upward, and a little circle in heaven opens and we transcend unto God’s Realm, and are removed from here.  Our earthly dead body means nothing to us.

hell

However, God showed me specifically that if we commit suicide, or do not believe in Him, or do not try to do good; our body becomes tethered or anchored into the ground of the earth, where we become stuck.  We cannot ascend through into Heaven because we have chosen to be part of this world.  And we become like a tree.  Perhaps this is why God hates tree worship so much.  We are the trunk, and our legs are rooted in the ground.  It is horrible because the earthly world can regard us, but we cannot communicate with it.  Nor can we communicate with Heaven.  This felt like something that lasts forever in my dream.  This is hell.

It is not very difficult to go to Heaven.  It’s simply believing in, and loving God, and trying to do good.  Jesus was in my dream, but as a silent witness to the truth of these matters.

10/02/14:  God plants people here alone when they go to hell (as above), leaving them to their choice of life without Him.  This state is miserable, to say the least, and the only solace they will be able to find is finally accepting the Truth of Him, and loving Him.  Because no matter where we are, God, and only God, can give us peace.  Their punishment therefore is hell tethered into the earth with no one able to hear them, nor understand them, but God; not even others in hell, because they chose a life without Him.

But they will see that God is real and God is Truth, and they will finally be put in a situation where they cannot and will not deny that anymore.  Then when the earth is destroyed and God’s Son comes to reign in Zion, those who have turned to loving God, even from hell, will find themselves in the Lamb’s Book of Life, and live in Heaven with Him and His host.  The others will be ejected into eternal damnation, the Lake of Fire.

Praise Almighty YHWH ALHYM~

As Numerous as the Sand on the Seashore…

After Abraham offered Isaac as a sacrifice on Mount Moriah, God blessed him and said because Abraham had offered his only son as a sacrifice to God, Abraham’s offspring would be as numerous as the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore.

 

I traveled home to Texas this past summer and we went to Galveston to swim in the surf and walk along the beach.  However, we were never able to even get down on the beach at any place because seaweed had washed on shore along the entire coast, and the rotting piles of it created a stench that made the eyes water, and also created an unhealthy sulfuric haze in the air.

 

I found in the news that not only the Gulf Coast was affected, but the Atlantic coast, and English coastline as well:  all were covered in rotting seaweed, with little sign of sand anywhere.

 

It occurred to me that this might be a sign from God that He is not going to multiply His people anymore, or a bold attempt by the enemy to blot out God’s promise to our Patriarchs that His Chosen Ones will be as numerous as the sand on the seashore.  Since this event is unprecendented in our recorded history, there is no doubt in my mind it is a spiritual omen of the possibility that man might be on the way out…

 

To correlate with this, as a midwife I have noticed a distinct and fairly recent increase in the  number of women having problems in labor and delivery.  The cesarean section rate is climbing rapidly, and this cannot always be attributed to aggressive management and unnecessary surgery.  Indeed, many more women and babies would be dying without surgical intervention and the reason is not easily discernible.  Infertility is not uncommon as well.

 

Add to this signs similar to the plagues of Egypt, like water turning to ‘blood’ in China, and diseased livestock with mad cow; along with the wars in the middle east where Muslims are killing Christians and Jews, and it does not bode well for humanity.

 

Perhaps obliterating the sand is just the first sign.  Maybe He will blot out the stars, and cover the dust of the earth as well, rendering life hopeless.

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To Abram:  ~Genesis 15:5~ And he brought him forth abroad, and said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: and he said unto him, So shall thy seed be.

To Abraham:  ~Genesis 22:17~ That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies;

To Isaac:  ~Genesis 26:4~ And I will make thy seed to multiply as the stars of heaven, and will give unto thy seed all these countries; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed;

To Jacob:  ~Genesis 28:14~ And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south: and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed.

God is in our Every Cell

He knows what we are thinking because He is in every cell of our body, including our brain.  As I shared in a previous post, The Image of God, God has made life with a cellular basis because that is how His perfect form is.  In the sacred process of life-giving whereby He creates all beings, He attaches Himself to that being in that process, on a level so infinitely small as yet to be undetectable to human understanding, yet so invasive that we cannot ever escape from Him, our Creator.

