In the Beginning…
by Royce Logan
Why are our eyes at the front of our head instead of at the bottom of our feet?
Why do we have two eyes instead of just one? Why do we have eyes? Oh, “natural selection”.
The organisms in our body have evolved into this magnificent creature we’ve become because of the intelligence of nature.
What? Nature has intelligence? If nature has intelligence then nature must also have consciousness. Why? Because consciousness is required to have a will and a will must have a desire and the desire must be to choose the more favorable traits of the organism over the lesser traits of the organism and then the organism must have the ability to sever itself from the lesser traits.
So, how can nature choose the more favorable traits of the organism unless it has the consciousness, the will and the desire to make that choice and then the ability to discard those lesser traits into the ash bin of its useless self?
Pretty crazy, huh? I agree.
There is no intelligence in nature, no consciousness, no will, no desire and certainly no abilities in nature to evolve into a better organism and then intervene into that evolution process to give a body of organisms something that is not even of its own realm: a consciousness. No, the only abilities in nature to evolve are those abilities set into motion by an intelligent designer who also has the ability to intervene into that process of evolution to unite the natural realm with a realm of awareness and of consciousness: the realm of our spiritual existence.
And you say, “Prove it!” And I say, “Prove me wrong!”
Where did the first slimy organism come from? Out of nothingness? Out of no thing? No matter, no energy, no light, no life, no nothing. Emptiness. But the very existence of nature is dependant upon the reality of itself: the truth that nature must contain substance, matter, even energy to exist, to be reality, and to be truth.
Nature can procreate itself, but it can not create itself. Big difference! We weren’t evolved from some slimy mess under a rock. If you still think we were then you have to answer the question, “Where did the slimy mess come from?”
Where does thought come from? Can a creature consume certain elements of nature to create thought? Sure, food nourishes the body to provide the fuel to generate thought, but food, by itself can’t create anything.
Having the ability to choose, having a will and a desire can only be manifested in a physical creature when a physical body has been combined with life; when the experience of nature has been integrated with a spiritual experience.
Nature alone is only substance and matter. Evolution requires something beyond what nature can offer. Evolution requires life.
Creation versus evolution. We’re missing the point.
Creation is evolution.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Excerpt from The Worship Principle
Excerpt from The Worship Principle
by Royce Logan and Dale Linton
Chapter 4
Man’s Separation from God
Before man’s first act of sin, the eating of the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, man was spiritually pure. There was no evil in the soul of man. We know what happened to Adam and Eve in the physical world when they sinned. God drove them out of the Garden of Eden partly as punishment, so that they would no longer enjoy the ease and pleasures of this Paradise God had created for them, but also to keep them from eating from the tree of life. God even placed a guard, an angel, in the Garden of Eden to keep Adam and Eve from the tree of life because He could no longer trust man to be obedient. We had failed in our worship of God.
In the physical, God was able to forgive Adam and Eve. He is the author of the physical. He can do whatever He wants in the physical world. That’s why He clothed Adam and Eve before He sent them out from the Garden of Eden. He did what He could for them in the physical. He forgave them in the physical and He clothed them because He had compassion for them. Adam was ashamed and hid himself from God. God accepted Adam’s regret. He forgave them in the physical. Adam and Eve’s forgiveness in the physical was because of their shame and their regret. God is the author of the physical and could therefore set the penalty they owed for their sin in the physical and the penalty was the loss of Paradise. By removing Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, they paid the penalty for their sin in the physical.
Spiritually, however, Adam and Eve had no way to atone for their spiritual sin against God. God could forgive the spiritual sin but He could not take away the penalty for the sin and be done with it because God is spiritual. God is everlasting and unchanging. God would have to compromise Himself to change the nature of sin, the penalty of sin, or the results of sin. It would be like one of us condoning murder. If our best friend or child committed murder we could decide in our own minds to forgive them for the act of the murder, but we could not take away the penalty they would have to pay for the murder. Even if we had the power to take away the penalty for the act of murder, we would have to compromise our own values and the values of our culture to do it. We would have to compromise ourselves.
You might ask, “Well, isn’t God also the author of all that is spiritual too? And if He is, can’t He do whatever He wants in the spiritual realm just as you say He can do anything He wants in the physical realm?” I can’t answer this because it’s like asking which came first the chicken or the egg. What we know about God from the Bible is that He always was and always will be.
I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty. Revelations 1:8 (KJV)
God is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. He always was and He always will be the Almighty. God is spiritual. Did He create Himself and all that exists in His presence which is spiritual? The best answer we have to the question, “Did God create Himself?” is no. There was no beginning to God and certainly no end. He always was and always will be. Therefore, there was no creation of God. The point of this is that God created the physical world. He is the author of all that exists in the physical realm. Therefore, He can move mountains and part seas. What He can do in the spiritual realm we don’t know. Perhaps He can do anything, and I would expect that He can. But, because He is spiritual, He would have to change Himself, but God is unchanging. For I am the LORD, I change not; Malachi 3:6 (KJV). God will not change His spiritual realm because He would have to change Himself, He would have to compromise Himself to do it.
By Adam and Eve committing the original sin, they opened the door to allow sin in man’s soul. There was no way to close this door. Their eyes had been opened and now sin would live in man’s soul from generation to generation. Eating the apple was a physical sin, but disobedience of God was a spiritual sin. All Satan could do before the fall was tempt us in the physical realm. We could have resisted the temptation, but we didn’t. Now, Satan also had access to a spiritual part of us, our soul, the part that God gave us of Himself, the part that makes us different from all other creatures, the part that combined flesh with the Spirit of God and created a living soul.
So, Satan and his minions have been free to roam the earth seeking whom they may devour as the apostle Peter says it in 1st Peter 5:8. God told Cain before he slew his brother Abel that if he does well, if he does not sin, God will accept him, but if he doesn’t do well, if he allows spiritual temptation to overcome him then sin lies at his door waiting for him.
You see, we all have sin waiting at our door. Satan and his minions are roaming the earth speaking to us in our spirit, tempting us to do anything we are willing to do that is a sin against God. Satan hates us because God loves us. We are just pawns to Satan in the spiritual realm. We are just a means for Satan to rebel against God. As stated before, Satan is just an evil spiritual being, but he can be evil for all eternity with no harm to his adversary, God, unless he has some way to commit acts of evil. Satan knows that God loves us so much that when he attacks us he is attacking God because God lives in us.
So, Adam and Eve and all generations to follow were destined to die a physical death for two reasons; a physical reason and a spiritual reason. Physically, Adam and Eve never ate from the tree of life that would have given their bodies the supernatural ability to live forever. Spiritually, they had eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil so their spirits now had a spiritual knowledge that they were never intended to have and they received that spiritual knowledge through disobedience of God. Adam and Eve sinned against God, but because there are spiritual laws just like there are laws of nature, spiritual laws that say a spirit can not cease to exist once it has been created, Adam and Eve could not die a spiritual death in the sense of a cessation to exist, but they would suffer a spiritual death as defined as a spiritual separation from God.
If Adam and Eve had also eaten from the tree of life they would not only have spiritual knowledge of good and evil with sin embedded in their souls forever, they would have also become physically immortal with no way for God to restore them to spiritual communion with Him. This problem would have to be remedied in the spiritual realm because there was no way to do it in the physical realm. So, God was quick to get Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden before they ever ate from the tree of life. If they had eaten from the tree of life Adam and Eve would have been destined to live on the earth forever, separated from God’s spiritual presence forever.
The penalty for sin is hell and death. Hell being a place of punishment and confinement of the spirit and the soul and death being spiritual separation from God. There would have been no way to ever pay the penalty for sin as long as Adam and Eve’s immortal bodies were trapped here on earth forever. No. God would have to return man’s body back to the earth so that his soul could be released from the physical world and become purely spiritual. Now, this was only part of the solution. God still had to find a just way to pay the penalty for his sins.
God had a plan, a way for man to be reunited with God spiritually and it had to be a plan that was fair and just and did not contradict spiritual laws. Adam had given Satan access to his soul and there was no way to take it back and remain just, but was there a way, even though man was now a sinner, for God to forgive man’s sin and also for God to pay the penalty for sin required by spiritual justice which would purify man’s soul and make him Holy again so that man’s soul could be restored to Holy communion with God? Forgiving the sin was not the problem. God already had the authority, the power, and the justice to forgive sin. Jesus began forgiving sin the day the Holy Spirit descended on Him and gave Him that authority from God. The problem was paying the penalty for sin. Satan controlled the penalty for sin because Satan controlled the keys to hell and death. Satan was given the keys to hell and death when he was cast out of heaven, out of the spiritual presence of God. At that time there was no earth, there was no physical universe, only the spiritual realm of God and the hell God created outside of His spiritual presence to send Satan and his army.
Hell is a spiritual place of separation from God. There was no other place for Satan to go other than hell if he could not be in the spiritual presence of God. So, Satan was given the key to the bottomless pit (Revelations 9:1) which is hell, and commanded by God to go there and leave His spiritual presence, which is spiritual death. Again, not death as a cessation to exist, but death as a spiritual separation from God. It’s like sending your child to their room for punishment. You tell them to go to their room and close the door, but you don’t lock them in there. Your child obeys because you have authority over them. So, what is your child’s punishment? Confinement and separation from you and the rest of the world; the realm that you control for that child.
Satan was confined to hell until the earth and the universe were created. He was confined there because the only other place that existed was the spiritual presence of God which he was not permitted to go except by permission from God. Once the earth was created, Satan now had another place he could roam that was not in the spiritual presence of God except when God manifested His presence to man. Although there were times when God manifested His spiritual presence on earth, as when He spoke to Abraham and Moses, the godhead of our triune God, that is, God Himself does not dwell on the earth. He sent His son, Jesus, a part of the triune God to live on the earth for a time, and He sent the Holy Spirit to dwell on the earth with us today, but God, Himself, the godhead of our triune God, does not dwell on the earth with us today as the Holy Spirit does or as Jesus did when He was manifested in the physical realm here on earth except in the concept that a part of God dwells within each of us because He gave us a part of Himself at creation.
You might ask, “I thought everything was in God’s realm?” Yes, everything is in God’s realm but not necessarily in God’s spiritual presence. Hell is in God’s realm, but God’s spiritual presence, that is God Himself, is not in hell, nor is He on the earth. The Holy Spirit, a part of the triune God dwells on earth with us now, but not God Himself. There were times when God manifested Himself on earth when He spoke to the prophets, but He does not need to do that anymore because the Holy Spirit is here with us all the time. People ask, “How come we don’t see or hear from God anymore like we used to in the time of Moses and Abraham?” The reason is because the Holy Spirit is here with us now. We just need to learn how to communicate with Him.
The battle Jesus fought in the spiritual realm brought changes to our relationship with God because that battle restored our spiritual right to commune with God in His spiritual presence. We’re going to explain more about this in the next chapter. One of the biggest changes that occurred in the spiritual realm is the requirement on us of faith. Did you know that the word faith only appears in the Old Testament of the King James Version of the Bible two times, but occurs more than 200 times in the New Testament? Do you think faith became more critical to our spiritual life after Christ? I would say at least 100 times more critical. Not that faith wasn’t important in the Old Testament times, but faith is obviously much more a factor in our relationship with the triune God today.
“How could Jesus descend into hell to battle Satan if Jesus is God? Yes, Jesus is a part of the triune God, but Jesus was spiritually separated from God during that battle. This was the whole point of the crucifixion which we’re going to get into as soon as we get through this foundation of why and how these events had to occur.
Why could Satan leave hell and roam earth? Because he had the key to the bottomless pit. He was given the key to open hell and confine himself there. His penalty for rebellion was not necessarily confinement in hell but was separation from God. God created hell inside of His realm but outside of His spiritual presence for Satan and his minions to have a home, a dwelling, a place of punishment to send them that was not within the spiritual presence of God. Satan could come and go from hell because he had the key to hell, but there was no other place for him to go until earth was created. “What is the significance of Satan possessing the keys to hell and death?” The significance is that possessing the keys to hell and death is spiritual control of the penalty for sin. Although our triune God could forgive sin, He could not deny the penalty for sin and remain spiritually just. “Why didn’t God just take back the keys to hell and death?” Well, He did and we’re going to explain how He did it in the coming chapters.
“What about the story of Job? How could Satan come along with the angels to present themselves to God if his penalty for rebellion was separation from God?
Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan came also among them. Job 1:6 (KJV)
The reason Satan came into God’s presence with the other angels is because God summoned Satan for a Holy purpose. That too is another story, but the point is that even though Satan controls the penalty for sin which is hell and spiritual death, which keeps us spiritually separated from God because remember: God’s spiritual presence is not in hell nor is it on earth except in those times that God, Himself, manifests Himself on the earth, Satan is still under God’s authority. Satan must come when he is called. God used Satan for a Holy purpose in the story of Job.
Man’s status is not the same as Satan’s because Satan has the spiritual right and authority to claim our souls if we have not been righteous; if we have denied God and His sovereignty, if we have denied Jesus or failed to receive forgiveness of sins and His payment for our sins, or if we have blasphemed the Holy Spirit. As long as Satan is not bound and secured inside of hell, he can roam in and out of hell anywhere that is not in the spiritual presence of God. His penalty for rebellion was the same as our penalty for sin, spiritual separation from God. However, man’s penalty for sin goes one step beyond the fallen angels because we have something they don’t have. We have a soul. When man’s soul is condemned to hell because of sin, we do not have the spiritual authority to roam outside of hell as Satan and his minions do because Satan has authority over a soul condemned to hell, not because God gave him that authority, but because we gave Satan that authority by denying God.
Once a condemned soul goes to hell it can not leave, that is, not until they are summoned by God for final judgment which we’ve got a long way to go before we get into that. Why? Because once a soul is in hell, there is no other place it can go. A perished soul can’t go back to earth and it can’t be in the spiritual presence of God. Now, since Satan has authority over souls in hell, it may be possible for Satan to allow a spirit to return to earth, or for Satan to send a spirit back to earth for his own purposes. Satan may have that authority. If there’s anything to the stories and reports we read or hear about involving sightings of the dead, this could be an explanation. I’m not saying these stories are true, I’m just saying that if they are true, this could be an explanation. Why does Satan have this authority in the spiritual realm? Probably because Satan was a leader in God’s realm at the time of his rebellion and I suspect God would have to compromise Himself to remove Satan from a position of spiritual authority. Remember: God is spiritual. He would have to change Himself to change the way His spiritual realm works and God is unchanging.
God needs a reason to claim our souls at the time of our physical death to remain spiritually righteous Himself. He has no reason to claim anyone who has denied Him. Hey, if you don’t want any part of God, why would He want you? He still loves you and He gives you a lifetime of opportunity to come to him, but after physical death He can’t justly claim your soul if you have denied Him. Again, that’s spiritual justice and He would have to compromise Himself to claim an unrighteous soul.
So, God could claim the soul of a righteous person; anyone who believed in Him and believed in His sovereignty and made atonement for their sins in the physical world through sacrifice, or through shame, or through repentance; He could forgive their sins if they sought forgiveness, but He still could not pay the spiritual penalty required for their sins to allow them to enter into His spiritual presence justly because Satan still controlled the keys for hell and death, the keys for the penalty of sin. By forgiving their sins He could keep them out of hell, but they could not enter into His spiritual presence unless the penalty for sin was paid.
God needed a way to pay the penalty for sin that was spiritually just. How could He do this and still remain a just God without compromising Himself in the process; without compromising righteousness and justice? You see, Satan now had the spiritual right to take the soul of an unrighteous person away from God. Satan had the spiritual right to claim any soul that was perverse and disobedient to God and God, because of justice, would have to let them be taken by Satan into hell. Our God is a just God. If God were to compromise Himself our whole existence would collapse. If God’s righteousness were to collapse, His omnipotent authority to sustain the creation of His faith would also collapse. What would happen then? Satan’s rebellion would become successful and the order and relationship God created in the universe would collapse into chaos. Now, you have to understand that this is Satan’s ultimate goal; to rise above our God’s authority and destroy what He has created and ultimately to make God subservient to himself. Why would Satan even think this is possible unless it really is possible? Why would Satan believe he could ever have sovereignty over God unless it was attainable? So, how could this be possible? It’s possible by God giving up sovereignty. How could God give up sovereignty? By compromising Himself; His righteousness and His justice.
If, however, God had a just reason to claim a person’s soul because of the righteousness of that person, He could claim that soul for Himself. The Bible tells us that most men were evil and full of sin on the earth. But, there were some that remained righteous even in the influence and temptation of sin roaming the earth. Being righteous doesn’t mean they were sinless. Sin is embedded in us from birth. Only Jesus, through His Holy conception by the Holy Spirit was born sinless. Righteousness then and today can be identified by the will of each person’s heart. Although we can not be perfectly righteous, the intentions of our will can be righteous by believing in God and in His righteousness even though we sometimes fail by sinning. As long as our will remains righteous in intent by believing in God and in His sovereignty, God can justly claim us. It is only when our will chooses to deny God and His sovereignty that He can not justly claim our souls. This is the clear distinction between our souls being claimed by God or by Satan at the time of our physical death. Yes, there’s more to it than this which we’ll get into later. But, for now, we need to understand that the most basic building block between heaven and hell is the distinction of whether we accept God as truth or deny God as false. All of Christianity resides on this building block.
Okay, that being said, man still had a problem. Although at the time of physical death God could claim the soul of a person with a righteous intent so that Satan could not take that soul into hell to pay the penalty for the sins that had been committed, we still could not justly commune with God in His spiritual presence face to face because the penalty for our sins was still there and unpaid. Man nor God had any way to pay that penalty yet. Why does it matter whether the penalty for sin is ever paid? Because of justice. Remember: our God is a just God. He would have to compromise Himself to be unjust and allow man to restore his relationship with Him while his debt for sin was still owed to the entity that controlled the penalty for sin, that entity being Satan. If He were to compromise Himself, He would have to give up His sovereignty of all that exists and Satan could then claim sovereignty of all that exists. God is the author of order and relationship. Satan is the author of chaos. Our world has order and relationship because God is sovereign. Our world would become chaos if Satan were to become sovereign.
Satan still possessed and controlled the keys to hell and death. As long as Satan could justly demand a penalty for sin he could keep man separated from God. What would have to happen to correct this problem in the spiritual realm is God would have to take back possession and control of the keys to hell and death, and again, He would have to do it in a way that did not compromise His justice. He had a plan to do this but it would take time to fulfill. For the time being, that is the time following Adam’s sin, God needed a place where He could send souls that had remained righteous by the intent of their will. He could justly keep them out of hell because their hearts were righteous even though they were not sinless, but He could not restore their right to commune with Him in His spiritual presence until the penalty for their sins had been paid.
