When Might Christ Come?

 

[1]

 

Ephesians 1: 10 (GNT)

¹⁰ This plan, which God will complete when the time is right, is to bring all creation together, everything in heaven and on earth, with Christ as head.

 

The phrase, “When the time is right,” or “in the dispensation of the fullness of the times,” (KJV) has caused me to wonder. But I have no answers. Right now, we can divide time roughly into 2,000-year periods: I am working under the assumption that creation was roughly 6,000 years ago.

Creation to Flood                                roughly 2,000 years

Flood to Christ                                    roughly 2,000 years

Christ to the Present.                           roughly 2,000 years

This fits nicely into Adventist understanding. But it is neither suggested by the Bible, nor does it support it. Christ was born “when the fullness of time was come.” (Galatians 4:4 KJV)

Another way to think of it is to have Christ’s first coming at the middle of earthly time:

      Creation to Christ’s 1^st advent                        roughly 4,000 years

      Christ’s 1^st advent to the 2^nd Advent               roughly 4,000 years

In this case Christ’s second coming would not be for another 2,000 years. This definitely does not fit into Adventist understanding. It would allow humans to develop magnificent inventions. This would allow them to enslave the entire human race to a point we cannot imagine! This point might be the entire destruction of civilization; the survivors would be thrust back into the stone age. Who knows?

Can a loving God tolerate human cruelty to each other for another two millennia? This gives human history a balanced symmetry. But I see no evidence that God values this type of symmetry in time.

Christ was born when the time was right: consult Daniel 8:14, Daniel 9: 24-27. Early Adventists used the Daniel 8:14 to calculate when they though Christ would come. They got the date right but the wrong event for that date. Since that 1844 date, there appears to be no more “right time,” that we can predict ahead of time. Christ was absolutely insistent that “no man knows the day or hour.” Consequently, we need to be constantly watchful.

We look forward to sharing in the bringing of “all creation together, everything in heaven and on earth, with Christ as head.”

 

Labels: #CALIFORNIA, #IE, #INLANDEMPIRE, #CHRISTRETURN, #BIBLE, #CRFEATION, #HEAVEN, #DANIEL, #MILLENIA, #ENSLAVE, #CIVILIZATION, #DESTROCIVILIZATION, #STONEAGE

 

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[1] https://hopeenlightenment.com/2018/01/24/creator-of-heaven-and-earth/

God is Love

 

[1]

Exodus 20:8-12 King James Version

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 only time God spoke to humanity in His official position, He gave the ten commandments to them through the most impressive set of fireworks ever seen.

The fourth commandment is the center of His presentation. In it He identifies Himself as the Creator of heaven and earth and sea. He states that He made these in six days and rested the seventh, which He calls the Sabbath.

Let’s do a thought experiment. God identifies Himself as a creator of heaven, earth, and sea—that is, of our universe. I think in this way. Suppose God enjoys and administers his vast creations. The biggest number the Greeks named was a myriad. So maybe God spends a myriad years enjoying His creation. During this time His marvelous intellect explores other ideas for another, a different universe. Mentally, He plays around with the physics of this new universe, and the creatures He would like to have. His ideas are vast and sometimes quite strange: think of giraffe vs. rhinoceros, humming bird vs. ostrich, sloth vs. human.

God’s excitement builds over those ten-thousand years until He can’t hold it in. He spends a week creating this new universe. Then he monitors carefully how things develop there while He continues running His vast other universes. His overwhelming rule is that of love: the love of God for His creatures, the love of His creatures for Him, and the love His creatures have for each other.

Time goes by. Myriads progress one after another. Envision this happening since time immemorial. There is no first universe creation. God has always been doing this! Then God’s greatest helper decides he can run all these universes better than God has been doing. He has been God’s right-hand angel since time immemorial. He skillfully starts the greatest coup d’état ever attempted. God in love does not kill him outright, but he is driven from heaven. He chooses to take up residence in God’s latest creation. He swiftly defeats its lord—Adam and Eve. Then God lets him develop his insurrection until everyone in all of God’s universes recognizes that Satan is a brutal imposter.

We are in the final scenes of this fierce struggle. Love eventually overcomes evil. Notice that EVIL is simply LOVE spelt backwards with “I” taking the place of the hug, “O”. Without love, life becomes misery or evil.

I awoke this morning with words of the song “The Love of God” running through my mind.

The love of God is greater far
  Than tongue or pen can ever tell.
It goes beyond the highest star
  And reaches to the lowest hell.
The guilty pair, bowed down with care,
  God gave His Son to win;
His erring child He reconciled
  And pardoned from his sin.

