Ultimate Reality in One Sentence…Genesis 1 pt 1

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.(Genesis 1:1)

This simple sentence, given to us as a Revelation from God through Moses, has launched hundreds of thousands of books, papers, sermons, and essays, and has underpinned our entire civilization. It is a theological statement, but it has also led to our modern concept of science, technology, philosophy, and our western epistemology (concept of truth).

Thus the departure from Genesis 1:1 and all that follows it, has been the deepest and perhaps least appreciated reason for our current civilizational decline and pending collapse.

Here in these spare words, selected by the Holy Spirit of God, we are granted a statement of ultimate reality.

In the beginning… This means that one of the limits set around  all created life and being, is Time. We have a beginning, and an end. There was once a beginning, meaning that there was something before the beginning, an ultimate cause which existed prior to and independent of time.

God...(Elohim) … is a personal being, the almighty creator of everything that exists. He made all things for His pleasure, as they sing of Him in Heaven, around His throne,

 Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created (Revelation 4:11)

But God is distinct and separate from His creation. The creation is an expression of God, but it is not God, nor is it part of God. God is Holy. This means that God is entirely “other” than His Creation, he is separate, and above in every sense from his Creation.

There is only God himself, and his creation; “all is two”, and never, “All is one” as the pagans teach.

God created…Everything that exists came into being by the power and Sovereign will of the infinite , personal God of the Bible. Elohim, the Almighty God, is the designer behind “intelligent design”. He is the one who brought into being all plants, animals, fish, geography, elements, chemicals, natural laws, planets, et al.

Stanley Jaki, in his book ,Christ and Science gives four reasons why modern science owes its existence to the Genesis 1:1 worldview,

1. “…. the Christian belief in the Creator allowed a break-through in thinking about nature. Only a truly transcendental Creator could be thought of as being powerful enough to create a nature with autonomous laws without his power over nature being thereby diminished. Once the basic among those laws were formulated science could develop on its own terms.”
2. “The Christian idea of creation made still another crucially important contribution to the future of science. It consisted in putting all material beings on the same level as being mere creatures. Unlike in the pagan Greek cosmos, there could be no divine bodies in the Christian cosmos. All bodies, heavenly and terrestrial, were now on the same footing, on the same level. this made it eventually possible to assume that the motion of the moon and the fall of a body on earth could be governed by the same law of gravitation. The assumption would have been a sacrilege in the eyes of anyone in the Greek pantheistic tradition, or in any similar tradition in any of the ancient cultures.”
3. “Finally, man figured in the Christian dogma of creation as a being specially created in the image of God. This image consisted both in man’s rationality as somehow sharing in God’s own rationality and in man’s condition as an ethical being with eternal responsibility for his actions. Man’s reflection on his own rationality had therefore to give him confidence that his created mind could fathom the rationality of the created realm.”
4. “At the same time, the very createdness could caution man to guard against the ever-present temptation to dictate to nature what it ought to be. The eventual rise of the experimental method owes much to that Christian matrix.”(Jaki,Stanley, Christ and Science, Realveiw Books)

God Created the Heavens…  Created life and being are not only bound by the dimension of time, but by space also. God created the heavens; space, in which to place the world, the planets, the nations.

 Thou, even thou, art Lord alone; thou hast made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth, and all things that are therein, the seas, and all that is therein, and thou preservest them all; and the host of heaven worshippeth thee.(Nehemiah 9:6)

The expression, “the heavens”, in the Hebrew of Gensis 1:1, “HA Shemayim“, is plural. By the New Testament Revelation we learn that there are three heavens, each containing the other. There is the atmosphere around the earth, where clouds and birds are seen.

Nevertheless he left not himself without witness, in that he did good, and gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness.(Acts 14:17)

 Then there is the expanse which we call “space”, in which the planets and stars and galaxies are set.

