Tag: faith

January 5: Read through the Holy Bible in a year.

 

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!

Matthew 6:1-18, do good, the Lord’s model prayer, fasting.

Matthew 6:1-18, do good, the Lord’s model prayer, fasting.

Pope Francis has called for a rewriting of the Lord’s Prayer, saying the current translation gives God a bad name and, essentially, does not give the devil his due.

Described in the Bible as a prayer taught by Jesus, the Lord’s Prayer is viewed in the catechism of the Roman Catholic Church as “the summary of the whole gospel.”

In a TV interview December 2017, Pope Francis said that the line asking God to “Lead us not into temptation,” or in Italian, “non indurci in tentazione,” should be changed.

Jesus spoke in Aramaic and this prayer in the gospel of Matthew is originally written in Greek, and it says:

και μη εισενεγκης ημας εις     πειρασμον            αλλα ρυσαι ημας απο του πονηρου and not  bring         us   into temptation(or testing), but rescue   us   from   –     evil.

The Roman Catholic church of France has changed the translation of this verse to “and do not let us fall into temptation” and somehow Pope Francis thinks this would improve on what God has said.

January 4: Read through the Holy Bible in a year.

 

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).

Matthew 5:21-48, fulfill the Law: murder, adultery, divorce, oaths, an eye for an eye, love your enemies.

Matthew 5:21-48, fulfill the law, murder, adultery, divorce, oaths, an eye for an eye, love your enemies.

 

 

 

January 3: Read through the Holy Bible in a year.

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 do better without fellowship with 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 the Lamb’s book of life, the Lamb 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)

January 2: Read through the Holy Bible in a year.

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.

 

 

 

Matthew 4:12-25, the calling of the first disciples, Jesus early ministry.

Matthew 4:12-25, the calling of the first disciples, Jesus early ministry.

The prophecy in Isaiah 9 begins in doom and gloom, but promises the great light.

And Isaiah 9:6-7 is two of the most wonderful verses in all of scripture.


Matthew calls it “the Kingdom of Heaven, the other Gospels “the Kingdom of God”. It means the same.  “My Kingdom is not of this world”

 

January 1: Read through the Holy Bible in a year.

The Holy Bible is the most important book ever written. It is the word of God.

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.