Winter Solstice 2015: Shortest Day Of The Year Celebrated As Pagan Yule

Having natural bodies and hoping to get spiritual bodies in this system of things we do have to live in this world but that does not mean we have to live according to this world or according to man’s system.

Most parents get confronted more with life questions as soon as they get children and when those go to the primary school they are questioned even more about life and religious matters.

English: Santa Claus with a little girl Espera...

Santa Claus with a little girl (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When those schools celebrate the pagan festivals and have the children dress up and parade with Halloween and when Saint Nicholas is celebrated begin December and afterwards the Christmas tree is put up in class and Santa Claus becomes the subject of the day, parents have to be strong not to go against those worldly fashions in the wrong way but have to deal with it diplomatic.

Though they should not be afraid to make it very clear to their child what is pagan and contrary to the Will of God. Such pagan festivals are the time of the year to show the right way to children and grandchildren. Such occasions we may not miss to witness about the Gospel of the real Good Tidings and how we have to prepare ourselves to a much better world than this one.

We have to show our children and/or grandchildren how we have a much more precious gift than all the material gadgets this world is offering our greedy consumer eyes.

Male and female essences shall receive their righteous place in a new universe and shall come to to operate fully as renewed beings, but only those who are justified and shall be allowed by the God given judge, Jeshua, the master teacher and saviour Jesus Christ. On him we should put our hope and look forward to receive him as our most important gift of the year.

*

To remember

English: Illumination of Earth by Sun on the d...

Illumination of Earth by Sun on the day of winter solstice on northern hemisphere. A view to eastern-hemisphere showing noon in Central European time zone (ignoring DST) on the day of winter solstice (on northern hemisphere – this is summer solstice on southern hemisphere). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

  • In 2015, the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere will begin on Dec. 22 at 4:48 a.m. UTC. To calculate the turning point in your time zone, click here.
  • Officially first day of winter > winter solstice > North Pole tilted 23.5 degrees away from sun => longest night of the year => days get progressively longer after winter solstice until summer solstice.
  • winter solstice celebrated by many people around the world as beginning of return of the sun = darkness turning into light.
  • Talmud > winter solstice = “Tekufat Tevet” ==== [Teḳufat Nisan, the vernal equinox (March 21) Teḳufat Tammuz, the summer solstice (June 21), Teḳufat Tishri, the autumnal equinox (Sept. 23), Teḳufat Ṭebet, the winter solstice (Dec. 22), when the sun enters Capricornus; this is the beginning of winter, or “‘et ha-ḥoref”(stripping-time), when the night is the longest during the year. Each teḳufah, according to Samuel Yarḥinai, marks the beginning of a period of 91 days and 7½ hours.]
  • China, Dongzhi Festival >Winter Solstice celebrated by families getting together + eating special festive food.
  • Until 16th century winter months = time of famine in northern Europe =>Most cattle slaughtered = wouldn’t have to be fed during the winter => solstice time fresh meat plentiful => merriment + feasting.
  • pre-Christian Scandinavia > Feast of Juul, or Yule 12 days celebrating rebirth of sun god and giving rise to the custom of burning a Yule log.
  • ancient Rome winter solstice celebrated at Feast of Saturnalia > honouring Saturn, god of agricultural bounty > characterized by feasting, debauchery + gift-giving = With Emperor Constantine’s conversion to Christianity => customs absorbed into Christmas celebrations. >>> Emperor Constantine appropriated Pagan holidays for Christian ones ostensibly to make them more palatable to his people who had been Pagan for generations.
  • winter solstice in ancient ruins of Stonehenge, England > Thousands of druids + pagans gather there to chant, dance + sing while waiting to see spectacular sunrise.
  • solstices chance to still ourselves inside, to behold the glory of the cosmos, + to take a breath with the Sacred.
  • connecting with natural world (honouring sacred immanent in all things) => establish resonance with seasons
  • Ritual helps to shift our consciousness => reflect outer world inside our inner landscape
  • daughter  of 4 wants practically everything she sees toy and clothes-wise => real historic figure St. Niklaus who would bring gifts to children at Yule-time.
  • Christmas only been celebrated in the US since about the 1800s > In it’s current manifestation = more like a holiday invented by toy manufacturers to increase their profits.
  • the writer of the article underneath believes that the dying god, the male esssence, is sacrificed (or dies in the winter) and goes into the Mother (Earth) for the winter in order to be reborn again in the spring => thinking of a figure like The Green Man.
  • Incidentally a full moon this year on the Winter Solstice

+

Preceding

Holidays, holy days and traditions

Focus on outward appearances

Autumn traditions for 2014 – 1: Sinterklaas and Zwarte Piet

Traditionalists Vow to Fight Charges of Racism in Netherlands

The imaginational war against Christmas

++

Additional reading

  1. Politics and power first priority #1
  2. Eostre, Easter, White god, chocolate eggs, Easter bunnies and metaphorical resurrection
  3. Jesus begotten Son of God #1 Christmas and Christians
  4. Solstice, Saturnalia and Christmas-stress
  5. Christmas customs – Are They Christian?
  6. Christmas in Ancient Rome (AKA Saturnalia)
  7. The Advent of the saviour to Roman oppression
  8. Christmas trees
  9. Manna from Sint Nicholas
  10. Ignorance of Today’s Youth (and Adults)
  11. Sancta Claus is not God
  12. Brits believe Santa present at Jesus’ birth, new poll reveals
  13. Wishing lanterns and Christmas
  14. Christmas in the 1950s
  15. Continued nostalgic Christmas memories
  16. The Proper Place of Excess
  17. Looking for the consummation of presents
  18. One can buy a lot in the supermarket, but not hope
  19. Objects around the birth and death of Jesus

+++

Further reading

  1. Winter is Coming!
  2. The Dark Side
  3. Darkness to Light
  4. Winter Solstice
  5. Winter Solstice by Luna Beam
  6. Long nights’s moon
  7. Winter Solstice and Yule
  8. Yule
  9. Personal Festival of Lights
  10. Celebrating the Winter Solstice….
  11. Great Yule: The ancient and present holiday
  12. Winter Solstice Festival
  13. The Yule Countdown
  14. In Praise of the Invincible Light
  15. Hail the Return of the Sun
  16. Yule is upon us!
  17. Yule Fillable Ornament Magick
  18. Yuletide Tunes
  19. Saturnalia
  20. Christmas
  21. Christmas is Pagan!
  22. From Sukkot to Saturnalia: The Attack on Christmas in Sixteenth-Century..
  23. By Jove! It’s Christmas: Did the First Christian Roman Emperor Appropriate..
  24. Christmas is Tammuz’s Birthday?
  25. War On Christmas Memes: Saturnalia
  26. War On Christmas Memes: The Yule Tree
  27. A Little history on the holly tree
  28. How to bring some real Christmas spirits into your Yule-tide
  29. Santa Claus, Krampus,The Wild Hunt and Me.
  30. Christmas, the Weridest Holiday of the Year; Part one
  31. Christmas — Who gives a rip HOW we came up with the date we use?!?
  32. Christmas: it’s all about money, not messiahs.
  33. Jan 17 – Antony of Egypt
  34. Tanguyan
  35. Christmas Day Reads
  36. Cheers to Hot Cocoa and Peppermint Schnapps
  37. Set to Purpose
  38. Yule 2015#18
  39. Merry Yule!
  40. Online Winter Solstice / Yule Ritual by Spirit’s Edge Shamonial Temple
  41. Yule, Light, and rare events
  42. Following the Yule Star
  43. Cranberry & Hazelnut Peppermint Honey Cake: Hail To The Mothers!

 

+++

Mystic Myrelle

“Something in us needs to know that at the end of the longest night, there will be light.”

  • HuffPost Religion EditorsThe Huffington Post
12/16/2015 02:35 pm ET

In 2015, the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere will begin on Dec. 22 at 4:48 a.m. UTC. To calculate the turning point in your time zone, click here.

Officially the first day of winter, the winter solstice occurs when the North Pole is tilted 23.5 degrees away from the sun. This is the longest night of the year, meaning that despite the cold winter, the days get progressively longer after thewinter solstice until the summer solstice in 2016.

The winter solstice is celebrated by many people around the world as the beginning of the return of the sun, and darkness turning into light. The Talmud recognizes the winter solstice as “Tekufat Tevet.” In China, the Dongzhi Festival is…

View original post 805 more words

Mortal Soul and Mortal Psyche #1 Intro

Intro

When a husband and wife come together, in that physical expression of mutual love and intimacy, sometimes a biological fusion will occur that starts a new life. After nine months a miracle of nature takes place and that foetus, now fully grown, sees the light of this world for the first time.

When in the womb of the mother that little human being does not know what happened before it. When that baby comes into the world it does not remember anything from before. The brain of the child is not yet fully formed and has no knowledge as yet. That child does not yet have any idea about right or wrong, good or bad. It is, in that sense, a blank slate.

As that child develops into a person, he will be influenced by the events of his life. The child shall grow up forming his inner being, his mind and way of thinking (his “soul”), along the way. That “soul” may be blessed with moments of goodness but will also be spotted with sin. Each person will struggle with temptation, each in their own way. Some struggling to resist; some consenting with their lusts and being drawn away by them.

Yet much of that child’s life has already been determined by the circumstance of its birth. There is “a time for birth,” Solomon said, but also “a time to die” (Ecclesia 3:1-2), and the days in between may be filled with many kinds of experiences including joy, pain, hard labour, abundance, trial and, if without God, emptiness (Job 7:1-3). Everything that a person has belongs to God, for it is only God (and not that person) who can deliver the “soul” from the power of death (Psalm 89:47-48). No person is so strong that they shall live on and escape the iron grip of death.

There may be a point in a person’s life where thought is given to the purpose of this life, and a conclusion might be reached that what this life offers is not entirely satisfying. At that point a person might stop and consider exploring if there is some higher purpose or truth in this life (Ecclesiastic 3:11). A person may embark on this inquiry without understanding completely that this inner urge to explore these questions are part of being created by God. Each person is created in the likeness of his Creator. All children are in the image of God, like the first human beings were created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). And though from one perspective giving birth is a “natural” act, God is responsible for bringing things to life and all “natural” things (Psalm 90:2). Having eternity set within our hearts, yet living only for a short time, we long for something more; we long for a way for our person (our “soul”) to conquer death.

English: Fountain of Eternal Life

Fountain of Eternal Life (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Scriptures speak of another sort of birth, a spiritual birth, leading a new sort of life. A person “born of water and of the spirit” (John 3:5) can enter the Kingdom of God, becoming a child of God and enjoying everlasting life. This, then, is the way for the “soul” to endure. Not through natural immortality but through a second birth and entering through the small gate into the Kingdom of God.

In this chapter we shall look at what it means to have a “soul”, to form a “soul”, to have a mind to think and a body to be in; what it means to be mortal and to have the opportunity for eternal life, from the perspective of the New Testament.

+

To be continued

++

Additional reading:

  1. What is life?
  2. Creation Creator and Creation
  3. Creator and Blogger God 2 Image and likeness
  4. Born to Shine not to fear!
  5. Looking at three “I am” s
  6. Philosophy hand in hand with spirituality
  7. Necessity of a revelation of creation 2 Organisation of a system of things
  8. Eternity depends upon this short time on earth

+++

A British judge rules that mother can’t indoctrinate son with religion

A problem may arise when civil courts come to intrude with the upbringing of children about what to believe or what not to believe. But in the case of the JW mother judged about the upbringing of her son it has more to do with bringing up the child with discriminative ideas. Discrimination does not suits our civil society. All children should have the right to have contact with both parents whatever faith they may have.

All children also should not only learn about learning about mainstream Christianity or Christendom, but also about all other sorts of believes (atheism, Buddhism, Hinduism , shamanism, etc.). All children should learn that in this world there are different opinions and that every one should have respect for the different beliefs of others.

Though our society should also allow parents to bring their children into those communities they like to bring their children in, as long as they are not damaging the child. Kingdom halls are not a damaging environment. They are even less damaging than what can often be seen on television.

Taking a child away from the mother and the father is not at all a good idea and is not at all helping the child plus giving wrong signals to society in general.

As the writer of the article rightly says:

“Truly enlightened parents either tell kids to investigate different religions on their own, or help them do so without promoting one over the others. “

In several countries, like in Belgium ethical and religious education is part of the education program, giving all children the opportunity to learn about all sorts of religions, humanitarian and atheist visions. States should help the weaker ones, children, to receive an unbiased education, free from brainwashing and making the pupils strong enough to detect such forms which limit the right to think freely and to detect discriminating thoughts even by their own parents.

+++

Why Evolution Is True

Perhaps the statement from a New Atheist that most angers believers (or faitheists) is Richard Dawkins’s characterization of religious indoctrination of children as “child abuse.”  Yes, them’s strong words, but there’s something to be said for their truth. Of course it depends on the religion, but nearly all forms of parental teaching about religion abuse the intellectual curiosity of kids by taking advantage of their natural credulity. If you’re a Christian, you teach your kids stuff that is regarded by Muslims as not only false, but worthy of death. If you’re a Christian Scientist, you teach them to reject scientific medicine, a decision that can ultimately harm or even kill them. Further, religions can instill in children horrible feelings of guilt (ask an ex-Catholic), fear of hell, and a moral code that is bigoted, irrational, and hateful.

I don’t know how to remedy this problem, because clearly the state doesn’t want to…

View original post 426 more words

I Can’t Believe That … (2) God would allow children to suffer

How could a loving God allow an innocent child to suffer? Surely he cares enough to prevent the suffering (if he didn’t care, he wouldn’t be very loving). And surely is able to prevent to suffering (if he couldn’t, he wouldn’t be very powerful). And yet we know that in this imperfect world children suffer. So does that mean there is no God? Or could God have good reasons to allow such suffering?

The Suffering (video game)

The Suffering (video game) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When we talk about the reasons for suffering there is a real danger that anything we say will sound glib or even insensitive to those who have been bereaved. The mother who has lost a beloved child doesn’t want reasons, she wants her child back. Trying to intellectualise the problem will be cold comfort for such grief. Trying to explain away the suffering would be heartless. Because what possible reason could you give that would make the death of a child acceptable? What explanation would justify so great a loss? And that is the first thing to recognise. When we seek to understand the existence of suffering we are not seeking to give a reason for individual acts of suffering. Some acts of suffering, when considered in isolation, have no reason. They are not caused by God, they are not for some eventual gain, they are, essentially, meaningless. We do not live in a world where everything has a purpose, where everything happens for a reason. The Bible says God has subjected the world to “futility” (Rom 8:20), that is, God has purposefully made this world imperfect and subject to imperfection. God does not cause suffering, but has made the world where suffering occurs. The question is, why would he do that?

Step back and consider: what is the cause of so much of the evil in the world? Answer: human beings. Whether it is cold-blooded murder or just casual neglect, so much suffering and pain is caused by humans making bad choices. Sometimes people will choose to do something truly wicked, more often people just choose to do what is easy, but it is those choices that produces the suffering. God could have created a world without such suffering because he could have created a world without people or only with people whose minds he controls. That would have prevented a lot of suffering. There would be no murders, if God didn’t allow people the freedom to choose. But God has allowed people the freedom to choose. Because a world in which people have free will is better than a world without it. Imagine a world without free will. Sure, there would be no evil but there would also be no good. Without free will there could be no love and there could be no relationships. There could be no acts of kindness, no moments of generosity, and no real charity. The world would just be filled with choice-less robots, neither good nor bad, just behaving as instructed. A world with free will is better, and world where people freely choose to do good is best, but if people are truly free then that means they have the option to cause evil.

But this isn’t the whole answer. Murderers may choose to murder, but waves don’t choose to drown people, rocks don’t choose to crush people and viruses don’t choose to infect people. A lot of the suffering in the world is caused by natural processes, by the laws of nature operating as they always do, the victims just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Why does God allow such suffering? Well, imagine the alternative. Imagine that rocks would always fall down to the ground EXCEPT when a child was underneath. That might seem like a wonderful idea, but think of all the exceptions and kinks in the laws of nature that would be needed to make children invulnerable. Bullets would turn to jelly when fired at children, fire would become cool when a child was close by, man-eating tigers would become lovable kittens. Suddenly the ordered and regular world that we’re used to has become chaotic and difficult to predict. No longer could humans depend on things behaving like they always have and so could no longer make even reasonable guesses about the outcome of their actions. Without the laws of nature, without the regularity of nature, human free will cannot operate because without that regularity you cannot make informed choices.

