Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Prepare yourself. And please do not laugh at a simple typo or two. Does God (higher power..whatever) have a loving and forgiving nature or not? If He wasnt inclined to forgive our shortcomings, I didnt see how Jesus death could change His mind, and if God was a forgiving sort, I couldnt see why He would need a human sacrifice to prove it. I think that if God originally created us in three distinct parts (or dimensions.) The first is the physical body, which contains the five senses. These are responsible for a lot of selfishness. Our body is not who we are. Its the physical membrane we live in. Many humans actually destroy their own bodies because they like many other humans believe that we are only animals. Wolverines, storks, dolphins, etc….Yes, we are animals, but there is one profound difference. We know the difference between right and wrong. The second part of man is the soul. This is the real you and me. It contains the mind (the non-physical source of thoughts which activates the physical brain), the emotions, the will and the conscience (or moral reasoning power.) The Bible claims that the soul is non-physical and indestructible (it will exist in some state forever). There is a third part of man called the spirit. I had always thought that the terms soul and spirit were just two names for the same thing. I had already decided that there must be a non-physical part of us. Even Freud, who was a confirmed atheist, was forced into an explanation of human behavior that involved non-physical elements. (As far as I know, no one has ever operated on a human brain and found a physical I.D., ego or superego, except certain DJs..(sorry for that joke) On the other hand one the greatest physicist of my lifetime and any other…Albert Einstein…. supposedly believed in God. As he grew older and pondered his own concepts and destiny he eventually realized that the cosmos, the universe, the heavens, stars, etc. could and would never stop. His profound equations had no definitive proof for that one. If they did, what was on “the other side”? Rod Sterling?. His profound equations had no definitive proof. I began to see that the concept of spiritual death described me exactly. I had read and heard a great deal about God and had spent many hours thinking about the idea of God, but I certainly had never directly perceived or experienced Him until one evening when my dad fell into a coma for no apparent reason. To make a long story short, I knew and found God because of David’s near death experience. I began to see the answer to something else that had bothered me. I had always said: If God created man and man has an evil side to him, then why should God blame us for acting the way He made him? (In the long run it seemed as though evil were Gods fault, not mans.) It’s our fault when we screw up. I saw that God had created us with freedom to respond to Gods love and love Him back. I will NEVER forget the warmth and spiritual comfort I felt when I looked at his slippers and offered a simple prayer. Please let him live a little longer God. Within seconds I jumped up and screamed “He’s gonna live.!!!! My Mom and brother in the other room had their doubts. That very night I squeezed his hand and he literally woke up. For love to be real, a person has to be free to choose to love (and free to choose not to). God looked forward in time and took all the spiritual death generated by you and me and all the other men and women who will be born until the end of time and put that death penalty on Jesus too. I still am unclear about the concept of time. Jesus cried, My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me? He was experiencing to the fullest, the spiritual death generated by countless men and women throughout the ages. He literally experienced spiritual hell as he was continuously beaten. … even though He committed no sin and was not deserving of death….I now believe that He actually died spiritually in our place. In my place. In your place. One thing continued to puzzle me. I could see how Jesus, if He lived a perfect life and therefore was never unplugged from God, could die spiritually for our sins (and it seemed logical that He would have to stay dead eternally). But I couldnt understand how Jesus as one man could possibly die and stay dead for only a few days - the Bible says He was resurrected three days later] - and still manage to pay off several billion eternities of separation from God. What? Its meant to confuse us and instill doubt. Surprisingly, I suddenly remember that I found the answer while I was a student at San Francisco State College. I asked a math major who lived in my dorm about this, and he replied, Youve forgotten that Jesus, though He was in human form, He was actually the infinite God. If He had suffered spiritual death for even 10 minutes, He would have generated more than enough death to pay for 100 billion eternities of separation from God. Remember He was giving up infinite life, and infinity multiplied times anything still equals infinity. Or as he wrote down for me: Jesus yielding infinite life x 10 minutes = infinite eternities of spiritual death payments. But I was still confused about this: Why, if Jesus death paid for all the spiritual death for all the ages, do we still experience separation from God? Then I realized that God still cant violate our free will without making us subhuman. God has gone to great trouble and sacrifice to provide forgiveness for us and to restore us to fellowship with Himself. Forgiveness and a new spirit are free gifts that He offers us. If we refuse His gift, we will continue to experience spiritual death, and when our physical life ends, we will be cut off eternally from God and His love. Those who accept Christs death as payment for their spiritual death are given new spiritual eyes. They are again complete in body, soul and spirit. For the person who has this new nature within their soul, physical death is no threat. When the soul sheds the physical body, the person continues to grow and have fellowship with God through His spirit. No matter what “faith” you embrace, please just ponder the word faith itself……………. As we grow older more and more loved ones will pass on. Notice how I use pass on. Some people actually believe that the human body rots and that’s all there is. Fine. That is your right. Just take a closer look at nature itself. A snowflake, a 300 foot ancient redwood..etc. I love the wonderful glow of an orange sunset, the whisper of a gentle western wind and the hum of a loose ground wire from my turntable. The thought of Mozart with a plume, writing a concerto by candlelight, and Beethovens head resting on a piano when he was deaf. The thousands of beautiful paintings that took years to complete.The spark in Thomas Edisons eyes when he invented the first light bulb and recording and so on. I could write another zillion great things, but I think I made my point. Geez..that was kind of heavy. HAPPY THANKSGIVING !!! Wyatt Jennings
Posted on: Thu, 28 Nov 2013 06:28:49 +0000
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