A Truly Repentant Heart

I've posted this Psalm before and it is being posted again. First, I love it because it is the perfect prayer for a repentant heart. It is the aftermath of Nathan having confronted David about his sin with Bathsheba. David having felt the true weight of his sin is convicted of it and loathes himself and sees the depth of his depravity. The psalmist prays for mercy, humbly confessing and lamenting his sins in Chapters 1 through 6. He pleads for pardon, that he may promote the glory of God and the conversion of sinners in Chapters 7 through 15. God is pleased with a contrite heart, A prayer for the prosperity of Zion in Chapters 16 through 19. What should be noted closely is not only the introductory repentance but also the follow-ups to the prayer. Not only does David seek God's pardon he looks forward to the benefit of Gods people and their ultimate prosperity. David goes from having focused on himself and doing what made him selfishly happy but then turns 180 degrees and seeks to openly do God's will. Strangely, as I read this my mind begins to wander backwards to 2 Samuel and the Lord telling David in 7:12 & 13..."When your days are complete and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your descendant after you, who will come forth from you, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for My name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever". My mind then jumps forward in time to Isaiah and "A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit." in Isaiah 11:1. Inevitably my thoughts begin to settle on things like the birth narrative in the beginning of Luke, the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, and thinking about Jesus in His ministry in Israel and the fact that He was crucified according to Scripture, was buried and rose again on the third day as stated in prophetic Scripture. I realize that David is essentailly apologizing to the Lord for putting Him in a situation where He will need to come incarnate to justify mankind and David is mortified by it. His conviction from sin breaks him apart like hammer blows until any linkage to that sin is riven to dust. He then asks the Lord to create in him a new heart that will be the basis for a renewed relationship with the Lord.

Psalm 51

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.

Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin!

For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.

Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment.

Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.

Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.

Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have broken rejoice.

Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.

Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me.

Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit.

Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you.

Deliver me from blood guiltiness, O God, O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness.

O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise.

For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering.

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

Do good to Zion in your good pleasure; build up the walls of Jerusalem; then will you delight in right sacrifices, in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings; then bulls will be offered on your altar.

Mediums of Communication

First, I must clarify that I am not talking about spiritual mediums or so-called psychic quacks. These people unfortunately quite deluded in their worldview and often view the spirits they are dealing with as the spirits of departed loved ones. In reality they are evil spirits imitating the characteristics of those people to deceive not only the psychic quack but also the paying customer of said quack.

I've digressed. So sorry. We are now in a day and age where many are leaning towards electronic mediums for writing and documentation. The joke was always, "We're going paperless **chuckle**". This seems like it could be more of a reality in the not-so-distant future. Schools are switching to whiteboards. People are buying electronic books like Kindle. Students are carrying IPads, Laptops, etc. I personally prefer the smell of fresh ink but trends are trends and as far as I can see, things like the newspaper are dead.

Paperless Bibles? Much of the move to electronics also includes Biblical information. Logos Software and every software you can imagine under the sun now exist to exegete and study the Word. We can download 100 year old books form people like Spurgeon among others off of www.archive.org or Google books into electronic PDF form. It wasn't always like this, even a few years ago.

We can go back and find there were some quite unique mediums for propagating the Word of God.

Stone

Exodus 24:12
The LORD said to Moses, "Come up to me on the mountain and wait there, that I may give you the tablets of stone, with the law and the commandment, which I have written for their instruction."

Exodus 31:18
When the LORD finished speaking to Moses on Mount Sinai, he gave him the two tablets of the Testimony, the tablets of stone inscribed by the finger of God.

Exodus 32:15-19
Then Moses turned and went down from the mountain with the two tablets of the testimony in his hand, tablets that were written on both sides; on the front and on the back they were written. The tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets. When Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said to Moses, "There is a noise of war in the camp." But he said, "It is not the sound of shouting for victory, or the sound of the cry of defeat, but the sound of singing that I hear." And as soon as he came near the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, Moses’ anger burned hot, and he threw the tablets out of his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain.

Metals

Gold
Exodus 28:36
"You shall also make a plate of pure gold and shall engrave on it, like the engravings of a seal, 'Holy to the LORD.'

Bronze
1 Maccabees 8:21-22 (non-canonical)
The Romans accepted the proposal, and what follows is a copy of the letter which was engraved on bronze tablets and sent to Jerusalem to remain there as a record of the treaty..."

