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Tag: prodigal

‘You’re NOT MY Father!’ – the prodigal C.E. Evangelical
‘You’re not my father,’ the young woman yelled at the top of her voice as her mother tried to take control of the situation. (The prodigal teen might just as well been a son rejecting the authority of his father.)

Our Family Prodigal

Most Christians are no doubt familiar with the scenario of Jesus’ parable about the prodigal son with its two brothers questioning their relationships with their father.

We have perhaps neglected a theological relationship of the Trinity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit of God.

Today in PART 2 of our examination of the role of the FATHER we continue in our study of doctrines of the Common Era by looking at contemporary family relationships AND parallels to the Son Jesus‘ parable of the prodigal son (which of course HE is not).

God our Father estranged from Trinity

Part 1 of God our Father and His role in the Trinity

Parable of the prodigal son
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You'll find an archaic former view of 'the prodigal' in the New King James version of the Bible from Before the Common Era referring to the son's prodigal living common to this era.
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Root word from the Greek translated as prodigal or riotous.

This parable of Jesus is part of three illustrations of those whose faith is LOST as answer to why the Lord receives and dines with SINNERS.

Gospel of Luke 15:

The Parable of the Lost Son

Luke 15:11 NKJV
Then He said:

“A certain man had two sons. And the younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the portion of goods that falls to me.’ So he divided to them his livelihood. And not many days after, the younger son gathered all together, journeyed to a far country, and there wasted his possessions with prodigal living.

But when he had spent all, there arose a severe famine in that land, and he began to be in want. ..when he came to himself, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and will say to him,

“Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you, and I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants.” ’

HERE is the riotous Common Era christian as well! You, me and others BEFORE some realize that WE may return to GOD the FATHER in humility — BEFORE some become acceptable in the Father’s house through the saving grace of the SINLESS Son JESUS our only hope and Savior.
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(You likely know more of the parable and its additional lessons from this father.)
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“And he arose and came to his father. But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him.

Why do Common Era prodigals deny the Father’s love?

Our cover PHOTO, christian family photo album or church member directory could include THOUSANDS of FACES we know who were once near and dear to our hearts.
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As noted previously the truth of SCRIPTURE has not changed. 

WE cannot quite grasp the mystery of the Holy Spirit. 

AND in Common Era preaching Jesus can be promoted more like WE like on the stage of 'worship.'

YET the fruit of FALSE teaching may easily rot souls JESUS would save had WE prodigal evangelicals returned to the Father.
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Jesus welcomes ALL sinners with the love of a friend. This Common Era king embraces sinners of ALL cultures and beliefs without requiring any turn toward His righteousness and away from The Life of this world.

FALSE! According to Scripture.

Witness of a dad

I know a man in Christ.. —such a man was caught up to the third heaven.
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The Apostle Paul in witnessing a true event without disclosure of his source of witness writes to Christians in Corinth.

The 'man' in Christ may have been Paul, John during his Revelation from Jesus Christ, perhaps even Peter or another. The witness is authentic. Therefore the truth and impact of these scenes require no identification of its narrator.
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‘I knew a dad..’ I could say, ‘I know a man’ or ‘I know a woman’ or even ‘I knew a 21st century common era mom.’

Here is true witness of several sad stories of sin:

common fathers in the Common Era:
- Their father insisted, “not in my house you don’t,” but they did.
- Her older sister ran away with her boyfriend, then her father came into her at night!
- Their ‘christian‘ mother was caught in the arms of another man, then threw her father out of their house.
- The church had no idea who the father of a single mom leading worship might be.
- Their father cheated with a woman at work, then they all moved to another town where this prodigal pastor did it again.
- The PK (Pastor’s Kid) was known to be sleeping with a significant other.
- When their son got his girlfriend pregnant mom helped pay for her to get an abortion.
- She changed schools so no one would know what her mother dared not tell her father.
- A father suspected his son partied all night with guys and girls alike.
- “HE’S NOT MY FATHER! You have to choose between him and ME,” insisted the step-daughter to her mom.
These are all lost sheep, prodigal sons and daughters of FATHERS who are also sinners.

JESUS would invite ANY to the great feast of Heaven..

YET MANY will die in their sin

still refusing to turn back to our Father God

from so many pigsties of the Common Era.

