my lamb
Monday, January 24, 2011
Create in Me a Pure Heart...O God: STOP THE CORRUPTION!
Create in Me a Pure Heart...O God: STOP THE CORRUPTION!: "In the beginning God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him (Genesis 1:27). God was perfect and so was man, for he..."
Thursday, November 25, 2010
STOP THE CORRUPTION!
In the beginning God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him (Genesis 1:27). God was perfect and so was man, for he was created in God’s likeness. Blessings Before the Fall
Man was immortal, given the breath of eternal life (Genesis 2:7). His body was ethereal and radiant, like that of God’s glorious body, shining brighter than the sun (Philippians 3:21, Daniel 12:3). Neither the blight of death nor sickness nor aging had any hold on it (1 Corinthians 15:52).
Man was upright (Ecclesiastes 7:29). He had no knowledge of evil. His thoughts were pure; his motives, holy (Genesis 3:5).
Man received blessings in a fashion that was “exceeding abundantly” (Ephesians 3:20 nkjv). God was King and man, a prince given to royal treatment. He had access to everything that God owned (Luke 15:31) and he could appropriate them at will. He did not know the meaning of poverty or want. He shared in the omniscience and omnipotence of God; and with it came unbounded creativity. He was appointed god and ruler over all creation (Psalm 8:6), even over Lucifer (Genesis 1:28). He had authority (the right) and power (the ability) to act for and on behalf of God.
Man partook of God’s love and bliss (Matthew 25:21). Immense joy, serenity and contentment overflowed inside and outside of him.
Disobedience
The relationship between God and man was perfect, harmonious and joyful, that is, until man disobeyed God. God gave him freewill (the freedom to choose, to be what he can be) and he chose to disobey God.
14 (God) made man in the beginning, and then left him free to make his own decisions. 15 If you wish, you can keep the commandments, 16 to behave faithfully is within your power. 17 He has set fire and water before you; put out your hand to whichever you prefer. Man has life and death before him; 18 whichever a man likes better will be given him. ECCLESIASTICUS 15
Lost BlessingsThe disobedience led to serious and dire consequences:
The pure was stained with sin. Human nature transformed from godly (radiant, beautiful and pure) to ugly (dark, sinful and impure).
Man was separated from the life of God (Ephesians 4:18). He was banished from the realm of the living (the Garden of Eden) and made to walk the realm of the dead. Psalm 115:16 says, “The earth the Lord has given to man.”
God hid from him, and he from Him, because God was a consuming fire to the impure (Deuteronomy 4:24). The impure may not look at God’s face and live (Exodus 33:20).
God’s Spirit had to vacate the human spirit because no sinful vessel could contain the Spirit and live. <The human spirit is the virtual head of the human soul. Proverbs 20:27 and Ephesians 3:16 describe it as man’s inmost being. Luke 6:45 and Ephesians 3:17 refer to it as the heart of man.>
The vacancy left a vacuum which the demonic spirits filled. They indwelt the human spirit and clung to it like to a pestering leech. They nagged man to disobey God some more (Ephesians 2:2). And the human heart turned “deceitful above all things and desperately wicked” (Jeremiah 17:9 kjv). It produced evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly (Mark 7:21-22).
The immaterial man (whom Genesis 2:7 kjv describes as a “living soul”) was clothed with garment of flesh (Genesis 3:21). It offered him an alternative lifestyle: drunkenness (loss of God-awareness), dissension (rebellion against godly order), sensuality (limited sense of reality), carousing (excessive pursuit of fleshly desires), selfish ambition (self-centered life direction), envy and jealousy (covetousness), impure thoughts and actions, immorality (unfaithfulness), outbursts of anger (impatience), idolatry and sorcery (ungodly practices in search of power), partisanships (factionalism), and social conflicts (enmity, heresies).[1]
God took away man’s breath of eternal life. Sickness, aging and death visited him—a reminder to us that anyone who does not deal with the corruption that is in him, to dust he will return (Genesis 3:19).
Man lost his connection and access to omniscience and omnipotence. His creativity turned into mediocrity and, often, into failure. In lieu of superabundance, he found poverty and want. The earth was cursed (Genesis 3:17). He had to labor by the sweat of his brow so he could eat and drink.
Lucifer usurped man’s dominion. Left without authority and power to act for and on behalf of God, man began to feel weak, insecure and fearful, even of those he used to lord. Joy, serenity and contentment stopped overflowing in him and were replaced with conflict, restlessness, emptiness and suffering.
