PreLaw: Second Semester
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEPr9T8OXRk
A summary of the previous posts:
One can sum up the complete relationship of man and God til this point with humanity saying one sentence: "I want it NOW!!!!"
We had Eden, Everything we could need. Meeting every every need. Maslow's Hierarchy of needs from the bottom of the pyramid right to the top. Wanting for nothing and therefore psychologically perfect.
God said not the eat of one tree. It must have been there for some reason besides temptation. It seemed like God would eventually say, "Yes." To humanity, it was something we wanted right now.
God said one woman for one man. Some began to take two. Later, even religions calling themselves Christian would claim a right to multiple wives. Why wait for one woman to be in the mood or physically available or to have a baby? Get what you want now.
God told us we were nomads. We settled in cities God would eventually offer one city of His blessing. We wanted it now. We still build cites that go to rack and ruin, burned in wars, overgrown when economies crumble. But we have them now.
Zoologist Desmond Morris wrote The Human Zoo in 1969:
This study concerns the city dweller. Morris finds remarkable similarities with captive zoo animals and looks closely at the aggressive, sexual and parental behaviour of the human species under the stresses and pressures of urban living. from Goodreads.com
In fact, what Morris found was that our aberrant behaviors all seem to match those of caged apes, forced into a situation unnatural to them, trapped in a misshapen prison. The result is crime, aggression, sexual deviation. The book gets attacked today because the social sciences have come to call what he refers to as "deviation" as "normal". Never suggesting that their view of normal may derive from their own immersion in the human zoo or their own involvement with sin.
God said we were going to die, We couldn't wait for our neighbors to die so we invented murder. We couldn't wait to die ourselves so we invented every possible form of sin that could speed it along: smoking, drinking, sex with strangers, strange sex, overeating, undereating, eating anything that moved or grew, swam, ran, flew.
All of it rotating around Satan's curse: "You will become like God."
We earlier mentioned the Venus figurines, the earliest idols discovered thus far, Further discussion:
Latest evaluation of the goddesses says, because they were depictions of large bodied women, they were salutes to older women, seeing them as goddesses because of their maturity, fertility and mother leadership.
Recall they were viewed as being in contrast to the hunter culture male gods.
Now what do we have going on today?
We have an older women with deep commitment to family, even to staying with her less than loyal husband. One who constantly raises her commitment to helping children, to being the mother figure of the nation. One whose decision making is under question over two incidents despite the mountain high pile of mistakes from her opponent.
We have another, a man who clearly either believes he is a god or want us to believe it. One who says he has all the answers and has And has followers who's devotion defies any logic except that of men trying to retain their own image of personal godhood which feels threatened. like their love of their guns, weapons used for hunting men and animals, hiding behind the idea of men as the only ones fit for leadership even as he raises eyebrows on a weekly basis (now, was daily before he had a woman handing his campaign).
TV has been pushing female leadership for decades, witness Homer Simpson and almost any male figure in a sitcom.
Twitter and the internet has become the hiding ground if sexually threatened male children who lash out at things like a female oriented version of Ghostbusters.
We have the old conflict of the hunter god versus the goddess each one vying for worship. One loudly, the other with more dignity. Both representing a conflict that has been going on in idolatrous cultures since the beginning of fallen flesh.
Since Noah's time.
Luke 17:26 And as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the day of the Son of man.
27 They were feasting and taking wives and getting married, till the day of the overflowing of the waters, when Noah went into the ark, and they all came to destruction.
28 In the same way, in the days of Lot; they were feasting and trading, they were planting and building;
29 But on the day when Lot went out of Sodom, fire came down from heaven and destruction came on them all.
30 So will it be in the day of the revelation of the Son of man.
31 On that day, if anyone is on the roof of the house, and his goods are in the house, let him not go down to take them away; and let him who is in the field not go back to his house.
32 Keep in mind Lot's wife.
33 If anyone makes an attempt to keep his life, it will be taken from him, but if anyone gives up his life, he will keep it.
(BBE)
Peter speaks even more cogently here:
2 Peter 2:1 But there were false prophets among the people, as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly put forward wrong teachings for your destruction, even turning away from the Lord who gave himself for them; whose destruction will come quickly, and they themselves will be the cause of it.
Imagine then one false teacher on each side and the choice telling everyone that any leadership right now will fall short one way or the other.
2 And a great number will go with them in their evil ways, through whom the true way will have a bad name.
3 And in their desire for profit they will come to you with words of deceit, like traders doing business in souls: whose punishment has been ready for a long time and their destruction is watching for them.
