Being 83 years old and closer to the Lord than some of you, I often read the Bible and have found no better word than that of the Geneva version with comments. Needless to say it is neither socially or politically correct. They were exiles for their beliefs and a stiff necked bunch of bas****. As good a comment on our present situation as I have read in a while is Isiah 3. For any with an interest it is listed here. Bible Gateway passage: Isaiah 3 - 1599 Geneva Bible A more modern version of the same chapter in a minor attempt to show how the living nature of documents is not limited to the Constitution. Bible Gateway passage: Isaiah 3 - New Living Translation As usual, I really don't expect anyone to read or pay attention, but hope springs eternal that at least one new person will at least consider the origonal sources rather than the "official" word.
A lot of parallels to today. Not a big believer in Christianity myself, despite having been raised as a Mennonite. But that doesn't mean the bible should be discounted as trash or a collection of fairy tales. We can look at those ancient texts and draw similarities to present day. This is not due to some kind of magic or the "Power of God", enabling those who wrote and edited those texts to foretell the future. It is due to the fact that human nature has not changed. It's one big reason that history repeats and mankind continually makes the same mistakes. The Framers of the Constitution knew human nature all too well. That's why they attempted to put restraints on those in power. Now those restraints are being attacked and removed. And we have a 79 year old toddler in charge of the country.
I read a messianic Bible and take comfort in it's straight forwards text. Also have been reading the works of Josephus, learning much more about early Christians. There are other videos featuring telling this story for himself, however, this gentleman makes a statement at the end of the video that caught my attention. The Jew's have been preparing for the third Temple and gathering everything that will be needed for it. Then throw into the mix that Jew's pray three times a day for the coming of the messiah and they are very much anticipating his immanent arrival. We as Christians would know him as an Anti Christ. Too many things are coming out into the open these days for one not to take notice. And these things must come about and we should not worry ourselves about them.
As good a comment on our present situation as I have read in a while is Isaiah 3. For any with an interest it is listed here: Bible Gateway passage: Isaiah 3 - 1599 Geneva Bible . . . . As usual, I really don’t expect anyone to read or pay attention, but hope springs eternal that at least one new person will at least consider the original sources rather than the ‘official’ word. (Edited for: content, syntax, & spelling)[/QUOTE] My friend, lest we forget, nobody has to be 83 years of age in order to be ‘close to The Lord’. The reality of being born straightforwardly implies that, at some future point, a 'date with death' is inevitable. Shakespeare alludes to this (what shall I say) ‘existential absurdity’ in Part II of ‘Henry IV’: “By my troth, I care not; a man can die but once; we owe God a death and let it go which way it will he that dies this year is quit for the next.” What sometimes amazes me is how freely men are given over to the Holy Bible’s ‘seven great sins’ without showing the slightest regard for even the most obvious of their own future consequences—their own perpetually impending demise! “These six things doth The Lord hate: Yea, seven are an abomination unto Him: A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood. An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, a false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren.” (Proverbs 6:16-19) The important lesson I have learned from my own life experience (and, sometimes, I’ve had to learn certain things in the ‘hard way’) is that: Nobody ever walks away from the (again, what shall I say) ‘karmic effects’ of his own: personal attitudes, behaviors, and—most of all—his deeds! Whether men believe in God or not, still, God is God; and, sooner or later, the pursuing wraith (that psychic nemesis) of everyman’s karma is sure to catch up with him! Consequently it is never wise and always foolish for any man (e.g.: All-powerful utterly dominant men like: Napoleon Bonaparte, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, or Mao Zedong) to expect to simply walk away from the consequences of his own life’s work and overwhelming material being. ‘Life’ (conscious and reactive material being as we know it) ALWAYS ends in physical death. My suggestion? I think that a clever man should prepare for that inevitable date which looms in front of all men, and, thereafter, live each day of his life accordingly. As for myself: Back in 2009 I very keenly remember dying on an emergency room gurney. The monitors in the room said that I was dead! But, do you know what? I had one of those so-called ‘out of body’ experiences. While I was flat-lining on the monitors I heard and saw everything that was going on in that room! What important spiritual lesson did I come away from that experience with? I, rather poignantly, learned that nobody ever really dies—not really! We ‘sleep’; we ‘rest’; we ‘dream’; we abandon our physical beings; we self-evaluate; and subject to (I don’t really know) either by the Will Of God, or karma (which seems to be a curious melange of self-inflicted: fate, fortune, and destiny) each of us moves on. (Would you like to know what, literally, scares the very hell out of me? I have come to believe that a part of this afterlife ‘soulful self-evaluation’ involves experiencing the consequences and emotions of one’s own sins from the point-of-view of that person, or persons, who were originally wronged!) I imagine that some of us go ‘up’ (As the Holy Bible implies in I Kings 2:10, “So David slept with his fathers, and was buried in the City of David.”), and others of us (perhaps most of us) go ‘down’ to an utter desolation of nothingness as it is described of Judas Iscariot in the Book of Acts 1:16-20—Which I personally have long thought of as one of the darkest forms of biblical ‘Tartarus’. Nevertheless, how a man dies in nowhere near as important as how he has lived! As King Solomon once warned us: “And further, by these, my son, be admonished: Of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.” “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep His commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.” (Ecclesiastes 12:12-14) Someone either believes this biblical admonition, or he does not. By the way, I agree with you: Most people, most assuredly, do not genuinely believe in God; and, yet, at the same time I remain convinced that, somewhere deep inside of themselves, most people know—they know—that, somehow, they are NOT going to have the last word! Be it for good, or be it for evil: No man ever has, and no man ever will escape from either God’s admonishing moral intellect, nor the deserved reward which his own personal behavior has in store for him—No man! Why then should either one of us take umbrage! PS: I am sure you know as well as I do that mankind is presently standing on the verge of the biblical ‘Age of Sorrows’, the prelude to the dreadful time of the antichrist. Of course you, and I are not going to see most of this; however, I strongly suspect that in less time—less time—than either one of us has already lived, Christ’s promised return will suddenly burst forth upon mankind, AND so will His angry judgement! “Thou believest that there is one God. Thou doest well. Yet the demons, themselves, also believe; and they tremble!” (James 2:19)
Well, I picked up my Bible I keep next to the computer and opened it to Isaiah 3 and low and behold I have almost the entire chapter high-lighted and underlined! Verse 10, "Tell the righteous it will be well with them." (NIV)...
