God is Worthy to be Praised.

Praise to God

The Lord is the Great God.

It is He who reigns,

Over all we see,

Each and every day.

He is the Great I AM,

The one who calmed the raging sea.

He gave the blind back their site,

He set the captives free.

He is the God of Abraham,

Showing mercy unto all.

He is the God of Israel,

Offering forgiveness to the world.

The Lord is our Savior,

Our Great Redeemer is He.

He sacrificed it all,

To give hope to you and me.

He is our Great Advocate.

He Stands in the Most Holy Place,

Making intercession for us,

So we can one day see His face.

The Lord is our Shelter,

Shielding us from the tempest.

A very present help,

He saves us from the wicked.

He is our Best Friend,

A comforter of the weak.

He lifts up the down trodden,

And blesses the meek.

The Lord is the  Great Shepherd.

He knows us each by name.

He protects from the wolves,

And saves us from the flame.

My God, my Savior.

You are everything to me.

You are worthy to be praised.

I live to love only thee.

By Gabriel Taylor

On April 24, 2012.

Love Your Neighbor

In Matthew 22, we find where a lawyer asked Jesus a question. Trying to tempt Jesus, he asked, "What is the greatest commandment?" Jesus responded with, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."

 Who is your neighbor? Who is my neighbor? In Luke 10 we find the parable of the Good Samaritan. A man was taking a trip. When all of a sudden, he was ambushed. Beaten within an inch of his life, he was left for dead. Two prominent Jewish individuals walked by him, sidestepping him. The third guy was a Samaritan.

In those years, Jews and Samaritans were not exactly the best of friends. They hated each other. But this Samaritan in particular didn't fit the stereotype. He saw the man who was near death and took pity on him. He loved him like Jesus does, even though he didn't know him from Adam.

Like a true Christian, the Samaritan took him, cared for him, and when he couldn't, he put him in an inn and payed for someone else to take care of him till he could return and resume the care-taking himself.

So who did what was right? Do you find it ironic that it was the man who, by society's standards, was supposed to hate the injured man? I certainly do.

A while back, I wrote a couple of blog posts on homosexuality; an Old Testament perspective and a New Testament perspective. But what I kept putting off was writing how we should treat folks who are different from what society deems as "normal."

I watched a video by a man who has cerebral palsy. It was a video response to a blog post on the issue of treating those considered different. When he mentioned he did a presentation on living as a gay man with a disability, I am ashamed to say my attitude changed. Then Jesus said something to me.

"Why did your attitude change? You are called to love everyone."

Love God first above everyone else. Love your neighbor as yourself. Why am I scared to love those who are different from me? What is so hard about it?

How are we supposed to win people to Christianity when we don't treat them as Jesus did and still does? I wonder what kind of things Jesus would do and say if His earthly ministry was in 2012, instead of nearly 2,000 years ago.

We are called to love everyone. Jesus died for ALL of us. Not just some. We aren't called to condone sin, but we are called to love. Love like Jesus. Because when Jesus loves, it's an irresistible love.

Watch the Lamb

Here are a few videos for this Happy Resurrection Day. "He is not here: for he is risen, as he said." Matthew 28:6.

Evangelism

I first felt the call to ministry in the 9th grade. In the 9th grade we were given a project. What do you want to do for life and do you plan to retire? I began thinking about this. My dad works with computers for a living. His degree is in computer science. So I thought maybe that's what I wanted to do. But I got a deep impression. "Be an evangelist." I thought about a few other occupations. But every time I got the same impression. "Be an evangelist."

So I went to school for Theology. I got my B.A. in said degree with a minor in Biblical Languages. Towards the end of my schooling, I had to write a philosophy of pastoral ministry as an assignment for a class. And so I did. A very good friend mentioned to me that I would make a good counselor. In my philosophy, I wrote that I wanted to get a master's in counseling so I could counsel the members of a church I may pastor someday.

As a consequence the staff of the college I went to felt that I was not 100% for pastoral ministry. And because of that, I was not allowed to interview with the conference presidents when they came down to interview the soon to be Theology graduates. Please keep in mind that I don't tell you this to get back at them. That is why I won't mention where I went to school.

