Jack Anderson

What a blessing your son must be to engage in a discussion like this, especially at his age. Not an easy to understand to be sure, but IMO, some if not all the answer is given by Paul in Romans 6:1-10. Jack

Never really thought much about God as a kid. Maybe a couple times I would wonder what force or power was holding the stars up there in the sky. After getting married, and attending church with my wife, I became a believer in Jesus as the Savior who was sent by God. After accepting Jesus as my Savior and being born again, my understanding of God improved dramatically. Today He is my best Friend. He is my Protector, my Counselor, my Helper, my Lord and King, my Master who I call my Father, and sometimes Dad in private. It causes me to smile a lot calling Him Dad when talking with Him in private. In this life I live today, it just doesn't get any better knowing He has adopted me into His family....not until that day He comes for me and takes me home. What a glorious day that will be when I see Him face to Face. At that event He will even reveal to me how He kept those stars up there in the sky that I wondered about as a kid. (:<) God bless, Jack

One of peace, You wrote - Lol follow me on this if you can. Not LOL! You sadden my heart. As for following you, no problem, you're totally transparent as to who it is that you follow whether you know who it is or not. Most likely my answers to your questions and comments are a waste of time, however I have been compelled to answer. You wrote - How was Jesus born? If you will take a Bible and turn to Luke 1:31 and 1:35 you will note that Jesus was born with TWO NATURES. A fleshly body through Mary whereby Jesus had a HUMAN NATURE and a DIVINE NATURE provided by the Holy Spirit. You wrote - You might have forgotten he was divinly born. If you read my post surely you are jesting, if not then the word naive comes to mind. You wrote - When you say god came down from someplace was it actually god that came down or an angel? Read my post again. Never said God came down from someplace. Neither did I say God was an "it", nor an angel. Wrote - You should read the book of John again. I will, thanks, for the Gospel of John is my very favorite book in the Bible. It was John's Gospel about the Good News of Jesus Christ that the Holy Spirit used to convict me of my sin and need my for the Savior. That was 52 years ago. Praise God! Because of who Jesus is and what He did, I've been born again! Not only me, but also my dear wife, our three sons, our three daughters, and our eleven grandchildren...all forgiven, saved, and born again through His shed Blood. It was John's Gospel that made such an huge impart our my life, and still does today. Thank you for reminding me read it again. You wrote - Wasn't Gabriel the same angel that came to Elizabeth. You are correct (Luke 1:26-38). Gabriel's name means "man of God," and his ministry involves making special announcement concerning God's plans (Daniel 8:16 and 9:21). You wrote - Was not Noah perfect in his generation, in his genetics, his genes, his blood. This wasn't a new thing. No, Noah according to the Bible was a righteous man, blameless in his time (Genesis 6:8-9); meaning he was mature, well-rounded, though not sinless. It was that Noah believed God; it was his reverence (fear) of God, his piety) that he found favor in the eyes of God (Genesis 6:13-22). It was by faith Noah believed God and became an heir of righteousness which is according to faith (Hebrews 11:7). You wrote - Your god is a man, you have paintings of him that's great. My god is the Master. You are INCORRECT, my God is God. But you are correct when you say your god is the master, but you not know, nor understand what his mastery is about. Otherwise, if you did, you would repent of these heresies you attempt to persuade others of. The following questions you pose all need to answered correctly, including yourself. Maybe you would even like to start a thread for each. 1. who do you call on? The Father or the Son? 2. who's doctrine are you following? 3. who's glory do you seek the son or the father? Remember his is a jealous god. 4. who do you honor? It is my earnest opinion that unless an individual accepts the testimony of the Scriptures, and the witness of the Holy Spirit, and believes that Jesus is God, there is no way he/she can be saved from their sins, let alone ever be born-again and adopted into God's family and have eternal life with Him. Undertake a prayerful and serious study of the Gospel of John, allowing the Holy Spirit to illuminate your understanding so as to bring about your acceptance of who Jesus Christ is. It's imperative that you seek God with all you heart, mind, and soul so as to understand what the Holy Spirit would have you know regarding Jesus Christ. Your very eternal disposition rest with a proper understanding and yielding to His call. May God permit you understanding that will led to salvation and fellowship with Him, through Christ Jesus. God bless you, Jack A.

