Faithful Writers

Recognition. Reward. At least a little celebration. But it didn’t come. Instead, I watched people walk away from the church, come back, and get welcomed like heroes. I clapped on the outside. But inside, I was thinking: Really? That’s it? Just throw them a party and move on?

Some allude that God could have used many ways to save humankind that were less barbaric; that He just preferred blood! He did it for His own pleasure and entertainment — much like the gods of Olympus, He used humans for entertainment to amuse His boredom of eternity.

The loving Jesus you follow, and cling to certain teachings of, said this about the Old Testament: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” Matthew 5:17

When the Disciples couldn’t cast out the demon, Mark 9:14–32, Jesus demonstrated that the way life is lived between prayer sessions is much more important than the eloquence of the prayers spoken — after all, He knows what you’re about to say before you do.

Let’s start here: Shame is a liar. It doesn’t convict you, it crushes you. And that’s not how God works. When we mess up, it’s easy to believe the voice that says we’ve crossed some invisible line God won’t forgive. But that voice isn’t God. That’s fear. That’s toxic religion.

Revelation 20 seems an outlier among the Scripture narratives but, this is not unusual in Scripture as some of the most loaded messages with tremendous implications are very short.

I’m here right now telling you I am alive in Christ. I feel peace and confidence that God’s got this. This storm will pass, and when it does, I’ll be standing on firm ground with God at my side, because how can I not possibly believe after everything I have been through and survived?

Repainting a masterpiece ruins it. Rewriting the Bible does the same. Truth doesn’t need edits—it needs faith and obedience.

The underlying theme of Genesis is about the overcoming of all odds to achieve ultimate victory through faith in God. Think about it. God chooses one childless and elderly couple way beyond their ability to bear children. And God says to the husband Abraham that not only is he going to have a child but He is going to make him into a great nation, bless him abundantly and grant his descendants the Land of Canaan.

We can see throughout the book of Genesis that God’s interventions are at their most intense during the early stages of mankind’s history and gradually take a backseat as His creation matures.

Here is something a lot of people don’t know. Jesus Himself quoted from the Septuagint. This translation was done in the third century B.C. by Jewish scribes who were experts in Hebrew and Greek.

So have you ever heard this argument? “How could God have created the universe in just six days?” “The Hebrews claim that by counting the generations we find the earth to be approximately six thousand years old.”

There is a logical symmetry behind His actions clearly reflected in His creation. He is a God who draws up boundaries that are NOT to be broken. Let’s take a look at the creation story in Genesis Chapter One.

It doesn’t need a glow-up, a rebrand, or wrapped in skinny jeans or delivered by someone with a TikTok following and a smoke machine. What it needs is a person bold enough to live it out with honesty and imagination.

Since we are talking about the one true God of Israel, why is the plural form of God being used, instead of the singular form, which is EL? The answer is that the IM ending in Hebrew also has another usage. Adding IM to the end of a word can also indicate greatness.

My answer: If you knew the original Hebrew, you wouldn’t have that problem. In verses 3 and 4, the Hebrew word for “light” is OWR.

Today I would like to explore its opposite, the word CHOSEK. The dictionary defines this word as darkness or obscurity and as with owr also has strong spiritual significance but in a very negative sense.

God achieves His purposes through division and separation. This is a fundamental God principle and can be seen in the very first Chapter of Genesis. “God saw that the light was good, and God divided the light from the darkness.”-GENESIS 1:4

The important point that I want you to get from all of this is to keep in mind that there is an underlying spiritual reality and message behind not only physical objects in Scripture but also, many of the events depicted in Scripture that are not evident when first read but become clearer through prayer and as God gives us a deeper understanding.

The problem with this explanation is that it still does not explain how the market days happened to cluster around every “seventh” day, instead of every fifteenth day or nineteenth day or something else.

In some mysterious way, this number has left an indelible impression on the world and mankind. Our planet has seven continents and seven seas. The rainbow only has seven colors. The entire musical scale consists of only 7 notes. In popular culture, we have Snow White and the 7 Dwarves, The 7 Samurai, and James Bond 007.

In the Genesis account, most people assume the first human created was a male. However, the Scripture isn’t so crystal clear on this point. Let’s take a good look at the text.

The word Adam is also the root word for the color “red” and for the word “soil” or “earth." This makes perfect sense since the Scriptures tell us that God created a human (remember not a “man” but a “human”) from the dust of the ground.

But imagine watching a historical piece or a detective movie from the halfway point. Contextually speaking, you would be completely lost. This is the exact problem one encounters when reading the Bible starting from the New Testament.