Tag: Holy Bible

January 8, read the Bible in a year in PowerPoint; commented.

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 five thousand (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 may have other plans for us. In the feeding of the five thousand it is important that they had to start with a ridiculously small amount and end up with much more leftovers than when they started. Sometimes miracles happen and we don’t even notice, but when we participate things sink in.

With the building of the tower of Babel the people started thinking they could do very well without God. They started to have globalist thinking and be able to build the perfect society without God. They started to produce the first money and in so doing they facilitated the “oldest profession” and the goddess Ishtar was worshiped. God decided to confuse their language so they could no longer understand each other globally. We know that happens all the time. Nearly every family has a few words or expressions that are unique to that family. In a city you can hear the different accents in different parts of the city, dialects differ in every valley, and so on.

January 7, read the Bible in a year in PowerPoint; commented.

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 destined for servanthood and 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.

When Jesus defended his testimony the Scriptures were already written and pointed to the coming Messiah. In most of the prophesies Messiah is described as a conqueror. He will reestablish Israel in all its glory, and the prophesies of the suffering messiah of divine origin were ignored as being inconsistent with the purpose and destiny of Israel. This is why Jesus testimony was vehemently opposed.

In Noah’s time on the other hand none of the Scriptures had been written, so God in His grace gave Noah the covenant He would never again destroy mankind with a flood, and He sealed it with the sign of the rainbow as a remembrance. After the deluge weather patterns changed and thunderstorms became common in season. In spite of this it didn’t take long for Noah to sin and get drunk, and from that story we get “the curse of Ham” which really was the curse of Canaan.

January 6, read the Bible in a year in PowerPoint; commented.

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 mankind still trying to do it all by themselves 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 one male and one female of each specie of unclean animals, and also birds. The aquatic life did just fine. After the animals had entered, God shut the door and it 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. The dove and the olive branch has since 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 the fight that is going on even today.

January 5, read the Bible in a year in PowerPoint; commented.

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, held in contempt by the Jews, scorned and rejected by her many ex husbands and the town people, 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.)

After the fall God revealed himself in His marvelous creation, but the Word of God was not yet given. The spiritual connection was lost, so people did what they deemed most pleasurable. This is much like the situation today: Sigmund Freud declared sexual man the most mature man, rejecting the spiritual aspect and we have gone downhill ever since, rejecting all personal relationship with God as pure imagination.

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!

January 4, read the Bible in a year in PowerPoint; commented.

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. After the fall people had the spiritual void not being able to fellowship with God, nor even communicate. To satisfy the need to do what they felt God wanted, and God showed that only sacrifice involving the shedding of blood would suffice

 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 sacrifice, the first murder, the first man (Enoch) to be carried directly to God rather than die, (because he walked with God).

January 3, read the Bible in a year in PowerPoint; commented.

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, the ability to do independent critical thinking, and the inevitable 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 so doing we think we can build a better world 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 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 the Bible in a year in PowerPoint; commented.

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

To find out how God created woman we move to verse 21 So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.“The rib” is from the Greek Septuagint translation of the Old Testament. The original Hebrew meaning is “took part of the man’s side“, but since the Greek Septuagint was the most used version of the Scriptures for the early Christians, the rib won.

Don’t get stuck on the detail if it was from the side or from a rib. That is not the point of the story. Some take it to only mean “the two shall be one flesh” is only for procreation, but it is more than that. I can attest it works, having been married now to my wife for over 57 years. It works through communication and fellowship with God. This fellowship is broken in Genesis 3 and forward in the Old Testament.

January 1, read the Bible in a year in PowerPoint; commented.

The Holy Bible is the most influential book ever written. According to Wikipedia it has been translated in its entirety into 724 languages, and the New Testament has been translated into 1617 languages. At least one part of the Bible has bee translated into 3,589 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.

Genesis 1 deals with the physical creation with 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.

Another Question: Why did God say “it was good” for day 1,3,4 and 5 but not for day 2 and it was very good after day 6?

Answer: The ecosystem is a work in progress and will function differently for each phase and finally come to completion when all parts are set in place, which includes people. We are responsible to God to be good stewards of the earth and leave it a better place than we found it. The main regulator of temperature on earth is the clouds. They cool by day and warm by night. The time of day they appear is also very important, and there is no risk for the earth to overheat.

December 31, read the Bible in a year in PowerPoint; with comments.

Revelation 22 begins with the Angel showing the Apostle John the River of Life, the time is near, Jesus is coming soon and He testifies to the Churches, don’t add to or take away from God’s word. Jesus is coming Quickly, Amen!

Proverbs 31. The sayings of King Lemuel. The book of Proverbs ends up with “The Wife of Noble Character”, and every day I thank the Lord for my wife of 57 years. Lives would have been quite different (three children and seven grandchildren would not exist at all) if God had not brought us together.

Psalm 150. Let everything that hath breath praise the LORD!

December 30, read the Bible in a year in PowerPoint; with comments.

Revelation 21. The apostle John saw in a vision how all things are made new, the New Jerusalem was before his eyes and the glory of the New Jerusalem was on full display. there was no temple in it, all glory goes to the Lamb, the Alpha and Omega!

Malachi 4 describes the great and dreadful day of the Lord, but before that day God will send His messenger Elijah.