 For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light: the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine.(Isaiah 13:10)

Finally there is the highest heaven, the place where God’s throne is and where He dwells. When Solomon dedicated the temple, he prayed repeatedly that in the variety of circumstances and trials the Jews should find themselves in that “You would hear from heaven, your dwelling place…” and deliver the people.

Behold, the heaven and the heaven of heavens is the Lord’s thy God, the earth also, with all that therein is.(Deuteronomy 10:14)

God created … the earth…All created life and existence is bound by three dimensions; Time, Space and Matter. We are all something, somewhere, and exist at some time. But we are not God, nor are we a ‘part of God’.  We can only be what God made us to be, (Human, flesh and blood, mortal, male or female), and we can only exist  when  and where He placed us according to his pleasure. (I used to wish I lived in the pioneer days, but I live now, not then!).

God created us. This implies his ultimate ownership of us, and our accountability to Him. This is why there is a “creation controversy”, one doesn’t need to be a theologian to perceive that if I was created by someone, I owe that Person my worship, and accountability at the very least.

Recognizing reality means accepting the Creator/creation distinction, as well as the Divinely ordained limits of time, space, and matter, as ordained by that Creator for our own good and His glory. He made us who we are, and set us where and when we exist. It is His definition of our humanity that counts because our existence is owed to His good will.

 

 

 

Abram; A New Beginning…Genesis 11 pt 3

These are the generations of Shem: Shem was an hundred years old, and begat Arphaxad two years after the flood.   And Shem lived after he begat Arphaxad five hundred years, and begat sons and daughters… ^{And Nahor lived nine and twenty years, and begat Terah:} And Nahor lived after he begat Terah an hundred and nineteen years, and begat sons and daughters. And Terah lived seventy years, and begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran.  Now these are the generations of Terah: Terah begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran; and Haran begat Lot.  And Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his nativity, in Ur of the Chaldees.  And Abram and Nahor took them wives: the name of Abram’s wife was Sarai; and the name of Nahor’s wife, Milcah, the daughter of Haran, the father of Milcah, and the father of Iscah.  But Sarai was barren; she had no child.  And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran his son’s son, and Sarai his daughter in law, his son Abram’s wife; and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there.  And the days of Terah were two hundred and five years: and Terah died in Haran.(Genesis 11:10-32)

The second half of Genesis 11, is a transitional chapter. The LORD had by then allowed for a brief period of innocence, (Adam and Eve) which ended in a fall. He then allowed  men to develop without any human government, in a time when there were two distinct streams of humanity, believing and unbelieving, (Seth and Cain,and the pre-flood civilization) but this era ended with a massive apostasy and a worldwide flood.

Finally, the Lord allowed for an age of total unity, in which the whole world had one culture, one language, and one calling, to fill the earth.  The human governments that God had established after the flood, degenerated into tyranny, the rise of a proto anti-Christ(Nimrod), and a globalist project to disavow God.

The Divine focus will now shift from a  universal dealing with all of the nations of the world, to an individual from the tribe of Shem,  a man named Abram. This Shemite, lived in Ur of the Chaldees, several generations from the Babel incident. At the time of his election, Abram was an idolater, with His father Terah, and brother Nahor.

And Joshua said unto all the people, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood in old time, even Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nachor: and they served other gods.  And I took your father Abraham from the other side of the flood, and led him throughout all the land of Canaan, and multiplied his seed, and gave him Isaac.( Joshua 24:2-3)

God would create a new, priestly nation, a witness of His truth and Salvation to the ends of the earth.

But when the God of the Bible wanted to create a brand new nation by which to witness to and save the world, he didn’t choose a virile young couple in the prime of life. Rather He chose an elderly married couple, who had gone long past child bearing age, and had never been able to have children.

A full, Divinely wrought Salvation for all mankind would require a miracle, so the LORD by a miracle created a “Holy Nation”. God “gives life to the dead, and calls those things which be not, as though they were…”. He chose Abram and Sarai, to be the “Father ( and mother) of a multitude”, and through whom would come a seed who would bless all of the families of the earth!