O love of God, how rich and pure!
  How measureless and strong!
It shall forevermore endure—
  The saints’ and angels’ song.

When hoary time shall pass away,
  And earthly thrones and kingdoms fall;
When men who here refuse to pray,
  On rocks and hills and mountains call;
God’s love, so sure, shall still endure,
  All measureless and strong;
Redeeming grace to Adam’s race—
  The saints’ and angels’ song.

Could we with ink the ocean fill,
  And were the skies of parchment made;
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
  And every man a scribe by trade;
To write the love of God above
  Would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
  Though stretched from sky to sky.

Frederick M. Lehman, 1917
v. 3 by Anonymous/Unknown

 

Dear Lord, I love You and yearn for Your final banishment of evil and establishment of Your kingdom of love!

 

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[1] https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Flookaside.fbsbx.com%2Flookaside%2Fcrawler%2Fmedia%2F%3Fmedia_id%3D611018337688184&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=42026be4f25a4ff3dcf7a5f67b18ad81d7193cd05fa28bd9db2cc981f76d4cd8

 

Woman Snake Enmity

 

 

 

Genesis 3:15

Good News Translation

[God said to the snake] ¹⁵ I will make you and the woman hate each other; her offspring and yours will always be enemies. Her offspring will crush your head, and you will bite her offspring's heel.”

 

From across the street, Shirley came breathlessly into our house yesterday. I was in my office in the back of the house. All I could hear was impassioned conversation between Shirley and Sylvia. Finally, curious, I walked into the front room. Shirley described how her grown son, Ivan, who was on his way out the door, said: “Be careful when you walk out into the backyard. There’s a rattlesnake out there.”

“Well, aren’t you going to do something?” she asked in half panic.

“Nah,” He drawled, “Just be careful where you walk,” and he was out the door.

Shirley told me she placed a tub over the snake and came over to our house. Her breath was short, and her whole demeanor radiated distress!

Rattlesnakes live in the hills around our neighborhood. Katie and I find them occasionally. I have taught her to beware of them and give them wide berth. She can sense a bit of alarm and warning in my demeanor when I see the snake. I do fear that she will try and protect me by rushing in and attacking the snake—which would be a fatal move on her part. So far, she has yielded to my commands. I don’t kill the snakes in the hills—I feel that they serve a purpose in keeping the vermin down. And I sense that I am in their territory. But when they come into our area, they are out of line. I have been instrumental in getting those snakes killed. All my neighbors concur with this decision.

“Is it in the open?” I knew what I had to do.

“It’s under the tub! Oh. I’m scared!” she shivered, “What can we do?”

“Give me a minute!” and I walked towards the back door.

“What are you going to do?” she was desperate and figured I was doing like Ivan and leaving her to it.

“I’m going to fetch a spade,” I said matter-of-factly.

“He’s going to kill the snake!” Sylvia had no doubts. She has lived with me long enough to understand me.

Shirley led me around to the back of her house. There I saw a little red plastic tub lying upside down in the mowed grass. I looked at Shirley, “You’re brave to have done that! Good for you!”

I stuck the blade of the spade under the edge of the tub and flipped it. A large western red diamondback rattlesnake immediately began to take up attack mode. The first thing I noticed was that it had no rattles. The snake moved rapidly, and my first strike hit it about a foot down from its head, breaking its back. It’s wide-open mouth, fangs protruding, struck the spade. My second strike severed the head from the body, leaving it hanging by only a bit of skin.

“Wow! You’re so brave,” Shirley cooed, “Now what are we going to do?”

“Do you have a bag?”

She brought a plastic garbage bag stuck in a large paper bag and stuck it in a cardboard box. She placed this on the ground nearby and made sure the garbage bag was wide open. I picked up the snake by its rattle less tail and dropped it into the bag, tied it shut, and placed it in her garbage bin. I’ve heard that in some parts of the U.S., rattlesnakes are evolving into rattle less rattlesnakes. This has me concerned because rattlesnakes have always warned those who approach of their presence by their rattles. If that happens around here, it will make hiking in the desert more dangerous.

Satan, the old serpent, has been attempting to camouflage his presence, even getting the more gullible to deny his very existence. In this way they are not prepared for his attacks.

Preserve us, Lord, from the devil and save us from sin, so we will be ready for Your soon return.

 

 

Serengeti National Park

 

[1]

Psalm 104:24-25

King James Version

²⁴ O Lord, how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all: the earth is full of thy riches.

