Forgiveness

What if forgiveness begins upon the revelation of how the great deceiver has been exploiting our responses to past trauma to cause us to depend upon our inner resources in a concerted effort to validate his own narrative that the creature has their own inner light? When the veil of the response of the natural, free-willed human being is lifted by exposing the trauma-to-psychological defense mechanism, we see how fallen and independent human nature is manipulated by Satanic triggers.

We called for His crucifixion because we wanted a defiant freedom fighter instead of a bruised, whipped, defeated, and passive man. Our human experience in this world requires strength and overcoming weakness; but the testimony from the cross exhibits weakness and surrender. He forgives us because we don't know that what we are manipulated into doing, blinded by our deluded sense of self-preservation, is the result of Satanic conditioning that only His testimony of surrender could break. 

The power to break the bondage of sin was expressed in His coming as the weakest of all creatures, manifest in the wonders performed by a Christ emptied of His divinity, testified in His surrender at the cross, and victorious in His resurrection. Our God extends forgiveness to us all, but the forgiveness is not complete until we surrender our deluded, independent, and proud will back to the One who created us to reveal His image. For the image of the beast is a trophy, but the image of God is the cross.

Theodicy in the Book of Job

1. In Ezekiel 28 what is Lucifer’s sin?
2. Why is sin explained in Genesis as the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and in Ezekiel 28 as pride?
3. How does the creation remain in the midst of sin?
4. Why would God sustain a self-annihilating world?
5. What does God provide to a world on a path to annihilation?
6. How is this intercession a testimony of the Grace of God?
7. How does the message of the Book of Job align with the creation, the fall, Abel’s offering, Exodus 13, the Sanctuary Service, the birth of Christ, the death of Christ, the resurrection, the out-pouring of the Holy Spirit, and the consuming fire Paul writes of in 1 Corinthians 3:5-15?
8. God recognizes the righteousness of Job after he repents wanting to assert his own righteousness.  Job acknowledges God has shown him things to beautiful to understand.  In Hebrews 9:13-14 and Isaiah 53:7 what does it mean that Christ offered Himself without blemish?  
9. If Christ, in coming to this world surrendered His divinity (Philippians 2:5-8), and at the cross surrendered His humanity [fallen or un-fallen] (Psalm 31:5, Luke 23:46); of what relevance is the contention of the nature of Christ?
10. In Revelation 20, what was Lucifer left with?  On the cross, what was Christ left with?  What makes the difference between the two?  How does Revelation 20:7-10 contrasted with Philippians 2:5-8 reveal what God reveals to Job in chapter 42?
11. What message does the author of the Book of Job convey by the conspicuous absence of Satan in the last chapters?
12. If Christ could come into this world as a weak, defenseless, and powerless infant; what threat does Satan truly pose to the kingdom of God?  Why?

What greater testimony of the eternal Grace of God can there be than God reaching into the midst of a self-annihilating world and bringing out of it life?

The Revelation of Christ in The Book of Job

SS 3 DEC 2016

1. In Ezekiel 28 what is Lucifer’s sin?
2. What point is Elihu making in Job 32:2, 33:13, 35:6-7, and 37:11-12?
3. Why is sin explained in Genesis as the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and in Ezekiel 28 as pride?
4. How does the creation remain in the midst of sin?
5. Why would God sustain a self-annihilating world?
6. What does God provide to a world on a path to annihilation?
7. How is this intercession a testimony of the Grace of God?
8. How does the message of the Book of Job align with Abel’s offering, Exodus 13, the Sanctuary Service, the birth of Christ, the death of Christ, the resurrection, the out-pouring of the Holy Spirit, and the consuming fire Paul writes of in 1 Corinthians 3:5-15?
9. God recognizes the righteousness of Job after he repents wanting to assert his own righteousness.  Job acknowledges God has shown him things to beautiful to understand.  In Hebrews 9:13-14 and Isaiah 53:7 what does it mean that Christ offered Himself without blemish?
10. What greater testimony of the eternal Grace of God can there be than God reaching into the midst of a self-annihilating world and bringing out of it life?

