Our Part in God’s Plan for the Reconciliation…Part I & 2

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By Denis Bowden / Rapture Ready

August Company:

There are those who presently write for Rapture Ready and, of course, those few other credible commentators, both churched and unchurched as pastors/teachers, who could do this better. These are they who steadfastly refuse to compromise the Word of God. Many have spent years of literal, theological study in asking and seeking and attaining answers for these very same questions I have attempted to tackle.

Pray God that I haven’t bitten off more than I can chew as I give special thanks for sources such as Got Questions!

In the course of this commentary, I have submitted myself entirely to the hand of God. Even more so than usual, I did this in order that Satan could not beguile me. That unafraid, I would write and state what needs to be said. For just like you, Satan confronts me each and every day. And everywhere I turn, he attempts to anoint both you and me with the smothering oil of his heresies. Worse, he increasingly speaks to us from the pulpit, and we often are simply too ignorant of scripture to see either error or lie.

Attributed to the unlamented Dr Goebbels of the Third Reich is the following: “Tell the lie often and keep repeating it, and the masses will believe it.” In fact, the bigger the lie and the more pretentious, the greater the chance of its acceptance. Both Hitler and Goebbels actually accused the Jews and the English of employing this tactic when, in fact, it was the tactic of Hitler’s Third Reich: accuse the other side of what you’re actually doing (psychological projection).

Satan’s Ongoing War Against God’s Special Creation:

The preamble to our story is the Creation of man and his helpmeet, Eve, in the Garden of plenty that God created for both man, woman and the creatures he made to inhabit ‘the Garden.’ It included all the good things necessary to provide for each of them.

From the moment that God said on the sixth and thus the last day of creation (for He rested on the seventh day, prescribing it as a Shabbat Rest forever), that He would make man in ‘our’ image, Satan declared war. Hitherto, Satan, the most beautiful of the angelic host, had enjoyed a special place before the attention of God. Then God said:

“Let us make man in our image, in our likeness” (Genesis 1:26). Thus, He finished His work with a “personal touch.” God formed Adam from the dust and gave him life by sharing His own breath (Genesis 2:7).

Accordingly, humanity is unique among all God’s creations, having both a material body and an immaterial soul/spirit.

The Weapons Used By Satan:

Satan bided his time until the creation of woman and then beguiled her with blandishment and temptation, convincing her to eat the one fruit (of the knowledge of good and evil) that God had expressly said was not to be eaten. Satan did this as his attempt to destroy their special place of attention and affection that they had been given in the eyes of God.

It is widely believed that (in Satan’s view) the man Adam and his helpmeet apparently had supplanted his own place before the Throne of God. Satan is seen to have commenced his age-long war against us because of jealousy. We had, in his eyes, supplanted him.

Satan has never given up on his desire to destroy us. And that includes any attempt to restore our fallen state. His chief weapons at this time, using the media particularly, are lies and heresy. He manipulates and distorts the Word of God, specifically as it applies to the Commandments, because these rules were given mankind as a basis for a loving, worshipful, relationship with our Heavenly Father. And where believers are concerned, Satan works constantly to destroy that relationship

Satan’s Heresy to Explain Creation:

Lying heresy has always been the chief weapon favoured by Satan. And mankind has always been a sucker for a shill. Lies are the basis of fraud. Fraud is always presented in the most appealing way.  Usually a positive reward is indicated to reel the sucker in. The fraudster seeds his appeal with a grain of truth and offers something, apparently for nothing, ‘out of the goodness of his or her heart.’

In its present-day form, it is heresy which now denies the very fabric that God created. Originally, God made man to rule as king over the animal kingdom and to be overseer-in-chief in his role as the husband over the Garden itself. This was prior to the LORD’S creation of the woman, Eve.

In this day and age of imminency, where Satan knows that his time is short, science and technology is his seed. Of course, he manipulates truth. Climate Change is a good example.

It cannot be proven that man (who has been around for such a short time) can possibly cause what one huge volcano can achieve in a week of huge, violent eruption. Many true scientists have argued this and produced the contrary evidence.

Satan moves quickly to instruct his minions to destroy truth in the form of any emerging contrary viewpoint. This is so his evil narrative can continue to ‘gather legs’ and be sustained amongst the gullible. The latter is made up of an increasing number of ‘deniers,’ most of whom tend to be those who also deny God Himself. And where true, proven science conducted under auspices of strict science methodology can be verified by other genuine researchers, they not only deride that research, they set out to immediately destroy it by discrediting the messenger – and worse, ruining the careers of those involved.

For instance, Darwinism (The Origin of the Species) is being refuted every other day. In Montana for instance, huge (and I mean huge) caches of bones of animals that at first face appeared to be millions of years old have been found in recent years. They have been found with a deep covering of what would have been sweeping, choking mud, as in a giant tsunami or something like that huge, man-made mining dam that recently collapsed in Brazil, entombing dozens of people in an instant.  Another example can be found on YouTube if you watch the horror of the in-sweeping tsunami that devastated Japan, including its nuclear facilities. Another fascinating facet that has arisen from the Montana find is that DNA and carbon dating have revealed that the catastrophic event/s took place in very recent history.

In Montana, it is now being shown that these creatures appeared to have been fleeing en masse.  Given the mud of their entombment, there seems little doubt that it was a huge flood that wiped them out.

So, when I write (irrespective of my sources, attempting to explain the Word of the LORD), I am always cognizant of one plain fact.  Science and its bondservant, technology, has never, can never, hope to explain God any more than it can yet explain His Creation (the Universe, the Earth and both creatures and mankind which He placed upon the Earth).

To their disappointment and chagrin, neither has science yet satisfactorily dated the alleged ages of the Earth: much is still in the realm of conjecture. So bring on your quantum physics and computers, artificial intelligence and the ‘might’ of Cern as it attempts to isolate and unlock the core of creation. The Word of God itself says that you are doomed to failure.

