If the will of God be so... we suffer.
1 Pet. {3:17} For it is better, if the will of God be so, that ye suffer for well doing, than for evil doing.
If the will of God be so.
All is done by the will of God. The good, the bad, the happiness, the suffering it is allowed by God there is no getting away from that. Allowed but not orginating from God. Sin orginated with Satan. Some might argue that God created all things so He had to have created sin too. Any parent that creates a child and raises them and the child goes on to be something totally unexpected- a monster of sorts, a criminal- is it automatically the parents fault that the child has gone wrong? No. Yes, when God created something called free will He allowed for the possibility of good or evil. If God had created free will without any possibility of there being a choice, is it truly free will? If a person is only given one road to walk on do they have a choice of walking any other?
The will of God wasn't to live in a world where He ruled without other beings allowed a choice. Angels were given that free will. We have no clue how long angels lived without sinning, none. What we do know is an angel finally chose not to love and trust in God.
There are mysteries we can't possibly understand and some would say because they can't understand everything, the whole deal is a huge fable. Some don't want to live by faith and that is their choice they are free to make.
If the will of God be so.
The will of God. We live by the will of God. We were created by the will of God. Some call God a monster for His will. They scream that God shouldn't allow this or that, yet the minds that are scream it do not know that end from the beginning as God does.
If the will of God be so that you suffer for well doing it's better than suffering for evil doing.
Some are called to suffer even though they do no wrong, they harm no one, they are good and they suffer for it. How much better is it for us to suffer for good? Much, much better.
Suffer for good.
If the will of God be so... we suffer.
Ultimately it is the will of God that we be His, but only we can make that choice. He offers us everything, but before everything we may be called to suffer. Jesus suffered.
1 Pet. {3:14} But and if ye suffer for righteousness’ sake, happy [are ye:] and be not afraid of their terror, neither be troubled; {3:15} But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and [be] ready always to [give] an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope
that is in you with meekness and fear.
Suffer for righteousness' sake - happy are ye.
We don't have to understand, we want to be we don't have to.
May the will of God be done now and forever and may we all suffer for good, suffer for righteousness sake, suffer in faith knowing that any suffering now is nothing compared to the promises given us. Easy to say, yes, very easy. May God bless us and keep us in Him no matter what.
By the grace and mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ!
Amen.
6/14/10
Rom 13:12 The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.
Rom 13:13 Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying.
Rom 13:14 But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof.
Put on the armor of light.
The night is far spent....
The day is at hand...
Cast off the works of darkness...
Works of darkness- rioting, drunkeness, wantoness, strife, envying, lusts of the flesh. We know what the works of darkness are and if we know what the works of darkness are then we know what the armor of light is. The armor of light is what we are left with when we are no longer consumed by the works of darkness. When you're caught up in drunkeness you're not dealing with reality you're escaping from life. When you're embracing rioting you've lost patience and violence is what you're condoning. Covered in strife, in envying, letting your base desires overcome any maturity you may possess, you are not covered in the armor of light. We need to live without the angst, without the darkness ruling us. There are movies and books without number pitting evil against good and it's anyone's guess any more which win. So many revel in the thought of evil sneakily winning even when it appears good may have conquered...that last bit where you question whether good really wins is the surprise ending. Evil against good and sometimes promoting evil- making it appear good- is a big thing as well. Disguising evil under a cloak of goodness is so popular. Things aren't that bad, evil isn't that bad, we make excuses for evil. Do we cast off the works of darkness? Do we cast off the works of evil? Do we know what evil is any longer? We're so busy turning evil into good, or disguising it and pretending the armor we wear is of light that we don't realize how much darkness we are covered in.
Let us walk honestly.
Put on the LORD JESUS CHRIST.
May God help us really see ourselves for what we are. May the Holy Spirit convict us of the darkness in our lives so that we may know to cast it off with His help and may the armor of light be upon us fully- May we have Christ our Lord and Savior in us now and forever! Please Lord let us recognize the evil we've disguised as light for what it really is, we want to be found in Your light by Your mercy and Your grace, through Your love!
Amen
6/14/11
Continuing with prophecy we're going to pick up with Daniel--
We were talking about the Beasts in Daniel 7 depicting the same kingdoms that Daniel 2 speaks of and so far it seems very clear that history has proven that the first two beasts correspond with the head of gold and chest and arms of silver in the great statue of Nebuchadnezzar's dream. Will we find the same of the 3rd beast- will it match up with the belly and thighs of brass which is Greece?
Dan 7:6 After this I beheld, and lo another, like a leopard, which had upon the back of it four wings of a fowl; the beast had also four heads; and dominion was given to it.
