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Tag: America

  • Thanks Black Friday Cyber-Santa Specials

    Thanks Black Friday Cyber-Santa Specials

    Black Friday Deals Are Here – Epic Deals. All Week Long

    2024 CE Amazon AD

    Black Friday to Xmas

    I don’t know about you, but once again Thanksgiving seems to be upon us, a prerequisite observance overrun by the rush of DEALS for the Christmas holidays.

    Aren’t you THANKFUL for this holiday season immediately following Halloween?

    Innumerable lights blinding in darkness and gift buying lasting forever and ever…

    Black Friday HOLIDAY Deals Drive-thru

    I have previously mentioned this hustle and bustle of black Friday having overtaken the archaic imagery of worshiping pilgrims. Yet each year’s commercial focus on a relatively minor Jewish holiday and formerly insignificant Christian observance grows more and more into a worship of our prosperity (for which we give thanks).

    You might even see NEW deals for this Black Friday if you click on these old links.

    A Puritan Thanksgiving in colonial America

    from which our Thanksgiving traditions supposedly celebrate

    Perhaps our 17th century Puritan forefathers who celebrated this uniquely American Thanksgiving holiday weren’t far from the truth of this holiday season.


    Puritans forbade Christmas, considering it too pagan. Governor Bradford actually threatened New Englanders with work, jail or fines if they were caught observing Christmas.

    Christianity.com

    THANKS to BLACK FRIDAY & Cyber Monday this holiday provides little rest and even less thanks.

    Roger@TalkofJesus.com

    Thanks giving?

    Set aside your devices and distractions for a moment as you gather together with family and you will see much bounty, a recurring theme for America.

    Who will you thank?

    • Your host and hostess? Sure.
    • Or maybe family who have made this gathering possible? Perhaps. 
    • Yet the thanks giving of those faithful to the Lord is always to God.

    No book better expresses our worship, our praises, and singing with joy to the LORD than Psalms, which is the hymnal of Jewish and Christian worship.

    Psalm 136

    Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good.

    [136:1 הֹודוּ לַיהוָה כִּי־טֹוב כִּי לְעֹולָם חַסְדֹּֽו׃]

    25 Who giveth food to all flesh:

    for his mercy endureth for ever.

    26 O give thanks unto the God of heaven:

    for his mercy endureth for ever.


    King James Version (KJV)

    This is giving thanks as the Pilgrims of America’s founding would have given to God – not only on this holiday, but also in other worship.

    Thanks is often a theme of worship, therefore thanking God is the first fruits of harvest for believers of all faiths who landed in this new world.

    Yet we have forgotten the lessons of the Lord — He who has preserved us for bounty and blessings of a new land.

    Are we so unlike those who worshiped the Lord before, yet then neglected to thank their Provider?

    God bless America is a frequent prayer of Christians, but the prayer of difficult times must be, "America, Bless God!"
    Let the people of AMERICA, bless GOD

    Psalm 95

    Worship 

    1 Come, let us shout joyfully to the Lord,
    shout triumphantly to the rock of our salvation!

    2 Let us enter his presence with thanksgiving;
    let us shout triumphantly to him in song.

    Psalm 95 CSB

    a Consumer WARNING for a Common Era Black Friday

    Hear this caution from the Psalm, that we might not give our thanks lightly, forgetting the worship of Almighty God our Creator.

    6 Come, let us worship and bow down;
    let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.
    7 For he is our God,
    and we are the people of his pasture,
    the sheep under his care.

    The Psalmist then reminds worshipers of those who had previously turned from the Lord.

    Warning

    Today, if you hear his voice:
    8 Do not harden your hearts as at Meribah,
    as on that day at Massah in the wilderness
    9 where your fathers tested me;
    they tried me, though they had seen what I did.

    Psalm 95, referring to exodus 17:17

    Negev in southern Israel, Gaza and some areas near the Dead Sea are very barren places away from the towns and settlements
    Wilderness of the Negev 

    Meribah מְרִיבָה means testing and is the place where the Hebrews escaping Egypt tested the Lord, rather than giving thanks to the Lord.

    And Massah מַסָּה means quarreling, the politics of an ungrateful saved people in the wilderness.

    Sound familiar?

    The Lord saved many who had fled to the New World from persecution and death in the seventeenth century.

    The Pilgrims and others gave God thanks for this.

    Yet the Psalmist reminds worshipers of a blessed people:

    Do not harden your hearts.

    Those escaping to a new land had far to go and much to learn of community, lessons about authority and of thankfulness.

    Because of their testing and quarreling, the promise of the Lord would not be fulfilled in their generation.

