Talk of JESUS .com

Tag: Genesis

  • Closer to Hell than Heaven

    Closer to Hell than Heaven

    A descent of God from the Throne of the Third Heaven, down to the heavens seen by man, and down to the clouds of the first heaven above us in this earthly atmosphere; even down to the dust and ashes upon which we walk is a great humility for the Living God Who created it all.

    As if Jesus being born of ‘adam (Mary, betrothed to Joseph of Nazareth) is not humility enough – as if crucifixion for our sins is not humility enough; Jesus descended into Hell before He was raised to His former glory.

    Ephesians 4:9 In saying, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth?

    We walk closer to Hell than the Third Heaven of our Lord God. We are nearer to perishing than to salvation.

    Romans 3

    English Standard Version (ESV)

    “None is righteous, no, not one;

    11     no one understands;
    no one seeks for God.
    12 All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;
    no one does good,
    not even one.”
    13 “Their throat is an open grave;
    they use their tongues to deceive.”
    “The venom of asps is under their lips.”
    14     “Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.”
    15 “Their feet are swift to shed blood;
    16     in their paths are ruin and misery,
    17 and the way of peace they have not known.”
    18     “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

     23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.

    Pompeii2mount st helensDo you recall the devastation of Mount St. Helens in 2008 A.D or Mount Vesuvius burying Pompeii in 79 A.D.?  Certainly the power and wrath of God are in evidence in current disasters: hurricanes, typhoons, earthquakes, even the eruption of mountains spewing out hot lava from the depths of the earth.

    Can you think vertically? We walk nearer the bowels of the earth than to the Third Heaven of God.

    God can wash the sea upon us, crack the earth beneath us or cover us with the ashes that were once a mountain.

    Why do the nations not worship God? Why do the people refuse to follow Christ Jesus, our ONLY hope for eternal life?

    Think horizontally for a brief moment in these last days:

     Genesis 1:1-2 KJV

    In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 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.

    OR to put the beginning in a context of Christ:

    John 1

    English Standard Version (ESV)

    The Word Became Flesh

    1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

    Matthew 1 provides a genealogy of the Son of man, Christ Jesus, beginning from Abraham, the descendant of Adam. We refer to this horizontal timeline as B.C., that is: Before Christ.

    2013 A.D. (from the Latin) means in the year of our Lord.

    We have no problem projecting horizontally into 2014 A.D., 2030 A.D., even perhaps a time beyond our certain death like 2100 A.D.

    Think ahead.

    Think of Jesus Christ as the center of the Cross of grace for you. HE has descended into the depths of hell from the heights of Heaven.  HE was before the beginning. HE was before His incarnation, His own death and His resurrection. HE IS.

    HE was before you and I were born. HE IS now. HE will be after our death.

    Jesus Christ will be after the end.

    What must we do for eternal life?

    Worship the Lord and bow down.

     

  • A Picture of Heaven – Chapter 5

    A Picture of Heaven – Chapter 5

    [In case you are joining our serial short story about grief a little late, here is a link to the beginning.]

    “Do you see all those stars,” the little girl asked? “There are more of them in heaven than sand on the beach. Know how I know?”

    I nodded that I didn’t and her dad looked our way in interest (for he too had been silent all along).

    The little girl continued: “God told Abraham,

    “You’ll have more kids than the sand on the beach or the stars in the sky.” [Gen.22:17]

    “Well, that was a long time ago and there’s lots more stars in heaven now.”

    I smiled and nodded confirmation of the little girl’s encouragement.

    I was thinking about the lifeless fluid-filled corpse in the casket. It wasn’t very encouraging. The scene was as frightening to me, truth-be-told, as the wax-carved bodies at Ripley’s.

    Another image quickly came to mind. If zombies could be real as dancers in a music video, then the next room would be as fearsome as death.

    I glanced ever-so-briefly toward the adjacent doors, through which I had fled into this vestibule.

    As I looked back to the girl and her picture I asked, “Why is that star so much brighter?”

    (I had not considered the impact of her matter-of-fact answer.)

    “THAT one’s my Mommy.”

  • EMPIRE Fallen: Church Divided – Part 2

    EMPIRE Fallen: Church Divided – Part 2

    9 August, AD 2013 – This time in history.

    Genesis 1:2a King James Version – And the earth was without form, and void…

    ‘without form’ – tohuw – place of chaos;

    “Most history is untold and unknown to most.

    We look at history as a timeline of what someone has suggested has relevance to our own lives.

    AD abbreviation – Anno Domini (used to indicate that a date comes the specified number of years after the traditional date of Christ’s birth). Forgotten in secular timelines.

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    AD 753 – AD 1806 — The Holy Roman Empire

    By the time of its end, the Holy Roman Empire was far from holy, had nothing to do with Rome and evolved slowly from powerful Empire of Charlemagne to a powerless attempt to keep title of sovereignty from Napoleon.  The sometime anarchy from power plays of royalty and church leadership was just one facet of a complex schism of the Church with political alliances divided between Rome in the West and Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem in the East.

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    AD 1375– AD 1378 The War of the Eight Saints, carried on with spates of unprecedented cruelty to civilians…

    9 August, in the year of our Lord 1378, French bishops declared Urban VI’s election as pope invalid. This began the great schism in which two and then three popes claimed the Holy See of Rome at once. Once in office, Urban (ca. 1318–1389) had become overbearing.

    1378 A.D to 1417 A.D. – Western Schism or Papal Schism was a split within the Catholic Church.  Two men simultaneously claimed to be the true pope, driven by politics rather than any theological disagreement. The Western Schism is sometimes called the Great Schism, although this term is also applied to the East–West Schism of 1054 A.D.

    “Doubt still shrouds the validity of the three rival lines of pontiffs during the four decades subsequent to the still disputed papal election of 1378. This makes suspect the credentials of the cardinals created by the Roman, Avignon, and Pisan claimants to the Apostolic See.” [3]

    Urban was declared excommunicated by the French antipope and was called “the Antichrist“, while Catherine of Siena, defending Pope Urban, called the cardinals “devils in human form.

    On the death of Charles of Naples in 1386, Urban contrived to take advantage of the anarchy which had ensued and in August 1388 Urban moved from Perugia with thousands of troops.

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    AD 1432 – Mehmed II was born in this capital of the Ottoman Empire. Islamic education had a great impact in molding the mindset of Mehmed and reinforcing his Muslim beliefs. He began to praise and promote the application of Sharia law.

    The influence of Ak Şemseddin in Mehmed’s life became predominant from a young age, especially in the imperative of fulfilling his Islamic duty to overthrow the Byzantine empire by conquering Constantinople.[5]

    AD 1453 – The capture of Constantinople marked the end of the last remnant of the Roman Empire, an imperial state which had lasted for nearly 1,500 years.  The Christian Church had been divided by the Great Schism of 1378 for less than 80 years and the enemy of Christ extends the political and religious power of Islam.

    Edirne, in northwest Turkey located north of the Aegean Sea and south of the Black sea, was formerly known as Adrianople and borders areas of conquest between Rome and its invaders.  During the existence of the Latin Empire of Constantinople, the Crusaders were decisively defeated by the Bulgarian Emperor Kaloyan in the battle of Adrianople (1205).

    To be continued…