Proverbs 18:22 “Whoever finds a wife finds a good thing, and obtains favor of the LORD.”
This means that the Kingdom of Heavens provides “family capital”, blessing a couple when it’s married just like as some countiries on the Earth pay money to a mother when she gives birth to a child.
Some theological thoughts. Not sure if I am quite right about this.
Bible demonstrates the following two similar concepts:
How can we be both on the Earth and on the heaven? My proposed answer is the following: There is some one-to-one correspondence (a mathematician would say “bijection”) between us on the Earth and heavenly creatures. That is every detail of our human body corresponds to some part of a heavenly creature and vice versa.
I think, this “correspondence” appeared as a result of the following: Heavenly createtures seeking a way to save us from sin (see also this my sermon), think how to do it. The one who thinks about a human is a giant smart heavenly creature. I think Bible calls such a creature “spirit of a man”. Spirit is much more smart than our brain. But the behaviour of such a heaveny spirit is fully determined by behaviour of its man. That is the spirit of a man is the human body “translated” to the heaven.
The same applies to Christ. Christ in the heaven is an image of His human body, as said in (Col. 2:9) “For in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily”. Everything of God is an image of his human body.
(1Cor. 6:9) “Know you not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither … nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind”. So at first, it may seem that homosexuals go to the hell. But we know more important principle that salvation is by faith, not by deeds. I suppose that people with broken hormones are to be considered rather “people of third sex” rather as these who are called “unrighteous” here by the Bible. It seems to go to the hell a regular man who decides to experiment and have sex partners of same sex because it is his conscious decision. It seems that Paul writing this did not know about hormones (but this does not make God’s word false.)
Homosexuals are an error of the nature (but the way, see my views about evolution).
I was going to write “I do not approve same sex marriage, but…”, but unexpectedly for myself I thought: It may be better if they as they say “marry” and have a persistent partners than to change partners and distribute HIV.
It is not about selecting the best alternative, but about selecting one of the bad alternatives.
Also, for example, I was a maniacal killer before conversion to Christ. I am sure God can heal a homosexual, too. Probably, no more wonder of healing a homosexual than of healing a maniacal killer.
(Matthew 5:20) “For I say to you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.”
I am a “scribe”. This mean that I write (Christian and other) books. The modern word for “scribe” may be “book author”.
The words of Christ mean that if one writes correct theological books (even speaking correctly on the topic of salvation), this does not warrant his salvation. The faith needs to be manifested by the life.
It is confirmed by
(James 2) “19 You believe that there is one God; you do well: the devils also believe, and tremble. 20 But will you know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead? 21 Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he had offered Isaac his son on the altar? 22 See you how faith worked with his works, and by works was faith made perfect? 23 And the scripture was fulfilled which said, Abraham believed God, and it was imputed to him for righteousness: and he was called the Friend of God. 24 You see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only.”
The salvation depends on faith only not on deeds (and who say otherwise has no right to be called a Protestant), but the faith is true only when it is manifested by deeds. In the example of Abraham, he was justified by the fact that he did a certain deed (agreeing to sacrifice his son) accordingly the faith he had that God may resurrect him even if he got killed.
It is little known about the origin of the word “Mammon” met in the New Testament. Doesn’t God tell through it that Mammon is an obscure, hard to understand thing?
You know: “You can’t serve God and mammon” (Matthew 6:24)
What is mammon? It is the spontaneously organizing spirit of money having material and spiritual components. It is the spiritual component of money.
The nearest word to “mammon” in modern language is probably “luck”.
In the past I was led to frustration and despair by the fact that money behaved “magically” (not in the natural manner). I said: I’d only wish about money that they would follow natural laws, not behave magically.
Any honest reader of the Bible however can notice that God blesses believers. You cannot serve God and mammon. This means you cannot follow both Christ and that supernatural luck. These two are distinct and cannot be followed together. Reject luck and seek blessing of God.
And these words of Christ also mean the widely accepted thing: Don’t be greedy. You can be rich but don’t be greedy, use your money to help others.
I will first before the sermon tell a little about myself.
I am a programmer and mathematician. It happened that I haven’t finished the higher education, but I do serious scientific research as a volunteer.
Once I saw in a night dream that I am the principal pastor of a church having 10 identical buildings, each for 20000 seats, in one city and that I in one day tell 10 different sermons in these ten buildings. I am not able to do 10 sermons in one day, I don’t know whether this dream will be accomplished, but I suppose that God through this dream calls me to the preaching ministry.
