In your mind’s eye, look at the vastness of the universe -- the immeasurable distance of space, the galaxies, planets, suns, constellations. The beauty of the Great Nebula in the constellation of Orion is recognised by astronomers as the most beautiful.
God’s dwelling place is in the centre of the universe that moves slowly around Him. The foundation of the holy city is made of twelve precious stones which reflect their colours through the transparent gold of the streets above. The walls of the holy city are jasper and its gates of pearl.
Standing before the throne are two holy angels called ‘covering cherubs’. One is known as Lucifer, the most beautiful angel of all. Light from the throne encircles him, enhancing his beauty before the heavenly host.
Surrounding the throne are ten times ten thousand holy angels, all ready to do the bidding of their King. They are clothed in the light of God’s Spirit, their faces reflecting the beauty of His character. They minister to unfallen beings throughout the universe.
But God is not alone on the throne. He has a beloved Son sitting at His right hand. His name is מִיכָאֵל pronounced Mi-ca-el and meaning ‘who is like God’. Not a Son by creation as are the angels and sinless beings, but a Son begotten of the Father in the aeons of eternity. He was born before the earth was created, in fact before anything was created.
Our earth was the last created planet, and we are a special creation. All the angels and beautiful beings on other planets were individually created, likewise Adam and Eve, but the rest of the human race is different.
God made our first parents in His image, able to ‘create’ children in their own likeness. We call it pro-creation. God wanted a holy race of beings with children in their image. Sin and death would have no part in this new world, only peace and harmony for eternity.
Sadly, we made the wrong choice.
Amazingly, the problem began in heaven when the most beautiful angel rebelled against his Creator. It is a mystery why Lucifer became proud of his beauty and coveted the power and position of God.
He began his attack against Mi-ca-el. If he could dethrone God’s Son, he would be closer to his ultimate goal of dethroning the Father.
It did not matter that He had been lovingly created with a pure mind and heart. Now he simply wanted power. ‘After all’, he said to himself, ‘I am as wise as God. Why should I not be seated on the throne? Why should the Son have authority over me? I will make the laws for heaven and the universe.’
Eventually this honoured cherub convinced a third of the angels to join him in his rebellion. ‘We do not need to keep God’s law. We are superior beings’, he told them.
Heaven became a sad place.
God the Father and His Son tried to reason with the rebellious angel, but he refused to listen. To repent was out of the question. Pride of appearance and elevation of self had become his god. Finally all who chose Lucifer as their leader were banished from heaven.
Justice demanded that God act in harmony with the principles of His righteous government for the preservation of the universe. These rebellious angels had lived in the very presence of God and their time of repentance had passed.
God did not immediately destroy Lucifer and his followers, as the whole universe must see that rebellion and disobedience will naturally end in hatred, violence, sickness and death. Even the loyal angels must see that justice had been carried out in heaven.
The Father and Son again met in council. Their hearts were aching, but their love for Lucifer and the angels who followed him in sin had not changed. The loyal angels were heart-broken. Friends had been separated from friends.
All heaven was hurting.
God discussed the pain of the loyal angels with His Son. ‘The creation of the new world will take their minds from the sorrow they feel’. The Son agreed.
The plan for a new world had been formulated in previous counsels; now it would be fulfilled.
But God and His Son were concerned. ‘What if one of the human beings rebels against us and our law?’ As both Father and Son are divine and omniscient, they know the future, but love is creative and will bring forth, despite the sadness to come.
Disobeying God’s command on the newly created planet would separate the earth from God’s universal family, making it necessary to quarantine it from the other worlds. The deadly nature of sin must not affect the rest of the universe.
If God did nothing for the fallen planet, man would automatically sicken and die. Nothing would be left but dust. The thought of losing His created children in this way was too painful for God to consider.
No, earth’s children would not die without hope.
In this heavenly council God’s Son volunteered to give His life for human beings. He would take the death penalty incurred through sin, and die in the sinner’s place. This would reinstate planet earth and its inhabitants into the family of heaven, and every human being who accepted the sacrifice of God’s Son would be regarded by God as sinless and granted the gift of eternal life.
