Doctrine

Why does God multiply sorrow in childbirth?

Doctrine, Salvation / /

Sorrow in Childbirth is often counted as a punishment for Adam’s wife for disobeying the commandment not to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. But the punishment was death. That was promised ahead of time and fully came upon the woman, Adam and all his descendants.

Was it a curse like God put on the serpent and on the earth? God did not call it a curse, apparently because it was not a curse. Surely God had a good reason for this. I had thought for some time that other things might have made more sense—like maybe making the woman allergic to that specific fruit or something like that.

I looked everywhere I could think of to find the reason God to assigned sorrow in childbirth. I looked in commentaries in libraries and bookstores. I looked in religious encyclopedias. This was long before there was internet. But there were Bibles with explanatory notes, so I looked through every one of those I could find. I saw no satisfactory answer until one morning God showed me the answer in my Bible reading. And God’s answer, which I have written in the theology slides Sorrow in Childbirth, is far above anything I could have imagined.

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When Does a Human Body Get a Soul?

Doctrine / /

This has been an issue for a long time. But the Bible is really very clear about when a body gets a soul. I did not believe this for years and held on to a number of verses that seem to give basis to argue otherwise. But I am now convinced the Bible is consistent throughout. These slides, Body Gets a Soul, examine this issue carefully.

From the very beginning God stated that He made a body for a man and breathed into that body a breath of life to make man a living soul. There is no reason to believe God does otherwise with bodies that are formed through conception and birth. Every body gets a soul when God breathes into it a breath of life; and that occurs when a baby first breathes. There are verses that state this quite clearly. And verses to which one may appeal in order to argue otherwise are easily explained in light of this truth.

That unborn babies do not yet have souls surely has implications for the acceptability or unacceptability of abortion. What is very evident is that a human body, except for (independent) life itself, fully determines the nature of the soul associated with it. Furthermore, it is God that fully controls the body as it forms. So any attack upon the body as it forms in the womb, is an attack against the purposes of God and against a person to be fully formed in God’s image.

For discussion of these matters see the slides: Body Gets a Soul

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What Can We Know about the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil?

Doctrine / /

The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden had a fruit forbidden to Adam and Eve on threat of death for eating it. They both ate of it and died. We understand their spirits within them died immediately, but their bodies did not die for many years. In Adam’s case he lived physically for nine hundred thirty years before he died. Their souls were condemned to die in ultimate separation from God in the Lake of Fire and Brimstone. Jesus Christ, having taken on the likeness of sinful flesh, has taken the condemnation of death upon Himself for all who will accept that sacrifice of Himself.

Fruit and Death

Theologians generally believe that it was not the forbidden fruit itself that caused death. They teach that it was the act of disobeying God that gave them experiential knowledge of good of good and evil and thus made them sinners. I believed this for years. But how is it that sin and death passed on to all of Adam descendants “who had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression”? The evidence strongly suggests that sin and death has passed onto Adam’s descendants genetically. And if that is through physical, genetic change(s), then almost surely the physical fruit had a physical, biological effect upon Adam which was then passed on genetically to all descendants.

After Adam had sinned, God was very concerned to keep them from eating from the tree of life. That tree God will place on earth again in the new earth. But what about the forbidden tree? There was apparently no continuing reason to keep man from that. So is it still growing on earth? Of all the kinds of fruit on earth, Scripture only singles out one fruit with various prohibitions and warnings. That surely makes it a candidate as the once (and now sometimes) forbidden fruit.

Blood and Sin

Furthermore, Scripture sets forth a strong relationship between blood and sin. Blood is the life of the flesh in which sin dwells. It is only blood that can atone for sin, but only blood that is not itself contaminated with sin. Scripture also sets forth a strong relationship between blood and juice from the fruit that is singled out as dangerous. There are too many clues in Scripture about what happened when Adam ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil for us to be ignorant concerning that. These slides, The Blood of the Grape, systematically examine those Scriptural clues and make logical deductions for the purpose of setting forth doctrine that matches the Scriptural evidence.