Another kingdom comes up like a leopard with four wings of a fowl on its back. Remember the lion of Babylon had 2 wings like eagle's on it's back and we talked of the swiftness of the conquering? Well if we believe 2 wings mean swiftness then 4 wings means an even faster conquest and the fact this was another of the feline family says a lot as well. While not the majestic king of the animals, a leopard is impressive as well. Leopards are known for their stealth and this is something a conquering king can use to their advantage and we know for a fact that Alexander the Great was one of the most famous of conquerors for Greece.
Read this… and keep in mind the 4 wings on the leopard denoting speed in conquering.
Alexander conquers his world
Inheriting a kingdom from his father didn't really please Alexander. What kind of hero gets everything given to him? This wouldn't satisfy Achilles or Hercules and it wouldn't satisfy him.
Alexander wanted to get started conquering ASAP.
He got his first opportunity almost immediately. Some of the Greek city-states saw the ascension of the 20-year-old Alexander as a chance to regain their independence from the foreign Macedonians. By the way, "foreign" is how the Greeks saw the Macedonians, not how the Macedonians saw themselves. To this day, there's still contention over whether Macedonians are Greeks.
Alexander took care of the little rebellion post-haste. To set an example, he completely razed the Greek city of Thebes in 335 B.C., killing most of the population -- including women and children -- and enslaving those few left alive. After that the Greeks were happily united behind Alexander and he could focus his attention on expanding the empire.
He immediately began pushing east, against the old enemy Persia -- which his father never succeeded in defeating.
After winning a battle for the city of Gordium, Alexander is said to have solved the famously tricky Gordian Knot. He sliced through the thing with his sword rather than fool around it. A legend supposedly foretold that whoever solved this puzzle would rule all of Asia.
Alexander rapidly moved on to destroy the city of Tyre ... push through Palestine, Syria, Iran, and Afghanistan ... and conquer Egypt (or, depending on your perspective, "liberate" Egypt from the Persians). In bloody battle after bloody battle the Persian Empire and most of the known world fell to the hero Alexander and his Macedonian war machine.
Pasted from <http://www.interesting.com/stories/alexander/>
Amazing! Simply amazing how these prophecies fit together. We can choose to ignore things. We can choose to close our eyes and stop our ears from hearing because we don't want anything to mess with our preconceived ideas of how things are and/or will be. We make choices all the time and some choices we make affect our lives- making the true life or death decisions. When we make choices with God's word they can be eternal life or death choices we are making. Let us pray earnestly that we are being guided by the Holy Spirit unto all truth. Let us NOT close our eyes or cover our ears.
Continuing on we need to look at the rest of the verse---
Dan 7:6 ...the beast had also four heads; and dominion was given to it.
Four heads. This is really important to note. For all that Alexander the Great came up strong and very fast conquering, becoming one of the greatest conquering leaders of all time, he died very young. When he died- he died without any heirs but there were four generals… four…
These plans ended in 323 B.C., however, when Alexander was struck with fever and died in Babylon, leaving no heir. His empire was divided among four of his generals.
Pasted from <http://ancienthistory.about.com/cs/persianempir1/a/persiaintro_4.htm>
…. And these four generals divided Alexander the Great's Grecian kingdom among them. It's NO coincidence that there were four heads on that leopard, no coincidence at all.
A bit of history mentioning the 4 generals--
In 315 he turned his attention towards Seleucus, the satrap of Babylon. Alarmed, Seleucus fled to Ptolemy in Egypt, and warned him of Antigonus’s ambitions. This can hardly have come as a surprise to Ptolemy, or to the remaining successors, for in the same year Ptolemy, Cassander and Lysimachus issued an ultimatum to Antigonus. In it they demanded that he return Syria to Ptolemy, allowed Seleucus to return to Babylon, give Hellespontine Phrygia to Lysimachus and possibly give Cappadocia and Lycia to Cassander. He was also ordered to split Eumenes’s treasury between them all. This would have left Antigonus with part of Asia Minor. Unsurprisingly he refused.
Pasted from <http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/wars_diadoch_3rd.html>
Seleucus, Ptolemy, Cassander, Lysimachus
These four men took over that which Alexander the Great conquered. So why weren't there ten or twenty, one or two others who took over? There were four major players here that divided the kingdom of Greece and there were four heads to the leopard. Coincidence? Some would say so and others would pick it all apart to pieces not wanting anyone to make connections. People will warp anything and everything they can just to put doubt to God, doubt to prophecy, doubt to understanding.
There will be those who argue that believing and holding fast to a belief is NOT allowing room for God to reveal what He will. I have to believe that if we truly love God and desire His will over our own, His righteousness over our filthiness, His perfect love over our poor excuse for love, His life over ours then God will open our hearts to ALL TRUTH. If we hold false beliefs God will reveal the true beliefs. We must trust in our Savior in all things and believe as He unfolds truth to us. We must be ever ready to follow where God leads.
This is short tonight, but it is a lot to take in, a lot for us to study and pray about. We are learning about prophecy - history proven prophecy.
