I have two passions besides the Truth. Both deal l with the beauty of Gods nature. A wiseman noticed that the closer you look at things God created, the more perfect they get but the opposite is trur for everything mans gets his hands into.
Take for example a pretty penny and then use a microscope and will see there are imperfections galore, like scratches, impurities and holes that where not in man’s design. Then the more powerful the lens you use, the greater are imperfection. But now if zoom in with optical scope into Gods creation. Mineral kingdom , Vegetal or Animal it is perfect.
The closer look the more order and perfection you see. You will find crystals or cells all following logical order with repeating laws. Then go deep to the molecules that make crystal lattices or determine the dna of your mortal coil, it is still perfect. And go deeper, atoms, orbitals, bond and molecules, to subatomic and beyond you will see they all spin with certain God ordained rules. As well the megaverse and the order of the stars.
Well I was doing some scuba diving in Mexico in 2019 and I will share some photos sometime.
But lately I have been using my man cave for a photography studio and going through a lot of macrophotos with a helicon stacking program
I want to share why i chose the name truthprospector. The reason is I love to prospect for true things. The best are in Gods creation untouched by the human hand. But best of all is the Word of the Creator, which is The Truth and His name is Jesus.
King Beaver Open Pit, Thetford Mines Quebec specimens. 1) brown calcite scalehedral xls whych in the 3rd photo fluoresce under short wave UV light. 2) a nice smokey quartz xl 3) the 1st specimen under sw uv light
polished fossil containing chalcedoy from Sunset beach Cape May NJ
If ever a Christian has moral issues with how God is sometimes portrayed in the Old Testament, theological gatekeepers will fling the term “Marcionism” or “Marcionite” to dismiss such questioning as heresy. Knowingly or unknowingly, it is used as a strawman argument to villainize someone who notices discrepancies in the Bible. Accusers are often fundamentalists or inerrantists, but in any case, they wish to defend Scripture from their point of view.
Is Rival Nations a Marcionite? Does Rival Nations support Marcionism? What does Rival Nations think about Marcion of Sinope?
THE MARCION PROBLEM
Marcion of Sinope was a man who lived from AD 80-160 in the Roman empire. He is responsible for the first New Testament canon to ever exist. While not considered an early Church father himself, he is likely ultimately responsible for spurring on the creation of the Apostles’ Creed and the Catholic canon of Scripture. Marcion read the Hebrew scriptures (the Old Testament) and was appalled by how sometimes God was portrayed as a violent, vindictive, spiteful, genocidal god. He wondered how this god could be compatible with the always loving, caring, compassionate, merciful, and graceful god he saw in Jesus Christ. Many, many, many Christians and non-Christians notice the same thing. Many Christians seek to understand and explain the solution to this problem. That is what Marcion of Sinope did—he just went a little too far. Okay, he went a lot too far.
It doesn’t take a Bible scholar to see that the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament often look very different. If you’ve read the Bible, you’ve seen this. Marcion saw this. But Marcion became Christianity’s first heretic for how he reconciled this problem. Marcion decided that the God of the Old Testament, Yahweh, and the God of the New Testament, Jesus’s Father, weren’t even the same god. He figured that Yahweh was responsible for creation, but that he wasn’t Christ’s father but instead he was a demon. Because of this, Marcion threw out the entire Old Testament, rejecting it as Scripture. He created his own canon of scripture that only included ten Pauline epistles and his modified version of Luke.
Marcion didn’t stop there. He also had some pretty heretical views on Jesus. Marcion believed that Jesus never had a physical body or that he was ever born at all. He rejected the belief in Jesus returning, of a coming judgment, and the bodily resurrection of humankind. All of Marcion’s beliefs are outside of Christian orthodoxy and are rejected by Rival Nations.
LITERARILY INSTEAD OF LITERALLY
The term “Marcionite” is often used to describe people who find solutions to the discrepancy of God’s violent nature in the Old Testament and God’s nonviolent nature in the New Testament. Most often, the slander isn’t even made against people who actually believe what Marcion believed; rather, it is just used as a strawman to dismiss the argument. But many Christians struggle with what Marcion struggled with, and better solutions have been found.
Several early Church fathers, including Origen and Tertullian1, wrote against Marcion’s beliefs. They took issue with Marcion for the root of his issues: taking the Old Testament too literally. These early Church fathers didn’t interpret the whole Old Testament literally, and interpreted much of it allegorically, especially when related to the record of violent acts.
The early Church fathers agreed with Marcion that Jesus shows us the exact representation of God and that in comparison, no one has ever seen God (Hebrews 1:1-3, John 1:18). That, by itself, is completely orthodox and central to Christianity. But Origen believed it was sinful for Marcion to interpret the Old Testament’s violent stories as literal, the root cause of him throwing out the Hebrew Scriptures. Origen remarks about Marcion’s downfall, “Holy Scripture is not understood by [Marcion] according to its spiritual, but according to its literal meaning.”2 Would strict literalists who fling around the accusation of “Marcionism” apply that insult to all the church fathers who interpreted portions of the Hebrew scriptures allegorically? Unlikely.