Further resistance against fathers

SOMETHING CHANGED, but I’m not certain when.
Roger@TalkofJesus.com

What is certain in 2023 of the Common Era is that:
- Christians have again become a minority.
- Marriages between one man and one woman for life are rare (even among ‘christians.’)
- Children need not be born into a Common Era home with values of God our FATHER.
- Parents of the Common Era reject accountability to a father, a family and to God.
Fathers (present or absent) may NOT raise, teach or discipline ANY human progeny.

a few more facts:
- The 1960 Census showed a record proportion married, 67.4 percent, among persons 14 years old and over.
- The number of families in the United States in 1960 was 45.1 million. (A family is a group of two or more persons who are related to each other and living in the same household.)
- In 2011, the Pew Research Center found that 51 percent of Americans were married, compared to 72 percent in 1960. However, rates of cohabiting couples are rising
- according to private research company Demographic Intelligence, less than half a million couples were cohabiting in 1960, compared to 7.5 million in 2010 [C.E.]
  - Source: HuffPost 7/22/2023 C.E. TEN years ago
America’s Families and Living Arrangements: 2022 – U.S. Census
- TOTAL children of any age living in household:
  - US Census Source of statistics below
    
    71.9% with living spouse present (at time of survey only)
- 4.2% Cohabiting with joint biological child (actual # may be higher than survey sample)
- 2.6% Cohabiting with NO joint biological child
- 21.3% or ONE IN FIVE – NO partner present (at time of survey)
  - A few are single fathers — MOST are culturally priased as SINGLE MOMS in the Common Era
WHY does Common Era culture reject JESUS?

GOD, the authority of any church and especially FATHERS are anathema to the majority of this COMMON ERA.
Roger@TalkofJESUS.com on Rejection of the Father of Trinity

It’s quite easy for some to worship MARY, the ‘single mom’ of the child Jesus we celebrate each ‘Christmas.’

Yet in the Common Era Mary could easily have made a CHOICE to ABORT this BABY before the Census in Bethlehem!

BUT since SHE chose to live with Joseph (who is NOT the FATHER of Jesus),

Mary was a ‘single MOM’ we can look up to — even worship as the mother of god.
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Of course A.D. first century culture was intolerant of such things.
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What does JESUS say about ‘the Father’ that is so offensive to so many in Common Era churches in these last days?

“For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day.”

So Jesus said, “When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that am He, and I do nothing from Myself, but I speak these things as the Father taught Me. “For this reason the Father loves Me, because I lay down My life so that I may take it again.

“I and the Father are [in essence] one.”
Gospel of John: 6:40, 8:28, 10:30 Legacy Standard Bible

apokalypsis iēsous christos which God gave Him to show to His slaves the things which must soon happen; and He indicated this by sending it through His angel to His slave John,
The Revelation of Jesus Christ 1:1 LSB from Morphological Greek New Testament
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Revelation 3:19-22
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‘Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline. Therefore be zealous and repent.

Reproof, discipline and certainly that ‘slave‘ thing WE dare not proclaim to Common Era christians.

‘Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me. He who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit down with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.

‘He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’”

Revelation of Jesus Christ to John

Talk of JESUS .com

Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to keep all that I commanded you; and behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
Matthew 28:19-20 LSB – Command of the Risen Christ Jesus

Comment on Scripture + Share the Gospel
November 30, 2023
Hansel and Gretel – 4

IF you have NOT already taken time to watch the Hosea Movie of a previous post, it is related to this series and I recommend it. Watch it as a family, if possible (80 min.); especially your teens.

Roger Harned

HANSEL & GRETEL – Chapter 4

The story of Hosea is a story of reconciliation between a husband and a wife. It is a story of reconciliation between a people who have done evil in the sight of the Lord and our God of unfailing, unconditional love.

As a wife commits adultery against her husband; so does a people who sin commit adultery against God.

Why is it that after his adultery with Bathsheba David had prayed, “Against You and You only have I sinned?”

God will judge and punish; yet God may have mercy on the one who repents.

Christ died for sinners, adulterers against God. Christ died for you and for me. We have His blood as our redeeming Light of hope, an escape from this woods of darkness away from our Father.

If we are like Hosea, a faithful husband with unconditional love, we know that the evil of the step-mother of this story is not committed against Hansel and Gretel or against her husband. The evil of their actions affects ALL, but God will judge.

Dear Christian husband, beloved Christian wife: do not believe you have sinned against each other, when Christ has sacrificed His undying love for your forgiveness and redemption. Do not continue to sin against our Lord.

You believe your sin is against me; but your sin is the adultery of Judas.

Rev. 2:21

(Enough for now of the importance of marriage.) Returning to the story of our children:

Hansel and Gretel are children of a step-family. Their father has given in to an evil step-mother and sent the children off into the woods… twice. The father and step-mother want to be alone. The children want to be with their parent. CONFLICT.

(Parents, once you have a child you do NOT get to be alone. That is God’s intention. Children need the loving affection of both parents… often.)

Go to your room!

As the story goes, after being sent away once the children find their way back. Hansel has marked the way with stones.

Yet after their return to what they hoped and had known as the love of home, the second time the wicked step-mother locks them in their room and they cannot gather stones to mark the way home.

