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God's Reconciliation


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Romans 1:8 - A labor of love, it is trying to understand something and then work with that understanding. Love, the behavioral glue that binds together the believer to other members of the Body of Christ, that is how God designed the new creation in Christ to operate. Love is the attitudinal adhesive God intends to keep the Body of Christ functionally smoothly and operating efficiently and effectively. Love is the bond that both unifies and edifies the members of the Body of Christ. 


Maturity is all about the degree to which you participate in the increase of the Body of Christ unto the deifying of its self in love. The degree to which you participate in that which brings unity to the Body of Christ and edifies the believer to that degree you can consider yourself to be mature. We serve others today motivated by appreciation in the fact that God loves them, we are intricately joined to them, just as we are joined to Christ. 


The law had apprehension as a motivation factor. Our labor of love under the Age of Grace has had the apprehension aspect removed entirely. We are to serve others today based on how God expressed his love to others through Christ and what he accomplished for them, who he made them and us to be in our savior by joining us to our savior. 


Christian living is not about doing, it is about believing something, and when we believe something and we continue to take in God’s Word, it should change who we are, not change what we are trying to do and trying to become. Every believer has a part to play when it comes to that which edifies and unifies the Body of Christ, but attitude is that which instigates action. Faith does not come in gallons and tons, faith is not something “do I have enough faith, have I believed firmly enough?” Faith is simply taking your stand where God takes his stand.

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Romans 1:9-10 - Achieving God’s goals for our ambassadorship is learning to distinguish his goal, from his desire. It is a critical distinction, because it can spell the difference between success and failure. His goal is any specific result reflecting his purposes for our ambassadorship, that does not depend on people or circumstances beyond our ability. 


The only person who can block his goal or render it uncertain or impossible is us, and if we adopt the attitude of cooperation with his goals, his goal can be reached. His desire is any specific result that depends on the cooperation of other people or the success of events or favorable circumstances we cannot control.

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Romans 1:11 - Dealing with Satan and his forces is not a power encounter; it is a truth encounter. You can not expect God to protect you from Satan and his forces influences if you do not take an active part in his prepared strategy. The armor that we must take up to protect ourselves from Satan and his forces attack, the first three are established because of our identity in Christ, the last three help us continue to win the battle. 


It is critical that when we put on the armor of God, we start with the belt of truth. If Satan and his forces can deceive us into believing a lie, they can control our life in that area. It is absolutely vital that we put on the breastplate of righteousness, so that we can resist the persistent accusations of Satan and his forces, they never give up trying to get us down and keep us down by hurling one false accusation after another. 


We put on the shoes of peace, because we are to forgive as we have been forgiven, and we must base our relationships with others on the same criteria. If we fail to speak the truth in love and manage our emotions, anger which turns to bitterness and unforgiveness is an open invitation to Satan and his forces. 


In addition to believing it and thinking it, the Word of God is the only offensive weapon mentioned in the list of armor. If you are going to resist Satan and his forces, you must do so outwardly so they can understand you and be put to flight. That is why Paul insists that we be transformed by the renewing of our minds. Satan and his forces have no power over us except what we give them by failing to take every thought captive and thus being deceived into believing their lies.

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Romans 1:12 - It is imperative to our growth and maturity that we believe God’s truth about who we are in Christ. God is looking at our identification with his son and at what his energizing power from on high is producing in us, because that is where our life is as far as God is concerned. We cannot use experience to prove the validity of our doctrinal position, we must always use doctrine to prove the validity of our experience. 


Our brains are an engine of understanding, our transformation process that is taking place in our lives as we take in the Word of God and apply it to the details of our lives, it is only when we come to properly understand God from his perspective concerning ourselves. The battle is taking place between the ears, between fleshy thinking and divine thinking. Trust that God knows what he is doing, and he is going to do it whether we pray or not. God knows precisely what he is going to do. 