Okay, you say, I understand that free will is a good thing and I understand that the laws of nature are necessary, but even so couldn’t have God made the world better? Couldn’t there be less dangers? Or couldn’t we be less vulnerable? Why not make humans impervious to harm so that we can carry on whatever the world throws at us? Of

+

Preceding article: I Can’t Believe That (1) … God would send anyone to hell

++

Additional reading:

  1. About suffering
  2. Foreword to suffering
  3. Choices to make in suffering
  4. Crucifixion for suffering
  5. God’s instruction about joy and suffering
  6. God’s promises to us in our suffering
  7. Importuning for suffering hearts
  8. Seems no future in suffering
  9. Suffering through the apparent silence of God
  10. Suffering continues
  11. Suffering leading to joy
  12. Surprised by joy
  13. Surprised by time in joys & sufferings
  14. Miracles in our time of suffering
  15. Offer in our suffering
  16. Temptation and its conquest
  17. Words from God about suffering
  18. Mission son of God perceived as failure
  19. Patient waiting
  20. Moving mountains
  21. Why Think There Is a God? (3): Why Is It Wrong?
  22. Attributes to God
  23. Disappointed with God
  24. God’s measure not our measure
  25. Full authority belongs to God
  26. God Helper and Deliverer
  27. God is Positive
  28. God’s design in the creation of the world
  29. God’s hope and our hope
  30. God His reward
  31. God’s promises
  32. God’s salvation
  33. Incomplete without the mind of God
  34. Is God hiding His Face when He is seemingly silent
  35. Jesus his answers about God’s silence
  36. Based confidence
  37. Chrystalised harmonious thinking
  38. Our way of life
  39. Life with God
  40. Nuturing a close relationship with God
  41. Concerning gospelfaith
  42. Epitome of the one faith
  43. My faith
  44. Hope
  45. Working of the hope
  46. Looking for blessed hope
  47. Hope for the future
  48. Expiatory sacrifice
  49. Content with the no answer
  50. Free will and predestination
  51. Meaning of life
  52. Death and after
  53. God’s Comfort
  54. A world in denial
  55. Fear and protection
  56. Because men choose to go their own way
  57. It is a free will choice
  58. Free will and predestination
  59. Let you not be defined by the effect of your wrong choice
  60. The Existence of Evil

+++

  • Why does God allow evil? (pastormikesays.wordpress.com)
    The Bible describes God as holy (Isaiah 6:3), righteous (Psalm 7:11), just (Deuteronomy 32:4), and sovereign (Daniel 4:17-25). These attributes tell us the following about God: (1) God is capable of preventing evil, and (2) God desires to rid the universe of evil. So, if both of these are true, why does God allow evil? If God has the power to prevent evil and desires to prevent evil, why does He still allow evil? Perhaps a practical way to look at this question would be to consider some alternative ways people might have God run the world:
  • God’s Gift & Our Response: Mercy & Worship (jamespaulgaard.wordpress.com)
    God gives us many good and wonderful gifts that we need. But a gift does not give its intended benefit if the one receiving the gift does not open the gift and use it. You could be given the greatest gift in the world, but if the gift sits in the corner unopened, that gift will have no benefit in your life. So through this series, we want to encourage you to reflect on the many gifts God has given you, and how you respond to those gifts. In today’s sermon we are thinking about God’s gift of mercy and our response of worship and the three points of the sermon
  • Why You Shouldn’t Teach Your Children That Hell is Real (patheos.com)
    If teaching heaven is bad, teaching hell is downright mental child abuse. There is no way around this one. You are telling a child that for bad deeds done, or not worshipping the right (or any god), you are going to burn in a lake of fire for eternity. Pure torture, unimaginable pain and it is forever.The myth of Hell needs to be destroyed faster than the myth of heaven by far. Children and countless adults fear any of their actions will result in them spending eternity in Hell. Why? It is such a childish and illogical idea. For starters, their almighty God created an evil angel, and instead of destroying him, gave him his own kingdom? And let’s not get started on the fact that if Satan is the one punishing the bad guys for their evil, doesn’t that make Satan the good guy? If Hell is for the most evil people in the world who listened to and or worshipped Satan, wouldn’t Satan be glad to have them? It simply doesn’t make sense and even Christians and other religious followers are deciding they don’t believe in Hell anymore. It seems that all the rest of their religion is true, but Hell sounds too mean, so that part is obviously just an allegory. So, just like the endless rape, murder, genocide and other atrocities of the Bible, let’s go ahead and cherry-pick Hell right out of it.
  • The Man or The Devil In The Mirror? [Part 1] (corbenstreet.wordpress.com)
    People must understand and know how to differentiate between the reason and the purpose of doing things. But because humans are always so good at taking things for granted, it is not surprising that whatever the reason and the purpose of using mirrors, it no longer means anything to everyone – anymore!
  • David Haines killing is ‘an act of absolute evil’, says Archbishop of Canterbury (christiantoday.com)
    The Archbishop of Canterbury is among the Christians expressing their sorrow over the killing of hostage David Haines at the hands of Islamic State militants.The 44-year-old aid worker’s beheading was shown in a video released on Saturday night.It has been strongly condemned by British Prime Minister David Cameron, who has vowed that Britain will take “whatever steps are necessary” to keep the country safe and bring the killers to justice.Archbishop Justin Welby used his Twitter account to ask every church in the country to pray for Haines’s family, saying he had been “evilly killed in the place he was serving in love for its suffering people”.

    In comments to the BBC later on Sunday, the Archbishop described the aid worker’s murder as “an act of absolute evil, unqualified, without any light in it at all”.

    He said there was a sense that in places where militants have taken hold “the darkness is deepening”.

    “It’s being done in the name of faith, but we’ve heard already today faith leaders from Islam across the world condemning this,” he continued.

  • William Lane Craig vs Walter Sinnott-Armstrong: evil, suffering and God’s existence (winteryknight.wordpress.com)
    This is one the top 4 best debates that William Lane Craig has done in my opinion. (The other two are Craig-Millican debate and the first and second Craig-Dacey debates) This one doesn’t seem to get a lot of play on the Internet: there’s no video, transcript or anything. But it is a great debate, and on a problem we are all concerned about: the problem of evil and suffering. One other thing – Sinnott-Armstrong is also a very courteous, respectful and intelligent scholar and he is very good at defending his side. This is a very cordial and engaging debate, and because it was held in front of a church audience, it was targeted to laymen and not academics.

Marriage of Jesus 3 Listening women

In the previous posting we saw that it was not uncommon to chose for celibacy. There were even leading Jewish thinkers who praised such men for their choice.

Also years and centuries after Jesus had died some major teachers wanted to stay unmarried. Several people who thought it was their duty to spend most of their time to study the Word of God, considered it not practical to go into a marriage covenant. Matrimony would take up more time than they wanted to lose to study Gods Word.

Jesus carried God His Word in his heart, but he was not afraid to loose to much time spending it with ordinary people. There were several Jewish teachers at the time of Jesus who secluded themselves from women accompany. Jesus was not afraid to come close to children and women. By the followers of Christ there were also some women in their company who had been healed of various evil afflictions and illnesses: Mary, the one called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out;  Joanna, wife of Chuza, Herod’s manager; and Susanna—along with many others who used their considerable means to provide for the group. Those women serving the men from their possessions, let us known that they had a good relation with them all, but that they really believed in the cause of that Nazarene man Jeshua (Jesus Christ) (Luke 8:2-3)

“2 and a number of women who had been healed from evil spirits and illnesses—Miryam (called Magdalit), from whom seven demons had gone out; 3 Yochanah the wife of Herod’s finance minister Kuza; Shoshanah; and many other women who drew on their own wealth to help him.” (Luke 8:2-3 CJB)

Harold Copping Jesus at the home of Martha and Mary 400.jpg

Martha on the left, Jesus at the house of Mary and Martha, Harold Copping. – Virgin, Myrrhbearer, Wonder Worker of Southern Gaul

From the gospels we also get to know that Jesus not always travelled on his own. He had his followers around him and there were women like Martha, the sister of  Mary, who welcomed him into her home. The sister Mary sat at the rabbi’s feet and listened to him talk. Jesus considered Mary having made the right choice, listening to him. By listening to Jesus preaching many women learned from him and where able to give his teachings to others. Mary from Bethany, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, was also such a woman eager to learn form Jesus, who praised her for that. (Luke 10:38-42) Several of these women are mentioned by name in the New Testament gospels, including, Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Susanna, who together helped to support Jesus and his other disciples financially. But nothing in the New Testament suggests that Jesus was ever married to any of these women, or to any other woman, for that matter.

Magdala Archaeological site near the Sea of Galilee

Miriam or Mary was a very common name. Many women with that name are mentioned in the biblical gospels, including Jesus’ mother and Mary from Bethany. The other “Mary” who gets a lot of attention is the one from Magdala, also called “Magadan” at the coast. Dalmanutha, as it was also called, was on the shores of the Sea of Gallilee where Jesus went to after he fed the four thousand. (Mark 8:10) the place would later also play a role during the Jewish Revolt.

We can not tell if this place was Mary her home or her birthplace, but most Christian scholars assume that she was from the place the Talmud calls Magdala Nunayya. We do know that this “Magdalene,” which means “from the village of Magdala,” accompanied Jesus on his preaching mission and helped to support him financially (Luke 8:1-3).

The apostle Luke talks about seven demons that had been cast out of her, presumably by Jesus (Luke 8:2). Nothing in this passage suggests that there was anything unusual about Mary’s relationship with Jesus, other than the very unusual fact that she was included among Jesus’ retinue. Having this woman prominent present during Jesus’ last days, may indicate she really was a serious follower, and that she might have some special affection for him. But we may not gallop and think this would mean they had a sexual relationship.

File:José de Ribera 024.jpg

The Penitent Mary Magdalene as Thaïs, fragment – José de Ribera, Prado Museum, Madrid

Mary Magdalene was probably one of more women who where close to this teacher. Though Jewish teachers in Jesus’ day usually didn’t teach women or include them as followers, Jesus involved them in his spreading the Good News. Perhaps such an inclusive practice may have been virtually unique, and his relationship with Mary and her female counterparts quite counter-cultural. She and some other women were there supporting Jesus in his final moments and mourning his death. John the Beloved and she were the courageous ones who stayed with Jesus at the stake after the other disciples  had fled. She was also present at his funeral and when she with a couple of female companions went to the tomb of Jesus, found it empty. She is the only person that all four Gospels say was first to realize that Jesus had risen and to testify to that central teaching of our faith. This makes her also so special, because it was as if it was meant that she would be the first contact of the resurrected Christ.

Just because she was there at the

“beginning of a movement that was going to transform the West” {“Mary Magdalene, the clichés”}

many want to give her a special place of interest. In several countries she is even honoured as a saint and receives such devotion like she is a goddess. She is often called the “Apostle to the Apostles”, an honorific that fourth-century orthodox theologian Augustine gave her. {Doyle, Ken. “Apostle to the apostles: The story of Mary Magdalene”. Catholictimes, 11 September 2011}

We may assume she really was a young woman to have been of leadership among the women following Jesus.

Several centuries after the biblical gospels were written, Mary became associated with the prostitute or harlot who bathed and anointed Jesus’ feet (Luke 7:36-50). But there’s nothing in Scripture that makes this connection. We have no reason to believe that Mary had ever been such a girl of light virtue. In case she would have been a girl with loose or lax morals, that would only prove that already in Jesus time those could become converted and take a whole different attitude in life, worthy to their master and in honour to God.

For some it might be a nice asset to have  a serious man, full of love for God, having also the love for such degenerated person. The moralists would love to see the story being true having like in a fairy tale, the bad becoming good and marrying the prince. Having Jesus as the prince of light and Mary Magdalene as the human being from the darkness. Those who suggest that, because of her previous ‘profession’, Jesus had a sexual relationship with her outside of marriage, do not know very well the teachings of Jesus and do not understand what Jesus tried to bring over to the people. He would not do something where he knew his Father would be against such attitude. In case they would have been free of anything of which they could be accused off, to be against the Will of God, and they would have felt very much for each other, they could have made their vows. But then Jesus would have known his responsibility for his wife and would have taken care that somebody would take care of her after he would have been taken from the living. Before he would have died he then would have entrusted her into the care of somebody like the Beloved Disciple, just as he did with his mother. The absence of this action could suggests that Jesus and Mary were not married.

We may assume that Jesus may have held Mary in the highest regard, though not as his wife. Ironically, the efforts to turn Mary the disciple of Jesus into Mary the wife of Jesus actually minimizes how truly extraordinary she was as a central follower, supporter, and witness of Jesus.

In the next chapter we shall see that such marriage claims only rely on the evidence of non-canonical “gospels”  of which I mentioned already in the previous chapters that they have to be considered as a sort of fiction.

+

Preceding articles:

Marriage of Jesus 1 Mary, John, Judas, Thomas and Brown

Marriage of Jesus 2 Standard writings about Jesus

Next article: Marriage of Jesus 3 Listening women

  • Magdala on Sea of Galilee (israel-tourguide.info)
    Magdala Nunayya (Magdala of the fishes) was an important Jewish city on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee established during the Hasmonean period, centuries before neighboring Tiberias. In Christian tradition, it is the birthplace of Mary Magdalene and where Jesus went after he fed the five thousand (Mark 8:10).
  • LISTEN: Mary Magdalene: The First Person to See the Risen Christ (The Unsung Heroes of Easter #8) (blackchristiannews.com)
    The first reason why Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene before anyone else could be because Mary Magdalene represented a direct triumph over the devil and his plan. Mark 16:9 states, “Now when Jesus was risen early the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene…” Of course, we can be content to know that Christ simply appeared to Mary Magdalene first because he chose to do so. But I believe it is safe for us to say that Christ appeared to a woman first as a symbolic expression that the curse of sin that had been brought on humanity by the actions of a woman had been completely removed.
  • First Century Synagogue at Magdala – Did Jesus Worship Here? (holylandphotos.wordpress.com)
    The site of al–Majdal (Arabic for “tower”) is located 4 mi. northwest of Tiberias, along the western shore of the Sea of Galilee.  This is evidently the site of New Testament Magdala (from migdol “tower”) that is the same as Taricheae (“the place of salted fish”) mentioned by Josephus where a bloody naval battle took place between the Jews and Romans during the first Jewish Revolt (ca. A.D. 66–70; War 3.10.1–10 [462–542]).
  • Archaeologists: Bible town possibly found (mobile.wnd.com)
    Archaeologists say they’ve discovered an ancient town mentioned in the New Testament, and it could be the location to which Jesus sailed after miraculously feeding some 4,000 people by multiplying a few fish and loaves of bread.
    +
    Experts believe Magdala is the modern-day town of Migdal, slightly inland near Israel’s Ginosar Valley. Magdala is perhaps most famous for being the hometown of Mary Magdalene, a female disciple of Jesus who was the first person ever to see Christ after He rose from the dead.
  • Magdala on Sea of Galilee (lavenderturquois.wordpress.com)
    The original excavations at the site were done by the Franciscan, Corbo in the 1970s. Paved streets and a large colonnaded square typical of a Roman city were found, along with buildings with mosaic floors. On the floor of one urban villa, an image of a sailing ship, a type of Mediterranean vessel modified for the lake, was found in mosaic.
  • 14. Hike the Bible – Mary Magdalene (biblescienceguy.wordpress.com)
    It’s possible that Mary “was called Magdalene” (Luke 8:2), because she was very tall. Magdala means tower in Aramaic as does Migdal in Hebrew. It would distinguish her from others named Mary, just as today we might distinguish one Tom from another by calling one Big Tom. Contemporary slang translations might be “Mega Mary” or “Mary the Tall” or “Mary the Great.” In early Christian art Mary was often depicted as taller than the apostles.
    +
    The prominence of Mary of Magdala is further underscored by calling her simply “Magdalene” without connecting her to a family. Frequently women in the Gospels were identified by husbands, such as “Joanna the wife of Chuza” (Luke 8:3) or “Mary the wife of Clopas” (John 19:25) and by sons, such as “Mary the mother of James and Joseph” (Mat 27:56; Mark 15:40, 47; 16:1), Salome “the mother of the sons of Zebedee” and sister of Mary the mother of Jesus (Mat 27:56; Mark 15:40; Mark 16:1; John 19:25).
  • Mary of Magdala; Tenth in a Series “Chosen Women in the Life of Christ” (asistershugs.wordpress.com)
    Mary Magdalene seems to have shared the spirit of Peter; she saw, questioned, believed, and then followed through!  We see her mingling with the Apostles and the other disciples of Jesus; caring for their need of food and domestic care.  I can almost imagine the women washing clothes, fetching water, preparing meals; all the while listening to the men as they questioned Jesus and heard His teachings.  I can hear them singing along with the group as they walked from town to town; sharing stories between themselves as women always do.
  • Festival of Saint Mary Magdalene (brvanlanen.wordpress.com)
    Following the assumption (possibly quite misguided) that Mary Magdalene truly had been a spectacular sinner whose penitential sorrow was deep and complete — and possibly because John described her as crying at the tomb of Jesus — artists often portray her either as weeping or with red eyes from having wept. This appearance (and a slight corruption in translation) led to the English word “maudlin,” meaning “effusively or tearfully sentimental.” Magdalen College at Oxford and Magdalene College at Cambridge (note the different spellings) — both pronounced “Maudlin” — derive their names from this Saint Mary.
  • Mary Magdalene – What’s in a name? (christiantoday.com)
    “None of the historians, people like Josephus or any of the other Greek or Latin texts of that period, reference a town called Magdala,” she said at a lecture at King’s College last night.This is a rather large stumbling block for the traditional theory. If this town was called ‘Magdala’, why wasn’t it mentioned in the writings of the time?There is another problem too. The word ‘Magdela’ is the Aramaic word for ‘Tower’.

