Hebrews 5:11 - 6:3

"We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain because you are slow to learn.
In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food!

Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.

Therefore let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death, and of faith in God, instruction about baptisms, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment.

And God permitting, we will do so."
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Are you ready to leave these "elementary teachings" behind to go on to maturity? IE: how is your foundation of your Faith?

Moreover, have we trained ourselves to distinguish good and evil?...

...now where is my counsel of the Fellowship in Christ...

Frankincense: of Myrrh and Hyssop

How is your Christian life? Is it a constant struggle? Or apathetically comfortable? Do you feel the constant tension between flesh and spirit? Or is thou holier than the rest of the Saints?

Romans 7:15-25 is an embedded Scripture in my mind; everyday in every waking moment of my conscious life. That said, how much more do we praise our LORD God who has delivered us from our sins, wiped away our guilt and promised us Eternal Life in a place where there will be no more death, mourning or weeping.

Is your life a sweet smelling incense? An aroma pleasing to The King of the Heavens and The Lord of the Earth? Are you past your youthful age? Do you thus praise the LORD more for what He has blessed you with, wisdom with age? As I grow older, I pray that God may look upon me with favour, and bless me with godly brothers and sisters in Christ; surround me with counsel who will praise the LORD with me forevermore; for it is by the Grace of God that I've come to know him, and it is only by his Grace that I'll come to see him face to face... in that day, in his good time.
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"Let your desire for God's glory be a growing desire. You blessed him in your youth, do not be content with such praises as you gave him then.

Has God prospered you in business? Give him more as he has given you more.

Has God given you experience? Praise him by stronger faith than you exercised at first. Does your knowledge grow? Then sing more sweetly.

Do you enjoy happier times than you once had? Have you been restored from sickness, and has your sorrow been turned into peace and joy? Then give him more music; put more coals and more sweet frankincense into the censer of your praise.

Practically in your life give him honour, putting the "Amen" to this doxology to your great and gracious Lord, by your own individual service and increasing holiness."
-Spurgeon (1834-92)

A Spark of Inspiration

In response to a post, my special friend said:
"God will use the song we sing in our lives to make Babylon more like Zion."
And thus I was inspired:

"The Lord our God sees all,
For those who belong to him He calls,
When his voice they hear,
From the wilderness they will peer.

Aliens and strangers we are in this land,
But we still sing the Lord's songs with our motley band,
As long as eternity awaits us,
We fight forward only for Jesus.

Not alone in our endeavour,
God promises us salvation forever,
We go only where we are told,
For the Holy Spirit directs our fold.

As we live our lives are being transformed,
Through great mysteries unfathomable,
Our true dwelling we remember,
Living always for our future,
Where the land of Zion is God's own dwelling space,
The songs we sing will then be nothing but short of glorious praise."

2 Peter chapter 1, vv2-11

A while back I had the opportunity and privilege of seeing God work his Spirit in his people crafting the peacemakers that He calls us to be – much in the same way as we see God hold the Israelite’s hands as they are delivered out of Egypt, into the Promised Land, and established as a mighty kingdom, Holy for God’s purposes.

…it was a quiet night, regular as your average Joe on any given Sunday. Conversations propelled on smoothly and eventfully; relationships were being built brick by brick. Then it happened; you know, unexpectedly – a purposeful question, perhaps expecting a certain type of answer – but had predestined an answer which did/would not come. Alas, the wrong tone, the wrong body language, and certain ‘vibe’ of it all leave both parties in a state of not ‘go-in-peace-to-love-and-serve-the-LORD’, on the contrary, it leaves things in utter chaos; …That must’ve been what it felt like for Adam as he gazed speechlessly towards his companion Eve, as she ate the Fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil – Adam would have recalled the command so vividly, the command the LORD God explicitly gave him forbidding the consumption of that particular fruit…
…so you catch yourself standing there and – just like in the movies – the world around you ‘stops’ if even for a split second – which seems like an hour; you’re left bewildered and literally thinking: “what the…”

The night passes on as usual, but in the blessed company of a certain God-given girlfriend, things start to pan out quite unexpectedly; I know this is 20/20 hindsight, but when I was in her counsel, I could literally see the events starting to take shape into different forms, forms which I would not have imagined even in my wildest dreams.
Within the hour, I had realized that my reaction was a culmination of my upbringing, the environment of my high-school; private and all boys. In the end, after some prayer, I decided to ‘put-away’ my initial reactions (which is all it was) and go with the “peacemakers” attitude that had been the suggestion from my 1-on-1 counseling… 

…within 24 hours, things had made a turn for the better. God’s Spirit is truly a Spirit of Peace, He brings peace to every place He dwells in, and if He dwells within the Saints, the Saints should bear the fruits of the Spirit. Apologies were made and accounts were settled. True peace has come. And a lesson has been learnt.

God has made those - who trust in the salvation of Jesus Christ on the Cross, believing in your own heart that God raised Jesus from death – into Living Temples for God. The Saints are cleansed and sanctified, able for God’s Spirit to live in and built as He pleases. These perishable bodies which we live in are God’s own, and instruments for building his eternal kingdom which is coming very soon. The night is gone and daybreak is here. The Saints live in Light, Light which comes from heaven and from the hand of God. He has given us eyes of Light, discerning Good and Evil deeds, discerning Wisdom and Folly, and given true choice to follow the desires of the flesh or the obedience of the Spirit. Follow the Spirit and bear his fruits.

