Life and an assembly of books

On 2016-05-022016-05-02 By Relating to GodIn Bible = Book of books, God the Father - Eternal Jehovah, World & Universe10 Comments

Today, more than ever, men and women are concerned about job satisfaction and a way to live wealthy. Most of them though think money shall bring them the aspired luck. Having so much wealth and so many gadget around them to make life easier and more pleasant, lots of people still do not seem to be satisfied.

They do not seem to be able to find “fulfilment“. Being pressed at work, more and more being pushed by society which wants more from man, people become more and more frustrated and sometimes even do not get to the point where the can wonder what the purpose is of this all.

Strangely enough lots of people looking for job satisfaction are confronted with employment itself being partly responsible for the negative experiences of time management and of joblessness because, in allowing people only a limited space in which to cultivate other interests, skills and social ties, full-time jobs can often leave people with few personal and social resources to fall back on.

Lots of people get so much caught up by work they have not time for others and often even not enough time for their own family. That is one of the reasons we see so many families breaking up.

Many feel an emptiness in their life which does never seemed to feel filled in. All the time when people seem to reach something they are confronted by somebody else who has done better. Whatever a person may achieve in life, there is someone who probably has done better in another side of the world. As such there is no point boasting about one’s achievements.

The point is that our happiness should not be built on achievements but should flow from fulfilment, from the hole that makes whole. {Have you found the hole that makes you whole}

In this very fast turning around commercial world, lots of people are focusing everything around their own self and do everything they think possible to acquire great things for themself. It takes, for many, a very long time before they come to see that this attitude is not at all going to make them happy for a long time.

Focusing on themselves people get to feel the vacuum inside themselves better. They shall have to come to the understanding that already from the beginning of times man wanted to have a partner to be one with, and not until we try to become one with each other we shall like trying to fill an endless deep pit. Every person of mankind shall have to find the right way and the right material to fill the “hole” to feel truly whole.

This is not the joy that achievement, material wealth or success gives. Have you wondered why some supposedly successful people commit suicide? {Have you found the hole that makes you whole}

For many it takes many years before they come to see that we have our place in society and that we are in a certain way all connected with each other and with the world around us. Once people start seeing the importance of the relationship between them and those around them, them at last also becoming concerned about how they can relate in a proper and good way to others, helping them to achieve great things, then they shall come to realise they may become partakers on the path of fulfilment. From then onwards, when they have opened their hearts to others, the hole inside will be filled with joy and that will make them whole.

That essential element in life, becoming partakers of journeying people to fulfilment, is not an easy task laid out for mankind. In case much more people could see that there exist a manual to come to the best life possible, they would much more easier find answers to their questions and ways to make life easier.

It is a fact that the book that tells us why we were made, what our purpose is, how we can make the best of life, is seldom consulted. No wonder so many people are muddled up, do not know were to go or what to do, and are caught up in a big mess.

46 is the earliest (nearly) complete manuscrip... — 46 is the earliest (nearly) complete manuscript of the Epistles written by Paul in the new testament. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The book which is already a long time provided for mankind to get on the right path to happiness, is the most unread Bestseller of all times. That book does not exist just out of one story and genre, but is really a library of books. The tittle “Bible” actually means “the Books,” coming from the Greek biblia (“books”). Those different books are bound together in one or two volumes, because they make up a set. They depend on one another. Together they form a complete story.

Often people use the word “Holy“, meaning “set-apart” or “separate”, put aside for a special use. The bible is different from all other books, because though somebody penned it down, that person is not actually the author himself. When we look at what they write about themselves, we shall be struck with the transparent honesty of those writers, who do not hide the bad things they did, or annoying things which happened to themselves because of their own fault. Their openness in writing of failure and sin, even their own, is most unusual.

