El Shaddai Who appeared unto Abraham

 

 

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1 ASV)

“And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, Jehovah appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am {1} God Almighty; walk before me, and be thou perfect. {1) Heb [El Shaddai]}” (Genesis 17:1 ASV)

“2 And God spake unto Moses, and said unto him, I am Jehovah: 3 and I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, as {1} God Almighty; but {2} by my name Jehovah I was not {3} known to them. {1) Heb [El Shaddai] 2) Or [as to] 3) Or [made known]}” (Exodus 6:2-3 ASV)

“Who is like unto thee, O Jehovah, among the gods? Who is like thee, glorious in holiness, Fearful in praises, doing wonders?” (Exodus 15:11 ASV)

“Now I know that Jehovah is greater than all gods; yea, in the thing wherein they dealt proudly against them.” (Exodus 18:11 ASV)

“And he said, Thou canst not see my face; for man shall not see me and live.” (Exodus 33:20 ASV)

“Hear, O Israel: {1} Jehovah our God is one Jehovah: {1) Or [Jehovah our God, Jehovah is one]; Or [Jehovah is our God, Jehovah is one]; Or [Jehovah is our God, Jehovah alone]}” (Deuteronomy 6:4 ASV)

“For I will proclaim the name of Jehovah: Ascribe ye greatness unto our God.” (Deuteronomy 32:3 ASV)

“Thine, O Jehovah, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty: for all that is in the heavens and in the earth [is thine]; thine is the kingdom, O Jehovah, and thou art exalted as head above all.” (1 Chronicles 29:11 ASV)

“And the house which I build is great; for great is our God above all gods.” (2 Chronicles 2:5 ASV)

“Behold, God is great, and we know him not; The number of his years is unsearchable.” (Job 36:26 ASV)

“{1} Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth. {1) Or [Let be]}” (Psalms 46:10 ASV)

“«A Song; a Psalm of the sons of Korah.» Great is Jehovah, and greatly to be praised, In the city of our God, in his holy mountain.” (Psalms 48:1 ASV)

“Thy righteousness also, O God, is very high; Thou who hast done great things, O God, who is like unto thee?” (Psalms 71:19 ASV)

“Blessed be Jehovah God, the God of Israel, Who only doeth wondrous things:” (Psalms 72:18 ASV)

“That they may know that {1} thou alone, whose name is Jehovah, Art the Most High over all the earth. {1) Or [thou, whose name alone is Jehovah, art etc]}” (Psalms 83:18 ASV)

“There is none like unto thee among the gods, O Lord; Neither [are there any works] like unto thy works.” (Psalms 86:8 ASV)

“For who in the skies can be compared unto Jehovah? Who among the {1} sons of the {2} mighty is like unto Jehovah, {1) Or [sons of God] 2) Or [gods]; See Ps 29:1}” (Psalms 89:6 ASV)

“How great are thy works, O Jehovah! Thy thoughts are very deep.” (Psalms 92:5 ASV)

“3 For Jehovah is a great God, And a great King above all gods. 4 In his hand are the deep places of the earth; The {1} heights of the mountains are his also. {1) Or [strength]} 5 The sea is his, and he made it; And his hands formed the dry land. 6 Oh come, let us worship and bow down; Let us kneel before Jehovah our Maker: 7  For he is our God, And we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. To-day, {1} oh that ye would hear his voice! {1) Or [if ye will hear his voice, Harden etc]} 8 Harden not your heart, as at {1} Meribah, As in the day of {2} Massah in the wilderness; {1) That is [strife] 2) That is [temptation]} 9 When your fathers tempted me, Proved me, and saw my work.” (Psalms 95:3-9 ASV)

“For thou, Jehovah, art most high above all the earth: Thou art exalted far above all gods.” (Psalms 97:9 ASV)

“He hath sent redemption unto his people; He hath commanded his covenant for ever: Holy and reverend is his name.” (Psalms 111:9 ASV)

“For I know that Jehovah is great, And that our Lord is above all gods.” (Psalms 135:5 ASV)

“Great is Jehovah, and greatly to be praised; And his greatness is unsearchable.” (Psalms 145:3 ASV)

“but Jehovah of hosts is exalted in justice, and God the Holy One is sanctified in righteousness.” (Isaiah 5:16 ASV)

“And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is Jehovah of hosts: {1} the whole earth is full of his glory. {1) Heb [the fulness of the whole earth is his glory]}” (Isaiah 6:3 ASV)

“Jehovah of hosts, him shall ye sanctify; and let him be your fear, and let him be your dread.” (Isaiah 8:13 ASV)

“To whom then will ye liken God? or what likeness will ye compare unto him?” (Isaiah 40:18 ASV)

“I, even I, am Jehovah; and besides me there is no saviour.” (Isaiah 43:11 ASV)

“Fear ye not, neither be afraid: have I not declared unto thee of old, and showed it? and ye are my witnesses. Is there a God besides me? yea, there is no Rock; I know not any.” (Isaiah 44:8 ASV)

“For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy: I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite.” (Isaiah 57:15 ASV)

“Who should not fear thee, O King of the nations? for {1} to thee doth it appertain; forasmuch as among all the wise men of the nations, and in all their royal estate, there is none like unto thee. {1) Or [it beseemeth thee]}” (Jeremiah 10:7 ASV)

“{1} As a sweet savor will I accept you, when I bring you out from the peoples, and gather you out of the countries wherein ye have been scattered; and I will be sanctified in you in the sight of the nations. {1) Or [With]}” (Ezekiel 20:41 ASV)

“And I will sanctify my great name, which hath been profaned among the nations, which ye have profaned in the midst of them; and the nations shall know that I am Jehovah, saith the Lord Jehovah, when I shall be sanctified in you before {1} their eyes. {1) Or according to another reading [your]}” (Ezekiel 36:23 ASV)

“And I will magnify myself, and sanctify myself, and I will make myself known in the eyes of many nations; and they shall know that I am Jehovah.” (Ezekiel 38:23 ASV)

“The king answered unto Daniel, and said, Of a truth your God is the God of gods, and the Lord of kings, and a revealer of secrets, seeing thou hast been able to reveal this secret.” (Daniel 2:47 ASV)

“And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of Jehovah shall be delivered; for in mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be those that escape, as Jehovah hath said, and {1} among the remnant those whom Jehovah doth call. {1) Or [in the remnant whom etc]}” (Joel 2:32 ASV)

“For then will I turn to the peoples of a pure {1} language, that they may all call upon the name of Jehovah, to serve him with one {2} consent. {1) Heb [lip] 2) Heb [shoulder]}” (Zephaniah 3:9 ASV)

“After this manner therefore pray ye. Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.” (Matthew 6:9 ASV)

“And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? none is good save one, [even] God.” (Mark 10:18 ASV)

“For he that is mighty hath done to me great things; And holy is his name.” (Luke 1:49 ASV)

“{1} God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship in spirit and truth. {1) Or [God is spirit]}” (John 4:24 ASV)

“1  These things spake Jesus; and lifting up his eyes to heaven, he said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that the son may glorify thee: 2 even as thou gavest him authority over all flesh, that {1} to all whom thou hast given him, he should give eternal life. {1) Gr [whatsoever thou hast given him, to them he etc]} 3 And this is life eternal, that they should know thee the only true God, and him whom thou didst send, [even] Jesus Christ.” (John 17:1-3 ASV)

“I manifested thy name unto the men whom thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them to me; and they have kept thy word.” (John 17:6 ASV)

“25 O righteous Father, the world knew thee not, but I knew thee; and these knew that thou didst send me; 26 and I made known unto them thy name, and will make it known; that the love wherewith thou lovedst me may be in them, and I in them.” (John 17:25-26 ASV)

“And it shall be, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” (Acts 2:21 ASV)

“For the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, [even] his everlasting power and divinity; {1} that they may be without excuse: {1) Or [so that they are]}” (Romans 1:20 ASV)

“for, {1} Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. {1) Joe 2:32}” (Romans 10:13 ASV)

“O the depth {1} of the riches {2} both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past tracing out! {1) Or [of the riches and the wisdom etc] 2) Or [both of wisdom etc]}” (Romans 11:33 ASV)

“4  Concerning therefore the eating of things sacrificed to idols, we know that no idol is [anything] in the world, and that there is no God but one. 5 For though there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or on earth; as there are gods many, and lords many; 6 yet to us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we unto him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him.” (1 Corinthians 8:4-6 ASV)

“according to the {1} gospel of the glory of the blessed God, which was committed to my trust. {1) Gr [good tidings]; See Mt 4:23 margin}” (1 Timothy 1:11 ASV)

“For there is one God, one mediator also between God and men, [himself] man, Christ Jesus,” (1 Timothy 2:5 ASV)

“For Christ entered not into a holy place made with hands, like in pattern to the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear before the face of God for us:” (Hebrews 9:24 ASV)

“And we know and have believed the love which God hath {1} in us. God is love; and he that abideth in love abideth in God, and God abideth in him. {1) Or [in our case]}” (1 John 4:16 ASV)

“and the four living creatures, having each one of them six wings, are full of eyes round about and within: and they have no rest day and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, [is] the Lord God, the Almighty, who was and who is and {1} who is to come. {1) Or [who cometh]}” (Revelation 4:8 ASV)

“saying, We give thee thanks, O Lord God, the Almighty, who art and who wast; because thou hast taken thy great power, and didst reign.” (Revelation 11:17 ASV)

“And I heard the altar saying, Yea, O Lord God, the Almighty, true and righteous are thy judgments.” (Revelation 16:7 ASV)

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Preceding:

Bible, sword of the Spirit to come into the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man

El Shaddai Die verscheen voor Abraham

El Shaddai Jehova der Abraham erschienen

El Shaddai ’Eternel et Dieu puissant Qui apparut à Abraham

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Find also:

El-Shaddai God Almighty Who no-one may see and live

No man see the Almighty God and live

"Jehovah" at Exodus 6:3 (1611 King J...

“Jehovah” at Exodus 6:3 (1611 King James Version) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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An anarchistic reading of the Bible (2)—Creation and what follows

Whilst there may certainly be nothing sacred or “God-ordained” about the modern nation-state, lots of people do claim the connection of their state with the God of their Christian faith. Lots of those claiming to be Christian do not notice they themselves made themselves an own faith which in many cases has gone far away from the leader Christ Jesus his teachings. Even worse many of the conservative Christians and extreme right people have twisted so much the biblical teachings they do not see straight any more.

Lots of people in the so called democratic countries would like to build up their country to what they call to be a free nation, though they want to put a lot of limitations to whom may enter and to what others may believe.
A very good example of such deformation of the mind is the United States of America where there are some citizens who are totally convinced that it is their own home country, not recognising they themselves came from immigrants, thinking their laws should be build on their restricted view of the Bible, ignoring in a certain way the idea of freedom of the Pilgrims who founded their country.

Americans, convinced that the only state they have does not belong to the original locals, redskins or Indians, neither that it belongs to the Divine Creator, are convinced only they can work, according to their measures, to make ‘their state’ the most just and life-enhancing state it can be.
They are also convinced they should also work against their state as strongly as possible when it is unjust and undermines life. Though they often forget which measures or rules they would consider to be the just, righteous and most right to choose for.

