Don't Expect The World To Receive You

Don't expect the world to understand your faith, it won't. Don't expect people who do not believe to not mock or ridicule you, they will.

Even those who say they have lived a Christian life before but are now turned away won't understand it. The truth is, they never understood it when it was right in front of them. There is a difference in having the head knowledge of knowing who Jesus Christ is and the heart knowledge of actually knowing Jesus Christ. This is made clear in the parable of the seeds. (Matthew 13:1-23) There are thousands of people right now who sit on a church bench every Sunday and have the head knowledge, but will never come to the heart knowledge.

The point is, they are in darkness. They cannot see the truth because there is no Light shown on it for them, and until they are ready to see that Light, to admit their need for that Light, they will remain in the darkness. 

"You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you." - The Words of Jesus, John 15:16

“If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you. If they kept My word, they will keep yours also." - The words of Jesus, John 15:18-20

The Gifts Of The Wise Men To The Christ Child

It is the Christmas Season once again! I love the celebrations, the lights, the sounds and the smells of Christmas. It is my most favorite time of year, as it is for most people. I believe that sometimes we get so caught in the commercialism of it all, that we do not reflect nearly enough on what the real Reason for the Season is.

Some, I am sure, roll their eyes. the usual, "Blah, blah, blah" comes forth. "I know, it is about the Christ child and the baby in the manger". We have heard it all so many times that we have truly become somewhat desensitized to it.

We do not fully comprehend during this season, that there was a great price being paid. A King has left his throne to dwell among His own creation, in their flesh, in their sufferings, in their feeling of joy and angst. We forget that he was born sinless, that he was most unique of all children ever born, even to this day, in that during his life, there would come a time that he would be asked to carry the weight of the sins of the entire world on his back. Also is true that we fail to remember had it not been for the manger, there would never have been a cross, and without the cross, no resurrection.

So this season, I am going to post a few things that, I hope, will help us once again, refocus on just what Christmas really is about and what it should mean to each of us.

In this post, I will just touch on the gifts given to the Christ Child by the Wise Men. Many do not know that each of those gifts were symbolic of many aspects of Christs birth, life, death and Kingship. Though this subject alone could fill a book of hundreds of pages, I will be brief and give you the "Reader's Digest" condensed version.

GOLD
The Gift of Gold to the Christ Child is said to have come from Melchior, a king from Arabia, who, legend has it, was one of the Three Wise Men. His contribution is said in legend to have financed the Holy Family's flight into Egypt when Herod sought the life of the Messiah. Gold, as valuable then as it is today, symbolizes the immortality, divinity, purity, and the kingship of Jesus Christ.

FRANKINCENSE
Tradition maintains that Balthasar, the second of the Three Wise Men who came from the East to find the Christ Child, presented frankincense to the baby as a gift. By honoring him in this way, Balthasar fulfilled the prophecy that gold and frankincense would be brought from the Gentiles (Non-Jews) to honor the Heavenly King (Isaiah 60 and Psalm 72). Frankincense, a sweet gum resin from the Boswellia tree, is the purest of incense, was used in the worship of the temple. When burned, it produces white smoke and a sweet smell, symbolizing the prayers and praises of the faithful rising to the Lord. In the case of Christ, it symbolized his life, lived sinless, and His life, through His Divinity, being the sacrifice and propitiation for all our sins.

MYRRH
Caspar, a king from Tarsus and the last of the Three Wise Men, is believed to have been the one who gave the gift of myrrh to the Baby Jesus. Myrrh is known for its medicinal value and was used in ancient times for cleaning wounds and sores, as an analgesic, and for embalming the dead as well as anointing kings. Myrrh is actually an aromatic gum resin that oozes from gashes cut in the bark of the commiphora tree. It hardens into teardrop-shaped chunks and is then pounded into powder or mixed to make ointments and perfumes. It is named for its bitter taste and symbolizes not only the life of Christ, in the natural, that put forth healing to the sick and those suffering, but symbolizes also His death and suffering as the Savior, on the cross that was to come to the child. As the myrrh was to relieve the sores and pain, Christ refused the drink to dull his senses that was offered to Him on the cross. When he died that day, they anointed His body in death, but they also anointed Him as the Coming King, that would rise in Kingship to sit at the right hand of the Father in Heaven.

The Gifts of the Wise Men, showing all that Christ embodied in his birth, life and death, as well as all showing his Divinity and Kingship.


