…this is meant for you.
I woke up compelled to write about this because you may not hear this from someone close to you, maybe not even your local religious organization, for many possible reasons that may become obvious to you after reading this. I intend to condense 4,000 years of history into a brief summary hoping it will be relevant and worthwhile for you and answer many “why” questions. This is the truth, not a fictional story.
CURRENT TIMES
You and I are caught in the middle of, and and are living with the residual effects of a war continuing today, that started approximately 4,000 years ago, or maybe even before then. Unfortunately and unknowingly we have been brought into this war, as participants, and we don’t have a choice in participating. There is no way to avoid being involved; we can’t “opt out.” This is one of the most challenging types of wars to succeed in because it literally is invisible, so if we can’t see it, how are we going to defend ourselves?
THE BACKGROUND
We are not the only beings in the universe: there are angels (both good and bad ones), demons, cherubim, and other creatures and spiritual beings that have not been revealed to us yet and most importantly, there is a God, who created all of this. Despite the intelligence of many in this world, the human race is not all knowing or as wise as some want to believe. Just think of the “food chain”- the rank that exists in nature, we are part of a rank as well, different than the food chain. I don’t know where we rank relative to other beings in the universe, but since angels and demons can travel back and forth and we can’t, that may indicate we don’t rank that high compared with all that exists.
The hardest aspect to comprehend is God, probably because we don’t know anyone or any thing that has “no beginning and no end, is omnipresent, all knowing”- again we have limited knowledge, limited comprehension. It is hard to comprehend a divine Person who created everything, because we didn’t see it happen and haven’t seen God. That’s an obvious reason why many “logically” don’t believe this.
WHAT CAUSED THIS WAR
We aren’t given all the details, but there was a rebellion in heaven by Satan, by name, and some of the angels who began to think they were as good or better than their Creator. God had blessed them with beauty, limited power and limited knowledge (in comparison, more knowledge than the human race has) and they evidently felt they had the ability to be as good as, to compete with, or be better than God. We can easily see this reality in our everyday life if we think about our business world: we have creators of a product or service and we have people who help the creators. Some of those people who help the creator begin to think they can do something better (sometimes they can and other times it’s not as good as the original) but they venture out on their own. Same concept, but there is much more to gain when we are talking about the level of God and His Kingdom. Satan was given limited authority over the air and the earth, I’m not sure if this was before or after the rebellion; but it would make more logical sense if this authority was given before the rebellion, when Satan was in God’s good grace. Satan apparently didn’t start out evil, but something happened: pride occurred. In this rebellion, Satan is attempting to take away or gain a following from God’s created children, probably out of revenge, proving his ability to do this to God. Historically, Satan has been, and will be successful in doing this with many people, but not all.
THE ULTIMATE PLAN
God creates everything that is good and has good intentions for it, but when He gave “choice” to the beings He created not every thing or everyone chooses to love Him back, obey Him or recognize their “rank” in the Universe. God is going to get rid of everything that has turned bad, that doesn’t love Him, that doesn’t want to obey Him, that doesn’t recognize their rank. God created the universe with an order in His design and that order will prevail, despite efforts by any other being. Only God knows the timeline for this because he designed it. He has a new kingdom that will be revealed in the future, it will be on Earth (but it will be a new earth; this existing earth will be destroyed) and He will live among the people in His kingdom; but none of those who turn against Him will be part of it.
THE HISTORY
In the beginning, God was both physically (walking in the garden) and spiritually here interacting with humans, but when sin occurred, He could no longer be physically present and the earth was cursed at that point. That’s something else which is hard to comprehend: the law surrounding Holiness: not being able to be present where sin exists. Only God knows why He made the law this way. Perhaps this was part of the knowledge Satan had from being in God’s presence: if Satan created sin, God couldn’t be present and Satan could gain influence and rule?
Without God’s physical presence it obviously was a challenge for people to believe He exists and since the earth was cursed once sin was present, everything on earth was then under the influence of Satan. Other beings in heaven that rebelled against God came to earth too. In fact there is a very brief mention of this in the bible; these beings came from heaven because they became infatuated with, lusted after some women on earth. They had physical connections with these women producing children called Nephilim. There is a book of Enoch that is not certified as completely without error or incorporated into the bible, but IF this part is true, the angels who rebelled against God, took some of the knowledge they had and taught humans- that is where astrology originated and much of the occult. The bible is very specific about astrology being something bad that God does not want the human race to get involved with, it actually separates us from God. Just think about that, doesn’t this all make logical sense now?
Because the world was getting so corrupted by this and filled with sin, God decided to flood the earth, and destroy the majority of life, saving only a small portion of humans (those God determined were the most obedient to Him) and animals, and there was an opportunity, a new beginning for humans once again. In the beginning of the human race, people had much longer lives (hundreds of years), but after seeing the bad choices and sinful nature of humans, God changed the average life span to 120 years. After this “cleaning up” of the world through the flood, God promised the survivors He would never do that again and as a symbol of this promise for people to remember, He created the rainbow which appears after rain.