Perhaps they can use an anarchist critique of the state and an anarchist affirmation of the human capacity for self-organizing to help to resist the undermining and, even more, to help them as they seek to construct a well-functioning society.

But most of all I would advice those who call themselves Christian to take up again the Bible and to go through it thoroughly.
All people interested in building up a community which can leave together in peace,is better to take up the manual given by the Supreme Writer and Divine Creator of all.

We can approach the Bible as a storybook and see it as providing a loosely coherent message, amidst a great deal of diversity, but than we shall miss out a lot of wisdom provide in it and would not be able so much to see our own stupidities and the stupidities of our governments who do not want to learn from the past, having the past repeating over and over again.

When we look at the Bereshith, the book of the Beginnings brings us the evolution of all things. Lots of conservative Christians do want to take its writing as a literal presentation from day to day, but it was never intended to be so. Moses neither the Client to write, wanted to present humanity with a factual historical scientist into depth account of what happened throughout the years of this universe.
The very beginning of the Bible provides much important information about the Bible as a whole, about the cosmology of the whole, about the character of the God seen to be central to the entire story, and about the relationships between humankind and this God.

Those people taking up the Bible, the infallible Word of God, should remember that the tale told in that Book of books, is to bring us knowledge about our own beings, our own self, how and why we are and how humanity develops.

In this Best-seller of all times, the One giving His Voice, the One Who asked to have His Words written down, This Creator God speaks of His Creation, which includes not only the human beings (male and female) being created in His own image, but also all the things He gave under dominion of those human beings (plants and animals). Though man could make use of it and could give it names, it has made a mess of it, and has done dishonour to the Creator of it. Too many have forgotten that humanity is commissioned to care for the rest of creation as God’s stewards. This is one of the good reasons lots of people should again or for the first time start reading the Bible to find out what their position on this planet is and what they have as task to do to come to a nice good peaceable world.

The Bible tells us what went wrong in the past and how the relationship between God and man became troubled. We do have to find ways to restore that relationship between God and humanity which is not one of domination, command-and-obedience. Yes it is rather a relationship of like with like. God has given several man of God to lead us and to show us the right way to develop. The prophet and master rabbi Jeshua (Jesus Christ) is the most important one to follow. after so much time that the people still did not come to understand the Torah, Jesus came to clarify it once again and to show the Way to God. though Jesus is the Way, he did not want to do his own will nor wants us to do only his will, neither to make him God or to worship him. He wants us to worship and to pray to the same God he prayed to, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, Who is also the God of him (Jesus) and his disciples.

We are told to put on the armour of Christ and to become like Jesus, and to put on the armour of God becoming one with God like Jesus is one with God. Though God is the Most High and even Jesus could not do anything without his heavenly Father, we also shall never be able to do anything without God allowing it to happen. But we are given the words of Christ and the words of the other prophets to help us to find the right way, trying to transform ourselves by the teachings of the master teacher and by the words of the very different books brought together in the Canonical Bible.

We as humans created in the image of God are also by that Creator asked to be like God. And, perhaps even more importantly, the picture here is that all humanity shares in this divine image — kingly, perhaps, but in a strongly egalitarian sense. As well, human beings are given power and responsibility.

The biggest problem is we all are responsible for our own choice and for our own actions. There is nobody else to blame for what we ourselves decide to follow.
It is up to us to take up the Book of books, to believe in it and to follow up freely its advice and wisdom.

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To remember:

to avoid the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” (2:17) =  restriction >  arbitrary rule from a dominating God intended to prevent human enlightenment? => Such an interpretation contradict much of the surrounding story + much of what follows in the Bible.

restriction = symbolizing innate human limitations.

human beings seek to know + use that knowledge to dominate creation => will devolve into power struggles and develop hierarchies

To avoid such a dynamic =>  to step back from desiring too much “knowledge,” to accept limits, and recognize to live in trust.

Adam and Eve

Adam and Eve (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“temptation” to violate restriction = too strong => Adam and Eve break the close connection between themselves and God.

coming from human side — after they eat the forbidden fruit, God still seeks to hang around with them in the Garden

humans hide from God (3:8) = they become ashamed of their nakedness.

consequences of this turn toward disharmony = establishment of “enmity” between Adam and Eve (3:15) and of Adam as “ruler” over Eve (3:16).

Not God’s will

new tensions and struggles = characterize human life.

rest of story = God’s work among humanity to overcome this “enmity” and proclivity toward “rulership.”

“fall”= affirmation of fundamental character of human peaceableness and responsiveness to God = complicated by human freedom.

God gives humanity potential to turn away as a key part of basic loving nature of the relationships +> turning away has consequences.

fatalistic interpretation has underwritten power politics over the centuries — the “fallenness” of humanity used as an excuse for a politics of centralized, coercive power.

human proclivity to exercise power in dominating ways = target in story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11.  = inclination to centralize human power and to create a “oneness” that serves centralized power.

“scattering” Babel-dwellers (3:4, 8, 9), God seeks to create the conditions for a different kind of oneness — human unity respecting diversity, decentralizing power, based on mutual respect.

rest of the Bible’s story describes long, tenuous process of such a oneness being established.

human beings being gifted through God’s Spirit to connect despite their differences in languages, points to the type of oneness God endorses.

God’s healing strategy

genealogy that will connect Noah with the founding of God’s chosen people, we meet the human founders of the Hebrew peoplehood.

God creates something new out of barreness + promises descendants, beyond counting, and the agents of blessing for “all the families of the earth” (12:3).

important intervention of God = vocation God gives Abram, Sarai, and their descendants = God’s response to what happened in Eden, the story of the Flood, and the Tower of Babel => God will bring healing, but it will be patient, non-coercive, based on love and not on domination.

Founding ancestor of God’s chosen people = far from being a king or powerful ruler.

God’s work to bring healing to creation = not linked with territoriality => no geographical kingdom and no human king.

The method for doing God’s work in the world is “blessing” and this work is intended to encompass “all the families of the earth.”

We will have to follow the rest of the story to understand better the political implications of this starting point. But we should notice right away the combination of a lack of state-centeredness and the optimism about the possibilities of this “blessing” spreading widely without domination.

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Additional readings:

  1. What is life?
  2. Leaving the Old World to find better pastures
  3. Men of faith
  4. Built on or Belonging to Jewish tradition #1 Christian Reform
  5. Right to be in the surroundings
  6. Creator and Blogger God 2 Image and likeness
  7. Creator and Blogger God 5 Things to tell
  8. God wants to be gracious to you
  9. The giving and protecting God
  10. Testify of the things heard
  11. I Only hope we find GOD again before it is too late !
  12. A secret to be revealed
  13. Humility and the Fear of the Lord
  14. No fear in love
  15. If you want to go far in life
  16. Being of good courage running the race
  17. Wisdom lies deep
  18. God’s work done in God’s way will never lack God’s supplies
  19. God should be your hope
  20. Your New Job Description — Bless!
  21. Count your blessings
  22. There can only be hope when there is a will to be and say “I am”

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  • American Pride: What Does the Bible Say? (endtimesprophecyreport.com)
    Throughout its short 230+ years existence, the country known as the United States of America has specialized in turning vice into virtue.  Exhibit A?

    Americans teaching that pride is a much-desired quality.

    “American Pride”: it’s on the airwaves; it’s taught in the schools; it’s preached from the pulpits.

  • Is This What US Interviewing Officers In The Embassy Go Through? (thechroniclesofrenard.blogspot.com)
    The experience of getting a United States visa in order to visit the United States of America can be quite challenging for a lot of people in The Republic of Trinidad and Tobago.

    Here is a humorous video about those interesting experiences.

  • Muslim Americans Insist Students Were Killed Because of Faith (voanews.com)
    The Obama Administration released a statement late Friday about the killing of three Muslim students this week in North Carolina. In the statement US president Barack Obama said “No one in the United States of America should ever be targeted because of who they are, what they look like, or how they worship.” American Muslim leaders agree and are urging authorities to label the shooting deaths a hate crime. VOA religion correspondent Jerome Socolovsky reports.
  • Akin Osuntokun: The winner takes all election (dailypost.ng)
    Politics is inherently conflict-ridden with a dual and contradictory potential to either serve as a conflict resolution mechanism or generate a momentum for the escalation of conflict to crisis and ultimately to catastrophe.

    The election of Barack Obama, the first African-American, to the office of the President of the United States of America (USA) is unique and indicative in several respects. It was a veritable indication of how far America has gone in functional socio-political integration and positive adaptation of social diversity. Yet it equally brought in its wake the manifestation of the negative potential of politics to serve as a predictor and harbinger of conflict and crisis.

  • United States Corporation & The united, “States of America” . . use this to help people understand! It is very important information! ~J (gunnygbb2.wordpress.com)
    This film explains the difference between the, “united States of America” which is a Republic, created by the people, and for the protections and freedoms of the people; and, a corporation called “The United States Of America”, which is a Corporation of the “District of Columbia”; Titled, “The United States Of America” this corporation was founded in 1871″.

Thinking Pacifism

Ted Grimsrud—February 2, 2015

This is the second in a series of posts.

In this survey of some biblical themes looked at from an anarchistic angle, I will not be real precise in my use of “anarchistic.” I’ll be talking about a sensibility more than a full-fledged political philosophy. The key “anarchistic” motifs I will focus on will be a strong suspicion toward centralized social power, especially kingdoms and empires, and an optimism about human possibilities for self-organizing and decentralized social power.

And I will be reading the Bible in fairly naïve and straightforward ways. I approach the Bible as a storybook and see it as providing a loosely coherent message, amidst a great deal of diversity. I will focus more on the loose coherence than the diversity—largely due to a desire to find usable guidance in the Bible. At the same time, in reading the Bible more as…

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Counterfeit Gospels

We’re fine with the idea of God being our saviour, but we’re not always keen on the notion of letting Him transform every area of our lives. Though many people take on an other god to be their saviour, not understanding that it was that man his heavenly Father Who allowed His only begotten son to be on this world to be a saviour for mankind, between all those who tried to safe people in their lives.

Many persons may find somebody who was there to be a saviour in their life,was it a parent, a teacher, a close friend or sometimes somebody they even did not know. So many people were saved from death by drowning, or by death by a car accident or house-fire by one of their fellow citizens. They had an other human saviour than the two saviours the Bible mentions.

English: The Mokvi Four Gospels 1300 Genealogy...

The Mokvi Four Gospels 1300 Genealogy of Christ (part) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Gospels tell the story of the promise of the Most High Saviour which gave His Word for a saviour who became in the flesh some two thousand years ago. Without the Most High Saviour the other Saviour, the man “with an other Name” would not have been possible.

In Christendom there are still lots of people who do not realise the value of that human saviour. They think it is impossible for a human being to do the Will of God. They do not want to see that in history there was rally a man who managed to do not his will but the will of his heavenly Father. That man was the Jewish Nazarene Jeshua, better known today as Jesus Christ. It is about him that the Gospels and the letters of his disciples talk and let people see how that simple man was very special in his acts, his deeds and his words. That man was so inspired by the Words of his heavenly Father that he wanted others to know them very well and that they too would come to let others know those Words of the Only One True God, the God of Abraham and the God of Adam.