Brass
1 Maccabees 14:26 (non-canonical)
"For he has restored his brethren, and has driven away in fight the enemies of Israel from them: and they decreed him liberty, and registered it in tables of brass, and set it upon pillars in Mount Zion.

Gems

Exodus 28:9-10
"You shall take two onyx stones, and engrave on them the names of the sons of Israel, six of their names on the one stone, and the names of the remaining six on the other stone, in the order of their birth. As a jeweler engraves signets, so shall you engrave the two stones with the names of the sons of Israel. You shall enclose them in settings of gold filigree."

Wood

Numbers 17:1-4
"The LORD spoke to Moses, saying, "Speak to the people of Israel, and get from them staffs, one for each fathers’ house, from all their chiefs according to their fathers’ houses, twelve staffs. Write each man’s name on his staff, and write Aaron’s name on the staff of Levi. For there shall be one staff for the head of each fathers’ house. 4Then you shall deposit them in the tent of meeting before the testimony,where I meet with you."

Engravings Rock & Lead

Job 19:24
"That with an iron stylus and lead
They were engraved in the rock forever!"

Wood w/Wax Coating (as above)

Luke 1:60-65 (In the infancy narrative of Jesus and John the Baptist)But his mother answered and said, "No indeed; but he shall be called John." And they said to her, "There is no one among your relatives who is called by that name." And they made signs to his father, as to what he wanted him called. And he asked for a tablet [πινακίδιον/pinakidion: a writing tablet] and wrote as follows, "His name is John." And they were all astonished.

Parchment

Made from animal skins. The oldest that we still have date from around 1500BC...around the time of Moses. They were most common between the 4th and 14th Centuries AD. Most all of the manuscripts of the New Testament are on this medium. It was usually only used on one side since it was rolled up although there is a mention of it being used on both sides in Revelations 5:1. These scrolls could get quite large, as long as 35 feet unrolled. Others forms could be codex and uncials.

Palimpsest

Is nothing more than a parchment that has been scraped clean and reused due to shortage of material to write on. Parchments were often reused in this manner.

Papyrus

Common until the 3rd century AD and was made from reed. In particular the center strips within the reed were extracted, crossed over one another and glued or bonded together into sheets. These sheets were glued and/or stitched together to form rolls or scrolls. Job 8:11, Isaiah 18:2, 35:7, 2 John 12

Writing Styles/Utensils

These varied in accordance with the medium that was being used.

Stylus:
These were used with wax or clay tablets. They were sharp on one end and round on the other to rub out mistakes.

Jeremiah 8:8
"How can you say, "We are wise, for we have the law of the LORD," when actually the lying pen of the scribes has handled it falsely?

Jeremiah 17:1
"Judah's sin is engraved with an iron tool, inscribed with a flint point, on the tablets of their hearts and on the horns of their altars.

Reed Pen:
Like a modern quill pen, slit on the ends.

3 John 1:13
I have much to write you, but I do not want to do so with pen and ink.

Ink:
Black ink often made from soot and gum and dissolved in water.

2 Corinthians 3:3
You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.

2 John 1:12
I have much to write to you, but I do not want to use paper and ink. Instead, I hope to visit you and talk with you face to face, so that our joy may be complete.

3 John 1:13
I have much to write you, but I do not want to do so with pen and ink.

Good Old Fashioned Paint Watching

I wanted to see if I could write on a topic so pathetically boring that at first glance it looked like even I could not finish a train of thought while writing about it. The topic that popped into my head was the proverbial "exciting as watching paint dry". Hence the title and the following post. Please bear with this post...it actually goes somewhere other than a catatonic state.

When I see the paint I think of the effort that goes into getting it there...on the wall that is. I think about the fact that the moisture needs to evaporate and move out of the paint for it to dry. I think about how evaporation is a transfer of moisture into the air from the wall. Boring yes, but systematic in its process. A process that is always the same. Aspects of the process may change relative to elevation, humidity, etc. but no matter where you go, paint drys the same everywhere. It drys according to rules of physics. Rules that require order, rules that require consistency in the physical universe. A universe that is usually consistant and uniform no matter where you are at in it. (Although we are beginning to find that at the sub-atomic level things get rather interesting but that is a topic for another post).