Whollybybill, So then, with you believing Jesus is only the Son (not God), and is not One with God His Father, how can God's fierce anger and wrath against man be satisfied? God's judgment is perfect, as is His justice. God being God, He is perfect in all things. Our sins judged, and justice's verdict rendered, we all now have need for a perfect payment in order to have our debts to be satisfied, and to be forgiven our sins. God can not just excuse us and overlook our sins. If He did that, then His justice would not be perfect. And NO man is capable of satisfying God's perfect justice with its sentence of death. Remembering God being God, He is perfect in all things, including His judgments and His justice. You see Whollybywill, only a God-Man, the Incarnate Lord Jesus Christ has the worth to satisfy God the Father's burning wrath against man. Philippians 2:5-11, "Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore also God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those who are in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." Jesus emptied Himself -- this emptying of Himself is known as the "kenosis" of Christ during His incarnation. Jesus as God becoming man (flesh and blood) does not mean that He surrendered any of His Deity, but that He took on the limitation of humanity. This involved a "veiling" of His pre-incarnate glory, for Jesus said in John 17:5, "And now, glorify Thou Me together with Thyself, Father, with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was." He voluntary waived some of His divine prerogatives during the time He was on earth in flesh and blood. Literally He drew a veil between Himself and His divine power -- He being God still had the same nature and essence that included all He was before coming into this world. God is God! Jesus could not, nor cannot literally divested Himself of His divine nature and perfections, for that is impossible. He could not cease to be omnipotent, and omnipresent, and most holy, and true, and good. Only Jesus as God-Man has the uniqueness to save us from our sins. He is of the very same nature and divine essence as God. Our Redeemer existed in the form of God. Jesus is truly divine, and His consenting to become a man was the most remarkable of all possible acts of humiliation. Jesus the Man is of the same divine nature and essence of God the Father. Though our Savior was God appearing in the form of man -- a divine person on earth -- yet He did not assume and assert the dignity and prerogatives appropriate to a divine being, but put Himself in a condition of obedience. For such a divine being to obey implied voluntary humiliation; and the greatness of His humiliation was shown by His becoming entirely obedient, even up to and including the time He hung, bled, and died on that cruel cross. Scriptures record and prove Jesus Christ is God by His preexistence, His incarnation, His humanity, His deity, His earthly life, His kenosis, His impeccability, His death, His resurrection, His ascension, His present ministry, and last, but not least, His return. Scriptures are replete with the proofs of all these. A well known author wrote a book titled, "No Wonder They Call Him Savior", a fitting title, for only the perfect God-Man Jesus Christ is worthy and capable of imputing righteousness into the account of the believer.

"...which is why I don't worship jesus as THE God. He was a messenger of God sent from God." Whollybybill, You may not worship Jesus as "The God", but you should because the Scriptures report that the angels do, and that His disciples did. "And let all the angels of God worship Him." Hebrews 1:6 And those who were in the boat worshiped Him, saying, "You are certainly God's Son!" Matthew 14:33 There is a time a coming that, probably not to far off, when, All that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those who are in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Philippians 2:10-11 The Scripture also gives a us a warning whereby Paul says: See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ. 9 For in Him all the fulness of Deity dwells in bodily form, 10 and in Him you have been made complete, and He is the head over all rule and authority; Colossian 2:8-11 In Jesus ALL the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily. We further are told, And He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation. 16 For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities

MeCajunboy, You ask "Can we be punished for the Sins of our Parents?" My answer to your question would be no; that an individual before God is not punished for the sins of our parents. This question is not new. Back in the O.T. they asked the same. There was even a proverb pertaining to this question. In Jeremiah 31:29 we read, "In those days they will not say again, 'The fathers have eaten sour grapes, And the children's teeth are set on edge. And in Ezekiel 18:1-2, Then the word of the Lord came to me saying, 2 "What do you mean by using this proverb concerning the land of Israel saying, 'The fathers eat the sour grapes, But the children's teeth are set on edge'? This was a proverb among the exile's children born in Babylon to express that they suffered the evil consequences of their fathers' sin rather than of their own. There are Christians today that still are essentially saying and teaching the same thing. The Christian community, and the church we attended back in the late 70's, this same question was being asked, along with the teaching it was true, the sins of the fathers, a curse was upon those who suffered. Examples being cited about people being under a curse who were sick; a city or a town being under a curse because it was named after a non-Christian; stretches of highways under a curse because someone's wife had an accident; parents passing on occult demons to their children; etc. Where does this type of thinking and teaching come from? Some folks get it from reading the following scriptures. Exodus 20:1-6 Then God spoke all these words, saying, 2 "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. 3 "You shall have no other gods before Me. 4 "You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. 5 You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, 6 but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments. Exodus 34:5-8 And the Lord descended in the cloud and stood there with him as he called upon the name of the Lord. 6 Then the Lord passed by in front of him and proclaimed, "The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; 7 who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations." Deuteronomy 5:9-10 'You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, and on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, 10 but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments. Numbers 14:18 'The Lord is slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, forgiving iniquity and transgression; but He will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generations.' Lamentations 5:7 Our fathers sinned, and are no more; It is we who have borne their iniquities. But when folks read those Scriptures they need to balance them with the following as well. Deuteronomy 24:16 "Fathers shall not be put to death for their sons, nor shall sons be put to death for their fathers; everyone shall be put to death for his own sin. Isaiah 3:10-11 Say to the righteous that it will go well with them, For they will eat the fruit of their actions. 11 Woe to the wicked! It will go badly with him, For what he deserves will be done to him. All of Ezekiel 18, but especially verse 20 "The person who sins will die. The son will not bear the punishment for the father's iniquity, nor will the father bear the punishment for the son's iniquity; the righteousness of the righteous will be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked will be upon himself. Jeremiah 31:27-34 "Behold, days are coming," declares the Lord, "when I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of man and with the seed of beast. 28 "And it will come about that as I have watched over them to pluck up, to break down, to overthrow, to destroy, and to bring disaster, so I will watch over them to build and to plant," declares the Lord. 29 "In those days they will not say again, 'The fathers have eaten sour grapes, And the children's teeth are set on edge.' 30 "But everyone will die for his own iniquity; each man who eats the sour grapes, his teeth will be set on edge. 31 "Behold, days are coming," declares the Lord, "when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, 32 not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them, "declares the Lord. 33 "But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days," declares the Lord, "I will put My law within them, and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. 34 "And they shall not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,' for they shall all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them," declares the Lord, "for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more." One of God's attributes is that He is changeless. He deals with us in our heart attitude of drawing near to Him, or in our rebellion of rejecting Him the same as in past generations and generations to come. There is much more I would like to say, but this has become too long already. So in ending I would say, no, we are not punished for the sins of our parents regarding our relationship and fellowship with God. On the one hand there is a cause and effort upon a society, or nation where the sins of the fathers are visited upon it. But whatever penalties and judgments befall communities and nations for connections with the sins of their fathers, the individual who repented and is in right standing with God, in Jesus Christ shall escape His wrath. God bless, Jack

