Tuesday 7 May 2013

Wim Verdouw zijn tocht naar geloof in slechts één God

Het gebeurd wel meer dat mensen zich beginnen af te vragen wie God nu toch werkelijk was. Zo ook deed Wim Verdouw , voorganger van de Messiaanse gemeente Immanuël dat.

In een interview verteld hij over zijn meest heftige jaren van zijn leven toen hij belandde bij een Evangelisch-Charismatische gemeente waar hij zich enthousiast verdiepte in het Pinkstergeloof, maar tot de conclusie kwam dat er Bijbels gezien niets van al die geesten en tongenbidden klopte. Bovendien verwierp men de Tora: het moest allemaal vanuit het gevoel. De Wet was immers ‘weggedaan’.”
Hij vertelt ook hoe hij samen met zeven andere gelovigen de moed bijeen schraapte om niet meer enkel in zijn huis samen te komen op Sabbatmorgen, maar om na een jaar een zaaltje te gaan huren en een gemeente te starten. Ze stapten dus naar de notaris voor een officiële registratie. ‘Een kerk beginnen? Dat hoor je niet zo vaak meer tegenwoordig’, zei de notaris hen.


Lees het interview: Interview W. Verdouw – “Alleen de Vader is God”

Thursday 2 May 2013

Don't Envy the World

Don't Envy the World SermonOur flesh has the basic characteristic of envy and it’s something that our spiritual mind has to keep under control. It is something that the Psalmist says almost got the better of him. 

Have you ever thought sometimes that being a disciple of Christ means you are missing out on the things of the world? Have you ever thought about what life would be like if you had never come to a knowledge of Jesus. Imagine what it would be like to live our lives in pursuit of happiness through money, possessions, social status and to not have the moral constraints places upon us having accepted Christ as our saviour.
Are we ever envious of those who live in the world? Does it seem like they get all the freedom and fun in life? I'm sure we can all think of examples in our own lives where our beliefs have prevented us from doing something that we would have liked to do.
Continue reading.... Don't Envy the World - Sermon


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We have a choice. The riches of God, or the riches of the world. Will we allow ourselves to get caught up in the prosperity of the world like in the parable of the rich man who built bigger barns to store his wealth? Or when we look over the fence in to the world outside as the Psalmist did, will we come to our senses and realise that true riches lie within God’s sanctuary.  

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Envy
Envy (Photo credit: NRK P3)


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Praise the most High Jehovah God above all

Christian Wallpaper Psalm 113 v 3

“1  praise Jehovah! praise, O servants of Jehovah, praise the name of Jehovah. 2 blessed [is] the name of Jehovah from this time forth and forevermore. 3 from the rising of the sun to its going down, Jehovah’s name [is] to be praised. 4 Jehovah [is] high above all nations, and his glory above the heavens. 5 who [is] like Jehovah our god, who dwells on high, 6 who humbles [himself] to behold [the] [things] in the heavens and in the earth! 7 he raises up the poor out of the dust, [and] lifts the needy out of the dunghill, 8 in order to make him sit with nobles, with the nobles of his people. 9 he causes the barren to dwell in the house [as] a joyful mother of sons. praise Jehovah!” (Psalms 113:1-9 MKJV)


Psalm 13:5
Psalm 13:5 (Photo credit: [Share the Word])

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Wednesday 1 May 2013

Did the Inspirator exist

When we see those different Books who make up that one inspirational Book of Books, we can either see those 40 different authors, Hebrew or Greek writers from 19 different occupations (including shepherd, farmer, fisherman, tax collector, doctor, king)

Could it be possible that  those human writers all speak in the name of the same Spirit?


The Gutenberg Bible displayed by the United St...
The Gutenberg Bible displayed by the United States Library of Congress, demonstrating printed pages as a storage medium. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In these 66 books we hear them telling about history, prophecy, poetry, and theology. Despite their complexity, differences in writing styles and vast time periods, the books of the Bible agree miraculously well in theme, facts and cross-referencing. No human beings could have planned such an intricate combination of books over a 1,500-year time span.

The writers did live in different places and in different times. Strangely enough there seems to be one line in their stories. An astonishing 668 prophecies have been fulfilled and none have ever been proven false. An honest study of biblical prophecy will convincingly show the divine authorship of the Bible, the infallible Word of God. Furthermore, archaeology confirms or supports many Biblical accounts. No other holy book comes close to the Bible in the amount of evidence supporting its divine authorship.

