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IF YOU’RE WONDERING WHEN THIS EVIL WILL END… (5)
For those of you who have stayed with me so far and have read all four parts of this series to date, your time and attention is about to pay off.
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I wrote a segment within Part 3 about Adam and Eve. My longtime reader Amber and I had a good discussion in the comments section afterwards which answered several questions. What follows are more clues from Genesis.
GOOD AND EVIL
Of course, our first parents first lived in Paradise. They existed in a state of innocence. They had absolutely no knowledge of sin. They were pure and holy. God allowed them to eat from any tree in the Garden except one. This meant that every single tree other than that one had good fruit. Only one tree had bad fruit. And there were only two trees mentioned by name in the Garden:
Out of the ground the Lord God caused to grow every tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. [Genesis 2:9]
By inference, we know that the Tree of Life was located somewhere in the center of the Garden. It was likely more prominent than the other trees. It held this strategic place not only to showcase its importance but to be equally accessible from any place thereof. Wherever one traveled in the Garden one would often pass by the Tree of Life and always be reminded of its significance. The Tree of Life is mentioned three times in the Book of Genesis. The bad Tree is mentioned twice. Three is the Biblical number of Divine Perfection. Two is the number of Division.
By further inference, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil must have been far off in a relatively remote location close to the boundary of the Garden. It was in a relatively hard to reach area which for the most part demanded a determined effort to visit it, possibly also because it was at a higher elevation. The odds upon happening upon it by chance were very low.
Regarding which direction this tree might have been located from the center, we can gain clues by simply reading the text. One notices that Adam and Eve were apparently driven out of the Garden on the east side:
Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”— therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken. So He drove the man out; and at the east of the garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life. [Genesis 3:22-24][1]
By inference again, it would seem that the bad tree would be located close by. It would seem that the bad tree was close to the eastern boundary. It would appear that visiting the bad tree was associated with a consideration of leaving the Garden, or in other words, rebelling against God and going off into sin. Was this Eve’s intention?
A FIG TREE
Also, Hebrew tradition states that the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was a fig tree, precisely because it is mentioned thus in Genesis. It was the Tree from which Adam and Eve gained the large leathery leaves to sew together and wear as loin coverings to hide their newly discovered nakedness.
This is not the fig tree of which most people are familiar. It is not a relatively low and bushy shrub but rather a very large tree that can grow to great heights.
Here is Ficus Sycomorus, the Sycamore Fig Tree of ancient Israel:
© 2022 by RJ Dawson. All Rights Reserved. [To Be Continued]
[1] Unless otherwise noted all Scriptures are taken from the New American Standard Bible, © 1960, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.
IF YOU’RE WONDERING WHEN THIS EVIL WILL END… (1)
IF YOU’RE WONDERING WHEN THIS EVIL WILL END… (2)
IF YOU’RE WONDERING WHEN THIS EVIL WILL END… (3)
IF YOU’RE WONDERING WHEN THIS EVIL WILL END… (4)
IF YOU’RE WONDERING WHEN THIS EVIL WILL END… (6)
IF YOU’RE WONDERING WHEN THIS EVIL WILL END… (7)
IF YOU’RE WONDERING WHEN THIS EVIL WILL END… (8)
IF YOU’RE WONDERING WHEN THIS EVIL WILL END… (9)
THE DESCENT OF THE ASCENDANT: THOSE WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS (NIMROD IS HERE)
They have crossed over into full-fledged iniquity. They break the law routinely and no longer care. They are determined to have their way. They will not be restrained by anything including the Constitution.
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“This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil.
“For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.
“But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.” [John 3:19-21]
“And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness.’” [Matthew 7:23]
In reading the preceding verses, remember who the Lord’s ministry was directed to. At that time He was obviously not referring to the world at large but only the land associated with His direct ministry. Much of the context of the Gospel message is lost without this proper frame of reference.
HIDDEN EVIL (IN OTHERWISE PLAIN SIGHT)
Going back to ancient times, there have always been people in the world who gained enough power and money to do absolutely anything they desired. They reached a point of no restrictions. Though the possibility existed that some of these people possessed enough self discipline to restrict their behavior, and though outward observers, including those researching history, may have thought the best of such powerful people, the reality is that the vast majority, in essence, all of them save a possible one or two here and there, crossed over into absolute hedonism.
