Tag Archives: man

The “Light, shineth on my feet”!

Let me explain my title to you. God’s ‘leading’, at least for me, is the direction of my studies to go next to understand God’s full and Eternal Purpose for His People.

My journey with Christ, has been adventurous to say the least, I grew up being a preachers kid, just following along with my father and the ideal of religion, not ‘really’ understanding all that was entailed in it. It was not until I stood back and looked at the entirety of the institutional program(this was not at my father’s church but later in my 50’s) that I said to myself, “It has to be more than this, and it is to be done differently”!

It was then that I started to read on things of the bible, thru outside sources, and ‘seeing’ the finished product of man thru God’s eyes! I might hear some feedback on this method of discovery of God, but it isn’t until ‘you’ step back from something and ‘see’ the BIG Picture can you actually see what is really going on in your life, a business, a group, or ‘the government’, that you can see the overall plan and the end result. This is what I jumped into, the dichotomy of what God’s Goal was, and surprisingly it wasn’t what you would of thought of.

It wasn’t the ‘end’ of the story that I looked at, it was the beginning of the story, that I relooked at. You see, It is what God’s intentions were/are that He designed His Kingdom/World by the first plans that he had. So, by this metric, we can go from there to see how designed His original Kingdom, and how He would get it back on track with the hiccup that He came across with man. It is what is going on thru 98% of the bible. It is that 2% that God’s Picture Perfect example is what we are trying to get back to.

Now, to my journey on this subject, when God works with his people, He works with them at their ‘identity’ level, their humanness, It is here that God uses the tools of man to show them their weakness,frailty, ungodliness,spiritless, and Holiness! He set’s them up to fail. It is like testing your child on their obstinate behavior that they ‘believe’ that they are older and wiser than they really are. You put them to rights by showing them that they are not, where they think they are,yet.

It is then that God has them build a ‘Temple’ so that God would be near to them, and not have them think that their God was ‘far’ away from them, when they continued to ‘not’ be able to follow the ten commandments. It would be the place where God and man could fellowship together, but with a caveat.

It would only be thru the ‘High Priest’ system of identity. It would only be ‘thru’ one being who was different than the rest,Holy. The High Priest was their ‘model’ of identity to God. It is thru this ‘system’ of the early Israel journey to realize the ramifications that they were to understand the meaning of the system that they were in. The Temple.

This reality of God’s training man to ‘be’ Holy, to be as the ‘High Priest’ again, in the realm of God, as they were in the Garden of Eden. The temple in the old covenant, is the training ground for Israel, and also the gentiles in the days ahead. This is where we need relook at the book of ‘Leviticus’ not as how ‘Israel’ was to worship God here on earth, but to understand the ‘identity’ we must become to actually be ‘in’ God’s presence, as like the High Priest of the days of Israel(God’s people).

“Thus to be clean means to be fit for the Presence of God, while to be Holy means that one belongs to God.” This is a quote from the book-“Who shall ascend the Mountain of the Lord?” by L. Michael Morales. Read this quote a few times, try to ‘see’ what it is saying? I see it as (forward to now) God’s forgiving our sins, we have gone from unclean to ‘clean’, we are now free to be Holy, the ‘state’ in which we can be Holy! Unclean- Clean-Holy. We are all in the state of being ‘Clean’ it is our journey to become ‘Holy’ to God.

I have believed in the journey of becoming knowledgeable in the Wisdom of God, thru the reading of many men and women who have dedicated their lives to God to dig dipper into the Bible, and read what they have dug up in the inspiration of the author. I,too,have had many revelations reading the bible and saints of God with the inspiration and wisdom of their being inspired by God. I believe the bible,I believe in it’s ‘Inspiring Spirit’ of the Holy Spirit to bring us the Word of God. But I also believe in the Men and Women of God that have given their lives to God to ‘learn and have Wisdom’ from the scriptures.

theeternalpurpose.life Web site.

Advertisement

Leave a comment

Filed under Deeper Understanding, Kingdom of God

Where do we go from here?

Life sure does mess things up, doesn’t it!

It seems that, at least for me, in the last year it has been a whirlwind of activity for me,my family, and my friends, it is always something. Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

Good Question!

I have over the past two years(time of retirement) have set in a more structured routine of my life, because I feel that I have found my calling of writing,studying(bible), and interacting in social media in christian beliefs. It is when things go awry with other things that break my routine of it that it ruins my personal life. It is all about me, right? LOL But is it?