The Divine dealings with Abraham and his miracle family, are the theme of the rest of Genesis and shape the development of all of subsequent human history. Salvation is of the Jews, the seed of Abraham,Isaac and Jacob, and leads man to the first and second coming of the Messiah, the seed of the woman, and the seed of Abraham, Jesus Christ!

 

Thirsty For God- A Sunday Meditation

Read aloud this desperate and heartfelt prayer with me;

As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.  My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?  My tears have been my meat day and night, while they continually say unto me, Where is thy God?  When I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me: for I had gone with the multitude, I went with them to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept holyday.  Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance.  O my God, my soul is cast down within me: therefore will I remember thee from the land of Jordan, and of the Hermonites, from the hill Mizar.  Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts: all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me.  Yet the Lord will command his lovingkindness in the day time, and in the night his song shall be with me, and my prayer unto the God of my life.  I will say unto God my rock, Why hast thou forgotten me? why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?  As with a sword in my bones, mine enemies reproach me; while they say daily unto me, Where is thy God?¹¹ Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God.(Psalm 42)

* What happened to the Psalmist? How did he get to this place of desperation? It could be unconfessed sin, but the text doesn’t say anything like that. Perhaps he had gotten sick, or was tired or discouraged. We are more than Spiritual beings, sometimes the physical can be a huge factor in our wellbeing.

* It could just be that we have a God who often sovereignly hides His presence from us, that we might seek Him, and see our need for Him.

* It is evident that the Psalmist had been somehow cut off from participation in the public worship, and this hurt him deeply.

* We have a constant need for the means of grace, and for the renewed presentation of the vision of God.

* Another painful thing about this experience, He was surrounded by taunting and godless people.

*What did he do about it? He preached to himself! As Martyn Lloyd Jones used to say, “Don’t listen to yourselves, talk to yourself!”.

* Thirst like this is actually a gift from God…for it draws upwards, and causes us to want something that this world cannot give us…thus it draws us heavenwards.

* Our God recognizes this(he made us to be motivated this way)so he makes it into an offer at the end of the Bible;

 And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.(Revelation 22:17)

The message of the Holy Spirit and of the true church who is the Bride of Christ, is to the thirsty,  to come and drink deeply and freely of the waters of Life, which flow out of the smitten Rock, the Messiah Jesus.

* What a sad and cruel hoax, when the apostate church presents false prophets such as Rodney Howard Browne, Rick Joyner, Rob Bell, and others as the answer to spiritual thirst! “Come drink at Joel’s place!”,as they staggered about, supposedly ‘drunk in the Spirit’, as if they were initiating revival. Where are these churches now in the hour of the world’s deepest crisis? They are irrelevant, empty tombs. But they have manged to turn millions of once thirsty sinners into cynics!

*Do you remember when the water was too brackish to drink, out in the wilderness in the days of Moses our teacher? What were the instructions he was given? Take the tree, cut it down and throw it into the water…and the water will become sweet again. Is that not the story of our lives? The cross of Jesus applied to the brackish pit that is our lives, now yields the sweet, life-giving water of life!

* Reconciliation with God is so refreshing! Like drinking water after years of health destroying soda or Koolaid, so forgiveness of sins, adoption, true worship and communion with God does restore our souls.

* But Jeremiah tells us that God has a double controversy with His people, 1) they have forsaken Him, the fountain of living water, and 2) they have hewn out their own cisterns which can’t really hold water. Is this not true of todays church? How much of Spiritual activity is really based upon seeking after God himself? Why have we forsaken God’s “old paths” of preaching the Word, calling men to repentance and warning of hell and judgment”? INstead we have ‘skits’ to entertain the bored flock.

* Some people are thirsty but unquenchable. This is because they really don’t want the God of the Bible. They have a void, but have already ruled God out of the equation. This thirst takes them into false religion, mysticism, sexual hedonism, and a variety of other human experiences that prove unsatisfactory. Satan has a minstrel named Mick Jagger who sings of it, when he wails, “I can’t get no satisfaction….”