Consider this hypothetical question: If a person has gained so much power and money he can do anything he wants and no one can stop him, do you think he will limit himself? The Word of God is clear on the depravity of unregenerate humanity bound by sin and out of relationship with the Lord. Those who sow to the flesh will reap the sinful fruit of the flesh. Those who do so with powerful means and no restrictions will reap the greatest of sinful fruit. The Lord Jesus expounded upon this issue in the following:
And He summoned the crowd with His disciples, and said to them, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul? For what will a man give in exchange for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will also be ashamed of him when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.” [Mark 8:34-38]
Reflect on the Biblical illustration of Solomon, a person many Christians highly honor, as one who fits the preceding passage perfectly. He reached a point in which he gained zero accountability and did whatever he wanted (because he quit on God and eliminated God’s prophets). Rather than one wife, for example, he appropriated several and many more “concubines.” As time proceeded there were never enough women to satisfy his lust. He eventually possessed over a thousand:
Now King Solomon loved many foreign women along with the daughter of Pharaoh: Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, and Hittite women, from the nations concerning which the LORD had said to the sons of Israel, “You shall not associate with them, nor shall they associate with you, for they will surely turn your heart away after their gods.” Solomon held fast to these in love. He had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines, and his wives turned his heart away. [1Kings 11:1-3] [1]
Can you then see the distinct likelihood that other powerful people like Solomon with zero accountability might have grown tired of attempting to satisfy their lust with grown women and branched out? The Old Testament spells this out exactly. The Law of Moses describes specifically the sins which one should never engage in. It involves the most disgusting practices you can imagine. It’s all right there in black and white. Great tyrants who could do whatever they wanted were doing such things. No one could stop them. Then their disgusting sins permeated the entire nations over which they ruled and those nations became as corrupt as the disgusting leaders. Then the nation of Israel engaged in the exact behavior. Repeatedly. Over and over. The rumors that abound in our day of powerful people engaging in such lawless behavior are rampant. Remember, they can do anything they want and no one can do anything about it. They have embraced absolute lawlessness. They possess the means, the motive, and the opportunity.
It is strange that people don’t see this. The evil of the powerful mostly remains behind a curtain. The likely reason is centuries-old psychological conditioning in that the subjects of such people are forced to fear their leaders and what will happen to them if they attempt to call them out. There have always been stiff penalties. Offending those in power has traditionally resulted in societal rejection and prison. Revolting against them has resulted in death. This is how the world has always been run. The ones who gain power and their sycophants step on everybody else to get there and keep a boot on their face after they do. Whoever objects to the sin and lawlessness of those who gain power are made to pay and some are made to pay exceedingly as examples to check whoever else may have such tendencies. This is likely why most people refuse to consider the subject. The Lord Jesus, however, has forever remained undaunted regarding such. He strives to root out and expose the evil. He knows the great harm it causes. In the nation of Israel’s case the Lord sent prophets. Even so, what happened to the prophets?
We could get into a long list of such powerful unaccountable people from ancient times to the present in both the secular and religious fields, including “Christianity” of course, even if we restrict it to the world’s most powerful at the top of various hierarchies and pyramids. But for the purposes of this short paper I will limit the scope to just one guy to illustrate what is possible and to honor the Lord for using this person as an early example in His Word:
ANCIENT SUMER
The first great empire on the planet was created by the Sumerians in Mesopotamia, the “land between two rivers,” in about 3000BC, roughly occupied at present by the country of Iraq. The Bible refers to this land as Shinar. A man by the name of Nimrod created and ruled over this first of all empires and did so with an iron fist. It was not an easy task to run roughshod over the entire population of the vast region and cobble together a union of city states. To streamline the process Nimrod gave very little or no heed to “human rights” or what any of his potential subjects may have thought of the process. He was determined to rule the world and he achieved his goal. In the process everyone under his rule became slaves to various degrees. Those who bucked the process were simply eliminated.
How do we know some revolted? The bigger question, in my estimation, is why did not everyone revolt? Why was there not a wholesale revolution? Why did they not stop him from coming to power? What Nimrod engaged in was a total mockery of humanity and rejection of the inherent liberty of each person. He had no respect for the mass of people. He would only use them for his own ends. Once he gained enough toadies bound to his will, those who had the same evil outlook in life who wanted only to satisfy their flesh with the usual sinful practices, and paid them off with such, he had enough of an army to fight the few who were bold enough to oppose him. Though the great majority were likely greatly offended at what was happening, likely only a relative few, as always, had the boldness to put their lives on the line to prevent it. In the case of ancient Sumer it obviously did no good. It was the end of an egalitarian social structure and the beginning of a collectivist one-man-rule dictatorship model later emulated by others, notably ancient Egypt and eventually Rome. Ironically, those early Sumerian tyrants are credited with creating “civilization.”
NIMROD IS HERE
To better explain the following verses of Scripture regarding Nimrod, I wrote the following passage about twenty five years ago. It is an excerpt from my book Real Christianity—The Nature of the Church. What I wrote then has turned out to be prophetic. What I wrote then has now essentially come to pass. The warning I gave then was largely rejected by the very people (Christians, especially those in “leadership”) who should have taken it to heart. See if any of the following sounds familiar. Remember, I wrote the following in approximately 1995:
Now Cush became the father of Nimrod; he became a mighty one on the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the LORD; therefore it is said, “Like Nimrod a mighty hunter before the LORD. The beginning of his kingdom was Babel and Erech and Accad and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. From that land he went forth into Assyria, and built Nineveh and Rehoboth-Ir and Calah, and Resen between Nineveh and Calah; that is the great city. [Genesis 10:8-12]
Nimrod was the great-grandson of Noah, the grandson of Ham and the nephew of Canaan. In this verse he is called a “. . . mighty hunter before the Lord,” but this phrase is not very clear. Its surface meaning is a tad ambiguous, and its deeper meaning is hard to judge on the basis of its simple translation. Therefore, an in-depth explanation is called for. This will get somewhat confusing, but the end result in greater understanding is worth the effort.
