History, Government, and Voting Part 3

There is a battle that has been going on since the beginning of time. It is a battle between good and evil. The battle was in favor of evil winning when Eve obeyed the voice of the snake (the devil) and led Adam to participate also. Ever since that time, the beautiful earth that God created started to experience ugliness, suffering, pain, and many difficulties that God did not intend for mankind to have. People became perverted. People wanted to rule kingdoms, even if it were just the people around them.

  Perhaps you are thinking, I wouldn’t have done what Adam and Eve did. I wouldn’t have listened to the voice of the snake. That voice is still speaking to people today, and people are believing the lies from the voice of the snake every day. The words that came out of the snake’s mouth were from the devil. He still lies to people today, and he has specific lies designed for each person he wants to take captive. He will keep you captive to his lies if you don't protect yourself from them.

  As the population grew, more and more people were now living on earth, wanting to control everyone else. When people didn’t get what they wanted, they killed the person or people who got in the way of what they wanted. It started with the first murder of Cain killing Abel. Abel understood what sin was, and provided the right kind of atonement offering for his sin, while Cain missed the boat altogether. Cain was angry that Abel got it right and he didn’t, so he killed his brother. This trait continued on, and has continued throughout all of human History. This trait has characterized men and women for the past 5,000+ years, and can be seen more clearly expressing itself in realms of governments, in any city, state, country or province.

   There were kings in the Bible who killed people because they didn’t get what they wanted. During the Middle Ages we see people in authority taking advantage of others. We see the deception of rulers and the cruelty of tyrants. Yet, God ordains governments and sets people in places to rule. So, what is wrong, and what can we do about it?

   Stay tuned as we continue on with our saga….

History, Government, and Voting-Part 2

I will have to make this article in several parts because it will end up being too long to read in one sitting!
  The reason why people like a government that gives handouts, is because many of them are lazy. But that is not the initial problem. The root problem of this is our whole educational system. It caters to people’s laziness and does not have the capacity to know how to stimulate people to thinking. The whole educational philosophy has put people to sleep. It does their thinking for them. Ultimately, that is the goal of this educational system, for if they can put us to sleep and keep us entertained, we will forget how to think. Then they will do the thinking for us. Bingo! Do you see the problem here? If we are never trained to be functional in life, we will have to depend on someone or something else to take care of us. And if the government is successful in accomplishing its goal, then socialism will easily slip in and be welcomed. The next step is Communism. If you don’t think that is the goal of people who get into government, then you need to think again. There are many ways to get people to forget about Communism and not even be aware of what it is or how harmful and dangerous it would be for any society to be under. It goes back to the heart of wicked men and women, which the Bible is clear that we all are. We all have the capacity to be very wicked, whether we want to believe that or not. We are self-centered people, and left to our own desires, we will end up destroying ourselves and other people (for a Historical recording of this happening, see Genesis chapter 6). If you don’t think you are a bad person, I recommend that you take the Good Person Test and find out whether or not you are. (The Good Person Test  , Test 4 Good Person) . We all have a little Hitler inside of us. The issue we struggle with is love of control. We want to call the shots in life. We don’t want to submit to God and let Him rule our lives. It is a struggle that God can help us to overcome by giving us a new heart.
To be continued....

History, Government, and Voting Part 1

We have less than 2 weeks to cast our votes. Many have already decided on whom they are voting for. In our voting, we have to take some things into consideration. For those of us who want to look at our voting Biblically, we have to realize that the Bible does not actually have a pattern available for how to vote in a society in which voting for a president is an option, nevertheless, there are principles that we can still go by and use in our decision making. Romans 13:1-7 says ‘Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God's wrath but also for the sake of conscience. For because of this you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed.’ (ESV)

To be continued.

Today in History - October 18, 1767 - Mason Dixon lines defined

Mason Dixon Lines Defined - October 18, 1767

    Today in History, the boundaries between the colonies of Pennsylvania and Maryland were defined. The Penn and Calvert families hired two English men who were surveyors to settle a dispute over the boundaries between the two proprietary colonies. Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon completed the survey, and on side of the border was a marker with Pennsylvania's crest, and the other side was marked with Maryland's crest. The boundary settled at 39 degree latitude, and 43 minutes at a northern latitude.