That man spoken of in the Gospels, Acts of apostles and letters of the apostles revealed those Words of his heavenly Father, to whom he often prayed and whom he praised like no other. One of the tasks Jesus gave was to share the love of God with others and to bring them the Gospel of the Good News.

We often emphasize sharing the gospel, but do we consider the reality of the outcome?

The apostle Paul poses this question also to the immigrant Gauls from Thrace, who gathered in the ecclesia (or church) in Galatia. For them he does not open his letter with a prayer of thanksgiving for the members of the community. In his correspondence with the Galatians, he skips the niceties and opts for a biting remark, signalling that something is drastically wrong.

“6  I am astonished that you are so quickly turning away from him who called you into the grace of Christ to a different gospel: 7 Which is not really not a gospel; but some who want to pervert the gospel of Christ are troubling you. 8 But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any gospel to you other than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed. 9 As we have told you before, I tell you again, If anyone preaches any gospel to you other than the one you received, let him be accursed.” (Galatians 1:6-9 KJV_2011)

There had been persons who were ready to be saviours for the many people of Galatia. Each member of the ecclesia was called by some one by the grace of Christ, but awfully enough many where also called  to a different gospel, not that there is a different gospel, except there are some who are disturbing them and wanting to distort the gospel of Christ.

Still today we do find a travesty of the gospel of Christ in many church denominations. They made Jesus into their god and made human teachings their guide instead of heaving the infallible Word of God, the Bible, giving them guidance.

Many are trying to pervert the genuine good news of the Messiah, saying he could not do what he did when he was not the Creator himself. They minimise the act of his following the Will of God and ridicule his sacrificial offering, because God as an eternal Spirit can not die.

As a devout Jew, Paul at first also did not know very well the role of Jesus and also had misunderstood his function. Therefore he wanted protect the people from any false teaching which could dishonour the Only One True God. After he was confronted with heavenly voices he came to see the real Jesus and understand the Work of God. After Paul had seen the light he too knew the importance to bring forth the Good News that Jesus preached. He himself had also preached the gospel to the Galatians, so no wonder he was surprised they preferred to listen to false teachers who had infiltrated the community.

Instead of holding to the true teaching or even testing these teachers’ claims against the gospel message, the Galatians adopted a new, counterfeit gospel. Many of them thought they had to become Jews or had to take on a sort of Jewish faith which included the Jewish or the Roman or the Greek traditions or all those traditions which were going on at that time.
Paul interrogates the Galatians, who may have been affected by the teaching of people who wanted them to adopt Jewish legal requirements, asking, “Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?” (Galatians 3:2–3).

The simple gospel had been cluttered by attempts to remain obedient to the law. The believers were no longer living in the Spirit. And in other communities there where also false teachers giving other functions to Christ and making his teachings interwoven with Greek thought.

Paul his warnings about false teachers is not just about the teachings of one subject, be it Jewish teaching or other. In the acts of the apostles we hear the warning for such false teachings which entered already very soon the community of followers of Christ. Those false teachings would even bring the church into a serious schism in 325 when the Roman emperor managed to get his will , having Greek-Roman culture defining the new state religion: Christendom.

From the 4° century there were not only some who were disturbing the real followers of Christ and who wanted to distort the gospel of Christ, the majority of the Christian community got poisoned by a teaching which was called to be a doctrine to be taken or otherwise you would become excluded of the community. Wanting to belong to the community the majority of people preferred to choose for the security to belong to the community of man instead of being an outsider with other ideas and not able to enjoy the festivals and pagan festivals or going to meet with a very small community of real believers.

Too many people have chosen the easy way, though Christ warned that following him would not be easy. They choose following the world, being of the world, instead of being of God, following His son and God His will.

Those who preach have to warn people for that dilemma. The listeners as well as the preacher do have to make a choice. either they can enjoy the human teachings or go for the heavenly (or God given) teachings and stick to the Words of the Bible instead of the words of so called theologians.

Do we think of becoming a Christian — getting saved — as the end of the journey?

When people go out to preach the Word of God and preach the Gospel of Christ, they should teach those things which Jesus Christ believed in and taught, like the being of One God, the coming of the end-times, the coming of a resurrection of the dead, the coming of the Kingdom of God, and should show the world how Christ made it possible that the Grace of God comes to each of us, though we are all sinners, we all can be saved by the offer, the ransom of Christ Jesus, the man from Nazareth.

The reality of the gospel should affect all areas of our lives, which can now be used to give God the glory. Jesus did not wanted to be worshipped, and worshipped himself the only One God. So should we.

"Son of man" appears 25 times in Luk...

“Son of man” appears 25 times in Luke, a copy (c. 800) shown here. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We should focus on the son of God but may not be blinded by him and get to place him on a higher pied de stall he deserves.

Our entire lives — our thought processes, our ideals and theologies, our relationships — should reflect Christ and be shaped by the Spirit. The gospel isn’t for one moment. It’s going to transform everything.

We should let the words of the Gospel mould us and have ourselves transformed by it.

Have you, without realizing it, turned from the gospel? What area of your life needs to be transformed?

 

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Please do also find some background reading:

  1. Seeing or not seeing and willingness to find God
  2. Attributes to God, titles ascribed to Him or Names given to JHWH, the God of gods.
  3. God of gods.
  4. Only one God
  5. God is one
  6. God of gods
  7. The Trinity – the Truth
  8. Jesus Messiah
  9. Jesus begotten Son of God #10 Coming down spirit or flesh seed of Eve
  10. Jesus begotten Son of God #13 Pre-existence excluding virginal birth of the Only One Transposed
  11. Jesus begotten Son of God #17 Adam, Eve, Mary and Christianity’s central figure
  12. Jesus begotten Son of God #18 Believing in inhuman or human person
  13. Trusting, Faith, calling and Ascribing to Jehovah #3 Voice of God #4 Words in Scripture
  14. Trusting, Faith, Calling and Ascribing to Jehovah #14 Prayer #12 The other name
  15. Wishing to do the will of God
  16. God’s promises
  17. Bible, Word of God, inspired and infallible
  18. Bible a guide – Bijbel als gids
  19. People Seeking for God 3 Laws and directions
  20. Because men choose to go their own way
  21. Listening and Praying to the Father
  22. Our relationship with God, Jesus and eachother
  23. Joining for a new year in the assurance to be bought with a price
  24. The Cares of Life
  25. “Unnoticed”
  26. Love and forgive this friday
  27. Being Religious and Spiritual 5 Gnostic influences
  28. Being Religious and Spiritual 7 Transcendence to become one
  29. Something Most False Christians Have In Common
  30. Irminsul, dies natalis solis invicti, birthday of light, Christmas and Saturnalia
  31. Character transformed by the influence of our fellowships

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  • Dig for Friday the 7th of November…..check out the results of a lack of preaching of the true Word of God…..1 Timothy 1 v 5 (heilanword.wordpress.com)
    Hypocrisy and lack of love is an accusation that I’ve often heard spoken against the church in general and against individual churches in particular.

    Paul tells us why this could be true.

    He says it is because of a lack of preaching of the true Word of God (1 Timothy 1 v 5).

    In verse 3 Paul exhorts Timothy to speak out against people teaching a heretical message and not the true Gospel.

    He is telling Timothy to ensure that the true Gospel is preached, the Gospel of grace, the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

    If he adheres to this i.e. ensures that the true Word of God is preached, he will see love (charity) displayed and will see a lack of hypocrisy (1 Timothy 1 v 5).

    The opposite of teaching the Gospel of grace is teaching the law (1 Timothy 1 v 6 and 7), and from the previous verses we can see a danger of this.

    Teaching law (or not the true Gospel for new covenant believers) will results in hypocrisy and a lack of love; that is a powerful truth.

    Paul commands Timothy to ensure that no other doctrine, other than the grace of Jesus, is preached in the church.

  • Don’t Be Ashamed (kristiankennedy.wordpress.com)
    Are you afraid or ashamed to share the message of Jesus Christ? As believers, we are to share the message of the Gospel and the love of our Heavenly Father. Here is a verse that warns us against being ashamed of the Gospel:
  • Jesus’ life is a fact of history (christianmotivations.weebly.com)
    The Four Gospels tell the facts of Jesus’ birth, life, death and resurrection. They are not made-up fables like the insane adventures of the Greek gods. No, the powerful miracles the apostles describe actually happened! Peter, John and Matthew were eye-witnesses to all this.

    In addition, tens of thousands of people from one end of Israel to the other had met Jesus and seen His miracles. As Paul pointed out, “This thing was not done on a corner” (Acts 26:26).

    My dear friends, make no mistake: the Four Gospels are accurate historical reports. Many people are making huge efforts trying to dismiss the Bible and telling people that miracles are things of the past. But we have the Bible that declares

  • The Simple Gospel of Jesus Christ (yelobrd777.com)
    God the Father sent His son to die for us. We now have Christ living His life through us. He loves us beyond condition. “Dad ain’t mad” as Ken says at the station. We simply believe it, live it and surrender to it.

    It is not complicated. No frills, no fund raising commitment card, no guilt and condemnation. Over the years I have heard time and time again about how a song or short one minute moment of encouragement has gotten someone through a trying day…or hour.

  • Minimizing the Cross of Jesus Christ (dailybibleplan.com)
    Paul was very concerned about the Galatians.  The Galatians had started to believe the Judaizers who preached that Gentiles had to become Jews before they could become Christians.  They had started to impose Jewish legalism stating that works could earn God’s favor.  This false gospel minimized the importance of the death of Jesus Christ by implying that justification (salvation) could be gained through works.
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    When a person thinks that “living right” can secure salvation, that person is essentially saying that Jesus did not have to die, but we know that Jesus opened the door to salvation for us.  When it comes to eternal life, Christ is the only key that fits that lock.
  • The Revelation Of Jesus Christ: “I will not blot out his name out of the book of life” (mydelightandmycounsellors.wordpress.com)

Give Thanks To God

 

Give Thanks To God

When times are lean with nought to share
When love is hard to find
Where cold nights reign with cupboards bare
Then God is on the mind

But who gives praise when life is grand
When God has seen us through
Who’ve learned in truth to understand
That God remembers too

How oft we fail to thank the Lord
For all His kindness done
Through love He’ll turn His vengeful sword
In Christ His faithful Son

Give thanks to God for large and small
Give thanks for life on earth
From deep within or not at all
Give praise for all you’re worth

Worthy is God of all our praise
For all His wondrous deeds
Who serve The Truth in all their ways
May find they have no needs

Yet still the nations live in stress
Where harvest brings defeat
They need to turn so God can bless
With food for all to eat

Yet those who have can ill afford
With belly’s full to sit
We need to pray through Christ our Lord
We need to do our bit

For things can change as times before
When God held back the rain
For who can tell if sin once more
Won’t change our times again