And the need then becomes the asking now of who is in it for profit alone. Who has always, all his life, only been in it for the money. Like a bad evangelist who hawks holy water to cure you or the pursuit of your own dreams over God's dreams for you. So we ask: who is described most closely by verse 3?
4 For if God did not have pity for the angels who did evil, but sent them down into hell, to be kept in chains of eternal night till they were judged;
5 And did not have mercy on the world which then was, but only kept safe Noah, a preacher of righteousness, with seven others, when he let loose the waters over the world of the evil-doers;
6 And sent destruction on Sodom and Gomorrah, burning them up with fire as an example to those whose way of life might in the future be unpleasing to him;
7 And kept safe Lot, the upright man, who was deeply troubled by the unclean life of the evil-doers
8 (Because the soul of that upright man living among them was pained from day to day by seeing and hearing their crimes):
We get back to Lot and the Twins of Sin, Sodom and Gomorrah. Making our second post after the next a bit obvious.
9 The Lord is able to keep the upright safe in the time of testing, and to keep evil-doers under punishment till the day of judging;
Keep always in mind that deliverance for the Saved always awaits.
10 But specially those who go after the unclean desires of the flesh, and make sport of authority. Ready to take chances, uncontrolled, they have no fear of saying evil of those in high places:
11 Though the angels, who are greater in strength and power, do not make use of violent language against them before the Lord.
12 But these men, like beasts without reason, whose natural use is to be taken and put to death, crying out against things of which they have no knowledge, will undergo that same destruction which they are designing for others;
13 For the evil which overtakes them is the reward of their evil-doing: such men take their pleasure in the delights of the flesh even in the daytime; they are like the marks of a disease, like poisoned wounds among you, feasting together with you in joy;
14 Having eyes full of evil desire, never having enough of sin; turning feeble souls out of the true way; they are children of cursing, whose hearts are well used to bitter envy;
Please listen to this description of the false leaders in the church when you listen to or decide to give to false leaders in general when you vote.
15 Turning out of the true way, they have gone wandering in error, after the way of Balaam, the son of Beor, who was pleased to take payment for wrongdoing;
16 But his wrongdoing was pointed out to him: an ass, talking with a man's voice, put a stop to the error of the prophet.
17 These are fountains without water, and mists before a driving storm; for whom the eternal night is kept in store.
(BBE)
And I find myself pointing out errors and thinking what God must think of me.
But it underlines the one thing we keeping searching for and demanding: We want God now!
Or, more precisely: We want a god who we can understand who gives us everything we want and we've got the Santa suit already and pressed and everything.
While God, obstinate being that he is, keeps insisting on us accepting Him as the one in charge.
In an earlier post, I mentioned the Dispensations, the notion that God deals with humanity in different ways at different time. The notion is that, during history, God has dealt differently with humanity, first with a law to keep about eating the fruit and then with individuals and then with Israel and then with the Church.
Except that every covenant was and is always individual. God gave the rule on the tree and individuals failed. God was readily available to the pre-Flood people and only certain individuals like Enoch and Noah listened. He gave the Law to Israel but it was individuals like the prophets or King David who kept it. who sought relationships with God. He gave Christ to take sin from us all but it is the individual who must accept the sacrifice and be saved. It has always been a one-to-one relationship with god. never a guy on a pedestal, but the reality of a person who wants to know each of us personally. like Enoch, like Noah. It has always been human beings who create the gulf, the wall, the distance of pleasing ourselves at the cost of others.
https://multiplymovement.com/Material/251
Though we are still at the beginning of the Biblical story line, a pattern has already developed: People sin, people face the consequences, God redeems. People sin, people face the consequences, God redeems.
As we saw in the previous session, when Adam and Eve sinned, God cursed the earth and then told Eve that her descendant would crush the head of the serpent (Gen. 3:15)—a promise that Jesus will one day destroy Satan and his works (Rom. 16:20). Only a few chapters later, we find people sinning continually, to the point that God destroyed all but eight humans by flooding the earth. But as soon as the waters subsided, God made a covenant with Noah, promising, “I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done” (Gen. 8:21). People sin, people face the consequences, God redeems.