    Professor Taylor says this challenges the traditional theory as the name is “not distinctive” and “seems rather odd”.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Words to inspire and to give wisdom

On the net we can find lots of words. They may have been written to inform us or to tell us stories. Lots of things are said on the internet. It is a world full of fantasies and full of things to bring people away from the truth.

Though in the wood of writings we are able to find also very interesting writings. Those we should use and not let them lay untouched. On this site we also want to offer words people could use to continue their life, perhaps in an other way. We do want to give inspiration and we would love to get people to think and reason.

The Aleppo Codex is a medieval manuscript of t...

The Aleppo Codex is a medieval manuscript of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), associated with Rabbi Aaron Ben Asher. The Masoretic scholars wrote it in the early 10th century, probably in Tiberias, Israel. It is in book form and contains the vowel points and grammar points (nikkudot) that specify the pronunciation of the ancient Hebrew letters to preserve the chanting tradition. It is perhaps the most historically important Hebrew manuscript in existence. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Those who believe in God and follow the Bible do know the importance of taking words at heart. They know that they should consider all things said. We have been instructed to search everything this world offers. For that reason we also do want to present on this site different ideas, even those which are not according to what we ourselves think. But we want to give “food for thought”.

A very wise man from the past said “Get insight” and talked a lot about how wisdom can also be something we can earn by doing our best to think and to listen to words and by using our words in the right way. “Laying hold” on words which can enrich us and give us wisdom. And that wisdom is a principal thing. Therefore we should try to acquire wisdom. Only by trying to use our brains to search everything we shall be able to get true knowledge, and with all our acquiring, get understanding. (Proverbs 4:7) Today lots of people are more interested to gain material wealth, but the spiritual wealth is so much more important.

“How much better is it to get wisdom than gold! Yea, to get understanding is rather to be chosen than silver.” (Proverbs 16:16 ASV)

Not only do we have the words which comes from people on this earth. We also do have words which comes from a Spirit, above this earth. That Spirit of Jehovah spoke by several people in the past, and His Word was upon many their tongue. (2 Samuel 23:2)

When we grow older we all can speak from our experience. Our parents and educators taught us many things and tried to give us wisdom. It was not by only presenting the pleasant ways and by spoiling us that they let us grow up and learn the necessary things. They made us bear the yoke in our youth, and now we should live to thank them for it.

There is a great temptation to spoil our only child or those we kindly love, a temptation which few are able to resist. Parents can deny themselves everything for their idol, except the pleasure of making the child a despot; they can endure any pain for their despot, except the pain of resisting him and instructing him. And accordingly they have sometimes to experience the shame and anguish of their children’s curses.

Good parents and educators are not those who spoil their children, but who are standing ready to help the children to grow up and to get more wisdom. It are those who want to share their wisdom with others and who want to tell them the tricky things and warn them for the dangers. It are not those who overprotect their children, but those who learn them where dangers looks around the corner. It are those who owes much to their parents and their previous educators, and give them honour. It are those who are eager to acknowledge what they owe.

God has no kinder gift to give us than a hallowed home, the memory of lessons from the lips of father and mother, the early impressions of virtue and wisdom, the sacred streams which rise from that fountainhead, and that alone, and run freshening and singing and broadening all through our lives. (Expositor Bible)

We learn to love, not because we are taught to love, but by some contagious influence of example or by some indescribable attraction of beauty. To come to the greater love we should get to know the Most Precious Giver of Love. He has given the most important Words which can give us the most important “Wisdom”. Those words written down in many books, a set apart or holy Library or Biblia of books we all can find in the bookshop and should get in on our bookshelf at home.

Words have a power all their own

Words have a power all their own (Photo credit: Lynne Hand)

We should give ourselves to those Words of Wisdom, presented in the Bible or Holy Scriptures. We should offer ourselves to be willing to allow the Words of the Bible mould ourselves by heavenly wisdom, so that we shall be able to walk securely. Those Words shall enable us to look at matters of this world with the right eyes. They will give a certain trend to all our thoughts. A certain instinctive desire for righteousness will be engrafted in our nature; and an instinctive aversion will lead us to decline the way of the wicked. (Proverbs 4:14 )

Those Words shall help us to give ourselves, our children, and to those around us, an atmosphere to grow up in; to cultivate their affections, and set their hearts on the things eternal; to make them associate the ideas of wealth and honour, of beauty and glory, not with material possessions, but with the treasures and rewards of Wisdom.

Those who have become grown ups, should know that they still should feel and have the spirit of the child in them, eager to learn. We should keep the attitude of children in us.

First of all we should listen to God His Words. As we read God’s word we must have a child-like attitude to “hear” and then “accept” (the) words we read and then “we will have treasure in heaven” Jesus told a ruler, adding, “and come,follow me.” [v.18,22] The very last chapter in the Bible, the final message of Jesus, tells us that, when Jesus returns, this treasure will be revealed, for I will be “bringing my reward (or recompense)with me to repay everyone for what he has done” (Revelation 22:12) {Bible Reading Thoughts for March 26th, Hear … Accept my words}

We“hear” by reading what God has caused to be written preserved and translated – the challenge to all of us is to read and then “accept into our hearts what we read, so that they become a real influence on the principles by which we guide our lives..

Solomon writes (Proverbs ch. 4)  “Let your heart hold fast my words” – this is the vital next stage after we accept them.   The first verse tells us that these are “a father’s instruction”  on what the acceptance of his words should lead to – “Keep my commandments and live” [v.4] “and whatever you get, get insight” [v.7]    We must develop inward vision  so that we can reflect on what we have accepted, comparing scripture with scripture so that our understanding becomes increasingly greater.

After saying, “Get insight” Solomon adds, “Prize her highly, and she will exalt you; she will honour you, if you embrace her.  She will place on your head a graceful garland; she will bestow on you a beautiful crown” [v.8,9] ” {Bible Reading Thoughts for March 26th, Hear … Accept my words}

We should know how important it is to keep learning, to keep advancing in thought. As a tree tries to get all the ‘juice of live giving water’ we should know where or Whom is the right Source.

Wisdom is a tree of life to those who lay hold upon her.  ”Lay hold” lit means to be strong, to hold fast, and when we consider the tree of life looking forward to eternal life, our minds are taken to Paul’s words, which show this being strong is not passive but active: {Bible Reading Thoughts for March 26th, Hear … Accept my words}

“Fight the good fight of the faith, lay hold on the life eternal, whereunto thou wast called, and didst confess the good confession in the sight of many witnesses.” (1 Timothy 6:12 ASV)

We all have to run hard and fast in this world but even better in the faith. We better seize the eternal life, the life we were called to, the life we so fervently embraced in the presence of so many witnesses.  All good athletes train hard. They do it for a gold medal that tarnishes and fades. We should be running after one that’s gold eternally. (1 Corinthians 9:25) taking the Words of the Supreme Being at heart we should become fearless in our struggle, holding faith and a good conscience. We should lay hold on that for which also we were laid hold on by Christ Jesus, laying up in store for ourselves a good foundation against the time to come, that we may lay hold on the life which is “life” indeed. (Philippians 3:12; 1 Timothy 6:19)

We all should better listen to Solomon and other wise men who wrote in the Book of books. Solomon goes on to write advice to his  son,

“Hear, my son, accept my words, that the years of your life may be many. I have taught you the way of wisdom; I have led you in the paths of uprightness. When you walk, your step will not be hampered, and if you run, you will not stumble. Keep hold of instruction; do not let go; guard her; for she is your life” (Proverbs 4:10-13).

But Solomon’s son Rehoboam, did not listen so as to remember his father’s words, they did not stay in his heart and we read of the tragedy of his lack of wisdom when he succeeded his father in 2 Chronicles 10:8-13 in rejecting wise counsel. This is reflected in Proverbs 1:25,26

“because you have ignored all my counsel and would have none of my reproof, I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when terror strikes you …”.

We see these words as also having a final application in our days as the whole world ignores God’s counsel, despite his word being available in every language! {Today’s thought “My father … he taught me” (March 26)}

Solomon writes in chapter 15,

“3  The eyes of Jehovah are in every place, Keeping watch upon the evil and the good. 4  A gentle tongue is a tree of life; But perverseness therein is a breaking of the spirit. 5  A fool despiseth his father’s correction; But he that regardeth reproof getteth prudence.” (Proverbs 15:3-5 ASV)

Let us heed God’s word!

Page of a rare black-letter Bible, 1497, print...

Words of the Most High. – Page of a rare black-letter Bible, 1497, printed in Strasbourg by Johann Grüninger. The coloured chapter initials were handwritten after printing (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

+

 

  1. Words in the world
  2. The Tongue an Outlet
  3. Loving the Word
  4. Answering a fool according to his folly
  5. Honour your own words as if they were an important contract
  6. Think before you speak
  7. A tongue to speak slowly and well-considered
  8. For attractive lips, speak words of kindness
  9. Growth in character
  10. Aim High: Examples of Godly Characters to follow
  11. How should we preach?
  12. The radiance of God’s glory and the counsellor
  13. A Living Faith #2 State of your faith
  14. Feed Your Faith Daily
  15. Trusting, Faith, calling and Ascribing to Jehovah #3 Voice of God #5 To meditate and Transform
  16. Bible a guide – Bijbel als gids
  17. Happy who’s delight is only in the law of Jehovah
  18. A Bible Falling Apart Belongs to Someone who isn’t
  19. Truth never plays false roles of any kind, which is why people are so surprised when meeting it
  20. Wisdom lies deep
  21. Those who make peace should plant peace like a seed
  22. Clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience
  23. Prophets making excuses
Title page to the ASV

Title page to the ASV (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

+++

 

  • Devotional on Proverbs 8 (Wisdom) (365devotionals.wordpress.com)
    Wisdom is talked about many times in the bible but today we don’t really honour or celebrate wisdom so much. Rather the people who have the most power, most money, who are the most beautiful and talented are celebrated and honoured.Rather than seeking wisdom many seek riches and i also seek and desire riches more than wisdom sometimes. It is constantly in my face, through advertisement and just living in the world in general. But wisdom has this to say “I love all who love me. Those who search for me will surely find me.”
  • Several quotes about wisdom. (closetoeighty.wordpress.com)
    The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.  ~Isaac Asimov
  • Secrets of Wisdom (peterdavid28.wordpress.com)
    Secrets of wisdom have been collected and preserved for you. Solomon, the rich and wise king of Israel, son of beloved David, will teach you to be great in the sight of God and men (Pr 3:1-4; 10:1; 25:1).You stand before an open door of knowledge, prudence, honor, riches, and life, among many other blessings. These are not the mere words of a pagan thinker, whose sayings have long ago been proven false. These are the inspired words of God as learned, proven, and written down by the world’s greatest analyst and philosopher (Eccl 1:12-18; 2:1-12).
  • March 27: Wisdom= Generosity (pastorpekari.wordpress.com)
    Want to know how you’ll use a billion (with a b) dollars?  Just take a look at how you use $100, and you’ll know.
  • Wisdom: Cue Sound Effects! (pastorpekari.wordpress.com)
    We usually think of wisdom connected to the mind, but a reading of wisdom literature in the Bible shows that wisdom might not be as much about getting the right answer as it is about living the right way at the right time.
  • Wisdom by A Schoonbee (christianmotivations.weebly.com)
    The bible says that those who walk in wisdom will be successful and live long lives. they will be happy and be blessed. See Proverbs 3:1-18
  • Wisdom From Above (theresaboudreau.wordpress.com)
    Life is a journey that can be difficult at times, as you try to navigate your next steps. In some cases, there are no black & white solutions to your problems or straightforward answers to your questions. You may travel hard roads and encounter gray and foggy days on your venture. What you need is wisdom from above to make the choices and decisions that will ultimately move you forward in the right direction. Wisdom from above is wisdom that can only come from God in Heaven.
  • Thursday Thoughts: Pattern of a Wise Woman (keeponswimmingblog.wordpress.com)
    The Proverbs 31 woman is one example of a woman who feared the Lord and applied that wisdom in everyday life. Just as with many examples, we can learn from them without feeling the pressure to conform to every practical application of the wisdom principles behind each application. Clearly some applications, like her speech being characterized by kindness, is echoed in the New Testament as descriptors of a believer in Jesus Christ.
  • The Value of Wisdom (2-23-2014) (worshipwithheart.wordpress.com)
    Solomon asks for wisdom.  Even God acknowledged to Solomon how rare it was for such a request.  Would I have made such a request?  Or would have I asked for the other things God named that most people would ask for?  (Possessions, wealth, honor, a long life.)
  • A Fool (inspirationalchristiansfortoday.com)
    A fool is a person lacking wisdom and common sense. They act imprudently and are easily tricked or deceived. If you wish to avoid the label of simpleton, dunce, blockhead, or imbecile I encourage you to seek out and find someone wise and sit at his or her feet for a while. Soak in their knowledge and try to apply it to your life.

    King Solomon had many faults but he did appreciate the value of wisdom and understanding. He had the common sense to ask God for wisdom in order to lead the children of Israel. God blessed this son of King David with a wisdom so great it was known around the world. A fool leading a nation is dangerous and both King Solomon and God wanted a wise and competent ruler.

Being Religious and Spiritual 7 Transcendence to become one

Often when people in a discussion come upon talking about the higher elements of life and speak about believes in God or in divine beings people in the previous years were curious to know if that person belonged to a certain church.  Today there might be not so much interest in talking about the spiritual. And when they encounter people more interested in spiritual matters we encounter a shift in questions.

Ryan Killough also noticed that and mentions in his blog:

Homo sapiens sapiens - Deliberate deformity of...

