True Bible Teaching - What the Bible really says about God and His Purpose

WHY DO MANY PEOPLE IGNORE RELIGION?

WHY DO MANY PEOPLE IGNORE THE OPPORTUNITY TO SEE BEYOND THIS LIFE?

Surely nobody can be happy about living such a short life, I mean 75yrs goes by in a blink, you ask anyone who is there and they will all tell you “I don’t know where the years have gone...”  “it seems like I was only young yesterday...”  “life has gone by so quickly, it is hard to know how it has gone by so quickly...”

It’s sad but very true, that this life seems to be over in a blink and for a lot of people not only do they have little to show for it, they have nothing they can take with them to their eternal home in the ground ie. from dust we were made, unto dust we return.  There is no doubt about this, dig up anyone who has died and there they are or rather what’s left of them.

Now is there any after life?  Well no one has ever come back in any shape or form to prove this except for one man – Jesus Christ – and this is a fact of history.

But most people seem to ignore this fact, or willingly disbelieve it, by this I mean they don’t even bother to research it or look into it to find out if it was true.  Yet it is a fact of history apart from the record of the Bible.  Goodness our dating system alone proves it to be so and every time you reference the year you are reminded of the birth and death of Christ.

Now for a lot of thinking people, religion as they have heard it makes no sense ie. supernatural devils, heaven going, departed spirits and the like seems to belong to a long ago age where myths and legends were actually believed.

However this is not what the Bible teaches, it is only what past church leaders have brought into Christianity based on their former or even current maintained belief in such myths and legends.  The Roman Catholic Church is foremost in doing this and you can go to any good encyclopaedia and it will tell you that a lot of the teachings of Roman Catholicism can’t be substantiated on the Bible but come from former Roman and Greek myths and legends that we slowly brought back into their teachings.  At the end of the day this church was born out of a political system and Constantine at the time a politician knew that if he was to maintain his hold on power he had to hold a central power base or popular support.  So he set about merging Christianity with Paganism which was the other dominant force of the times, so we end up with December 25^th being Christ’s birthday where as in fact it was Nimrods and Easter supposedly celebrates Christ Death and Resurrection, but why is it connected to the movements of the Moon???  Well in actual fact this was the festival of fertility and the worship of Semiramis the wife of Nimrod who claimed 14 months after Nimrod’s death to have given birth to a reincarnated Nimrod?You can trace every false teaching of the Roman Catholic Church back in this way and find that their origin lies in Pagan religion and not the Bible.

But that is no reason to dismiss the True Teaching of the Bible, it just proves that you need to search it out for yourself.

And why wouldn’t you want to do that? 

The Bible holds the greatest wealth of all time ‘eternal life’ and you can have it without cost or money, all you need is a Bible.

Then you just need an investment of your time to search it out, and it is not heard!

You know if God had said that eternal life was at the top of Mt Everest would there not be a massive queue to claim Mt Everest, I mean there is somewhat of a queue even now and all this is just for vain glory as there is no reward but the risk of death for a great number of those who try.

Rather God has given ‘eternal life’ to us on a plate so to speak, all we need to do is read and search it out – now He couldn’t really make it any easier and still ensure that only those who really want it will seek it out.

This is what the Apostle Paul has said about this in Romans 10...

^“5 For Moses describeth the righteousness which is of the law, That the man which doeth those things shall live by them. ⁶ But the righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise, Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? (ie. You don’t have to do some great thing like to bring Christ down from above:) ⁷ Or, Who shall descend into the deep? (ie. You don’t have to do some great thing like to bring up Christ again from the dead.) ⁸ But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach (ie. it is here right in front of you in the Bible and you have been given the ability to believe and have faith in what is proven evidence of God); ⁹ That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.”

Read more ...

In touch with The Living God

You accept there is a God. Do you have faith in Him?

To recognize the existence of a Superior Being is just like having a casual acquaintance. You may have ideas about God, but your views do not change your life.

Faith, on the other hand, is like a close friend. Both faith and friendship are built on understanding and trust. Both require time, effort and giving of self. Both offer a resource of strength.

Communication with God

Mutual understanding sets a friend apart from an acquaintance. Good friends express themselves honestly and openly to each other and listen to each other with sincere interest.

The key to a lasting friendship is to maintain this communication, to keep in touch.

The same kind of communication is essential in your relationship with the Creator.

How do you presently express your faith? You may pray, go to church, observe holy days and sacraments, give money or perhaps just try to be a good humanitarian.