The serious and dire consequences above were passed on to everyone in the whole world (Romans 5:12). Today we are born physically alive but spiritually dead (Ephesians 2:1). Lucifer
Lucifer is the ruler of the evil empire in the spiritual realm. Scripture refers to him as the enormous red dragon (Revelation 12:3), the ancient serpent who tempted Eve (verse 9), the devil meaning slanderer (verse 9), the prince of this world (John 14:30), and the ruler of the kingdom of the air (Ephesians 2:2). The world popularly calls him Satan but it’s not his real name; his fellow demons call him “Chitanam.”
The descriptive nouns adversary or opposition or enemy of God’s people in the Scripture are an allusion to Satan. But here is an occult secret: Lucifer does not really feel alluded to by any of them.
The evil empire has seven levels. Its fourth level (the astral kingdom) is governed by “Lord Naga” and his assistant “King Elam” whose other name is “Sat An.” Whenever the name Satan is invoked, Lucifer is not the demonic spirit who appears or manifests but Elam. [2]
For the sake of truth and to clear the air of disinformation, this book shall use the name Lucifer whenever reference is made of the devil or the ruler of the evil empire, or the adversary or opposition, or the biblical Satan.
The Restoration Process
After the first disobedience was committed, He did not bring man to judgment. He banished man with hope that he would appreciate life better when death is in sight. With hope that the stain of disobedience might forever be removed from him. With hope that in the face of mediocrity and failure, poverty and suffering, he would desire to receive abundance from His hand, partake of His bliss and immeasurable love, and get to celebrate life anew. God hoped that man would desire to be restored to his original blessed state, gain re-entry to His kingdom, and stay in it throughout the rest of eternity. God wanted man to be reconciled to Him and become part of His royal family again.
This explains why man was given instructions to live by, instructions summed up and unified in the Decalogue called Ten Commandments.
The instructions (summarily called the Law of God or simply the Law) blueprinted the way of life in heaven. It gave man focus on what to achieve over and above the hustles and bustles of his day-to-day existence. Man—who was weak (Romans 8:3) and error-prone (Hebrew 8:8)—was told what to do in given situations so he might not miss the mark. “Miss the mark” is the literal translation of the word “sin.”
The instructions reflected God’s love, plan and hope for man. Clearly it was not to abandon him in the realm of the dead but to provide him with a roadmap to the realm of the living.
17 If you want to enter life, obey the commandments. MATTHEW 19
8 The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes. PSALM 19
5 Follow the practices and the laws that I give you; you will save your life by doing so. LEVITICUS 18 tev
17 I am the Lord your God who teaches you what is best for you, who directs you in the way to go. ISAIAH 48
11 For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future… 14 I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you, declares the Lord, and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile. JEREMIAH 29
50 God’s command leads to eternal life. JOHN 12 Corruption in Old Testament Times
But look! Lucifer has been corrupting God’s instructions—contaminating, distorting and messing up our knowledge and understanding of them. The motive was to frustrate obedience, to spite God.
Get a Bible. Validating what is being taught or said to us is a good habit to develop. The Old Testament has two lists of the Ten-C. Open to Exodus 20:1-17 and Deuteronomy 5:1-21. Did you notice the heading? It says Ten Commandments. Yet one commandment—Commandment No. 1—has been omitted:
30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. MARK 12
You won’t find it written in Exodus 20:1-17 or in Deuteronomy 5:1-21. God gave to Prophet Moses ten but, unknown to most men, only nine have been listed.