For a while I would get upset and even bitter when I thought of it. But this next quarter of the year, our Seventh-day Adventist Sabbath School lesson is on evangelism and witnessing. And God made me realize something.

I don't need to be taking a paycheck from the church to be in the ministry. I don't need to be hired to be an evangelist or a pastor. If God has called you to be a pastor, you are a pastor. If God has called you to be an evangelist, you are an evangelist. Whatever He calls you to be, you don't need anyone else to agree with God's calling for you. If He says you are called, you are called. And we are all called to reach out to those around us with the love of Jesus.

I don't get upset anymore. I'm no longer bitter about it. God has something in store for me. 

Check this out.

Ephesians 4:11 says, "And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers;"

 Check out the different meanings for "evangelist." Awesome. I will try to write more on evangelism as we go through this quarter of Sabbath School lessons on this subject.

For now, I leave you with this thought. If God calls you to something, do it. It may be that He wants you to do it in a way that is out of the norm.

The Woman Caught in Adultery

John 8:1-11 is an awesome story. It's about the woman caught in adultery. Read it by clicking here. I was thinking yesterday about this story. And God brought to my attention something. In this story, we find Jesus does 3 things for us. He loves us. He defends us. He forgives us.

He loves us despite past mistakes. You can have a checkered past. Jesus loves you anyway. This was the woman caught in adultery. She was a prostitute. Not only that, but she was possessed 7 times. But He didn't send her away. He didn't tell them to stone her. He loved her anyway. Seven times Jesus freed her from demonic control. And as a result, she gave Him her life. She was the first to see Jesus after His resurrection. What wondrous love! What matchless love! A woman with a history like hers, and He still loved her anyway.

Not only does Jesus love us despite our mistakes, He defends us. Here the crowd of scribes and pharisees were, trying to get Jesus to make a decision (so they could trap Him). But He didn't say a word. He just bent down. Some might wonder how not saying anything counts as defending her. But if He would have said to stone her, He wouldn't be the loving Son of God He claimed to be. If He said to let her go, He wouldn't be following the Mosaic law. So He just bent down and starting writing in the sand.

But they kept pestering Him. So He got up and said, "He who is without sin, let him cast the first stone." I can imagine the woman must have cringed. After all, it was a crowd of self righteous people accusing her. But that didn't happen. The accusers went away. One by one. Oldest first, down to the youngest. He defended this woman. Notice that He did not defend her sin. But He did defend her life.

He loves us anyway, and defends us.

Lastly, He forgives us. And not only does He forgive us, He tells us to stop sinning. He asked the woman where her accusers went and if anyone condemned her. She noticed that they left and said, "No one, Lord." Then Jesus told her to stop sinning. Jesus never asks us to do something without giving us the strength to do it. But don't  be fooled. Neither you nor I can do a thing without Christ. But if we have a relationship with Jesus, then, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." - Philippians 4:13.

The State of the Dead

Ecclesiastes 9:5, NKJV:

"For the living know that they will die;
But the dead know nothing,
And they have no more reward,
For the memory of them is forgotten"

Most Christians tend to believe that there is life after death. I, however, do not. Most believe that you go either to Heaven or to Hell when you die. I don't believe this. I have found no Biblical evidence to support this claim. However, I have found plenty of evidence for the opposite.

But let's compare how most Christians believe in life after death with how ancient cultures taught life after death. Most ancient cultures taught some form of life after death. Take the Egyptians, for example. According to them, when you died, you stood before the god of the underworld who decided your eternal fate. Your soul was either sent to hell or allowed to go to paradise.

 Another example is the ancient Greeks. They taught that all life ended and went to the underworld for eternal misery. Most Christians believe that when you die, you go to Heaven or Hell depending on how you lived your life. Sound familiar? Do you see how strikingly similar the modern popular teaching of life after death among most Christians is with how ancient cultures taught life after death?