I see the color of the wall. Or should I say I see the color the the wall paint's pigment rejects. The color I see is the portion of visible light or wavelength that the wall would not absorb so it reflects that light back and I see it as the color that was not absorbed. As a matter of fact, no matter what we look at we are looking at the portion of the visible spectrum of light that an object doesn't absorb. A white surface reflects most if not all of the wavelengths of white light back into the receptors in our retina. A black surface absorbs all wavelengths and reflects little or no light to our retina. I guess it is no surprise that pupils of eyes were created as a hole located in the center of the iris of the eye that allows light to enter the lens and subsequently, the retina. It appears black because most of the light entering the pupil is absorbed by the tissues inside the eye. The inside of the eye is actually a dark chamber designed to absorb light or electromagnetic radiation (light). Think about that. While most things in creation were created to reflect all but a certain portion of the visible light spectrum, your eye was actually made to absorb as broad a range as possible which is why we have such an immense array of colors that we can make out (as long as you are not colorblind).
Consider this: We are only seeing a very small sliver of what is available in the Electromagnetic Spectrum. The wavelength spectrum encompasses everything from Radio waves (long) to Gamma waves (short). If we had to rely on only our eyes to judge everything that was going on with things that dealt with waves...we literally would be blind to most of reality. No Radio, no TV transmission, no cell phones...well, you get the picture...or maybe you don't?

If the light that is reflecting off the wall came from the sun it is the product of thermonuclear reactions 93 million miles away of 8 light minutes from Earth. A light wave that has traveled unmolested until it reached the wall in your house. If you put your hand up 3 inches from the wall you have effectively stopped light rays that have traveled just under 93 million miles and stopped them 3 inches short of the wall and bounced them either back out into space or some of them were absorbed by your hand, heating it or illuminating it.

I could go on some more...isn't it marvelous the complexity that goes into something so simple that we take so much for granted? Simple processes that had to have been designed perfectly for the universe and our world to function exactly the way I have just described.

And you thought it was just paint drying didn't you? Actually, it was...but so much more. Just like every other process around us that has been laid out with perfect precision, order and sequence that we take for granted every day. How...or should I say...Who do you suppose established the order in these seemingly mundane occurances? Fate? Odds? Even if someone didn't believe in God how could they possible explain the repetitive order and a tendency towards order rather than disorder or entropy which science claims is the end of all things? Granted the evaporation process is more or less a transfer of heat/moisture but it is in the process of creating or making something beautiful like a freshly painted room, not destroying it (unless of course you let me paint your wall). Someone please explain that order that supposedly is diminishing not increasing in a closed system. Atheists? Scientists?......anybody? I didn't think so.

Perhaps at a later date I could pen something about watching grass grow?

Jesus said to him, "It is written.."

Throw Yourself Down by ~eikonik

People that do not believe in the God of the Bible often look at believers like they are uneducated idiots or delusional mental cases. How do I know this for sure? I use to be one. I was like Paul. I persecuted the people that I have become. I understand just how wretched I am (please note that I said am, not was). They cannot understand how Christians could believe in and shape an entire worldview around what they view as an imaginary entity. The entity Christian believers call Jesus. It stupefies them. What baffles them even more is they see that a body/group of people have been believing in this supposed “imaginary” entity for centuries and millennium based on a book called the Bible. To them it is just a manufactured delusion based in a book of myths. They claim that believer’s base their arguments for His existence on arguments from ignorance, or non-believers just make ad hominem attacks. They think that we create God in our own minds as a supportive psychological crutch and then argue for His existence. In actuality, it is God creating us and informing us of His existence through empirical historical data in the form of historical events. God actually entered the world of space and time and it has been documented historically as an event.


Galatians 4:4
"But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law..."

Hebrews 1:1-2
"In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe."


The anti-God argument that he was imaginary might actually hold water if it wasn’t for the fact that we get this so-called straw man from the Bible filled with eyewitness accounts of Christ's incarnation among other evidences. Many in ignorance of the faith argue that the Bible is a book that was supposedly written by nomadic sheep/goat herders (which they created out of their imaginations, which according to the world, makes us twice as stupid because our culture is suppose to be so much more advanced in our "intellectual" thinking. This is where it gets really hard for the unbelieving world. They become indignant and downright hostile. They just cannot figure out how isolated sheep herders in the Middle East 2000+ years ago could’ve come up with such a consistently accurate book that has stood the test of time.


