The Trinity

I've wondered sometimes why it is that some people have a hard time understanding the Trinity and that Jesus was always God, He didn't 'become' God because of what He did. There are some religions considered to be in the 'Christian' realm that believe Jesus earned His place as deity because of His perfect life on earth. That's not what Scripture shows. It shows that He always was there and from the beginning of time, because He could foresee the future (He is not limited by our linear timeline) He planned His visit to earth to give His life as a sacrifice for our sin. Deut. 6:4 'Hear O Israel, the Lord Our God, the Lord is One.' When Moses asks who he should say sent him to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, God said, 'Tell them I AM that I AM.' Not we are who we are. We also know that it is impossible for God to lie. Heb. 6:18 So if His word seems to contradict itself at some other place, you must take all the Scripture together to figure out what it could mean. We must understand. He has made Himself clear if we seek Him. II Tim 3:16 'All Scripture is God breathed and useful for rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped.'
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John 1 tells us that Jesus was in the beginning with God. We didn't know Him as Jesus then, so he calls Him 'The Word'. John tells us the Word was with God and the Word WAS God. There are clearly two distinct personalities, at least. Verse 3 says everything was created through Him. Nothing was made without Him. Genesis 1:26 'Let US make man in OUR image.' Well, we know from John 1 that Jesus was there and we also know from Genesis 1:2 that the Spirit of God was there. That means that God is three in one - The Father (Jehovah), the Son (The Word, Adonai, Jesus) and the Holy Spirit (Spirit of God). He is not like us that we can amputate a part and still be who we are. His is God and one without the other two would cease to be God. That is one reason why God is One. Another is He is singularly the only God. All other 'gods' are either simply man made superstitions or demons demonstrating supernatural power in order to deceive. In the Psalms David says that God the Father spoke to God the Son saying, 'Sit at My right hand until I make Your enemies your footstool.' Psalms 110:1 The Jews recognized that this was the Messiah, the Son of God, deity, in Acts 2:37,38 (Ps. 110:1 quoted in v. 35)
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If some people weren't so concerned with trying to find where the Bible is wrong, they might just find out some enlightening information.

Firstborn from the Dead

I was studying and happened upon Colossians 1:18 that says, 'He is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning and the firstborn from the dead, so that in everything He might have supremacy.' I started thinking....you know, He wasn't the first to be raised from the dead, so what does this mean? They raised people from the dead in the Old Testament and Jesus Himself raised people from the dead, the most famous one being Lazarus. So what does it mean? He was the first after redemption from sin - the debt had been paid, but He was sinless. He could have gone back to the Father at any time. I believe the difference is the resurrected, glorified body. He took it with Him when He left, no one else has done that since, nor had anyone done it before except perhaps Elijah and Enoch. (Mark 16:19 The Lord is received up into Heaven. II Kings 2:11 Elijah went up in a whirlwind and Genesis 5:24 Enoch walked with God and then was not, for God took Him.) When we die, our spirits go to the Lord (Eccl. 12:7 and the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.)and our body is given back to the dust of the earth where it came from. In I Cor. 15:15 The question is asked, 'How are the dead raised? And with what body do they come?' After he tells them that they are foolish to think God cannot take care of this (paraphrase), he says in vs. 42 'The body is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption.' That's pretty clear to me that our body will be raised. Incorruptible, as the Lord's was when He ascended. This is substantiated in vs. 20. He is called the Second Adam in vs. 48 and vs. 49 says that 'as we have borne the image of the man of dust (Adam, humanity) we shall also bear the image of the heavenly Man (Christ). All of this is still in I Cor. 15. I just realized I changed my Bible versions and was using a New King James, I'll go back to the NIV, but they don't conflict.
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II Cor. 5:8 says that to be absent from the body, is to be present with the Lord. That would be our spirit that is absent, obviously. So we know we aren't just 'asleep' in our graves with our bodies. I Thess. 4:14 says that when Jesus returns, He will bring back with Him those who have fallen asleep in Him. Their spirits, because their bodies are on earth. Beginning with vs. 13 he says he doesn't want us to be ignorant about what's going to happen. Vs. 15 says we will by no means precede those who have fallen asleep. (Precede in what?) vs. 16 The dead in Christ will rise first. Wait a minute! Weren't they just with Jesus? Apparently, this is the rejoining of the spirit and the body when we are raised incorruptible. Vs. 17 Then the ones left on the earth who are alive will be caught up.
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I Cor. 15:52,53 in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.
For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality.
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Then we will be like Christ in His glorified body that was the firstborn from the dead.
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I realize not all of you may come to my conclusion. It's just food for thought and not a 'salvation' issue.