So God created a place for righteous souls to go after physical death. Now, once again, by righteous I mean men and women who believed in God’s righteousness and sovereignty. God could justly claim these souls and protect them from paying the penalty of their sins, which was eternal damnation in hell, because their intentions were righteous. Even so, He still had no way to justify the payment for their sins so these souls could enter into His spiritual presence. He created a place called Paradise until His plan to take back the keys to hell and death could be fulfilled. This spiritual place called Paradise is not the same physical place called Paradise which contained the Garden of Eden and the tree of life. This spiritual Paradise was a holding area; a spiritual place between heaven and hell where souls could exist in the spiritual realm without existing in either hell or in God’s spiritual presence which we call heaven. Even Jesus called this holding area Paradise when He told one of the criminals being crucified with him on Calvary, after this criminal asked Jesus to remember him in the after-life, that he would be with Him in Paradise before the day was over. How many souls were there? We don’t know, but we do know Abraham and Lazarus were there and we know from this place called Paradise that you can see into the pit of hell because Jesus gives an account, recorded in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 16, of a rich man in hell who calls up and speaks to Abraham in Paradise.
There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day: And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of sores, And desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table: moreover the dogs came and licked his sores. And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom: the rich man also died, and was buried; And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame. But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented. And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence. Then he said, I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father's house: For I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment. Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them. And he said, Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent. And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead. Luke 16:19-31 (KJV)
Paradise was a place where God could send righteous souls until He could justly redeem them from Satan’s control of hell and death by paying the penalty for their sins. Now, this place called Paradise is technically in the kingdom of God as everything that exists is within the kingdom of God. The souls that were there were under His protection and care, but the souls in Paradise could still not commune with God in His spiritual presence. They had His protection and His intercession, but they could not yet enter into heaven, into His spiritual presence until the penalty for their sins had been paid. God’s plan to redeem these souls would some day be fulfilled.
Now, physically, back on earth, God wanted to give man an avenue to regain or retain his righteousness. Man was destined to sin, but the intentions of his heart could still remain righteous. How could God provide a way for man to make atonement for the sins he knew man was going to commit? God began to accept animal sacrifices as a way for man to atone for his sins. Blood is the life-force of every living creature. Blood-letting was God’s provision before Jesus came to earth for man to seek atonement for sin, but it was purely an act of repentance in the physical world. It had no effect or power in the spiritual world. God was still working on His plan to redeem man spiritually for his sins.
There were times when God was ready to give up on man. In Genesis chapter six, man had become so full of evil that God was ready to just wipe us off the face of the earth, but then He remembered Noah. Noah was a righteous man. God decided to start over. He instructed Noah to build the ark and bring pairs of all the creatures on it so they would be preserved in the great flood. After the flood God seemed to come to an understanding about this creature called man He had created. In Genesis, chapter 8, God said, I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake; for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth. God seemed to come to an understanding of the nature of man; that man has a sinful nature from birth and He realized He was going to have to work with us to try to help us choose righteousness. Yes, God is omnipotent. God knows our hearts, but remember; we were a new creature, a living soul with a will. We were created with an ability to make choices that other creatures don’t have. Can we surprise God with our choices? No, not really. A better word might be disappoint. We certainly can disappoint God with our choices.
God gave man every opportunity He could to be righteous. He warned us over and over again to resist sin. He blessed righteous men with wealth and possessions, which should have been great examples for us to live a righteous life. When we wouldn’t listen to His chosen leaders like Abraham and Moses he sent an angel to warn His people, then he set up a system of judges to direct His people, then kings, then more prophets, but Satan was powerful on the face of the earth and man’s soul was weak. Our physical nature embraces spiritual sin, almost like they are attracted to one another. God gave us free will to choose our own destiny and too often we choose sin over righteousness. Why? Because our physical nature is so much more evident to us then our spiritual nature. Every person on the planet will agree that they have a physical body, but not every person will agree that they also have a spiritual persona in them.
Our desires, our greed, our selfish nature, which are fed to us through our spiritual half, tempt and drive our physical bodies to attain those desires and fulfill our greed and our selfish nature. We were made this way by God, with a physical half and a spiritual half but we disappoint God every time we choose to satisfy our physical nature rather than to build our spiritual nature with faith and love for Him and for other people. We are designed to seek substance from the earth, our souls crave substance, but too often we choose the wrong substance. We choose the substance of drugs, alcohol, possessions, sex, status, power, authority over others, and other people instead of the substance God says we must have now to overcome the sin we are born with in our souls.
That substance is Faith. Paul says in the Book of Hebrews, chapter 11, verse 1 that Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. But, then goes on to say in verse 2: For by it the elders obtained a good report. Paul begins to give examples of men and women of the Old Testament who had obtained righteousness with God through their faith and he is urging the people of his day to also persevere with faith and they too will receive righteousness with God. Then in verse 6 Paul drives this message home about the importance of faith:
Without faith it is impossible to please God; for he that cometh to God must believe that he is God, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. Hebrews 11:6 (KJV)
There’s that building block again. We must believe that our God is who He says He is and believing in God is believing that He is sovereign in both the physical and the spiritual realms.
So, how could God reclaim His people? How could God redeem our souls? How could God take back Satan’s right to claim the souls of man with justice rather than with power that would be unjust? Knowing that we would all forever be born into sin, how could God provide true spiritual atonement for sin, payment of the penalty for sin, and purification of man’s soul to make him Holy again? Satan had a spiritual right to claim our souls. Adam gave him that right when he sinned.
Since man chose to give Satan access to his soul by sinning, now God would have to provide a way for man to choose atonement. God did this in the physical by making blood-letting of sacrificed animals man’s physical atonement for sin. By this process, man could atone for his sin in the natural and upon his physical death his soul could enter into Paradise. This was still not the spiritual presence of God, but at least it would keep man out of hell. This Paradise was known as the “third heaven” by the people in Jesus’ time. The first heaven being God’s spiritual presence, the second heaven being the one He created in Genesis, chapter one, for the earth to exist in, and this third heaven, also called Paradise, being a spiritual place God created where souls could go which was between God’s spiritual presence and hell.
So, now the problem was how could God provide a choice for man where he could be redeemed for his sins in the spiritual realm and then justly have the right to enter into God’s spiritual heaven? Our triune God had a plan. A plan that would require sending Jesus to earth in physical form to do battle with Satan for our redemption knowing that this would mean great turmoil and suffering for His triune part, Jesus. The best way to describe this part of God in our terms is that Jesus is His son. This would be like sending your own son off to fight in a battle that you knew he was going to suffer and die in that battle, but you did it because you loved the people you knew he would save in the battle. Remember, we are created in God’s likeness. There are plenty of fathers and mothers who have sent their sons and daughters off into battle for other people and those children have not come home. We can understand this sacrifice God was making for us because we were made in His likeness.
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. John 3:16 (KJV)
So, this verse tells us about Jesus coming to earth because God loved the world and we are of this world, and how man would then be given a choice. If we believe in the kingdom of God, if we have faith in what we cannot see, we will have everlasting life with God in His spiritual presence. Now the plan had to be carried out and when it was completed, Jesus would have authority over hell and death. He would have the keys to hell and death and He will have taken them from Satan.
I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death. Revelations 1:18 (KJV)
The Worship Principle was published in 2006 by Xulon Press and is available at these locations:
www.xulonpress.com, www.amazon.com, www.target.com, www.barnesandnoble.com, and www.agapesolutions.com
by Royce Logan and Dale Linton
Chapter 4
Man’s Separation from God
Before man’s first act of sin, the eating of the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, man was spiritually pure. There was no evil in the soul of man. We know what happened to Adam and Eve in the physical world when they sinned. God drove them out of the Garden of Eden partly as punishment, so that they would no longer enjoy the ease and pleasures of this Paradise God had created for them, but also to keep them from eating from the tree of life. God even placed a guard, an angel, in the Garden of Eden to keep Adam and Eve from the tree of life because He could no longer trust man to be obedient. We had failed in our worship of God.
In the physical, God was able to forgive Adam and Eve. He is the author of the physical. He can do whatever He wants in the physical world. That’s why He clothed Adam and Eve before He sent them out from the Garden of Eden. He did what He could for them in the physical. He forgave them in the physical and He clothed them because He had compassion for them. Adam was ashamed and hid himself from God. God accepted Adam’s regret. He forgave them in the physical. Adam and Eve’s forgiveness in the physical was because of their shame and their regret. God is the author of the physical and could therefore set the penalty they owed for their sin in the physical and the penalty was the loss of Paradise. By removing Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, they paid the penalty for their sin in the physical.
Spiritually, however, Adam and Eve had no way to atone for their spiritual sin against God. God could forgive the spiritual sin but He could not take away the penalty for the sin and be done with it because God is spiritual. God is everlasting and unchanging. God would have to compromise Himself to change the nature of sin, the penalty of sin, or the results of sin. It would be like one of us condoning murder. If our best friend or child committed murder we could decide in our own minds to forgive them for the act of the murder, but we could not take away the penalty they would have to pay for the murder. Even if we had the power to take away the penalty for the act of murder, we would have to compromise our own values and the values of our culture to do it. We would have to compromise ourselves.
You might ask, “Well, isn’t God also the author of all that is spiritual too? And if He is, can’t He do whatever He wants in the spiritual realm just as you say He can do anything He wants in the physical realm?” I can’t answer this because it’s like asking which came first the chicken or the egg. What we know about God from the Bible is that He always was and always will be.
I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty. Revelations 1:8 (KJV)
God is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. He always was and He always will be the Almighty. God is spiritual. Did He create Himself and all that exists in His presence which is spiritual? The best answer we have to the question, “Did God create Himself?” is no. There was no beginning to God and certainly no end. He always was and always will be. Therefore, there was no creation of God. The point of this is that God created the physical world. He is the author of all that exists in the physical realm. Therefore, He can move mountains and part seas. What He can do in the spiritual realm we don’t know. Perhaps He can do anything, and I would expect that He can. But, because He is spiritual, He would have to change Himself, but God is unchanging. For I am the LORD, I change not; Malachi 3:6 (KJV). God will not change His spiritual realm because He would have to change Himself, He would have to compromise Himself to do it.
By Adam and Eve committing the original sin, they opened the door to allow sin in man’s soul. There was no way to close this door. Their eyes had been opened and now sin would live in man’s soul from generation to generation. Eating the apple was a physical sin, but disobedience of God was a spiritual sin. All Satan could do before the fall was tempt us in the physical realm. We could have resisted the temptation, but we didn’t. Now, Satan also had access to a spiritual part of us, our soul, the part that God gave us of Himself, the part that makes us different from all other creatures, the part that combined flesh with the Spirit of God and created a living soul.
So, Satan and his minions have been free to roam the earth seeking whom they may devour as the apostle Peter says it in 1st Peter 5:8. God told Cain before he slew his brother Abel that if he does well, if he does not sin, God will accept him, but if he doesn’t do well, if he allows spiritual temptation to overcome him then sin lies at his door waiting for him.
You see, we all have sin waiting at our door. Satan and his minions are roaming the earth speaking to us in our spirit, tempting us to do anything we are willing to do that is a sin against God. Satan hates us because God loves us. We are just pawns to Satan in the spiritual realm. We are just a means for Satan to rebel against God. As stated before, Satan is just an evil spiritual being, but he can be evil for all eternity with no harm to his adversary, God, unless he has some way to commit acts of evil. Satan knows that God loves us so much that when he attacks us he is attacking God because God lives in us.
So, Adam and Eve and all generations to follow were destined to die a physical death for two reasons; a physical reason and a spiritual reason. Physically, Adam and Eve never ate from the tree of life that would have given their bodies the supernatural ability to live forever. Spiritually, they had eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil so their spirits now had a spiritual knowledge that they were never intended to have and they received that spiritual knowledge through disobedience of God. Adam and Eve sinned against God, but because there are spiritual laws just like there are laws of nature, spiritual laws that say a spirit can not cease to exist once it has been created, Adam and Eve could not die a spiritual death in the sense of a cessation to exist, but they would suffer a spiritual death as defined as a spiritual separation from God.
If Adam and Eve had also eaten from the tree of life they would not only have spiritual knowledge of good and evil with sin embedded in their souls forever, they would have also become physically immortal with no way for God to restore them to spiritual communion with Him. This problem would have to be remedied in the spiritual realm because there was no way to do it in the physical realm. So, God was quick to get Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden before they ever ate from the tree of life. If they had eaten from the tree of life Adam and Eve would have been destined to live on the earth forever, separated from God’s spiritual presence forever.
The penalty for sin is hell and death. Hell being a place of punishment and confinement of the spirit and the soul and death being spiritual separation from God. There would have been no way to ever pay the penalty for sin as long as Adam and Eve’s immortal bodies were trapped here on earth forever. No. God would have to return man’s body back to the earth so that his soul could be released from the physical world and become purely spiritual. Now, this was only part of the solution. God still had to find a just way to pay the penalty for his sins.
God had a plan, a way for man to be reunited with God spiritually and it had to be a plan that was fair and just and did not contradict spiritual laws. Adam had given Satan access to his soul and there was no way to take it back and remain just, but was there a way, even though man was now a sinner, for God to forgive man’s sin and also for God to pay the penalty for sin required by spiritual justice which would purify man’s soul and make him Holy again so that man’s soul could be restored to Holy communion with God? Forgiving the sin was not the problem. God already had the authority, the power, and the justice to forgive sin. Jesus began forgiving sin the day the Holy Spirit descended on Him and gave Him that authority from God. The problem was paying the penalty for sin. Satan controlled the penalty for sin because Satan controlled the keys to hell and death. Satan was given the keys to hell and death when he was cast out of heaven, out of the spiritual presence of God. At that time there was no earth, there was no physical universe, only the spiritual realm of God and the hell God created outside of His spiritual presence to send Satan and his army.
Hell is a spiritual place of separation from God. There was no other place for Satan to go other than hell if he could not be in the spiritual presence of God. So, Satan was given the key to the bottomless pit (Revelations 9:1) which is hell, and commanded by God to go there and leave His spiritual presence, which is spiritual death. Again, not death as a cessation to exist, but death as a spiritual separation from God. It’s like sending your child to their room for punishment. You tell them to go to their room and close the door, but you don’t lock them in there. Your child obeys because you have authority over them. So, what is your child’s punishment? Confinement and separation from you and the rest of the world; the realm that you control for that child.
Satan was confined to hell until the earth and the universe were created. He was confined there because the only other place that existed was the spiritual presence of God which he was not permitted to go except by permission from God. Once the earth was created, Satan now had another place he could roam that was not in the spiritual presence of God except when God manifested His presence to man. Although there were times when God manifested His spiritual presence on earth, as when He spoke to Abraham and Moses, the godhead of our triune God, that is, God Himself does not dwell on the earth. He sent His son, Jesus, a part of the triune God to live on the earth for a time, and He sent the Holy Spirit to dwell on the earth with us today, but God, Himself, the godhead of our triune God, does not dwell on the earth with us today as the Holy Spirit does or as Jesus did when He was manifested in the physical realm here on earth except in the concept that a part of God dwells within each of us because He gave us a part of Himself at creation.
You might ask, “I thought everything was in God’s realm?” Yes, everything is in God’s realm but not necessarily in God’s spiritual presence. Hell is in God’s realm, but God’s spiritual presence, that is God Himself, is not in hell, nor is He on the earth. The Holy Spirit, a part of the triune God dwells on earth with us now, but not God Himself. There were times when God manifested Himself on earth when He spoke to the prophets, but He does not need to do that anymore because the Holy Spirit is here with us all the time. People ask, “How come we don’t see or hear from God anymore like we used to in the time of Moses and Abraham?” The reason is because the Holy Spirit is here with us now. We just need to learn how to communicate with Him.
The battle Jesus fought in the spiritual realm brought changes to our relationship with God because that battle restored our spiritual right to commune with God in His spiritual presence. We’re going to explain more about this in the next chapter. One of the biggest changes that occurred in the spiritual realm is the requirement on us of faith. Did you know that the word faith only appears in the Old Testament of the King James Version of the Bible two times, but occurs more than 200 times in the New Testament? Do you think faith became more critical to our spiritual life after Christ? I would say at least 100 times more critical. Not that faith wasn’t important in the Old Testament times, but faith is obviously much more a factor in our relationship with the triune God today.
“How could Jesus descend into hell to battle Satan if Jesus is God? Yes, Jesus is a part of the triune God, but Jesus was spiritually separated from God during that battle. This was the whole point of the crucifixion which we’re going to get into as soon as we get through this foundation of why and how these events had to occur.
Why could Satan leave hell and roam earth? Because he had the key to the bottomless pit. He was given the key to open hell and confine himself there. His penalty for rebellion was not necessarily confinement in hell but was separation from God. God created hell inside of His realm but outside of His spiritual presence for Satan and his minions to have a home, a dwelling, a place of punishment to send them that was not within the spiritual presence of God. Satan could come and go from hell because he had the key to hell, but there was no other place for him to go until earth was created. “What is the significance of Satan possessing the keys to hell and death?” The significance is that possessing the keys to hell and death is spiritual control of the penalty for sin. Although our triune God could forgive sin, He could not deny the penalty for sin and remain spiritually just. “Why didn’t God just take back the keys to hell and death?” Well, He did and we’re going to explain how He did it in the coming chapters.
“What about the story of Job? How could Satan come along with the angels to present themselves to God if his penalty for rebellion was separation from God?
Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan came also among them. Job 1:6 (KJV)
The reason Satan came into God’s presence with the other angels is because God summoned Satan for a Holy purpose. That too is another story, but the point is that even though Satan controls the penalty for sin which is hell and spiritual death, which keeps us spiritually separated from God because remember: God’s spiritual presence is not in hell nor is it on earth except in those times that God, Himself, manifests Himself on the earth, Satan is still under God’s authority. Satan must come when he is called. God used Satan for a Holy purpose in the story of Job.
Man’s status is not the same as Satan’s because Satan has the spiritual right and authority to claim our souls if we have not been righteous; if we have denied God and His sovereignty, if we have denied Jesus or failed to receive forgiveness of sins and His payment for our sins, or if we have blasphemed the Holy Spirit. As long as Satan is not bound and secured inside of hell, he can roam in and out of hell anywhere that is not in the spiritual presence of God. His penalty for rebellion was the same as our penalty for sin, spiritual separation from God. However, man’s penalty for sin goes one step beyond the fallen angels because we have something they don’t have. We have a soul. When man’s soul is condemned to hell because of sin, we do not have the spiritual authority to roam outside of hell as Satan and his minions do because Satan has authority over a soul condemned to hell, not because God gave him that authority, but because we gave Satan that authority by denying God.