Due to the law surrounding holiness not being able to be in the presence of sin. God had to use other means to reach people, so He did. He used other people (prophets, and those who had faith and believed in Him) to reveal Himself, through miracles, supernatural events, letting people know that He truly exists, even though they don’t see Him. Remember this is part of a spiritual war, as it has been from the beginning: Satan is trying to take people away from God, gain them for Satan’s purpose. Both Satan and God use people who are willing to be used. This is where we only have two options: either we are being used by God, or we are being used by Satan. This is the participation we can’t avoid. From history, we see that despite these supernatural events, people were still skeptical and didn’t believe. Satan has much more influence in a cursed earth environment and easily manipulates people through money, greed, lust, perversion, pride and self-centeredness. None of these things have any value at the end of history, but somehow people are blinded by the deception, perceived value. We are not the most intelligent beings created! Satan uses temptation, lures people into thinking they are getting something of great value, for people only to be disappointed after a period of time. One of the supernatural events God used was giving Moses the 10 commandments (a collection of 10 rules that God wants His people to live by); people still didn’t keep them. Within a very short time, people were back to their sinful ways.
Finally God sent his son, Jesus to be a physical presence here on earth, interact with people, do supernatural things and fulfill in real life the events that the prophets told people about, so that this information would be believed. Still some people didn’t believe, but others did. Jesus told those who believed, he wanted them to spread this information to others, to save the others. When Jesus was here, he gave insight into the heavens and tried to give humans a better understanding of God, God’s nature, God’s expectations, God’s plans and to let people know how they will be able to be a part of God’s future kingdom, when Jesus returns again. This continues today, in an effort to save people.
WHY BAD THINGS HAPPEN
One misconception that people have is that if we are “good” nothing bad will happen to us. That is not true, unfortunately the earth has been cursed and there are two reasons bad things will happen to us: spiritual warfare (Satan’s power against God’s people) or a consequence of our sin. God does give blessings to his people and God will use the spiritual warfare to make us better people. He turns something bad into something good and promises us even more in the future. God stays true to His word. He is trustworthy.
HOW WE CAN BE A PART OF GOD’S FUTURE KINGDOM (A NEW EARTH AND HEAVENS)
- Seek God. Learn about the bible, study the bible, pray/talk to God, ask God to reveal Himself to you. Pray as often as you can.
2. Make a decision, but don’t take this decision lightly, because your intention matters: Are you willing to surrender to God and let God lead you? This means a willingness to give up the “valuable” things in this world, which are ultimately meaningless in the eternal world, but are very valuable to people in this world. A willingness to make God your priority, your #1 priority. A willingness to admit ‘I don’t know it all, I need God to provide. Admitting it when we are living differently than how God wants us to live and then committing to change that. A willingness to trust God. A willingness to let God use you, to serve God in some way with your abilities and help others. A willingness to accept God’s commands and do your best to obey them, knowing you won’t be perfect, but that you will keep trying. A willingness to put others first, rather than yourself. The honest intent is what matters, if you’re afraid you can’t do all these things, don’t be afraid of that, God will help you; you just have to be WILLING and give it to God. God has seen throughout history how hard it is for humans to be “good” he knows it’s impossible, and that is the main reason Jesus first came to earth: to save us (He became the required sacrifice to release Satan’s hold on us) when he was crucified, died on the cross and was the first to be resurrected (given a supernatural humanlike body, but better). That supernatural body is what all who surrender to God will be given in the future, because of Jesus. And we will be living with God in eternity, doing things/enjoying a NEW physical life on the new earth, not just floating around “in heaven” as some imaginations/teachings may have you thinking.
3. Get baptized. This is symbolic, but Jesus said it was required (baptism of the Holy Spirit) to gain eternal life and get this supernatural body. It symbolizes a “rebirth”: a death to our sinful natural self (old ways) and a new life (living according to God’s commands) This is where “born again” got its name, from a conversation Jesus had with Nicodemus.
4. Ask for the Holy Spirit. God’s spirit is what enables a person to be resurrected and live in eternity. When you have God’s spirit residing in you, you will know you are saved. You will feel like a different person, and the following character traits in you will be seen by others: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. God will be working within you. God’s spirit also give you courage, strength and power. We will need all these things to make it, endure until we are in God’s future eternal Kingdom.
5. Remain connected to God by prayers. The bible is also a way that God can communicate with us; so reading and studying the bible has many purposes: teaching, letting us know right vs wrong, correcting and training people in God’s ways.
I hope this makes a positive difference in your life! If you think this might be valuable to someone, please share it. Thank you.
S.A.I.L. 