What ‘Do’ We Actually Know (not withstanding our Faith)?

Assuredly, we see through a glass but darkly. For God did not choose to share the core of His own Majesty with the clay of His own creation. Nor have we yet uncovered much of our past because He has not yet chosen to reveal more than tantalizing glimpses.

1 Corinthians 13:12, King James Version (KJV):

“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”

What I Know Myself To Be:

However, of this I am certain (implicitly and totally convinced): My Faith in God has given me the understanding and partial wisdom to ‘see’ at least one particular thing clearly. It is this:

‘Although I come from the dust and will to dust return, my very essence of conception was/is God-breathed. I was and am, even before He breathed into me the breath of living life itself to enable my first breath outside my Mother’s womb.’

I have ‘being.’ My very D.N.A is of divinity Himself. I am a creature created of the divine inspiration of the Living God; and thus, my conception could not have ensued if He had stayed his ‘hand.’

To Deny Or To Believe?

And so, my very ‘being’ was and is foreknown. Even it was, before my conception and final ejection from the womb of my mother. And finally, the day I die (‘the first death,’ destined for all flesh), my destiny is pre-destined because of two things:

1) The totality of God’s power over this God-breathed clay vessel that He made

2) The exercise of free will given me that allows me either to accept or deny the potter who made me and which (God knows and has so commanded) will determine my ultimate destination when I appear before Him.

At that appointed time – there being no denial in my soul but only loving acceptance of the Son and His sacrifice for me as his blood washed away my sins forever (thus hiding them from the Father’s sight) – I will receive my promised crown, commensurate with my proven worthiness.

Brethren, there will be many ahead of me and far worthier than I; but oh, the joy, the wonder as my God recognizes ‘me.’ That in itself surely is a ‘crown’ of glory.

Picture in your minds-eye a weary traveller. He is returning home after a long, long, absence. Alighting from the train and descending onto the platform, his face lights up and his heart leaps within him as he sees his beloved father and mother pressing forward to greet and clasp him in the loving warmth of their embrace.

And so will it be when my Eternal Father is pleased to receive me, ‘Home At Last!’ What a welcome that will be.

Convicted By Denial

But for those called before the Great White Throne of Judgment, having departed the flesh, their souls still locked in almost pathological denial (many with hatred still seething within them at the moment of their departure) I cannot say, ‘God help them!’

Why?

Because no one can help them. Nor should we think we are entitled to say this.

To paraphrase a bacchanalian chorus from an old drinking song:

“Here’s a health to the King and lasting peace,

to faction an end and wealth increase.

Come, let’s drink it whilst we have breath,

for there’s no drinking after death.

And those that will this health deny,

down amongst the dead men,

let him lie.”

(“Down Among the Dead Men” is an English drinking song first published in 1728, but possibly of greater antiquity.)

The song begins with a toast to “the King” and continues with obeisance to the god Bacchus which become increasingly less subtle descriptions of the benefits of alcohol in procuring opportunities for sexual intercourse. At the conclusion of each stanza of the song, those who deny the song’s declarations are condemned to lay “down among the dead men,” a euphemism for drunken unconsciousness.

In using the Drinking Song in a metaphorical sense, ‘Down among the Dead Men,’ I have applied it as a metaphor for the Second Death’ awaiting deniers.

“What Then Is The Second Death?” (Got Questions direct quotation)

Answer: The second death is mentioned on multiple occasions in the book of Revelation and is synonymous with the lake of fire. It is a “death” in that it is a separation from God, the Giver of life. It is called the “Second” one because it follows physical death.

Revelation 21:8 explains the second death in the most detail:

“The cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars – their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulphur. This is the second death.”

[This speaks to those appearing before God still unrepentantly locked to their sins and denying the ‘right’ of the Master to censure them.) It is now too late to seek mercy. None is to be offered.  Implacable denial was offered God. An implacable God now denies the denier.]

Three other places in Revelation also mention the second death. The first is Revelation 2:11:

“He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. He who overcomes will not be hurt at all by the second death.” In this verse, Jesus promises that believers (“overcomers”; see 1 John 5:4) will not experience the lake of fire.

The second death is exclusively reserved for those who have rejected Christ. – source

And in the rejection of Jesus Christ (Yeshua-h), you reject God Himself.

John 8:58 “Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.’”

As Jesus said, the ‘second death’ is not a place believers in Christ should fear. It is therefore spiritually impossible, nay forbidden, than that we would or should attempt to pray for the souls of the dead.

In plain language, our lives bring before the Throne of God the life-testament of our ‘journey’ within the fleshly capsule of our souls.

God has clearly told us (through the testimony of His Son) that those who die in denial of The Living God have freely denied themselves the glory of His loving recognition of His reconciled creation and the welcome that awaits them.

For deniers, there is no ‘welcoming home of a prodigal son.’ Their own stone-cold hearts of denial (many having influenced others to join them in their false, self-appointed roles of pastors/priests, prophets, evangelists and even more vaunted claims of direct appointment and concourse with God Himself) are now forfeit.

The papacy has for centuries confirmed and re-affirmed constantly in their Councils and the papal encyclicals that Pontifex Maximus speaks as the voice of God on Earth. I would submit that the pontiff may speak for someone, but I seriously doubt it is God. Rather, I had another more suitable candidate in mind.

Bereft of God by choice, God now is bereft of all deniers. This to me is a horror beyond all imaginings. My horror is compounded by the knowledge (from the Word of God) that there stands ready a worldly multitude who are to be swept away, for our ‘future’ is now truly, truly, imminent.

For ‘if’ our choice is ‘denial’ of the Son, then we deny God Himself.  And thus, God, through His Son, will ‘deny’ us.