READING THROUGH THE CROSS
Interpreting the Old Testament through the lens of Jesus and the Cross is what makes Christianity different than Judaism. Interpreting the Old Testament differently than a modern Jewish Rabbinic scholar doesn’t make one a Marcionite. Christians start all their theology and interpretive hermeneutics at the Cross and go from there, not the other way around. This is why Paul says that he resolves to know nothing except Christ crucified (1 Corinthians 2:2).
Interpreting the Hebrew Bible in the light of Christ is Christianity. Throwing away the Hebrew Bible is Marcionism.” -Brian Zahnd
Christians don’t throw out the Old Testament just because its authors sometimes misunderstood God. All of the Old Testament is inspired by God (2 Timothy 3:16 NRSV), and it records the journey of God’s people as they struggle and strive to understand him. But we know today that all of the authors of the Hebrew scriptures lacked what the authors of the New Testament had—Jesus Christ. To say that Jesus changed nothing about how the Old Testament should be interpreted is to ignore a major reason why God came in the flesh. Jesus caused Paul to rethink everything he had ever thought about the Hebrew scriptures. Jesus should cause us to rethink everything about the Old Testament and view everything we read through the lens of the Cross.
Unlike Marcion, Rival Nations believes that Yahweh and the Father are the same person. Unlike Marcion, Rival Nations believes that Yahweh is Christ’s father. Unlike Marcion, Rival Nations believes that the Old Testament is inspired by God. Unlike Marcion, Rival Nations believes that the Hebrew scriptures are part of the Biblical canon. Unlike Marcion, Rival Nations believes that Jesus came in bodily form and will resurrect the dead in bodily form one day. Unlike Marcion, Rival Nations believes that the Old Testament should be interpreted through Christ crucified.
I Believe we saw man leave God Totally form the Garden to be without God. Violence and hate and war was the lack of understanding. It took all those thousand of years to bring man back to understand God is LOVE and we saw GOD in His own SON
Jesus appeared on the scene, offering a new way of life, a way of peace. He called his way of life the Kingdom of God. He taught us that we are to pray and work for this Kingdom to come to earth. He taught us to pray and work for his will to be increasingly done on earth as it is in heaven (Matthew 6:10). Jesus taught that his Kingdom of Peace would start small but would grow to be the biggest Kingdom in the whole world (Mark 4:30-32).
Prior to this view of a doom-obsessed end of the world, the primary belief through Church history was that the world would continue to get better and betteras the Kingdom grew until Jesus returned to vanquish evil entirely. This is what the apostles taught. This is what the early Church taught. No Rapture, no 7-year Tribulation, no Antichrist, no battle of Armageddon, no conflict regarding Israel. And you won’t believe what they thought about the Mark of the Beast.
How did we go from a Gospel of “peace and hope” to a warning of “death and disaster”? How did we go from a Gospel of “the world is getting better” to an idea that “the world is getting worse”? How did we go from a Gospel of “bringing heaven to earth” to an “escape from earth to heaven”? Where did all this come from?
THE INVENTION OF THE DOOM MACHINE
A Rapture, a 7-year Tribulation, and a one-world Anti-Christ leader were all things that no Christian had ever heard of before the Reformation in the 1500s. In his rejection of Catholicism, Martin Luther called the Roman Catholic church the “Whore of Babylon” and the Beast, both references to Rome from the book of Revelation. In England, John Wycliffe, Martin Luther in Germany, John Calvin in France, John Knox in Scotland, Ulrich Zwingli in Switzerland, and countless others, all began preaching that the Pope was the antichrist.1 To counter this new popular belief, in 1585 a Catholic Jesuit priest by the name of Francisco Ribera published a 500-page work that placed Daniel 9:24-27, Matthew 24, and Revelation 4-19 in the distant future.2 Rather than seeing these passages as already fulfilled, now Ribera was saying they were still to be fulfilled in the future.3 This was the first teaching of its kind and was the foundation for modern western evangelical futurist end-times views.4 Historically speaking, this new belief didn’t take off right away.
Ribera’s book was actually lost for hundreds of years until, in 1826 a librarian to the Archbishop of Canterbury rediscovered and published it.5 A man named John Nelson Darby, a British evangelical preacher and founder of the Plymouth Brethren, came across Ribera’s newly resurfaced book and unfortunately took the propaganda seriously. Doom and gloom end-times beliefs kicked back into gear in 1830 in Port Glasgow, Scotland, when fifteen-year-old Margaret MacDonald attended a healing service.6 It was there she was said to have seen a vision of the return of Jesus happening in two stages: Jesus taking Christians from the Earth (eventually called the Rapture) and then returning again years later.7 Prior to this, it was a forgone conclusion that Jesus was only returning one time.
Her story was adopted and amplified by John Nelson Darby. He taught that the world would be getting progressively worse until Jesus came and secretly snatched all the Christians away. This heretical belief admonished an entire generation of Christ-followers who were busy improving society. Darby would go on to invent the idea of “dispensationalism,” which packages several fringe, yet now popular in the West, beliefs about the end-times.