Once a condemned soul goes to hell it can not leave, that is, not until they are summoned by God for final judgment which we’ve got a long way to go before we get into that. Why? Because once a soul is in hell, there is no other place it can go. A perished soul can’t go back to earth and it can’t be in the spiritual presence of God. Now, since Satan has authority over souls in hell, it may be possible for Satan to allow a spirit to return to earth, or for Satan to send a spirit back to earth for his own purposes. Satan may have that authority. If there’s anything to the stories and reports we read or hear about involving sightings of the dead, this could be an explanation. I’m not saying these stories are true, I’m just saying that if they are true, this could be an explanation. Why does Satan have this authority in the spiritual realm? Probably because Satan was a leader in God’s realm at the time of his rebellion and I suspect God would have to compromise Himself to remove Satan from a position of spiritual authority. Remember: God is spiritual. He would have to change Himself to change the way His spiritual realm works and God is unchanging.
God needs a reason to claim our souls at the time of our physical death to remain spiritually righteous Himself. He has no reason to claim anyone who has denied Him. Hey, if you don’t want any part of God, why would He want you? He still loves you and He gives you a lifetime of opportunity to come to him, but after physical death He can’t justly claim your soul if you have denied Him. Again, that’s spiritual justice and He would have to compromise Himself to claim an unrighteous soul.
So, God could claim the soul of a righteous person; anyone who believed in Him and believed in His sovereignty and made atonement for their sins in the physical world through sacrifice, or through shame, or through repentance; He could forgive their sins if they sought forgiveness, but He still could not pay the spiritual penalty required for their sins to allow them to enter into His spiritual presence justly because Satan still controlled the keys for hell and death, the keys for the penalty of sin. By forgiving their sins He could keep them out of hell, but they could not enter into His spiritual presence unless the penalty for sin was paid.
God needed a way to pay the penalty for sin that was spiritually just. How could He do this and still remain a just God without compromising Himself in the process; without compromising righteousness and justice? You see, Satan now had the spiritual right to take the soul of an unrighteous person away from God. Satan had the spiritual right to claim any soul that was perverse and disobedient to God and God, because of justice, would have to let them be taken by Satan into hell. Our God is a just God. If God were to compromise Himself our whole existence would collapse. If God’s righteousness were to collapse, His omnipotent authority to sustain the creation of His faith would also collapse. What would happen then? Satan’s rebellion would become successful and the order and relationship God created in the universe would collapse into chaos. Now, you have to understand that this is Satan’s ultimate goal; to rise above our God’s authority and destroy what He has created and ultimately to make God subservient to himself. Why would Satan even think this is possible unless it really is possible? Why would Satan believe he could ever have sovereignty over God unless it was attainable? So, how could this be possible? It’s possible by God giving up sovereignty. How could God give up sovereignty? By compromising Himself; His righteousness and His justice.
If, however, God had a just reason to claim a person’s soul because of the righteousness of that person, He could claim that soul for Himself. The Bible tells us that most men were evil and full of sin on the earth. But, there were some that remained righteous even in the influence and temptation of sin roaming the earth. Being righteous doesn’t mean they were sinless. Sin is embedded in us from birth. Only Jesus, through His Holy conception by the Holy Spirit was born sinless. Righteousness then and today can be identified by the will of each person’s heart. Although we can not be perfectly righteous, the intentions of our will can be righteous by believing in God and in His righteousness even though we sometimes fail by sinning. As long as our will remains righteous in intent by believing in God and in His sovereignty, God can justly claim us. It is only when our will chooses to deny God and His sovereignty that He can not justly claim our souls. This is the clear distinction between our souls being claimed by God or by Satan at the time of our physical death. Yes, there’s more to it than this which we’ll get into later. But, for now, we need to understand that the most basic building block between heaven and hell is the distinction of whether we accept God as truth or deny God as false. All of Christianity resides on this building block.
Okay, that being said, man still had a problem. Although at the time of physical death God could claim the soul of a person with a righteous intent so that Satan could not take that soul into hell to pay the penalty for the sins that had been committed, we still could not justly commune with God in His spiritual presence face to face because the penalty for our sins was still there and unpaid. Man nor God had any way to pay that penalty yet. Why does it matter whether the penalty for sin is ever paid? Because of justice. Remember: our God is a just God. He would have to compromise Himself to be unjust and allow man to restore his relationship with Him while his debt for sin was still owed to the entity that controlled the penalty for sin, that entity being Satan. If He were to compromise Himself, He would have to give up His sovereignty of all that exists and Satan could then claim sovereignty of all that exists. God is the author of order and relationship. Satan is the author of chaos. Our world has order and relationship because God is sovereign. Our world would become chaos if Satan were to become sovereign.
Satan still possessed and controlled the keys to hell and death. As long as Satan could justly demand a penalty for sin he could keep man separated from God. What would have to happen to correct this problem in the spiritual realm is God would have to take back possession and control of the keys to hell and death, and again, He would have to do it in a way that did not compromise His justice. He had a plan to do this but it would take time to fulfill. For the time being, that is the time following Adam’s sin, God needed a place where He could send souls that had remained righteous by the intent of their will. He could justly keep them out of hell because their hearts were righteous even though they were not sinless, but He could not restore their right to commune with Him in His spiritual presence until the penalty for their sins had been paid.
So God created a place for righteous souls to go after physical death. Now, once again, by righteous I mean men and women who believed in God’s righteousness and sovereignty. God could justly claim these souls and protect them from paying the penalty of their sins, which was eternal damnation in hell, because their intentions were righteous. Even so, He still had no way to justify the payment for their sins so these souls could enter into His spiritual presence. He created a place called Paradise until His plan to take back the keys to hell and death could be fulfilled. This spiritual place called Paradise is not the same physical place called Paradise which contained the Garden of Eden and the tree of life. This spiritual Paradise was a holding area; a spiritual place between heaven and hell where souls could exist in the spiritual realm without existing in either hell or in God’s spiritual presence which we call heaven. Even Jesus called this holding area Paradise when He told one of the criminals being crucified with him on Calvary, after this criminal asked Jesus to remember him in the after-life, that he would be with Him in Paradise before the day was over. How many souls were there? We don’t know, but we do know Abraham and Lazarus were there and we know from this place called Paradise that you can see into the pit of hell because Jesus gives an account, recorded in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 16, of a rich man in hell who calls up and speaks to Abraham in Paradise.
There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day: And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of sores, And desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table: moreover the dogs came and licked his sores. And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom: the rich man also died, and was buried; And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame. But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented. And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence. Then he said, I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father's house: For I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment. Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them. And he said, Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent. And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead. Luke 16:19-31 (KJV)
Paradise was a place where God could send righteous souls until He could justly redeem them from Satan’s control of hell and death by paying the penalty for their sins. Now, this place called Paradise is technically in the kingdom of God as everything that exists is within the kingdom of God. The souls that were there were under His protection and care, but the souls in Paradise could still not commune with God in His spiritual presence. They had His protection and His intercession, but they could not yet enter into heaven, into His spiritual presence until the penalty for their sins had been paid. God’s plan to redeem these souls would some day be fulfilled.
Now, physically, back on earth, God wanted to give man an avenue to regain or retain his righteousness. Man was destined to sin, but the intentions of his heart could still remain righteous. How could God provide a way for man to make atonement for the sins he knew man was going to commit? God began to accept animal sacrifices as a way for man to atone for his sins. Blood is the life-force of every living creature. Blood-letting was God’s provision before Jesus came to earth for man to seek atonement for sin, but it was purely an act of repentance in the physical world. It had no effect or power in the spiritual world. God was still working on His plan to redeem man spiritually for his sins.
There were times when God was ready to give up on man. In Genesis chapter six, man had become so full of evil that God was ready to just wipe us off the face of the earth, but then He remembered Noah. Noah was a righteous man. God decided to start over. He instructed Noah to build the ark and bring pairs of all the creatures on it so they would be preserved in the great flood. After the flood God seemed to come to an understanding about this creature called man He had created. In Genesis, chapter 8, God said, I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake; for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth. God seemed to come to an understanding of the nature of man; that man has a sinful nature from birth and He realized He was going to have to work with us to try to help us choose righteousness. Yes, God is omnipotent. God knows our hearts, but remember; we were a new creature, a living soul with a will. We were created with an ability to make choices that other creatures don’t have. Can we surprise God with our choices? No, not really. A better word might be disappoint. We certainly can disappoint God with our choices.
God gave man every opportunity He could to be righteous. He warned us over and over again to resist sin. He blessed righteous men with wealth and possessions, which should have been great examples for us to live a righteous life. When we wouldn’t listen to His chosen leaders like Abraham and Moses he sent an angel to warn His people, then he set up a system of judges to direct His people, then kings, then more prophets, but Satan was powerful on the face of the earth and man’s soul was weak. Our physical nature embraces spiritual sin, almost like they are attracted to one another. God gave us free will to choose our own destiny and too often we choose sin over righteousness. Why? Because our physical nature is so much more evident to us then our spiritual nature. Every person on the planet will agree that they have a physical body, but not every person will agree that they also have a spiritual persona in them.
Our desires, our greed, our selfish nature, which are fed to us through our spiritual half, tempt and drive our physical bodies to attain those desires and fulfill our greed and our selfish nature. We were made this way by God, with a physical half and a spiritual half but we disappoint God every time we choose to satisfy our physical nature rather than to build our spiritual nature with faith and love for Him and for other people. We are designed to seek substance from the earth, our souls crave substance, but too often we choose the wrong substance. We choose the substance of drugs, alcohol, possessions, sex, status, power, authority over others, and other people instead of the substance God says we must have now to overcome the sin we are born with in our souls.
That substance is Faith. Paul says in the Book of Hebrews, chapter 11, verse 1 that Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. But, then goes on to say in verse 2: For by it the elders obtained a good report. Paul begins to give examples of men and women of the Old Testament who had obtained righteousness with God through their faith and he is urging the people of his day to also persevere with faith and they too will receive righteousness with God. Then in verse 6 Paul drives this message home about the importance of faith:
Without faith it is impossible to please God; for he that cometh to God must believe that he is God, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. Hebrews 11:6 (KJV)
There’s that building block again. We must believe that our God is who He says He is and believing in God is believing that He is sovereign in both the physical and the spiritual realms.
So, how could God reclaim His people? How could God redeem our souls? How could God take back Satan’s right to claim the souls of man with justice rather than with power that would be unjust? Knowing that we would all forever be born into sin, how could God provide true spiritual atonement for sin, payment of the penalty for sin, and purification of man’s soul to make him Holy again? Satan had a spiritual right to claim our souls. Adam gave him that right when he sinned.
Since man chose to give Satan access to his soul by sinning, now God would have to provide a way for man to choose atonement. God did this in the physical by making blood-letting of sacrificed animals man’s physical atonement for sin. By this process, man could atone for his sin in the natural and upon his physical death his soul could enter into Paradise. This was still not the spiritual presence of God, but at least it would keep man out of hell. This Paradise was known as the “third heaven” by the people in Jesus’ time. The first heaven being God’s spiritual presence, the second heaven being the one He created in Genesis, chapter one, for the earth to exist in, and this third heaven, also called Paradise, being a spiritual place God created where souls could go which was between God’s spiritual presence and hell.
So, now the problem was how could God provide a choice for man where he could be redeemed for his sins in the spiritual realm and then justly have the right to enter into God’s spiritual heaven? Our triune God had a plan. A plan that would require sending Jesus to earth in physical form to do battle with Satan for our redemption knowing that this would mean great turmoil and suffering for His triune part, Jesus. The best way to describe this part of God in our terms is that Jesus is His son. This would be like sending your own son off to fight in a battle that you knew he was going to suffer and die in that battle, but you did it because you loved the people you knew he would save in the battle. Remember, we are created in God’s likeness. There are plenty of fathers and mothers who have sent their sons and daughters off into battle for other people and those children have not come home. We can understand this sacrifice God was making for us because we were made in His likeness.
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. John 3:16 (KJV)
So, this verse tells us about Jesus coming to earth because God loved the world and we are of this world, and how man would then be given a choice. If we believe in the kingdom of God, if we have faith in what we cannot see, we will have everlasting life with God in His spiritual presence. Now the plan had to be carried out and when it was completed, Jesus would have authority over hell and death. He would have the keys to hell and death and He will have taken them from Satan.
I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death. Revelations 1:18 (KJV)
The Worship Principle was published in 2006 by Xulon Press and is available at these locations:
www.xulonpress.com, www.amazon.com, www.target.com, www.barnesandnoble.com, and www.agapesolutions.com
Excerpt from Worthy of Worship
Excerpt from
Worthy of Worship
by Royce Logan and Dale Linton
Chapter I
Call to Worship
“We’ve been summoned.”
Lucifer looked out among his legions of angels God the Father had assigned to him millenniums ago. Assigned to him with a purpose; a noble and magnificent purpose. A purpose esteemed above all other purposes in all the nations of the angels. Lucifer, the most beautiful angel, the most adorned, the most envied, the most loved, the most god-like angel in all the Father’s kingdom. Lucifer, so brilliant that from a distance it was hard to distinguish his glory from the Father’s, so beautiful all the angels knew he was created with a special purpose, a special mission, a special passion to fulfill for the glory of the Father. Lucifer walked upright and in dignity always. Every angel knew his significance.
Lucifer gazed over the expanse of the Father’s kingdom to the East. Thousands upon thousands of the angelic host mingled and fluttered about in conversation and testimony. Thousands more were resting quietly in reflection and in personal exhortation of their last mission of worship for the Father. Resting, yes, but angels never sleep. They are purely spiritual; each one created by the Father, each being unique in some astounding way that only the Great Creator could have imagined. Individual, yes, but unified by a single purpose by God, a single passion for their very existence, a passion given to them by the Father, a passion of incredible love and worship for the Father and for his glorification. A passion for worship of the Father even beyond that of the other nations of the angels.
“Beelzebub, call my captains to order and have them assemble the legions before me. Find Xaphan, Astarot, and Adramelech and bring them to me for council before we depart for our Father’s presence.”
“As you command, my prince.” Beelzebub was a prince himself, the commander of all the ranks, a five-star general in Lucifer’s hierarchy, a cunning and crafty leader among the angels of worship, shrewd and powerful, confident and demanding. His commanding stature preceded him wherever he went. It was no wonder he had risen from the ranks of his creation to become second in the legions; second only to Lucifer, the first prince of all the angels and master of the highest function in all the Father’s creation. Lucifer, God’s shining star. Lucifer, the master of worship.
Whilst the legions assembled before him, Lucifer turned to gaze at the center of the kingdom. Far away he could see the glow of purity that was never extinguished, never faded, never dulled. A glow that touched Lucifer even here, so far from the Father’s spiritual presence. Even Lucifer was comforted by the light. It was always there, just as true and gleaming as life itself; just as real and everlasting as his own breath. To know his own existence, his own immortality, his own awareness and power and creativity was born in that flash of the Almighty was an overwhelming and daunting reality of his place in the kingdom. God created him to be magnificent, to be a great prince, to lead thousands upon thousands of the angels in worship. God’s glory was his responsibility, his passion, and even his own glory. Yes, He was glorified in glorifying the Father. He is Lucifer, the angel above all others. The one who sits next to the throne of glory. The one who orchestrates all the glory and all the worship of the Great Father.
“There are none above me. I am Lucifer,” he whispered quietly towards the presence of God as he turned back to his army and admired the depth and breadth of his commission. “How, I love it so.” Lucifer paused in his own reflection, “I do. I do love it so.”
His captains approached him from the expanse of the East kingdom.
“The legions are assembled my prince,” bellowed Beelzebub, “and your captains are at your call.”
“Beelzebub, Astarot, Adramelech, Xaphan.” Lucifer’s voice was always soft and harmonious, but subtly domineering in a way that you just didn’t realize until sometimes hours later. “Our Father has summoned us to worship. This may be the day our Father tells about the plan we have been hearing all these rumors about; this new creation; just what it is and how his plan will change the kingdom. I want your ranks to be especially apparent today. We go to glorify the Father. We go to worship the Great One who gave life to us all. Keep your ranks in good order today. I expect nothing less than perfection of worship today.”
“Yes, prince. As you command. Today will be a great day of glory and worship for the Almighty One; the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.” Astarot, second in hierarchy only to Beelzebub in the legions of the worship angels assured the prince of light, the master of worship, the prince of glory, the great one chosen by God himself to lead even the seraphim and cherubim in glory and honor in His omnipotent presence.
“To His glorious presence”. Lucifer turned and with his right armed raised and pointing to the presence of God, the great multitude of the angelic host followed their leader and his generals, captains, and lieutenants in an upright and holy march towards the heart of the kingdom, the pure light of the Holy One, the palace and throne of the Almighty Creator.
Even in the infinity of the kingdom the armies can gather quickly from all directions and provinces. There is no real passage of time in the kingdom; there is, but there isn’t. It’s hard to explain. The spirits can move around the great kingdom at will; in and out of the presence of God, east to west, north to south, up, down, diagonal. There is no need for time, for distance, or for space in the kingdom of God. It’s all uniform, it’s all one, it’s all a perfection of the Creator. It’s always been this way. As far back as Lucifer could remember which was, in fact, the moment of his creation. There were far fewer angels then. Gabriel and Michael, archangels with authority like Lucifer, were created about the same time as Lucifer. Raphael, Uriel, Reuel, and Sariel came soon after.
There was such perfect order in the kingdom. A perfect hierarchy of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, all one, but all individual as well. Perhaps not individual in the same way Lucifer understood his own consciousness, but a singleness and unity all in one. Together they were like the perfect music chord. Melodious and harmonious at the same time. Three sounds and sights and beings in perfection of order and relationship and process. There was a true holiness to the trinity that was inconceivable and incomparable anywhere else in the kingdom.
Lucifer often wondered just where the Father came from. How was he created? Who created him? How long ago? He knew the truth, but he wondered just the same. He knew there was no beginning. He always was. How do I know this is true? Lucifer would sometimes ask himself. What was God doing the day before he created me? Or, even the moment before he created me? Did he create the Son? The Spirit? Yes, I know. They too were with him from the beginning, but when was the beginning? Is it even possible that there was a beginning to any or all of these nine dimensions of the kingdom?
The sweetness of the Father’s glory was upon the angelic host. It was always with them, even when they were in the far reaches of the Eastern kingdom. Distance had no meaning. God’s presence was always apparent, always visible, always near. Even so, the closer they got to his presence the sweeter the light became. Crossing into his presence was like stepping into a cool shower on a cold morning and gradually feeling the water become more and more warm until it becomes so hot and refreshing that you never want to step out of it. Clean, warm, pure, and sweet was the presence of God. Basking in his glory was like basking in the warm sun; so natural, so comforting, so real there was no other way to receive it except by Holy Communion with the Father. There was nothing so wonderful as the Father’s glory. Even Lucifer enjoyed the transition and then the full glory of the Father as he and his ranks of angels entered into his holy presence.