Paul doesn’t tell us that we are filled with God’s energizing power from on high, but instead, Paul is telling us that we should be filled with God’s energizing power from on high. In other words, we should allow God’s energizing power from on high to be in control of our lives. God’s energizing power from on high works in us, but only to the degree that we are willing to yield ourselves to God’s use in our ministry of reconciliation. 


The most dangerous and harmful detriments to our growth is passivity, putting our mind in neutral and coasting, sitting back and waiting for God to do everything is not God’s way to maturity. Our old pattern for thinking and responding to our sin-trained flesh must be transformed by the renewing of our mind, it is our responsibility to change our behavior by putting to death the deeds of the body.

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Romans 1:13 - We cannot base our self-worth or our personal success on our desires, no matter how godly they may be, because we cannot control their fulfillment. When a desire is wrongly elevated to a goal, and that goal is frustrated, we must deal with all the anger, anxiety, and depression which may accompany that failure. Dealing with the disappointments of unmet desires is a lot easier then dealing with the anger, anxiety, and depression of goals, we would do well to distinguish goals from desires. 


When we begin to align our goals with God’s goals for our ambassadorship, and our desires with his desires, we will rid our life of a lot of anger, anxiety, and depression. We can know on a moment-by-moment basis if our ambassadorship is properly aligned with his truth. God has established a feedback system which is designed to grab our attention, so we can examine the validity of our goal. That system is our emotions. When an experience leaves us feeling angry, anxious, or depressed, those emotional signposts are there to alert us that we may be cherishing a faulty goal. 


Any goal which can be blocked by forces we cannot control (other then God’s goal) is not a healthy goal, because our success in that arena is out of our hands. When we feel anxious in a task, our anxiety may be signaling the uncertainty of a goal we have chosen. We are wishing something will happen, but we have no guarantee that it will. We can control some of the factors, but not all of them. 


When we base our future success on something that can never happen, we have an impossible goal. Our depression is a signal that our goal, no matter how noble, may never be reached. Depression often signals that we are desperately clinging to a goal we have little or no chance of achieving, and that is not a healthy goal. Feelings of anger should prompt us to reexamine our ambassadorship, and the mental goals we have formulated to accomplish God’s message of reconciliation.

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Romans 1:14 - The Bema has to do with the building project. The building is the Body of Christ. We as members of the Body of Christ, are co-labors with God in the building project. The Chief Architect for the building project, the master builder is the apostle Paul. The blueprint for the proper construction of this building has been given to apostle Paul for the work crew of which we are apart. 


Paul’s ministry was distinct, because Paul was the chief, the head architect for the Age of Grace for the building called the Body of Christ. The Bema of Christ, issues with which we need to be concerned, understand God does not want us to be unaware of the evaluation we will face. 


The Bema has to do with the building project, remember whenever we see those words “labour or work” in Paul’s epistle, they are always in direct connection to the Bema of Christ. What is this blueprint? Paul’s epistles are laid out in the manner of Doctrine, Reproof, Correction, issues. 


Paul tells us what those issues are in those epistles, and when it comes to our reward worthiness or not being worthy of reward, Faith, Hope, Love, are the maturity of the believer is all about, and the maturity of the believer is what the evaluation at the Bema of Christ is all about.

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Romans 1:15 - Being created in the image of God means that we must view ourselves as intrinsically valuable and richly invested with meaning, potentially and responsibilities. We are to be and to do on a finite scale, what God is and does on an infinite scale.

By virtue of being created in the image of God, human beings are capable of reflecting his character in their own life; animals possess none of these qualities. What distinguishes people from animals is the fact that human nature inherently has godlike possibilities.

Omniscience, omnipotence, or omnipresence, none of these other divine attributes have been ascribed to the human race as part of the image of God. We have been created to reflect God in our thinking and actions, but the physical sustained by God and dependent upon him for our existence in this world and in the world to come. Developing a godly character in this present life, this will be our personal identity in the world to come. It is the character or personality that we have developed in this life, that God preserves in his memory.