The Denier Asks, “Does God Exist and Who Made Him?”

No believer can sustain or should attempt to bring life to the question, ‘Does God exist and if so, who made Him?’

Such is the puny nature of both our intelligence and true understanding (for we were not given this depth of wisdom) that we do NOT have this knowledge, nor were we meant to possess it.

To the ‘denier,’ arguing through ‘logic’ of post-modern types of Gnosticism, this constitutes the Achilles Heel of our belief in God and in their denying eyes, utterly crushes the basis on which our faith is built.

I would in turn offer the counter-argument: that, if we could answer such questions, then of what value would be the faith through which comes repentance for sin (particularly where, previously, denial may well have existed)? For you can clearly see that the test put upon us by God, is FAITH. Not just in His existence, or His majesty, but in the means that He provided us to be reconciled back to what man was meant to be and was, before the Fall.  And the key to faith is, of course, Jesus in His role as the sacrificed paschal lamb, thus permitting us to ‘Pass-Over.’

The Basis Of Sin And What It Consists Of:

For ALL sin is based upon denial of God. Sin is the symptom. Denial is its root cause.

Dearest brothers and sisters, ‘see’ this and you both understand and have gained true wisdom. And this wisdom, gained at last through your understanding (given you by revelation from the Holy Spirit), is the precursor necessary to overcome ALL. For when you truly (absent denial) accept Jesus, the Christ of the Living God, in His sacrificial role, you cannot help but be moved to repentance. Your denial has ceased at that point. You accept God and He accepts You.

In putting ‘paid’ to our denial, we now seek only the will to fight the ‘good’ fight with ‘all of our might’ and win each battle as we are confronted by Satan and his earthly and spiritual minions.

Faithful TRUST in Yeshua and the power of His Grace, granted and given ‘legs’ by the Holy Spirit, provides us with the weapons we need to face and defeat Satan in the many ongoing battles to come.  No, you ‘heard’ me! I said, ‘battles to come,’ for our adversary never gives up; and that is why the road Home is described as narrow and the analogy given that not many end up walking it to its end.

But, our ‘sin,’ the symptom of the dread disease of separative denial, does NOT (cannot, will not) pass before the burning eye of God Himself, because the Grace of redemptive salvation of our souls through the blood of Yeshua has lovingly covered us.

For we have been ‘passed over.’

Now we must stay the distance. Remember well that the firstborn of the Hebrews were passed over; and that very night, the embryonic nation set out into the desert, released by Pharaoh. Yet what they thought was to be a short way home took over 40 years because of their inability (lack of faith) to stay the distance.

Are you saying, “Come on…all this is just simply too hard?” Of course it is. Are you presently attending a ‘church’ whose priests and pastors tell you differently – or worse, don’t touch on this at all? Then, if you are, you have been sold a wooden nickel. Bite down hard on it, and it will split open; for it has no substance. And neither is there substance in their message.

Get OUT. There is nothing here for a true believer.

As surely as the firstborn of the Hebrews was spared the Angel of Death – because the blood of a firstborn lamb was slaughtered and sprinkled over the lintels of the doors of their hovels, thus providing a sign of spared redemption from physical death – so now are we spared, and that by the precious, pure blood of the human paschal unblemished lamb.

He is the lamb who died for us in sacrifice, that we might, in acceptance of His amazingly wonderful gift, be granted eternal life.

Be in no doubt, that the blood of the Christ has been sprinkled over the lintel of your respective hearts.  Through this and only this are you saved to Eternal Life. Thanks be to God!

“What is the breath of life?” (Got Questions)

The answer provided by ‘Got Questions’ is true to the Word of God, and I am more than happy to accede to the inspired scholarship inherent in the answer below.

Answer: The climax of God’s creative work was His extraordinary creation of man. “The LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being” (Genesis 2:7). The supreme Creator of heaven and earth did two things in creating man. First, He formed him from the very dust of the ground, and, second, He breathed His own breath into the nostrils of Adam. This distinguished man from all of God’s other creatures.

This one passage contains three significant facts about man’s creation.

The first is that God and God alone created man. Man did not evolve from other creatures. Impersonal forces did not form man. All the cells, DNA, atoms, molecules, hydrogen, protons, neutrons, or electrons did not create man. These are only the substances that make up man’s physical body. The Lord God formed man. The Lord God created the substances, and then He used those substances to create man.

The word formed is a translation of the Hebrew yatsar, which means “to mold, shape, or form.” It conjures an image of a potter who has the intelligence and the power to form his creation. God is the Master Potter who had the image of man within His mind and who possesses the power and the intelligence to bring that image to life.

Second, God breathed His own breath of life into man. Man is more than “dust” or physical substance. Man has a spirit. We can picture it this way: Adam’s body had just been formed by God from the dust of the earth—a lifeless human body lying on the ground. Then God leaned over and “breathed” His own “breath of life” into the man’s nostrils; God is the Source of life, and He directly placed life within man. This breath of life is seen again in John 20:22, as Jesus imparts new life to His disciples.

Third, Genesis 2:7 tells us that man became a living soul (KJV). The word soul in Hebrew is nephesh, meaning “an animated, breathing, conscious, and living being.” Man did not become a living soul until God breathed life into him. As a physical, animate, rational, and spiritual being, man is unique among all living things upon the earth.

What is the Breath of God?

It is the life and power of God, given to man to animate him. – source

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(A Personal Anecdote):

It was with the greatest of joy, when recently, in the weeks immediately prior to the passing of my late Wife, Laraine, late in December 2018, that she, of her own volition (following a lifetime of doubt as she teetered between acceptance and denial) finally ceased her denial and gave herself completely to Jesus.  Nothing I had previously said had convinced her.  And sadly, my own conduct had, on many occasions, not provided her with a supportive view of a Christ-centred role model.