God’s messenger, Gabriel and his legions of the angels were forming to the south of the throne of glory. The Word of God was as mighty as God himself. Every utterance of the Father was full of perfect wisdom, holiness, and faith. Gabriel carried the Word of God with the most reverence, the most awe. Gabriel cherished his purpose and he expected his ranks to be perfect in their commission; to accomplish every word from the mouth of God- to the letter; holding the Father’s wisdom and faith intact, revealed and delivered in true holiness, exactly the way in which the Word was given to them.
Michael and his commission of angels were assembling on the west expanse of the throne of glory. Mighty and powerful they were; muscular and athletic in stature; the protector of the Word of God. It was often said that Michael and his soldiers upheld the faith of God for all of God’s wisdom and faith are held in his very Word. It was also believed that the very existence of the Father’s kingdom depended on the faith contained in his Word. All the angels, all the kingdom of God, everything other than His own presence was created and now exists only by the perfect faith in the Word of God. That’s why his Word is so powerful and so important. Without it, nothing would exist. He spoke each angel into his kingdom and it was so. He gave each angel uniqueness, and it was so. He put all the kingdom into perfect order and hierarchy as each new angel was created, and it was so and has been so since the beginning of time. It all exists by the Word of God. He created something righteous and holy out of nothingness.
Why? Lucifer would ask himself. Why did God create me? Why did God create any of us? Why create a kingdom? What’s the point?
Lucifer’s entrance was always significant, always apparent. His brilliance was the greatest among all the archangels. He was second only to the trinity. His beauty, his glorious light seemed to brighten even in the purity of the light of God. Even though the legions of angels knew this wasn’t possible, it still seemed so. The Father spared little of his imagination or of his perfect skill in creating Lucifer, the “light bearer”.
Why did God create Lucifer? Why did God create anything? Why? Because He is the one and only God of purity, righteousness, glory, wisdom, and faith. Because He is a God of order and relationship and love. Because He is a God of imagination and creation. God longs for relationship and communion with His creation. Life is his gift. Existence is his gift. Consciousness and awareness is his gift. Every spirit in the kingdom knew and appreciated the Father’s gift of life and love. No angel, no archangel, no spirit of any kind could create life like the Father could. God exists for them and they exist for Him. This is the order and relationship of God. This is the order and relationship of the Father’s kingdom.
Lucifer took his place next to the throne of glory. Michael and Gabriel approached the prince of light. “Greetings in our Father’s name I bring you, Lucifer.” Gabriel’s instructions were always to greet and make welcome the archangels so that they would know the Great Father loves them and appreciates their service and devotion. It was typical that Gabriel would greet Michael first and together they would pay homage to God’s chosen one, the master of worship. But, it was homage, not worship. It was to honor the one God chose to be the brightest star. Honor to Lucifer, but reverence to the Father. And, Lucifer knew it.
“Salutations to you Gabriel and Michael”. Lucifer would return the greeting with his right arm raised and index finger pointing up, symbolic of pointing to the Holy Trinity; symbolic that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are above all creation, symbolic that they all serve the One greater, the One above all others in the kingdom, the One who framed each of them in his own imagination and spoke their awareness into existence by his great Word of faith.
“Are your legions prepared for worship?” Lucifer was anxious to get started. He was anxious to hear the Word of God today. More anxious than usual. All the divisions knew the heart of the Father. They knew he loved to create life. They knew he loved each of them, but there had been no new creations for a millennium. The kingdom was bustling with a thousand, thousand legions of angels. What seemed to be a perfect number. It was though the kingdom needed not even one more angel, but could not do with even one less. Every being had significance. Every being had a purpose and it seemed like there was perfection in the kingdom. Why create this new creature? Lucifer thought to himself. True, it was just a rumor, but Lucifer too knew the heart of God. The Father loves to create and he loves his creation.
“Yes, Lucifer. My legions who carry the Word of God are at your leave. I yield my authority over them to you for this time of worship, my captain.” Gabriel was always very formal, but then, he was the bearer of the Word of God. Words mean something and Gabriel was always very careful to speak properly, speak eloquently, and speak with meaning and purpose.
“And I concur, my captain.” Michael was more direct, more militaristic. He upheld the faith in
the Word of God. He knew what that meant. He knew his purpose was accomplished not with words, but with power and strength given to him by the Almighty. The angels knew Michael was of few words but mighty in conviction. Bumping heads with Michael was inconceivable. He held all the power and might of the Almighty. Michael knew that protecting the faith of God was the very substance of the existence of every creature in the kingdom, and he took his purpose seriously.
“Then let this measure of worship begin! Fill this kingdom with the glory of God. Let us prepare for his arrival. Bring forth the music and singing! Lift up holy hands to the Father! Sing, shout, and dance for God the Father is the Almighty, the Great Creator, the Giver of life! Let us honor and worship and praise him! Let us glorify The Father, the Holy Son, and the Holy Spirit! Let us be unified and perfect in our worship this day! Great is the Father, and Holy is His name!”
The din of worship among the angels quickly changed to a great uproar of harmony and purity. From within the perfect order of melodious singing and shouting you could hear admonishes from throughout the kingdom that seemed to come at perfect interludes of intense worship and singing and lulls of praise.
“Great is the Father!”
“He alone is worthy!”
“Holy is His name!”
“We worship and praise Him!”
“Blessed be the Father!”
“Blessed be the Son!”
“Blessed be the Spirit!”
“He alone is worthy!”
“He alone is worthy!”
“He alone is worthy!”
For hours the angels praised His name. For hours the host of heaven worshipped Him and raised their voices in unison and in harmony to the Holy Trinity and as time passed their worship grew more intense, their hearts grew more pure, their spirits, which they purely are and is everything they are, were filled with devotion for the Father. And as this measure of worship continued they became more one with the Father and they reveled in this time of worship.
Their spirits were moved in two directions. One, that this time of worship would never end. They existed for this purpose, this purpose of worship. Yes, they had other duties, but nothing seemed more perfect in their being than when their worship of God was perfected within themselves, and these moments of perfect worship were the moments they cherished in all their existence.
But, two, this perfection of worship had meaning and purpose too. It meant that the Father was drawing near. His presence was here but he would soon manifest himself in their presence. They would no longer just feel Him and know He was with them, but they would soon see Him and He would speak to them in wisdom and power and faith. It’s one thing to be in the presence of God, but it’s certainly a time of epiphany to be in direct Holy Communion with the Almighty, the Holy Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Even Lucifer’s spirit, his very being, was in a frenzy. He was stirred and hyped. The Father’s presence would be with them at any moment now. But, something was not as it should be, he thought. I know what purity of spirit is, he thought to himself, and I am not there yet, but I know I should be.
The moment of the Father’s manifestation was upon them. All the angelic host felt his presence as the Holy Trinity became visual on the throne of glory.
“Magnificent is the Lord our God!”
“Glory to the Holy Father, the Holy Son, and the Holy Spirit!”
“We praise You and Worship You, Oh Father, Oh Holy One!”
The intensity of worship and singing and shouting continued. Shouts of adulation continued in perfect unison with the music of harps and horns and strings.
The Father’s pleasure was obvious. He loved his creation. He loved being with them always, but there was no more pleasure than these times of Holy Communion with the angelic host, except maybe in His pleasure for the Holy Son and Spirit. The angels knew their creator was pleased. The angels knew their worship was perfected in their Father’s pleasure. His pleasure brought substance to their passion and purpose. They were fulfilled, they were lifted, they were perfected in His glory.
The Father’s hands lifted and the voices and the music peaked and then gradually began to subside. Once silence spread across the angelic host of heaven they became prostrate. They lowered themselves in reverence, not because they had to. No, God had never commanded them to bow their heads, to lower themselves before His presence. They never had to, they wanted to.
“Rise, and hear the Word of our Father.”
The Holy Son was always first to speak. He bore the glory of God wherever they manifested. Yes, even He, the Holy Son of God, had a purpose; a purpose to reveal the glory of the Father to all His creation, and only He, only the Son of God was worthy of such a purpose. The Holy Spirit, now He was something special. He was like the wind. He could carry the glory of the Father throughout the multitude of angels, throughout the entire kingdom which had no beginning or end. The Holy Spirit was always flowing, always in movement. Even at the side of God there was no stillness. The Holy Spirit was evidence that the spirits never sleep, are never unaware; they rest, but they are never at rest.
The host was surely ready. Ready to hear the Word of God. Gabriel and his ranks were bent forward, anxious, yet patient for their mission for every word of God held meaning and power. Michael and his army stood almost at attention, full of desire for duty. Lucifer was proud; confident that his worship had been superlative, not necessarily personally, but as a whole the host of heaven had been magnanimous in worship.
“I love each of you.”
God is not a respecter of persons. Each being in the angelic host held significance and value to Him equally. Sure, order and authority is necessary in any kingdom, in any corporation. Wherever two or more are gathered there must be order and relationship for any process to be manifested. Of course God knew this. He created his kingdom in order and relationship, for without order and relationship there can only remain chaos.
“Lucifer, Gabriel, Michael,” once again your leadership has been magnificent.” I thank you for your service.”
God blesses those who bless Him. The angels knew this. There was no envy, no jealousy, no resentment among the host. They knew the Father loved them. They understood the order of God’s kingdom. The first is the last and the last is the first.
“I am the Alpha and the Omega and I change not. My kingdom, however, is always changing.”
The host knew this. Their Father has never changed. He is not unlike the day they were created, but each new creation in the kingdom brought change within the kingdom. More beings, more entities to assist them in their missions, their purpose, their passions. Every new creature enhanced the great kingdom of God.
“I am and I know all the dimensions of my kingdom.”
The host knew only four dimensions. They knew of the nine dimensions, but existed in only the first four and even in those four dimensions there were limitations. The first dimension is of time and distance; a straight line. They understood time from their creation to the present moment, but they had no concept of the future, though they knew the future existed they just didn’t know what was in it, what’s going to happen. They understood distance because they understood travel within the Father’s kingdom. They knew they could travel in and out of the Father’s spiritual presence, yet they knew they were always within their Father’s kingdom, yet they did not understand the infinity of the kingdom. They understood there were no boundaries, no walls, no edges but they had no concept of how far reaching the kingdom was.
They understood the second dimension, the plane. That the kingdom of God is not just a straight line. That there are four distinct directions from the presence of God; in our terms; north, east, south and west, but also they understood the concept of the circle; that of which we describe as 360 degrees.
They knew the third dimension; that of height, width, and depth; up and down in combination with the circle; therefore understanding the sphere. And, they understood the fourth dimension, the spatial dimension that allowed them to manifest in other parts of the kingdom without travel. Something they could do any time they wanted but they usually only traveled in the fourth dimension when they were traveling alone. As a group or a legion or a division of heaven they normally traveled as we do, in the first three dimensions traveling from point A to point B in unison; in time, distance, and direction. What they did not know yet, but eventually would, is their ability in the fourth dimension to travel through matter. They could not know this yet because there was no matter in the spiritual kingdom of God. He had not created it yet, but matter and energy were in the Creator’s imagination. The time was coming.
“I have framed a new creature for my kingdom. A new life. He will be a little lower than the angels, but crowned with glory and honor.”
This was the news Lucifer and all the angels were waiting for. They had heard of this new creation but now it was confirmed. All the angels were in awe of this great announcement. A new creature! How exciting! How intriguing! A new creature to share in the great glory of the Father!
How wonderful the news!
Lucifer was quick to sum up the news. A little lower than the angels. My position is intact, but I
must know more. What of this new creature? What place will he have in the kingdom? What will be his purpose, his passion? Lucifer was careful to keep his thoughts to himself. The Father was omnipotent and this was not a good time to question anything in the kingdom considering his very proximity to the Holy Trinity at this very moment.
“Blessed be the angelic host. Depart now and prepare thy selves for the new creation.”
The Great Father departed with the Son and the Spirit and the host of heaven praised Him and glorified Him in music and song.
“Glory to the Father.”
“All praise and glory to His name.”
“He alone is worthy.”
“He alone is worthy.”
“He alone is worthy.”
“Amen!”
What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. Psalms 8:4-5
Worthy of Worship was published in 2007 by Xulon Press and is available at these locations:
http://www.xulonpress.com/, http://www.target.com/, http://www.amazon.com/, http://www.barnesandnoble.com/, http://www.agapesolutions.com/
Worthy of Worship
by Royce Logan and Dale Linton
Chapter I
Call to Worship
“We’ve been summoned.”
Lucifer looked out among his legions of angels God the Father had assigned to him millenniums ago. Assigned to him with a purpose; a noble and magnificent purpose. A purpose esteemed above all other purposes in all the nations of the angels. Lucifer, the most beautiful angel, the most adorned, the most envied, the most loved, the most god-like angel in all the Father’s kingdom. Lucifer, so brilliant that from a distance it was hard to distinguish his glory from the Father’s, so beautiful all the angels knew he was created with a special purpose, a special mission, a special passion to fulfill for the glory of the Father. Lucifer walked upright and in dignity always. Every angel knew his significance.
Lucifer gazed over the expanse of the Father’s kingdom to the East. Thousands upon thousands of the angelic host mingled and fluttered about in conversation and testimony. Thousands more were resting quietly in reflection and in personal exhortation of their last mission of worship for the Father. Resting, yes, but angels never sleep. They are purely spiritual; each one created by the Father, each being unique in some astounding way that only the Great Creator could have imagined. Individual, yes, but unified by a single purpose by God, a single passion for their very existence, a passion given to them by the Father, a passion of incredible love and worship for the Father and for his glorification. A passion for worship of the Father even beyond that of the other nations of the angels.
“Beelzebub, call my captains to order and have them assemble the legions before me. Find Xaphan, Astarot, and Adramelech and bring them to me for council before we depart for our Father’s presence.”
“As you command, my prince.” Beelzebub was a prince himself, the commander of all the ranks, a five-star general in Lucifer’s hierarchy, a cunning and crafty leader among the angels of worship, shrewd and powerful, confident and demanding. His commanding stature preceded him wherever he went. It was no wonder he had risen from the ranks of his creation to become second in the legions; second only to Lucifer, the first prince of all the angels and master of the highest function in all the Father’s creation. Lucifer, God’s shining star. Lucifer, the master of worship.
Whilst the legions assembled before him, Lucifer turned to gaze at the center of the kingdom. Far away he could see the glow of purity that was never extinguished, never faded, never dulled. A glow that touched Lucifer even here, so far from the Father’s spiritual presence. Even Lucifer was comforted by the light. It was always there, just as true and gleaming as life itself; just as real and everlasting as his own breath. To know his own existence, his own immortality, his own awareness and power and creativity was born in that flash of the Almighty was an overwhelming and daunting reality of his place in the kingdom. God created him to be magnificent, to be a great prince, to lead thousands upon thousands of the angels in worship. God’s glory was his responsibility, his passion, and even his own glory. Yes, He was glorified in glorifying the Father. He is Lucifer, the angel above all others. The one who sits next to the throne of glory. The one who orchestrates all the glory and all the worship of the Great Father.
“There are none above me. I am Lucifer,” he whispered quietly towards the presence of God as he turned back to his army and admired the depth and breadth of his commission. “How, I love it so.” Lucifer paused in his own reflection, “I do. I do love it so.”
His captains approached him from the expanse of the East kingdom.
“The legions are assembled my prince,” bellowed Beelzebub, “and your captains are at your call.”
“Beelzebub, Astarot, Adramelech, Xaphan.” Lucifer’s voice was always soft and harmonious, but subtly domineering in a way that you just didn’t realize until sometimes hours later. “Our Father has summoned us to worship. This may be the day our Father tells about the plan we have been hearing all these rumors about; this new creation; just what it is and how his plan will change the kingdom. I want your ranks to be especially apparent today. We go to glorify the Father. We go to worship the Great One who gave life to us all. Keep your ranks in good order today. I expect nothing less than perfection of worship today.”
“Yes, prince. As you command. Today will be a great day of glory and worship for the Almighty One; the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.” Astarot, second in hierarchy only to Beelzebub in the legions of the worship angels assured the prince of light, the master of worship, the prince of glory, the great one chosen by God himself to lead even the seraphim and cherubim in glory and honor in His omnipotent presence.
“To His glorious presence”. Lucifer turned and with his right armed raised and pointing to the presence of God, the great multitude of the angelic host followed their leader and his generals, captains, and lieutenants in an upright and holy march towards the heart of the kingdom, the pure light of the Holy One, the palace and throne of the Almighty Creator.
Even in the infinity of the kingdom the armies can gather quickly from all directions and provinces. There is no real passage of time in the kingdom; there is, but there isn’t. It’s hard to explain. The spirits can move around the great kingdom at will; in and out of the presence of God, east to west, north to south, up, down, diagonal. There is no need for time, for distance, or for space in the kingdom of God. It’s all uniform, it’s all one, it’s all a perfection of the Creator. It’s always been this way. As far back as Lucifer could remember which was, in fact, the moment of his creation. There were far fewer angels then. Gabriel and Michael, archangels with authority like Lucifer, were created about the same time as Lucifer. Raphael, Uriel, Reuel, and Sariel came soon after.
There was such perfect order in the kingdom. A perfect hierarchy of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, all one, but all individual as well. Perhaps not individual in the same way Lucifer understood his own consciousness, but a singleness and unity all in one. Together they were like the perfect music chord. Melodious and harmonious at the same time. Three sounds and sights and beings in perfection of order and relationship and process. There was a true holiness to the trinity that was inconceivable and incomparable anywhere else in the kingdom.
Lucifer often wondered just where the Father came from. How was he created? Who created him? How long ago? He knew the truth, but he wondered just the same. He knew there was no beginning. He always was. How do I know this is true? Lucifer would sometimes ask himself. What was God doing the day before he created me? Or, even the moment before he created me? Did he create the Son? The Spirit? Yes, I know. They too were with him from the beginning, but when was the beginning? Is it even possible that there was a beginning to any or all of these nine dimensions of the kingdom?
The sweetness of the Father’s glory was upon the angelic host. It was always with them, even when they were in the far reaches of the Eastern kingdom. Distance had no meaning. God’s presence was always apparent, always visible, always near. Even so, the closer they got to his presence the sweeter the light became. Crossing into his presence was like stepping into a cool shower on a cold morning and gradually feeling the water become more and more warm until it becomes so hot and refreshing that you never want to step out of it. Clean, warm, pure, and sweet was the presence of God. Basking in his glory was like basking in the warm sun; so natural, so comforting, so real there was no other way to receive it except by Holy Communion with the Father. There was nothing so wonderful as the Father’s glory. Even Lucifer enjoyed the transition and then the full glory of the Father as he and his ranks of angels entered into his holy presence.