Homo sapiens sapiens – Deliberate deformity of the woman skull, “Toulouse deformity “. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The question I receive more frequently now is, “oh, what are you?” I always want to answer that question by saying: “I am a species of Homo sapiens from the kingdom of Animalia, pleased to meet you earthling” but it is clear what they mean. So instead I answer, “I am …” Wait, should I answer? I wonder if it’s worth it, because the second it is heard what, “I am” will the attitude and thought behind anyone reading this entire post now change? Not that this ever happens in politics, but why take the risk? There is nothing specifically wrong with the question, “what are you?” My concern is not the question itself, but the change in social norm causing the shift to this question. The question is often asked, not always to learn about someones relationship with Jesus, but to figure out what his or her beliefs are. That is the problem I am addressing. {Church/Denominations}

for him it seems to be a problem when people wonder what he believes. But is that not the first thing to come into a relationship with the person in whom you want to believe?

He should know that people are curious when they encounter somebody who dares to mention he believes in something. When it is Jesus or God that person believes in, he becomes a test person. Than that believer becomes the target to question to see if his beliefs are really well structured and sound. Most people do know that there are many churches and people with so many different believes but that they also often got against each other, even killing each other for their believes. For many the believes or connected with religion which was a ’cause’ (according to them) of many wars. they find it strange that those different churches often claim to be talking about the same God.
Ryan Killough also agrees and questions:

Even though we attend different denominations, we are all following the same God. We should be of the same mind and thought. So if God new all these religious sects would occur where differences and discord would take place, did He make a mistake with the idea of church? Absolutely not. {Church/Denominations}

The Seven Sacraments by Rogier van der Weyden, ca. 1448.

He finds Church is a necessity for teaching, admonishing, and worshipping but agrees that through weekly patterns in our forms of worship, we can deceive ourselves into believing in wrong philosophy.

Our church practices should not be our belief! We should not put tradition and spiritual rituals over what is right, good, and true. Traditions are for the purpose of acknowledging God and, again, are not to become our beliefs. Communion, baptism, confirmation, hand movements, church membership, fasting, or any other church sacraments will not give you salvation! They will not make you any more holy or deserving of Gods grace. These sacraments are simply to express our gratitude of God’s love for us, and allow us to become closer to Jesus in our personal relationship with Him. {Church/Denominations}

But it are just created sacraments and religious actions of those churches which are build on human traditions and not on biblical traditions of the Judean people of God. Many denominations created rules how to do things in the community which are not always totally Biblically funded. Through the years several theologians brought in different teachings and took followers or believers with them, often forming a new church-community  or worse, a new denomination.

Some might think the church does need its theologians to stay in existence, because without good doctrines, good theology, or wonderful expositions it would not be able to survive and be lost in the land of fables and cute stories. Without institutions, temples or churches there would be not much for religion to have a feeding ground. In Religion that church also needs life. In Christian religion this may be the resurrection life of Christ.

No doctrine, idea, theology, or exposition can replace the life of Christ. Only the life of Christ and that which issues from it will prevail against the gates of Hades.

writes Eric Adams in his writing on the British missionary in China, Margaret E. Barber. {My Experience In The Word Of Faith Movement Pt. 6-Watchman Nee, Miss Margaret E. Barber, Roman Catholic Mystics}

according to him

Heaven and God are far away, so we must find ways to ascend to heaven. Like the old African American spiritual says:

We are climbing Jacob’s ladder,
We are climbing Jacob’s ladder,
We are climbing Jacob’s ladder,
Soldiers of the cross.

Every round goes higher, higher,
Every round goes higher, higher,
Every round goes higher, higher,
Soldiers of the cross.

But we may know that God is not far away. He is every moment of the day very close to the world, everywhere and knows every person his or her heart. In their life every person is somewhere else on the Jacob’s Ladder. He can either look down and be afraid or look up and be of full hope.

The Christian Flag displayed next to the pulpi...

What some call “The Christian Flag” displayed next to the pulpit on the chancel of a church sanctuary. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Many religious people do want to grab themselves by the bootstraps, and try to work their way into God’s good graces, not by grasping or lathing themselves to the Bible, but preferring to  cling to theologian writings. Some may seek for God internally through emotional or mystical experiences and become preoccupied with their own spirituality. To come into a spiritual life which also can become a religious life the person has to be able to hear God’s voice, and to be willing to come to understand God’s Will. When not willing to understand and than to follow the Will of God his faith would not be of much value. Children also often do know what they should do but do something different. That will bring them in problems. The same for adults who have an inborn ethical feeling, which they can ignore or follow. Maturity also informs most of us which influence our feelings may have on others and vice versa. When grown up the person knows how sustained feelings can ‘strangle’ a person and how he can become enslaved by preventing emotional growth to progress beyond the sense of pain having been precipitated, in some way, by whom or what is not liked or hated (i.e., another person, group or class of persons).

As such every person in the world, all created in the image of God can come to hear the call of righteousness and have the feeling of good and bad in them. The difference for the Christian religious person is that he or she should hear that Voice of God and offers himself or herself to follow that Voice more than any other voice. This makes Jesus so special. He could do what he wanted to do and could strike all honour for the things he seemed to be doing; But he never claimed that he could do those things on his own. He recognised he could not do anything without his Father, to whom he prayed to have things done. Jesus was in the world to have his Father to be known better. He also lifted up his eyes to heaven asking his Father to accept and glorify him the only begotten son, in order that he, Jesus the Son of God, may glorify the Only One God who had given Christ authority over all flesh. The religious person who wants to call himself Christian should be a follower of Christ, Jesus the Messiah from whom he or she can get eternal life.  But to be able to get that eternal life those persons should come to the understanding Who is who and should come to know the Only True God, who is the Adonai Elohim Hashem Jehovah, and Jesus Christ, whom God had sent to the world.

Jesus never glorified himself, neither should we glorify ourselves. We should become like Christ, but by doing so we shall not become Christ himself like he did not become God himself. Jesus always had glorified his Father, the God of Abraham as the Only One True God. Jesus knew his lower position than the heavenly beings (angels), but also knew that God was the Most High and always should and shall be the Most High Elohim.  The son of Joseph and Miriam (Mary/Maria) from the tribe of King David only wanted to be the will of his Father and wanted to complete on earth the work that his Father, Allah the God of gods had given him to do.

It was this Nazarene man who has revealed God His name to the men whom God gave him out of the world. Jesus never claimed those to be his. He knew that those men who were willing to follow him, were given by his Father. They were God’s, and He have given them to Jesus, and they have kept God His Word.  Those disciples continued the work of Christ after he was killed and resurrected. By the sent Comforter, requested by Christ Jesus,  they lost their fear and went out into the world, understanding that all the things that God had given to their master teacher Jesus came not from their rabbi, but came from his Father, which they now also could call their Father, the Only One God, whose name Jehovah they knew already from Torah, but was now better known by the words and works of His son Jesus.

It was from that Nazarene man the disciples got their words. They received them and knew truly that Jesus had come from God, and they have believed that God had sent him. They never believed that it was God Who had come down onto earth, because they also remembered the voice, at the baptism of their master, Who told the people present that it was “His beloved son” who stood there and did not tell them that it was God who had come down to earth. They also had heard enough from this man to know his relationship with his Father, whom Christ considered to be the Only One true God, to whom Jesus prayed and asked them also to pray to.

” It came to pass when all the people were baptized, Jesus also was baptized, and while he prayed the heaven was opened,  (22)  And the Holy Spirit descended on him, like a dove, and a voice from heaven, saying, You are my beloved Son, with whom I am pleased.” (Luke 3:21-22 Lamsa NT)

Jesus had always asked  the things to happen on behalf of the people around him, but they also remembered Jesus telling them that he did not ask God on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom God had given him, because they are God His,  and all Jesus his things are His. They also remembered that Jesus was pleased that His Father had given His world into the hands of him, and that he could been glorified in them. Jesus became no longer in the world, and they were in the world, Jesus went up to his Father in heaven to sit at His right hand. Though Jesus left not his disciples, nor us, on their own. He asked God to keep them, and those who were willing to follow him, in God His name. Being under the Guidance of Christ and his Father all followers of Christ should become like Christ, becoming one the same way like Jesus and God were one. This would not make us to be Christ, like it also did not make Christ to be God. Otherwise we being one with Christ, Christ being one with God, in case Jesus was God we also would become God.  But that is impossible. Like Jesus was a man of flesh and blood, a material being we also are of flesh and blood material beings. Even when we try to become so spiritual that we overcome the material site of ourselves, we shall never be able to become as immaterial or spiritual beings as angels or as the eternal Spirit God.

Jesus has given us his word that he kept us in God’s name and told us all those things in the world so that we may have his joy completed in ourselves. Jesus does not live any more in this world, but we who are living in this world, are still submitted to the Laws of God but subject to the laws of the country were we live in. The world may hate us because we have chosen to follow Christ Jesus and to believe in the One God Who is One. Not believing in the worldly gods we also do not want to be of the world just as Jesus was and is not of the world.  Jesus did not ask his Father that He would take us out of the world, but that He would protect us from the evil of that world.

“But Jesus said to them, My Father works even until now, so I also work.  (18)  And for this the Jews wanted the more to kill him, not only because he was weakening the sabbath, but also because he said concerning God that he is his Father, and was making himself equal with God.  (19)  Jesus answered and said to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, that the Son can do nothing of his own accord, except what he sees the Father doing; for the things which the Father does, the same the Son does like him also.  (20)  For the Father loves his Son, and he shows him everything that he does; and he will show him greater works than these, so that you may marvel.  (21)  For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to those whom he will.” (John 5:17-21 Lamsa NT)

“Jesus spoke these things, and then he lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, O my Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son, so that your Son may glorify you.  (2)  Since you have given him power over all flesh, so that to all whom you have given him, he may give life eternal.  (3)  And this is life eternal, that they might know you, that you are the only true God, even the one who sent Jesus Christ.  (4)  I have already glorified you on the earth; for the work which you had given to me to do, I have finished it.  (5)  So now, O my Father, glorify me with you, with the same glory which I had with you before the world was made.  (6)  I have made your name known to the men whom you gave me out of the world; they were yours and you gave them to me; and they have kept thy word.  (7)  Now they know that whatever you have given me is from you.  (8)  For the words which you gave me I gave them; and they accepted them, and have known truly that I came forth from you, and they have believed that you sent me.  (9)  What I request is for them; I make no request for the world, but for those whom you have given to me; because they are yours.  (10)  And everything which is mine, is yours; and what is yours is mine; and I am glorified by them.  (11)  Hereafter I am not in the world, but these are in the world; and I am coming to you. O holy Father, protect them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are.  (12)  While I was with them in the world, I protected them in your name; those you gave me I protected, and not one of them is lost, except the son of perdition, that the scripture might be fulfilled.  (13)  Now I am coming to you; and these things I speak while I am in the world, that my joy may be complete in them.  (14)  I have given them your word; and the world hated them, because they were not of the world, just as I am not of the world.  (15)  What I request is not that you should take them out of the world, but that you should protect them from evil.” (John 17:1-15 Lamsa NT)

The religious and spiritual person in the Christian faith should come to the essence of Christ Jesus his teaching. Like Jesus was not of this world they also should try to cleanse themselves, have their spirit clear, proper for God and not being tempted by the material world, loving the traditions of the world. As such they should try to dispose themselves of those celebrations which are kept in the world, but have elements not in accordance with God His commandments.  We should strip our world from all the heathen or pagan elements. The world were we do want to live in should be removed from all those things which are mentioned in the Bible, the Word of God, as things which are not right.  By avoiding all the things God does not want the world might not like us, because they will notice that we do not want to be “of the world”, even as Jesus was and is not of the world.

In history when churches went astray from the teachings of God, religious people wanted to bring them back on the good track. Their teachings being in conflict with the general or traditional church, made that new denominations were formed. Many allowed legalism, the theological doctrine that salvation is gained through good works, to take a higher stand than God and wanted certain actions to be part of the service a religious person ought to do. Instead of giving more attention at our personal daily walk with Christ and with his Father, which is more important than the sacraments we can burden ourselves with, they brought limitation to what people could do or gave specific strict rules to what people could not do. Sacraments became used as a tool to enter heaven, instead of looking at those sacraments as a symbol of our gratitude toward Gods unfailing grace.

Those ‘renewing teachers’ their followers created new churches and considered that only those people could be saved and go to heaven who became a member of their congregation. They had forgotten that Christ Jesus saved everybody and is the cornerstone of the Church. It is not by belonging to a church a person will secure his position in a place called heaven or in the Kingdom of God. Instead of so many different churches which exclude the other churches, all followers of Christ should be united in that Body of Christ. Those teachers claiming people could only be saved by being a member of their church, also had forgotten that יהוה , YHWH and Love are Four-letter words which are inextricable bound up with the Body of Jesus Christ and his Father, Jehovah God. There were two or more people are gathered in the name of Christ, Jesus is present and there should be peace and Christian brotherhood. The church should offer a place for Christian community, in order strengthen the members their faith, for the purpose of coming closer to God and of spreading God’s Word (by preaching) to the world and worshipping God in everything they do.

Going into ourselves, the spirituality should bring the person in a pure state of mind, clear to receive the entrance to the Supreme Being and becoming one with Him. It should be the aim of the spiritual minded and of the religious person to clear his or her mind of all the unnatural things. The Christian person aiming to get such an open mind to Jesus his Father, like he had, being sanctified in God His Truth, knowing that only God His Word is Truth.  Coming to the knowledge that it was God Who had sent Jesus into the world, and that it was not God Who came down Himself, the religious person should recognise that it was that man Jesus who also sent him or her into the world to become sanctified in Truth.

Jesus did pray to his Father concerning those who will believe in the Messiah Jesus through their word, that all may be one, as God is in Christ that they also may be one in Jesus and in Jehovah God so that the world may believe that God sent Jesus.

Jesus did give his disciples the glory which Jehovah God had given him, that they may be one, as God and Jesus are One. The real Christian his or her main aim should be that oneness with God, like Christ Jesus was one in his apostles we also should become one in Christ like Jesus had unity with his Father, that we may be perfected in one; and that the world may know that it was Jehovah God Who sent Jesus and loved them, even as God loved Jesus.

The spiritual minded Christian should aim to come in such transcendent state that he reaches that goal to become like Christ united with his Father. The transcendence should bring the person wherever Jesus would be. His desire to be one of those whom Jehovah God has given Jesus, that where he is, they may be with him also, that they may behold his glory which God gave Jesus, because God loved Jesus already before the foundation of the world. Because God knows everything, He already knows us as well already from the beginning of the universe. We do not know anything from that period when everything came into being (because we did not exist yet, like Christ did not exist yet), but our spirit should be willing to be part of that foundation of the world, that does not want to know about their Creator, but Jesus knew God and made him known to the world. We also should now become part of that New Foundation, where Jesus as the second Adam opened the gates to the Kingdom of God.

“I with them and you with me, that they may become perfected in one; so that the world may know that you sent me, and that you loved them just as you loved me.  (24)  O Father, I wish that those whom you have given me, may also be with me where I am; so that they may see my glory which you have given me; for you have loved me before the foundation of the world.  (25)  O my righteous Father, the world did not know you, but I have known you; and these have known that you have sent me.  (26)  And I have made your name known to them, and I am still making it known; so that the love with which you loved me may be among them, and I be with them.” (John 17:23-26 Lamsa NT )

In the spiritual mood the person wants to become perfect like the Father of Jesus in Heaven is perfect. (Matthew 5:48 )

“So he that descended is the same also that ascended far above all heavens, that he might fulfil all things.  (11)  And he has assigned some, apostles, and some, prophets, and some, evangelists, and some, pastors, and some, teachers;  (12)  For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ:  (13)  Until we all become one in faith, and in the knowledge of the Son of God, and become a perfect man according to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ:  (14)  That we henceforth be not as children easily stirred and carried away by every wind of false doctrines of men who through their craftiness are artful in deceiving the people;  (15)  But that we be sincere in our love, so that in everything we may progress through Christ, who is the head.  (16)  It is through him that the whole body is closely and firmly united at all joints, according to the measure of the gift which is given to every member, for the guidance and control of the body, in order to complete the edifying of the body in love.” (Ephesians 4:10-16 Lamsa NT)

The person getting into spirituality wants to become one with his full being and with nature. That nature is part of the universe God created. The spiritual person tries to go deeper than the material site of the world, coming into the mystic site. Apostles, prophets, evangelists, some pastors, and some teachers may help the person to find subject matter and to get him or her on the way to do good research. Those surrounding the person who wants to be religious and spiritual should provide the right spiritual food so that this person can come to unity with himself and with the Christian Church community, being a good working element and ‘being one’ in, and of, the Body of Christ.

