BRAGADAYJAH 139
Monday, September 30, 2013
BRAGADAYJAH 15
The Great Flood
In giving Noah instructions concerning the living creatures that he should take into the ark, God stipulated that there were to be taken in male and female. Males and females were and are and always will be God’s plan for procreation, neither could it be otherwise.
Once Noah and his family were securely inside of the Ark, the Lord shut them in. God, the God of heaven closed up the door of the Ark, and caused it to rain, so the Bible says for forty days. And at the end of that time the Ark was lifted up from the earth, above the earth.
Now some men considering themselves to be wise, question the veracity of the flood account; but the word is clear about it. I remember well going home one late afternoon and feeling tired I laid on my bed and fell asleep. It was about 6.00 p.m. and there was no sign of rain about. Not a cloud in the sky. About two hours later a friend of mine knocked on the door and was astonished that I obviously had been sleeping.
“You were in bed already and the whole place is washing away!” he exclaimed.
When I looked out there were massive land slides and the water in my basement was over twenty feet high. I was truly amazed that so much water had descended in such short a space of time. In that episode many lives were lost, houses, people, animals, and bridges were washed away.
Not so long ago, I went to sleep one night right here in Central Florida and the next morning found that many places were flooded and people trapped in their homes, and required days before they could get out of their houses. Yes Rome was not built in a day, but it could be destroyed by flood in an hour.
Imagine, then what could be done in forty days and nights of constant rain, especially if God wills it to be a flood to fulfill His purpose.
“And the waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon the earth, and the Ark went upon the face of the waters. And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered. Fifteen cubits upwards did the waters prevail and the mountains were covered.” More….
Sunday, September 29, 2013
Escape Or Perish
BRAGADAYJAH 14
Before proceeding further, I would like to deal here and now very briefly with the subject of God speaking to individuals directly. Now I have heard it said that God does not speak to people one and one; and while there are many scriptures that will speak to the contrary, I will try and avoid as I go onward, referring to any Books until we reach them. But looking back from Chapter 1 to chapter 6 of the present book, we see that God spoke most definitely to Adam and Eve, Satan the serpent, Cain and now Noah.
On the other hand I have heard people use all kinds of what I would call weird claims of conversations they had with God; “God told me to start a church without music;” “God told me not to read books;” and of course the classic, “God told me to tell you;”
Since however, I was not privy to any of these kinds of conversations it would be presumptuous of me to say that they never happened. So all I can say is that given the nature of the conversations, I have to admit I find them weird, without saying more, except to say that since the Bible as we know it is made up of 66 books, I would find it not only weird but disturbing if God were to tell me not to read books.
Be that as it may, God spoke to Noah, and in obedience to God’s command Noah built an ark as commanded. The Ark was to be the means whereby, God would allow Noah and his family, together with pairs of every living creature both male and female to escape the ravage of the great flood, and after the flood to replenish the whole earth. More….
Saturday, September 28, 2013
Republicans Acting Like Hooligans
I say, regardless of which party you belong to or support, Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Tea Party or no party, what the Republican/Tea Party members of the House of Representatives is wrong, dead wrong.
To intentionally and maliciously hold the government and the people of the United States to ransom as a way of hitting back because The Health Care law was passed over their strong objection is ethically, morally and procedurally wrong and mean; and in due course the electorate should make them pay.
What the Republican Party in Congress is doing goes against the grain of the Two Party System and also that of the Democratic institutions that we have long held dear. What would happen to the Parliamentary/Democratic process if every time the opposition is defeated over the passage of a piece of legislation they do not like, they become obstructionists?
Whether in congress, a social club, or other organization where matters are discussed and finally voted upon, the outcome should be and must be respected by all sides. In the premises, the Health Care Law was fought tooth and nail all the way up to the United States Supreme Court, which court ruled with regard to its constitutionality which was challenged by the other party. Since that time there was a Presidential election which the President won hands down although the Health Law was made a pivotal high point of campaign wrangling.
It must be taken, therefore, that the electorate gave the President and his Party a mandate to carry into effect Healthcare and to have it funded; and Republicans, however much they resent it, have a constitutional, moral and moral duty to support it. I say finally, the electorate have a right to expect a much higher standard of behavior from their elected representatives, who are in this regard acting like a bunch of hooligans.
BRAGADAYJAH 13
Now God tells Noah that He is about to destroy all flesh. In God’s words, “The end of all flesh is come before me. For the earth is filled with violence through them and behold I will destroy them with the earth.”