So what do I believe in? I believe that you live your life in obedience to one of two masters. You are either serving God or Satan. It really is as simple as that. When you die, you simply cease to exist. You are buried and that's that. If you live your life in true service to God, then the Bible refers to your death as sleep. 

When you go to bed at night, and wake up in the morning, you have no recollection of the time that passed during your 8 or so hours of shut-eye. It's a similar thing for the righteous dead. 1 Kings 2:10 mentions the death of King David. He was a righteous man and this passage reads thus:

     "So David slept with his fathers, and was buried in the city of David."

That word slept is  שָׁכַב or shakab. Translated it means "to lie down." It has multiple uses but the point here is that it does not refer to David going to Heaven. There is a whole slew of other examples. Only 3 humans are listed by name as going to Heaven before the Second coming.

Enoch, Elijah, and Moses. The Bible documents Moses as having died but Jude brings to our attention that Michael, the archangel, disputed with the devil about the body of Moses. Why would this need to happen if Moses was already in Heaven, according to pagan mythology and what most Christians believe?

In the article, The God of Hell, Marvin Moore addresses the doctrine of Hell that most Christians believe. After the introduction, he address the question of who is in charge of Hell. He says, and I agree with him, that God is in charge. To quote directly:

"The Bible’s most descriptive passage about hell says that “fire came down from heaven and devoured [the wicked]” (Revelation 20:9; emphasis added).* If the fire comes down from heaven, it has to come from God, because He’s in charge of heaven, not Satan. Two other biblical accounts of the destruction of the wicked—the flood of Noah and Sodom and Gomorrah— clearly show God initiating the destruction, not Satan (Genesis 6:5–7; 19:24)."

He goes on to answer the question, when is Hell? Most Christians believe that Hell is a place that has been in existence since the fall of Adam and Eve. I disagree. And so does Mr. Moore. He quotes Malachi 4:1 which says, "Surely the day is coming; it will burn like a furnace. All the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble, and that day that is coming will set them on fire,’ says the Lord Almighty." (Emphasis his).

Revelation 20 describes the millenium after the Second Coming. It describes the destruction that will befall the wicked at the end of this 1,000 year period. The fire that comes down from Heaven is at the end of this millenium. "So if hell won’t even start until 1,000 years after Christ’s second coming," Mr. Moore says, "it certainly cannot be going on now."

 He goes on to make his final point that God simply wouldn't make people suffer like that. The Bible refers to the destruction of the wicked as God's strange act. Isaiah 28:21 reads like this: "For the LORD shall rise up as in mount Perazim, he shall be wroth as in the valley of Gibeon, that he may do his work, his strange work; and bring to pass his act, his strange act."

God doesn't want to destroy anyone but He cannot allow sin to go on forever. The Bible also says in Revelation 21:4, "And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.”


I don't know about you, but in an eternal Hell, I would think there would be a lot of tears and sorrow. Also, why would God allow an eternal Hell when He Himself promised that there will be no more pain, and that the "former things have passed away?" 


Here are a couple of links to help with further study.


The God of Hell by Marvin Moore in the Signs of the Times.


Spirits of the Dead: Do They Speak and Hear? by Joe Crews with Amazing Facts.


Are the Dead Really Dead? by Amazing Facts

Remember the Sabbath - Exodus 20:8-11

^{Exodus 20:8-11 KJV}

⁸ Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
⁹ Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:
¹⁰ But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:
¹¹ For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

 The Sabbath has been an issue that's been debated for most of Christian history. The majority of Christianity keeps Sunday as Sabbath. But where did this observance of Sunday come from? Many claim that because Jesus was resurrected on the first day of the week, that it is the reason for Sunday observance. Many claim other reasons, often distorting passages from the Bible for their observance of Sunday.

Some claim that they keep the spirit of the law but not the letter. They claim that saying we should keep sundown Friday to sundown Saturday as the Sabbath is legalism.  But how can you keep the spirit of the law without the letter, when the letter is the very foundation for the spirit of the law? It's like saying you shouldn't look with your eyes upon another lustfully (thereby committing adultery in your heart) but it's OK to physically sleep with them. Or that you shouldn't hate someone (thereby committing murder in your heart) but it's OK to shoot them in the head. 