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- To begin with, the English word “mighty” in the above verse is translated from the Hebrew word gibbor which means “powerful,” but by implication, a “warrior,” or “tyrant.”
- Tsayid is the Hebrew word which was translated as “hunter,” yet tsayad is the proper word for hunter or “huntsman.” Tsayid actually means “the chase” or “hunting.”
- “Before” is taken from the word paneh which means “the face (as the part that turns),” or as the preposition “before” in the sense of being “against.”
- “The Lord” in this case is, of course, YHWH, the “Self-Existent or Eternal.”
When translated closer to the original intent, the following sense emerges: “Nimrod was a powerful warrior-tyrant hunting the face of YHWH.” Now, what exactly does it mean to hunt the face of YHWH?
First of all, it helps to be aware of the terminology of early Genesis. In the first fifteen chapters, the word paneh (face) is mentioned eighteen times. On seventeen of these occasions, “face” is a reference to the face of the deep, the waters, the earth, and the ground. On one occasion, there is a reference to the face of YHWH. [2]
Of course, even though God appeared in theophanic form on occasion, Nimrod wasn’t hunting God’s human face but the façade which marked the boundary, or surface (presence) of the Lord, or in other words—the Lord’s dominion. He was against the Lord in this sense. Nimrod’s name means “rebellion.”
In essence, Nimrod’s objective was to hunt, or chase after, the kingdom of God. He either did this in direct competition against God, as one who would build his own kingdom, or he labored under great deception, thinking he was seeking the kingdom according to God’s will and by God’s plan. In either case he was wrong, and the effect was the same.
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Throughout the ages and continuing into the present, countless Nimrods have established control over the unsuspecting by wresting away their freedom. They create governments which place themselves in supreme authority over the masses. They swell up like Thanksgiving Day parade balloons with the life they steal from their subjects—those who innocently trust them—those defenseless ones who eventually become nothing but inert husks, mere shells of destitute humanity. As fish out of water, a people lose their energizing spark and eventually breathe their last breath, while those who destroyed them build monuments to themselves.
It is for this very reason that the founding fathers of the United States of America sought to place ruling authority in the hands of “We the People.” This would prevent another Nimrod from taking over. History clearly shows us that this experiment in government known as the USA has been the most successful of all that have ever existed, hands down. Why? It is due simply to the fact that when people have authority, they have freedom, and when they have freedom, they have the chance at life. That is why the Declaration of Independence refers to the right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. No other government in the history of the world had ever stood on such a principle, with one exception.
Many centuries earlier, an extremely limited form of government was created which depended on one thing to make it work—obedience to God. The nation was ancient Israel. This form of government failed because its people did not “love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might,” [3] nor did they “love your neighbor as yourself.” [4] The government that God gave to Israel was also formed to keep a Nimrod from taking over, but that objective failed and we have documented proof to verify it.
In ancient Israel, the spirit of Nimrod rose from within. The Old Testament gives us a Hebrew king list which is largely composed of one despot after another who ruled the descendants of Jacob with complete disregard for God’s first intention—His children’s life and liberty. When the people of Israel turned their back on God, they turned their back on everything, and thus received the leadership they deserved.
The USA will also fail to stop the current Nimrod insurgency if we don’t get our priorities straight. Each citizen of this country is guaranteed by the Constitution the right to life. This right has been greatly curtailed, paradoxically by the government itself, that is, the government of “We the People.” We have surrendered much of the substance of our original right to life. We have created a hierarchical, bureaucratic machine which has no feeling or regard for our true welfare. We now largely look to the government instead of to God for answers to our problems. Even though our government was built in such a way to keep Nimrod from taking over, Nimrod is about to come to power anyway—we created him, and the exact creation has transpired within American Christianity.
In the early church, God spread out power and authority evenly among His people, but in the majority of today’s churches, the religious upper class rules with a velvet-gloved iron hand. If one doesn’t think this is true, then one has never challenged the ruling class as Jesus did. Those who do find out post haste that it has a dark side, that it often regards its dependents with contempt, and that its holy exterior remains that way only as long as one remains its fool:
And all the people in the synagogue were filled with rage as they heard these things; and they got up and drove Him out of the city, and led Him to the brow of the hill on which their city had been built, in order to throw Him down the cliff.[Luke 4:28–29] [5]
© 2022 by RJ Dawson. All Rights Reserved.
