kjv@Psalms:54 @ @ RandyP comments: Mentioned here are "those that uphold" David's soul in the same sentence as God being David's helper. Shall we assume that amongst other things God is using certain people in David's life to comfort and sustain David's will and judgment? As we are often prone to gathering the wrong people around us, it would be wise to not only pray for the right people to enter and surround us, but to seek out and nurture these necessary relationships well ahead of our time of need, and for His hands to guide them in these times of our crises?
kjv@Acts:28:27 @ @ RandyP comments: ...and should be converted... converted to what? The complaint is that Christianity is something new, that Judaism is being added to, the Law is being removed/diminished. The Law is not diminished it is being fulfilled in one person. It is not being added to, it is being completed in the manner it itself has long prescribed. It is not something new if it's leader is someone anticipated ever since kjv@Genesis:3:15.
kjv@Psalms:66 @ @ RandyP comments: Affliction serves the purpose of purging and cleansing in the life of believers. It is not a bad thing other wise we'd likely go back to the way we were before. This way we've not only learned to depend solely on God, been removed from our selfish and ill advised motives, seen the hand and operation of God, but, also have some investment into the process. The praise and prayer offered becomes real and sincere, organic and experiential instead of merely academic.
kjv@Romans:2 @ @ RandyP comments: No one is above judgement. Our only salvation in judgment is in Jesus Christ. In the previous chapter we've read of the ways of the reprobate. It would be natural for us to be judgmental of others given this impressive list. The problem with that is in the many things for which we ourselves will be judged, things perhaps more hidden than for example overt homosexuality. Persons on both sides of the line draw their own conclusions and judgements. A wall builds up between us with sinners on both sides. God's long suffering and forbearance has been shown to us all. It is time for us on both sides to think in terms of the spirit verses the letter of the law. Let us set aside any sin that would so easily beset us.
kjv@Psalms:71 @ @ RandyP comments: We are reading this as it appears in the order of the book of Psalms and not in the chronological order of his Davids life. It will be interesting in the next devotion to see where David is at in his life when he pens this. We know by I reading thus far of Samuel Kings and Chronicles that there was a good part of his life in exile being hunted by Saul or later his son. These may be some of the enemies which he writes of so frequently of. It can be the spiritual enemies while he is on the throne as well.
kjv@Psalms:75 @ @ RandyP comments: When it is all said and done we will look back, notice the old things dissolved, the many horns silenced but one. We will know then what a grand work the Lord has done. We can sense that even today if open to it and know that we are going through a separation process where the dregs are settling to the bottom and the good wine poured off into its vessels of honor. There is plenty to praise Him for already!
kjv@Psalms:78 @ @ RandyP comments: By Asaph. The condition of man's heart, even the heart of God's chosen/faithful, is reviewed. Rebellious, if by them than how much more are we? After all that God had done, after all that God had made them into, after all that God had done both peaceably and violently to correct them, they sinned still and did not believe Him for His wondrous works. They forgot, refused, tempted and provoked, believed not nor trusted, lusted, kept not His commandment/testimony, were not steadfast in His covenant. By denying Christ Jesus to this day, what would make us to think that this is any different today, that somehow now they've got it right, have evolved to a higher more trustworthy plain? Gentiles are just the same though they haven't been exposed to this measure. We know from scripture however that they will one day come to the fullness of their covenant with God in the Lord Jesus.
kjv@Romans:7 @ @ RandyP comments: In Christ our previous husband (the Law) is dead; we've seen our inescapable sin nature, we know the will to do right is there but not how to perform it, we sense the war raging against the law of our minds. Now we are married to a new husband, a husband that has raised from the death dictated by the Law and brought us into a completely new and living hope.
kjv@Psalms:82 @ @ RandyP comments: The poor and the needy are a constant theme in our reading. There are a great many reasons one might be poor and needy or fatherless and afflicted. I have known people that I have tried to help that even with my extra resources that just don't know any other way. In some respects it seems as if this exhortation is more about working to keep the wicked off their backs. By accepting the persons of the wicked, by not realizing who they are and what they are doing and calling them out we are dealing unjustly with poor and needy. An entire and large sub economy is built around serving the poor either as false recipients or providers that have little to do with actually helping the poor. The system grows exponentially but the truly needy are ill served. Our good intentions are used by the wicked to serve their darker purposes.
kjv@Romans:8:19-39 @ @ RandyP comments: This chapter being one of the most quoted in the Bible is often being picked apart into bite size pieces instead of being taken in as a whole. In bites we can make it say all sorts of nice comfy things. As a whole we should see it as an intense spiritual battle over the souls of men. Being saved by hope, helped even still in our infirmities, being drafted into the allied ranks, being counted as sheep for the slaughter, Paul is persuaded that nothing can separate believers from the love of God, that all these trench level struggles and persecutions work for together for the good. No matter what this war can throw against us our Supreme Commander is there.
kjv@Psalms:85 @ @ RandyP comments: I wonder how much of the anger of God read about here is His anger and how much is either our sense of shame or rebelliousness. We often transfer the blame or misinterpret the real situation; which may make Him all the more angry. We have to be careful not to present ourselves as being ready for being turned if only God were not still so mad. If God is angry there will be good cause. If He is still distant then perhaps we are not fully ready to be turned and revived. With God, mercy and truth are always met together, it is never a point that we wish He would return to.
kjv@Romans:14 @ @ RandyP comments: Notice how this theme of the brethren and striving for the unity of the spirit ties in with what we just read in kjv@Romans:12. This teaching is a very practical way of considering the more general commands of 12.
kjv@Psalms:106 @ @ RandyP comments: They sacrificed sons and daughters to devils. If the notion is true that all paths lead to God, we would have to say no they sacrificed unto other forms of the same God. Then why would God be so angry and show His displeasure in so many ways? One must ask where do other forms of gods come from? How do they develop the forms of influence that they do and sway so many well intended people? Would they of sacrificed if they had known that behind these gods were literal devils? How is it that despite all these God given miracles and large wondrous mercies that they would still sacrifice to devils and learn of others idolatrous works?
kjv@Romans:16 @ @ RandyP comments: A long but partial list no doubt of the people Paul has marked out as being good brethren, people he would encourage us to hang out with and emulate. A leader would be wise to make public mention of these role models frequently. There are people to mark out to avoid as well, people that appear to be goodly but serve their own belly. Maybe it is not as important to us individually to mark them out, but, as leaders of a ministry or congregation it certainly is. Be sure to address this fault with them first personally as is proper but, if nothing yet changes avoid them. In any event they must be cut off from their position in the services of the church. A leader would be wise like Paul to search this list out system wide especially in the areas where food or money or barter-able services might be changing hands.
kjv@Psalms:114 @ @ RandyP comments: The sea parted for Israel. The Jordan river became dry land for them to cross. As a foreign nation watching on from a distance, one would have to ask why such a mighty god would do these things for Israel and not us? Later, after our foreign nation had infiltrated and commingled our gods and idols into Israel, one would have to ask why is this god Jehovah so jealous over Israelite people and not us? What are these many legends being retold about their time in the desert? Surely, Israel is being used as an injection point for His inoculation needle. The surrounding area festers, it fevers, it changes, the remainder of the body takes sudden and frequent notice. The body collectively resists, the body swells against, it is whipped into a frenzy, but, in the process of fighting against the injection the body takes on and spreads the antibody unknowingly, receiving and carrying about that which the Doctor behind the needle had fully intended from the start. 'Tremble, thou earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob'.
kjv@Psalms:118 @ @ RandyP comments: It is common to think of righteousness as something personal that you build up with good works. Here we find righteousness as a entry way that has been opened which one person, the subject of this psalm walks into. Who is this person that does not die but declares the works of His Lord? If we think of Jesus as the one the nations and wicked have come against like bees, if we think of Him as the head cornerstone they've refused, Him that will execute the judgement against these haters, the sacrifice bound to the alter, then we see how that entry way has been made. Now then by this gate the righteous plural can enter in as well. His mercy does endure for ever!
kjv@1Corinthians:3 @ @ RandyP comments: Paul continues to address the divisions in Corinth. He could have just said to stop it, but, instead used the opportunity to teach important doctrines. The carnal mind has not been escaped to this point as there are envying and strife. Thinking oneself to be wise, glorying in certain men over others when all are doing their work for the Lord are caused by spiritual immaturity. We are taught to look at a much larger picture of what God is doing and how other men and ourselves fit into that.
kjv@1Corinthians:6 @ @ RandyP comments: Just as this divides itself over it's leadership, just as this assembly tolerates fortification, just as they tolerate civil matters between themselves to be brought before a secular court, this body joins itself as if in marriage to these grievous forms of unrighteousness. The leaven mentioned in the previous chapter has raised up into a spiritual adultery of congregational proportions; and this among fellow believers. Surely not all have done individually these sinful things, but, the congregation is effected as a whole none the less. Tolerance and passiveness in this case is a sin just as pungent.
kjv@Psalms:131 @ @ RandyP comments: When the heart is haughty and the eyes lofty the soul takes upon itself a great deal, increasingly large matters it really has no business in. I think of the political campaigns we are suffering these months ahead of elections. Presented are entire shopping lists of big and grandiose ideas/programs that each and everyone of us knows will never once be addressed. So why are we making concern over them, why to the near exclusion of the things that we would be able to address? This same type issue is true in our individual hearts as well. Oh yes, grand dreams and visions, miraculous intentions, marvelous causes, big and frequent squawks and chatter. It hardly ever results in any more than that. For some though, a new found calm and quietness, a weaning from the demanding tantrums of a suckling child, a trust and obedience to a more modest constantly maturing godly nature.
kjv@1Corinthians:8 @ @ RandyP comments: The principal is that knowledge is likely to puff us up. The example illustration is eating food offered to idols. The knowledge may be correct that the offering to idols means nothing, but so is the knowledge that some believers will be offended by it (right or wrong). Instead of puffing up about it and insisting to be right, bend towards the matters of another's conscience. What other areas can we apply this principal to?
kjv@Psalms:147:15 @ @ RandyP comments: We often put the concept of God spreading His word solely into the hands of man, limiting His word to the places man can get to and the time frame it would take for man to be able to get there and the reaction the man or men would receive. God's word is not limited by any such thing; it moves swiftly. He can use man's willingness to spread just as He can use the frozen ice.
kjv@Psalms:150 @ @ RandyP comments: kjv@Psalms:37:4 Delight thyself also in the LORD... What more could one's heart desire? I'm ready. Join me?
kjv@Proverbs:8 @ @ RandyP comments: I sense the suggestion that before creation the plan was all laid out, Jesus was to be our redeemer. Wisdom became all that which moved that plan forward, the establishment of the covenant, the law, Israel, the prophecies, the conviction of the Holly Spirit. Wisdom was there when all these essential things were framed, it is there evident in all creation revealing even the Godhead so that we are without excuse kjv@Romans:1:20. Wisdom is the purpose and direction and establishments leading all men back to their savior.