²⁵ So is this great and wide sea, wherein are things creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts.

 

We were poor. All of the other missionaries at Ikizu Secondary owned a car. We could not have afforded to put gas in it, even had we owned one. So, we had to hitch a ride anytime we wanted to go anywhere. From my meagre earnings I had managed to buy an SLR camera and a 200 to 400 mm zoom lens.

We lived on the northern edge of the great Serengeti National Park. Often on a Sabbath (Saturday) afternoon or a Sunday, I would talk with one of the other missionaries—never the Kings who had no sense of adventure—about what we might do. The only real entertainment within driving distance—the Serengeti.

I would almost always ride shotgun while Gary or Fritz or George or Dave or Bob drove. I seemed to have a sixth sense when it came to the trackless steppe county of Africa. Even though the grass was four feet high, and the bush and trees grew with no pattern, I always knew the most direct route to the only ford across the Grumeti River and the way home. There was no GPS in those days.

Upstream or downstream, the Grumeti housed the great crocodiles and even greater hippos. We would often risk life and limb by stealing on foot through the dense brush along the river to snap pictures of the crocs or hippos. Of course, this same thorn brush often hid the lions and leopards awaiting their prey. Hunters claimed you could always smell a lion from 20 feet away by the foul smell of rotting flesh caught between its teeth. I was fortunate not to have ever gotten that close on foot. Every year we got reports of someone’s having been carried off by a lion or disemboweled by a leopard.

Out on the plains we saw the great animals, 5-ton elephants flapping their ears to drive off the tsetse fly, tall giraffes delicately picking off the leaves from between the vicious thorns of flat-topped acacia trees. When we were lucky, we would arrive to experience the hundreds of thousands of wildebeest and zebra during their annual migration towards Lake Victoria. They left the plains totally denuded of grass and blotched with pungent manure. Then we could see the smaller animals: warthogs running with their tails pointing straight up, maybe the sneaky jackal. Always we saw various stately antelope that varied from the eland, as great as a bull moose, to the terrier-size tommy (Thompson’s gazelle) with its perpetual-motion tail. 

As the sun sank towards the lake in the west, we would drive back home, enriched by the vista of God’s varied handiwork. Back at Ikizu, missionaries gathered as Sylvia or Charlotte played hymns on the piano and we hand cranked vanilla ice-cream and popped corn, renewed for a new week of endless work.

Thanks, Lord, that we have never gone wanting and for the enjoyment we have received in spite of periods of poverty.

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[1] https://www.exploring-africa.com/en/tanzania/western-corridor-and-grumeti-reserve-western-serengeti/south-grumeti-river

Wondrous Heavenly Things

 

[1]

Psalm 119:18 

King James Version (KJV)

¹⁸ Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things...

 

Brock Kidd in the July 10, 2020, devotional in Daily Guideposts 2020 pulled an unforgiveable punch with the quote as I wrote it above. Of course, if your mind thinks along similar tracks to mine it automatically fills in “out of Thy law.” Ignoring the inspired ending to the verse, he went on to describe a cabin his grandfather had built where he would retire to meditate. Allow me to prolong Brock’s abuse of scripture.

At four-thirty on the same morning I read Brock’s story, Katie, our beloved mongrel, and I went out to Doty Park near home. There was a promise of seeing Comet Neowise. The park was dark and silent. Across the sky in a magnificent arc of a circle stretched four naked-eye planets. Punctuated on the right (west) shone Jupiter, and on the left Venus outshone even Jupiter. Continuously social distancing herself wider and wider from Jupiter, Saturn followed, looking pale compared to her brilliant sisters. Racing towards Venus almost as fast as Venus was racing toward her was Mars. And in their very midst sat an almost pregnant Moon, brighter than all four sisters combined.

Immediately below Venus hunkered Aldebaran—the bull’s eye. With my binoculars I noticed a cloud of stars, the Pleiades, dancing around Venus. In ancient Greek mythology they were considered a troop of nymphs bringing rain. They would have to prance a whole lot livelier to bring us rain in this middle of the dry season.

We didn’t find the comet. A week or so later it had moved into the evening sky, so Sylvia, Katie, and I drove out into the desert where we had true night. Sure enough, we saw a wondrous, naked eye comet in the north sky under a magnificent Big Dipper. We sat there a while and then walked around in the warm desert evening marveling at God’s handiwork in the heavens.

Help me, Lord, to put similar effort into seeing wondrous things in Thy Law.