  ~ Michael P. Johnson

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  • Thanksgiving and Survivorship (thehopejourney.wordpress.com)
    You aren’t in your old home, you don’t have everything you once had, but God granted you so much more than this. He granted you life and joy, and a new story to tell with your survivor story. Don’t get so worked up in the day that you forget to honor and be thankful for what God has blessed you with. There is such blessing in the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.
  • I will trust in You alone for You have never failed me before. (forging4th.wordpress.com)
    I lay before God the fears, the disappointments, the anger, the rage, and all the stuff that for over 30 years has been all part of this thing… I literally think (or have thought) in this 1 area of my life God You made some Huge colossal mistake and it has pretty much followed me all my life. Yet, As I learned on Sunday
  • My God (christianmotivations.weebly.com)
    – Just think of it, the Lord is Your God.
    – Just think of it, the Lord is perfectly faithful.
    – As you look back over this year, think of the wonderful things He has done.
    – Now begin to praise and exalt His wonderful name.
  • Praise (fwgf.wordpress.com)Praise is a spontaneous outburst of thanksgiving for a redemptive act of God
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    When praise goes up from man to God, there is always a rain of His blessings and presence; expectations, desires and needs are met.
  • God is in control! (redeemedfrancoise.wordpress.com)
    For those of us in Christ we are assured that our lives are truly in Gods hands. We may ask why do the righteous suffer though? And thats a totally understandable question. Why do our problems and sorrows increase when we become children of God? Why do the wicked seem to enjoy there lives and be prosperous while us believers seem hopeless? We have all asked similar questions to these and its caused some of us to lose hope and trust in God. But let me tell you something God is in control!
  • Jonah 1:4-7 – Wherever We Go…There Is God. (pastorgkirby.wordpress.com)
    God can use anything to accomplish His will. He is the creator. He created the earth, the sea, and the wind. Satan may be the prince of the power of the air, but God is King. The outcome of the storm is that the ship gets to the point where it is about to break apart. Don’t know about you…but I’d be terrified.
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    Jonah 1:1-3 – God Calls and We Go…But Which Way?
    God has called each one of us to His service.
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    We must understand something very important here. When God calls and we say “no” (and we all do from time to time), our defiance, our disobedience is against God alone. Think about that for a moment. You are openly defying the God of the universe to do what you want to do. But that doesn’t stop us does it? Just like Jonah we are fooled into believing that if we go far enough for long enough…God will forget. As if He can’t see (sounds a little like Adam and Eve in the garden).
  • Prepare (watchingforthemorning.wordpress.com)
    The governance of God will bring a restoration of right relationships – even among the wild creatures, as proclaimed in Isaiah.  It restores right relationships within the human community, uniting all peoples in a common bond of peace – as Paul exhorts the Christian community to recognize and live.
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    Counting the cost
    There is a choice to be made.  There is a price to be paid.  Following Jesus, being a child of the kingdom, living the way of God, requires something of us.
  • Jars of Clay (samboanderson.wordpress.com)
    Life sometimes gives us more than we think we can handle; pressing and confusing days that lead to feelings of persecution and abandonment. But even in these circumstances we remain uncrushed, without despair, without abandonment, and undestroyed.
  • Conversion (joliow.wordpress.com)
    We must believe that the Word of God has the power to save us. Every promise made will be fulfilled. There is nothing that God cannot do and he does so want us to be able to live fully, joyfully and in the final analysis, we need to be convinced that he loves us unconditionally.
  • God’s Faithfulness
    The Lord is faithful.  What do I mean by that?  I mean that when I talk to Him and read His Word, He always reassures my heart.  Sometimes He changes the environment, sometimes He changes the path I’ve been walking down, but always He changes me.  Every time I invest in God, He pours back into me more than I am capable of giving Him.  There is no path you walk down that He cannot alter, direct or protect you from.

 

Thanksgivukkah and Advent

Having several Holy days around us we should consider why those days are special and deserve to be placed separate (holiness : being set apart).

Dedication and illumination

In this Rosh Hashana greeting card from the ea...

In this Rosh Hashana greeting card from the early 1900s, Russian Jews, packs in hand, gaze at the American relatives beckoning them to the United States. Over two million Jews fled the pogroms of the Russian Empire to the safety of the U.S. from 1881-1924. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Jews have their eight day festival of Hanukkah, the Feast of Dedication, also called “Feast of the Maccabees“, in the Talmud principally known as the “Feast of Illumination.” But what is illuminated? Is it just about displaying eight lamps on the first night of the festival, and to reduce the number on each successive night, or to begin with one lamp the first night, increasing the number till the eighth night? Or is it only remembering the relighting of the altar-fire by Nehemiah due to a miracle which occurred on the twenty-fifth of Kislev?

A Ḥanukkah Lamp found in Jerusalem Excavations.(In the possession of J. D. Eisenstein) says:

“[We thank Thee] also for the miraculous deeds and for the redemption and for the mighty deeds and the saving acts wrought by Thee, as well as for the wars which Thou didst wage for our fathers in days of yore at this season.

Provider of light, waters, earth, plants and animals

Clearly it is not just only saying thanks for the wars having come to a good end. It is also a time to reflect on the Wonders of the Most High Adonai. Throughout history the Divine Creator God did not only provide the light of this world, the streaming waters, the food giving plants and the many animals which can be used as meat to get more strength.

In the days of the Hasmonean Mattathias, son of Johanan the high priest, and his sons, when the iniquitous kingdom of Greece [Syria] rose up against God  tried to make His people Israel forget God His Law and to turn them away from the ordinances of His Will. Taking this in mind we should notice that those adversaries of God (Satan) did not manage to get the people of God away from God. In God His abundant mercy He lifted them up. Those occupied with the Law of God could manage to get through all the troubles which came over them by the many years.

A blessing from the Jews

Not only the Jews should remember those blessings God gave to His people. By the deed of the only begotten son of God, the Jewish Nazarene Jeshua (Jesus Christ) salvation has come to other people people than the Jewish Judean people. Everybody has been called to follow Jesus the Messiah. He has been the greatest gift the Most High has given the world.

To say thanks for that gift and the many other blessings God has given this world many protestants feast Thanksgiving Day. This year they can celebrate their holy days with the Jews and give them also a stronger feeling of being respected as the Chosen People of our Creator. Certainly in this time of  growing anti-Semitism it is necessary that people are remembered of their special role those people do have in the Plan of God and world-peace.

Season of giving presents

Julius.jpg
Electric candle lights on the first Sunday in Advent

Catholics do like a lot of gifts and are also entering a season of gifts. This weekend they celebrate the beginning of Advent, looking forward to the ‘Light of God’. Following the Sunday of the Feast of Christ the King they have this weekend  Advent Sunday, starting a time of expectant waiting and preparation for the celebration of the Nativity of Jesus which they celebrate at Christmas. On the night of 5 to 6 December Catholic, Lutheran, and Orthodox Christians have Saint Nicholas bringing presents for the children. On the 24th and 25th of December they have their most special day of the year, being Christmas. Followed by the last day to give presents on the first day of the New Year, celebrating the circumcision of Jesus. That Feast of the Circumcision is also celebrated in the Eastern Orthodox Church on January 1 in whichever calendar (Old or New) is used, and is also celebrated on the same day by many Anglicans.

Advent wreaths are used to mark the passage of the season.

In the Advent Roman Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, Moravian, Presbyterian and Methodist believers think about the first and second coming of Christ. (Parousia ancient Greek word meaning presence, arrival, or official visit, is adventus in Latin.) Those Christians do look for the shining of their lord. That manifestation, striking appearance they also want to celebrate in the feast with that name epiphany (“appearing”) which they took from the Greeks who used ‘epiphaneia’ to describe the glorious manifestation of the gods, and by the Romans as a title for the Emperor. For them Christ Jesus is such a manifestation or appearance of a divine or superhuman being and a manifestation of the gods, being god the son, God the Father and God the Holy Spirit.

Passage of season

Like the protestants with their celebration of Thanksgiving, the Christians who celebrate the Advent remember the passage of the seasons and the special gift God has given the world. Both take it also as a time to meditate on the Works of God and how He is the Light in the dark, guiding us to the way to enter the Kingdom of God, by means of His only begotten son Jesus, the bringer of peace.

A godly mother

https://i0.wp.com/upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9e/Paolo_de_Matteis_-_The_Annunciation.jpg/330px-Paolo_de_Matteis_-_The_Annunciation.jpg
Annunciation by Paolo de Matteis, 1712. The white lily in the angel’s hand is symbolic of Mary’s purity in Marian art.

The Catholic religion follows the Roman theology presenting Christ his mother as the Venus, the yielding, watery female principle, essential to the generation and balance of life. The annunciation to Mary (Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary or Annunciation of the Lord) is the Christian celebration of the announcement by the angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary that she would conceive and become the mother of Jesus, the Son of God, marking an Incarnated God and having her as the mother of god or the Venus who embodies sex, love, beauty, enticement, seduction, and persuasive female charm among the community of immortal gods.

Having Jesus an incarnation, he fitted Hermes the god of transitions and boundaries, intercessor between mortals and the divine, and conductor of souls into the afterlife. A bringer of presents he symbolises also Mercury, the patron god of financial gain, commerce, eloquence (and thus poetry), messages/communication (including divination), and travellers who will show the way to himself as the most important god.

Like Turms was the equivalent of Roman Mercury and Greek Hermes, both gods of trade and the messenger god between people and gods, Jesus is now celebrated as the divine messenger and god having come down on the earth to save his people.

Bringer of peace

When we look at the description of Jesus in Catholic theology books we clearly can see the superposition of the man born in Bethlehem on the Greek and Roman gods. Having him as Bringer of peace also fits those pagan gods, but we do know that the Real and Only One God told His people to bring a messenger of peace. Lots of Jews did also expect to find in the Nazarene Jeshua (Jesus) to find their liberator or the Messiah who could get rid of the Roman oppressor.

These days we should think of that messenger who brought ‘Grace’ and liberated us not from Romans or any other government literally, but liberated us spiritually and gave us a hope for a better future. That Nazarene Jew is the man of flesh and blood who offered himself so that we would receive space to develop ourselves in the liking of the Creator. By him we should be able to find the way to see the space of all creativity, the connection to the Divine. Many still keep looking outside themselves, but they forget how in the Scriptures is told that we should go into our own body. We can not blame others for our being what we are. We have to create ourselves and find the connection that is inside of us.

Lots of people are looking in the world around them. They should know that there is not really another place where they have to go to. Everybody is enabled to find Him who gives peace, comfort, blessings also in this life here and know on earth. Jesus prepared the way and made it possible that we can speak freely to his Father, the only One God. We just have to come to Him and just have to talk to him, as our closest Friend and He will answer and come to us.

If we want to come to peace, first of all we do have to create peace in ourselves. Therefore we should love ourselves and give the love of Christ the chance to grow in us. Like Jesus showed the world his love we also should find the inner peace he had. Like his peace brought water of life our inner peace should flow out of us flowing into the world.

Time to meditate and to feel

Various menorot used for Hanukkah. 12th throug...

Various menorot used for Hanukkah. 12th through 19th century, CE (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Putting on those candles in this holiday season, being Jew or Christian, those believers are demanded to see beyond the candle light and to see the real light. they also should come to feel a stillness deep within them, and should get to know how to look for that stillness that allows them to seek the Most High Almighty God Who is One Elohim Hashem Jehovah.