kjv@Proverbs:2 @ @ RandyP comments: Chapter marks are a more recent development added to the Bible for purposes of easier reference. Sometimes they get in the way of the more fluid reading that the writer intended. It is interesting way to read these proverbs to remove these chapter partitions and read larger chunks of instruction. kjv@PLAIN:Proverbs:1-8
kjv@Proverbs:9 @ @ RandyP comments: Two woman are portrayed, wisdom and a noisy clamorous fool. Wisdom is an invitation to a feast already prepared, foolishness is an invitation to secret taboos and pleasures. Both pursue the same type man, the simple.
kjv@Proverbs:9 @ @ RandyP comments: Simple mindedness can be thought of as open mindedness; it can be both good and bad. An open mind can lead to the acceptance of the possibility of wisdom all ready being prepared beforehand there for the taking, for the shedding of and separation from foolishness. It can also lead to nothing more than an attitude permitting oneself to scorn the notion of true wisdom and an investigation into stolen and secret sensual pleasures. One way leads to life the other to hell. Ones focus should not be on having an open mind just for the sake of having an open mind and being able to self justify any and everything, one should have an open mind for the sake of seeking absolute truth for it will catch up with us sooner than later. Perhaps having a clear mind should be a better objective.
kjv@Proverbs:10:24 @ @ RandyP comments: Interesting that the comparison here is between fear and desire. The wicked do not desire the inevitable and they fear that it will inevitably come. What do they have to fear? The judgment of their misplaced desires. The righteous desire the inevitable and their desire is inevitably granted. What is it they desire? Judgment leading to fuller communion with God.
kjv@Proverbs:12 @ @ RandyP comments: Like all scripture the proverbs take some digging into. Meaning may not be immediately obvious especially when two proverbs take the same point from two different directions. In a sense many of these appear as generalities when taken individually. But if taken as spring boards toward a greater reverence/fear of the Lord, the sum brings true wisdom/understanding; somethings that the casual reader will not spend time to consider.
kjv@Proverbs:15:22 @ @ RandyP comments: The problem is that few of us have ever taken the effort of developing and maintaining a circle of wise counselors. It is a purposeful and extensive investment long before an issue ever arises. Knowing who to trust, who most sees things as they really are, having previous experience with them in smaller issues. Men seem to hold off seeking counsel until times where a circle of counsel cannot be mustered soon enough. Women tend to seek the wrong counsel, counsel that will tell you whatever they think you want to hear instead of counsel that is honest and fearless enough to tell you where you are wrong.
kjv@Proverbs:15 @ @ RandyP comments: kjv@Proverbs:15:33 seems best to summarize all the individual proverbs we've now read best. Everything comes down to this - humility before honor, reverence is the allowance to become tutored by.
kjv@Proverbs:16:9 @ @ RandyP comments: If the preparations of the heart are the Lord's kjv@Proverbs:16:1, if his goings forth are from the Lord and his way cannot be understood outside of the Lord kjv@Proverbs:20:24 and if it is only the counsel of the Lord that will stand kjv@Proverbs:19:21, what do we have other than to choose which of His steps to take? In light of kjv@Romans:1:18-24 God prepared hearts to follow after Him, He gave them a choice, as much as He prepared they still chose contrary, their steps now are directed (that choice leads to these steps) yet His counsel must stand - they are condemned for transgressing the preparation laid into their hearts.
kjv@2Corinthians:1 @ @ RandyP comments: Whether Paul's team was afflicted or comforted, it was for our comfort and salvation. Both abounded with his team, sufferings and comfort because they abound in Christ. They were afflicted even to the point of death. They considered themselves dead and only by the deliverance of God did they continue. Our consolation is effectual in all sufferings but particularly in the same sufferings which they suffered.
kjv@Ecclesiastes:1 @ @ RandyP comments: Just days ago we had read kjv@1Corinthians:15 that the righteousness of God in putting us through this corruption was to break us down, have us die to ourselves that we might germinate to a spiritual plant/being (be born again). Here it says similarly the travail God has given the sons of men to be exercised with. From the observation from heaven it is a unnecessary and righteous thing and from our sense it is a grievous and sorrowful thing. This is because of the weight with which we invest ourselves into making something carnal out of this present corruption. We do not see the things under heaven as they were before nor the things as they will be. All is vanity, but, God submitted us to this vanity because of a much greater righteous hope kjv@Romans:8:20-23.
kjv@Ecclesiastes:7:10 @ @ RandyP comments: The wiser question might be where does the Lord want me now and what does he want me to do today! I thank Him for the good found in every day. I thank Him that He is there ahead of me through it all. He truly is my shepherd.
kjv@2Corinthians:12 @ @ RandyP comments: An uncleanness/fornication/lasciviousness is sweeping through this church. Instead of being repentant and chaste they are seemingly becoming accusatory and slanderous of Paul. He had sent Titus but, it is quickly becoming an issue that he will have to address himself to answer his accusers. Sin has this manner where it puffs itself up, justifies itself by attacking/diminishing the person that represents righteousness.
kjv@Isaiah:1 @ @ RandyP comments: BookOfIsaiah gives us a good background to Isaiah. We find ourselves in great rebellion, the LORD seeking to correct but, no correction being taken. If not for a remnant the nation would have already been destroyed.
kjv@Isaiah:7 @ @ RandyP comments: This is a very detailed prophecy. In 65 tears Ephraim/Israel shall be no more and not long after both Ephraim and Judah shall be without a king being first under the hand of Assyria. The fruitful land shall be over taken with flys and bees and become briers and thorns suitable only for cattle. Heads and beards and feet will be shaven in utter humiliation. During this era of captivity the messiah will born, His name, her virginity, His diet and distaste for evil all are revealed. Each and every piece of this prophecy has been completely fulfilled within a 675 year time span.
kjv@Isaiah:8 @ @ RandyP comments: Imagine how the people reading and hearing this would feel and what they would be compelled to do. The obvious reaction would be to seek out confederate alliances with stronger nations, but even the stronger nations themselves will be overcome by Assyria like flood waters. They would seek out familiar spirits and the occult, the Lord then would completely hide His face. The fulfillment of God's righteous redemptive plan, the Messiah Himself would become a stumbling block, a rock of offense, they would be in the dark. Again, each and every word was fulfilled. And as for the 'rock of offense' it continues to be fulfilled even today.
kjv@Isaiah:9:21 @ @ RandyP comments: Manasseh, once the land of the tribes on the other side of the Jordan, now the land of Gilead.
kjv@Galatians:6:11 @ @ RandyP comments: I have heard theories that Paul may have been crippled or have a deformity in arm or hand. We have already summized that he could well have problems with his eye sight. We also know that he was beaten and stoned near to death on several occasions and therefore be severely damaged. The Galatians here would have been deeply moved by whatever this sentence points to; he does bear the marks of Christ.
kjv@Isaiah:16 @ @ RandyP comments: The thought of invading troops walking freely through our streets is something we as Americans have not had to face. The long dreaded enemy of the Moabites, the lords of the occupation, doing as they pleased to whatever or whomever they pleased is one thing, but, to have it told to you three years in advance and to be told why another. You would know that you had done wrong!
kjv@Isaiah:25 @ @ RandyP comments: I can't help but think that we have minimized sin to such a point where these actions of God seem extreme instead of thinking of them as faithful and true. That He would have to do all of this and to this extent should tell us everything that we need to know about this sin nature. By the time that we are delivered through and out of this present truth there is a tremendous new life. Death will be gone, tears wiped away, rebuke shall be lifted, a feast partaken of.
kjv@Isaiah:37 @ @ RandyP comments: We tend to imagine the worst. If this enemy was strong enough to do this or that to the others than what chance do I have. The other nations stuck to their flase gods; God was using Assyria to clean their house. Judah had their false gods but, there was also a remnant of those committed to Jehovah; God was using Assyria as a means of cleansing and correction. What a tremendous testimony especially being that the Assyrian defeat was prophicied. God also used a false messenger from Ethiopia. All things work for God's purposes, the more open, the harder we look for that common thread, the sooner we will see the events and circumstances in our lives in their truer light.
kjv@Isaiah:38 @ @ RandyP comments: The king was suffering from some disease causing the skin to boil. Indications are that it was making him to be bitter towards God. Hezekiah had been a good godly king, the right man for the times at hand in Judah, but, not even that keeps one from suffering deadly illness, the curse of Adam. We cannot say that bitterness caused this cancer. We cannot say that the illness was intended to bring to light a hidden bitterness that then could be dealt with. We can not say that Hezekiah's illness was intended to stir the faith of the others around him. For then we would have to say the same about anyone of us. Though these things may have resulted, we can say that God dealt with everything that happened with the good of His plan and love for His servant in mind. The same would have been true if Hezekiah would have been called back into the Lord's rest.
kjv@Philippians:3 @ @ RandyP comments: Pressing toward the mark, not that we have already attained perfection; having no other confidence but in Christ, the fellowship of His death and sufferings that we may know the power of His resurection. How different this sacrifice/pursuit is from mere religion.
kjv@Isaiah:41:26 @ @ RandyP comments: The Lord is righteous. A large measure of that righteousness can be found in the fact that He announces what will be before it happens. It is not to show off, though it is impressive, it is to warn and instruct. It is righteous for instance for the highway department to put a warning sign before a sharp curve or steep decline. Whether there is good ahead or danger it is right of the Lord to show it in advance. It also shows that He is a Lord like no other with vision and capability to perform it.
kjv@Isaiah:42 @ @ RandyP comments: mhcc@Isaiah:42 worth the read!
kjv@Isaiah:51 @ @ RandyP comments: The matter of perspective is all important; who is who and what is what. Heaven and Earth and everything in it, all this has the Lord done and still does. What man/nation is there that can alter one thing, and yet this is who we fear. In this case we read of the children of Abraham, the children of Zion. God has indeed given them over to a measure of correction. It seems like a long time and an impossible burden for them. The Lord will accomplish His will and their is none to stop Him; the cup of trembling shall be removed.
kjv@Isaiah:53 @ @ RandyP comments: Again we read of the 'Servant' as being the 'Arm of the Lord'. His visage so marred beyond any other; a tender plant wounded for our transgressions. He has poured out His soul unto death. The details here are exquisite. Can there be any doubt as to who Isaiah is talking about? The Father sees the travail of this particular soul and shall be satisfied. He bares their iniquities and justifies many.
kjv@Isaiah:54 @ @ RandyP comments: The effect of the 'Servant's' redemptive work is glorious. The life to follow extreme. For now we have this eternal hope. It guides us and feeds us and inspires us. Soon it will be our reality. Instead of a flood of destruction it will be to us a flood of supreme love and good will.
kjv@1Thessalonians:1 @ @ RandyP comments: People do notice. There is not a particular individual mentioned here. The congregation is likely acting together as one, they are working and laboring doing things as a body that are being observed and talked about. One thing that stands out is that they are not doing what everybody else is doing, in this case having turned from idols. For this they suffered affliction yet withstood the pressure with patience and hope. Such things stand out and are talked about distances beyond our personal knowing and causing the gospel to be spread. Where can we stand out in our churches today?