The act of the Wise Men is also the main contributing factor of why we give gifts to each other during the holiday season today. What a wonderful tradition they started!

2 Questions And The Truth On the Matter

1. "The Bible was written by men and is full of contradictions."

"Yes, the Bible was written by men, it is believed 42 of them wrote the 66 books we know today in the Protestant Bible. Written over a period of time around 1,500 years. But, it is not full of contradictions. As a matter of fact, when scripture is read and placed into the context of what is being said in the entire passage, and laid beside other scripture as confirmation, there are no major contradictions whatsoever, only minor spelling nuances and typically a misunderstanding of the scripture itself. This, in and of itself proves the validity of the Word of God being "Divinely Inspired", or dictated to men by the Holy Spirit of God.

2. "Nothing from the Bible can be proven to be true. It is a book of myths and fairy tales"

Actually, the bible has proven itself over and over in a number of ways and through different sciences and disciplines. There have been a number of skeptics and naysayers who went out of their way to prove the bible incorrect, only to have to come to the conclusion that they were the ones incorrect. As Archaeologist make more discoveries in the middle east and Israel, they are finding as they investigate the events of their finds, the Bible is being proved true in every case.

A couple of examples would be the City of Jericho, thought for years to be a myth. it was found in the early 1900's, and the evidence of the city revealed the walls of the city had not fallen out or in, but straight down, just as the bible stated they had. Also is the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. We know now that both cities actually existed and both were destroyed at the same time by a major disaster. Archaeologist have found the remains of where people had died in large numbers together within the cities and also recovered a number of items with sulfur on them, and digging has shown the buildings had been turned to ash in what could only be described as a fiery cataclysm. Again, the bible is proved correct.

Also, it must be taken into consideration that the Bible was sometimes hundreds and even a thousand years ahead of modern science. Here are just a few examples.

1 Corinthians 15:41 - There is one glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star differs from another star in glory. (We know now that this verse is correct. Analysis of their light spectra reveals that each is unique and different from all others.)


Job 26:7 - He stretches out the north over empty space; He hangs the earth on nothing. (We know now that the earth is "Suspended in the emptiness of space. no one at the time of this writing had proven this scientific fact, but it was written in the Bible.)

Ecclesiastes 1:6 - The wind goes toward the south, And turns around to the north; The wind whirls about continually, And comes again on its circuit. (Before there was meteorologist and Doppler radar, the bible stated the circulation of the winds int he atmosphere.)


Leviticus 17:11 - ‘For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul.’ (nothing can survive without the blood, and there has been no substitute made that can replace it as a whole for the body. In 1616, William Harvey discovered that blood circulation is the key factor in physical life—confirming what the Bible revealed 3,000 years earlier.)

Job 36:27-29 For He draws up drops of water, Which distill as rain from the mist,Which the clouds drop down And pour abundantly on man. Indeed, can anyone understand the spreading of clouds, The thunder from His canopy? (Long before we understood the water cycle on earth with science, the Bible stated its process clearly.)


Isaiah 40:22 - It is He who sits above the circle of the earth, And its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, Who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, And spreads them out like a tent to dwell in. (300 years before Aristotle suggested the earth might be a sphere. Again, the Bible had it pegged)

And these are just a few example, there are many more.


My question is, for those who have stated the above two phrases before...have you even actually read the bible for yourselves, or are you taking someone else's word for what you are believing? Science cannot prove without a doubt the theory of evolution, yet, as I showed you here, in just this short writing, the Bible can prove it knew science before mankind knew science. God was way ahead of the plan.


No one, who truly takes a look at the facts, that investigates fully the bible and the facts that surround it, can come away and not be convinced of it's accuracy and reliability. Notice, I said no one who truly takes a look, because some do not want to truly take a look. They do not want to believe it to be true because if even these parts of it are true, then it bears witness that the rest of it also must be true. If it has been before and is being proven today, to be factual time and time again, then even those parts that have yet to be proven can be relied upon to be true because of the accuracy already shown to be there.


To discount the Word of God. To downplay the Bible as just another book. To refer to Christians who believe it to be the truth as crackpots or wacko's, is to be a fool. I do not call you that, the Word of God calls you that.

For the fool has said in his heart "there is no God". (psalms 14:1)


Make no mistake in it. the Bible is exactly what it claims itself to be. the Word of an Almighty and Sovereign God. If that is the case, then the unbeliever has some very big decisions to make regarding his eternity.