I already have a few short sermons in the Internet, but now I’ve gathered together stuff from a few my earlier sermons and articles to make a longer and, I hope, more understandable sermon.
Keep in mind, that this sermon will be difficult for understanding. But it main purpose is to make you believe that a human must go through sufferings to raise to a higher level. There is no other way. It is confirmed by a mathematician.
The New Testament calls us sons of God (Rom. 8:14). What does it mean to be a son? It means to grow and become like the Father. It means that we grow and become more and more similar to God. This means that as we grow, we learn to solve more and more complex problems.
God wants us to learn to solve any problems, problems of all levels of complexity.
Now we live in the flesh and reason think by the brain. What is soul? I think that the soul is a backup copy of the brain. This means that when we die, everything what was in our brain, remains in the soul. The soul saves the thoughts of the brain after the deadth.
People ask: What if I’ll have Alzheimer and I forget about God? Don’t worry: in the soul you won’t forgot whatever may happen with your brain.
If our brain is a computer created by God, then why we cannot calculate in mind like computers? It is written: (Gen. 1:31) “And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.” If God created everything good, our brains should be good computers. We should have to be able to calculate in mind.
The answer to this question: It all was broken by the Satan. Before the Fall to Sin we were good computers. Satan damaged our brains.
Some people think that Adam and Eve ate an apple. In the reality, Bible says that they ate the fruit of knowledge of good and evil or better to say of good and bad. In the Eden there were fruits of knowledge: Imagine one eats a fruit and after this instantly knows say quantum mechanics. The fruits of knowledge contained information. It is why they were called fruits of knowledge. The fruit of knowledge of the good and the evil contained an information about how the brain can break its own functionality, disturb itself to think. Particularly, this fruit which Bible calls the fruit of knowledge of good and bad contained the information about how the brain instead of solving some problem to concentrate on what a human considers good or bad. For example, instead of to eat to satisfy the appetite, to eat to enjoy the food. Do you feel the difference? It is instead of the process itself to think how ourselves will feel the process: as good or bad. It is a substitution of the thoughts about something by the thoughts about our own feelings on this. The sin exchanges good and evil in the acts of a human, so that the man starts to do evil instead to serve God.
There is the occupation “hacker”. Them are people which break computers in different ways. One of the ways (called DoS-attack) is to overload the computer by a too complex problem, causing lack of resources for normal functioning of the computer.
So: To overload a computer with a too complex problem or task is called DoS-attack.
This is what the devil did with our brains.
It’s written that Adam died in the day he ate the fruit: (Gen. 2:17) “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat of it: for in the day that you eat thereof you shall surely die.” Adam didn’t die physically. But the operating system of his brain hanged. God calls it “death”.
Modern computers have so called Wi-Fi, that is a radio link between computers. For example, one computer may translate a video from its video camera to another computer. It was the same with Adam and Eve. They were able to see with each other’s eyes, because their brains were connected by a radio link. (Gen. 3:7) “And the eyes of them both were opened.” Before the Fall to Sin only one of them kept his eyes open, because his second half saw with his or her eyes and it was enough to keep open eyes only by one of them. After the Fall they were forced to both open the eyes.
So, people lose the paradise and were thrown away for sufferings.
What is sufferings? This is just an awfully complex problem which overloads our brain. Before the devil’s attack there were no sufferings. There could have been some small problem that angels could easily cope with.
Sufferings are distinct from a regular problem by the point that angels don’t know how to solve this problem (that is the sufferings).
So, why it is impossible on the way to God to avoid sufferings? This is because we must learn to solve problems of all levels of complexity. Very difficult for us problems are not an exception. We must learn to solve even very difficult problems, but very difficult problems are sufferings.
One more time: Sufferings is just an attempt of our brains to solve too complex for us problems. And this cannot be avoided, because at due time we must learn to solve problems of all levels of complexity. The devil overloaded us with too difficult for us problems, but it cannot be avoided because we must receive these problems. So the devil is necessary to set before angels and before us the problem of how to overcome sin. This problem needs to be solved to move to the next level.
It is difficult to live in prosperity, when where you live a war happens. It is very difficult. This is a difficult problem. A war is an example of sufferings. The God’s plan encompasses sufferings. This means that the wars were necessary, they could not be avoided.
The plan of the devil was to destroy our life. The plan of God is to overcome the devil. God considers the troubles created for us by the devil as a problem to be solved.