The Father and Son clasped hands in agreement. It would be a risk of eternal loss, but there was no other way to give man hope. The Son’s death would cover every person on earth; no one would be left out.
Mi-ca-el (called Yeshua in Hebrew [Jesus] on earth) willingly went to the cross and died a cruel and painful death. But it was not the crucifixion that killed Jesus, nor was it the Jews, or the Romans. Even the devil did not kill God’s Son, although he thought he had succeeded.
God’s Son gave His life for the human race.
Bearing the sins of the world – your sins and mine – Jesus died of a broken heart. After His ordeal in Gethsemane; an illegal trial before the Sanhedrin from midnight to the early hours of the morning; an interrogation before Pilate, then Herod and back to Pilate; His back lashed with a spiked whip; mocked with a crown of thorns upon His brow; an attempt to carry the heavy beam of the cross, and then
crucifixion, it is no wonder His heart collapsed. When a soldier pierced His side, blood and water flowed forth, a medical sign of a broken heart.
Religion? No Thanks
All who have died believing and trusting in their Saviour, will be resurrected to meet Him in the clouds. They will be beautiful and immortal. Gone will be the disease and deformities. No more wrinkles. Tears, pain and death will be no more. Depression will be banished from all who rise to glory.
Those of the living, who have surrendered their lives to Jesus, will be changed to immortality in the twinkling of an eye. Their feet will leave the ground and they will ascend into the clouds to meet their long-departed loved ones in the air.
Jesus, our glorified Saviour will then lead the vast assembly through the magnificent Great Nebula in Orion to the holy city. What a space journey it will be.
You do want to be one of His children on that day don’t you?
www.turnbacktogod.com
Nathan Greene - colour enhanced
Have you ever been confronted on the street with religion and your reply was ‘No thanks’? Do you think you gave the right answer to say ‘No’?
Perhaps you already know that religion has caused great suffering to millions of human beings. During the Dark Ages, it was the church that tortured and murdered over 50,000,000 men, women and children. They were martyrs for Jesus. In the name of religion the Crusades killed tens of thousands of innocent victims. Even today whole people groups have been murdered in acts of genocide by religious bodies.
Religions are manmade with supernatural interference from evil sources, and to join a religion is to become enslaved for life, and in the end destruction.
No, religion is to be avoided at all cost.
In today’s unstable world, men and women are searching for something other than secularism. Deep down they are tired of the entertainment and thrills of this world. They want peace now and hope for the future.
Where can they go?
Some look for satisfaction from Middle Eastern religions. The majority continue to search the alleys of this world for that elusive dream. Too many give up altogether and commit suicide.
Let me ask you --- Are you searching for something to satisfy your inner being, your heart’s cry? Do you long for someone so true and honest that you can trust them with your most secret thoughts; someone who has the power to give you peace, even in the midst of your busy life?
Millions of men and women worship a dictatorial and vindictive God who demands destruction of those weaker than themselves. Others pray to fickle spirits who are angry at a whim? Still others bow before statues made of marble or covered in gold and precious stones.
Some believe in a God who began this world by a supernatural act, then left it to evolve on its own, a God who is aloof from His creation and unknowable by them.
Can these so-called deities satisfy the longing of the heart? No. Religion is powerless to heal the human soul.
Many believe in evolution, the survival of the fittest. They hold to a ‘Big Bang’, after which all the beauty surrounding us was formed. But millennia and mutations do not have the power to bring about intricate design.
We would wait as long for a fully formed aeroplane to appear with fuel in the tank as we would for the beauty of a sunset over fields of flowers.
N.H and Photoshop
The Orion Nebula http://enwikipedia.com/orionnebula
When Jesus was about to breathe His last, He spoke the words, ‘It is finished’. They were directed to His Father in confirmation of the fulfilment of the covenant they had made in eternity. Jesus had faithfully fulfilled His part of the covenant.
All heaven sighed in relief -- their Commander’s suffering had ended. The universe was now secure -- the devil and his angels would eventually be destroyed.