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Romans 1:16 - What a marvelous plan God had for us! God has kept the fingerprints of the guilt-worthy off of the righteousness he designed for the guilt-worthy. God has committed to us the ministry of reconciliation, to tell the world God is not imputing their trespasses unto them; so we see the world still thinks he is. This ministry of reconciliation is not to the saved, we know we are reconciled, but now all have access to God, a change in status for the entire world. Does this mean the entire world is save? No.

There are those who mistakenly suppose that reconciliation is the same thing as justification. These people have jumped to the conclusion that Jesus Christ taking the sin issue off the table of God’s justice through his becoming sin for the human race is that which makes a person as righteous as God; they have mistaken reconciliation for justification. Being declared righteous is God’s gift to the believing sinner and it has nothing whatsoever to do with the sinner himself doing anything to deserve or merit that righteous standing.

What God was doing through his son; God knew about what he intended to do before the world was ever formed, yet, God had kept this secret from ages and generations until it was time for the ascended Jesus Christ to reveal it to the apostle Paul. God no longer views us in our human flesh, he views us in our identity in the second Adam (Jesus Christ), he views us in our glorified identity. In our identity in Christ, now we can bear fruit unto God, but it is only in our identity in Christ, not through this fleshly body in which we dwell.

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Romans 1:17 - We could look at the righteousness of God, in the sense of righteousness being an attribute of God, God’s righteous character is part of God’s glory. BUT NOW the righteousness of God, apart from the law is manifested; God has provided for people what people desperately lacks, God’s very own perfect righteousness. Inside that gospel message is good news concerning a righteousness that far exceeds the righteousness of any person, no matter how righteous appearing that person may be.

The righteousness spoken of in what Paul calls “the gospel of Christ” is no less than than the perfect righteousness that belongs to God himself. Being justified results in an unchanging attitude of peace with God for every believer. Reconciliation has to do with God’s justice being satisfied for sins, and that means all of them and that means for all the world, reconciliation is a sin issue. Justification is something entirely different, it has to do with a judicial decree of the very righteousness of God himself freely attributed to the believer’s account.

The avenue of our faith in Christ’s faithful performance on our behalf, rather than peace based upon our performance, results in an unchanging attitude of peace with God for every believer. We now have available for the enjoyment of our everyday experience an everlasting peaceful relationship with God! Justification is unfathomable to the earthly mind, that God could judicially consider you just as his perfectly righteous son.

This gift decree of righteousness comes totally apart from any and all human promise, any or all human performance or any or all human production, no human merit of people whatsoever for this free gift. God will never consider people’s works as a payment for God’s justifying declaration.

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Romans 1:18-32 - God is fair in revealing his perfect wrath against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of the human race. In other words, in spite of people’s excuses, in spite of trying to shift the blame for people’s wrath-worthiness, Paul is presenting the evidence that all people of all time justly deserve the wrath of God, because all people are without excuse. It’s not what we deserve that is the issue, because all people deserve the wrath of a perfectly just God. 


People glorify themselves by filtering everything they say and everything they do through that screen of self-protection, self-elevation, and self-gratification. No matter what we wish others to believe, we seek to satisfy self first and foremost. It is true of all of us, whether we like to admit it or not. People began their journey with unthankfulness, a lack of appreciation for the true God, and once on that road of a darkened heart, they traveled through such checkpoints as human reasoning and close-mindedness until their wayward course at it’s final destination brought them all the way to what God calls vile affections. 


You see, vile affections is nothing more than idolatry at its logical conclusion: the end point of people replacing God with people. Things have not changed from the very beginning of time, we are at the same point today, or rapidly approaching it, that resulted in God giving up on the Gentiles way back in the book of Genesis. They knew about God, they chose not to keep him in their thoughts. The conscience has been present in people since the garden, and knowledge of the reality of God has been present as well. 