That to my eternal shame and regret. We cannot undo that which we have done nor allay its damage: only repent it at the foot of the Cross.

In those last days and hours however, we spoke at length about this very subject. How fortunate and blessed we both were that God gave us sufficient time for this. It was also a time for the baring of our souls to each other: of forgiveness and the fervent renewal of our vows and love over nearly fifty-seven years.

I pointed out that denial was the only obstacle, and the one thing that would occasion her eternal separation from God. Finally, she commenced, over some days, to pray and to ask Jesus to take her HOME. From that moment of time onward, we prayed every day; and she, of her own volition, would start to pray as I entered her room each morning.

I would like to say that this was easy for her. Stricken with an oesophageal cancer, it was increasingly both difficult and painful for my wife to converse. Sometimes our ‘conversations’ consisted of me reading to her, singing hymns and also those old love songs that she liked so much. Sometimes we just spent the hours holding hands.

Another relative, also a believer, came one morning also. She prayed with and over my wife. Finally, that lady left to go home. About ten minutes later, she unexpectedly returned, took my darling by her hand and directly asked her,

“Laraine, I had to come back to ask you, are you sure you have given yourself to Jesus?” My beautiful girl replied, “Yes, I have!”

Her doubt and thus her denial were washed away in the blood of the paschal lamb. And I am convinced she knew at last, her assured destination and acceptance. The hospital chaplain who had come a number of times to chat with her was also of this conviction.

Thanks be to God through the Saving Grace of His Son.

https://www.raptureready.com/2019/03/01/part-gods-plan-reconciliation-man-part-denis-bowden/

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END OF PART I

Denis Bowden

[email protected]

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Part 2:

Of Male and Female, God Created Them:

From GotQuestions.org:

Genesis 1: “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’ So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’

“And God said, ‘Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.’ And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.” Read More

Genesis 2 takes a closer look at the creation of man. This passage is not a second creation account, nor is it contradictory to Genesis 1.  Genesis 2 simply takes a step away from a linear report to refocus the reader on God’s unique work concerning man.

God formed man from the dust of the earth He had previously created. After forming man’s body, God breathed life—a soul—into him. The fact that God chose to form man this way shows His great care in this process. God next placed the first man, Adam, in a special place, the Garden of Eden. Eden was beautiful and bountiful. Adam had almost everything he needed, including food and productive work. However, God was not done with man.

God helped Adam to see his need for a mate by having him review all the other creatures and naming them (Genesis 2:19–20). At the end of the naming process, Adam understood what he lacked. God caused Adam to sleep and then formed Eve with as much care as He had formed Adam (verses 21–22). Eve was made from Adam’s rib. When God brought Eve to Adam, the man immediately understood that she was special. She was his counterpart, his complement, and flesh of his flesh (verse 23).

God made both Adam and Eve in God’s image (Genesis 1:27). The Bible’s creation account establishes the family as the basic building block of society (Genesis 1:24; cf. Matthew 19:5–6). As a God-ordained institution, marriage is to be only between one man and one woman.

Adam and Eve were created in a state of innocence (Genesis 1:25) and had not committed any sin. They enjoyed communion with God in Eden and the freedom to eat of whatever trees of the garden they wished, except for one (Genesis 2:16–17). Part of their relationship with God was the inclusion of one simple rule: Adam and Eve were forbidden to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:17). – Source

At this point we have Adam (from or of the Earth)

From BibleStudyTools.com, Adam:

“Adam” is both the proper name of the first human and a designation for humankind. God himself gave this appellation to Adam and Eve ( Gen 5:1-2 ). The color red lies behind the Hebrew root adam [; ‘a]. This may reflect the red soil from which he was made.

Adam was formed from the ground ( Gen 2:7 ). Word play between “Adam” and “ground” (adama [h’m’d}a]) is unmistakable. It is important that Adam is identified with humankind rather than any particular nationality. The country from which the dust was taken is not specified. Rabbis believed it came from all over the earth so no one could say, “My father is greater than yours.”

The word “formed” suggests the careful work of a potter making an exquisite art-piece. Into this earthen vessel God breathed the breath of life ( Gen 2:7 ). These words describe vivid intimacy between God and man not shared by animals.

Adam was made a little lower than “angels” (or “God”) at his creation and “crowned with glory and honor” ( Psalm 8:5 ). (Rabbis speculated the glory of Adam’s heel outshone the sun.) He was commissioned as a vassal king to rule over God’s creation. The words “subdue,” “rule,” “under his feet” ( Gen 1:28 ;Psalm 8:6 ) suggest kingship over nature but not over his fellow man. – Source

[So, having made Adam in his own image (specifically so because he is placed only ‘a little lower’ than the angels of God), he is given special lordship/rule in the manner of a King over all of God’s earthly dominion that God Himself had created.]

God Begins To Task and Teach Adam:

In Genesis 2: Adam is given the task of reviewing and naming all of the creatures that God had created. In doing so, Adam becomes aware that all creatures are of a pair, male and female and procreate their species from their sexual congress and union, bringing forth young.

Seeing that Adam has reached the conclusion that he is without a mate, God causes him to fall into a deep sleep during which Eve is created from his rib.

Ev, (chawwah, “life”; Eua; the name given, as the Scripture writer says, Genesis 3:20 (Zoe), from her unique function as “the mother of all living”):

The first created woman; created secondarily from Adam (or man) as a “help meet for him” (Genesis 2:18-22), and later named and designated as the mother of the human race.

The Relation of the Female, Eve, To the Man, Adam: (further quoted from Got Questions)

As mentioned in the article ADAM, the distinction of male and female, which the human species has in common with the animals, is given in the general account of creation (Genesis 1:27); and then, in the more particularized account of the creation of man, the human being is described at a point before the distinction of sex existed.

