I was reflecting on what it must be like to be a fully intelligent, free-willing being in a place other than earth, let's say heaven for example. In my reflection, I first pondered on the purpose of humanity and the meaning of existence. I realized that in life, we are preoccupied with items and cares, which on one hand define our living—for these items we live for (e.g. family, health, education, religion, charity, etc.). On the other hand, these very items, some more than others, consume our being until the day we are rendered fully inconsumable in death and are emptied of life (i.e. physical, emotional, temporal). For a lifetime, however long that might be, we toil in the establishments and maintenance of romantic and familial relationships, personal health and well-being, intellectual and career pursuits, religious activities, charity towards our fellow humans and society, and many more. In one sense, we spend our humanity in these life items and activities— placing our affections, hopes, and energies in these activities more than we would like to admit. In the other sense, and ironically, we are spent by these very items as they draw out all of our affections, hopes, and energies. I will come back to that point later. But before I do, I will mention one important point. If we lived in a perfect world, we would find the pursuit of those life actives and the results thereof to be perfectly satisfying and perhaps less painful, less disappointing, easier to achieve, requiring less of our energy, and delivering more of the happiness we hoped for. We are continually disappointed, in some life activities more than others.
God, I just came out of an experience that I can’t explain. Where sin took me, it is so deep for my words to not suffice. Where your grace has lifted me, it is too high for my intellect to comprehend and joy to express. I have experienced your grace and mercy as you have lifted me to the heavens from the pits of hell, accompanied with supernatural peace and holy spirit given strength. This grace that I often acclaim in the songs of public assembly yet having little private and personal meaning has nonetheless come to reach me in the valley of the shadow of sin’s death. My soul was parched, I thirsted in the desert. Now as I have come to reflect upon this, I am reminded of the time Christ was led in this same desert. However, out of the desert, through perfect obedience and holiness to the life-giving and guiding Word, He came. How inverse this is to my desert experience. Like Peter sinking in the storm waters, I was almost scorched to my death with the desert drought. Instead of coming out of the desert as Christ did, I let my soul believe empty promises of joy in this desert. Unlike Christ, I disobeyed the holy life-giving and guiding Word. On the desert floor, I lay dreaming of the land that I once inhabited, overflowing with rivers of waters that bring and sustain life. There, my thirst was quenched, my soul filled, my every desire met. O Great God, how you came to my rescue as you couldn’t rejoice in my death. As I feasted on this desert sand, you brought forth a brook to my heart’s desperation and you quenched me with the oasis of your grace, even in the desert. As I gained strength to walk, You then led me out of the desert, unto the land overflowing with the river of life, that quenches my deepest thirst and washes me clean. O Great God, how immaculate is your promise of salvation and the means to this salvation—through you, and you alone. And through you, do I find the desire and strength to love you and to offer my whole being as a sacrifice of thanks for your saving grace. My soul thirst no more, and drink to your filling for this river's source is God Himself, and never runs dry.
We entertain and investigate the possibility that there is life outside of earth and invest billions into this scientific pursuit, but yet scoff at the idea that there is life after death, and that God is the author of life, and has the ability to create life within any dimension or environment and define the biological, physical, emotional, spiritual, social, experiential qualities of that life. I believe that the question of whether there is life outside of earth only points to a greater question of whether life can exist beyond our humanity.
Thank you God for you. Thank you for your love. Thank you for providing for me. Thank you for being with me at such a stressful time in life, work, school. Thank you for forgiving me of my big and small sins and that no burdens have to be on my back. You know I would break, I would fail. But you saw my need before I could even tell you about them. Thank you for the supernatural knowledge, wisdom, and skill I am experiencing with my work. Thank you for this path. Thank you for this year that I cannot even begin to explain. God, take over next year. In my weakness I will boast from now so that your strength maybe made known to me, and to the whole world. You are real, and I love you.
]]>I will be writing a post on this in the next few months. Here are the thoughts that inspired this (as I was taking a shower).
Is it a coincidence that the first sin happened to be in the first human love story?]]>What can we learn from this? What led to this downfall? What does this say about the state of romance, love, marriage, and sex today?