This is why dreams and daydreams and aha! moments and intentions and intuition tell us God’s Will.  It is the immanence of God in us at work, in these moments that move us.  He is transcendent at all times too, yes, out there.  But He is always in here as well.  As Rick Warren says so eloquently in The Purpose Driven Life, God is constantly watching us-our every nuance-in every moment to see how we think, how we feel, and how we respond to events in our lives!  He is also feeling us, knowing us, and guiding us from within.  I find that so profound.  I don’t know about you, but knowing this makes a huge difference in how I actually behave!

But it is God in Us that is our ever surveillant Master, but also our dependable safety net.  He tailors our lives to His everlasting assessment of us, if we but learn to hear Him and listen to Him.  This is living in His will for us, and living coram Deo, with God, in everything we do.

Years ago, I read a heart-wrenching account of a young woman lost at sea on a sailboat that had gotten caught in a hurricane somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.  Based on a true story, this woman’s fiancee had apparently been lost overboard when the tumultuous storm tore him off the chains he had tied around himself and the helm, to anchor him.  Realizing that they would not be able to run away from the storm or go around it, he had sent her below where it was safer, while he stayed up top to do any navigation he could.  Down below, her body got thrown around, and she became unconscious for 24 hours.  When she returned to the deck afterward, her fiancee was gone, and she was alone and adrift on the open sea.

She describes how she heard a voice in her head giving her commands which ended up helping her navigate to the coast of Hawaii, and saving her life.  Commands like, “Open that can and eat it.”  The commands were from somewhere inside her head, she knew, but were not from her.  I do not recall her being a Christian or being a believer, or saying the voice was God, as I was reading her book.  But now I know it was God speaking to her.  Because that is how He sounds to me too.  It was nothing short of a miracle how, with nothing but star reckoning, she was able to sail herself to the island of Hawaii in the great expanse of the Pacific Ocean, over a month or more period of time.  And that she did not starve of hunger or thirst on the way.

God is like that in our head.  He feels our aches and pains in our bodies.  We don’t really have to tell Him or whine to Him about what ails us, though He is gracious when we do.  He understands that life is pain.  He sent Jesus to us knowing that life is pain.  He doesn’t want us to always feel pain, yet He knows that we will suffer whilst here on earth, because of man’s inherent sinful nature, from the very Beginning.

But we can also feel joy and happiness and hope.  That is the message of the Gospel.  That is what I want to share with others.  Life is pain, but life everlasting can be bliss with God.  We can have bliss here if we allow God to blossom within us and take over our every cell!  Open your understanding and know He is there, inside you, waiting for you to open your heart and mind and body fully to Him.

God Bless~

Mary

Part II: IPOD is an IDOL

An idol is anything that comes between you and God.  In the bible-days idols were represented by golden calves and naked deities, so I think it is easy for us as modern-day Children of God to think the second commandment (the second most important commandment of the 10), ‘Thous Shalt have no other gods before Me,’ does not really apply to us anymore.  However, if you stop to think about how the Gentiles (pagans) of the time used the ancient idols, you can see similar behavior in our current culture.

It doesn’t really matter what you do with it, an IPOD  is made to be a personal device for entertainment; to be clutched, protected, and clung to like a constant companion.  It is a muse and a cherished device.  It is a modern-day deity.  In older generations, the TV was our IPOD.

An idol can also be a bottle of booze.  A pack of cigarettes.  A phone.  A credit card.  In all these cases, we worship something that we perceive is going to deliver us unto happiness.  We might not even consciously believe that, it might be completely subconscious, but the point is, our action reaches for and intoxicates upon, the Thing, whatever it is.

Technology is our golden calf.  We might not literally bow down to it, but I bet if your IPOD or phone or computer breaks, you are going to lament, contort yourself somewhat, and take steps to replace it immediately.