Shakespeare wrote, “All the world’s a stage, and the men and women merely players…” It is true. Heavenly beings watched the drama played out on earth, and when they saw their Commander on the cross they knew God the Father had been righteous in banishing Lucifer from heaven. Now human beings had hope in the promise of heaven and eternal life.
The Father also suffered in fulfilling the covenant as it was His responsibility to place the sins of the world upon His Son. If Jesus broke the commandments and sinned, all would be lost. The Father would lose His beloved for eternity. Thankfully Jesus was faithful, refusing to accept the devil’s lies.
Friends, this is not religion. It is reality.
Christianity is a Person – God’s only-begotten Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
The devil, once a holy angel and now called Satan, is working relentlessly to deceive as many human beings as possible because he wants to take them down with him. When he dies the second death with his angelic followers, every man and woman who followed him on earth will die with him. Eternal death is totally unnecessary for human beings, as every one of us has a choice.
Many religions are easy to detect as they deny that God has a Son, however, the Deceiver’s masterpiece of deception is difficult to identify.
Counterfeit fifty dollar notes are not purple!
Behind the scenes of this great deception is corruption and horror, but on the surface there is much beauty. Its buildings are magnificent and its services attractive and appealing. Most of the people are devout, but deceived.
However, it is not enough to simply identify and reject all religious counterfeits. The majority of men and women in this world are actually bowing at the feet of the devil simply by living a normal life. Doing nothing is to reject the Saviour. Even many who believe, disobey God’s Ten Commandments, and disobedience is the outworking of a lack of true belief.
Of course you are not compelled to accept Christ’s sacrifice, but why choose to die? Why reject the gift of eternal life and heaven? God has done everything possible to save you from destruction, and He longs for you to accept His Son’s sacrifice.
After all, you are the purpose of this story. Think about it. You have been redeemed and do not need to suffer the death penalty for sin, which is the second death. Turn it around the other way. Jesus was willing to become part of the human race, take my penalty for sin, and die a most cruel death. Jesus died for me. It is a personal message for you dear Reader -- God loves you.
But that is not the end of the story.
On the third day, Jesus rose from the dead!
He ascended to His Father, retaining His human nature. Jesus will always be our ‘elder brother’. When God’s Son became part of the human family, He gave up His divine form to take on humanity, and when He returned to His Father, He did not look the same. He now
looked Jewish! Of course He was glorified with an immortal body, but there was a difference. This was part of the Father’s sacrifice. He gave His Son to the human race.
Today Jesus is in heaven with His Father, reunited in glory. He is no longer a Jew because Jesus is for all men and women of every race. His heart breaks to see his earthly children rejecting Him, not only the nation of Israel, but also those who reject anything that looks religious.
True Christianity is of course in the realm of religion, but its centre is Jesus Christ, the promised Messiah, making it completely separate from the counterfeit in all its forms.
The heart of God the Father still aches for His earthly children.
His heart aches for you, for me.
Will you believe the wonderful story?
Soon Jesus will return to this earth to receive His reward for fulfilling the covenant He made with His Father. He will come in great glory, attended by all the holy angels, to take His children back to His home.
It will be a most amazing day – the beginning of eternity.
Non-matter has never produced living-matter. It is scientifically impossible. The words by evolutionary scientists -- ‘Given enough time, man evolved’, are not scientific.
To see an innocent babe in its mother’s arms, the delicate petals of a rose or the intricate design of a butterfly’s wing, common sense tells you they speak of a divine mind – the work of a Master Designer. If random ‘chance’ is God, and ‘time’ its companion, there is no hope for the future.
Let me tell you the most beautiful love story ever told.There is a Creator of the universe. He lives beyond the Orion Nebula in a magnificent city called the New Jerusalem. His name is יְהוָ֔ה (Hebrew) YHVH, perhaps Ya-Veh or Ye-ho-vah. The true pronunciation has been lost. He is seated upon a glorious throne that rests upon precious blue sapphire. A brilliant light radiates from His presence.