Scripture Verse | Pertains to Commandment No. | Commandment | ||
Deuteronomy | Exodus | |||
1 | Love God and neighbor. | |||
5:7-10 | 20:3-6 | 2 | No idolatry. | |
5:11 | 20:7 | 3 | Do not misuse the name of God. | |
5:12-15 | 20:8-11 | 4 | Observe the Sabbath. | |
5:16 | 20:12 | 5 | Honor your parents. | |
5:17 | 20:13 | 6 | Do not commit murder. | |
5:18 | 20:14 | 7 | Do not commit adultery. | |
5:19 | 20:15 | 8 | Do not steal. | |
5:20 | 20:16 | 9 | No false testimony. | |
5:21 | 20:17 | 10 | Do not covet. | |
The Great Omission created a spiritual blind spot among men. What followed was legalism <obedience of the Law with the element of love missing in it>. The Jews, for example, have become rigidly strict in obeying the Law, quick to stone the lawbreaker to death. In our present time, many of the clergy would not correct the omission, insisting that nothing can be wrong with the Scripture.[1] Lucifer loves it!8 How can you say, “We are wise; the Lord’s Law is with us” when in fact the lying pen of the scribes has handled it falsely? JEREMIAH 8
More Corruptions
Take note how cunning Lucifer is. He removed Commandment No. 1 from the original list and placed it elsewhere. The phrase “with all your mind” was deleted so that anyone who finds the commandment gets to read a corrupted copy:
5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your strength. DEUTERONOMY 6
Three more commandments were corrupted, to wit: Commandment No. 3 (“You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses His name”—Exodus 20:20), Commandment No. 4 (“Observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy, as the Lord your God has commanded you”—Deuteronomy 5:12), and Commandment No. 9 (“You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor”—Exodus 20:16).
What is wrong with them? All three have been scaled down. A commandment has two or more decrees (ordinances, rules and regulations) under it. In this instance mere decrees are being passed off as commandments. Lucifer omitted the real commandments so that nobody might observe them completely.[1] Y’shua said, “Your Father in heaven has but one communication to all humankind. If the truth had not been erased from the Book of Moses, then the Father would not have given to David a second book. And if the Book of David had not been contaminated, then the Father would not have sent Me.”—The Gospel of Barnabas (London: Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1907), chapter 124, edited and translated from the Italian Manuscript at the Imperial Library at Vienna by Lonsdale and Laura Rigg.
The Correct Copy
God incarnated to restore the omissions. Two thousand years ago He made the Nine to be Ten again. The real commandments in the Three were given; it had been made clear what they were. The correct interpretation of each of the Ten-C was given. And so the Ten-C should read like this:
2 I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. EXODUS 20
Commandment No. 1: LOVE
29 Hear, O Isra’el, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. MARK 12
39 Love your neighbor as yourself. MATTHEW 22
20 For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. 21 And [God] has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother. 1 JOHN 4
Commandment No. 2: HAVE NO OTHER GODS BEFORE ME
3 You shall have no other gods before Me. 4 You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5 You shall not bow down to idols or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate Me, 6 but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love Me and keep My commandments. EXODUS 20
Commandment No. 3: SPEAK ONLY TO BUILD AND FIRM UP A LOVE-RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD
6 Do not let your mouth lead you into sin. ECCLESIASTES 5
Commandment No. 4: OBSERVE THE SABBATHS
13 Observe My Sabbaths. EXODUS 31
Commandment No. 5: HONOR YOUR PARENTS
16 Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live long and that it may go well for you in the land the Lord is giving you. DEUTERONOMY 5
Commandment No. 6: COMMIT NO MURDER
13 You shall not murder. EXODUS 20
Commandment No. 7: COMMIT NO ADULTERY
14 You shall not commit adultery. EXODUS 20
Commandment No. 8: DO NOT STEAL
15 You shall not steal. EXODUS 20
Commandment No. 9: SPEAK ONLY TO BUILD AND FIRM UP LOVE-RELATIONSHIPS WITH YOUR NEIGHBORS
6 Do not let your mouth lead you into sin. ECCLESIASTES 5
Commandment No. 10: DO NOT COVET
21 You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife. You shall not set your desire on your neighbor’s house or land, his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor. DEUTERONOMY 5We shall scrutinize and understand each of the commandments in the succeeding chapters of this book. Meanwhile, do not think the Ten-C suffered no more corruption. It continues to be corrupted.
Corruption in Our Age
The Catechism of the Catholic Church lists the Ten-C as follows:
1. I am the Lord your God. You shall not have strange gods before me.
2. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.
3. Remember to keep holy the Lord’s Day.
4. Honor your father and your mother.
5. You shall not kill.
6. You shall not commit adultery.
7. You shall not steal.
8. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
9. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife.
10. You shall not covet your neighbor’s goods.
Catholic churches and schools in the Philippines display two stone tablets that list the Ten-C accordingly. Now take note of the corruptions:
Again the LOVE commandment—Commandment No. 1—is omitted!
Commandment No. 10 is fragmentized into two (as Commandment No. 9 and Commandment No. 10) to hide the omission.