This is where the unbelieving world gets it totally wrong and begins to bark up the wrong tree. When they attack the Bible they are not attacking the antiquated or outdated writings of Middle Eastern nomadic tribes. They are attacking the living breathing and inspired word of God. The Bible was not written exclusively by peoples of ancient nomadic origin. As a matter of fact some of them were quite stationary and territorially powerful such as Solomon, David, etc. All the writers of the Scriptures were in some shape or form inspired by the Holy Spirit. The only thing that differed over the 1500 year period of writing all the works that entered the canon was the method for getting it on a medium such as parchment or papyrus. The pen went to paper in Dynamic Inspiration and that inspiration was the Spirit's content and the words of the human authors. Verbally Inspiration is the Spirit's content and words in harmony with the human authors or by partial dictation. Dictation Inspiration is the Spirit's content and words without reference to the human authors. Never were any books written without God’s guidance. It is called verbal plenary inspiration or, every (plenary) word (verbal) of Scripture is God-breathed (inspired) in the autographs or original documents


What should we expect from a perfect omniscient God? We should expect it to be totally unique. We should expect it to be internally and externally consistent. The Bible is absolutely and utterly consistent in spite of multiple authors, circumstances, and centuries of composition. Regardless of what "educated" experts tell you in the media (we know we can trust them don't we?). Wherever it has been attacked down through the ages it has not faltered in defense of itself. Even in modern day. We must keep in mind that the Bible is not a science book it is a book of God and theology and how God relates to man. Where the Bible has spoken to science it has never legitimately been refuted or wrong. It is the Divine revelation of God or a full disclosure of His Will to mankind. God’s Spirit helps us understand what is written. The Book will be inerrant. The Scripture will have authority or have its own significance.


Matthew 4:4, 6 , 7, 10
Jesus statement to the Devil with Scripture. "It is written."
Galatians 1:8
But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned!

2 Timothy 3:16-17
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

2 Peter 1:20-21
Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.


This is why the Bible is so consistently attacked and maligned. To avoid the circular argument fallacy (God of our own creation) Christians should and do rightfully claim that they are obeying the Bible and its authority from God. If you say you are not basing you opinions on your own rationalizations but rather obeying the Bible you are on sound logical ground. This is why many well versed apologists and pastors always revert back to the Bible for sound defense of the faith. It is also why people that do not do this end up faltering in their apologetics (defense) of the faith. The Bible has never been wrong and has its own authority being the Word of God. Again, this is the reason people so rabidly attack the Bible and its source (God). It has been made obvious to the enemies of God that if God's people base their argument on the infallible word of God in the Bible, the enemies only need to twist, distort and undermine Scripture and then attack the twisted distortion (straw man arguments/ad hominem attacks) to neutralize believers and their God in this culture. Sadly, this has become mildy effective because people claiming to be educated and even some marginal Christians are Biblically illiterate.


What they have failed to fully understand is that to neutralize the Bible and God is impossible. Every time this has been attempted in history it has failed. Everytime you suppress it in one place it jsut surfaces elsewhere stronger and more brilliantly. Every time it will be tried in the future, it will fail also. They do not attack you but rather they attack God. You are just the messenger or God’s message and the embodiment of it.

Acts 19:8-9
Paul entered the synagogue and spoke boldly there for three months, arguing persuasively about the kingdom of God. But some of them became obstinate; they refused to believe and publicly maligned the Way. So Paul left them...


You shouldn't take it personal. Look what Paul did in the Acts verse above. He left. He had done his job for three months, arguing persuasively about the kingdom of God. The devil will attack anything that connects itself to God and His holiness and that includes you. The devil cannot even approach the holy God so he attacks God by proxy. Through His human creation. Through us. We should do everything within our power as justified people in the process of sanctification to resist that skunk by giving sound and logical arguments for our faith against His lies. We do this with the expectation that they will change. If they do not we should move on to others that may be receptive to the Good News. We should not run away with our tail between our legs when we hear someone clearly and fraudulently maligning God or God's Word. We need to be prepared to give a ready defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence. We need to do it with gentleness regardless of how badly we are attacked for we represent Christ and the Kingdom. At the same time we cannot continue to bludgeon people with the same message over and over and have them repeatedly reject it. We give the message, The Spirit does the work inside the person. It is a squandering of the resource of time alloted to us by God if we continue to speak on deaf ears. There may be others that will respond positively.


Therefore, go forth and proclaim the Gospel to a hungry world!