* Others are thirsty because they have tasted God, but are currently in a dry place in their pilgrimages. They need to be renewed in God and know it, thus they seek Him.

O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is;  To see thy power and thy glory, so as I have seen thee in the sanctuary.  Because thy lovingkindness is better than life, my lips shall praise thee. Thus will I bless thee while I live: I will lift up my hands in thy name.(Psalm 63:1-4)

* Finally there is a kind of “satisfied thirst” of One who knows God and constantly resorts to Hm. He isn’t always looking for something else, for He knows that God himself is what he needs. There is a cycle of thirst, the more I drink, the more I want.

Drink deeply of Him who was smitten for our Life my friends, and have a good Sunday!

 

Judgement, Scattering and The Unfinished Task…Genesis 11

And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.  And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.  And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter.  And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.  And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.  And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.  Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.  So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.  Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.(Genesis 11:1-9)

It sounded good in theory. All men on earth working together on the same project, towards the same end. A tower and a city to represent a complete world unity. There were no separate nations, or cultures, no language barriers, no competing factions.There was no such thing as ‘diversity’, in fact the unity was amazing and has never been seen since!

All men working together to make the world a better place, or perhaps to make it a safer place for man. Humanity as a productive collective, highly organized and set to one great task, under capable leadership! The whole world was ‘One’!

But God didn’t see it that way.

The Lord Came down to see the city and the tower…That is the LORD condescended to evaluate this work of man, for judgment. He who already knows all things, nonetheless “came down” to see this spectacle from the perspective of a man, shadows of the incarnation and vicarious substitution of out Lord.

It wasn’t good at all that all men spoke the same language, and were engaged in a universal world improvement project, with no differences, cultural or otherwise to present any barriers to them. Man is fallen, therefore the complete pooling of man’s intellect and his strength and willingness to undertake a global project under a one world governance can only lead men further away from God.

Now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do…

Without the above mentioned barriers, there is no stopping man in his elaborate defection from God.When “hand joins in hand” among the fallen ones, unity is their undoing, for they drag each other down to hell. If man could find a way to totally co-operate with all other men,  then God would be ‘dead’ to Him, for we would imagine that we no longer need Him.

Let us go down and confound their language…

The only Unity that remains ever indivisible is the unity of the Godhead which is blessed forever. Thus Father,Son and Holy Spirit come down to divide the dangerous unity of fallen man. The single most divisive factor is language. The Lord divided the nations by confounding the languages.

The judgment was an act of mercy, because total human unity is toxic when it is not based upon the only true center, the worship of “he only true God and Jesus whom he has sent”. God will not allow man to so empower himself that he utterly destroys all mankind.  No longer would man be allowed to be “as one”.

Paul would tell us centuries later that God divided the nations and even appointed their times and boundaries, that “they might seek Him’.

Obviously it hasn’t always worked out that the majority of nations did seek God, for free will is involved also. But the division of nations was a benevolent judgment, a safeguard against the humanly irresistible power of a globally united humanity with the capability to construct one unique “truth”, equally acceptable and understood by all, with which to counter the Word of God.

So the building project came to an abrupt end, and the workers gathered into their own language groups and dispersed abroad to fill the earth. However, the dream of “making a name for ourselves” has never died out. One of the undercurrents of all subsequent human history has been the attempt to get back to a worldwide unity, to overcome the “Babel Effect” and to complete the humanistic city and the tower.

The earth is littered with pyramids, ziggurats and astrological tower platforms, as a testimony to the universal truth of the story in Genesis 11. From Peru, to Mexico, to Egypt and Babylon, in China,Cambodia, indeed everywhere people have gathered, these artificial mountains have been built. The universality of the zodiac also testifies to the worldwide apostasy spoken of in Genesis.