By His grace!
Amen.
If the will of God be so.
All is done by the will of God. The good, the bad, the happiness, the suffering it is allowed by God there is no getting away from that. Allowed but not orginating from God. Sin orginated with Satan. Some might argue that God created all things so He had to have created sin too. Any parent that creates a child and raises them and the child goes on to be something totally unexpected- a monster of sorts, a criminal- is it automatically the parents fault that the child has gone wrong? No. Yes, when God created something called free will He allowed for the possibility of good or evil. If God had created free will without any possibility of there being a choice, is it truly free will? If a person is only given one road to walk on do they have a choice of walking any other?
The will of God wasn't to live in a world where He ruled without other beings allowed a choice. Angels were given that free will. We have no clue how long angels lived without sinning, none. What we do know is an angel finally chose not to love and trust in God.
There are mysteries we can't possibly understand and some would say because they can't understand everything, the whole deal is a huge fable. Some don't want to live by faith and that is their choice they are free to make.
If the will of God be so.
The will of God. We live by the will of God. We were created by the will of God. Some call God a monster for His will. They scream that God shouldn't allow this or that, yet the minds that are scream it do not know that end from the beginning as God does.
If the will of God be so that you suffer for well doing it's better than suffering for evil doing.
Some are called to suffer even though they do no wrong, they harm no one, they are good and they suffer for it. How much better is it for us to suffer for good? Much, much better.
Suffer for good.
If the will of God be so... we suffer.
Ultimately it is the will of God that we be His, but only we can make that choice. He offers us everything, but before everything we may be called to suffer. Jesus suffered.
1 Pet. {3:14} But and if ye suffer for righteousness’ sake, happy [are ye:] and be not afraid of their terror, neither be troubled; {3:15} But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and [be] ready always to [give] an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope
that is in you with meekness and fear.
Suffer for righteousness' sake - happy are ye.
We don't have to understand, we want to be we don't have to.
May the will of God be done now and forever and may we all suffer for good, suffer for righteousness sake, suffer in faith knowing that any suffering now is nothing compared to the promises given us. Easy to say, yes, very easy. May God bless us and keep us in Him no matter what.
By the grace and mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ!
Amen.
6/14/10
Rom 13:12 The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.
Rom 13:13 Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying.
Rom 13:14 But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof.
Put on the armor of light.
The night is far spent....
The day is at hand...
Cast off the works of darkness...
Works of darkness- rioting, drunkeness, wantoness, strife, envying, lusts of the flesh. We know what the works of darkness are and if we know what the works of darkness are then we know what the armor of light is. The armor of light is what we are left with when we are no longer consumed by the works of darkness. When you're caught up in drunkeness you're not dealing with reality you're escaping from life. When you're embracing rioting you've lost patience and violence is what you're condoning. Covered in strife, in envying, letting your base desires overcome any maturity you may possess, you are not covered in the armor of light. We need to live without the angst, without the darkness ruling us. There are movies and books without number pitting evil against good and it's anyone's guess any more which win. So many revel in the thought of evil sneakily winning even when it appears good may have conquered...that last bit where you question whether good really wins is the surprise ending. Evil against good and sometimes promoting evil- making it appear good- is a big thing as well. Disguising evil under a cloak of goodness is so popular. Things aren't that bad, evil isn't that bad, we make excuses for evil. Do we cast off the works of darkness? Do we cast off the works of evil? Do we know what evil is any longer? We're so busy turning evil into good, or disguising it and pretending the armor we wear is of light that we don't realize how much darkness we are covered in.
Let us walk honestly.
Put on the LORD JESUS CHRIST.
May God help us really see ourselves for what we are. May the Holy Spirit convict us of the darkness in our lives so that we may know to cast it off with His help and may the armor of light be upon us fully- May we have Christ our Lord and Savior in us now and forever! Please Lord let us recognize the evil we've disguised as light for what it really is, we want to be found in Your light by Your mercy and Your grace, through Your love!
Amen
6/14/11
Continuing with prophecy we're going to pick up with Daniel--
We were talking about the Beasts in Daniel 7 depicting the same kingdoms that Daniel 2 speaks of and so far it seems very clear that history has proven that the first two beasts correspond with the head of gold and chest and arms of silver in the great statue of Nebuchadnezzar's dream. Will we find the same of the 3rd beast- will it match up with the belly and thighs of brass which is Greece?
Dan 7:6 After this I beheld, and lo another, like a leopard, which had upon the back of it four wings of a fowl; the beast had also four heads; and dominion was given to it.