[1] Unless otherwise noted all Scriptures are taken from the New American Standard Bible, © 1960, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.
[2] Genesis 4:14
[3] Deuteronomy 6:5
[4] Leviticus 19:18
[5] © 2001 Real Christianity—The Nature of the Church by RJ Dawson. All Rights Reserved.
EVIL’S FRENZIED RETORT IN COUNTERING THE GREAT AWAKENING
They spent decades preparing for this day. They have accomplished much and continue with their universal plan. Yet there remains a gritty opposing force, refusing to surrender, and giving them fits.
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It was never part of the original plan. Once they decided to stray from the script and enter the emotional realm, allowing the unreliability of passion to be factored in to a previous hardline discipline, it exposed their vulnerable underbelly. Whether this was due to simple exasperation from heightened warfare, or from weariness of waiting—of shrewdly maintaining a marathon pace—or sensing the finish line so close the need for speed overcame their reason, and being unable to pull back the reins for want of finally achieving the long sought goal, they threw down the gauntlet for a full bore all-systems-go sprint, as if sucked ahead by lateral gravity, which eliminated their former mastery of strict impulse control, which in turn tarnished their former clandestine station behind the veil and revealed them for what they are: These were not high masters whatsoever, other than of guise and guile—but mere Halloween actors dressed to deceive and disappear, and shroud their demonic nature.
ONCE UPON A TIME UNDER A TREE FAR, FAR AWAY
The assumption had been, with every base covered and each of a million different possibilities exhaustively vetted and deduced, that ultimate victory was not only inevitable but thoroughly predictable. An assured smugness had arisen among the perpetrators. The vast intricately detailed planning would surely bring about the desired outcome. How could the powerless possibly overcome it?
In the beginning it was wholly cerebral. They had the means and money. They knew it would take time. They knew it might not work exactly as they envisioned but had hope it would function in some form or semblance to the same effect. In the meantime, they would continue extracting wealth, appropriating political power, and generating the vast propaganda apparatus, which could only increase their chances.
It was a gradualist approach, a multi-generational effort. Nothing could stop them. They existed above all laws and restrictions. As the capstone group atop the pyramid, no one told them what they could or could not do. They were held back only by (1) cultural decorum, (2) an indigenous natural morality shared by all humans to varying degrees, (3) an unwillingness to sully themselves or their perfect plan with unnecessary sleaze and low-level filth which kept the more sordid forms of evil under wraps, and (4) established social barricades beyond the which they preferred not to travel.
The moment arrived when they perceived that such cultural barriers had been imperceptibly holding them back from fuller and faster progress. They had a sudden insight that their plan would never actually work as envisioned as long as such limits were allowed. Due to a better understanding of such mores and why they existed in the first place, and had existed from time immemorial in higher cultures—as hedges against corruption and the very plan they were attempting—they had come to an inevitable fork in the road. Would they recognize themselves as being completely out of line and even against the God of creation and not only moral but natural law and forget the whole thing? Would they care enough about their wives and children and grandchildren and family relations and friends to refrain from subjecting them to association with the evil they were planning? Or would they plow ahead anyway with all caution to the wind, endangering not only their own faint moral compass (essentially trashing what was left of it) but that of humanity as well?
Whether they saw that their plan was actually evil and could never be achieved by a moral people or that ethics were in themselves somehow evil and a mere abstract construct restricting progress—whichever one of these arose first in their minds—it ultimately did not matter because attaining the ultimate prize was of paramount importance and therefore the greater good. In other words, these parasitic creatures disguised somewhat as human beings who had already overcome in large part the dictates of their God-given conscience in attaining their wealth to that point had finally decided they would cross a bridge too far. They had decided that the end justified the means.
Therefore, they would henceforth, from that time forward, do anything whatsoever with no regard for any concepts of good or evil, to gain absolute control and capture the planet. They would own and control everything and no longer cared how they achieved it. This was the new plan, a furtherance of the former, and they were sticking with it. And the people be damned. Each generation of this upper crust clan thus engaged in greater forms of evil by degrees. They no longer called it by such, of course, but merely as the cost of doing business. They were the best. They deserved it. The rest of humanity were essentially nothing more than simple morons—cattle and swine, bovine and porcine—to be herded and processed by their superiors. They would do whatever they wanted with such people, though they numbered in the multimillions and billions. Such human detritus were no different than any other species of animal. It would never matter how many there were since the whole lot were insufferably stupid and could never mount an effective challenge even with the advantage of mass numbers. They knew a miniscule few had historically always ruled the masses which proved the sub-humans comprising the masses may as well be sheep led to the slaughter.