Once I understood that my mathematical research is just a top of an iceberg. Everybody of us solves the problem how to overcome sufferings and to overcome the sin. Everybody of us, even not knowing this, is a great mathematician. We are born to solve how to overcome sufferings. To overcome the sufferings it is necessary to deliver them to God. Without God by ourselves we cannot overcome sin. We are solving the problem, how to coordinate with God the fight against the devil.
(Job. 5:7) “Yet man is born to trouble, as the sparks fly upward.”. To fly upward that is to the heaven, it is necessary to go through the troubles. The sufferings is that problem, solving which, a human flies upward.
So the purpose of the devil in the God’s plan is to set a very difficult problem, which must be solved to go to the upper level.
When we suffer it looks like meaningless, as we don’t know which problems we should solve.
When we get to the heaven, this becomes explicit. After passing through the sufferings we become more smart that angles. Everybody of us will be a great mathematician at the heaven.
It is now unnoticeable for ourselves, that we are solving are difficult mathematical problem during our life. Everybody of us is a great mathematician, but the problem which we solve becomes evident only after getting to heaven.
So: The victory over the sufferings is a hard mathematical problem, which we are solving even not knowing that we do.
We cannot deny: “We will not solve this problem,” because we must learn to solve all kinds of problems. But sufferings is a problem, so we cannot not to pass through sufferings during our life. This is a problem and it must be solved. Sufferings cannot be ignores, they must be got rid.
The devil wants that we would continue to suffer. God wants our victory over all sufferings.
(1Thes. 4:3) “For this is the will of God: your sanctification”. Sanctification is the ability to withstand to the sin. All what God wants from us is sanctification. Sanctification is also moving to the new level and new mind which will surpass the mind of angels. Sanctification encompasses everything what we need. And after the victory over the sin, our sanctification will keep going, because sanctification is fullness of our life and fullness of the will of God. Our mind and our feelings will keep go to develop within the framework of sanctification.
So, sanctification is a new mind which overcomes the sin and moreover moves us to a new level.
The church is called the pillar of the truth (1Tim. 3:15). This means that through sanctification of people the knowledge of the truth reaches a new level, like climbing a pillar and getting to the next level. If the Bible was written now, it probably would be written: The church is the lift of the truth, that thing which allows to climb to the next level of angels’ knowledge of mathematics.
Sanctification is the God’s way to make priorities in our life. It is very simple: It is necessary to decide correctly which of two things is more important. But we need God’s help for solving this problem, because despite seeming simplicity it’s a very difficult problem. Sanctification is necessary to overcome the sin, because the sin attempts to distribute priorities incorrectly in our life.
One who can correctly decide which of two things is more important, can also solve any problem. In reality, entirely holy that is always can decide which of two things is more prioritized only God. Really, the Revelation of John says (15:4) “you only are holy.”
God has already transferred us to an another kingdom: (Col. 1:13) “who delivered us out of the power of darkness, and translated us into the Kingdom of the Son of his love”. Outwardly nothing has changed: we yet are unable to calculate in mind like computers. Our brains are still overloaded and we cannot be sane computers. We count by fingers, write on paper, because we cannot remember ourselves. But now we by our faith do good, we are at the side of the good. But our side in the fight has changed. Now we are fighters of God.
We cannot do good by our deeds, to do the deed of God is to believe. It is superfluous to cite Bible about this.
Earlier I thought: isn’t it in vain i’m doing math, because angels anyway know math better than me and I cannot discover anything new? The job of a businessman looks even more vain: angels in the heaven are anyway richer and our richness on the Earth costs nothings. And what about the necessity of the job of a regular hired worker, if even the work of a mathematician is vain?
Once I understood that our work is not vain: (1Cor. 15:58) “Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the Lord’s work, because you know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.” When we work for the Lord, our work is not vain, because we learn how to overcome obstacles.
(Ecc. 1:14) “I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and behold, all is vanity and a chasing after wind.” All what we do under the Sun is vain. Not a vain is what we being settled at the heaven do over the Sun that is in the Kingdom of the Heaven.
Jesus himself passed through sufferings. (Is. 53:3-7) “a man of suffering and acquainted with disease … But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was on him … He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter.” This means that he took the task to solve our problems instead of us. He borne the sin. The sin killed Adam but was not able to kill Jesus. But Jesus really suffered.
