Talking With Israel

11/08/2024

Genesis 18:23-25
(23) And Abraham came near and said, "Would You also destroy the righteous with the wicked? (24) Suppose there were fifty righteous within the city; would You also destroy the place and not spare it for the fifty righteous that were in it? (25) Far be it from You to do such a thing as this, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous should be as the wicked; far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?"
New King James Version Change email Bible version

God's justice is according to His righteousness, His holy character. Psalm 119:172 defines righteousness, stating "All Your commandments are righteousness." Those commandments reflect in writing the character of God.

What God does is always consistent with who and what He is, and what He has written. His righteousness is absolute purity. He is utterly incapable of an unholy, unrighteous, unjust act. For God to act unfairly, He would simply have to cease being God. It is totally impossible for Him to commit an injustice.

When Abraham uses the word "righteous" in verse 23, he is not saying, "Would You destroy the sinless with the wicked?" He means people who, through their fear of God and being conscientious, have kept themselves free from the iniquity of S***m and Gomorrah. Abraham's concern was that there were people in the city we might consider to be really good citizens. They were not sinless, but if there was a fear of God in them, maybe they were trying with all their might to obey God, but they were caught up simply in being in the environment which God had decided He was going to destroy.

God does not always act with justice; sometimes He acts with mercy. That is what He did with Lot and his family. God acted with justice against the city because it was so corrupt, so evil, so filled with sin that it even offended God's sense of what is right and wrong. It even offended God's patience, His longsuffering. And so in justice He wiped the city off the map, but in grace and mercy He spared Lot, his wife, and two children.

Mercy is not justice, but neither is it injustice, because injustice would violate righteousness, and God always acts according to His holy character, which is total righteousness. Therefore mercy, which manifests kindness and grace, does no violence to righteousness, and we may see non-justice in God—which is mercy—but we never see injustice in God.

— John W. Ritenbaugh

09/01/2024

Have you ever REALLY considered our God? The God of Israel; The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? The Creator of the universe, the Creator of ALL things - including man.
This God has seen it as His DUTY to let mankind know as, as much as he can, all about Himself and His Son and His Spirits, and the beginning of mankind, and the fall of mankind, and the way to return, again, to be with Him.
He chose a people. The Hebrew people. A nation of Black people. He told the Black people, who were enslaved, how and why their punishment continues to this day. Because, of all the people He had created, the Hebrews were chosen and blessed by God - not only for their sake, but to be a blessing to ALL nations, for all time.
When Israel blew that mission, they were scattered in ships; became the tail and not the head; they had even lost their identity. Going, here in America, from colored people to negroes to African American.
So, we give all praise and honor and thanksgiving to our Father for the Word of God, which reveals ALL truth. He didn't have to, but He thought it wise to let those who are made in His image know the end from the beginning and how to return to be one of the God-family. The Bible. Someone called it the Basic Instructions Before Living Eternally. Read it. DO IT. Help those who aren't do the same. It can ONLY help!

08/31/2024

The Author of tomorrow has said for six days may work be done but on the seventh day there is a Sabbath of complete rest, a holy convocation; it is a Sabbath to the Lord in all your dwellings. Or, is someone ELSE ordering your steps?

07/12/2024

Genesis 2:1-3
(1) Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished. (2) And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. (3) Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.
As the sixth day ended, the creation week was not yet complete. One more day and a major blessing remained to be given to mankind to aid it in accomplishing God's purpose for all.

God created the Sabbath by resting on it and sanctified it as a blessing for mankind to observe in a similar fashion. God did not need to rest because He had grown tired, as we humans do (Isaiah 40:28; see Psalm 121:4). He rested as an example to us, showing what we must do on the seventh day, as well as to sanctify it as a special day to accomplish His purposes in creating us.

He did not do this for any other day.

06/14/2024

Nothing proves faith in Christ as well as righteous conduct that comes from a true change of heart. A Christian must make sure that His faith is not a temporary faith that lacks obedience, but one based on love for God. As Christ says in John 14:23-24, "If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word."

