As a youngster, I was waiting for some divine “magic” to happen; that when I went to the alter, I would immediate become righteous and was so disappointed when the next day I was the same old sinner, doing the same old things.
At that time, I failed to understand original sin; that sin was in every cell of my flesh. I was expecting a divine “Houdini” to change me from one kind of being to another. Admittedly, God can do anything, and I have seen drug addicts delivered from drugs, and even fornication, immediately, but I was not! I still struggle with sin, and if you are a Christian and do not, then perhaps you do not recognize sin in your own flesh!
Recently, an overly critical and rude longtime Christian stated that she does not sin. She does, but fails to recognize it in herself, to wit: “If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His Word is not in us” (1 John 1:10). That lady deceives herself (1 John 1:8) as scripture points out. Christians still sin, and if anyone denies that, then they deny the truth. Can any of you Christians still be truthful and claim to be without sin? Why else would Jesus have Christians to pray to God for forgiveness of our trespasses (Mat 6:15)?
“Trespassing” in scripture is squatting on God’s Estate without acknowledging that you are there with His permission. It is wronging God, and even Christians wrong God quite often. For instance, skipping worship services is wronging God and some “trespass” against God from their recliners or stadium seats!
The point to this background is that converts expect to be a much different person after conversion than before, and the word “joy” in the King James Version leads one to believe that conversion is an ecstatic experience. The Greek word, chara, is translated as “joy” but it has a range of emotions from “calm delight” to “exceedingly cheerful” (Strong’s Definitions).
“Conversion” is the cause and joy the affect. Because people are emotionally different, they can have various degrees of joy, hence joy may be brief or enduring. Conversion does not depend on emotions but cognition.
Conversion is a mental task. The mind does the work. Paul wrote to Timothy, a young believer, “Consider what I say, and the Lord give thee understanding in all things” (1 Tim 2:7). What is it that must be understood? That you are not a god and as such, you cannot change yourself.
Because “iniquity” is your genetic identity (depravity), only God can change who you are! Have you considered that? If you have become a Christian, that you trust in God to change who you are is imperative. Trust is not an emotional experience; it is cognitive. You may feel relief, but relief is the outcome of trusting God because therein is the only opportunity for salvation. “He (Paul) reasoned in the synagogue every sabbath, and persuaded the Jews and the Greeks” (Acts 18:4).
The moment a sinner is persuaded to become a Christian is an “epiphany.” There are several meanings of that word, but “an illuminating discovery” is the most general. It is the “Light” of God shining right into the face of a sinner (To be discussed later is that it is a “Divine Impulse.”) It is when a sinner concludes that he or she has no power over their own eternal destiny and well-being. But that is not all; the remainder of the epiphany is that Jesus saves!
Work is “ergon” in the Greek. Sinners can work by the sweat of their faces, but that changes nothing. Working smarter, not harder is “ergonomics.” The most ergonomic Way is trusting God to do the saving and resurrecting.
But what do you do? You submit to God, and He will give you understanding. Submission is doing nothing. You do what the repentant thief did; you act as if you are nailed in place while Jesus does all the transforming. Christians never quit trying to transform themselves. Christians are to do nothing for salvation… but think.
Cognitive work (thinking) is not physical, but it is only mental. Sinners are to “work out their salvation” (Phil 2:12). “Work” therein is katergomazai in the Greek. It is mental work that philosophers call “reason” and so did Paul when he persuaded the Jews and Greeks, he “reasoned in the synagogue.”
Reasoning is “the power of the mind to think, understand, and form judgments by a process of logic” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). It takes mental power but that is the most ergonomic of all the faculties. If only you could think, and your genes change, would be a miracle and that is essentially what “born again” entails! However, the first conclusion is an epiphany, but the continual application is constant self-analysis and conclusion-forming, just as, “Paul and Barnabas: who, speaking to them, persuaded them to continue in the grace of God” (Acts 13:43).
The grace of God wrought the epiphany but when that “Peak Experience” wanes, continual persuasion is efficacious. In other words, the road to salvation is not just the epiphany but the application of it. So, you trust God. Good! How far do you trust Him, part of the Way or all the Way?
Trust is reasoning. A person first thinks. Thinking requires that knowledge must be imputed. God does that through the Word in scripture. What is the “Knowledge”? The evidence that Jesus is, in fact, God in the flesh and that as the Creator (John 1), Jesus has the power to re-create, or regenerate; that He can resurrect a dead person. Do you have that power? No, you do not! That is only half-way there because you may reason faultily — no natural born person can raise anyone from the dead!