That is Paul’s point, it is not just that people do these things, the problem is all people are wrath worthy, because all people have minds that are capable of doing these things given enough time or the right circumstances. Anyone of us here are capable of doing what anyone else in this world has ever done. Do you know what these vile affections that Paul is making reference to are called today? An alternate lifestyle. Obviously, unclean hearts, darkened minds attempt to take the shame out of it. The idea is, let’s just get on with life and accept it for what it is.

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I rewrote this post, thanks for any insight. Romans 1:9-10 - When we think of pouring a foundation for a building, we might think of something like concrete being use as the foundation material. We can relate that to Paul’s job, when it came to dispensing the doctrinal truth.
It was committed to the apostle Paul to dispense the doctrinal concrete which would become that firm foundation upon which a believer’s growth might take place. Since growth is an important issue, it was essential that the doctrinal concrete Paul would begin to pour would contain the appropriate ingredients and that those ingredients would be in the correct proportions. 


What happens if concrete’s too thin or too thick, doesn’t have sufficient water or moist with it. So we see these concrete doctrines would have to be prepared properly. They’d have to be spread adequately and smoothly to the point that our minds become set with the truths Paul was commissioned to establish. We can not pour a foundation properly, even if we have the proper ingredients for the foundation material apart from preparing the soil properly on which those ingredients are to be poured. We would want the foundation of the structure to be poured in an appropriate manner. If the soil of a person’s mind is not prepared by that which God has revealed about himself, then foundational truths holds no meaning. 


Achieving God’s goals for our ambassadorship is learning to distinguish his goal, from his desire. It is a critical distinction, because it can spell the difference between success and failure. His goal is any specific result reflecting his purposes for our ambassadorship, that does not depend on people or circumstances beyond our ability. The only person who can block his goal or render it uncertain or impossible is us, and if we adopt the attitude of cooperation with his goals, his goal can be reached. His desire is any specific result that depends on the cooperation of other people or the success of events or favorable circumstances we cannot control.

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Romans 2:1 - Paul knew that the defense mechanism resident within the pride nature of the human heart would be instant in it’s response to protest the accusation of wrath worthiness. Paul knew the human heart would not only be quick, but that it would be ingenious in the pleas that it would offer as to why we are not wrath-worthy. Paul anticipated the reaction of the human heart given the sin nature disease. Paul anticipated that we would jump to defend ourselves. Paul anticipated that some people would be quick to defend other people. 


Paul has done what any wise prosecuting attorney would do, he has been eliminating our excuses before we have opportunity to present them. No one has a self-defense plea that will successfully excuse them from being counted worthy of God’s wrath. No one therefore, will be able to escape the judgment of God by anything that they do. This is what Paul has been setting out to prove; the necessity of justification, the gift declaration of righteousness by faith. 


Paul does not saying IF we do these things and IF we judge another then we are guilty. Paul is saying whenever we judge another we are automatically condemning yourself, because the truth is we do the same things, we may do them in a different way, but rest assured we do them. Anytime we condemn the coming shortnesses in others, we need to understand the reality of the fact that we are all in the same boat, we all come short in the righteousness department due to that indwelling sin nature. 


We all come short of God’s measure of rightness. A person who is in the gutter, so to speak, oftentimes realizes the situation they have gotten themselves into, but a person who believes they are in a position to judge someone else; a person who has rationalized away their own short comings is one who is failing to recognize the sins of self.

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1 John 1:9 - “sins” is a Double Metonymy, a figure of speech that replaces the name of a thing with the name of something else with which it is closely associated. A Figure of speech relates to the form in which the words are used. It consists in the fact that a word or words are used out of their ordinary sense, or place, or manner, for the purpose of attracting our attention to what is thus said. A Figure of speech is a designed and legitimate departure from the laws of language, in order to emphasize what is said. 


John was writing to the Israelites, but to the necessity of that confession for the Israelites. Ezekiel 36:26-28, when will this national sanctification come to fruition? When Israel is willing to accept Jesus Christ as their messiah and admit they swore falsely when they entered into a covenant with God vowing they could merit a righteous standing before him through their performance. 