The Mighty Resurrection

The Sepulchre
Dan Burr

I do not just read Christian source material as I would pigeon-hole myself when doing apologetics. I make an honest attempt to keep myself abreast of all the diversified and sometimes unique (in a bad way) blasphemies and irreverence that adorn the atheist and agnostic blogs that I have bookmarked. I often frequent these sites along with comparative religions to gauge where I stand with the unbelieving world. The internal inconsistencies in many of the dissenting arguments are so apparent as to be obvious and it surprises me that they do not recognize the inconsistencies in their arguments. I must say that I have just returned from one of these forays and after such a foray I become rather indignant and annoyed with blissful ignorance passed off as intellectuality or supposedly educated people of "higher education" pretending to be the enlightened elite.

Romans 1:12
"Claiming to be wise, they became fools..."

1 Corinthians 1:20-21
"Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe."

Their arguments are often ungrounded, fallacious and absurd and they have the gall to bash other's beliefs when theirs are clearly illogical or internally inconsistent. Also, after these forays into "I-Hate-Christians Land" I usually like to reground and reroot in the Scripture.

So lets go reground shall we? (**and my subconscious responds: "Why yes Andy, let's do so!"**)

Lets talk about the Resurrection of Jesus Christ and elaborate on its importance to the Christian faith and the individual Christian. The Resurrection is the linchpin in Christianity. Besides, I feel like talking about it on days other than just Easter since it helps me keep things in perspective. Pain, suffering, purpose, glory, Jesus, Yeahhhh!!!!! The Resurrection is important all year round as it is a shadow of what is to come for all believers.

1 Corinthians 15:12-19
"Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied."

Pitied because we have believed a lie and are believing a lie. People led astray due to deception are to be the most pitied and forlorn.

But as Christians we know that it is not a lie as all evidences both Biblical and Historical point to Christ being the First Fruit of the Resurrection. The act of the Resurrection itself was the affirmation of the Father's acceptance of the Son's work on the cross. This Resurrection of Christ is imperative to God's plan of redemption. It fulfilled the prophecies of the Old Testament. Of specific importance is Christ's statements about Himself: That not only would He be put to death but He also knew of His own Resurrection.

Matthew 16:21
"From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life."

Matthew 16:17
"Jesus replied, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven."

Matthew 16:22-23
"Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. "Never, Lord!" he said. "This shall never happen to you! Jesus turned and said to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men."

Matthew 20:19
"and will turn him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified. On the third day he will be raised to life!"

Mark 8:31
He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again.

Mark 9:31
"...because he was teaching his disciples. He said to them, "The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of men. They will kill him, and after three days he will rise."

Mark 10:34
"who will mock him and spit on him, flog him and kill him. Three days later he will rise."

...and the list continues.
__________________________________________________

The Empty Tomb

Either Christ was Resurrected or someone stole the body. If someone took the body why was the body not produced later. Disciples couldn't have done it because the tomb was being guarded by Roman soldiers and the tomb had been sealed.

John 20:6-8
"And so Simon Peter also came, following him, and entered the tomb; and he saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the face-cloth which had been on His head, not lying with the linen wrappings, but rolled up in a place by itself. So the other disciple who had first come to the tomb then also entered, and he saw and believed"

The interesting things about the passage of John 20:7 is the statement about the shape of the linen wrappings indicated to John that the Lord had risen. The wrappings were still in the shape of the head or in a "rolled up or a wrapped" condition judging by the word in the verse rolled-[ἐντυλίσσω/ἐντετυλιγμένον] or entulisso/entetuligmenon: the implication is that it was in the shape it would've been on his head not "folded" as other translations in other English versions. Rolled as in circular/cylindrical...like a mummy or like you would wrap your knee with an Ace bandage. It had retained its general shape albeit flattened and absent a head (Christ's). The position that the linen would've been in would've been rather difficult to mimic. It is quite evident what had happened, the body of the Lord Jesus Christ has passed through the wrapping. The linen then collapsed in on itself and retained a cylindrically wrapped or "rolled". How have I drawn this conclusion? This word is only used in two other places in the New Testament, Matthew 27:59 and Luke 23:53 and it also refers to Christ and the actual wrapping of his body by Joseph of Arimathea. The implication it is the same shape and the same form.

The Resurrection appearances annihilate any opposition to the Resurrection story. He was seen by many in the days (40) and weeks afterwards. Including women, the two on the road to Emmaus, Peter and the twelve disciples, 500 believers at one time, etc. The large crowds of witnesses add extra voracity to the eyewitness accounts as these accounts of many people seeing Him could not be attributed to hysteria or psychosis unless it was mass hysteria. There were clearly enemies of Christ or doubters converted and beleived so this is highly unlikely.