kjv@1Thessalonians:3 @ @ RandyP comments: It is hard to know how people will react to pressure. You work hard to establish something. You may have to step aside knowing that the work is not yet completed but progressing forward. You hope and pray and send envoys to check in now and then, but, it is a nerve racking ordeal no doubt. The pressure these early churches were under was considerable. The forces (even Satanic) specifically following the team of Paul extreme. The hindrance mentioned may not have been so much upon the team being able to travel there as much as what their arriving might have brought. Were they ready? Was the lack in their faith something to do in the armament of believers against the Satanic warfare being experienced?
kjv@1Thessalonians:4:13-18 @ @ RandyP comments: There are differing theories that can be scripturally supported regarding the dead in Christ. The most common would suggests that this passage is speaking of the body being at sleep but the spirit being fully awake and present with the Lord. This would allow for Paul's 'being absent from this body means being present with the Lord' comment as well as Jesus' 'this day you will be with me in paradise' statement as well as others (beggar and rich man etc..). Others suggest this is a literal sleep (like Lazarus), that time is imperceivable in eternity, that from our side this sleep is for a while, from eternity it would be instantaneous. There are other plausible explanations as well. Either way, the Lord has matters well in hand, and the soul is at a state of grace and peace.
kjv@Isaiah:57 @ @ RandyP comments: The plan is not for God to have to contend much longer. The time that He will is of His choosing. All paths cannot lead to eternal blessing and not all souls will be unconditionally accepted. This moment is but an opportunity to turn oneself around. He has now accomplished all that His righteousness/mercy has required Him. He will perform that which He has promised. He will dwell eternally only with those of humble and contrite hearts, revive their spirit and once and for all heal them. For the others it will be a raging murky sea of their own consequence apart from Him. How much clearer can the choice be?
kjv@Isaiah:58:4 @ @ RandyP comments: What an interesting statement. Fasting to make ones voice heard on high instead of fasting to hear the 'Voice on High'. Fasting for strife and debate? Much caution should be made to fast for the right intents.
kjv@Isaiah:58 @ @ RandyP comments: The fast and the Sabbath are mentioned together in one passage. We see illustrated how easily the fast can be contorted into something lesser that it is not. The true fulfillment of the fast is much more wide spread than we most often allow. Can the same be said of the Sabbath then being that they are placed within the same prophetic declaration? Is this the fast He has chosen? Is this the Sabbath He chosen?
kjv@Isaiah:65 @ @ RandyP comments: They are still the apple of His eye as we are reading. If only He was theirs.
kjv@Jeremiah:4 @ @ RandyP comments: I see two possible explanations as to why the language very similar to kjv@Genesis:1 would be used here. 1a: This coming judgment will so severe as to symbolically set Israel/Judah back to the beginning as if none of this covenant had ever been. kjv@1b: It will be so devastating as to appear as dark and chaotic as earths infancy. 2: Gap theory suggests a gap between kjv@Genesis:1:1 and kjv@Genesis:1:2 where this type of judgment actually occurred to a pre-Adamic human or angelic race on earth; that what we read is not an account of creation but of a earth's first restoration. Both explanations may not be exclusive as well.
kjv@Jeremiah:9:24 @ @ RandyP comments: The thought should not be that when the Lord acts in loving kindness He acts one way and when He acts in judgment it is another. The Lord always acts in loving-kindness just as He acts in judgment. There is no separation. Those that think that a loving God would not judge are caught in a loop of self justification, nothing that they could do deserves His judgment, or so they think. Instead, judgment and mercy go together, there cannot be one without the other especially when you are talking the hearts and lives of billions of people. Ask yourself, what is loving about sovereign Deity that simply over looks all of the ills men inflict upon themselves and others? What is loving about a God that created us to be happy and fulfilled as one thing but allows us to be everything other than that in this sad sad state?
kjv@Jeremiah:11 @ @ RandyP comments: The chief complaint seem to be of the worship of false gods. From that branch out a multitude of other whoredoms and transgressions. As God has amplified Israel/Judah that all the nations of all the times might watch and hear of His dealings, such a nation as this called by His name and home of His tabernacle hear on Earth cannot be allowed to much leeway. Double measure blessings. Double measure curse and reproof. Today, we should know well the Lord's feeling towards other gods and false worship, but instead we seem to glory in it.
kjv@2Timothy:1 @ @ RandyP comments: Timothy appears to be suffering some type of affliction leading toward possible discouragement. There is a constant resistance towards the gospel, the greater the accomplishments the greater the push back. No doubt Timothy's ministry is having an impact judged by the resistance it is receiving. Paul is encouraging Timothy not to hold back or shy away from what his ministry is facing, the Lord has not left him high and dry. What good is it to do all of this good and yet give it up because of some resistance? The Lord Himself suffered such, it is a sign of righteousness.
kjv@Jeremiah:18 @ @ RandyP comments: Instead of turning to the Lord they intend to take it out on Jeremiah. This is how the evil imaginations of the heart work. Will the message go away? Will God not raise up a hundred more prophets just like him? What can be hoped to be gained if this is indeed the word from God? This is the problem, there is no word of God so thinks the heart. The word of God is whatever we want it to be. God is intending to judge them, they are intending to judge God.
kjv@Jeremiah:23 @ @ RandyP comments: False prophets kjv@Jeremiah:23:13 caused Israel to error, kjv@Jeremiah:23:14 strengthen hand of evil doers that none return from their wickedness, kjv@Jeremiah:23:15 spread profane throughout the land, kjv@Jeremiah:23:17 prophesy God's peace/no evil, kjv@Jeremiah:23:27 think to cause the people to forget God's name, kjv@Jeremiah:23:32 cause my people to error by lies/lightness,kjv@Jeremiah:23:36 pervert the words of the Living God, kjv@Jeremiah:23:38 say that they are moved by a burden from the Lord.
kjv@Jeremiah:22 @ @ RandyP comments: The kings of Judah surely had their part in this coming judgment. There was a long pronounce track record of God pleading to them through His prophets. They were warned, they chose not to listen. They were commanded to execute judgment on behalf of the people and would not. They enslaved them for their own gain and ended up loosing everything. To the end that later, when other nations looked upon the wreckage they would know that this was not typical downfall of just any nation, this was God's people that had deserted their God.
kjv@Jeremiah:29 @ @ RandyP comments: I am just as confused here as the people must have been. Multiple messages coming from multiple places? Who is right and who is wrong? Do we listen to Jeremiah or Shemaiah who wants Jeremiah killed? Remember, we are reading the story line clinically detached; we know who is right in the end. They did not have such luxury. Would you vote for seventy years of peaceful subjection (running the risk of deep foreign integration) or a few years of radical revolt and resistance? Which prophets are true and which are false? Aren't they all about the same from ground level? Again, luckily we know the story.
kjv@Jeremiah:30 @ @ RandyP comments: Interesting that Jacob is mentioned here with all he was put in subjection to. We know how Jacob was finally made to prevail; not against his masters but with and for his masters to the miraculous deliverance of his own people. When is this to come? Has this all ready come about? Or is this something yet in the making?
kjv@Titus:1 @ @ RandyP comments: Having been reading through Jeremiah of late it is plain to see that not much has changed over these hundreds of years with the zealous Jew (they profess to know, in works deny, unto every good work reprobate). Structure and backbone are being developed in the early church with a focus on Elders and Deacons, in part to be able to withstand the pressures of these self serving gainsayers.
kjv@Jeremiah:37 @ @ RandyP comments: Have you ever had someone do everything they could against you only to later come back to you for advice? Jeremiah asks the obvious "why do you come to me, where are all your prophets, why not ask them"? Did Zedekiah really think that Jeremiah for the sake of some possible friendship or for the chance of being released would have anything other to say than what had already been said?
kjv@Jeremiah:41 @ @ RandyP comments: The United States itself has learned successfully the type of concerted and focused effort and force to conquer a complete nation, but the nearly impossible dispersed effort of maintaining the rule over it. Here bands of rogue men are able to nearly do as they pleased, even assassinate the appointed leader at will.
kjv@Hebrews:2 @ @ RandyP comments: The writer is purposely using several references to the Psalms as his grounding points. To the Hebrew reader these would have been very familiar quotes but, driven in a new and fuller context.
kjv@Jeremiah:43 @ @ RandyP comments: The lesson I guess has not been learned yet. The leaders are lead by fear, not by fear of the Lord. Everything Jeremiah has said has panned out and yet he is despised like this. This time he offers them calm and peace and they will have none of that. What else can be said?
kjv@Jeremiah:44 @ @ RandyP comments: Suggested here in this text is a goddess largely worshiped by the women. We sense that men were typically excluded. Many of the male gods now have fallen yet the complete destruction of a nation has not rooted this one out; it has only strengthened it in the void. We are again looking down on this from a clinical view as readers knowing beginning/context and end. They are living it in real time without the top down insight. They are left to decide by observing the mounting evidence around them. The idolatrous mind certainly sees the evidence in a much different fashion. For those of you lead by your heart this should be a warning; the heart may be 180 degrees off.
kjv@Hebrews:4 @ @ RandyP comments: It sounds contradictory that we must labor to enter into our rest. We can assuredly enter into that rest today but, today is not that day of rest. Today we know Jesus Christ to be our rest and we enter into that rest laboring for Him until His work for us here in this day is done. The rest for us today is the peace and assurance and hopefulness of that day and His high priesthood. The rest for us in that day will be to be there with Him, to be like Him, to partake of all the grace and goodness that He has stored and readied for us. Our rest is in His completed work. His two-edged sword, penetrating as it is, is used to bring us through to there.
kjv@Hebrews:6 @ @ RandyP comments: The belief is that Jesus arose to the right hand side of God the Father. The hope is that we will see and be with them there; that we too will enter because of Him. This hope is our anchor, it is our strong consolation, we take refuge in it, it enters within the veil. Along with this belief and hope there are evidences that accompany this salvation, living works, works that He does upon us, works of obedience that lead us toward His perfect obedience with a similar obedience of our own. Many of these works that we obey Him in are toward the saints and the brethren. Some, having tasted of this goodness, have still yet removed themselves from this obedience, from this hope, their living works having become dead works deceive them into a complete apostasy. They become as briers and thorns whose only use is to be burned.
kjv@Hebrews:7 @ @ RandyP comments: Two supreme orders of the priesthood, Levi and Melchizedek. The one supersedes the other. The former has brought us to the realization of need for the later. The lesser has been our schoolmaster leading us to conclude in the positive to the greater; the greater being formed by the oath of God. Jesus is the centerpiece/cornerstone of this greater order and not of the lesser. This is a stumbling point for the Jews even to this day who assume the Messiah is a Levitical order high priest. If so, then why did Abraham pay tithes and David prophecy?