This second account may have a different origin, but it has also a different object, which does not conflict with but rather supplements the other. It aims to give the spiritual meanings that inhere in man’s being; and in this the relation of sex plays an elemental part.

As spiritually related to the man-nature, the woman-nature is described as derivative, the helper rather than the initiator, yet equal, and supplying perfectly the man’s social and affectional needs.

It is the writer’s conception of the essential meaning of mating and marriage. To bring out its spiritual values more clearly he takes the pair before they are aware of the species meanings of sex or family, while they are “naked” yet “not ashamed” Genesis 2:25, and portrays them purely as companions, individual in traits and tendencies, yet answering to each other. She is the helpmeet for him (ezer keneghdo, “a help answering to him”).

Eve’s Part in the Change of Condition:

True to her nature as the being relatively acted upon rather than acting, she is quicker than the man to respond to the suggestion initiated by the serpent and to follow it out to its desirable results. There is eagerness of desire in her act of taking the fruit quite different from the quasi matter-of-course attitude of the man.

To Eve, the venture presents itself wholly from the alluring side, while to him it is more like taking a desperate risk, as he detaches himself even from the will of God in order to cleave to her. – Source

THE EXPULSION:

Now, because of their disobedience they are about to be expelled from the wonderful Garden. In this especially created environment, neither they nor the created creatures had wants because God supplied all that was necessary to meet their respective needs.

What Lay Outside The Garden?

At this time, we do not know what existed outside the Garden or in what form the land lay. Our minds might dwell on loads of possible explanations to identify the world the man and his woman were about to be thrust into. That indeed is another story to which, though we conjecture, there are no known answers.

The Perfection of Their State Before the Fall:

Prior to their expulsion, the man and woman were perfect beings. They were created in such a bodily state, as befit their special status, that we believers will not again see until raptured, when as promised, our bodies are changed from the perishable to the imperishable.

Can you visualise what this implies? Adam and Eve had, at this point (immediately prior to the Fall), no physical or psychological imperfections. They did not suffer illness or stress; and neither at this stage was there yet any necessity for sexual congress leading to the procreation of human birth. Eve was made thus far as the companion of the man, supplying the warmth and affection that kind gives to kind even before sexual congress – the latter which, in both carriage and essence, is but a momentary joining of both flesh and spirit.

(Not surprisingly, some cults and man-created religions go to great lengths to both incorporate sexual congress as a pre-requisite for the rites of their worship practices. And further, because they attach a false spirituality to the act of congress itself, attempt to prolong it with meditative processes and even the taking of drugs alleged to help the participants ‘achieve bliss’).

The Beginning of Imperfection:

Upon expulsion from the Garden because of their mutually inclusive disobedience, the way-back is forever barred by the Holy Angels of God. And all the ills of imperfection fall upon the man and his helpmeet woman. This immediately carries through and also falls upon the seed of their procreation.

What now ensues is pain and suffering. It includes the associated woes of miscarriage (the expulsion from the womb of damaged fetuses) and offspring that, though womb ejected, grow to less than perfected maturity and are both psychologically and physiologically malformed: ‘damaged goods.’  Thus born less than the perfection that God had originally created.

What Did NOT Change:

Clearly, God could have (at the time of their punishment by expulsion and the forever changed status of their originally created state) forever changed both the sexual roles prescribed under which His law of Creation was now to operate. By this I infer that God had the power to also change the nature of the act of procreation through the sexual congress that, of necessity, must enable it.

Yes…I am speaking to the fact that God could have gone back to the ‘drawing board’ of His design of Creation and now created a number of alternate types of sexual beings. Quite patently, He did not do this.

What God had created originally (in both man and woman, male to female), he remained committed to. It had approval in His eyes, for His design was and is perfection as is He.

Nowhere, however, does the Word of God prescribe that radical differences in the future procreation of humankind are either approved or intended to take place. His own Word is the final authority, and it clearly sets out: there are still to be two different sexes.

A covenant relationship to be known as ‘marriage’ is established by God to sanctify the sexual relationship between man and woman, both in His eyes and that of their fellow kind.

Sexual congress outside of the marriage covenant is strictly forbidden. (I venture to infer to both limit disease and constrain human jealously, amongst other reasons known only to God Himself.)

All and any sexual congress to allegedly enhance and inspire idolatry within the knowingly false practice and/or celebration of religious or harvest festivals is strictly forbidden and made socially and legally taboo.

Sexual congress between family members is forbidden.

Sexual congress between members of the same sex falls under similar prohibition.

God makes it perfectly clear that such practices are to be seen as lustful excesses of the fleshly senses and that He, personally, abhors and hates them.

The Foreknowledge and Wisdom of God:

In His wisdom, God knew that when sin came into the world through the desire of the woman and with the complicit act of her companion/mate, all manners of evil would then be manifest.

God knew also, that given the worldly lordship of Satan in his guise of the serpent or the many other ways in which he is known to cloak himself, there would be constant attempts to evilly conspire to destroy mankind itself. For it is well-recorded that the status originally given man inspired great jealously in he who had formerly been the brightest star in Heaven, the most beautiful of the angelic host.

The Commandments and the Mosaic Law were given for man to live by, as his numbers increased again following the catastrophic deluge of the Flood. The latter (which constituted the Second Fall of Man) were rules that were put in place to curb a repeat of the type of unbridled licentiousness and utter wickedness that had ensued within the pre-Flood world in which Noah and Enoch lived. It was a world where Satan and his fallen host had had a period of unlicensed reign.

The Abominations of the Pre-Flood World:

Deviated sexual congress in the pre-Flood world had become such an abomination and stench to the Creator that He had moved to destroy it all.  Yet God had already set aside a remnant: a small group not locked into the evil of denial and whose bloodline had not yet been contaminated. This contamination was resultant from the abnormal congress that had occurred between women and the fallen angels (which had led to an impure lineage of corrupted flesh (the Nephilim) and which was utterly denied and unsanctioned by God).