The confession was indeed called for. It was not about confessing the three lies on Monday and the bad attitude on Wednesday, and the idolatrous thinking on Friday, it was not about any of that. It was not an option testimony in the days of Jesus Christ, it was a requirement for the remission of sins. It was the way people could be identified with the faith associated with the confession of Leviticus 26:40. 


Israel was continually being called upon to repent, to change their thinking. John called upon the nation to repent, the 12 called upon Israel to repent, and Jesus called upon the nation to repent, God wanted them to change their thinking about the source of their righteousness and the identity of their Messiah.

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After God gave up on the nations, God experiments with a single individual of believing; Abraham’s believing withstands many a trial. God is the owner of the land, Abraham was called to. God is empowered to set conditions or residency requirements for those who would reside in it, like a landlord. God is seeking replacement tenants who are going to follow the moral rules of residence that God has established for his land. God’s promise to Abraham is formalized in a ritual ceremony called a suzerainty covenant. 


The patriarchical covenant, which is a covenant in which a superior party, a suzerain dictates the terms of a political treaty usually, and an inferior party obeys them. The arrangement primarily serves the interest of the suzerain, and not the vassal or the subject. So God is making a land grant to a favored subject, and there’s an ancient ritual that ratifies the oath. In this kind of covenant, the parties to the oath would pass between the split carcass of a sacrificial animal, as if to say, that they agree they will suffer the same fate as this animal, if they violate the covenant. 


Abraham cuts sacrificial animals in two, and God, but only God, passes between the two halves. Only God seems to be obligated by the covenant, obligated to fulfill the promise that he’s made. Abraham doesn’t appear to have any obligation in return. In this case, it is the subject, Abraham, and not the suzerain, God, who is benefited by this covenant, and that’s a complete reversal of this ritual ceremony. Their is a moral justification for the grant of land to Abraham, the current inhabitants of the land are polluting it, filling it with bloodshed and idolatry. And when the land becomes so polluted, completely polluted, it will spew out its inhabitants. 


That process, God says, isn't complete; so Abraham's offspring through Isaac, they are going to have to wait, the lease isn’t up yet. Abraham is obedient to God in a way that no one has been up to this point, but ultimately, the model of blind obedience is rejected, too. When Abraham prepares to slaughter his own son, God sees that blind believing can be as destructive and evil as disobedience, so God relinquishes his demand for blind obedience. 


The only relationship that will work with humans is one in which there is a balance between unchecked independence and blind obedience, and God seems to finally have found the working relationship with humans that he has been seeking since their creation, with a man named Jacob. When Jacob undergoes a change in name, Israel, meaning one who wrestles, who struggles with God; God and humans lock in an eternal struggle, neither prevailing, yet both forever changed by their encounter with one another.

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The drama of Adam and Eve’s life should revolve not around the search for eternal life, nor preoccupation with immortality; it was not in Yahweh’s design for this kind of drama. It was Yahweh’s design for the tree of life to have been eaten of, there was no danger to Adam and Eve going on eternally, being immortal. When Adam forfeited his inheritance; and the promise of a coming Deliverer and Redeemer was given. 


Who has the right to redeem the forfeited inheritance, the lost Paradise? Satan is in possession of this world now, and as such Satan was able in a peculiar way to tempt him who had come to redeem it, in the only lawful way in which it could be redeemed. Who is worthy, who will act the Goel’s (or Redeemer’s) part for man and for Israel, and recover his lost estate. 


And while Jesus was in Jerusalem, at the feast of the Passover, many believed in him, because they saw the miracles which he did; and there was a man of the Pharisees there, whose name was Nicodemus, a ruler of the Israelites; and he came to Jesus by night, and said to him, “Teacher, we know that you are a teacher sent from God; for no man can do these miracles that you are doing, unless God is with him.” 