Source: History.com - Mason Dixon Line

The Story of the Christmas Tree

   Hav you ever wondered why people put up a Christmas tree during the Christmas season? Was it a pagan icon? Did it have some symbolic meaning relating to the Christmas story? Here is what I learned today, as my daughter related what she was teaching her children during a reading assignment.
   The Christmas tree story began when a man named Boniface, an English monk who planted churches in the 7th century, was made aware of an event that was going to take place on Christmas Eve. So, Boniface and his men went traipsing through the snow in west Germany to reach a group of people who were going to sacrifice a child to the god named 'Thor'. Apparently, Boniface was a man who loved to preach the Gospel to lost people. Boniface and his men were actually watching from a distance and realized that the chief of this group was going to sacrifice his own son, because the group decided that the gods were angry and they wanted to appease the gods. Aware of this, Boniface wanted to reach this group and preach the Gospel to them. What these people would do is to cut a tree down to use for the sacrifice. They would use the tree as a stake and tie the person they were sacrificing to it. Boniface was able to cut down the tree and used the cut down tree to explain the Gospel to the people. He came to the rescue and the child that was going to be used as the human sacrifice did not have to be sacrificed! Boniface explained the shape of the tree, which is a triangle, in comparison to the Trinity. He used the tree as a symbol of eternal life in Christ. He instructed the people to take the tree home and surround it with gifts of kindness and love.
Christmas Tree Origins-St Boniface
Christmas Tree Origins - St. Boniface - Catholic Doors

                                                     

                                 

What Was Noah's Wife's Name?

   I am going to reprint a blog I did in my apologetics page. I learned some fascinating Historical facts in the past couple of days. I love trivia and putting things together to see the bigger picture with.
     There was a group of people who lived in a province of China called the Miautso people. They use oral tradition in their weddings and funerals, and can trace the person's ancestry back to Adam! They use their genealogy in their ceremonies. How would you like to find your ancestors all the way back to Adam? These people will recite their genealogy at these ceremonies.
     I copied and pasted what I had written last night. I hope you will find it interesting. When I researched this subject, I found that there were many cultures that have a global flood story, with names of people in the boat (Ark). There actually were different names for Noah's wife, depending on the culture. I hope you will find this as interesting as I did. I find it ironic that Adam's name was 'Dirt'. How fitting that is for the first man who came from the soil, and who tilled the land!

           There has been some work done by Bill Cooper, who wrote about the descent of the Miautso people who lived in the province of Kiangsi in China. These people took excellent genealogical record keeping and claim they are descendents from Japheth, one of Noah’s sons, who was the ancestor of the indo-Europeans of today. The Miautso people were not of Chinese stock, and they were booted out of their land. They have genealogical records all the way back to Adam. The translation work was done by Edgar Truax, and written about in the book, ‘After the Flood’ by Bill Cooper. Take a look at this list of names and see how similar they are to the Biblical names.
Dirt (Adam)
|
Se-teh (Seth)
|
Lusu (unidentifiable. I personally think it could be Methuselah).
|
Gehlo (Unidentifiable)
|
Lama (Lamech)
|
Nuah (Noah) (wife’s name is Ga Bo lu en)
|                                |                                        |
Lo Han          Lo Shen                      Lo Jah-phu
(Ham)            (Shem)                        (Japheth)

These records are not going to match the Bible because they were recorded by other cultures. Nor are the other stories that tell about a world wide flood going to have accurate facts in them. Greek and Roman mythology came out of them. Its not the other way around. For example, people say that the Chaldeans had the flood story before the Hebrews did, therefore the Hebrews borrowed the flood story, but that isn’t the case. The Chaldeans were before the Hebrews and had the flood story, and Abraham came from a place called ‘Ur’ and he would have known about the flood as well and brought it to the Hebrew people. Abraham came from a pagan background, but God called him to be the ‘Father of Many Nations’ which he was.
It is interesting that there are other sources that have stories that are very similar to the Global Flood of Noah’s day. I’m grateful we can still find these stories.
Bill Cooper