I was recently engaged in a conversation with a colleague regarding race, specifically on the importance of the race of Jesus. The conversation is posted below. His argument, in summary, is that the skin tone of Jesus is of great importance in knowing "the truth". In other words, Jesus was Black or descended from blacks (which I am not interested in arguing), and that knowing this is TRUTH and it will set you free (which I am arguing). You’ve got to be kidding me. I had no plans of sharing the conversation, but I decided to just because it really infuriates me. It is so sad. This points to a greater human problem of drawing boundaries between itself based on trivial human matters like race, and other physical, economical, and ideological characteristics—the same boundaries that the theologically, spiritually, and historically true Christ came to erase. The only boundary Christ upheld was that one which divided evil from good. Historically, Jesus was one of the first, if not the major, influential people to stir controversy by going against societal and cultural norms in views regarding race, nationality, gender, economic class, religious class. And he was HATED and killed for that by Pharisees, who were the intellectuals and the religious Ph.Ds of the time.
I am realizing that in life you have to be confident in order to take risks and make the right and hard decisions that come with living. Either find that confidence in God (which I strongly recommend) or find that confidence somewhere, based on personal convictions and knowledge. People will give you very much needed and sometimes unsolicited and not-so-needed advice. Some of these people do love you and have your best interest at heart. But always know that advice given is subjective and greatly dependent upon a number of subjective human experiences, characteristics, and viewpoints. Only God is omniscient (all-knowing) and has the ability to advise with no bias, or at least with a bias toward his ultimate will (Himself) which is always for our own and other’s greater good. If you want to be lost and confused in life, be a consistent people follower or pleaser.
I wrote this at the beginning of this year. I have taken out some more deeply personal things.
What do I see in 5 years? Where do I see myself? Where should I be?
Paul was fond of painting an absolutely dismal picture of our condition, then saying, "But here's God's remedy." He did it in Ephesians 2:1-5, where he said that although we were dead in our transgressions and sins, God "made us alive together with Christ." It's God who gives us spiritual life. We couldn't make ourselves spiritually alive any more than a dead person can make himself alive.
When Lazarus lay dead in the tomb, he could not decide to come to life again. He could not even respond to Jesus' call, "Lazarus, come out," unless with that call Jesus gave him life (John 11:1-44). Lazarus's condition, as he lay dead in the tomb, is a picture of our spiritual predicament. We can hear the gospel a hundred times, but unless that call is accompanied by the life-giving power of the Holy Spirit, we can no more respond to it than Lazarus could respond to a vocal call from Jesus.
I know it's difficult for us to accept the fact that we could not just decide to trust Christ in much the same way we might decide to buy more life insurance. The truth is, we did decide to trust Christ, but the reason we made that decision is that God had first made us spiritually alive. This is part of the good news. God comes to us when we're spiritually dead, when we don't even realize our condition, and gives us the spiritual ability to see our plight and to see the solution in Christ. God comes all the way, not partway, to meet us in our need. When we were dead, He made us alive in Christ. And the first act of that new life is to turn in faith to Jesus.
On this day mathematician, physicist, philosopher, theologian Blaise Pascal was born. After spending 31 years of his life running from and arguing against God, the mathematical genius was transformed by the truth and knowledge of Jesus Christ, but yet still maintained equal, if not greater, intellectual ability and influence on secular and non-secular society. He spent the last 8 years of his short life focusing specifically on Christian apologetics, including the popular "Pascal's wager". To read more on Blaise Pascal, see post from John Piper, or Google the guy.
God,
I know you are the same, majestic, all powerful, all knowing, always good. Sometimes I just want to talk to you like a friend and ask you how you are doing. But that's the silliest question to ask you. Sometimes I go through out my day, like today, somewhat unaware of your every second/minute presence in my life. But then I take a time like this and write, or talk, or simply internally reflect and I get a small glimpse of your reality. God I know you are real and I know your Holy Spirit enables me to grasp certain aspects of your real presence. I can't wait to see you in heaven when I can fully possess the ability and capability to know you and love you. Sometimes it's a struggle to live in this dichotomous body that is corrupt because of sin but yet alive in Christ, constantly experiencing life and death at the same time. It is a painful place to be but thank you for your grace and your Holy Spirit that doesn't leave it all to my self, that same spirit which has been placed inside of me as a guarantee of the perfecting salvation and restoration of me to you in heaven. I can't wait to live eternally and understand your richness in a new way everyday without a speck of monotony. God sometimes I am curious. Sometimes I want to, and do approach you through philosophy, intellect, and natural instincts, but I am thankful my philosophy and intellect are obviously limited in many things in life. Where intellect fails, faith rises. Where the natural ceases the supernatural still is. I am glad in heaven I will have the joy to intellectually, emotionally, philosophically, physically, relationally, experience you. I can't really fathom that now to be honest.