The symbol of the unfinished tower is the inspiration for the European Union parliamentary building. The United Nations is also an attempt to bring about a world unity.We are approaching the time when through technology, men will arrive at their closest attempt to overcome “the Babel effect” and come together “as one”, in defiance of the very God who once divided us. This seems to be “their hour and the power of darkness” but according to Jesus and the prophets and apostles, it will be short lived.

Forcing Us to Face The Horror…Gosnell

When future President, General Dwight Eisenhower oversaw the liberation of German run  concentration camps, he commanded his troops to round-up as many German civilians as possible, and forced them to tour the camps, so that none of them could say, “We didn’t know what was going on out there…”.

Eisenhower wanted to force the German population to fully face the evil that they had allowed in their midst. They had to march through the camps, in order to witness the stacks of bodies, the louse infested barracks, the massive crematoriums, the human survivors who looked like skeletons. Ordinary German citizens were made to inhale the stench of death which their political choices had led to.

German Citizens Tour Camps

Notice in the clip above, that  on the way into the camps the civilians seem smug, defiant, they laugh and joke. But on the way out of the camp they have a look of horror, they cover their mouths, they simply cannot believe what had been done to others in their name.

It has occurred to me that the LORD is currently doing the same thing in my country, through the very public Gosnell trial. Though the mainstream media did their very best to try to ignore it, they themselves seem forced to have to cover the nauseating spectacle.

Finally after more than forty years, and fifty million murders, America is being forced to look directly at the horror of abortion, without the benefit of euphemistic word games,(“pro-choice” or “Women’s Health”), through the grisly Gosnell trial.

Kermit Gosnell is an African-American ‘physician’ who ran a late-term abortion clinic in the inner city of Philadelphia. In spite of various legal requirements for regular inspections, Gosnell’s clinic was a veritable nightmare charnel house, it was rat infested, cats moved about the clinic leaving hair and feces, the bodies of aborted babies were kept in jars and boxes around the office.

None of this caught any official attention, until “clients”, ie mothers, began dying. In 2002 a 22-year-old woman, Semika Shaw died of a perforated Uterus, after an abortion performed by Gosnell. Gosnell sent her home in critical condition,after puncturing her Uterus. A complaint was filed with the Public Department of Health, but it was dismissed without investigation, after the PDH declared the injury an “inherent risk”.

Gosnell’s hideous ‘practices’  didn’t come to life until the murder of 42-year-old Karnamaya Mongar, an immigrant from Bhutan, who sought a better life in the USA but thought the baby she was 20 weeks pregnant with would complicate her new beginning.

“

On November 19, 2009, Karnamaya waited at the clinic for hours to be seen by Gosnell while being given overdoses of the anesthetics Cytotec and Demerol and numerous shots of the abortion-inducing drug, Digoxin by Gosnell’s medically unqualified staff.  Though the clinic had a chart that listed the maximum level a patient could be dosed with the various painkillers and abortifacients, the women administering the drugs, Lynda Williams and Sherry West had track records of not following the chart.  The chart did not in any case have adjustments for the differing weight and sizes of patients. Karnamaya was 4’11 and 110 pounds, yet despite her size and weight Williams and Sherry continued to overdose her on Demerol because of the discomfort the patient was suffering from the abortifacient injections.  Mongar’s daughter Yashoda checked on her mother and found her unresponsive; when she questioned a staff worker about this she was told that her mother was sleeping.  In fact, Karnamaya was in a coma from the drug overdoses.

Ten minutes into the abortion procedure, Karnamaya stopped breathing and Gosnell attempted unsuccessfully to revive her through CPR.  When this failed, he and his assistant tried to use a broken defibrillator.  At 11pm, three hours after the patient’s daughter had mentioned that her mother was unresponsive, 911 was called.  When firefighters and paramedics arrived at the clinic, they were unable to get in the emergency entrance, as the entrance was locked and chained, and neither Gosnell or his employees had a key. The hallways were so narrow that they were unable to use a stretcher to take Karnamaya out of the clinic, and half an hour was wasted trying to both get into the clinic and get the patient out of the clinic.  Due to the ineptitude and carelessness of Gosnell and his staff, Karnamaya was pronounced dead the next morning, 20 November 2009 (R. Seth Williams, 2011).”