Some claim that Sunday is the Lord's day. But what does the Bible say about when the Lord's Day is? Matthew 12:8, KJV, says this, "For the Son of man is Lord even of the sabbath day." Jesus didn't say Sunday. He said the Sabbath day. The word for "sabbath" here is σάββατον, transliterated sabbaton. The definition for this word is as follows from Blue Letter Bible:

1) the seventh day of each week which was a sacred festival on which the Israelites were required to abstain from all work

a) the institution of the sabbath, the law for keeping holy every seventh day of the week

b) a single sabbath, sabbath day

Some will claim, then, that this definition makes it clear that the Sabbath was only for the Jews. But this is not true. In writing to the Gentiles of Galatia, Paul wrote in Galatians 3:29, KJV, "And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise." Again, Paul here was writing to the Gentiles. Sure, there may have been some Jews there. But this was not a Jewish city in the least. The apostle makes it clearer than crystal that if you belong to Jesus, then you are Abraham's seed. In other words, you are a part of Israel, Hebrew blood or not. 

In addition to this, Sabbath was instituted at Creation.  Genesis 2:2-3, KJV, reads, "And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made." (Emphasis mine).

Some claim that the Ten Commandments have been changed. To borrow a quote from Amazing Facts, in their article, The Lost Day of History, "Jesus says: "And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail." Luke 16:17. God says: "My covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips." Psalms 89:34. Notice, the Ten Commandments came from His lips. Exodus 20:1 says, "And God spake all these words, saying ... [the Ten Commandments follow in verses 2-17]."


A yod is the smallest letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The tittle is the smallest part of this smallest letter. So Jesus was saying not even the smallest part of the smallest letter will ever pass from His law. 

However, Sunday observance never was encouraged by Jesus. So who started it? Ministry Magazine, in their article, Pagan Sunday Observance, says this: "The civil law issued by Constantine on March 7, A.D. 321, was one of a series of steps by which men were led to celebrate Sunday as a day of rest after the manner in which the Sabbath was kept by the people of God."



God says several times in His Holy Bible that He never changes. Malachi 3:6, KJV, says, "For I am the Lord, I change not..." Speaking of God in Psalm 102:26-27, KJV, "They shall perish, but thou shalt endure: yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment; as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed: But thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end." Even though Heaven and Earth pass away, God's law will not. Isn't it safe to say that the laws a person makes describe who they are?

Hebrews 1:12, KJV, says, "And as a vesture shalt thou fold them up, and they shall be changed: but thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail." Hebrews 13:8, KJV, says, "Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever." James 1:17, KJV, says, "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." 

Jesus said that nothing will ever pass from the law. And speaking of Jesus, He Himself kept the Sabbath. Luke 4:16, KJV, reads, "And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up for to read." (Emphasis mine). 


The same is true of the apostle Paul. Acts 17:2, KJV, reads, "And Paul, as his manner was, went in unto them, and three sabbath days reasoned with them out of the scriptures," (Emphasis mine)

The seventh day Sabbath will also be kept in Heaven and the New Earth. Isaiah 66:22-23 KJV says, "For as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain before me, saith the Lord, so shall your seed and your name remain. And it shall come to pass, that from one new moon to another, and from one sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith the Lord."

If you know about the seventh day Sabbath, why not keep it? Why cling to tradition? Why cling to a foundation-less belief in Sunday? I don't mean to be rude. I just want to tell the truth. John 14:15, KJV, "If ye love me, keep my commandments." Jesus didn't specify some and not others. If I love Jesus, I am to keep all of His commandments. I can't pick and choose.


So we can see that the seventh day Sabbath is still binding. I encourage you to read the articles mentioned here in this blog. I will post them again here at the bottom as well as a video from Amazing Facts showing a completely Biblical case for the seventh day Sabbath.  

 The Lost Day of History

Pagan Sunday Observance