--Pascal
]]>Here is part of an email a good friend of mine sent me:
I have found in my life the blessedness of confession. Wherever and however we find ourselves, confessing the depth and length and breadth of our sin to God is a blessing. One blessing is that we can better our need of Him! When I confess my unbelief, it shows me that my faith is NOT the reason God loves me and points to His free grace -coming from outside of me- that I so desperately need.
Confessing the sin of our sin also reminds us that "the flesh profits nothing," and that life comes from the Spirit. (SO many people say, "yeah, I know, I need to pray more, read the Bible more, worship more, etc..." That is the flesh talking. Those with the Spirit have beheld God's standard of holiness which made "sin revive [they saw the magnitude of their sin], and [they] died [meaning they lost all confidence in their own goodness and ability]." Romans 7:9. Confessing our sin reminds us to, rather than look to our fleshly striving for revival, trust God whose "divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence.""If we may confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." 1 John 1:9Find a minute to enjoy Psalm 32: Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven,
3 When I kept silent, my bones grew old 6 For this cause everyone who is godly shall pray to You 8 I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; 10 Many sorrows shall be to the wicked;
Through my groaning all the day long.
4 For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me;
My vitality was turned into the drought of summer. Selah
5 I acknowledged my sin to You,
And my iniquity I have not hidden.
I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,”
And You forgave the iniquity of my sin. Selah
In a time when You may be found;
Surely in a flood of great waters
They shall not come near him.
7 You are my hiding place;
You shall preserve me from trouble;
You shall surround me with songs of deliverance. Selah
I will guide you with My eye.
9 Do not be like the horse or like the mule,
Which have no understanding,
Which must be harnessed with bit and bridle,
Else they will not come near you.
But he who trusts in the Lord, mercy shall surround him.
11 Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, you righteous;
And shout for joy, all you upright in heart!
The necessity of the word
God's people are "kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time." 1 Peter 1:5 We know that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. Thus, part of God keeping us is His using the word. "And we have more firm the prophetic word, to which we do well giving heed, as to a lamp shining in a dark place, till day may dawn, and a morning star may arise -- in your hearts..." 2 Peter 1:19. Here are some wonderful Scripture songs that are free to download and which you can listen to whenever you are in transit or are allowed to have earphones in. http://www.scripturesongsforworship.com/ (Many of my favorites are on this free CD:http://www.scripturesongsforworship.com/2012/06/album-songs-of-salvation-2012.html) As you take them in, may you taste and see that the Lord is good, and be drawn to seek Him, knowing that "He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him." Hebrews 11:6
If that title doesn't describe anything, nothing I type will help. God are you real? I believe you are. You don't seem to be, but my perception doesn't and can't really define your reality, or your ability. Why have I come to experience such a self-deserved, self-inflicted wound to the most precious aspects of my being, to the faith that so sustains my physical, intellectual, relational, emotional, and psychological worlds. Just like that, I've crumbled. I have come to ruins because of sin. I have come to the edge of confusion, the edge where right before tumbling to a bottomless pit of confusion the grace of the one who saved me holds me by the leaf of my collar, keeping me from falling to my total death. Why didn't you keep me from falling when it seemed that there was no way out? Well, you said you will never let me be tempted beyond what I can bear? You also said you will always provide a way out. So by that, I automatically know you are right and I am wrong. I am at a point where I really can't and don't want to even shed a tear because I have cried so many meaningless tears only to return to the sam….[well, I guess I couldn't hold these tears back. give me a second].
This is an excerpt of my time being real with God. Of course I couldn't post the entire thing. And as you read this, I would like to say, don't ever let anyone fool you with extreme spirituality characterized by deep talk and sometimes a prideful talk that's based on their work and less on the work of Christ. Like John Piper once said, "we are not professionals brothers". Christ is. No matter how good we talk, we are only vessels of a good God. The vessels, by themselves without the Living Water, are dead, parched.