Another kingdom comes up like a leopard with four wings of a fowl on its back. Remember the lion of Babylon had 2 wings like eagle's on it's back and we talked of the swiftness of the conquering? Well if we believe 2 wings mean swiftness then 4 wings means an even faster conquest and the fact this was another of the feline family says a lot as well. While not the majestic king of the animals, a leopard is impressive as well. Leopards are known for their stealth and this is something a conquering king can use to their advantage and we know for a fact that Alexander the Great was one of the most famous of conquerors for Greece.
Read this… and keep in mind the 4 wings on the leopard denoting speed in conquering.
Alexander conquers his world
Inheriting a kingdom from his father didn't really please Alexander. What kind of hero gets everything given to him? This wouldn't satisfy Achilles or Hercules and it wouldn't satisfy him.
Alexander wanted to get started conquering ASAP.
He got his first opportunity almost immediately. Some of the Greek city-states saw the ascension of the 20-year-old Alexander as a chance to regain their independence from the foreign Macedonians. By the way, "foreign" is how the Greeks saw the Macedonians, not how the Macedonians saw themselves. To this day, there's still contention over whether Macedonians are Greeks.
Alexander took care of the little rebellion post-haste. To set an example, he completely razed the Greek city of Thebes in 335 B.C., killing most of the population -- including women and children -- and enslaving those few left alive. After that the Greeks were happily united behind Alexander and he could focus his attention on expanding the empire.
He immediately began pushing east, against the old enemy Persia -- which his father never succeeded in defeating.
After winning a battle for the city of Gordium, Alexander is said to have solved the famously tricky Gordian Knot. He sliced through the thing with his sword rather than fool around it. A legend supposedly foretold that whoever solved this puzzle would rule all of Asia.
Alexander rapidly moved on to destroy the city of Tyre ... push through Palestine, Syria, Iran, and Afghanistan ... and conquer Egypt (or, depending on your perspective, "liberate" Egypt from the Persians). In bloody battle after bloody battle the Persian Empire and most of the known world fell to the hero Alexander and his Macedonian war machine.
Pasted from <http://www.interesting.com/stories/alexander/>
Amazing! Simply amazing how these prophecies fit together. We can choose to ignore things. We can choose to close our eyes and stop our ears from hearing because we don't want anything to mess with our preconceived ideas of how things are and/or will be. We make choices all the time and some choices we make affect our lives- making the true life or death decisions. When we make choices with God's word they can be eternal life or death choices we are making. Let us pray earnestly that we are being guided by the Holy Spirit unto all truth. Let us NOT close our eyes or cover our ears.
Continuing on we need to look at the rest of the verse---
Dan 7:6 ...the beast had also four heads; and dominion was given to it.
Four heads. This is really important to note. For all that Alexander the Great came up strong and very fast conquering, becoming one of the greatest conquering leaders of all time, he died very young. When he died- he died without any heirs but there were four generals… four…
These plans ended in 323 B.C., however, when Alexander was struck with fever and died in Babylon, leaving no heir. His empire was divided among four of his generals.
Pasted from <http://ancienthistory.about.com/cs/persianempir1/a/persiaintro_4.htm>
…. And these four generals divided Alexander the Great's Grecian kingdom among them. It's NO coincidence that there were four heads on that leopard, no coincidence at all.
A bit of history mentioning the 4 generals--
In 315 he turned his attention towards Seleucus, the satrap of Babylon. Alarmed, Seleucus fled to Ptolemy in Egypt, and warned him of Antigonus’s ambitions. This can hardly have come as a surprise to Ptolemy, or to the remaining successors, for in the same year Ptolemy, Cassander and Lysimachus issued an ultimatum to Antigonus. In it they demanded that he return Syria to Ptolemy, allowed Seleucus to return to Babylon, give Hellespontine Phrygia to Lysimachus and possibly give Cappadocia and Lycia to Cassander. He was also ordered to split Eumenes’s treasury between them all. This would have left Antigonus with part of Asia Minor. Unsurprisingly he refused.
Pasted from <http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/wars_diadoch_3rd.html>
Seleucus, Ptolemy, Cassander, Lysimachus
These four men took over that which Alexander the Great conquered. So why weren't there ten or twenty, one or two others who took over? There were four major players here that divided the kingdom of Greece and there were four heads to the leopard. Coincidence? Some would say so and others would pick it all apart to pieces not wanting anyone to make connections. People will warp anything and everything they can just to put doubt to God, doubt to prophecy, doubt to understanding.
There will be those who argue that believing and holding fast to a belief is NOT allowing room for God to reveal what He will. I have to believe that if we truly love God and desire His will over our own, His righteousness over our filthiness, His perfect love over our poor excuse for love, His life over ours then God will open our hearts to ALL TRUTH. If we hold false beliefs God will reveal the true beliefs. We must trust in our Savior in all things and believe as He unfolds truth to us. We must be ever ready to follow where God leads.
This is short tonight, but it is a lot to take in, a lot for us to study and pray about. We are learning about prophecy - history proven prophecy.
By His grace!
Amen.