When we look at their direct and forceful language, we also notice that they themselves contribute a lot of words or sayings not to themselves but to a Higher Being. That Higher Being they consider the Originator of everything, the Divine Creator of heavens and earth. This Provider of the Voice bringing the Words to those people living here on this earth at different times, also chose Himself those Scriptures to stay in existence. This Supreme Being no man can see and live, took care that His Words were written down and given from one to an other generation. It was Him Who also preserved the words that truly reveal Him and teach us of His person. Even when so many people tried to destroyed His words, they never succeeded in doing so. They died, decayed, became dust and forgotten, but The Words of God stayed lively continually going from one person to an other, bringing life to many.

His Words have been of great help for many, throughout the ages. Lots of people turned to those Words in times of need or distress. Those Words form the Book of books were revered and relied on for guidance.

They were the books, therefore, which were copied and translated when others were lost.

Though many of the books are ridiculed and lots of people make a fool of some of the Biblical characters, it is all the distortion of simple Bible facts that has led to ignorance and misunderstanding.

We need to get back to the beginning and to the Biblical truth.
Then we can make some sense of our life.

Preceding articles:

All about love, not needing disasters

Are there certain books essential to come to faith

Words of God to stand and to be followed and to believe

Additional reading:

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(Please be careful: We recommending you to read the different articles of different bloggers, does not mean we are in total agreement with those bloggers.)

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Are there certain books essential to come to faith

On 2016-04-292016-04-29 By Relating to GodIn Bible = Book of books, Christianity, God the Father - Eternal Jehovah, Religion & Church, Trinity14 Comments

When we are looking for God and want to find Him are there certain books in which we should belief and follow?

Many people create themselves gods. We can see that in how people have idols and sometimes go so far to worship those human beings. There are also people who take elements from nature as their god and they speak or pray to trees, sun, stars or look for a god behind everything that happens in nature, and as such have a god for the rain, wind, thunder, sky, or even for each day of the week.

But when we look how those gods respond or what they can do we see that something is lacking. It is always questionable what those gods can do and what they really provide.

Though there is One God Who is superior to all those gods and can do much more than they. About Him is a lot written down throughout the years. But one particular library is very trustworthy and should be best referred to. When we consult that library of Books of books we can find the Word of that God of gods, Who is most reliable.

White-collar criminal defense lawyer Joel Cohen questions if the Bible’s factuality is essential to faith.

Many people wonder if one can trust what religious people say about the Bible. Is there reason to believe in the factuality of the Bible’s contents, and that the Almighty God Himself was its Author?

Cohen writes:

Indeed, to worship God as religion demands, must one believe that God actually performed the acts attributed to Him; must we accept as authentic His purported interactions – His Creation of the universe and mankind, the plagues that He visited on Egypt, His splitting of the Red Sea and His conversations with mankind, Moses, Abraham and David. More to the point, must we obdurately accept them in the particular and peculiar ways described in the Bible? {Is the Bible’s factuality essential to faith?}

A bible from 1859. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It all depends how you want to look at that Book of books. In which way do we have to look at those different writings, and take them as stories or real reviews of what happened at the earlier times? Several people do find that we have to take those Biblical accounts as morality plays or anecdotal narratives, created by human beings without God’s help or involvement.

When you take a closer look at them, you will find strange things, which would shed a light on those writers, they normally would hide for others.

We may choose to believe that God dictated nothing whatsoever to Moses, and merely instructed a spiritually inspired Moses to write of the Creation.

writes Cohen and continues

We may choose to believe that all that God really wants from mankind is for it to live a conventionally moral life based on civility, charity and love of one’s fellow man. That a moral life is not only the sine qua non to a life of faith, but is also its sole prerequisite. We may believe that all of the meticulous laws of animal sacrifice (morphed, upon the Temple’s destruction, into communal prayer), the Sabbath’s sanctity and kashrut were fashioned by man himself in order to nationalistically (if you will) create a “culture.” Perhaps even, a culture that designated this particular Society as having been chosen, while others were not. {Is the Bible’s factuality essential to faith?}

Today we have different media and we always can pick up what is written or filmed before. At the old times there were no sources people could consult and not all where so literate they could read the stones or scrolls. For that reason passing the word form one generation to the next mostly was done in the aural way and history had to be so compressed or said in such manner people could easily remember it.