These days we get time to consider how lucky we are where we live and what we can do. We should become aware of all the things we really do get without doing enough for it. We must be aware of the nourishment we can get and the opportunities we get to live nicely and to come to an environment of peace. But oh, so often, we do not see it. We do run past it. We have our eyes shut so that we can not see it. It is all so close to us, but we do have to be willing to open our eyes and be willing to see.

God is prepared to give it you all, but you have to recognise Him and to take His hand.

“Hanukkah as the holiday of ‘miracles’ can help us reframe our gathering together with family and friends at this secular season as an incredible miracle that requires much gratitude,”

David Fainsilber, religious leader at the Jewish Community of Greater Stowe said.

“Thank God for this miracle of life and family, gathering, friends and gratitude.”

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Preceding: A Meaningful Thanksgivukkah

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Read also:

  1. Hanukkahgiving or Thanksgivvukah
  2. Being thankful
  3. Thanksgiving-Hanukkah overlap spurs thanks, angst
  4. What happens when you cross Thanksgiving with Hanukkah?
  5. Holiness and expression of worship coming from inside
  6. Count your blessings
  7. God’s Salvation
  8. Written to recognise the Promissed One
  9. A “seed” for the blessing of all mankind would come through the family of Abraham

Dutch articles about the advent:

  1. Adventstijd bezinningstijd
  2. Advent een tijd voor reflectie
  3. Uitkijken naar twee adventen
  4. Een “zaad” voor de zegening van de gehele mensheid gekomen door de familie van Abraham
  5. Uit u zal voorkomen degene die heerser in Israël zal worden
  6. Het grootste geschenk ons gegeven
  7. Wat betreft Korte inhoud van lezingen: Bijgeloof en feesten

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Find also additional reading:

  1. Do No-Thing: The Power of Self Love.
  2. Crazy Messy Love: [Insert Faith Here.]
  3. Legacy of peace
  4. Its Never to Late
  5. I Was to write about love

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  • Jen And Tim Get A Taste Of Thanksgivukkah (new102.cbslocal.com)
    On Thursday, November 28th, the first day of Hanukkah falls on the same day as Thanksgiving. Many popular websites such as Buzzfeed have created recipes for American Jews so they can incorporate both holidays and have some neat decorating ideas as well.
  • Next Thanksgivukkah in 70,000 years (vtdigger.org)
    “The calendar is drifting forward with respect to the solar cycle at a rate of four days every 1,000 years,” he said. “Right now, the earliest that the first day of Hanukkah can fall is Nov. 28. Coincidentally, this is also the latest that Thanksgiving can fall.”Other mathematicians argue that the phenomenon will never happen again. Regardless, everyone agrees on one thing: Thanksgivukkah is an extremely rare and significant event in our lifetimes.
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    Thanksgivukkah is big business. People are selling T-shirts, table décor, dreidels, jewelry and more in honor of the super holiday.

    But regardless of how people choose to celebrate Thanksgivukkah, this unique historical event offers Jewish Americans an opportunity for introspection and reflection, said David Fainsilber, religious leader at the Jewish Community of Greater Stowe.

    “The thinker behind Reconstructionist Judaism, Mordechai Kaplan, was the first to introduce a Thanksgiving service into his siddur/prayer book,” Fainsilber said. “One of his main contributions to Jewish thought is the concept that, as Jews in America, we live in two civilizations: American and Jewish. Today, as American Jews (or Jewish Americans) this concept is now taken for granted in many ways.

  • Thanksgivukkah 2013 (be-watchful.com)
    Both holidays are about being thanksful so that shouldn’t be too difficult. Thanksgiving is a day when Americans count our blessings and give thanks to those who fought for our freedom and for all that we have. We share a day together with our loved ones.
  • 18 Reasons Why Thanksgivukkah Gives Jews The Best Of Both Worlds (elitedaily.com)
    While it may be a little annoying for some Jews to have to meld two of their favorite holidays into one, it could be a lot worse: imagine if Thanksgiving fell on Yom Kippur! Thanksgivkippur would be terrible! When you think about it, it’s actually pretty awesome that the two holidays fall on the same day. It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity that every Jew should embrace and look forward to.Here are 18 reasons why Thanksgivukkah gives Jews the best of both worlds
  • Q-C Jews celebrate Thanksgivukkah (qctimes.com)
    Justin Teitle of Bettendorf says his family’s partying like it’s 1999.He’s Jewish. His wife is Lutheran. Their two children are Jewish. And Thursday was the only time any of them will ever see Thanksgiving and the beginning of Hanukkah fall on the same day. The next time the two coincide will be 79,000 years.
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    “We see it as a great chance for our kids to participate in something that isn’t going to happen again, like New Year’s Eve before the year 2000,” Teitle said.
  • Happy Thanksgivukkah (mymorningmeditations.com)
    Amazement never ceases for the enlightened mind.At every moment it views in astonishment the wonder of an entire world renewed out of the void, and asks, “How could it be that anything at all exists?”-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
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    In my recent investigation into the concept (as opposed to the movement) of Christian fundamentalism, I see that at its heart, it is just the attempt to render a basic definition of the essentials of what makes a Christian. It’s the minimum set of standards, so to speak, that one must uphold to be an authentic believer.
  • St. Louis Jews celebrate Thanksgivukkah for first time since 1800s (fox2now.com)
    Peggy Umansky has enjoyed preparing for both holidays simultaneously. “People have been very inventive,” she says, “I have half my house decorated for Hanukkah, half decorated for Thanksgiving.”

    Umansky and her daughter made pumpkin-flavored challah, shaped and decorated like a turkey.  “I think it’s fun for the kids when the secular world meets the religious world, and they see that everything can coexist and be fun together,” she explains.

  • ‘Happy Thanksgivukkah!’ (endtimebibleprophecy.wordpress.com)
    Judith Mendelsohn Rood, a Jewish Christian and professor of history and Middle Eastern studies at Biola University, connected Hanukkah to one of Jesus’ most important teachings. In an interview this week, Rood cited John 10:22-42, when Jesus celebrated the Feast of Dedication at Jerusalem.

    “In the Old Testament, there’s the festival of tabernacles, where people lived in booths in the fields for eight days,” Rood explained. In the time of Judas Maccabeus, the ruling Greeks would not allow the Jews to celebrate this feast. Once the Maccabees freed Israel from their rule, however, they celebrated Succoth late, and that gave rise to Hanukkah, Rood said.

Science and the Bible—Do They Really Contradict Each Other?

Nikolaus Kopernikus.jpg

Portrait of Mikołaj Kopernik, better known as Nicolaus Copernicus 1580, Toruń Old Town City Hall

galileo_card

galileo_card (Photo credit: triviaqueen)

The seeds of the clash between Galileo and the Catholic Church were sown centuries before the Renaissance mathematician and astronomer Copernicus and Galileo were born. The earth-centered, or geocentric, view of the universe was adopted by the ancient Greeks and made famous by the philosopher Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E.) and the astronomer-astrologer Ptolemy (second century C.E.).*

Aristotle’s concept of the universe was influenced by the thinking of Greek mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras (sixth century B.C.E.). Adopting Pythagoras’ view that the circle and sphere were perfect shapes, Aristotle believed that the heavens were a series of spheres within spheres, like layers of an onion. Each layer was made of crystal, with the earth at the center. Stars moved in circles, deriving their motion from the outermost sphere, the seat of divine power. Aristotle also held that the sun and other celestial objects were perfect, free of any marks or blemishes and not subject to change.

Ancient Greek philosophers such as Plato and A...

Ancient Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle would become highly revered in the christian world and later also in the medieval Islamic world. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Aristotle’s great scheme was a child of philosophy, not science. A moving earth, he felt, would violate common sense. He also rejected the idea of a void, or space, believing that a moving earth would be subject to friction and would grind to a halt without the application of constant force. Because Aristotle’s concept seemed logical within the framework of existing knowledge, it endured in its basic form for almost 2,000 years. Even as late as the 16th century, French philosopher, jurist and polyhistor Jean Bodin expressed that popular view, stating: “No one in his senses, or imbued with the slightest knowledge of physics, will ever think that the earth, heavy and unwieldy . . . , staggers . . . around its own centre and that of the sun; for at the slightest jar of the earth, we would see cities and fortresses, towns and mountains thrown down.”

Aristotle Adopted by the Church

The fifth of Thomas Aquinas' proofs of God's e...

The fifth of Thomas Aquinas’ proofs of God’s existence was based on teleology (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A further step leading to the confrontation between Galileo and the church occurred in the 13th century and involved Catholic authority Thomas Aquinas (1225-74). Aquinas had a profound respect for Aristotle, whom he referred to as The Philosopher. Aquinas struggled for five years to fuse Aristotle’s philosophy with church teaching. By the time of Galileo, says Wade Rowland in his book Galileo’s Mistake, “the hybridized Aristotle in the theology of Aquinas had become bedrock dogma of the Church of Rome.” Keep in mind, too, that in those days there was no scientific community as such. Education was largely in the hands of the church. The authority on religion and science was often one and the same.

The stage was now set for the confrontation between the church and Galileo. Even before his involvement with astronomy, Galileo had written a treatise on motion. It challenged many assumptions made by the revered Aristotle. However, it was Galileo’s steadfast promotion of the heliocentric concept and his assertion that it harmonizes with Scripture that led to his trial by the Inquisition in 1633.

In his defense, Galileo affirmed his strong faith in the Bible as the inspired Word of God. He also argued that the Scriptures were written for ordinary people and that Biblical references to the apparent movement of the sun were not to be interpreted literally. His arguments were futile. Because Galileo rejected an interpretation of Scripture based on Greek philosophy, he stood condemned! Not until 1992 did the Catholic Church officially admit to error in its judgement of Galileo.

Lessons to Be Learned

What can we learn from these events? For one thing, Galileo had no quarrel with the Bible. Instead, he questioned the teachings of the church. One religion writer observed: “The lesson to be learned from Galileo, it appears, is not that the Church held too tightly to biblical truths; but rather that it did not hold tightly enough.” By allowing Greek philosophy to influence its theology, the church bowed to tradition rather than follow the teachings of the Bible.

All of this calls to mind the Biblical warning:

“Look out: perhaps there may be someone who will carry you off as his prey through the philosophy and empty deception according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary things of the world and not according to Christ.”—Colossians 2:8.

A page of hand-written notes, with a sketch of branching lines.

In mid-July 1837 Darwin started his “B” notebook on Transmutation of Species, and on page 36 wrote “I think” above his first evolutionary tree.

Even today, many in Christendom continue to embrace theories and philosophies that contradict the Bible. One example is Darwin’s theory of evolution, which they have accepted in place of the Genesis account of creation. In making this substitution, the churches have, in effect, made Darwin a modern-day Aristotle and evolution an article of faith.*

True Science Harmonizes With the Bible

The foregoing should in no way discourage an interest in science. To be sure, the Bible itself invites us to learn from God’s handiwork and to discern God’s amazing qualities in what we see. (Isaiah 40:26; Romans 1:20) Of course, the Bible does not claim to teach science. Rather, it reveals God’s standards, aspects of his personality that creation alone cannot teach, and his purpose for humans. (Psalm 19:7-11; 2 Timothy 3:16) Yet, when the Bible does refer to natural phenomena, it is consistently accurate. Galileo himself said: “Both the Holy Scriptures and nature proceed from the Divine Word . . . Two truths can never contradict one another.” Consider the following examples.