God’s messenger, Gabriel and his legions of the angels were forming to the south of the throne of glory. The Word of God was as mighty as God himself. Every utterance of the Father was full of perfect wisdom, holiness, and faith. Gabriel carried the Word of God with the most reverence, the most awe. Gabriel cherished his purpose and he expected his ranks to be perfect in their commission; to accomplish every word from the mouth of God- to the letter; holding the Father’s wisdom and faith intact, revealed and delivered in true holiness, exactly the way in which the Word was given to them.
Michael and his commission of angels were assembling on the west expanse of the throne of glory. Mighty and powerful they were; muscular and athletic in stature; the protector of the Word of God. It was often said that Michael and his soldiers upheld the faith of God for all of God’s wisdom and faith are held in his very Word. It was also believed that the very existence of the Father’s kingdom depended on the faith contained in his Word. All the angels, all the kingdom of God, everything other than His own presence was created and now exists only by the perfect faith in the Word of God. That’s why his Word is so powerful and so important. Without it, nothing would exist. He spoke each angel into his kingdom and it was so. He gave each angel uniqueness, and it was so. He put all the kingdom into perfect order and hierarchy as each new angel was created, and it was so and has been so since the beginning of time. It all exists by the Word of God. He created something righteous and holy out of nothingness.
Why? Lucifer would ask himself. Why did God create me? Why did God create any of us? Why create a kingdom? What’s the point?
Lucifer’s entrance was always significant, always apparent. His brilliance was the greatest among all the archangels. He was second only to the trinity. His beauty, his glorious light seemed to brighten even in the purity of the light of God. Even though the legions of angels knew this wasn’t possible, it still seemed so. The Father spared little of his imagination or of his perfect skill in creating Lucifer, the “light bearer”.
Why did God create Lucifer? Why did God create anything? Why? Because He is the one and only God of purity, righteousness, glory, wisdom, and faith. Because He is a God of order and relationship and love. Because He is a God of imagination and creation. God longs for relationship and communion with His creation. Life is his gift. Existence is his gift. Consciousness and awareness is his gift. Every spirit in the kingdom knew and appreciated the Father’s gift of life and love. No angel, no archangel, no spirit of any kind could create life like the Father could. God exists for them and they exist for Him. This is the order and relationship of God. This is the order and relationship of the Father’s kingdom.
Lucifer took his place next to the throne of glory. Michael and Gabriel approached the prince of light. “Greetings in our Father’s name I bring you, Lucifer.” Gabriel’s instructions were always to greet and make welcome the archangels so that they would know the Great Father loves them and appreciates their service and devotion. It was typical that Gabriel would greet Michael first and together they would pay homage to God’s chosen one, the master of worship. But, it was homage, not worship. It was to honor the one God chose to be the brightest star. Honor to Lucifer, but reverence to the Father. And, Lucifer knew it.
“Salutations to you Gabriel and Michael”. Lucifer would return the greeting with his right arm raised and index finger pointing up, symbolic of pointing to the Holy Trinity; symbolic that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are above all creation, symbolic that they all serve the One greater, the One above all others in the kingdom, the One who framed each of them in his own imagination and spoke their awareness into existence by his great Word of faith.
“Are your legions prepared for worship?” Lucifer was anxious to get started. He was anxious to hear the Word of God today. More anxious than usual. All the divisions knew the heart of the Father. They knew he loved to create life. They knew he loved each of them, but there had been no new creations for a millennium. The kingdom was bustling with a thousand, thousand legions of angels. What seemed to be a perfect number. It was though the kingdom needed not even one more angel, but could not do with even one less. Every being had significance. Every being had a purpose and it seemed like there was perfection in the kingdom. Why create this new creature? Lucifer thought to himself. True, it was just a rumor, but Lucifer too knew the heart of God. The Father loves to create and he loves his creation.
“Yes, Lucifer. My legions who carry the Word of God are at your leave. I yield my authority over them to you for this time of worship, my captain.” Gabriel was always very formal, but then, he was the bearer of the Word of God. Words mean something and Gabriel was always very careful to speak properly, speak eloquently, and speak with meaning and purpose.
“And I concur, my captain.” Michael was more direct, more militaristic. He upheld the faith in
the Word of God. He knew what that meant. He knew his purpose was accomplished not with words, but with power and strength given to him by the Almighty. The angels knew Michael was of few words but mighty in conviction. Bumping heads with Michael was inconceivable. He held all the power and might of the Almighty. Michael knew that protecting the faith of God was the very substance of the existence of every creature in the kingdom, and he took his purpose seriously.
“Then let this measure of worship begin! Fill this kingdom with the glory of God. Let us prepare for his arrival. Bring forth the music and singing! Lift up holy hands to the Father! Sing, shout, and dance for God the Father is the Almighty, the Great Creator, the Giver of life! Let us honor and worship and praise him! Let us glorify The Father, the Holy Son, and the Holy Spirit! Let us be unified and perfect in our worship this day! Great is the Father, and Holy is His name!”
The din of worship among the angels quickly changed to a great uproar of harmony and purity. From within the perfect order of melodious singing and shouting you could hear admonishes from throughout the kingdom that seemed to come at perfect interludes of intense worship and singing and lulls of praise.
“Great is the Father!”
“He alone is worthy!”
“Holy is His name!”
“We worship and praise Him!”
“Blessed be the Father!”
“Blessed be the Son!”
“Blessed be the Spirit!”
“He alone is worthy!”
“He alone is worthy!”
“He alone is worthy!”
For hours the angels praised His name. For hours the host of heaven worshipped Him and raised their voices in unison and in harmony to the Holy Trinity and as time passed their worship grew more intense, their hearts grew more pure, their spirits, which they purely are and is everything they are, were filled with devotion for the Father. And as this measure of worship continued they became more one with the Father and they reveled in this time of worship.
Their spirits were moved in two directions. One, that this time of worship would never end. They existed for this purpose, this purpose of worship. Yes, they had other duties, but nothing seemed more perfect in their being than when their worship of God was perfected within themselves, and these moments of perfect worship were the moments they cherished in all their existence.
But, two, this perfection of worship had meaning and purpose too. It meant that the Father was drawing near. His presence was here but he would soon manifest himself in their presence. They would no longer just feel Him and know He was with them, but they would soon see Him and He would speak to them in wisdom and power and faith. It’s one thing to be in the presence of God, but it’s certainly a time of epiphany to be in direct Holy Communion with the Almighty, the Holy Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Even Lucifer’s spirit, his very being, was in a frenzy. He was stirred and hyped. The Father’s presence would be with them at any moment now. But, something was not as it should be, he thought. I know what purity of spirit is, he thought to himself, and I am not there yet, but I know I should be.
The moment of the Father’s manifestation was upon them. All the angelic host felt his presence as the Holy Trinity became visual on the throne of glory.
“Magnificent is the Lord our God!”
“Glory to the Holy Father, the Holy Son, and the Holy Spirit!”
“We praise You and Worship You, Oh Father, Oh Holy One!”
The intensity of worship and singing and shouting continued. Shouts of adulation continued in perfect unison with the music of harps and horns and strings.
The Father’s pleasure was obvious. He loved his creation. He loved being with them always, but there was no more pleasure than these times of Holy Communion with the angelic host, except maybe in His pleasure for the Holy Son and Spirit. The angels knew their creator was pleased. The angels knew their worship was perfected in their Father’s pleasure. His pleasure brought substance to their passion and purpose. They were fulfilled, they were lifted, they were perfected in His glory.
The Father’s hands lifted and the voices and the music peaked and then gradually began to subside. Once silence spread across the angelic host of heaven they became prostrate. They lowered themselves in reverence, not because they had to. No, God had never commanded them to bow their heads, to lower themselves before His presence. They never had to, they wanted to.
“Rise, and hear the Word of our Father.”
The Holy Son was always first to speak. He bore the glory of God wherever they manifested. Yes, even He, the Holy Son of God, had a purpose; a purpose to reveal the glory of the Father to all His creation, and only He, only the Son of God was worthy of such a purpose. The Holy Spirit, now He was something special. He was like the wind. He could carry the glory of the Father throughout the multitude of angels, throughout the entire kingdom which had no beginning or end. The Holy Spirit was always flowing, always in movement. Even at the side of God there was no stillness. The Holy Spirit was evidence that the spirits never sleep, are never unaware; they rest, but they are never at rest.
The host was surely ready. Ready to hear the Word of God. Gabriel and his ranks were bent forward, anxious, yet patient for their mission for every word of God held meaning and power. Michael and his army stood almost at attention, full of desire for duty. Lucifer was proud; confident that his worship had been superlative, not necessarily personally, but as a whole the host of heaven had been magnanimous in worship.
“I love each of you.”
God is not a respecter of persons. Each being in the angelic host held significance and value to Him equally. Sure, order and authority is necessary in any kingdom, in any corporation. Wherever two or more are gathered there must be order and relationship for any process to be manifested. Of course God knew this. He created his kingdom in order and relationship, for without order and relationship there can only remain chaos.
“Lucifer, Gabriel, Michael,” once again your leadership has been magnificent.” I thank you for your service.”
God blesses those who bless Him. The angels knew this. There was no envy, no jealousy, no resentment among the host. They knew the Father loved them. They understood the order of God’s kingdom. The first is the last and the last is the first.
“I am the Alpha and the Omega and I change not. My kingdom, however, is always changing.”
The host knew this. Their Father has never changed. He is not unlike the day they were created, but each new creation in the kingdom brought change within the kingdom. More beings, more entities to assist them in their missions, their purpose, their passions. Every new creature enhanced the great kingdom of God.
“I am and I know all the dimensions of my kingdom.”
The host knew only four dimensions. They knew of the nine dimensions, but existed in only the first four and even in those four dimensions there were limitations. The first dimension is of time and distance; a straight line. They understood time from their creation to the present moment, but they had no concept of the future, though they knew the future existed they just didn’t know what was in it, what’s going to happen. They understood distance because they understood travel within the Father’s kingdom. They knew they could travel in and out of the Father’s spiritual presence, yet they knew they were always within their Father’s kingdom, yet they did not understand the infinity of the kingdom. They understood there were no boundaries, no walls, no edges but they had no concept of how far reaching the kingdom was.
They understood the second dimension, the plane. That the kingdom of God is not just a straight line. That there are four distinct directions from the presence of God; in our terms; north, east, south and west, but also they understood the concept of the circle; that of which we describe as 360 degrees.
They knew the third dimension; that of height, width, and depth; up and down in combination with the circle; therefore understanding the sphere. And, they understood the fourth dimension, the spatial dimension that allowed them to manifest in other parts of the kingdom without travel. Something they could do any time they wanted but they usually only traveled in the fourth dimension when they were traveling alone. As a group or a legion or a division of heaven they normally traveled as we do, in the first three dimensions traveling from point A to point B in unison; in time, distance, and direction. What they did not know yet, but eventually would, is their ability in the fourth dimension to travel through matter. They could not know this yet because there was no matter in the spiritual kingdom of God. He had not created it yet, but matter and energy were in the Creator’s imagination. The time was coming.
“I have framed a new creature for my kingdom. A new life. He will be a little lower than the angels, but crowned with glory and honor.”
This was the news Lucifer and all the angels were waiting for. They had heard of this new creation but now it was confirmed. All the angels were in awe of this great announcement. A new creature! How exciting! How intriguing! A new creature to share in the great glory of the Father!
How wonderful the news!
Lucifer was quick to sum up the news. A little lower than the angels. My position is intact, but I
must know more. What of this new creature? What place will he have in the kingdom? What will be his purpose, his passion? Lucifer was careful to keep his thoughts to himself. The Father was omnipotent and this was not a good time to question anything in the kingdom considering his very proximity to the Holy Trinity at this very moment.
“Blessed be the angelic host. Depart now and prepare thy selves for the new creation.”
The Great Father departed with the Son and the Spirit and the host of heaven praised Him and glorified Him in music and song.
“Glory to the Father.”
“All praise and glory to His name.”
“He alone is worthy.”
“He alone is worthy.”
“He alone is worthy.”
“Amen!”
What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. Psalms 8:4-5
Worthy of Worship was published in 2007 by Xulon Press and is available at these locations:
http://www.xulonpress.com/, http://www.target.com/, http://www.amazon.com/, http://www.barnesandnoble.com/, http://www.agapesolutions.com/
The Splendor of the King
The Splendor of the King
by Royce Logan
“The splendor of the King… (rest) clothed in majesty;
Let all the earth rejoice, all the earth rejoice… (rest)”.
It was our final song of the evening. The praise band was quite magnificent kicking off our annual “Deeper Life Crusade”: a four night revival in our church held every Spring.
“He wraps Himself in light, and darkness tries to hide,
And trembles at His voice, and trembles at His voice.”
God is in this place tonight! Oh yeah!
It’s always more fun playing when the whole band is into it, the singers are into it, the congregation is into it, hands are clapping to the rhythm with the fast songs and raised in worship for the slow ones.
Cool!
After eight songs the Holy Spirit was swooping all through the sanctuary. Worship was taking the place of the toils and tears of everyday life.
Remember to lift that middle finger off the e string to get that harmonic D chord.
“How great is our God! Sing with me: How great is our God!
And all will see how great, how great is our God!”
I play rhythm guitar. A beautiful mahogany bodied Gibson electric. I’ve been playing practically all my life. Not that I’m any kind of a great guitar player, but I’ve been playing so long I know a few things.
“Age to age He stands, and time is in His hands;
Beginning and the End, Beginning and the End.”
Five years ago a few of us got together and created the praise band. We’ve been playing at our home church every Sunday morning since and we’ve even been invited on a few road trips to other churches.
“The Godhead three in one, (rest) Father, Spirit, Son,
The Lion and the Lamb, the Lion and the Lamb.”
This was a special service, though. Kenny and John were our visiting pastors from North Carolina. They come every year and bring a new and fresh perspective to our worship.
“How great is our God! Sing with me: How great is our God!
And all will see how great, how great is our God!”
I looked out above the neck of my Gibson to find my wife’s face. Ah, there she is; my mom and two sisters surrounding her, a couple of friends on one side, a couple more in the pew behind. A sanctuary filled with church family and a few visitors I didn’t know.
“Name above all names, worthy of all praise.
My heart will sing: How great is our God!”
My mom’s a great singer; been doing it all her life. She used to stand out in a crowded sanctuary; had a powerful voice. Not so much anymore; quite a bit older now; and weaker. Still reverent though and beautiful.
Whoosh! The Holy Spirit was swooping down on me! As I felt it… spiritual awareness was coming into focus.
“Name above all names, worthy of all praise.
My heart will sing: How great is our God!”
Stop playing! Our praise band goes right into the old hymn, “How Great Thou Art” in a capella.
I sing harmony bass.
“Then sings my soul, my savior God to thee;
how great thou art, how great thou art!”
Heaven comes into focus. Everything is white and bright. It’s very brief; maybe only a few seconds.
I see a gathering of people: my mom, my sisters, my wife, myself. Others I don’t have time to recognize.
We’re singing:
“Then sings my soul, my savior God to thee;
How great thou art, how great thou art!”
Mom's voice stands out again in the crowd. Beautiful. Reverent. Powerful.
(How Great is Our God. Words and music by Chris Tomlin, Jesse Reeves, and Ed Cash.)
(How Great Thou Art. Words and Music by Stuart K. Hine.)
by Royce Logan
“The splendor of the King… (rest) clothed in majesty;
Let all the earth rejoice, all the earth rejoice… (rest)”.
It was our final song of the evening. The praise band was quite magnificent kicking off our annual “Deeper Life Crusade”: a four night revival in our church held every Spring.
“He wraps Himself in light, and darkness tries to hide,
And trembles at His voice, and trembles at His voice.”
God is in this place tonight! Oh yeah!
It’s always more fun playing when the whole band is into it, the singers are into it, the congregation is into it, hands are clapping to the rhythm with the fast songs and raised in worship for the slow ones.
Cool!
After eight songs the Holy Spirit was swooping all through the sanctuary. Worship was taking the place of the toils and tears of everyday life.
Remember to lift that middle finger off the e string to get that harmonic D chord.
“How great is our God! Sing with me: How great is our God!
And all will see how great, how great is our God!”
I play rhythm guitar. A beautiful mahogany bodied Gibson electric. I’ve been playing practically all my life. Not that I’m any kind of a great guitar player, but I’ve been playing so long I know a few things.
“Age to age He stands, and time is in His hands;
Beginning and the End, Beginning and the End.”
Five years ago a few of us got together and created the praise band. We’ve been playing at our home church every Sunday morning since and we’ve even been invited on a few road trips to other churches.
“The Godhead three in one, (rest) Father, Spirit, Son,
The Lion and the Lamb, the Lion and the Lamb.”
This was a special service, though. Kenny and John were our visiting pastors from North Carolina. They come every year and bring a new and fresh perspective to our worship.
“How great is our God! Sing with me: How great is our God!
And all will see how great, how great is our God!”
I looked out above the neck of my Gibson to find my wife’s face. Ah, there she is; my mom and two sisters surrounding her, a couple of friends on one side, a couple more in the pew behind. A sanctuary filled with church family and a few visitors I didn’t know.
“Name above all names, worthy of all praise.
My heart will sing: How great is our God!”
My mom’s a great singer; been doing it all her life. She used to stand out in a crowded sanctuary; had a powerful voice. Not so much anymore; quite a bit older now; and weaker. Still reverent though and beautiful.
Whoosh! The Holy Spirit was swooping down on me! As I felt it… spiritual awareness was coming into focus.
“Name above all names, worthy of all praise.
My heart will sing: How great is our God!”
Stop playing! Our praise band goes right into the old hymn, “How Great Thou Art” in a capella.
I sing harmony bass.
“Then sings my soul, my savior God to thee;
how great thou art, how great thou art!”
Heaven comes into focus. Everything is white and bright. It’s very brief; maybe only a few seconds.
I see a gathering of people: my mom, my sisters, my wife, myself. Others I don’t have time to recognize.
We’re singing:
“Then sings my soul, my savior God to thee;
How great thou art, how great thou art!”
Mom's voice stands out again in the crowd. Beautiful. Reverent. Powerful.
(How Great is Our God. Words and music by Chris Tomlin, Jesse Reeves, and Ed Cash.)
(How Great Thou Art. Words and Music by Stuart K. Hine.)