Orality, the first and still most widespread mode of human communication. Far more than “just talking,” oral tradition refers to a dynamic and highly diverse oral-aural medium for evolving, storing, and transmitting knowledge, art, and ideas. It is typically contrasted with literacy, with which it can and does interact in myriad ways, and also with literature, which it dwarfs in size, diversity, and social function. {Encyclopaedia Britannica}

What is so special about that aural tradition, that not likewise other aural stories, these stories kept the same over centuries.

Even Voltaire, who wanted to destroy the Bible and distributed pamphlets against that book, had to confess that he could not imagine that when there would be a watch that there would not be a watchmaker. Looking at mankind and the plants and animals around us, and when you get to know how wonderfully they are made it would be very strange to believe there would be not a Master Inventor or Maker behind them, providing this life. When those people grew up and multiplied from one generation to an other, they carried with them the stories of their families. To their next of kin they brought stories from kings (Solomon) herdsman (David), man who could tell about things which happened many years later and as such were visionaries (Isaiah, Zacharia), fisherman (John) doctor (Luke), publican (Matthew), scholar (Paul) etc..
That collection of stories written on 3 continents: Africa, Asia and Europe, under different circumstances: in desserts, humble homes, palaces, prisons, etc., written in three languages, Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, became the first translated Great Book, and became the most translated and reprinted book in the world, a best-seller of all times.

Voltaire is death. His house and the printing machines became again used, this time to print bibles.

Interesting to note is that those writers also told not such nice things about themselves. Proud being inherited by man you would expect their visions would be contributed to themselves. But more than 3800 times the writers do say that their words do not come form them but from the Higher Power God, the Adonai Elohim Hashem Jehovah.
Every time we read:

Jehovah, god, said to me

The word of the Most High, Jehovah God, came to me

Naturally you could assume they were telling lies; But how could they tell about things which had not happened yet and could use names which did not mean anything yet at the time they lived?

Would such liars than be able to produce such special writings which can inspire so many people and can bring forth so much goodness? Bitter sources cannot bring forth sweet waters.

The 40 different writers of the assembly of books, written over a period of more than 1500 years, also never contradict each other. This whilst they wrote about one of the most sensitive subjects on earth: God.

Though many rabbis as well as priests and ministers say it does not matter if the Bible is written under the guidance of God or if their congregants want to read the Bible with skepticism, or see it as somewhat of a work of historical/Biblical fiction.

In the monotheist religions we have seen several groups which started to put more accent on human writings and gave preference to keep to human doctrines instead of holding to the clarity of the simple words written in the books of the Bible. This created many schisms in those religious groups and even made it possible that certain people came to consider themselves still monotheist though they started worshipping what they call a tri-une god, three gods in one.

The man of justice correctly looks at the real question

what do the rabbis themselves believe? Do they say aloud “it doesn’t matter” because they recognize that defending the Bible’s stories to moderns simply won’t (or can’t) be effective, leaving congregants to turn elsewhere or pay less attention to what observant Jews tend to believe? Or is it because they, themselves don’t believe in their authenticity? {Is the Bible’s factuality essential to faith?}

In the Catholic Church we can find many examples of people who call themselves “theologian” and do not believe in God. For them being part of an institution which pays for their living is very handy. Also for the other priests we can ask the same question as for the Jewish rabbe or the Muslim imam when they utter either in their sermon or tete a tete that a Holy Scripture account’s authenticity “doesn’t matter,”

do they immediately then mutter to themselves: “But yet it happened”? And, really, does it and should it matter if an observant rabbi/teacher doesn’t himself believe in exacting fashion that the Bible is God’s literal Word transmitted by God to Moses at Sinai? {Is the Bible’s factuality essential to faith?}

If you want to get to know the only real God, in a way it does not matter if you believe it or not that the Bible is God’s Word. But it is essential to come to see and understand what happened to mankind and to get to know Who is behind it all.