During the 1830s, the Holy Spirit was clearly stirring American churches to life in what we today call the Second Great Awakening. But around the same time, Satan was also hard at work spreading false teachings. Darby’s new falsehoods were born alongside several others, such as Mormonism in 1830, Jehovah’s Witnesses in the 1870s, Christian Science in 1879, and other New Age movements around the same time. Even after making six trips to the U.S. to promote his Darbyism, Darby had little luck in swaying many people to his beliefs. Unfortunately, all that would change in roughly a hundred years.
A NEW STUDY BIBLE
When the Scofield Reference Bible was first published in 1909, it was the first of its kind and it would go unchallenged for nearly 50 years. It wasn’t a new translation; rather it was the KJV with custom headers and study notes in the margins. The views expressed in these notes would come to shape much of the American theological landscape, predominately through the 1960s-1990s.
Focusing heavily on Eschatology(end-times), the notes weave parts of the Old and New Testaments together, as though all were written at the same time by the same people. This is a favorite device of modern dispensationalists, who essentially weigh all scripture against the unspoken and preposterous theory that the older it is, the more authoritative it is. The borrowed ideas in the headers and notes were later popularized under the labels and definitions that have evolved into common usage today: “pre-millennialism,” “futurism,” “dispensationalism,” “Judeo-Christianity,” and most recently, the highly political movement openly called “Christian Zionism.”
When World War I began, Christian optimism took a hit, and the Scofield Reference Bible provided a pessimistic worldview that seemed prophetic. By the end of World War II, the Scofield Reference Bible was the best selling Bible in the whole nation.8 Being the first of its kind, Scofield’s Reference Bible began to shape the theology of popular Christianity in America and Europe. Many historians show how the dispensational theology of Scofield’s Bible led to Christian apathy when Hitler and Mussolini rose to power. Literature began to rapidly spread, claiming that “these men could be the antichrist; therefore, we should let them rise in power because this will lead to our soon rapture.”9 Dispensationalism promoted a “hands-off” policy regarding Nazi persecution of the Jews since they believed it was a sign of “the Great Tribulation.” Pleas from Europe for assistance for Jewish refugees fell on deaf ears because “hands-off” meant no helping hand.10Who was behind the creation of the Scofield Reference Bible?
MISTER SCOFIELD
The author, Cyrus I. Scofield, allegedly had a Doctorate in Divinity, but that has since proved false.11 Originally a lawyer and later involved in politics, he was not a Bible scholar as one might expect, but rather a political animal with charm and talent for self-promotion. Scofield was a dubious character with a criminal history, who embezzled money, was forced to resign from politics, had a severe drinking problem, served six months in jail for forgery even after his conversion to Christianity, and abandoned his wife and daughters.
Researchers believe that as one of Scofield’s closest friends, Samuel Untermeyer, a lawyer and one of the wealthiest Zionists in America, funded the writing of the Reference Bible. Lavish living conditions in Europe were also funded where Scofield would come to be linked to Oxford University Press. It seems Scofield’s interest in Darbyism was shared by Oxford, which published and distributed the Scofield Reference Bible.12 Scofield stated he was paid handsome royalties by Oxford, allowing him to buy many properties.
The idea of a Rapture and its merry gang of end-times beliefs got a major boost from being taught in Bible colleges popping up all across America. Oxford University Press made sure distribution took place through these various popular seminaries and that every new pastor left school with one in hand. It was through this forced and artificial proliferation of the Reference Bible that these beliefs became solidified in the minds of evangelical churches. There was a clear and concerted effort to influence Christian belief.
POP-CULTURE CHRISTIANITY
Doom and gloom dispensational theology has created boogeyman after boogeyman over the decades. There is always a new Anti-Christ and a new Mark of the Beast to be fearful of after the last one gets proven to be false. Later followed by a popular movie, the best selling book of 1970 was The Late Great Planet Earth, by Hal Lindsay. In a misinterpretation of Matthew 24:34,13 Lindsay predicted that Jesus’ return might be within “one generation” of the establishment of the modern nation-state of Israel. He predicted that the end times would occur in the 1980s, where he utilized current fears of Soviet communism and nuclear weapons to draw allegories to apocalyptic imagery. In his work, The 1980’s: Countdown to Armageddon, Lindsey predicted that “the decade of the 1980s could very well be the last decade of history as we know it.”
Left Behind, a series of 17 best-selling religious fiction novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, is responsible for pushing the idea of doom and gloom into the forefront of popular Christianity in the 90s. After selling 60 million copies, the book series was followed up by four different films and a host of video games. LeHaye and Jenkins replaced Lindsay’sRed Scare of the 70s, with budding Islamophobia and the hysterical scare of Y2K in the late 90s, evangelicals were primed for rapture fever. David Carlson, a Professor of Religious Studies, writes that the Dispensationalist theology underpinning the Left Behindseries promotes a “skewed view of the Christian faith that welcomes war and disaster, while dismissing peace efforts in the Middle East and elsewhere—all in the name of Christ.”14
Despite the Rapture and it’s accompanying Dispensational beliefs not being held by most orthodox Christian scholars and theologians today, they continue to permeate much of evangelical lay theology in America. Undoubtedly, this can be mostly attributed to the widespread distribution of the Scofield Reference Bible which, sometime after it’s authors death, was re-released with edits four times up to 1967, with steeper Dispensational and Zionist leanings with each release.
