- Oct 4, 2010
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Hi DH,
You asked:
This is why God had the Scriptures written. As a testimony to what He has done in bringing about man and the life that we have.
One must take some time and study to put all of this together. And, as the Scriptures declare, without faith all of this seems as foolishness to those who are perishing. My righteous ones shall live by faith, God declares. We must start with Abraham. God called a regular guy living in Ur of the Chaldeans. A man of no particular importance and why God chose him is honestly anyone's guess. But He did. He made a number of promises to Abraham. One of those was that He was going to raise up a nation of people through him who would be His (God's) people. As we follow along through the account of Abraham and his descendants, we find that they began to write down, often by the command of God, the things that He revealed to them. Moses spent a fairly lengthy period of time on the mountain with God and throughout Moses' life we find God telling him to write things down. These writings became what we know today as the Scriptures of Israel.
My own testimony is that God first proved Himself to me through the many fulfilled prophecies of the Scriptures. Once I came to the understanding that there must be this entity who calls Himself God to His people, because there just isn't anyway that any mere mortal men could possibly have known the outcome of the many prophecies that were fulfilled, then, by faith, I came to believe that if He is right in all of these prophecies, then the rest of it must be true also. The Scriptures do tell us that God cannot lie. Man, of course, limited by the knowledge that man has about man, believes that the Scriptures, like any other writings of men - great books and poems and stories and such - are merely the writings that have been spawned by the thoughts and imaginations of men. The fulfillment of all the prophecies quickly dispels that idea within my mind. There just isn't anyway that the prophecies written in the Scriptures, some hundreds of years before their fulfillment, could have been written by such wanderings, musings and imagination of men. There must really be some being who does know the end from the beginning, just as God declares of Himself in the Scriptures. There honestly just can't be any other explanation of these things, as far as I'm concerned.
So, once I became firmly grounded in my faith and understanding that God does exist, then the rest pretty much fell into line with this understanding that He does love us and He did create us and there is an end game to all of this which is fairly well described in the Revelation of Jesus Christ. Because all the things before were fulfilled just as they have been foretold, I have no doubt that the things yet to be, that have been foretold, will likewise be fulfilled just as we have been told that they will.
So, there is a logical reason for one's understanding that there is a God and He does know the end from the beginning. Once we come face to face with the awesome love and power of this God, then those things that are written in the Scriptures that we just can't quite seem to understand the 'how' that they might have come to be, is answered simply be saying that God did it. He said He did it and I believe Him. Based pretty much on just the fact that He seems to have been right about everything else and therefore, there is no reason that I shouldn't believe Him in all of it.
However, there have always been those who deny God and that's what the Revelation tells us is going to be the eventuality of this existence. This God who has claimed to have created this realm of existence is going to separate from all of mankind those who believe Him and those who don't. Those who love Him and those who don't. Those who understand that He exists and those who don't. He is going to take those who believe and love and understand these things and set them apart from those who don't. Now, there are passages in the Scriptures that tell us the eternal existence after that time for those who believed and loved and understood will be one of peace and satisfaction. Those who didn't will have a life of fairly great suffering and torment. Because I believe that all that God caused to be written to me concerning the many fulfilled prophecies of the old covenant, I then believe that it's 100% likely that all the prophecies yet to be fulfilled will be fulfilled just as they are explained in those same Scriptures.
That's how I know that God did anything.
As to the rest of your following claims that these things for which we have no explanation just didn't happen. Again, the fulfilled prophecies of the Scriptures assure me that there is a being who knows what's going on in this world. Who knows the nature of men that He created and knows how all of this is going to work out. Who is able, merely by His power, to cause a deep sea of water to just separate into two standing walls of water. Who is able by His awesome power to just tell the rays of light from the sun to stop or turn back at any place and time. Who is able to create stars in the heavens that mere moments before didn't exist, and yet while they are billions of billions of billions of miles away from us, their light visible at the moment they were commanded to exist.
God has power that you or I will never completely comprehend. But as we come to faith and trust in Him, we begin to understand that He can do whatever He thinks in His thoughts to do. He has the power and authority over His creation to make a woman who has never had male seed within fifty miles of her womb to be carrying a child. He has the power and authority over His creation to make water jump up and dance like a gargantuan marionette, if He so chooses. He has the power and authority over His creation to make the sun go around backwards throughout the whole of the universe if He so chooses. He has the power and authority over His creation to forgive us of our sin against Him and our fellow man by the method of His choosing. The fullness of God's power and abilities over His creation are pretty much without limit as to what He can make things do.
That's the God that I serve.
I remember the introduction to the old Superman show. That he was able to leap tall buildings with a single bound. Now, I might walk into downtown New York city and think to myself, "Gee, wouldn't it be something if I could just jump over the Empire State building from the sidewalk below. No special devices or tools. Just jump up as if I were jumping rope, but jump high enough to go over the top antenna of the Empire State building. I can't do that. But God can think to imagine that I can jump right over the building and by golly, it will happen! I don't know the 'how' that He would cause me to go airborne from the sidewalk on one side of the building to land gently down on the other side of the building, but I know that He can do it! It is within his power and abilities to merely lift me up off the sidewalk and carry me over the top of the building and then let me fall back down on the other side to land safely on the sidewalk of the other side.