Even more fundamental than the movement of stars and planets is that all matter in the universe is governed by laws, such as the law of gravity. The earliest known non-Biblical reference to physical laws was made by Pythagoras, who believed that the universe could be explained by numbers. Two thousand years later, Galileo, Kepler, and Newton finally proved that matter is governed by rational laws.

The earliest Biblical reference to natural law is contained in the book of Job. About 1600 B.C.E., God asked Job: “Have you come to know the statutes [or, laws] of the heavens?” (Job 38:33) Recorded in the seventh century B.C.E., the book of Jeremiah refers to Jehovah as the Creator of “the statutes of the moon and the stars” and “the statutes of heaven and earth.” (Jeremiah 31:35; 33:25) In view of these statements, Bible commentator G. Rawlinson observed:

“The general prevalence of law in the material world is quite as strongly asserted by the sacred writers as by modern science.”

If we use Pythagoras as a point of reference, the statement in Job was about a thousand years ahead of its time. Keep in mind that the Bible’s objective is not simply to reveal physical facts but primarily to impress upon us that Jehovah is the Creator of all things—the one who can create physical laws.—Job 38:4, 12; 42:1, 2.

The Hydrologic Cycle. Illustration by Tom Schultz

Another example we can consider is that the earth’s waters undergo a cyclic motion called the water cycle, or the hydrologic cycle. Put simply, water evaporates from the sea, forms clouds, precipitates onto the land, and eventually returns to the sea. The oldest surviving non-Biblical references to this cycle are from the fourth century B.C.E. However, Biblical statements predate that by hundreds of years. For example, in the 11th century B.C.E., King Solomon of Israel wrote: “All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full. To the place from which the rivers come, to there and from there they return again.”—Ecclesiastes 1:7, The Amplified Bible.

Likewise, about 800 B.C.E. the prophet Amos, a humble shepherd and farmworker, wrote that Jehovah is “the One calling for the waters of the sea, that he may pour them out upon the surface of the earth.” (Amos 5:8) Without using complex, technical language, both Solomon and Amos accurately described the water cycle, each from a slightly different perspective.

The Bible also speaks of God as “hanging the earth upon nothing,” or he “suspends earth in the void,” according to The New English Bible. (Job 26:7) In view of the knowledge available in 1600 B.C.E., roughly when those words were spoken, it would have taken a remarkable man to assert that a solid object can remain suspended in space without any physical support. As previously mentioned, Aristotle himself rejected the concept of a void, and he lived over 1,200 years later!

Does it not strike you as amazing that the Bible makes such accurate statements—even in the face of the erroneous yet seemingly commonsense perceptions of the day? To thinking people, this is one more evidence of the Bible’s divine inspiration. We are wise, therefore, not to be easily swayed by any teaching or theory that contradicts God’s Word. As history has repeatedly shown, human philosophies, even those of towering intellects, come and go, whereas “the saying of Jehovah endures forever.”—1 Peter 1:25.

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[Footnotes]

In the third century B.C.E., a Greek named Aristarchus of Samos put forth the hypothesis that the sun is at the center of the cosmos, but his ideas were dismissed in favor of Aristotle’s.

For an in-depth discussion on this topic, see chapter 15, “Why Do Many Accept Evolution?” in the book Life—How Did It Get Here? By Evolution or by Creation? published by Jehovah’s Witnesses.

The Protestants’ Attitude

  Leaders of the Protestant Reformation also railed against the sun-centered concept. They included Martin Luther (1483-1546), Philipp Melanchthon (1497-1560), and John Calvin (1509-64). Luther said of Copernicus: “This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy.”

  The Reformers based their argument on a literal interpretation of certain scriptures, such as the account in Joshua chapter 10 that mentions that the sun and the moon “kept motionless.”* Why did the Reformers take this stand? The book Galileo’s Mistake explains that while the Protestant Reformation broke the papal yoke, it failed to “shake the essential authority” of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, whose views were “accepted by Catholic and Protestant alike.”

[Footnote 2]

Scientifically speaking, we use incorrect terms when we refer to “sunrise” and “sunset.” But in everyday speech, these words are both acceptable and accurate, when we keep in mind our terrestrial perspective. Likewise, Joshua was not discussing astronomy; he was simply reporting events as he saw them.

[Credit Line 1]

From the book Servetus and Calvin, 1877

[Credit Line 2]

From the book A General History for Colleges and High Schools, 1900

[Credit Line 3]

From the book Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, 1855

After w05 4/1 pp. 4-7

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Preceding articles:

Where is the edge

The mythical conflict of science and Scripture (1)

The mythical conflict of science and Scripture (2)

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Additional reading:

  1. Living on the edge
  2. Is it “Wrong” to Believe that the Earth is a Sphere? Inclusive the first generation of Christadelphians their views
  3. A dialogue about the earth moving and spinning around the sun
  4. Cosmos creator and human destiny
  5. Everyday beauty

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In Dutch:

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  • Reason Illuminates Faith (in the Middle Ages) (thesoapboxguild.wordpress.com)
    The Genesis of Science: How the Christian Middle Ages Launched the Scientific Revolution, is incredibly readable for its length and depth, and is a credit to its author. I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in science and the Middle Ages. This series of blog posts is my attempt to gain a deeper appreciation for the issues Hannam raises, and to think alongside him as he dives into the lost world of medieval cosmology, medicine, mathematics, and philosophy.
  • Thomas Aquinas’s Works and Philosophies  As an Italian philosopher and (bestessaycheap.wordpress.com)
    Thomas led the Church towards a new expression of thinking. (MSN knowledge and Research). From the beginning he rebelled against a life previously go d sustain the stairs by his family, and pave a road towards success for himself.
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    Although many philosophies were derived from the bookworm thinker, Aristotle, he believed that it focused too na! rrowly on only when a few professions.
  • Galileo (hiddengrail.wordpress.com)
    At the University of Pisa, Galileo learned the physics of the Ancient Greek scientist, Aristotle. However, Galileo questioned the Aristotelian approach to physics. Aristotelians believed that heavier objects fall faster through a medium than lighter ones. Galileo eventually disproved this idea by asserting that all objects, regardless of their density, fall at the same rate in a vacuum.
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    Because Galileo supported the Copernican system, he was warned by Cardinal Bellarmine, under order of Pope Paul V, that he should not discuss or defend Copernican theories. In 1624, Galileo was assured by Pope Urban VIII that he could write about Copernican theory as long as he treated it as a mathematical proposition. However, with the printing of Galileo’s book, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Galileo was called to Rome in 1633 to face the Inquisition again. Galileo was found guilty of heresy for his Dialogue, and was sent to his home near Florence where he was to be under house arrest for the remainder of his life. In 1638, the Inquisition allowed Galileo to move to his home in Florence, so that he could be closer to his doctors. By that time he was totally blind. In 1642, Galileo died at his home outside Florence.
  • Who are the most significant moral philosophers in the history of Western philosophy? (leiterreports.typepad.com)
    1. Aristotle  (Condorcet winner: wins contests with all other choices)
    2. Immanuel Kant  loses to Aristotle by 364–227
    3. Plato  loses to Aristotle by 414–168, loses to Immanuel Kant by 349–241
  • Unified Truth: Faith and Reason (str.typepad.com)
    Christianity’s engagement with non-Christian thought proceeds from the Christian belief that reason and faith are complementary, not oppositional. Thomas Aquinas’ synthesis of Aristotle and Christianity is a vital chapter in this engagement. His interaction with the philosophy of Aristotle demonstrates both the harmony of reason and faith and the oneness of truth, which are both central to the Christian intellectual tradition….
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    Greek philosophy is not compatible with Christian theology, except in a few areas. In Greek philosophy, the body is bad. In Christian theology, the body is good and will be redeemed eventually by God. Greek philosophy has brought us off course in our understanding of eschatology and other important things on many occasions in the church. I am a bit wary about some of what Thomas Aquinas believes because of that.
  • Galileo Galilei (Scientific revolution) (chrissanchez42.wordpress.com)
    Galileo eventually combined his laws of physics with the observations he made with his telescope to defend the heliocentric Copernican view of the universe and refute the Aristotelian system in his 1630 masterwork, Dialogue on the Two Chief Systems of the World. Upon its publication, he was censored by the Catholic Church and sentenced to house arrest in 1633.
  • Aristotle (megcannington.wordpress.com)
    Aristotle’s works shaped centuries of philosophy from Late Antiquity through the Renaissance, and even today continue to be studied with interest. He was definitely a  prodigious researcher and writer.
  • Knowledge Development History (zahrohtimy.wordpress.com)
    According to Bertrand Russell , among all history , nothing so difficult so astonish or explained besides the birth of civilization in Greece of a sudden. It has many elements of civilization there for thousands of years in Egypt and Mesopotamia. But certain elements have not been intact until then executing Yunanilah race .
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    Archimedes , considered one of the greatest mathematicians of all time , it is based on mathematical principles form temuannya lever, pulley system ( which didemonstrasikannya to attract a private boat only), and penak thread, that shows the planetarium model that can show movement of sun, moon, the planets, and constellations in the sky possibility. In the field of mathematics, the findings on the value of p ( phi ) over the previous approach of scholars. Of his works that is experimental, it is then dubbed as ” Mr. Experimental IPA ”.
  • What’s the record for the longest delayed apology? (chron.com)
    The longest delayed apology I can think of came from the Catholic Church, in 1992, to Galileo:Moving formally to rectify a wrong, Pope John Paul II acknowledged in a speech today that the Roman Catholic Church had erred in condemning Galileo 359 years ago for asserting that the Earth revolves around the Sun.
  • Thomas Aquinas on Wisdom by Robert M. Woods (facebookapostles.org)
    For Thomas, and most Philosophers until the modern world, Philosophy was essentially the “love of wisdom.” To engage in the the practice of philosophy was the faithful pursuit of wisdom wherever it might be found. The primary understanding of truth was saying of a thing what was and not saying of a thing what was not. In a larger sense, wisdom was an understanding of the truth of things. Philosophy was not navel gazing and not ideological manipulation, but it was a diligent quest to understanding the good, the true, and the beautiful.

Blackness, nothingness, something, void

Void and darkness

Darkness. Nothingness.

Void, so there was and there is ….. complexity. Empty spaces make up void, but than there is something to make the spaces in between. Then there is density, length, with, depth, hight … space. When there are periodic fluctuations in the density of the visible baryonic matter of the universe, this means there is a stand still, a movement, but caused by what? If caused by acoustic waves then there would be sound and movement in space. If it would come to an explosion, call it Big Bang, than still it had to exist in the early universe.