...I fed real legitimate hunger with dust, with sand. I ate sand, and drank gasoline to satisfy a hunger that nothing else but You could satisfy. So many things have been going wrong the past month, financially, emotionally, academically, spiritually, everything. But at the end of the day, I see how a lot of it is really a reflection of my spiritual state, and a lot of it are consequences to choices I made at some point. God, I am tired of describing and focusing on my sin. You know all of this, and more. But God, I want you I want to come back to my first and only love. I have had enough really. A month of rebellion and coldness is way too much. God, I want you to revive me. God even as I am praying and fasting and my body and mind (flesh) don't really feel like it or the need to, God I still pray for a miraculous restoration of my mind, body, and spirit. God, restore to me the supernatural, holy, perfect inhibitions and freedom of the Holy Spirit. I need your influence on every area of my life, so that I can once again live for you and get back to desiring your will, your work, your desires. God, if it pleases you restore me and help me because I am completely snuffed out. Light the lamp of my heart again. God I am not dead yet, so don't leave me for death. I have nowhere else to go God. I have no one else to turn to. God, continue to develop in me the spiritual discipline that you had started when you pulled me out slavery to sin. Not for the sake of my own righteousness and self-pleasure, but for your own sake. For the sake of obeying your commands, and pleasing you, and living in your eternal destiny, save me.
Jeremiah 2:13: "My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water."
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A few months ago, as I was praying and confessing the sin of my wicked heart, God spoke to me about character, His will, and my will. He was specifically speaking to me about manhood, and how broken men are today outside of Christ. This is however, addressed to all genders.
If God's will was weak, indefinite, unintentional, I think our salvation would have never happened. Our existence and being would be left to chance. The amazing thing is, God never gets confused about his plan/will, it's perfect and concretely grounded in Himself, but expressed towards us, in perfect and patient love.
The opposite is true of us. Outside of God, and when left to and with ourselves, our wills are weak! Our character being so shallow, will topple over at the smallest budge of sin. We cave in at the slightest wind of opposition and resistance. We are quick to change our minds at the sight of sin and temptation. We are quick to break vows we recently made. We are quick to go along with popular or convenient course of sinful actions due to self-consciousness instead of God-consciousness, and self or peer-worship instead of God-worship. We are quick to lie. Quick to fornicate, masturbate, watch porn. Quick to cheat, lie, get angry for the smallest things. Quick to exaggerate our strengths, and minimize our weaknesses while minimizing others' strengths and exaggerating their weaknesses. Quick to judge others. Quick to jealousy, envy, hate, gossip. Quick to pride instead of humility and submission to others, even if they are wrong. Quick to self-righteousness. And even quicker to claiming our love for God and commitment to being Christians. This is how our natural wills look like. It makes the world and everything in it about us.
Let us align our wills and character according to the will of God and only then will we have such definite, intentional, and strong wills, enduring through time and circumstances.
This blog post, is a result of a sin that I willfully committed, after I had made up my mind about what is moral, right, loving, and true and was pursuing the perfect will of God. But because of my weak character and will, and outright disobedience, I took an emotional/sinful approach at listening to the plea and will of someone else, someone that I do care about. This was the problem in the Garden of Eden. Adam, having a weak will and separated from the will of God, was similarly led into sin, not by Eve, but by his own sinful will. And today, we are continually led into deception, each time we decide to pursue our own wills instead of the will of God.
As Paul says in Romans 7:24, "What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?" Then says, "Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! (v25)"
To men: we need to lead with such strong but loving character. You need to will as God wills. You need make up your mind how your will is going to affect the woman you are leading, the family you are leading, the friendships you are leading, the company or organization you are leading, and how you are living out your own walk of faith.
]]>I am realizing how crucial the books of the Old Testament are to understanding the significance of Jesus Christ in the New Testament. So before I go any further, I strongly encourage you to go back and read the Bible from the beginning. A good plan to start with is the Youversion Chronological Bible Reading Plan.
