Significance of Jesus wearing a crown of thorns?

Posted on by

Symbolism of thorns in Scripture

pictures-of-jesus-crown-thorns-1127729-gallery

As well as thorns and thistles being a very real physical component of the cursed world that we all now live in, they carry further symbolic negative overtones throughout the Bible, firmly pointing back to the Curse in Genesis. Their symbolic meaning also creates problems for those who do not read Genesis as a true historical account, as the negative biblical overtones associated with thorns and thistles are integral to their historical origin at the time of the Curse. Without the connection to their historical origin, their symbolic meaning becomes empty and vague.

The numerous references to thorns and thistles throughout the Bible remind us of the historical Original Sin and Curse that followed. The negative biblical overtones associated with thorns and thistles after Genesis 3:18 are demonstrated in their representation as obstacles, punishment, or serving as a reminder of sin and its consequences. For example:

  • In Numbers 33:55, God warned the Israelites that if they did not drive out the inhabitants of the land of Canaan, allowing them to remain, the Canaanites would be an obstacle to them. They would be, “thorns in your sides”. Proverbs 15:19 again uses the imagery of thorns as obstacles, saying, “The way of the sluggard is like a hedge of thorns, but the path of the upright is a level highway.”
  • The New Testament also uses thorns and thistles in reference to the inner workings of the worldly heart, corrupted by sin. In the parable of the sower, Matthew 13:3-8 some seeds “fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them” (v. 7). Also, the outward expression of that worldly heart which apostatizes from Christ is likened to a barren wasteland, which, “if it bears thorns and thistles, it is worthless and near to being cursed, and its end is to be burned” (Hebrews 6:8).

The ultimate fulfilment of the symbolism that thorns and thistles have in the Bible is found in Matthew 27:29:

“And twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on his head and put a reed in his right hand. And kneeling before him, they mocked him, saying, ‘Hail, King of the Jews!’ ”

Here the governor’s soldiers placed a crown of thorns on Jesus’ head, to mock him as the King of the Jews. Oh, if only they had known both what they were doing and the symbolism that their actions entailed! Thorns were not present in the original very good world, but the Roman soldiers didn’t have any trouble finding thorns to place on Jesus head. Thorns that were a direct result of man’s original sin are now found in abundance in a world that is steeped in sin. What the soldiers unwittingly did was hugely significant. There is nothing random in the Bible; every word that has been written in its pages is significant. The crown of thorns vividly symbolised the curse of sin being placed on Jesus’s head. It immediately takes the reader back to Genesis, reminding us of why Jesus went to the cross, to take the penalty for sin on our behalf. He died as the perfect sacrifice for our sins, so that the Curse that God had pronounced upon this earth because of sin, can be removed for those that believe in him, and that ultimately creation itself can be redeemed. “For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” Romans 8;20-21. Christ’s actions will blunt every sharply pointed thistle and thorn as well as the other effects of the curse. The Christian can shout, “O death, where is your sting?”

extract from article Why did Jesus wear a Crown of Thorns by and  www.creation.com

ETERNITY IN HEAVEN OR HELL?

Posted on by

Hell

It is evident from the current fallen state of the human race, that we do not live on a planet that resembles paradise, where harmony exists and where death is absent. This is because two people, Adam and Eve decided to disobey God, even after all that God had provided for them, an awesome home (Earth), a beautiful garden with abundant food, the ability to procreate and have dominion over it all.

People alive today have the same choice as Adam and Eve  that is to obey God or reject Him and face the consequences of separation from God, only this time forever, with no second chance.

Jesus , the Son of God , gave Himself as a sacrifice for the payment of sin, not just for Adam and Eve, but for the sins of everyone who ever lived. We, therefore, have a choice to repent of our sin (disobedience) and accept Jesus offer of a new life with Him as Lord and Saviour or stay separated from God forever.

Today, instead of just one fallen angel deceiving two people, we have Satan and his demonic forces as well as two billion people who are against Jesus and deny God. There are global media corporations, government schools and universities that promote the theory of evolution and mock religion. Despite this seeming overwhelming force against God the choice is still the same, it’s a choice of heaven or hell, whether you believe it or not.