Do we do this with God?  Do we take the same loving care with our relationship with God as we do with our personal devices?  Do we protect from taking His name in vain with the same diligence with which we protect our phone from moisture?  Do we keep our communication with Him as quick and responsive as our texting?  Are we as enraptured by His wonders as we are by viral youtube videos?  If not, we are probably serving idols in place of God.

Technology which is a vehicle for communication and connects people together, such as certain aspects of the internet and phone, are not all bad, but we must use them with caution, knowing they could lead us into temptation and subsequent idolatry.  Usually God does not want us to be tempted at all, and commands that we avoid temptation by eliminating all of it from our lives.  As He illustrated when the ancient Hebrews settled in the Promised Land of Canaan, He demanded that all the pagan tribes be destroyed, lest they lead His chosen people into sin and idolatry.

Even though we might think we are far removed from worshiping golden calves and sacrificing our children to gods, we are actually the very same now.  We let our children go away from our protective arms from the time they are born, so that we can make double the money, one of our favorite gods.  We elevate our false egos that make us worship ourselves and each other, because since we do not believe in God, we make ourselves or someone else god.  We pay homage and adoration to stars, and look up to them.  We clutch cold shiny metal that portrays any image we crave to see, and in the imagination of our own hearts, we think that it is good.

 

I, Mary, by Mercy…

I, Mary, by mercy of God a recluse, in the name of God, His Law, and His Son Jesus Christ, offer my humble servitude forever.

A reaffirmation of my commitment and vows to God.

The Narrow Way

Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it.  Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.  ~Matthew 7:13-14

Jewish-Christian versus Pagan-Christian

I recently bought a copy of Cradle of Christianity, published by the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.  It is an exhibition of artifacts from the time of Christ, in and around the time when the new religion of Christianity was dawning.  In it, they discuss how early Christians who believed in Jewish rites and Law were called Judeo-Christians, members of the “church from the circumcision”, and those who had no connection with Judaism were called members of the “church from the Gentiles”.

Initially, the majority of the members of the new faith in Palestine were Judeo-Christians, who believed (in opposition to Paul) that affiliation with the Jewish religion and observance of the commandments were prerequisites for Christian faith….In hellenized cities, of course, uncircumcised Christians formed the majority.  ~Cradle of Christianity p. 32

It occurred to me that if I am a Jewish-Christian, then my contemporary Christian brethren who do not believe in the Law, but only the concept of Jesus, should then be called Pagan-Christians, as their doctrine originally extends from the foundation of the Gentiles, who largely practiced pagan worship and were considered pagans.  The term for bypassing the foundation of our religion is “antinomian”, meaning in the Greek, anti law [nomos].  The earliest leaders put forth antinomian law at the Jerusalem Council when they voted that gentile Christians did not need to adhere to the Mosaic Law, only the Noahide Law, which basically means instead of following all God’s commandments, they were allowed to bypass them and follow a watered-down version for the new religion of Christianity [see more about this in my pending post on antinomianism and legalism].  If you think about it, the Roman influence is strong in modern Christianity, and Roman ways were gentile, or pagan, ways.  Much of how Christians express their Christianity is tied to pagan practices, even if the worshiper is unaware of this, down to the times of year and religious celebrations.

I think we should all just be called Christians, but for me being a Christian means adhering to God in all the ways he commands us in the Torah.  This means loving Him and listening to His Living Word and Holy Spirit every day.  It requires obeying His Law given to us by His Prophets.  And it means having faith in Him and loving our neighbor as ourselves, as Jesus taught, and honoring Jesus’ role as the everlasting sacrificial lamb of God.

Being a Christian is not just about holding dear the concept of Jesus, no matter how much I aspire to be like Jesus on a daily basis.  Being Christian is holding dear our Hebrew roots, no matter what our ethnicity is, because all who are born again unto God are His Children and His Chosen Ones.  We cannot ignore our foundation and the patriarchs of our religion.  We must pay them homage by daily meditation and recitation and prayer and obedience, to all God’s Laws, statutes, and commandments as He demanded from the very beginning.

The Three Branches of God

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.