Cosmology

First baryon octet

First baryon octet (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) may provide a “standard ruler” for length scale in cosmology. does it help us to understand more about the nature of dark energy (which causes the apparent slight acceleration of the expansion of the universe) by constraining cosmological parameters? When there was a hot, dense plasma of electrons and baryons (protons and neutrons) then those also had to come into being.when there would have come overdensity gravitationally attracting matter towards it, the heat of photon-matter interactions creating a large amount of outward pressure, then there should have been something like emptiness and matter, something to cause limitness or presser on something else.. Then counteracting forces of gravity and pressure could create oscillations, analogous to sound waves created in air by pressure differences.

Collapses of masses, Big Bang and billion of years

Voids are believed to have been formed by baryon acoustic oscillations in the Big Bang—collapses of mass followed by implosions of the compressed baryonic matter. Starting from initially small anisotropies due to quantum fluctuations in the early Universe, the anisotropies grew larger in scale over time. Regions of higher density collapsed more rapidly under gravity, eventually resulting in the large-scale, foam-like structure or “cosmic web” of voids and galaxy filaments seen today.

When, according to scientists, approximately 13.798 ± 0.037 billion years ago the Universe was in an extremely hot and dense state and began expanding rapidly to cool down sufficiently to allow energy to be converted into various subatomic particles, including protons, neutrons, and electrons, there should have been all these elements. Subatomic particles, present in the nucleus of each atom having a mutual electromagnetic repulsion stronger than the attraction of the nuclear force, should still then have something to bring in force.

Books of man against books of Supreme Being

The Big Book made up of 66 books, brought together by men, beings of flesh and blood, got ideas in it which came from somewhere and bothered their brains. It let them think and handle, wondering about their being or not being, life and death. Being nothing, would it be being part of that void?

So that “Void” was considered part of the beginning.

“And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness [was] upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” (Genesis 1:2 AV)

Spirit, Space and Earth

Mass map of Abell 1689.

Mass map of Abell 1689. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Space and Earth being without form, part of the so called nothingness, which was something not seen, because darkness did not reveal it,  bottomless emptiness, an inky blackness. God’s Spirit brooded like a bird above the watery abyss, so there was water to hover over.

“And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.” (Genesis 1:3 AV)

Then there was a God, a Being, a Spirit, not man not woman, not flesh, not blood. darkness was elevated so there was light.

Fluids and Being

When there was water, there was space or volume, the volume of void-space (such as fluids). Having darkness and light makes radiation and reflection. To have reflection there has to be material and volume of solids. Volume change tendency control. If void ratio is high (loose soils) voids in a soil skeleton tend to minimize under loading – adjacent particles contract. The opposite situation, i.e. when void ratio is relatively small (dense soils), indicates that the volume of the soil is vulnerable to increase under loading – particles dilate.

The Void also can denote excretion, the process by which waste products of metabolism and other non-useful materials are eliminated from an organism. In vertebrates this is primarily carried out by the lungs, kidneys and skin. The void as such could be the part of the being, the breathing or passage of air, the composure of the things, be it man or animal or plant.

Dependant Independence

Elementary particles need not be statistically independent and everything could move around without the other but would interfere with the other. Einstein observed that the exchange of radiation between bodies should involve an exchange of mass; light quanta have mass exactly as do ordinary molecules. In his derivation of this result, Einstein speaks about a “light complex,” an entirely classical concept, rather than about a light quantum. When, after Bose’s work, he did attribute corpuscular properties to light quanta, he distinguished clearly between photons (a word he did not use), zero rest mass bosons (another word introduced later) whose number need not be conserved; and massive bosons, whose number must be conserved. His prediction of a condensed state for massive bosons (see Einstein, 1925), now called a Bose-Einstein condensate, offered the first theoretical explanation of a transition between two phases of a system. The prediction was spectacularly confirmed some seventy years later, winning its discoverers the 2001 Nobel prize in physics.

A light ray divides itself, but a light quantum cannot divide without a change of frequency” (Einstein to H. A. Lorentz, 23 May 1909, Collected Papers, vol. 5, p. 193).

Originator of Big Bang

The Big Bang era of the universe, presented as...

The Big Bang era ofthe universe, presented as a manifold in two dimensions (1-space and

time); the shape is right (approximately), but it’s not to scale. (Photo

credit: Wikipedia)

For those saying because there was a Big Bang, so there could not be a Creator is like having the empty peace of paper, getting sings or drawings on its own, without someone using a pen, his hand or his brains to bring something on the paper.

The Big Bang does not contradict anything which is written in the Book of Books, the Bible or Holy Scriptures, which is inspired and infallible the Word of that Maker, the Being behind it all.

The void got formed.

Philosophers

A pagan Greek philosopher, Proclus, called the Successor, had written a massive polemical commentary explicitly criticizing the Biblical description of the universe and its origin, on the grounds that it was scientifically unsupportable. Philoponus, also known as John the Grammarian or John of Alexandria, was a Christian and Aristotelian commentator and the author of a considerable number of philosophical treatises and theological works, destroyed Proclus’ arguments in his reply, demonstrating the many flaws in Proclus’ work. {Wilderberg, ‘John Philoponus’, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.}
He also wrote numerous commentaries on Aristotle’s works which identified their errors, using the Biblical cosmology as his tool. {John McKenna, article ‘John Philoponus, Sixth Century Alexandrian Grammarian, Christian Theologian and Scientific Philosopher’, Quodlibet Journal, Volume 5, Number 1, January, 2003.}

Cosmology, Philosophy and Science

This breakthrough was instrumental in the formation of Western science as we know it. Philoponus’ work was used by later scientific investigators such as such as Bonaventure, Gersonides, Buridan, Oresme, Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola, Galileo Galilei, and Isaac Newton, all of whom made significant scientific progress as a result.

Philoponus had defended the Christian cosmology, deriving powerful arguments from observations of the universe that it must have had a beginning, and that it was finite in duration. He single-handedly debunked the greatest pagan philosopher and cosmologist in recorded history (Aristotle), as well as burying Proclus’ criticism of the Christian cosmology.

Around 550 Philoponus wrote a theological work On the Creation of the World as a commentary on the Bible’s story of creation using the insights of Greek philosophers and Basil the Great. In this work he transfers his theory of impetus to the motion of the planets, whereas Aristotle had proposed different explanations for the motion of heavenly bodies and for earthly projectiles. Thus Philoponus’ theological work is recognized in the history of science as the first attempt at a unified theory of dynamics. Another of his major theological concerns was to argue that all material objects were brought into being by God (Arbiter, 52A-B).

Later Jewish and Christian cosmologists throughout the medieval era made similar arguments, based on the same observations. Christian scientists from Francis Bacon to Isaac Newton all understood this, for centuries.

To be or not to be true

Incredibly, some of the greatest 20th century scientists such as the son of a Somerset Quaker, Arthur Henry Eddington and Einstein claimed it could not be true (apparently Einstein later said it was possibly the greatest error in his career). Eddington even admitted he didn’t want it to be true, for philosophical reasons. [9] It was only recently that scientific evidence for the ‘Big Bang’ proved that the universe did indeed have a beginning and would have an end, contrary to what many scientists had believed.

The Bible did not want to give an exact picture of who everything came into being but does contain information which has historically been of considerable scientific value.

Biblical concept of the universe

WMAP image of the (extremely tiny) anisotropie...

WMAP image of the (extremely tiny) anisotropies in the cosmic background radiation (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Unlike every other Ancient Near East cosmology, the Bible describes the universe in naturalistic terms. The sun, moon, and stars are inanimate objects rather than gods, the universe was not created from the recycled body parts of divine beings, and the universe operates according to fixed laws. Early Jewish and Christian commentators understood that nature is regular and orderly, since everything in nature takes place according to fixed laws which God has instituted, which never change.

Sirach chapter 16, verses 26-28, 180-175 BCE.

‘When the Lord created his works from the beginning, and, in making them determined their boundaries, he arranged his works in an eternal order, and their dominion for all generations. They neither hunger not grow weary, and they do not abandon their tasks. They do not crowd one another, and they never disobey his word.’

Basil of Caesarea, ‘Hexamaron’, chapter 5, sections 10, 370 CE.

‘It is this command which, still at this day, is imposed on the earth and, in the course of each year, displays all the strength of its power to produce herbs, seeds, and trees. Like tops, which after the first impulse continue their evolutions, turning upon themselves, when once fixed in their center; thus nature, receiving the impulse of this first command, follows without interruption the course of ages until the consummation of all things.’

This concept of the universe, which we take for granted, was revolutionary in the Ancient Near East and was not even approached by the Greeks until around the 4th century BCE. In fact the inadequacy of Greek science led to a complete dead end.

Concept of Origin and Originator

John McKenna, article ‘John Philoponus, Sixth Century Alexandrian Grammarian, Christian Theologian and Scientific Philosopher’, Quodlibet Journal, Volume 5, Number 1, January 2003.

‘The Greek concept of God caused a deep confusion between cosmology and theology and was a dead-end to science, as we know it in our time.’

Unable to free itself completely from mythology, Greek science finally stagnated and failed to advance any further.

Wilderberg, ‘John Philoponus’, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

‘Reading Philoponus as well as the writings of his great adversary Simplicius, one gets the sense that in the 6th century CE, traditional pagan Greek learning had become desperately insular.’

Inheritance

Western science was not revived until the 6th century CE Christian philosopher John Philoponus challenged the pagan cosmology inherited from the Greeks.

Dan Graves, ‘Aristotle’s Earliest Creationist Critic’, 1998.

‘A widespread religion of Philoponus’s time was pantheism, a belief system that sees God as equivalent to nature. In his rejection of this, Philoponus argued that the Creator transcends nature rather than being within it. Having been created, nature exists without constant intervention by God. This radical conception shocked the pagans who believed the gods were imbedded within the material universe.’

Religious experience versus scientific experience

Eddington argued from a novel interpretation of positivism that religious experience and scientific experience were equally valid parts of human life, but that neither could prove any particular sectarian dogma. This ecumenical, reassuring position was quite popular in the interwar period with the last surge of liberal theology, but became less relevant with the death of that movement around World War II.

Einstein loved to discuss scientific problems with friends, but he was, fundamentally a “horse for single harness.” His belief in strict causality was closely related to his profound belief in the harmony of nature, which did not have to exclude a Supernatural Hand behind it all.

Most of the people do want to look at the universe rationally, in mathematical terms, and by doing so they often become blind for the mystical elemenents we as human beings can not understand. It is not because we can not cope with the matter that we do have to cease to evoke a deep — one might say, religious — feeling of admiration in the Power behind all science.

“The most incomprehensible thing about the world,” Einstein once wrote, “is that it is comprehensible.”

Free inventive capacity of human mind

To discover the basic laws and concepts of nature we can either try to find knowledge by scientist, whose findings after some years may become outdated and not so right as people thought after, first arguing a lot.

Einstein argued that while we learn certain features of the world from experience, the free inventive capacity of the human mind is required to formulate physical theories. There is no logical link between the world of experience and the world of theory. Once a theory has been formulated, however, it must be “simple” (or, perhaps, “esthetically pleasing”) and agree with experiment. One such esthetically pleasing and fully confirmed theory is the special theory of relativity. There was the Galilean invariance or Galilean relativity that states that the laws of motion are the same in all inertial frames. Galileo Galilei first described this principle in 1632 in his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems using the example of a ship travelling at constant velocity, without rocking, on a smooth sea; any observer doing experiments below the deck would not be able to tell whether the ship was moving or stationary. The fact that the Earth orbits around the sun at approximately 30 km/s offers a somewhat more dramatic example, though it is technically not an inertial reference frame.