Every prediction has proved to be false, and after 50 years of false predictions about the end of the world, we should probably stop paying attention. The clear historical record shows where these doom and gloom beliefs came from. The teaching that Christ’s words in Matthew 24, Daniel’s prophecies, and the book of Revelation are all referring to future events is a new system of beliefs that started at the Reformation, developed in the 1800s and became popular in the late 20th century. You may have just assumed that Christians have always believed this way, but it does not have the support of Church history or Scripture and will go down in the history books as an unfortunate fad.
WHY IT ALL MATTERS
Doom-and-gloom end-times beliefs are an example of what can happen when Christians rely on popular teachings rather than reading scripture for themselves. The enemy is a crafty deceiver. God saves us not by snatching us out of the world but by coming into the world to be with us. The escapist mindset behind much of the Rapture theology should cause worry. We’re supposed to be bringing the Kingdom down to earth, not escaping earth to avoid hardships. The world is not destroyed; it is renewed.
End-times theology has produced a Christianity that is wide-spread but has so little cultural influence because it recognizes no long-term hope of success. In contrast, the true Gospel of the Kingdom of God has a plan; it motivates us to pursue it, and understands that we as Christ’s ambassadors are to build into his nation and think long-term.
The Prince of Peace has established a new kind of government, a government characterized by ever-increasing peace. Weapons of war are being transformed into instruments of agriculture (Isaiah 2:4). This was Isaiah’s hope (Isaiah 9:5). What had been prophesied for generations became fulfilled with the coming of Jesus, the Prince of Peace!
The doom-obsessed end-times beliefs of Dispensationalism attempts to take that hope of Peace away. They say that Jesus is the Prince of Peace, but that peace is not for now, only when Jesus comes back again. This is not what Scripture teaches. War can never achieve peace. The Dispensationalist version of the biblical storyline requirestribulation and war in the Middle East, not peace plans. That is the most terrifying aspect of this distorted theology. Such anticipation of violence is the very reason why we cannot afford to give in to this false idea—because real people’s lives are at stake.
Michael de Semlyen, All Roads Lead to Rome (Bucs, England: Dorchestor House Publications, 1991) 202-203.
Rev. Joseph Tanner, Daniel and Revelation, 16-17; as quoted by Froom, Vol. 2, 487.
George Eldon Ladd, The Blessed Hope: A Biblical Study of the Second Advent and the Rapture (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1956) 37-38.
Robert Caringola, Seventy Weeks: The Historical Alternative (Springfield, MO: Abundant Life Ministries Reformed Press, 1991) 31.
Dr. Ron Thompson, Champions of Christianity in Search of Truth (Brushton, NY: Teach Services, 1996) 91.
Dave MacPherson, The Rapture Plot (Simpsonville, SC: Millennium III Publishers, 2000) 28, 249-252.
Dave MacPherson, The Incredible Cover-Up: Exposing the Origins of Rapture Theories (Medford, OR: Omega Publications, 1980) 30-32.
Gaebelein, 11.
Woodrow, Ralph. Great Prophecies of the Bible. Riverside, CA: Ralph
DeMar, Gary. Last Days Madness, 4th ed. Atlanta, GA: American Vision, 1999.
The Incredible Scofield and His Book by Joseph M. Canfield
A History of The Plymouth Brethren by William Blair Neatby
Matthew 24:34 was used as proof, “Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.” Since the Bible teaches that a generation is forty years, this led millions of Christians to believe and teach the rapture would occur in 1988. Thus, Edgar Whisenant sold 4.5 million copies of his book, 88 Reasons Why Jesus Will Return in 1988. For more information on this verse, read our article here.
God has been putting up with us and our sin for a very, very long time. One massive overarching theme that we can see in Scripture is that God has been slowly moving his people further away from sin and closer towards his ideal. In the New Testament, we see a massive jump forward with the arrival of Jesus. God came to us in the flesh to say, “enough is enough.” No more misinterpretations, no more accommodations, no more concessions.
In this first article of a series called “Enough is Enough,” we’ll be looking at animal sacrifice in the Old Testament and how God never wanted it in the first place.
ANIMAL SACRIFICE
The ancient Israelites had a barbaric and bizarre practice of killing animals and then burning their dead bodies. While many assume that God wanted animal sacrifices, a closer look at scripture reveals otherwise.
All Ancient Near Eastern people, not just the Israelites, sacrificed animals to appease the gods. Animal sacrificed was practiced long before the Hebrews were even a people, much less had written the Scriptures. In light of the almost universal religious practice of sacrificing animals, it seems reasonable to assume that the Israelites had been sacrificing animals a long time before God ever began instructing them. In fact, the way some Old Testament authors refer to the sacrifice as producing “a pleasing aroma to God” reflects the cultural indebtedness of this practice, for we find this same phrase used by other people long before the Israelites (Exodus 29:25, 41; Leviticus 1:9, 13, 17).