"Innocent Blood"

1.         What is the definition of innocent? 

2.         What definition of innocent applies to the phrase “innocent blood”?

3.         Based on Job 1:8 was there any doubt Job was innocent?

4.         What made Job innocent?

5.         How was Job’s legal status relevant to the message of the Book of Job?

6.         Understanding the folly of Job’s legal view of God’s justice when he wanted to take God to court to prove his innocence, how does Isaiah 53 illuminate the Gospel represented in Job 42:1-6?

7.         How does Paul’s rendition of Isaiah 53 in Philippians 2:5-11 link us with Christ?

8.         How does Paul link Faith and Hope in Hebrews 11:1? ὑπόστασις- guarantee/assurance

9.         How does he link them to Love in 1 Corinthians 13?

10.       Why is Love the greatest?

11.       What is the relationship between the words “test/tested” and “approved”?

12.       How does this understanding of “test” and “approve” illuminate Romans 5:1-5?

13.       How does Paul expand upon Romans 5 in 1 Corinthians 3:5-15?  What comes through the fire and what does not?

14.       Did Paul think his legal status (blameless) was sufficient?  Philippians 3:4-7 ζημίαν- transactional loss

15.       Based on the message of the Book of Job, and the messages of Paul, is innocent blood sufficient for salvation?

16.       Was Christ’s death on the cross a transaction or a revelation?

Christ does not say, “This is life”; He said, “I am the life.”

SS Lesson 15 OCT 2016

1. Did contemporary tradition believe Job's righteousness merited his prosperity?
2. Was Job's prosperity a matter of cosmic justice?
3. What was Satan's hypothesis about Job?  Job 2:3, Job 40:8
4. How does Satan’s premise represented by the phrase, “skin for skin” (Job 2:4) relate to Christ’s statement in Luke 17:33?
5. Was Satan contending that Job would contest his unjust adversity?  Job 13:18, 16:21, 19:6-7, 23:3-7, 27:6, 31:6
6. Why would God lead Satan into this allegation?  Job 40:8
7. How is God's justice fundamentally different than Satan's and ours?
8. Was Job’s deliverance based on his blamelessness before God?  Job 42:1-6
9. What did Job discover that was, “too wonderful for me, which I did not know.”  Job 42:3
10. Job knew about legal righteousness before his encounter, but what did he know about Grace and the Gospel?

Sabbath School 17 SEP 2016

1. What was the message of Jeremiah chapter 29?  (Verse 7)
2. How can we relate to this message?
3. What are some examples of urban evangelism in scripture?
4. What do they have in common?
5. John 6:52-57, 7:1-9, 8:43-44, what was Christ's view of publicity?
6. Why did people come to Jesus?
7. How does His common response explain their healing?
8. What does Ephesians 2:8-9 tell us about faith?
9. Matthew 16:13-18  What did Christ mean when He said, “flesh and blood did not reveal this to you”?
10. What then is the rock Christ builds His church upon?
11. How would you describe modern urban culture?
12. What appeal does the Spirit hold for urban culture?  Why?
13. What do we do to the Gospel when we attempt to make it appealing to urban multiculturalism?
14. So how are we to go out and make disciples out from all nations?

SS Lesson 22 OCT 2016

1. What is the foundational difference between creationism and naturalism?  Rom 1:21-23
2. Upon what premise does naturalism depend to explain the origins of life?
3. Why is law asserted as the premise for naturalism?
4. Upon what premise does creationism depend to explain the origins of life?
5. How does Paul explain the creative nature of God’s word?  Hebrews 11:3-4
6. Why did Paul use Cain and Abel as an analogy to faith, creation, and God’s word?
7. What do the two offerings represent?
8. How does Exodus 13:11-16 explain the message of Abel’s sacrifice?
9. How does this explanation contrast the marks in Revelation 13:16?
10. How are the marks of the beast like Cain’s offering?
11. What do we assume about the premise of origins when we ask God why He allows suffering?
12. How does the deliverance of Noah, of Lot, of the Israelites, and the redeemed at the final judgment explain Romans 3:1-4?  What is the context of Psalm 51:4?  
13. What is the difference between the testimony of the Jews (or ours) of the truth and the will of God?
14. Which is greater, our observation and codification of the truth we observe, or the truth itself?
15. What is truth?

