New Year Resolute Determinations

October 13, 2024

Intro:

It may seem to be a bit early for this, making something like New Year’s Resolutions, but the time is actually later than most of us think. Yes. Getting very late. So, time shouldn’t be wasted.

Maybe I am becoming more aware of this calamity, because I’m far closer to my death than my birth. (I’m not afraid of death, but more about the dying.)

However, this is not going to be about me. You see, I have now received a different calendar that I have to plan by, and may I point out that everybody is going to have to go by this same calendar whether liking it, or accepting it, or not… or trying to make up their own…

I’ve become a Born Again Bible Believing Christian, and that decision has made all the difference in the world for me — from the time I decided to go by Jesus’ timing over 50 years ago.

As the Lord leads me, expanding my understanding, correcting my points of view, my actions, and so on, I feel an urgency to share with other Believers and also, probably more importantly, those Non-believers who might run across my essays and think a bit about what I am saying.

Please understand that I wasn’t always a born again believer. Still and all, I did become born a second time, just like Jesus said everyone has to become, what has to happen applies to everyone (John 3:1–15).

This is followed by this morning’s bolt from the blue: Maybe, John’s own understanding is expressed in the ensuing paragraph’s verses, John 3:16–21, in which he might be expanding on the significance of Jesus’ teaching about the necessity of having a second birth. Starting with verse 16, John emphasizes the very essence of the Gospel of Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only {begotten} Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” NIV, {my edit for clarification}.

I haven’t always believed in the Bible stories I had heard in my youth. I was mostly agnostic or maybe atheistic — but not in the hostile way some express their beliefs these days. It was completely a passive non-expression. I left my parents’ Church during my early adolescence and went out in my own way on my own non-existent terms. (I’m seventy-four years old now, and I hope much the wiser.)

If God really did exist, I use to brashly challenged Him, shaking my fist in the air, with all the common questions:

• If you’re so all powerful, why do you allow all the evil in the world like wars and famines and diseases…?
• If you’re so all-loving, why do you intend to send people into Hell and unrelenting torture?

Al so on …and the more mundane questions:

• Why am I here?
• What’s the purpose of my life?
• I don’t understand, why am I so depressed and suicidal?

Before I get into the meat of the matter inferred by the title of this writing, I realized that most of my complaints and questions — as well as everyone else’s various questions and complaints — arise from misunderstandings precipitating from misinterpretations of the Bible — even coming down to us through the ages by the intelligence of — or maybe I should say “the lack of intelligence of” — various “religious authorities” organized around various synods, counsels, and conclaves, people who had not been born anew, and despite their collective “knowledge” were merely self-proclaimed authorities who actually knew nothing of what they were talking about, making all their proclamations to the masses, confusing and actually invalid. Unfortunately, their edicts have “stood the test of time,” but are really like “gold rings in pigs’ snouts.”

Yes, the simple, direct, and plainly spoken Gospel of Jesus has survived — but only in much as being a meager remnant — a scarcity… No… Rather, it has become much more than that; There is a famine in the world instead of everyone being invited to attend the full banquet…

…Again, let me remind you that there is a vast difference between knowing about someone and actually meeting someone and spending time with them…

Jesus put it this way: “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” — Matthew 11:29, NIV.

Still and all, I insist that those manmade dogmas cannot stand up to the test of God’s eternal timeline. So then, we should not hold onto them so dearly as many of us do… Instead, maybe, we should start to try to clean up the chaotic mess.

Resolute Determinations:

These resolutions start at the very beginning which is God creating the Heavens and the Earth as recorded in Genesis 1.

• Mankind was created first. Then God assessed what he had made and said it was all good. Then He took some time off.
• Next, He created a Garden Paradise, made Adam out of earthen elements, made Eve out of Adam’s flesh, and gave them work to do while they enjoyed Eden.
• God had put two trees in the Garden and gave the couple this one — and only one — prohibition: “Don’t eat the fruit of that one tree over there.”
• Satan conned Eve. She ended up disobeying God’s one prohibition, questioning if God really meant what He said, Satan challenging, “Did God really say,,,”
• Also, Adam got involved, but not in a very responsible or protective way. He disobeyed God and bit into the apple, also, and finally, passed the buck onto Eve.

So, now allow me to explain what went on here:

The “Original Sin” as it has been passed down through the ages is disobedience. Yes. That is the central issue, but I realized, about the hundredth time I read this part of the Bible, there were several more sins and failures which have not been taught, which I just said was passing the buck, a phenomenon that I call “The Blame Game,” involving three historical parts

1. Eve blamed Satan.
2. Adam blamed Eve.
3. Adam also blamed God by inference, saying to God, “…the woman You gave me…)

Still and all, God, being the responsible person in this situation, blamed Satan and cursed him. He also found fault with Adam, and would take away the Easy Life from him and left him to eke out a living. As for Eve, her childbearing would become difficult.