The language that communicates most effectively to God is your day to day behavior.

Your actions, attitudes and prayers convey to Him how genuine you are in your faith and how seriously you are trying to respond to Him.

On the other side, how do you “listen” to God? You may go to hear a priest or minister, recognize God’s care and guidance in your life or believe in His presence in a less tangible way. A church building and sacred music — or the beauty of nature — may give you a feeling of closeness to God.

The surest way to receive and benefit from God’s message is to read and study it for yourself. The Bible, in a very real sense, is God’s direct line to humanity. In it He reveals His character and His purpose.

Don’t be satisfied with second hand listening.

If you put personal effort into understanding your Bible you will more readily see God’s influence in the world and your own life, recognize the outworking of His purpose in world events, and feel the impact of His truth.

Prayer

You have access to God’s word through the Bible. You also have a channel to express your thoughts to Him— prayer.

Prayer provides a way for you to ask God to guide your life, to thank Him and to express confidence in Him.

Moreover, the Almighty hears and responds to prayer if it is offered in faith. The Creator of the universe is interested and concerned about individual human beings. He wants to help those who put their trust in Him.

This doesn’t mean that God spares the true believer from suffering.

Sometimes He presents challenges, opportunities for personal growth and strengthening. But always He provides for basic needs:

“I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread.” Psalm 37, verse 25

Like a loving Father, He knows better than His children what they really need in order to develop the right kind of character. His guidance might come in the form of discipline.

For example, He may allow the believer to suffer the consequences of wrong acts or attitudes.

The Bible stresses that the prayers of those who have a true and active faith receive His special attention.

“The eyes of the LORD are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their cry.” Psalm 34, verse 15

The book of Psalms, in the middle of the Bible, contains examples of many different kinds of prayers. Each Psalm expresses a mind truly in touch with God — aware of His love, power and absolute goodness, and at the same time of the human situation.

To anyone who seeks to know God, the Psalms are a must for thoughtful reading.

Communication brings results

Read more ...

God’s Purpose with the Earth

God’s Plan

Despite all the tragedy brought about by mankind’s disobedience and heedlessness, God has been steadily working with those who want to be His children. Always He is seeking people who want to start again and live their lives in His way. Thus, to Noah God said:

"I have seen that you are righteous before Me in this generation..." (Genesis 7:1).

To Abram (Abraham or Ibrahim), who was then living in Ur of the Chaldees, God said:

"Get out of your country, from your family and from your father’s house, to a land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation; I will bless you and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing"   (Genesis 12:1–3).

In the New Testament, the apostle Paul explained that this promise is part of the gospel of salvation:

"The Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel to Abraham beforehand, saying, “In you all the nations shall be blessed” (Galatians 3:8).

Father of the Faithful

The people we know as Jews, or Israelis, are descended from Abraham’s grandson Jacob. When the family had grown into many hundreds of thousands God said this to them:

"Now therefore, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be a special treasure to Me above all people; for all the earth is Mine" (Exodus 19:5).

The later books of the Bible show us that although most of these people chose to please themselves, there were many who chose to go God’s way.

In the lives of all these people, God was working. The Bible shows Him as a God of action – not only a Being with high thoughts and moral principles but a God who reveals Himself in what He does. The Bible is filled with references to God’s activities –

✓ rescuing Israel from Egypt,

✓ leading them to the land promised to their father Abraham,

✓ bringing foreign armies against them when they went badly astray, then

✓ having mercy and restoring them when they repented and turned back to Him.

Psalms 103 through 107 are meditations on history – mainly Jewish history - from this point of view.

Still at Work

Students of Bible prophecy recognise that God still works in human affairs today. From 1948 onwards He has allowed the people of Israel to have their own state again, after they had been scattered for nearly 2,000 years.

Read more ...

Paradise On Earth or in Heaven?

Jesus had a few words with the thief who was crucified alongside him, as recorded in Luke 23. It ended with the Lord saying: “... today you will be with me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43).

The essential issue is: Where will the righteous be rewarded? And, to a lesser extent: When? So it is a limited Scriptural teaching which is being considered in this short article. It is not the aim to discover what makes a person righteous in God’s sight, simply where are they to be rewarded – in heaven, or on earth?

SEARCH THE SCRIPTURES

A valuable method of Bible study on essential matters would seem to be; examine simple, clear, unambiguous passages and use them as a basis. This is what we are now about to do.