Notes:

Jesus didn't say, "This is the truth", He said, "I am the truth."

2 Cor 3:7 But if the ministry of death, in letters engraved on stones, came with glory, so that the sons of Israel could not look intently at the face of Moses because of the glory of his face, fading as it was, 8how will the ministry of the Spirit fail to be even more with glory? 9For if the ministry of condemnation has glory, much more does the ministry of righteousness abound in glory. 10For indeed what had glory, in this case has no glory because of the glory that surpasses it. 11For if that which fades away was with glory, much more that which remains is in glory.

Hebrews 8:13When He said, “A new covenant,” He has made the first obsolete. But whatever is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to disappear.

A Weapon

Sometimes I am dirty, carbon hardened on my bolt, gritty lube in my receiver, and salty sweat on my buttstock.

Sometimes I am torn apart, laid out with all my filthy insides exposed, carefully cleaned, the hard scale meticulously chipped away.

Sometimes I am clean, with a light coat of oil, silent and unused, hanging on His gun rack.

Then there are those days He takes me into the trenches, for purposes I cannot perceive, in ways I could never imagine, with the precision and power that reveals His glory.

I am a weapon. 

The Gospel of Marriage

If the common understanding of marriage is founded on the vows people make, made sacred by the witness of God; then the foundation of the purported sacrament of marriage is the promise of a man testified by God.  However, if the foundation of a marriage is the promise of God to weave our hearts together and make us one, that no man can dissolve; it is man who testifies of what God has done and what He is doing.  This new understanding renders the first one not only obsolete but also blasphemous.

The Razor

To be a true Conservative (or Right) means to preserve the the rule of Law no matter the considerations for situational attenuation; an application that (when evolved along its course) must adhere to the interpretation of the Conservative- others be damned.

 To be a true Liberal (or Left) means to break every notion of rule, Law, and pre-contractual solidarity upon the altar of Reason in order to liberate the true identity of man; an application that (when evolved along its course) must adhere to the interpretation of the Liberal- others be damned.

 In the end both destroy Liberty by imposing upon the world a version of reality by the power of Law or Reason . . . the Conservative and the Liberal are one and the same. The Liberal becomes a Law of themselves and the Conservative the only bearer of sound Reason.

 Both the Liberal and the Conservative must vanquish one last foe to attain ontological fulfillment. They must (by the power of Law and Reason) destroy God, and place themselves in His place.


 If I am to find life, I must SURRENDER LAW AND REASON ON THE ALTAR OF FAITH.

The Image of God

How do I know my name is written in heaven? When the Love of God is poured through my heart into the vessel that completes me, inspiring the music that flows through her instrument- stirring my soul . . . I know the Kingdom of Heaven is here- even in me.