GOD’S PARALLEL PLAN
From the time Adam rebelled and was bounced from the perfect Garden planted by the LORD God, toward the east, in Eden, his future multi-generational progeny, for the most part, remained disassociated from God and resorted to their own devices. Survival was the name of the game my man, and whatever one had to do to survive was fair game, including making other humans fair game. Without the Lord’s overall protection and spiritual order, and the order of everything under His control for the benefit of His creation and humanity, and the sweet fellowship derived thereof, there was nothing but hardship and criminality. Devoid of laws to keep one another civil and to honor the needs, lives, and loves of others, humanity in general had fallen into a brute beast mentality. It is what happens when one rejects a benevolent higher order and closeness to the divine. One is on one’s own and those of his immediate group. Survival portends putting oneself and one’s group above all others.
Though the earth was large and stretched out forever, fear often kept them relatively close. And they always clashed at the borders—those intangible barriers that presented themselves when one group was threatened by another traveling upon it. The wandering group, chancing upon the other’s rude camp and possible spoils, depending on their mood and sizing up of the situation, would turn and travel on or decide to fight. Then the two nomadic groups would engage in yet more bitter battle, happening there as elsewhere, and shed each other’s blood. They would kill each other and add to the ongoing, incessant misery, a far cry from the Creator’s original plan.
And so it went. You could never trust a foreign group. You could only trust your own. But even within one’s own, rebellion would rear its ugly head. There would be power struggles. Beyond fighting for turf against evil interlopers one must also battle the threat from within—that a lesser young buck might throw off his restraints against established authority and take the group off in another direction with no concern for the people in it. That partners in marriage would turn upon the other, and sow yet more hate in the next generation, whose only future hope was more wandering, more searching, more looking for a place to rest, to simply stop and build, and be rid of constant threats from without and despair from within. But there was none to be found and no peace for the weary. Without the Lord it was every man for himself.
But soon, by heaven’s intervention in those dark ancient days, there would be a man of peace, birthed suddenly upon the scene, a compensation given from above. He would restore the way to God.
© 2020 by RJ Dawson. All Rights Reserved. [To Be Continued]
FINDING OUR ORIGINS: HOW DID WE GET HERE?
Christians believe in a Creator. We believe the Creator made us in His image. Christians are also highly intelligent and knowledgeable, and prove that faith in God and scientific fact are not mutually exclusive.
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Though proponents of secular science insist there is no God, they are also forced to believe in an unexplainable original uncaused cause. They must admit, no matter how distasteful it may be, that they’ll most likely never make it to the rainbow’s end. They have no idea how Creation, or the “Universe,” came to be at its earliest instant, though they content themselves with the highly implausible possibility they may figure it out someday. In the meantime, the surrender towel they threw into the ring remains there, above the canvas, stuck forever in suspended animation. For them, discovering the origin of Creation has reached a dead end. They can go no further. Though such anti-God proponents et al are saturated with scientific knowledge up to that point, if indeed their vast pronouncements of scientific reality are indeed factual, their otherwise powerful brains come up short at explaining beginnings. Could it be their absence of faith makes the original uncaused cause forever undiscoverable to them?
TRACING OUR ROOTS
For those who engage in the work of genealogy, often inspired to trace their personal family tree, it can be an intriguing and exciting adventure, especially when finding a slightly harder to locate previously unknown link in the chain. They continue going back in time adding more pieces to the puzzle. As they do the effort grows more difficult. The people one searches for become increasingly harder to find. Though one may have success in the early going mapping out ancestral generations, even going back several centuries, one discovers an eventual unwelcome interval when the trail is lost, when he must expend more time and energy on finding the next ancestor in line who has inadvertently perchance made himself scarce, than discovering all the other ancestors up to that point. Inevitably, whether Mr. Scarce or another after him is eventually found, one will reach a dead end. There will be no more ghosts of the past located.
Upon reaching this place, a person must simply face reality. The records grow scarce to the point of non-existence or at least it appears that way. With no written records one has nothing to work with. There is always the hope that maybe something will be found to grant another clue but the odds are against it. Even professionals with relatively unlimited budgets can only go so far.
ONCE UPON A TIME
As a way to remedy such an occurrence, what if one simply started making things up? What if one simply began creating ancestral characters? As an aside, we know that primitive people with no written records have oral histories stretching back into the distant past. They particularly honor the great ones of their bygone times who performed outstanding deeds to better the cause of their people. In time, the honor they give such ancestors becomes ancestor worship. And inevitably, such great ancestors become deified. They transform them into gods. Later generations approaching and appearing in the present accept such “history” without question. They believe wholeheartedly in the legends of their clan. It helps to make them what they are though much of their history is contrived.
Secular science does the same. Rejecting any idea of a Creator, an original personal uncaused cause, they insist on finding purely scientific and factual answers without getting bogged down in foggy legends or what they often term religious nonsense. On the surface, of course, this is good. On the other hand, however, without keeping an open mind to possible spiritual origins beyond their understanding, even though much in such a field is obviously suspect and easily refuted by facts, such people have a decided tendency to grow ever more cynical. It is why many of these people refuse to believe in God. The concept of God looks like a fairy tale. Some of them consider invoking God to be a cop out. And with such unbridled skepticism it is only a hop, skip, and a jump into outright mockery. With such an arrogant attitude which insists only on the use of what their intelligent but extremely limited brains can fathom, they eliminate the very place where the bulk of answers are found.
