Tag Archives: mankind

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!

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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.

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Worship defined

This word has a plethora of misunderstandings.

I believe it needs to have more discussion within the assembly of believers.

There are some discrepancies in the the usage of the action. What are the issues of it are, I believe are the use of tradition and stealing of usage from the gentile gods. We will start with the ‘tradition’ issue first.

All throughout the old testament, the ‘worship’ was thought of as ‘where God was’, This concept was instituted only because of mankind’s banishment of the Garden of Eden where the heavenly reign of God was with man, walking and talking together. It was to be a ever expanding realm of God thru the multiplying of mankind. It was then that things changed to be one of a ‘pinpoint’ of a location for man to start again from a central location with God there also. This was the Temple. God was there. It also was the location where God’s chosen people to begin again to become the ‘image’ of God and to then ‘multiply’ to the whole world. It was a plan of re-commitment from God’s people to be who they were meant to be.

This ‘place’ where God was, was also the place of ‘sacrificing’ for the being of God’s people. It was a daily chore, a seasonal chore, and a yearly chore for being with God to ‘right the ship’ sorta way. This was an full blown production of the people’s lives with living for the sacrificing of an individual’s livestock,produce and time. It was also an investment for the people as a whole to sacrifice to the ‘temple’ as a nation of Israel. This ceremonial process was a never ending ritual. It was always to be giving God the first of everything that the person,family, or nation had, whether it be livestock,produce or themselves, to institute the meaning of God’s desire for himself to be first in their minds.

Another form of ‘Worshiping’ was by the pagan worshipers of the plethora of gods that they had in other nations. These rituals were similar to the forms of some sects of the jewish people. It was this that God chastised them for the ways of the world for being wrong.

It is then that the ‘Christianity’ movement was instituted at Pentecost and the formulation of ‘laws’,beliefs, everything to this ‘new’ religion was being made on the fly to keep it going. With the beginning of this movement coming from the perspective of the jewish religion, it was as a way to keep things rolling, would use those things of the jewish rituals. There was some alterations on what laws to keep from the Jewish sect tho. What is perceived as a would be normal transition to use the same things of the Jewish ‘worship’ of going to the temple, after all, that’s where ‘God’ was for the Jews, right. But I will take the hint from the scriptures, that this was not an option for the most part. It is said that ‘they’ christians would ‘meet’ in one another’s homes for the partaking of food and fellowship. This also was at times a struggle in the meeting at all with still the beginning of persecution of the ‘Jews’ and also from the Romans. It would eventually be able to use as a meeting place at ‘halls’ of publicly held meetings, thru the instituting of ‘christianity’ as an ‘association’.

The quote ‘practice of Worship’ was to be redefined by the ‘new sect’ of religion by it’s not ‘going to where God was’ to something else. This is where it gets tricky and messy, there are various convictions or beliefs that surrounded different camps of the newly formed people. First, there was different understandings of this subject, but the two main ones were from Paul and Peter. Let me just say that the one that we are using today is from Peter. The Hierarchical institutional one, with either a layered institution of Priests and the proclaimed ‘Universal’ church, with the much smaller hierarchy of just one leader with followers under him or her.

Let me quote scripture here to throw into the mix to see if maybe we are not seeing things right.

1 When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. 2 And suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. 3 And there appeared to them tongues as of fire, distributed and resting on each one of them. 4 And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.

The Revised Standard Version (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1971), Ac 2:1–4.

14 But Peter, standing with the eleven, lifted up his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and give ear to my words. 15 For these men are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day; 16 but this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel:
17 ‘And in the last days it shall be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams;
18 yea, and on my menservants and my maidservants in those days
I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy.

The Revised Standard Version (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1971), Ac 2:14–18.

As I read this I notice that there is a ‘hand off’ of authority from Jesus to the ‘Holy Spirit’. What I don’t see is the need for any other form of leadership or institution made by man. There was one such group in this time frame that was doing such as this, being led by the Holy Spirit in their individual lives and their life as a group. This in my opinion is the misstep that christianity has taken, in furthering God’s calling of his people.

It is the following of the ‘institutional’ paradigm that has gotten us into alot of trouble in both of the beliefs. I believe that Paul was not as direct in saying a ‘meeting place’ was necessary for the continuance of the faith. It was the understanding that Jesus’s Spirit would be the guiding light of his people. God’s people would be of a ‘New Being’ that would not be left alone in the world to fight the evil, but the Holy Spirit was a ‘light upon our feet’.