SS Lesson 28 June 2014

1.       In Eden, did Adam live in the Kingdom of Heaven?

2.       How did Christ describe dominion or rule in the Kingdom of Heaven?  (Matthew 20:25-28, Luke 22:24-27)

3.       Therefore, in Eden what does dominion mean?

4.       When Adam asserted to be like God what kind of dominion did he assert?

5.       Who maintained sovereignty of Eden?  Who was cast out?  Who else was cast out of the kingdom of heaven?

6.       What is the difference between the land of Eden and the land outside Eden?

7.       What is the difference between the source of life in Eden and the source of life outside Eden?

8.       Which provides eternal life?

9.       What does the Tree of Life symbolize?

10.   Where did the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil lead Adam and Eve?

11.   With which of the two trees would Grace be associated?

12.   With which of the two trees would Law be associated?

13.   In reference to Corinthians 4:3-4 who does Paul identify as being veiled? (2 Cor 3:7, 13-15)

14.   What does Paul refer to as the ministry of death?  (2 Cor 3:7-11)

15.   Paul uses a contrasting parallel in 1 Cor 3:5-6.  What has God made us adequate for, by what means, and unto what end?  What source of adequacy is denied, what means to adequacy is denied, and what is the result for those who pursue such a deluded course?

16.   How does Paul contrast those who are veiled to those with unveiled faces (2 Cor 3:2-3)

17.   What is revealed behind the veil? (2 Cor 3:16-18)

18.   How does understanding the contrast between dominion in the Kingdom of Earth and the Kingdom of Heaven help us understand Matthew 4:1-11?

19.   How is the Gospel revealed in Eden, 2 Cor 3, and the temptations of Christ?

20.   In regards to holding allegiance, what is the difference between submission and surrender?

21.   How does Christ describe how we show where our citizenship resides? (John 13:35)

22.   By what means is this citizenship revealed? (2 Cor 3:5-6)

Sabbath School 20 JUN 2014

1.      What is the new ἐντολή Christ gives us? (John 13)

2.      Where does love come from?  Can it come from somewhere else? (1 John 4)

3.      Can the Law of sin and death make us righteous? (Romans 8, Galatians 2:21, 3:21)

4.      What is righteousness? (Romans 3)

5.      In the transition from the Old Covenant to the New how has the understanding of the word ἐντολή changed? (Hebrews 8)

6.      Who is the agency of righteousness?   Who alone is good? (Luke 18:19)

7.      Can righteousness originate from man?  (Romans 3)

8.      When did the Law γεγονὼς [come to be]? (Galatians 3:17)

9.      Until when is the Law utilized? (Matthew 5:18)

10.  When was the Lamb slain? (Revelation 13:8)

11.  What or who does the slain Lamb and the Tree of Life symbolize?

12.  What is Grace? (2 Cor: 9:8, 12:9, Eph 2:8)

13.  How long does Grace exist? (Romans 5:21)

14.  When did Grace begin? (Gen 1)

15.  What happens when we define righteousness as the keeping of the Law? (Gal 5:4)

16.  What are the two dominating metaphysics inherited from Greek philosophy that dominate the theological paradigms of Western Christianity?

17.  What is the difference between Platonism and Aristotelianism?

18.  How do these interpretations of truth and reality influence our understanding of Salvation by Grace through Faith? (Galatians 4:1-11)

19.  How does this understanding cause the difference in finding Grace resistible or irresistible?

20.  How does Platonism and Aristotelianism influence our perspective of human will?

21.  What major theological paradigms establish positions on free will?  Do those positions address the permanence of human free will?

22.  What do Platonism and Aristotelianism have in common for defining truth and reality?

23.  If both philosophies presuppose the dualism of Law (good and evil) how does each approach the means to keep the law?

24.  Do either philosophy’s means to righteousness agree with scripture?

25.  Is righteousness and salvation controlled by the human capability of choice based on the human knowledge of good and evil? (Romans 6:1-7)

26.  If the knowledge of good and evil leads to death how can it be used to save?

27.  What then is the basis of salvation?

28.  How does Christ reveal what righteousness is?  By whose will?

29.  If righteousness, grace, and salvation is by the will of God then is man in control of its determination?  (Romans 10:1-10)

30.  Does this mean we have no free will?

31.  What changed when Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil? (Genesis 3:4-13, 22-24)

32.  Why does Satan say that we would be like gods? (Genesis 3:5)

33.  If by the knowledge of good and evil sin came into the world then by whose will did it emerge?

34.  If our righteousness is not attainable by an independent, sovereign, and free human will; and sin did not come by God’s will then is either philosophy of human free will valid?