Jesus replied, saying to him, “Truly I say to you, that, unless a man be born anew, he cannot behold the sovereignty of God.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can an old man be born? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?” Jesus replied, saying to him, “Truly I say to you, that, unless a man be born of water and new nature, he cannot enter the sovereignty of Yahweh. 


That which is born of the flesh, is flesh; and that which is born of new nature, is new nature. Be not surprised that I said to you, you must be born of new nature.” Nicodemus answered, saying to him, “How can these things be?” Yesus answered, saying to him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?” 


God has to modify his plan, by barring access to the tree of life; that was not something presumably God planned to do. Adam and Eve had access to this tree up to that point, as long as their will conformed to the will of God, there was no danger to their going on eternally, being immortal. Once they discovered their moral freedom, once they discovered that they could thwart God and work evil in the world, and abuse and corrupt all that God had created, then God could not afford to allow them access to the tree of life. 


That would be tantamount to creating divine enemies, immortal enemies. So God must maintain the upper hand in his struggle with these humans who have learned to defy him. And God maintains the upper hand in this, the fact that humans eventually must die. God stations the cherubim and the fiery ever-turning sword to guard the way back to the tree of life, once Adam and Eve were banished from the garden. The tree of life is now inaccessible; no humans have access to immortality, and the pursuit of immortality is futile.

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Thomas O’Buck’s Reasonings: 


My thoughts on prayer…communication with God himself. If Christians are filled with the spirit of God, and if it is the spirit of truth and it dwells in us, then we have an amazing thing that we don’t recognized the potential of. The very same spirit that dwelled in Christ and revealed to him the thoughts and intentions of men’s hearts also dwells in us. 


Since the spirit groans with thoughts we cannot utter, it reveals the thoughts and intentions of our hearts directly to God whether we are able to express them or not. It also reveals the thoughts and intentions of God’s heart directly to us, if we will just listen to him instead of constantly telling him what we want. That means we don’t “go pray”, instead, we are in a constant state of prayer to and from God through the spirit God has given us. 


Everything we, as spirit filled Christians, think, say, and do is offered directly to God through his spirit ALL THE TIME. Religious people “go pray” and argue over how, what, when, where, and why to pray. People who walk in the spirit of God are in a constant state of prayer.

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A free gift, but with a condition.

BUT NOW, no longer does the human race have to strive to attain and maintain God’s acceptance on the basis of who they are and what they can do. Our decree of judicial perfection in the eyes of God comes not through Christ’s death for our sins, but through our union with Christ’s resurrection life. If a person believes Christ died for their sins, but does not believe that God’s justice was satisfied, when Christ died for those sins, that person has not believed Christ died for their sins. 


God purchased the human race out of sins dominion, never to be returned to the market place of sin again. By removing the sin issue from the table of God’s justice, God effectively canceled Satan’s ownership of all the human race. Satan can lay claim to no person based on that persons sinfulness. 


It was God’s plan before the creation of the world, that humankind’s fingerprints would not be found on humankind's salvation. Reconciliation has to do with God’s justice being satisfied for sins, and that means all of them and that means for all the world, reconciliation is a sin issue. Justification is something entirely different, it has to do with a judicial decree of the very righteousness of God himself freely attributed to the believer’s account.


Now I am being asked to believe in one more thing? A free gift was offered, but now this gift has a condition? Those who believe Jesus was purely human tended to understand the Israelites history and they even accept him as a messiah, but that does not mean they think he was God. 


They know the monotheism of Israel does not and cannot evolve from polytheism, because the two are based on radically divergent world-views, radically divergent intuitions about reality. The monotheism of Israel was not, it could not be the natural outgrowth of the polytheism of an earlier age, it was a radical break with it. 


Monotheism was a revolution, not an evolution. Therefore, they say, no, Jesus cannot be divine. The early Christians who chose the human and divine route, though they had to spilt this up. Some believed Jesus was always divine; others believed Jesus became divine. 


If Jesus became divine, then when did he become divine, at his birth, at his baptism, or at his resurrection? Other Christians say, no, he always was divine, but even they believed in different choices too, because some believed Jesus was divine but also fully human. 