In the meantime, they must continue with their version of Creation based purely on the discoveries of the scientific method. They continue going back in time (by the billions of years) explaining to the best of their ability how it all came to be. And then they reach the same dead end. They are at a loss to explain it any further. Their only conclusion for the riddle of the Universe is an original uncaused cause. An unknown beginning. Even if they go back to a single point from which the entire Cosmos emerged or burst forth, there is no satisfactory scientific explanation for that single point. How did it get there? Do they think the process of minimizing the Universe to a single subatomic particle in the great distant past makes it easier to understand and accept our origins? Intelligent thinking people know better. The scientists know better. They still refuse, however, to consider a possible spiritual reality or something or someone beyond their ability to see or perceive.
So they make things up. In much the same way primitive tribes construct a legendary reckoning of ancient ancestors, filling in gaps as they go with fictional stories based loosely on suspect oral histories, so must science, the supposed facts people, come up with “answers” to fill in their knowledge gaps in order to complete the story, or their version of events. For backup they rely on one another. It becomes nothing more than circular logic or baseless biased reasoning. It happened that way because we say it did and we are the ones who know because we are the ones with all the credentials. And thus science destroys their one major caveat by becoming religion.
BREAKING FREE
I understood early in life that there must be something more. Looking around and sizing things up brought me to the conclusion, even as a kid, that things simply didn’t add up. Rather than plunge ahead into life with no thought of trying to figure it out, I always allowed for a belief in what may be termed higher things. Though unknown, of course, there must be something else out there I could not perceive but could at some point possibly discover. Such a belief and inevitable search allowed for a drag of sorts on doing what society expected and demanded regarding full attention toward excellence in completing a prescribed course. We understand that devoting full attention to whatever it is we must do makes the job easier.
However, as we mature and face our responsibilities, we collect out of necessity a growing number of hot glowing irons in the fire at the same time, each of which demands our attention, and therefore the idea of devoting full attention to any single one can only happen on an effective piecemeal basis. For those whose lives are so simple they only engage in a single activity and can thus give full devotion to it, I would think their chances of success would be relatively high in that particular field. For most people, however, they must devote themselves to any number of activities, engaging in them all at the same time in turn, like the guy who juggles bowling balls and meat cleavers. Life gets tricky that way. But it also tells us, through our previously unknown ability to excel at several activities at once, that we can spare some time for higher things as well, even though the latter might not be a top priority.
However, until our personal search for truth moves to the top of the list, we will never excel in that endeavor. And without such excelling God will forever remain in the distance.
© 2020 by R.J. Dawson. All Rights Reserved.
FIFTH COLUMN CHRISTIANS: How the devil Created Unreal Christianity
“FIFTH COLUMN”: Clandestine group or faction of subversive agents who attempt to undermine a nation’s solidarity by any means at their disposal.
“A cardinal technique of the fifth column is the infiltration of sympathizers into the entire fabric of the nation under attack and, particularly, into positions of policy decision and national defense. From such key posts, fifth-column activists exploit the fears of a people by spreading rumours and misinformation, as well as by employing the more standard techniques of espionage and sabotage.” [1]
THE JERK WHO STARTED IT ALL
The devil is the original jerk.
A jerk, in this sense, with a wide inclusion of corresponding names and titles denoting derivative evil and subversive activities, is someone driven to do all in his or her power to mess up a good thing.
The Garden, east of Eden, built by the Lord God, was absolutely perfect.
Adam, the first human, created by the Lord God, was also absolutely perfect.
And Eve, wonderful Eve, the first woman, also created by the Lord God, was not only absolutely perfect but the crown of creation. With all due respect to Adam, there was no possible better created being than Eve. After the Lord God made her He was done. He saved His best for last.
But of course, the devil had to come along and screw it all up. (The devil is such a rotten little reprobate.) He lives to destroy, to rottenize everything he touches, and to do all is his power to transform the perfectly moral and beautiful into gross immorality and ugliness.
The sad thing about this idiot is that he possesses such a powerful ability to lie and cheat and deceive that EVERYBODY ends up listening to all his sorry tripe and most obey him their entire lives with no recourse or ability to stop.
THE ONLY CURE:
He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him.
But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. [John 1:11-13]
THE TREE OF THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL
Adam listened and at first he told the devil to bug off. Adam remained loyal to the Lord God.
Eve listened and at first she fought him. She quoted the Word of God. But the devil kept on in his sly and slimy manner and started making sense to her. Adam was nowhere around. The devil isolated her and caught her on her own. She had never been taught directly by the Lord God but by Adam. Thus, the devil simply attacked her husband’s credibility in order to attack the credibility of the Lord God.