35.  What must occur in the transition from righteousness to sin for man to live by the knowledge of good and evil?

36.  What did Satan offer man?

37.  What must occur for man to return to the original state in which the knowledge of good and evil is obsolete? (Matthew 16:24-26)

38.  How did the Lamb of God achieve this? (Philippians 2:5-11)

39.  How does Christ say the truth is revealed to us John (Matt 16:16-18)?

40.  Upon what does Christ build His church?

41.  What happens when we assert that His church is built on free will? (Matt 21:42-44)

42.  If true love is only by free will, then is love of man?

43.  Is salvation earned by submission of the will or received through surrender of the will?

The Incorruptible Gospel

I have just watched a Star Trek: Voyager episode and discovered a theme I had never seen before; a theme influenced by our western culture of which the writers would certainly be unaware.  It is a theme the writers may openly deny yet are unwittingly influenced by, a theme forgotten by those who should know it best.  This literary theme has been lost to those it was intended for but none the less been made manifest, as if the rocks were crying it out.  The two-part episode entitled “The Year of Hell” begins with Captain Annorax, the commander of a ship that can alter history by annihilating entire civilizations; a power used to restore the glory of an empire lost.  The ship and crew of Voyager are ravaged by the effects of this ship that has restored 98% of its empire.  Yet 98% is not enough for its captain who has lost his wife as a result of his incursions into the rewriting of history.  He is a desperate and obsessed man who believes if he can calculate precisely enough he can restore his wife and his empire.  In the end, the captain of Voyager sacrifices herself as she tells her forces to lower the shields of their ships that protect them from the time-altering weapon of Annorax’ ship.  They cry out that they will be defenseless, but she responds that if the ship that began the year of hell and has warped history is destroyed, so will the altered universe be destroyed-- restoring the original state.

How is it that the writers of Star Trek, who clearly subscribe to a macro-evolutionary interpretation of origins, can create an insight into the archetype of the Gospel of Surrender?  The power that Annorax employed was the power that kept him from his wife and brought destruction to his sector of the galaxy.  The destruction of the power to control time and space, combined with the vulnerable state of the allied ships, restored them to their original state while the corrupted universe was annihilated.  The episode ends where it began, with the critical alteration that Annorax was reunited with his wife; his plans for the ship that would corrupt the fabric of space unfinished. 

The Star Trek writers would deny it but they are influenced by a theme that is innately embedded in our western minds, unless we purposefully purge it by our efforts to be good.  It is the theme of the Gospel of Surrender.  Satan who presumed to make the universe better, brought upon it corruption.  By his asserted will Satan deceived man to think by a free will he too could control his destiny and sustain his life.  We have bought into the lie that God made us with free and independent wills, but Christ revealed the original state of the universe as beings surrendered to His will.  In sovereignty there is death, but in surrender there is life; the mystery of the stumbling stone of contradiction that can only be revealed by Grace.  Given to the rocks to cry out, and they don’t even know it.

John Chapter 15

John Chapter 15

1.       What is the fundamental analogy in John 15?

2.       What makes us “clean”?

3.       How does Christ drive home the point of the analogy in verse 5?

4.       In verse 7 whose words are doing the asking?

5.       How does the reference to His words in verse 7 reveal the reason why Christ mentions His word in verse 3?

6.       By whom is discipleship proven?

7.       Has Christ revealed the works of the Father?  Who did the works? (John 14:10)

8.       How do the Words of the Father create fruit?

9.       Who is really creating the fruit, doing the work, speaking the words, and keeping His commands of the Father and Christ?