We then see the transformed disciples that were willing to die for what they believed they had witnessed. Had they made up this story of Christ's resurrection, telling it would've been one thing but to die for a deception of their own making is counter-intuitive and highly unlikely. When they saw Him they were completely changed. This is especially evident in Peter. He goes from bumbling, happy-go-lucky Peter who was relatively thick-headed to steadfast and sure of Himself (he shows pronounced conviction as opposed to unsureness and oscillating in his beliefs as when Christ was still alive).

As Jews they had observed the day of the Lord on the first day of the week as opposed to the Sabbath. This is profound as it is a complete change in mindset ingrained through centuries of tradition.

Christ was raised by the power of the Father.

Ephesians 1:19-20
"...and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms..."

But also had the power to raise Himself.

John 10:18
"No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father."

The Holy Spirit was also involved in the Resurrection.

Romans 8:11
"And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you."

This is either a reference to the Holy Spirit or God the Father.

All this information taken together by anyone with half a melon (brain) and lick of sense can see something amazing happened around the time of Jesus' death even if they didn't have the Bible or had one and refused to read it. But if we do take this information in combination with the historical evidences and eyewitness accounts in the Bible, it is almost undeniable. Yet God-haters persist in their vain attempts to deify themselves in place of the god they do not believe in. Some even deny Christ ever existed. It is sad. They really do believe they are intelligent yet they are deceiving themselves and accepting the accolades of the like-minded vainly conceited clones to bolster their manufactured reality. They same thing that claim Christians do with God and fellow-believers. So I guess we could say their intelligence and pursuit of the idols of intelligentsia are their God?

Burr, Dan . The Sepulchre. 2009. NA, NA. Dan Burr Illustration. Web. 28 Sept. 2010. Painting

Theodicy: Why Is There Evil If God Is Holy & Good?

How many times have you heard non-believers or even believers make a statements like this: "If God is so powerful and so holy how and why would He allow evil and suffering?" "To me a God that allows evil is a mean and uncaring God." We also hear statements like "God is either mean or evil, or He just doesn't care" or worse we hear that He actually is "not all-powerful and cannot control the evil in creation so He couldn't possibly be God to begin with."

It is basically the very simple (and simple-minded) chain of reasoning that says that if God were omniscient, omnipotent and benevolent (loving), he would know about the great suffering in the world, have the ability to stop it as omnipotent, and choose to. He does not stop it so He could not be a loving God. The argument or discussion usually stops here with the people who would make this type of statement and they generally are not open to further reasoning. This inevitably blocks out the truth which also blocks God's providence and sovereignty in their minds/thought processes. How silly.

I posit that (1) God is poorly understood even by those that are in the Christian faith and (2) People that say absurd statements like this or ask questions like this are attempting to put God within a box of their own making thereby confining God to their myopic view of what He should be and how He should behave. I mean...get real people. Who's really at fault for the evil in this world? God or the beings that have actually perpetrated the heinous acts and then refuse to take accountability for them? The sinful human beings behaving like petulant and irresponsible children that went rogue. This leads to blaming God for our own recalcitrance and ignorance. We unjustly elevate ourselves to believe we can actually get inside God's head and know why He does things and how He thinks. Simultaneously we try to bring God down to a human level (if not lower) passing judgment on Him as if we are actually fit to do so. We deify ourselves and try to undeify God. All the while being satanically led on by the great deceiver...that slug Satan.

Theodicy

The term theodicy comes from Greek theos "god" + dike "justice"

Theodicy reconciles or tries to reconcile the evil of the world with a holy and righteous God. How an infinitely holy and just God can allow evil to exist and in some cases thrive in His creation. In doing so it implicates and draws in the idea of God’s justification and justice. As Christians we are to view God as the sovereign Creator. In so doing we relinquish the right to be the final say in judgment of ourselves and give this over to Him. By doing this we acknowledge that we have imputed sin as a product of Adam and the sin in the Garden (Enns 319, 323). Although created holy, man chose to disobey God and sin and thereby gaining for himself a penalty of death. Death not only physically but also spiritual unless we accept Christ’s redeeming/atoning work on the cross and repent. There is a price to be paid for sin since the wages of sin is death. Christ sacrificially put himself up as the ransom or a substitution to free man from the bondage to sin which is the source of the ills of this world or what many view as evil. Christ also abrogated the ceremonial law instituted by the Mosaic covenant (Enns 89).