Separation. Return home. Locked up alone by hatred. Sent away once more… never to see the love of home again. A sad and all-too-familiar contemporary non-fiction.

Then, as we observed in a previous chapter, a wicked witch (not unlike the step-mother, according to literary analysts) holds the children to serve her and even to become the food for the table of her famine. All seems hopeless; but once again (as we discovered in the previous chapter) their cleverness wins out and they escape the witch, who comes to her death as a result of her own evil intended for Hansel and Gretel.

2 Chronicles 29:6 For our fathers have been unfaithful and have done what was evil in the sight of the LORD our God. They have forsaken him and have turned away their faces from the habitation of the LORD and turned their backs.

A man has turned his back on his own children in favor of a new wife.

Is a father not lord over his children? Is a husband not lord over his wife? Is the man who led his own children into the hands of hopelessness and the fates of the darkness of the woods not unfaithful to the Lord?

The father and the step-mother have BOTH done what is evil in the sight of the Lord.

Yet somehow, without the help of their earthly father, Hansel and Gretel escape.

But what next? How better off will the children be in returning a third time to the home of an evil step-mother?

Then they stayed for several days to eat some more of the house, till they discovered amongst the witch’s belongings, a huge chocolate egg. Inside lay a casket of gold coins.

(The Grimm answer of fable: the money will make it all right.)

I hadn’t really remembered this part of the story after all these years, until looking up Hansel and Gretel and rereading the ending.

I had only remembered that they returned home.

God has planted this deepest desire into the heart of every child (even a man, who has no home).

So I ask us: where is home?

How must a father welcome a lost child?

They filled a large basket with food and set off into the forest to search for the way home.

After two days they find their own way home (not knowing what to expect). Yet the picture of the father is of joy, as in the story of the prodigal son. (My mom needed not tell us that the prodigal of Hansel and Gretel is the father.)

Once upon a time, children were innocent. Fables and bed-time stories spoke to hope – hope of living “happily ever after.” Hansel and Gretel (in a sense) does not disappoint in this.

“Promise you’ll never ever desert us again,” said Gretel, throwing her arms round her father’s neck.

Is this not the heart of every child who loves her father? The heart of every little boy who loves his father?

Promise.

(I did not remember the next scene of the ending, either.)

Hansel opened the casket.

What did Hansel see?

Competition? For had the step-mother not also seen competition for love in the children of the woodcutter? Of course.

It was evil for her to not love these as her own children. And now, providence has placed her with the same fate as the witch: death. Hansel looks inside the casket at the face of evil – dead and harmful no more.

His conclusion is perhaps childish. (Even his father, the woodcutter, may have learned an untold lesson in this fable.)

“Look, Father! We’re rich now . . . You’ll never have to chop wood again.”

And they all lived happily together ever after. The little ones who were still awake would say in unison.

As parents we know that this is but a fable. As Christians we know that indeed we are the prodigals of the story. As those whose home is in heaven, hopefully we tell our children of the real treasure.

Jesus said: The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil. – Matthew 12:35

Proverbs teaches children what Hansel and Gretel observed in the house of the witch. She was hungry in a house made of food. The witch had not purchased the food of righteousness with the treasure she had hidden away.

Proverbs 15:

6 In the house of the righteous there is much treasure,
but trouble befalls the income of the wicked.

16 Better is a little with the fear of the LORD
than great treasure and trouble with it.

Therefore, look into the casket, dear children. See the death of the wicked and the bones of our future.

And look to your Father in Heaven to the hope of our salvation.

2 Corinthians 4:16 So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.

2 Corinthians 5:

The Ministry of Reconciliation

11 Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others. But what we are is known to God, and I hope it is known also to your conscience.

18 All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; 19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. 20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

As I see it, Hansel and Gretel is a story of reconciliation. The father, who loves his children, is finally reconciled to them. And the children, who love the father, are finally reconciled to him.

It is not really a story of a step-mother or of a witch, as much as a story of the death of evil and the triumph of God – that is, the triumph of God: Who IS and was and will judge every evil and reward every good.

Therefore, IF you want to live happily every after (and eternity is a long time…):

Our Heavenly Father has rescued us from the woods of deep darkness and evil through the Light of the Sacrifice of His only Son and the redemption by His Blood on the Cross.

Walk in Love

Ephesians 5 Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. 2 And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

8 for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light 9 (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), 10 and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord.

Wives and Husbands

22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.

25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her

Dear Christian brother, beloved Christian sister of these last days,

Do you look to the light of the promises of Scripture and obey?

Teach these to the children of your bowels and remain faithful to the Head of the body, Christ Jesus our Lord.

31 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” 32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. 33 However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

Children and Parents

6 Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 2 “Honor your father and mother” (this is the first commandment with a promise), 3 “that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.” 4 Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

And they lived happily ever after… Eternally!

October 12, 2013