Firstly, we are told where the righteous will NOT be rewarded. Look at the following clear statement:

"No one has ascended to heaven but he who came down from heaven, that is, the Son of Man who is in heaven" (John 3:13).

So, subsequent to the life, death, resurrection and ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ, the apostle John can record that NO ONE HAS ASCENDED TO HEAVEN. There was, by the time of writing, one exception − the Lord Jesus − and the writer is careful to include that in the record. (He was, of course, writing under inspiration and therefore the words are accurate.) The teaching of that passage is clear.

Other people who had died had not gone to heaven, however good they might have been.

The same teaching is found in the Book of Acts when the apostle Peter says this about David the good king of Israel. He was a man described by God as “a man after My own heart” (Acts 13:22), yet this is what the apostle Peter said:

For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he says himself: “The Lord said to my Lord, ‘Sit at My right hand’” (Acts 2:34).

So, although he was righteous, yet David did not ascend to heaven but was (and remains) in the grave until the resurrection of the dead, as the apostle Paul later affirms (Acts 13:36).

WHAT THEN?

If people who have died are not in heaven, where are they? A clear Bible principle is established in one of the Psalms:

"The heaven, even the heavens, are the Lord’s; but the earth He has given to the children of men" (Psalm 115:16).

This is a wonderful promise; that this beautiful earth, at an appointed time, will be taken from man’s misrule and, under God’s control, will be given to mankind. This is in perfect accord with the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples:

"Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven" (Matthew 6:10).

These well-known words of the Lord’s Prayer teach his disciples to pray for the time when God’s kingdom will again be set up on earth. Do you recall these words of Jesus?

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth (Matthew 5:5). (To pursue this further look up the  following passages: Psalm 37:9-11; Proverbs 2:21,22; Proverbs 11:31; Numbers 14:21; Psalm 72:19 and Isaiah 45:18. There are many others.)

GOD'S COMING KINGDOM

Read more ...

GOD'S PLAN FOR THE WORLD:

THE view of planet earth, seen from outer space, is very beautiful indeed. Confirmation of this has come from the astronauts who have gazed upon it. The earth is the fairest jewel in God's creation and it is the chosen place in the whole universe where He has promised to reveal His Kingdom in all its glory. That is why it is so beautiful.

The earth, of all the planets in the solar system, is the one that is perfectly suited to all forms of life and the one that orbits at exactly the right distance from the sun to provide comfortable conditions for the human race.

Bible Prophecy is the Sole Source of Information on God’s Purpose.

The Bible alone explains why and how this should be. The reason is that the Creator "formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the Lord, and there is none else" (Isaiah 45:18).

We think it is logical to assert that if there is a Great Designer, and if He created a race of beings to inhabit this planet and no other, then there must have been an ultimate objective in His mind. Happily, we have not been left to guess what that goal might be. From the day that God put a human being on this earth, His one supreme purpose was that His creation should willingly respond to His own perfection:

"For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea" (Habakkuk 2:14).

The final stage in fulfilling that intention is what the Bible describes as THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH.

A REAL KINGDOM:

Because it will be in every physical and political sense a real kingdom it will have a king, a government, a capital, and an international system of laws. God has already delegated "all power in heaven and in earth" to His own Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. What is more, we learn that the date has been set in the divine calendar:

"God hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained" (Acts 17:31).

The kingdom of God on earth will soon be here. The abundant signs which confirm this are not the subject of this booklet; but we are mightily convinced that it is so! This coming Millennium will be the most exciting thing the world has ever seen. It will overshadow all those periods in history labelled with names like 'the age of enlightenment', 'the classical age', 'the renaissance' and so on. The kingdom of God will provide a superb environment on this lovely planet for all who will acknowledge God as supreme Creator and Jesus Christ as king of the world.

A BEAUTIFUL WORLD:

Use your imagination for a moment! Think of a world at peace, its inhabitants healthy and well-fed and doing rewarding work. Imagine a world in which there is full employment, where people are not exploited and where a man can live a long and prosperous life; a world in which famine and pestilence no longer kill one quarter of the population and where the full resources of the land and the seas are harvested. Already you are getting a picture of the Kingdom of God.

Now ponder on the absence of religious bigotry or sectarian strife; imagine the benefits of internationally accepted laws, with justice administered by fair-minded yet uncompromising judges. Conjure up a mental picture of life without terrorism and child-abuse; where good neighbourliness prevails and evil tendencies are discouraged, where governments establish good standards of behaviour, and implement just forms of retribution. That will be the kingdom of God on earth!

Read more ...