ADAM AND EVE
Some claim that animal sacrifice has been a staple of human religion around the world from the start because of two stories in Genesis. The first is when Adam and Eve sinned and were expelled from the Garden of Eden, God made them animal skin clothes (Genesis 3:21). It is sometimes taught that God wanted to show Adam and Eve that there were consequences because of their sin, so he sacrificed an animal in front of them and used its skin to make clothes. Some even go as far as claiming this is an illustration that points to Penal Substitution Atonement Theory, saying that God should have killed them but killed an animal in their place.
All of this is a major stretch, though, because none of it is mentioned. All that the Scripture says is, “The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.”The death of an animal and sacrifice are never mentioned. God simply made “garments of skin,” and he could have in the same way he made Adam and Eve and the world—out of nothing. So we shouldn’t read this story as proof that God invented animal sacrifice.
For in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to your fathers or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. But this command I gave them: ‘Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people. And walk in all the way that I command you, that it may be well with you.’ Jeremiah 7:22-23
CAIN AND ABEL
As we read in Genesis, chapter 4 tells us about something Adam and Eve’s children do to appease God. Cain and Abel each make an offering to God (Genesis 4:3-5). Interestingly enough, there’s no suggestion that God asked Cain and/or Able to offer anything. They just started doing this. Some have suggested that this reflects the fallen human sense that we are estranged from God and that he’s angry about it, so we instinctively want to do something to rectify this.
This story in Genesis makes absolutely no mention of commonly concluded claims: the killing of an animal or the sacrifice of an animal. Reread the story; there is no mention of sacrifice—only of offerings. Offerings were also ubiquitous in the ancient world. The common thought was that gods need to eat too, and so food offerings are made to feed them. Cain offered God fruit to eat, and Abel offered God “fat portions” to eat.
Remember, no mention of sacrificing an animal is made in Genesis 4, so the offering that Abel made was not a dead animal but rather a part of an animal to eat. Abel was offering God the “fat portions” of the firstborn of his flock. So Abel could have killed his animals for food and offered God the best part to eat, but there is another interpretation as well. The Hebrew word translated into “fat” shares the same consonant configuration for the word that gets translated into “milk.” Some early Jewish and Christian scholars understood this text to say that Abel offered milk to God. The Jewish historian Josephus is one such source, who wrote that “Cain brought the fruits of the earth, and of his husbandry; but Abel brought milk and the first-fruits of his flocks” (Antiquities 1.2.1).
Either way, no mention of sacrifice is made in the story of Cain and Abel.
ABRAHAM AND ISSAC
Most are familiar with the story of Abraham and Issac. God tells Abraham to go up a mountain and sacrifice his son, but at the last minute, he stops him (Genesis 22). Most read this story as God testing Abraham’s faith, but it is actually much more than just that. If you look closely, you can notice some interesting things about the story.
In Genesis 22:2-3, God says, “go kill your only son that you love,” and Abraham just sets out and doesn’t even question it. There isn’t a hint of Abraham being resistant to this idea. He lies to his son to keep him calm but doesn’t hesitate to tie up Issac and raise up his blade. Right before Abraham slaughters his child, an angel stops him and says, “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.” (Genesis 22:12)
Without knowing the context of Abraham’s world, it is easy to overlook the most important lesson this story teaches us. In the time Abraham lived, there wasn’t a pagan god in the land that didn’t demand child sacrifice. Human sacrifice was commonplace, and the gods demanded firstborn children most often.
When Abraham heard God tell him to go sacrifice his son, this was no surprise. He expected it. But instead, God stays his hand. That is the story’s whole point: God is putting an end to the ritual of child sacrifice (Leviticus 18:21, 20:3; Deuteronomy 12:30-31, 18:10). Human sacrifice was the norm worldwide, but God was revealing that he is different from other gods. This was God’s first step in taking humankind away from sacrifices: moving from human to at least animal.
SUBVERTING PAGANISM
Since God must relate to people where they are in order to gradually lead them forward, just as a missionary must do when going to pagan cultures, it seems that God accepted this barbaric practice as an accommodation to his fallen, culturally conditioned people. In fact, one passage in Leviticus indicates that God commanded animal sacrifices as a way of helping his people to stop worshiping demons (Leviticus 17:7).
So while God accepted this practice, he changed its meaning. Instead of being used to appease God’s wrath, as pagans have always believed, these sacrifices were used to remind people that covenant-breaking with the God of life inevitably leads to death. Thus, animals were sacrificed not because God needed them to forgive people but because his people needed them to remember the death consequences of sin and to therefore repent when they’d broken covenant with God.
Origen, a 3rd-century theologian, put it this way:
Since the Jews loved sacrifices, being accustomed to them in Egypt, as the golden calf in the desert gives witness, God permits them to offer them to himself so as to curb their disordered tendency to polytheism and to turn them away from sacrificing to idols.1
Like other Christian thinkers of the time, Origen did not believe that animal sacrifices were God’s idea. However, the Jews were already steeped in this ancient barbaric practice, and God saw that it was pulling them in the direction of pagan polytheistic idolatry. God thus choose the lesser of two evils when he decided to block the pull toward polytheistic idolatry by stooping to allow the Jews to make their sacrifices to him.