+

Preceding articles:

Being Religious and Spiritual 1 Immateriality and Spiritual experience

Being Religious and Spiritual 2 Religiosity and spiritual life

Being Religious and Spiritual 3 Philosophers, Avicennism and the spiritual

Being Religious and Spiritual 4 Philosophical, religious and spiritual people

Being Religious and Spiritual 5 Gnostic influences

Being Religious and Spiritual 6 Romantici, utopists and transcendentalists

Next: Being Religious and Spiritual 8 Spiritual, Mystic and not or well religious

++

Find also to read:

  1. A world in denial
  2. Catholicism, Anabaptism and Crisis of Christianity
  3. To mean, to think, outing your opinion, conviction, belief – Menen, mening, overtuiging, opinie, geloof
  4. Being prudent – zorgvuldig zijn
  5. Choices
  6. Choosing your attitudes
  7. Not the circumstances in which we are placed constitutes our comfort
  8. The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands
  9. Our stance against certain religions and immigrating people
  10. Our relationship with God, Jesus and each other
  11. Parish, local church community – Parochie, plaatselijke kerkgemeenschap
  12. Attitude to others important for reaching them
  13. We have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace
  14. How us to behave
  15. Not liking your Christians
  16. Who are the honest ones?
  17. Greatest single cause of atheism
  18. What’s church for, anyway? (by Marcus Ampe)
  19. How we think shows through in how we act
  20. Act as if everything you think, say and do determines your entire life
  21. People should know what you stand for
  22. Remember that who you’re being is just as important as what you’re doing
  23. Followers with deepening
  24. Determined To Stick With Truth.
  25. Fear of God reason to return to Holy Scriptures
  26. Preaching to an unbelieving world
  27. True riches
  28. Doctrine and Conduct Cause and Effect
  29. Morality, values and Developing right choices
  30. Fixing our attention
  31. Being religious has benefits even in this life
  32. Faith
  33. A Living Faith #1 Substance of things hoped for
  34. A Living Faith #3 Faith put into action
  35. A Living Faith #4 Effort
  36. Faith antithesis of rationality
  37. Faith is a pipeline
  38. Trusting, Faith, calling and Ascribing to Jehovah #3 Voice of God #2 Instructions and Laws
  39. Trusting, Faith, Calling and Ascribing to Jehovah #5 Prayer #3 Callers upon God
  40. To mean, to think, outing your opinion, conviction, belief – Menen, mening, overtuiging, opinie, geloof
  41. Two states of existence before God
  42. God receives us on the basis of our faith
  43. Grace is Gods acting love
  44. He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.
  45. Jesus begotten Son of God #6 Anointed Son of God, Adam and Abraham
  46. In the death of Christ, the son of God, is glorification
  47. Are Christians prepared to Rejoice in the Lord
  48. That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us
  49. Self inflicted misery #8 Pruning to strengthen us
  50. Self-development, self-control, meditation, beliefs and spirituality
  51. Are religious and secular ethicists climbing the same mountain
  52. Caricaturing and disapproving sceptics, religious critics and figured out ethics
  53. Theology without spirituality sterile academic exercise
  54. Trinitarian philosophy
  55. God of gods
  56. Only One God
  57. Jesus Christ being dispatched as the Figurehead of a Religion
  58. Gaining Christ, trusting Jehovah
  59. Happy who’s delight is only in the law of Jehovah
  60. Being one in Jesus, Jesus in us and God in Jesus
  61. Good or bad preacher
  62. Words to push and pull
  63. If you have integrity
  64. Set free from any form of mental torment or self-condemnation
  65. Emotional pain and emotional deadness
  66. From pain to purpose
  67. Everything that is done in the world is done by hope
  68. Honour your own words as if they were an important contract
  69. All Positive Energy People Are Acceptable
  70. Messengers of Jesus will be hated to the end of time
  71. Discipleship way of life on the narrow way to everlasting life
  72. Church sent into the world
  73. Communion and day of worship

+++

Additional reading:

  1. What is the difference between Philosophy and Spirituality
  2. Who is the Only “True God”? (John 17:3)
  3. If the Father is the “only true God” (John 17:3) , does that mean that Jesus is a false god?
  4. Following Jesus’ Footsteps
  5. Church/Denominations

+++

2013 St. Patrick's Day Races: 5k Participants,...

Are you running the right race, having the right goals? – 2013 St. Patrick’s Day Races (Photo credit: ianhun2009)

  • Critically examine the relationship between gender, religious participation and religious organisations. (cheapbestessaywriting.wordpress.com)
    While it is difficult to know precisely whether or not spiritual beliefs differ in relation to males and womanishs, it is evident that unearthly rule and participation does show relatively clear sexual urge differences. This is sure across all forms of religious organisation. Almost two-thirds of churchgoers are women. However, as with social factors worry class and age, it is clear that in that respect is no overall pattern of male / female religious attendance, since there are evident differences between denominations.
  • The Authority of the Catholic Church (zeal4thefaith.wordpress.com)
    I have heard the argument from Protestants that the Bible is the only authority. They do not believe that the Catholic Church has authority on earth at all. Well, the Bible says absolutely nothing about being the only authority.
    +
    Anglicans, Baptists, Born-again Christians, Brethren-in-Christ Churches, Calvary Churches, Episcopalians, Bible Fundamentalists, Non-denominational churches, Methodists, Presbyterians, start up churches too numerous to count and the list goes on and on. They all teach different theologies and they all have different pastors who went to different seminaries which teach different interpretations of Scripture. Which ‘church’ is correct? Which interpretation is correct?
  • Picking fights over religion and the separation of church and state (santamariatimes.com)
    “We have just enough religion to make us hate,” wrote Jonathan Swift, “but not enough to make us love one another.” A lifelong religious controversialist, the 18th-century Irish satirist definitely knew whereof he wrote. After all, it’s fewer than 20 years since Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland quit dynamiting each other’s gathering places.
    +
    Even here in the United States, it often seems that picking fights over religion increases during the Christmas season. If anything, claiming to be persecuted while expressing contempt for others’ beliefs appears on the rise.
    +
    Like Swift, Jefferson recognized the dangers of religious strife. That’s precisely why, he assured Connecticut Baptists in 1802, the First Amendment decreed “a wall of separation between church and State.”
  • Sunday Worship- Understanding and Teaching (eggflip.wordpress.com)
    Sunday Worship is a core practice of the followers of Christianity, but it’s meanings and it’s enactments represent a wide variety of different traditions and rituals loosely associated with different denominations of Christian Churches and sects that are associated the world religion of Christianity. As is precisely within the Roman Catholic Church, the Liturgical calendar is a key part of Sunday worship for Catholics, with liturgical cycles determining which scriptural passages are read out in sermons on each Sunday of the week. Anglican Churches and the Church of England are examples of other churches that retain their own liturgical calendar. Sunday worship is an important part of many different churches own liturgical calendars, and in part defines and how the Christian year is organized.
    +
    part of understanding the practice of Sunday worship as a religious commitment and a religious experience, and the impact it has on the followers of Christianity, or Catholicism
    +
    C Peck (2007) describes the Church’s rationale for Sunday worship “There are approximately two billion professing Christians on earth. They attend over 2,000 different church denominations and organizations in the United States alone. This number continually increases, bringing no end of confusion over beliefs and disagreement between them.
  • Spirit of Medjugorje Update: Patience (zenobiuszjuz.wordpress.com)
    a good Christian life cannot be pursued without a regular examination of conscience and a good grounding in the virtues…

    …virtues stem from the grace deposited in the ground of the soul by God..the root of all virtue is humility which is characterized by a patient and loving submission to authority…
  • Religulous Bastards (venitism.blogspot.com)
    In the Iran of the Mullahs, the Persian Gulf emirates and even in those countries where Orthodox Christian patriarchs still wield considerable influence, journalistsare branded as heretics as soon as they dare to describe the far-from-holy practices of the regime and its clergy. And if they dare to denounce the atrocities of an armed Islamist group in Pakistan, Bangladesh or Nigeria, theyare gunned down as infidels even when they are Muslims.

    Although used for political ends, religion often carries real weight in societies where no boundary between the spiritual and secular is recognized. When an Omani publication quoted gays as saying they were better off in Oman than in neighbouring divine-right petro-monarchies, it was accused of promoting “moral depravity” and therefore “sacrilege.” Subjects such as the role of women, sexuality and reproduction – all markers of secularization – are surrounded by taboos.
  • Significance of followers of Islam beliefs (lovevisiblesim.wordpress.com)
    I met a man in my days with SAT-7 from Tunisia – an Anglican by denomination but a true follower of Jesus among the people of Islam – a friend to followers of Christ.He shared these thoughts –

    For one, it is a myth that the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims are unified in the embrace of classical Islam’s religious precepts.  On the contrary, man Muslim peoples have a poor understanding of what their religion is really all about.
    +

    But the followers of Islam are religious people and under the right conditions, open about sharing their beliefs.  The word of God, presented under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and watered by the intercessory prayers of God’s people, can do its work in their heart just as in the heart of any who seek truth.

    The follower of Christ’s responsibility is to share the same love and concern for the followers of Islam that God has, the truth as it is in Jesus Christ — the One who can make him free indeed.

  • When Do Christians Have Church Services (christianity.answers.com)
    Christianity is the most prominent religion in the United States, and most Christians regularly attend worship services. However, not all churches offer the same services on the same days. If you are interested in giving it a try, learn a little bit about when Christians hold their church services.
    +
    In most churches, holiday services revolve around the birth and death of Christ, or Christmas and Easter. On Christmas Eve, many churches hold traditional evening services that sometimes include candle light ceremonies and Christmas carols. Some churches also hold services on Christmas Day. The days leading up to Easter, including Palm Sunday and Good Friday, are usually celebrated with special services. Easter Sunday, of course, is celebrated by nearly every church with an upbeat service.
  • Spirituality and Your Health (evelynmmaxwell.com)
    Our spirituality and philosophy are the roots to our tree of life.  Whether or not our spiritual beliefs and philosophy of life provide us with psychological comfort and hope, rather than distress and discouragement, is very important.  Whether or not they provide us the wisdom and courage to act affects us for life as we branch out in our “decision tree” (a term used in the medical field for the decisions we make in relations to our perceptions of the situations, for example, if “this” is true, we do something for “this”; but if “this” is not true we do something different). And, the strengths and weaknesses of our spiritual lives contribute to our society’s strengths and weaknesses.
  • Explaining Christmas to Children (joiedevivreheather.wordpress.com)

Patriarch Abraham, Muslims, Christians and the son of God

Lazy Christians

English: Faithful praying towards Makkah; Umay...

Faithful praying towards Makkah; Umayyad Mosque, Damascus.  (Foto Antonio Milena/ABr – hor – 08) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Having to reply to some blogs on the saying that “Christians are to lazy to study and have no zeal for the deep things of God. I fear that they will not stand against the wiles of the devil as we enter into the tribulation. People will rush to Islam because it makes more sense the trinity is nonsense created 350 years after Christ from Greek and Roman Pagon tradition…” on a.o Shining light blog defies scripture! Where has the Lord God gone? and some other blogs pointing at the “stupidity of Christians” who consider Jesus to be a son of God, we would like to publish some of answer here too.

To consider Christadelphians and other Bible Students lazy to study and having no zeal for the deep things of God we would call unbecoming, because it are people who have no paid ministers, do their own searching and Bible study, organise themselves their own meetings and ecclesiae (‘churches’).

According to us it is inappropriate language to insult those who try after their working hours, to earn their living, to daily read in the Holy Scriptures and to regularly come together to discuss the Daily Bible Readings. Uncalled-for reproach we would like to defend all those who sincerely take a lot of their time, daily, to study the Bible and to look into the spiritual things of life.

Preaching Christians against not witnessing Muslims

The last hundred years in the so called civilised countries the citizens could find all sorts of Christians preaching at their doors or in public places. How many people are you able to encounter who never had a Jehovah Witness, a Mormon, a Pentecostal or Evangelical Christian at their doorstep? Those so called lazy Christians dared to go out and speak in the language of the people and present the words of God in the language of the people. How many Muslims offer the Word of God in the language of the people? How many people translated the Quran/Quoran/kor-Ahn/Koran in the many world languages? Would you describe all those scribes who tried to get the Word of God made clear in the tongue of the many nations as lazy Christians?

English: Muslims and Christians united for Egy...

Muslims and Christians united for Egypt by Carlos Latuff. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Many Christians do go out in the world and are active on many platforms, internet sites to proclaim the Word of God. Can this also be said about the Muslims? Most what people hear form Muslims is the hate bearing words against Christians and non-believers. But where is their call to the love of God and the love for the neighbour? How many Muslims actively show that brotherly love God wants his creation to show? How many People did you already got on your doorstep or visit you at home to share their Islamic faith with you?

On the streets, on the internet, in special places open to every one, we can find more Christians, proclaiming the Word of God and trying to get people becoming a God loving person, than we can find Muslims doing that.

Thinking all Christians and all Muslims are of the same lot

Looking at certain reactions on Islamic websites we can not fail to see that many Muslims do have a wrong idea about ‘all’ Christians, thinking that all Christians are the same and do think the same. Many of the Muslims put every Christian in the same box, like we can find many Christians who put all Muslims also in the same category.

Like many Christians do not know that there are many other non-trinitarian Christians than the Jehovah Witnesses, the majority of the Muslims consider all Christians as Trinitarians and blasphemous Islam haters.
Both would better go over those different people with a fine-tooth comb.

An earth-father or patriarch

Many Muslims also do not seem to understand the sonship of Christ, though themselves consider Avram/Abraham as their patriarch or “aartsvader” = “earthy father” or “stamvader” = “tribe father” or “father of their tribe” the imam of their nation.

“And remember that Abraham was tried by his Lord with certain commands, which he fulfilled: He said: “I will make thee an Imam to the Nations.” He pleaded: “And also [Imams] from my offspring!” He answered: “But My Promise is not within the reach of evil-doers.”” (Koran 2:124 Yusufali)

Meaning of Islam

Harper's Muslims and Christians

Harper’s Muslims and Christians (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Several Muslims, Christians and irreligious people forget what “Islam” really means. The Jews and Christians have and speak about the “Shalom” or the “Peace be with you”.

That peace, purity, submission and obedience brings “Islam” from the Arabic root of “Salema”. As such “Islam” means “submission to the Will of God and obedience to His Law“. It is considering oneself part of the Peace of the Creator God. Calling yourself as part of the ‘Islam’ would  mean you are willing to give yourself to the Creator God, Allah, the Elohim Hashem Jehovah.

Everything and every phenomenon in the world other than man is administered totally by God-made laws, ie. they should be obedient to God and submissive to his laws. Those that are in a ‘State of Islam’ are persons who have given their inner being to the Most High, willing to give their ‘body and soul’ in submission to that God. We all may Man posses qualities of intelligence and choice, but they all are their  and we only can exist because God allows us to exist. We as creations of the One God are all invited by the Creator to submit to the good Will of Him, Allah/God and to obey His law, ie, become a God fearing and God loving being. For the Jews this is becoming a good Jew, for Christians this would mean to accept also the one send by God and to follow the teachings of that Nazarene Jew Jeshua/Jesus Christ. For the followers of the teacher Abū al-Qāsim Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib ibn Hāshim it would mean to become a Muslim or Bahá’í.

According to the Bahá’í, Jewish and Christian teachings the human purpose is to learn to know and love God through such methods as prayer, reflection, and being of service to humanity.

The word Allah in the Arabic language means God, or more accurately, The One and Only Eternal God, Creator of the Universe, Lord of all lords, King of all kings, Most Compassionate, Most Merciful. The word Allah to mean God is also used by Arabic speaking Jews and Christians.