From Meet Gosnell’s Victims

This is abortion, out in the open, unvarnished and exposed in all of its grisly squalor. All of those who “personally oppose it” but publicly support it by voting for candidates who keep it in law, and who vote to force those who hate it to finance it through tax dollars, share in the guilt with Gosnell, you are equally culpable. You did this!

Everyone who voted for Obama, is certainly guilty, for Obama would be the equivalent of a “High Priest” of abortion. As a state Senator in Illinois, the one thing he was known for (other than voting ‘present’) was his passionate advocacy of post birth killing. In other words he championed all of those who want to kill a baby after it survives an abortion!

Bill Clinton never had the gall to address ‘Planned Parenthood’ as President of the United States, much less to wish the genocidally racist organization, a “God bless you” as Obama did.  Abortion is more than a social issue, it is a religious issue,like Nazism and Islam.

Abortion is the revival of the bloody paganism of Moloch, and it demands sacrifices to “the good life”, or to “Women’s liberation” and “Self fulfillment”.  This is what feminists have fought so hard to maintain, the right to kill children in the womb, without any qualification. This is what they have lied to the ignorant about, demagoging any sane person who would dare call into question the wisdom of destroying the next three generations for the sake of sexual liberation.

Look at Gosnell, don’t turn away from the sinks clogged with body parts, and from the filthy tables on which destitute young women shivered with pain, guilt and utter degradation, in a ‘medical facility’ in which cats chase after rats and cluttered with body parts in boxes and jars! Weep for sorrow over this shame! Howl for the misery soon to descend upon us for this deep evil!

There is still time to repent, but we had better hurry for the Lord who exposed this, in spite of the best efforts of our politicians and media, is coming to exact justice for innocent blood!

Mine eyes do fail with tears, my bowels are troubled, my liver is poured upon the earth, for the destruction of the daughter of my people; because the children and the sucklings swoon in the streets of the city.  They say to their mothers, Where is corn and wine? when they swooned as the wounded in the streets of the city, when their soul was poured out into their mothers’ bosom.  What thing shall I take to witness for thee? what thing shall I liken to thee, O daughter of Jerusalem? what shall I equal to thee, that I may comfort thee, O virgin daughter of Zion? for thy breach is great like the sea: who can heal thee?(Lamentations 2:11-13)

Precious In The Sight Of the Lord….Aeron Morgan

…Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints. O Lord, truly I am thy servant; I am thy servant, and the son of thine handmaid: thou hast loosed my bonds.  I will offer to thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving, and will call upon the name of the Lord.  I will pay my vows unto the Lord now in the presence of all his people. In the courts of the Lord’s house, in the midst of thee, O Jerusalem. Praise ye the Lord.(Psalm 116:15-19)

Dear friends, today we are mourning the loss of a dear friend and mentor, our beloved brother Aeron Morgan has gone to be with the Saviour he so faithfully proclaimed all of his life. My prayers and deepest sympathy go out to dear Dinah, his faithful wife, and to Aeron’s children, Angela,Michael and Philip.

What can I say in tribute to this wonderfully Spirit filled man of God? Aeron’s countenance literally shone, as he proclaimed the indescribable riches of God’s grace, and of his saving love as revealed in Jesus. Such a joyful man of God, with an ever ready good word and an infectious smile.

I will miss his prayers. Aeron and his beloved wife Dinah have always faithfully carried so many of us in their prayers. One of my first thoughts on hearing of his home going was selfish, I admit, for I thought,  ‘who will pray for us, as Aeron did?’ .  At certain times in our pilgrimage, and always at just the right time, Aeron and Dinah would write us and tell us that God had especially laid us on his heart.