Back to the Beginning - God's infallible Word.

Although I've already had a couple of entries, I suppose I really should start back at the beginning with the most basic precept of my studies.
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I BELIEVE THAT THE BIBLE IS THE INERRANT WORD OF GOD given through the medium of man, but is His very thoughts and ideas that God would have us to know in order to know Him and to live godly lives.
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Here is why.... First, you must have some base or else you can make up your own belief system based simply on the way you feel at any given time in your life.
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Second, because God said so. Hebrews 6:18 It is impossible for God to lie and II Timothy 3:16 'All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness. Matthew 5:18 'Not one jot or tittle will pass away from the law until all has been fulfilled.' (Jots and tittles are the Hebrew equivalent of periods and commas.) Proverbs 30:6 says, 'Do not add to His words, lest He rebuke you and you be found a liar.' Rev. 22:18 concerning the book of Revelation - 'If anyone adds to these things, God will add to him the plagues that are written in this book and if anyone takes away from the words of this book of prophecy, God will take away his part from the Book of Life.'
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God is pretty serious about His word being delivered properly. The ancient Jews, when copying the Torah, if any mistake was made in the scroll, the entire scroll was destroyed and burned and the ashes were sifted to make sure that no part remained.
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MAINLY, I believe the Word of God is true because it proves itself true. There are so many, but I'm going to give just a few. A couple of the ones that stick out to me, but by all means are still just a few of what I can name right off hand. I hope you will see these as proofs to you, too. They seem all too obvious to me and it just seemed that to most ordinary people they would, too.
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One proof, in Genesis 1 (follow it), the Lord says - 'Let there be light..', 'Let there be an expanse...', Let the water be gathered into one place.....', 'Let the land produce vegetation.....', 'Let the waters teem with living creatures....', ' Let the land produce living creatures....' and so forth. Now having said all that so fast, remember the theory of evolution? Water, slime....slime to fish, fish to land mammals? They have the sequence of when each animal shows up correct, just not why they show up. God created them. Most scientists assume because they just show up where they weren't there before, that they had to evolve from what was there. Nope. At any rate, thousands of years before man even knew the order they show up, God had Moses write it in Genesis. Now who would know the order, besides the One who put them there since man wasn't there and hadn't discovered the order yet?
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Another proof is back in what we just read. Genesis 1:9. All the water was gathered into ONE place and dry ground appeared. You might skip right over that, but if the water is in one place - and God puts words in there for a reason - it stands to reason that the land is also in one place. Pangea. One large mass of land. Of course, it's just been known, understood and accepted by the scientific community since 1920. If you look at the earth on a globe, you can see how it fits together like puzzle pieces. (and see the puzzle pieces together on Wikipedia - Pangea) Later, Genesis 10:25 the earth divided. It was such a significant event that the Bible mentions it and Peleg means literally 'the land was split apart'. Of course, God told us about it thousands of years ago. Why? For people who need proofs...
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Finally, and dare I say another one of God's perfectly planned jobs to show 'proof' for those who rely on 'proof' (and I am one of those 'show me' people). For those who need to be shown by a preponderance of the evidence that God is indeed God and He is quite able to dispense and preserve His Word. Read this....
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A Bedouin shepherd, looking for a lost sheep, tossed a rock into a cave hoping to scare it out if it was in there. Instead, he heard the breaking of pottery. Upon investigating, he found many clay jars of scrolls containing the scriptures and Jewish history. This was in 1947. The scriptures dated back to 66 A.D. and were very well preserved. So you know how long they had been there???? Yep, and nobody had ever discovered them. And not just that cave, they were found in 10 caves! When they were compared with the Bible we have today that has been translated and copied and hand written through thousands of years, the only differences found were in schematics or word translation. For instance, schematics - Instead of saying 'they went after eating.' it would say, 'after eating, they went.' In word translation - instead of saying 'plates and cups, forks and spoons' it might say 'tableware and eating utensils'.
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I believe it is a miracle directly from the hand of God that He keeps His word true and in tact. Knowing how well meaning human beings would try to 'fix' or 'correct' scientific errors to make the Word sound more true, it is a wonder it hasn't been completely rearranged by Biblical scholars in their attempt to prove the Bible true only to later have what they believed to be truth revealed as fraud, thus discrediting the Bible. But God has not allowed any one to 'correct' His Word and I have no doubt that what we think are scientific flaws or discrepancies in the scriptures now, will in due time be discovered as more 'proofs'.