Everything recorded in the Bible is true and factual, and you will also see that men of the Bible recorded things that they had no way of knowing, unless they had been divinely inspired by a greater being than any human being, namely God, the Creator of all things.

Nobody has ever seen God, so how can they know that He exist. "Hè" you could think and say to us "you say nobody saw God, but did not many people see and spoke to Jesus Christ". Then we would say: "Yes, many saw Jesus Christ"; But that Nazarene man who was a master teacher was and is not God; He is the son of God, which is totally different than "god the son". In case Jesus would have been God than all the people who saw him would have died straight ahead, because God is a man of His Word and never lies. So what He said many centuries before the birth of Christ would still happen at the time of Christ or thousands of years later. God who can not be tempted nor say something which is not true said about the nephew of John the Baptist that it was His "only begotten son". Jesus who could be tempted and was tempted more than once, did not sin, which also means that he never lied, so when he said he was not a spirit but a man of flesh and blood, and showed his wounds from the wooden stake where he was brought to death (while God can not die and is an eternal Spirit) Jesus did tell the truth.

Jesus his Father is the Only One God and Creator of heaven and earth.

In nature, in Jesus, in the men or prophets of God, in the people of God, we can see the manifestation of God. The trees, the flowers, the beauty of the natural world, the stars; none of these things can answer straight away, the question if that Creator God has an existing and  purpose.

All the things around us can show that there must be a Greater Power who made all this.

We may be sure that all the created elements show the world their existence and the secrets of the Maker behind it. By those incredible things in the world God His invisible attributes are clearly seen. Because all creatures are created in the image of God, all inherited parts of that godhead and received from Him the possibility to think and to understand where they came from. Either with many or with not many brains people still would have the instinct to get to know their Maker and to know what is good or bad. As such  they really are without excuse. Everybody received the possibility tho think but also to make their own free choice. So when people deceide to ignore what their heart is telling them they are responsible themselves for their choice and way of direction.

Although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools … (Romans 1:19–22)

Paul was saying that what we see with our naked eyes of the natural world provides us with ample evidence that an almighty and eternal power exists which created and brought order to everything around us. We don’t need to depend on the thoughts of mankind: the latest scientific discovery or theory, or the continuing arguments of men. Evidence for the existence of God is all around us, if we are prepared to look and think about it.

Notice too that to deny the existence of God, since He has given adequate evidence to convince us, leaves us in the apostle’s words, “without excuse”. It is inexcusable to deny the existence of God, regardless of what current phi­losophy or polite society might think. Do we first need to believe the Bible to accept this proof? Not so! The Bible is pointing out that the evidence for an eternal power and Godhead is all around. If you can accept that, then clearly the Bible will have other good things you want to know about.

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Please do read the articles:  Belief in God &  

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Read also:

  1. Science and God’s existence
  2. Creator and Blogger God 1 Emptiness and mouvement
  3. My Beliefs and the World
  4. Trusting, Faith, calling and Ascribing to Jehovah #3 Voice of God #1 Creator and His Prophets
  5. On the Nature of Christ
  6. Hellenistic influences
  7. Politics and power first priority #2
  8. Politics and power first priority #3 Elevation of Mary and the Holy Spirit

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Who Wrote the Bible?

Who Wrote the Bible?

Written by Man… Inspired by God

There are many books in the world. You only need to step into your local library and see the rows upon rows of books to see that there are a lot of them. Think how long it would take to read them all. Then consider that is only a small library, there are larger central libraries, then there are academic libraries with many more books and journals, then realise that there are archives of information all over the world. Then there is a lot of information which is published only in electronic format, electronic Journals, the information on the internet. This is the collective wisdom of mankind, a vast archive of information too big to comprehend.
Bible
Bible (Photo credit: Sean MacEntee)


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The Bible was written by about 40 different authors representing some 19 different occupations (these include shepherd, farmer, fisherman, tax collector, doctor, king) who lived during a period of some 1,500 years. That is approximately 50 generations.
The first 39 books of the Bible were written in the Hebrew language over a period of about 1,000 years. There was then a 400-year gap when no Scriptures were written. After that, the last 27 books of the Bible were written in the Greek language during a period covering roughly 50 years.
There may have been 40 different authors but the Bible itself tells us that God is the author of the Bible. God hasn’t just left us with claims that it is His divine handiwork, but He also supports it with compelling evidence. The design of the Bible itself is a miracle.
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The books of the Old Testament, showing their ...
The books of the Old Testament, showing their positions in both the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible, shown with their names in Hebrew) and Christian Bibles. The Deuterocanon or Apocrypha are colored differently from the Protocanon (the Hebrew Bible books which are considered canonical by all). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Read more: Who Wrote the Bible? Written by Man… Inspired by God


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Armageddon, har and megiddo, an action or a place

Armageddon TimelineArmageddon:

Fact or Fiction?