Other Christians believed Jesus was fully divine but not fully human. They believed Jesus was so divine he was God, so that when Jesus walked along on wet sand on the beach, his feet did not leave footprints, that is how divine he was, but this belief became declared as a heresy. 


Out of all these choices, only one of them is considered Orthodox by the later church, so that what Christians end up with is the Nicene Creed, or the Creed of Chalcedon, which is what Christians came to believe? There were lots of complexities in early Christianity that finally got whittled down into a more united consensus view on Christology.

Edited by teachmevp
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The people in this video will be a wake up call for you Ministers of Righteousness followers and you Gentile Kingdom followers. The people in this video are going to have a lot of fun

because you Gentile Kingdom believers are putting the cart before the horse. You have to survive the ‘sunteleia’ before you get to the ‘telos’. The Day of Yahweh (Yahweh - The Israelite’s God) will be a prolonged period; it must not be confined to “seven years,” as is so often done. 


After the Body of Christ is lifted off the earth, the whole period of the Day of Yahweh is called the final meeting of the ages, or the Greek word “sunteleia”; but, the crisis in which it culminates is called the end of the age, or the Greek word “telos.” These two Greek words are rendered “end” in the New Testament, but the use of these two words must be carefully distinguished. 


Sunteleia denotes a finishing or ending together, or in conjunction with other things. It implies that several things meet together, and reach their end during the same period; whereas telos is the point of time at the end of that period. The sign of the telos is the setting up of “the abomination of desolation” spoken of by Daniel the prophet. 


Thus the telos, those who endure to this, the same shall be saved, and will be among the overcomers specially referred to in these seven letters during the Great Tribulation; to whom these promises are made, and to whom they peculiarly refer. 


The Great Tribulation, which is the central subject, but Daniel is not permitted to do much more than make known the fact of the Great Tribulation out of which Daniel’s people, the Israelites were to be delivered. The particulars and the circumstances of that day, were not to be made known at that time by Daniel. 


The Day of Yahweh will be a prolonged period; it must not be confined to “seven years,” as is so often done. These events may occupy a period of thirty-three years; and if to these we add the seven years of the last week of Daniel, we have a period of forty years. Matt. Chapter 24, “What shall be the sign of your coming, and of the sunteleia of the age?” 


Jesus describes four of those seals, and adds, “All these are a beginning of sorrows.” This fixes these first four seals as the “beginning” of the sunteleia of the Day of Yahweh. This “beginning” may be spread over some years before the Great Tribulation, proper, comes on. Not one of these seals has yet been opened, nor can any period of history be pointed out in which these first four seals have been in operation simultaneously.

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The followers of the Creed of their new Apostle Nicene changed the meaning of a word, they changed the context of this story. Here is the story before they got their hands on it. 


Just a reminder, this is the second Adam here. Yeshua was everything that the first Adam was, before Adam allowed Eve to eat of that tree. Satan was successful with the first Adam. Now Satan has his chance to try and do it again with the second Adam. 


And Yeshua was about thirty years old; and Yeshua, having the fullness of power, yea, the powerful power of Yahweh upon him, returned from the Jordan. Than was Yeshua led by Yahweh into the wilderness forty days, to be tempted by Satan; and during those days, he ate nothing; and he was with the wild beasts; and when he had completed them, he was at last hungry; and Satan said to him, “If you are the son of Yahweh, command this stone to become bread.” Yeshua replied, saying to him, “It is written, that man does not live on bread alone, but that man may live on anything that Yahweh decrees.” 


And Satan conducted him to a high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the land, in a little time; and Satan said to him, “To you will I give all this dominion, and the glory of it, which is committed to me, and to whom I please, I give it; if therefore, you will worship before me, the whole shall be yours.” But Yeshua replied, saying to him, “It is written, revere only Yahweh, and worship him alone, to him shall you hold fast, and swear only by his name.” 


