At first glance there is not much that combines the New and old Testament readings selected for today. In John 6:1-24. Jesus performed miracles 4 and 5 recorded by the Apostle John, feeding 5000 (plus women and children) and then during the night walking on water.
Then in the Old Testament Genesis 11 it tells about the Tower of Babel, and how different languages arose, all by being disobedient to God.
Then again in Psalm 3 David prayed earnestly when he fled from his son Absalom.
The common thread is we always seek to get some favors from God, and thus be able to control the outcome. But God.
Today we read in John 5:31-47 how Jesus defended His testimony.
In Genesis 9 God established His covenant with Noah (The Noahic Covenant), and as a sign He established the rainbow in the sky. Noah planted a vineyard, got drunk and exposed his nakedness. This lead to “the curse of Ham,” which gave the excuse that the black race was for slavery. It was in reality the curse of Canaan, the original inhabitants of the yet to be promised land. Ponder that!
Genesis 10 is a genealogy of the descendants of Noah. It describes how the earth was repopulated. This is quite interesting to see how the different tribes developed.
The common thread for today is Jesus redefining the meaning of the Sabbath and Noah being part of the new beginning. Psalm 2 defines Jesus as the Son,
and God the ruler of all and man still trying to do all by himself at no avail.
John 5:1-30, describes how Jesus healed a man at the pool of Bethesda on the Sabbath, which offended the Jews. In addition Jesus claimed to be equal with the Father, for which the Jews sought to kill him, but Jesus defended His testimony.
Genesis 7 tells of Noah, having completed the ark, took with him seven (pairs) of clean animals and two of unclean animals, and also birds. The aquatic life did just fine. After the animals had entered God shut the door and it rained and rained forty days and forty nights.
Genesis 8. The water receded and Noah sent out a raven and later a dove that returned empty. The second time the dove was sent out, it returned with an olive branch in its beak. This has now become the universal peace symbol. After exiting the ark Noah built an altar and sacrificed from the clean animals. God made a promise to Noah: “While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.”
Psalm 2 tells of what happens when “the heathen rage” and this psalm speaks of what is going on today.
John 4, speaks about the first real evangelist spreading the good news of Christ the Messiah. It is the woman at the well, a Samaritan, scorn and rejected by her many husbands, yet used by God to tell the good news.
Genesis 6 . Sin and wickedness got worse and worse on earth. God saw it and decided to start over. But Noah, his wife, his three sons and their wives, eight in all found favor with God, so God told him to build an ark. This Noah did, and it was the biggest ship built until the time of Ptolemy (around 215 BC.)
Ponder that the first evangelist was a scorned woman who happened to meet Jesus, and that Noah, being obedient to God built the ark on dry land, too big to be of any use unless there was going to be a giant flood. This takes faith!
The headlines say it all. These are the results so far of adverse reactions to various medications and vaccines according to the official VAERS reporting, which give low estimates. The truth is worse. This is from Sen John Johnson:
It should be noted that for the first five medications the time frame is nearly 16 years, the result for COVID vaccine is one year.
Of all medications that actually works against COVID with a more than 75% efficiency, Ivermectin has been approved for human use against river blindness and other parasites, such as head lice since late 1980’s. The countries in Africa that routinely use it for parasite control have a COVID case and death rate of less than 1/10th of the countries in Africa that don’t. There are almost no adverse reactions.
HCQ is almost as good COVID fighter as Ivermectin when taken early in conjunction with Zinc. It’s effectiveness is at least 65% and has been used for over 50 years as an anti malaria drug, against lupus and some rheumatoid diseases. It is given to pregnant women and nursing mothers without restrictions.
Flue vaccines have very few adverse effects, but they happen.
Remdisivir was approved very fast, after all, it was expensive and showed early promising results, but it turned out that nearly 30% of the test clientele had used HCQ before entering the protocol. It turned out, that without HCQ it was not so good after all.
Alone in the history of vaccines has COVID vaccines been approved with such a staggering rate of adverse reactions and over 20,000 deaths from the vaccine in a year. Yet it helps people at risk, people over 60, obese, diabetic, anemic, vitamin C and D deficiency, immune compromised, high blood pressure and a variety of diseases, so they were important in the beginning of the disease, and will be for a while until the therapeutics are approved.
In the mean time , children and young adults without additional risk factors are at higher risk of dying if they take the vaccine than if they get COVID, older people should still go the vaccine route. With admittedly limited statistics available I have calculated the crossover point to be 45 years for people without additional risk factors.
Today we read John 3, the new birth chapter; you must be born again (literally: from above), the new birth is necessary to enter into the Kingdom of God; John 3:16 is the most quoted verse in all the Bible.
Genesis 4 tells of the results of original sin with the story of Cain and Abel and the beginning of animal sacrifice; Genesis 5 gives the Genealogy from Adam to Noah.
The take home for today is there are two births, the physical birth and the spiritual birth (the birth from above), the first murder, the first man (Enoch) to be carried directly to God rather than die. (because ha walked with God).