This action would be our ‘Worship’ of being in Christ, and Christ in Us. This is the ‘action’ of ‘Worshiping’ our God.

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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.

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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”!

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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”!

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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.

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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.

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Where is God?

This is not the story of searching, where you see God in the World, but something different.

The relevance of this piece is rather unique in that it will show us what the ‘Temple’ is, and all the story behind it.

As an ‘after the fact’ observer when we read the beginning of the creation of the World by God, we really don’t understand the nuances of what God is doing. Sure, he is building this big blue marble with water, land,sky,trees,birds,animals,rivers,lakes,grass,sun,moon,planets surrounding it in the sky. What is the significance of it? God makes it for some people that he will create to live on the planet. It is what we would now call it “Heaven on Earth”*. We will come back to this later.

If we follow the story of Genesis 1-2, we will also notice that God’s creation is perfect for man and for God. So much, that God lives with Adam and Eve, walking, talking with each other all day long. They are in the Garden of Eden, Where man and God are together.

Now, let us fast forward a little ways in the story, we know the transgression of adam and eve, that creates mankind to go astray. It is when God brings together His people called “Israel’ and unites them together as one and then gives them instructions to help them stay God’s people by setting up a place for them to give their sacrafices for their transgressions to God as individuals, and as the group “Israel”, and even the High Priest sacrifice was given in this ceremony.

The High Priest was ‘one of one’ that could even be ‘Holy’ enough to ‘be’ with God in this room called ‘Holy of Hollies’, This was the only place in the entire world that God was touching in his ‘being’ and presence on the earth. It was because of man’s transgression, that God was now only a pinpoint in the world, instead with his creation in a garden.

Although this setup of a Temple, for the Israel kingdom was one for just Israel, It was actually a microcosm of the original one that God had created in the beginning of time. This was/is the blueprint of God’s Kingdom. But let’s clarify something here, before some get lost in their thinking. What God is showing us very special. Even tho I have described this large, glorious and splendid Temple that was in Jerusalem at one time. The majority of the Temple was used for giving of sacrifices and all that went with it.

There was a Portico, a place for semi-large congragating to talk and discuss religious things before going into ‘Holy of Hollies’ , which only the High Priest was able to go into. This “Space”, is actually the space that we can compare or use as the illustration of the ‘Temple’, the ‘place’ where God abides. Another illustration would be the use of ‘Clouds and Fire’ to lead Israel on their way for a journey. He was ‘with’ His people. Their are many examples of this in the scriptures, to show the Lord’s presence with man.

This space in the temple, was limited in size and people, one person in a room of 20 cubits squared. Small and limited to say the least in where God was.

It wasn’t until Christ resurrection that things changed. Christ’s New life and Kingdom was now established, albeit in different and totally new way. The curtain was rent from Heaven, signaling that ‘All’ would be able to be in the same place with Him, for He is now in the world for all mankind. God would not only leave this small and confining space but He would ‘go’ and be with man again in his creation. This is the story of a ‘full circle’ paradigm, that God does not change his plans for anything.

This plan of creation for his creatures, ‘all of his creatures’,man,animal,creation,heavens’ will again be back together. This scenario is one that is lost in our process of ‘learning’ things of the scriptures, but it is a major one to ‘see’ what God is doing.

God’s ‘picture’ of the Garden of Eden is one of Creator and Creation together as One.

If you can, try watching a short video by ‘The Bible Project’ group that shows this exact paradigm in a video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zy2AQlK6C5k&t

God’s ‘church’ or people are one and the same. We are God’s. We are one, in Spirit,Mind and Truth.

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Do we have a biblical knowledge problem?

Let me just answer this upfront. Yes We do.

I am not one to come to if you need me to ‘quote’ you something from the bible from memory, but because I have read it multiple times over my life, I know somewhat the message is or can direct someone to where it speaks to this question. I can tell you if I have read something on this subject. My memory doesn’t allow me to remember things as much I would like. But I try.

Either people are really dumb, playing dumb, or only know things that people have fed them over the years, We have a really bad problem.

Does this need to get fixed? Yes

How do we do it then? My solution is, We need to clear our lives of the trivial stuff that we think is important to do or just to have fun in life, and get serious about our God!

But the dominant factor of this is the Acknowledgement that God is God and He is creator of the World and we are His image in it!

Until then, it will be a crazy,mixed up world as today.

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