kjv@Lamentations:3 @ @ RandyP comments: It is interesting now that we know more about Jeremiah how similar his lamentation is to Davids psalm. Both were in positions that you would think would be well respected and that people would gather alongside to support and comfort. Both seem almost alone. The things that the Lord had them do set much of which was on the peoples behalf set them apart and made them targets. No singular enemy mentioned but an overwhelming mass of momentum and continuum labeled as godlessness/wickedness. The prophets comfort is instead the recollection that not a thing happens that God does not set forth; the goodness God intends for us all for a long moment can appear as an evil until our hearts are completely turned. If not for these times how would our heart know? During these times how would our heart not know?
kjv@Lamentations:5 @ @ RandyP comments: He questions why it is that this must last so long, but, you will remember it was part of the promise, they had their chance to avoid it. You might also remember recently we read that not all were yet convinced that the God of Abraham was the means of proceeding forward from this, many females were blaming Jeremiah's God for not allowing them to provide drink offerings to their imaginary Queen of Heaven. The question might better be how long will it take them to get past their continuing iniquities?
kjv@Hebrews:9 @ @ RandyP comments: The purging of the conscience from dead works is one of the more interesting phrases in this passage. kjv@Hebrews:6:1 was the other mention of these dead works and in the context of that seems to center on the obedient works of Christ having their work on us by means of our obedience.
kjv@Ezekiel:4 @ @ RandyP comments: Think of the strange public methods that have been employed to broadcast the impending judgment. Here Ezekiel is to lie on one side on a tile 390 days continuously and 40 days on the side eating only the rations given at the start and bread cooked on dung. Jeremiah was breaking ancient pots and such. Wasn't it Isaiah walking naked for three years? Certainly not just anyone could get the message out by doing this, these men must have been fully established as prophets before hand in order to have impact. With the state of things the way they are this well may have the best of all options. It is rarely the convincing intellectual dialog and reasoning we think of that is called for. Knowing that God is perfect in all His ways, it makes me wonder what methods He might have for us today?
'The LORD has forsaken earth, and seeth not'. If so then we are most likely to continue this same evil. In our homes? In our schools? In our court rooms? In the way we personally try to hide our faith from our neighbors and coworkers? Morality surely cannot be legislated but to rest silent in the lie that 'God has forsaken/does not see' is a worse evil. Would our foreheads be marked or unmarked today if such a judgment was to again occur in our community/nation?
kjv@Ezekiel:11:19 @ @ RandyP comments: Some of Israel (not all) was regathered at the end of the seventy years. The Temple was rebuilt and put back into service but, the hearts of Israel barely changed. They awaited an even more horrific judgment that Jesus himself would prophecy. In Jesus Christ a new spirit is given and hearts were changed but, Israel not regathered awaiting a final gathering yet to come in the end of the age of Gentiles. We see that every word of this prophecy is accurate, the time-line however not as direct as we might read.
kjv@Ezekiel:14:9 @ @ RandyP comments: Does this mean that God lies? That He deceives? Think of it this way, if He created the mental faculties to believe the truth when they heard it couldn't it also be said that these faculties could also be used to believe their own vain imaginations rather than the truth? If God made certain things to be more enticing than others to guide man along the straight and narrow, cannot that gravity toward be corrupted and converted to something else? If that which is meant for good can be used for harm, if that which locks men's hearts into good instead can lock them into falsehood, cannot it not be said then that God in this sense has made it so?
kjv@Ezekiel:21 @ @ RandyP comments: Many read or else hear about these passages in the Bible and come to the determination that the God of Israel is mean spirited. For these years of judgment they fail to say the ions of longsuffering and mercy. Others would point to the ineffectiveness of God's plan not being able to turn the hearts of even such a small nation as Israel avoiding to consider that His plan is yet hundreds of years from being fulfilled. People under estimate the power the sin nature has over us and just how patient and steady God has had to remain over it to gain our redemption from it. If there is any mean spiritedness to observe, it is in the people who claim that God is over reacting, over sensitive, over bearing.
kjv@Hebrews:13 @ @ RandyP comments: Mentioned more than once is the idea of remembering/submitting/saluting those that have rule over us. These rulers by context are sensed to be leaders in the church. The author speaks in tones of a absolute necessity. Who are these leaders today? and why are we not doing so?
kjv@James:2 @ @ RandyP comments: There is an eternal salvation and justification accomplished on our behalf strictly by the work of Jesus Christ our savior at the cross of Calvary. No other work can replace that. What James means by works leading to justification here is similar to what the author of Hebrews meant by 'the evidence of things unseen/substance of things hoped for' ( kjv@Hebrews:11 ), the effect faith has in producing corresponding action. It is difficult for one man to justify that another man has faith if their is no tangible evidence outwardly of said faith. It should be just as difficult for us ourselves to justify our reasoning for believing in Christ if we yet disallow His natural effect upon us causing us to act forward in a new and living way. If our faith leads us to no more than what faith in any other god would lead us to do or not do, what justification would we have for such faith? The question then must be asked 'how much does Christ's redemptive work on the cross mean to us personally'? 'To what extent does it/will it effect us'? Jesus called it 'abiding in' and Peter called it 'being neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of Christ'.
kjv@James:3 @ @ RandyP comments: The bulk of passage speaks of the power of the tongue and that it is impossible for both blessing and cursing to come from the same source. In context this is tied to leadership (be not many masters) and to righteous peacemakers. It is obvious to see the workings of the tongue in our own small scale circles, less likely that we are even watching it in the larger scope of our diplomats and peace envoys and national/world leaders. The statements here are just as true if not more so for the fiery tongues in the United Nations as it is on the Gaza streets. For us to know this is to radically alter our world view.
kjv@Ezekiel:22 @ @ RandyP comments: We know by reading how God feels about Israel. We know how Israel feels about God. There is a broad gulf between them. How do the people of the heathen nations feel? What have they observed? Are they not as disgusted with Israel as God is? When the dispersed of Israel in numbers take refuge amongst them recounting the terrible blood and carnage in Jerusalem do they not take notice and see it as a warning?
kjv@Ezekiel:22:30 @ @ RandyP comments: God had His prophets at this time. He had also we find out searched for a leader to make up a hedge but found none. Later He would find Ezra and Nehemiah but, this may illustrate to us a important difference in temperance or skill set or anointing between a prophet and a leader, that it is rare for one man to be both. Moses and David both prophesied (mostly Messianic) though not in the sense of a Elijah or Issiah, Ezekiel or Jeremiah. I can not think of a prophet that was made to rule.
kjv@Ezekiel:28 @ @ RandyP comments: There is the suggestion as well that this has nothing to do with Lucifer but, everything to do with the king of Tyrus. Poetic imagery is being used to describe a brilliant yet self worshiping man. The reader must decide.
kjv@Ezekiel:29 @ @ RandyP comments: Egypt was not spared from judgment in fact they were given over as wages to Nebuchadrezzar for the siege on Tyrus earlier. They would be dispersed forty years then regathered as a much less imposing nation. This lasting humility was purposeful so as to rebuke Israel as well for relying upon Egypt for it's protection instead of God.
kjv@Ezekiel:32 @ @ RandyP comments: The picture I find interesting is that with all of these fallen nations laid into the pit, their swords (weapons of war) are laid behind their heads (as if their iniquity was detached and behind them) yet their iniquity remains in their bones. We might think of iniquity as this gun or this bomb or this weapon of mass destruction. What is truly evil is the heart that devised it, the intent of that heart towards it's use. When the weapon is removed it does not remove the heart the remains devising and intending.
kjv@1Peter:1 @ @ RandyP comments: Peter is rarely quoted by the prosperity preachers as much as the others because these earthly things were of little importance to him. This coming from a productive business man. Of the many things more likely important to him tops would be unfeigned love toward God and brethren, the testing and trying of faith to its precious purification, the furtherance of the commission of the spreading of the Gospel to the vast world beyond. The prosperity message more times than not is a direct hindrance to these types of things.
kjv@Ezekiel:34 @ @ RandyP comments: The flock here is identified as Israel. The Lord had set shepherds over them; they fed themselves on the flock instead. Some were driven away, some lost, some diseased, many scattered. Their good pasture was trampled and their good water muddied. These shepherds are no doubt spiritual and civic leaders. The answer is that the Lord himself becomes the shepherd; He is the Good Shepherd. In the end, when His glory is come, He will set David over them (David is not the Shepherd himself). There is a shame of the heathen that they bare (perhaps that the heathen recognize this Shepherd before they do).
kjv@Ezekiel:37 @ @ RandyP comments: Some of the dispersed have been regathered here since 1947 + 1968. Many are still left to come. Judah and Israel are again solidified as one. The things not yet achieved is the revelation of the true Shepherd, the cleansing of their hearts, the installment of David as His king. Whether the raising of the bones is literal or symbolic, it would have to be at least in the case of David. These things are moving ahead quickly.
kjv@Ezekiel:39 @ @ RandyP comments: Seven years of burning nothing but weapons for fuel. A gathering of many birds and creeping things to eat on the carcasses. Seven months of flagging and burying the dead. A national effort by every citizen to cleanse the land. This would be an effective way of making yourself known again to your people. It would certainly lift the veil from their eyes. Imagine being in Israel at this time. Given the odds of the battle this sight would only be by the hand of God.
kjv@1Peter:4 @ @ RandyP comments: You can see just how much the subject of trials and suffering for Christ play into Peter's theology. He sees it as the necessary cleansing and separating agent in the believers life, thus the will of God. This leads him to conclude that the end judgment begins with the house of God and works outward. Essentially, it is suffering in Christ that shapes us and our reaction to and obedience in that we are judged by. It is the measure of just how faithful we believe Him to be.
kjv@1Peter:4 @ @ RandyP comments: So should we go out a stir up some suffering? The gospel is preached that men dead to Christ might be judged as men of the flesh. They are this to begin with, their reaction once presented condemns them all the more. One does not have to go out purposely to stir things up, the Gospel of Christ does this by itself. By presenting the Gospel in it's truest form man's very nature is stirred against Him/Us.
kjv@Ezekiel:40 @ @ RandyP comments: The chapter reads much faster than the vision would have played out. Imagine the time involved making these measurements 6 cubits at a time. In order to remember all this detail, Ezekiel must have been writing it down as each transpired.
kjv@Ezekiel:40 @ @ RandyP comments: What is the importance of these details to us today? That God has a great many (if not all) details planned out; that He is trying to tell us something needed to be known. Consider that this temple fell and was desecrated just as the first and yet it is not a mistake that God gave it such detail and foresight; it is all part of a much greater plan/dialog. Often physical things and events described in the Bible are shadows/pictures/blue prints of things occurring in the spiritual world put into a language we could more readily understand. I have heard men like Dr. Vernen Mc Gee attempt to show how the Temple, the things of it, the predetermined rituals spell out a spiritual description of salvation and atonement; things like the 'holy of holys' that only the high priest was able to enter after being cleansed once a year. North gates, south gates, having to go in one gate and out another, tables and hooks, borders of pomegranate and palms, etc..., they all have their meaning in a spiritual sense. The thing for now to know is that Jesus is the complete fulfillment of all of these descriptive types. To go back and rediscover what each of these types means is to study what Jesus was able to accomplish and who we are in Him; for us each detail measured out precisely.