And he brought him to Jerusalem, and set him on a pinnacle of the temple, and said to him, “If you are the son of Yahweh, cast yourself down from here, for it is written, he will give his angels charge over you, to keep you; and in their arms will they sustain you, lest you strike your foot against a stone.” And Yeshua replied, saying to him, “It is said, do not try Yahweh.” And when Satan had finished all his temptations, he departed from him for a time; and Satan came, and said to Yeshua, “If you are the son of Yahweh, command these stones to become bread.” But Yeshua replied, and said, “It is written, that man does not live on bread alone, but that man may live on anything that Yahweh decrees.” 


Then Satan took him to the Holy City, and set him on a pinnace of the temple, and said to him, “If you are the son of Yahweh, cast yourself down; for it is written, that he will give his angles charge of you, and in their hands will they sustain you, lest you strike your foot against a stone.” Yeshua said to him, “It is moreover written, do not try Yahweh.” Then Satan took him to a mountain that was very high, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world, and their glory; and said to him, “All these will I give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” Then Yeshua said to him, “Begone, Satan; for it is written, revere only Yahweh, and worship him alone, to him shall you hold fast, and swear only by his name. 


Then Satan left Yeshua; and lo, angels came, and ministered to him. Wisdom was in the beginning, and that very wisdom was with Yahweh, and Yahweh was that wisdom. Wisdom was in the beginning with Yahweh. Everything came to be by Yahweh’s hand; and without Yahweh, not even one thing that was created came to be. The life is in Yahweh, that life is the light of men.


Wisdom was indeed in the beginning with Yahweh, Proverbs 8:22-26. Wisdom recounts her creation and her presence during the creation of the world. She was the very first of God’s creations. ‘Created me’ wisdom existed from eternity and was coeval with God. Some Christian groups identified wisdom with the Logo, which was in turn identified with The Christ. It is , however clear from v.23 that wisdom is a created being. Wisdom declares that she was present when God produced the inhabited world.

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The followers of the Creed of their new Apostle Nicene even changed the meaning of what God said about himself to Moses. Here’s is what Exodus 3:13-14 in the TANAKH should read before they got their hands on it.


Exodus 3:13-14 - Moses said to God, “When I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” And God said to Moses, “Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh.” He continued, “Thus shall you say to the Israelites, ‘Ehyeh sent me to you.’ ”


Not having been raised among his own people, Moses is ignorant of their God’s name and fears he will lack credibility with the Israelites. God’s proper name, disclosed in the verse 15, is YHVH (spelled “yod-heh-vav-heh” in Hebrew; in ancient times the “vav” was pronounced “w”). But here God first tells Moses its meaning: “I Will Be What I Will Be,” meaning “My nature will become evident from my actions.” 


Then God answers Moses’ question about what to say to the people: “Tell them: ‘Ehyeh’ (“I Will Be,” a shorter form of the explanation) sent me.” This explanation derives God’s name from the verb “h-v-h,” a variant form of “h-y-h,” “to be.” Because God is the speaker, he uses the first person form of the verb.

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The boldness of the followers of the Nicene Creed, they even added the word Lord to Paul’s Epistles! 


The Lord: The Hebrew states God’s name, YHVH, meaning according to v.14): ”He Will Be.” The Lord is actually a translation of “adonai” (lit. “my Lord”) because that is what the Israelites now pronounce whenever the consonants YHVH appear. YHVH was probably originally pronounced “Yahweh,” but in Second Temple times, as an expression of reverence, Israelites began to avoid uttering it, substituting “adonai” and other surrogates. (As a reminder to do so, in printed Hebrew Bibles the consonants are accompanied by the vowels of the surrogate words, leading to such hybrid English forms as Jehovah [i.e., “Yehovah” or the consonants Y-H-V-H with the vowels from “adonai”].)


Paul (Philippians 3:4-6) would have never used Lord in Romans 10:9! Paul would insist that a person confess Jesus as Savior, not Jesus as Lord.

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