06/13/2024

YOUNG MEN: PLEASE LISTEN - I have emphysema. It was diagnosed 5 years ago. Doctors say that people with emphysema will live 5 years or more. Before I leave, I hope at least one of you hears me: STRENGTHEN YOUR SPIRIT. ABSORB THE WORD OF GOD. LIVE BY IT.
Once you realize that what we are living is a PRELUDE to life, and you begin to exercise your SPIRITUAL self EVEN ABOVE your physical self, you will have JOY AT THE END! Because your Spirit person is excited about the future and spends his or her time making plans RULE over this earth and putting treasures (good deeds) in heaven.
Thank You, Father, for strengthening my spirit, for GIVING ME HOPE for a GLORIOUS FUTURE IN Christ Jesus, our King and our Savior!! Father, I pray that at least ONE MAN hears Your call to come back to You and will repent and live with us forever. In the name of Jesus, our High Priest, King and Savior. Amen.

05/23/2024

Believing in the God of Israel (“BELIEVING” means DOING what He says) is hard for a natural person. “Natural” means a person NOT LED by the Spirit.
How natural is acknowledging His sovereignty over all the affairs of mankind? How natural is it to acknowledge His presence being around you and guiding you all day, every day – and RELY on it? How natural is it to say “no” to fornication and adultery? How natural is it to be forbidden to lie, cheat, steal and rob? How natural is it to consume unleavened bread for a week or to afflict yourself for a day of atonement, when you give your body absolutely nothing? How natural is worshipping Him on the day He chose, the 7th day and not the 1st? How natural is it for people not to know – or care – about the 2nd death? How natural is it for a person to put all of their faith into a future that is only written about?
Believing in the God of Israel is a spiritual circumstance, in which all of those things are done. As God promised in Jeremiah 31:33: “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel atter those days”, declared the Lord, “I WILL PUT MY LAW WITHIN THEM, AND ON THEIR HEART I WILL WRITE IT; AND I WILL BE THEIR GOD AND THEY SHALL BE MY PEOPLE”. Walk THIS way.

05/15/2024

Out of TRUE love, you tell people: Don't worship Jesus as a man; He said, "Why are you asking me about what it good? There is only One who is good; but, if you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments".
Yet we honor his date of birth (which no one knows), His crucifixion (just as we do on November 22 when JFK was assassinated) and Easter (the day some people believe He rose).
Celebrate Him as the First-born among us, as the Christ - the Anointed One - the one we want to be like.
He does NOT honor those days I spoke of.
He keeps the commandments.
The Sabbath and His Feasts are what He honors.

05/08/2024

The "way of Cain" includes religion and worship on one's OWN terms, with more faith in one's OWN righteousness than in God's. It also contains a humanistic bent that believes that we can have good relationships with others even without first being reconciled with God and wholly devoted to Him. It can involve works that may appear good on the surface but end up being evil in their effect or influence. The way of Cain is about shortcuts for the sake of expediency rather than submitting to the pattern that God has set forth.

04/09/2024

04/01/2024

The cause of man's plight is not ignorance of the right but his own desire, which leads him to substitute his will for God's. This simple story, of Adam and Eve, illustrates why man's relationship with God has run afoul. By deliberate choice, man separates himself from God, who created him and gives him the freedom to choose.

Nothing changes regarding the free-moral agency of the person called by God. When one is forgiven and receives God's Spirit, He does not overpower them. THE RIGHT TO CHOOSE FREELY REMAINS. even as with Adam and Eve. To take away this privilege would truly make the individual a puppet on a string and destroy God's creation of him or her in His spiritual image. God is free to choose, and so is man created in God's image. It is this freedom of choice that opens the door for man, through redemption and conversion, to be like God in character.

CHOOSE YE THIS DAY WHO YOU WILL SERVE!!

02/28/2024

Whether by assumed church authority or by carelessly handling the Word of God, Sunday-keeping is a tradition of men rather than an ordinance of God. Jesus says, "If you love Me, keep My commandments" (John 14:15), including the ten He gave at Mount Sinai. The apostle John concurs: "By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome" (I John 5:2-3). Yet, church leaders for centuries, like the Pharisees before them, have led millions into error by making "the commandment of God of no effect by [their] tradition" (Matthew 15:6).

Jesus' resurrection made no change in the day of worship; men took it upon themselves to change it without respect to God's Word. In the near future, however, when Christ returns, all who claim Him as King will once again hallow the Sabbath (Isaiah 66:22-23; Ezekiel 44:24; 45:17; 46:3).