kjv@Ezekiel:43 @ @ RandyP comments: The Law and ritual return in this temple as do the sacrifices. If this is in the Millennium or later salvation and the remission of sins have already been achieved once and for all by the blood of Jesus and the order of high priest is now after Melchizedek and not Levi. These offerings then would either be symbolic and memorial or else a covering for sins that the sacrifice of Jesus does not atone for. The former makes greater sense to me.
kjv@Ezekiel:44 @ @ RandyP comments: I find this an extremely challenging section of prophecy. The consequences of interpretation shape deep doctrinal foundations. The reader must study and ponder this deeply and come to their own conclusions; which is a very good thing. We are challenged by scripture every day. We are stirred. We are unsettled. We are encouraged to examine and re-examine. Nothing but Christ at times seem fully settled. This is what makes faith in the Bible real and living and dynamic; the constant challenge. Thereby we grow, we are shaped, we are moved. Some seek the answers that are readily available and figure if it is not readily there it is not there at all. Others however seek deeper into the broad context and the doctrinal consequence to shed light upon that which is not readily answered. Just because I am presently confused over this passage does not mean that the answer is not there, it means that I am being challenged. My curiosity is thus thrilled to explore it much further.
kjv@2Peter:3:15-16 @ @ RandyP comments: There should be no doubt that Paul was not only known by Peter but read and agreed with by Peter. What better recommendation can Paul's literary works receive.
kjv@2Peter:3:15-16 @ @ RandyP comments: It has been the doctrine of some cults (even the universal church at times) that the unlearned masses must be kept from the holy scrip based on the possible misinterpretation and destruction it might cause them identified by this passage. The context however of this passage in light of kjv@2Peter:2 is more properly of those who once knew of the Gospel/Grace of Christ but chose not to continue, turned to oppress and afflict and teach falsely after their own increased unrighteousness and gain. Paul's writings in particular are targeted by these cherry picking wicked souls as points of fierce contention, points of apparent contradiction, points to slander and attack. Peter here stands up for Paul in uncompromising fashion and therefore endorses the distribution of his works. The general masses are greatly helped rather by the availability of unfiltered scripture, their trust in leadership deeply enhanced in the things that are not easily understood by the things that are. Those who are going to fall away are going to fall away any way. Disputes and factions may arise amongst us over certain points as we try to become learned, but, even that is used to challenge and stir and put essential truths into our remembrance. Challenge does not mean destruction, challenge means hunger and thirst and utter trust in the most certain hope of an eventual divinely revealed answer.
kjv@2Peter:3 @ @ RandyP comments: The mass distribution/reading of the Holy Scriptures to the unlearned is also our church's only security besides the Holy Spirit that those proclaiming themselves as being 'the learned' are in fact 'The Learned'. Otherwise the door is opened wide for those wicked apostates to whom this passage and context alerts us to. We see this very thing occur through out the history of our church. To get to the essentials of falsehood one must bypass the essentials of truth. Truth number one = Scripture!
kjv@1John:1 @ @ RandyP comments: The core doctrines of the gospel are simply put to the reader by John in terms anyone even child can understand. From these core points we can expand the doctrine outward. The over arching truth is that any notion contrary to these points is either a lie by us or else a lie by Him; there is no middle ground. Light, fellowship with the Light, fellowship with each other, sin, confession of sin, forgiveness of sin and the cleansing of sin from unrighteousness are all a one way or no way proposition. Who shall be the liar here; man or Christ?
kjv@Daniel:1 @ @ RandyP comments: The Lord is always moving ahead with His plans. As a nation Judah has now fallen into Chaldean hands but through the obedience of four young souls He plans to move Israel forward through the seventy year captivity. He has gifted these four with the skill, the knowledge, the situation and the opportunity needed. They won't be the only ones that He builds up and moves into place.
kjv@Daniel:5 @ @ RandyP comments: The kingdoms of men are ruled by God and He appoints them to whomever He will. Would He appoint a tyrant? If it served His purposes. Would He appoint a socialist or a mad man? If it furthered His will. He would? He has and He will. What then about His righteousness, is He not then an unrighteous God by appointing an unrighteous king? This God is righteous, mankind is presently unrighteous, His design is to lead us from our unrighteousness into His righteousness. If a good shepherd commands his flock to move forward and they move not, is it not right for the shepherd to send his dog? If it takes appointing certain men exhibiting the worst of our collective unrighteousness to show and move us off of our unrighteousness when we otherwise would not listen, is that not in itself utterly righteous?
kjv@Daniel:6 @ @ RandyP comments: In the comments of kjv@Daniel:5 I had pondered the righteousness of God and the unrighteousness of man as it came to God appointing rulers, even if of questionable heart. Here immediately after that chapter, we see a demonstration of one of these leaders being played shrewdly/wickedly by a band of political malcontents to a man of God's harm/end. The king was aware of the trickery and sorrowful about it but, was not in a position to go against his own decree. We see a similar occurrence with Pilot regarding the sentencing of Jesus. We should be aware then that matters of righteousness and unrighteousness and leadership are not as cut and dry as we commoners presume, neither is the manner in which the righteous hand of God must deal with them.
kjv@Daniel:9 @ @ RandyP comments: The math if we understand one day to be one year correctly is exact, 490 years from the year of this vision to Christ's baptism, 434 from Ezra's rebuilding of the temple. Christ the Messiah is in Jerusalem but is cut off (not for himself but for our sins) and then shortly (AD70) the city and temple are destroyed. There is an unrevealed number of years of desolation (current) followed by a confirmation (or tribulation) of seven years. I am told that many Jews of the time by this prophecy expected the Messiah on this same schedule and by some Jews expectation even today He is nearly 2000 years late. When the veil is lifted they will understand their confusion as to Jesus (1 Messiah appearing twice lamb and ruler instead of 2 at once).
kjv@Daniel:11 @ @ RandyP comments: Further reading:http://pages.suddenlink.net/dalede/dan11.htm http://www.letgodbetrue.com/bible/prophecy/daniel11.php http://www.drshirley.org/hist/hist07.html http://www.zianet.com/maxey/Inter2.htm
kjv@Daniel:12 @ @ RandyP comments: Further reading:http://www.studylight.org/com/guz/view.cgi?book=da&chapter=012 http://www.godrules.net/library/clarke/clarkedan12.htm http://bible-truth.org/Daniel12.html
kjv@Daniel:12 @ @ RandyP comments: I feel presently that I am not equipped to explain this kjv@Daniel:10-12 passage. There are a great many scholars that have looked into this much more deeply who disagree one to another. I started to add further reading resources as starting points, but, don't want to outright endorse any of these particular views. Like with much of bible prophecy, I believe that every single word is true and that when it is all fulfilled we will everyone say 'boy Daniel sure nailed that'. Until it is all fulfilled however, I marvel at the detail, I marvel at how it could explain this and that, I marvel at the angels and the means of communication they use. I seek to understand these things and I dig deeper and deeper into them.
kjv@3John:1 @ @ RandyP comments: We should know that not everyone in the fold is for the fold. John may have written some of these smaller letters in part to gather intel and to make sure that the things/persons that he had sent were being received and used. He has taken the time to develop networks of 'wellbeloved' and so should we. We should be participants in this network that our true spiritual leaders are maintaining as well. Who knows, maybe one of these letters will be arriving at our desk one day.
kjv@Hosea:2:16 @ @ RandyP comments: The symbolism of husband and wife has been used to depict our spiritual nature by several authors in many places in the bible. Here, if I read this right is an interesting insight of a wife that sees her God as Baali or master when she should see him as Ishi husband. His love then is the key difference. A master can master with or without love, impose his rule over her. A husband loves and gives himself for her, he builds her up and protects her. Her perception and response is much different given the two.
kjv@Hosea:7:11 @ @ RandyP comments: The thing that they are told not to do is what they do. They spread their own net.
kjv@Revelation:2:12-17 @ @ RandyP comments: In Pergamos we see a likeness to the two previous churches, faithfulness under severe persecution and having to deal with apostates amongst the brethren. This church however had not been as successful holding out the apostates and is in need of repentance in this same regard. We could say in effect that they need to return to their first love as their first love would not have mixed and commingled these blots and dead relics.
kjv@Revelation:2 @ @ RandyP comments: There are those that for for the sake of their own individual faith have deserted the corporate faith of the church body. Our Lord does not address the church of Randy in this revelation which should be an indication of what kind of church the church of Randy is; it is not. Notice that our Lord did not say 'oh members of the church of Thyatira, run away, split, your church is corrupt, it is getting too hard for you to grow and be productive'. Instead it says 'hold fast/overcome'. Why is the church so important? Ask the Lord.
kjv@Hosea:8 @ @ RandyP comments: From the mouth of several prophets we have heard these details. As readers we may be thinking 'why am I reading this? Haven't I read this over and over?'. Don't you think it interesting though that the Lord spent so much effort for us to repeatedly His message to them in as many ways as possible, His patience towards them throughout it all, His prophecy of what will happen to them should they continue. What does this tell us today? That they were just deaf and stupid or that we are likely to be the same way?
kjv@Hosea:10 @ @ RandyP comments: Pictures of vines producing fruit, wheat producing flour, flour producing bread, leaven falsely puffing the bread up, sea's producing their own foam, night and day, light and darkness, faithful brides and harlots, sheep and goats, wheat and tares; such picture-grams fill the volumes of scripture. Over and over, situation after situation, pictures of nations and empires, of tents and temples, of times and eras, of deserts and fruitful places; how do they not mean what they mean? How do they lend themselves to mis-interpretation? God surely knows the heart of man, that two men will look at the same object and dispute over what it is. One man will pick it apart with small words, the other piece it together with larger pictures. God knows the limitations of human language and the deceitfulness of hearts. His word is constructed in such a way that the only doubt that can be left is the doubt of a rebellious self justifying reprobate.
kjv@Hosea:14 @ @ RandyP comments: We tend as readers to read these things clinically from the top down knowing how the Lord feels about them. Imagine these things down looking up from the street view. Who is this Hosea? Why does he say the things that he does? Does he not love his nation Israel? What wrong has Israel done and who have they harmed? Sure there are idols but then where is the God who delivered us from out of Egypt? Why does He not deliver us now? You see how deceitful hearts work; they work the same today as yesterday. When it comes to blessings everyone is all for it, when it comes to correction there is nothing to be corrected for/by. As if God needed correcting, we pray to God for Him to change His mind. Who then shall be wise to these matters?
kjv@Revelation:4 @ @ RandyP comments: If you have ever been blessed with revelation you know that your attention to detail is un-human. The things that you remember are remembered because there is divine meaning planted in each and every little thing, they are sealed in your memory because they are meant to be sealed. There is no doubt coming out that you are granted occasion to be a part of something foreign and miraculous and you want to go back into it without letting the moment get away from you. You try to get back into it for days, but, eventually realize that it has ended. It may be the only revelation you ever again receive or it may be years until another. Part of you however searches for it again in your dreams, in strange little occurrences, in voices you think that you might of heard. John here receives perhaps the greatest and most complete revelations ever recorded. The imagery and symbolism and threads tied to other bible prophets and covenant history that God uses is utterly mind blowing. John must have been exhausted afterward beyond human strength.