My life is one that is searching,digging, and finding my way with Christ,and God to ‘see’ the Light! It has been a tumultuous one on so many points, but I am a survivor. I am a late bloomer in the fact that I feel that I didn’t find my passion in life until I was around 50 yrs old. And I am doing it now.

The question is one that is about “who is first”? Biblical speaking the one that ‘is first’ shall become last! So there’s that. But what should we do? God tells us to “Be Christ”, in everything that we do and say. Christ’s life, is different, for one it is not us, nor is it made of ‘man stuff’, but one from the Holy Spirit!

But what is the “Holy Spirit”? It is “Life”! It is not death, which is what ‘man’ has had to deal with since the ‘garden’. What I believe that has been missing in our christian walk with God, is this understanding that ‘Christianity’ is about “Life”. When we believe, and ‘see’ Christ, we are seeing “Life”, in our life. Society as a whole,(society is all of us, not just everyone but us to included) have perceived as everything we know,do,say, and proclaim as ‘Life’ to us. But is it? What does it ‘get’ us? It is an instant gratification of fun and keeping us busy to not be able to really see “Truth” and “Life”!

Christ in our lives is different. It is first, not us, but Christ that is filling us with His love,desires,needs for us to continue in His life to fulfill the ‘eternal purpose’ of His, an ‘My People’ objective to have fellowship and unity in His Image of the World!

Leave a comment

Filed under Our walk

Dear Christian…

Oh, dear christian, why do you let me down so….

(Sorry, another rant) I want to come at this from two different directions. One is from the ‘pulpit’ and one is from the ‘pew’ angle.(although, I don’t condone either one, but for the purpose of my angle, I will use this example)

Let me start from the ‘pulpit’ angle first, Let me preface this ‘rant’ by saying that my father was a pastor for over 40 yrs, thus I was a preachers kid for that long too, having heard all those sermons and bible studies in my life I feel that I can come at it subjectively. (side note,I have been on three church boards in my life also) What I would like to share with you is the issues of the pastor has when doing his vocation(so they believe), is that in this paradigm of religion, we break it down by our various dogmas of belief’s in what we call denominations. Thousands of them in the U.S.. All varying ever so slightly in their thinking but just enough to have another denomination. lol

It is to this we have to address to understand the dilemma a pastor has. You see, a pastor is held true to his belief system in his sermons, without a doubt his feet are held to the fire of his or her denomination. So this paradigm is worked into his ‘studying’,reading,listening,talking and living this life. Just one little variance could change things for him and his life.

So it is this that has and for ever more put blinders on him to the ‘Word of God’ that He or She says that they believe in and stand on. But they are only seeing or hearing a sliver of it and believing it. Not the whole thing.

Pastor’s have problems. “Our” system has done this to them, We have done this to them. But what I what to say is ‘Pastors’ are not the solution either. It is not the right paradigm.

Now, to the second rant, the solution is sitting in the pews.(again, wrong paradigm) But it is the christians that are sitting there not holding the pastor personally to the ‘fire’ for truth of the word of God, irks me to no end! I had an epiphany at a service one sunday that I would read the scripture surrounding the sermon and to see the true message that it was meaning. I did this instead of listening to the pastor to see if it came across the same way. It didn’t. What we have allowed as the ‘listeners’ of the word to do to us is to ‘hear snippets of stories from the bible and not understood the whole premise of the Bible and of God’s Eternal Purpose.

But to the main issue of the problem, is that the pastor is held accountable to his beliefs and to the denomination’s beliefs of the bible without any variance. Now I also want to point out that if you are a longtimer in the faith of the denomination, that you too believe this way, or you are stuck in this ways of thinking or you just don’t know any other way to think. This too is you duty to hold a pastor to the truth from scripture if something is different, or is false. Now, if there are new or younger people in the church, who are curious of this preaching, it may take years for them to see what the preaching is pointing to specifically, and they being immature believers don’t see the fault in the reasoning, will continue to just listen.

Here is my compaint to the christian, Study the Bible!! Read it, know it. Daily. Not on Sunday for the little ‘Headlines’ that you hear and then go home! That’s Stupid! How do we live our lives to God by hearing 20 minutes of “Be like this” and then go home and try to ‘live it’ and except God to be there too? I don’t understand it?

Let me say here, that I too was like this til I was around 50 yrs old, when I had a epiphany that this is ‘just not right’ God is bigger than this! I decided to be one of those people that put their nose in their bible, books, blogs, sermons,preachers, youtuber watcher of people and seen various things of the world of ‘churchianity’. It was then that I realized that there was much more to the scriptures and God that I wanted to dig deeper, know, have wisdom from God.