Now to the topic of this post. At times I am amazed at how quickly I intentionally and unintentionally blur the reality, holiness, mercy, grace, and conviction of God in order to pursue my own will. A lot of times, due to utter disobedience, lack of patience, lack of faith, lack of commitment and faithfulness, I will do that which is in complete opposition to the will of God--in other words, I sin. Sometimes it's a private sin (no one is there to witness), and other times it's a public sin. When going through this phase, and especially when coming out of any sin, I get hit like a ton bricks when I realize just how quick I am to forget.
God's chosen people of Israel, after being saved from slavery in Egypt, witnessing the presence and love of God in every single possible way, after being led through a desert to a land that was promised to their forefathers, rebelled multiple times against their source of life, provision, and guidance. The book of Exodus chronicles the beginnings of this rebellion with the root of sin starting from Adam and Eve. As the book of Exodus concludes, there's an ugly picture of the human sin condition. The book of Exodus ends with the second most vivid picture (the first picture being Jesus Christ) of the covenant between God and people. In what is supposed to be the most holiest, meaningful, beautiful celebration of the convenant between God and his people, a big stain of sin is cast onto the picture when God's people outrightly rebel by impatiently choosing to worship a piece of gold shaped in the image of a cow, as they had learned and seen as slaves in Egypt. Read the entire book of Exodus (but more specifically chapters 32) to see this picture of sin, mercy, and the commitment that God still kept with His people after this grave sin of idolatry, which is the basis of all sins.
How easily they forgot the salvation of God. They were rescued from over 400 years of slavery, protected as the Egyptians were plagued, led through the desert, the Red Sea, protected from the Egyptians' pursuit, supernaturally fed, and many more wonders of God. The Israelites had previously agreed to do everything God commanded them to do just what seemed like a few days before their rebellion (Exodus 24:7). They had been given the 10 Commandments (Exodus 20), and so they knew well the expectations of God. Keep in mind that the first few commandments address the sin in which they walked (not fell) into, with the help of Aaron, who was Moses's right-hand man in leading the people to the Promised Land. Aaron is the one that gave in into the people's request to make the golden "god", shaped the metal, and later when Moses came back, awkwardly and untruthfully gave an account of how things happened, mentioning that he simply threw the gold in the fire and it came out as a golden calf. Sounds anything like the excuses we make before, during, and after sin? I think it does. We formulate all sorts of justifications for why we give into public sin (often citing we couldn't handle the peer pressure), and private sin (citing our weakness, blaming someone in our past, etc).
In conclusion, this is the picture of sin against the background of the Most Holy God. The same Israelites we see in Exodus are as human and as sinful as it can get. Even more, they were not any worse or better than us today.
Since the creation, as evident in Genesis, sin is our default state. God has always been merciful but yet has remained consistently just when the sentence and price of sin had to be paid. Even in his judgements, his mercy is ever present (e.g. the death of Jesus Christ).
I once again encourage you to read the Bible from beginning to end. It can be time consuming (keyword "can be", if you don't manage your time well) but is crucial to your growth.
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As I was praying for my meal, I happened to start confessing my sins before God (usually my meal prayers are as short as short can get). But this one was different. As I was praying, I received a sort of a "revelation" for lack of a better word, and this revelation had little to nothing to do with the sin(s) I was confessing but I guess God thought it was important for me to understand the truth.
As I was praying, I realized that we often mislabel, misrepresent, misunderstand, misuse, and mistaken sex in contexts where it clearly is not sex. Let me explain. How often do we call the act of taking someone's property without their authorization simply "taking". We associate the taking of another's property without full prior consent as theft, saying "he/she stole", not "he/she took". We wouldn't misrepresent lying by saying "he/she is telling some of the truth", or call even the smallest twist of the whole truth to be truth. Truth is holistically true. So why do we so stupidly and ignorantly say we are having sex when what we are actually doing is fornicating. Sex is not sex in all contexts. Sex is only sex within the contexts of marriage. Period. Outside of that, call it whatever you want to call it but you are not having sex. We use sex in all the wrong contexts that now we have tried to dichotomize sexual intercourse as sex-while-married vs. sex-outside-of-marriage. Sex outside of its proper context is not sex, just as taking something that doesn't belong to you doesn't have any other proper definitive verb than "stealing". It's not simply taking, or taking-out-side of being given permission to take, but STEALING. Do you get it?