Dead Lazarus was told by God about the spiritual condition of his five brothers, “…neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead” (Luke 16:31). Even now, whenever a person’s heart fails, who gets the credit for resuscitation? Generally, the doctor. Seldom do you hear that Jesus raised a dead one from being dead! Now, either the doctor or pharma gets the credit. The pandemic revealed that even Christians “trust the science” more than the Creator, and even trust Dr. Fauci more so that the Great Comforter!
God spoke of persuasion. He said that a dead man walking again (Luke 16) would not be convincing. After Jesus died, then walked among men, most still do not believe that Jesus did that! The brothers of Lazarus, God knew, would have faulty reasoning.
As an educated man, Paul used logic
to persuade sinners to become Christians (Acts 13). One of his arguments
was this:
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)
“Without excuse,” in that statement of fact, is entirely reasonable.
Science claims reason and reasonability as their own ideology but God created the “Age of Reason,” not just the scientific age when Christianity was trivialized (1794 onward). Paine’s thesis was simple, “Paine advocates reason in the place of revelation, leading him to reject miracles and to view the Bible as an ordinary piece of literature, rather than a divinely-inspired text” (Wikipedia).
Reason uses the process of logic. Insinuated by Paine is that God is unreasonable and illogical!
The illogic presented by scripture are miracles. Now get this; what is the first “miracle” of scientists? The “Big Bang” is a conditional theory, and the conditional statement is; if there was a “Big Bang,” then all matter came from that release of energy.
Perhaps God did start existence with a Big Bang or by some other means. What is revealed as ultimate truth in the Bible is “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth” (Gen 1:1). Neither are capitalized by the translators, so that would mean that God created space and mass in some amount of time from the beginning. “Created” in that declaration infers that there was a process or processes that began physical things.
The “conditional statement” is, if
there was pre-existing power, then that power was transformed
into things (mass) over time. Albert Einstein reasoned that E=mc2
where E is the energy from that source of power, m is matter or things that can
be seen of tested, and c2 the speed of light squared. (The units of
c2 are length/time squared or area/sec/sec.) Isaiah knew that
equation before it was ever written! Here is Isaiah’s rationale:
21 Have ye not known? have ye not heard? hath it not been told you from the beginning? have ye not understood from the foundations of the earth? 22 It is He that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in” (Isa 40:21-22)
First off, Isaiah was not an archaic “scientist,” but he did have esoteric knowledge. From where did that special, little-known knowledge originate? The same origin as Paul’s.
Paul revealed its source when he wrote, “The invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen.” Paul had an epiphany on the road to Damascus. God blinded him and showed him visions.
Paul saw the creation of all things when his mind was blinded (Acts 9:9) from the distractions of the world. Paul saw, not only the generation of earthly matter, but perhaps the heavens as well: “I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth; such an one caught up to the third heaven” (2 Cor 12:2).
Perhaps God gave both Paul and Isaiah the same evidence. Isaiah saw the circle of the Earth generate a sphere as the “curtain” was rotated about an axis. That rotation was of an area that when it was complete, formed the spherical Earth in a process in time. Note that the units match — area in time over time. Not only does that apply to the Earth but all physical existence itself. Isaiah saw the celestial sphere whose cross-sectional area was rotated as a “curtain,” thus forming the cosmic sphere — the “dome” in many versions of Genesis 1:6.
Just as Isaiah and Paul, Einstein finally gave God the credit. Because of what he saw in his mind, Einstein concluded that there must be a Creator (God). No wonder scientists call the creating Existence (“E” in that equation) Higg’s Boson and “The God Particle.”
The “E” in that equation can just as well represent “The Existence” preceding all things — JHWH (Yahweh), the mass all things, and the c2 the process in time (Gen 4:3) squared.
All that to conclude that “The Creation Theory” is evidence of the Truth. Paul wrote the conditional statement, if what you see is credited to God, then things unseen are from God as well.
Scientific theory applies the “if/then” conditions to physical things and Paul applies it to unseen things as well. Is it not reasonable to assume that all things are in equilibrium in the universe; that for matter there is corresponding energy as in balancing a scientific equation? Finally, science has discovered the unseen that Isaiah and Paul saw and called it “antimatter.” In that theory, there is unseen matter for all seen matter for the universe to be in balance.
That sounds complicated, but science is complicated. The Creation Theory is conditional as well — if there are things that are seen, then there surely are things that are unseen. Creation Theory is therefore as logical and reasonable as scientific theory and even more so. Science calls their “Unknown God” a “Discontinuity” — that both physical and astro-science was suspended for that one time wherein something’s source was from “no thing.” Ironically, that is what a “miracle” is! So, science, as well as Judeo-Christianity, believes in miracles, but science just one “miracle” — the biggest miracle that God ever performed!
Christians believe in the resurrection (i.e., the re-creation) but so many deny the Creation. If God has the dynamis (virtue) to create; then God can re-create, or resurrect, the creatures and things for life.