Do not commit murder in Commandment No. 5 is altered to read “Do not kill.” It makes a big difference. “Do not commit murder” gives the God-worshiper the right to defend himself and, if necessary, to kill in self-defense. “Do not kill” inculcates the wrong teaching that he should not kill at all, not even in self-defense.
Commandment No. 2 (which forbids idolatry) is cut short. These words are omitted:
4 You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5 You shall not bow down to idols or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate Me, 6 but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love Me and keep My commandments. EXODUS 20
In Commandment No. 4, Lord’s Sabbath is replaced with “Lord’s Day.” What’s the difference? Rest to the Lord is moved to the first day of the week (Sunday). Overruled is God’s command for everyone to rest from secular or mundane work, and to attend “sacred assembly,” on the seventh day (Saturday).
9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. 11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but He rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. EXODUS 20
21 If they love their lives, they must not carry any load on the Sabbath. They must not carry anything in through the gates of Jerusalem 22 or carry anything out of their houses on the Sabbath. They must not work on the Sabbath. They must observe the Sabbath as a holy day, as I commanded their ancestors. JEREMIAH 173 The seventh day is a day of sacred assembly. LEVITICUS 23
The Seventh-Day Sabbath is only one of the Sabbaths. “Observe My Sabbaths,” says God in Exodus 31:13 and Leviticus 19:30. Sabbath observance is limited to one, to the wrong one.
Terrible Consequences
God has spoken but His Word is being corrupted. What’s the bottom line?
False teachings fill our minds. We become ignorant of the truth and accept the counterfeit as genuine.
The light of reason is obscured and the human will goes astray. Our actions and religious orientation become anomalous. They do not tally with the Word of God.
Christianity has continued but not in its original form.
False teachings keep us in bondage. We insist on observing killer lies, take pride in them and espouse them to our loved ones. We are given to practices that disobey the Word and to a mindset that says it’s okay to disobey. We think that what we are doing is righteous and acceptable to God, when in fact it is not.
Division, conflict and alienation creep in as we are given to different faiths.
God is greatly displeased. The impure stay impure. Lucifer loves it!
Second Death
Stop the corruption! He who breaks any one of God’s instructions—the Love Commandment or the Sabbath Commandment for example—sins (1 John 3:4). He shares the fate that awaits murderers, adulterers and plunderers. He shall enter the Second Death, which is the second level of the realm of the dead. The humankind currently walks on the first level.
3 “God did say, ‘You must not eat from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’” 4 “You will not surely die,” the serpent [Lucifer] said to the woman. GENESIS 3
12 Sin entered the world through one man… and in this way death came to all men. ROMANS 5
On the Day of Judgment, nothing impure will enter the kingdom of God (Revelation 21:27). God is a God of purity and His kingdom, a kingdom of purity. The impure will be thrown into the Second Death. Revelation 19:20 describes it as the lake of fire and sulfur. The impure will be degraded further and estranged farther from God. Their poverty and suffering will intensify.
A Catholic friend remarked, “I may be ignorant of the Word but if in good faith I remain faithful to the teachings of my church, then perhaps God would spare me. Maybe I could escape the Second Death.”
Brother, ignorance of the Word is no excuse for our sins; it’s death.17 If a person sins and does what is forbidden in any of the Lord’s commands, even though he does not know it, he is guilty and will be held responsible. LEVITICUS 5
4 The soul that sinneth, it shall die. EZEKIEL 18 kjv
Recommended Course of Action
What does a journeyman who is disoriented and lost in the thick usually do? Open his eyes and ears for directional signs, right? When he finds someone who could give him proper direction, how would he feel? He would feel relieved and delighted, right? And would he disobey the instructions given him? Of course not! In fact, he would try hard not to forget any one of them. He would obey them 100% with gladness and excitement in his heart.Now, are we not disoriented and lost in this spiritual journey called life? God no less has provided us the roadmap to the realm of the living. The roadmap requires purity, the strive to be holy (obeying God’s instructions 100 percent). Holiness requires conscientiousness, meaning thorough and diligent obedience of the instructions.
Conscientiousness starts with being realistic. We have to learn and accept what we are: spirits living in souls embodied in flesh (1 Thessalonians 5:23). We have to learn and accept that God is not after the state of our flesh but rather after the state of our spirits. It goes without saying that we must attend more to our spiritual well-being than our physical well-being.