Having declared his purpose, God gave Noah instructions about building an Ark. He told him the model of it, the fashion of it, the length 300 cubit, the breath or width 50 cubit and the height 30 cubit. The ark was to have a window and a door, the location of each being specified and was to be a triple storied.
To reiterate His intention God told Noah, Behold, I even I do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven, and everything that is in the earth shall die.”
What made Noah special, or why did Noah find favor with God? Well by inference we see four distinct qualities from which we can assess Noah’s character.
1 He was a man who was willing to listen.
2 He was a man who was prepared to take advice.
3 He was a man who could be trusted to act on good advice.
4 And carry out instructions as directed. More ….
Friday, September 27, 2013
BRAGADAYJAH 12
God’s first family faced two crises, firstly by the sin of disobedience born out of deception, and the second, fratricide born out of jealousy. God the Supreme arbiter had to act. Now the entire world, that is to say the people of the world, stood before him in judgment. In just a little less than two thousand years since creation, sin, like a growing cancer had taken over, much as it has today, and was eating away at the very core of human morality.
God’s reaction was to destroy the whole of His creation; to wipe the slate clean as it were; but a man named Noah, found favor in God’s sight. And not only Noah, but his entire family, that is to say, Noah’s wife, his three sons and their wives, being eight souls in all.
It was just as well because the task God gave Noah to complete in preparation for the great event was not an easy one, and would have been almost impossible for one man to complete by himself. But God is a Provident God and even as he watched the world fall away into all sorts of sexual depravity, he was also watching and guiding a single man and his family, and preparing them for the great ordeal that he would soon impose on them. More…..
Thursday, September 26, 2013
BRAGADAYJAH 11
It is a question often asked, “Why did God?” Why did God make man possible to sin? Why not a perfect stereo type specimen? Why did God not simply destroy Satan when he rebelled and so save the rest of His creation from sinning and death?
There are many answers not least among them being that God is sovereign and as such He does His own will. But a more pragmatic answer is that God gave man free will; the will to do or not to do; the will to obey or disobey. It was God’s creation and He chose to do it His way.
But let us for a moment take a bird’s eye view of the heavenly places when Satan rebelled. To be sure the angels would have been very curious to see what God would do about it. How God dealt with the rebellion was no doubt a matter of great interest and concern to the angels.
Would God just obliterate him, or how would God deal with him? If God had simply destroyed Satan there and then, the other angels to be sure would thereafter worship God, not out of love, but with fear and trembling. But that is not God’s way. Sure He cast out Satan; but He did not kill him on the spot.
God was now about to take drastic action against a sin-soaked world. It was so extreme indeed that after it was all over, He unilaterally covenanted never again to destroy the earth in that way. More ……
Wednesday, September 25, 2013
BRAGADAYJAH 10
If you are one of those boxed in thinker/skeptics who like to ask where did a wife for Cain come from, learn to think a little outside of the box, and you will find that the answer would not seem quite so far away.
The Bible gives a fairly comprehensive genealogy of the descendants of Adam and Eve through to Noah, perhaps one of the best know names in the Bible, a time line which stretched over almost two thousand years.
And so it was that when God looked down upon His creation, He did not like what he saw. Immorality was running rampant. The godly line was becoming mixed with the ungodly and as a result they were producing hideous giants, not beautiful children of God. So God said, “My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he is flesh; yet his days shall be a hundred and twenty years. For God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”
What was taking place was sexual immorality. Maybe not as abominable is that taking place today; but it was serious enough for God to take very drastic action to extirpate it. What did God do? We shall see. More…
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
BRAGADAYJAH 9
Now it should be very apparent that there was a bit of a lacuna in the story of Adam and Eve’s existence between the time that they were driven out of Eden, and the incident when Cain slew Abel.
It may be inferred from other parts of the story that between Eden and Abel’s death was upwards of one hundred years. During that time Adam and Eve would have had many other sons and daughters, who would themselves have had many sons and daughters.
I remember well my consternation a few years back when I encountered a 33 year old grandmother. I had a hard time doing the math. This was at a time when all sorts of birth control methods were available. Not hard to see, then, how fast 9 months came about in those ancient days and how many times 9 months go into 100 exponentially.
Not long ago, too, I was reading about a famous historical couple, where the wife died at age 22 I believe it was and had 7 children.