This is me, 15 years later still digging and soaking in everything I can. It is a daily thing for me,24/7 thing and I can’t get enough of God. This is what every Christian should be like. I pray that you will too! Find that taste of God, that everlasting water to want to continue to be by the everlasting creek flowing to you and your fellow christian.

Leave a comment

Filed under New Perspective

Don’t get me started…..

One thing that drives me crazy, is that Christians of today and of yesteryear failed to ‘proof text’ their beliefs or their pastor or both. This is actually how I started to wave away from the ‘church’ institution when alot of things that were being said, were not in there. I am always being fruitional in all things read, heard or being discussed. (This is what I have found out the hard way from discussing with friends, that their is not an attempt to ‘fact check’ my stance on things, only saying it is wrong or ‘you don’t know what you are talking about’!) Irritates me to no end!!

Let me point out something first before my main ‘IRK’, LOL. Man’s attempt to figure out God, has failed. This is why we must say it out loud for us to realize it in our heads. But let’s start with that thot, with the man in the old testament thru today. There were ‘christian men’ who didn’t have it right even tho God let them continue in their ways. Just Go back to the scriptures and see where man’s ‘leaders’ were still not getting it right. From individuals to institutions have led us astray to the wrong path, that has exacerbated God to no end, I’m sure. God’s plan was different than his creation itself, it was not ever to be of a ‘manly’ way, but of a Heavenly way.

And here it is, my biggest complaint or ‘Irksome’! Let me give a small background of myself, so you will know where I am coming from. My Father was a Pastor for over 40+ yrs in the Church of God denomination. He studied at a christian college, I also went to the same christian college, albeit alot shorter of time. But the crux of the matter is if stand back and look at this paradigm of Christianity and its processes, we will notice something, something bad.

When you go to a college for a ‘degree’ or for a ‘Title’,aka Pastor it is taught all that it is recommended for that ‘type’ of ‘Pastor’ aka, denomination. There is no exception. You are taught that which you also will spout the same verbatim as you learned at school. Now this is fine and dandy, in a sense, but where is the ‘newness’ of the WORD that God gave us, it refreshing, like the spring in the mountain flowing daily down to us in the valley below, it’s the same but different. I can attest for alot of ‘AHA’ moments in my last 15 yrs of deep and thorough studying of God’s word. I have been enlightened thousand of times of very small things to very big things.

It is with this understanding that for one of many reasons I fault the institution of the ‘church’ as it stands today, with many paradigms to be explored and to follow.

I do not know how I would of lived if I had this thirst when I was younger, I would of been starving and no place to live, with my 24/7 appetite of the word. It is this thirst that the bible tells us that we must dig and dig into the meat of the story of God, not just the appetizers that it seems that we have been doing for a long time now.

I will challenge you to do the same, dig deep into the bible search it’s meaning, with God’s desire and will and it will raise you up to Him and His Eternal purpose.

Please, let me know what you think of this short ‘irksome’ story of mine and if you have some of yourselves. Or anything else? I love discussion! Thanks

Thanks for reading Douglas’s Newsletter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Check out my other site at douglasmccall@substack.com

Leave a comment

Filed under Deeper Understanding

on all flesh.

Let me address the topic in two ways. One in Joel 2:28-32, and in Acts 2: 14-21 The former is used in the latter of Acts 2. I will use Joel for the reference in reading.

  28 "And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. 29 " And I will give portents in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and columns of smoke. 31 The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes. 32 And it shall come to pass that all who call upon the name of the Lord shall be delivered; for in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be those who escape, as the Lord has said, and among the survivors shall be those whom the Lord call.

30 “And I will give portents in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and columns of smoke. 31 The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the great and terrible day of the LORD comes. 32 And it shall come to pass that all who call upon the name of the LORD shall be delivered; for in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be those who escape, as the LORD has said, and among the survivors shall be those whom the LORD calls.

The Revised Standard Version (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1971), Joe 2:28–32.

The passage in Joel is quoted in Acts 2 by Peter in the scene of the Pentecost in the upper room. Joel being a prophet is foretelling of an future event in the coming of the Lord and also the Holy Spirit, to not only the prophets But to all, read this reference to this verse 28- On all flesh= God’s Spirit had come upon prophets, priests and Kings during old testament times. Joel looked to a future day when the gifts of the Spirit would come to old and young, men and women, without regard to external office or function. In the New Testament, Peter stated that this prophecy was fulfilled on the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit baptized the church.