Next is knowing God’s instructions. In applying for a job, we have to know the job requirements before we can comply with them. The same holds true in finding our way back to life. We have to know exactly what the instructions are. In the succeeding pages of this book, the decrees and ordinances of each commandment will be unfolded and taught. The desire to be loyal to God must be tempered with the knowledge of how God expects us to be loyal to Him.
11 Whoever wants to keep the Law must learn what the Law means. SIRACH 21
10 Find out what pleases the Lord. EPHESIANS 5
2 It is not good to have zeal without knowledge, nor to be hasty and miss the way. PROVERBS 19
Third is understanding the instructions. Psalm 119:142 says God’s instructions are the truth. Psalm 19:7-8 says, “The Law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul. The statutes of the soul are trustworthy, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart. The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes.” But some of God’s instructions have been corrupted (the Ten made Nine is one blatant proof of this). It is not healthy for anyone’s spirituality to obey them at face value. Conscientiousness requires faith that is based on accurate knowledge (John 17:3). We must analyze the Law and figure out its flaws: which parts are insertions, which parts are altered, and which parts are omitted. The chaff must be taken away from the grain before full compliance is made. The instructions must be obeyed in their pure form.
17 …Understand what the Lord’s will is. EPHESIANS 5
Fourth is living by the instructions. In the Gospel of Barnabas God asked, “My instructions to you, are they given for knowing or for doing?” Conscientiousness requires making constant practice of obeying the instructions until it becomes a habit. This is the toughest part. Our rebellious spirits, sinful desires, compromising attitudes, and the false teachings lurking in our minds will have to be discarded. Prophet Ezra devoted himself to the study and observance of the Law, and to teaching its commandments and decrees (Ezra 7:10). Let us imitate him.
1 Let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God. 2 CORINTHIANS 7
Conscientiousness requires obeying God’s instructions with enthusiasm (Psalm 100:2) and without overlooking or altering any one of its specifications (Galatians 3:15). Rick Warren said, “Often we try to offer God partial obedience. We want to pick and choose the commands we obey. We make a list of the commands we like and obey those while ignoring the ones we think are unreasonable, difficult, expensive, or unpopular. I’ll attend church but I won’t tithe. I’ll read my Bible but won’t forgive the person who hurt me. Yet partial obedience is disobedience.”[1]
To overlook or alter a specification is to act against the will of God. It will keep us lost, impure, barred…10 Whoever keeps the whole Law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it. JAMES 2
How many sins did it take for Adam and Eve to be banished from the kingdom of heaven? Just one. Likewise, it takes one sin to keep us out of God’s heaven.[2]
Study Made Easy
The Ten-C are like jigsaw parts scattered in the 66 books of the Scripture (74 books if the apocryphal books are added). This book has pieced the parts together.
In sourcing study materials for each of the commandments, extrabiblical Christian literatures have been consulted like the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Barnabas (although we do not necessarily agree with all of their contents). Also, books which Born-Again Christians consider apocryphal—like the books of Tobit and Sirach (better known as Ecclesiasticus)—have been consulted. In Thomas, Barnabas, Tobit and Sirach are practical notes that elaborate the Ten-C better than we could. We took the liberty of quoting them for you so they could serve as commentary and give both emphasis and clarity to the lessons at hand.
Text integrity of quoted materials is kept. However, liberty is taken to replace “Jesus” and “Christ” with Y’shua and Messiah respectively. (Why we do so will be discussed in Commandment No. 3.) Also, New Testament verses quoting the Old Testament are identified in bold letters. The first letter of pronouns pertaining to God is capitalized.
In citing a Scripture verse, we have chosen that which is closest to the meaning or intended message of the original text. The Scripture was originally written in Hebrew Aramaic and subsequently translated: the Aramaic copy to Greek; the Greek, to Latin; the Latin, to different English versions; and the English versions, to other languages and dialects. In the event the translations before us are essentially the same, we cite the one which could give fresh understanding.
The objective behind all the above efforts is to frame God’s instructions and present them to you in a purer form—minus the satanic contaminations, distortions, insertions and omissions done to them.
In figuring out the satanic corruptions, we have relied on the Gospels as our primary resource material; the other books in the New Testament, secondary; and the Old Testament writings, tertiary. In rare cases where an irreconcilable conflict between an Old Testament verse and the New Testament exists, the policy is for the New to prevail upon the Old. You will notice that extensive references are made to the Old Testament. That is because the New Testament teachings are given in the context of the Old Testament. In order to understand the New, we need to be familiar with the Old.
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