Pastime
My favorite pastime is fishing/boating. Tomorrow I am going with a friend here at our apartment complex who has a boat. God bless him! Fishing is fun, but Catching is even better! Whenever I come home with no fish, Joanne says where’s the fish? I say, I went fishing, not catching! Ha!
I have been a Deep Sea fisherman in the Sea of Cortez for 21 years. Here in California it is predominantly bottom fishing for Halibut and White Sea Bass. I have yet to catch one. It is a whole new paradigm for me, a big learning curve.
It is a lot like rightly dividing the Word. You know something one way your whole life, then you learn that there is another way to understand the Bible. You’re resistant at first, thinking you know all you need to. Over time you end up making “investments” in new equipment, become humbler, and learn about “grace.” You start listening to people you never thought you would.
Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t have a pastime, an activity that brings them closer to God and the Lord Jesus and their fellow man, outside of their normal everyday activities. Even Jesus took time for himself.
What do you do to get away from “it all?”
Sleeping
In the Old Testament when a believer died he was referred to as being asleep. This concept of death carried over to the new as well. Here it refers to those who sleep in Christ. Death is such a harsh reality that it is no wonder it is referred to throughout the Bible as being asleep; it is so much gentler and peaceful.
I don’t know about you, but I love to sleep! Yet, to those of us still living, sleep can be sort of a curse. We can’t get a lot done while we are sleeping; if we are lucky, we might wake up with a new idea, a new way to approach something we were thinking about the day before. But, with the dead there is not even that. Ecclesiastes tells us there is no reasoning or consciousness of the fact we are dead.
What we do know from the Bible is that when we, as born again believers, wake up, it will be to meet the Lord Jesus in the air with other living believers. This will be the 1st thing we will be cognizant of after we die. It may be days, weeks, years or even centuries; but we know that whenever it does occur, we will be there. This is our Hope as believers.
As far as the Old Testament saints are concerned, they will not realize this awareness until seven years later at the resurrection of the Just. A major difference between their awakening and ours is that they will go directly to the land they were promised, as their inheritance. Those involved in this event, will only be those who never had the opportunity to believe in Jesus Christ.
With the exception of the 144,000 of the twelve tribes of Israel who are sealed during the Tribulation, the only chance of having eternal life is by becoming a Christian, in accordance with Romans chapter 10. If I were not all ready a part of the first group, there would be nothing standing in my way to procure eternal life. Sweet dreams.
What is holding you back?
The Logic of the Old/New Testament?
The Logic of the Old/New Testament?. See how believing in this concept of dividing the Bible into these 2 sections is completely illogical.
The Logic of the Old/New Testament?
The Greek word logos, from which we get the word logic, is also used in reference to God’s Word. The division of the Bible between the Old and New Testament is not only illogical but completely unbiblical. There can be no new testament while the testator is living. A testament (will) is of no effect until after the testator has died!
God who is the Holy Spirit divided the Bible into 8 sections called dispensations or administrations, oikonomia. By revelation, Jesus Christ, revealed the one we live in today to the apostle Paul. A major paradigm shift occurred when the Apostle Paul came on the scene, a shift from believers living under the Law of Moses to that of the grace of God, through faith in Christ Jesus.
Paul introduced to us the oikonomia of Grace, called the Secret. It is called the Secret because God kept it a secret from the beginning of the world. Prior to his ascension, Jesus didn’t even know about it; imagine that, his own Father didn’t even tell him. We are presently in the 5th administration of the Bible. The one previous to this one was the Law Administration which was governed by the Law of Moses. Prior to that was Judges, Conscience and the original Paradise. The book of Acts serves as a transition or adjustment period between Law and Grace.
The Law administration ended with the death and raising again of our Lord Jesus, as Jesus fulfilled the Law. Pretty logical isn’t it. It stands to reason that since Jesus fulfilled the Law, that the Law of Moses was in effect during the gospels of Matthew, Mark Luke and John. Therefore, these gospels cannot be considered part of what Bible Translators called the New Testament.
Think on that a while. Logic and reason have been replaced by mysticism in the mind of most believers. When we accept as true, illogical concepts , our minds become blinded to the truth. When something we believe doesn’t make any sense, it is probably not true.
Does this make sense to you?
Types, tupos, of Christs’
In reading one of my favorite books, the author’s were giving illustrations of the relationship between God the Father and his only son Jesus Christ. One of them was the relationship between the Pharaoh in Egypt and Joseph. The Pharaoh gave Joseph his signet ring which represented his authority over all of Egypt. The only exception to Joseph’s authority was the throne.
Another example was that of Abraham and Isaac. This one is even more intimate where Abraham is told to sacrifice his only son that took him over 100 years to get! In this example Isaac is 30 years old and goes along with everything willingly.
As we know, an angel of the LORD stopped Abraham from carrying out the sacrifice of Isaac. These two men are “types” of Christs’; essentially they were “proto-types” of the coming Messiah. Jesus read about these two to prepare him for the joy that was set before him to endure death, knowing what he was in for afterward.
What do you think?
The two Bible v…
The two Bible version that are the most accurate representatives of the original God-breathed Word are, in my opinion, the New Revised Standard Version and the New American Standard Bible, updated edition. If you are not using these daily, I highly recommend that you begin to, at least to compare them to what you are reading.
The KJV of the Bible has hundreds of words added by the translators that are not in italics as some words that were added are. Reading and therefore believing things which were not God-breathed, theo pneustos, is very dangerous.
If you seriously want to know that what you are reading was in any original manuscript I highly recommend a PC Bible Software program. These two versions leave out a lot of the words the KJV adds. These programs will also show what the original words mean according to their Hebrew and Greek usage. Short of this, you need to apprentice yourself to someone who does this, so you end up believing what is true.
Just because we believe something, doesn’t make it right. The Bible says there are many impostors in the church, some knowingly, some not.
What Bible Programs do you recommend?
Home of the Rightly Divided Word 