Already from the early ages there were people who considered that there was /is a Most High Supreme Being that created everything around us. Through the ages there have always been faithful people who wanted only to honour that Almighty God of gods. There where also people who wanted to love that God or Allah so deeply they also wanted to know who He was and what His Name was. For that reason Allah let his beloved people know Who He was and how he could be named.

 (1)  And יהוה {Jehovah} said to Mosheh, “Now see what I do to Pharaoh, for with a strong hand he is going to let them go, and with a strong hand he is going to drive them out of his land.”  (2)  And Elohim spoke to Mosheh and said to him, “I am יהוה {Jehovah}.  (3)  “And I appeared to Aḇraham, to Yitsḥaq, and to Yaʽaqoḇ, as Ěl Shaddai. And by My Name, יהוה {Jehovah}, was I not known to them?  (4)  “And I also established My covenant with them, to give them the land of Kenaʽan, the land of their sojournings, in which they have sojourned.  (5)  “And I have also heard the groaning of the children of Yisra’ĕl whom the Mitsrites are enslaving, and I have remembered My covenant.  (6)  “Say, therefore, to the children of Yisra’ĕl, ‘I am יהוה {Jehovah}, and I shall bring you out from under the burdens of the Mitsrites, and shall deliver you from their enslaving, and shall redeem you with an outstretched arm, and with great judgments,  (7)  and shall take you as My people, and I shall be your Elohim. And you shall know that I am יהוה {Jehovah} your Elohim who is bringing you out from under the burdens of the Mitsrites.  (8)  ‘And I shall bring you into the land which I swore to give to Aḇraham, to Yitsḥaq, and to Yaʽaqoḇ?, to give it to you as an inheritance. I am יהוה {Jehovah}.’ ” (Exodus 6:1-8 The Scriptures 1998+)

” (5)  Thus said the Ěl, יהוה {Jehovah}, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread forth the earth and that which comes from it, who gives breath to the people on it, and spirit to those who walk on it:  (6)  “I, יהוה {Jehovah}, have called You in righteousness, and I take hold of Your hand and guard You, and give You for a covenant to a people, for a light to the gentiles,  (7)  to open blind eyes, to bring out prisoners from the prison, those who sit in darkness from the prison house.  (8)  “I am יהוה {Jehovah}, that is My Name, and My esteem I do not give to another, nor My praise to idols.  (9)  “See, the former predictions have come, and new ones I am declaring; before they spring forth I let you hear them.”” (Isaiah 42:5-9 The Scriptures 1998+)

Those who love and recognise יהוה {Jehovah} should all be united in the same love as their Creator. Submission to the good Will of God, together with obedience to His beneficial Law, ie, would be becoming a child of God or belong to the People of God, either by what the world would call becoming a Jew or becoming a Christian or like the followers of ‘their prophet Muhhamad’ would call themselves to be a Muslim, as the best safeguard for man’s peace and harmony.

Worshipping prophet not followed

Quran, Mus'haf_Al_Tajweed.

Quran, Mus’haf_Al_Tajweed. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Many Muslims do not want to believe that Christians would worship the One and only one God, Creator of heaven and earth and everything around יהוה. But lots of Christians consider Abraham also as their patriarch who witnessed the Wisdom of God and who received the promise for all God loving people, first given to the Judean People of God, afterwards also to gentiles, Christians and Muslims.

“Were ye witnesses when death appeared before Jacob? Behold, he said to his sons: “What will ye worship after me?” They said: “We shall worship Thy god and the god of thy fathers, of Abraham, Isma’il and Isaac,- the one [True] Allah: To Him we bow [in Islam].”” (Koran 2:133 Yusufali)

“Abraham was not a Jew nor yet a Christian; but he was true in Faith, and bowed his will to Allah’s [Which is Islam], and he joined not gods with Allah.” (Koran 3:67 Yusufali)

Chosen people and their faith

Christians do believe in God (in several languages a title also said like in Arabic: Allah) and in the ones He had chosen, like Abraham, Ishmael, the other patriarch Jacob and many other prophets whose books we now have assembled in the Holy Scriptures, the Bible.

“Say: “We believe in Allah, and in what has been revealed to us and what was revealed to Abraham, Isma’il, Isaac, Jacob, and the Tribes, and in [the Books] given to Moses, Jesus, and the prophets, from their Lord: We make no distinction between one and another among them, and to Allah do we bow our will [in Islam].”” (Koran 3:84 Yusufali)

Son of a mother

First of all there is the sonship, like we can find Jeshua, the prophet Jesus to be the son of Miriam (Miryam, Mary/Maria)

Koran 2:87 We gave Moses the Book and followed him up with a succession of Apostles; We gave Jesus the son of Mary Clear Signs and strengthened him with the Holy Spirit. Is it that whenever there comes to you an Apostle with what ye yourselves desire not, ye are puffed up with pride? — ome ye call impostors, and others ye slay!

Koran 2:87 And most certainly We gave Musa the Book and We sent messengers after him one after another; and We gave Isa (Issou/Jeshua/Jesus/Jezus/Chesu), the son of Marium (Miriam/Mary/Maria), clear arguments and strengthened him with the holy spirit, What! whenever then a messenger came to you with that which your souls did not desire, you were insolent so you called some liars and some you slew.

Koran 2:253 Those apostles we endowed with gifts, some above others: To one of them Allah spoke; others He raised to degrees of honor; to Jesus the son of Mary we gave Clear Signs, and strengthened him with the holy spirit. If Allah had so willed, succeeding generations would not have fought among each other, after Clear Signs had come to them, but they chose to wrangle, some believing and others rejecting. If Allah had so willed, they would not have fought each other; but Allah fulfilleth His plan.

Son of a father

Many people in the world do receive sons and call themselves children of that father, but we also find other children who consider the previous prophets their father. Like for us Christians the prophet Abraham is our patriarch and father.

About the Nazarene Jewish man Jeshua, who fitted the Plan of God, it is also know that many say he is the son of Allah, the Only One God:

Koran 2:116 They say: “Allah hath begotten a son”: Glory be to Him. — ay, to Him belongs all that is in the heavens and on earth: Everything renders worship to Him.

Koran 3:47 She said: “O my Lord! How shall I have a son when no man hath touched me?” He said: “Even so: Allah createth what He willeth: When He hath decreed a Plan, He but saith to it, ’Be,’ and it is!”

A son to Allah

Allah has taken to himself a son which we consider to be the son of man in the line of Adam and many prophets:

Matthew 1:1 this is the genealogy of Jeshua/Yeshua the Messiah, son of David, son of Avraham/Abraham:

“The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham.” (Matthew 1:1 KJ21)

English: The Bible

The Bible with the Gospels telling the world about the son of David and son of God (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Matthew’s first gospel tells us about an angel of Adonai who appeared to Yosef (Joseph), son of David, not to be afraid to take Miryam as his wife; for what has been conceived in her is from the Ruach haKodesh, the Power of God or Holy Spirit. That what she bears does come directly from the Most High Elohim and the angels tell Joseph and Mary that she will give birth to a son, which they have to name Jeshua/Yeshua/Yashua/Yahushua, (which means ‘Jehovah saves’). It is because this son fostered by this two common people will save his people from their sins.

The virgin conceived and brought a son on this earth, and they called him ‘immanu el” or “God with us”

“20 But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, you son of David, fear not to take unto you Mary your wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. 21 And she shall bring forth a son, and you shall call his name Yashua: for he shall save his people from their sins. 22 Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord [Yahweh] by the prophet, saying, 23 Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us. 24 Then Joseph being raised from sleep did as the angel of the Lord had invited him, and took unto him his wife: 25 And knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son: and he called his name Yashua.” (Matthew 1:20-25 KJBPNV)

When the son of those God fearing people grew up, he learned everything from them. (In case he would have been God he could not learn anything from them because he would have known everything already.) Becoming an adult he went into the river Jordan to become baptised by his nephew John and when he came out of the water people were astonished to suddenly hear a voice from the air. All the onlookers could hear the voice of Allah, the God of heaven and earth, who let everybody present hear that they could see His only begotten beloved son.

“16 And having been baptized, Jesus immediately went up out of the water: and, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him: 17 And a voice from heaven, said, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” (Matthew 3:16-17 KJV_2011)

Son of David who received from his Father in heaven

Jeshua went to many places where people could see him (remember that nobody can see God or they would die) and found also witnesses who shouted for example “son of David! take pity on us!”

“And when Yahshua departed therefrom, two blind men followed him, crying, and saying, You Son of David, have mercy on us.” (Matthew 9:27 KJBPNV)

The son of man promised for many years had come into being and received the power from his Father, without Him Jesus could do nothing.

“But when they persecute you in this city, flee you into another: for truly I say to you, You shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of man has come.” (Matthew 10:23 KJBPNV)

“Then answered Yahshua and said to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he sees the Father do: for whatever things he does, these also does the Son likewise.” (John 5:19 KJBPNV)

“You have heard how I said to you, I go away, and come again to you. If you loved me, you would rejoice, because I said, I go to the Father: for my Father is greater than I” (John 14:28 KJBPNV)

Jesus himself clearly speaks about his Father in heaven who has handed over everything to him for a while. Because Jesus comes directly from the Father he, like any child, knows his father better than anybody else.

“25  In regard to that, Jesus then said, I thank you, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and have revealed them unto babes. 26 Yes, Father: for that was your gracious will. 27 All things have been given to me by my Father: and no one really knows the Son, except the Father; nor does anyone really know the Father, except the Son, and he to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. 28 Come to me, all you who labor and are carrying a heavy load, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:25-30 KJV_2011)

A son of glad tidings

We have Jesus who is … “the son of man … lord of shabbat!” (Matthew 12:8) but also “Mashiach, the son of the living God.” (Matthew 16:16)

“And Simon Peter answered and said, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.”” (Matthew 16:16 KJ21)

Allah is the One who gives the world everything we can see. He is the One who gave the glad tidings of a Word from Him that this man from Nazareth would be the Christ or Christos, the Messiah.

“Behold! the angels said: “O Mary! Allah giveth thee glad tidings of a Word from Him: his name will be Christ Jesus, the son of Mary, held in honour in this world and the Hereafter and of [the company of] those nearest to Allah;” (Koran 3:45 Yusufali)

But it would be wrong to consider that son of man, son of David, son of Abraham, son of Adam (see the genealogy of Christ in the different Bible books or gospels) as being Allah or the One Elohim Hashem Jehovah, God Himself.

“In blasphemy indeed are those that say that Allah is Christ the son of Mary. Say: “Who then hath the least power against Allah, if His will were to destroy Christ the son of Mary, his mother, and all every-one that is on the earth? For to Allah belongeth the dominion of the heavens and the earth, and all that is between. He createth what He pleaseth. For Allah hath power over all things.”” (Koran 5:19 Yusufali)

“And in their footsteps We sent Jesus the son of Mary, confirming the Law that had come before him: We sent him the Gospel: therein was guidance and light, and confirmation of the Law that had come before him: a guidance and an admonition to those who fear Allah.” (Koran 5:49 Yusufali)

“They do blaspheme who say: “Allah is Christ the son of Mary.” But said Christ: “O Children of Israel! worship Allah, my Lord and your Lord.” Whoever joins other gods with Allah,- Allah will forbid him the garden, and the Fire will be his abode. There will for the wrong-doers be no one to help.” (Koran 5:75 Yusufali)

Son of the One Greatest Elohim

Jesus (Jeshua/Ishi), who never claimed to be God, told not to worship him but to honour the one greater than him, the Only One God to whom Jesus prayed himself and told us also to pray to.

“Therefore the Lord Himself shall give you a sign: Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel.” (Isaiah 7:14 KJ21)

“But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law,” (Galatians 4:4 KJ21)

“30 And the angel said unto her, “Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found favor with God. 31 And behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb and bring forth a Son, and shalt call His name Jesus. 32 He shall be great and shall be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God shall give unto Him the throne of His father David, 33 and He shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of His Kingdom there shall be no end.” 34 Then said Mary unto the angel, “How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?” 35 And the angel answered and said unto her, “The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee. Therefore also that Holy Being who shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.” (Luke 1:30-35 KJ21)

” (21)  And it came to be, when all the people were immersed, יהושע {Jeshua} also being immersed, and praying, the heaven was opened,  (22)  and the Set-apart Spirit descended in bodily form like a dove upon Him, and a voice came from heaven saying, “You are My Son, the Beloved, in You I did delight.”  (23)  And when יהושע {Jeshua} Himself began, He was about thirty years of age, being, as reckoned by law, son of Yosĕph, of Ěli, (24)  of Mattithyahu, of Lĕwi, of Meleḵi, of Yanah, of Yosĕph, (25)  of Mattithyahu, of Amots, of Naḥum, of Ḥesli, of Noḡah, (26)  of Maʽath, of Mattithyahu, of Shimʽi, of Yosĕph, of Yehuḏah, (27)  of Yoḥanan, of Rephayah, of Zerubbaḇel, of She’alti’ĕl, of Neri, (28)  of Meleḵi, of Addi, of Qosam, of Elmoḏam, of Ěr, (29)  of Yehoshua, of Eliʽezer, of Yorim, of Mattithyahu, of Lĕwi, (30)  of Shimʽon, of Yehuḏah, of Yosĕph, of Yonam, of Elyaqim, (31)  of Melea, of Menna, of Mattattah, of Nathan, of Dawiḏ, (32)  of Yishai, of Oḇĕḏ, of Boʽaz, of Salmon, of Naḥshon, (33)  of Amminaḏaḇ, of Ram, of Ḥetsron, of Perets, of Yehuḏah, (34)  of Yaʽaqoḇ, of Yitsḥaq, of Aḇraham, of Teraḥ, of Naḥor, (35)  of Seruḡ, of Reʽu, of Peleḡ, of Ěḇer, of Shĕlaḥ, (36)  of Qĕynan, of Arpaḵshaḏ, of Shĕm, of Noaḥ, of Lemeḵ, (37)  of Methushelaḥ, of Ḥanoḵ, of Yereḏ, of Mahalalĕl, of Qĕynan, (38)  of Enosh, of Shĕth, of Aḏam, of Elohim.” (Luke 3:21-38 The Scriptures 1998+)

“40 One of the two who heard John speak, and followed Him, was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. 41 He first found his own brother Simon and said unto him, “We have found the Messiah” (which is, being interpreted, “the Christ”).” (John 1:40-41 KJ21)

“Then answered Jesus and said unto them, “Verily, verily I say unto you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He seeth the Father do; for what things soever He doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise.” (John 5:19 KJ21)

“Jesus said unto her, “Touch Me not, for I am not yet ascended to My Father; but go to My brethren and say unto them, ‘I ascend unto My Father and your Father, and to My God and your God.’”” (John 20:17 KJ21)

Anointed and given tasks by his Father

“how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, and how He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him.” (Acts 10:38 KJ21)

“22 For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son, 23 that all men should honor the Son, even as they honor the Father. He that honoreth not the Son honoreth not the Father who hath sent Him.” (John 5:22-23 KJ21)

Prayed to his Father

Jesus did never asked for himself something to himself, but asked that not his will but the will of his Father would be done. It was to this Father he prayed and wanted all people to pray to.

“9  In this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name. 10 Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth, as it is in Heaven. 11 Give us this day our daily bread. 12 And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. 13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Thine is the Kingdom, and the power, and the glory for ever. Amen.” (Matthew 6:9-13 KJ21)

“Ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit and that your fruit should remain, that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in My name, He may give it to you.” (John 15:16 KJ21)

“And in that day ye shall ask Me nothing. Verily, verily I say unto you, whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in My name, He will give it to you.” (John 16:23 KJ21)

” (40)  And coming to the place, He said to them, “Pray that you do not enter into trial.”  (41)  And He withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, and falling on His knees He was praying,  (42)  saying, “Father, if it be Your counsel, remove this cup from Me. Yet not My desire, but let Yours be done.”  (43)  And there appeared a messenger from heaven to Him, strengthening Him.  (44)  And being in agony, He was praying more earnestly. And His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.” (Luke 22:40-44 The Scriptures 1998+)

An intercessor or mediator

“For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,” (1 Timothy 2:5 KJ21)

From the texts above we do hope you can see that not only Adam was the son of God and Eva His daughter who created them directly, but that also Jesus was created directly by Allah, and therefore he certainly could call himself son of God. But he offered himself also to be one of God His people, one of the most beloved ones of the Most High, Allah, the One God.