Which God is He?

God hasn't 'spoken' to me in my study for quite a stretch. I don't know, maybe I'm not praying right or something. But as I read the scriptures set forth for myself for those days, I keep wondering --- Which God is He? I have a very hard time reconciling in my mind the God portrayed in the Old Testament and Jesus as God walking among men. Jesus says in John 10:22-30 that He and the Father are One. In another place, John 14:9 After the disciples had asked Jesus to show them the Father, He told them, 'If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father.' In the Old Testament, God has His people slaughter enemies. I understand this because of the influence they would have on His people that would cause them to worship other gods and turn from Him. And it did. But why the babies, children and even the animals of the enemy? Then He has them slaughter each other, the Jews, whole families including babies, children, and even the slaves and in one instance even the friends. Why not just the ones who were disobedient? I Kings 15:25-30 I Kings 16:8-13 and it says it came by the Word of the Lord to do this, except for Jehosaphat and he just banished people.

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Then there's the prophet.... it doesn't give his name, He's just happily doing God's work. I Kings 13:1-24. God told him to go to Bethel and warn them. The king was so happy, he invited him to stay for dinner. The prophet said, no God told me not to eat or drink anything and to come back the way I came. So he sets off for home. Another prophet in this town, for some reason, decides to deceive him. So he finds him on his way home, tells him he too is a prophet and that God has told him to come and get the prophet and take him to his place to eat and that it was ok. So the prophet goes back with the lying prophet thinking God has changed His mind and has sent this prophet to tell him. God strikes the deceived prophet down........ Not the one who did the deceiving, who lied. He struck down the one who trusted that a fellow prophet got another word from God. Imagine. And we complain about fellow Christians stabbing us in the back all the time. At least most of the time, it doesn't lead to our death.

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Then there's II Kings 23-25 Elisha was walking to Bethel and some kids (the Hebrew language insinuates these were young children) were calling him names. A huge group of them. Not pushing or shoving or being physical or throwing rotten eggs or tomatoes or sticks or stones, just name calling. Of course, it IS a man of God, but as we have seen in the previous paragraph, they aren't always the best of characters. Even Elisha's protege' ended up lying and cheating to gain possessions and was punished by becoming a leper. (You can read about Gehazi in II Kings 5:15-17) OK, Elisha IS one of the good prophets, but lets say these non-believers had met their share of hypocrits. So they are calling him names. And it's a group, so there's a little of the 'going along with the crowd' thing. I'm sure there were some there (out of a group of 42 so it says) who probably had no clue what they were really doing or knew who Elisha really was, they were just following the crowd and name calling seemed harmless enough. Elisha called down a curse, two bears come out and mauled and killed them all. W??

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You know, when I was young, there was a time I was disenchanted with what I considered to be 'organized religion' (it was the '70's) and the adults that just didn't get it and all that stiff religious ritual stuff. I know I disrespected people who were probably true men and women of faith. I dabbled in witchcraft, not satanism, but pagan spell casting, herb burning, psychic stuff, tarot card reading, reincarnation, things like that. Thank God He didn't ZAP me for being so cynical. At that time He must have been the God that was saying,'Forgive them, they know not what they do.'

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I just can't wrap my brain around THAT God in the Old Testament and the Good Shepherd. The Lord who hung on the cross, bleeding, having to push up on the nails in his feet to get the air in his lungs to say ' Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.' Which brings me to the dilemna I have always had. Who is the God that loves me? The One who is ready to zap me for being naive enough to think I'm doing the right thing, but since I'm not - TO HELL WITH ME..literally? Or the Good Shepherd, who knows sheep are dumb and they wander off and when they don't have that constant rod moving them back on the path they wander into territory they don't know? They fall into a pit and they can't get out. Their hooves aren't made for climbing. If it starts to rain, their wool is so heavy it will cause them to sink and drown. The only thing it can do is bleat and call out for it's Shepherd and hope the shepherd is the Good One. The one who leaves the 99 to find the ONE who is lost. (Matt. 18:11-14, John 10:14) Because He knows it's wandered off, knew it shouldn't have, but was too stupid not to and now it's in a real fix. He comes and finds you, all you have to do is call.

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I pray it's THAT God I serve. But I just don't get how it's the same one. Most of the time I FEEL (yes, I know feelings aren't reality and satan likes to use them against us) like He's standing ready to zap me and since I mess up every day in one way or another..... it's just not very comfortable. Oh, to feel grace and mercy and to KNOW that He's not frowning at me.........

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Mark 9:24 Lord, I believe, please, help my unbelief.
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