“GENEALOGY, n. An account of one's descent from an ancestor who did not particularly care to trace his own.” ~ Ambrose Bierce

 

There are two genealogies of Jesus and they don’t seem to agree.

 

This gives great joy to those who like to attack the bible as being inaccurate. 

 

Yet let’s remember that if we look at the objectives of the two writers as described in their books. They have vastly different objectives.

 

Matthew was showing Jesus as a Jew and so needs to start with Abraham as that is the source of Jewish heritage.

 

Luke is showing Jesus as the    saviour of all humans and so ends his genealogy with Adam, the source of the human race.

 

People like to focus on differences, but it’s the similarities that are striking in that most of the genealogy is similar.

 

The point of major contention is that of Joseph’s father. Matthew says Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, and Mary was the mother of Jesus who is called the Messiah.

 

Yet Luke says Now Jesus himself was about thirty years old when he began his ministry. He was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph, the son of Heli,

 

This seems to say that the bible is screwed up.

 

How can there be conflicts like this in the genealogy?

 

Perhaps this is possible, but there are explanations that explain this point.

 

One of the theories is related to a Levite marriage situation. Here when a person dies without a son, his brother takes on the wife to give her a son. This would mean that Heli was the legal father but that Jacob was the biological father of Joseph. Mathew following the biological heritage and Luke the legal.

 

It could also be that Matthew follows the Joseph’s ancestor line and Luke Mary’s.

 

Luke’s genealogy is different anyhow. The virgin birth is different and tracing a maternal lineage is also different. Matthew takes the more traditional approach.

 

Yet the important aspect is the reason the genealogy’s are written in the first place. That is to show that Jesus of the line of David and is the messiah, the one who saves us.

 

The aspect that makes much of this argument mute, is that those of us who have had a relationship with God can attest to the fact that he does wonderful things, and that we experience the love of Jesus. Simple paper arguments have little purpose when we know the person.

 

It’s more important to know the person than get locked up in the different arguments about their ancestors. It would be strange if we refused to accept a friend we knew well simply because some people had arguments about their ancestors.

 

How well do we know Jesus? Perhaps these arguments arise simply because we have not yet had the chance to experience his love and care?

“There is nothing funny about Halloween. This sarcastic festival reflects, rather, an infernal demand for revenge by children on the adult world.” ~ Jean Baudrillard  

I would not agree with Jean but it is an amusing quote isn’t it?

I hear Christians everywhere getting a bit annoyed about Halloween due to some fairly straightforward reasons.

Many say...

a.   It glorifies the evil side of life and we need to focus on the good,
b.   It teaches people to be nasty to others (the prank side of it),
c.   It is an opening to let the demonic interact with the human side of life,
d.   People use it as an excuse for going out of control and letting the evil side of their nature take hold,
e.   It doesn’t glorify God but glorifies the devil in an artificial way that can cause people to think he is “nicer” than he is.

These are valid arguments I am sure.

What however many Christians and others probably forget is that the reason we have Halloween is due to the church!

The word Halloween, dates to about 1745 and means “Holy evening”, All Hallows' Eve (the evening before All Hallows' Day) and this started out as a Scottish term. This day marked the end of harvest and start of winter. It was a day when people remembered saints (hallows) and martyrs as well as those who had died.

Whatever the origin focus, it is no longer a church time. It is now a time of children and their parents trick-or-treating, getting dressed up, going to costume parties, carving pumpkins, lighting bonfires, visiting various haunted attractions, telling scary stories, pranking and going to watch horror films.

While as Christians we seem to have lost the focus, it seems that Satan has not!
 
Evil excess has twisted Halloween from a good remembrance, into a time of human excess.

Most of it is not Godly, but it can be.

It depends how one dresses speaks and acts over that period.God judges each person’s attitude and actions at a personal level. This means we need to do what we know to be right.

What I do and what you do may differ, but if God is in control, perhaps we can put the Holy back into the Hallowed.

Have a great day...and evening!

Control yourselves. Be on your guard. Your enemy the devil is like a roaring lion. He prowls around looking for someone to chew up and swallow. Stand up to him. Stand firm in what you believe. All over the world you know that your brothers and sisters are going through the same kind of suffering. 1 Peter 5:8-9

 “Human history has become too much a matter of dogma taught by 'professionals' in ivory towers as though it's all fact. Actually, much of human history is up for grabs. The further back you go, the more that the history that's taught in the schools and universities begins to look like some kind of faerie story.” ~Graham Hancock

Most of us have heard about Stonehenge and are intrigued by it’s mystery and how people could have constructed such huge stones so long ago.

Stonehenge is a 3000 to 2000BC ring of standing stones and is a UNESCO world heritage site. Nobody knows who built it or why and it receives a lot of interest in the media.