What is a Jew? (Part I) An Essay by Royce Logan
What is a Jew? (Part I) An Essay by Royce Logan
First there was Adam. Adam fathered Cain and Abel. Cain slew Abel. After Abel was dead, Adam fathered Seth. According to Eve, Noah’s wife, God told her that Seth was a replacement for Abel. (Gen. 4:25). Seven generations after Seth, came Lamech who fathered Noah (Gen. 5:29). Noah had three sons that accompanied him on the ark, Shem, Ham, and Japheth (Gen. 9:18).
Japheth, third son of Noah, had a grandson named Kittim (Gen. 10:4). Kittim was the name of the island known today as Cyprus and this island and the islands around it were taken by Japheth. These islands have been called the “isles of the Gentiles” and may be an indication of how the European race began, including the Romans who later persecuted the Jews. Genesis 10:5 tells us the descendants of Japheth divided into different nations and spoke different languages. They were also known to be sailors and to have settled other parts of the ancient world because they could sail the seas to new lands.
Ham, the second son of Noah, had four sons: Cush, Mizraim, Phut, and Canaan. The land of Canaan encompassed the land that was later given to Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel by God. This land encompassed parts of what is today known as Syria in the North, parts of Lebanon, parts of Israel, and parts of Jordan. All this land is on the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea and is just west of Iraq. Canaan, the grandson of Noah, also fathered the people who would later war with the Hebrews; the Hittites, the Jebusites, and the Amorites (Gen. 10:16). Mizraim, the brother of Canaan, fathered the people known as the Philistines (Gen. 10:14) who also warred with the Hebrews. The descendants of Ham are most likely the people who later became the Egyptians, Africans, Orientals, and people of the Middle East as from Iraq, Syria, Turkey and India.
Shem, the first born of Noah, took the land east of Canaan, which is today parts of Iraq, Jordan, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. Eber was the great-grandson of Shem, great-great grandson of Noah, and therefore also descended from Adam. Eber is known as the father of the Hebrews.
If you follow the lineage of the three sons of Noah who survived the Great Flood because they accompanied Noah on the ark, you can see how these three sons could have fathered the population of the entire world, as the Bible claims in Genesis 9:19. If you are of European descent you may have descended from Japheth. Orientals, Africans, Middle Easterners and probably also Eskimos and American Indians descended from Ham. The Hebrews descended from Shem.
Six generations later, Abram is born, a great grandson removed four more times from Eber, who was the great-grandson of Shem. God decided to make a covenant (a promise, or contract) with Abram and changed his name to Abraham. God promised to make him rich and to let him have many sons and promised him that this covenant would also be for all of Abram’s descendants forever, and that his sons would become kings and create new nations.
The word Hebrew means “belonging to Eber” and Abram is the first person in the Bible called a “Hebrew” (Gen. 14:13) because he is descended from the family of Eber. Abram was born in the area known as Ur which is near the Persian Gulf and known today as Iraq. After Abram had taken a wife, Sarai, Abram’s father, Terah, took Abram, Sarai, and his grandson, Lot, and moved them all to Haran. Haran was an area north of Ur that was given to Lot’s father, Haran (Gen. 11:31). Haran was Abram’s brother.
When Abram was 75 years old, God told him to take up all his family and possessions and move to Canaan. Lot, Abram’s nephew, also had great possessions and went with him. There was a famine in the land of Canaan so Abram and Lot and their families all moved to Egypt for several years until a time came when the Pharaoh demanded they leave the land of Egypt. As they were traveling north, back to the land of Canaan, the land couldn’t support both Abram’s family and Lot’s family, so they decided to split up. Lot headed east into Jordan and settled there and his son, Moab, later established the nation of Moab. Now, remember Canaan was the land taken by Abram’s great uncle, removed four more times, Ham, the second son of Noah, and brother of Shem. After Lot had departed, God told Abram that he was giving him all the land as far as he could see in all directions. So, basically, God gave the land of Canaan to a descendant of Shem (Abram) which was still inhabited by the descendants of Shem’s brother, Ham. This land later becomes Israel.
We have to keep following this lineage to find how the Hebrews, or at least some part of the Hebrew family, became known as Jews. Although Abraham fathered many children by many wives, he only fathered one son with his Hebrew wife, Sarah, whom they named Isaac. Abram’s first son, Ishmael, was born from Hagar, an Egyptian maid of Sarai, whom Sarai sent to Abram to conceive. An angel of the Lord came to Hagar while she was pregnant and told her that Ishmael would father so many descendants that they couldn’t be counted. We now know that Ishmael became the father of Islam.
God changed Sarai’s name to Sarah when he made the covenant with Abraham. Isaac married Rebekah who gave birth to twins, Esau and Jacob. God blessed Jacob and later changed his name to Israel. Jacob had two wives, Leah and Rachel but also fathered children from each of his wives’ maidservants. Among these four women he had 12 sons; Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, and Zebulun were sons of Leah, Joseph and Benjamin were sons of Rachel, Dan and Naphtali were sons of Bilhah, Rachel’s handmaid, and Gad and Asher were sons of Zilpah, Leah’s handmaid (Gen. 35:23). These 12 sons fathered the 12 tribes of Isreal.
Israel and all his sons eventually moved to Egypt, again because of famine in the land of Canaan and because Joseph, the eldest son of Rachel, had lived there for many years and had earned the gratitude of the Pharaoh by helping the Egyptian people survive seven years of famine (Gen. 41:30). All the sons and their families died there after many years, but their children multiplied greatly until a time came that a later Pharaoh, who did not know about all the good things Joseph had done for Egypt, made slaves out of all the Israelites. The Israelites had managed to maintain their individual families based on each of their tribes. However, by the time of their escape from Egypt there were actually 13 tribes of Israel, not just the 12 we think of today. Joseph had two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh who each headed their own tribe making up the thirteen tribes of Israel along with Joseph’s eleven brothers.
This concludes part one of this essay for we have now been introduced to Judah, one of the twelve tribes of Israel, and from whom the word “Jew” comes. In part two we’ll follow the descendants of Jacob out of the land of Egypt, who by that time numbered an estimated three million people.
First there was Adam. Adam fathered Cain and Abel. Cain slew Abel. After Abel was dead, Adam fathered Seth. According to Eve, Noah’s wife, God told her that Seth was a replacement for Abel. (Gen. 4:25). Seven generations after Seth, came Lamech who fathered Noah (Gen. 5:29). Noah had three sons that accompanied him on the ark, Shem, Ham, and Japheth (Gen. 9:18).
Japheth, third son of Noah, had a grandson named Kittim (Gen. 10:4). Kittim was the name of the island known today as Cyprus and this island and the islands around it were taken by Japheth. These islands have been called the “isles of the Gentiles” and may be an indication of how the European race began, including the Romans who later persecuted the Jews. Genesis 10:5 tells us the descendants of Japheth divided into different nations and spoke different languages. They were also known to be sailors and to have settled other parts of the ancient world because they could sail the seas to new lands.
Ham, the second son of Noah, had four sons: Cush, Mizraim, Phut, and Canaan. The land of Canaan encompassed the land that was later given to Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel by God. This land encompassed parts of what is today known as Syria in the North, parts of Lebanon, parts of Israel, and parts of Jordan. All this land is on the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea and is just west of Iraq. Canaan, the grandson of Noah, also fathered the people who would later war with the Hebrews; the Hittites, the Jebusites, and the Amorites (Gen. 10:16). Mizraim, the brother of Canaan, fathered the people known as the Philistines (Gen. 10:14) who also warred with the Hebrews. The descendants of Ham are most likely the people who later became the Egyptians, Africans, Orientals, and people of the Middle East as from Iraq, Syria, Turkey and India.
Shem, the first born of Noah, took the land east of Canaan, which is today parts of Iraq, Jordan, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. Eber was the great-grandson of Shem, great-great grandson of Noah, and therefore also descended from Adam. Eber is known as the father of the Hebrews.
If you follow the lineage of the three sons of Noah who survived the Great Flood because they accompanied Noah on the ark, you can see how these three sons could have fathered the population of the entire world, as the Bible claims in Genesis 9:19. If you are of European descent you may have descended from Japheth. Orientals, Africans, Middle Easterners and probably also Eskimos and American Indians descended from Ham. The Hebrews descended from Shem.
Six generations later, Abram is born, a great grandson removed four more times from Eber, who was the great-grandson of Shem. God decided to make a covenant (a promise, or contract) with Abram and changed his name to Abraham. God promised to make him rich and to let him have many sons and promised him that this covenant would also be for all of Abram’s descendants forever, and that his sons would become kings and create new nations.
The word Hebrew means “belonging to Eber” and Abram is the first person in the Bible called a “Hebrew” (Gen. 14:13) because he is descended from the family of Eber. Abram was born in the area known as Ur which is near the Persian Gulf and known today as Iraq. After Abram had taken a wife, Sarai, Abram’s father, Terah, took Abram, Sarai, and his grandson, Lot, and moved them all to Haran. Haran was an area north of Ur that was given to Lot’s father, Haran (Gen. 11:31). Haran was Abram’s brother.
When Abram was 75 years old, God told him to take up all his family and possessions and move to Canaan. Lot, Abram’s nephew, also had great possessions and went with him. There was a famine in the land of Canaan so Abram and Lot and their families all moved to Egypt for several years until a time came when the Pharaoh demanded they leave the land of Egypt. As they were traveling north, back to the land of Canaan, the land couldn’t support both Abram’s family and Lot’s family, so they decided to split up. Lot headed east into Jordan and settled there and his son, Moab, later established the nation of Moab. Now, remember Canaan was the land taken by Abram’s great uncle, removed four more times, Ham, the second son of Noah, and brother of Shem. After Lot had departed, God told Abram that he was giving him all the land as far as he could see in all directions. So, basically, God gave the land of Canaan to a descendant of Shem (Abram) which was still inhabited by the descendants of Shem’s brother, Ham. This land later becomes Israel.
We have to keep following this lineage to find how the Hebrews, or at least some part of the Hebrew family, became known as Jews. Although Abraham fathered many children by many wives, he only fathered one son with his Hebrew wife, Sarah, whom they named Isaac. Abram’s first son, Ishmael, was born from Hagar, an Egyptian maid of Sarai, whom Sarai sent to Abram to conceive. An angel of the Lord came to Hagar while she was pregnant and told her that Ishmael would father so many descendants that they couldn’t be counted. We now know that Ishmael became the father of Islam.
God changed Sarai’s name to Sarah when he made the covenant with Abraham. Isaac married Rebekah who gave birth to twins, Esau and Jacob. God blessed Jacob and later changed his name to Israel. Jacob had two wives, Leah and Rachel but also fathered children from each of his wives’ maidservants. Among these four women he had 12 sons; Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, and Zebulun were sons of Leah, Joseph and Benjamin were sons of Rachel, Dan and Naphtali were sons of Bilhah, Rachel’s handmaid, and Gad and Asher were sons of Zilpah, Leah’s handmaid (Gen. 35:23). These 12 sons fathered the 12 tribes of Isreal.
Israel and all his sons eventually moved to Egypt, again because of famine in the land of Canaan and because Joseph, the eldest son of Rachel, had lived there for many years and had earned the gratitude of the Pharaoh by helping the Egyptian people survive seven years of famine (Gen. 41:30). All the sons and their families died there after many years, but their children multiplied greatly until a time came that a later Pharaoh, who did not know about all the good things Joseph had done for Egypt, made slaves out of all the Israelites. The Israelites had managed to maintain their individual families based on each of their tribes. However, by the time of their escape from Egypt there were actually 13 tribes of Israel, not just the 12 we think of today. Joseph had two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh who each headed their own tribe making up the thirteen tribes of Israel along with Joseph’s eleven brothers.
This concludes part one of this essay for we have now been introduced to Judah, one of the twelve tribes of Israel, and from whom the word “Jew” comes. In part two we’ll follow the descendants of Jacob out of the land of Egypt, who by that time numbered an estimated three million people.
What is a Jew? (Part II) An Essay by Royce Logan
What is a Jew? (Part II) An Essay by Royce Logan
In part one of this essay we followed the lineage from Adam to the twelve tribes of Israel. When we left the Hebrew people they were still slaves in the land of Egypt, but about to be led to freedom by Moses.
Moses was born from the family of Levi, brother of Joseph and one of the 12 sons of Israel. God called upon Moses to lead the Hebrew people out of Egypt and for the next 40 years the Hebrews roamed the desert in search of Canaan, the land God had promised Abraham and his descendants. During this time most of the Hebrew law was written, including the Ten Commandments.
Moses never entered Canaan, the Promised Land. He led the Israelites right to the edge of the Jordan River but God would not let him cross. There were still about three million Israelites in his camp at this time. Moses climbed Mount Nebo and from there God showed him all the land, but God told Moses he would not cross into the Promised Land. Moses died in the plains of Moab, east of the Jordan River, and was buried there. He was the last prophet to know God face to face.
Moses had an aid, Joshua. Joshua was the son of Nun from the tribe of Ephraim, one of the sons of Joseph. Here it gets a little complicated. God told Moses how to divide the Promised Land among the 13 tribes of Israel, but, the tribe of the Levites, which Moses was from, was not to receive any land. Instead the Levites were to receive possessions and food from all the other tribes from their sacrifices to God. This was an honored position of authority and judgment given to the Levites by God. Before the Israelites left Egypt, the tribe of Joseph had been split into two clans of the two sons of Joseph; Manasseh and Ephraim and each were called half tribes by the Israelites. Since the Levites were not to receive any land, the splitting of the tribe of Joseph created the 12th tribe of Israel that received land.
Joshua, Moses’ aid, became the leader of the Israelites after Moses’ death. Soon after the Israelites left Egypt, God commanded Moses to take a census of all the men from each tribe that was 20 years old or older. From this census we can count more than 600,000 men over 20 years old and then estimate that there were around three million Israelites who roamed the desert for 40 years.
The Israelites were always grumbling and complaining, worshipping other gods, and rebelling against God and God got tired of it after while. When the Israelites finally reached the Jordan River, God told Moses to send one leader from each tribe into the Promised Land as spies to explore it and bring back a report to the Israelites. The land was inhabited by the Amalekites, the Hittites, the Jebusites, and the Amorites (Num. 13:29). Among these men Moses sent Caleb from the tribe of Judah and Joshua, Moses’ aid, from the tribe of Ephraim. When the men returned all of them except Caleb and Joshua gave bad reports about the land, saying it was inhabited by people the Israelites couldn’t defeat. Caleb and Joshua, however, reported that the land flowed with milk and honey and they could certainly defeat the people in their land and take possession of it (Num. 13:27). The other men spread their bad report all through the Israelite tribes.
This angered God and he decided that not one of them would ever see the Promised Land except Caleb and Joshua. Even Moses was excluded from entering the Promised Land. Not just the men who went to explore, but any man over 20 years of age counted in the census would never see the Promised Land. God sent down a plague on the men who gave the bad reports and over time, all the men over 20 years of age counted in the census died except for Caleb and Joshua. Out of the six hundred thousand men counted in the census only Caleb and Joshua ever saw the Promised Land.
Joshua carried out the promise of God and assigned land to each of the 12 tribes of Israel. During the next 200-300 years the Israelites lived among other inhabitants of Canaan, but as tribes scattered throughout the land. God rose up judges during this time to help the tribes govern themselves, but the Israelites were wicked and began worshipping gods of the Canaanites and other tribes after Joshua and all the elders who crossed the Jordan had died. The Israelites wanted a king like their neighbors even though God wanted the Israelites to accept Him as their one God instead of having a king.
During the time of the judges, the tribes of Israel stayed intact. You could ask any Hebrew which tribe he belonged to and he would know. A woman named Naomi and her daughter-in-law, Ruth, who was a Moabite, moved back to the land of Judah. There, Ruth married Boaz who was living in Bethlehem, Judah, and was from the tribe of Judah. Ruth gave birth to Obed (Ruth 4:13), who fathered Jesse, who fathered David (Ruth 4:17), the second king of Israel chosen by God. Joseph, the husband of Mary, the mother of Jesus, was a direct descendant of David, and therefore, Jesus belonged to the house of Judah. Having Ruth, a Moabite, as an ancestor to Jesus would seem to be a curious deviation from the Hebrew lineage. However, Moab was the son of Lot (Gen. 19:37), Abraham’s nephew, and therefore descended from the house of Eber just as Abraham did (Gen. 12:27), and so, Moab, and therefore, Ruth, are truly Hebrew.
The first king of Israel was Saul, whom God told Samuel to appoint as king over all the tribes of Israel. Saul was from the tribe of Benjamin (I Samuel 9:2). Remember, at this time the Israelites had no king, but were judged by the Levites. Samuel was from the tribe of Levi and was known throughout Israel as a prophet of God and high priest of the Israelites.
There was much war during the reign of Saul against the Philistines, but Saul continued to enlarge the army of the Israelites. After years of fighting with the Philistines, God told Samuel to send Saul and his army to Amalek to destroy the Amalekites for ambushing the Israelites after their escape from Egypt. He told Samuel to tell Saul to kill every Amalekite and destroy all their possessions. Once Saul’s army defeated the Amalekites they took the Amalekite king prisoner and kept all the best sheep and cattle. This angered God because God told him to kill all the Amalekites and destroy all their possessions and God regretted making Saul king over Israel (I Samuel 15:35). Saul retreated to his home in Ramah in the land of Benjamin where he spent most of the rest of his life in spiritual torment.
God sent Samuel to Bethlehem to anoint David, the son of Jesse, with oil so that the Spirit of the Lord would come upon him. David was from the tribe of Judah and was the youngest of the eight sons of Jesse. This was all done in secrecy because Saul was still king of Israel, even though he was living in somewhat seclusion in his home town of Ramah, which was only about 12 miles from Bethlehem. David was still a young man and not ready to be king.
Saul remained in his home tormented by an evil spirit. One of his attendants suggested that Saul find a harp player to soothe him when the evil spirit rises in him. David was a cunning player on the harp so Saul sent a messenger to the house of Jesse to send him David. Saul liked David and had him enter into his service as his armor bearer (I Samuel 17:21).
The Israelites were at constant war with the Philistines at this time. Everybody knows the great story of how David slew Goliath, the giant Philistine. With this victory, Saul appointed David over thousands of his armies and David won many battles for Israel, so many that Saul eventually became jealous of David because the women of Israel would sing and dance about how Saul had slain thousands but David had slain tens of thousands. Saul tried to kill David with a javelin, but the Lord was with David and he escaped with the help of Saul’s son Jonathan, and hid out for many years, growing his own small army which he used to defend his own tribe of Judah against the Amalekites in the southern areas of Israel.
Around the time David was fighting the Amalekites the Philistines were pursuing the Israelites and overtook Saul’s army and Saul and three of his sons, including Jonathan, were killed. God told David to go to Hebron in Judah and the elders of Judah anointed him King of Judah (II Samuel 2:4). After Saul’s death, Saul’s uncle, Abner, appointed another of Saul’s sons, Ishbosheth, king over all of Israel but the people of Judah followed David. This was the first division of power between the people of Judah and all the other tribes of Israel.