 

 

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[1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/10/21318478/nasa-f3-comet-neowise-see-watch-astrophotography-space

The Gethsemane Battle

 

[1]

1 John 4:9

Good News Translation

⁹ And God showed his love for us by sending his only Son into the world, so that we might have life through him.

 

After many years, last night I again read the chapter in The Desire of Ages entitled “Gethsemane”. In eloquent and deeply emotional prose, Ellen White describes how Christ wrestled with God. He knew that He had come to earth for exactly one purpose—to save the world and its inhabitants from sin. I have seen many definitions of sin: some glorify it, some condemn it, some try to lay out boundaries for it. But in the end, sin is only one thing—rebellion against God. Sin declares puny man’s attempt to deny his Creator and become independent from the only Source of Life.

In the Garden of Gethsemane Christ’s divine nature headed steadfastly forward to the only possible act of redemption for rebellious man. Christ’s human nature, however, sensed the presence of every sin in the world. It felt the eternal separation from God, the terror and despair of inevitable annihilation, the horror of the wrath of God. It buckled and crumbled under this huge weight. His human nature pled with God to find another way of salvation. “If it be possible, let this cup pass from Me!” a cry wrenched from His very heart. Then in total submission to the divine within Him, He gave way to divinity: “Never the less, not My will but Thine be done!” Three times he sought reprieve but then acquiesced to His great love for sinners.

To His human view, (that was all that He could see at this point in the struggle), all mankind had turned their backs on Him. Even His chosen disciples had fallen asleep when He asked them to pray for Him. His chosen race, His favored people were bent on His destruction. Why? He had taught them, healed them, encouraged them, blessed their children, even fed them and raised their dead. He had expressed His love to them in every action. Was this why they turned away?

Of course not! When sin comes in touch with purity, divinity, perfection, it has but one response—rebellion. This rebellion was the only thing Christ sensed. Fortunately for us, His vast, unending love drove Him on to yield to the divine will and rescue His creatures in spite of their absolute rejection of Him.

When it became completely obvious that Christ was going through literal hell for us, the mightiest angel in Heaven materialized at His side, driving away all the demons that were clustered around Him and crushing out His very life. The angel strengthened Him for this, the greatest battle of the universe.

Thank You, Jesus, for fighting the battle for me, the battle that I had no hope of winning without You. I love You.

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[1] https://www.deseret.com/2019/6/12/20675446/taylor-halverson-why-did-jesus-suffer-in-an-olive-garden-called-gethsemane#olive-trees-in-the-gethsemane-garden-at-the-foot-of-the-mount-of-olives-in-jerusalem

 

Seeing More Than You Expected

[i]

Daniel 3:25 

New International Version (NIV)

²⁵ He said, “Look! I see four men walking around in the fire, unbound and unharmed, and the fourth looks like a son of the gods.”

Once or twice a year I would take several carloads of students to a computer show in Las Vegas. We spent the day looking at the latest innovations in the field of computers. We also marveled at the crazy lengths exhibitors went to trying to sell us their product. They showered us with relatively worthless gifts until everyone was walking around with a big bag of loot.

When the show closed, we would get in our cars and go to some casino where we could get a good meal for a very reasonable price. Then we headed south toward home in a caravan. As the miles ticked, by everyone would get sleepy—hopefully not the driver. South of Baker there are several exits off the I-15 freeway that go nowhere. There are no buildings, just a dirt road wandering off into the desert.

At the top of an exit I pulled over and stopped.

Students poured out of all the cars and ran up to me: “What’s wrong, Dr. Clarke?” they queried.

After a minute or two to let their eyes adjust to the darkness, I would point dramatically to the sky. “Look up!”

Their eyes turned heavenward, a unanimous awe inspired “Wow!” escaped their lips. They were city kids. They had never seen the majesty of a black sky with millions of stars, the Milky Way, the majesty of Orion.  Like Nebuchadnezzar in front of the fiery furnace, they would see far more than they ever knew existed. Their minds would begin to imagine how great God and His creation really are.

Thank You, O God, for being so immeasurably greater than our grandest concepts—and for being intimately interested in each of us.

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[i] https://www.allposters.com/-sp/The-Winter-Milky-Way-Constellations-Orion-Gemini-Canis-Major-and-Canis-Minor-over-a-Tamarisk-Posters_i13821350_.htm?UPI=PWCVFZ0&PODConfigID=4990719

Just Where Is Heaven?