THE FINAL SACRIFICE
Later in Israel’s history, when people began sacrificing animals without repenting in their hearts, the Lord told them (through prophets like Isaiah, Hosea, and Amos) that he despised their sacrifices, for they are meaningless without a change in heart (Psalm 51:16-17; Isaiah 1:11-14; Micah 6:6-8: Amos 5:21-25; Hosea 6:6). Even Jesus quotes Hosea when speaking to the Pharisees, saying, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice” (Matthew 9:13).
The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming—not the realities themselves… …those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins. It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said: “Sacrifice and offering you did not desire… with burnt offerings and sin offerings you were not pleased.” …we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. Hebrews 10:1, 3-6, 10
In Hebrews 10:1-14, we are told that animal sacrifices were a reminder of sins but could never take the sins away. No matter how many times the Israelites killed animals, their sins were never taken away. “Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not desire, nor were you pleased with them” (Hebrews 10:8). Jesus came to do away with sacrifices by becoming the final sacrifice, the first and only sacrifice that could actually set things right.
It is clear that once Jesus arrives, the sacrificial system that God had been accommodating is done away with.
On this side of Jesus, Christians don’t sacrifice animals. We don’t do it. We don’t because it’s been revealed to us that God never desired it, and Jesus is the only sacrifice that humankind would ever need. God never wanted animal sacrifices. He used them for a time, but now with Jesus, they are done away with once and for all. Enough is enough.
How did I survive the scamdemic? I knew it was a bio arm from the Communist people party and that the vaccination would not stop until they destroyed our freedom from the West and all around the world.
That was 2020 but I not only survived I grew stronger!
Since then, I refused to be monitored and cared for by the medical system. They close the gyms, isolated older people and destroyed all business that did not rely on their controlled internet networks. They sent us to stores that only profited those causing all the fear for profit. They destroy countless lives and the dreams of our children and grand children.
I was at war because I knew this was no pandemic but a war and at first I was looking for an enemy to fight. I was ready to leave my wife. I had made the choice to leave the USA and become a Canadian and now I could no longer leave my prison without losing my wife who I married for “better or worse” I was the only one with an American passport and could leave when ever I wanted but never come home to Canada!
My Bunker Man Cave Gym
I started doing push ups on my fists. I am now 69 going on 70 and I am in great shape. I continue today to train in my basement and made my own Gym to be in shape because the enemies were hoping to get rid of me and our generation of gray haired wisdom of experience. I knew that so I decided to prepare for the war.
I started lifting 20 to 30 lbs dumbbell with a bench I would religiously carry to all my hotels as I was still working as a QA steel inspector. I would get away from my wife to have some freedom to evangelize. She is not on the same page yet and I had to have these projects just to be away in another town place tracts and being a Jesus Freak and I am proud of it.
But somewhere through all the trials I was changed to become stronger, more loving and more like Christ. I had some major bouts with not a person but my own demons. I had to die to my plans and when I sacrificed I found more strength and power of the Holy spirit in me.
I refused to be vaccinated and my wife did not support me at all. I went to see my family, my three daughters and 6 grandchildren in new England and then my sister and family in new jersey. I did a two week trip and had to do all these apps and tests to be in a quarantine imprisoned in a hotel for 2 weeks with the risk of jail of ONE MILLION DOLLAR fines, but I did it and got closer to God. I was in the room (one of my favorite suites I had when working) and it was like a spiritual retreat for me. I did a lot of praying and that was May 2021.
I had planned to use the excuse of seeing my children when I was more interested in scuba diving one more time in Los Cabos Mexico. I had broke my depth record at 100 ft in nov 2019, But I was redirect by God. He closed that door. I was too tired and stressed to arrange all he hotels and flights. But after a day of grief feeling like a part of me died a moved on and saw the real reason unfold. I was there to minister to all my family the love of God. I saw miracle and was moved around by the holy spirit to be in the right places and the right time.
But I was still learning to become stronger in love and less in love with myself. It was a painful process. I realized coming back I may never see my family in the USA again. I still wanted to leave Canada and hated the tyrrany of the socialist government so bad I could not stand it. I was so ready to leave my wife to find my freedom. She seemed happy to be with her family and I was never going to see mine! I was full of resentment and anger. It took a lot to surrender to His will but I was learning that every time I sacrificed for Love, love made my faith stronger.
I had been a resident for about 10 years and carried one travel document to re-enter Canada. But on Dec 20 I was called to a zoom meeting Citizenship ceremony to find I had to cut my card and lose my right to re-enter Canada until I had a Canadian passport. I had to apply and I am still waiting. The Lord willing I will have that in a few weeks. But the day I won my Canadian citizenship evey one congradulated me. All I could say was “thanks Comrads” because now I felt like nothing achieved. I had less freedom than when I was a permament resident. I was cynical and depressed because it looked like I chose the wrong country to finish my days in.
I had almost up and left my wife once a few months back after a disagreement between who is your master? Trudeau or Jesus? And I could not leave my wife then. I cried and died and realized love bears and endures all things ALL! I could not leave because I did realize I could not leave my wife and doggie behind. And this time when I got my Citizenship I bough a bottle of brandy and drank myself drunk, blanked out and got possessed by the devil I think.