Therefore, it is essential that
Christians must believe in the Creation, or what? Their “God” is not a god at
all but a myth. Why so? Because the definition of a God is an entity that has
the power and will to create, and if indeed a “god, then
only One God is required to both create and resurrect. That “One God” was identified
as Jesus:
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 The same was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made… 10 He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not… 14 And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth. (John 1:1-3, 10, 14)
All this commentary is technical and even scientific. However, the hypotheses herein must be taken as truth — that if Jesus is God in the flesh and that just as He is imperishable, then so can those who trust Him might be. The repentant thief on the cross, ostensibly to the right side of Jesus, saw two things, I believe: (1) He saw Jesus transfigured wherein his Spirit was revealed from his physical Existence, proving that there is an unseen God manifested in the flesh as Jesus, and (2) he saw the “Man’s” Existence written on His thigh, “King OF King; Lord Of Lords” (Rev 19:16) — in the Greek, Basileus Basileus; Kyrios Kyrios — “The Founder Of Foundations; The Possessor And Disposer.”
Therein, it was complicated, but let it be simple; if you trust God for the substance of His Word, then the Word is Truth, and you shall be set free from the falsehoods of the world. And what would those be? That there is no God, and that Jesus was certainly not Him.
The crucifixion of Jesus revealed the Substances of the Father: (1) His Divine Matter and (2) His Divine Spirit for which science has no explanation. The Greeks did — Jesus was the “Vessel” from which the Virtue (dynamis) of God was poured to redeem mankind.
“Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Heb 11:1). Hope is more than wishful thinking but looking forward to the time when the things promised will be realized. Hope is a measure of the degree of certainty. Doubt is created by the Wicked One to dissuade you. Satan wants you to doubt the Creation, to dismiss from your thoughts that resurrection is real.
To uncomplicate salvation, it is nothing more than reason which is from the Divine Impulse of God. If you are convinced that there is a God, and that only He can save, and that God is called Jesus, then you have been persuaded to be a Christian. If you are a Christian who believes the Word as Truth, in the process of time, then you shall be saved.
There are no shortcuts. You must trust God for the duration. Trust is faith over the process of time, and the time is when? “And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed” (Rom 13:11).
“Knowing” is certainty. It is fully persuaded. “Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind” (Rom 14:5). It is reasoning; I exist, who did that?
Hence, a Christian is one who is persuaded, and by the time death is eminent, fully persuaded. So, eternal life does not depend on what you do but what you think about God. If your God is not Jesus and He did not Create; then your God has not the power nor the purpose to save you.
Christians live in safety from the Wicked One until death; that is why death is gain if in Christ (Phil 1:21).
Death has a “sting” as is written about the soul becoming incorruptible, “…Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting?” (1 Cor 15:54-56). Apparently, there are two stings of death: 1) the sting for the unrighteous is sin (1 Cor 15:57) but for the victorious the sting is the “Divine Impulse” from above that theologians call the “Divine Spark.”
The question has always been, is the Spark at conversion or at death? Scripture points more to the reception of the Divine Spark at death when the soul is dynamically (virtuously) removed from the decadent flesh. The Spark would be like God taking His intense Light and surgically removing dead flesh from an eternal soul!
The Divine Impulse seems magical; even mythological, but it is presented for another purpose. Science says that Higg’s Boson is the “Big Bang,” also called “The God Particle” that resulted in all things. That gigantic “Spark” came from somewhere. Science has no idea from where all that pin-pointed energy came to provide the impulse or spark to initiate that huge process.
The Big Bang, a bang without a sound for there was no receiver to hear it, resounded across empty space. The Divine Impulse was the Impetus that brought about a “wormwood-type” process. An Impulse is a force so communicated as to produce a sudden motion. Imagine the terrific impulsion when God generated all things from His own dynamics; when His Virtue made all things “good.”
A “wormwood” is a star so potent that it will destroy one-third of all creation (Rev 8:11). Wormwood is calamity on a scale never seen before and is a partial reversal of the Creation process wherein all things were generated. So, just as God used His Divine Impulse to create all things, God will take back one-third of what He generated with another Divine Impulse. He will send an exploding “star” to surgically remove so much of what He made. “Star” is not literal in Revelation 8:11. It comes from a root word, meaning “spreading.” God, in the end, will provide an impulsion that will spread all over the universe. Science considers that spreading in the beginning a dynamic “particle field.” They have validated the Existence of God and never even noticed it!
The point to all this commentary is to show that the Creation and the Re-creation of all things IS “science.” Albeit science, it is God who is the “Author” of science, and scientists mere students of it. Although relatively good students, none deserve “outstanding,” but God deserves “Magnificence.” He is the Supreme Teacher and science students are slow learners.