The stakes are high because we all face judgment and then eternity in a new heaven and earth with your Creator God or eternity in hell without Him.

 

WORLDWIDE FLOOD (Genesis) AUTHENTICATED IN CLAY

Posted on by

Nippur-tablet

Fig. 3. The Nippur tablet (c. 2100 BC) translated by Hilprecht.

During the last decade of the nineteenth century, the University of Pennsylvania conducted a number of archaeological digs in the ancient Babylonian city of Nippur. Among the remains of the temple library, they found a tiny tablet fragment containing another account of the Flood.

It was translated by Hermann Hilprecht, an expert Assyriologist, and was found to agree with Genesis remarkably in its details. It speaks of a deluge that would destroy all life, and how God commanded the building of a great ship in which the builder, his family and animals were to be preserved.

The tablet could be dated quite precisely for a number of reasons, foremost of which is that the library in which it was found was known to be destroyed around 2100 BC, when the Elamites invaded Nippur. Hilprecht believed it was written sometime between 2137 and 2005 BC.

Also of significance is that the language of the Nippur tablet is quite different from that of most of the other tablets recovered alongside it. It is very close to biblical Hebrew, again indicating that the Genesis account was not derived from Babylonian myths. It also lacks the gross polytheism of the Gilgamesh account.

The account of a global flood, in which God judged the wickedness of man, must be one of the most ridiculed passages of the Bible. At the same time, it is attested to by some of our most ancient historic records, numerous documents and legends from all over the world, the fossil record, and many facts of geology.  We ignore it at our peril.

The Genesis account of THE FALL and NOAH’S FLOOD give us an explanation for a world full of death and suffering. Death and suffering were not there in the original creation, and with Christ’s resurrection, we know it will one day be done away with forever.

Extracted from an article by Dominic Statham, Genesis Authenticated in Clay refer http://www.creation.com

Pope Francis leading Catholics astray on evolution.

Posted on by

Pope-Francis

Sadly Pope Francis on October 27th, 2015 in the Pontifical Academy of Sciences address in Italian clearly indicated he accepts evolution and the billions-of-years timescale. This is not surprising, since the Catholic church has accepted evolution for about fifty years now.

The Vatican quotes Pope Francis:

“When we read in Genesis the account of Creation, we risk imagining God as a magus, with a magic wand able to make everything. But that is not so. (Pope Francis is saying here that God is not able to create ex nihilo as He so clearly claims). He created beings and allowed them to develop according to the internal laws that He gave to each one, so that they were able to develop and arrive at their fullness of being. …(through natural selection, survival of the fittest, pain and death). And so creation continued for centuries, millenia and millenia until it became which we know today, precisely because God is not a demiurge or conjurer but the Creator who gives being to all things……..”

The Bible clearly states that the world was perfect when God created it with Adam and Eve present at the beginning of creation. There was no death in the world until Adam and Eve sinned. Pope Francis however contradicts the clear reading of scripture by accepting evolution’s death and suffering before Adam and Eve.

Unfortunately for Catholics, their sole authority isn’t Scripture, but the Church, which is the only ‘infallible interpreter’ of Scripture according to their theology.

And yet when we look to Peter who they consider their ‘first pope’, we see that his attitude toward the biblical account of origins is very different to that of Pope Francis his supposed successor.

“…scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. They will say, “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation’. For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and that the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and then perished. But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly” 2 Peter 3:3-7.

In Peter’s proclamation we see first of all a complete acceptance of the biblical history of the world. And Scripture is his starting point, not other ideas in the culture. Peter points us to Genesis which states that the world was created from water by the Word of God. The world was destroyed by God with a world-wide flood. We know from creation geology models that a catastrophe of this scale would account for the geological layers containing all sorts of fossils with evidence of carnivory, cancer and thorns – because it’s a record of the post – Fall world. And if a year-long global catastrophe explains the majority of the fossil record, there is no room for millions of years of earth history.