The Image of God

The Image of God

“God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”  ~Genesis 1:27

God revealed to me recently that His image is like a cell.  The ‘nucleus’ of the cell is where the brightest light and purest essence resides, made up of perfect loving energy inherent with all the qualities we attribute to God.

As we die to our earthly bodies and return to Him, our life force ends up somewhere in this cellular body, and where we land has something to do with being called by Him, and the intent of our actions while here.  The sons and daughters of God might end up in the nucleus whilst common man might end up on the darker and farther reaches, more distant from his throbbing warmth; and everyone else falls somewhere in between.

It occurred to me after this revelation that our entire bodies are made up of cells!  So in this way we ARE made in God’s image.  It isn’t that God has a head and feet and hair, it’s that the building blocks of life remain the same between God and us, and all living things.  And that is the simple cell.  The unit of life.  All life contains carbon as well, and we know that carbon molecules, along with iron and other fundamental metals that exist here on earth also exist in space; and are probably a part of God’s image (makeup) too, a gift from Him to us.  Another interesting thought is that the DNA or RNA that exists within our cells and makes us us, might also come directly from God.  And it might indeed be encoded with memory, or controlled by God in real-time in some way.  Kind of like an invisible lifeline from our Creator to us.

Kind of ominous, isn’t it, to think of God being invisibly in control of our very bodies and minds, of our cells.

In this context, solar systems would be living things as well, because they exhibit cellular qualities, with a central ‘nucleus’ sun, and bodies that are contained near that sun, and are a system (solar) unto themselves.  This is because God, at any time, has chosen where and when to create life, as He deems, and at His will.

What is nearly impossible for us as humans to grasp is that God’s image and His essence are one and the same.  We are used to separating the physical and the spiritual, but in God’s Realm, there is complete and perfect uniformity and intent.

Why did he create us?  Ahh….that is the subject for another post….;)

Genesis, the Decalogue, and the Circle of Life: An Everlasting New Covenant

The Book of Genesis has become my favorite book of the Bible, by far.  There is so much wisdom and truth in it.  Presented in such a tantalizingly esoteric and artistic way, I am overwhelmed at discovering it all, even though in my ignorance of Hebrew I fall far short of understanding it all properly.

The very beginning of the Bible is a scientifically accurate depiction of creation as we know it.  It is in line with old earth creationism, and I have discussed this in a previous post.

But it is also a summation of the cyclical nature of God creating an Eden for us, a Promised Land; how we are exposed to evil, fall away from God with increasing depravity, until He is forced to annihilate us because He is so besotted over our grievous behavior; saving those who are most holy to begin anew, making a New Covenant with us.

I want to discuss the correlation of the Genesis story with the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments, which are first expressly laid out in Exodus chapter 20, when God makes a New Covenant with Moses on Mount Sinai.

We will start at the beginning:

Genesis 1:1  “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth…and all the host of them.”

God is Sovereign Supreme Being

Enter Day 6 of creation, after God had created everything, creatures on the earth, and man…

Genesis 1:28:  “Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”  

Commandment 2:  Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, nor any manner of likeness, of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; thou shalt not bow down unto them, nor serve them; for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Me; and showing mercy unto the thousandth generation of them that love Me and keep My commandments.

God is saying that He is above man and man is above creature, so there is NO WAY that creature can be above God.  If man does not honor God’s Original Sovereignty, man will be led to commit idolatry.

Genesis 1:31  “Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good.  So the evening and the morning were the sixth day.”

Commandment 3:  Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh His name in vain.

God is saying that if everything He made is indeed very good, there is no reason to ever use His name in an unholy way.  God is always holy.  If man commits idolatry, man will also be led to believe God is mere vanity or emptiness.

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.”

Commandment 4:  Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.  Six days shalt thou labor, and do all they work; but the seventh day is a sabbath unto the LORD they God, in it thou shalt not do any manner of work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; for in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested on the seventh day; wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

God is saying we should work six days, and rest on the seventh because it is a holy day.  If man believes God is mere vanity or emptiness, man will not feel the need to honor God’s holiness or holy things.