Once again, in Genesis 11, the human race gathered at Babel in defiance of God in order to “make a name for themselves.” God’s response was to confuse their speech and divide them. But just when we think that humanity has no hope, God launched a plan of redemption that was global: to create a people for Himself who would embody and spread His salvation to every group of people on the planet. After cursing and scattering humanity, God made a promise to bless all of the nations. And God set this plan in motion by calling one man living in the middle of an idol-worshiping nation away from everything he once knew. And He promised to change the course of history through this man and his offspring.
God’s plan to rescue the world from sin started very quietly. God chose one man, Abraham, and said:
Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. (Gen. 12:1–3)
It may not sound like much, but with these words God put into motion a plan that would lead Paul to cry out in amazement about “the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God” (Rom. 11:33). This plan would eventually reach its climax in Jesus’s incarnation, death, and resurrection—events that took place at “the fullness of time” (Gal. 4:4). In other words, human history was working toward this moment, the central point in God’s plan of righting what went wrong with the fall.
As soon as sin entered the world, God began to reveal His plan to reverse the effects of the Fall. He would restore us and the world around us to what He originally created—and more. God made a promise to Adam and Eve, then to Noah, and here God made a covenant with Abram. At a few key points in his life (Gen. 12:1–9; 15:1–21; 17:1–14), God spoke with Abra(ha)m and revealed more about His plan. But the basics are clear from the beginning: God promised to make Abraham into a great nation, to make his name great, and to bless him so that he would be a blessing to “every family of the earth.”
Next, we'll discuss the founding of Israel which sets everything else up, the Law and prophets and Christ. Then the constant attempt of Satanic influenced humanity to crash the plan..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEPr9T8OXRk
A summary of the previous posts:
One can sum up the complete relationship of man and God til this point with humanity saying one sentence: "I want it NOW!!!!"
We had Eden, Everything we could need. Meeting every every need. Maslow's Hierarchy of needs from the bottom of the pyramid right to the top. Wanting for nothing and therefore psychologically perfect.
God said not the eat of one tree. It must have been there for some reason besides temptation. It seemed like God would eventually say, "Yes." To humanity, it was something we wanted right now.
God said one woman for one man. Some began to take two. Later, even religions calling themselves Christian would claim a right to multiple wives. Why wait for one woman to be in the mood or physically available or to have a baby? Get what you want now.
God told us we were nomads. We settled in cities God would eventually offer one city of His blessing. We wanted it now. We still build cites that go to rack and ruin, burned in wars, overgrown when economies crumble. But we have them now.
Zoologist Desmond Morris wrote The Human Zoo in 1969:
This study concerns the city dweller. Morris finds remarkable similarities with captive zoo animals and looks closely at the aggressive, sexual and parental behaviour of the human species under the stresses and pressures of urban living. from Goodreads.com
In fact, what Morris found was that our aberrant behaviors all seem to match those of caged apes, forced into a situation unnatural to them, trapped in a misshapen prison. The result is crime, aggression, sexual deviation. The book gets attacked today because the social sciences have come to call what he refers to as "deviation" as "normal". Never suggesting that their view of normal may derive from their own immersion in the human zoo or their own involvement with sin.
God said we were going to die, We couldn't wait for our neighbors to die so we invented murder. We couldn't wait to die ourselves so we invented every possible form of sin that could speed it along: smoking, drinking, sex with strangers, strange sex, overeating, undereating, eating anything that moved or grew, swam, ran, flew.
All of it rotating around Satan's curse: "You will become like God."
We earlier mentioned the Venus figurines, the earliest idols discovered thus far, Further discussion:
A Venus figurine is any Upper Paleolithic statuette portraying a woman,[1] although the fewer images depicting men or figures of uncertain gender,[2] and those in relief or engraved on rock or stones are often discussed together.[3] Most have been unearthed inEurope, but others have been found as far away as Siberia, extending their distribution across much of Eurasia, although with many gaps, such as the Mediterranean outside Italy.[4]
Most of them date from the Gravettian period (26,000–21,000 years ago),[3] but examples exist as early as the Venus of Hohle Fels, which dates back at least 35,000 years to the Aurignacian, and as late as the Venus of Monruz, from about 11,000 years ago in theMagdalenian. These figurines were carved from soft stone (such as steatite, calcite or limestone), bone or ivory, or formed of clay and fired. The latter are among the oldest ceramics known. In total, some 144 such figurines are known;[5] virtually all of modest size, between 3 cm and 40 cm or more in height.[1] They are some of the earliest works of prehistoric art.