This addresses alot of things, but I will only seek out the matter of the Holy Spirit ON ALL FLESH. I believe that this is a testament to all that God in His Spirit has come to be with us.

Leave a comment

Filed under Kingdom of God

Land/Temple

Genesis 28:15-17 15 “Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done that of which I have spoken to you.” 16 Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, ” sureley the Lord is in this place’ and I did not know it.” 17 And he was afraid and said,”How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of Heaven.”

Read this very carefully. Notice the associations, the references that both sides give. They say them differently, but they are saying the same thing. Land mentioned by God is His saying this is where I will be. House(Temple) by Jacob is the house where God lives, and interestingly cryptic for us but we have missed it in our ciphering of this passage is that this land/Temple/house/place is also “Heaven” which also implies that this was the Garden of Eden!!

Do you see it? With Jacob, later will becom Israel as a nation, God’s people, His selected example to become a light upon a Hill to the entire World, would later be for All to be, His people!!

I want to also point out that the ‘land’ reference to the ‘Temple’ also needs to be rectified in understanding. Do you see it? One, Jacob associates God’s home to a temple(because it has to have a building) This was before the actual first Temple was even thought about, it was probably seen as the thing to do because of other people had buildt temples to their Gods. God’s plan for his people was to start with the idea of the temple,sacrifices,commandments to bring them into the realm of God.

It is then that God ‘saves’ us from our transgressions by sending His Son to die on the cross, and Create the New Man for all to become!!

Leave a comment

Filed under Deeper Understanding

Something to think about…

A little nibble here and a nibble there.

God continues to give me insight on everything that I am studying. I have 3-4 topics that dig into deeply right now that they actually are intertwined with each other in some ways. I will start with one of the topics to get a more deeper understanding of it, when I am pointed to another nugget within one of my other interests. I still love it that it is open to everything that we read in the bible.

Let me make general observation about studying the word that I see in the ‘community’ of believers. I fear, that the lack of learning God’s word by exegesis in this ‘community'(I am disguising the real culprit (paradigm) in this statement to help you realize what it is) The paradigm that I am talking about is the ‘church’ model that we have, mainly in the US. It does not lead to the leader nor the participants of really being able to dig deep and to understand God’s word and storyline.

I find it worrisome. Let me backup a little so you will understand where I am coming from. My father was a Pastor, I was a pastor’s son, my life was filled with everything and anything related to the ‘church’ and the ‘Ministry’. My pastor(father) was with me until I was 18 yrs old until I went to college. After that I too continued with this model of a pastor and perishioner thru my early adult life until my early 50’s.

From this model I too became a example of the ‘church’ model and all it’s glory. It was then that I realized that we(I) were just getting snippets of the story. Everything was not explained or pieced together to make a complete story. It was only highlighting certain ones to put a exclaimation on it, but was it the REAL story?

I don’t fault the pastor,per se, because this is what they were taught. So why not just continue it with the congregation. But what, I do say, both parties are at fault, the pastor and the listener. Now I know that you are going to say here, that ‘you’ have bible study groups on wednesday nite or a small group on thursday evening. I say this is not exactly what happens when the ‘body’ get together to dig deep into the word. Most of us are not equipped to do such a thing, either from a ‘leader’ position let alone the student.

Why, do I say all this? It is when people that are semi-interested in discussiong things of scripture, and you have someone bring something up that is ‘different’ in nature to what everyone has heard or read, and they dismiss it as hogwash or the ultimate worse thing, it is ‘Heresy’. lol. Not even knowing what heresy is defined as.

This shows that when people bring something up that is found in scripture, we treat it as foolish but it is there as proof text. We sometimes push it aside when we don’t see it as relevent in the verses that we read, or even in the context of the whole story of God. But what I have found that it is amazing that just the tiniest nugget can make a big difference in the meaning of a story.

I would like to point out one of the stories in the bible that gets a little bit of attention, but it is not quite really understood in the relevance of the whole story. It also leaves out some details in it that it either doesn’t want to get into, or just glosses over it. It is the story of the “the tower of Babel”, I challenge you to read it again in its entireity, and slowly ingest it’s meaning and subtlety in all its flow.

Take more time to read the word to dig into the true meaning and the whole storyline of God and how he works thru man and mankind to get to the “Eternal Purpose”!

Leave a comment

Filed under Deeper Understanding

Instruction

26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. 28 And God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” 29 And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. 30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. 31 And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good

The Revised Standard Version (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1971), Ge 1:26–31.

I find these six verses of the bible, the most non-understood verses in the bible.