What is Armageddon, when will it happen and what will happen?

Armageddon is often thought of as being a huge, violent event on a global scale, whether it be a natural disaster such as earthquakes, tidal waves, asteroids, volcanoes, or plagues, or something less natural like alien invasion or nuclear war.

In the article of 'The Bible Study' the authors look at what the Bible tells us about Armageddon, it's perhaps not quite what you think!

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The Apocalypse is a Greek transliteration of our word revelation, and apokálypsis simply means unveiling or uncovering, or as is the case of the last book of the New Testament, The Revelation.
Armageddon only appears in the Bible once. That’s in Revelation 16:16.
And they assembled them at the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon. (Rev 16:16)
This word Armageddon comes from the Ancient Greek, Harmagedon and will be according to the Book of Revelation, the site of a battle during the end times, with some interpreting it as literal and others interpreting it as a symbolic location. It will be the battle when God sends Jesus and all the saints to battle against the nations that come against Israel.

There are a couple of thoughts as to where the word comes from, one of them being that it is made up of two Hebrew words, har and megiddo, meaning “mountain of Megiddo”.
Megiddo is mentioned twelve times in the Old Testament, ten times in reference to the ancient city and twice in reference to the plains of Megiddo. None of the Old Testament passages describe Megiddo as being associated with any particular prophecy which you would think likely if it was to be the scene for the battle at the end of the world. Neither is there a mountain at Megiddo, there is a range of hills, but not a mountain. Megiddo is in the north of Israel some 50 miles from Jerusalem.

Some conclude that Armageddon is symbolic place rather than a physical place because there are no mountains of Megiddo, only plains. Others think that the word is more likely to be har moed, or the mountain of assembly, which would then refer to Mount Sinai, and therefore to its replacement at Mount Zion, in Jerusalem.
But, as it was originally a Hebrew word we should perhaps we should be looking more carefully at the word in the Hebrew language. As there is only one letter ‘d’, it might be more correct to break it down in to ‘arma’ which is a heap of sheaves, ‘ge’ which is valley and ‘don’ which means judgement.
That translates as the nations will be gathered together as heaps of sheaves in the valley of judgement.

> Continue reading: 

Armageddon: Fact or Fiction?

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One God the Father, a compendium of essays



One God, the Father (Ed. T. Gaston, sponsored by the Christadelphian EJournal of Biblical Interpretation (www.christadelphian-ejbi.org), and published January 2013, 310 pages, £8.99)


Synopsis
One God, the Father is a compendium of essays about Biblical Monotheism. It explores the continuity of monotheism from the Old Testament presentation of God through to the Synoptic Gospels, the writings of Paul and John. It traces the development of Christian ideas about God from the original, biblical, monotheism to the emergence of the doctrine of the triune God, a doctrine that has dominated Christian thought ever since. It describes thinkers and communities, both historical and contemporary, who have held to Biblical Monotheism, often in the face of significant opposition. It also explores the implications of Biblical Monotheism for Christian doctrine and practice.

Essays and contributors are:

PART ONE: THE BIBLE
One God: The Shema in the Old and New Testament (J. Adey)
Jewish Monotheism in the First Century (A. Perry)
Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels (P. Heavyside)
Jesus in John’s Writings (P. Wyns)
Jesus and Paul: A Summary of Pauline Christology (J. Thorpe)
The Holy Spirit (M. Allfree)

PART TWO: HISTORY
After the Apostles (T. Gaston)
The Trinity in the Fourth Century (D. Burke)
Before the Reformation: Medieval Christianity (K. Stewart)
Biblical Monotheism in the Radical Reformation (J. Andrews)
Antitrinitarian Textual Criticism in Early Modern Europe (S. Snobelen)
Biblical Monotheism in the Nineteenth Century (A. Wilson)
Biblical Monotheism Today (R. Hyndman)

PART THREE: DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE
Manifestation or Incarnation? (A. Perry)
Monotheism and the Atonement (R. Benson)
Worship, Prayer and Jesus (M. Morris)