And at this point, we can ‘see’ that which had been gestated into life at the direct intervention and instigation of Satan, was, in the main, a foul replica of God’s original Creation.

It had no place. It had to go.

So the Creator (because it was always His prerogative alone) ‘started over,’ having destroyed that abomination of half flesh in the great deluge. Only the selectively set-aside pure remnant, both in spirit and bloodline, was given a future in the world that would come after the Flood.

Ultimately, it will be a remnant of this same pure bloodline, down through Abraham and his perpetuated seed, that God will, because of our reconciled Faith, restore us from our fallen state. Thus we see inferred (as confirmed by Scripture) the reconciliation of national Israel, as a nation set aside. The home of a royal priesthood serving God forever and inclusive of the faithful remnant of the nations:

• called home in rapture and/or,
• to be delivered up to glory following their martyrdom.

Unreconciled, Unrepentant Mankind:

God had seen that, left to his own desires and actively encouraged by Satan, man and woman would sink lower and lower – and that they would, as a result, succumb willingly to every vice and lustful indulgence that satanically supported evil could conjure up.

Mankind never disappoints in terms of both apostasy and heresy and obdurate, totally stubborn determination to ‘go his own way and do his own thing.’

For the lusts of mankind are led into the most vile of actions through the will of the human mind.  And his tongue (in both male and female) is (of themselves) utterly depraved and given over to misbehaviour, which is sin in denial against God.

Worse, is our corporate desire to deny completely the concept of sin within the actionable practice of any act ‘enjoyed’ during our constant search for more and more excesses to titillate our carnal senses.

Even in this age, we believers are no less immune to the carnality of the times. Just as easily as the non-believer, so also does the believer succumb and fall if he/she lets slip their hold on the Cross.

As I gaze upon the decline of true worship, I am convinced that ‘we’ are in fact, in many instances, easier prey to the blandishments offered by Satan. Moreover, probably even more prone and susceptible than the ‘unchurched.’ Particularly so amongst those congregations who have been falsely convinced that ‘my church’ will save me, as will my charitable works and the practice of associated doctrines and allegedly saving sacramental performances.

And I see that some of these ‘great’ mega-churches no longer teach reliance on the saving Grace offered by Jesus. This teaching has succumbed in lieu of the granting of indulgences: ergo, ‘the living of your good life of works and services entitles you to all the best that this world has to offer.’

Most, if not all of us, have, in even partial renunciation of our denial of the will of God, plumbed the depths of evil. And every day our minds and our tongues continue to betray us.

In Part I you may recall that I reminded you that the ‘road home is narrow’ and very few make it to the end out of the billions of Earth’s inhabitants. We then are faced with two diverse choices:

1) Either to repent (an ongoing state simply because we continue to sin) and be broken each time into literal pieces emotionally and spiritually. For, once more, facing our sin, we fall upon our knees in abject poverty of spirit and seek the forgiveness of the Lamb of God through the Cross of sacrifice.

And repentance will continue apace because, God Help Us, our penchant for evil is both focused and wilfully constant.

2) Or, giving up completely, we deny the ‘right’ of God to interfere; and we dive back with glee, headfirst into the pig wallow we crawled out of and stay there until we die and confront the Great White Throne of His Judgment.

The Issue of Fetal Abortion: (Unforeseen Consequences)

Not only do we deny God by denying either our sin or our willful capacity to engage in it, when we suffer the consequences of sin, we try to hide it.

In the matter of abortion, either within or without the covenantal, hallowed, protection of marriage, we sin on several levels.

When agreed abortion takes place, even within the constraint of marriage with the consent of both husband and wife, we deny the will of God and His command to ‘go forth and multiply.’ All forms of contraception taken specifically to prevent conception fall into this category. Yes we are all guilty of this. And we men who got ourselves ‘snipped’ are not excused. To my knowledge, contraception, let alone abortion, is not suggested or mentioned in Holy Scripture: only God’s exhortation to ‘go forth and multiply.’ Where is the sin in the latter (forms of contraception)? We have withdrawn our trust in God to provide for us.

Neither contraception nor abortion is proscribed by the Holy Word of God to curtail the proliferation of our species. God never rescinded his command that we should freely multiply our kind. And even if it appears the world cannot feed those countries whose governments cannot properly supply their present needs, let alone a burgeoning population growth, we are denied any ‘right’ to corrupt God’s plan even in this, our fallen state.

At this point, I will lose many, for the Word of God is divisive. Jesus spoke extensively about this just as he told the rich young man who wished to follow him, ‘to go and sell all he had and give it to the poor.’ The Word of God separates the sinless from the sin and the sinner from the Word.

Did you think it would be easy to walk this narrow path? After teaching such lessons like this in parables, even His disciples asked, “Lord, who then can enter Heaven?”

Didn’t you ‘see’ even Him attempting to carry in His weakened, scourged condition that awful Cross?  So heavy that the Centurion directed Simon of Cyrene to help carry it over the last part of the walk to Golgotha. And don’t you remember Him saying, “Pick up your Cross and follow me!”

It is not our will that is meant to prevail. We are to always prayerfully trust God to provide for us out of His infinite bounty. And though God answers and certainly hears all our heartfelt prayers, we will NOT always be delivered from the calamities of life that beset and befall us. That includes the birth of the malformed and those infants already with the hand of death upon them: that too is the burden of the Cross. And we all must, on occasion, lift and carry it even without a Simon of Cyrene to help bear up our burden.

Gladly would I have taken the burden of some, if not all of my wife’s pain and distress. Yet though I say this, ‘were it possible – would I have done so willingly when it came to the crunch?’