Now with David as King of Judah, the stage was set to usher in an era of both good and bad kings for Israel and Judah. Israel is reunited again by David but divided again some 80 years later by the downfall of Solomon in his old age. In part three of this essay we’ll follow David, Solomon, and some of the reigning kings after them to find out how the people of Judah came to be called “Jews”.
In part one of this essay we followed the lineage from Adam to the twelve tribes of Israel. When we left the Hebrew people they were still slaves in the land of Egypt, but about to be led to freedom by Moses.
Moses was born from the family of Levi, brother of Joseph and one of the 12 sons of Israel. God called upon Moses to lead the Hebrew people out of Egypt and for the next 40 years the Hebrews roamed the desert in search of Canaan, the land God had promised Abraham and his descendants. During this time most of the Hebrew law was written, including the Ten Commandments.
Moses never entered Canaan, the Promised Land. He led the Israelites right to the edge of the Jordan River but God would not let him cross. There were still about three million Israelites in his camp at this time. Moses climbed Mount Nebo and from there God showed him all the land, but God told Moses he would not cross into the Promised Land. Moses died in the plains of Moab, east of the Jordan River, and was buried there. He was the last prophet to know God face to face.
Moses had an aid, Joshua. Joshua was the son of Nun from the tribe of Ephraim, one of the sons of Joseph. Here it gets a little complicated. God told Moses how to divide the Promised Land among the 13 tribes of Israel, but, the tribe of the Levites, which Moses was from, was not to receive any land. Instead the Levites were to receive possessions and food from all the other tribes from their sacrifices to God. This was an honored position of authority and judgment given to the Levites by God. Before the Israelites left Egypt, the tribe of Joseph had been split into two clans of the two sons of Joseph; Manasseh and Ephraim and each were called half tribes by the Israelites. Since the Levites were not to receive any land, the splitting of the tribe of Joseph created the 12th tribe of Israel that received land.
Joshua, Moses’ aid, became the leader of the Israelites after Moses’ death. Soon after the Israelites left Egypt, God commanded Moses to take a census of all the men from each tribe that was 20 years old or older. From this census we can count more than 600,000 men over 20 years old and then estimate that there were around three million Israelites who roamed the desert for 40 years.
The Israelites were always grumbling and complaining, worshipping other gods, and rebelling against God and God got tired of it after while. When the Israelites finally reached the Jordan River, God told Moses to send one leader from each tribe into the Promised Land as spies to explore it and bring back a report to the Israelites. The land was inhabited by the Amalekites, the Hittites, the Jebusites, and the Amorites (Num. 13:29). Among these men Moses sent Caleb from the tribe of Judah and Joshua, Moses’ aid, from the tribe of Ephraim. When the men returned all of them except Caleb and Joshua gave bad reports about the land, saying it was inhabited by people the Israelites couldn’t defeat. Caleb and Joshua, however, reported that the land flowed with milk and honey and they could certainly defeat the people in their land and take possession of it (Num. 13:27). The other men spread their bad report all through the Israelite tribes.
This angered God and he decided that not one of them would ever see the Promised Land except Caleb and Joshua. Even Moses was excluded from entering the Promised Land. Not just the men who went to explore, but any man over 20 years of age counted in the census would never see the Promised Land. God sent down a plague on the men who gave the bad reports and over time, all the men over 20 years of age counted in the census died except for Caleb and Joshua. Out of the six hundred thousand men counted in the census only Caleb and Joshua ever saw the Promised Land.
Joshua carried out the promise of God and assigned land to each of the 12 tribes of Israel. During the next 200-300 years the Israelites lived among other inhabitants of Canaan, but as tribes scattered throughout the land. God rose up judges during this time to help the tribes govern themselves, but the Israelites were wicked and began worshipping gods of the Canaanites and other tribes after Joshua and all the elders who crossed the Jordan had died. The Israelites wanted a king like their neighbors even though God wanted the Israelites to accept Him as their one God instead of having a king.
During the time of the judges, the tribes of Israel stayed intact. You could ask any Hebrew which tribe he belonged to and he would know. A woman named Naomi and her daughter-in-law, Ruth, who was a Moabite, moved back to the land of Judah. There, Ruth married Boaz who was living in Bethlehem, Judah, and was from the tribe of Judah. Ruth gave birth to Obed (Ruth 4:13), who fathered Jesse, who fathered David (Ruth 4:17), the second king of Israel chosen by God. Joseph, the husband of Mary, the mother of Jesus, was a direct descendant of David, and therefore, Jesus belonged to the house of Judah. Having Ruth, a Moabite, as an ancestor to Jesus would seem to be a curious deviation from the Hebrew lineage. However, Moab was the son of Lot (Gen. 19:37), Abraham’s nephew, and therefore descended from the house of Eber just as Abraham did (Gen. 12:27), and so, Moab, and therefore, Ruth, are truly Hebrew.
The first king of Israel was Saul, whom God told Samuel to appoint as king over all the tribes of Israel. Saul was from the tribe of Benjamin (I Samuel 9:2). Remember, at this time the Israelites had no king, but were judged by the Levites. Samuel was from the tribe of Levi and was known throughout Israel as a prophet of God and high priest of the Israelites.
There was much war during the reign of Saul against the Philistines, but Saul continued to enlarge the army of the Israelites. After years of fighting with the Philistines, God told Samuel to send Saul and his army to Amalek to destroy the Amalekites for ambushing the Israelites after their escape from Egypt. He told Samuel to tell Saul to kill every Amalekite and destroy all their possessions. Once Saul’s army defeated the Amalekites they took the Amalekite king prisoner and kept all the best sheep and cattle. This angered God because God told him to kill all the Amalekites and destroy all their possessions and God regretted making Saul king over Israel (I Samuel 15:35). Saul retreated to his home in Ramah in the land of Benjamin where he spent most of the rest of his life in spiritual torment.
God sent Samuel to Bethlehem to anoint David, the son of Jesse, with oil so that the Spirit of the Lord would come upon him. David was from the tribe of Judah and was the youngest of the eight sons of Jesse. This was all done in secrecy because Saul was still king of Israel, even though he was living in somewhat seclusion in his home town of Ramah, which was only about 12 miles from Bethlehem. David was still a young man and not ready to be king.
Saul remained in his home tormented by an evil spirit. One of his attendants suggested that Saul find a harp player to soothe him when the evil spirit rises in him. David was a cunning player on the harp so Saul sent a messenger to the house of Jesse to send him David. Saul liked David and had him enter into his service as his armor bearer (I Samuel 17:21).
The Israelites were at constant war with the Philistines at this time. Everybody knows the great story of how David slew Goliath, the giant Philistine. With this victory, Saul appointed David over thousands of his armies and David won many battles for Israel, so many that Saul eventually became jealous of David because the women of Israel would sing and dance about how Saul had slain thousands but David had slain tens of thousands. Saul tried to kill David with a javelin, but the Lord was with David and he escaped with the help of Saul’s son Jonathan, and hid out for many years, growing his own small army which he used to defend his own tribe of Judah against the Amalekites in the southern areas of Israel.
Around the time David was fighting the Amalekites the Philistines were pursuing the Israelites and overtook Saul’s army and Saul and three of his sons, including Jonathan, were killed. God told David to go to Hebron in Judah and the elders of Judah anointed him King of Judah (II Samuel 2:4). After Saul’s death, Saul’s uncle, Abner, appointed another of Saul’s sons, Ishbosheth, king over all of Israel but the people of Judah followed David. This was the first division of power between the people of Judah and all the other tribes of Israel.
Now with David as King of Judah, the stage was set to usher in an era of both good and bad kings for Israel and Judah. Israel is reunited again by David but divided again some 80 years later by the downfall of Solomon in his old age. In part three of this essay we’ll follow David, Solomon, and some of the reigning kings after them to find out how the people of Judah came to be called “Jews”.
What is a Jew? (Part III) An Essay by Royce Logan
What is a Jew? (Part III) An Essay by Royce Logan
In part one of this essay we learned that a “Hebrew” was anyone descended from the house of Eber. Eber was the great-grandfather of Abraham, removed four more times and the great-grandson of Shem, who was the son of Noah. In part two we saw how the Hebrews became slaves in Egypt, escaped under the leadership of Moses, and settled in the Promised Land as the 12 tribes of Israel. Although God tried to protect the Hebrew from bad kings by setting up a system of judges, the people whined and complained until God grew tired of them and allowed Saul from the tribe of Benjamin to be anointed the first king of Israel. After Saul’s death, we saw how Saul’s uncle, Abner, was the the real power in Israel and appointed Saul’s son, Ishbosheth, king of Israel. Ishobeth was an honorable man, according to David, but his future as king wasn’t very promising since he was not anointed by God. God anointed David from the tribe of Judah as the second anointed king. However, when we left part two of this essay, David had not yet unified Israel and was king of only the tribe of Judah.
David’s army of Judah warred against the house of Saul for more than seven years, but the people of Israel were sympathetic to David. There was much support for David to be king over all of Israel. Abner became angry at Ishbosheth for reprimanding him for sleeping with one of Saul’s concubines so Abner approached David and made an alliance promising to deliver all of Israel to him. Joab, a nephew of David, but also an overbearing captain in his army, killed Abner on his way home from Hebron in revenge for Abner killing his brother a few years before.
Now that Abner was dead, two brothers that were captains in Ishbosheth’s army believed that Israel would fall to David because Abner was the real power in the house of Saul. They beheaded Ishbosheth and took the head to David believing they would gain favor in whom they were sure would become king over all of Israel. David knew that Abner was the real power in the house of Saul and believed Ishbosheth to be a righteous man so he had the two captains executed.
Once all the sons of Saul were dead the elders from all the tribes of Israel came to Hebron and anointed David king over all of Israel. David was 30 years old at that time. He reigned as king of Judah for seven years and six months and, upon becoming king of all of Israel, he moved his base to Jerusalem and reigned over all of Israel for 33 years (II Samuel 5:5).
After David’s death, David’s son, Solomon, became king of Israel. Solomon was a wise and just king and was known for his wisdom throughout the land of Israel, Egypt, Moab and beyond. His fame was in all nations round about (I Kings 4:31). But, Solomon liked his women. In fact, he loved all 700 of his wives and his 300 concubines and he especially liked women from other nations. In his old age his wives began to turn his heart away from God and onto other gods that they worshipped. This angered God and God told Solomon that He was going to take away his kingdom. For David’s sake, whom God loved, God told Solomon he would not take the kingdom of Israel from Solomon but from his son, all except for one tribe, which, again, for David’s sake, he would allow Solomon’s son to keep. That nation, of course, was Judah.
Solomon saw that a young man named Jeroboam was valiant and industrious, so he gave him charge over the house of Joseph. But Jeroboam became an adversary of Solomon so Solomon sought to kill him. Jeroboam left Isreal and hid out in Egypt until the death of Solomon.
Rehoboam, son of Solomon, was to become king of all of Israel, but Jeroboam came with many Israelites to meet with Rehoboam and Rehoboam rejected them, so all the Israelites left and went north with Jeroboam to establish the one nation of Israel and the descendants of Judah stayed with Rehoboam and re-established the kingdom of Judah. So, Israel became split again between Judah and all the other tribes of Israel. But, Judah was a large area of land that was well populated because of the wealth and popularity of King David and King Solomon. Judah was, at least, equally as strong and powerful as all the rest of Israel.
Israel and Judah never again reunited. During these ancient times of the kings and the division of the Israelites into two nations, Israel and Judah, the people of Judah came to be called Jews to distinguish them from the Israelites. The first mention in the Bible we find of the word “Jews” is in II Kings 16:6 when the Bible tells us that Rezin, the king of Syria, recovered the city of Elath and drove the Jews out. Elath was a port city at the very northern tip of the Red Sea which was also on the southern border of Judah. From this time on, all through the kings to follow and the fall of Israel and Judah, the people of Judah were called Jews.
From the time of King David, God protected the tribe of Judah. Even when they turned from Him and followed other gods and did other evil things, God did everything He could to protect them. But the Jews kept losing sight of God’s promises for them. After Judah split from Israel for the last time, God began to raise up prophets to foretell the destiny of the Jews unless they would stop following other gods and trying to solve their problems by treaties with other nations. All God ever wanted was for the Hebrew people to put their trust in Him. When they did, they flourished and lived in peace, but, when they didn’t they were continually defeated and enslaved by other nations.
In 722 B.C. Israel was destroyed by the Assyrians and only Judah was left. In 612 Assyria fell and was replaced by the very powerful nation of Babylon. Judah became a state of Babylon but continued to rebel until 586 B.C. when King Nebuchadnezzar sacked Jerusalem after 18 months of war and took the survivors of Judah back to Babylon to be slaves. After 70 years of captivity, the Jews return to Jerusalem and rebuilt the temple. For the next 400 years the Jews were defeated by one nation after another until finally signing a treaty with the Romans in 160 B.C. Isreal basically remained independent for the next 100 years. Although subdued by the Romans, at least the Jews received some peace from their neighbors due to their treaty with Rome, but around 63 B.C. the Romans were no longer satisfied with just a treaty. The Rommans forcibly conquered Isreal and made them a state of the Roman Empire. Of course it was during the occupation of Jerusalem and the land of Judah by the Romans that Jesus was born.
If you look through history you can see how God did everything he could to protect the Hebrew. First, there was Adam and Eve. They and their offspring disappointed God and eventually He sent the Great Flood to destroy all of mankind except one righteous man and his family, Noah. In other words, He tried to start over with man. The Hebrew people did okay with God through the descendants of Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, but, due to famine, they were driven into the land of Egypt where they were eventually enslaved. God rose up another great leader, Moses, who led them to freedom and to the Promised Land. But, the people grumbled and complained. They weren’t satisfied with just their God, they wanted a king. God knew man was wicked and a king would just dominate His people so he arranged a system of judges so the Hebrew people would have a system of authority without a king. But this wasn’t good enough for the Hebrews. They still wanted a king. So, God gave them kings for some 500 years. Only David pleased God and He was also pleased with Solomon until the very end of his life and those years of David and Solomon’s reigns were the most peaceful and prosperous times the Hebrews ever knew.
During the years after Solomon of mostly bad kings, God rose up prophets to warn the Jews about their impending demise unless they stopped their evil ways and followed Him. But, again the Jews would not listen. Finally, Israel and Judah fell and the Jews were exiled from the Promise Land and for the next 400 years they were continually dominated by other nations until eventually signing a treaty with the Roman Empire simply for protection, even though they would have to become subordinate to the Romans to survive.
It almost seems that God gave up trying to give His people the free and easy life He promised to Adam and Eve, then to Moses and the three million Hebrews in the Promise Land, then to all of Israel under the reigns of David and Solomon. If He couldn’t save them from their own wickedness in their natural lives, He would send them a Savior to free them from their spiritual wickedness. So, He sent Jesus. Even then, the Jews thought Jesus was going to create a world power and free them from Roman domination, but, no, that was not why Jesus came to earth. Jesus came to reunite all the people of the world, not just the Jews or the Hebrews, but the Gentiles, and all of mankind by re-claiming what Adam and Eve had given to Satan; authority over sin and spiritual death. Jesus used His time on earth as a natural man to teach about the kingdom of God, but it was His spiritual victory on the cross that regained our rite, as children of God, to enter into the kingdom of God spiritually upon our natural death.
So, finally, “What is a Jew?” Well, in the natural a Jew is a descendant of the tribe of Judah, but later the term came to include all the tribes of Israel. However, because of the resurrection of Christ, we all became children of God; so, another way of looking at it is that we all became Jews in the spiritual sense of the word. The big difference between the Jews and all the rest of the world’s population during the time of the Old Testament was that the Gentiles never had all the opportunities to accept God as their king as the Hebrews had. But, in reality, do you really think the rest of the world would have done any better with those opportunities than the Jews did? Probably not.
In part one of this essay we learned that a “Hebrew” was anyone descended from the house of Eber. Eber was the great-grandfather of Abraham, removed four more times and the great-grandson of Shem, who was the son of Noah. In part two we saw how the Hebrews became slaves in Egypt, escaped under the leadership of Moses, and settled in the Promised Land as the 12 tribes of Israel. Although God tried to protect the Hebrew from bad kings by setting up a system of judges, the people whined and complained until God grew tired of them and allowed Saul from the tribe of Benjamin to be anointed the first king of Israel. After Saul’s death, we saw how Saul’s uncle, Abner, was the the real power in Israel and appointed Saul’s son, Ishbosheth, king of Israel. Ishobeth was an honorable man, according to David, but his future as king wasn’t very promising since he was not anointed by God. God anointed David from the tribe of Judah as the second anointed king. However, when we left part two of this essay, David had not yet unified Israel and was king of only the tribe of Judah.
David’s army of Judah warred against the house of Saul for more than seven years, but the people of Israel were sympathetic to David. There was much support for David to be king over all of Israel. Abner became angry at Ishbosheth for reprimanding him for sleeping with one of Saul’s concubines so Abner approached David and made an alliance promising to deliver all of Israel to him. Joab, a nephew of David, but also an overbearing captain in his army, killed Abner on his way home from Hebron in revenge for Abner killing his brother a few years before.
Now that Abner was dead, two brothers that were captains in Ishbosheth’s army believed that Israel would fall to David because Abner was the real power in the house of Saul. They beheaded Ishbosheth and took the head to David believing they would gain favor in whom they were sure would become king over all of Israel. David knew that Abner was the real power in the house of Saul and believed Ishbosheth to be a righteous man so he had the two captains executed.
Once all the sons of Saul were dead the elders from all the tribes of Israel came to Hebron and anointed David king over all of Israel. David was 30 years old at that time. He reigned as king of Judah for seven years and six months and, upon becoming king of all of Israel, he moved his base to Jerusalem and reigned over all of Israel for 33 years (II Samuel 5:5).
After David’s death, David’s son, Solomon, became king of Israel. Solomon was a wise and just king and was known for his wisdom throughout the land of Israel, Egypt, Moab and beyond. His fame was in all nations round about (I Kings 4:31). But, Solomon liked his women. In fact, he loved all 700 of his wives and his 300 concubines and he especially liked women from other nations. In his old age his wives began to turn his heart away from God and onto other gods that they worshipped. This angered God and God told Solomon that He was going to take away his kingdom. For David’s sake, whom God loved, God told Solomon he would not take the kingdom of Israel from Solomon but from his son, all except for one tribe, which, again, for David’s sake, he would allow Solomon’s son to keep. That nation, of course, was Judah.
