Faith v Knowledge.

There seems to be a popular notion today: How can God fault someone for not believing when God never revealed himself to them? It is certainly within an all powerful, all knowing, all good God to prove to everyone beyond any doubt that he exists.  But if that is what it takes for someone to believe in him, they aren't a very good believer are they?  What great thing have they done if they have faith in God only after God appeared to them? At that point people would have knowledge, not faith.  Giving everyone firsthand knowledge isn't something God wants to do.   It would be like having a police officer is standing right next to us 24/7. If that's what it takes to make us obey the law, we aren't very good are we?   Faith is what God is after not knowledge,  he already knows everything.

Snow and Hail.

"Have you entered the storehouses of snow, or have you seen the storehouses of hail?" Job 38:22

There is a cloud like region just beyond the orbit of Pluto made up of snow and rocks called the Oort cloud.  Beyond Neptune there is a kind of asteroid belt, only made of ice, called the Edgeworth-Kuiper belt.  Job wrote about these storehouses of snow and hail some 2600 years ago, before any telescopes were invented.  They were proposed to exist in 1943 and 1950 by the astronomers Kenneth Edgeworth, Gerard Kuiper, and Jan Oort.  The Oort cloud is  technically still a theory since it can't actually be seen.  Whereas, the Edgeworth-Kuiper belt can be seen, in fact Pluto is one such object in the belt.  Job specifically mentions "entered" with the storehouse of snow and "seen" with the storehouse of hail.  The Oort cloud can't be seen but certainly can be entered.  We can see the Edgeworth-Kuiper belt similar to the rings of Saturn.  I think it is takes more faith to believe someone who wrote about these things 2600 years ago was just wildly guessing than believing he actually had a conversation with the God of the universe.

Separation of Church and State.

Here is the 1^st amendment verbatim:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Here is what the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (1986-2005) said:

“the wall of separation between church and state is a metaphor based on bad history, a metaphor which has proved useless as a guide to judging. It should be frankly and explicitly abandoned.” -William Rehnquist Chief Justice Supreme Court 1986-2005.

 

I just want to set the record straight.  I have met too many people who think those words appear in our constitution.  They appeared in a letter to the Danbury Baptists which Jefferson assured them the state would not interfere with the church. 

Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea or walked in the recesses of the deep?

-Job 38:16

It wasn't until the 1970's that submarines like Alvin confirmed what Job knew about over 3,400 years ago. How could Job have known there were springs in the seas? Most writings show people believed the ocean floor was a flat sandy desert, at least until submarines came along. If Job wrote this thinking it would convince people there was a God, I'd imagine talking about springs in the sea made him sound less credible not more credible to the people of his day. Either he was just guessing or perhaps he was getting divine inspiration.

My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?

Picture this: Jesus is hanging on the cross, battered, bleeding. He looks down and sees all these people watching. Some are his followers, waiting to see what will happen. Some Romans are watching, thinking this will be the end of the recent troubles with the Jews. Some Jews are watching, thinking this will be the end of the troublemaker. Jesus looks to the sky and says “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” in Hebrew.  Some probably saw this as Jesus faltering. But why did he say it in Hebrew, instead of in his native language Aramaic?  Psalm 22 was written in Hebrew. Psalm 22 begins “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”. Psalm 22 also says “all who see me mock me............they pierce my hands and my feet...........they cast lots for my clothing”.   I wonder if when Jesus said that did any of the people casting lots for his clothing, or had peirced his hands and feet realized something written over 1000 years ago was happening right before their eyes.   Psalm 22 further says “He has not hidden his face from him, but has listened to his cry for help.......future generations will be told of the Lord.”.  Jesus rocked the world.  This is just one of many reasons there is BC, Before Christ, and, AD (Anno Domini) in the year of our Lord.

When I first became a Christian I set about to read the Bible from beginning to end. Genesis and Exodus was pretty interesting but then Leviticus got a little dry with all the laws and begetting. Then it struck me how detailed these laws were and how long ago Leviticus was written. Supposedly, these people were just a few generations away from cavemen, yet they wrote this about dead animals in Leviticus:

³² When any one of them dies and falls on anything it becomes unclean—any item of wood, clothing, leather, sackcloth, or any implement used for work. It is to be rinsed with water and will remain unclean until evening; then it will be clean. ³³ If any of them falls into any clay pot, everything in it will become unclean; you must break it.

Weren't these the same simpleton's that invented a diety to explain things like thunder, drought or famine? But then were smart enough figure out things like germs?  Technically, germs weren't discovered until the 1600's when Louis Pasteur looked through a new invention called a microscope. These people who lived almost 7000 years ago were smart enough to figure how to avoid diseases like dysentery and typhoid.
"You shall also have a place outside the camp and go out there, and you shall have a spade among your tools, and it shall be that when you sit down outside, you shall dig with it and shall turn to cover up your excrement." -Deuteronomy 23:10-13
One of the first settlements in America nearly died off from dysentery and typhoid in part because of where the people of Jamestown were doing their business. Did theJews figure this stuff out on their own or did they have some help from God? If they figured it out on their own, why then invent a diety?

Some time ago someone said to me they thought Jesus was a myth and that christains just "made up" the story. This isn't new information, just apparently not well known information. There are Roman and Jewish historians that made reference to Jesus. Tacitus, Josephus, Suetonius, Pliny the Younger, Thallus, Lucian, Mara Bar-Serapion. Josephus was jewish historian who surrendered to the Romans and took the new name Flavious. He wrote this in his Antiquities of the Jews (AD 94) referring to the time of Pilate:
"At this time there was a wise man who was called Jesus. And his conduct was good and [he] was known to be virtuous. Many people from among the Jews and other nations became his desciples. Pilate condemed him to be crucified and to die. And those who had become his desciples did not abandon his descipleship. They reported that he had appeared to them three days after his crucifixion and that he was alive; accordingly, he was perhaps the messiah concerning whom the prophets have recounted wonders."