Do you want to take it as an allegory or metaphor, that is your good right, but then also dare to take the words written in it to take for what they (literally) say. For example when there is written “the son of God“, do not think in your head “god the son” because that is not at all what is written there. Only by accepting the words like they are written down, saying what they are saying and not what some theologians may want you to believe what should be implemented by that saying.

God is a god of order and clarity who does not tell lies. When those writers claim to have written down what God ordered them to write down, we may expect that they did not write down lies but wrote what was meant to be said. Then we also should not fix our eyes on one phrase but look at all the phases being connected with each other and in unison with each other. As such we should always look at the text in contexts with the sayings at other places in that Holy or put or set apart Book of books.

Joel Cohen asks

Can we, ourselves, determine what the Bible truly means to us? While it may be controversial or provocative to articulate it that way, that’s exactly what’s at stake. And, lest it go unsaid, this decision, dilemma if you will, is not limited to Judaism. How different is it that the Fathers of the Church, years after Jesus’s time, dictated that Jesus is actually part of the Holy Trinity (part of God Himself) , even though the Christian Bible never said that. Yet, would a modern Christian remain in good standing, if he doesn’t believe (or, at least state he believes) in a Triune God? {Is the Bible’s factuality essential to faith?}

Real lovers of God should come to see how certain people prefer to be off this world, instead of being of God, following God His advice and wise Words.

When you shall take the historical books and the Bible, you shall come to see that the idea of a three-headed god does not come from Jesus, nor from somewhere in the bible but from those people who wanted to live in peace with the Roman leaders and came to an agreement with emperor Constantine the Great.

You also than come to understand what it means to be from the world or of the world, to belong to the world and what it is to be living in this world being of God or to belong to God.

Those people whose lives are steeped in faith – split so that approximately 50% said they accepted the Bible’s account; the other 50% did not, will have it more difficult to see the light and come to the truth.

Then, after everyone had opened their eyes, the moment of truth arrived: I asked those who had only “confidentially” acknowledged that they didn’t believe the Bible’s account to raise their hands in full view of the now eyes-wide-open congregation. Only a handful raised their hands. How does one explain this? For me at least, the overwhelming majority of those “non-believers” of the Red Sea story who sat on their hands were comfortable in their belief, but only privately. They apparently didn’t want their community to know; essentially, they didn’t want their neighbors to think “less” of them. {Is the Bible’s factuality essential to faith?}

Lots of people are afraid to talk openly about what they really believe. Lots are convinced that one’s faith is a very personal thing, and should remain so.

People might believe in only certain things their religion places before them, irrespective of whether the Author is divine. But even if they don’t believe in all of it, they remain believers in God, as well as believers in the importance of faith in their lives. {Is the Bible’s factuality essential to faith?}

says Joel Cohen.

We do believe that in case you are wiling to read and study the Bible as a book to come to enlightenment and to learn about the Most High Divine Creator of all things, it shall offer you enough insight to come to understand that it is really the Word of God, and that there is really only One True God of gods, Who is One, and that we do have a sent one from God who is one mediator between God and man.

Preceding article: All about love, not needing disasters

Please find additional reading:

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For Dutch speaking readers #2 Second component of triptych

On 2016-03-182016-03-18 By Marcus AmpeIn Journal - News & Facts, Relationship & Connection, Religion & Church, World & Universe2 Comments

At “For Dutch speaking readers #1 On the first component of a triptych” we looked at the subjects tackled on the Dutch counterpart of this and the Weebly site.

The second component of the triptych concerning looking and finding God treats the subject of the Way to God: “De weg naar God“.

“The way to God” is a site created for those who are sincerely looking for God and see in front of them many denominations or churches calling out that they have the truth, but all having very different ideas.