As Temples of God we would be wise to take every precaution not to outrage the Spirit of Grace. He lives in us to bring Glory to God’s Name, ergo we have 1 John 2: 6-12. Walk as Jesus did and inherit the crown that is through Christ our own.
...This brings interesting implications for those who persecute the Saints. If those who cut down God’s chosen for preaching Jesus’ redemption in his death on the Cross and his victory in Resurrection over the grave; and the Holy Spirit lives in these people who are cut down, then they are indeed cutting down the LORD God himself.
…but perhaps that is a matter for another day.

That said, what more can we ask for, than to witness the one God in this universe who created and sustains everything, through our very own eyes? As we see the faults of others and of ourselves, and forgive others and be forgiven ourselves. As we preach the Good News of Jesus and see others come to Faith; to witness God’s Spirit at work like this through our own eyes is a blessing, and unequivocally Divine in Nature.

As the LORD Jesus said, “The Spirit is willing, but the body is weak”. All you Saints would do well to keep good and godly counsel in every circumstance. Pray and stay awake, for the end is nigh. It will come like a thief in the night; and you do not want to be caught off guard.

For my counsel that night, I thank you, for your patience and pertinence; our Awesome God who blesses you with great insight and wisdom.

To our LORD God, all honour and praise be to your name for making us peacemakers on Earth for Heaven.

For our weak bodies, LORD I pray for mercy and strength from your hand; bestow it to us from Heaven that your Name will be known amongst all nations.

"Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires."

Hume’s Fork

It’s been a few months in passing since I’ve wanted to post a blog such as this one. That said, these kind of things are always ‘in the making’, so to speak…  *disclaimer.

A couple of months back, a conversation regarding the Origins Book came up at the dinner table. I’m not quite sure why, I just happened to be there and was involuntarily ‘roped’ into the conversation. It happens quite frequently, and I suppose I should not be surprised - it tends to happen when you actually take a stance in matters of controversial topics – as you make a stance, you inevitably gather an audience, and that audience is a mix of friend and foe – and you never quite know what is around the corner…

GENESIS chapter 1, verse 29 states:

“Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.

Verse 30 continues:

And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground — everything that has the breath of life in it — I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.”

Now, is it absolutely certain (100% without a doubt) that ‘in the beginning’, everything with ‘the breath of life in it’ ate only ‘green plant for food’? Or is it a mere 99% certainty? Is it wise for us to allow at least a 1% uncertainty that maybe ‘everything that has the breath of life in it’ also ate meat (of dead animals) like we do today?

David Hume in “Treatise of Human Nature” says: “Matters of fact, which are the second object of human reason, are not ascertained in the same manner; nor is our evidence of their truth, however great, of a like nature with the foregoing.” (The first object of reason being Inductive Logic.)

In the modern world we call this the synthetic proposition - fancy name - for defining statements about the world “…which are synthetic, contingent, and knowable a posteriori.” Examples include: "the sun rises in the morning", "the Earth has precisely one moon", and "water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit".

This is contrasted with a priori ‘knowledge’, IE: "2 + 2 = 4", "all bachelors are unmarried", and truths of mathematics and logic. The latter we can know for certain, and the former, we cannot know for certain, or so states Hume.

“I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground — everything that has the breath of life in it — I give every green plant for food.”

Now I don’t know about you, but the above statement appears to me to be explicitly elucidating that ‘everything that has the breath of life’ ate green plants for food; or, if you like, that “…the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground” were ‘vegetarians’.

…It was ‘argued’ over dinner that the text does not exclude these beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground as vegetarians per se; they could have been carnivorous too, the text in Genesis 1:28 simply does not shed any light on the matter – thus we cannot know for certain.

On first impressions that may appear to be a clever argument; however, having come across such treatises before, something did not sit correctly that night - and rightly so. Upon closer inspection, verse 29 - “I give every green plant for food” – is unambiguous and unequivocal; one cannot be more precise and plain in language. But apparently I was misguided; Hume’s Fork was blocking (what I had thought was) my straight and narrow path.

...Those who employ Hume’s dictum should know that Hume ‘essentially “proved” that no certainty can exist in science’ because statements such as: "the sun rises in the morning", "the Earth has precisely one moon", and "water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit" – are cause-and-effect relationship of events that people judge out of habit, and so it is impossible to state definite truths about the world or make definite predictions.”

IE: Suppose one states this as a "truth" of the world: "When a rock is dropped while on Earth, it goes down." While we can predict with probability that when you drop a rock it will go down, since in every instance thus far when a rock was dropped on Earth it went down, we technically cannot prove that it always will. The next time we drop a rock, it might miraculously go up.

If I may translate our previous example: “The sun rises in the morning” - It should rather be said (according to those who follow Hume):
“The sun rises in the morning, {except for those times when the sun does not rise in the morning}”.

Run that in parallel with:

“I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground — everything that has the breath of life in it — I give every green plant for food.”

Genesis 1:29, 30 according to Hume philosophy rather should state:

“I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground — everything that has the breath of life in it — I give every green plant for food.” {And if any animal happens to die, you are also allowed to either eat it raw or cooked over an open-stove or camp-fire. Green food is good, but meat is better. My command is not a restrictive command.}

I’m sorry, but that is not only bad exposition of text (Biblical text or otherwise), but it is philosophically flawed. An argument employing Hume’s dictum only confuses and builds unnecessary fence-sitters; fence-sitters whom consciously or unconsciously believe wholeheartedly that, “The next time we drop a rock, it might miraculously go up.”…

...Hume’s Fork?; ...or misleading metaphysics?

The Saints would do well to tread lightly in such matters.