Our sufferings make sense because we participate in sufferings of Christ: (1Pet. 4:13) “But rejoice, inasmuch as you are partakers of Christ’s sufferings; that, when his glory shall be revealed, you may be glad also with exceeding joy.”
That Jesus bears our sufferings means that He solves instead of us the problems set by the devil. We should deliver to Jesus our situations, especially these which we cannot solve by ourselves. Earlier I didn’t understand what is to bear other’s sufferings. Now I understand: As the sufferings is just a difficult problem, then to bear other’s sufferings means just to solve the problem instead if him. The cause of a sickness is an unsolved (among angels) problem. Such a problem (and so the sickness itself) can be transferred from one human to another one and finaly to Christ. In the case of a sickness we should call the blood of Christ, to make the problem transferred onto Him, who can solve every problem and thus can overcome every sickness. (Is. 53:4-5) “he has borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows … But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities.”
We should move our sufferings to Jesus. When should we do this? Always. We should learn to always move our sufferings to Jesus. It is what is sanctification.
And the last: We should overcome every suffering with the blood of Christ, bindings them with the name of Jesus.
So the conclusions briefly: The devil wanted to destroy the deed of God, but instead he has set a problem which God uses to transfer us to the next level of knowledge. This problem (that is sin) can be solved only in partnership with Christ. When the sin will be finally overcome, we believers who like all people passed through sufferings will become more smart than angels.
What is being wise? It is ability to take correct decisions.
Because of global warming, a correct decision would be not to learn how to use oil, not to build cars, etc.
So the wise thing would be what is stupid, that is inablity to make the current civilization (which could however progress later with more green energy, if the authorities were submit to God).
That’s what the Bible says:
(1Cor 3) 18 Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seems to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise. 19 For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He takes the wise in their own craftiness. 20 And again, The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain.
The really wise man is actually one what is more stupid.
The same happens in our religion: The more we analyze it, the more possibilities we have to go astray from the true religion.
However the true wisdom, understanding of Christ, is good.
Prosperity theology in six words is “God wants you to be rich”.
Because of this, many Christians become businessmen.
But does God want us to be businessmen?
Yes, God wants us to be rich. And it is usually better to have your own business than to work for somebody other.
So, you could ask: Does God want me to be a businessman?
You probably won’t believe me: God wants you to become a mathematician.
Why? Very simple:
(Prov. 8:10-11) “10 Receive my instruction, and not silver; and knowledge rather than choice gold. 11 For wisdom is better than rubies; and all the things that may be desired are not to be compared to it.”
Thus God wants that you spend more time in learning and researching than in earning money. God wants you to be a scientist or even a mathematician.
In this article I attempt to answer the question: Is water baptism necessary for salvation?
(Mark 16:16) “He that believes and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believes not shall be damned.”
I think, most people misread it: “He that believes and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believes not or baptizes not shall be damned.”
Baptism gives salvation but is not a necessary condition for salvation. (It is not said “who baptizes not shall be damned.”) The example of the repented bandit on the cross co-crucified with Jesus without doubt tells that he was saved without water baptism:
(Luk. 23:41-43) “41 And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man has done nothing amiss. 42 And he said to Jesus, Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom. 43 And Jesus said to him, Truly I say to you, To day shall you be with me in paradise.”
I remind that the faith does not work without deeds:
(Jam. 2:19-26) “19 You believe that there is one God; you do well: the devils also believe, and tremble. 20 But will you know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead? 21 Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he had offered Isaac his son on the altar? 22 See you how faith worked with his works, and by works was faith made perfect? 23 And the scripture was fulfilled which said, Abraham believed God, and it was imputed to him for righteousness: and he was called the Friend of God. 24 You see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only. 25 Likewise also was not Rahab the harlot justified by works, when she had received the messengers, and had sent them out another way? 26 For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.”
Baptism is a deed of faith what here means that if one believes then he is going to be baptized. If anyone would say that he believes but refuses to baptize, he in my opinion still goes to the hell.
But that bandit was not able to baptize with water, despite he got the faith. So he is not damned.
The other argument of these who insist that baptism is necessary for salvation:
(John 3:5-7) “5 Jesus answered, Truly, truly, I say to you, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. 6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Marvel not that I said to you, You must be born again.”
This looks very similar to a reference to water baptism. But it cannot be (see the case of the bandit). So it may probably signify that borning again happens when the spirit enters human body and interacts with water inside (remember that human body consist 60% of water).