This should be the verses that every christian, every group of christians, everyone in the world should know and to be the follower of it’s meaning from day one to today!

This is our “Vocation” for mankind. It is all that we need to know. It is from “OUR” God! What else do we need?

This is the “The Eternal Purpose”!

Leave a comment

Filed under Kingdom of God

Upon further review

(the voice of an official in football, after looking on video if play was good)

I have had discussions with a few people on the importance of the old testament(I prefer the use of ‘covenant’) in all matters of the biblical theology to ‘see’ what God is telling us.

Side note- My interest biblically has always more New Testament(Covenant) but I have since moved my studies to the old.

Tying these two things together,old covenant and God’s eternal purpose are so tied together that We MUST start from the old testament. If we don’t ‘see’ the narrative of God’s plan then we will not see it in the New Testament. And that may be the problem with the “Church” Today,and historically the past 500+ years!

What we must do to see it, is to not look at the bible as before and after narrative of the story with the cross and resurrection in the middle, but as a narrative of God’s Eternal Purpose for His Creation. I believe that God’s desire was and always will be the indwelling of Himself with the indwelling of Creation melding into one. This was the scenario of his plan in the Garden of Eden, with His creation and Himself walking and talking in between the beauty of the Garden. It wasn’t to be.

This beginning, is key to the rest of the narrative in scripture. We must remember it, as we travel thru the scriptures. It is throughout the whole bible. The Temple narrative is one way, another one being the ‘covenant’ way, that we can ‘see’ the desire of God and His purpose.

Let me just go back to the fact that I can see that the christian community has seemed to dismiss much of the intentions of what the old covenant was pointing to. I believe that ‘We’ as christianity have just jumped into the middle of the story, when we have started with the story of ‘Jesus'(Messiah) without knowing why He comes into the narrative. We have for along time seen Christ’s coming as the ‘end all’ of man’s sinful ways. But could it be something else,too?

What if it was a more amazing thing that God was trying to do? What if He was creating that ‘Garden’ scene again, with no possible way of failure to have man and His God walking side by side forever!

You see the ‘Garden’ scene was the foreshadowing of the Temple of God, which in reality was the ‘Messiah’ Christ, who became the Temple of Mankind, within Us as we have joined to Him.

Leave a comment

Filed under Kingdom of God

Holy

That’s what Genesis is all about.

If we stand back and look at the story of the Garden of Eden, we will actually see what the story is all about.

First, we have to ‘see’ what the reality of what the Garden is, God’s Space that also includes his creation; mankind.

Can you “SEE” it? if you can, then it will get easier from here to see the clear picture. God’s creation his ‘abode’, his living quarters, his room and board, his head resting place, his space, his bethel, his love. You see, this is where he is Himself, He can be himself with ‘all his creation’ (I sometimes think that we forget, or don’t realize this aspect, God loves not only his humanly creation, but also the surroundings around his humanly creation) This is “His Temple”, this is the original design, altho it might of seemed small to adam and eve at the time, it was expandable, it could start as a pinpoint on the globe, but it could spread out as a ‘drop of water in the ocean’ to expand forever! God told adam and eve to ‘Be fruitful and multiply’ in the garden, this was for everything that was concerned with in the garden, all the goodness surrounding them would flourish ‘with them’, when they would. “Good” would continually to ‘grow’!

This garden was perfect, gorgeous,amazing,picture of God and his essence. You could say that it was “Holy”. It was God and creation together in one place being one in “Holiness”! Two becoming one as a model for things to come!

Have you ever had a conversation with someone and they were telling you a story of their expertise, and a storyline of events, and they mentioned something in the story that was a analogy of something but you didn’t understand it at the time, you just didn’t say anything, and went on. But then you see the person years later and he brings up the story he told you years earlier, and it suddenly dawns on you on what that person was talking about because the one thing you didn’t understand is now in reality, standing right in front of you?

This story is the telling of “God’s temple” in reality of the Garden of Eden of the ‘ideal’ purpose of mankind, but what is ‘in front of us’ is this building that we have designated as ‘a Temple’ as our blueprint of what God wants, when in reality it is just the microcosm of what it is supposed to be, not one of ‘walls'(Eden had not walls) or an institution(men create institutions),or Theology(understanding ways of God), it is much “Bigger than this”, it is not of human ways,or hands but of God’s goodness,or Holiness!

God’s Holiness is the essence that God created us by. It was ‘His Image’ that we were brought into this world, and this was what we were meant to continually be. Christ in Us, Us in Christ.

Holiness.

Leave a comment

Filed under New Perspective