I look back on the years of my life, and I see my own mistakes. I gaze in horror at some of my freely indulged choices. I see the times I took the wide road of destruction as I sought the ‘easy’ way through the maze of life. I gaze retrospectively at my attempts, in great adversity, to bend down and pick up my burden again and walk back onto that increasingly narrow track. And in deepest night, midst the wet warmth of my sobs, have I beseeched Jesus to do for me what the Centurion forced Simon of Cyrene to do.  Did help come? Yes but often in ways least expected as He forced me not only to acknowledge and look upon my errors, but to learn from them.

God Help me. God help YOU. The Way of the Cross that leads to glory is replete with those that lost the will to continue to carry it and fell, never to rise again. Yet also, it is illuminated with the glorious light of those who have won through and received the victor’s crown.

The Options Offered By Choice:

The result of our ‘freedom of choice’ is, today, very apparent. Affluent Western population growth by natural means has not just stagnated, it is now in reverse. We are failing to replace, not only our dead, but per misadventure, our respective national populations are aging and are an increasing burden on the capacity of the few remaining taxpayers to offset the inherent costs of our choices.

Allegedly, we of the West are by faith and practice, ‘Christian.’ We decline, and non-believers – amongst them the nations that worship a deity that calls for our oblivion – prosper and multiply extraordinarily.

Am I entitled to ponder if our Heavenly Father remarks, “I told you so!”

It must surely be apparent to even the most Liberal of ‘self-described’ believers that, “Houston, we have a problem!”

“So, Does the Bible Teach That Life Begins at Conception?” (Got Questions)

Answer: The Bible does teach that life begins at conception.

However, every culture’s view of when human life begins changes as society’s values, moral standards, and knowledge about the process of embryonic development change.

Prior to the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that allowed abortion on demand, developing embryos were considered unborn persons.

Now, even a fetus that can survive on its own outside its mother’s womb is legally permitted to be aborted, under certain medical circumstances. This demonstrates that we do not consider an unborn child to be a true human being.

My Comment is added to Got Questions extrapolation:

The most recent Court rulings, aided by Liberal politicians of the Extreme Left, have extended the concept of these earlier rulings to include the aborting of a fetus at Full-Term. There are an increasing number of recorded cases of the slaughter of infants, both forcibly aborted alive and breathing. These are some of whom failed to succumb to the poisonous cocktail of death injected into them. They were then literally murdered by the severing of the spinal cord with surgical secateurs.

The figures involved in the national abortion harvest in America alone (without looking at other Western nations) run into the tens of millions. America slaughters just under twice the population of Australia each year.

You could well sit in a pew come this Sunday (if such is your day of Shabbat Rest), and on the right- hand side of you sits a husband and wife who have just participated in the act of a fetal abortion as a ‘lifestyle’ act of free choice.

On your left-hand immediate side, sits another married couple. She has miscarried so many times that she has stopped counting. They have undergone many expensive procedures to create new life.  Dear God in Heaven, what this couple would have given to have been granted the opportunity to have taken in adoption, following normal delivery, that which became ‘body parts.’

The perversity of the human spirit of denial of the will of God is a foul, rotten, pus-ridden thing that should be locked away in a box of lead and sunk 21 miles into the Mariana Trench.

Back to Got Questions:

Science tells us that human life begins at the time of conception. From the moment fertilization takes place, the child’s genetic makeup is already complete. Its gender has already been determined, along with its height and hair, eye and skin colour. The only thing the embryo needs to become a fully functioning being is the time to grow and develop.

More importantly, God reveals to us in His Word that not only does life begin at conception, but He knows who we are even before then (Jeremiah 1:5). King David said this about God’s role in our conception:

“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb . . . your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be” (Psalm 139:13, 16).

Society however, continually seeks to devalue the lives of the unborn, creating its own definitions of humanity based on distorted views of morality. But the undeniable fact is that life begins at creation, and a human is created as soon as he or she is conceived. God is present at our creation; He is, in fact, our Creator. Our value as human beings created in His image is conceived even before we are. – Source

In the act of the willful expulsion of a fetus from a mother’s womb, from the point of view of God’s own Holy Word, we therefore destroy a living, human, entity. We have killed!

It is an entity whose little fetal heart beats, because conception itself is not only the pollinating seeding/germination of male sperm to combine with that of the woman’s receptive egg, resulting in ureteral incubation by the woman – it is also an act of divine intervention by God. A God whom the Word says, ‘knows us before we were yet born.’

Yet the world says that a fetus ‘is not human.’ And man-made and prescribed law (deliberately framed to cover our sin) says that because this ‘thing’ does not breathe, it can be disposed of without fear of consequence from either man or God. The sin is now compounded by the legal harvest of ‘baby parts.’

Like those ghouls who once robbed London’s graves to sell the putrefying corpses to the universities for medical students to learn their surgical skills, these ‘baby-parts’ are now part of a very profitable, legitimate, legally sponsored business that, as I type, are making some very rich indeed.

Thus, those who abort or who are complicit in the act of abortion, both either orchestrating and/or carrying out the surgical or drug-induced removal itself, believe they are ‘home free’ – released from every possible legal, moral and religious censure or consequence of their actions.

Certainly they brook no interference or entertain argument from those of us who know this to be a terrible sin. Protesting believers are not only ostracised, they are legally forbidden for attempting to picket and/or censure this foul trade.

As believers, we cannot give credence or tacit approval to validate either the moral or physiological reasons that give rise to a general belief that there must always be reasons for man to intervene in the plans God has set for each of us.

Whether it be rape, disease, diagnosed malformation of the fetus or other excuse, we (simply put) do not and never have had the ‘right’ to abort. You don’t like this ‘hard cheddar?’ No…neither do I, but I have to accept as a believer given to God, through His Son, that this is another type of Cross to bear, pick up and walk with. I simply reiterate the Word. And yes, I am saying that we don’t have the right to impose upon our bodies a procedure that deliberately takes life to enhance our own, even if the cost is dire in terms of outcomes.