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Baptism: an Overview

Doctrine, Salvation / /

Years ago when I had learned that baptism by immersion symbolizes the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ, I tried to understand why baptism is in water. Scripture and common sense both clearly indicate that a simple immersion in water does not cleanse externally or internally. It cannot even be symbolic of cleansing.  Cleansing from sin is by the blood of Jesus Christ, and that is surely not applied while one is in the grave. When I saw a clear argument from Scripture concerning the meaning of the water just last summer, I decided to document it in a set of PowerPoint slides.

While I was well into that, I saw an internet blog speculating on where the water baptism used by John the Baptist came from. I thought surely the Scripture would give some clarification on that. And it surely does. So I added more slides about that.

My pastor then suggested I add in some slides about transliteration of the Greek words for baptize and baptism. Then if I would also talk about “saved by water”, I could teach an adult Sunday School class about baptism. By the time I had added discussions about John the Baptist, about Jesus’ baptism, about Holy Ghost baptism and baptism by fire, there was material for several lessons. And even as I was trying to organize all that material into a single set of slides for this website, I was presented with arguments for trine and face-forward immersions. To organize my thoughts about that I wrote more slides. And since they contributed to my understanding about baptism, I decided to add them as well.

So these Baptism slides are extensive. I would not have expected that there would be so much to say, when I started. And there is surely more that could be said. In fact, even as you consider this discussion, you may wonder why I did not comment on other things that may come to mind. My philosophy here has been not to examine the many false doctrines about baptism (except where doing so is clarifying), but to systematically establish Scriptural doctrine.

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The New Testament Is Not the New Covenant

Doctrine / /

The New Testament is not the New Covenant. To make the New Testament equal to the New Covenant is to deny God’s promises to Israel. When Balaam, with Balak’s encouragement, attempted to undermine God’s promises to Israel, God told him, “God is not man that he should lie; neither the son of man that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?”  Any hermeneutic that argues that God will go back on His literal promises to Israel is a hermeneutic that starts by calling God a liar. Rather, “…let God be true and every man a liar.”

None of the New Testament Scriptures indicate that God will fail to fulfill His promises in the Old Testament covenants. In fact the New Testament writers quote the Old Testament Scriptures as words of God not to be questioned. What God has promised He will do. And He will do it exactly as He has promised it.

God has said specifically that He will establish the new covenant with Israel. Paul says He will do that when the Deliverer will return to Israel. That obviously has not happened yet. Jesus instituted the new testament in His blood at His crucifixion. That has happened. The new testament and the new covenant are quite different. It is confusing that Greek New Testament Scriptures cannot distinguish these two concepts by different Greek words. But God has refined His words according to Psalm 12:6. Those refined words preserved for us in the King James Version have sorted out these concepts for us, so we can easily see how all of God’s promises to Israel will be fulfilled without modification.

Tribulation saints will be on earth after the Church has gone to heaven and before the new covenant is instituted at the start of the Kingdom. The discussion of the already established new testament and the coming new covenant in the Epistle to the Hebrews will be especially useful to them. They will need the information there about salvation and covenants to know how to live for God at that time.

See slides: The New Testament is not the New Covenant for a Scriptural explanation of these things.

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The Love of God

Doctrine / /

The Love of God is badly misunderstood by many. God is love. God does not need created beings to manifest love. So love is an independent attribute of God. Since God is a trinity, He manifests love between persons of the trinity. God’s independent love is as eternal as God Himself.

God’s love for His creation is a dependent love. It depends upon there being created beings. Dependent love is necessarily a lesser love. God manifests his love for fallen humanity through the sacrificial death of His son. Each person in this Church Age who accepts that death for himself is placed by the Holy Spirit into Jesus Christ. In this way he enters into the eternal love of God. Those who reject the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ for them, reject God’s love, and remain under God’s eternal wrath. God’s love for sinners, as great and as deep as it is for living sinners, is no longer extended to those who die before accepting it. That love is necessarily temporary.