Does it not make sense that if God uses His Divine Impulse to re-erect the universe, that God used that same Divine Impulse to erect it in the first place? Does it not make sense that if God is too weak to Erect that He would be too weak to Resurrect?
The purpose in writing this is to promote the rationalism in Judeo-Christianity. It is the only explanation for all material things, and certainly for the provenance of things unseen that heretofore science never attempted to theorize.
When there was nothing but void in the beginning, “God said, ‘Let there be light’” (Gen 1:3), and God provided the Light — the Energy — required for the Creation process. Thereat was the Divine Impulse that provided that one-time Big Bang. From that Impulse “Wormwood” spread. Science calls the spreading of that impulsion “particles fields” or as much the cosmic “waters” of God. Then God separated the waters from the waters (Gen 1:6) and the types of particle fields were divided. “Waters” therein are literally “semen from semen” (Strong’s) and as such God’s “Goodness” spread across the void much like Wormwood will in the end.
Wormwood is bitterness (ibid) but in the beginning that spreading was Goodness from the bowels of God. It is written, “Thou shalt rejoice in every good thing which the Lord thy God hath given unto thee” (Deut 26:11). “Good” therein is figuratively “fertile” (ibid). That all things point toward the fertility of God is reasonable.
Reason is a constant topic throughout scripture, and one example is, “’Come now, and let us reason together,’ saith the Lord…” (Isa 1:18). Judeo-Christianity is not mythology; it is science (Theology) because reason is the basis of scientific theorizing. If/then is the hypothesis/conclusion process used to test the validity of a premise.
God said, I did all that! Just as in science, all things in scripture are to be tested for validity: “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good” (1 Thes 5:21). “Prove” is often translated as “test.” All things are to be tested. Provenance is unattainable in science. It requires faith for science as well because they never claim to prove anything. The process is only a failure to reject the null hypothesis.
The null to God did this is God did not do that! God can neither be proven nor disproven, so science tests His Dynamics — Did God do this or not? Science cannot reject the null… God did not do that cannot be rejected so it is not proof but “evidence.” So, their failure to reject was that all things happened by chance encounter with no intelligence at all but by randomness alone. By that, God is dismissed from the hypothesis but still nothing is proved nor disproved.
Reason has it that if there is order, then there is intelligence. Only a fool would argue that there is no order, and if there is order, then who was intelligent enough to design it? There is order… that is not subjective. Paul saw it and wrote about it to the Romans. He presented evidence for God as only God is omniscient. Jesus was not a mere “carpenter.” He was called a “Tekton” (in the Greek). John said that Jesus IS the Creator (John 1), so John understood that Jesus was the “Technician” who was omniscient enough to make all things good.
How about virtue to create all things good? When Jesus healed the woman with the blood issue, “Jesus, immediately knowing in Himself that virtue had gone out of him…” (Mark 5:30). That Virtue was the dynamics (Greek; dynamis) that changed the woman’s blood from tainted into pure.
When Jesus healed the nations at the crucifixion, imagine the Virtue released from Him to do that! That impulsion of Virtue was the Divine Impulse that spread all over the world to provide the Potential for saving all of mankind, according to John 3:16.
That “God so loved the world” implies that He provides Virtue enough for everybody who would have it. That Divine Love is the spread of the Divine Impulse from God.
“The God Particle” of science cannot be seen; it can only be detected by measurement. It is theorized by the evidence scientists see.
Neither can God’s Divine Impulse be seen but because of the existence of all things, wise people believe it to be reality and truth. The point herein is that not only is the Bible “The Last Will and Testament of God,” but it is also scientific. After all, who would want an Estate in another realm if it was not Real Estate?
The thread throughout the Bible is the provision of the evidence that God’s unseen Estate is as real as the Paradise of Israel. The reader may have missed it, but the Bible begins with the Creation and to whom all things belong. Because they belong to God, only He has the right to distribute it to whomever He will.
Rather than give it all away, one-third of His real Estate will be destroyed at His Impulse. It is His right to do so!
Although I could go on and on, surely the reader has tired. Even if I showed you a body that was raised from the dead, most would not believe God! God did that too; He raised His Son from among the dead and gave Him the Divine “Sting” of Life! If He can do that one time, He can do that all the time… if He wills it. To be in the Will of God is to believe that He did all that He said He did.
So, you do not believe that God created? Therefore, since only gods create, you deny His Godhood. Your God is so a weak entity; so weak, He has no power to do much of anything! Why, then, would that weak God be able to save you by resurrection?
My hope is that you see that God is the “Author” of science and that even Einstein was just a poor student just as his teachers thought. Before he died, Einstein at the end, received an A-minus because albeit He reasoned that there had to be a God, His God was so weak that even though He could create, He could never re-create.
Please think on these things!
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