Our brother was ever a man of scripture, always talking about the Word of God, but never in a dry, academic way, for Aeron was (and is) passionately a lover of God and a follower of the Lamb of God, Jesus. He would always have some insight to share with those who are like-minded.

I have spent time with brother Morgan in his home, with his wife and in his dealings with others. What you saw and heard was what he lived. The Morgans live out a simple, God-fearing piety, with a deep, burning faith, constantly praying about everything, witnessing to others, and  forever loving their neighbor, as Christ loved us, even when they were hurt or betrayed by others they had nothing but love and hope for them.

I loved the times I spent in hotel rooms with them at conference, praying together, fellowshipping.  Aeron and Dinah would share their meals with me, feeding me sandwiches and ‘Welsh Cakes’, as we laughed, shared, cried, and talked scripture.

Before he was a Bible College chancellor , instructor and a denominational superintendent, Aeron was for long time an Assembly of God pastor, serving congregations in the UK and in Australia. Through his years as a shepherd(pastor), He obviously learned to love and serve God’s people.

Aeron would give credit first to God, then to his upbringing, and his parents for anything worthwhile in his life. The bio on his website explains that;

Aeron Morgan is a Welshman, born in Aberaman in the Aberdare Valley, South Wales. Raised in a Christian home, his godly parents had a great influence on his life, and he was converted at a very early age in the local Pentecostal Mission. The assembly was truly a ‘sending church,’ privileged to see many go forth as missionaries, pastors, and evangelists to different parts of the world. 

Brother Morgan would often bless me (and others I am sure) by sharing his earliest memories, of being shaped and formed by people who had been involved in the Welsh Revival, and for whom the Lord Jesus and the Christian life is a burning and living reality.

From his parents, and a through steady stream of others touched by God,  brother Morgan’s early life was enriched by redeemed drunkards, itinerant preachers who would stay with the Morgans when Aeron was young, ( one of whom would lead him into personal, devotional Bible studies,“We will just study the book of Colossians this week, alright Aeron?“), and devout Pentecostal christians of all walks of life who stamped their impression on this man of God.

One of my favorite ‘Aeron stories’ was of the Bible professor in England who for forty years had served in the Bible college, teaching theology to youth. He wasn’t formally educated himself but He knew Jesus and the Bible deeply and was a real treasure. In the 1960′s, When the college wanted to ‘get with the times’  this man was unceremoniously put out of the faculty.

This was the discussion when this ‘retired’ Pentecostal pioneer went into the British Bereau to apply for and receive his pension,

“How long have you  worked at the school?”

“Forty years”.

“What was your salary”

“Nothing, I took nothing for I have lived completely by faith…”

Pause. Then, “Where did you reside?”

“At the school…”.

Aeron, you would always tell me of men and women who had been deeply touched by God, and who were full of the Holy Spirit, living godly lives in a world full of sin, evil and failure. They gave all for Jesus and took nothing for themselves, They shone for Jesus as theylived, shaping your life brother, and we are all better for that.

But all this time I now realize, that you yourself were one of them…the godly fruit of revival,a real man of faith and of the Spirit. Your ‘denomination’ modernized also, but you stood fast in your testimony of truth even when they turned away from yourself, and Philip and the others. You are one of my Christian heroes brother. We love you and will miss you dear brother, tell Jesus we love Him- Pastor Bill Randles, Kristin, and Believers in Grace fellowship!

  

The Apostasy…Genesis 11 pt 1

And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.  And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.  And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter.  And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.  ^{(Genesis 11:1-4)} 

Genesis 11 takes a closer look at events alluded to in the previous chapter, ie the references to the rise of the tyrant Nimrod, (whose name means, “Let us rebel”), and to Peleg, of whom it was said that in his time the earth was divided. The cause and nature of that division is the subject of chapter 11.