kjv@Amos:1:3 @ @ RandyP comments: The first reason for the four judgments, this against Damascus for their threshing of their threshing of the Gilead region where the two and a half tribes settled on the other side of the Jordan, Gad Reuben and Manasseh.
kjv@Revelation:5 @ @ RandyP comments: We just read and commented that these things must happen; it is not a matter of us holding them off. Now we read of why it must happen. This is not a terrible thing, the crowning achievement of our worthy Lord to open the book. The judgments inside this sealed book are terrible to those outside the coverage of His blood, but, the purging that will result by opening it is much needed in the hearts of men and angels alike. All creation groans as in travail for this to happen.
kjv@Revelation:5 @ @ RandyP comments: If all paths lead to God, why is it that only one of those paths is worthy to unseal this book of judgments?
kjv@Amos:5 @ @ RandyP comments: Many today think of their sins as personal things that have little or no effect on others such as the just, the poor, the oppressed, the needy. This passage speaks of such transgressions causing a nation's judgment as a whole to become as soft porous wormwood and it's righteousness to be left off. The stark evidences can be found in how the just are more and more rebuked, abhorred and afflicted (to the point the just are better off personally to keep silent). The results are a form of personal prosperity and social suave that comes quickly to an end having no bases of support (earlier described as being lead away by fish hooks). The nation as a whole is judged not only by it's failed condition, but, by God. Doesn't sound all that personal to me.
kjv@Revelation:6 @ @ RandyP comments: Six of the seals from the book are now open. Remember that the only one worthy of opening these was the Lamb our Lord, no other could have done this but, a great many wanted it to be done. Having been sealed means that each of these were predetermined yet held off until the right to do so had been claimed. Even when He was proved worthy upon resurrection He then had held off until certain numbers had been fulfilled and the go ahead was given by the Father. Each unsealed judgment alone would be devastating. Together or in sequence they become a time like the earth has never known.
kjv@Revelation:6 @ @ RandyP comments: From our limited perspective it would be quiet logical to wonder why anyone would want to become worthy in order to open up such judgments upon mankind. Our perspective limits the nature and effects of our sin. Becoming worthy meant dying to take these natures and effects away. Our perspective limits the fact that for ions these judgments have been held off to one seven year period. Till now we have tasted enough judgment to see the need to repent but, little of the judgment that sin actually deserves. If God's mercy is not enough to turn us, if His occasional and limited judgments upon us are not enough, if His word and testimony are not enough, if His grace and provision is not enough, if the love shown in the giving of His own Son is not enough, even for having the threat of these predetermined judgments opened, what then is there that would be enough? At some point can it not be said that the remainder of mankind will not turn? Thus is the truest nature of sin exposed; it will not let go and it limits everything down to it's own justifications. Why not then this judgment? If seen from the perspective of the heavenly host looking down on this, one would have to ask why hasn't this judgment come already.
kjv@Revelation:7 @ @ RandyP comments: There are those 144k of the tribes of Israel that are sealed and on earth. There are are a innumerable number present at the throne from all nations and tongues washed in the Blood before the opening of this seal. Somewhere in this time frame many gather that either the dead in Christ or the actual living church has been raptured. When exactly is debated. Most assume that the dead in Christ are already with Christ.
kjv@Obadiah:1 @ @ RandyP comments: As you have done so shall it be done to thee. Edom was deceived in two ways, by its pride thinking that it was above the destruction that Judah was facing, by nations that they thought were confederates. They joined in with these nations against Judah even to where the survivors fleeing out of Judah were being caught up and killed or made captive. The descendent's of Esau were meant to be brotherly. Instead they were fooled into that which they should not have done; an unpardonable brutality. They were to cut off and suffer in the same manner.
kjv@Jonah:1 @ @ RandyP comments: The fish here may or may not have been a whale. People dispute this story often because of the uncertainty of this fish. But we are told that this fish was prepared by the Lord. It may have been been prepared as in being placed into the same locale, prepared as is being able to swallow without chewing, prepared as in having an air pocket provided if Jonah is alive inside this belly and not dead, prepared as in being something completely out of the ordinary beyond our experience or consideration.
kjv@Revelation:9:4 @ @ RandyP comments: We know from earlier that the foreheads of 144k have been sealed. Now we see that those 144k are spared from this terrible plague. What about the Gentile Church? It is for this reason and more that many believe that the Church has left the storyline completely having been raptured (they have not specifically been mentioned since chapter 3), they are a part of the numerous host surrounding the throne. There may be new tribulation believers haven seen these occurrences first hand of course.
kjv@Micah:3 @ @ RandyP comments: Historically we know of a near four hundred year absence of the prophetic spirit in all of Israel up to the time immediately before Christ's advent; these words did indeed come to pass. The night that followed was largely because of leaders leading for personal reward, priests teaching for hire, prophets divining for money, and an insistence that God was at peace when the opposite was discernibly and expressibly true.
kjv@Revelation:10 @ @ RandyP comments: John is kept from revealing too much. There is an importance to mentioning vaguely what he was about to record, but, being told not to reveal it any further. Instead he is given a book to eat that will make him to prophesy that which is required by others to be known. We must consider that not everything is for us to know outright, though to a few it may have been shown. Somethings are to be searched for like hidden treasure, other things to be merely trusted. This may in part be because of our best interest, more fully it may also be because of who else would be reading this.
kjv@Micah:4:5 @ @ RandyP comments: This does not say that the gentile nations will be allowed their own gods to walk in or that other gods exist. There will be but one God Jehovah. It instead marks an important relationship between the people of Israel to the name Jehovah, a peculiar bond that they will always have. As special as that name will be to all the peoples, it will still mean more given their history to the Hebrews. As is rightfully so!
kjv@Micah:7 @ @ RandyP comments: What God will do for those who will bear His indignation: 1. plead my cause 2. execute judgment for me 3. bring me forth to the light 4. pardon iniquity 5. pass by the transgression 6. retain not his anger 7. turn again 8. have compassion 9. subdue our iniquities 10.cast all sins into the depths 11. perform the truth to Jacob 12. mercy to Abraham
kjv@Nahum:1 @ @ RandyP comments: The name of the country changes. The time changes. The name of the prophet changes. The problem with false gods and false imaginations remains the same. One might ask, really what can the Lord be so mad about? Gods other than Him. One might say, well this is Assyria, what are they going to know about some Hebrew God? Nineveh knows all about Jehovah (see: Jonah)(they have already turned to Jehovah at least once). There is not much by now that any nation should not know about Jehovah. Do you think that Jehovah would be so angered and jealous if they had not had plenty of knowledge and opportunity?
kjv@Nahum:3 @ @ RandyP comments: The mistress of witchcrafts, she sells nations, she sells families/tribes. Imagine how laughable the notion would be to them for a conquered nation's prophet to blabber about such a complete and thorough judgment. The threat that this man's God would expose them with skirts above their heads to the other nations, after all they have had their will with everyone that has opposed them.
kjv@Revelation:13:4 @ @ RandyP comments: The thought of warring against the beast is there it seems but, the futility of doing so is obvious. Can you imagine the United States for instance backing off from a war due to it's inferiority? Worse yet, could you imagine the strength of the USA standing firmly behind such a leader?
kjv@Revelation:13:10 @ @ RandyP comments: A great many men (most of them well meaning) will be guilty of leading their own people into captivity; these men will not escape this captivity themselves. A great many men will kill by the sword either for themselves or for their kin or for their nation or for pure survival and necessity; these men shall not escape either. As short as the time left is, there is a time appointed for this be completely fulfilled. Here is a clue to what it will mean for those latter day saints to have faith and patience.
kjv@Revelation:13:7 @ @ RandyP comments: The point I am trying to make is that if the Church and these saints are one in the same, then it is the Church that is overcome. In order for the Church to be overcome then the Holy Spirit has to be overcome or He has to leave us to our own. Scripture suggests that neither can happen! To be overcome is to be put back into bondage to. The Church being put back into bondage after the blood and resurrection of Christ? After the forever indwelling of the Comforter? Even for a short time - Where is the sense? If instead these are new believers after the Church has been raptured, they are by virtue of this peculiar time frame merely transitional (Spirit-less/Church-less) believers still awaiting the Spirit with patience and faith.
kjv@Habakkuk:1 @ @ RandyP comments: In the midst of the prophet's many questions/complaints to God it is revealed that the Chaldean's are next to take Judah. If you knew anything about the Chaldean's you too would wonder why a people as filthy wicked as they would be used of this God to rule over His people. We have a tendency to look at the people in charge in a similar light. What did they do to deserve being this? How is it God put them there instead of me? Are they not bitter and hasty and scornful, all the things told to me not to be? Doesn't God require judgment and dignity? Why then is He silent in this matter? Habakkuk ponders.
kjv@Revelation:14:12 @ @ RandyP comments: Nearly the same thing is said kjv@Revelation:13:10. First in regards to the captivity of those who lead the peoples captive to the beast. Here in regards to the eternal smoke and torment from the pit of those who worshiped the beast and received his mark. The patience is in holding true throughout for as long as it takes.
kjv@Revelation:15 @ @ RandyP comments: His judgments are made manifest. How can these be known as being from anyone/anything other? None of these things before this could be analyzed honestly and be said to result from nature gone bad or coincidence or misfortune; especially when He has made it known so far in advance. Instead, I would say that the people are fully aware of where these judgments are coming from but, are all the more angry that this God would be judging them. These times are flushing out those who no matter what the situation proves to be, no matter what evidences are on the table, will not allow themselves to be part of nor worship Jehovah God or Son Jesus Christ. God is proven then to be fully justified to discontinue His grace and presence amongst these rebel tares. These vials are brief tastes of that absence, not even this will change many hearts.
kjv@Haggai:2 @ @ RandyP comments: Every generation seems to have it's spiritual project; much larger than any one person. They must learn to rely on the Lord and clarify the will and resolve towards spiritual matters. It is never a side project, something to work on when other successes have left you the time. Things are constantly needing to be rebuilt or repaired or restored or re-established. Battles are to be fought and won and obstacles spiritually overcome. Often specific men are called upon to lead such efforts, but surely it is a group process. God is willing to shake the heavens to make such projects work.
kjv@Zechariah:5 @ @ RandyP comments: A two sided curse flies over the entire earth, one side curses all theft, the other curses all swearing. Theft and swearing comes in big and small ways, ways each of us try to justify and reduce, but, assuredly spring from the same heart. Think of it for now though as one whole. The collective heart can be measured out like a ephad of wheat, often Jesus described the Kingdom as wheat. Yet in the middle a woman is found sitting in the wheat adding to the weight thereof as a weight heavy as lead. This complete measure of wickedness is transported to be housed in Babylon. A woman of similar geographic description is described in Revelation as 'MYSTERY, THE GREAT HARLOT OF BABYLON' who reigns over the kings of earth. Could she be tied to the theft and swearing as well?