Yet there is an older and even more intriguing ring of stones that we almost never hear about.

Have you heard about the Göbekli Tepe site?

Göbekli Tepe is a Neolithic site that is in Turkey. (The name means potbelly hill)

The site has huge stone pillars in circles. Twenty of them! These pillars are up to 6m(20ft) high and weigh up to 20 tons. Again who did it, why and how are not known. These stones are even more impressive than stonehenges stones because they have carved on them images of animals, foxes, cranes, bulls etc. These are about 10 000years old. This makes them three to four times older than Stonehenge.

The circles have diameters that range from 30 to 100 meters.

This time frame is often looked on as hunter gather time frame of human development. Yet these could not have been constructed by individuals or a few families. This needed concerted co-ordinated effort.

Claus Schmidt who led the excavation of these huge T shaped pillars. He suggests these are sacred circles.

It is interesting to see how mankind has been striving to worship God since very early times. This effort seems totally unique to man. No other creature has evidenced any of this.

God said we were made in his image in Genesis 1:27

The bible says

Isaiah 43:7

But now, this is what the Lord says—

…

“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have summoned you by name; you are mine.

…

Bring my sons from afar
and my daughters from the ends of the earth—

everyone who is called by my name,
whom I created for my glory,
whom I formed and made.”

It seems than men and woman of antiquity took time away from the tough task of daily survival to follow after spiritual paths.

How much time do we take to honor God today? What have we done over the past year to establish our spiritual legacy for God?

Have we become so complacent as modern man that we no longer understand our prime purpose?

A thought to consider today!

Ancient Mesopotamia exhibit

The Royal Ontario Museum(ROM) in Toronto is hosting an exhibit of the ancient treasures and archeological findings of Mesopotamia.

This is a good collection of artifacts that cover the ages from about 4000 B.C. to just before Christ. The interesting aspect is how these were presented ,but also perhaps the lack of information and artifacts. There was a huge gap in the 6500years before Christ to 4000years before Christ range.

This timeframe was really important, as it was when the first agriculture and villages started to appear in Earth’s history. Right there in Mesopotamia is the place civilization started.

The first culture is something called the Ubaid culture (because of the place where remnants of that culture were found). This over time developed and became a Sumerian culture, then it changed  to be the old Babylonian culture in the south and the Assyrian culture in the north. Literacy was developed.

The ROM explains how literacy developed as farmers needed to use central storehouses and had to mark their sacks of grain to keep them distinct from the sacks of other farmers. Clay seals were wrapped around the tops of the sacks and then special indentations were made that dried to form a identification that if removed could not be reproduced(the seal broke). In this way initial symbols were used, and slowly these were further used to account for the storage quantities and developed for further communication until finally an ancient language was written in what today we call the cuneiform text. Making indentations in clay of differing shapes and forms was the means of writing in those ancient days. The fine detail in the work of these texts is amazing to see.

In all of this what is really amazing is the amount of overlap between the bible and what archeology has found. Ur, the city from which Abrahams relatives came is featured prominently. Genesis 11:31
Terah started out from Ur in Babylonia. He took his son Abram with him. Then, many of the kings of Babylon and Assyria mentioned in the bible have aspects from their reigns on show at the museum.

We have to see that the bible accurately portrays the cradle of civilization, and tracks the progress of mankind in this area over thousands of years.

That alone should give credence to it’s accuracy.

Instead what do people do, they look for minor areas where it is not apparently accurate, although these are limited, and focus on the negative instead of the wealth of positive.

Why?

Why is it that the bible has become a target for assuaging our consciences and unloading our frustrations?

It’s interesting that this is so often the case.

If Satan was real, that’s what he would want isn’t it?

Perhaps these criticism’s are in their own way proof of God and Satan’s interactions as man develops.

Whatever the case, it’s worth understanding a bit about ancient Mesopotamia, and in so doing getting a better understanding of the context in which our Bible was formed.

Have a great day!

 One we discover how to appreciate the timeless values in our daily experiences, we can enjoy the best things in life.~Jerome K. Jerome

Some things are eternal and some only last as long as we do. Once of the characteristics we possess as the human race is to write and track information in a way that future generations can use it and in this way the information becomes a springboard to future achievement.

Yet most of this will also die with time. We know our universe has a finite life, and our earth definitely has a finite life.

Yet, God is outside time and space. Yet he delivers to us, in our cocoon of space/time, a gift of eternal information that if used correctly not only lasts longer than time and space, but enables us to move into eternity in the right way as well.

For, “All people are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord endures forever.” And this is the word that was preached to you. 1 Peter 1:24-25 NIV

We may come and go, but God’s word is forever!

We have the privilege to be able to read and try to understand it. Yet so many people miss this opportunity do not see it for what it is. Perhaps we need to do something about that?