Knowing what I have stated above, Christians should then truly understand their irreparable position in relation to a holy and perfectly just and righteous God that must judge sin or He wouldn’t be God which is directly contrary to the logic and thought processes of non-believers or those that doubt God's providence, sovereignty, grace and mercy. The correct and suitable response by Christians is to submit to the One who judges and is merciful and full or grace to forgive…if we accept His sacrificial offer and repent. In other words: We are reprobates and only He can save us. It is only by the grace of God we can be redeemed. Believing involves and act(s) of repentance in faith. This is not to be construed as a work. Faith is the vehicle that gets you to the destination or the eye that sees, the Lord Jesus has done that work for us already (Enns 97-98).

Because man and his entanglement with sin is the direct consequence from the fall of man in the world we can then link the above statements together. Man is created holy but falls choosing to sin. God being perfectly just cannot ignore sin as it is an affront against His holiness. In needing to respond to the sin of disobedience the world is under a curse and/or being punished for sin. Man will die, for the wages of sin is death. The world is now also at odds with God and/or anything divine. As converted justified believers, we are at odds with ourselves or our flesh that is still “of this world”. The best example of this is in Romans 7 and what appears to be Paul suffering from a multiple personality disorder. In actually he is talking about the tension between the spiritual good and the sinful flesh. He ends up doing things he doesn’t mean to do, and not doing things he should. (Enns 324-326). In other words sin and evil are ontological parasites. They are an absence of good. Had man obeyed we wouldn’t be in this mess. Regardless, humans often view suffering, sickness and death (the effects of the Fall) as bad or evil. Christians should view it as justice exacted against a sinful humanity. If we repent we will eventually be glorified in Christ and restored to our previous state (after death or rapture) anyway.

I will now closely parallel one of my sources and then comment as the source’s eloquence is in its specificity. The church (body) focuses on two primary aspects when it comes to Christian’s response to Theodicy/ or the church’s Biblical orientation to dealing with the idea of a God and the presence of evil in His creation. The primary assumption when dealing with this topic is that man knows better and this is dangerous because God’s ways are above our ways meaning we cannot understand His purposes because we only have a myopic human view or things but He has all aspects covered at all times. Macchia’s quote is brilliant:

“God has created humanity with the freedom to rebel and become vulnerable to satanic opposition. God has allowed satanic opposition to exist to test humanity’s free response to God.” (Macchia 202)

Macchia also states that:

“God wills to triumph over satanic opposition, not only for believers, but also through them. Therefore, the triumph of God’s grace has a history and a development.” (Macchia 202)

In a word: Brilliant (not uncaring). God uses the vessels of triumph to propagate further triumph…all to the glory of God. Just as he has placed the seeds of rebirth and new life within fruit, He has done the same with believers by placing the Spirit in men (indwelt). The whole implication here is that God is constantly active and involved in His creation and His creation once saved (us), actively pursues the will of God (usually).


What is also amazing here in this premise is that, for God to gain salvation over some “thing”, there has to be some “thing” to triumph over. God being omnipotent and sovereign over His creation has to first allow this to happen. Hence the existence of evil. The other question that arises from this is why God didn’t just make people (angels) love Him? Had He done this they would’ve never strayed. My response to this is one further question. Does forcing someone to love you actually constitute real love? For God to allow us to love Him of our own freewill He needed to allow us to hate Him or choose something besides love. Otherwise there would be no choice, only a directive or mandate. That’s not love. It’s called tyranny and despotism and that would make God a tyrant and therefore not God. If God is anything He is holy, He just and He is love.

Enns, Paul. The Moody Handbook of Theology. Revised ed. Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2008. Print.

Macchia, Frank D. "Chapter 6 Repudiating The Enemy: Satan And Demons." Systematic Theology. Ed. Stanley M. Horton. Springfield: Logion Press, 2010. 194-213. Print. Anthology.

Further reading about Theodicy: Examining The Scripture LXXIV: Job's First Discourse & The Problem of Suffering

A Milling Process

I feel as if lately I am being ground to powder. Not powder like dirt but rather something akin to flour. Broken down into rudimentary parts. Dismantled only to be reassembled at some later time in a different form. Flour ground up to later be mixed with water and other ingredients or other people to create something that will fuel and edify a body or the body. Broken down just like a body does to extract the nourishment it needs to not only stay alive but to thrive. Broken into smaller parts so the parts can be sorted out to figure out which ones I don't really need to carry with me. Stripped down and made light. Perhaps to travel light as I may need to move quickly and be agile.