Fornication, adultery, immorality, etc, are the proper terms. Let's not subconsciously sugarcoat sin, and perhaps we'll walk away and flee from the sin more often. Let's not twist scripture either, that's Satan's job. And the twisting of scripture comes via media, pop culture, society, and a worldly viewpoint of knowledge.
]]>I originally posted this on Youversion based on the following scriptures: Psalm 23:3, Psalm 119:40, Psalm 119:105, Proverbs 11:19, Proverbs 12:18, and Matthew 7:13
Think of a train on its path, on its rails. As long as it stays on the rails, it can move from point A to point B, and so forth. It can also most effectively deal with unexpected situations that come its way. As long as it stays on the rails, it can move forward when its supposed to, it can stop when it is supposed to. And us, in our walk with Christ, we think we can operate off of the path God has destined for us to stay on. We think we can operate outside of the path of righteousness. We absolutely can't.
It might seem like we are moving forward for a period, but we are not going far before we come to a complete stall. The terrain of unrighterousness is not conducive to the progress of our journey, and our spiritual growth in Jesus Christ. We will not grow, move, be supplied for walking outside of the will that God destined for us to live in. We will more than likely perish outside of the path of righteousness.My pastor used an example of the earth around the sun's orbit. As long as the sun follows its orbit around the sun, everything is perfect and conducive for human life on earth. If the earth moves just little bit closer to the sun in its orbit path, we would have real global warming or burn to death. If the earth moves just a little further, we freeze to death. Either way, the atmosphere becomes deadly. How much more, do we think we can operate outside of the path of righteousness? A righteousness that comes through faith in Jesus Christ, being transformed daily into His likeness; and not works that come by following "the law", or self-righteousness, which God says are nothing but filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6). ]]>Continuing with the chronological reading through the Bible, I left Genesis Chapter 11, and into the first 5 chapters of Job. The first two chapters of Job set the scene for the next 40 chapters.
In Job chapter 1, we are introduced to a righteous and very wealthy man called Job. He was very wealthy the Bible says, and he feared God and lived a blameless life. God commended Job Himself. We also know that Job's children loved to party, and Job would give sacrificial offerings for each them thinking that "perhaps my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts." Job also had a wife, who will be introduced shortly after.Satan, the accuser of the brethren as the Bible refers to him in Revelation, and one whose purpose is to kill, steal, and destroy (John 10:10), appears before God and the conversation goes something like this: Satan: "Job would curse you if you didn't bless him and protect him."
I just read the first 7 chapters of Genesis in my chronological reading plan of the Bible. I am really excited to start to see God more clearly from the beginning of time to today.To see His original plan and resolution to commune with man and women from the beginning of our time. It's amazing just how God has been at the rescue and in fellowship with man from the beginning. Even in punishment, God was concerned and was caring for His creation in all of His actions. He blessed them with free will, a character that defines and clearly separates them from all creation. First, God makes man in His image, makes man to be a reflection of the attributes of God. Perhaps these attributes might be physical, capability, will, spiritual, relational, moral, ethical? Who knows. But all we know is that man rules over all other creation. Man stands out. The first marriage happens. The first sexual attraction and bonding happens. The first disobedience. The first blame game happens. The first guilt and shame. The first pronunciation of death and other consequences come into the picture. The first DEATH happens. A brother kills brother. Soon after that, murder is the most popular cause of death, until natural deaths start happening due to man's new state of mortality. God doesn't disappear from the picture even as messy as it gets. Although He pronounces consequences to Adam and Eve, God covers the shame, guilt, nakedness of Adam and Eve with garments of skin [an animal that probably had to be slain all for the sake of man]. This is perhaps the first picture of Jesus Christ we see. Can you imagine the arguments that Adam and Eve probably had for the rest of their lives: "you ate apple", "no you gave it to me", "but the serpent deceived me". Amazing. Shortly the first death happen with Cain and Abel, stemming from the first sibling feud. Sin exponentially increased in the heart of men and women. Violence got so ugly. God is hurt and grieved that He created men and women. God prepares the earth for destruction by water. Noah (a righteous man), and his family are given instructions to prepare for the flood. Obediently, Noah builds an ark that will house the seeds that will restart civilization. It rains for 40 days. Waters cover the earth for 125 days. All living creatures on the entire planet die but a few people and animals in the ark.
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