10.   In verse 10, do we abide in God's love because we keep His commands or because He works His commands in us?  (Luke 19:39-40)

11.   How could this bring joy to you?

12.   How does Christ make us like Him in verse 12?

13.   How does Christ reveal in the synopsis of the verses 13-17 the closeness of our relationship with Him?

14.   What has the world rejected?

15.   Although it is His word, why does Christ refer to it as their Law in verse 25?

16.   Of whom do both the Father and the Apostles testify?  How does this relate to Christ’s fundamental analogy?  Of whom is the testimony? (Rev 19:10)

Sabbath School Lesson 22 SEP 2012- The Antichrist

Sabbath School Lesson 22 SEP 2012- The Antichrist

 

2 Thessalonians 2:1-12 (Translation from the Greek):

 

However, we implore you, brothers, concerning the coming of our Lord, Jesus Christ, and his gathering together of us, to not be quickly shaken of mind nor troubled neither by means of spirit, nor through word, nor through letter, even through us, even because the day of the Lord is at hand.

 

Let no one be deceived in any manner, for not until first the apostasy comes may the man of lawlessness be revealed,  the son of destruction; he who opposes and exalts himself above every self-proclaimed god or object of worship so as to sit in the temple of God- exhibiting himself as proof that he is a god.  Do you not remember yet while being with you I told you these things?  And now you perceive that which is restraining he who is to be revealed in his own time.  For the mystery of the coming lawlessness is already working (ἤδη- eide).  Only He who presently restrains until out of the midst emerges and then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will subdue by the breath of His mouth and render powerless by the glorious appearance of His advent(παρουσίας-parousias).

 

Those who are perishing, which the love of the truth they had not received to be saved, exchanged it for the advent(παρουσία-parousia) of the work of Satan, which is in every power and mark and wonder of falsehood and in every deceit of injustice.  And on account of this, God permits a deceiving work to go to them, leading them to believe the false one; in order that they may all be judged, not having believed the truth but having delighted in unrighteousness.

 

1.       Should we be troubled over the coming of the Lord?

2.       What will reveal the man of lawlessness?

3.       How is this man of lawlessness described?

4.       To whom else did Jesus ascribe lawlessness? (Matt 23:27-28)

5.       Who is restraining the man of lawlessness?

6.       Why do you think he is restrained?

7.       Is the mystery of lawlessness already at work?

8.       Who reveals the man of lawlessness?

9.       What happens to him?

10.   How does Paul use the term "Advent" to contrast two groups of people?  What causes the contrast?

11.   What causes God to permit the deceiving work to go out?

12.   What does it accomplish?

13.   What is the difference in experience between those Paul is writing to and those Paul writes about?

14.   How does this difference relate to the first question?

Revelation, and the God Revealed in It

Sabbath School Lesson 13 OCT

Revelation, and the God Revealed in It

1.       Is God's objective to save us from our sinful choices?

 

2.       Is the Bible the objective or the witness?

 

3.       Is the Bible a code book or a case book? 

 

4.       What makes the Bible testimony a revelation?  Amos 3:7

 

5.       Do the words of the Bible reveal the Gospel or does the Spirit, as we read the words?

 

6.       Were the Pharisees and Sadducees obeying the Scriptures?

 

7.       Why would Christ declare that they did not know the Scriptures when they memorized every word?

 

8.       How does their misunderstanding of Scripture relate to the notion that all Scripture must be obeyed except certain parts that are no longer binding?

 

9.       Are the Scriptures meaningful for our obedience or revelation of God's Grace?

 

10.   What happens when we view the Scriptures as revealing Good and Evil so that we will do the Good and not the Evil?

 

11.   What does God's Grace, revealed in Scripture, reveal about Himself and how He designed us?

 

12.   What comes first in the experience of salvation: the knowledge about God and the process of salvation or the Spirit of God drawing the sinner to Himself?

 

13.   So where does knowledge fit in?  Does it save us?

 

14.   How does the idea that knowledge saves us lead us to depend on the human mind?

 

15.   Are we saved when we know we need God or when we resign to express that we know nothing?

 

16.   What did God reveal about Himself to Elijah on Mt. Horeb?  How does this contradict our expectations of His nature?

 

17.   What critical aspect of God never changes, so that we are not lost forever?