Solomon saw that a young man named Jeroboam was valiant and industrious, so he gave him charge over the house of Joseph. But Jeroboam became an adversary of Solomon so Solomon sought to kill him. Jeroboam left Isreal and hid out in Egypt until the death of Solomon.
Rehoboam, son of Solomon, was to become king of all of Israel, but Jeroboam came with many Israelites to meet with Rehoboam and Rehoboam rejected them, so all the Israelites left and went north with Jeroboam to establish the one nation of Israel and the descendants of Judah stayed with Rehoboam and re-established the kingdom of Judah. So, Israel became split again between Judah and all the other tribes of Israel. But, Judah was a large area of land that was well populated because of the wealth and popularity of King David and King Solomon. Judah was, at least, equally as strong and powerful as all the rest of Israel.
Israel and Judah never again reunited. During these ancient times of the kings and the division of the Israelites into two nations, Israel and Judah, the people of Judah came to be called Jews to distinguish them from the Israelites. The first mention in the Bible we find of the word “Jews” is in II Kings 16:6 when the Bible tells us that Rezin, the king of Syria, recovered the city of Elath and drove the Jews out. Elath was a port city at the very northern tip of the Red Sea which was also on the southern border of Judah. From this time on, all through the kings to follow and the fall of Israel and Judah, the people of Judah were called Jews.
From the time of King David, God protected the tribe of Judah. Even when they turned from Him and followed other gods and did other evil things, God did everything He could to protect them. But the Jews kept losing sight of God’s promises for them. After Judah split from Israel for the last time, God began to raise up prophets to foretell the destiny of the Jews unless they would stop following other gods and trying to solve their problems by treaties with other nations. All God ever wanted was for the Hebrew people to put their trust in Him. When they did, they flourished and lived in peace, but, when they didn’t they were continually defeated and enslaved by other nations.
In 722 B.C. Israel was destroyed by the Assyrians and only Judah was left. In 612 Assyria fell and was replaced by the very powerful nation of Babylon. Judah became a state of Babylon but continued to rebel until 586 B.C. when King Nebuchadnezzar sacked Jerusalem after 18 months of war and took the survivors of Judah back to Babylon to be slaves. After 70 years of captivity, the Jews return to Jerusalem and rebuilt the temple. For the next 400 years the Jews were defeated by one nation after another until finally signing a treaty with the Romans in 160 B.C. Isreal basically remained independent for the next 100 years. Although subdued by the Romans, at least the Jews received some peace from their neighbors due to their treaty with Rome, but around 63 B.C. the Romans were no longer satisfied with just a treaty. The Rommans forcibly conquered Isreal and made them a state of the Roman Empire. Of course it was during the occupation of Jerusalem and the land of Judah by the Romans that Jesus was born.
If you look through history you can see how God did everything he could to protect the Hebrew. First, there was Adam and Eve. They and their offspring disappointed God and eventually He sent the Great Flood to destroy all of mankind except one righteous man and his family, Noah. In other words, He tried to start over with man. The Hebrew people did okay with God through the descendants of Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, but, due to famine, they were driven into the land of Egypt where they were eventually enslaved. God rose up another great leader, Moses, who led them to freedom and to the Promised Land. But, the people grumbled and complained. They weren’t satisfied with just their God, they wanted a king. God knew man was wicked and a king would just dominate His people so he arranged a system of judges so the Hebrew people would have a system of authority without a king. But this wasn’t good enough for the Hebrews. They still wanted a king. So, God gave them kings for some 500 years. Only David pleased God and He was also pleased with Solomon until the very end of his life and those years of David and Solomon’s reigns were the most peaceful and prosperous times the Hebrews ever knew.
During the years after Solomon of mostly bad kings, God rose up prophets to warn the Jews about their impending demise unless they stopped their evil ways and followed Him. But, again the Jews would not listen. Finally, Israel and Judah fell and the Jews were exiled from the Promise Land and for the next 400 years they were continually dominated by other nations until eventually signing a treaty with the Roman Empire simply for protection, even though they would have to become subordinate to the Romans to survive.
It almost seems that God gave up trying to give His people the free and easy life He promised to Adam and Eve, then to Moses and the three million Hebrews in the Promise Land, then to all of Israel under the reigns of David and Solomon. If He couldn’t save them from their own wickedness in their natural lives, He would send them a Savior to free them from their spiritual wickedness. So, He sent Jesus. Even then, the Jews thought Jesus was going to create a world power and free them from Roman domination, but, no, that was not why Jesus came to earth. Jesus came to reunite all the people of the world, not just the Jews or the Hebrews, but the Gentiles, and all of mankind by re-claiming what Adam and Eve had given to Satan; authority over sin and spiritual death. Jesus used His time on earth as a natural man to teach about the kingdom of God, but it was His spiritual victory on the cross that regained our rite, as children of God, to enter into the kingdom of God spiritually upon our natural death.
So, finally, “What is a Jew?” Well, in the natural a Jew is a descendant of the tribe of Judah, but later the term came to include all the tribes of Israel. However, because of the resurrection of Christ, we all became children of God; so, another way of looking at it is that we all became Jews in the spiritual sense of the word. The big difference between the Jews and all the rest of the world’s population during the time of the Old Testament was that the Gentiles never had all the opportunities to accept God as their king as the Hebrews had. But, in reality, do you really think the rest of the world would have done any better with those opportunities than the Jews did? Probably not.
When I die will I go to heaven?
When I die will I go to heaven?
Multiple Choice:
A. I don’t care.
B. I don’t know.
C. I don’t believe.
D. All the above.
A. I don’t care.
There’s just too much good stuff on this earth to give up.
It’s not about doing what you want. It’s about enjoying what you do.
B. I don’t know.
You believe in the wind because it smacks you in the face.
Someone ‘s smacking you in the face right now. Pay attention!
C. I don’t believe.
If you’re right and I’m wrong, nobody gets hurt.
But, if I’m right and you’re wrong, I get to spend eternity in a really, really nice place. You have to spend eternity in an agonizing hell.
A-gon-i-zing.
D. All the above.
Time’s almost up. It’s your choice.
Multiple Choice:
A. I don’t care.
B. I don’t know.
C. I don’t believe.
D. All the above.
A. I don’t care.
There’s just too much good stuff on this earth to give up.
It’s not about doing what you want. It’s about enjoying what you do.
B. I don’t know.
You believe in the wind because it smacks you in the face.
Someone ‘s smacking you in the face right now. Pay attention!
C. I don’t believe.
If you’re right and I’m wrong, nobody gets hurt.
But, if I’m right and you’re wrong, I get to spend eternity in a really, really nice place. You have to spend eternity in an agonizing hell.
A-gon-i-zing.
D. All the above.
Time’s almost up. It’s your choice.
Ol' Henry
Ol’ Henry
by Royce Logan
Abner pulled his head off the soft warm pillow. The air was cold as consciousness poured back into his memory. October… Sunday… church today…chickens…milk the cow…bring in some wood…Ol’ Henry!
The cold didn’t matter anymore! Abner recalled staring down the dusty dirt road the day before when he caught his first glimpse of big Ol’ Henry struttin’ alongside his father. He couldn’t even see the short piece of dingy rope loosely tossed round Ol’ Henry’s neck. It was as if Henry was just out for a stroll and his father just happened to be taggin’ along.
His feet were on the floor before he even finished the thought not noticing how cold the pine wood floors are in Montana this time of year. Being Sunday, he knew he was the first one up ‘cept for the sun peeking over the trees.
His father promised him he could ride Ol’ Henry after church today, long as he got all his chores done before.
It didn’t take a minute for Abner to pull on his trousers and the woolen shirt his momma had made him. A pair of warm socks and a jump in his boots and he was out the front door and scurrying across the scruffy brown grass to the barn.
Henry was massive. A huge brown beast! Abner had almost forgotten how monstrous Ol’ Henry was. His daddy let him name him. Ol’ Henry just sounded like a big name to him. No particular reason why.
“Good mornin’ Henry.”
To a lad of seven or eight years a new horse or a new cow in the remoteness of a Montana farm is, after all, like finding a new friend.
Ol’ Henry’s ears were standing straight up as if he could understand every word a little boy might say.
“You are a handsome horse,” Abner reassured Ol’ Henry as he surveyed his bulging shoulders that shimmered in the early morning sun creeping through the open barn door. Ol’ Henry barely flinched as Abner reached up slowly to brush the short soft hair at the end of Ol’ Henry’s long brown face.
“We’re gonna’ be good friends, you and me. Ain’t we Henry?” Abner looked into Ol’ Henry’s big black eyes almost as if he was expecting some kind of answer.
Ol’ Henry let out a snort and bobbed his head, startling Abner for a few seconds until he realized that Ol’ Henry was just agreeing with him.
Like any little boy, Abner just wanted to climb up on Ol’ Henry and go racing off across the east meadow in search of the next adventure that lies beyond the distant tree line he could envision from his memory. It wasn’t long before he had drifted into his own story of cougars and bears, Indians, and bad men who seemed to want to confront him for no particular reason at all. Just because he was there. But, Ol’ Henry was a fast and powerful horse that could outrun, outfight, and out intimidate any other horse alive and Abner drew his strength from his powerful steed.
“Abner! Where are you?”
“Uh-oh. Mamma’s callin’.” Abner suddenly jerked back into the chilly October morning. Chickens… milk…wood… Sunday mornin’!
“I gotta hurry now, Henry, or you and me’s is just gonna’ be lookin’ at each other all day.”
“Abner!” This time the call was not quite as shrieking but certainly more stern.
“Be there in a minute, ma!” Abner whooped out with a little boy’s bellow that startled even Ol’ Henry.
Funny how a few chores can take just a few minutes some days and all mornin’ others.
by Royce Logan
Abner pulled his head off the soft warm pillow. The air was cold as consciousness poured back into his memory. October… Sunday… church today…chickens…milk the cow…bring in some wood…Ol’ Henry!
The cold didn’t matter anymore! Abner recalled staring down the dusty dirt road the day before when he caught his first glimpse of big Ol’ Henry struttin’ alongside his father. He couldn’t even see the short piece of dingy rope loosely tossed round Ol’ Henry’s neck. It was as if Henry was just out for a stroll and his father just happened to be taggin’ along.
His feet were on the floor before he even finished the thought not noticing how cold the pine wood floors are in Montana this time of year. Being Sunday, he knew he was the first one up ‘cept for the sun peeking over the trees.
His father promised him he could ride Ol’ Henry after church today, long as he got all his chores done before.
It didn’t take a minute for Abner to pull on his trousers and the woolen shirt his momma had made him. A pair of warm socks and a jump in his boots and he was out the front door and scurrying across the scruffy brown grass to the barn.
Henry was massive. A huge brown beast! Abner had almost forgotten how monstrous Ol’ Henry was. His daddy let him name him. Ol’ Henry just sounded like a big name to him. No particular reason why.
“Good mornin’ Henry.”
To a lad of seven or eight years a new horse or a new cow in the remoteness of a Montana farm is, after all, like finding a new friend.
Ol’ Henry’s ears were standing straight up as if he could understand every word a little boy might say.
“You are a handsome horse,” Abner reassured Ol’ Henry as he surveyed his bulging shoulders that shimmered in the early morning sun creeping through the open barn door. Ol’ Henry barely flinched as Abner reached up slowly to brush the short soft hair at the end of Ol’ Henry’s long brown face.
“We’re gonna’ be good friends, you and me. Ain’t we Henry?” Abner looked into Ol’ Henry’s big black eyes almost as if he was expecting some kind of answer.
Ol’ Henry let out a snort and bobbed his head, startling Abner for a few seconds until he realized that Ol’ Henry was just agreeing with him.
Like any little boy, Abner just wanted to climb up on Ol’ Henry and go racing off across the east meadow in search of the next adventure that lies beyond the distant tree line he could envision from his memory. It wasn’t long before he had drifted into his own story of cougars and bears, Indians, and bad men who seemed to want to confront him for no particular reason at all. Just because he was there. But, Ol’ Henry was a fast and powerful horse that could outrun, outfight, and out intimidate any other horse alive and Abner drew his strength from his powerful steed.
“Abner! Where are you?”
“Uh-oh. Mamma’s callin’.” Abner suddenly jerked back into the chilly October morning. Chickens… milk…wood… Sunday mornin’!
“I gotta hurry now, Henry, or you and me’s is just gonna’ be lookin’ at each other all day.”
“Abner!” This time the call was not quite as shrieking but certainly more stern.
“Be there in a minute, ma!” Abner whooped out with a little boy’s bellow that startled even Ol’ Henry.
Funny how a few chores can take just a few minutes some days and all mornin’ others.
A Quiet Day In Heaven
A Quiet Day in Heaven
by Royce Logan
Bam! It was like I stuck my finger in a light socket. But, then, in the same way, almost immediately, it was over. In fact, it was over so fast I don’t even remember any pain. I just remember leaving it all behind and I didn’t care. It was all just a mangled mess of steel and rubber under a cloud of smoke and steam.
In an instant I was outside the gates of heaven. It was every bit as beautiful as I had imagined, except for one thing. Although I could hear singing a far off inside the gates, the people walking towards me were silent. Their mouths were open but nothing was coming out. I thought it strange. They looked like a welcoming committee, but they were so quiet. Not what I expected.
The first person I recognized was this kid I remembered from second grade. He was quite the bully back then and I really didn’t like him very much. His name was Dwayne and he seemed to have a mission to make everybody else around him miserable just because he was a couple inches taller than the rest of us. Dwayne always had two or three of his cronies around him that would laugh at everything he said or did. Like when he’d grab one of us by the wrist and twist.
Oh, they thought that was funny.
He moved away before the end of the year and I remember finding out later that he had failed first grade in another state before moving to our town. That’s why he was bigger than the rest of us. Also, he lived with his mother and aunt and two or three older sisters. He didn’t have a father. After that I felt sorry for him.
But, there he was: walking right towards me on the streets of gold. I couldn’t believe a bully like Dwayne was here with me in heaven.
Next, I saw this nasty woman who lived in the apartment next to me in the first place I rented. That was even before I was married. Mrs. Whitney was her name I think. She complained about everything from the sound level of my radio in the morning to where I parked my car.
Once she accused me of taking her mail. I tried to be cordial to her up until that point, but that burnt my toast and I snapped at her a bit.
“Why would I want your mail?” I demanded of her.
That’s when she backed down a little and tried to make it sound more like she wasn’t saying that I took her mail, but she just wanted to know if I had seen her mail.
I didn’t live there very long but I found out years later that she had lost a child in some sort of accident long before I knew her and that her husband had run off and he wasn’t of a very good sort anyway and he left her to struggle alone all those years.
After that I always felt bad about snapping at her.
“Mrs. Whitney,” I mumbled, still too far away for anyone to hear me. She too, was quiet like the rest of them. Something just didn’t seem right.
Finally I saw my grandpa! He certainly wasn’t someone I expected to see in heaven, but I was glad to see anyone from the family!
Grandpa was a mean and vile man never much good to anyone, but my grandma was a church-goin’, hymn-singin’ and prayin’ Christian all her life and she told me that my grandfather accepted Jesus into his heart on his deathbed. I wasn’t quite sure I believed it.
But, there he was: coming right at me from the pearly gates of heaven. It was a wonder to behold.
“Grandpa!” I cried out with excitement.
The crowd of people I had known through-out my life circled around me still quiet and seemingly in awe.
My grandpa hugged me. Something I can never remember him doing before.
“Grandpa, I know all these people,” I whispered to my grandpa. “I just never would have expected to see them here in heaven.”
“Ah, hush, hush, my son,” my grandpa comforted me, “for they are as awed as you.”
“You see, my son,” my grandpa continued, “they’re surprised to see you too!”
by Royce Logan
Bam! It was like I stuck my finger in a light socket. But, then, in the same way, almost immediately, it was over. In fact, it was over so fast I don’t even remember any pain. I just remember leaving it all behind and I didn’t care. It was all just a mangled mess of steel and rubber under a cloud of smoke and steam.
In an instant I was outside the gates of heaven. It was every bit as beautiful as I had imagined, except for one thing. Although I could hear singing a far off inside the gates, the people walking towards me were silent. Their mouths were open but nothing was coming out. I thought it strange. They looked like a welcoming committee, but they were so quiet. Not what I expected.
The first person I recognized was this kid I remembered from second grade. He was quite the bully back then and I really didn’t like him very much. His name was Dwayne and he seemed to have a mission to make everybody else around him miserable just because he was a couple inches taller than the rest of us. Dwayne always had two or three of his cronies around him that would laugh at everything he said or did. Like when he’d grab one of us by the wrist and twist.
Oh, they thought that was funny.
He moved away before the end of the year and I remember finding out later that he had failed first grade in another state before moving to our town. That’s why he was bigger than the rest of us. Also, he lived with his mother and aunt and two or three older sisters. He didn’t have a father. After that I felt sorry for him.
But, there he was: walking right towards me on the streets of gold. I couldn’t believe a bully like Dwayne was here with me in heaven.
Next, I saw this nasty woman who lived in the apartment next to me in the first place I rented. That was even before I was married. Mrs. Whitney was her name I think. She complained about everything from the sound level of my radio in the morning to where I parked my car.
Once she accused me of taking her mail. I tried to be cordial to her up until that point, but that burnt my toast and I snapped at her a bit.
“Why would I want your mail?” I demanded of her.
That’s when she backed down a little and tried to make it sound more like she wasn’t saying that I took her mail, but she just wanted to know if I had seen her mail.
I didn’t live there very long but I found out years later that she had lost a child in some sort of accident long before I knew her and that her husband had run off and he wasn’t of a very good sort anyway and he left her to struggle alone all those years.
After that I always felt bad about snapping at her.
“Mrs. Whitney,” I mumbled, still too far away for anyone to hear me. She too, was quiet like the rest of them. Something just didn’t seem right.
Finally I saw my grandpa! He certainly wasn’t someone I expected to see in heaven, but I was glad to see anyone from the family!
Grandpa was a mean and vile man never much good to anyone, but my grandma was a church-goin’, hymn-singin’ and prayin’ Christian all her life and she told me that my grandfather accepted Jesus into his heart on his deathbed. I wasn’t quite sure I believed it.
But, there he was: coming right at me from the pearly gates of heaven. It was a wonder to behold.
“Grandpa!” I cried out with excitement.
The crowd of people I had known through-out my life circled around me still quiet and seemingly in awe.
My grandpa hugged me. Something I can never remember him doing before.
“Grandpa, I know all these people,” I whispered to my grandpa. “I just never would have expected to see them here in heaven.”
“Ah, hush, hush, my son,” my grandpa comforted me, “for they are as awed as you.”
“You see, my son,” my grandpa continued, “they’re surprised to see you too!”
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