In contrast to Pope Francis, Peter stands on the firm foundation of Scripture. I hope you and your church do so as well.

Extract from article by :Lita Cosner on The Pope on Evolution 1st Nov 2014, http://www.creation.com

A GOOD GOD & A WORLD OF DEATH & SUFFERING?

Posted on by

lambs

One of the most common questions asked of Christians is some version of: “If God is so loving, why are there bad things in the world?” The implication being that if God created this world in the state it is in, He can’t be ‘very good’ Himself. This is sometimes used as a reason to reject belief in God.

If God created everything in 6 days when exactly were ‘bad things’ created?

The first thing we need to understand is that God wasn’t surprised by the Fall of Adam. God is all knowing and so knew that a punishment would have to be meted out following Adam’s (and his offspring’s) rebellion.

According to Scripture, at the time of the Fall the environment changed and there were changes in the physical construction of some things as well. For example thorns appeared where there were none before. Some might ask ‘Doesn’t that mean God must have created new genetic information for these things at that time where there was none before?’ Not necessarily, because ‘hidden’ genetic information can lie dormant within living things and be activated under certain environmental conditions.

For example up to the 1920’s, scientists used to classify grasshoppers as a separate species to locusts. However, researchers have since determined that they are actually the same creature. Under certain (laboratory reproducible) circumstances they exhibit a sort of Jekyll/Hyde transformation that is truly startling!

Behavioural differences happen immediately at the transformation, with physical changes appearing in subsequent generations. The difference in behaviour (grasshoppers are solitary, locusts swarm), and morphology (locusts have smaller legs, wings and bodies but have a 30% larger brain than grasshoppers) is significant and changes neural, muscular and exo-skeletal expression. And the transformation from grasshopper to locust can also be reversed back again. Yet the DNA of the two creatures is identical.7

This ability for DNA to express different programming from the same source code under different environmental conditions is actually fairly common. The epigenetic code, a set of switches that turn genes on and off (e.g. in response to environmental stimuli) is a main contributor to this ability of the ‘finished product’ to vary despite the same DNA ‘instructions. This is known as ‘phenotypic plasticity’.

Not only is the discovery of latent genetic information an incredible challenge for evolution to account for, and a tremendous evidence of design (because it exhibits all of the characteristics of foresight and pre-planning in the genomes of creatures around the world), but it also helps answer the supposedly unanswerable question of how ‘bad things’ appeared after the Fall if God’s creation was completely finished by the end of the sixth day of creation.

God’s word is true

Foreknowing the Fall of man,9 God created the features of a post-Fall world in latent form within His very good world. They only became activated when God cursed the creation as punishment for Adam’s transgression. And the entire creation groans because of that Curse and is evidence that something is desperately wrong with this world. If God had not caused our physical environment to change at the time of the Fall, we would be lost without Him, bound for Hell but still in a virtual paradise. How would we know there was anything wrong and that we were in need of our Saviour

extract from article “The good, the bad and the ugly ….” by Calvin Smith on http://www.creation.com

 

Terminally Ill and Eternally Full of Life

Posted on by

Gods-Not-Dead-ALS

Russell Wolfe is a producer for the recent hit GOD’S NOT DEAD and many other Christian movies. Recently diagnosed with ALS, Russell took to Facebook to contribute to spreading awareness and raising money for scientific research of this incurable disease – ALS also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease,

Regarding the Ice Bucket Challenge, Russell told Movieguide®, “So few people even know of the disease or even know what it is. I think it’s done a great job at raising awareness for that, but I felt that it was particularly good to link it to the fact that God’s not dead, mainly because I have faith that I’m healed, and I’ll receive that manifestation of that healing. Maybe there are some people I can encourage along the way.”

Encourage people he did. Within a week, his Ice Bucket Challenge had been shared over 34,000 times and over 3,000 comments flooded in with encouragement, prayers and others with ALS stories.