Most of them have small heads, wide hips, and legs that taper to a point. Various figurines exaggerate the abdomen, hips, breasts, thighs, or vulva, although many do not, and the concentration in popular accounts on those that do reflects modern preoccupations rather than the range of actual artefacts. In contrast, arms and feet are often absent, and the head is usually small and faceless. Depictions of hairstyles can be detailed, and especially in Siberian examples, clothing or tattoos may be indicated.[6]
The original cultural meaning and purpose of these artifacts is not known. It has frequently been suggested that they may have served a ritual or symbolic function. There are widely varying and speculative interpretations of their use or meaning: they have been seen as religious figures,[7] as erotic art or sex aids,[8] or alternatively as self-depictions by female artists.[9]
Latest evaluation of the goddesses says, because they were depictions of large bodied women, they were salutes to older women, seeing them as goddesses because of their maturity, fertility and mother leadership.
Recall they were viewed as being in contrast to the hunter culture male gods.
Now what do we have going on today?
We have an older women with deep commitment to family, even to staying with her less than loyal husband. One who constantly raises her commitment to helping children, to being the mother figure of the nation. One whose decision making is under question over two incidents despite the mountain high pile of mistakes from her opponent.
We have another, a man who clearly either believes he is a god or want us to believe it. One who says he has all the answers and has And has followers who's devotion defies any logic except that of men trying to retain their own image of personal godhood which feels threatened. like their love of their guns, weapons used for hunting men and animals, hiding behind the idea of men as the only ones fit for leadership even as he raises eyebrows on a weekly basis (now, was daily before he had a woman handing his campaign).
TV has been pushing female leadership for decades, witness Homer Simpson and almost any male figure in a sitcom.
Twitter and the internet has become the hiding ground if sexually threatened male children who lash out at things like a female oriented version of Ghostbusters.
We have the old conflict of the hunter god versus the goddess each one vying for worship. One loudly, the other with more dignity. Both representing a conflict that has been going on in idolatrous cultures since the beginning of fallen flesh.
Since Noah's time.
Luke 17:26 And as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the day of the Son of man.
27 They were feasting and taking wives and getting married, till the day of the overflowing of the waters, when Noah went into the ark, and they all came to destruction.
28 In the same way, in the days of Lot; they were feasting and trading, they were planting and building;
29 But on the day when Lot went out of Sodom, fire came down from heaven and destruction came on them all.
30 So will it be in the day of the revelation of the Son of man.
31 On that day, if anyone is on the roof of the house, and his goods are in the house, let him not go down to take them away; and let him who is in the field not go back to his house.
32 Keep in mind Lot's wife.
33 If anyone makes an attempt to keep his life, it will be taken from him, but if anyone gives up his life, he will keep it.
(BBE)
Peter speaks even more cogently here:
2 Peter 2:1 But there were false prophets among the people, as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly put forward wrong teachings for your destruction, even turning away from the Lord who gave himself for them; whose destruction will come quickly, and they themselves will be the cause of it.
Imagine then one false teacher on each side and the choice telling everyone that any leadership right now will fall short one way or the other.
2 And a great number will go with them in their evil ways, through whom the true way will have a bad name.
3 And in their desire for profit they will come to you with words of deceit, like traders doing business in souls: whose punishment has been ready for a long time and their destruction is watching for them.
And the need then becomes the asking now of who is in it for profit alone. Who has always, all his life, only been in it for the money. Like a bad evangelist who hawks holy water to cure you or the pursuit of your own dreams over God's dreams for you. So we ask: who is described most closely by verse 3?
4 For if God did not have pity for the angels who did evil, but sent them down into hell, to be kept in chains of eternal night till they were judged;
5 And did not have mercy on the world which then was, but only kept safe Noah, a preacher of righteousness, with seven others, when he let loose the waters over the world of the evil-doers;
6 And sent destruction on Sodom and Gomorrah, burning them up with fire as an example to those whose way of life might in the future be unpleasing to him;
7 And kept safe Lot, the upright man, who was deeply troubled by the unclean life of the evil-doers
8 (Because the soul of that upright man living among them was pained from day to day by seeing and hearing their crimes):
We get back to Lot and the Twins of Sin, Sodom and Gomorrah. Making our second post after the next a bit obvious.
9 The Lord is able to keep the upright safe in the time of testing, and to keep evil-doers under punishment till the day of judging;
Keep always in mind that deliverance for the Saved always awaits.
10 But specially those who go after the unclean desires of the flesh, and make sport of authority. Ready to take chances, uncontrolled, they have no fear of saying evil of those in high places:
11 Though the angels, who are greater in strength and power, do not make use of violent language against them before the Lord.