Chiquita, Just read last night on another forum where a fellow was promoting this doctrine of "soul sleep". After reading what he wrote I did a little reading for myself. For your consideration, some folks take literally, rather than as a "figure of speech", passages in the Bible that the dead are "asleep", such as in: Acts 7:59-60 And they went on stoning Stephen as he called upon the Lord and said, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!" 60 And falling on his knees, he cried out with a loud voice, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them!" And having said this, he fell asleep. And in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve, as do the rest who have no hope. 14 For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus. 15 For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, and remain until the coming of the Lord, shall not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16 For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first. 17 Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and thus we shall always be with the Lord. 18 Therefore comfort one another with these words. However, upon reading the following passages in the Bible I come away understanding that the soul of the departed is not "asleep". Matthew 17:1-4 And six days later Jesus took with Him Peter and James and John his brother, and brought them up to a high mountain by themselves. 2 And He was transfigured before them; and His face shone like the sun, and His garments became as white as light. 3 And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them, talking with Him. Luke 16:19-31 "Now there was a certain rich man, and he habitually dressed in purple and fine linen, gaily living in splendor every day. 20 "And a certain poor man named Lazarus was laid at his gate, covered with sores,21 and longing to be fed with the crumbs which were falling from the rich man's table; besides, even the dogs were coming and licking his sores.22 "Now it came about that the poor man died and he was carried away by the angels to Abraham's bosom; and the rich man also died and was buried.23 "And in Hades he lifted up his eyes, being in torment, and saw Abraham far away, and Lazarus in his bosom.24 "And he cried out and said, 'Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool off my tongue; for I am in agony in this flame.'25 "But Abraham said, 'Child, remember that during your life you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus bad things; but now he is being comforted here, and you are in agony.26 'And besides all this, between us and you there is a great chasm fixed, in order that those who wish to come over from here to you may not be able, and that none may cross over from there to us.'27 "And he said, 'Then I beg you, Father, that you send him to my father's house - 28 for I have five brothers - that he may warn them, lest they also come to this place of torment.'29 "But Abraham said, 'They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them,'30 "But he said, 'No, Father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent!"31 "But he said to him, 'If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone rises from the dead.'" Luke 23:40-43But the other answered, and rebuking him said, "Do you not even fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? 41 "And we indeed justly, for we are receiving what we deserve for our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong." 42 And he was saying, "Jesus, remember me when You come in Your kingdom!" 43 And He said to him, "Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise." Philippians 1:21-25 For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain. 22 But if I am to live on in the flesh, this will mean fruitful labor for me; and I do not know which to choose. 23 But I am hard-pressed from both directions, having the desire to depart and be with Christ, for that is very much better; 24 yet to remain on in the flesh is more necessary for your sake. 2 Corinthians 5:1-9 For we know that if the earthly tent which is our house is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. 2 For indeed in this house we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven; 3 inasmuch as we, having put it on, shall not be found naked. 4 For indeed while we are in this tent, we groan, being burdened, because we do not want to be unclothed, but to be clothed, in order that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. 5 Now He who prepared us for this very purpose is God, who gave to us the Spirit as a pledge. 6 Therefore, being always of good courage, and knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord

We wore out the "Egermeier's Bible Story Book". By the time the last child was moved on to a regular Bible it was being held together with duc-tape! She did a great job in presenting the Bible storys in a wording style that holds the children

Does not the bride in preparation for her great day make herself ready and clothe herself in the finest and cleanest wedding dress possible for her husband? And does she not do this only to be pleasing to the One who has captured her heart? Hallelujah! For the Lord our God, the Almighty, reigns. 7 "Let us rejoice and be glad and give the glory to Him, for the marriage of the Lamb has come and His bride has made herself ready." 8 And it was given to her to clothe herself in fine linen, bright and clean; for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints. Revelation 19:6-8 NASB