The Only Thing To Fear

In his inaugural address, then president Franklin D. Roosevelt stated that ". . .the only thing we have to fear is fear itself . . ." (you can listen to it and read the whole address at this link - http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5057 ) However, even though many of the situations at the time he said that in 1933 are the same today, (click the given link and read it!), I have to fervently disagree with him. I personally believe that the only thing we have to fear is the wrath of God! Now there are many in the Christian world today that will teach that the old testament wrath of God is gone and we now have a loving, wonderful God that will forgive just about any sin (if we simply confess it) and everything is fine. Almost everyone can be assured of going to that wonderful, perfect place called Heaven to live forever and ever. NOT! 


It's true, that the death of Jesus on the cross of Calvary satisfied the absolute Justice of God and made a way to escape the Wrath of God, but it only opened a small door through which we can find salvation, and that is in Christ, Himself! Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth and the life, no man comes to the Father but by me." He said in John 10:8-10, All who ever came before Me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture.  The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly." Most people are duped into believing that there are many ways to heaven." God says there is only one. (I'm just repeating what God says, here. You don't have to listen to what I say, but I am not quoting me. I'm just telling you what God, the Creator of Life and Death has said and immortalized in His Word. And you better listen to Him!)
Here's a solemn truth: (It's impossible for God to lie. Hebrews 6:18 And keep that in mind when reading the rest of the bible.) John 3:35-36 says, "The Father loves the Son, and has given all things into His hand.  He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.” That's pretty clear, isn't it? And I'll get you to a more complete understanding of how He did that in another post. 


How bad is the wrath of God? You really don't want to know, and the devil does not want you to know, either, because you just might start believing in Jesus. And that is the last thing he wants anyone to do. Jeremiah 10:10 says, "But the LORD is the true God; he is the living God, the eternal King. When he is angry, the earth trembles; the nations cannot endure his wrath." And in another place, Psalm 7:11 says, "God is a righteous judge, a God who expresses his wrath every day." Now you know how we can escape the wrath of God. It's through believing in Jesus. This world and the universe will end, by the way, when God rolls it up into a tiny ball from which nothing can escape; and it will burn, without light, forever and ever in a tiny black hole. God is going to roll up the cosmos like a scroll and it will be an everlasting lake of fire prepared for the devil and his angels. You can read about that in the book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ. (Yes. That's the real title of the book.)  


Be patient. I am trying my best to get you to the understanding that I have of God's plan and of His Word. But, to do that, I need to first take you back to before the creation of the earth. I'll get to the creation of man after that. And now we may be coming to some stuff in the bible that you have never heard about. Where, for instance did the devil come from? And what the heck was he doing in the Garden of Eden when God created man? Where do demons come from, and why do they hate us and want to separate us from God? This is very important information that you probably don't know anything about and have never read anything about it in the bible, even though it has always been there. Are you ready?

God is LIFE and death has a purpose

I was in a small church yesterday, http://www.therootscommunity.com/ and the pastor, Jesse Carbo and assistant pastor, Paul Podraza, were talking about Jonah (from the Old Testament story) in the bible. Go read the story! But here I will give you the short of it and some history that you will not read (in the bible) without some research.

Jonah was a servant of God, a prophet. And one day God told Jonah to do something that Jonah absolutely did not want to do. God told Jonah to go to the Ninevites, (an enemy of Israel whose home base was in Iraq), and warn them that unless they repented (God blessed Israel and put a curse on anyone that cursed Israel and a blessing on any nation that blessed Israel - Psalm 37:22 says, "those the Lord blesses will inherit the land, but those he curses will be cut off." And God's promise to Abraham, the single old man that God promised to make a strong nation called Israel out of was, "I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you: and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.") God was going to destroy Nineveh, and Jonah wanted Him to. Jonah wanted God to nuke them all. But God, who is and always has been a loving God, and full of mercy, was sending His servant to talk to them and cause them to repent and pray and seek Him, the true God. Jonah didn't want to go. He would rather have died than go, and decided instead to head for Spain and in the absolute opposite direction away from Nineveh. But you can't outrun (or out think) God. Jonah hired a boat and got in it and sailed away. But shortly after they sailed, God sent a fierce storm that threatened the boat and all the sailors on it. All the sailers were trying to figure out what they could do to save themselves and were just going crazy and praying to their various gods and they found Jonah sleeping down in the hold. The sailors didn't know what was going on, but Jonah did (when they woke him up) and he told them that it was God doing this and that if they threw him overboard, they would be fine. They didn't want to do that and be guilty of murder, but eventually, seeing no other way, they did it. And Jonah figured that he won. He didn't have to kill himself to get away from God. But God had other plans. God, according to the bible, had prepared a "great fish." It could have been a whale, but it says a great fish. And Jonah lived inside that fish for 3 days while the fish traveled to (you guessed it) Nineveh. Now a fish has to be pretty big to swallow a man and allow him to live inside of it without drowning and I personally believe it was huge. (But, of course knowing God has no limitations, it could have been a minnow, except that it would not have impressed the Ninevites who just happened to be worshippers of the fish god, Dagon.) So God has this huge fish beach himself near Nineveh and puke out Jonah. Unimpressive to the prophet, but very impressive to anyone from Nineveh who saw it. And apparently, they did. So when Jonah went into the city to tell them to repent and seek after the true God, Jehovah, they all repented, including all the rulers. That really upset Jonah. He wanted them to die, and instead, all of Nineveh listened to him, and in sackcloth and ashes, declared that they were nothing apart from God, and they repented and God forgave them and let them live. 