12 But these men, like beasts without reason, whose natural use is to be taken and put to death, crying out against things of which they have no knowledge, will undergo that same destruction which they are designing for others;
13 For the evil which overtakes them is the reward of their evil-doing: such men take their pleasure in the delights of the flesh even in the daytime; they are like the marks of a disease, like poisoned wounds among you, feasting together with you in joy;
14 Having eyes full of evil desire, never having enough of sin; turning feeble souls out of the true way; they are children of cursing, whose hearts are well used to bitter envy;
Please listen to this description of the false leaders in the church when you listen to or decide to give to false leaders in general when you vote.
15 Turning out of the true way, they have gone wandering in error, after the way of Balaam, the son of Beor, who was pleased to take payment for wrongdoing;
16 But his wrongdoing was pointed out to him: an ass, talking with a man's voice, put a stop to the error of the prophet.
17 These are fountains without water, and mists before a driving storm; for whom the eternal night is kept in store.
(BBE)
And I find myself pointing out errors and thinking what God must think of me.
But it underlines the one thing we keeping searching for and demanding: We want God now!
Or, more precisely: We want a god who we can understand who gives us everything we want and we've got the Santa suit already and pressed and everything.
While God, obstinate being that he is, keeps insisting on us accepting Him as the one in charge.
In an earlier post, I mentioned the Dispensations, the notion that God deals with humanity in different ways at different time. The notion is that, during history, God has dealt differently with humanity, first with a law to keep about eating the fruit and then with individuals and then with Israel and then with the Church.
Except that every covenant was and is always individual. God gave the rule on the tree and individuals failed. God was readily available to the pre-Flood people and only certain individuals like Enoch and Noah listened. He gave the Law to Israel but it was individuals like the prophets or King David who kept it. who sought relationships with God. He gave Christ to take sin from us all but it is the individual who must accept the sacrifice and be saved. It has always been a one-to-one relationship with god. never a guy on a pedestal, but the reality of a person who wants to know each of us personally. like Enoch, like Noah. It has always been human beings who create the gulf, the wall, the distance of pleasing ourselves at the cost of others.
https://multiplymovement.com/Material/251
Though we are still at the beginning of the Biblical story line, a pattern has already developed: People sin, people face the consequences, God redeems. People sin, people face the consequences, God redeems.
As we saw in the previous session, when Adam and Eve sinned, God cursed the earth and then told Eve that her descendant would crush the head of the serpent (Gen. 3:15)—a promise that Jesus will one day destroy Satan and his works (Rom. 16:20). Only a few chapters later, we find people sinning continually, to the point that God destroyed all but eight humans by flooding the earth. But as soon as the waters subsided, God made a covenant with Noah, promising, “I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done” (Gen. 8:21). People sin, people face the consequences, God redeems.
Once again, in Genesis 11, the human race gathered at Babel in defiance of God in order to “make a name for themselves.” God’s response was to confuse their speech and divide them. But just when we think that humanity has no hope, God launched a plan of redemption that was global: to create a people for Himself who would embody and spread His salvation to every group of people on the planet. After cursing and scattering humanity, God made a promise to bless all of the nations. And God set this plan in motion by calling one man living in the middle of an idol-worshiping nation away from everything he once knew. And He promised to change the course of history through this man and his offspring.
God’s plan to rescue the world from sin started very quietly. God chose one man, Abraham, and said:
Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. (Gen. 12:1–3)
It may not sound like much, but with these words God put into motion a plan that would lead Paul to cry out in amazement about “the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God” (Rom. 11:33). This plan would eventually reach its climax in Jesus’s incarnation, death, and resurrection—events that took place at “the fullness of time” (Gal. 4:4). In other words, human history was working toward this moment, the central point in God’s plan of righting what went wrong with the fall.
As soon as sin entered the world, God began to reveal His plan to reverse the effects of the Fall. He would restore us and the world around us to what He originally created—and more. God made a promise to Adam and Eve, then to Noah, and here God made a covenant with Abram. At a few key points in his life (Gen. 12:1–9; 15:1–21; 17:1–14), God spoke with Abra(ha)m and revealed more about His plan. But the basics are clear from the beginning: God promised to make Abraham into a great nation, to make his name great, and to bless him so that he would be a blessing to “every family of the earth.”
Next, we'll discuss the founding of Israel which sets everything else up, the Law and prophets and Christ. Then the constant attempt of Satanic influenced humanity to crash the plan..
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