Saturday, January 16, 2021

LITERALLY - Part 1

 God literally did it all and paid it all! I credit God for everything. I believe in a true, real, and literal God!  

  Words in the Bible can be literal, figurative, or metaphoric. Sometimes God used all three methods, and sometimes metaphors for the literal. As an example, I believe that the Garden of Eden was a real garden with real trees, but also that it was a Garden of Metaphors; that the “trees” and vines of the Garden represent people and that the “husbandman” of the Garden is the Great Producer and Keeper of the cosmos. By cosmos, it is meant, “orderly harmonious systematic universe” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). The “universe” consists of all things real, postulated, and observed. Hence, the “universe” is the heaven (postulated) and the earth (observed or measured).

  What is postulated is based on the observed or measured. God said that in a different manner, to wit: “For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse” (Rom 1:20)

  Real things that are observed, since they exist, must have been generated. Hence, a “Generator” of all things must be reality. “Generation” is processing. The process of generating existence, both the observable and the postulated, requires order, containment (volume), raw material (mass), energy (heat), time, and equilibrium. In my book, On the Origin of Man and the Universe, I take the Hebrew literally, not figuratively or metaphorically. Not being a linguist, I relied on those who are. Abaririm Publications, Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, and Strong’s Concordance were my translators.

  However, I selected the context which seemed most applicable to the storyline. With that, I tried not to extrapolate an implied meaning, but stay true to Holy Scripture. Although, not an astrophysicist, I am an engineer. Most of my career were spent processing and maintaining processes. I think in terms of processes, and the most splendid process of all time was not the invention, processing, and manufacturing of fire or the wheel, but the cosmos itself. Rather than “universe,” cosmos indicates order, harmony, and planning. Why use the word, cosmos? Because God is the Cause of order, harmony, and the cosmos was planned for a reason. Contrast that to evolution, which is chaotic, accidental, and random.

  In Romans 1:20 (above), the visible cosmos is observable, the unseen postulated, and their generation hypothesized. Strangely, science has taken the least likely with the lesser probability. They chose evolution over creation because they are by definition blind to the unseen. Science is the study of the observable and postulatable, as are creationists, but they are biased against God![1]

  The Old Testament is a Postulate of God. Because of what they observed, it was true and real. “I AM THAT I AM” is postulated from the Voice of God. As Moses did not see God Face to face, but only His Splendor that we call “Glory.” His God had Voice and Power but not a Face. However, God was real for Him. Moses based His belief in the Unseen on what he saw. When he looked upon the Power of God, he saw Jesus! On the other hand, many saw Jesus and postulated that they had seen God. As an example, consider what Jesus told Philip: “He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father” (John 14:9).

  As such, because Philip and many others testified to that, then Christians postulate that God is real because men have physically observed God. Why would all the apostles lie? They would not because they saw Jesus do miracles that only God could do, they postulated using logic and reason that God is real and mankind saw Him. Jesus altered existence to suit His Purpose. Now that Jesus is not seen, Christians  postulate that because Jesus arose and the Holy Ghost came down, that “Jesus” is both real and observable. Christians observe Jesus by the Comfort of the Holy Ghost.

  Christians feel virtue (Goodness) inside. Jesus healed by the flow of virtue from Him to those He healed, and that “Virtue” was the Holy Spirit or Power of God. Since the Holy Ghost is the Comforter (John 14:6) and Christians are Comforted, we deduce that Jesus is with us, and that is validated by Holy Scripture, the “gospel” — the absolute truth with no inherent bias.

  When Jesus healed, virtue, or goodness, left Him (Mark 5:3). Why did God rest on the Sabbath? Because enormous virtue had gone out of Him. Why did Jesus die? Because the virtue to heal all the sins of mankind of all time depleted Him of virtue. His three days in the tomb was Jesus’s Sabbath. While His body rested His Holy Ghost was still working by carrying all those sins to Hell and delivering them to Satan, who that day, had left Judas.

  Virtue is the Power of God and God is Good! He created all things entirely good. Hence, Existence was all Goodness. Only mankind is not good. Yes, it is us who will cause the demise of the world, but according to scripture, God will be the One to “Build Back Better.” Better in the sense that devils and demons will not mutate what God has made!

  Thomas doubted. He had seen Jesus, His miracles, and His blood but he still doubted. “Doubt” is the reciprocal of “faith.” Absolute faith is the Faith of God Himself (Rom 3:3). That is perfect faith that only God has because He is Existence, and He knows Himself. We must trust the Word of God. In other words, humans do not know “beyond a shadow of a doubt” but trust God for truth. Because of what we see, we should know that there is a Creator (a God), then with that strong belief, doubt is lessened. I focus on the creation because the more I postulate that what I see and observe is truth, validates the Existence of an Almighty God.

  I postulate that God is real, not because I saw God Face to face, or even observed His wounds as Thomas did, but because I can sense the Holy Ghost with me, but also trust those who left depositions to what they saw, and so much that they died for their faith. Very thoughtfully, Jesus knew that later generations would need that: “Jesus saith unto him, ‘Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed’” (John 20:29).

  Thomas was blessed because He observed Jesus, and later Christians believe because they postulate that Jesus is God in the Flesh. We call postulates, “faith,” to wit: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen…” Faith is postulating that God is real, and as such can not only create but heal (repair) what failed in His perfect design. Yes, the flesh is temporary and corruptible, but the Creator is also the Fixer: “While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal” (2 Cor 4:18).

  God will glorify His faithful followers. Their temporary corruptible flesh, because of their faith, will sometime after death become “glorified” with incorruptible flesh, a repaired vessel, containing God’s Spirit in an orderly, harmonious, systematic universe. Yes, the earth will again be orderly, harmonious, and systematic when all the chaos is straightened out by God Himself. There will be a new heaven and a new earth.

  Our postulation that the seen is proof of the unseen must be so strong that Satan’s legions cannot convince us otherwise! For that, Christians must trust that there is a Creator. “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear” (Heb 11:1-3).

  The world diminishes faith by elimination of God as the Creator. Why evolution? With that belief,  the postulation that there is a God, is dead. With God presumed dead, or non-Existent, then we postulate that each of us are God.

  Self-esteem has all but replaced Christ-esteem, and churches postulate that rather than lacking God, people lack self-esteem. With that God is dead, and we are alive. We can still observe the seen, but rather than God generating the heaven and the earth, the people of “Mother Earth” created the heaven and the earth. Hence, “Earth Worship” and environmentalism is believed over creationism.

  Believe it or not, but all those thoughts came from my key verses for today, which I failed to even mention so far:

KEY VERSES:  1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 2 And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. 3 And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made. 4 These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens. (Gen 2:1-4)

  I believe that so much that I know it to be true! Because I believe that so intensely, I postulate that God is real. Jesus validated that when He showed the world at that time the Face of God. He arose, we no longer see His Face, but something better. We commune, if we are Christians, with the very Spirit of God — the Spirit with whom Moses communed! Next, I will comment on how God did His first miracle. It was a process that we did not observe but because it is here, it must have happened.

  (The picture below is a metaphor. The Holy Ghost did not come down to Jesus in the bodily form of a dove, but the motion of a dove. Hence, a dove is metaphorically the Holy Ghost, but not literally.)



[1] Known exceptions are Albert Einstein and recently, Mikao Kaku, but their "god" is not the God of the Bible who mankind has seen and experienced.

(picture credit: St. Albans Catholic Church; "The Holy Ghost")




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