We are commanded, “Thou shalt not kill.” This Commandment is clearly not speaking to the duly performed judicial execution of a condemned criminal. Nor is it construed as relative to warfare specifically condoned and ordered or brought about by God Himself. The commandment speaks entirely to the willful, unlawful, sinful taking of human life within the normal constraints of community.

The God who said, “Suffer little children to come unto me, for such is the kingdom of Heaven,” is the same God who knows the feathers on the sparrow and the hairs upon your head.

A Moral Quagmire:

I fear that, in the case of abortion, many believers entertain mixed feelings and suffer great confusion. Within the logic of our ‘educated’ minds, aided by the liberality of philosophical thought and, of course, the whispering voice of Satan, we tend to ‘see’ only extenuating circumstances.

Through the ‘rose-tinted glasses’ we wear to ensure we are not seen to be too intolerant in our views, even believers allow their respective consciences to be allayed and appeased.

The truth cuts more to the bone. We also wear those same ‘rose-tinted’ glasses in the expectation that they will hide sin so that we will not see it. But only God has this power. And where mankind is concerned, it is only the repentant, accepted and cleansed whose sin He does not see, they having been ‘passed over.’ He most certainly turns His burning eye upon those who have not sought to have their sin acknowledged and ‘passed over.’

Using such a moral yardstick (actually a misnomer; I should say immoral), we who have been complicit in this sin can attend Sunday-Go-To-Meetings in a house of our chosen source of worship, neither suffering nor feeling further censure. And because our yardstick itself was corrupt, we see little or no need to fall upon our knees in a broken and repentant spirit.

Indeed, the liberality of many of our religious institutions either turns a blind eye or takes no position aligned to the Holy Word of God. Therefore, all are happily and morally placated; because acts such as these, morally justified in our own eyes, are more than likely supported by both family and friends and are mutually and tacitly agreed to be  ‘seen’ as sinless.

Yes, friends, we can fool ourselves outwardly and, in the eyes of the world, have our actions condoned. Yet, even in our denial we cannot obviate that knowledge of what we have done. Though it lies buried deeply within the core of our very subconscious being, we ‘know’ we have sinned. In the still of the night, our actions or lack thereof come to torment us.

I sincerely believe that the ‘mother’ of the aborted suffers this conundrum of her conscience dreadfully. Many psychiatrists/psychological counselors agree, as does the testimony of ‘mothers’ who, particularly in their teens, felt that they were forced to walk this road.

My heart goes out to each of them. They suffer as does the ‘mother’ who yet sought her pregnancy, but the union produced a stillborn child. She mourns deeply. Do you then think the abortive ‘mother’ is any different? Of course she also grieves, and the knowledge that she has sinned compounds her distress. And thereby, the sin is compounded seven times seventy because of her continued attempt at denial of its existence.

Another Personal Anecdote:

As my wife lay dying, I found her crying one day almost to herself. This was following her decision for Christ. I asked her why she cried. She was remorseful over several cruel things that she believed she had done to several of her school companions. Her recollection of her sin went back sixty-five years or more as an infant student. Never forgotten. Always there. And now served up again. We prayed on it, and I consoled her with the statement that God had always known what she did; and now, given to Him through Christ, that too was swept away. For God ‘will not see it’ now that denial had ended; and thus she had been ‘passed over.’

“Come Down To the Jordan and Wash Yourself Clean:”

Do you think then that I speak from the high pedestal of one who has never grappled with these issues? Married for nearly fifty-seven years, a child of the post-modern era, born into a rising level of affluent, Western culture and community, I have had to confront my own sin and demons. To that, then, of which I have pled guilty, I speak directly.

You, my brethren, must account to God for your own sin (whatsoever its kind or ilk). If you don’t, it lies prisoner in satanic bondage to denial because of your unrepentant heart.

Remember the words of John the Immerser: “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!”

This dissertation is long enough, and I apologize for my lack of brevity. In my defense, I have prayerfully called upon God to guide my thought, facilitating that which flows from fingers through the computer keyboard and so, through cyberspace, to you. I want this message to help remove the ‘moat’ from our eyes before we look at the sin of others, particularly, fellow believers.

The Lateness of the Hour:

I commenced with Genesis 1: and I submit that this fallen world of sinful man, shortly to be swept away, has but a short time remaining for yet truly unredeemed deniers to seek the Grace of eternal Salvation. And that, only by and through the benediction of Grace Himself, Yeshua, Jesus Christ, Holy Redeemer, and soon to be apparent “Lord of lords and King of kings.”

The lesson for those living in the “here and now” is that we must heed the warning of the writer of Hebrews who said:

“So, as the Holy Spirit says: ‘Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion, during the time of testing in the desert, where your fathers tested and tried me and for forty years saw what I did. That is why I was angry with that generation, and I said, ‘Their hearts are always going astray, and they have not known my ways.’ So I declared on oath in my anger, ‘They shall never enter my rest’” (Hebrews 3:7–11, citing Psalm 95:7–11).

Seek therefore your Salvation whilst it still may be found, for God truly has a plan for each of us.  From it He has never deviated. What is it, you say? He wants us restored. Reconciled to the state of Grace that He had granted humankind BEFORE the Fall.

The earth groans with the blood of the innocent and the excesses of Satan’s minions. The old earth is passing, for it has to be cleansed as do you. And as the Nephilim were removed, so also will the present sons of Satan be swept to the Second Death; for few, if any, will ever repent. They are haters of God; and that is why, by their very nature, we call them Satan’s minions.

Amen.

Denis Bowden

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https://www.raptureready.com/2019/03/03/part-gods-plan-reconciliation-part-ii-denis-bowden/

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