We might also adhere that there exists an absolute space, in which Newton’s laws are true, an inertial frame as a reference frame in relative uniform motion to absolute space where all inertial frames share a universal time. {Newtonian relativity}

If it be a relativity generalising special relativity and Newton’s law of universal gravitation, providing a unified description of gravity as a geometric property of space and time, or spacetime we in a moment of time can appear or dispensary, be or not be.  In the curvature of space-time we shall not be able to avoid the energy and momentum of whatever matter and radiation are present.

Subtle but not malicious

When Einstein was informed of D.C. Miller’s experiments, which seemed to contradict the special theory by demanding the reinstatement of the ether, he expressed his belief in the spuriousness of Miller’s results—and therefore in the harmoniousness of nature—with another of his famous aphorisms, “God is subtle, but he is not malicious.”

This frequent use of God’s name in Einstein’s speeches and writings provides us with a feeling for his religious convictions. He once stated explicitly,

“I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the harmony of all being, not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and actions of men.”

It is not difficult to see that this credo is consistent with his statement that the

“less knowledge a scholar possesses, the farther he feels from God. But the greater his knowledge, the nearer is his approach to God.”

This should let us made to think about our position to the Divine Creator who provide human beings with brains so that they can think and have wisdom. Since Einstein’s God manifested Himself in the harmony of the universe, there could be no conflict between religion and science for Einstein. As Christians we should believe the Word of God and notice that many things written in it were first taught otherwise by man. Lots of people twisted words and told people they were in the Scriptures, but that ordinary people could not understand them. Many points of believe were created, people had to accept them, or they would be tortured and even be killed for other beliefs. The major points in this are that the world would be there in one go like we see it today, that the earth would be a flat surface, that God would be three in one (the Holy Trinity), that Jesus was God and that Jesus existed already at the time of the creation.

Looking into matters, taking time to study and for investigation

We should look into all matters, investigate them and make the right choices. The Creator provided the universe, placed human beings, plants and animals in it and gave guidance in His Word, to help them find their way. each of us has to use their brains to search, look for and to experiment. Each of us has also either to hear to the world or to see the Magnificent Hand of God and the Beautiful Works of God, which work faith.

Illustration of the expansion of the Universe ...

Illustration of the expansion of the Universe after the Big bang. In Bulgarian. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Einstein’s theory implies the existence of black holes — regions of space in which space and time are distorted in such a way that nothing, not even light, can escape — as an end-state for massive stars. There is ample evidence that the intense radiation emitted by certain kinds of astronomical objects is due to black holes; for example, microquasars and active galactic nuclei result from the presence of stellar black holes and black holes of a much more massive type, respectively. In time people will find out more about it. Many previous scientific findings may be considered mistaken. those faulty teachings where once taken as the truth and preferred above the Truth of God. We should know better and look for truth in the Bible, the Word of God. Studying that word we should come to conclusions and take the right choices doing the job god wants us to do.

No void anymore

We can have no void, having no members or examples. Today the void is gone. We live in the world not inhabited any more and is not deserted. Being part of those living elements of the universe, we can breath and move and fulfil duties.

When Einstein lay dying he could truly utter, as he did,

“Here on earth I have done my job.”

Shall we be able to say at the end of our life the same thing?

It would be difficult to find a more suitable epitaph than the words Einstein himself used in characterizing his life:

“God is inexorable in the way He has allotted His gifts. He gave me the stubbornness of a mule and nothing else; really, He also gave me a keen scent.”

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Additional notes:

  1. Proclus Lycaeus was a Greek Neoplatonist philosopher, one of the last major Classical philosophers who set forth one of the most elaborate and fully developed systems of Neoplatonism. He stands near the end of the classical development of philosophy, and was very influential on Western medieval philosophy (Greek and Latin) as well as Islamic thought.
  2. The biblical findings and theological ideas of John the Grammarian or John of Alexandria broke from the Aristotelian-Neoplatonic tradition, questioning methodology and eventually leading to empiricism in the natural sciences. His doctrine on Christ’s duality, according to which in Christ remain two united substances, united but divided, is analogous to the union of the soul and body in human beings and coincides with the miaphysite school of thought.
    He was posthumously condemned as a heretic by the Orthodox Church in 680-81 because of what was perceived of as a tritheistic interpretation of the Trinity.
  3. Arthur Henry Eddington was the first interpreter of Einstein’s relativity theory in English, and made his own contributions to its development; and he formulated relationships between all the principal constants of nature, attempting a vast synthesis in his provocative but uncompleted Fundamental Theory.

Please do find:

  1. The professor, God, Faith and the student
  2. The Origin of Life on Earth: Creation or Evolution?
  3. God of gods
  4. The Divine name of the Creator
  5. Two states of existence before God
  6. A viewpoint on creation
  7. The World framed by the Word of God
  8. Creator and Blogger God 1 Emptiness and mouvement
  9. Creator and Blogger God 3 Lesson and solution
  10. Trusting, Faith, calling and Ascribing to Jehovah #3 Voice of God #1 Creator and His Prophets
  11. Cosmos creator and human destiny
  12. Creation of the earth out of something
  13. Creation gift of God
  14. Creation and the Bible
  15. God, Creation and the Bible Hope
  16. A viewpoint on creation
  17. Man made life
  18. The manager and Word of God
  19. Newton did not believe in a Trinity
  20. Trinity: A False Doctrine of a False Church
  21. God works faith
  22. Without God no purpose, no goal, no hope
  23. Finish each day and be done with it

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  • Could ‘Higgsogenesis’ explain dark matter? (phys.org)
    The recently discovered Higgs boson is best known for its important role in explaining particle mass. But now some physicists are wondering if the Higgs could have played an equally significant role in generating dark matter and baryonic matter in the early Universe, as well as causing the hypothetical dark matter asymmetry and the observed baryon asymmetry between matter and antimatter particles.
  • Nothingness (coggj22.wordpress.com)
    When you ask people about how life started, or even how the entire universe came into fruition, their answer would basically boil down into two categories – an answer which is derived from scientific explanations and another which involves an application of faith, a response born of their religion. In the scientific field, we see theories which seek to explain the origin of the universe such as the big bang theory, as well as ideas which aim to resolve the issue of how humans were formed such as Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species.
  • Why Does The World Exist? (rationaloptimist.wordpress.com)
    In writing previously about Lawrence Krauss’s book, A Universe From Nothing: Why is There Something Rather Than Nothing? I called this the greatest question. Comes now Jim Holt’s book, Why Does the World Exist? Whereas Krauss’s was basically a physics book, Holt’s is mainly philosophical. At the heart of the problem is what nothingness means (as the alternative to the Universe we’ve got, full of stuff). Holt spends much time on this, discussing the plausibility of nothingness via a process of subtraction from our cosmos of somethingness. Meantime Krauss described nothingness in such a way that applying physics to it could get you a Big Bang; he talks a lot about field theory and suchlike. imagesBut the trouble is that religious apologists can always say their nothingness (not even fields) is deeper than yours and requires a god to get something going.
  • Creation Myth Flash Fiction (thewriterandpoet.wordpress.com)
    According to the Standard Model of particle physics, the universe should be empty. Matter and antimatter, which are identical except for their opposite electric charges, seem to be produced in equal parts during particle interactions and decays. However, matter and antimatter instantly annihilate each other upon contact, and so equal amounts of each would have meant a wholesale annihilation of both shortly after the Big Bang. The existence of galaxies, planets and people illustrates that somehow, a small surplus of matter survived this canceling process. If that hadn’t happened, “the universe would be void,” Schönert said. “It would be very, very boring for us, who would not exist.”
  • Accommodation of the Void (themanaoblog.wordpress.com)
    Even thinking about it in terms that can be thought as even being semi-friendly makes a lot of our brains itch. We loathe a void. A void means that we are empty of something and that the void demands to be filled. What we are not realizing is that there is a reason for the void and once it is that we understand the reason, there will be no more void. Too many of us are not accepting this. Too many people believe that a void is a bad thing when in reality it is only a neutral thing and doesn’t carry any negative energy until we choose to believe that it is something other than what it truly is, which is merely and only a void.Nothing in existence did not first come from a void. A void is really only an empty space that is waiting for the right and matching energy to come through to it and fill it. The reason that there is a void created is because that which was there to begin with no longer fits and neither does the energy that used to be there.
  • Stephen Hawking’s Big Ideas Made Simple (ritholtz.com)
    No time to read Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time? In just two and a half minutes, Alok Jha explains why black holes are doomed to shrink into nothingness then explode with the energy of a million nuclear bombs, and rewinds to the big bang and the origin of the universe?
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    Nice story, but many astrophysicists do not accept this theory of universal birth.
  • [CEA] Constraints on Large-Scale Dark Acoustic Oscillations from Cosmology (arxiver.wordpress.com)
    If all or a fraction of the dark matter (DM) were coupled to a bath of dark radiation (DR) in the early Universe we expect the combined DM-DR system to give rise to acoustic oscillations of the dark matter until it decouples from the DR. Much like the standard baryon acoustic oscillations, these dark acoustic oscillations (DAO) imprint a characteristic scale, the sound horizon of dark matter, on the matter power spectrum.
  • Higgs boson may have played a role in dark matter creation (vr-zone.com)
    The most famous subatomic particle in recent years is no doubt the Higgs boson, which is responsible for defining the mass of particles. Now scientists believe it may also have an important role in the creation of dark and baryonic matter in the early universe. It may also have something to do with the asymmetry between antimatter and matter particles.The concept of asymmetry involves the idea that while the big bang should have produced equal amounts of matter and anti-matter, it didn’t. If matter and anti-matter had been created in equal amounts, they should then have eliminated each other, leaving… nothing. Of course, that’s not what happened; there was a slight excess of matter, meaning some was left over after all the anti-matter had been eliminated. That matter is what makes up our universe.
  • The impact of baryonic processes on the two-point correlation functions of galaxies, subhaloes and matter [CEA] (arxiver.wordpress.com)
    The observed clustering of galaxies and the cross-correlation of galaxies and mass (a measure of galaxy-galaxy lensing) provide important constraints on both cosmology and models of galaxy formation. Even though the dissipation, and more importantly the feedback processes associated with galaxy formation are thought to affect the distribution of matter, essentially all models used to predict clustering data are based on dark matter only simulations.
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    We conclude that predictions for galaxy-galaxy and galaxy-mass clustering from models based on dark matter only simulations will have errors greater than 10% on sub-Mpc scales, unless the simulation results are modified to correctly account for the effects of baryons on the distributions of mass and satellites.
  • Using the topology of large-scale structure in the WiggleZ Dark Energy Survey as a cosmological standard ruler [CEA] (arxiver.wordpress.com)
    The Minkowski functionals are a set of statistics which completely describe the topological nature of each isodensity surface within the field, as a function of the density value.