Today we read in John 2, that Jesus turned water into wine, cleansed the Temple, and when the Jews demanded a sign he gave them just one sign (which they of course did not understand).
Genesis 2 left us with the idyllic Eden, no diseases existed yet. But God created us with free will, and the fall is then described in Genesis 3 . The problem is, after eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, (not an apple tree) and in doing so we think we can build better without God.
The question to ponder is: Why did God create us with a free will? He knew the result from the beginning, and knew He would have to send His Son to redeem us back to Himself. In fact He knew it from before the beginning: “All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast—all whose names have not been written in theLamb’s book of life, theLamb who was slain from the creation of the world.” (Revelation 13:8, NIV)
Answer: We are created in God’s image, male and female, not so much physical, but spiritual, and free will is part of the package. Without free will there is no fellowship with God, only puppetry.
Psalm 1 is a beautiful poem about righteous living, and only one person could fulfill all the conditions mentioned, the exception to ” There is none righteous, no, not one” (Romans 3: 10)
First let me assure you I am not an anti-vaxxer. Both me and my wife got the booster shot of Pfizer vaccine last week, so that is not my beef. The problem is to get accurate information from CDC. All they say is Get the vaccine, and now they want to expand the age down to 5 year olds, even without conducting any meaningful tests.
I am of Swedish origin and my wife is from Denmark, so I follow what is going on in the world to get real, up to date information; CDC, FDA and NIH seem to be indebted to promote vaccines only, so they keep real time information to themselves, or so it seems.
According to a report from the Danish Ministry of Health’s Statens Serum Institut(SSI), nearly 90% of individuals infected with the Omicron coronavirus variant are “fully vaccinated,” or have also had a “booster” injection.
Out of a total reported 41,342 Omicron infections, 29,781 infected individuals had completed the primary vaccination injection schedule.
7,330 infected individuals had been injected with a “booster,” and 731 infected individuals had received one dose.
Compared to the 3,500 unvaccinated people who became infected with Omicron variant, 37,842 infected individuals had been injected with coronavirus vaccines. Denmark’s reported vaccination rate is purported to be nearly 78%. It is clear that the Omicron variant favors vaccinated people. Not only that , but the longer you have been vaccinated the worse it gets. Another statistics from Denmark confirms:
The booster shot does not even bring you back to the original efficiency of the vaccine.
The data appears to suggest a trend, as previous data from Germany showed that 96% of new Omicron coronavirus patients were “fully vaccinated,” while unvaccinated people accounted for only 4% of the infections.
A small sample of data released by the German government found that the Omicron coronavirus variant has been overwhelmingly infecting “fully vaccinated people,” including triple vaccinated people, while unvaccinated people remain largely unscathed by the newly discovered strain.
Out of 4,206 patients in the study, 4,020 had been injected with the COVID-19 vaccines, National File reported Thursday.
In the United States, data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that the Omicron variant had been overwhelmingly infecting people who had received vaccine injections for COVID-19 to the tune of 80%. The Dec 28 U.S. vaccination rate is 69.31%
An explanation as to why vaccinated individuals appear to be getting infected with the new strain at such a staggering rate, when compared to those who have not been injected, could perhaps be found in a report by the New York Times, which claimed that experts in Israel had warned the Israeli government that “too many shots might cause a sort of immune system fatigue, compromising the body’s ability to fight the coronavirus.”
This is a big red flag. Let us stop vaccinate people under the age of 45 unless there are at risk people.
Today’s reading of the Bible begins with John 1: 19-51. John the Baptist testified about the Messiah: “Make straight the way for the Lord”. When he met Jesus he referred him as “The Lamb of God” that “takes away the sin of the world”, and “this is the Son of God”. Jesus called his first disciples, Andrew and Peter, Philip and Nathaniel.
Genesis 2 tells of how God created woman out of man, showing that creation was not complete without man and woman as a unit. This must be taken spiritually, since in Genesis 1 he already created man in His own image, male and female. God’s design is one man, one woman, one lifetime. This would still be the case if we let God chose our mate. If we had followed God’s intent, many sicknesses would not exist, especially sexually transmitted diseases. “He who finds a wife finds what is good and receives favor from the Lord.” Proverbs 18:22
The Holy Bible is the most influential book ever written. It has been translated in its entirety into 704 languages, and the New Testament has been translated into 1160 languages. At least one part of the Bible has bee translated into 3,312 languages, and more translations are coming every year, especially from the Wycliffe translators.
Both the New Testament and the Old Testament begin with the words “In the beginning”. John1:1-18 deals with creation spiritually, and Genesis 1 deals with the physical creation, but with a spiritual emphasis, laying the groundwork for spiritual understanding of how and why we exist.
We are existing in time and space. The question is: What was there before time and space existed, before the beginning?
Answer: God, existing in three persons, God the Father, God the Son (the Word) and God’s Spirit, (the Holy Ghost).
The Three-in-one God alone are eternal, everything else, including time and space, is created.
Len Bilén's blog, a blog about faith, politics and the environment. 