Moved by the huge response to the video, Russell said, “One thing that speaks specifically to me is the outpouring of people and their prayers. I’m so grateful for that. I’m actually taken back by how much it was shared, and how many people have included me in their prayers.”

When the news of his terminal diagnosis was revealed to him, Russell said his doctor was more surprised than he was because of Russell’s demeanor.

“I was so calm in reaction to the news,” Russell explained. “I’ve been through a lot of storms in my life, and God has certainly delivered me from each one. When I’ve had things that have happened that are bad, at the time, they might have seemed disastrous, but God has turned each and every one of them around so that in retrospect, I can look back at those, and I’m thankful that they happened, and I don’t feel any different about this. So when he gave me the news, I just looked at it as an opportunity to stand in my faith, and now we’ll just see how God uses this for his Glory.”

Romans 8:28 is a special encouragement to Russell, because God’s work and plan for his life is already so apparent.

“A part of the movie [GOD’S NOT DEAD] is sort of ironic, not only that I play the doctor that was delivering terminal news, and then I received that [same news] thereafter, but the letter that was in the movie that Kevin Sorbo read.

When we had the script, I felt that there needed to be a bridge between him being a solid atheist, and then converting to a Christian on the screen. So, I felt that while he was sitting in his office, he could pull out a letter from his mother. So, I wrote that letter. The idea behind that was, what would I tell my kids if I knew I was going to die at a young age? That letter that’s in the movie, I wrote it in that perspective. Again, the irony of writing that letter, and then getting a terminal diagnosis expresses the way I felt at that time and feel now knowing that I have this diagnosis.”

With his health deteriorating, Russell is still full of encouragement, faith and hope.

As he says, his message “is that God didn’t give this [ALS] to us. God didn’t give me ALS. I believe we live in a fallen world, and as such, bad things happen to good people. . . . What I do believe is that God can take any of those bad things and turn them into good. My message is to keep your faith. God is good all the time. He will turn things that are bad to the good. So, look for the hope in that.”

Pray for Russell Wolfe, his family and the thousands of others that suffer from ALS. Pray for physical healing through miracles and scientific advances through medicine, but especially, pray for a spiritual healing for all those who don’t have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

edited article  by Ben Kayser Managing Editor, Movie Guide

 

 

Creation is FOUNDATIONAL to knowledge of GOD

Posted on by

Prof Bernard Brandstater

So says, medical pioneer Professor Bernard Brandstater. He is in his eighties and still doing part-time operating theatre work at Loma Linda University, California. He has many firsts in his distinguished medical career. He introduced prolonged intubation to assist infant breathing. This landmark technology spread rapidly. It triggered the quick appearance of neonatal intensive care units around the world.

“God made us”, says Professor Brandstater. “That’s His identity: the Creator, the sovereign Lord of the Universe. God as Creator is foundational to our understanding of anything”. According to Professor Brandstater, a Creation that deserves a central place in our worldview cannot include a long process that is abhorrent to us with millions of years of pain, suffering and death. The process of Creation must fit the character and purposes of God who does all things well, who is generous and merciful and delights in beauty. This is the God we can trust, seek to know and love. The Creation is clearly described in God’s Word as a brief time-limited event with a clean ending on Day Six and a celebration the following day. Moreover God tells us why he made the universe in six days, it is a pattern for mankind, six days we will work and rest the seventh day and it’s significant we still have a seven-day week. Dare we add a drawn out process that distorts this picture. Sadly most people do, adding long ages of evolutionary time. As Darwin’s Theory of Evolution does not make sense under the scrutiny of the latest scientific findings so why should we bow to such conjectures? God’s mode of creating tells us about His mind, His heart. In the Bible there is no indication of a long incubation. “He spoke and it was done.” Psalm 33:9. Evil and death certainly exist in the world today but they came later, not as part of God’s original Creation. They were a tragic result of the FALL; mankind’s disobedience. For the full article by Don Batten on Professor Bernard Brandsater, Medical Pioneer: Creation Foundational go to http://www.creation.com