I fell but I keep getting up, I had a brother in Christ in New York and I called him, He exhorted me in strong words and I realized I needed it. So I changed my course ate a lot of humble pie and apologized to my wife.
I am still working out in my basement and writing a lot, I am concentrate on praying and winning my unsaved love ones, like my wife, our two grand-daughers and their family. I am being like Christ and showing them not with words so much but self sacrificing love as Christ would. When I go out though I am doing all I can to spread Jesus to ever one I can, even at my steel jobs. I have learned Spanish for Mexico but Canada hires lots of Mexicans and Columbians so I can talk now with them about EL Senor where ever I go to work. Let the will of the Lord be done is my prayer ever day.
I want to share my personal way of dealing with the oppressors. I refuse to let them cause bitterness in me and I forgive my wife and family for being such good little “Conrades” I forgive more and more and pray for love more and more. Because Love never fails and if I do all without love I am nothing. I want to be as big as God a be filled with His love. I want my life to count while I am here and leave an impact for His Kingdom, not myself. But doing that I am getting more mature and stronger
working out in the woods with Molita
When I was supposed to be in lock down with the socialist lock downs I would find a new way to amuse myself. I would take my 8 pound Chihuahua with me on all these prospecting trips looking to document new mines and prospects. This is why I call myself the Truthprospector. I have two passions in life. One is scuba diving and the life in the Ocean. The other is minerals and geology. So in 2020 I spent most of my time making trips all around my area of Quebec looking for mines and minerals with my little dog dauther Molly
I became so close to this dog. No one can tell me she will not be in Paradise with me when the Lord returns to restore the world back to what it is supposed to be. She was given to me and Guylaine my wife when Covid just started and she is the cement that saved me and my marriage time and time again. She sleeps with us, and although the devil has tried destroying our love for each other over politics and religion, she kept us together. We both have grown to love her as our baby and there is no child custody over the board in time of war. So we had to stay together through all the times we hated each other we still loved our dog daughter and made our relation work for her little home. Crazy as it seem it worked she was a gift from God in his good providence.
She still is the thing we can always agree on. But after I gave up trying to run away from muy new family in Canada I began to realize this is where God wants me. I was learning more of what surrender to His will means and meekness. But there is power when you are meekness because when you give up and surrender to God’s will, who can be against you? No one can go against Gods plans!
Even though we could no longer go to Wildwood NJ like every summer I took my WIfe and dog daugther Molly on trips in Quebec and learned to love shoveling snow!
My Lovely Wife
So I do not thank the New world Chaos, or Fauci or the corrupt socialist communistic take over. But I thank God that He is alive and powerful to allow me at 69 not to survive but thrive and grow in spite of all of them! God is Greater in every situation!
2 Samuel 7 begins with an account of David remarking on his guilt that he lives in such a lavish palace, but the Ark of the Covenant remains in a tent (the Tabernacle). The origin of the idea to build God a temple starts here. David’s prophet, Nathan, tells David, “Whatever you have in mind, go ahead and do it, for the Lord is with you.” But that night the Lord spoke to Nathan in a dream, explicitly telling him to warn David that he was “not the one to build me a house to dwell in” (1 Chronicles 17:4). God says that a temple is not needed and that he has never asked for such a thing.
Go and tell my servant David, ‘This is what the Lord says: Are you the one to build me a house to dwell in? I have not dwelt in a house from the day I brought the Israelites up out of Egypt to this day. I have been moving from place to place with a tent as my dwelling. Wherever I have moved with all the Israelites, did I ever say to any of their rulers whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, “Why have you not built me a house of cedar?” 2 Samuel 7:5-7
What comes next is key. God goes on to say that it is his desire that he himself build a house [temple] and that it will be his son, Jesus.
The Lord declares to you that the Lord himself will establish a house for you: When your days are over and you rest with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, your own flesh and blood, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his father, and he will be my son. 2 Samuel 7:11-14
The Lord here is talking about his son, Jesus, and his Kingdom (Luke 1:31-33; Acts 2:29-31; Hebrews 1:5). Notice four key details: God himself will build the “house”. After David has already died, someone in David’s line will be raised up to establish his kingdom. This person will reign on a throne in an eternal kingdom. This person will be God’s son.
The word “house” is referring to a dwelling place for God. The Lord indeed built a dwelling place for himself: the Church. All over the New Testament, we are told that the Church, the people in Christ, are God’s temple and therefore his dwelling place (1 Corinthians 3:16-17, 2 Corinthians 6:16, 6:19; 1 Peter 2:5, Ephesians 2:19-22). Long after David died, just like in Nathan’s prophesy, his descendant established an eternal kingdom. The descendant of David was Jesus, God’s son, and he indeed established an eternal kingdom—the Kingdom of God.
Unfortunately, David makes several key misinterpretations (1 Chronicles 28:5-7). Instead of God allowing himself to build the “house”, David and Solomon build one. Instead of waiting for God to raise up one of his descendants after he died, David appointed his already living son, Solomon, to build a temple. Instead of letting God use his son to build a “house”, David appoints his own son to build a temple (1 Chronicles 22:7-10). God never called Solomon, a man who worshiped pagan gods, His son. David, who already had his mind up before any of this, thought that “house” meant a cedar and stone temple, much like all the other pagan cultures had for their gods to dwell in. Finally, Solomon’s kingdom would not be an eternal one—his kingdom ended spectacularly when the Israelites were thrown into Babylonian exile.
