Salvogesis

Some people have explained salvation in terms of trying to get back to the Garden. The idea of Salvation is certainly about people and even all of creation returning to our full and proper relationship with God our creator. In Revelation Chapter 22 it speaks about us being restored to the presence of the Tree of Life and of God Himself. Some people have asked do we need to be restored. Why do I need to get back? Why am I away from the Garden? Why am I punished for what Adam and Eve did? I never ate from the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge; how come I suffer the consequences? I look at the consequences of Originating Sin like this: Our lives are affected by the choices of Adam and Eve, our original parents, in much the same way that our lives are affected by the choices of our actual parents and their parents before them. Adam and Eve were evicted and moved from the Garden of Eden; therefore Cain, Abel, and Seth weren’t born in the Garden of Eden.  I was born and Susan and I wer...

Verse 14,“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” Verses 12 & 13: “Yet to all who did receive Him, to those who believed in His Name, He gave the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.” Though the greater world did not and does not even yet recognize Jesus; some of us do, just as some of us did. And for those of us who do recognize our creator and sustainer and rely on Him to recreate and continue to sustain us, He gives us the honour of being children of God. Like an earthly father returning home from a war, long journey, or for some other reason a long time away, to a child who may not at first remember him, but when reintroduced loves and accepts his dad; so, the same with God; the same with Jesus.   Jesus is the Son of God and Jesus is God; He is the W...

THIS IS AN INTERESTING ARTICLE WE STUMBLED ACROSS BY ANNE GRAHAM LOTZ Why the average believer is starving for something more. By Anne Graham Lotz I love junk food—McDonald's french fries, Auntie Anne's pretzels, and almost any kind of pizza! If I'm not careful, though, I will gain unwanted pounds while getting zero nutrition. Many Christians seem to eat spiritually the way I am tempted to eat physically. They fill up on "junk food"—Christian books, CDs, TV programs, seminars, and all sorts of church activities—none of these are bad, really, but they lead to a sickly spiritual state if consumed apart from the true Bread of Life. We need the real nutritional "food" that will be served one day at the Wedding Supper referred to in Revelation 19:9, food that we can partake of right now as we dig into God's Living Word. For the past 17 years, as I have crisscrossed America, speaking at various conferences and churches, I have become convinced of ...

I am a Rotarian and this week I am speaking at one of the Rotary clubs in town. While thinking about this I was reminded of   a harrowing story I heard at the Swift Current club about a family vacation that Dave, one of the members, took in Acapulco in 1968: Dave and his wife are on holiday down in Mexico. They check into their hotel. They are near the ground floor and there are these little lizards - Geckos or something else – climbing all up the walls; so they speak to the hotel and ask to be moved as far away from the lizards as they can, up to the top floor. They do move up to the top floor. This turns out to be a mistake. In the middle of the night, they are woken up as people are running through the halls screaming. Some girls from Quebec tell them what is happening: the hotel is on fire. The stairs, they are concrete for the top few floors and then wood beneath and the wooden stairs are ablaze. The girls from Quebec jump over the railing from the 10 th storey or more up...

Ecclesiastes 1:3: What do people gain from all their labours at which they toil under the sun? We've heard the expression and maybe the Hoyt Axton song: work your fingers to the bone and what do you get? Boney fingers. Or maybe we've heard Tennessee Ernie Ford's version from an older song? You load 16 tons and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt. The city of Detroit went bankrupt a couple of years ago. The Detroit Free press last year ran articles on the effect of the city's bankruptcy on pensioners. Some people had to all of a sudden find private health insurance of almost $1000 a month where it was covered before. In Canada pensions that people are working for are not necessarily much more secure. Our country has talked about raising the retirement age to 67 instead of 65 and many people my age and younger have lamented that they may never be able to retire. Hoyt Axton: You work your fingers to the bone what do you get? Boney fingers. Tennessee ...

Romans 12:15: Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. It has been interesting in the news lately. I saw one survey published the other day in the National Post that said that we are, as a society, becoming angrier. This makes sense intuitively if we read all the social media memes and comments. Alongside this in Canada there is also the reality that more people feel less free to share their opinion at all. This has been evidenced by election polling. Polls which once used to be accurate within 3 percentage points 19 times out of 20 now seem to be way off. The Conservative election victory on PEI recently proved that again. The day before the election they were calling for the first Green party government in Canada. All of this is of course a symptom of a sense of powerlessness. And this powerlessness can lead to a feeling of loss and despair. There are many desperate tragedies and other sad events in our world. On and since Easter there have been those horribl...

Now I must admit that when I was a kid I used to be quite good at hide-and-seek: I had a great way to not get caught – it also worked very well with my own kids when they were little – when I was hiding and they were looking for me, I kept my eyes open and watched to see where they were and listened to discover where they were looking and as soon as they had looked in a particular spot, I would move from where I was hiding to that exact spot where they just were, knowing that they won’t look there again. This worked really well in a house with an upstairs and a downstairs because as soon as the kids came upstairs, I would make a beeline straight downstairs. Hide and seek: Did you ever play hide and seek? There is one thing that you notice playing ‘hide and seek’ with mostly little kids but sometimes with older ones as well.    It is really quite neat. Most of them when they are hiding, they close their eyes. So when you call out, ‘1-2-3, I see you’ – you will sometimes he...