The point is that Adam and Eve could have been the forebears of many hundreds of children over a period of a hundred years, but which were not mentioned specifically as they added nothing to an already overcrowded historical document.
Adam and Eve continued to have other children, and we are told at the age of 130 They had Seth who himself had a son whom he called Enos. Significantly, it was not until after the birth of Enos that men began to call upon the name of the LORD. It took that length of time for the men of earth, to feel free to look again to God. More
Monday, September 23, 2013
BRAGADAYJAH 8
Adam and Eve were now driven out of the garden to eat bread by the sweat of the face.
In course of time they bore two sons, Cain and Abel. Abel was a keeper of sheep and Cain tilled the soil.
In the process of time Cain took to God, an offering of the fruit of the ground and Abel offered a firstling of his flock. For whatever reason the Lord showed greater appreciation of Abel’s offering than that of Cain and in a fit of angry jealousy Cain up and slew his brother Abel.
Once again, there was trouble in the Adam family. Mother and father were the first of mankind to sin, and now their offspring was the first murderer. And once again God was called upon to hold court.
When God called upon Cain to account, he at first tried to evade the question by saying, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
So the Lord told him his brother’s blood accused him. “The voice of thy brother’s blood cries unto me from the ground.”
God did not even wait for Cain to come up with any more lying excuses. He simply put a further curse on Cain and drove him out. So that curse was the ground for the sake of Adam’s and Eve’s sin and now curse is Cain for murdering his brother. More…..
Sunday, September 22, 2013
BRAGADAYJAH 7
The couple, Adam and Eve had to stand before the Master and confess their wrongdoing, and receive just punishment for their disobedience. God had told them before hand that the penalty was death. And although he initially covered them with the blood of the lamb, thus sheltering them from eternal death, they still had to suffer the earthly penalty for their wrong and undergo physical death. So it was written that thenceforth they shall know hard labor and the pain and the agony of this present life.
Satan, symbolized as the serpent, would be pitted against the seed of the woman and the seed of the woman against the serpent. “And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; he shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heal.” (Gen. 3:15)
This was the second reference to Christ in the first book, the first been in the very first chapter where we find the first three words of verse three, “and God said,” thus sending forth the Word, by whom and for whom all things were created.
“For Judah’s Lion burst his chain, Crushing the serpent’s head.
And cries aloud through death’s domain, To awake the imprisoned dead.”
More……...
Saturday, September 21, 2013
BRAGADAYJAH 6
Adam and Eve were both in agony. For the first time in their existence they knew the pain of guilt. In their misery, they heard the voice of their Master/Creator calling them; in their panic they hid themselves briefly before heads bow they stood before God, confessing their nakedness now that their innocence was removed.
It was of the man that God addressed his first question, “What has thou done?” Adam entered a rolled up plea; he confessed and denied. Confessed that he had eaten of the fruit, but denied that he had broken the law in that he was just doing what God had ordered him to do, namely cleave to his wife.
Before going further God had to do something about this pair of sinners. His redemptive law was not yet written neither in stone, or clay or vellum or papyri; but in his own heart; for as it would be later written, “almost all things are by the law purged with blood; for without the shedding of blood there is no remission.”
So what did God do he covered them figuratively with the blood of the Lamb, about whom it would be written, the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
Adam and Eve on that day benefited by God’s mercy effectuated by the blood of Christ which would be shed on Calvary’s cross six thousand years later. More......
Friday, September 20, 2013
BRAGADAYJAH 5
When God in His infinite wisdom and foreknowledge decided to make man, God knew exactly what he was doing. God is Omnipotent, Omniscient and Omnipresent. God always knows and controls the future as He has the past. So He does not, and cannot make a mistake. In taking counsel to make man, the Triune God anticipated every decision and every outcome. So He made man with free will, to enable him to make personal, rational, and moral choices. Of course man had the capacity to go this way or that, to know good from evil and to obey or disobey. For God made man possible not to sin and to live for ever; but through sin, man became impossible not to sin and to die.
So when the tempter asked Eve, “Did God tell you not to?” Eve well knew the answer to the question; for she quoted God’s commandment exactly.
“Yes,” Eve said. “God told us that every tree of the garden was good for food except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He warned us that the day we eat of the fruit of that tree, we would surely die.”
But Eve allowed herself to be beguiled by the serpent. She ate the fruit, liked it, gave it to her husband Adam, he too ate, and too late the consequences of their disobedience were uncovered before their very eyes. More.