Even though God clearly tells David not to build a temple (1 Chronicles 17:4), he does it anyway.
“PLANNING”
David reports that he is forbidden from building a house to God because “he is a warrior and has shed blood“ (1 Chronicles 28:2-3).1 Despite a temple not being God’s will, and being forbidden from building it, David really wanted to. So knowing he was forbidden from building a temple, instead, he made “extensive preparations” (1 Chronicles 22:5, 14; 29:2-3). What started in David’s heart as his idea, took root and became an obsession. Scripture seems to indicate that David possibly had insomnia over it (Psalm 132:1-5).
The contents of David’s preparations for the temple are extensive (1 Chronicles 22:2-19). David planned out every detail down to the exact weight of every decorative item. He funded the entire construction project, created the exact blueprints, and even gathered all the materials needed (1 Chronicles 28:11-18). Finally, David also picked out the exact location that his temple would be built (1 Chronicles 21:24-26). David knew that God forbade him from building a temple, but because he mistakenly believed that his son would be able to build it, he prepared so extensively that Solomon could carry out David’s will exactly as he envisioned it.
Despite the fact that today we call the building “Solomon’s Temple”, Solomon really had nothing to do with it. Even though David was told that a “house” would be built by God’s son, not David’s son, and that it wouldn’t be built until after his “days are over and he rests with his ancestors,” David wasn’t able to wait—he himself gave the order to start construction of the temple (1 Chronicles 22:19).
The first temple was not God’s will but was the product of David’s flesh.
THE TEMPLES DESTROYED
David’s temple, being the result of his flesh and misunderstandings, did not enjoy the protection of God. Roughly 30 years after it was built it was completely ransacked by a foreign king (1 Kings 14:25-26). Foreign gods were worshipped and child sacrifices were made in the temple (2 Kings 21:3-6). It was completely destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BC and rebuilt 70 years later. Jesus prophesied that the temple would once again meet its destruction sometime within a generation and he was correct. Clearly, God does not care about a temple building.
Scripture says that the Law (including the Old Covenant and the Temple) was “weak” and “useless“, made “obsolete” and would soon “disappear” (Hebrews 7:18, 8:13). Jesus brought on the New Covenant which replaced the Old. The temple, part of God’s Old Testament concessions, would meet its fate in a few decades, but God clearly wanted to make a statement sooner than that. In the temple was a curtain that separated the “Holy of Holies” (the former place of God’s presence) from the rest of the building. At the moment of Christ’s death, that curtain was torn in two from top to bottom. Now the way into the Holy of Holies was open for all people, for all time. When Jesus died, the curtain was torn, and God moved out of that place never again to dwell in a temple made with human hands (Acts 17:24). God was through with temples and their religious system.
NEVER WANTED IT
The book of Hebrews explains how Jesus is now our only way to God’s presence (Hebrews 10:19-20). The author of Hebrews makes great pains to link Jesus back to the Old Testament but he never uses the Temple to do this, instead, he always uses the Tabernacle (8 times), saying, “the true tabernacle [is] set up by the Lord, not by a mere human being” (Hebrews 8:1-2). The prophet Amos is quoted by James where he says that it would be the Tabernacle that would be rebuilt, not David’s temple (Acts 15:15-18).2
Stephen, while preaching to the Israelites, moments before he was murdered by them, said that the Temple was David’s idea, that it was a result of resisting the Holy Spirit, and that God “does not live in houses made by human hands” (Acts 7:44-51). Today there is no Jewish Temple in existence. God allowed for the existence of a temple building but now we know, through the New and the Old Testament, that God wanted to build his own Temple. That Temple, we are told, is Jesus Christ and his body of believers (John 2:19-22; Matthew 12:6; 1 Corinthians 3:16-17; Ephesians 2:19-22; Revelation 21:22). If Jesus himself and his followers are the True Temple of God, then that means that the Israelite building, modeled after pagan worship, was the False Temple.
The promise that God made to David all those centuries ago was fulfilled in Jesus. David didn’t listen to God, but Jesus came anyway and established his true Temple. God never wanted a Temple building. He put up with it for a time, but now with Jesus, it is done away with once and for all. Enough is enough.
FOOTNOTES
This illustrates another sin that God accommodated for a time but is now abolished with Jesus: violence.
“Amos here plainly, spoke of the temple of Solomon as a condition “fallen” from the tabernacle of David. He also viewed the temple of Solomon as “the ruins” of that tabernacle, and he included a promise that “in that day,” that is, in the times of the Messiah, the tabernacle would be rebuilt. Amos wrote these words in the eighth century, and yet at that time when Solomon’s temple had been standing more than a century, he said, “The tabernacle of David is fallen.” That cannot mean that God had replaced it with Solomon’s temple.” James Burton Coffman, The James Burton Coffman Commentary Series: The Historical Books, Commentary on 2 Samuel 7 (Abilene Christian University Press, 1974)
Truth Prospector 