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EDUCATION-Christ as Prophet RELIGION-Christ as Priest GOVERNMENT-Christ as King ++++ RELIGION-Christ as Priest =============== ==============
Since the beginning of time mankind has wondered how to get in touch with and experience God, if indeed there really is a God who created the whole universe and everything in it. This book Experiencing the Presence of God: A 50 Week Daily Devotional Guide to Change Your Life Forever explains in step-by-step detail how to get in touch with and actually experience the spiritual Presence of God in personal fellowship in an Abba Father relationship through His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit of God. However, ultimately, the end goal of the Christian life is to understand and live out the Whole Counsel of the Kingdom of God in all its fullness as presented in the holy Word of God, the Bible. This book is available on Amazon at>>> amazon.com/dp/1696928893?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860
+++ +++ RELIGION-Christ as Priest The Bible and common experience say that the vast majority of people think that there is a God, an actual, perfectly Righteous Creator God. In the story of mankind on earth atheists and agnostics stand out for their exceptional nature. This means just thinking there is a God or even trying to serve Him in right living is not “religion,” as such. Religion is more to the worshipping of God as such. Scripture teaches that all religions outside of Judaism and Christianity are demonic deceptions. Judaism and Christianity both teach the same basic Two Great Commandments: Love God with all your heart, mind and soul, and love your neighbor as yourself. Christianity differs from Judaism in that it holds that Jesus is the Son of God (the Second Person of the Trinity) who came to earth and died on the Cross for our sins to make us right with God and to re-establish personal spiritual relationship with Him that was lost in the Garden of Eden. Some people today take the Garden of Eden as an allegory, but regardless, the spiritual point of the story remains: we are naturally fallen selfish creatures and separated from God and from relationship and fellowship with Him, and God will ultimately Judge us for our sins unless we have a Savior to pay our sin debt for us. That Savior would be Jesus of course. There is no reason not to accept Jesus as one's Savior, unless one is committed to not following him in the doing the Two Great Commandments. So, with time, presumably all or virtually all of humanity on planet Earth will come to Christ. In worshipping God, Jesus said it is a matter of getting it right in both spirit and truth (John 4:23), and ultimately this becomes in God's Spirit and Truth, and not in false or corrupted “spirits” and “truths.” In dying on the Cross for our sins, Jesus became mankind's High Priest for all who want personal spiritual fellowship with God the Father, the Creator of the universe and everything in it. A “priest” is a go-between between man and God (and even a go-between between man and the demonic spirit realm). However, for Christians, Christ is one's High Priest making God directly accessible to man in the realm of the spirit without needing any longer a human priest on earth. This is known as the priesthood of the believers. (1 Peter 2:9-10) When we worship God correctly in spirit and truth in God's Spirit and Truth, this is ultimately known as the Whole Counsel of God or the Whole Counsel of the Kingdom of God spoken of by Paul in Acts 20:25-27 & Acts 28:30-31. The importance of this cannot be overstated. The fundamental religious point of Christianity is evangelism or, that is, the Gospel or Good News that Christ died on the Cross for our sins in order to reconcile us to God and re-establish a personal spiritual relationship with Him, but the Whole Counsel of the Kingdom of God is much more than this. The Whole Counsel of the Kingdom of God includes everything in the entire Christian cosmology from the Creation to the Final Judgment, to right living and Right Reason, and ultimately the Whole Counsel of the Kingdom includes establishing Just and Righteous governments throughout the world for a thousand year time of peace and prosperity for all nations, but the specifically “religious” point of the Whole Counsel of the Kingdom is Christ is mankind's High Priest to God, if one wants personal spiritual fellowship and relationship with God. This is the main subject of the book Experiencing the Presence of God: A 50 Week Daily Devotional Guide to Change Your Life Forever by Frank N. Mitchell, but the book also deals in part with the Whole Counsel of the Kingdom of God that includes good government as well as right moral education because the Whole Counsel of the Kingdom takes one outside of the realm of truly good religious worship of God in Spirit and Truth where Christ is High Priest and into the more secular two spheres (or areas) of good and just government where Christ is King as well as into the sphere of good and right education where Christ is Prophet. But why is this so in education? Christ is the moral Wisdom of God says Solomon as well as the Logos Rationality of the Greeks says John. It is seeing this fact that allows for the Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit to make sense in a way that it otherwise does not, though we still cannot really get our infinite minds around the Trinity. The Father is the Good (of Plato and James 1:17-18) from which all good things come, and the Son is the Right of Right Reason (of Solomon, John and Heraclitus) and the Holy Spirit is known as the Spirit of Truth (John 14:17, 15:26, 16:13, 1 John 4:6) and the perfectly loving Comforter (John 14:16) or spiritual Helper, who gives peace that passes all understanding (Philippians 4:7). The Good, the Right, and the True: they are very real, and they are God. And they are a Trinity. Augustine said he can no more doubt the existence of Truth than he can his own existence! But, in reality, that is true for everybody; no one can. But this means in a very real sense Augustine could have said he can no more doubt the existence of God than he can his own existence! But the same holds true for not being able to doubt Right Reason and the Good. The Good, the Right and the True are not only real, absolute, and perfect, they are three Persons. They are one God in three divine Persons. This is awesome, truly awesome. God is all-Knowing, all-Powerful, all-Righteous, perfectly Loving and ever-Present. (True Love is very real. It actually exists as much as the Good, the Right and the True, and God is love says 1 John 4:7-8.) When Christianity came on the scene in the ancient Roman Empire it was taken by the Romans to be yet another Middle Eastern mystery religion, and in truth in a sense this was correct, though Christianity truly explains the mysteries of existence in a way that all the other mystery religions of the Middle East did not as demonic deceptions. How did mankind get here on this planet? Why are we here? And where are we going when we die? The answers to these basic questions and “mysteries” are to be found in the Bible, and as a general statement they are not the subject of science because science does not deal well with the subject of origins or with the meaning and truth of life. Even if there was a Big Bang, we would know not why. Did lightning bolts hit a hot dilute soup on earth and create life that miraculously turned into animals and then humans? This pushes the limits of science and credulity any way you figure it. Was Jesus born of a Virgin? As Mary herself in all likelihood told this to Dr. Luke around 60 AD, it would seem almost certainly to be the case that Jesus was indeed born of a Virgin. And did Jesus walk out of the grave? Well, that was without any question the faith of the Apostles in the first century, and they are either telling the truth or making the whole thing up, which is a virtual impossibility all things considered. Bottom line on true religion in Spirit and Truth: The ultimate significance of the Resurrection for us is it that it proves the entire Christian cosmology is true from the Creation to the Final Judgment (just as Paul says in Acts 17) and it assures us that there is life after death for all of us. Holy smoke, it hits one profoundly at some point: Christianity is true, all true, I mean really true. What is the specifically “religious” point of this? It is Psalm 122:1 “I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the LORD.” + + + |
Experiencing
the Presence of God: A 50 Week Daily Devotional Guide to Change Your Life
Forever by Frank N. Mitchell