Atheists claim not to believe in God because they can’t prove He exists. The. Bible tells us to live by faith and not by sight. An educated society may make for a better society, though educated types tend to reject the Divine because there is no evidence; or at least none they can see.
As an intellectual, I like to question everything. I like to try to figure out why I believe something. This has made me a freethinker, thus the bane of the established church. Note I said established because the true church has invisible walls.
My basic beliefs would align me with the Judeo-Christian faith. Sometimes I can’t help but wonder why I believe what I do. The fact that I catch myself quoting the Bible frequently confirms my beliefs. Especially if a certain verse is logical or consistent with the culture. And that is what makes the Bible stand out as the best selling book. Even nonbelievers admire it as a book of philosophy and wisdom.
Today’s verse reminds me that poverty is man-made and a mindset. If you believe in divine providence anyway. There is no way to prove this. Sometimes you just have to trust in it and quit over thinking everything.
Everyone knows that when we go through hard times, aka recessions or famines, the ones who get through it are the ones who are the most prepared. In many cases the ones who are the most prepared are the ones who put their trust in the Most High.
Prosperity is biblical but the invisible kingdom is more than money. That’s why we aren’t supposed to put our trust in material wealth. What some people lack in money, they make up for in other resources. Sometimes the ones who look poor on paper actually have a better quality of life.
James 4:13-15. . .”And now I have a word for you who brashly announce, ‘Today, at the very latest tomorrow, we are off to such and such a city for a year. We are going to start a business and make a lot of money.’ You don’t know the first thing about tomorrow. You are nothing but a wisp of fog, catching but a brief bit of sun before disappearing. Instead make it a habit of saying, ‘if the Master wills and we are still alive, we will do this or do that.'” (The Message)
Today’s devotional sounds like most people nowadays. This just proves that people don’t really change. We are always planning for our future. In and of itself this is not a bad thing; we just have to remember that nothing is promised. This flies in the face of the prosperity gospel which claims God has much wealth in store for us. There is truth to the prosperity gospel but it is more internal; i.e., from the inside out.
This does not mean we shouldn’t be ambitious. Ambition is a good thing because it is better than living an idle life. Worldly ambition leads us to pray to God with wrong motives which serve to only benefit ourselves only. True ambition involves living humbly before God and walking in the Spirit. Maybe it would help us to look at all the other blessings that our business brings us rather than just the monetary ones.
Follow your dreams but be realistic. Put God first and remember nothing in the future is set in stone. It is a fallacy to believe we have our whole lives ahead of us because every day is a gift with no promise of another day. Although our spirits will live on in another realm.
As Christianity declines in western culture and the United States in general, many who still defend the church think it’s time for a another Reformation. The Protestant Reformation exposed the churches lies with regards to selling indulgences and the office of the Pope. The latter was technically an abomination with calling the supreme pontiff the “holy father.”
Also the Catholic Church was known for keeping the public from reading the actual biblical texts, so no one could think for themselves. Of course, even in Protestant world many people who attend church still don’t read the actual text; they just rely on whatever their preacher tells them.
So what would the next reformation be? It’s been 2000 years and many are starting to wonder about this whole Jesus coming back thing. I know for me, I started reading the book of Revelations about 20 times in one years back in 2013.
Here are some of the things that led me to the conviction that Preterism was true:
Read the Bible with a first century mindset; how the text in the first part of Revelation said “these things which must shortly come to pass.” Of course God’s timing is different than man’s but no one in the Old Testament ever waited several thousand years for a promise. Also the word for second coming, aka parousia, referred to judgement on Jerusalem which could have easily been AD 70, if the book turns out to be written during the 60’s and not towards the end of the century like the established church proposes.
Ask yourself “what if these events already happened?” I asked myself this multiple times and that’s when it slowly dawned on me.
Read historical accounts outside of the Bible and find out about a war between the Romans and the Jews that took place from AD 66-73; note the fall of the temple took place at the midpoint. It turns out the Left Behind series was accurate, though it was basically historical fiction.
If you think Christianity will become more popular when the lies get exposed, think again. It was the lies that held it together; the biggest one being the hellfire and brimstone which was taken right out of Dante’s Inferno. It was the lies that held it together this long. But if it hadn’t been for the lies, we never would have heard the truth, for those that can see through it.
What does this mean for the nation of Israel?
I am still researching about Turkish-Mongolian settlers that raided the ancient hebrews thousands of years ago and borrowed the ancient texts which was subsequently used to build a false religion of Judaism around. This religion later was taken over by Christianity when it became the state religion of the Roman Empire. Islam would have never started if it hadn’t been for the corruption of the first two.
So what is this so-called Israel today? Mostly just a historical site. Jewry is more of an ethnic group. The Zionists are a political movement, mostly European atheists from what I read, who are using bad theology to rule the world from Israel.
The Catholic Church
The nation of Israel exists along with the Catholic Church to preserve the religious texts which point to the one true God. The ancient Jews, people of Judea, were chosen to reveal the one true God through the Christ. The current state of Israel exists to preserve the Torah which even the prophetic writings say is written on man’s hearts, and even Jews say one can practice their religion anywhere; the law boils down to simply loving God and loving one’s neighbor.
The Catholic Church simply means “universal church’. While the Judeo-Christian faith is the basis for truth, the one true God can be found anywhere.
The Future
Sadly, in another 2000 years there will still be people who are still waiting for the soon return of Jesus Christ. I wouldn’t doubt if there was another group waiting for the soon return of Donald Trump along with it. American Evangelicals seem to only support the nation of Israel so they can kick the Jews out of the United States and make Christianity the state religion of the U.S.
A comment on Quora under the topic of Preterism said that if this was all true, that would make true Christians just another form of Deism. Much of the Quakers profess to be Deists. It simply favors rationality of blind faith and doesn’t really believe in an overly personal God. Just because God is sovereign doesn’t negate your freewill, which most people don’t really believe in anyway.
The best argument as to whether we have freewill is to compare our relationship with God to a marriage, just like the Bible does. Who chooses who? Both choose each other. I am sure many hyper Calvinistic types will still twist this. And even atheists say that if a God exists then man doesn’t have freewill. My only conclusion is that giving man freewill was a sacrifice on God’s part because He didn’t want machines.
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