Extra baggage weighs us down. Makes it harder to do what we are called to do. Baggage gives us more things to remember when its time to go. Many things that don't really warrant a second glance I have often dragged along with me in my life. Doubt, guilt, anger, impatience, unwelcome angst and anxieties, etc. Do I still carry these things. Sure do. Not nearly as much of them as I use to. Someday I will truly grasp the fact that the only One that matters has already forgiven me of many of the things I continue to carry guilt about...I should forgive myself. He is the only thing I should be carrying in me anyway. The truth is that it is Him that carries me anyway.

I am being ground down. Like diamond dust. Cut away. Honed. Broken down so that I can serve others as I have been obviously called to do. Ground into a fine grit that can eventually be used to polish others in the same process that has ground away and polished me. Just as the brilliance of a diamond only comes through after repeated chipping away at just the right places and repeated grindings and polishings. The grindings have been done with surgical precision to best optimize the material and waste none of it. The raw material is in short supply and every spec and iota of it that can be used to show the glory and brilliance of its Creator needs to be taken advantage of. God maximizes your value. And like a Master Gem Cutter, God hones me away to remove as many of the flaws as possible.

Every aspect of me that glorifies God will be preserved by God to do His will. Anything that does not will be disgarded. This process will continue until all the facets that God wants shown to the world are perfected and spotless. Until the clarity of the gem inside is brought forth for the sparkling briliant light that will shine through it. I am just raw material. A stone or one with a heart of stone that has been made flesh.

And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh. ~Ezekiel 11:19

The beauty of it all is not the stone itself but rather the way the light plays and works through the stone that gives it its luster...its beauty. A stone on the diadem of the King.

I am being simplified an in this simplicity I will find my purpose God has set aside for me. Where I can shine most brilliantly for his purpose.

Inseperable: Word-History-Revelation

There is an inextricable bond or relationship between the literature, the history and the theology of the Bible. These three distinctive units synergistically work together to form the continuity and continuous whole called Biblical Theology. They literally act as foundations that allow us to step, in a coherent manner into the text of our Holy Bible. They literature, history (or historical record) and the theology (or revelation) contain within its covers. In a word the relationship between these elements is synergistic as they reinforce one another on a holistic level.

The literature aspect is the wording itself. Words themselves are nothing more that symbols used to convey a meaning. That meaning is determined by decoding the symbols (text) and how they are present in the Bible. In their “literary” environ so to speak. We need to understand how God has revealed Himself in the Word in conjunction with the way He has revealed Himself incarnate also. These aspects cannot be viewed in isolation or in a vacuum or we miss the whole/holistic picture or what God wanted us to understand. This means we need to also take into account the human element/historical events that occurred involving humanities redemption and God which segues us to our second aspect.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.”~John 1:1,2 [Literary, History, Revelation]

“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father...”~John 1:14[Revelation, History]

The historical record works with the revealed word in a manner that shows us as readers. In this manner God has chosen to reveal Himself in time/history and thereby being essentially documented as historical narrative within the Bible. We as believers take this narrative as historic record whereas the secular world views it as possibly myth. As many of these events such as creation are beyond the realm of investigation since there were no human observers of the Creation, we then rely on God’s revelation of said event. In the Bible’s case it was revealed through Moses’ narrative. This leads us then to our last aspect of our triad, the theology revealed within the Bible.

“But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law”~Gal 4:4 [Revelation]; “He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.”~Col 1:17[History]

All of these aspects are inextricably linked together. Revelation is not just concerned with past historical elements but also future as historical also. We must understand that the Bible is revelation of God or what God wanted man to know about Him. It is also what God wanted man to know about himself. Since the Bible is a revelation about an infinite Being that is One but a Trinity of three persons, we should understand that this revelation enters into the realm of infinitude and the timelessness of eternity. This is an area hard for man to grasp and comprehend because it is nearly outside of our reality and ability to comprehend. The Bible encompasses these three aspects but never totally separates them as they are not totally inseparable. All of these are revealed in Jesus Christ.

“God, after He spoke long ago [Revelation/History] to the fathers in the prophets [History] in many portions and in many ways [Literary], in these last days [History] has spoken to us in His Son [Revelation], whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world [History].”~ Heb 1:1, 2

I have added the Scripture and labels in brackets for a twofold purpose, example and evidential truth.