kjv@Zechariah:9 @ @ RandyP comments: The Christ King will not only be King of Judah but of all the earth. When He comes He will come with salvation already in His hands, already achieved having once been lowly and riding a colt, having spoken peace to the heathen, now thundering to defend and save His flock, to devour and subdue His enemies. How great His goodness How great His beauty
kjv@Zechariah:10 @ @ RandyP comments: Idols don't speak, men hear what they want to here from them and over the years they have heard plenty, all of it vanity. The signs are plain for all to see, but, what the diviners take from it is a lie, they see what they want to see, all of it vanity. Men are troubled because there is no shepherd or so they think, they comfort each other in vain. These were the shepherds they thought missing and the Lord's anger was kindled against them. Shepherds must stand for what is true, often a most difficult and sacrificial task. Instead, as a whole they lead the flock away and so the Lord dispersed them. Faithful leaders need to add to their faith virtue (Valor/Excellence), knowledge (revealed), temperance (physical/spiritual), patience, godliness, brotherly kindness, and charity (agape) in order to be fruitful in the knowledge of Christ kjv@2Peter:1:5-8 . There are leaders amongst us today that need much of the same. We have one Shepherd but several pastors.
kjv@Revelation:20 @ @ RandyP comments: What is this life here and now? It is a book being written. In it are the stories of our lives, the spiritual fruit that the Lord was able to produce in us by our abiding. If not abiding then no fruit. If not His works (the works He had predestined that we walk in) than no works at all. It is said that all paths lead to God. Here all paths are recorded in the book of life and lead to His judgment, wheat from tare, sheep from impostor. When Jesus declared that one must be born again of spirit and water, these then are the names written favorably in the book of life. Their rebirth in Him has produced works and fruit some one hundred fold.
kjv@Zechariah:13 @ @ RandyP comments: The question may come to mind that if the Lord can cut off the names of idols and lying prophets in that coming day why doesn't He just do it now? The answer may lay in the object of a process we are being brought through to be able to identify and desire this ourselves as well. It is one thing for Him to cut off when no one knows what He is doing and why He is doing it and many possibly be angry or taken back by it, it is another to have everyone on board and aware and even participants along with Him in cutting it off. We are told here of parents willingly striking their wicked prophet son through. We are told here of a refining fire. In effect, what good does it do for the Lord to cut something off if it grows right back again? If it means cutting off more people than already need be cut off? If it can serve a better purpose temporarily being allowed?
kjv@Revelation:21:8 @ @ RandyP comments: Is Hell really that hard to understand? If your family was moving from it's remote frontier outpost to a new thriving city and you refused to go, what would you have left? If your ship was abandoned and left to sink and you refused to go, what would you have left. If your leprosy was cured by a shot and a new healthy location and you refused...you get the idea! We tend to think of God when we think of Hell in terms of "how could He" instead of "why did we not". If it is the course of creation to proceed from A (a temporal/carnal existence) to B (a transitional/spiritual existence being set apart and prepared) to C (a new and spiritual living eternal existence far removed from the corruption of sin/death) and we stick to our guns and stay at A, what happens to us when A and B are no more? Are no longer supported? Are removed from available options? What happens to the seed that refuses to sprout?
kjv@Malachi:4:5-6 @ @ RandyP comments: Interesting what it says Elijah does in his return, turns the hearts of fathers to their children, and the children back to their fathers. Where did their hearts go that it requires turning back? Think of the context of this book; is it not a false and self justified religion? Before the great and dreadful day of the Lord; is that not today?
kjv@Matthew:1:1-17 @ @ RandyP comments: The human ancestry of Jesus is not as dry a reading as one might expect. It flies by in 16 quick verses, but, the personal histories of these individual lives cover an amazing 42 generations. You can imagine someone someday reading over your descendent's genealogy and skipping over your name as dry and inconsequential. What is important here is the lives, the lifetimes, passions and interests and occurrences, successes and set backs, wishes and desires, health and sickness, riches and poverty, sin and righteousness, freedom and captivity. Much like our lives, these people had the hope that despite everything that this life or at least the lives of our offspring was leading to something good. In these peoples case it lead from a promise to a patriarch to a fulfillment of that promise the living Messiah.
kjv@Genesis:3:1-5 @ @ RandyP comments: A great many things are given and allowed in the garden. One simple thing is not. It is the one thing that often occupies our mind. People are to some extent defined by what they can't have, by what is forbidden just as they are defined by the fear of death. Not only is there what is forbidden, there is what is threatened, and there is someone readily willing to deceive.
kjv@Genesis:5 @ @ RandyP comments: We see proof immediately that God is being selective about who is being recorded in these genealogies, not everyone is being listed, only those important to the progression of the particular history being told. We have seven generations lined up already just in the people He wants us to know meaning that there can be plenty of people on the earth by the time of Noah.
kjv@Genesis:6:9 @ @ RandyP comments: If this put in the context of a mixed super race, it could read that Noah was both morally just and of pure/untainted human bloodline.
kjv@Genesis:7:11 @ @ RandyP comments: It was water from below earth's surface perhaps super heated that broken through the crust that flooded the atmosphere raining doing heavily as it cooled. Much of the life that was was drowned in the instant and place where it stood. Geologic and fossil records today can be read if willing to suggest the same, something traumatic, catastrophic and global. If gap theory is believed this then would be the second lesser event of this type.
kjv@Genesis:12 @ @ RandyP comments: This is the beginning of what we call the Abrahamic Covenant. It is a covenant based totally upon God's grace; the land will be a gift, the seed will be a gift. The Lord leads Abraham away from his kin to show him this land. The seed will not begin to come for another 20 some years and the land not for another 450+ years. In the mean time Abraham and Sarah stumble trying to make it happen on their own.
kjv@Genesis:13 @ @ RandyP comments: Lot choose his land selfishly and yet unknowingly his choice was the same as the Lord had already made. We often make the same seemingly obvious choices based upon appearances also. The wide open fertile land is not always the best choice just as the wide open door of opportunity. This choice turned out to be a big problem for Lot.
kjv@Genesis:24 @ @ RandyP comments: The angel had prepared the servants way to prosper at this task. The blood line was to remain pure. I take it (way) to mean that he prepared Rebekah and her family's heart. The servant put a test before the angel so that he would know when he found the right woman. I have known people to put other tests out in their own prayers and dealings; I think that we need to be careful. Remember that Isaac was to become the continuation of the covenant with Abraham, this wife was to birth a great many seeds of the covenant. There is a righteousness there that may not be there if we place a similar test on which job shall we take or what city. Often our tests favor preconceived notions of what we would most like the answer to be and the situations leading to them born out of our dissatisfaction or restlessness. I am not saying that tests such as these are not good in certain cases, I am saying one must truly search out their intentions and honesty before making demands upon the righteous will of God.
kjv@Genesis:25:17 @ @ RandyP comments: Is this being gathered unto ones peoples a saying? or a biblical truth of death? I don't know kjv@STRING:gathered+unto+his and kjv@STRING:gathered+unto+thy . If so, would Ishmael's people be Abraham? The Egyptians? Who? Most likely, at least in the end, people of the same regenerate or non-regenerate spiritual heart. The fuller interpretation is that physically it simply means that they ended up in the same spot 'dust to dust' as all the loved ones who have gone before him. Spiritually however, added to 'giving up the ghost' it means dead in body (dust), the ghost yeilded, spiritually gathered to their just reward.
kjv@Genesis:25:34 @ @ RandyP comments: We have a spiritual birth right similar to what is discussed in this passage. Any number of us at any number of times have sold our rights for mere morsels of common bread and drink thus in effect despising our birth right. What is the intellectual make up of this? Could it be our narrow perception of our Father's love and wealth? What this birthright means? Could it be our own appetites? Is it that we feel that in the long run we have no right or that our right is somehow ordained to be given another? Some would say in this case 'didn't God make it so?' to which I reply 'didn't God foresee?'. In Jesus we not only have the opportunity to be born again but, also to be born into an inheritance of saints. Where does this heavenly birthright stand with you today?
kjv@Genesis:35:1-4 @ @ RandyP comments: Jacob takes on the role of a proper spiritual father. He leads all of his children, as old as some may be, as a whole. He insists that they put away their strange gods, to be spiritually pure, to be circumspect in their dress and adornments. He became inclusive of them participating in the spiritual projects and worship that he himself was driven to accomplish. He set the tone and pace and they indeed followed along.
kjv@Genesis:35:22 @ @ RandyP comments: Leah's first born Ruben is sleeping with Rachel's handmaid Bilah who bore Jacob Reuben's brothers Dan and Naphtali. This is like sleeping with his stepmother, a woman that his dad has already slept with. Not good at all. The incident is noted here but, the consequence not fully discussed.
kjv@Genesis:39 @ @ RandyP comments: The Lord's favor is always good even though it may not at present be observed as so. How other people react can cause the recipient trouble. Not only has his jealous brother sold him into slavery, his masters wife has sold him into prison. Joseph takes it all in stride believing in the Lord, thankful for the favor. Again he receives the Lord's favor in prison but, notice that the favor does not deliver him immediately from prison. Where His favor is leading us may be a lengthy process start to finish and involve tests of courage, obedience, and or patience. It is tremendous favor none the less.
kjv@Genesis:40 @ @ RandyP comments: How does one forget such a one as interpreted his troubling dream? How does one forget a solemn oath? Quite easily it appears. Notice that Joseph believes in his Lord and at the same time is pleading his way with others to be delivered. There may be times when the Lord works His favor through other people blessing ones initiative. This however seems to be a time when it was not yet time for the Lord to fully reveal His favor. In the long run Joseph's initiative sticks but, it should be known that it was not the cause.
kjv@Matthew:5:31-32 @ @ RandyP comments: mFaithOfJesus kjv@Matthew:5:31-32 BUT I SAY UNTO - The common understanding again falls short. The purpose of a writ of divorce isn't only to protect the wife, it is to curb the effectual adultery that would result. If either spouse is unchaste then adultery is made. If both spouses are being chaste but have grown tired and loveless therewith adultery will be made should either take a new partner. We are not released from an eternal vow just because we want it to be unless the defilement of the vow by the one has forced the God fearing decision of the other. We are seeing the weakness of the Law in that it is interpreted and implemented by the human heart that is already deeply influenced by sin. The human heart at it's sincere best is searching from the inside out to see what God may have meant by the commandment. The faith of Jesus is looking from the outside in, knowing as the Father would know, looking in on the injured and entrapped heart knowing it's faulty logic and reprobate reasoning.