[i]

Ephesians 3:17-19

Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB)

¹⁷ and that the Messiah may dwell in your hearts through faith. I pray that you, being rooted and firmly established in love, ¹⁸ may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the length and width, height and depth of God’s love,¹⁹ and to know the Messiah’s love that surpasses knowledge, so you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Some have pointed out that Heaven is a spot on the other side of the Great Orion Nebula. Furthermore God’s administrative center must be hidden behind this magnificent nebula.

On the other hand we view that God is the creator or prime generator of not only our Solar System but of the entire vast universe we detect beyond it. Whether your concept of this creation stretches back in time to a monumental week some 6,000 years ago--or to an inconceivably huge big bang some fourteen billion years ago--or some point of the past in between, you probably have breathed the query, “What was God doing in the eternity before this universe?”

St. Augustine quoted someone who quipped in response to this question, “He was preparing hell for those who pry into mysteries.”[ii] From the context of this remark Augustine clearly regarded this answer as an ill-posed jest.

But seriously, since God is “the same yesterday, today, and forever;”[iii] He was undoubtedly creating other universes. Where might he place these other universes? Well, certainly not within our universe; they must indeed be “beyond” or “outside” our universe, which was not here before He created it.

It is not impossible that Paul was hinting at a possibly vaguely understood concept when he expressed a four-dimensional measuring “length and width, height and depth” of God’s love. This concept just might be vital for our understanding of the presence of God. If there is another spatial dimension besides the three in our universe, then God would not have to be in a heaven over 1344 light years away. He might be just a scant millimeter away in this fourth spatial dimension and yet be beyond our sensory perception of Him.

Writers of the newly reincarnated science fiction Star Trek series hint at a similar notion of a space “warp”. How can space be warped unless it is in a dimension outside of the space itself?

Thank You, Lord, for being ever close to our side at all time!

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[i] http://maxpixel.freegreatpicture.com/Portal-Vortex-Time-Travel-Wormhole-Warp-Space-2514312

[ii] Book XI, Chapter 12 of the Confessions of St Augustine

[iii] Hebrews 13:8 (HCSB)

Green Earth and Creation Stamps

Isaiah 45:18

GOD’S WORD Translation (GW)

¹⁸ The Lord created the heavens.
    God formed the earth and made it.
    He set it up.
    He did not create it to be empty
        but formed it to be inhabited.

This is what the Lord says:

I am the Lord, and there is no other.

 On July 24, 2016, I went down to the Quality Anaheim Sunday Stamp Show. Claude Abraham waved at me and said he had some things he thought I might be interested in. He knows more about stamps than anyone else I know, and I sat down at his booth to see what he had to offer this time. One of these was a stack of souvenir sheets.

This Palau sheet immediately caught my attention. Initially I decided I wouldn’t buy it. I don’t collect Palau, an tiny island east of the Philippines and north of Papua New Guinea. But I do collect some topics, like Mathematicians on Stamps, Giraffes on Stamps for Sylvia, Famous Writers, and so on. So I bought this one and have included a copy of it.

I wondered if Palau was peopled by Adventists who celebrate creation every Sabbath. Did they urge the country to issue a beautiful issue honoring the creation and its Creator? Looking on Wikipedia, I saw that Adventists constitute a mere 5.3% of the population, whereas other Christians constitute over 75%. This stamp issue is rather a part of the great green earth movement that encourages humans to treat our planet with respect.

A couple months ago Sylvia and I returned home from a road trip back east to North Carolina. During that trip, we drove through vast stretches of hot desert where we encountered some amazingly powerful rain and hail storms. Vast prairies contrasted with the might Rocky Mountains that were visible for miles. We crossed beautiful rivers, wide enough and deep enough to allow ocean going vessels on them. Wild donkeys, buffalo, prong horn antelope, coyotes, and big horn sheep, all seeking to live out their own lives, graced our travels. We became almost claustrophobic as we pushed through the seemingly endless eastern deciduous forest where our horizons were less than 100 feet (30m) on either side of us.

Such marvelous and varied scenery and views we experienced, each special in its own way! Throughout our journey, we were often conscious of the mighty Creator who prepared all this for us and all others to enjoy.

Thank you, Lord, for creating a beautiful planet and placing us on it to cultivate and preserve it. Thank you, Jesus, for becoming human and living on earth with us to guide and save us.

#CREATION, #CALIFORNIA, #IA, #SOUVENIRSHEETS,  #STAMPS,  #STAMPSHOWS, #GRATITUDE, #PALAU, #GREEN, #ADVENTISTS, #CHRISTIANS, #ANAHEIM