God bless you,
In Christ, ted
You asked:
This is why God had the Scriptures written. As a testimony to what He has done in bringing about man and the life that we have.
One must take some time and study to put all of this together. And, as the Scriptures declare, without faith all of this seems as foolishness to those who are perishing. My righteous ones shall live by faith, God declares. We must start with Abraham. God called a regular guy living in Ur of the Chaldeans. A man of no particular importance and why God chose him is honestly anyone's guess. But He did. He made a number of promises to Abraham. One of those was that He was going to raise up a nation of people through him who would be His (God's) people. As we follow along through the account of Abraham and his descendants, we find that they began to write down, often by the command of God, the things that He revealed to them. Moses spent a fairly lengthy period of time on the mountain with God and throughout Moses' life we find God telling him to write things down. These writings became what we know today as the Scriptures of Israel.
My own testimony is that God first proved Himself to me through the many fulfilled prophecies of the Scriptures. Once I came to the understanding that there must be this entity who calls Himself God to His people, because there just isn't anyway that any mere mortal men could possibly have known the outcome of the many prophecies that were fulfilled, then, by faith, I came to believe that if He is right in all of these prophecies, then the rest of it must be true also. The Scriptures do tell us that God cannot lie. Man, of course, limited by the knowledge that man has about man, believes that the Scriptures, like any other writings of men - great books and poems and stories and such - are merely the writings that have been spawned by the thoughts and imaginations of men. The fulfillment of all the prophecies quickly dispels that idea within my mind. There just isn't anyway that the prophecies written in the Scriptures, some hundreds of years before their fulfillment, could have been written by such wanderings, musings and imagination of men. There must really be some being who does know the end from the beginning, just as God declares of Himself in the Scriptures. There honestly just can't be any other explanation of these things, as far as I'm concerned.
So, once I became firmly grounded in my faith and understanding that God does exist, then the rest pretty much fell into line with this understanding that He does love us and He did create us and there is an end game to all of this which is fairly well described in the Revelation of Jesus Christ. Because all the things before were fulfilled just as they have been foretold, I have no doubt that the things yet to be, that have been foretold, will likewise be fulfilled just as we have been told that they will.
So, there is a logical reason for one's understanding that there is a God and He does know the end from the beginning. Once we come face to face with the awesome love and power of this God, then those things that are written in the Scriptures that we just can't quite seem to understand the 'how' that they might have come to be, is answered simply be saying that God did it. He said He did it and I believe Him. Based pretty much on just the fact that He seems to have been right about everything else and therefore, there is no reason that I shouldn't believe Him in all of it.
However, there have always been those who deny God and that's what the Revelation tells us is going to be the eventuality of this existence. This God who has claimed to have created this realm of existence is going to separate from all of mankind those who believe Him and those who don't. Those who love Him and those who don't. Those who understand that He exists and those who don't. He is going to take those who believe and love and understand these things and set them apart from those who don't. Now, there are passages in the Scriptures that tell us the eternal existence after that time for those who believed and loved and understood will be one of peace and satisfaction. Those who didn't will have a life of fairly great suffering and torment. Because I believe that all that God caused to be written to me concerning the many fulfilled prophecies of the old covenant, I then believe that it's 100% likely that all the prophecies yet to be fulfilled will be fulfilled just as they are explained in those same Scriptures.
That's how I know that God did anything.
As to the rest of your following claims that these things for which we have no explanation just didn't happen. Again, the fulfilled prophecies of the Scriptures assure me that there is a being who knows what's going on in this world. Who knows the nature of men that He created and knows how all of this is going to work out. Who is able, merely by His power, to cause a deep sea of water to just separate into two standing walls of water. Who is able by His awesome power to just tell the rays of light from the sun to stop or turn back at any place and time. Who is able to create stars in the heavens that mere moments before didn't exist, and yet while they are billions of billions of billions of miles away from us, their light visible at the moment they were commanded to exist.
God has power that you or I will never completely comprehend. But as we come to faith and trust in Him, we begin to understand that He can do whatever He thinks in His thoughts to do. He has the power and authority over His creation to make a woman who has never had male seed within fifty miles of her womb to be carrying a child. He has the power and authority over His creation to make water jump up and dance like a gargantuan marionette, if He so chooses. He has the power and authority over His creation to make the sun go around backwards throughout the whole of the universe if He so chooses. He has the power and authority over His creation to forgive us of our sin against Him and our fellow man by the method of His choosing. The fullness of God's power and abilities over His creation are pretty much without limit as to what He can make things do.
That's the God that I serve.
I remember the introduction to the old Superman show. That he was able to leap tall buildings with a single bound. Now, I might walk into downtown New York city and think to myself, "Gee, wouldn't it be something if I could just jump over the Empire State building from the sidewalk below. No special devices or tools. Just jump up as if I were jumping rope, but jump high enough to go over the top antenna of the Empire State building. I can't do that. But God can think to imagine that I can jump right over the building and by golly, it will happen! I don't know the 'how' that He would cause me to go airborne from the sidewalk on one side of the building to land gently down on the other side of the building, but I know that He can do it! It is within his power and abilities to merely lift me up off the sidewalk and carry me over the top of the building and then let me fall back down on the other side to land safely on the sidewalk of the other side.
God bless you,
In Christ, ted
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