God had to make them leave Paradise (exactly as he cursed Satan and threw him out of Heaven). Yet, He also left Eve with a promise: through her progeny Paradise would be restored and there would be the offer of a way to enter Paradise again.

Hence, Jesus the Savior.

So, there’s that.

Beyond these things, I’ve heard more sophisticated complaints these days like:

• “Why allow this situation in the first place?”
• “Why even put that tree of the “knowledge of everything” in the Garden?”

My thoughts about the answers have gone this way: Could it be that this was the first, and has become, one very big “teachable moment” — for the Angels in Heaven and, more importantly, for people down through the ages, for all of Mankind, including us more modern, philosophical types?

I certainly don’t claim to know all of God’s good purposes, but I think I’ve got a line on this one, remembering that God evaluated all that He had created and “saw that it was very good.” Then, everything He has done and is doing is for the benefit of all of His Creation from then until now and in the future forevermore.

He knows the end from the beginning. Isaiah 46:8–10, New International Version emphasizes the point this way:

“Remember this, keep it in mind, take it to heart, you rebels. Remember the former things, those of long ago; I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me. I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say, ‘My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please.’ “

Therein lies the foundational principle, and even though it may be a tripwire for Non-believers, it makes sense in its consistency with proper understanding of the entire Bible. It indicates that just like He saw everything he had made as “very good,” His purposes for Mankind remain to be “very good.”

Here might be the right time to repeat my point that there is a vast difference between superficially knowing about God, and altogether knowing Him.

The next topic I ran into relating to the Genesis account is the question: “Where did Cain’s wives come from? Answer: those “daughters of men”

My understanding is that when God told Eve her childbearing would become difficult, it stands to reason that, perhaps, beforehand or afterwards she had borne children and that that had been relatively easy. How many sons and daughters she may have had, yes, is purely speculative, but fits well into the context of the whole narrative with the command to “be fruitful and multiply.”

In the same way, the fruitful and multiplied population of Mankind, which God had created beforehand (which, by the way, is exactly how the sequence of the Genesis account is recorded), and the fruitful and multiplying progeny of Adam and Eve (the first son and daughter of God), began to mingle. It should be understood that all had obeyed God’s edict, had obeyed God’s edict, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the Earth.” The two different genealogies naturally began to do what came naturally… naturally.

Now, I don’t know what the alternative storyline would have been, but please allow me to point out that this is how the fallen nature came to be the burden of all peoples. Every generation would inherit it.

It had become an intricate part of the mix of being Human.

Then, we should presume they would continue to make babies… How else could we all be here today?

So, there are plenty of reasons to believe the accuracy and relevance of that Scripture which tells the rest of the story, “Now when men began to multiply on the face of the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they took as wives whomever they chose.” Genesis 5:1 & 2, BSB.

So, there’s that.

Another relevant fact about the Genesis stories up to that point, is that they establish a certain kind of pattern in which God would always separate particular people He would choose to be “holy unto the Lord.” You see, in this way, God continually reveals His character and His precepts to the entire Human Race. What we all do with those revelations are, of course, an entirely different matter, and, I suppose, that this is where our free will and freedom to choose comes in and determines our destinies, our fates — the eternal consequences in our lives and for our afterlives.

Nevertheless, throughout the Bible God continues to separate individuals, like Abraham, entire nationalities like the Hebrews, and entire nations, like Israel, to be separated to God (“holy”) as demonstrations of His character and purposes, His ways and His precepts- those things which are the rules of the road — that is, the way for us to live successfully in His Creation.

He knows how His creation works and therefore how we should live in it.

God has never and will never abandon us and the good news He has always had prepared for us.

Finally on this topic, it is obvious to me that the world is deteriorating in multiple ways — from environmental to social to religious to even our choices of vocation — in every dynamic of existence, the world is sliding sideways. The reason, as I have come to see it, is consequential to our own doings and is essentially the consequences of our determination to exclude God from all aspects of our lives. Yes, of course there still is a remnant of people who are trying to live exclusively for God and His purposes. However, it doesn’t take a revelation from the Holy Spirit to see where all this world will end up.

My hope for everybody is that they will make the determination to change the road they are on, choosing to look at the better map and most accurate calendar to discover the best road to travel and making a resolute determination to call on God to save them from what is at the end of this road we are currently racing down…