That site wants to show people there are many ways in front of us. We can choose out of a lot of options and directions. Man being confronted by so many religions and so many different groups in each religion may wonder which religion is the right one and in that religion for which group he or she has to go.

Some may think that people “go to church”

probably for the same reason that, when Adam & Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, and thought God was near, they “hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden” (Genesis 3:8 NKJV). {Why People Don’t Come To Church}

Going to a church may be a valuable part of coming into the presence of God. Or when looking for God to find them there. But we should know that God is everywhere and not limited to one particular space.

Though we may agree with the saying

When people sin today, they think by staying away from “church,” they are hiding from God. {Why People Don’t Come To Church}

But like Adam & Eve found out,

“there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account” (Hebrews 4:13 NKJV).

The world has to know that God is calling all people, sinners and those who try to live a good life and are doing good. Non-believers or un-believers also can do very good things and for them it would also be better if they could see the importance to go on the right way to God. Also to them this website, our Weebly twin, and the Dutch antipode wants to bring them to see that mankind has to come on the right track.

When you do not believe in God this site and for the Dutch readers the Flemish sites can bring you closer to the One Who wants to have a relationship with His creatures. As an unbeliever it shall not hurt to have a look at what we have to say or to make a visit at a Christian church and to see and hear what they have to tell you there.

It is when “an unbeliever or an uninformed person” attends church, that “the secrets of his heart are revealed; and so, falling down on his face, he will worship God” (1 Corinthians 14:24-25 NKJV). The churches of Christ invite you to come. {Why People Don’t Come To Church}

Lots of people may think you have to be a fool to believe in a god. “Idioot zijn om te geloven?” (Being an idiot to believe) tackles that idea and want to show you that perhaps you might be smarter than all those who want you to keep away from God.

“Paadjes, straten, autowegen, hoeken en kantjes” (Paths, streets, highways, corners and edges) looks at the world-map with her many paths, which bring people from one to an other place. It tells that even if we have a modern gps in the old ages already a very good satmap was provided by the Creator of all what we see around us.

The Maker of that most elaborate Plan gives His readers the liberty to choose freely. In “De Plannenontwerper laat kaarthouders of klanten vrij kiezen” (Plans Planner allows cardholders or customers choose freely) we show how the Maker provide His Plan and how He gave the best Guide to go on our road-trip.

The coming up series showing that there is a way to joy and eternal happiness shall be placed on that second component in Dutch, or should we better say shall be translated to this site in English?

Here too we shall look how you can experience the daily management and joy of God. On The Way to God (De Weg naar God) the focus is on the many roads man has in front of him but only one true Way to God. On that site we want to convince people that we can be sure that there is something much better than the life man finds here at the moment. We shall show that also this system of things shall be limited in time, the same as any living being is, but that we do have the prospect to something much better.

The coming up series on this site and in Dutch on the “Weg naar God” site shall bring answers to your questions about this and the future life.

On that site we also shall look at different religions and how even in Christian religious groups so many have gone far away form the Biblical teachings. Like on this site we want to bring all those who are looking for God to come to see that we should use the Books God provided and listen to His Words to come to the Truth.

Therefore please do make sure that you always keep the bible at hand to check what is really written there.

De Weg naar god - Kruispunt pagina = The Way to God showing the many road-sings and the best way to choose to find God. — De Weg naar god – Kruispunt pagina = The Way to God showing the many road-sings and the best way to choose to find God.

Preceding: For Dutch speaking readers #1 On the first component of a triptych

Additional reading

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	Suffering and the Go… on Motivated by love
	Damien de Soto on Bible offering hope and w…
	Marcus Ampe on Bible offering hope and w…
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	rules? \| From guestw… on Revolt against the Authority o…
	Suffering and the Go… on Motivated by love
	Damien de Soto on Bible offering hope and w…
	Marcus Ampe on Bible offering hope and w…
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