At this time the tribes of Shem, Ham and Japheth had not yet spread out over the earth, as God had commanded them to do,  rather it seems that they  banded themselves together in the city named “Babel”, which is interpreted as “gate of the gods”, in the land of Shinar, in southern Mesopotamia. The word ‘Shinar ‘ means ‘casting down’.

The apostasy, which involved virtually the entire population of the world, centered around three things,

*A city- The city was already built, of course, Babel, Nimrod’s capital. It became the focal point for the universal rebellion against the God who told them to go out and to subdue and fill the earth. They would not spread out, nor would they pioneer to subdue the earth. Rather, they would collectivize, joining hand in hand to live on their own terms without God.

Like their ancestor Cain, who founded a city after slaying his brother, naming it Enoch, ie “inauguration”, the city Babel became the “new beginning” of life for the united world away from the God of Shem.

* A tower- Central to the new, world uniting city, was a tower, “Whose top would reach unto heaven”. There are several plausible theories about the meaning of the tower. Some say it was a safeguard against the possibility of another flood. As if the priests of Babel were saying, “This time some of us,(the elite) will survive, by seeking refuge on top of the tower. We can’t ever allow the God of the flood to wipe us out again!”.

Another theory, one that I find most plausible, is that the tower was a pyramid or ziggurat, which elevated a platform for priests to better observe  the planets in order that they might practice astrology.

There is a third theory, that the Tower represented heaven. The Ancients would create their own symbolic cosmological ‘heaven’ on high platforms, so that through ritual performance, man would be in control of what happens in heaven and subsequently, on earth.

The truth could be any one of these or any combination of them. The effect was that man would be in control of his own life, and to be the one to define and create  his own destiny. Shem’s God wouldn’t be needed anymore, nor would he have to be feared, now that they had the unity and technology to make their own way.

* A name-Underlying the tower and city building project, was the deepest  reason for the apostasy, for they would ‘…make a name…’ for themselves. This is another way of saying that they wanted to be independent of God.They wanted to re-define themselves in terms of their humanity, and to divorce themselves from the God of heaven, Shem and the flood.

The fact that God named Adam, and calls men by their names, implies His dominion over them. The object named belongs to the one who named it. There is accountability also, for the namer defines the named. When God allowed Adam to name the animals, He was giving man dominion over them.

The city and Tower building project was a revolt against God, a rejection of accountability to, and definition by the Creator of the universe. At that time man was absolutely united, in rebellion and repudiation of God. All spoke the same language and virtually all had adopted the rebellious mindset.

In order to accomplish their goals, the leaders set out to utilize technology and to organize labor, to mass produce bricks, and to harvest bitumen for mortar for the project. Nothing would be spared in this monumental undertaking, all men worked together in a remarkable spirit of unity.

The making of bricks, ie artificial stones, all uniform, to the same standards, sizes and weights has a symbolic meaning in scripture. A Stone represents truth, thus the Ten Commandments are etched into stone tablets. Bricks are man made, and represent falsity. The Temple was made of stone, not brick. Pharoah forced the children of Israel to make bricks.

Bricks represent man’s technology to make his own world. The conformity of bricks as opposed to stone seems to be a good metaphor for the man made unity, the one size fits all, no distinctions, multi-cultural world we are constructing, in which no one is “right” or “wrong”, nothing is distinct, All is one.

Isn’t this what we in the modern world desperately want? Isn’t the idea of all men communicating, and working together in one common cause, one of our highest ideals? How many popular modern songs have pined for an ideal world in which we all ‘love one another’, and work for the common good, and in which there are no separate nations, no wars, no barriers, nothing to keep men apart?

Haven’t we always wanted to “teach the world to sing in perfect harmony“? To Imagine a world “As one”, in which there is “nothing to live for, or to die for’”? How different are God’s ideals from man’s! Our Saviour has told us “…that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God…”.

At the height of the idyllic world unity project, God himself “…came down…” out of concern for man, to see for himself this project and to determine the best course of action to utterly destroy it.