kjv@Genesis:41:51-52 @ @ RandyP comments: Joseph possess two attitudes beneficial to his relationship with God from which he names his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim. His first attitude is that He has made him to forget his toil and fathers house. It is not that he has forgotten it whole it is that it has a positive influence on him. Instead of blaming God or that he is entitled to this time, he praises God that all of these experiences have lead him to this moment; he would not be this had he not been through that. And surely the desire to be reunited with his kin (particularly Jacob and Benjamin) is still there but contained in the knowledge that it will be by God's hand in God's time. The second attitude is that God has made him fruitful in the land of his affliction. He is not sugar coating the fact that he has been afflicted, he is acknowledging that God has brought him through affliction into fruitfulness.
kjv@Exodus:5:3 @ @ RandyP comments: The Hebrews are in somewhat of a predicament. When asked who God is as of yet they really don't have the experience of God to describe who He is or what He has done; most everything He has promised to them remains future tense. How would you convincingly describe God to another at this stage in your faith. Instead, Moses and Aaron appear to the ruler as rebel rousers leading their people to idleness and fantasy. This test is as much for the Hebrews sake as it is for Pharaoh.
kjv@Exodus:5:20-23 @ @ RandyP comments: So the first approach did not work, in fact things got worse. The people blame Moses and Moses blames the Lord. It was actually a pretty lame approach to begin with, but, one has to realize that you don't just go up to a pharaoh and ask him to let my people go. Things have to be proven, leaders have to be tested, effort and sacrifice invested, God has to be depended upon.
kjv@Exodus:6:9 @ @ RandyP comments: Just as the people have little working field knowledge of Jehovah they have little knowledge of Moses. All that they know is that the ambition of Moses has made their bondage much more harsh. When we today read this we kind of know how the story is going to progress and we see the peoples hearts as immature and disbelieving. Stepping into their shoes though one can see that from their immediate vantage point that they are absolutely right. The key then for us to learn is that of vantage point. While something may appear to us to be a certainty in one direction, they actually could be opposite and with good reason; it is all a matter of vantage point.
kjv@Exodus:13:9 @ @ RandyP comments: Think of what the perception of God was before these acts. He was mostly full of promises. He had accomplished some necessary judgments (flood, Sodom), talked now and then to direct an individual. This is the first though that He had revealed with a mighty hand a entire people; first He had used one people to show forth His power to all other people and thereby spread the prophesy of the coming Christ. Now He will be right on top of these chosen people for a time to show us His precise nature.
kjv@Exodus:13 @ @ RandyP comments: It should be known by the way the Lord ritualized this event that He did not intend to continue doing this specific type of massive deliverance again, not for the Israelites, not for any other nation or tribe; it was a once and for all proclamation of the deliverance in Christ to come. There are not other Christs therefore there are not other pictures of His complete deliverance given for the nations. God will show smaller more general deliverances hereafter but those are pictures of more daily deliverances after the all in all deliverance of Christ is received and followed. He always did these fortellings leading up to Christ through Israel so that the nations would not confuse these accounts with any other god. This exodus account will be retold and reminded many times more throughout scripture.
kjv@Exodus:14:15 @ @ RandyP comments: I am sure that the Lord is always encouraging of prayer and communication. Crying out may not always be appropriate however. David for instance often cries out in his Psalms but, his desperation often leads him to the conclusion that God is truly great and a mighty deliverer in times of need. How often do we cry out however with desperation alone, seeking for answers that we are not prepared to follow, directions we are not observant to go, pleading for self strength without having established ourselves within His. We can not be too hard on these Israelites for they are experiencing God many of them for the first time. We should be harder on ourselves for having had their experience plus our own plus that of others and still yet crying out for the sake of crying out. Is there not reason to be communicating with God on a totally different level?
kjv@Exodus:14:31 @ @ RandyP comments: The emphasis of the word fear is not only on the sheer terror of this event but also on the reverence toward the controller of of such uncontrollable elements. That this happened in the manner that it happened for the people who were in this moment could only have been the hand of God. For us who now read of this event there is intellectual wiggle room and physical detachment from these occurrences that these many witnesses were not privy to. It is interesting to see how in the coming hours/days how this fear/reverence too wore down; a testament to the tendencies of the self justifying human reprobate will.
kjv@Exodus:16:4 @ @ RandyP comments: Have you ever wondered if the dry spell that you are going through now is a time where God is seeing whether you will obey His command or not? There may be a section of time in advance where your expectations are not met when you begin to murmur. And maybe you think you are murmuring at somebody (a boss or a spouse a pastor) but, really you are murmuring of God. The problem may be in your expectations. Then there is a second phase where God in His wisdom has provided an answer for you. Again it may not be what you expected; instead it is an intermediary answer as in this case to see if you will perform the steps mandated in the frame of heart that is needed. Again the problem comes with one's expectation. When following the deliverance of God one must expect that our own expectations and His may differ grossly. His offering may not be the final answer all at once, it may be a series of processes that lead us to His ultimate answer. In our own personal wilderness experience, not only do we need learn to trust/depend on Him, to be thankful for anything when do or do not have, but, also to obey what He has impressed upon us to obey.
kjv@Exodus:16:35 @ @ RandyP comments: Not to get ahead of ourselves, but, it was forty years of Manna only because of their disobedience and lack of trust. Since the chapter began with God wanting to prove whether they would obey or no, we should know that almost immediately from outset onward the answer was no. For the manna obedience was somewhat locked in, it would spoil overnight and not grow on Sabbath. For the many other things God was doing the obedience was more voluntary. You have to remember also that these people were in a desert isolated from foreign influences and still had these disobedient tendencies. Is our nature any different? Where do we stand in our proving yet today?
kjv@Exodus:17 @ @ RandyP comments: There is a danger when a single individual is used as mightily as Moses that the people follow the person and not the Lord. The odder turn is that they don't seem to follow the Lord unless there be a mighty leader. The truest statement is possibly that they don't generally follow the Lord period and the individual is only complained and plotted against. In the wilderness they could not provide for themselves, that was the point. But, did they come to depend on their own contact and relationship withe the Lord or did they depend upon another's. Today, we are much the same depending the faith and workings of our leaders rather than our personal faith and the Lord's bountiful resources.
kjv@Exodus:18 @ @ RandyP comments: The Lord instructs us Himself one to one. He instructs through the counsel of others as well. Moses had taken too much upon himself. Not only was it bad for his health and endurance it was bad for the people he was trying to lead. Notice that the Lord did not tell him this, the Lord used his father in law. The Lord did not object. Perhaps Moses had been praying for an answer but was too busy/distracted to listen for it. Perhaps the Lord had told him but, he did not receive it for some reason. Maybe the Lord choose this method from the beginning to develop Moses in the areas of friendship and counsel that he needed developed himself. Regardless, the point for us to take is the importance of counsel, of grooming trust relationships, of allowing opportunity to receive, of being able to compare and line up with the known word of God and correctly decide. Not just any counsel mind you, not just the advice we want to hear, the right godly counsel.
kjv@Exodus:20:5 @ @ RandyP comments: The curse to third and fourth generations is tied specifically to the iniquity of utterly hating God as shown in the worship of other gods. I would think that this would be someone having already known of God and His mercy systematically choosing not retain God in their thoughts rebelliously worshiping the creature rather than the creator. We are not told what the curse will be here but, scripture suggests that the fathers are given over to that which is not convenient kjv@Romans:1 , their generations perhaps suffer after their consequences. Note that the threat of this was not enough to keep many from this; a testament to man's evil heart.
kjv@Matthew:13:20-21 @ @ RandyP comments: From whom does the most pressure/persecution come from? Those just described as the wayside. Those here now without root expect peace and pleasantry. If the gospel is obvious to them it should be obvious to others they presume, and yet it is not obvious, ridiculed, divisive, persecuted against, even deadly. The young fledgling becomes disheartened, embarrassed, offended. A process - sunlight that is supposed to bring about growth instead kills off the plant. Though passive from ther out typically by number they are used by the wayside (therefore Satan) to increase the pressure on the remaining believers.
kjv@Matthew:14:1-12 @ @ RandyP comments: This passage almost reads backwards. At some point earlier the disciples of the Baptist told Jesus and His disciples the outcome of John's imprisonment - beheading. The crew is aware of the circumstances therein. What is happening now that Herod Antipas is associating Jesus with as a haunting of John. We do not know how this becomes known (perhaps one of Herod's servants) but, it does.
kjv@Psalms:60 @ Psalms:60 @ RandyP comments: By the time of son Solomon's reign, God had used David as an instrument of bringing Israel from the pits of "hard things" to a nation with all enemies subjected to it. It was a time like never before and never again for Israel. David from the start believed in God's promise and God's ability. These neighboring nations were to be overcome by God's hand if only there be a leader such as David faithful and fully expectant. It is a hard lesson to learn when we go about electing our own way and our own man, going about by our own resource as they had done in the reign of Saul. Israel was taught in hardship that it really didn't have it's own resource and had little ability to stand against such hardened external/internal foes. It is also taught by prosperous times that God can bring about a great many essentials outside of their normal resource to surround faithful leaders such as David. Battles begun being won for the cherished nation that by their own strength would have undoubtedly been lost (or not even pursued) largely by the faith and petition of a God fearing/seeking man. God surely teaches by the hard times and by the prosperous times; the message either way is much the same. This lesson unfortunitely would have to be relearned every few short generations.
RecentComments @ kjv@James:2:21 @ RandyP comments: Justification can be thought of on two scales, one being made right with God overall (this is by faith and faith alone), the second as proof one to another of our pre-existing overall faith (the faith that I have can be proven to you by the works that this faith has executed on/through me). If faith has not produced demonstrable works, one must wonder if that having been made right with God actually exists. For, the "made right with God" faith will unalterably cause corresponding demonstrable proofs. The larger scale justification is all important first and foremost, each of us must be made right with God by the imputation of Jesus' own righteousness covering over us. This is the justification Paul largely speaks to us of. The smaller scale justification then (and only then) is inevitable should this first condition be met. This is the obvious point James here in chapter 2 furthers.
So many unbelievers today look at Christian faith as a dead thing. One response is that they (unbelievers) want that to be. The opposing response might be that perhaps on an observable scale it indeed is dead is if we (Christians) have not the works to counter their disbelief with. Dead in this inference is to mean unprovable or yet to have tangible effect, not necessarily that the faith in some smaller but saving form does not exist.
RecentComments @ kjv@James:2:21 @ RandyP comments: Justification can be thought of on two scales, one being made right with God overall (this is by faith and faith alone), the second as proof one to another of our pre-existing overall faith (the faith that I have can be proven to you by the works that this faith has executed on/through me). If faith has not produced demonstrable works, one must wonder if that having been made right with God actually exists. For, the "made right with God" faith will unalterably cause corresponding demonstrable proofs. The larger scale is all important firt and foremost, each of us being made right with God. This is the justification Paul largely speaks to us of. The smaller scale justification then (and only then) is inevitable should the first condition be met. This is the obvious point James furthers. So many unbelievers today look at Christian faith as a dead thing. One response is that they (unbelievers) want that to be. The opposing response might be that perhaps on an observable scale it indeed is dead is if we (Christians) have not the works to counter their disbelief with. Dead in this inference is to mean questionable as to whether the first scale has actually been met.
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