Kingdom Ready

In trying to get back in the swing of posting, I ‘m publishing an article here from one of my Facebook friends.

This was something he wrote and posted on FB last month and I really liked it a lot.  I told him I would post it here later so that others could read it as well.  Hope you enjoy it too.

This week I’m beginning another series from my website.  The foundation for our understanding of the Kingdom of God is found in the Old Testament.  Throughout its pages we see the purpose of God unfolded from creation, through Abraham, Moses, David, and the Prophets.  In part 1 we will see that from the beginning God has always wanted man to dwell on the earth that He created.

In The Beginning

Man was designed to live on this planet. The earth was designed to be the home for man. This was the plan God had from the very beginning. He began by creating the heavens and the earth, and He spent six days preparing it for His man. When it was finished, he put Adam and Eve in the garden and gave them dominion over the earth.

Karl, recently emailed me a link to this lecture on the first chapter of Genesis. The talk is titled “Why God Didn’t Call the Light ‘Light.'” Dr. John Walton, professor of Old Testament at Wheaton College, spoke at Blackhawk Church back in 2005 about how important it is to be aware of the cultural setting of the Bible. In particular, he focused on how we should interpret the first chapter of Genesis functionally rather than ontologically. In other words, rather than thinking about what God made we should understand this chapter in reference to the functions God gave these various systems: time, weather, food cycle, etc. Not only will this teaching make you think, it will make you aware of your own cultural bias and learn how to read the Bible more effectively.

As we walk through our daily life we are always thinking about something, or perhaps many things.  Consider this:Prov 4:26  Ponder the path of thy feet, and let all thy ways be established.
Prov 4:27  Turn not to the right hand nor to the left: remove thy foot from evil. 
In an article about “The Fixation of Belief” by Charles Sanders Pierce much consideration is given to “logical thought” to bring man to “one true conclusion”.  However, as is brought forth in this article review by Brett Clippingdale, mans own ability to perceive is in question. 

My local Jehovah Witnesses recently came by for a follow-up visit to an earlier one (which I wrote about here on the blog – “When the Arians came calling“).  During their most recent visit I was asked: “Other than your disagreement with our view of Jesus being a preexistent angel, what else would prevent you from being a Jehovah Witness?”.  My response was that there were several other views that I did not agree with (e.g. their view of the 144,000, and some others), but it was their prohibition against blood transfusions that I thought was not only wrong, but just plain dangerous and insidious.

I read an article recently detailing the benefit of using self control to gain mental strength.  You can read the article in the Albany Times union archives entitled, “Grant funds study of self control” from a gentleman named Mark Muraven.  In it an amazing comparison is made to practicing mental restraint in order to gain overall mental strength.  Here is a quote from the article,

“Mark Muraven, a social psychologist, theorizes that self-will is a muscle. Exercise it, and it gets stronger.” 

and 

“From my perspective, you can never have too much self-control,” Muraven said. “I think it’s the most important part of people’s lives. Without self-control, people and society would have a lot of problems: debts, crime, failure to work, obesity and health problems.”

There are common presuppositions that everyone brings towards reading the Scriptures that are entirely unwarranted. These are brought by both those who have faith in the Scriptures, and those who wish to invalidate them. And both views need light shed on them. I hope to use some of NT Wright’s introductory “The New Testament and the People of God” in helping us understand these issues.

In the New Testament field, some critics have made a great song and dance about the fact that the details of Jesus’ life, or the fact of his resurrection, cannot be proved ‘scientifically’; philosophical rigour should compel them to admit that the same problem pertains to the vast range of ordinary human knowledge, including the implicit claim that knowledge requires empirical verification.

Dinesh D’Souza was born in Bombay, India; he came to America at the age of 17; and he eventually graduated from Dartmouth. He was a policy adviser in Ronald Reagan’s White House until 1988. His latest book, What’s So Great About Christianity? is a response to many of the new atheists who are traipsing around saying that the greatest problems of the world are caused by religion (in particular Christianity and Islam). Surprisingly, even Michael Shermer, publisher of the magazine, Skeptic, and an ex-Christian, had this to say of D’Souza’s book, What’s So Great About Christianity?:

Evolution reigns supreme in the educational institutions of America and Europe. However, there are major holes in the theory that remain even after over a hundred years of intense efforts to fill them in not to mention the billions of research dollars spent along with some of the careers of many of the finest scientific minds of the 20th century. Even so, alternative theories of how everything came about are routinely ostracized, ridiculed, and rejected without investigation. Ben Stein has done the leg work to track down this anti-freedom conspiracy and expose it for what it is: good old fashioned fear–fear of being wrong. Click the play button below to watch the trailer for this upcoming movie due to hit theaters this spring.

Cypress trees in Hungary buried for “eight million years” are unfossilized and uncoalified. 

Bacteria buried under Antarctic ice that “range in age from 100000 years to eight million years” were revived.

They have also found soft dinosaur tissue that was apparently millions of years old. 

Read more! 

According to the geneologies and timelines given in the scriptures the earth is between 6000 and 10000 years old.  This flies in the face of modern science where long ages have replaced the great God who created everything with natural random processes. Finds like these don’t ever cause the long ages to be reconsidered…their old ages are just assumed.