If there were not two levels of love, then God’s love for sinners would be equivalent to God’s eternal love. And that would lead to one of two heresies. (1) If God will love forever every person to whom He extends love (everyone), then there would be universal salvation. (2) If God does eternally love some and not others, then He must never love some. That would be limited atonement. The slides, The Love of God slides document the differences in the two levels of love through New Testament Scriptures.

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The Lake of Fire and Brimstone

Doctrine / /

I am sorry to say the Lake of Fire and Brimstone will be the future for multitudes –past, present and future– living on this earth.  It is prophesied by God though His prophets and apostles. There is sufficient Scripture about the Lake of Fire and Brimstone to tell us a lot about it.

photo of brown owl
Screech Owl

We are aware that God rained fire and brimstone upon the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to completely destroy them, even though we do not see clear evidence of fire and brimstone there today. According to Scripture God will again rain fire and brimstone onto this earth in judgment. That will produce a lake of fire and brimstone that will be evident to earth’s inhabitants for the full one thousand years of the coming Millennium. And it will continue onto the new earth even after this present earth has been burned up.

The Lake of Fire and Brimstone will be on the earth where earth’s residents will be able to go and view both it and those in it. In these slides, Lake of Fire and Brimstone, we will explore where it will be, how it will get there, what it will look like to observers, and who will be in it.

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Satan: His Beginning and End

Doctrine / /
volcano, lava, iceland-7396466.jpg

That Satan was an archangel or the highest ranking angel is a common misconception. It is often stated just this way in church doctrinal statements. But in the KJV the beast called Satan is said to have been a cherub above the throne of God. He was a fifth cherub, the one representing before God the class of reptiles. As such he was the serpent, the most subtle of all the beasts of the field.

In the very chapter where Paul tells us the serpent deceived the woman, he tells us Satan deceives by transforming himself into an angel of light. Theses slides, Satan: His Beginning and End, deal with where he came from and where he will end up. They are not a study of his methods and practices.

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Show us a Sign from Heaven

Doctrine / /

When Pharisees and Sadducees asked Jesus to show them a sign from heaven, He mentioned signs that He had already put in the heavens. But he accused them of being too hypocritical to recognize those signs already given as signs from God.

It is evident from Scripture that God put the red sunset and red sunrise as signs in the heavens pointing to Jesus Christ. Physically we see these as signs for the weather. We say: Red at night, sailors delight; red in the morning, sailors take warning. If we would see them as signs from God, we would say: Red at night, sinners delight; red in the morning, sinners take warning. The slides, Signs in the Sky, document this from verses throughout the Bible and establish how the Pharisees and Sadducees should have been able to recognize this.

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Identify God’s Infallible Words

Doctrine / /

God promised us that He will teach us doctrine Himself if we believe His words above all others. So His words surely are worth having. But this would be an empty promise if He did not preserve His words for us. Indeed, He has promised that they will be available forever. With God’s help we can surely identify those words.

Scholars deny such words exist.

Scholars have denied that God’s infallible words are available. By defining inspiration in such a way that it can only apply to original autographs of Scripture, they affirm that will be no Scripture, written words of God, available to man until those original autographs can be found and/or reproduced. Although there are multitudes of manuscripts of Scripture available, they do not fully agree with each other. So the scholars argue we can only approximately know God’s infallible words. Which means we must believe the words of scholars to tell us what words we can believe, and which are uncertain. Words derived in this way are certainly not what God has promised us.

God has purified His Words.

There is nothing in the manuscripts we have that indicates that piecing together original autographs is the appropriate way to identify God’s infallible words. In fact, God has promised He will preserve His words through purification. God has moved on from original autographs. He now uses words He has purified as silver in a furnace of earth. We will not be able to identify those refined words from original manuscripts, which are not available anyhow. Jesus Christ, who is called the Word of God Himself, told those demanding to know who He was that according to their Scriptures the truth of a matter could be determined by two or three witnesses. So in these slides, Identifying the Words of God, we will use two witnesses to identify the true words of God. Then we will trust God to teach us doctrine through those words.

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