And Jonah went up on a high mountain and sulked. He told God, "I knew you were going to do that. That's why I didn't want to come." And he just sat and stewed in his own juices and got hotter and hotter and the sun beat down on him. And overnight, God caused a huge gourd plant to grow up beside him and shade him. And Jonah was happy for the plant, until God caused it to wither and die. And then, Jonah got really mad at God. Because now this was a personal affront. And the bible says God talked to Noah (Noah didn't have God's words in writing as we do) and God asked Jonah why he was so upset about the gourd? He didn't plant it or have anything to do with growing it, so why should he have such strong feelings for it when he didn't even create it? God was explaing to Jonah through an analogy why He, God, had such strong feelings of mercy toward the Ninevites whom He had created and which had come under God's curse. God loved the Ninevites as He loves all people, and the bible says someday "Every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is LORD to the glory of the Father." God would rather bless than curse and He always goes to great lengths to do so. But curses do come, as it did in Sodom and Gomorrah. According to the bible account, God would have spared that nation, also, but for 10 righteous individuals. Only one righteous family escaped. A man called Lot and his wife and two daughters. And Lot's wife didn't make it all the way out, either. Check out the story in Genesis 13. Check out this Google site: http://www.accuracyingenesis.com/sodom.html#appendix

Let me say here that unless God reveals Himself to a person or family or city or nation, there is no coming to Him. I mean, you would not be able to invite yourself to meet with the president of the United States, so how could you possibly, unbidden, invite yourself to meet with the Creator of all life? God will arrange it or it won't happen. But God has promised that for anyone that really and truly wants to meet Him, He will show up.  Jeremiah 29:13 says, "And you shall seek me, and find me, when you shall search for me with all your heart." 

Who Really Knows About Life?

The only person to listen to about life is the Creator of all life, and that is God. How do you find out about what life is all about? By finding out what God has written down through various authors through divine inspiration (God put His thoughts in many people's heads and dictated word for word what they should say - in their own words!) That sounds like an impossibility to have someone write in their own words exactly what you want to say, but God is not ordinary. He is more extraordinary than anyone you could possibly imagine. And I will try to explain exactly what I mean by that.
But first, I want to say that there are thousands of people and books and pamphlets and organizations trying to tell you about life and death who have absolutely no experience with death. There is only one who has lived and died and is alive today. His name is Jesus, the Christ, the Son of the living God. This is not just a belief, but a truth that is more easily proved by history and those who lived when He lived than to prove the birth and life of any other historically famous person such as George Washington. Do you really believe in George W.? Can you prove it?
One of the greatest proofs is to try to disprove anything He has written. God wrote the Word of God and elevated His Word above His own name. (He said that, I didn't.) I'll start quoting the "where did He say that" if you want me to. Some people believe that the bible is a book written by a bunch of different men, which it is, but the men were writing down their own experience from God's mind and in their own words. How do I know that? Because God said it in the second book of Timothy, chapter 3 and verse 16: "All scripture is given by inspiration (God breathed) of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man (person) of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work." In the book of John (in the New Testament) God wrote, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Another name for Jesus is "The Word of God." There are many other names that He is called as well, such as "Wonderful," "Counselor," "The Mighty God," "The Everlasting Father," and "The Prince of Peace." The amazing thing about Jesus is His obviously opposite nature. The nature of Christ as a man is impossibly opposite to His nature as God, and yet He is comfortable and perfect in both venues. As far as I can determine there are ten (10) attributes that make up God's incomparable and "absolute" nature and they are are follows:
Sovereignty - Whatever God says is so. King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He can countermand anyone else's commands.
Absolute Righteousness - God is absolutely Good in everything He says and does. God cannot do evil.
Absolute Justice - God demands righteousness and punishes evil and is absolutely fair.
Absolute Love - God is the quintessential essence of Love. God is Love.
Omnipotence - God is the highest power there is and His power has no limits.
Omniscience - God knows absolutely everything. Even "the hairs on our heads are numbered to God." There is no insignificant truth that He is not aware of, which brings us to the next attribute.
Absolute Truth - It is impossible for God to lie. It is not part of His character. He also has no reason to lie. There is no entity singular of plural or thing that God is afraid of. There is no reality that He is scared of including death, and, in fact He is the author of death as well as the Creator of all life.
Omnipresence - He is everywhere at the same time. God is a Spirit and that makes it possible to be all over at once. In Star Wars, the Jedi masters believed in a "force" that is in and through all things. But it is not some force produced by microscopic creatures called "Midochlorians, "according to George Lucas, it is actually God who is that force, and no one controls Him. The space He occupies is unlimited.
Immutability - Change is not a part of God. He is "the same yesterday, today and forever," which is very reassuring to our world which is characterized by change.
Eternal Life - God has always been and always will be. A difficult concept for any of us to understand since everyone and everything that we have ever known has or had a beginning. But God always was, and there was never a time when He was not. He is Eternal because He has no limitations in or to time and is in fact the creator of time, which is a small part of eternity and how He can know all things.
That said, Jesus as a man is the exact opposite of all these things, and yet, He is still God. Jesus' life on earth is a paradox that I will delineate in a future installment. So, please keep reading.