    Therefore let us heed these cautions of the Psalmist in our attitude of thanks to the Lord.

    Even today, in these Common Era seasons of Black Fridays,

    If you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.

    10 For forty years I was disgusted with that generation;
    I said,

    “They are a people whose hearts go astray;
    they do not know my ways.”
    So I swore in my anger,
    “They will not enter my rest.”

    Do you thank the Lord this day?

    OR

    are BLACK FRIDAY and every other Common Era christmas consumer shopping day

    gourging our mortal flesh in the delicacies of death without the Manna of our Redeemer and Lord?

  • Looking Back – Nations in the eyes of the LORD

    “So nation was destroyed by nation, and city by city, for God troubled them with every adversity. – 2 Chronicles 15:6 NKJV

    History from an eternal perspective

    We have begun this year of our Lord, 2018, in consideration of eternal time. Time beyond years and measurement shows a perspective of man peering beyond the beginning and ending of our mortal history.

    The Lord’s voice resounds through those God chooses in both spoken and written words. Therefore books of the Bible also relate stories of the Lord given to mortal men. 

    We occasionally hear God speaking through Prophets of events which the Lord will cause in the future. They speak of Israel and of nations familiar and forgotten. True prophets warn of the consequences of men and nations opposing the will of Almighty God.

    A few Prophets like Ezekiel, Daniel and John reveal events beyond the mortal timeline of all mankind, even to an apocalypse of the heavens and earth!

    Christ Jesus boldly proclaimed not only what was, but the unseen of time before man, now, and forever more.

    This Nation (U.S.) – Looking Back

    Without looking back Americans might not acknowledge some divergent views of actual history of our 17th century founding. (500 years, so long past; yet passes so quickly)

    Notice a Pennsylvania only east of the Alleghenies. You likely haven’t read how a George Washington surrender to the French may have led to the French and Indian War. 

    At the time of the U.S. Constitution, Colonial states claimed lands for future expansion.  America has always been a land of immigrants.

    We the people, while opposing fading European empires, conquered a new world from native nations. Then we the new world people defended it against immigrants from foreign lands of origins other than our own.

    Spain, England, France and other empires expanded then diminished, even to the point of America coming to their aid in the great wars of the twentieth century.

    Yet who remembers the fall (or even existence) of empires besides Rome?

    A Lesson for the Nations from Israel

    What does all of this have to do with the Bible, you may ask?

    Deuteronomy 9:

    “Hear, O Israel: you are to cross over the Jordan today, to go in to dispossess nations greater and mightier than you, cities great and fortified up to heaven..

    4 “Do not say in your heart, after the LORD your God has thrust them out before you, ‘It is because of my righteousness that the LORD has brought me in to possess this land,’ whereas it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD is driving them out before you.

    Israel would not only ignore the voice of the LORD though its Prophets, God’s own chosen people would ignore the Law given for their own holiness. A people of tradition has rejected its own traditions of the Lord their God.

    And empires to follow, including Spain, Great Britain and now the United States of America, which sometimes make claims to new lands of milk and honey, reject the rule of the Righteous One.

    The Lord God brings nations to renewed hope and crushes wickedness in the wilderness of the unknown.

    History beyond claims of conquerors & contentions of analysts

    We the people of the Lord really must hear more than quick sound-bytes of this hour. Godly men and women should seek more than a 60 second headline to the crowds.

    Even now, a boisterous tyrant or reasonable king may proclaim in an instant his partism message of good or evil. Will the world look beyond the agendas of mortals to the written word of Almighty God? Rarely, only the faithful.

    The Lord will lead a remnant of all the nations to eternal life. God has revealed His plan and chronicled events of the past for our understanding.

    Moses did not write the Books of the Law as the events unfolded. The LORD revealed the Beginning, the generations of Noah & Joseph, a great leader of Egypt. God gave instructions to priests, elders and common men and women. In addition to prophesies of the failings of Israel and other nations, the Bible records events for the discovery of God’s will in later generations. Yet will you read God’s word and claim its cautions?

    Looking Back

    “Do not say in your heart, after the LORD your God has thrust them out before you, ‘It is because of my righteousness that the LORD has brought me in to possess this land,’… 

    This caution to a new conquering empire (Israel) might well serve as a lesson of history to many 21st century nations.

    This series will continue with scripture written or chronicled as historic evidence of events for others to read later.

    Stay tuned and read your Bible. It’s all there – history, that is; but we just give a headline glance to most of these pivotal events. For after all, it was a long time ago. What could that matter to a 21st century Christian?

    To be continued..,