Thursday, September 19, 2013
BRAGADAYJAH 4
God made a beautiful garden for Adam and Eve and provided a variety of food for them; but in the midst of the garden was a forbidden tree, and God commanded Adam and Eve not to eat of the fruit of that tree.
One could imagine how Adam and Eve tried to keep their distance from the forbidden tree. After all there were lots of delicious and delightful trees and fruit a plenty. There was no need to disobey God and eat of that one tree. There was no shortage of food. Beside, God visited them daily and provided them with both fellowship and company. But Satan, that evil creature we know as the devil was about to change all that for ever. More……
Wednesday, September 18, 2013
BRAGADAYJAH 3
So when God had finished His creation, He appointed man to have dominion over the whole earth. “Every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for food.”
God is Lord and Master. He it was that created; it all belonged to Him, and so He had authority to delegate. But there was a lot for Adam to do by himself; he needed help and so God made for Adam a helpmate and companion, whom He presented to Adam.
What an impression this present must have made on Adam; for on seeing his prize, he waxed eloquent and poetic. “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of man.”
Isn’t this a poignant reminder that God did in fact make man in His own “image and likeness?” That is to say, that man is a personal, rational and moral being? That man in other words was possessed from his very inception with godlike elements of personality, reason and morality? Common sense says so. More……….
Tuesday, September 17, 2013
Bragadayjah 2
God said, it is I who created the first evening; it is I who created the first morning; it is I who created the first day. I who created all things and without me, there was nothing made that was made.
I created the dry land, I created the sea. I created every living thing, the trees and flowers, the birds, the animals, the fishes of the sea and guess what? I made every thing to reproduce after its kind. In other words I created chasms between every specie of every created things, so that there is no crossing over. And finally I made man, male and female created I them.
These irrefragable claims God made at the beginning, over 8000 years ago. And try as they might, the great so called wise men of the earth cannot and will never be able to prove God wrong. This fact alone should be enough to convince lowly men that God sits up high and is irreproachable. As an unschooled farmer once said, “sheep can’t bring goat and goat can’t bring sheep.” And today, after thousands of years of production and reproductions, and however much man tries to mess with the genes of God’s created order, the chasms remain impregnable.
Monday, September 16, 2013
In Memoriam, Written In memory of those who perished in 911
In Memoriam
The face of terror raised its head,
Our sons and daughters now are dead!
And who will weep for them?
We will weep for them!
Demonic fiends broke through our door,
And mamas and papas are no more.
And who will sing lullaby’s for them?
We will sing for them!
Fiends! They came in demented rage,
Sent grandmas and grandpas to the grave!
And who will pray for them?
We will pray for them!
What deathly force those cowards ushered!
Taking with them our sisters and brothers!
And who will speak for them?
We will speak for them!
Without warning came they like wolves!
Wreaking havoc on our friends!
And who will judge for them?
We will judge for them!
As for the dead, what pain they felt?
As twisted steel, bricks, mortar melt!
And who will bury them?
We will bury them.
They came! They demolished our beautiful city!
Despoiled our buildings without pity!
And who will rebuild for them?
We will rebuild for them!
Defenseless all they lived, they died.
They got no pity when they cried!
And who shall avenge them?
We will avenge them!
And that date, eleventh September,
We will always, always, remember!
And who will remember them?
We will remember them!
And who will repay the cowards?
We will repay them, a thousand fold.
And we, the living,
We will weep for them.
We will sing for them.
We will pray for them.
We will speak for them.
We will judge for them.
We will bury them.
We will rebuild for them.
We will avenge them.
We will remember them,
Ad infinitum, in memoriam!
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Bragadayjah
BRAGADAYYAH
In case you should wonder what is Bragadayjah, it simply means bragging, not blogging, every day, daily, about Jah, or Jehovah, Elohim, God, the Master Architect and Creator of the universe.
The creation story was told by God Himself and written down by Moses, God’s chosen scribe, and preserved through the ages for our edification and instruction by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
The first Book of the Bible, Genesis, is where it all began; it is called His story, that is to say God’s story told to man by inspiration by chosen ones of old. Without Genesis, man would be totally lost, drifting as a cloud blown by the wind and tossed. But man has God and His world which tell of his origin. How he was made, when he was made and by whom he was made; for the Lord God made them both male and female
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