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Here we have an intermission in the Genesis/commandment correlation.  God creates a perfect world for us to live and dwell in with Him.  But evil (which was created before man, as creatures were created before man) enters in and man becomes impure,

and falls away from God.

But God still provides for man and cares for him.  Then the story proceeds…

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Genesis 4:1  “Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, and said, “I have gotten a man from the LORD.”  

Commandment 5:  Honour thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God givith thee.

God is saying that children born to parents should honor them, not dishonor them.  If man does not honor God’s holiness or holy things, he will also not honor his own parents.

Genesis 4:8  “Now Cain talked with Abel his brother; and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose against Abel his brother and killed him.“

Commandment 6:  Thou shalt not murder.

God is saying that we should not kill those whom we hate.  If a man does not honor his parents, he might also commit murder.

Genesis 4:19  “Then Lamech took for himself two wives:  the name of one was Adah, and the name of the second was Zillah.”[Lamech means warrior or conqueror, and this is the first case of polygamy in the Bible]

Commandment 7:  Thou shalt not commit adultery.

God is saying that to Him polygamy is adultery.  If a man is capable of committing murder, he will also desecrate the holy sacrament of marriage.

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Here we have another intermission in the Genesis/Commandment correlation.  God sees the increasing depravity of man.  Man has now dishonored and murdered within his own family, and with his act of committing adultery,

his sin is starting to spill over into mankind.

Yet God still continues to give him another chance and Adam has a new son, Seth [which means ‘compensation’ in Hebrew].  Then the story proceeds…

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Genesis 6:1-2  “Now it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God [angels or, likely in this case, fallen angels] saw the daughters of men, that they were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves of all whom they chose.”

Commandment 8:  Thou shalt not steal.

God is saying that now matter how powerful you are, or alluring the prize, stealing is wrong.  If a man commits adultery, he will also be willing to steal from others.

Genesis 6:4  “There were fallen ones on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men and they bore children to them.  Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.”

Commandment 9:  Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

God is saying that the fallen angels tricked the daughters of men into thinking they were good, so that they would bear them wicked children.  If man steals, he will be willing to swear falsely by his neighbor.

Genesis 6:5  “Then God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every thought of the thoughts in his heart was only evil continually.”

Commandment 10:  Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house; thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his man-servant, nor his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor’s.

God is saying that your wickedness grows until every thought in your heart is bent on evil and attaining your own glory.  If man is willing to swear falsely by his neighbor, there is no end to the lengths man will go to make himself more lofty.

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Final intermission.  “And the LORD was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart.”  ~Genesis 6:6

Man has fallen so far away from the beginning, so far from

God is Sovereign Supreme Being

That a rip occurs between man and God because man slips so far from God, and since man cannot exist without God, man is annihilated.  However, God saves Noah and his family because Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD.  God floods the earth for 40 days and 40 nights.  40 is the archaic way to describe circle, because there are 400 radians in a circle.  Life, exposed to evil, had come full circle.

Then the story continues…

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So, Commandment 1 stands alone and also brings us back full circle to the beginning.  Commandments 2, 3, and 4 are about us and God.  Commandments 5, 6, and 7 are about us and our family.  And Commandments 8, 9, and 10 are about us and society.  As we get further and further from God, sin is like a cancer that spreads and spreads until it has corrupted all of society.  This reflects number symbology of 1/3/3/3.  Which means One LORD whose realm makes a circle with 3 representing pi:  a circle within a larger circle within a larger circle, representing the ripple effect of sin as it transmits from mans’ relationship with God into his family, and finally into society, 3 being coded for often in the Torah (see previous posts).

Finally, we end with Commandment 1:  I am the LORD thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.  Thou shalt have no other gods before Me. 

God is saying He will bring those He deems worthy [the Chosen Ones] out of captivity, out of the bondage that we will get ourselves into [time and time again].  All He asks is that we recognize His sovereignty, honor Him,  obey Him, and love Him, and if we do this, we will not continue along the slippery slope of sinfulness, where we will inevitably meet our utter destruction.

This is a perpetual covenant which He renews with us over and over.

He is full of grace.  And LOVE.

Praise be to God.  Amen.