Interestingly enough, Eve began to listen:
“Maybe Adam got it wrong…”
“How do I really know that Adam learned everything he taught me from the Lord God?”
“Maybe this alternative picture the devil is painting in the real reality…”
The devil encouraged her to use her human eyes, her human understanding, and her human imagination. The forbidden fruit suddenly looked good to her, both to her eyes as a thing of beauty and also for food. She also fell for the lie that eating the fruit would make her wise and that she would replace the Lord God. She would be equal to the Lord God. SHE would be the Lord God.
The original fifth columnist gained his first convert.
ADAM’S EVENTUAL FAILURE
What the hell happened to Adam? Why did he no longer resist sin and temptation?
He had successfully defeated the pukey little devil on every other occasion. He was never fooled by his lies before. His education by the Lord God in spiritual things had been perfect.
Why did he not resist his wife’s manipulation?
If you can answer this question you will know how Christianity in general has been almost completely subverted and transformed into something completely different from the original, WHICH IS PERFECT.
The man said, “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate.” [Genesis 3:12] [2]
And with that the devil made his second convert.
Since that time the devil has managed to create many more converts. There are more unreal Christians on the planet than real ones. The faux bros have listened to the devil’s suggestions and eaten the forbidden fruit.
Unreal Christians have never undergone required heart circumcision as per the Lord’s commands, but have certainly succumbed to backbone removal.
Could it be because many of the people you see in pulpits are nothing but undercover Christian Fifth Columnists blinded by the devil and won over to his cause?
It certainly appears that they and their congregations have all fallen into their respective pits.
“FIFTH COLUMN:” Clandestine group or faction of subversive agents who attempt to undermine a nation’s (Christian group’s) solidarity by any means at their disposal.
“A cardinal technique of the fifth column is the infiltration of sympathizers into the entire fabric of the nation (Christian group) under attack and, particularly, into positions of policy decision and national (Christian group) defense. From such key posts, fifth-column activists exploit the fears of a people by spreading rumours and misinformation (false doctrines and teachings), as well as by employing the more standard techniques of espionage and sabotage (lies and deception).” [1]
© 2016 by RJ Dawson. All Rights Reserved.
Real Christianity—The Nature of the Church
[1] © 2016 Encyclopedia Brittanica
[2] Unless otherwise noted all Scriptures are taken from the New American Standard Bible, © 1960, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.
DEFEATING THE RULER OF THIS WORLD: Christian Heroes and Villains
Portals of Progress (Part 2)
Hesiod’s story of Pandora’s Box was an obvious take on the Genesis account.
Pandora had been granted authority.
She possessed the freedom to choose.
Freedom allows for the making of evil choices.
Eve discovered evil in exactly this manner.
Evil gives clear perspective to goodness.
Before people know evil, however, they are only vaguely aware of evil in an abstract sense.
This is how God presented evil to Adam—in the abstract. He never taught Adam about evil directly, because Adam could not possibly have known what He was talking about.
There he was—fresh from creation—Adam! Bright and pure and strong, perfectly innocent, with large open eyes and a big smile. He was astounded by the beauty around him and most especially by the majesty of the Lord before him, his Creator.
The Lord and Adam were very close, a very loving Father and son. Though Adam was made of earthly elements in the physical realm, he was filled with the Spirit of God. The very life and presence of God lived within Adam. He was a true son of his Father, and as his Father, the Lord did all possible to teach Adam properly and protect him.
Regarding evil though, the only option God had was a commandment:
The LORD God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.” [Genesis 2:16-17]
Commandments are just that—they are commands. The reason commands regarding evil must be presented as commands is because the recipient of the command has no understanding of the far-reaching consequences of its violation.
In this, Adam had to learn obedience, and in that He had to trust God.
And this is what faith is.
Of course, Adam had no reason whatsoever to doubt God. He did not blindly obey, either. He knew He was loved. God created him and gave him a great place to live and work.
Adam chose to obey God. He loved his Father.
He must have also understood that his Father should and must be respected, and that his Father knew a whole lot more than he did. He knew the command he received against evil was for his own benefit and protection, though he had no understanding of what those things—evil and death—were. As in the hearts of innocent children, evil and death were only abstractions to him.
In Genesis 2, God reveals Adam’s initial purpose:
Then the LORD God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. [Genesis 2:15] [1]
Adam obeyed the Lord regarding his purpose also. He took good care of the garden in which he lived. As a result of his work, the garden was very fruitful. It grew. It produced.
As Adam continued on he saw the good consequences of his choices, that good things happened as a result, and he saw good fruit come forth that he had never previously seen. It was all new—astoundingly and wonderfully new—and abundant.
But Adam also had to grow. He had to progress. And he did. He became more knowledgeable though remaining in a state of perfect innocence.
There were often times he had to do things, however, that he had never done before. He had to choose. It was always a new portal for him, one in which there was the usual trepidation. Like any of us, he had to figure things out. He put two and two together. He no doubt sometimes learned by trial and error, error being not an evil thing but simply an unfruitful thing. In academic terms, it is referred to as gaining knowledge empirically.