The 2° Adam was like the 1° Adam chosen by Allah:

“Allah did choose Adam and Noah, the family of Abraham, and the family of ’Imran above all people,-” (Koran 3:33 Yusufali)

We as children of Abraham and of Adam should look at the man who made it possible to have the relation between God and man restored.

“O Children of Adam! wear your beautiful apparel at every time and place of prayer: eat and drink: But waste not by excess, for Allah loveth not the wasters.” (Koran 7:31 Yusufali)

Son lower than Father

Today we can enjoy the many things and look forward to a better future because we did receive that son of man, who is also the son of God and now sit at the right hand of his Father, Allah, the only One God Jehovah, who is the greatest and without Him we can do nothing, even Jesus not, who is the faithful witness of God. In this world a son or daughter may become higher or better than his father or mother, but they shall never be able to come in a higher position the the Most High.

”  (5)  and from יהושע {Jeshua} Messiah, the trustworthy witness, the first-born from the dead, and the ruler of the sovereigns of the earth. To Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood,  (6)  and has made us sovereigns and priests to His Elohim and Father, to Him be esteem and rule forever and ever. Amĕn.” (Revelation 1:5-6 The Scriptures 1998+)

” (18)  And let them know that You, Whose Name is יהוה {Jehovah}, You alone are the Most High over all the earth.” (Psalms 83:18 The Scriptures 1998+)

” (3)  For not knowing the righteousness of Elohim, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, they did not subject themselves to1 the righteousness of Elohim. Footnote: 1Or did not obey.  (4)  For Messiah is the goal1 of the ‘Torah unto righteousness’to everyone who believes. Footnote: 1Or end purpose; not termination.  (5)  For Mosheh writes about the righteousness which is of the Torah, “The man who does these shall live by them.”  (6)  But the righteousness of belief speaks in this way, “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who shall ascend into the heavens?’ ” – that is, to bring Messiah down; or,  (7)  “ ‘Who shall descend into the abyss?’ ” – that is, to bring Messiah up from the dead.  (8)  But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” – that is, the word of belief which we are proclaiming:  (9)  That if you confess with your mouth the Master יהושע {Jeshua} and believe in your heart that Elohim has raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved.  (10)  For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and one confesses with the mouth, and so is saved.  (11)  Because the Scripture says, “Whoever puts his trust in Him shall not be put to shame.”  (12)  Because there is no distinction between Yehud?ite and Greek, for the same Master of all is rich to all those calling upon Him.  (13)  For “everyone who calls on the Name of יהוה {Jehovah} shall be saved.”” (Romans 10:3-13 The Scriptures 1998+)

” (21)  “And I shall call for a sword against Gog? on all My mountains,” declares the Master יהוה {Jehovah}, “the sword of each one being against his brother.  (22)  “And I shall judge him with pestilence and blood, and rain down flooding rain and hailstones, fire and sulphur, on him and on his bands and on the many peoples who are with him.  (23)  “And I shall exalt Myself and set Myself apart, and I shall be known in the eyes of many nations. And they shall know that I am יהוה {Jehovah}.” ’ “(Ezekiel 38:21-23 The Scriptures 1998+)

” (28)  “You heard that I said to you, ‘I am going away and I am coming to you.’ If you did love Me, you would have rejoiced that I said, ‘I am going to the Father,’ for My Father is greater than I.” (John 14:28 The Scriptures 1998+)

” (3)  And I wish you to know that the head of every man is the Messiah, and the head of woman is the man, and the head of Messiah is Elohim.” (1Corinthians 11:3 The Scriptures 1998+)

” (15)  The man went away, and told the Yehud?im that it was יהושע {Jeshua} who made him well.  (16)  And because of this the Yehuḏim persecuted יהושע {Jeshua}, and were seeking to kill Him, because He was doing these healings on the Sabbath.  (17)  But יהושע {Jeshua} answered them, “My Father works until now, and I work.”  (18)  Because of this, then, the Yehuḏim were seeking all the more to kill Him, ‘because not only was He breaking the Sabbath, but He also called Elohim His own Father, making Himself equal with Elohim.’  (19)  Therefore יהושע {Jeshua} responded and said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son is able to do none at all by Himself, but only that which He sees the Father doing, because whatever He does, the Son also likewise does.  (20)  “For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all that He Himself does. And greater works than these He is going to show Him, in order that you marvel.  (21)  “For as the Father raises the dead and makes alive, even so the Son makes alive whom He wishes.  (22)  “For the Father judges no one, but has given all the judgment to the Son,  (23)  that all should value the Son even as they value the Father. He who does not value the Son does not value the Father who sent Him.  (24)  “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me possesses everlasting life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life.  (25)  “Truly, truly, I say to you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of Elohim. And those having heard shall live.  (26)  “For as the Father possesses life in Himself, so He gave also to the Son to possess life in Himself,  (27)  and He has given Him authority also to do judgment, because He is the Son of Ad?am.  (28)  “Do not marvel at this, because the hour is coming in which all those in the tombs shall hear His voice,  (29)  and shall come forth – those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have practised evil matters, to a resurrection of judgment.  (30)  “Of Myself I am unable to do any matter. As I hear, I judge, and My judgment is righteous, because I do not seek My own desire, but the desire of the Father who sent Me.  (31)  “If I bear witness of Myself, My witness is not true.  (32)  “There is another who bears witness of Me, and I know that the witness which He witnesses of Me is true.” (John 5:15-32 The Scriptures 1998+)

Men of God

English: Abraham, Sarah and Hagar Русский: Авр...

Abraham, man of God, Sarah and (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Already in the Beréshith, the first book of the Holy Scriptures, we can find The Supreme Being making all things. As the Great Designer He is the Originator of everything, including man. Adam and Eve (Ḥawwah, the mannin) were His direct makings, His children, who could call him Father. Afterwards still many men of God, or men coming from God could call the Almighty Elohim their Father.

” (7)  And יהוה {Jehovah} Elohim formed the man out of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils breath of life. And the man became a living being.” (Genesis 2:7 The Scriptures 1998+)

” (18)  And יהוה {Jehovah} Elohim said, “It is not good for the man to be alone, I am going to make a helper for him, as his counterpart.”” (Genesis 2:18 The Scriptures 1998+)

” (21)  So יהוה {Jehovah} Elohim caused a deep sleep to fall on the man, and he slept. And He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place.  (22)  And the rib which יהוה {Jehovah} Elohim had taken from the man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man.  (23)  And the man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. This one is called ‘woman,’ because she was taken out of man.”  (24)  For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” (Genesis 2:21-24 The Scriptures 1998+)

We have received men of God (i.e. children of God having become adult) who brought us the Words of their Father in heaven. The chosen one from God, Abraham was allowed by his Father in heaven to become the witness for God and the father of many.

“And strive in His cause as ye ought to strive, [with sincerity and under discipline]. He has chosen you, and has imposed no difficulties on you in religion; it is the cult of your father Abraham. It is He Who has named you Muslims, both before and in this [Revelation]; that the Messenger may be a witness for you, and ye be witnesses for mankind! So establish regular Prayer, give regular Charity, and hold fast to Allah! He is your Protector-the Best to protect and the Best to help!” (Koran 22:78 Yusufali)

” (17)  And יהוה {Jehovah} said, “Shall I hide from Aḇraham what I am doing,  (18)  since Aḇraham is certainly going to become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him?  (19)  “For I have known him, so that he commands his children and his household after him, to guard the way of יהוה {Jehovah}, to do righteousness and right-ruling, so that יהוה {Jehovah} brings to Aḇraham what He has spoken to him.”” (Genesis 18:17-19 The Scriptures 1998+)

On those men brought into the world by a man and a woman, allowed by God to have children, God brought His blessings and let them also announce the marvellous action which would take place in the future. (The one of Jesus been born and being risen from death has already come true).

“Those were some of the prophets on whom Allah did bestow His Grace,- of the posterity of Adam, and of those who We carried [in the Ark] with Noah, and of the posterity of Abraham and Israel of those whom We guided and chose. Whenever the Signs of [Allah] Most Gracious were rehearsed to them, they would fall down in prostrate adoration and in tears.” (Koran 19:58 Yusufali)

We, having found a restored relation with Allah, the Most High Almighty God, can now also come to Him (Jehovah) and call Him our heavenly Father.

+

Please do read also:

  1. God is One
  2. Only one God
  3. God of gods
  4. Creator of heaven and earth and everything around יהוה
  5. What are the attributes of God?
  6. “Who is The Most High” ? Who is thee Eternal? Who is Yehovah? Who is God?
  7. The Father (Jehovah) is God Alone
  8. How did the Trinity Doctrine Develop
  9. History of the acceptance of a three-in-one God
  10. The History of the Development of the Trinity Doctrine
  11. For those who have not the rudiments of an historical sense
  12. Is God comprised of three persons, or is He just one person?
  13. Altered to fit a Trinity
  14. The Trinity: paganism or Christianity?
  15. The Trinity – the Truth
  16. Trinity in the Bible
  17. Trinity: A False Doctrine of a False Church
  18. Trinity And Pagan Influence
  19. Questions for those who believe in the Trinity
  20. How do trinitarians equate divine nature
  21. The Word being a quality or aspect of God Himself
  22. The Great Trinity debate
  23. Newton not believing in the Holy Trinity
  24. Only-begotten god (OBGOD
  25. 2 Corinthians 5:19 – God in Christ
  26. Preexistence in the Divine purpose and Trinity
  27. On the Nature of Christ
  28. The Christ, the anointed of God
  29. Christ begotten through the power of the Holy Spirit
  30. Jesus begotten Son of God #1 Christmas and Christians
  31. Jesus begotten Son of God #4 Promised Prophet and Saviour
  32. Jesus begotten Son of God #5 Apostle, High Priest and King
  33. Jesus begotten Son of God #6 Anointed Son of God, Adam and Abraham
  34. Jesus begotten Son of God #7 A matter of the Future
  35. Jesus begotten Son of God #8 Found Divinely Created not Incarnated: The Anointed begotten Son of God
  36. Jesus begotten Son of God #9 Two millennia ago conceived or begotten
  37. Jesus begotten Son of God #11 Existence and Genesis Raising up
  38. Jesus begotten Son of God #13 Pre-existence excluding virginal birth of the Only One Transposed
  39. Jesus begotten Son of God #14 Beloved Preminent Son and Mediator originating in Mary
  40. Jesus begotten Son of God #15 Son of God Originating in Mary
  41. Jesus begotten Son of God #17 Adam, Eve, Mary and Christianity’s central figure
  42. Jesus begotten Son of God #18 Believing in inhuman or human person
  43. About a man who changed history of humankind
  44. Servant of his Father
  45. For the Will of Him who is greater than Jesus
  46. Christ having glory
  47. Russell and his beliefs
  48. One God the Father, a compendium of essays
  49. God loving people justified
  50. Proclaiming shalom, bringing good news of good things, announcing salvation
  51. Trusting, Faith, Calling and Ascribing to Jehovah #4 Transitoriness #2 Purity
  52. Fearing the right person
  53. Christianity is a love affair

+++

  • A good example how certain Christians misunderstand the word Allah and what Islam should really mean is seen in Allah has the Same Behavior as Satan (justiceshallovercome.wordpress.com)
    In his text the writer does not seem to recognise that in the Bible you shall also be able to find many instances where God call unto destroying of killing other people.
    The writer seems to focus on militant fundamentalist Muslims where perhaps “The Altoyah muslims says that Allah is Satan” (Never heard such a thing) “The Terrorists of Bin laden says that Allah is Born out of Lucifer” (where can we see this written or hear him say that?), “this means the same as that Allah is Born out of Devil, this means also the same as that Allah is Born out of Satan.” Where he seems to forget what Satan means. Satan is any adversary, so it would not be abnormal to call Jehovah God the adversary or satan against the evil world. The writer of the article clearly considers the wrong viewpoint of certain Christians where Satan has become a devilish being which has two horns on its face and lives in a underground where people after they die will be tortured.
  • Conversations at the Mosque – Islam v Christianity (sianarulanantham.wordpress.com)
    During my visit to Bahrain I took the tour of Al Fateh Grand Mosque. I was asked to dress in a Hijab and was shown around the building.
    +
    My guide was a young lady called Faiza who had such a sweet humble nature, it was a pleasure to talk to her. She had a profound love of God and a desire to serve him and dedicate her life to him.  She was keen to share her faith and I mine.
    +
    So what did I learn? That Muslims believe that:

    • There is only one God and our first commandment is to serve Him (although Islam does not attribute a gender to God) and then to serve others
    • Abraham had direct communication with God and Abraham, Moses, David, John the Baptist are among the prophets
    • Jesus was born of a virgin and was God’s messenger, the messiah who was foretold in Jewish scriptures
    • Mary was a very special women, chosen by God
    • Jesus healed the sick, raised people from the dead and was without sin
    • There will be a second coming of Christ, which will be a time of judgement.
    • We can communicate directly with God through prayer, we don’t need priests or rabbi as intercessors
    • There are angels who God uses as messengers
  •  In Secular Sunday: Losing My Religion, Part 1: Christianity (rebekkaksteg.com) can be seen how difficult it is for people to understand why God allows certain things to happen. THey donot seem to understand what happened in the Garden of Eden and  do not see that when people thought they could do it better than God, when He gave them the right to rule the world, they should not blame Him for the things they did wrong.
    She also writes:
    I left Islam, and in the end, I couldn’t see any convincing evidence as to why I should believe in god at all. All I see is fairy tales, make-believe and wishful thinking. And I’m sorry, I’d rather be hurt by the truth than comforted by a lie.
    +
    God orders genocides, murder and torture of other people, but that’s okay, because those were heathens who were damned anyway. God is okay with babies being born with horrible birth defects or cancer, but it is our fault for being sinful in the first place.
    +
    At the age of 15, I really began to see the hypocrisy of many of my fellow Christians. The girls who were leading the worship sessions, and spoke about “saving yourself for marriage” were the ones who went all the way with their boyfriends.
    +
    But if God is truly good, why would He allow so much evil in the world? If He is truly all-powerful and all-knowing? If She exists and we are given free will, this world seemed like a test designed to make us fail.
  • Christian-Jews-Muslims and Concept of God (makashfa.wordpress.com)There are two fundamental points between Islam and Christianity which,for the sake of the truth and the peace of the world, deserved a very serious and deep investigation. As these two religions claim their origin from one and the same source, it would follow that no important point of controversy between them should be allowed to exist. Both these great religions believe in the existence of the Deity and in the covenant made between God and the Prophet Abraham.
  • Damnable idol of “Catholic Jesus” erected in Syria (ivarfjeld.com)
    In the midst of a conflict rife with sectarianism, a giant bronze statue of Jesus has gone up on a the Syrian Cherubim mountain, apparently under cover of a truce among three factions in the country’s civil war.
    +
    There are no limits to lawlessness, when people mock God in the name of “Jesus”. The law is crystal clear.  Man shall not make any image, in the likeness of anything in Heaven above or on the Earth below.
    +
    A false lawless copy-cat Messiah has guided the Greek Orthodox Patriarch, lead astray to follow demonic powers.  No doubt the Islamic forces agreed on a cease fire, to let the god-mockers set up their gross idol.
  • Pakistani Police Hunting Down Christian Who Dared To Correct Islamic Misconceptions About Christianity (midnightwatcher.wordpress.com)
    “Police and a banned Islamic extremist group in Lahore, Pakistan are searching for a young Christian accused of blasphemy – with the extremist group calling for his death – after he sought to correct misconceptions about Christianity in a Muslim book, sources said. Sources close to Adnan Masih, 26, said he believes that if he turns himself in, he will be killed by either the Islamic extremist Jamaat ud Dawa (JuD) or the Pakistani judicial system, which makes blasphemy against Islam’s prophet punishable by death.
    +
    A Few Simple Questions for Muslim Visitors – “The Qur’an teaches that, according to Christianity, God acquired a son through procreation with Mary. In the eyes of Muslims, the term ‘son of God’ is believed to be, and is therefore understood, in a literal sense.  But this misrepresentation is so far from the basic tenets of Christianity that any serious student of the Qur’an should begin questioning the veracity of some of the teachings of Islam on this error alone… Because of Mohammed’s misunderstanding of what Christians believed and practiced, Islam teaches that the Christian belief of the Trinity is a polytheistic teaching of  ’three gods’, characterized as the ‘Father’, and the ‘Son’ and the ‘Virgin Mary’ …” Read more.
  • In A Few Simple Questions for Muslim Visitors the writer misleading says that the teachings of the historic Christian faith that was delivered to the saints would be different to what the apostles believed and the many followers of Christ who kept truthful to the Only One God. The so called midnightwatcher also does not leave an opportunity to react, which shows how much reactions are avoided in the fear to having it answered properly or to let others disagree or show where the person goes wrong in his thinking.
  • U.S. imam: Muslims can take the property of Christians and Jews (cofda.wordpress.com)
    Yasir Qadhi (aka Abu Ammaar Yasir Kazi) is an American imam and college professor who is described by a 2011 New York Times Magazine essay as “one of the most influential conservative clerics in American Islam.”
    +
    In his sermon/lecture in the YouTube audio below, Qadhi begins by calling Christians “shirk” for being “polythesists” who believe in the Triune God (three persons in one God), instead of Islam’s “monotheist” god Allah.Then Qadhi really steps up his verbal abuse. He says, since “there is no deity worthy of worship except Allah wuzza wuzza,” Christians are “by necessity and by definition … the most evil of all evils.” Like all “unbelievers” and “polytheists,” Christians are “filthy.” They are ”najusa” (feces, urine) — “a filthy impure dirty substance.”
  • Test the Spirit (evangelize4life.org)
    My recent (predetermined) encounters, with a Jehovah Witness and two Islamic Saudi Arabian students, supports John’s admonition. Both religions deny that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh (not God), and insist that He was but a mere man or prophet of Allah. The Bible describes Satan as the father of lies and is responsible for promoting error regarding the true identity of Jesus Christ our Lord. According to scripture Lucifer uses false prophets, religions, doctrines, and more to propagate satanic lies in order to blind the eyes of unbelievers from the truth of God’s Word. In this same chapter, John describes the work of the Holy Spirit as “spirit of truth” and the activities of Satan as “spirit of error.”
  • What is a religion? (jesuschristzfreedom.wordpress.com)
    There are several, or dozens, or hundreds of religions in the world. I’m not sure how many, because measuring where a religion stops and where the next one starts is like measuring where Alaskan Inuit becomes a different language than Canadian and Greenlandic Inuit. Because of this, there is really no way to know how many languages there are in the world, either. If these people can understand these people, and they can understand them, but they can’t understand them…
  • Once again an article on a site which does not give any possibility to react is What is the Bible: A Summary, and Some Important Highlights (servehiminthewaiting.com) were the writer also considers the New Testament to be the story of God-man which than would be Jesus. She understands that Christ is a title, rather than a name, and agrees that the prophesied Christ had come, and accomplished the redemptive work which he came to do, that is; “having never sinned, he died for (our) Human Sin, and rose from the dead, thereby buying our pardon, and commissioned.” Acknowledging that Christ Jesus died she also should recognise a sign that this was an element of humanness which God does not have as an eternal Spirit. God, who does not tell lies, can not be tempted, can not sin and can not die, said about that Nazarene Jew: “This is my beloved son”.  when Jesus would be God all the promises made in the Old Testament would be false conceptions and would have people to believe that god must have been a terrible tyrant and unjust God, because why did He wait so long before He made an end to the effect of the first sin. And why do we still have to wait so long before we can see and enter that Kingdom of God about spoken in the Old Testament all the time?

A New Perspective

More people should see the advantage they get when they can stay at home to spend time with the children. Taking time to teach the Word of God is one of those very important tasks given to us all, men and women. The stay-at-home mother with the right attitude can show the child how a Christian has to behave and how we as human beings can bring the Word of God into action, making the works of God visible to others.

+++

  • Changing My Perspective (mixwilliams.wordpress.com)
    I think all of us have had “stuff” in our past that has caused us to have self-doubt and not believe God’s promises.   We need to let go of our past, let go of our self-doubts, our disappointments, our baggage and anything else that is causing us not to believe God’s promises, move forward and stop questioning Why!  It’s not where we have been, where we started, but rather how we finish that matters.  It is changing our perspective and running the race with Him, letting go of our ugly pasts and basking in His Word today moving forward!
    +
    Did you know we were planted or born to display His splendor?   What a verse!  It does not matter if I am having a bad day, it does not matter how I am feeling, it does not matter if life is hurting, that verse says we should be displaying His splendor through it all. We are not to give up and wither when we are in a drought, but rather let our roots of our knowledge in Him draw us closer to Him.
  • Let’s Get Fresh Perspective (supportinggodlywomen.wordpress.com)
    Did you know the key to power is the renewed mind? The definition of a renewed mind is putting the Word of God in mind and acting accordingly.
  • Empowerment Café: Perspective (pinkcandyandstilettos.com)
    “This goes out to some of my favorite mommies…keep pushing you ARE making a difference. I admire your strength and perseverance!!!”  The message was timely, unexpected, sweet and extremely thoughtful.
    +
    While we are obsessing over the fine details of being a perfect mom, our little ones think that their “good enough” moms are simply perfect.  So moms, know that even in your imperfection, you are making a significant difference in your children’s lives.  As my girlfriend stated, we deserve to have those reminders every now and again.

It's All Grace

Imagine going to a job each morning where you can set your own schedule. You arrive when you want, take breaks whenever you want, and leave for an extended lunch hour without anyone breathing down your neck. Answering your phone calls and emails is regulated to a minimum each day, and the work responsibilities and goals you have are varied. There is no dress code or security passes to wear around your neck, and no one cares if you eat at your desk or play your favorite radio station. Your boss is off-site, and you can manage your workload to best suit your needs. Your work is rewarding and exciting, and you usually see immediate results from your efforts. Wouldn’t we all love to have a job that fits this description? As a homeschooling parent, you do!

Many homeschooling parents get caught up in the fact that they never receive…

View original post 293 more words

Importance of parents 1

Jehovah, the perfect Father, greatly esteems godly parents who try hard to educate their children spiritually. When the children respond, they find great joy in pursuing true worship together with their parents. As such children mature, they store up pleasant memories of such experiences.

When we look at the children in the world and question their feelings with their parents, we may notice that many have a real connection with their parents which is unforgettable. About the importance of the role of the mother and the father we notice also that those children who lost one of their parents in early childhood may have to face many problems in their future life.

Even when they may consider themselves devoted husbands or wives, having the blessing of children they can suffer with depression and being constantly struggling with issues of faith and spirituality. when the child get mothered it takes it for granted to have its mother close by, nurturing, and able to catch it when it falls or help it when something goes wrong. for the child the mother often is  the shell of their identity. When the mother dies early the safe-haven goes away, the shell collapses and all the pieces become shattered to lay fragmented in a heap. This may bring the child in despair and though things may go not so bad in life make it still to  faced a constant battle with depression.

Cover of "Questions of Life"

Cover of Questions of Life

Often the questions of life are shouted at the one several of the world consider the Creator. Most people when something goes wrong in their life give God the creator the fault of it. They forget what happened in the Garden of Eden and why man has to figure it out on his own. Many do not see the origin nor the reason why this world is so often in the struggle for life. They also question the matter of Grace. They question themselves about conditions on grace such as “you must do… or “this must happen”. Some try to put themselves at ease by thinking we receive Grace for nothing, so we should do nothing for it now. But they are mistaken. The Grace is really given for nothing, but when we do not live up to it, have no faith, do not believe nor want to worship a God we shall not receive the entrance to the Kingdom of God, though the grace was also given to us. faith without works shall be dead and result in death.

But in our life we are already able to receive the blessings of the Grace given unto us, because unto us a child is born. In our life we shall have to face the world in which we do have to live. We can’t escape this world-system. As long as Jesus did not return we are bounded to this system with all its problems.

It would be wrong to despair because the things not always evolve like we want. We must be conscious that often it is often our own minds which trick us and want to concentrate on our own self. Not out of despair but rather, out of self awareness we often go into a battle we cannot win on our own. Instead of focussing on depression we much better would focus on living life.

Those who encountered something bad in their childhood or in their parenthood may have their mind broken. But they should know that the next generation, their kids will still need a father or a mother. The wife shall need a husband the same as the husband shall need his wife. And both their lives need to be lived.

Though our world may be offering us lots of battle we may not let us be carried away and get depressed because we can not manage.  Perhaps we even manage much better than we ever would think of ourselves. Often we do forget that we can give our worries to the Father in heaven, who would do much more than any father on earth. Would it not sometimes be better to trust that Creator God, and accept Him as our Best Father? Would it not be better that those who can fight, do it but for the rest of us, and that we all join hands to stand in God’s grace and enjoy our moments letting God handle our shortfall?

+

Preceding articles:

Father and motherhood

Gender Roles, What?

Poverty and conservative role patterns

Dignified role for the woman

Having children interferes with work

Surviving Motherhood: things to get excited about, right now

Next: Importance of parents 2

Concerning:

  1. Giving up on depression.
  2. the detrimental cycle I call life….
  3. Seven essential checks to see if you are ready for children
  4. It is not over! – Other tests to check you are ready for children.
  5. a state of naiveté
  6. Empty Nest Syndrome: 10 Plusses To Make It All Better~by glenn kinyon
  7. Hard Lessons
  8. Parenthood made more difficult
  9. mummahood on mondays
  10. Light and Momentary Troubles
  11. Ending the cycle of judgment
  12. The Bitter and the Sweet
  13. Depression’s Antidote
  14. The Stuff My Kids Teach Me…
  15. Stuff My Kids Say
  16. The Dawning of a New Day
  17. Don’t be afraid to fall
  18. Aligned
  19. Seeking Trying To Find
  20. His Grace in Hardship

++

Please do find also to read:

  1. Greatest single cause of atheism
  2. We are ourselve responsible
  3. Self-preservation is the highest law of nature
  4. Joy: Foundation for a Positive Life
  5. Memories are important
  6. Suffering
  7. Suffering-through the apparent silence of God
  8. End of the Bottom Line
  9. Give your worries to God
  10. Ask Grace to go forward
  11. God wants to be gracious to you
  12. Cosmos creator and human destiny
  13. The redemption of man by Christ Jesus
  14. Believing in God the rewarder
  15. Count your blessings

+++

  • Growing up in Ireland report raises issue of stress and depression in parenting (irishtimes.com)
    Greater supports for parents with depression or stress and more help for women at risk of giving birth to premature or low birth-weight babies are recommended in the latest Growing Up in Ireland report published today.The report, based on the study since 2006 of 11,000 children from the age of nine months, highlights the role of parenting and family contexts in child development.“Even from a very young age, the sensitivity that parents show when interacting with their babies is important for their development,” says co-author, Dr Elizabeth Nixon from Trinity College Dublin.

    “Both mothers’ and fathers’ parenting behaviours can be negatively affected by stress and depression, but babies can be protected from these potentially negative influences if sensitive parent-child interactions can be maintained.”

    For both parents, a significant association was noted between higher levels of depression and higher levels of stress. Maternal stress was strongly associated with difficult temperament in a child, though this was less pronounced in the case of fathers.

  • An Example of How the Conflict Between Parents Can Seriously Children (sbwire.com)
    The family court heard how the conflict between parents can seriously affect their child. The Court did not find that it would be in the best interest of the child for his parents to have equal shared parental responsibility due to the high level of conflict between them. Thus, the mother was awarded sole parental responsibility and the father was allowed to spend time with the child during specified dates.
  • The Psychology of Neurotic Romantic Attraction (psychologytoday.com)
    One of the most common problems psychotherapists see today is a chronic pattern of dysfunctional love relationships. The person’s chosen partners typically share consistent similarities, such as physical and/or emotional abuse, unavailability, substance abuse, instability, lying, cheating, narcissism, etc. And each relationship eventually and inevitably ends badly because of these repetitive dynamics. After a while, such destructive relationship patterns–totally obvious to everyone else–start to become more apparent even to the patient. And then the glaring therapeutic question becomes: Why would anyone in his or her right mind persist in pursuing relationships that are clearly doomed to frustration, humiliation and failure?
    +
    The repetition compulsion is a neurotic attempt to rewrite or undo one’s personal history. The history we try to rewrite is typically the troubled or unsatisfactory relationship with our parents, particularly, but not always, the opposite sex parent. When the early parental relationship is fraught with frustration, disappointment, rejection, abandonment, neglect or abuse, the child is in a precarious spot. As young children we mistakenly conclude that the problem with the parent(s) resides with us, and that, therefore, we possess the power to rectify it by changing ourselves into someone more acceptable to our parents. This illusory cognitive core belief not only nurtures our magical hope, but provides a much-needed sense of power and control over our environment, of which, in reality, children have very little. Children are, for the most part, victims of circumstance, possessing minimal control over their lives. No matter how cleverly they try desperately to change the distressing situation, it is typically to no avail.
    +
    unconscious choices in life which we are unaware of making but nevertheless still do, are potentially the most dangerous and destructive decisions. Because they are basically “blind” choices, driven not by the present and what is best for us, but by the past and what traumatized us, by that from which we are running. This is the nature of a neurosis.
  • 3 Ways To Ensure Your Parenting is an Epic Fail (greatbaygospel.wordpress.com)
    First off, there are far more than three ways to blow it as parents. Secondly, I know all of these through experience. Third, God’s grace is not dependent on our success or failure as parents.  But we are responsible for how we steward the children he entrusts to us.
    +
    We have no control over whether or not God regenerates our kids hearts. We do however,  have all kinds of control over whether or not we are communicating the gospel to our kids.  Don’t just assume your kids are  ”picking it up” from being around a church, but intentionally speak and show the gospel to them.
  • Devotional 04.11.2013 (thelifeofastrangercalledme.wordpress.com)
    The “grace of faith” is an effective remedy against fainting in times of trouble. Jesus Christ is our hope of glory, and because of that hope we have in Him, that hope we have is enough to encourage us during our times of distress. And that distress is that advantage, that leverage we need for the glory of God to be even more visible in our lives.
  • The blessing to me, that was blessing my daughter. (kylesweeklythoughts.wordpress.com)
    I do think there are equality issues within the Church and culture that need to be addressed, and I think that this movement is shining a light on areas of inequality.  However, my own personal opinion is to have patience with the Lord’s revelatory process and look at the way the system now works and search for the good that exists because of the current sex-segregated priesthood system while not putting blinders on to any gross inequalities and injustices.
  • Holding Them Closer – Carl Desportes Bowman (blithespirit.wordpress.com)
    Nearly 30 years ago, sociologist Robert Bellah and his team of co-authors in Habits of the Heart (1985) described the American parenting ideal as the production of independent children who “leave home,” both figuratively and literally. To never leave home, they wrote, violated the cardinal American virtue of self-reliance, contradicting self-understandings that individuals should “earn everything we get, accept no handouts or gifts, and free ourselves from our families of origin.” The essence of parenting was preparing children for just such a separation, reflecting the American belief that a meaningful life could be had only by breaking free from family and giving birth, in a sense, to oneself.
    +
    Parents still hope, of course, that their adult children will attain financial independence, but this aspiration is no stronger than the hope that children will retain “close ties with parents and family”—both are considered “essential” by about half of American parents. The quest for long-term connection with children has taken central stage. Parenting is still about formation, but its overriding concern has pivoted from formation to connection.
  • Incarcerating Parents and Family Members – Why Our Jail-Happy Judges Are An Embarrassment (researchingreform.net)
    The very real problem of non disclosure and other concerns the family courts must deal with on a daily basis should not be trivialised, but whilst the problems are serious, and it may seem as if intense punishments are the order of the day, they neither deter desperate parents nor improve the outcomes for children.