Without making correct decisions, there is no possibility of progress.
He discovered that as long as he kept choosing correctly, good stuff kept happening. In time, he became somewhat less concerned about walking through such new portals, and even began to approach apparent risk with much fervor. He was, after all, obeying God.
Through obedience, faithfulness, personal experience, hard work, dedication, and seeing the fruitful results of planting good seed, he learned that life kept producing good fruit as long as he stayed true to the Lord in his heart and in his work. He saw how fruitful the garden was, and was thankful that every tree was acceptable and good, except one.
And because he trusted his Father, he refused to go down that path.
© 2014 by RJ Dawson. All Rights Reserved. [To Be Continued.]
[1] Unless otherwise noted all Scriptures are taken from the New American Standard Bible, © 1960, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.
Portals of Progress (Part 1)
The Lord sometimes sets a door before us through which we must pass. It often arrives as a result of much prayer and searching. Upon arrival, we sometimes do not recognize the door as the answer we seek because it doesn’t necessarily appear as an opportunity, but something to avoid.
Walking through such a portal begins a journey into the unknown.
It portends a Door of Discipleship—an Avenue of Advancement—a Portal of Progress.
Going through such a door will cause one to surrender one’s supposed security. It will demand the leaving of one’s safe and guarded sanctuary composed of the known, where all is seemingly predictable and routine, and head into uncharted territory.
This moment will demand great faith. Though one must receive clear confirmation that such a move is God’s will and though one may feel a great tug in the spirit and the Lord’s leading, the much greater tug must actually be a push, in that even though we feel something drawing us forward, it is never enough to force us or carry us along.
We must act. We must choose. We must compel ourselves. We must obey. We must step through.
I wrote a post two years ago entitled He Steadfastly Set His Face To Go To Jerusalem. The Lord knew all along the cross was His fate. It was a portal through which He had to pass. None of His loved ones agreed with His choice, though the choice was made eons before.
We know that God had already integrated the cross into His master plan before He began creating anything.
Regarding the fate of humanity, long before He created Adam, God planned His own crucifixion.
…Knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers, but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ. For He was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but has appeared in these last times for the sake of you who through Him are believers in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God. [1Peter 1:18-21]
The Lord knew in advance of His creation that a sacrifice would be called for. He knew as soon as He began planning to create free-willed beings like Himself that such beings must be allowed to choose, even to the point of choosing against Him, or they would have no such thing as a free will. In this—choosing against God—choice allows for the opposite of what God intends.
We know what Adam and Eve eventually did. We know that at some point they both violated the command against choosing evil. But we also know that prior to their spiritual fall, Adam and Eve spent an undetermined age in perfect purity and union with the Lord, a time in which they continually chose correctly. It was their time of obedience, and thus, innocence.
The Word of God says that Adam and Eve were made in His image. God had created two people who were like He was, with the ability to choose as He did, and thus with a completely free will. He had granted them the ability to make their own choices.
They were thus not robots. Robots, no matter the level of sophistication, are programmed. They are built and programmed by a higher intelligence. Human beings, as the creators of robots, continue to make them as “intelligent” as possible. But regardless of appearances, robots will forever be the result of programming—robots cannot possess free will.
Even so, people who think deeply about such things have long speculated about the possibility of robots eventually gaining the upper hand and becoming so intelligent and pervasive they will somehow take over. After a century or so of such speculation, of predicting the future, and of science-fiction writers coming up with all manner of end results regarding the subject, we can now fully appreciate just how far-thinking many of them were. Most people back then never believed our present was possible and had very little to do with its arrival.
And this is the problem with humanity. People in general have a strong tendency to remain with the tried and true and traditional, to remain in their zones of comfort, to lasso life to their liking and drive it into a small and crude corral. In this they can control their lives, as rudimentary and small as they are.
Now, in their defense, there are certainly good traditional things to establish and limits one knows will cause great problems if transgressed. There is a reason the ancient Greek writer Hesiod penned the tale of Pandora’s Box (actually a jar), in which all the evils of the world were contained. As long as the large jar remained unopened all would be okay. For those who have not heard of the story, it’s not hard to figure out the ending.
This is why some people insist on a low level of progress or none at all. They fear the bad consequences of wrong choices. They see the terrible results of sin in the world and some human beings becoming total idiots as a result of stupid choices. They know well that stupid is as stupid does and would rather do nothing regarding progress for fear of doing something wrong.
They’ve also seen much “progress” that was not progress at all, but the opposite. Thus, they’re content with less instead of risking an advance toward better things and possibly upsetting their small gains. Fear of failure has shanghaied their necessary discipleship, progress, and advancement.
In their effort to stay a million miles away from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they also stay a million miles away from the Tree of Life.
© 2014 by RJ Dawson. All Rights Reserved. [To Be Continued.]
